Apple is just set to release its latest technology in the gizmo market the iPhone 4. Earlier this week Steve Jobs unveiled the iPhone, newest in its iPhone Series. In an announcement yesterday Vodafone revealed its plans to bring the iPhone 4 to India and would be shipping out this smartphone in the coming months.

It comes with an all new design and even more stunning features along with a renamed iPhone 4.0 OS or ios. Thewhole new exiting features of this cellphone are enlisted below:

• 9.3mm thick almost 24% thinner than the current iPhone
• 3.5 inches Display
• 960 × 640 Resolution
• Dual microphones
• An Upgraded camera system that will include HD video recording and editing capabilities
• Powered by the A4 chip
• A larger battery having 7 hours of talk time, 6 hours of 3G browsing, 10 hours of Wi-Fi browsing, 10 hours of video recording, 40 hours of music and 300 hours of standby
• 7.2MB download and 5.8MB upload speeds, depending on carrier capabilities
• 5MP camera with 5x zoom and LED flash
• Front- and rear-facing cameras for FaceTime the new video chatting application.
• iOS for multitasking
• Stainless steel and glass case, including a glass back for the device

The newest iPhone would be available from June 24th in selected countries in black and in white, with storage capabilities of 16 and 32GB. The 16GB and 32GB iPhone 4 is expected to be priced at Rs 35,000 and Rs 41,000 respectively in India.

Just think you have gone to attend a banquet. Firstly, you have been given pizza with macaroni and told to wait for the next item. Then, when you think that next item might be champagne or like that. You have been given a glass of salt water.

Then what would be your feeling? Perplexed! Aggravated! Wondered! Happy!

Same thing had happened to the attendee of the Google I/O Developer’s conference in San Francisco. It was the second time in as many years that Google had an “Oprah moment.” It was Google’s flash; firstly the attendees were given to a free HTC EVO 4G. Then, when they were waiting for something more… they were given to a free pair of socks naming Google TV socks.

Perplexed people firstly thought it were a phone holder. Then they disillusioned it was really a pair of socks. Free socks!

To combat with click fraud, Microsoft puts legal motions into place to stop “click laundering”. According to Microsoft by dint of this device the most recent scheme could have cheat advertisers by taking hundred and thousand dollars from them.

The Plaintiff, Microsoft, “… seeks injunctive relief and damages to remedy Defendants’ fraudulent conduct in perpetrating a sophisticated click-laundering fraud scheme on the online advertising network operated by Microsoft and to protect the integrity of Microsoft’s advertising network against the fraudulent actions of Defendants.”

The fraud list includes RedOrbit and several John Does. But Eric Roll, president of RedOrbit Inc, refutes this accusation saying “I did not engage in click fraud. That’s absurd. It’s professional suicide.” The demand was made to SeattlePi.com.

Microsoft defines click laundering as “… grouping otherwise innocent individuals to websites where they can be tricked into triggering clicks on advertisements, and using scripts or other methods to alter the information sent, for example, to adCenter.”

Microsoft said they found “dramatic and irregular growth in click traffic” in both the cases of  Microsoft v. Eric Ralls” and “Microsoft v. John Does” on two sites within its adCentre network.

Yesterday, at a press briefing at Google I/O developers’ conference, Google cofounder Sergey Brin admitted the matter of confidential data collection of   “Google” from “wifi”. He said, “We screwed up”.

He was asked about his company’s last week’s confession of last three years’ accidental collection of data from private wifi networks.

Brian replied, “We screwed up, and I’m not making excuses about it”

He added that though his company has internal control, but this accidental mistake proves that more improvement is needed and more tools should be put for security.

“Trust is very important to us, and we’re going to do everything we can to preserve it,” Brian said.

He was also asked whether greater internet industry effort was necessary to reassure consumers.

He accepted the idea. But his felling was like that Google should be confirmed about its own house order. And the other company should also be careful of their own issues.

Kindle iPad is now one of the favorite i-Pads for the quality people. It seems to you strange. But really in some ways it is superior to the others. For example, you can sync it across multiple devices. Particularly, this summer is very special, for it is going to include Android phones. Moreover, there’s a nice big bonus for that platform too.

