Google's Chrome OS-running Cr-48 netbook is quite a hot item nowadays, so coveted that, despite only being available directly from Google, it's already become available for sale in China.

As you will certainly remember, search-engine giant Google officially introduced a couple of weeks ago its first-ever netbook, the Cr-48, meant to offer at glimpse at the future Chrome operating system's capabilities, and made it available within its Pilot program (sort of a beta-testing initiative).

However, as GizInChina reports, it seems that, if you happen to live in China and you have 7,777.77 Chinese yuan (roughly 1,170.84216 U.S. Dollars) to spare, you'll be able to get one of the new Cr-48 netbooks even if you haven't qualified for the aforementioned program, since the item was listed as being available for saleon one of China's largest online sales portals, Taobao (with no less than 77 pieces being available in stock)

While the photos posted within the respective listing seem to be genuine enough (we've also added them to our article, so you can check them out directly), there's very little technical info to go on, the vendors informing possible customers that the device sports a 12-inch display, an Atom CPU running at 2.66 Ghz, a built-in 3G module and 64GB of built-in flash memory.
As far as we're concerned, the listing on Taobao has two possible explanations: either we're talking about clones (which shouldn't be much of a surprise, given the fact that, after all, Chine is the land of knock-offs), or about genuine Cr-48 netbooks that were more or less voluntarily misplaced (we seriously doubt that Google would actually sell these things in China, since it's not doing it anywhere else around the world).

However, we wont' probably get to know the truth about these netbooks unless someone actually gets to purchase one, and if one of you happens to do so, please, don't hesitate to drop a line in our comments section.

Canonical announced a few minutes ago in a press release that the Ubuntu project, with Google's help, released today the amazing Ubuntu Font Family to the world. The font is available to any web designer from the Google Font Directory.

The Ubuntu Font Family was especially designed by Canonical for the Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick Meerkat) operating system. Starting with today, any web developer can add the Ubuntu font on their websites. This means that visitors will be able to see the text on the respective webpages as it was intended, even if they don't have the font installed on their computers!

"Our focus on design and usability in Ubuntu led us to create a font which is at once beautiful and readable. We're delighted to share the Ubuntu Font Family with web designers around the world who want their websites to be stylish and readable in as manylanguages and browsers as possible."

Be it perusing books, browsing Internet, pleasing ears with music, or glancing over favorite photo albums, E Fun indeed helped many enliven their imagination. The company is back again with its new Next3 8.4-inch Android-powered tablet enclosed in a sleek, lightweight chassis.

Designed to revamp the whole fun encounter, the stylish Next3 can be an entertaining companion for consumers seeking entertainment while on the wheels. Featuring Wi-Fi capability, the device enables users to surf the web, receive and answer e-mails, watch YouTube videos, listen to Internet music providers, and get real-time weather reports.

“Our first Android tablet, the Next2, exceeded all expectations, selling out on HSN in less than a week in November,” shared Jason Liszewski, Managing Director and VP of Sales for E Fun. “Our new Next3 tablet continues our objective to provide easy-to-use lifestyle products filled with fun and functionality. With its large touch-screen color display, Borders eBook Store app, and multimedia capability, the Next3 delivers on all counts.”

Hanging directions to pages and settling upon applications gets easier with the tablet’s touchscreen feature. Powered by Google’s Android operating system, the feature-rich Next3 also boasts of a large 8.4-inch TFT color display, built-in speakers, 2 gigabyte flash memory coupled with an SD card slot for additional banking, and an MP3/photo viewer.

Windows vs. Chrome OS, so it begins, or at least it’s about to. At the end of the past week, Google started sending out invitations to a Chrome team event on December 7th, 2010, in San Francisco.

The promise from the Mountain View-based search giant is that some exciting news about Chrome will be made public. No other details were offered, but the general consensus among various third-party sources seems to be that the event is related to Chrome OS.

Google’s open source Linux-based operating system has been cooking for some time now, and the company now seems closer than ever to place a foothold in Windows territory.

Speculation indicates that Google might ready a Beta preview of Chrome OS which would ship on a netbook offered to developers.However, this is not the actual general availability deadline of Chrome OS, which was postponed to 2011, with Google refusing to detail the reasons of the delay. Chrome OS was initially planned for availability by the end of 2010.

