Technology news

• Microsoft gives universal apps new Windows branding

  25-03-2015 23:59
  
  To reduce compatibility questions, Microsoft has a new name for universal apps that will work across multiple screen sizes: Windows apps. Windows apps will work on Windows 10 laptops, tablets, desktops, phones, IoT and Xbox. "In Windows 10, we have this notion of a universal app platform," Microsoft engineer Don Box said in a session at WinHEC 2015. "And the apps that target it are called Windows apps. Sometimes we say universal apps, but we call them Windows apps."Box goes o
  
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• ​Indian govt partners with Twitter for SMS updates

  25-03-2015 23:23 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  The Indian government has teamed up with Twitter to launch a system that will allow people to receive tweeted updates from the government straight to their mobile phone via SMS.
  
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• How web services became cloud magic, then turned real again

  25-03-2015 23:11 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  When businesses turn into a set of web APIs, decisions about trust, security, and risk management become more important than ever -- and many of these are board-level decisions.
  
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• U.S. jury says Motorola infringed one Intellectual Ventures patent

  25-03-2015 22:58
  
  By Andrew Chung NEW YORK (Reuters) - Patent holding company Intellectual Ventures' second crack at holding Motorola Mobility liable for using its technology without permission partially succeeded on Wednesday after a U.S. jury in Delaware found Motorola infringed a patent on multimedia text messaging. The jury, however, cleared Motorola, a unit of China's Lenovo Group, on a second patent, which it said was invalid. The last time these two companies faced off in court ended in a mistria
  
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• Facebook brings apps, businesses to Messenger service

  25-03-2015 22:55
  
  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Wednesday opened up its Messenger service for developers to create apps and for shoppers to communicate directly with retailers, as the Internet company seeks to expand its reach. The new features mark Facebook's latest effort to transform its mobile messaging service into a full-featured platform with the same pull with consumers and businesses as its flagship 1.4-billion user social network. Facebook unveiled the new features a
  
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• U.S. FTC says regrets release of documents on Google probe

  25-03-2015 22:55
  
  Three U.S. Federal Trade Commission members said on Wednesday they regretted the inadvertent release of part of an agency report about its probe of Google Inc as the company continues to face antitrust scrutiny from European authorities. The document, which was at the centre of a report by The Wall Street Journal, indicated that key staff members at the FTC were in favour of suing Google for allegedly breaking antitrust law. In a statement the commissioners -- Chairwoman Edith Ramirez, Julie Bri
  
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• Uber sets up response teams as safety concerns rise

  25-03-2015 22:31
  
  (Reuters) - Ride-sharing company Uber said it has formed response teams to address safety issues across the world, amid increasing concerns about the security of its passengers and drivers. Uber will form a safety advisory board comprising independent experts to review its practices and advise on adding safety features to its platform, the company's global safety head Phillip Cardenas said in blog post on Wednesday. Uber was also elevating its standards of background checks on drivers and h
  
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• Ellen Pao jury begins deliberations in Silicon Valley sex discrimination case

  25-03-2015 22:09
  
  Tech executive’s lawyer tells jury to look to their ‘conscience’ in decision on $16m lawsuit that is the most high-profile of its kind ever to reach court Continue reading...
  
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• Review: Plex

  25-03-2015 21:45 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  The streaming media world grows more and more crowded everyday. Between Sling TV, PlayStation Vue and HBO Now, there's no shortage of streaming options as long as you're willing to shell out the cash every month. But what if - and hang in there with me - you want to stream your own media? What if you don't want to pay for something you've already paid for four years ago? What do you do then?What you do then, my friend, is download Plex, the all-in-one media sharing server that uses your PC to di
  
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• Facebook's Messenger app adding more ways to connect

  25-03-2015 21:18
  
  SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — Facebook is trying to mold its Messenger app into a more versatile communications hub as smartphones create new ways for people to connect with friends and businesses beyond the walls of the company's ubiquitous social network.
  
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• PayPal to pay $7.7 million in U.S. Treasury sanctions case

  25-03-2015 19:51
  
  PayPal, the electronic payments firm, agreed to pay $7.7 million (5.1 million pounds) to settle charges by the U.S. Treasury Department that it violated numerous sanctions programs against countries that include Iran, Cuba and Sudan, Treasury said on Wednesday. PayPal, owned by EBay Inc, did not adequately screen its transactions for U.S. sanctions targets for several years through 2013, resulting in 486 apparent violations of U.S. law, Treasury said in a statement. PayPal also dismissed alerts
  
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• VIDEO: Future plans for Facebook Messenger

  25-03-2015 19:26 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has outlined some of the social network's plans for its Messenger app, including opening it up to third parties.
  
