Get engrossed in your latest web research project and you’ll soon be navigating an array of browser tabs, each one with some vital piece of information -- it’s very easy to lose track.

Firefox offers a few very basic options to help you maintain control. Clicking History > Restore Previous Session will reopen whatever you were viewing last time, for instance, or you can bookmark all open tabs for reference later.

The standard methods work just fine, but if you need more then Session Manager takes this to a whole new level. This Firefox add-on can save and restore some or all of your windows, on demand, on startup, at regular intervals, after crashes, as a backup, and a whole lot more.

This doesn’t have to be complicated. Just click Save > Save Session, and your open tabs, windows, closed tabs, form data, session cookies and more can all be saved. When you next launch Firefox, choose your previous session from the Save menu and everything will immediately be restored.

There’s an option to create "auto-save sessions", which are automatically updated when you close the browser. This is much like the Firefox "Restore Previous Session" option, except it works with as many sessions as you need.

Session Manager also has an option to save only the current window, useful if you don’t need to save every single tab you have open at the moment.

There are a pile of management options to rename sessions, group or search them, maybe encrypt them for greater security.

And a comprehensive "Options" dialog helps you tweak the fine details, everything from the default format of session names to keyboard shortcuts for all the main Session Manager features.

If there’s a mild concern here it’s that (as we write) some recent reviews on the official Add-Ons site complain about reliability issues. Not everyone is saying this, though, and Session Manager worked just fine for us, so if you need better control of your Firefox sessions then it’s well worth taking for a test run.

Now that Windows Phone 8.1 has scored a huge win by receiving support for Fitbit wearables, Microsoft is giving prospective Nokia Lumia 635 buyers the option to purchase a bundle that also includes a Fitbit Flex activity tracker.

The bundle, that starts at $148.95, is good for both the AT&T and T-Mobile versions of Lumia 635, that cost $99 and $129, respectively, on Microsoft Store when purchased individually. Flex goes for $99.95 alone on Fitbit's site. That equates to savings of $50 when buying the two devices as a bundle on Microsoft's online and brick and mortar shops.

The bundle includes a black AT&T or white T-Mobile Lumia 635 and a Flex in a color of the customer's choosing. Both versions of the Windows Phone 8.1 device are offered off-contract in the bundle. You have until September 1 to take advantage of this deal (or, of course, "while supplies last").

Lumia 635 highlights include: 4.5-inch IPS display, glove-friendly, with a resolution of 480 by 854; 1.4 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400 processor; 512 MB of RAM; 1,830 mAh battery; 8 GB of internal storage; microSD card slot (can house cards up to 128 GB in size); 5 MP back-facing camera with 720p video recording (there is no front-facing camera, however); Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n; GPS with Glonass; Bluetooth 4.0 and USB 2.0. The physical dimensions are 129.5 x 66.7 x 9.2 mm and weight is 134 grams.

Flex allows users to keep track of distances, steps, calories and monitor sleeping habits.

There was widespread condemnation of Facebook when it was revealed that the social network had been manipulating users' newsfeeds as part of a social experiment. Official complaints may have been made but it doesn’t seem to have served as a lesson for other websites. Now it transpires that OkCupid -- the dating website whose slogan is "We use math to get you dates" -- has been fiddling the figures in a series of experiments on its users. The weird thing is, the site is openly bragging about it.

In a blog post unashamedly titled "We Experiment On Human Beings!", founder Christian Rudder writes that "OkCupid doesn’t really know what it’s doing". Seems like something of an odd admission. The blog post details three experiments the dating site conducted on its subscribers. There must have been more because the post is prefaced with the words "Here are a few of the more interesting experiments OkCupid has run." Does "interesting" just mean "less controversial"? Who knows?

So is the openness to be welcomed, or should we view it a little more cynically? It just about goes without saying that I would suggest the latter. Transparency is great, but sometimes what is revealed is far from savory. Some of the experiments listed are fairly innocuous -- hiding pictures so users have to base their opinions on words, for example -- but telling people they are compatible when OkCupid's "math" actually says otherwise is a little different. That's blatantly lying to people, and that's never right. The results of the experiments are tedious to most people outside of OkCupid, but the mere existence of the experiments is fascinating.

The timing is a little weird. On Monday, a tweet from the OkCupid account proudly proclaimed "The OkCupid blog is back! New post up now...", while a tweet from Christian was similarly excited: "Very happy to announce the first OkCupid blog post in three years". Why bring the blog back from the dead after so long? It might be slightly late to ride the wave of controversy surrounding Facebook's experimenting, but it's an attention grabbing story which captures the zeitgeist. It's said that there's no such things as bad publicity -- which I would argue is nonsense -- but advertising a stunt like this is a sure fire way to get noticed. What’s that, Christian? You have a book coming out in September? Interesting stuff.

Facebook's experimentation was bad enough. We have enough to worry about without having the added concern that what we're seeing -- even when it is from our friends -- has been processed through some third party filter. But OkCupid is a different matter. The site may be free, but it's dealing with people's hearts, minds and lives. Christian Rudder may think himself tremendously clever for crunching the numbers and gaining all of this free publicity for his book, but the argument that "if you use the Internet, you’re the subject of hundreds of experiments at any given time, on every site... that’s how websites work" just doesn't cut it. Of course websites try things out, different designs and layouts, new features, different types of content and so on, but that's really not quite the same things as lying to users.

Is OkCupid off the hook for being retrospectively honest? Not in my book. It's probably covered in some small print somewhere, but it's still unethical and dishonest, and it breaks my heart.

Image credit: Piotr Krzeslak / Shutterstock

Apple has updated its MacBook Pro with Retina display lineup with faster processors across the board and more RAM in the base 13.3-inch and 15.4-inch models, that kick off at $1,299 and $1,999, respectively. The new processors are 200 MHz faster than before.

