Well, that was quick – Google Plus has reached 10 million users already, despite being less than three weeks old. The influx of people was so large that Google had to shut down the invitation system for a while (it’s back up now).

That’s right – that many people got in before the service is officially open to anyone. One problem though – girls don’t seem to be into it. According to some statistics, as much as 87% of Google Plus users are male. Read more »

Back in April when the iPhone secret location tracking took over the media attention, Apple was quick to dismiss it as a non-issue and said it wasn’t doing anything wrong. However, that’s not what the Changwon District Court in Sourth Korea thinks as it has just ordered the Cupertino-based company to pay compensation to a user because of it.

In fact Reuters reports that Apple has already made the payment of $946 to Mr. Hyung-suk (not surprisingly, a lawyer himself). And while that kind of cash will hardly make Steve Jobs lose his sleep, what will follow next might. Apparently, the law firm that won the case is gearing up to launch a class action against Apple. Read more »

PayPal has announced a cool new way to transfer money from one person to another. It involves the use of the NFC technology found in some of today’s smartphones.

To make this work, all you have to do is install the PayPal widget on your phone. Then you enter the amount that you want to receive in this widget and touch your phone to the person’s phone who will be sending you the money. Once the phone vibrates, the other person is asked to enter their pin number, following which the transaction is completed and you get the money along with a confirmation email. Read more »

This Sunday the US citizens will witness the birth of yet another eBook ecosystem. The iriver Story HD is the first e-reader integrating direct Wi-Fi access to Google’s eBooks open platform and it’s bound for a Sunday release over at Target stores all over the country.

The iriver Story HD, will retail for $139.99 and will offer over-the-air (Wi-Fi) access to hundreds of thousands of Google eBooks for sale and more than 3 million for free. Read more »

Okay, file this under “accessories no one will ever buy”, but the iPhone 4 DSLR lens mount just looks so cool that we couldn’t help, but share it with you. Here’s the deal – you part with $250 and get a case which lets you attach your expensive DSLR gear to your favorite smartphone.

You then get the ability to do close-up shots and ones with shallower depth of field, which are two particularly problematic areas of cameraphones. Adding a filter is also possible, if you feel like it. Read more »

Although the Americans weren’t exactly starved of good free online music services (Rdio, Grooveshark, Zune Pass, just to name a few) they were deprived of the fabulous Spotify that the Europeans know and love. But not for long. Spotify has just announced that they will be bringing their musical goodness to the good people of Unites States of America.

No launch dates have been mentioned so far but Spotify has started accepting invites on their website. The service is currently being tested in the US and should be available for use soon. Meanwhile you can continue rocking whatever service you have been using so far. Read more »

Google really wants its Google+ social network project to succeed. So much so that the company will be rebranding its popular Picasa and Blogger services in order to help the promotion of the Facebook competitor.

Apparently Google will be trying to solidify its brand name by renaming Picasa “Google Photos” and Blogger “Google Blogs”. Rumor has it that other services might be affected too, though YouTube will remain as it is for the time being. Read more »

The boys in the labs down at Google HQ have been tinkering and tweaking recently and on Thursday released the latest iteration of Google search for BlackBerry webkit 6.0 devices (obviously this means you’re running BB OS 6 or higher).

Assuming you’re the browsing type you might have already noticed the improvements they’ve brought to the table in the past two days, but in case you haven’t, there are four aspects that Google have focused on. Read more »

Yesterday BGR received an open letter by an anonymous high-level RIM employee, address to Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, CEOs of RIM. The employee pulled no punches as he (or she) outlined everything that is currently wrong with RIM and the reason they are losing so badly to Apple and Google.

Among the things that the employee addressed the first was about BlackBerry devices lagging behind Apple’s when it comes to user experience. He also noted that Android devices lacked when it comes to simplicity and elegance and that BlackBerry has the opportunity to build something new and “uniquely BlackBerry” with QNX platform. Read more »

Not even two days passed since the launch of Google’s latest social networking service and they already had to shut down the gates to prevent the hordes of people trying to get in. Although some assumed, myself included, that this invite mechanism might work against Google, turns out the exclusivity of it generated far greater interest among people than it would had Google just allowed anybody and everybody to come in.

But even with the limited invites that Google handed out the response they got was pretty overwhelming with everybody wanting to get in and ironically enough, using other social networking services to score an invite for themselves. Read more »

While carriers are still pushing all sorts of technologies as “4G”, Ericsson did a quick demo run of actual 4G – LTE Advanced – using a test network. They achieved mind-boggling speeds of around 950Mbps – in other words, much, much faster than current “4G” offerings (including LTE) and faster than even Wi-Fi 802.11n.

Ericsson expects the first commercial LTE Advanced network to be up and running by 2013, though considering most networks haven’t even begun rolling out LTE, I doubt Advanced will reach many people soon. Still, here’s what you can expect from LTE Advanced. Read more »

Yesterday ICANN decided to allow custom domain suffixes. Right now companies have to settle for .com or .org or one of the 20 others standard suffixes or use country-specific ones. Starting 2012 they can create custom suffixes – if they’re willing to pay for it.

It’s pricy but I’m sure sites ending in .google or .apple are not very far off. It would allow companies to offer very memorable URLs for their important products – think mail.google for Gmail (instead of the current mail.google.com) or iphone.apple (instead of www.apple.com/iphone). Read more »

No, it’s not what it sounds like. Rovio, the developer of Angry Birds, isn’t using some sort of Apple PR talk to make it’s top selling game more interesting. Angry Birds Magic, if you remembered, is an NFC-based addition to Angry Birds which allows you to unlock special levels by tapping two NFC-enabled phones together.

Now Rovio is taking Magic one step further with special location-aware integration in Angry Birds. When you go to your favorite cafeteria, for example, you might be offered to unlock some cool stuff. Read more »

If you’ve been hesitating between buying an Apple iPhone 4, but you’ve always admired and preferred the freedom Android provides, you can now find some peace and get the GooApple 3G (whew!). This unholy creature combines the body and looks of an iPhone 4 with the “soul”, as Steve Jobs likes to call the software, of Android.

The GooApple 3G comes from the great copyland of China and is replicated to such a degree that even screen protectors and cases designed for the iPhone 4 will match perfectly. When you turn it on, you might get fooled that it’s running iOS 4, but you’d be wrong. This thing runs Android 2.2 Froyo and is so deeply skinned to look like the real deal that it fills you with amazement. Read more »

After the unveiling of their next generation console, the Wii U, at E3 2011, Nintendo Co. shares fell down by 5.7% on Wednesday, their lowest in the past five year. As of mid-day Thursday, they are still down by 5.2%. Clearly people are not taking a liking to the new console.

The problem, according to the analysts, is that the product itself isn’t bad but it just failed to meet people’s expectations, which were rather high following the phenomenal success of the Wii. The market is also evolving at a rapid pace Read more »