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Web ad giant (Google) pops Adwords into Maps for iOS and Android
Google has finally woken up and integrated Adwords into its mobile mapping app, pushing paid results onto the top of the heap along with directions guiding customers to your door.
The ad addition came with the last update to Google Maps for Android and iOS. It switches on this week with ads popping up at the bottom when one …
PayPal lets Brit 'burb-dwellers buy stuff using their ugly mug
PayPal has launched a trial of a new payment system which will allow British shoppers to buy stuff using just their face and their pocket fondleslab.
The virtual purse provider has allowed retailers based near its headquarters in teh swish suburb of Richmond Upon Thames, London, to sell stuff to customers using just the PayPal …
Apple: Of course we stalk your EVERY move. iOS 7 has a new map to prove it
The latest beta of Apple's new iOS 7 for iThings features a "Frequent Locations" map, showing where fanbois have been hanging out lately for those too hip to remember the happening joints.
The feature is buried deep in the privacy settings, but if one has Location Services enabled it shows a map recording all the places where …
Google lifts skirts, reveals Play All Access to UK market
Without much fanfare, Google Play's on-demand streaming service has launched in the UK. Google Play All Access is priced at £9.99 per month and offers mobile access … and only runs on web browsers and Android devices, for now.
GPAA enters a crowded market with Spotify, Deezer, Xbox Music and Sony Unlimited offering very similar …
Stop! Yammer time: Microsoft blats biz babble account hijacking bug
Microsoft has fixed a potentially nasty set of authentication vulnerabilities involving Yammer, the "Facebook for business" enterprise collaboration and social networking platform.
The flaws - discovered by Ateeq Khan, a security researcher in the Vulnerability Laboratory Research Team - would have allowed hackers to bypass the …
Hey, you know Android apps can 'access ALL' of your Google account?
The single-click Google account login for Android apps is a little too convenient for hackers, according to Tripwire's Craig Young, who has demonstrated a flaw in the authentication method.
The mechanism is called “weblogin”, and basically it allows users to use their Google account credentials as authentication for third-party …
BlackBerry slides crown jewels into Samsung: BBM Android app touted
BlackBerry is sharing its crown jewels - BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) - with non-BlackBerry devices for the first time: and the lucky punters are Samsung fandroids in Africa.
The instant-messaging app will be free, compatible with the Android-powered Galaxy range of handsets, and offer all the important BBM functionality including …
Shack in flat-pack bric-a-brac lack flap? Whack on this 3D flat-pack app
Vid Ikea, champion of the disposable Allen key, is launching an app to show how its self-assembly furniture would look in your home – if you could put it together properly.
The new software, available for Android and iOS gadgets at the end of this month, overlays 3D models of selected flat-packed firewood onto live video of one's …
There's a tide of unstructured data coming - start swimming
Whether you prefer to define the known size of our planet’s total digital universe in petabytes or even zettabytes, we can all agree the collective weight of data production is spiralling ever upwards.
While we focus on the relative merits of transactional versus analytical databases, the unstructured data that fails to fall …
Lost phone? Google's got an app for that, coming this month
Google has announced that it will begin offering a free device location and security service for Android phones and tablets for the first time later this month, addressing a longstanding omission in Mountain View's mobile OS.
According to a blog post by Android product manager Benjamin Poiesz on Friday, the forthcoming Android …
Google rolls its eyes, gives Windows Phones five more months to sync
Microsoft has bought Windows Phone users more time to sync their calendars and contacts with Google, which has agreed to push the kill date for its Google Sync service to the end of the year.
"We've reached an agreement with Google to extend support for new Windows Phone connections to the Google Sync service through December 31 …
Nokia sidles up to Qualcomm, hands over bulging map package
Nokia Here will be sharing its global floorplan database with Qualcomm, putting indoor maps together with indoor positioning in an assault on the last place one can get lost.
Here is Nokia's mapping division. It has accumulated a huge database of airports, museums and venues which it will share with Qualcomm in the new deal. …
You're doing WHAT with friends? Zynga sues Bang With Friends maker
Social games designer Zynga is suing the makers of casual sex app Bang With Friends for trademark infringement.
Zynga - which says it owns the '...With Friends' brand - is no stranger to the courts, having been sued a number of times by competitors who alleged it copied the design of their games.
But seeing as one of the rival …
No fondleslabs please, says Microsoft as Office 365 hits Android
Microsoft has made a version of its Office software available to Android users - as long as they are not using a tablet.
Subscribers to Office 365 can download the app for free using Google Play and then spreadsheet away to their heart's content. All that's required, apart from the subscription, is Android 4.0 and a mobile …
Data analytics nears adulthood but has it grown up yet?
