Technology

You know what's really annoying? Teenagers. Even more annoying? Teenagers inventing legitimately useful things and getting awards for it.

We’re always exhorting PCW readers to back up files.

But even though there’s no shortage of backup applications available, they can be difficult to use, and it can be time-consuming choosing which files and folders to back up and which to ignore. Choose to clone a hard disk instead and it’s possible to safeguard its entire contents with very little effort and for no cost, as we’ll show you in this back-to-basics feature.

Open source software could help to alleviate the increasing risks posed by hackers, according to an IT researcher.

In battling security threats, providers also need to remember that their measures cannot be too restrictive as user requirements need to be taken into account, Shane Wright, technical director of eDigitalResearch said.

Nokia has turned in its proposal for the user interface in Symbian^4, with the goal of developing an interface that can compete with the iPhone and Google's Android OS. The proposal has been turned in to the Symbian Foundation, and will now undergo open evaluation, according to a blog post.

Symbian^4 - which will show up on smartphones in the beginning of 2011, according to the Symbian Developer website - will have a new user interface, according to the Symbian Foundation.

Getting meaningful results from a quantum computer requires what can only be described as a little magic.

Traditional computers – from your desktop PC to the supercomputers that IBM builds when it's showing off – all use a system of switches that can be either on or off. We represent this binary state with a 1 or a 0. Quantum computers are different in that they can be in both of these states at the same time. These states are called 'superpositions'.

AROUND 30 million high-tech German bank cards could leave owners high and dry, bank associations warned on Tuesday as the feared Y2K computer bug cropped up 10 years later than expected.

The problem that hit cardholders trying to use cash machines or make payments throughout Germany and abroad stems from computer chips unable to recognise the year 2010, and could take up to a week to resolve, the DSGV savings and regional banking association said in a statement.

The year 2009 was exceptionally interesting. On the one hand, for the first time in many years sales of personal computers declined, on the other hand, 2009 summed up all the trends of the decade: mobility, style, high-definition, energy-efficiency, platformization and others. The 2009 also set a number of new trends that will only become apparent in the new decade.

The days of the good ol’ BIOS are numbered. The Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) will introduce a more powerful solution able to better cope with the demands of today’s diverse hardware. In a nutshell, UEFI is an interface that takes care of handing over the pre-boot environment to the operating system. We took a quick look at UEFI and found some imminent issues.

Are you submissive? Do you do what others or other machines tell you to do?

Well, according to the Associated Press, John and Starry Rhoads took a high road that almost turned into a very low road indeed, all because they did what their Toyota Sequoia's GPS told them to.

Apparently, the high desert of Eastern Oregon is a lovely place. Until you ask your GPS for the shortest route to your destination and it sends you down a remote forest road, without actually saying: "Yo, people. You go that way and it's really remote and foresty."

Engineers didn't make huge improvements to technology in 2009. The year's big tech names -- Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon -- all existed before January. Instead, this is the year technology changed us.

At year's end, we're connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing.