Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » août 25, 2015

BetaNews.Com (18 non lus)

YouTube Gaming is ready to give Twitch some competition

Publié: août 25, 2015, 11:18pm CEST par Mark Wilson

youtube_gaming

Anything computer-related can be made social and shareable, and gaming is no different. Amazon's game live streaming service Twitch has proved immensely popular and now Google is ready to put up some competition with YouTube Gaming.

Starting tomorrow (26 August), head over to YouTube Gaming and you can start a stream of your own or watch other gamers play. Of course there will also be an app, and Google is aiming to create "the biggest community of gamers on the web".

The service is not just about live streams. Google promises individual pages for more than 25,000 games as well as dedicated channels from game publishers. Everything is taken care of using HTML5, and YouTube Gaming manages to upstage Twitch with a DVR feature that allows for the buffering and rewinding of streams.

Clearly Twitch has something of a head start, but YouTube Gaming has the clout of Google behind it; YouTube is already a popular destination for gamers looking to share their gaming footage.

While the YouTube Gaming website should be available globally, the Android and iOS apps are limited to the US and UK -- at least for the time being.

This app lets you see the invisible Wi-Fi signals all around you

Publié: août 25, 2015, 10:40pm CEST par Wayne Williams

Architecture of Radio

People worry about everything these days, and new technology is often a big cause for concern. Wireless charging, which is starting to appear in appliances, cars, and furniture, has some people fretting that it will microwave their internal organs while they sleep, and it wasn’t that long ago that people were stressing over the possible side effects of Wi-Fi too.

A BBC investigation a few years back found that RF radiation levels in some Wi-Fi-enabled schools were up to three times higher than the levels emitted by a typical mobile phone mast, leading to suggestions that Wi-Fi should be banned in places of education in the UK until its possible dangers had been fully investigated. Of course Wi-Fi hasn’t been banned in schools, or anywhere else for that matter, and it’s become far more ubiquitous. A new iPad app by Dutch designer Richard Vijgen uses augmented reality to visualize the network of radio waves that surround us, and it provides a truly fascinating glimpse into the invisible world that we now rely so much on.

Before you rush off to download the app I should say it’s not actually available to try for yourself. The Architecture of Radio ("a field guide to the hidden world of digital networks") will be on display at Germany’s ZKM | Center for Art and Media from September 2015 - April 2016, but if you can’t make it over there, there’s a video of the app in action available to watch below.

According to the Architecture of Radio website, the app offers a "realtime, location based visualization of cell towers, Wi-Fi routers, communication, navigation and observation satellites and their signals. A site specific version of the app includes wired communication infrastructure embedded in the exhibition space. Its aim is to provide a comprehensive window into the infosphere".

'Glitch' to blame for Uber customers getting overcharged

Publié: août 25, 2015, 9:33pm CEST par Darren Allan

uber_logo_black

Uber has said that a system glitch was to blame for a number of customers who were massively overcharged for their rides over this past weekend.

Users of the service in the UK and also the US were apparently affected, according to a report in the Telegraph, with complaints popping up on Twitter. A number of folks complained of being charged around £70-£80 for very short trips that shouldn’t have been much more than a tenner.

Sharna Tommy Egan tweeted: "So @Uber charged me £82 for a job which was only meant to be £10-14. Sort this out".

On Saturday, the Uber Support account tweeted: "Some riders & drivers may experience issues requesting and completing trips. Our team is on it and things should be back to normal shortly".

That was quickly followed up by: "We had a glitch earlier... Issues requesting & completing trips should be resolved".

An Uber spokesman told the Telegraph: "Due to a brief error, a small number of trips were incorrectly charged over the weekend. This has since been rectified and all those affected are being refunded".

Refunds were of course only to be expected. Uber might be worth some $41 billion, but it can’t afford bad publicity -- or at least no more bad publicity than it already gets.

There are plenty of anti-Uber protests being organized by licensed taxi cab drivers across the globe, and the latest one we’ve heard about is in Montréal, with taxi drivers threatening to block bridges in the city.

