Google will be introducing its Nexus One smartphone device next Tuesday, it appears certain. Not that Google has said as much: All the the company has announced is that it will hold an “Android related” press conference on Jan. 5, a day identified in prior rumor accounts as the Google phone’s launch date. The expectation of a Nexus One announcement has been bolstered by screenshots containing pricing information and other details published by the tech blog Gizmodo.

In 2010, application developers will continue to be asked to do more with less. During the global financial meltdown of the past year, the amount of work didn’t change while resources were dramatically pared back. The result was that new projects suffered. Talking with application development leaders today, there is more optimism. While new projects are moving ahead, the lessons of 2009 have not been forgotten. The focus on getting more done with less and the demand for fast ROIs remains.

Data mining is becoming a crowded field filled with software providers using similar strategies. Their basic goal is always the same. The analytics platforms are designed to slice and dice data to make sales trends and buying opportunities more evident. The firms that can deliver this product more accurately and more rapidly grow their reputations and entice new customers from lesser-producing competitors. Even when relative newcomers such as ParAccel introduce innovations, what they provide to their customers is essentially a better, faster way to dissect digital data.

Hackers have once again demonstrated that the GSM standard, the most widely used mobile phone standard in the world, can be hacked. The GSM Association has acknowledged the technology’s flaw, but it said the weakness is not a serious threat and that hackers have not been able to create a practical attack capability that can be used on live, commercial GSM networks. However, the danger of this latest hack is that it was done with relatively inexpensive equipment, including a PlayStation 3 and open source software.

Back in early October — nearly three months before Umar Abdulmutallab tried to blow up a jetliner bound for Detroit — the Transportation Safety Administration’s blog cheerily announced it had received $355 million of Recovery Act money for “a lot of really nifty improvements to aviation security.” Included in that amount: $25 million to pay for 150 backscatter advanced imaging units which allow screeners to detect threats under people’s clothes.

As netbook sales continue to grow, hardware and software vendors are battling to exploit this relatively new market. Intel released a beta software development kit in early December for developers who create applications for netbooks based on its Atom chip. These apps will run in the Microsoft Windows and Moblin operating systems. Meanwhile, Google has promised a new netbook operating system in time for holiday sales next year, while computer vendors such as Asus, Dell and Lenovo are jostling to get their slice of the networking pie.

Chinese-language consumers unwilling or unable to pay the cost of a legitimate copy of Microsoft’s Windows XP now have a new alternative: a clone of the operating system that’s based on Ubuntu. Dubbed “Ylmf OS,” the software is available from Rain Forest Wind Guangdong Computer Technology as a free download on a dedicated Web site. The system is based on Ubuntu 9.10 and integrates Wine, according to the page. Also included are OpenOffice 3.1, CompizConfig Effects Settings Manager, Firefox and Pidgin for instant messaging.

Apple could be gearing up to release a new tablet device known as the “iSlate” as early as next month, according to the latest batch of rumors circulating in the tech press. It turns out Apple owns the domain islate.com, MacRumors reported last week, citing a historic record that briefly exposed the Cupertino company as the registrant for the site. The company has also placed an order for 10-inch touch panels with Foxconn subsidiary >Innolux after delaying the tablet’s launch in order to find stronger glass, according to Taiwanese rumor site DigiTimes.

When Google opened up the source code for its Chrome operating system last month, third-party hardware manufacturers lined up plans to build Chrome-based netbooks, with availability expected in late 2010. Could Google also be cooking up plans to sell its own, Google-branded Chrome netbook at around the same time? The blogosphere’s rumor mill is humming with purported hardware details of such a Google netbook, which were first listed by IBTimes. Google remains elusive on the issue.

Entering a physical facility should be just as secure as logging onto a PC. Security professionals often find themselves hard-pressed to secure both physical and logical assets. So why are so many organizations behind the curve when it comes to managing physical and logical access? There are dozens of excuses: “It’s too expensive.” “Securing electronic data is a greater concern.” “We wouldn’t even know where to start.” However, the reality is that a unified approach to physical and logical access actually saves money — not to mention time.

General purpose search applications like Spotlight do an excellent job of giving byte-slingers swift access to the content in a panoply of common file types. When it comes to proprietary formats like those created by Quark Express and Adobe InDesign, those file ferrets can be blind as olms. That poses a big problem for publishers of every stripe who have countless documents in those formats and need to find something in them. Now, though, there’s a solution to that problem. It’s called “PageZephyr.”

With just a few days left to 2009, the mood on the Linux blogs has been uncharacteristically quiet and contemplative. Mostly gone are the fire and vitriol so often seen in the community’s many contentious debates, replaced instead by discussions of a kinder, gentler nature. To wit: Linux Today’s Carla Schroder recently penned an Editor’s Note entitled, “Hug Your Favorite FOSS Contributors Today (On the Internet, no one can see you nod.)”

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