Applications

Microsoft announced Wednesday that the latest updates to its Windows operating system will include built-in support for 3D printers, making it as easy for consumers to create a 3D object as it is to print text. Additive manufacturing isn't a new technology, but it is just starting to work its way i...

Microsoft kicked off its Build 2013 developers conference on Wednesday with the announcement that its highly anticipated Windows 8.1, aka "Windows Blue," has arrived. CEO Steve Ballmer also said that rapid release will be the new norm in the Microsoft ecosystem, and that Redmond will transform Windo...

At this week's Computex trade show in Taiwan, Microsoft applied some polish to its beleaguered Windows platform. That included announcing that its widely used Outlook email software will finally arrive on Windows RT as well as making the first public demonstration of its forthcoming Windows 8.1 upda...

TECH TREK

SAP Seeks Autistic Employees

SAP, a German software heavyweight, announced that it plans to recruit hundreds of people with autism in a quest to staff employees who "think differently." The company said it would hire 650 autistic people by 2020, which would account for about 1 percent of its multinational workforce. Autism affe...

Continuing its revamp of the Google+ social network that began in March, Google announced on Wednesday the addition of 41 new features and a redesign of the service, which it claims has 190 million active users. The changes focus on three areas -- the Google+ stream, photos, and the Hangouts feature...

Google Maps, already the de facto standard for online and mobile maps, is breaking new ground with added capabilities announced on Wednesday at the Google I/O Conference in San Francisco. Maps will get 3D views, speech recognition, enhanced voice search capabilities and will leverage artificial inte...

Google announced on Monday that it was consolidating the storage allowances for its various products. It will now provide 15 GB of free storage space for use across Drive, Gmail and Google+ Photos. Before, Google gave users 10 GB for Gmail and 5 GB to be used for Drive and Google+ Photos. Google is ...

Viber, a proprietary cross-platform instant messaging VoIP app for smartphones, is now available for Windows and Mac OS X desktops, Viber Media announced on Tuesday. The mobile version of Viber runs on Android, iOS, Symbian and some versions of the BlackBerry and Windows Phone OSes. Viber works on ...

When Catherine Kasper Place in Fort Wayne, Ind., needed to help refugees plan garden plots for themselves and for the organization's community supported agriculture, it turned to GrowVeg.com's Garden Planner and its affiliated iPad app, Garden Plan Pro. "It's challenging just to manage one garden," ...

The peer-to-peer technology company BitTorrent this week introduced the alpha version of BitTorrent Sync, a service that will let people sync and transfer files between multiple devices. "There are no file size limits, and the speed of transfer is only limited by your Internet connection," said Bret...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Trusteer Ventures Into the Chinese Hackers’ Den

China has a reputation as a center for international hacking, so why would a U.S. security company want to set up shop there? Before hackers launch their international escapades, they typically cut their teeth in their local markets, explained Rakesh Loonkar, president of Trusteer, which announced l...

Twitter announced updates to its Cards feature for developers Tuesday. The enhancements enable greater integration of media and apps, and target mobile users of the social network, but the overall goal is to allow developers to stuff more content in and around a typical tweet while maintaining the 1...

Google on Wednesday launched Google Keep, a mobile application designed to let users store notes and checklists in a way that could compete with popular productivity app Evernote. Keep allows users to tap out a note or checklist, or record a voice memo that Keep will transcribe and store. Notes can ...

North Korea is the suspected perpetrator of a hacking attack that knocked out a trio of South Korean broadcasters and two major banks on Wednesday. South Korean officials in the capital of Seoul traced the attack to a server in China, something that meshes with previous attacks by North Korea. The a...

Microsoft's newest version of its Office product, Office 365 Home Premium, has a number of new features: You can install it on more than one computer; save documents online using tight integration with Microsoft SkyDrive; and store files offline as well as retain cross-device settings and themes via...

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