Photo credit: 360b / Shutterstock.com

VMware Workstation 12 Pro, Player 12, Fusion 8 ship with Windows 10 support

Publié: août 25, 2015, 9:32pm CEST par Mike Williams

workstation

VMware has announced the release of VMware Workstation 12 Pro, VMware Workstation 12 Player and VMware Fusion 8.

VMware Workstation features full Windows 10 compatibility: you can run it as a host or a VM, it’s supported for both Auto Detect and Easy Install, and you’re able to migrate any Windows 10 PC to a virtual machine.

There’s a major speed boost of up to 3x when suspending and resuming encrypted VMs. 3D graphics are up to 36 percent faster, support for DirectX 10 and OpenGL 3.3 means improved compatibility, and Workstation is now optimized for 4K UHD (3840 x 2160) and QHD+ (3200×1800) displays.

The good news continues with a strong set of new and improved features, including IPv6 NAT network support, smarter tab handling (drag open tabs into a new or existing Workstation window), and echo cancellation for Skype and Lync.

VMware Player Pro gains all the core improvements of Workstation 12, and a rebranding to VMware Workstation 12 Player brings more consistency to the range.

VMware Fusion 8 gains full support for Windows 10 and El Capitan, and brings you smarter ways to ensure they work together.

It’s easier to find Windows files from Spotlight, thanks to natural language support; you can launch Windows applications from the Mac via the Fusion Applications menu; and the Split Screen and Unity modes help Windows run seamlessly alongside Mac applications. Even Mission Control can now show Windows and Mac applications in one place.

Trials of VMware Workstation 12 Pro, VMware Workstation 12 Player and VMware Fusion 8 are available now.

Samsung smart fridge might leak your Gmail credentials

Publié: août 25, 2015, 8:54pm CEST par Sead Fadilpašić

Your smart fridge might be good for storing cold beer, but it definitely isn’t good for storing your Gmail credentials, as those can be easily stolen. During the recent DEF CON hacking conference, the vulnerability was unveiled at the IoT hacking challenge run by Samsung.

The fridge that got owned was the RF28HMELBSR smart fridge. It downloads Gmail Calendar information and displays it on an on-screen display. The device does implement SSL, but it fails to validate SSL certificates, thereby enabling man-in-the-middle attacks against most connections.

According to a report by The Register, hackers from the Pen Test Partners that managed to get into the local network are able to grab the Gmail credentials through the fridge.

"The internet-connected fridge is designed to display Gmail Calendar information on its display", explained Ken Munro, a security researcher at Pen Test Partners. |It appears to work the same way that any device running a Gmail calendar does. A logged-in user/owner of the calendar makes updates and those changes are then seen on any device that a user can view the calendar on".

"While SSL is in place, the fridge fails to validate the certificate. Hence, hackers who manage to access the network that the fridge is on (perhaps through a de-authentication and fake Wi-Fi access point attack) can Man-In-The-Middle the fridge calendar client and steal Google login credentials from their neighbors, for example".

Pen Test Partners’ Pedro Venda added: "We wanted to pull the terminal unit out of the fridge to get physical access to things like a USB port and serial or JTAG interfaces, but ran out of time. However, we still found some interesting bugs that definitely merit further investigation. The MiTM alone is enough to expose a user’s Gmail creds".

Photo Credit: Bloomua/Shutterstock

Free versions of enterprise streaming analytics platform launches

Publié: août 25, 2015, 5:55pm CEST par Ian Barker

Data analytics people

Businesses are under pressure to get applications out quickly and that means they benefit from having real-time streaming analytics as a way of cutting preventable losses, gaining operational insight and uncovering new business opportunities.

Big data specialist Impetus Technologies is helping developers do this by launching free versions of StreamAnalytix, its enterprise-class, streaming analytics platform, based on open source technology components.

It uses a GUI-based platform to allow developers to gain experience, conduct pilots and take a wide range of applications into production. The free versions of StreamAnalytix are intended to address the heightened interest among Fortune 1000 enterprises which want to quickly and easily capitalize on real-time streaming analytics.

