Google’s upcoming Tuesday press conference is likely to mark the debut of the Nexus One, the search company’s own Android-based smartphone.

Nexus One should showcase the latest generation of the Linux-based open source Android operating system. It’s also the first phone that is expected to be directly marketed by Google, setting higher expectations for the phone.

Here’s what we know about the phone so far.

Hardware

The Nexus One was designed by HTC, which has a close relationship with Google. HTC created the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, and has released at least five Android handsets since the operating system launched in October 2008.

Though packed in a big, white box with the Google logo printed prominently, the Nexus One clearly shows the stamp of HTC’s design sensibilities. Photos show a device similar to the HTC Droid Eris phone with its trackball and four buttons at the bottom of the phone.

The Nexus One has a 1-GHz Snapdragon CPU, a 3.7-inch 480 x 800 display, 512 MB of of RAM and an expandable 4-GB microSD card, says Engadget. The 1-GHz processor alone should make the Nexus one of the fastest smartphones available currently.

By contrast, the Palm Pre has a 600-MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3430 processor and the Motorola Droid runs a 550-MHz Arm Cortex A8 processor.

The Nexus One doesn’t lack in the bells and whistles either. It has a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, Wi-Fi connectivity, accelerometer, compass and proximity sensors. The phone is also reportedly extremely thin — slimmer than the iPhone and HTC’s Droid Eris.

Operating System

Nexus One will run Android 2.1, the latest version of the operating system. That is a step up from the Droid’s Android 2.0.

Android 2.1 will likely be snappier and have an improved user interface. Among the enhancements are a new widget for weather and news, a power control widget and a redesigned media gallery, says HTC Source, an unofficial site that tracks HTC news. It also includes support for multitouch, but that’s a feature that’s reportedly missing in the Nexus One.

Still the 2.1 version has largely consisted of “bug fixes.” At this point, we hope there’s more to the latest version of the OS than what we know so far.

Pricing

The Nexus One will be available on the T-Mobile network. Leaked documents suggest that the device  will retail for $530 unlocked (though according to Engadget, it will not work on AT&T’s 3G network). The subsidized price of the Nexus phone will be $180 and customers will have to commit to a two-year contract. T-Mobile is expected to offer just one monthly plan for the phone — $80 for 500 minutes, free weekend and in-network calls and unlimited text messages and data.

The phone could start retailing as early as Tuesday through either T-Mobile or the Google website.

Overall, the Nexus One seems underwhelming. Sure, the phone is likely to be sleeker and faster than its peers, but there’s little to suggest that it will set a new standard for smartphones. Unless Google has a few surprises up in its sleeve — either in pricing or device capability — the Nexus One could get lost in the flood of Android devices currently hitting the market.

Perhaps Apple is getting ahead of itself. Even as the company plans to announce its “latest creation” on Jan. 27, one of its last creation’s key features — the ability for special-purpose accessories to communicate with iPhone apps — remains largely unused.

Integration between hardware accessories and iPhone apps was one of the standout new features of iPhone OS 3.0. By enabling iPhone apps to communicate with accessories over Bluetooth or through the dock connector, manufacturers and developers could augment the iPhone’s powers. Wired liked the idea so much we even coined an admittedly awkward term, dongleware, to describe these hybrids. And you, our readers, came up with some great suggestions for iPhone hardware/software add-ons.

With the addition of an accessory, the iPhone could potentially transform into a versatile electric guitar pedal (which was actually demonstrated at an Apple event by Line 6 and still hasn’t seen the light of day) or maybe even a light-switch controller. Game developers could ship special joysticks for their games. At Apple’s press event in March 2009 we even saw a special accessory that turned the iPhone into an insulin meter for diabetes patients to monitor their glucose levels.

Alas, dongleware never took off, either as a term or as a concept. We scoured the web and the show floor at the Consumer Electronics Show, and we even pitched a query through Help a Reporter Out begging for dongleware. All we found was a mere handful of app-powered iPhone accessories, most far less interesting than what Apple promised in its June 2009 keynote.

