Latest news

Google has announced its acquisition of DocVerse, a technology company that allows people to edit Microsoft Office in the cloud.

The company paid $25 million for the company, the latest in its long string of acquisitions.

Google will immediately add the service to its Google Docs suite.

Reads the official blog post:

The future of productivity applications is in the cloud. We've always believed the web is the best platform for creating and sharing information, and Google Docs has already helped millions of people become more productive. But we recognize that many people are still accustomed to desktop software. So as we continue to improve Google Docs and Google Sites as rich collaboration tools, we’re also making it easier for people to transition to the cloud, and interoperate with desktop applications like Microsoft Office.
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For example, we recently made it possible to use Google Docs to store and share any type of file that you have on your computer, not just the ones you create online. Today we’re excited to announce another step towards seamless interoperability: we have acquired DocVerse.

In March of last year, Microsoft apologized for the banning of an Xbox Live user who self-identified herself as lesbian in her Xbox Live profile, noting that "the expression of relationship preference in Gamertag profiles and tags, whether that's heterosexual or other," was not allowed.

Today, the software giant has updated the Xbox Live "Code of Conduct" to include for the allowance of sexual orientation, race, religion, and nationality in Gamertags and profiles.

"Under our previous policy, some of these expressions of self-identification were not allowed in Gamertags or profiles to prevent the use of these terms as insults or slurs," adds Xbox Live General Manager Marc Whitten.

Although some terms will still not be tolerated, the use of "Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgendered and Straight" are okay, says Destructoid's Jim Sterling.

"Microsoft had been working with GLAAD and [its own] LGBT community to narrow down the terms. Use of those words in an insulting manner won't be tolerated either, so it seems as if Microsoft has retracted its scorched earth policy and will now be reviewing the use of these words on a case-by-case basis. It may not seem like a big deal to many of you, but it was certainly a big deal to some, and it's very cool that Microsoft has taken the stick out of its arse and decided to judge the use of these words on their own merits. Microsoft doesn't do everything right, but this was definitely a good thing. Well done!," concludes Sterling, via TGDaily.

Livestream, the live video streaming startup company, has just hit their biggest partnership yet, a one-year deal with the AP to stream all of the AP's live video needs, starting with the Oscars red carpet festivities in two days.

The videos will stream at http://www.livestream.com/aplive, and users can log in with Facebook or Twitter IDs, or register for new accounts.

The AP and Livestream will share revenue from APLive, and revenues will come from licensing deals and advertising. Adds TechCrunch: "Revenues can come from licensing (AP-affiliated publishers can embed the video on their news sites) or advertising (partners can embed the video for free with the APLive branding, which comes with pre-roll plus overlay ads sold by the AP and Livestream jointly)."

Livestream currently has deals with ESPN, NPR, Fox, Scripps, and National Geographic.

YouTube has announced the launch of automatically generated captions for all its streaming videos, a new feature that should help both deaf users, and those who want subtitles for videos in other languages.

Google software engineer Ken Harrenstein, who has been blogging about the eventual launch of the captions, showed off the new feature at a press conference. Harrenstein is deaf, and says the company has been working on the project since 2005.

Automatic captioning has been available to a small number of groups since last year, but the feature has now gone wide.

Researcher Mike Cohen says "the captioning technology blends Google's speech-recognition and translation algorithms."

The technology continues to improve daily, getting better at factoring in accents, and canceling out background noise.

Although first announced with a March release date, the Apple iPad now has an official new launch day, April 3rd.

Analysts and consumers had expected a March 26th launch.

Although Apple would not specify the reason for the delay, analyst Peter Misek reported last week that the tablet was seeing "unspecified production problems," and Apple was not happy with the amount of tablets that would have been available by the end of March.

The Wi-Fi-only devices will be the first available, and will cost $499 at minimum. 3G-capable versions, which sell for $699 minimum, are coming at a later date with an AT&T contract.

Would-be buyers can start pre-ordering on March 12th.

The devices will go on sale internationally in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the U.K. in late April as well.

Less than week after Microsoft began offering alternative browsers to European Windows users, Opera has announced that downloads have tripled.

"It varies from country to country, but yes, in several major countries, Opera downloads have tripled since the ballot screen appeared," added Rolf Assev, the chief strategy officer for Opera.

Downloads surged as high as 350 percent in some nations such as Belgium, Spain, France and Poland.

The downloads may have been helped by the launch of Opera 10.50, but Assev says compared to past launches, "such as Opera 10.0, 10.10 and 9.5, and the tripling is above what we would normally expect with a new version launch."

The so-called "ballot box" was implemented on Monday, thanks to a European Commission mandate, two years after Opera complained to anti-trust regulators that Internet Explorer being bundled with Windows was "stifling competition."

The ballot allows users to choose what browser they want, Safari, Chrome, Firefox, Opera, or stick with Internet Explorer 8.

Apple has banished a whole new set of apps from the App Store, banning any apps that actively scan for Wi-Fi hotspots.

Apps that use a database of hotspots combined with GPS are still allowed, but many of the most popular "Wi-Fi locators" have been taken down.

One developer, Three Jacks Software, of the popualr WiFi-Where app, was clearly frustrated:

"I find it quite ironic that Apple removes these very handy, very useful apps from the app store when there are so many useless gimick [sic] apps that just pollute the App Store pages."

