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Has Google fixed Java? Sure looks like it.

"Like it or not, faxing is still alive and kicking. No need to get a fax machine though -- instead get any of these five apps for faxing and receiving faxes on your phone. FaxBurner If you don't send or receive lots of faxes, this iOS app is the one for you. There's a paid and a free version, but unless you do plenty of faxing, the free one will be what you need. With the free version you get a free fax number, although that number will be different every time you fax. You can receive 25 pages of faxes for free every month, but you can only send five pages total for free. After that you have to pay for it. The best plan is $10 per month for 500 fax pages sent and 500 fax pages received. eFax This one has apps for iOS and Android, and lets you do it from your desktop as well. It has plenty of nice extras, including annotating faxes and signing them. There are several levels of service, but your best bet is eFax Plus, which cost $17 a month and lets you send 150 pages or receive 150 pages. After that it's ten cents a page. FaxFile This iOS and Android app is a good choice if you don't want to pay a monthly fee, and instead prefer to pay for each fax you send and receive. You buy credits ahead of time and then apply them as you send and receive faxes. FreeFax This faxing app for iOS and Android lets you fax a single page a day for free. After that, you pay. A single page doesn't get you very far, but if you send very few faxes, it's worth a try. iFax This app is available for either iOS or Android. You won't get anything for free. Instead, you pay by the pages. For 99 cents you can fax up to five pages, and the price goes up from there. If you've got an Apple Watch you can view your faxes on it."

"Remix OS is an Android based portable mobile operating system works similar like Windows, OS X and Linux (Ubuntu) desktop operating systems. Remix user interface comes with user-friendly options, features and functions i.e. minimize, maximize and close buttons on every program or software screens, start menu button on desktop home screen, taskbar, windows with title bar, multitasking in multi-windows, notification center, regular software updates etc. Some pre-installed android apps and games such as; Google Play Store, Google Chrome, Microsoft Office, E-Mail App, Twitter, Pinterest, Facebook, Evernote, Keyboard, Advanced File Manager and lots more. Remix OS users can even use mouse similar to Windows, OS X and Linux (Ubuntu) to perform operations like; double-click, left-click or right-click. As currently, Android is officially available for Smartphones and Tablets devices only, being an open-source, Remix OS is very useful for developers, testers and general public users to experience latest Android platform on bigger display screens."

"Microsoft's Windows, which in 2015 fell to third place among the world's operating systems, will continue to lose share this year to both Android and Apple's combined OS X and iOS, Gartner said today. Download the March 2016 digital issue Inside: What you need to know about staffing up for IoT, how cloud and SDN set Veritas free & much more! READ NOW Not until 2017 will Windows begin to recoup some of the losses it's sustained since 2013, Gartner said in its latest device forecast. The continued decline of Windows makes Microsoft's job of pivoting to explorations of cross-platform opportunities all the more pressing. And it goes a long way to explain Redmond's drumbeat of new strategies, including this week's announcement that it will pursue a "conversations as a platform" initiative that aims to put automated assistants, or "bots," front and center on not just Windows, but also Android and iOS. According to Gartner, which provided Computerworld with its forecast broken out by operating systems, Windows will power about 283 million devices shipped in 2015, a 3.4% year-over-year decline. The 283 million represents 11.7% of the total of 2.4 billion devices shipped, over 80% of that number smartphones, and the majority of those smartphones running Google's Android. Six months ago, Gartner's forecast had pegged Windows in 2016 at 308 million devices, or 12.9% of the total. Gartner regularly downsized its estimates of both total devices shipped and Windows' portion of those shipments throughout 2015. The trend continued into 2016. In fact, last September, Gartner predicted that Windows would not slip behind Apple's combined OS X and iOS until 2017. But according to the research firm's latest data, Windows dropped to No. 3 in 2015, thanks to Apple shipping 297 million OS X/iOS devices -- 4 million more than Windows -- and grabbing the second spot behind way-way-out-there Android and its leading 1.3 billion devices. In Gartner's current forecast, Windows will dip 3

