Today in Tech - June 6, 2009

This Saturday's tech buzz mostly consists of some much hyped tech releases, particularly those of the Palm Pre mobile device and Sims 3. In other news, Microsoft's Bing search engine gets a huge boost in traffic and Opera releases a new version of their web browser.

Palm Pre

Once the industry leader in PDAs, Palm managed to somehow miss the boat to the early stages of the next stage of mobile computing. Today they attempt to regain the reigns of the market with the release of their much anticipated Palm Pre. Palm still has a loyal customer base that has been eagerly waiting for Palm to catch up, and their association with the widely accessible Sprint network may help them give the iPhone a run for its money. Rarely one to miss a trick, Apple has suggested that they will be releasing the latest version of the iPhone as early as this Monday. For a video tour and review of the Palm Pre, check out what Phone Scoop has to say on the matter here. Also, here is PC World's head-to-head comparison of the Palm Pre and the iPhone.

Sims 3

Playing with dolls just got more complicated with the release of the latest edition of the massively popular Sims franchise : Sims 3. From all reports, this incredibly open ended game is even more expansive with nearly every facet of daily life available for customization. For a video demo and walkthrough of all of the main new features of Sim 3, check out the ten minute product demonstration with Grant Rodiek here.

Opera 10 beta Released

Of more interest to some tech heads is the new release of the latest beta version of the Opera web browser. Developed by the Opera Software company, this browser is used on Windows, Macs, Linux and other operating systems, as well as mobile devices and gaming systems. They've yet to gather a serious hold on the average home computer user, but it is a browser worth tooling around with if you're ready to take a look at the world of browsers beyond Firefox. Take a look at Carrie-Ann Skinner's article for information on the updates featured in Opera 10 beta.

Bing Beating Yahoo?

According to some tech critics, Microsoft's newly unveiled search engine, Bing, has already begun drawing more traffic that Yahoo's search engine, commanding 16.2 percent of all web search queries in the US. Unlike Google and most search engines, both Bing and Yahoo combine their search engine with content heavy websites of their own.

Sources:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRnlzbuLRwM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EFq40YSYGso
http://www.pcworld.com/article/166163/iphone_3g_and_palm_pre_headtohead.html
http://www.pcworld.com/article/166268/opera_10_beta_released.html
http://www.reuters.com/article/bigMoney/idUS261272646120090605