Latest Technology News

Responding to the continuing disasters in Japan, Google on Tuesday published a new version of Google Translate for Android that supports Conversation Mode to translate Japanese into 50 different languages in a quick, live fashion.

Google Translate for Android was first launched in January, showing an impressive early version of live, speech-to-speech translation between English and Spanish.

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When it comes to disc burning tools, you could be forgiven for believing that there is little more to think about than simply copying files from your hard drive to a CD, DVD or Blu-Ray disc. While this may be the case when creating the most basic of backups, Roxio Toast goes to show that there is so much more that can be achieved with the humble recordable disc. The program is a suite of tools all related to the task of burning data onto recordable discs, and includes a number of individual components that can be used to create audio discs, video discs, slideshows, data backups and much more.

With basic disc burning and the option of working with image files built directly into Mac OS X, any third party disc burning tool has to have plenty to offer in order to justify the cost. From the offset, Roxio Toast does not disappoint; a huge set of features means that the application has great scope, and a neatly redesigned interface ensures that any project you are working on can be carried out entirely intuitively, and clearer labelling means that there is little chance of confusion when looking at various buttons and screen elements. The interface overhaul is not a major change from previous versions of the suite, but the minor changes that have been made make all the difference to usability.

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Since Friday's devastating earthquake, coastal Japan has been battered by tsunamis and aftershocks which have caused billions of dollars in damage to the country's infrastructure, and have triggered a series of explosions at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant.

The International Atomic Energy Agency today said it is launching a series of missions to assist the Japanese government in monitoring the radiation from Fukushima Daiichi and the potential danger that could spread from the explosions that took place there.

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AVG has launched a beta of its brand new online backup service. LiveKive will offer cloud-based backup, synchronising and file-sharing for its users, and the beta version launches with a one-size-fits-all free storage plan of 5GB for a year. No paid-for packages are currently available while LiveKive remains in beta.

Once signed up through the AVG landing page, users can then download the backup client, currently codenamed AVG AirSpace. This is a rebadged version of the same client used by rival online backup provider, SpiderOak.

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With security of our social networks an ever growing concern, being able to connect to these sites securely has become increasingly important to some networks. Twitter is the latest to offer this feature, introducing an "always on" HTTPS connection within the site's settings.

Previously users would access the SSL connection by surfing to the URL directly from the web browser. By checking the "Always use HTTPS" box in settings, Twitter would always connect in this manner.

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Yeah, but what about 2011, with the app store craze?

NPD released new US data early today suggesting retail software isn't going away soon. As measured in dollars, Microsoft accounted for one-third of US retail software sales last year. Office 2010 led the company's sales. As previously reported, Student and Home Edition accounts for about 85 percent of Office sales. Office pushed the productivity suite category to a four-year sales high.

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In a validation of its strategy to make its content available on as many platforms as possible, research firm NPD Group has found that 61 percent of all legal movie downloads and streams originate from Netflix. That is over seven times its nearest competitor Comcast, with only eight percent of the market.

"VOD and other digital options are now beginning to make inroads with consumers," NPD entertainment analyst Russ Crupnick said. "Overwhelmingly digital movie buyers do not believe physical discs are out of fashion, but their digital transactions were motivated by the immediate access and ease of acquisition provided by streaming and downloading digital video files."

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If there is one truism about IT organizations -- they're risk averse. Some are so against making changes they even take unnecessary risks to avoid others, like continuing to use Internet Explorer 6 even as Microsoft pushes hard to get businesses on a more modern, and safer, browser. Today, Google extended a concession to IT organizations by offering a second track for Google Apps that lets IT organizations delay and take seemingly more control over upgrades. The program smacks against one of cloud computing's benefits: Seamless and seemingly maintenance-free upgrades.

Google Apps' administrators can now choose "Rapid Release" or "Scheduled Release" options. The first track assures that users have the most up-to-date software. The second allows administrators to delay updates, which will be released to them on Tuesdays. Google provides a calendar of planned upgrades, seven days in advance of new features' release.

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At the South by Southwest Interactive festival in Austin Texas today, Qik, the streaming video service acquired by Skype in January debuted its latest iOS application, called Video Connect.

Unlike other Qik apps released for the iPhone, Video Connect isn't just a video chat client, but a portable video communications suite that includes on the fly editing, live streaming video effects, video mail, as well as instant social sharing and automatic desktop synchronization.

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Microsoft has tagged the Zune music player end of life, although the software will live on. Perhaps the kindest way to think of it is transformation: From caterpillar to butterfly. Zune will be freer now to roam among many devices. But many people posting blogs or news stories about the music player's demise are using it as opportunity to kick the corpse: Some Zune epitaphs are even nastier than I expected. For example, the Apple 2.0 blog turned Zune into a verb to describe future failed tablets.

While the first report originated with Bloomberg, many of the blogs cited Business Insider as the source. Betanews took the time to ask Microsoft about Zune plans. My colleague Tim Conneally emailed Microsoft's outside PR agency for comment; I called and left voicemail. We chose to post an originally sourced story, while also crediting Bloomberg. I posted late last night.

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Tuesday morning, Verizon Wireless and HTC announced Thunderbolt, their first smartphone supporting the LTE 4G protocol, will be available this Thursday, March 17 for $249.99 with a new two-year contract.

Thunderbolt is powered by a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and Android 2.2. It has a 4.3" WVGA screen, an 8 Megapixel rear-facing camera, and 1.3 Megapixel forward-facing chat camera, 8GB of onboard storage and support for microSD cards up to 32 GB.

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Earlier today, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has unofficially killed the Zune music player. The company isn't officially saying yes or no, but based on a statement there's little doubt. I've read enough non-denials to know a tacit confirmation.

"We're absolutely committed to providing the best movies, music and TV show experiences through Zune on Xbox, the PC, Windows Phone 7 and Zune devices," according to a statement provided by Microsoft's outside PR agency responsible for Zune. "We'll share more information about the evolution of the Zune entertainment service and Zune hardware as future plans develop."

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Hewlett-Packard Chief Executive Officer Leo Apotheker on Monday outlined the future plans for his company, which involve three main priorities: public/private hybrid cloud computing, connected devices of all types, and finally, management, security, and analytics software.

As the "consumerization" of the enterprise space takes hold, HP is going to provide products and services that can handle the needs of both the consumer and the enterprise user.

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As expected, Microsoft launched the Release to Market version of Internet Explorer 9 on Monday. The rollout began earlier in the day with a launch in the UK, and was heralded at an event at SXSWi in Austin, Texas. The browser will be available in 39 languages across the globe, and can be downloaded at Beautyoftheweb.com or right here in our FileForum at midnight EST March 15.

"The browser is only as good as the operating system it runs on," Internet Explorer general manager Dean Hachamovich said on Monday evening's event in Austin. But with HTML5 letting the browser tap into a system's GPU for hardware acceleration, the browser can actually do just a little better than that. That was chipmaker AMD's angle on Monday.

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Internet Explorer 9 may have only just been released by Microsoft, but already there is a tool available that can be used to tweak the browser to your liking. TweakIE9 is a free tweaking tool that can customize Microsoft's web browser in a number of ways, helping to iron out annoyances and make the program easier to use.

TweakIE9 includes a number of options, such as the ability to always start Internet Explorer 9 in InPrivate browsing mode, or to create a shortcut to make it easier to access the increased privacy mode. It is also possible to create a shortcut that can be used to launch another Internet Explorer session -- these shortcuts can be added to the Quick Launch bar or pinned to the Start menu for ease of access.

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