The latest update release from Google Android (1.5 a.k.a. Cupcake) included, among many other things, video recording capabilities. Google Android video apps are still emerging in the Android Market but there’s a handful of free ones that are very well developed. I’ve sifted through all the free Google Android video player apps and hundreds of Android photo apps, as well as Android audio applications to come up with a list of some of my favorite Google Android multimedia applications.

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Given that Mafia Wars is such a popular Facebook app game, I thought it only made sense to create a Mafia Wars guide. I’ve only recently started playing but I’ve successfully grown my mafia family to over 250 in just a few days. Mafia Wars is a highly addictive Facebook game but it’s also a great place to meet and add Facebook friends too.

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In addition to Google Maps, are plenty of other great location-based GPS (Global Positioning System) driven Google Android apps available for free download in the Android Market. GPS can be very helpful when you’re needing directions, trying to find the closest restaurant nearby, or simply wanting to display your location to friends on some of the popular mobile social networks. Nowadays Android apps that utilize GPS can even help you find your T-Mobile G1 if it’s ever lost or stolen.

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When you purchase a domain (e.g. yourwebsite.com) for your website from any of the domain registrars such as GoDaddy, you normally get a single free email account that includes limited storage space. Instead of upgrading to a paid email account, why not use a free solution like Google Apps? Google Apps is a software-as-a-service solution for business email as well as for sharing information between users and groups. In addition to using it for your business, many personal website owners and bloggers use Google Apps because of the following:

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I believe it’s time for Matt Mullenweg to seriously reconsider the restrictive, unsuccessful business models (donations, paid support) he currently requires developers adhere to in order to have their plugins and themes hosted at WordPress.org. Theme and plugin developers have helped make WordPress the champion blogging platform that it is today without receiving a single dime of the $29.5 million in funding that Automattic raised last year.

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Plugin developers are the heart and soul of WordPress. WordPress plugin developers not only extend the core functionality of WP but they drive innovation for the popular blogging platform. Compared to other blogging platforms, WordPress arguably possesses the strongest and most generous community of all. Despite this however, WP plugin developers receive very little compensation for their efforts to supply the WP plugin repository with quality free plugins.

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This is a guest post by Robert Miller. If you want to guest post on this blog, check out our guest author guidelines.

On April 7th, Google announced an early look at Google App Engine for Java and I received access to it shortly thereafter. I was able to complete their example application and deploy it to Google servers with very little struggle. I found the Google App Engine for Java to be very entrepreneurial because it offers a simple development and deployment process along with really cheap, scalable hosting. The following are notes and a case study of my experience in developing a new microblogging service using Google App Engine for Java.

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The internet is an incredibly powerful tool for sharing information, communicating, and learning, but it’s also an excellent resource that identity thieves use to obtain your personal information. Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in the United States and nowadays most people don’t give a second thought to posting their full name, address, and phone number on popular social networks like Facebook, MySpace, or Twitter.

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Last month I pointed out that Twitter’s growth rate had slowed from 76% in March to 39% in April according to Compete. Compete statistics that were recently released show that Twitter’s unique visitor traffic growth for May was stagnant at a mere 1%. To make matters worse, Quantcast has Twitter actually losing traffic in May. This should be of serious concern for Twitter and its investors as the life of Twitter’s recent popularity is still in its infancy despite arguably receiving more media hype than any web service to date.

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A couple of weeks ago, I thought I would take the initiative towards making the comment system here more socially accessible. With their rising popularity and the great social features available with Intense Debate and Disqus, it made sense to put the default WordPress comment system on the back burner. I thought it would also be helpful to test, review, and compare the Intense Debate, Disqus, and WordPress comment systems prior to settling on one or the other. As I pointed out in my previous post, I had a great experience with Intense Debate but it’s lacking some of the social features that Disqus possesses.

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