Global smartphone shipments grew 79.7 percent in first quarter 2011, according to IDC, which released numbers today. Apple moved into second place, pushing ahead of ailing Research in Motion and closing the distance on Nokia. Manufacturers shipped 99.6 million smartphones in the quarter, up from 55.4 million units a year earlier.

Most surprising is Apple's change with respect to Nokia. In Q1 2010, 12.8 million units separated the two handset manufacturers. Last quarter, Apple closed the distance to 5.5 million. Given Nokia's transition to Windows Phone 7 and Apple's continued carrier expansion, particularly China and the United States, it's conceivable Apple could match or pull ahead of Nokia during 2011.

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Skype once again finds itself as the target of a possible buyout, as both Google and Facebook have been said to seeking either a joint venture with the company or an outright acquisition. Any deal is said to be worth some $3 to 4 billion according to Reuters sources.

The company is also in the midst of seeking an initial public offering, which could raise up to $1 billion for the company. That is expected to take place sometime in the second half of this year, and it is not clear if the talks with either company may cause Skype to change plans or scrap the idea altogether.

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Google Earth for Android has been available for just over a year, giving mobile users an on-the-go access to the 3D mapping software previously only available for full desktop operating systems.

With an update to Google Earth for Android that rolled out on Thursday, Google unveiled a version of the software optimized for Android tablets running Honeycomb (Android 3.0) in addition to the existant version for smartphones running 2.1 and up.

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Let's say your company wants to produce smartphone apps. On the conference room white board, developers have laid out the beginnings of a small-screen game that will make Angry Birds look like Ms. Pacman. Everyone's pretty excited.

You don't have much budget, so you're going to have to start by focusing on one platform and fan out to others once you're successful. Time to bet on a horse, and start immersing yourself in the ecosystem.

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The future of computing, so we're told, lies in the cloud. It's already possible to spend practically all your entire computing life in your browser window, using web-based apps like Google Docs and Photoshop Express Editor in place of more traditional desktop apps like OpenOffice and Paint.NET.

The only downside of this approach is keeping all your online apps and accounts together in one neat place. This is where Jolicloud comes in, offering a desktop-like experience in your browser window. But why stop there? Jolicloud has gone one step further and developed an entire operating system, Joli OS, that takes your browser-based desktop and places it right in front of you.

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Users of the free browser add-on LastPass, which offers secure online password and form management, have found themselves forced to change their master password. This follows an announcement by LastPass after it detected an unexplained "anomaly" in one of its machines' network traffic logs.

After failing to adequately explain the cause, LastPass has taken a "worst-case scenario" approach to the anomaly, assumed it represents some form of security breach -- the amount of data transferred was large enough to have contained enough sensitive information to have enabled any hacker to attempt to brute force insecure passwords -- and triggered a mandatory password change for all users.

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Several tech companies are again finding themselves in hot water over their hiring practices, as they were sued in California Superior Court on Wednesday over allegations of conspiring to fix employee pay. Named in the suit are Adobe, Apple, Google, Intel, Inuit, Lucasfilm, and Pixar, among others.

Former Lucasfilm employee Siddharth Hariharan is the lead plaintiff in the suit, which seeks class action status. He says the companies over the years signed deals with one another that eliminated competition in the job market, as well as placed caps on the pay of skilled workers.

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Few digital cameras have caused as much stir as the retro-styled compact now available in the United States on a limited basis. The Fujifilm FinePix X100 joins the Leica X1, Sigma DP1x and DP2x, Sony Alpha NEX-3 and NEX-5 and micro four-thirds cameras like the Olympus PEN E-PL2 and E-P2 or Panasonic DMC-GF2 in a newer class of mirrorless digicams. I used or owned the DP1, DP2s, E-P2, GF1 and X1.

