The best way to understand a new SDK is to work with it. With that in mind, we'll show you how to do some basic location based services and simple UI layout using Google's newest upstart mobile offering.

Recently, Gmail added IMAP support, giving the powerhouse email host the ability to interact better with third-party clients. And Google, being the friendly neighborhood do-gooder that it is, provided instructions on how to use IMAP with a variety of third-party clients. However, it forgot one popular client: KMail, the email portion of the KDE Kontact personal information management suite. Google also neglected to mention that several of its other services, such as Google Calendar and Google Reader, can work well with Kontact. Here's how you can integrate them.

Can something you give away for free turn into a gold mine? That's the multimillion-dollar question Google Inc. is betting on with its push into open-source software.

Google's OpenSocial initiative to establish common, standard APIs for creating social-networking applications is still in its early days. But its impact for end users, developers, Web site owners, social-network operators and even business application vendors could be huge in the long run.

Google could be heading for a showdown with Sun over the way Android, Google's new mobile phone software platform, handles Java.

[The desktop] has served us well, and old-timers like me will remember it with fond affection for many years to come, but we will have our work cut out trying to explain to the next generation why anyone would bother to go to a clunky box on a desk in a particular room room whenever they needed computer power.

"Nick Carr posted recently about 'Google, Apple and the future of personal computing'. I agree that mainstream popular computing is shifting from desktop apps to web apps, and while Microsoft is trying to do it all itself, specialist players like Apple and Google are forming coalitions. But I disagree that the future will be found in Apple: The future is in free software..."

Google will give $10 million to the developers who build the best applications for Android, the open source platform Google designed for building mobile phones. Google says it hopes to spark innovation with the so-called Android Developer Challenge, announced today concurrently with the release of Android. The software development kit is now available for download on the Android site.