Images have appeared of what purport to be a new Android device from Motorola. One quick glance is all it takes to discern that this device is a non-keyboard version of the Droid. Closer inspection, however, reveals a truly unique feature: an HDMI out port.

In the second part of our three-part video interview series with San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, we talked about the role technology can play in the transformation of a city, including addressing the growing digital divide, the progress on STEM in San Francisco, and the role the Bay area will play, as a hub of technology innovation, in helping lead the way to economic recovery.

The Harris County Hospital District of Houston, Texas, fired 16 employees, accusing them of violating patient privacy laws by inappropriately accessing the records of a medical resident who'd been admitted to the hospital after she was shot in a grocery store parking lot.

Based in Bangalore, India, a Tata subsidiary that specializes in video effects and animation will open a high-tech delivery center in Los Angeles next week to cater to Hollywood's appetite for video wizardry. Since this is clearly a case of outsourcing, I must ask the question: will the professional positions created at the new lab be "our jobs"?

What Twitter client do you use? TweetDeck is a favorite of many people who use Twitter for professional purposes. I've been an enthusiastic user of Tweetie for the Mac since it came out more than seven months ago, because I love its powerful, simple, and easy-to-use interface. However, TweetDeck now supports Twitter features that Tweetie doesn't, so I figured I'd give TweetDeck another try. And I'm liking it.

That's one of the many analogies and observations drawn by Vyatta CEO Kelly Herrell in a blog post about the economics of open source. The open source business model is tremendously effective, in his eyes -- it's just that its effects are not always measured in dollar values, and that can drive the money men crazy.

The FBI's newly appointed CTO, Jeffrey Johnson, brings an outside-the-beltway background to the job--he worked for Lehman Brothers, a hard-charging technology innovator, until last year. FBI CIO Chad Fulgham also worked at Lehman Bros., as well as at IBM and JPMorgan Chase. Look for their private sector experience to be reflected in the intelligence agency's IT strategy and execution.

We were in a meeting yesterday at General Motor's headquarters with Kirk Gutmann, chief technology and strategy officer, when a woman walked in and handed Gutmann a note. I could see type highlighted in bright yellow. She said, "You need to be in a 4 p.m. board meeting that just got called." I saw a flash of concern pass over Gutmann's face. We shook hands, and our meeting was quickly adjourned. Less than an hour later, I learned CEO Fritz Henderson had resigned.

With the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention this week reporting widespread H1N1 flu outbreaks in 32 states, many companies are dealing with or anticipating the need for staff to work remotely in the months ahead. This can present a challenge for IT organizations that haven't in the past dealt with large numbers of remote workers.

Google has admitted that it is no longer developing its Gears browser plug-in. Instead, it will focus efforts on HTML5, which it says will accomplish much of the same functionality that Gears made possible.

Or else. It’s no surprise that organizations are now looking at adding netbooks into their device mix. A recent InformationWeek Analytics survey found that 72% of enterprises surveyed planned to expand their use of the devices over the next 48 months.

The companies you use to access the internet, both household broadband as well as wireless, have an incredible amount of information on your online habits. They know where and when you to go to sites and in the case of wireless carriers, they usually know where you are in the real world. To supplement their revenue, they are apparently selling this information to the government.

In a wide-ranging interview with InformationWeek, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom talked about DataSF.Org, the role of social networking in politics and running his diverse city, and the role of San Francisco in the digital world. In the first of three in this video series, Newsom discusses how his city has embraced the "open and transparent government" concept.

IBM has already established cloud computing centers in the Chinese cities of Dongying and Wuxi. In the former, the cloud will serve as a "smarter city" platform for development of services. In Wuxi, it will serve as a collective platform for software development. Now it's on to Ho Chi Minh City.

Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of that little thing called Twitter, is showing off his latest project, and Square is trying to turn iPhones into a mobile payment hub for merchants. It's a very interesting idea, but, like Twitter, I'm wondering how it's going to make real money.

Some good news for users of the Motorola CLIQ. Motorola is offering a system update for the device that makes some major improvements in battery life, screen accuracy and accelerometer accuracy. Too bad the CLIQ is stuck on Android 1.5, though.

