Latest Technology News

Today, at Google I/O, Google revealed that the first Chrome OS laptops, or Chromebooks, will be available for order on June 15 in the United States. Prices will start at $349 for an 11.6-inch model. Additionally, Google announced a sweet deal for students -- a Chromebook for 20 bucks a month. Assuming a nine-month school year that works out to $180. Businesses can subscribe for $28 per user/a month.

Chrome OS is a cloud-dependent operating system requiring a persistent Internet connection -- or so it seemed before today's Google I/O keynote. The user's Google account ID allows syncing of browser bookmarks and passwords with computers running Chrome and opens access to server-side Google services like Apps, Gmail and Reader.

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NirSoft is famous for creating some of the best free Windows utilities around: tiny, portable and packed with useful features. If you'd like to sample what the company has to offer then you could spend an hour or two browsing the site, individually downloading anything that appeals. But it's probably easier to simply grab a copy of NirLauncher, which crams more than 130 of the best NirSoft tools into a portable, easily accessible package.

We're not just talking about a zip file holding the various executables, either. NirLauncher also provides a front-end menu that organizes its tools into categories like Password Recovery, Network Monitoring, Disk Utilities, System Utilities and more, making it much simpler to locate the particular programs that you need.

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Enterprise security and firewall company Palo Alto Networks on Wednesday released the results of an eight-month study of more than 1,200 organizations and 2 million users that observed more than 28 exabytes of data passing through corporate networks. Among the results of the study, Palo Alto found that applications using SSL (secure sockets layer) in some way represented 23% of all corporate bandwidth, and dynamic/port hopping applications represented a further 16% of all bandwidth.

In total, social networking within the corporate firewall has increased 500% in one year's time.

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WinZip Computing, a subsidiary of Corel, has released a major new update for its Mac zip tool, WinZip Mac Edition. Version 1.5 features a number of improvements based on two key areas: zip/unzip functionality, and file sharing and archiving.

WinZip Mac Edition now features improved support for Mac application bundles, which are recognizable via the .app extension. Previously the program could simply unzip an entire .app bundle, but version 1.5 gives the user additional options, namely the ability to view the contents of the archive, plus the option of extracting individual items. It's also now possible to include hidden files within zip archives, plus the program supports a wider number of archived formats, including .jar and .war files.

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The average antivirus package will detect around 97 percent of all known threats, according to independent tests. Which sounds quite good, until you realize that means you could be infected in around 1 in every 33 malware encounters (and that's before we even consider the brand new, undiscovered threats).

It makes sense to equip your PC with a second antivirus tool, then, to assist in picking up any malware that your main package has missed. There's no shortage of possible candidates, but one of the most interesting is a new, free set of tools from Comodo: Cleaning Essentials.

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One of the most popular open-source tools for ripping and encoding video from DVD and Blu-ray is the cross-platform tool, Handbrake. One of the charges levelled at it, particularly from a Windows user's point of view, is that the user interface can be a little confusing and overwhelming, particularly for beginners.

Mindful of this fact, Codeplex code RandomEngy has developed a fresh take on Handbrake in the form of VidCoder, which is also available as a 64-bit application. VidCoder takes all the features and raw power of Handbrake, and delivers them to end users via a more streamlined and user-friendly interface, making the program more accessible to all.

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Continuing its foray in iOS software Adobe today released three companion apps for Photoshop CS5. The apps provide a range of new ways to interact with Photoshop with your iPad starting with Adobe Eazel,  which enables you to paint and draw on the screen of your iPad using a range of tools before sending the completed work of art to your PC or Mac, or sharing it via email.

Next up is Adobe Nav , on which you can use your iPad to access the tools you use most frequently in Photoshop. A customizable toolbar enables you to access your favorite tools form your iPad as well as browsing through your documents. The app can be used to navigate through up to 200 open documents, and when you tap on the screen of your iPad it will become the active document on your Mac or PC.

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There were enough leaks in Google's streaming music plans to sink Titanic. So it was no surprise that earlier today at Google I/O, the search and information giant launched a cloud locker for your tunes. Well, for the tunes of special invitees (I/O attendees for starters) or Motorola XOOM tablet owners (the music app is included with Android 3.1). It's a closed beta. You can't attend I/O now if not registered, but you could still buy XOOM to get beta access -- that's if your domicile is the United States. The beta's only open here.

