Latest Technology News

While Apple's iPad currently enjoys a healthy advantage over its competitors presently, at least one analyst expects the bestselling tablet to enjoy its advantage for the next decade if not longer. Needham & Co. analyst Charlie Wolf expects competitors to eat into the iPad's lead, but the device will still have a 60 percent market share by 2020.

Wolf speculates that competition among competitors will mainly cannibalize market share among those competitors, rather than affect the iPad's market share in any demonstrable way. Such a prediction may not be far from the truth: while dozens -- if not hundreds -- of new tablets have popped up in recent months, none have been able to gain any traction against the iPad.

Network management can be a complex business, often requiring a whole suite of tools to carry out properly. Or you could just download a copy of the free, open-source Network Stuff, which crams much of what you'll need into a 1.3MB portable executable.

There are graphical Ping and Traceroute tools, for instance. You're able to run TCP, UDP, ICMP or CGI scans on the IP address and ports you specify. And a Stats tab displays everything from the currently open network and Internet connections, to assorted TCP, IP, UDP and ICMP statistics, and a real-time graph charting the current activity on whatever network interface you specify.

If you've ever found yourself in a position whereby you're expected to enter some kind of text, including snippets of code, into an application or web form that you struggle to get to grips with, then Text Editor Everywhere could be a lifesaver.

This handy free tool allows you to compose your required text in another application -- say, your favorite text or code editor -before automatically transferring it into the other application or web form once you're done. The end result is that you get to work in an environment you feel comfortable while maybe gaining access to features not available in the original application or window, such as spell checking or syntax highlighting.

Echoing a move made by other government agencies as of late, the FBI on Monday debuted its first in-house mobile application called Child ID. The iOS app aims to give parents a central location to store information about their children in the event they are lost or kidnapped.

The app will store information such as vital statistics and pictures of the child, which then can be easily e-mailed to law enforcement to aid in their investigations. The FBI has also included information on keeping children safe, as well as what to do if your child does indeed go missing.

The United States may have lost its coveted AAA credit rating with Standard & Poor's, but, hey, it's still higher than most tech companies -- but not as good as Microsoft's. That's right, Microsoft is rated AAA and one of the few tech stocks that is.

Friday's stunning downgrade rocked stock markets across the globe today, with tech stocks also taking a hit. But Moody's today reaffirmed the United States' AAA rating, offering relief that could help mollify investors' fears, which are exacerbated by continued debt crises in Europe.

Consumer electronics companies Panasonic, Samsung, Sony and XPAND 3D (X6D Ltd.) announced on Monday that they have begun collaboration on a new standard for active shutter 3D glasses called the "Full HD 3D Glasses Initiative."

Even though electronics companies are pushing 3D as the next great frontier for cinematic, home theater, and video game-based entertainment, it's been pretty much a flop all around.

Taiwanese smartphone trailblazer HTC will be acquiring Seattle-based mobile Web services company Dashwire for approximately $18.5 million, Dashwire's key product offering is Dashworks, a licensable software platform that runs branded services on top of mobile operating systems.

HTC says it will use Dashwire's cloud sync and device set-up products in HTCSense.com, the cloud services platform that launched in beta last year with the Desire HD and Desire Z in Europe and introduced remote access to users' smartphones, cloud backup, and locate and lockdown features. Currently, the service is still in beta and works with 20 different HTC smartphones, including the EVO 4G, EVO 3D, Incredible, and View/Flyer tablet.

Friday's Standard & Poor's downgrade of the United States' crediting rating from coveted AAA to AA+ has set off a trading tsunami that is washing over tech stocks. Apple, Google and Microsoft are among the heavy-hitters taking a hit in early trading -- the first day since the shocking announcement.

"The downgrade reflects our opinion that the fiscal consolidation plan that Congress and the Administration recently agreed to falls short of what, in our view, would be necessary to stabilize the government's medium-term debt dynamics", S&P says in the Friday statement. "More broadly, the downgrade reflects our view that the effectiveness, stability, and predictability of American policymaking and political institutions have weakened at a time of ongoing fiscal and economic challenges to a degree more than we envisioned when we assigned a negative outlook to the rating on April 18, 2011".

Security firms are always keen to release new versions of their products, and the unveiling of a new operating system is as good a reason as any. Mac users who jumped on OS  X Lion the moment it was released have found that there are a number of applications that do not work correctly, or at all, and this can be a serious issue when it comes to security software. Symantec has just released two Lion compatible security products in the form of beta versions of Norton Internet Security 5 and Norton AntiVirus 12 for Mac.

Lion support is one of the main reasons for the existence of both of these new versions, but there are also a number of changes and additions.  Performance improvements are always something of a subjective claim, but the new Norton software takes advantages of some of Lion's new underlying features to help speed things up.

I can't apply updates. C`mon, how hard must this be?

Generally, I prefer Galaxy Tab 10.1 to iPad 2. I like how the device feels in the hand, and I'm now accustomed to its longer, narrower shape when held in portrait mode. I find Tab to be generally faster and more responsive than iPad 2, and Android 3.1 is considerably more pleasing than iOS 4. I could go on -- and would -- in a full review, which I was saving for Samsung's TouchWiz UX user interface/skin that released Friday. I can't install it -- hell, I can't even come close.

CHENGDU Yiwo Tech Development Co has announced the immediate release of EaseUS Partition Master 9. Available in both free (Home) and various paid-for (including Professional and Server) editions, EaseUS Partition Master provides non-destructive tools for partitioning Windows PCs that go beyond the basic functionality offered by Windows' own Disk Management tool.

Version 9 of EaseUS Partition Master includes several major new features, including the ability to merge two or more adjacent partitions on the same physical disk. Paid-for versions also include support for dynamic volumes, including copying, resizing and converting without data loss.

Well, so much for Facebook's 750 million active users as a competitive advantage.

IDC's quarterly survey of mobile developers couldn't have come at a better time for Google, soon after its Plus service opened on an invite-only beta basis. Developers -- 2,012 surveyed from July 20-22 -- are enthusiastic about Google+. "Two-thirds of respondents believe that Google can catch up to Facebook in social with Google+", according to the report.

Sprint and Samsung have announced the seventh 4G WiMAX phone, The Samsung Conquer 4G, which differentiates itself by being the first to launch with a sub-$100 pricetag.

Sprint debuted its first WiMAX phone (HTC EVO 4G) a little less than a year and a half ago, and the flagship device became Sprint's best-selling smartphone of all time. By the one year anniversary of the launch of the EVO, Sprint had launched a total of 22 WiMAX-capable devices which included netbooks, tablets, hotspots, USB modules, and, of course, smartphones.

Smartphones come with dozens of sensors: gyroscopes, accelerometers, proximity sensors, ambient light sensors, barometers, and magnetometers, all for the sake of adding to the device's "situational awareness" without adding significantly to its size and weight.

Japan's Yamaha Corporation on Friday announced it has collapsed the size of its magnetometers by 56% to just 1.5 square millimeters, and claims to have created the world's smallest tri-band geomagnetic sensor for smartphones and tablets.

They don't have capacity to meet demand and likely can't build profitable infrastructure fast enough. New data from Gartner explains why.

The analyst firm predicts that the number of mobile connections will reach 5.6 billion this year, up from 5 billion in 2010. By 2015, Gartner expects the number will reach a stunning 7.4 billion. That's not as fast as global population growth -- reaching 7 billion people this year -- but it's plenty enough to generate big revenues and big headaches for carriers and their customers.