Gregarius » BetaNews.Com » décembre 11, 2015

BetaNews.Com (17 non lus)

Ford plans to make 40 percent of its cars electric by 2020

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 10:39pm CET par Alan Buckingham

The green revolution has hit the auto industry and it has become time to adapt or move on. The company started by Henry Ford has always been near the front in innovation, especially under Alan Mulally. We've seen Ford Sync evolve into the platform it now is and the introduction of electric vehicles.

Now the company is laying out its plans for the next few years and a lot of that involves energy savings. The environment is in trouble and fossil fuels are part to blame.

To the tune of $4.5 billion the company is jumping in feet first with "electrified vehicle solutions by 2020, including the new Focus Electric with all-new DC fast-charge capability, which delivers 80 percent charge in an estimated 30 minutes and projected 100-mile range", or at least that is the claim.

This will total 13 new electric vehicles by the end of this decade and also signify a move in design that company claims goes towards a customer-experience-based plan.

"The challenge going forward isn’t who provides the most technology in a vehicle but who best organizes that technology in a way that most excites and delights people", says Raj Nair, executive vice president of Product Development. "By observing consumers, we can better understand which features and strengths users truly use and value and create even better experiences for them going forward".

This is all based on an investment in social science research. It sounds a bit new-age, but that is the direction the company wants to head in. The company has plans to double down in this area over the next year. This is all underway already, with research having been done over the past several years, much of it studying companies in other industries.

This research is the key to everything. As founder Henry Ford said "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse".
Microsoft OneDrive is making it rain gigabytes -- here's how to score free cloud storage

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 8:36pm CET par Brian Fagioli

Microsoft is doing some great things lately. Between Windows 10, Xbox One and its embrace of open source, you would think the company would be put on a pedestal by its users. Unfortunately, the company acted more like Scrooge than Santa Claus when it announced it was taking away cloud storage capacity from all of its users citing abuse by a few. Not cool.

Today, however, Microsoft is righting this wrong -- at least partially. While unlimited storage is still dead and buried, it is now possible to prevent the decrease from 15GB to 5GB. Shockingly, you can even keep your 15GB camera roll bonus too. How do you achieve this awesomeness? Just use the special link below.

Microsoft makes the following announcement.

You're an important part of what we do, and we want to make sure you know that. That's why we're making it possible for you to keep your base storage quota and camera roll bonus, even after the changes roll out.

Click below and your account will not be affected when the amount of free storage changes from 15 GB to 5 GB and the +15 GB camera roll bonus is discontinued

To score this awesome deal, simply click here and follow the instructions. Keep in mind, Microsoft could shut down this offer at any time, so I advise you to act fast. Be sure to tell your friends about it too.

If you are successful, you will see the below message.

Photo Credit: Kiselev Andrey Valerevich / Shutterstock
The struggle to keep up with private cloud workload demands

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 8:10pm CET par Sead Fadilpašić

Organizations are struggling with the ability to deliver infrastructure to end users to enable the demands of a DevOps environment.

Those are the results of a new global survey conducted by Qualisystems, provider of private/hybrid cloud orchestration software for DevOps and cloud sandboxing.

The Qualisystems survey queried nearly 650 architects, engineers, system administrators, IT managers, directors, VPs and C-level executives from the US and Europe at VMWorld in October.

The survey results revealed most organizations take over one week to deliver infrastructure to end users. Seventy-five percent cannot deliver infrastructure within a typical workday.

In addition, the number of applications with workloads that have a high mix of physical and virtual infrastructure requirements is projected to grow. Right now, 40 percent of application environments have a high mix of physical and virtual requirements, and 34 percent are network heavy.

The private cloud is gaining traction with 30 percent of application workloads currently running in the private cloud, and 40 percent of application workloads expected to run in the private cloud within 24 months, a projected growth rate of 10 percent.

"We see the demand on enterprises and service providers to deliver more complex applications and software-defined services as a major driver in the growth of private clouds, especially in devtest labs and DevOps oriented data centers", said Joan Wrabetz the CTO of Qualisystems. "This emphasizes the need to provide development, test and QA teams with Sandboxes that allow them to mimic complex private cloud infrastructure from development all the way to production".

