Google's Chrome Browser has a growing number of applications available on its web store and it's only logical that Google has devoted an entire schedule block to concentrating on the benefits and capability of a browser that now has 120 million users, and counting. Google gathered representatives of three different companies to tell their success stories regarding their Chrome web apps. First up was Jason Horman Chief Architect of Springpad, the online task tracker.

Springpad is a task application that tracks your tasks, movies, books etc. in order to compile databases for your life. It started off as a website service linked to a mobile application they released a while back. The success of their mobile app in contrast with what Horman described as a service that relied too heavily on the website led Springpad to develop a web app using Chrome. Horman noted how seamless the transition was between mobile and web, and that Chrome facilitated maintaining a similar UX. Springpad doubled its web app users for its first few months in just two months, and has seen a 500% increase in the amount of "saves" since its initial web app launch. 50% of daily time on the app altogether is spent through Chrome, with an average of 30 minutes a day.

Next up was San Francisco-based World Golf Tour, responsible for the game of the same name- the largest online Golfing game on the internet. Golf Tour went to chrome looking for new channels of user acquisition. After launching their Chrome app, they've found that Chrome users play their game 23 times more than all of the users on any of the other channels. Also, more importantly, they spend 147% more money than mobile users.

10:08 US PST:

I am floored. Absolutely floored. Engadget livebloggers were unnerved by the people weeping in the audience, but I completely understand it now. Joe Brit and Hugo just finished up the Keynote by giving everyone in the audience the new Samsung Tablet, but let's talk about what Joe Brit revealed: The new Android @ Home network, which allows you to use your house as an android accessory. We're not just talking TVs and communicating with wireless capable devices- in fact, the complete opposite. This is cutting-edge NFC that lets a CD talk to a box, or your phone to turn lights on and off.

I'm thinking thermostats, toasters, refrigerators-pretty much the sky is the limit right now. Google has partnered with Light Signs, a company that will be providing LED light bulbs controllable by Android by the end of the year.

Late last week GIGABYTE invited us to the fancy Miramar Garden hotel in Taipei where they were setup to shoot their own promo videos of its forthcoming Intel Z68 based motherboards launch.

We went along to check them out and snap some photos for our preview of the Z68 UD3H and UD7. Inside the hotel suite GIGABYTE had two identical systems setup with the Z68 UD7 platform with the only difference being that one was configured with an SSD using Intel's new Smart Response caching technology and the other just with a standard hard drive configuration.

What is Intel Smart Response Technology? In short since we can't go into extensive detail here, it is in my opinion a way of gaining some of the benefits of an SSD without blowing your bank account or having to settle for limited storage space. The idea is that you can pick up an affordable 20GB SSD, put it in a RAID array with your large spinning hard drive and regular data that is most often accessed is cached on the SSD for quicker access.

We all know hacking is a fact of life, be it for good or bad. However, I don't think the topic of this news relates all that much to hacking.

Colin Brix is a manager at GIGABYTE headquarters here in Taipei and someone I have worked with as a contact for product samples and tech questions for many years. From the information we have seen so far, he seems to be the victim of a fairly serious prank today and one that the Taiwanese motherboard maker is taking very seriously.

A website by the name of Rumor Pedia claimed to be have sent a screenshot by someone named Kirllos who managed to 'infiltrate' GIGABYTE's internal work network using "mega-d botnet". Mind you, this bot was disabled by security company FireEye back on November 6, 2009, according to sources on Wikipedia. This screenshot is filled with a vast amount of inconsistencies relating to 'leaked' details about an upcoming processor from AMD. It also showed benchmarks using popular tests such as Super PI and others. This type of leak by a company employee tends to have very serious consequences, as you can imagine.

Diablo fan? Want Diablo 3 real, real bad? Well, just close your eyes a little bit longer and make that wish and it may come true as soon as July of this year! External beta testing of Diablo 3 is set to start in Q3 of this year. It was revealed in Activision's first quarter investor call where president and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment, Mike Morhaime, revealed the company-wide beta testing of Diablo 3.

