3D is emerging as one of the hottest trends in consumer electronics this year, especially in the digital camera and camcorder realm. Major brands including Sony, JVC and Panasonic all tout the technology that has finally reached a level of quality where it can be taken seriously. While 3D represents one of the most exciting enhancements to our entertainment experience, unit sales are still very low. Yes, even the earliest of adopters aren’t buying 3D TVs — yet.

Welcome to this morning’s edition of “First To Know,” a series in which we keep you in the know on what’s happening in the digital world. We’re keeping our eyes on six particular stories of interest today.
Recap: 12 Stories of Egypt in Turmoil
We’ve been closely watching the rise of the protests in Egypt since they began, and in case you’ve missed our coverage, here’s a recap.
Study: Android Now the Most Popular Smartphone Platform
Google’s mobile platform Android has overtaken Symbian to become the top smartphone platform in Q4 2010, research firm Canalys reports.

As part of ongoing quality assurance, Intel Corporation has discovered a design issue in a recently released support chip, the Intel 6 Series, code-named Cougar Point, and has implemented a silicon fix.

In some cases, the Serial-ATA (SATA) ports within the chipsets may degrade over time, potentially impacting the performance or functionality of SATA-linked devices such as hard disk drives and DVD-drives. The chipset is utilized in PCs with Intel’s latest Second Generation Intel Core processors, code-named Sandy Bridge.

A group of engineers from Google, Twitter and SayNow (which Google acquired last week) were hard at work building a speak-to-tweet service for protesters in Egypt this weekend. The service, which is already live, enables users to send tweets using a voice connection. Tweets sent using the service will automatically include the hashtag #egypt.
People can also listen to the tweet messages by dialing the above numbers, and by clicking on the links posted to @speak2tweet.
“We hope that this will go some way to helping people in Egypt stay connected at this very difficult time. Our thoughts are with everyone there,” Ujjwal Singh, co-founder of SayNow, and Google product manager Abdel Karim Mardini wrote in a blog post.

Facebook has finally added the ability to access the site via a HTTP Secure (HTTPS) connection, which
should drastically increase security for users.
HTTPS provides a combination of the HTTP and SSL protocols, enabling encrypted communication between your computer and a web server. Without it you’re exposed to sniffing attacks on the network; for example, if you’re using a public Wi-Fi to access

Skype for Mac is out of beta, and version 5.0 is now available as a free download. No longer the poor stepchild of the PC, it’s finally catching up, matching most of the features of the PC version 5.0.
Included in the new features are a call control bar, group video calling, the ability to search chat content, integration with the OS X Address Book, and a smaller floating contacts monitor. The only missing feature from the Windows version of Skype is its integration of the Facebook newsfeed.
The beta version of Skype for Mac OS X has been available since last November (and the PC beta version was available in

A scientist at the network security company Arbor Networks has used data from 80 Internet service providers around the world to create an image of the Internet block in Egypt. The graphic, which was compiled using anonymous traffic engineering statistics, shows traffic to and from Egypt dropping sharply around 5:20 p.m. ET. As of about three hours ago, traffic has not picked back up.
Craig Labovitz, the creator of the graphic and chief scientist at Arbor Networks, says that he found no evidence of Internet disruption in Syria, debunking a report from Al Arabiya earlier Friday that

Logitech claims its Couch Mouse M515 is optimized for soft surfaces such as sofas, beds or carpets. No stranger to the wonders and allure of a comfy couch, I was eager to see if it could do better than other pointing devices at navigating a PC from, shall we say, more relaxing surroundings. I got the Couch Mouse working just a few seconds after plugging in Logitech’s signature “unifying receiver,” a USB dongle scarcely the size of a thumbnail that communicates flawlessly with most of its new pointing devices. Flipping on its switch underneath, the Couch Mouse was ready for action.
Next it was time to try the mouse on a variety of surfaces, and it was able to navigate them all as if it were sliding around on a mousepad. Logitech calls the mouse “easy gliding,” and that’s a true statement.

