In a move that is sure to leave Apple less than happy, Google has brought Google Voice back to the iPhone, it just isn’t as an application this time.

What can only be described as a schoolyard smack down has been happening between Google and Apple since last September when it was announced that Apple would not allow the Google Voice application to stay on the iPhone.  What followed was a he said/she said fight between Google, Apple and AT&T over who said what and when, but in the end it did look like it was Apple’s call as the two companies are now finding all sorts of ways to annoy the other one.

Well, in what is sure to annoy the living heck out of Apple now is that Google has brought the Google Voice service back to the iPhone in a way that Apple can do nothing about realistically: they put it on the Web.

If you go to m.google.com/voice with your iPhone (and even an iPod Touch for texts) or web OS based devices you will have access to your Google Voice contacts, saved voice mails and have the ability to place calls & texts all through the browser.  It isn’t clear how this will impact your minutes on your phone plan, but the texts do appear to be completely free.  You can watch the video below for more details, or visit the Google Voice blog.

The stable release of Google Chrome 4.0 has been released, and it has brought with it several major enhancements.

The Google Chrome Blog today announced that the stable release of Google Chrome 4.0 is now available for download.  This is a major release, and brings at least two major new features that everyone should be excited about.

Extensions

At long last, Chrome now supports extensions!  For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, extensions enable your browser to do extra little jobs like the Google Voice extension we described the other day.  Currently Google is offering over 1,500 extensions in its extension gallery, but we do highly recommend you limit how many you install because the more you add, the slower your browser may run.  That being said, there are some really useful ones out there, so you should at least give them a look and see if any of them will ease your online life.

Bookmark Synching

Chrome now comes with a built-in ability to synchronize your bookmarks across all of your computers running Chrome.  So if you have a laptop and a desktop in your life, set up the sync and your bookmarks will be the same on both machines.  It can be done on as many machines as you have, so the headaches this will relieve for people with multiple computers in their lives will truly be welcome.

Here is a video explaining more of the features

If you’ve resisted trying out Google Chrome, now would be the time, we think you’ll be pleased.

While not exactly tech news, it is something that impacts every American tax payer.

According to The New York Times, both houses of the U.S. Congress have decided to make monetary donations to earthquake relief in Haiti tax deductible from your 2009 returns.  This is unusual in the fact that donations usually have to be made in the calendar year that you want to take them off your taxes.

If you make a monetary donation to a recognized charity inside the United States between Jan. 11th and March 1st, you have the option of applying it either your 2009 return, or saving it for your 2010 return.  You will need a receipt of your donation of course, and, again, it must meet the other criteria.  You can read all about it in this CCH briefing (PDF link).

Of course this shouldn’t be your only motivation for donating to help with relief from this devastating natural disaster, but every little bit helps.

If you need assistance in determining what legitimate charities you can donate to, make sure to check the resources we put in our Haitian Earthquake Relief post.

Google has updated its Google Voice extension for Chrome, and it sure brought with it some highly usable new features.

Users of Google Chrome and Google Voice have already been able to use them in conjunction with one another, but with the release of version 2.0 of the Google Voice extension yesterday, it just got even more exciting.  The extension now:

• Adds a button to the toolbar, which displays the number of unread messages in your Google Voice inbox.
• Gives you quick access to your most recent messages with transcripts.
• Lets you initiate calls and send free text messages by just typing any number or contact name.
• Makes phone numbers on websites callable via Google Voice by just clicking on them.

The system is a lot more integrated now, and should make it even easier to save on cell phone minutes, and even contemplating getting rid of your landline once and for all.

If you haven’t signed up for Google Voice yet, it’s well worth it … especially since it is free.

In yet another example of password stupidity, a recently released list of hacked passwords showed that “123456″ was still popular.

Last year RockYou was hacked and millions of passwords stolen.  The list made its way on to the Web, and beyond hackers downloading the list were security experts who wanted to study it.  From that list they came up with the 32 most popular passwords on the site, which you can see to the right.

Apparently some need lessons in how to pick a password.

According to The New York Times, it wasn’t just these 32 that bothered security experts, but the fact that around 20% of the passwords came from a pool of only 5,000 passwords.

There was another similar story recently about how Twitter has a list of 370 passwords you can’t use, and that seems like something every site should be doing as evidenced by this list.  If a password is easy for you to remember, that also means it is easy to hack.  The fact that some people have used a password of “0″ is just mind boggling to me.

