Has Nokia finally figured out the formula for a successful Internet tablet-gadget-thing? We're about to find out, because Nokia just announced that the Maemo-powered Nokia N900 is now on sale in the U.S. and shipping to customers who pre-ordered the device.

Unlike Nokia's earlier efforts such as the N800 and N810, the N900 is roughly the size of a regular smartphone. It also actually makes cellular calls on T-Mobile's 3G network or AT&T's 2G EDGE network, instead of relying on Wi-Fi or WiMAX. The N900 offers the Linux-based, open-source Maemo OS, along with 32GB of internal storage, 3G connectivity, multitasking, and the ability to install third-party apps (commercial, homebrew, or otherwise).

The N900 also features a 3.5-inch touch screen, a full QWERTY keyboard, four customizable home screens, and Adobe Flash 9.4 support within the N900 Web browser.

Look for it in Nokia's flagship Chicago and New York stores for - hold onto your earmuffs - $649 unlocked. It's also available online at www.nokiausa.com and www.amazon.com. And if you grab one, let us know what you think of it in the comments.

Twitter has a problem: A number of users tweet, then lose interest. It needs a way to reengage them in the site. And tonight it’s starting to test one way: Notifications.

The test is currently only rolled out to a “limited” number of users right now, according to this update. But those who have it should notice an indicator similar to what Twitter does to let you know there are new search results on a query (see a capture above and below). There’s another service that does these types of notifications for new messages also: Facebook. Yes, Twitter for once is taking a playbook from its rival rather than the other way around.

When Twitter was still a young service, it used to auto-update with new tweets as they came in, in realtime. That was one of the first features killed off as the service began to explode in size and was having trouble scaling. FriendFeed implemented a similar live-updating stream before the Facebook acquisition, and that seemed to help boost engagement. Twitter currently offers live updating stream with its widgets.

The new, revamped MSN homepage is now live. Updated on Tuesday, November 3rd, this hugely popular internet portal sees 100 hundred million visitors per month who comes to read news, watch videos, and get other local information like events and weather. Yet despite its popularity, the portal has not seen a major overhaul of its design since 2004.

If you’re not a regular visitor to the site, you’ll still be able to tell at a glance that it’s undergone a number of big changes. Nothing has been left untouched – even the butterfly logo has been revamped!The new site opts for a much cleaner look. Gone is the blue background surrounding the white space, replaced by a completely white background instead.

At the top of the site, there’s a Bing search box, followed by topical links underneath taking you to news, entertainment, sports, money, lifestyle, or “more” subsections. On the main page, the lead stories are promoted by large, attention-grabbing images while other news items appear below as links.

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When the team at Twitter Inc. hatched the idea of producing a mobile device dedicated to “tweeting” they contacted Jonathan Kaplan, founder of a gadget company that experienced one of the most successful exits for venture investors in 2009.

The TwitterPeek

Kaplan, who sold Flip camera maker Pure Digital Technologies Inc. to Cisco Systems Inc. for $590 million in stock, told the team the man to talk to was Amol Sarva.

Sarva is the founder of Peek Inc., a company that coincidentally aims to be the Pure Digital of mobile email. The company builds a sleek, simple, affordable gadget that allows people to send or receive email.

The result of the collaboration between Twitter and Peek is a version of the device built exclusively for sending tweets.

Clad in “Twitter blue,” the TwitterPeek allows all the same functionality of a desktop Twitter client - reading tweets, sending tweets, replying, retweeting and direct messaging – only it gives users that access on the go.

For those of you who have been patiently waiting to unlock your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS currently on the 3.1.2 software, today is your lucky sn0w day as blacksn0w has been released one day ahead of schedule. It was just 3 days ago that iPhone hacker, George Hotz, announced via his Twitter account that he had found an exploit to unlock any iPhone with the 5.11.77 radio baseband.

blacksn0w is the unlock for the latest 05.11.07 baseband, and will also enable official tethering. blackra1n, a jailbreak for 3.1.2, has been updated to RC3, with hacktivation support, 15 second speed improvement, Tiger+PPC support, and installation of the latest blackra1n.app.

For the full details and on how to gain access to blacksn0w be sure to check out GeoHot’s blog. Need more help? Visit our Jailbreak and Unlock forums.

If you are looking to unlock your iPhone 3G or iPhone 3GS and use blacksn0w, let us know how it goes!

blacksn0w the latest unlocking tool for iPhone 3GS and iPod Touch is now live. The tool is capable of unlocking your iPhone 3GS or iPod Touch running on version 05.11 of the baseband. The tool has been released by geohot who earlier also released blackra1n for jailbreaking iPhone and iPod Touch.
Those of you who are already unlocked at 3.1.2 because you kept your 04.26 baseband now have an extra cushion of comfort, and more choices: ultrasn0w, purplesn0w, and now blacksn0w (and of course the original yellowsn0w too if you’re still back at FW 2.x).

Happy unlocking and jailbreaking!

Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter, FriendFeed & Flickr are all pretty common names in the social networking world, but now social and search are about to combine thanks to Google.

At the Web 2.0 expo last week, Google’s Vice-President of Search Marissa Mayer surprised everyone with the announcement that Social Search is coming via Google Labs.

This new search feature will allow you to see search query results from people in your social network. By using your Google Profile, (if you fill it out with the other social networks you’re a member of, such as FriendFeed) Google will scan who you are connected to and give your results from those people if they are relevant to your search query.

At the expo, Mayer demonstrated how a search for ’New Zealand’ produced a list of search results that included relevant content from friends half-way down the search results page. Among the search results were links from different friends, the first to a Gmail message that mentioned New Zealand and the second, a FriendFeed entry.