November 2015

One of the greatest strengths of the Windows operating system is backwards compatibility. Many classic programs from the DOS-age or early-Windows days are still running fine on modern versions of Windows.

Along with the strength comes a weakness, as exploits may target these legacy systems.

If you have upgraded your version of Firefox to 42, you may have noticed a change affecting the security icons displayed by the browser to indicate secure connections to websites.

As you may know, Firefox displays different types of icons depending on the status of the connection to a site.

I don't really print out web pages ever, but when I visit my parents, I see them print out Wikipedia pages and other informational web pages regularly.

If you do print out web pages on a regular basis, you may know that it is possible to safe printer ink and paper by optimizing content on the page before you send it to the printer.

This can be done with readability extensions that turn the page into an optimized version directly, or with services that let you modify the print out before it is sent to the printer.

Microsoft announced recently that it would change OneDrive plans for all but Business and Enterprise customers.

The move limits Office 365 Home, Personal and University customers to 1TB of storage space, and reduces the storage available to free users to 5GB from previously 15GB or more.

Whenever I install a program on Windows, the very first thing that I do is check for a customization option.

I have two main reasons for doing so: The first is to make sure I don't miss adware or other unwanted programs offered during installation, the second that I don't install components that are part of the main program that I don't require.

The latest version of Avast Free Antivirus highlights why that is a good precaution.

Password managers are the way to go when it comes to keeping accounts and information secure on virtually any system. They allow you to create secure passwords for any service, and many even improve the login process by auto-filling information or logging you in automatically.

As long as the underlying system or device is not compromised, they do offer a high level of protection.

Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and other modern browsers will support so-called push notifications on the desktop in the near future or are already supporting it.

Push notifications allow websites to notify the user even if the site itself is no longer open. It is a notification system that can be utilized by sites to inform users about new messages or items available on site among other things.

The system uses servers, maintained by Google or Mozilla depending on platform that interact with these sites and the user's browser.

Google announced a new feature today that it is launching in Inbox by Gmail tomorrow that it calls Smart Reply. The feature is designed to predict replies to display those as options to you when you are responding to emails to improve your workflow further and reduce typing.

Smart Reply has been designed to cut response times and make it less time-consuming to reply to emails in Inbox for Gmail.

Norwegian company Opera Software launched new versions of its mobile web browsers for Android today. Opera maintains two different browsers for Android which Android users can download and run on their devices.

The main difference between Opera Mobile and Mini is that Opera Mini traffic is tunneled through Opera servers automatically which do much of the heavy lifting in the process while that is not the case for Opera Mobile.

Microsoft announced yesterday that it will make changes to the storage plans of its online file hosting and synchronization service OneDrive and to OneDrive storage given to Office 365 subscribers.

The changes affect existing users of the service as well as future users. Several of the plans provided by OneDrive or other Microsoft services that provide access to OneDrive as a bonus are downgraded.