ICT Magazin

The 11 Worst Internet Scams We’re Still Falling For In 2001, I planned to move to a new town in Connecticut. I put my house up for sale, but it sat there, unsold in the recession, for over a year. Not a nibble, even after I dropped the price and made some improvements. Then one day, my realtor called with some astonishing news. “You’ve got a full-price offer!” she said. “And get this: The buyer doesn’t need an inspection, she’s paying cash, and she wants to close at the end of this week!” OK, what? She didn’t need a mortgage? She didn’t want to negotiate? Well, whatever. I showed up at the closing—but the buyer herself was absent. Her lawyer was deeply apologetic. “She just called; she’s in tears. She won’t be buying your house after all. She just keeps saying, ‘The Nigerian man promised that I’d have the money by today!’” Oh come on. Really? There’s one person left in America who fell for the old Nigerian email scam? No, not one person—a lot of people. Internet scams ...

Kids’ App of the Week: Name Play  Any master preschool or Kindergarten teacher knows that one of the best words to unlock the power of reading is a child’s first name. Because it is comprised of letters, syllables and phonemes, it makes sense to use kids’ names as part of an informal early reading curriculum. After you type in your child’s name into Seven Academy’s Name Play, you hand the tablet to them so they can enjoy its 14 easy-to-play activities. They can blast the letters as they fall, type them using an old-fashioned typewriter, feed a hungry word snake, play with the letters of the name on a magnet board, or tilt the screen to try to capture the letters in the right order. There’s plenty of variety. Parent options let you toggle between 18 languages, just in case you want to use this app as an immersion activity. You can also add the names of friends, pets, or family members. Need to know: Explore the parent options to add friends names, and adjust the backgrou...

Budget virtual reality headsets set to be hot Christmas gifts in 2015 If you've been excited about the possibility of virtual reality finally becoming available for games and entertainment but don't want to spend a fortune or wait for big companies like Oculus Rift, Samsung and HTC to release their headsets, then you'll probably be excited to learn that not one, but two new budget virtual reality headsets will be making their way to UK high streets this Christmas. First off, the Merge VR Googles is retailing at Game stores around the country and online for £49.99 ($76.97) from 30 October. The Merge VR is a purple foam headset that works with most Android and iOS smartphones and can be adjusted to make space for different-sized devices, as well as different-sized heads. Also, the Merge VR comes with lenses that can be adjusted to accommodate the distance between your eyes, which varies from person to person, and if you want to interact with a virtual reality app, game o...

Five ways Microsoft plans to get you to upgrade to Windows 10 Microsoft wants Windows 10 on one billion devices by 2018 - and its tactics for hitting that ambitious goal are about to get more aggressive. From next year, Microsoft will be more direct in pushing Windows 7 and 8.1 users to upgrade to its latest OS, in an attempt to bolster the 110 million-strong Windows 10 userbase. Here's how Microsoft is about to crank up the pressure to make the switch. 1. Windows 10 will automatically begin installing itself From "early next year", Microsoft will change the status of the free Windows 10 upgrade so it is classified as a Recommended Update. Given that most home machines are set up to install Recommended Updates automatically, the change to Windows 10's update status will lead to most Windows 7 and 8.1 machines beginning the upgrade. However, Microsoft says that before Windows 10 is installed users will need to manually confirm the installation, giving them a chanc...

T-Mobile turns to customers to improve its network  T-Mobile (TMUS) is taking an unusual approach to improving capacity on its phone network, announcing on Monday that customers can get their own mini-wireless broadcast tower. Dubbed the 4G LTE CellSpot, T-Mobile's small plastic box plugs into a customer's home Internet connection and provides up to 16 nearby devices with full T-Mobile wireless signal, including the fastest LTE format. T-Mobile said the Cellspot would be free with a $25 deposit to customers on its Simple Choice plans. Wireless carriers have been experimenting with adding many more, smaller transmission points to relieve some of the congestion on their networks as iPhone-happy teens uploading ever more videos to Snapchat and their ilk threaten to overwhelm the capacity of the existing system. Some analysts think adding numerous smaller cells, called femtocells in the industry, could be a cheaper and more efficient way to expand capacity than building more...

Blowing into this gadget could help asthma sufferers recognize the signs of an attack According to the team behind this interesting new Indiegogo campaign, nearly every death, ER visit, or hospitalization in the U.S. due to asthma is preventable. Because it can be difficult for sufferers to recognize the signs of an impending attack, an early warning system that could be carried around each day was needed. Thus they came up with Wing, a sensor that links up with a companion app on your phone to help manage and understand what asthma is doing to your body. By blowing into the Wing sensor, it measures how much air you can blow in a single second, and how fast it flows, the results of which give a picture of how your lungs are working. The app presents the data in a simple to understand traffic light system, helping asthma sufferers understand if they’re in danger of having an attack. Related: This smartphone accessory can see parasites in your blood, and could save your life Used ...

Google denies plan to “phase out” Chrome OS Update 11/2/105 10:45 AM: A new update on the Google Chrome blog has denied the plan to “phase out” Chrome OS, but as admitted the company is ” working on ways to bring together the best of both operating systems” — the other operating system being Android. The company didn’t go into specifics on the plan, but did say there will be “dozens” of brand new Chromebooks in 2016. Update: 10/30/2015 8:23AM: Hiroshi Lockheimer, the Senior Vice President of Android, Chromecast and Chrome OS, has released a short statement on Twitter. While being “committed” to the platform sounds good, it does notably skirt a denial of The Wall Street Journal’s. Google might be committed — until 2017, when it’s not. or being committed could mean, as the report suggests, Google is committed to the idea of low-cost notebooks — but they’ll soon be running a version of Android, rather than Chrome OS. Original Text: ChromeOS has been a success in many respects. Whi...