Latest Technology News

At CTIA Wireless in Orlando today, Sprint announced two more 4G devices: The HTC EVO 3D, and the HTC View 4G Tablet which bring the carrier's WiMax-capable canon to a total of 22.

It's been one year since Sprint debuted the EVO 4G, and it has gone on to become the operator's best-selling smartphone ever. This year, the bar has been raised, and the popular smartphone's successor has been equipped with a 1.2 GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 4GB Internal memory and 1GB RAM; and the defining features, stereoscopic 5 Megapixel 720p cameras and a 4.3" 3D QHD (glassesless) display.

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Adobe has issued an out-of-cycle patch for its Flash, Reader, and Acrobat applications which it recommends all users upgrade to immediately. The fix will close a security hole in the Authplay component, which allows for the use of Flash within PDF files.

Code to exploit the vulnerability was out in the wild, Adobe has disclosed. It had initially believed that the vulnerability was only being exploited through malformed Flash .swf files within Excel spreadsheets, but it was discovered that attackers could also possibly exploit the vulnerability through holes in the PDF file format.

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T-Mobile this week said it was set to double the speeds of its HSPA+ network to 42Mbps in three cities this spring, with service initially launching in New York City, Orlando, Florida, and Las Vegas. Long Island, N.Y, northern New Jersey, and Chicago would follow soon after, expanding to about 25 markets by the middle of the year.

The carrier's announcements come just days after it announced a blockbuster merger with AT&T that would create the nation's largest wireless carrier. Regardless, T-Mobile had said it would continue with its plans until the merger's approval, including network expansion and new device releases.

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If you have a large number of images to work with, perhaps in readiness for use on a website, it can be an arduous task performing the same editing process to image after image. XnConvert is a free batch converter and image editing tool, available for Windows, Mac and Linux, that helps to automate the process by making it possible to edit and convert images in groups rather than have to work with files individually.

With support for over 400 image formats, XnConvert will handle almost any file you can think of, and while the program can be used on single images, the real benefits come from importing entire folders of image files and processing them all simultaneously.

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Samsung was arguably the first company to deliver a compelling Android-based tablet with its 7" Galaxy Tab, which debuted in late 2010. The company is continuing its momentum by releasing two other Android tablets in 10.1" and 8.9" profiles. Today at CTIA in Orlando, Samsung took the wraps off of the new 8.9" for the first time.

In its first month of availability, Samsung sold some 600,000 units of the original 7" Galaxy Tab. A common complaint about the device, however, was that the screen is too small to be a competitor to the iPad, yet too big for it to be a truly pocketable smart device. In keeping with the public's demand for larger screens and flatter chassis, Samsung announced the 10.1" Tab at Mobile World Congress earlier this year.

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Adobe AIR applications haven't exactly been renowned for their great performance to date, but that could begin to change with AIR 2.6, released today, which comes packed with major new features.

The new SquirrelFish Extreme JavaScript engine should run code 50-percent faster than before, for instance. Adobe claims that a smaller and more efficient runtime will cut CPU usage by up to 30 percent, and reduce memory consumption immediately, no application recompilation required. And hardware graphics acceleration should help to maximize rendering performance on Android and iOS systems.

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When you're developing a website, it's important to check how your pages are displayed in all the main browsers. But that's not always straightforward, especially with Internet Explorer, as you can't easily install multiple versions on the same system.

Fortunately there's a simple alternative in Microsoft's Express Web SuperPreview, an Expression Web component that's also available as a stand-alone trial version. The latest version has just been released and it makes a very useful addition to every web developer's testing toolkit.

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LogMeIn Ignition for iPhone and iPad has long been one of the most impressive remote access tools for iOS, but things just improved even further in the latest version of the app. LogMeIn Ignition 2 adds a number of important features including the ability to gain remote access to more than one Mac or PC and to view their files. But perhaps more importantly there are now a number of interesting new options relating to file transfers.

