Editor's Note: On June 6, Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced that iCloud, an online synchronization service, is coming in the Fall. iCloud will replace MobileMe, and Apple isn't waiting around for the new service to launch. MobileMe has stopped taking new subscribers and has extended existing customers' service for free. MobileMe will close on June 30, 2012. But iCloud is a much different service, which has upset many subscribers for what they're losing and for what they paid ($99 or more).

Apple is bringing us a laughably monikered upgrade to MobileMe called iCloud, and when you strip away the hype and Steve Jobs reality distortion field, iCloud is a proprietary, convoluted and highly restrictive sync-backup service.

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Eighth in a series. The upgrade program, for which Microsoft charges $29 annually for desktop software over three years, is obtusely complex. Many stated benefits have a pleasing marketing ring to them but often turn out to be nothing useful at all. The saying "The devil is in the details" aptly applies to Software Assurance.

Three-Dimensional Matrix

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The Google Maps team on Wednesday announced an update to both Google Maps for Android 1.6+ and Google Maps for desktop that incorporates real-time mass transit data, letting users not only plot their bus and train routes, but also track them in real time.

Currently, the live transit data is only available in six cities worldwide: Boston, Portland (Oregon), San Diego, San Francisco, Madrid (Spain) and Torino (Italy) and the tracking feature is tied into transit stations included on the map.

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It has been 18 months since Check Point released ZoneAlarm Extreme Security 2010 -- and as it didn't make much impact, and there was no 2011 release, you might have thought the company had given up on security suites altogether.

But you'd be wrong, though. It turns out ZoneAlarm was simply working on a much more interesting Extreme Security 2012 edition, released today, which comes packed with essential functionality.

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The growth of Twitter has far exceeded the expectations of many people, both in terms of scale and speed. The sheer number of users logging into the service, be it via the website or using one of the many Twitter clients that are available, is staggering. For some people this represents an unprecedented level of connectedness, but for everyone involved it means that there is a huge volume of information to work with.

There is no denying that the Twitter website makes it fairly easy to perform search. Whether you are looking for a particular person, or you want to find out more about something that other users are talking about, conducting searches for Twitter users and their tweets is far from taxing. If you are using a Twitter client, things are likely to be even easier, and the option of creating saved searches can be a real time saver.

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The more popular and sophisticated a smartphone becomes, the more susceptible it is to malware, fraud and other personal attacks. Android is no exception, and two respected security vendors have dipped their toes in the market with two new betas offering protection for Android-based devices.

Both BitDefender Mobile Security and ESET Mobile Security are currently available for free testing as public betas through the Android marketplace. Both currently offer anti-malware protection and a Security Audit tool, which allows the user to quickly see what permissions have been granted to applications, making it possible to quickly highlight potential privacy concerns.

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Berlin-based O&O Software GmbH has released O&O Defrag 14.5. Available as a free update to version 14 users, O&O Defrag 14.5, which is also available as a separate 64-bit build, offers a powerful and fast alternative to the basic Windows defragmentation tool, promising to keep hard drive performance running at optimum by keeping fragmentation at bay.

Version 14.5 includes four major new and enhanced functions. There's improved support for using TRIM commands to optimize SSD drives for both better performance and reduced read-write cycles, thus lengthening its life. The program also now automatically analyzes each drive whenever the program is run, while work has been done to improve three core defragmentation methods: stealth, space and complete. A new alternative Speed Zone setting is provided in this release, and the program is now configured to automatically interrupt the defrag process when a portable computer switches from mains to battery power.

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One year ago, we took a look at CounterPath's Bria softphone clients for PCs and mobile devices. Today, CounterPath has released Bria iPad Edition 1.0, which the company believes is a perfect example of effective IT consumerization because it strikes a balance between the feature-heavy, yet immobile desk phone and the versatile, yet feature-light consumer smartphone-based VoIP.

"The deskphone…looks ill-suited for today's work style, where employees need anytime, anywhere access to voice and data --exactly the kinds of applications where a tablet shines," a CounterPath representative said today. "[But] VoIP applications for tablets have been clunky and user-unfriendly to the point that they undermine the responsiveness and productivity they're supposed to enhance."

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But 2012 is waaaaay too late.

DigiTimes reports that Microsoft is "considering to launch an own-brand tablet PC that features Windows 8 by the end of 2012 with cooperation from Texas Instruments and Taiwan-based OEMs/ODMs." Companies like Microsoft are "considering" all kinds of things. For example, Microsoft Research might be considering how to adapt Windows for cryogenic chambers, anticipating someday freezing CEO Steve Ballmer's head. That doesn't mean it will happen.

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Get ready folks for the Information Superhighway of the future, one with 2128 lanes.

It's World IPv6 Day, a day when we're all supposed to check our readiness for the next version of IP, or Internet Protocol, the Internet Layer protocol of the Internet and almost all networks these days. IPv6, of course, is an old story, since it was long ago that we recognized the address space of IPv4 would run out, and we're almost there. The IPv6 address space, as I have written before, is so large that we may just take it with us to the first few planets we colonize.

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HP Financial Services, a subsidiary of leading information tech hardware company Hewlett-Packard, announced it will be making up to $2 billion available to "help clients finance their way into the cloud."

According to Forrester Research, business IT investment was up between 8.9% and 11% in 2010, but based upon recent trends, growth in 2011 is expected to slow to only around 8%.

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I can answer that question for you. Apple locks up your past purchases for 90 days, and you can forget that Monopoly game get-out-of-jail free card. But that's OK.

It was a big day for Apple yesterday, announcing iCloud and new push sync features from iTunes Store. It's a big day for Apple customers, now that iTunes 10.3 is available -- with purchase sync in beta. The utility is simply amazing for what Apple intends for it -- but also for how customers might choose to use it.

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Google has updated its popular open-source browser Chrome to version 12, introducing a number of notable features. Of most importance is a new extension to the Safe Browsing feature, which now screens downloaded files for known malware in addition to warning against potentially malicious or phishing websites.

Privacy has been bolstered ,too, with Chrome now able to manage and delete Flash Player's equivalent of cookies (Local Stored Objects) directly within the browser itself. LSOs are now listed alongside cookies when clicking the Content Settings button followed by All cookies and site data in the Privacy section of Chrome's Options dialog.

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Nintendo debuted its newest piece of gaming hardware, Wii U, a touchscreen tablet and game controller that takes the dual-screen gaming concept of the DS and applies it to the television.

Wii U includes a 6.2" touchscreen tablet with dual analog circle pads, a D-pad and buttons, rumble support, a microphone and speaker, accelerometer, gyroscope, and forward-facing camera which are all used to communicate with a 1080p HD set top box that stylistically looks like an update to the current Wii console.

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A portion of Skype users found themselves without service Tuesday after a configuration problem caused the VoIP provider's systems to crash. A message to Heartbeat, Skype's status page, indicated that the company was aware of the problem and was working to fix it.

The most recent update indicates that the problem has been "stabilized" and most should be able to log back in shortly. "You shouldn't need to manually sign back in to Skype - it should reconnect automatically when it's able to do so," Skype's Peter Parkes said in an update.

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