Despite still being very much an early preview, Windows 10 is already brimming with dozens of handy tweaks and tricks—and, because the operating is still in preview, a handful of those tricks unlock powerful functionality hidden to everyday users.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2875600/windows-10-the-best-tips-tricks-and-tweaks.html#tk.rss_all Windows Sat, 14 Feb 2015 04:00:00 -0800 John Gaudiosi John GaudiosiBlending the thrill of managing a fantasy sports lineup with the opportunity to win real-world money has helped companies like FanDuel and DraftKings change the way millions of fans tune in to football, basketball, baseball, and hockey games. But why should physical sports get all the fun? Now, a pair of startups are bringing that cash-fueled fantasy thrill to the passionate, red-hot world of e-sports.
AlphaDraft and Vulcun have launched in tandem with the new season of Riot Games' League of Legends Championship Series (LCS), offering fans the chance to win real money by creating fantasy League of Legends teams comprised of actual professional LOL players.
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In this era of the all-pervasive cloud, it's easy to assume that the data we store will somehow be preserved forever. The only thing to fret about from a posterity perspective, we might think, is the analog information from days gone by—all the stuff on papers, tapes and other pre-digital formats that haven't been explicitly converted.
Vinton Cerf, often called "the father of the Internet," has other ideas.
Now chief Internet evangelist at Google, Cerf spoke this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and he painted a very different picture.
Rather than a world where longevity is a given, Cerf fears a "digital dark age" in which the rapid evolution of technology quickly makes storage formats obsolete thanks to a phenomenon he calls "bit rot."
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China's Huawei Technologies is facing a growing backlash in Zambia, following revelations that the company is erecting telecom towers that do not adhere to technical specifications.
Lawmakers and consumer rights groups have urged the Zambian government to withhold payments to the company until it brings the towers up to the required standard.
The Zambian Information and Communication Technology Authority (ZICTA), awarded Huawei a contract to construct 169 telecom towers in rural areas of the country, at a cost of over $13.5 million. It has been established, however, that the coverage of the towers extends to a radius of 1.65 km (one mile) as opposed to the 5 km specification in the contract.
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Rumors that Apple is developing a car have been met with a world of skepticism, but two news reports Friday suggest there's something to the idea after all.
Several hundred Apple employees are working in secret to develop an electric vehicle, The Wall Street Journal reports. The project is code-named "Titan," and Apple's initial design resembles a minivan, the report says -- not exactly a sexy choice for the iPhone maker.
Earlier Friday, the Financial Times said experienced managers from Apple's iPhone division have been assigned to an automotive project at a secret Silicon Valley location. Apple has hired away the head of Mercedes-Benz's Silicon Valley R&D lab, the FT says.
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Big data may have just crested the wave of inflated expectations and be barrelling towards the trough of disillusionment, at least if you're following along with the Gartner Hype Cycle.
In other words, some practitioners are beginning to doubt the marketing jive around big data analysis and starting to take a more critical view of the limits of big data systems.
The promise of big data has been that the more data you collect, the more insights you can get for your organization. An engineer from Google, which has profited as much from big data as anyone, has called that notion "the unreasonable effectiveness of data."
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Internet connectivity and mobile communications throughout the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) have been fully restored, but the country's political turmoil is far from over.
The government had moved to block communications in an attempt to quell public protests sparked by President Joseph Kabila's political maneuvers to extend his tenure in office.
The DRC government shut down Internet, social media and mobile phone communications on Jan. 19, restoring Internet service only to banks, government agencies and other corporate bodies 10 days later.
People had been using text messages and social media networks to coordinate rallies to protest Kabila's attempts to introduce an electoral bill and change the country's constitution in order to continue his stay in office. The DRC government admitted that the debate over the bill would likely delay the next presidential election by at least one year.
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A programmer for defunct file storage site Megaupload has pleaded guilty to criminal copyright infringement charges and has been sentenced to a year and a day in U.S. prison.
Andrus Nomm, a 36-year-old Estonian man, pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia to conspiracy to commit felony copyright infringement. District Judge Liam O'Grady accepted the guilty plea and imposed the sentence.
Nomm is the first defendant to face charges in the U.S. in the Department of Justice's long-running copyright infringement case against Megaupload.
The plea is "a significant step forward in the largest criminal copyright case in U.S. history," Assistant Attorney General Leslie Caldwell said in a statement.
