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Media tablet shipments missed IDC's third-quarter shipment projections. Meanwhile iPad lost market share; IDC forecasts greater declines for Q4. The culprit: Amazon Kindle Fire (with a little help from Barnes & Noble Nook). In the battle of price, and vertically-integrated content platforms, Amazon is ready to take a bite out of Apple. That brings me to the question of the day: Did you or do you plan to buy Kindle Fire, or even Nook, when previously considering iPad 2 this holiday? Please answer in comments as well as taking our buying poll.

Kindle Fire's big advantage is price -- $300 less than the cheapest iPad 2, at $199. Amazon and Apple compete head-to-head in ebooks, music and movies and curated applications stores. Both command hugely popular brands. Kindle Fire is smaller and doesn't pack a camera, but less also means lower price -- and single one at that. iPads range from $499 to $829.

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Christmas is very nearly upon us, and over the past couple of weeks we have been collecting together some of the best festive offerings available. Whether you’re looking for some seasonal games to keep the kids (or yourself) entertained, a festive app for your iPhone, or something to give your desktop a more Christmassy look, there’s something here for you. In this round up we take a look at some of the software you may have missed.

For fans of simple strategy games Christmas Troubles -- Tower Defense Game 1.0 is a great way to get into the festive spirit. With fun graphics and instant appeal, this is a game that’s suitable for all ages. If you’re more of a puzzler, Christmas Puzzle 1.0 is a festive take on the classic game Bejewelled, while Christmas Crisis 1.3.9 is a vertical scroller in which the aim is help Santa deliver his presents all over the world.

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I offer a hat tip to Gizmodo, which has put together a list of smartphones that have Carrier IQ. The company disclosed the information as part of a US Senate inquiry. Sprint subscribers are the most likely to have the spyware installed -- 26 million, or nearly half of them. Verizon: None. The information is also available in a statement from Sen. Al Franken (D-Minn.), just not as quickly scannable.

But not all phones where Carrier IQ is installed have it active. Android developer Trevor Eckhart uncovered Carrier IQ last month, offering detailed explanation how the rootkit-like software works. I followed his instructions to see if the software was active on my Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket, and it appeared not to be. Days later I installed Carrier IQ detectors from BitDefender and LookOut Labs, which found the software but didn't indicate its status. Apparently, Skyrocket is one of the phones where Carrier IQ is installed but not active. Same is true of HTC Vivid, AT&T's other LTE phone.

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Since its announcement, I’ve been an avid fan of Windows Phone. So much that I even created a dedicated news website when it first emerged (Winphonia.com -- no longer active). This was all without ever having held a WP7 device in my hands or even seeing one in person. One of the aspects I genuinely like about Windows Phone is the fact that you can simply glance at the home screen, or the many hubs, and see all of life’s important events with just a peek.

I personally know people who’ve call it non-functional, or too simplistic, or even archaistic. But those people have not done their research. What I see is a phone that lets me tack on all of life’s significant events and priorities in a place where I’ll see it in the forefront.

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Italian security vendor NoVirusThanks has just made four of its previously commercial 32-bit system monitoring tools available as freeware. And while there’s nothing here to compete with the troubleshooting power of, say, Sysinternals Process Monitor, the new freebies are lightweight, portable and (for the most part) very easy to use.

Have you ever wondered what files an installation program has added to your system, for instance? The File Extension Monitor makes it very easy to find out. Simply launch the program, and it’ll run in the background, logging files as they’re created, along with the date and time, and the process that created them.

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The year 2011 will go down in the history books as a great year for tablets mostly for Apple’s iPad, however -- not all tablet vendors fared as well as Apple. It'’s not for lack of products that prevented Android tablets from taking any market share away from Apple this year. By our calculation, over 100 tablets were introduced since the iPad.

However, we defy even the most tech-savvy of you to name more than a few of them. What was so wrong with the competition that it failed to make any inroads in the tablet market, at least until the Amazon Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble Nook came along? I'll explain why we think Apple and Amazon will continue to dominate the market well into 2012.

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A month ago today at Midnight, we ended our Windows Phone contest. Finally, after too many delays, it's time to announce the lucky winner. Why did we take so long? The entries were just too good. We argued like X-Factor judges about how best to choose the winner. In the end, we left it to chance among the top contenders.

We requested: "Please tell us why glance and go appeals to you and how you would benefit from it". "Glance and go" is Microsoft's design and marketing philosophy for Windows Phone. Conceptually, Windows Phone enables people to live better rather than spend their lives tap, tap, tapping on the touchscreen. That concept, and the task-oriented user interface behind it, makes Windows Phone remarkably different from either Android or iOS.

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Many modern games are all about the graphics, with the developers exploiting the very latest engines and technologies to deliver some truly cinematic experiences. Get past the eye candy, though, and there’s not always a great deal left. So if you place a higher value on compelling gameplay, then you might find considerably more entertainment in a retro-style project, something that’s based on interesting ideas rather than just pretty pixels.