In January, Qualisystems will debut its CloudShell 6.4 product along with its strategy for launching an open community for users and developers of its CloudShell platform.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Image Credit: Ferbies / Shutterstock
Data security is key for customer retention

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 6:03pm CET par Sead Fadilpašić

Nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of consumers worldwide say they are unlikely to shop or do business again with a company that had experienced a breach where financial information was stolen, and almost half (49 percent) had the same opinion when it came to data breaches where personal information was stolen.

This is according to a recent global survey by Gemalto, titled Broken Trust: 'Tis the Season to Be Wary, which surveyed 5,750 consumers in Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Japan, United Kingdom and United States.

Six in ten people (59 percent) believe that threats to their personal information increases during the festive season, and two in ten (18 percent) believe that they are likely to be a victim of a breach during the holiday season.

Only a quarter (25 percent) of all respondents feel that companies take the protection and security of customer data very seriously. More than twice as many respondents feel that the responsibility of protecting and securing customer data falls on the company (69 percent) versus the customer (31 percent). Of the employed respondents, only around two fifths (38 percent) feel that their employer takes the protection and security of employee data very seriously.

The survey revealed that 31 percent of consumers have already been affected by a data breach in the past. Around four in ten state the most likely causes for being a victim of a breach are visiting a fraudulent website (42 percent), phishing attacks (40 percent) or clicking a fraudulent web link (37 percent). The emotional impact of data breaches has also created apprehensive feelings towards businesses with nearly one fifth (19 percent) feeling they are likely to be a victim of one within twelve months to three years.

Ninety percent of surveyed consumers feel that there are apps and websites that pose significant risks to the protection and security of their personal information. Fifty-five percent believe that social media sites expose them to the greatest risk, and around two in five consumers believe adult content and torrent apps/websites carry the greatest risk to the security of personal information.

Around a quarter (23 percent) of respondents who have been a victim of a data breach, either have, or would, consider taking legal action against the breached company involved in exposing their personal information. Almost half (49 percent) of respondents said they would take or would consider taking legal action against any of the parties involved in exposing their personal information.

However, the consumer is not completely absolved of responsibility. Despite the many risks involved, the survey also found that a majority (54 percent) of respondents are using the same password for all or some of their online accounts. Of the respondents who actively use social media accounts, only a quarter (25 percent) use two-factor authentication to secure all of their social media accounts.

Of the respondents who actively use online/mobile banking, around three fifths (58 percent) say that all of their banks use two-factor authentication to secure their internet banking. This isn’t as widespread amongst retailers, however.

Of the respondents who actively use online retail accounts, one in four (25 percent) state that all of the online retail apps/websites they use, require two-factor authentication to secure online transactions.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: wk1003mike / Shutterstock
Crystal Security is a compact cloud-based malware detector

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 3:09pm CET par Mike Williams

Install any anti-malware with real-time protection and you’re generally weighing down your system with services, drivers, DLLs, background processes and more.

Crystal Security does things differently, its tiny download unpacking to a single 830KB executable which runs happily on Windows XP and later.

Features start with an on-demand scanner. Click Quick > Quick and the program crawls over your system, using multiple engines to look for dubious files, and uploading anything suspect to VirusTotal (called "Collective Cloud" in the Settings, confusingly) and Crystal’s own cloud.

If you need a little more, Crystal Security can be configured to start with Windows, and run daily or weekly scans.

What’s more surprising is that the program monitors your system while running, looking out for threats, uploading anything potentially dangerous to the cloud, and alerting you if necessary.

If you’re already using a good antivirus system then this seem unnecessary, but there are a stack of settings available to customise how it works.

If you’re concerned about the impact on system performance, for instance, you could reduce monitoring to your program files only, maybe disable checking for created and modified objects. Crystal still watches running processes and should offer useful protection.

Still too much? You could cut functionality back even further to monitoring startup locations only. It’s basic, but still more than enough to justify the download.

