DO more with less, that’s the gist of today’s technology. Here are five technology trends likely to change the way we work, play and connect this year

1. More tablets and smartphones

With Windows Phone models, including two Nokia Lumia models and the Android Ice Cream Sandwich-based Samsung Galaxy Nexus to hit Malaysia within the first half of the year, the platform war within the smartphone category will likely heat up. Even with the recent release of iPhone 4S, many users are still anticipating the announcement of iPhone 5…

The world’s largest semiconductor company seems to be steadfast for 20 consecutive years. In 1999, Intel Corporation (NASDAQ:INTC) attained dominance was eroded because of the surge of rival Advanced Micro Devices (AMD). As of this year, its market share is back on top.

Apparently, Intel is strengthening its grip on the microprocessor market and is shown in the new figures given by IHS iSuppli. The market research firm results indicate that Intel has increased its market share by 83.7 percent. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) on the other hand has dropped its share by 10.2 percent.

The thing that led Intel plunge in sales was the boom in media tablet. As consumers embraced new devices like tablets and disregard netbooks, Intel microprocessors is powering the netbook market. On the third quarter, the Atom microprocessor and chipset revenue has dropped by 32% compared to last year’s third quarter…

The past few years have been nothing if not a boon for entrepreneurs looking to cash in on venture capitalists’ lust for all things cloud.  All the activity has been great, and we’ve seen some exciting new companies emerge and prosper — companies such as Heroku, RightScale and New Relic — but it also means there’s precious little room on the playing field for newcomers. Startups that want to get noticed, get funded, and ultimately have a winning exit must either find their own unique niche or stake out ground on a different field altogether.

Here are 10 cloud computing startups that launched in 2011 and that have a chance to make it big in 2012…

Distinguishing cloud computing reality from cloud hype can be a daunting task. Smart Business met with Christian Teeft, vice president of Engineering at Latisys, to examine some of the key assumptions, myths and drivers that decision makers face as they build their cloud IT infrastructure strategy.

Defined: cloud computing

Cloud computing is IT infrastructure that is delivered as a service, is elastic (users consume as much or as little of a service as they want at any time), is sold on-demand and is fully managed by the provider. In short, cloud computing makes it possible to increase capacity and add capabilities as needed — without the user having to invest in new infrastructure, train new personnel or license new software. Some say the cloud is ‘[anything] as a service’ (XaaS)…

A declining amount of computing is conducted today on desktop computers; instead, cloud computing – in which operations are carried out on a network of shared, remote servers – is expected to rise as the demand for computing power increases. This raises some crucial questions about security: For instance, can we perform computations on data stored in the “cloud” without letting anyone else see our information? Research carried out at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is moving us closer to the ability to work on data while it is still encrypted, giving an encrypted result that can later be securely deciphered…

If you consider the fact that more than 220,000 patents will have been granted by the end of the year and even more patents were filed with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office over the past 12 months, it is impossible to say which ones were the most significant patents of the year. Like every year, there were many patents that should neither have been granted nor filed in the first place. On the other hand, there were also those that were captivating, giving us an idea about how technology in the future will develop and affect every one of us. Among all of the patent applications and approvals in 2011, the following five were the most memorable ones of which you should be aware:…

The link between mobile devices and corporate networks has largely been a neglected mechanism in the construction of corporate communication data distribution and access, and is an area for considerable growth and development. "Cloud computing has been a natural extension for consumer devices due to the relative ease of access allowed in Public and Private Cloud infrastructure," says Greg Pierce, Managing Director of Cloud Computing at Tribridge.

The debate being in allow-ability, accessibility and user controls. Says Mr. Pierce, "It’s become increasingly difficult to handle the number and range of devices for end users, with the typical worker often having three devices: laptop, iPad, and smartphone. With the launch of Windows 8, Microsoft is looking to change the way workers access enterprise data."…

Amazon has one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. There’s something unusual about it, though — it’s not real. That is, it’s not real in the way other supercomputers are, in a huge room filled with glowing, humming racks of processors and storage. It’s in the cloud.

Cloud computing gets a lot of attention, and deservedly so. Harnessing the processing power of multiple machines in different locations to attack a single, complex task that would usually be completed by a machine in a single location is an impressive engineering feat. But as promising as the idea is, it’s not known for high performance and reliability…