Smartphones are the phones for the season and especially Google’s Android OS is really taking off high. The number of smartphones shipped with Android OS is just augmenting every day. However, this is not the greatest news for Google as the platform is still behind of Apple’s iPhone in terms of market share and especially behind in terms of apps. Google is much smaller when we see 100,000 apps in the Apple store, but then things are changing now. The number of apps created for Android devices are growing every month and last number from AndroidLib.com expose that there were 9,325 new ones were added to Market Place in the month of March.

This number is even more interesting to note when you look at the Android Marketplace’s historical growth. In December 2009, for example, there were 3,807 new apps added to the Android app store. By January, 4,458 more were added. In February, 5,532 came. And now, 9,325 added in March. If this trend continues, we might also see a month this year where the number of new applications tops 5 digits.

There are now over 160,000 apps in the Apple App Store, so Google still has some way to go. The latest market share numbers show that Android had about 9% of the US market in the second month of the year, compared to Apple’s 25.4 percent, having made important strides in the previous three months. Good luck Google!

After a long wait, people finally got to see and purchase iPad last Saturday. The most surprising thing is not that it sold out about 600,000 – 700,000 iPad on the release date, but one among them was a teenager bought it just to destroying a brand new iPad computer with a baseball bat.

Justin Kockott, the guy whose plan was to smash the iPad with a baseball bat, reportedly  said,

I wanted to be the first one to do it before other people did it,” adding that, “It was just something to do.”

I knew some people would hate it, but I didn’t think that many people would hate it,” he said. “A lot of people are leaving really bad comments,” he added, referring to the YouTube video they made.

Surprisingly he is not a person that hates Apple and do not hold any grudges against it and has actually bought two other iPads. I do not at all hate Apple. I love Apple, actually,” he said.

No clue on what made him do such a stupid thing, either he had too much of money or probably he is not in his senses!

There was an interesting rumor popped up yesterday saying Google Adobe may get chummier with Chrome, Flash partnership, but that seems to be accurate. Google today announced a deeper integration of the Adobe Flash Player in Chrome. Particularly, the latest development builds would now come bundled with the Flash Player, though the feature is not enabled by default. According to Google this path is more suitable for users, who don’t have to download and install the plug-in individually. Google Chrome 5.0.360.4 dev for Windows and Mac and Google Chrome 5.0.360.5 dev for Linux users will now get Flash plug-in pre-installed.

Linus Upson, VP Engineering at Google, wrote.

The traditional browser plug-in model has enabled tremendous innovation on the web, but it also presents challenges for both plug-ins and browsers. The browser plug-in interface is loosely specified, limited in capability and varies across browsers and operating systems.

That’s why we are working with Adobe, Mozilla and the broader community to help define the next generation browser plug-in API. This new API aims to address the shortcomings of the current browser plug-in model. There is much to do and we’re eager to get started. As a first step, we’ve begun collaborating with Adobe to improve the Flash Player experience in Google Chrome,” he added.

It is visibly true that Google and Adobe has teamed up against Apple, it indicates that both parties are drawing line in the sand against Apple. However, Google pull out many benefits to users via this partnership – the sandbox is one of Chrome’s most hyped features and with Adobe’s help, Google plan to further protect users by extending Chrome’s “sandbox” to web pages with Flash content. Developers can download the Chrome developer channel version with Flash built in here. To enable the built-in version of Flash, run Chrome with the –enable-internal-flash command line flag.

HTML5 may not be the latest technology available, but for sure it is a great help to web apps and functionality online that is now available for web developers through a standard and non-proprietary technology. And of late we also saw W3C Release Seven Important Document On HTML5 to help web masters and Google is getting closer to HTML5 standards. Now entering Brightcove, which might not be familiar to all, but this company offers web-based streaming video for many esteemed clients, such as The New York Times, Time, Condé Nast, The Weather Channel, Universal, and many more. Brightcove has just announced that it’s launching a video player based on HTML5 specially to bring compatibility with the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

According to Brightcove website -

HTML5 helps website owners harness open standards to deliver video content to devices, such as the Apple iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch. However, organizations attempting to deliver HTML5 video experiences are struggling with knowledge gaps, technical limitations, and additional development costs that can make it prohibitive to deliver HTML5 video experiences in parallel with other approaches.