If there’s a problem here, it’s the lack of any significant documentation. Where should you begin? What do individual functions do? How will individual settings impact your security? Mostly you’re left to figure it out on your own.

Despite that, Crystal Security offers plenty of useful functions and features in an ultra-lightweight package, and if you’ve security experience – and the time to experiment – it’s worth a closer look.

Crystal Security is a freeware application for Windows XP and later.
How fast is Google's quantum computer compared to a PC?

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 2:58pm CET par Alasdair Gilchrist

Even Google’s artificial intelligence research labs can sometimes find that they just don’t have enough computing power available to them. This is despite Google owning powerful computers that just about any country in the world.

As a result of finding some problems in the AI field too difficult to solve using conventional computers, Google has turned its interest to quantum computers. These systems can solve problems that traditional PC computers just cannot handle. This is because quantum systems tap into the mystic world of quantum mechanics.

To satisfy its ambitions, Google acquired the Canadian company D-Wave Systems as part of its ambitious plans to accelerate their machine learning programs, which will facilitate everything from faster search to health focused businesses. Google’s interest was fueled by its desire to get hold of the D-Waves x-2, the first quantum computer that has a 1,000 qu-bits quantum processor, which Google claims is 100 million times faster than a conventional one core PC.

Google’s Hartmut Neven, head of the Quantum AI Lab, explains: "We found that for problem instances involving nearly 1,000 binary variables, quantum annealing significantly outperforms its classical counterpart, simulated annealing. It is more than 10 to the power of 8 times faster than simulated annealing running on a single core".

Some serious caveats around the D-Wave’s computer as it can perform only a limited set of quantum calculations, and just a few people know how to shape problems suitably for its purpose. As a result, Google has running only limited test operations on the D-Wave system, rather than the code used in the company’s day-to-day operations.

Despite being confident that its quantum computer can blitz a single-core PC -- others have been skeptical about the D-Wave x-2’s capabilities -- the technology is unlikely to move into production anytime soon, as Neven explained.

"While these results are intriguing and very encouraging, there is more work ahead to turn quantum-enhanced optimization into a practical technology".

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: kentoh / Shutterstock
Best Windows apps this week

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 2:25pm CET par Martin Brinkmann
One-hundred and fifty-eight in a series. Welcome to this week's overview of the best apps and games released for Windows 8.x and Windows 10 in the past seven days.

A solid selection of apps and games has been released this week for Windows.

Game of the week is Sniper Fury, a great looking shooting game.

Other notable additions to the Windows Store are 3D Scan, a 3D scanner that uses Kinect, Hero Panda, a great looking Bomberman clone, and Action Note, a note taking application that integrates with the Action Center.

As always, if I missed an app or game that has been released this week that you believe is particularly good, let me know in the comments below or notify me via email instead.

Discounts This Week

Red Stripe Deals are back. Up to six applications and games are discounted and highlighted in Windows Store each week.

The following is this week's selection:
- SuperPhoto, a photo editing application for $1.99
- PDF Jack, a PDF productivity app for $2.49
- Solitaire Mystery: Four Seasons (Full), a hidden object and solitaire game for $0.99
- Learning Games for Kids (Educational Preschool activity in English), an educational game for young children for $2.49
- Checkers by Post, play Checkers against human opponents for $0.99
- Hero Panda Bomber, a Bomberman game for $0.99
App of the Week

Sniper Fury

Sniper Fury is a shooting game in which you play an elite soldier. Play and unlock missions, better weapons, or raid the bases of other players of the game to steal their gold.

The game is held back somewhat by its free to play mechanics, mainly that you spend energy for each mission or action you take in the game.

Energy replenishes every four minutes to a maximum of ten which prevents you from playing the game non-stop unless you use premium currency to fill up the energy level right away.

You use an automatic rifle or a sniper rifle during missions with objectives ranging from identifying and terminating an enemy operative to shooting down drones or preventing attacks on buildings or innocent bystanders.

It is a fun, but ultimately basic game which may appeal to casual gamers more than it does to hardcore gamers.

Other Apps

Action Note

Action Note is a note taking application at its core. What sets it apart is its integration with Windows' Action Center, and the options that it provides when creating notes.

While you can use it to create text notes only, you may also use it to attach images to notes and synchronize notes across devices.

The Machine

The Machine is a challenging puzzle and dexterity game in which you try to move a small droplet of ink to the level exit.

Each click or tap results in a jump in the selected direction. The droplet sticks to surfaces, and things begin to get complicated once traps are introduced.

The game is challenging, offers several worlds to play through and three game modes on top of that.

Toon Clash Chess

The chess game supports hot-seat play against another human opponent or games against the computer.

It features three difficulty levels, different camera modes, and unique chess pieces and animations.

Some game elements, like the hot-seat mode or different themes, are only available in the pro version.

Figure

Figure is a music making application by Propellerhead. It requires no musical expertise making it dead easy to use.

Create, share and remix tunes using drum, bass and lead synth by sliding with the mouse of finger across the play pad.

Music can only be saved online though and not locally it appears.

Hero Panda ($0.99 currently, no free trial)

Hero Panda is a modern adaption of the classic Bomberman game in which you use bombs to destroy blocks and enemies to proceed to the next level.

The game features more than 20 different enemies including bosses, and can be played with the keyboard, gamepad or by touch.

3D Scan

Use a Kinect to create 3D scans in real-time. You can use the Kinect to scan people or objects. and use 3D Builder afterwards to edit them.

You may use 3D Builder afterwards to print the 3D scan using a local 3D Printer or order a print online instead if you don't have access to a 3D Printer.

Forza Hub

The application ties-in with the Forza game franchise on Microsoft's Xbox console. Get free credits or cars each month, check your overall progress or compare your performance to those of your friends.

It features editorial content, information about new cars, as well as racing news.

Country Friends

Country Friends looks like your typical "create your farm" style of game on first glance, and while that is true to some extent, it improves the process by introducing the community farm concept.

Basically, it allows you to grow fruits and craft products together with your friends.

So, band together and build the best community farm out there.

Notable Updates

Fenice for Twitter is a universal application now. The new version of the third-party Twitter client introduces other changes such as small screen improvements.

Big update for the Kobo Ebooks application. It is optimized for Windows 10, supports Live Tiles, Cortana and Continuum as well now.

The Uber application for Windows has been released as a universal application.
Yahoo Mail app adds support for Gmail, Google Apps accounts

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 1:53pm CET par Mihaita Bamburic

If an email app doesn't support multiple providers, chances are lots of potential users will not bother with it. Or they will seek alternative offerings that do. So, unsurprisingly, major players like Microsoft and Google now welcome those who have embraced rival services to Outlook and Gmail, respectively, even though they would much rather prefer they switch to their own products.

Yahoo has followed suit, adding AOL Mail, Hotmail and Outlook.com to the list of email providers supported in its Yahoo Mail app for Android and iOS. But, as you can probably tell, there was one major service missing from the list -- Gmail. Now, there is an update that rectifies this.

Yahoo says that Gmail (and Google Apps) users who add their accounts to Yahoo Mail will be able to take advantage of all the big features available in the app, like "powerful search, smart contacts, rich compose features and Yahoo Account Key for password-free sign-in".

That means, for instance, that they can search through all their emails, search for contacts, and have all the changes they make immediately sync with Google's servers. There is also support for Gmail in Yahoo Mail's desktop interface, making it easy to access the accounts from PCs.

Those who want to test the new update can grab Yahoo Mail from App Store (iOS) and Google Play (Android).

On top of supporting Gmail accounts, the iOS app now also works in Split View and supports Slide Over on iPads. On Android, the app brings back select all, adds the ability to switch between mailboxes with a single tap, makes the inbox "more readable", settings easier to navigate, touch targets bigger for the sidebar and back buttons, improves accessibility and lowers data consumption.
Xbox Live certificate keys exposed according to Microsoft

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 12:29pm CET par Alan Buckingham

A lot of Xbox customers shill out the extra money for a Live account to improve the gaming experience. With the vast amount of Xbox consoles out there, that is quite a few customers. Now Microsoft is acknowledging that the keys for some of those faithful users have been exposed.

