Michalis Nicolaides

Microsoft is moving on many fronts, after the announcement of Office Mobile to iPhone Microsoft announced a new partnership with Best Buy to put Windows Stores to their locations. The total numbers of Windows Stores is 600, 500 in U.S and 100 in Canada. It is basically Microsoft stores where users will be able to see and try several devices and services. Microsoft will try to show that using its products make the life of the user easier and more productive. Among the products there will be Windows based PCs, tablets, Windows phones, Xbox and Microsoft Office. I am very curious to see how all this will affect the sales of Windows 8 and Windows Phones.

Jun 14

Microsoft Office for iPhone

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Microsoft and Apple are competitors but from time to time Microsoft ports its solutions to Apple’s operating systems. The most popular product is Microsoft office and they announced Office Mobile for iPhone. The application is going to be free for the users that have Office 365 subscription. This will allow iPhone users to open, edit and share their documents through the app. It is a good deal for both companies and their users. It is nice watch companies from time to time working together. It is worth to mention that Microsoft has Apple shares since the beginning, when Bill Gates and Steve Jobs started those big tech giants. Microsoft created several ads saying that Google Docs are not for professionals and they mess with the formatting.

Jun 08

How to fix Firefox – Flash problems

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Articles, Software, Technology

If you are reading this post it means that you are one of us that updated the flash and it stopped working on Firefox. It happened to me several times on different computers and uninstalling, reinstalling both Firefox and Flash player didn’t work, it was still not working. Everything is fine and suddenly, because you updated something now nothing is working, you can’t watch videos online, you can’t play flash games and you can’t visit a flash website. Firefox was, is and will be the web browser of my choice and Flash crashes will not change that.

May 22

Windows 8: Stop your PC from waking up automatically

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Articles, Technology

I’ve installed Windows 8 weeks ago and recently my PC started to gain intelligence. It found a clever way to annoy me where normal people can’t do that so easily. I prefer sleep mode instead of shut down because I have a lot of programs open and this saves me time. I was putting my computer to sleep mode and then immediately was waking up. I thought it was a wireless mouse that I have as I enabled USB devices to be able to wake my system. I removed that and I tried again, the same issue, then again until after few tries it stopped waking up. Then again the next day but this time it was worse and after few minutes that I manage to put it to sleep it woke up again. This was obviously an issue that had to stop and because I like to fix things, here we are.

May 20

Windows 8: Disable Maintenance Tasks

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Articles, Technology

Microsoft has default maintenance tasks running without you even knowing about them. One is running when the system is idle and the other by default every day at 03:00. This second one is very annoying and it causes many strange problems and behavior. If your computer is waking up is because of this scheduled task and another setting that I will tell you in a next post how to disable. In this post I will explain how to disable those maintenance tasks for those who doesn’t like them.

May 12

Authorities need Apple to decrypt iPhone data

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Authorities seize digital devices and they want to use the data inside them to find evidence. Some times they can’t decrypt the data and in case of iPhone they ask Apple to decrypt the data for them. In fact, the number of those cases is so big that Apple has a waiting list for them. I don’t think even Apple can decrypt the data as the algorithms used in such devices are not that easy to crack but they don’t have to either. If someone, and in this case Apple, bypass the security lock can gain access to all your unencrypted data. It is believed that Apple built a backdoor to its OS to gain access to any device for whatever reason. Apple then sends the unencrypted data back to the police and they use it to catch bad guys or put them into jail. Some times it is scary how easy it is to unlock a phone, even if it is the company who created its operating system.

Apr 27

Japan authorities try to block Tor

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Japan authorities ask from internet service providers to block access to Tor network. Tor is a web service that help users to surf the internet anonymously without the fear that prying eyes are watching them and police use their internet activity against them. It is a way to make internet users to feel some kind of freedom and of course police is not happy about it and they started making efforts to block it. You might think that it is Japan and it doesn’t affect you but this is not true. If Japan authorities block Tor then other countries will do the same, this is happening always.

Apr 26

Flaw in Viber allows full access to smart phones

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Hacking, News, Technology

About 50 million android smart phones have Viber installed and a critical flaw in that app make all those devices vulnerable. It is as easy as sending two messages through Viber and attacker can gain full control to your device. It is scary how easy it is and I would expect a fix and ultra fast by the Viber app creators. You can watch the video to see exactly how it can be done and you can try it with a friend. It is the easiest and fastest exploit that I learned so far for android smart phones.

Mar 21

Disable lockscreen on Samsung devices

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Hacking, News, Technology