Stories by Daniel Ionescu

Since Google began mapping the world with Google Earth and Street View, an entire pastime--Google mystery hunting and debunking--has cropped up.

Sony is experimenting with exclusive features embedded into its iTunes movies, PaidContent reports, slowly paving the way for the day when DVDs will be no more. In the iTunes version of The Other Guys users can search through the script of the movie to see the exact moment a line was said in the film, while other pictures like Salt and Resident Evil: Afterlife allow you to share video snippets on social media.

Apple's clash with Adobe over Flash is far from over. Apple released iAd Producer, a tool for online advertisers to create content for Apple's iAd platform, helping the company to establish HTML5 as a viable alternative to Adobe Flash technology on mobile devices.

Nokia and Microsoft are reportedly discussing an alliance that would lead to Nokia-branded smartphones running the Windows Phone 7 mobile operating system. The claim comes from respected Russian tech blogger Eldar Murtazin, the man behind many of the smartphone leaks you see today.

Facebook users in the United States will be able to use a face detection feature for photos, making the tagging process easier. The feature, which debuts next week, uses face recognition software to look through your current photos and will match people in new photos to those who you have already tagged.

The Verizon iPhone, the biggest myth of the tech world for the past few years, would sell nine million units in 2011, stealing many customers from AT&T, according to a note from analyst Gene Munster sent to AppleInsider. Rumored to arrive sometime in early 2011, the Verizon iPhone would break AT&T's iPhone exclusivity, leading many consumers to switch to Verizon's network.

10 years after it launched its first tablet PC, Microsoft is still struggling to come up with a hit product in the category. On the opposite side of the spectrum, Apple managed to sell more than seven million iPads in just a few months. But Microsoft is planning a comeback next month, when it will introduce a bunch of new slate computers, according to a New York Times report.

Google's lead Android developer Andy Rubin tweeted that the company is activating more than 300,000 Android phones each day. This equates to more than 9 million Android phones activated per month, despite reports that the platform's activation numbers were plummeting as of late.

Google has reentered the phone production market with the Nexus S, the first phone to launch with Android 2.3 Gingerbread, the latest version of Google's mobile operating system.

AirPlay, one of the main feature additions in iOS 4.2, could soon work with third-party apps and Safari, according to a purported Steve Jobs e-mail that a reader sent to the MacRumors blog. The e-mail suggests that in 2011 users will be able to stream video to their Apple TVs from third-party applications and the Safari browser.

Hacking-happy users of iPhone 3G and 3GS models can now unlock their phones to work with other carriers, thanks to a new hack. The iPhone Dev Team released this weekend a new carrier unlock for the older iPhone models, which allows you to use any SIM card with the latest software update from Apple, iOS 4.2.1.

Days after Apple released the iOS 4.2 software update for iPhones and iPads, another update to the OS is rumored to be arriving in December, together with News Corp's iPad-only news app. A corroborated report from Apple-centric blog MacStories claims that at some point in mid-December Apple will release iOS 4.3, which will enable publishers to charge for recurring subscriptions.

Samsung says it has sold more than 600,000 Galaxy Tab Android tablets worldwide, according to a Korea Herald report.

From Awesome Currency Calculator to iTranslate, here are 15 iPad apps that will help you do the job and make the process a bit more fun.

Pictures and specifications of what is claimed to be another upcoming Samsung Android phone with a larger than 4-inch display have been leaked by tech blog Engadget. Only yesterday the site posted pictures of an upcoming Google-branded Nexus S phone from Samsung, and this second device is also said to run on Android 2.3, Google's next major update of its mobile OS.