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Microsoft has uncharacteristically spoken out against Google over the two firms' free online storage offers. The comments follow Google's announcement that it is extending the size and type of files eligible for free back-up. To date, users of ... Google Docs had been severely limited in the amount of data they could store online. Storage could only be used for specific types of document file, namely: word processing, spreadsheet and presentation files. Free Google Docs Storage Balloons to 1GB The firm now says users will be allowed 1GB of free storage, with extra space available for 25 cents per ... (view more)

Google has made a formal and public apology to Chinese authors after including their works in its book search project without permission. It's a striking contrast to the way the firm responded to similar complaints in the United States and Europe. ... Google Book Search involves scanning books with optical character recognition so that the text can be searched. The firm argues that this is simply to make it easier for users to find information in books and that they are limited to seeing the relevant pages rather than it being a free way to read an entire book. The firm has consistently ... (view more)

Small Canadian companies are having big success against even bigger opponents of late. Just a week after a U.S. judge confirmed Toronto tech firm i4i's claim against Microsoft's use of XML technology in Word, an Oakville, Ontario company has won its ... domain name case against search giant Google. For those who've missed the news, Microsoft last week lost its appeal over an August decision that forced it to remove XML functions in its very popular Word, a big part of Microsoft Office. On the winning side was small Toronto-based i4i; the court decision means Microsoft must remove the conflicting ... (view more)

Google makes tens of billions of dollars each year through advertising sales. Yet it has now allowed independent developers to produce tools which block ads from appearing on pages viewed with its Chrome browser. Since last month, the latest beta ... edition of Chrome has been able to run extensions, third-party tools which offer functions similar to those available for open-source browser Firefox (where they are known as add-ons). The current plan is to keep the extensions in the next full release of Chrome. Programmer, Student Create Ad Blocker An independent programmer from Athens, Georgia and ... (view more)

Australia's federal government has announced that it is proceeding with controversial plans to censor the Internet after government-commissioned trials found that using a blacklist of banned sites was accurate and would not slow down web use. ... Critics, including Google , Electronic Frontiers Australia and Greens communications argue that the censorship policy is fundamentally flawed and the trial results are not surprising. Stephen Conroy, Australia's Communications Minister, will introduce legislation just before next year's elections designed to force ISPs to block a blacklist of refused ... (view more)

Reports suggest Google will soon unveil its own smartphone running Google's own Android operating system. However, analysts are split on how significant the move is and whether it will have a major impact on the market. Rumors of a "Google-phone" ... have been rampant ever since the company launched its open-source operating system Android, which now appears on a growing number of handsets, most prominently Motorola's Droid phone. Blog Posting Drops Strong Hints Officially, the firm has only said "We recently came up with the concept of a mobile lab, which is a device that combines innovative ... (view more)

It's been a year since Google released Chrome for Windows, and now Mac and Linux users have access to the popular, streamlined browser. It comes just two months after Google co-founder Sergey Brin told his audience at the Web 2.0 Summit that the ... absence of a Mac version of Chrome was a serious disappointment for his company. To be clear, the edition of Chrome for download by Mac users is still in its beta stages. Still, Google says the release is part of a long-term project that has meant much sweat and stress up to this point. "The Wait was Worth it, " Says Google "We've been ... (view more)

Google Public DNS Google Public DNS is a free, global Domain Name System (DNS) resolution service, that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider. If you decide to try Google Public DNS, your client programs will perform all DNS ... lookups using Google Public DNS. http://www.code.google.com SpeedFan SpeedFan is a program that monitors voltages, fan speeds and temperatures in computers with hardware monitor chips. SpeedFan can even access harddrive S.M.A.R.T. information and show hard disk temperatures. http://www.almico.org Today's fresh software picks were provided courtesy of ... (view more)

Google will soon offer a range of new search options. The improvements include a constantly updated "real-time" search and some creative ways for using camera phones. One of the main drawbacks to any search engine has been that it takes time for ... pages to be scanned, analyzed and then added to the site's index so that they appear in searches. Today, that time has been greatly reduced, and it's common for news stories to appear on the first page of Google search results on the same day they are published. However, that's not enough for some users who want to search for the latest details on a ... (view more)

Google appears on the verge of releasing software capable of starting up a PC as fast as a television set. The speedy start up software is said to be linked with the Google Chrome operating system designed for computers that perform the bulk of ... their workload over the Internet. According to Sundar Pichai, vice-president of product management for Google's Chrome OS, netbooks running the Chrome OS will be able to start in less than 7 seconds. (Source: reuters.com ) Imitating the TV Experience The idea is to mirror that of the television set experience. "From the time you press boot you want it ... (view more)