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As a child, clicking through static images on the classic View-Master toy took me to remote parts of the planet. Now Mattel is bringing the retro toy into the future with the addition of virtual reality, which encourages interaction by bringing images to life.
Mattel is aiming high with the View-Master. It wants kids to take virtual 360-degree tours of cities, see classic sites, go on undersea adventures and even play with dinosaurs. Unfortunately, a hands-on test of this new View-Master left me disappointed.
I tested a cardboard version of View-Master, but the final, commercial version of the product will have a plastic frame.
The frame houses a smartphone, which will transmit bite-sized virtual reality (VR) experiences to the product's viewer. The smartphone gets the experiences either from mobile apps or from stand-alone circular discs developed by Mattel. The discs are supposed to automatically pair up with the smartphone, but it took about two minutes for one of my discs to establish the connection. The headset wasn't always responsive.
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U.S. businesses and government agencies need to work more closely together to combat the growing threat of cyberattacks, President Barack Obama said Friday.
Calling on U.S. agencies and businesses to share more cyberthreat information, Obama said he had signed an executive order intended to encourage more cooperation.
Protecting against cyberattacks "has to be a shared mission," Obama said during a speech at Stanford University. "Government cannot do this alone, but the fact is, the private sector cannot do this alone either."
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The Windows 10 technical preview for phones doesn't walk up, slap you in the face, and demand your attention, as Windows Phone 8 and its Live Tiles did. But you can detect a subtle power, even at this early stage—and one very nice feature: deeply integrated speech recognition.
Right now, I'd characterize Windows 10 for phones as a convenience. That's not a criticism. Features like interactive notifications or the improved Quick Actions may be nothing new for iOS and Android phones. But who cares? They're useful nevertheless.
Aesthetically, there are few changes between Windows Phone 8.1 and Windows 10 for phones.
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Apple CEO Tim Cook has warned of "dire consequences" if tech companies can't protect the privacy of those who use their products.
Giving up our privacy to digital technologies exposes us to greater risks than just identity theft and financial losses—serious though those things are, Cook said in a brief speech at a cybersecurity summit in Silicon Valley on Friday.
"History has shown us that sacrificing our right to privacy can have dire consequences," Cook said.
"We still live in a world where all people are not treated equally," he said, "where too many people do not feel free to practice their religion or express their opinion or love who they choose, a world in which that information can make the difference between life or death."
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Google is pulling the plug on Helpouts, the company's service to provide answers and advice by connecting information seekers with experts via live video.
With Helpouts, Google sought to provide an information platform built around live tutorials rather than clickable search results or links. The goal of the service, launched in 2013, was to let people connect with experts to get information about practically anything, whether it be photography, cooking, fitness or home improvement. Google took a 20 percent transaction fee from most types of paid sessions. A desktop version was offered, as well as mobile apps.
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All's quiet on the gaming front this week—unless you're Peter Molyneux. This is the gaming news for the week of February 9.
Remember that "game" Curiosity from Peter Molyneux? The one where you just eliminated cubes from a larger cube and then eventually someone was supposed to eliminate the last cube and find out what was "inside"? And then someone won and Molyneux was like, "Hey good news, this was actually an elaborate promo for this other game I'm working on, Godus."
And then Godus sucked.
Eurogamer has the story this week of what happened to the poor sap who "won" Curiosity. The best part? When the winner (Scot Bryan Henderson) says, "That's when they [Molyneux and Co.] made us play Godus for three hours straight. It was our choice when to get up and stop playing, but I didn't want to seem rude."
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Google just launched a beta channel of its WebView tool, which should ultimately lead to a better experience when you view web content inside of an app.
Developers use WebView in apps like Feedly or Facebook to let you read an article within the app, without kicking you out to the browser. By creating a Beta version, developers can check out new features sooner and optimize performance for a better experience with their Android apps. Until Android Lollipop, WebView was baked into the operating system, and was only updated when the whole OS was. That changes in Lollipop; WebView can be updated directly from the Play Store.
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Senior U.S. government officials came to Silicon Valley on Friday to deliver a direct appeal to executives from major companies and the cybersecurity industry: work with us so the nation will be better protected from cyberattacks.
The charm offensive, which includes a speech by President Barack Obama, comes as a new government agency is being formed to oversee preventive and reactive response to cyberattacks: the U.S. Cyber Threat Intelligence Integration Center. That's part of the government's response to the growing number of cyberattacks on large corporations, like Target and Sony Pictures, but the cooperation of industry is not guaranteed.
