Dolphin's Sonar lets you talk to your browser.

Dolphin Sonar is a new built-in feature for the Dolphin Browser (download) that lets you control the browser by voice, the company announced yesterday. The feature is a first for mobile browsers.

Currently available only in the Android version of the browser, Sonar can be used to search the Web, open or close tabs, and perform basic page navigation. Dolphin's head of marketing, Edith Yeung, says that the company has been working on it for more than half a year. "What we want is for people to forget about typing," she said in an interview at CNET's San Francisco office last week.

Sonar has been integrated into Dolphin in a way that feels quite natural. You activate it by either shaking the phone with the Dolphin app open, or by holding down on the Gesture button in the lower left corner. Tap the microphone to turn Sonar on, and then speak.

It works by hooking into Google's Voice API, but Yeung said that the server work is their own implementation.

In testing, I found Sonar to be surprisingly flawless. "Facebook CNET" instantly loaded the CNET Facebook page; "Share this" opened the Share options; "Google cheese" brought up search... [Read more]

Windows 8 on an ARM tablet.

Samsung executive Hankii Yoon said at Mobile World Congress, "The best thing to survive in the market is to kill your products."

He was referring to new Samsung Android tablets cannibalizing older ones, but let's take that comment even further. The first tablet demonstrating Windows 8 at Mobile World Congress was a Samsung one. Sure, Samsung is playing the field, and it's made Windows tablets before. However, it only goes to show that if you're not the one vertically integrating software and hardware, it's a free-for-all as far as where tablet hardware might evolve next.

The iPad isn't going anywhere: it has huge popularity, a massive app catalog, and dominating market share going for it. However, that spot at No. 2 seems wide open. Android tablets have been far from compelling thus far, leaving the doorway open for Windows 8 tablets to stake a claim that no other Windows tablets have previously been able to capture. However, for Windows 8 to succeed as a true iPad competitor and bury Android tablets, the battle will have to be fought on several fronts:

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Microsoft's Internet Explorer seems to be keeping rival browsers at bay after years of share losses.

For Microsoft's Internet Explorer team, stasis is bliss.

In February's worldwide usage statistics, IE largely held at bay its top challengers, Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome, according to Net Applications' latest measurements. IE has done so for a few months now, a big improvement for Microsoft compared to years of losing share.

IE dipped from 53.0 percent of global usage in January to 52.8 percent in February among desktop browsers; Firefox and Chrome stayed level at 20.9 percent and 18.9 percent, respectively. Safari popped up a notch from 4.9 percent to 5.2 percent, and Opera was unchanged at 1.7 percent.

Browsers have become a fiercely competitive technology as companies seek to attract users to what has become a foundation for many applications they use daily. Underlying operating systems still matter -- especially on mobile devices, were apps are a vibrant market -- but people today spend a lot of time on the Web.

Among mobile devices, Android rose to second place over Opera Mini and No. 1 Safari extended its lead.

IE lagged rivals for years, but IE9... [Read more]