Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » novembre 24, 2014

BetaNews.Com (14 non lus)

3 billion people will be online by 2015

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 7:49pm CET par Barclay Ballard

More than three billion people will have Internet access by next year, according to a new study.

Estimates by eMarketer indicate that 42.4 percent of the global population will be online in 2015, an increase of 6.2 percent compared with this year.

By 2018 this figure will have risen to close to 50 percent, with 3.6 billion people able to access the Internet at least once a month.

Senior forecasting analyst at eMarketer, Monica Peart, explained that most of the growth will come from emerging markets and the increasing availability of smartphones.

"Inexpensive mobile phones and mobile broadband connections are driving Internet access and usage in countries where fixed Internet has been out of reach for consumers, whether that’s due to lack of infrastructure or affordability," she said.

"While highly developed nations are nearly saturated in terms of Internet users, there’s significant room for growth in emerging markets; for example, India and Indonesia will each see double-digit growth in each year between now and 2018".

Major technology brands are now in a race to launch the Internet-enabling infrastructure that will allow these nations to get online more easily. Aside from any altruistic motives, establishing connections in developing countries could be a major revenue source for these firms.

Google has already launched its Project Loon initiative, which uses high altitude balloons to create an aerial wireless network capable of providing high speed Internet access.

Facebook, in partnership with Internet.org, also recently began enabling smartphone owners in Africa to view a selection of websites, free of any data charges, via a specially designed app.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
For Thanksgiving dinner, Bing will teach you to cook -- Google prefers eating out

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 6:36pm CET par Brian Fagioli

Thanksgiving is probably my favorite holiday. Not only is it a great day to reflect on what I am thankful for, but it allows me to overeat in a socially acceptable way. When I am gorging on food the other 364 days, I'll get dirty looks; not so on Thanksgiving! Turkey, stuffing, sweet potatoes -- mmm mmm mmm, I can taste it already.

If you haven't made plans for the holiday yet, do not worry; both Bing and Google are aiming to help you out. The competing search engines, however, are taking polar approaches as to how to eat. Bing will help you find recipes, while Google will help you with eating-out.

"Our friends over at Zagat.com have made it easy to find top-rated restaurants for Thanksgiving. With city spotlights in Austin, Denver, NYC and San Francisco (to name a few!), you can check out top-notch Thanksgiving dinner options -- whether you want a traditional Thanksgiving meal or would rather try tacos or sushi", says Google.

The search-giant has partnered with Zagat to locate restaurants that are open on the holiday, making it easy to find a place to dine with Google Maps. While some will find eating-out on Thanksgiving to be sacrilege, remember, not everyone has a large family, or a kitchen large enough to cook a big meal. Hell, my first apartment, a studio, had no kitchen -- just a microwave in the living room.

For those who want a traditional home-cooked Thanksgiving meal, Bing is here to make your holiday wonderful. Microsoft's search service is launching a new way to find and view recipes.

The Bing team explains, "Thanksgiving is almost here and that means two things, family and food. We understand how difficult it can be to cook such a huge feast. Whether you are looking for a new dish for this year's table or for how to make stuffing just like your mom's, Bing can help you find the perfect recipe. We've collected recipes from all of your favorite sites, this way you can look through all of them in one place. Click through our new carousel with large images to explore dishes until you find the right one".

I'm sure a lot of you enjoy eating-out, and I get that; it is easier and requires no cleaning up. With that said, it is rather special sitting around a table with your family enjoying a home-cooked meal and talking about what you are thankful for. Whether you go a restaurant, or cook yourself, maybe you should call a lonely friend or relative and invite them -- I am sure they will be thankful for that.

Will you be eating a home-cooked meal this Thursday, or eating-out? Tell me in the comments.

Photo Credit: Lisa A / Shutterstock
Wireless connectivity is enhancing SMBs in unexpected ways

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 6:00pm CET par Jonathan Hallatt

Three-quarters of small and medium-sized firms say that having a reliable wireless network in place is now essential for business success.

It doesn’t matter if the company has two, twenty or two hundred employees, all agree that a wireless network keeps employees connected wherever they are on site, and that this boosts productivity, strengthens competitiveness and enhances customer service.

