Stories by: Tom Spring

Holy App Store! Apple is bragging that more than 3 billion apps for its iPhone and iPod Touch have been downloaded since the store opened on July 10, 2008. That's a lot of Super Monkey Balls, Facebook, and Google Earth Apple app downloads.

As e-readers such as the Amazon Kindle continue to rise, so follows the publishing industry's worst nightmare: e-book piracy. For years e-book piracy was the exclusive province of the determined few willing to ferret out mostly nerdy textbook titles from the Internet's dark alleys and read them on their PC. But publishers say that the problem is ballooning as e-readers grow in popularity and the appetite for mainstream e-books grows.

Google says it is working on an operating system designed for netbooks that boots in seconds, is impervious to viruses, and is designed to run Web-based applications really well. What's not to like? Plenty--if you're the number one software maker, Microsoft. Expect a showdown. Google faces an uphill battle rolling out its operating system, Chrome OS. The irony is, Google may not care if Chrome OS succeeds or fails. Here's why.

In the arena of world-class search, can Bing bring the hurt to Google and Yahoo? Microsoft's newest search engine comes packed with search tools such as an Explorer Pane for refining searches, Quick Previews for sneaking a peek at a site before visiting it, and Sentiment Extraction for making sense of product reviews.

Microsoft's latest vehicle for achieving the elusive goal of Web dominance is Bing. Previously known as Kumo while in development, Bing replaces Microsoft's Live Search brand and carries forward the company's strategy for taking on Google and Yahoo. Besides introducing a new look to Microsoft's search interface, Bing adds a spruced-up navigation for search results, including a new left-hand navigation bar, a hover feature that lets users preview Web pages before visiting them, and a categorized search feature that groups search results by topic category.

At last, Bing has arrived. I tested a preview release of Microsoft's new search/decision engine, previously called Kumo, to see how well it compares. Here's a breakdown of its new features and how well they perform.

Windows Vista Service Pack 2 is now available for download. The Vista SP2 update include new support for recording Blu-ray discs straight from the Vista OS, updated support for Bluetooth v2.1, and bug fixes that address slow shutdowns and mysterious crashes.

Online storage sites, the toast of the Internet circa 2006, are shutting down in droves, putting the data and images of their users in jeopardy.

The tech-world's epicenter shifts to Las Vegas this week as the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show kicks off. Over the next week expect a parade of shiny, tiny, and wireless gadgets from CES exhibitors -including a 3G watch-phone from LG Electronics, a wafer-thin TV from Samsung that's 6.5-millimeters thick, and an emphasis on emerging technology such as environmentally friendly green technologies and Wi-Tricity, a technology that allows wire-free power charging of small devices.

The nonprofit One Laptop Per Child Project has shown the first images of its next-generation touch-screen laptop that goes by the name XO-2. According to Nicholas Negroponte, chairman of OLPC, the laptop is under development and has a goal of costing US$75. Negroponte showed off images of the XO-2 at an OLPC event here at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He says the first XO-2 is slated to be built by 2010.