Microsoft Curbs Cortana in Windows 10

Microsoft on Thursday announced that it was restricting its Cortana digital assistant to operating with the Edge browser and Bing search engine in Windows 10. "As Windows 10 has grown in adoption and usage, we have seen some software programs circumvent [its] design and redirect you to search providers that were not designed to work with Cortana," said Ryan Gavin, Microsoft's general manager of search and Cortana. "The result is a compromised experience that is less reliable and predictable."

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Apple Drops CareKit on GitHub

Apple on Thursday made its CareKit platform available through the GitHub open source community. CareKit joins two other previously released Apple frameworks for developing healthcare apps -- HealthKit and ResearchKit. It was designed to enable developers to create apps that give users a more active role in managing their health. Apps developed through CareKit will let people track symptoms and medications, and share the information with their doctors to get a better picture of their health, Apple said.

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Codenvy, Samsung Team to Power IoT Development

Codenvy on Wednesday announced the beta release of the Samsung ARTIK IDE powered by Eclipse Che. The release of the professional toolset is part of Samsung's partnership with Codenvy to make it easier to build, deploy and manage applications for the Internet of Things, Codenvy said. The ARTIK IDE is the first open source cloud IDE platform dedicated to IoT application development. It is based on Eclipse Che, a community-driven open source cloud IDE, workspace server and plug-in platform

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TiVo's New Roamio for Cord Cutters Cuts the Subscription Fee

TiVo on Wednesday announced a new version of its Roamio OTA digital video recorder aimed at the growing market of cable cord cutters, with a box that includes a hefty 1 TB of storage space and no monthly subscription fee. The DVR can record up to 150 hours of high-definition programming and up to four television shows at the same time, the company said. The device can access content from OTA network television, including ABC, NBC, CBS, PBS and Univision, as well as content from streaming services such as Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime and YouTube.

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Getty Images Takes Google Grievances to EU

Getty Images on Wednesday filed a competition law complaint against Google with the European Commission. The company last year filed an "interested third party" submission in support of the EC's investigation into Google's anticompetitive business practices. Getty's complaint, in essence, is that Google Images creates galleries of high-res copyrighted content, and that providing easy access to them dissuades consumers from going to the source to view or license those images. That damages Getty's image licensing business.

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BlockIQ Escalates War on Ad Blockers

As consumers turn to ad blockers to avoid advertising on their mobile and computer screens, marketers and content providers who depend on pitches to pay the bills are searching frantically for ways to counter the pesky programs. BlockIQ offers them one. BlockIQ, owned by AdSupply, which recently merged with Adaptive Medias, has launched BlockBypass. The software can detect users of the popular ad blocker AdBlock and perform a number of countermeasures, including circumventing the ad blocker.

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Alexa Takes Up Residence in a Really Smart Fridge Magnet

Invoxia on Thursday announced that Amazon's Alexa Voice Service has been integrated with its Triby digital assistants. The voice-activated unit is the first non-Amazon product to be Alexa-enabled. Triby, which has a magnetic frame, features a built-in speaker and microphone that can be used to listen to Internet radio or as a hands-free speakerphone, but its main function is to act as a digital assistant that can provide hands-free control for getting information from the Web, including Wikipedia, weather, news and sports.

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Gadget Ogling: Electric Nightmares, Cold Coffee, and a Smart Clothespin

I'm quite possibly the worst person in the world at waking up, without exaggeration. As a boy, I slept through a gas explosion that destroyed a home around 100 yards from my bedroom. All too often, I rely on my partner to shake me out of my slumber, as my own alarm clock rarely does the trick. I need something a little more forceful. The Shock Clock may be just up my alley. It's a wearable band that can vibrate, beep, or administer an electric shock to jolt you awake. You might elect to use a combination of two or three elements, with the shock always saved for last.

