Latest Technology News

Less than three months ago, a beta version of Skype was unveiled that boasted a number of new features. The latest update to the popular VoIP tool sees the software jumping straight to version 5.8, finalizing some of the features found in the beta and adding a couple more for good measure. There are a number of highlights to Skype 5.8, and there is a great deal to investigate if you have not been keeping track of the beta versions of the software.

Conducting video chats has for too long been a blocky, stuttering affair, plagued with poor quality footage -- not just in Skype, but in general -- but support for full HD video-calling, assuming you have a suitable camera and a fast enough internet connection, means that this is set to change for Skype users. Video calls are great not only for personal Skype chats, but also for business meetings, and in the same vein the new group screen sharing is an interesting new addition. If you have a Skype Premium account, during the course of a group chat you can now share your entire desktop or just a single application window.

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Android 4.0, also known as Ice Cream Sandwich, takes a slightly different approach to social content organization and management, and includes a couple of new APIs to let application developers surface social network data.

If you've got ICS running on your phone already, you have probably already noticed the "People" application, Android's revamped contacts system that unifies different social networks and methods of communication under a single profile, allowing information to be more centrally located on a user's phone and shared out when needed.

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What does Windows 8 really look like under the hood? Is Metro a totally new direction for the Windows API? What does this really mean for software development?

As a programmer I like to know how things work under the hood. I am also a decent backyard mechanic, and I look at automobiles the same way. People who work on cars may have spent years learning how a gas engine works, but what happens when they finally have to work on a hybrid? The difference between a gas engine and a hybrid engine are like night and day. I believe we are seeing something similiar with Windows too!

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Move over, iMovie, some serious competition moved on to iPad, today. Avid Studio for iPad is now available -- $4.99 for a limited time. Avid was the big name in filmmaking, long before Apple stormed the market with its pro and amateur products. Apple reigns king on iPad and the Mac. Can Avid provide some needed tablet competition?

By the specs and feature list, Avid Studio for iPad appeals. The app can directly capture video, use multiple content sources on the tablet (e.g., audio, photos and video), generate motion titles and graphics, precisely trim content, create picture-in-picture effects and much more. That's all while taking advantage of iPad's touchscreen. For people using Avid's PC software, there's an app exporter available, too.

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"Conan" offers yet another timely spoof, here about Apple's problem with working conditions at factories in China. People have called for boycotts, others claim Apple is no worse than other high-tech companies using the same facilities. Seems like everyone has an opinion about what's really an old story.

Satire is a dish best served cold, and Team Coco packs on the ice.

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Amazon's fourth quarter results missed targets, despite strong sales of the Kindle Fire. It is these users that will begin to pad the company's earnings, however, validating Amazon's strategy of selling Fire at a very low margin and then making up the profit through entertainment content sales.

Amazon saw its profits plummet, reporting net income of $177 million in the fourth quarter of 2011. This was down sharply from a year earlier, when the retailer reported income of $416 million. Revenue was up 35 percent however, to $17.4 billion.

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Manufacturers shipped 1.546 billion cell phones last year, up 11.1 percent from 2010. Apple posted the strongest gains for the quarter and year -- 128.4 percent and 96.2 percent, respectively. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company ended both time periods in third place. No other vendor came even close. Samsung was up nearly 21 percent for the quarter and ZTE 30.9 percent for the year. IDC compiled the data, which represents shipments into the channel, rather than sales to end users.

Apple's strong showing comes from a huge fourth-quarter finish -- 37 million handsets, all smartphones. By comparison, Nokia and Samsung sold many more feature phones, which still overwhelmingly account for the number of handsets shipped globally. "Feature phones accounted for a majority of shipments from four of the five market leaders during the quarter", Ramon Llamas, IDC senior research analyst, says. "Even though their proportion is eroding, feature phones maintain their appeal on the basis of price and ease of use".

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Qualcomm on Thursday finally came forward to announce an LTE milestone that took place at the end of December: the first voice call to be seamlessly handed over from an LTE mobile network to a WCDMA network using Single Radio Voice Call Continuity (SRVCC). This is an important milestone because SRVCC lets the LTE-based VoIP/IMS packets be transferred to the legacy circuit-switched domain, unifying the old mobile networks with the new.