As a result, all over the UK, employees clutching a growing range of connected devices are walking around SMB offices, shop floors, restaurants, warehouses, greenhouses and more, sharing information, making decisions, responding to customer inquiries, booking appointments, processing orders and billing customers. The business benefits speak for themselves.

This growing dependence on wireless is not totally unexpected. As our personal lives become more connected and mobile it is almost inevitable that the businesses we own, manage or work in will follow a similar path.

However, a Netgear study into SMBs and wireless also revealed something else. It showed that wireless connectivity is enhancing aspects of the business many might consider to be beyond the reach of technology, namely brand image and employee morale.

Two-thirds of the 500 small to mid-size firms we spoke to say that having a wireless network makes their business look vibrant and up-to-date. Three quarters (72 percent) believe that not having Wi-Fi makes a firm look old-fashioned. In other words, firms like what wireless capability says to the outside world about the kind of company they are.

A third (33 percent) believe it helps them to recruit fresh, new talent into the business – young people drawn from a generation of digital natives who expect wireless mobility and flexibility as standard. Three-quarters of firms with more than 11 employees say wireless is essential for meeting employees’ demands to be able to work anywhere on any device.

Last, but definitely not least, half (54 percent) of the firms surveyed say the introduction of a wireless network has boosted company morale and team building as people are not stuck to their desks but can mix freely with colleagues across the workplace.

This appears to become increasingly important as a company grows in size. Two-thirds (64 percent) of firms with between 11 and 50 employees and three-quarters (76 percent) of those with more than 100 staff have experienced this.

The case for installing a wireless network in the workplace is therefore a strong one. Yet some firms are still reluctant to introduce it. Our study revealed some of the main reasons behind this.

Just under a third (31 percent) of the companies we spoke to had considered abandoning all wireless plans after a bad experience with poor network quality and reliability, while 33 percent feared a possible data security risk. A quarter (25 percent) was unsure how to introduce wireless into their existing IT infrastructure, rising to 35 percent of firms with more than 100 employees.

Fortunately these are issues that can be addressed easily. There are solutions on the market that are designed specifically to meet the needs of smaller firms. Easy-to-implement and cost-effective solutions that do not require any advanced IT knowledge or skills, can be installed quickly using existing infrastructure to deliver consistent, secure, high quality wireless access across the workplace.

A seamless, high performing wireless network is within the reach of every firm -- and there are products and providers out there who will help you to get going. As our survey discovered, it doesn’t matter if you have a law firm, a hairdressing salon, a veterinary surgery or a café, once you have a network in place and the benefits start to pour in, you will wonder how you ever managed without it.

Jonathan Hallatt is the regional director for UK, Ireland & South Africa at Netgear.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
Block webcam hijacking with WebCam On-Off

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 3:20pm CET par Mike Williams

Webcam hijacking has been around for a long time, but recent stories about websites streaming live footage from thousands of hacked webcams have placed it firmly back in the headlines.

Fully protecting your own webcam requires tough security measures. A quality antivirus engine, smart firewall, strong passwords.

There’s no harm in having an additional layer of security, though, and that’s what’s on offer with Sordum’s new WebCam On-Off, a tiny free tool which allows you to disable your webcam when it’s not being used.

The program is portable, with no adware or other hassles, and it couldn’t be much easier to use. Launch it, a status icon indicates whether the driver is on or off, and you click "Enable" or "Disable" as required. Simple.

It’s not exactly convenient to manually toggle the setting each time, of course, but WebCam On-Off also provides a command line interface. Run "Webcam.exe /on" or "Webcam.exe /off" and the driver is configured to match, so you can launch the program from a shortcut, a script, a scheduled task, whatever you like.

This isn’t in any sense a real security solution. If someone is able to penetrate your PC from the outside world, or has placed a Trojan on your system, then that’s the real problem. Stopping them using your webcam isn’t going to help much if, say, they just capture your keystrokes instead.

Disabling the driver doesn’t offer guaranteed protection, either. If someone has hacked your system then they may still be able to view any footage when you’re using it. And if there’s malware running on your system then it may be able to reactivate the driver as required.