Healthcare IT adoption is one of four pillars on which the Obama administration is basing its healthcare strategy, and is key to containing costs, administration healthcare officials said. Healthcare IT should be combined with a budget-neutral healthcare reform bill, establishing a Medicare Commission to improve quality, and an excise tax on expensive private healthcare plans, all of which are included in the Senate healthcare reform bill.

Security researchers at CA have found a new so-called "ransomware" attack underway. There are many things you can say about malware writers. Most of it would be NSFW. But you can't say they don't work hard at what they do.

Video calling is one of those features that has the "neat-o" effect on people. It's fairly common in some European markets, but has yet to make much of an impact in the U.S. Perhaps the newest version of fring for the iPhone will change that, as it allows one-way video sharing from the iPhone to another device running either fring or Skype.

Readers of this blog know I'm a fan of the PortableApps.com suite of open source programs. Now, its curators have made it that much easier to take your app -- freeware or open source -- and make it a PortableApp.

Neither Verizon Wireless nor Motorola have reported official sales figures for the Droid smartphone, but estimates place current sales between 700,000 and 800,000. That makes reaching the one million units sold milestone (pun intended) within Motorola's grasp.

Looking to show that turnabout is very fair play, Sun has launched a campaign to snatch customers from HP with a "no-risk migration assessment" aimed at HP enterprise users who "are facing higher support costs, performance and availability issues, and loss of ISV support for critical business applications."

Black Friday in the US was boosted by mobile phones, but perhaps not in the way you think. Yes, there were definitely some good deals on mobile phones, but I'm talking about people using mobile phones to hone in on good deals and even complete some purchases.

In 2008, TechCrunch's Michael Arrington had a lovely vision for a $200 portable tablet device that would provide wireless web browsing. Sixteen months later, the collaborators on the CrunchPad are going through a messy divorce and it's not likely to see the light of day. Looking at the project's evolution, though, I can't say I'm surprised.

As the Senate begins debating its healthcare reform bill, there's several health IT related provisions that aren't likely to stir a lot of emotion on the Senate floor, but deserve some attention.

Today, citing people familiar with Nokia's 2010 product roadmap, Reuters is reporting that Nokia will release just one new device in 2010 running its Linux-based Maemo platform. That's a bad idea, Nokia.

I'm wondering if Google Wave is like a concept car for Google. We'll never see it in production--but all of its features and capabilities will emerge in other products released by Google and other companies. Google Wave solves some very real business problems. But I think even Google will have trouble getting companies to adopt it.

On the cusp of launching its Azure cloud computing service, Microsoft is also making a savvy bid to lock up a patent for one of the main worries--vendor lock-in--of cloud users. (The other big concern is security.) The folks from Redmond have filed a patent application for migrating data to a new cloud, which is what you'd have to do when leave your first vendor.

After a couple of years of rest, L0phtCrack, one of the most famous password auditing and recovery tools is back.

Today LG and AT&T introduced a new Windows Mobile 6.5 smartphone, the eXpo. The device's defining feature is a removable Texas Instruments DLP pico projector, which can be used to share movies...er...PowerPoint Presentations when on the road.

Would Google's Chrome OS spell more competition for Android than anything else? That's one of the possibilities looming for Google's browser-centric Linux distro, as on each closer inspection it looks that much less like a Windows killer.

Cloud storage is constantly being discussed in the IT media today. When you get right down to it, what can businesses really use cloud storage for now? The small office, individual user has embraced cloud storage for backups and for collaboration, but what can larger businesses use these services for?

Just before the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend, AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon Wireless all announced sales for Black Friday and over the weekend. Conspicuously absent was any sort of sales event promoted by Sprint. Turns out Sprint was saving its deals for Cyber Monday instead of Black Friday.

I need to add an FTP server to my environment, and as I sit here and struggle with how I'm going to do that and stay under my annual budget, it occurs to me that the cloud isn't a bad option anymore. The savings are pretty compelling, in fact; read on for a quick and dirty cost analysis.

