Verizon Wireless and Google are close to a deal in which Google will become the official search engine for all Verizon-powered cell phones.  The deal will give Google up to 68 million new users who will see the Google search engine on all home screens of Verizon phones.

Industry insiders expect an official announcement to be made within the next couple of weeks.

Under the deal, Verizon users would be able to download new ringtones and wallpapers, look for restaurants, and browse the Internet in a single location, which cannot currently be done.

Oddly enough, even though this announcement is on the horizon, Verizon and Google still have a bit of bad blood between them.  For example, every major U.S. carrier has expressed interest in having phones operating on the Google Android operating system, except for Verizon; with no indication Verizon will change its mind.

AT&T, the nation’s biggest wireless phone carrier, partnered with Yahoo to use its MEdia Net search engine, which left Verizon Wireless, the second biggest wireless phone carrier, as its most lucrative option.  Besides that, Google also removes the risk of Verizon creating its own web browser to compete with Google and the AT&T/Yahoo alliance.

Verizon previously considered working with Microsoft, but it is unknown why that deal fell through.  Google also made an agreement with Sprint Nextel, so the Mountain View, CA-based company’s search engine is the exclusive provider on 40 different Sprint phones.

Around 63 percent of mobile internet search users say they use Google, while Yahoo is in second place with 34 percent, and 25 percent use the built-in search features on their phone.

The mobile search advertising market will be valued in the $244 million ballpark for 2008, but analysts expect that number to steadily increase as cell phone owners continue to use their phones for more than just talking.  Google and Verizon will split revenue each time users search for something through mobile Google.

It has been an up and down battle for telecommunication companies who have spent the past couple of years denying they need help from Internet search engines to offer mobile search portals.  But the alliances reveal the telecom companies are conceding they need help while at the same time willing to give up some advertising revenue.

Google’s new phone OS, Android OS, is backed by some of the industry’s biggest players.  While some carriers are reticent to the prospect of switching from their proprietary software, in which they have invested millions, Google brings much to the table with Android. 

First Android is free.  Secondly it provides a broad array of APIs to connect users to the internet and to perform graphical functions.  Lastly, the OS comes with numerous Google programs, all free, such as Google Maps, GMail, and Google Docs.

However, with the release of the 0.9 beta SDK, an updated version of the OS’s previewed SDK, Google unfortunately decided to cut out a couple of desirable features.  Google acknowledged that both Google Talk, its popular IM program, and its Bluetooth API were on the chopping block.

In a blog, developer advocate Dan Morill announced the omissions and provided a bit of background, stating, “Earlier this week, we released a beta of the Android SDK.  In the accompanying post, I mentioned that we had to remove some APIs from the platform for Android 1.0, and as a result they don’t appear in the 0.9 beta SDK, and won’t appear in 1.0-compatible SDKs.”

In the case of the Bluetooth API, it may come eventually.  The reality, says Android engineer Nick Pelly, is “we plain ran out of time.  The Android Bluetooth API was pretty far along, but needs some clean-up before we can commit to it for the SDK. Keep in mind that putting it in the 1.0 SDK would have locked us into that API for years to come.”

His comments indicate that the API will not be headed to the Version 1.0 release of the SDK, set to launch next month.  As some Android supporters such as HTC or T-Mobile offer Bluetooth on their phones, this leaves their developers unable to support the technology.  This in turn passes the task of Bluetooth support and the design of Bluetooth functionality on to the hands of Google’s engineers.

Mr. Morill stated that Google Talk API might never make its way on the OS, due to security concerns raised by Rich Cannings, a Google security researcher, and others at Google.  Google is concerned that games using the messaging program as a means of communication might expose users’ names and information on the internet, compromising their privacy. 

Also the program has no “intent” mechanisms, so it offers equal control from remote locations, raising the possibility of malware hijacking phones.  Explains Mr. Cannings, “At first, remote applications could send arbitrary Intents, meaning that your Google Talk friends had almost the same control of your device as you did.  Even once that issue was resolved, we recognized that we could not trust the identity of the application who sent the request. We could only trust the identity of the user. So a “bad” application on your friend’s device could send a message to a “good” application on your device which would negatively affect the good application.”

