When Alec Baldwin was kicked off of an American Airlines flight for refusing to turn off his smartphone, he became the fodder for many jokes. After all, his love for the game Words With Friends was a rather trivial thing to let escalate to the point of being removed from an airplane. However, many of us have faced the same situation -- being told to turn off our electronic devices while on a plane. This was frustrating because, to speak frankly, we all knew it was stupid.

Today, the stupidity ends. According to the Federal Aviation Administration, "airlines can safely expand passenger use of Portable Electronic Devices during all phases of flight, and is immediately providing the airlines with guidance. Expanded use will not happen overnight. The process will vary among airlines, but the agency expects airlines to allow passengers to safely use their devices in airplane mode, gate-to-gate, by the end of 2013".

It has been less than 24 hours since music streaming service Pandora took the wraps off version 5.0 of its mobile app for Android, giving users a new tablet-friendly look and improved features. Now the company adds yet another update to the list, this time in the form of support for Google Chromecast.

"Today, we’re excited to share that Pandora is now available on Chromecast, Google’s new TV-connected device that wirelessly delivers online audio and video entertainment to the biggest screen in the home", announces Pandora's Tom Conrad.

Web pop-ups are annoying, intrusive, and potentially dangerous, which is why all the top browsers make at least some attempt to block them. Google’s Chrome is no exception, but it won’t stop everything, and so you might want to add a little extra protection in the shape of JavaScript Popup Blocker.

As you’ll guess from the name, this free extension aims to block all JavaScript-generated pop-up and pop-under windows. You don’t have to worry about configuration, at least initially, as it starts working right away: just carry on browsing as normal.

Flexibits has released Fantastical 2 for iPhone, a major new update for its popular calendar app (which, despite its moniker, also works natively on the iPad). Fantastical 2, which is also available for Mac, is designed to work with existing calendar services -- including iCloud and Google -- but adds a more powerful front end for managing and viewing reminders.

Version 2.0 has been redesigned from the ground up to blend in with the new flatter look of iOS 7, but also ships with a number of major new features.

Cloud, cloud, cloud. This is a word that is prevalent when describing modern services, and one that we hear all too often nowadays. The premise is simple: move stuff somewhere you cannot control and leave it to someone (or some company) to do the backend work for you. For CRM software this approach appears to be ideal, as both the developing companies and their clients seem to embrace it.

CRM software used to be associated with on-premise solutions, but this approach has failed to integrate well into the new computing landscape where mobile devices are used increasingly around the office and on the go. A mobile-friendly philosophy is key. I chatted with Pipedrive, a company that makes cloud-based CRM software, about how it leverages the cloud and what the benefits are for its 30,000 users.

I like unusual games, and the original Papa Sangre really appealed to me. If you’ve never heard of it, it’s essentially a sound-only game for iOS in which you listen for 3D audio clues as to where you are and the direction you need to be going in. The follow up, The Nightjar (featuring the voice of Benedict Cumberbatch), added more of a story to the proceedings, and now in time for Halloween, Papa Sangre returns.

I was one of the beta testers for the new game, and I’m pleased to report Papa Sangre II is a massive improvement over the original. The rebuilt binaural processing Papa Engine does an amazing job of recreating a 3D soundscape in your mind and the addition of actor Sean Bean’s vocal talents, a choice of control systems and some inspired levels -- one moment you’re escaping a burning house, the next shooting ducks in the dark -- combine to create a very rewarding experience.

SeriousBit has rolled out EnhanceMy8 2.0, the latest edition of its Windows 8 maintenance and tweaking utility.

This release benefits from full Windows 8.1 support (although of course it also runs just fine on Windows 8). EnhanceMy8 2.0 is also the first digitally signed version of the program, which should ensure that it’s properly recognized as a trusted program by your security software.

Silver surfers are a more important market than generations X and Y yet are often ignored by technology companies according to new research by Gartner. With many markets now having an aging population, technology designers and marketers need to refocus on the opportunities offered by older users.

