PCWorld Mar-15

RadioShack first opened its doors in 1921 to serve radio officers stationed on ships in Boston Harbor. On February 5, 2015 RadioShack filed for bankruptcy (go.pcworld.com/radioshack). We hate to see our beloved nerd emporium shut its doors. Sure, the retail chain may not be relevant today, but for decades it epitomized consumer electronics. Intrigued? Then join me on a tour of vintage RadioShack moments. The Early days The image above was shot in 1931 at a store in Boston. Then as today, customers visited RadioShack to listen to audio equipment before making a purchase. Listen to this RadioShack says it invented the in-store audio equipment listening experience—a service that pure audiophile shops adopted many years later. Here you see the audio room of a RadioShack location in Boston (year unknown). Notice the two turntables beneath the…

MICROSOFT’S DIGITAL ASSISTANT isn’t content to conquer Windows Phone and Windows 10: Cortana is a-coming to Office, too. That’s according to The Verge’s Tom Warren (go.pcworld.com/verg), who went digging after the folks at WMPowerUser (go.pcworld.com/wmpu) discovered an odd Work Assistant app in the Windows Phone Store, locked down to internal Microsoft beta testers alone. The Work Assistant app is a prototype that can be used to open, edit, and share documents via voice commands and Cortana, Warren reports. Apparently the end intention is to integrate Cortana fully inside of Office on phones, tablets, and PCs. Microsoft recently announced that Office 2016 will ship later this year, and released a preview of touch-capable Office apps (go.pcworld.com/16preview), ahead of an official launch closer to the release of Windows 10. The story behind the story: ZDNet’s…

THE MICROSOFT OF today is not the Microsoft of yesterday. Embrace, extend, extinguish? That’s all gone, replaced by a new era of openness and collaboration. The Windows 8 debacle? It’s quickly being forgotten thanks to the far more palatable Windows 10. It’s truly a new era at Microsoft, and the catalyst for the transformation was a singular event: Satya Nadella’s appointment as CEO one year ago today. Sure, not all of the major events that occurred on his watch began on his watch—Windows 10 has been in the works for a while—but it’s nevertheless been a year swelling with a sea of changes. It remains to be seen whether the reimagining of Microsoft will pay off. But one thing’s already certain: Nadella’s reign is off to a rocking start. Office for iPad Nadella pledged…

THE U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY AGENCY and its intelligence partners are reportedly sifting through data stolen by state-sponsored and freelance hackers on a regular basis in search of valuable information. Despite constantly warning about the threat of hackers and pushing for their prosecution, the intelligence agencies of the U.S., Canada and the U.K. are happy to ride their coattails when it serves their interests, news website The Intercept reported (go.pcworld.com/intercept). “Hackers are stealing the emails of some of our targets... by collecting the hackers’ ‘take’ we 1) get access to the emails ourselves and 2) get insights into who’s being hacked,” a page from an internal wiki used by the agencies reads. The page (go.pcworld.com/page), last modified in 2012, was among the files leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden to journalists and…

DELL JUST LAUNCHED a sleek new MacBook Pro competitor running Linux, and the freedom-obsessed Purim Librem 15 (go.pcworld.com/ purim) laptop blew past its crowdfunding goal. But Richard Stallman’s Free Software Foundation doesn’t approve of either of these powerful, tightly designed, Linux-running laptops. Instead, the FSF recommends you buy the “LibreBoot X200”—which is actually a refurbished ThinkPad X200 from 2008 (go.pcworld.com/fsf). That’s insane… at least on the surface. But the story isn’t quite that simple. On the one hand, the FSF looks comically out-of-touch by endorsing this hardware, which spectacularly few people—even hardcore free software geeks—will want to buy. But on the other hand, the FSF is sticking to its guns, and making a good point about how hard it is to get hardware with completely open code. Only two laptops “respect your freedom,”…

GOOGLE HAS DONE a good job at keeping data-stealing Trojan apps out of Google Play, but attackers still find ways to monetize rogue apps through the store. Avast Software researchers recently found three apps on Google Play with hidden adware functionality that was designed to activate days after the apps were installed. The rogue applications—a game called Durak, an IQ test and a history app—had been downloaded millions of times. When people first install Durak, it looks and acts like a normal gaming app, Avast researcher Filip Chytry said in a blog post (go.pcworld.com/blog). “This impression remains until you reboot your device and wait for a couple of days. After a week, you might start to feel there is something wrong with your device.” Specifically, every time users unlock their phones, the app…