Finally, Mr. Cannings fears that Google Talk could become an unwitting Android virus propogation tool.  The protocol lacks the security needed to protect against such attacks.  Explains Mr. Cannings, “An Android application using GTalkService would be reachable from all of the user’s Google Talk friends, and a flaw in that application could pose an inviting target to a malicious ‘friend’ or automated malware.”

One unspoken possibility is that Google may have also been pressured due to the p2p functionality of the Google Talk protocol.  The protocol could easily have been adapted to offer a cell-phone based p2p network.

While the exclusion of these APIs are disappointing to prospective users and developers, they’re just as disappointing to Google.  Mr. Morill states, “I’m definitely bummed about these API removals.  I was particularly looking forward to the P2P capabilities offered by GTalkService, but, as always, user security and privacy must come first.”

Android OS will compete with smart phone OS leader Symbian, and minority player Microsoft’s Windows Mobile, and the iPhone, which supports a version of OS X, when it launches either late this year or in early 2009.

Notebooks
ASUS Eee PC 1000 @ bit-tech

Motherboards
Super Micro C2SEA G45 @ Phoronix
Gigabyte EP45-Extreme Motherboard @ HardwareLogic
Gigabyte GA-MA790GP-DS4H @ bit-tech

Video
Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 Toxic 512MB Video Card @ ThinkComputers.org
ASUS GeForce GTX 280 TOP Graphics Card @ TweakTown##12## Two Dozen GeForce 9600GTs Overclocked @ AMD Zone

Displays
Samsung SyncMaster 2263UW 22-inch Widescreen LCD Monitor @ ThinkComputers.org

Storage
Western Digital VelociRaptor 10,000RPM Hard Disk in RAID 0 @ TweakTown
Icy Dock 3.5 Inch Screwless Internal HDD Enclosure @ ASE Labs

Peripherals
Logitech MX 1100 Cordless Laser Mouse @ I4U
OCZ Alchemy Series Elixir Keyboard @ Virtual-Hideout

Cases
NZXT Guardian 921 @ OCC

Cooling
Vantec Aeroflow FX 120 CPU Cooler @ Pro-Clockers
Thermalright Ultima-90 Intel/AMD Processor Cooler @ Tweaknews.net
NZXT Sentry LX @ Bjorn3D
Glacialtech Igloo 5058 Light E Heatsink @ Frostytech.com

Power Supplies
Tuniq Potency 550W @ OCC
BFG Tech LS-680 Power Supply @ OCIA.net
Antec TruePower Quattro 850W @ TechwareLabs
Topower PowerBird 900W Power Supply @ Overclockers Online
BFG Tech ES 800W PSU @ Sharky Extreme
FSP Everest 80Plus 700 Power Supply @ Pro-Clockers

Consumer Electronics
LG 32LG4000 32in LCD TV/DVD Player @ Trusted Reviews

To give credit where credit is due, Dell’s recent reveal of its new Latitude E-series business laptop line was the first new laptop announcement in a long time to not completely leak a few days or weeks early. (There were some photos and rumors a few months ago, but overall, it was a successful launch.)

The same cannot be said for Dell’s consumer side — every new product is leaked, usually with detailed photos and spec sheets, leaving little actual news for the system’s launch day. Case in point — these new photos and details (purportedly from an internal PowerPoint) of something called the Dell XPS Studio line.

We’re familiar with both the XPS and Studio brands, and we’re curious to see if this new hybrid is the beginning of the end of one or both as a standalone. These slides, from notebookreview.com, show slot-loading Blu-ray drives, edge-to-edge glass displays, hybrid SLI graphics (that’s a GPU and the motherboard’s integrated graphics working together), and backlit keyboards. In addition, the 16-inch model is shown with some cool-looking wood accents on the lid.

According to the leaked docs, you can expect the Studio XPS 13 and 16 sometime in November. Check out the purloined PowerPoint slides after the break.

