Thursday, February 19, 2015

Software : Pebble with color display on the way? Find out February 24

Software : Pebble with color display on the way? Find out February 24

Pebble with color display on the way? Find out February 24

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Pebble with color display on the way? Find out February 24

With the long-awaited Apple Watch now expected in April and pretty much everyone else in the tech business throwing out new smartwatch models like T-shirt cannons at a sporting event, the company that helped start the craze appears to be gearing up for phase three.

The official Pebble website has been taken over by a timer on Thursday morning, which is gradually counting down until the calendar flips a page to Tuesday, February 24 at exactly 10AM Eastern standard time (EST).

So what should Pebble fans expect? A recent interview with Pebble CEO Eric Migicovsky earlier this month teased both new hardware and software this year, complete with a new framework to better interact with smartphones.

The countdown teaser displays a happy face on a first-generation blue Pebble display, which doesn't offer many clues, unless you jump to the conclusion that existing devices may wind up receiving a few cool new features.

Pebble countdown

Time will tell

According to little birdies singing in the ears of 9to5Mac today, there could be any number of items on Pebble's roadmap, including a new watch said to be "slightly wider" with a "color, e-paper-like display... encased in an overall thinner design."

While the rumored new model will reportedly offer similar battery life to the current Pebble and Pebble Steel models, the company could integrate a microphone and possibly even sensors for a heart rate monitor, an option that's increasingly popular with competitors.

One thing not expected to arrive on the next model is a touchscreen, although Pebble may make up for that by offering a "dramatically different" operating system said to be redesigned from the ground up.

It's hard to know for sure how much (or how little) of these leaks Pebble plans to announce come next Tuesday, but we'll be sure to bring you all of the news as it happens.

Opinion: Oh no, Lenovo: why bloatware needs to get the boot

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Opinion: Oh no, Lenovo: why bloatware needs to get the boot

Introduction

Lenovo hit the headlines for all the wrong reasons this week: the world's biggest PC manufacturer has been accused of installing malware on its PCs. The software, called Superfish, appears to be intercepting internet traffic to inject third-party advertising – and in doing so, it makes affected laptops vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks, even if the software has been uninstalled.

That isn't just dangerous to users – it's dangerous to Lenovo's reputation too. Lenovo has now acted and suspended installations of Superfish on new PCs, but it's been shipping affected hardware for months.

What is bloatware, and why should you care?

Bloatware used to mean software that was poorly made or designed, but it has also come to mean unnecessary software that's been pre-installed by the hardware manufacturer. A device driver or a manufacturer-branded utility for controlling a graphics card isn't usually bloatware, but a price checking toolbar or a "visual search engine" usually is.

The Lenovo case is unusual because bloatware is not normally malicious. The most common kind of bloatware is a trial or a "lite" version of a paid-for product, which is installed in the hope that consumers will then upgrade. However, some bloatware is adware (software that adds advertising to your web browsing or everyday computing) or spyware (software that monitors what you do and sends details to a third-party, such as a marketer). Even if the unwanted software is entirely benign it takes up space and can make a significant difference to your PC's performance.

Don't just take our word for it: take Microsoft's. To promote its $99 (around £64, AU$127) bloat-free PC service, Signature, it said that the six Signature PCs it tested entered sleep 23.1% faster, started up 39.6% faster, and resumed 51.3% faster than otherwise identical "cluttered, trialware-filled, slower-than-should-be" laptops. Microsoft has since removed those claims from the web, presumably because it made its bloatware-bundling OEM customers unhappy.

Why bloatware is bad for business

This week we discovered that Sony is considering hiving off its smartphone business. Bloatware is partly to blame: Sony made excellent hardware, stuffed it with bloatware and watched rival firms snap up most of the market. One of those rivals is Apple, whose computers are also famously free of bloatware, and the other is Samsung, whose imminent Galaxy S6 smartphones will apparently ship without the relatively innocuous bloatware that has nevertheless been implicated in the less than stellar sales of the Galaxy S5.

Given that consumers hate it, and it makes otherwise speedy PCs sluggish, bloatware is clearly a bad idea. So why on Earth do manufacturers persist in installing bloatware?

The answer, of course, is money.

It's all about the cash

Critics of bloatware often point to Apple's bloatware-free and sticker-free PCs, but it's easy to keep your PCs pure when you have a gross margin of 39.9%. That's inflated somewhat by the massive margins on smartphones and tablets, but analysts suggest the margin on Macs is still somewhere around 18.9%.

Windows PCs sell for much less money and with much lower margins: according to The Guardian, the weighted per-PC profit of the five biggest PC manufacturers (HP, Dell, Lenovo, Acer and Asus) fell from $15.71 (around £10.20, AU$20.20) in 2010 to $14.87 (around £9.60, AU$19.10) in 2013, and the same report notes that Acer may have made a loss on almost every PC it sold from late 2011 to late 2013, with its best ever profit margin raking in a massive $1.13 (around £0.75, AU$1.45) per PC. In the same period, Apple's per-PC profit was between $230 and $240 (around £155, AU$310).

