Gregarius » BetaNews.Com

BetaNews.Com (14 non lus)

Apple suffers outage that knocks App Store, iCloud, iTunes and more offline

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 11:17pm CEST par Mark Wilson

Many of Apple's online services are currently out of action, with the App Store and Apple TV being just two that people are struggling with. Some users are reporting that Apple Music is out of action, but the most common complaint is that App Store purchases cannot be complete. Apple says that it is aware of the problems and is investigating, but at the moment has given no hint at what the cause might be. The company's System Status page highlights numerous issues, with a fluctuating number of listings tagged "Service may be unavailable for some users". Apple Support's recently… [Continue Reading]
Google will start suggesting apps to remove when you run out of space on your Android phone

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 9:41pm CEST par Mark Wilson

With the size of apps and games spiralling upwards faster than the amount of storage increases in phones, it's very easy to run low on space. To help overcome the problem of not having enough room to install a new app, Google is starting to suggest rarely used apps that could be installed. The feature has not appeared completely out of the blue, with references having been spotted to it in APK teardowns some months ago. But now Google Play's intelligent uninstall manager has been spotted in action. As reported by Android Police, it appears that when a user attempts… [Continue Reading]
Internet of Things devices will surpass smartphones by 2021

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 7:59pm CEST par Sead Fadilpašić

Before we reach 2021, there will be more internet-connected devices (IoT) than smartphones, Ericsson said in its latest Mobility Report. Projected growth of these devices is 400 percent in the next five years, with a total of 16 billion devices expected by that time. One of the main drivers of adoption will be regulatory requirements, Ericsson argues, saying that things like smart utility meters will be leading the charge. Paired with a growing demand in internet-connected cars, and you get a significant spike in adoption. "IoT is now accelerating as device costs fall and innovative applications emerge. From 2020, commercial… [Continue Reading]
Lost your Android smartphone or iPhone? Google will help you find it

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 7:41pm CEST par Mihăiță Bamburic

There are lots of services that help you find your lost smartphone, but nothing beats the convenience of a built-in tool like Android Device Manager or Find My iPhone. However, Google might have something that's even better. Google believes that locating a smartphone should be as simple as a Google search, so the company has introduced a new feature in My Account that lets you do just that. And it works no matter if you have an Android smartphone or iPhone. The feature, called Find your phone, is introduced in celebration of the first anniversary of My Account, and is… [Continue Reading]
Cyber risk management -- Is your company ready for anything?

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 4:46pm CEST par Rick Tracy

In late 2013, news of a massive data breach at Target surfaced. Hackers stole personal and credit card information of nearly 70 million shoppers, and the breach ended up costing Target $162 million and the resignation of the CEO and CIO. While this was one of the largest and most widely publicized data breaches, it’s by no means one of few. Just recently, LinkedIn came clean about its 2012 data breach – a few days after it was discovered some of the information was being sold online. While LinkedIn originally reported the email and passwords for 6.5 million people were… [Continue Reading]
MEEM memory cable automatically backs up your phone every time you charge it

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 3:56pm CEST par Wayne Williams

While most smartphones can backup photos and other content to the cloud on a regular basis, there are downsides -- backups handled by third-party apps might not always happen, free storage can quickly become full (I’m looking at you, iCloud) and of course cloud services could be compromised. MEEM memory cable offers a low cost solution to all of those problems -- automatically, and securely backing up your iPhone or Android device every time you charge it. To set it up, all you have to do is connect it to your phone, choose and confirm a four-digit PIN, and the… [Continue Reading]
Five tips to avoid becoming a ransomware victim

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 3:48pm CEST par Ian Barker

Ransomware is one of the major threats computer users now face, even though recent reports suggest that many people don't actually know what it is. Delivered via spam or phishing emails that trick users into clicking on malicious links, ransomware renders computer systems, devices or files inaccessible and holds the victim hostage until payment is made, usually in the form of bitcoins. "Victims are faced with the choice of paying up or losing all their valuable data forever. Unfortunately, this approach works for cybercriminals, because consumers and businesses are unprepared for their data -- whether it's a business' intellectual property… [Continue Reading]
Oukitel’s K4000 gets maxed out