And Windows is about to get a new rival. Windows 7 at least, since, despite still being present on the market, Windows XP and Windows Vista are largely irrelevant in terms of new sales.

Just a few years ago, Google was launching the Chrome browser, and now the company is extremely close to the 10% mark of the market.

Granted the OS market is not as crowded as the browser one, and Windows is in a far more dominant position than Internet Explorer was when Google’s browser shipped, but if the success of Chrome is any indication, Microsoft needs to brace for impact.

Chrome OS comes with a new approach to the classic operating system model. There’s very little local storage, and there are no application programming interfaces (APIs) to support applications running locally.

Instead, Chrome OS is built for the Cloud, and is browser-centric, with the Chrome browser at the core. The user data, settings, content, applications sit in Google’s servers rather than being stored locally.

Meanwhile, Windows 7 still has the same Cloud connections as its predecessors, largely related to the Windows Live Essentials suite.

Microsoft does have the chance to push Windows 8 into the Cloud, linking it with Windows Azure, but there’s no telling whether the Redmond company will actually do it, or wait for the next version of Windows, after Windows 7’s successor.

Meanwhile, Google is extremely close to have the operating system rendered all but useless, and shift the focus entirely to the web.

Estimates indicate that Chrome OS will be available on netbooks in early 2011, but a release date has yet to be disclosed.

What’s interesting is that Chrome OS was created in a time when netbooks were extremely hot, which is no longer the case.

Consumers seem to prefer tablets / slates to netbooks more and more, especially for media consumption scenarios, and in this regard, Chrome OS might just have betted on a losing horse, at least in the long run.

And the operating system cannot simply be transitioned to tablets, since it’s not sufficiently touch-centric, but tailored to machines with keyboards instead.

Windows 7 dominates the netbook market for the time being, although it will take a while before slates sporting the OS will gain traction, and not until 2011 at the latest, even according to Microsoft estimates.

As far as netbooks are concerned, the Redmond company has won the OS war with Linux, and it did it with XP, before Windows 7 was launched.

Now Chrome OS comes to challenge Windows’ dominance, the shadow of Linux is still in the background, and it’s time for Microsoft to take on a new rival.

Opera Software has released the final version of Opera Mini 4.2 for mobile phones, giving G1 handset users looking for change from Android's built-in WebKit browser a third party alternative to play with. Opera Mini, which is the first web browser alternative on Android, sports a number of enhancements, including what Opera claims is up to a 30 percent performance boost.

"With Opera Mini 4.2, we are showing the world that Opera never gets complacent. We will always be improving our product, adding speed, new functionality and features, and ensuring that it is accessible by all,” says Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera Software. “Our support of the Android platform helps fulfill our mission to be available on more platforms, for more devices and reach more users, anywhere in the world."Opera Mini also boasts greater multilingual support with more than 90 language versions, personalization through skins, Opera Link support for notes, and support for mobile video on a wider range of phones.

If you’re a Gmail user and you’ve got a domain that’s registered through GoDaddy, you’ve been put in danger – from yourself.

A new security flaw in Gmail has caused a new exploit to run wild. The exploit essentially makes you to create a filter all on your own, allowing unwanted eyes to get access of your Gmail account.

In a nutshell, the exploit steals a cookie from you. Once this cookie has been swiped some malicious code creates a hidden iframe with a url that contains the variables required for Gmail to create a filter for your account. Once this is done, the hacker has free reign over your personal emails and whatever else you might associate with your Gmail account.While this is clearly the shorthand version, be sure to check out the full rundown. If you’re one of the many that uses both Gmail and GoDaddy, we’d suggest that you take some time to check it out.

Google released an update for its iPhone app that allows people to search on Google faster and easier than ever before. This launch builds on the previous version of the Google Mobile App for iPhone to offer two innovative new ways for users to search the web while they're on the go: by voice and by location.

