Latest Technology News

Way back when, Mozilla used slogan "Take back the web!" to promote Firefox. Internet Explorer 9 aims to do just that. Today at Microdoft's Windows Team Blog, Ryan Gavin pronounced, not 1, not 2, but 2.35 million IE9 downloads in 24 hours. It's an impressive number. Internet Explorer 9 has exploded onto the web, as Microsoft makes a grab to take it back from upstarts. We'll see if Mozilla can do as well when Firefox 4 officially launches next week.

Internet Explorer 9 is by far Microsoft's most ambitious browser since v3 launched to great fanfare in summer 1996. Microsoft browser development was ferocious and fast as the software giant sought to take the web away from Netscape. Microsoft would later win the browser wars but lose the fire in its belly. All realistic browser development stopped with IE6's release in October 2001 and didn't resume until after Mozilla launched Firefox in late 2004.

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Microsoft on Wednesday announced that BlackBerry mobile e-mail for Exchange Online 2010 is now free for all new customers to the Business Productivity Online Suite, and when Office 365 launches later this year, it will include Hosted Blackberry Services for free.

Previously, Microsoft placed an additional $10 per month per user charge for syncing Exchange Online with BlackBerry devices. According to the company's announcement on Wednesday, current paying customers will soon be given options to take advantage of this change.

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Expanding on moves first made last April to make Google Docs more collaborative, Google on Wednesday further expanded on social aspects of the online document service. Comments are now "seamless," the company says, and easier to manage through new e-mail functionality.

Previously users had to check the document itself to view new comments, which the company admitted was not the best solution. Google has changed this so that a new comment would be directly e-mailed to the document owner. Replying to the comment would be as easy as replying to the email. Also, new participants can be added through the use of an @mention.

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Dropbox is a handy online service that can be used to synchronize files between multiple computers, share files with others and backup important documents. Using Frenzy for Mac, it can also be transformed into a personal social networking tool that makes it easy to share files and links with friends and colleagues. The app is available as a free beta version and it is compatible with both free and paid-for Dropbox accounts.

Setting up the app is a breeze. Simply launch the software and indicate which of your Dropbox folders should be used for sharing, and the content you choose to share can only be seen by friends with Macs running Frenzy. To make it as easy as possible to share with others, keyboard shortcuts can be used to share files and web links without the need to explicitly launch an app. Once something has been shared, Frenzy returns focus to the app you were using so you can get straight back to what you were doing.

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Swiss online backup provider Wuala, which is part-owned by hard-drive manufacturer LaCie, has released a new iOS app for iPad, iPhone and iPod touch. Wuala for iPhone/iPad is a free download from the Apps store and gives Wuala users remote access to their backed up or synchronised files from their iOS device.

Wuala is an online backup service that runs on Windows, Linux and Mac OS X, allowing users to keep their files backed up in a remote location. The Pro version also supports synchronizing folders between an unlimited number of computers as well as file-sharing and file versioning. In addition to accessing their files through an iOS device, Wuala users can also gain access through their web browser (Java is required for this function to work).

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At an event in New York City today, Samsung announced its Galaxy Player portable media players will be available in the U.S. this Spring. The Android 2.2 devices come in 4" and 5" screen sizes and offer most of the same features of the high end Galaxy S smartphones or the Galaxy Tab, but lack the option for cellular connectivity.

Though Samsung has wide variety of portable media player styles this year, the Galaxy Players will fall alongside Archos' line of Android-powered "Internet tablets," in the MID (Mobile Internet Device) category; a sort of portable grey area that falls between traditional mp3 player design and the current mobile tablet/slate design trend.

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Micron Technology's flash memory subsidiary Lexar this week began shipping its first 128 GB SDXC Memory cards, the highest capacity SD memory media thus far.

Lexar says this line of SDXC cards offers a Class 10 speed rating with a minimum guaranteed speed of 20MB per second, also known as 133x.

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Is it enough to take on iPad 2? For the tablet hungry, maybe given Apple's device is sold out everywhere.

The WiFi-only XOOM comes contract-free and will cost $200 less than the Verizon unsubsidized model or same as the subsidized tablet but without two-year data commitment. So buyers will pay $599 for the only Android 3.0 "Honeycomb" tablet currently available. Motorola also will get some marketing tail wind from Verizon, which is heavily promoting the XOOM on television.

