Software & Apps - Page 55

TikTok is without a doubt spreading like wildfire, but if you are a member of the US Navy and want to enjoy some short, quirky videos, don't hold your breath.

Reuters has reported that the United States Navy has banned the use of TikTok on any government-issued mobile devices. Why have they done this? Allegedly, the app's software created by ByteDance poses a "cybersecurity threat" to personal information.

Pentagon spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Uriah Orland didn't specify what this "cybersecurity threat" was, but he did warn all Navy troops to be very mindful of the app, and asked everyone to "safeguard their personal information." Orland also said that this ban was an effort to "address existing and emerging threats". Due to TikTok being owned by Chinese company ByteDance, the US military could be safeguarding their hardware from potential information scraping software that could be in TikTok.

Facebook is reportedly working on its own operating system, in the hopes that sometime in the future it can pull back its reliance on Android. A new report from The Information says that the co-author of Windows NT, Mark Lucovsky, is leading the project.

We don't know how Facebook's own OS would work exactly, but we do know that Facvebook currently uses a modified version of Android to run its Oculus and Portal devices. Facebook's head of hardware, Andrew Bosworth, explains: "We really want to make sure the next generation has space for us. We don't think we can trust the marketplace or competitors to ensure that's the case. And so we're gonna do it ourselves".

Ficus Kirkpatrick, one of the bosses of Facebook's internal AR and VR departments, says that "it's possible" that future Facebook hardware won't rely on Android. Right now, Google has a nice stranglehold over Facebook's hardware, and Facebook sees that as a big issue, that it is now trying to resolve.

Information has been gathered by PreciseSecurity that reveals a list of the most commonly exploited applications in the third quarter of 2019.

According to PreciseSecurity, Microsoft Office solutions and applications are the most commonly exploited applications around the world. The data taken over the third quarter of 2019 shows that 72.85% of cyber exploits are done in Microsoft Office products.

The following software applications that come after Microsoft Office are: web browsers with 13.47%, Android with 9.09%, Java with 2.36%, Adobe Flash with 1.57%, and PDF with 0.66%. So, where are these cyber exploits coming from? PreciseSecurity traced the exploits back to five top countries. The United States with 79.16% of exploits, the Netherlands with 15.58%, Germany with 2.35%, France with 1.85%, and Russia with 1.05%. For more information about the exploits check out this link here.

The Epilepsy Foundation has filed an official criminal complaint with law enforcement agencies for what they consider as attacks on users with epilepsy.

According to the report, Twitter trolls have been using the Epilepsy Foundation Twitter handle as a way of distributing flashing videos or strobing lights to a number of people with epilepsy. The Epilepsy Foundation says that these posts, which are photosensitive visual patterns, were posted to trigger epileptic people into seizures.

Jacqueline French, M.D., chief medical and innovation officer of the Epilepsy Foundation and professor of Neurology at NYU Langone Health's Comprehensive Epilepsy Center said, "Flashing lights at certain intensities or certain visual patterns can trigger seizures in those with photosensitive epilepsy. While the population of those with photosensitive epilepsy is small, the impact can be quite serious. Many are not even aware they have photosensitivity until they have a seizure."

Instagram has just rolled out a new feature for the layout section of Instagram Stories. This new feature will allow users to create a cool collage.

The news was announced via the official Instagram Twitter account, which says that users can now capture and share multiple photos in their stories. The new update adds a collage feature that allows users to choose between two and six photos to combine together.

Instagram are continuously thinking of new innovative ways to keep its userbase using their stories section and not go back over to Snapchat. Or on the other side of the fence - attract Snapchat users over to Instagram. Instagram will no doubt, continue to add new features to their layout section, that will be designed to attract new users and keep their regular ones.

Social media platforms are in a perpetual war against 'harmful' content, and are always looking for new ways to keep the users on their platform safe.

Instagram is now the latest social media platform to launch an attack on potentially harmful content, and it's all in the name of keeping their user base safe. Instagram's AI will now officially comb through each caption to every image uploaded to its servers and determine whether or not the caption that the Instagram user chose is potentially harmful.

How does this work? Instagram's AI will take a user's caption and then compare it to the log of previously flagged 'harmful' comments, and if the caption is similar to these comments, the AI will send the Instagram user a push notification regarding their caption. Basically, Instagram's AI is fed data (flagged comments) and then uses that data as a benchmark for what is "offensive" or potentially "harmful". Then if anything comes close to that benchmark, warnings are sent out to the users who have crossed the line.

Your Windows and macOS Catalina just need a better start without iTunes this year. For Windows users, iTunes has long been out-dated. For macOS users, the love-hate relationship with iTunes is becoming more complex as they jump on the boat of macOS Catalina.

Since the old iTunes has been replaced by three new apps on Catalina, some consider themselves trapped in Apple's money-sucking whirlpool.

And it's not just for Mac users. Legacy iTunes, for example, on Windows is also a long-standing headache. So, if you set out to find an iTunes alternatives for macOS Catalina and Windows 10, here we have a few listed for different purposes - for data syncing, management and music/video playback, respectively.

