Latest Technology News

Microsoft is hoping to increase its search share in China through a new deal with the country's leading search site Baidu. The tie-up partners the Redmond company with a company that holds about a 75 percent share of China's search queries.

Google pulled out of the country last year over protests of China's stringent rules on censoring search results. The google.cn website currently redirects to Google's Hong Kong-based site, and only holds about 20 percent of the market, reports China-based research firm Analysis International. Bing's search share is practically non-existant in the country.

Talk about juxtapositions. Last week, Google quietly unleashed the Data Liberation Front and tool Takeout for moving user data from the company's services. Would you like to switch from Gmail to Windows Live Mail? Google Takeout can help. Over at Facebook, however, matters are quite different -- as one tool for extracting friend data shows. The world's largest social network wants to keep your friends. But you knew that already, right?

Developer Mohamed Mansour's tool Facebook Friend Exporter revved to version 2.2.1 yesterday. CNET's Stephen Shankland blogged about the Chrome Extension then, and Mashable's Eric Swallow today. Perhaps the utility got a wee bit too much attention. Mansour posted to the download page today: "Facebook is trying so hard to not allow you to export your friends. They started to remove emails of your friends from your profile by today July 5th 2011. It will no longer work for many people". I can't get the extension to work, BTW.

Confirming rumors that have circulated for months, Verizon Wireless says that Thursday, July 7 it will no longer offer an unlimited data plan for smartphones according to a report in FierceWireless.

The new plans will have 4 options:

Chinese authorities in the southwest city of Chongqing are working with a group of Western companies, including Cisco Systems, to build a surveillance network of as many as 500,000 cameras over an area of 400 square miles, Wall Street Journal reports today.

What comes to mind at first is the use of such a network, including servers and software for the police to monitor them, to control political dissent. But surveillance systems can be used for legitimate purposes as well, even by police. Some are used for traffic control and monitoring, some for crime fighting and prevention.

Today, Skype updated its Mac client with one major new feature and a promise of improved multi-tasking thanks to a tweaked control bar that allows video conversation windows to remain in focus even when switching to another application.

Skype for Mac 5.2 also heralds the arrival of group screen sharing for multi-video conferencing. This makes it easier for users to share their screens with other people in the conferencing call for the purposes of sharing documents, photos and presentations.

People love to play, eh? The global gaming ecosystem, which includes consoles, handhelds, software and social networks, will grow 10.4 percent in 2011 to $74 billion from $67 billion last year, says Gartner, which expects spending to reach $112 billion by 2015.

Software will account for more than half of gaming spending -- $44.7 billion this year. However, Gartner predicts that through 2015, software spending will recede before online games, which is the fast-growing segement.

If your time isn't worth much, do take advantage of the free $25 iTunes gift card offer circulating Facebook. Clicking the link will lead you to a page compelling you to share the offer with all your friends, before moving on to a survey. What do you get -- other than perhaps a few dislikes from your social network? Nothing. It's a scam, blogs Graham Cluley, Sophos senior technology consultant.

The request to "share" the offer with Facebook friends should be dead giveaway the offer is fake. "You should, of course, always treat such requests with suspicion, but that hasn't stopped many people unwittingly help the scammers to spread their links far and wide across Facebook", Cluely warns.

Acronis has released the first private beta of Acronis True Image Home 2012, its flagship backup tool. True Image, which combines drive-imaging, online and file-based backups in one program, is now available to Acronis account users. After registering, the beta can be downloaded and installed.

Acronis True Image Home 2012 introduces a new file synchronization feature, closer integration with Acronis Online Backup and a number of under-the-hood improvements as well as some other minor changes.

We all know how important backing up your hard drive is. Whether you're backing up a clutch of files and settings, or want a complete backup of the entire hard drive, there are solutions a-plenty to choose from. But while you may have given a lot of thought to backing up your computer, have you ever considered what you'll do if the worst comes to pass and you need to restore that data?

What you need is a tool that doesn't rely on you being able to load your operating system before it allows you to get at your data. And if it's free, well so much the better! The good news is that you can have your cake and eat it, with the aid of Redo Backup and Recovery, which has just enjoyed its first stable release (1.0) after a lengthy period in beta.

You want to know why Apple is so hellbent on stopping Samsung selling smartphones in the United Sates? Reread this post's headline.

Samsung's sales milestone comes as competition increases with Apple here and abroad. Galaxy S II sales success also partly explains the ongoing patent claims and counter-claims spat going on between the companies. In its boldest move yet, Apple on July 1 requested a preliminary injunction barring Samsung from selling Droid Charge, Galaxy S 4G, Infuse 4G  and Galaxy Tab 10.1 here. (Justia.com has consolidated case history.)

On Friday, Dropbox revised its terms of service, privacy policy and security overview documents. Although the updates are designed to make Dropbox's T&Cs simpler and easier to understand, it has reignited the debate that first surfaced when Dropbox announced it was changing its terms and conditions to allow it to hand over data if required to do so by the authorities.

In its defense, Dropbox has always recommended software to let users encrypt their data before its uploaded to Dropbox's servers, thereby protecting their data even if Dropbox was forced to hand it over. TrueCrypt is one such solution, and BoxCryptor is another, and now there's a third option available for Linux and Windows users in the form of SecretSync.

The alarming tweets that went out a few hours ago are false, according to Fox News. They claimed that President Barack Obama had been shot while campaigning, which itself is red flag something wasn't right. What president would campaign on America's Independence Day nearly 18 months before the election?

"FoxNews.com's Twitter feed for political news, FoxNewspolitics, was hacked early Monday morning", according to a report by Fox News. "Hackers sent out several malicious and false tweets claiming that President Obama had been assassinated. Those reports are incorrect, of course, and the president is spending the July 4 holiday with his family. The hacking is being investigated, and FoxNews.com regrets any distress the false tweets may have created".

Finally techdom is talking about something other than Apple, and probably it's more important.

When dinosaurs ruled the earth, what creature then could have imagined that someday mammals, which were smaller and eventually smarter, would replace them? Fast-forward to the present. For all the talk about the handsome or the beautiful, it's the geeks, not the athletes, that people listen to. Right now techdom is incessantly chattering about Google+. There's simply no way to turn down the volume.

On this day, 235 years ago, the Second Continental Congress voted for a Declaration of Independence. From that perspective, July 2nd is America's independence day, but the document wasn't ready for another two days. So it's perhaps appropriate timing to discuss the declaration I made on April 4th to free myself from Google. At the time I asked: "Can you give up Google?" Maybe you can, but I couldn't.

Google's antitrust troubles motivated me. In December, the European Commission opened an "antitrust investigation into allegations that Google Inc. has abused a dominant position in online search". An investigation loomed in the United States and, as of late last month, is underway. The Federal Trade Commission is reviewing Google's business practices.

Well, hell, maybe Google is serious about all this open stuff, after all. As part of the massive Google sites makeover now underway -- of which the + social service and gmail clutter cleanup are part -- there is a new utility for sucking all your precious data out of the search and information giant's services. Hey, it's your data. Shouldn't you be able to take it anywhere?

The Data Liberation Front video above introduces this new thing -- Google Takeout. It's more than a utility. Google Takeout is a movement. I mean that. This whole data portability thing clearly stems from Google's so-called "Open Principles". There is a Data Liberation Front website, blog and Twitter feed.