The Apple App Store has been the subject of debate. Developers complain about the hoops they have to jump through to get through the approval process, while Apple defends the process and claims there is nothing wrong with the App Store. As with most things, the truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Last week one of Facebook's lead developers for the iPhone app, Joe Hewitt, left the project to work on other things, claiming to be "philosophically opposed" to having Apple control which applications are allowed to run on the iPhone platform. Hewitt abhors the gatekeeper mentality and says the App Store approval process "sets a horrible precedent".

Care to take your very own Federation starship for a spin and maybe right a few of the wrongs done by Paramount writers to the franchise over the past decade or two? The thought of beaming down to planets and playing World-of-Away-Team-Craft have you grinning from pointed latex ear-to-ear? Has the new Star Trek MMO got a deal for you! If you're too impatient to wait for Star Trek Online's planned early February launch, you can beam onboard a few weeks early to give the game a shake in open beta.

Spotify, the popular music streaming service available only in select European countries, introduced on Monday a mobile application for the Symbian operating system, which includes Nokia, Sony Ericsson, and Samsung phones.

European owners of various Nokia phones, such as the N97, E72 or XpressMusic, can now download the Spotify app and enjoy music streamed to their phones. Several other phones will be able to run this app, including the Sony Ericsson Satio and Samsung Omnia HD (i8910). A full list of supported devices can be found here.

Need to correct colors, remove red-eye, or change the format of an image? Don't want to shell out hundreds of dollars for Adobe PhotoShop? ImageAnalyzer is freeware, and light, and it does many functions that the big apps do.

Now, I am as much against smoking as anyone. I also do not want workers needlessly exposed to hazardous substances. Still, for Apple to deny warranty claims on Macs exposed to cigarette smoke seems way over the line.

Yet, that is what The Consumerist says Apple has done on at least two occasions in recent months.

Chrome OS may lead to higher-performance netbooks, but many of them will not be running Google's next-generation operating system.

Why? Because Chrome OS could force Microsoft to stop crippling netbooks to avoid competition with more expensive notebooks.

IGetMusic ($40; ten-day free, feature-limited trial) is an interesting app that listens to Internet radio stations for you and turns their streaming music into numerous portable M4A files, which can be played on most MP3 players. iTunes or other music apps can convert these into MP3 files, if you wish, for total portability. Unfortunately, this isn't one of those easy-to-use, launch-and-go apps.

The debate over climate change--and what is fact versus what fits the agenda of one side or the other--is raging in the wake of hacked e-mails alleging that facts were covered up. I'll let the climate change rivals battle that out, but let's take a closer look at the security aspects of e-mail and how attackers were able to acquire these messages.

A server at the Hadley Climate Research Center in the United Kingdom was breached and the attacker was able to acquire thousands of e-mail messages and sensitive documents which were subsequently uploaded to an FTP server in Russia and have since been publicly shared and analyzed around the world.

Now, I'm not suggesting that Google's Web-centric OS is a nefarious, 1984-esque plot to subjugate the human race -- or at least the 1.7 billion (and rising rapidly) people who use the Internet. But Google already knows more about many of us than we may know. A few examples:

By the year 2020, you won't need a keyboard and mouse to control your computer, say Intel Corp. researchers. Instead, users will open documents and surf the Web using nothing more than their brain waves.

Scientists at Intel's research lab in Pittsburgh are working to find ways to read and harness human brain waves so they can be used to operate computers, television sets and cell phones. The brain waves would be harnessed with Intel-developed sensors implanted in people's brains.

When Google unveiled its open source Chrome OS on Thursday, many commentators were quick to dismiss the new operating system as unimpressive and underwhelming. Citing everything from the browser interface that represents the entirety of the user experience to its limited hardware support and inability to install apps or play PC games, early critics have slammed Google's cloud-based OS for being exactly what it is intended to be: lean, fast, and simple.

To my eye, all this criticism appears to miss the point of Chrome OS--and indeed, the point of most of Google's services. Of course, this is nothing new for Google.

Earlier this week, Google gave the world a first look at the Chrome OS. The press event confirmed what was suspected when Google announced it was working on a netbook operating system four months ago -- it would emphasize speed and simplicity. As the tech world tests versions of the operating system that were compiled from Google's source code it is looking like the project's priorities may be weaknesses.