If you’ve been looking for a way to bond with your mom if she isn’t into technology, a way to get her into technology, or the perfect present for the tech savvy women in your life, look no further. These gifts are gadgets any mom will love, whether she is a technology maven, geek mama or someone who can’t even turn on a computer.

Data Portability has been in the news a lot over the last few months, with many wondering just what the heck it is and when a concrete application of it would be in evidence. now MySpace, eBay, Yahoo (and its properties), Twitter and PhotoBucket have all teamed up to give Data Portability functionality its first real world launch.

If you thought Comcast couldn’t be any worse a cable provider after recent issues with throttling and its history of poor customer service and rampant outages, think again. The technology rumor mill is thick with the anger and indignation of Comcast users everywhere in response to news that the cable giant wants to punish users for actually using the bandwidth they already pay for.

The United States is perceived as cutting edge when it comes to technology, but is it really? Looking at the cold, hard numbers generated by a recent think tank on broadband activity, it becomes apparent that not only is the United States ranked 15th on the international list, the country lags behind countries like Japan and Sweden as far as speed and availability as well.

Cuba has been cut off from technology and the rest of the world throughout Fidel Castro’s regime. Now that his brother Raul is in charge, the winds of change are finally starting to blow through. One of the biggest recent changes is that Cubans are now allowed to own home computers, and home computers can be sold in the country, as well as cell phones, DVD players and other once restricted goods.

Microsoft is now making noise that they may raise the amount of the hostile takeover bid they have made for Yahoo. This comes as a complete about face from its earlier stance that it would not budge on the price already offered. It also signals that Microsoft needs Yahoo more than Yahoo needs them at this point, in order to break into the online market.

Time Warner, recently under fire for implementing a tiered bandwidth price structure and targeting iTunes and Amazon Unboxed users with the practices of its cable division, has decided to dump Time Warner Cable. Time Warner Cable is the second largest cable internet services provider in the United States, falling behind ComCast by a small margin.

Hewlett Packard faces a new security hazard as their Software Update Tool is found to have a fairly serious security hole. The double threat can lead to remote command execution or data leakage, both of which are huge issues for a company like Hewlett Packard.

Del Ray is using a free download to grab people’s attention for the release of the latest book in the Star Wars “Legacy of the Force” series. To drum up interest for the newest (and final) book, they are making book one, Betrayal, available fora free download as an audio book.

For Microsoft, the introduction of its new Live Mesh platform is almost an admission of defeat. After many years of taking a proprietary view of software and insisting that PC based applications were the only way to go, to jump into the online social application field is a huge change in tactics for the software giant.

In a blow to privacy, laptops and gadgets have been determined to be “dumb luggage” for people heading to other countries from the United States. This means that the border agents are allowed to crack them open, turn them on and take a look around for… treason? Bomb plans? Sedition pamphlets?

NextWave Wireless holds controlling interest in 154 Advanced Wireless Services licenses, 30 wireless Communication Services licenses, Educational Broadband Service licenses and Broadband Radio Service licenses. That’s a huge amount of Wireless Spectrum real estate.

The Sharper Image filed for bankruptcy recently, making it harder to find gifts for those hard to shop for gadget loving dads, granddads and friends. One of many questions surrounding the bankruptcy has been how the company would divest its inventory. The suspense is over - the company has chosen the fire sale method: everything must go.

The United Kingdom made headlines when they introduced a “teen repelling” gadget that used sound to drive loitering teens away from buildings. Now they are making news again because they are afflicting this atrocity on American teens. The heinous gadgets are already dropping on American and Canadian soil, with nearly 1000 of the units installed already.

While the debate over the ethics of cloning rages on, countries and companies with no interest in the morality of the science are already using clones to fill their needs. One country doing so is South Korea, who is now training cloned dogs for drug patrols.

A company out of Finland has developed an Open Source movie platform to help makes movie success more attainable to the masses. It is called Star Wreck Studios and they want you to Wreck A Movie with them. The release that gave them the idea for the project was called “Star Wreck: In The Pirkinning“. The first Wreck A Movie feature is Iron Sky, an implausible future based vehicle featuring Nazis and space travel.

In hopes of enriching the Network Neutrality debate, the FCC and Stanford hosted a Network Neutrality hearing. With a significant contingent of people at Stanford who side with the telecommunications companies against Network Neutrality in addition to the FCC and people who support it, the hope was for a hearing representing both sides of the argument. Instead, the invited telecommunications companies, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon and Time Warner, all ignored the event completely.