(Credit: notebookreview.com)

(Credit: notebookreview.com)

The WUSB to VGA kit from Iogear includes two compact components.

(Credit: Iogear)

If you’ve always wished to connect an external display to your laptop without having to physically hook a cable between to the two, then I have good news for you.

Iogear introduced on Tuesday its Wireless USB to VGA Kit for streaming PC content to an alternate display. This is going to be one of the first implementations of Wireless USB (WUSB).

WUSB technology has been under development ever since 2004 and the first time I saw its demo was during WINHEC 2006. As the name suggests, it’s essentially the current USB 2.0 technology without USB cables. WUSB can operate at full USB 2.0 speed (480Mbps) within a 10 feet range — longer than the length of most standard USB cables — and up to 110Mbsp within a 30 feet range. For now, most computers and legacy peripherals has to be upgraded to WUSB with add-in cards and hubs. Going forward, most computers and devices will hopefully have this technology built in, just like USB 2.0.

The WUSB VGA kit from Iogear will allows for quickly displaying your laptop’s visual content on to an external display such as an LCD, a HDTV or a projector, just like you would currently do that by hooking the two with a VGA cable. The kit allows for displaying anything you see on the laptop’s screen including 720p HD video content on the alternate display up to 30 feet away. For non HD content, the kit supports resolutions up to UXGA (1600×1200) or WSXGA+ (1680×1050), which are higher than the native resolutions of most laptops. It can also take advantage of a television’s picture-in-picture function so that you can view the laptop’s content and watch TV at the same time.

The WUSB to VGA kit consists of a Wireless USB adapter that connects to a Windows PC and a wireless VGA adapter to plug into a VGA display. You will still need a VGA cable (not included) to connect the wireless VGA adapter to the display, however. Aside from the VGA cable, the set up is compact enough for you to easily carry on the go.

The kit is compatible with both Windows XP and Windows Vista operating systems and will be available for the general market sometime in October for about $230.

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang delivered his keynote speech at NVISION 2008 today. The keynote was all about the GPU. Pointed out in the keynote was exactly how far the GPU has come since the first one hit market in 1987.

In the beginning, the GPU was a fixed-function device and now an NVIDIA GPU can deliver almost a teraflop of processing power. Huang noted in his address that NVIDIA has no intention for the GPU to replace the CPU. Rather, the GPU will complement the CPU.

News.com quotes Huang saying, “It is not about replacing the CPU at all. We don’t believe that replacing the CPU is a good strategy. Supplementing the CPU is far better.”

One impressive figure that Huang tossed out during his keynote had to do with the Folding@home program. Huang says that in total there are 2.6 million PCs running the folding at home application providing 288 teraflops of processing power. NVIDIA’s CUDA based version of Folding@home is running currently on 24,000 GPUs — only СЕКРЕТУТКА of the total processors available with the application.

That СЃРΜРЄСЂРΜтстЪа of GPUs running the application provides 1.4 petaflops of performance amounting to five times the processing power of all CPUs available to the project says Huang. Huang also shared the stage with Peter Stevenson of Realtime Technologies reports News.com. Realtime Technologies demonstrated real-time ray tracing that can render 3D graphics with very complex light interactions — presumably on NVIDIA GPUs.

After the ray tracing demo, a demo from Microsoft showed off its new Photosynth application. DailyTech first reported on Photosynth in 2006. Huang also showed a 3D stereoscopic graphics demonstration using the NVIDIA Medusa demo and Age of Empires. Imagine 3D gaming on your PC with the same quality as 3D films in movie theaters like Beowulf. This is some of the most exciting work NVIDIA is doing right now.

Huang also had Jeff Han on stage and the pair demoed a huge multi-touch user interface on a 100-inch screen according to AnandTech. The pair was able to simultaneously operate the screen and bring up applications and information with hand gestures. According to Han, the mouse has become the bottle neck for user input. Future OS’ may take advantage of multi-touch user interfaces rendered on the GPU like Windows Vista’s Aero theme.