Both the entry-level and mid-range 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pros come with a 2.6 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.1 GHz), while the high-end model packs an even faster 2.8 GHz processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.3 GHz). The base model gains 8 GB of RAM in the new generation, twice as much as its predecessor offered, but retains its 128 GB of internal storage.

The mid-range 13.3-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which comes with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of internal storage, costs $1,499. The beefier model, with 8 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal storage, goes for $1,799. Available hardware upgrades include: 2.8 GHz dual-core Intel Core i5 for $100, 3.0 GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 for $300 (just $200 for the top of the line model), and 16 GB of RAM for $200.

Other highlights include: 13.3-inch IPS display with a resolution of 2,560 by 1,600 (227 pixels per inch); Intel Iris Graphics; 720p FaceTime HD camera; two Thunderbolt 2 ports; two USB 3.0 ports; SDXC card slot; Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac; Bluetooth 4.0; OS X 10.9 Mavericks; nine hours of Wi-Fi web browsing or video playback; physical dimensions of 31.4 x 21.9 x 1.8 cm and weight of 1.57 kg.

The entry-level 15.4-inch Retina MacBook Pro offers a 2.2 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.4 GHz), while the high-end model comes with a 2.5 GHz processor (with Turbo Boost up to 3.7 GHz). The former ships with 16 GB of RAM, which is double than before, and 256 GB of internal storage.

The high-end 15.4-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which features 16 GB of RAM and 512 GB of internal storage, can be had for $2,499. Available hardware upgrades include: 2.5 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor for $100 (only for the base model), 2.8 GHz quad-core Intel Core i7 processor for $300 (just $200 for the high-end model), 512 GB of internal storage for $300 (only for the base model), and 1 TB of internal storage for $800 (just $500 for the high-end model).

Other highlights include: 15.4-inch IPS display with a resolution of 2,880 by 1,800 (220 pixels per inch); Intel Iris Pro Graphics (high-end model also gets Nvidia's GeForce GT 750M with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory); 720p FaceTime HD camera; two Thunderbolt 2 ports; two USB 3.0 ports; SDXC card slot; Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n/ac; Bluetooth 4.0; OS X 10.9 Mavericks; eight hours of Wi-Fi web browsing or video playback; physical dimensions of 35.89 x 24.71 x 1.8 cm and weight of 2.02 kg.

Last week web performance specialist Keynote monitored and compared 11 Formula One constructor team web pages during the German Grand Prix to see how they fared under pressure. The results made for interesting reading.

The Hungarian Grand Prix, staged a couple of days ago, was a classic race, packed with excitement, and topped with a surprise win by Red Bull's Daniel Ricciardo. Keynote monitored the same F1 websites again to see how they did second time around, and as you might expect changing race fortunes did have a noticeable impact on site performance.

Keynote found that during the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday (27th July), the Red Bull constructor homepage took longer to load content (9.11 seconds), on average, than it did in the German Grand Prix the previous week (8.8 seconds).  Its load success rate also dropped from 99.65 percent to 98.08 percent, which could be due to increased visitors to the site, as a result of Daniel Ricciardo’s victory.

"It’s interesting to see how the homepage of the Red Bull constructor team site coped with its win at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Sunday, especially since Red Bull beat Mercedes to first place, for only the second time this season", says Thomas Gronbach, digital quality expert at Keynote.

"Daniel Ricciardo’s win is likely to have drawn in many visitors to its site and, as such, could be the reason why its online performance was poorer; compared to last week’s Grand Prix race in Germany it struggled to load content and had a lower load success rate. The site owners could have better prepared the Red Bull homepage, so that it was able to cope with this level of interest and match its online performance with its success on the track -- a lesson that needs to be learned ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix next month".

"At Keynote, we would recommend that site owners aim for a consistent response time of less than two seconds and a load success rate of more than 99 percent. This will ensure fans, such as those visiting the Red Bull constructor team site, are always able to access the final scores and track its progress throughout the season," concludes Thomas.

Addressing the Hackers on Planet Earth (HOPE) conference over the weekend of 18 July, Edward Snowden entreated hackers, engineers and activists to fight surveillance by building a new generation of privacy tools for everyone to use. In fact, privacy startups are already hard at work building tools to help web users protect their privacy in areas such as analytics, encryption and search.

However, there is still much work to do to put these tools into the hands of the ordinary web user.

Since the NSA revelations last year, this task has continued to grow in significance as more and more privacy scares have grabbed the attention of the general public. Earlier this month, for example, an employee of Germany's intelligence service was arrested on suspicion of spying for the US.

However, it's not just the NSA who is the guilty party. Corporations such as Google and Facebook are also building treasure troves of personal information to share with others, often without your consent.

Emerging technology startups from around the world have responded to privacy concerns by building user-friendly products in three key areas: analytics, encryption and search.

It's more often than not a David versus Goliath scenario, with many of the startups taking up the challenge of competing against Google. Despite the nature of this challenge, market demand for privacy-friendly products has proven strong, so the hackers and entrepreneurs remain undeterred.

In analytics, Google Analytics is the most popular tool for companies and governments who want to analyze traffic on their website. While popular, it doesn't put users in control of their data. If you use Google Analytics, Google would not only know all visitors to your website (and which pages they looked at on your site), but because most other websites use GA as well (or another Google product), Google would also know, for example, the 19 other websites that person visited earlier that day and the hundreds of websites they looked at in the last month.

Because more than 60 percent of all websites on the Internet use Google Analytics, Google Adsense or another Google product using tracking beacons -- "only 36.5 percent of the web is Google-free" -- Google is able to build a very accurate picture of most websites and their users.

There is a competitive threat at stake here too: allowing Google to use your data to improve their other products, enables it to collect data to build custom audiences that they sell via AdWords to your competitors.

