Google has finally added one of the biggest omissions to the Web-based version of its Google Talk service: size limit-free, P2P file transfers.

The feature, which has been a part of the service’s desktop software since mid-2006, went live on the Google Talk widgets inside of iGoogle and Orkut on Monday.

The endgame here–which Google says is coming, is to bring file-sharing into Gmail’s integrated Google Talk. Imagine, if you will, a situation where you want to share a big file, and Gmail’s attachment limit is just not cutting it. Your options are simple: you could hop over to another Google property with storage (like Google Docs) and upload the file there. Or you could go with a myriad of external file-sharing and storage services. Once this feature comes to Gmail, though, you just bug the other person to hop on Google Talk, and then start your large transfer there.

That situation, as lovely as it sounds, could be a pipe dream, though. In our testing we couldn’t send executable files, which, while safer because it could limit the sending of malware, means you can’t send handy software-installing packages like Ninite (coverage). Here’s hoping future versions will pack the same kind of virus-scanning prowess Gmail’s attachment handler has had since 2005, but in real-time. That may, in fact, be what is holding it up from being a part of Gmail already.

Windows XP users will not be able to run the final version of Internet Explorer 9, according to Microsoft executives, cutting out a decade-old, yet still popular operating system.

In fact, the Windows IE9 Platform Preview, as well as the final version, won’t run on anything but the latest Microsoft operating systems. Users trying to run the preview code on an XP system will receive the following dialogue box: “Windows Internet Explorer Platform Preview does not support any operating system earlier than Windows Vista SP2.

And of course, don’t even think about versions for non-Windows operating systems. IE General Manager Dean Hachamovitch told TechGiraffe that Mac and Linux versions weren’t currently in the company’s plans.

The reason IE9 doesn’t work in XP is that it uses the Direct2D feature of DirectX when accessing the graphics hardware to accelerate image creation and drawing. Direct2D was introduced in Windows 7, but then added to Windows Vista SP2 and Windows Server 2008 R2. But not to WIndows XP.

When I asked the IE9 team about their plans for the legacy OS, they confirmed that XP was not in the cards:

“Windows XP users have a fast, safe, reliable and private browser in Internet Explorer 8,” company representatives said in an emailed statement. “As the Web has continued to change in everything from security to the future HTML5 applications developers are starting to build today, browsers should require the modern graphics and security infrastructure that has come along since 2001. Internet Explorer 9 requires the modern graphics and security underpinnings that have come since 2001, and is intended to be run on a modern operating system in order to build on the latest hardware and operating system innovations.”

It only makes sense the the OS vendor wants to give people as many reasons to upgrade their PCs to Wnidows 7 as possible, and not spend developer man-hours updating software that debuted nine years ago. Still, this probably won’t make XP loyalists smile. They may even jump ship to fast browsers that do run on their platform – like Chrome, Opera, and Safari.

Like every other company that offers support, the first and the only option Facebook had in mind when it came to offering support was – well, India. Social networking company Facebook said on Monday that it is setting up an office in Hyderabad in southern India. The new office will have online sales and operations teams, said Don Faul, a director of global online operations at Facebook, in a posting on the official Facebook blog.

Facebook will start with a small initial team in Hyderabad, which will include experts on the Facebook product to help users with their questions, and specialists in online advertising to help advertisers, the company said in a statement issued separately on Monday. The company said last week that it was setting up an office in Austin, Texas. Both the new offices will allow the company to better serve Facebook’s more than 400 million users, besides advertisers and developers, Faul said.

By having support centers in a variety of time zones, Facebook can provide better around-the-clock, multilingual support, he added.

The company is seeing significant international expansion, with 70 percent of the people using Facebook outside the U.S., accessing the service in more than 70 languages. More than 8 million people use Facebook in India, Faul said. The new operations centers in Austin and Hyderabad will supplement the company’s support teams at its headquarters in Palo Alto, California, and in Dublin, Ireland. The Hyderabad office is Facebook’s first in Asia.

In India, Facebook is ahead of Google’s Orkut social networking site according to Web traffic monitoring service Alexa. Zynga, a developer of games like FarmVille, for social networking sites including Facebook, recently set up a product development center in Bangalore.Facebook does not, however, have plans to move parts of its engineering and product development from Palo Alto to India. “We have no plans to base product managers or engineers in Hyderabad at this time,” the statement said.

Apple tablet

I was getting tired of using sentences like — Much Awaited — when talking about iPad. Now, it is the new device, a Wi-Fi iPad which is available for pre-order for customers from the US.

Of course, the April 3 date only applies to the Wi-Fi-only models. If you’re holding out for the 3G versions, you’ll have to wait until late April. And those customers outside the U.S.–Apple specifically mentions Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland, and the U.K.–will have to wait until late April for either model.

Pricing for those countries is still unknown, though Apple said that it would be announced in April. The company also said that the iPad would ship in additional countries later this year, so if you’re not in one of the above locations, keep your fingers crossed.