The problem is particularly pronounced with consumer products. Firms such as Dell can operate with low margins because they have other products and services to sell to businesses, usually at much higher margins. That doesn't happen in the consumer market, which is almost entirely price driven. There's every chance the person you're selling to today bought from a different firm last time and will buy from a different firm next time.

In those circumstances, a software firm offering to double your profit margin if you pre-install their program sounds like the kind of offer you can't refuse, and many manufacturers don't. They call it adding value, but that's just marketing nonsense: with very few exceptions the only value bloatware really adds is to the manufacturer's profit and loss account. If apps such as Superfish were so valuable, we'd seek them out and install them ourselves.

Beat the bloatware

Bloatware is likely to be around for the foreseeable future, but that doesn't mean you have to put up with it. If you don't buy solely on price and you look for business-oriented machines you're likely to avoid the worst excesses (and of course many business users will roll out images to their computers containing only the applications they want). Furthermore, if time is money then you might consider shelling out the extra dough for the Signature edition of your chosen device (if there's one available) or buying a Surface, because Microsoft doesn't put bloatware on its own machines.

Failing that, tools such as the PC Decrapifier do exactly what the name suggests, automating something that's relatively simple but fairly time consuming, or you could reinstall Windows from scratch (a full installation, not a reset or refresh: OEMs can customise the images Windows uses for those in Windows 8).

In the long-term we'd like to see Microsoft do with Windows what Google has done with Android – that is, crack down on what OEMs can do to change the default experience. It could do so via the OEM license agreement and financial incentives: for example, Windows 8.1 licenses are currently discounted for OEMs who agree to set Bing as the default search engine, and free if the devices are also below a certain size and price. The same approach could work perfectly well with Microsoft offering discounts dependent on a no-bloatware clause, or by adding such a clause to the existing criteria.

Windows of opportunity

That may happen with Windows 10, which is widely expected to adopt a freemium business model. That could mean ultra-cheap Windows machines running free Windows, possibly with all the unpleasantness we're familiar with, and slightly more expensive paid-Windows machines that are blissfully free of bloatware and which run as their engineers, not their accountants, intended.

Satya Nadella says Microsoft wants users to love Windows 10. Banishing the bloatware would certainly make that a lot more likely.

Branded sign-in coming to Office 365

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Branded sign-in coming to Office 365

Office 365 users have been spoiled lately and Microsoft has kept up the steady flurry of enhancements by adding three new identity and access management features.

A blog post first explained that company branding can now be added to the sign in page and access panel where they were originally only available for customers with an Azure Active Directory (AD) Basic, AD Premium, or Enterprise Mobility Suite subscription.

Users logging in to select a software as a service (SaaS) will now be met by customised branding on both the Office 365 and Access Panel sign in pages with enterprises able to personalise the text, colour and images. Once logged in there is also the chance to continue this branding with custom text, colour and images.

Microsoft taking enterprise seriously

The third new feature adds self-service password resets for cloud users and it does exactly what it says on the tin by utilising preconfigured personal information to allow users to recover their password without involving the system administrator.

Microsoft is taking its enterprise cloud commitments very seriously as part of its roadmap for the future and the latest enhancements come just a day after it adopted an international standard for protecting personal data stored in the cloud.

Via: Microsoft

Microsoft sheds light on Office 365 encryption expansion

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Microsoft sheds light on Office 365 encryption expansion

Microsoft has released a new set of guidelines to its Office 365 customers on how they can configure encryption to protect sensitive data as well as updates on when they will be available to mobile customers.

A blog post explained that Office 365 encryption is used in two major ways by Microsoft with one implemented in the service itself and the second way giving Office 365 customers control over how it works.

Customer have three primary encryption controls that are Office 365 Message Encryption, Information Rights Management (IRM) and S/MIME, which can all be adapted to meet the requirements of specific companies.

Office 365 Message Encryption allows messages sent to external recipients to be protected and they require a Microsoft account of unique password to open the file, and Microsoft also confirmed that there are now apps in the Google Play and iOS App Store to allow them to be viewed on mobile devices.

Shipping with Windows 10

Companies using IRM can encrypt information within the organisation so that only specific people can read certain messages or access information. S/MIME, meanwhile, is a peer-to-peer encryption control that means only the two people involved in the exchange can view the data.

Microsoft plans to deliver enhancements to Message Encryption in Q2 2015 with message expiration, message renovation and user triggered encryption all on the way. IRM will also be expanded to other platforms with Office for iOS, Mac, and Android all seeing it arrive this year, and it will be a part of Windows 10 straight out of the box.

Via: Microsoft

Lenovo accused of pre-installing 'bank-intercepting' adware on laptops

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Lenovo accused of pre-installing 'bank-intercepting' adware on laptops

Lenovo will be feeling green around the gills following reports of fishy activity taking place on its consumer laptops.

