Given Vonage stock recently jumped some 33% simply on the news they were developing a voice application for the iPhone, the company is trying to milk interest further by issuing a press release stating the application has been approved by Apple. Unfortunately, you won't be able to use it just yet. "Vonage is currently conducting a beta test and general availability will be announced at a later date," says the company. While the quick approval may be the result of a watchful FCC and the Google Voice fiasco, it's still unlikely that the application will work over AT&T's 3G network.

Google this morning fired a chrome cannon at Microsoft by officially announcing that they're developing a Chrome operating system for PCs. Sort of; so far it looks like just an application running over Linux, but substantive details seem scarce. "Later this year we will open-source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010," says the company. Tying an "OS" to their online applications will certainly get the attention of regulators and privacy advocates, and the new OS (combined with their push to be a centralized voice hub) is certainly making the company new corporate enemies in the telecom, voice and software sectors. "We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision," the company says in a blog post.

After acquiring VoIP outfit Grand Central back in 2007, the search giant remained rather quiet, leaving many people in our forums wondering what was going on. Last March we got an answer, the Google Blog noting that the service had been repackaged as Google Voice. Google Voice aims to make Google your hub for all things phone and voicemail, something that obviously worries existing telecom companies -- who've already been working hard to smear the company for Google's positions on things like net neutrality and white space broadband. Google this morning took to the Today show, where NBC's Matt Laurer accidentally announced the service would be available to everyone, everywhere. That's not really the case: according to the Google Voice Twitter account, only invitations to those on the service's reservation list are going out today.

Google's no dummy when it comes to Internet architecture, given they own a lot of capacity and employ plenty of specialists -- including TCP/IP co-creator Vint Cerf. To engage the broader Internet on how to speed things up further, Google this week launched a new website that offers site tips and tools to developers, but also aims to encourage community discussion on how to improve protocols, content delivery, and the expansion of broadband services. "Networks have become much faster in the past 20 years, and by collaborating to update protocols such as HTML and TCP/IP we can create a better web experience for everyone," the company states in a blog post.

Opera this morning announced that they've unveiled Opera Unite, a new browser the company insists will "reinvent the web" by turning each user PC into zero configuration content servers. The new client-side service delivers a ridiculously easy way for users to host files, music, photos and websites.

U.S. Air Force Colonel Charlie Williamson complains to the BBC that the government has been "on the defensive" when it comes to cyber-warfare and fighting botnets.

Admob has released their latest smart phone and 3G statistics (pdf) which note that Google Android market share continues to grow, gaining one percentage of market share every month this year. Android now accounts for 6 % of all mobile ad requests to Admob, putting them right in line with Palm competitively. The Rim OS and Windows Mobile OS control 22% and 11% of the market respetively, though the Windows Mobile market share is on the decline. Of course the iPhone trumps everyone with 50% market share. An interesting side note: Admob says that 3% of T-Mobile's overall requests come from jailbroken iPhones.

We've spent many years following the exploits of spyware outfit 180Solutions, from their breakup of anti-spyware coalitions to their endless production of malicious adware. If you recall, they changed their name to Zango, and enjoyed bullying any website or spyware vendor that dared call their products spyware.

Users in our security forum have discovered that advertisements delivered via the FoxNews.com website have been using popup malware to force-deliver artificial anti-virus malware onto the PCs of unsuspecting visitors (of which Fox has countless millions). One of our more skilled scambusters and "malvertising" gurus has further dissected (with photos) the exact scumware delivery mechanism at work here -- and notes that users don't even need to click on an ad banner at the website in order to get infected. The vsm_free_setup.exe forced download the ads are instituting originates from Russia or the Ukraine, and appears to involve a keylogger.

According to Telegeography (via GigaOM), international voice traffic continues to rise, despite the availability of an ever-broader range of substitutes for standard telephone calls. Gobbling up the lion's share of this growth is Skype. Skype’s cross-border traffic grew approximately 41% in 2008, to 33 billion minutes -- equivalent to 8% of combined international telephone traffic. Meanwhile, Skype this week unveiled a new plan to target businesses by unveiling Skype for SIP, which allows the Skype software to work with business PBX phone systems.

