With the Galaxy Note 20 launch just a week away, all eyes will be on what upgrades Samsung brings to the table. While the chipset might remain unchanged, there might be a silver lining. While Samsung flagship like the Note series and the S series are powered by Snapdragon chipsets in the US and European markets, they come with Exynos chipset in Asian markets such as India. It often tends to lose out on the performance front against Qualcomm Snapdragon counterparts. However, a new leak suggests some good news in this regard. Samsung Galaxy Note 20 release date, price, news and leaks Upcoming smartphones in India: Specs, launch date, price (Image credit: Samsung/WinFuture) According to a tweet by Anthony, a Youtuber, Samsung Galaxy Note 20 will continue to be powered by the Exynos 990 chipset, but with major improvements in terms of the performance and efficiency. These optimizations should bring it closer to the Snapdragon 865 series. He even suggested that it is almost li
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Samsung's next smartwatch may be a hybrid like the LG Watch W7
There's a trend in smartwatches at the moment to try and make them continue to keep telling the time even when the smart element has run out of battery.
You've got the TicWatch Pro that sports two different displays and the newly-launched the LG Watch W7 (pictured above) that has mechanical hands to keep telling the time after the screen has died.
Now a patent suggests Samsung may be working on a similar concept to LG's watch, but with a key difference.
According to the patent filed with USPTO (United States Patent and Trademark Office) and spotted by LetsGoDigital, the company is experimenting with a tech that would allow for a touchscreen smartwatch that also sports mechanical hands.
It sounds similar to the LG Watch W7, but instead of having the hands on top of the display the mechanical elements would all sit underneath the screen.
The patent shows a transparent touchscreen display that sits on top that would allow you to use the normal features of a smartwatch without the hands getting in the way. The patent doesn't make it clear whether this watch would be running Tizen, Wear OS or a different operating system.
A novel ideaWhen the battery has run out on the display, the document suggests the analogue hands would appear and be able to keep displaying the time. There's a physical crown that's used for setting the time, and you can also pull it to set an alarm on the watch too.
The watch would sport two batteries, which we believe means one will be for the more power intensive actions of a smartwatch, while the other would activate to keep the watch ticking over in analogue mode.
A little strangely, the patent also suggests the watch would be able to have a digital camera inside the watch case, which would be able to take quick pictures from your wrist.
This is all just a patented tech at the moment, so there's no guarantee we're set to see this on an upcoming smartwatch from the company. Samsung only released the Galaxy Watch back in August, so even if the tech is going to be on a future watch, we can be quite certain we won't hear about it officially until 2019.
Looking for a powerful hybrid? Here are our favorites
The true cost of a data breach
From the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) back in May, which fundamentally changed the rulebook for storing data of EU citizens at least to the Butlin’s hack, 2018 has been a very significant year for cybersecurity.
One of the biggest changes centred around transparency, specifically businesses being forced to reveal within 72 hours if they have suffered a breach. While the US has had this type of policy for a while, businesses in the EU were not required to publicly state when a breach occurred, leaving them free to keep significant news like this from their customers. But now that things have changed, and it’s starting to heat up in the EU.
We've also highlighted the best antivirus A financial hitThe first thing anyone thinks of when considering the cost of something is how can it be calculated in monetary value. Up until now, it’s been difficult to pinpoint the exact cost of a data breach, given many companies are not too willing to unveil the money they’ve spent cleaning up the mess left behind after being hit, or the drop in sales figures. There are some indications though that can help give a guidance. Studies such as the annual Ponemon Institute’s Cost of a Data Breach report aims to paint a clearer picture – indicating the average cost is currently $3.62 million globally ($141 for each piece of data) and as much as $7.35 million in the US.
However, that may be considered the average, with some financial hits being much bigger. According to its most recent SEC filing, Equifax has spent $242.7 million and counting since its data breach, which exposed the sensitive financial and personal information of nearly 148 million of its customers. To add a bit more context to this, Equifax spent nearly as much in just seven months, as Target ($252 million) did in two years after its 2013 data breach. That’s a big hit to the bottom line for simply leaving consumer data unencrypted and out in the open for hackers to simply walk up and take.
Moving forward, we should start to see a clearer picture of the tangible financial cost of a data breach through legislation like GDPR, which can fine companies up to 4% of their global turnover, if they are found to have suffered a breach.
The reputational impactAs well as business suffering from a clear financial hit, the transparency aspect of GDPR has increased the potential for companies to suffer reputationally as well. As consumers become more aware of the increasing number of breaches out there, they are starting to understand they have the power in the relationship, particularly with GDPR enabling points like the ‘right to be forgotten’.
Companies need to realise that if they get breached, consumers will simply go to another brand they consider to be more secure. Take the case of TalkTalk as a great example. Following its well-publicised data breach, the company lost around 100,000 customers, who simply deemed that they could not trust the business to keep their details safe. In this case the CEO also had to step down, a growing consequence that is beginning to develop with senior management usually in the firing line when a breach occurs.
It’s not just a reputational hit with customers that can affect a business either. Yahoo! had to lower its asking price by $350 million for its acquisition by Verizon, after it suffered a huge breach that affected millions.
Mitigating the risks and costs of a breachSo, with regulation making things more transparent and media headlines making consumers more aware, how can businesses avoid being the next Equifax or TalkTalk?
The simple answer is there needs to be a change of mindset when it comes to security in the business world. Businesses can no longer adopt a ‘it won’t happen to us’ approach or ‘my perimeter can’t be breached’ mentality. The focus must be on securing the most sensitive data a business has at its core. Too many companies attempt to secure the outside and leave the data exposed, meaning if a hacker was to break in, they can almost help themselves. Encrypting data at rest and in motion, securely managing the encryption keys and storing them securely, while also managing and controlling user access, are vital steps for businesses to take to protect themselves.
With nearly every business using the cloud and the continued emergence of IoT, businesses have never had such opportunities to grow, but with that comes an increased attack surface to defend against. By implementing the solutions such as encryption, businesses can essentially adopt what is known as a ‘secure breach’ strategy, whereby if they are attacked, their data can’t be accessed.
Investing in this strategy moving forward is the only way businesses can protect themselves from the financial and reputationally hitting consequences that are being seen more frequently now. The true cost of a data breach may still be up in the air and vary depending on the business, but companies shouldn’t be running the risk of finding out what it will cost them.
Jason Hart, CTO of Data Protection at Gemalto
Been hacked? This is what to do next
The best green web hosting of 2018
Choosing a website hosting company typically involves weighing up many factors, such as price, features, support, reputation and more. The environmental impact of a web host probably won't rank high on most people's priority lists, if they think about it at all – but that could be a mistake.
Web hosting is very energy-intensive. Data centers may have tens of thousands of high-powered computers, most of these with permanently high CPU and drive usage, generating so much heat that the provider will usually need a massive cooling system to keep temperatures manageable.
The math can be surprising. Web Neutral Project founder Jack Amend calculates that powering the average website produces 4,500 pounds of CO2 a year, equivalent to driving the average new car for more than 10,000 miles. We're not quite sure what ‘average’ means in that context, but whatever the precise details, the message is clear: hosting has a very real environmental impact, and it's much more significant than you might think.
Green web hosting companies try to address this issue by investing in some form of carbon offsetting scheme, so that for every unit of energy they use, they pay to generate the same amount of energy (or sometimes more) from renewables, and pump that into the grid. This doesn't negate their environmental impact entirely – building and disposing of all those computers produces issues of its own – but it does at least mean that your individual website isn't adding to the problem.
Going green does tend to have some hosting consequences, in particular with the price: it's often a little higher than the competition. That's no surprise when a company is paying a second energy bill to generate renewable power, though, and the extra cost usually isn't significant. Check out our pick of the green hosting crop to find out more.
Founded in California back in 2008, GreenGeeks now proudly claims to be the ‘world's #1 green energy web hosting provider’, not surprising given that it is dedicated entirely to green causes.