"Today's Windows Mobile is Microsoft second try at an OS with that name. Despite having an early first mover advantage with Windows Mobile in the early 2000's Microsoft's lead folded like a bad hand of cards when the iPhone and Android arrived on the scene in the second half of the decade. We have not heard much about the reasons for this failure from inside the company, until a few weeks ago, when Christian Hernandez, who worked as a developer in the division, spoke out about his experience of this period in a Medium post. He revealed that Microsoft did anticipate the upcoming evolution of mobile phones into internet-connected computing devices and that initially things were looking good, due to Microsoft having the following advantages: A solid and stable embedded OS code base with WinCE and a growing PDA platform in PocketPC which integrated familiar apps and user experience to the desktop A relationship with chip manufacturers and OEMs which should allow it to copy the model of the Wintel era onto smartphones where Microsoft provided the OS, reference designs and marketing dollars and OEMs built the hardware and took it to market A well managed and broad set of application developers who lived and died by Microsoft and would surely support its new shift towards a mobile platform. This also included Microsoft's own apps like Outlook, Word, Excel, MSN Messenger, Internet Explorer and XBox assets. A lot of money in the bank to buy customers and market share"

"I happened to be looking through the settings of Google's Docs app for Android the other day when I spotted something interesting -- something I'd never before noticed. Sitting amidst all of the app's everyday options is a quietly significant feature, disabled by default: the ability to create standard Word documents within the app with a single tap -- to start a file that's in the DOCX format from the get-go, in other words, rather than in Google's own proprietary format. Huh. How 'bout that?"

"Microsoft has signed up over 70 smartphone manufacturers to pre-install its services onto phones, up from 20 in May last year.   In a blog post announcing the milestone, Nick Parker, the man in charge of relationships with smartphone makers, wrote that "Microsoft has been working hard to win over the hearts and minds of our partners and customers" which has culminated in 74 original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) signing up.  The partners, which include Acer, LG, Samsung, and Sony, will ship Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook, OneNote, OneDrive, and Skype on devices starting soon. Essentially, Microsoft will have its most important products on millions of phones. "

"Back in Microsoft's early days, Bill Gates and Paul Allen devised the mission statement that became the formula for their company's success: "A computer on every desk and in every home, running Microsoft software." Fast-forward a few decades and the playing field has changed. For starters, the notion that we can get by with just one computer at home and one at the office is downright quaint in 2016. Then there's that word software, which brings up images of shrink-wrapped retail packages and CD jewel boxes. Today, most modern development is aimed at creating apps that are lightweight and easily available for modern mobile platforms. And even traditional software is morphing into services, managed in the cloud and available from just about anywhere with Internet access. Microsoft Azure services are gradually replacing on-premises servers, and Office 365 subscriptions are eating into the market for perpetual Office licenses. Put it all together, and I suggest it's time for Satya Nadella's Microsoft to adopt a new mission statement: "A connected world, filled with intelligent devices running Microsoft services and apps." The company's latest financial results suggest that Microsoft is living up to that mission statement. The Intelligent Cloud segment, which combines traditional server products and cloud services like Microsoft Azure, is top dog in Redmond. In the first half of fiscal 2016, Microsoft's combined commercial cloud businesses grew 70 percent compared to the previous year, and that growth rate shows no signs of stopping. To get to that point, Microsoft had to get rid of the mindset that Windows was its most important product. And, indeed, that's happening already. Aaron Levie, CEO of Box and a Silicon Valley veteran, told me recently that he thinks Microsoft has mastered the art of "openness." The result is a series of moves that would have been unthinkable even five years ago, with a steady stream of apps for iOS and Android, including Office 365 rele

"Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) posted the following to its Office blog on Tuesday: This month, we're announcing several new Office 365 investments to help people better collaborate. This includes the much anticipated Skype for Business Mac Preview, new Yammer external groups and improvements in our Office Mobile apps on Windows Phone, iOS and Android. Please read on for details. Introducing Skype for Business Mac Preview Today, we are excited to announce the start of the Skype for Business Mac Preview. This new app offers a simple yet powerful experience that brings our Mac customers into the modern era of Skype for Business. "

