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It was a long time coming, but Google is finally ready to bring Gmail to the desktop. The search giant has unveiled a new and much anticipated gadget that allows Google Desktop users to check their Gmail accounts without running a full-blown email client or even having to fire up the browser.

The new gadget will allow users to read, star, search and send Gmail messages while in Google Desktop, according to the company, while supporting other useful features like keyboard shortcuts and multiple accounts. The app is currently Windows-only and requires Google Desktop version 5 or higher, leaving Mac and Linux users out in the cold for now.

Recently BitTorrent has toyed with the idea of switching to a UDP-based transmission method as opposed to the current TCP-based method. The new protocol was designed to combat network congestion, but it almost immediately came under fire with reports claiming it would destroy network traffic. Claims were made that the UDP-based protocol would make P2P traffic more unmanageable than ever, bringing services like VoIP to their knees and rendering networks dead in the water or slowed to a fraction of their normal speed.

In response to these, BitTorrent who created the new protocol has said that such claims are absolute falsehoods. They add that the report is inaccurate in how it describes or interprets their new protocol. To the contrary, BitTorrent says the new protocol will actually make torrent traffic more neutral and fairer, becoming more sensitive to high latency.

In this instance I'm inclined to agree with BitTorrent developers. The report made many generalizations regarding torrent traffic, and makes some pretty bold claims as to what this new protocol will do. I certainly don't foresee VoIP traffic being “destroyed” by torrents.

Cloud computing is becoming a big topic, and as more companies offer such services, there’s more demand for an operating system that can integrate with them. Even the latest desktop Linux distros, Mac OS X and Vista are still not designed with cloud computing in mind, though, and it'll take a radical change to make an OS that truly “integrates” with the cloud.

Good OS seeks to do just that, with the announcement of “Cloud,” a Linux-based operating system intended to be used solely with Internet-based services. The OS “uniquely” integrates a browser into the system, designed to boot extremely fast and give someone instant access to cloud computing services. The OS is apparently intended to be coupled side-by-side with a standard desktop OS, such as Windows, which can then later be booted on demand. The quick-booting software is due in the beginning of January, where it will be demoed at CES.

Cloud computing represents a forward movement of Internet-based services, but at the same time resembles a time in the past when computer terminals were nothing more than an interface to a more powerful machine behind the scenes. Cloud computing is virtually the same concept, on a much more massive scale. It's too early to tell if “cloud” computing is really where mainstream computing is going, though it certainly seems the industry is moving in that direction. You can read more about Cloud OS in the press release after the jump.

ComScore released numbers for online spending during Black Friday in the U.S. For non-economists, figures look encouraging with a total estimated spending of $534 million. However, this represents a mere 1 percent increase over last year, which comes despite of the general recession climate affecting this market. In previous years, online sales growth during Black Friday have surpassed 20 percent.

There are a few other interesting tidbits in the report issued during the weekend. Unlike the average shopper that wakes up early on Black Friday to get the best deals from retail stores, the study shows that the bulk of sales took place after 8 AM, with the most active shopping period between 12 and 4 PM.

For the whole holiday season so far, comScore reports that a staggering $10.41 billion has been spent online, still a 4 percent decline from last year. As most of you are aware, however, today is Cyber Monday which represents the kick-off of the holiday online shopping season in the U.S., so watch out for further discounts and offers from online stores.

Earlier this month it was discovered that a significant number of movies by Columbia Pictures, a subsidiary of Sony, were mysteriously pulled from the Netflix service offered on Xbox Live – but remained available on other Netflix compatible devices. This of course led many to believe that Sony had carefully timed the downtime of the films as a blow to rival Microsoft on the eve of the NXE launch.

The excuse given by Netflix at the time was that there was a problem with licensing the films for XBLA, claiming they would be back “shortly.” Whatever the problem was, it appears that the companies have finally solved it, and now most of the films have been quietly put back up again. Interestingly, Netflix noted that certain Sony titles are still missing and “not necessarily” due to a licensing issue, though no solid explanation was given.

Sling Media is best known for its Slingbox TV place-shifting device, but the company is now hoping to grab a slice of the increasingly crowded online streaming market, with a newly launched video destination of its own at Sling.com. The selection of media is pretty comprehensive, offering pretty much the same content as Hulu along with CBS programs and other clips from popular video websites such as College Humor and Break.com. The site has a fairly clean look and is rather easy to navigate, but it doesn’t really bring much new to the table… unless you happen to own a Slingbox.

Right now, Slingbox owners need to use the company's proprietary software to access their television, but Sling.com will allow them to watch their live TV streams and saved content in a standard web browser via a special plug-in – which unfortunately for Linux and Mac users runs only on Windows-based PC's at the moment. Of course, you also need a decent high-speed Internet connection at home to enjoy watching your Slingbox streams through the site.

All in all, Sling.com still has a ways to go if it wants to unseat Hulu as the top choice for online video streaming, but hopefully it will continue to introduce new content and perhaps even the ability to stream such content to a Slingbox set-top box.