That's a big statement, but there is some substance behind it. The company doesn't just say that its platform has been designed for maximum energy efficiency, it also promises that "for every amperage we pull from the grid, we invest three times that in the form of renewable energy via Bonneville Environmental Foundation." So in theory at least, your hosting isn't just carbon-neutral, it's carbon-reducing.
GreenGeeks' hosting range isn't quite as impressive. There are the usual set of plans – shared products, application hosting, VPS, dedicated – but there isn't much choice, and what you do get is mostly very average.
There is one exception in GreenGeeks powerful shared hosting plan. This offers unlimited websites, emails, databases, web space and bandwidth, and throws in a free domain, shared SSL, Cloudflare CDN integration, nightly backups, the Softaculous one-click app installer, a simple website builder and support via email, chat and telephone.
Pay for three years upfront and you can get everything for an equivalent $3.95 (£2.80) per month – $9.95 (£7.10) on renewal – and a 30-day money-back guarantee represents a risk-free way to test the service for yourself. It's a good deal, and shows that green hosting isn't just about making eco-friendly gestures: you can find some capable products, too.
Despite the increasing interest in green hosting, many providers do little to flag up their eco-friendly credentials. The DreamHost website doesn't talk about the issue on its front page, there's no clear link or green 'energy saving' logo, or indeed no sign that the company is thinking about this at all. But dig a little deeper and you'll find the reality is very different.
DreamHost says its data centers are powered by grids that obtain electricity from many renewable sources, for instance. It's a partner in state-level 'clean wind' programmes. Cooling systems are designed for efficiency, and the evaporative cooling plants use both municipal and reclaimed water.
The company offices are LEED Platinum and EnergyStar-certified. Optimized heating, ventilation and air conditioning plants keep energy demand down all year round, and the working environment is designed with sustainability in mind: recycling bins everywhere, electronic forms to reduce paper usage, disposable cups and plates replaced by ceramic, financial incentives to use public transportation and work-from-home policies to keep some people off the roads entirely.
All this environmentally-friendly infrastructure powers a good-looking range of highly specified and fairly-priced products. Shared hosting gives you unlimited everything from $7.95 (£5.70) a month. A capable cloud server can be yours for $12 (£8.60) a month, plus fully managed VPS hosting starts from $13.75(£10.45) a month, and the list goes on.
DreamHost has its issues, too – in our review, we weren't impressed by the non-standard hosting panel, and found support response times could be slow – but it's still a decent host in many areas, and an exceptional 97-day money-back guarantee shows just how confident the company is in its service.
Green web hosts make all kinds of claims about their eco-friendliness, but it's not always easy to figure out what these mean. A provider might say it's using an energy-efficient cooling system, for instance, but how does that compare to the rest of the industry, and what could the savings be, if any? There's no way to tell.
iPage sidesteps this problem by avoiding the usual vague chat, and instead presents a clear and definitive green policy in a single sentence: "For every KWH of energy that iPage uses, the company purchases Renewable Energy Certificates to offset that amount with wind energy by 200%!"
Simple, straightforward, and it outperforms most claimed carbon-neutral providers by offsetting twice its energy usage (although GreenGeeks manages 300%).
iPage's hosting products also have plenty of appeal. Prices are sometimes a fraction higher than the competition, but there some excellent introductory deals – three years feature-packed shared hosting for $1.99 (£1.50) a month, renewal at $8 (£6) – and a range that also includes managed WordPress, capable VPS plans and powerful dedicated servers. Well worth a browse for demanding users who are more interested in functionality than getting the lowest possible price.
A2 Hosting is another provider that doesn't boast about its green credentials. There's not a word about the topic on its website's front page, and unless you're in the habit of browsing web host 'About' pages you might never know anything about A2’s green-friendly aspects.
This is a little surprising, because in reality A2 Hosting has more to boast about than many providers. This starts with a Carbonfund.org energy offset scheme which has allowed the company to be effectively carbon-neutral since 2007. This isn't just about buying energy from wind farms: Carbonfund.org also works on reforestation and promoting energy efficiency in many other areas.
A2 highlights some of its green hosting practices, too, covering everything from using coffee mugs instead of disposables, to allowing telecommuting for its staff as much as possible.
Whatever you think of its environmental attitudes, A2 Hosting's plans have a lot of appeal. Starting prices are a little higher than some, but that's mostly because the company is focused on delivering power and functionality, rather than barebones products which only exist to create a low headline price.
Even the most basic shared hosting account gets free site migration, for instance. Not to mention Let's Encrypt SSL, Cloudflare CDN integration, and regular virus scanning. Oh, and performance-boosting AnyCast DNS. You don't just get one-click installs for WordPress, PrestaShop and others: A2 gives you optimized performance settings, too. And there are data centers in the US, EU and Asia. Not bad at all for a starting price of $3.92 (£3) a month, rising to $7.99 (£6) on renewal.
HostPapa was one of the first hosting companies to commit to going green, and we're not just talking vague claims about energy-efficient data centers: it's making real and significant promises.
The company explains that it "purchases ‘green energy tags’ or certificates from a certified green energy supplier. That supplier calculates the total energy consumption of our operation and uses their suppliers of green energy to pump in 100% equivalent energy back into the power grid."
Essentially, although HostPapa's operations aren't directly powered by green energy, it purchases the equivalent amount from green providers, a carbon offsetting system which balances out emissions overall.
HostPapa's products include shared hosting, managed WordPress and a website builder. Prices are a little higher than the competition, but individual plans could appeal in other ways. Even simple shared plans offer unlimited bandwidth and disk space (although Starter plan has 100GB disk space), for instance. And although there's no dedicated hosting, the company has some monster VPS packages, with the high-end Extreme plan giving you 12 CPU cores, 24GB RAM, 1TB storage and 8TB bandwidth for $299 (£215) a month (first month is $249.99).
You might also want to check out our other website hosting buying guides:
WordPressCloud hostingE-commerceDedicated serverSmall businessWindowsManagedGreenBusinessColocationEmail hostingResellersVPSSharedCheapWebsite buildersBest website hosting
Plusnet's amazing new broadband deal comes with a £75 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card
There are so many broadband deals out there promising different incentives and freebies and it can be really hard to know which ones are worth it. But Plusnet has a new broadband deal with a perk you will really want to get your hands on.
Until Wednesday November 7 Plusnet is offering a £75 Amazon.co.uk Gift Card with its Unlimited Broadband plan. Along with this bumper Amazon.co.uk Gift Card you' also be getting internet with average speeds of 10Mb and free landline calls to Plusnet customers.
The package will cost you £18.99 per month and is a 12 month contract. You will have to pay an upfront fee of £5 but this is a fixed price offer so you are guaranteed the same price throughout your contract.
If the 10Mb speeds of this deal just aren't doing it for you - maybe you rely on high quality 4K streaming, or just have loads of people in the house always looking to use the internet at once - Plusnet has other faster broadband deals that could be perfect for you that also come with an added bonus.
Upgrade to its Unlimited Fibre plan for an extra few pounds a month and you get some beefed up average speeds of 36Mb for faster internet use. This deal costs £23.99 a month and maintains that £5 upfront fee. This deal doesn't have the Amazon.co.uk Gift Card to sing about, but does come with £50 cashback instead which helps to make it one of the best value fibre broadband deals out there.
If you need even faster speeds, Plusnet also offers Unlimited Fibre Extra broadband with massive average speeds of 66Mb - that equates to downloads of over 8MB per second. This one will cost you £28.99 a month and a fiver upfront, but you still get that £50 cashback. Those kind of speeds for less than £30 per month are almost unheard of.
All of today's best broadband deals in one placeOnce your broadband and line rental have been activated, Plusnet says you'll be sent an email with the details of your Gift Card - then you're free to spend away to your heart's content.
It can't be traded for money but you can use it to buy anything on Amazon.co.uk. And the best bit...you'll be happy to know that the card should be with you in plenty of time for Christmas so you can use it to power through your Christmas shopping!
