In place of the usual ”I’m feeling lucky” button below the search box, it says “Insert Coin”. This is the company’s first playable logo and coincides with Pac-Man’s 30th Anniversary.  Blinky, Pinky, Inky and Clyde were back, this time as guest stars on the Google homepage, roaming around the search engine’s iconic logo.

It is up for the next 48 hours so go ahead and check it out. Its pretty darn addictive.

Just go to google.com and enjoy. “Insert coin, insert coin…”

Google is making headlines for all sorts of different reasons. From being a household name, to Wi-Fi data fiasco.  Things are far from slowing down in Google.  Tomorrow May 19, 2010, Google I/O, a conference held annually, will start and crowd of developers will be turned loose on different technical sessions, and various Google product  innovations.  Imagine how much territory Google has covered since Larry and Sergey Brin started their little Backrub search engine.  

Since, many Google products and technologies have spanned over this kind of event.  Android, Chrome, Google Web Toolkit, OpenSocial, Google AJAX APIs, and the newly announced Google Wave. In the upcoming web developer-focused conference, Google announced its plan to acquire global IP Solutions, launch new API for contextual gadgets in Gmail and release updates to Google Apps Script.

Google “I/O”, which may stand for “Innovation in the Open”, or input/output, would mean a big event for us but for Google, it’s just another week, another entry in its ongoing timeline.

Lately, it seems that social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have been receiving viruses directly to its members. It was said that this Friday at 10 pm, that the Twitter site was hacked and defaced.

Twitter.com is said to be down. Some tweets are getting through at the moment because parts of the API are up. The search seems to be working. It is suggested that if you use the same password on your twitter account with other accounts, now would be a good time to change your password on those other accounts.

It was said that there is a history between Iran and Twitter. It was well noted and covered in the media that Twitter was used as a tool during the Iranian election protests. The US government actually intervened to assure that Twitter was available to the protestors in Tehran and around the country. This attack maybe an act of reprisal from groups who were not happy with the role that Twitter played during the protests.

But then, luckily that Twitter.com is back. The company even updated the status blog.

The US Air Force on Tuesday confirmed for the first time that it is flying a stealth unmanned aircraft known as the “Beast of Kandahar,” a drone spotted in photos and shrouded in secrecy.

Aviation experts dubbed the drone the “Beast of Kandahar” after photographs emerged earlier this year showing the mysterious aircraft in southern Afghanistan in 2007. The image suggested a drone with a radar-evading stealth-like design, resembling a smaller version of a B-2 bomber.
The air force said the aircraft came out of Lockheed Martin’s “Skunk Works,” also known as Advanced Development Programs, in California – the home of sophisticated and often secret defense projects including the U-2 spy plane, the F-22 fighter jet and the F-117 Nighthawk.

Robots or “unmanned systems” in the air and on the ground are now deployed by the thousands in Iraq and Afghanistan, spying from the sky for hours on end, searching for booby-traps and firing lethal missiles without putting US soldiers at risk.

A 2,700 feet 160-story skyscraper in Dubai opens on January 4, 2010, the fourth anniversary of Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashed al-Maktoum’s rule in Dubai, a month delayed for its expected opening.  It will be the tallest building in the world which acquires impressive technologies of today like the fastest elevator in the world, traveling at 10 meters per second and double-decker elevators that can accommodate 21 people. To keep out the desert heat, 10,000 tons of coolant with flow through the tower every hour. There are 230,000 cubic meters of concrete form the building’s core, enough to pave 1,180 miles of sidewalk.

The largest shopping center is also located there, with space for 1,200 shops nestled among 30,000 apartments. ith Dubai announcing it financial mess last week, 400 projects are now stalling, including the Burj Dubai — the world’s tallest tower.

As the AP wrote this week:

“Most other of the unfinished super-projects announced in recent years, such as a second palm-shaped island or a tower to surpass the Burj Dubai, are either recession roadkill or being considered on a far smaller scale, if they are still considered at all.”