While it is nothing new for Microsoft to host open testing runs for their XBox 360 updates, as they do this at least once per year, it is the first time that his has involved physical changes as well as items being sent to participants. The previous testing phases have all involved simple dashboard updates that would be downloaded on to consoles, where nothing would be mailed to participants.

The only qualifications are that you live in the continental US, own and XBox 360, and sign up for the Microsoft Connect website, after the sign up process, you will be eligible to participate in the open testing process as long as you submit the web form with accurate information.

XBox Live Gold members will be receiving priority in the sign up queue over Silver members, but it is possible that Silver members will be let in if not enough Gold members sign up, as a paid membership is not listed under the requirements.

This could be a great way to get your hands on Halo: Reach if you have not already done so, along with the other freebies that Microsoft will be sending your way as a thank you. It will also be a great opportunity to find out just what these new discs will be able to do. Rumors are that they will be able to hold much more data, allowing for larger games and decreasing the need for DLC that must be paid for, but this is just pure speculation. What do you think?

Two publishers are now trying a different route to boost their e-textbook sales. Both Pearson and McGraw-Hill recently announced their investments in Inlking, a company that makes interactive iPad books. These books incorporate audio, video, and the traditional text to make them much more engaging. It is the hopes of these publishers that this will create a larger incentive for students to buy digital versions of their books.

Inkling already has 14 textbooks available for the iPad, but Pearson and McFraw-Hill will be significantly adding to the number with both M.B.A. textbooks as well as undergraduate textbooks.

Inkling’s chief executive has stated that both publishers are fully committed to moving forward with the arrangement, and that this is not a simple little venture. The companies are intending to move forward in terms of technology, with the previous digital versions of their textbooks being only what was available in print. The addition of more interactive media might change the tides, and give them more success in the realm.

It remains to be seen if this will actually garner interest from students. Many need to be able to have their textbooks in class, and some professors do not allow for such “distractions” that technology could provide. For those who are allowed to have an iPad on during class, though, these new forms of e-textbooks could prove invaluable as they bring alternate forms of learning to the table with videos and more images. We will just have to wait and see if this works out for publishers.

Recently, this has resulted in two additional features to their Spreadsheets part of Google Docs that finally makes it the full package.

The first addition is filtering. This is not as advanced as the feature found in Excel, but is great for a free, collaborative app accessible anywhere by a browser. It works essentially how auto-filtering does in Excel, with a little more ease of use, as can always be expected from Google. There are no sub-filters, but it is still very useful.

The second addition is the ability to select non-contiguous data ranges for graphs. This lack of ability to choose specific cells to use in a graph has been hindering many users for a while, and it has been welcomed with open arms by many heavy graph users, who could previously only drag and select an area of neighboring cells, or specify neighboring cells, but could never before only select the beginnings and ends of a range of data.

These two changes, along with the other existing features of Google Docs Spreadsheets really give Excel a run for its money in terms of base users, as most people will not use many more advanced features than what it now contains for free.

With more and more people adopting the free, collaborative option each day, Microsoft might actually have to worry about not being the king of the desktop anymore. They have already seceded in the Internet race, but how long until they have to give up significant shares in the desktop realm?

It is basically like using a brand new phone with your mouse inside of your browser, but you can’t call or text anyone, but you can use any app you want, even those that require data connections, as it will just use your computer’s Internet connection. The only real downside here is that there is no keyboard input, but using the virtual keyboard in Android should suit this well enough. After all, the purpose of this service is to really just sell apps by allowing a very extended trial, not to fully use the apps to create documents or blog posts.

This service shows just how powerful cloud computing can be, as it runs the whole thing straight from the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud, which is called EC2 for short. IT gives you full control of an Android phone, allowing the installation and deletion of apps, browsing of picture gallery, and just about anything you can think of.

With the success of this service, it will be interesting to see if Amazon takes further steps to providing a user’s actual phone online via the EC2 cloud, allowing them to access all of their apps and data with their computer. Keyboard integration would most likely be needed for something of that nature, as people would expect more. For app selling purposes, though, the mouse only input works fine to quickly check out how an app operates, and insert small amounts of text into fields when required.

All in all this is a great service that makes it easy to find out if you will be making a purchase that is actually worth your dollar (or two).

The Vimeo app’s editing functions are quite advanced for a phone, allowing for the capturing of video focus control and grid alignment. Videos can then be combined, cut, and have effects added to them such as transitions, titles, and music. All of this can be saved on the phone and then uploaded via the app. Both standard definition videos and high definition videos can be uploaded through Vimeo’s iPhone app as well.

This is a free app available in the App Store, and is a recommended download even just to play around with. It’s interesting to see the types of things you can come up with just simple editing thanks to a powerful app such as this one.

Vimeo has also stated that the launch is just the beginning, and they plan to provide further, regular updates to it. It will be great to see what other features they include in the app in future versions. An easy guess would be more effects, but they might have something much more ground breaking up their sleeves. Who knows? What we do know now is that this is already a ground breaking app, and is a very powerful video editor, especially for being a free app for a phone.

What are you waiting for? Download Vimeo’s official iPhone app from the App Store right now, you will not be disappointed.

Instead of a mobile operating system, though, this tablet runs Windows 7 Home Premium. This decision has pro’s and con’s just as any other design choice, the main one here being the usability. Windows apps aren’t designed for multi-touch, so there will not be many new features going on there. iOS and Android apps are, and would be much more suited for a tablet, but then again, those operating systems cannot run something like Microsoft Office, at least not yet. The ability to run these sorts of applications might not apply in the future, but for now it is still a big selling point.