A few of the other notably banned apps are WiFiTrack, WiFiFoForum, yFy Network Finder, WiFi Get, eWifi, and WiFi Analyzer.

According to the Gigatweet counter, the incredibly popular social network service Twitter has hit 10 billion "tweets," seeing fast growth from past milestones.

1 billion tweets was hit in November 2008, and 5 billion was hit in November 2009.

Given the current pace of tweeting, Gigatweet has projections for when future milestones will hit, with 20 billion coming as soon as 197 days from now, or about mid-September.

Despite a gigantic lead in the online MP3 market, Apple appears to be playing dirty against Amazon MP3, using its clout with the record labels to try to snuff out Amazon's popular "Daily Deal" promotion.

In 2008, when Amazon MP3 first launched, the Daily Deal was paid for by Amazon, out of their own pockets, as a way to get traffic to the service. In 2009 however, says a label exec, "that promotion morphed into something where the labels make arrangements to provide an exclusive selling window with Amazon for a big release expected to do a lot of business on street date."

In exchange for the Daily Deal promotion, Amazon gets a one-day exclusive window for sales before street date, as long as digital marketing support through the artist's Web sites, or MySpace pages.

The same executive said about that situation (via Billboard): "When that happened, iTunes said, 'Enough of that s**t.' "

According to a new WSJ report, Sony is finally ready to create a PlayStation-branded smartphone, one that will help it compete against the iPhone, and Microsoft's new Windows Phone 7 line.

Additionally, the company will be creating "a portable device that blurs distinctions among a netbook, an e-reader and a PlayStation Portable, or PSP," one that it hopes will compete against the iPad and net/smartbooks.

The products have a target launch in 2010, but prices are nowhere near finalized.

Equally as surprising is the news that this will be a Sony-only venture, leaving out Ericsson, its long-time smartphone partner.

PSP and PSP Go sales have been extremely disappointing since the launch of the iPod Touch and the Nintendo DSiDS continues to rack up impressive sales, all at the expense of PSP market share.

A federal appeals court has ruled in favor of TiVo today in the long-standing patent case brought against them by Dish and EchoStar, with the news sending TiVo's stock shares up over 55 percent on gigantic volume.

The district court had ruled last year that Dish and EchoStar had violated TiVo patents and ordered a permanent injunction on DVRs being sold by the company's that used the infringing technology.

The companies were also told to pay TiVo $300 million in damages, and the latest ruling will finally pave the way for TiVo to receive that money.

Aten Design Group, a design firm in Colorado has hosted a "funeral" today for the aged web browser Internet Explorer 6, which is quickly being thrown out in favor of faster, safer browsers, including its descendants IE7 and IE8.

The service will have a coffin with a dummy inside with an IE6 logo for its head. Anyone who attends is welcome to eulogize the browser with memories, good or bad.

Some users already posted their thoughts, on the invitation page.

"I feel terrible admitting this, but ... I never really liked him," writes "Eddie Escher," via CNN. "He had so many hang-ups, and he looked awful -- especially in his later years. But... he was always there when you needed him. You have to give him that."

The real nail in the coffin (pun intended) is coming next week when Google pulls all IE6 support from its Google family of sites, including Docs and Gmail. YouTube will drop support within a month.

All I will say on the matter is I hope IE6 dies fast, there is absolutely no reason anyone should be using it, ever.

Google has released a new Android application called Gesture Search today, which allows users to shorthand (gesture) on the touch screen and jump to a destination, such as a contact or application.

Says Google: "Gesture Search lets you quickly find a contact, a bookmark, an application, or a music track from hundreds or thousands of items by drawing alphabet gestures on the touchscreen. Gesture Search continuously updates search results as you add each letter and improves search quality by learning from your search history."

You load the application, are then given a blank screen, and then you can "gesture" letters until you find what you want.

The main criticism so far seems to be the fact that Gesture Search is a standalone application and needs to be opened each time. It would be better suited as part of the actual operating system.

The second largest criticism is the fact that it only works on phones running Android 2.0 or higher.

As reported last month as a rumor, Valve has today officially confirmed upcoming Mac support for some of developer's most popular games.

Doug Lombardi, Valve's VP of developer marketing says the first two games to be ported will be Portal and Team Fortress 2.

It is still unclear when Mac gamers will be given access to the popular Steam service, but that day is likely soon given the latest news.

The company adds that current Mac hardware is very similar to the hardware used by current PC gamers, with Intel CPUs and Nvidia GPUs.

In what has to be a gigantic embarrassment for the company, Ubisoft's highly criticized "always connected" DRM has been cracked on the first day of release of the game Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic.

The publisher made headlines earlier this month when it announced the DRM which made it so gamers must be always connected to the Internet, or not be able to play the game. If you are ever disconnected from the Internet, you are forced back to the main menu, losing any progress you made between save points. The DRM was confirmed for Splinter Cell: Conviction, Silent Hunter 5: Battle of the Atlantic, Assassin's Creed 2, Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands and the all new Ghost Recon titles.

Yesterday, the pirated release, Silent Hunter 5 Battle of the Atlantic-SKIDROW, was made widely available, circumventing the DRM easily with a patched executable.

Ubisoft, however, is saying the pirated game is not fully complete.