• Got an idea for a smartphone app? If you've got an Android phone you might be able to build it yourself, thanks to App Inventor for Android, a new Google Labs program for Windows, OS X, and Linux that's designed to make building Android programs as easy as piecing blocks together.Steve Lohr's story in the New York Times makes it sound sensational; here's a video from Google showing a lady creating her first App Inventor app: App Inventor is in closed beta at the moment, and Google says it'll let folks in "soon" -- you can sign up here. As you'll see if you fill out the sign-up form, Google sees the program as an educational tool of particular interest to teachers and students.
• Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) will roll out multiple Windows 7 slate devices "over the course of the next several months," company CEO Steve Ballmer confirmed in a keynote speech on Monday. "This year one of the most important things that we will do in the smart device category is really push forward with Windows 7-based slates, and with Windows 7 phones," Ballmer said in his speech at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in Washington, D.C. "This is a terribly important area for us," he added. Toward that end, a range of Windows 7-based slates will debut in the coming months, Ballmer noted -- with and without keyboards; dockable; and representing many different form factors, price points and sizes. They will be designed with both home and enterprise users in mind.
• As BlackBerry continues to fight for its standing in the smart phone world, its maker, Research In Motion, is rumored to be readying a BlackBerry tablet to compete with Apple's iPad. The company also announced Monday its free BlackBerry Protect program, out in limited beta, which gives consumers the ability to locate or erase lost phones. This news comes at a time when the BlackBerry's market share is threatened by not only Apple's iPhone but Google's Android, whose devices — from an assortment of hardware makers including Motorola and HTC — increased their share during the past three months, according to research firm ComScore. A BlackBerry tablet has been referred to in recent weeks by some publications, and a research analyst's note shared Friday gave some specifics. The tablet, said Ashok Kumar of Rodman & Renshaw, will have a 7-inch screen and 1 gigahertz processor. Apple's iPad — the most successful touch tablet on the market — has a 9.7-inch screen and uses Apple's own A4 processor, which is also 1GHz.
• Consumer Reports said it isn’t recommending Apple Inc.’s iPhone 4 following tests confirming it has a hardware flaw that causes signal quality to degrade. “The problem seems to be a design flaw, and it is significant,” Mike Gikas, senior electronics editor for Consumer Reports, said today in an interview. Tests were conducted in a room designed to eliminate radio- frequency interference, he said. The results showed that when a user covers the lower-left side gap, where two pieces of the external antenna meet, the loss of signal strength may cause the iPhone 4 to drop calls in areas where AT&T Inc.’s network coverage is weak.
• Such is the threat of facebook that both Google and Yahoo are turning to Zynga to stay competitive. Google's investment in Zynga and potential launch of a games vertical seems to be a defensive move against both competitors which I don't anticipate yielding big results.Here's a short history of games on Facebook. People like Facebook for pictures and friends. After 5 minutes they're done. They're looking for something else to do, and to connect to their high fidelity social net and games are good for that. Furthermore games on Facebook open up a whole new older and international demo to games. Zynga builds a good monetization funnel, spends tons on Facebook,  and thus a symbiotic relationship is born.
  So if I am a large Internet property like Google or even Yahoo do I want games too? Will that equalize me with Facebook? I doubt it. Google and Yahoo are where people consume and do functional tasks, not connect with friends. On Google they hope you leave by default because you're clicking a link. I have 300 friends on Facebook but 2,500 contacts in Gmail.
• Fring and Skype, sometimes-rivals in the VoIP mobile space, are spitting out harsh words in what's turning into an ugly public relations play. In a news release sent to CNET on Monday, Fring accuses Skype of being "afraid of open mobile communication" after Skype brought legal action against Fring, which has traditionally included Skype in its IM and VoIP calling app. In its news release, Fring went on to accuse Skype of "muzzl[ing] competition, even at the expense of its own users," and in a strongly worded blog post, Fring's CEO, Avi Shechter, refers to Skype's legal action as an "ambush." Skype has fought back on its blog, issuing a statement that called Fring's "mis-use" of its software "increasingly damaging our brand and reputation with our customers." The fall out came after Fring temporarily withdrew Skype as an add-on in its latest iPhone update, which it specifically optimized to compete against the FaceTime video chat app Apple built into the iPhone 4 (note: the add-on was operational when we conducted our hands-on test.)
• At first, Apple said there was a simple fix for the iPhone 4's reception problems -- hold the phone differently. Then it said it was working on a software fix to make it better. Now the venerable Consumer Reports says that because of the reception issues, it can't recommend the iPhone. "Our findings call into question the recent claim by Apple that the iPhone 4's signal-strength issues were largely an optical illusion caused by faulty software that 'mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength'," writes Consumer Reports in a blog post. "The tests also indicate that AT&T's network might not be the primary suspect in the iPhone 4's much-reported signal woes."
• Microsoft has decided to give businesses some more time to move off of Windows XP. Until now, those buying new PCs with Windows 7 Ultimate or Windows 7 Professional have had the option to downgrade those machines to Windows XP. Microsoft had said this option would end 18 months after the release of Windows 7, or with the shipping of Windows 7 Service Pack 1, which entered beta on Monday. Had that happened, those buying machines after that date would only have had the option to run either Windows 7 or Windows Vista. However, Microsoft backtracked on Monday, acknowledging customer concerns that this would be tricky for them to comply with.
• Facebook is placing a so-called "panic button" on pages served to users in the United Kingdom, allowing minors to quickly report suspicious activity to the authorities.The partnership is with the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), which had asked social-networking sites to add such a button. Bebo and MySpace agreed, the BBC reported, but Facebook had held out until Monday. Users can visit the CEOP app page on Facebook to add the app. Since CEOP is a U.K. government-run organization, it's unclear whether U.S. users would be able to add the app, or, if clicked, what actions would be taken - or if a U.S.-specific version could be added at a later date. Facebook officials were not immediately available for comment on Monday.

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