Between Christmas and the New Year's night, things should be peaceful in most areas of the world, especially for all those software and hardware companies that just got through the "Holiday shopping madness," but this time, things are a bit different, at least for Microsoft, Apple, and Google. As strange as it may seem, these three companies got a really nasty Christmas present - a lawsuit!

The story is veeeery simple, yet stunning - Cygnus System accused all those three giants of violating US patent 7,346,850, entitled "System and method for iconic software environment management." Good, but... what about that patent?
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Well, if you want to know a bit more, it's enough to say this is all about thumbnails. The patent mentioned earlier describes "a method and system for storing, navigating, and accessing files within an operating system through the use of a graphical thumbnail representing the video display of the active document within the active application," so it can easily cover software like Windows Explorer, Cover Flow, and even iPhone's file previews capability. Obviously, it doesn't stop here, since Safari's browser tab thumbnails and Google's Chrome similar capabilities are also targeted!

This may be only the first step in a legal storm that can engulf other giants of the industry, like Adobe, Opera, maybe going as far as targeting web services like Flickr, but that's what remains to be seen. After all, there's still plenty of time until this story will get to an end...

With its fifteenth release, the Google Chrome browser left behind the "Beta" label and became a mature application. No, not one bearing the "M (mature)" mark, but one that should make even the most demanding users happy. Well, if some people won't be happy, at least they'll give it a try now, since I know a lot of guys and chicks who would stay away from virtually any program labeled as "Beta," no matter its source, and "little details" like outstanding reliability and a wide range of features...

...and since I mentioned "features," then let me tell you that Google Chrome 1.0.154.36 doesn't come with anything new, but has a lot of improvements over the first version, as the official blog says. Below, you have a few passages from the post related to the first non-Beta Google Chrome browser in the wild...

"Better stability and performance of plug-ins (particularly video). Video and audio glitches were among the most common bugs fixed during the beta period. <-125x125 Button - right->If you had problems watching videos with Google Chrome in the past, you should be pleasantly surprised with the performance now.

Even more speed. Google Chrome starts up fast, loads pages quickly, and just keeps getting faster. Since the first beta, the V8 JavaScript engine runs 1.4 times faster on the SunSpider benchmark and 1.5 times faster on the V8 benchmark — and there is more speed to come.

Bookmark manager and privacy controls. We heard you! Better bookmark features were a top request from our users. It's now easier to switch between another browser and Google Chrome with the bookmark import and export features, and we added a new simple way to manage large numbers of bookmarks, too. We also wanted to make it even easier for you to control your browsing data, so all of the features in Google Chrome which affect user privacy are now grouped in one place with detailed explanations for each one."

If you avoided Google Chrome until now, today is the first day of your life, and you have no excuse to avoid it any longer, so download it and give it a try, it simply can't disappoint you!