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The days of home theaters with multiple stereo speakers spread around a room may be numbered, thanks to the soundbar.

The soundbar is a slender collection of speakers in a single housing that connects directly to the TV -- so there's no worrying about stringing up speaker wire. The devices have been around for a while, but those in this year's crop are cheaper and more powerful, and have the ability to connect to smartphones, tablets and PCs for streaming music.

Soundbar prices range from upwards of $1,400 for multiple speaker systems from Bose and Philips to $700 for the new Sonos Playbar and $100 to $200 for lower-end units from Samsung and Sony.

This week, TV manufacturer Vizio began shipping its latest, the S4251w-B4. At $329, (street price, $299) it is $200 less than Vizio's previous model. It also has built-in Bluetooth to stream music into the living room from a smartphone, tablet or PC.

"If you have a Spotify or Pandora account, just come in, pair the phone or device with the soundbar, and you're set," says Matthew DeHamer, a Vizio product manager. "You don't have to have the TV on."

Soundbars are filling a gap in the audio quality of many new TVs. As prices continue to fall for flat-panel television sets and models get thinner and larger, manufacturers have skimped on sound. Speakers on new TVs are generally inferior.

The Consumer Electronics Association projects that soundbar sales will rise 22% in 2013.

Bringing Internet-streamed music into the living room has been a huge push for wireless speaker company Sonos, which goes beyond Bluetooth with a series of smartphone and tablet apps that let the device act as a remote control for TV and music.

Consumer response to the Sonos Playbar has been greater than expected. "We can't make them fast enough," says Sonos CEO...

The buzz around Google Glass continues, but it's not all good. Some in Congress are raising privacy issues around the futuristic product.

Eight members of the House Privacy Caucus sent a letter to Google co-founder and CEO Larry Page. They have some questions about the privacy aspects of Google Glass. And they want answers.

"As members of the Congressional Bi-Partisan Privacy Caucus, we are curious whether this new technology could infringe on the privacy of average Americans," the letter says. "Because Google Glass has not yet been released and we are uncertain of Google's plans to incorporate privacy protections into the device, there are still a number of answered questions that we share."

Congressional Questions

The caucus then puts forth eight questions:

1. How does Google plan to prevent Google Glass from unintentionally collecting data about the user/non-user without consent?

2. What proactive steps is Google taking to protect the privacy of non-users when Google Glass is in use? Are product lifecycle guidelines and frameworks, such as Privacy By Design, being implemented in connection with its product design and commercialization?

3. When using Google Glass, is it true that this product would be able to use Facial Recognition Technology to unveil personal information about whomever and even some inanimate objects that the user is viewing? Would a user be able to request such information? Can a non-user or human subject opt out of this collection of personal data? If so, how? If not, why not?

4. Would Google place limits on the technology and what type of information it can reveal about another person? If so, explain. If not, why not?

5. Given Google Glass's sensory and processing capabilities, has Google considered making any additions or refinements to its privacy policy? If so, explain. If not, why not?

6. Would [device-specific] information be collected from users operating Google Glass?...

In a vote of confidence for Apple's iOS devices, the U.S. Defense Department has given the all-clear for employees to use iPads and iPhones for work. But only those running the latest operating system, iOS 6, and only if issued by the government.

The Pentagon previously approved the Samsung Knox and BlackBerry systems as secure enough for its employees, and made the decision after allowing some to use Apple devices during a trial period.

In announcing the decision, the Defense Information Systems Agency said it had approved the Security Technical Implementation Guide (STIG) for iOS 6, allowing government-issued mobile devices to be approved for connecting to DoD networks "within current mobility pilots or the future mobile device management framework. "

Pilot Program In Place

Employees won't be able to use devices they acquired on their own, however.

DISA is the agency responsible for a Mobile Device Management (MDM) system, which is in source selection now and expected to have a contract awarded in early summer, the statement said. That protocol will manage and distribute mobile applications and fend off persistent cyberattacks that have been targeting private and government computers in search of secrets.

"All of these pieces must be in place to allow the secure use of commercial mobile devices on department networks," said Mark Orndorff, program executive officer for Mission Assurance and NetOps, and chief information assurance executive at DISA, in the statement. "DISA is running a pilot program today where we bring this all together."

Chester Wisniewski, a senior cybersecurity analyst at Sophos International, said approving STIGs is a common procedure for nearly any type of technology or operating system. "Everything that is in use must have a STIG defining how it is to be deployed, which options must be enabled/disabled, etc.," he said. "While it is certainly a good thing for Apple, I...

IT will skip Windows 8 as the enterprise standard. So says a new Forrester Research report penned by David K. Johnson that goes by the same name.

"Windows 8 is the boldest release of the OS since Windows 95. Microsoft chose to discard the Start button in favor of a new look designed to tie together the PC, tablet, and, smartphone experience," Johnson wrote. But he noted that the "unorthodox offering" drives IT leaders to ask a number of questions.