Amazon has announced last-night that Kindle for Android will be available from the coming weeks. It has proclaimed “read more than 5000,000 Kindle books on your Android phone with our free Kindle for Android app. Like all kindle apps, Kindle for Android includes Whispersync technology, which automatically synchronizes your last page read, bookmarks, notes and highlights across your Kindle and Kindle-compatible devices including PC, Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Black Berry”. So it’s good news for you that you’ll be able to buy books right from Android devices.

For anyone who has used the Kindle app on the iPhone or iPad, is annoyed to it for not being able to access it. If you would want to buy your choice-able things, you were kicked out of the app, back to the web, to make the purchase.

It is silly enough. But both sides: Apple and Amazon are responsible and likely put up with it for their own reasons. Form apple’s side, the Kindle Store directly competes with its own iBookstore. On the other hand, from Amazon’s perspective, there’s no way they’d pay Apple a 30% commission to sell their titles as in-app purchases. Android suppresses those issues.

This might be a killer future for the Android version. Amazon has to know that its hardware strategy isn’t sustainable. It simply can’t compete with the other likes of Apple and the dozens of other hardware manufacturers who are about to enter the tablet space in a major way. But by spreading quickly to all of these other platforms, the Kindle Store seems balanced to live on — and possibly even thrive.

And even direct competition from Apple.

Beside, the iPhone, iPad, and now Android phones, Amazon also have a Kindle app for PCs and Macs, as well as BlackBerry devices.  And again, everything can be synced across all devices — a universal bookmark.

A few notes about this version from Amazon:

•          Requires Android OS 1.6 or greater

•          Requires an SD card

•          Supports Droid Incredible, Google Nexus One, HTC MyTouch, Motorola CLIQ, Motorola Droid, and many more Android phones

•          Buy a book from the Kindle Store optimized for your Android phone and get it auto-delivered wirelessly

•          Search and browse more than 500,000 books, including more than 96 of 110 New York Times bestsellers. If you are a non-U.S. customer, book availability may vary

•          Find New York Times® Best Sellers and new releases from $9.99

•          Get free book samples. Read the beginning of books for free before you decide to buy

•          Books you purchase can also be read on a Kindle, computer, or other Kindle-compatible mobile devices

•          Kindle newspapers, magazines and blogs are currently not available on Kindle for Android

After months of testing, Google is releasing a new look-and-feel for its search results in a three column design providing a permanent menu of search options and tools to help searchers refine their queries along with a freshly-updated Google-logo atop the left corner.

The new user interface (a place of interaction between human and machine) — UI for the tech crowd- places search options into a column on the left-hand side of the search results page. Search results appear in the in the middle, in a wider column and ads in the right column, though some ads continue to appear in the middle column above editorial picks:

Though colorful, the new look is clean and not disturbing. It has been designed with a view to make it easier for searchers to drill-down further into their queries. It rolls out today worldwide in 26 languages. Google tells everyone should see the new look.

Many of the options in the new left-hand search options column aren’t new for Google made many of these features available a year ago and then expanded them last October (see Up Close With Google Search Options). The only difference is that formerly in order to find the options; you had to “open up” the search options column that by default was left off but today change opens up the column permanently, which should cause many more people to make use of these. Giant Google got the idea of three-column design following the footsteps of Ask.com, which pioneered the look back in 2007. Bing and Yahoo followed the three pane trend in 2009, and now it has effectively been given the stamp of approval by search giant Google itself.

Just have a look at the new design and options, followed by some history and background.

Search Options Column

Within the column there are three sections: the top portion consists of the types of content that a search can be narrowed to. As example, in the search below for tidal waves, you can see that the results contain things like web pages, images and video matches, all blended together in the same column as part of Google’s Universal Search system:

That the default “Everything” search — where Google is mixing together everything it believes is relevant to your query, regardless of the exact content.

