SEARCH

Showing 61-70 of 150 results

  • OPINION

    Sour Apples, high Notes

    Life, James Hein, Published on 01/10/2014

    » Apple, at the time of writing, says it has sold more than 10 million iPhone 6 units — which is an amazing claim. Of course, the figure for units sold, as we have seen in the case of other manufacturers like Microsoft, could also include orders sent to stores. After some people had lined up for the iPhone 6 for days, reports are starting to come in about some of the problems experienced by these eager, first-time users. Phones are bending in pockets; there are video-formatting issues with the larger unit; and the software on both units is behaving the same, for example the same number of icons being displayed per line on the larger screen. It seems that in the rush to come out with a larger screen, the support and software was not adapted to this new format. The iPhone 6 (both versions) can still be spoofed with the same fake fingerprints the iPhone 5S were susceptible to. All in all, no wow factor and nothing that could attract anyone with a comparable phone in the same market space.

  • OPINION

    7, 8, skip 9, and it's 10!

    Life, James Hein, Published on 08/10/2014

    » Forget Windows 9, Microsoft is so certain the next version of Windows is so good they are jumping right to 10. Yes, Windows 10. Its reasoning is something about this not being an incremental update, which is what I thought was the point of a decimal numbering system (8.1).

  • OPINION

    Safe surfing with a VPN

    Life, James Hein, Published on 27/08/2014

    » So how safe is your surfing? Not the water, board and shark kind, but what you do on the web. Sitting in front of your computer you will either have your own internet protocol (IP) address or be assigned one as part of a pool that is doled out by your internet service provider (ISP). Somewhere between you and the rest of the internet will be a domain name server (DNS) that knows how to get a message from out there back to you and vice versa. Or to put it another way, they know where you are.

  • OPINION

    Web standard development in the pipeline

    Life, James Hein, Published on 16/07/2014

    » Samsung, Dell, Intel, Broadcom and others have started the Open Interconnect Consortium (OIC) with the aim of uniting on standards for internet development. Or, in their own words, “will seek to define a common communication framework based on industry standard technologies to wirelessly connect and intelligently manage the flow of information among devices, regardless of form factor, operating system or service provider” and “it is our intention to create a specification and an open source project that will allow interoperability for all types of devices and operating systems”. For the moment this announcement is about there is to it, with more information to follow later.

  • OPINION

    Condolences and rumours

    Life, James Hein, Published on 23/07/2014

    » I want to start out this week by offering Microsoft server administrators by heartfelt condolences for their future. I recently remote-logged onto Windows Server 2012 and immediately thought I’d made a mistake when I was presented with a Windows 8-like screen.

  • OPINION

    Get ready, this week is Apple-heavy

    Life, James Hein, Published on 30/07/2014

    » At a talk given at the recent Hackers On Planet Earth conference, Jonathan Zdziarski found a number of hidden surveillance tools hidden in the iOS operating system. One provides a back door that, while not wide open, is enough to gain access to the user’s address book, account info and other bits and pieces. In this case, you can get data out, but not back into the device. The retrieved data is in a raw format and needs additional processing. There is also an undocumented packet sniffer (com.apple.pcapd) that can log and export network traffic. These items have been actively updated by Apple, meaning they are not left over from testing.

  • OPINION

    The power of power

    Life, James Hein, Published on 13/08/2014

    » During a recent power failure I contemplated how reliant we are on technology. I suspect the quickest way to hear people scream these days is for any nearby telecom tower go offline. This would affect phones, tablets, notebooks and anything else that requires a data or wireless connection for internet access.

  • OPINION

    Downfall of Chromebook dynasty?

    Life, James Hein, Published on 20/08/2014

    » First there was the netbook, then the Ultrabook. Now we have the Chromebook, of which the Gartner Group predicts sales will top 5 million units this year. If it is anything like the netbook, by 2017 people will be asking: "Chromebook? What is that?" Gartner missed predicting that the netbook bubble would burst, and I think they have made the same mistake here.

  • OPINION

    Protect your photographs from spies

    Life, James Hein, Published on 21/05/2014

    » Beware the Cloud, or at least Google+. I took a picture with my phone recently, something I don’t do all that often, and happened to visit Google+ soon after. The first thing I saw was the photo I’d just taken. This was the first time I discovered that any photos I take are by default sent immediately to my Google+ area. You would think this was a setting in the Android G+ app but it is instead in the Photos apps. Google’s default push is to fully open up everything you do to Google, so be careful what setting you have and how you use your camera. To be fair the photo was in a “protected” area but we all know how well that kind of protection remains in the open-to-the-world-plus-their-dog environment we live in.

  • OPINION

    OnePlus One is new

    Life, James Hein, Published on 04/06/2014

    » The OnePlus One is a new Android phone from Oppo Electronics out of China. It sells for US$299 (about 10,000 baht), which puts it under half the price of the big models like the Samsung Galaxy S5 and HTC One M8. For that price you get the latest Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor, 3GB of RAM, 16GB of storage, a 5.5-inch 1080p IPS screen, 13MP camera, 4G LTE support, Bluetooth 4 and a 3100mAh battery. You also get Gorilla Glass 3 in a polycarbonate shell.

Your recent history

  • Recently searched

    • Recently viewed links

      Did you find what you were looking for? Have you got some comments for us?