Google introduces ability to download tracks from Music Manager

Yesterday, Google announced that it is rolling out a new version of its Music Manager application, adding in two new major features - the ability to download tracks and the ability to share YouTube videos of tracks on Google+. The web giant says that any song currently uploaded to Google's Music Manager program, including ones you bought and uploaded, can be downloaded. Tracks will also remain in the cloud as well. 

The second new feature is outlined below:

Former Palm head Jon Rubinstein leaves HP

According to AllThingsD, Jon Rubinstein, former senior VP of Apple's iPod division and Palm CEO, has left Hewlett Packard (HP) today. The report says that Rubinstein has left HP following his 12-24 month commitment to the company following its acquisition of Palm in 2010. "Jon has fulfilled his commitment and we wish him well," said an HP spokeswoman.

Rubinstein is best known for helping develop the original iPod back in 2001. He left Apple in 2006 to work for Palm, where he became CEO in 2007. Following HP's acquisition of Palm in 2010, Rubinstein joined the company as an executive overlooking the now axed webOS division. 

Facebook filing for IPO as early as this Wednesday

According to a report from The Wall Street Journal, Facebook may be filing for an Initial Public Offering (IPO) as early as this Wednesday, February 1, 2012. The social network's IPO has been long-awaited and could possibly be the largest ever for a tech company, valued at $10 billion. For comparison, Google filed for an IPO back in 2000 for less than $2 billion.

If the IPO is valued at about $10 billion, Facebook as a company would be valued at around $100 billion. The offer will be managed mainly by Morgan Stanley, with Goldman Sachs as a "significant" secondary.   

YouTube updates “Browse” page, video editor and video manager

Today, YouTube rolled out a number of updates to several parts of the video upload and sharing website, including the "Browse" page, the video editor, and the video manager. All of the updates focus on adding the same design as the major redesign YouTube received last month to these features. 

New Browse page details:

Today we're giving the Browse page a fresh look-and-feel, to help you find even more great Channels on YouTube. Alongside the top lists like Most Viewed Today, you can now discover and subscribe to more YouTube Channels on browse pages, which will then regularly update on your homepage. You can also discover more content under categories including Entertainment, People & Blogs, Science & Technology and more. You’ll find it all onYouTube.com/browse.

The new video editor features a design overhaul, as well as the following new features: new timeline, easier clip trimming and a moving playhead. 

Following an update to the video manager last month, YouTube also slightly updated the design of the feature, and added the following new features: search history, an improved display of scheduled uploads and claimed videos, displaying "likes" and "dislikes" and new sorting options. 

Motorola Mobility reports Q4 2011 financial results – revenue of $3.4 billion

Today, Motorola Mobility reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011, announcing a net revenue of $3.4 billion. However, the company did report an $80 million net loss in the quarter, despite net revenues of $13.1 billion for all of 2011. Mobile devices accounted for $2.5 billion of the revenue in the holiday quarter, with 10.5 million devices shipped. 

In regards to its acquisition by Google, Motorola says it "continues to work closely with Google to complete the proposed acquisition of Motorola Mobility as expeditiously as possible." The company believes that the deal will be closed sometime in early 2012. Google acquired Motorola back in August 2011 for $12.5 billion. 

Teenagers can now begin using Google+ with enhanced security features

In a status update on Google+, Bradley Horowitz announced that the social network can now be used by teenagers who are older than 13. However, to improve safety with teens using Google+, the web giant will display a notification on the user's account before they share something publicly, making sure that they would indeed like to share the content with the whole world. 

In addition, be default, only people in teen's "Circles" are able to interact with the person, and users can now block someone easily. Finally, when in a Hangout on the social network, and a stranger who is not in a teen's Circle joins the video call, the teen is automatically removed from the Hangout and has the ability to rejoin. 

