Apple announced their new iteration for the popular iPhone smart device, the iPhone 4 at WWDC 2010 on 7th June and now the new mobile device is available for pre-order around the globe. The device features tons of new enhancements making it one of the most appealing smartphones available in the market today.

The iPhone 4 can now be pre-ordered from Apple’s website at $199 for the 16GB model and $299 for the 32GB model with a 2-year AT&T contract. Whereas the iPhone 3GS 8GB is moved back to $99 price slot. The unlocked smartphone is available for a starting price of £499 in UK and €629 in France.

The new features incorporated in iPhone 4 include FaceTime which enables video calling over Wi-Fi network. Both the front facing camera and the high-resolution backside camera can be used for video calling. The device comes with Retinal Display technology with 960×640 screen resolution at 326dpi to provide crisp image quality while the IPS technology improves viewing angles.

The iPhone 4 is powered by the same Apple A4 chip that is used in iPad tablets. This makes the iPhone 4 dramatically faster than previous devices while conserving battery life. Other notable features include stainless steel band, gyroscope, 5MP camera with LED flash supporting 720p video recording and dual-mic to enhance voice quality. Check out the complete list of new features here.

Google has made a major change in its search results indexing system by adopting ‘Caffeine’ web indexing. The update is anticipated to provide fresher and quicker indexing of the web content, especially dynamic pages.

This new system will provide a plethora of new changes including better indexing for video and images, higher speed and accuracy of results. Google has been preparing to launch Caffeine for almost a year. According to Google, this new system will provide almost 50% faster indexing of the web content. The new algorithms analyze and index small portions of the web on continuous basis instead of updating several layers which would take weeks at times to index new content.

According to the search giant, Caffeine is able to process hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel every second. The total space required for the indexing of the web counts to millions of gigabytes with “hundreds of thousands of gigabytes added per day”. Thus indexing algorithms needs not only to be faster but smarter as well.

The new system is also highly scalable to provide better support for the ever increasing web content. This addition will further strengthen Google’s position in the web search category while Bing tries to catch up. For more information, read the complete entry at Google blog.

Hotmail still remains the largest e-mail provider in the world with over 343 million users. However the user interface and features of Hotmail have stayed almost unchanged for several years while other email providers such as Gmail have been adding new features to their system, such as easy integration with web services and highly dynamic content.

Microsoft has decided to give Hotmail a major overhaul with a ton of new features and modifications. One of the most needed additions is Office Web Apps that lets you create, edit and share office based documents. These documents or photos can be saved in the already available Microsoft SkyDrive cache from which it can be publicly shared. The received photos can now be viewed as slideshow directly from your inbox which saves the effort of downloading them. The emails can be sent with embedded YouTube or Hulu vidoes that the viewer can watch within the e-mail. However these features require Microsoft Skylight installed in the browser.

Another exciting feature is Hotmail Highlights that gives a quick insight about the new messages with reference to sender’s identification such as FaceBook and Twitter IDs. This makes it easier to view and manager high volumes of mail. Microsoft also introduced a better protection system with full SSL protection and easy spam filtering using Swipe. Features such as content management and multiple accounts are enhanced as well.

Hotmail took some time to finally wake-up and enhance its services to compete with Gmail and others. However the new changes with certainly help the mail giant to regain the trust of its users.

Most of us are now familiar with the heated relations between Adobe and Apple, especially after Apple’s strict move to remove support for Adobe’s CS5 professional software. Steve Jobs, CEO Apple has posted his views online about the relations with Adobe and the future of Flash and streaming media, especially on mobile devices.

The letter defends Apple’s claims about the shortcomings in the Flash player and how it’s not suited for mobile devices such as iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad. Steve has pointed out several defects in the product and compares it with the alternatives such as HTML5. According to Steve, Apple doesn’t support propriety web development software. This is because the close standards don’t allow community to bring changes in order to meet demands of user base. Thus Apple supports HTML5 which is both light and open-source. Steve also negates the claim that without supporting Flash, Apple users are deprived of the complete web experience. He claims that majority of the streaming websites including YouTube are supported on iDevices out of the box.

He further criticizes the performance and security features of the Flash product by commenting that Flash is both unsecure and requires high system resources which in-turn reduces battery timings of mobile devices. As compared to H.264 video standard which is hardware decoded on iPhone, the flash media only runs in software which requires almost twice the hardware resources, thus decreasing the battery life to almost half. Flash based applications such as games and utilities are not suited for touch-enabled devices, thus these applications fails to bring a better user experience.

Steve also comments on the company’s move last month to ban Adobe’s CS5 flash to iPhone compiler which will disable Adobe’s move to port flash applications onto iDevices. Apple claims that third-party applications are not optimized to run on the iPhone and proved to be sluggish. The intermediate layer also restricts the developers to make full use of the underlying hardware which results in poor application performance and value.

In short, Steve Jobs believes that unless Flash improves in the areas listed above, he doesn’t see it to become viable in coming years. You can read the complete script of the Steve’s letter here.

Android is now the only real competitor to the popular iPhone OS that comes in trendy smartphones and is backed by Google and HTC. Google has confirmed native support of the Adobe Flash in the upcoming revision 2.2 of the open-source Android OS. This capability will result in a richer web experience on the smartphones and mobile devices running Android.

Apple is always criticized for not providing support for the Flash in its iPhone OS that comes with the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch devices. The company is now backing HTML5 as an alternative to Flash that will be able to support streaming media and ads for the iPhone OS.

However most of the streaming content available today is based on Adobe’s flash that includes popular media websites such as YouTube and Hulu. As the smart devices have become faster and now support popular browsers, the mobile web traffic has now become a significant part of the internet and the support for flash playback is now a much needed feature in these smartphones. After Apple’s refusal to support flash in their iPhone OS, Google team has taken a move to provide full support of the flash playback in the Android 2.2.

