sincity

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/Nokia/Lumia1520/Review/lumia-1520-review-64-470-75.jpgYou'd think it would be a big deal when a company announces that it won't repeat a mistake that alienated tons of its users, but then again, sometimes those revelations are mentioned quietly by brand accounts on Twitter. That's how Microsoft revealed that all existing Lumia handsets with Windows Phone 8 will be upgraded to Windows 10 when the new OS arrives. In response to a question about the Nokia Lumia 930, Microsoft's official Lumia account tweeted that "we plan to upgrade all Windows Phone 8 devices to Windows 10 in the future." They even added a smiley-face so we'd know they're serious. Definitely Windows 10There aren't any new details on when Windows 10 will arrive, but Windows Phone diehards who got burned when their WP7 handsets were never upgraded to WP8 should be relieved at this news. In addition this is more evidence that Microsoft really is calling the next version of its operating system Windows 10 across all platforms, signaling the death of the "Windows Phone" brand and - goodness willing - Windows RT. Microsoft officially dumps Nokia in favor of Lumiahttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/40765e39/sc/5/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597589547/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40765e39/sc/5/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597589547/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40765e39/sc/5/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597589547/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40765e39/sc/5/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597589547/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40765e39/sc/5/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597589547/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40765e39/sc/5/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/kQiz0irARQ0

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/Windows%20Phone/Windows%20Phone%208/Cortana/Cortana-470-75.jpgMicrosoft's Siri rival Cortana is currently exclusive to Windows Phone, despite plenty of speculation that she should have moved beyond her home base by now. But that will happen soon enough, judging by comments Microsoft made during a briefing with analysts and journalists recently. Microsoft Chief Experience Officer Julie Larson-Green took the opportunity to touch on some of the many things Cortana might do beyond her basic smartphone functions. When asked if that means Cortana is on her way to other platforms, she responded, "the short answer is yeah." She wouldn't reveal any more details, but that's pretty unambiguous. It won't be surprising at all to see Cortana in Windows 10, but where she might venture beyond that is a mystery we're eager to see solved. Windows 10 shows that Microsoft's getting back on trackhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/407613a4/sc/28/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597564423/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407613a4/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597564423/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407613a4/sc/28/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597564423/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407613a4/sc/28/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597564423/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407613a4/sc/28/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597564423/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407613a4/sc/28/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/0vBUbq3pLHw

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/Watches/Samsung/samsung_simband_blueprint-470-75.jpgSamsung debuted its Simband wearable and SAMI platform back in May, but things finally got rolling this week at the company's 2014 developer conference. The Samsung Simband is a wearable loaded with health sensors that collect data like your temperature, blood flow and EKG levels. While Samsung just introduced a slightly improved second generation of the device it's not actually intended for sale. Rather the Simband is meant as a blueprint for other device makers who want to incorporate Samsung's tech and designs into their wearables, and to that end the company has just released its APIs and development kit into the wild. That's the real news, and it means developers can finally get started making their own health apps for Simband devices. Send it to the cloudSamsung says Simband is "our concept of what a smart health device should be." "Now, for the first time you will be able to ask specific wellness questions and get clear, insightful answers direct from the source: you," reads a Samsung site describing Simband and some other initiatives. One of those is SAMI, or Samsung Architecture Multimodal Interactions, a cloud platform that will receive data from Simband devices and allow developers to leverage it with apps. Here's a video describing some of what Simband's many sensors can do. With these tools now available to devs it could be only a matter of time before Simband really takes off. Of course, it already has plenty of competition. The Microsoft Band is what Apple's Watch should have beenhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/4075c125/sc/5/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597570587/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4075c125/sc/5/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597570587/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4075c125/sc/5/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597570587/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4075c125/sc/5/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597570587/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4075c125/sc/5/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597570587/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4075c125/sc/5/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/EMafQzfnW58

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/BlackBerry/BlackBerry-01-470-75.jpgBlackBerry was once the sole emperor of the enterprise phone space, so it's nice to see the Canadian company isn't too bitter about its fall from grace to help out a friendly rival. At a conference in San Francisco today BlackBerry announced it's going to be using its security expertise to give Samsung a boost in the enterprise market. BlackBerry will help Samsung make more secure Android devices, BB CEO John Chen said during a presentation, by adding its own BES12 encryption to devices using Samsung's Knox software. The partnership will bear fruit in early 2015, Chen promised. BBM MeetingsAt the same conference BlackBerry also introduced BBM Meetings, a version of its BlackBerry Messenger service aimed at conferencing for enterprise users. BBM Meetings supports cross-platform video and voice conferences as well as text chats, screen-sharing and presentations, and it's compatible with BlackBerry 10, Android, Mac OS X and Windows PCs. BBM Meetings costs businesses $12.50 (about £8, AU$14) a month per host after a 30-day free trial, though it will alternatively be available in December as part of an enterprise bundle that also includes BBM Protected and advanced technical support for slightly less per month. The Passport 2 is only one of BlackBerry's weird upcoming handsetshttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/407541f2/sc/5/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597569251/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407541f2/sc/5/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597569251/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407541f2/sc/5/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597569251/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407541f2/sc/5/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597569251/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407541f2/sc/5/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597569251/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/407541f2/sc/5/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/1wpJEt40XdQ

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/13th%20Nov%2014/maindealpic-470-75.jpgAs usual, our team of deal elves have been working through the night to bring you today's best tech deals. And today we've got some exclusive bargains for you! Not only can you save £30 on the excellent 8.4-inch Samsung Galaxy Tab PRO Android tablet, but we've also found deals on bluetooth speakers, USB thumb sticks, a home fryer and a portable phone charger. And remember, Black Friday is approaching so don't forget to check out our Black Friday UK page for all the knowledge you need to pick up a tech deal on the biggest shopping day of the year! So let's jump right in with these two exclusives: http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/13th%20Nov%2014/61GIC8livIL._SL1000_-580-100.jpg The Lumsing portable, waterproof Bluetooth speaker will play music for up to 8 hours on a single charge and is designed for taking to the park or the beach. It's available on Amazon for £30.99 but you can get £10 off the asking price by using the secret code TRADAR10 when you check out! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/13th%20Nov%2014/51JWqNRWllL._SL1000_-580-100.jpg And while we've got another exclusive deal for you on Lumsing gear. The Lumsing Harmonica portable battery charger has a 10400mah cell which means it can carry enough juice to charge even the most demanding mobile devices multiple times. And we invite you to say 'meh' to the Amazon price of £21.99 by getting a £5 discount with the secret code GIZMODO5 when you check out! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/13th%20Nov%2014/233110768-580-100.jpg Two excellent portable gadgets above, and both would make excellent gifts. But you know what you need to make the most of them? A mobile device to charge and play music from! Lucky we've found a great deal on the Samsung Galaxy Tab PRO Android tablet, which you can pick up from John Lewis for just £199. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/13th%20Nov%2014/l_21663537-580-100.jpg And how about this for a quick bargain? Sandisk is one of the biggest names in flash memory sticks, and you can currently pick up its 16GB Cruzer Force memory stick for just £4.99! That's two thirds less than the in-store Currys price. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/13th%20Nov%2014/l_20731957-580-100.jpg And finally, if you want to make a saving on a very nifty piece of kitchen equipment, the Tefal ActiFry Plus fryer is currently down to £89.00 on Currys. Buy today, make home-made chips tomorrow! MORE DEALSLego City Advent Calendar 60063 £14.97 @ Asda Direct Bluedio HT(Shooting Brake) wireless bluetooth 4.1 stereo headphones (Black) £17.79 Sold by Bluedio and Fulfilled by Amazon Epson EH-TW490 HD Ready 720p 3LCD Home Cinema Projector sold at Amazon for £299.99 Dell C1760NW Wireless Colour Laser Printer back to £89.99 delivered @ Ebuyer Acer K272HLbid 27" VA LED DVI HDMI Monitor - £137.99 @ Ebuyer Hitachi 50HYT62U 50 Inch Full HD Freeview HD Smart LED TV £349.99 @ Argos (Includes £10 Voucher) Asus X200CA 11.6" Touchscreen Laptop £199.99 @ Hughes On Networks 5 Port Gigabit Network Ethernet Switch - £6.99 @ Ebuyer TomTom Via 135M - UK & ROI Sat Nav @ Halfords £99.99 LG 42UB820V 42 Inch Ultra HD 4K Freeview HD Smart LED TV £499.99 at Argos Philips QC5570 DIY Hair Clippers £25.49 @ Argos CRUCIAL MX100 2.5" Internal SSD - 256 GB £69.99 @ PC World Chad Valley 250 Piece Super Art Set now only £8.32 free CC @ Argos LG 70LB650V 70 inch 3D LED Smart TV 1080p HD Freeview HD £1999 @ richersounds