Here's how to activate eSIM on your iPhone with Etisalat in the UAE
With the release of iOS 12.1, Apple has enabled the eSIM functionality on the iPhone XS, the iPhone XS Max and the iPhone XR which finally allows you to use two simultaneous mobile connections on your iPhone.
Etisalat has already announced support for eSIM on these new phones and here is how you can enable it on your iPhone.
Visit an Etisalat Office to get your QR codeAt the moment, you can't activate eSIM over your phone and have to physically visit an Etisalat office to get a QR code. You can then scan this code on your iPhone through "Settings -> Cellular -> Add Cellular Plan" to activate the eSIM.
Charges for activating an eSIMCharges for activating an eSIM are identical to that of a regular SIM which means you'll need to pay AED 26.50 if you already have a postpaid plan. If you are on a prepaid line, charges for that are AED 57.75.
If you are getting a new account/phone number with eSIM, charges for that are AED 131.25.
While eSIM works with multi-SIM options, at the moment, you can only have one eSIM on your phone number and that has to be your primary SIM. The rest of your SIM cards can only to be physical SIM cards.
To give you an example, you can activate your primary eSIM on your iPhone with your secondary physical SIM on your iPad or your car. The only exception is the Apple Watch which can act as a secondary eSIM.
Switching back to physical SIM for eSIMSwitching back to a regular SIM is basically the same process as switching to an eSIM. You'll need to go to an Etisalat office and get a new SIM card for which you'll pay AED 26.50 and your eSIM will get deactivated. You can then use the physical SIM card on your phone.
Let us know if you have any questions about eSIM in the UAE through twitter on @techradarme and we will try and get answers from Etisalat or du.
The iPhone now supports dual SIM but what about dual apps?
Best Wear OS apps for your smartwatch in 2018
Several of the best Wear OS apps come pre-installed on watches. Google Maps, Google Fit and Play Music offer the smartwatch essentials, and do the job well.
But what else is there? We’ll level with you. Wear OS’s app ecosystem is in a sorry state.
In the past few years there’s been little progress, and some of our original favorites aren’t even supported anymore. TripAdvisor? Gone. Wear Mini Launcher? It doesn’t support newer watches.
As we half-expected when modern smartwatches appeared, phones are still much better at doing most things. However, there are several Wear OS apps worth trying if you want to use your watch to do more than just the baked-in basics.
Maintaining a food diary is tricky at the best of times. Get too into the idea and it can become a bit obsessive, and most other people find it chronically boring.
Lifesum’s Wear OS app is a decent way to stay somewhere in-between. It’s a very stripped-back version of the full phone app, intended to let you log your food, probably either just before or just after you eat it.
All the fine detail has been vacuumed-out. You don’t flick through mile-long menus that feature every brand and scrap of food in the supermarket.
There are just a handful of options for breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinner. And for the main meals, you just choose 'small', 'medium' and 'large' portions, which you need to correlate with the rough number of calories involved.
None will cover a splurge on a large Pizza Hut pizza for one, but if you find one of those in front of you, just write it off as a cheat day. Lifesum has nothing for you.
Open the app and you’ll see the number of calories you have remaining. You can also log the number of glasses of water you drink, and it will tally the minutes of exercise you do.
The Lifesum app is in a slightly tough spot. It doesn’t have the specificity to work for those after fairly accurate calorie counting. However, if like many of us you find meal-recording too much of a time-consuming chore, the Wear OS version is worth a try.
Urban navigation app Citymapper has been around on Wear since 2015. It hasn’t changed all that much since, but is still one of the few essential Wear OS downloads, at least for those who use the phone app.
For those new to the service, Citymapper offers journey planning between places in major cities. You can get routes on foot, by car, by taxi or, the most important, using public transport.
The major appeal is the way Citymapper digs into train, bus and tram tracking systems, so you can see by-the-minute when yours is meant to arrive. And this is what the Wear OS version of the app is useful for.
When you’re waiting in the cold for a bus that never seems to show, this app will at least tell you how much misery is left. Flick through the app’s various screens and you can also see the number of stops, and a map of where you need to get to for any on-foot sections.
It has all the important mid-journey parts of Citymapper. However, if you want to go anywhere but the 'Home' and 'Work' locations set in the main app beforehand, you have to take your phone out.
This is not a standalone app, which seems fairly obvious when you consider the always-on data required. However, it is kind of great.
Sometimes, the simplest apps are the most useful. ParKing lets you record where you parked your car. As such, you won’t have to spend 45 minutes looking for it outside IKEA, its location having been wiped from your memory after three hours of queuing to buy shelving units and meatballs.
Boot the app and you simply press a 'car' button to log the location of your vehicle. You’ll then see a Google Maps-style pinpoint of where it is.
Little controls let you zoom in and out of this map view, and you can flick around the location using the touchscreen.
ParKing feels a bit like a mod for Google Maps. But if you own a car and like the “keep it simple, stupid” school of design, this one is worth checking out. It’s free too, with no in-app purchases.
If you want an app that just lets you look at a shopping list on your wrist, try Bring!. However, Google’s own Keep is designed for all sorts of notes, and is perfect for daily to-do lists or even checking over draft emails or reciting some notes.
It works much as it does on your phone. You’ll see a list of your existing notes when you run the app, and then can either jump into one of those or start a new one.
When you’ve written a note, you can set a reminder for it at a certain time, unpin it from your Keep home screen or archive it. It’s a clean, simple app, like the best parts of the Google suite.
You can make lists as well as plain notes too, and tick off items. We’ve been using Keep on a Wear OS watch like this, as a way to track a daily to-do list. While it may not be quite as satisfying as ticking off a box on a piece of paper, it does avoid the ever-recurring search for pen and notepad.
Any problems? Google Keep is a strictly functional app. There’s no visual gloss to it, which some may find off-putting. The phone app is more visually pleasing, and being able to customize the color theme in the watch app would be a neat extra.
There’s a good chance you’ll have stumbled upon Accuweather already. It’s one of the most popular weather apps, and a Wear OS staple.
The watch version comes in two halves. There’s an analog-style watch face, which has three customizable slots into which you can bung three bits of weather data. And then there's the app proper.
In the app you just need to supply the location you want weather data for, and you’ll then see hour-by-hour reports. Or reports for the days coming up if that’s what you’re after.
The watch face in particular is handy. And not bad-looking either.
As you might expect, the app is relatively basic, and lacks features seen in the phone version. There’s no radar view that lets you look at rain clouds on a world map, for example.
There’s no multi-location support either. If you just want one location’s weather data that’s fine, but if you need to switch between two or more, you have to use the location search function. Typing in place names all the time can feel like a waking nightmare.
However, this is the go-to weather app for Wear OS, and a very handy way to see if it’s raining later without asking Google Assistant. Not all of us want to start talking to our wrists every day.
This is one of the most useful standalone Wear OS apps. It’s a quick, neat way to get a guided workout before you go to work. Or, hey, even at work if you’re ambitious.
You’ll see animations of the exercises you’re meant to perform. Nicely animated ones too. By default, these exercises come in 30-second bursts, with short recovery rests in-between. During these you’ll see a preview animation of the next move to prepare for.
7 Minute Worksout’s animations are great. They give the app a professional look that most Wear OS apps don’t have. However, you probably shouldn’t try to learn the exercises from scratch off a 1.5-inch screen. It’s the combination of vibrate feedback and visuals that makes the app work as well as it does.
Once you’ve used it a few times you should only have to look at the screen for about 20 seconds in the seven minutes. The rest of the time you can just use the vibrate buzzes, which let you know when it’s time to stop and get ready to switch to the next exercise.
Use this as a standalone app and you can try a few basic circuits, enough to wake you up before you go to work. However, download the phone app, then subscribe to the $9.99/£9.99 per month premium service, and you can access many more. Yoga stretches, Pilates, and sets that work out a particular part of the body are all in there.
