Latest Technology News

You could spend real money for virtual goods on the farm, or earn merit badges for being an informed citizen instead. For free.

Late yesterday, Google announced "News Badges" -- more than 500 of them -- for readers of Google News. I was feeling crappy yesterday (still am today -- and I'm not looking for sympathy badges), otherwise you would have read this story last night. Maybe. I kind of chuckled about the whole concept and joked with other Betanews writers about it.

In May, Nature Publishing Group and California State University announced a three-year partnership to use $49 e-books for certain Biology classes over a more expensive and less versatile paper book. Soon, state universities in Texas and Florida will follow suit. While there are hundreds of startups pitching various ways to bring e-textbooks to universities, Nature's initiative is one of the first widespread e-textbook programs to come from the publishing industry.

The most interesting part?

Install one program, run another, remove a third, and all kinds of changes will be made to your system: files added, others deleted, Registry keys modified and more. Understanding exactly what's going on can help you uncover malware, troubleshoot conflicts and solve many other problems, and the latest beta of OSForensics makes this very easy indeed.

The program has always been able to monitor and report on file-based changes. So you could use it to create "before" and "after" signatures of your current system, then compare the two for a report of all the files that have been created, modified or deleted. And OSForensics 0.98 has extended this by adding the ability to check for Registry changes, too.

Investors rewarded Google on Friday for strong second quarterly earnings results, with shares up more than 13 percent in early trading. Google traded $599.69, up $70.75, or 13.38 percent soon after the opening bell. The stock closed at $528.94 yesterday. Shares rose more than 10 percent overnight in after-hours trading. Google opened at $597.87 this morning.

Google announced Q2 earnings late yesterday. Revenues rose 32 percent to $9.03 billion, year over year; net income climbed to $2.51 billion up from $1.84 billion a year earlier. That's $7.68 earnings per share. Operating income was $2.88 billion.

Adobe has released public betas of the next generation of both Adobe Flash Player, and Adobe AIR, highlighting how the essential browser plug-in and cross-platform runtime component share similar code and technologies.

The most notable new feature is found exclusively in Flash Player 11 Beta: support for 64-bit browsers. 64-bit support has been in development since Flash 10.2, but until now has been available only as a limited pre-release build, codenamed Adobe Flash Player "Square". By incorporating it into the Beta release of Flash Player 11, Adobe has signalled its readiness for final release, due later this year.

RealNetworks on Thursday updated its still-in-beta RealPlayer for Android, introducing dozens of new user-requested features to the still very new media management application.

While Real could just be riding on Spotify's coattails by choosing to roll out an update to its beta today, the two items really can't be compared since a lot of RealPlayer's new features are related to management of photographs and videos as well as music. But since Real no longer controls Rhapsody, Spotify's real competitor in the space, this is about as close as the company can get.

Microsoft introduced a new feature within Hotmail on Thursday that it hopes will assist the company in detecting compromised accounts, as well as prevent users from locking their accounts with passwords that are easily guessed by attackers. The company's thinking is that you will know your friend's account was hacked well before Microsoft would.

"When someone's account gets hijacked, their friends often find out before they do, because the hijacker uses their account to send spam or phishing email to all their contacts," Hotmail group program manager Dick Craddock said.

Last March, a total of 24,000 files containing Department of Defense information were stolen by a "foreign intelligence service" in a hack of a defense contractor, Deputy Secretary of Defense William J. Lynn III and the American Forces Press Service revealed on Thursday.

Details about the attack, such as who the victim was, and the type of data that was stolen, were not disclosed. This is because Deputy Secretary Lynn was simply using the figure to underscore the importance of data security in the new Department of Defense Strategy for Operating in Cyberspace, which was unveiled today.

The Wall Street Journal shook the tech world Wednesday with news that Amazon plans to release its own Android-based tablet in October, a clear effort to take Apple head on now that it has nearly dominated the e-reader market with its market-leading Kindle device.

While the device is not a replacement for the Kindle, it's likely that the e-retailer will make it compatible with its array of services. Amazon already has a stable of offerings that could make any tablet successful: its cloud-based music service, its own music store, the Kindle e-bookstore, and its streaming and downloadable video offerings.

In case you hadn't noticed, very few rumor stories appear here at Betanews. We purposely err on the side of factual reporting rather than spread gossip. There are plenty of sites doing that all to well. Today's Mac OS X 10.7 Lion and MacBook Air no-shows are examples why we cautiously write about rumors. Particularly when it comes to Apple. The rumors are often wrong.

But in this era of grubbing for pageviews, it's easy for bloggers and reporters (and their editors, if there are any) to justify publishing rumors, particularly about hot company Apple. Often, the mass of readers see only the headlines and assume the rumor to be fact. Look around and tell me a tech company for which there are more rumor stories circulating than Apple. The company's secretive character is major reason.

It's no secret that keeping your Windows PC up-to-date is essential, for security reasons alone. Actually achieving this, though, takes considerable time and effort, which is probably why there are so many Windows tools around promising that they can help -- and Patch My PC Free is one of the latest.

Launch the program and it'll immediately highlight any updates required by some key applications and tools: Firefox, Java, Adobe Reader/ Flash/ AIR, QuickTime and so on.

Everyone, led by Vice President Whatshisname, wants to use their iPhone on the corporate network. Don't IT security people have enough problems? But the onslaught of unsecurable consumer devices in the enterprise is probably unstoppable.

A new study by IDC sponsored by Unisys looks at the problem of consumer devices invading the enterprise. The authors of the study come out of it upbeat, but it scares the bejeezus out of me. Put simply, these devices -- by which I basically mean those running iOS or Android -- were not designed to be secure and manageable. There are efforts to make them secure and manageable, but these are, generously-construed, version 1.0 efforts. It's obvious to me that these devices will create many severe security problems for enterprises, but the forces of consumerization cannot be stopped. Too many people want to use them, security be damned. Even the White House got them.

For a change, Gartner and IDC agree on something. Both analyst firms put Apple in third place, based on shipments, during calendar Q2 2011. Apple was the only bright performer, during another lackluster quarter. Both firms put a positive spin on otherwise grim numbers.

The overall global PC market grew a tepid 2.3 percent year over year, according to Gartner, down from its earlier 6.7-percent growth projection. IDC put growth at 2.6 percent, slightly off its 2.9-percent estimate. By comparison, US PC shipments were disastrous, falling 5.6 percent year over year, according to Gartner, and declining 4.2 percent by IDC's reckoning.

Japanese consumer electronics company Sharp is expected to debut its Android tablets soon in the U.S. market, but has not announced their availability yet. However, according to an announcement from security software company McAfee on Thursday, they will be available starting on July 25.

Today, McAfee announced it has partnered with Sharp to offer McAfee VirusScan Mobile for Android on both of the Galapagos tablets, which it says will come in 5.5" and 10.8" screen sizes. Sharp first announced these tablets and last September, but put them in the e-reader category. McAfee on Thursday instead called them "Media Tablets."

At 8:00AM EST on Thursday, Stockholm-based streaming music service Spotify officially launched in invitation-only beta in the United States.

Spotify's service in Europe has gained critical acclaim over the last few years, and the rumor that it would launch in North America has persisted for nearly two years.