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/televisions/Vizio/aircastlive_app_vizio-470-75.jpgThere are plenty of reasons to love Vizio's new 4K P-Series TVs, not least because they're the first affordable Ultra HD sets to hit the market. Here's another: the AirCastLive app, which Vizio and AirCast Mobile have announced can now sling photos and video directly from smartphones and tablets to Vizio smart TVs. The app is available on iOS and Android, and it lets users send content between devices even if they're not on the same wi-fi network. Photos and video are first uploaded to the company's servers, and from there they can be shared to other AirCast users' screens. AirCast says it happens "instantly." The app is available for a small fee on Google TV and Roku devices, but the version for Vizio TVs, out now, is free with 1GB of storage. It's compatible with Vizio's E-Series and M-Series TVs, plus the brand new 4K P-Series. Vizio's reasonably priced 4K Ultra HD P-Series TVs are out nowhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406ca0f4/sc/28/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597519688/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ca0f4/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597519688/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ca0f4/sc/28/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597519688/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ca0f4/sc/28/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597519688/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ca0f4/sc/28/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597519688/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ca0f4/sc/28/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/xdryjfrxRKM

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Windows/windows9/install/2014-10-01%2021.08.19-470-75.jpgMicrosoft has issued a patch for a security bug that, unbeknownst to anyone, has plagued every version of Windows since Windows 95. The bug, had anyone actually discovered it before now, apparently could have allowed attackers to set up websites that let them run code remotely on your machine, even taking it over, if you visited them. An IBM research team discovered the exploit earlier this year, and Microsoft just now patched it. Luckily the researchers - IBM's corny-named "X-Force" - "hasn't found any evidence of exploitation of this particular bug in the wild," IBM's Robert Freeman wrote on IBM's Security Intelligence blog. HindsightFreeman described the bug as "rare" and "unicorn-like" - both because it sidesteps all of Internet Explorer's and Windows' built-in protections, and because it went so long undetected. Hindsight is 20/20, and in hindsight Microsoft probably should have noticed this serious security issue back when it was introduced almost 20 years ago. But no harm, no foul, we guess, and it at least makes for a good headline. Windows 10 shows that Microsoft's getting back on trackhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406ba42a/sc/21/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597525164/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ba42a/sc/21/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597525164/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ba42a/sc/21/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597525164/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ba42a/sc/21/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597525164/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ba42a/sc/21/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597525164/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ba42a/sc/21/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/TMNfrZy5uuE

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/samsung_carmode_note4_edge_gears-470-75.jpgSamsung has announced a bundle of new driving-related apps and features that will be out on its Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge and Gear S smartwatch by the holidays. Thanks to a partnership with traffic data firm Inrix announced at the 2014 Samsung Developer Conference, these three Samsung gadgets will get live traffic, in turn providing better directions and more accurate arrival time estimates. That should help ease the road rage some drivers feel on their morning commutes, as should the new "car mode," which automatically enlarges the UI and puts voice controls and route data front-and-center when you're driving. Car mode even helps you find parking and cheap gas, while a new "my places" widget provides some of this info on the home screen. The Gear S, for its part, will be able to send you travel alerts and estimate arrival times for you, while the Morning! Smart Alarm Clock app gains the new ability to send you some notifications - including traffic and other data - right when you wake up. Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge release date: where can I get them?http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406ace5d/sc/28/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474363/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ace5d/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474363/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ace5d/sc/28/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474363/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ace5d/sc/28/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474363/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ace5d/sc/28/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597474363/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406ace5d/sc/28/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/zurCF6ELR-U