Still, WebCam On-Off does offer a minimal extra layer of protection, and it might be useful for other reasons, like making it harder for your kids to use the webcam without permission. Give it a try, just don’t expect -- or rely on it -- too much.
Evernote for Mac 6 gets Yosemite-inspired redesign, Work Chat feature unveiled across all major platforms

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 3:16pm CET par Nick Peers

Evernote Corporation has released major updates across its four biggest platforms with Evernote for Mac 6.0, Evernote for Windows 5.7.2, Evernote for iOS 7.6.2 and Evernote for Android 6.2.

All four platforms roll out a new collaborative feature named Work Chat, while Evernote for Mac 6 also unveils a new Yosemite-friendly redesign. Evernote Premium users also gain a new business card scanning feature in Evernote for Android.

The headline new feature has appeared over the past few days across all platforms. Work Chat is a tool for providing real-time collaborative and sharing features, using the platform’s existing contacts list as a starting point for finding users to work with.

Work Chat now makes it possible to quickly share notes and notebooks within the Evernote for Mac app, and users gain the ability to set view or edit permissions when choosing to share individual notes.

The feature also comes with a built-in chat tool, accessed via the clearly labeled Work Chat button found at the top of the navigation sidebar. This allows users to chat with both individuals and groups about things they’re working on.

When selected, users pick the name of other users and then simply start chatting using a traditional text-based messaging system, similar to Skype. The screen is split into two: on the left are the people taking part in the chat, and on the right is the chat history window.

As part of this new feature, users are now made aware of when other Evernote users are viewing or editing notes in their account, making it easy to start chats. Users can also filter chats to find specific information using the 'Search for people or messages' box at the top of the chat screen.

Evernote for Android users also gain Business Card Scanning, but only if they’re holders of the paid-for Evernote Premium account. This feature scans in business cards, and then automatically turn them into detailed contacts for storing in Evernote, complete with profile photos and the ability to connect via LinkedIn.

Evernote for Mac 6.0.1 also comes with a UI revamp described by Evernote as a "sleek new design inspired by OS X 10.10 Yosemite". It sees the app adopt a flatter, more streamlined look with icons simplified and modeled on the latest iteration of OS X.

The Mac app also also comes with three specific bug fixes: improved handling of long URLs, the restoration of the Rename PDF menu item and a fix for a crash that occurs on launch. The Windows build, meanwhile, gets a number of bug fixes, concentrating on preventing app freezes and crashes as well as sync errors.

Evernote for Mac 6.0.1 is available now as a free download for Macs running OS X 10.7.5 or later, along with Evernote for Windows 5.7.2, Evernote for iOS 7.6.2 and Evernote for Android 6.2.
XBMC moves forward with name change as new logo is chosen

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 2:40pm CET par Alan Buckingham

XBMC, whose name was derived from Xbox and Media Center, is making a change that you may have heard about. Or at least you have if you delve into the HTPC world. The platform will soon be officially known as Kodi, distancing itself from Microsoft, though it continues to work on the company's products, just as it always has.

To go along with this fresh new face, a new logo was also in order. For that, the organization reached out to its community. The result was an amalgam of the feedback received during the process.

"With that in mind, we did a few things to narrow down the results. First, we had a user vote to get an idea of which ideas were more popular, and where some commonalities might lay", says Nathan Betzen of XBMC...ah, Kodi.

The company is also allowing usage of the new logo, but you'll need to check to see if you are within your rights for this. "For users interested in using the logo for business, fansite, or other purposes, we’ve put together a fairly simple Logo Usage page for you to browse".

The organization isn't quite done yet. It's now asking the community to animate the new logo, as that seemed to be a popular choice with users. The animation won't make the new Kodi 14, but hopes are high that it will appear in version 15.
Google's removal of homophobic 'gay hunting' game was far, far too slow

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 1:58pm CET par Mark Wilson

This morning there was flurry of activity on Twitter as people became aware of the existence of a game called Ass Hunter on Google Play (link included for the sake of completion, although it's no longer active). There were snorts of indignation, incredulous shakes of virtual heads, and numerous cries for Google to pull the app without delay.

