iPod touch users are finally getting a taste of what iPhone users have had since iPhone OS 2.2: Google Street View. iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod touch includes an update to the Maps application that enables Google Street View, and it works just like it does on the iPhone.

Additionally, the "Find my iPhone" feature is implemented as "Find my iPod touch" for iPod touch users. It works exactly like Megan described yesterday, but is perhaps less accurate than using the iPhone's built-in GPS. It'll at least get you close, so long as it's connected to a Wi-Fi network. If it is, you can send messages to the iPod touch and wipe its memory.

If you do send a message to an iPod touch that's turned off or not connected to a Wi-Fi network, the message is queued until it's on and connected.

Both features appear to work on both first- and second-generation iPod touch devices. As Megan mentioned, since the first-generation iPod touch lacks a speaker, it won't make the "ping" noise associated with Find my iPhone unless you have speakers plugged in. Perhaps less useful for finding it in the house, but still helpful if you left it on a table at the park.

Have you found an undocumented feature that the iPhone 3.0 Software Update for iPod touch provides? Let us know by tipping us, or leaving a comment.

Thanks, Harold, Ben, Rocky, and everyone who sent this in!

Google released a new tool for Mac users today. With Google Quick Search Box (QSB), you can perform searches of anything on your Mac or the Web with a few keystrokes. After downloading QSB, I installed it and gave it a test drive on my MacBook Air. After a short first look, I can say that QSB is going to be in constant use on my Macs.

The application takes up about 18 MB of space on your Mac hard disk, and once it is installed a small search box hovers on your screen (see above). You can toggle the presence of the box by pressing Control-Space Bar. The keyboard shortcut, as well as the appearance of the search box, can be customized in a very thorough preferences panel.

Digg's Kevin Rose, perennial purveyor of information that just "fell off the back of the truck" shared a link early this morning to Google's new, supercharged, Webkit-based browser -- for Mac.

The new browser, Chrome, is clearly marked as a developer preview, and not meant for general browsing. In fact, as a good Mac citizen, it will refuse to set itself as your default browser.

It scores a 100 on the Acid3 test straight out of the box, but doesn't pass: it fails something called the linktest, which involves interacting A tags and IFRAMEs. A little research suggests that it could be a bug with Webkit. If that's true, then it's a bug that Safari 4 beta has fixed.

Chrome appears to have Flash (and other plugin) support disabled as well. JavaScript support, however, is fully functional. While Chrome performed much better than Firefox on this cursory test, it still didn't beat Safari 4 by a long shot. While only a beta, its performance is respectable and sure to improve.

Again, Google Chrome isn't for everyone, but if you're a web developer who needs to keep up with the bleeding edge of browser development, then this preview should be stable and reliable enough for you to test what you need to.

Read through for the full JavaScript test details.

Thanks to everyone who sent this in!

Apple, Google, Yahoo! and Genentech are subjects of a fresh antitrust investigation surrounding hiring and recruiting practices among companies in the tech industry, according to Washington Post staff writer Cecilia Kang.

"By agreeing not to hire away top talent, the companies could be stifling competition and trying to maintain their market power unfairly," antitrust experts said in the article. Hiring and recruiting can sometimes be a touchy affair, as Apple found out late last year when trying to hire Mark Papermaster. The investigation may suggest some kind of written agreement among large tech firms to not hire away each other's top talent.

According to the New York Times, Justice has only requested documents for the ongoing investigation. Neither the Justice Department nor any of the companies mentioned in the story had any comment.

This comes in addition to another Justice investigation into ties between the boards of directors of Apple and Google, and whether or not having Google CEO Eric Schmidt on both (and Genentech CEO Arthur Levinson on all three) constitutes antitrust violations. Some consider Apple and Google to be competitors in certain areas such as phone handsets.

The Obama administration is stepping up efforts to investigate anti-competitive activity among high-tech companies, and is already investigating Google's deal with book authors to republish their work via Google Books.

[Via AppleInsider]

Hot on the heels of the new version of Gmail Mobile for the iPhone comes a new mobile version of Google Calendar leveraging some of the same technology. The previous iteration was frustratingly feature-poor, allowing you only to view your appointments and add new ones using a natural language interface which could be frustrating with the iPhone's keyboard. Thankfully the new version has a more typical appointment entry screen.

Better appointment entry is nice, but the big new features in the new version of Google Calendar for the iPhone are the ability to edit existing appointments, invite other people to events, and the ability to manage appointment invitations and attendance statuses.

Although the official announcement on the Official Google Mobile Blog inexplicably downplays it, Google Calendar now has a modicum of offline functionality on the iPhone and Android phones. Now even if you have no network connection it can still show you appointments that you've previously viewed, though you can't edit them. Hopefully this matures into a true offline capability in future versions, but it's sure nice to know that you can get to your appointments if you need to when you're without a network connection.

