fixed

Verizon has issued a post-mortem on its recent network outages, and says it's taking steps to make sure they don't happen again.

In a statement this evening, the wireless company said that despite the hiccups, it's seen 99 percent availability for its 4G LTE network for the year, and that the problems that have cropped up have been unrelated to one another.

"Each incident has been different from a technical standpoint," the company said. "Our engineers have successfully diagnosed those past triggering events, and they have not re-occurred. We also work diligently to rectify … Read more

Seven LCD manufacturer including Samsung and Sharp this month agreed to pay $553 million to settle lawsuits that claimed the companies were colluding with one another to fix the prices of their panels for use in consumer electronics.

Legal documents filed last week, and picked up by Reuters, show that the collected fines total $553 million between the companies involved, and that said companies will be setting up antitrust compliance programs as part of the deal. Of that sum, about $501 million is going towards a refund program for consumers, and about $37 million is being doled out to governments … Read more

A decent registry cleaner can help you keep your computer clean, safe, and running at its best, but with so many available, how do you choose? First off, any program that makes changes to the registry should do no harm. It should have a scheduler and other performance options, and a good Help file. Make it open-source freeware and you have our attention. Little Registry Cleaner provides safe, effective registry cleaning with automatic registry backups. It requires Microsoft .NET Framework 4.0, which you can download and install from Little Registry Cleaner's setup wizard, if your system lacks it.… Read more

Apple released Safari 5.1.2 (Mac or Windows) to users today, adding some fixes and stability improvements to its official Web browser.

A must-download for any Safari user, the update includes various improvements to stability, addresses issues that caused hangs and excessive memory usage, and will now allow PDFs to display within Web content.

The update also addresses an issue that would cause Web sites to flash white while browsing.

The full list of feature enhancements and fixes is not yet available at Apple's Web site at the time of this writing, but we'll update the Safari … Read more

As CNET reported last week, Apple is not only aware of the battery problems associated with iOS 5, but has already pushed out a second beta of iOS 5.0.1--which promises to fix them.

My take: why stop there? Apple's already prepping an update, so why not address some of iOS 5's other quirks, annoyances, and omissions? Here are five I'm secretly hoping will get fixed in 5.0.1:

1. A snooze option for reminders. The new Reminders app? Awesome. Long overdue. Love it. But it's missing one crucial feature: a snooze option. … Read more

Apple has given developers a new version of iOS 5 to test that promises to squash bugs that affect battery life.

This afternoon the company seeded a beta of iOS 5.0.1, which represents the first revision to the software since its public release on October 12.

According to BGR, which spotted the update on Apple's developer site, the new software fixes a handful of bugs, and even brings new features to the iPad.

The new beta coincides with Apple's acknowledgement that some users are, in fact, having battery life issues with iOS 5. In a statement … Read more

The other day I encountered a serious problem with my iTunes account that seemed to require major surgery, so I figured I'd stop in at my local Apple Store and mosey up to the Genius Bar downstairs to see if there was a less draconian fix than the one I'd read about online.

Since I was there during Happy Hour, I figured I'd go for the two-for-one special and also ask why the battery on my new iPhone 4S was puttering out in about 12 hours (with only minimal use), well short of what I was getting with my old 3GS.

For the uninitiated, the Genius Bar is the place where you take your Apple problems. You actually need to make an appointment, and like the doctor's office, the knowledgeable Apple reps who help fix your problems don't necessarily see you right away, especially if you make an appointment at 5:50 p.m. when the place is a madhouse. At least in Manhattan, anyway. … Read more

South Korea's antitrust watchdog has fined six LCD makers $176 million for conspiring to artificially inflate prices for flat-screen monitors.

Samsung Electronics and LG Display were among the companies that colluded from 2001 to 2006 to control the prices of panels for TVs and personal computers, the Fair Trade Commission said. The cartel, which also includes AU Optronics, Chimei Innolux, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, and HannStar Display, held 200 secret meetings to discuss cutting or suspending production to prevent prices from declining, the FTC said.

"They colluded on minimum prices of panels, pricing policies on each product type, timing … Read more

When it comes to software, the desktop is the best neighborhood, and nearly every piece of software tries to move in there. Some merely set a shortcut, but others "do things," often things you don't want and, worse, can't undo.

You have several options for restoring your desktop settings when software hijacks them, most of which aren't difficult but nevertheless often prove challenging to those users who really don't care what's "under the hood" of their computer any more than they do their car or their washing machine. For them, Random … Read more