My sweetie is an artist, and no geek. Her idea of complicated technology is the TV remote control's channel and volume buttons. So I was surprised to find her enthused about Google Android phones. Isn't it a stereotype that artists and Apple go together like organic gumballs in a bag?

Choosing Google over Apple

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Exxon Mobile has retaken the lead from the most valuable tech company. This morning in early trading, Exxon Mobile's market cap was $353.60 billion compared to $350.45 billion for Apple. Update: Apple almost caught Exxon at day's end. Exxon closed with valuation of $350.07 billion and Apple $349.50 billion.

On August 9, Apple and Exxon Mobile played a cat-and-mouse chase for largest market capitalization. Apple passed Exxon the next day and held the lead to close -- Apple's market cap was $337.17 billion, compared to Exxon Mobile's $330.77 billion. But Apple's gains came more because of Exxon's losses. Today, with both stocks up in early trading, the energy giant pulled away from the maker of the Jesus phone -- er, iPhone.

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Security software is not something that is generally associated with mobile devices such as phones, but the open nature of the Android platform means that viruses are a real threat, just as for desktop computers. Security firm Symantec is only too aware of this and has released a beta version of Norton Mobile Security that includes not only virus protection, but also other security features such as location locating and remote wiping.

On the virus protection front, any files you download or updates you install are scanned for signs of infection before they can cause any harm, and SD cards can be automatically scanned when you insert them.  This in itself is comforting, but there are plenty of other mobile specific security features that will be of interest to anyone looking to safeguard their phone and the data it contains.

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The PC world is packed with tools that promise to optimize your system, but most do little or nothing useful. And so the news that Kingsoft Security had released another, their free PC Doctor, didn't exactly fill us with anticipation.

The reality was much better than we expected, though. PC Doctor is far more interesting than most of the competition, and while the program is currently flawed, it could already be useful for many people.

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Last month, Apple released Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" to reasonably favorable response -- well, not Betanews -- but the update process has been called into question a few times. After releasing a migration tool to make it easier to upgrade from Snow Leopard to Lion, Apple has now unveiled the Migration Assistant Update for Mac OS X Leopard, which serves the same purpose for anyone looking to upgrade from the older Leopard OS.

The app is designed to simplify the process of moving from Leopard to Lion, making it possible to transfer personal files and data along with applications -- at least those that are Lion compatible -- and system settings to a new machine running Lion.

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Google's new social network took a lot of the good stuff from Facebook, Twitter, and Google Wave and mashed it all together to make Google Plus. Today, social games, one of the more lucrative, but possibly more obnoxious facets of Facebook has launched on Google Plus.

With the Circles feature of Google+, the constant stream of game-related feed updates and promotions that has been known to pollute Facebook can at least be corralled into its own little area. Google is hailing this as a major improvement to the social gaming experience.

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When you set up a new Windows system, especially an XP system, you may be faced with a titanic load of updates to apply to it in order to bring it up to date. If you don't have a loaded-up WSUS server or similar system this means pulling potentially hundreds of megabytes over your Internet connection, and multiple reboots. Microsoft could make it a lot easier.

F-Secure just brought this up by asking for an "update rollup" for Windows XP SP3. A perfectly reasonable request if ever there were one. When they set up a minimal install of XP SP3 (e.g. no calc.exe) in a VM they have to apply 157 updates after SP3. As they point out, SP3 itself was basically just an update rollup. So why doesn't Microsoft do more?

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Damn, video streaming looks good, too, and there are no dropped frames. To critics who have never used Chromebook, I say: Underpowered my arse. This is the first computer I've used that just keeps getting better.

First, I must apologize. Google's PR agency reached out to me late yesterday afternoon about a new update to Chrome OS. I wondered if it was the same update I downloaded last week, asked, and after an exchange of emails assumed that it was. Wrong! Chrome OS prompted for the new update today -- so that's two delivered in less than 7 days. Outstanding!

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HTC continued to diversify its product portfolio on Thursday, announcing it had purchased a majority 51 percent stake in Beats Electronics, a US company that produces high end headphones and speakers. The company is a joint venture of rapper Dr. Dre and Jimmy Iovine.

In monetary terms the investment comes to about $300 million USD, according to reports.

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Web-based file storage and content sharing service Box.net on Thursday unveiled three new apps for the tablet world: one for Android Honeycomb, one for BlackBerry PlayBook, and one for HTML5-compatible browsers. These new products bring Box to essentially all mobile platforms in some way and round out its app offerings which already included iOS, Android, and WebOS.

Like Amazon has done with its Kindle e-book platform, Box is attempting to attain what it calls "mobile ubiquity," or a meaningful presence on any mobile device that comes along, irrespective of platform.

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TeamSpeak Systems GmbH has released TeamSpeak 3 for Windows, Mac and Linux. This powerful teleconferencing tool is designed to allow users, both home and business, take part in group voice conversations on a large scale.

Version 3.0, which coincides with the release of mobile client apps for both iPhone/iPad and Android, boasts a dedicated 64-bit build for Windows and Linux users for the first time. It's been rebuilt from the ground up in C+++ to improve compatibility and performance, and boasts improved voice quality and latency, 3D sound effects, improved security and privacy and a new feature that allows users to share files during voice chats.

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Whoa, that can't be good.

Today, Gartner released worldwide handset sales for second quarter 2011. To be clear these are real sales. IDC and most other analyst firms measure shipments into the channel, not sales to end users, which Gartner does. These aren't good numbers for Microsoft.

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Your friend's PC has been hit by malware, and you're trying to help him out. He doesn't have any security apps installed, though, and so normally that means a lengthy browsing session around your preferred vendors, locating and downloading the tools they need.

Unless, that is, you've a copy of the free, portable SSDownloader to hand. It's a small and easy-to-use download manager that can grab your choice of 50 security applications in just a few clicks.

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Bloggers with Gizmodo will escape prosecution surrounding the receipt of an iPhone 4 prototype last year, which the site paid for and ultimately reported on. Two other individuals will be charged however, as they allegedly were behind the sale of the device to the blog.

Brian Hogan, 22, of Redwood City, Calif. and Sage Wallower, 28, of Emeryville, Calif. both face one count of the misappropriation of lost property, with Wallower also charged with possession of stolen property. Their arraignment has been set for August 25 according to a statement from San Mateo County District Attorney Stephen Wagstaffe.

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Yesterday's cat-and-mouse chase, where Apple and Exxon Mobile kept passing one another, didn't last today. Apple's market capitalization surpassed Exxon's early in the day and stayed that way though market close.

Apple's market cap is $337.17 billion, compared to Exxon Mobile's $330.77 billion

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