Google Chrome ad features Justin Bieber

A new Google Chrome ad features Justin Bieber. The add chronicles Bieber's rise to fame after posting a YouTube music video in 2007 at the tender  age of 12.

Skype releases Android video calling app

Skype now offers a video calling feature for Android devices. A Skype blog post announced the new feature, which is available from the Android Market or by visiting Skype.com/m from your phone's browser.

Google makes it easy to create mobile sites

Google Sites now offers a way to build a mobile website in minutes for free. No programming experience is necessary.

Fring updates group video chat for iPad

Fring yesterday released an improved version of its group video chat app for the iPad. Skype is working on its first iPad app, but there are no reports that it will support group video chat.

Infamous PS3, iPhone hacker hired by Facebook

Facebook has hired George Hotz, a twenty-one-year-old famous for hacking the PS3 earlier this year and hacking the iPhone in 2008.

The news about Hotz, known in hacker circles as GeoHot, was initially reported by TechUnwrapped, whose source was a software developer named Joshua Hill.  Known on Twitter as POsixninja, Hill is a member of the Chronic-Dev Team,  a group of programmers known for jailbreaking the iPhone and other iOS devices.

In a video interview, Hill talked about an upcoming jailbreakers' convention known as MyGreatFest and said GeoHot was not interested in his suggestion to hack the iPad 2 because of his employment with Facebook and legal problems with Sony.

Cali group's Whole Foods rap video goes viral

A collective from the SF Bay Area and LA that call themselves Smog and Fog have produced a viral rap video entitled "Whole Foods Parking Lot." The music video, which has been seen by nearly two million viewers, spoofs a shopper driving a Prius angered by a confrontation over a parking space at a Whole Foods parking lot in Venice, California. The video also raps about the angst of shopping for master cleanse and Kombucha and paying $80 for six items.

Black Eyed Peas dance game coming to Kinect, Wii

"We are thrilled to be working with Ubisoft to create The Black Eyed Peas Experience," Peas spokesman will.i.am announced yesterday. A Kinect for Xbox 360 and Wii version of the dance game will also be released later this year.

The video game creates avatars of the band's four members that allows players to follow the group's dance moves.

The first Ubisoft dance game, Michael Jackson: The Experience, has sold more than three million copies.

YouTube videos capture huge Syrian protests

Syrian activists say the video above shows tumultuous protests  today in Hama, Syria's fourth largest city, calling for an end to the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, reports The Lede blog.

Fifteen demonstrators were shot and killed by security forces in four cities in Syria during massive protests across the country.

Minority Report's futuristic interactive presentation technology comes of age

John Underkoffler, Chief Scientist for Oblong Industries, was the technical advisor for the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie Minority Report. The science fiction thriller starring Tom Cruise was the public debut of Oblong's gesture recognition platform.


Oblong plans to bring to market later this year an operating system designed for large meeting areas that will allow users to take the reigns ala Tom Cruise and make high fidelity graphic presentations on large screens.

Conan pokes fun at Apple's Final Cut Pro X

Many professional video editors are not happy with Apple's new Final Cut Pro X  software. The latest version of Final Cut Pro has been completely revamped to make it more user friendly for amateurs, reports Macworld.

New camera lets you focus after you shoot

"Shoot now, focus later," says Lytro, a Silicon Valley start-up that has developed a new technology that lets photographers focus an image after a picture has been taken.

The Mountain View, CA, company, which has about 45 employees, plans to market its first camera later this year. The camera will use light-field technology, which was pioneered by Lytro's founder and CEO Ren Ng while working on his PhD at Stanford University.

Saudi women defy driving ban

Image from Facebook page "Teach me how to drive"

The detention last month of a Saudi woman who posted a YouTube video showing herself driving has sparked a campaign that will begin June 17 to defy the country's ban on women drivers. Saudi Arabia is the only country in the world that does not allow women to drive.



Al Sharif, 32, was detained for nine days by Saudi authorities after posting her video encouraging other women to drive. She was released after apparently being pressured to abandon a YouTube, Facebook and Twitter campaign for women drivers inspired by her protests. Her release was also contingent upon her signing a statement pledging not to drive again.



The June 17 campaign was spearheaded by the Twitter/Facebook group #Women2Drive, the Facebook pages "We are supporting Manal Alsharif" and "Teach me how to drive so I can protect myself," and  YouTube supporters called "Honk for Saudi Women."



On June 9, less than two weeks after Manal Al Sharif was arrested, six Saudi women were briefly detained in the capital city of Riyadh after defying the ban on driving.

One of the women drivers detained in Riyadh

Google embraces voice search

"The next big thing is definitely speech and voice recognition," Microsoft founder Bill Gates recently told the Daily Mail. Voice recognition is a key feature of Microsoft's popular interactive Kinect for Xbox 360.

In a June 14 blog post, Google noted that "mobile search traffic growth over the past three years is comparable to overall Google search traffic growth ... earlier in our history." Due to this exponential growth, including a  six-fold increase in mobile voice search traffic during the past year, Google has added voice recognition to the desktop.

Microsoft's Bing is Google's chief search engine rival in the U.S.  Google currently has 65 percent of the U.S. market. Bing controls most of the rest.

Google  also introduced a desktop Search by Image feature and increased the speed of searches with Instant Pages. Google provides an overview of its new features in its Inside Search blog.

Google expands electric car fleet

Google is expanding its electric vehicle fleet. As part of that effort, Google is installing more EV charging stations built by Coulomb Technologies. A Google blog post says the Silicon Valley company has the biggest corporate EV charging infrastructure in the U.S.

Google Maps adds live transit updates

Google Maps now offers live transit updates. The new live departure times feature allows users to plan for public transportation traffic delays.

UC Berkeley robot does laundry

A research group at UC Berkeley is teaching a robot to do the laundry. The UC researchers, along with teams from several other universities and corporations worldwide, are working on personal robots designed by Willow Garage, a Silicon Valley robotics start up founded by Scott Hassan, one of the original developers of the Google search engine.

Facebook, YouTube couriers of Syrian uprising

Foreign journalists have been barred from Syria, where some 1,000 protesters have been killed since mid-March in a popular uprising President Bashar Assad. "The only way we get information is through the citizen journalist," says Ammar Abudlhamid, a Syrian exile living in Maryland who helped organize the delivery of satellite phones and laptops to Syria earlier this year.

Facebook, YouTube and Twitter have been used by a clandestine group of Syrian journalists to bring worldwide attention to the tumultuous protests calling for the ouster of Assad, whose family has ruled this Middle East country for 40 years.

The Facebook page of Syrian Revolution 2011, which has some 200,000 followers, has been a key source of information about the rebellion. The YouTube video and memorial Facebook page of Hamza Khatib, a 13-year-old boy who was recently allegedly tortured and killed while in government custody, has sparked massive demonstrations. The Shaam News Network created by young Syrian activists has been able to leak news about the recent clashes through YouTube, Facebook and Twitter. The Local Coordinating Comittees in Syria has also downloaded a host of YouTube videos showing the street protests.



This video filmed in Hama on June 3 shows demonstrators fleeing gunfire. According to varying reports, in 1982 government soldiers massacred between 10,000-40,000 civilians to quell a popular rebellion. A collection of  videos showing the recent clashes in Hama have been posted on YouTube's CitizenTube.