I was surprised when we has snow storm at the end of April. Now, I don’t know what to feel at the end of May, when we are having another snow storm, again.

It is mid-spring and all the plans for the weekend were shattered by the snow storm. It was, May 28, the day of iPad release, but I didn’t feel like going to the Apple store to watch the line of buyers of the Apple’s magic creation.

I hope I won’t have to complain the weather again for a few months. 

Here are some photos of snow…

Google celebrated Pacman’s 30th anniversary yesterday with an interactive PacMan Google logo. The birthday cake is all chowed-up – the the birthday party is all done but the cool, interactive, and fully functional PacMan logo is still featured in Google.com. That left me wondering if the PacMan logo signify more than a simple birthday party!

Google is in the verge of releasing an Operating System, a web based OS. The programs in the Chrome OS are supposed to work like the PacMan logo. The games and programs are supposed to run in remote servers and we, consumers, won’t need a hard disk to install software.

When the announcement of a Web Apps store like the Apple Apps store and PacMan birthday mystically coincided, and the ‘birthday logo’ was featured in an extended period, I believe Google wants us to believe this is how Google’s OS works.

The PacMan logo is made in code Google has been promoting lately, JavaScript. Chrome browser is told to perform a number of times better in dealing with JavaScript when compared to other browser.

Google is trying to redefine how we use computers. They told that the desktop is soon going to be obsolete and, now it is becoming clear how they are going to change the computing platform.

Later this year, Google is planning to open a Web application store for easier set up programs based on the Chrome browser. It is an important step towards the release of Chrome OS, Google announced last year.

The online store was previewed during a Google conference for software programmers. The Chrome OS is being developed for light-weight laptops (netbooks) that don’t have any hard drives. Every programs run on it will be remotely hosted and run. Chrome OS powered computers will be cheap and are expected to arrive in store in time for the holiday shopping season.

The Google’s Web apps store is also expected to provide applications for tablet computers to compete with Apple’s iPad. Like the Apple store, the Google store will also feature paid as well as free apps to download for the computers using Chrome OS

Started in May of 2005, with an objective to offer users with an option to upload easily and share videos with each other, YouTube has largely been successful in the said objective.

In the last 5 years, the site has grown to become the most visited video site in the world, with over two billion views daily.  In every single minute, people upload more than 24 hours of video footage. YouTube history is well presented in the following video:

YouTube is localized in 22 countries in 24 different languages. It receives 70 percent of all its video uploads from outside the United States these days. The most popular video on YouTube is Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance”, with over 200 million views – posted below:

A Canadian chef, Ted Reader, made a huge hamburger, weighing 268 Kg (590 pounds)! He put the burger together at Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto, in an attempt to get into the Guinness Book of World Records. The previous heaviest burger weighed only 84 kgs (185.8 pounds).

The award-winning chef used a specially designed grill with a built-in forklift mechanism designed to flip the oversized culinary creation.

Reader says it took six hours to cook the behemoth of a burger, starting off with a patty weighing 139 kilos. The grilled patty was then nestled in a 48-kilogram bun, dressed with lettuce, cheese, tomatoes, red onions, pickles and barbecue sauce.

An auction was held and it also raised $8,500 to benefit a camp program, Camp Bucko, for children with burn injuries. (source)

Now, it is HTC, who is suing Apple in response to a patent infringement lawsuit filed by Apple in March.  HTC, a Taiwan based smart-phone manufacturer, makes phones based on Google Inc and Microsoft Corp software.

In the lawsuit, HTC is accusing Apple of infringing five HTC patents but, didn’t specify the patents by names. HTC has asked the ITC, a U.S. trade panel that investigates patent infringement involving imported goods, for a halt of the importation and sale of the company’s popular mobile devices.

People usually don’t expect Apple to respond to media reports. But, a report saying Android is outselling the iPhone should have worried the company. Apple spokeswoman Natalie Harrison told John Paczkowski of Digital Daily:

This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide. IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon.

As long as the iPhone continues to grow at 130% per year worldwide, Apple won’t be much worried. One thing to be noted – iPod touch is not a smartphone. They might have add the a million of iPads, sold in a month, in the list though.

Some even accuse the Android success: “… drastically reduced pricing, and aggressive buy-one-get-one-free offers from wireless providers create a false sense of success.”

It is nice to know that they at least are worried. We, as consumers need competition. It doesn’t matter whether it is Apple, Google, Microsoft, RIM, or Palm (HP I mean).

Google’s Android platform has inched itself to second position with a market share of 28% in the US after RIM’s Blackberry in the smart-phone market, leaving the iPhone in the third position.

Android’s start was not that smooth as compared to iPhone but Google picked-up with multi-touch and attractive handsets. Multi-carrier and multiple handset manufactures (from Motorolla, HTC, Samsung etc.) gives Android a clear advantage to iPhone’s single hardware and a single carrier.

Yes, iPhone still has a greatest advantage on its pocket, the App Store with more than 150,000 apps, when compared to about 50,000 Android apps. But, strict and inconsistent approval system is scaring away the developers.

Do you think the Android’s ‘Open’ system will win over the ‘Closed’ iPhone system in the long run?

Adobe is planning to demonstrate a version of Flash for Google’s Android software in May at the Google I/O conference, in response to Steve Jobs’ criticism of Flash in an open letter. Adobe also plans to give its employees mobile phones powered by Google’s Android mobile operating system, and running a new mobile version of Flash created for the platform.

Adobe’s chief technology officer, Kevin Lynch wrote in a company blog post that the company was moving on without Apple. He said, "…given the legal terms Apple has imposed on developers, we have already decided to shift our focus away from Apple devices for both Flash Player and AIR."