Alan Buckingham

Time magazine's Person of the Year is an annual tradition, dating back to Charles Lindbergh in 1927. The tradition has continued ever since, encompassing such luminaries as Mahatma Gandhi, Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and controversial figures such as Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and twice Richard Nixon.

This time around, the news magazine is asking for help, and seeking it from Twitter. However, before your ego swells, the publisher is only taking your vote into consideration, not making it the deciding factor. "While the choice is ultimately made by TIME editors, this will give everyone who's interested an unprecedented chance to air their opinion and cast a vote before the final decision. Using Poptip, TIME will gather votes on Twitter, where readers can weigh in on who made the biggest impact in 2013 via Tweets", says Twitter's Andrew Fitzgerald.

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There is no shortage of variety in today's Android tablet market. Devices come in a range of functionality and price, and from a host of makers. Two prominent tablets on the market are from a couple of the web's biggest sites, and both Amazon and Google are hoping their devices will land under your tree this holiday season.

The second generation of the Nexus 7, manufactured by Asus and sold by Google, has been on the market for some time, but now Amazon is pushing the third version of the Kindle Fire tablet. This latest iteration is, of course, purported to be the best, but is it? Can the HDX really be better than the 2012 HD?

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It's been a big day for Microsoft. The Xbox One hit store shelves and took over the daily tech news, overshadowing all competition, including that of it's own Nokia devices arm. While reviews, unboxing videos and a few tales of hard drive woes have highlighted the news, there were other announcements surrounding the console launch.

One such piece of news came from an unexpected source. Logitech, known for its cases, keyboards and mice, is also in possession of all-in-one remote company Harmony. The darling of the home theater crowd, or at least those who don't wish to pay for Crestron, has thrown its support behind the new gaming console.

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The repercussions of the recent Adobe hack continue to echo around the internet. The attack exposed the user information for a huge number of customers, and data leaked online displayed email addresses, passwords and hints. The final tally of affected users ended up at 150 million, and the dump has since been parsed by security researchers, such as those at Sophos.

Now Evernote is the latest to warn customers of the far-reaching possibilities that could result from Adobe's misfortune. The note-taking service has been checking the database of email addresses and comparing it to its own customer list. When a matching email address is discovered, a message is generated to warn the potential victim.

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The little gaming console that could. Ouya, the Android-based Kickstarter darling, is on the market, and getting less attention than it did when everything was shiny and new. But the console continues to innovate and bring new games and features to the platform, in an effort to carve its own niche in a Sony/Microsoft-dominated world.

Now the console-maker has pushed a new update, which is perhaps the biggest since the little device debuted. The number one feature included here is external storage, in case you're running out of space for your games. Customers can now plug in an external drive, and the console will work with FAT32, NTFS, and ext4. A word of warning, though, don't take your drive to your friend's house, as the games won't work on another Ouya.

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November 22 is a big day for Microsoft, with the Xbox One officially hitting store shelves, and Nokia releasing its latest devices, including an extra-large smartphone and a new Windows RT 8.1 tablet. The latter, known as the Lumia 2520, is being offered by Verizon for $399 with a two-year contract or $499 on a month-to-month deal.

While the price seems reasonable, at least in the realm of Windows tablets, Verizon is sweetening the deal with an offer for your old tablet. It's a deal similar to what Microsoft has offered as bribery in the past -- "trade in your current iPad in good working condition and receive a Verizon Wireless gift card up to $300. See how much your iPad is worth".

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We are just over a week away from Black Friday, the traditional kickoff of the holiday shopping season. It's the day when normally sedate citizens forget their manners and trample anyone standing between them and the desired item. Much of this tradition has moved online in recent years, but the scene at retail stores still borders on crazy.

While the offerings of many locations have been leaking out to the internet over the past few days, three of the heavy hitters stand out. Microsoft, while running a number of brick and mortar stores, is traditionally an online entity, Amazon is completely internet-based and Sears is an old-school physical location retailer that has tried to make the online move. Three businesses in very different positions.