The App Store is a multi-billion-dollar industry, and the iPod and iPhone accessory market already surpass a billion dollars a year. We thought that by now dongleware would be a market overflowing with entrepreneurs eager to strike it rich in the App Store.

We’re not alone in wondering what happened.

“It’s been nine months since the 3.0 press event, plenty of time for hardware companies to get products out,” said Raven Zachary, president of Small Society, an iPhone app development house. “I think there are a handful, and only a handful. I’m surprised.”

Unsurprisingly, it turns out that creating new hardware products is harder than it looks, according to iPhone developers polled by Wired.com.

“When you talk about making a change for a hardware product, there’s a lot of planets to align,” said Matt Drance, Apple’s former iPhone evangelist who left the company to start his own iPhone app publishing company Bookhouse. “I think getting the planets to align has been a challenge for most people.”

To start with the obvious, creating and shipping hardware requires many more steps than coding a piece of software and submitting it to the App Store. You have to find manufacturing partners, perform product forecasting and plan inventory. And for the iPhone in particular, you must hire engineers who understand both hardware and coding for the iPhone OS.

A more arcane part of the dongleware-creation process involves gaining certification through Apple’s stringent “Made for iPod and Works With iPhone” licensing program. The purpose of the program is to ensure accessories meet certain technical standards, including FCC requirements.

For ThinkFlood founder Matthew Eagar, an independent entrepreneur who developed the RedEye universal remote app and accessory for iPhone, getting certified was his major challenge.

To gain certification, Eagar had to fly his staff to California to put his accessory through a cellphone testing lab at Cetecom. For his particular accessory, he had to ensure RedEye passed over-the-air testing to avoid interfering with the iPhone’s cell signal. The testing took many hours spread over several days.

“They had crazy requirements in terms of, you don’t want to interfere with the cell signal,” Eagar said. “It took us 10 weeks of back and forth and flying people around the country to spend time with these certification facilities.”

So naturally, it’s less likely we’ll see much dongleware from independent developers such as Eagar. Most of these products will likely come from larger companies who have been in the accessory industry for years.

Accessory maker Griffin, for example, in September 2009 released a piece of dongleware called the iTrip (above), a transmitter that broadcasts audio from an iPhone to an FM radio. On the iPhone, the iTrip app acts as the controller for setting the frequency. (With earlier iTrip models, you’d only be able to control the frequency with small plastic buttons on the transmitter.)

Griffin’s experience? Not even close to as difficult as it was for Eagar, thanks to an in-house staff of RF engineers who have been making gadget accessories for years.

“We always saw software as a way to get more value out of the hardware for us,” said Mark Rowan, president of Griffin. “Moving to iPhone integration was a very natural step for us because it met a business model we’ve been doing for 20 years.”

Rowan added that the size of the special-purpose iPhone accessory market is small, and perhaps that’s because we don’t need many. The iPhone, after all, strives to be an all-in-one device with the help of apps rather than physical hardware. With over 100,000 apps in the App Store and counting, it’s doing a pretty good job at that.

“I don’t think there will ever be the same kinds of numbers in hardware integration apps as the non, because I don’t think there needs to be,” he said. “There are plenty of opportunities for games and information on the phone if all you need is the 3G access, to pull all kinds of data down. There are plenty of apps that work perfectly fine without any extra hardware.”

Perhaps more important, participants say, the gathering produced a framework that could keep aiding disaster-relief efforts in the months and years to come.

CrisisCamp Haiti brought together developers, programmers and other volunteers for meetings in Washington, Los Angeles, California, and other cities.

Results included a digital map to help relief groups in Haiti coordinate their efforts and applications for the iPhone and other smartphones, including a Creole-to-English dictionary.

“There was virtually no moving around,” said Noel Dickover, a CrisisCamp co-founder and one of more than 200 people who attended the session in Washington. “Everyone was sitting there working and really getting stuff done for the entire time.”

Dickover said an open-source, interactive map that the group worked on already is being used by relief organizations working in Haiti to help coordinate their efforts.

A Craigslist-style Web site that would allow groups in Haiti to exchange supplies and other assistance is almost ready, he said. Apps for the iPhone and Android smartphone system also are on their way.

