Offering a radically different, touch-oriented interface, the upcoming operating system is designed for desktops, laptops, and tablets. WINDOWS 8 Is on its way, and it will be a departure from the Windows we know and love today. That was the message Microsoft sent in a presentation given at the annual All things digital Conference held…

"THERE’S A SUCKER born every minute.” That quotation, widely attributed to P.T. Barnum, originally referred to deceptive carnival sideshow attractions, but it’s just as relevant to online scams—in particular, Facebook scams—today. None of the common Facebook frauds—the “Facebook dislike button,” the “stalker tracker” (which purports to tell you who’s visiting your profile), and “watch this…

We looked at the latest challengers to Apple’s iPad 2, and found some worthy contenders. Which tablet came out on top? THIS YEAR SHAPES up as the year of the tablet—for real, this time—as the hugely popular, impressively svelte Apple iPad 2 competes with an array of challengers, most of them running Android. For this…

Toshiba's Digital Products Division (a division of Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc.), has announced that their upcoming 10.1-inch Thrive Tablet is available for pre-order at Amazon.com, with models starting at a suggested retail price of $429.99. Formerly known simply as The Toshiba Tablet, Thrive is the company's first Android-based tablet for the U.S. market, and…

RESEARCH IN Motion’s BlackBerry PlayBook ($500 for 16GB version, $600 for 32GB, and $700 for 64GB) offers a convenient size and novel navigation, but its software can be frustrating. In some respects, the PlayBook is the most impressive tablet I’ve seen. But native apps such as its browser have disappointing glitches, and its variety of…

IT’S TEMPTING TO use the same password for all of your online accounts, but doing so puts every account in jeopardy if one of them gets hacked. In view of some recent massive security breaches, now’s a good time to update your passwords and make sure that each is unique. A few great password management…

Sony’s recent data breach got all the headlines, but such attacks aren’t rare. Here’s how to protect yourself and your data from them. IN 2011 ALONE, tens of millions of users have had personal information exposed or put at risk in some way by data breaches at Epsilon, RSA Security, the state of Texas, Ashampoo,…

IN LATE APRIL, a purported scam spread via Facebook Chat and wall posts. Affected users received a message saying: “haha did you see this yet? it’s pretty funny... see what you look like 20 years older, mine is HILARIOUS:) [link redacted] whoops sorry meant to send that to someone else:P” If you received such a…

When it comes to setting up your own blog, it’s pretty well understood that you need to have your own domain and that it needs to be under your control. However, people view the process of setting up a domain as being completely different from that of setting up hosting. Where most people are meticulous…

How to search for apps? The App Store, with its small number of categories and haphazard assignment of apps to those categories, hasn’t scaled well in terms of finding apps. The App Genius feature in iOS can help somewhat, but to find what you need, you’ll likely want to go online. There are websites that…

IT SOUNDS LIKE a B-movie plot: Millions of smartphone owners are being tracked by their phones. In addition, their mobile apps are eavesdropping on them. And information on their whereabouts is being sold to third parties. But it isn’t science fiction. If you own a smartphone and download popular apps, the odds are good that…

The Internet's been around in some form for decades. It wasn't until the mid-80s, though, that the Web as we know it started coming together -- and those precious dot-com domains started getting snatched up. As we finish out the tech-centric year of 2008, we thought we'd take a look back at the Internet's oldest…