This has now been done. The game, which described itself as a "popular game on hunting gays", encouraged people to "play and do not be gay" is not new. The Android game is (or was) a port of a title that dates back almost a decade, and its appearance in the Play store highlights an importance difference between Google's and Apple's app stores -- the vetting processes involved.

There is one key difference in the way Apple and Google handle apps. Apple pre-vets titles before they hit the App Store. Apps and games have to meet Apple's quite exacting standards before they're allowed through the gates, but it is a very different story with Google. In fact the approach could hardly be more different.

Ass Hunter appeared in the Play Store despite a clause in the Developer Program Policies:

Hate Speech: We don't allow content advocating against groups of people based on their race or ethnic origin, religion, disability, gender, age, veteran status, or sexual orientation/gender identity.

It is not an especially subjective view to suggest that a game in which players are encouraged to hunt and kill gay characters would be covered by the "hate speech" clause. But rather than taking a particularly pro-active stance in weeding out the crap from its store, Google relies heavily on users reporting the titles they deem to be unsuitable in some way.

This is a multi-faceted argument. One way of looking at it is that Google is trying to distance itself from the way Apple operates by not censoring the Play Store. As an advocate of free speech and an opponent of censorship, this is undoubtedly a great thing. At least at face value. But when titles like Ass Hunter appear, things start to get a little more complicated.

The developer, Roman Matrosov, is free to hold and express whatever views he may have. But when these views spill over into the area of incitement to cause harm or commit violence, it's rather a different story. This is why there was such a furore on Twitter:

Dear @GooglePlay, how the hell did you approve a game about killing gay people? #DeleteAssHunter via @tommorris pic.twitter.com/RRHAtZ6Zhs

— Aral Balkan (@aral) November 24, 2014

We reached out to Google for comment about Ass Hunter, but the company was unwilling to shed much light on what had happened. The company said it has a policy of not commenting about individual apps, but went on to say that Ass Hunter had since been pulled from the Play Store. Had the game been submitted to Apple's App Store, the manual checks that are in place would have meant that it would be caught and blocked. Does this amount to responsible publishing, or interfering censorship?

It's great that Google saw fit to remove the game, but the response on Twitter -- the disbelief that such a title would be available in the store -- goes to show that it should not have been there in the first place. This runs counter to my usual anti-censorship stance, but here we’re talking about promoting and encouraging illegal activity (albeit within the confines of a cartoony game) and reinforcing misplaced prejudices.

Which approach do you think works best? Pre-vetting or waiting for issues to be reported?

Photo credit: Aquir / Shutterstock
Corporate PC demand will last

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 1:06pm CET par Tom Garrison

The health of the PC market has been a topic of debate as spending shifts towards tablets and smartphones. This shift is readily evident in the consumer market, but the enterprise market paints a completely different picture. PCs still rule within the walls of business and will likely continue for a while.

Why has the corporate PC been spared from this down cycle? First and foremost, we are in the midst of a business-centric refresh cycle. The factor that has received the most attention when attempting to explain this new growth is Microsoft’s end-of-life (EOL) support for Windows XP in the spring of 2014. This hard deadline served as a wakeup call for many companies who, by mid-2013, started to upgrade their PC fleet. There is quite a bit of additional data, however, that suggests the EOL of Microsoft XP is only one of several factors driving a corporate PC refresh, and that this bounce may have legs once the Windows XP refresh has run its course.

Historically, corporate PC upgrades have tracked very closely with gross domestic product (GDP) performance. When GDP rises or falls, the cycle for buying or upgrading a corporate PC follows. It’s an extraordinary predictor for total available market (TAM) growth. After a sharp period of decline beginning in 2008, the GDP recovered to positive growth late in 2009 and has been in positive territory since. During this recovery period from 2009 to 2012 we would have expected sales of corporate PCs to also return to positive growth. This did not happen and the non-consumer PC TAM continued to fall. It has only been since early 2014 where we have seen the business PC TAM hit bottom and return to growth. This delay in enterprise IT purchasing created pent-up demand which is now being corrected. Furthermore, only now are emerging markets and small business beginning to recover. As such, we can likely expect growth to remain strong as hiring by small to mid-size businesses catch up to the levels exhibited by large-scale enterprises.

