Take The Poll: When Do You Change Your Email Password?

Unlike big Corporations that you may work for, having a strict policy for changing your own GMail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Windows Live Hotmail or any other email password probably does not exist.

If you are like many users who use Internet based email, most likely you have not changed your password recently, or for that matter, still have the same password since the day you first created the email account.

If you never experienced having your email account hacked, consider yourself lucky. Believe me, you don't want to experience it. Worse, having a false sense of security in thinking that no one will ever find out your email account password is just ridiculous thinking.

Two Verizon Android phones coming in 2009

Google and Verizon Wireless on Tuesday announced what would have once seemed a very unlikely partnership, pledging to "advance the discussion" in the mobile computing market with a family of jointly designed devices to appear over the next few years.
Eric Schmidt and Lowell McAdam, CEOs of Google and Verizon Wireless respectively, worked on this partnership for 18 months before they were ready to officially bring it to light, they said Tuesday morning in a Webcast press conference. Two mobile phones running Google's Android mobile operating system will launch on Verizon's network by the end of the year, and that's just the start of a joint road map that will include other Android-based devices beyond phones, the companies said.
Verizon is known for the strong performance of its data network, but has not historically been known for its mobile software, at least not in a good way. The carrier was perhaps most emblematic of the wireless industry's desire to control the software that ran on its devices, and that left Verizon customers with a stable network but relatively unpopular applications.

The brawn of Facebook, the brains of Twitter

If you were a social-networking site other than Facebook or Twitter, you were probably struggling to stay above water in 2009. But if you were one of the many services built on top of Facebook's or Twitter's platforms, this may well have been a very good year.

Some formerly big names in social networking were attempting to revamp, rebrand, or recover. MySpace hired former Facebook exec Owen Van Natta to spearhead a turnaround for the News Corp.-owned social site as it saw its traffic increasingly eaten up by Facebook's; at year's end, it was still struggling to reinvent itself as a music and pop-culture powerhouse. Friendster, long past popularity in the U.S., took advantage of Asian traffic and sold itself to a Malaysian company in December. AOL, under the new auspices of CEO Tim Armstrong, more or less attempted to sweep its embarrassingly pricey $850 million acquisition of social site Bebo under the rug, placing it in a new division called "AOL Ventures."

Facebook, however, was riding high. Shortly after the start of the year, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg--several months away from his 25th birthday--posted an entry on the company blog in which he announced that the social network had hit the milestone of 150 million members. At the beginning of December, it had more than doubled, reaching 350 million.

Ford Goes Wireless

Today Ford announced the second generation of its Sync in-car connectivity system. The biggest feature of the new version: an in-car WiFi system, powered by customer's USB mobile broadband modem. Using any mobile modem (often known as an "aircard"), the new Sync system will broadcast a WiFi signal throughout the vehicle, giving WiFi-enabled computers and other mobile devices access to the Internet wherever the broadband modem gets a signal.

The Sync system will provide secure wireless connections, using the WiFi Protected Access 2 (WPA2) protocol. It will require users to enter a randomly chosen password before they can connect to the Internet. When SYNC sees a WiFi device for the first time, the driver has to specifically allow it to connect, preventing unauthorized users from using the signal.

Ford isn't the first car company to announce in-car WiFi; last year, for example, ChryslerAutonet Mobile to offer an built-in WiFi router in most of its 2009 vehicles. That system, however, requires a monthly service fee. The Sync system will rely on customers' existing mobile broadband services. teamed up with

Gift-Worthy Budget LCD Photo Frames

I’m shopping for a pretty basic digital photo frame for some friends who have a digital camera and an adorable 1-year-old who has just learned to walk. They are forever showing shots of him, and a digital frame seems like an ideal gift for the holidays.

These days, digital photo frames can do so much more than display photos from a memory card. Many can connect to a Wi-Fi network to wirelessly stream photos from online photo-sharing sites, play movies and audio tracks, and even display local weather forecasts and Facebook feeds.

My friends use a computer every day, but they are not tremendously tech-savvy. In fact, they recently called me to ask how to transfer photos from a memory card to their PC. So I’m figuring a simple frame, without Wi-Fi, would be best. (I’ve heard many users have encountered problems linking wirelessly to their online photo sites, although I haven’t tried this myself.)

The Top 10 tech trends of 2009
-- Engineers didn't make huge improvements to technology in 2009. The year's big tech names -- Twitter, Facebook, Google, Apple, Amazon -- all existed before January.

Instead, this is the year technology changed us.At year's end, we're connected to each other and to the Internet like never before. In 2009, we carried tiny computers in our pockets, through which we fed the Internet constant real-time info about where we were and what we were doing.

Our app-laden phones helped us manage our on-the-go lifestyles; our books fell off the shelves and into e-readers; our televisions and video games unchained themselves from home entertainment centers; and our mobile updates helped organize protests and even threaten governments.

