Computer tech

I have tremendous respect for two groups of engineers: Apple's hardware designers and Google's Web programmers. But when it comes to Google Maps, boy, do I wish the two got along better.

For months now, I've suffered from a problem using the mouse on Google Maps: when I'd click and drag to pan the map using the Magic Mouse, the view would zoom out when I released the button. Instead of feeling the magic, I felt hexed.

The issue stems from the fact that sliding your finger forward or backward along the Magic Mouse is equivalent … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--CeBIT is a mammoth trade show that most people in the United States have never heard of.

It's a huge show, with more than 300,000 attendees--many of them ordinary consumers who show up on "family day" on Saturday, the last day of the show. CeBIT has waxed and waned over the years, losing some clout with the rise of Mobile World Congress and the shift of so much electronics manufacturing to Asia, but it remains a fixture of the European technology world.

Along with sections for personal computing, Internet companies, and IT services, you'll … Read more

Don't like playing by Apple's rules? Tough beans.

Because for the foreseeable future, Apple's financial power and customer appeal gives it a powerful command over the industry--everything from component suppliers to programmers. That poses all kinds of problems, but it also means we'll be moving much faster into the future of computing--call it the post-post-PC era.

Yesterday's launch of the new iPad shows just how complete that power is. Sure, we'll still have Windows PCs, Android phones, and even MacBooks, but the iPad is on a steady trajectory that leads from entertaining toward essential. … Read more

HANOVER, Germany--Wish you had one of those spy-movie scramblers the president uses to to keep snoopers from tapping into his calls?

At the CeBIT show here, Secusmart debuted a microSD card with a built-in processor that lets people do just that with ordinary smartphones. It plugs into phones with a microSD slot--yes, that means no iPhones--then encrypts voice and SMS communications.

The technology uses VoIP (voice over Internet Protocol) to actually place the calls, which means it needs 3G or Wi-Fi connections, said Hans-Christoph Quelle, a managing director at the German company. With that connection, it provides real-time, full-duplex communications--in … Read more

Startup Audience currently specializes in improving audio quality for higher-end phones--the iPhone 4 and 4S, most notably--but now it's going down market.

The company sells small chips that process phones' microphone signals with technology it calls EarSmart designed to identify the person speaking and filter out everything else. It's good for voice calls, obviously, but also for newer uses, such as issuing voice commands to a phone, videoconferencing, or capturing the soundtrack for a video.

Audiences's technology reproduces audio signal processing that humans use--processing that relies on our having two ears and therefore that works on … Read more

Apple's A5 processor includes noise-reduction circuitry licensed from a start-up called Audience, and a chip analyst believes that fact resolves an iPhone 4S mystery and explains why the iPhone 4 lacks the Siri voice-control system.

Audience revealed details of its Apple partnership in January, when it filed paperwork for an initial public offering (IPO) of stock. Teardown work from iFixit and Chipworks revealed a dedicated Audience chip in the iPhone 4, but the iPhone 4S integrates Audience's "EarSmart" technology directly into the A5 processor, the company's S-1 filing said.

The details answered a question that … Read more

Kazuo Hirai is becoming Sony's new chief executive, replacing Howard Stringer on April 1, the Japanese electronics giant announced Wednesday.

Hirai led Sony's PlayStation gaming business and more recently took over a growing electronics group, and Stringer said in a statement he recommended him for the CEO post:

Three years ago, I started to work with the board on succession plans, and in February 2009 we named a new generation of leaders to be my management team. Among them was Kaz Hirai, who had distinguished himself through his work in the PlayStation and networked entertainment businesses. Kaz is … Read more

Intel apparently believes there's life beyond Ethernet and USB.

Those industry-standard interfaces are taking over an ever larger number of jobs connecting one digital device to another. Its work with Apple to develop and promote Thunderbolt shows that the company doesn't think USB is the only way to plug a device into a PC, and a deal to acquire InfiniBand assets from Qlogic shows that it sees limits to Ethernet, too.

Intel didn't disclose terms of the deal but said it should close this quarter. Along with the InfiniBand product lines and related assets, Intel said it … Read more

LaCie, one of the first companies out of the gate last year with storage using Intel's fast Thunderbolt interface, introduced a dual-drive system called the 2big today at CES.

The 2big can be configured with two drives paired for high performance and capacity (RAID 0) or for high reliability by mirroring (RAID 1). Some people will appreciate fast backups, no doubt, but it seems likely that those willing to spring for Thunderbolt will be more inclined to take the performance route.

In addition, LaCie introduced its eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series. eSATA is an external version of the usual internal … Read more