The update also adds the "What's Hot" stream, which highlights popular posts from around Google+, already available on the mobile Web version. There's also a funky feature that lets users send feedback to Google+ by shaking the phone.

We called Instant Upload Google+'s killer feature because of how much easier it makes photo sharing. Apple's own iCloud instant upload feature has a 1,000 photo limit, but this allows unlimited uploads to Picasa albums, as long as your videos are under 15 minutes and your photos are smaller than 2048 x 2048. Note that for iPhone 4 and 4S users, full-size photos are bigger than that, so there's a 1 GB limit unless you shoot smaller.

Instant Upload was a secret weapon for Android before, but now iOS users get the benefit as well.

The photos are uploaded to a private album, so only you can see them until you decide to share to Google+. The advantage is that you don't have to wait for the photo to upload when you share; it just changes the status from private to shared.

You can download Google+ for iOS from the App Store.

Yesterday, Google TV's Facebook page seeded that a big announcement was coming. When Peter Kafka revealed that this YouTube app was it, he concluded that it was no big deal. But as far as Google TV goes, the YouTube app is big. YouTube is the new television. It's smart TV's killer app. But YouTube is not exclusive to Google TV. If Google TV wants to be relevant, it has to offer the best YouTube experience around.

YouTube was redesigned around topical channels and social networks in December. 2011 was a humongous year for YouTube. It racked up over 1 trillion views. YouTube also worked on major content deals with pro sports leagues and Disney movies last year. This year, YouTube was the venue for an online campaign stop by President Obama. It's starting to eclipse television.

So why is Google TV, the tip of the spear in Google's march into the living room, lagging behind?

Eric Schmidt made some hefty promises about the next year of Google TV. "By the summer of 2012, the majority of televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded in it," he said in December.

Right now, there's one integrated Google TV set on the market, the Sony Internet TV, and there are two set-top boxes. It's supposed to be the beachhead to bring Android into the living room, but only 8% of Google TV apps out there have been downloaded from Android Market. The rest came pre-installed on the device. Google TV owners aren't using the "smart part."

Thus far, Google TV has been plagued by performance and UI problems. It's even missing important video content. The YouTube experience has to be first-rate, but that's not even the platform's biggest challenge. The hardware sucks.

Logitech stopped making its Revue Google TV set-top boxes after losing more than $100 million on them. CEO Guerrino De Luca called it a "mistake of implementation of a gigantic nature."

But this month, Google asked the FCC for permission to test a secret, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth-enabled "entertainment device." It sounds like the existing Google TV products are just a beta test for Google's hardware ambitions. This year, there will be a smart TV showdown between Google's beta and Apple's "hobby".

Do you have an Internet-connected TV device? Which one(s)? Is it competing with old-fashioned TV? Share your living room tech setups in the comments.

The volume slider came out in December to let users adjust the prominence of posts from individual circles in their overall streams. It's now available for the What's Hot feed as well, which is where Google+ shows users popular posts from across the network.

What's Hot is a way for Google+ to make sure its users all see the big news on the network. It also helps users discover new content, as well as people and pages to add to their circles.

For a real-time social network, amplifying trends to all users is a way to ensure that big stories get maximum attention. On Twitter, for example, the whole service has been recently rearranged around the "discover" tab, which highlights trending topics and hashtags. This is also a tempting place for paid promotions.

Trending topics are not always (read: almost never) pretty, though. Fortunately for users, Twitter has shunted most of this madness off into its own tab. Google+ puts What's Hot posts prominently into the main stream. But today's update will let users turn the volume of What's Hot down, or even all the way off.

You can access What's Hot from the left sidebar, underneath your circles, or from plus.google.com/hot. When the volume slider goes live for you, it will appear in the top-right corner of the stream.

Flame graphic courtesy of Shutterstock

While the idea of the smart TV is intriguing, consumers are still warming up to adoption. We expect that to change this year as more avenues for Internet-connected televisions become available and prices begin to fall. Google TV is just a small segment of the ecosystem with Apple TV, Roku, Boxee and Samsung all coming with solutions to connecting your living room to the Web.

Google TV works on an app-centric approach, with native Android apps designed specifically for the large screen form factor. The Android apps, which include staples like Flixster, Google Music, IMDb, Plex and Twitter, are not well rated on the Android Market. Xyologic points out users find most Google TV Android apps underwhelming with only two apps with higher than a 4.0 (our of five) rating in the top 10 most downloaded apps.

The surprise winner for all Google TV apps is Napster. That may be the only list that the once-powerful music service tops these days. It comes pre-installed on Google TV devices and is likely a product of the fact that most devices are sold through Best Buy, which bought Napster several years ago.

For comparison, the Roku set-top box had 15 million channel downloads as of May 2011, ahead of the release of the Roku 2. Roku's channels are not like Android apps and are not designed from a mobile platform perspective. Most Roku channel downloads are done manually (not pre-loaded) and there is a robust selection. Roku acts more as an intermediary, allowing Google to make partnerships with a variety of players from Hulu Plus, Amazon On Demand to Netflix, HBO Go and others.

