Technology - Macworld.com

It was a banner week for stupid opinion pieces about Apple. Indeed, the Macalope had a hard time narrowing the field. He did eventually pick two lucky winners, but he’d like to assure all the silly pundits who auditioned that they did horrible, horrible work and even though they didn’t get selected, they should still feel terrible about themselves. Before we wade into the muck, though, who wants to dance…with Microsoft?!

Though you may think us to be iPhone fans all the time, we really do want to root for the underdog. Whether it's Google's Android or Palm's webOS, the smartphone industry could really use a David to the iPhone's Goliath to promote competition and better products all around.

On Friday, Cloud Engines introduced the second generation of its Pogoplug multimedia sharing device. The Pogoplug is designed to plug into your home or small office network and let you access and share content of USB hard drives over the Internet using a standard Web browser.

The original Super Monkey Ball was an App Store launch game and sold like gangbusters. Taking advantage of the iPhone’s accelerometer controls and already possessing a huge following thanks to its console success, Super Monkey Ball was one of the most highly anticipated apps on the iPhone.

Remember last week, when the net was abuzz with the news that the Mac OS X 10.6.2 update broke notebooks with Atom processors? Well, given the first syllable of the word "hackintosh" it's little surprise that that state of affairs has changed. The release of a newly-hacked kernel claims to allow the Snow Leopard to roam freely off of the Apple steppes.

SubRosaSoft has released FileSalvage 7, an update to its data recovery software. The latest release offers Snow Leopard support and enables better recovery for flash-memory cards and Windows drives. SubRosaSoft gave FileSalvage’s user interface a facelift, too.

Everybody bring out the noisemakers, confetti, and party poppers. Fresh out of public beta, the one-stop password-managing shop known as Agile Web Solutions 1Password 3 is now available to one and all.

Accessory vendor Incase has released two new chargers for iPods and iPhones.

Safari may have stolen much of the browser thunder in recent years, but that doesn't mean that other players aren't still plowing ahead, as evidenced by Wednesday’s release of Camino 2.0.

No, no, no, AT&T. I realize you’re trying to fight fire with fire with your new “side-by-side” ad, but when you play with fire, somebody’s going to get burned. Taking on Verizon head on by comparing your services is not exactly a win for you, especially when two of your points (most popular smartphones and 100,000 apps) are pretty much thanks to a single handset that rhymes with Sly Stone.

On Wednesday, Apple released LED Cinema Display iSight Firmware Update 1.0, a fix for an issue with the built-in iSight camera on the LED Cinema Display () not being recognized by some applications.

Are your photographs suffering from a decided feline shortage? There's a cat for that.

Red Giant Software has released Holomatrix 1.0, a new After Effects plug-in designed to let you easily recreate holographic special effects with a few mouse clicks. The package—which features effects such as animated sci-fi holograms, ghosts, bad TV reception, and realistic digital signage—includes 30 presets and lets you control the look, timing, and placement of random effects.

OnOne Software has released Photo Essentials 3, a suite of five add-ons for Adobe Photoshop Elements.

Two scanning apps have been upgraded (finally) for use with Snow Leopard.

Google has announced an update to its popular Google Earth iPhone app. Version 2.0 lets users view personalized maps created on a desktop machine. The upgrade also adds 13 new languages to the mix, bringing a total of 31 supported languages.

This just in: Adobe Labs has some new toys up for grabs. As part of Adobe's poorly-named Open Screen Initiative to put Flash on every popular platform known to mankind, Adobe has released beta versions of Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR 2.0 for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Antwerp, Belgium is well known as one of the diamond capitals of the world (host to at least one major heist in the past decade). But the latest place in the city to be pilfered wasn't a vault full of gems, but a warehouse full of iPhones.

What kid of the ’80s didn’t see himself as Luke Skywalker, valiantly manuevering his X-Wing fighter down the Death Star trench, the fate of the whole galaxy resting upon him and his loyal astromech droid? Seeing as most of those ’80s kids probably have an iPhone now, we imagine that THQ Wireless didn’t even consider the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid field when producing the $5 Star Wars: Trench Run (iTunes link).

If printer drivers for Snow Leopard set your heart a-racing, then Christmas arrived a month ahead of schedule. Apple posted printer updates for Canon, Brother, HP, and Lexmark on its Support Downloads site Monday.

Runtime Revolution has released version 4.0 of its self-titled application-authoring software. New in this release is the ability to deploy applications directly to the Web in any of the major browsers running in Mac OS X, Windows, and Linux.

Location-based social networking got a bit more interesting with the recent release of Loopt 2.0 for iPhone and iPod touch. This major new upgrade puts businesses, events, and even shopping coupons on the map, all while making it easier to stay in touch with friends and make new ones.

I debated whether the headline for this story should be about the fact that Apple has now approved Bobble-Rep, an app that the company had previously rejected. The other option was to make the headline "Macworld contributor Lex Friedman can predict the future."

On Tuesday Dell announced the 5130cdn ($1549), a workgroup color laser printer that the company claims is the “world’s fastest single function letter-size office color laser printer.”

Apple won a key victory in its legal battle with Psystar, as a federal judge has ruled that the clone-maker violated Apple’s copyright when it sold PCs with Mac OS X pre-installed.

Looks like there some people out there could use some schoolin’ on how to do business. A rather surprising admission from a Microsoft exec gets us kicked off this week but, as silly as Microsoft is, the App Store takes the cake yet again. And last, a well-reasoned, polite discussion about Apple’s strategy, featuring the Macalope and two knuckleheads.

Since its inception, Google Voice has offered a wide range of features for managing your phone calls, with one glaring exception: calls passing through Google Voice have to be directed to another phone number if you actually want to answer them. This gap may now have been closed with Thursday's announcement that Google is acquiring Gizmo5, also known as the Gizmo Project.

Apple’s latest iPod nano got a firmware update Friday, aimed at fixing a few performance issues for the miniature MP3 player.