Five months after we heard about Google TV for the first time at the Google I/O event,  we've got some news: the launch of the new official Google TV website and Google TV blog.

With a sleek, dark design and eye-catching animations, the Google TV website includes the answers to all the questions you may have about Google's new service, which will no doubt be launching soon. The website offers a list of Google TV features, a Spotlight area with featured content, and even a form aimed at developers who want more information on how to create apps for Google TV.

As for the Google TV blog, it's quite empty at the moment as you'd expect, but be advised to include it in your RSS feeds if you want to keep track of all news related to Google TV.

In order to get Google TV, you'll  need to buy either a standalone smart TV like the Sony Internet TV, or a separate box you can use with your current TV, like the Logitech Revue. According to the Google TV website, both devices will be available this fall.

Believe it or not, a BitTorrent app is now officially available for download in the AppStore. IS Drive is the first app of this kind to be approved by Apple, despite its traditionally tight rules to software authorization. In fact, the iOS Developer Program policy still reads that uploaded apps cannot break the law or infringe copyright in any way - which makes this release even more surprising.

IS Drive is a client that allows ImageShack Drive Premium users to check on their downloads' status. Ironically this app was available on Cydia before, under the name "Jack Torrents".  The app's developer, Derek Kepner, admitted in an interview with TorrentFreak that he was "on dangerous ground here", but he also insisted that his app was not designed to break the law. "There is no real torrenting happening on the client side", Kepner said. "It's not a torrent client. It's an ImageShack Drive client".

Whether it was just a question of luck or Apple really is loosening some of its guidelines, the fact is that IS Drive is available for download in the AppStore.

While the Facebook-based movie The Social Network has started generating box office benefits ($23 million in its opening weekend), the popular website just announced that they're planning to introduce a bunch of improvements to the Photos tool, focused mainly on three areas: image resolution, the photo uploader and the photo browser.

To begin with, Facebook will increase the size of photos from 720 pixels to 2048 pixels - that's 8 times the original size. This generous new resolution will allow you to print photos downloaded from Facebook without quality loss.

Next, the photo uploader. This tool has been completely rebuilt to provide you with a more reliable user experience. The new Facebook photo uploader will be based on the latest Flash technology, and it also features an improved tagging utility. Through the main changes are under the hood, you'll probably appreciate the faster speed and more stable uploads -especially when you have dozens of photos.

Finally, Facebook's new photo browser allows you to view photos more comfortably. Photos are displayed on a new layer on top of your screen, so that you can flick through them without having to open a new page, or move back and forth between tabs.

According to the Facebook blog, these changes will be rolled out to all Facebook users over the next month.

You were the first one to download it, you tested all of its tools and functions, and you collected a bunch of webslices and accelerators... But now you just want to get rid of Internet Explorer 9. Don't worry, we won't judge you for it!

However you may need help to uninstall Microsoft's latest browser, as the process is not as clear as you might think. Here's a short guide on how to remove Internet Explorer 9 from your system and move on to another browser.

1. Click the Start button, go to the Control Panel and select Uninstall a program (if you have the settings sorted by Category) or Programs and Features if you have the Icon view.

2. You'll see Internet Explorer 9 is not included in the default list of installed software, because it's considered to be an update. You'll need to select the View installed updates option in order to make it appear on the list.

3. Wait until the program list has been populated, and scroll down until you find Internet Explorer 9. Select it and hit the Uninstall button.

4. Windows will uninstall Internet Explorer 9. The process can take a few minutes and requires a system restart afterwards. Note that this doesn't mean you don't have Internet Explorer on your system - Windows just downgrades it to version 8.

[Via: OnSoftware Spain]

If you have so many movies and TV series that it’s getting hard to keep track of them, it’s time to organize your collection in a serious way – and a free utility called EMDB can give you a hand with this project.

EMDB stands for Eric’s Movie Database, a simple yet powerful movie organizer that will help you create a detailed list with all your movies and TV shows, whether you have them on DVD or stored in your hard drive. EMDB is easy to use, light on resources and doesn’t require any external plug-ins or libraries.

The best thing about EMDB is that it connects directly to the Internet Movie Database, which means you don’t have to type in all the information about each movie; simply enter the title, search the online movie database for it and let EMDB do the hard work.

Other interesting features in EMDB are a loan tracker, a built-in search tool and the possibility to export your collection to TXT, CSV or HTML.

UPDATE: Luckily Xmarks didn't close. LastPass acquired the company and this enabled the service to stay online. It also marked a transition point for Xmarks, which moved to a "freemium" business mode and started offering paid plans.