The product comes in three flavors, StreamAnalytix Lite is a free, perpetual license to a production ready, unlimited scale, limited functionality version of the StreamAnalytix platform. It's aimed at developers looking to pull streaming data into Hadoop and use a powerful visual toolkit for developing real-time applications based on Apache Storm.

StreamAnalytix Developer is a free, one-year trial of StreamAnalytix Enterprise with all features included and scale limited to a maximum of eight processing cores of Apache Storm. It’s designed to provide maximum power and flexibility for developers to build real-life and complex enterprise applications and perform functional testing before expanding to a full scale deployment.

Finally StreamAnalytix Sandbox offers a free, one-year pre-licensed copy of StreamAnalytix Enterprise limited to eight processing cores, integrated with underlying open source components and pre-packaged in a binary virtual machine format that can be downloaded and used within minutes with no software installation process required other than the sandbox player tool.

"The power to ingest and analyze real-time streaming data at scale is one of the core value propositions of the big data eco-system. We are delighted to unleash that power in an easily consumable manner at no cost to a wide audience with the free versions of StreamAnalytix," says Anand Venugopal, head of product for StreamAnalytix at Impetus Technologies. "StreamAnalytix is being recognized as a leading solution among enterprises and analysts specifically because it offers the power and flexibility of the underlying open source systems along with the usability and manageability features, as well as support and professional services that are critical for enterprises to achieve business ROI through these technologies".

All three versions are available to download from the StreamAnalytix site as is a 60-day trial of the Enterprise version.

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Google Classroom gets additional features

Publié: août 25, 2015, 5:54pm CEST par Alan Buckingham

students celebrating

It's back to school time, at least here in the US. The big yellow busses have begun rolling, and kids are standing curbside, hopefully under the watchful eye of an adult. There are many things to consider this time of year -- what computer to buy, a phone they can use to call in an emergency. In fact, my colleague Brian Fagioli did an overview of his choices in technology for the student.

But software also plays a major role in this equation, with things like Windows, Office and Google Docs all being possible players in your child's life. One you may not have known about is Google Classroom, but it does exist and it's getting a back-to-school update.

"Most of these features are rolling out this week; stay tuned in the next few weeks for more back-to-school goodies in Google Classroom, Google Docs, Sheets and Slides, all designed to help you make this school year yours", says Will Phan, a Google software engineer.

Included are enhancements to the Q&A, making it even more interactive and collaborative. Google explains "You can post questions to your class and allow students to have discussions by responding to each other’s answers (or not, depending on the setting you choose). For example, you could post a video and ask students to answer a question about it, or post an article and ask them to write a paragraph in response".

Google has also added the ability to reuse assignments, questions and announcements. Coming soon will be a calendar that will automatically update with your schedule and classes. Other updates are coming as well, such as the ability to make due dates optional or bump a post to the top to make an older item easier for students to find.

It's hard to believe it's already that time of year, but the kids are heading back, or have already done so. Technology will be their friend for the next nine months or so.

Image Credit: Poznyakov / Shutterstock

Samsung Galaxy Note 5 vulnerable to massive S Pen snafu

Publié: août 25, 2015, 5:29pm CEST par Mark Wilson

samsung_galaxy_note_5_s_pen

If you've managed to get your hands on a new Samsung Galaxy Note 5 -- and this might sound like a case of stating the bleeding obvious -- make sure you put the S Pen into its slot the right way round. Inserting the pen the wrong way round could result in you breaking not just the stylus itself, but also kill some functionality of the Note 5.

While, ordinarily, slipping the S Pen home point first should not be too taxing, if attempted by someone who is a little tired, drunk, young, or stupid, it could go horribly wrong. You could end up with a Note 5 with an S Pen that just can’t be removed, or -- if you exert sufficient force -- you may remove the S Pen and break either the pen or the innards of the phone.

There is no mechanism in place to prevent the backward insertion of the S Pen. You won’t be able to insert it all the way, but by the time you've noticed your mistake it could well be too late. If the pen does not become stuck fast, you run a very real risk of breaking the pen detection mechanism. What are the consequences of this? For starters it means that the Note 5 will be unable to tell whether the S Pen is inserted or not so -- assuming you didn’t get it stuck -- the S Pen-specific Air Command menu won't appear, and other pen tools will also be broken.

