Can a Palm Pre multitask better than an iPhone?

Palm’s comeback attempt rests squarely on the notion that it has found a better way to manage your complicated digital life. Ever since its January coming-out party at the Consumer Electronics Show, Palm has generated buzz for the Pre unlike any other phone released since Apple’s iPhone arrived in June 2007 (that includes impressive phones such as Research in Motion’s BlackBerry Bold and HTC’s G1 Android phone.) The two phones will be forever compared — not just because of their consumer-oriented styles and emphasis on gesture-based user interfaces, but because of the very real enmity between the proud team that worked on Apple’s historic iPhone breakthrough and the ex-Apple executives and engineers attempting to rebuild Palm. While the iPhone has set the standard for future smartphones, Palm’s WebOS delivers two important improvements that the iPhone can’t yet match: true multitasking between applications, and a subtle notifications system that doesn’t interrupt your train of thought.

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Prepaid wireless service could spur price war

The prepaid cell phone market has finally hit the U.S. in a big way as economically strapped consumers flock to inexpensive pay-as-you-go services. The result will likely mean that big cell phone providers may be forced to slash prices on contract service plans to keep consumers from defecting

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Amazon Kindle Users Are Older Than You Think

Someone at technology news site, Cnet, came up with the clever idea of running a poll to learn the age of people who use Amazon’s miracle book reader, the Kindle. Seven hundred people responded, which puts the survey somewhat below what researchers would expect from Gallup, but it is a reasonable straw poll, nonetheless

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Conficker wakes up, updates via P2P, drops payload

The Conficker worm is finally doing something–updating via peer-to-peer between infected computers and dropping a mystery payload on infected computers, Trend Micro said on Wednesday. Researchers were analyzing the code of the software that is being dropped onto infected computers but suspect that it is a keystroke logger or some other program designed to steal sensitive data off the machine, said David Perry, global director of security education at Trend Micro. The software appeared to be a .sys component hiding behind a rootkit, which is software that is designed to hide the fact that a computer has been compromised, according to Trend Micro.

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Google improves Gmail for iPhone, Android

Google has released a new Web-based version of Gmail that gives iPhone and Android phone users a more sophisticated version of the online e-mail service, including access to messages that’s faster and that works even when offline. Google demonstrated the Web-based mobile version of Gmail last week and announced its availability Tuesday on the Google Mobile blog. “You’ll notice that it’s a lot faster when performing actions like opening an e-mail, navigating, or searching.

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