The problem with business analytics technology is that it has just about emerged from puberty and adolescence but nobody has given it a bank account and introduced it to the opposite sex yet.
Analytics has been around in one form or another ever since Henry Ford decided to catalogue his motorcar assembly line measurements a …
Dumpsters begone! App matches diners with leftovers to broke, hungry
Hungry? Broke? Soon you'll be able to fire up your smartphone and find out if anyone in your immediate area hasn't been able to finish their meal, then drop by their place and spirit away their leftovers.
Yum.
"It's obviously not for everybody," says Dan Newman, the cofounder of the group developing the app that will facilitate …
Microsoft introduces warning on child abuse image searches
Microsoft is warning Brits who use its Bing search engine to hunt down child abuse content that they are attempting to view illegal material online.
The company debuted the pop-up message on Bing in the UK following pressure from the Prime Minister David Cameron, who has been pressing internet firms to do more to help prevent …
Microsoft offers IE 11 preview for Windows 7 ... but not Windows 8
Microsoft has released a developer preview build of Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 7, breaking a pattern of dragging its feet when it comes to supporting the latest version of IE on the older OS.
After shipping IE10 with Windows 8, Redmond took over a year to release a preview version that ran on Windows 7, and another three …
How Novell peaked, then threw it all away in a year
Netware 4.0 Anniversary One grey morning in the mid 1990s, your writer was bundled on a plane and flown to somewhere in Germany - it might have been Dusseldorf - to attend the Olympics. Not those Olympics. The inaugural Certified NetWare Engineer Olympics.
Marketing for tech companies is tricky, and all the harder in the '90s, when sci-fi visions of …
Apache OpenOffice 4.0 debuts with IBM code side and centre
The Apache Software Foundation has released OpenOffice version 4.0, a leap forward from the previous 3.4 edition let into the wild in March 2012.
The Foundation's talking up over 500 enhancements, foremost among them a new sidebar built with code IBM cooked up for the Lotus Symphony productivity suite*. The sidebar comes in four …
Apple Maps. Remember that? Apple does. It just gobbled Locationary
Apple has bought a Canadian startup called Locationary in an apparent bid to beef up its own mapping service.
After a disastrous rollout of its crap map app service last year, Apple has been working overtime to sort out its own satnav-like software.
Locationary maintains and updates a regularly updated database of where one can …
World's biggest software biz SAP not selling as much, er, software
Sales of actual business software at the world’s largest maker of business software fell in its second quarter, but SAP said that the firm had made more money from cloud subscriptions and support services. Overall sales were up 4 per cent.
Sales of software at the German biz had fallen seven per cent to €982m ($1.28bn) in the …
Speaking in Tech: We chat to Microsoft man about THAT Ballmer memo
Podcast speaking_in_tech Greg Knieriemen podcast enterprise
In the latest Speaking in Tech podcast, your hosts Greg Knieriemen, Ed Saipetch and Sarah Vela chat to special guest Marc Farley of Microsoft. The team grill Marc about what he's been up to lately (on holiday, by the sounds of things) before getting into the nitty-gritty of …
Admen's suggested tweaks to Do Not Track filed straight into the bin
Web standards chiefs have snubbed an ad industry attempt to water down efforts to prevent people from being tracked across the internet.
The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is drawing up a specification that will set out how web browsers can instruct online advertising networks and other websites not to stalk people as they move …
Fanbois get Outlook app for iOS, but only if they sign up for Office 365
Microsoft has released an iOS version of the Outlook Web App that improves performance and adds new features for mobile devices. The catch? You'll need to be an Office 365 subscriber to use it.
"Our goal is to help our customers remain productive anytime, anywhere. This includes providing a great email experience on smartphones …
How do you solve a problem like LibreOffice: From Excel to slab fever
Analysis A senior bod behind LibreOffice says the open-source suite's spreadsheet app lags behind much-nippier rival Microsoft Excel - but the hardware acceleration announced this month should close that gap.
And that acceleration could give the freely available productivity suite a leg up on tablets, smartphones and other mobile gadgets …
VMware waves goodbye to Zimbra
VMware has offloaded Zimbra less than four years after buying the email-cum-collabware business unit from Yahoo! Terms are undisclosed.
The buyer is Telligent, a developer of enterprise social software. It will merge its software into Zimbra, and the goal is to deliver a "unified social collaboration suite designed for the post- …
STEVE BALLMER KILLS WINDOWS
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has unveiled plans for a massive restructuring at Redmond. From today, the company’s product groups will be dissolved and resurrected as slimmed-down devices and services teams ready to take on Apple, Amazon, Google and others.
