Tech News

Macworld.com - Looking to catch the most recent season of Lost, but don’t want to succumb the baggage of having to buy a bunch of episodes that you’ll only watch once? Relax, friend, because if you’re an iTunes 10 user, you can now rent TV shows from the comfort of your very own…computer.

PC World - One of the most confusing things for the newcomer to Linux is how many distributions, or versions, of the operating system there are. Ubuntu is the one most people have heard of, but there are hundreds of others as well, each offering some variant on the basic Linux theme.

Mashable - Facebook is apparently testing a new subscription feature that would allow users to receive alerts any time a specific friend takes certain actions on the social network.

AP - WIDER NET: After pressuring BlackBerry maker Research in Motion Ltd. for data on users' traffic, India is now cracking down on other companies that provide encrypted communications.

AP - India has widened its security crackdown, asking all companies that provide encrypted communications — not just BlackBerry-maker Research In Motion — to install servers in the country to make it easier for the government to obtain users' data. That would likely affect digital giants like Google and Skype.

Reuters - Samsung Electronics' first tablet computer, the Galaxy Tab, will go on sale in two weeks, it said on Thursday, turning up the heat on Apple Inc's iPad.

Reuters - Burger King Holdings Inc agreed to sell itself to investment firm 3G Capital for $3.26 billion, giving the No. 2 U.S. fast-food chain breathing room to fix its business and close the gap with leader McDonald's Corp.

PC World - SAS Institute on Thursday announced a new toolset aimed at giving business users the ability to work with predictive analytics software, which has historically been the province of specialized statisticians.

PC World - Microsoft on Thursday started featuring a small advertisement on its Bing home page for Internet Explorer 8 in an apparent effort to encourage more people to migrate to the latest version of its browser.

Mashable - Late last evening, Apple released iTunes 10 and its new Ping social network to the public. Assuming you were able to access the service, you may have noticed the ability to add friends via Facebook Connect, a feature we mentioned in our first-impressions post last night.

AP - THE DEAL: Burger King Holdings Inc. is selling itself to investment firm 3G Capital in a deal valued at $3.26 billion.

AFP - Google released an improved version of Chrome on Thursday as the Internet titan's Web browser turned two years old.

AFP - NASA has landed on the iPad.

NewsFactor - Finishing touches complete, Microsoft sent its latest Windows Phone 7 operating system to equipment manufacturers Wednesday, paving the way for a round of Windows-based mobile devices to debut in time for the holiday season.

AFP - Hot microblogging service Twitter launched an application for the Apple iPad on Thursday to rave reviews from technology blogs.

PC Magazine - Tandberg Data now offers several enterprise-level network-attached data protection devices for the SMB.

AP - Burger King Holdings Inc., the nation's perennially No. 2 hamburger chain, said Thursday that it is selling itself to little-known private equity firm 3G Capital in a deal valued at $3.26 billion.

AP - BlackBerry's Canadian manufacturer should give law enforcement agencies around the world access to its customer data, the U.N. telecommunications chief said, adding that governments have legitimate security concerns that should not be ignored.

AFP - Competition to Apple's highly successful iPad hotted up on Thursday as Samsung and Toshiba unveiled rival tablet PCs that they hope will steal some of the Californian giant's thunder.

PC World - An information security company will soon release a tool that will allow companies to test their ERP (enterprise resource planning) software for security threats.