Back in March I made a plea for a native Gmail application on the iPhone. As it turned out, Google was working on a new version of the Gmail Mobile site that takes advantage of HTML5 features like database storage to provide caching functionality on the iPhone and Android phones. The demo was compelling; a super-fast Gmail experience that includes long-awaited features like full label support, the ability to apply changes to multiple messages at once, and a floating action bar (dubbed the "floaty bar") that allows you to archive, delete, mark read/unread, add or remove a star, or mark messages as spam without having to scroll to the top or bottom of the thread you are viewing to do so.

The demo was certainly exciting, but though I was hoping would be released soon, I was fearing we were still a year away from seeing this new version of Gmail Mobile. Boy, was I wrong.

This sexy new web version of Gmail Mobile was released yesterday, and as a heavy Gmail user I have only one word for it: Glorious! Okay, I'm a blogger, so we know I never only have one word for something. But if you've been using the built in Mail app on your iPhone to avoid the clunky web version, it's time to try Google Mobile again.

While it's a huge, massive improvement on the previous version, the new Google Mobile is not without areas that could use improvement. For one, it is very slow to load. For me, I'm willing to put up with this since once it does load everything is significantly faster than it was. But it would certainly be nice to see an improvement in this regard, and that's something that was hinted at on the Official Gmail blog post announcing this new version. Another small annoyance is that the buttons are smaller than standard iPhone buttons, and there are more of them. It's manageable, but does require a bit of extra care and attention.

All in all, a very solid improvement, and one that makes working with email on the iPhone significantly more pleasant for Gmail users.

After much lamenting and a few attempts, Google Chrome can finally be run natively in OS X. Kind of. Don't get us wrong, it works: it starts up fast and runs one process per window, just like the Windows version. But there are a few glaring holes, the lack of plugins (and therefore Flash, which means no YouTube) being one of them. The History, Bookmarks Bar, and Preferences screens don't work either, which makes this not much more than a proof-of-concept still: it can run natively, but you wouldn't really want to.

It's too bad Google hasn't gotten this working themselves sooner. Maybe they've just been too busy lately taking care of panda-obsessed AIs.

I admit it. I check Google out all the time when I need some information. It's a good habit, and I feel better informed.

If you are a juror, however, you can be a wee bit too informed. The New York Times is reporting jurors with web enabled cell phones are doing their own research, Googling lawyers names, more information on defendants and even research into claims made by witnesses. Recently in a Florida case, such misbehavior resulted in a costly mistrial after 8 weeks of work by prosecutors and defense attorneys.

In an Arkansas case, a juror used Twitter to send updates to friends during a civil trial.Jurors are instructed to not do any outside research or communications, but some find the temptation just too great.

In some states, cellphones are not allowed in the courtrooms, but are allowed in the jury rooms. Most of these rules were designed to keep distracting noises out of the courtroom, and later the rules were trying to deter cameras built into phones. Many judges didn't give a thought about jurors using their phones to do research until recently, but our do-it-all phones are likely going to force a complete rewriting of the rules. How can you learn more about this issue? Google it on your iPhone, of course.

We're right in the middle of convention season and as I noted last night on the Talkcast, I'm here in Chicago (at least the weather's nice) instead of down in Austin with the rest of the gang. But there is a little consolation: I've had a chance to try out SXSW's newest software darling, Foursquare. It's an app (and a social networking site, and a service, and a game) from the guys who made Dodgeball, that social network that just recently got shut down by Google, who bought it out a while ago.

The basic premise is very close to Dodgeball, in that the system basically revolves around "checking in" -- whenever you go out to a bar, you hit a button in the app that says something like "Hey, I'm at Tin Lizzie," and then everyone in your friends list (and your Twitter followers, if you have that option set) sees where you are.

In addition, however, they've added some new features into the mix: you get "scored" on how many times you go out and when you go out to different places. And there are even "achievements" you can earn (eventually user created) for trying a hot dog at everyone's favorite stand, or drinking x number of beers at a popular bar. In fact, there's even awards for going to bars where less-than-fashionable people appear, so watch where you decide to spend your Saturday night, lest you pick up the d-bag award.

Gather around, Apple fans. I have good news and bad news for you. The good news is that there is a preliminary version of Google Chrome up and running. Sort of. Google's Mike Pinkerton has posted a couple of screenshots of Chrome for Mac on his blog, including the very first time he used it to load a webpage. It's coming, folks.

Now the bad news from Mike himself, "We've got a very very long way to go." He says that the WebKit that ships with Mac OS X doesn't do what they developers need right out of the box, and it took a lot of cajoling to get it to comply. If it's anything like the acrobatics I must perform each weekday morning to get my kids out the door in time to catch the school bus, Google's Mac devs will be busy indeed.

That thudding sound you're hearing is the head-to-keyboard collision of everyone who, for the purposes of wireless PIM sync to an iPhone, renewed a MobileMe subscription last week. Google announced today that the beta Google Sync for Mobile capability, long a feature on the Blackberry, has now been extended to iPhones (via Microsoft's ActiveSync), and also to other devices that support the SyncML standard. You can sync your Google-side calendar and contacts to your device of choice, free, bidirectionally, starting today.

