Go, the increasingly popular programming language Google first announced in late 2009, is now available in its first stable version. This release also marks the first time that a native support for Go is available to Windows users. Dart, another language developed by Google’s engineers, is mostly meant for web applications, while the developers of Go aimed to create a modern general-purpose language for networked and multicore computing. While Go took quite a bit of inspiration from C, it also includes ideas from other languages like Pascal, Newsqueak and Limbo.

As the engineers behind the project note, the reason to release a stable version now is to give developers a stable target for their development efforts. Until now, the language still changed regularly and some of these changes likely broke existing code. Now, Google’s engineers will ensure that – with a few exceptions – every further addition to Go won’t break existing programs. “Code that compiles in Go 1 should, with few exceptions, continue to compile and run throughout the lifetime of that version, even as we issue updates and bug fixes such as Go version 1.1, 1.2, and so on.”

With this release, Google also updated its Google App Engine SDK to support this new version (App Engine is Google’s cloud computing platform for developers). To see how serious Google is about Go, you just have to look at the fact that besides Go, App Engine only supports Java and Python right now.

A simple click on the Google+ hangout button on these sites opens up a standard Google Hangout with the respective application running inside the same window. You can now also find these apps in the new “Apps” pane in Google+ Hangouts.

Google is rolling this feature out right now, so it may take a bit before it becomes available in your account.

Google, which has been struggling to get users to adopt Google+ as a social network, has long been pushing these video chats as a differentiating feature for its service. It’s not clear how much adoption this feature has seen on Google+ itself (even as video chats become more common, most people still feel very self-conscious on camera, after all). By effectively decoupling hangouts from the social networking aspects of Google+, however, I wouldn’t be surprised if a number of productivity apps and games will adopt this feature now. Google, as far as I can see, isn’t charging developers for this tool and adding video chat tends to be a costly feature for developers.

The one technology Mozilla really wants to showcase here – besides the multiplatform nature of using web technologies over native apps – is WebSocket. With this, developers can set up a system to communicate back and forth between the browser and the server. In the case of BrowserQuest, this means that the server can keep your actions and those by your fellow players in sync without much effort. 

Here is the total list of web technologies BrowserQuest uses: 

• HTML5 Canvas, which powers the 2D tile-based graphics engine.
• Web workers, allowing to initialize the large world map without slowing down the homepage UI.
• localStorage, in which the progress of your character is continually saved.
• CSS3 Media Queries, so that the game can resize itself and adapt to many devices.
• HTML5 audio, so you can hear that rat or skeleton die!

The guide, it is worth noting, also features some indoor imagery, as well as the ability to virtually stroll through some of the country's famous gardens. Besides the obvious Street View feature and sightseeing suggestions, the guide also features restaurant, hotel and shopping recommendations – all of which feature indoor Street View images and a bit of information about the establishment.

According to Google, the guide features 339 locations – including "26 great cherry blossom viewing spots." The guide is available in English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

It will be interesting to see if Google plans to expand this program to cover other countries as well. While there are a number of third-party sites that use Street View to augment their travel guides, this guide for Japan is actually Google's first foray into using this feature for a home-grown travel guide. The fact that the company calls this an "edition," though, provides a hint that more of these guides may be in the works.

The company hopes that the new lab will "serve as a hub for independent technology projects and identification of new research investments and partners located along the West Coast." It also hopes to develop deeper partnerships with local tech firms and universities. Ford is, for example, already a member of Stanford's Automotive Research at Stanford (CARS) affiliate program.

Ford will hire Silicon Valley talent for its new offices, but also plans to rotate-in engineers from its other locations to work on new in-car technologies and ideas.

The company first announced its plans to open a Silicon Valley office earlier this year, but at that time, it hadn't chosen a location yet. According to the city of Palo Altos' economic development manager Thomas Fehrenbach, the city itself reached out to Ford when it heard about Ford's plans, though chances are that it was already pretty high on Ford's list of possible locations.

Unsurprisingly, teens from households with a higher income are more likely to own cell phones and while 83% of suburban kids now own a mobile phone, only 69% of kids in urban areas and 73% in rural areas own one.

The Pew study did not find a statistically relevant difference between boys and girls when it comes to cell phone ownership, but when it comes to texting, girls are still far heavier users than boys. The median number of texts per girl in this study was closer to 90, while boys only send about 50 (the mean numbers, it’s worth noting, are far higher and also far closer to each other: 165 for girls and 168 for boys).  Unsurprisingly, those teens who send the most texts are also more likely to own a smartphone.

As for old-fashioned voice calls, teens – just like the rest of us – are slowly making fewer calls and most teens report that they mostly use text messages to socialize with the people in their lives:

I've had the joy of working with Ammirati at ReadWriteWeb for almost two years. He is one of the smarter and more driven people in our business, so losing him will be a loss for SAY and RWW. At the same time, though, it's clear that Sean's entrepreneurial experience (mSpoke, a company he co-founded, was the first startup to be acquired by LinkedIn) will serve him well in his new position. It's also probably not a stretch to think that his role at RWW changed quite a bit after the acquisition.