Filtering By Content Type

What if you’d like only images of tidal waves? That’s where the colorful content type choices come in. Select “Images” and that content type gets highlighted in blue, to indicate that the results to the right have now been filtered to show only image matches (along with, oddly, two ads from Google rivals Yahoo and Ask both hoping to catch some Google searchers):

For example, the tidal wave search above features options to narrow by Images and Videos. But a search for iPhone provides different narrowing options:

Now the choices are to narrow by Shopping, News and Blog content. The assumption is that people searching for iPhone information may be most interested in these categories of results, while those searching for tidal waves may be more interested in images or videos. As before, selecting one of these other options narrow to the particular content type, such as how choosing News brings back only news content about the iPhone:

Not happy with the content choices that Google features by default? That’s where the “More” option at the end of the list comes in. Select that and you can see all available options:

Yesterday, AdAge ran a story that Facebook was preparing to roll out its first true location-based service (beyond its for-fun Presence thing). It said that the social network was partnering with McDonald’s for a special Facebook app that would allow people to check-in to restaurants and get deals. But apps that use location to follow Foursquare on Facebook have limited appeal. Much more interesting is what Facebook itself is planning to do with location. AdAge offered a little bit about that in their story, but didn’t go too deep.

Today, they have appeared with a new story like a recap of yesterday, but with less of a focus on McDonald’s. According to their sources, Facebook will start allowing users to update their status messages with their location as soon as late May — yes, a few weeks away.

What’s still not clear from all of this is if this location ability will be more like Foursquare or more like Twitter? What I mean by that is, Foursquare is predicated around the idea of checking-in to a specific venue (as are Gowalla, Loopt, and others). Twitter, meanwhile, allows you to tag a tweet with your location — not really a check-in. To me, this Facebook location system sounds more like the latter.

That said, when tied in with the aforementioned McDonald’s app (and apps that other brands will undoubtedly build), the Facebook location plan could turn into more of a Foursquare-like one. We’ve heard that Facebook has been toying with a lot of potential ideas, including federating check-ins from Foursquare and Gowalla. There’s also been talk that they’ve been thinking about acquiring companies like Loopt and Foursquare (though they supposedly cooled on both of those ideas).

And there’s something else to consider. While Facebook may indeed be allowing location-tagging in status updates, it could open these up to other apps besides just the ones brands build. For example, you could use Foursquare to update your status and put your location in this new location field — just as it works on Twitter right now. Again, this would be the federated model.

Given what Facebook has been doing in recent weeks with its Open Graph initiative, on the face of it, this seems like the most obvious solution. Facebook doesn’t want to destroy startups; they want all startups to use them as a central point to distribute their services. They want to seize control of information on the Internet (not necessarily in an evil way).

Plus, with all the recent privacy concerns about Facebook, launching an inclusive location service seems like possibly the worst idea in the world. AdAge wonders if they would make it opt-in or opt-out — if it were opt-out I think the blogosphere would explode.

When I reached out to Foursquare for comment about Facebook’s supposed May location launch, co-founder Dennis Crowley gave me the vague, “First i’ve heard of it… looking fwd to seeing what they launch.“

Facebook, meanwhile, gave me even less; “We don’t have anything to share around timing.  We’ll keep you posted when we do,” a spokesperson said in an emailed message.

I don’t doubt AdAge is on the right trail with the status update location feature, I just think they’re sources may be limited in their scope (as you might expect focusing on the marketing side of things) of what Facebook is planning. I wouldn’t be surprised if Facebook’s location play is more of a challenge to Twitter — which is supposedly thinking about adding place information as well.

If I were Foursquare (or Gowalla, etc) I might be more afraid of what it sounds like Google is doing with Latitude. They’re supposedly going to add the check-in feature — and Latitude is built-in to the Maps application on all Android phones. They’re now growing by 30% each month, and already have 3 million active users (3 times what Foursquare has).

It’s easy to be wary of the enemy you can see. But it’s the one you can’t that could pose the real threat.

