Teak Technologies

Another year gone and now is the time to commemorate the most popular brands of 2011. Research firm Nielsen has released its “Tops of 2011” lists and the top spots are occupied by familiar names such as Google, Facebook and Apple. Google has topped the ‘Top 10 US Web Brands’ lists, followed by Facebook. Surprisingly, the third spot goes to Yahoo, the struggling web behemoth. MSN and YouTube occupy fourth and fifth spots respectively.  While Microsoft and Apple in top 10 list does surprise us. Other occupants of the list, AOL Media Network and Ask Search Network, are a bit puzzling. Wikipedia occupied eighth spot.

Facebook held the top spot in ‘Top 10 US Social Networks & Blogs’ list. Twitter has been placed third, while Blogger is sandwiched between these two. Social netwo

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Owners of the M.ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 12-50mm F3.5-6.3 EZ will be happy to know that an update has been released which adds a few improvements.For starters, the lens now supports Zoom Resume when used with Panasonic cameras, which is a nice touch. The newest firmware also improves the way the image stabilizer behaves in macro mode, which should net you some cleaner photographs – always a good thing.To download the firmware, just plug your camera into your computer and hit ‘update’ or download the software updater and follow the provided instructions.

Large book publishers’ most recent earnings reports reflect a new normal: Revenues are roughly flat, but profits are up—in large part due to e-books.

In the 2011 Bertelsmann annual report released this week, Random House said it has nearly 40,000 titles available as e-books worldwide, and while revenues were down for the year, “operating EBIT was higher year on year, especially in the United States. This rise was helped by continued cost-cutting measures and lower return rates in North America and the United Kingdom due to increased e-book sales.”

Similarly, Pearson’s 2011 annual report shows that Penguin’s sales are roughly flat, while adjusted operating profit rose by 5 percent, again due in part to e-book sales. “Penguin saw e-book revenues in 2011 double on the previous year,” the report says. “In 2011 they a

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A longtime game designer and collector of gaming systems, Chris Melissinos is the guest curator of the “The Art of Video Games” exhibition, which opens at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, D.C. on March 16.

Melissinos, who is former chief evangelist and chief gaming officer for Sun and founder of PastPixels, talked with Network World associate news editor Ann Bednarz about why the art of video games is different from other artistic media, the “separation anxiety” he’s feeling after loaning many of his vintage gaming systems to the travelling exhibition, and why now is the opportune time for an exhibition like this.

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Windows 8 screenshot

Pressured by that trend, Microsoft is updating Windows to make PCs work more like smartphones and to bring Windows to a whole new class of devices: iPad-like touch-screen tablets. Last month, the company launched what it calls a “consumer preview” of Windows 8, the next version of its flagship operating system. The preview is not a final version – that isn’t expected until at least this fall – but it’s close.

I’ve been playing around with the Windows 8 preview for several weeks. I loaded it onto a several-year old Dell laptop, in part because that’s what I had available and in part to see what users of traditional PCs can expect from the new software.

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The brand name of an upcoming Android smartphone for Verizon has surfaced via a leaked internal screen. This phone first surfaced as the HTC Fireball and some images of the device also surfaced.

The new leak published by the folks at AndroidCentral, indicates that Verizon Wireless intends to launch the smartphone as the HTC Droid Incredible 4G. The leak includes the handset’s model number, ADR6410 and the MAP (minimum advertised price) policy that will be assigned to the device.

The HTC Droid Incredible 4G is rumored to offer an AMOLED-based display, a 1.2GHz dual-core CPU, 1GB of RAM, 4G LTE, and an 8MP camera.

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A Sunday, and April 1st at that, is an unusual day to launch a flagship product, but Nokia has done this with the new E710 Communicator. Seemingly incorporating some of the best bits of both the N8 and E7, we have, at last, a smartphone that we’ll leave no Symbian fan dissatisfied. Press photos and specifications are all shown below.

Effectively the E7 form factor but with a base that’s 4mm thicker (full dimensions are 124 x 62 x 17mm;  weight is 191g), the same 4 inch, ‘Clear Black Display’ Polarized AMOLED display is used at the usual nHD resolution. However, the new design answers complaints about the E7 in dramatic style. It

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