Gadgetory

happy st. Patrick's Day it's Wednesday March seventeenth I'm Natali Morris and it's time to get loaded Motorola has announced that it will sell the Wi-Fi only version of the xoom tablet for 599 dollars the 3g version went on sale for between six and eight hundred dollars the Wi-Fi only model will have 32 gigs of storage and the same dual-core processor that the 3g version has this is the same price as the 32 gig Wi-Fi only ipad 2 earlier this week we reported that t-mobile was the only major US carrier not offering free calls and texts to Japan that is not true anymore t-mobile is now offering free calls and texts to Japan through the end of the month and the charges will be backdated to March 11th youtube announced a Talent Search called YouTube next up they want to make you a star the contest asks members of YouTube's Partnership Program to contribute a three minute video that best represents their talents in consideration for a new type of show or film or whatever winners will be selected by YouTube voters and the finalists will be selected by a panel of judges winners take home 35 thousand dollars and a chance at new internet fame them the European Union is about to revamp its online privacy laws with a specific view of Facebook and Google current privacy laws in the EU are 16 years old when the new laws are revamped if social sites and search engines do not comply they will face court action the laws will pertain to data collection about these sites users behavior Apple now requires a password for in-app purchases this is a move to stop kids from running up their parents iTunes bills oftentimes developers upsell users inside games or other apps and parents were finding that their kids were spending money a bit too liberally now if you want to upgrade your smurf village you'll need the password every time so that might slow your kid down a little until of course they learn the password Samsung has released a new line of laptops aimed for students and office workers the samsung series 2 4 and 6 have intel core processors high-definition displays and a feature called fast start and fast browsing designed to get you online faster with the long wait for the machine to kick in there are also extra rugged and prepared for slips and spills they vary in price and size of course google has updated the conversation ability inside of Google Docs this is the feature that lets you communicate with document collaborators inside one document one cool thing is if you want a specific person to ring in on the document you can at reply their email address inside the chat and that message will be sent to their email just in case they miss the real-time communication you can of course change your settings in case these emails get to be too much and Firefox floor will ship next week Mozilla announced this on Wednesday the newest version of the browser comes out on March 22nd which just a tad later than its original launch date of last November better late than never one of the more anticipated features is a new tab manager called panorama that's your news of the day remember cnet com / loaded for links to the stories we discussed I'm Natali Morris foreseen it and you just been loaded