Ken Garen, CPA, Co-Founder and President, UBCC

by Kent German Almost a year ago, we offered our list of the best iPhone apps as chosen by CNET editors. Picks from the CNET 100 series included titles of almost every kind from the insanely addictive (like Angry Birds ) to the strictly practical ( Still Tasty , anyone?). Of course, Apple's iOS can't have all the fun so this year the CNET 100 gives Android its due attention. Just like last year, a different CNET personality will showcase his or her 10 favorite Android apps each day for the next 10 business days (today through Friday, July 22). And with each post, you'll have the opportunity to vote for your own favorite title. Then, once the series is over, we'll collect the full list of 100 apps and announce the 10 that you, our readers, love the most. I'll kick off the 2011 CNET 100 with my top Android picks. If you've followed me on CNET, you'll know when I'm not writing about cell phones, I'm writing about commercial aviation...

Congress has from time to time adjusted both the tax rate and amount of wages subject to FUTA taxes.  In 1983 the amount of taxable wages was set at $7,000 which is where it has remained to this day.  The effective tax rate, which began in 1939 at 0.3 percent, was raised to 0.8 percent in 1983, which included a surtax of 0.2 percent enacted by Congress in 1976.  Even though this is an annual tax reported on an annual tax return, that rate is scheduled to decrease to 0.6 percent, effective July 1st, 2011. What this means is that the Federal unemployment tax must be reported at 0.8 percent for the wages paid first half of the year, and 0.6 percent for wages paid the second half of the year.  Because almost no payroll software was designed to handle this change, payroll software providers and payroll service bureaus will have to change their software to comply with this mid-year tax rate reduction. UBCC will be releasing revised payroll software to clients that al...

By Sharif Sakr   posted Jun 30th 2011 12:01AM You've got to hand it to IBM's engineers. They drag themselves into work after their company's 100th birthday party, pop a few Alka-Seltzers and then promptly announce yet another seismic invention. This time it's a new kind of phase change memory (PCM) that reads and writes 100 times faster than flash, stays reliable for millions of write-cycles (as opposed to just thousands with flash), and is cheap enough to be used in anything from enterprise-level servers all the way down to mobile phones. PCM is based on a special alloy that can be nudged into different physical states, or phases, by controlled bursts of electricity. In the past, the technology suffered from the tendency of one of the states to relax and increase its electrical resistance over time, leading to read errors. Another limitation was that each alloy cell could only store a single bit of data. But IBM employees burn through problems like these on their c...

WASHINGTON, D.C.   BY MICHAEL COHN, ACCOUNTING TODAY The Federal Unemployment Tax Act surtax is set to expire Thursday after House Republicans refused to extend the 35-year-old "temporary" unemployment surtax. The surtax has been extended eight times since it was originally enacted in 1976. House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Dave Camp, R-Mich., refused to extend the tax beyond its current June 30, 2011 expiration date. "The death of any tax on jobs-no matter how big or small-is a historic moment and one to be celebrated," Camp said in a statement. "The fact that it has taken 35 years for this 'temporary' tax to expire clearly illustrates the dangers of higher taxes-once in place, they are unlikely to ever go away.   We need employers paying more salaries, not paying higher taxes.   And when the surtax expires, job creators will get a little and long overdue relief." The original purpose of the "temporary" 0.2 percent surtax wa...

By DAMIEN GAYLE Last updated at 9:24 AM on 29th June 2011 Trials of a new breed of 'super WiFi' that uses the white space between TV channels are set to begin in Cambridge. Microsoft, the BBC, BSkyB and BT are among the tech giants investigating how the gaps in frequencies between TV broadcasts can be used to transmit broadband. They hope the technology could help them create 'super WiFi' networks that can support bandwidth hungry mobile internet devices like smartphones and tablet computers. The aim of the trials, which begin this week, is to show that the new services do not interfere with TV signals. So-called 'white space' includes the unused frequencies in the TV spectrum - between 470MHz and 790MHz - which are left empty to avoid broadcasts leaking into one and other. With wavelengths much lower than regular WiFi, these frequencies are able to travel further and penetrate much more deeply into buildings, raising the possibility of regional broadba...

June 27, 2011 – Taos, New Mexico - Universal Business Computing Company ( www.ubcc.com ), the leading provider of high volume, high productivity software for accounting and payroll professionals, announced the release of an enhancement in the UBCC Unified Payroll to allow clients, on a client-by-client basis, to use the old 0.8 percent rate or the new 0.6 percent rate.  The July 1 st , 2011 expiration of the 0.2 percent FUTA tax surcharge means is that the Federal Unemployment tax must be reported at 0.8 percent for the wages paid first half of the year, and 0.6 percent for wages paid the second half of the year.  Because almost no payroll software was designed to handle this change, payroll software providers and payroll service bureaus will have to significantly change their software to comply with this unprecedented mid-year change.  UBCC, in keeping with one of its core software design criteria of providing the upmost in flexibility, has solved this problem by all...

By   Ben Popken With providers like AT&T and Comcast adding on limits to how much bandwidth you can use per month, Netflix has rolled out a feature that lets you downgrade the streaming video quality so you don't use as much data and incur overages. After you're logged into your Netflix account, just go into https://account.netflix.com/HdToggle and select from one of three options. "Good quality" at up to .3 GB per hour, "Better quality" at up to .7 GB per hour, and "Best" at up to 1GB per hour or up to 2.3GB/hr for HD. Recently AT&T added on a 150 GB cap for DSL users and a 250 GB cap for U-Verse customers. Users still report getting a blank page when they try to look at the "bandwidth meter" promise by AT&T, but if you're a heavy Netflix and data user and start to see fees for overages on your bill, downgrading your Netflix stream could help you stay under the threshold. http://consum...