The app has always made it possible to view remote files on iOS devices, but this latest version allows remote files to be moved or copied to an iPhone or iPad. This helps to avoid the need for work-around solutions such as sending files as email attachments, and the ability to create folders locally means that it is easy to keep files neatly organized.

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Web of Trust Services has released a major new update to its free WOT browser plug-in, which provides security and privacy ratings for websites. Past versions of WOT also provided ratings for major search engine results, allowing the user to see a site's rating before attempting to visit it. The latest release extends this functionality to provide ratings for links displayed in Facebook and Twitter, as well as links that have been shortened using services such as bit.ly or t.co.

WOT rates websites for both security and privacy, based on community feedback from millions of WOT users worldwide. These ratings are displayed as clearly visible icons using traffic light colors to help identify safe sites (rated green) from potentially dangerous and hazardous ones (amber or red). The current site's rating is displayed in the browser toolbar. If a site is rated red, access will be temporarily blocked and the user clearly warned that the site in question is considered dangerous. This can be overridden by the user, but provides an additional layer of security by helping to steer users away from malware-infested and fake websites.

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The oft-promised BlackBerry PlayBook is finally coming, April 19. You can believe Research Motion this time, as Best Buy already is taking preorders. For more than six months, RIM made announcement after announcement but released no product.

"Previews of the BlackBerry PlayBook have generated tremendous excitement and we know that customers are eager to get their hands on one," Craig McLennan, RIM's Regional managing director for North America, said in a statement. Well, considering how many ways RIM announced the tablet over the past six months or so, is it any surprise there is anticipation? I was beginning to wonder if PlayBook was a phantom product RIM hauled out just for tradeshows (The company made the launch announcement at CTIA Wireless, which starts today).

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Leading Web retailer Amazon today launched its official app store for Android mobile devices. Rumors of this app store first surfaced in late 2010, and Tuesday's launch follows a lawsuit by Apple over Amazon's use of "app store" to describe it.

Like Google's revised Android Market, Amazon's Web-based app store pushes downloaded apps from a browser to the wireless device. Amazon's app store, however, requires that a client application be installed on the target device to allow downloading.

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The nation's largest GSM carrier on Monday announced two new smartphones aimed at the higher end as it works to differentiate itself after losing exclusivity of the Apple iPhone. The LG Thrill 4G, a dual-core 3D-ready Android phone, and the HTC HD7S, a Windows Phone 7 device with a five megapixel built in camera, will be available in the coming weeks.

Both devices will sport large 4.3-inch screens, with the LG Thrill able to run on AT&T's new 4G network. The LG Thrill would also be able to shoot 3D imagery and video through its own built in five megapixel camera, and no glasses would be required in order to view the imagery.

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I can't say that I like the old one. But the new? You simply have to share what you think about it. One of the things the social web is good for is telling vendors where to put their new logos. Many an online social mob has forced vendors to give up a new logo or other branding change. Remember last year's online revolt against the new Gap logo?

So what's your reaction to the new Chrome logo (OK, Google calls it an icon)? Does it appeal to you? Please answer in comments, or email joewilcox at gmail dot com.

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While the final version Firefox 4 is not slated to release until Tuesday, Betanews' sister site FileForum has obtained the official releases from Mozilla's FTP servers a day early. Those FTP servers are the ones used to populate the company's distribution points for widespread release.

Mozilla strongly discourages direct downloading from these servers as they are not equipped to handle the traffic that major software releases can generate. In the past, the software maker has asked companies to remove any direct links to its FTP servers.

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The web is a dangerous place, packed with all kinds of threats, so it's important to take steps to ensure your browsing security. Browser add-ons aren't always the answer. Many grab too many resources, and either offer too little functionality, or don't work with all the browsers you need -- a real disappointment.

BitDefender's new TrafficLight beta, however, takes a new approach, and the difference is obvious from the moment you install it. The program adds a service to your PC that filters web traffic at the protocol level, so it doesn't show up as an add-on in Internet Explorer or Firefox, or add an extra toolbar to your browser.

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