World’s leading mobile music discovery provider Shazam today announced the availability of its (SHAZAM)^RED Special Edition App on the App Store. Unlike the Shazam app which is free, the new app costs $4.99 like Shazam Encore app. Apart from updated content related to (RED)™, rest of features are mostly similar to that of Shazam Encore. Shazam will donate 20% of the proceeds to (RED). (RED) works towards eradication & awareness of HIV and AIDS in Africa.

“(RED) enables consumers to positively impact the lives of those living with AIDS in Africa through their purchases of products and we are incredibly honored to be the first mobile app company to partner with them,” said Andrew Fisher, CEO of Shazam. “Given our popularity and that we already have more than 10 million iPhone and iPod touch users around the world, (SHAZAM)^RED is a powerful way for our audience to create real change in the world.”

Shazam has now become the first mobile app developer to link up with (RED). All new and existing Shazam users will have the option to upgrade to (SHAZAM)^RED .

According to Reuters, Twitter might go through acquisitions to bring in some of the talented developers from its ecosystem.

“That is something we are definitely interested in,” Stone told a news conference in Tel Aviv. “We made an acquisition last year that turned out to be an outstandingly good decision.”

Twitter acquired Summize last year and enhanced its real time search ability. So it is very much possible that new acquisitions would enhance the functionality of Twitter without any major change in its UI.

Security firm F-Secure is reporting that a new iPhone worm is targeting jailbroken ipnones in the Netherlands. Unlike the first worm, this one is malicious and steals bank login info. More specifically, customers of ING Direct are targeted in this round. If the jailbroken iPhone is SSH enabled with the default password (“alpine”) unchanged, the worm redirects the bank’s customers to a look-a-like site with a log-in screen. The hacker can then use the collected login data to steal money from the bank accounts at a later time. The new worm also has the ability to infect iPhones sharing the same WiFi hotspot. So it is imperative that jailbroken iPhone users should either disable SSH or change the default password to be secure.

A leading Indian blog reports that Google has discriminated Indian kids by awarding a paltry $2100 for the doodle4 google competition, when kids from USA  “will win a $15,000 college scholarship to be used at the school of their choice, a trip to the Google New York Office, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle. We’ll also award the winner’s school a $25,000 technology grant towards the establishment/improvement of a computer lab.” A couple of other news sources from India are also reporting the story from the same perspective.

Was a bit surprised and started to poke around if this was true. Not only is this true but also is pretty darn nasty. The prizes announced for the doodle4google competition in Australia, USA, New Zealand, Japan, Ireland, Israel, England were either the same as the US prize or is much higher than the prize announced for Indian Kids. Mexican prizes are worse when compared to the Indian prize. Mexican winner will get a laptop and not a single peso is given to the school or the kid. Egyptian winner gets crayons and pencils. No laptop. No ipod. Chinese kids are better off in the third world with almost $7200 in cash prize. I could not comprehend the logic behind the prize formula. The prizes, in comparison are more peanut shells than the proverbial peanuts.

Unless these third world kids stole Larry or Sergey’s lunch money, they deserve a decent and equal treatment. So much for not being evil Google.

According to a Taiwanese news outlet, Apple may be delaying the launch of it iTablet till late 2010. Plans to launch a model using a 9.7-inch OLED panel from LG nd switching some of the components are touted as the major reasons for the delay. The delay kinda makes sense, as by the end of 2010, people would have forgotten about the recession and would be going on a mad holiday purchasing spree. However, some details from the source, like the tablets will cost $1,200-$1,500 to make and would be sold for $2,000 to consumers is outright implausible. Apple is greedy, but they are definitely not crazy.

Maybe if you look hard enough am sure there will be a provision to charge the battery by hand winding.. iPhone killer, my ass.

1. Gmail Certificate FAIL

The most pathetic and irritating annoyance of Chrome is that it fails to validate its own SSL certificate. If you visit https://gmail.com, Chrome will suggest that you might be stupid enough to visit a wrong site. So much for developing a brand new browser for “enhancing” the user experience with Google’s services.

2. Atom feed FAIL

There is no feed icon in the address bar. All “modern” (Google’s favorite term) browsers, including IE, now allows users to subscribe to a site’s news feed from the browser. Blogs and websites have feed link icons all over the page and the browser should facilitate a streamlined subscription option.

Also, Chrome’s support for RSS feeds is pretty spotty like the AT&T 3G network. On the other hand, Atom support is all the way broken. Congrats Google.

3. Cookie FAIL

Another pathetic insult to Chrome is its inability to identify it’s OWN cookie when opening Google’s sites. I logged into my Gmail account and Google Reader accounts and then tried to open the Youtube link from the link at the top left hand corner.  Sadly, I was not logged into my Youtube account automatically. It is laughable that the “Cookie King” of the planet falls flat in its core competency. Firefox does this perfectly though.

The same kinda cookie snafu occurs when you try the Bookmark Sync option, even when logged into a Google account.

4. Links FAIL

Why is the order of the links at the top left hand corner of the Gmail/Reader/Google Accounts in total disarray in Chrome and Firefox for the SAME account?

Firefox

Chrome

5. Status bar FAIL

The tacky status bar overlaps at all the wrong places in the webpage. For example, it covers the Next item and Previous Item options in Google Reader rendering them unusable most of the time.

6. Scrolling FAIL

I use a lot browsers and software that involves scrolling up & down. Except for Chrome, NONE of them gave me the rubbing-on-the-skin-with-salt-paper type of scrolling.

7. Settings Import FAIL

When I tried to import settings from other browsers, Chrome asked me to close all my open Firefox Windows and those that are open in the entire office (Not really). But hey! Really need to close all open browser windows? Firefox imports settings with other browsers open.

8. UI FAIL

The stop button is on the omnibar, almost at the extreme right. Back, Forward and Refresh buttons are on extreme left. Users have to move the mouse from left to right like a typewriter’s head to stop and go back. What logic drove the Chrome team to do this?

9. Clear private data FAIL

There is no option to clear private data upon exiting the browser. Forget Firefox, even IE has that feature. Am not going to emphasise the need for this feature in a multiuser environment. That’s the job of the fat ass program manager/ lazy ass developers at Googleplex.

10. File Download FAIL

There is no notification when the file downloads are complete. FF pings you even when there is a movie playing in fullscreen mode. At this point it is pretty insulting to even compare Chrome with Firefox. They are yet to catch up with IE 6.

There is an old saying, “You are as strong as your weakest link”. So how strong is Google if Chrome is its weakest link in the chain?

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