Lisa Monaco, a senior advisor to President Obama on homeland security and counterterrorism, said she worried that the type of cyberattack that targeted Sony could become the norm in the future if more isn't done.
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Call it 802.11baaa: A new research project may look at ways to turn sheep into wandering, wooly Wi-Fi hotspots.
According to Wales Online, researchers at Lancaster University have received a grant of about $260,000 to equip sheep with digital smart collars. The primary purpose is to track the herd's location and measure environmental conditions.
However, the collars could also turn the herd into a Wi-Fi hotspot, helping bring better connectivity to rural areas. As the Atlantic notes, a herd of sheep can form a mesh network that transmits connectivity across large distances. Similar tests in Northern Scandinavia have already looked at offering Wi-Fi to nomadic people through reindeer. (If you're worried about animal safety, the sheep should be fine if the collars don't exceed 2 percent of their body weight.)
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People looking for richer mobile apps may cheer Apple's decision to double the size limit of those approved for sale. But those whose iPhones and iPads have smaller amounts of memory will need to download carefully.
On Thursday, Apple said it is bumping the maximum size of apps to 4GB from 2GB, marking the first time Apple has expanded the size limit since the App Store's 2008 debut.
Larger apps will be able to take advantage of the faster processors and improved screen resolutions found in iPhones and iPads. These hardware updates allow for apps with richer media experiences like high-resolution graphics—additional features that also mean bigger downloads.
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The fog is beginning to lift on Samsung's next major flagship hone launch. The company is jumping into full promo mode, renaming its @SamsungMobile Twitter account "TheNextGalaxy" and tweeting a teaser video.
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]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2884198/samsung-hints-at-galaxy-s6-camera-focus-in-new-twitter-campaign.html#tk.rss_all Phones Fri, 13 Feb 2015 09:24:00 -0800 Michael Kan Michael Kan Asustek Computer isn't exactly known for smartphones, but the Taiwanese PC maker is aiming to bring more Android phones to U.S. and European markets this year. A year ago, Asus introduced its ZenFone line (above), a range of Android handsets, and demand for the phones is growing. In the fourth quarter, Asus shipped 4.5 million smartphones, up from a mere 200,000 units in the first quarter of 2014. The shipments are still small compared to those of leading vendors such as Apple and Samsung Electronics, but Asus is among the PC makers hoping to break out from the notebook market by releasing more mobile devices. In 2017, Asus expects revenue from its mobile business to surpass that of its PCs. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Apple is throwing the doors open to its online iWork suite, even for people who've never purchased Apple hardware. The browser version of iWork—now 18 months old and still in beta—has always required an iCloud account. But until now, Apple hasn't let people create an account without an iOS device or a Mac. As BetaNews reports, Apple's iCloud site now offers a way to create an account straight from the browser, providing access to web versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Fairphone's second smartphone will not only be built using conflict-free or fair trade minerals, but also offer better performance and be really easy to repair. After selling 60,000 units of its first phone, the Dutch company is now turning its attention to a new model that will go on sale in the latter half of the year. With the second phone, the goal is still to manufacture a smartphone that doesn't use minerals from conflict zones, is recyclable and is made by workers who are treated well. Fairphone is also aiming to make product longevity a development goal. The longer a device lasts, the less waste it creates and the fewer resources it requires, founder and CEO Bas Van Abel said in a blog post. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here In the latest Internet of Things security blunder, personal weather station devices made by Netatmo were found sending users' Wi-Fi passwords back to the company over unencrypted connections. Netatmo weather stations can be used to monitor indoor and outdoor temperature, humidity, carbon dioxide levels and overall air quality. Users can see the data collected by their stations in real-time through an app installed on their phones, tablets or computers. The public weather map on Netatmo's website shows that thousands of such devices are installed around the world. When the weather stations are first configured, users need to give them access to their Wi-Fi networks, so they can transmit sensor readings to the Netatmo cloud over the Internet. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've tried Google Cardboard and are over the age of 30, you've probably noticed some parallels to those old View-Master stereoscopes. Now, Mattel is embracing the comparison with its own virtual reality headset. Starting this fall, Mattel will sell a virtual reality version of View-Master using the same software as Google Cardboard. Instead of sticking slide reels into the plastic frame, you'll plop in an Android phone. Instead of seeing static images, you'll use apps to explore virtual worlds. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
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