As the row between Apple and Adobe over Flash on the iPhone OS continued to grow, we thought circumventing the issue entirely might be disruptive. If we could seamlessly deliver a site that uses Flash in Mobile Safari without installing any additional apps there'd be tons of potential uses, especially for large organizations trying to leverage existing content. Today, we're sharing a few videos of an early proof-of-concept. One of the best parts of this implementation is that there's nothing Jobs can do about it without castrating the web experience on the iPad/iPhone altogether. It's not jail-broken and it doesn't require an app or a plug-in: Just the default Safari browser.

Last week, we announced a new feature that lets you add a favorite photo or image to the background of your Google.com homepage. To provide you with an extra bit of inspiration, we've collaborated with several well-known artists, sculptors and photographers to create a gallery of background images you can use to personalize your Google homepage. Included in the collection are photographs of the works of Dale Chihuly, Jeff Koons, Tom Otterness, Polly Apfelbaum, Kengo Kuma, Kwon, Ki-soo and Tord Boontje, as well as some incredible photos from Yann Arthus-Bertrand and National Geographic. We'll be featuring these images as backgrounds on the Google homepage over the next 24 hours. Of course, since we want your Google homepage to be personal to you, you can still choose an image or photo from your computer or your own Picasa Web Album. Whether you select an image from our new artist collection or prefer to have a more personal touch on your homepage, you'll still enjoy the speed and ease of use that you've come to expect from Google. We're also excited to announce that this feature is now available internationally. We hope you enjoy the new artist collection and making Google feel more like your own!

Mr. Joshi (the head of Hewlett-Packard's $24 billion printing empire) has spent years disputing the notion that people will print less as they do more on their hand-held devices. This week, he will see his ideas put into action as H.P. introduces a fleet of printers with Web access, their own e-mail addresses and touch screens. These products should open up new ways for people to print from Web services like Google Docs, and from smartphones and devices like the iPad from Apple. Mr. Joshi is going back to his roots as an engineer - as a young H.P. researcher, he figured out a way to make ink cartridges fire 45 million drops - and relying on new technologies, not slick marketing. But still, he will have to prove that customers will change their behavior and print more if given the right tools. That, Mr. Reitzes said, is crucial to how investors will evaluate the long-term prospects of H.P. "Investors are worried about printing," he said. "It's really important that they get this right." As the world's largest technology company, H.P. sells a wide variety of products but got much of its profit from printers and their pricey ink. More recently, H.P. has built up a large technology services arm as well, which has helped round out its business. But the printing division accounts for about a fifth of its revenue and a third of its profits. The new printers - which build on a limited experiment last year - will range in price from $99 to about $400. Every one will come with what H.P. executives billed as a breakthrough feature - its very own e-mail address. H.P.'s engineers hit on the e-mail address as an easy, familiar way for people to send print jobs to the Web-ready printers. You can, for example, take a photo with a phone, e-mail it to your printer's address and have the printout waiting for you at home. Or, you can share the printer's e-mail address with family and friends. This means that someone can buy Grandma a Web-ready printe

We can't say if there's an actual rule or not, but we're pretty sure that anyone in the e-reader business has to, at one point, make a prediction about when e-books will overtake actual books, and it looks like Sony has now come through with a big one of its own. That comes courtesy of Sony's Steve Haber, the man responsible for the company's digital reading business division, who says that: "within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content." Note that he says "digital content," not books, so we can presume that also includes magazines and newspapers, but it's still a fairly ambitious statement nonetheless. What's more, Habar also insists that there is a place for standalone e-readers alongside multi-function devices like the iPad, saying that, "it's just like digital imaging, where you can take pictures with a cellphone - and many people take pictures with cellphones - but if they want the best possible picture they'll use a point-and-shoot camera or a digital SLR."

Apple has just trotted out its latest sales milestone for the iPad: two million devices have now been sold since the slate's launch on April 3. We promise we won't bother you with sales figures every time another million gets rounded, but it's notable that the company has managed to maintain the rapid pace it achieved with its hero tablet during its first month on the market. Of course, that big international launch just a couple of days ago would surely have had something to do with it as well. Ah well, good for them.