Before you panic, this doesn't necessarily mean you've been hacked, but the possibility is there. In a new security bulletin the company claims that the SSL/TLS digital certificate keys for xboxlive.com were exposed and that this could be used by hackers for man-in-the-middle attacks.

While the issue affects all supported versions of Windows, Microsoft claims it is unaware of any actual attacks. The software giant has taken action to ensure nothing bad happens.

"To help protect customers from potentially fraudulent use of the SSL/TLS digital certificate, the certificate has been deemed no longer valid and Microsoft is updating the Certificate Trust list (CTL) for all supported releases of Microsoft Windows to remove the trust of the certificate", the bulletin reads.

Microsoft has issued an update which covers "Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows RT, Windows RT 8.1, Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 10, and Windows 10 Version 1511, and for devices running Windows Phone 8, Windows Phone 8.1, and Windows 10 Mobile".

For now customers don't need to panic or do anything particular to protect themselves. All of the above listed systems will be protected automatically.
The challenges of endpoint management in a hybrid environment [Q&A]

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 11:53am CET par Ian Barker

As the IT world is changing it's not uncommon for companies to be using a mix of cloud and on-premise solutions. These hybrid environments offer a best of both worlds option but do present problems when it comes to managing resources.

To find out how managers can address these challenges and what tools they can use to help, we spoke to Dana Epp, CTO of IT management specialist Kaseya.

BN: The cloud is meant to make things easier, but do hybrid environments inevitably lead to greater complexity?

DE: A lot of the complexity comes from the fact that when people start adopting the cloud IT isn't always involved. CRM systems like Salesforce can make life easier for the sales team but it becomes complex for IT if they're not part of the decisions. Over the last five years or so there are so many new tools available in the cloud and they're easy to buy with just a credit card so you don't have to be in IT to get hold of cloud services.

This growth of 'shadow IT' means that you end up needing to implement tools and strategies to watch for these behaviors and take back control. The most important part of this is not so much the systems as the data they hold which is a corporate asset and needs to be protected. The complexity comes from understanding how you can get visibility and control, whatever tools you’re using. You also need to ensure that you have the ability to recover when things go wrong.

BN: What do businesses need to be aware of when selecting cloud partners?

DE: The most important thing is to realize that not all cloud partners are the same. It's vital to look at a potential partner's data center management to ensure they're providing redundancy, security, backup, and that they have the right staffing to handle the management of the systems. But having the ability to run a data centre doesn't necessarily make you a good cloud partner. Things like being able to maintain the data and have access to it are vital to companies looking at cloud services.

You need to look for providers that have geographical redundancy, but you also need to be aware of any compliance restrictions on where data can be stored. If you’re in Europe for example you may not want your data stored in the US. Some cloud providers will have multiple data centres around the world, but it’s important to understand what happens when the system fails over, does geographical redundancy mean your data may end up somewhere it shouldn't be?

You also need to look at what due diligence providers carry out on their systems and infrastructure. The big three, Google, Microsoft and Amazon, spend a lot of time and have dedicated staff to make sure they meet compliance obligations of different standards. One of the values of going to the cloud is that you can leverage that expertise.

BN: How much of the move to hybrid environments is about changing the management mindset?

DE: It's difficult for some organizations, especially at board level, to be willing to give up control. What they don't always understand is that you're not abdicating responsibility, you're delegating it to a service that can provide you with a better, more flexible and more efficient service than you could run in-house.

You can also spin up more resources quickly when needed, so it becomes an operational expense rather than a capital one. That mind shift needs to happen and it allows you to get the job done better and faster. For example mining companies are able to use public cloud for a short period of time to do an intense amount of work, but if those servers were on-premise they would sit idle for nine or ten months of the year. In many ways cloud is just an extension of your infrastructure management. The key is to make sure the right people have access when they need it regardless of where the data is located.