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/internet/Firefox/firefox_browser_logo-470-75.jpgIntroduction and Firefox todayAs you might have noticed, this week saw the tenth anniversary of the Firefox web browser. Given that, we spoke to Johnathan Nightingale, VP Firefox, to discover more about what's new in Firefox as of this week, and his thoughts on what the web and the browsers of the future will look like. TechRadar Pro: What's new in Firefox? Johnathan Nightingale: Let me start by saying that the consistent theme you are seeing from Mozilla is that we're trying to solve actual problems for you and offer you choices that are meaningful, that matter to you and that you understand in terms of value. This started with launching Firefox 10 years ago and continues today. We always look for the simplest thing you can tell us about your online preferences. Then we think about how we can present that back to you in a meaningful way so you can start to see how your information flows on the web. We then think about presenting that back to the industry in a way that allows us to advocate for the change we feel needs to happen. We did that with Do Not Track and now every browser supports it. We did it with WebGL and now every browser supports it. You continue to see that work with the Forget button, which is one of the new things in the special anniversary edition of Firefox released this week. Forget is based on a really simple idea. If you fall down a link path and realise that you are not where you wanted to be, or click on a link or are on a research mission that you should have done in Private Browsing mode but forgot to, now you can just erase that. With Forget, there is a way to undo that action after the fact. Firefox works to remember things to help you, but it also helps you forget things when that is the right choice. We've made that into a really simple transaction so you can ask Firefox to forget the last five minutes, the last two hours or the last 24 hours. In one click you can delete your recent history, cookies, close all tabs and windows and open a new window to start again. We also included DuckDuckGo as one of our search options because search without tracking is an interesting proposition. It feels like a choice we wanted to make available to our users. We understand that even users who don't spend their lives in the technology space still worry about how their information is being tracked and traded, and do not like it being done without their consent. We're also introducing the Privacy Coach, a new kind of add-on for Firefox for Android, which puts key privacy features within easy reach on one dedicated home screen page. You can add it to your Firefox today to have information at your fingertips about the privacy features that Firefox has to offer, including Do Not Track, Private Browsing, Guest Browsing, Cookie Blocking and Clear History. You'll see easy-to-digest explanations about these features to help you figure out what settings are right for you. And we're excited to launch Firefox Developer Edition built from the ground up for developers and those who have a curiosity about how the web is made. Now they have a place they can call home instead of having to force a consumer-oriented browser into their particular workflow. We are also working on a privacy initiative to partner with others to improve privacy protection options and tools online. We will conduct research, experiment with and create advances in privacy technology for the web. TRP: What is your favourite Firefox moment from the last 10 years? JN: Right now. Firefox initiated choice, innovation and opportunity online. We've come a long way and we created this vibrant competition for the web where our users have totally co-opted our platform around standardisation and openness, and we believe that openness and interoperability are essential. Today is exciting because we are talking about technological innovation everywhere in Mozilla – new features for users focused on privacy, partnerships with other organisations who are all working to make the web a better place, all our developer tools in one bespoke browser. Every release since Firefox 1 shipped a decade ago is something that we are immensely proud of. Each release represents the huge amount of work we have put together in order to try to make the web better. The effects of that work shine particularly brightly this week. While it is great to be able to stand where we are and look back over the last 10 years to see how far we have come, what is more inspiring is the energy we have to fight today's fights and do the things we know we have yet to do. There hasn't been a better time. Developer Edition and privacyTechRadar Pro: How and why did you create Firefox Developer Edition? Johnathan Nightingale: Mozilla exists because we see the power of the web. We really believe in it. Our mission is to take care of the web and our users. The web itself is open and interoperable and that is great, but it can be messy. There are numerous proprietary development platforms that often don't mesh with each other, meaning developers end up switching between different tools, platforms and browsers which can slow them down and make them less productive. If they do end up using one over the other they can be left high and dry if an app store then tells them their app is not good enough to be submitted. Proprietary development platforms make it easy to build apps for certain stores and that is obviously attractive, but developers want to build beautiful things that everyone can use, on any platform. Firefox Developer Edition is the first browser out there designed specifically for developers. It's a stable Firefox browser that consolidates all the developer tools you're used to and some new features that simplify the process of building for the web. Firefox Developer Edition is for designers and developers who want to build compelling web content and apps. For developers creating web apps, there's no need to download additional plugins or applications to debug mobile devices. TRP: Why is privacy important to you? JN: Data flows are inscrutable. Some companies take advantage of the fact that you don't understand what's going on. You have a right to be able to change that, you should demand better of us and everyone else in terms of giving you the tools to better mediate and understand that. This isn't the same as not looking under the bonnet of your car because you're not a car person and you don't want to know what's under the hood even though you have a car and that knowledge might help you. You can't avoid caring about privacy. We try to help you be that person by giving you ways to see who knows what about you and how you are being tracked online. It is a difficult thing to get to grips with and it shouldn't be as hard as it is, but at the same time, you can't leave it up to your tech-savvy friends to advise you. It's your life and you should be the custodian of it online – just as much as you are in the physical world. There are lots of interactions in your offline life where you are perfectly capable of giving consent despite the fact that there are complicated forces at work. When you walk down the cereal aisle, you are faced with marketing that is trying very hard to get your attention, but no-one disputes the fact that you get to choose what you're buying. When you're online, you don't get to choose who gets to see the last 10 things you buy. That's weird and broken and we should fix it. Looking aheadTechRadar Pro: What will the web look like in ten years' time? Johnathan Nightingale: There are four dominant trends that I see happening over the next ten years… 1. The rest of the world will come online: half of the world's population has come online and those who have yet to do so are coming online quickly. That pace is just going to accelerate. Initiatives like our own Firefox OS and others make it easier and easier to reach the web without having to buy a £600 smartphone. Ten years ago, the web was a product of affluence. In ten years' time we will be thinking about a web that is truly global in ways that were not possible ten years ago when Firefox started out. That shift is going to be massive and transformative. Those who are coming online now will have different needs to those who are already here. That will create pressure for software to change and opportunity for new products and features to emerge that serve those new needs. We're excited to see it – it is a big part of why we are investing in Firefox on all platforms; we believe deeply in the value of having everyone connected to web. 2. More of life will happen online: When Firefox started, I had two connections to the web – one at work and one at home. Now I have dozens of things that are connected to the internet – phones and tablets with Wi-Fi, my Kindle has 3G, I have multiple computers and I'm just getting started. I don't have an internet-connected thermostat or fridge or vacuum cleaner but some people do already. In ten years, everything is going to be connected and people will ask 'how do we organise our digital lives, how do we situate ourselves in the middle of this web of things and control it and understand it?' For Mozilla, it is a very real imperative to build tools and make it easier to manage our users' digital lives. 3. Data will get more complex: As these layers of connectivity emerge and more devices are connected, the way data is managed will get more complex. There will continue to be tension around whether that data is something that we can control or something we are victims of. This is another place that we have an opinion. At Mozilla we think that you should be in control and we're going to keep building tools that make those data flows more visible, that give you the ability to turn them off or add a notion of consent and indicate what you are not OK with. We're going to continue with our policy advocacy and continue to build technological proof that it is possible to make things in a way that respects the humans they serve. 4. The web as we understand it might go away: I don't mean that in the sense that cars will be replaced with better cars or fridges with better fridges. I mean that there are corporate interests in making sure that everything about how you get online and all of the apps you use to do so are controlled by gatekeepers. They have colourful logos and lovely design conferences but their business model, make no mistake, is to mediate between you and everyone. These gatekeepers are going to try and create the most attractive, integrated stack of products that they can because that is how they make money. I don't fault them for making money but I don't want my life controlled by a company's profit model. I may be accused of catastrophising but I don't think that's a naïve way of describing it. It really is a threat. People talk about apps versus the web, but the issue at hand is so much more than a sterile technological debate about whose stack will do a better job. The future isn't about apps versus the browser. It is so much more than that. It's a question of whether we will save the web as we know it, this global marketplace of ideas, where if you have a cool idea and if it is provocative you can change the world. This is going to keep being a problem unless users win. TRP: What will the browser of the future look like? JN: People have taken for granted a basic browser that can render the web faithfully and interoperate with other browsers and give them the things they are trying to get to – and that is good news. That's a big step. When we launched Firefox 10 years ago, there was no guarantee that we would be where we are today. Now, everyone is exploring the app space, but I want us to evolve the conversation in a different way. I think there is a real need for browsers to provide users with a deeper level of support. Think of it as a piece of software that is working for you, instead of just being a window onto the web content that is out there. So, there's room for the browser to grow into more of a helper or trusted friend on the web that gives you choices in a way you can understand, and that anticipates what you might need while still doing all of that with the same rock solid performance you're used to. There are many differences between browsing the web in 2014 and in 2004. This is obviously a big deal and that is how apps have entered into the conversation, but the bigger deal is the interconnectivity of devices and making sure that you can have a consistent web experience as you move between work and home or between a desktop machine and a smartphone. TRP: What makes Firefox different to other browsers today? JN: By every objective measure I can come up with – and I appreciate that I am not objective – I believe that Firefox is the best browser today. It is fast, beautifully designed and highly customisable. Users are responding well to the changes we make on Firefox on desktop and we are also seeing massive increases in adoption of Firefox for Android. We are past 80 million downloads on Android. Firefox is now the fastest on every benchmark, but I actually look for more from the products I love than their benchmark scores. Some other browser could come along with a surprising JavaScript speed or they could copy our design and be just as customisable, but none of them will ever be able to imitate us on our independence. We are running an independent game here and we are firing on all cylinders. People care that we have a mission, we have values – and no other browser can compete on that score. If you look at our competitors, they are Google, Apple and Microsoft. These are all giant organisations with business models that are about driving you into their platform and keeping you there. Instead, what we are trying to steer you towards is the web – a grand, interoperable, globally accessible gatekeeper-free printing press of the modern age. Future featuresTechRadar Pro: Will you release a 64-bit version of Firefox on Windows? Johnathan Nightingale: We've been working on 64-bit builds and at Mozilla we put everything we do through very robust quality testing, which includes automated testing as well as human QA testing. While 64-bit Firefox on Windows seems like a relatively small thing to some people we want to make sure that everything works perfectly. We have a high quality bar and focus a lot on things like performance and stability; things our users have told us are important. We're not going to push out to a new platform without being really very confident that we're delivering something that is worthy of the Firefox name. 64-bit Firefox on Windows has moved out of the initial calibration and qualification phase, and since Monday you will see it in our Nightly release channel. We expect that to run through the trains probably on Firefox 36 unless we find any problems. Released versions of Firefox are already fully 64-bit on Mac OS X and Linux. 64-bit Firefox on Windows is coming quickly. TRP: What features would you like to see next from Firefox? JN: Firefox is at its best when it is helping me out. A decade ago this meant giving me tabbed browsing so I didn't have hundreds of windows open at once because that was hard to manage. Other browsers used the tab concept too, but Firefox really popularised that idea and brought it to the mainstream. In the process, my life online got easier because I had a new tool. 10 years ago, Firefox helped me by blocking pop-up ads. This was controversial because as a browser, there's an argument to say that we should be objective and shouldn't mess with what a web page is trying to do. I disagree with that, I think we should have an opinion. Back then, our opinion was that pop-up ads were a nuisance so we shipped a blocker to take away that pain. Let's look at solving the problems that I'm having today. Today, it's about having too many machines. I would love to see features on Firefox to make it easier for me to move between my devices and give me the ability to synchronise them all and live on several at once. I would like to be able to start doing something on my desktop, and pick it back up later on my phone or tablet exactly where I left off. Today, there are a lot of people following me around and I don't understand that. I don't know how many people there are, I don't know what they are doing with my information and I don't know how to control it. I have privacy concerns that are about the web at large and also about my devices. I want to be able to give my phone to a friend when we are in a restaurant so they can quickly look something up without them being able to sift through my personal data. How do I do that? I want to be able to share my laptop with a roommate in college but still have secrets. How do I do that? I'm curious to see more of that. Getting personal about FirefoxTechRadar Pro: How many devices do you have Firefox installed on? Johnathan Nightingale: I have my work laptop, my home PC and I've always got some phones and tablets on the go; I am relatively digital. But I've actually installed Firefox on hundreds of devices. Even before I started working for Mozilla, I was a big fan of Firefox and what it represents so I was one of those people who go into a computer store and install Firefox on all the laptops on display. I don't know if that's welcome or not but I do it! We hear from our fans all the time that they do it too because they want people to have a choice, they believe in what we are doing and they understand it. TRP: Why is customisation important to you? JN: Firefox is fast and safe and fun. It is all of those things out-of-the-box. You don't need to do a thing to it. But when we talk to our users, they tell us that our individuality and our independence is something they value. We value our users' individuality in return. So, customisation is important because we want to make it as easy as possible for you to get your browser working the way you want. It's about giving you the ability to express that choice, whether you want to customise by applying a theme or deeply changing the functionality of your browser by applying a number of add-ons or configuring your preferences. You spend more time in your browser than any other piece of software or any other interface in your life. So to us, it makes sense that yes, you should be able to grab that and move it around. Earlier this year we released a version of Firefox that made customisation even easier because we wanted to invite more people to do it. The customise button is the only part of the menu that you can't cut out of your browser! We believe that it should always be possible to alter your browser. That is a central value of ours. TRP: How have you customised your Firefox? JN: My browser is where I live – and it shows! I thoroughly customised it with add-ons and my own personal preferences and I also change it up a fair bit depending on what I am working on. When I am engaged in a planning process, I'll reconfigure things and find an add-on that puts my tabs on the side so I can manage them more easily, or I'll move to multiple windows and start using tab spaces. When I am ready to work on something else, I will reconfigure it again. I'm one of those people who hoard tabs – I have hundreds of tabs, so every once in a while, I'll reorganise those. TRP: What is your favourite Firefox add-on? JN: I'm really excited about things that give people extra visibility into their web experience. People are smart and they want to understand the way the internet works and the fact is, it's complicated. Our job is to make that easier for you to understand and control, which is why I use add-ons like Lightbeam, which we built at Mozilla. It shows you how the websites you visit track you and interact with your data, and it sheds some light on which third-party sites can access your data based on the first website you visited. We are not the only ones who are exploring how to make the state of the web more visible to you and I get really excited by that. There are other add-ons including Privacy Badger and Ghostery that are working on relaying the same set of concepts. These are also the add-ons I recommend anytime someone asks me about online data and online privacy. It is always interesting to see people's reactions when they run with one of those add-ons for a while – they start to get a clearer sense of how they are being tracked. It causes new questions to come up and invariably makes people feel different about some of the sites they visit and the tools those sites use to keep track of them. TRP: When you are not working, do you use Firefox for web gaming? JN: Yes. I've been using the web for gaming in different ways over the years. The games I am playing this year are better than the games I was playing a couple of years ago and the games I will play next year are going to be incredible. What I'm excited about is what has become possible when it comes to gaming on the web. Games used to be seen as one of the last bastions of downloaded software – a game would only work if you install it on your machine or console and run it locally. In October, Mozilla released a package of eight web games with Humble Bundle. What you see there is the ability to play big, rich, interactive, plugin-free games on the web, without downloading or installing anything. This is becoming more possible because of the work we are doing to make JavaScript perform really well and to make it really easy for game developers to port their existing code over to JavaScript and the web. That work ties to what we're doing in the graphics acceleration space with WebGL, which makes it possible to make beautiful things online. We unlocked the web so game developers could take advantage of it in the same way most other kinds of apps have for the last 10 years. Because of this, we are seeing major game engines look more closely at the web as a platform for gaming. The web is an exciting place for game developers to be, because on the web, distribution is trivial and you don't have to convince people to install things. Game developers are starting to realise that the time has come for them to say: 'I want this game to be available on the PC, on Xbox and the web'. TRP: How important has the work of the volunteer community been over the past 10 years? JN: Our global community of volunteers is very much the lifeblood of a lot of our engineering work. Approximately 500 people worked on Firefox 33, and more than half of those contributors were volunteers. On top of that, Firefox is available in 90 languages thanks to the work of hundreds of localisation volunteers. It is a humbling and incredibly powerful experience to be in a room of people who are not paid, who spend their time looking at everything we have built in Firefox, taking all of the text that goes along with that, looking at all of the assumptions about how you write numbers and how you express different concepts, making it work in their own language and delivering that. Our community of volunteers is the heart of what we do. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406997a8/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597506503/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406997a8/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597506503/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406997a8/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597506503/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406997a8/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597506503/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406997a8/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597506503/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406997a8/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/4a-5fXRRKVY

