Google on Wednesday announced it will be testing "+1", a button akin to Facebook's "Like" that lets users show their approval for search result relevance.

The +1 feature is only available to Google profile/Gmail users who are signed into their accounts when using Google search. Once the experimental feature is activated, an animated button appears next to all search results, which lights up whenever you mouse over a particular result.

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Hells, bells, iPad might be Apple's backdoor to the enterprise, after all -- and, whoa, that can't be good for Windows PCs. Gartner projects that global spending on media tablets will be as much $29.4 billion this year, up from $9.6 billion in 2010. Here's the kicker: IT spending on tablets will be a noticeable chunk of that spending, Gartner predicts.

Today, Gartner reiterated what it forecast in January: IT organizations will spend $3.6 trillion this year. However, the analyst firm notched down growth projections to 5.1 percent from 5.6 percent. Spending would have declined, too, had Gartner not added media tablets like iPad to the mix. The addition boosts hardware spending growth to 9.5 percent from 7.5 percent year over year.

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I don't know about you, but I have trouble feeling sorry if Paul Allen was cheated out of that 14th billion and stuck in the slums of 57th place on the Forbes list. Of course Paul Allen doesn't really want my pity and he's probably cool with the money he got out of his work co-founding Microsoft. They just could have been nicer to him.

An adaptation from Allen's forthcoming memoir "Idea Man" may be found in Vanity Fair. "Microsoft's Odd Couple" runs all the way from high school, where he met Bill Gates, to February 18, 1983, when he resigned as an officer from Microsoft (although he retained his position on the Board of Directors). It has already generated controversy.

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Google has agreed to settle with the Federal Trade Commission over allegations that Google Buzz, the social network launched in 2010, violated the FTC Act.

When Google launched Buzz last year, it immediately came under fire from privacy groups, who complained that the social network/microblog created a too-easy way for Google to convert Gmail contact lists into publicly searchable information.

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As well as being a useful tool for carrying out work and accessing the internet, many home computers are used as storage for large music collections. While the likes of iTunes and Windows Media Player include music management options, they can be cumbersome to use, and this is something that MAGIX MP3 deluxe 17 aims to help with. Covering everything from importing music from CDs and adjusting tags and album art to creating playlists and recording online radio stations, this burgeoning suite of tools has almost every MP3 related base covered.

The main program has an easy to use interface that can be used to extract music from CDs and import folders full of music files into your library. If you have already spent time working with iTunes and have therefore created a music library in Apple's software, this can be quickly imported into MAGIX MP3 deluxe 17 to help save time. Of course, the program can also be used to play back music, and there are a number of options available in this area.

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Creating a modern, professional website can be a complex business, requiring a host of skills: design, HTML, scripting, Flash, graphics optimisation -- the list goes on. Which, if you've yet to master any of these, may seem just a little intimidating.

Fortunately Xara Web Designer 7 offers a much simpler alternative. It's a WYSIWYG web editor that includes a host of attractive web templates to get you started, and makes it easy to customize them with all kinds of content, even if you've no web development experience at all.

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Even though they were only sold directly to consumers, Roku's streaming set top boxes managed to become fierce competitors in the connected media player category against AppleTV, Boxee, WDTV, and countless others. Roku announced on Wednesday that the Roku XD streaming player will finally be available in retail nationwide through a partnership with Best Buy.

"Having sold over 1 million Roku players through online sales only up until now, we are incredibly excited to announce our entrance into brick and mortar retail with nationwide availability from the preeminent consumer electronics retailer," said Anthony Wood, founder and CEO of Roku, Inc.

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That didn't take long. On March 24th, Google launched in-app billing in test mode so that developers could test their mobile applications at the Android Market. This evening, Google announced that the service is live.

In-app billing is an important catch-up feature for Android Market. Developers can now collect additional revenue by offering customers option to purchase extras after the initial sale. "Several apps launching today are already using the service, including Tap Tap Revenge by Disney Mobile; Comics by ComiXology; Gun Bros, Deer Hunter Challenge HD, and WSOP3 by Glu Mobile; and Dungeon Defenders: FW Deluxe by Trendy Entertainment," Eric Chu writes at the Android Developers blog.

