The world’s largest Internet-based commerce company, Amazon Inc., is venturing into unfamiliar territory by launching a new mobile applications store, Amazon Appstore, for Google Android powered devices on Monday.

Amazon Appstore directly competes with Android Marketplace, the native application store for Android powered devices, but currently only has about 4,000 applications in its index, a number that is likely to grow exponentially in the coming weeks.

Users could access Amazon Appstore directly from their PC browser, or from an Android device.

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In another apparent attack on its computer systems, the world’s largest search engine, Google Inc., is publically pointing the finger at the Chinese government for allegedly manipulating how some of its services function in China.

It appears many basic functions and tasks within Google’s Gmail email service, including sending messages, using the instant messaging service Gtalk within Gmail, starring or marking messages as read, all appear to be sporadically hindered for users in China.

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Research In Motion, the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, has made available its new Facebook application for BlackBerry devices, available now in beta to a limited number of people through BlackBerry Beta Zone.

The revamped application features a more intuitive user interface that is more consistent with the BlackBerry experience. For example, other system notifications outside of the Facebook app, like new e-mails or BBM notifications, now appear unobtrusively at the top of the system bar.

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The Waterloo, Ontario-based maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion (RIM), today announced a cloud-based data storage partnership with the world’s largest software vendor, Microsoft Corp.

RIM will use Microsoft servers and software to provide cloud-based storage solutions for clients, as more of them shift their data to the cloud.

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The world’s largest Internet search engine, Google Inc., has released a new search application, Google Mobile App, for Apple iOS devices that includes a revamped user interface with new gesture controls, new features, and improved performance, among other enhancements.

The new swipe features make searches more intuitive by utilizing new swipe gestures that bring up contextual menus. For example, if you swipe from left to right, a contextual menu appears that allows you to filter your results by time, Google Places, Images, News, Videos, Blogs, Discussions, among other parameters.

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The world’s most popular online search engine, Google, lost an immaterial amount of market share in February 2011 over the previous month, according to a new report published by the research firm HitWise.

The decline in Google market share was the result of a marginal gain in the combined market share of top rivals, Microsoft and Yahoo.

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Apple has published the first promotional detailed video showcasing the new features of GarageBand for iPad.

The application features a number of virtual instruments, including piano, guitar, a drum set, among other instruments and tools.

When using the virtual piano, a user could set a number of different settings, including the ability to change the keyboard size, and even the ability to display dual keyboards.

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The world’s largest Internet search engine, Google, has announced a new feature for mobile users that will make searching for content from a mobile a more seamless experience.

Google added a new feature to search result pages that allows users to pan through previews of websites returned in search results.

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The Waterloo-based maker of the popular BlackBerry smartphone, Research In Motion (RIM) Inc., has confirmed a new partnership with the online media retailer 7digital Inc.

The strategic partnership aims to make RIM’s upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook tablet more attractive to consumers by offering a seamless app for users to purchase digital media, including individual songs, albums, videos, among other content.

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The world’s most popular online search engine, Google Inc., yesterday implemented the most significant changes in over a year to its search algorithms that rank websites in an effort to increase the quality of its index.

Google says its primary goal is to provide the most relevant results for queries as quickly as possible, but for years, low-quality websites have been gaming Google’s proprietary systems to artificially increase their rankings, thereby getting more visitors from organic search results.

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