On March 12, customers will be able to either pre-order either the Wi-Fi or 3G models from the Apple online store, or they can put their dibs down on a Wi-Fi model and pick it up from their local Apple Store. As previously announced, the Wi-Fi models will run $499 for 16GB, $599 for 32GB, and $699 for 64GB, while the respective models including 3G will cost $629, $729, and $829.

Facebook may pull in an excess of $1 billion in revenues, according to estimates and poking around on behalf of industry blog Inside Facebook. That’s an increase from the same publication’s estimate of $700 million last year.

Facebook board member Marc Andreessen said last year that he projected the company would break $500 million revenue in 2009, and that it had the potential to be a billion-dollar company already, but that it was acting conservatively.

(Naturally, Facebook says that as a privately held company it doesn’t disclose its financials.)

What can Facebook credit this big jump in revenue to? It’s all about the Social Ads program. Facebook ditched banner ads altogether earlier this year when its longstanding ad partnership with Microsoft ran out and has chosen to focus on its edgier “engagement ads” program instead–and often these are sold by encouraging brands to promote their presence on Facebook with ad space.

However accurate these new estimates from Inside Facebook are, Facebook is certainly making money–and it’s making money because the Facebook “fan page” and complementary ad space to promote it are the hottest ticket in brand marketing right now. They won’t always be, and Facebook will have to maintain that front-runner status in plenty of advertising innovations down the road as the industry evolves faster than ever.

Plus, it’s well-known that some of the biggest buyers of Facebook advertisements are social-gaming companies looking to pull in more players: how long can they, in turn, keep up their place in the sun? Critics have long since pointed out the number of third-party companies that are effectively dependent on Facebook for traction and revenue, but the reverse is likely true as well.

Facebook has a potentially lucrative new revenue stream emerging when its virtual currency system, Facebook Credits, launches in full–Facebook takes a 30 percent cut of all proceeds. But the developer world isn’t totally sold, and the product has grown far more niche from the days when it was rumored to be a “PayPal killer.” As Inside Facebook points out, advertising is still the core of the company’s business model. And here, it has to stay ahead of the pack more than ever.

This is more like a trend we see these days. Everyone is on the social networking track today. I wonder when social networking gained so much importance in our lives. Microsoft is also facing the social networking heat that they have also decided to enable features to support the same on their popular email client – Microsoft Outlook.

Microsoft is partnering with Facebook and MySpace to allow users to see updates, photos and activities from those social-networking services within Outlook, as part of the OSC (Outlook Social Connector) integrated into the upcoming Office 2010. Those social-networking services will join Windows Live and LinkedIn as services capable of being viewed from within Outlook.

Also on Feb. 16, Microsoft announced the public beta of LinkedIn for Outlook.

LinkedIn for Outlook will enable users to view their contacts’ updates and photos alongside e-mails, and automatically update Outlook contacts with information from LinkedIn. Once the Facebook and MySpace applications are released, user information from those services will also appear in Outlook.

An Official Microsoft Blog post announcing LinkedIn for Outlook, as well as the Facebook and MySpace partnerships, couldn’t seem to resist taking a jab at Google Buzz, the search-engine giant’s new Twitter-like social networking application.

“What we think users will appreciate is that the Outlook Social Connector doesn’t add another professional or social network into the mix,” Dev Balasubramanian, product manager for Microsoft Outlook, wrote in the Feb. 16 posting. “The Outlook Social Connector does offer busy people, who are already a part of one or several networks, convenience.”

In a separate Feb. 17 posting on the Microsoft Outlook 2010 blog, Balasubramanian and Outlook program manager Michael Affronti pointed out a link for downloading the LinkedIn for Outlook beta, and suggested that “both Facebook for Outlook and MySpace for Outlook will be available later this year as our official release of Office 2010 approaches.”

The announcement suggests that Microsoft is in the race to aggregate its users’ social-networking content into a single “hub,” a trend being embraced by companies ranging from Google to Xobni. Previously, LinkedIn had also partnered with IBM, Research In Motion and Twitter to port its users’ profiles onto those companies’ respective networks and devices.

On the Microsoft Outlook 2010 blog, Microsoft also nodded to the privacy concerns currently being raised about social networking.

“The design of the OSC is such that your privacy and permissions settings on each of the networks you use are represented and respected within this experience,” the posting added. “For example, if your profile photo and job title are publicly listed on a given network, then OSC users will see your photo and job title when receiving an email from you … if you choose to restrict profile access on a given network, the OSC will respect that privacy.”

Its the war of the Mobile Giants. Nokia’s Maemo and Intel’s Mobilin – two Linux based operating systems will merge to take on Apple’s iPhone. The new, merged product will be compatible on most mobile devices and smart phones.

The groundbreaking partnership aims to take on Apple’s iPhone, along with other operating systems that span across multiple devices, including Google’s Android and Microsoft’s Windows Mobile. But Intel and Nokia said the MeeGo platform will extend beyond smartphones and will be flexible enough to scale to larger devices like full-fledged computers or in-car systems.