While apps designed specifically for Google TV may not fare well, companies like Myriad are working to lower the barrier for all Android apps to appear on TV sets. Myriad Alien Vue brings any Android app (not just Google TV) to the living room and may be a more attractive option to service providers looking to gain traction in the smart TV market. As opposed to funneling content through the over-the-top market that Apple TV, Roku and Google TV represent, service providers can just create a dedicated Android app and connect to the TV through Myriad.

This may be another case of the open Android ecosystem coming back to bite Google. Instead of pushing dedicated Google TV apps, Myriad and others can cut Google TV out of the mix and go straight to the service providers with Android apps for Internet connected televisions.

Are you planning on purchasing a smart TV this year? Will it be a set top box like a Roku or an integrated system like something offered by Samsung? Let us know in the comments.

The black bar, sometimes called the "sandbar," only appeared in the middle of last year as Google began to redesign its interfaces, and the gray Google Bar was launched in November. Some users still have the sandbar, and others have the gray one. Now there's a strange hybrid appearing, and it's sort of the worst of both worlds.

The black bar worked because it was simple. The text links were clear, and the important services were all easily visible, with a drop-down at the end for the rest. It wasn't pretty, but it was inoffensive and functional.

The gray Google Bar was more visually intensive. When Google introduced it, it sounded like the point was to give the user back some space by removing the black band at the top. The gray bar contained a search box for the Google service you were currently using, and to navigate to other Google apps, you used this crazy dropdown menu:

The icons helped, but it still wasn't fast to navigate, because you had to open the drop-down menus.

What we've got now is some kind of hybrid. The search box is still there, but the black bar is back now, too. Instead of the drop-down under the Google logo, it's among the text links at the top, and the drop down is just a list of black words that descends in the middle of the screen.

This inconsistency is starting to get crazy. Google's navigation bar gets a lot of use, and it's impossible to form habits with it constantly changing. The changes are inexplicable, too. Now the Google Bar is bigger than ever, but it doesn't seem any easier to use.

What do you think of Google's new, new Google Bar?

It will also let systems with older GPUs use SwiftShader for 3D graphics instead of WebGL, which older GPUs can't handle. It won't look quite as good, but users with older systems will still get more 3D content than they currently can. The new Chrome beta with these features is available today.

Many of Google's recent browser-based updates have pushed the envelope on hardware performance. For example, in October, Google released 3D views in Google Maps that use WebGL, so lower-end GPUs can't display them. Even some relatively new laptops can't handle WebGL. The new SwiftShader capabilities in Chrome will bring some these 3D graphics to less capable systems.

Other recent Chrome releases contained advanced audio APIs and the ability to run native code inside the browser. Others focused on speeding up page loads by pre-caching pages. Chrome engineers are even building new image formats to push the Web forward. These uncompromising updates were moving pretty quickly for a while, so the next version of Chrome will let older computers catch up.

If you feel like testing Google's browser capabilities as soon as they come out of the shop, jump in the Chrome beta channel.

Google Drive rumors have been around for many years, and they've always conformed to the understanding of "The Cloud" that has prevailed at the time. If it's not like Apple's iCloud, which is integrated into Apple's devices, then it must be like Dropbox, which lives on the Web but syncs through a client. But think outside the box for a minute. Google has new and unique cloud services that Dropbox and Apple don't. There's room for a third, stand-out option here.

Google already has a browser-based file system, Google Docs. It originated as a sort of word processor in the cloud, but it can actually handle and store many kinds of files, such as PDFs, JPEG images, MPEG audio and video, and it'll handle pretty much anything containing text. That does make it a pretty compelling stand-in for Dropbox when it comes to simply storing files.

It even has a nice disk drive icon now, after last year's Google makeovers. Google Drive, indeed:

Are people already using Google Docs as a cloud drive? Spanning, a company that provides backup for Google apps users (not just Google Apps users; free customers, too), took a look into how thousands of people are using it, and it studied their use to better optimize its services. Consequently, it has some insights into Google apps users to share.

Spanning has found that over half of the files in their customers' Docs accounts were not Google Apps-created. They were PDFs, audio, video, photos and Microsoft Office files. By file size, non-Google files comprised over 85% of the stuff people stored in their Docs accounts.

So, at least for the use case of storing files, lots of people are already using Google Docs instead of Dropbox. What Docs does that Dropbox doesn't is allow users to create and edit certain kinds of files. If you use Google Docs as your cloud document service, you're probably using it to make and work on documents, too. That's more than Dropbox can offer, standing on its own. (We'll get to apps built on top of Dropbox in a minute.)

Search, plus Your World

There's a new Google product that didn't exist last time the Google Drive rumors surfaced. It's Google. Or rather, it's Google+. On January 10, Google revealed Search, plus Your World, which threw everybody for a loop. If you don't understand that Google+ is the user-centric backbone of Google itself now, it doesn't make sense that this one side of Google search has stuff from this weird social network in it.

While this early stage of Search+ is definitely about putting Google+ in users' faces, that's not what the message is. "Your World" does not consist solely of YouTube videos shared on social networks. Google's personalized search also tries to figure out what a search means to you, so it can return something more meaningful. It's two modes of search: Global mode searches the indexed Web, and personal mode tailors it to you.