Unlike the Apple devices, Android does support Adobe Flash. Brightcove says this move would make sure that no user is left out and that its customers are able to reach their audience in spite of the device they’re coming from. The move may be brilliant, but point to be noted is that it concentrates on Apple devices that do not have Flash Suppot. However, Brightcove says it’s working on to bring HTLM5 video player on Flash-based as well.

The iPhone Dev-Team has just exposed redsn0w 0.9.4 to jailbreak and unlock iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G (No unlock for 3G), iPod touch 1G and iPod touch 2G (older Non-MC models only). However note – do not update to iPhone 3.1.3 firmware still if you wish to preserve your unlock for iPhone 3GS, iPhone 3G, iPod touch 2G (new models) and iPod touch 3G. That’s because the new iPhone 3.1.3 firmware updates baseband to 05.12.01 on iPhone 3GS and iPhone 3G which makes it unworkable to jailbreak and unlock iPhone 3GS and 3G.

According to Dev-Team Blog -

If you care about your jailbreak and unlock, don’t update your device – 3G and 3G(S) owners should pay particular attention to this warning.

Update 1:  [Don’t go near this if you have 3GS, newer ipt2G, or any ipt3G] Thanks to daring experimenters in the comments, we can confirm that yesterday’s redsn0w works for today’s 3.1.3 update for iPhone 2G.  Just point it at the 3.1.2 iPhone 2G IPSW after doing update or restore to 3.1.3.  So far we’ve only confirmed this for iPhone 2G.  (Note that if this does work for iPhone 3G too, you can *only* use it if you don’t care about the unlock.)

Update 2: [Don’t go near this if you have 3GS, newer ipt2G, or any ipt3G] Can confirm that this method works for iPhone 3G and iPod touch 1G too.  Don’t do it for iPhone 3G if you need an unlock though (really, don’t!). For older iPod touch 2G, we’ll need a small (1-character) change in redsn0w source.

Update 3: [Don’t go near this if you have 3GS, newer ipt2G, or any ipt3G] For those with older (non-MC) iPod touch 2G, we’ve compiled a special version of redsn0w meant just for you: Mac and Windows.  You guys can get in on the “3.1.2” loophole too using this special version.  Don’t try this if you have a newer iPod Touch 2G or if you’re not completely sure what version you have.  And of course don’t try it for 3GS or ipt3G either.

That about does it for the 3.1.2 redsn0w loophole.  It can only be used by: those who don’t need the 3G/3GS unlock, and only owners of iPhone 2G, iPhone 3G (not unlockers!), iPod 1G, and iPod 2G older version.  Everyone else please wait for official support in the tools.

Google today released Google email uploader for Mac, which is an interesting application geared towards simplifying the transition process to Google Apps account. This application further abridges the process of uploading hundreds of messages simultaneously from any three of the major Mac e-mail applications – Apple Mail, Eudora, and Thunderbird. However, you will require Google Apps for a business account for Email uploader to transfer mail to any ordinary Gmail account.

Google Code blog share some tips:

Start small. Due to server upload rate limits, the uploader is fast for up to 500 messages, and slow thereafter (1 message per second.) Pick a small subset of your mailboxes when first trying out the uploader.

Be patient. Even after uploading completes, the server requires a while to process uploads.

Do assign a custom label (this is checked by default.) This lets you effectively “undo” the uploads later by deleting all messages with the label. Deleting the label itself will not delete the mail.

If you have many mailboxes in your archives, creating labels for each mailbox probably is not a good idea, as this could create far too many labels.

This is of course a good news for Mac-based businesses looking to outsource their e-mail and take advantage of Google’s system, and now we hope that Google will also make this option available for regular users of Gmail.

Whether you enjoyed the launch of iPad on Wednesday or not, it is the conversation discussed all over Twitter. Retrevo Buzzmeter measured in the number of tweets made across the Internet on a per-minute basis, the number of tweets about “Apple tablet,” “iPad,” and related terms raised up to about ten times the traffic that the terms had generated before the launch, or between just 500 to 600 tweets per minute. That indicated peak activity levels as high as 7,000 Tweets per minute (TPM) during launch. Typical celebrity topics such as ‘Britney Spears’ get about 10-20 Tweets per minute on a sustained basis.

