Yesterday Microsoft finally announced their plans for Windows 8 running on ARM-designed processors.  The news came with two very interesting pieces of information… “WOA (Windows on ARM) includes desktop versions of the new Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote. These new Office applications, codenamed ‘Office 15,’ have been significantly architected for both touch and minimized [...]

The beta “Consumer Preview” version of Microsoft’s new Windows 8 operating system could be released on Wednesday 29th February.  Microsoft have announced a “Windows 8 Consumer Preview event” in the city, that is also home to the Mobile World Congress expo that week. This looks like a reasonable time to launch the beta given that [...]

In case you missed it, we’ve had a great Windows 8 discussion going on here at gHacks in the last couple of days, one that is no doubt set to continue for a while yet in various forms as we look forward to the release of the Consumer Preview (beta) at the end of this [...]

Yesterday Martin wrote up his thoughts and concerns about the forthcoming Windows 8 operating system from Microsoft.  I’ve spent much more time with Windows 8 so far, have given talks about and I’m current writing two books about how to get the best out of it, one for complete novices and another for IT Pros [...]

Popular web browser plugins like Flash Player or Java are a prime target of malware and hackers. The core reasons are simple: Lack of centralized updating and little to no protection of the underlying system if the plugin has been compromised. Changes have been introduced, but only in select browsers at this point of time. [...]

News reached the world-wide-web last week that Microsoft Office 15 had reached the Technical Preview stage, and that a beta would be available this summer.  That’s all we know about the company’s next generation integrated Office suite at the moment except that the company in a recent blog post said that “Office 15 is the [...]

Last week Google announced changes to its privacy policy that, on the face of it seem perfectly reasonable.  In essence they want to treat all the different Google services you use as a single big account and share the data.  What this ultimately means though is that the company will know absolutely huge volumes of [...]

The messaging platform Twitter can be used for trending purposes. The more users talk tweet about a certain topic, the more popular it has to be. While it is not possible to say that with absolute certainty, as other factors like automation play a role as well, it can often act as an indicator. Twitter [...]

It is widely expected that when Microsoft launch the Windows 8 beta in a few weeks that it will be labelled the “Windows 8 Consumer Preview”.  This has alarmed and concerned many IT Pros who feel that Windows 8 is cutting them out with Microsoft putting all the focus on consumers and tablets with its [...]

It seems like just a short while ago that I was writing about how Windows XP had just 1,000 days of support left but now that number is down to under 800!  Microsoft reminded us of this on the weekend with a blog post encouraging companies to migrate to Windows 7 as soon as possible [...]

Google recently revealed the plan to merge the privacy policies and terms of service for most of the company’s products. This move gives all Google services direct access to all user data. Google search for instance can take into account what kind of emails a user gets in Gmail to personalize the search results based [...]

Bundling third party applications with your own software is not a new thing on the Internet. It is for instance quite common that you see the Ask Toolbar, Babylon Toolbar, or any other toolbar added to software installations. Users who do not pay attention to the installation are then not only installing the software they [...]

We have covered quite a few Facebook modifications and tips in the past that let you get more out of Facebook Chat. A userscript for instance to add easier access to emoticons in chat or how to hide from friends on Facebook chat. Pretty Facebook Chat is a Google Chrome extension that lets you customize [...]

Google has a distinct advantage that other companies on the web do not have. Google Search at the time of writing controls more than 50% of all search on the web, which can go up in some countries to more than 90%. Google uses this to their advantage by promoting their own services in search. [...]

Apple’s terms and conditions for using its new iBooks author program have now been revealed and Dan Wineman of Venemous Porridge has picked it apart to find a few clauses that could give rise to concern for authors.  The new programme is intended to do for self-publishing what the iTunes store did for podcasts, and open [...]

We take for granted these days that Microsoft will always provide new versions of Windows and Windows Server, that Google will always provide world-leading search and that many other companies will just be there for us in perpetuity.  After all, look at the big names like Coca Cola, Ford and and more that have been with [...]

The closer we get to the unveiling of the Windows 8 beta, the more I’m thinking about the impact (or not) this operating system is going to have on the world.  Since we first saw that Metro would be the default interface for Windows I have been as sceptical as many IT Pros, but now [...]

