Latest Technology News

I'm having freaky sense of déjà vu, today. Apple may be late to cloud computing, but what's that saying about better late than never? Late has worked for Apple before, and I expect it to do so again.

Apple was late to music, when it launched iTunes in January 2001. The Napster revolution was well underway and Windows PC manufacturers shipped CD-RW drives. Now look at Apple and music. Apple was late to smartphones and tablets. Now it has shipped 200 million iOS devices, 25 million of them iPads -- in just 14 months. The list is longer, but you get the point.

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Since Betanews' original report last Wednesday, dozens of readers have e-mailed their own reports of account issues, most dealing with Sega's Kingdom Conquest. Some of these initial reports were detailed in a followup to our original piece, but we have received more since then.

(Betanews is still actively collecting reports. If you've been hacked, whether it's Kingdom Conquest or not, we'd like to know. Send your reports to ed at edoswald dot com.)

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Apple's newest operating system, Mac OS X 10.7 "Lion" is coming next month, with Apple passing big savings to customers. But you'll need v10.6 "Snow Leopard" to get it. The announcement came earlier today during Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference.

Lion will be distributed as a software download through the Mac App Store, which is available as an add-on to Snow Leopard. Mac App Store is built into Lion. The in-app upgrade is a new distribution mechanism for Apple, and the company is passing on savings to its customers. Apple offered v10.6 Snow Leopard as a $29 upgrade from v10.5 Leopard on DVD. More typically Apple charged $129 for a single license and $199 for 5-license Family Pack.

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Apple on Monday debuted a new subscription service called iTunes Match which scans a user's library of music, and "matches" the user's songs with iTunes' database of 18 million songs. Instead of actually uploading the songs to a server like Amazon Cloud Player and Google Music Beta, iTunes Match simply identifies the song on the user's machine and then makes the equivalent song available "in the cloud" for download on other devices.

The company did not reveal whether the service will have any methods of detecting music ownership.

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In Apple's unveiling of iOS 5 on Monday, the company revealed iMessage, a new feature that brings the functionality of BlackBerry Messenger to all iOS devices: iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

The feature lets users send texts, photos, videos, contact information and group messages over Wi-Fi or 3G. It has delivery receipts and "read receipts" and live typing notifications which are pushed to all of a user's iOS devices.

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Though the name and concept behind Kinect Fun Lab leaked before its keynote, Microsoft showed off three very cool features available in Kinect Fun Labs when it launches for all Xbox 360 users later today.

The first was Xbox Live avatar creation demo called Kinect Me, which lets you snap pictures of your face and clothing with Kinect, and it's rendered as an Xbox Live avatar. It's actually exactly the same thing that Nintendo did with the Mii Maker for 3DS, but the results look a lot more sophisticated, and the clothing-scanning feature adds a bit more depth.

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs today dispelled the rumors surrounding the company's new cloud service. For months, the rumor mill churned out thousands of webpages of guesses about iCloud. Would it be a cloud-based music locker, MobileMe revamp or something else?

Simply stated, iCloud is a synchronization service for pushing data out to all your connected devices. Jobs introduced the service during the Worldwide Developer Conference keynote this afternoon. For more than a half decade, I've said that synchronization is the killer application for the connected world.

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During today's Apple Worldwide Developer Conference, Scott Forstall, senior vice president of iOS software, announced that to date 200 million iOS devices have shipped. Apple also shipped 25 million iPads in the first 14 months. Forstall used the data points to prepare the audience for the introduction of iOS 5.

Forstall offered other important data points:

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In Los Angeles on Monday, Microsoft revealed its further plans to make the 360 a comprehensive streaming entertainment solution with Xbox Live TV, YouTube integration, and voice activated navigation and Bing search.

It's been just about three years since the "New Xbox Experience" debuted which brought Netflix Streaming, animated avatars, and live parties to Xbox Live. Microsoft today actually used the phrase "New Xbox Experience" again to describe this latest update, which will bring a new dashboard, voice controls including Bing voice search, YouTube integration, and Xbox Live TV in the fall.

