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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGugj1ym594]

In honor of Google+, Break has released a Google+ theme song to Youtube. This is sure to leave you singing, “I kinda like Google+” all day… [via Google’s Vic Gundotra via AllThingsD]
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After sending out the usual laundry list of bug fixes for its Flash Player yesterday, Adobe is coming under pressure from Google security engineer Tavis Ormandy who claims the update only listed 13 of the approximately “400 unique vulnerabilities”… A number he describes as “embarrassingly high”.

Ormandy claims he sent the bugs to be fixed “as part of an ongoing security audit” and, according to a report from Computerworld, was “upset that he was not credited for his bug reports”. After noticing he hadn’t received credit in the patch, he took to Twitter to address his concerns, prompting Adobe’s senior manager of corporate communications to tweet the following:

“Tavis, please do not confuse sample files with unique vulnerabilities. What is Google’s agenda here?”

Ormandy responded, also in a tweet, saying:

“I don’t know what Google’s agenda is, but my agenda is getting credit for my work and getting vulnerabilities documented.”

Hours before the patch officially rolled out, Google launched the latest version of Chrome 13 and 14, which included the Flash Player patch in question, and was accompanied by the following statement from Google:

“The Chrome Team would especially like to thank Tavis Ormandy, the Google Security Team, and Google for donating a large amount of time and compute power to identify a significant number of vulnerabilities resolved in this release of Flash Player.”

Adobe did credit 10 other researchers in the report accompanying the update, but had only this to say about Google and Ormandy’s work:

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[youtube=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ADwPLSFeY8″]

A demo of App Inventor

Last month, Google announced that the company will be shutting down Google Labs — a hub for the testing of new products. Google said that while most of the products were being shut down, a few products from Labs will be saved, but it appears the Android App Inventor, announced late last year, will not be one of them.

App Inventor was aimed at providing an educational bridge for people who wanted to create Android Apps but weren’t versed at Java. The app was even used at many camps to teach early programming.  It’s sad to see such a great educational tool go and we wonder if it is a sign of something bigger in the tools area or maybe a sign of Android divesture of Java. Luckily for those who don’t want to let go, the project will be open-sourced. (via Hack Education)
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Facebook has released Facebook Messenger, an app available for both iPhone and Android. The app is an extension of Facebook’s Messages service and will allow you to send a text message to your phone’s contacts and a Facebook message to your Facebook contacts.

Besides messaging one person, you can message a group, and it even lets you send and receive photos. Messenger is available in both the iTunes App Store and Android Market and is based off the Beluga technology which the company recently acquired.

Bloomberg has discovered Google’s recently released social network Google+ is gaining ground fast — with 13% of U.S. males registered. Interestingly, Bloomberg doesn’t think Google+ will lose much traction, because they predict the service will gain 9% of U.S. males within the next year — making a grand total of 22%. If Google+ does gain this much ground they can pass LinkedIn and Twitter to become the second most popular social network, in only a year.

Google Inc.’s new social-networking service may grow to claim 22 percent of online U.S. adults in a year, passing Twitter Inc. and LinkedIn Corp. to be the second- most-used social site after Facebook Inc., a survey found.

Google has just released a new version of the Google Search app for Android that includes several welcomed UI enhancements and new features. Among the more notable, an “updated and simplified” UI (image above),  country-specific suggestions and search results,  and suggestions can now be grouped by type (web suggestions on top).

From the Google Mobile Blog:

• Suggestions grouped by type, with web suggestions at the top.
• Country-specific suggestions and search results for all countries with Google domains.
• Long press to remove history items.
• Faster, smoother performance, with an updated and simplified user interface.

The update is available for devices running Android 2.2 and up… you can swing by the market and grab it now. Google also posted some tips for some of the enhancements that have been incorporated in the update:

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Google has just pushed an update for the official Google+ app for iOS, bringing with it support for iPad and iPod touch, two devices the app was previously unavailable for, among a few other features including aggregated circle add notifications, huddle settings, and the usual “Performance and stability improvements”.

You should be able to update the app now via the App Store or swing by iTunes and grab the new version now. We’ll keep you posted with any other discoveries we might make in this latest update.

