Latest Technology News

Romanian security company BitDefender on Wednesday released statistics from its analysis of more than 25 million spam messages, which reveal the most common celebrity names used to entice users to view junkmail.

1. Jay Leno
2. Madonna
3. Cameron Diaz
4. Barack Obama
5. AC/DC
6. Stephen King
7. George Lucas
8. Kenny Chesney
9. Howard Stern
10. 50 Cent

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COMODO has made a third beta of the next version of its backup product, COMODO BackUp, available for download. The major change in COMODO BackUp 4 is the switch to a two-tier product, with a function-limited Free version now being joined by a fully functional Pro version, pricing details of which will be made available on the program's final release. At the present time, the Pro beta version functions as a 30-day trial.

This seems to be the major driver for version 4, with other improvements and changes being relatively minor, while the user interface itself remains largely unchanged from the current version 3 release.

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Yesterday, Netflix did something almost unthinkable in this economy -- dramatically increased prices for many customers. I asked for your reaction, and, whoa, did you give it.

To recap: Netflix separated its DVD and streaming plans. Under the old arrangement, subscribers could rent one DVD at a time and get unlimited streaming for $8.99. Under the new scheme, 1-disc rentals and unlimited streaming are $7.99 a piece. To get both, the new price is $15.98, or a $6.99 increase.

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Windows Intune 2.0, the first major update to Microsoft's cloud-based PC management solution for small and medium sized businesses, is now available in beta to qualified users.

Interested testers must sign up on the Windows Intune
TechNet site with their Windows Live ID, and they can preview all the updates to Intune that have taken place since the RTM in March.

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Netflix helped kill Blockbuster.

Its DVD-by-mail service, in conjunction with Redbox's 24-hour $1 rentals drove brick and mortar video store chain Blockbuster from market dominance into bankruptcy and near irrelevance.

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Facebook has successfully conquered the smartphone market, with its apps for both Android and the iPhone consistently one of the most downloaded. However, the company has done little to focus on the so-called "dumb phone" market -- that is, until now.

The company announced Tuesday that it was releasing Facebook for Every Phone, a Java-based app which will work on over 2,500 phones. With a good deal of the phones today here in the US and elsewhere now smart phones, the move appears more to increase Facebook's reach in developing markets.

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Will the Google makeovers never end? I sure hope not.

Google has started to roll out yet another new version of the Android Market. The revamped store client is going out to Android 2.2 or higher handsets now, on a rolling basis expected to take several weeks.

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Electronic Arts on Tuesday announced it will acquire PopCap Games for $650 million in cash and $100 million in EA stock. PopCap is known for creating some of the most popular mobile and browser-based video games of the last few years, including Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, and the company is squarely focused on the strongest growth areas of the video game industry.

There's no doubt that mobile and Web-based video games have the potential to be hugely profitable for game studios. With advertisement and in-game purchases, each game title can have multiple recurring revenue streams in addition to the upfront purchase price.

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AT&T introduced two LTE devices on Tuesday, while at the same time saying it was on track to roll out the next generation cellular technology in five markets later this summer. Hidden in the details is the that fact the new devices also support T-Mobile's frequency bands, showing confidence in the proposed merger.

The AT&T USBConnect Momentum 4G is the carrier's first LTE dongle which will also support access to AT&T's entire national Wi-Fi network. The AT&T Mobile Hotspot Elevate 4G will be an LTE-enabled hotspot allowing for the connection of up to five devices simultaneously with the carrier's cellular network.

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One downside of the ever-increasing resolution of digital cameras, as well as mobile phones, is that they produce massive images. They're great for printing or production environments, but not so useful if you just want to email them to friends or upload them to a blog. Oversized images make web pages load slowly without adding anything to the overall experience, while they produce attachments vast in size that take an age to send, and could get you blacklisted by friends and family for tying up their Internet connection and inbox while downloading them.

While you can manually resize images using your image editor, the process of opening, resizing and then resaving can quickly become tedious. Thank goodness, then, for FreeSizer, a free tool that enables you to quickly and easily resize a batch of images quickly and easily without affecting the original files.

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When you're next looking for a backup program then you could try to save money by opting for the free version of a commercial tool, but that's often a mistake. Many have key functions stripped out, and annoying nag screens added in an effort to persuade you to upgrade.

Fortunately there are a few exceptions, though, and ActiveImage Protector's free Personal Edition is one of the best. It's strictly for home users only, but if that's not a problem then you'll find it packed with useful functions and features.

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I've had a DVD-rental plan from Netflix since February 1999. Sometime between now and September 1, I will cancel that plan -- not because I want to give up DVD movies but because Netflix is forcing me to choose between them or streaming. To get both, I will substantially pay more. So will you, if a Netflix subscriber.

I got the official email about an hour ago: "Your current $9.99 a month membership for unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs will be split into two distinct plans. Plan 1: Unlimited Streaming (no DVDs) for $7.99 a month. Plan 2: Unlimited DVDs, 1 out at-a-time (no streaming) for $7.99 a month. Your price for getting both of these plans will be $15.98 a month ($7.99 + $7.99). You don't need to do anything to continue your memberships for both unlimited streaming and unlimited DVDs".

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California-based mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) Telestial on Tuesday announced it had dropped its international 2G and 3G roaming rates to the lowest in the industry.

Customers who buy one of Telestial's Passport or Passport Plus SIM cards can now connect to data networks in France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, Switzerland, the UK and 21 other European countries for as low as $1 per megabyte. The company's prepaid SIM cards are compatible with mobile networks in 180 countries worldwide and require a SIM-unlocked GSM 850/900/1800/1900 phone for activation.

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Android Open Source Project engineer Jean-Baptiste Queru on Tuesday announced the portions of Android 3.2 covered under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) have been released to the Android Open Source Project.

Android uses several different Open Source licenses, but the majority of the code falls under the Apache Software License 2.0. Things like the Linux kernel and Bluetooth stack fall under the GNU licenses.

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Groupon has nothing to fear from Google. Yet. But the methodical Google Offers expansion shouldn't be ignored -- today two other cities join Portland. Google Offers beta launched in the Oregon city on June 1.

Google announced New York and San Francisco as coming soon on that day. Next up, revealed today: Austin, Boston, Denver, Seattle and Washington, DC and possibility Google Offers could reach 10 major metropolitan areas by early autumn.

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