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TechCrunch is reporting that three independent sources close to Apple have said to expect a new iPod Touch out this fall. That’s not particularly big news except that they are saying it will have a 7 to 9 inch screen. That’s basically a Netbook. Apparently Apple has been toying with the idea of a tablet form device for years and now that they have the AppStore which has thousands of games and other applications that are perfect for a touch screen device with an accelerometer they could be making their move.

My main concern would be that it’d be Netbook form factor but won’t do everything a Netbook can do. There’s also the issue of price. The 32 GB IPod Touch is $399, how much is a 9 inch screen version going to cost and will people be willing to pay for it?

Read the full article at TechCrunch for more details.

KeePass is a free open source password manager, which helps you to manage your passwords in a secure way. You can put all your passwords in one database, which is locked with one master key or a key file. So you only have to remember one single master password or select the key file to unlock the whole database. The databases are encrypted using the best and most secure encryption algorithms currently known (AES and Twofish).

Keepass comes in a portable version, perfect for keeping on a USB thumbdrive. The password database consists of only one file that can be transferred from one computer to another easily.

Keepass is open source and totally free (released under the GPL).  Version 2.x (the latest) runs on Windows 98, 98SE, ME, 2000, XP, 2003, Vista, Mono (Linux, Mac OS X, BSD, …), the only requirement being that you have Microsoft .NET Framework ? 2.0 or Mono ? 2.0.1. It allows for exporting to XML, HTML, CSV, KDB3, XSL-Transformed, and importing from more than 25 different formats. KeePass 2.x already has built-in support for file synchronization and because it has a plugin architecture which allows others to extend the application you can also download a plugin to synchronize with online storage providers!

KeePass supports the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES, Rijndael) and the Twofish algorithms to encrypt its password databases, this is the same type of encryption used by banks and the government, so you know your data is safe.

Grab a copy of Keepass from keepass.info.

Never scrounge around for a USB cable again! Eye-fi is a magical orange SD memory card that will not only store 2GB worth of pictures, it’ll upload them to your computer (All Eye-Fis), and to Flickr, Facebook, Picasa (or 14 others) (Eye-Fi Explore and Eye-Fi Share), even geo-tag them so you can see exactly where in the world you took the photo (Eye-Fi Explore) wirelessly, invisibly, automatically!

This little guy looks like a normal 2GB memory card and works with nearly any camera that takes SD memory. There are no antennas, no protrusions, no subscription fees, and no cables.

Ok so 2GB isn’t that big for a memory card these days BUT with Eye-Fi you set up the card once with the included USB card reader, choose a photo sharing service of your choice then slip the card in your camera.

From then on, you never have to touch anything. Just take photos. Whenever your cameras near the wireless network you selected and idle, Eye-fi will upload all your photos (JPEGs only) to your computer and/or online photo sharing service. Eye-Fi works out of the box with a ton of services that support image uploads.

Long ago the king of the browsers was Netscape. Microsoft turned their massive shift very quickly once they realized exactly how important the browser would be to the future of computing and brought Internet Explorer in line with Netscape… and then the browser wars began. As a web developer I can tell you those years SUUUCKED. Each company would include “features” that only worked with their browser, build web apps when the web was young was difficult (I realize this still exists, but nothing like it did back in the day).

Last month, Microsoft’s market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. Initial data sets provided by Net Applications suggest that the Internet Explorer will drop once again significantly in December to below 69% and Mozilla will climb above 21%.

This doesn’t mean IE is out… 69% is still the lions share but it shows that other browsers are making in-roads to Microsoft’s stranglehold on browser marketshare.  The contenders are FireFox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. FireFox is clearly in the lead as the primary competitor to IE. I personally use FireFox as my daily browser; when the next release comes out and their uber JavaScript engine is in place I can’t see myself going back to IE for anything unless it requires it. Chrome has the mighty Google backing it… it seems Google can do very little wrong lately and Chrome fits nicely into their long term strategy. However, Chrome is still immature in comparison to FireFox at this point.

For crazy detailed stats on each browser gain, decline, etc check out How serious is the market share loss of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer? at TGDaily.com.

I agree with the summary of the authors of the article… I’m stunned at how Microsoft is just letting this happen. Web apps may not be able to counter desktop apps yet (ok GMail is CLOSE… if they’d just get the contacts to sync correctly!); let’s face it… Photoshop via the web ain’t happening anytime soon. However, more and more applications are moving to the cloud. Google understands this and is pushing it agressively, MICROSOFT knows this and is building out cloud architecture… so I’m completely baffled as to why they would allow this to happen. IE8 beta’s appear to be a dude… slow, proprietary, and still not comforming to standards. Whereas the new-comers are quick, have excellent plugin architectures, the new rendering engines used in Chrome and the next release of FireFox make “web 2.0″ site rawk. I guess the best we can hope for at this point is that Microsoft has a card up it’s sleeve for when Windows 7 comes out.

A project from the guys over at MacHeist gives Mac users free applications just by creating a MacHeist account. The Giving Tree now has iPhone application icons sprouting up around it — what does it all mean? When the icons grow and start wiggling you are able to click them and join a drawing for the application. If you are a winner you will receive a promo code for the app specified. If you wish to try at winning some promo codes, then head on over to the Mac Giving Tree website.