How much more useful would this be if Google's personalized search had your files in it? If your Google Drive contained your documents and music and other local files, they could show up in your personalized search results. If you couldn't remember whether you read something online or in a document you downloaded, Search+ could find both. Now we're giving meaning to the "Your World" part.

Dropbox has search, but it only contains part of what you're looking for when you search "your world." It's more useful as one of many services in a third-party cloud search app like Greplin, which also logs into Google apps and searches across. Google's new social signals run through all its services now, so if it's in your Google cloud, Google search will find it, period.

Dropbox Is A Platform. It'll Be Fine.

Between Docs and Search+, whatever Drive Google eventually ships (whether it's in a few weeks or another X years) will have lots of unique capabilities that make it a different beast from Dropbox.

That's exactly the way Dropbox wants it.

Dropbox turned down insane amounts of money from Apple, because it didn't want to get rolled in as a feature of one integrated system. That's why iCloud doesn't work like Dropbox. Apple wanted cloud syncing that was just there, so users don't have to know where their files are. Developers in the Apple ecosystem can just hook into iCloud. Their applications become Apple-specific. In exchange, they get free marketing in the App Store, and if Apple is feeling generous it features their apps as the App Of The Week or something.

Dropbox said "no" to all that. It wants to be the next Apple or Google, and its valuation seems optimistic about that possibility. Apple's cloud is totally integrated with its devices, using hardware as the platform. Google's cloud is integrated with its services, using the Web as a platform. Dropbox is a platform.

Dropbox lets different clients on different systems read and write to it. Dropbox doesn't have a Google Docs because anyone can build a word processor on top of it. We can build a thousand word processors on top of it, and if they can all read the same file format, they can all work together. Dropbox's platform ubiquity is what it's all about, and that's why Google (and Apple) can't copy it.

Lead photo: AHMAD FAIZAL YAHYA / Shutterstock.com

The app update section returns for the its fifth month and we found that fewer of our existing apps issued updates for new features or bug fixes than in months past. We also have a new treat in the Apps of the Month: a limited Staff Picks section where some of ReadWriteWeb's writers picked the apps they found most interesting during the month.

The list, as always, is a bit subjective so please let us know in the comments if we missed an app or you have found one that you cannot live without.

Vimeo (Free - iOS, Android)

As a video platform, Vimeo has always played second fiddle to YouTube. Yet, Vimeo does attract a more professional grade of videographer and often the contents of Vimeo are much more polished than the much uploaded to YouTube from millions of would-be Internet stars. Vimeo finally has a new app for iOS and Android and it is everything you would expect from the platform in terms of quality video and performance. Users can view videos, manage their accounts and upload all from one app. The Android version of Vimeo requires 2.3 Gingerbread or above.

Producteev (Free - iOS, Android)

Talk about cross-platform. Producteev is a task manager available for Macs and Windows PCs, iOS and Android, IM and email. It is basically everywhere. As a task manager, one of its best features is the ability to work offline so you can access your tasks and projects from everywhere. Imagine being an intern working on Capitol Hill in D.C. and stuck on the Metro Orange Line between Roslyn and Foggy Bottom (if you have never worked in D.C., that is where the train goes under the river and there is absolutely no cell reception) then the ability to access your tasks offline on your phone is tantamount. You can also invite other users into the projects within the app with its workspace feature. Business is going mobile.

Lanyrd (Free - m.Lanyrd.com)

We eventually envision that the cross-platform Apps of the Month section will be dominated by HTML5 mobile Web-based apps as opposed to those that happen to be released for both iOS and Android within the same month. So, we introduce our first HTML5-based Web app ever in this column with Lanyrd, the social conference directory. It made a big splash when we wrote about it for ReadWriteMobile on the last day of January and the community at Hacker News had a fairly robust discussion about how it was made and what its benefits are. The greatest benefit of Lanyrd's mobile Web app is that it utilizes HTML5 offline caching so you can get around any conference even when the Wi-Fi or cellular connection has gone kaput. While Lanyrd is a fairly simple and the UI leaves a bit to be desired, this is a great first step towards open standards and cross-platform deployment through the mobile browser.

Plex ($4.99 -- iOS, Android)

Plex for iOS actually came out for iOS in December but the Android version was released in January so we will give it a cross-platform designation. It is a media platform that runs across Windows, Mac and Linux. Install the Plex Server on your computer then download the app and all of your media (music, video, pictures) will be converted to mobile form through your myPlex app. Plex serves over 200 channels including Vimeo, YouTube, Revision3 and others. When attaching it to a Mac it can run content from iTunes, Aperture and iPhoto. Truly a simple and powerful media streaming app.

Zynga Poker (Free - iOS, Android)

It is what it is, as they say. Poker from social gaming company Zynga. This poker game is a little cooler on the geek factor though since it was written in HTML5 and then wrapped for the native platforms (a hybrid app). If you have ever played Zynga's poker app on Facebook, this will be no different except it has now gone mobile. Connect with friends, get some free chips and get your Texas Hold 'em' on.

