Every week, I record the technology news for 820 AM WWBA here in the Tampa Bay area. My news is played here in the Tampa Bay radio market as well as in several other metro areas throughout the state of Florida. Rather than post audio recordings, I thought I would simply post my transcript.

You can tune into the show every Saturday at 1PM EST on the SOS Computer Talk Show, on 820AM WWBA.

Here is my news transcript for this week:

Back in September, I talked about the release of Google Chrome. Chrome is the web browser that Google designed that has some advanced features like a private browsing mode, integrated search, plus the separation of individual browser tabs into separate processes. It is open source and free to download. Since the release, it has been a beta browser, meaning it is still a work in progress. Well, in Paris, one of Google’s vice presidents said that Chrome was soon to come out of beta. The motivation behind this is simple: They want to get Chrome shipped on new computers. In order to do that, it can’t be a beta product. So, while Google Gmail has been out since 2004 and still is called beta, they’re going to push Chrome out of beta after only a few months. The question is: Can Chrome ever steal market share away from Firefox? Over on PCMech.com, about 50% of our audience uses Firefox whereas only about 4% are using Chrome. Chrome doesn’t yet support any add-ons and that’s probably the biggest single selling point to Firefox. As soon as Chrome tackles that, usage will climb quickly. And again, Chrome is free to use and you can grab your copy at google.com/chrome.

If you’re into smartphones, you pretty much know that the big contenders right now are the Iphone, the Blackberry, the Windows Mobile phones and a few others. Palm has been off the radar for some time because they hadn’t really done anything new in years. That might be about to change. Word has it that Palm is inviting people to visit them at next month’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas to "see all the Palm New-ness you’ve been waiting for". So, maybe, just maybe, Palm is about to become a contender in the phone markets once again. And as far as I’m concerned, they better come out swinging because this is pretty late in the game.

If you use Google Gmail, Google just released another feature in the Google Labs. Its the task list. Now, I’ve been railing against Google for some time for not having a todo list in their offerings. It just makes sense. Well, the todo list in the Gmail Labs is pretty light-weight and certainly not all that I’d like to see, but it is a start. If you want to use it, go to the Labs screen in your Gmail account and enable it. When you click the Tasks link, a little pop-window will appear in the lower right of your browser to control your task list. Not bad, but I hope to see more, soon.

As we approach the end of another year, the major search engines are releasing reports on the most popular search terms. Well, all is normal in the world because Yahoo reports that Britney Spears remains the top search term for 2008. The WWE is #2. For more on the Yahoo report, go to buzz.yahoo.com. On the Google side of things, their report is a lot more interesting. Sarah Palin actually ranks very high, as does Obama, Facebook, AT&T, the Iphone, etc. Quite honestly, it seems as if the Google audience is a little higher brow. While Yahoo users are looking for skin pics of Britney, Google users are searching political candidates. Either way, a search on Google for the 2008 Zeitgeist will show you the full report.

On PCMech.com, we are holding a giveaway contest where the prize is a very cool computer case from Ultra Products. For a video of the prize and how to enter, head on over to pcmech.com/giveaway/.

Lastly, if you’re interested in how you can turn the Internet into a medium to generate an income for you every month, you’ll want to check out David Risley dot com. This is my personal blog where I talk about what I do for a living and how I do it. I also do a ProBlogger Flip Tip almost every day in video form. So, that’s at David Risley dot com.

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