Gmail's free voice calls will be available through all of 2011, still only in the US

While the rest of the world has yet to taste the sweet elixir of free voice calls from its email supplier, US-based Gmailers are having their fun extended for a whole new year. Back in August, Google made it possible to dial up voice numbers in the US and Canada for free from anywhere in the world, and now, in the true holiday spirit of keeping users happy and advertising dollars flowing, Google promises to keep that service free through all of 2011. 

Nexus S gets its first update over the air

We don't know what it fixes yet, but we've gotten some tips -- and we're now seeing it on xda-developers -- that Nexus S handsets in the field are getting blessed with their first software update, build GRH78 (up from GRH55) with an official version of 2.3.1. Not everyone has it yet (we don't on ours), so as usual, this would seem to be getting sent out on a rolling basis. 

Update: The full text of the update is "This system update from Google contains important bug fixes plus the latest version of Maps." It's 1.9MB -- so yeah, don't expect much!

Update 2: By the way, it appears that the "checkin" trick is actually working to force this update (it usually doesn't). Just dial *#*#checkin#*#* from the dialer and you should get the update notification. Have fun!

TOYOTA UNVEILS REVISED VITZ (YARIS) 2011 (Photo gallery)

Toyota has unveiled a revised version of its Vitz hatchback. Better known as the Yaris in North America, it is likely that we will see the updated car on our shores in the near future. hit read more for details.

Video : Google Sends The Nexus S On A Mission To Space - Literally

Google obviously has some grand ambitions for Android, its mobile OS that is now being activated on 300,000 devices per day and has a forthcoming release called Honeycomb that will take on the iPad. But even that isn’t enough — now Google wants to bring the green robot to an entirely new market: the final frontier (read outer space). Hit read more for details and videos taken from the phones from above the planet.

Pakistani IT firm's Smartphone App ranks number one in the world!

Khaleej times reports that Photo editing software developed by a Pakistan technology firm Five Rivers became the best selling paid-for application for the Blackberry, the firm said on Wednesday.

Lahore-based Five Rivers said its Photo Editor Suite had hit the top spot across all sectors on Blackberry’s AppWorld store.

Hit Read more for details.

Apple looking to patent sharable apps, considers calling them 'seeds'

The fine folks at Patently Apple recently unearthed an Apple patent app that describes a way to transfer apps over peer-to-peer Bluetooth or shiny, star-filled WiFi. The idea goes that if a company wants to spread a program by word of mouth, it might as well make it shareable too, and so the owner of an app could transfer an "application seed" to friends and associates with a similar device. You'd pick from a menu of apps to beam over, where only those greenlit by their developer would be available to send, and your recipient would receive a trial version -- or somewhat less excitingly, a link to the App Store -- over the air. Hit read more for details.

Net Neutrality - What is this controversy all about?

One debate that in developed economies is quickly gaining pace and is getting increasingly important for the rest of the world is the debate on net neutrality. This topic will be heard increasingly over technology blogs and will spill over into the mainstream news as the end users start getting affected. The decisions made by the big internet providers of the world and the regulators will in turn effect all the internet users of the world  whether they reside in developed or underdeveloped economies (like ours) because if this ends up wrong, it has the potential to create essentially two different sides completely separate from one another. Hit read more for the complete article.

Word Lens augmented reality app instantly translates whatever you point it at

Augmented reality and optical character recognition have just come into their own, beautifully intertwined into an instant translation app for the iPhone. Download Word Lens, pay $4.99 for a language pack, then point it at a sign and watch as it replaces every word with one in your native tongue. It's a little bit like Pleco, but without the whole language learning stuff. We just gave it a spin, and while it's not quite as accurate as this video claims, it's still breathtaking to behold -- especially as it doesn't require an internet connection to do any lookup. Sadly, it only translates to and from English and Spanish for now.

Another Key Feature Of Google +1: Massive-Scale Social Video Conferencing

Over the past few weeks, we’ve been able to dig up a bunch of details about Google’s secret forthcoming social service. The service, previously codenamed “Emerald Sea” but currently being called “+1“, essentially seems to be a toolbar that exists along the top of Google’s various properties to allow for easy sharing. 

But there’s also quite a bit more to it, based on what we’ve been hearing. For one thing, we’ve been hearing a bit of talk about specific mobile applications, which may or may not be called “Loop” — after one of the key features of +1 (think: groups). But another feature of +1 is apparently large-scale video conferencing. Hit read more for details.

Google Takes Another Big Step to Retain Employees: Autonomous Business Units

There’s a lie that companies and entrepreneurs tell themselves in order to commit to an acquisition.

Oh, we’re not going to change anything! We’re just going to give you more resources to do what you’ve been doing even better!

Yeah! They bought us for a reason, why would they ruin things?

It usually works for a little while, but big company bureaucracy– whether it’s HR, politics or just endless meetings– almost always creeps in. It’s a law of nature: Big companies just need certain processes to run and entrepreneurs hate those processes because they stifle nimble innovation.

Google has a new policy to fight it, according to several sources close to the company. Hit read more for details.