Using Google Analytics therefore means running a risk of losing control of your data. In light of this, governments, companies and individuals are using alternatives such as Piwik, an open source web analytics platform which puts users in control of their data and does not share data with other servers.

Piwik's approach to data retention includes anonymized IP addresses, a respect for DoNotTrack requests, an opt-out mechanism and shorter expiration dates for tracking cookies.

In another case of David versus Goliath, DuckDuckGo is giving Google a run for its money in online search. The search engine doesn't collect IP addresses or track your searches. It exploded in popularity in 2013 following the revelations about NSA mass surveillance.

Innovation in privacy-friendly tools is not, however, just limited to analytics and search. Startups are building tools to make it easier for web users to encrypt communications and files. GPG tools, for example, are growing in popularity as web-users download plugins such as GPG for Mail to encrypt Apple Mail and GPG Keychain to manage OpenPGP Keys. HTTPS Everywhere is another popular browser extension for Firefox and Chrome that encrypts communications with major websites, making browsing more secure.

Beyond web tools and software, hardware is also becoming more privacy-friendly: Silent Circle teamed up with Geeksphone to design and build the Blackphone, an Android phone boasting an array of sophisticated features for private communications, browsing and cloud storage.

For the ordinary web user, keeping up with the variety of new privacy tools is a daunting task. The community has recognized this, however, and has built PRISM break, an online resource available in 26 languages which provides details on alternative web tools and software for people who wish to opt out of global data surveillance programs like PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora.

The tools listed on PRISM Break and startups outlined in this article are the building blocks of the free and open internet. Campaigning to raise public awareness of these tools, make them easier to use for the general public and highlight the dangers of mass surveillance will ensure the Internet we love is not twisted into something it was never meant to be.

Maciej Zawadziński is a co-founder of Piwik PRO.

Image Credit: iQoncept/Shutterstock

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Russia's government has issued a 4 million rubles (about $112,000) bounty to anyone who cracks the Tor anonymity network's encryption protocols.

Tor, which began as a secret project from the US Naval Research Laboratory, works by piling up layers of encryption over data, nested like the layers of an onion, which gave the network its original name, The Onion Router (TOR).

Tor encrypts data, including the destination IP address, multiple times and sends it through a virtual circuit made up of successive, randomly selected relays. Each relay decrypts a layer of encryption to reveal only the next relay in the circuit.

The final relay decrypts the innermost layer of encryption and sends the original data to its destination without revealing, or even knowing, the source IP address.

The American National Security Agency (NSA) has made considerable efforts in the past to crack the encryption protocols behind Tor, but to limited success. Instead, they've just banked on tracking everyone who uses it, or even searches about it on Google.

Under President Vladimir Putin, Russia has been cracking down on various Internet freedoms, and reducing the scope for anti-government protesters to operate online.

In fact, Tor has encountered problems in Russia before. The country's principal security agency, the FSB, lobbied the Duma last year to ban Tor, but while deputies expressed support for the initiative, it never got out of committee.

However, the government's issues with Tor could also have to do with legitimate police concerns. Tor is a favored haven of drug users, terrorists, smugglers and distributors of child pornography.

The $112,000 (a relatively small amount of money by global industry standards) is being offered not by the FSB but the Interior Ministry, which is more interested in fighting child pornography than anti-Putin dissidents. However, breaking the encryption protocol would certainly endanger those who use the network for political protest.

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Being a tech enthusiast is usually synonymous with being out of shape. Thinking back to the movie Revenge of the Nerds, it was clear that computer users were weaklings. As time marched on from the 80's, tech nerds went from simply being weak, to being fat too. Yes, we tech nerds like to sit in chairs and eat bad food. Of course, I'm generalizing; I am positive there are physically fit computer nerds. With that said, I have not encountered many.

Thanks to the smartphone, technology has become more and more mainstream and simple to use. An iPhone or Android device is in the hands of all ages. I have encountered many older people that have never owned a PC and likely never will, that own an iPhone or Android device. The mainstreaming of technology has brought the merging of previously non-tech things with tech. For instance, I recently saw a WiFi connected crock pot. The surprising trend, however, is technology and fitness. Dongles such as the Fitbit have been all the rage lately, but sadly, Windows Phone users were left out -- what else is new, right? Today, this changes as Windows Phone gains a Fitbit app!

"Fitbit is launching their native app for Windows Phone 8.1 today that brings direct mobile syncing (via Bluetooth 4.0). Devices running Windows Phone 8.1 will now have instant access to up-to-date stats from Fitbit's wireless activity trackers like the Flex, One and Zip. Fitbit’s wireless activity trackers track health and fitness metrics like steps taken, distance traveled, calories burned, active minutes, floors climbed and sleep quality. With their wireless activity trackers, Fitbit wants to inspire people to lead healthier and more active lives. I am nearing my two-year mark as a Fitbit user so I’m pretty excited about their app!", says Brandon LeBlanc of Microsoft.

LeBlanc further says, "the Fitbit app features a Live Tile when pinned to your Start screen giving you all the up-to-date information and notifications at a glance. You’ll see things like steps taken and how much more is needed to meet your daily goal for example. All without having to open the app. In addition to direct mobile syncing, you’ll be able to quickly log fitness and nutrition data and set or manage personal goals directly from the app. And you’ll also be able to see how you stack up against your friends on the leaderboard and cheer (or taunt) them by direct messaging them from the app".