BN: Is it possible to get a 'single pane' solution that allows enterprises an overview of all their systems?

DE: To accomplish that your technology selection and infrastructure have to be well aligned. If you're picking solutions that don't integrate and don't allow information to be shared you'll never get that single pane. At Kaseya we make sure we follow the standards that are there so that we can communicate with the devices, the data and the people so that we have that visibility.

But of course the world is always shifting, you have IoT devices all of which have IP addresses and which need to be managed so that there's no risk to the organization. Managing everything from a single pane, therefore, is a constant challenge.

BN: Can we expect to see more focus being placed on analytics and automation in systems management?

DE: The more data that's available the more we can make informed decisions about what's going on. We can create a holistic report that can show business owners what type of applications they're running. The next stage is to automate that so that if, for example 13 percent of employees are using Dropbox, management can decide if that's an activity they want to permit and, if it's not, disable and uninstall the software automatically. You can also automate the ability to sign in to applications like Salesforce and manage the users.

It helps when employees leave the organization too because you can automate the provisioning of cloud applications, reassign licenses and so on. Similarly with new starters, if the HR system is talking to other systems then an employee can automatically be added to the right groups and given access to the apps and cloud services needed to do their job, so IT doesn't have to be involved in manual provisioning.

BN: Does that also mean companies can save on licensing costs?

DE: Yes, if you have that visibility into applications you can de-provision licenses and reassign them. That's a potentially huge cost saving in larger organizations, by managing software and cloud use effectively they could be saving thousands of dollars every month.

Whilst it's possible to do everything in the cloud, in reality most enterprises will have a hybrid approach. Companies should be able to use the same governance and policies to deal with all of their systems. That can save them money and deliver a better experience for the user.

Image Credit: jannoon028 / Shutterstock
Google adds data loss prevention tool to Gmail

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 9:51am CET par Alasdair Gilchrist

Google is striving to improve the security protection for its business product Google for Work by introducing data loss prevention for its popular services such as Gmail.

DLP is an enterprise technology that aims to reduce the data leakage of confidential and valuable data from the business. The common ways that data leakage occurs is through emails and storing files to employee’s personal cloud storage services.

By providing DLP on its Gmail services for business, Google hope to mitigate the risks of data leakage through its popular email service. The way DLP works is that a gateway device sits and monitors traffic leaving the business via the internet firewall/gateway.

By inspecting the content of outgoing emails, the text and attachments, against preconfigured rules and file categorization, DLP can intercept and block emails that contain confidential or valuable data from leaving the business. An example, of this type of valuable data could be for example an email that contains text detailing a customer’s personal details such as their credit card numbers.

DLP is very efficient but does require an initial administrator’s time to go through and categorise all the files and set them priorities. DLP can check against information at rest (in a database), in action (being used by an application) or in motion (traveling across the wire).

Furthermore, administrators can use specific keywords or expressions to create their own powerful filters, and then determine the action taken. For example, an email may be blocked, returned to the sender to edit, or placed in quarantine for further examination. However, in each case the sender will be automatically informed of the situation.

Google says, "Starting today, if you’re a Google Apps Unlimited customer, Data Loss Prevention for Gmail will add another layer of protection to prevent sensitive information from being revealed to those who shouldn’t have it".

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo Credit: Bloomua/Shutterstock
Here's why Apple's products are so popular in the enterprise

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 9:51am CET par Anthony Spadafora

In 2015, Apple was very successful in reaching users working in education and enterprise. JAMF Software, a company that specializes in Apple device management, conducted a survey in which it noted a large uptick in the adoption of Apple devices in both fields as a result of user preference.

Apple has secured a foothold in today’s enterprise environment and its devices are now integral to many businesses. Enterprise IT professionals have noted how strongly support has grown for the company’s various platforms with 96 percent of internal teams supporting Mac, 81 percent supporting iPad, and 84 percent supporting iPhone. As more companies have tried to reduce cost and appeal to the preferences of their employees, support for Apple’s products have increased as well.

