Latest Technology News

Mozilla has released the first publicly available beta of Firefox 5, which acts as a halfway house between the final stable, final release of Firefox and the developmental version, Firefox Aurora. The beta version offers a more stable environment than Aurora in which to road-test developmental features before they're implemented into the next final release.

On the surface there's little to differentiate Firefox 5 from Firefox 4 in this beta release, which installs over the top of any existing stable release, but it does feature the new Firefox Channel Switcher that allows users to move between developmental and stable versions of Firefox from a convenient dialog box.

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Some people seem capable of organizing everything in their head: the day's tasks, a running to-do list and even when and where all their meetings for the next month will be. For the rest of us, though, we need a bit of help. And your computer or smartphone can help here, by doing all the hard work for you.

Planning apps are ten-a-penny, and the great news is that while there are plenty of powerful commercial tools available, you can put your life in order without spending a single penny. We've dug through our extensive archives and picked out 10 useful to-do apps -- in no particular order -- for those with chaotic lifestyles to consider.

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Quickoffice HD
You'd hope an app with a hefty $16.99 pricetag would have a lot of features. Fortunately, Quickoffice Pro HD has the guns to back up the expense. Essentially a cloud-based Office suite, you hook up your Google Docs, Dropbox, Box, or MobileMe accounts to QuickOffice, and then you can create, access and share Word, Excel, and Powerpoint documents. One of my favorite features in QuickOffice is its speech recognition, so if you aren't comfortable with typing on a tablet yet, and you don't have a bluetooth keyboard, you can dictate blocks of text.

Spectral Souls
Another expensive app at $14.76, Spectral Souls is a full-scale tactical role playing game that shines especially brightly because it's exclusive to Android. Android doesn't yet have anything quite as graphically mind-blowing as Infinity Blade on iOS, but Spectral Souls is no less impressive thanks to its sheer size. Hyperdevbox Studio says it has "hundreds of hours" of gameplay, 82 characters, and 52 different soundtracks.

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All web browsers now feature a search option at the top of the program window, and many have reduced the address bar and search box into a single entity. This is the case with Firefox, creating the unashamedly named AwesomeBar. Combining searching and URL typing into a single location not only reduces clutter, but also helps to keep things intuitive. If you would like to take things a little further, AwesomeBar HD is a free Firefox extension that grants you control over your searches.

Now, rather than just typing in a search term and pressing "Enter," the extension makes it possible to construct powerful custom searches using a range of different search engines. Start to type a search term into the AwesomeBar and a series of labels will appear. These cover common search topics such as news, books, weather and many more. Rather than searching the entire web for your chosen term, click one of the tags to limit your search to this topic.

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In a move designed to force those using large amounts of data to pay for it, Verizon will eliminate unlimited data plans and replace them with a tiered system likely similar to competitor AT&T. There is a tradeoff, however: the carrier will begin to offer shared data plans.

Calling it a "logical progression," Verizon noted that while family plans have long been able to share minutes, each line with a smartphone was forced to pay for its own data plan. The new offering would allow for the pooling of data as well.

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Microsoft's decision to ditch the menus in Office 2007 didn't exactly meet with universal approval. To put it politely. Some users loved the new "ribbon," but others were annoyed about the loss of a familiar interface, and even today it's still an issue for many.

If you're less than happy with the Office ribbon, though, you don't have to live with it. Install a free (for personal use) alternative like UBitMenu or Classic Menu and you'll immediately gain access to the traditional menus and toolbars, in at least some Office applications: it's like 2003 all over again.

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Apple cannot win the smartphone wars, but it could dramatically slow Android's advances by taking a dramatic risk to its handset margins: offer a $99 iPhone 4 available globally, following iPhone 5's release. Such an aggressive pricing strategy could be enough of what Apple needs to win the mobile platform wars.

3GS: Model for Success

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Microsoft can't wait for the Class of 2011 to graduate before offering a sweet back-to-school Windows PC deal for the next group of students. Perhaps somebody decided to get in front of Apple's yearly Mac promotion offering free iPods to its customers. Either way, the dueling promos, assuming Apple's comes as expected, will be much bigger than the giveaways. The promotions represent a showdown of younger consumers' digital lifestyles around gaming.

"Starting May 22nd for a limited time, we are bringing students a very special offer. When students buy a Windows 7 PC over $699, they will receive a free Xbox 360," blogs Microsoft's Kristina Libby. That's the 4GB model, which retails for $199.99.

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LinkedIn's first day as a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange has been by just about any measure a blockbuster success. After announcing Wednesday that it had raised $352.8 million in an initial public offering, pricing shares at $45, the stock shot up more than 109 percent to a closing price of $94.25.

At that level, the company would be worth a staggering $8.9 billion, and would have had the most successful IPO since Google's in 2004. It also certainly begins anew the talk among financial analysts of a new "tech bubble" developing in the sector.

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Fifth in a series. Using Software Assurance, Microsoft has crafted a program that promises savings, while often costing businesses even more for software. Sometimes the higher prices are obvious, and that can hurt Microsoft's sales. Other times, it's not so obvious, such as the way Microsoft uses crazy math and a concealed license switch to raise the price on Software Assurance license renewals for larger customers.

What Assurance of Savings?

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A group representing over 5,000 users of vector drawing software FreeHand has filed a class action lawsuit against Adobe Inc. in the California District Court for antitrust violations.

Adobe almost acquired FreeHand in 1994 when it acquired Aldus, but the Federal Trade Commission put a decade-long moratorium on the acquisition. Like clockwork, when Adobe acquired Macromedia in 2005, it acquired FreeHand, because Macromedia had absorbed FreeHand's then-owner Altsys.

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A crucial piece of Sony's online infrastructure is slated to return on May 24, according to a memo sent to developers and publishers this week. Gaming news site Gamasutra obtained the note on the PlayStation Store, Sony's repository for gaming content and downloadable games.

The store is also a major source of additional revenue for developers, thus its return is highly anticipated. Backlogged content that was supposed to be released during the store's downtime will be made available on a rolling basis over the next few weeks, the note details.

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Last month Symantec gave us a first look at their Internet Security 2012 technologies, and now it's BitDefender's turn, as today it has released the first public beta of the company's extremely comprehensive Total Security 2012.

We do mean comprehensive. So the lengthy feature list doesn't only include the standard modules: antivirus, antiphishing, antispam, a firewall, and so on. You also get file encryption, a secure file shredder, chat encryption, parental controls, an online backup tool, file syncing, vulnerability detection, privacy options, a tune-up tool to clean up redundant files and Registry keys and a remote management tool that will help you manage these features across your entire network.

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Apple's AirPlay feature makes it easy to share and stream your iTunes library to iOS devices, but it lacks the option to stream media in the opposite direction. Shairport4w is a free application that makes it possible to transform your Windows based computer into an AirPort receiver so you can stream media from one machine to another.

The application can be used in conjunction with any computer or device that includes a version of iTunes or iOS that supports AirPlay, and the process of configuring your computer to be a media access point can be completed in just a moment.

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The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Google is setting aside $500 million to potentially resolve a case with the Justice Department. The DOJ is investigating whether Google knowingly took ads from online pharmacies that break U.S. laws.

When you run as much advertising as Google does it's hard to police everything. But Google has a history of problems in this regard. In 2006 researcher Ben Edelman examined some of these and concluded that "Google ought to do more to make ads safe."

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