Google is testing a service that lets you make phone calls from Gmail, according to a report that includes a screen shot of the test.

Hot ChipsIntel has confirmed that its upcoming Westmere-EX server processor will be a 10-core, server-enhanced, single-die beastie.

Carriers and handset makers are rallying to make it cheaper and easier to deliver applications on phones using the "official" brand of Java on mobile.

The ARM RISC processor is taking a few baby steps closer to being a credible alternative to x64 processors for servers, according to ARM Holdings, the British company behind the popular chip.

Product Round-upThe last batch of stereo Bluetooth headphones I looked at, back in 2008, were something of a mixed bag, with some cumbersome designs and very variable audio quality. Fortunately, the current generation provides much better stereo quality, and we’d happily recommend any of them as an alternative to a conventional set of wired headphones.

An appeals court in Argentina has ruled that search engines are not responsible for the content of sites that they index. The court overturned a lower court's ruling against Google and Yahoo! Argentina.

Marten Mickos – the former MySQL chief executive who now heads build-you-own-cloud outfit Eucalyptus Systems – has defended the Eucalyptus platform against recent criticism of both its "open core" model and its ability to scale beyond a relatively small number of servers.

Two Stockholm schoolgirls have been slapped with a fine for bugging the staff room at their seat of learning.

Chinese auction house Alibaba is expanding its US presence by grabbing Auctiva - the Californian firm which makes tools for business users of eBay.

Paris Hilton entertained her 2,520,223 Twitter followers yesterday with a quick tweet revealing that some bloke had just tried to enter her Hollywood Hills pad armed with "knifes".

Are your one-port powerline Ethernet adaptors proving insufficient for hooking up all the gadgets you want to connect to your network? Western Digital has the answer.

Alternative location service echoecho reckons Facebook Places is driving up interest in the subject, to the good of the whole industry and, in particular, echoecho.

WikiLeaks used Twitter to tell the world it is to release a CIA document later today.

If 3PAR decides the HP re-bid is a superior offer it is going to give Dell three days to come up with a better acquisition offer or be jilted.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a BT television advert, after the watchdog concluded that customers had been misled by the telecom giant’s broadband speed claims.

Pioneer has taken the standard iPod speaker dock, flattened it out and hung it on a wall.

Federal boffins in the States say that the brave new future in which today's 'leccy-guzzling lights are replaced by efficient LEDs may not, in fact, usher in massive energy savings.

Dixons has had its wrist slapped for leaving customer details in a skip outside one of its PC World stores.

Apple has punched out a security update for some major bugs found in its Mac OS X operating system.

AnalysisIn matters of extreme porn, the message of recent cases seems to be that whether you get off increasingly depends on how familiar your legal team are with a law still in its courtroom infancy.

The ex-president of Fujitsu has thrown a sue ball at his former employer, following his ousting from the company in September 2009.

O2 has added environmental impact to its handset specifications, rating the Palm Pre as the worst while Sony Ericsson's Elm left the smallest footprint.

A teacher who let a class use his laptop was given a suspended sentence yesterday after kids found child sex abuse images in his recycling bin.

Boffins in Kansas report that they have made a breakthrough in "spintronics" - the postulated future technology which might replace today's conventional electronics and allow much more powerful IT hardware.

OpinionMy US colleagues are regulars on John C Dvorak's excellent Cranky Geeks and a highlight of the show. I was recently intrigued to hear the opinion from Vulture West Coast (in Episode 232) that RIM was toast, and Android would triumph. Now, bearing in mind that I've been wrong about mobile more than I've been wrong about anything else - quite epically and unheroically wrong - I beg to differ.

Yesterday Nokia and Intel announced that the future of mobile interfaces is 3D, and that everyone else will soon be following their Meego platform into the third dimension.

The Royal Society has opened its investigation into why kids are so bored with technology and computing classes in British schools - even if they're obsessed with their mobiles and iPods and applications like Facebook.

The Home Office has said that new UK passports with 'strengthened security features' will be issued from October.

Labels both large and small, as well as songwriters' organisations, are owed millions after Playlist.com filed for bankruptcy.

The Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) team has spent the last couple of days working on a definitive Vulture 1-X wing structure, having already tried and rejected a few options.

As America wakes up to the idea of pay-by-phone the Consumers Union is calling for greater regulation, concerned that proximity payments may not receive any protection at all.

We're delighted to announce that the Beeb appears to have got with the programme and adopted official El Reg units.

The recovery in the server business is building momentum, and the box counters at IDC believe that server makers peddled and pushed $10.9bn in aluminum, tin, and iron in the second quarter of 2010, an increase of 11 per cent compared to last year.

Facebook’s popularity has overtaken Google’s Orkut in India, where Mountain View’s social network site had previously – and somewhat surprisingly – reigned supreme.

The Commodore 64 will rise from the grave before Christmas, according to the tiny company determined to reanimate the long-dead 80s icon.

The Pentagon has opened the kimono on what it described as the “most significant breach of US military computers ever,” in which a flash drive in 2008 was used to infect large numbers of computers, including those used by the Central Command overseeing combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Google has announced that you can now place and receive phone calls inside Gmail, a day after a report revealed that such a service was under test.

Intel CEO Paul Otellini believes that the US is heading towards a second-rate status as a technology leader, and it's the Obama administration's fault.

Internet Explorer 9 is getting a stripped down interface, if a screenshot leaked online is to be believed.

On Wednesday, Citrix Systems kicked out XenClient, a bare-metal (or type 1 in virt lingo) hypervisor aimed at desktop and laptop PCs, perhaps in an attempt to steal a little thunder from VMware and its upcoming VMware View 4.5 virtual desktop infrastructure software, expected to be announced at the VMworld conference in San Francisco next week.

A US military competition aimed at finding a robotic unmanned helicopter able to haul supplies to isolated bases in Afghanistan has a winner, according to reports.

Wikileaks posted a classified CIA memo on Wednesday, three weeks after the Pentagon warned the self-described whistleblower website to return a huge cache of of unpublished documents believed to be in its possession.

Fanbois, mark your calendars: Apple has sent out invitations to a music-themed event to take place in San Francisco next Wednesday morning.