• Pelosi Asks Justice To Take Broader View Of Competitive Landscape [multichannel.com]
• The risks of a national broadband network [aardvark.co.nz]
• Congress re-mulls ban on wireless tax [theregister.co.uk]
• Google, Yahoo, Skype in survey that states obvious: Consumers expect unrestricted Internet access [reuters.com]
• Is it a bad idea for IBM to buy Sun? [cnet.com]
• Survey reveals woeful service from UK broadband big boys [pcpro.co.uk]
• In-Stat: 30% of subscribers will be 3G or 4G by 2013 [fiercewireless.com]
• Skype offers Mac users free Wi-Fi [yahoo.com]
• Choruss' Music Tax Plan: Bait-And-Switch [techdirt.com]
• Further Sony Ericsson Break-Up Rumours [cellular-news.com]
• AT&T to offer unsubsidized iPhone 3G with no commitment required? [engadget.com]
• Privacy watchdog barks for federal Gmail probe [theregister.co.uk]

• Australia's Blacklisted Hyperlinks to Cost Webmasters $11,000 a Day [maximumpc.com]
• Recession Isn't Holding Back Mobile Broadband Subscribers [cellular-news.com]
• Telus to invest $500-million to improve B.C. broadband [theglobeandmail.com]
• AT&T takes smart grids residential [telephonyonline.com]
• Is BT losing its bottle on Phorm? [pcpro.co.uk]
• CEA: Cable Should Rely On Common Downloadable-Security Scheme [multichannel.com]
• Irish ISPs Point Out They're Under No Obligation To Follow Three Strikes Policy [siliconrepublic.com]
• Discovery sues Amazon over Kindle patent infringement; won't seek to stop sales [cellular-news.com]

Valve's broadband video game delivery system Steam had a rocky beginning, the company barely able to keep their then 500Mbps pipe operational when the most recent Counter-Strike patch was released. But the system is now home to some sixteen million subscribers, and offers roughly 600 games for download via servers across multiple countries. Slashdot directs your attention to an article at Edge exploring the rise of Steam, which these days is busy rattling the foundations of traditional brick and mortar game distribution. On a related note, Steam recently released data showing how their practice of offering discounts on games boosts sales.

Though most people in the United States were busy sleeping, blogger hearts are a'flutter over the fact that Google GMail and other application users experienced a four hour outage yesterday. According to a Google blog post, the outage was caused by a "routine maintenance event" gone wrong in one of Google's European data centers, somehow creating a cascading failure at one data center after another. According to the Associated Press, Google is handing out 15 days of free service to businesses, government agencies and anyone else who pays for an expanded version of Google services (a value of $2.05 per user).

Users in our security forum highlight a new debate over CNN's use of P2P for its new streaming service. CNN's system, which makes use of Octoshape P2P technology, is generally a good thing, as it uses bandwidth from the community of CNN video watchers to ensure a better viewing experience. But CNN has implemented the system rather strangely, by pretending the system is mandatory for viewing to work properly, and by including an EULA that technically restricts you from analyzing your own traffic while the software's in use. There's also questions concerning security, the quiet P2P network springing to use each time a user visits an "Octoshape-enabled" website.

Google, in cooperation with academic researchers, the New America Foundation and the PlanetLab Consortium, have launched Measurement Lab (M-Lab). Measurement Lab is a suite of tools dedicated to helping broadband customers determine what kind of throttling or protocol discrimination their ISP is employing, presumably letting them make an intelligent decision when shopping between ISPs -- assuming they have a choice.

User KeysCapt writes in: "Researchers using 200 PlayStation 3's, a sophisticated attack on the ailing MD5 hash algorithm, and a slip-up by Verisign claim to have found a method of hacking any website, in the interest of improving web security. As a result Verisign says it's stopped using MD5, as of around noon Pacific time December 30.

Over the weekend, six of the UK's largest broadband ISPs began inadvertently filtering user access to Wikipedia for all users. Why? The image of an under-aged nude girl on the cover of a 1970's Scorpions album was flagged by a child filtration watchlist created by the Internet Watch Foundation (IWF).

AT&T recently offered free Wi-Fi for iPhone users, though to use an AT&T hotspot, users had to find the hotspot, enter their ten digit phone number, approve the AT&T EULA, wait for an SMS with a password, then click on that link to browse. A few iPhone application developers have simplified that process with "Easy Wi-Fi for AT&T," an application that reduces the above process into simply launching the application (iTunes link). According to Ars Technica, the app is free until Friday, after which it will cost $1.99.

Microsoft announced that they'd be discontinuing their OneCare security suite, a subscription service that includes anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall functionality. Replacing OneCare will be a free service code-named "Morro" that will include protection from viruses, spyware, rootkits and trojans. According to a Microsoft press release, the new product will drop in the second half of 2009. While the release claims Microsoft is interested in increasing the protection rates in non-developed countries with less broadband, McAfee tells CNET that two years after its release, Microsoft's paid offering only managed to net a 2% market share. The OneCare blog has a FAQ for impacted subscribers.