Fitbit lists the following features of the app:

• Real-time stats: Automatic and wireless syncing for all Fitbit activity and sleep trackers through Bluetooth 4.0
• Fitbit on your Start screen: Pin the Fitbit Live Tile to your Start screen and quickly view your step count
• Stay on track: Real-time and historical stats in easy-to-understand graphs, to help track progress and set goals
• Log more than activity: Recently enhanced food database of more than 350,000 foods with accurate nutritional data for faster, better food-logging and calorie coaching
• Get motivated: Fitbit's motivational social tools like notifications and badges, to help reach target goals
• Stay social: Ability to challenge friends and family with leaderboards, direct messages, cheers and taunts

So, if you are a Windows Phone user that needs to get in shape, today is your day. You can download the app here. As someone who uses a Nokia Lumia Icon and needs to drop some pounds, I will be watching this app very closely. Who knows, maybe I will buy a Fitbit dongle this weekend. That is, after I go to White Castle, of course.

Will you be using a Fitbit dongle with your Windows Phone? Tell me in the comments.

Photo credit: Andrey Armyagov / Shutterstock

When I go to the grocery store, nothing drives me crazier than people using the speakerphone function of their phone to talk with their partner. When I hear "honey, should I buy 1% or 2% milk?" and then listen to the discussion, it makes me nuts. It's like, I just want to throw their phone into the live lobster tank. Does no one have a sense of privacy and consideration anymore?

This nonsense also happens in the workplace. It is not uncommon for an employee to run a video chat or web-based conference call through their speakers. They then shout at their computer, so the cheap mic picks up their voice. This is very inconsiderate; it negatively impacts the entire office's productivity, as attention is diverted from tasks. Today, Logitech wants to quiet these annoying coworkers with the H570e USB headset.

"Once you've made the transition from a traditional phone to a softphone, you're probably going to need a headset. Good news! Logitech just introduced the Logitech USB Headset H570e: a new headset designed for comfort and ease-of-use available in stereo for people who need to block out surrounding noise during desktop calls, and in mono for those who prefer to have an open ear to their surroundings", says Ann Finnie, Logitech.

Finnie further explains, "this affordable USB Headset H570e can help companies of all sizes to realize the benefits of hands-free crystal-clear communication. No more worries about your ever-changing workplace environment, we've got a headset that allows you to clearly hear whatever is being said or played".

Logitech lists the following specs:

Microphone:

• Type: Directional ECM
• Frequency response: 100 Hz - 18 kHz
• Sensitivity: -47 dB +/- 3 dB
• Distortion: <2% @ 1kHz, 94dB SPL
• Operating voltage: 1.4 - 5.0V DC

Speakers:

• Frequency response: 31.5 Hz - 20 kHz( Diffuse field )
• Sensitivity: 94dB ±3 dB at 1KHz, 0.01m, 0.01W
• Max output: <79 dB SPL
• Distortion: < 5% @ 1kHz, 10mW, 1kHz

The option to switch from mono to stereo is an awesome feature. There is definitely a usage case for both scenarios. If you are only listening in to a conference call, muting the mic and listening in stereo is ideal. When participating and speaking, mono is better so you can better regulate your voice and not impact your surrounding coworkers. By bypassing the on-board sound and utilizing USB, sound should be improved too.

The wired remote appears to be very useful. Of course, you can do the expected things -- volume up and down, mute and answer/end call. However, it does have a trick up its sleeve -- a visual call indicator. Yes, a green LED will alert you visually to an incoming call. This is helpful if you have the headset off while working at your desk.

While the H570e is designed for business, there is no reason why home users can't enjoy it too. Logitech claims that it will work on Windows 7 or higher and Mac OS 10.6 or better, but it should work on Linux as well.

Will you buy this $49 headset? Tell me in the comments.

Belight Software has released Printworks 1.0 for Mac. Launching with a discounted price of $29.99 (normally $49.99), the app is a fully fledged desktop publishing and design tool aimed at the home and small business market.

The app’s main appeal is that it manages to wrap up all the core functionality required for designing a wide range of documents -- including flyers, newsletters and greetings cards -- in a user interface that’s simple to grasp and places all the key tools at the user’s fingertips.

Once fired up, users can create a document from scratch or choose from one of the many templates on offer -- over 400 are provided, broken down into manageable sections. Each template is fully customizable and showcase the app’s capabilities well.

Printworks also offers four video tutorials that reveal how simple the app is to use while giving complete beginners an insight into how it -- and desktop publishing in general -- work.

The user interface -- which is 100 percent Retina-ready -- is split into three panes: the document sits in the middle pane, with available media -- images, clipart and basic shapes -- accessible from the left, and an Inspector on the right.

The Inspector provides four tabs: Page Setup covers the document’s general dimensions, while Geometry works with the currently selected object. Similarly, the Appearance tab is used to color and fill selected objects, while Text Formatting works with selected text.

The toolbar provides buttons for quickly inserting barcodes, tables and even a calendar, plus a handy paragraph style switcher and clickable preview button for viewing your document as it should appear when printed. There are also buttons for creating headings as well as accessing the usual line, box and select tools.

Having put these key tools front and center, Printworks also hides some useful tools behind the scenes -- double-click an image, for example, and a powerful dialog for editing and masking the image appears.

Printworks is an excellent demonstration of how to launch a desktop publishing tool at the lower end of the market, bringing together all the tools required for creating striking documents quickly, easily and without being engulfed in unhelpful technical jargon. Even relatively inexperienced users should quickly pick up how the app works, making it easy to migrate to from other DTP programs.

Printworks 1.0 is available now for $49.99 through the App Store. It requires Macs running OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion) or later. Over 1,000 clipart images are bundled with the software, while 40,000 more can be unlocked through an in-app purchase for an additional $9.99.

It can often be useful to keep a local copy of a web page, and your browser’s "Save Page As" option is a good place to start. But typically this saves an HTML file and a separate folder with its resources, or an archive format like MHT, not so convenient if you’d like to share the document with others.

Wkhtmltopdf is an open source tool which quickly converts HTML to PDF, ready for viewing just about anywhere. It’s written for the command line, but don’t let that put you off -- you’ll be using it productively in seconds.

