Latest Technology News

What Apple takes away, Google gives back. Early this morning, Google Maps arrived for iPhone, replacing the app removed by Apple with release of iOS 6. The company's homegrown product proved nothing short of disastrous, for the fruit-logo brand and customers using the app/service. Earlier this week, law enforcement in Australia warned against using Apple Maps, after motorists were misdirected and their lives put at risk.

Reviews rightly have been scathing, while iPhone users cried not to Apple but Google for direction. Now that it's here, irony comes along. Android's developer may do more for current iOS than its maker. A surprising number of people held back iOS 6 upgrades or iPhone 5 purchases, not wanting to give up Google Maps or take on Apple's replacement.

We have seen top-10 lists now from Yahoo, Twitter and Facebook. Sure, all of them provided the raw data pertaining to the most-searched for and most-talked about products, events, people and more from the past year. Google, with it's popular Zeitgeist release, did the same. But the search leader took it one step further and, in so doing, was the real winner in this 2012 popularity contest.

Google provides perspective and emotion to raw, boring statistics and creates something that is appealing to basic human instincts. The company put together a video that will jog your memory, make you smile and bring a tear to your eye.

Among the modding community, Android devices from Verizon Wireless are known for limited modding capabilities. Samsung Galaxy Note II is no different, however, its stigma is slowly fading. The handset can run apps with elevated privileges, and now the bootloader can be unlocked as well.

An unlocked bootloader may not appeal to less demanding users, but holds a great deal of importance to enthusiasts that want to install custom Android distributions, third-party recoveries or kernels. But in order to get even a whiff of all the goodies, Galaxy Note II users first have to install a new Partition Information Table and a custom ROM. Afterwards an exploit must be run in order to install the PIT file (again) and flash the insecure (unlocked) bootloader as well as the new recovery.

Within the past few days Instagram has divorced Twitter and added a new filter, Twitter got into the Instagram game by adding photo filters and now Yahoo-owned photo sharing service Flickr has joined the fray with its new iPhone app update. You can probably guess where this announcement is going.

Yes, Flickr has added a set of filters that users can access upon snapping a photo. Like Instagram and now Twitter, there are a standard set of filters including black and white and 15 others that are now part of the built-in editor, which also allows you to crop your image right on the spot. You can then share it via Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr or email.

Centigrade to Fahrenheit, miles to kilometers, pounds to kilograms -- everyone needs a unit conversion tool occasionally. And if you’re working with simple units, and are online at the time, then a quick web search will probably find a service to help. Or you can often use Google directly: just type 55F in C into the search box for a quick temperature conversion, for instance.

If you’d like some offline assistance, though, or need to run more unusual conversions, then the free ESBUnitConv is a great place to start.

This morning, Amazon greeted me with email promoting the ARM Chromebook. Well, hell, back in stock is a story. But what a surprise I got clicking the link. Rather than the expected $249 price, one of the retailer's third-party sellers demanded $342.92 for the WiFi model and $448.45 the 3G. There were five WiFi Chromebooks hours ago. They're sold out now -- 3G as well from the one seller. Another has one 3G unit left for $441.90 -- or about $112 more than the official selling price.

I'm a big Chromebook fan and last week made the $249 ARM model my main PC, even though Samsung's Series 5 550 is faster. I simply like the smaller portable's ergonomics and keyboard better. But my Chromebook enthusiasm stops with paying way more than Google's selling price. I've got to wonder: Why are these people paying premium price? Is it you? Is Chromebook really that much in demand?

Sign up for an account with a website and you’ll usually see them promising not to share your details with others. “We hate spam as much as you do”, they might claim, although none of this seems to prevent the endless torrent of junk which pours into our inboxes on a daily basis.

It could be a better idea to simply never give out your main email address in the first place, then. And MaskMe is an excellent Chrome extension that can help.

Six weeks ago, Samsung sauced up Galaxy S3 marketing with a dad going on a work trip commercial. His girls prepared a video, which the wife beams by touching phones together. She has one, too, but "you probably shouldn't watch it on the plane". A new version is out, with the Clauses, and the plump Mrs. still has spunk. She prepares a video for Santa, "but you probably shouldn't watch it on the sleigh".

