Watch Leonardo DiCaprio's new climate change film, Before The Flood, here for free

With the tagline "the science is clear, the future is not", the climate change documentary Before The Flood wears its heart on its sleeve. With Martin Scorsese as executive producer, and featuring none other than Leonardo DiCaprio, the film paints a bleak picture of man's effect on the environment. Before The Flood was produced by the National Geographic Channel, and received a cinema release on October 21. But the documentary is seen as being so important, it is also being made available to stream for free to bring it to as wide an audience as possible. The film really speaks… [Continue Reading]

Automatically clear your clipboard with ClipTTL

You’re working away in one app, but realize you need data from another. So what? That’s what the clipboard is for: copy here, paste there and it’s sorted in seconds. But the story isn’t over. The information you copied will remain in the clipboard until it’s replaced, visible to others, consuming RAM (maybe a lot, if it’s an HD image), and annoyingly appearing in other documents if you accidentally hit "paste". You could try to fix this by replacing confidential clipboard items with something else. Once you’ve copied and pasted a password, for instance, copy some other text and your… [Continue Reading]

Today's ghostly Google doodle is a Harry Potter-inspired Halloween game

It's that time of year again when the pumpkins are glowing, the kids are out trick or treating, and things start to go bump in the night. To celebrate Halloween 2016, Google has launched a new game as today's doodle. You're invited to go ghostbusting. You must help your feline companion to defeat ghouls and ghost with a little spellcasting -- with a doodly twist, of course. Things will be easier if you have a touch screen device, but you can also use your mouse. As ghosts appear on screen, you need to draw the symbol (or symbols) that appear… [Continue Reading]

How to reset NVRAM on late-2016 MacBook Pro models

Things can go awry with any computer from time to time, and getting things back to normal is often just a matter of knowing the right trick. With a Macs, resetting NVRAM is a quick fix for a number of issues, and Apple has changed the way you go about doing this with the late-2016 MacBook Pro models. One of the reasons for the change is that these latest models do not feature the startup sound, so timing the required key presses is a slightly different matter now. Here's what you need to do. Previously, the trick was to press… [Continue Reading]

New MacBook Pro (2016) starts automatically when opened without the iconic startup chime

When Apple unveiled the new MacBook Pro range last week, much was made of the Touch Bar and other things that have been added. What was not noticed immediately is that the company has also ditched the famous startup chime that used to sound when powering up the laptops. More than this, Apple has eliminated the need to use the power button. Just as laptops wake from sleep when the lid is opened, the new MacBook Pro automatically powers up when the lid is lifted -- even if they are fully switched off. There are multiple benefits to these changes,… [Continue Reading]

What you need to know about service oriented architecture

Service oriented architecture is a principle that allows businesses to manage their IT and business transformation in order to give themselves a competitive edge. It offers benefits including insight into the running of the entire business, seamless integration of systems and the cloud, and linking of front and back office systems. The World Wide Web Consortium defines SOA as "A set of components which can be invoked, and whose interface descriptions can be published and discovered". CBDI defines it in more detail as "[the] policies, practices, frameworks that enable application functionality to be provided and consumed as sets of services… [Continue Reading]

Is Apple Halloween 2016 Trick or Treat?

That's the question to ask if you're considering ordering the new MacBook Pro unveiled last week or wondering whether or not to cancel an already placed purchase before it ships. For fervent fanboys who drink Apple Kool-Aid like water, "treat" can be the only answer. But for the thinking public, the response depends on several factors, such as budget and whether or not buyers believe that the fruit-logo company advocates a rational design ethic. Let's start with the latter. Apple is finger-obsessed and has been since before the first Mac shipped, as I explained in March 2010 post: "What 1984 Macintosh marketing reveals… [Continue Reading]