Latest Technology News

Something startling happened today. Either someone in Apple's PR department royally screwed up, or the landscape of iOS device users is dramatically different than I or many other people thought.

Last month, during the event announcing iOS 5, Scott Forstall, Apple senior vice president of iOS software, said: "For our stores we have more than 225 million accounts, all with credit cards and one-click purchasing". Forstall also said that Apple had sold 200 million iOS devices.

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New data suggests that the "freemium" mobile game model is becoming increasingly popular, with two-thirds of all revenue among the top 100 games in the iTunes App Store coming from such games. This is a marked increase from January, when only 39 percent of revenue came from such sources.

Free-to-play or freemium games work like this. Instead of charging for the game up front, it is given away for free. The developer makes its money by extending or enhancing game play through in-app purchases, but they are not necessarily required to play the game itself.

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A personal experience of mine makes me wonder about Google Apps and Google's ability to support it properly. I try to minimize complaining about my own vendors, but this incident was handled badly.

I had to pull rank to get an answer.

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"Modern" is not a word I would have ever used to describe how YouTube looks. The user interface remains dated, even after several refinements. But that may change, and quite dramatically. Google is in process of changing YouTube's look and feel in startling and refreshing ways. How this new experience comes to market depends in part on how users respond to it.

Today, as part of the ongoing TestTube project, Google opened "Cosmic Panda", which is described as "a new experimental experience for videos, playlists and channels". Hot damn, this thing is smokin'! My initial reaction is simply "Wow!"

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In a move sure to rankle opponents of the entertainment industry's anti-piracy efforts, leading ISPs and the movie studios and record labels announced a voluntary deal to begin monitoring ISP accounts for possible piracy. Piraters would be subject to a series of "alerts," each increasingly threatening in tone.

The first alert would simply be to inform a user that their account may have been used for copyright infringement, and what the consequences are for getting caught and where to find legal material. These warnings would get more stern in tone until the sixth alert, where the user would find his or her Internet connection slowed or disrupted until the problem is addressed.

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That's the question for you to answer after watching the video above, looking and pics from the linked tumblr blog and reading this post, of course.

According to what Mashable claims is an exclusive report, the Secret Service raided the home of artist Kyle McDonald earlier today. The video above made the tech news this week, and now the computers producing it are gone -- confiscated in the raid.

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Mozilla has started the Firefox development merry-go-round again, updating its Beta, Aurora and Nightly 32-bit and 64-bit builds to versions 6, 7, and 8, respectively. Unlike the recent Firefox 5 release, version 6 introduces some visible new features, including a Permissions Manager for better privacy, while version 7 sees Firefox taking long overdue steps to address its memory consumption issues.

Once again, the question arises: Which version should you install, and what sets each release apart? Read on for our updated guide to what's happening with each version of Firefox.

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Microsoft has released a minor update to its Windows Live Essentials 2011 suite of free tools, which includes Mail, Photo Gallery, Movie Maker and Messenger. Live Essentials 2011 build 15.4.3538.0513 is available for download now, while existing Live Essentials users will be prompted to update later this month.

This latest release contains a number of specific fixes and improvements for Mail, Messenger and Photo Gallery, as well as containing other "usability, performance and stability improvements" across the entire suite.

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For all the talk about Apple innovation, it's still old school in one respect. While Google product managers make major announcements in blog posts, usually accompanied by helpful videos, information control-freak Apple does it the old-fashion way by issuing a press release. Today it's 15 billion downloads from the App Store.

I'm more surprised by timing than anything else. Apple's App Store opened for business July 10, 2008, which makes the three-year anniversary good day for the announcement. But by old school PR thinking, that would be bad day, being Sunday. Some advice to Apple: Look at Microsoft taking over Baidu English search. The news was everywhere on Monday -- and that was on July 4th, America's national holiday!

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Sometimes I really can't figure out Microsoft. Does the left-side corporate brain not connect to the right?

Take this new business in Microsoft patents supposedly applied to Android. HTC already coughs up five bucks per handset in licensing fees and scuttlebutt is Microsoft wants $10-$15 per phone from Samsung. Had the Supreme Court sided with Microsoft in last month's i4i ruling, Samsung and other Android licensees could quite possibly have invalidated the patents in court -- putting an end to Microsoft's lucrative Android patent payment business.

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Microsoft is demanding that Samsung pay it $15 in royalties for every Android phone it sells, Korea's Maeil Business Newspaper reported on Wednesday. While Samsung is attempting to negotiate the royalty fee lower, it does indicate that Microsoft plans to become more aggressive in pursuing Android manufacturers over use of technologies within Android that it says it has rights to.

The Redmond company is already receiving $5 for every HTC phone sold with the Android operating system, and that has made the company some $150 million, according to reports. With Microsoft asking three times that from Samsung, the potential is there for the company to make much more from this licensing deal.

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Rumors continue to indicate that the next version of the iPhone is getting ever closer to launch, with the Wall Street Journal saying sources have told the paper that orders have been placed for "key components." No specifics were given on a launch date, only saying it was expected during the third quarter.

Given we're currently in the third quarter now, and that will end in September, it likely means a launch of the device is probably no more than two months away. With at least one source saying it was told to ship components in August, that seems to suggest the launch will occur in September as has been rumored over the past several months.

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It's a common human desire to keep up with the Joneses or even to play games of oneupmanship, and it's no truer when applied to PCs. While older kit and software may do the job admirably, there's no ignoring the desire for new shiny toys and the latest in cutting-edge technology.

Windows 8 isn't out yet -- the first beta isn't due to appear for another few months yet -- but that doesn't stop people from wanting it. Windows 8 UX Pack 2.0 gives you the next best thing: it makes Windows 7 look and feel just like Windows 8.

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Early this afternoon, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg debuted three new personal connection service updates -- group chat, chat redesign and video calling.

Last week, Zuckerberg hinted at something "awesome" coming today. Early rumors tipped to in-browser video chat powered by Skype.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the number during a live event early this afternoon.

Last week, Zuckerberg hinted at something "awesome" coming today. Early rumors tipped to in-browser video chat powered by Skype. A live event is underway now.

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