What? Will Santa's cheeks burn as red as Rudolph's nose? Mr. Kringle is supposed to reward those kiddies who are nice and give coal to those who are naughty. But what happens to the naughty and nice, like Mrs. Claus? Samsung leaves that to your imagination. But what you can imagine! I know, thinking of Santa and Mrs. Claus in bed together isn't much different than thought of your parents. But, hey, those elves came from somewhere.

BillP Studios has launched WinPatrol 2013, a brand new version of its snapshot-based security tool that alerts users to program attempts to make significant changes to key areas of a PC.

Version 26.0.2013 focuses on making the program more Windows 8 friendly than before, largely by tweaking program settings to accommodate new Windows 8 conventions such as cookie storage in Internet Explorer 10.

Microsoft's plans to greatly expand Surface RT sales to third-party retailers accomplishes two things. One: Rebuts unfounded rumors that the tablet sells poorly or that the company has cut fab orders by half. Two: Makes the tablet available in enough places to be truly successful. Honestly, I am so fraking sick of so-called professional blogs (and some news sites) writing rumor stories based on a single source -- or worse using another site's report based on unnamed source(s).

Just a week ago, I explained why "Surface RT sales are probably quite good, you just don't know it". In a number-crunching analysis you shouldn't have missed, I refuted pundit claims sales are weak by looking from the perspective of actual distribution, which isn't much through 66 North American company shops or Microsoft Store online in seven countries. If Surface has any problem, it's limited distribution. Too bad the company waited so late in the holiday season to expand Surface RT availability.

Just weeks after I wrote a column saying Apple will dump Intel and make Macintosh computers with its own ARM-based processors, along comes a Wall Street analyst saying no, Intel will take over from Samsung making the Apple-designed iPhone and iPod chips and Apple will even switch to x86 silicon for future iPads. Well, who is correct?

Maybe both, maybe neither, but here’s what I think is happening.

The trend for tech companies in the past few days has been to, well, release lists of trends for the past year. Today Facebook joins Google, Twitter, Yahoo and others in releasing its list of the most talked about stories of 2012. Let's face it though, these lists rarely vary no matter if it's a search engine or a social media website. What people search for most tends to also be what they are talking about the most.

Still, Facebook is one of the biggest influencers on the web right now. Consequently the data the company releases carries some weight.

A week after Nokia announced the Lumia 920T, the first TD-SCDMA variant of the Lumia 920 for China Mobile, the Finnish manufacturer has introduced its entire Windows Phone 8 line-up to the Chinese market.

Nokia's Windows Phone 8 flagship, the Lumia 920, is available for pre-order in China for ¥4,599 (roughly $735). The handset sells for the same price as the Lumia 920T, but is designed to operate on other networks. The company's mid-range Windows Phone 8 device, the Lumia 820, can be pre-ordered with a less intimidating price-tag. The smartphone is available for ¥3,499 (roughly $560).

Popular open-source blogging CMS system WordPress 3.5 has launched. The system, pre-installed with many hosting packages but also available for direct download, shows off a brand new media manager and simplified default theme as its most noticeable improvements.

The update also becomes Retina-friendly for the first time, debuts a number of accessibility and interface tweaks, and provides a number of under-the-hood tweaks aimed at blog developers.

If you haven't heard of Oppo before, I don't blame you. Awareness of the company's existence in mature Western mobile markets is practically nonexistent. However, that hasn’t stopped the Chinese manufacturer from announcing the Find 5, a surprising smartphone coming to the US market shortly.

Oppo's handset features specs that rival those of HTC's Butterfly (or DROID DNA as it is known in the United States), which is rather impressive. The Find 5 sports a 5-inch display with a resolution of 1920 by 1080 and a 441 ppi density. Power comes from a quad-core 1.5GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (codename "APQ8064") processor backed by 2GB of RAM and an Adreno 320 graphics card. The smartphone's 2500mAh battery though is larger than the one found in the Butterfly/DROID DNA, which comes in at only 2020mAh.