TORONTO — The Waterloo-based maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion Ltd (RIM), recently launched its first tablet computer, the BlackBerry PlayBook, over six months after the company first announced the product.

RIM has largely been criticized for releasing the BlackBerry PlayBook without key features when not paired with a BlackBerry smartphone, such as a native e-mail client, BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) support, and native calendar support, among other key features that would be expected in a new high-end tablet.

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The world’s largest social network with more than 500-million registered users, Facebook Inc., today announced via a blog post a new “Send” button aimed at making it easier for users to share content on Facebook only with a select group of friends.

Facebook says its users have created more than 50-million Groups, and the new Send button could be used to share content with select groups.

There are currently two ways to share a link on Facebook, either through the Share or Like button. The only caveat with the current share methods is a user cannot filter which friends see the shared content, rather a shared link simply appears in the Newsfeed of all friends – the new Facebook Send button simply aims to change that disadvantage.

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Donald Trump, photo by Gage Skidmore

WASHINGTON – American business mogul and likely presidential hopeful, Donald Trump, has made headlines numerous times over the last few weeks after publicly lashing out at political heads, including both President Bush and President Obama.

In the latest outburst, Mr. Trump criticized Rep. Mitt Romney during an interview on the CNN show “State of the Union” that aired earlier today.

After being asked by the CNN reporter Candy Crowley why Trump is preferable to Mitt Romney for Republicans, Trump characterized Romney as “a small-business guy,” going on to say, “I’m much bigger than this man and have a much, much bigger net worth. I mean my net worth is many, many, many times Mitt Romney,” when asked who was a better businessman.

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The world’s largest software vendor, Microsoft Corp. (NASDAQ:MSFT), today showcased various new web technologies at the MIX11 tech conference in Las Vegas, but most notably, the company announced the newest forthcoming features of Windows Phone.

Microsoft largely focused on the developer side by showcasing a comprehensive look at the newest development platform codenamed Mango of Windows Phone. The upcoming version will include many new features, including both under-the-hood enhancements and improvements to the user interface of the platform.

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The Internet search giant, Google Inc., has completed its third acquisition of a Toronto-based tech company, this time scooping up PushLife Inc. with the details of the acquisition being kept private.

PushLife was founded in 2008 by ex Research In Motion employee Ray Reddy and aimed to developed software for people to organize, share, and purchase digital content across different mobile platforms from a single application.

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The Ontario-based maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion (RIM) Inc., today released a new conferencing application, BlackBerry Mobile Conferencing, exclusive to its BlackBerry platform that easily facilitates organizing conferences among a small group of people.

The application is aimed at small business BlackBerry users that could use the application to seamlessly schedule conference calls between participants with invites. The app could then automatically dial in participants, and re-connects dropped calls back to the conference through a sleek new notifications interface.

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The world’s largest carmaker, Japan-based Toyota Motor Corp (TMC), announced a new non-exclusive $12-million partnership with the world’s largest software vendor, Microsoft Corp, that will see telematics systems in upcoming Toyota hybrid vehicles powered by Microsoft’s Azure cloud-computing platform.

From 2008 to 2009, global production of vehicles declined by 13.50-percent to almost 70-million cars manufactured in 2009, the biggest decline in over a decade, as demand fell amid the global financial crisis.

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In a move not seen very often, NASDAQ OMX Group, the company that owns and operates the Nasdaq stock index announced today the company would re-organize the weightings of certain securities in a bid to lower volatility.

Technology stocks that are traditionally more volatile will be adjusted to new lower weightings, and other stocks that are less volatile will now represent larger weightings.

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Google co-founder Larry Page today replaced outgoing CEO Eric Schmidt as part of a transition process that takes place today.

Schmidt will continue to work at Google as Executive Chairman, where he will focus on external factors like business partnerships, mergers and acquisitions, and government lobbying and policies that impact Google’s operations. Schmidt says he will still be involved in key decision making among the three co-founders.

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A team of engineers and researchers headed by Dr. James Hedrick at IBM Inc. has developed a new technology that could revolutionize how resistant bacterial infections are currently treated.

IBM researchers created a new type of nanoparticles that are capable of destroying the membrane walls of certain drug-resistant bacteria strains, leaving the cells to harmlessly degrade without any trace. The new system works by using biodegradable plastic to engineer electrically charged nanoparticles that in turn attract to the bacteria’s opposite charge, in turn destroying the membrane walls hence the cell entirely.

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