Latest Technology News

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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Apple's second-generation tablet is pretty much sold out everywhere. If you want one, good luck trying. Shortages are sure to intensify demand, and crazy buying behavior. It's a psychology-of-buying thing, like customers running on the bank to get out their cash. People afraid they won't get iPad 2. The next couple of weeks are going to be ugly, as desperate masses fight to get Apple's tablet, further feeding hype and desperation, further pumping up demand (and prices).

The iPad 2 aftermarket is already in motion, as resale parasites -- looking to profit from shortages -- sell iPad 2s they snatched up before genuine buyers could get them from Apple stores. There's hot trade on eBay today, with the 32GB WiFi white iPad 2 selling in the mid $700s. The profiters are interested in more than Americans who couldn't get iPad 2 over the launch weekend. They're looking to profit from sales to international markets where iPad 2 isn't yet available but where there is demand.

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Dozens of electronics and technology companies with headquarters and facilities in Japan have issued initial damage reports in the wake of Friday's catastrophic earthquake and the subsequent tsunamis which resulted in major flood damage, providing the first look at the damage to the country's tech economy.

Currently, most companies are still assessing damages and promise to keep conversant with shareholders as the situation in the country is still unstable.

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Hackers have already managed to break open Apple's latest iPad, with developer and hacker Comex saying he had managed to do so remotely over the weekend. While proof of the jailbreak has shown up in photos and video on the Internet, it will not be made available immediately as it must be packaged for public use.

According to talk on Twitter, versions for both the Wi-Fi and 3G models of the iPad could be released shortly, although no specific date for its release has been given.

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Piriform Software has released a new update for its free Windows defragmentation utility. Defraggler 2.03 is now fully compatible with Windows 7 Service Pack 1, and it includes a number of interesting new features and fixes.

Defraggler is a free (for non-commercial use) tool that can defrag entire drives or just quickly defrag selected files and folders. It supports both FAT/FAT32 and NTFS drives, and it includes a quick-defrag option, scheduler for keeping your drive defragged at regular intervals and an option to defrag free space only.

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You're working away on your laptop, engrossed in your work and typing at speed. And all is well, until you accidentally touch a trackpad mouse button, the cursor jumps somewhere else entirely, and you have to pause to try and undo the damage. It's frustrating, especially when it keeps happening, but you don't have to live with this -- Touchpad Blocker can help.

Once installed and launched, the program runs in the background, monitoring your keyboard. And every time you press a key, it disables the trackpad mouse buttons for half a second, so if you accidentally tap one then it'll have no effect.

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Monday, chipmaker Intel Corp. announced that its recently formed Intel Mobile Communications group has acquired "most of the assets" of privately held Egyptian communications company SySDSoft, a company whose intellectual property includes LTE Protocol Stacks for user equipment and femtocell premises equipment.

In August 2010, Intel acquired Infineon AG's wireless group for an estimated $1.4 Billion, giving the chipmaker access to a significant chunk of the global cellular baseband market. Then five months later, Intel announced the creation of its new Mobile Communications Group which would see the company working not only with its traditional x86 processor architecture, but also with the popular 32-bit ARM architecture.

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Everyone thinks they have a great novel inside them, but taking it from the deep recesses of your brain to a final, published state is a difficult journey. Your computer might seem the obvious tool to help here, but word processing software isn't geared towards novelists, and in trying to record and organize your notes alongside writing the actual story you can quickly become swamped.

What you need is a dedicated tool that doesn't just give you the tools to write your story, but provides you with the tools you need to organize them too. That program is yWriter; it's completely free, and version 5.1.6.4 has just been released, adding support for exporting your finished novel to ebook format.

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People get so paranoid about Google! Not that Google or any other large company in this industry is especially loveable, but so-called privacy advocates are especially prone to presume the most evil motives on its part. The latest example is the "Android Kill Switch."

This issue grew out of the discovery of dozens of malicious applications in the Android Marketplace on March 1st. Google removed the apps and went a couple of steps further: The company issued a program to reverse the effects of any infections, triggering the Remote Application Removal Feature.

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Betanews readers are an opinionated lot, and they have a lot to say about Apple's second-generation tablet, which went on sale at 5 p.m. March 11th. Yesterday I asked: "Did you buy iPad 2?" Many of you tried but found local stores sold out. Many others would kiss the devil before buying iPad 2 -- or any Apple product, for that matter.

"If you haven't bought the iPad 2 you're either broke or on drugs," Roland Jefferson writes in comments from his iPad 2. "There is no in-between or fine gray line. Take your pick: broke or on drugs. To which Hans Torm replies: "You got it wrong. You bought an iPad 2 so apprently you are on drugs and broke. :p"

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I did. My teenage daughter wants to use one for school. Late-afternoon yesterday, I waited for a surprisingly short time outside Apple Store Fashion Valley in San Diego, where at least 500 people lined up to get an Apple tablet. The doors opened at 5 p.m. local time, and I completed my purchase by 6:20 p.m. Apple Store employees rapidly processed purchases using iPhones.

Judging by the number of people using iPhones -- I'd say 60 percent to 70 percent -- the majority of buyers here were existing Apple customers. So in answering "Did you buy iPad 2" please also express whether or not you use other Apple products and whether or not you purchased (or otherwise own or owned iPad 1). Please respond in comments, or email joewilcox at gmail dot com.

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