For years now, hotel chains have been toying with alternative ways to letting patrons check-in, access their room and run up their bill with all-too-convenient in-room services. Marriott began testing smartphone check-ins way back in 2006, and select boutique locations (like The Plaza Hotel in New York and Boston's Nine Zero) have relied on RFID, iris scanners, biometric identifiers and all sorts of whiz-bang entry methods in order to make getting past a lock that much easier (or harder, depending on perspective). This month, InterContinental Hotels Group announced that they would soon be trialing OpenWays at Chicago's Holiday Inn Express Houston Downtown Convention Center, enabling iPhone owners to fire up an app and watch their room door open in a magical sort of way. Other smartphone platforms will also be supported, and as we've seen with other implementations, users of the technology will also be able to turn to their phone to order additional services, extend their stay or fess up to that window they broke. There's no word on when this stuff will depart the testing phase and go mainstream, but we're guessing it'll be sooner rather than later. Video after the break, if you're interested.

Look around you. Are you at an electric vehicle charging station? If so, good for you! If not, that's okay, because the things are still mighty rare. California-based Coulomb is helping to change that, expanding its operations with deals that will see its ChargePoint networked charging stations appear in Poland and in Australia. The Warsaw-based station is powered by juice from 365 Energy, while the Sydney one is being run by GoGet, a sort of Aussie Zipcar, if you catch our drift, mate. They join the 600 stations that Coulomb deployed in 2009 and are part of the thousands the company hopes to scatter about in this year. Both forward-reaching press releases are included for your enjoyment after the break, either of which make for great reading while your Tesla hungrily sucks down the electrons.

Talking to people is hard, and talking to strangers? That's, like, really hard. Nokia has a better way: the Nokia Instant Community. It relies on ad-hoc WiFi connections from (Finnish) smartphones to create dynamic communities into which people can join. Once connected, trendy but introverted festival-goers can chat, exchange photos, and even download each other's bootlegs of the very show they're attending!

Google made some waves yesterday when it announced the new Google TV platform, backed by major players like Sony, Logitech, Intel, Dish Network, and Best Buy. Built on Android and featuring the Chrome browser with a full version of Flash Player 10.1, Google TV is supposed to bring "the web to your TV and your TV to the web," in Google's words. It's a lofty goal that many have failed to accomplish, but Google certainly has the money and muscle to pull it off. But hold up: what is Google TV, exactly, and why do all these companies think it's going to revolutionize the way we watch TV? Let's take a quick walk through the platform and see what's what.

Authorities on both sides of the Atlantic on Monday moved towards investigating Google following the internet group's disclosure that it had recorded communications sent over unsecured wireless networks in people's homes. Peter Schaar, the German commissioner for data protection, called for a "detailed probe" by independent authorities into the practice by Google. He said the group's explanation of the collection of data as an accident was "highly unusual". "One of the largest companies in the world, the market leader on the internet, simply disobeyed normal rules in the development and usage of software," he said. In the US, the Federal Trade Commission was expected to launch an inquiry as well, according to people who spoke to agency officials. Privacy advocates said an inquiry could look at whether the collection of data breached rules on unauthorised access to computers and private communications. "This may be one of the most massive surveillance incidents by a private corporation that has ever occurred", said Marc Rotenberg, leader of the nonprofit Electronic Privacy Information Centre in Washington. "It is unprecedented vacuuming of WiFi data by a private company. Can you imagine what would happen if a German corporation was sending cars through Washington sucking up all this information?" Google reiterated its statements from late Friday in Europe, when it reversed earlier denials that it had collected personal activity. It said it had been using a fleet of camera-equipped Street View vehicles, which take pictures for the group's imaging services, and had been at the same time using the cars to assemble a database of electronic WiFi addresses intended to improve the functioning of its maps and other location services. Google said the project leaders ignored that the vehicles were also taking in snippets of activity on the WiFi networks. "We didn't want to collect this data in the first place and we would like to dest

