Google’s just announced its third quarter earnings and, as expected, the company’s numbers are continuing on the upswing (even beating expectations). That includes $9.72 billion in revenue, which represents a 33 percent jump compared to the third quarter of 2010, along with $2.73 billion in net income, which is up from $2.17 billion a year ago.

Somewhat notably, Google also choose to lead off its press release announcing the financial results (included after the break) with the news that Google+ has just passed the 40 million user mark — the company further notes that “people are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate.”

There’s not a ton of surprises to be found in the results otherwise, although Larry Page and co. sure seem to be busy hiring new folks — they’ve brought on 10 percent more employees in the span of three months (for a total of 31,353 full-time employees as of September 30th).

During the company’s earnings call, CEO Larry Page confirmed that there’s now 190 million Android phones activated around the world, and 200 million users of the Chrome web browser (although it’s not clear how many of those are active users).

SOURCE via Google

The unfolding Android drama just got a bit more dramatic, as Microsoft and Taiwan-based Quanta have announced a lucrative patent-licensing agreement. Though the specific terms of the deal have not been made public, the press release confirms that Quanta will enjoy “broad coverage under Microsoft’s patent portfolio for Quanta’s tablets, smartphones and other consumer devices running the Android or Chrome Platform.” Naturally, Microsoft will also receive royalties from Quanta.

Those royalties are sure to give Google severe headaches. Microsoft has long claimed that Android borrows significant elements from Windows, and that they’re owed significant royalties for those borrowed elements. Considering Google’s policy of giving the OS away to developers for free, that’s not very likely to happen soon, but Microsoft’s plan B – undermine Google’s position by striking deals with individual developers – has worked out pretty well for them so far.

During the last few months, Microsoft has accumulated an impressive array of patent-sharing arrangements, including with Casio, Acer, ViewSonic, Velocity Micro and most recently with Apple arch-nemesis Samsung.

SOURCE via Engadget

Forget LED headlamps – according the BMW, the next logical step in car lighting development is laser lights. Laser lighting is radically different from sunlight or any different kind of artificial lighting used today, including the different types of light sources we use in vehicle headlamps.

Laser lighting is monochromatic, which means that all the light waves have the same length. It is also a “coherent” light source, which means its waves have a constant phase difference. As a result, laser lighting can produce a near-parallel beam with an intensity a thousand times greater than that of conventional LEDs, while having less than half the energy consumption of LED headlamps.

Read more…

Even if you were one of those Apple fans who was less than impressed by the iPhone 4S, there is still reason for excitement — and that reason’s name is iOS 5. If you’ve got an iPhone 3GS, 4, third- or fourth-gen iPod touch, or either of the iPads you can download Apple’s latest and greatest mobile OS right now.

That’s right, all the fun new features like pull-down notifications, iCloud, iMessage, Find my Friends, Twitter integration and lock screen access to your camera will be at your disposal. Sadly you will not be getting a taste of Siri, which appears to a 4S only feature for now. Still, there’s more than enough here to make it a worthy upgrade to your device. So, what are you waiting for? Go hit that update button now.

Updating to iOS 5 will require iTunes 10.5 to be installed on your computer. There’s also an update to OS X coming down the pipes — version 10.7.2 — which officially delivers iCloud to your Mac.

SOURCE via Apple

Desktop or mobile access to Apple’s iCloud will still require the absolute latest versions of OS X Lion and iOS 5 that haven’t been officially released just yet, but you can get into the website right now. Line jumpers may have noticed the site opened up to all a few hours ago, and now the design has changed, dropping the beta tag for this more inviting storefront. Hit the source link below to check it out for yourself, but have your Apple ID and password handy.

SOURCE via Apple

Intel has teamed with Asetek to provide an Intel-branded sealed liquid cooler for their CPUs. Intel becomes the first major CPU manufacturer to offer this as a base thermal cooling solution over the standard air cooler. In addition, it shows Intel’s commitment to provide users with new, improved options, along with offering options designed with the overclocking community in mind.

The cooler will be sold as a bundle option with their Sandy Bridge-E series CPUs. Users will be able to purchase the Sandy Bridge-E processors with or without the bundled cooler. This allows the end-user to determine what thermal cooling solution they want to utilize with their new CPUs, without having to deal with the “basic Intel heat-sink” utilized through the years. This does mean that the end-user will need to make sure they either go with the bundled option or have a 3rd-Party cooling option chosen for their new processor.

Intel will sell its sealed liquid cooler as a standalone option, as well. This provides user an option to utilize their new cooler with our platforms, within the Intel family. The coolers will sport the traditional Asetek-made water-block, as well as a large 12 cm fan and will be compatible with LGA2011, LGA1155, LGA1156 and LGA1366 platforms. Pricing of the new coolers is still unknown at this time.

SOURCE via xbitlabs