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Pentagon to Open New Cyberfront in War Against ISIS

The Obama administration reportedly has authorized a new online campaign in its slow, grinding war against ISIS. The Pentagon's Cyber Command aims to get inside the heads of terrorist commanders to disrupt their military operations. The goal appears to be to sow mistrust and confusion among ISIS leaders by interfering with their ability to pay their soldiers, execute operational orders, recruit new fighters, and communicate with one other. The plan amounts to dropping cyberbombs on the enemy, said Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert O. Work.

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Tech, Auto Honchos Join Forces to Push Self-Driving Cars

Some major players in both the new and old economies on Tuesday announced an alliance to pave the way for self-driving cars in America. Ford, Google, Lyft, Uber and Volvo raised the curtain on their Self-Driving Coalition for Safer Streets, which will work with lawmakers, regulators and the public to raise awareness of the safety and societal benefits of self-driving vehicles. Self-driving vehicles could significantly reduce the severity and frequency of auto accidents, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation.

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New Attack Technique Hides Spread of RATs in Asia

SentinelOne last week announced that it has detected a technique being used in Asia to infect systems with remote access Trojans that ensures that the payload remains in memory throughout its execution and doesn't touch the victim's computer disk in an unencrypted state. Attackers remain hidden from antivirus and next-generation technologies that focus only on file-based threats, according to SentinelOne. The samples analyzed also can detect the presence of a virtual machine, preventing them from being analyzed in a network sandbox.

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Bodhi Linux 3.2 Promises Clearer Path to Enlightenment

Bodhi Linux 3.2.0 is an update to the Bodhi Linux 3.x series and features key kernel and desktop improvements. It is a different kind of Linux distro. Its developers refer to it as the "Enlightened Desktop," because it draws its energy from the Enlightenment desktop. Enlightenment started as a project to build a window manager for X11 in 1996. It became much more than a window manager -- it grew into a desktop environment in its own right. The Enlightenment Project is currently version 17, known as E17, and the Bodhi crew recently forked it.

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White Hat Finds Security Threats on Facebook's Corporate Net

A white hat hacker last week announced the discovery of more than a half-dozen security flaws in some software Facebook used on its corporate network. While performing penetration testing of some third-party software in a network appliance Facebook used, Orange Tsai, a security researcher for Devcore, discovered seven vulnerabilities that attackers could use to compromise a system, as well as a backdoor script left by someone else who'd penetrated the network. The researcher was conducting tests as part of Facebook's bug bounty program.

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Chromebooks May Get Avalanche of Android Apps

Google appears to be on the verge of executing a long-speculated plan to integrate Google Play's vast collection of more than a million Android apps into the Chrome operating system. A series of screen shots recently posted on Reddit show Chrome OS users able to access the Google Play store on a Chromebook. Users were able to find extensive references to ARC, or App Runtime for Chrome, embedded in the source code. ARC allows users to run their favorite Android apps in the Chrome OS. Google was coy about whether the code cameo signals a new strategy. "We're always experimenting with new features," said spokesperson Iska Saric.

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Taking DIY to the Next Level

While hobbyists, inventors and innovators alike have been experimenting and producing a variety of do-it-yourself projects, their world is expected to undergo a hard shift as DIY moves to the next level. 3D printing is the cornerstone of the coming shift, and its effect on our daily lives will be multiplied by several converging forces: the collaborative economy, the jobless economy and the age of personalization. As these economic forces bear down on DIYers, the market will shudder hard and eventually reboot. Here's how that will work.

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BMW, Daimler Steer Clear of Apple Car Project

BMW and Daimler have broken off talks about forming a partnership with Apple to develop an electric car, according to news reports published last week. Discussions reportedly stalled over issues that included which company would take the lead on the project and which would have ownership of the data. Apple apparently sought to develop a vehicle that would be integrated closely with its cloud-based software, while the carmakers had concerns over customer data protection.

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Facebook Messenger Lets 50 Friends Get In on a Call

Facebook last week announced that it had rolled out group calling worldwide in its Messenger app. Members engaged in a group conversation can tap the phone icon on their screen to initiate a group call. They can manage individual participants on the next screen. Members of a group who miss the initial call can tap the phone icon in the group chat to join the call while it's in progress. The feature allows up to 50 participants. Users need to download the latest version of Messenger.

