One of the most vexing aspects of a Windows 7 reinstall is that even after you install the operating system and Service Pack 1, you can expect to spend a ridiculous amount of time applying patches that came post-SP1. Service Pack 1 came out in 2011, and there have been dozens and dozens of fixes over the past five years.For the longest time, this was a sore spot among users. That and the fact that Microsoft was reluctant to issue a second service pack with just a rollup of current fixes.Well, that wish has been granted. The company today announced a "convenience rollup" for Windows 7 Service Pack 1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 that contains all of the security and non-security updates it has issued for the two operating systems since the Windows 7 Service Pack up through April 2016.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google’s been hard at work under the hood of its Android operating system, announcing performance, security and productivity updates in the new Android N alongside a swanky new suite of VR capabilities called Daydream and version 2.0 of Android Wear.Android N is available for select devices in beta today, and will be released in a stable version this fall. It’s been publicly available as an open alpha for developer use for some time, but Google’s presentation offers the company’s definitive vision for the future of the Android platform.+ALSO ON NETWORK WORLD: Microsoft leaves feature-phone business as Nokia moves back in, sort of + ARM acquires Apical to add eyes to IoTTo read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Geographic location stamps transmitted in tweets can provide enough information for people to deduce where a Twitter user lives and works, say researchers.
The deduction occurs through the clustering of the posting locations. The assemblage provides location patterns that provide a good guess as to where the poster spends most of his or her time.
When that’s coupled with other data, such as the time of day, non-scientists recruited for the study simply picked out the homes and workplaces of the tweeters, said researchers from MIT and Oxford University in a press release.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is launching a smart personal assistant that uses artificial intelligence and search to let people not just get answers to their questions but to even control their devices.Google wants users to be able to do more than ask Google Assistant what the weather will be that day.+ Follow all the stories out of Google I/O 2016 +Google says its new assistant will make movie suggestions based on what films you've liked before. Going to the theater with your kids? Google Assistant will change its recommendations accordingly. It'll offer up moview reviews and buy your tickets for you.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft today continued to undo its disastrous 2014 acquisition of Nokia's phone business, announcing that it is exiting the feature phone market, which it had once trumpeted as a critical component of its mobile strategy.The sale of its feature phone business for $350 million prompted analysts to again question Microsoft's commitment to smartphones. "There won't be any more Lumia [smartphones]," said Jan Dawson, chief analyst at Jackdaw Research, in an email reply to Computerworld's questions today. "It does leave the door open for a new, narrower, phone strategy in the future."MORE ON NETWORK WORLD: 10 (FREE!) Microsoft tools to make admins happier
In a statement Wednesday, Microsoft said it had sold its remaining Nokia assets, including its factory in Hanoi, Vietnam, to FIH Mobile Ltd., a subsidiary of Taiwanese contract manufacturer Hon Hai, better known as Foxconn, and to Finnish firm HMD Global.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
When it comes to living on Mars, the human body is simply not suited to living for long periods in zero-g. Until this issue is solved, we have no hope of landing humans on the surface of Mars, nor can we create permanent residences in space.That was the crux of the testimony given to the House Committee on Science, Space, and Technology today by best-selling author of The Martian, Andy Weir. The hearing, entitled “Next Steps to Mars: Deep Space Habitats,” is exploring what NASA’s plans are for the development of deep space habitation. Weir was among speakers from NASA, Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Orbital.+More on Network World: NASA touts real technologies highlighted in 'The Martian' flick+To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is updating the developer tools for its Docs productivity suite in an effort to make it easier for companies to integrate third-party applications with its presentation, spreadsheet and word processing software. Software makers can start working with a new tool that lets them sync data between a Google Sheet and their application for easy data compilation and sharing among people who use the online spreadsheet software. In addition, Google also announced a new Slides API that will allow users to automatically populate slide decks with information from outside sources. Software packages like Google Docs don't exist in a vacuum, and offering developers a way to more deeply integrate with the company's products could lead to more companies becoming interested in picking up the productivity suite because of how it works with other software. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google is updating the developer tools for its Docs productivity suite in an effort to make it easier for companies to integrate third-party applications with its presentation, spreadsheet and word processing software.
Software makers can start working with a new tool that lets them sync data between a Google Sheet and their application for easy data compilation and sharing among people who use the online spreadsheet software. In addition, Google also announced a new Slides API that will allow users to automatically populate slide decks with information from outside sources.