Support for Apple’s platform is also very strong in the field of education with over 90 percent of those surveyed confirming that their schools or higher education institutions offer support for Apple’s devices and services. The number of Macs and iPads in classrooms has increased as well. JAMF software attributes this to Apple’s rich ecosystem, overall appeal, native security features, and the way in which using Apple devices reduces maintenance costs.

The continued growth of Apple’s presence in the enterprise market has helped create competition and growth in what was once a very stagnant field. Its products have also helped a greater adoption of the bring your own device to work movement.

Apple has had presence in the field of education since the company donated Apple 1s to schools in 1975 and it is impressive to see the company continue to have a presence there.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Photo credit: 360b / Shutterstock
Listen up! Pandora arrives on the new Apple TV

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 3:54am CET par Alan Buckingham

The brand new Apple TV is now on the market, and it is receiving some attention. Capability is in the eye of the beholder, but of course, being Apple, it has its fans. This time around the platform has opened up a bit more and slipping in now is music darling Pandora.

The streaming service is announcing that it is now launching on the the new Apple TV. The service already supported many different devices, but this adds one more to the arsenal.

"We are excited to expand the devices we support with the release of the Pandora app on Apple TV. We continue to focus on an elegant and simple design for music listening and discovery to complement the Apple TV experience", states Chris Phillips, chief product officer at Pandora. "Our team worked to ensure Pandora would be ready in time for listeners to enjoy during the holiday season".

Customers will find all of the features they expect from any Pandora app. This includes creating personal stations, giving a thumbs up or down to particular tracks and discovering new music, which is perhaps the best part of Pandora.

This platform adds to the extensive list that already exists, including game consoles, set-top boxes, smart TVs, wearables, computers and much more. It even works well on Amazon Echo. If you have the new Apple TV then you can grab the app now, providing you live in the US, Australia or New Zealand.

Photo Credit: racorn/Shutterstock
Griffin Survivor Play will protect your Apple TV Siri Remote while improving ergonomics

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 3:05am CET par Brian Fagioli

This year has been quite an Apple-themed affair for me. I bought the new iPad mini 4, iPhone 6s Plus and the newest Apple TV. While I love all three, the TV-connected box has been the most surprising. What do I mean by this? Well, while I expected it to be great, I didn't realize just how much fun it would be. Besides being a very capable media box, it is quite the enjoyable gaming console, and I adore the intuitive Siri Remote.

While the Siri Remote works well and feels pretty great in my hands, it is obviously fragile. If I was to fall asleep watching a movie or something, and it fell out of my bed onto the hardwood floor, I am not confident that it would survive. The glass trackpad would probably shatter. Today, however, Griffin announces the availability of the Survivor Play protective case for the Siri Remote. This inexpensive accessory will help prevent damage.

"Survivor Play for Siri Remote lets users get a grip on gaming with its no-slip, impact absorbing silicone that surrounds the remote’s back and edges. It adds extra cushioning on the edges and corners of the Siri Remote and protects the places most likely to be damaged if the remote is dropped. Even if the Siri Remote goes flying across the room from rowdy gaming, Survivor Play is designed to keep it safe when it lands", says Griffin.

The popular accessory-maker further says, "the textured silicone and extra thick grips on the back of Survivor Play make it easy and comfortable to hold onto no matter how the Siri Remote is held, or how long it's used for playing games. Survivor Play also doesn’t get in the way of anything, allowing easy access to Siri Remote's buttons, touchscreen, mic and Lightning charge port".

Not only does this silicon case protect the Siri Remote, but it should improve ergonomics too. In other words, it should make it more comfortable; the increased size and the curves should create a more natural fit in your hands. If you plan on playing games for many hours in a row, this would be a smart buy.

These benefits are reasonably priced too, as the Survivor Play is just $19.99. Unfortunately, it is only available in white for now. If the accessory proves popular, I hope the company will expand the selection to red, blue, green and more.