The Note 5's manual does state that care should be taken to ensure that pen is inserted correctly. Samsung issued a statement to the BBC about the issue:

We highly recommend our Galaxy Note 5 users follow the instructions in the user guide to ensure they do not experience such an unexpected scenario caused by reinserting the S-Pen in the other way around.

Android Police has a video showing just how easy it is to break the Galaxy Note 5. Depending on the type of person you are, you'll either wince with sympathy, or chortle meanly:

You have been warned!

Using social collaboration to deliver better IT visibility

Publié: août 25, 2015, 5:16pm CEST par Ian Barker

group young business it network server room solving help support

For enterprises to stay on top of their IT and in particular to deal with incidents they need to be able to navigate through high volumes of information and work out what’s important.

In order that operations teams can minimize time lost from searching mixed information sources and spend more time on resolving incidents, ops performance specialist PagerDuty is announcing integration with VMware's Socialcast enterprise social collaboration tool.

"During an incident, enterprises must currently navigate through a glut of information sources to resolve issues and maintain uptime," says PagerDuty Vice President of Product Management, Jonathan Wilkinson. "With this integration, we're deepening our commitment to supporting the enterprise and enabling faster and more efficient resolutions".

By linking with VMware, PagerDuty creates an integrated workflow across the tools that IT operations teams are already using. Incidents can be understood and resolved more efficiently with a means to share the data needed to fix the problem and the ability to seamlessly access that information from any device or platform.

"Two-way integration between Socialcast and the PagerDuty operations performance platform sets a new bar in helping our common customers identify and resolve IT issues rapidly," says Bob Schultz, vice president and general manager, Workspace Services, End-User Computing at VMware. "The ability to swiftly communicate about time-sensitive incidents is critical, and our collaboration with PagerDuty will provide our customers an even better solution to resolve issues quickly".

The feature is available now via the Socialcast Integration Store. It will also be demonstrated at next month's VMworld conference in San Francisco.

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How to create a system restore point -- even if your PC is turned off

Publié: août 25, 2015, 5:15pm CEST par Mike Williams

Restore Point Creator

If your PC isn’t behaving as it should then System Restore could help, quickly restoring your system files and settings to a more trouble-free time. Unless, that is, you don’t have a suitable restore point available (oops).

Restore Point Creator is a handy tool which can automatically create restore points when you log on, or on some daily, weekly or interval-based schedule.

The latest edition even has an option to wake up your PC first, if it’s sleeping (System Restore Point Utilities > Schedule creation of System Restore Points > check "Wake computer if the system is sleeping…").

There’s nothing too advanced behind this -- Restore Point Creator is using Task Scheduler to do the actual work -- and of course it won’t work at all unless your computer supports the feature. That means the motherboard and system drivers must be compatible.

It is a welcome addition to the program, though, which has now become a very capable System Restore manager. Just launch it and you’re able to view your current restore points, delete old/ create new ones in a click or two, run a "Restore" immediately or in Safe Mode, set a specific number of restore points you’d like to keep, and more.

Restore Point Creator is a freeware application for Windows XP (with some limitations) through to Windows 10.

NSA wants to future-proof encryption standards against quantum computers

Publié: août 25, 2015, 4:42pm CEST par Darren Allan

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The NSA is concerned that current methods of cryptography, used to encrypt data and ensure that if it does fall into the wrong hands it’s not readable or usable, are going to be woefully inadequate and easily broken when quantum computers come into play.

Of course, this isn’t going to be something that happens in the near future, as quantum computers -- which instead of bits, use qubits that can hold three states instead of the usual binary 0 or 1 -- are still merely conceptual in nature, and won’t be fully realized for many decades yet.

That said, as the IB Times, which spotted the NSA’s release on the matter, points out, such vastly powerful computers could come about in the next 50 years, and so preparing for that eventuality is certainly important.

Whereas previously the NSA has been urging companies to employ Suite B cryptographic algorithms -- such as 256-bit AES encryption -- the agency now states that it will be moving to quantum-resistant algorithms in the "not too distant future".