This was revealed by Andrew Robin, VP Engineering Google during an interview describing the project code named ‘Froyo’ that will provide native support for Flash Player 10.1. This update will be available soon on latest Android based smartphones including Google Nexus One and provide compatibility with flash games, flash based streaming media and ads.

Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networking platforms which register thousands of new users daily. However as other social platforms like Facebook, it’s facing the problem of identity theft due to stolen passwords or accounts. This is mainly due to a simple and basic authentication system in place which lets users to sign-in through the web applications or third-party clients through a simple procedure.

Twitter is now preparing OAuthcalypse that will be released by the end of June this year. Twitter will replace the basic authentication system with OAuth to connect to third party apps. Thus users will no longer have to provide their authentication details (username and password) after 30th June while using programs made on Twitter API.

The announcement was made through the Twitter API’s Google group which called the developers to start making applications that will utilize OAuth instead of the current system. However, the streaming API will enable the applications to get access to real-time twitter feeds will still use the basic authentication procedure.

This move is welcomed by users and developers alike as the new system will reduce the events of identity theft. We hope other social media platforms also establish such procedures for authentication to make it safer and easier for the users in general.

Twitter has also launched the OAuth countdown clock as a reminder to the developers to shift to the new specifications by this time.

Since ancient times, we have been using a printer attached to our PC with some troubling drivers to print our documents. In order to share this printer across multiple PCs, each system needs to have a copy of the driver. This whole system does not welcome a new system or device without the copy of the required drivers and software.

Google is working on its cloud printing platform that will make it simple and easy to connect and share printers with multiple devices. What’s more is that the new setup will run on any device capable of running a web browser including smartphones and tablets. The driver of the printer installs one-time on this cloud and every new computer or mobile device connected to the cloud can get access to this printer.

Google is working with Industry leaders to establish protocols and software necessary for this integration. Besides built-in support with the new “cloud aware” printers, Google is also trying to bring this innovation to the already existing printers that require a driver to setup by using proxies. A small software client will be installed on the host PC that is directly connected to the cloud service. This software communicates the printing jobs between cloud service and the host computer.

Some other benefits of this setup include high-level security, easy-of-access and printing from highly mobile locations such as printing a photo from a home printer through smartphone over large distances. This will virtually connect every printer with every device across the world. The new system will be transparent from any operating system running on your device resolving any compatibility issue.

However this project is still in development stage and the new system will be part of the upcoming Chromium OS. Google has released the initial code and documentation of the project on Google Code. The setup will require “cloud aware” printers which do not exist today but might become a standard soon.

Twitter, the most visited micro-blogging social network has finally launched their own ads program with the name of “Promoted Tweets” this Tuesday. It was a much awaited addition for the social media giant with user base of millions. However it took the company a little longer to cash the huge volume of traffic on their network.

The new program will allow businesses and advertisers to promote their tweets by sending their promoted messages in the regular tweet streams. These tweets will be shown on top of the contextual searches made by the users. Thus the promoted tweets will be an organic part of the whole network. These tweets will be labeled as “promoted” with a different background color and usually include a link to the promoted site or product. These tweets can be purchased by the advertisers on CPM basis.

Like any other tweet, users will be able to reply, re-tweet and bookmark these promoted tweets. The success of an ad depends on the liking or ‘resonance’ of the tweet by the user base. Thus, the better a tweet ‘resonate’ with the users, the better ranking it gets. Those tweets which do not get enough response from the users will eventually be removed. Thus users get to decide and promote these tweets.

Twitter is planning to extend these ads to third party applications if the initial phase returns acceptable results. There is also a possibility that the highly ranked promoted tweets are shown in the timeline of regular users. Thus the advertising companies can extend their messages to even those who don’t search for it directly.

However the success of this new network is uncertain as many believe that those who wish to get updates from their favorite companies or individuals are already following them. Some fear that the promoted tweets in their timeline will increase noise. Certainly, the ads network needs to mature fast to provide a clean environment to the users.

Apple announced the iPhone SDK 4.0 last week which will bring several new changes to the already rich API. Most notably, the new license agreement bans the porting of application from other platforms, specifically targeting Adobe’s Flash CS5.

Most of us are familiar with the heated ties between Apple and Adobe, and with the release of the new SDK, the relations will only worsen. Adobe is releasing the next version their Flash product, the Flash CS5 professional today that will bring many exciting features to a large base of developers. The flash to iPhone compiler is being regarded as the flagship feature of the new release. This will allow the developers to compile the flash code into a native iPhone application and bring thousands of already existing flash applications and games to the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.

However, Apple explicitly banned this porting from languages other than C++, Objective-C or JavaScript.

“Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs.”

Thus submitting any application on the App store that is ported from flash will directly violate the license agreement. According to Steve Jobs, CEO Apple, “Intermediate layers produce substandard apps”. This news is a hard blow for Adobe as well as the flash developers who were waiting for the new platform for months. However, Kevin Lynch, CTO Adobe has declared that the iPhone packager will remain a part of the new release. He further pointed that if anyone is stopping the developers from using this new feature, its Apple. There is also a possibility that Adobe might move to other hand-held platforms such as Android, which would bring it in direct competition with Apple.

It’s likely that the iPhone packager leaves some traces of the flash application code. However, it’s uncertain for now if the native iPhone apps and those complied by the iPhone packager can be separated. Anyways, now the ball is in the developers’ court. Either they can maneuvers over the new agreement or stay confined in the Apple’s boundaries for iPhone developers.