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Microsoft: YES Windows 8.1 is finished, but NO you can't have it
Microsoft says it has already begun seeding the final code of Windows 8.1 to its manufacturing partners, but that doesn't mean you'll be able to get your hands on the update any sooner.
In a blog post on Tuesday, Windows corporate VP Antoine Leblond said that while hardware makers are being given time to incorporate Windows 8.1 …
Facebook gov surveillance data kept locked inside, er, Facebook
Facebook has released its first government transparency report, revealing – unsurprisingly – that once again India, the US and Blighty were the countries whose police were most likely to snoop on our online activities.
Ironically, anyone wishing to actually access the data, at the time of writing, needs a Facebook ID first.
The …
Did Google's Waze gobble run rivals off the road? UK watchdog starts probe
Google's acquisition of free map app Waze has awoken Britain's competition watchdog, which today confirmed it was scrutinising the gobble.
Israeli firm Waze Mobile was bought by Google in June this year for a rumoured $1bn. It gave the advertising goliath satnav-like software that, we're told, taps into the whereabouts of 50 …
Loads of mis-sold PPI, but WHO will claim? This man's paid to find out
Feature When the opening line of a conversation starts, “I read an interesting number the other day”, it’s fairly safe to assume that you’re talking to someone whose business it is to know about "interesting numbers". Perhaps unsurprisingly, these words were uttered by an economist whose ability to find god gold in the numbers is the …
Come and get it: Feedly Pro hits general availability
Google Reader refugees have another alternative reader, with Feedly announcing that its Feedly Pro is now available to all.
Not, however, for free. The $US45 a year or $US5 per month might look like stretching the willingness of punters to hand over dollars for a humble RSS reader, but the development work on the Pro version was …
HP to offer SAP's HANA-as-a-service
HP has announced it will offer SAP's in-memory database HANA in as-a-service mode, an offering The Reg revealed was under discussion back in March 2013.
Details of just what is on offer are sketchy for now. HP has not made a price list available, saying only “Pricing will vary according to client need.” Nor has the company …
Google cripples Chromecast third party replay
The Chocolate Factory has decided Chromecast was a little too capable, it seems. The developers of the Fling app, which allowed users to stream local content via Google's video dongle, are complaining that a recent software update has killed it.
Fling isn't the only app to get find itself rolling in the dust after being chucked …
The 'third era' of app development will be fast, simple, and compact
Hot Chips At the annual Hot Chips symposium on high-performance chippery on Sunday, the assembled chipheads were led through a four-hour deep dive into the latest developments on marrying the power of CPUs, GPUs, DSPs, DMA engines, codecs, and other accelerators through the development of an open source programming model.
The tutorial was …
Germany warns: You just CAN'T TRUST some Windows 8 PCs
Microsoft's new touchy Windows 8 operating system is so vulnerable to prying hackers that Germany's businesses and government should not use it, the country's authorities have warned in a series of leaked documents.
According to files published in German weekly Die Zeit, the Euro nation's officials fear Germans' data is not …
Ubuntu Edge Linux mobe: 'Made you look,' crows Shuttleworth
Canonical's attempt to raise £20.5m ($32m) to create a Ubuntu Linux smartphone wasn't the failure it appeared to be: despite only managing two fifths of its fundraising target by its own deadline, the Edge handset project was a hugely successful advertisement for the Ubuntu distribution.
That's, of course, according to Canonical …
China's Baidu builds new type of App Store
Chinese web giant Baidu has unveiled Light App – a new distribution model for mobile applications which could eventually help international developers to better promote their wares in the world’s biggest smartphone market.
Unveiled at the firm’s annual Baidu World event on Thursday, the new system was conceived as a way for …
Oracle launches paid support for 'free' NoSQL database
Oracle has added a paid support option to the "free" version of its BerkeleyDB-based NoSQL database.
The addition of paid support to the Community Edition of the Oracle NoSQL database was announced by Ellison & Co.'s veep of database server technologies Andrew Mendelsohn in his keynote speech at the NoSQL Now! conference in San …
Lenovo to ship all new PCs with Start Menu replacement
You wanted the Start menu back in Windows 8.1. Microsoft listened ... and didn't give it to you. Now Lenovo says that if a Start Menu is what it will take to get you to start buying Windows 8 PCs, then by gum, a Start Menu you shall have.
By now, everyone should be aware that the Start icon that's coming to the Windows 8.1 …
Google cursed its own phones with wacked Wi-Fi, say Nexus users
The latest tweak to Android is fitting badly onto Google's own hardware, with the Nexus 4 reportedly fudging Wi-Fi, crashing out and refusing to run previously compatible applications.
