Andy Rubin has resigned from head of Android development. In his place, Google has appointed Sundar Pichai. Pichai has previously been the senior vice president for Chrome and Apps and is a nine-year veteran of Google. This could indicate that Chrome OS and Android will start to get cozy with each other, something that has previously been predicted.

It would be interesting if Google were able to allow Android apps to run on Chrome OS. It shouldn't be that hard of a task, but Pichai has said that it is much too early to discuss whether this is in the cards.

Sergey and I first heard about Android back in 2004, when Andy Rubin came to visit us at Google. He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry. Most people thought he was nuts. But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences.[/quote]

CNET is reporting that Twitter could release a standalone iOS music discovery app within the month. They say that Twitter is using their We Are Hunted acquisition from last year to power the new standalone music app. It's not clear why Twitter would want to join this crowded market.

CNET reporter Casey Newton:

Twitter Music suggests artists and songs to listen to based on a variety of signals, and is personalized based on which accounts a user follows on Twitter. Songs are streamed to the app via SoundCloud.

It would appear that Twitter would like to expand beyond the simple 140-character tweets into something more. Users are not required to have a Twitter account to use the app, though having a Twitter account helps personalize the music that is suggested.

The app makes use of four different tabs" 'Suggested', #NowPlaying, 'Popular', and 'Emerging'. The suggested tab does just like the name suggests it might: it suggests new music for the person to try. #NowPlaying operates off of a hashtag of the same name. It links to songs that were tweeted by users you follow who included the "#NowPlaying" hashtag.

Popular shows songs that are popular on We are Hunted. The Emerging tab shows artists who are mostly unknown. Twitter faces an uphill battle, but they might just stand a chance, depending on how integrated they can make the service. We'll know more once the official app launches.

Last year I reported on a bill passing congress that would allow Netflix to integrate with Facebook to share your watch history with your friends. Three months later, Netflix has finally implemented some functionality with the social network.

Today Netflix rolled out new features that will allow you to share your activity on your Facebook wall. After enabling the feature, two new rows will appear in your Netflix app that allows you to share your activity with your friends. Users will have the ability to post shows and films to Facebook and offer comments about recently viewed items.

This functionality has been available to the international crowd for well over a year now, but was held up in the US by obscure laws dating back to the VHS rental days that prevented renters from disclosing an individual's rental records. Netflix and Facebook teamed up to get the law amended - things were made official this past January.

Dell has just announced a new Windows 8 based tablet, and normally that would not be much of a big deal, but this tablet is actually a very big deal - literally. Measuring in at a whopping 18.4-inches, the new Dell XPS 18 is the direct competitor to Sony's VAIO Tap 20.

The 18" Windows 8 beast features a run-time of about five hours on a single charge, and weighs in at 4.85 pounds. The tablet features custom flip-out feet that allow it to transition from "desktop mode" to lap mode quickly. The tablet will ship with a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse when it ships in April.

For a mere $900 you will get a dual-core Pentium ULV processor and 320GB hard drive. Premium editions will feature a Core i7 CPU, 8GB of RAM and a 512GB SSD. This monstrosity may not be for everyone, but it is the first tablet that has me considering purchasing a Windows 8 device.

The European Parliament has passed a proposal that effectively bans all porn within European Union member states. This was considered a major blow to the online porn industry, but after some wording was removed, it seems that internet porn is safe for now.

Members of the European Parliament removed wording from the porn ban section, essentially limiting the ban to advertising and print media, which appears to leave internet porn in the free and clear. This removal took place at the last minute as the original proposal called for the ban of "all forms of pornography in the media."

Speculators are suggesting that online porn was removed from the proposal because it would effectively place the burden of policing the internet onto the shoulders of the ISPs. Whether you are an online porn aficionado or not, this move to remove the ban of online pornography can only be seen as the right one as internet censorship in any form is never a good thing. In the long run, will only cause more harm than good.

In this Twitter weekly giveaway we have teamed up with Corsair to giveaway one of its new Hydro Series H90 and Hydro Series H110 all-in-one CPU liquid coolers. For this giveaway we increase your chances of winning as two winners will be selected for either prize.

In our review of the H110, our cooler editor Chad Sebring had the following to say:

"In the realm of the casual buyers out there, the H110 shines in a different light. It is one of the largest sealed AIO solutions on the market. It does do pretty good, and the results are great compared to a stock cooler. Then there is the fact that a lot of buyers out there also have Corsair cases, PSUs, SSDs, and memory, so why not keep the theme going?