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Why Is the PC Industry Trying to Kill the PC?

Every time the "PC is dead" topic comes up, an old Monty Python movie comes to mind, and I'll bet you can guess which one. PCs are on almost every desk, and the installed base is measured not in the hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands -- it is measured in the hundred millions. Brian Krzanich, Intel's latest CEO, last week announced a massive layoff tied to the company's missing its quarterly numbers, and once again the alarm sounded. Was the PC is dead, or was Intel's miss just another new-CEO mistake?

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Hospitalized Stossel Bemoans Sorry State of Healthcare Customer Service

Fox News journalist John Stossel, who recently underwent an operation for lung cancer, on Wednesday wrote that although New York-Presbyterian Hospital's medical care is excellent, "the hospital's customer service stinks." Doctors "keep me waiting for hours, and no one bothers to call or email to say 'I'm running late,'" Stossel said. He was given X-rays, EKG tests, echocardiograms and blood tests, but he doubted all were needed. "No one discusses that with me or mentions the cost. Why would they? The patient rarely pays directly."

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With Latest Opera Browser Everybody Gets Free VPN

Opera on Wednesday announced that it would add a free VPN service to the latest version of its browser. Virtual private networks add an extra level of security for Web surfers. Companies use them to provide secure communications for employees remotely accessing office systems, and consumers use them to block unwanted snooping on their online activity. "Now, you don't have to download VPN extensions or pay for VPN subscriptions to access blocked websites and to shield your browsing when on public WiFi," senior VP Krystian Kolondra said.

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Sports Fans and Social Media Part 2: Perils Pitfalls and Best Practices

This fall will see a 10-game pilot of professional football streamed on social media -- Twitter, to be specific. It's a continuation of the NFL's search for gold in the veins of digital broadcasting and an opportunity for sports brands to forge new and deeper relations with fans. Initially seen as merely a way to connect with teens and texting lovers, social networks have permeated the Internet with a proliferation of like and share buttons. For sports teams looking to bolster their brands, social networks have evolved into a critical channel.

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Gadget Ogling: A 360-Degree Cam a Leveled-Up Kindle and a Space-Saving Home Gym

At its F8 developer conference, Facebook announced it was opening up its live streaming API to allow anyone using practically any camera capable of streaming live video to do so over its network. Aligned with that, the company also unveiled its latest push into hardware -- an open source 360-degree camera. Bearing 17 cameras and Web-based software to render footage in 360-degrees, Facebook Surround 360 is more of a design than a commercial product. It would cost around $30,000 to build one as is, Facebook said.

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Insurance Industry Buzzes Over Data Breach Ruling

If the rash of data breaches in recent months has done anything for businesses, it's raised their awareness of cyber liability insurance. The market for cyber liability insurance is expected to increase dramatically as businesses become more aware that their current policies don't adequately cover cyber-risks, according to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners. However, a three-judge federal appeals panel last week threw into question just how inadequately existing insurance products cover cyber-risks.

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Viber Goes the Encryption Route

Viber on Tuesday announced that it has begun rolling out end-to-end encryption across all devices for the 711 million users of its messaging app. Users have to download Viber version 6.0 or higher. The app offers stronger security in every voice or video call, message, video and photo, in both group and one-on-one messages, the company said. In addition, Viber launched Hidden Chats, a feature that lets users hide specific chats from the main screen so only they know those chats exist. Hidden Chats can be accessed only by using a four-digit PIN.

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2017 iPhone May Be a Glass Act

Apple has been developing a glass casing for a new iPhone with an AMOLED display to be unveiled in 2017, Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst at KGI Securities, reportedly said this week in a note to investors. That would mark a return to the design of the iPhone 4 and 4s, both of which had glass cases. The use of the AMOLED screen will offset the heavier weight of a glass back for the device. No more than 40 percent of iPhones will be made with aluminum bodies once the glass device is launched, Kuo predicted.

