Latest Technology News

They say April showers bring May flowers. What will Facebook's April 4 event bring? Late today the social network reportedly invited blogs and the news media to "come see our new home on Android". I'm not on the social network's guest list and can only report that based on those who got the invite, everything looks legit and tantalizing.

That's because no one can resist speculating or claiming that some unnamed source -- sorry, your buddy in the next bathroom shouldn't count -- promises debut of the long-rumored, oft-denied, ever-elusive and Google-gauging Facebook phone. Running Android! My God, the irony, the rumor wide-eyed profess. Hey, dudes, what if the new home is a tablet? Like Amazon does with Kindle. Or there's no phone at all?

I guess reviews just aren't enough. Social matters more. Late today Amazon and Goodreads reached a merger agreement, in a deal expected to close second quarter. The companies did not publicly disclose terms.

Goodreads is a recommendation service with social sharing capabilities. Founded in 2007, the the company claims 16 million members and 23 million reviews, but the magic comes from the social aspect. If you ever wanted to snoop in a friend's bookshelf, Goodreads lets you do something just like that -- recognizing reading recommendations from people you know can be more influential than professional reviewers and other strangers.

Got a lot of media stored digitally? Want access from a range of devices, including your computer, mobile and smart TV? One of the best tools for the job is the wonderful, and open-source, XBMC 12.1. It’s capable of so much, acting as a media center, DLNA-compatible server an, from version 12, PVR for live TV on your computer.

Next to XBMC, just about every so-called smart media box out there pales under its radiance. If only you could build your own XBMC-based smart box, eh? Actually you can: all you need is a spare PC and the wonderful OpenELEC 3.0.0.

Say, you know that new pop-up compose message box Google introduced last autumn. You don't? Well, get ready. Gmail is giving the ditty to everyone, whether or not wanted. That's what it looks like, in photo right.

"The new compose will be rolling out to everyone over the next few days", Phil Sharp, Gmail product manager, says. I've used the thing since October, in a sort of love-hate thing. On a laptop working in Chrome -- even better, on Chromebook Pixel -- the new compose box is great. On Surface Pro, using Internet Explorer 10 from Modern UI, the thing is unusable. The box flicks up and down from the bottom of the screen.

What would the Thursday before Easter be without a good scare to keep network administrators awake at night. Perhaps IDC just mixed up the candy holidays thinking it's Halloween. Whatever, the analyst firm warns of a troubling increase in enterprise distributed denial of service attacks and promises more are coming to you.

Of course, the real motivation here is to scare businesses into exploring DDoS-protective solutions. IDC forecasts 18.2 percent growth rate in DDoS products and services through 2017, reaching $870 million. To be fair, there's little dispute about rising DDoS risks.

The Spamhaus Project just finished a rocky week of "large-scale DDoS attack". Another DDoS disrupted Wells Fargo's website this week.

Samsung Galaxy S4 fans, be prepared to use your credit cards because it's pre-order season. A number of UK carriers, including Vodafone, EE and O2 have the new Android smartphone flagship on pre-order today, while in the United States AT&T announced that prospective buyers will have to wait until next month to get their hands on a new Galaxy S4 before it hits online and brick-and-mortar stores.

AT&T revealed that the Galaxy S4 will be available for pre-order starting with April 16 for $249.99 on a two-year contract. The carrier does not specify which model will be offered, but the 32GB Galaxy S4 is a good guess judging by the price of its predecessor at launch, during pre-orders. If 16GB, the price would be $50 higher than Galaxy S3 at launch and what iPhone 5 sells for today.

I love Amazon Prime. If I had a Kindle I would probably love it even more, if that were possible. Over the past two weeks I have also come to love my new Google TV, which has taken over our living room, with control of the DirecTV DVR and apps thrown in to boot. One of those apps is Amazon and I use it quite often, keeping a string of movies and TV shows in my watch list.

Now the Google PrimeTime app for Google TV has been updated to version 1.4.3-43-79424. This innocuous little name actually comes with a huge feature update. Not only has Amazon Prime content been rolled into the service, but you can control it and Netflix and HBO GO subscriptions from within the app as well.