Speaking at Gartner Symposium/ITxpo on Australia's Gold Coast, vice president and Gartner Fellow David Furlonger says, "In recent years, technology decision makers have focused their work largely on the perceived wants and needs of younger demographics. They have created and sold products targeted explicitly at an already-saturated market of financially poor 'digital natives' in Generations X and Y. This emphasis on the young is unsurprising, since many technologists are themselves part of these younger age groups. However, it is a very serious mistake, because it neglects the most promising technology market demographic of all: the affluent, increasingly technologically sophisticated older generation we are calling the 'silver surfers'".

22 years old and still going strong, veteran archiving tool WinZip has today been updated to version 18. And this time, it’s mostly about the cloud.

This starts with support for more services; you can now directly add files from (or save archives to) your Box, CloudMe, Dropbox, Google Drive, SkyDrive, SugarSync or ZipSend accounts.

There are many records available to be broken -- worlds tallest man, biggest hamburger or loudest crowd, to name a few. However, in the technology sector, there are records to break too; namely benchmarks. A benchmark is a way to test performance of both hardware and software. Red Hat announces that in a partnership with Hitachi, they too have broken a record -- the largest TPC-H database benchmark ever published.

"As a testament to Red Hat's continued innovation, the Red Hat Enterprise Linux team is pleased to announce that longtime Red Hat partner Hitachi, a leading global social innovation company with headquarters in Tokyo, has chosen Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 for the largest TPC-H database benchmark ever published at a scale factor of 100 Terabytes (100,000 Gigabytes)", says Red Hat.

Earlier this month, I delivered a keynote at Gartner's annual symposium and published a blog post about the rapidly evolving landscape of business technology. The rise of cloud computing and ubiquitous, powerful mobile devices means that organizations can reduce their IT bills significantly while boosting employees' productivity and collaboration. Moving to the cloud is no longer a questionable proposition -- it's inevitable.

This led some of the organizations I work with to ask: "That all makes sense, but how do we actually get started?"

When I embarked on my Microsoft-only journey, I was scared. After all, my professional life and career depends on my use of technology. By limiting myself to only one company and its products, there could be room for more harm rather than good. However, I was also excited to try something new and share it with you.

In reality, people will not purposely restrict their choice in computing; they will choose the devices they want, regardless of brand. Quite frankly, many people mix and match brands and operating systems -- Windows laptop with an iPhone, iMac with an Android smartphone, etc. While I was using a Surface 2 with a Windows Phone in my experiment, that is not necessarily a common combination.

Back at the start of the month, Adobe reported that the company’s network had suffered a breach and that as a result the accounts of 2.9 million customers had been compromised. Sounds bad? It's worse than first thought. And not just a bit worse; much, much worse. Upon further analysis of the figures Brian Krebs of KrebsOnSecurity puts the numbers at 38 million user accounts.

We reported the security breach at the time, and it is amazing to discover that the figure of 2.9 million affected users is in fact more than ten times as high. So how could the figures have been misread to such an extent? Apparently, many of the directories of data were password protected, making it difficult to give precise numbers at the time.

Music choices continue to grow for the new mobile generation. While most services found on your phone are also an option for the tablet in your life, Pandora has been curiously absent from the larger screen. Not that it wouldn't work -- it has been at home on my Kindle Fire HD for sometime now -- but, it wasn't dedicated to the platform.

Today that changes. Mike Grishaver of Pandora proclaims "we’re excited to unveil our latest version of Pandora, designed specifically for Android tablets, and available for download starting today via Google Play".

Amazon has continued to roll out its Cloud Player application with the release of Amazon Cloud Player for Mac 2.0 (despite the version number, this is the first release on the Mac platform). The new player is practically identical to the Windows build, which debuted in May.

Amazon Cloud Player, also available for iOS and Android, allows Amazon users to access all music stored in its Cloud Player service.