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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.

Well, so much for Apple cofounder Steve Jobs' infamous $1 pay.

Just two days after taking the chief executive's chair from Jobs, Tim Cook received a stunning 1 million shares from Apple. It's restricted stock -- meaning shares won't vest for years --- but it's big money, about $383.58 million at today's closing price of $383.58. Thank you Apple for making the math easy for the end of another shockingly busy tech news week. Whatever happened to August vacations and no big biz activity until after Labor Day?

Seventh in a series. Two short years ago -- not even that yet -- soon after testing Windows 7 for several months, I came home to find a UPS post-it stuck to my front door with "delivery attempt" on it. I live in a small town, so I drove around looking at the major places I might find the UPS guy. SCORE!!! He was at the bank. There I was standing by the brown truck waiting for him to come back. I must have looked a little creepy -- crazy guy physically shaking in anticipation. I’m not sure what the UPS guy thought as he handed the Windows 7 package to the creepy guy with shaking hands.

Many people do not realize how many geeks actually get overwhelming joy when a piece of software or technology gets released -- something that can or will change the world of computing. Now that is said, let’s go back 10 years.

Sixth in a series. My Windows XP experiece started in 2003 when I bought my first Laptop. I had delayed jumping on the personal computer bandwagon for years. It was a Dell Inspiron 2500 -- the first and only time I would own a Dell system.

I experienced Windows XP by learning how to install drivers and adding new hardware and dealing with the problems associated with each task. Trust me, there were problems -- like trying to install a new Ethernet adapter driver, having the New Hardware Wizard ask if I was connected to the Internet and for it to fail once I clicked "No". The laptop had no Internet connection. Each time I attempted the driver installation, it would fail at the same place and not just on my system but others.

This week, we've been looking back at the legendary Windows XP, which launched on August 24, 2001 ten years ago on Wednesday. But you know what Microsoft launched just three months after XP that was just as massive and impactful on tech culture? Halo: Combat Evolved.

The Halo series of video games turns 10 in November, but is getting an early birthday celebration at the Penny Arcade Expo (PAX Prime) in Seattle beginning today. The event, predictably titled Halo Fest is a massive gathering of Halo fans to engage in big multiplayer gaming sessions and contests of skill.

Internet security company Trend Micro Incorporated has released its Titanium 2012 range of products, which have been extended with a variety of new features.

Malware detection has been improved with some interesting new technologies. Perhaps the most useful of these allows Titanium 2012 products to detect applications that have been packed (encrypted), in an effort to bypass your defenses; once the file has been unpacked, it’s then scanned in real time using file-based signatures, which greatly improves the chance of detection.

The Federal Communications Commission told AT&T Friday that it had received enough information on its proposed $39 billion merger with T-Mobile, and would restart the clock on its review. The agency had already spent 82 days of the 180 it typically takes for large deals.

FCC officials "stopped the clock" in July, saying they needed more information on the economic modeling of the deal vis a vis its possible anticompetitive effects. Competitors such as Sprint have been the most vocal about the negative effects, even equating it to the return of "Ma Bell."

Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. 19-year-old Jailbreakme.com creator Nicholas Allegra -- better known by his hacker handle "comex" -- has been hired as an intern by Apple, he disclosed on Thursday night.

Allegra had been searching for an internship while taking some time off from studies at Brown University. Up until recently he had continued to develop the website that thousands have used over the past few years to jailbreak their iOS devices. It appears in the end, however, that he felt like he had to move on.

Antivirus and anti-malware software are essential for any computer users, but there are times when your defenses are down. You may have reinstalled your operating system or had to disable your security software for some reason. If you find that for these or other reasons your computer has become seriously infected with malware, perhaps to the point that it will not boot, Dr Web LiveCD is on hand to help you to get things back in order.

As the name suggests, this is a live CD that can be used to boot an otherwise inaccessible computer with a view to retrieving files and fixing problems. Dr Web LiveCD downloads as a disc image that needs to be burned to CD and once this disc has been created it can be used to boot into a Linux environment that can be used to remedy a range of computer problems.

Google TV, an ambitious project to bring Google's powerful search tools and targeted advertisement to the television screens of America (and eventually the UK), has been something of a commercial dud.

Logitech's Revue set-top box, the first Google TV device to hit the market just short of one year ago has dropped in price by a whopping 60% to try to spur consumer adoption.

Wake-on-LAN (WOL) is, in theory, a very convenient technology, able to wake up a sleeping PC on your local (wired) network just by sending it an appropriately formed “magic packet”.

The reality can be rather different, though, as WOL only works if your PC, BIOS and network card all support the technology and have it enabled (and even then you may run into issues with your router). Still, if you’d like to give it a try then NirSoft’s latest, WakeMeOnLan, is an easy way to get started.

As the world digests the shock of Steve Jobs departing as Apple's iconic CEO and pontificates over stock prices and future leadership, we decided to take a look back at the innovations he oversaw -- both the flops and those that changed the world.

No matter how you feel about the company or Jobs himself, it's impossible not to recognize the incredible turnaround Apple has seen in the past 10 years -- and the industry it has transformed in the process. Apple has consistently been at the forefront of innovation, design and culture, inspiring a generation to look at technology not as a tool, but as a way of life.

The days when we talk to our computers like something out of Star Trek are fast approaching. Google announced a new feature for users of its Google Chrome browser Thursday that will allow them to use voice on Google Maps to initiate location searches and get directions.

Google says this helps in searching for hard to spell locations, and in some cases saying where your looking for or wanting to go may be much faster than typing it.

The following commentary is a guest post written by BetaNews reader Avatar X. A blogger from Mexico City, he has done software and tech reviews for the last 10 years.

One week ago today, 18 of August of 2011, HP discontinued webOS devices (Pre and TouchPad) and also announced their intention to sell or spin-off their PC business, in order to concentrate in the more lucrative and higher-margin markets of servers, cloud services and enterprise software.