Tim Conneally

When Google's Chrome browser moves up the ladder in the public beta channel, the dev channel gets an upgrade too, but a full generation ahead of what the public is playing with. So with Chrome 10 beta now available in public beta, the Chrome 11 developer beta (11.0.672.2) can now be downloaded as well.

Download Chrome 11 in Fileforum now!

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Thursday, the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) released The National Broadband map, a staggeringly powerful free tool that gives anyone access to census-level data about broadband connectivity in the United States.

The map, which cost roughly $200 million to build, includes data from more than 25 million records, showing what types of broadband are available in all of the 50 U.S. states (FTTH, Docsis 3.0, Cable, DSL, Mobile, etc.), which companies provide service (and thusly where regional monopolies exist,) and the maximum advertised speeds. Users can then filter data by region, state, city, county, district, block, or even street address, or by regional and household demographic information. This data can then be plugged into the map's "analysis" feature, and compared with data from other areas.

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The weakest link in any security strategy is human. No matter how good the technology, nothing creates risk like ignorance and naiveté. When Symantec released its Norton 2011 products back in September, the company spoke of "engendering goodwill" among potential customers with free tools to educate and protect their vulnerable systems. Today, concurrent with the release of Norton 360 version 5, the company made available yet another free tool to keep users aware of the ever-changing daily threat landscape.

The Norton Cybercrime Index, a free service, gives a daily snapshot of the most dangerous websites and the most hijacked search terms, as well as top scams, identity theft ploys and spam. The daily data from the Cybercrime Index can be viewed in a Web portal, on a mobile site, or as a free desktop gadget for Windows 7 and Vista. The main tool is a daily risk level meter similar to the Department of Homeland Security's threat advisory level.

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Raw first-week sales numbers are often used to indicate the efficacy of a product's launch. But really, the thing these numbers best represent is the level of user excitement. Today, Microsoft revealed that users were very excited about Internet Explorer 9 RC, which launched last week.

According to Microsoft, IE9 RC was downloaded 2 million times in the six days following its launch. While a big number, it's doubly significant because these were users who actively downloaded the software without a Windows Update auto update, or a system alert telling them an update was available. These users knew the update was there and went out and got it.

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Noted tech industry analyst Ross Rubin posed a fun question Wednesday morning on Twitter at which I thought I'd take a Quora-like stab. He asked, "So when does this deluge of low-end Android handsets start and from which OEMs?"

It's really one of the most important questions about Android, because it has long been presumed that Android will be the operating system that finally puts smartphones in the hands of every consumer. Rubin's timing is also impeccable, because for everything we're seeing, the deluge has already begun.

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Market research group In-Stat has published the results of its annual assessment of U.S. broadband speeds, which found that the nation's average downstream speed increased by 34% over the course of 2010.

In-Stat says the average downlink speed for broadband subscribers is 9.54 Mbps, up from the 2009 average 7.12 Mbps, which was itself up from 2008 average of 3.8 Mbps. The price of fixed broadband, by comparison, rose by only 4% among the 518 households surveyed.

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Among an announcement of half a dozen new mobile devices, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC debuted its first Android tablet, called the Flyer. HTC was the first company to release an Android smartphone of any sort and its presence in the Android tablet market could be imposing.

The HTC Flyer is similar to Samsung's Galaxy Tab in a number of ways. Firstly in its size, it has a 7" screen with 1024 x 600 resolution. Secondly, in its OS. It is not running Android 3.0 (Honeycomb), the tablet-optimized version of Google's mobile operating system, and will instead run on Android 2.4 (Gingerbread). However it does offer a slightly more powerful processor, running at 1.5 GHz, compared to the Galaxy Tab's 1 GHz.

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Various executive agencies of the U.S. government have come together in an effort to speed up how the government acquires new technology and solutions, the United States General Services Administration (GSA) announced today.

The GSA, in the simplest terms, is a federal body in charge of all of the material stuff the government uses. This includes everything from land, to cars, to IT technology and solutions, and it is also the government body in charge of the Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR).

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Following its Nokia partnership announcement at Mobile World Congress, Microsoft on Monday made half a dozen significant announcements about new features and capabilities that will be coming to the Windows Phone platform this year.

Microsoft CEO Ballmer announced that the first major update to Windows Phone 7 will be rolled out to consumers in March, and it will add copy and paste functionality. However, little else was said about the update, and we've asked Microsoft today for a bit more information about it. In all likelihood, it will pale in comparison to the updates Ballmer announced will be coming later this year.

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At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today, Sony Ericsson officially unveiled Xperia PLAY, the first "PlayStation Phone."

Xperia PLAY is a 4" touchscreen slider, but instead of sliding to reveal a keyboard like most slider phones, it reveals PlayStation-style controls and buttons like Sony Computer Entertainment's PSP Go. It's powered by Qualcomm's 1 GHz Snapdragon processor with the embedded Adreno GPU capable of 60fps playback 3D gaming. It also features 400MB RAM, support for up to 32GB MicroSD storage, a 5.1 megapixel flash camera, aGPS, Bluetooth 2.0, and 802.11 Wi-Fi with hotspot functionality.

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The mobile world's biggest hardware maker will be pairing with the computer world's bigest software maker to start making Nokia Windows Phones. Here are ten things about the pairing that you need to know before the partnership begins releasing any products.

1. It will take two years before Windows Phone even makes up half of Nokia's product mix

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Yahoo on Thursday announced that it will soon debut a new magazine-style method of digital content delivery especially aimed at touchscreen mobile devices like tablets and smartphones called Livestand.

"Publishers and advertisers must expand their content to [phones and tablets] to stay in front of consumers," said Blake Irving, Executive Vice President and Chief Product officer at Yahoo. "We see an opportunity to provide publishers and advertisers with a pipeline for fresh and active content and to help them reach and engage their most valuable audiences."

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It's been just about five months since Microsoft put out the first beta of Internet Explorer 9, and on Thursday, it officially reached Release Candidate (RC) status, and is now just about feature-complete.

The hallmarks of Internet Explorer 9 RC are: its support for new Web technologies based on HTML5, its treatment of sites like apps with pinnable shortcuts that can send dock notifications, improved privacy and tracking protection, and the ability for users to set filters for ActiveX elements on the Web.

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Today, the FCC's Enforcement Bureau announced it is clamping down on the marketing, sale, and use of illegal cellphone and GPS jamming devices because they can very easily jam signals used by the public safety and law enforcement sectors.

Cell jammers have become pretty popular items. At CTIA 2010 last year, we saw quite a few companies offering low-power jamming solutions for prisons, board rooms, movie theaters, and really anywhere else that privacy and radio silence is important.

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Contrary to reports which said they were released in January Microsoft today announced that Windows 7 SP1 and Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 were released to OEM partners today, and the updates will be available to consumers on February 22.

As we've known since back in June when the first beta invites went out for SP1, this is a very minor release. However, the RemoteFX and Dynamic Memory virtualization features in Windows Server are especially noteworthy this time around.

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