One application would allow real-time communication in Haiti, where the telecommunications network was ravaged by the earthquake. That app, and the Creole translation app, must win approval from Apple and Google before they will be available to smartphone users.

Participants called the Saturday sessions hectic, but rewarding.

“It really did feel like we were actually being able to help out, even though we were so far away — just using our skills and what we do normally to bring this information together for people,” said Brendan Lim, who works for Intridea, a Washington-based Web development and consulting firm.

“It was really gratifying and it feels good to keep working on those things and, hopefully, make something useful.”

Several of the sites that hosted camps on Saturday already are planning follow-ups, while other events are being organized in other cities.

The work is not just to make the participants feel good, they say.

Earthquake rocks Haiti

Volunteers included representatives from government agencies, including the State Department, and such tech companies as Google. The search-engine giant is looking to incorporate some of the group’s work into its own mapping system, which has been used heavily in Haiti, Dickover said.

Organizers also are inviting people who can’t attend any of the planned get-togethers to pitch in from where they are. Several of the projects are open-source, allowing remote users to improve coding and other aspects of the projects.

They’ve set up a wiki page and a Twitter account so people can stay up to date on their progress or volunteer to pitch in.

They’re also stressing that while advanced technical skills are nice, they’re not necessary.

“Probably about 30 percent of the folks who came to the camp in D.C. were coders, but there were 30-35 people who had never done any kind of mapping before,” Dickover said. “We had folks just entering data … . There’s a lot of stuff somebody can do who’s just Internet savvy.”

They’re hoping that their volunteer work, which came together with virtually no pre-arranged framework or schedule, will have an impact throughout the response to Haiti’s disaster and beyond.

“The hope is that it saves lives,” Dickover said. “This is really a test case. We’re just testing the idea out, but imagine three years down the road when we’ve done this three or four times.”

Planned job cuts at tech companies rose in 2009 for the second straight year, hitting the highest level in four years, according to a report released Tuesday.

Outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. reported that tech sector employers announced 174,629 job cuts in 2009. That’s a 12.3% increase from cuts announced in 2008, and the highest total since 2005.

“The recession’s impact on the tech sector was inescapable,” said chief executive John Challenger in a prepared statement. “Even with the economy showing some nascent signs of recovery … many companies are holding off on investments in new technology.”

Electronics companies fared the worst, with 65,300 cuts announced. Computer employers were next with 65,261 planned job eliminations, and telecom had 44,068 planned cuts.

The nearly 175,000 total tech cuts comprised 13.2% of the 1.3 million jobs lost across all industries in 2009. That’s up slightly from 12.7% in 2008.

The year was top-heavy for tech job losses, as more than 84,000 were unleashed in just the first quarter of 2009. On Jan. 30 alone, more than 65,000 job cuts were announced — including Sprint Nextel (S, Fortune 500) and Texas Instruments (TXN, Fortune 500). Also in January, Microsoft (MSFT, Fortune 500) said it planned to cut 5,000 jobs.

But by the fourth quarter, tech cuts tapered to just under 34,000. The report said the rapid decline in cuts over the year could signal a 2010 turnaround.

“It’s going to be a slow climb,” Challenger said. “Computer and electronics firms should be among the first to see the turnaround, as companies try to postpone hiring by achieving productivity gains through technology.”

A push for electronic health records should boost spending and jobs in the tech sector, the report said, citing data showing that about 44% of physicians use electronic records but only 7% consider the systems fully functional. That means IT professionals will be needed.

But the sector still faces challenges. The credit crunch has slammed tech firms, the report said, because the companies are having trouble finding new buyers. Fewer businesses have the cash or credit to expand their technology spending.

Earlier this month, in another sign of continued weakness, the government confirmed that nation’s unemployment rate remained at 10% in December. The Labor Department said the country lost 85,000 jobs that month.

Some of tech’s biggest battle lines may soon be shifting. Apple is in talks to make Bing the iPhone’s default search engine, according to a report published in BusinessWeek today. Microsoft’s search would replace the iPhone’s current default — yep, you guessed it — Google.