When I discover a great video or music track on the Internet I often want to share it with friends who I know have a similar taste when it comes to entertainment. What I really like to do is to watch videos together with friends. This works considerably well as we are often using Teamspeak [...]

I had to look twice at the press release about the new “Send to Kindle” program for Windows as on the face of it, it seems to be both obvious and something that you can already do with Windows.  Only when I looked a bit deeper did I see where the value might be in [...]

As we approach the beta of Windows 8 I’ve been thinking more about Windows tablets, and on our sister site Windows8News I’ve today written an article about the pros and cons of Windows on ARM.  One of these issues will be how successful the platform is overall.  In a large part this will rest on [...]

When you sign up for a Facebook account you are asked to enter information about you including your birthday. The majority of Facebook users will probably get that right, but it can happen that you pick the wrong date either accidentally or on purpose if you do not want to reveal you true age to [...]

So what is the future form factor of the PC?  If Intel are to be believed then the ultrabook is the computer we will all want, and I’m waiting on one or two of the first ultrabooks to arrive shortly for review.  What is becoming clear though is that the ‘beige box’ that is the [...]

Christmas was a good week for all of us, but a great week for apps with analytics firm Flurry reporting a 60% leap in app downloads on the previous week.  The figures which cover smartphones and tablets for just iOS and Android operating systems estimated that 6.8 million iOS and Android devices were activated on Christmas day [...]

A recent redesign on Facebook has changed the look and feel of the user start page on the social networking site. Some of the changes, the ticker for instance, have mostly received negative feedback from users of the social networking sites. Many smaller more subtle changes have also been introduced in recent times. The Pokes [...]

Facebook recently rolled out a new user profile design that the company calls Timeline. These new profiles change the layout and design of user profiles fundamentally. Facebook Timeline is currently an opt-in option, which means that users need to enable the new feature to turn their profiles into timeline profiles. Users who have not changed [...]

With the popularity of a service and an api come third party services that either use the service’s authorization system or add functionality to the service. A prime example is Facebook. Sites on the Internet may allow you to log in to the service with your Facebook credentials. This is useful as users do not [...]

First information about Facebook’s plan to release their own instant messaging program appeared on a Facebook support page about a month ago. Facebook Messenger for Windows, according to that page, offers chat, messaging and notification functionality. The program was initially only available to a group of alpha testers. A direct link to Facebook’s Messenger has [...]

In a week where Microsoft have released a SkyDrive app for Windows Phone, OneNote for the iPad and updates to Hotmail, the Senior Director of Office 365, Tom Rizzo, has said we should expect more platforms to be supported by Microsoft mobile products next year. In an interview with veteran Microsoft journalist Mary-Jo Foley, Rizzo said [...]

If you are using Microsoft’s Hotmail email service you have probably already noticed new options that are displayed in the web interface. Here is the new feature overview for those who have not, and those who have spotted some but not all of the new features. New email accounts can be created on the official [...]

One of the core issues that Microsoft is facing in the browser-war is that many users of the Internet Explorer browser are not updating the web browser. If you look at the browser’s market share, you will notice that users are still working with Internet Explorer 6, 7 or 8 and not the latest version [...]

Timeline is the name of the new Facebook user profile that was previously only available to beta testers and developers. Interested users can now activate Timeline for their profile on this page before everyone else gets a notification that it is now available to all users. It is not clear yet if all Facebook profiles [...]

Microsoft in the beginning of December launched a SkyDrive update that improved the functionality of the service significantly. One of the biggest new features is what Microsoft calls simple app-centric sharing. This basically adds easy sharing options to applications. Instead of having to leave the application they are working on and thinking about file permissions [...]

How do you make Excel data available on the Internet? You could upload the spreadsheet directly, or use the program’s export feature to export the spreadsheet as a static table full of data. Developers who wanted more than that had to find a way to use the spreadsheet data with a web scripting language, for [...]

Microsoft has released a new version of Silverlight, a technology for creating interactive web and mobile applications. It is in many regards Microsoft’s answer to Adobe’s Flash technology. There have been rumors for quite some time now that Microsoft would stop Silverlight development as it was never really able to break Flash’s dominance on the [...]

