Google likes to have its fingers in a lot of pies and the latest would appear to be the online book business. The Wall Street Journal are reporting that Google will have an online ebook store up and running in the US by the end of the year with an international launch in Q1 of 2011.

The store, to be called Google Editions, will seemingly rely on independent book sellers as the basis of its sales the WSJ reports:

 "Users will be able to buy books directly from Google or from multiple online retailers including independent bookstores and add them to an online library tied to a Google account. They will be able to access their Google accounts on most devices with a Web browser, including personal computers, smartphones and tablets."



There also looks to be a revenue sharing model in place for Editions with websites and blogs able to link to Editions so their readers can buy a particular book and the site can then take a share of Google cut of the sale for driving the purchase. It miht mean a much more personal means of selling books, with speciic sites able to discuss or review particular works and drive sales to just that title.

In this post you will be looking at the popularity of mobile operating systems around the world, based on evidence from web analytics firm StatCounter. The data is based upon web access from each platform and is broken down by region.

Android despite is increasingly popularity around the globe accounted for more than 50% of mobile web traffic in just one country, South Korea. There it managed to wratchet up a very impressive 78.3% share. Austria came second with 27.3%, Taiwan third with 26.5% and Denmark in fourth with 25.3% of its mobile web traffic originating from Android handsets.

Symbian had some rather impressive numbers too, albeit in markets that are not exactly at the core of the global growth in smartphones. For example, Symbian accounted for a whopping 94% of all mobile web traffic in... Chad. Libya was not far behind with 93.9% nor Sudan with 92.9%. By contrast Symbian accounted for 1.36% of American mobile web traffic.

iOS snagged 83.7% of mobile web traffic in Canada, but only 35% of America mobile web traffic.

HD video, 0% CPU utilization and Flash that has to be a joke, But Adobe is not laughing and promises just that with Flash 10.2 beta. This is achieved by letting the graphics card do all the heavy-lifting. it Also has other goodies like improved multi-monitor support and faster overall rendering  have been added to the new version.

Flash 10.1 added support for the long-awaited hardware acceleration for video decoding the video on the video card . The reality however is that playing HD Flash videos is still a CPU-intensive task. The new Flash Player 10.2 beta adds new functionality called Stage Video, which does the rest of the video rendering actions on the GPU itself without bothering the CPU with it.

Those steps include color conversion, scaling and blitting, which all had to be done by the processor previously. So, with a video card capable of decoding H.264 video, even Full HD videos should work smoothly.

Demo Below!

It appears that the display wars are not going to end anytime soon. Both Samsung and LG announced new generation display technologies, which as you can imagine, promise to be better than anything you may have seen so far.

First off it was Samsung Mobile Display division that showcased a working prototype of the Super PLS LCD. It is said to offer 100% wider viewing angles and about 10% higher brightness than conventional IPS LCD screens. Just do not get misled by the word conventional the IPS LCD unit on the iPhone 4 is among the best we have seen.

The Super PLS displays will support resolution up to to WXGA resolution (1280 x 768 pixels) and should cost about 15 percent less to manufacture. Mass production starts early next year so we will hopefully get to see them in action pretty soon  perhaps some time around the MWC 2011 the upcoming February.

On the other side of the camp, LG does not have a working prototype to show just yet but it has announced that it has teamed up with QD Vision for the development of Quantum Dot LED (QLED) display units. Dubbed ultimate solution for displays QLED should give unmatched power efficiency, providing more brightness, while consuming less power than any currently available OLED technology.

Back in August Gresso launched its extremely overpriced Luxor Las Vegas Jackpot luxury phone priced at 1 million US dollars and now the company is announcing its way more affordable alternative, the Luxor. The newly introduced Gresso Luxor misses Luxor Las Vegas Jackpot wow factor but its also considerably cheaper. The luxury handset is said to cost 4000 US dollars, which is some 250 times less than the 1-million-dollar phone price.

The Luxor is made of African blackwood, ceramics and sapphire. So, no black diamonds and gold this time. Instead, the case is made of titanium alloy coated with ceramics.