Want to buy it? You can get it here. If you do buy it, tell me about it in the comments below.
Google Wallet now lets you send money to anyone via text

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 1:21am CET par Mark Wilson

The likes of PayPal have long made it possible to send money to friends, family, and businesses via email. The same is true of Google Wallet, but a new update means that an email address is no longer needed -- a text is all it takes.

If you have someone's mobile number, you have everything you need to send them money. Google assures payers that the SMS-based system is secure, but it remains to be seen how popular an option it proves to be.

The feature is being pitched as a way to send money to anyone in your contact list. In a few taps, you can fire a payment off to a phone number and Google says that "the recipient will get a text message with a secure link".

In order to claim the money, the recipient needs to simply provide their debit card details and it will be transferred to their bank account.

You can grab the latest version of the app from Google Play or the App Store. If you don’t see the new payment feature straight away, it should be available in the next few days.

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Apple loses ground to Android in Europe

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 1:18am CET par Mark Wilson

Google is succeeding in keeping Apple at bay in Europe. The latest figures from Kantar show that Android is growing in popularity in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain (known collectively as EU5), while iOS growth is slowing.

The data covers smartphone sales in Europe's five largest markets in the three months ending October 2015. Android's popularity had been falling over the previous year, but sales in the last quarter see a return to growth that Google will hope to see continue into 2016 and beyond.

In the UK, Android's comeback is being attributed, at least in part, to the success of handsets from LG and Samsung. Around Europe, different handsets prove popular in different countries. Samsung and LG fare well in the UK, France laps up Samsung, and Huawei is the current brand du jour in Italy and Spain.

Kantar Worldpanel ComTech's chief of research, Carolina Milanesi says:

In Europe's big five markets, thanks to a strong performance in Italy, Spain, and France, Android showed year-over-year growth, but that OS success did not produce a clear vendor win, as different names showed strength in different countries: Huawei in Italy and Spain, and Samsung in France. The decline in iOS was marginal, and primarily driven by a deceleration of growth in Great Britain and Germany. Sales of the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus already represented close to a third of iOS sales in Europe's big five markets.

It's certainly not all bad news for Apple; in the US, the company managed to grab more than a third of the smartphone market (33.6 percent). While this is a continuation of iOS's year-on-year market share drop, it represents a quarter-on-quarter increase.

With the approaching holiday period, one of the busiest times for smartphone sales beckons, so it will be interesting to see how things look in the New Year. In the meantime, check out the current Kantar figures.

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Facebook becomes more adept at dealing with crappy connections

Publié: décembre 11, 2015, 12:41am CET par Mark Wilson

With projects like Internet.org, Facebook has shown that it is interested in getting the world connected. But the truth of the matter is that no matter where you may be in the world, there are times when it can be impossible to get a decent phone signal to allow you to post a photo of your meal.

Joking aside, in countries where people are struggling with 2G connections or otherwise unreliable signals, making use of Facebook's News Feed can be difficult. The social network is rolling out new technology that will make it possible for people with slow connections to now only see relevant news stories on a poor connection, but also post comments when offline.

Facebook has learned that few people take the time to scroll through their News Feed in its entirety. A new update takes this into account -- when a user tries to look at their News Feed when they have no signal, as-yet-unseen but already downloaded stories will be surfaced so there is still 'new' content to read.

Writing on the Facebook engineering blog, Chris Marra and Alex Sourov explain what is being done to improve the user experience:

We also factor in whether the images for the story are available. This way we can immediately display relevant stories you haven't seen yet, instead of showing a spinner while you wait for new stories. When we receive new stories from the server when you're back online, we load and rank those stories normally. We rank relevant, already downloaded stories upon startup of the app, when you navigate to News Feed from the app or pull down to refresh stories at the top of your feed, or as you are scrolling through your News Feed.

This is not the end of things, however. An experiment is also underway that sees News Feed content being updated periodically, whenever a connection is available so there is genuinely new content to see when the Facebook app is loaded. A similar technique is being used to allow for 'offline' commenting. Comments can be written and pseudo-posted even if there is no connection available, and they will be posted as soon as possible.

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