Ian Paul

Dell has rolled out a new set of all-in-one PCs including a new addition to the XPS lineup for those who want an Apple iMac without actually buying an iMac. The new Windows PCs boast all the features you would expect of a new desktop all-in-one including Ivy Bridge third-generation Intel Core processors, loads of RAM and hard drive space and big, beautiful screens.

But if you're looking forward to touch-friendly Windows 8 later this year, you might want to stay away from these PCs as Dell didn't say one word about touch with its new crop of all-in-ones.

This is the year of owning it all in the tech industry. After years of speculation, major tech companies including Apple, Google, and Microsoft are finishing up their ecosystems that tie your music, photos, videos and documents to digital devices deeply integrated with online storage and sync. Not wanting to be left out of the party, Facebook may soon be vying for a piece of that end-to-end dream with a Facebook-branded smartphone.

Mobile computing is becoming increasingly important as users turn toward tablets and smartphones for everyday computing. Facebook said that as of late April an average of 500 million people access the social network through mobile devices every month. With so many mobile users, Facebook needs a strong mobile presence.

After paying $1 billion to acquire Instagram about six weeks ago, Facebook recently launched its own Instagram clone, Facebook Camera, and like many people I wanted to check it out right away.

“Great, it’ll be like Instagram, but only with photos from people I actually care about,” I thought. Facebook is one of the most popular photo sharing sites on the Web. During the first three months of 2012, an average of 300 million images were uploaded to the social network every day. Facebook is all about photos. This was going to be great.

Apple may be following in the footsteps of Amazon's Appstore for Android by offering a paid app for free on a regular basis.

Apple recently used its ongoing “App of the Week” feature to promote Cut the Rope: Experiments as a free download. Cut the Rope: Experiments is priced at 99 cents on the Amazon Appstore and Google Play. Apple made the announcement via the App Store Twitter account.

Bump for iOS and Android makes it easy to move photos from handsets to PCs with a new Web-based tool that transfers smartphone photos to your desktop with just one tap of your spacebar. The new tool doesn't rely on a shared network or Bluetooth to transfer files. Instead, Bump uses geolocation capabilities on your phone and your PC browser to send photos to the cloud and then download them to your desktop. This is similar to how Bump's smartphone app transfers contacts and photos between mobile devices.

The touch-centric Metro version of Internet Explorer 10 in Windows 8 is plug-in free, but the browser may still be able to run Adobe Flash video, according to an online report. Microsoft is reportedly taking the Google Chrome approach with IE10 and building Flash capability directly into the touch-friendly browser. But Flash won't be available for every site on the Web in Metro IE10. Instead, Microsoft will only extend the capability to select popular sites, according to Windows bloggers Paul Thurrott and Rafael Rivera.

Image Credit: Winsupersite

The Web is making sweet music with Google’s latest doodle, a Web-based playable Moog synthesizer. The new doodle is in honor of Robert Moog, a music pioneer responsible for the modern electronic synthesizer. Moog, who died in 2005, was born May 23, 1934, and would have turned 78 this year. Moog’s creation influenced the work of countless recording artists including the Beatles, Doors, and Stevie Wonder.

You can use Google’s Web-based synthesizer to record and share your own Moog-style musical creations. The synthesizer is fully functional including the oscillator, filter and envelope controls, and even supports multi-track recording. You can share your creations directly to Google+ or grab a Google short URL to share it pretty much anywhere online.

If you're having trouble downloading apps from the Windows Phone Marketplace, you just might be a pre-Mango Windows Phone 7 user. Microsoft is now enforcing a rule that only users of Windows Phone 7.5, codenamed Mango, can use the Marketplace in any meaningful way. Without the Mango update you can still browse the Marketplace, but you will start getting error messages if you attempt to download, buy, update, or review an app.

Google is making it easier to help you find the contents of your Gmail. The search giant recently announced that Gmail’s autocomplete feature will now include suggestions based on the content in your e-mail. Previously, autocomplete only suggested e-mail addresses from your contacts list and previous communications. The new feature is rolling out to all English language Gmail users over the next few days. Other languages will be added in the coming months.

Gmail’s new autocomplete should not only help you find what you’re looking for faster, but also improve Gmail’s poorer search capabilities compared to Google’s Web results.

One of the nice features of Google’s main search is its ability to understand and correct your spelling mistakes on the fly. So if you search for “Orlanod” it knows you probably meant Orlando and automatically shows you results for the Florida city.

Not so in Gmail. If you search for “Orlanod” it doesn’t show you any Orlando results and instead offers a “Did you mean: orlando?” link. That’s so 2008. With autocomplete you should see results for Orlando before you can mistype the last two letters.

You no longer need a PC browser to test out apps from Amazon’s Appstore for Android. The online retailer recently announced that you can try out apps before you buy them by using the company’s new beta feature, Test Drive for Android. All you need is a compatible device and the Amazon Appstore for Android app version 2.6.53 or higher.

The company said only select Android devices will be able to use the new feature at launch, but did not elaborate on which phones were compatible. If your phone is compatible, a green “Test Drive” button will appear on an app’s product page above the “Save for Later” and “Share” buttons. Amazon said more devices will be able to use the new feature in the coming months.

Amazon has more than 5,000 Android apps ready to use Test Drive, and it aims to make the entire Appstore catalog available. At launch, only apps that use basic touchscreen features and device accelerometers have Test Drive enabled. Apps that require multitouch, a keyboard, microphone, camera, gyroscope, near-field communication (NFC), or GPS are not yet available.

Unlike Google Play’s 15-minute refund policy, Amazon’s beta version of Test Drive for Android does not require you to purchase the app first to try it out. Instead, the company puts the power of the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers to work. Whenever you try an app via Test Drive, a version of the app is launched on Amazon’s EC2 servers. Your taps and other inputs are sent to Amazon’s servers, and all display and audio outputs are sent back to your device. You can purchase an app at any point during your test drive.

Wi-Fi hotspot access just got easier for high-speed Internet customers of Bright House Networks, Cablevision, Comcast, Cox Communications, and Time Warner Cable. The five cable giants announced an agreement Monday to make more than 50,000 hotspots in several U.S. cities available for free to each company’s customers.

Microsoft's social networking experiment, So.cl, a site designed around sharing Web content pulled from Bing searches, is now available for all users. Launched in December and aimed at students, So.cl is not meant to compete with popular social networks such as Facebook, Google+, and Twitter. So.cl isn't a place to connect with friends and share moments from your lives.

Instead, So.cl is more like an image board where you post and share web-based content based on general interest categories such as cars, movies, and sports -- all of which is filtered through a built-in Bing search tool.