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Netflix may be looking to leverage some of its massive market share in streaming and downloading, reportedly outbidding major cable networks to carry a new television show exclusively on its platform. According to a report on Deadline.com, the entertainment company has won the rights to House of Cards starring Kevin Spacey.

The deal is said to be worth at least $100 million, and AMC and HBO had both apparently shown interest in the show. No doubt original programming is a whole new venture for Netflix, which has previously built its business on the distribution of other's content. But it is also a costly gamble with no guarantee of success.

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No antivirus engine is perfect, even the market leaders will miss the occasional threat, and so installing just one security package could leave you exposed to risks. WinMHR, though, will scan your system and use the collective intelligence of more than 30 antivirus tools to identify malware, which means it's much more likely to detect even the lesser-known dangers.

We launched the program and it scanned the executables for all our running processes, calculating MD5 hashes (digital signatures) for everything it finds. These are then compared with a central Malware Hash Registry, which the authors say is aggregated from over 30 antivirus engines (though they don't name them), and you're alerted to any hits, all in just a few seconds.

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Until you have worked with more than one monitor connected to your computer, it is difficult to understand just how useful a multi-monitor setup can be, and once you have tried it, it is very difficult to go back to using a computer with a single screen. But working with multiple monitors can also be slightly problematic, and while the extra desktop space is incredibly useful, it can take some time to get used to the fact that programs and windows launch on different monitors. Dual Monitor Tools is a collection of tools for Windows that can be used to take control of your displays and make them work the way you want them to.

There are five individual tools included in the suite, and each one can be run separately so there is no need to use them all if you don't want to. The simplest of the tools is Dual Wallpaper which makes it possible to choose between stretching a single desktop image across multiple monitors, or opting to use a separate image on each screen.

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International credit and payments company Visa Inc. on Wednesday announced eligible U.S. customers will be able to send funds to each other's Visa accounts, whether credit, debit, or prepaid, with as little information as their e-mail address or mobile phone number.

This new personal payments service was made possible by "technical enhancements" to Visa's global payment processing network, and the creation of a new transaction type. When the service goes live, it will compete with the likes of PayPal and Square.

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Anyone with an iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, third or fourth generation iPod touch or an iPad can take advantage of the new features of Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 for iOS. In addition to full multitasking and retina display support, the updated version of the app also features a refined camera workflow and the option to make an in-app purchase of the Adobe Camera Pack. Version 2.0 released to Apple's App Store today.

While Photoshop Express 2.0 is free, the in-app Camera Pack purchase costs $3.99 and includes a number of interesting enhancements and features. One of the problems with idevice cameras is that they can have a tendency to produce images that are plagued by noise. The new Reduce Noise feature of Adobe Photoshop Express 2.0 can be used to quickly smooth out such problems, helping to create far more impressive photos.

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Once again, Google has announced the end of development for its Gears browser plug-in -- most recently in a blog post yesterday. Aaron Boodman reiterates: "We [are] shifting our focus from Gears to HTML5." Timing isn't good for users of the most-popular web browsers. Google won't support gears in Internet Explorer 9, which released two days ago and Firefox 4, which is set to ship next week. However, Google has confirmed the feature will remain present in its own browser, Chrome, up until version 12. Chrome 10 shipped last week.

Gears is a technology that allows compatible websites and services, including Google's own Google Docs and Google Mail, to be accessed offline before resynchronising when an Internet connection is reestablished. It enables users to store offline and backup copies of email, documents stored in the cloud and more.

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Less than a week after releasing Firefox 4 Release Candidate, Mozilla is preparing to certify the build as golden. A decision will come today. If the RC passes, and there are no show-stopping bugs uncovered later, Mozilla plans to officially release on March 22nd, according to a forum post by Damon Sicore.

"Firefox 4 RC1 has received a very warm welcome; it's time to make a decision to ship," Mozilla's Sicore writes. "As of now, there are no known issues that would stop us from shipping RC1 as final. At the conclusion of our regular 11:30 a.m. triage session on Wednesday, March 16th, release drivers will decide whether to ship RC1 as Firefox 4."

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