Two sites now have revealed their passwords, and both sites have shocked us with the stupidity of the passwords people choose.  Does no one care about identity theft?  Does no one care about protecting their data?

Take the time, educate yourself on how to create a stronger password and start using them today!

The newest version of Firefox has just been released, and it looks to be quite an improvement over previous versions.

You can head to the Get Firefox site to download it right now, and from my little time using it thus far, it looks to be worth it.  The browser seems to be considerably smoother in rendering pages, and just feels a bit quicker in a lot of its activities.  The true test will come with time of course, but it seems to be a marked improvement over previous versions.

Other points of interest as indicated by the official blog:

• Personas: Personalize the look of your Firefox by selecting new themes called Personas in a single click and without a restart
• Plugin Updater: To keep you safe from potential security vulnerabilities, Firefox will now detect out of date plugins
• Stability improvements: Firefox 3.6 significantly decreased crashes caused by third party software – all without sacrificing our extensibility in any way
• Form Complete: When filling out an online form, Firefox suggests information for fields based on your common answers in similar field
• Performance: Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness, and startup time
• Open Video and Audio: With the world’s best implementation of HTML 5 audio and video support, now video can be displayed full screen and supports poster frames

If you’re a Firefox user, this looks like a “must have” update to be sure.

Have you ever wondered which of the big four cell phone carriers in the United States was actually the cheapest? Well, thanks to BillShrink.com, we now have a pretty good idea.

Yesterday, the money saving Web site BillShrink.com released a graphic that compared the major cell phone plans of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile and Verizon so you could see at an easy glance how they stacked up against one another.  You can click on the image for a much larger version, but we’ll give you the short version … it appears Sprint wins.  This isn’t to say that Sprint is dirt cheap, but compared to the other three big carriers, it pretty soundly trounces them on every type of plan.

Depending on if you need a specific phone, or you live in an area that they don’t cover that well, this chart pretty much says there is no reason not to go with Sprint, especially if monthly fees are your primary concern.

Apparently the stock sound effects and music business is booming if the latest news from AudioMicro is anything to judge by.

AudioMicro is a leading source for royalty free music that you can download to include in videos, podcasts and so on that we have written about several times before.  Today the company is announcing that it has added nearly 20,000 production audio tracks from the vaults of Hollywood in a new collection called “The Platinum Collection.”

This new collection are all tracks that were previously available to Hollywood productions, and this is the first time they are being offered in such a way that even people producing video from their basements can afford to use them in a production.  “When we launched our first high end collection in October, we received overwhelming positive feedback from the community about its unprecedented quality, size, and scope”, said AudioMicro CEO Ryan Born.  “We are excited to enhance our archive of premium content with 20,000 new tracks in the Platinum Collection.”

With the addition of these new tracks, AudioMicro is now offering over 200,000 music tracks and sound effects for use royalty free in productions.  If you’re producing a podcast of videocast, this site is a must visit.

Apple has sent out invites to the likes of Engadget inviting them to a press event to be held at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts Theater in San Francisco at 10:00 am PST on Wednesday the 27th.

With the tagline of “Come see our latest creation.”, the feeling is that this will finally be the announcement of the long rumored Apple Tablet, which some are also calling the iSlate due to some legal documents filed by the company.  While there are no guarantees that is what is being unveiled next week, it would require a new product from Apple to have been developed with absolutely no leaked information coming out at all, a fairly unlikely situation.

Traditionally Apple has held events on Tuesdays, so the original assumption had been this event would be on the 26th as it was known Apple had reserved the facility for a few days at the end of the January.  There has been no word on why the event was moved from the traditional day.

We will have all of the news for you as soon as it comes out.

During this horrible time for the people of Haiti, it is easy to want to reach out and help the people impacted by this crisis. While this is a great thing, just make sure that the group you are donating to is a legitimate one.

As sad as it might be, scam artists take advantage of situations such as the one in Haiti to fill their own pockets.  Luckily several sites have gathered together the legitimate places where one can donate to aid in the relief of the victims.  The sites are:

• CNN Impact
• FoxNews How to Help
• Google crisis response page
• Huffington Post’s How You Can Help
• NPR’s How to Help
• PBS Newshour’s Haiti Relief Effort

Any resource listed on these pages is legitimate and 100% trustworthy.  Do NOT trust any charities that email you, run ads on sites, text you out of the blue and so on.  While some of them may be on the up and up, you can’t take the risk.  Please make sure that whomever you decide to donate through is who they say they are, and that the money is going where they claim it is.