Mike also gave some updates on the status of Diablo 3 saying:

On the 'Diablo 3' front, I'm pleased to report that we began internal, company-wide testing last week. The game is looking great and we are currently targeting a Q3 launch for external beta testing. The development team is working hard to try to launch 'Diablo 3' this year, but I want to be clear. We do not have an official release date or window yet.

GPU giant meets Baseband & RF superstar, and $367 Million later an acquisition is born. Everyone at both companies is clearly excited about the deal, but nothing will be set in stone until a conference call held between the two companies Thursday, May 12, at 2:00PM PDT. Anyone at all can listen in to the call to find out more details, just dial 706-679-2572- no password or meeting number required! NVIDIA and Icera will also webcast the call, and you can listen in here and here. More details below in the press release.

SANTA CLARA, CA -- (Marketwire) -- 05/09/2011 -- NVIDIA announced today that it has agreed to acquire Icera, a leading innovator of top-performing baseband processors for 3G and 4G cellular phones and tablets.

Icera has more than 550 patents granted or pending worldwide, and its high speed wireless-modem products have been approved by more than 50 carriers across the globe. By combining the companies' products and technologies, including NVIDIA's Tegra processor, NVIDIA will enhance its position as a leading player in the growing mobile market.

16:12 US PST:

UPDATE: Both of the LG Devices will offer Wireless content streaming!! That's right, no plug or HDMI out required (although it's available too).

Tony Curry, LG PR representative, just got up to tell everyone about how much LG loves the Tegra 2 processor. Shipping this week are both the LG G2x smartphone and the LG G Slate tablet, available exclusively on T-Mobile. Life is certainly good with these two devices, sporting 4G capability and optimized battery lives.

13:52 US PST:

Here at the lovely Intercontinental Hotel in San Francisco, I'm listening to Bill Rehbok, General Manager of Mobile Games at NVIDIA tout just how awesome and how important their TegraZone platform is to Android mobile gaming. Android recently surpassed iOS as the most used OS for game developers with over 300 million users. TegraZone is what Rehbok describes as a content curator, ensuring that the best mobile games (those that run on NVIDIA Tegra) are available.

one of the biggest challenges is communicating to consumers what they can run, what they can play, and what they can pay for on their mobile devices.

BioWare's first steps into the MMO world will come in the form of Star Wars: The Old Republic. Star Wars: The Old Republic is a new MMO that is in development between BioWare and LucasArts where it pits players in a world that takes place 300 years after the events of Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and thousands of years before Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader.

Players will have the choice of character roles such as Jedi or Sith and give context to their personal story with the option to follow the light or the dark side of the Force. EA has now reported that its total investment in the new Star Wars-based MMO has reached $80 million, in development alone. Michael Pachter, Wedbush Security analyst says:

The contribution from the 'Star Wars' MMO is significant. Under the terms of its deals with LucasArts, EA is required to pay a royalty, but was required to front all of the development, marketing and distribution costs, as well as the costs of building out servers for the game. We estimate that LucasArts' share is 33 percent of revenues, after EA recoups its investment in game development. Given that the game was in development for over four years, with an estimated 200 full-time developers working on it, we estimate that EA's investment exceeds $80 million.

Google's over-the-air updates are amazing, I love updating my phone without having to use something like iTunes. For Apple users, they can hear about a new firmware being released for their iOS-based device, yet have to be at a computer - plug it in, open iTunes and let it update. Where Android-based users can just do it from their phone - magic, huh?

Apple are finally catching up and it seems with iOS 5 there are claims that Verizon users with iOS-based devices might have the opportunity to do updates over-the-air instead of the traditional way I explained above. Right now, theres no news on whether this will extend to other carriers as most iOS updates are pretty large in size - roughly 600MB. Obviously carriers won't want millions upon millions of people downloading massive upgrades every however often.

This is where Wi-Fi networks step in of course, but there is no news for whether the OTA updates can be done via Wi-Fi yet or not.