Latest Technology News

Mimo Monitors, the company best recognized for its USB-powered touchscreen mini-monitors released an equally miniature Plug computer on Monday called MimoPlug.

Based on Marvell's Sheeva plug computer design, the MimoPlug has a 1.2GHz CPU and 512 MB of DDR2 RAM. Like other plug computers using Marvell's design, MimoPlug uses a (4.33" x 2.74" x 1.9") fanless chassis with integrated power supply, and has a single Cat5 ethernet port and USB 2.0 port. Unique to Mimo's platform, however are its storage options. MimoPlug features an SD card slot which comes with a 4GB, 8GB, or 16GB MimoPlug GUI SD card that is partially dedicated to driving the 10" touchscreen mini-monitor with Debian Squeeze and Gnome Desktop. Users also have the option of a MimoPlug with an eSata II port.

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Market-leading IT company Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced Monday that it will be reorganizing its corporate structure to fit with the strategy shift it announced last March. Moving forward, HP is prioritizing three businesses -- hybrid cloud solutions, connected devices, and Management/Security/Analytics software -- and this executive shift is a reflection of that.

Priority 1: Customer-Facing businesses

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Frak, do I have to root every friggin' Android device just to take screenshots?

Last week, while writing my Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 first impression review, I had to take photos of the screen with a digital camera. On an iOS device, clicking the power and home buttons simultaneously would have captured the screen. C`mon, Google, must you make screen capture so difficult? There are third-party utilities, including Screenshot ER, which supports Honeycomb. But they require root access -- and, hey, I'm not going to root a tablet I haven't finished reviewing.

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Facebook is reportedly set to go public in early 2012, becoming the latest company to cash in on what seems to be a renewed frenzy surrounding technology stocks. Likely to be one of the hottest IPOs so far, experts believe that the company could reach a valuation of $100 billion.

A recent private sale of a large chunk of shares -- about 100,000 -- gave a valuation of about $85 billion. An IPO and the surrounding buzz would push the valuation even higher, experts believe. The news follows Groupon, which announced its IPO earlier this month, and LinkedIn, which started trading publicly last month.

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Microsoft has released a tool called Microsoft Analytics for Twitter that lets users build their own mini Twitter analytics engine for the Excel 2010 add-in PowerPivot.

This free add-in lets users query Twitter from within Excel 2010 and then build their own dashboard of Twitter statistics with the PowerPivot analytics plug-in. The application has been designed to let users track up to five concurrent search queries including #hashtags, @mentions, keywords, usernames, or any of Twitter's Search Operators, and analyze them with PowerPivot, which includes the ability to gauge the "tone" of a tweet (whether it's favorable or negative) based on customizable parameters.

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Another major move in the mobile processor space took place on Monday as Nvidia, maker of the popular Tegra 2 applications processor for mobile tablets and smartphones, announced it had completed its acquisition of Icera, a wireless modem company specializing in baseband technology for smartphones and tablets.

The $367 million cash acquisition will give Nvidia an applications processor with bundled baseband and RF chips that will give device manufacturers a single option to cover both of their onboard processor needs in a single package. For example, the Icera modem solution called Espresso 450 for smartphones and tablets uses Nvidia's Tegra processors, includes the radio interface layer for Android, and includes multiband HSPA+, HSUPA, and quad-band GPRS/EDGE radios.

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Let me offer apologies for being asleep at the wheel. Somehow I missed the road sign -- or perhaps ran it down -- for Gartner's updated PC shipment forecast, released last week. The analyst firm reduced 2011 PC shipments -- again. Massive slowdown in netbook sales and increased media tablet adoption are major reasons.

For years, the PC market benefitted from strong laptop sales that offset declines on the desktop. But the times they are a-changin.

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The only reason anyone would want to run a Nightly build of a Mozilla product like Firefox is because they want to help provide a test environment for providing that vital early feedback on a product that's so fresh it's completely untested. This early exposure provides the basis on which Firefox, Thunderbird and its brethren migrate towards the first major milestone in a program's life, the alpha build.

When it comes to evaluating these programs, you need a collection of useful tools to help you test and provide the feedback essential for catching early bugs. And Mozilla provides those tools in the form of the Nightly Tester Tools, a free add-in designed specifically for these early, unstable builds. It works with Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey and Songbird.

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If a project you are working on requires a map to be created, you may be stumped as to where to start. Sure, it's possible to knock something together based on Google Maps, but what about if you need a blank map or want to display detail and information other than what can be provided by Google or other online mapping services? You could turn to using clipart, but this is often far from ideal. Ortelius may well be the app you have been looking for.