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HTC has just hit the live switch on their HTC Developer website. The website provides developers with HTC’s OpenSense SDK, tools to unlock the bootloader on a few select phones (showing coming soon), and kernel source code.

The tools to unlock the bootloader seems to be the big gem here, but the OpenSense SDK features the S3D SDK for HTC’s 3D stereoscopic interface and a nifty pen SDK for the Scribe feature found in many of their devices. Let us know if you find anything! (via Engadget)

Looks like owners of that shiny new Touchwiz UX update for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 are waking up to a new “Movies” tab pushed out via an update earlier today. Touchwiz came preinstalled with a few video related apps including Google Videos, however none of these provided the option to purchase movies and TV from the Market.

If you haven’t received the update yet, be patient, as it should be rolling out slowly to all users running the Touchwiz UX upgrade within a day or two. You’ll have to accept the new terms of service upon updating to access the feature. We’ll let you know if we find anything else of interest in this latest update.

The TouchWiz UX update for Samsung’s Galaxy Tab 10.1 brought a number of new features and UI enhanceements to the Honeycomb-based tablet. Some of the more notable features include a new dock-like app launcher, quick-access to settings, mobile printing, and the Swype app for tablets preinstalled. Check out our 5-minute video walkthrough here.

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A new report from Digitimes says non-Apple tablet sales are expected to rise a solid 134% in 2012, higher than Apple’s projected growth rate for the same period.  For 2011, the sale of Android tablets are expected to top 19-20 million units and the iPad’s expected to hit 35-36 million units. With the 134% rise this mean there could be 44-45 million Android units sold in 2012 and 54-55 million iPad units sold in 2012 — perhaps marginalizing Apple’s lead.

To help push Android (and others) to parity, many manufacturers will be releasing new hardware in the upcoming months, like Nvidia’s Kal-El quadcore processor slated for later this fall. On the software front, Google is expected to release Ice Cream Sandwich(Android 4.0) late fall or early 2012.  With competition heating up, prices are already beginning to fall.

Who said 2011 was the year of the tablet? Just wait for 2012.
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We’ve known that Samsung’s Galaxy S II is on its way to U.S., as confirmed by a Samsung exec, but what we aren’t quite sure of is the II’s exact branding in the great states or if it’ll hit all four carriers. According to T-moNews the Galaxy S II will be available on T-mobile under the branding ‘Samsung Hercules’.

The Hercules is said to feature a 4.5-inch touchscreen and Galaxy S II branding on the back (as seen above). T-moNews was also told the Hercules features Netflix preinstalled, along with the usual apps from Google. Where will this white version be heading? Check out another shot from PocketNow after the break:

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The floodgates are officially opening this weekend as Google is giving everyone 150 invites to Google Plus.  Pop them into your Twitter and Facebook streams to get your friends signed up.

Here’s an invite link for our readers not yet signed up (looks like ours are going pretty fast!
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Some Android app developers aren’t receiving the earnings they’ve generated through web-based Market sales, according to a report from The Register.

Google’s Android Market support forums are full of devs claiming discrepancies with the orders being charged and the payout they’ve received each month. One forum poster comments “It could be that some of your orders aren’t charged until a day or so later and will therefore creep into a different payout day”. However, others note the issue goes beyond the normal lag and have missed  up to “100 orders a day at least for the last two days”.

Its also been reported that a large number of developers have failed to notice the inconsistencies, so you might want to take a closer look at your statements to make sure everything is accounted for. The Register notes rumblings of a “Developers’ Union” and there is even a petition going to renegotiate sales tax, initiate a removal appeal process, and more.

Google employee HeidiLC posted this response on behalf of the company:

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A report from Fusible shows Motorola has been acquiring domains names, five in total, each related to the “Kore” moniker.  The domain names listed include MotorolaKore.com, KoreMotorola.com,  Moto-Kore.com, MotoKore.com and Motorola-Kore.com

Of course speculation that Kore may be the successor to the Xoom, which recently received a price cut, at this point is just that.We told you about a leaked Verizon document that suggests Motorola is still planning on launching the LTE Xoom in early September despite less than spectacular sales, so we aren’t holding our breath for a new tablet before then.