Staff Picks

So, when I mentioned a "limited" Staff Picks section, I was being literal. Trying to get the busy ReadWriteWeb staff to put together one measly selection for Apps of the Month is like trying to pull the back hairs off an angry baboon. I promised I would shame the staff for not getting in their Apps of the Month selections by the deadline and I will continue doing so in this column until more than five staffers actually send me selections. They have a variety of excuses from "I didn't like the app I chose" to "I learn about new apps when you write about them." Bah! For a staff that writes about new applications and gets thousands of pitches a month on a variety of topics, you would think that picking one measly app would be easy enough to figure out.

Well, here are the staff selections we did get.

Jon Mitchell - Writer

The Ying to my Yang here at RWW, Jon had his App of the Month lined up weeks ago. Kudos, Mr. Mitchell.

Day One (Journal/Diary) ($1.99 - iOS)

Day One is my new journal. It supports tweeting and whatnot, but it's the best app for keeping things to myself that I've ever used. You can set daily reminders to write in it, or you can just dash off entries whenever it suits you. If you want to keep it secret, you can lock it with a passcode. Day One supports MultiMarkdown formatting, so you can make text bold, italic, and add links, too. Day One has been around for a while, but version 1.5, which launched this month, adds iCloud syncing. Now your journal is seamlessly synced between your iDevices, as well as the Mac app if you swing that way. It also supports Dropbox, if you'd prefer to sync there.

Robyn Tippins - Community Manager

Our intrepid community manager is a big gamer. You would not think of it coming from a mother with a thick Southern accent but if we ever open a RWGaming channel, Robyn would be our go-to resource.

Shogun: Rise of the Renegade (First mission is free on iOS, $1.99 to unlock the full game and the other missions.)

I'm a big fan of the games where you dodge unbelievably complex patterns of bullets and bombs, like Geometry Wars, so when I saw the screen grabs from this game I knew I'd probably enjoy it. In Shogun: Rise of the Renegade, you are fighting a warlord, the winner of World War IV. The premise is silly, but you don't play these games for a story. The graphics are retro-90s, the soundtrack is annoying but appropriate for the game type, the price is great, and other than the minor annoyance in weapon changing, it's a cool game. If you enjoy Japanese arcade games filled with lasers and 'bullet hell' situations, you'll enjoy this fun little game. Best part? It fits right into the iCade!

Joe "Zonker" Brockmeier - Channels Writer

Joe came in with an app at the very last minute after I threatened a public shaming on the staff editorial call. I was ready to give him a pass since he has been traveling in Europe last week, but Zonker came through.

Wunderkit (Free - iPhone)

Wunderkit is a sort of social to-do manager. It's suitable for setting up a "Getting Things Done" type workflow for personal use, or you can invite friends and co-workers to join and share workspaces. It's a low-impact collaboration tool that might catch on, if a team is iPhone-equipped and heavily into social tools. For maximum features, like gettimg involved with other people's projects, you need to sign up for a $5 a month account. But that's far cheaper than a lot of other collaboration tools. Having just checked it out recently (it was released on January 31), I can't vouch for its effectiveness just yet, but it looks promising.

And back to our regularly scheduled program.

iPhone & iPad

Chasing Salander: The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo ($0.99, iPhone)

I break my own rules (that Apps of the Month need to be published in the month being written about) every so often for apps that came the month before that rock. Chasing Salander certainly fits into that category. It is an enhanced e-book of the Girl With The Dragon Tattoo where you chase renegade Lisbeth Salander through 14 locations with a short reading and pictures. With over 100 new facts not found in the books or movies this is a great app for any fans of the Salander triology.

Yamaha NoteStar Sheet Music (Free - iPad)

Play the piano? Want to rock with your favorite band but do not have the sheet music to do it? NoteStar is a hands-free sheet music where you can play along with the band or have the keyboard section isolated to study it on your own. You can preview and purchase new music from within the app and Yamaha's screen flow feature provides automatic page turning in time with the music. The performance can be slowed or sped up depending on your learning limits. If I knew absolutely anything about playing the piano, this would seem like a great place to learn new songs.

iTunes U 2.0 (Free, iPad/iPhone)

Apple called for a mysterious press conference in the middle of January in New York City. It was actually a cruel thing to do to the poor Apple Fan Boys of the world because they all got excited that a new iPad was coming down the pipeline. No such luck. What Apple did announce was its new textbook initiative that makes courses available online through the iPhone or iPad from universities across the world. As a general concept this is cool stuff, but there has been controversy over Apple iBooks End User License Agreement and if it is even legal to proceed in the fashion that Apple has. Our Marshall Kirkpatrick called iTunes U 2.0, "not perfect, just awesome."

SoulCalibur ($11.99 - iPhone/iPad)

I used to play the classic SoulCalibur game on the ill-fated DreamCast at my neighbors house in my early adult years. Outside of some golf pro and business apps, graphic intensive games are the most expensive on the iOS platform. Normally I will add the expensive games in Apps of the Month because they good examples of the capabilities of smartphones and tablets but not download the actual apps. I decided to bite the bullet and spend the $11.99 on SoulCalibur because it was the greatest fighting game ever.

