UNLIMITED INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY

iPad Pro Expected At Apple's Sept. 9 Event Apple is now expected to show off its long-rumored and highly anticipated iPad Pro at its Sept. 9 event. The company may also update its iMac as well. Unless you've been blissfully spending the last week of summer on a deserted island (not a bad proposition) you've heard that Apple is planning a major media event on Sept. 9 where the company will likely take the wraps off of the hotly-anticipated iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus. In addition to the focus on the company's latest iteration of its ubiquitous smartphone, the rumor mill is indicating that Apple is going to debut  a larger version of its tablet called the iPad Pro , which would feature a 12.9-inch screen. Further separating it from its iPad and iPad mini cousins are features like differentiated software, an improved keyboard, and split-screen multitasking to make it a better daily workhorse for mobile professionals. Projections by KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo, fir...

Google Apps Refines Collaboration Tools Updates to Google Apps offer a way to track recent document changes and content creation assistance driven by machine learning. On Wednesday  Google  plans to introduce several changes to  Google Apps  that aim to enhance collaboration and content creation. In a phone interview, Ryan Tabone, director of product management at Google, described the update as an effort to make the collaboration features in Google Apps more useful and productive. Google Apps  consists of a dozen distinct services. The update focuses on Docs, Docs for Android, Google Sheets, and Google Forms. For Docs, Tabone said Google plans to add a button at the top of the screen, "See new changes." The idea is to make revision tracking more accessible and easier to attribute to a specific document collaborator. "When you work with others on a particular document, the document becomes a conversation," explained Tabone. "And like a conversation, you want to...

Acer Convertible Chromebook, Smartphones Debut At IFA In addition to its new convertible Chromebook and numerous smartphones, Acer updated its Aspire notebooks and released a tablet targeted at gamers at the 2015 IFA show in Berlin. Acer rolled out a slew of products at the IFA consumer electronics show  in Berlin on Wednesday, including PCs and notebooks aimed at gamers, six smartphones, a convertible Chromebook, and two Windows 10-powered desktops. On Sept. 2, Acer announced six Liquid smartphones, four of them running Android 5.1 and two running the upcoming Windows 10 Mobile platform from Microsoft. The handsets feature a curved chassis with upgraded front-facing cameras, wide-angle lenses, and enhanced audio and are all aimed at the Europe Middle East and Africa (EMEA) market. The flagship Z630 boats a 5.5-inch display and a 64-bit, quad-core 1.3GHz MediaTek MT6735 processor. It's also equipped with AcerEXTEND, which connects wirelessly to a compatible laptop or PC and lets us...

HTML5: 5 Tips That Will Change Your Life HTML5 is the future of the Web. Whether you're a developer or a power user, there are things you should know about the Web's new programming foundation. (Image:  HTML5 logo and wordmark  by  W3C . Licensed under  CC BY 3.0 via  Wikimedia Commons .) In case you missed it, the Web has changed. All of that online banking, real-time video chatting, and cat-video sharing has stretched the foundation of the Web to its breaking point and beyond. That's why the foundation has been given an upgrade. HyperText Markup Language (HTML) is the language of the browser. Originally based on the document-oriented Standard General Markup Language (SGML), HTML served the needs of the original academic users of the Web through its first four versions, but the increasing user demand for a variety of functions -- from secure encrypted transactions to video media -- meant that APIs, SDKs, add-on libraries, and external applications had to be bol...

Microsoft, Google, Mozilla Abandon RC4 Cryptographic Standard With Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla turning against the RC4 cryptographic suite, the standard will likely die in 2016. Something unusual happened in the browser arena on Sept. 1. Microsoft, Google, and Mozilla all simultaneously announced that their browsers will not support the RC4 cryptographic suite as of early 2016. RC4 is a stream cipher that was first described in 1987. It has been widely used across Web browsers and online services for various purposes, mostly to enable "secure" connections under the TLS protocol. However, recent attacks have shown that RC4 can be broken within hours or days. Typical attacks on RC4 exploit biases -- externally observable patterns -- in the RC4 keystream to recover repeatedly encrypted plaintexts. Cryptographers would call this a lack of "entropy" in the cypher. These kinds of attacks on the cypher led the  Internet Engineering Task Force to ban the use of RC4 in TL...

Sony Xperia Z5 Smartphone Stuns With 4K Screen The Sony Xperia Z5 features an incredible Ultra HD display, a 23-megapixel camera, a waterproof chassis, and a two-day battery life. Yet its 4K display is the real stunner. BERLIN -- On Wednesday at the  IFA show here, Sony revealed a broad range of new products, but none was more impressive than the Xperia Z5, its flagship smartphone for the year. The device boasts a premium design, comes in two sizes, and features a spec list that's sure to tempt even the most devout iPhone and Samsung Galaxy owners. The Xperia Z5  takes direct aim at competing models from  Samsung, Apple, HTC, and LG  -- and it might beat some of them. A metal frame and dual glass panels form the exterior. Sony added a fingerprint sensor to the screen lock button on the side edge for instant unlocking. Despite the exposed headphone jack and USB port, the Xperia Z5 is waterproof. It can sit in up to one meter of water for up to 30 minutes. Few flagship...

Google Chrome Support For Flash Ads Ends Sept. 1 Google's Chrome browser will no longer support Flash-based ads starting Sept. 1. This follows several months of problems with Adobe's Flash platform. Google's Chrome browser will be blocking Adobe Flash  content as of Tuesday, Sept. 1. This comes on the heels of Amazon's announcement that it would no longer support Flash-based ads on its websites. Chrome has a 27% share of the total browser market , so this is a major hit to Adobe Flash. This change in Chrome first showed up in  a June 4 Google Adwords blog  posting about a new setting in the browser that affected Flash content. In the post, Google wrote that it was "designed to increase page-load speed and reduce power consumption by pausing certain plugin content, including many Flash ads." Google also noted in the post, "As soon as September, this setting will be turned on by default so Chrome users can enjoy faster performance and view more content befo...

5 Apple Slip-Ups That Bruised Its Reputation Apple is known for its consumer-friendly reputation, but this list proves Cameragate is only the latest in a long line of Apple foul-ups. (Image: Onfokus/iStockphoto) Cameragate -- Apple's admission in August that some of its iPhone 6 Plus smartphones were delivered with faulty iSight cameras -- is the latest in a long line of hiccups the company has experienced as the public gobbles up its increasingly complex gadgets. While the problem appeared to affect a small number of iPhone 6 Plus users, the admission drew renewed attention to similar issues that have in the past bruised, if not tarnished, Apple's reputation as as a leader amongst consumer technology giants. Cameragate  follows similar monikers in recent Apple history, including Bendgate and the infamous Antennagate, as Steve Jobs referred to it, in which holding an iPhone 4 in a certain way would interfere with the phone's antenna and cause calls to drop (and Consumer Rep...