Jordan Kahn

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It appears more than a few of the approximately 600 employees currently working at Twitter left the GooglePlex at some point to do so… 13 percent according to a report from AllThingsD.

Among the more notable of Twitter’s 87 ex-Googlers, CEO Dick Costolo, who had a short stint at Google after they purchased his FeedBurner startup, former Senior Product Manager at Google Satya Patel, and their recent acquisition former Products Counsel at the Plex and Head of Music partnerships at YouTube, Glenn Otis Brown.

While the majority of ex-Google employees seem to leave on good terms, one current Twitter staffer, creative director Doug Bowman, explained in a blog post entitled “Goodbye, Google” his frustrations with the working environment and reasons for leaving the company.

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Today Google started rolling out the calling feature that previously only allowed North American Gmail users to make phone calls to landlines and mobile phones to 38 new languages.

Last year, we made it possible for those of you in the U.S. to call any mobile phone or landline directly from Gmail and starting today, we are making this available to many more of you who use Gmail outside the U.S. by offering calling in 38 new languages.

Purchasing calling credit has also been made more accessible and can now be acquired in four currencies including U.S. dollars, Euros, Canadian dollars, and British Pounds. Also starting today, the feature will no longer include connection fees so you “only pay for the time you talk”.

In addition to the announcement, Google also confirmed they will be lowering rates in over 150 locations. You can check out a full list of rates on the Google calling rates page here.

The Gmail calling feature will start to roll out to in the new languages over the next few days. Keep an eye out for a small green phone icon in your chat list within your inbox.

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Is Verizon preparing to launch the HTC Vigor, Droid Bionic, and two other mystery Android devices? If speculation stemming from a leaked pre-MAP (minimum advertised price) list is to be believed, the carrier is readying four new Android devices for launch including two HTC, one LG, and a Motorola.

DroidLife speculates the third device listed on the MAP memo, “HTC ADR6425”, is the rumored HTC Vigor, which, thanks to an anonymous NenaMark benchmark test, is rumored to sport a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon processor, 720p resolution display, and an Adreno 220 GPU.

The “LG-VS920” is most likely the successor to the LG Revolution, as the first-gen Revo was labeled with model number “LG-VS910”.

Less is known about the other mystery devices. The “Motorola MOTXT87” is thought by many to be the new DROID Bionic announced at CES and slated to launch in September. When it comes to the last device listed, the “HTC ADR6330”, your guess is as good as any.

Whether or not any of these devices will launch before the September Bionic launch is yet to be determined. We will keep you posted as more info becomes available…

(via Android Central)
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Last week we told you about the boys over at GTVhacker porting Honeycomb to the $99 Logitech Revue. Forum member cj-000 has now posted instructions for the recently released beta, which, be forewarned, is said to be full of bugs and “not meant to be widely used”.

Here it is everyone, Android 3.1 (Honeycomb) BETA On the Logitech Revue.This is BETA, it is not meant to be widely used and has bugs. If that’s something you don’t care about and would like to risk it anyway, install the update. Also, If you want to help Logitech and Google out buy another Revue ( preferably from logitech.com ), at $99 its worth every penny.

Installing the beta isn’t for the easily frustrated, involving copying the update to an external USB drive, connecting it to your Revue, and following a number of key presses to access the device’s recovery menu. Forum poster cj-000 also warns you may “notice some crashes”.

Original GTV poster Zenofex notes you may want to try the secondary USB slot on the back of the Revue if you are having issues with your initial installation attempt. You should also keep in mind forum posters who have attempted the update warn certain USB drives seem to cause errors during installation.
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Google today acquired San Francisco-based startup Dealmap, a daily deal service with over 2 million users that aggregates nearby offers on a map.

While the terms of the acquisition remain undisclosed, AllThingsD speculates the startup most likely received slightly ;) less than the $6 billion Google offered deal aggregator Groupon last year.

Dealmap took to their blog to officially confirm the deal in a blog post earlier today:

“We believe Google provides the ideal platform to help us accelerate our growth and fulfill our mission. We’re passionate about helping people save money while having great local experiences, and in Google we’ve found the perfect partner that shares this passion, as well as our vision and strategy. We believe that joining Google will help us innovate in new and unexplored areas of commerce.”

Google has already started their own Google Offers service and Google Wallet for mobile payments that will both more than likely benefit from today’s acquisition in future updates. Google told Venture Beat:

“We’ve been thrilled with the early success of our commerce offerings, and we think [The Dealmap] can help us build even better products and services for consumers and merchants.”
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In a report from the WSJ, a new study by researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh used facial-recognition technology in combination with data from Facebook accounts to successfully identify one-third of volunteer participants.

In the study, researchers used PittPatt software and a webcam to snap photos of volunteers who would later be identified via their publicly available Facebook profile pictures. Raising considerable security and privacy concerns, however, was the fact Professor Acquisti was also able to correctly predict the first five digits of a participant’s Social Security number in approximately 27% of cases (those are determined where you are born and when).

Should you be worried? Not if you trust Google’s stance on privacy… Addressing the privacy concerns highlighted by the study, a Google spokesperson told WSJ:

“We’ve said that we won’t add face recognition to our apps or product features unless we have strong privacy protections in place, and that’s still the case”

Google recently acquired the facial-recognition technology and will more than likely be integrating it into various Google products including Google+ and Google Goggles. A Google spokesperson had this to say about the acquisition:

“The Pittsburgh Pattern Recognition team has developed innovative technology in the area of pattern recognition and computer vision. We think their research and technology can benefit our users in many ways, and we look forward to working with them.”
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