Latest Technology News

Some really strange stuff (I want to use the other "s" word, but content filters) comes into the BetaNews Tips box. I'm paying more attention to what's in it this week, given my 7-day Google Reader fast. Weirdness knows no bounds, nor my perplexity to embrace and share it. I swear to debating for 10 minutes about sharing this video. It's strange. Topical. From a vlogger with 26,664 subscribers (now I'm one of them). And, sheepishly confess, made me laugh.

Hell, I even liked the text of the email before the video link and made it the headline. If Instagram is worth one billion bucks... You got me Khyan Mansley. Commenters don't be cruel.

Just as Facebook forces users to adopt a more cluttered, confusing appearance, Google+ simplifies and provides social networkers more control over the layout. Much as I've tried to use Facebook more, because that's where my family hangs out, Google+ is inescapable. It's a gravity well too strong to resist. For 170 million, the number of users Google revealed today, Plus perhaps is irresistible, too. That's a lot of people for a service less than a year old.

Google+ is more than a social network. It is the future of Google. Like it or not, the company has embarked on a strategy around social search, and Plus is a pillar. Competing against Facebook clearly is one of Google's goals. But there also is realistic appraisal that social is the web's future -- and why shouldn't it be with gregarious humans? Additionally, Google+ is the sun around which the company's other products will revolve -- even search -- defining a digital lifestyle empowering connections, communications and commerce.

Bare Bones Software has released TextWrangler 4.0, a major new version of its free OS X text-editing tool. TextWrangler offers both basic text-editing capabilities for general users as well as a number of powerful tools for programmers and system administrators.

TextWrangler 4.0 introduces a major new streamlined editing window for simplifying access to all open documents, plus automatically reloads all previously open documents when relaunched. It also introduces switchable syntax color schemes.

In December 2010 I asked: "Is someone fixing ebook prices?" Google's digital bookstore opened for business, and I started comparing prices only to find them fairly consistent across all retailers. I expected to see huge variances, not pricing consistency, which shouldn't be in a competitive market but is systematic of one where businesses conspire to "fix" prices.

I wasn't alone wondering about this abnormal consistency. After weeks of rumors, today, the US Justice Department filed a lawsuit against Apple and five publishers. The antitrust enforcement agency accuses them of colluding to fix ebook prices, thus impeding competition and, more importantly, consumer choice.

Finnish mobile phone maker Nokia on Wednesday issued an update on its financial performance for the first quarter of 2012, and lowered its outlook for the devices and services category, citing a few negative factors it is currently encountering.

Nokia's Lumia series, christened by the Lumia 800 which launched in November in Europe, and the Lumia 710 which launched in the US in December, has been performing quite well so far. Nokia says it sold more than 2 million Lumia devices since November at an average price of EUR 220. With the popularity of these devices steadily rising, Nokia says it is seeing sequential growth in Lumia sales.

Analyzing file structures can be a complicated business, and definitely isn’t for the technically faint of heart. It can be useful for troubleshooting or security analysis purposes, though, or even when trying to identify a mystery file you’ve found somewhere on your PC. And whatever it is you’re trying to do, FileScanner is an interesting Java-based tool which just might be able to help.

The analysis process starts simply enough. Click File > Open File, or just drag and drop the target file onto FileScanner and it’ll automatically check the contents, before giving you a detailed report.

For anyone that is interested benchmarking the performance of their computer, be it a Mac, PC, Linux machine or a mobile device, Geekbench is a simple, low-cost tool that provides you with all of the tools you need. Benchmarking tools are often used by fans of overclocking and tweaking to see what difference can be made to performance, but they can also be helpful for revealing helpful information about the hardware in mobile phones and tablets.

If you are interested in benchmarking performance, it is likely that you are running recent hardware. As such, it is little surprise to find that the latest version of Geekbench drops support for PowerPC Macs. The fact that this is hardware that is no longer supported by Apple and the ever dwindling numbers of remaining users mean that this was really inevitability, and the day has now finally come.

Late today, Nokia confirmed the Lumia 900 suffers from an Internet connectivity problem, confirming reports first seen on its own message boards earlier this week. The company's US arm blames a software glitch for the problem. What is stunning, however, is the company's mea culpa: it makes Apple's response to "Antennagate" look stingy in retrospect.