Favorite them in the phone app and you can then run them on your watch. Any bad points? The whole concept of the seven-minute workout, other than the time limit, is that the only equipment used is a chair. It’s not for the hardcore crowd.
There are a few podcast apps for Wear OS, including phone-favorite Podcast Republic. However, Wear Casts is the current best of the bunch if you want to do more than just control a phone podcast player on your wrist.
Wear Casts lets you search for podcasts using the app’s podcast directory or the search function. It uses the standard Wear OS options of voice input or the virtual keyboard, which can be a pain when some podcast names aren’t even real words.
But that’s not Wear Casts’ fault.
When you’ve found a podcast, you add it to a favorites list, which makes it show up on the app’s 'home' display. You can flick through episodes, play them over Bluetooth headphones, and even download them for offline use - great for exercise.
Wear Casts is also one of the more stable, fast Wear OS apps, making it a real pleasure to use.
The only painful part is getting your favorite podcasts logged in the app. However, there’s a way around this too.
Wear Casts must be one of the few Wear OS apps where there’s a phone version, but it’s a companion to the watch software. Not the other way around.
Use the Wear Casts phone download and you can search for and add podcasts, so you can avoid that tiny Wear OS virtual keyboard. It took us several minutes just to type “John Hodgman” into the thing.
Smartwatches are great for quick, simple interactions, not the kind of drawn-out stuff we never thought we’d do on a phone in 2009. And now do every day.
Unified Remote is a puppet master of these kind of quick controls. It’s a remote app that lets you plug in over 100 different kinds of control. You can control Spotify or Netflix from your wrist, turn your computer off and even use the watch’s screen as a trackpad. You add extra features like little modules.
So you can control everything in your house through your watch? Not quite. Unified Remote can control software on your PC, but not instances of Spotify and Netflix on your phone or, say, PS4.
If you have an entertainment PC in your living room, this app is great. It’s handy if you plug a laptop into your TV too. You can control Windows, Mac and Linux systems, but not other platforms.
The Unified Remote team does say it is working on getting the platform to control iOS and Android devices, though, which would make it even more useful.
We’ve recommended the full phone version of Zombies, Run! for years. But it only came to Wear OS at the tail end of 2017.
Some of the TechRadar crew love running. But if you find it a total chore, an app like this can help.
Zombies, Run! maps your runs into the context of a zombie survival story, not just a Google Maps journey view. It feels a little like an audiobook that uses your run progress to determine when you should hear the next segment.
It won’t take over your whole run either. You can play music or a podcast in the background, and the app will take over when it needs to.
Over the days and weeks, your runs represent missions, many of which involve picking up the essentials and delivering them to the characters in the Abel township. It’s the story’s encampment of zombie apocalypse survivors.
You can 'play' Zombies, Run! for free, and after the first few missions new ones unlock at a rate of one per week. Pay for a subscription and you can play as many of the 300-plus missions as you like. It’s more fun than a standard couch-to-5K.
A while back Endomondo was one of the top Wear apps. But it has not been updated to support Wear 2.0, which tells us a lot about how many people were using the Wear OS version.
RunKeeper survives, though, and it lets you run without taking your phone out, as long as your watch has built-in GPS.
It shows you stats as you run, and there are some battery-saving display tweaks to help save your watch’s stamina. And you can use it for free.
For many, the non-paid version will do the trick. Upgrade for £8.99/$9.99 per month, or a much more attractive $39.99/£29.99 per year, and you get training plans, broadcasting of your runs on social media (this will need a phone) and a feature that compares your workouts, so you can track progress better.
If you don’t upgrade the only real question is whether RunKeeper is actually much more useful than Google Fit, which nowadays is a great little Wear OS run tracker in its own right.
Best Wear OS watch 2018
Best SAD wake-up lamps: beat those winter blues
In the parts of the world where the clocks have turned back, the winter nights are drawing in and the frost is coating the ground most mornings, it can feel difficult to prise yourself out of bed in the morning - especially when you see so little sunlight first thing on the way to the office and at the end of the day when you're leaving.
Plenty of people find this time of year difficult. Maybe your mood is a little low or you don't have the energy you usually have during summer. Although this is normal as the seasons change, it could also be a sign that you're suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD).
Also called 'winter depression' or 'winter blues', SAD is a condition that's associated with the colder, darker months of the year. It's thought to be linked to a lack of daylight that goes on to then slow the production of happiness hormone serotonin, making sufferers feel anything from a bit groggy to depressed.
Of course the first step if you're feeling low is to chat to your GP. But there are also some gadgets that are specially made to help you ease the effects of the seasonal change - gadgets that’ll be enjoyed not just by those feeling the effects of SAD, but anyone wanting a light-fuelled energy boost in the mornings or even throughout the day.
The important thing to remember is this isn't just about getting you up and giving you energy either. Plenty of light during the day will give you a better night's sleep as well. Your body naturally wants light and dark, even if living in some parts of the world means you get way more of the latter.
Here's our pick of the best blues-busting lamps on the market at the moment, from the small and portable to the big, bold and super bright.
It's not really fair to put the Philips EnergyUp Energy Lamp into this list, because it's not the same as the others. It won't wake you up from a peaceful slumber to a fake sunrise and fake bird sounds and it won't lull you off into dreamland either.
Instead, the EnergyUp lamp does exactly what it says on the tin. It's designed to give you a boost of energy throughout the day instead. This is perfect if you already have a wake-up lamp at home, but need something for your office or the kitchen countertop or anywhere else to keep up your energy levels.
It provides 10,000 lux of light intensity, which is about the same as an average day outside. It delivers it in the form of blue light, which keeps you energised and the best bit is according to Philips you only need to have it on you for 20-30 minutes a day to notice the energy-boosting benefits.
The egg-like Lumie BodyClock Elite 300 is one of the best wake-up lights we’ve tried. It’s not the most advanced wake-up light on this list, but it’s certainly the most useful. Not only does it wake you with a gradually building light (along with one of a selection of natural alarm sounds), but it also offers the best sunset feature, helping you drift off to sleep - which most of the competition do not offer at all.
Seven-day alarm settings can be programmed, allowing for different wake up times across the week, while there’s also the option to use it as an AM/FM radio or MP3 player (provided you load an SD card up with tracks) too. In addition, it also comes pre-loaded with meditation tracks to help calm you before taking a nap.
There are a few too many buttons for all the controls and alarm combinations, and there’s a little construction involved outside the box - you’ll need to insert a regular lightbulb, and clip on the glass shade, too. But once you’ve got used to its intricacies, it’s a lovely warm light to wake to that works nicely as general bedside lamp, too.
The Philips HF3520 is perhaps the best-looking wake-up light on this list, and one of the best overall performers from our test. Circular (like a mini sun!) on a conical base, it gives off a warm glowing light that can be set to one of 20 intensity settings, from gentle ember to a room-filling blast.
With two separate alarm slots (which, slightly annoyingly, have to be activated each time you want to use them) and five natural wake up sounds, the HF3520’s gradual light steps were naturally graded, offering a peaceful start to the day.
In a nice touch, a simple tap of the lamp sets its alarm into snooze mode. But the other controls, either dotted around the outer ring or the touch-sensitive ones on its front face, could be a bit fiddly, especially when programming different settings. You’ll want to keep the instruction manual handy for the first few days.
This Philips light is let down by one point that otherwise mars a wonderful device - the radio function gets gradually more distorted along with the rising intensity of its light. I’d still heartily recommend it, but consider that potential problem before purchasing.
A SAD wake-up lamp with a scented twist, the Lumie Bodyclock IRIS 500 also doubles up as an aromatherapy gadget. You can fill two diffusers, tucked away underneath the lamp shade, with different smelling oils which will then be heated by the IRIS 500 and released in line with your morning wake-up and bedtime routines.
While it was great to walk into a lavender-scented bedroom, it could sometimes feel a bit overwhelming to have the perfumes released so close to my head (with the lamp sat on a bedside table - a placement I’d expect to be somewhat unexceptional).
