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Google’s now famous Android operating system has hit a milestone as 10 billion applications have been downloaded from the Android marketplace. The data from Google states that it just took 20 months for the market to get to just a billion apps and five more months after that to hit 2 billion. The word is now it is delivering more than a billion apps per month which is the same number Apple actually claimed in October. So the droid is growing and is continuing to keep pace with Apple. Looks like we have a good healthy competition here and Apple has finally met its match.

In Switzerland, just as in dozens of other countries, the entertainment industries have been complaining about dramatic losses in revenue due to online piracy.
In a response, the Swiss government has been conducting a study into the impact downloading has on society, and this week their findings were presented.
The overall conclusion of the study is that the current copyright law, under which downloading copyrighted material for personal use is permitted, doesn’t have to change.
Their report begins with noting that when it comes to copying files, the Internet has proven a game-changer. While the photocopier, audio cassette tape and VCR allowed users to make good quality copies of various media, these devices lacked a in-built distribution method. The world-wide web changed all that.
Distribution method or not, the entertainment industries have opposed all these technological inventions out of fear that their businesses would be crushed. This is not the right response according to the Swiss government, which favors the option of putting technology to good use instead of taking the repressive approach.

It has been reported for the holidays Verizon is releasing 2 4G Droid tablets! The wireless carrier plans to sell the Motorola Mobility Droid Xyboard in two sizes: a larger 10-inch design and a smaller 8-inch brother. Verizon didn’t provide details on the specifications, pricing, or launch date, although it will come out this month.

Motorola declined to provide details as well.

“As we’ve previously mentioned, we’re planning to bring several new LTE devices to market including two tablets,” the company said in a statement. “We haven’t made any official announcements in the U.S. but we look forward to sharing more details soon.”

For Verizon, the Xyboard tablets represent two high-profile additions to its growing portfolio of 4G LTE devices. That the carrier has opted to add the Droid name signals that both products are part of its premium lineup. Motorola, meanwhile, gets another crack at the tablet market with the successors to the Xoom. (They are sold overseas as Xoom 2).

Both tablets have a 1.2 gigahertz dual-core processor and 1 gigabyte of RAM. They each have a 5-megapixel camera in the back and a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera. The devices are both thinner than a AAA battery and lighter than a paperback book. They also feature Corning’s tough Gorilla Glass.
The 10-inch Xyboard is intended for use by business customers, and includes a stylus. The smaller Xyboard, meanwhile, is intended to be a more media-centric device and comes with a 2.1 virtual surround sound system that includes a subwoofer.

It looks like it will be reported that a beta version of Windows 8 will be out February of 2012. he timing of the public beta launch has been the subject of much debate in the technology community. It is expected that Windows 8 will be released in 2012, but the exact expected date for the completion and shipping of the forthcoming operating system remains undisclosed. However, knowing the release time frame of the beta is very exciting and will be anticipated by many developers.
While February is perhaps farther off than some were hoping, Windows 8 continues to make progress, and assuming Microsoft makes this milestone we think it should still be on track for its expected third quarter launch next year. That means it could be, unless something goes horribly wrong, on hardware everywhere for the next holiday sales cycle.

On Thursday, Napster will officially merge with Rhapsody, the largest on-demand music service in the United States. Rhapsody signed an agreement last month to purchase Napster for an undisclosed sum from its parent company, Best Buy.

Napster originally launched in 1999 and quickly brought a ruckus to the digital and music worlds. Two years later it was shut down by court order while the Recording Industry Association of America filed a series of lawsuits against Napster users who illegally downloaded music for free from dorms and bedrooms nationwide. A series of similar services like Kazaa and LimeWire sprang up behind Napster as downloading individual tracks and burning mix CDs became a permanent trend.

Eventually record companies accepted that music fans were no longer willing to buy entire CDs in order to listen to a couple songs, and iTunes’ 99-cents-per-song model emerged as a compromise of sorts.

The iTunes model eventually saw competition form music-streaming sites like Grooveshark, Rhapsody and European competitor Spotify, where Napster co-founder Sean Parker is a major investor.