Internet search giant Google has stepped into its teen-years as the firm celebrated its 13 years of existence.
On September 4, 1998 two friends Larry Page and Sergey Brin (a hewing of mine btw :) filed for incorporation of Google Inc. Two years earlier the Two launched search sevice BackRub, which later was renamed to Google a play on the mathematical figure, “googol,” which represents the number 1 followed by 100 zeroes.

According to the report, the application makers themselves have created 53,000 jobs, with an additional 129,000 jobs created indirectly, adding "$12.19 in wages and benefits to the U.S. economy." Zynga, the most well-known Facebook application maker out there of aforementioned FarmVille fame, employs 2,000 people directly.

The study was done by a University of Maryland business professor in partnership with Facebook itself, so that jobs figure may be inflated a bit since the social network has a PR incentive to make itself look like a job growth engine. In fact, today's report may in part be a response to the growing strain of thought that while the U.S.'s high-technology sector is growing rapidly, it isn't creating as many domestic jobs as it should.

That grain of salt aside, 182,000 jobs is nothing to cough at, especially considering the fact that the Facebook "app economy" is just a part of the larger application-based economy growing in the U.S. As a point of comparison, the entire U.S. economy created 105,000 net jobs this past summer. Those 182,000 Facebook app jobs, though, don't represent net job growth--some jobs created by Facebook applications could be squeezing employers in other industries, similar to how the auto makers of yesteryear squeezed the horse-and-buggy business.

The social media gauntlet has been thrown out and 2 Internet Giants are starting to circle each other. Current social media champion Facebook has announced a few changes. Those changes timed out rather interestingly with Google+ being made available to everyone. A social media showdown could be in the making.

Samsung Galaxy S II Channel Sales Reach 10 Million Worldwide.

Until Friday, increased solar activity was causing the atmosphere to expand and the 35-foot, bus-size satellite to free fall more quickly. But late Friday morning, NASA said the sun was no longer the major factor in the rate of descent and that the satellite's position, shape or both had changed by the time it slipped down to a 100-mile orbit.

"I firmly believe that we're just scratching the surface right now. I think there is an incredible opportunity for Apple there," Cook said at the time. However, analysts noted that Apple is far short of an ambitious goal set by executives early last year of opening 25 stores in the region by the end of 2011.

As part of our ongoing goal to foster the creation of great video content, we are announcing the release of three new features we hope will empower you to become even more imaginative with your video production.

1. Convert your 2D videos into 3D with a single click. (beta!)
Creating 3D videos was pretty tough before. You had to set up two cameras, combine the footage from each, and use special software to make the effect look just right. Today we're launching 2D to 3D conversion. Once you've uploaded your 2D videos to YouTube, you can convert them to 3D with the click of a button. Converted videos will be viewable by everyone in 3D. You'll still get best results with a 3D camera, but it's a great new way to let people enjoy your finest moments. You'll find this feature by selecting "Edit Info", then "3D Video" on a video you've uploaded. (Note, you'll still need glasses to watch on most devices.)

2. All verified users in good standing can now upload long-form videos.
YouTubers are some of the most innovative, entertaining and inspirational people in the world, and their creativity often needs more than the current upload limit of 15 minutes. Today, we’re improving upon our previous launch by enabling long uploads for users with a clean track record who complete an account verification and continue to follow the copyright rules set forth in our Community Guidelines. Check out some of the original full-length videos that can now shine on YouTube, such as student-film: “Spirit’s Revenge.”


To help you get those longer videos online, we also recently launched resumable uploads, which ensures that you won’t lose any of the minutes you’ve uploaded if your internet fails or your computer dies during the upload process. You can resume uploading right where you left off once you’re back online. (Note: Advanced uploader is no longer required to upload large files.)

3. Shoot, edit and share your videos easily with vlix and Magisto, now on youtube.com/create.
We’re adding two additional video creation platforms for you to make your videos even better: Vlix and Magisto. Vlix lets you spice up your videos by adding cool effects and text to the video intro and closing. Magisto takes your unedited video and automatically edits it into short, fun clips.

• Hold hangouts via Android smartphone
• Share your screen
• Draw together
• Create and edit documents together
• Hold topic-based hangouts
• Run your own TV network

Okay, that last one was an exaggeration, but there is the aforementioned new broadcast feature. You and up to nine of your friends can hold a hangout and then broadcast it to the world. Google picked a few stars, like Will.i.am, to run some of the early ones.

Microsoft offered many more details about its next-generation operating system, Windows 8, to an audience of developers and invited media at its Build conference in Anaheim, California. I was present at the initial Windows 8 unveiling a few months ago, and came away impressed but disappointed.


