Apple on Thursday announced the dates of this year's World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC).

As predeicted, the event will be occurring in mid-June, the 8th to the 12th, at the Moscone Center in San Francisco.

Apple did not offer any specific details about whether there would be the usual opening keynote at WWDC this year, except for an offhand reference to the "WWDC Keynote Session" in a site section regarding attendance policies.

Last year's event saw CEO Steve Jobs unveil the iPhone 3G, but this year, Jobs is said to be on medical leave through the end of June, which likely suggests that he will not host the show.

Speculation is rife as to what announcements may be made. So far, there has been speculation that QuickTime may receive a virtual control set -- similar to the playback and menu controls that pop up on YouTube when the mouse is moved over the screen -- and updates for OS X and "Snow Leopard".

Imagine you can "taste" an ad of a product before you even buy it.

U.S. Ink, a unit of Sun Chemical Corp., calls its new product Taste-It Note, and for the last two weeks the Carlstadt, N.J., the company has been trying to convince newspapers to adopt the peel-and-taste strips to help lick a predicted 22% drop in 2009 advertising revenue, according to New Jersey newspaper The Record.

Of the 1.5 million taste-testers exposed to a "Taste-It Note" in an ad, 59% said they were more likely to purchase the product.

U.S. Ink marketing manager Todd Wheeler told The Record the Taste-It Notes could give print advertising an advantage over advertising online.

A clever start-up Face.com rolled out a Facebook application on Tuesday called Photo Finder that can identify photos of your friends and yours on the social-networking site.

The software analyzes photos among your contacts, suggesting tags for faces it recognizes and monitoring new uploads for more. The software presents an array of your contacts' photos, letting you accept or reject suggested names for the people the application has identified.

Face recognition technology is not something entirely new. Apple has already built face recognition into its newest version of iPhoto, and Google has the technology in its Picasa Web Albums site for photo sharing.

Face.com currently has the application alpha testing. Visit the site here for more information.

Boxee rolled out its new Alpha release Tuesday night, adding support for Pandora music streaming, PBS video feeds, a revamped website among others.

The Pandora app will let users access content from the streaming music service via Boxee.com.

"I still remember the first time I used Pandora. It was love at first sound," Boxee CEO Avner Ronen wrote in a blog post. "Now it will be available on Boxee! You can listen to your quickmix, your favorite stations as well as create new stations. Music in the living room has never been better."

The Pandora offering will run on the new Boxee API, Ronen said, which will allow developers to build apps via XML pages and Python scripts.

Boxee's newest alpha is a free download for registered beta users of Mac OS X, Linux, and patch-sticked Apple TVs. Windows users who have gotten into the private alpha need to visit their download location to get the latest release.

One cannot help but wonder just how serious this economic crisis is getting if even the world's richest is squeezing his wallet when he eats out.

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates was spotted having lunch at a chichi Tao Restaurant in New York, according to PageSix.

Gates chose to go for the $24 price-fixe lunch, telling the waiter "that's a good deal!"

(This is in fact a good deal considering it’s a midtown New York restaurant.)

According to the restaurant's Web site, this is what you get for $24:

Appetizer choice of:

Bang Bang Chicken Salad

Satay of Chicken with Peanut Sauce

Bamboo Steamed Veggie Dumplings

Peking Duck Spring Rolls with Hoisin Sauce

Entree choice of:

Soy Ginger Salmon

Kung Pao Chicken

Shanghai Scallion Beef

Wok seared NY Sirloin

Vegetable or Chicken Pad Thai

Sushi Roll Trio

Dessert:

Zen Parfait

Fresh Fruit & Tangerine Sorbet

Banana Bread Pudding

Skype is now the largest provider of international phone calls made in the world. A rather big accomplishment for this seven-year-old VOIP company.

"Only five years after its launch Skype has emerged as the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world," TeleGeography analyst Stephan Beckert said. Skype is owned by eBay.