Again, like the previous Lumie, seven-day programming options are available, with a range of light intensities, as well as sunrise and sunset options. It also has a physical remote control, should that be useful to you. But the light felt a lot harsher than the Bodyclock Elite 300, and the alarm options less varied. Unless you’re really into aromatherapy, there are simpler options with better lamps available.
Whereas the previous lamps on this list have been intended for the bedroom, Beurer’s TL100 is intended for use throughout the day, hitting your SAD lows with a full-on bright-light blast.
Lighting up to an approximate intensity of 10,000 lux, it can be set to light up a room for up to two hours (in 15 minute increments), allowing you to keep track of how much time you’ve had in front of it.
Slim and standing about a foot tall, it’s attractive and discreet enough to have in a shared office - I’ve had it on in TechRadar towers every day for about a month now, without complaint.
Well, at least until I started playing with the mood light settings! With a Bluetooth-connected app (available for iOS and Android), the TL100 can be set to one of 256 different colors, pulsing out on a set of preset timers and patterns, or a single color on a custom timer. So when the SAD lamp has given you a lift, you can essentially set it to #partymode.
Did it make me feel any cheerier overall? That’s hard to say - so many factors can affect a mood during a day. But I’d say that having it on while working certainly made me feel more alert.
The Beurer WL90 has all the trappings of a great bedside SAD wake-up lamp, and definitely has the most feature-rich spec sheet. In addition to sunset and sunrise options, radio and melody alarms and multiple mood light colors controlled via smartphone app, it also has a Bluetooth connection for playing back songs from your smart devices.
It’s a reasonably attractive device too, with stereo 3W speakers sat either side of a relaxed lamp with a semi-circular shade. Its clock timer was easily visible in the dark too.
However, for anything but the most basic of functions, all controls rely on the smartphone app. This wouldn’t necessarily be a problem, were it not for the fact that the Bluetooth connection was so inconsistent. If it connected to my Android phone one in ten times, that would seem like a lot. With light color and music Bluetooth playback controls so reliant on the app, and those being the main reasons buy this option over the Lumie and Philips alternatives, it’s hard to recommend the WL90 while such problems persist.
Yes it's yet another Lumie lamp, but this is one of the newest from the brand and promises one of the best wake-up lamp experiences for under £150.
Like the other Lumie lamps in the list, the Bodyclock Shine 300 is a really effective device that promises to mimic sunrise and sunset. According to Lumie, its lamps are the devices of choice of The British Swimming team, who use the Lumie Bodyclock to get them up early for training on dark, winter mornings.
This particular lamp boasts improved LED lighting tech, which serves up an even more convincing sunrise and sunset lighting experience. It also has built-in FM radio and an alarm with lots of different sounds to choose from.
The most compact of the wake-up lamps on this list, the HF3505 sadly proved my least favorite. The least flexible in terms of alarm slots (only one is programmable), alarm sound options and sunrise settings (let alone offering a sunset), it is nowhere near as feature-rich as its competition.
That’s understandable, given the relative affordability of the HF3505. But affordability comes at a price - its LED offers one of the harshest, most-sterile of white lights of any lamp on this list, while the touch buttons on the front (paired with the process with which settings are navigated) made it a chore to use.
It may help you rise a little easier, but you won’t lose any sleep without it.
And now for something completely different. Seeing as this isn’t a tabletop lamp, you’d be forgiven for seeing how the Valkee Bright Light earphones qualify for a place on this list - if anything, they look more like a stylish MP3 player than a light source. But hear us out on why we’ve thrown in this wildcard option.
Valkee’s Bright Light earphones, rather than playing music, use fibre-optics to shine high intensity brightness light into your ear canals. Though the science behind the idea is a little sketchy, the company claims that regular sessions with the earphones can shake off the winter blues by triggering light-sensitive proteins in your brain - the ones which play a role in setting the hands for your internal body clock.
Charged over USB and good for more than a week’s worth of use against the recommended session amounts, it’s a discreet and portable alternative to the the Beurer TL-100, if not quite a like-for-like substitute for the wake up lamps listed here.
As with the TL-100, I’d be cautious to assign my faith in shaking the effects of seasonal affective disorder entirely over to the Valkee buds - or any one device without professional medical advice being sought out first. But it’s certainly a tidily designed gadget, should you try it and find it helps ease your symptoms.
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GoPro Hero 7 Black vs Hero 6 Black vs Hero 5 Black: 8 key differences you need to know
GoPro has no shortage of competitors today, each vying for a bigger slice of the action camera pie, but it remains the brand that many associate when they think of capturing any kinds of thrills.
Its wide range of suitable models is no doubt part of why this is: from its tiny budget Hero Session offering to the 360-degree-capturing delights of its Fusion model, there appears to be a camera for everyone.
The company’s Hero models are its most popular, with White, Silver and Black variants typically released at three different price points simultaneously. It’s the Black option that heads the triplet, with more powerful specs and an asking price to match, and the current option is the Hero7 Black. Look hard enough, though, and you can still find some of the older Hero5 Black and Hero6 Black models knocking around.
All three models share many commonalities, such as 4K video, 10m/33ft waterproofing without a case and Voice Control, together with Wi-Fi and Bluetooth, so what exactly do you gain by going for the newer versions? We drill into the spec sheets of all three to find out.
GoPro Hero7 Black vs Hero6 Black vs Hero5 Black: processorGoPro didn’t give the processing engine inside Hero5 Black any particular name, but the Hero6 Black was notable for being the first to feature a fresh 'GP1' processing engine.
This engine, which also continued to the Hero7 Black, provides additional features, better stabilisation than on the Hero5 Black and superior image quality too, which we'll look at more closely below. It also brought with it Global Tone Mapping for video to deliver up to two extra stops of dynamic range in high-contrast scenes, which, in turn, helped to boost color accuracy.
GoPro Hero7 Black vs Hero6 Black vs Hero5 Black: stabilisation
One thing that has consistently improved with every successive Hero model is image stabilisation.
In the Hero6 Black this came courtesy of the GP1 engine, and we found this to have a noticeable advantages over the system inside the Hero5 Black. The Hero7 Black, meanwhile, ramped things up even further, being the first model to offer HyperSmooth, which the company describes as gimbal-like stabilisation.
As we discovered in our review, this system is very effective at smoothing out bumps and knocks when travelling over rough terrain. It can be called upon when shooting right up to the maximum 4K/60p option, and on some of the other settings where it's not available a more standard stabilisation option is available in its place.
The biggest change between the Hero 5 Black and Hero 6 Black concerns their respective top frame rates when shooting 4K footage. While the Hero 5 Black tops out at 30fps, the Hero 6 Black powers on to deliver 60fps shooting at 4K. The Hero 5 Black does still offer frame rates beyond 30fps, but this comes at the cost of resolution.
Another difference between the models is down to the compression formats available. The Hero 5 Black only offers the H.264 (MPEG-4) codec, while the Hero 6 Black and Hero 7 Black offer both H.264 and H.265 (HVEC) flavours, thanks to the GP1 engine. H.265 is a newer and more efficient format, which has the result of you being able to squeeze more footage onto your card.
While the Hero 5 Black manages 240fps shooting at 720p, and 120fps capture at 1080p, the Hero 6 Black and Hero 7 Black are capable of 240fps at 1080p resolution. The latter model also adds an 8x Super Slow-mo option that slows down footage captured at these settings when playing it back in camera.
The Hero7 Black adds a handful off extra sweeteners to further separate it from its forebears
The Hero7 Black adds a handful off extra sweeteners to further separate it from its forebears. TimeWarp video provides stabilised hyperlapse-style results without you needing a tripod, with footage sped up to a maximum 30x, while another extra addition is the Short Clips feature, which restricts footage to either 15- or 30-second clips, disciplining you into capturing only the finest moments of your adventures.
Audio capture is also said to have been improved on the newer Hero 7 Black, partly thanks to a redesigned microphone membrane.