"Microsoft today launched Office 2016 for Windows, and simultaneously raised prices of the stand-alone licenses for both it and the Mac edition between 5% and 7%. Office 365 subscription prices -- the "rent-not-own" model that Microsoft's been aggressively pushing since early 2013 -- did not change. resume makeover executive IT Resume Makeover: How to add flavor to a bland resume Don't count on your 'plain vanilla' resume to get you noticed - your resume needs a personal flavor to Read Now The cost of a single-license Office Home & Student 2016 edition climbed $10, from $140 to $150, a 7.1% increase. Meanwhile, Office Home & Business 2016 -- which adds Microsoft's Outlook email client to the suite -- also rose $10, from $220 to $230, or 4.5%. Office Professional 2016, available only for Windows, retained its $400 price tag. The single-license, stand-alone editions are sold primarily at retail, and are dubbed "perpetual" licenses because they require a one-time payment, but can then be used as long as the user wants. That's in contrast to Office 365, which requires a monthly or annual fee to continue using the software. On the consumer side, customers can choose between Office 365 Personal ($70 annually, $7 monthly) and Office 365 Home ($100 per year, $10 each month), while businesses have options that range from $99 to $240 per user per year. Office 365 Home is notable because it allows up to five installations of Office 2016 on PCs or Macs in the same household. All Office 365 plans, both consumer- and business-grade, also include rights to run the Office apps designed for Android, iOS and Windows 10 touch-centric mobile devices, including Android smartphones and tablets, iPhones and iPads, and Windows 10 touch-enabled tablets and notebooks. Microsoft's price increase for Office 2016 perpetual licenses was the second since January 2013, when the company revamped its retail line-up and boosted prices by as much as 17%. Microsoft duplicated those price increa

The key to the Microsoft Empire has always been that of controlling the "interoperability layer". It's something Bill Gates learned in 1980, when he opted to forgo royalty payments from IBM for DOS, in order to control all rights to DOS. "Probably the smartest choice Bill Gates ever made came in 1980, when he decided not to hand over the copyright for Microsoft's first-ever operating system to IBM.  In 1980, IBM contracted a startup called Microsoft to deliver DOS, an operating system for its forthcoming IBM PC, on a tight deadline. The IBM PC came out in 1981, and soon became a smash hit, surpassing the leading Apple II. A horde of competitors rushed to build their own "IBM Compatible" clones that could run all of the same software and use all of the same hardware upgrades. But to build those IBM clones, they needed DOS. And if they wanted DOS, they needed to fork over cash to Microsoft. Microsoft kept the rights in lieu of royalties from IBM. DOS put Microsoft the very center of the PC revolution, even through the era of Windows, and even after IBM left the PC market, eventually selling off that business. 36 years later, it's been a long time since the IBM PC moment. And with the Apple iPhone and Google Android ruling the all-important mobile market, Microsoft missed its shot at the mobile operating system revolution.  That's why Microsoft, which keeps boasting about how much it loves selling cloud services and subscriptions, is suddenly investing so much in hardware like the HoloLens and the Surface. If no new IBM PC will come along like in 1981, Microsoft will just have to build it itself. "

https://history.google.com/history/ Google uses a lot of methods to learn about you. There's the stuff you tell Google outright when you sign up for its Gmail or to use your Android phone. This includes your name, phone number, location, and so on. But Google also watches you as you scamper around the internet, deducing your interests from your internet searches - what do you search for? click on? - from your use of Google's other services and from other websites you visit. By visiting a hard-to-find page called "Web & App Activity," you can see what Google is watching. Then by visiting a site called "Ads Settings," you can see what Google thinks it knows about you, and you can change what it's telling advertisers about you.