There are a few caveats with this beta, as one might expect: the main one is that you cannot use the sync capability if you already synchronize with an Exchange account, as there can be only one ActiveSync config on the iPhone or iPod touch at any time. Setting up sync with Google will also nuke your local contacts and calendar on the device, so back up before you proceed. Still, this represents a big step forward in the delicate dance of Google services in cooperation with Apple's mobile gear.

If you configure sync for your device, let us know how it goes! Early comments note that the lack of multiple calendar support is a showstopper -- if that applies to you, check out the NuevaSync option. Update: You can apparently sync up to five calendars to the phone, see here for details.

[via Engadget]

Google Analytics is a popular and quite useful set of tools for monitoring a web site's traffic and performance. Set up is a snap and the reports are easy to read and flexible. You can create goals, monitor traffic and so on. What more could you want? On-the-go reports via your iPhone? All of your target statistics in your pocket? Oh, all right.

Earlier this week, Michael D Jensen of Inblosam LLC released Analytics App, which presents everything you'd ever want from Google Analytics on your iPhone. It is exhaustive.

When you first launch Analytics App, you're asked for your Google login (you must have a pre-existing Analytics account). From there, a list of all the sites you're monitoring appears. Click any one and view nearly 30 reports, including traffic, visitors, content ... even events tracking you've set up and your own customized reports. It's speedy over Wi-Fi and EDGE.

For example, Analytics App's traffic reports include referring sites, search engines, keywords, AdWords campaigns and more. Set the date range of any report to sort by day, week or month. The Dashboard provides an overview complete with easy-to-read graphs.

For $5.99US, this application is a keeper. Up-to-date stats from all of your sites, available nearly anywhere, makes our geeky little hearts go pitter-pat.

Google has launched new location-based social software which is available to many smartphone users today. Latitude will share your location with others and allow you to to view your friends' locations as well.

You can then contact them using text messaging, instant message or a phone call. The service is opt-in, so you won't be found if you don't want to be.

Initially, the system was available to Windows Mobile phones, most color Blackberry phones, Symbian S60 phones and Android phones with Google Maps 3.0 and above. Current G1 phones don't have version 3.0 yet, but it is coming in a system wide update.

How about the iPhone? Google says it is coming soon for both the iPhone and the iPod touch. There is no cost for the application, but people without unlimited data plans will see data charges. Use of the application will require a Google account. The service is available in 27 countries.

Google says it is sensitive about privacy, and Latitude users can, for example, let family members see exactly where they are, or let friends only know what city they are in. Alternatively, your location can be completely hidden from everyone (you sly dog).

Google is also offering a desktop version which allows you to input your location or determine it with wi-fi, and, of course, you can track your friends who are out and about.

The iPhone already has Loopt [App Store link] which has similar features, but Google is such a heavyweight in the web space that many people may sign up. Apple will have to update the Google Maps application on the iPhone to make it all work.

When Google Labs introduced "Tasks" to Gmail in December, we were eager for a mobile version; yesterday, the Gmail team announced an optimized Tasks web UI for mobile devices including the iPhone.

Setup is simple. First, log into your Gmail account and click "Settings." From there, click "Labs" and then the "Enable" button next to "Tasks." As Jeff Goldblum said, "There's no step three." You'll see a link to Tasks in the left sidebar of your Gmail account.

Now grab your iPhone and point Mobile Safari to http://gmail.com/tasks. Once you've logged in, you'll see the tasks you created on your Mac. Of course, you can create a task on either device, as well as multiple lists, mark items as complete and clear completed tasks. It's nice and snappy over EDGE and Wi-Fi.

Here's a great example of something that works perfectly well as a web-based app. In the rush to create iPhone/iPod touch apps that do everything under the sun, we've seen a crop of replacements for web apps that weren't 100% necessary (I still use Hahlo on occasion, if only for its speed over EDGE). If you want a free, no-frills task manager, and you already use Google for email or other services, this could be it.

[Via Phandroid]

Reader John sent us a fascinating little trip back in time (thanks!) he took on his blog: he found a 1996 copy of MacUser about all of the amazing applications available on the Internet, and decided go look at what had become of them. Sadly, most of them have gone missing, but the old names sound familiar: CU-SeeMe for messaging, Lycos for search, and Happy Puppy for gaming. It's almost hard to believe there was a time before Skype, Google, and Steam, but 1996 was it.

Even Apple has moved on -- their "/documents/product-support" page, something you'd think would have survived all this time, is gone. It's amazing the turnover the Internet's gone through in just 10 years. It's hard to believe that in 2029, something like Google.com will be retaken by a domain squatter as everyone's moved on to the next big thing.

But then again, things are different these days -- Google has obviously successfully figured out how to monetize their free service, and most of the original web companies went down because they could pull that off. But you never know -- a site you visit all the time might be completely changed or gone ten years from now.