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/mainimage-470-75.jpgSaving you money is what TechRadar Deals is all about, and we've got some more bargains for you to consider here. For today's treats we've got some excellent deals on PS4 and Xbox One games so why don't we start there? If you're a PS4 gamer and you haven't played Destiny yet, you're missing out! It's the first true console-shifter of this generation and you can pick up a copy today for just £29.95 if you're quick! Xbox One gamers needn't feel left out though - using the secret code MSERAK10 you can pick up Halo: The Master Chief Collection for £32.95 - it's £42.95 without the discount. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/cod-580-100.jpg The game of the moment, though, seems to be Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Using the same secret code (MSERAK10) you can grab an Xbox One copy for £31.90 instead of £41.90. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/wd-580-100.jpg One thing that more of us are finding we need these days is portable storage. This brilliant 2TB WD USB 3.0 drive can currently be had on Amazon for just £69.99. That's a cost of just 3.5p per gigabyte! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/mouse-580-100.jpg And how about a wireless gaming mouse? This VicTsing 7-button mouse is currently just £10.99 on Amazon. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/pool-580-100.jpg Here's one for those shopping for Christmas presents, this 4ft pool table is currently £25 - that's half the price you'll find on Amazon right now. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/NERF-580-100.jpg And another Christmas bargain for the kids, the NERF Rebelle Diomondista Crossbow is currently available from ASDA Direct for £7. MORE DEALSPhilips Shaver Series 5000 with DualPrecision Shaving and Pop-up Trimmer PT860/17 for £51.99 @ Amazon Acer E5-571 15.6 Inch Ci5 Processor 4GB 1TB Laptop £349.99 was £499.99 at Argos Star Wars Complete Vehicles Book [ Hardcover ] - £5 down from £22.33 at Amazon (free delivery £10 spend/prime) Bullyland Fillimore Money Bank £6.71 @ AMAZON FREE DEL OVER £10/OR PRIME Seiko Mens Automatic Military Style Watch £39.99 Delivered Free Sold by WatchWave and Fulfilled by Amazon Wireless Mouse with 6 Buttons, 2000 DPI (2 colours) £10 Sold by AnkerDirect and Fulfilled by Amazon Tamiya £94.99 RC deal - Rising Fighter buggy BARGAIN BUNDLE DEAL - Everything for just £94.99! @ Time Tunnel Models

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/mainimage-470-75.jpgSaving you money is what TechRadar Deals is all about, and we've got some more bargains for you to consider here. For today's treats we've got some excellent deals on PS4 and Xbox One games so why don't we start there? If you're a PS4 gamer and you haven't played Destiny yet, you're missing out! It's the first true console-shifter of this generation and you can pick up a copy today for just £29.95 if you're quick! Xbox One gamers needn't feel left out though - using the secret code MSERAK10 you can pick up Halo: The Master Chief Collection for £32.95 - it's £42.95 without the discount. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/cod-580-100.jpg The game of the moment, though, seems to be Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Using the same secret code (MSERAK10) you can grab an Xbox One copy for £31.90 instead of £41.90. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/wd-580-100.jpg One thing that more of us are finding we need these days is portable storage. This brilliant 2TB WD USB 3.0 drive can currently be had on Amazon for just £69.99. That's a cost of just 3.5p per gigabyte! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/mouse-580-100.jpg And how about a wireless gaming mouse? This VicTsing 7-button mouse is currently just £10.99 on Amazon. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/pool-580-100.jpg Here's one for those shopping for Christmas presents, this 4ft pool table is currently £25 - that's half the price you'll find on Amazon right now. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/12th%20Nov%2014/NERF-580-100.jpg And another Christmas bargain for the kids, the NERF Rebelle Diomondista Crossbow is currently available from ASDA Direct for £7. MORE DEALSPhilips Shaver Series 5000 with DualPrecision Shaving and Pop-up Trimmer PT860/17 for £51.99 @ Amazon Acer E5-571 15.6 Inch Ci5 Processor 4GB 1TB Laptop £349.99 was £499.99 at Argos Star Wars Complete Vehicles Book [ Hardcover ] - £5 down from £22.33 at Amazon (free delivery £10 spend/prime) Bullyland Fillimore Money Bank £6.71 @ AMAZON FREE DEL OVER £10/OR PRIME Seiko Mens Automatic Military Style Watch £39.99 Delivered Free Sold by WatchWave and Fulfilled by Amazon Wireless Mouse with 6 Buttons, 2000 DPI (2 colours) £10 Sold by AnkerDirect and Fulfilled by Amazon Tamiya £94.99 RC deal - Rising Fighter buggy BARGAIN BUNDLE DEAL - Everything for just £94.99! @ Time Tunnel Models http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406b97e4/sc/28/mf.gifhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/RKWjUVT3C9w

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/Watches/LG/LG%20R%20Watch/Hands%20on%202/LG%20G%20watch%20R%20review%20(9)-470-75.JPGThe latest version of Android is readying itself for the jump to smartphones, but details have only just emerged about what Google has planned for the wrist-based version of Android 5.0 Lollipop. There's no definitive date for Android Wear's update to Lollipop. But according to reports posted on Phandroid, we'll be seeing plenty of new features when it drops - including the arrival of Material Design. First, the update will bring some improvements to battery life and storage. Google has added a watch storage monitor through the companion app, letting you see which apps are taking up the most space. Similarly, a new battery page will keep you apprised of your power usage and which applications are draining the most juice. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/Watches/Android%20Wear/Android%20Wear%20Lollipop%201-420-90.jpg Lollipop will bring with it more watch faces courtesy of an official watch face API that'll allow developers to really get creative. Additionally, watch faces on Lollipop will also be able to show weather information. Wristy businessTwo further updates to Android Wear with Lollipop will include the ability to undo a dismissed notification card by swiping upwards and two new modes to control brightness. Theatre mode and Sunlight mode will appear as settings when you swipe down to bring about a new menu. The former mode will mute the screen completely until you press the hardware button or double tap the screen. The latter, presumably, will bring the brightness up to maximum for the best viewing in bright light. A few new additions to Android Wear via the update should also make it easier to read. There are new settings under 'accessibility' that include upping the text size, colour inversion and magnification gestures. Finally, Google is adjusting the main action menu to now sort actions based on your most recently used feature. How this will work out in practice is something we're looking forward to finding out. Android Wear: What you need to know.http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406685ea/sc/28/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597502694/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406685ea/sc/28/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597502694/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406685ea/sc/28/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597502694/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406685ea/sc/28/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597502694/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406685ea/sc/28/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597502694/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406685ea/sc/28/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/mUmhFQQq80o

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/mobile_phones/iPhone/iPhone%206%20Plus/HandsOn3/6Plus-HandsOn-16-470-75.JPGThe iPhone 6 Plus is enormous - so big that many iOS apps fail to completely take advantage of its increased screen real estate. That's no longer the case with Netflix, which today updated its iOS app to better utilize the iPhone 6 Plus's huge screen. The Netflix 7.0 update includes a more efficient layout, so more info is displayed on the screen while you're browsing for content, as well as 1080p video playback support for the huge 5.5-inch iPhone. It's available now from the App Store, so give it a whirl if you have the iPhone 6 Plus, and start enjoying the phablet's comically large display the way you were meant to. Netflix wants to pay you to watch shows - here's whyhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406333d8/sc/15/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498323/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333d8/sc/15/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498323/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333d8/sc/15/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498323/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333d8/sc/15/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498323/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333d8/sc/15/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597498323/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333d8/sc/15/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/jF_LwQTlQkw

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/other/Onetimers/hodor-470-75.jpgIf there's one Game of Thrones character who was made to be a meme - despite being created two decades ago - it's Hodor. The character is a gentle giant who, to the delight of almost everyone, is only capable of saying the word "Hodor." And starting tomorrow, November 12, you'll be able to have a "Hodor"-off with the official Google app - say "Hodor" to its search box, and it will "Hodor" you right back. Just remember what the men of the iron islands say: "What is dead may never die, but rises again, Hodor and stronger." More blipsThe night is dark and full of more of TechRadar's blips. PlayStation games are the latest to get ported to Android WearAstronauts put a GoPro inside a floating water bubble, and it was awesomeOculus Rift pumpkin is the best pumpkinhttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406333dc/sc/23/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498322/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333dc/sc/23/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498322/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333dc/sc/23/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498322/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333dc/sc/23/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597498322/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333dc/sc/23/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597498322/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406333dc/sc/23/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/165hD0FXDec

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Skype/skypeforbusiness-470-75.jpgMicrosoft has announced a new "Skype for Business" client that it hopes will entice more enterprise users to its popular communication service. Skype for Business combines the popularity of Skype with the business-facing features of the unified communications service Lync. "We are bringing together the familiar experience and user love of Skype with the enterprise security, compliance, and control from Lync," Skype Corporate Vice President Gurdeep Pall wrote on the Skype blog. Skype for Business will arrive in the first half of 2015 instead of a new version of Lync. " width="420">YouTube : Best of both worldsPall said more than 300 million people currently use Skype "for messaging, calling and sharing." The new service will take advantage of the strengths of both Skype and Lync, he wrote - for example, using Skype's familiar icons and interface, but adding Lync features like easy content sharing and call transferring. Skype for Business also integrates video calling and the Skype user directory, adding plenty of value over existing versions of Lync. The Skype for Business release next year will arrive in the form of a new client experience and server release, plus updates to Office 365, and it sounds like existing Lync customers will be able to upgrade fairly painlessly. Satya Nadella wants to "reinvent productivity"http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406286df/sc/21/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474043/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406286df/sc/21/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474043/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406286df/sc/21/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474043/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406286df/sc/21/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597474043/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406286df/sc/21/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597474043/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/406286df/sc/21/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/8ODJCe9A3KY

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/deal%20main%20pic-470-75.jpgTechRadar Deals are put together each day to save you money, and today we've found some excellent deals you might find irresistible. Why don't we kick off with a couple of superb deals on Blu-ray movies? Firstly we've spotted the Frozen Blu-ray disc on Amazon for just £10 - if your young kids don't have this it's surely a must-buy. And if you're a Tolkien fan we've uncovered a bargain just for you - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug for just £5! The standard price for this one is £10 so be sure to add the secret discount code when checking out - that code is SPEND10. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/1roku-580-100.jpg Want a cheap and easy way to get superb smart features on an HD TV that doesn't have Netflix and BBC iPlayer already built in? The excellent Roku Streaming Stick is a little dongle that plugs directly into your TV's HDMI port and adds hundreds of smart apps for your viewing pleasure. And you can get it on Amazon right now for just £39! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/3cod-580-100.jpg Heads up PS4 gamers. If you're keen to play the new Call of Duty, Advanced Warfare can currently be had for just £34.85 over on Simply Games and that includes free delivery. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/2anker-580-100.jpg If your laptop's trackpad is driving you mad, you really ought to bite the bullet and buy a wireless mouse. It makes using a laptop so much easier if you've got the space and this full size ergonomic mouse is currently on Amazon for just £10. No brainer! http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/3plugs-580-100.jpg If you're planning on picking up a new TV, games consoles or any other gadgets before Christmas, you might also need a new power extension? The Duronic ST10B 10-socket 2-metre extension is now just £6.99 on Amazon. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/thermo%20flask-580-100.jpg And finally, with winter setting in one of the best ways to keep warm on the way to work is to take a brew with you. This 350ml Thermos is just £3 on Amazon right now! Don't be the one to arrive in the office with blue fingers! MORE DEALSCheetah Mounts TV Wall Mount Bracket for 20-55 inch LCD, LED and Plasma Flat Screen TVs for £12.69 @ Amazon Breville Blend-Active Personal Blender - 300 Watt - White/Green for £18.00 @ Amazon HDMI KING - Double Insulated 3M (9.8ft) Imperial Series High Speed v1.4 HDMI Cable with Ethernet, 3D, Audio Return, 2k and 4k Support for £3.49 @ Amazon Prometheus to Alien: The Evolution Box Set (8-Disc Set) [1979] for £15.00 @ Amazon Wacom Bamboo Solo Stylus - Black for £7.18 @ Amazon LG 42UB820V LED 4K Ultra HD Smart TV, 42" with Freeview HD + 5 year guarantee + 1week sky sports pass + 2 sky sports day passes + 3 Sky Movies month passes Free Delivery for £599 @ John Lewis New Raspberry Pi Model A+ (released today).. smallest of all RPi with a new lowest price of £16.84 @ CPC 1TB Samsung 840 EVO Series Solid State Drive - £289.95 Delivered! - Aria PC Philips AT796/16 CareTouch Wet and Dry Shaver for £47.99 @ Argos

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/deal%20main%20pic-470-75.jpgTechRadar Deals are put together each day to save you money, and today we've found some excellent deals you might find irresistible. Why don't we kick off with a couple of superb deals on Blu-ray movies? Firstly we've spotted the Frozen Blu-ray disc on Amazon for just £10 - if your young kids don't have this it's surely a must-buy. And if you're a Tolkien fan we've uncovered a bargain just for you - The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug for just £5! The standard price for this one is £10 so be sure to add the secret discount code when checking out - that code is SPEND10. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/1roku-580-100.jpg Want a cheap and easy way to get superb smart features on an HD TV that doesn't have Netflix and BBC iPlayer already built in? The excellent Roku Streaming Stick is a little dongle that plugs directly into your TV's HDMI port and adds hundreds of smart apps for your viewing pleasure. And you can get it on Amazon right now for just £39! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/3cod-580-100.jpg Heads up PS4 gamers. If you're keen to play the new Call of Duty, Advanced Warfare can currently be had for just £34.85 over on Simply Games and that includes free delivery. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/2anker-580-100.jpg If your laptop's trackpad is driving you mad, you really ought to bite the bullet and buy a wireless mouse. It makes using a laptop so much easier if you've got the space and this full size ergonomic mouse is currently on Amazon for just £10. No brainer! http://cdn0.mos.techradar.futurecdn.net//art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/3plugs-580-100.jpg If you're planning on picking up a new TV, games consoles or any other gadgets before Christmas, you might also need a new power extension? The Duronic ST10B 10-socket 2-metre extension is now just £6.99 on Amazon. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/11th%20Nov%2014/thermo%20flask-580-100.jpg And finally, with winter setting in one of the best ways to keep warm on the way to work is to take a brew with you. This 350ml Thermos is just £3 on Amazon right now! Don't be the one to arrive in the office with blue fingers! MORE DEALSCheetah Mounts TV Wall Mount Bracket for 20-55 inch LCD, LED and Plasma Flat Screen TVs for £12.69 @ Amazon Breville Blend-Active Personal Blender - 300 Watt - White/Green for £18.00 @ Amazon HDMI KING - Double Insulated 3M (9.8ft) Imperial Series High Speed v1.4 HDMI Cable with Ethernet, 3D, Audio Return, 2k and 4k Support for £3.49 @ Amazon Prometheus to Alien: The Evolution Box Set (8-Disc Set) [1979] for £15.00 @ Amazon Wacom Bamboo Solo Stylus - Black for £7.18 @ Amazon LG 42UB820V LED 4K Ultra HD Smart TV, 42" with Freeview HD + 5 year guarantee + 1week sky sports pass + 2 sky sports day passes + 3 Sky Movies month passes Free Delivery for £599 @ John Lewis New Raspberry Pi Model A+ (released today).. smallest of all RPi with a new lowest price of £16.84 @ CPC 1TB Samsung 840 EVO Series Solid State Drive - £289.95 Delivered! - Aria PC Philips AT796/16 CareTouch Wet and Dry Shaver for £47.99 @ Argos http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/406b97ea/sc/28/mf.gifhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/zVYnfk5nynw