OpenRA, for instance, is an open-source implementation of the Red Alert engine, which right now supports classic Westwood games like Command & Conquer and Command & Conquer: Red Alert. These aren’t clones of the originals, rather they’re what the developers call “reimaginings”, with “improved and rebalanced gameplay”.

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Microsoft is set to get a little more pushy ensuring you have an up-to-date browser and will automatically update Internet Explorer to the latest version on Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 beginning in January. This will occur for those who have enabled Automatic Updates within Windows Update, the company says.

The move echoes a trend started with Google's Chrome, which automatically updates itself by default: other browsers (such as Firefox and Opera) prompt before updating. Chrome's update strategy is why a previous version loses market share quickly when a new version comes out.

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It's the question I'm asking myself, so I pose it you. After countless launch day rumors, Verizon Wireless is finally offering the Google-branded Galaxy Nexus, the first Ice Cream Sandwich Android, to us poor dodos here in the United States. Seemingly everybody else in the world got it first, like Samsung Galaxy S II before it.

Related is another question: Will you pay more now or pay less and wait? Verizon has Galaxy Nexus available right now for $299.99 -- a penny more than the comparable iPhone 4S, which is HSPA and not 4G LTE; you can walk into a store and get Galaxy Nexus into your greedy grubby hands right away. Fry's Electonics will sell you the smartphone for $219.99 online, with a 2-to-3 day wait, which just might make Christmas; I assume it's in stores today, for West Coasters seeking immediate gratification. AmazonWireless has the best price I've seen so far, $199 -- and that's with no tax. I went through the ordering process, but didn't buy, and got December 29 delivery date -- that's no Christmas for you, bud. Better pricing means waiting longer, and Verizon made you wait so long already.

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Microsoft has long looked lovingly at identity, and providing the "one" that binds consumers and businesses to Windows. Users benefit by being freed from managing multiple identities and passwords across the web and, presumably, by improved privacy and security as a result. Microsoft gains by controlling a master identity system that keeps some of its core technologies relevant.

But Microsoft couldn't bring a single-identity system to market during the last decade. Privacy groups filed complaints about Passport, leading to a Federal Trade Commission investigation and later a settlement. Soon after, Microsoft settled its US antitrust case, agreeing to five years government oversight that instead went on for nearly 10. But Federal and state watchdogs left in September, and as I explained then Microsoft is freer to integrate stuff into Windows. Today, Dustin Ingalls, Windows Security & Identity, explains exactly how Windows 8 will tackle the identity problem.

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Verizon Wireless says that network expansion planned for tomorrow will bring 4G LTE to 200 million Americans. That's not the news we were waiting for. Google-branded, Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus, a LTE phone, is rumored to be launching tomorrow. How about a peep or two about that, Verizon? Wassup with these delays?

On December 15, Verizon will flip the LTE switch in Dover, Del.; Lafayette, Ind.; Fitchburg/Leominster, Mass.; Duluth, Rochester area and St. Cloud, Minn.; Manchester/Nashua, NH; Poughkeepsie, NY; Findlay/Tiffin and Youngstown/Warren, Ohio; and Indiana, Pa. Coverage will expand here on the West Coast in San Diego and San Francisco and Eastward in Savannah, Ga.; Chicagoland, Ill.; Baltimore and Hagerstown, Md.; and Washington, DC.

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The shoe is on the other foot. I hope Apple wears it well, because I expect it's a tight fit.

Samsung is doing to Apple what the "Get a Mac" marketing campaign did to Windows a half-decade ago: Change perceptions, for the negative. Apple's ad campaign is one of the best conceived for tech products, using two actors to represent a Mac and Windows PC and convey simply complex concepts about why one is better than the other. That campaign crushed the Windows brand at a time when Microsoft delayed Windows XP's successor, which thumped on the market in late 2006 like someone flying fast and far from a trampoline. Samsung's "The Next Big Thing is Here" campaign -- squarely slamming iPhone and its idolaters -- similarly succeeds.

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How’s this for a Christmas present? On Monday, December 19, you can get hold of a full version of Ashampoo WinOptimizer 8, which normally retails for $49.99, completely for free, courtesy of BetaNews’s Downloadcrew. For a period of 24 hours only (from 00.00 to 23.59, Central European Time, on Dec. 19, 2011), you’ll be able to download, install and register the software, completely free.

Ashampoo WinOptimizer 8 is the first of a number of full commercial applications we have lined up for you over the next few months. Downloadcrew is launching a brand new giveaway website, which will also host exclusive discounted software that you will not find elsewhere.

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It’s often useful to be able to grab some of the information contained in an application window.  If you need to share a complex error message with someone else, say, then being able to copy it immediately to the clipboard will save time and avoid the potential confusion that might arise if you make a typo or two while manually reentering it somewhere else.

But there’s a problem: in many cases text is presented in a way that makes it very hard to extract and use elsewhere. If you want to make a note of all 100 languages supported by a program, say, there’s no standard right-click option that will extract it from a listbox and copy raw text to the clipboard.  And so under normal circumstances you’ll have to manually read and retype the information yourself.

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