Ortelius is a Mac based cartography application that can be used to create any type of map imaginable. The app includes a huge number of royalty-free vector maps, meaning they can be scaled up without any loss of quality. Off course, no map would be complete without a selection of symbols, and this is something Ortelius has in spades. There are a wide range of common mapping symbols available that can be used to highlight all sorts of landmarks and you always have the option of using customizable shapes if you are unable to find something suitable.

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Multitasking makes it easier and faster than ever to get things done, but if you have a large number of programs running or have a number of Finder windows that you need to work with, it can be a chore to navigate between them. Mac OS X includes various options that help to make it easier to switch between programs and windows, but they are not perfect -- and the situation is made worse if you have more than one monitor and therefore more desktop space to work with. Window management tool Moom can help, providing a quick and neatly integrated way to move and resize windows as and when required.

The app integrates into OS X, such that the maximize button appearing at the top of any program or window can be used to shift the current item to one of a number of predefined positions. By default there are a number of standard sizes and positions to choose from, such as a half-size window to the left or right of the screen, or switching to full screen mode.

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If there was an award for most unpopular CEO, Steve Ballmer just might win it. There have been increasing calls to off his head -- to remove him and bring in anybody else. "Psst, Ms. Cleaning Lady, how would you like to run a software company?" But Microsoft's chief executive deserves more credit than he gets. The company closes its fiscal year in 17 days, with brighter future than any year since Apple announced iPhone in January 2007. Ballmer and his executive team delivered one of Microsoft's best years ever -- from a strategic perspective.

Sure, Microsoft is still running behind in mobile, and its cloud strategy is too tied to legacy products Office and Windows. But in many other respects, Microsoft delivered lots of promise, and the credit largely belongs to Ballmer and his larger executive team. One year ago, as fiscal 2010's close approached, I posted: "I have lost in faith in Steve Ballmer's leadership." In April came my turnabout post: "Steve Ballmer has restored my confidence in his leadership."

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Apple will deeply integrate Twitter into iOS 5 when it releases this Fall, but not Facebook. Now why is that? Facebook is the largest social networking platform on the planet, with more than 500 million users, according to the company (Hell, I thought it was closer 700 million based on multiple -- and unconfirmed -- press reports and blogs). Surely Apple already greatly benefits from the the social network's iOS app. Why not do more?

I can't speak for Apple CEO Steve Jobs and his executive team, obviously. Perhaps the major reason is nothing more complex than Apple and Facebook failing to reach terms either could agree to. After all, there would be more to it than just leveraging APIs. However, I see some very good reasons why deep Facebook integration into iOS would be a bad move for Apple.

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Another great scoop from MacRumors: All the recent attention iOS 5 has distracted people from the new beta of OS X Lion. Looks like Apple snuck a new feature, "Restart to Safari," into the newest beta, which gives Lion a browser user interface. Gee, kinda like Chrome OS. Perhaps it's no coincidence that both browsers are based on WebKit.

Nearby is a tough-to-read screen shot from MacRumors of what looks like the Guest Login screen for that mode. The mode allows you to boot Lion into Safari and just Safari. Superficially it resembles ChromeOS on a Chromebook, but there's no indication that Apple intends to sell computers that boot only into the browser, as Google is doing.

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More and more of us are working from home these days, and whether you're in the service of The Company or working for yourself, your computer will play a vital part in your day-to-day routine. As with all tasks, there are tools out there that can transform the way you work and free up your time so you're more productive (or able to devote more hours to Freeciv).

As established freelance homeworkers ourselves, we've built up a catalog of useful free software that can help you when working from home, too -- from the obvious (office suites and collaborative tools) to the less obvious (want to avoid RSI? Create a secure network over the internet? Access your computer while out and about?). Read on, then, for our choice of apps for those working from home.

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I hate rumor stories, especially on Fridays. The slowest news day of the week tends to magnify the smallest rumor into a gargantuan story linked and repeated across the web. Today's ditty: Apple supposedly is recalling Verizon 3G iPad 2s.

This is the kind of thing Apple simply doesn't confirm until there is some official statement.. So I didn't bother asking for comment right away. I started randomly calling U.S. Apple retail stores posing as a customer who had read about a recall on the Internet and wondered what he should do about it. At the first four stores, staff was unfamiliar with any recall -- or even trouble with Verizon iPads.

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