For a number of us, the release of catalogs marks the start of the holiday shopping season. But what if you could have all your favorite catalogs in one place, with the latest issues always available at your fingertips?

Google Catalogs is available for Android tablets from today, as well as the iPad, giving you a new way to shop from the comfort of your couch. With rich product images, videos, and the ability to curate your own personal collages to share with friends, Google Catalogs makes browsing your favorite mail order catalogs easy, fun and interactive.

Read rest of the story to Google Catalogs Comes to Android Tablets

Google has announced that it will acquire Motorola Mobility for $12.5 billion. The search and online advertising company is buying the company for approximately $12.5 billion (or $40 per share), in cash. The takeover will boost the rise of Google's Android software in the nascent smartphone market. The $40-a-share deal – which is Google's biggest acquisition to date – is a 63% premium on Motorola Mobility's closing price on the New York Stock Exchange on Friday.

Motorola, the company which has a history of over 80 years of innovation in communications technology and products, and in the development of intellectual property, which have helped drive the remarkable revolution in mobile computing we are all enjoying today. Its many industry milestones include the introduction of the world’s first portable cell phone nearly 30 years ago, and the StarTAC—the smallest and lightest phone on earth at time of launch. In 2007, Motorola was a founding member of the Open Handset Alliance that worked to make Android the first truly open and comprehensive platform for mobile devices.

Now, Android has become an increasingly important platform for Google, as global smartphone adoption accelerates. The platform, launched in 2007, is now used in more than 150 million devices, with 39 manufacturers. Android has become an increasingly important platform for Google, as global smartphone adoption accelerates. The platform, launched in 2007, is now used in more than 150 million devices, with 39 manufacturers.

Read rest of the story to Will Google-Motorola Acquisition Piss Other Android Partners Off?

BlackBerry was the top selling smart phone in the UK during 2010. RIM was delighted with a 28.2% share of the smartphone market. During the Christmas period RIM recorded over half a million sales which equated to around 36% of overall smartphone sales.

After a shaky start to 2010 with a drop in sales RIM eventually come through to finish strongly. It has been a tough year for the BlackBerry. A large number of businesses made the dreaded switch from the BlackBerry to iPhone. However, companies such as Morgan Stanley and HSBC remained loyal, continuing to insist it was handset of choice. It is clear that the coolness, stability and update frequency of iPhone meant it became popular among the business world. Elsewhere in the market it was able to see off fierce pressure from the release of the Android series.

There are a massive 33 million BB messenger users worldwide which signifies a 500% increase the previous year. RIM adapted well to the recent trends in social media and connected well with both Facebook and Twitter. However, it still lags far behind Android and Apple in terms of apps as it provides a mere 17,000. That aside, the BlackBerry handsets perform very well, hence the smartphone market in 2011 will certainly be hotly contested.

For nearly two decades, Windows and Mac OS have dominated the PC operating system market. Microsoft Windows began with Windows 1.0, one year after introduced Mac OS 1984 with the original Macintosh. Users are dull about the familiar two PC operating systems and eager to something new. Chrome OS comes just in time. Will it be the Terminator for Windows, iPad and Google’s own Android?

Google Chrome OS is a forthcoming Linux-based, open source operating system to work exclusively with web applications. It first announced on July 7, 2009, and was originally intended be publicly available as a stable release inspired by the growing popularity and lower power consumption of netbooks and the focus of these small laptops on Internet access.

The search giant Google, is a company known for its forward-thinking. Chrome OS is designed to specifically target the Internet generation which can be envisaged as a super web environment where life activities such as work and play are seamlessly integrated. The corn idea of the operating system inspired by the fact that web browsing is taking up most of users’ computer time. Why not make it the focus of computing? Chrome OS is an attempt to transform your local computer into a global entity, active and fully connected.

Cloud model operating system’s Advantages and Disadvantages

Chrome OS is widely considered as the first operating system running purely on a cloud model, where web applications are floating and are interconnected through the internet, allowing faster operations for the computer system.

One of the major advantages of Chrome OS is its impressive speed. The startup time for Chrome OS is expected to be in seconds rather than minutes due to no local program loading. Different from the traditional Windows operation system which takes up most of the system’s resources, Google’s new operating system Chrome OS is designed to be light-weight. Chrome OS makes it possible that all computing activities can be conducted online. User’s data and applications will be stored at dedicated servers instead of saved locally. Users will have anytime access to their data and programs. This will ultimately eliminate useless system processes, reduce memory usage, and remove the need for a robust hard disk. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, some news about Google is having a secret talk with mobile payments startup BOKU have been reported by many IT media. According to TechCrunch, Google is willing to discuss a possible acquisition for BOKU and the final price might be probably higher than 100 million dollars. It would be a great enhancement for Google in the competition of mobile market if the acquisition could be successfully made.

Review the past ten years, Google has made over 80 acquisitions and some of them have brought great influences not only to Google itself, but to the whole IT industry. Now, our editor has made a list to show you Google’s Top 5 meaningful acquisitions. By the way, the order of the list is determined by the significance of acquisitions.

1, DoubleClick

Acquisition date: April 13, 2007

Business type: Online advertising

Acquisition Value: (USD) $3.1 billion

Used as / Integrated with: Google AdSense

Before acquired by Google, DoubleClick has been a company that develops and provides Internet ad serving services. Its clients include many famous agencies and publishers who serve customers such as GM, Microsoft, Coca-Cola and so on. The core technology of DoubleClick is known as DART (Dynamic Advertising Reporting Targeting). DART automates the administration effort in the ad buying cycle for advertisers and the management of ad inventory for publishers. It is intended to increase the purchasing efficiency of advertisers and to minimize unsold inventory for publishers.

On April 13, 2007, Google has officially announced that it has made an agreement to acquire DoubleClick for US $3.1 billion in cash. So far, the value still ranks the first in the history of Google’s acquisition.

Based on the dominant position in the field of search engine, Google has seamlessly made useful of DART to its own key product—Google AdSense. The product line of DoubleClick has been integrated in many different aspects of Google AdSense. For example, DoubleClick Ad Exchange and Google AdSense have been merged as DoubleClick for Publishers (DFP). Through the operation, the function of influence of Google Adwords has been increased to a much higher level.

In Google’s Yearly Earnings, AdSense has always been one of the most profitable products and acquisition of DoubleClick is an absolutely contributive factor. Read the rest of this entry »

The news is exciting to Google fans that the HTC Dream's FCC has confirmed that it is indeed the long-awaited Android phone. The HTC Dream will be the first Android enabled phone to the market and it is slated for a Fall 2008 Release Date. At the same time, new Android SDK publicly released to developers. Both hardware and software are ready, our mobile dream of GPhone is about to come true…

What will Android phone bring to us?
A recent post in the unofficial T-Mobile blog, confirms that the HTC Dream will offer the following features:

*Touch screen
*Full Qwerty keyboard
*3G/ WiFi
*Full HTML internet capabilities
*Easy access to all Google applications (Gmail, Gtalk, search)
*Maps
*Street view
*YouTube
*Phone
*IM/Text
*Email
*Camera 3.0mp; no flash
*Video (playback only, no recording)
*Music player & 1GB memory card pre-loaded
*Applications, all available in Google marketplace (icon on the homescreen)

New Android SDK Released
Along with the release of Android phone, a new version of Android SDK has been publicly released to developers. It has been a long time since the last version which was made available only to contest winners, which made some developers feel less than appreciated.

The new version of Android SDK is 0.9 beta, we call it m5-rc14. There are a couple of changes and highlights in m5-rc14.

New user interface - m5-rc14 replaces the previous placeholder with a new UI, but as before, work on it is still in-progress.

Layout animations - Developers can now create layout animations for applications using the capabilities introduced in the Android. View animation package. Check out the Layout Animation *.java files in the API Demos sample code for examples of how this works.

Geo-coding - android.location.geocoder enables developers to forward and reverse geo-code (i.e. translate an address into a coordinate and vice-versa), and also search for businesses.

New media codes - The Media Player class has added support for the OGG Vorbis, MIDI, XMF, iMelody, RTTL/RTX, and OTA audio file formats.

Updated Eclipse plug-in - A new version of ADT is available and provides improvements to the Android developer experience.

Try Android now!
Are you deeply attracted by Android? If you are interested in trying out Android before buying your own, do the following easy steps and you can experience Android on your PC.

1. Download Android SDK here. Windows Version Mac Version Linux Version
2. Unzip files into a directory on your computer.
3. Open the “Tools” directory and double-click on the “emulator.exe” to start the simulator.

With simulator, you can play with Android as your mind. For more powerful features, you can find and install applications from some sort of application directory. Have a good Android trip!