As he told me yesterday, the new fund wants to take a very agile approach – somewhat like Kevin Rose's Milk. The fund will be both run as a lab (and hence develop its own products and startups) but also make investments in early stage companies.

For ReadWriteWeb, this is the first departure since the acquisition, though it is worth noting that the site had a very high staff turnover in the year leading up to the acquisition, with a lot of the key members leaving the site or, like RWW's former co-editor Marshall Kirkpatrick, starting their own ventures while still writing for the site now and then.

The organization has discussed most of these plans before, but it's good to take another look at what's in store for the popular browser.

A SPDYer Browser

Among the highlights Firefox's users can look forward to is default support for Google's SPDY protocol that speeds up the communication between your browser and web servers. In the current version (11), SPDY is not enable by default, but you can turn it on by browsing to about:config and doing a search for spdy.enabled.

In addition, Mozilla also plans to turn on HTTP pipelining by default. This allows the browser to download different elements of a site in parallel, which should speed things up, especially for sites that don't yet support the SPDY protocol.

Silent Updates

Mozilla also plans to bring silent updates to Firefox. This means, you will never have to see another update dialog again. Instead, Firefox will just update itself automatically, just like Chrome currently does. The development team plans to launch this feature in version 13.

Better Web Apps

As for web apps, Mozilla wants to integrate them more deeply into the browser. This means support for Mozilla's online app store, which is scheduled to launch later this year, but also a lot of work on the backend, including support for Mozilla's identity solution, an install process for web apps and the ability for apps to run in the background.

This, of course, is only the tip of the iceberg. You can find a full list of the features Mozilla has planned for this year here.

Out of the 40 cities where Google offers is currently available, customers in 23 of these now get offers from the company's partners in addition to Google's own offers.

In its announcement, Google explicitly acknowledges that in order to bring its users the best deals, it needs to work with partners. At the same time, though, it's also clear that these smaller niche sites need bigger partners to have any chance in succeeding in a market that is dominated by Groupon and LivingSocial.

Maybe the most interesting of these new partners is Signpost (which, it is worth noting, is partly funded by Google Ventures). The company sets up online stores for small businesses and also works with its customers to set up daily deal campaigns.

Talking to German public radio, Spotify acknowledged that the company is still negotiating with GEMA. As of now, the two haven't been able to reach an agreement, though the negotiations, which Spotify describes as "intense," continue.

GEMA, it is worth noting, has been negotiating with Google to set streaming rates for YouTube for years now. It's not unthinkable that its discussions with Spotify could also take quite a while. Just last year, Sony Music CEO Edgar Berger argued that "some members of GEMA's supervisory board have not yet arrived in the digital era."

Now, however, Mozilla has canceled this delay and announced that Firefox 11 is still on track for today's release. The security vulnerability, it turns out, was already known and patched. In order to avoid the conflict with Patch Tuesday, though, this release will only be available as a manual update today. Once the Firefox team is sure that there are no issues with Microsoft's latest patches, it will push automatic updates to all users.

Since switching to its rapid-release schedule, Mozilla never missed a scheduled release date for Firefox.

What's New in Firefox 11

Once Firefox 11 is available, this is what you can expect from the update:

What’s New

One issue a lot of developers have with the first-come, first-serve nature of registration for this event has been the fact that a lot of attendees at developer conferences are now often not developers themselves. I/O, where Google has developed a tendency to give away a lot of pricey gadgets that are often worth more than the ticket fee, has become somewhat notorious for this. 

Tickets for I/O will cost $900 for general attendees and $300 for students and university faculty members.

Here are some more details from Google:

• Registration will open first-come, first-serve on March 27th at 7 AM PDT / 14:00 UTC.
• Rooms at the W Hotel are currently going for $279. Limited time offer, while supplies last.
• Code Labs have graduated from Bootcamp and will now be incorporated into our 3-day agenda.
• This year’s After Hours theme is Carnival 2112.
• Real-time transcription (CART) will be provided live during the keynote and some breakout sessions.

It's also worth noting that you will need to have a Google+ account to register and that you will have to use Google Wallet to pay for your registration.

The most important update, however, is that Camera+ now offers third-party developers APIs for integrating the camera into their own iOS and Camera+ images that are stored on the web into their web and mobile apps. WordPress, Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Foodspotting and Twittelator Neue are already using these new features. Once you install the update, for example, you can now choose to take pictures with Camera+ in Tweetbot, edit them in the app and then use them in your tweet.