Xmarks, the great bookmark syncing service we already mentioned on this blog (also when it was known as Foxmarks) is closing. The date for definitive shutdown has been set to January 10th, 2011, giving you plenty of time to recover your information from Xmarks' servers and find an alternative syncing service.

As for the reasons why Xmarks is being discontinued, they're explained in the company's blog. Apparently Xmarks has had budget issues since Spring 2010 and was in desperate need to find new funds. The search for potential buyers wasn't successful, and with the bookmark syncing function being built-in in powerful browsers like Firefox and Chrome, it was difficult to come up with an alternative business model. In this situation, there's no way to support the free service and, at the same time, paid the company's expenses such as salaries and server hosting costs.

Xmarks plans to keep their service running for another three months, which gives you time to find an alternative to sync bookmarks across browsers. The Shutdown page on the Xmarks website includes some of them, like Firefox Sync, Chrome Sync, Windows Live Essentials (all free) and MobileMe (for $99/year).

Research In Motion (RIM) has introduced the company's new tablet, Playbook, at their annual Developer's Conference in San Francisco. Despite the playful name, the Playbook is focused on business, which makes sense taking into account that this is also the main target of RIM's smartphone, the Blackberry.

Though the Playbook won't be commercially available until early 2011, we already learnt about some of its features. It'll run a special tablet-oriented OS developed by QNX - recently acquired by RIM - and will have Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. It won't have support for 3G but you'll be able to get that by tethering to a Blackberry - another smart move for them, but a bit of an annoyance for the user.

During the device's presentation, RIM boasted about its ability to run Flash and Adobe AIR apps. According to the company's founder, Dan Dodge, the Playbook will be "an incredible gaming platform for publishers and the players". Surely the dual-core 1 GHz CPU, the 1 GB of RAM and the 7-inch, 1024x600 screen will help! Other features in the Playbook include two cameras (front and rear) HD video capabilities, HDMI port and a microUSB jack.

With the launch of the Playbook, the tablet market is getting increasingly crowded and competitive. I'm already looking forward to seeing future tablet wars between Apple and RIM.

So you've made up your mind and you want to create a blog. The question now is, how are you going to do it? There are many options available, for newbies and experts, for those who prefer to have everything set up and those who like to be in control of every single detail. But besides the traditional blogging platforms like Blogger or Wordpress, there are also a couple of alternatives for what is known as micro-blogging - a simpler, easier to update blog, perfect for those who don't need lots of features.

The two most popular micro-blogging platforms are Tumblr and Posterous. You may think they're quite similar, but the moment you analyze them in depth, you realize they also have quite remarkable differences. Let's take a look at both of them and maybe then you'll know which one suits you best.

When Google ran this 60-second TV ad during the SuperBowl they probably didn’t imagine the incredible response it would have. People liked it so much that Google decided to implement a simple tool in YouTube with which to build your own 'search story'.

Now, don’t expect anything like Premiere or Final Cut – this is just a simple online app to mix up a few Google searches, add a pre-made background music and put it all together to create a fun story, a greeting card or a cute message for that special one.

Here’s how the Google Search Stories Video Creator works:

1. Go to the YouTube SearchStories channel and click the big blue button to create your own.

2. Time to get creative! You need to enter up to six search terms that can make up a story, using different Google services – web search, images, maps, books, and so on. The page offers a few tips on how to write good stories, and even a tutorial to show you the basics. You can also preview the results as you enter the search terms

Foursquare, the popular geolocation-based social network, has just updated its iPhone client to version 2.0. The Foursquare team has been working hard on this update, and the hype grew to such an extent that their servers are now literally "melting down" due to the amount of download requests. While the new version slowly rolls out to all devices, let's take a look at the new features included in Foursquare 2.0:

• Separate lists for Tips and To-Dos. These two lists are now split in two separate sections, making them easier to access and manage. With this small change, Foursquare developers aim to make their application useful not only to keep track of all the places you've been to, but also to make a list of all the place you'd like to visit and what you'd like to do once you're there.

• Tips and To-Dos available everywhere. These two lists are no longer limited to the navigation bar and have been extended to other areas in the Foursquare app. So, for example, next time you spot a new venue, you can add it to your To-Do list with just one tap. And the next time to check in at that same place, you'll get a reminder of those saved To-Dos.