With the new version of the app, people can conduct a Google search by simply speaking their query into their iPhones. "Voice Search" uses speech recognition technology to transform spoken words into text and then runs the query through Google web search as if it had been typed manually. Additionally, to provide an even faster and more natural experience, when the app is turned on, Voice Search will detect the phone's movement and activate automatically when you want to do a search. This feature allows you to naturally bring the phone up to your ear and speak your search into the phone, just as if you were talking on the phone.This update to the Google Mobile App also uses the iPhone's location detection to further personalize your search results. Now you can just type (or speak) a query like "pizza," "movies" or "weather" and you will receive results tailored specifically to your current location, without having to include a city or zip code in the search.

The voice and location features add to Google Mobile App's existing tools that allow people to access all of Google's mobile services from their phone. To learn more, please visit www.google.com/mobile or download the app from the iPhone App Store by searching for "Google Mobile App."

Google's increasing dominance of Internet search and advertising is the rising fear that Google's broadening reach is giving it unchecked power. Consumer Watchdog, a non-profit consumer advocacy group, has called on Google?s founders and directors to adopt new privacy safeguards that allow for anonymous internet and software use.

The group has created a You Tube video showing how your computer could be having an unnoticed conversation about you with Google.

Earlier this month Consumer Watchdog wrote the Justice Department to block Google's proposed advertising alliance with Yahoo based on these privacy concerns. The letter notes that the introduction of Google's new browser, known as "Chrome," without new privacy protections, poses an unprecedented threat to consumers. (Read it here.)

"Google's role is now unprecedented because the Internet goliath is no longer merely collecting some data about how we search and surf the web," said Consumer Watchdog president Jamie Court. "Its new browser and software are actually sending information from inside our computers to its servers. If Google won?t solve its own privacy problems, the company must be prepared for regulators to put the brakes on its unprecedented growth. State Attorneys General need to take action to protect consumers? privacy and make sure that computer users have the ability to opt-out of Google?s web and browse anonymously."

Consumer Watchdog spoke with Google's team last month about its concerns, but the company agreed to address only one of the smaller privacy problems uncovered in the video, the group said.

"Google claims users do not expect to be able to navigate the web anonymously, only to have anonymous moments, which is why Google does not have an easy to use privacy mode for its products," the group added.

The consumer group's concerns center on creating a simple anonymizing button across Google?s products and websites so that there is transparency and easy opt-out for those who did not wish to share their private data.Most computer users do not focus on the huge amounts of data sent to Google's servers, Consumer Watchdog said.

The introduction of Chrome, unless the privacy concerns are addressed seriously and quickly, could mark the end of real user control and choice online, the group claims. And that because Chrome allows new asynchronous communications to occurring without users' full understanding, consent or control. In addition, many Chrome features blur the distinction between the desktop and cloud computing, where a computer user?s software, documents, data and personal information exist not on the consumer?s hard drive but on Google's servers on the Internet, the group said.

Another of Consumer Watchdog's complaints surrounds Chrome's Incognito mode, which "lulls consumers into a false sense of security that their actions are completely private and free from prying eyes when in fact they are not."

"Chrome provides Google unprecedented dominance over the transmission of computer data and warrants higher privacy standards," wrote Consumer Watchdog President Jamie Court and Policy Advocate John Simpson. "Chrome represents a once-in-a decade opportunity to raise the consumer privacy bar to new heights that will benefit consumers, content providers, and ultimately Google itself."

To protect user privacy Consumer Watchdog said Google should:

- Place a single prominent button on the main Chrome interface that can't be hidden or removed and that allows a user to enter Incognito mode instantly without interrupting the user experience. Once in Incognito mode, the application should assume we want to stay incognito, essentially treating Incognito as a default preference once a user has selected it.

- Provide clear disclosure on the Google search engine home pages so that users can easily prevent communication with Google before pressing the search button or affirmatively requesting an action. This could be an extension of an omni-present "Incognito mode" button. This disclosure needs to be made clear throughout all the Google applications including GMail, Google Talk, and the Google Toolbar. This disclosure needs to be more than a confusing warning a few clicks away. It should be a convenient, actionable feature so that the user can exercise informed choice.