Saving a remote web page to PDF, for instance, is as simple as this:

wkhtmltopdf http://www.google.com google.pdf

Wkhtmltopdf uses WebKit to render the page, which means you get accurate PDFs which look and feel just like the original HTML -- complete with clickable links.

You can probably already guess how to convert a local file:

wkhtmltopdf c:\folder\MyFile.html MyFile.pdf

There’s no need to stop with a single file, though. Point the program at multiple HTML documents and it can combine them into a book with a cover and a table of contents:

wkhtmltopdf cover cover.html toc chapter1.html chapter2.html chapter3.html book.pdf

If you need more flexibility then there are plenty of more advanced switches available. You’re able to set the PDF’s page size, orientation, dpi, margins, headers, footers, and much, much more. Plus, as this is a command line tool, it’s easy to automate via Task Scheduler or your own scripts.

Although PDF will be the output format of choice for most people, wkhtmltopdf can also save Postscript files. Just specify .ps as the extension of your exported file:

wkhtmltopdf http://www.microsoft.com microsoft.ps

We found the occasional issue: text that wasn’t rendered as we expected, a document which had local (file://) rather than remote (http://) links. But no HTML converter is problem-free, and even at version 0.12.1 wkhtmltopdf is better than most. Well worth a look, although if you’d like to avoid the command line, HTML to PDF Tools is a similar GUI-based alternative.

When I go for runs, my iPhone always comes with me, providing music and motivation through apps like Zombies, Run! Usually I just jam the device in my pocket, but that's not always possible, or practical. There are other ways to carry your phone with you, including using armbands, but SlimClip offers an alternative option.

The plastic case has a thin flap on the back. You lift this up to slide the iPhone into the enclosure, and the flap doubles as a clip so you can attach the device to your waistband. It's a simple, but very clever idea that works well.

I've been protecting my phone with the Kloqe, so to switch from an all-aluminum-case to a plastic one feels like a backward step, and certainly when you first remove the case from the box it does feel a bit cheap in your hands. That said, once the phone is in place the case looks good and fits snugly, with holes for the camera, ringer toggle and speaker, microphone, charger and headphone socket. There are buttons for power and volume built into the SlimClip.

The phone clips on upside down, so the headphone socket faces up, making it ideal for listening to music while exercising, or on the move.

SlimClip adds very little bulk to the phone (you won't look like a security guard with it on your hip), and clips on tightly so there's no danger of it coming loose while jogging.

I would prefer it if there was a way of locking the flap flat when not in use -- shove the phone in your pocket upside down and things like coins end up under the flap -- but that's a small niggle (and easily solved with a piece of tape if it becomes a problem).

The case is available in a choice of colors -- black, white, red, gray, blue, yellow and orange, and priced at $40 plus taxes and shipping.

You can get it now from Wonderful Things Factory.

Securing IT is essential for any modern business, but according to a new study carried out for security company Kaspersky Lab around one in four IT security experts have little or no understanding of the security options for virtual environments.

Almost half of respondents (46 percent) said that virtual environments can be adequately protected by conventional security solutions and 36 percent believe that security concerns in virtual infrastructures are significantly lower than in physical environments.

The study finds that IT security professionals may not have a clear understanding about the different virtualization security approaches that are available. Only one out of every three IT security experts have a clear understanding of light agent and agent-based virtualization solutions, and only one out of every four understands agent-less virtualization security.

Kaspersky points out that although conventional security solutions may be 'virtual aware' they can create performance problems when used with virtual environments. Agent-based security can overwhelm resources when scanning and may leave protection gaps when updates are required.

Mark Bermingham, Virtualization Evangelist at Kaspersky Lab North America says, "Businesses today face an ever-evolving threat landscape and cybercriminals are increasingly looking at virtual environments as the next frontier of sophisticated attacks. The survey results highlight a clear disconnect between what organizations believe is optimal security for a virtual environment when contrasted with the robust capabilities delivered via agentless and light agent solutions. With many businesses turning their attention to securing virtual environments, it is critical that they execute these initiatives and understand their options for securing these business-critical environments".

But while many organizations may not have a clear understanding of virtual security options 64 percent agree that security should be a priority when rolling out virtual infrastructure. Also 52 percent agreed that virtual environments are becoming key to their business infrastructure and securing them would be a priority for the next year.

The report concludes that businesses need to measure the performance costs of security, assign the right solution to each environment and limit 'virtual sprawl' by shutting down virtual machines when they're no longer in use. You can read the full report on Kaspersky's website.

Photo Credit: Sergey Nivens/Shutterstock

Even though Microsoft is planning to downsize its Nokia X efforts (to the point where there will likely be no new device announced), the software giant is still supporting its Android lineup by rolling out a new software update.

The update introduces the multitasking functionality from the Nokia X2 lineup, giving users the ability to easily switch and close running apps. It can be triggered by tapping on the App Switcher icon, after swiping down from the top of the display.

Microsoft is also preloading some of its cloud-based services, namely OneDrive, OneNote and Outlook.com. The note-taking app can sync up to 500 notes, while the email client supports push notifications and syncing of calendar entries and contacts.

Nokia Store sees improvements as well, making it easier for users to discover their favorite apps and games. There is also a new dedicated widget for discovering offerings and downloading them in a single tap.

The software update is designed for Nokia X, Nokia X+ and Nokia XL and will be available, starting today, as an OTA (Over-The-Air) upgrade. Microsoft recommends downloading it using Wi-Fi.

There are now more than one million apps in the Apple app store but a study by Deloitte's showed that 80 percent of apps get less than 1,000 downloads each. If we assume (very, very conservatively) that those apps cost an average of $10,000 to develop -- that is at least $8 billion being wasted making apps no one uses.

In reality, the cost is often over $100,000, which makes the wastage around $80 billion. That is a lot of marketing and development dollars being spent that could have been better used on something else.