Numberlys ($5.99 - iPhone/iPad)

One of the greatest things about the mobile revolution is that the nature of storytelling is fundamentally changing. It is dynamic, interactive and visually appealing like never before. Numberlys might be the greatest example yet. It is a game, a mystery, a story, a learning adventure. it is a depiction of the origins of the alphabet told through numbers. Our Jon Mitchell reviewed the app; " It's an interactive tale with a massive visual scope appropriate for people of all sizes. Its stark, soaring black-and-white aesthetic draws on Fritz Lang's Metropolis to tell the story of five characters' quest to create the alphabet in a world run by numbers."

Congressional Records App (Free - iPad)

This is an impressive app from the Library of Congress. Yes, I just wrote that sentence. This is the daily edition of The Congressional Record on your iPad using data from Office of the Clerk of the U.S. House of Representatives, the Office of the Secretary of the Senate, and the Government Printing Office. Browse by date (going back to 1995), share via email, read as a PDF and identify the latest bills put forth on the House and Senate floors. Great for politicos trying to catch up on activity, student researchers, interns, lawyers, pundits and lobbyists.

Android

Wikipedia (Free)

You would think that one of the largest Web services in the world would have already released an Android app. Wikipedia finally came to Android in January. It is fairly self-explanatory. Search, save for later reading, share with the Android share function. All the good encyclopedia knowledge that you need in the comfort of your pocket.

ViBe (Free)

ViBe is caller ID with vibration patterns. Choose a contact, set a vibration pattern for that person and know from the feel of the movement in your pocket who is calling you without looking at your phone. This is so weird that I think it might be one of the coolest things ever. If your phone is on silent at work, in a meeting, at a conference, while on a date, know who is contacting you based on the pattern. I am trying to figure out how the studio, Base2Apps, dreamed this up but it has become one of the more useful apps in my Android collection. One of the notable uses is for blind or deaf people that cannot see or hear their phones ring. "We're passionate about deaf advocacy," the Android Market page states.

Jotly (Free)

Rate everything. Like, really, everything. Go social, local and mobile (ack, dare I say it? mocial.) Jotly is actually a parody app of the often absurd world of apps and startups and their obsession with memes, rankings and just. being. social. It is not directly supposed to be a parody of Kevin Rose's Oink, but it kind of is anyway. It came to Android in January and just the Android Market page (linked above) is hilarious. "Move around freely. Jotly will automatically go where your phone does." Or better, "Find the best and worst things at any place. Like ducks? Jotly will show you big and little ducks." You know all those wonderfully sarcastic people you find on the InterWebs? They are kicking it on Jotly.

Dragon Go! (Free)

Dragon Go! from Nuance is new to Android in January. It came out for iOS in November. It is a voice-activated search app that gives Siri a run for its money and puts would-be Android contenders like Iris to shame. The tagline is " Just Say it, Get it and Go!" Search for local shopping, movie tickets and more. Connected to 200+ channels on the Web like ESPN, YouTube, Ask.com and more, it is a good search app from the developers at Nuance.

Decide (Free)

Last night a startup friend and I debated the merits of local shopping with an entrepreneur looking for seed funding for a mobile, social commerce app. It is a really tough space to get into. A good reason for that is apps like Decide. Decide is an app that helps you figure out if you want to buy the newest consumer electronics gadget on the market. At the store doing research on some fancy new tablet? Ask the Decide app if it is worth it or not and the app will give you a "Buy Now" or "Wait" instruction. Scan the barcode or a QR code and Decide will look up the gadget, give you price information and tell you if it is worth spending money on.

Embark (Free -- NYC, San Francisco and D.C.)

Embark is a series of public transportation apps that help you navigate a new city. Cannot figure out how to get from Manhattan to Brooklyn? (I never can, unless I am going to DUMBO.) Or maybe you performed the impossible and got lost on BART in San Francisco? What about conditions on the Orange Line in D.C? Embark provides train schedules, route planning and interactive maps for travelers who have lost their way.

Screenshot: Embark D.C. Metro

Notable Updates

It is always important to remember to go into your device and update apps on a regular basis. Updates provide new functionality, performance and security upgrades and make sure that the bugs from the last version have been taken care of.

Notable iOS Updates:

• Rage HD, Pandora Radio, Order & Chaos Online, Fishing Joy HD, HeyStaks, XFinity TV, Angry Birds Rio, IMDb, Powder Monkeys, Infinity Blade, Instagram, Zite, Netflix, Opera Mini, ShowYou, Path, Project Slice, Fanhattan for iPad, Kibits, Evernote, Square, Groupon HD, NBC Player, Epicurious, Urban Crime, Google Books, Hulu Plus, Rdio, Flixster, SoulCalibur, CNN for iPad, The Wall Street Journal, iBooks, Hipmunk, Slacker Radio.

Notable Android Updates:

• AirSync by DoubleTwist, Angry Birds, Angry Birds Rio, Barcode Scanner, ESPN ScoreCenter, Evernote, Facebook, Fandango, Firefox, Foursquare, Google Goggles, Google Maps, Google Music, LevelUp, LinkedIn, Lookout Security, Match.com, Norton Mobile Utilities, Flixster, News360, OpenTable, Opera Mobile, PewPew, Rdio, SketchBook Mobile, The Weather Channel, WordPress, Words With Friends, E*Trade Mobile, Google Voice, NPR News, Path.