- Ensure that Incognito mode has the full meaning the word implies when users opt for it. Incognito mode should default to SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) connections, provide an automatic IP anonymizing service, enforce a no-log policy on all Google servers including Google Analytics, as well as disable auto-saving, suggestions, and all other feature that use asynchronous event handlers other than button and link click. Incognito should disable all external calls to desktop applications and plug-ins whose applications fail to meet equivalent standards

Although Chrome is new, Consumer Watchdog is not waiting to see whether it gets too little use to worry about. In October, Court's group wrote U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey to caution him about Google's plans to sell ads for Yahoo, saying that its fears about Google's market power have been exacerbated by Chrome's release.

"We look forward to your response and to working with Google to make the company the standard bearer for privacy on the Internet," Consumer Watchdog?s letter concluded.

Google said that it has been working to fix the "Incognito mode" issue, which does not prevent the browser from sending a request to Google to help determine the actual site the user is trying to visit, in case a user spell a Web site's address incorrectly.

In July, Google also began linking to its privacy policy on its home page. It also recently began its anonymization of the data it stores through the "Google Suggest" feature.

In September, to placate European Union data protection officials, Google said it would maintain its search logs for nine months instead of 18, as it had been doing. After that time, Google will alter IP addresses to mask their source.

LG Electronics and Microsoft today announced the signing of Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to form strategic collaboration in mobile technology.

The agreement was signed in Seoul by Yong Nam, Vice-Chairman and chief executive officer of LG Electronics and Steve Ballmer, chief executive officer of Microsoft.

"This agreement between LG and Microsoft will create critical momentum in the industry," said Yong Nam at the announcement ceremony. "With this partnership, mobile computing will truly become an everyday reality, and LG and Microsoft will be at the forefront of it."

"This MoU further strengthens Microsoft relationship with LG and demonstrates our joint commitment to delivering the most innovative mobile experiences to our customers," said Steve Ballmer. "We are excited that leading mobility solutions providers, such as LG, are aligning with our vision for mobility."

The agreement includes strategic collaboration in R&D, marketing, applications, and services in the field of converged mobile devices.

"Under the MoU, mobile device business will be reinforced through incorporating LG?s core competences in marketing and products in mobile and IT sector and Microsoft?s proficiency in Windows Mobile OS, application, and service," reads the press release the companies issued today.Meanwhile larger home rival Samsung on the same day announced the launch of the domestic version of the Omnia touch screen handset model, based on Microsoft's Windows Mobile 6.1 operating system.

The model will be available from mid-November under an exclusive deal with No. 1 mobile operator SK Telecom, Samsung said.

Microsoft is hoping its Windows Mobile operating system can continue to challenge Symbian, a platform backed by Nokia and used in two-thirds of smartphones -- mobile handsets with computer-like capabilities.

Blackberry-maker Research in Motion and Apple's iPhone are also growing threats to Symbian, while several manufacturers are planning or have started to roll out smartphones based on Google's Android software.

Both LG and Samsung are members of the Symbian Foundation and are also developing models based on Android.

After the launch of the very first Google Android mobile phone, the T-Mobile G1 by HTC, Motorola was the next to announce that they were also in the process of developing their own handset to run on the same OS. That aside the next in line according to reports, is Asus who is planning to launch an Android-based handset sometime in the first half of next year.There are no specs or designs of the handset yet, but according to the same reports, the company plans to launch the first set of Android-based handsets exclusively in the Taiwanese market and then customize it for other areas.

Microsoft has released key details of the next generation of software that it hopes will run the world's computers. The software giant, whose dominance is increasingly under threat, said Windows 7 will replace the disappointing Windows Vista in January 2010.

Microsoft said the new operating system will be designed to function like a tighter version of Vista, which launched in 2006 but was widely derided as a system hog that slowed down computers with features that most users never used.

Speaking to participants at a Microsoft developers' conference in Los Angeles, Steven Sinofsky, senior vice president of Windows, said Microsoft was learning its lessons from Vista, and making sure that Windows 7 would be fully compatible with all relevant devices and applications on launch.

Among the innovations unveiled by Microsoft was a touchscreen capability that will allow users to select folders and control programs without using a mouse.Windows 7 will also feature faster bootup times, an updated task bar that includes previews of open windows, a new desktop look, and a set of features optimised for laptops. It would also make it easier to coordinate and access files over networks, and to automatically configure settings for different networks.

