Approximately 252 homes are in a trial run this month with a brand new Google Entertainment Device which very well may be the project thus far known as Android@Home. This project has been tipped by the FCC where a collection of pre-run devices have been approved for testing, each of them working with Wi-fi and/or Bluetooth to connect the home. This filing was made this December and is only popping up now, Google making no official word on it because it is a big secret but chances are, it is the Android@Home Hub.

The FCC filing itself has a tiny bit of information on what the project will contain, FCC says:

"Google is developing an entertainment device that requires testing outside the laboratory environment. The device is in the prototyping phase and will be modified prior to final compliance testing... Users will connect their device to home WiFi networks and use Bluetooth to connect to other home electronics equipment. This line of testing will reveal real world engineering issues and reliability of networks. The device utilizes a standard WiFi/Bluetooth module, and the planned testing is not directed at evaluating the radio frequency characteristics of the module (which are known), but rather at the throughput and stability of the home WiFi networks that will support the device, as well as the basic functionality of the device. From this testing we hope to modify the design in order to maximize product robustness and user experience. Utilizing the requested number of units will allow testing of real world network performance and its impact on applications running on the device, so that any problems can be discovered and addressed promptly."

Google+ is expected to have amassed around 100,000,000 users by Wednesday of this week.

Self-proclaimed "unofficial statistician" for Google+ and founder of Ancestry.com, Paul B. Allen predicted that come Wednesday evening, the readouts at Google HQ should be counting 100.8 million active users on their social network.

When Google launched the Galaxy Nexus along with Ice Cream Sandwich, they removed the ubiquitous menu button that was found on all the previous Android devices. Instead, they incorporated the functionality of the menu button inside an action bar that appeared on top of the screen. If there were additional options that need not be immediately shown to the user, they were hidden inside a drop down menu signified by a Windows Phone-style vertical ellipsis.

However, this change was only visible inside the native apps in Ice Cream Sandwich whereas the third party apps continued to use a standard menu button functionality, which was replicated on the Galaxy Nexus by displaying the vertical ellipsis in the bar at the bottom of the screen.

Google has launched a major update for the cool Google Earth program. The update (Google Earth v6.2) brings with it higher quality images that look much, much better than they used to. Google Earth now offers users a seamless experience. Rather than a patchwork of images like those that it used to offer, Google Earth now has one giant seamless image (as you can see above).

I would like to know how Google is able to render the images into the seamless shots we see now. I always understood that the reason the images were patchy was because the satellites flew over and snapped the shots at different times of day and in different weather conditions. Better image quality is not all the update brings.

Google Maps for Android has seen another update, adding to the Las Vegas indoor floorplans released earlier in the week with a new set of plans as submitted from the Floor Plans tool. The Google LatLong Blog also reveals that the company has a new Google Maps for Google+ game incoming, seemingly turning the PND service into a real-world Pac-Man of sorts.

Full details on the Google Maps game have not been revealed, but it looks like the floorplan data is used to track users as they move around and collect points. We have seen location-based gaming before, but Google heft and the huge number of Android devices in the wild could mean it finally takes hold in the mainstream.

Download Google Maps 6.1.0