Friday, Jan 9, 2009    Text size: 

The Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas dominates the tech news this week, with announcements from Google and many other leading companies.

• Google is prepping the latest version of its web browser, Chrome. New additions for this release will include:

• A new version of the open-source development platform WebKit.
• Autocomplete for forms.
• Import functionality from Google Bookmarks.

To download Google Chrome, visit Google.com.

• President-elect Obama is urging Congress to postpone the national switch-over to digital signals for TV.

• A federal judge has rejected an effort by police to listen in on the touch-tone signals from the telephones of suspects.

• Users on the instant-messaging aggregator Meebo may have noticed that Facebook chat vanished recently. That's because Facebook asked them to take it down and improve the service due to security concerns.

• Some former MySpace developers have launched Corkin.com, yet another challenger to Craigslist's throne.

• Palm has a new handheld device called the Pre, and Mobile Crunch has a preview of it.

• This one may be of interest to any geeks among the webmaster community: There's a new game available at CES that involves controlling a floating ball with your mind.

• TechCrunch has a full roundup of the biggest news coming out of CES.

• A new online gizmo called StoryBlender lets users add interactive features to still images.

• Is Joost finding its second wind?

• A model has sued Google because of disparaging remarks made about her on Google's Blogger service.

• Samsung may be gearing up to unveil a new 12-inch laptop.

• Here's a new MP3 player that has, of all things, a breathalyzer and mosquito repellant.