The new software will ditch some prominent features included in Vista, including Calendar, Windows Mail, Movie Maker, Contacts and Photo Gallery, which will now be available for free download from the Microsoft website.

Microsoft operating systems still power some 90 percent of the world's personal computers, though Vista has only racked up an 18 percent share since its launch.

Microsoft has been hit by the growing success of Apple's Mac computers and by the long-term switch of many computing functions to mobile phones and the internet.

Google has been threatening Microsoft's Office Suite, with online word processors, spreadsheets and presentation programs.

Microsoft Tuesday said it would launch free online versions of Office that would be supported by advertising. Many analysts fear that offering an online version could cannibalize Microsoft's most profitable line of products.

But Rob Helm, a senior analyst at research firm Directions on Microsoft, said that both Windows 7 and Office Online should work out well for the company.

"Both are good improvements," he said. "Windows 7 will help Microsoft overcome the weakness of Vista, while Web-based Office is a direct response to Google. Many businesses will like it because they have lots of users who don't use many of the Office features."

Russian regulators will not let Google buy a local online advertising company, halting a $140 million deal agreed to in July.

Google planned to acquire Zao Begun, which has a search and contextual video and text advertising business. Begun is owned by Rambler Media, a Russian company that own various Web sites and runs a search engine.

Google said it is reviewing the decision of Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) and hasn't decided how to react.

"We are very disappointed to hear that FAS has come to this decision," Google said in a statement. "We strongly believe that this acquisition will enable us to significantly improve opportunities for Russian users, advertisers and publishers as well as the entire industry."

Google's plans to grow its online advertising business, which comprises nearly all of the company's revenue, has run into other obstacles with regulators.

The U.S. Department of Justice is investigating a plan for Yahoo to show Google search ads. That deal formed as Yahoo was under intense pressure earlier this year as Microsoft tried to acquire the company.Yahoo and Google planned to start the program this month, but it has been delayed pending the DOJ review. Critics say it could drive up the costs of advertising and also gives the two companies too much control over the online advertising market. Google has said ads are purchased by auction, and neither company sets prices.

The rejection of the deal in Russia underscores the difficulty Google is having in some markets. While it dominates search in Western countries, Google faces strong competition from local search engines in places such as South Korea, China and Russia.

Google picked a strong partner in Russia: Begun runs a network with 40,000 advertisers covering 143,000 Russian-language Web sites. When the deal was announced, Rambler also signed an additional agreement to use Google's AdSense technology on its main portal.

Trying to keep up with HTC’s TouchFLO, ASUS has launched the P552w PDA phone which features Glide – the innovative touch-responsive user interface that ASUS has designed for navigation. The Global launch was in September of this year and the handset is now getting ready to hit Indian shelves.
Running on a Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional OS, the P552w is equipped with a 624MHz processor, internal GPS with Google integration, and Gester technology that enables users to perform a variety of navigational actions – such as selecting, zooming, scrolling and flipping through shortcust menus much like HTC’s TouchFLO. Their versions are called Multi-Home, Anytime Launcher, EziPhoto, and EziMusic. The handset also supports WLAN, Bluetooth and of course features USB connectivity. It comes equipped with a 2MP camera as well.Through a specialized feature called ASUS SMS Location Link, users can send a link embedded in an SMS of their location that when clicked on will show up on the receiver’s handset on Google Maps. ASUS P552w also features a convenient Google Search Bar on the 'Today' screen that makes it easier to perform online queries. The ASUS P552w also houses applications that enable easy access to web content like RSS newsfeeds, YouTube movies and photos on Flickr.

The ASUS P552w PDA phone is available for Rs. 27,900 and should offer other i-Killers like the Touch Diamond some heavy competition. But let’s wait and see.

The alfaiscool2002@gmail.com e-mail address is believed to have been used for privacy violations and corporate espionage against a manager of a company called iMerge. The company filed suit against Google after the Internet firm refused to voluntarily hand over the data.