Here is a full list of the updates in version 3:

★ App icon

The very first thing you’ll notice in Camera+ 3 is its shiny, new icon. It’s essentially the same Camera+ icon that you’ve grown to know and love… but better and much more polished.

★ Dramatically improved sharing

There are two main improvements here… The first is that you can now share to multiple services, or even multiple accounts on the same service, all at the same time. The second big thing that you’ll notice with sharing is the increase in speed. It’s now faster than ever to share your photos online.

★ Multiple photo library import

We’re introducing a great new feature where you can import multiple photos from your photo library all at once.

And we added several fine touches to the import panel. Large thumbnails, zooming to view your photo large, and photo info will help ensure that you’re choosing exactly the photos you want.

★ Workflows

Sometimes you want to shoot a bunch of pics in a row without having to think about things like editing and sharing. And sometimes you want to do just the opposite and edit and share each pic you take, right after you take it. Workflows easily provide you with the flexibility to do it either way

★ Focus & exposure locks

Now you can lock the focus and exposure of the camera, independently of each other. Photographers looking for the utmost flexibility in shooting will love this new feature because it enables all kinds of creative ways of taking awesome shots.

“Bokeh?! I hardly know her!”

★ APIs

We’ve created a few comprehensive APIs for Camera+. These APIs enable people to integrate Camera+ into other apps and to create web services that make use of the many, many photos that have been shared by Camera+ users.

Several prominent developers have already integrated Camera+ into their apps via these new APIs. Check-out the WordPress, Tweetbot, Twitterrific, Foodspotting, and Twittelator Neue apps in the App Store to see these APIs in action.

And to get all the details on how the APIs work, visit http://api.camerapl.us

★ Improved Lightbox UI

We’re a bit obsessive when it comes to user interface and user experience. With Camera+ 3, we’ve reworked several details of the Lightbox to make it even more usable. It’ll take a couple of seconds to get used to the changes but we’re completely confident that you’ll love these improvements almost immediately.

★ Create web link

Many of you used to use the SMS sharing feature (now renamed to Message) for passing web links along to others. Now we’ve got a much better, easier, and dedicated way of doing it.

★ Tuned Clarity

Often imitated but never duplicated, Clarity is one of the things that makes Camera+ what it is. And now it’s even better, especially if you’re using an iPhone 4S.

★ VolumeSnap setting in menu

VolumeSnap is our birthright. That is all.

★ Status bar in Lightbox

In previous versions of Camera+, we didn’t display the status bar (you know… that thingy with the clock, battery level, etc at the top of your screen) when you were in the Lightbox. Well, that’s all changed with this version! Never again miss picking your kids up at soccer practice because you were editing photos and had no clue what time it was.

★ Improved performance

We’ve gone through painstaking steps to improve performance in several parts of the app. It all feels a lot more fluid now. But don’t just take our word on it… try it yourself and see how much nicer it is now.

★ Notifications

Find-out about Camera+ updates, news, and contests. We’ve implemented notifications so they’re not intrusive and they’re opt-in only.

★ Lotsa bug fixes

We’ve identified and fixed several bugs in Camera+. Thanks to all of you who’ve reported any issues you’ve experienced.

★ Various other subtle, but significant enhancements

This security report is due later today, but the Mozilla team obviously still has to evaluate the vulnerability and, if necessary, patch Firefox 11 before releasing it. Nightingale still assumes that Firefox 11 will be released later this week.

This is the first time Mozilla had to postpone a Firefox release since it moved to its rapid-release schedule last year. The last major delay came before the release of Firefox 4, but this was also the last release before Mozilla changed its development cycle.

If you still want to get an early look at Firefox 11, though, you can always download the latest beta version here.

Neither Twitter nor Posterous disclosed any financial details of this transaction. Since its launch, Posterous raised about $10 million. The company received its seed funding from Y Combinator in 2008.

Why Would Twitter Buy a Blogging Platform?

This is a relatively unusual acquisition for Twitter. Until now, the company has mainly acquired companies that were already producing products closely related to Twitter itself (including TweetDeck, for example). Posterous, on the other hand, is quite a departure from this. The service, which first made a name for itself by providing very minimalist blogging tools, isn't a clear fit for Twitter, so chances are the goal of this acquisition was more to hire the Posterous team than to integrate the blogging platform into Twitter. 

Even though Posterous was one of the first players in this field of minimalist/short form blogging tools, Tumblr quickly became the more popular platform. While Posterous tried to reinvent itself over the last few months, the service was never quite able to match its competitor's traction, though judging from most of the publicly available traffic data, the service was still growing slowly but steadily.

What Will Happen to Posterous?

Twitter says that the Posterous service will "remain up and running without disruption." At the same time, though, the company also notes that it will give users "ample notice" if it makes any changes to the service and that it will provide users with instructions for backing up their data and moving to another service. Chances are then, that Twitter isn't planning on keeping Posterous up and developing its features for too long.