Chrome for Android is a win for everybody. Except, of course, most users. As of Google's latest Android platform numbers, only 1% of devices are running Ice Cream Sandwich. That will change as 2012 moves along with adoption accelerating from new device purchases and updates. Chrome for Android immediately becomes one of the go-to browsers on the platform, which is good for HTML5 development, reliability and security.

The best thing that Chrome for Android brings to the table is robust HTML5 integration. The native Android browser is known to have mediocre HTML5 performance (pre-Ice Cream Sandwich) but Chrome for Android promises to make up what has been lacking.

That will include a hardware-accelerated canvas, overflow scroll support, HTML5 video specs support along with Indexed DB (for offline caching, presumably), WebWorkers and WebSockets.

The biggest advantage for mobile HTML5 though will be the ability to bring Chrome tools to the Android platform. If a developer knows how to work in Chromium, working in Chrome for Android will be a seamless transition. This is where the possible convergence of the Chrome and Android platforms will take place.

"Much of the code for Chrome for Android is already shared with Chromium and over the coming weeks, the Chromium team will be upstreaming many new components developed for Chrome for Android to Chromium, WebKit and other projects," Arnaud Weber, Google's engineering manager for Chrome, wrote in a blog post.

Chrome for Android has already been put through its initial HTML5 tests with a score of 343 (+10 bonus) on HTML5Test.com. The native ICS browser scored 256 (+3 bonus) which put it in the middle of the pack in terms of mobile browsers.

Enhancements For Users

Chrome for Android promises to be fast, simple and reliable. It pre-loads pages with the Chrome Omnibox (only when Wi-Fi is enabled) and predicts where and what you want to navigate to. It also brings a simple user interface to the Android browser environment, something that many users will be very grateful for after dealing with some of the more complicated UIs from third-party options like Opera, Dolphin HD and Skyfire.

The best aspect of Chrome for Android though will be the ability to sign in to your Chrome browser and have access to all of your bookmarks, tabs and browsing history from anywhere. If you leave your computer with open tabs, Chrome for Android will recognize those and open them for you. Chrome will also be able to track your browsing history to better provide search suggestions. Like many other mobile browsers with desktop presences, Chrome for Android will also be able to sync your bookmarks to your mobile device.

This 1% Problem

We are going to be perfectly honest. No writer at ReadWriteWeb has a device running Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. So, we could not put the Chrome Beta through the paces (most RWWers use iPhones as well).

And there is the rub. Next to no one has Ice Cream Sandwich yet, outside a couple Galaxy Nexus users. This poses a problem, if a temporary one. Many existing Android devices are never going to get the ICS upgrade and the devices that have it pre-installed are still in early adopter/Android geek territory.

For many, the Chrome for Android is just an exciting announcement to shrug at since most will never see it on their current devices. Chrome for Android developers have plenty of time to roll out dynamic Web apps before the mass of Android users actually gets the browser. So, perhaps there is a positive side.

Excited for Chrome for Android? Will you develop for it? What about signing in to Chrome across all your devices? Let us know your reactions in the comments.

Kansas City won this privilege over 1,100 other cities in March 2011. Since then, Google and the city have been surveying, planning, and eating "way too much barbecue," says Google's manager, Kevin Lo. Today, they start laying cable. A few months behind the Kansas side, neighbors on the other side of the river in Kansas City, Mo. will get the hook-up as well.

Fiber optic cable contains a bundle of glass fibers about the width of a human hair. The fastest Internet connection on record was established by researchers at the SuperComputing 2011 conference in Seattle. They were testing ways to share the enormous amounts of data from the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at the European Center for Nuclear Research. That connection reached 186 gigabits per second. Google Fiber is just 1 gigabit.

That's not too shabby, though. Verizon's FiOS network, which is among the fastest commercially available in the U.S., gets only 150 megabits per second. Google Fiber will be almost 7 times faster than that.

How Will Kansas City's Fiber Work?

Kansas City won the Google Fiber competition because it met all of Google's various requirements. "Our goal was to find a location where we could build efficiently, make an impact on the community, and develop working partnerships with the local government, utility and community organizations," its FAQ says. "We believe we've found this in both Kansas City, Kansas and Kansas City, Missouri."

Lo says the network will use "thousands of miles" of cable. The backbone of the network will be built first, and then Google Fiber will be connected to homes around Kansas City. The cable work starts today after months of surveying and measuring, as well as some negotiations around how to use the city's utility poles.

The Kansas City Star reports that Google and the Kansas City Board of Public Utilities had some disagreement over how the network would be hung on the city's utility poles.

The Wyandotte County government wrote the plan with an unusual stipulation that Google would be allowed to hang its cables for free, using part of the poles typically reserved for utility companies to hang their own communication cables, not for third parties. Phone and cable companies typically use a lower part of the pole, and they pay a fee to do so.

The special installation for Google would also have required more specialized crews, so it would be more costly. The Star's source says that Google will opt to pay the regular fees like any third-party provider.

Google says the later stages of this experiment will reach over 500,000 people. Google has promised competitive prices for residential Internet service, but it hasn't been specific yet.