Apple has gone to great trouble to craft its stores and reputation. The company refers to its employees as geniuses, for goodness sake! Taking your device in for repair is alluded to as a visit to the "genius bar". It is an entire ecosystem designed to make the customer feel confident and comfortable when dealing with the company. It is also a setup that lends itself to comedy and U.K. hard cider maker Somersby saw that opportunity.

The company has produced a new one-minute TV spot that portrays the Apple Store as a bar that serves up its cider and the geniuses explain why it is so good. The ad does not so much make fun of Apple (that is what Samsung is for), but instead uses the tech company's concept as a basis for some good tongue-in-cheek humor.

Sysinternals has announced updates for Autoruns and Process Monitor, as well as the release of a new command line tool, Registry Usage.

The Autoruns tweaks are the most significant. In particular, all reports now include a timestamp for executable files, folders or Registry keys. And so if you browse to HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Run in the Everything view, say, you’ll now see a timestamp which tells you when that Registry key was last modified.

Whenever I want to jot down a couple of ideas for a new story, write some of my thoughts for posterity, or create a shopping list, Evernote is my favorite cloud-based note-taking app. It looks great and is available across all my devices, so I don't have to worry about forgetting important personal things when I'm on the go. Everything that I have is there, everywhere.

What I value the most is the cross-platform spread, as Evernote is available on Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Mac OS X, Windows 8/RT and Windows Phone. And, to get me hooked some more, Evernote 3.0 just arrived on Windows Phone with a revamped home screen, improved tag lists and the ability to use shortcuts, among the most noteworthy new features.

Genie9 has released Genie Timeline 2013, the latest edition of its easy-to-use backup tool. As previously, the program is available in three editions -- Genie Timeline Free 2013, Genie Timeline Home 2013 ($39.95) and Genie Timeline Professional 2013 ($59.95) -- and all of these gain plenty of features in the new release.

This starts with the new protection level, for instance. This will immediately highlight any problems -- lots of file changes which haven’t been backed up, say, or you’ve run out of free space on the destination drive -- giving you a quick and easy view of your backup status.

Fifteenth in a series. The next chapter in Robert X.Cringely's 1991 classic, Accidental Empires, looks at the real rise of Microsoft. IBM established the standard hardware, which Compaq successfully "cloned", and for which developers created software. Cringely explains how standards evolve, using vinyl records as metaphor.

It was in the clay room, a closet filled with plastic bags of gray muck at the back of Mr. Ziska’s art room, where I made my move. For the first time ever, I found myself standing alone with Nancy Wilkins, the love of my life, the girl of my dreams. She was a vision in her green and black plaid skirt and white blouse, with little flecks of clay dusted across her glasses. Her blonde hair was in a ponytail, her teeth were in braces, and I was sure -- well, pretty sure -- that she was wearing a bra.

My name is Alan and I am a Temple Run Addict. I play Temple Run 1, Temple Run 2, Temple Run Brave, Temple Run Oz...I have a problem and I am here to admit it. My wife should be my steadying force, but she has a Windows Phone 8, and now I fear she may fall victim to the same affliction.

As of today she can steal the idol from that cave and attempt to outrun the apes through the jungle in Temple Run. The game, long popular on Android and iOS, has landed on Windows Phone after a long wait from customers.

¡Hola! Many of us use Google Translate, some on a daily basis. For instance, I follow a few blogs in Reader (a moment of silence please) that are published in languages that are foreign to me. For the most part it works well, but can also lead to some rather amusing results. Now you can get those same laughs from your Android phone, even when you are offline.

Today Google's product manager Minqi Jiang announces that the search giant and mobile operating system developer is "launching offline language packages for Google Translate on Android (2.3 and above) with support for 50 languages, from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic".

If you're a Flipboard user then you need to read this. On Wednesday, Flipboard 2.0 for iOS made its way onto the App Store bringing along important new features, changes and improvements, among which is the the ability to create magazines.

Users can "collect and save content" into their own magazines by tapping on the "+" button from any item in Flipboard. To fully personalize the experience, Flipboard 2.0 allows you to name the magazine, add a description and choose whether to let other users view it or keep the new creation private. As the company says, "now everyone can be a reader and an editor".