Software posts

You don’t have to be a tech geek to know about apps. Just about anyone with a smartphone or a tablet has downloaded and installed apps onto their devices at one point or another. Some do it nearly every day. Gaming is the biggest category – we love our distractions – but business and productivity apps are starting to make a push and are being used by individuals and companies alike. This infographic by our friends at Intuit breaks down the boom of applications in the small business realm. As people become more accustomed to utilizing applications rather than websites and online resources, we can expect…

As mobile technology continues to become more prevalent in use and present in our hands, so too do the “bad guys” make gains in skill and tools. As such the recent malware report (PDF) released last week by McAfee showed a 22% increase in malware over the same period last year. Android was hardest hit with malicious software disguised as legitimate apps. The attacks are getting more sophisticated as well, finding exploits through downloads of common apps with hard-to-detect holes that open up for more malware to be downloaded behind the scenes. Much of this can be blamed on Google’s “less rigorous…

Microsoft really wants more cloud Customer Relationship Management (CRM) clients and now they’re willing to pay for them. Medium-sized companies with between 50-500 users can receive $150 cash per user if they switch to their Dynamics CRM Online service and sign a 2-year licensing subscription. The offer is open to US and Canada customers only and runs for $44 per user per month. “We feel that Microsoft Dynamics CRM Online delivers the best CRM service in the market — and at an extremely compelling price point,” said Brad Wilson, a general manager with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM division. Attached…

The vultures are circling the failed webOS-powered hardware victims, particularly the developers who have been making their money around building apps on the platform. Brandon Watson, the man responsible for apps and developers for Windows Phones, sent out a tweet on Friday to attract a response. The response has been huge. Currently, nearly 1000 webOS developers have attempted to take him up on his offer. To qualify, developers must have at least one application published on the webOS App Catalog. With Android and iOS exploding with apps and being hit up by tens of thousands of developers…

The promise of the internet 2 decades ago was that it would help to reshape the way we do things. Education has always been considered something that a connected world could do better. In many ways, the dream has been realized, but there’s still so much more to do. From a sheer business perspective, education is a huge market. There are hundreds of companies vying for a spot in the growing digital education field. Most are failing to reach the masses. It’s a hard shield to crack – education has been shrouded behind tradition and stubborn reluctance to change even in light of the potential that computers,…

The concept of robots that learn may seem relatively simply. We see robots and machines that are able to perform complex tasks flawlessly and many believe that this type of technology means that artificially intelligent robots are right around the corner (or here already). The biggest challenge has been in programming robots with the ability to adjust to changing environments and circumstances, applying what they know and extrapolating what they do not know to make a proper choice in new situations. Sounds easy, but it’s not. Not yet, at least. Researchers in Japan have developed a “Self-Replicating…

Ever since they first came about, digital movies have been totally absurd. Not only are they overpriced, they are almost always locked into particular hardware ecosystems. Buy a movie from iTunes and it only plays on Apple hardware; buy the same movie on Xbox Live or the Playstation Network, and it’s the same deal. It’s ridiculous. But it seems like buying a digital movie might finally be about to get better with the arrival of Ultraviolet. It’s a new system from Hollywood that let’s you buy a movie once and watch it anywhere. Sounds like the future we were promised, right? Trouble is, Apple aren’t…

Every IT person, developer, and programmer has an opinion when it comes to the various open source content management systems out there. It often comes down to functionality and ease of use, but even then the lines are often blurred and there is rarely a clear-cut victor. Wordpress vs Drupal vs Joomla – which is really the king of open source CMS? Our friends at Devious Media tackled the question and did a comprehensive breakdown, putting each CMS under a microscope to answer the most important questions to help people make a choice. For us, the choice is clear, but blogging is not the only thing important…

There has been a recent uproar about Facebook’s “Tag Suggestions” feature that takes people’s faces, attempts to recognize them, and suggests tags for them that their friends can add to any image. It’s been called creepy at best and an attack on privacy at worst. A successful Google+ launch could be a major challenge for Facebook already, so the timing of the latest controversy is bad for the social network. This breakdown by ZoneAlarm shows us how the technology works and gives us interesting information surrounding the controversy. It then dives into ways that privacy-conscious users can…

Our mobile devices have many uses to us, well beyond the talk and text functionality of the past. Millions of mobile apps are downloaded to smartphones and tablets every day. The types of apps we download are an indication of what uses we see for mobile devices. According to a recent study by Nielson, we want to have fun, know when it’s going to rain, monitor Facebook, and get directions. Over half of mobile device users have used apps for gaming, weather, social networking, and/or navigation in the last 30 days. Music, news, and entertainment follow. Perhaps more interesting is the fact that 93%…