Cisco's release of its study on mobile data usage proves that throttling at 2GB is not going to work. AT&T's response to it? Woe is us! Data's increasing exponentially, and we're trying!

AT&T says that its data traffic increased 20,000 percent since 2007, with the amount of bandwidth consumed doubling every year since then. "The growth is now driven primarily by smartphones", senior executive vice president John Donovan writes in a blog post. "Add to that new customer additions and the continuing trend of upgrades from feature phones to smartphones, and you have a wireless data tsunami".

People whining about human rights violations at Apple manufacturing facilities in China should look at business behavior, too, for it reveals much. Companies tend to act fairly consistently, reflecting the personalities of the people running them. If Apple shows disregard for workers making its products, then so should insensitive behavior crop up elsewhere. I see it in the callous patent attacks, which reached a new low yesterday. The company wants to sue bankrupt Kodak.

Apple's asking a bankruptcy court to sue for the patents is like demanding a judge turn over a portion of granddad's estate while he is still on life support. Kodak was the Apple of its day, bringing portable photography to the mass market in ways quite similar to iPod, iPhone and iPad today. Apple and Kodak are two of the greatest innovative American consumer technology companies of the last century, and they share similar attributes about creating compact, trendy and attractive products. On the design front, Apple owes much to Kodak and borrowed much from it. What a helluva way to show gratitude.

LightSquared, the aspiring 4G wireless network built in the "L band" of spectrum has been under fire from the GPS industry for the last year over the interference the experimental network was shown to create for GPS receivers.

Due to the L-band's close proximity to frequencies used in satellite communications, about half of the frequencies LightSquared planned to use in its network were shown to cause interference on some GPS receivers.

I know that BetaNews readers aren't indicative of the general population. You made that clear when answering our October 2011 browser poll you came out big time for Chrome. Google's browser is most popular among you, but really ranks third in global usage share, according to Net Applications.

Respondents to more recent poll "Microsoft Store is taking pre-orders for Nokia Lumia 900. Will you buy this Windows Phone?" answered resoundingly yes. If your responses were the measure of success, Microsoft and Nokia already would be kicking Android and iPhone butt down the hill.

While the White House in January signaled deep concerns about the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA), President Barack Obama's 2013 budget proposal suggests that he still plans to push for wider enforcement of intellectual property, a concession to the entertainment industry that could prove critical to his reelection efforts in 2012.

Last month, coordinated protests erupted across the Internet as prominent websites, Wikipedia among them, blacked out for 24 hours. Protesters argued that either bill, if passed into law, would greatly impede free speech and give the Justice Department unprecedented powers to censor the Internet. Those hailing victory over SOPA and PIPA should have a look at back-door enforcement championed by the White House.

Windows 7 comes packed with useful applets, functions and features, and locating them isn’t always easy. Can you remember where the Data Execution Prevention settings are to be found, for instance? If you don’t know already, tracking them down can be a problem, as they’re not flagged on the Start menu anywhere and entering various keywords in the Windows Search box won’t return anything relevant.

But then that’s where Windows 7 in a Box comes in. It’s a tiny tool (268KB in size) that organizes more than 160 functions, applets, applications and folders into just six menus so there’s actually a chance that you can find the option you need.

I shocked a group of total strangers this weekend when I admitted that I drink something on the order of twenty-five cups of caffeinated beverages per day, with the poison of choice being black coffee with just a hint of sugar.

I explained that my consumption is always hitting peaks and valleys depending upon my scheduling obligations, and at the moment, I happened to be at one of the peaks. Some random event will occur that requires me to wake up extra early, and I'll fueltank the coffee like a camel at an oasis. Then to prevent headaches and crashes, I have to ramp up my consumption.

If you close a tab in Firefox and then realize you’ve made a mistake, it’s easily fixed: just press Ctrl+Shift+T and the last-closed tab will be instantly reopened. Very convenient.

If you’re working at the Windows 7 desktop and accidentally close the wrong application or Explorer window, though, there’s no obvious safety net to reload them. Unless, that is, you run UndoClose, which delivers very similar functionality at the press of a key.

The Document Foundation has announced the release of LibreOffice 3.5.0 FINAL, its cross-platform, open-source office suite. Version 3.5.0 introduces a number of new features, including faster grammar checking, multi-line input bar in Calc, and a better user interface for headers and footers in Writer.

LibreOffice is a spin-off of OpenOffice, and comprises word processor (Writer), spreadsheet (Calc), presentations package (Impress), database (Base), graphics editor (Draw) and equations tool (Math). This is LibreOffice’s third major release since the project launched back in September 2010.

If you hate wireless data throttling, thank Cisco for making your argument against the practice that much easier. The telecommunications company says it expects at least 100 million smartphone users to exceed one gigabyte of data monthly in 2012. That is a large group of users with significant data needs.

But wait -- wasn't I just told that the average user doesn't need gigabytes of data, you ask? Yes you were: I wrote about it last week as part of the bigger story of AT&T's plan to screw its longtime customers with unlimited data plans, and the topic has been covered ad nauseum by the tech media at large for years.

Wall Street Journal claims that Apple is testing a smaller tablet, around 8 inches. The question: Would you buy one, if available?

Who knows, maybe your answer will help Apple, given how super-secretive is the company's product development. You can be the customer research Apple should seek before launching new products, particularly now that Steve Jobs -- master of good taste and guiding voice of one -- is gone. Please answer in comments and take our poll. But first read this perspective on what 8 inches could mean.

To celebrate the romance of Valentine's Day, app developers MacPhun LLC on Tuesday released a major update to Silent Film Director for iOS 4.2+ and have made it available for free.

What's so romantic about silent film? Maybe it's the fact that more of them were lost to history than survived, maybe it's the fact that you don't have to hear what the actors are saying to understand the message of the film. Whatever the reason, MacPhun picked a good day to roll out their new version of Silent Film Director.

You got a new PC, and you're excited. Only then you realize how much work is involved setting it up. Chances are  your old computer held a very large number of personal files that you will want to transfer to the new machine. It is also likely that you have a number of settings in place that you have become used to, and the task of reinstating all of these could be a very lengthy one.

This is where Laplink PCmover Express can help, and you can take advantage of a free copy of the program worth $29.95. For 24 hours, so do hurry.

Security solutions company Kaspersky Lab announced its first security product for virtual machines on Monday, appropriately named Kaspersky Security for Virtualization, which is meant to simplify the security management practices in a
network of virtual machines --especially ones running on VMware virtual infrastructure-- and integrate them with Kaspersky's endpoint security solutions.

Kaspersky Security for Virtualization is a centrally-managed virtual security appliance that integrates with VMware vShield Endpoint and Kaspersky Endpoint Security. With the anti-malware functions operating in a centralized virtual appliance, admins can intelligently deploy virtual and endpoint security alongside one another in a single admin console. This can eliminate the need for duplicated resources on each virtual machine and ultimately improve the overall performance.

Amid rumors the US Justice Department will approve Google's merger with Motorola Mobility this week, the European Union's Competition Commission acted first, clearing the deal.

In a procedural move, the European Commission halted merger review in mid December, after requesting additional information. Today's approval puts Googolora (not any official name, of course) within view. Merger now seems all but inevitable.