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• Facebook Messenger lets apps plug in

  25-03-2015 19:24 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Facebook opens up its Messenger app to accept posts from other photo, video, audio and Gif-based social networks.
  
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• Facebook expands messaging service features

  25-03-2015 19:23
  
  By Alexei Oreskovic SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Facebook Inc on Wednesday opened up its Messenger service for developers to create apps and for consumers to communicate directly with retailers, in the social media network's latest effort to expand its reach. The push to transform Facebook's messaging service into one that operates independently of the company's social media network comes as it faces intensifying competition from Twitter Inc and Google Inc, as well as from fast-growi
  
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• Producer Oisin Tymon faces abuse from Jeremy Clarkson supporters

  25-03-2015 19:03
  
  Tymon was attacked by Clarkson in the incident that led to the Top Gear presenter’s sacking by the BBC Continue reading...
  
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• VIDEO: 'Spherical video' coming to Facebook

  25-03-2015 18:49 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg shows off "spherical video" which will soon be supported on the site.
  
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• Video: CXOs sound off on the critical challenges facing IoT, big data, and the cloud

  25-03-2015 18:33 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  ZDNet's Jason Hiner interviewed CXOs at a San Francisco roundtable on IoT, big data, and the cloud. Here are the biggest challenges they anticipate in the coming years.
  
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• Huawei equipment not a risk to national security says report

  25-03-2015 18:28 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  Huawei Cyber Security Evaluation Centre is working effectively says oversight board.
  
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• The app generation - good or bad? - Tech Weekly podcast

  25-03-2015 18:25
  
  This week on the podcast we're talking apps and the generation of creatives using them for work and play Continue reading...
  
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• China's Huawei given clean bill of health by UK security board

  25-03-2015 18:02
  
  China's Huawei Technologies Co Ltd, the telecoms equipment company whose products are now integral to various mobile and fixed-line networks, poses no threat to Britain's national security, a board established to monitor the company's operations said. The world's second largest telecoms equipment maker set up an independent cyber security evaluation centre in Oxford in 2010 in conjunction with the government to check whether its equipment could pose a threat to national secur
  
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• ATF spent $600,000 on faulty drones that were never used, watchdog finds

  25-03-2015 17:31
  
  Justice department says it is ‘troubled’ that the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives spent money on drones that were rendered unsuitable Continue reading...
  
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• Joanne Harris: app replacing swearwords in novels is toxic

  25-03-2015 17:30
  
  Author has penned a furious blog accusing the Clean Reader app of promoting a biased agenda and fundamentally misunderstanding the nature of fiction Continue reading...
  
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• Fifa 15 is not broken, insists Electronic Arts

  25-03-2015 17:24
  
  As ardent fans continue to rail against Ultimate Team price ranges, the publisher says its motivation for change was players rather than pound signsFifa 15 publisher Electronic Arts has launched a stern defence of its decision to reconfigure the transfer market within the game’s popular Ultimate Team mode. In a blog post seen by the Guardian before publication, the company insists that fans who have taken to social media and games forums to declare the game fundamentally broken are wide of the
  
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• VIDEO: Ford tech 'stops people speeding'

  25-03-2015 17:01 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Ford is to sell a car that can read road signs and adjust its speed accordingly to ensure the vehicle is not driving too fast.
  
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• NASA’s Opportunity Rover Completes a Martian Marathon

  25-03-2015 16:44
  
  Only 11 years and two months after it began, NASA’s Mars Opportunity rover has completed a marathon across the planet’s barren red desert. “It’s historic,” said John Callas, a NASA astronomer who manages the Mars Exploration Rover project, in an interview. “This is the first time any human enterprise has exceeded a marathon somewhere other than Earth.” Opportunity was designed to drive a distance of only one kilometer.
  