Renee James, Intel’s vice president in charge of software, told The New York Times that although Android is “fantastic,” it is also too “specific” and restrictive to run on a wide variety of devices, particularly more complex ones.

“I think it’s important that there are alternatives that are truly open for innovation,” James reportedly said.

Intel previously announced its Moblin operating system for low-cost notebooks running the company’s low-power Atom processor. And Nokia’s Maemo 5.0, first introduced last summer, was expected to play an integral role in the company’s smartphones to come. The move would seem to signal the end of both platforms, though Nokia still intends to sell smartphones based on its Symbian platform.

Another interesting note by the Times: Since the platform will run on ARM-based processors (in addition to Atom), Intel will be lending support to an operating system that benefits one of its competitors. Apple has used ARM processors in its iPhone, and created a custom version of the Cortex-A9 chip, known as the Apple A4, for its recently announced iPad.

Nokia has not yet announced whether it will build any handsets or devices based on Intel’s Atom processor. Both companies will keep their separate application stores: Intel’s AppUp for netbooks, and Nokia’s Ovi software store will remain, despite the partnership.

The first devices running MeeGo, including a new phone from Nokia, are expected to arrive later in 2010.

Nokia and Apple currently have a number of lawsuits directed at each other, making accusations of patent violations on both parties’ behalves. As the iPhone has grown in popularity, Nokia has retained its status as the market leader, but has suffered significant losses at the hands of competitors.

Is this the beginning of the end of the modern day broadband connections. Google recently had unveiled their plans on testing an ultra high-speed internet service which apparently is more than 100 times faster than the fastest broadband connection available to the consumers in the US. Google mentioned that, this new ultra fast connection will be available to few but select users across the US on test basis.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski hailed the project, saying that it would “provide an American testbed for the next generation of innovative, high-speed Internet apps, devices and services.”

As a first step, Google has begun soliciting information from local governments and private citizens in a bid to gauge interest.  The company said that it plans to operate an open-access network giving users a choice of multiple service providers.

The goal of the project, Google said, is to “experiment and learn.”

“Network providers are making real progress to expand and improve high-speed Internet access, but there’s still more to be done. We don’t think we have all the answers — but through our trial, we hope to make a meaningful contribution to the shared goal of delivering faster and better Internet for everyone.” the company wrote on its blog.

Finally, Facebook  decided to go ahead and unveil the new Facebook interface. Currently, this change is noticeable only on 64% Facebook account. This change will be 100% once they have made the changes available on all their servers.

“Over the past few months, we’ve been testing several different designs of the home page to improve navigation to and discovery of commonly used features,” said Facebook engineer Jing Chen, in a post on the company’s official blog.

“Today we started rolling out the most recent navigation updates to help you find what you are looking for on Facebook,” said Chen.

Among other things, the redesign puts some of Facebook’s more commonly used areas, such as pages, status updates, and links, in a more prominent location. “Now from the top left menus you can quickly get to what’s new and important,” said Chen.

Also, Facebook moved the Home and Profile links to the top right corner of the home page.

Additionally, Facebook made the Chat tool “more prominent by showing you a list of some of your online friends, and the Events dashboard lists your upcoming events along with events your friends are attending,” said Chen.

And, in a likely blow to office productivity everywhere, the site is also making it easier for users to keep track of those addictive game applications, like Farmville and Mafia Wars.

“You will also start to see counters next to the applications you have bookmarked on your home page,” wrote Chen.

“Counters will notify you when you have a specific action to take, so that you never miss your turn in a game or an update from a friend in an application,” said the blogger.

Cheng said the changes are all about making it easier for individuals to access and use what’s become the world’s most popular social networking platform.

“We hope the simplified design of the home page will make it easy for you to stay connected with the people, applications, and activities that matter most to you,” Cheng wrote.

It has been more than a week since Apple launched there most speculated iPad. Soon after iPad was announced, there were rumors lurking about a second iPad with a Camera. How far is it true or is it even credible – Well, lets wait and watch.

Nevertheless, the most credible evidence to date that a camera is in the works came from Mission:Repair, an Olathe, Kan., service company that repairs Apple products. The company wrote in its blog that its first shipment of iPad parts included metal internal frames with an embedded spot for a camera.

The company found that a camera taken from an Apple MacBook fits perfectly in the iPad frame.

“The camera slips in the frame, the lens fits in the hole, the LED (light) that indicates that the camera is on, fits, and the ambient light sensor hole is also correct,” the company said Monday. “It appears that the plans to have camera in the iPad is a reality.”

Mission:Repair speculates that the camera will likely appear in the next version of the iPad. Apple does not comment on future product plans, so fans will have to wait until the company is ready to make an announcement.

In the meantime, despite being described as “magical” by pitchman Jobs, the iPad has its critics. Reviewers working off the specifications released by Apple have complained about the lack of a camera, the device’s inability to run multiple applications at the same time, and the lack of Adobe Flash support and a high-definition video port.

The next gauntlet Apple will have to run will occur when it releases the device to reviewers. With so much attention on the iPad, critics are sure to dissect each feature.