The greatly improved quality of new business PCs is also likely to drive demand. Corporate PCs have been treated like workhorses as companies try to extend the life of these computers as much as they can. Leading into 2014 the number of corporate PCs over 4-years-old still in use was at an all-time high. In fact, Intel’s internal estimates suggest that the number of PCs older than 4 years has doubled in the last 7 years. After 4 years, performance naturally dwindles and repairs become more frequent. Despite these drawbacks companies have nonetheless held onto their older machines to defray an immediate hit on their spending budgets. By the beginning of 2014 the value of these computing assets had been stretched to their absolute breaking point, and companies began realizing the impact these older machines were having on productivity, security and their ability to support a mobile workforce.

This confluence of growth factors has caused IT to take a hard look at new options for their PC fleet. They have found a wide variety of PC form factors and lower price points. Business PCs have closed the gap to consumer devices in terms of look and feel while delivering superior manageability and security. Today’s corporate PCs versus the ones from 4 years ago are 50 percent thinner, 50 percent lighter, can wake up from hibernation eight times faster, offer triple the battery life, and offer double the performance. There is also a rich variety of devices to choose from. Companies now have the option of upgrading to hybrids or 2 in 1 devices that can shift between a PC and a tablet. Such machines are ideal for mobile workers conducting business from the home, the office or out in the field.

The wealth of innovation offered by these new machines is even affecting long-held IT policies on how frequently corporate PCs are refreshed. An eye opening analysis by Jack Gold and Associates demonstrated that the performance advancements brought on by Moore’s Law, which predicts the processing power for PCs doubling every two years, will create a situation where there is tremendous ROI when moving from a 3-4 year refresh cycle to a 2 year cycle. The report listed job-dependent ROI as high as 1000% associated with replacing on a 2-year cadence[1]. This analysis was based purely on increases in the performance of Intel CPU architecture. Add in promising developments in employee productivity such as Intel’s “no wires” initiative for the workplace (PCs that can wirelessly recharge and connect to peripherals) and the ROI associated with upgrading more frequently could go even higher.

Security is another area where innovation is likely to drive continued growth. In 2015 Intel will launch Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) on platforms with Intel vPro processors. MFA improves password-only authentication by layering additional login authentication factors. Factors such as the signal from your Bluetooth-enabled phone, biometrics (fingerprints), or even facial recognition enabled by 3D cameras can solicit a biometric scan to validate or invalidate someone attempting to use a PC. Such technology can eliminate the need for passwords which is appealing to a wide gamut of companies looking to toughen their security protocols in the wake of highly-publicized data leaks and break-ins.

Additionally, the rise of the Internet of Things is making itself known in the demand for mini-PCs that can be readily mounted on a TV, monitor, digital sign or everyday object. Such devices deliver full computing power and connectivity in small, easily-concealed form factors. Adoption is already strong among businesses in retail, healthcare, financial services and hospitality.

These innovations and more will keep PCs anchored in the enterprise space. Instead of a hard swap from PCs to tablets, PCs will naturally evolve with the workplace to improve worker collaboration, productivity and mobility. The window of opportunity started by the Windows XP refresh and recovery from the recession will have a long lasting effect on the corporate PC landscape.

Photo credit: Monkey Business Images/Shutterstock

Thomas (Tom) M. Garrison is vice president in the PC Client Group and general manager of the Business Client Platforms Division at Intel Corporation. He has overall responsibility for Intel's business client revenue and strategy, including the Intel vPro brand, across all desktop and mobile platforms.

[1] J. Gold Associates. Replacing Enterprise PCs: The Fallacy of the 3-4 year upgrade cycle. August 2014
E-cigarettes can damage your PC's health

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 12:01pm CET par Ian Barker

Using e-cigarettes, or vaping, is widely touted as being healthier for you than smoking tobacco, however, it may not be so healthy for your PC.

Many e-cigarettes offer a USB charging option but a story on social news site Reddit suggests that this is a potential source of malware attack. An executive's PC became infected after he'd recently given up smoking and the infection was traced to his e-cigarette charger.

