Latest Technology News

In the consumer market, Intel is best known for making chips that go into PCs of various design, and with the newly announced Intel Atom Z2760 processor, codenamed Clover Trail, the Santa Clara, California-based corporation is looking to make a dent in the mobile tablet market as well, where its presence can be considered abysmal at best.

The new Intel processor is designed to fill the gap between Windows RT-based tablets running on ARM chips and full Windows 8 Pro-based tablets on Intel Core i processors. Intel looks to be planting its Clover Trail flag in the middle ground, offering compatibility with desktop applications and improved mobility through good battery life and a compact package.

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Chinese software developer CHENGDU Yiwo has released EaseUS CleanGenius Free 3.0.5. Despite the version number, this is actually the first release of CleanGenius on the PC platform, and follows in the wake of the paid-for EaseUS CleanGenius for Mac.

Despite sharing the name, CleanGenius is a very different beast on the PC, combining more than 20 disparate cleanup, optimization and privacy tools in a single program. While the vast majority of these are free, some features -- including scheduling options and automatic optimisation -- are restricted to a paid-for Pro license.

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It's been ten months since HP open sourced webOS, the attractive Web-based operating system that proved to be the last hurrah for smartphone pioneer Palm. Today, the Open webOS team announced the availability of Open webOS 1.0, the first official build of the open source platform for both desktop and embedded environments.

This release includes support for the Enyo2 core application framework, the Nyx portability layer, support for the latest Qt framework and WebKit engine. It also includes the OpenEmbedded build system for embedded Linux environments, and also a desktop build. It also has the signature webOS "card-based" user experience and core apps (Web browser, email client, calendar and contacts, clocks and memos).

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Welcome to weird news Friday! We went from Apple CEO Tim Cook's iOS 6 maps apology to a Steve Jobs sculpture made from his trash. Now this: AMC launches a bizarre retaliatory campaign against DISH Network. Following a contract disagreement, DISH killed AMC on its service. Now AMC uses hit TV show "The Walking Dead" to kill DISH. Who are the real zombies here?

The only living beings may be AMC marketers, who cleverly disguise payback as promotion. Starting today, DISH customers can sign up to stream the first new zombie episode when it airs October 14. Prominently displayed: "This is a one-time only event for DISH customers. Switch TV providers now to see the rest of Season 3 of The Walking Dead".

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Call me a pioneer. Those who have followed my contributions of late will have noted that I'm somewhat of a post-PC fanatic. I've taken it upon myself to blaze a trail into an IT future that features virtually no Microsoft or Intel technologies. Along the way, I've managed to stitch together a fairly functional post-PC solution. However, my journey has not always been a smooth one, and I will forever carry the scars of slings and arrows gone by.

For example, as I write this I'm sitting in the nearly empty family room of the new waterfront condo my wife and I just bought near Manalapan, FL. And as is often the case with a new property, I have yet to set-up any sort of Internet access -- nor do I plan to do so since we'll only be staying in the property for a few days before returning to Mauritius.

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"Most Recently Used" lists are generally a good feature in applications, as they allow you to reload recent documents without having to remember exactly where they’re stored.

But, of course, there are also privacy implications with doing this. And so if you don’t want other users of your PC to see exactly which documents you’ve been accessing recently, you may want to use a third-party tool, like MRU-Blaster, to wipe them all away.

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Apple's CEO is "extremely sorry" about the "frustration" the company's homegrown maps app "has caused our customers". Sorry isn't good enough because it's directed at the wrong place. Apple replaced Google Maps in the newest version of iOS on September 19, and even Cook admits "we fell short on this commitment" to "make world-class products that deliver the best experience possible to our customers". Simply stated: Apple Maps app sucks, but he apologizes about the wrong thing.

Cook's letter of apology should go further and get to the root problem: Why Apple ditched Google Maps in the first place. Before his death, Steve Jobs told his biographer that Google's Android essentially is a stolen product, a copycat: "I'm willing to go thermonuclear war on this". Apple bombs Android competitors with patent lawsuits, risking fallout in the form of legal precedents that could hurt all tech companies. Apple's dumping Google Maps, and also YouTube, from iOS are warfare tactics -- and bigger than copying concerns when looking at local search as future ad revenue opportunity. Apple customers are collateral damage from nuclear fallout that is the new mapping app.

