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If you have purchased a Ford with its SYNC software package in the past several years, starting early next year you can upgrade your car to the latest version that it will be shipping in its 2013 models, and for free. Yes, finally there is a car company that operates like a computer company, and I mean that in all the good aspects. (Note: I have test driven numerous Ford and Lincoln models, and own one myself.)

Five years ago, the complaint against Microsoft brewing before the European Court of First Instance was that it was not contributing enough knowledge about Windows' source code to let others develop services for it. That didn't make sense to the European Commission, which openly asked, what good is an operating system if it doesn't operate anything except itself?

Yesterday, the organization responsible for the Free Software-licensed system of file and print services called Samba - the group that had helped keep Microsoft in court for over six years - acknowledged that a distribution that showed up in Samba's respositories on October 11 contained interoperability code for Windows from Microsoft itself.

Yesterday's groundbreaking proposal by IBM for a new and open-source asynchronous protocol for machine-to-machine (M2M) Internet communication, called MQTT, cites a projected 1000x (put another way, 100,000%) increase in broadband device-generated traffic by the year 2020, and the need for a formal protocol for managing it all. Now, a study from the University of California San Diego's Global Information Industry Center (GIIC) projects, using data supplied by numerous sources including the FCC and network systems leader Cisco, suggests that bandwidth of that magnitude doesn't just simply fall out of the sky.

A new Forrester report that surveyed nearly 5,000 American IT workers has found that few of them are actually using social media for work-related activities. Checking their personal Facebook pages aside, we are still at the early adopter stage for many of us when it comes to using these tools in business. The report, The Enterprise 2.0 User Profile: 2011 was written by TJ Keitt and based on research conducted during May 2011.

I'll start with my disclaimer up front: These are my opinions you're about to read, not necessarily those of ReadWriteWeb. Now, maybe you've noticed this yourself already, but I actually don't read much "tech news" on the Web on a regular basis, besides what we publish here and what some friends and colleagues of mine produce elsewhere daily. There is news about technology and there is "tech news," and most of the time, they come from separate planets.

Many a colleague and some regular readers have read from me, or heard me say, the following: If a pro sports site like ESPN.com were to turn its attention to producing a technology news publication, it could improve the genre immensely. This week, the sports-minded folks at SB Nation are proving me right by providing a new and better platform for Joshua Topolsky and company to produce The Verge, the successor to Topolsky's version of Engadget.

Earlier this fall Visa announced a new credit card in Europe that comes with its 48x8 pixel LCD panel on the back, just above where your signature would normally go. Called the CodeSure Matrix Display Card, the idea is to have a more secure credit card, that can be used for online shopping where you have to use your card without swiping it at a retail payment terminal. This is what the credit industry calls "card not present" and they charge higher per-transaction fees to the merchants because of the fraud potentials seen.

For those of you that cut your teeth on graphical OSs and have never had to use a command-line terminal emulator, this article isn't for you. There is no Flash here, no OCD multi-tasking, cutting-and-pasting from one window to another. If the term "command line" reminds you more of the movie Tron than of something you actually use everyday, then perhaps you won't find much joy from reading the following post.

But for the rest of us that grew up when PC DOS first came into corporations and when mainframe programmers walked among us, you might enjoy this trip down memory lane.

Jobs. Cars. Pets. Rides. You can find almost anything online on places such as Craigslist, eBay and Angie's List. What you won't find is information about the actual buyer or seller, so you know something about the person you're dealing with.

Enter the Electronic Marketplace for Merchandise and Activities or "Emma." It is a new iPhone app from Microstrategy that, simply put, lets you view the Facebook profile of buyers and sellers. This know before you go approach may not be a deal breaker if you're in the market for collectibles. But for personal, community-based services - like tutors, rideshares, dates, carpool and parties - then Emma could add a level of security to the transaction. Sadly, it disappoints.

First-time young professionals and recent college students are getting increasingly more demanding about their workplace flexibility when it comes to their choice of computing devices, work hours, and access to social media networks during the workday. These results are part of the 2011 Cisco Connected World Technology Report, the second of three parts which was released today. Cisco and InsightExpress surveyed 200 college students and young professionals in 14 countries.

Scott Berkun is giving away his latest title Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds through November 3rd.

All he wants in return? Your email address. More specifically, Berkun asks that folks sign up for his monthly mailing list. And you can unsubscribe if you don't like what he's sending, so there's little risk involved.