AT&T reports Q4 2011 financial results – $32.5 billion revenue

Today, AT&T reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011, announcing a consolidated revenue of $32.5 billion, up 3.6% year-over-year. The company says that it sold 9.4 million smartphones in the holiday quarter, representing the best period of three months in AT&T history. The quarter also saw 7.6 million iPhones activated on AT&T's network, as well as giant gains for Android. 

For the full year 2011, compared with 2010 results, AT&T's consolidated revenues totaled $126.7 billion versus $124.3 billion, up 2.0 percent; operating expenses were $117.5 billion, compared with $104.7 billion; net income attributable to AT&T was $3.9 billion versus $19.9 billion; and earnings per diluted share was $0.66 compared with $3.35. Excluding significant items, earnings per share totaled $2.20, compared with $2.29.

The company also says that it added 208,000 AT&T U-Verse TV subscribers for a total number of 3.8 million customers. 

Google Earth 6.2 released with improved imagery

Today, Google Earth version 6.2 was released to the public. The update brings a number of improvements to the virtual globe application, namely "seamless imagery" and a new search interface. In addition, the web giant added a new feature to Google Earth that allows users to share pictures directly from the app to Google+. 

Today, we’re introducing a new way of rendering imagery that smoothes out this quilt of images. The end result is a beautiful new Earth-viewing experience that preserves the unique textures of the world’s most defining geographic landscapes—without the quilt effect. This change is being made on both mobile and desktop versions of Google Earth. While this change will appear on all versions of Google Earth, the 6.2 release provides the best viewing experience for this new data.

The latest Google Earth is available for download for Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux here.

“Speaktoit Assistant” launches in iOS App Store as another Siri alternative

We've just been exclusively informed of the initial release of "Speaktoit Assistant" into the iOS App Store (link). The app functions similarly to Siri in the sense that, the user inputs a question (either by typing it out or speaking), and the assistant will give you a response. Speaktoit also allows you to customize the avatar that you see on the screen, giving the app a little personal feel to it. 

Speaktoit is powered by Nuance technology, just like Siri and Evi, the also relatively new competitor to Siri released earlier this week. 

Speaktoit Assistant is a virtual buddy for your iPhone or iPod that uses natural language technology to answer questions, find information, and connect you with various web services, such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, Evernote, and many others.

The Assistant works with your device to get maps, search for news and images, look up weather reports, convert currency and measurements, send email, and much more.

No need to memorize special commands or complex interfaces - simply speak or type in everyday language and the Assistant will understand and respond with what you need.

A major feature of the app is the ability to speak to it naturally, meaning users won't have to follow strict language guidelines to receive an intelligent response. 

The app is currently available on the App Store for $0.99. 

Motorola Mobility files lawsuit against Apple over patent infringement

According to Reuters, Motorola Mobility has filed a lawsuit against Apple in a Florida federal court, claiming that Apple infringes upon some of its patents. The company, which was acquired by Google last year, believes that Apple is using six of its patents in the iPhone 4S and iCloud. The patents in question deal with wireless antennae, software, data filtering and messaging. 

This lawsuit is only the newest in what has been a long battle between Motorola Mobility and Apple over several different patents relating to smartphone technologies. 

Netflix reports Q4 financial results – $876 million in revenue and 220,000 new streaming customers

Today, Netflix reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011, which ended on December 31. The company announced a revenue of $876 million, up 47% year-over-year, and significantly higher than analyst expectations, which were in the mid-$850 million's. 

Netflix also revealed that it gained 220,000 new streaming subscribers in the holiday quarter, but still much less than the 800,000 it lost in the previous quarter. The company now has 21.67 million streaming subscribers in the United States and 24.4 million DVD rental  subscribers. In addition, 1.9 million international customers are signed up with Netflix, 380,000 of whom were added in the past three months. 