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Instagram/instagram_edit_captions-470-75.jpgInstagram power users are definitely going to appreciate the two big changes coming to the photo-sharing network today. First and foremost, you can now edit captions for images after you post them. This extends only to captions on your own photos, not to comments, unfortunately. Still, it's a welcome change - and a major blow to typos and bad jokes that you later regret. Explorer badgeThe second change is to the "Explore" tab in Instagram's iOS and Android apps. Now with a new icon (a magnifying glass replaces the compass star), the Explore tab has been redesigned to let you more easily search for other Instagram users. Instagram now also delivers results as you type, in addition to other, less noticeable changes "under the hood." This update hit the app on both platforms today, and Instagram promises more improvements "over the coming months." Facebook makes it easier to silence boring friendshttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/40595025/sc/4/mf.gifhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/JSGofi4nlC4

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/audio_systems/Amazon/Echo/amazon_echo_listening-470-75.jpgAmazon unleashed an unexpected new device on the tech world with the Echo, a gadget that gives away little at first glance. What is it? Where did it come from? Do I need one? These are all perfectly reasonable questions to be asking yourself right now. And luckily we have answers for you. The Amazon Echo is less than 10 inches tall, but that doesn't make it portable. It's meant to have a home in your living room, and despite its small stature, it may just take over whatever space you put it in. Here are five things you should know if you're at all intrigued by the Amazon Echo. 1. It's a Bluetooth speakerPerhaps first and foremost, the Amazon Echo is a Bluetooth speaker. That means you can connect any Bluetooth-capable device - from an iPhone 6 to your laptop - to it wirelessly to play music or other audio. As such it has some interesting audio components on the inside of its small, cylindrical chassis. Amazon calls it "advanced audio design." Most of its innards are comprised of audio components, like "dual downward-firing" speakers that shoot sound outward all 360 degrees around the device. The bookseller says it can fill an entire room. A "reflex port" allows for "deeper sounds without distortion," while a 2.5-inch woofer and 2-inch "tweeter" round out the lows and the highs of whatever you're listening to. The Echo comes with a remote with a built-in mic and music playback and volume controls, and as a wi-fi enabled gadget, it can access streaming music services like Amazon Music, Prime Music, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn. Which brings us to our next point… 2. It's always on (and listening)Given that the Amazon Echo can access streaming music services - but lacks a display with which to navigate said services - Amazon must be pretty confident in its voice recognition capabilities. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/audio_systems/Amazon/Echo/amazon-echo-hero-420-90.jpg Underneath the gadget's light ring on top is a seven-microphone array with something Amazon calls "far-field voice recognition," and these mics, as well as the one in the remote, are always on and always listening. They apparently "use beam-forming technology" to hear you no matter where you are in relation to the Echo (is the name starting to make sense?). In addition it has noise cancellation capabilities that allow it to hear your commands even when it's piping out music. 3. It has search functionalityWe've established that the Amazon Echo has music-streaming abilities, and that it's always on and listening. So what is it listening for? The answer is a single word: "Alexa." Saying "Alexa" where the Echo can hear you is like saying "Xbox" with an Xbox One Kinect in the room, or "Hey Siri" when your iPhone 6 feels like listening to you. In other words it gets the thing's attention. And the main thing you'll be doing once you have the Echo's attention is searching - for music and more. You can tell it to play a certain artist or song, but you can also ask general questions: "Will it rain tomorrow?" "When is Thanksgiving?" and "Wikipedia: Abraham Lincoln" are just some of the queries Amazon has provided as examples. It remains to be seen how useful it will be to have the Echo read entire Wikipedia entries to aloud, but you can't deny it's an interesting premise. In addition it seems you may be able to change the wake word - extra helpful for people who are actually named Alexa - though so far we haven't been able to confirm this with Amazon. We'll update here if we do. 4. It has an appThankfully the Echo's functionality isn't limited to its microphones, speaker and remote. There's also an app for Android handsets and Amazon Fire phones, plus a browser app for other devices - and we're guessing that will extend further if the Echo takes off. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/audio_systems/Amazon/Echo/amazon_echo_app-420-90.jpg According to Amazon you can use the Echo's companion app to manage whatever it's doing, from the music it's playing to alarms and beyond. The app will also help you with initial set-up, including connecting the Echo to wi-fi. If the Echo is as capable as Amazon says, it may well be easy to do almost everything without the app, but sometimes you just need to have a screen to accomplish what you want, and thankfully it seems Amazon knows that. 5. It *may* be the start of the connected homeBut the most exciting thing about the Amazon Echo is that Amazon may be using it to kickstart its own connected Internet of Things at home. In addition to what we've already discussed, the Echo can manage your to-do lists, alarms and reminders, and it can also play radio stations. But that's far from the device's limit, according to Amazon, and the bookseller has promised it will be updated periodically with new features and services. In between updates the Echo will always be learning and improving, the company says, and there are clearly lots of possibilities. Imagine the potential it has to be the access point for your whole connected home: "Alexa, turn the heat up in the kitchen;" "Alexa, is the front door locked?" "Alexa, turn on the Xbox." And the best part? That way you wouldn't have to rely on Kinect anymore. Siri's creators want to one-up Apple with a smarter, self-teaching AI

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/TRBC/People/Satya%20Nadella/future-decoded-470-75.JPGIn what was something of a vague, corporate-focused keynote address, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella used his first UK appearance to talk about concepts such as the "reinvention of productivity", the importance of startups to economies and why STEM is a vital investment for societies. Speaking at a Microsoft event in London, Nadella hailed the UK's "very advanced" position in cloud computing adoption and spoke of Microsoft's desire to build "digital life and work experiences", pointing to Azure and Office 365 as examples of "transformative products". He said: "One aspect of Microsoft, which I think is unique, is how we approach our work, which is a platform approach. Take something like our own participation in the UK where we have created a lot of opportunity for local retail partners and indie software vendors. That has come about because we harmonise the interests of users, IT and developers. "It's fair to say that, as a single word, productivity doesn't have emotional appeal. But look behind what it is that one needs to do to create a productive life - it's about freedom and the software tools and devices one is using. The ultimate goal is all about empowering every individual and organisation to do more and achieve more." Start me upMicrosoft's CEO also referred to startups as the "lifeblood of any economy", and said that they are in a better position than ever before due to the rise of cloud computing and "ubiquity of infrastructure and devices". He pointed to Microsoft Accelerator and Microsoft Ventures as two areas where the software and services giant is aiming to drive entrepreneurship. Nadella also praised the UK's decision to teach STEM subjects from a young age and said that is a need to democratise access to education. He said: "Technology is for empowering people, and if you look at the younger generation of entrepreneurs, all the way back, one of the most important investments any society can make is in STEM education. "In the UK computer science is now taught from ages five to fifteen. As more human capital is expressed through digital tools, I think that becomes important for inclusiveness. "It can't be something only the elites do, so it's very important to have an enlightened policy that makes access to education like computer science available everywhere to create opportunity." Why women can't afford CEOs like Satya Nadellahttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/40574d76/sc/36/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597431347/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40574d76/sc/36/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597431347/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40574d76/sc/36/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597431347/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40574d76/sc/36/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597431347/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40574d76/sc/36/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597431347/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/40574d76/sc/36/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/1OMimJlEqi0

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/deal%20main%20pic-470-75.jpgDid you hear about Black Friday? On November 28 the internet will be going deals crazy, with massive discounts on all sorts of products, the most important ones of course, being tech gadgets! Check out the Black Friday Deals UK page for more information, or just check back here on the day for all the best deals collected all in one place. In the meantime, you can still pick up a bargain or two! How about the excellent HP Chromebook 11 laptop for just £137.98? It runs Google's ChromeOS for simple, internet-based computing. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/3plugs-580-100.jpg If you're planning on picking up a new TV, games consoles or any other gadgets before Christmas, you might also need a new power extension? The Duronic ST10B 10-socket 2-metre extension is now just £6.99 on Amazon. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/4prom-580-100.jpg Here's a good present for the sci-fi fan in your family, or even a cheeky gift for yourself - the Alien Quadrilogy AND Prometheus on DVD for just £15. That's just £3 per movie! http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/5soundmagic-580-100.jpg And if you're looking for some new headphones to go running with or even just to walk around town with, the SoundMAGIC E10 earphones are now just £21.98 on Amazon. http://mos.futurenet.com/techradar/art/techradar/TechRadar%20Deals/10th%20Nov%2014/1van-580-100.jpg And finally, for those lovers of novelty toasters out there, how about the Campervan Toaster? Ideal Christmas present or what?! And just £21.95. MORE DEALS!Panasonic TX-42AS500 42" Full HD Freeview HD Smart LED TV £329.99 @ Amazon Dymo LabelManager PnP Plug and Play Label Maker with 2 x Assorted Tapes - Amazon £21.98 TP-Link TL-PA6030KIT AV600 Gigabit Powerline Adapter with 3 Ports Starter Kit (600 Mbps, Multiple HD Streams and No Configuration Required) - 2 Units Pack £39.98 delivered @ Amazon LEGO DUPLO 10558 Number Train RRP: £15.59 NOW Price: £9.44 & FREE Delivery in the UK on orders over £10 @ Amazon Samsung Memory 32GB Evo MicroSDHC UHS-I Grade 1 Class 10 Memory Card by Samsung £11.82 @ Amazon ipad air 2 space grey 16 GB wifi £352.44 Fulfilled by Amazon Vax S7 A steam mop - reduced to £39.99 in Argos - still £149.99 on Vax website. Offer ends Tuesday Electric Heated Hat £5 at Maplin MOGA Mobile Android Gaming System £15.99 @ Amazon VITREX Diamond Blade Tile Cutting Saw @ Amazon £24.99 Lego ninjago garmatron 70504 £13 @ Asda Direct Yamaha RX A830 AV Receiver for £399.95 at Richer Sounds