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Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Xenial Xerus Makes Its Debut

Canonical on Thursday launched Ubuntu 16.04, aka "Xenial Xerus," an upgrade that will be supported for the next five years. The latest version for all desktop, server and cloud editions will be available for download starting Thursday. Ubuntu 16.04 includes four major technology advancements geared toward multiplatform uses. Xenial Xerus is the sixth Long Term Support release for Ubuntu. It marks the first time the platform is supported on mainframes, making it one of the world's largest and most powerful Linux systems, the company said.

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EU Levels Antitrust Charges Against Abusive Android

The European Commission on Wednesday charged that Google breached EU antitrust rules by seeking to maintain and expand the dominance of its Android operating system. "A competitive mobile Internet sector is increasingly important for consumers and businesses in Europe," said the EC's antitrust chief, Margrethe Vestager. "Based on our investigation thus far, we believe that Google's behavior denies consumers a wider choice of mobile apps and services and stands in the way of innovation by other players, in breach of EU antitrust rules."

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MIT Researchers Forge New Weapon for Code Warriors

MIT researchers have developed a fast, accurate system for identifying security flaws in Web apps written in Ruby on Rails, according to news reports published last week. In tests the researchers -- MIT Professor Daniel Jackson and Joseph Near, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California at Berkeley -- performed on 50 popular RoR apps, they uncovered 23 previously undiscovered security flaws. What's more, the longest amount of time it took to analyze any one program was 64 seconds.

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Apple's MacBook Refresh Draws Tepid Response

Apple on Tuesday announced a refreshed MacBook with some incremental improvements but nothing likely to dazzle even the staunchest Mac fans. The improved battery life and fanless design got the attention of Eric Smith, a senior analyst at Strategy Analytics. "Battery life is always top of mind for consumers," he said. However, he was "a little disappointed" that there has been no improvement to display resolution, as "more PC OEMs are going to 4K displays in this price tier." The MacBook starts at $1,300.

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YouTube Wants You to See the World From Every Angle

YouTube on Monday announced the rollout of live-streaming 360-degree video and spatial audio, part of the company's push to boost its reach in the growing market for immersive video and virtual reality. The company has provided support for 360-degree video for more than a year, but it has been working with content creators to push the technology even further to bring fans into live events when they cannot be there themselves, Chief Product Officer Neal Mohan said.

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Sports Fans and Social Media Part 1: It's a Brand New Ball Game

Twitter and the National Football League are betting that a partnership announced this month could help refine the roughly defined relationship between social media and the world of sports. The NFL set out to reclaim fans who chewed through their cable TV cords and strayed from the flock of football faithful, while Twitter's motive in agreeing to stream 10 gridiron games during the 2016 season was growth and retention. The NFL fielded offers from Facebook, Amazon and others, but Twitter's reach and relevance to fans of the game won it over.

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60 Minutes Shows How Network Flaw Makes Any Smartphone Easy Prey

An international team of cybersecurity experts hacked into an iPhone loaned to a U.S. congressman who sits on a key technology committee, in a 60 Minutes demonstration of how easy it is for a criminal to spy on callers by exploiting an international mobile phone network vulnerability. The hackers were able to listen in on a call by Rep. Ted Lieu, D-Calif., who sits on the House Oversight and Reform Subcommittee, just by getting the actual phone number he was using, according to the program.

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The HTC's Wow Factor May Trump Shortcomings for VR Fans

The HTC Vive drew accolades from a hyped-up base of gamers and virtual reality enthusiasts when it launched earlier this month. However, the Vive is proving to be an experience that is not for the faint of heart, the light of wallet, or the short of patience. HTC earlier this year unveiled the Vive to an enthusiastic audience at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. Among its innovations is the Vive's ability to let users receive and respond to phone calls and text messages while immersed in the VR experience.

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LXLE Gives Aging Hardware a New Lease on Life

LXLE is an ideal distro for out-of-the-box functionality to handle your everyday computing needs. It's a well-oiled lightweight distribution based on Ubuntu's long-term support releases for Debian and Lubuntu Linux from a community originating in the U.S. The latest version is 14.04.4, released last month. It runs an optimized LXDE, or Lightweight X11 Desktop Environment, that has a comfortable look and feel with plenty of system settings to tailor its performance to your way of working.