Google will be holding a press event next Wednesday, February 2, at its Mountain View headquarters to show off Android Honeycomb, the company’s tablet-optimized OS.
The invitation, which just landed in our inboxes, asks us to join the search giant “for an in-depth look at Honeycomb, Android ecosystem news and hands-on demos.” The stage presentations will begin at 10:00 a.m. PT. Google is calling it the event “A Taste of What’s New from Android.”

Facebook for Android has been upgraded to version 1.5.1, bringing access to Facebook Deals and fixing a number of bugs.
Deals, which are only available in the U.S. at this time, show up when you check into a place, with the surrounding places displaying a yellow icon if they offer deals.
Unfortunately, Android’s fragmentation rears its ugly head here, as many of the comments on the official Facebook post complain about bugs not being fixed, new bugs appearing or some features going missing – depending on what version of Android the commenters use.

While we're always using our brains, we're not necessarily doing much to keep them in good shape. Here are the top ten sites and tools to train your brain and exercise your mental muscles.

Pixiq has a great write up on the similarities and differences between the our eye and a camera. Apparently, we're the same in image focusing and light adjustment but different in lens focus and sensitivity to light. What else?

 

 

Canon

$500 and Under

But should you switch?

Phone Calls

The Sony PSP2 has arrived under the codename NGP. It has a 5-inch OLED touchscreen, dual analog sticks, front/rear cameras,a touch-sensitive panel on the back of the device used for control along with a quad-core CPU and GPU.

“The Social Network Addiction” was the topic of discussion at a panel in Davos, Switzerland for the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting.
The panel, which was moderated by Loïc Le Meur, the founder and CEO of Seesmic, included Google’s Vice President of Search Marissa Mayer, professor and author Clay Shirky, Linkedin Executive Chairman and founder Reid Hoffman, the Archbishop of Dublin,

Sony India has launched the new Vaio YB range of notebooks based on AMD Vision CPU and GPU platforms, at a price tag starting Rs. 26,990 plus taxes.
Sporting a 11.6-inch display the Vaio YB is available in three colors of pink, silver and green.
The entry-level model comes with the AMD E-350 1.6GHz processor with Radeon HD 6310 graphics. It supports up to 4GB RAM, and ships with 500GB HDD.
The new range will be available across all Sony Centers and major large format outlets from February 2011 onwards.

Egypt Government decided to ban Twitter.com in Egypt on 25 January due to its role in dissemination of the revolutionary ideology among Egyptians.
Although Facebook has a similar or may be larger role, it have not yet been banned, however some news sources claim that it will be banned during the coming hours.

Cleaning through my disks, and found some old renders from an unfinished animation.

We are starting to see commercials for the iPhone 4 from Verizon Wireless.  Even Apple shows how lovely both the AT&T and Verizon iPhone 4s are performing an app waltz together.

An iPhone commercial on YouTube, with the Blue Danube in the background, shows an AT&T iPhone and an Verizon iPhone performing the same steps and apps - each ending with two FaceTime video callers waving to each other.

There's a reason why the Concorde only few over the Atlantic Ocean: Sonic booms. If every airplane were supersonic, it'd be extremely noisy and annoying. Fortunately, NASA is working in a solution.

What are Phytonutrients?

Phytonutrients are nutrients derived from plant material that have been shown to be necessary for sustaining human life. Phytochemicals are non-nutritive plant chemicals that contain protective, disease-preventing, compounds. Their role in plants is to protect plants from disease, injuries, insects, drought, excessive heat,

Shortly after CEO Dennis Crowley spoke at Europe’s DLD conference Monday, Foursquare announced that more than 6 million people have registered a Foursquare account. In addition, the company released an infographic celebrating its impressive growth in 2010.

eBay is out with its latest earnings report, and with it, some intriguing numbers about just how big of a role mobile commerce is starting to play in its business.
Overall, eBay’s revenue for 2010 hit $9.1 billion, $5.7 billion of which came from eBay’s marketplace business (from $53 billion worth of goods sold) and $3.4 billion of which came from PayPal transaction fees (from $91 billion worth of transactions).