It seems likely that this is a variant of the BadUSB malware uncovered in August this year by German company SRLabs. This allows the firmware on USB controller chips to be reprogrammed to deliver a malicious payload or masquerade as another device, such as a network card, to capture transmitted information.

Dave Goss of London's Vape Emporium told the Guardian that e-cigarette users can stay safe by purchasing respected brands but added that, "Any electrical device that uses a USB charger could be targeted in this way, and just about every one of these electrical devices will come from China".

How much you read into the fact that these devices originate in China is also open to question. Carelessness on the production line or more sinister, state-sponsored malware? Either way it's a good idea to treat unknown USB devices with suspicion.

Users can protect themselves by using a 'charge only' cable with the data pins disconnected to connect devices that don't need to exchange information. This news is likely to encourage more businesses to restrict the use of unauthorized USB devices on corporate networks too.

Have you suffered any kind of malware problem with a USB device? Let us know in the comments.

Image Credit: scyther5 / Shutterstock

Slow devices are causing billions of lost hours a year

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 11:37am CET par Wayne Williams

Sleep

I’m pretty impatient when it comes to technology and I’ve often wondered just how much of my time is being wasted while I’m waiting for something to load, or download, or for tasks to complete. Memory expert Crucial.com has done a spot of surveying and discovered that slow tech is responsible for wasting billions of hours every year.

The company surveyed 1,148 Brits, aged 16-65, and found the average person wastes over 39 hours each year (or 6.5 minutes a day) waiting for slow technology to complete everyday tasks. It also found some people wasted as many as 121 hours a year. For the whole of the UK, this equates to a whopping 2.1 billion hours of wasted time per annum.

35 percent of respondents were frustrated by tech running slowly, while 31 percent were annoyed by the length of time their devices took to start.

For fun, Crucial has come up with a list of the top things people would have preferred to have done with this wasted time. Suggestions include.

Watch TV/a movie	42%
Take a nap	33%
Cook a family meal	26%
Spend more time with children	24%
Go to the gym	20%
Catch up on work	18%
Read my child a bedtime story	15%
Go for dinner/drinks with friends	15%
Go on a date with my partner	13%

Roddy McLean, a computer upgrade expert from Crucial.com, said: "Families and couples today have such busy schedules and often find it difficult to make time for each other, without everyday annoyances such as slow-running technology adding to this problem".

There's an infographic detailing the perception vs the reality of our modern tech-life balance below.

www.kaizo.co.uk

Photo credit: Dan Kosmayer/Shutterstock

Microsoft has an amazing deal on Lumia 635 -- just $39 off-contract

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 11:33am CET par Mihaita Bamburic

If you want to get a Windows Phone 8.1 device for cheap, chances are you are waiting for Black Friday or Cyber Monday to start to pick one up. And who could blame you? Microsoft as well as various retailers will have some nice deals waiting for you -- and millions of other shoppers -- then.

But why not get one right now? Microsoft has an amazing deal on Lumia 635, selling the smartphone -- in black, AT&T trim -- for just $39, off-contract. That is amazing value for the money.

Normally, the AT&T version of Lumia 635 goes for $99 off-contract, which means that you save $60 by taking advantage of this deal now. Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals could be worth waiting for still, but at $39 the difference will be small anyway.

For the money, the only other option in Microsoft's portfolio is the T-Mobile-branded Lumia 521, which is very old and, quite frankly, less of a smartphone in late-2014. It only just got Windows Phone 8.1, months after the roll-out began, which says a lot about the level of support it will receive in the future.

Lumia 635 was unveiled in early-April by Nokia, alongside Lumia 630 and Lumia 930. Its highlights include: 4.5-inch IPS display, glove-friendly, with a resolution of 480 by 854; 1.4 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor; 512 MB of RAM; 1,830 mAh battery; 8 GB of internal storage; microSD card slot (can house cards up to 128 GB in size); 5 MP back-facing camera with 720p video recording (there is no front-facing camera, however); Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n; GPS with Glonass; Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 2.0. The physical dimensions are 129.5 x 66.7 x 9.2 mm and weight is 134 grams.
Blinkbox now offers offline TV and movie viewing on iPad

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 11:20am CET par Barclay Ballard

The online streaming service Blinkbox now allows customers to download films and TV shows to watch offline.