These will provide what the NSA describes as cost-effective security against a quantum computer engaged in cracking efforts.

The agency noted that: "We are working with partners across the USG, vendors, and standards bodies to ensure there is a clear plan for getting a new suite of algorithms that are developed in an open and transparent manner that will form the foundation of our next Suite of cryptographic algorithms".

Those organizations who have not yet made the transition to Suite B algorithms are being advised to avoid making any sort of "significant expenditure" to do so right now, but rather, they should plough resources into preparing for the deployment of quantum-resistant algorithms.

But the NSA added: "It is important to note that we aren’t asking vendors to stop implementing the Suite B algorithms and we aren’t asking our national security customers to stop using these algorithms. Rather, we want to give more flexibility to vendors and our customers in the present as we prepare for a quantum safe future".

Photo credit: 360b / Shutterstock

Clarizen improves visibility into work management

Publié: août 25, 2015, 4:03pm CEST par Ian Barker

Collaboration

Work collaboration specialist Clarizen is launching the latest version of its software aimed at delivering 360-degree visibility at any level of the enterprise, so teams can improve transparency within projects and among users and increase efficiency, accuracy and overall project quality.

Features include pre-built dashboards and reports that provide immediate visibility into projects and company wide effectiveness. New in-context data formatting automatically highlights key problems across all work items, as well as reports based on configurable rules.

An enhanced interactive resource load allows managers to make smarter resource deployment and project approval decisions. New mobile improvements enable team members to stay on top of changes as well as provide updates back to the rest of the team wherever they are.

It allows users to perform 'what if' analysis by filtering work items in or out to understand the impact of demand changes to a resource's workload. They can review the full work plan details on the same page as resource load, and view resource load data with more display and filtering options. Together the package offers a fully centralized resource planning process.

"Better work management starts with better visibility, and the fastest way to visibility is collaboration," says Avinoam Nowogrodski, CEO of Clarizen. "Executives, project managers and team members all need easy access to relevant information, not only to review off-track efforts, but also to properly allocate resources against ever-changing demand. Collaborative work management can only be achieved with visibility within projects and among team members. By simplifying work, businesses can move faster".

Clarizen's summer release is available now at no extra charge to existing customers. For more information visit the company's website.

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Xirrus makes Wave 2 easier for businesses

Publié: août 25, 2015, 3:18pm CEST par Ian Barker

Wi-Fi

Wave 2 Wi-Fi -- otherwise known as 802.11ac -- brings a number of advances to help wireless networks keep up with the increased demand from mobile devices.

Wireless network specialist Xirrus is aiming to make Wave 2 more accessible for business by introducing the industry’s fastest and only customizable Wave 2 Wi-Fi solution.

Xirrus' new Wave 2 access points (XD2) deliver triple the speed of competitive solutions, also allowing vendors to scale based on their specific connectivity needs. It includes two Wave 2 radios each capable of up to 3.47 Gbps, which enables customers to deploy a Wi-Fi network that keeps up with the demand from their environments, and ensures a longer network lifespan.

Other advantages include double the speed of competitive Wave 2 solutions with 7 Gbps per AP, four-stream multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) compared to three-stream MU-MIMO supported by other solutions. XD2 is fully customisable with the ability to enable both radios to Wave 2 with the click of a mouse and is also Bluetooth low energy (BLE) enabled for location based services.

"Until the XD2, all Wave 2 Wi-Fi solutions introduced to the market to date have been effectively 'Wave 1.5' because they do not fully support the MU-MIMO standard," says Bruce Miller, vice president of product marketing at Xirrus. "Customers should steer clear of Wave 1.5 solutions and verify they are getting Wave 2 technology in order to deploy the fastest solution available and achieve the best return on their investment".

The company is also launching a low-cost range of X2 access points. The X2 delivers affordable, fast, reliable cloud managed Wi-Fi for the small to medium enterprise, hospitality and education markets.

The X2 delivers 1.2 Gbps of bandwidth per access point, a graphical interface for seamless, simple management, easy one-step, device-agnostic connection, and cloud-based activation to cut down on the need for on-site IT support.