Google has brought a new feature to its Google Photo's app, and this new feature encourages people to share their snaps with their friends and family.

Google has taken to its official Twitter account to announce that Google Photos now allows users to share their images with friends inside the app. According to Janvi Shah, product manager at Google Photos, "This feature isn't designed to replace the chat apps you already use, but we do hope it improves sharing memories with your friends and family in Google Photos".

This feature uses the recipient's Gmail address as a means of sending an image to someone and can be done by pressing on an image and tapping the 'share' option. Users can like photos, comment in the conversation, and even save sent images to their own galleries. Google says on their blogpost that this feature will be rolling out for both Android and iOS over the next few days. Be sure to update your Google Photo's app on whatever platform you are on to receive this new feature.

Following up on yesterday's post regarding Twitter announcing a purge of inactive accounts across their platform, the social media platform has now stopped in their tracks until further notice.

Since yesterday's announcement of the coming purge planned for this December, Twitter has taken to their support account on their platform to announce that the purge won't be happening. This halt in their plans is due to many users concerns over Twitter potentially removing accounts of deceased people.

Twitter has said that this "was a miss on our part" and that they will now "not be removing any inactive accounts until we create a new way for people to memorialize accounts." Twitter also detail that for the time being the inactive account removals (when they go ahead) will only be in EU for now, "We're starting with the EU in part due to local privacy regulations (eg, GDPR)."

While Google Photos is definitely a great app to have on your phone, its certainly not perfect in every way possible. Google has finally rolled out a much-needed update to the app, and I bet many android users appreciative.

Since this update, Google Photo's users weren't able to pull up photos and manually tag friends, family, or just general people. Tagging people on Google Photos allows users to search their entire Google Photos by that person's specific tag. An example of this would be if I had a friend named Mitchell and Google recognized that he was in lots of my photos and added his tag based on his face.

I could then search "Mitchell", and all of the photos he is in that Google have detected will be pulled up for me. If you are interested in finding out how to access this new feature, follow the following steps. Select a photo in Google Photos, swipe up to get the photo menu, locate the pencil icon to the right of "people," tap that icon, and manually add names in. It should also be noted that this feature will only work on images that Google detects a face being present.

Reports have come out detailing a new on-demand music streaming service being developed by TikTok's owner, ByteDance.

According to Financial Times sources, ByteDance is currently planning a new streaming service app that incorporates a social media aspect. The Financial Times says that the app will include a library of short video clips that users can search for and then pair up with their desired songs. These video clips and songs can then be forwarded to users' friends.

The report also says that ByteDance is currently in talks with big companies such as Sony, Universal, and Warner for music licensing purposes. While you might think that this new app is some years off from releasing, the reports indicate that it could be launching in places like Brazil, India, and Indonesia as soon as December this year. It's also said that ByteDance's new app plans to undercut the current market price of other music streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music. Meaning the cost will be under $10, and more like $7, or even $5 a month.

Back in September, Nintendo finally stepped into the mobile with an extremely strong IP, Mario Kart Tour.

Players started their engines on the 25th of September, and in just one day the app got 20 million downloads. Now some new statistics have been released by Sensor Tower who has revealed that just in September the app was downloaded 86.2 million times. Following the September release, Mario Kart Tour slowed down a bit in October, but still managed to pull in a further 40.3 million unique installs.

In comparison to Mario Kart Tour, Activision's Call of Duty: Mobile pulled in 148 million downloads in October. How much revenue was made off these installs? Mario Kart Tour managed to rake in $32 million in October, while Call of Duty: Mobile pulled ahead with $54 million. Mario Kart Tour currently doesn't have multiplayer support, so these numbers are sure to increase once Nintendo updates the game with that.

The days of gathering the family around a pen-and-paper shopping list could be over as Apple users can now use their voice to fill their Walmart shopping cart.

The new feature is called Walmart Voice Order, and it's now available in the company's Grocery App for iOS. This means that Siri can listen to users' requests for products, and they will automatically be placed in Walmart's shopping cart, removing the necessity of touch.

Users can follow this voice process; "Hey Siri, add to Walmart" then list out the items you want to be placed into the cart and boom; they should be ready to order. It should also be noted that Apple users can tell Siri on a range of different devices such as an iPad, Apple Watch, Mac, HomePod, or in a CarPlay-enabled vehicle. Due to Walmart being a direct competitor with Amazon, it can be assumed that Walmart won't be adding this feature for Alexa devices now or anytime soon.

Just earlier this month, Facebook issued out a new update for the iOS app, and while updates are usually welcomed, this one harbored a strange bug that opened users camera without them knowing.

CNET reported that while users on the iOS app were watching videos or looking at photos their camera became activated behind the app. Some users even reported via Twitter that while watching a video and then rotating to landscape mode that the Facebook/Instagram Story UI could be seen for a split second. When flipping back to portrait, the Story camera/UI opened entirely, as seen above.

