While I would not consider myself a Microsoft fanboy, I definitely do find myself interested in the company's products to the point that I'd love to see Microsoft recover from its past mistakes and establish its brand firmly in the minds of consumers again. No matter how you view Microsoft, it is a great company with some pretty cool products. They are nowhere near the popularity of Apple or Google, especially when it comes to the tech press, but I cannot help but think that Microsoft stands in a unique position to wow us in 2011.

Will Microsoft do it? I don't know for sure. But I hope so. Microsoft employs some of the smartest and most talented programmers and scientists working anywhere. Then there's Steve Ballmer, the charismatic CEO whom many people think is fighting to save his job. As a Microsoft user and developer, I want to see the company succeed in 2011. Surely Ballmer wants to receive feedback from people like me, so I have compiled a list of 10 things I'd like to see him do this year. I believe that if Ballmer is successful at bringing these things (and others) to market this year or next, he will not only save his job but will make Microsoft a stronger consumer brand, something the company desperately needs in order to be competitive in the future.

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A former Apple manager faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday in federal court to charges he accepted kickbacks from suppliers. Paul Shin Devine, formerly a supply manager for the Cupertino company, was first charged in August of last year on 23 counts including money laundering, wire fraud, conspiracy, and kickbacks.

The deal reached Monday calls for Devine to only plead guilty to one charge from each of the types, meaning the sentencing set for June 6 would only involve five charges. "Mr. Devine is a good man who made a mistake, and now he's trying to make amends," his lawyer told Reuters in an interview.

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Piriform has updated its system information tool Speccy to version 1.09. The update adds support for Windows 7 Service Pack 1, plus promises better hardware detection along with a number of minor bug fixes.

Speccy provides detailed system information about the PC it's currently installed on. That means it does more than tell you how much RAM is installed, for example, it'll also tell you how many memory slots have been populated, helping determine the computer's upgrade capabilities.

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The real world state of security on Macs has long baffled security experts. From a simple analysis of attack surface and opportunities, the Mac is not just vulnerable to attack, but far more so than Windows. And yet attacks on Mac users are rare while Windows malware continues to thrive.

What explains this? The consensus, and it's an opinion I share, is that the people who write the important malware are unconvinced that the cost/benefit of writing a parallel code base of malware for the Mac is worthwhile to them. People argue about what the real installed bases of Windows PC and Macs are, but it would appear that these developers don't think there are enough Macs out there to make it worth their while.

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Google said late Monday that it would have e-mail access restored to those who found themselves locked out of their accounts due to a glitch in a storage update applied to Gmail servers on Sunday. The company noticed the update was malfunctioning and pulled it before it could cause additional trouble.

As opposed to the .08% of all Gmail users affected, Google revised that number down to .02%. This translates to about 34,000 or so locked out of their accounts, versus the 136,000 originally thought to be affected.

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At international tech tradeshow CeBIT on Tuesday, eye tracking technology company Tobii took the wraps off its first fully functional prototype notebook with integrated eye control. The company collaborated with PC maker Lenovo to include "eye control" technology on top of the standard keyboard/trackpad layout.

Another example of the growing sophistication of natural user interfaces, Tobii's eye control system lets users control the mouse pointer, select windows from exposé view, automatically scroll through a website, and create special eye controlled gadgets in a Windows sidebar.

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The question is meant for people who bought or received the original iPad since its release in April 2010. See, I keep meeting people who gave up iPad -- and not because they're preparing to buy its successor, which geekdom expects will be announced tomorrow. I consistently hear giver-uppers say they no longer used Apple's tablet much, or at all.

I sold my iPad in December, mainly because my smartphone, the Google-branded Nexus S, proved to be good enough on the go and the 11.6-inch MacBook Air otherwise was light enough and offered more capabilities (granted reading ebooks or from the browser is more enjoyable on iPad). I know of at least two other MBA users who ditched iPad for similar reasons. Disclosure: I'm not exactly feeling good about the Air quality today. After several days of ongoing program crashes, the laptop locked up and won't bootup past the grey system check screen. If there wasn't flash memory in the thing, I would assume it was hard drive failure. But that's topic for another post.

