Apple on Tuesday released the first public beta for its next-gen market-gaining Safari browser. Touting it as the fastest and most innovative browser, it runs JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3, 3 times faster than Firefox 3 and 30 times faster than IE7. Hit the Safari 4 beta download site for the free browser available for Tiger, Leopard and Windows.

Major new features and enhancements in this release are:

• Based on new version of WebKit browser engine which brings HTML 5 and CSS 3 web standards to the desktop, catching up to what has been available in Safari mobile browser in iPhone and iPod touch. HTML5 and CSS3 allows rich media and offline capability in browser. Apple develops WebKit as an open source project and is in the core of browsers in Google Chrome, Google Android phones, Palm webOS and Nokia Series 60 phones.
• Features Apple’s Nitro JavaScript Engine which boost the fastest load time among browsers in the market today, leapfrog one of the strong advantage of Google Chrome.
• Top Sites display in one page the most frequently visited websites in large thumnails of cached image of the site. Allows you to quickly go to that site with one click.

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A person by the nick ‘monthy’ on MacRumors forum has posted a short video of what could be the next-gen Mac mini. The clip shows a box device in the same design as current Mac mini but sports a Mini DisplayPort at the rear.

The Mini-DisplayPort connector aroused some excitement no doubt. Apple has only begun using Mini-DisplayPort on the recently launched MacBook and MacBook Pro models. The video is titled “Mac Mini 2009 Edition”, suggesting that it will be released this year. Rumors of an imninent new Mac mini has started as early as mid 2008. There are hints that Apple would use NVidia’s chipset for the new Mac mini, following the footsteps of all new Apple Macs in recent releases.

So is it a crazy mod or the real thing? Whatever it is, we hope Apple does refresh Mac mini quick, like in yesterday. Mac mini was last refreshed in August 2007, way too overdued by industry standard. And we wish Apple could offer an option for a mid-range Mac in the desktop form factor this time, a Mac mini with a respectable spec. Not everyone who long for a desktop computer is able to afford a Mac Pro.

Blacjack Card Counter from Australia based Webtopia is in the news lately as Nevada Gaming Control Board has warned casinos to watch out for players using the iPhone app to count cards.

Counting cards technique has been used by professional gamblers, it is ok if you are using your head, but is illegal if assisted by a device. Blackjack Card Counter is not the only card counter app in iPhone App Store, but is the only one with a stealth mode at the moment, allowing users to count cards discreetly where screen goes black.

Apple’s App Store rejected an South Park app that allows users to access episode clips, read South Park news, download South Park wallpapers and other Aouth Park related info. The reason given by Apple is that its content might be “potentially offensive”, and said such policy could change in the future. Strangely, you can find South Park’s Season 1 to 12 television shows and the South Park movie on iTunes store.

On a more ’serious’ note, Google at Mobile World Congress 2009 has demonstrated its up and coming offline feature for GMail running on iPhone, allowing you to use its popular GMail service while offline. It is using the new HTML5 local store features which is supported by iPhone’s Safari Mobile browser. No news when we can download it from App Store.

GSM Association has announced that 17 leading mobile operators and manufacturers have committed an initiative to implement a universal charger for mobile phones. The charger standard will be based on Micro-USB interface and by 2012 majority of new mobile phones will support this universal charging connector.

This comes days after European Union commissioner Günter Verheugen, in a Germany interview, vented his frustration over the many charger connectors in EU countries and wowed to take “severe measures” to force the industry to reach a solution.

It is about time the industry makes life easy for the consumers, who is able to use the same charger for other phones and there is no need to replace charger for new phone. GSM Association estimated that greenhouse gas would reduce by 13.6 metric tons as the replacement rate for chargers decreases.

Almost all big names have signed on, including Nokia, Sony Ericsson, Samsung, Motorola, LG, AT&T, Orange, T-Mobile and Vodafone. Noticeably mising from the list is Apple. It is anyone’s guess if Apple will follow suit or remain committed to its proprietary dock connector which is used by all iPod and iPhone since 2003.

Read the press release from GSM Association.

Microsoft announced Windows Mobile 6.5 on Monday at Mobile World Congress at Barcelona. Mobile devices with the new version of OS will appear last quarter of this year. The next-gen mobile platform sports a new honeycomb cells home screen and take interface cues from Microsoft’s Zune, with new services that are similar to Apple’s iPhone offering:

• Sports a new touch-screen honeycomb Start screen “designed for use with your fingers to accurately select the application, folder, game or setting quickly and easily.”
• Will ship with a new version of Internet Explorer Mobile browser that promises desktop-quality rendering. It will comes with Adobe Flash Lite, which is still missing on iPhone.
• A new My Phone service allows subscribers to sync mobile data, similar to Apple’s MobileMe offering. My Phone takes one step further, allowing you to backup the entire phone device to the cloud and then restore the image back to a phone device.
• The more signficant announcement should be the plan for Windows Marketplace, an Apple App Store like service that mobile user can access directly from their phone to purchase Windows Mobile applications and games.

Meanwhile, Nokia unveiled its Ovi Store in the same Mobile World Congress event. Nokia Ovi Store is an app store for Nokia S40 and S60 phones that wil go live this May. Nokia highlighted that Ovi Store will make purchase recommendations based on your geographical location and past purchase. Nokia has launched an Ovi developer site, paid apps will get 70% reveuue share, which is the same as Apple App Store. Nokia is doing the right things by luring developers into its camp.