In this type of a situation, I can see someone spending the money and using the H110 to complete the themed build with a bit of bragging rights to having the largest Corsair AIO you can buy."

Samsung's Galaxy Note 8.0 could be arriving on US retail shelves sooner than was previously thought. In a filing with the FCC, Samsung has submitted the "phablet" for review.

Based off the filing, the Galaxy Note 8.0 will feature 3G carrier support in the 800MHz and 1900MHz bands and suggest that it could be released for sale alongside it's WiFi only counterpart. It is expected however, that while the filing was for a 3G device, the US model will in fact feature LTE instead.

The Galaxy Note 8.0 is by far the largest smartphone we have seen and features an 8-inch 1280 x 800 display, 1.6GHz Exynos quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM and will run Android Jellybean. It will include the beloved S Pen stylus and will feature Bluetooth 4.0. I am not fully sold on these so-called "Phablets" I just feel that an 8" phone would be more of an obstruction than a productivity device.

A request has come from the very top level of AMD to remove this news story.

We are sorry.

In a regulatory filing made on Tuesday, Google has disclosed what bonuses some of its high ups received for the 2012 fiscal year. At the top of the list is Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt who received a reported $6 million cash bonus.

Other notability large bonuses include CFO Patric Pichette who earned a $2.8 million bonus, and CLO David Drummond who took home a cool $3.3 million in extra cash. Rounding things out is Google's CBO, Nikesh Arora, who received a $2.8 million bonus. Google says that all the bonuses are given in recognition for contributions to the company's performance last year.

Google co-founder and current CEO, Sergey Brin took no bonus this year, following in the footsteps of Larry Page, the other co-founder of the search giant. Schmidt's massive bonus came on the heels of reports that he will be selling off roughly $2.5 billion of his stake in Google.

This morning TechCrunch is reporting that Microsoft's Outlook.com and Hotmail email services have been down since 4:00PM EDT yesterday. That puts the services past 12 hours or so since they were last accessible.

SkyDrive and Calendar were also affected, but it appears that those services have been restored. Early speculation tied the outage to the Hotmail to Outlook.com migration, but an official statement from Microsoft denied that the migration had anything to do with the outage.

As of this posting I am unable to reach outlook.com and attempts to login to an old Hotmail account also failed. TechCrunch is reporting that the outage is not a total systems blackout though with some users still being able to reach the service.

This week a Paris court passed down a ruling that bans seven French Apple stores from forcing its employees to work night shifts. The ruling was in response to a complaint that was filed by several national labor unions against the Cupertino based company.

In addition to the ruling, the court fined Apple 10,000 euro (about $13,000 USD) in damages to the unions who filed the suit. The court said that any additional infraction would cost the company an additional $65,000 in fines per infraction. Apple stores in France on average close at 9PM, but employees are often required to stay until 11PM to finish close out duties such as cleaning the store.

In a statement one of the unions that filed suit said: "We are asking only that the law be respected," Apple is appealing the decision and a higher court in France is expected to pass down its ruling on the case sometime next month.

Earlier today here in Taipei we attended the yearly Intel Computing Technology Demo which is tour held by Intel folks from the headquarters in US where they give Asian press a look into some fairly exciting tech that it's working on and stuff that we may see in the future.

At the event at the Sherwood Hotel today, Intel showed off a lot of its new Ultrabooks, tablets and smartphones, which of course are all powered by Intel chips. A lot of those products have been seen at events prior to this one, but what took our interest was Intel's take on perceptual computing and where it sees it going in the future.

At the front of the room was an Acer Aspire S7 Ultrabook running Windows 8, some may get excited for that fact alone. Besides just multitouch where we are now with such Windows 8 based machines, Intel showed off various demos which makes uses of the computer's web camera to produce some rather interesting results.

In the video above the first part shows a demo where a Creative Labs 3D camera (attached via USB) is able detect the user's fingertips and control lightning. It uses depth perception and other cool technologies to recognize your fingertips and interact with them on-screen. Another demo we saw (not shown in the video above) showed the camera being able to recognize an Intel employee's hands, and he was able to accurately move around balls on the screen, even flick them with a real flicking motion - quite cool.

Tesla borrowed $465 million in 2010 from the Department of Energy, which was on a ten-year contract, but during an event hosted by Secretary of Energy, Steven Chu, Tesla CEO Elun Musk announced his company would pay back the near half-billion-dollar loan five years early.

