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Earlier this week David Rivas, VP of Technology Management at Nokia, showed off a demo of the interface for the Symbian^3 (S^3) smartphone OS at a demo in San Francisco. The first Nokia phones running the now completely open source platform will be available later this year.

During the presentation, which primarily demonstrated customizing the interface, Rivas talked about the features that will set it apart in the smartphone market. Of particular note were his comments about multitasking.

He pointed out that Nokia has had multitasking on their smartphones for several years, and indicated it will be "coming much more front and center."

You can see the demo in this video posted by PhoneDog.com's Noah Kravitz.

The cloud gaming service OnLive, first announced last year, finally has a set launch date.

Starting June 17th in the U.S., users can pay $15 a month to play games from major publishers EA, THQ, 2K Games, Warner Bros., and Ubisoft in the "cloud."

"This marks a huge milestone for both OnLive and the interactive entertainment landscape as a whole, changing the way that video games are developed, marketed, accessed and played," says Steve Perlman, Founder and CEO of OnLive. "We are opening the door to incredible experiences for gamers and enormous opportunities for developers and publishers."

The service includes standard features such as voice chat, profiles and gamer tags and will allow for pausing and resuming of games. OnLive is available for PC and Mac users.

"The OnLive Game Service creates a new opportunity for consumers to play the latest games without spending hundreds of dollars on a hardware system to make it happen," adds Mike McGarvey, COO of OnLive, via Gi.biz. "As a Mac user myself, I'm excited about the opportunity to help bring high-end gaming to this new and significant market."

New and popular titles that will be included are Mass Effect 2, Dragon Age Origins, Prince of Persia The Forgotten Sands, Borderlands, Assassin's Creed II, and Metro 2033.

Google has launched Google Reader Play, a "new way to browse interesting stuff on the web that’s easy to use and personalized to the things you like."

Making it different than Google Reader is the fact that Reader Play does not require any set-up, it uses the users feeds.

Try the experimental project here: http://www.google.com/reader/play/

Press release:

In Google Reader Play, items are presented one at a time, and each item is big and full-screen. After you've read an item, just click the next arrow to move to the next one, or click any item on the filmstrip below to fast-forward. Of course, you can click the title or image of any item to go to the original version. And since so much of the good stuff online is visual, we automatically enlarge images and auto-play videos full-screen.

Reader Play adapts to your tastes -- as you browse, you can let us know which stuff you enjoy by clicking the "like" button, and we'll use that info to show you more items we think you'll like. If you want, you can also choose categories, and we'll personalize your stream to only show you stuff from those categories. And you don't even need a Google account to use Reader Play. Of course, if you want to star, like, or share items, we'll ask you to sign in to your Google account. Since Reader and Reader Play share the same infrastructure, any actions you take in one will be reflected in the other.

Sony has launched their highly-anticipated motion controller, the PlayStation Move, a system that should rival the Wii and Microsoft's upcoming Natal motion system.

Says Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment: "The migration path from the Wii household to the PlayStation 3 household is a pretty natural path, partly because of the experience that you can get on the PlayStation Move but also because of the content that we find on PlayStation 3."

As viewed in the demo video, the Move is used in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye camera and allows for real-time tracking of the player's body movements. As for accuracy?

"Nothing has ever been this precise," say Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Electronics Worldwide Studios.

Standalone prices were not revealed but Dille says that a "starter bundle" including a game, the PS Eye and the Move will retail for under $100.

Motorola and Microsoft have announced a new deal today that will make Bing search and maps the default for the smartphone maker's Android-based phones.

The phones will now come with a search widget pre-loaded.

The company signed a similar deal with Baidu last week, to make Baidu the default Web search engine for Android phones sold in China.

The moves come as Google continues its dispute with China over censorship, a fight that has yet to be resolved, and one in which Google threatened to pull its search engine service from the country entirely.

The New York film maker Casey Neistat has made a funny but interesting video this week about the new sensation that is Chatroulette.

For those that have never tried the site, you sign on, hit "New Game" and you are matched up with another person from somewhere in the world who is on their webcam and wants to "chat."

Doing a small independent study, Neistat picked a random Thursday and chatted with 90 different people, finding that 71 percent were men, 15 percent were women, and 14 percent were "perverts." 83 percent were "fairly young" and the rest were older.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Palm, the struggling smartphone maker, continues to see the price of their handsets drop, with Wal-Mart now slashing the price of the Palm Pre Plus for Verizon to $30 with 2-year contract, and the Palm Pixi Plus to free.

If you prefer Amazon, the e-tailer has the Pre Plus for $40 with contract, still a large discount from even just last month, when the phone was retailing for at least $70 with contract.

Citing the price cuts, C.L. King analyst Lawrence Harris downgraded his estimate for 2011 EPS (earnings per share), dropping his expectation of a $0.50 per share loss, to $1.10.

The bigger loss estimate also adds in costs of Palm's costly new advertising campaign for the Pre Plus.

In a letter to the Financial Times, BT Group Chief Executive Ian Livingston suggested that persistent file sharers caught breaking copyright laws should face fines instead of technical sanctions proposed by the UK government. He said that suspending service for persistent infringers as spelled out in the Digital Economy Bill could deny a fair hearing for the accused.

Instead of the technical sanctions outlined in the DEB, Livingston said people could choose to pay a penalty or fight the accusation. Those who dispute accusations could take their case to a new tribunal instead of the courts. The suggestion brings BT in line with the Open Rights Group, which believes such a system would be fairer and less risky than the proposed suspensions and other sanctions.

In the letter - which was also signed by the bosses of TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Orange, as well as Facebook, Google, eBay and Yahoo! - a recent amendment to the Digital Economy Bill faced considerable criticism. The amendment made last week would allow copyright holders to injunct ISPs and force the blocking of specific web addresses.

Reggie Fils-Aime, President and COO of Nintendo of America, has told Forbes that the company is not ready yet to begin work on a new home console to replace the Wii. "When the software developer comes forward with an idea that can't be executed on the current platform, that's when we start thinking seriously about the next system. We're not there yet, from a Wii perspective," he said.

Fils-Aime once against mirrored Nintendo's general attitude toward including the latest technology in games consoles, saying that as an enabler, technology has to enable a new and unique experience for players. "So when people talk about high definition for the Wii console our feedback is that that by itself will not create a brand new experience," he said.

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday that the company expects an outcome in its dispute with the Chinese government soon. Schmidt made the comments on Wednesday at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. "I'm going to use the word 'soon', which I will not define otherwise," he said.

"There is no specific timetable. Something will happen soon." In Washington, Nicole Wong, the firm's vice president and deputy general counsel, told the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that the company stands by its decision to stop censorship in China.

"(if) the option is that we will shutter our .cn property and leave the country, we are prepared to do that," she said. At the same time, it was revealed that the United States is mulling a possible legal challenge to China's Internet censorship and related policies which it claims hurt U.S. companies that invest in the Chinese market.

The recent spat between Google and China started in January when the search giant announced that it would stop censoring search results in the country and would leave the market if it had no other choice. The announcement followed a hack targeted at Google's intellectual property and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

According to a new blog post, YouTube's mobile site will now come with ad campaigns, giving advertisers a chance to offer up ads to target audiences easier.

Google says the mobile site saw traffic grow by 160 percent in 2009, with tens of millions of videos being streamed everyday on their mobile phones.

Says the post: "Today, we're launching ads on the home, search, and browse pages of the American and Japanese YouTube mobile websites (m.youtube.com from your mobile browser). This is a great way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms. In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web. And because YouTube mobile attracts early adopters, the site can deliver to advertisers a coveted demographic of tech savvy trendsetters."

The company points to early adopter campaigns by Sony and Kia, in which both companies were pleased with the audience they reached.

According to a new survey from security firm Barracuda Labs, 73 percent of Twitter accounts remain "inactive," with less than 10 total Tweets.

Despite the large numbers, Barracuda says the number is down, from 79 percent in June of last year.

34 percent of Twitter users have never even made one Tweet.

A few of the other stats:

-74 percent of Twitter users have under 10 followers.
-60 percent follow less than 10 people
-34 percent of users have more followers than people they are following
-Growth jumped 21 percent in April 2009, when Ashton Kutcher was on the verge of hitting 1 million followers.

Which group Tweets the most? Let's check the chart:

Those with around 700-1000 followers seem to Tweet the most, with celebrities and those with millions of followers not Tweeting nearly as much.

Google has launched the Apps Marketplace today, an online store designed to give third-party developers a chance to sell their Web applications to the over 25 million users of Google Apps such as Gmail, Docs and more.

The apps will need to support an OpenID sign-on as well as OAuth-authorized access, and from there the apps can be made available. When installed, the apps will be integrated into the menu of Google Apps.

"With administrator approval, [third-party apps] may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity," adds Chris Vander Mey, senior product manager for Google Apps. "Administrators can manage the applications from the familiar Google Apps control panel, and employees can open them from within Google Apps."

On the developer side, to gain access to the marketplace is a $100 fee, and then Google takes 20 percent of application revenue.

View the marketplace here: http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home

View the first part of the launch video:

Members of European Parliament are united in opposing the European Commission's secret negotiation of the highly controversial ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) treaty. They voted 663 to 13 in favor of a resolution requiring the Commission, the European Union's representative in ACTA negotiations, to share all information about the talks with them.

Besides the lack of transparency in the negotiations, MEPs have concerns about provisions which would dictate how intellectual property protection in EU member states would work.

This would include what's covered, for how long, and even the definition of fair use and types of penalties for infringement. In other words it could require a substantial rewrite of most European IP law.

They are also concerned about language that could be at odds with EU privacy rights. They are demanding that the European Commission provide proof that no fundamental rights would be impacted.

The resolution "Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of the implementation of ACTA with regard to fundamental rights and data protection," and "consult with Parliament in a timely manner about the results of the assessment."

First unveiled at the CES event earlier this year, the Android-based Spring Design Alex e-reader should begin shipping by "early Spring," says the company, after production and software delays have held it back so far.

Visiting the Spring Design store (pic below), the Alex Store says you should be able to start ordering the device by the "first week of March," which clearly has come and gone.

The company has told Engadget however that "that there were some slight issues with the order page and that it should be up within the “next week or two."

The Alex runs Android 1.6, has a 6-inch E-Ink top screen and a 3.5-inch color, touchscreen on bottom.



Pic via Slashgear: