So now with Google’s stars, they can always find facebook.com when searching for facebook.

Click here to login to facebook

So while everyone is clamoring to get a piece of the Google Buzz action, spare a thought for the poor Google Wave. Wasn’t that supposed to be the social media’s next best thing? It didn’t stay around for long, is anyone still using it?

And has anyone used Buzz yet?
What are your thoughts?

The software, dubbed Android, has been available internationally for more than a year in just a handful of mobiles. But the first Android phones to be sold by Irish networks have only just landed.

So let’s delve into some Androids to see what all the fuss is about.

HTC may not be a familiar name to many but it has a long track record making capable devices for other companies. The HTC Hero (Meteor only) is the firm’s flagship phone — small, light and distinctive.

The Galaxy Spica (O2 only) resembles other members of the Samsung family but works considerably better for its use of the slick Android system. Though roughly similar in cost to the Hero, it’s more of a mid-tier phone. Its lower specs make it equivalent to HTC’s Tattoo, another Android phone sold only by Vodafone.

In terms of their physical shape, the phones themselves are unmistakably different. The Hero has the edge even though its white duds are an acquired taste. Common to all Androids is the user-friendly and attractive operating system that works in similar fashion to that of the iPhone. With taps and swipes of your fingertip, you’ll soon be reading email, browsing the web, checking directions via GPS and listening to music.

HTC has gone considerably further than Samsung to customise the Android experience, with some simple but beautiful touches in its menu system, from the pretty weather widget to the one-button access to things such as WiFi and Bluetooth. The tiny trackball also helps enormously when navigating around that big screen.

Not surprisingly, Androids integrate smoothly with Google services such as Gmail, Maps and YouTube. But, most importantly, all Google-based phones have access to the Android Market, which now offers up to 20,000 applications to add functionality and fun to your handset.

That’s a far cry from the iPhone’s 100,000 apps but, most damningly, you cannot yet get paid-for apps for Android in Ireland because of billing issues. That cuts out a huge chunk of useful apps but hopefully the roadblock will be resolved soon.

So we’ve established that Android is a powerful operating system with the glitz to match the iPhone. The Apple handset keeps its nose clearly ahead by virtue of its superior handling of music, video, podcasts and so on through iTunes.

But Apple must surely be looking over its shoulder and worrying. Google reckons there’ll be 19 Android phones by the end of the year and the choice will mean something for everyone as well as encouraging rivals to lift their game.

Here in Ireland, the decision is complicated by network exclusivity. The HTC Hero is far and away the best Android but until some time next year is available only on Meteor, whose 3G network is not nearly as extensive as that of Vodafone or O2.

The Hero’s little brother, the Tattoo, has an FM radio where the Hero does not but otherwise can’t keep up even at its cheaper price. The Galaxy Spica isn’t a bad first Android from Samsung but lacks the smarts that make the Hero such a champ.

via The Indo.

Google said netbooks with Chrome OS could be on sale by the middle of 2010. “Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS,” the firm said in its official blog.

The operating system, which will run on an open source license, was a “natural extension” of its Chrome browser, the firm said.

Wave is designed to be a ground-up reinvention of the way we communicate and collaborate.

Google has given a sneak peek of its latest project – Google Wave. Wave is designed to be a ground-up reinvention of the way we communicate and collaborate. Think instant messaging, but with the open platform potential for plugging in Twitter and other methods of communication, too.

For the moment, Google Wave isn’t a public launch – that’ll be later in the year – but it will be made available to a small number of developers at Google’s Google I/O conference in San Francisco, taking place today.

In a conference call with TechRadar, Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineering Manager, explained about Wave. “It’s a communication and collaboration tool we’ve been working on for a couple of years down in Sydney.

“A Wave is a single shared space where two or more users can exchange real time dialogue, photos, videos, maps and documents in what we call a Wave. Everyone can reply to a Wave, people can come and go and you can drag and drop information from all over the web.”

PLAY GAMES: You can drag in information from the web and comment as you go

As well as running in a web browser, waves can be embedded in sites, while open source code means that you could even run your own Wave server. “Everything you’re [can see in Wave] is an HTML 5 application built with the Google Web Toolkit.