We could have done any of these things in 2008. But we embraced in unprecedented numbers a digital-centered life in 2009.

Here's a look back at how it happened. It's CNN.com's 10 biggest tech trends of the year, listed in no particular order. Think we missed something? Please let us know in the comments below.

As Phones Do More, They Become Targets of Hacking

This year, the Russian antivirus company Kaspersky Lab reported on a new malicious program that stole money by taking over Nokia phones and making small charges to the owners’ wireless accounts.

Last month, an Australian student created an experimental worm that hopscotched across “jailbroken” iPhones, which are phones altered to run software Apple has not authorized. The mischievous worm did not cause any damage; it just installed a photo of the ’80s pop star Rick Astley. But to security experts, it suggested that pernicious attacks on iPhones are possible.

Windows XP
Finally, consumers got the same, more-reliable Windows software as their corporate brethren in Windows XP. But the product was dogged by controversy: Launching not long after Microsoft's landmark antitrust trial, the product contained links to other Web services that critics said were designed to help Microsoft control the Internet the same way it dominated PC software. XP also launched just weeks after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Microsoft had to pull a planned marketing tagline, "Prepare to Fly," in light of the suicide airline hijackings.

Stealthy Samsung
When looking for an affordable laptop, don't pick the prettiest pony at the fair, or you may wind up sorely disappointed. This isn't the flashiest laptop you can buy. It's specifications, however, stand out. It includes Nvidia 105M graphics, 4 GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Bonus: It weighs just 4.9 pounds and is only 1.4-inch thick.

Videogames That Make You Smarter

If action and violence in videogames is getting you down, give so-called brain games a try. The latest batch of brain games, which include puzzles, strategy and casual games, are enjoying a quiet success and injecting the industry with a fresh take on what's fun. Here's a peek at some popular titles.

High volume of Mac sales may account for iMac delay

Apple's delay in shipping the 27-inch iMac may have more to do with the sheer volume of sales than any problems with the graphics chips, according to numbers from market research firm NPD.
Stephen Baker, NPD's vice president of industry analysis, told CNET on Monday that for October and November, Mac desktop sales were up 74 percent over the same period last year. While NPD did not break the numbers down by desktop model, it's clear the iMac is a top seller.

In fact, the 27-inch iMac appears to be selling so well, it could account for the shipping delay that Apple apologized for on Sunday.

"It's not surprising Apple would be having problems supplying them [iMacs]," said Baker. "I can't imagine in their wildest dreams they would have thought they would sell like this."

Reports over the weekend suggested Apple was delaying shipments of the 27-inch iMac due to reported problems with the graphics card. While those issues remain, it may not be the root cause of the delay.

The surge in Mac sales was not limited to the 27-inch model. Baker said that the 21.5-inch iMac and the Mac mini are also doing very well.

Piper Jaffray financial analyst Gene Munster estimated in a research note to clients on Monday that Apple could sell 2.9 million to 3 million Macs for the current quarter, according to a report on AppleInsider. Munster cautioned that approximately 50 percent of all Mac sales for the quarter happen in December, so that number could change.

A PC Rooted in the ’50s

Sometimes a design catches your eye. Some designs catch your eye, and a whole lot more.

Dave Schultze isn’t a retro kind of guy, and in fact his rendering of a 1950s-era Philco Predicta television into a Windows computer — all sparkling orange and chrome and black — might be too futuristic for some. To me, it’s the most stunning computer design since Apple introduced The Cube.

There is no physical model of the Philco PC, “and I designed it with no client, no deadline, no budget,” said Mr. Schultze, who runs the industrial-design firm SchultzeWorks, based in Pasadena, Calif. And while he said he’s received tons of response since a photo of the computer-generated image hit the Web, “there’s no calls yet from manufacturers, although I do have some leads.”

The computer “box” is actually two pieces, a cyclopsian screen and a rectangular deck. The keyboard smacks of an antique typewriter — one of the inspirations behind the design, Mr. Schultze says.

Mobile Phones Become Essential Tool for Holiday Shopping

Powerful software applications for devices like the Apple iPhone are making it easy for bargain-hunting consumers to see if another retailer is offering a better deal on a big-screen HDTV or pair of shoes and to use it to haggle at the cash register.

Online retailers are revamping the mobile versions of their sites so consumers can make purchases without tedious typing. And offline retailers, battling for every last dollar, are sending cellphone users electronic coupons to lure them away from competitors.

One in five shoppers said they intended to use their cellphones to shop this holiday season, according to an annual survey by Deloitte, the accounting and consulting firm. Of those, 45 percent said they would use their phone to research prices, 32 percent said they would use it to find coupons or read reviews and 25 percent said they would make purchases from their phones.