Many consumer electronics buyers in the U.S. end up purchasing counterfeit goods, a study commissioned by Canon reveals, with almost one in five buyers having paid for such devices in 2013 without knowing they were fakes. Furthermore, of those people who unknowingly purchased fake gadgets, more than half thought that they were actually able to spot counterfeit electronics.
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Like it or not, Windows XP is no longer a smart option for personal computing. Microsoft went against its word and issued one last security update for the aging platform on Thursday, but new security holes that pop up will go unfixed and your personal data is at risk as a result. It’s time to move on.
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Have you ever wished you could charge your Android phone with the same kind of magnetic power connector used in Apple’s MacBooks? If so, then one developer at DroidBuild has created a new smartphone case that might pique your curiosity. The developer created the new case by modding a spare MagSafe power connection lying around and attaching it to a 3D printed ABS faceplate. The result is a case that fits perfectly on his Galaxy Note II and that lets him charge the device just as he’d charge a MacBook Air. While this is obviously just a prototype and won’t be going on sale anytime soon, it’s still a really cool concept that anyone who has access to a spare MagSafe and a 3D printer might consider trying themselves. A picture of the case follows below.
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Last month, the Heartbleed bug was revealed as a major vulnerability in the world’s most popular encryption method, OpenSSL. Since Heartbleed was uncovered, we still don’t know too much about the people behind OpenSSL. To find out more, BuzzFeed has written a great profile of the two guys named Steve who basically control OpenSSL. Steve Henson, a 46-year-old British mathematics Ph.D., contributes roughly 60% of the code behind OpenSSL, and Steve Marquess, a former Defense Department consultant, runs the OpenSSL Software Foundation, which raises money to support the continued development of OpenSSL.
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Yahoo this week announced that it won’t be honoring “Do Not Track” requests from users anymore either, because it wants to offer them a personalized web experience whether they like it or not.
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Although the traditional narrative about Apple and Samsung is that Apple is the leader and Samsung is the fast follower, that’s just not always the case. For instance, Apple will likely release its first-ever phablet later this year more than two years after Samsung released the first Galaxy Note. And now Business Insider points out that Apple is taking cues from Samsung in another area: Marketing.
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Newer Android smartphones like Samsung’s Galaxy S5 and the HTC One (M8) ship with fantastic new software features designed to combat the biggest problem in the smartphone space: battery life. For most handset owners though, there is no such feature. Battery technology simply isn’t advancing quickly enough to accommodate developments in other areas, such as higher-resolution displays. As a result, we’re forced to be more aware of the remaining charge on our phones at all times, and we also have to take certain steps to preserve battery life as much as we can.
Luckily for Android users, there’s an app for that.
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With all the fantastic smartphones that have launched in recent months, finding a great phone is becoming easier than ever. Finding the right wireless provider and the right service plan, however, can be a much more daunting task.
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Following the major Heartbleed security issue that affected millions of websites, a different vulnerability has been discovered that could have allowed hackers to steal certain personal data from users. CNET reports that a security flaw in the OAuth and OpenID online login protocols could be used to steal data and redirect users to malicious websites.
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For many email users, Gmail seemed like a gift from the heavens when it first debuted in April 2004. Compared to other popular email services at the time it was unique, simple and free, and it offered far more storage than any rival service. Fast-forward to 2014 and Gmail is still one of the top email services in the world, but it has also gotten far more complex. Gmail was all about making people’s lives easier in 2004 but now, 10 years later, it’s a feature-packed service with so many great value-adds that it’s easy to miss things in all of that clutter.
Thankfully, there are plenty of great guides out there to help you optimize and organize Gmail so you can ensure that you’re getting the most out of Google’s great free email service.
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