If you are a Safari user then you might be familiar with the program's Bookmarks bar, where you can save links to individual Web pages, or group them as collections in folders. You can also use it to save any other location you can link to through Safari's address bar, including files and folders on the system. To do this, simply drag a file to the address bar, and you should see a bookmark to it as you would any other file. You can also load some files such as images directly into Safari by dropping them on a Safari window, and then bookmark them as you would any Web URL.

Facebook just announced that it is indeed launching ability to follow conversations via hashtags, as was reported in March. To be clear, there was nothing stopping you from including hashtags in your Facebook content before — it’s just that they didn’t have any real functionality. In its blog post announcing the new feature, the company acknowledges that this isn’t exactly a new idea, noting that it will be “similar to other services like Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, or Pinterest” — when you click on a hashtag, you’ll get a feed of comments using the hashtag. Facebook says its capabilities will include searching for hashtags, clicking on hashtags that come from other services, and writing posts directly from the hashtag feed.

Apple had a great big belly laugh at the expense of near field communications (NFC) at its WWDC keynote this year, but it also quietly adopted a tech that has received an equal amount of general scorn (if not more): the QR code. Apple actually built a QR code reader into iOS 7 – yes, right into the OS – but in a way that makes clear its presence is more of a mildly unpleasant but useful tool in promoting its own tech, rather than anything to be truly upheld and encouraged.

Google just launched Google App Engine 1.8.1 with a host of new features, most notable among them a long-awaited search API and push-to-deploy feature similar to pushing code to a Git repository. The new features follow a busy Google I/O that witnessed the company showing its strongest push ever into the cloud services market. Until the announcements, Google had been quiet about Google Cloud Platform. But now with general availability, the team is pushing out new features weekly and connecting different parts of the organization in a way it had not done before.

Microsoft is sharing more on how existing Windows 8 and Windows RT users will be able to upgrade to Windows 8.1 "Blue" preview and final. With the public preview builds of Windows 8.1 due out later this month, a number of users are wondering how Microsoft plans to handle the upgrade. At TechEd North America, officials shared some details on that topic in a session entitled "Windows RT in the Enterprise." Microsoft officials have said previously that the company plans to deliver the public preview of Windows 8.1, codenamed "Blue," via the Windows Store on June 26.

Several older Apple iPhone and iPad models infringe on a patent held by Samsung, a judge at the U.S. International Trade Commission said on Tuesday. In a final ruling (PDF), the ITC said Apple infringes on a Samsung patent related to cellular technology with AT&T models of the iPhone 3GS and 4, along with 3G models of the iPad 1 and 2. As part of the ruling, the ITC has issued a limited order to ban those devices from sale in the U.S. The decision is final, however Apple can appeal it to the Federal Circuit, or bid for a reprieve from the White House, which has the power to approve or disprove of the ruling.

Google will soon launch Google Web Designer, an HTML5 development tool for “creative professionals.” The service, Google says, will launch within “the coming months” and is meant to “empower creative professionals to create cutting-edge advertising as well as engaging web content like sites and applications – for free.”

Foxconn and Mozilla announced a partnership Monday under which the Chinese electronics manufacturer will build not just Firefox phones, as others have announced, but tablets, too. The Chinese electronics manufacturer plans multiple devices, including tablets and phones, as part of a strategy to supply software and services along with hardware.

Apple's AirDrop tool, which allows OS X users to share files between computers quickly and efficiently, is on its way to the company's mobile platform, a new report claims. Apple is currently in the process of testing AirDrop on iOS 7, 9to5Mac is reporting, citing people who claim to have knowledge of its plans.

Asus has announced the Transformer Book Trio, a notebook that can be separated and used as an Android tablet and desktop PC simultaneously. In its notebook form, the 11.6-inch Transformer Book Trio can switch between Windows 8 and Android. Separated, the 1,920 x 1,080-pixel screen portion acts as an Android tablet, running off its 2.0GHz Intel Atom Z2580 processor.

Windows 8.1, which will be available for download in a preview version on June 26, will feature the good old Start button in desktop mode. Users who dislike the new Modern UI/Metro interface will also be able to boot right to the desktop. While rumors about the return of the Start button had long been making the rounds, Antoine Leblond, Microsoft’s corporate VP for Windows Program Management, made the official announcement on the Windows Blog this morning.

Mozilla and Foxconn have sent around an press event invitation that declares that the two companies will be debuting a new device that runs on a Firefox operating system, according to Focus Taiwan. The event is to take place on June 3. Someone with knowledge of the matter told Focus Taiwan that the new product will most likely be a tablet.

Opera has built a new Web browser from the ground up, and it's available now on Windows and Mac. The new Opera, which the organization is calling Next, its channel for what used to be known as "beta," was built from scratch, it claims. What has resulted is a much cleaner interface and a host of features that Opera says, will make it easier for users to find contents.

Samsung has yet to officially confirm the Galaxy S4 mini, but the smartphone’s brief appearance on the company’s app store yesterday backs up rumors of a summer launch. The listing was spotted and screencapped by TGspot before it was removed. The Galaxy S4 mini appeared with the model number GT-I9195 as part of a line-up of Samsung smartphones on the company’s app store site. The handset is a smaller, cheaper version of Samsung’s fastest selling phone ever, which recently hit 10 million channel sales less than a month after its international launch on April 26.

HTC will sell a Google Edition version of its flagship One smartphone with the stock Android operating system, CNET has confirmed. Word of a version of the phone without its trademark Sense user interface popped up earlier Friday on Geek.com, with a reported time frame of two weeks. HTC is indeed planning to launch the phone, but the only indication of timing was summer, a person familiar with the company's plans told CNET.

