Latest Technology News

It’s fair to say that a disc burning tool is one thing hardly in short supply, so it would be natural to wonder why another might be needed. While there are all manner of advanced burning suite available, anyone starting out in disc burning for the first time tends to get forgotten. This is something that Hamster Free Burning Studio aims to address, bringing the option to create and copy discs to everyone.

The interface is the first thing you will notice about the app -- it is far from being the complex and often confusing beast that Nero has become; Hamster Fre is just delightfully simple. Despite this apparent simplicity, you can use the program to create CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays using your own files or ISO images, or you can create direct copies of discs.

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There is no shortage of cloud file sharing and sync services today, and most of them focus on mobile accessibility: Dropbox with Dropsync, Box.net, SugarSync, YouSendIt…there are tons of options.

As a user, strong competition among service providers is a wonderful thing, so it's a great time to be a user of cloud file management systems.

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Facebook users report seeing large amounts of image spam in their news feeds, depicting acts of violence, pornography, mutilation and bestiality. The site says it is investigating the issue, but did not give any possible cause for the problem.

BetaNews has received reports of spam messages typically sent with the word "YUKKY" and including a shortened link, although it is not immediately clear whether this has anything to do with the graphic imagery. The images show up in victims profiles as being "liked".

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Palringo is a cross-platform chat client that supports all the major networks plus its own group chat rooms. Whether you use Windows, Mac or most popular smartphones, Palringo has a client for you.

Sadly Blackberry owners are going to be disappointed because the Palringo client for their phone has been discontinued, but there are free versions of the application for Android, iOS and Symbian. You can also use it on your desktop be it a Mac or a Windows PC and you can even run it in Linux under WINE.

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Google has made the source code and software stack for Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) available for download on the Android Open-Source Project git servers. This means companies and developers who are working on their own devices based on the new version of Android can officially get to work.

"This is actually the source code for version 4.0.1 of Android, which is the specific version that will ship on the Galaxy Nexus, the first Android 4.0 device," said Android Open-Source Project software engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru said on Monday. "In the source tree, you will find a device build target named 'full_maguro' that you can use to build a system image for Galaxy Nexus. Build configurations for other devices will come later."

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On September 30, I asked: "Will you buy Kindle Fire?" Based on responses to our survey, your comments and a study showing some people putting off iPad 2 purchases for Kindle Fire, the question could have been: "Why won't you buy Kindle Fire?" Many people plan to, and Amazon will make it easy. Unlike the original Kindle's debut, exclusively through Amazon, Fire sells in stores like Best Buy. Actually, Amazon plans broad retail availability, giving Kindle Fire the kind of distribution needed to take on other Android tablets and, of course, iPad 2.

Among the 1,156 BetaNews survey respondents, 31.66 percent already preordered Kindle Fire -- another 23.26 percent plan to purchase within 3 months. I'll skip to the punchline: Only 28.89 percent of respondents "have no plans" to buy Amazon's Android tablet. I've embedded the survey below for some fresh responses and expect the numbers to go up. The responders aren't qualified, meaning we don't know who they are but assume many are techies like you.

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Amazon's Kindle Fire is just starting to ship today, but it already is the most popular Android tablet among developers. IDC and Appcelerator say the Fire edges out the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and interest in the device is similar to that seen before the launch of Apple's iPad in April 2010.

IDC's study confirms BlackBerry's continuing fall from grace, as Windows Phone moved into the third spot among most popular mobile operating systems for development. Nokia's new lineup of Windows-powered phones are the reason, as developers expect market share for the platform to rise as a result. Half of those who expressed interest in Windows Phone cited the Microsoft/Nokia partnership as the reason.

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Apple has pushed out the latest version of its media player and management software -- iTunes 10.5.1. The latest version of the app is not big news in itself, but the release coincides with the much anticipated launch of iTunes Match, in the US market at least. The service has been expected for some time, but a series of delays pushed the release date back slightly. Now, at long last, iTunes Match is here.

