Latest Technology News

When you’re looking to free up a little hard drive space, then you might start by using something like CCleaner to find and remove logs, leftover temporary files and assorted other junk.

But if that doesn’t help very much, then your next step should be to try and get a better understanding of exactly what is filling up your drive. And the free, Java-based JDiskReport is the ideal tool to help.

I love living on the cutting edge of technology; it's a great place for writing and coming up with important feedback. But nothing can stay new forever, and some things don't necessarily need to be replaced whole-hog. Component upgrades, therefore, can give you that feeling of the new without having to scrap something that still has value to it. An old spinning hard drive in your laptop is a perfect example. When you've still got a lot of life in your machine, replacing the HDD with a solid state drive should be a no-brainer.

For me, it was either do that or buy a whole new laptop that wouldn't serve me any better at doing my job. After some research on reliability and pricing, I concluded that the Intel 330 Series 240GB SSD would fit my specific requirements without going overboard and spending too much on technology that's rapidly depreciating anyway.

What the frak? Did Microsoft hire the same artist for Windows 8 packaging that Google used for Nexus 7? Because I am absolutely struck by similar color choices and graphic fluidity. You wouldn't confuse the boxes on a store shelf, because the products would be nowhere near one another. But one wonders if Google tapped a new trend in graphic box design, and Microsoft just copied along.

Before posting, and as sanity check, I asked colleague Tim Conneally about the boxes. "The similarity is kind of shocking", he responded. "That gunmetal grey color was nowhere to be seen in tech two years ago".

In advance of Windows 8 Day on October 26, the big computer makers are all rolling out incrementally updated models in their different PC lines to support the touch activities central to Windows 8. Friday, long-running Texas PC maker Dell announced it had put up three new touch-enabled PCs for pre-order in the U.S., which will ship on October 26.

The three new PCs fall under the category of "seen it before, but not in this exact way," and they include the XPS 12 convertible notebook with the "spinning target" hinged display we first saw on the Inspiron Duo two years ago; the XPS One 27 All-in-one PC, and the Inspiron One 23 All-in-one, both of which had launched previously, except without the touchscreens.

Looking for a way to better manage the contents of your Android phone or tablet? SnapPea is a free tool, currently in beta, that could meet your needs. Regardless of whether your device was provided with its own management software, which is found wanting in the vast majority of cases, you can use the program to connect to your device to perform backups, transfer data and browse through images and other files.

You’ve probably found that keeping on top of your contacts on your phone can be a pain – with SnapPea you can take advantage of your computer’s mouse and keyboard to make changes, additions and backup more quickly and easily than ever before. Similarly, the program can also be used to browse through your text messages in a simple yet sleek interface, but more importantly it gives you the ability to send text messages from within Windows.

Two weeks to launch, Microsoft's newest operating system is available for preorder -- that's standalone software or preinstalled on new PCs available from Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, Samsung and Sony. Upgrade price is $69.99 for Windows 8 Pro, which in the United States is available from major retailers, including Amazon, Best Buy, Microsoft Store, Newegg, Office Depot and Staples.

"Customers outside the US will also have an opportunity to reserve Windows 8 Pro during this promotion, via participating retailers worldwide such as Best Buy in the United States, Future Shop in Canada, Walmart in Mexico, Casas Bahia in Brazil, Dixon’s in the UK, FNAC in France, Yamada in Japan, Suning in China and many more", a Microsoft spokesperson tells BetaNews. "We also recommend checking with local retailers for more information".

You’ll no doubt be familiar with The Innocence of Muslims, the controversial film that has angered Muslims across the Middle East, sparking riots and leading to several deaths.

It’s unlikely you’ll have actually watched it, although the more curious among you may have caught some of it on YouTube, where the film is still freely available -- provided, of course, you’re not reading this in one of the countries where Google has blocked it, specifically Libya, Egypt, India, Indonesia, and Malaysia. Russia recently banned the film, too, which unsurprisingly also is not available to watch in Iran, Pakistan, or Afghanistan, where they’ve chosen to go a step further and block YouTube entirely.

A couple of months ago, BetaNews contributor Mihaita Bamburic complained that he couldn't do his engineering work on any tablet, and what he really needed was a tablet with at least a 15-inch touchscreen. Sony appears to have met my colleague's demands with five inches to spare in a new tablet-ish PC of massive size. Sony calls it the Vaio Tap 20 PC...the first "mobile tabletop PC."