Google and Intel are expected to announce a significant breakthrough into consumer electronics and the broadcast industry this week with the launch of a "Smart TV" platform. Top executives from the Silicon Valley companies are reported to be ready to reveal a deal with Sony, bringing web services to its televisions, during Google's annual developer conference in San Francisco. Intel's Atom microprocessor and Google's Android operating system are spearheading their assault on set-top boxes and TVs featuring integrated internet services. Intel pioneered internet "widgets" on TV screens with Yahoo in 2008 but while many other players have entered the market since, it remains fragmented and has been slow to take off.

It's rush hour, and you're headed due West on your evening commute -- the sun burning holes in your eyes. You could flip down a window visor, trading your field of view for visibility. Or, with a prototype shown off at Intel's 2010 International Science and Engineering Fair, you could simply let the windshield darken on its own. Two San Diego students (both accustomed to copious amounts of sunshine) rigged a Toyota Prius to do just that by stringing up electrochromic panels, which dim when voltage is applied. The trick is figuring out when and where to apply it, because when the sun is shining the panels themselves all receive the same amount of light. So instead of gauging it at the glass, Aaron Schild and Rafael Cosman found that an ultrasonic range finder could track the driver's position while a VGA webcam measured the light coming through, and darken the sections liable to cause the most eyestrain. We saw a prototype in person, and it most certainly works... albeit slowly. If you're rearing to roll your own, it seems raw materials are reasonably affordable -- Schild told us electrochromic segments cost $0.25 per square inch -- but you may not need to DIY. Having won $4,000 in prize money at the Fair, the teens say they intend to commercialize the technology, and envision it natively embedded in window glass in the not-too-distant future. Here's hoping GM gives them a call. See pics of the Prius below, or check out a video demo of their prototype right after the break.

Mac and Linux users are still being asked to hold their horses, but Windows loyalists can begin testing out that hotly-anticipated group video calling feature today. Skype's latest beta, which was detailed earlier in the month, is now available to download for those willing to take the risk, with Skype 5.0 Beta adding support for "group video calls with up to four people." Hit that source link to get things rolling, and be sure to drop us a line once you and your four besties have had a chance to give 'er a go.

Slowly but surely, LED light bulbs have been getting brighter and more efficient, but price has always been a major factor staying their adoption. Back in 2007, a single 308 lumen bulb cost $65, and the more things changed, the more they've stayed the same. Now, out of the blue, The Home Depot has stepped forward with a cost-effective alternative. For $20, the new EcoSmart LED bulb promises a 429 lumen, 40W equivalent with a 50,000 hour expected lifetime, making it cheaper and nearly as powerful as the 450 lumen, $40-50 design industry heavyweight GE unveiled last month. Best of all, it's already available for purchase (though backordered) at our source link. Honestly, we're starting to wonder what the catch is. PR after the break.

The burgeoning legal challenges to Apple over its rapid advances in mobile computing mounted on Friday when Finland's Nokia launched a patent infringement suit over the iPad. Nokia accused Apple in a US federal court in Wisconsin of infringing five patents in the iPad, which has sold 1m units since its US debut in March. Nokia's suit cites technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations that allow for more compact devices. "These patented innovations are important to Nokia's success as they allow improved product performance and design," the Finnish company said in a statement. Apple had no immediate response. The Finnish company, the world's biggest mobile phone maker, is already in dispute with Apple over alleged patent infringement in the iPhone. IDC said on Friday that Nokia's smartphone market share in the first quarter was flat at 39 per cent, while Apple saw its share of the shipments jump to 16 per cent from 11 per cent a year ago, closing in on Canada's Research in Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry, which occupies second spot. Overall, smartphone sales rose 57 per cent in the quarter. The iPad is Apple's bid to leverage its smartphone success into a new category of mobile computing, with fingertip control instead of a mouse and an interface designed for consuming digital content. Apple announced on Friday that the device would go on sale outside the US at the end of the month in nine other countries. The US technology group is planning to charge more for the iPad in other countries than it does in the US, with UK prices starting at £429 ($632) for tablet devices, which currently only offers a WiFi connection to the internet. Prices in continental Europe will begin at €499 ($630). This compares with $499 in the US. The latest patent dispute, as well as the earlier cases, will aim to establish whether the intellectual property that powers Apple's mobile devices owes more to the world of mobile

