Latest Technology News

Music software developer Freemake dropped an intriguing infographic in my inbox this morning, claiming most people won't pay for music next year. Heck, who does today, I ask.

My daughter has a music library with more than 7,000 songs, but she now just streams Pandora on her iPhone to connected speakers. She hasn't listened to anything from her own library for months. She pays zero. I'm a big fan of Vevo. I don't often have time to watch music videos, but I can listen to them streaming in the background.

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How can you find the size of a file on an NTFS drive? Sounds easy enough -- just right-click and select Properties -- but that will only provide the size of the file’s main data stream. Under NTFS, files may also have additional streams, which can be of any size (even larger than the main data stream), yet they’re not mentioned at all in the Explorer properties dialog.

While this may sound odd, it can be useful, and there are plenty of legitimate uses for alternate data streams (ADS). Create a favorite in Internet Explorer and the browser will store the site’s icon (if available) in the resulting shortcut, for instance. And IE also uses ADS to tag files as having been downloaded from the internet, which can be very valuable information in some circumstances.

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Do you use Meebo? Will you switch to Google+? Think hard before you answer, because Google is buying Meebo, the companies disclosed late today. The Meebo team, and presumably technology, will move to Google+, just as the social network's year anniversary approaches. (Whoa, has it been that long already?)

I remember Meebo, which launched in 2005, for its socially-oriented messaging client, which didn't stick to my online habits. More recently the company is better known for the Meebo Bar, which adorns tens of thousands of websites. I signed up two years ago and quickly gave it up. Meebo isn't alone producing this kind of website shtick, and I can only hope Google doesn't make Plus negative by adopting any similar menu bar motif.

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Late last year, I got pretty excited about the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime Android tablet. The tablet/notebook form factor spoke to me, the specs were impressive, and the overall package looked just right for an individual looking to do more working than playing.

Asus has revisited the appealling form factor of the Transformer Prime and applied it to Windows RT, the version of Windows 8 specifically for devices running on ARM-based processors.

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A week ago the big malware news was the code known as Flame, Flamer, or sKyWIper (detected by ESET as Win32/Flamer.A), then on June 1, this news broke: "A damaging cyberattack against Iran’s nuclear program was the work of US and Israeli experts and proceeded under the secret orders of President Obama" (Washington Post). Clearly, the antivirus community is going to have a lot to say about this news and there will probably be several posts on the topic from ESET researchers.

Just to give some background, the attack was Stuxnet, a piece of malware that was documented in detail in the ESET white paper Stuxnet Under the Microscope. The goal of Stuxnet was to attack and sabotage Iran’s nuclear program, and as the New York times puts it: "the last of that series of attacks, a few weeks after Stuxnet was detected around the world, temporarily took out nearly 1,000 of the 5,000 centrifuges Iran had spinning at the time to purify uranium".

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Asymco's Horace Dediu asks an interesting question today: "Trouble with the Robot?" -- referring to Android. He hones in on two seemingly convergent trends: a slight sequential dip in US Android share and sharp decline in US subscribers switching from feature phones to smartphones.

Based on his analysis of April data, iPhone sales remain fairly constant, while Android disproportionally declines. "Broken out by platforms, we see signs that the slowing in smartphone growth seems to be attributable to a slowing in Android adoption", Dediu explains. Stated differently, referring to comScore data he adds: "We see the lowest user growth for Android since 2009". The easy interpretation -- Android is now declining before iPhone -- would be wrong.

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Instapaper, the popular iOS application that lets users save web pages for offline reading, was released for Android on Monday, and can now be downloaded in Google Play.

Instapaper's creator Marco Arment released the app exclusively for iOS, and showed a public preference for the platform, hence earning him the label of "Apple Fanboy" from much of the platform-partisan Web. But due to the undeniable success of Android tablets such as Amazon's Kindle Fire and Barnes and Noble's Nook, Arment and Android app makers Mobelux have ported Instapaper to Android.

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Australian utilities developer Auslogics, perhaps most famous for the excellent Disk Defrag tool, has extended its range with the release of BitReplica, a straightforward and free backup tool.

