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.