"When you use Google, you are making a deal. You get to use services like Gmail, Drive, search, YouTube, and Google Maps for free. In exchange, you agree to share information about yourself that Google can share with advertisers so their ads are more effective. For instance, airlines want to target people who love to travel. Children's clothing makers want to target parents. Google uses a lot of methods to learn about you. There's the stuff you tell Google outright when you sign up for its Gmail or to use your Android phone. This includes your name, phone number, location, and so on. But Google also watches you as you scamper around the internet, deducing your interests from your internet searches - what do you search for? click on? - from your use of Google's other services and from other websites you visit. By visiting a hard-to-find page called "Web & App Activity," you can see what Google is watching. Then by visiting a site called "Ads Settings," you can see what Google thinks it knows about you, and you can change what it's telling advertisers about you. Read on for the details:"

"As CIOs look for better value from their enterprise content management (ECM) solutions, they're finding more cost effective ways of operating from cloud based file storage vendors. Box, Google Drive, AWS and others provide the same capabilities offered by expensive ECM solutions. In this article, ECM refers to a solution that stores unstructured data, such as documents, images, and plain text. Traditional ECM solutions are no longer cost competitive and do not provide any additional value over the simple indexing, storage and retrieval capabilities. Shifting ECM management of infrastructure, maintenance and operations to cloud based file storage vendors seems unavoidable to stay cost competitive."

"For the past two years, I've been doing a road show about Office 365 with Mimecast to businesses of all shapes and sizes in America and Britain. At the beginning of the show, when I asked the audience, "Who of you has moved or is looking to move to Office 365?" not one hand went up. Fast-forward to a week ago, and more than half the hands went up when I asked the same question. This shift is happening much faster than I would have predicted. [ Considering the move to Office 365? Take these crucial steps before, during, and after for a successful migration. | The InfoWorld review: Office 365 fails at collaboration | Stay up on key Microsoft technologies with the Enterprise Windows blog and Windows newsletter. ] There is no doubt that the driving force behind this shift is Office 365's Exchange Online component. I hear that rationale from everyone I talk to. And it's not only the people I talk to: A recent Gartner survey showed Exchange was overwhelmingly cited as the reason to move to Office 365. Oddly enough, OneDrive for Business was the second motivator, but it was also one of the biggest disappointments thus far. Why? Because, as my colleague Galen Gruman has shown, OneDrive for Business works only partially. Some organizations are motivated by Office 365's preconfigured SharePoint Online to assist with document collaboration and workflow, though the on-premises SharePoint remains much more capable. Skype for Business is making headway for instant messaging and conferencing as well, though it continues to be iffy in multiplatform environments. Then there are the productivity apps -- Word, Excel, and PowerPoint -- which Microsoft has made work well not only in Windows but also in iOS, in Android, and in OS X. Keep in mind that none of this means Office 365 has triumphed over Microsoft's on-premises services. On-premises Exchange -- IT's biggest reason to adopt Office 365 -- is still the leading email server by far. But over the next year or so, we will see

"The free Airtable database app for iOS has an edge over spreadsheets, and it lets you easily collaborate with other users. It may be overkill for some people, but its flexibility in storing and sorting data could be invaluable to others." It's been nearly three years since Bento, an easy-to-use database app for Mac and iOS, joined the digital junkheap. During that time, I hadn't seen anything that can truly replace Bento - until I tinkered with Airtable. Airtable is a free iOS app that recently received a big upgrade. It has the look and feel of a spreadsheet app, such as Numbers or Excel, but it has a relational database engine as well. (Airtable's Android app is currently in beta, there's a Google Chrome app, and you can use Airtable's website to create and edit your databases.) New features include the abilities to share records via email, search the database template gallery, and create calendar events from date fields.