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Mozilla today released the final version of Firefox 4 for Android and Maemo, just one week after general availability of the mobile browser's release candidate.

It's kind of hard to believe the first version of "Firefox Mobile" is finally done. The browser that was originally launched under the name Fennec back in 2008 wasn't even available on Android until April 2010, and even then it was only a "pre-alpha" release. After the mobile browser switched names and became Firefox 4 six months ago, finalization of the browser has been rapid.

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Now here's something you don't see everyday, an analyst firm predicting that Microsoft's mobile operating system will trump Apple iOS and Research in Motion's BlackBerry. Don't believe it. I surely don't, and with good reasons.

The skinny: Today IDC predicted that by 2015, Windows Phone 7 and Mobile would reach 20.9 percent global market share, as measured by shipments, on smartphones -- up from 5.5 percent this year. By comparison, iOS share is predicted to be nearly flat over four years, with smartphone OS share of 15.3 percent in 2015. IDC predicts Android will grow to 45.4 percent from 39.5 percent.

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Tuesday morning, Washington DC Mayor Vincent Gray broke ground for the DC Community Access Network (DC-CAN), a fiber optic network geared toward bringing high speed broadband to underserved areas of the nation's capitol.

Though Washington DC is one of the most well-connected cities in the United States, there are few cities where the "digital divide" is more obvious. The infrastructure is robust, but at times it seems the beneficiaries of it are only on one side of the Anacostia river. A large proportion of the city's lower income residents remain woefully underconnected.

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Sign me up, baby. Today, Amazon started offering my music (yours, too) from the cloud -- in a web browser or through an Android app. Sorry iPhone users. There is no app for you. The service chokes in Mobile Safari on iPhone, so that's no option.

The concept is simple: Amazon stores your music on its servers -- and you can listen anytime, anywhere and on anything. There are two conjoined services -- Cloud Drive for storage, which also can be used for documents and other files, and Cloud Player for listening to music. Setup is seamless. Amazon customers click links while signed into their accounts, and that's it (Ease of use stops there; see next couple of paragraphs). Amazon offers 5GB storage for free. Additional storage ranges from 20GB to 1TB and from $20 to $1,000 a year, respectively. However, Amazon is running a promotion through the end of the year. Buy one album and get upgraded to 20GB of storage for free.

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Nokia has filed new patent infringement clams with the US International Trade Commission against Apple, the company disclosed on Tuesday. At issue are seven additional patents which Apple is accused by the Finnish phone maker of infringing in "virtually all products."

This latest move comes after the ITC ruled in Apple's favor on Friday, saying the Cupertino company was not committing infringement on five Nokia patents. Those patents were part of an earlier suit filed in October 2009. Nokia said it did not agree with the judge's decision, and has yet to decide its next steps.

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Intel debuted the third generation of its consumer solid state drives on Monday, promising increased reliability while at the same time lowering the price by as much as $100 or more in some capacities. The 320 series drives replace the X25-M drives which the company began to push in earnest last year.

Prices on average dropped about 30 percent, which came as a result of advancements in the manufacturing process. Overall drives are expensive, however -- about $1.80 per gigabyte -- which some analysts believe is still higher than most consumers would be willing to pay.

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Today, the air is flush with rumors -- now from three credible journalists -- that iPhone 5 won't debut during Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference 2011, in June. Rumors like these are great for generating pageviews and for sending some Wall Street analysts or Apple shareholders into cardiac arrest. But other than a few 911 calls for emergency services, does it really matter?

Technically, there is no iPhone 5 delay, contrary to reports about one. Apple hasn't announced a release date, so there can't be a delay. Now there is, based on four previous releases, reasonable expectation iPhone 5 would debut at WWDC and ship in June or July. That has been Apple's pattern for the four previous models, but it's not beholden. The rumors also put iOS 5's delivery later, too. That certainly makes sense. Why not have one but the other?

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