Google’s new look that is its appearance with new design to have been widely accepted without complaint except some who want “old” or “Classic Google” back. Google affirmed that is not going to happen. But there is also a suspicion that those who are against the change and patronage of antiquity might force for the old look to appear, unofficially.
There is no complaint or outcry on behalf of millions of people since last Wednesday when Google appeared with a new looks. Hundreds of millions of people have been using its new look since that very day but no hue and cry have been arisen on behalf of them. No comments on Facebook “I hate Google’s new look” on behalf of groups or individual have ever seen. No widespread media reporting of complaints or massive blogger outcry as we saw when the now-defunct SearchWiki launched at the end of November 2008.
Everybody might have their personal liking for design but they should not detest the others. So when most of the people have their liking for new look- the lovers of antiquity should be quiet about it.
The only real outcry was founded when a reader pointed to in Google’s own help forums, where people are begging for a way to get back to the old design. Some of their selected comments:
For the love of God, PLEASE give us the option of going back to the old version. Simplistic used to be what made Google great. But the new cluttered look feels cramped. I’m only looking at the middle pane with the results anyway. If you want to refine the search or what have you, that’s what the advanced button is for.
Why is it so hard to simply give users an option to hide the sidebar?  We don’t need the clutter.  I never ever utilized the “Show Options” before, but now you are going to force it down my throat?
Wow…I love how Google has contradicted everything the site was founded on…I love that after all these years they give in, and conform to greedy corporations (it was inevitable). If this layout does not change, I will not be using Google. The only reason I used Google in the first place is because they gave the community and un-cluttered, simple to use, simple search engine, rather than give us options in a sidebar that we didn’t ask for. You Google, as a corporation, have now discredited yourselves by contradicting the whole purpose of the site in its entirety.
Just give me the possibility to turn it off … and I’m happy.
So what would be ultimatum? Will Google provide an option to turn off the new look? The question was asked on Friday afternoon and got an answer back on Saturday from Google spokesperson Nate Tyler: We’re not offering a way to revert back to the old design.
It was not beyond expectation. When Google’s had design changes in the past that people have disliked, it has generally stuck by its guns, warning that if Google provides opt-out options, people never get used to new features that they later grow to love. When this issue came up during the SearchWiki complaints:
But why not just let people opt-out if they want to, as they can opt-out from other Google products — or how they can use the search preferences page to control number of results shown, popping-open search listings in their own windows, enabling subscribed links and other options.
“While users don’t have the option of turning off SearchWiki, they do have the option not to use the feature. By turning off the feature entirely, people will never get used to the new offering or see how it might be useful to them. We encourage people to try it out,” Dupont said.
To some degree, we saw this after Google Universal Search rolled out last year. Some people kept asking for a way to turn it off. Today, rarely this voice is heard.
Google personalized search is a better example. Some people — especially search marketers — wanted a way to toggle it on or off. Google didn’t care. At best, it advised a way to hack out the URL as a way to do it. Various third party tools are out there that allow this, as well.
So the previous incident inculcates that Google won’t let you override on their final considerate decisions. Google has viewed things like Universal Search, SearchWiki and now its new look as so essential to a good user experience that doesn’t allow users to override them.
If you want to have 100 results at a time you can do this by permanent option using search settings. But want “Classic” Google? Adding a similar option would probably be easy to do. Google just doesn’t want to do it. And it is rather a shame not to give priority to some users the choice. At least, providing an option would allow a small number of Google users to take their time to grow used to the new look that supposedly they’ll love over time.
It might also be less awkward for Google if it decides that it has made a mistake, as in the case of SearchWiki. Testing prove people to love it. And at the end, Google has killed the feature of participatory process that is people’s feedback.
Still, there’s glimpse of hope for those who like Classic Google. Bookmark this link:
http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=all
This tip came from How to gain access the old Google Search. No hacks or scripts required over at The Next Web, and it works great. You’ll get all the search options shown in the new look; except these remain hidden within a left column that only appears when you want it (as things used to work, explained more here).

Last week, well-known web/iPhone developer Joe Hewitt decided to go on Twitter. His target was the state of web development. In 25 or so tweets, Hewitt ripped apart the state of the industry.  His emotional views caused some controversy. But more than a few people think his views were right on the monetary aspect. Today, at Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco, a couple prominent sides in the industry addressed his comments.