This has been one of the big challenges for LTE VoIP for the last four years, and the industry was exploring SRVCC alongside a technique called Circuit Switched Fall Back (CSFB) to offer continuous voice over LTE service. With the ability to hand over connections, VoIP subscribers can roam between LTE and other wireless networks without disconnection.

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If you’ve ever tried Auslogics free Disk Defrag tool then you’ll know it’s a quick and easy way to optimize your hard drive, if a little basic: like most of the free defrag tools, the program offers the bare essentials and very little else.

But it’s a very different story with the newly released commercial version, Auslogics Disk Defrag Pro, which is absolutely stuffed with essential features -- and the results are very impressive.

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This should be obvious, but something needs to be stated by somebody: Based on previous development cycles, Microsoft's plans for public beta and the PC market's desperate need for a new OS this year, Windows 8 is tracking for October launch. Actually, the public beta coming this month is the last milestone for hitting October, otherwise Microsoft might be forced to repeat history and, like Windows Vista, miss the holidays. That's unthinkable.

By measure of Windows 7, its successor is actually trailing behind development track for October. Microsoft released Windows 7 Beta 1 in early January 2009. Windows 8 public beta is expected six weeks or more later. Typically, Microsoft would have offered a second Windows 7 beta but went right to release candidate. Windows 8 would need similar accelerated track to be ready for the holidays. Just one snag: The new OS is much more ambitious. There's new Metro UI, ARM processor support and architectural changes that hugely impact developers. Oh, yeah. Microsoft is launching a software store, too. End-of-February to October launch is a stretch.

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Corning Incorporated and Samsung Mobile Display Company on Thursday announced they are beginning an equity joint venture in Korea that focuses on making the glass substrate for Organic Light Emitting Diode (OLED) displays.

OLEDs were a big topic at this year's Consumer Electronics Show, especially the large-panel TVs sporting the display technology. But OLED tablets were also on the menu, as Toshiba teased with a 7.7" concept tablet with a high contrast AMOLED display.

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Ashampoo has released a beta version of the forthcoming Ashampoo WinOptimizer 9. The all-in-one maintenance and performance tool for Windows PCs will include two brand new components and promises improved performance over its predecessor thanks to tweaked algorithms that will scan quicker and more thoroughly to identify more areas for improvement.

Version 9 also boasts a redesigned user interface and promises to be compatible with the forthcoming Windows 8, due for release later this year.

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That's a question many people will ask today following Facebook's IPO filing. In March 2007, less than a year after opening to the public, the social network had 30 million users. The number is more than 800 million today. But neither number truly reveals Facebook's global impact.

Last summer, Pew Internet found that 92 percent of social network users are on Facebook -- just 17 percent on Twitter. Today, comScore released data on Facebook penetration across the globe, as measured as percentage of total Internet audience.

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So Facebook is set to go public today. It's the most anticipated initial public offering since Google in 2004, and may net the Menlo Park, Calif. social network between $5 billion and $10 billion, according to estimates. That said, I am still lost as to how Facebook's going to be able to wow Wall Street from quarter to quarter, and we all know that's what investors (and the tech press) are looking for.

The IPO will cause pandemonium on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, as investors attempt to cash in on one of the most successful Web companies in history. This type of market hysteria is prone to pitfalls: fellow social networking site LinkedIn saw its shares skyrocket to nearly $95 in the first day of trading from an IPO of $45, but it has since given back about half of those gains.

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That will be the number by end of today, according to FamilyLink founder and unofficial Google+ statistician Paul Allen. The number has grown from 90 million since Google CEO Larry Page's official statement just two weeks ago.

Allen's announcement comes as rival Facebook announces its public offering, and quite possibly the largest one ever. Not since Netscape's IPO at the dawn of the World Wide Web era has a tech company generated so much interest going public. But Facebook has a new rival that's growing fast and leveraging hard existing Google assets. By year's end, Google+ could have half as many users as Facebook does today.

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