The root of my disappointment is this: I think Microsoft has, for the first time in a long time, created a product that is truly innovative. It’s Windows Phone 7, which does not feel like an iOS photocopy (as opposed to Android and WebOS, which are very clearly inspired by the iPhone's interface). Windows Phone 7's interface design, “Metro,” offers a fundamentally different approach to a touch interface. Microsoft went its own way with Windows Phone 7 and it made me enthusiastic about the possible innovations that interface could offer on tablet devices.

But with Windows 8, Microsoft has embraced Metro while rejecting the concept that touch devices and PCs are different classes of products. There will be no “tablet edition” of Windows Phone 7, there will just be Windows 8 whether you run it on a tablet or a desktop PC or something in between.

There are a couple factors at play in Microsoft’s decisions to create a single operating system for tablets and PCs. First and foremost, this is Microsoft. The company does not believe in a post-PC world, which you might expect from the folks whose software runs on most PCs. Microsoft has a real, business reason to try and keep everyone in the Windows ecosystem, where it dominates, rather than a mobile ecosystem where it’s way behind.


As someone who covers Apple and is used to that company killing its hit products in order to transition to something even better—and as someone who works in an industry with its own challenges—I am predisposed to appreciate businesses that embrace the new rather than opting to squeeze as much money out of the old thing as possible before turning off the lights forever. So yes, my instinct is to dislike Microsoft’s PC-centric approach. I understand it, but it feels like denial.

But what if it’s not denial? Let’s give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt here, because the company may also be betting on the fact that new technologies will make the distinction between PCs and phones and tablets completely irrelevant. Maybe Microsoft did miss the smartphone and tablet waves, but there’s a third wave coming and they’re going to try to surf that one. The company is protecting the past while making a bet on the future.

If you want to travel with a tablet but also need to run a Windows app, Microsoft will oblige: plug in a keyboard and mouse and your touchscreen tablet interface vanishes, replaced by old-school Windows. Carry a tablet with you for reading a book on the bus in the morning, then plug it in to a stand at the office and it becomes your PC. Maybe even something as small as your smartphone is actually your entire computer, docking to a tablet screen, TV set, or traditional desktop setup as needed. Microsoft is also counting on millions of PC users running Windows 8 on their desktop PCs and then demanding that same familiar interface on a tablet device.

I think I understand Microsoft’s vision here, but I’m not sure I can believe it’ll work. What made the iPad successful when a decade of Windows tablets has failed was that it was a focused product that omitted features in order to keep that focus. It was absolutely not a Mac or PC, but something new that was built from start to finish as a touch-based device. Not only did that make it a consistent, easy-to-use device, but it also made it relatively cheap and energy efficient.

The Metro interface on Windows 8 looks really good. What I can’t get over is that Microsoft wants a regular PC underneath. I suppose it offends me because I am trying to see the product through an Apple lens: If Microsoft had announced that Windows 8 Tablet would not support old Windows software and would run on dedicated tablet hardware only, I would have cheered, because I think that could be a really cool product. But I can see why Microsoft won’t do that: If it does, it risks just being an also-ran. PCs are its lot, for better or worse.

In the United States, A PS Vita that connects to the Internet only using Wi-Fi will be priced at $249, while a version featuring 3G connectivity will be priced at $299 once available.

The social-media giant this week launched a subscription feature that lets non-friends follow you, a move that may once again draw the ire of privacy watchdogs.



Subscribing To Strangers 
 

Yahoo!’s new design is influenced by clean and simple aesthetics. The refined layouts attempt to remove the design clutter and assimilate the company’s entire web, multimedia and vertical search results pages under the one unified search experience.

“At Yahoo!, we’re always looking for ways to make the Yahoo! Search experience even more organized and streamlined while serving the most relevant content,” posted Yahoo! Search team members Paul Ko, Girish Ananthakrishnan and Caroline Tsay on the Yahoo! Search Blog.

The changes are apparent throughout Yahoo!’s Web, Images, Video, News, Blogs, Finance and Sports search results pages.

New features include browser-inspired tabs that automatically appear below the Search box to provide users with easy-to--access links to other vertical search results pages and Left Filters that help users sort results by time, sources, content type or related searches.

There have been upgrades to Yahoo!’s Image search too with “Latest” pictures (which provide an indication of how long ago each image was published), more images sourced from Facebook, and better recommendations at the end of galleries.

“Every time you search on Bing, the information provided helps Bing understand what you’re trying to do. The more you search, the more Bing can learn – and use that information to adapt the experience so you can spend less time searching and accomplish what you set out to do,” explained Microsoft.

Google recently rolled out new streamlined designs for a number of its popular products including Docs, Calendar, Gmail and Blogger.

The microblogging service has a total of 200 million registered users, but how many of those are actually regulars has been open to debate. Costolo, in an informal chat with tech reporters, revealed that exactly half of them log in monthly -- a number he says is up 80% since the beginning of the year.