Imagine if you took a desktop all-in-one PC and slapped a battery inside its chassis. That's essentially the Vaio Tap 20. It has a 20-inch screen (1600x900) with 10-point multi-touch recognition and it has a built-in stand which allows it to be propped up and used as a traditional all-in-one PC when not being used as a pseudo-laptop-tablet thingy.

Yesterday Google updated factory images for the Nexus 7 and Galaxy Nexus; today Android 4.1.2 is available for the almost two-year old Nexus S smartphone and Ice Cream Sandwich for the US-made Nexus Q.

Nexus Q launched alongside the latest mobile operating system during Google I/O in June, but today marks the first time it makes an appearance on Nexus Factory Images, still available with the Android 4.0 it originally shipped with. In late July, Google suddenly suspended sales and delayed the entertainment device's launch. Release of factory images could foreshadow closer release. If nothing else, developers with the device have more options to experiment.

Shoot a video, run a backup, create a virtual machine: there are all kinds of programs and operations that can create truly massive, multi-gigabyte files. And while these monsters remain on your hard drive, there’s no problem.

But if you want to back them up, perhaps share the files with others, then life could become a little more difficult. Unless, that is, you use a tool like Split Byte to separate your files into smaller, more manageable chunks.

Three months after offering a public preview, overnight, Microsoft announced that Office 2013 released to manufacturing. Development is complete. The timing isn't surprising, given the software is bundled with Windows RT, which will be available to purchase on new computing devices in two weeks.

However, Windows RT-based devices, and specifically the Surface RT, will come with a preview version of Office 2013 rather than the fully-developed final code, due to the time-frame between the device and the software suite launch.

Hot on the heels of Mozilla pulling the latest stable release from its download servers after discovering a security vulnerability, Firefox 16.0.1 FINAL has now been released. Those who had already upgraded to version 16 should upgrade automatically now the updated version is available. Full details about the vulnerability can be found here.

In the meantime, Mozilla has updated all pre-release versions of the popular cross-platform, open-source browser to versions 17 (Beta), 18 (Aurora) and 19 (Nightly/Elm/UX) respectively. Once again, confirmed changes are thin on the ground, although the recent release of the “Elm” branch of Firefox Nightly, previewing the new Modern UI-based version of Firefox for Windows 8, is a noteworthy addition.

Recently we took a look at PNGGauntlet, an excellent tool which could compress PNG files by up to 50 percent without any apparent loss of quality.

If you found that program useful, but wished it had more scope, then you might want to take a look at FileOptimizer. This tool can compress images, documents, archives, audio files, executable files, 33 formats in total: AIR, APK, APNG APPX, BMP, CBZ, DOCX, DLL, EPUB, EXE, GIF, GZ, ICO, JAR, JPEG, MNG, MP3, MPP, PNG, PPTX, ODT, OGG, OGV, PDF, PUB, SCR, SWF, TIF, VSD, WEBP, XAP, XLSX, and ZIP.

First in a series. Thirty years ago, when I worked for a time in Saudi Arabia, I saw a public execution. I didn’t attend an execution, I didn’t witness an execution, I just happened to be there. There was in the center of this town a square and in the square were gathered hundreds of people. I worked in a building next to the square and looked out the window to see what caused all the noise. At that moment a prisoner was brought forward, his arms bound behind him. He was dragged up the steps to a platform and there fell to his knees.

Another man, whom I quickly came to understand was the executioner, climbed to the platform with the prisoner and poked him in the side with a long curved sword. The prisoner involuntarily jerked up just as the sword slashed down and just like that there was a head rolling off the platform, the body falling dead like a sack of flour. The crowd roared. Beginning to end it took less than a minute.

Aimed at developers and webmasters, Google introduced the open-source Apache HTTP server module 'mod_pagespeed' in beta form almost two years ago, and now it is finally available as a stable release that is ready to be deployed.

Touting features such as automatic website and asset optimization, more than 40 configurable filters, open-source nature and individual deployment, mod_pagespeed is part of the Mountain View, Calif.-based corporation's efforts to improve the Internet experience by offering performance improvements to web pages. Together with PageSpeed Service, it's part of PageSpeed Optimization Libraries project that is designed to provide best performances practices for Internet pages.