Microsoft has announced that people who use both Hotmail and Internet Explorer 9 are now able to see a desktop notification of how many messages have arrived since they last checked their Inbox. Unlike Chrome's desktop notifications, these won't be pop-up bubbles. In fact, the pinned Hotmail icon will simply change to display a number next to it -- that shows how many messages have arrived ... Read more »

Today's the day, folks! In case you haven't heard, today is the not-quite-official-but-still-a-good-idea World Backup Day 2011, which is all about awareness -- awareness that your hard drive and all its data are vulnerable to the harsh realities of this world we live in today. The idea may have started as a simple post on Reddit, but it's bloomed into a full-blown initiative, and it's a ... Read more »

Boxcar, the push notification application that has a great number of fans on iOS, has just made it to the Mac, though in beta form for now. Essentially, Boxcar allows you to get push notifications for many different services, and lets you organize those messages and deal with them in a less stressful way than, say, the notification system that Apple has built into iOS. About a couple of months ... Read more »

During the Photoshop World conference's keynote, Adobe has unveiled some details about the next generation Photoshop for iPad, that's being worked on as we speak. Despite the recent feature additions to the current version of Photoshop for iOS, that's still an 'Express' app, and for good reasons -- although quite robust, it's nowhere near as capable as the desktop software going by the same ... Read more »

Twitter has just updated its iOS app, and the biggest change that version 3.3.3 brings is something many users have asked for -- the removal of the (in)famous dickQuickBar. First introduced in an update at the beginning of this month, this new feature has seen immense backlash from users of the app, who considered it had only one purpose -- to intrusively serve 'promoted trends' and help Twitter ... Read more »

I'm getting fat; that's what you see on the screenshot to the right -- my gradual move from chubby to portly. But never mind the numbers, look at the pretty graph! If you've ever read The Hacker's Diet, this graph should be instantly recognizable. Each point shows the weight for a given day, while the trend line lets you see if you're gaining or losing weight. When I use my "main" PC, I ... Read more »

Sure, Amazon's Cloud Player works -- as long as you're in the U.S. or willing to do some tinkering -- but it's fairly simplistic at the moment. There are plenty of features missing which we'd like to see added -- but since Cloud Player is a Web app we don't have to wait for Amazon! Google Chrome users, for example, can add playback hotkeys with an extension called keyMazony. Once ... Read more »

With Windows 8 milestone 3 now up for grabs for select Microsoft Connect partners, it's inevitable that leaked bits and pieces will start popping up around the Web. In fact, the first "official" wallpaper image from the still-brewing OS is already making the rounds. As you can see, it's got a similar feel to the good ol' Windows 7 default background, but features a more subdued smattering of ... Read more »

Google, as part of its ongoing and much-needed overhaul of its popular Blogger platform, has just enabled five dynamic, HTML5ish, AJAXy 'Dynamic Views'. There's a video introducing the new layouts after the break. The five new views provide fresh and interesting ways to explore your favorite Blogger blogs. The Mosaic view, for example, creates a wall of thumbnails -- click one, and it zooms ... Read more »

With the webOS 3.0 SDK available for almost two months, HP has now given developers access to a beta download of webOS 3.0 -- which powers the upcoming TouchPad and will likely ride along on HP desktops and laptops in the form of an emulator. Right now, the webOS 3.0 beta is only available to Early Access developers. The crew at PreCentral states that HP appears to have eased up on access ... Read more »

Google Voice Search has just introduced localizations for Latin America, Indonesia and Malaysia, enabling native language search for hundreds of millions of users. Google's official blog post offers some interesting insights into the process of collecting and analyzing the speech data needed to expand support. Thousands of hours were spent gathering voice samples and choosing key regional ... Read more »

Select Microsoft Connect partners -- major players like HP -- have been given their first taste of Windows 8. According to various sources, the build string currently sits at 7971.0.110324-1900, which is the third milestone build of the successor to Windows 7. So far, there haven't been many details revealed about Windows 8. An actual System Restore -- which is being referred to as History ... Read more »

Google, according to reports from "a dozen executives working at key companies in the Android ecosystem" is finally locking down the open source and easily-fragmented Android operating system. As it currently stands, Google hands over the 'final' code for each version of Android, and OEMs and developers then spend some time customizing the OS to fit their hardware, and to create a unique ... Read more »

Microsoft, citing Google's tyrannical 95% share of the European search market, has lodged a formal complaint with the European Commission. It's not like Microsoft is breaking any ground here -- the European Commission has been investigating Google's alleged violation of European competition law since November 2010 -- but there's no doubt that the addition of Microsoft's gravitas will affect the ... Read more »

This is one of those posts that could probably be condensed into a tweet: Apple has released the second Preview of Mac OS X 10.7 Lion. If you're running Preview 1, it looks like you'll first receive a small update via Software Update, and then you can download Preview 2 from the Mac App Store. There has been some speculation that Apple is getting close to a release or Golden Master build, ... Read more »