You can find out more about Wave 2 solutions on the Xirrus website.

Photo credit: Shutter_M / Shutterstock

Windows 10 Mobile will not support 4GB smartphones -- are you affected?

Publié: août 25, 2015, 2:57pm CEST par Mihaita Bamburic

Coffee Beans Sad Face

Microsoft has updated a landing page for Windows 10 Mobile to reveal that Windows Phone 8.x devices with less than 8 GB of internal storage will not be upgraded to the upcoming operating system. This will come as bad news to some folks who have invested in the platform.

Windows 10 Mobile can very well run on devices that were designed with Windows Phone 8 or Windows Phone 8.1 in mind, as long as there is enough storage space to accommodate the new OS. It, for instance, runs well on both my Nokia Lumia 920 and Lumia 520. Manufacturers which have cut corners are, obviously, to blame for this.

Kazam, one of the manufacturers which has released a Windows Phone 8.1 device with 4 GB of internal storage, told WMPoweruser earlier this month that the smartphone in question, Thunder 450W, will not be upgraded to Windows 10 Mobile. Put two and two together, and you can now understand why.

Fortunately, the list of Windows Phone 8.x devices with less than 8 GB of internal storage -- 4 GB, basically -- is not that long. It includes handsets like the Nokia-branded Lumia 530, Karbonn Titanium Wind W4, BLU Win JR LTE, and Yezz Billy 4.

The vast majority of Lumia-branded Windows Phone 8.x devices feature at least 8 GB of internal storage, and since they are most-popular with platform adopters -- Microsoft currently holds a market share of around 90 percent in the Windows Phone fold -- few are likely to be affected by this limitation.

And by "few" I mean roughly 10 percent of Windows Phone users, according to the second most-recent stats released by Microsoft. Lumia 530 is one of the more-popular Windows Phones on the market, only topped by the older Lumia 520, which, as I suggested earlier, is better equipped for the upgrade.

It is interesting to note that when Microsoft originally revealed the system requirements for Windows 10 Mobile it listed 4 GB of internal storage, coupled with a microSD card slot, as the minimum.

It will be interesting to see whether Microsoft can come up with an alternative way of getting Windows 10 Mobile on such smartphones. If there is not enough storage left for the upgrade perhaps users could use a recovery tool to load a fresh firmware onto their devices.

Photo Credit: Nataliia Dvukhimenna/Shutterstock

Ad-blocker Crystal massively reduces bandwidth usage and page load times in iOS 9

Publié: août 25, 2015, 1:47pm CEST par Mark Wilson

iphones_crystal

There's a lot to look forward to in iOS 9. We already know that the new version of Safari will include the option to block ads, but the browser is not going to be alone in clearing out unwanted ads. Crystal is an ad blocker for iOS 9 created "with the goal of making web browsing with the iPhone and iPad a great experience again".

It started life as a tool for testing iOS 9's own content blocker, but grew into a stand-alone project. Crystal is currently in closed public beta but its developer, Dean Murphy, has released some figures that show how effective it is. The results show that Crystal can speed up page load times by nearly four times and reduce bandwidth consumption by 53 percent. Impressive stuff, and the stats make for extremely interesting reading -- particularly for those waiting for the launch of a new iPhone.

Dean previously looked at how effective the content blocker of iOS 9's Safari is, and this inspired him to spend the next two months working on a project of his own. Crystal was born and now it's time to test it out. For the tests, Dean chose ten popular websites (New York Times, Business Insider, Macworld, Wired, The Verge, PC Gamer, iMore, Kotaku, Huffington Post, Vice) to connect to on his iPhone 6+.

Clearly with a content blocker, there are various things that can be measured, but the most important are how long it takes a page to load, and how much data has to be downloaded. The graphs speak for themselves, and it will be great to see how the blocker continues to develop over time.

crsytal_page_load_times

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If you're interested in trying out Crystal for yourself, Dean is still taking requests to join the beta program. He's waiting for Apple to allow iOS 9 betas on its TestFlight service as this will increase the number of beta testers that can take part.

