At the Hadoop Summit in California Wednesday Yahoo released the source code to its version of Hadoop which will be used to power its sites and products.

Hadoop is free Java software framework born out of an open-source implementation of Google’s published computing infrastructure and fostered within the Apache Software Foundation.

Yahoo! has been the primary developer and investor to Apache's Hadoop.

Hadoop founder Doug Cutting joined Yahoo in 2006 to lead the project of developing the open-source software. Hadoop now provides the framework for many Yahoo properties including Yahoo Search, Yahoo Mail, and several content and ad services.

Hadoop runs on more than 25,000 servers and analyzes billions of Web pages. 

Wolfram Alpha, the service that’s less of a Google-like search engine and more of a “computational knowledge engine” of information on the Internet, announced major updates on Tuesday and said it plans to offer more in the future.

Below are the first major updates to Wolfram Alpha in its entirety:

* Additional linguistic forms for many types of data and questions

* More comparisons of composite properties (e.g. “US military vs. UK”)

* Combined time series plots of different quantities (e.g. “germany gdp vs population”)

* More complete handling of government positions (e.g. “chancellor”, etc.)

* Updates to country borders for India, China, Slovenia, Croatia, and others

* Updates to naming for certain politically sensitive countries and regions

* Additional subcountry regions (e.g. “Wales”); many more to come

* Additional support for current and past fractional timezones (e.g. “Iran time”)

* City-by-city handling of U.S. states with multiple timezones

* Updates to certain European currencies (e.g. for “Cyprus” and “Slovakia”)

* Some additional historical events; many more to come

* Additional probability computations for cards and coins (e.g. “2 or 3 aces”)

* Additional output for partitions of integers (e.g. “partitions of 47″)

* Implicit handling of geometric figure properties (e.g. “ellipse with area 6 and major axis 2″)

* Additional support for Mathematica 3D graphics syntax

* Additional support for stock prices with explicit dates

* Support for planet-to-planet distances and “nearest planet”, etc.

* Extra information when comparing incompatible units (e.g. “ergs vs. newtons”)

* Improved linguistic handling for many foods (e.g. “love apple”)

* More mountains added, especially in Australia

* Support for many less-common given names (e.g. “zebulon”)

* More “self-aware” questions answered (e.g. “how old are you”)

* More consistent handling of sidebar links to Wikipedia(), etc.

If you eager to know what is going on this very moment at Apple's Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco, a Website has posted up a stream of the keynote.

You can view the unauthorized stream over at this link:  http://live.twit.tv/

Be warned, the quality is not the best, but if you eager, this may be an answer for your curiosity. 

Microsoft unveiled its new control system for the Xbox 360 console, dubbed Project Natal, at E3 in Los Angeles on Tuesday.

Project Natal is a fully hands-free control system that will use face recognition and motion sensors to allow users to play games. The product will work with all incarnations of the Xbox 360 console.

Unlike the Nintendo Wii, which relies on motion sensors and an actual 'Wiimote' that you have to hold, Natal simply detects your motions, letting you kick and jump and do all other moves as if you were in the game.

Although still in the early stages, Microsoft has sent prototypes to all the main game developers. The software giant said it is still developing games and did not disclose an official release date or how much it would cost.

Below are some videos of Microsoft's Project Natal in action:

YouTube is hoping to make the leap from the PC to a more prime entertainment location--the TV set.

Google's (GOOG) video service is rolling out a new browser feature, called YouTube XL,  which is a portal designed for users who want to view YouTube videos on any big screen device via the Sony PS3 or the Wii consoles.

Google showed off the revamped changes to YouTube to a small group of reporters yesterday, according to reports.

YouTube rival, Hulu.com, unveiled its desktop app last week that allows user to take the streaming service to the television.

The reformatted YouTubeXL is clutter free compared to the traditional interface. User comments, for example, have been stripped away from YouTubeXL. The navigation buttons, such as top rated, research searches, favorites, etc., are much larger, presumably to make it easier to navigate the site while watching on a television.

It will be interesting to see how YouTube XL is accepted by the public, since the idea of watching poor quality videos on a large screen may not be the most appealing thing for many.

Apple updated its iTunes in order to prepare itself for the expected iPhone firmware upgrade to version 3.0

iTunes 8.2, for Windows and Mac, makes the program ready for the iPhone and iPod Touch operating system upgrade by pushing out changes made to recent prerelease versions of iTunes that had been available to only iPhone developers. The new iTunes also includes one security fix.

Meanwhile, Apple also updated its QuickTime video player to 7.6.2, for Windows and Mac, contains several security fixes, including patches for holes that could have been exploited to run arbitrary code by maliciously created PSD, JP2, and some movie files.

LG unveiled two new handsets that are targeted at a social-networking and business-oriented audience.

The two new handsets, the GW520 and GT505 feature push notification of updates from various social networking sites, push email from personal accounts and Microsoft Exchange support.

 The GW520 features a 2.8-inch touchscreen and a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that makes messaging convenient and a unique "push" social networking element to help people keep in touch.

With HSDPA supported up to speeds of 7.2Mbps, the phone allows users to quickly surf the net and although the camera is only 3-megapixels, it's enough to post your photos up on your profiles on social networking sites.

The GT505 has a 3" touchscreen, GPS, Wi-Fi, HSDPA, 3G, 7.2Mbps HSDPA and a 5-megapixel camera. It comes preloaded with a trial of WisePilot - piece of navigation software. The GT505 also comes with a 30 day trial of WisePilot for LG which offers turn by turn navigation.

Both handsets are expected to be available in June 2009 in the UK.

Google and Microsoft continued their war of ideas on Thursday, with the software giant unveiling a new web 2.0 search engine and Google said its planning to launch what it calls "the e-mail of the future" later this year.

At the D7 conference in California Thursday, Microsoft introduced Bing, which it says its not just a search engine, but a "decision engine" that will take search to a whole new level.

Meanwhile, Google introduced a new communication tool that it hopes will redefine the way we communicate online.

Google Wave, which was first under the codename of "Walkabout", will mesh elements of e-mail, instant messaging, wikis and photo-sharing to help simplify online communication.

Developers began testing out Wave yesterday but for the rest of is who are still having a hard time figuring out just what this new tool will do, check out the below video online that Google released.

It offers an in depth explanation that runs for 90 minutes. (gulp)

A month before he's slated to return to Apple, CEO Steve Jobs sounds "healthy, energetic," company co-founder Steve Wozniak told the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday.

Wozniak made the comments at the Journal's "All Things D" conference. Hebased his assessment on a phone conversation he recently had with Jobs. Concern grew for Jobs last year after public appearances at which he seemed gaunt.

"[Jobs] doesn't sound sick," Wozniak told The Wall Street Journal. Wozniak did note that this was his personal opinion and he did not ask Jobs directly about his health issues.

Last January, Jobs announced he was taking a medical leave of absence from the company until the end of June, citing health issues that were "more complex than I originally thought." The week before he made that announcement, Jobs had blamed a "hormonal imbalance" on the weight loss that had sparked speculation that he might be seriously ill.