Software packages like Google Docs don't exist in a vacuum, and offering developers a way to more deeply integrate with the company's products could lead to more companies becoming interested in picking up the productivity suite because of how it works with other software. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the health IT development hype cycle, a number of novel technologies have been announced and marketed. One example is the Qualcomm Tricorder Xprize, which is a competition designed to encourage developers to build a device that will diagnosis and self-treat a number of chronic conditions without the need for a physician. This prize is from the same organization (Xprise) that tried to encourage suborbital flight from commercial spacecraft companies.Technology is so pervasive in healthcare that books have been written about “The Internet of Health Things” (Kvedar J.C., The Internet of Healthy Things) that describe the wonderful new sensors patients can wear and measure their health every day. Even within older data collection paradigms, the healthcare area is talking about patient-reported outcomes and how we need to incorporate this data with the electronic health record to help improve patient care.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Dealing with obstacles is an inevitable part of life, and it looks like robots may be surprisingly adept at applying creativity to the challenge.Researchers from Carnegie Mellon University developed software that not only helped a robot deal efficiently with clutter but also revealed considerable creativity in solving problems. Their new study is due to be presented Thursday at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Sweden.A research team led by Siddhartha Srinivasa, CMU associate professor of robotics, challenged HERB -- his lab's two-armed mobile robot -- with a pile of clutter.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Get ready for new Nokia Android phones. No, Nokia isn’t coming back. Instead a group of former Microsoft executives have formed a company called HMD global, which will use Nokia branding in a new line of Android smartphones and tablets.HMD signed an agreement with Nokia Technologies which allows the brand licensing. This will certainly give the new devices a higher profile than if they were under an unknown label.The Helsinki-based HMD didn’t offer any specifics about when such phones and tablets would launch or what the pricing would be. The move further distances Nokia from Microsoft (whose own future with Lumia devices is rather uncertain). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
In the world of cybercrime, everybody from individuals to nation states is a target – some more attractive than others, of course. Health care organizations have gotten the most headlines recently, and the Internet of Things (IoT) offers an almost unlimited attack surface.But law firms are attractive too. They hold sensitive, confidential data ranging from the personal (divorce, personal injury) to the professional (contract negotiations, trade secrets, mergers and acquisitions, financial data and more) that, if compromised, could cause catastrophic damage both to the firm and its clients.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Microsoft yesterday threw a bone to Windows 7 users by releasing a cumulative roll-up that collects all the bug fixes from February 2011 to April 2016, making it easier to update a PC running the still-standard OS.
The Redmond, Wash. company has ditched the "service pack" moniker, and so named Tuesday's collection a "convenience rollup update." The label was meaningless, however: The update was identical to a service pack.
"This convenience rollup is intended to make it easy to integrate fixes that were released after SP1 for Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2," Microsoft said in a document explaining the update.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Google confirmed that it will have an Amazon Echo competitor, called Google Home. Announced during the keynote of Google I/O 2016, Home will serve as a hardware avatar of sorts for its new Google Assistant conversational language search tool.Google Home will be available later this year, executives said, for an undisclosed price. The company showed off the small, cylindrical device in white, but it will feature bases in custom colors.
Google Home being held by Mario Queiroz, vice president of product management and a member of the Chromecast team.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
If you’ve ever had a pet go missing from your house, you know that time is critical – whether it’s danger from other animals or the possibility of them getting hit by a car, you want to find them quickly.Here’s a really cool tool - the FurAlert app, available for iOS and Android smartphones, gets the word out quickly to other FurAlert users when a pet goes missing. The app serves two purposes – it lets pet owners alert all of the other users (within a specific geographic area) if a pet goes missing. Second, it lets someone who has found the animal notify the pet’s owner directly, through a phone call, text or email.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
For many years, open source software seemingly lay at the fringe of the tech industry. A subculture that many didn’t understand and that seemingly threatened the broader industry. It is amazing how much has changed.Today, open source software, especially Linux, is so pervasive that you probably interact with it every day. From supercomputers to GoPros and nearly every data center in the world, open source software is the default platform.+ More on Network World: Open source: Career-maker, or wipeout? +Not only does almost every company (and government agency) leverage open source software in some capacity, but even vendors who fought it tooth and nail have finally turned around. Microsoft’s embrace of open source software under Satya Nadella is a great example of the massive change in perception that has been slowly creeping over the industry over the past 20 years.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Just attach this case to your iPhone 6 or 6s, and the next time you catch yourself low on juice, don't panic -- just push a button and the built-in rechargeable 1,840mAh lithium-ion polymer battery gets you an additional 22 hours of talk time, 16 hours of internet use, and 17 hours of video playback. Plus, it provides level 2 high impact protection while also being compact, adding only .3 inches to your phone's thickness and less than 3 oz. It currently averages 4 out of 5 stars on Amazon (read reviews). With a regular list price of $60, this 33% off deal saves you $20. See Mophie's discounted Juice Pack now on Amazon.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
Slack, the fast-growing workplace collaboration startup, has snagged a new engineering chief from Pinterest.Michael Lopp left the social bookmarking site earlier this month to become Slack's vice president of engineering, according to his LinkedIn profile.Lopp is a Silicon Valley veteran with experience at companies including Apple and Netscape. Prior to Pinterest, he was a director at Palantir Technologies, a Palo Alto firm focused on using big data analysis for business and government applications."We’d like to thank Lopp for his contributions to Pinterest and wish him well. We’re fortunate to have strong technical leaders throughout the engineering team as we look ahead to growing the company and the product," Pinterest said in a statement.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
It's not often easy for line-of-business managers to get a real-time view of their budgets and spending, but a new app from SAP aims to change that.Based on SAP's Hana Cloud Platform, the app pulls data from core financial reporting systems and makes it searchable, so that line managers can do ad hoc spend analyses and other on-the-fly calculations.Called SAP RealSpend, the app lets managers drill down and perform a fine-grained analysis of actual and future spending. It can also deliver related forecast and budget plans.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
The top 1 percent of U.S. publishers on the iOS App Store with paid or in-app purchase (IAP)-supported apps accounted for approximately 94 percent of all revenue on the store.That’s according to Sensor Tower, a vendor of App Store marketing and sales tracking software, which published its latest findings in its Store Intelligence blog. The company monitored app store revenue and download estimates from Jan. 1, 2016, to March 31, 2016. It compared the estimated net revenue of publishers on the U.S. App Store with at least one actively ranking paid or IAP-supported app. It does not include Google Play or Android.To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here