Disclosure: I use AppBrain.  I find it very useful to browse apps online & then easily sync/install on my Captivate.  Looks like they’ve been pretty hard at work filtering out the crap, though, & have some interesting things to say on the state of the Android Market.  Apparently, out of the total 70,000 apps that Google states are available, the number of craptacular apps has risen from 30% in March to 50% today.  Yep, 20% increase in 4 months.  Thankfully, they’re working to improve their search algorithm to filter these spam-tastic apps from their search results.  My question is: why isn’t Google taking up the lead on this?  Kudos to AppBrain for their efforts.

BGR has it on good authority that the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10 will definitely be showing up at AT&T “Pretty Soon”.  Expected to sell at $199 with a two year contract.

• Size: 119 x 63 x 13 mm
• Weight: 135 grams
• Phone memory: Up to 1 GB
• Memory card support: microSD™
• Memory card included: 8 GB
• Operating system: Google™ Android Donut, version 1.6
• Processor: 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon™ QSD8250

I’m really impress by the TimeScape feature.  It integrates several social media providers into one place.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Several more videos are available at Sony Ericsson.

Today’s the day that Google is expected to officially announce its Nexus One Android phone, custom built by HTC.  The details & rumors have been swirling for over two months now, & Google is expected to make some waves today, just two days before CES kicks off.  According to the link above, the press conference is scheduled to begin at 10am PST, so to tide you over until then, why don’t you read Engadget’s official review?  Lots of good stuff in there, including a side-by-side-by-side web browser loading times with the Droid and iPhone.

WordPress 2.9 has been in the works for a while now, and in beta for a couple months.  I’m happy to announce that it has been officially released!

Some notable new features:

1. Global undo/”trash” feature, which means that if you accidentally delete a post or comment you can bring it back from the grave (i.e., the Trash). This also eliminates those annoying “are you sure” messages we used to have on every delete.
2. Built-in image editor allows you to crop, edit, rotate, flip, and scale your images to show them who’s boss. This is the first wave of our many planned media-handling improvements.
3. Batch plugin update and compatibility checking, which means you can update 10 plugins at once, versus having to do multiple clicks for each one, and we’re using the new compatibility data from the plugins directory to give you a better idea of whether your plugins are compatible with new releases of WordPress. This should take the fear and hassle out of upgrading.
4. Easier video embeds that allow you to just paste a URL on its own line and have it magically turn it into the proper embed code, with Oembed support for YouTube, Daily Motion, Blip.tv, Flickr, Hulu, Viddler, Qik, Revision3, Scribd, Google Video, Photobucket, PollDaddy, and WordPress.tv (and more in the next release).

Get your asses over to the WordPress download section or use the update feature to get yourself some 2.9 sweetness.

Slowly but surely, it seems Google will be opening up it’s Chrome extensions site…

Currently in a developer only mode, the Google Chrome Extensions site has started allowing contributions.  No word on when we’ll be able to start downloading Chrome Extensions, but I’m happy to see the official distribution site finally starting to show some forward momentum.

Google started testing a new look for Google Search … Perhaps a sign that everything Google will soon look like Wave?

I hope this “upgrade” in styling becomes a Google-wide phenomenon — although I guess I’m still left wanting.  Google has had a tendency to stick with minimalism in their design, but I’ve also found their products to feel a little too utilitarian – cold and functional but missing the form.  I’m not saying that Google’s design is ugly … well, yes I am.

If you’d like to check out this new look for yourself, you can enable the wave style look and feel by adding a cookie to your browser.  Just head over to google.com and paste the following JavaScript in your browsers address bar:

javascript:void(document.cookie=”PREF=ID=20b6e4c2f44943bb:U=4bf292d46faad806:TM=1249677602:LM=1257919388:S=odm0Ys-53ZueXfZG;path=/; domain=.google.com”);

Yesterday, Google announced Dashboard, a one stop information center that helps you keep track of all the Google products attached to your Google account.  Although it doesn’t seem like a really big deal, it really does a great job of centralizing the management of 20 Google products that you might have even forgotten you’ve signed up for.

They’ve included this snazzy little video to tell you all about it.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Perhaps … NEVER!  The last few days have been full of rumors that the Crunchpad is dead, but is it?  Are Mike Arringtons dreams of producing a $200 $300 tablet dead in the water?

The time-line behind the Cruchpad does play out like your typical too-good-to-be-true vaporware product, but the evidence of real working prototypes and even fancy packaging have leaked into the wild making this more than some drawing board pipe-dream.  It’s real, it works and we’ve seen it.

Many seem to think that the project might be scrapped due to higher than anticipated production cost.  Arrington has stated that he wants to sell the CrunchPad as cheap as possible — initially shooting for the $200 price point, and later saying “you can sell it for $300 and probably not go out of business”.  Is cost the sticking point?  Are they worries that people won’t pay more than $300 for a tablet that won’t do anything more than surf the web?

Another popular theory is that Fusion Garage and their Linux/WebKit based browser OS may be the hitch in the giddy-up.  Perhaps with Google and their open source Chrome OS seemingly around the corner, Mike has made the decision to dump Fusion Garage and wait for the Google offering to become a reality.  This would definitely put the CrunchPad in a holding pattern, but since Google Chrome OS is bound to be very well developed and more full-featured than the Fusion Garage offering, it seems it’d be a much smarter way to go.

So, is the CrunchPad dead?  Has the project run into problem it can’t overcome or are the delays just a reflection of changes in market overall?  I for one hope to to be sitting on my couch, surfing all my favorite blogs on a  CrunchPad, or Google Tablet, in the near future.

TechCrunch has a full run-down on the Google Nav application that will ship with Android 2.0 (Eclair), along with a demo video.  If you couldn’t tell by the screenshot alone, this is one killer navigation app.  It includes plain English search, as you can see in the video below.  Oh yeah, & did I mention that it’s a free application to boot?  When, o’ when, will AT&T pick up some Android phones….?

Click here to view the embedded video.

You’d think that the majority of people that use a computer and a web browser know what a web browser is… Guess not.

“Some folks at Google” decided to create a little website to help those that can’t tell the difference between a PC, a browser and a web site.

Wonder if some folks at Microsoft could come up with one of these to help my parents understand the difference between Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office…  That would be sweet.