Currently, the service is only available to iPad owners running iOS 6 or later, but it is expected to come to Android devices at a later date.

In order to take advantage of the new feature, users will still need to buy or rent the title via a web browser, before they use the app. Once that’s done however, Blinkbox users can watch their favorite movies and TV programs wherever they are.

Blinkbox was originally launched back in 2007 and has deals in place with more than 50 of the world’s largest content providers including HBO, BBC Worldwide, Disney, Warner Bros., Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, and 21st Century Fox.

In 2011, Tesco acquired an 80 percent stake in the firm, which enables users to stream content to their PCs, video game consoles, tablets and smart TVs.

The decision to enable offline use may have been taken as a response to the intensifying competition in the online streaming market.

Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant Video and the Sky-owned Now TV all provide subscription services competing for a similar market position as Blinkbox.

While the service began life solely as a TV and movie provider, it has recently launched its own ebooks service called Blinkbox Books, alongside a music streaming platform, Blinkbox Music.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
Pro-Hong Kong websites hit by massive cyber attacks

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 8:26am CET par Alex Hamilton

Websites supporting the Occupy Central movement in Hong Kong have been hit with what is being described as one of the largest cyber attacks ever recorded.

The two sites, Apple Daily and PopVote, have been covering and vocally supporting the pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong. The two even carried out spoof elections for a new chief executive in the region.

Cloudflare, the company the two sites employ to protect them from threats, has revealed that both have been under sustained attacks of unprecedented size.

"[The attacks are] larger than any attack we’ve ever seen, and we’ve seen some of the biggest attacks the Internet has seen," Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, told Forbes.

The sites were targeted with DDoS reflection attacks, in which large packets of data are sent from spoof IP addresses. An attacker connects to a target, which sends a challenge the attacker then deflects to another victim. Both targets then end up reflecting their own signals back to each other.

At its peak the amount of data thrown at the two pro-democracy websites reached 500Gbps. According to Prince the sites were seeing 250 million DNS requests per second, level with how much the entire Internet receives in the same time span.

The blame for these attacks has naturally fallen on the Chinese government, considering the scale of the attacks and the nature of the targets.

"It’s safe to say the attackers are not sympathetic with the Hong Kong democracy movement," Prince said. "But I don’t think we can necessarily say it’s the Chinese government. It could very well be an individual, or someone trying to make the Chinese government look bad".

Photo Credit: Fabio Berti/Shutterstock

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.
Handbrake 0.10 ends XP support, adds H.265 encoder

Publié: novembre 24, 2014, 8:25am CET par Mike Williams

Popular open source video transcoder Handbrake has been updated to version 0.10 with some major additions and improvements.

New encoders include Intel Quick Sync Video, a speedy hardware-based H.264 encoder. Basic H.265 support is provided by x265 1.4, while WebM's libvpx can encode VP8 to MKV files (and sees Theora deprecated).

A new NLMeans filter should see better quality denoising. It can also be horribly slow, unfortunately, but the old hqdn3d filter now has individual settings for each chroma channel, and should also offer improved results.

The Presets Panel has gained a Windows Phone 8 Preset. Handbrake’s Windows build has an option to hide the panel as required, and you can choose your target format from a new Presets menu, instead.

Other Windows tweaks include fixing the program’s tab ordering, and providing an option to always use system colors. Makes sense to us, but keep in mind that this isn’t turned on by default. If you're interested, click Tools > Options > General, check "Always use System Colors", click Close and restart the program.

An experimental OpenCL-based bicubic scaler provides a small performance improvement when downscaling on compatible systems (AMD/ Intel GPUs supporting OpenCL 1.1), at the cost of some loss in quality. Not too interesting just yet, but these are early days, and the old Lanczos scaler remains the default.

Perhaps most notably of all, Windows XP is no longer supported. The minimum version is now Windows Vista with SP2. But if that's not a problem, Handbrake 0.10 (32-bit) and Handbrake 0.10 (64-bit) are available for download now.