TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Apple has switched on Find My Mac, a feature from the upcoming iCloud service which lets careless or unlucky Mac owners track down their computers. Currently in beta, for testing by OS X Lion developers, Find My Mac works a lot like the iOS app Find My iPhone.

Instead of using GPS to work out where the Mac is, Lion instead uses other location info such as that from nearby Wi-Fi networks (and probably the external IP address, too).

Foxconn has a reputation as maker of our much-beloved iDevices. It also has a reputation for inhumane living and working conditions for employees in its Shenzhen-based plants.

One way to potentially fix that tarnished image: replace some of those workers with robots.

One million robots, in fact, hopefully all in place within the next three years. The robots will be tasked with mundane tasks such as welding, spraying and assembling, which humans currently do.

The BBC has launched the international version of its iPlayer app for the iPad. The app, which lets users stream and download the Beeb’s TV shows, is free and available in the following countries: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain and Switzerland.

The app differs from the local, UK-only version quite significantly. The UK iPlayer service is intended as a way to catch up on shows from the past week, and all content is free for its short life on the service.

One sure sign that the news-desert of August is almost upon us is that concept designs outnumber real new products. With this in mind, take a look the the Handy Meter, a digital measure for your faucet that looks more useful than some of the real gadgets you can buy in your local department store.

The device, designed by Jeon Hwan Soo, slips onto the end of the faucet and measures the flow of water. The total amount delivered is displayed on an LED readout.

T-Mobile introduced on Wednesday a new financing plan for purchasing devices over an extended period, as well as a price reduction for one of its smartphone plans.

With T-Mobile’s new layaway plan, customers make an upfront down payment on a particular smartphone, with the amount varying depending on the model. Afterward, customers pay a monthly EIP — or equipment installment plan — typically anywhere between $5 and $15 monthly, again depending on the phone purchased.

Additionally, T-Mobile is expected to announce a $20 price drop for its mid-tier smartphone plans, according to information obtained by CNET. The plan includes unlimited monthly minutes, SMS messages and data, with escalating prices for larger caps on high-speed data access.

With its souped-up specs and slimmer profile, Motorola’s latest Droid iteration is a definite improvement on the company’s previous two models. Too bad you’ll be hard-pressed to fix the thing if you break it.

Gadget repair site iFixit cracked open the Droid 3 Android smartphone to find a host of improvements. Among those is a big perk for the world-traveling types, as well as a processor update for improved computing power.

In a big bonus for the frequent flying crowd, the Droid 3 comes with a SIM card, which lets you make phone calls while in countries other than the United States.

“Bergmönch” might sound more like something Beavis would call Butthead, but it in fact means “mountain monk.” Seemingly unrelated to any of this is the the actual Bergmönch itself, which is a folding scooter in a backpack.

The idea is that the Bergmönch can be carried up a mountain on your back and make the descent much easier. Apparently, walking down a mountain is very hard on your knees.

Sprint may be next in line to join Apple’s iPhone ranks.

It’s highly probable that a Sprint iPhone will debut before the year’s end, according to Shing Yin, an industry analyst at Citadel Securities.

Because Verizon is ending its unlimited data plans Thursday, and because Sprint features cheaper pricing for comparable plans on AT&T and Verizon, the carrier “could offer an attractive proposition for more price-conscious users (a demographic that we think is increasingly important to Apple following the rise of Android),” and “could be a relatively stronger seller than the Verizon iPhone,” according to Yin.

Those in the market for a tablet may have more incentive to opt out of buying the iPad.

Box.net will offer 50 GB of free online storage to buyers of HP’s new tablet device, the TouchPad. The company plans to announce the deal Friday, the same day as the TouchPad’s launch.

New TouchPad owners can download the Box.net app from HP’s App Catalog store beginning Friday.

Over a year late to market, HP needs to give potential tablet shoppers all the reason to buy a TouchPad it can muster. Along with the storage promotion, HP offers a $50 rebate to owners of Palm smartphones — like the Pixi and Pre — through the end of July.

Fring, the cross-platform mobile VoIP app, has issued an update that brings native four-way video-calling to the iPad, before Skype has even released an iPad app of any kind.

The app, which is also available for Android and even in Nokia’s OVI store, offers video and audio chat over both Wi-Fi and 3G (unlike FaceTime, which is currently Wi-Fi — and iOS — only).

Considering that Apple’s own iChat multi-way video calls at first required a honking great Mac Pro to initiate and control the session, running this on an iPad shows how far we have come in just a few years. Sure, you probably don’t take your iPad skiing, or blow kisses to three of your friends at once like you see in the promo photo above, but there are times when four-way chat could come in useful.

The obvious use is podcasting, but as Fring offers no desktop software it’s unlikely to usurp Skype anytime soon.