September 2015

Microsoft is betting big on Windows 10 and the operating system's adoption rate in the next few years. The company mentioned more than once that it plans to deploy Windows 10 on more than one billion devices in that time.

The operating system is off to a good start thanks to the free-for-nearly-everyone offer that Microsoft announced to the surprise of many.

Android Pay, Google's replacement for Google Wallet and answer to Apple Pay is being rolled out in the United States as we speak.

Rolled out means that it reaches smartphones of US Android owners gradually over the coming days.

According to Google, it enables Android phone owners to pay at "over one million locations" across the US and to store gift cards, loyalty cards and special offers on the device.

Google Chrome, just like Mozilla Firefox and other web browsers, ships with a built-in popup blocker that has been designed to prevent the creation of popups on websites you visit in the browser.

While it blocks some popups out of the box, it has been my experience in the past that it does not work well as popups tends to slip past the protection regularly.

Video files can have extreme sizes depending on formats, resolution and quality settings. If you have ever captured a game video of a game running in 1920x1080 in 30 or 60 fps, you know that even short videos will reach the Gigabyte level quickly.

Deepnut is a free program for the Windows operating system that has been designed to process video files you add to the program's queue.

The official Virustotal application for Android has not received updates since 2012 which is one reason why it is recommended to use a third-party application instead to scan apps and files for malicious content on Android devices.

It is rather surprising that the official application does not receive any love considering that Virustotal is a Google company.

Hovercard is a new extension for the Google Chrome browser that reveals information about links in a small overlay on the screen on hover.

It works in this regard similar to Imagus but focuses on social links instead of pictures.

The browser extension works in new tabs right after you have installed it in Google Chrome -- or a compatible browser -- and in existing tabs once you reload them.

There is certainly no shortage of privacy related programs for Microsoft's new Windows 10 operating system.

If you compare that to programs released for Windows 7 or 8, you will notice that the count exploded with the release of Windows 10, and the core reason for that is the operating system's hunger for data and the fact that most privacy related settings are enabled by default.

The patch day overview for September 2015 provides you with everything you need to know in regards to security and non-security patches that Microsoft released this month.

It begins with an executive summary listing the most important information about this month's patch day. It is then followed by lists of affected client and server versions of Windows, and other Microsoft products.

The next three groups list security bulletins, security advisories and revisions, and non-security updates released since the last patch day in August.

Microsoft added a couple of smaller changes to its Windows 10 operating system that I really like, for instance the highlighting of the first result when you search.

Another feature is the ability to print to PDF natively which you can do from any program or application that supports printing.

You had to install third-party software previously for that which installed virtual printers on the system which you could make use of to convert files to PDF.

Opera Mini was a revolutionary application when it launched back in 2005 as it displayed websites on phones just like they looked on desktop systems (sans the larger screen and all that of course).

The Internet was slow and expensive back then, and every Kilobyte saved before transfer meant a better user experience.

Things have changed in the past ten years. Technologies have advanced, smartphones are on the rise and web browsers are a dime a dozen these days on mobile devices.