“It does push the limits of the web and it does require a modern browser,” adds Lars. It won’t work in IE6, but it will work in later versions as well as Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

“Later when we show the demo one of the new things we’ll add is integration between Google Wave and Twitter which is an example application we hope will inspire developers to build things for real. You build an extension for Wave that users can install, similar to installing extensions for Firefox.”

ACCEPT OR DECLINE: Meeting request or BBQ invite – you can collaborate with your mates or colleagues on events and chat about them in your Wave

Rasmussen worked on Google Wave alongside his brother Jens. Both worked for the mapping startup, Where 2 Technologies, acquired by Google in October 2004 – subsequently the brothers developed Google Maps.

The aim with Wave is to allow people to communicate and work together in a richer, more instant and integrated way – it was originally codenamed Walkabout. “We were looking at all the advances in technology that have occurred since email was invented over 40 years ago. We looked at how computers have improved dramatically and the many types of communication [that has come about] since then,” explains Lars.

CHAT AND SHARE: Look at pictures, then talk about them – you can drop into the conversation at any point

“We tried to come up with a new form of communication, as simple as we could make it, which has functionality spanning as many of these existing tools as we could come up with. We’re aiming to rethink what communication might look like if we try and rethink everything from scratch.”

“After months holed up in a conference room in the Sydney office, our five-person “startup” team emerged with a prototype. And now, after more than two years of expanding our ideas, our team, and technology, we’re very eager (and a little nervous) to return and see what the world might think.”

EDIT CONCURRENTLY: You’ll see updates appear letter-by-letter, while you can see everything happen in realtime. In Google’s own words, Wave will “try out some new ideas” such as concurrent rich text editing – you’ll be able to see on your screen almost instantly, letter-by-letter, what your fellow collaborators are typing into a message or document in a wave, unlike in instant messaging where you need to wait to see what someone is typing. (If you don’t like this, there is a draft mode.)

You’ll also be able to ‘playback’ waves so you can see how conversations have evolved.

INVITE: You can add participants to a Wave at any time.

Google is planning to open source Google Wave in the coming months while any developer can build extensions to Google Wave using our open APIs.

“The way we think about Wave is that it’s a communication system, a productivity tool as well where you can produce content but there’s a very rich set of APIs that come with the tool and that of course is why we’re releasing it to developers first,” explains Lars.

“We intend for Wave to be an open system much like email where you can have an account with any provider. We would love to see a future where different organisations build their own Wave services. We want to make sure users can interoperate with each other.

“All of the underlying protocols and algorithims have been designed with this in mind. We are going to make the protocol openly available and we intend to…open source the lion’s share of our code.

“We have built in some very important features, in particular anyone can run their own Wave server. This is particularly important for enterprises that would prefer to run their own Wave servers.”

SET TO DRAFT: If you don’t want people to see as you type, you can set to draft

Waves will also be searchable “When a web crawler comes by a site with a Wave on it, our servers will serve up that Wave in static HTML so they can be easily indexed,” explains Lars.

We asked him whether Google had any current plans to introduce advertising into Wave. “We have no such plans, this again is a very early release and at Google we have quite a luxury that in the beginning of the life of a product we focus exclusively on technology and making a product successful.

“The question of monetising we deal with later, this was also true of our last product Google Maps – it was a year and a half in before we even started to discussing [monetising it].

“By then it was even easier to do it as our existing advertising customers had lined up around the block wanting to advertise on Maps. We’re hoping a similar scenario with unfold,” he explains.

If you’re interested, Google Wave information for developers is available while you can opt to be notified when Google Wave is launched as a public product.

ADD AND SHARE: Drop in Google Maps to events, for example.

Apple has issued journalists with an email invitation for a sneak peak at the iPhone 3.0 firmware. This suggests that the company is also preparing to launch new members of the iPhone family. The last version, the iPhone 3G, was launched in July last year, so an upgrade is due.

The event will take place at Apple’s corporate campus in Cupertino, California on Tuesday, 17 March.

As well as the iPhone 3.0 firmware, Apple will also be launching a new software development kit (SDK) for developers. There is speculation that the new iPhone 3.0 software will support video-recording, turn-by-turn navigation and Flash.

The news comes just days after Google announced that a new version of its Android operating system will be released in the coming weeks.

via SiliconRepublic.com

See also here

Enn.ie also have a good post on this here