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If you want to back up a CD, DVD or Blu-ray disc, then the ISO file offers the opportunity to take advantage of all that spare capacity on your backup drive, using that as a storage medium for your backed up discs. ISO files are exact images of discs, which also comes in handy when you, or someone else, wants to distribute a CD without incurring the costs of burning a disc and posting it.

Windows 7 has some limited support for ISO files built-in: you can create an ISO file from a disc, or burn a disc from an ISO file using tools built into the OS, but what if you're using an earlier version of Windows, or you've been handed a disc image in a format other than ISO? The quick, simple and completely free answer is ISO Workshop, a new release from Glorylogic.

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If you've got a small business odds are very high that you use Intuit's QuickBooks for your accounting. You may have figured out by now that things go wrong with QuickBooks now and then. On occasion, they go wrong to the point of corrupting your database.

You might not be able to open your company file. Perhaps QuickBooks says it's "Not a QuickBooks data file or is damaged", perhaps along with a helpful code like "(-6189, -83)."

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HP today announced a new direct digital dispensing design for medical research that utilizes inkjet printheads to accurately apportion tiny doses of drugs.

In the fields of medicine and biotechnology, the process of drug discovery is long, costly, difficult, and sometimes wasteful. We often hear it said that each new drug costs about $1.3 billion to develop. HP today said pharmaceutical companies are spending upwards of $16 billion a year in drug discovery research.

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Apple seems to be set to release a cheaper iPhone after the company's executives made some uncharacteristically frank comments during an analyst meeting with Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi. Chief operating officer Tim Cook appears to have all but confirmed a cheaper iPhone is in the works.

Cook told Sacconaghi that the Cupertino company wants its iPhone to not be just a device "for the rich," and said the company is planning "clever" things for the prepaid market. He acknowledged that China, a major mobile market which the company is now focusing heavily on, is a country which has a large prepay base.

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Google was still working to restore access to its Gmail e-mail service to a handful of customers on Monday, a day after an outage prevented a few users from accessing their e-mails. A message posted to the Google Apps status page at 10:40pm Eastern Sunday said engineers were "working to restore full access," and full access would be restored in the "near future."

No update had been provided as to if the issue had been fully resolved, although the company noted the issue affected only .08% of the total Gmail user base.

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Microsoft on Monday announced that its new cloud PC management solution, Windows Intune, will be launched in its first complete RTM build on March 23 at the Microsoft Management Summit, and will be commercially available in more than 35 countries thereafter.

Windows Intune is a cloud-based desktop management solution which lets IT techs manage remote systems through their browser. Microsoft is marketing Intune toward two different types of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs.) First, companies that don't yet have a PC management infrastructure, and want one that won't incur a big material cost; Second, companies that have lots of "virtual" and remote employees.

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When it comes to desktop image editing, Photoshop is the undoubted king. However, when an iOS version of the popular editing software was released, many users were left a little disappointed. TouchUp for iPad is another image editing tool which not only makes it possible to make subtle adjustments to enhance imperfect pictures, but also to make more creative edits for greater impact.

The app can be used to work with any of the images in your photo library, but it also works in conjunction with Apple's Camera Connection Kit so you can pull images straight from your digital camera.

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Today, AT&T announced that, starting March 6, it will carry Amazon's Kindle reader in its retail stores nationwide. Timing is interesting, given iPad 2's imminent launch and Apple App Store subscription changes that could compel Amazon to curtail or even stop distribution of Kindle software for iOS devices. Buyers considering iPad in AT&T stores will now have option of the lower-cost and ebook reading-dedicated Kindle.

Retail distribution isn't new for Kindle, which I've seen available here in San Diego from Best Buy and Microsoft Store. Given that Barnes & Noble and Sony sell their readers at retail, Amazon levels the competitive field for people that want to hold and experience Kindle.

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