Facebook acknowledged the issue, saying that this bug was introduced to the iOS app when they fixed another bug that was incorrectly launching the app in landscape mode. Facebook's Guy Rosen gave a statement regarding this bug, saying "We recently discovered that version 244 of the Facebook iOS app would incorrectly launch in landscape mode. In fixing that issue last week in v246 (launched on November 8th) we inadvertently introduced a bug that caused the app to partially navigate to the camera screen adjacent to News Feed when users tapped on photos."

Microsoft has just made the most radical change to its web browser logo since the introduction of Internet Explorer, with the new Edge browser receiving a new logo.

The original Edge logo that launched with the browser in 2015 had parts of the original Internet Explorer infused into it, but the new one looks like nothing like it -- it resembles a Tide pod if anything. The new logo was discovered inside of a surfing mini game that was hidden inside of the latest Canary versions of Edge.

Edge's slick new logo looks like a wave... get it? You're surfing the web. Just don't try and eat the new Edge logo, okay? Microsoft's brand new Edge browser will launch on January 15, 2020 with the new logo. You can try out the new Edge browser in release candidate form here.

Apple and Adobe have debuted Adobe Photoshop for iPad, the app is currently available on the App Store for download.

Back in October, I reported on Photoshop making its way over to the iPad, and the time has finally come as it has arrived as a 30-day trial on the App Store. The app supports full PSD editing, layers, tools, advanced tools and cloud syncing. Unfortunately, as it was detailed back in October, Photoshop for the iPad isn't full kitted out with all the features editors know and love.

Although, as time goes by Adobe plan on adding more and more features to the app, but at the moment its missing some core features. In the entirety of this article there are dot points listing the major features included within the app. There is also some dot points listing what features Adobe are currently working on. To go alongside Photoshop for iPad, contacts close to Bloomberg have said that Adobe eventually plan to bring Adobe Illustrator over to iPad.

Uber has begun testing out a new feature that could move the company from predominately being a ride-hailing business, into an app that connects all different types of services.

According to an email that was sent out to Uber Eats customers in the San Francisco area, Uber Moments which is an option within the Uber Eats app will soon be offering cooking and dinning experiences. The email says that Moments will begin its cooking and dining offers with a $75 cooking class for Chinese dumplings and a $55 five-course Nigerian dinner.

A spokesperson from Uber said the company is "always thinking about new ways to enhance the Eats experience." Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi also spoke out about the companies plan to eventually become everyone's "operating system of your life". Since Uber are moving towards providing services through their Uber app that aren't necessarily for rides or food, I can eventually see Uber allowing tradesman of any sort to connect to paying customers via Uber.

The latest version of Google Chrome is now live for all platforms and with the new version comes a plethora of brand new features.

The new features are as follows; new customization for the New Tab page, forced dark mode, Password Checkup, Tab Hover Cards, Click-To-Call and more. Firstly, the New Tab page originally just allowed users to customize the background, now Google gives users a choice between a large selection of images or themes, while also giving the option of shortcut customization.

Forced Dark Mode is exactly what it sounds like. Google Chrome will now convert all websites on the web to a dark theme, whether or not they support it in their back-end. Instead of adding new source code to every individual website, Google has used color inversion theory to change the light websites to a dark theme. Tab Hover Cards gives users more accessible navigation through their chosen cards, while 'Click-to-Call' adds an option to send a phone number found on the web to the users Android phone.

Recent rumors have surfaced online and have pointed towards Adobe gearing up for a reveal of Illustrator making its way over to the iPad.

According to contacts close to Bloomberg, Adobe are plotting a reveal of Illustrator but for the iPad at its MAX conference this November. The sources say that Illustrator for iPad would follow in the same footsteps as Photoshop for iPad which is planned to launch later this year. Unfortunately, early testers of Photoshop for iPad haven't said the greatest things about the coming app, and instead said that its missing core features. Hopefully Illustrator doesn't have these same issues.

Bloomberg also reached out to Adobe to presumably ask if this was true, and an Adobe spokesperson neither confirmed or denied any plans, saying "We have nothing new to share at this time." It would be an obvious move for Adobe to slowly move through their suit of programs and add them to iPad. So, if I was to guess at whether or not Illustrator is going to come to iPad, I'd say its a pretty safe bet, especially considering Photoshop is on its way.

What sort of passwords do you use? Things like '123456', 'qwerty' or even 'password'? If so, you are not alone, but you should be worried. These are among the most commonly used passwords around and all leave users accounts inherently vulnerable.

Fortunately, these days, more and more people are more and more aware of the benefits of using a Password Manager. They not only help keep your passwords secure but also make it easy for anyone to remember a whole host of complex passwords. A good Password Manager can also check how secure your passwords are, generate new secure ones for you, and much more.

But, while the case for using a Password Manager may be beyond dispute, choosing the best one is much harder. Which is why new research in this area is always welcome and that is what VPNCompare have delivered. Their in-house experts have been hard at work testing all the top Password Managers to see which is best.