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• India raises record 11.8 billion pounds from telecom airwaves auction

  25-03-2015 16:30
  
  By Aman Shah MUMBAI (Reuters) - India raised a record $17.6 billion from the sale of mobile phone airwaves in its latest telecom spectrum auction after 19 days of fierce bidding, the country's telecoms minister said on Wednesday. Ravi Shankar Prasad said the government received bids worth almost 1.10 trillion rupees (11.8 billion pounds), topping the 1.06 trillion rupees it raised in 2010. The government did not disclose winning bidders and the regions in which they had won spectrum, but th
  
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• Video: CXOs see big opportunities at the intersection of IoT, big data, and the cloud

  25-03-2015 16:07 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  ZDNet hosted a roundtable with CXOs in San Francisco to talk IoT, big data, and the cloud. Here are the big opportunities they see in the years ahead.
  
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• Car slows when it sees speed signs

  25-03-2015 15:45 via bbc.co.uk
  
  Ford announces it is to start selling cars that restrict their speed to the limits shown on the road signs they pass.
  
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• China clamps down on sexual content on WeChat

  25-03-2015 15:42
  
  China's Internet regulator issued on Wednesday new guidelines prohibiting sexual and vulgar content on Tencent Holdings Ltd's popular messaging app, the latest step in the agency's perennial campaign to clean up China's Internet. The Cyberspace Administration of China (CAC) said sexually explicit pictures and text, including nude photos and erotic animation, and stories of "one-night stands, wife-swapping, sexual abuse and other harmful information" will be subject
  
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• UK politicians to get an iPad Air 2 and a laptop each

  25-03-2015 15:27 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  A minor furor has broken out with the news that the UK's legislature is to get a much needed, and expected, upgrade to its technology.
  
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• Samsung Galaxy S6 versus Apple iPhone 6: What do the specs tell us?

  25-03-2015 15:25 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  The two flagship devices are more alike than ever, so what do the differences and similarities tell us about the future of smartphones?
  
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• Review: Lenovo ThinkPad T450s

  25-03-2015 15:15 via feedproxy.google.com
  Introduction and designLooking at the Lenovo ThinkPad T450s, you wouldn't be faulted if you mistook it for last year's ThinkPad T440s. The ThinkPad T series represents Lenovo's careful trade-offs between power, performance, and portability in a lightweight design.In this year's evolution, Lenovo focuses its efforts on under-the-hood improvements – updating the ThinkPad T450s to a more energy-efficient Intel fifth-generation Broadwell CPU – rather than changing the familiar business-centric d
  
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• Review: TomTom GO Mobile for Android

  25-03-2015 14:49 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  We last chin-stroked our way through reviewing TomTom's sat nav app in December 2014, finding it a fine app, if maybe too expensive compared to its free – and mostly pretty sturdy – rivals. That was on iOS, but now, just a few months later, TomTom have double-upped the ante, with an updated Android-only (for now) app and a new and interesting pricing plan. So for once, your iPhone-packing chums can look over your shoulder enviously. Well, slightly enviously; it's only a sat nav.A new way of
  
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• Review: Updated: Amazon Fire TV Stick

  25-03-2015 14:48 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Intro, design and setupThe set-top box landscape is changing. It used to be a full-size battle royale where three titans – the Roku 3, Amazon Fire TV and Apple TV – duked it out for control of your television. Then, in July of last year, Google released Chromecast, a set-top box built into a thumb drive form factor and fits entirely behind a TV.In many ways the Amazon Fire TV Stick, the successor to the full-size Fire TV, looks similar to Google's impulse buy offering from last year. But wha
  
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• Drones: US loss could be UK's gain

  25-03-2015 14:30 via bbc.co.uk
  
  As Amazon complains that US regulators are taking too long to issue test permits, countries like the UK could be well placed to profit, says a leading academic
  
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• Stefan Stern: Forget the rise of the robots, human beings are the world's killer app

  25-03-2015 14:24
  
  "The robots are coming!" goes the cry. Artificial intelligence is getting cleverer all the time. There is always hype surrounding new technology. Two economists from the Martin School at Oxford University, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael Osborne, published a paper two years ago called The Future Of Employment: How Susceptible Are Jobs To Computerisation?
  
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• Online electronics retailers raided over EC antitrust price fears

  25-03-2015 14:03 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  The EU is still concerned that online retailers may be cooperating to restrict the supply of certain consumer electronic goods.
  
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• The car claiming to be 'teen proof'

  25-03-2015 12:43 via bbc.co.uk
  
  The new Chevrolet lets nervous parents spy on their children's driving in real-time.
  
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• ​Telefonica sells O2 to Three for £10.25bn

  25-03-2015 12:40 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  Three UK will become the largest mobile operator if regulators approve its agreement to acquire O2 from Spanish operator Telefonica.
  