As expected, spam levels are heading back up after dropping dramatically following the shutdown of McColo. According to MessageLabs, now part of Symantec, spam levels decreased by about 80% when the spammer’s hosting firm was disconnected recently, but the remaining 20% has almost doubled to 37% since last week.

Computers that are part of the Srizbi botnet – which by some estimates send nearly half of the world's spam – are apparently becoming active again, with the lag between the initial decline and the subsequent rise being attributed to the time it took for the spammers to find a new ISP and bandwidth provider.

The resurgence of spam is not at all surprising but it is disappointing to hear that, two weeks after the McColo shutdown, no federal agency has been able to seize the servers used to control these operations, which of course conceal a potential treasure trove of evidence against the cybercriminals.

BlockBuster may be best known for its brick-and-mortal video rental outlets, but the company is now getting ready to make a serious play in the digital video market, with the introduction of a new set-top box player that will let customers download movies over broadband connections and watch them on their TV sets.

For a limited time the recently introduced MediaPoint box will be available "for free" with the advance rental of 25 on-demand movies for $99 – movies will then be available starting at $1.99 each. The company is emphasizing its a la carte pricing model, in contrast with Netflix's fixed-rate fees, and promises “hot new releases available within weeks of leaving theaters” with the new service. While the player supports HD video content, Blockbuster did not specify whether it will offer any high-definition titles initially.

YouTube received a major overhaul today with the introduction of widescreen videos. The hugely-popular video-sharing website has had its page width increased to 960 pixels in order to “better reflect the quality of the videos [users] create and the screens [they] use to watch them,” according to a blog announcement explaining the change.

The long-awaited transition to the 16:9 aspect ratio finally brings the service up to the standards of other video sharing sites such as Vimeo and Hulu. Obviously, the move is also motivated by the company’s long term goal of featuring full length movies on the site, with MGM being the first major studio to provide its content. Moreover, users who wish to continue uploading 4:3 videos can continue to do so, and YouTube's player will display an unaltered image with black bars either side.

Facebook has been a hot acquisition target for years but the massively popular social networking site is now looking to pick up some of its own big name web properties. Apparently, the company tried to acquire Twitter for $500 million worth of stock five weeks ago but senior executives at both companies gave up on the idea at the beginning of this month.

The sticking point was of course price, with Twitter executives claiming that the $15 billion valuation of Facebook is inflated and taking the all stock offer would have would have actually given the deal a 150 million dollar price tag according to their calculations. Moreover, it seems there was a feeling among Twitter investors that the start-up should keep growing on its own and take a shot at figuring out its own revenue model.

Facebook has been awarded $873 million in damages against a Canadian man accused of sending spam messages to its members, marking the largest award yet for a suit filed under the CAN-SPAM Act. The suit charged Adam Guerbuez, Atlantis Blue Capital and 25 other unnamed people for falsely obtaining login information for Facebook users and then sending spam to those users' friends.

The amount awarded in this case tops the $234 million judgment won by MySpace in May to be paid by so-called Spam King Sanford Wallace, and the lesser $177,500 fine that two men were ordered to pay in October 2007 for their porn spam operation. Like previous cases, this is probably just a symbolic victory unlikely to yield Facebook much money, but hopefully it will represent a powerful deterrent to anyone seeking to abuse this and other sites for sending spam.

Microsoft intends to rebrand its Live Search service as Kumo next year, according to a TechCrunch report that cited a source within the company. Apparently, the software giant acquired the kumo.com domain name last week and since then has been busy snapping up all the other variants such as .net, .jp, .fr, .ru and so on.

Also being reported as a sign that Microsoft is taking measures to boost its search engine is the fact that it has recently hired Sean Suchter, currently Yahoo’s vice president of search technology. Despite Microsoft’s recent efforts to encourage Live.com usage, which include actually paying users, their service seems to have reached a dead end and hasn’t grown in the past few months. Whether or not these latest moves will improve the company’s competitiveness with the other leading search engines remains to be seen.

Continuing with an ongoing trend, Virgin America is finally making its long announced entry into the world of in-flight broadband. The carrier, like American and Delta, will use the Gogo service from Aircell to provide its passenger with broadband connectivity and has teamed with YouTube to provide an air-to-ground video stream, from a plane flying over the San Francisco Bay Area, as part of the launch event tomorrow.

Virgin America’s in-flight Wi-Fi service will then remain in beta tests for one week before a planned commercial launch on December 1, with plans to have the system from Aircell deployed on all its planes by the middle of next year. Internet access won't be filtered for content or applications, except for VoIP, and the company will charge $9.95 for a flight of three hours or less and $12.95 for longer flights.

Spam may be down recently, but scamming certainly is not. Quite the opposite, recent reports are indicating that the amount of Internet scams are actually rising, including financial scams, and particularly interesting is the fact that many people involved are often unaware they are even part of something illegal. According to the study, recruitment into financial scams has risen to over five times what it was just a few months ago.