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Google Calendar Offers Life-Coaching Goals Feature

Google last week rolled out Goals in Google Calendar, a feature designed to help users achieve their personal goals. Users set a goal, such as working out more often, and answer relevant questions, such as how often they want to work out and the best time for them to do so. Calendar then will sift through their schedules and select the best time to allocate for the task. Calendar uses artificial intelligence, so it will get better at scheduling the more often it's used, the company said.

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What the Traditional Car Companies Don't Seem to Get

Two interesting events took place this month. Tesla announced its Model 3, a relatively affordable electric car, and it attracted around 180K preorders on the same day. That was before the company actually revealed the car. There were more than 250K preorders in the first 36 hours. Oh, and the run rate is about 1,500 per hour of pre-orders for this car right now. Ford opened preorders for its new Ford GT, and only 500 people actually will get to buy this $400K car -- and as of right now, you still can order one of those 500.

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Windows Users Warned to Dump QuickTime Pronto

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security on Thursday issued a warning to remove Apple's QuickTime for Windows. The alert came in response to Trend Micro's report of two security flaws in the software, which will never be patched because Apple has ended support for QuickTime for Windows. Computers running QuickTime are open to increased risk of malicious attack or data loss, US-CERT warned, and remote attackers could take control of a victim's computer system. US-CERT is part of DHS' National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center.

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Facebook Envisions Virtual Social Future

Facebook on Wednesday demonstrated at its F8 developer conference how socializing could take place in a virtual world. Two employees some 30 miles apart -- Chief Technology Officer Mike Schroepfer in San Francisco and Product Manager Michael Booth in Menlo Park, California -- showed how they could share the same virtual space. Through the use of 360-degree photos, they visited London and the hangar where Facebook's unmanned aerial vehicle is housed, drew together with virtual pens, and took selfies and posted them to their Facebook news feeds.

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E2E Encryption Could Make WhatsApp a Spam Magnet

Facebook's WhatsApp last week announced it would roll out end-to-end encryption for its users to better protect their privacy, but the move could make the service more attractive to spammers, too. While encryption can safeguard information from data thieves, it also can block data protectors from detecting malicious activity on their networks. "WhatsApp's encryption policy is a win for privacy advocates, but it will not stop the growth of spam on the platform and could make the problem worse," AdaptiveMobile's Simeon Coney said.

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HTC 10 Wins Heaps of Praise With a Sprinkling of 'Buts'

HTC this week unveiled its latest flagship smartphone, the HTC 10. The phone's camera is outfitted with new, larger sensors and 12 million new-generation UltraPixels. Both the front and rear cameras sport the world's first optically stabilized, larger-aperture f/1.8 lenses on, the company said. The rear camera also has a faster laser autofocus. The front UltraSelfie camera has a wide-angle lens and screen flash. Both cameras take sharp, high-resolution photos, even in low light, according to HTC.

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Hortonworks Ramps Up Hadoop Security

Hortonworks this week announced a series of enterprise security efforts to bolster performance and data safety with its Hortonworks Data Platform. The company announced Tuesday that Pivotal Software will standardize on Hortonworks' Hadoop distribution. Hortonworks also will resell extract, transform and load tools developed by Syncsort. The thrust of the Hortonworks' product announcements concerned updates on applying security policies and maintaining data governance to simplify the provisioning of clusters in hybrid clouds.

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Tiny Nanocraft May Sail to Neighboring Star System

Stephen Hawking and billionaire Yuri Milner on Tuesday unveiled Breakthrough Starship, an ambitious $100 million effort to send miniature spacecraft to another solar system, but the program might not be quite ready to fly. It calls for a team of engineering and astrophysics experts to develop nanocrafts with sails propelled by a light beam that would allow the devices to zoom to the Alpha Centauri star system at 20 percent the speed of light. The Alpha Centauri star system is 4.37 light years, or 25 trillion miles, from Earth.

