Microsoft was hit with a double whammy last month as it made scant progress in either boosting the usage share of Windows 8 or depressing the share of Windows XP, data published today showed. According to Internet analytics company Net Applications, Windows 8 gained just over half a percentage point of usage share in April—virtually the same as the —but again fell further behind the pace set in 2007 by Windows Vista, the edition most see as Microsoft’s last dud. Windows 8’s April share, including what Net Applications labeled as “touch” for Windows 8 and Windows RT—in other words, browsing from the “Modern” user interface (UI) rather than the mouse-and-keyboard UI of the traditional desktop—was 4.2 percent of all Windows PCs, up from March’s 3.6 percent. Even with that increase, the gap between Windows 8’s and Vista’s adoption trajectories again widened.
A U.S. senator has introduced legislation allowing the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to review and invalidate controversial patents challenged by technology startups in an effort to discourage so-called patent trolls. Senator Charles Schumer, a New York Democrat, introduced a bill Wednesday that would extend a patent-challenging provision in the 2011 patent reform bill the America Invents Act. The patent bill included a temporary program that allowed companies in the financial products industry to challenge business-method patents at the USPTO, and Schumer’s new bill would expand the provision to include business-method patents challenged by technology start-up companies and would remove the provision’s temporary status. Schumer’s legislation is targeted at so-called patent trolls, patent-holding companies with business plans focused on suing for patent infringement and not on making or selling products. “Patent trolls are bullying New York’s technology companies, stymieing innovation and dragging down growth,” Schumer said in a statement. “This legislation will provide small technology startups with the opportunity to efficiently address these claims outside of the legal system, saving billions of dollars in litigation fees.”
Clearing out hard drive space is never fun, so it should at least be a quick and painless task. WizTree is a free and tiny utility that scans NTFS volumes at blazing speeds, making it possible to home in on the largest files and folders in no time at all. It's available in a portable version, too, so you can carry it around on your USB stick to help out friends and colleagues in need. Unlike fast: WizTree took 1.4 seconds to scan my 256GB SSD, and 7.45 seconds to scan my 2TB magnetic drive. The simple display makes it easy to dig into folders to figure out what exactly is taking up so much space within the folder. The initial scan doesn't just cover the top level: It recurses through the entire drive, so there are no delays as you drill down the folder hierarchy. Subfolders (and sub-sub-subfolders) are instantly displayed with clear percentage bars. The contents of each subfolder is sorted by size, although you can manually sort by name, number of items, number of files, number of folders, or modification time. Next to the tree view tab, there's a second tab showing the 1,000 largest files on the drive. That's useful for finding individual files that are hogging lots of space, like VM images, HD videos, and archives you may not need anymore.
President Obama has nominated telecom trade group veteran Tom Wheeler to be the next chairman of the Federal Communications Commission. Wheeler’s nomination, announced Wednesday, ends weeks of speculation that he was the top choice to replace , served as president of the National Cable Television Association (NCTA) from 1979 to 1984 and as CEO of mobile carrier trade group CTIA from 1992 to 2004. Wheeler has also served as CEO of some tech startups and he co-founded SmartBrief, an online targeted news service. In 2009, he led the Obama transition team focused on science, technology, space and arts agencies.
, I've been having intermittent problems with my Internet connection. Just when I thought I'd solved it, I woke up this morning to yet another massive slowdown. Using the method I described previously—running SpeedTest on at least two devices—I verified that this wasn't a local hardware problem. Something was amiss with either my router, my modem, or my ISP (Comcast). This kind of thing can be really frustrating, to say nothing of difficult to diagnose. If I call Comcast, they'll run their usual battery of tests, then tell me they can't find anything wrong. . True to its name, this utility helps you track when your connection is up—and, more importantly, when it's down.
Aging networking protocols still employed by nearly every Internet-connected device are being abused by hackers to conduct distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks. Security vendor Prolexic found that attackers are increasingly using the protocols for what it terms “distributed reflection denial-of-service attacks” (DrDos), where a device is tricked into sending a high volume of traffic to a victim’s network. “DrDos protocol reflection attacks are possible due to the inherent design of the original architecture,” Prolexic wrote in . “When these protocols were developed, functionality was the main focus, not security.” Government organizations, banks and companies are targeted by DDoS attacks for a variety of reasons. Hackers sometimes use DDoS attacks to draw attention away from other mischief or want to disrupt an organization for political or philosophical reasons.