Those questions include: Is Windows 8's new interface too far of a departure for some employees to learn, and will there even be any employee demand for it? Does Windows 8 offer enough new value to justify migration investments, and if so, when, and across which devices?

The report goes on to explain why Forrester believes most businesses will not adopt Windows 8 as their primary standard, but must be prepared to meet employee "bring your own device" demand. The latter point lines up with a recent Gartner report suggesting that half of companies will mandate BYOD for employees.

The UI Beef

Windows 8 started out of the gate with disadvantages. Usability guru Jakob Nielsen set the stage for the complaints with a review that tore the operating system to shreds last November.

Nielsen didn't like what he deemed a reversal of Microsoft's user interface strategy, one that differs from the traditional Bill Gates-driven style that emphasizes powerful commands. He said Microsoft has "gone soft" and "smothers" users with big colorful tiles while hiding needed features.

"One of the worst aspects of Windows 8 for power users is that the product's very name has become a misnomer. Windows no longer supports multiple windows on the screen," Nielsen wrote in a blog post. "Win 8 does have an option to temporarily show a second area in a...

The Financial Times is the latest victim of the Syrian Electronic Army, a "hacktivist" group that supports Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The U.K.-based newspaper reported the attack followed a phishing attack on the company's e-mail accounts.

Twelve posts entitled "Hacked by the Syrian Electronic Army" appeared on the FT's tech blog between 12:38 p.m. and 12:42 p.m. London time on Friday, with the company's Twitter accounts also disrupted, the Financial Times said.

"We have now locked those accounts and are grateful for Twitter's help on this," said Robert Shrimsley, the managing editor of FT.com. "Unfortunately this is an increasingly common issue for major news organizations."

No New Tricks

Ken Pickering, development manager for security intelligence at CORE Security, said the Syrian Electronic Army's methods are straightforward: They rely on a phishing e-mail with a link to a spoofed Web page that in some cases looks like Google Apps, and is able to yank an employee's credentials fairly easily.

"However, some old tricks are good ones, and until we actually educate users to think before they click, these attacks will continue to be successful," Pickering told us. "There are vast architectural changes we could make to the Internet to make this happen, or we could all follow one simple policy: Don't enter your password on a link you followed from e-mail. If you get a notification from somewhere, just go to the site itself via your browser. It will cost you an extra 10 seconds of typing, but I promise it's worthwhile."

People tend to reuse passwords, Pickering said, so tactics like this are easy and effective. Once hackers have access to e-mail, he said, injecting malware into a network by using internal e-mails as a carrier is exceptionally effective. And it only takes one weak link to begin a chain of several attacks.

"I wish I could...

Has Microsoft Phone moved into a coveted though distant third place for smartphone platforms behind Google's Android and Apple's iOS? A new report from IDC says it has.

IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker found that Android and iOS took an overwhelming combined 92.3 percent of all smartphone shipments in the first quarter, a huge increase of 59.1 percent over the same quarter last year. Separately, Android took 75 percent and iOS 17.3 percent.

Windows Phone, for the first time in IDC's reports, took third place with 3.2 percent, barely ahead of the BlackBerry OS, which had 2.9 percent. This compares with 2 percent for Windows Phone in Q1 of 2012, and what had been a more substantial 6.4 percent for BlackBerry. In January of this year, BlackBerry released its new BlackBerry 10 platform.

'Forward Motion'

Rounding out the top half dozen platforms, Linux had 1 percent and the dying Symbian, which posted 6.8 percent in first quarter of last year, now has 0.6 percent.

We asked Ramon Llamas, research manager with IDC's Mobile Phone team, if the Windows Phone showing in this report appeared to be just a blip, or if seemed to be a forward motion that could continue to keep Microsoft in third place.

He replied that he sees this "as forward motion" and not a blip, and the reason is Nokia. We can see now, Llamas said, "how serious they are and how serious their carrier partners are," as evidenced by their evangelizing, marketing, and steady stream of new Windows phones. Llamas said "it takes some time" to launch a new platform, and Nokia's efforts are now bearing fruit.

While other manufacturers have released Windows Phone devices, Microsoft's partnership with Nokia is the key to whether the smartphone platform succeeds. Nokia's devices accounted for 79 percent of Windows Phone shipments during Q1.

'Significant...

Four young computer hackers who masterminded cyberattacks on targets from the CIA to Sony Pictures and Rupert Murdoch's News International were sentenced to up to 32 months in prison on Thursday.

The hackers, who were affiliated with the group Lulz Security, had all pleaded guilty to hacking charges. Prosecutors say they also targeted the Web sites of Britain's National Health Service and the U.K.'s Serious Organized Crime Agency, and posted stolen information including emails and credit card details belonging to millions of people on file-sharing sites like Pirate Bay in 2011.

The group also attacked their targets by launching distributed denial of service attacks, which overwhelm sites with traffic.

Sentencing the four, Judge Deborah Taylor said what they considered a "cyber game" had real consequences.

"You cared nothing for the privacy of others but did everything you could through your computer activities to hide your own identities while seeking publicity," she said.