Each of the three models is capable of capturing 12MP stills, either in single-shot or 30fps burst modes, and each can also be set to a time-lapse mode. Each can also capture raw files in addition to JPEGs.
Where they differ is with the secondary capture options. The WDR (Wide Dynamic Range) option found on the Hero5 Black transformed into the HDR (High Dynamic Range) option on the Hero6 Black and Hero7 Black, taking advantage of the GP1 engine to better image quality under high-contrast conditions.
The most recent Hero7 Black also combined its HDR option with multi-frame noise reduction and local tone mapping into a single SuperPhoto mode. This uses scene analysis to work out which of these technologies (if any) to deploy when it senses they could be of use, saving you from having to manually call upon individual options.
GoPro Hero7 Black vs Hero6 Black vs Hero5 Black: Wi-Fi
One common criticism of the Hero line has been the time it takes to offload footage wirelessly from camera to smart device, so this is one area where it’s focused. The inclusion of 5GHz Wi-fi on the Hero6 Black delivered a 3x speed advantage over the Hero5 Black, and this was maintained for the newer Hero7 Black.
The Hero 6 Black and Hero 7 Black each offer a Touch Zoom option, which allows the user to swipe their finger up and down the side of the rear touchscreen to gradually zoom into the scene, whether they're shooting videos or images. While quality suffers as you zoom, it does at least provide a way to frame images at more standard focal lengths when the default option is a little too wide.
Despite being equipped with a touchscreen, Touch Zoom was only came to the line with the Hero 6 Black, although it's still possible to zoom to pre-determined points by touching the screen.
GoPro Hero7 Black vs Hero6 Black vs Hero5 Black: LivestreamingThe Hero 7 Black is alone in offering the option to livestream footage to Facebook, YouTube, Twitch and Vimeo platforms among others, with footage saved onto the camera’s microSDHC/SDXC memory card at the same time.
GoPro Hero7 Black vs Hero6 Black vs Hero5 Black: Vertical shooting
A smaller change on the most recent Hero7 Black is vertical shooting. The camera’s UI flips to portrait orientation when you have the camera positioned that way and saves images vertically, making it easier to embed into Instagram Stories and on other mobile-specific outputs.
Best action camera: 10 top models for the GoPro generation
UK businesses falling behind by not embracing AI
British businesses have been urged to embrace AI technology to help the country become a hub for development and innovation.
A new report from Microsoft has highlighted that the UK has "a clear opportunity" to strike out as an AI leader, but is currently being held back by the fact that many businesses don't have a concrete technology plan.
The report, which surveyed over a thousand business leaders and 4,000 workers across the UK, found that companies that have already begun using AI are already seeing tangible benefits.
UK AI useOverall, more than half (51 per cent) of the business leaders surveyed revealed they do not have an AI strategy in place to address the changing needs brought on by rapid technology innovation.
These changes are so severe that 41 per cent stated that they believe their current business model will cease to exist within the next five years.
Despite these worries, many businesses seem unwilling to change or alter their current practices, with less than half (46 per cent) of UK leaders saying they thought it was worth re-training their current workforce - despite nearly two-thirds (59 per cent) of workers saying they are open to experimenting with AI to do new things at work.
As a result, just 18 per cent of employees say they are actively learning new skills to help them keep up with future changes to their job as a result of AI, and 41 per cent saying they thought AI will push out older workers within the next five years.
“AI represents a huge opportunity, but only if UK organisations embrace its application in the right way," said Clare Barclay, chief operating officer, Microsoft UK.
"AI is not about making UK businesses leaner, it’s about how we use the technology to make them stronger. In doing so, we can make our work more meaningful and boost UK competitiveness.”
What is AI? Everything you need to know
New iPad Pro range brings Portrait Mode to Apple's tablets
We went a bit Apple-frantic yesterday with the launch of the new iPad Pro 11, iPad Pro 12.9, new Macbook Air and Mac Mini (2018) all getting a once-over from our tech eye.
It was during this run-through that we decided to check out one of the features on the new iPad Pro range - given that it has the TrueDepth camera for Face ID, allowing you to open the tablet with your face, would that mean that selfies are improved too?
After all, that camera was first brought on the iPhone X in 2017, and it allowed Apple to offer selfies with bokeh (background blur) with only a single sensor.
That trick has now come to the iPad for the first time, allowing you to take portrait shots of yourself that look a little bit niftier than just a generic pic of your wonderful visage.
You can also play with the lighting effects, as you can on the iPhone X and its newer 10-monikered bedfellows, the iPhone XS, iPhone XS Max and iPhone XR. However, there are only three effects available, with Stage Light and Stage Light Mono (where the background is darkened out) curiously not available.
We say curiously as there's certainly enough power under the hood to allow for it - the A12X Bionic chip is going to be light years ahead of the power of some phones Apple has made, and yet they can handle the Stage Light effect.
While it's cool that you can have extra features on your new tablet - and given the price of the new iPad Pro range, you'd expect that you'd have every single goshdarn option going - we didn't find it that easy to take a snap holding the tablet.
Yes, you've got a massive viewfinder that lets you find your face more easily, but we tried it on the large iPad Pro 12.9 and it wasn't the easiest thing to hold with a single hand.
But, if you're thinking for some inexplicable reason that you'd like a massive screen to take your selfies, at least you can now buy the new iPad Pro with the safe knowledge that option is now open to you.
Have a look at the new Apple tablet in our hands on: iPad Pro 11 review
Custom plans help boost O2 revenues
O2 is already feeling the benefits of its custom price plans as an increase in handset revenue and 120,000 new contract customers contributed to a 7.9 per cent increase in revenues to £1.5 billion during Q3.
The new tariffs were introduced at the end of August and allow customers to spread the cost of their device over the course of between three and 36 months at 0 per cent interest and are able to increase or decrease their data, text and call allowance on a month-by-month basis.
There are now 32.3 million users on the O2 network, a figure which also includes Tesco Mobile, Sky Mobile and Lycamobile customers, with O2 also citing a strong quarter” for its B2B units and an increase in service revenue.
Everything you need to know about 5G O2 financesThe company recently announced plans to bring 4G coverage to more rural communities in the UK, while it has also been trialling 5G at a testbed at The O2 in London. It’s most recent achievement was its first data test call on 5G using edge computing technology.
“O2 Custom Plans offer customers real choice, by giving them control, flexibility and transparency, and once again has driven the O2 point of difference in the market,” declared O2 CEO Mark Evans.
“Q3 saw us deliver strong commercial performance with continued growth in revenues and profitability as more customers chose to join us, stay with us and spend more with us. Our ongoing commitment to invest in our network includes enhancing 4G connectivity and preparing the ground for 5G. As champions of Mobile we continue to build for the future, where Mobile is one of the most powerful opportunities to strengthen the UK economy and enrich our society.”
O2 was a bright spot for the wider Telefonica Group, which saw profit rise during the same accounting period. Telefonica abandoned plans to sell O2 following the failed £10.5 billion merger with Three having been impressed by the performance of the businesses during the process.
An IPO was mooted shortly after in 2016, but this was delayed because of an apparent failure to attract investors. Telefonica still plans to take O2 public but will wait until after Brexit due to market uncertainty.
Here are the best O2 mobile deals for October 2018
From a start-up to a multinational - make the right business decision by moving to the cloud
Until some years ago it happened that the majority of companies had to create their own IT based up on their own small on-site data center, and not because it was the best solution, but because it was the only available one. It was due to several reasons, from the low level of the broadband connection to the traditionalism of the technical practice, from the lack of technical standards in the market to the lack of specific technology. Among the several solutions, today the cloud represents an alternative to this ‘on premise’ model that is reliable, affordable and possible on the different purpose.
That’s why organizations have started moving data centres and software to the cloud: cloud could be seen as the ‘IT-as-a-commodity’, a new way to accelerate and facilitate a business.
As a result, many companies continued to deploy cloud solutions in silos, while maintaining their traditional core systems, but little by little the digital transformation has shifted the argument. There has been a step ahead in the mentality of the companies and now we can see that is the ‘best solution’ and not the ‘cheapest one’ to drive the final choice, overpassing any uncertainty or doubt.