Of course, when an app works -- as WhatsApp has shown with 450 million users across all platforms and a valuation of $18bn -- it really works.

We decided to step back and see what it meant to be truly "mobile first" as that is a buzzphrase that is being bandied about by a lot of companies.

In the early days of the web, publishers essentially took their offline print properties and 'repurposed' them for use on the web. Over time they realized that the web was an intrinsically different medium and they needed to develop content specifically for the internet. Only once publishers came to this realization (and many still have not) did we get many of the highly trafficked content websites we have today -- from Slate to The Huffington Post to the New York Times.

However, most of the companies who are going mobile now are making the same mistake, they are taking their web content and essentially resizing it for a mobile screen, not appreciating that mobile is in many ways a fundamentally different medium from a website which is made to be interacted with on a laptop or desktop.

An analysis of the top five websites in the world (Google, YouTube, Facebook, Yahoo, Amazon) shows something equally interesting. They are all utilities that exist purely because of the internet -- i.e. they are not pre-internet properties that were then repurposed. In fact, of the top 50 websites in the world only three -- Microsoft (41), Apple (48) and CNN (49) -- come from pre-internet brands.

A similar analysis of the top 25 free iPhone apps shows that almost all the paid apps are games, except WhatsApp (6) and that only one, (The Weather Channel (7) ) comes from a pre-internet brand. It also shows that ten of the 25 are brands native to the mobile phone, with no significant web presence before the mobile app launch (Instagram (3), Words with Friends (6), Temple Run (9), Shazam (12), Angry Birds (13), Draw Something (14), Flashlight (15), FruitNinja (18), iHeartRadio (19), Bump (21)).

We took this slew of statistics and came to two conclusions:

• The best apps are focused on the mobile experience and are not just repurposed websites. Nick Watt, a senior researcher at Reed Business Information, has identified the key mobile attributes as being -- 'communication, spontaneous, geo-sensitive, short periods of use and focused activity'. Shazam, a company I helped launch in the UK, very much played to these strengths. When Shazam first launched in 2000 it was pre-smartphone but focused on four out of the five 'above-mentioned mobile attributes very successfully. When the iPhone came along the Shazam app was refined for the smartphone age and the fifth 'mobile attribute' geo-sensitive was added, keeping it consistently one of the most downloaded apps year after year.
• The best apps have true utility which gets people engaging with them and using them very often. WhatsApp is the perfect example here -- simple, clear and functional, it does what is needed and only brings in features to enhance the communication experience.

The one thing that most apps aren't doing is really understanding the user. A smartphone is a very personal device. Understanding and anticipating the user's needs are what makes an app great. One of our product managers mentioned that a great app was like the personal assistant who always knew what you wanted. This got me thinking of dining in a restaurant and the different types of dining experience we might have. I broke them down into three experiences:

The Fast Food -- This app makes you do all the work and is ultimately not terribly satisfying. For example apps that force you to hunt around for things that should be intuitive, where you click aimlessly hoping something will happen and then suddenly crash for no reason -- we've all been there.

The Irritating Waiter -- The app that is incredibly intrusive, wanting to access all your Facebook details, your contacts and sending you pointless alerts every day.

The Perfect Waiter -- This is the Holy Grail. The app that works perfectly when you need it, sends you alerts that really matter, is incredibly easy to use and leaves you feeling you've had a great experience.

Ajay Chowdhury is CEO of Seatwave

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Even though Cortana shares some major design traits with Google Now, there is no denying that the new Windows Phone 8.1 personal assistant actually feels more like a Siri rival. That is due to their uncanny wittiness and human-like personality, two things that are just not there in Google's (clinical, albeit mighty powerful) offering.

Cortana is gunning for Siri as the latter is a more talked-about personal assistant than Google Now is (and will likely ever be). So it should come as no surprise that, in a new Windows Phone 8.1 ad titled Happy Anniversary, Microsoft pits the two against each-other. And, obviously, Cortana embarrasses its opponent.

Microsoft leverages some of Cortana's contextual awareness for its personal assistant to come out on top. It can remind the husband to wish his wife a happy birthday next time she calls and buy roses next time he is near any flower shop, and let him know when it is time to leave for Bold Spoon (likely a restaurant) to arrive there in time.

Siri, on the other hand, fails to do any of those things in the ad. But it ends its string of can't dos with a praise aimed at its opponent -- "Now that is a smart phone" -- after Cortana displays the said navigation information.

The clever bit in this ad, however, is that Siri loses on an expensive Apple iPhone 5s while Cortana wins on an inexpensive Windows Phone 8.1 device -- it is a Nokia Lumia 635, which goes for as little as $99 off-contract in US -- and not a comparable premium smartphone like a Nokia Lumia 930.

On Friday, China Telecom, the country's third biggest telecommunications company, said it would start selling the Xbox One in China from September, although no pricing details were revealed.

Today JD.com Inc, China's second largest e-commerce company (by market share), confirmed it has started to accept pre-orders for the games console.

According to Reuters, the pre-orders, which will run from July 28 to July 30, will be taken via Tencent Holdings' mobile social networks Mobile QQ and WeChat, which is known as Weixin in China.

The all-in-one games and entertainment system will be the first of its kind to launch in China, and the first foreign games console since the government lifted a 14-year old ban on such devices in January. Console sales were banned in 2000 on the back of concerns that games were negatively affecting the mental health of players.

Although the recent uncoupling of the Kinect and resulting price cut has seen the Xbox One enjoy a healthy sales spike, rival Sony’s PlayStation 4 has consistently outsold it.

China is a potentially huge market for the Xbox One with an estimated half a billion people playing games. According to Microsoft that’s "roughly more than a third of the country’s population and more than the entire population of North America".