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Fresh off a hack of the Sony Pictures website last week, hacking group LulzSec turned its attention elsewhere. FBI related websites were attacked on Friday night, and it was revealed this weekend that the US web servers of Nintendo had been hit by the group several weeks ago.

In the Nintendo hack, LulzSec took no information. "Re: Nintendo, we just got a config file and made it clear that we didn't mean any harm. Nintendo had already fixed it anyway.

Hijazi claims that LulzSec attempted to extort money from Unveillance in exchange for them not publicly releasing his information, although the hacking group claimed that Hijazi wanted LulzSec to hack his competitors. Hijazi maintains that no sensitive information was disclose about his company's anti-hacking efforts, since the e-mails were of a personal and work nature.

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Apple may be generating loads of rumors this morning, but Microsoft has got some noise to make, too, even if done accidentally -- or accidentally on purpose. Hours before Apple Steve Jobs takes the Worldwide Developer Conference stage (1 p.m. EDT) or Microsoft's E3 keynote (12:30 p.m), several Xbox announcements leaked: Kinect Fun Labs and some new games, including Halo 4.

I say accidentally on purpose, because Microsoft's leaks cut into Apple noise before it drowns out most other tech news today. Jobs' keynote will unveil iCloud, which has generated more rumors than, well, storm clouds drenching rain. The Apple fan club of bloggers and journalists are sure to drown out pretty much everything else. So, Microsoft's leak, whether or not intentional, is timely -- and it may lead more people to tune into the E3 keynote. Microsoft is streaming its keynote; Apple is not. LOL, you have to enter your birthdate to watch the Kinect keynote and other content.

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Just six months ago, we looked at a dual-screen 14.1" tablet called Kno that was being tested with university students. We got to play with the device a little bit, and got a feel for the ambitious goals of its creators. In short, they wanted to make e-textbooks exactly the same as their paper counterparts with the same page numbers, and with the ability to write on the pages.

Unfortunately, one of the main drivers behind the e-textbook movement is their affordability, and the custom Linux-driven tablet hardware was projected to cost students between $600-$900.

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If you're looking to customize the look of your Windows PC, then you might start with wallpaper, icons, sounds maybe -- they're all quick and easy to customize. Animated cursors are more difficult to work with, and so tend to get a little neglected by comparison. But it doesn't have to be that way. Especially if you install a copy of the free AniTuner 2.

The program allows you to work with existing cursors, for instance. In a click or two you might open one, then resize it, change the color depth, the hot spot, or even play around with individual frames (add or remove them, manipulate existing frames and more).

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For fans of digital photography, there is certainly no shortage of image editing tools to choose from, but the problem is that many of them are expensive. Free editing tools do exist, but it can be hard to track down one that is not too basic. For Windows users, Paint.NET has offered a neat balance between power and ease of use, and now this option has been brought to Mac and Linux users thanks to the cross-platform Paint.NET clone Pinta.

Just like Paint.NET, Pinta is light on system resources and has been designed so it performs well even on older hardware. Unlimited leveld of undo and support for an unlimited number of layers in projects means that there is plenty of scope to get creative. As the application is available for Windows, Mac and Linux, anyone who works with different systems can continue to use the same tool no matter which computer they are using.

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Earlier this week, Google claimed to have uncovered a password-stealing campaign that originated from Jinan, China, and targeted senior U.S., officials and other prominent individuals. The Chinese government later denied involvement. The attacks' origins aren't being disputed so much as who is responsible.

The most famous cases of alleged "cyberwar" have some common characteristics that are at the heart of the problem. It's never clearly the governments conducting the attacks and it's plausible that outside actors are responsible. This leads to the "attribution" problem of cyberwar, that it's never crystal clear where retaliatory measures should be targeted.

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