The court in Amsterdam ordered Google earlier this month to provide the targeted company with a list of all IP addresses that have been used to access the account over the past 30 days under penalty of a €1,000 (US$1,342) daily fine.

Google also had to hand over the IP address from which the account was created and the date on which this happened, as well as the name and secondary e-mail address of the applicant.

IMerge also had asked for a list of all addresses that mail had been sent to, but the court ordered that such data would unduly violate the privacy of third parties. Google has since complied with the order.

IMerge over the summer found that it's e-mail servers had been altered, allowing all e-mail messages addressed at the manager to be secretly forwarded to the Gmail address. The company said that the log files show frequent access to the account from both within iMerge as well as from the personal Internet connection of a disgruntled partner. The company argues that the log files provide sufficient evidence for a civil claim against the individual.In addition to corporate espionage, the copied e-mails have harmed the affected manager in his personal life. He used his corporate e-mail to exchange messages with a person with whom he had an extramarital affair. Those messages have been forwarded to his spouse and are now part of a divorce procedure.

IMerge's counsel Mark Meijer complained to Webwereld, an IDG affiliate, that it is "incredibly easy" to create an anonymous e-mail account and harass other people. "Companies like Google will only cooperate when they risk legal claims, even if there is overwhelming evidence to indicate criminal wrongdoings as is the case here," Meijer said.

Allister Verney , a spokesperson for Google Netherlands countered that the firm never gives out user data without a court order. "In court cases we always try to limit the amount of that that is provided. But if a judge rules that we have to comply with a request, then we have no option but to give out the data," said Verney.

Google planned to announce on Tuesday that the source code for its mobile operating system, Android, is now available for anyone to use free.The move was expected, although the timing was uncertain.
Developers can find the source code on the Web site for the Android Open Source Project.

"An open-sourced mobile platform, that's constantly being improved upon by the community and is available for everyone to use, speeds innovation, is an engine of economic opportunity and provides a better mobile experience for users," said Andy Rubin, senior director of mobile platforms for Google, in a statement.

The first Android phone isn't yet on the market -- the G1 goes on sale in the U.S. from T-Mobile on Wednesday. Journalists were first able to publish reviews of the G1 last week.

Google expects that by making the source code for the operating system open, a wide variety of applications will appear, as will cheaper and faster phones.

But Google's model for Android has some critics. The LiMo Foundation, which publishes specifications for middleware for mobile Linux devices, and of which Google is not a member, says that Google's model might be too open."There's a debate about whether Google's approach to openness is sustainable and good for the industry," said Andrew Shikiar, director of global marketing for the LiMo Foundation.

Android will be released under the Apache license, which doesn't require developers to share their changes to the code back with the community, he said. This is one of the reasons why some people wonder whether Android will become fragmented as various incompatible versions of the software appear in phones across the market.

In the FAQ section of the site for the Open Handset Alliance, the group supporting Android, Google says that using the Apache license will let manufacturers innovate on the platform and allow them to keep those innovations proprietary as a way to differentiate their offerings.

Shikiar floats a more sinister reason that he's heard for why Google may have chosen the Apache license. "If it's fragmented and scattered, and the only common version is the Google-optimized one, it's good for them," he said. That's because the G1, which is optimized by Google, comes loaded with many Google services that can eventually bring in revenue for the search giant. If that turns out to be the best version of an Android phone, more people will use it and so, presumably, more people will be using Google apps.

LiMo and Symbian, which also is going open source, each use different licenses, but both include obligations for people who change their code to share their changes, Shikiar said.

Shikiar also criticized Google because he said the search giant hasn't created any sort of governance model for the Open Handset Alliance and doesn't publicly publish the group's membership agreement. A governance model spells out for participating companies exactly how their intellectual property can be used by other members. Without it, members might be reluctant to contribute, he said.

The OHA did not reply to questions recently posed regarding its choice of license and its governance model. Google also was not immediately able to respond to similar questions.

Last month, it was confirmed that an iPhone 2.2 beta build had been handed to a select number of iPhone developers for testing. Two weeks into the release of Apple's first pre-release build of the new iPhone OS, some hidden features have emerged, Japanese emoji icons (461 emoji characters), Google Street View, and the ability to disable the iPhone's auto-correction.