After that demo, Huang shared the stage with Trisha Helfer from “Battlestar Galactica”. Apparently, no one warned her about the green NVIDIA theme — she wore bright red. Huang and Helfer talked about acting with computer generated characters on the show and what challenges that presents for actors.

The tie in there — other than simply having a sexy actress for the geeks to ogle — is that the computer-generated graphics for TV and movies are often rendered on NVIDIA hardware. Huang asked Helfer what she thought the future of computer graphics meant for actors. According to AnandTech Helfer said, “The idea that you’re just being created and…your soul, what you’re putting into the character isn’t coming out. It’s a scary thought, it’s a threatening thought. The advantages and uses of it are amazing and we’ll have to get used to it.”

The communications network EarthLink was for a time seen as a messiah of sorts for the free wireless movement.  After spending millions to build several free networks in cities across the country, its efforts collapsed, and it went from messiah to pariah for its failed claims.  The bad part was that EarthLink’s customers were suddenly faced with severance.

Some networks, such as Philadelphia’s municipal WiFi, which was supposed to be shut down in June, have been saved by private investors.  At the last minute, when dismantling was expected to commence, a group of investors known as the Network Acquisition Company bought the network, and have kept free WiFi flowing to parts of the city.

Now Google is partnering with I-Net Solutions, and some wireless equipment makers, to rescue another network which EarthLink left for dead.  They are looking to help the city of Milpitas stay connected.  Milpitas is home to SanDisk’s headquarters and the headquarters of several other major tech firms.  Seagate, Symantec, Cisco, Maxtor, and many others have offices in the city as well.

When EarthLink first built the Milpitas network, it invested $1M USD in the infrastructure equipment.  The network was actually not one of the free ones, but offered service on a subscription bases.  Perhaps even more painful than the free network’s collapse, when EarthLink’s services fell apart, its paying customers lost their coverage.  Since the fall of EarthLink, the network has been placed in city hands, and the city has been using it for fire and police traffic.

Under the new agreement, awaiting finalization, Google and others will run the nonprofit network, and will be contracted by the city.  The network will provide free WiFi to both citizens and local government.

Google is a strong supporter of free WiFi efforts and it has some experience on the topic.  Google already provides free access in the city of Mountain View, California, home of Google’s headquarters.  Google is lobbying the Federal Communications Commission to open up the “white space” spectrum between television channels.  Google says this spectrum could be used to provide free or inexpensive broadband access.  Microsoft founder Bill Gates has also backed this stance.

It believes that earlier free efforts like EarthLink’s were not a bad idea in principle, but were, rather, sloppily implemented and ahead of their time.  Says Derek Slater, a policy analyst for Google, in his blog, “Rather than prematurely writing off the idea, it’s important to critically study municipal networks’ successes and shortcomings.  As we’ve written about before, America generally lags behind the rest of the developed world in broadband penetration and speeds, and we ought to be exploring many different solutions, both private and public, to bring fast, affordable Internet access to everyone.”

Currently 80 percent of Americans go online, but broadband use is growing more slowly than expected.

Use vodka to power your iPod.

(Credit: Horizon)

• An iPod powered by Vodka. Seriously.

• We checked the CNET archives: turns out we’ve heard this newfangled-disc-will-never-catch-on argument before.

• Lots of Xbox news this week, some fact, some speculation.

What we do know: there will be a 160GB Xbox 360 this fall.

What we hope is true: price cuts on existing models coming soon.

• Epic fail: PC and electronics companies’ product names don’t make much sense to normal people.

See anything awesome we missed? Send it our way at crave at cnet dot com.

Have a great weekend!

