TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

I hate TV. It seems so limited. Ads, fixed schedules and limitless junk floating through the airwaves seems so primitive. I haven’t owned a TV for five years — everything comes through BitTorrent or via podcast.

But I hate speaking bad Spanish even more, which is why this weekend
I picked up Elgato’s EyeTV Hybrid, a USB stick which will let me watch as many culebrones as I like. My teacher tells me I should watch more TV to help learn the language, so I decided to do it on my MacBook.

Like a plus-sized dress on a skinny runway model, Windows just doesn’t fit when it’s loaded on a netbook.

So entrepreneurs are taking a page from the fashion industry playbook, and creating new operating systems that are tailored exclusively to fit the smaller, less powerful and inexpensive netbooks.

At least four new operating systems are in the works, all promising to offer a better experience to users struggling with tiny Windows icons on their 10-inch laptops.

Things you may not have known about the iMac, number one: The glass panel is held on by magnets. No glue, just 14 magnets which pull the panel’s metal bezel into place. All you need to remove it are a couple of suckers, as seen above.

So begins iFixit’s epic teardown of the new iMacs, which appeared on Tuesday (the iFixit guys don’t drag their feet). Among the revelations of this warranty-voiding escapade are a new, slightly less glossy display, louder, clearer speakers and a comparison between the 17" MacBook Pro’s battery and the tiny, internal clock battery of the iMac (spoiler — they’re not the same size).

Apple has announced enough new Macs to merit a keynote from, well, from whoever does them these days. Instead, all we get is a press release. Here we run down the spec-bumped desktop machines. Those of you who recently bought MacBooks can breathe easy — no changes to the notebook lines have been made today. UPDATE: Yes they have. The $2500, 15" MacBook Pro gets a faster 2.66GHz processor and the option to upgrade to 2.93GHz for an extra $300.

Sony has announced a new GPS device that detects your physical location around the world and also serves as a photo geolocation logger that works directly with Google’s Picasa and Maps programs.

Many gadgets out there already use both of these technologies, but they’re not often combined. The Xact|Trax, for example,details an object’s location in an online map, and several cameras and SD cards, like the EyeFi, can tag photos with geolocation properties.

You may be able to guess the function of the Find It All Key Finder, but it’s the way it works that makes it better than the solutions we’ve seen before.

Think of it as a kind of P2P key locator. You hang the (frankly rather ugly) tags onto your keys, the TV remote or your wallet and they can be located from afar (although if you have lost the remote, we suggest looking down the back of the sofa first).

Bikes, unlike bigger means of transport, are pretty easy to modify to fit the will and needs of the owner, for carrying strange cargoes or perhaps to just look more awesomer. Sometimes, though, there are some chop-jobs which are quite inexplicable. Here we’ll look at a few, and try to decode the more unusual.

First, this bike above, photographed this weekend in Berlin’s slushy streets. We have dubbed it the "Pizza Bike" for its round cargo section, but it is clearly not used for delivering pizza.

Google’s Android operating system is not just for mobile phones. It is coming to netbooks.

Asus, which kickstarted the netbook  market with its Eee PCs, has put a team of engineers to work on developing an Android-based device.

The company could have a netbook with Android OS the end of the year, says Samson Hu, head of the Asus’ Eee PC business in an interview with Bloomberg.

Asus already has some experience with Android. The company is working with GPS-based navigation devices maker Garmin to launch a line of new phones, some of which will run Android.

Everybody hates the bureaucratic nonsense of clicking through end-user license agreements. It’s a universal hatred —  kind of like the software equivalent of the post office or the DMV. Anne Loucks devised a clever way to crawl herself out of legal trouble if necessary: She got her cat to agree to an Adobe EULA for her.

Barcelona — Samsung’s new Omnia HD continues the South Korean company’s quest to shoehorn big things into small boxes. Following rumors of an ill-conceived 12MP cameraphone comes this oversized handset which is capable of both recording and playing back 720p video.

Seen above is a snap of the phone in action, shooting its bolt in excitement. In person, the sharpness and resolution is quite impressive, although as I said the handset is a little on the bulky side.