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• U.S. urges companies to do more to fight cyber crime

  25-03-2015 12:14
  
  By Huw Jones LONDON (Reuters) - Cyber crime is probably the biggest risk facing companies across the world, and they need to do more to help governments tackle the problem, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin said on Wednesday. "Each of us must recognise this risk is perhaps the most pressing operational risk of our time," she told the CityWeek conference in London. Financial services firms were making substantial investments in reinforcing their resilience to cyber attac
  
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• India's Wipro seeks bigger digital market share with 'commando' unit

  25-03-2015 12:07
  
  By Nivedita Bhattacharjee MUMBAI (Reuters) - India's third-largest IT services exporter Wipro is setting up a "commando force" unit next month that will target clients seeking to speed up automation and do more business online, an executive told Reuters. Rajan Kohli, who will head the newly formed Wipro Digital business, said the unit aimed to generate $1 billion in annual revenue within three years, which would make it one of the company's top sources of revenue. "We be
  
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• Review: SanDisk Connect Wireless Media Drive

  25-03-2015 11:25 via feedproxy.google.com
  
  Introduction and performanceSharing content wirelessly is something that is the norm in today's modern society. With our mobile devices, computers, and the cloud, everything is in sync and in a constant stream of access. But what happens if you do not have decent broadband internet access, or you are travelling – what do you do then? Well, you could load up one device with everything you need and bring some USB flash drives to pass around to share with others. Or you could look for a more intu
  
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• China's ZTE 2014 profit almost doubles on smartphones, 4G roll-out

  25-03-2015 11:19
  
  HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese telecom equipment maker ZTE Corp posted a 94 percent rise in 2014 net profit on Wednesday, in line with its own forecast, due to strength in its smartphone business overseas and high-speed 4G network division at home. The Shenzhen-based company recorded profit of 2.63 billion yuan (284 million pounds) from 1.36 billion yuan a year earlier, in line with the company's forecast of 2.6 billion yuan. Operating revenue rose 8.3 percent to 81.4 billion yuan. ...
  
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• ​Apple acquires NoSQL database maker FoundationDB

  25-03-2015 11:12 via zdnet.com.feedsportal.com
  
  Apple has snapped up a small database company that specialises in high-availability distributed environments.
  
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• BT returns to mobile phone market

  25-03-2015 11:02 via bbc.co.uk
  
  BT announces it is to start selling mobile phone subscriptions again in the UK, 10 years after it pulled out of the market.
  
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• Beijing official says Chinese have no need for blocked websites

  25-03-2015 10:53
  
  By Ben Blanchard BEIJING (Reuters) - If Beijing is successful in its bid for the 2022 Winter Olympics then foreigners who attend will get uncensored Internet access, but this isn't an issue for Chinese who "don't like" sites like Facebook and Twitter, an official said on Wednesday. China keeps a tight rein on its Internet. The government has warned that social media, particularly foreign services, could be a destabilising force for Chinese society or even affect the country&#
  
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• U.S. calls for global consensus on tackling cyber crime

  25-03-2015 10:46
  
  LONDON (Reuters) - The United States called on Wednesday for an international consensus to tackle the growing threat of cyber crime in financial services and other sectors, saying governments alone cannot tackle the problem. "We now need to develop consensus around ways to respond to this threat," U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Sarah Bloom Raskin told the CityWeek conference in London. Any solution will be suboptimal if governments act alone with the help of the financial services sect
  
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• Delhi government asks federal ministry to block Uber, Ola apps

  25-03-2015 08:31
  
  New Delhi authorities on Wednesday asked India's federal information technology ministry to block the taxi-hailing apps of U.S.-based Uber and its local rival Ola in the city in a bid to enforce a ban on the companies' services. India in December ordered all unregistered web-based taxi companies to halt operations until they obtain an operating licence after a driver contracted with Uber was accused of rape. The ban, however, has largely been ineffective and both Ola, backed by Japan&#
  
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• Review: Sony streaming service modernizes TV, not your bill

  25-03-2015 08:13
  
  NEW YORK (AP) — Sony's new PlayStation Vue television service probably won't save you money over cable.
  
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• Details on PlayStation Vue, comparison with Sling TV

  25-03-2015 08:11
  
  NEW YORK (AP) — Sony's new PlayStation Vue online TV service launched in three cities last week with more than 50 channels starting at $50. Additional channels can be had for $10 to $20 more, and the service comes with some on-demand apps for remote viewings.
  
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