During the “What to Expect from Browsers in the Next Five Years: A Perspective” session, panelists were asked directly about Hewitt’s thoughts. Google’s Alex Russell disagreed with Hewitt’s assessment that web development is moving too slowly. According to him, web development is moving faster than it ever has. He said “I feel like a lot of his comments totally ring true to me about two years ago”. He added that noting that back then he was working on a JavaScript toolkit (just as Hewitt used to do), “it was hell.”

Russell concluded that but now thanks to WebKit and specially, CSS-based animations, life is much easier. And, as more browsers continue to support the type of advanced CSS that runs through the GPU, things will only get better. “It’s buttery-smooth,” Russell said noting that this support was coming to all browsers shortly.

Perhaps, the most remarkable quote made by Hewitt in his rant was: “I want desperately to be a web developer again, but if I have to wait until 2020 for browsers to do what Cocoa can do in 2010, I won’t wait.“

Russell said he understands that frustration, but again, he believes that the rate of improvement is increasing rather than remains stagnant. “It’s not all better yet – but it’s getting better at a pace that in 5 years we’ll accept what’s bleeding edge right now,” he said. Meanwhile, Yahoo’s Douglas Crockford echoed some of Hewitt’s sentiments later in the panel. “We have a strong risk of losing openness” Crockford said noting that the web is based on standards, and standards have to move slowly or “they’re crap.” So who will they lose this openness to? The app stores.

What’s interesting is just how much those that no longer have a stake in the game (Hewitt) are at odds with those who do have a stake in the game (Google, etc). While web development is no doubt better than it was 5 years ago, I can’t help thinking that a lot of what Hewitt says is true. After all, this lack of innovation is at least partially to blame for the rise of the app stores.

Adobe’s tough competitor Flash is about to take another hit and online documents are finally going to join the Web on a more equal gripping. Today most documents (PDFs, Word docs, Powerpoint slides) can be viewed only as boxed off curiosities in a Flash player, not as full Web pages. From the next day online document sharing site Scribd will start to channel Flash across its tens of millions of uploaded documents and convert them all into native HTML5 Web pages. Not only will these documents look great on the iPad’s no-Flash browser (see screenshots), but it will bring the richness of fonts and graphics from documents to native Web pages. Scribd co-founder and chief technology officer Jared Friedman mentions “We are scrapping three years of Flash development and betting the company on HTML5 because we believe HTML5 is a dramatically better reading experience than Flash. Now any document can become a Web page.”

Documents will simply be very long Web pages where a new bookmark feature will help user to keep his place in especially long documents. Scribd’s documents will be iPad friendly. You will be able see an electronic version on Scribd and read it in your browser instead of downloading a book from Apple’s iBooks store or Amazon’s Kindle app. Pinch and zoom to make the text bigger. No download is necessary for the books and other documents are stored on the Web. They can be shared via Facebook and Twitter, or sent to a mobile phone.

Scribd is joining with a group of companies from Apple to Microsoft in siding with HTML5 over Flash. On 6^th May only 200,000 most popular documents will be available in HTML5, but all of them will be changed later. When it will be finished, Scribd alone will billions of document pages into Web pages.

Scribd’s currently uses a Flash player like YouTube’s to allow people to upload and view documents on the Web. But their recently invented device HTML5 standards are making their way through not browsers. “Right now the document is in a box,” says Friedman, “a Youtube-type of experience. There is a bunch of content and a bunch of stuff around it. In the new experience we are taking the content out of the box.”

Friedman has been working on this project for the last six months. He is much excited about this project.  He believes the Web is finally ready to ditch Flash for documents. Unlike video players, the parts of the HTML5 standard that impact documents have to do with support for fonts, vector graphics, and rotating text.

Friedman estimates that 97 percent of browsers will be able to read Scribd’s HTML5 documents because those parts of the standard are older and more widely adopted. HTML5 documents will still be embeddable in other sites using an iFrame.