Tim Conneally

Wireless chipmaker Broadcom Thursday announced it will be releasing a fully open source Linux driver for its current generation of 802.11n chipsets. This means that Wi-Fi, one of the most problematic peripherals in the entire Linux ecosystem, will become a lot simpler to set up.

"The driver, while still a work in progress, is released as full source and uses the native mac80211 stack. It supports multiple current chips (BCM4313, BCM43224, BCM43225) as well as providing a framework for supporting additional chips in the future, including mac80211-aware embedded chips," Broadcom Scientist Henry Ptasinkski posted in a gmane newsgroup today.

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Parallels, makers of one of the most popular pieces of virtualization software for Mac OS X machines, has announced that the retail launch of Parallels Desktop 6 will be on September 14. This new version of Parallels Desktop promises to be faster, more tightly woven into OS X, and more powerful, with a total of 80 new or improved features.

Parallels Desktop 6 uses a 64-bit engine, which the company claims helps it run 41% faster than the last version, and helps Windows start twice as fast as it does in rival VMware's Fusion 3.1 virtualization suite.

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Amazon's Kindle has managed to make a tremendous impact on the e-reader market without even being available in physical stores. Soon, however, Amazon's best-selling product will be available through retailers in stores across the U.S.

Today, Best Buy announced it will be selling the Wi-Fi only 6" Kindle for $139.99 and its 3G-equipped counterpart for $189 in all of its stores this fall. The company says the 9.7" Kindle DX will be available "later in the season."

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Wireless network operator T-Mobile USA has been incrementally releasing information about the G2, its first HSPA+ smartphone, and long-awaited sequel to the first Android smartphone, the G1. Thursday, the first official images of the G2 were released, along with some additional specs that have heretofore been unknowns.

The 3.7" touchscreen device may look like a QWERTY slider, but it is actually hinged...Not hinged like a clamshell device, but more like a rack. We've sent an inquiry to HTC to find out more about the benefits of this design, and we will update with the company's reply when it arrives.

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Irish company Amulet Devices today announced it is now shipping its Amulet Voice Remote to U.S. customers. The Windows Media Center remote control supports a full array of voice commands in addition to standard button-based IR navigation.

Through the remote's built-in microphone, users can access their profile and navigate through all the content on their Windows Media Center box. In addition to simply playing the media, users can also program their DVR, instantly navigate to a specific clock time in a video or audio file, skip over advertisements in recorded TV, or ask their Media Center questions such as what song is playing or the title of the show they are watching.

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Google Wednesday launched a new search feature called Google Instant, which offers search results as you are typing your query terms.

Around this time two years ago, Google unveiled Suggest, a feature which predicted what searchers were looking for as it was being typed in the Google search field. Instant takes this a step further and provides the actual results so the user doesn't have to even click "search" or hit enter.

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A lot of attention is being paid to Google Doodle logos with the company's impending press conference today, and the public's curiosity about the search engine's animated logos really paid off for one toy maker.

On September fourth, Google's Doodle logo was a celebration of the 25th anniversary of the Buckminsterfullerene molecule, a spherical allotrope made up of 60 carbon atoms which closely resembles the geodesic domes made famous by American Engineer Buckminster Fuller.

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Symantec Wednesday launched the latest versions of its flagship security products: Norton Antivirus 2011 and Norton Internet Security 2011. As it has been for the last two years, Symantec's focus remains on keeping the Norton software quick and lightweight, while harnessing the power of the crowd and the cloud.

For this version of the Norton software, Symantec has added 100 new content updates, which includes new versions of both the software's behavioral engine, and the file-based heuristic engine. The cumulative effect of the improvements were recently shown off by software benchmarking company Passmark; which ranked a beta version of Norton Internet Security 2011 the best performing security software package for Windows 7 Ultimate (64 bit.) The company timed booting, scanning, browsing, IE launching, and installation, measured memory usage at idle, footprint, registry keys added, and network throughput in a total of 30 different tests.

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Tuesday evening, Mozilla pushed out the fifth beta of its Firefox 4 Web browser. With this update, improvements to the browser's audio, video, and security have been added.

Two weeks ago, the Beta 4 release of Firefox 4 included new features to help users get organized, Firefox Sync and Panorama. This release focuses less on giving users new features, and more on providing the tools for a better experience down the road.

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HP filed a civil lawsuit against its former CEO Mark Hurd on Tuesday after the executive was hired by IT giant Oracle.

"Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP's trade secrets and confidential information. HP intends to enforce those agreements," HP's statement to the media said.

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Samsung's Gigaherz class, Android-powered Galaxy S line of smartphones will be available on all four major U.S. wireless carriers this week with the launch of the Fascinate on Verizon Wireless.

Verizon Wireless and Samsung today announced the Fascinate will be available tomorrow (September 8) online and the following day in stores for $199 after rebate and two-year service contract.

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Personalized feed reader my6sense has launched in beta today on Google's Android platform, and can be downloaded freely from the Android Market now.

My6sense made some ripples in the vast ocean of iOS apps when it launched last year; because it takes the simple concept of RSS and social feed reader and gives it some "digital intuition" so your feed is more relevant to your interests.

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HP's ousted CEO Mark Hurd will be joining Oracle as a co-president and member of the board, statements from the company said Monday.

Last month, Hurd left his position as CEO of HP after a sexual harassment investigation uncovered several of his policy violations; including a clandestine personal relationship with an HP contractor, and falsification of expense reports.

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Friday, 2K Games and Gearbox Software announced they will be releasing Duke Nukem Forever on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Windows PC in 2011. The game was first announced in 1997 and has long been considered the most legendary case of "vaporware," that is, hardware or software that is announced but released either too late or not at all.

The story of Duke Nukem Forever is so legendary that its delay inspired its own parody game franchise. D3's Eat Lead: The Return of Matt Hazard was released in 2009, and featured a gun-slinging action game hero very similar to Nukem returning to video games after a six-year hiatus.

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Video game maker THQ has opened the beta of Company of Heroes Online, a free-to-play World War II strategy game based upon THQ's critically acclaimed real-time strategy franchise Company of Heroes, originally released for Windows in 2006.

The open beta of Company of Heroes Online includes 17 multiplayer maps which can be used in two, four, six, and eight-player modes, and beta testers can play one-player campaign mode from Company of Heroes for free. Users that register on

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