She gave a 32-month sentence to Ryan Cleary, 21, who pleaded guilty to six charges including hacking into U.S. Air Force computers at the Pentagon.

The others were: Ryan Ackroyd, 26, jailed for 30 months; Jake Davis, 20, jailed for 24 months; and Mustafa Al-Bassam, 18, who was given a suspended 20-month sentence.

Prosecutor Andrew Hadik described the hackers' actions as "cowardly and vindictive" and said they caused companies serious financial and reputational damage.

"Coordinating and carrying out these attacks from the safety of their own bedrooms may have made the group feel detached from the consequences of their actions," Hadik said in a statement. "But to say it was all a bit of fun in no way reflects the reality of their actions."

U.K. lawmakers subjected search giant Google to blistering criticism Thursday, accusing the U.S. Internet company of playing games with Britain's tax rules to avoid paying what it owed.

In his second appearance before Parliament in roughly six months, Google Vice President Matt Brittin tried to defend his company's complex corporate structure to a committee of skeptical U.K. politicians, many of whom seemed unconvinced by his assertion that Google was being transparent about how it paid its bills.

After two hours of sharp questioning, committee chairwoman Margaret Hodge accused Brittin of "devious, calculated and, in my view, unethical behavior in deliberately manipulating the reality of your business in order to avoid paying your fair share of tax to the common good."

"You are a company that says you do no evil and I think that you do do evil in that you use smoke and mirrors to avoid paying tax."

Brittin countered that his company's employees "fully comply with the law."

Google is one of several major multinationals -- including Amazon, Facebook and Starbucks -- whose convoluted corporate structures and disproportionately low tax bills have drawn increased attention in Britain and elsewhere.

Google, one of the world's most visible companies, has attracted particularly close scrutiny. The company has paid less than 0.1 percent of its billions in U.K. revenue back to the government in tax. In the first quarter of this year it made $1.3 billion in revenue from the UK, according to a Google release. The company justifies low taxes by saying that the overwhelming majority of sales actually occur at the company's European head office in Dublin.

The ins and outs of what makes a company's revenue taxable in Britain are complicated, but much hinges on where the sales take place. At his first hearing back in November, Brittin said that sales didn't take place in...

To the U.S. technology industry, there's a dramatic shortfall in the number of Americans skilled in computer programming and engineering that is hampering business. To unions and some Democrats, it's more sinister: The push by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg to expand the number of visas for high-tech foreign workers is an attempt to dilute a lucrative job market with cheap, indentured labor.

The answer is somewhere in between, depending as much on new technologies and the U.S. education system's ability to keep up as on the immigration law itself. But the sliver of computer-related jobs inside the U.S. that might be designated for foreigners -- fewer than 200,000 out of 6 million -- has been enough to strain a bipartisan deal in the Senate on immigration reform, showcase the power of big labor and splinter a once-chummy group of elite tech leaders hoping to make inroads in Washington.

"A lot of people agree that employers should have access to (highly trained) immigrants -- that they are a benefit to the country, and we are a country of immigrants," said B. Lindsay Lowell, director of policy studies at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of International Migration. "I think the question is how much of a good thing is good."

The Senate immigration bill -- the result of months of quiet negotiations among eight influential senators -- is on track to nearly double the number of highly skilled foreign workers allowed to work in the U.S. under what's called an H-1B visa, from 65,000 to 110,000. The number of visas could climb as high as 180,000 depending on the number of applications received and the unemployment rate.

The Senate Judiciary Committee planned to take up the portion of the bill relating to H-1B visas on Thursday, paving the way for an eventual floor vote and setting...

Google Glass' capabilities are becoming clearer. At the Google I/O developers conference now taking place in San Francisco, the first wave of brand name apps for the new interactive headgear -- of course, called Glassware -- are entering the field of view.

This week, apps were unveiled from CNN for getting news flashes, from Evernote for accessing notes and reminders, and from Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter for keeping up to date with your social network. The new software joins others previously announced by The New York Times and social networker Path.

The apps are intended to comply with Google's new guidelines for a platform that is continuously with the user and potentially overlays everything the user sees. For instance, Google advises that interruptions to a viewer's attention should be short, relevant and timely, so the CNN app allows a user to choose the subject area -- sports or politics, for instance -- for which attention-breaking interruptions are warranted. Additionally, the time of day can be set when such news bulletins can be sent, after which a user can call up a brief summary and a video.

Ice Breaker

The fashion magazine Elle has developed an app so fans of that magazine can flip through photos, hear a portion of an article read aloud, share articles or designate some for reading later. Facebook's software enables sharing Glass-captured photos on Facebook, and Twitter's offers the ability to voice-post and to filter which people's tweets to receive.

Evernote users can send notes to Glass, providing a to-do list when you're actually out in the world, and Tumblr's shows a user's feed or selections thereof.

One application by an independent development team indicates the potential for entirely new forms of weird behavior. Called Ice Breaker, it sends a notification to nearby users of the same app. The Glass-wearing Ice...