Week That Was: Windows 7 RC Out, Gmail down again!

Twitter Security Breached, Again
After the teenager-created Mikkey worm wrecked havoc in mid-April, another hacker, a French hacker by the screen name "Hacker Croll" has managed to break into Twitter's systems and sneak in information related to user accounts, including that of U.S. President Barack Obama's. In a display of arrogance, the hacker has posted screenshots of him viewing private details of the accounts-including details regarding the IP address of the user who accessed the account last.

N97 /Pre-orderMicrosite goes live
Nokia's N97 might be the one of the most look forwarded to phones of this year and if we're to go by the indications we have, the phone is all set to be launched in the next few weeks. The first N97 microsite has cropped up already and select countries even have the option to pre-order the device.

Asus Preps Up 11.6-inch Ultra-thin Eee PC
Its raining Netbooks! Literally! We do not know if the recession has anything to d with this, but almost everyone is flooding the market with a host of ultra compact netbooks. The pioneer of this market ASUS has also announced its intentions to announce a "high end" netbook. Asus president Jerry Shen has stated that the company will launch an 11.6-inch ultra-thin Eee PC notebook later this month. In addition, Asus is still considering the launch of more 10-inch Eee PC notebooks for the mainstream market.

Microsoft Rolls Out Windows 7 Release Candidate
Microsoft has unveiled the Windows 7's first release candidate (RC) after Windows 7 Beta was made available publicly in January. As anticipated earlier, Microsoft has kept its word. However, it did not specify the timing and notes that the download links would be available till July this year. Microsoft has put up the Windows 7 RC ISO files in 32-bit and 64-bit versions in English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish languages.

BlackBerrys Outsell iPhones in U.S.

The good times for Research In Motion (RIM) continue with recent news that the BlackBerry Curve has managed to outsell the Apple iPhone in the first quarter of 2009, in U.S. RIM dominated the smartphones chart with as many as three handsets finding place in the coveted top 5 largest selling phones list there. All this came with the added satisfaction of "beating" the iPhone 3G and relegating it to the second spot. Two other BlackBerry phones; the Storm and the Pearl took the third and fourth spot respectively. T-Mobile's G1 managed to come in at a respectable fifth position.

IMEI-less Chinese Handsets Won't Die Just Yet

If you've been worried sick about your Made-in-China mobile phone dying an untimely death due to its IMEI-less stature, you can breathe a sigh of relief. GSM-industry representative Cellular Operators Association of India (COAI) has developed a software that will provide a unique IMEI number identity to those handsets that don't have it. Prior to this development, the government had decided to bar all Chinese handsets that lacked this IMEI number.

Nokia E71 Successor to Get 5 Megapixel Camera?

After the success of the E71, the phone received an apt upgrade in the form if the freshly launched E75. However, Nokia does not seem to be ready to "let go" the E71 model number and is reportedly planning an update to the E71 in the form of an E71i.E71i will see the addition of a 5 megapixel camera and an OS update in the form of S60 Feature Pack 2. All current E71 models run FP2 - except for the E71x recently launched in U.S.

CEO Confirms Twitter Not for Sale

Here comes the reality after rumors were abound about a possible buyout of the social networking website Twitter by Apple Inc. In a recent television interview, Twitter CEO Biz Stone has denied that they were planning to sell off the startup to Apple or to any other company for that matter. He added that Twitter was only two years old and there was a lot more to do in terms of growth and product features.

Concerned About Security? Use Firefox, Chrome

A new study has revealed that users who use Google's Chrome or Firefox are more "secure" than folks who use other browsers like Safari or Opera. Researchers at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and Google Switzerland have revealed that the built in update mechanisms which keep the browser up to date by automatically downloading and installing updates, offer a far more secure browsing experience as compared with products that need a user prompt to initiate an update. Hit the link to learn more.

Dell Planning Android Based Netbooks
Rumorsville is abounding with the news of Dell readying an ultra-portable laptop, (commonly known as a Netbook) that will run Google's Android OS, instead of Windows XP or Linux. The current rumors arose from a recent press release by BSquare, a software firm. The release mentioned about a "system to use certain Adobe software on Dell netbooks running Google's Android platform".

Gmail Acts up again!

Gmail users went into a tizzy as the popular e-mail service from Google went bonkers yesterday. Users around the world were affected. Even Google Apps users were affected. The latest outage throws some questions at the service's reliability with a string of outages in the past few months.