The program clearly aims for simplicity above all else. Create a new backup job, say, and you’re able to choose common backup sources (Documents folder, Pictures, browser and Outlook Profiles) by just checking boxes, which works for us.

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If you're ogling Galaxy S III and thinking "I want", perhaps you should be asking "i what?" Galaxy S III arrives on these shores from all major carriers this month. As for iPhone 4S, well, whatever. Preorders start tomorrow (from Sprint, T-Mobile); June 6 (from Verizon).

But to get lower-cost, subsidized US models, many buyers will gain in network connectivity but lose in raw processing power. US models, also from AT&T, Sprint and US Cellular, are dual-core -- not the quad-core beauts shipping overseas. To get one those babies, unlocked, expect to plunk down at least $650. US, locked, contractual commitment S3s start at $199.99.

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If you manage one or more PCs then you’ll know it can be difficult to make sure they’re all being used as you might like. Should someone want to conceal files from you, say, then if they zip them up and password-protect the archive then there’s very little chance of you ever finding out.

It doesn’t have to be that way, though, not if you install Passware Encryption Analyzer Free, a simple tool that will scan whatever areas of a PC you define and highlight almost any encrypted or password-protected files.

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The Internet is awash with dark rumors that the brand newWindows 8 Release Preview Microsoft is getting heavy with users who have bypassed attempts to remove the traditional Start button and menu from the traditional desktop. No doubt you've heard that Microsoft has removed all support for the Start menu in this latest release, bringing a host of Start menu apps grinding to a halt.

We’re here to put you straight. Windows 8 Release Preview works fine with all of the Start menu replacement tools we threw at it, including two of our favorites: Classic Shell and Start8 from Stardock. But while they work now, will the same be true when the final release surfaces later this year?

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At Computex 2012 in Taipei, Taiwanese PC maker Asus unveiled a new Windows 8 ultrabook design that features a full-sized HD IPS touchscreen display on the "lid" portion of the device. This second screen allows the device to be used as a tablet when the lid is closed, or as a presentation/screen-sharing tool when it is open.

The Asus Taichi is currently a working design, and Asus says the specs are not yet finalized. However, the company says the Taichi will be available in both 11.6” and 13.3” profiles, will have third generation Intel Core processors with 4 GB of DDR3 memory, and an undisclosed amount of SSD-based storage.

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Nintendo filled the lull of the Sunday before E3 -- typically slow with rehashed quick posts of news for most video game journalism. Rather than wait until its Tuesday keynote, Nintendo decided to jump the gun last minute, with details about new Wii U console, including several finalized product specs of the Wii U controllers. The news beat Microsoft and Sony as the first to wow with their console news, coming today.

Now simply called the "Wii U Gamepad", it has been polished down and made thinner, placing joy pads and buttons inward in off-set locations as to help with the ergonomics, adding handgrips on the bottom, making it slightly wider. But all these also make it similar to that of a traditional modern game controller / joy pad. The thumbsliders similar to what was on the Sony PlayStation Portable have been switched for analog thumbsticks, providing support L3 and R3 button presses as well, similar to Playstation and Xbox 360 joypad sticks. There has also been an update with more sensitive motion and gyroscope sensors rounding out the typical video game controller specs.

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Computex is underway in Taipei, and Asus has a slew of mobile announcements we'll get to in other posts today. I'm scratching my head trying to grok the computer maker's cloud strategy, which looks good in this video but far removed from the reality I live in, or you. It's an idealized future of everywhere sync and help holograms that's more Star Trek than today's tech.

But the concept has meaning, and so there's no misunderstanding: Windows 8 plays an important role in Asus' cloud strategy. Microsoft issued Windows 8 Release Preview on May 31 and anticipates new PCs shipping with gold code for the holidays.

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Ahead of its official release, Mozilla has uploaded Firefox 13 FINAL to its servers, the latest version of its open-source, cross-platform web browser. Version 13 will be officially unveiled on June 5, when it should also become available as an update to existing Firefox users.

Version 13 is a landmark release, containing a number of major new features: redesigned home and new tab pages, support for “tabs on demand” loading of pages on restoring the previous browsing session to speed up startup, and a new Reset Firefox feature for attempting to fix major problems with a single click.

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