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/TRBC/Cloud%20services/Azure/azure-marketplace-470-75.jpgOn top of recent announcements concerning more powerful virtual machine sizes for running more intensive workloads and hardware for running your own Azure-consistent private cloud, Microsoft has also just launched the Azure Marketplace. The Marketplace is an app store for SaaS applications and data sets that businesses can use for BI and big data, with the usual app store features of trials and integrated billing. It boasts some bigger name apps, including Cloudera – this Hadoop-based big data platform has previously been something you would run on your own Hadoop cluster (on-premise or in the cloud). Now you can buy it as a service you can run on Azure (or on a Microsoft private cloud on-premise) without needing to set it up. Quality appsPicking those kind of quality enterprise tools is what the Azure Marketplace is about, Azure corporate vice president Jason Zander told TechRadar Pro – there are no automated approvals, the way Google Play and the Windows Phone Store let developers publish. Zander notes: "We're bringing together startups and independent software developers with our Enterprise customers and we want to make sure they have an awesome experience. So we're working very closely with the first partners and we're doing a curation process – that is primarily making sure that everything that's in the marketplace has been tested and is great quality." That means there might be a small number of apps to start with "but we'll hit acceleration mode pretty quickly," he claims. Initially, the Azure Marketplace is separate from the Azure agent, which lets you run monitoring or management tools inside your Azure virtual machines automatically, but Zander predicts that they'll come together in the future. "The agent is one of the mechanisms for how we can make it easier as you build this kind of software. We started off with some of the antivirus tools, the anti-malware components there, because we had requests, and again we are following a curated approach to make sure everything we put in is tested. I do expect as the Marketplace comes out that we'll combine it with that." Public, private and in-betweenCloudera integrates with several Microsoft services, including Office 365's PowerBI business intelligence tools and the Azure ML machine learning service (so you could drill in to visualise your big data or use it to power a recommendation engine on your website, or to do predictive analytics). Apps don't have to integrate with Microsoft tools and services to be on the Azure Marketplace, but Zander expects that many of them will at least work with Azure Active Directory. "The identity management components ties the whole thing together and actually makes it really super easy to use the system. Even if your cloud solution isn't running on Azure, being able to integrate with identity and work with enterprises and their identity systems is actually a very powerful way to start." Zander sees the Marketplace as a way for startups and smaller developers to reach business companies they might otherwise find it hard to market to. "We think our enterprise customers want choice, they want new innovation, they want the new technologies; but they want that delivered in a way that they can consume it and make it part of their existing systems. That's why Azure AD is an awesome thing, because it federates with your existing identity store and you can start to use it straightaway." He continues: "We also have our hybrid story which allows me as a developer to build and deploy in the public cloud on Azure and get that integration. But I can also decide to deploy my work into private cloud as well and it's a consistent experience. Or take Cloudera as an example – you can actually do the hybrid in-between as well. I can run my service in the public cloud and I can connect it, through ExpressGate [the Azure MLPS service that lets you connect directly from your data centre without going over the internet] to a private cloud. I can use the domain servers and directory systems and everything else. So we think we've got the most flexible system for this." He thinks this integration is what will make the Marketplace appeal to business customers. "The way we look at it, if I'm pulling these sorts of apps and workloads into my enterprise often you're coming in with an IT and an IT governance perspective. Because I am opening up and running these workloads in my data centre, it has access to my sensitive data, so we do want to make sure, when you're in that environment, that you're comfortable with that." But it might also inspire some businesses to do more development themselves. "A lot of the same mechanisms we are talking about for creating these applications, like Azure Active Directory – we also allow enterprise line of business apps to be in the same system. So I can build my own internal line of business applications and authenticate against AD and write services and those sorts of things as well. We think it will be a combination of deploying third-party curated workloads in my enterprise as well as any custom development I'm doing and the mechanisms all wind up being the same." The importance of consistencyThat sort of consistency is what he believes makes Microsoft attractive for private cloud, whether you're shelling out for the pre-built Microsoft Cloud Platform System or building your own with Windows Server and System Centre. That doesn't give you a cloud that's the same as Azure, just one that's consistent with Azure. He notes: "Take Cloudera. That's an example where I'd like to take the workload and I'd like to be able to deploy it consistently, whether it's going to be run on a private cloud, the CPS kind of device, or in the public cloud. That's a place where consistency is helpful for me, because I can take the same workload and I can decide where to run it and how to configure it." If you're doing that in a private cloud, there's more work, but you get more control. "For my private cloud, I may have very custom hardware topology, say network devices, and I still want to be able to manage those. And those may be places where I need to do custom configuration for my private cloud where frankly, in the public cloud, you shouldn't really have to care, because you're not going to get access to the actual equipment. "Those are cases where the fact that we're built on Hyper-V and we have System Centre support means that it's not an either or. I can actually use my custom hardware, I can run Azure Pack on it, I can do configuration that's custom to my hardware and my environment. But I can still have that consistency when it comes to the workloads being able to run in both places. My virtual machine can run in both places and I can choose to scale – maybe in the hyperscale Azure cloud I'll want to run on ten thousand of fifty thousand cores, and in my private cloud maybe I'll only need a hundred. This way, I get to make those choices." On the public cloud side, Zander also dropped a hint that the new Australian Azure region won't be the last. "We're 19 regions by the end of the year; we're not done." http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/4053c8ae/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597407038/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4053c8ae/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597407038/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4053c8ae/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597407038/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4053c8ae/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597407038/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4053c8ae/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597407038/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/4053c8ae/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/eatjX7mRDzk

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Microsoft/New_Office_iOS-470-75.jpgMicrosoft made Office free for iOS and Android this week (previously it was free to download but you needed an Office 365 subscription to do more than read documents). Microsoft tried to spin this as something it had basically intended to do all along – instead of, as it likely actually is, a last-ditch attempt to cling to the vestiges of relevancy. In a move that sounded like nothing so much as a teenager telling you he 'meant to do that' when he screws up a skateboard trick and breaks an ankle, Microsoft's head of Office marketing, Michael Atalla, told The Verge, "It's an extension of the strategy that we've got. It's not a total strategic shift, as much of an extension of the existing strategy." I idly thought about checking out some of the Office apps on iOS again. Turns out I'd deleted them from my iPad after pawing at them a bit on their initial release because, as someone who only uses Office apps under very noisy protest, I most decidedly do not have an Office 365 subscription. So I went to download them again out of professional curiosity, and as Word was downloading, I noticed that it had one of the new video previews on the App Store as well as still screenshots, so I watched that. This drew me to looking more closely at the other screenshots; screenshots, remember, designed to make you so excited about Word that you install it. Go on; take a look at the screenshots for Word on iOS. Or, if you'd rather not sully your browser, here's my executive summary: they're all about executive summaries. And pie charts. And long-term trends. And customer research. And, God help us, a child playing with a kite in a wheat field presumably to break up the unrelenting grimness of the screenshots. Yuck yuck yuckIf you use Word, Microsoft is saying, 'We know it's because you have to use it for this kind of soulless, turgid and utterly dispiriting tripe. It's fine. If you're doing anything even vaguely creative, you'll probably already be using Pages and we can't tempt you back from that.' Pages screenshots show an exciting, beautiful poster for people heading off on a fun adventure, for Pete's sake. (Mind you, on closer inspection, the adventure in question appears to be flying a damned kite; have I just stumbled onto some massive global desk top publishing conspiracy, or is kite-flying just much more widespread than I had hitherto been led to believe?) Even the screenshots for Numbers, Apple's spreadsheet app, look mildly interesting, with some lovely typography and design; Apple's saying "yeah you might have to make a pie chart for some reason, but you don't have to hate your life as you do so". To be sure, Microsoft clearly and sensibly wants to show that its office apps are capable of heavyweight work, but surely we can take that as read? You're allowed five grabs on iTunes, Microsoft; use four of them to show people doing inspiring things with your software, and you can use one to reassure people that it can still do all the dull stuff too. Even if that one page is just a blank Word document with 'Oh, yeah, and it can do, I dunno, like, PivotTables and all that other crap you actually need for your job' set in 36-point Calibri. As it is, every single one of Word's screenshot just seems like a window into a tortured corporate hell. In one, showing off Track Changes, Michael Atalla asks if the original author can "reference the research in a footnote", to which 'David Alexander' replies "Yes, I will add the research information". It's all just too depressing for words. Neatly, however, it appears to be exactly as depressing as Word. http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/404ddf33/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597386857/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404ddf33/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597386857/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404ddf33/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597386857/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404ddf33/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597386857/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404ddf33/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597386857/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404ddf33/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/GTVobVWLdjM

