Finding Internet access and an open hotspot can be a pain in the you know what. In such cases, hackers typically rely on geeky cards, computers and utilities and since I need upload stories from anywhere in the world, I usually have a laptop with NetStumbler, Wireshark and Cain installed and my trusty AirPcap Tx card readily available. But as I discovered last night, all of these high-tech tools were no match for the almighty Dollar, or in this case, the Thai Baht.

Microsoft announced that it will extend the file format range supported by its Office 2007 package. ODF 1.1, PDF 1.5 and XPS will be added with the next service pack, but the integration of Microsoft’s own and recently standardized Office Open XML will be delayed until Office 14.

Opinion - Yesterday’s news that we will be seeing a redesigned XO laptop in 2010 has settled in and it has become clear that version 2 of the notebook is not just an update of the first generation model. OLPC has thrown out the entire design idea and is apparently starting from scratch to come closer to the goal of providing a world computer. But a successful XO-2 may need much more than new hardware.

Canadian notebook manufacturer Eurocom is, at least to our knowledge, the first company to announce the specifications of a system based on Intel’s Montevina platform, which is expected to debut as Centrino 2 next month. The notebook, which can either be used as a gaming notebook or a mobile workstation, can be equipped with up to 8 GB of memory and a pricey quad-core processor.

Motorola has closed one of its costliest adventures in the company’s history. The company was handed a global settlement of all pending Iridium bankruptcy cases, which resulted from a shutdown of the company’s satellite phone technology that was developed and deployed between 1987 and 1998.

Almost all Americans think they are safe drivers, but a new survey shows otherwise.  The second annual Nationwide Insurance DWD or Driving While Distracted survey found that 98% of drivers think they are safe, but that 72% of them drive while distracted.  Nationwide claims that distractions like mobile phone usage, text messaging and eating cause a great majority of accidents.  The company also says societal pressure to immediately respond is the main reason that people use phones while driving.

Special to TG Daily - Multicore architecture has created a little frenzy among programming language designers and software developers to hone up their concurrent and parallel programming skills. But is this push one way? Is it just the hardware driving the software and language design in multi-core era? Rajesh Karmani continues his article series on TG Daily which focuses on a dramatic shift in software development techniques to help developers exploit the horsepower of multi-core processors.

Zagreb (Croatia) - While travelling in Europe we stumbled across more details about Nvidia’s upcoming graphics card, which surely looks more and more like a processing monster to us.

Boeing said that it has begun work on the first Boeing Business Jet 3 (BBJ3), a new private airliner that tries to get the attention of all of those who find their Gulfstream V too small and too average. Launched in 2006, the fuselage of the first BBJ3 has been completed and is currently being prepared for a 2000-mile trip to the company’s Renton, Wash., final assembly facility.

Steve Jobs' WWDC keynote has been officially confirmed and he is widely expected to pull 3G iPhone out of his pockets during his presentation. More launch details surfaced today, supporting the previously rumored launch date as well as the claim that the 3G iPhone will be available globally at or right after launch, depending on where you live.

Greenpeace today released detailed numbers on the concentration of hazardous materials used to manufacture the PS3, Xbox 360 and Wii game consoles. The good news is that the findings reflect previous hazmat results from notebook tests, but the report indicates that each manufacturer has a lot of room to reduce the concentration of materials such as lead, chromium, bromine or cadmium in its products.   

YouTube has told Senator Lieberman that it will leave it up to its viewers to help remove Al-Qaeda terrorist videos.  In an open letter, Lieberman demanded that YouTube immediately remove thousands of videos because they clearly intended “to encourage violence against the West”.  YouTube in its public blog post says hundreds of thousands of videos are uploaded everyday and that it cannot arbitrarily remove one group's videos.

Recently published cellphone market share numbers in the U.S. indicate that the four largest carriers in the U.S. - AT&T Wireless, Verizon Wireless, Sprint Nextel and T-Mobile - have found effective ways to limit churn and protect their customer base. The growth of the big four is especially painful for smaller carriers that are bleeding market share.  

There are those things that don’t look right, like resembling the look of Windows Vista on an iPhone. Even if just looks like the Microsoft operating system, some may consider such a move the ultimate sin of an iPhone owner.

TG Daily Review - Waging standard wars is one of those annoying, but unavoidable flaws in today’s setup of the technology industry. In a perfect world, there would only be one standard defining a technology, but the reality is that in a diverse environment as IT, there will always be different interests and there will always be customers at stake, sparking different ideas of how a certain technology should look like: Take the display segment, for example, and take a closer look at the history of interfaces will reveal a huge mess of D-SUB 15/DB-15, BNC, HDI-45, ADC, DVI-I, DVI-D, HDMI, DisplayPort. Has anyone ever thought about the idea of reusing another interface with a proven track record and that has been around for quite some time to connect a PC to a monitor … such as USB?