Samsung’s Galaxy S4 has hit 10 million channel sales one month after its release. The company announced its latest milestone today just eight days after confirming that it had shipped over 6 million units of the S4 since its international launch on April 26. According to Samsung, this is the fastest ever sell rate for any of its smartphones.

Google is enabling a more naturally spoken question-and-answer interface to its search service for people with a new version of Chrome. Google demonstrated conversational search at Google I/O a week ago, a style of search designed to be more like natural human speech than the technically constructed search queries that people often use today to retrieve information from a search engine.

Yahoo's board has approved a $1.1 billion acquisition of blogging site Tumblr, according to the Wall Street Journal. The Journal first reported the news on Sunday via Twitter. An imminent announcement of the acquisition had been expected. AllThingsD reported Friday that Yahoo's board was meeting this weekend to finalize a deal. Rumors about the possible tie-up first surfaced on Thursday.

A full-size iPad that gets closer to the lean design of the iPad Mini may finally be on the way. Production of the fifth-generation iPad is slated to begin in July, according to a report from Taipei-based Digitimes. The new 9.7-inch iPad will be 25 percent to 33 percent lighter than the iPad 4, Digitimes said.  Specifically, the 2,048x1,536 pixel-density Retina display (same pixel density as the iPad 4) will have thinner glass - achieved by using new touch sensor technology - and, most importantly, a less bulky backlight apparatus, according to them.

Unexpected instabilities forced Adobe Systems to hasten a planned outage for its Creative Cloud Connection, a service that keeps files made on mobile devices or uploaded to the Web in sync with customers' PCs. Adobe launched it a half year ago in a preview version, and had planned to take it offline this week to update the interfaces the software uses to communicate with Adobe's servers.

One of the many announcements flooding out of Google I/O that may have gotten lost in the shuffle is Android's expected support for Bluetooth Smart technology. This may seem like an odd development, especially if you know that many Android devices already feature Bluetooth 4.0, the version in which Bluetooth Smart (that is, Bluetooth Low Energy) first appeared.

Google announced a small but cool update to Gmail. For emails where the developer has enabled this feature, Google will now show action buttons next to emails in your inbox that let you take actions without even opening the message. The cool thing about this, however, is that it’s open to developers, who can now use the schema.org markup language to add their own actions to Gmail messages.

Google says it has rebuilt Google Maps for the Web with a new version that's more immersive and social. The new version takes a page from Google's mobile efforts by putting the search box inside the map and making use of cards - Google's take on interactive information widgets. "It's simple and powerful. The map is the user interface," Google's Bernhard Seefeld told attendees at the company's annual developers conference, where the new Web service was unveiled.

After last year's Google I/O conference, the Google Cloud Platform Developer Relations team started to think about how attendees experienced the event. They wanted to help attendees gain more insight about the conference space and the environment itself. Which developer Sandboxes were the busiest? Which were the loudest locations, and which were the best places to take a quick nap? They think about data problems all the time, and this looked like an interesting big data challenge that we could try to solve. So this year, they decided to try to answer their questions with a project that's a bit different, kind of futuristic, and maybe a little crazy.

The update to the struggling Windows 8 operating system, known by the code name "Blue," will be called Windows 8.1, a naming convention that Microsoft has used for its software updates for years. Tami Reller, the chief marketing officer and chief financial officer of Microsoft's Windows division, disclosed the name during a speech at J.P. Morgan's Global Technology, Media and Telecom Conference in Boston this morning.

Google continues to increase the reach of its Google+ platform, and today the company is launching a new mobile content recommendation service powered by Google+. These recommendations will appear as small widgets at that bottom of the screen as users browse a news site that has enabled this service. Google’s launch partner for this service is Forbes, but others can implement these recommendations by just adding a single line of code to their mobile sites. Recommendations, Google says, can appear regardless of whether a users are signed in to Google+.

Over the course of the last week, Microsoft started a very negative anti-Google Docs campaign that fits the mold of its more general Scroogled anti-Google ads. But why the sudden focus on Google’s productivity tools? Quickoffice, which Google acquired last June, allows users to read and edit Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents on the iPad, iPhone and Android.

Today, Samsung revealed the Galaxy Tab 3, a 7-inch tablet, a slim mobile device which may be able to directly compete with the smaller tablet ranges offered by rivals Apple, Amazon, and Google. The South Korean electronics maker's latest tablet offering sports a 1024x600 pixel screen - although perhaps underwhelming at today's standards - but is able to support full 1080p HD playback. The Galaxy Tab 3 is powered by a dual-core 1.2Ghz processor, and is available with either 8GB or 16GB of storage and 1GB of RAM.

After the Associated Press' Twitter account was hacked into on Tuesday and the accounts of CBS News programs "60 Minutes" and "48 Hours" were hacked over the weekend, it's been made clear that Twitter needs to boost security. But, it may be doing just that. According to Wired's Mat Honan, the social-networking site has reportedly been working on creating a two-factor authentication for user password verification. Honan writes that the company is currently carrying out internal testing before rolling out the new security control.

Adobe is announcing new predictive capabilities for Adobe Social — capabilities that should be particularly helpful to marketers wondering why some social media posts take off while others fall flat. Bill Ingram, vice president for Adobe Analytics and Adobe Social, walked Anthony Ha through the new features in advance of the Adobe Summit in London. Adobe is using historical data — both in aggregate and at the customer-specific level — to predict the likely engagement level and sentiment around a specific Facebook post, and it can recommend keywords, content types and timing that might lead to a better response.