The subscription service will set you back $25 per year and enables you to access your entire music collection in the cloud. The latest version of iOS has seen Apple expressing a greater interest than ever before in life in the cloud and this foray means that it will now be possible for those willing to stump up the annual fee to access their music collection from any internet connected device without the need for manually copying of files.

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The folks at angel-backed startup Tout know that e-mail has still got a long future ahead of it, so they're trying to improve it by equipping individuals and small businesses with the powerful template-based messaging capabilities big enterprise would pay lots of money to get.

It's an "email-as-a-service" product not unlike Amazon Simple Email Service (SES.)

Users can access their email accounts through Tout's web interface to compose and send messages. It's not designed for informal personal communications, but instead for efficient, targeted business communications, so Tout lets users create and save templates of messages and organize them into categories (broadly analogous to campaigns.)

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Intel pushed the speed envelope on its Sandy Bridge-based Core processor line Monday, debuting its new six-core Core i7-3960X Extreme Edition flagship CPU. The chip runs at a speed of 3.3GHz, although using less cores through Intel Turbo Boost technology can clock as high as 3.9GHz. In tandem with the announcement, Maingear updated its Shift and F131 systems to use the chips.

Intel markets the 'Extreme' lineup of chips to enthusiasts: hardcore gamers, programmers and the like. These consumers will pay a premium for their hardware and expect flexibility. Intel provides it through unlocking, allowing the enthusiast to overclock.

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Only a few days have passed since Firefox 8.0 arrived, with new additions including an option to speed up launch time in some situations. If the browser still isn’t quite as fast as before, though, you could always try Pale Moon 8.0, released today.

This spin-off project starts with the same code base, so for the most part looks and behaves just like regular Firefox -- but it’s been carefully optimized to deliver even better performance.

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Piriform Software has updated its free defragging tool, Defraggler to version 2.08.373. The new build adds a new disk and file benchmarking feature alongside a new VSS (Volume Shadow Service) compatible mode, plus promises better SSD detection and minor bug fixes alongside improvements to the Disk Health tab.

Defraggler made its name as one of the first tools to allow users to defrag individual files as well as entire hard drives. This latest build continues its path to become a more fully rounded defrag tool.

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The Consumer Electronics Association (CEA) and Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) on Monday officially opened a 30-day contest called the “The Cathode Ray Tube (CRT) Challenge: New Uses for Recycled Glass.” The CEA and EDF are looking for an environmentally friendly and financially viable way to recycle the tons of obsolete CRTs that have piled up in junkyards as the world moved on to flat panel display technology.

In the next ten years, the EDF says more than a billion pounds of old CRT televisions and monitors are expected to enter the United States recycling system alone, and the problem is that the glass used in CRTs contains lead, and that makes them unsuitable for glass-to-glass recycling and unsuitable for disposal in landfills.

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Last night, my colleague Ed Oswald made the most ridiculous statement in defense of iPhone 4S: "Battery life is not a showstopping defect", and he put it in italics! I disagree and told him so in group chat: "It's a real apologist post. Battery life is a showstopping defect". Ed's commentary responds to so called "Batterygate", where for many iPhone 4Ses the charge drains too fast. On Thursday, Apple released an update that fixes the problem for some, but not for many others. Meanwhile, the company issued a statement that: "We continue to investigate a few remaining issues".

Absolutely, smartphone battery life matters, and, yes, it's a "showstopping defect". In a survey of 23,000 phone and tablet users, conducted by SwiftKey developer and retailer/accessory maker Smartphone Experts, battery life ranked third as "essential" feature when answering "What's important when buying a new smartphone". When adding "quite important", battery life tops the list, which includes screen size, ease of typing and app availability.

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There is no denying that the iPhone 4S has battery issues. Despite Apple claims to the contrary, there is a significant number of users with problems, based on what I have seen in both my own experience and across the web. It is an issue that deserves Cupertino's full attention.

Is it really as bad as it seems? Has 'Batterygate' taken on a life of its own, far surpassing the true weight of the situation? There is tendency in this era of the 24-hour news cycle to overhype, and Apple's battery woes are no exception.

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