You know that little sleep indicator light on the front of your new MacBook Pro -- the one that simply disappears when your notebook is wide awake? Apple wants to do that for buttons, too. Cupertino's latest patent application is for pressure-sensitive, capacitive touchscreen materials it could build right into the surface of its aluminum-clad devices, and identify with laser-cut, micro-perforated holes that let light shine from within. According to the filing, the technology could potentially be used to eliminate existing buttons in favor of a smooth, solid slab, and / or integrate new ones into surfaces that weren't previously considered for use. Engineers imagine light-up controls on a laptop's lid that could be used while closed for things like USB charging and media playback, and local heat and sound sensors that selectively light up interface opportunities when users are in close proximity. Not bad, Apple. As long as you let us keep our nice, springy keyboards, we're all for revolutionizing the rest of modern input.

Backing away from a previous position, are we Nintendo? Just a month after Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime claimed that the iPhone OS (you know, that operating system used on the iPod touch, iPhone family and the iPad) wasn't a "viable profit platform for game development," along comes the company's president to say that, in fact, Apple is the primary "enemy of the future." That's according to Times Online, who says that the Big N's CEO (Satoru Iwata) feels that the battle with Sony is a "victory already won," and who clearly believes that the next wave of gaming won't be of the traditional sit-on-your-coach-and-slam-buttons variety. 'Course, the PSP never has been able to hang with the DS family, but even the Wii has a ways to go before it catches the mighty PlayStation 2 in terms of global sales. Going forward, the company is purportedly looking to revive the element of "surprise" in Nintendo products, but it might be best served by simply catching up to the competition and supporting this wild concept known as "HD gaming" over "HDMI."

This ain't the first rodeo for Visa and DeviceFidelity, and if we had to guess, we suspect it won't be the last. Just a few short months after teaming up to bring contactless payments to any mobile with a microSD slot, the two are at it again -- this time aiming for the oh-so-tantalizing iPhone market. Reportedly, the tandem is toiling away in an effort to concoct a protective iPhone shell with a secure memory card that hosts Vista's contactless payment app, payWave. As it stands, the product would only function on the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, leaving upcoming iPhone 4G / HD / Barhopper buyers out in the cold. As with any other payWave-enabled handset, this would allow users to simply tap and go when checking out, a process that our pals over in Japan have had down for centuries now. If all goes well, market trials of the payment-enabled iPhone are set to begin this summer, or approximately six months too late for anyone to seriously care.

Household, Misc. Gadgets Northeastern University students build web-syncing, home-automating DPAC alarm clock By Donald Melanson posted May 6th 2010 4:51PM It may not actually be available for sale, but it looks like some students from Northeastern University are giving devices like the Chumby and Sony Dash a run for their money. They've built this so-called Dynamically Programmable Alarm Clock, or DPAC, which can sync up with your Google Calendar to automatically set alarms, get traffic, weather and other information, and even integrate with a home automation system to turn on the lights, open the blinds, and start your coffee maker as part of a wake-up cycle. What's more, the whole thing can also be configured using a web interface, and it of course packs a built-in FM radio and an iPod dock for good measure. Hit up the source link below for a look at the months-long build process, and head on past the break to check it out in action. See: http://egaertner.com/dpac/

It's hardly been a secret that Windows 7 was on track to become Microsoft's fastest-selling operating system, but the company has just now finally made that designation official, and also revealed that the OS has crossed the magical 100 million licenses sold mark in the process. In other words, that translates to Windows 7 being installed on one in ten of the world's PCs just six months after it launched, which is pretty darn impressive any way you slice it -- or punch it, as the case may be.