The story, which cites the always-popular “people familiar with the matter” for its information, says talks between Microsoft and Apple have been underway for weeks. If true, it could mark a monumental shift in one of tech’s most relentless wars.

Apple and Google: A Changing Story

Let’s start by setting the stage: Google and Apple, you see, used to be pals. They played nicely together, with Google holding valuable spots as the default search provider for both the iPhone and Apple’s PC-based Safari browser. The real rivalry, of course, was always between Apple and Microsoft — just look to the ads if you need any proof.

It wasn’t until Google began testing the waters of mobile development that the tides began to turn. With the open-source Android platform, the plethora of Google-supported anti-iPhones, and that one Google-sold super-duper-phone, the G-Force suddenly stopped looking so sympathetic to Apple’s interests.

Throw in the spats over mobile apps (e.g. Apple saying “We don’t want Google Voice or Google Latitude for vague reasons that don’t quite make sense”) and the rumored native maps app coming to iPhone 4, and our former buddies suddenly don’t seem so chummy.

Apple vs. Google: Signs of Change

The fanboy fights seem to reflect the changing trends. Sure, you still see the PC vs. Mac comment clashes; those aren’t going away anytime soon. But as smartphone use continues to surge and we spend more and more time with our handheld devices, our tech identities are becoming increasingly dependent on our phone preferences. These days, it’s as much a question of Android vs. iPhone as it is Mac vs. PC.

(Yes, I realize the Microsoft fanboys are still out there, too — but come on, how many people are seriously hardcore supporters of Windows Mobile? The real clashes seem to be more between Android and Apple fans.)

The Microsoft Phone Factor

Windows Mobile, incidentally, may be where this alleged Microsoft-Apple deal gets most interesting. Along with Microsoft’s upcoming Windows Mobile 7 release, the Redmond rangers are now rumored to be preparing their very own custom-branded smartphone. The so-called “Zune Phone” would supposedly be made by a third-party manufacturer and branded by Microsoft. I hear the device might even offer live blue-screen-of-death wallpapers and a race-changing photo editor, though I’m not sure how reliable those last bits of info are.

But I disgress: The point here is that with its own full-fledged phone, Microsoft would be positioning itself as a direct competitor to Apple’s iPhone. So would that factor force Apple to reconsider any default-search decision?

It’s tough to know for sure — we’re speaking about layers of hypothetical situations, after all — but one would think that even a “Zune Phone” would be less threatening to Apple than Google’s growing gaggle of Android devices.

All things considered, it seems safe to say the new battleground is firmly situated in the land separating Cupertino from Mountain View.

Don’t you hate the smudges you get on your phone, or iPod whenever you touch the screen? Would you pay $100,000 to make them go away? HP thinks you might, if you’re a large company or organization. That’s why they’ve created the Wall of Touch, a gigantic wall of advanced touch screens –9 of them, to be exact, each one 43 inches across, with 1080p resolution.

Put together, all these screens create essentially a large, touch-operated computer that will let you do everything from read news to watch videos and video chat, all in enormous fashion.

What’s unique about HP’s approach, though, is that you don’t even have to touch the screen to make it work. Instead of the screen requiring a press to activate an action, the wall uses optical cameras and a magnetic strip to determine when there’s a user nearby, and then responds to gestures made near the screen rather than simple presses, according to the Wall Street Journal.

For now, the product is mostly limited to big corporations, thanks to the $100,000 price tag. The NBA, Edelman PR, and Continental Airlines are among the first customers for the Wall of Touch. HP’s plan is to market devices like this of various sizes, from a smaller screen that is more suitable to consumers, to larger screens like the prototype for businesses. The wall will likely be available to consumers in 2011, said Philip McKinney, a VP at HP.

There are a number of cool possibilities for technology like this. Since users don’t have to touch the screen to make it work, museums and companies could both use the wall to let people see their products and interact with them. The video conferencing potential is exciting on the wall as well, and the touch-screen technologies allow for quick browsing, reading, and consuming of everything from Hulu to Twitter.

Hewlett Packard, reigning inkjet giant, has partnered with Stratasys, a leading manufacturer of rapid prototyping machines, to bring 3D “printing” of solid objects to the desktop.The HP-Stratasys models have been described as small enough to sit on a desktop, quiet enough to use in an office, and priced under $15,000.