Retrevo Explained -

Just prior to the event we see a somewhat elevated activity compared to the much lower “baseline” of the night before the event. As the event gets underway at 10:00 AM and Steve Jobs takes the stage, we see a low level buzz that builds toward the formal announcement at 10:10. Activity drops off momentarily followed by the highest level of the event measuring 7,000 TPM which coincides with the hardware description at 10:30 AM. We then see several smaller bursts associated with more announcements until activity peaks again as the event was winding down.

It is not the appropriate time to predict whether iPad will be successful in impressing people, but of course we can figure out that the buzz created was huge and will make a difference to Apple as a whole.

Spotify is a very popular music-streaming among users that enables them to listen to a vast library songs for no cost. On the other hand, most people prefer to tie up their collection to iTunes. But it can be little disappointing if one do not have iPod as they cannot carry their collection anywhere they go. So to offer solution to this a guy name Phil Nash from UK launched a service called SpotifiTunes that enables users to access most of the tunes via Spotify.

SpotifiTunes is a web app that enables users to import their iTunes library into Spotify. Using it is very simple, all you need to do is upload iTunes’ database file, which keeps tabs on all your music, to the SpotifiTunes website. The library data is stored in an XML file on your computer and the site directs you to the folders where the file is to be found on either Windows or Mac.

You get a list of tracks segregated by genre, artists, or albums after the files are uploaded.  Then you can select an artist or an album and the app would automatically find the songs in the Spotify desktop app.

We have seen Google’s Nexus One, Palm’s Pre, and Motorola’s Droid all been shipped with LED flash technology apart from the cameras and Apple might join the group soon. As industry insider confirms that Apple in recent months has moved to obtain significant quantities of LED camera flash components, which in turn will help the maker to produce next-generation mobile with superior image and video captures in low-light situations also.

According to Appleinsider

The lack of camera flash technology has long stood as one of the iPhone’s glaring omissions. Although the handset’s existing 3.2 megapixel camera produces surprisingly sharp and vibrant images when employed in sun-drenched scenes and aptly lit venues, its lack of flash often leads to disappointing, dark and grainy photographs in more dimly-lit scenarios.

People familiar with Apple’s initiative claim the electronics maker is seeking allotments of LED camera flash components in the tens of millions for delivery during the 2010 calendar year, meaning future iPhones — and possibly the iPod touch — are the most likely recipients of those parts, due to their sales volume. Those same people say that Philips’ Lumileds Lighting sector is believed to be the front-runner for Apple’s business and may have already secured the design win.

Although there is no confirmation made by Apple itself, there has been lot of hope been generated. Who knows we might soon see the next-generation iPhone coming up with LED camera flash.

We already knew that people’s love for Google Chrome is just going to grow and that is been proved with the latest market share numbers. Chrome has been on a rise since its inception over a year ago and it took a high jump last month with beta launch for Window, Mac and Linux and extensions gallery. And now Google Chrome is the third most popular web browser across the world just behind Internet Explorer and Firefox, however surpassing Safari was no less than achievement for Google.

According to numbers by Net Applications for December – Google Chrome owns 4.63 percent of the browser market, which is ahead of Safari’s 4.46 percent. Yet, it’s far behind Firefox that carries a significant 24.61 percent market share, while Internet Explorer owns huge 62.29 percent. It’s of course a big milestone for Chrome though, as the browser market has been hard to crack.

On the other hand theappleblog says –

As for alternatives to Internet Explorer in web browsing, that would be Firefox, followed by Chrome, which is now followed by Safari. With the release of the Chrome beta for Windows, Mac, and Linux, it was only a matter of time before Safari was passed by. December makes it official. Chrome is now at 4.63 percent of browser share, followed by Safari at 4.46 percent. Safari appears to have plateaued at around 4.5 percent of total share. Of course, with Apple it’s never been about market share for any product. The company’s business model has always been predicated upon selling a unique experience at a profit…considerable profit.

So now the question is, will Safari gain it’s position back or will Chrome try to surpass other rival also in 2010? Well, it’s a long way to go for Chrome and let’s hope for the best!