The loan was meant to be paid back over ten years once the production of the Model S started, with Musk announcing they would accelerate the repayment of their loan, a full five years earlier than required under the original loan terms. Tesla's last payments to the Department of Energy will be in 2017. It's also worth noting that Tesla's $465 million loan wasn't the biggest given out by the DoE, where Ford received $5.9 billion, Nissan with $1.4 billion and Fisker with $529 million.

Musk has an addition to getting things done in a timely manner, getting the Tesla S up and running, rolling off their production lines at the Tesla Factory in Fremont, California in less than two years. This has put them in the position to pay their loan five years early.

There have been plenty of truly amazing things to come out of Google's X Labs, with the head of the Google X Lab 'moonshot' division, Astro Teller, revealing that a new project will be announced in the coming weeks.

There aren't many details on the new project, but Teller has said that it would be related to control systems. The moonshot division head also said that Larry Page has approved the project, telling Teller to make sure that he broke at least five prototype devices first. Teller said that this was a reminder that if you're not going so fast that you physically break prototypes, you're not going to go "radically fast."

It looks like Intel have been busy, where they've just released a pre-alpha, Intel-optimized release of Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean. Intel's Open Source Technology Center developers have been working closely with the Android Open-Source Project, so that they can get a decent build out for Intel-powered devices.

This could mean PCs, or traditional smartphones and tablets. Better yet, thanks to being powered by the Linux 3.9 kernel, there's a new interactive installer as well as the stellar ability to dual-boot on a Windows 8 system. Let's hope this makes it to consumers' hands, quick.

Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Wayne in the US wanting to know if he should wait for Intel's Haswell-based CPUs to arrive before he upgrades.

Q: I am looking at upgrading to a new system. I will be mainly playing 1st person shooters but also some virtual servers. Should I buy an Ivy Bridge CPU or wait for a Haswell CPU?

A: You can view the answer to Wayne's question right here.

Research firm IDC have their latest report out, which expects to see a tip toward Android being dominant this year in the tablet market, taking the throne from Apple's iPad. IDC have increased their 2013 forecast for worldwide tablet shipments to 190.9 million, up from 172.4 million units.

Interestingly, Jitesh Ubrani, Research Analysts for IDC's Tablet Tracker, has said: "One in every two tablets shipped this quarter was below 8 inches in screen size. And in terms of shipments, we expect smaller tablets to continue growing in 2013 and beyond." Getting into the Android dominance, the IDC report that moving into 2013, Google will continue to expand their share of the tablet market.

Google's incredible little wonder app, Google Now, might just be headed over to iOS. An update released last October to the Google Search for iOS app updated voice recognition, but left out alerts and contextual cards of data - something exclusive to Android.

A video sent into Engadget hints at Google Now for iOS, something that would be quite interesting. Google aren't scared of releasing products for their competitor, as it is kind of like rubbing salt into an uncompetitive wound. The clip showed off a low-resolution purported promotional video for Google Now on iPhone and iPad. The video has since been pulled, but includes the same voice actress from the original Google Now announcement.

Dell have just unveiled their latest creation, the XPS 18 All-in-One. You might have guessed already, but the the latest XPS 18 All-in-One, is an all-in-one Windows 8 PC. What makes this stand out from the crowd is that it's an 18.4-inch beast.

This means you can use the XPS 18 All-in-One on your desktop, fold it up, put it under your arm and walk away. Set it up on your lap as a tablet, and voila - an 18-inch Windows 8-based tablet. The 18.4-inch display is Full HD, so you won't be missing out in the pixel department, and we're to expect Intel's latest Core ULT processors and SSD drive options to be baked inside. There's not much else to know just yet, so watch this space.

It looks like users are experiencing some downtime to multiple Microsoft services, for the last few hours and counting. Hotmail is one of these services, and three hours without email is like a week without snail mail for some.

SkyDrive and Outlook are experiencing similar issues, with SkyDrive users having problems with file editing. Hotmail and Outlook issues seemed to be pegged on an issue not displaying all of your emails, which is, well, quite important. Microsoft have given the following statement on the problems:

Microsoft is investigating an issue affecting a small number of customers' access to Hotmail and Outlook.com, and we are working to restore full access to the service as quickly as possible. For the latest information, we encourage people to visit the Hotmail and Outlook.com status page (HTTPS://status.live.com/).