Rumor has it the Kore device will have a 4:3 aspect ratio, but that is pretty much a given if it plans to take on its competition. There is still always the possibility the Kore could be a new smartphone, rather than a tablet.

If it is a tablet it could be the first running Nvidia’s Kal-El Quad core processor (demo below).

We’ll keep you posted as more becomes available.

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You knew this was going to happen at some point.  A Google automated car with that spinny thing at the top was in what looks like a minor rear ending incident near Google HQ in Mountainview.  While it doesn’t appear that anyone was hurt (even the two Prii above), it isn’t exactly a vote of confidence for the fledgling product that Google hopes will materialize into a useful product within a decade.

Before we pass judgement based on a tipster’s photo – we’ll wait for Google’s post mortem.

Update: As we thought – human was at the wheel for this fender-bender.  Google sent over this statement:

“Safety is our top priority. One of our goals is to prevent fender-benders like this one, which occurred while a person was manually driving the car.”

Via Jalopnik

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8HnmpIFUPk]

No need for a Ticket Restro in the Google Paris Office where they work on YouTube and Chrome mostly.

Get in line behind us here.

Via Elgan
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While it hasn’t officially been announced, Google Operating System has discovered how to enable the new design for Google Docs. The new design matches the Google+ design we’ve seen Google enabling across all products over the last month — adding more whitespace and new colors. To enable, all you have to do is select “enable new look” below the settings icon in the Google+ bar (shown after the break).

Along with the new design are five new keyboard shortcuts: up and down arrows will highlight documents to open, shift + T creates a new text document, shift + S creates a new spreadsheet, shift + C creates a new collection, and “?” opens the shortcut guide. If the new design isn’t for you, you can enable the old theme back, but we don’t think you’ll want to change. Check out a few more screenshots after the break.

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If you have ever used Gmail on a tablet, you’ve probably appreciated the improvements made to the mobile UI and missed them when forced to use Gmail from your desktop browser. Luckily, Google just introduced a new preview pane feature for Gmail that allows you to quickly view snippets of messages, much like the mobile interface currently accessible on tablets (which, yes, dates from Outlook 2003 – thanks commenters).

You can enable the feature by turning it on from the Labs tab in your Gmail settings and switching between views via a new toggle button in the upper right corner of your inbox.

You can also move the preview pane below your message list if you have limited screen real
estate.

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Google News just launched a new Editors’ Picks feature that provides a personal, human touch, straying from the “generated entirely by computer algorithms without human editors” approach of the past.

The new feature won’t exactly have Google employees suggesting their favorite articles, but rather aggregate content that publications have highlighted as being their “most engaging content”. Editors’ Picks will be available initially in the right column of the U.S. Google News page and display content from nearly two dozen publications Google has selected to participate. The feeds you will see in the new feature will depend on your news preferences.

Publications and news organizations can head over to the News Help Center to learn more.

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Today comScore posted their latest smartphone market share report showing Google’s Android as the top smartphone platform for the three-month reporting period ending in June 2011, up 5.4 percent from the previous March 2011 report.

78.5 million people in the U.S. owned smartphones during the three months ending in June 2011, up 8 percent from the preceding three month period. Google Android ranked as the top smartphone platform…

A close second to Android is, of course, Apple with 26.5 percent market share, up 1.1 percent, followed by RIM at 23.4% down 3.7 percentage points since March. ComSCore also posted the top mobile OEMs based on the same reporting period with Android manufacturers Samsung, LG, and Motorola topping the list, which also shows Android’s dominance in the current smartphone market.

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Two nice-to-haves discovered earlier this week over at the Google Operating System blog. The first deals with using templates in Google Contacts. You can choose between two templates by hitting the More Actions button when creating a new contact: Standard and Business. The latter has added custom fields such as job title, company name, mobile phone and work phone. Hopefully, Google will allow us to edit and create our own templates in the future.

The other feature available in the Google Translate service seeks to tap the crowd-sourced knowledge in order to improve the quality of translations. From now on, you can mark each individual translation as Helpful, Not helpful and Offensive by clicking the Rate Translation button. Also, you can click on the translated word and up pops a menu with alternate translations that you can re-order by holding down the Shift key and drag the words around.

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