The iPhone OS 2.2 beta build was accompanied by a new SDK version as well. While the builds were labeled “compatibility testing,” they provided no indication as to what they included. However, MacRumors was recently able to confirm that new features have made their way into the latest iPhone OS version. However, bear in mind that these are just the latest findings and that more features are likely to be disclosed, as testers acknowledge them.

Support for Japanese emoji icons. This is said to be a very popular feature for Japanese phones. In fact, part of the reason Apple's iPhone saw very little adoption in Japan was the lack of emoji support, analysts say."The iPhone is a difficult phone to use for the Japanese market because there are so many features it doesn't have," says Eimei Yokota, an analyst with MM Research. He added that a lacking feature as small as this can be quite a deficiency in the iPhone. Emoji clip art that can be inserted in sentences to let a person express more using less characters is a “must-have” for the iPhone in Japan.

Next up, support for Google Street View. Naturally, we're talking about the Google Maps application. Street View is a hefty feature that allows one to view panoramic street level photographs within the Google Maps application. However, as of now, it is available only for select cities on the globe. Recently showcased on Google's Android, the new addition promises to deliver a breathtaking experience.

The third “hidden” feature found in Apple's latest iPhone software is the ability to disable the iPhone's auto correction. Users have long complained about having their hands tied when the iPhone constantly offered suggestions while typing, something you don't necessarily need when, say, you like playing around with words.

According to Softpedia, As the Beijing Olympics just opened, Google announced the launch of a new website that comprises the latest news in the sports world, videos of the competitions provided by YouTube, or 3D models of the stadiums that host the events, created with the Google SketchUp. The events schedule and a medal count, either for sports or for regions, are offered to Google users on a mobile platform.

The website is available in 66 countries and in 31 languages, as Dylan Casey, Product Manager at Google, reveals. The satellite imagery was also updated, in order to offer users who cannot attend the games a virtual experience to match the intensity of the genuine one. Moreover, the possibility of seeing details that range from stadium seats to racing tracks makes the Internet experience even more enjoyable."To track medal counts, click on the 'Medals' tab and zoom or pan the map to see updates around the world. Clicking on a country or region will display medal information as it's received. Use the 'Events' tab to view the latest schedules by date, country, and sport. All data – including country and region participants, sport results, and medal counts – is provided through an official feed from the World News Press Agency", explains Brittany Bohnet, Google Maps Special Projects.

Dylan Casey, the team member who announced the launch of the new Google site on the company’s official blog, was actually a member of the U.S. Olympic team himself. Born in 1971, the Google fellow made it into the team that competed at the Olympics in Sydney, in 2000. "Even though I didn’t walk away with any medals then, training and competing involved a herculean effort - but that pales in comparison to what we’re unveiling today." says Casey, drawing a parallel between his performance as a sportsman and his achievements with Google.

According to softpedia, a 502 server error prevented Gmail and Google Apps users from accessing their accounts for about 15 hours. The error, associated with servers that have to deal with too many connections, disappeared after the number of people who tried to access a specific location decreased. In this particular case, it took Google engineers over half a day until they managed to solve the problem generated by a server congestion.The majority of users complained about the fact that they could not connect to Gmail through their Google Apps account, while the rest of them said that no other attempt worked either. People with more than one Gmail account noticed that, usually, only one of those could not connect. Google found out about the problem via the support forums. The officials responded, saying that the issue was already being worked at. Even so, some of the users got no less than furious. Many claimed that their businesses depended on important emails that had to be read or sent as soon as possible.

To pour oil upon troubled waters, Google representatives assured that only a "small subset" of Gmail users was experiencing the inability to log in. Also, on the Google Apps discussion group, one of the representatives of the company said that the issue was only access-related. During the failure, email accounts were still able of receiving and storing messages.

The annoyed users affected by the issue pointed the finger at Google, accusing the Mountain View-based company of slow response. "I feel for all business that has been affected by this. I can only imagine how much money was lost and how many client relationships must now be strained as a result of this monumental dropping of the ball on behalf of Google." said Tim, a man who claimed that his company was one of the first to adopt Google Apps.