• New 'Add to My foursquare' button. This new, embeddable button allows you to add new places to Foursquare from other sources than just your friends. If you read about a new coffee shop on a website and would like to try it out, just click the 'Add to My foursquare' button and it'll be automatically added to your To-Dos list. You can already see this button in action in Eater and Racked, with more websites coming soon.

UPDATE 4:48 pm: According to Twitter's Safety Team leader Del Harvey, the flaw is now patched and no longer exploitable.

Twitter is known for its stability issues, but this is definitely the last straw. A security flaw in the application's code is enabling third-party websites to publish tweets, open window messages and redirect you to other pages. The problem started to spread early this morning as apparently harmless, colorful tweets and has ended up rendering the Twitter website completely useless.

The flaw allows third-party websites to exploit a vulnerability in the "onmouseover" command, and run processes on the Twitter website simply by moving the mouse over a link. It's precisely this simplicity what is making the bug spread so fast, as it's automatically being copied and published on status updates.

The 'onmouseover flaw' is not really that dangerous in itself, but it could be potentially annoying as it allows to redirect Twitter users to other not-so-innocuous websites, as happened to Sarah Brown, wife of the former British Prime Minister.

For now, and until the Twitter team fixes this complete mess, the best you can do is stay away from the Twitter website and use a desktop client or your Twitter mobile app to follow your timeline. Also, avoid mousing over or clicking on any suspicious tweets displaying color text or weird source code.

Great news for all iPad owners: the excellent VLC Media Player is now available for download in the App Store. This special iPad port has been developed by Applidium, based on the popular open-source media player for desktop computers.

VLC Media Player for iPad is meant to have native support for major video formats (like MKV and AVI), which can’t be played on iPad’s default video player without being previously converted. It also displays a thumbnail for each video for easier browsing, and is lighter on resources than other video players.

On the downside, comments from the first users who have tried it out report lots of problems with this early version of VLC for iPad – especially when you use it with iOS 4.2 (available as a developer's beta, so those users shouldn't really complain!). The most frequent complaints refer to the app being unable to play MKV files, playing sound but not image or even crashing unexpectedly from time to time.

It's somewhat surprising to read such negative feedback about VLC, when its original desktop version is probably the most stable and efficient media player around. In any case, I still think that having VLC Media Player available for iPad is excellent news. Let's just hope they fix those bugs in future releases, so that we can enjoy our favorite movies anytime, anywhere – and without any boring conversions required!

Context menus are generally quite useful, and the "Send to" utility in particular comes in very handy when managing files on Windows. The good thing about this little tool is that it can be easily customized to include those folders and apps you use on a frequent basis, and the best of all is that you can do it without having to install any third-party app.

All you need to do is go to this specific location in your Windows 7 system: C:\Users\YourUsername\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Windows\SendTo and add shortcuts to all the folders or applications you want to have in your Send to menu. You’ll see them right there the next time you right click on any file.

Note that you’ll need to make hidden folders visible in order to use this trick, as the AppData folder is not visible by default. Also, if you’re still using Windows XP, here’s the explanation on how to use the same trick on XP-based systems.

The good thing about Gmail and its generous storage is that you rarely have to worry about deleting attachments. But storing dozens of attached files also make them harder to find in a cluttered inbox. This is the time when you need to start using Gmail search operators.

I already wrote a short post about these operators, and how they help you to perform more powerful, accurate searches. This time however I’ll focus on the ones you need to use to manage stored attachments in Gmail.

If you want to filter Gmail’s search results to get only those emails with attached files, you need to type filename: in the search field, followed by the type of file you’re searching for, or the specific file name, in case you remember it.

filename:pdf

filename:report.pdf

This operator works together with others in order to refine search results even more. This means you can search for emails with certain keywords that have attached files, or emails coming from a specific person with attached files.

tickets filename:pdf

from:albert filename:pdf

With the right combination of these operators and the correspondent keywords and search filters, you won’t miss any important attachment ever again.

The waiting is finally over: the first beta of Internet Explorer 9 has launched. After testing several preview versions over the last few months, I've been looking forward to this moment. I wanted to see with my own eyes if Internet Explorer 9 is really the revolutionary browser Microsoft wants us to believe.

After testing it for a while, I must say this new version does include some great new features, and has improved in many ways, especially when it comes to performance and web standards compliance. Whether this will be enough, only time will tell. As for now, let's take a look at the new features included in Internet Explorer 9, and how it performs in comparison with other browsers.

New features in Internet Explorer 9

The new version of Internet Explorer now lets you pin specific websites to the superbar o the Start menu, for faster access. This makes the toolbar in Windows 7 even more useful.