TeleGeography estimates that 384 billion minutes' worth of international calls were made in 2008, up 12 percent on the year before, but revenues were flat due to falling call prices.

Throughout 2008, Skype carried around 33 billion minutes of international voice calls which make up around 8% of all international voice traffic.

The growth in the company's international traffic, 41% in 2008, has made Skype the largest provider of cross-border voice communications in the world.

International voice traffic as a whole is also growing, although more slowly than for Skype. Last year it grew 12%, compared to 14% in 2007, according to TeleGeography.

Paul Smith being interviewed (Flickr)

A British blogger is trying to "Twitch hike" as far around the world as possible in 30 days, relying solely on the generosity of people using social networking site Twitter.

Known as the Twitchhiker, British journalist Paul Smith left his home in Newcastle-upon-Tyne on March 1 and has already travelled via Amsterdam, Paris, Germany and the United States.

Paul Smith, 33, aims to travel to Campbell Island in New Zealand, the opposite side of the planet to his home in northern England, and back again.

For his transport and accommodation he is relying only on other Twitter users.

Why, you may ask.

"To see if it's possible. Because it might be fun. And to raise a eye-bulgingly enormous stack of money for charity: water," he said.

He aims to raise money for a water charity, and has so far had more than $6,400 pledged in online donations.

Smith is also banned from making any travel plans more than three days in advance and has to leave each location within 48 hours of arriving.

Follow Paul here on Twitter.

Watch a clip below of him crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco:

Rockstar today announced the upcoming release of the third chapter of its popular first-person detective series, Max Payne. The game has been given the release date of "Winter 2009."

"We're starting a new chapter of Max's life with this game," said Rockstar founder Sam Houser in a statement. "This is Max as we've never seen him before, a few years older, more world-weary and cynical than ever."

Max Payne 3 will be available on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360; the rating is still pending.

Not much in the way of details beyond that, but it's probably enough for fans to start getting excited.

Instead of doing what social-networking is purposed to do which is to connect people. It is causing break-ups, and even very public ones too.

Jennifer Aniston reportedly dumped singer-songwriter John Mayer because instead of calling, emailing or texting her he was Twittering. Mayer just couldn't find time for the Friends star in between his 140 character updates on the hugely popular micro-blogging site.

The UK's Telegraph reports:

The source said: "John suddenly stopped calling her or returning her emails and when she would finally catch up with him, he'd say: 'I've been so busy with work. I'm sorry I haven't had time to call you back."

The source added: "Jen was fuming. There he was, telling her he didn't have time for her and yet his page was filled with Twitter updates.

"Every few hours, sometimes minutes, he'd update with some stupid line. And in her mind, she was like 'He has time for all this Twittering, but he can't send me a text, an email, make a call?'."

It has also been claimed musician John made no attempt to cover up his Twitters.

The source said: "He didn't even deny it. He knew he was avoiding her. So when she called him on it and ended things, he just said OK, and that he was sorry it didn't work out.

"He took the break-up like a man."

It sure does seem John Mayer updates often, his last tweet was less than an hour ago. Poor Jen.

Police officers are no longer satisfied with their normal cars, but instead, would prefer a high-tech one that is often featured in superhero movies.

This may soon become a reality. Carbon Motors Corp. has a new high-tech cop car prototype that might not have all the superhero specs, but some police say it could be a welcome addition to their arsenal.

The Carbon E7 concept was designed by cops for cops, breaking the tradition of recruiting family sedans into the force, company co-founder Stacy Dean Stephens said.

"The current vehicles that they (police departments) use were designed for driving around, going to the grocery store, taking kids to school -- things like that," Stephens said.

The car has 300-horsepower clean diesel engine, flashing lights visible from all angles, an ergonomic cockpit, an onboard computer with voice command and instant license plate recognition, integrated shotgun mounts, and more.

Watch a video of Carbon E7 below: