With Windows 8 milestone 3 now up for grabs for select Microsoft Connect partners, it's inevitable that leaked bits and pieces will start popping up around the Web. In fact, the first "official" wallpaper image from the still-brewing OS is already making the rounds. As you can see, it's got a similar feel to the good ol' Windows 7 default background, but features a more subdued smattering of ... Read more »

With the webOS 3.0 SDK available for almost two months, HP has now given developers access to a beta download of webOS 3.0 -- which powers the upcoming TouchPad and will likely ride along on HP desktops and laptops in the form of an emulator. Right now, the webOS 3.0 beta is only available to Early Access developers. The crew at PreCentral states that HP appears to have eased up on access ... Read more »

Google Voice Search has just introduced localizations for Latin America, Indonesia and Malaysia, enabling native language search for hundreds of millions of users. Google's official blog post offers some interesting insights into the process of collecting and analyzing the speech data needed to expand support. Thousands of hours were spent gathering voice samples and choosing key regional ... Read more »

Select Microsoft Connect partners -- major players like HP -- have been given their first taste of Windows 8. According to various sources, the build string currently sits at 7971.0.110324-1900, which is the third milestone build of the successor to Windows 7. So far, there haven't been many details revealed about Windows 8. An actual System Restore -- which is being referred to as History ... Read more »

While this slick little HTML5 audio player might not pack all of the features of your favorite desktop media application, it's still a very cool demonstration of what a Web app can do with access to local resources -- like MP3 and OGG files. Just fire up http://antimatter15.github.com/player/player.html in your HTML5-compatible browser and browse to the topmost folder in your music ... Read more »

Right on cue, Google has launched in-app payment support for Android applications. Developer testing began last week, and now many popular apps -- like the ones pictured above -- can begin charging users for add-on functionality, content, or whatever the heck else they feel is worthy of additional bits of your pocket change. If you were wondering, Google will take the same 30% cut that Apple ... Read more »

Bots -- like the kind which automate IRC rooms and Google Wave -- are a good thing to know about. There are plenty of useful bots worth knowing about, too, including the Google Talk Guru. Just add guru@googlelabs.com to your GTalk buddies, and you can start firing off questions. Lifehacker suggests that the same types of queries supported by Google SMS will work, though we didn't have any luck ... Read more »

Just a little under two months after its release candidate went live, Windows Home Server (WHS) 2011 has been finalized and released into the wild. The new version of Microsoft's slick, do-it-all server OS is a big step forward from its predecessor. Built on the Windows Server 2008 R2 base, Home Server 2011 features a simpler dashboard, a better backup solution, dead simple remote access to ... Read more »

Over on the Internet Explorer Blog, Microsoft has posted results from an extensive comparison of the top five Web browsers. The goal: to determine whether Internet Explorer 9, Firefox 4, Chrome 10, Safari 5, or Opera 11 is able to squeeze the most life out of your laptop's battery. A baseline was determined with test systems sitting idle, and then browsers were pointed at about:blank, a ... Read more »

Evernote, the popular multi-platform 'digital memory' app, has done some serious re-tooling of its Web interface. In addition to a more polished UI that more closely mirrors the look of Evernote on the desktop, the update brings features like notebook stacks and snippet view to the Web. Auto-saving is now enabled as well, and you can select multiple items by holding down the Cmd or Ctrl key ... Read more »

Security company BitDefender -- which recently released the Safego app to protect your Facebook account -- has put together an infographic illustrating information about the state of scams on the social networking site. At an impressive 7,532 pixels tall, the graphic offers plenty of insight into the dark underbelly of Facebook. The company found profile insight apps -- like those which ... Read more »

Skyfire, the popular Flash-video-playing Web browser for iOS and Android, has released a new version for iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch users. The update includes a handful of important changes, including seven new localizations: French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese, and Spanish. There's also an improved support process for when you need to submit feedback or bug reports to ... Read more »

Trustware BufferZone is a great way to add an additional layer of security to your Windows computer. It's a sandboxing application, which means it helps isolate programs so they can't directly interfere with your Windows installation. Sandboxing is a terrific way to defend against malware infections. Unfortunately, BufferZone had one serious shortfall. When Windows 7 arrived and the push to ... Read more »

Nir Sofer (of NirSoft) makes loads of useful little Windows utilities. One of our favorites, Volumouse, has a new beta available and it offers some nice improvements over its predecessor. To start, Volumouse beta 2 adds support for Windows Vista and Windows 7 per-application volume settings. There's also a new "send hotkeys" feature which lets you use the mouse wheel to fire off custom ... Read more »

You still can't sync custom search engines in Google Chrome, and that makes tasks like site-specific searches a pain. There are loads of extensions available which can handle the chore, of course, and one worth checking out is Omnibox Site Search. Once installed, you simply type the letter s and press space to invoke a Google-powered site search for the domain you're currently visiting. ... Read more »