According to posts by users on the company's forum, adware called Superfish has been caught hijacking browsers to inject third-party ads on Google searches and websites without permission.

It apparently does so using self-signed certificates to fool browsers into displaying them. One forum user claimed that the program had intercepted a web connection to their bank, potentially allowing Superfish to collect data without question.

Another, who pledged to return his lurgy-riggen laptop after discovering the adware, described it as, "A blatant man-in-the-middle attack breaking any privacy laws."

Scaling back

In reply to the growing number of posts from disgruntled users, Lenovo administrator Mark Hopkins replied in a separate thread to confirm that Lenovo has removed Superfish from its consumer laptops. The company has also requested that the developer issues a patch to plug the security snafu.

He wrote: "Due to some issues (browser pop up behavior for example), with the Superfish Visual Discovery browser add-on, we have temporarily removed Superfish from our consumer systems until such time as Superfish is able to provide a software build that addresses these issues.

"As for units already in market, we have requested that Superfish auto-update a fix that addresses these issues."

It's unknown how many Lenovo laptops containing the software are still on the market. In a statement to TechRadar, Lenovo confirmed that it is still investigating cases related to Superfish.

It said: "Lenovo removed Superfish from the preloads of new consumer systems in January 2015. At the same time Superfish disabled existing Lenovo machines in market from activating Superfish. Superfish was preloaded onto a select number of consumer models only. Lenovo is thoroughly investigating all and any new concerns raised regarding Superfish."

Download of the Day: Templates for Office

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Download of the Day: Templates for Office

If you thought the templates inside your copy of Office were the only ones available then think again as Templates for Office offers even more ways to create diverse content using all parts of Office.

Why you need it

Office is the most popular productivity suite of all time yet there are certain limitations to what you can do with the product straight out of the box and it's something that ultimately doesn't need to hold you back.

Templates for Office is a free set of templates for all parts of Office that can be downloaded directly from Microsoft to be used with Word, Excel or PowerPoint, and there are quite literally thousands of options available.

It allows you to turn Word into a tool to help you push your career to the next level through a wealth of CV and cover letter templates as well as guides that will enable you to create event flyers for your next big event. Add a dash of colour to benign Excel spreadsheets, turn your budgets into colourful representations of company performance or alternatively produce a revision schedule for your next set of exams that makes it easier to knuckle down. There are even a slew of professional looking PowerPoint presentation templates to make your next briefing stand out against the bog standard PowerPoint templates on offer.

Browsing through the vast selection is simple with a long-list of categories to choose from including cards, calendars, budgets, health and fitness, education, financial management, schedules, surveys, menus, minutes and a lot more.

That list barely lights the touch paper of what can be achieved by using Templates for Office, so head over to the site now to start finding out how the raft of templates available can help you.

Key Features

Works on: All versions of Office

Versions: Free

All programs included: There are a number of templates available for whichever major part of the Office suite you are using meaning that Excel spreadsheets, Word documents and PowerPoint presentations can all be enhanced.

Simple browsing: Finding templates is incredibly easy with the ability to narrow down the search by category and by whether the templates are for Word, PowerPoint or Excel.

Easy to implement: Once you have downloaded one or a number of templates, opening them is as simple as accessing the Office program and then opening up the template you want to use.

Former GM boss thinks Apple's car ambitions should shift into park

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Former GM boss thinks Apple's car ambitions should shift into park

In case you haven't heard, Apple may or may not toiling away on a smart electric car - but at least one industry executive thinks it could wind up being a fool's errand, and is offering some free advice on the subject.

Bloomberg today added fuel to ongoing rumors that Apple may be secretly working on its own electric automobile, with a retired industry veteran weighing in on some of the challenges the iPhone maker could face.

Former General Motors Chief Executive Officer Dan Akerson cited the "low-margin, heavy-manufacturing" aspect of the auto business as a key reason for Apple shareholders to be wary of such plans, despite a spike in the company's shares yesterday after the news first broke.

"They'd better think carefully if they want to get into the hard-core manufacturing. We take steel, raw steel, and turn it into car. They have no idea what they're getting into if they get into that," Akerson remarked.

Stick to the dashboard

The former CEO sounds envious of Apple's lucrative profit margins after selling 74.5 million iPhones during the last quarter alone, but cautions the company's long-term prospects for success should give shareholders pause.

"A lot of people who don't ever operate in it don't understand and have a tendency to underestimate" the regulatory and safety requirements imposed upon the automotive industry, Akerson added.

Akerson feels Apple would have a far better chance partnering with existing automakers with products like CarPlay, citing infotainment systems as one area the executive would have gladly turned over to Apple during his days at GM.

The 66-year-old GM veteran stepped down from the Detroit automaker last year, but during his four-year tenure, he expanded the company's electric car offerings, while focusing more on in-car technology like wireless broadband.
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