TOP TECHNOLOGY NEWS

Android chief Andy Rubin took to the blogs Wednesday evening to combat recent reports of Google clamping down on Android’s openness.

“We continue to be an open source platform and will continue releasing source code when it is ready,” wrote Rubin on the Android Developer Blog. “As I write this the Android team is still hard at work to bring all the new Honeycomb features to phones. As soon as this work is completed, we’ll publish the code.

Google’s Android platform has been growing steadily since its release in 2008. Now, one out of every three U.S. smartphone owners is using an Android-based device, according to a recent report.

So why aren’t developers more excited about the platform?

Of the 69.5 million Americans who owned smartphones as of the end of February, 33 percent used Android devices, according to a report from ComScore. It’s a leap of 7 points in a period of only three months.

Can’t decide between a warm, instant-on halogen bulb, a long-lasting, low-power compact fluorescent or a plain old incandescent in its familiar bulb shape? You don’t have to. Just buy GE’s new hybrid and you get all three, in one handsome glass bauble.

The bulb looks like any bulb you may have bought in the last hundred years or so, but inside you’ll find a cool CF tube coiled spring-like around a hot halogen core. When you flip the switch, the halogen lamp lights up instantly, and the CF tube starts to warm up.

Oh, RIM! What are you doing? According to a leaked internal document, the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will ship without native support for e-mail, contacts or messaging. To use any of these services, you’ll have to either hook up a BlackBerry handset, or access them through the web browser.

The document, a seven-page FAQ for the upcoming tablet, lays out the details. To use these core BlackBerry services you need to use “BlackBerry Bridge”, which displays the BlackBerry’s apps on the PlayBook’s screen.

Sometimes — not often but sometimes — I am invited to real people’s homes. In these homes we sometimes eat, and often drink. Then, when we’re “done”, the host will grab the half-full bottle of wine and slip in a cap. It may be a simple rubber stopper, or a more complex Vacu-Vin-style closure with a pump to evacuate the oxidizing air from the bottle.

Imagine a beautiful old steel fountain pen, with its twist-to-suck pump that slurps in ink. Now imagine that instead of twisting the reservoir to fill the pen, you turn it in the other direction and force ink to seep out through the nib.

Now imagine that instead of ink, you are squeezing out toothpaste, and instead of a pen, you have a toothbrush.

Pop quiz: What’s the difference between a man’s and a woman’s watch? If your answer involves styling differences, or watch-faces designed to easier fit the typically smaller female wrist, then don’t even bother opening your mouth to tell us.

The difference is that a girl’s watch has a thin strap, and it’s pink.

That’s the difference according to Hex, at least, which has fulfilled an imaginary demand for a women’s version of its iPod Nano-holding wrist-strap.

The iPad 2 doesn’t pack a higher-resolution “retina” display yet, but the quality of the screen is just as good as the iPhone 4’s, according to a display expert.

DisplayMate analyst Raymond Soneira put the iPad 2 and iPhone 4 displays through a series of tests and found that they perform very similarly.

The “iPad 2 delivers almost identical performance to the impressive iPhone 4 Retina Display,” Soneira said in his report.

That’s interesting, because the iPad 2 display has a lower pixel density than the iPhone 4.

“Tweeting Phil Schiller” is the new “emailing Steve Jobs.” When 16-year-old from Albuquerque, New Mexico wanted to know if the mythical white iPhone would ever emerge into the world, he Tweeted Apple’s product marketing boss: “@pschiller how do i get a white iphone?”

The reply? “@airickanderson Hi Eric. The white iPhone will be available this spring (and it is a beauty!).” Given that most people in the U.S consider that spring begins on March 21st, then Apple has until has until June 21st to deliver.

DIY Pulse Laser Pistol Can Decimate Styrofoam and Plastic
Built by Patrick Priebe, this Pulse Laser Gun sends out a kW-pulse of infrared coherent light. When the beam is focused, it can blaze through plastic, Styrofoam, and even a razor blade—so don’t aim it at any parts you’d like to not see melted. It weighs in at two pounds, is 320mm long, and has a 3m range.

Logitech’s Z906 Surround Sound Speakers Make Their Debut
The successor to Logitech’s Z-5500 speaker set will be available later this month for $350.