Many of the newer scams use a “money mule” scheme, in which someone is paid to do nothing but shuffle funds from one country to another. This sounds an awful lot like the known Nigerian email scam, except in this case people really are being paid to partake. Interestingly, the study indicates that people in North America are 66% more likely to actually be suckered in to partaking in one of these scams.

In an effort to provide a more customized search experience, Google has launched a new feature that lets signed-in users shift around, delete and add comments on search results. The feature is called SearchWiki, and it is a dramatic departure from the streamlined, algorithm-rules approach to search that Google has championed for years.

The company has been testing this system in its labs for a while, but now it has seen a full release. It’s not clear whether Google plans to incorporate user feedback from SearchWiki into its normal search results eventually, or perhaps they simply plan to consider the extra data when determining the relevance of its own rankings.

Moreover, Google was careful to point out that the system would only affect personal results, but it will nonetheless allow you to see how the community has collectively edited the search results by showing notes made by others and what pages they have re-ranked, added or deleted.

How much does spam cost a business? Google wants businesses owners and the world at large to know, and seeks to aid them with the introduction of the Google Spam Calculator, a fairly simplistic tool intended to demonstrate what it actually costs for a company to sort through spam every day. The goals of Google here are pretty clear – after all, they own Postini, one of the world's biggest anti-spam companies. In fact, they give you a figure at the end that tells you on average how long it would take for Google Message Security once employed to pay for itself in terms of cost savings.

An interesting sales pitch. Some, though, say Google doesn't go far enough with their anti-spam measures. For instance, some of criticized their Gmail service, claiming it can become a haven for spammers. Google certainly isn't in the wrong, though. Independent research all over has come up with many figures that all agree spam costs businesses quite a bit of money – up to $70 billion a year, according to one study.

For all the companies that try, from Google's own Postini to Appriver to numerous others, the fight against spam won't be one with filtering and blacklists – an overhaul of email as we know it is probably the only real answer.

Add-ons are one of the biggest advantages of Firefox over the competition and Mozilla has grown a healthy ecosystem of developers centered on its popular open source browser over the years. But while longtime Firefox users probably have the browsers packed with their favorite extensions already, the lineup can be overwhelming to newcomers.

To simplify things, the company has just launched Fashion Your Firefox, a version of the add-on library that is edited and maintained by Mozilla staffers, based on the extension’s popularity, functionality and ease of use. The site is divided up into categories, which include social networking sites, music, data, shopping, news and searching, each with just a handful of add-ons.

There are many other great extensions not found in the categories currently listed at the site, but this is nonetheless a simple way for those unfamiliar with extensions to get started with some good ones.

Cloud computing may be the future, but it is a future that few seem to be embracing as of yet. Google Docs, the current largest online office suite, has managed to only scoop up around one percent of users, and those users still used a standard office suite alongside it to supplement.

In a study done between May and November, it was discovered that not only did relatively few people make use of online office suites, those who did also used a far less diverse suite of functions and don't see these online suites as “competition” for standard office apps right now. Still, the number of people making actual use of online office programs was zero not long ago.

This is the second study done in recent history which demonstrates how few people are using online office suites. Some may look at it as bad, but I see it in a different light. Google Docs, for example, has an extremely small set of tools available to it. A document or spreadsheet editor from 15 years ago would be far more functional. The fact people are making use of it at all shows their willingness to experiment and I think the only real hurdle Google and others have to overcome, aside from the trust factor, is feature richness. Every once in a while I will login to Google Docs and see they've added some new feature – and with every feature they add, more users will come.

In a move shocking to absolutely no one, Netflix has confirmed that very soon they will no longer be offering HD DVD movies for rental through their system. The official date is set for December 15th. For those who have already queued movies up and may still have them queued in HD DVD format, Netflix will be substituting regular DVDs for those.

Since the “death” of HD DVD, many companies that adopted early, including Netflix, have been wondering what to do with the inventory they'd acquired that was quickly becoming useless. Netflix isn't mentioning if they will be selling off their HD DVDs, particularly since they plan to stop selling used DVDs in the near future as well. They might end up just trashing all the media, which could be costly.

Following a soft launch in the UK earlier this year, Microsoft has debuted its online store in the United States. Simply titled the Microsoft Store, the outlet promises to become a one-stop-shop for all your favorite Microsoft gear from first-party software to hardware and PC/Xbox video games.

Purchases can either be shipped as regular boxed versions or downloaded, and users will be allowed to re-download a product until mainstream support for it ends (typically five years). Sounds handy, indeed, but the store apparently still has some way to go, with multiple sites reporting substantially higher prices compared to Amazon for example.

Microsoft has been testing the electronic-software-distribution concept for several years via its Windows Marketplace effort, whether the Microsoft Store will replace the former remains to be seen. In any case, the new store is now open for business alongside German, Korean and UK editions. Stores for France, Japan, Netherlands and Spain will be available in the near future while other countries will be covered “throughout the year.”