Although phones featuring Google's open-source Android operating system have been out for more than a year, it's only been in recent months that the platform has really caught on. In fact, this fall alone has seen the debut of several new high-profile Android devices from such esteemed manufacturers as HTC, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and Samsung. Read more
Among all the free tools that Google produces, Google's 3D modeling software, SketchUp, has to be one of the best and most addicting. Here is a link to a slideshow of 10 models that were selected from Google's 3D Warehouse, its online library of thousands of models created by SketchUp users. Read more
Google has released the 4.0 beta of its Chrome browser. The main new feature is a way to synch your bookmarks across multiple computers. The synch technology is based on the same XMPP-based servers that power Google Talk. Read more
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Here are the answers to the November, 2009, trivia questions. Read more
Google today took the wraps off of more than 10 new features for its Google Search Appliance aimed at the enterprise, including better SharePoint integration. Perhaps the coolest feature is the Self-learning Scorer, which lets the device fine-tune and improve itself. Read more
If you are looking at Google as an indicator of overall economic health, you'll be happy to know the company had a good third quarter. It reported increased revenue and profit over its year-ago third-quarter, beating analysts estimates in the process. Google CEO Eric Schmidt even went so far as to say, "we believe the worst of the recession is behind us and now feel confident about investing heavily in our future." Read more
Google Apps is growing up. Over the past six months, dozens of developers have built apps to make Google's office wares (Apps, Docs, Gmail, Calendar) more appealing for the enterprise. The following is a selection of these apps. They range from the practical (backups) to the creative (a freebie VPN replacement based on Google Talk). Better still, most of them are free. Read more
Google on Monday rolled out a new service to help Webmasters identify malware that may have been slipped into their sites. The new tool will show Webmasters of sites flagged as "unsafe" just what the offending code is. Read more
The final ties have been cut between Apple's and Google's board (and it's about time they have been). Arthur Levinson had been serving as an independent member on both the Apple and Google board of directors but has resigned his position from Google's board.
No one is shocked that Levinson left, but it sure took a while. Google's CEO Eric Schmidt resigned (or was shown the door?) in August, shortly after Google announced it would be competing head on with Apple in the operating system market with Chrome OS just as it was competing with the iPhone with Android. Read more
UPDATED 10/12/09: The FCC has agreed to investigate Google Voice at the urging of AT&T and a group of lawmakers. On Friday the FCC sent a letter to Google asking it to explain the service and why it thinks the service is in compliance with regulations. Read more
Dell is reporedly planning to launch an Android smartphone that will be carried on AT&T's network, according to Reuters. and the Wall Street Journal. Read more
Adobe made two announcements today sure to bring joy to the hearts of smartphone users. Google has joined Adobe's Open Screen Project, an initiative that helps standardize the display of Flash no matter the screen. Adobe also announced that full support of Flash 10.1 would be available in Android, Blackberry, Symbian, Palm webOS and Windows Mobile devices. Read more
Google is being sued by Textscape, a New Jersey company who claims Google violates its patents for processing text. Textscape claims the Google "find" feature in Chrome, which allows a search of text on a Web page and indicates the location of search hits in the scrollbar, is one of the alleged culprits.
Textscape is seeking royalties. Textscape is similarly suing Adobe Systems for patent violations as well.
Invitations to Google Wave were sent to 10,000 people this week and the hype machine has begun. Some are calling Google Wave revolutionary. Others aren't going so far, but do say that its integrated approach to social networking and business communications will be at least helpful. It's not the first app to tackle this. Read more
The creator of a popular souped-up version of Android thinks he's found a way to avoid a further tussle with Google over distribution of the company's mobile applications. Google recently sent a cease-and-desist letter to Android guru Steve Kondik asking him to stop distributing applications such as Gmail with Cyanogen, his modified version of the open-source Android operating system. Read more
When Google contacts crashed yesterday, it created Google's second high-profile outage this month. It took out Gmail and Gtalk, Google's chat service, that relies on contacts. The Gmail problem comes on the heels of an hour-and-a-half Google News glitch Tuesday. Read more
Testers are claiming that the Google's new Internet Explorer plug-in, Google Chrome Frame, makes IE8 run ten times faster. Microsoft is not amused. The company has already started a push-back campaign that notes that Frame breaks stuff in Outlook and Word and might offer a big target for hackers Read more
Google today introduced a plug-in for Internet Explorer called Chrome Frame. This plug-in gives Internet Explorer Chrome's standards-compliant rendering capabilities. If it becomes massively adopted by IE users, it could also push new standards along (like HTML5) with or without Microsoft's cooperation. Read more
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski announced Monday that the FCC would be moving ahead to implement net neutrality rules. Should these come to pass, Google Voice could wind up a big winner. On the other hand, pundits speculate that Google Voice itself could be facing even more FCC scrutiny. Read more
When news of Google Wave first bubbled to the surface in May, it created a lot of buzz, a little hype and has since ebbed out of the public eye. Earlier this month, Google began letting some of its Apps users test-drive Wave. Read more
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