Keeping with Google's mindless marketing approach to nomenclature -- with Android and Chrome being two of the few exceptions -- for now the service is called Music Beta by Google, presumably Google Music on release. If someone got paid to develop the brand, please tell me how to get such an easy cash-producing gig. If Music Beta by Google is the product name, seriously I want the brander's job. That said, I must concede Music Beta by Google does evoke a sense of exclusivity fitting with the invitee or XOOM "Honeycomb early adopter" status.

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For the last three years, Google has given away pretty desirable free gifts to attendees of the Google I/O developer conference, and this year is no exception. The more than 5,000 attendees this year received a limited edition 10.1" Samsung Galaxy Tab.

This is the same device that Samsung unveiled last month at the CTIA conference, but left untouchable under plexiglass shields. Now, a handful of people have access to the device before it is released on June 8th and that includes Betanews.

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As the outage of the PlayStation Network entered its 20th day, Sony says that it would still be awhile yet before it is able to bring the gaming network back online. In a short statement on Tuesday, spokesperson Patrick Seybold seemed to ask for a bit more patience from its users.

"I know you all want to know exactly when the services will be restored," Seybold posted to the PlayStation blog. "At this time, I can't give you an exact date, as it will likely be at least a few more days." Such words are likely not comforting to the millions of PlayStation 3 users who have been shut out of online gameplay for nearly a month.

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Android continues to gain momentum, with over 100 million Android devices now activated, and approximately 400,000 new activations daily, the company reported on Tuesday. That number is up from the 300,000 activations daily that it had reported in December of last year, and is likely now surpassing iOS overall.

Official activation data has not been available from Apple since September of last year, when Steve Jobs said the company was activating about 230,000 iOS devices per day. Some anecdotal data indicates that this may now be nearing 300,000 per day, but it has yet to be officially confirmed.

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At the Android Keynote on the first day of Google I/O 2011, Google announced the next version of Android called Ice Cream Sandwich will unify tablets, phones, and Google TV devices under a single version of the operating system. Yet a new facet to Android was introduced today that may turn out to be the most left-field announcement of the conference: Android for embedded devices and home automation.

Android founder Andy Rubin summed up the operating system's progress in the following way at a press conference Tuesday morning: Android started with phones, then grew to tablets, and now it should grow to everything.

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Similar to the e-book section of the Android Market which was unveiled last February, Google today launched Android Market Movies (U.S. Only) which lets users rent movies in their Web browser, and consume in their browser or on their Android devices. Rentals stay in the user's queue for 30 days and once opened, they can be viewed for 24 hours.

Google says "thousands of movies" can be rented starting at $1.99 today which can be viewed on the various Android devices, or even in Youtube in the user's browser. An update to the Motorola XOOM today will give users a new Movies application that is compatible with the new rental market, and Android 2.2+ devices will get the update "in the coming weeks."

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Cerulean Studios has announced that it's making Trillian, the cross-platform social networking and instant messaging client, free for desktop and mobile users. Features previously restricted to Pro users, such as the ability to sign in from multiple locations, support for themes and activity history viewer, will now be available in free editions of the software, starting with Trillian 5 for Windows, which has just been released.

Other supported platforms, including Mac and mobile devices (iPhone,Android and Blackberry), will get these features added to the next updates when they're released. For now, though, only Windows users get the full gamut of features with the release of version 5.

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Hot on the heels of the stable release of Chrome 11, Google released a new beta version of Chrome 12. It is obviously very early days for Google's latest browser, but there is already a great deal to look forward to. There is support for the latest web standards, which means that hardware accelerated 3D CSS can deliver rich content in style, assuming you have a recent graphics card installed.

Security has been enhanced in the latest version of Chrome. New algorithms check websites to ensure that downloads are not malicious, and this is in addition to the phishing protection we have become used to. The download checking works in much the same way as checking for phishing website and it means that malicious software can be intercepted before it has a chance to cause any problems.

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