Microsoft’s chief executive today announced the death of the mighty five …
Pirate Bay bod and pals bag $100k to craft NSA-proof mobe yammer app
Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and his pals have raised $114,000 to develop a snoop-proof mobile messaging app dubbed Hemlis.
Heml.is (which means "secret" in Swedish) is designed as an encrypted, privacy-safeguarding alternative to popular smartphone chat software, such as WhatsApp and iMessage. The plan is to build a …
Up yours, Google! Iran to launch OWN state email service
The Iranian government is set to roll out a national email service to all of its citizens in another ominous step towards the dismantling of their online freedoms.
There’s not much detail on the new home-grown service, which was apparently reported in local media and on state-run TV, except that it will use the “mail.post.ir …
Google loses Latitude in Maps app shake-up
Google is rolling out an upgrade to its Android Maps app that redesigns local search, and adds dynamic traffic reports along with a partnership with reviewers at Zagat. But this comes with a cost; Latitude is being abruptly shut down 30 days from now, and Google says that "The offline maps feature for Android is also no longer …
Microsoft: Still using Office installed on a PC? Gosh, you squares
Microsoft has dangled fresh licences for Office 365 - its subscription-based software suite - and beefed up its data-analysis tools to woo more business customers.
Opening its Worldwide Partner Conference (WPC) in Houston, Texas, Microsoft announced something it's called “upgrade SKUs” that will let IT bosses running on-premises …
Radar gremlins GROUND FLIGHTS across southern Blighty
Computer glitches in the UK's air traffic control system have restricted the number of flights over the south of England. It's reported thousands of passengers and holidaymakers face delays thanks to the technology gremlins.
National Air Traffic Services (NATS) confirmed that it's "experiencing technical problems" at its …
Apple: Ta for blowing £££s on apps, fanbois. Now we've set them FREE
Apple is marking the fifth anniversary of its app store by doling out free software and games.
In a move that may anger anyone who's shelled out for one of the titles, Apple has made them available gratis in the run up to Wednesday's big day.
The fruity firm has yet to discuss its plans for the anniversary, but it likely the …
Every Friday is rat-out-your-boss-for-software-piracy Friday
For The Cure, Friday was a day of love, for most of us it is the gateway to the weekend - but for pirate-haters it is the best time to shop employers using unlicensed software at work.
This is the latest statistic from the Ministry of Silly Numbers, aka the Federation Against Software Theft, whose latest research states 34 per …
Twitter to let ad pals TRACK COOKIES on micro-blogging site
Twitter needs to make more money from advertising - to do that it has decided to follow the lead of other free content social media networks by targeting its users' cookies to create tracking profiles for its ad partners.
The privately-held micro-blogging site said in a blog post that it would, for now, be displaying promoted …
Flogging an iTunes app? Just 4k downloads will get you in Top 10
A free app in iTunes' US top 10 gets around 70,000 downloads daily, while a paid app needs just 4,000 nods from fanbois to get to the top of the tree – but markedly fewer on a Tuesday.
The numbers come from number-crunchers Distimo (free with registration), but combine with those from NetBiscuits (also free, also requires …
AMD joins LibreOffice, adds GPU grunt to free software suite
LibreOffice, the open source office suite created by disaffected Oracle developers, has signed up Advanced Micro Devices to the free software cause and plans to add the chip company's GPU acceleration system to the code base.
The Document Foundation (TDF), which produces LibreOffice, already has Intel on-side for silicon and …
US State Department coughs up $630k for Facebook Likes
US State Department apparatchiks spent a whopping $630,000 in a bid to make millions of new Facebook friends on the say-so of a manager who left staff terrified of the sack if they challenged her, according to a recent report.
The department's Bureau of International Information Program (IIP) spent the cash trying to persuade …
Bigger than Twitter: Opera releases rebuilt Chromium-based browser
Opera, the pioneering web browser, may have only a small single-digit market share but that still counts as a hefty number of people – it has more active users than Twitter. But it doesn’t look like a happy place today.
Earlier this year Opera announced a decision to base future development of its desktop browsers on the WebKit …
Something's going on with Google Reader but nobody knows what
Journalists and, well, mainly other journalists are mourning the loss of Google Reader, a news aggregating RSS reader which will be euthanised today.
The Chocolate Factory will close the Reader software as of midnight tonight, California time, forcing RSS fans to find a new service.
Mostly, people appear to be turning to Feedly …
Facebook restricts ads running next to dodgy posts
Facebook has begun preventing ads from running alongside controversial material - such as sexual, graphic or violent content - posted by users of the social network.
The free content ad network confirmed on Friday that it would begin protecting brands that advertise on Facebook from being displayed on pages and groups carrying …
