Microsoft on Wednesday released the community technology preview of Project Roslyn, a new type of compiler (considered a "Compiler-as-a-Service") that was first debuted at BUILD earlier this year.

Based on the Mono Project, Roslyn is designed to be a more open compiler (and not just "a black box," as Microsoft says) that lets developers access and utilize the data that it is generating on the Visual Basic and C# code it is compiling.

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For the last two years, the FCC has warned that our consumption of wireless broadband bandwidth is far outstripping its growth, and that if more of the wireless spectrum isn't allocated to broadband services, we're all in for a massive slowdown.

But that message hasn't really stuck.

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Aiming to better compete with services like Pandora, AOL relaunched its radio app on Wednesday. The new service is powered by Slacker, and cuts the amount of commercials in half.

Pandora inserts about 45 seconds worth of commercials per hour, according to recent statements by the company. AOL Radio will now broadcast three minutes of commercials every hour versus six, aiming to respond to the most common complaint about its service: the number of commercials.

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Defragmenting data is a lot like eating bran. We know that we should do it to keep our systems regular, but it always seems like a lot of hassle for the limited potential benefits. It’s not easy to know how much a defrag will really help. Even when you’ve done one you could be excused for wondering if it’s made any difference at all.

With this in mind, take a look at a brand new tool from German-based O&O Software. O&O SpeedCheck 2.0 is a free stand-alone program that enables you to test your system to find out how it performs with highly fragmented data compared to defragmented files. It simulates reading from disk without affecting any of your existing files.

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Do I even need to ask?

Let the debate begin. Google and Samsung delayed their planned Android 4.0 operating system and Galaxy Nexus smartphone launches until today in Hong Kong instead of October 11 in San Diego. They claimed the delay showed respect for Apple cofounder Steve Jobs who died two weeks ago. Some members of the Apple Fanclub of bloggers and journalists insist that reason is a smokescreen for software or hardware problems. Unlikely considering nothing ships until November. Looking at what Google and Samsung unveiled today, the companies had plenty of good reasons to announce before iPhone 4S sales started October 14. It would have been the competitive equivalent of launching a nuclear strike.

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NJ Transit is the first public transit system to accept Google Wallet thanks to a new deal announced Wednesday between New Jersey and the Mountain View, Calif. company. The deal will allow transit riders to "tap to pay" for fares at select locations.

Google Wallet uses near-field communication (NFC) to operate, a feature that has all but become standard on most newer smartphones, but not Apple's iPhone. The service launched in select retailers last month after being in testing for much of the summer.

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Just over a month ago, U.S. regional wireless carrier Cellular South changed its name to C Spire wireless in a move to become a more data-centric carrier.

Today, scrappy C Spire Wireless announced it will be getting the iPhone 4S "in the coming weeks" before its larger competitors T-Mobile, MetroPCS, and U.S. Cellular do.

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Today in Hong Kong, Google formally launched Android 4.0 in an event cosponsored by Samsung. The new operating system replaces Android 2.x "Gingerbread" for smartphones and 3.x "Honeycomb" for tablets. During the event Andy Rubin, Android chief, laid out "three defining terms" -- goals -- for new version "Ice Cream Sandwich: "simplicity", "beautiful", "we want to go beyond smart". Android 4.0 looks smart and acts smart, too. Many people will look and remark how suddenly outdated is Apple's iOS 5, which only launched last week.

Ice Cream Sandwich will be available in November on the new Google phone, the Samsung-manufactured Galaxy Nexus. Presumably, Android 4 will soon be (or soon after be) available for stock "with Google" devices, such as Nexus S and Motorola XOOM. Meantime, we thought you'd like a peak at what's coming your way.

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To celebrate the introduction of the newest version of Android, called Ice Cream Sandwich, Google and Samsung introduced the flagship Ice Cream Sandwich phone Tuesday evening, the Galaxy Nexus.

Continuing Google's naming culture where "Nexus" represents the most cutting-edge Android phones, the Galaxy Nexus offers impressive hardware to back up the impressive Android software update.

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In Hong Kong today, Google and Samsung unveiled Google's new flagship Android device, the Nexus Prime, a 4.65" Super AMOLED-toting, 1.2GHz LTE and HSPA+ smartphone. However nice the hardware of the new device is, it is second to the fact that it is the first device to run Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS), the newest build of Android that unifies tablets and smartphones under a single OS for the first time.

"People like Android, they need Android…but they didn't LOVE Android," said Google's Matias Duarte in today's presentation. To remedy this, Google has not only introduced new and practical functions to ICS, but gave it a slicker look, faster responsiveness, and some extremely impressive bells and whistles.

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Google is expanding its use of the SSL encryption protocol, saying Tuesday it will begin redirecting all searchers to its secure search when signed in with their Google Accounts over the next few weeks.

"We’ve worked hard over the past few years to increase our services’ use of an encryption protocol called SSL, as well as encouraging the industry to adopt stronger security standards," product manager Evelyn Kao says. "As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver."

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Today, after the closing bell, Apple announced another blow-out quarter -- and the first with Tim Cook officially as CEO. The Cupertino, Calif.-based company also closed fiscal 2011. While Wall Street waited with interest for today's results, fiscal Q1 2012 may be more interesting -- Cook's first full quarter as chief executive and when Apple launched iPhone 4S.

The quarter broke a longstanding trend of Apple beating Wall Street's over-inflated estimates, not just revenue and earnings but also for numbers of prominent products shipped. Only Macs exceeded analyst projections among the top-tier products.

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On the first day of its BlackBerry developer conference in San Francisco, smartphone maker Research in Motion announced the next generation of BlackBerry platform will be called BBX and it will combine QNX, the platform RIM acquired in 2010 and used in the PlayBook tablet with the more traditional BlackBerry smartphone platform, a move not unlike the one Google has taken with Android "Ice Cream Sandwich."

BBX will be a complete platform made up of the operating system known as BBX-OS, and the related BlackBerry cloud services and development environments. BBX will support all the QNX tools that were used for PlayBook development, including Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash and WebWorks/HTML5. It will also include support for the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps.

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Samsung is set to release the highly-anticipated Nexus Prime on Wednesday. The device was set to debut at the CTIA conference on October 7, but was delayed due to the passing of Steve Jobs. The new event takes place in Hong Kong on Wednesday at 10:00 am local time -- 10:00 pm tonight Eastern Time.

While it has never been confirmed that Samsung's event will be about the Nexus Prime, Google-Samsung teasers and loads of rumors surely point to the device's release, along with Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich." The Prime would be the first device to run the new version of the mobile OS.

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Every PC user would like their system to run a little faster, but making that happen yourself usually requires time, effort, and an in-depth knowledge of how Windows really works.

Does that sound too much like hard work? Then maybe you should just install a copy of TuneUp Utilities 2012, which the authors say can restore "over 50 percent of speed and free space" on cluttered PCs, while improving "battery life by up to 30 percent".

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