However, like the Leica X1 or Sigma DP series, the X100 is eccentric -- the lens is fixed and cannot be changed. Who on earth would buy a digital camera without telephoto? I, for one. Many professional photographers for another. I'm no pro, but I have specific needs as a journalist for which the X100 is ideally suited. The X100 is the only camera I own. Whether or not it will be sufficient for my needs, or possibly yours, will be focus in my follow-up review. For now, I offer some first impressions and explain what are this camera's major benefits.

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When many companies were pushing the boundaries for bigger and higher resolution screens on Android smartphones, Sony Ericsson went against the grain and made a smaller Xperia X10 phone. Now that other companies have jumped on board and introduced their own more pocketable smartphones, Sony Ericsson on Thursday moved into its second generation with two new Xperia minis.

Like the previous generation X10 Mini, the Xperia mini line has two options: the standard version, and the "pro" version which has a slide-out keyboard. In many other respects, however, these devices have undergone quite a bit of change.

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Chinese mobile communications companies Huawei Technologies Ltd. and ZTE Corporation, amicable competitors in the telecommunications business, are now engaged in competing patent infringement lawsuits in Europe.

At the end of April, Huawei filed lawsuits against ZTE in Germany, France, and Hungary for patent and trademark infringement. Huawei accused ZTE of infringing on its data card and LTE (Long Term Evolution) technology patents, and that it had even used one of Huawei's trademarks on some of its products without permission.

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Standard images editing tools are not hard to come by -- in fact Mac users are almost spoiled for choice in this field. But when it comes to vector graphics packages, the choices are slightly more limited. If you don't fancy the idea of forking out fortune on an expensive package, Artboard may be of interest. It offers an impressive range of creative tools at a fraction of the price of comparable software.

Whether you're looking for a quick and easy way to create scalable posters, or would like to design your own logos or web graphics, Artboard includes a number of templates to help get you started. The fact that the templates include designs for invitations and fliers as well as business cards and signs gives some indication of the target audience of the app.

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When it comes to burning discs, the likes of Nero and Roxio have their place. However, while it is possible that you will occasionally need the features provided by such suites --if you are creating video discs or photo slideshows, for example -- it is more likely that most of your burning sessions involve little more than copying a few files or folders to disc. This is where a lightweight tool such as Tiny Burner is ideal.

Rather than overwhelming users with endless features, Tiny Burner focuses on the basics of disc burning -- the process of getting files from your computer onto CD, DVD or Blu-ray. There are no fancy extras to be found here, and if you are looking to work on complicated disc projects, this is certainly not the tool for you. However, if you have found the built-in disc burning support offered by Windows to be a little too basic, Tiny Burner may be for you.

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You are? Then why are you reading this? You should be hanging out at Microsoft's Windows Experts Community.

I dunno how long this thing has been around, but Microsoft blogger Paul Donnelly calls it a "new site." Donnelly describes Windows Experts Community as "a collection of online forums geared for advanced users, enthusiasts, experts and so on -- those that are doing fantastic and amazing things with their Windows PCs and other ecosystem devices. We're also rolling out a community-driven wiki where members can create and edit articles and explainers on how they've set-up their PCs, created scenarios, or established their own best practices."

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Apple on Wednesday released the iOS 4.3.3 update, the biggest of changes having to deal with the location database that has made the company a target of a good deal of criticism as of late. As part of the changes in the new software, a user can now choose to have the database deleted altogether.

"The iPhone is not logging your location. Rather, it's maintaining a database of Wi-Fi hotspots and cell towers around your current location," Apple said in a Q&A last week. It stated that a bug was causing the file to continue being maintained even after location services was turned off, and would be fixed shortly.

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Just over one month after the final version of Firefox 4 was released, first beta of Firefox 5 has become available. This newest version of the iconic Web browser is the first one to go through Mozilla's new release schedule.

Previously, Mozilla staggered Firefox releases in three different channels: nightly (most frequent, no quality assurance), beta (less frequent, more stable) and final release (least frequent, most stable).

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