Latest Technology News

HTC will upgrade eight current devices to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich in the first wave of updates, the device manufacturer said on Monday. The latest version of Google's mobile operating system was announced in mid-October along with the Samsung Galaxy Nexus -- the first Android phone to run ICS natively -- but current Android phones will have to wait several months for the upgrade.

Relying on its partnerships with carriers, HTC will upgrade the following devices to ICS: the EVO 3D and Design 4G on the Sprint Network, the Vivid on AT&T, and the Amaze 4G and Sensation on T-Mobile. For the Sensation, the XE and XL variants will also get the upgrade. In addition, the upcoming HTC Rezound will be upgraded to ICS. That phone will launch on Verizon's network on November 14.

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Book retailer Barnes and Noble on Monday unveiled the third generation of its Android-powered Nook e-reader, the Nook Tablet. Nearly identical in appearance to its predecessor the Nook Color, the Nook Tablet is designed for improved multimedia consumption to better compete with Amazon's new Android tablet, the Kindle Fire.

The Nook Tablet has a 7-inch IPS touchscreen display, a 1GHz dual-core processor (currently of undetermined brand,) 1GB of RAM, and runs Android 2.3 (Gingerbread.)

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My problem is all the rumor and misinformation spread about Apple and apologists who treat the world's most valuable tech company like it's some rebel force. Apple is no longer a puny upstart fighting "The Man". Apple is the "Establishment". I'm aghast with apologist bloggers and so-called journalists, not the company the two Steves, Jobs and Wozniak, founded.

This post responds to a question posed over the weekend by one of BetaNews' most loathed commenters, Bay_Area_CA_Male, who I threatened to ban last week because so many other readers complain about his comments. He responded to my email promising to tone things down and also asking: "Why do you hate Apple so much? Or is it a 'get the most hits thing?'" I don't hate Apple, and I stand behind everything I write about the company (there's no hit whoring here, just provocative writing and compelling headlines). Can the Apple rumor-mongering rabble say the same? For clarification, while I here answer Bay_Area_CA_Male's question, catalyst for writing is one of several Macworld UK headlines in my RSS feeds this morning: "iPhone 5 'already built, waiting for LTE chipset'".

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Verizon Wireless wants its customers to upgrade their phones and take advantage of the carrier's next-generation LTE network, and is sweetening the data pot to get them to do so. Beginning Tuesday, Verizon will double the data allotments for customers for the same price as its traditional data plans.

The $30 2GB plan is now 4GB, the $50 5GB plan will have 10GB allotment, and the $80 10GB plan a cap of 20GB. A Verizon spokesperson confirmed the offering, first reported by CNET, saying it will last "through the holidays", but declining to offer specifics.

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Editor: Ryan DeJonghe responded to our request for Kinect stories in celebration of the technology's one-year anniversary. Would you like to get fit? He has a group of 1,400 using Xbox 360 and Kinect to do just that.

I’ve always been a fan of video games and technology. Anything that would marry the two would be icing on the cake. Starting out on the NES, I hooked up every accessory available, from Broderbund’s U-Force controller to the Miracle Piano Teaching System. So naturally, when Microsoft announced they were releasing a product that would be able to track your entire body, I was first in line.

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Not me, likely, and I'm surprised by the answer.

Today, AT&T flipped the 4G LTE service switch in four additional markets and launched its first supporting smartphones -- HTC Vivid and Samsung Galaxy S II Skyocket. Last week, I asked "Who will buy them?" I'm less surprised by your responses than my own.

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Have investors, analysts, and pundits lost their minds? Reading some recent Apple analysis you could make that case. The company is still wildly successful financially, yet perusing the news sites and the blogs will make you think the company is in some danger of failure. That couldn't be further from the truth.

There is too much focus on the present, take for example Apple's most recent quarterly results. The Cupertino company had its second best quarter ever, yet investors focused on analysts sky-high expectations. Apple paid for it, and still hasn't recovered two weeks later.

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If you need to work with Adobe PDF files then you could cobble together a basic solution from free tools. A virtual printer driver here, a conversion tool there, a PDF viewer with simple annotation features -- it’s surprising what you can achieve.

If you’re looking to create your own PDF files, though, edit any part of an existing document, work with PDF forms and perhaps integrate with document management systems, then you’ll need something considerably more powerful.

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This week I gave a talk on Web 2.0 and teaching to a group of higher-education faculty ("cloud" isn't yet pervasive in academia). I won't bore you with the details, but I made the basic argument that using cloud-based tools could help educators create better learning environments for their students through the collaboration, mobility and engagement opportunities the cloud affords. I gave examples of several different tools that could help do this, like collaborative documents, mobile video broadcasting, and group citation indexes. Then I ended with what they all really wanted to talk about: social media.

In addition to being the hottest iteration of cloud computing to the general public, social media holds much potential for education. Social media allows for effortless individual and collective communication between teacher and student(s). It breaks down the walls of the traditional classroom, allowing for conversation and active learning to exist 24/7, in real time and asynchronously, right in the palm of a student's hand.

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On the opening day of the Mozilla Festival in London on Friday, the Knight-Mozilla News Technology Partnership announced five technology fellows who will spend the next year embedded in leading news agencies, studying the needs of the modern newsroom.

The Guardian, The Boston Globe, Al Jazeera English, Zeit Online, and the BBC have opened their newsrooms so these innovators can find new ways that open source Web technology can advance the values of journalism.

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Google has updated both Google Chrome Beta to version 16, and Google Chrome Dev to version 17, respectively.

Chrome Beta’s standout feature is support for multi-user profiles that can be standalone or linked to separate Google accounts for sync purposes. This allows users to access their own personal settings from another machine, but should be considered a feature that’s convenient rather than secure.

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A dedicated email client is not something that is seen as being quite as essential as it used to be, largely because most web-based email services have dramatically improved. However, there are many people who prefer to entrust their communication to an application rather than a website, and there are a number of titles that can fulfill the role. Free programs such as Thunderbird have proved popular, but if you’re looking for a little more control over your inbox, commercial offerings such as Postbox provide a range of additional options and features.

Although the email client can be used to access almost any email account, there is a strong focus on Gmail support. As Gmail is widely regarded as being the most accomplished web-based email service available, you may well wonder why you would want to use an email client to access it at all. Postbox has a great deal to offer, but its integration with social networks such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter is one the highlights. Postbox pulls in information from each of these networks to provide as much information as possible about your contacts and the people you correspond with.

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China is in the spotlight again after a US intelligence report accused the country of cyber espionage. The country is using the data stolen as a result to strengthen its own economy, and is a threat to both American progress and the economy overall, the report says.

"Many states view economic espionage as an essential tool in achieving national security and economic prosperity", the report reads. "Their economic espionage programs...could give these states a competitive edge over the United States and other rivals".

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Microsoft's innovative natural user interface Kinect turns one year old today, and it looks like there's a celebration of some sort brewing.

Kinect began as an Xbox 360 peripheral, but it grew into an official Windows peripheral six months ago with the first Kinect for Windows beta.

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That's my response to the question "Does the Siri outage reveal its success?" posed by Darrell Etherington at GigaOM today. Etherington's post will be one of many Apple apologies that you'll read, following Siri's collapse yesterday. There are conflicting reports about timing, but five to six hours is fairly consistent.

I expect the typical fanboy comments to this post -- like those yesterday to my "Why can't Apple get iPhone's design right?" -- accusing of linkbaiting and being an Apple hater. Not so. In the Apple crowd, no one can hear you scream because they're all shouting you down.

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