Currently, Stratasys’ most popular offerings under the Dimension brand, the “SST” series, are priced closer to $30,000, and are roughly the size of a small refrigerator.

The push by HP-Stratasys to market an entry-level desktop rapid prototyping platform may have been spurred by a series of successful DIY projects; Most notable among them the “RepRap” and “MakerBot Cupcake“, both of which sell as kits for under $1,000.

Like the RepRap and Cupcake, the HP-Stratasys platform will operate using ABS plastic material. It’s likely that the HP-Stratasys machine will, at least initially, be more like the additive approach used by Stratasys’ Dimension line and the Reprap, not the CNC-style of the MakerBot Cupcake machine.

Since the initial release of Stratasys’ rapid prototyping platforms, the software used to create the STL files required to generate a three-dimensional print has dropped significantly in price commercially, and been released free and open source by the Blender project.

Assuming HP-Stratasys can continue to lower the price of their desktop-style rapid prototyping machines, it may not be long until we’re printing our own household items as-needed, and one step closer to a Star Trek-style replicator.

The potential pitfalls have made most other major newspapers hesitant to take a similar step. But after months of deliberation, the Times said Wednesday that it will use a metered system, allowing free access to a certain number of articles each month and then charging users for additional content.

The Times did not disclose how many articles would be available for free each month or what it would charge to read more. Subscribers to the printed version of the Times would still have free access to the Web site.

It would not be the first time the newspaper has asked readers to pay for its online articles.

It charged for its Web site in 1996 but attracted only about 4,000 subscribers. Another experiment called Times Select, which required a $50 annual subscription to read Times columnists, drew 221,000 customers but was scrapped in 2007 because it dented ad sales. Advertisers generally pay more for higher Web traffic.

The goal of a metered system is to draw casual readers with free articles while getting fees from people who want to go deeper on the site.

The plan would not stop search engines from cataloging the newspaper’s Web site, so its articles could still benefit from the traffic generated by search results.

The Times said it will use 2010 to build a new online infrastructure for charging readers on different platforms, not just personal computers. For instance, the newspaper can be read for free through an application on Apple’s iPhone. But the Times did not specify its plans for mobile editions.

In a statement, New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson said the company is “guided by the fact that our news and information are being featured in an increasingly broad range of end-user devices and services, and our pricing plans and policies must reflect this vision.”

Shares in The New York Times Co. lost 39 cents, or nearly 3 percent, to close at $13.11 Wednesday — a steeper decline than the broader markets.

The push for subscription revenue is happening because online advertising hasn’t grown enough to offset declines in print ads. Publishers not only face a slump in ad spending caused by the recession but also competition from a growing number of news sites on the Web.

Overall advertising revenue fell nearly 30 percent in the first nine months of 2009 for the Times Co.’s business unit that includes the Times, the International Herald Tribune and their Web sites. The company reports fourth-quarter results Feb. 10.

One of the Times’ biggest rivals, The Wall Street Journal, already charges for access to its site. Rupert Murdoch, chairman of the Journal’s owner, News Corp., has vowed to impose a similar system at the company’s other titles, which include The Times of London and the New York Post.

The New York Times is contemplating a different approach than the Journal, however. On the Journal’s Web site, some articles are free to anyone, and some require a subscription.

The Times’ site would function more like the one run by The Financial Times. The London-based newspaper allows anyone to view one free article per month, and people who register on the site can get 10 free articles per month. Subscribers who pay $186 a year get access to most material on the site. A premium subscription for $299 comes with extra material. Or for $397 a year, FT subscribers can get the printed newspaper and read the Web site.

Rob Grimshaw, the managing director of FT.com, said the site has struck a successful balance between ad revenue and subscription fees. He said the newspaper has roughly 121,000 people who subscribe exclusively to its digital edition, up 22 percent from a year ago. By comparison, the print edition has about 400,000 subscribers.

And though he did not disclose specific figures on ad revenue, he said the newspaper makes up for the loss of advertising volume by charging each advertiser more. It can get this premium, he said, because FT.com knows more than other online destinations about its users and their interests.

