Speaking of browsers and search engines, an odd one we never heard of before is Springo.com, which is number two in Israel, right after Google. Their search results are more visual than Google, which just delivers text, and the home page is nifty. The home page offers immediate links to about a hundred popular sites.

Google Voice is free for everyone. Starting today, you no longer need an invitation.

Google Voice gives you a special phone number that routes calls to all your phones. You could be at your castle in Scotland, your other castle in Spain, at your desk at work, or at home with Mom. You’ll still get the call.

It also gives you voicemail, call forwarding, teleconferencing, call screening, etc. Go to Google.com/voice.

The $200 phone is made by HTC, a Taiwanese company, and uses the new Google Android operating system. It’s the only phone in the country that uses the super fast “4G” cellular network. It’s great for watching movies and other big-demand tasks. The phone comes with a kickstand so you can watch it as if it were a little TV. Or connect it to a big-screen TV by way of  an “HDMI” cable. The phone has both a front-facing and rear-facing camera, so the recipient of a video call can see you while you chat.

EVO 4G can also turn into a Wi-Fi hot spot, allowing up to eight nearby laptops nearby to connect wirelessly to the Internet along with you. That’s an extra $30 a month, however.

The major downsides? You may need to switch back to 3G some of the time or your battery quickly runs out. It won’t last a whole day. The 4G connection is only available in 32 U.S. cities, and not the big cities you’d expect but places like Boise, Idaho and Wichita Falls, Texas. Using the phone as a Wi-Fi hot spot eats up the whole battery life in one hour.

A sampling of apps for the EVO 4G phone:

• Intuit app processes credit cards on the phone without additional hardware.
• Qik makes live video calls. (The recipient must have Qik too.)
• Fring also makes live video calls, but the recipient doesn’t need to have Fring, only Skype.
• Epocrates accesses drug information. (This is aimed at health care professionals, not  druggies.)
• Real Estate by Smarter Agent provides access to homes for sale, plus recent sales and rental news.

Here’s a link to “4G firsts–” first wedding vows streamed at 4g speed, first tweet at 4G speed, etc.

Ulysses S. Grant, right, talks things over with General McClellan

First off, it’s more organized. We always have trouble finding individual photos in our immense Picasa library. They’re scattered all over the place, which means we often put in duplicates without realizing it.  Picasa seems to duplicate photos like rabbits, and it takes forever to scroll through them all.  In Windows Live, duplicates are easy to find. They appear next to each other and you can delete the ones you don’t want.  You can also find and remove duplicates with a free program called “VisiPics,” from Cnet.com. It finds them no matter where they are in your computer.

Windows Live Photo Gallery is a free download from windowslive.com. To get it, you first, sign up for a “Windows Live” ID. Then click “do more” to find downloads, and click “photo gallery” to get the free photo editor.  The program handles still photos and videos. If you choose “Make a Movie,” it moves still shots to make them appear in motion and also offers you the opportunity to add videos and music.

Once installed, you’ll see options along the top of the screen. Click “publish” to send photos directly from the Windows Gallery to Flickr and other online albums. Choose “more services” to add Facebook to the list of destinations. Highlight groups of photos and click “email” to send them all as attachments. Windows Live will ask if you want to send them in the original size or something smaller. You have a choice of several sizes. Click the “fix” button and then “auto adjust;” to improve pictures. Click “red eye,” “straighten,” etc. to fix problems one at a time. Click “Make” to burn the pictures to a DVD, make a movie, slideshow or post them to a blog.

It uses the Android phone’s GPS locator and programming to calculate the position, line of sight, date and time. You can put your finger on the phone and point the Android around the sky to learn about other areas.  If you’re wondering where Mars is, you can click “search” and type “Mars.”

The Android is now the number two selling smart-phone, according to NPD Group, a consumer research company in New York. The Blackberry is still number one and the iPhone number three, You can get the Sky Map application at Google.com/sky/skymap.

We learned that TSS-Radio was founded six years ago by a guy from Los Angeles who said he had no interest in college but a lot of interest in satellite radio. When his radio antenna broke, he couldn’t find replacement parts, so he started selling parts from his studio apartment, using Google’s AdWords to advertise online.  Now the company has 250,000 customers. The founder estimates that online ads generate $9 in sales for every $1 spent.

Here are some hard numbers about Google’s economic impact:

• Businesses in Illinois earned $3.2 billion from new business generated by Google ads.
• Business in New York earned $6.2 billion through Google ads.
• Business in California earned $14.1 billion through Google ads.
• Nationwide, nonprofit organizations have received $600 million worth of free Google ads through the Google grants program (google.com/grants).

In case you missed it, here’s what Google TV is all about.

• It’s coming this fall.
• You can only buy a Google TV at Best Buy.
• No one knows the cost yet.
• You’ll have millions of  channels, though they won’t all look good. Developers are working on that now.
• Google partners include Jinni and Rovi.
• Like a giant smartphone, it will run “apps” from the Android App store.
• You can see TV programs translated into any language in real time.

What you’ll need:

A Sony TV with Blu-ray player and Google TV built-in.

Or a Logitech set-top box

Or a DISH network box.

If you’re already using Google Documents and Spreadsheets online, you get the idea. The benefit is simplicity. You don’t have “drivers” to update. You don’t have an operating system to maintain. You do have to be within range of a Wi-Fi hotspot, unless you get a computer with a celluar “3G” connection, like the new iPad.

The day the iPad came out, we walked into a Sony store and asked: “What do you have that’s like the iPad?” “Nothing,” they said. “It’s a whole new category.” Yesterday, we were in a Sony store again when someone said they wanted to see a rival to the iPad, something equally simple. That something might be the new Google computer. It will be launched by Acer at the Computex show  in Taiwan in June.

It turns out that using Google Apps for online collaboration, spreadsheets and word processing saves schools a big chunk of dough.  The state of Oregon converted all its schools to Google Apps and saved $1.5 million a year. In Illinois, just one school district making the change saved $160,000. In Maine, science students are using Google spreadsheets to organize data collected in the field.

Big reasons for the savings: No need to buy software  and no need for expensive information technology workers to keep programs updated. You can find these free programs by going to Google.com/apps. Corporate users must pay a fee, but schools and individuals do not. More info here.