The cloud is not only an enabler for making businesses more digital, it’s also an essential business driver for growth.
Moving away from the data centreSimple, self-service, pay-per-use, scalable - there are many reasons to move to the cloud, and yet 65 percent of enterprise workloads are still running in owned or onsite data centres. Colocation data centres only host 20 percent of systems and just 9 percent are cloud-based.
For a business with an innovative tech-focused model, choosing the right cloud is an important step. By making this choice, you’ll ensure that technology is not a barrier that slows your business down, but rather a springboard for your go-to-market strategy. However, too often, businesses find a reason to convince themselves that moving to the cloud is not the best decision for them. On one hand you have large organizations talking about the supposed complexity, and on the other you have small businesses saying they are too small for the benefits to have a real impact.
This couldn’t be farther truth. From scalability to disaster recovery and digital transformation, the benefits of moving to the cloud are available to organizations of all shapes and sizes.
Moreover, let’s bear in mind that cloud is one of the possible ideal solution, but there is enough room for colocation, dedicated servers or managed dedicated servers and infrastructures too. Each provider has to find the right solution and it could also mean to integrate those services and approaches, by taking the best part of each of them, and at the same time, being able to hide their complexity so that the end user should only focus on his own business, and do not take care of the IT.
Making scalability easierMoving to the cloud gives businesses the ability to adapt to business growth. With the cloud, scalability can be achieved in two ways: horizontally, by manipulating the infrastructure to add or remove cloud servers and vertically, by increasing or reducing the individual components (vCPU, RAM, HD etc.) of a server.
Businesses of all sizes can achieve scalability needs, such as start-up CercaOfficina.it – a website through which you can choose a repair shop to fix your car. After only four years in business, CercaOfficina.it crossed the threshold of 100,000 requests. For this start-up, scaling up needed to scale fast and it also was the only way to stay in business. Another example is Tommigame.com, a startup aimed at supporting hospitalized children: it is a business realized by a digital health company using virtual reality and artificial intelligence in order to create immersive VR experience for those little patients. By using cloud solutions, it is possible to collect data about their psychomotor behavior, monitor and personalize their treatments. Also, in this case, the business growth so fast that it was necessary to scale up and provide tools and resources very quickly.
Cloud-based solutions enables businesses to find the perfect solution for every stage of growth. You can expand your IT infrastructure by increasing or decreasing the resources you need, depending on how the business is developing. You can start off with a relatively small infrastructure, then gradually scale up, eliminating latency that results from dormant physical IT infrastructure.
More effective disaster recoveryOver two-fifths (43%) of SMEs have no contingency measures in place to deal with an IT crisis. For businesses that don’t have a specialised IT department, disaster recovery (DR) generally means relying on a third-party provider. This is the case for most businesses, either because they think they’re too small to need DR, or because they are not able to justify the cost and resources needed to maintain traditional DR. For businesses that do have DR in place, a recent survey found that one in five (18%) lack confidence in their DR plans and almost half (46%) are not testing those plans on an annual basis.
Cloud-based DR offers solutions adapted for all types of firms. Whatever your size, cloud based DR offers a way to build up your resilience at a price that’s relative to the size of your business, and with smaller resource overheads when creating, implementing and testing your DR plan.
Accelerating digital transformationAs part of an overall five year and 3.5 million Euro investment plan, Nexive, Italy’s number one provider of private postal services, decided to digitize all of its operations, moving from on-site to cloud-based data centers.
By moving to a cloud-based model, Nexive was able to ensure reliable physical and digital services. This also put Nexive one step ahead of its competition, with a flexible and secure solution for its data.
Before moving to the cloud, Nexive’s data was stored on a private server. This approach was a costly one, requiring significant investment in human resources to manage processes, constant manual upgrades and high maintenance costs. The regulatory requirements and activities involved in ensuring compliance were also significant.
Moving to the cloud eliminated the maintenance and compliance costs from Nexive and offered a solution that could instantly scale up in case of an activity peak.
Moving to the cloud, and staying one step aheadFrom start-ups to multinationals, moving to the cloud is the best insurance against downtime – whether that be due to natural disasters, or human errors. It’s also the best way to respond to activity peaks and free business leaders concentrate on running their companies, rather than these potential concerns.
What’s more, having the right cloud solution provides protection for IT resources, the data the business holds and for the business processes it supports.
As the cloud becomes an everyday part of how we live and work, it will become increasingly difficult to not have it as an essential part of your business process. Businesses that fail to take this leap risk missing out on the many opportunities that cloud presents. And ultimately, they risk losing their customers, many of who now expect cloud-transformed experiences as the norm, to competitors that provide these experiences.
Stefano Cecconi, CEO of Aruba S.p.A
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Microsoft fixes Windows 10 October 2018 Update ZIP file bug in latest cumulative update
Microsoft has just released a cumulative update for Windows 10 Insiders in the Slow and Release Preview rings which addresses several problems, including the ZIP bug in Windows 10 October 2018 Update that was causing people to lose data.
The update is Build 17763.107 (KB4464455), and is available for Windows Insiders who have signed up for early versions of Windows 10.
While the ZIP file bug, which allowed people to accidentally overwrite existing files when moving .ZIP files into folders with files of the same name without warning, is the headline fix in this update, another problem has also been addressed.
Roaming profilesAccording to Microsoft’s release notes for the cumulative update, “We fixed an issue causing roaming profiles to not work correctly.” For anyone who has encountered issues with their profile when logging into Windows 10, this fix should hopefully sort that out.
Other fixes include fixing wrong details being shown in Task Manager, compatibility issues with anti-virus software and driver compatibility problems.
If you’re a Windows Insider you can install the update by going to Settings > Windows Update and checking for updates.
Hopefully these fixes will be brought to regular users soon.
Windows 10 October 2018 Update problems: how to fix themVia Wccftech
Cybersecurity: The latest news and statistics
In our increasingly digital world, cyberattacks are a daily risk for businesses and consumers alike.
While installing an antivirus is an essential first step for staying safe online in 2018, being informed regarding the latest cyberattacks will ensure that you’re prepared for when not if the next attack comes.
We’ve compiled a collection of recent security headlines and statistics to keep you up to date with the latest developments. The list will be regularly updated, so be sure to check back often.
Got an addition for us? Contact mike.moore@futurenet.com
We've also highlighted the best antivirus of 2018
While the first half of 2018 was relatively uneventful in terms of cyberattacks, Malwarebytes identified a 55 per cent increase during the last three months as cybercriminals increased the number as well as the severity of their attacks. This includes a major rise in the number of ransomware attacks carried out as well as an 84 per cent increase in banking trojans compared to the previous quarter...
A significant portion of organisations are ill-prepared for the event of a cyberattack and four in ten have gone through such an event in the last 12 months according to a report by BSI’s Cybersecurity and Information Resilience division...
New data from Gemalto found that 4.5 billion records were compromised during the first half of 2018 as businesses were busy preparing for GDPR to go into effect. The US was hit the hardest with 3.25bn of breached data entries while the UK was the highest country in Europe with 22 data incidents during the first half of 2018...
A survey published by Bitkom found that two thirds of the country’s manufacturers have fallen victim to a cyberattack costing Europe’s largest economy around $50bn. A third of the companies reported having their employees phones stolen while a quarter said they had lost sensitive data...
Research from Positive Technologies revealed that cyberattacks increased by 47 per cent during Q2 2018. Data theft has grown in popularity as hackers move away from mass campaigns with personal data (30 per cent) and credentials (22 per cent) being the most attractive targets...
Cryptocurrency thefts have risen to almost $1 billion over the course of 2018 according to a study by cybersecurity firm CipherTrace. The majority of thefts come from cryptocurrencies and trading platforms being hacked, with smaller, more frequent attacks becoming increasingly common...
