Yesterday, the T-Mobile blog CellPhone Signal published a list of new features it claimed would be in the G2, the second HTC-built phone built for the T-Mobile network running Google’s Android platform. The most outrageous claim however, was the supposed date of the device’s release: January 26, 2009.

Would T-Mobile really risk enraging the million or so people who bought the G1 just a few months after its release by launching an updated version? No, says the blog Boy Genius Report, which has a separate tip containing some of the same G2 information, but a later launch date: April 2009.

Read more: venturebeat.com 

Labels: Android, Google Phone, phone

Negotiations between Warner Music Group and YouTube over renewing the licensing agreement for the record label's music videos broke down Friday. Early Saturday, Warner, the third largest record label, removed videos from the Google-owned video site.

The impasse comes at a time when all four major labels, including Universal Music Group, Sony Music, and EMI, are renegotiating their licensing deals with YouTube.

"We are working actively to find a resolution with YouTube that would enable the return of our artists' content to the site," Warner said in a statement. "Until then, we simply cannot accept terms that fail to appropriately and fairly compensate recording artists, songwriters, labels and publishers for the value they provide."

YouTube has become an important revenue stream for at least one of the top labels. This week, Rio Caraeff, Universal Music's digital chief, told CNET News that YouTube has generated "tens of millions" of dollars for the recording company this year, up 80 percent from last year.

Caraeff said that Universal and YouTube enjoy a strong relationship and that the companies are trying to expand their relationship beyond music videos. A source close to Universal said that the label will likely book nearly $100 million in video-streaming revenue--most of it from YouTube.

Read more: news.cnet.com 

Labels: video, Warner Music, youtube

Google’s mobile phone OS “Android,” will soon be updated with several new features as a part of a major roadmap update. One of those features will include support for a video recording mode that will also let users share the content. The update, code-named “Cupcake,” has many speculating what that video sharing feature will actually look like. Some have suggested the possibility of being able to upload videos from the phone directly to YouTube. Now that’s something we would like to see!

One of the only drawbacks to Apple’s widly popular iPhone is its lack of support for video recording. Of course, you can jailbreak your iPhone, a process that removes the restrictions put in place by Apple, and then install your preferred video recording application on your newly free device. However, the regular “Joes” of the world who are purchasing the phone don’t necessarily know how to do this or care to learn. If the “other” big smartphone offered video recording support, that would be a great selling point. (Then they would just need some apps.)

Read more: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: Android, Google Phone, phone, video, youtube

Back when YouTube launched its new HD video support, we (and many of you) lamented the fact that there was no way to find all the available HD content. Well, YouTube has now fixed that oversight with a new HD section to showcase all the high-def videos available on the site.

To go along with the the new HD section, YouTube has also started displaying high-def movies in a larger video player that occupies the vast majority of the page. Naturally you can still use the fullscreen option, but with the larger player it isn’t as necessary.

Read more: wired.com 

Labels: HD, player, video, youtube

YouTube is driving more than traffic to music labels like Universal Music Group. Rio Caraeff, EVP of UMG’s eLabs, told CNET that YouTube is adding “tens of millions of dollars” to the recording company’s bottom line: “(YouTube) is not like radio, where it’s just promotional ... It’s a revenue stream, a commercial business.”

The video site shares revenue with record companies like UMG from ads appearing with their music videos, as well as user-generated clips featuring their artists’ tracks. UMG’s eLabs division has brokered such deals with YouTube and others, including MySpace Music, over the past three years, and has made about $100 million dollars off its music videos as a result. By Caraeff’s account, YouTube has been responsible for a large chunk of that (which should make UMG doubly happy, since it, like some other labels, took a small stake in YouTube as part of the content-sharing deal). And while that’s great for the labels, what about Google?

Read more: paidcontent.org 

Labels: music, video, youtube

Vocito is a desktop UI for GrandCentral for the Mac. It allows you to easily dial anybody from your desktop. Using GrandCentral it will dial the remote phone and your local phone simultaneously, and connect you together.

It integrates into Address Book, Quicksilver, Automater, system services, supports "tel" URLs, and is fully AppleScriptable.

All this integration makes it easy to have Vocito automatically dial your phone from just about any application that supports scripting, html, or Automator actions. For example, you can easily set up your iCal meeting appointment to automatically dial the conference call for you at the correct time.

Vocito also allows you to save little applets that will automatically dial the phone for you with a simple double click.

It works on Tiger and Leopard, is both PowerPC and Intel native, and is fully open sourced.

Download: Vocito 1.1.0 for Mac 

Labels: GrandCentral, Macintosh, phone, Vocito, VoIP

Picasa is software that helps you instantly find, edit and share all the pictures on your PC. Every time you open Picasa, it automatically locates all your pictures (even ones you forgot you had) and sorts them into visual albums organized by date with folder names you will recognize. Picasa also makes advanced editing simple by putting one-click fixes and powerful effects at your fingertips.

Picasa also makes it a snap to share your pictures you can email, print photos at home, and make gift CDs. And with the new Web Albums feature, you can upload your photos to the web with just one click. You can even download your friends' photos directly back to Picasa on your own computer. It's never been so easy to share photos online. Now with Picasa Web Albums!

System Requirements: Windows XP/Vista or Linux

Download: Picasa 3.1 Build 70.71 

Labels: album, Linux, photos, picasa, pictures, Software

Use your Mac to upload photos!

Now there are two ways to upload your photos to Picasa Web Albums -- from directly within iPhoto or using drag-and-drop from a standalone application.