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Gadget Ogling: Smarter Notes, Livelier Virtual Reality, and Bigger In-Flight Movies

We've for some time had Moleskine's Smart Notebooks, which allow you to jot down your thoughts and upload them to Evernote through an app. The new Smart Writing Set takes that idea and elevates it to a new plane, letting you quickly turn scrawled notes or doodles into digital files you can edit using a computer or any mobile app -- no smartphone camera required. There are a few components at play here: the notebook, a smart pen, and a mobile app. The Pen+ is the key factor -- it has a camera that captures your ink scratches as you make them.

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Facebook Entices VR Content Creators With Open Source Surround Cam

Facebook on Tuesday unveiled a high-quality 360-degree 3D camera suitable for creating virtual reality content. The Facebook Surround 360 system, which made its debut at the F8 developers conference, includes a production-ready camera -- which costs about $30,000 to build and looks like a flying saucer from a science fiction movie -- and software for controlling the camera and for stitching and rendering what the camera captures. "We wanted to create a professional-grade end-to-end system that would capture, edit and render high-quality 3D-360 video," said Facebook's Brian Cabral.

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Next Apple Watch Will Be More 'S' Than 2

Most of the changes in the next version of the Apple Watch will be on the inside and not the outside of the case, according to an investors note issued Monday by Ming-Chi Kuo of KGI Securities. While he was short on details about what the internal changes for the watch might be, the analyst's comments are consistent with rumors circulating last summer that the design of the next version of Apple's wrist computer would remain essentially unchanged, with some improvements in battery life and its display's outdoor visibility.

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Zuckerberg Launches Remodeled Messenger

CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Tuesday launched the company's new Messenger platform beta at its annual F8 conference. The Messenger announcement was the first major initiative in the long-term vision he presented. Zuckerberg outlined a major push to incorporate artificial intelligence and bots into the Messenger platform. The revamped service will allow companies and individuals to develop more sophisticated and personal experiences through Messenger than ever before, ultimately transforming the app into a major communications and marketing tool.

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Samsung's AR Vision Includes Smart Contact Lenses

Samsung has been granted a patent for a smart contact lens, according to news reports published last week. The lens is equipped with a tiny display, a camera, an antenna, and several sensors that detect movement and eye blinks. Eye blinks would provide the input, and a smartphone would be needed to process the images. A user blinks to take pictures or interact with data displayed on the smart contact lens. Sensors pick up the blinks and relay the commands they indicate to the user's smartphone for processing.

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Robust New FreeOffice Suite Proves Free Can Be Just as Good

SoftMaker's FreeOffice Linux office suite is a LibreOffice look-alike that provides strong performance compatibility with Microsoft Office documents. SoftMaker offers a line of open source offerings that compete with its commercial flagship office suite, SoftMaker Office 2016. It's a Windows/Linux cross-platform office suite with integrated applications for word processing, spreadsheets, presentations and email management. The commercial version is nearly identical to the free, open source FreeOffice version.

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Ford After Dark: Self-Driving Car 'Sees' All

Ford on Monday revealed that it has been testing its Fusion Hybrid autonomous research vehicle with no headlights on remote desert roads at night. While such a task would be quite perilous for a human driver, it was an important step in developing a fully autonomous vehicle, the company said. The test vehicle relied not on cameras, which require light, but instead on LiDAR technology for navigation. LiDAR worked with the car's virtual driver software to navigate the pitch-black and winding roads at the Ford Arizona Proving Ground.

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Learning to Love Virtual Reality

At Nvidia's technology conference last week, I saw a variety of new technologies showcased. From deep learning systems -- computers that arguably are smarter than we are -- to self-driving cars that can drive better than we can, the technological advances on display made me feel just a tad inadequate. One way to get over my sudden concern over obsolescence was to check out the virtual reality showcase. With the realization of all the free time I'm likely to get, the prospect of computers doing what I used to do suddenly didn't look so bad.

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