"Software update coming soon to Nokia Lumia 900 addressing memory management", a tweet from Nokia US reads. "Customers receive automatic $100 credit". The update is due April 16, with the $100 credit valid through April 21. Affected users will be able to switch their device out for no charge instead if they prefer, and any new customer will get the device for free, since it retails in store for $99.

I recently purchased the much-hyped Nokia Lumia 900 and no longer have cellular service on my iPhone 4 and this is my story. (VH-1’s "Behind the Music" dramatic sound effects here).

Reason for switching: My 8 year old accidentally dripped water on my iPhone 4, and the Apple geniuses said there was nothing I could do to fix it. Everything worked but the volume -- wouldn’t ring and Netflix just isn’t the same without any sound. Of course I never have to tell my kids to turn down the weird sounds coming from Angry Birds as they hurl to their impending doom.

Most of us now use at least two devices to connect to the Internet and while this freedom of connectivity is great in many respects, there are also problems associated with it. One of the most infuriating aspects of moving from browsing the web on one computer to using another device is that you will lose the web sites you were looking at. This is something that is addressed in the latest beta version of Google Chrome 19, which features the synchronization of tabs between devices. The feature extends to other devices a capability available with Chrome for Android Beta.

If you are working on your computer at work and then head home, there is no longer any need to send yourself an email with links to the websites you have been looking at during the day. Instead, assuming that you have the beta version of Google web browser installed on both machines and you are signed into your account, when you get home you need look no further than the ‘Other devices’ menu on the new tab page.

Enterprise software company SAP on Tuesday announced it plans to expand its presence in mobile applications by acquiring enterprise app developer Syclo for an undisclosed sum. Syclo provides field service and mobile asset management solutions to industries like utilities, oil & gas, manufacturing and biomedical.

Syclo's SMART family of enterprise mobile applications already integrate with SAP's ERP and CRM products and include a dozen different categories: Work Management, Service Management, Inventory, Auditing, Inspecting, Scheduling, Task Managment, Asset Management, Sales, and so on.

I just have to ask, because your first impressions will matter to other possible buyers. Colleague Tim Conneally reviewed Lumia 900, but good as that is we need more. I want your review, too. AT&T started selling the 4G LTE Windows Phone on April 8 -- Easter Sunday -- when the major malls here in San Diego were closed. Heck, even my local Target shuttered for the holiday. It's Tuesday, and that's time enough for your first impressions.

I got to thinking more about Lumia 900 last night when something quite unexpected happened. My wife asked: "That new phone is only $99?" Which one? "The Nokia". She had seen a TV commercial for the handset. My wife has never asked me about an advertised phone before. Never. Never. Never. If Mrs. Non-Geek Artist is intrigued, what about enthusiasts rushing out to buy Lumia 900? Is it a bruiser or a loser?

Amazon on Tuesday launched in-app billing in its Android App Store, allowing developers to include for-pay content upgrades, subscriptions, and other purchase-driven features to their applications. The feature comes exactly one year after Google introduced in-app billing in the Android Market (now known as Google Play.)

Data from mobile app analytics company Flurry last year suggested that mobile games based on the "freemium" model earned two-thirds of all the revenue of the top 100 games. This business model is based on giving away the game, and keeping it free to play, but earning money through in-app purchases such as add-ons and content expansion packs.

In a move aimed at unseating Amazon's dominance in the space, HP on Tuesday launched a cloud service known as HP Converged Cloud that allows companies to take advantage of the company's expansive data centers. Converged Cloud is very much like Amazon Web Services, which is by far the largest provider of public cloud access.

HP will offer on-demand instances and virtual machines, and users will pay for the resources they use starting May 10. In addition, two Infrastructure-as-a-Service offerings will launch: one a storage service that assists in moving data from one instance to another, and the other a relational database tool for MySQL.

If there’s one silver lining to the cloud cast over Mac users by the recent revelation that the Flashback/Flashfake Trojan has infected over 600,000 Macs worldwide, it’s surely the end to the myth that Macs are invulnerable to viruses and other malware. Seasoned Mac users will have never claimed anything different, but now there’s no excuse for any Mac users to run without protection of some form or other.

Of course, before you can bolt the barn door, you need to make sure no horses have escaped, which is where Kaspersky’s free Flashfake Removal Tool comes in. As the name implies, it’s designed to remove any specific Flashback/Flashfake infection from your Mac; it’ll quickly scan for infection, inform you of the result and then take steps, if necessary, to nullify the infection.