WikiLeaks war takes over the Web

Hi, I'm Molly Wood, and welcome to the Buzz Report, the show about the tech news that everyone's talking about. This week, it's a Wikileaks Web war, Google goes app happy, and it' a blizzard of Blizzard leaks. But first, it's the Gadget of the Week. The Gadget of the Week is the Google Nexus S. It's Google's new "reference phone" -- the one that gives you the latest version of Android with no skins, no crapware, and no interference. It's called Gingerbread, and it offers much better copy and paste, a buttoned up interface, a better keyboard, and more, plus a 1 gigaherz processor, a front-facing camera, one of those good Samsung cameras, and its own Twitter feed! Sure, it doesn't have expandable memory or support for T-Mobile's faster HSPA network, which IS a bummer, but dude. It has its own Twitter feed. That's a seriously hip phone. And now for the news. Google held an Apple event this week to announce its new Web app store, where Websites turn into apps in the blink of an eye, presumably so that you'll only use the Chrome browser. Ever. Because otherwise, if the New York Times is a Website, I really truly don't understand why it needs to be an app. I guess if Google says we need it, we need it. Also, Google showed off Chrome OS with a laptop demo! The company says Chrome laptops will start shipping in the first half of next year, for now you can sign up to be a beta tester of the CR-48, the first Chrome OS laptop. You can't buy it, no one knows who built it, and it's very, very far from pretty. But they're the first laptops in the world running Google's operating system, and that makes them just about as hot as the MacBook Air. If you're a giant nerd. Like me. I want that. Also in the news this week, a WAR on the Web over Wikileaks! The reaction to cable-gate started to look less like justified outrage and more like an attack on free speech and possibly even journalism. Various Web hosting sites stopped hosting Wikileaks, and banking sites including PayPal, Visa, and MasterCard stopped processing donations to Wikileaks. And that's where the 4Chan people stepped in. The group calling itself Anonymous, best known for taking on the church of Scientology, the RIAA, and the MPAA, is using its "Operation Payback" movement to launch distributed denial of service attacks on MasterCard, Swiss banking sites, and more, and has vowed to take down any site that "bows to government pressure." And then apparently the Operation Payback site also came under attack, presumably by shadowy government forces. I don't really know. I do know that it's insane, it can't end well, and botnets are the new Peacekeeper missiles. And nobody is keeping any peace at all. Wow. Ok, it was a crazy big news week. Let's do some headlines, shall we? Google announced its e-book store. It's got over 3 million books that you can read on iOS devices, Android, and any eBook reader that supports the Adobe eBook platform ... which includes, basically, everything but the Kindle. Where are you, Amazon? Also, Amazon announced Kindle for the Web, so you can read any book in a browser and even embed a little Amazon bookstore on your own site. Oh, so that's where they are. Competing with Google. Reports suggest the iPad 2 may be shipping in February, landing on store shelves as soon as April. Making the iPad the BEST IOU gift certificate you can give this holiday season. The next version of Internet Explorer will include a "Do Not Track" feature that prevents advertisers from following you all over the Web and building a big scary database of personal information about you. The next version of Mozilla will NOT include that feature. Um. What? And in "water is also wet" news, Consumer Reports this week named AT&T the worst mobile service provider in America. By quite a margin. See, check it out ... they use a bunch of black dots to show this information. We use this. We made this two years ago. But it's nice to be validated. And finally, nerds everywhere knocked over their Mountain Dew cans at the news of a MASSIVE leak of Blizzard's game roadmap for the next four years. Blizzard, as you know, makes World of Warcraft and Starcraft, so everything they do is important, although I cannot for the life of me imagine how knowing when the next games are launching will make any bit of difference to anyone, except for causing a lot of gamers to tattoo the dates on their mousing hands. Sounds cool to me. And that's the Buzz Report for this week, everyone. I'm getting out of here before any more news breaks. I'm Molly Wood, and thanks for watching.