BlackBerry isn’t losing any sleep over the recent enterprise tie-up between IBM and Apple as their CEO John Chen compared it to a couple of large mammals taking to the dance floor.

Chen, talking to the Financial Times, likened the partnership to when "two elephants start dancing" and thinks that the firm he is slowly rebuilding has enough in the bag to compete with anyone that challenges it in the enterprise market.

Rumors persist that it is ready to sign up with its own enterprise partners and Chen stoked the fire by giving an inkling that it is ready to start dancing with its own beau, with the CEO remaining coy on who it could be. That hasn’t stopped various observers speculating that the likes of SAP, Oracle or even Samsung could be a-party to some kind of tie-up.

"A good enterprise partner for them might be an SAP or an Oracle," says Joe Compeau, a lecturer in information systems at the Ivey Business School, according to The Globe and Mail. "Security is a little more important part of those systems, so BlackBerry would be a natural fit".

The deal signed between IBM and Apple is expected to bring iPhones and iPad into the enterprise sector with a range of secured apps that leverage each side’s expertise and at the time the deal was signed, BlackBerry’s share price dived.

BlackBerry has been busy in the past week with the release of the first-ever cloud-hosted version of its BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 that means customers don’t have to maintain individual BES10 servers. It followed this up with the appointment of Marty Beard as new COO, a man that worked closely with Chen at Sybase and has also been employed by Oracle.

"What it needs [is] to find a company that can really accelerate its software agenda," added technology analyst Carmi Levy, someone that believes huge app libraries will matter more to consumers but less so in the enterprise sector. "It’s about how many business-relevant solutions you can create".

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

Network convergence has been defined as the integration of voice, video and data in a single network. This convergence allowed enterprises to deliver more, and even better services, at a much lower cost to customers. While network convergence has evolved over the years to include teleconferencing, streaming media, and HD video, the latest addition to network convergence is mobility and this includes smartphones, tablets, laptops or any other wireless capable device.

For an enterprise to leverage the advantages of mobility, such as increased employee satisfaction, improved productivity and overall agility, the network should be capable of providing a hassle-free and seamless user experience. Here are a few key things that network admins need to keep in mind when deciding to bring mobility into the enterprise mix.

Wired and wireless experience

Wired and wireless were traditionally run as separate networks, with wired the most commonly used and wireless usually limited to guests and a few employees who frequently moved around the office. This changed with the advent of mobility and BYOD. Mobility requires a scalable, high-speed and converged wired and wireless network that can provide consistent performance to the end user, with the device used and the location of the user bearing no impact on the overall experience.

To achieve this, network admins should start consolidating their standalone networks into a converged one, leveraging network hardware that can handle both wired and wireless. Further, converged networks are less complex, easier to manage and remove the need for maintaining a separate architecture, policies and features. Many hardware vendors, including Cisco, Alcatel-Lucent and Juniper, have solutions for unified access that can make network convergence easy.

Something else to consider is the performance of your wireless network. Network admins should make sure that their wireless networks provide either the same or a better level of experience than the wired network.

Bandwidth

An increased demand for WAN bandwidth is a major impact of mobility. Mobility and BYOD bring in applications that compete for bandwidth with business-critical applications. With each user carrying at least two wireless devices and numerous applications, there can be an exponential rise in demand for enterprise bandwidth, which may lead to link saturation, non-delivery of business data or even network downtime.

To ensure that WAN bandwidth is not being misused by unwanted applications or non-business critical traffic, your network should have continuous, real-time traffic analytics using technologies such as NetFlow and deep packet inspection. Traffic analytics will help determine who and what is using your precious WAN bandwidth and provide actionable information to help redesign QoS policies or make capacity planning decisions.

Security

Security can be considered the biggest problem brought into the enterprise by mobility. Employees may end up getting hacked or pick up malware while using their wireless devices in unsecured public networks. Security measures such as firewalls, ACLs and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) are rendered useless against security threats that are physically carried into the network. When these devices are connected to the enterprise, it results in the infection spreading to other devices or providing backdoor access to sensitive information stored in the network.

Employees also tend to use rooted devices that allow the installation of unverified applications from any source. Using devices with such applications can lead to a virus spreading in the network or the network falling prey to data theft. Unknown and unwanted applications should be blocked in the network and network security should not be limited to only incoming traffic but should also cover LAN traffic. This helps detect network anomalies that could have been physically carried into the network.

End-to-end monitoring

Monitoring is one of the most important aspects when ensuring network performance. Be it wired, wireless or converged networks, monitoring allows administrators to identify possible issues before they impact business continuity. Monitoring can help a network admin discover slow network devices, saturated links, route flaps, failing application servers, incorrect QoS priorities, security violations, network anomalies, and more. This way, the network admin gets to be proactive and can solve issues even before the users become aware of them and starts complaining.

Small things

Never forget the small things. Just because your enterprise supports mobility does not mean you have to allow all applications installed on a device access to your network. Allowing all applications can lead to bandwidth or security issues, both of which are undesirable. You also don't have to support the personal requirements of your employees, so feel free to say "no" when you are asked to work on non-business requirements.

You must also remember to implement policies and rules for using the enterprise network. Though your organizational policies may allow an unrestricted network, remember to review or log file downloads, especially when they are larger than normal or simply not your regular file types. Such downloads can hog available bandwidth, causing security problems and in some cases even legal trouble.

Last but not least, make sure you educate your employees. Users in the network can be your biggest security problem. Educate your employees on the importance of data protection, prevention of data loss, network security and privacy, irrespective of whether they are using wired, wireless or remote to access the enterprise network.

Don Thomas Jacob is the head geek at SolarWinds

Published under license from ITProPortal.com, a Net Communities Ltd Publication. All rights reserved.

