January 2016

Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced today that it decided to discontinue its annual subscription payment system by turning the application into a free offering.

WhatsApp's previous subscription model was somewhat confusing as some users used the service for free effectively while others were asked to pay a subscription fee to continue using it after the first year of service.

While most Internet users know about cookies, as word about their tracking capabilities have even reached mainstream news, only a minority seems to do use add-ons that improve cookie handling in web browsers.

If you look at the user count of popular cookie management extensions for the Firefox web browser for instance, you will notice that they are in the thousands or even less usually, with only a handful reaching six digit user counts.

Microsoft enabled a new protective feature in Internet Explorer 11 for Windows 10 recently that it introduced for its Microsoft Edge web browser back in November 2015.

The security feature has been designed to prevent third-party software from changing the browser's homepage or default search engine.

Search is a lucrative business and it is no coincidence that companies try to push adware or third-party tools to user systems to modify search providers.

Facebook Notes is a re-imagined version of the note taking feature that Facebook launched years ago on its site.

Unlike the previous version, it has been designed more like a basic blog editor than a simple note taking application that does not look or feel that different from jotting down status updates on the site.

Facebook Notes is an attempt to keep content on Facebook or produce it for the site. Most of the time, interesting articles, images or what have you are linked by posting a simple status update on Facebook.

Sean Cassidy discovered recently that the popular password manager LastPass is vulnerable to a  phishing attack that takes advantage of the way messages are displayed to users of the service.

The method that he describes on his blog works in Google Chrome, and to a degree in Firefox as well.

Mozilla has added a feature to Firefox 46 that will convert old YouTube Flash code to HTML5 Video automatically under certain circumstances.

When YouTube started out, Flash was the dominating technology used to stream video on the Internet, and the first player that YouTube made available to webmasters to embed videos on third-party sites used Flash exclusively.

YouTube changed the code later on to reflect changes in streaming technologies. From a technical perspective, YouTube started to offer embed codes as iframes instead of objects.

Microsoft announced an upgraded support policy for Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 customers in which the company details support for next silicon generations such as Intel's Kaby Lake, Qualcomm's 8996 or AMD's Bristol Ridge.

In essence, devices with these processors will not be supported by previous versions of the Windows operating system but only by the "latest", which at the time of writing is Windows 10.

There you have it, another thumbscrew for Windows customers who prefer previous versions of Windows over the current version.

Missed Features Installer for Windows 10 is the latest version of the popular application that brings back removed or altered features to Windows 10 that were part of previous versions of the operating system.

It can best be described as an all-in-one tool featuring dozens of applications, games and tools that bring back old features or modify them so that they resemble features of the past.

How well is Windows 10 received, that is one of the core questions that is not only of interest to Microsoft but also to any end user and company that considers upgrading to Microsoft's new operating system in the future.

According to a study by IDC which polled 1009 adults from the United States "about their attitudes toward Microsoft's latest operating system" Windows 10, it is well liked by the majority.

Metflix announced recently that it will start to block VNP and DNS proxy services soon that customers use to circumvent geo-restrictions set in place.

The company, which operates in almost 200 countries now, is not the first to limit access to its offerings as companies such as Hulu have implemented similar measures already in the past.

Netflix customers can use VPNs or DNS proxy services to access content made available to Netflix customers in different countries.