Google launched an update to Android's voice search capability on Tuesday that incorporates speaker recognition to improve results.

The new "personalized recognition" feature is currently quite limited: it's only available in English in the United States on Android devices running 2.2 and above.

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Last week, I took my daughter to Los Angeles for a TV commercial audition. About 20 other teen girls waited with their parents, and all -- every single one and parents, too -- had out a smartphone. Tap, tap, tap text and apps. It's an anecdotal moment supporting an IDC prediction: By 2014 the global market for mobile applications will surpass $35 billion.

IDC published the findings in a new report "Worldwide and U.S. Mobile Applications, Storefronts, and Developer 2010-2014 Forecasts and Year-End 2010 Vendor Market Shares: The 'Appification' of Everything." The analyst firm is quite serious about so-called "appification" (God help us if the word makes the Oxford English Dictionary by end of 2011). There are two main trends: Lighter, mobile apps popping up in more devices -- some stationary like settop boxes -- and mobile applications impacting virtually everything people do. Personal example of the latter: During the drive back from LA, my daughter downloaded an app that turned her smartphone's LED camera flash into a light, so she could do homework.

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The year 2011 will be make or break.

Early year, make or break will be one of perception, whether or not customers and shareholders see the glass as half full or half empty. From the half-full perspective, Microsoft has bet big on the cloud, and at the right time. From the half-empty viewpoint, Microsoft muffed mobile, by first fumbling smartphones and later tablets. The company started pushing the latter category a decade ago, only to lose it to Apple during 2010.

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SlySoft, maker of the popular decryption software AnyDVD HD, and Game Jackal announced on Monday that it will be discontinuing its lifetime update subscription service on January 1, 2011.

Since 2003, SlySoft has developed circumvention techniques for the various methods of disc copy protection and incorporated them into its software packages. In 2007, for example, the company announced it had cracked BD+ Blu-ray copy protection which was developed by Cryptography Research Inc. The following year, the company announced it had cracked BD+ again, allowing its software to have a more complete Blu-ray copying solution.

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There's something unbelievable about Gawker claiming to be "embarrassed." Considering the amount of raunch and rumor Gawker sites like Gizmodo publish, editors show no signs of being embarrassed by anything they do. Yesterday's hack, which exposed 1.3 million Gawker usernames and passwords and some of the content management system source code, can only be good for churning pageviews. How funny if "embarassed" turns out to be ashamed of profiting so much from readers' hardship -- Gawker having an unusually good month of traffic.

The Gawker hack and other mischief and mayhem going on this month should be warning to everyone on the InterWeb: Nothing is private. Amazon, Facebook or Google mine your private information, while some hacker or insider makes it available for everyone to read, whether on some torrent or even WikiLeaks. There's no such thing as privacy on the Internet, and there never really was. People acknowledge this all the time, then flip on the denial -- "It could never happen me" -- switch. No doubt, many Betanews commenters speak out elsewhere. If that's Gizmodo, you've been hacked, baby. It's time to change passwords anyplace using the same one(s) at Gawker.

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The patent infringement lawsuit against AOL, Apple, eBay, Facebook, Google, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo and YouTube filed by Interval Licensing LLC has been dropped. Interval is widely associated with entrepreneur Paul Allen, who co-founded Microsoft, and served as chairman of Charter Communications until late 2009 when the company emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection.

Interval sued the eleven tech companies last August, claiming violations of four patents for Web technology related to product search and user alerts.

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Yesterday in comments, Betanews reader DaveN asked why anyone would make the sacrifices he believes necessary to run a Chrome OS laptop. "If you're going to carry around a device in the laptop format, why would anyone want something so limited?" It's a good question, that necessitates two answers -- one for now and another when the first units are commercially available.

On December 7th, Google announced a pilot program, distributing some 60,000 unbranded Cr-48 laptops running Chrome OS. I expect to receive one for review as early as this week. That's a helluva pilot program, which has me laughing. I don't hear anyone fussing about Google handing out laptops the way they did about Microsoft with Windows Vista. That's some double standard. Microsoft offered bloggers and reviewers free Vista notebooks four years ago this month. Happy Christmas! I publicly supported the Vista program -- "Microsoft's Laptop Giveaway is About Influence Not Bribery" -- even though I didn't get a computer; there was no conflict of interest in my support. Microsoft handed out the notebooks before Windows Vista released. How else were reviewers going to use and test the operating system? Google's situation is similar, with commercial units six months, perhaps more, away.

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I haven't been this satisfied with a laptop since purchasing a 266MHz PowerBook G3 in February 1999. Apple's smaller MacBook Air is unexpectedly satisfying. By the specs, the little laptop should disappoint. By the experience, it's a delight. I'm simply stunned by how much I enjoy using this notebook -- or should that be netbook?

Design Matters

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A group of more than 80 advocacy groups including The Media Access Project, Reporters without Borders, Daily Kos, Common Cause, and Nonprofit Technology filed a letter with the Federal Communications Commission on Friday citing five main areas that need improvement in the Net Neutrality legislation coming up for vote on December 21.

Unlike former FCC Commissioner Michael Powell, whose main concern is keeping the Internet lean and loosely governed to empower investors, entrepreneurs, and businesses, these groups are focused on the rights of the user.

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2010 was without a doubt the year of distracted driving legislation. Eleven U.S. states this year banned texting while driving, and a further eight states banned drivers from using handheld phones altogether.

In total, 30 of the 50 states now have local laws regarding mobile phone use.

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Android activations have now surpassed 300,000 per day which equals the number of activations for Symbian worldwide, according to data provided by Google. It also indicates that the now near-continuous stream of new Android phones is having a positive effect on sales overall.

Back in October, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said the company was activating about 200,000 phones per day. The new number also comes from Google's engineering chief Andy Rubin, who tweeted it on Wednesday night. It is not out of the question to think that Android may become the top platform in the world early next year.

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Microsoft on Thursday provided some good news for Windows Phone 7 app developers in the form of a handful of new information about the Windows Phone Marketplace.

In October, Windows Phone developers were told the first Marketplace payouts would arrive "some time in February 2011," but today Microsoft said payments will be processed in the fourth week of January. While tecnically only a tiny bit ahead of schedule, it's surely good to know when the money will start coming in.

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A group that is using the name "Anonymous" is using a voluntary botnet in order to take down websites that interfere with the operations of Wikileaks. The group has taken responsibility for a denial-of-service attack on Visa on Wednesday and an attack on competitor MasterCard earlier in the week.

The two credit card firms had suspended Wikileaks' account, as did PayPal over the weekend. That company was also the victim of a DDoS attack, which Anoymous has also taken responsibility for. The creation of this botnet could be seen as the first salvo in what is sure to be an increasingly vicious war between the site's supporters and those looking to shut the site down.

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Innovative soft keyboard Swype has released a new beta on the Android platform, and is now accepting more beta testers.

Late last year, Swype made big waves in the mobile tech world when it launched its alternative "paint to type" touchscreen keyboard software.

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Comcast, the United States' largest cable provider, and content delivery network Level 3 Communications remain at odds over how they will work together in the future. A major issue arose between the two companies in late November, after Netflix announced Level 3 would be its primary CDN, and Comcast sought to collect new fees from Level 3 due to the massive increase in traffic the Netflix arrangement would cause.

Level 3 argued that Comcast was abusing its monopolistic position to squeeze money out of a service working "over the top" of its broadband connections. Comcast, on the other hand, said it's simply re-negotiating a "peering" (free traffic) arrangement to a "transiting" (paid traffic by volume) arrangement.

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