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/software/Microsoft/Windows%2010/press/windows10-04-470-75.jpgIntroduction and authenticationEvery new Microsoft operating system release is both a cause for celebration among IT folks and a cause for serious consternation and concern. New features tend to resolve persistent problems and make things a little easier for end-users. We already know the new Start menu is going to make workers more productive, and there will be a clearer divide between desktop and touch users (the OS will know which one you are using). Thankfully, in terms of security, there's always a few new features to protect not only employees from would-be hackers but to protect the company from a data breach. Still, there's always a possibility that the new OS will provide new attack vectors, especially related to phishing and viruses, that are as yet unknown. With Windows 10, it's clear Microsoft wants to bolster security without opening up any new holes. For the most part, after testing the preview build, it's clear most of the changes are related to usability and solving that Start menu issue for end-users. The tech giant is not trying to reinvent the wheel again with a dramatically new UI, which is good news for security pros. Fewer weak pointsBrenden Vaughan, a threat research manager at Webroot, says it's a big step in reducing security threats. "With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft is introducing a number of security improvements that should make the world of computing a significantly safer place. All things considered, the security improvements Microsoft is making for Windows 10 sound very promising. Much of it still relies on IT admins and end-users to use the tools at their disposal correctly, but Windows 10 should provide hackers fewer weaknesses to exploit." In examining the features in the preview build for Windows 10 and the early Microsoft reports about features, the experts agree that the security upgrades look like a major win for those who worry about data breaches. Here are the top new enhancements to ward off hackers. 1. Multi-factor authenticationWe already know that Microsoft will add new methods of authentication. IT analyst Charles King says the most important change is that the user will have a few flexible and workable options. For example, if you use a Microsoft Windows phone, you can enable a feature that requires the device to be connected over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi in order to gain access. (This feature has already been available on HP laptops for some time, but now it's baked into the OS). King says the other options include the requirement to have a biometric device such as a fingerprint reader used as a second authentication in addition to a password. As we've already seen with enhancements to Mac and iOS devices, having a second form of authentication can radically change how easy or hard it is to break into a device. Having these features baked into the OS means it will be easier to deploy and manage them. Data and trusted apps2. Separation of corporate and personal dataWe've seen this trend already on smartphones like the BlackBerry Bold and the Samsung Galaxy S5 where corporate data is locked down and encrypted in a separate portal from all personal apps and data. King says this will be a feature in Windows 10 and will occur "on the fly" without the end-user even knowing (or understanding) what is happening. "All apps, data, email, website content, etc. defined as 'corporate' will be automatically encrypted without user intervention. Windows Phone will support the same technology so that protected documents can be accessed via the phone," says King. 3. Trusted appsAsk any IT pro about a typical cause for headaches when it comes to end-user computers and you'll likely get an earful about unauthorised end-user apps. Employees sometimes browse to unknown sites and see a prompt to install an application that looks helpful, or purposefully try to install their own app that's not approved for enterprise use. Then the problems start. Fortunately, Microsoft is taking action on this security issue as well. Trusted apps will be those that are approved by IT to run and must be authenticated first. "Microsoft also hopes to make it easier for users to stay free of malware with Windows 10 by providing the ability to lock down devices, allowing only trusted applications to be installed and executed," King says. "These trusted applications must be signed by a Microsoft authorised signing service and organisations will have total flexibility to decide which applications they deem trustworthy." Derek Tumulak, the vice president of product management at Vormetric, notes that the operating system is making a reach beyond OS functions, logins/authentication, and user access control into a fuller security infrastructure platform that addresses the reason security threats arise in large companies. "Extending the capabilities to 'lock down' the software set used on PCs and mobile devices by prohibiting installations of software that aren't specifically authorised is something that would really have helped prevent the many recent retail POS breaches on those dedicated machines," Tumulak says, referring to recent data breaches at companies like Target. More in the pipelineIn the end, adding these improvements should help admins – and executives – at large companies who need to manage a complex IT infrastructure and maintain security. "These are all features that should help businesses attain better security by gaining greater control over the company endpoints used by employees," King observes. "With the escalation of cyber-criminal activities against corporations, businesses need to be more proactive in the ways they protect themselves. These initial Windows 10 security options should help them do just that but I expect we'll see additional features as Windows 10 continues to evolve." Of course, only time will tell if the new OS, set to debut next year, lives up to these claims of enhanced security, and if data breaches start occurring less frequently for end-users. For more on Windows 10, see our hands-on with the OShttp://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/404765a9/sc/4/mf.gif http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597358855/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404765a9/sc/4/rc/1/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597358855/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404765a9/sc/4/rc/2/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597358855/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404765a9/sc/4/rc/3/rc.img http://da.feedsportal.com/r/211597358855/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404765a9/sc/4/a2.imghttp://pi.feedsportal.com/r/211597358855/u/49/f/415085/c/669/s/404765a9/sc/4/a2t.imghttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/0iuppqVP9WU

http://cdn.mos.techradar.com/art/techradar/Black%20Friday%20Deals%20UK/PNG/Black-friday-deals-uk-470-75.pngWe've added the first black friday retail links to the bottom of this page so you can mentally prepare yourself for the Deal Nirvana ahead! In the US and Canada, Black Friday needs no introduction: it's a time for big sales, crazy prices and CCTV footage showing shoppers knocking lumps out of each other. But it's becoming a huge deal in the UK now as well, with some of the biggest retailers like Amazon slashing their prices for one day only. And the best news? TechRadar will be busy finding all the best deals on phones, headphones, speakers, cameras, games and more, and posting them here so you can find them more easily. So what is Black Friday - and while we're at it, how is it connected to Cyber Monday? What is Black Friday?Black Friday is the first Friday after Thanksgiving, and it represents a perfect storm for retailers: many people in the US have the day off, and as a result it's been the busiest shopping day of the year for nearly a decade. To make things even busier, many retailers now offer some of their best sale bargains on Black Friday. Even Apple joins in. When is Black Friday?That depends on when you're reading this. If it's 2014, Black Friday is Friday 28 November. If it's 2015, it's Friday 27 November. And if it's 2013, you've been asleep for a year. The things you've missed! How did Black Friday get its name?Take your pick: some say it's the day that retailers' profits finally move into the black, although Wikipedia reckons that the true origin of the term comes from Philadelphia where it referred to the disruptive pedestrian and vehicle traffic that occurred during the holiday. Is it really as big a deal as it seems?Yes it is. Every year there are reports of fisticuffs as bargain-crazed shoppers beat each other up, partly because of the practice of using "doorbusters" - amazing and excruciatingly limited deals to attract as many customers as possible. US-based retailers such as Amazon are now keen to make it a tradition here in the UK. Is Black Friday connected to Cyber Monday?Cyber Monday is the Monday immediately after Black Friday, and it was invented in 2005 in an attempt to create an online equivalent of Black Friday. What this has resulted in now, is an entire 4-day weekend of hot deals both in store and online. What's TechRadar doing for Black Friday?No one likes a tech bargain more than TechRadar! And we don't want to keep them all to ourselves. So we'll be beavering away tirelessly all weekend to constantly bring you the hottest deals as they go live online. You'll need to keep your wits about you though, because many deals only last for an hour or until stocks run out. So you need to be quick off the mark - and we'll be on hand to make it as easy for you as possible. Tune in to TechRadar on November 28th, 29th, 30th and December 1st to get at the hot deals first! Where do retailers put their best Black Friday deals?Don't you know that patience is a virtue?! It's not Black Friday yet, but okay - we've put together a list of retailer's Black Friday pages so that you can take a look now and see what it's all about. We'll be adding more soon, and of course, this page on TechRadar will be the place to be with a curated list of all the best deals! Amazon Black Friday page Argos Black Friday page Very Black Friday Page Currys Black Friday page John Lewis Black Friday page http://rss.feedsportal.com/c/669/f/415085/s/4047c1d9/sc/28/mf.gifhttp://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/techradar/software-news/~4/I01pNZ--ziw