The first problem surfaced within days of the update being made public, with eager adopters complaining that their handsets had stopped …
Need the loo AND need to build a website? There's an app for that
Geocities saviour Jimdo has launched an iOS app, allowing instant fanboi-friendly website creation for those moments when inspiration strikes and a Facebook post just isn't enough.
Want to set up a new website, but can't be bothered to boot up a computer – let alone learn HTML? Jimdo will fix that with a WYSIWYG iOS app which …
iCloud outage outrage: Look, iPhoto friends, kitty just learned to... NOOO
Apple's iCloud is suffering an outage that has resulted in millions of fanbois being unable to access the service.
According to Apple's own status page, there are currently issues with photo stream, documents in the cloud, backup and iPhoto journals, which some fanbois use to share snaps on Facebook.
Around 1 per cent of all …
Chocolate Factory hits the Translate button on Google+
Google+ just got ever so slightly more user-friendly for those following accounts which tend to post or comment in languages which the user doesn't understand, after adding a one-click translate function.
Up until now, users of the Chocolate Factory’s social platform were forced to cut and paste any such text into Google …
A single company is responsible for 1 out of 4 BlackBerry apps
It's no secret that sales of the latest BlackBerry handsets haven't been as strong as the Canadian mobile maker had hoped. But if the real strength of an OS platform is in its developer ecosystem, BlackBerry could be on even shakier ground than previously thought.
At the BlackBerry Live event in Orlando, Florida in May, CEO …
Ubuntu devs to get 15-min code review, full SDK love – Canonical
Changes in Ubuntu will speed up the process of building apps and getting them approved for Software Center - but they could leave you more tied into the Linux distro’s software development kit (SDK).
Canonical has said it is changing the way packages – another name for the apps that make the basic operating system interesting – …
MongoDB speaks elephantese with Hadoop Connector upgrades
MongoDB steward 10Gen has increased the capabilities of its Hadoop Connector, which lets administrators shuttle data between MongoDB and HDFS and other Hadoop services.
The updates were announced on Tuesday, and see the company add support for Mongo's Binary JSON (BSON) backup files into the connector, along with support for …
Firefox takes top marks in browser stability tests
Web app testing-as-a-service company Sauce Labs has released its latest browser crash data, and remarkably enough, the least stable web browser today probably isn't the one you think it is.
True, by this metric as by most others, Internet Explorer 6 is the worst browser out there. It topped the crash rankings in Sauce Labs' …
FoundationDB ACID-lovers price up NoSQL database
NoSQL database startup FoundationDB has made its ACID-compliant tech generally available, after an extended beta that has seen over 2,000 people try out the company's unorthodox database.
The FoundationDB database is a key-value store that also allows for different data models – such as JSON documents, graphs, and SQL (via …
Microsoft shoehorns Skype into Outlook.com - we quickly kick the tyres
Vid Microsoft has slotted voice-chat app Skype into Outlook.com, melding email and telephony into a single platform - which almost works smoothly.
The functionality comes with a browser plugin, and makes video and voice calling as simple as sending an email, aping Google's Hangout platform but with Skype's infrastructure.
Outlook …
Microsoft Exchange: To host or not to host
Webcast Webcast To host or not to host: cloud is the question. With the recent release of Exchange 2013 and Wave 15 of Office 365, you probably have a choice to make in the near future, particularly if you're one of the huge number who also use Exchange for messaging.
Do you migrate to the newest version of Exchange, migrate to the …
Windows NT: Remember Microsoft's almost perfect 20-year-old?
Feature If you want to be reminded that you're getting old, ask a youngster what Windows NT is. Chances are, there'll be blank looks all round. Windows What? Is it, like, a codename for a new version?
You can't blame them. There hasn't actually been a proper "Windows NT" release since the late 1990s, so for almost anyone under 30 it's …
How much mazuma does it take to not be Oracle?
NewSQL database slinger Clustrix has taken on $10m in funding to help fund a shift away from expensive hardware appliances and towards commodity hardware.
The Series D funding was announced on Monday, and will see the company take on filthy Valley lucre to help it take advantage of the shift to low-end servers that has occurred …
Fanbois taught to use Apple's new killer app: Microsoft Windows
Apple is preparing to train its shop staff to use Microsoft Windows in a bid to flog more Macs to business users reared on PCs.
The fruity firm is planning to teach its shop staff to use a piece of virtualisation software called Parallels, which allows fanbois to run both OSX and any number of Windows and Unix operational …
Mozilla's Metro-friendly Firefox for Win 8.1 to arrive in December
A Metro-friendly version of Firefox is finally coming to Windows 8, more than a year after Mozilla first floated the new browser.
Mozilla’s Firefox planners have pegged 10 December as the release date for the first iteration of the browser to support Microsoft’s boxy, fondleable interface.
Builds of Firefox 26 with unfinished …
12 simple rules: How Ted Codd transformed the humble database
Anniversary Edgar – or Ted – Codd is one of the most influential figures in computing. Born 90 years today*, Codd – who passed away in 2003 – was the man who first conceived of the relational model for database management.
Relational databases are today ubiquitous – on your PC, in your smartphone, in your bank’s ATMs, inside airline …
Online trainer launches free student login promo
Learnable.com has launched a promo targeting students interested in learning to code, with 10,000 free places available on a first-come-best-dressed basis.
General manager Kyle Vermuelen says that the registrations will give students three years' access to courses to “learn to develop and design websites, apps and more”. Based …
Microsoft warns of post-April zero day hack bonanza on Windows XP
Microsoft has a Windows XP problem: people still like it and aren't willing to upgrade just yet. So it's warning users that if they don’t upgrade soon, hackers will lie in wait each new Patch Tuesday to reverse-engineer a full set of new vulnerabilities.
"The very first month that Microsoft releases security updates for …
Apple erects measures to stop app-happy kids splurging parents' dosh
Apple has handed new guidelines to App Store software programmers to prevent kids from racking up huge bills from in-app purchases.
The fruity firm has come under pressure to protect kids from spending all their parents' cash on virtual rubbish in games, such as smurfberries or vegetables.
The new guidelines, available from the …
YouTube Wars: Microsoft cries foul as Windows Phone app pulled again
Analysis Microsoft has publicly criticized Google for failing to live up to its commitment to openness, after being told to pull its custom-built YouTube app from the Windows Phone Store for the third time.
YouTube has had a rocky history on the Windows Phone platform. Since early this year, Microsoft's legal team has accused Google of …
Just add creepiness: Google Search gets even more personal
Google will soon be interrogating its users' Gmail, Google Calendar and Google+ accounts to try and predict the questions they enter into Google Search, bringing the Chocolate Factory's Now functionality into the mainstream.
The personalised search is being rolled out slowly, with the US getting it first, but it will respond to …
Auntie touts e-babysitting ... and no £15,000 in-app purchase shocks
The BBC's kiddie TV wing, CBeebies, has turned out a "free" collection of mobile games for parents happy to let Captain Barnacles and the Alphablocks rear their children.
The games, bundled into the CBeebies Playtime app for Android and iOS, come from the broadcast side of the corporation so are funded from the television …
Superstar cluster-Zuck as Facebook tries out celeb-only edition
Facebook is building an anti-social network which will ban ordinary people and only allow celebrities beyond its virtual velvet rope.
Zuck's advertising empire is reportedly working on a "VIP app" that non-famous people - whom Elizabeth Hurley once famously described as "civilians" - will not be allowed to use.
Sources told All …
YouTube app returns to Windows Phone
Updated Microsoft has released another YouTube app into the Windows Phone store.
The release of an app may not seem noteworthy, save for the fact that back in May Google prepared a flaming sueball and threatened to heft it in Redmond's direction because its previous app allowed users to download videos and didn't play nicely with …
Facebook tops up Apache Project graph database with fresh code
Facebook has shoved code back into the trunk branch of Giraph, an open source graph-processing Apache project that mimics Google's advanced "Pregel" system.
The upgrades let Giraph process graphs with trillions of edges – the connections between entities in a graph database – and were announced by the company in a blog post on …
Make or break: Microsoft sets date for CRUCIAL Win 8.1 launch
Microsoft will begin the second act in its Windows 8 drama on Thursday, 17 October. The company said today that Windows 8.1 would be available through the Windows Store in a free worldwide update for consumers already on Win 8 from 4am Pacific Time on that date (7am Eastern, 12 noon BST).
PCs and tablets featuring Windows 8.1 …
Evernote hobbles third-party apps... but is it pulling a Twitter?
Mobile archiving service Evernote is throttling access to third-party applications which use its application programming interface (API) - and admits that apps that sync Evernote data will fall foul of the new rules.
The restriction takes the form of a ceiling on the number of API calls an hour, rather than a bandwidth cap. It …
Microsoft Patch Tuesday: The '90s called. It wants its 'Ping of Death' back
Microsoft has pushed out eight advisories as part of the August edition of its regular Patch Tuesday update cycle. With just three critical patches, the most interesting thing about this week's batch is the return of the "Ping of Death" in the form of a stability bug in the Windows IPv6 stack.
The critical updates offer new …
There she blows! Mid-October release date for Windows 8.1 sighted
Microsoft will unleash Windows 8.1 for world+dog to download in October, it's claimed, a year after it released the touchscreen-friendly, tile-tastic Windows 8.
The software giant is preparing to release version 8.1 of its operating system to computer makers later this month, but it has been reported the public will get the …
