Latest Technology News

Austrian security company Emsisoft has launched a public beta test of Anti-Malware 6, its flagship antivirus tool. And the focus this time around has clearly been performance, with the company claiming a new multi-core optimised scanning engine is on average 450-percent faster than the previous version.

The next benefit comes from a new scheme for identifying trustworthy files. These then don’t have to be scanned in the future unless they’ve changed, providing another speed boost. And, the company claims, further optimizations have “drastically” reduced Anti-Malware’s impact on the boot process.

If Amazon's rumored Android tablet ever indeed becomes a reality, it could quickly become one of the bestselling tablets on the market. That's the claims of Forrester Research analyst Sarah Rotman Epps, who expects the tablet to sell up to five million units in the fourth quarter of this year.

At that rate, sales of the Amazon tablet would surpass the 4.19 million iPads that Apple sold in the first full quarter of its availability from July through September 2010. Amazon would roughly be doing that in about two to three months.

The cardinal rule in good user interface design: Keep it simple, stupid. Windows 8 will break that rule in the worst ways, unless Microsoft customers and developers knock some sense into the company's product managers. They'll have their chance next month, at the Windows BUILD conference.

In early June, I sang Windows 8 praises, posting: "It took 4 min 34 sec to get me really excited about Windows again". The video introducing the new user interface stunned me, as it did many other people. Finally, Microsoft achieved the kind of simplicity, elegance and good taste more typically associated with Mac OS. But beneath the breathtaking desktop is a file-system nightmare: The Office Ribbon is taking over Windows.

Despite its denials, Samsung still appears to be making a move for HP in some form. Reports had surfaced last week that the South Korean electronics maker was interested in purchasing HP's consumer PC business. The company quickly denied the rumors in a terse statement, calling the reports "not true".

The same publication that first published those rumors -- Taiwanese technology daily DigiTimes -- has come back saying that Samsung has hired a former HP executive to head its PC business, and also may be interested in HP's WebOS platform.

Today, VMware kicked off its VMworld convention in Las Vegas, and dozens of companies have announced new products supporting VMware's various virtualization services, including Dell, Wyse, Citrix, NEC, Huawei, and Cisco, to name just a few.

In response to the convention and the support from hardware companies, Microsoft, a major competitor to VMware in the enterprise virtualization space, has released a hilarious caricature of VMware in video called "Don't get stuck in the IT past" which shows the exploits of IT salesman Tad and his company VMlimited.

After steadily gaining popularity among professionals and receiving a $3 billion valuation in its IPO, LinkedIn has become the gold standard of work-related social networking.

But LinkedIn isn't really well-tailored for finding jobs and employees without becoming a paid member. It's more about posting résumés and creating a network of contacts exclusively for professional purposes.

Google+ real names policy continues to generate controversy. Last month I strongly urged Google to resist calls for pseudonyms or to allow people to be anonymous. The policy of using real names is sensible and the best approach long term. But, clearly, not everyone agrees. So it's time for a poll and to ask for more reader reaction.

Argument repeatedly made against real names: Some people need to protect their identities. Perhaps they live in a country with oppressive regime, don't want to disclose gender choices or whistleblow on governments or their contractors, among other reasons. But I look at Betanews comments or other forums around the web, where trolls run wild. They hide behind anonymity and attack others. Their presence pollutes the discussion and makes forming real communities -- people who share common interest -- difficult, if not impossible.

Diebold, the United States' largest manufacturer of Automated Teller Machines (ATMs) will be unveiling its prototype of a virtualized ATM today, the first day of the annual VMworld conference in Las Vegas.

Like most of the products coming out of VMworld this week, the virtualized ATM was developed jointly by Diebold and VMware. Unlike the traditional standalone ATM model, the virtual ATM has no onboard computer driving it, and it is effectively a thin client tied to a central management server.

Samsung is expected to launch a new cross-platform mobile chat service called ChatON* this week at the IFA Conference in Berlin. Like Apple's new iMessage, ChatON will be very similar to RIM's BlackBerry Messenger, letting users set up individual or group chats that support multimedia messaging, as well as location, calendar and contact sharing.

The service will also include some unique features, such as Animated Message Service (AMS), short animations which can be sent like e-cards; and Interaction Ranking, a metric that shows how often you interact with certain contacts.

Mozilla has released beta and alpha versions of Thunderbird for testing purposes, mirroring the release cycle of Thunderbird’s sister project, Firefox. Thunderbird 7 Beta, which will install over the top of any existing Thunderbird installation, has no major headline changes – the release notes mention support for printing a summary of selected email messages, but this functionality is already present in the current stable release, Thunderbird 6 Final.

Other reported changes are minor fixes and interface tweaks, including various fixes related to the way Thunderbird handles attachments. Also appearing on Mozilla’s download server is Thunderbird’s alpha build, which has a different name -- Earlybird 8.0a2 – and which installs alongside an existing beta or stable build.

Now that he's no longer Apple CEO, it is.

During Jobs' two medical leaves, starting in early 2009 and 2011, I argued that his health was not a private matter. Apple is a public company, majorly owned by shareholders -- not Jobs, the company's board or any other executive or employee. In Jobs' role as chief executive, and as someone so closely identified with Apple, health impacted his ability to perform daily duties and, therefore, could affect Apple operations and financial performance. Jobs is no longer chief executive. He remains an Apple employee, according to a recent 8-K filing but in unspecified role, and is Chairman of the Board. But he is no longer directly responsible for Apple operations.

Piriform Inc has released version 3.10 of CCleaner, its popular free cleaning tool for Windows-based PCs. CCleaner 3.10, which is also available as a portable version, adds support for Internet Explorer 9.0.2, Firefox 6.0 Final and Firefox 7.0 Beta.

Version 3.10 also adds a number of new and improved cleaning options, plus promises better accuracy and reliability when wiping free disk space as well as entire drives.

Last week the Department of Justice announced the conclusion of its investigation of Google permitting online Canadian pharmacies to place advertisements through AdWords, facilitating the unlawful importation of controlled pharmaceuticals into the United States. Google's large forfeiture -- fully $500 million -- reveals the gravity of the offense, and as part of the settlement, Google affirmatively admits liability.

These admissions and the associated documents confirm what I had long suspected: Not only does Google often ignore its stated "policies", but in fact Google staff affirmatively assist supposed "rule-breakers" when Google finds it profitable to do so.

Earlier this month I sold my 11.6-inch MacBook Air (using Samsung Series 5 Chromebook now) and iPhone 4 (switched back to Google Nexus S). I don't miss either Apple product. Not the least bit. In reflecting, I realize that the spell is broken. Without Apple Chairman Steve Jobs driving innovation or inspiring passion -- the oft-called "reality distortion field" -- my Apple enthusiasm is gone. Perhaps it's return to sanity.

I should have connected the dots sooner, but often people don't easily apply even basic math to emotional matters, because the nuances move swiftly on the surface with many slower currents and fast-churning eddies below. The ocean is an excellent analogy. Yesterday, in viewing Nate Mook's slideshow of 20 products introduced by Jobs, and resurfacing emotions about the different launches, I had an epiphany. I could see how much Jobs' passion infected mine -- his ability to inspire about what Apple products offered.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and FCC Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau Chief Jamie Barnett gave a brief press conference on Saturday afternoon to give a snapshot of Hurricane Irene's effect on communications networks in the Atlantic coastal area. All data presented here was collected from the FCC's Disaster Information Reporting System (DIRS).

Wireline: 12,000 are out of service, 8,000 in NC, 4,000 in VA.