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Orcs, trolls, balrogs, ring wraiths, dark lords -- it's a dangerous world out there, especially if you are a hobbit. Despite these dangers, Google has elected to brave Middle Earth, taking its cross-platform browser along for protection. The company does so in the name of improving the web experience, specifically for mobile devices.

Chrome for Android now supports technologies ranging from WebGL and WebRT to Web Audio, and Google is anxious to show this off. It's doing so through a new interactive experience, based on the timeless J.R.R. Tolkien books and award-winning Peter Jackson movies -- The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit.

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Google's Android platform is on fire these days, with a new operating system, a latest and greatest smartphone, in the form of the Nexus 5 and rumors of an updated 10-inch tablet coming soon. However, the company is also known for killing off products, which makes today's announcement of a newsreader for Android all the more interesting.

Newsstand, according to the search giant, "puts the news you care about most front and center and presents stories that interest you based on your tastes". However, before you jump the gun and think this is Reader reincarnated, know that the service is a bit different.

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Dropbox, one of the leading services for cloud storage, has been making recent inroads to become business and IT-friendly. The company boasts that its business user-base has doubled since 2012, and now reaches over four million customers. To keep that fire stoked, Dropbox now announces a new partnership with Salesforce.

"Today, we’re excited to announce that we’re partnering with Salesforce to bring great technology to the enterprise and help users connect with customers in a whole new way", says the company's Ari Friedland.

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Much has been made of Google's little Chromecast device  -- the dongle that allows you to send media from computers and mobile devices to your TV. The $35 device has received a fair amount of attention and also a bit of mimicry, with services like Cheapcast popping up.

Now, TV streaming service PlayOn is teaming with set-top box maker Roku to bring similar functionality to customers of the two services. "PlayCast gives users the ability to stream virtually any online video from a PC browser to a Roku-connected TV. It is like Chromecast casting for the Roku", PlayOn says in a brief statement received by BetaNews.

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With both models of the new Kindle Fire HDX tablets now out in the wild, Amazon can concentrate on tweaking the system to add features and fix bugs. The device, while considered to be a competitor to the Nexus 7, is really more about media, specifically that from the retail giant's ecosystem.

The latest update, which rolls out today, takes the OS to version 3.1 and adds several new features to enhance the 'media device' perception even more.

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Bluetooth is everywhere these days -- in our smartphones, tablets and even in newer computers. We use it for the mouse, keyboard and other items. Increasingly, that extra item is a speaker, or perhaps two, in the case of the new Logitech Mini Boom. But that's far from the only show in town, as Divoom also produces a speaker that it hopes can rival competitors in the market.

That market has become increasingly competitive, which is not particularly surprising given the growth of handheld devices, some of which produce less-than-ideal sound quality. The Bluetune Bean attempts to help alleviate this problem, by providing an external source to pound out your tunes with a bit more fury than the tiny built-in speakers that come as part of your tablet or phone.

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Amazon continues to enhance its Prime video service in an ongoing effort to take on Netflix and the up-and-coming Redbox Instant video streaming services. One area of focus has become original content, with Netflix taking home awards for its House of Cards series.

Now the first of these original shows has hit the retail giant's video arm -- Alpha House, which stars John Goodman, brings comedic light to the US Senate, as if it weren't already there. "The first three episodes of Alpha House debut today for all customers to enjoy. Remaining episodes will become available weekly, every Friday, exclusively on Prime Instant Video", states Amazon.

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Google continues to push forward its mapping program, earlier today unveiling its Street View team's trip around the city of Venice, Italy. While that may be fun and display pretty scenery, the latest update the company announces takes a more serious note. Cataloging the systematic destruction of our planet's forests.

"In a collaboration led by Dr. Matthew Hansen at the University of Maryland, we’ve built the first detailed maps of the world’s forests, from 2000-2012, documenting and quantifying forest landscape changes such as fires, tornadoes, disease and logging", says Rebecca Moore and Matt Hancher, of the Google Earth Engine team.

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