Computing

Money will be the biggest problem users of Windows XP will face when Microsoft officially stops supporting it on Tuesday. As a last resort, Microsoft is offering custom support for Windows XP as a temporary stopgap. That could cost as much as $200 per PC per year, Gartner estimated. The UK governmen...

One thing that Apple made clear when it took the smartphone market by storm and away from then-dominant players Palm, BlackBerry and Microsoft is that to win you need to make big bets and change the battle. The market is now dominated by Apple and Google technology -- much of which Google doesn't co...

Microsoft on Wednesday introduced Windows Phone 8.1, the latest refresh to its mobile operating system. The update includes a personal digital assistant named "Cortana," based on the popular AI character in the video game Halo. Cortana is the Windows Phone 8.1 counterpart to Apple's Siri or Google's...

Amazon Sets TV on Fire

Amazon on Wednesday put paid to the buzz circulating around its plans for a set-top box, announcing Amazon Fire TV at a New York event. The size of a CD box and just over half an inch thick, Fire TV takes on set-top boxes, the iPod, Apple TV and game consoles. It plugs into users' HDTVs to provide i...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Clock Counting Down on Windows XP Support

As Microsoft prepares to cut off support for Windows XP, hackers are sharpening their knives in anticipation of carving up the operating system's carcass. Web predators will pounce on XP 10 minutes after Microsoft pulls the support plug on the software, predicted one former military computer special...

ECS -- Nvidia's Emerging Companies Summit -- is a place to check out some of the firms that could become the next breakout company. It didn't disappoint this year. Among the highlights: A firm that could redefine advertising connected to Web pictures and videos; a company that could put your entire ...

Ask the Internet. That's the pitch in HTC's TV ads for its new flagship smartphone, the HTC One M8. It's a pitch that hopes to acquire by word of mouth what HTC was unable to get for its predecessor: consumer mindshare. "The challenge for any vendor outside of Samsung and Apple in the North American...

Google on Monday announced a number of new features to the Google Play Games platform that are intended to boost discoverability and cross-platform multiplayer gaming while providing developers with deeper analytics. Three out of every four people who use the Android operating system play games, acc...

One of the questions I've been getting regularly, both because little companies like WhatsApp are in the news and because large firms are struggling to find early stage innovative firms, is "Where do you go to see a lot of small innovative companies?" Firms like this get lost at shows like CES. They...

Following months of speculation that Microsoft may be rethinking its approach to getting its beleaguered Windows Phone into the hands of more consumers, two reports came to light on Thursday suggesting that indeed may be the case. First, echoing rumors last fall that Windows Phone could take up resi...

Apple has released a major update for iOS that takes its mobile firmware beyond the confines of smartphones and tablets and onto car dashboards. The Apple CarPlay system, which will be available in select models this year, promises to insert the most common features of iPhone that a driver may wish ...

Intel is set to speed up data transmission by providing MXC cables for use in data centers and with supercomputers. The company plans to start selling the high-speed cables later this year. The cables are take advantage of silicon photonics technology, which uses light to move large volumes of data ...

SPOTLIGHT ON SECURITY

Bad Ads Outstrip Porn as Mobile Phone Infection Vectors

Trawling porn sites used to be the best way to pick up an electronically transmitted disease on your smartphone. That's changed. Every one in five times a mobile user is redirected to a malware site online, it's done through a malicious ad, according to a new report. That's three times what it was t...

Apple has pushed a large update to its OS X Mavericks OS that includes a patch for a significant security flaw. The vulnerability allows Net predators to hijack a secure communication channel from a device running the latest version of OS X and perform mischief such as intercepting user names and pa...

Cords have been the bane of digital life since the introduction of personal computers. As wireless devices proliferated, though, the need for cords has declined, thanks to technologies like Bluetooth and WiFi. One product area where cords have been persistent, however, has been storage. Sure, the cl...

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