It's about to get easier to donate money to non-profits via Facebook

Publié: août 25, 2015, 11:29am CEST par Mark Wilson

show_me_the_money

Facebook is known as The Social Network, but it's about more than just being social. It's also used by business, charities, and other organizations to promote products, services and causes. To make it easier for non-profits to raise money Facebook is introducing a Donate Now button.

This is something that makes life easier for the donor and the recipient. Many non-profits are small operations which may not want to go to the trouble of setting up a fully-fledged website with a donation page. For people who discover a worthy cause through Facebook, it makes sense to be able to hand over some money through the same medium.

The button is in the process of rolling out, so it might be a while before you start to see it out in the wild, but it is are on its way. It will give page owners a way to add a new 'call-to-action' to an ad or page (something usually reserved for booking reservations, buying products, and the like) that gives visitors the chance to make a donation.

Announcing the new button, Facebook says:

We are excited to introduce a new "Donate Now" call-to-action option on both link ads and Pages. Now, it's easier than ever for nonprofits to connect with people who care about their causes and encourage them to contribute through the website of their choice.

The button will only be available to pages that have been categorized as "Non-Profit Organization", and Facebook has provided instructions for how to get up and running.

Photo credit: Gustavo Frazao / Shutterstock

Most Android lock patterns are easy to guess

Publié: août 25, 2015, 10:29am CEST par Sead Fadilpašić

Android Unlock Pattern

Your Android lock screen patterns are so predictable, it almost makes no difference if you use one or not.

According to a study by a woman named Marte Løge, a graduate of Norwegian University of Science and Technology, a vast majority of Android users use lock patterns which are easy to guess.

The study looked at 4000 patterns created, and discovered that 77 percent of the patterns started from one of the four corners. Forty four percent of the patterns created began from the top left corner.

More than 10 percent of the ones she collected were fashioned after an alphabetic letter, which often corresponded to the first initial of the subject or of a spouse, child, or other person close to the subject.

The average number of nodes used in the study was five, meaning the average lock screen selection was one in 7152 possibilities.

A large number of users selected four nodes, which means their pattern was one in 1624 possibilities.

As a comparison, those who used eight or nine modes had a pattern that was one in over 140,000 possible combinations.

"Humans are predictable", Løge told Ars last week at the PasswordsCon conference in Las Vegas, where she presented a talk titled Tell Me Who You Are, and I Will Tell You Your Lock Pattern. "We’re seeing the same aspects used when creating a pattern locks [as are used in] pin codes and alphanumeric passwords".

Løge says that to create a successful lock pattern, use a high number of nodes, make the pattern complex with crossovers, and turn off the "make pattern visible" option so that someone can’t look over your shoulder to discover your lock pattern.

Microsoft will launch Office 2016 on 22 September

Publié: août 25, 2015, 12:23am CEST par Mark Wilson

office_logo

Just as with Windows 10, Microsoft has been running a preview program for Office 2016. After launching the Mac version of the office suite, we’ve been waiting for news about the PC edition will be released. Now, thanks to a leaked document, we now know it is due to launch on 22 September.

Internal documents obtained by WinFuture.de show that Office 2016 is set to launch in less than a month for home and professional users. Microsoft is preparing staff for the event, asking them to install the preview version for now and keep an eye on the Office 2016 Launch Hub for training documentation and other materials.

There have been a few preview versions of Office 2016 and -- as has become the norm with Microsoft -- there's a strong focus on the cloud. For business users, there are collaborative features such as Real Time Typing, and all of the programs in the suite have undergone a gradual evolution rather than a dramatic overhaul.

The internal memo says:

On September 22, 2015, we'll release Office 2016 -- with updates for Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, Outlook, Skype for Business, Project, Visio, Access, and Publisher. The innovation wave continues in Q2 with the release of E5 and Skype for Business, and on-premise servers will follow.

This is the central hub for all Office 2016 Commercial readiness, training, and marketing materials. Mark this page and check back frequently, as we will be releasing new materials, weekly, to support the launch.

It is expected that pricing will be broadly in line with Office 2013, but it shouldn't be long before we have official confirmation.