Why Is Google Becoming An ISP?

Google's not just doing this to collect Internet bills from homes. When the Internet gets faster, Google's whole business benefits. Google wants to test new, bandwidth-intensive "killer apps" to see what kinds of future services it can provide. But even for normal Web services, speed benefits Google. Put bluntly, the faster your Internet, the more Google ads you can see. That's why Google search and the Chrome browser are so dang fast.

Google refers to this Google Fiber project as an "experiment," so don't get too excited about 1-gigabit fiber in your neighborhood just yet (unless you're in Kansas City). But as Google said in its initial announcement, there are big implications for testing this out in the U.S. The country isn't even in the top 10 for average connection speed. Google wants to push U.S. Internet infrastructure forward.

As for Kansas City, with these kinds of speeds, there's sure to be a boom in next-generation Internet start-ups.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock

Google will institute Bouncer without disrupting the Android user experience or requiring an Apple-like approval process. The tactic that Google is using focuses on the cloud and identifying malware as opposed to checking each app's credentials at the door. Furthermore, Google said that Android malware is actually decreasing, contrary to prior reports.

"The service performs a set of analyses on new applications, applications already in Android Market, and developer accounts... (O)nce an application is uploaded, the service immediately starts analyzing it for known malware, spyware and trojans. It also looks for behaviors that indicate an application might be misbehaving, and compares it against previously analyzed apps to detect possible red flags. We actually run every application on Google's cloud infrastructure and simulate how it will run on an Android device to look for hidden, malicious behavior. We also analyze new developer accounts to help prevent malicious and repeat-offending developers from coming back."

Google claims that Bouncer has been searching for malicious apps "for a while now." The company claims that between the first and second halves of 2011, Android malware decreased 40%.

But, how can that be, you ask? We see reports of the exponential growth of Android malware almost every day. In late October and early November of 2011, there was supposed to have been a huge spike in Android malware.

Not so, says Google.

"This drop occurred at the same time that companies who market and sell anti-malware and security software have been reporting that malicious applications are on the rise," wrote Hiroshi Lockheimer, VP of engineering for Android. "While it's not possible to prevent bad people from building malware, the most important measurement is whether those bad applications are being installed from Android Market - and we know the rate is declining significantly."

Juniper reported that Android malware had increased 472% between July and November 2011. That would correlate with Google's proclaimed decrease in malware downloaded to user devices. Somebody is lying right?

Not quite. There is a distinct difference between malware that is created and exists in the wild and what actually makes it to users' phones. Google is focused internally on the Android Market. It is not scanning the globe for malware signatures and behaviors that could potentially make it to user devices.

Google's Bouncer is not actually all that different from what a lot of third party Android security apps do. Lookout has an API that scans the download point of the Android Market, effectively scanning the store itself before and app is actually put on a device. Almost all device-level security apps function through the cloud because there is not enough free computing space on smartphones to handle the type of computations needed to identify malware. What Google has in terms of an advantage over the third party security apps is unadulterated access to the Android Market as well as one of the largest cloud infrastructures in the world to run applications on.

What Google cannot control, however, is malware from third-party app stores. If you are a frequent user of third party app repositories, it is important to know what you are downloading and keep a third party security service on your device.

It is good to see Google taking these steps, even if it is a touch overdue. Hopefully Bouncer will be effective in wiping out malware from the Android Market. Will it work? Let us know in the comments.

The post then goes straight to the list of Microsoft products to which Google users can switch: Hotmail, Bing, Office 365 and Internet Explorer. How are these products better for users' "own information" than Google? Well, they don't read it to target ads. What else do they do with users' information? No explanation here. "We've left the light on for you. :)", VP Frank X. Shaw writes. You have to hand it to Microsoft for being so forward, but by rushing to the sales pitch, this post misses a huge opportunity to be informative. Is that because the information might be more complex than Microsoft (and the press) would care to admit?

It then goes on to explain to the public that the reason people get to use Google's suite of products for free is because Google uses the data to target them for ads. What an astonishing revelation. Microsoft gives the disclaimer every critic of free Web services uses before assailing a new, user-unfriendly change: "To be clear, there's nothing inherently wrong with wanting to improve the quality of an advertising product. But, that effort needs to be balanced with continuing to meet the needs and interests of users."

That's a great talking point. But Google's response to this campaign is so easy to imagine. "We rewrote our 60 privacy policies to be one clear, human-readable document. This policy doesn't collect any new information." Or how about this one? "Google users can export all their data and be gone forever. How's that for 'maintaining control of your personal information?' Hey Microsoft, how's your partner, Facebook, doing with that?"

The blogosphere won't make that argument for Google. It has to pay for an expensive campaign, just like Microsoft is.

UPDATE 12:30 p.m.: Google has posted a response. It's a simple checklist of myths versus facts, and it saves the deepest cut for last:

• Myth: Microsoft's approach to privacy is better than Google's. [Microsoft]
• Fact: We don't make judgments about other people's policies or controls. But our industry-leading Privacy Dashboard, Ads Preferences Manager and data liberation efforts enable you to understand and control the information we collect and how we use it--and we've simplified our privacy policy to make it easier to understand. Microsoft has no data liberation effort or Dashboard-like hub for users. Their privacy policy states that "information collected through one Microsoft service may be combined with information obtained through other Microsoft services."