Facebook may treasure the data it has on its one billion-plus users for its advertising returns, but the analysis the site performs on that data is expected to continue to pose numerous challenges over the coming year, an engineer said. The problems, which Facebook has been forced to grapple with “much sooner than the broader industry,” include figuring out more efficient ways to process user behavior on the site, how to better access and consolidate different types of data across Facebook’s multiple data centers, and devising new open source software systems to process that data, Ravi Murthy, who manages Facebook’s analytics infrastructure, said Tuesday. “Facebook is a data company, and the most obvious thing people think of on that front is ads targeting,” he said at an industry conference in San Francisco, during a talk on Facebook’s back-end infrastructure, data analytics and open source projects. “But it goes deeper than this,” he said.
Bereits 30 Prozent aller Werbeeinnahmen stammen bei Facebook von mobilen Geräten. Immer mehr Nutzer schauen immer öfter bei dem Sozialen Netzwerk vorbei.
Blumengiessen leicht gemacht: Wie ein Sensor eine App über die Bedürfnisse von Topfpflanzen infomiert.
Der Internetkonzern bietet seinen Suchassistenten nun auch fürs iPhone und iPad an. Der Dienst will dem Nutzer vorausschauend Informationen liefern - und hat einen entsprechend grossen Daten-Hunger.
Das Geschäft mit Smartphone-Zubehör boomt weltweit. Davon profitieren auch Schweizer Kleinbetriebe. Wie das Atelier von Ledermeister Ado Sala, der in Zürich-Wipkingen Schutzhüllen von Hand fertigt.
Apples iTunes Music Store entwickelte sich zum weltweit grössten Einzelhändler der Branche und dominiert inzwischen auch den digitalen Videomarkt. Am 28. April wird die Jobs-Erfindung zehn Jahre alt.
Kenia macht als «Silicon Savannah» von sich reden, in Nairobi boomt die IT-Branche. In Afrika schlummert ein kreatives Potenzial, das selbst den Google-Chef überrascht.
Erstmals wurden Zahlen bekannt: Der Lohn des Facebook-Chefs betrug im letzten Jahr 500'000 Dollar. Dazu kamen weitere Bezüge. Durch den Börsengang seines Unternehmens nahm er 2,3 Milliarden Dollar ein.
Eine Untersuchung der stabilsten Laptops mit dem Microsoft-Betriebssystem zeitigt überraschende Resultate. Die Methodik der Analyse indessen stösst bei Fachportalen auf Kritik.
Ruinöser Preiskampf und hausgemachte Probleme: Die Fernsehhersteller haben im letzten Jahr Milliarden verloren. Die Hoffnungen ruhen nun auf Ultra-HD. Doch Sony und Co. könnte der Mobiletrend zum Verhängnis werden.
Die Internet-Tauschbörse Pirate Bay ist von Schweden auf die Atlantik-Insel gezogen.
Das Internet-Urgestein kommt nicht zur Ruhe. Mit dem VR-Präsidenten Alfred Amoroso verlässt bereits der achte Verwaltungsrat den von Marissa Mayer geführten Konzern.
Der US-Onlinehändler erreichte im ersten Quartal einen Umsatz von über 16 Milliarden Dollar, was einer Steigerung von 22 Prozent entspricht. Der Gewinn ging hingegen um 37 Prozent zurück.
Der südkoreanische Elektronikhersteller hat im ersten Quartal 2013 einen Gewinn von über 6 Milliarden Franken erzielt. In nur drei Monaten dürfte Samsung bis zu 70 Millionen Smartphones verkauft haben.
Passwörter sollten geheim sein, so die Regel. Ein 43-jähriger Schweizer hat sich nicht daran gehalten – eine Nachlässigkeit, die ihm das Leben gerettet hat.
Ermittler haben offenbar den Hauptsitz der chinesischen Telecomfirma in der Schweiz durchsucht. Huawei soll ausländische Mitarbeiter ohne gültige Visa und ohne erforderliche Bewilligungen beschäftigt haben.
Der Internetkonzern hat im Streit mit Mitbewerbern über einen möglichen Missbrauch seiner marktdominierenden Stellung in Europa deutliche Zugeständnisse signalisiert.
Der Softwareriese stellt am 21. Mai die neue Generation der Xbox vor. Seit dem Verkaufsstart im November 2005 hat Microsoft mehr als 70 Millionen Xbox-360-Geräte verkauft.
Der Raspberry Pi ist ein PC auf einer nackten Platine, der weniger als 50 Franken kostet und sich für spielerische Experimente genauso eignet wie für ernsthafte selbst gebaute Anwendungen aller Art.
Die Hinweise mehren sich, dass die Tsarnaev-Brüder ihre Tat alleine planten, ohne Kontakt zum islamistischen Untergrund. Auch scheint nun klar, warum der ältere der beiden nach Russland reiste.
Der Twitter-Account der US-amerikanischen Nachrichtenagentur AP ist gehackt worden. In einer Meldung hiess es, im Weissen Haus sei es zu Explosionen gekommen. Die US-Börse brach daraufhin ein.