More and more Internet companies are beginning to implement 2-step verification processes to counter the ever increasing attacks on customer accounts. Yahoo! is the latest company to upgrade the account security with a 2-step verification option. The new second sign-in verification feature is opt-in at this point in time, and only available to users from [...]

Remember TweetDeck, the Adobe Air Twitter client that offered better faster access to all things Twitter? Adobe Air was not the only platform TweetDeck was offered on. A web based version and Google Chrome application were offered as well by the developers. TweetDeck made the list of Melanie’s Top 5 Twitter Add-ons and has been [...]

When it comes to tech support for their products, Microsoft tries to handle most requests via websites like Microsoft Answers or the Microsoft Support website. Depending on the product, problem and country, phone support may be available. Some support requests redirect users to the new Answer Desk website which – according to Microsoft – is [...]

Twitter today announced redesigns for all platforms the social messaging site is offered for. This includes the web version for desktop PCs as well as clients for Android and iOS systems. Twitter users interested in the changes can head over to the Fly page on Twitter for a first impression of the things to come. [...]

As Martin wrote earlier, today marked the unveiling of the new Windows Store that will be integrated into all Microsoft products including Windows 8, Windows Phone and the Xbox.  One very interesting snippet of information that came from the Windows Store launch though was ‘confirmation’ of the availability date for the Windows 8 beta. I [...]

Microsoft’s next operating system Windows 8 will have an app store. That’s what every tech savvy Windows user knows. Microsoft’s own Antoine Leblond and Ted Dworkin have now started a small series of posts about the Windows Store over at the Building Windows 8 blog. Much of what’s being said in the first post is [...]

Many screenshot applications have been covered here for capturing WebPages, selected areas, full screen, etc… We all get the idea. Screenshots are screenshots. EasyScreenshot is a different screenshot application because it allows you to take a screenshot and upload it to your Twitter account automatically. Then you can tweet it at will. This makes screenshot [...]

Sometimes you may want a clean slate. Maybe you have realized that you are communicating only with a handful of friends on Facebook, and that you have added the majority only to feel good or to avoid hurting someone’s feelings. On Facebook it is only possible to remove one friend at a time. If you [...]

Microsoft’s Technet site is a huge documentation repository for all things Microsoft. The library on Technet offers technical documentation for Microsoft products and technologies. Sometimes you may want to save documents to your local computer system, for instance to access the documents when no Internet connection is available or to include documents in learning materials. [...]

Most Facebook users probably have one or two page elements or features that annoy the hell out of them. This can be a small recent change like the top posts feature that promotes some posts and modifies the timeline by doing so, or something bigger like the new photo viewer interface or the highly annoying [...]

Microsoft have begun issuing invitations to testers who expressed an interest in the next generation version of their Security Essentials, free anti-virus product. In the invitation email the company say… The Beta program is a fully functional antimalware app with ongoing updates to help protect your PC from viruses, spyware, and other malicious software.  In [...]

Microsoft have today announced that new features are rolling out to users of its SkyDrive service.  There’s no wait for the new features either as they’re going to start rolling out immediately.  SkyDrive has come under extensive criticism in recent months for limiting the sync storage that Windows Live Mesh (and Windows 8) can use [...]

Amazon S3, which stands for Amazon Simple Storage Service, is an online storage service by Amazon that gives web developers access to a scalable and fast infrastructure. Webmasters and services may come into contact with Amazon S3 in various ways, for instance when setting up a content delivery network (cdn) or during new product launches [...]

The Facebook Ticker is a controversial new feature that Facebook introduced in August of this year. It basically displays a history of friend activity on the popular social networking site; It notifies you when friend’s like something or when they leave a comment on Facebook. The core difference between the ticker and the main news [...]

iOS devices are a wonder. This article is being typed on one right now. Sometimes, however, these robust and snappy little things go “boink.” One of the more common issues a user will perhaps encounter is when the iOS device (iPad, iTouch, iPhone) gets stuck in recovery mode. If you are reading this article, you [...]

When I was young I remember looking at the pre-Christmas toy advertisements on the TV and wanting the latest Six-Million Dollar Man action figure in the Action Man range, the latest new engineering kit from Mecanno, a Lego castle (or two) and perhaps a chemistry set so I could practice blowing things up. Over the [...]