We've always believed the facts should inform our marketing--and that it's best to focus on our users rather than negative attacks on other companies.

The sad thing is, there's plenty to critize about Google's new direction and its impact on users, it's just too complicated (and politically sensitive) for Microsoft to explain in an ad.

This is just a shady PR attack by Microsoft, and the press is buying it. Microsoft doesn't deign to inform its readers about Google's policy. It uses a few kumbaya words up front and then gets straight to the point: it's BAAAAD. But we've seen less spun talking points in the Republican presidential debates.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock.com

What do you think of Google's new privacy policy? Sound off in the comments.

But don't start your knee-jerking just yet (as so many did with Twitter's local compliance policy). This is a way around censorship. Would you rather Blogger and Twitter be blocked in some countries outright? As Google Operating System (the original purveyor of this fine story) points out, the content at the "blogspot.com" domain will continue to exist. "Content removed due to a specific country's law will only be removed from the relevant ccTLD," Google explains in its support document.

There are still some questions here, as there were in Twitter's case. As Google says, a takedown request will only affect the content at the TLD of the country whose government requests the takedown. Does that mean users in that country will still be able to access content at other domains? Obviously, Google can't be straightforward about that if the answer is "yes," so the fact that it doesn't explicitly say "no" sounds good.

In fact, it makes clear that users can specifically request a particular country's version of a Blogger site by using a "No Country Redirect" URL. If you request http://[blogname].blogspot.com/ncr," it will go to the .com (U.S.) version of the site no matter what. It sets a short-term cookie to prevent the browser from redirecting that blog to a local domain. Whether that version will be accessible within a blacked-out country is unclear, so let's test it!

Better Than Nothing (And Then Some)

The idea of Web companies complying with censorship requests sounds icky. But too many people gave knee-jerk objections to Twitter's policy last week without considering what it actually does. Both Twitter and Google (at least with Blogger) have found ways around censoring this content altogether while still complying with local laws. The content isn't lost. It's still accessible outside of that area. Blogger sites may still be accessible within some blackout areas if users request a different domain.

The alternative, in some countries, would be to block the entire service. There's no way that's good for free speech. One could argue that doing business at all in a country that supports censorship is wrong for a communication company. But then put yourself in the local users' shoes and consider which alternative is preferable. The shame here is on the governments who censor their people, not on the companies sneaking free speech past them however they can.

What do you think of Blogger and Twitter's new censorship policies? Sound off in the comments.

This is the most user-friendly White House in history. It was a nice experiment in Web-enabled democracy. But despite the great camera angles and the believable-but-composed real-world folks, it stretched the definition of "social media" pretty thin. User-submitted content is good, and the hand-picked live participants get to be involved, but for most of us, it's no different from television.

The Hangout dynamics did offer some back-and-forth between participants and the president. The action didn't feel scripted. On the contrary, it felt like people talking over each other, just like a video chat usually does, except there was a moderator to occasionally interrupt and move things along.

But for most of the audience, it was a YouTube stream. The link was posted all over Google+ by various accounts, including the White House, YouTube and Google Politics & Elections, but the comments there were spammed-up and useless. It wasn't a social event except for the selected participants.

In that sense, it wasn't much different from the president's live event at Facebook last April. It was good publicity for a social Web platform, pro-Web PR for the White House, and a TV-like experience for the rest of America.

This was certainly a game-changing event. It was a demonstration of YouTube's looming succession to television as the most influential video platform. This was a triumph of a tech company over media companies. The production values were high, the program was engaging, and the content was timely. But for the public, it was no more of a paradigm shift than changing the TV channel.

Did you watch the White House Google+ Hangout? What did you think? Share your reactions in the comments.

Nairobitech reported:

"The Google Mocality saga has drawn its first casualties. Kenya country lead for Google, Olga Arara-Kimani formerly of Safaricom has been let go by the company. Also axed is a technical guy in Zurich... It is not clear how Olga was picked for the fall but as one observer noted, sometimes a sacrificial lamb has to be found for the brand name to weather the storm."

Update after the jump.

"We've concluded our investigation into the serious allegations about our use of data from Mocality's website in Kenya. We're very sorry this happened. We've taken appropriate action with the people involved and made changes in our operations to ensure this doesn't occur again."

A Google global PR representative, who insisted on talking to ReadWriteWeb after our first post on the subject, assured us that we would be given a full rundown of the investigation after it was complete. Last night, we were told Mattos's post was Google's only "on-the-record" statement. Not sure, if the comments on Mattos's Google+ page are representative, that this was the right tack to take.

We'll let you know if they reverse course and make a further statement, as some African tech blogs are reporting.

Update: Kenyan newspaper The Nation reports Ms. Arara-Kimani has claimed to have left of her own accord.

"'I confirm I have left Google Kenya. As the leader of the Kenya office, I felt that the buck stopped with me and I decided to leave,' she wrote in a phone message to the Nation on Monday."

Other sources: TechMTAA