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 3:10pm CEST par Ian Barker

When we reviewed the Oukitel K4000 Pro toughphone last month it came with a pretty standard Android UI. Latest versions of the K4000 though will come with a new 'max' interface that puts fewer but larger icons on each screen. It also offers a bigger dial pad, so the phone should appeal to older users and to others who struggle to cope with smaller icons. The main screen puts three fixed apps at the bottom of the screen for phone functions and displays six more of the user's choice above. Users can set eight frequently used numbers too, each with… [Continue Reading]
Xiaomi unveils Mi Band 2 fitness tracker -- here's what you need to know

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 2:16pm CEST par Mihăiță Bamburic

Xiaomi may be best known for its smartphones, but the company is also a major player in the wearables market. In the first quarter of the year it actually took second place, following the renowned Fitbit, thanks to shipments of 2.6 million units. Xiaomi owes its success in the wearables market to the affordable Mi Band fitness tracker. Its latest upgrade arrived in late-2015, but even with the addition of a heart rate monitor the company managed to keep the cost under the very reasonable $30 mark. But now that the Mi Band 2 is here, what can Xiaomi bring… [Continue Reading]
Salesforce buys cloud commerce solutions provider Demandware

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 1:48pm CEST par Sam Pudwell

Salesforce has announced that it has agreed to purchase enterprise cloud commerce solutions provider Demandware in a $2.8 billion cash deal. Salesforce will commence a tender offer for all outstanding shares of Demandware -- which boasts the likes of L’Oreal and Marks & Spencer as customers -- for $75.00 a share, with the transaction expected to close at the end of July 2016. Marc Benioff, chairman and CEO of Salesforce said: "Demandware is an amazing company -- the global cloud leader in the multi-billion dollar digital commerce market. With Demandware, Salesforce will be well positioned to deliver the future of… [Continue Reading]
SWIFT attacks date back more than a year

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 11:57am CEST par Ian Barker

We reported a few days ago on banks using the SWIFT inter-bank transfer system being hacked, resulting in $81 million being stolen from the Bangladesh Central Bank. Now Luis Corrons, technical director of PandaLabs, has released more information on other banks affected, with attacks that stretch back more than a year. In addition to the Bangladesh attack in February, Vietnamese Tien Phong Bank suffered a similar attack in the last Quarter of 2015, where cybercriminals also tried to make transfers through SWIFT, although the bank realized in time and halted the million dollar transfers already en route. A few months… [Continue Reading]
Auto-close unused Firefox tabs with Dustman

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 11:55am CEST par Mike Williams

You can resize Firefox tabs, group them, send them to another window, but it won’t make any difference: there’s never quite enough tab space to go around. Dustman is a free Firefox extension which helps out by automatically closing tabs which haven’t been used in the last 20 minutes. That could be potentially risky, but as with the similar Tab Wrangler for Chrome, the developer has used several tricks to reduce the chance of problems. Dustman won’t close anything you haven’t viewed yet, for instance, and it won’t close tabs if you’ve got a few open (less than 5, by… [Continue Reading]
How to delete all of the illicit recordings Google has gathered from you over the past year

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 11:31am CEST par Mark Wilson

One of the concerns -- for those focused on privacy, at least -- with the likes of Siri, Cortana and 'OK, Google' is that the way these features works means they are constantly listening to what you say. In the case of Google, these recordings are stored in the cloud for the company to use to improve the service. But voice recognition is an art rather than a science, and your phone is not always able to distinguish between commands you direct at it and ordinary conversation. As such, Google may well have recorded audio of you going about your… [Continue Reading]
Expect to lose data when your SSD fails

Publié: juin 2, 2016, 9:48am CEST par Sead Fadilpašić

As more people are switching from HDDs (hard disk drives) to SSDs (solid state drives), more data loss is occurring, a new report by Kroll Ontrack suggests. SSD disks might be solid in their state, but don’t seem to be more reliable than HDD disks. Still, it doesn’t stop their popularity growth. Out of 2,000 global respondents to the Kroll Ontrack survey, 92 percent are using SSD technology, with more than a third (38 percent) having experienced an SSD failure. Of those failed disks, almost a quarter (23 percent) lost data. "Businesses and consumers continue to move toward SSD technology",… [Continue Reading]