Tired of dealing with wires to charge your mobile device? The Energizer Inductive Charger lets you place your iPhone or Blackberry on its shiny black surface, where it immediately begins charging wirelessly.
Energizer’s $89 inductive charging station has been available for a few months, and the company’s been working on the various sleeves that must be placed on devices so they can work with it. So far, there’s a sleeve for the iPhone 3G and 3GS, a replacement door for the BlackBerry Curve 8900, and now,

Z5C7DJ2DPHV4

Tired of dealing with wires to charge your mobile device? The Energizer Inductive Charger lets you place your iPhone or Blackberry on its shiny black surface, where it immediately begins charging wirelessly.
Energizer’s $89 inductive charging station has been available for a few months, and the company’s been working on the various sleeves that must be placed on devices so they can work with it.

On February 2nd around 4 a.m., the Internet will run out of its current version of IP addresses. At least that’s what one Internet Service Provider is predicting based on a rate of about one million addresses every four hours.
Hurricane Electric has launched Twitter and Facebook accounts that count down to what it has termed the “IPcalypse.”

Verizon has just launched its first commercial spot for the long-awaited Verizon iPhone on YouTube.
The 30-second spot teases customers for the February 10 launch of the iPhone 4 on Verizon. It features lots of ticking clocks, dramatic music and people waiting in anticipation for the day the iPhone makes its way to largest carrier in the U.S.
There is only one line in the entire commercial:

“To our millions of customers who never stopped believing this day would come… thank you.”

Let the Verizon iPhone countdown begin.

Here’s video evidence that lets you see the new multitouch, app-switching capability on the iPhone. We’ve seen this trick on a video featuring the iPad, but not one with the iPhone.
Similar to the gestures available now on Apple’s laptops with their “Magic Trackpads,” a four- or five-finger multitouch gesture lets users move from one application to another. But don’t get your hopes up about using this on iPads or iPhones when iOS 4.3 is officially released. We obtained this from Apple’s official release notes for iOS 4.3, beta 2:

Despite the undoubted popularity of third-party photo and video sharing services, it could be argued that Twitter is all about language.
Whether it’s usernames, hashtags or that infamous 140-character limit, the service is built around using language in a very specific way. Even more fascinating to word lovers, Twitter has added a ton of vocab to our online lexicon, made abbreviations much more acceptable, and can spread new words globally in minutes.

We had so much fun pulling together the gallery of new Facebook profile photo hacks (not to mention a great reader response), we decided to follow up the original collection with 10 more creations.
This time around we’ve sourced all the images from the marvelous

Facebook users are showing off some serious creativity by taking advantage of the new profile page photo layout.
French artist Alexandre Oudin (below) has been identified as the creator of the craze, and more and more designs are now emerging. People have been playing around with their profile pics since Facebook first launched, but the new redesign allows for some inspired fun including clever animations, typography and photography magic.

Facebook has just announced that it has raised $1.5 billion in venture funding from Digital Sky Technologies, Goldman Sachs and clients of the investment bank. With this round, Facebook is officially worth $50 billion.
“Our business continues to perform well, and we are pleased to be able to bolster our cash position with this new financing,” Facebook CFO David Ebersman said in its announcement.

 

Here’s a comparison of two Verizon-bound smartphones recently introduced at CES 2011, with Verizon’s iPhone 4 rolled out last week sandwiched in between. Created by one of Skatter Tech‘s student reporters, it’s remarkably comprehensive.


When you compare the Motorola Droid Bionic and HTC Thunderbolt to the iPhone 4, the iPhone starts to look like last year’s model. Well, that’s because it is.

At long last, the mythical white iPhone 4 could finally be ready to reach stores.
According to reports from Engadget and MacRumors, white iPhone 4 units are showing up in inventory systems at Vodafone Germany and Best Buy. Leaked screenshots of the Best Buy inventory system indicate a projected in-stock date of February 27, 2011.