The inspiration for this weekend's whine, along with the reason for its slight delay are one and the same thing. An appallingly slow (often non-existent) internet connection. Well, actually it's a combination of things, a slow internet connection being just one of them. Most people -- myself included in the past -- don't give a second thought to living online. Web pages are there ready be accessed on demand. Movies are just waiting to stream. Facebook and Twitter posts stream by. And so on. At least that's how it should be. If you live out in the sticks, it's a very different story -- and it stops me from banging about Edward Snowden and the NSA.

Look at the headlines and you’d be forgiven for thinking that everyone in the "developed world" is working with a blisteringly fast connection. Forget cables, we just have our brains connected directly to the internet. But we don’t. Here in the UK, there is a very noticeable digital divide, and I know it's a similar story in many other parts of the world. I've been fairly lucky in the past. Moving house at the turn of the millennium happily coincided with the arrival of broadband in the area. Hooray! 4Mbps of downstream -- more than acceptable nearly 15 years ago. A house move later, and things jumped to 8Mbps.

Across the pond

I then spent some time in the US. This meant dealing with Verizon rather than BT, and accepting a drop in speed to 3Mbps or thereabouts. Several months later, returning to the UK, a move to Scotland was on the cards. But not just "Scotland", "middle-of-virtually-nowhere Scotland". Mobile signal was a little flaky, but a surprisingly speedy "up to 8MB" broadband connection was available. Great for everyone in the area, but essential for people like me who work from home. The next move, despite involving relocating from somewhere very rural to somewhere on the edge of decent-sized town, meant dropping back to 3Mbps. The drop wasn't too much to shoulder, but there was a noticeable increase in drop outs, unreachable websites, and general frustration. But nothing could prepare me for what was to come next.

Yet another house move, and things took a turn for the particularly rural. An area where there are fields filled with sheep and cows in every direction, clumps of trees on the horizon, and only one neighbour, sounds -- and indeed is -- idyllic, but it comes with drawbacks. Chez nous had zero mobile signal. Not a bit. But worse than this, particularly for a technology journalist working from home, is the fact that the term "broadband" here refers to a connection that is *up to* 0.5Mbps. And when my ISP says "up to" you can almost hear them laughing as they say it. In reality, it means battling with a connection that operates at 0.3Mbps on a good day. Downhill with a tail-wind.

It's hard to describe how frustrating working with such an antiquated connection is. Simple online tasks that should take seconds, spread out to take minutes or hours. It is not possible to multi-task. You want to look at two web sites? Forget loading one in a background tab because that just means that the first tab won’t load at all! Streaming video? What's that? YouTube is reduced to looking like a flickbook operated by an arthritic old man, only able to flick between pages once a minute -- and who needs to take a lie down to recover from the exertion of turning three in succession.

F*&%!

I'm a person not averse to swearing. In fact it's something I embrace. A good, loud, full-bodied curse is great for the soul. But I don’t think I have ever sworn so much in my life. The internet is not just slow -- it is frequently completely unusable. Literally. Take this past week for instance. There have been three days when there has been no internet connection whatsoever. Countless phone calls to my ISP resulted in line tests revealing no problems, and probing showing that we should be able to connect at the blistering speed of 0.38Mbps. There was a beautiful irony in talking to a customer service robot who insisted that everything was working as it should. I was asked on several occasions to perform a speed test on the line, which led me to report back that the speed tests were inaccessible. With three different routers.

Now, after spending virtually the whole of Sunday on the phone battling, explaining, arguing, and trying to remain calm as I was told time and time again that everything was fine, the connection seems to be back up and running -- but for how long? And when I've spent my day dealing with people who don’t understand the difference between an internal and an external IP address, I do wonder how qualified they are to help.

The reason for my terrible internet connection -- and through which I am expected to write things online -- is that not only is the Wilson-plus-partner-and-cats abode way out in the middle of the Scottish countryside, but that the internet hardware in the area is positively ancient. Serving a total of under one hundred people, the local telephone exchange is simply not able to deliver broadband of about 0.5Mbps -- minus a bit for distance, minus a bit more for contention, and a bit more for noise, and a bit more for good measure. Never mind... we don’t have long to wait until the equipment is upgraded, do we? What's that? 2017, you say? W T actual F?! (and I stand by my use of the oft-maligned interobang there).

The remote location means that my current ISP has a monopoly. They own the cables and it's up to them when the system is upgraded. Cable and fiber just aren’t going to happen. The only vaguely realistic alternative is broadband via satellite, but this has hefty setup fees and ongoing charges. Restrictively hefty.

He over-speeds and he never gets pulled over...

Heading to coffeeshops, libraries, and other public hotspots -- even just browsing the web on a phone's data connection in town -- is a revelation. Pages that refused to appear at home flash up in an instant. I realize I am far from being alone. For each person gloating over the fact they have a 100Mbps connection, there are dozens more still stuck in the dark ages of dialup speeds -- literally in many cases, although thankfully not mine. And web pages are just not created for people with slow connections. Massive images, embedded videos, fat and lazy code. All these things slow down the internet for everyone, but it's only really noticed on the really slow connections.

How many web designers *really* think about optimizing their sites for everyone. It's all too easy to assume that everyone connects to the web at 10Mbps or more, and create all-singing, all-dancing sites to take advantage of all of this bandwidth. But the reality is that many, many people do not have such connections, and that means missing out on a lot the web has to offer. Spotify, YouTube, even the likes of Imgur are all but out of bounds to me -- I just don’t have the time or patience to wait for pages to load. There are tools that can compress pages, optimize browsing and so on, but there's a whole lot more that can be done to make the internet more accessible to all.

And despite all this, I continue to live my life online. The internet is my entertainment (not my sole form, of course), my job, a hobby, my research tool, and so much more. But I feel like a second class citizen of the web. The internet is my livelihood, but I have to bend to its will rather than it to mine. That's not right.

Photo credit: Djomas / Shutterstock