The CEO offered a whole raft of statistics to prove that Twitter is healthy and growing like a weed -- especially on mobile platforms. Some 55 million users log on to Twitter from their phone or tablet every month. Web-based users are on the rise, too: Twitter.com now sees 400 million visitors a month, up from 250 million at the beginning of the year, Costolo says. Less than 40% of users don't tweet at all, according to the CEO, preferring to simply follow the timelines of others. That figure stood at 70% at the end of the year. "We're excited about that number," Costolo says. "That's super healthy."

Yahoo Inc. fired Carol Bartz as CEO Tuesday after more than 2½ years of financial lethargy that had convinced investors that she couldn't steer the Internet company to a long-promised turnaround.

What happens when competing pizza chains go all-out in an attempt to outdo each other? Apparently some big, ridiculous promises are made. At least that seems to be the case as the Japanese arms of both Domino's and Pizza Hut face off in the first ever restaurant space race.


It all started back in 2001 when Japan's Pizza Hut chain sent along some pies for the crew of the International Space Station during a routine supply run. It was officially the first pizza delivery in space. More recently, Domino's hired construction firm Maeda Corp to draw up plans for a moon-based Domino's restaurant, and the company is finally ready to show it off. The lunar eatery will cost an estimated $22 billion to complete, and will require 15 rocket trips to deliver supplies to our planetary neighbor's rocky surface.

Staff would be required to live at the restaurant, which might not be such a bad gig considering the company plans to have a huge recreation area inside the complex. Domino's employees would grow everything on-site in state-of-the-art lunar gardens. Customers will be able to chose to come in for a bite to eat, or have their pizza brought to them by spacesuit-clad delivery boys.

Despite the ridiculous nature of these plans, Domino's officials are keeping a straight face. Spokesman Tomohide Matsunaga notes, "In the future, we anticipate there will be many people living on the Moon, astronauts who are working there and, in the future, citizens of the moon."

For incoming freshmen at western Connecticut's suburban Brookfield High School, hefting a backpack weighed down with textbooks is about to give way to tapping out notes and flipping electronic pages on a glossy iPad tablet computer.

China's top search engine Baidu Inc is on the lookout for potential acquisitions and investment opportunities in the mobile and cloud computing spaces, its chief financial officer said on Friday.

“In that time, the web community has continued to inspire us,” says Google, “bringing the power of the web into all kinds of apps and experiences, with all modern browsers making great strides in speed, simplicity and security. To pay homage to the goodness of the web, we’ve put together an interactive infographic, built in HTML5, which details the evolution of major web technologies and browsers.”

Celebrate Chrome’s third birthday and see how the web and browsers such as Mosaic, Netscape, Opera, Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Chrome have evolved from the humble beginnings of HTTP and HTML 1.0 in the early 1990s into the modern web browsers

WikiLeaks disclosed its entire archive of U.S. State Department cables Friday, much if not all of it uncensored a move that drew stinging condemnation from major newspapers which in the past collaborated with the anti-secrecy group's efforts to expose corruption and double-dealing.

WikiLeaks has blamed the Guardian for the blunder, pointing out that a sensitive password used to decrypt the files was published in a book put out by David Leigh, one of the paper's investigative reporters. The media organizations' rejection is a further blow to WikiLeaks, whose site is under financial embargo and whose leader remains under virtual house arrest in an English country mansion pending extradition proceedings to Sweden on unrelated sexual assault allegations.

The iPad continues to sell at a rapid pace, AT&T customers looking for an Android-powered tablet for their mobile data needs have been few and far between. The carrier hopes to change that with the reveal of the HTC Jetstream, a brand new 4G slate running Android Honeycomb which will retail for a probably-higher-than-it-should-be price of $699 and launch on September 4.

Like almost every other Honeycomb tablet on the market, the Jetstream will sport a 10.1" screen and the speedy 1.5 GHz Snapdragon processor. Familiar front- and rear-facing cameras are also in place, as well as Flash video support. The main draw of the Jetstream is its compatibility with AT&T's brand new 4G LTE data network, which will hopefully up the ante in terms of mobile computing. The tablet will work with HTC Scribe, a digital stylus accessory that allows for more precision than your finger might.

As HTC's first Honeycomb tablet, the Jetstream looks like a solid offering, but that doesn't mean it's destined for the best seller list. Other Android slates like the Xoom have had a tough run so far, and customers may be hesitant to dive in with yet another similar tablet. At $699 with a 2-year data contract, HTC's offering is a full $70 more than the 16GB iPad 2 with 3G capabilities (which doesn't require a commitment), so asking prospective tablet buyers to pay a premium might not be the best solution.

The carrier's data network has come under fire many times for being unreliable, and introducing a 4G network could backfire. Much of the Jetstream's future may lie in whether AT&T's new network — which is slowly rolling out to major cities right now — can handle the weight.