A new report from KPMG estimates that investment in AI, along with machine learning and robotic process automation (RPA) technology, is set to reach $232bn by 2025. This is a significant increase from the $12.4bn spen today as more and more organisations adopt AI in their business...
Nokia 7.1 is the smartphone you need for your perfect holiday
Forget “poolside poses” and “hotdog legs”. According to a recent survey commissioned by Nokia, over half of 1500 millennials believe creative selfies and landscapes attract the most engagement from followers.
Perhaps that's why over a third of those millennials are found to be jealous of other people’s holiday snaps. After all, a landscape says a lot more about a holiday than a hotel swimming pool.
Getting those snaps right can be a challenge, though, particularly if you don’t have the right hardware in hand, and that’s why the new Nokia 7.1 is the ideal holiday smartphone.
Its sharp, fast ZEISS optics, high-quality dual rear cameras and Auto HDR processing let you shoot carefree with high quality images.
The Nokia 7.1 feasts on sunsets, handling low-light conditions with ease, while its quick autofocus helps capture spur of the moment action shots.
If you’re struggling to take a picture of a friend or loved one—don’t worry, 55 percent of millennials admit they get help from tools and apps to improve their photos—extra features like Live Bokeh mode use the rear depth camera to blur out backgrounds.
Live Bokeh is similar to using a big DSLR camera with an expensive lens, except in a pocket-friendly (and wallet-friendly: the Nokia 7.1 costs just £299) format. It’s like shooting in a studio, wherever you are. Live Bokeh works with the front camera too, bringing your selfies into even sharper focus.
The Nokia 7.1 is also a master of sharing, which is ideal for the 56 percent of millennials that post their holiday snaps right there and then, rather than waiting to get back home. You can live stream to Facebook (which is still commands over 40 percent of photo shares) and YouTube directly from the camera app.
With Google Photos as your built-in gallery, you get unlimited free storage for all your memories. Plus, the app can help you effortlessly search and share memories instantly.
Google Photos recognises a meaningful moment like a summer BBQ or a wedding, selects your best shots and even suggests who you may want to share them with. So go ahead, search for a photo you took years ago with just a single word.
The Nokia 7.1 is a great phone for holidays—but it’s not just about the camera.
To keep your battery going, Android One phones such as the Nokia 7.1 prioritise background activity for your most important apps and even reduce power usage while in your pocket.
With just 30 minutes of charge, it replenishes 50 percent of the battery. Even if you use the Nokia 7.1 to keep you entertained on a long flight, give it a quick boost once you land and it’s ready to carry on all night.
As an Android One phone, the Nokia 7.1 comes with Google’s latest mobile software built in. This combination of high-quality hardware and software generates an experience that’s smart, secure, and easy to use.
The Google Assistant enables you to get things done quicker and easier while on the go. Google Photos allows an unlimited number of images to be stored in the cloud at high quality. You can also make use of Google Maps for directions and local information and use Google Pay for your purchases.
The price for all this reliability and creativity? In case you missed it: the Nokia 7.1 costs just £299 SIM-free, and you can head to Nokia.com to find out more.
We could see a Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III in early 2019
The Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark II is one of our favorite pocket compacts, but it looks like we could see a replacement in early 2019 if the rumors are to be believed.
According to CanonRumors.com, it's possible we'll see a PowerShot G7 X Mark III as early as CES 2019, with the camera aimed at both those seeking a premium compact camera as well as those who want to vlog on a budget.
This means that the new camera will get 4K video capture (the Mark II only has 1080p), along with Canon's Dual Pixel AF system.
Some of the other rumored specs include a new 24.1MP 1.0-inch CMOS sensor and the ability to shoot at 10fps. There could be a slightly longer zoom range than the Mark II's as well (currently 24-100mm f/1.8-2.8), though a detailed spec list hasn't been leaked just yet.
As well as rumors of a new PowerShot G7 X Mark III, we could also see a replacement to the PowerShot G9 X Mark II at the same time. We'll keep you posted as soon as we get more news.
Best compact camera: 10 top compact cameras to suit every budget
Google denies claims of Home Hub security issues
There's no doubt that we are living in the age of the smart home, and despite misgivings around security issues, the public has largely accepted connected devices with open arms (and wallets).
Unfortunately, it seems some of those misgivings aren't completely baseless, as developer Jerry Gamblin found he was able to hack into his new Google Home Hub with relative ease.
He claims he was able to do this due to an undocumented API, which allowed him to reboot the Home Hub, erase the wireless network setup, and disable notifications, which is fairly alarming for Home Hub owners.
Gamblin also released a video, which appears to show him rebooting the Home Hub remotely:
Hackers gonna hackGoogle has denied Gamblin's claims, telling Android Authority that "all Google Home devices are designed with user security and privacy top of mind and use a hardware-protected boot mechanism to ensure that only Google-authenticated code is used on the device. In addition, any communication carrying user information is authenticated and encrypted."
How concerned we should be about the security of our Home Hubs and other smart devices is unclear. Are we really surprised that a hacker was able to hack into a smart device?
Of course, it's worrying when you bring things like personal data including voice searches, photos, and bank details into the mix, but we wouldn't suggest throwing your Home Hub out the window just yet.
Google Home Hub review
Your Huawei Watch is about to get faster with new Wear OS
The original Huawei Watch and Huawei Watch 2 are two of the best Wear OS watches (originally Android Wear) products released on Google's operating system, and each is about to get a touch better.
A new version of Wear OS (version 2.17) is coming to both the original device and the latter watch from the company. If you own one, you should be able to download the Wear OS update now.
It brings with it a variety of new UI changes for both watches as well as overall improved speed. That's according to the first few who received it and noted so to Android Police as Huawei hasn't included a change log with the new update.
Years of supportThe improved interface means you're now able to swipe right on the watch face to access Google Fit and left to find the Google Assistant. There may be other improvements that haven't been discovered by users yet.
Considering the original Huawei Watch came out in 2015, it's both surprising and reassuring to know the company is continuing to support software updates now the devices have switched from Android Wear to the newer Wear OS platform.
Huawei just announced another new smartwatch called the Watch GT, but this doesn't run Wear OS and instead includes the company's own software.
Best Wear OS watch 2018: our list of the top ex-Android Wear smartwatches
With a new branding, 1&1 IONOS wants to be more than just a hosting provider
1&1 recently announced that it would be joining forces with ProfitBricks, the German specialist for cloud infrastructure solutions, to form a new united brand called 1&1 IONOS.
The change is meant to accelerate the firm's ambitions to move beyond just web hosting and it will give customers the opportunity to use a personal consultant free of charge as their central contact person for all questions related to products.
TechRadar Pro sat down with 1&1's Achim Weiss (the founder/CEO of ProfitBricks) to learn more about 1&1 IONOS and how the new entity will benefit its customers.
We've also highlighted the best website hosting
Alexa gets new navigation skills for the Fire TV Cube
Amazon's Alexa smart assistant is no stranger to updates to expand its range of skills or functions. The latest, however, is bringing in some new directional functionality to better navigate streaming apps and services through the Amazon Fire TV Cube.
Users are now able to use voice commands to move up, down, left, or right across a selection screen, mimicking the Fire TV remote's d-pad and moving closer to a truly hands-free viewing experience.
Commands like 'Alexa, go up' or 'Alexa, move left' can replace the basic remote functionality and make it all that easier to start your weekend TV binge - with the option to use Alexa to 'select' specific content seen on screen, rather than every search query being run through the app's entire content library.
The feature has been quietly rolling out over the past few weeks, but has now reached all Amazon Fire TV Cube devices.
This girl is on fireThere's currently no word on when the feature will be coming to less premium streaming devices like the Fire TV Stick, but we'd be surprised if Amazon didn't bring it across its entire Fire TV range eventually.
Amazon is going full throttle on smart home connectivity, with a widening range of streaming devices and an increasingly flexible smart assistant appearing in everything from Sonos One hi-fi systems to Alexa-enabled microwaves.
The best Amazon Fire TV deals and sales out there
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