Apple’s App Store is a business model executed successfully by Apple. Extending on the resource and experience of its iTunes Store, Apple has the biggest advantage and lower cost of entry than the others. Apple has been touting iPhone’s over 10,000 apps as one of its selling point, it is surprised that Nokia and Microsoft, who were few years ahead than Apple in the mobile market, only now see this as a differentiating factor for their platform.

Let the competition begins!

This is one Mac OS X behavior every new Mac users must keep in mind, especially for those coming from Windows: when you copy/move a folder to a location containing a folder with the same name, Mac OS X will replace the entire content of the folder with the new one you are copying/moving over. Under Windows, the files under the two folders will be merged together.

Let say you have five photos under your folder ~/Pictures/Photos/ with the file names feb001.jpg, feb002.jpg, feb003.jpg, feb004.jpg and feb005.jpg. And on your USB thumbdrive you have a folder named Photos which has three photos with the file names feb004.jpg, feb005.jpg and feb006.jpg.

Under Mac OS X, when you copy the Photos folder from your USB thumbdrive to your ~/Pictures folder, the system will prompt you to confirm. If you proceed by clicking on the “Replace” button, the ~/Pictures/Photos content will be replaced by the content on your thumbdrive, thus you will have the files feb004.jpg, feb005.jpg and feb006.jpg. Files feb001.jpg, feb002.jpg and feb003.jpg are gone!

Under Windows, system will merge the contents of the two folders, result in six files feb001.jpg to feb006.jpg. Files feb004.jpg and feb005.jpg will be overwritten with the version on the USB thumbdrive.

As you can see this OS X behaviour can be damaging if you are not being careful, imagine having your whole year’s photos wipe out by a folder copy.

Apple has released its first security update for the year. Security Updates 2009-001 is available for Leopard, Server Universal, Leopard Server, Tiger (both Intel & PowerPC) and Tiger Server for PowerPC Macs. Available via Software Update, the update fixes among others the Safari RSS vulnerability discovered in mid January. Apple also released Safari 3.2.2 for Windows to patch the same flaw for Windows users.

In addition, Apple releases Jave for Mac OS X 10.5 Update 3 and Jave for Mac OS X 10.4 Update 8 that fixes vulnerability in Java Web Start and Java Plug-in components.

It had to happen, Microsoft has announced plans to open its own Microsoft branded outlets, there is no information on details but David Porter, who used to work for Wal-mart, is enlisted to spearhead this effort.

Microsoft COO Kevin Turner said, “We’re working hard to transform the PC and Microsoft buying experience at retail by improving the articulation and demonstration of the Microsoft innovation and value proposition so that it’s clear, simple and straightforward for consumers everywhere.”

It looks like Microsoft is showing keen interest in Apple’s operations lately. Before the retail store, we have an iPod like Zune. And Microsoft recently announced an App Store like service for its Windows Mobile platform called SkyMarket. And the just announced My Phone syncing service looks similar to MobileMe. And iPhone touch features is coming to Windows Mobile too. And no doubt many Mac users would find Windows 7 somewhat familiar.

But retail store is in a territory that is not familiar to Microsoft. Gateway, Palm and Dell boutique stores have come and go. The success of Apple Store is hard to copy. There is no other tech retail store at the moment that is as successful or even come close. Apple open its first store back in 2001. And today it has 251 retail stores with nearly 16,000 employees. 41 of its stores is outside of the US. It is interesting to see if Microsoft could pull it off, especially during this difficult times.

In a conference call to investors on Wednesday, Palm CEO Ed Colligan officially announced the end of life for Palm OS (RIP 1996-2009). There will no longer be any new Palm smartphones using Palm OS, instead the focus for them would be on the new webOS and Windows Mobile. You bet there will be many Palm lovers mourning this death.

Looking at the bright side, the new webOS from Palm is generating excitement and hype ever since it was demonstrated on a brand new Palm Pre smartphone at CES in January. Many has called it the closest challenge to Apple iPhone based on the slickness and usability of the webOS.

Palm Pre will also be the first smartphone other than iPhone to feature multitouch capability. Colligan reiterated that Palm is not too concerned about any potential litigation from Apple. Apple was awarded recently for patents covering touch screen and multi-touch user interface. He mentioned that Pre will have an app store and Palm will not control its content like in Apple’s App Store.

Palm Pre is rumored to launch anytime now, starting with Sprint. It will expand to other US carriers in 2010. International launch is also expected. Latest leak specs indicate that it will have MMS and support data tethering (phone-as-modem) via bluetooth or USB. These two are features lacking in iPhone.

Google has released a beta of Google Sync that enable you to sync your Google Calendar and Gmail Contacts to those in your iphone. This free service by Google also supports similar sync for Windows Mobile devices.

This is handy for people who rely on Google tools and require the calendar and contacts info on their iphone. Please note that Google Sync will replace all your existing contacts and calendar on your iphone, be sure to backup important data before you try out the service.

For those who uses Apple’s Calendar and Contacts on their Mac and iPhone, Apple’s $99 per year MobileMe service is the option that would enable you to access your calendar and contacts over the internet.

The setup for Google Sync is slightly more complex, it uses the Microsoft Exchange ActiveSync technology on the iphone thus requires the setting up of a new Exchange ActiveSync account on your iPhone. Google provides step by step setup guide to enable Google Sync on your iphone.

Google Sync Home Page.

Google Blog announcement on Google Sync for iphone.