For iPhoto users
The Picasa Web Albums Exporter lives right inside iPhoto. Select photos, choose Export in the File or Share menu, and upload them directly to your web album.

For a standalone application
Use the Picasa Web Albums uploader -- just drag photos from the Finder and click the Upload button.

Requirements:
- You must have a Picasa Web Albums account to use the Exporter or Uploader.
- Requires OS X 10.4 or later.

Download: Picasa Web Albums Uploader 1.3 

Labels: album, Macintosh, photos, picasa, pictures, Software

New move from Yahoo should help further privacy on the internet

One major concern in the tech community is the loss of privacy on the internet. With the internet being increasingly used as a site for personal activity and business, such loss is worrisome to many. Search providers store vast amounts of personal information based on your web browsing practices, which some fear could be used against them for medical discrimination or other malefic uses if the information fell into the wrong hands.

In September, Google, who is one of the largest collectors of such information, announced an initiative to make its user logs anonymous after only 9 months. Now Yahoo has one-upped Google by announcing that it will anonymize its own user data stockpile after only 90 days.

Read more: dailytech.com 

Labels: Anonymity, data, Yahoo

Human interaction is increasingly diversifying. We post photos to Flickr, family members leave comments, and friends reply to our latest Tweets. Yahoo recognizes this shift and has begun rolling out a new "smarter inbox" that melds social tools and even opens up to third-party applications, all in an effort to help Yahoo Mail users get more done with the people they know.

Slowly rolling out in limited beta for a select group of users, Yahoo Mail's most significant change is a completely redesigned Welcome page that focuses less on mainstream news and ads, and more on social activity and a new concept called "My Connections." Near the top of the Welcome page is a new My Connections area that features mail from the contacts you most frequently exchange mail with, and other contacts you specifically mark as preferred. Clicked messages open in the tabs that Yahoo's (still-in-beta) Mail UI has featured for some time, making it easier to quickly sift through all that correspondence.

Read more: arstechnica.com 

Labels: mail, social, Yahoo

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

One box for everything
Type in the address bar and get suggestions for both search and web pages.

Thumbnails of your top sites
Access your favorite pages instantly with lightning speed from any new tab.

Shortcuts for your apps
Get desktop shortcuts to launch your favorite web applications.

Download: Google Chrome 1.0.154.39 

Labels: browser, Chrome

Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.

This is the portable version of Google Chrome.

Just download and extract and start with ChromeLoader.exe. Chromeloader.exe is a simple AutoIt-Script – compiled to an exe-File. So – if you get an error from your AV: it’s just a false positive, because ChromeLoader.exe was packed with UPX. All settings are stored in “Profil”-folder.

Download: Google Chrome Portable 1.0.154.39 

Labels: beta, browser, Chrome, portable

Mountain View (CA) – Google’s Gmail team is on a roll. Two days ago we were introduced to a first task feature in Gmail and today it is another “Labs” feature that enables users to send text messages cellphones and receive a reply that will be posted in Gmail’s chat window.

Another day, another new Gmail feature - text (SMS) messages from within the webmail interface. Some readers may remember that this feature appeared in Gmail about a month ago only, but was quickly removed due to bugs. This time around, Google says the feature is here to stay. "Send SMS text messages right from Gmail. You chat from your comfy computer and reach your friends on the go; they get your messages as texts and can peck out replies on their little keyboards," the company said in a statement released today.

Read more: tgdaily.com 

Labels: Gmail, instant messaging, mail, SMS

It was great to see Firefox’s success in the browser war. While IE still dominates the market, Firefox has been chipping away IE’s shares. Now come Google Chrome which many have reported it would be hitting gold release soon. According to TechCrunch, the reason why Google is pushing Chrome to final release milestone is to be able to get PC Vendors to bundle the browser in their systems - as many of them would not accept incomplete software.

Read more: slashgear.com 

Labels: beta, browser, Chrome

Google today announced that it is adding magazines to its lineup for Google Book Search. These magazines include publications like Popular Science and New York Magazine, but also more obscure publications like the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists. In the long run, Google expects to add search results from these magazines to its main Google.com search results.

It is not clear if Google struck a deal with specific publishers to allow for this, but the selection of included magazines still feels a bit uneven and leaves out quite a few well known publications like Time, Newsweek, and Wired.

Read more: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: books, magazine, search

Open Handset Alliance, the consortium that is supporting the Google developed Android operating system, has some new fans.

Fourteen new members that comprise both telecom service providers and handset makers among others have decided to join the Alliance in a sign that the newly introduced platform may be gaining momentum.

The new entrants include ARM, Asustek, Garmin, Huawei Technologies, Sony Ericsson, Toshiba and Vodafone.

So far only T-Mobile has introduced an Android device, the G1 from HTC, in North America. Meanwhile, Motorola has said it will launch handsets based on Android OS next year.

Read more: wired.com 

Labels: Android, mobile, Sony

Google today announced that it has added a new option for AdWords advertisers to specifically target iPhones, T-Mobile's G1, and other mobile devices that have 'real' Internet browsers. Unlike the standard mobile AdWord ads that were targeted to appear on mobile web sites, this new feature will allow advertisers to target any mobile device with a full HTML browser. Google also points out that it is seeing 'a lot' of searches from iPhone and G1 users and the iPhone drove more traffic to Google.com during last year's holiday season than any other mobile platform.

Read more: readwriteweb.com 

Labels: ads, ADWords, iPhone, mobile