We are encouraged by the strength in acquisition that we are seeing, coupled with continued improvements in retention among our domestic streaming members. For Q1 to date, our domestic net additions for streaming are tracking close to our net additions in Q1 2010 of 1.7 million net additions. Given this trend, we are comfortable with our ability to continue to expand our domestic streaming contribution margin.

Google introduces “Public Alerts” feature for Maps

Today, Google announced "Google Public Alerts," a service intended to provide users with important information regarding things such as inclement weather, public safety, and earthquakes. The service is integrated into Google Maps and gathers important, emergency information based on your current location. 

Whether you see an alert depends on which alerts are active at a given location, their severity, and your search query. If you’re interested in seeing all of the active alerts in one place, visit our homepage at www.google.org/publicalerts. This page also provides a link to more information on our new platform and gives instructions to interested organizations who want to make their emergency data available through this tool.

This feature is available worldwide and was built by the Google.org project team. 

Report: Microsoft plans to axe its virtual “points” system by the end of 2012

According to Inside Mobile Apps, a source is claiming that Microsoft currently plans to phase out its proprietary virtual points system that's used to pay for something on Windows Phone, the Zune Market, and Xbox LIVE. Instead, the software giant will switch over to a money-based system that is based on the region your account is setup in. Users that currently have "Microsoft Points" on their account will have them converted to a money value by the end of this year. 

While the move to eliminate the system comes as a surprise, it will certainly be good news for many Microsoft product owners. Why? The main reason is because of the inconsistency Microsoft has with Points - some things in the Xbox LIVE Marketplace are marked with points, while others with monetary values. The same goes for the PC and Windows Phone Marketplace. 

What do you think about this decision? 

Twitter to add support for right-to-left languages this spring

Twitter announced via its official blog today that it has begun working on adding support for right-to-left languages for the microblogging website. The company is beginning translation work for Arabic, Farsi, Hebrew and Urdu using volunteers in the Twitter Translation Center. 

The Twitter Translation Center takes a crowd-sourced approach to translating and localizing Twitter for people around the world. More than 425,000 volunteers contribute to the Translation Center, and to date have helped make Twitter available in 22 languages. With their help, these will be the next four.

Twitter explains that it has developed a way to make sure that tweets and hashtags will appear properly in right-to-left languages, as well as giving users a more "localized experience." 

If everything goes as planned, the company will be introducing these four new languages sometime in the spring. 

HP announces “Open webOS 1.0″

Today, HP gave the first details regarding the now open source webOS mobile platform, cleverly dubbed "Open webOS 1.0." The company released Enyo, its JavaScript app framework, under an open source license, allowing developers to port their apps to other mobile platforms. 

This initial open source release includes Enyo 1.0, which allows current developers of Enyo apps for webOS devices to distribute their apps to other platforms. While this release is not intended to be expanded any further, there is considerable utility for our current developer base in releasing it.

Today’s release also includes the core of Enyo 2.0, which will be the foundation for Enyo going forward. It expands Enyo’s “write once, run anywhere” capability to even more platforms, from mobile devices to desktop web browsers. It works on many of the most popular web browsers, including Chrome, IE 9, Firefox, and Safari.

HP says that the current release of version 2.0 doesn't include UI widgets, but a future release will. In addition, the company notes that a future release will include a version of WebKit, a platform that web browsers are based from, with support for HTML5, Silverlight, Flash, 3D textures and multi-touch. 

More information is available at the official Enyo website.

HP announced last month that it plans to keep webOS, which was killed in August 2011, around as open source development. 

Google announces plans to overhaul privacy policies and terms of service

Earlier today, Google announced its plans to overhaul its current privacy policy and terms of service system in one month to a more simplified, central policy.

The web giant notes that it currently has over 70 privacy policies for all of its products, making it difficult to keep track of and follow for end-users. To solve the problem, Google will soon begin using a new main privacy policy that covers a majority of its products and explains how information is stored and collected. More than sixty (60) of the current policies will be consolidated into one. 

