New FiOS top speed is half that of Google Fiber—and 4x the price

In an attempt to go after more lucrative, higher-revenue customers, Verizon announced Monday that it would be boosting its FiOS service to 500Mbps—for $310 per month. By comparison, in original Google Fiber locale Kansas City, 1Gbps of service starts at just $70 per month. (Comcast charges $320 for 305Mbps speeds on its network.)

Last year, Verizon boosted its speeds to 300Mbps—of course, that’s still limited to the small part of the United States where FiOS is available. (Verizon has essentially halted new FiOS rollouts, meaning that if it's not available in your area, it’s unlikely to show up anytime soon—for now, only 5.8 million Americans have Verizon’s fiber service.)

While rollout of significantly faster broadband across North America is limited, we’ve reported on developments in some parts of Northern California, Vancouver (Canada), rural Vermont, and Seattle. And Google Fiber is only reaching specific areas of the Midwest and Western United States and probably won’t be nationwide anytime soon.

However, one Verizon technician told Bloomberg that the company is holding back. “We can support up to 10Gbps on our network,” said Fowler Abercrombie, a manager of the FiOS development team in Irving, Texas. “We’re watching the market to see where it goes next.”

Finally Auto-updating is coming...finally

By this fall, Apple and Microsoft will have followed in the footsteps of Google to automatically update apps on their mobile and desktop platforms, another step in the trend to take security out of users' hands.

"This is one of the best things we've seen in security in the last decade," argued Andrew Storms, senior director of development and operations at San Francisco-based CloudPassage. "Historically, we've always relied on the end user to update, and praying that they do so. Auto-updating means that the moment [a new version] is released, the majority has the most secure code available installed."

Google's Android and Chrome OS -- the latter based on the Chrome browser -- automatically update installed apps, silently and in the background, without bothering the user.

Both Apple and Microsoft will mimic Google later this year, when the former ships OS X Mavericks for the Mac and iOS 7 for the iPhone and iPad. Microsoft, too, has committed to app auto-updates, a feature that will debut in Windows 8.1 this fall.  Finally!

Did you ask for the Ask Toolbar? Didn't think so..

Chances are, you've had this experience: you weren't really paying attention to all the little checkboxes and fine print when you were installing a software application, and the next time you opened up your Web browser, you found out that you, like countless others before you, had accidentally installed the Ask.com search toolbar.

Well, no big deal, it's just a tiny toolbar, right? Not so much. The problem is, it isn't just taking up precious screen real estate on your screen. The Ask Toolbar is frequently referred to as a browser hijacker because it takes control of the Web browser and does things you may not want, such as using Ask.com instead of Google or Bing to perform a search, or setting the Ask.com webpage as your default homepage. Many people call it a virus, but it isn't malware. The security industry generally refers to it as a "PUP," or potentially unwanted program. Users who it hijacks mostly have less polite names for it.

Click here for the full article and more importantly, how to get rid of the toolbar.

AT&T's Next phone upgrade plans are a huge ripoff

Who would have guessed that? 

AT&T unveiled its new Next plan today, which allows you to pay a small monthly fee for the privilege of upgrading your phone every year without a down payment. It's an obvious response to T-Mobile's Jump plan, which costs $10 a month and allows for an upgrade every six months. Both plans sound like a great idea: you'll get a new phone much faster than before, without having to pay full price up front or resigning your contract every time.

The big differences with AT&T's Next plan are that it costs anywhere from $15 to $50 a month depending on which phone you buy, and also that it's an absolutely clear ripoff designed to cheat customers into paying full price for their phone without actually buying anything.  For more on how to give AT&T your money for nothing read on...

An Apple Innovation that is struggling...Thunderbolt

For Thunderbolt fans hoping that the high-speed interface will catch on, we've got more bad news: an Acer representative talking to CNET has said that the company has no plans to support Thunderbolt in its PCs this year. Acer's Aspire S5 Ultrabook was one of the few Windows laptops to include Thunderbolt support when it was introduced in early 2012.

"We're really focusing on USB 3.0—it's an excellent alternative to Thunderbolt," said the Acer spokesperson. "It's less expensive, offers comparable bandwidth, charging for devices such as mobile phones, and has a large installed base of accessories and peripherals."

By itself, the news of one company distancing itself from Thunderbolt might not be a big deal, but this is just another example of the trouble that Thunderbolt faces two-and-a-half years after its public introduction in the 2011 MacBook Pro. A Newegg search reveals a handful of high-end desktop motherboards that support it (five boards, all above $150), but the complete list of non-Apple prebuilt systems that have ever supported the interface is pretty short.

We've talked before about how cost is one of the primary obstacles facing Thunderbolt—the cost of the cables, the cost of licensing, and the extra cost of putting the separate controller chip into PCs are all significant hurdles. Some relief may come when (or if) Intel begins to integrate Thunderbolt into its chipsets, which certainly boosted adoption of USB 3.0 when that interface became natively supported by Ivy Bridge's 7-series chipsets.

Until then, though, Thunderbolt's chicken-and-egg problem will persist. PC makers won't want to spend the money to integrate the port until there are more accessories for it, and accessory makers won't want to support the interface until more systems use it.

So what happens to your stolen smartphone or tablet?

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As demand for smartphones continues to increase, mobile-related crime has risen with it. In the US, not only are smartphones a prime target for thieves looking to make a quick buck, organized crime gangs are paying large sums of money to ship devices outside the country. The Huffington Post takes a look at the massive global market for smartphones, detailing the operation of a US company that accepted so many stolen iPhones and iPads (to ship overseas) it needed an armored truck to deliver the stacks of cash it used to pay for them all. While there are strict processes in place to restrict the trading of stolen smartphones in the US and neighboring regions, carriers lack arrangements with other countries, which allows international smartphone trafficking to thrive. It explains why some stolen handsets are often traced to the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where smartphone prices can be up to ten times higher than in western markets.