Notebooks
MSI Wind U100 Netbook @ The Tech Report
Toshiba Satellite L300-11G @ InsideHW

Processors
Intel E8600 Core 2 Duo Processor @ Legit Reviews
Intel Core 2 Duo comparison: E8200 - E8600 @ Hardwareoverclock Austria

Motherboards
GIGABYTE GA-EP45-DS3R Motherboard @ PC Perspective
NVIDIA nForce 700a, GeForce 8000 Chipsets @ Digit-Life
Foxconn A7DA-S AMD 790GX Motherboard @ Trusted Reviews
J&W RS780UVD-AM2+ mATX Motherboard @ OCIA.net
Gigabyte GA-EP45T-EXTREME DDR3 Motherboard @ Hardware Canucks
ASUS P6T Deluxe - Intel X58 Begins @ bit-tech
ASUS Striker II NSE Motherboard @ Legit Reviews
ASUS P5QL-E @ InsideHW

Memory
OCZ DDR2 Flex II XLC PC2-9200 4Gb kit @ CPU3D
OCZ DDR3 PC3-16000 Flex II Water Cooled Memory @ Madshrimps
AData Vitesta G-Series Memory 4GB DDR2-800 @ TechwareLabs
Patriot Viper 2GB DDR3-2000MHz Memory @ Virtual-Hideout

Video
XFX GTX280 XXX @ Bjorn3D
ATI Radeon CrossFire On Linux @ Phoronix
XFX GTX 280 @ XSReviews
Palit GTX 260 @ OCC
Foxconn GeForce 9500GT @ AMD Zone
ASUS GeForce 260 GTX  @ AMD Zone
Palit Radeon HD 4850 Sonic Graphics Card @ TweakTown
VisionTek Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB @ Phoronix

Displays
Samsung SyncMaster T240HD 24in DTV Monitor @ Trusted Reviews

Storage
Silicon Power 32 GB Solid State Disk @ Guru3D

Cases
Silverstone KL01 Computer Case @ TechwareLabs
Danger Den Tower-26 Case @ HardwareLogic.com
In Win Metal Suit - GunDam Case @ TechwareLabs
Apevia X-Sniper G-Type Case @ hi-techreviews.com
Apevia X-Sniper Mid-Tower Case @ OCIA.net
Thermaltake Xaser VI VG4000BWS @ OCC

Cooling
CoolerMaster GeminII S CPU + Board Cooler @ TechwareLabs
Noctua NH-C12P @ BurnOutPC.com
ASUS Silent Knight II CPU Cooler @ Digit-Life
Scythe Ninja 2 Cooler @ Pro-Clockers
OCZ Vendetta 2 @ bit-tech
Thermaltake DuOrb CPU Cooler @ TechwareLabs
Xigmatek Achillies S1284 CPU Cooler @ CPU3D

Power Supplies
Cooler Master UCP 1100W PSU @ Elite Bastards
BFG ES800 Power Supply @ Virtual-Hideout
Thermaltake Power Express 650W VGA PSU @ Rbmods
Cooler Master UCP 700W Power Supply @ TweakTown
Cooler Master UCP 900 PSU @ TweakPC

Consumer Electronics
Pioneer DCS-580 DVD Home Cinema System @ Trusted Reviews
TomTom One GPS @ ThinkComputers.org
Creative Zen X-Fi 16GB @ Trusted Reviews
TomTom GO 930 @ Rbmods

Is the world ready for a fancy Netbook?

(Credit: blogeee.net)

A high-end luxury Netbook? Seems like an oxymoron, since Netbooks are supposed to be simple, stripped-down, low-cost laptops. (If this is all news to you, check out our Building the Perfect Netbook feature for a primer.)

Asus, the company that single-handedly built the Netbook category with its Eee PC, is reportedly aiming at more upscale consumers with a fancier version of the popular Netbook. The newest version, with a 10.2-inch screen, has some high-end features, including a fingerprint reader, HDMI output, Altec Lansing speakers, and, at least in a few leaked shots, an Express Card slot.

The catch is that Asus is calling it the N10, instead of using the Eee PC name, which has already graced several Netbooks, a low-cost small form factor desktop, and a slew of accessories. We first caught site of this new system on French Web site Blogeee.net, which also claims (if our rusty French is correct) it’ll cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 330 to 430 euros, which at the current exchange rate of $1.47, is about $486 to $630. No official word on price, specs, or release date so far.