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I'm sorry, guys. I'm sorry. I have to apologize up front for even passing this story across your screens today, but it's one of those things that I just cannot overlook.

Los Angeles art house Cory Allen Contemporary Art announced yesterday that it is "re-pressing" the Steve Jobs figurine that Apple snuffed out of existence two years ago, but this second version adds a new wrinkle: is made out of porcelain and "a recycled resin made up of Steve Job’s residential trash the artist collected from the tech icon’s home several months before his death last year. "

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Say goodbye to Ice Cream Sandwich and hello to Jelly Bean! Acer's flagship Android tablet, the quad-core nVidia Tegra 3 Iconia Tab A700 gets an Android 4.1 Jelly Bean adrenaline shot in Europe, with extended availability likely to follow in the near future.

According to XDA Developers members, the Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean update for the Acer Iconia Tab A700 tablet is available only in Germany at the moment. The update brings along a few notable changes, the biggest of which obviously is operating system upgrade in itself, but it is reported that Google Chrome as well as Acer Cloud are included in the update among the usual Google Currents, Play Books and Play Music. Allegedly, there is an effect on touch sensitivity as well which, according to the same user that reported the changes, is an improvement over the previous version.

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This morning, Apple posted an apology from the CEO about iOS 6 maps, which replaced the mature Google product available in the five previous versions of the operating system. Complaints about misidentifications and misdirections flooded the web, starting with the software's release on September 19.

The letter, posted on Apple's website and signed by Tim Cook, is a rare mea culpa. Ironically, Cook's temporary remedy: Use map apps like Bing or do what colleague Wayne Williams suggested yesterday -- create a shortcut to Google Maps web app. Wayne's Apple Maps review shows exactly what's wrong with the experience he describes as a downgrade.

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If you went to Google.com today, you probably noticed the logo was replaced with a fun little birthday cake animation celebrating 14 years of incorporation. Google was incorporated on Sept. 4th 1998, but chose today to celebrate the birthday. What does it matter when they celebrate, after all, Google has had a great year.

In April, Google released a concept video about Project Glass, fancy glasses with computers in them. In May, the search giant closed the purchase of Motorola Mobility. During the annual developer conference in June, Google made a lot of announcements, among them: Android 4.1, Nexus 7 tablet, Nexus Q and creepy but useful Google Now. The fun: skydiving, bicycles and rappelling down the side of a building. Big surprise: event participants could purchase a developer version of Google Glasses.

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The office workplace is continually evolving. New technologies and trends -- like cloud computing and BYOD schemes -- are becoming more and more popular, but not every firm is willing to embrace the future, and many are stuck firmly in the past.

LinkedIn, the world’s largest social network for professionals, surveyed more than 7,000 members across the globe and asked them which of the current office tools and trends they expect to be extinct in five years’ time, combining the answers to produce the following top 10:

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Four months ago, I put aside (and later sold) MacBook Air for the Samsung Series 5 550 second-generation Chromebook and never looked back. They say three times is a charm, and that proves true with my third foray using a laptop running Chrome OS. The first two proved life-changing, as I adopted a partial cloud computing lifestyle. Now I live a vigorous, charmed cloud life, which includes Android embrace.

Chromebook isn't easy, because it demands a thinking reset. I had to put aside concepts about everyday computing, fear of losing Internet connection and perceptions about hardware configurations and what's good enough performance value. Something else: When I started this journey, in December 2010, Chrome OS wasn't good enough, because there weren't enough supporting cloud apps. That has changed dramatically, because of Chrome Web Store and how much desktop-like utility Google now brings to cloud services like G+ or YouTube.

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Avira Operations has launched its 2013 product range, which includes Avira Free Antivirus, Avira Antivirus Premium 2013($29.99), Avira Internet Security 2013 ($59.99) and Avira Internet Security Plus ($81.99).

Paying customers will benefit from integration with Avira’s Protection Cloud, which should see malware identified more quickly, while scanning is now more thorough with the new ability to check network folders.

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If you are a CyanogenMod 10 nightly user, then CM10 Downloader is a must-have on your Android device.

The app is designed to download CM10 nightly builds for your Android smartphone without involving the use of other apps, and it provides the option to download the necessary Google Apps package. If you don't want to manually check for a new build, and if you're trying to avoid using cellular data, it also comes with a scheduler option that will automatically check for you, and download updates via Wi-Fi. Pretty nice, isn't it?

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