Business users might be taking a hard look at this device to see if it is worth their while as it does have the power to run anything they need. Acer has also included great features such as a full one-screen keyboard and a ring design complete with customizable gestures, that make the use of multi-touch in some applications possible along with providing a quicker way to go about standard tasks such as closing a window or opening a program.

All in all, with a fast processor, a great amount of RAM, a webcam, 3 USB ports, HD graphics displays, and a 640 GB hard drive, the Acer Iconia is obviously much more than a tablet, and it proves that quite well. This will be a great gadget for businesspeople that want a tablet and a laptop, but do not want to have to lug both around. Instead, they can just buy both of them in one device, and buy it at a very reasonable price.

This is a huge development, and BlackBerry and Android have always been seen as competing entities, as they are both mobile operating systems, but now they will be working together on the PlayBook. There had been rumors on the subject that were dismissed as unlikely, but they have turned out to be completely true. This will certainly serve to showcase RIM’s BlackBerry platform, though, as they will be running apps developed for two completely different operating systems, unified by only the programming language, Java.

The technical details of the compatibility with Android apps are yet unclear, but many assume some sort of virtual machine will be used to run the apps. If that is the case, a performance hindrance, specifically noticeable in games and system intensive apps is likely.

With Android 2.3 compatibility, not 3.0, existing apps will have an easy time porting over. Those creating all new apps for the tablet specific Honeycomb 3.0 version will have to consider a different development path, then, if they want their app to run on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Apps will still need to be repackaged and resigned for the BlackBerry world, but this is a very simple process to bring an app to another OS, considering no code must be changed.

BlackBerry is also expanding to the Adobe Air platform as well, allowing apps written for it to run on the PlayBook as well. With three different kinds of app running engines, the BlackBerry PlayBook looks to be an app powerhouse, with a library greater than even the iOS could ever boast.

RIM (Research in Motion) has announced that on April 19th, when their BlackBerry tablet called the BlackBerry PlayBook will also support Android apps. It will supposedly run any and all apps written for Android 2.3 and BlackBerry Java. RIM has also said that they are in the process of porting the Airplay and Unity 3 game engines to the BlackBerry PlayBook as well.

This is a huge development, and BlackBerry and Android have always been seen as competing entities, as they are both mobile operating systems, but now they will be working together on the PlayBook. There had been rumors on the subject that were dismissed as unlikely, but they have turned out to be completely true. This will certainly serve to showcase RIM’s BlackBerry platform, though, as they will be running apps developed for two completely different operating systems, unified by only the programming language, Java.

The technical details of the compatibility with Android apps are yet unclear, but many assume some sort of virtual machine will be used to run the apps. If that is the case, a performance hindrance, specifically noticeable in games and system intensive apps is likely.

With Android 2.3 compatibility, not 3.0, existing apps will have an easy time porting over. Those creating all new apps for the tablet specific Honeycomb 3.0 version will have to consider a different development path, then, if they want their app to run on the BlackBerry PlayBook. Apps will still need to be repackaged and resigned for the BlackBerry world, but this is a very simple process to bring an app to another OS, considering no code must be changed.

BlackBerry is also expanding to the Adobe Air platform as well, allowing apps written for it to run on the PlayBook as well. With three different kinds of app running engines, the BlackBerry PlayBook looks to be an app powerhouse, with a library greater than even the iOS could ever boast.

The content itself is thought provoking, and contains editorials about current business and technology topics from a great deal of people. From notable writers such as Simon Rogers (editor of The Guardian‘s Datablog) to the unknown freelancer, Google’s Think Quarterly encompasses a great deal of opinions on a great deal of topics.

Google’s aim has increasingly been to quickly provide killer apps to customers, but this is the exact opposite. It is just a sit back and relax and reflect approach at bringing a product to business customers. While this may sound lazy to some people, the magazine is actually a trove of useful information, even to the non-businessperson.

Google has technically avoided calling Think Quarterly a magazine, calling it a book on their website, and terming it a “unique communications tool via Twitter. Whatever this is, though, it is great, and shows the company’s versatility. Their ability to switch gears and provide a slow paced product instead of just pushing out new features or new services show their likable, human side. It shows that Google is not just an app and service creating machine; it is still a company with personality.

While there are no plans to go print with the material or to sell it, Google still sees great potential with Think Quarterly. They have made it available to the public, but still aim the content at their business partners, who they originally sent it to via email.

Apple’s announcements of their updates to come at the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) of this year so far have been surprisingly all software, which has added further fuel to the fire of those claiming that Apple will hold off on the iPhone 5 until the fall. They are reportedly revealing the futures of both their iOS and Mac operating systems.

Another source has also stated that Apple has not even ordered their iPhone 5 parts yet. If this is true, they will not have ample time to assemble the devices for an early summer release.

Apple just recently added their iPhone to Verizon’s smartphone offerings, giving them 100 million new potential customers, so, by delaying until the fall, they would be avoiding a situation of where they would lose the potential revenue from the move. This would be assuming that all Verizon iPhone 4 adopters would switch over to the phone by them.

Regardless, waiting until the fall as well as the next fiscal year will allow for Apple to squeeze a lot more revenue out of the fourth generation of iPhones before bringing out the next version. This delay would also allow the focus at the WWDC to be on MAC OS X Lion as well as whatever Apple has up their sleeve for the iOS.