Grand Theft Auto, one of the biggest franchises in videogames, touched down on the App Store this week, and brought its special brand of mayhem and manslaughter with it. A port of the PlayStation Portable edition of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars (which was in turn a port of a Nintendo DS game), the iPhone version is a phenomenal play despite a handful of interface issues.

You are Huang Lee, the spoiled son of a Triad ganglord. After your father was murdered, you must deliver an ancient sword to your uncle so as to keep the empire in your family’s name. Ambushed at the Liberty City airport and left to die, you now find yourself drawn into the underworld with thoughts of vengeance. But what starts out as a simple revenge tale grows in scope, with a criminal world about to explode as gangs (and cops) square off for control. The Chinatown Wars narrative is strong, full of both humor and real drama, and benefits from excellent writing.

Instead of a 3D behind-the-shoulder view, Chinatown Wars returns to the top-down roots of the pre-PlayStation 2 GTA games. The art style is cartoonish and looks fantastic. The camera gives you a good view of the city around you, although when you start zipping through traffic trying to escape cops on a motorcycle you can almost get too far ahead of yourself. There is an option called Vehicle Camera Look Ahead that I recommend you try. You get a little extra real estate in the frame when driving, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like enough. However, pulling back the camera any more would rob the game of its rich detail (Liberty City lives and breathes with tons of pedestrians, buildings, and logical traffic patterns,) but it is often too easy to slam your car into a wall or an oncoming car.

Absolute mayhem.

Chinatown Wars uses a virtual stick for on-foot movement that is just about as good as you’ll find on the iDevices. Combat controls would benefit from some sort of targeting system, but I experienced few problems with digging into a violent crew and trading bullets or putting shoe prints on their faces. When driving, though, you default to a pair of arrows for turning left and right, which you use in conjunction with gas and brake pedal buttons. All of the virtual buttons (gas, shoot, kick, carjack) are simply too small. They work — but they are not easy to manage and often require you look at the buttons to make sure you are hitting the right one. In the middle of a big fight or a high-speed pursuit, this is troublesome until you are 100-percent comfortable with the controls. The layered menus are also not user-friendly and take some time to get used to. Too much time is spent wriggling around screen after screen of menus to adjust game options.

The mission variety in Chinatown Wars is one of its strongest features. You are not just driving to a location, shooting somebody, and then returning to home base. You perform in a parade, hijack fuel tankers to turn into giant bombs, run interference during a race, and put out fires. And on top of the main story, there is a plethora of side jobs and races, including the extra content that was included with the PSP port. But most surprising is the drug dealing. I’m not just shocked that Apple was cool with heroin (other games have been rejected for drug- and alcohol-related content), but just how vital it is to the overall game. If you want to make money, you have to juggle this resource management game-within-a-game where you buy low, sell high, and watch out for busts.

Another Chinatown Wars high point: the GPS system. Tapping locations on a map to set a course is intuitive and makes finding your way around town easy. Of course, getting there isn’t necessarily a cakewalk, as you must watch for cops on the lookout for the new kid with the high wanted level. All of the touch screen elements from the DS original are pulled into the iPhone Chinatown Wars, too, such as kicking out the back window of a car in the water, interacting with computers, scratching lotto tickets, or hot wiring a car.

Finally, Chinatown Wars does not have the same kind of licensed music as other GTA games. Instead, it has a series of five stations that play genre instrumentals, like hip-hop and dance. I actually like this quite a bit; over time, I found the licensed music in the GTA games almost look-at-me distracting. You can also create a custom station with your own music, which is cool if you want to shoot up Chinatown while listening to Dean Martin.

Closing Comments
At just $9.99, Chinatown Wars is a mere third of the price for the original Nintendo DS game, making it one of the best gaming values on the App Store considering just how much stuff is packed in here. While I did have a few problems with the control set-ups (the virtual buttons are too small yet still crowd the screen) and menu arrangements, the narrative, mission variety, and production values easily overwhelm those shortcomings. This is 2010’s first must-have iPhone game.

IGN rated this game 9 out of 10.