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HTML5 World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) I'm the de facto tech support person in my family. This means every trip to a relative's house I'm asked (among other things) whether or not to update Adobe Flash. Well, we're one step closer to sidestepping that question entirely: YouTube announced this week that it's eschewing Flash to stream HTML5 video by default. YouTube has used HTML5 video for years but limited it to mobile platforms that don't support Flash, such as iOS, or to desktop browsers that tech-savvy users configured to demand it. Yet Google, which owns YouTube, has recently worked in features like Adaptive Bitrate (ABR)--a technology that lets video change quality on the fly, based on the strength of your internet connection (and banishes the bothersome "buffering" notice we all hate)--to prepare HTML5-powered YouTube video for p

According to the 'best of 2012' list, messaging app WhatsApp was the best-selling iPhone app of the year, while Apple's Pages word processor was the best-selling iPad app of the year. NEW DELHI: With more than 700 million monthly active users, there's no doubt that WhatsApp is one of the largest mobile-focused messaging service. A large number of these users have been demanding a PC interface for the service to stay connected with their favourite people even when they switch devices. After a long wait, WhatsApp has finally introduced a way to access the service on a PC. However, there are several limitations attached to it as the interface is limited to a web browser. Here are five limitations of WhatsApp for web... 1. It doesn't support iPhone: WhatsApp for web essentially syncs messages between your smartphone and browser via its servers. At this time, the service does not support the iPhone. According to WhatsApp it's unable to p

  Today, for the first time, millions of you will have the ability to use WhatsApp on your web browser. Our web client is simply an extension of your phone: the web browser mirrors conversations and messages from your mobile device -- this means all of your messages still live on your phone. To connect your web browser to your WhatsApp client, simply open https://web.whatsapp.com in your Google Chrome browser. You will see a QR code --- scan the code inside of WhatsApp, and you’re ready to go. You have now paired WhatsApp on your phone with the WhatsApp web client. Your phone needs to stay connected to the internet for our web client to work, and please make sure to install the latest version of WhatsApp on your phone. Unfortunately for now, we will not be able to provide web client to our iOS users due to Apple platform limitations. We really hope you find web client useful in your everyday lives.

Microsoft spent the last half of 2014 getting everyone excited about Skype Translator,  a new technology that translates real-time conversations between two people speaking different languages over Skype. The new feature went into an invite-only preview in December. Not to be left behind, Google recently let slip to The New York Times that it intends to beef up the spoken translation chops of Google Translate for Android and (presumably) iOS. Pretty soon, Google Translate will automatically detect when someone is speaking and translate and transcribe their words on the fly, according to the Times . If you're a Google Translate user that description probably sounds a little confusing; Translate can already listen to your speech and transcribe it into any number of languages in near real-time. Google's app cannot, however, automatically detect what language you're speaking. Instead, you have to tell Translate which language you're starting with and

U.S. President Barack Obama will push Congress to pass a law requiring companies that are victims of data breaches to notify affected consumers within 30 days and a second law that gives consumers more control over their digital data, he said. Obama will call for a national data breach notification law and a Consumer Privacy Bill of Rights in ID theft and privacy initiatives in his State of the Union speech Jan. 20, he said Monday at the Federal Trade Commission. Neither of those proposals is a new one—the White House first called for a consumer privacy bill of rights in February 2012 and has backed a national breach notification law for years—but Congress has failed to pass those proposals. With a growing number of data breaches coming to light, it’s important for Congress to protect Internet users from a “direct threat” by hackers, Obama said. “If we’re going to be connected, then we need to be protected,” Obama said. “As Americans, we shouldn’t have to forfeit ou