Latest Technology News

OK, Windows users, here's your chance to set the record straight. If you dare. The Mac Fanclub of bloggers is gaga today over the image you see above. It's supposedly McDonalds Australia's instructions for connecting Windows PCs and Macs to WiFi. The Windows setup is a whole lot more complicated than for Macs. What should you expect from MacDonalds?

I haven't roamed on Windows for awhile, but on my last trip I don't recall connecting to encrypted or open hotspots being anywhere as difficult as these instructions indicate. It's three easy steps for the Mac, and eight fairly complicated ones for Windows XP or Vista.

ZocDoc, a web-based service for finding doctors and booking appointments without making a single phone call, launched its official Android app on Monday, and it is freely available for download in the Android Market.

ZocDoc is frequently compared to restaurant reservation service OpenTable because, well, it's really the same thing, but instead of booking dinners, the user is booking medical or dental appointments.

Editor's note: Software developer Steve Lacey was killed in a tragic car crash on July 24th, reportedly when another driver accelerated in an unrelated road rage incident. In perhaps a sign of changing times, a number of notable geeks are writing their remembrances on Google+. Here, Robert Scoble shares about working with Lacey at Microsoft. More recently, Google employed Lacey.

When I first met Steve Lacey, back in 2004, he was working at Microsoft on the Flight Simulator team and I could instantly tell he was a geek's geek (e.g., a pioneer everyone looked up to). You can see the video we did together. (Silverlight required)

Mobile security issues are no longer the next big thing. The threats are here, and vulnerabilities could be present in your pocket right now.

Apple has released the second security update to iOS 4.3 in just over a week. While the last update addressed a vulnerability to maliciously crafted PDF files, this update fixes a security issue with certificate validation.

Program lockups are always annoying. But if the app in question has the text of an important document, which you've been working on for hours, and not actually saved to disk yet, then it could be a real disaster.

Don't shut down the hung program, though -- you may still be able to recover your carefully crafted words, just as long as you've a copy of DumpIt to hand.

Some people find watching foreign films with subtitles hard work, but it's even harder if the movie in question has no subtitles at all and you're not fluent in the relevant language. It's not just those with an inability to speak in tongues who benefit from subtitles either; they also help the hard of hearing, and there's the added benefit of being able to watch a video with the sound muted to avoid disturbing others too.

If you've got a movie or TV show you're desperate to watch, but there's no subtitle track included, don't fret. Sublight is a program for searching and downloading subtitles, simplifying and speeding up the process of both finding the right file and linking it to your movie.

The premier event on the software vulnerability research calendar is the Pwnie Awards ceremony (it's pronounced "pony"). The 2011 nominees include critical vulnerabilities in Microsoft ASP.NET, iOS, Google Chrome, Java, the Linux kernel, and an award for special achievement in insecurity to Sony.

Read the nominations page for the full list. Here are my selections:

GestureTek, a company which we first noticed three years ago for its Wii-like motion controller technology for smartphones, has sold some of its motion control and gesture recognition technology patents to chipmaker Qualcomm. This acquisition is a signal of the importance of inputs in mobile devices beyond the touchscreen.

Qualcomm will integrate GestureTek's technologies into its popular line of Snapdragon smartphone mobile processors, giving equipment manufacturers the option to enable their devices with natural user interfaces.

London-based ZABKAT Software has released version 2.0 of its Windows Explorer replacement tool. xplorer2 2.0 includes a number of notable new features and improvements, including support for dockable and floating panes.

xplorer2, which costs $29.95 and is also available as a 64-bit build, also utilizes the native preview handlers found in Vista and Windows 7 to deliver improved document previews, notably with PDF and Office files. Also new in version 2.0 are dual bookmarks, tab locking, context menu extensions and faster file browser operations.

Google, don't cow before riffraff demanding that you allow Google Plusers to use pseudonyms or to be anonymous. The policy of using real names is sensible and best approach long term.

While I was at San Diego Comic-Con this weekend, there was a big row about suspended Google+ accounts -- so I'm playing catch up on this one. Well, thank you, Google! I mean that without the slightest hint of sarcasm. That's a sincere thank you.

BlackBerry maker Research in Motion will be cutting nearly 10% of its global workforce as it struggles to keep its piece of the smartphone market against the avalanche of Android-powered devices.

RIM will be laying off a total of 2,000 employees globally, and layoffs will begin in North America this week. The rest of the reductions will happen at an unspecified later date due to "local laws and regulations." The company says all employees who lose their job will receive severance packages and job placement assistance.

It doesn't matter how much RAM you pack into your cutting-edge PC running off a SSD disk  -- programs have a habit of gobbling up all the resources they can get their hands on, resulting in sluggish performance and a sudden desire to take a pickaxe to your digital companion.

You can often diagnose problematic programs simply by opening Task Manager to review which ones are currently swallowing up all your RAM and CPU cycles, but it only works in real time. If you want to be able to monitor selected applications and processes over a more extended period of time, try Kiwi Application Monitor 1.4.6.

Today, Comic-Con 2011 wraps up here in San Diego. It's family day, where the halls fill up with locals -- following three days of celebrity panels, costume contests and other festivities. The event is all about people, whether someone comes to see a celeb, meet the authors of favorite books, games or movies or to do role play.

Many attendees have come here as someone else. For a day, or even a few, they take on another persona. They become someone else -- perhaps whom they would rather be, but most certainly not who they are. They can be heroes and even stars, for most anyone well-costumed will be repeatedly stopped for photos. Comic-Con lets them be not just someone else but someone special.

Google+ has done in about three weeks what took Facebook years -- reach 20 million (presumably) active users.

In May 2006, Facebook opened to the public, already with about 6 million active users (mainly from schools). The service reached 20 million active users 11 months later. Google announced the G+ service -- invite-only during early testing phase -- on June 28. But those invites trickled out at first. Three weeks later, Google+ already had 20 million subscribers, or so claims Pluser Leon Håland.

The browser wars are back, not least due to hectic and ever shorter release schedules, just about every other week there seems to be some new build promising that it's the faster way to get around online.

But which browser really delivers the best performance? We decided to pit the leading contenders against each other in a gruelling set of benchmarks to figure out the truth for ourselves.