Ever since Google's Android phone has been known about, there has been speculation that Google would make a "Google Phone" to sell. Google has steadfastly maintained they don't want anything to do with hardware though. They are satisfied with making the platform and working with hardware makers to bring Android to the consumers. That may change.

A report in the Financial Times says that Microsoft has approached News Corp to obtain exclusive indexing rights for their sites such as Fox News. In return for some payment from Microsoft, News Corp would change its sites to block Google's indexing (and presumably others as well), leaving Bing as the primary way to find content on their sites.

For about a year now, Microsoft has been trying to gather data on real-world attacks, the types of attacks normal users might encounter in their day to day Internet use - and the software maker just released some interesting data on password attacks.

I am ashamed to admit it but I am a deal hunter. I'd like to share my top resources so you can save actual money on Cyber Monday.

As families and friends gathered across our great country yesterday, we were celebrating the merits of low tech. I think it should teach us something about how we conceive, build, and deliver any tech.

President Obama's making a new push to encourage and improve math and science education, in order to keep up in the global economy. In China, meanwhile, math and computer skills rank low as a requirement for driving innovation, a surprising Newsweek survey finds.

AOL is offering up a tantalizing taste of its post-Time Warner business strategy: a new brand identity, which it plans to formally introduce when it lists on the NYSE on December 10.

At least three of the four major network operators in the U.S. have announced sales on devices for the Black Friday shopping bonanza. Here's a round-up of what AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless are offering. My favorite deal is the buy-one-get-one BlackBerry offer that Verizon has scheduled for Friday, November 27.

The holiday shopping season has fully arrived, and stores across the country will be opening early and offering bargains. If you're brave enough to hit the big box retail stores this weekend, Best Buy is offering five different Android handsets for $99 each.

"Transparency" is a vital term in open source: how easy is it to find out about some aspect of an open source project or product? Matthew Aslett of the 451 CAOS Theory blog went to find out how a number of vendors of open core products stacked up in this regard.

I've said before the iPhone is nice but what really makes the platform stand out is the App Store that now has over 100,000 apps available. There are grumblings however from an increasing number of developers not happy with the way Apple is treating those that keep the App Store's shelves stocked.

There's exploit code circulating that can be used to target certain versions of Internet Explorer, Microsoft says it's working on a fix.

Organizations are realizing technological expertise is just as essential as sharp legal analysis when it comes to e-discovery.

One of the coolest features that comes with the Motorola Droid is the new Google Maps Navigation application. It provides free, voice-guided navigation for the Android 2.0 platform. Google decided to spread the Maps Navigation love around a bit and recently made the app available to devices running Android 1.6.

Hewlett Packard has occasionally tossed a new iPAQ-branded smartphone into the market more as proof that it can still make them than to scare up any real sales. Its latest smartphone is perhaps one of the best-looking it has ever crafted, but HP crippled it with a terrible, horrible, no-good name.

Among the people Google's partnering with to build Chrome OS, there's now a very familiar name: Canonical, the folks behind Ubuntu. In their words: "Canonical is contributing engineering to Google under contract" (for Chrome OS).

Did your iPhone catch the new "Duh" iPhone virus? If so, Apple says it's your own fault for jailbreaking the iPhone. iPhones that have not been jailbroken are not susceptible to the virus, and jailbreakers can take steps to protect themselves.

In our last few entries we looked at what can be done today with storage software running as virtual machines. In this entry we will consider what the future holds for storage as a virtual machine. Storage as a virtual machine may be the only way you apply data services in the future.

The iPhone and devices based on Android make up 75% of mobile web traffic according to a recent report by AdMob. These two devices together don't make up anywhere near 75% of the device sales, but they have a disproportionate share of web browsing.

Internet Explorer 8 may have just shipped, but last week Dean Hachamovitch who is General Manager for Internet Explorer provided some hints about what is coming with IE9. A release date wasn't one of the hints that was dropped; I think it's far away.

Microsoft is reportedly discussing a deal that would see News Corporation remove its Web sites, such as the Wall Street Journal, from Google's index.