Google [GOOG] has made changes to the Contacts tool found in Gmail today. The new Contacts section of Gmail has been made easier to use and integrates more easily with Gmail.

New features added include a bunch of keyboard shortcuts as well as the ability to sort contacts by name and label every field on a contact.

With the number of Android users growing rapidly, the need to have a decent online Contacts manager is becoming more essential. The changes that Google has implemented today aims to give the user more control of Contacts. [Read more…]

The police in South Korea have raided offices of Google this morning. The raid was related to the Google Streetview WiFi problems that have been highlighted over the last few months although in other countries, those problems are generally resolved.

Earlier this morning, Google’s Seoul HQ was subjected to a raid and search operation by the cyber crime unit of the Korean National Police Agency, due to suspicions that it may have collected and stored data from WiFi networks without authorization. So it’s the same old complaint the rest of the world’s been dealing with, only the zeal of the methodology seems to have been turned up to 11.

[Read more…]

Apple [AAPL] is opening the Apple Covent Garden Store tomorrow at 10am. The store will become the worlds largest Apple store and will be looked after by 300 staff members.

Other interesting facts about the store include it’s two glass staircases, the largest Genius bar of any Apple store, and it will hold the most stock of any store in the world.

The Covent Garden store covers three floors and has a Start Up room where Apple employees can help you configure your newly purchased gadgets. [Read more…]

Rightmove is a property search website in the UK that has hundreds of thousands, if not millions of properties listed across the UK. The normal way to search on Rightmove is to enter a postcode or town name and hit search. You can then set limits such as search within 3 miles of the selected postcode.

The company recently launched a new service called draw-a-search that lets you do just that… draw a search on a map to define where you want to look for a house.

The service launched a couple of weeks ago and already half a million people have drawn searches on the UK map to hunt for property. [Read more…]

The Amazon Kindle in the UK is now taking pre-orders. With that in mind, we now see that Amazon has opened up the UK Kindle Store allowing Kindle owners to buy books from the UK based website rather than the US site.

The new UK Amazon Kindle store already has more than 400,000 books to download including most of the sort after books. Including New Releases and Bestsellers, from UK authors including Terry Pratchett, Ian Rankin, Martina Cole, Sophie Kinsella and Ken Follett.

The UK Kindle Store can be accessed now and books can be downloaded to your current Kindle, or to any device you have that runs the Kindle software such as the iPad, iPhone and Android based devices. [Read more…]

Google [GOOG] launched Google Wave about a year ago in June 2009. A long beta test was done with the service which then finally opened up for general use. Since it fully opened the take up has not been the best and the service really hasn’t taken off like Google would have hoped for.

Because of this, Google is now killing off the Google Wave service, but will continue to support it for the remainder of this year.

Wave has not seen the user adoption we would have liked. We don’t plan to continue developing Wave as a standalone product, but we will maintain the site at least through the end of the year and extend the technology for use in other Google projects. The central parts of the code, as well as the protocols that have driven many of Wave’s innovations, like drag-and-drop and character-by-character live typing, are already available as open source, so customers and partners can continue the innovation we began. In addition, we will work on tools so that users can easily ‘liberate their content from Wave.

[Read more…]

StarCraft II took a long time to arrive, but when it did just a few days ago, a staggering 1.5 million copies of it were sold in the first 48 hours.

To compare these numbers to the original StarCraft… it took the games company a whole year to sell 1.5 million copies.

More statistics reveal that in the first 24 hours, 1 million copies were sold which gives it the title of the best selling launch title for a PC in 2010. The game is also the fastest selling strategy game on record. [Read more…]

Google [GOOG] is in the process of enabling mutiple sign-in for various Google services which includes GMail, Google Calendar, Google Sites, Google Reader, Google Voice, App Engine and Google Code.

To get the system working you need to first enable it in your account preferences. Once enabled, you can then choose to log in with various Google accounts.

“If you use multiple sign-in, the first account you sign in to will be your default account. If you visit other Google products that don’t support multiple accounts after you’ve signed in, you will automatically sign in to your default account for that product. If you sign out of any Google product while signed in to any account, you will be signed out of all your Google Accounts at once.” (Google help center)

[Read more…]

Google [GOOG] has increased the upload limit for all users from the standard 10 minutes to 15 minutes.

According to Google, many users have asked that the 10 minute restriction is increased and after waiting a while, it is now available.

We encourage you to take full advantage of this new time limit by making a video of your ’15 minutes of fame. Imagine that this video is all the world will ever know about you: what would you want to communicate? What will be the enduring stamp you’ve left on us all? Tag your video with ‘yt15minutes, upload it by Wednesday, August 4, and we’ll select a handful of people to truly gain their 15 minutes of fame by featuring them on the YouTube homepage in a future spotlight.

[Read more…]

Facebook is rolling out a new feature called Facebook Questions that aims to get users to ask questions and have them answered by the 500 million users that are on Facebook.

The service works in a similar way to Yahoo! Answers, Mahalo and others where users can answer each others questions.

The product has been in beta testing for a couple of months now and it appears it was successful as the company is now rolling it out to some users of the platform.

Some interesting features have been pointed out by Mashable which includes the following possibilities…

* Photo questions: For example, if you take a picture of a bird, but don’t know what species it is, you can post the picture on Facebook Questions and get your answer.
* Polling: If you’re simply looking for the answer to Which city is better: Chicago or Dallas?, you can get your answer by creating a poll.
* Tagging: The company seems to be placing a lot of emphasis on tagging questions based on category or topic. The goal seems to be to make Q&A discovery an easier and faster process by making it simple to look up questions on cooking, photography, San Francisco or a variety of other topics.
* Topic exploration: Facebook described this as a roulette-type feature that allows users to browse Facebook’s eventual mountain of Q&A. Under the ‘Questions about drop-down menu, there’s a feature called ‘Everything that allows users to browse the company’s catalog of questions.
* Following: You can follow specific questions for updates and new answers.
* Updated homepage: Facebook Questions does actually change the homepage, adding a new bar at the top of the page where you can choose to update your status, ask a question, add photos, or post a link.

[Read more…]

During the world cup, Sky broadcast some of the matches in 3D. We now hear that the Sky 3D service is rolling out across Europe on the 1st October.

To use the service you’ll need to have a 3D TV and a Sky+HD service. When the channel first goes live, you’ll have access to the following programs…

· This year’s Ryder Cup, with three days of live coverage from Celtic Manor, as Europe take on the US in the most eagerly awaited golf event of the year
· Two of the biggest grossing 3D films to date – Bolt and Monster vs. Aliens – will make their 3DTV debuts

[Read more…]

Microsoft [MSFT] is working on a new street view style service that allows you to view a wider perspective of a particular street.

The Street View service that Google [GOOG] uses is currently restricted to what Microsoft calls bubbles. When viewing a street you sit in a particular bubble that you can look around. By clicking an arrow you jump to the next bubble and carry on that way. You cannot view details of location on the street without jumping to a bubble, or close to another bubble. This is where Microsoft differs in there new technology.

Street Slide differs in that you can zoom out of the bubble and see a perspective view of a lot more of the street. In effect you are seeing all the bubbles on a street stitched together in perspective. The service allows you to slide down the street, flip around to see the other side of the street and see a lot of related information about the street such as company logos and building numbers. [Read more…]