"eady a major player in enterprise file sharing and hosting, Dropbox is launching a public version of its new Paper service to make a name for itself among collaborative productivity suite providers such as Google Docs and Microsoft's Office 365. Paper, which has been available in beta since last year, is aiming to win converts from the big names in the space with a user interface that the company said makes collaboration between coworkers easier. The cloud-based platform will allow users to manage shared documents by assigning different tasks and deadlines to various collaborators. Making Collaboration Easier The service also includes a variety of features designed to make collaboration between team members easier, no matter where in the world they're located. A Paper app is coming to iOS and Android devices to enable users to work on documents even while offline. The Web interface, meanwhile, is currently available in 21 languages, an important feature for multi-lingual teams. These new capabilities join other recent additions such as presentation mode, a feature that turns documents into presentation slides and integration with Google Calendar to make it easier for teams to create and share notes. Paper has already reached early enterprise adopters such as InVision, Ben & Jerry's, Shopify, Campaign Monitor, Getaround and Patreon, according to Dropbox. But the company appears to be positioning Paper to steal market share away from Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365. New Business Plans Going head-to-head with such well-established players will likely be a tall order. To help make Paper more attractive to its enterprise clients, Dropbox is also making its file hosting environment more enterprise-friendly. The latest version of the Web interface, which was released in conjunction with Paper, is more streamlined and potentially easier to navigate. Dropbox has also introduced a new feature that allows users to see others on their teams who have viewed their s

"Egnyte has been vying with the likes of Dropbox and Box for some time already in the cloud-storage arena, but on Tuesday it jumped on board the "mobile-first" train with a newly revamped version of its enterprise-focused app suite that's aimed squarely at mobile business users. State of the CIO 2015 More than 500 top IT leaders responded to our online survey to help us gauge the state of the READ NOW Now running on the Apple Watch and Windows tablets as well as Android, iOS and other Windows platforms, the new suite of apps is designed to let enterprise users on virtually any mobile device access, manage and share online and offline data from both cloud and on-premises storage. In addition to the expanded mobile-platform coverage, Egynte's new suite includes several new features, including the ability to organize files marked for offline access in a centralized view, thereby making it easier to coordinate offline and online content."

"Docady, an iOS app that lets you store and manage all your important documents, has been doing well in the App Store since its official launch in mid-July, including being featured by Apple as a 'best new app' for the last few weeks. And to help continue with that momentum, the Tel Aviv-based startup has just closed a $1.5 million funding round. Investors include Pitango Ventures, and Disruptive, the VC fund from Tal Barnoach, Eilon Tirosh and various unnamed former AOL video execs. The new investment will be used to bring the app to more platforms, with Android up next, and for the development of additional 'smart' features to make your documents work harder for you."

"In recent weeks, email and other collaboration and workflow tools are being re-imagined with new interfaces, social components, integrated video conferencing and easy swipes to dismiss messages. To wit: IBM launched  its Verse effort with a snazzy interface that combines, social, email, analytics and mobile nicely. Google floated Inbox , an app designed to help you manage your email better. For the most part, it's effective. Cisco's Project Squared is an app that runs on its collaboration cloud and integrates video conferencing, messaging and other tools. Facebook is pondering Facebook at Work with a news feed and doc sharing. We could go on, but the list of tech vendors trying to deliver a workflow leapfrog is long. And we're not even counting efforts by Workday, Salesforce and others to include collaboration with core business functions. WHAT'S HOT ON ZDNET Windows 10: You've got questions, I've got answers Windows 10 ​How to use Google's new My Account, the one-stop control center for all of its services Security Apple Watch or Android Wear? Neither. Why smartwatches aren't ready for prime time Mobility The tech of Computex 2015 in pictures Hardware Here's where all these efforts fall flat: These products are all pitched as magic bullets to simplify your work life, but in reality are just another item to sell or keep current customers in the fold. Another reality: These applications are trying to tackle human issues with collaboration and communications. Tech isn't going to fix those communication quirks or cure humans' need to try and keep up. We don't need another tool. We need less of them. We don't need another app to aggregate tech functions. We need to simplify tech functions starting with a bunch of check boxes marked delete. We don't need technology to help us communicate. We need to be taught how to communicate. And we sure don't need more messaging. We need to turn our damn phones off so maybe we can really get some work done or look up a