Google explains:

What does this mean in practice? The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you've provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

On the terms of service side of things, Google is also consolidating and simplifying into one giant Terms of Service that covers a majority of its products.  

Finally, the web giant notes that it won't be changing the ability for users to pick up their information and leave Google, as well as not selling personal information to third party companies. 

These changes will be in effect on March 1, 2012. 

Next-generation Xbox scheduled to ship in late 2013 with 6x the processing power of Xbox 360

According to a report from IGN, the next-generation Xbox model will begin shipping to customers in late October or early November of 2013 with about six times the processing power of the current-generation Xbox 360. 

The game console's graphics processing unit (GPU) will reportedly begin being produced in late 2012, and will be based off of AMD's 6000 GPU series. "In real terms, the Xbox 720's raw graphics processing power is expected to be six times that of the Xbox 360 and will yield 20-percent greater performance than Nintendo's forthcoming console, the Wii U."

Game developers will receive development kits based on the console's final specifications in August 2012, according to the report.  

Research in Motion 2012 to early 2013 product roadmap revealed

BGR has compiled a list of what it claims to be Research in Motion's (RIM) product roadmap for 2012 to early 2013. The list of devices include several BlackBerry 7 OS smartphones, as well as a new PlayBook tablet and a couple of BlackBerry 10 OS devices. 

The full roadmap is below:

• RIM plans to introduce two new Curve smartphones within the next few months: the BlackBerry Curve 9230 and the BlackBerry Curve 9320. The 9230 will be an EDGE smartphone and the Curve 9320 will be an HSPA device.
• While we don’t have confirmation on the size, we have heard that RIM will introduce a new PlayBook tablet with 1.5GHz processor, built-in HSPA+ 42Mbps cellular data support and NFC around May or June.
• RIM’s BlackBerry London is still on track for a September launch.
• There is now another BlackBerry 10 smartphone in the works that will launch as part of RIM’s Bold series. The phone features a touchscreen display and QWERTY keyboard, and it is planned for a December release.
• A QWERTY slider running BlackBerry 10 has been talked about for the first quarter of 2013.

RIM's near future has been very shaky as of late, with a report coming earlier this month that the company was working on only one new smartphone at the time. Earlier this week, RIM's Co-Chief Executive Officers stepped down and they have been replaced by now former COO Thorsten Heins. 

Microsoft cancels MIX 2012 conference

Today, Microsoft revealed its plans to cancel the MIX 2012 conference that was originally scheduled to occur sometime in the Spring of this year. Instead, Microsoft will be merging the developer-focused conference with another event that will be occurring sometime within the next year. 

The software giant says that it had many factors in making this decision. First, the company believes that web development should be considered normal development today. Also, because of confusion between developers, choosing which conference to attend was becoming difficult. 

So what happens going forward? As we look ahead to 2012 and beyond, the goal is to ensure that global Microsoft developer events are of the caliber that many of you experienced at BUILD last September, in addition to the thousands of online and local developer events we host around the world to support communities and connect directly with developers. We will share more details of our next developer event later this year. In the meantime, know that we are we are hard at work and will look forward to seeing many of you there.

Microsoft hasn't provided any information on when this new event will be taking place. 

Verizon reports Q4 2011 financial results – $28.4 billion revenue

Earlier today, Verizon reported its financial results for the fourth quarter of 2011, announcing a total revenue of $28.4 billion. The company says that it saw a record-breaking revenue growth for the holiday quarter, which was fueled by strong wireless sales.

Verizon Wireless accounted for $18.3 billion revenue in Q4, up 13% year-over-year. It also notes: "1.5 million retail net additions (excluding acquisitions and adjustments), largest increase in three years, includes 1.2 million retail postpaid net customer additions; 108.7 million total connections, includes 92.2 million retail customers."

On the wireline side of things, Verizon reported 201,000 FiOS Internet and 194,000 FiOS Video net additions, with a net increase of 98,000.