E-tail giant Amazon is ready to launch its long-awaited Android app store on Tuesday, says Wired.

Rumor of the app store surfaced last September.

Differentiating it from the official Google Android Marketplace is the fact that the Amazon store will only have apps that Amazon allows in, just like how Apple does with the iOS App Store, arguably leading to a "higher quality" app selection.

Last week, Amazon accidentally let one page of the store go live, showing off 48 paid apps.

Customers can purchase the apps through the desktop page or via a native Amazon app on Android devices.

As another way to differentiate itself from the official Marketplace, Amazon's payment system works in almost every country, whereas Google Checkout has its limitations.

Finally, many sites have suggested that Amazon may be working on a Kindle tablet, one that will still emphasize e-reading but will run on Android 3.0 and include more powerful specs than a standalone e-reader.

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Following up on our previous popular article on how to get Angry Birds for PC, free and legally, there is now another chance to get the game, free of charge.

Visit Best Buy via this link, download the Intel AppUp center, and then they will be linked to a free download of the game.

Simple as that.

Rovio, the developer behind Angry Birds, recently said the game has hit 100 million downloads between iOS, Android and PC, and a Facebook version of the game is coming soon.

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Today in 2006, Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey sent off the very first tweet, an unimpressive message that read "just setting up my twttr."

Since then, over 30 billion tweets have been made and Twitter has become synonymous with social networking just like Facebook and LinkedIn.

In the private market, Twitter has been valued at $8-10 billion although an IPO is not in the cards for 2011.

Despite the huge valuation, Twitter expects to see 2011 revenue of just $150 million, and possibly some profit.

Twitter has over 125 million users, and 500,000 new join each day. Overall, CEO Dick Costolo says there are now 1 billion tweets sent every 8 days.

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Mozilla has expressed surprise after hearing that Microsoft had abandoned support for Windows XP with the release of Internet Explorer 9.

IE9, released last week, does not support the decade-old operating system, which is still the most popular operating system, although 2009's Windows 7 is quickly gaining.

According to NetApplications, XP still accounts for 55 percent of all PC users, with Windows 7 second at 23 percent.

Microsoft explained their decision with the launch of IE:

We knew we didn't want to optimize for the lowest common denominator, you need a modern operating system. [Supporting XP would have been] optimizing for the lowest common denominator. It's ten years old. That's not what developers need to move the Web forward.

Mozilla disputes that, for the most part, with Johnathan Nightingale, the director of Firefox saying (via CW):

For me, the most interesting thing is not the quibbling about what browser [boasts] full hardware acceleration. What surprises me the most is that acceleration is not available for Windows XP.

Firefox 4 and IE9 support hardware acceleration through Direct2D and Direct3D, but Direct2D is not available with XP, so even Firefox 4 only supports partial acceleration for the aged OS.

Concludes Mozilla:

That took us a lot of work. We had to do almost twice the work to accelerate [Firefox 4] on Vista and Windows 7, and Windows XP. But by our count, Windows XP still accounts for 40% to 50% of the Web. Our obligation is to the users, and Windows XP is not a part we can cut out.

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According to VLC developer Rémi Duraffort, the long-awaited VLC for Android could be coming next month, in beta form.

Duraffort says "most of the components are working but we must work to make them fit together."

VLC for Android was initially expected in January, but lead VLC developer Jean-Baptiste Kempf said earlier this year that it has been "a challenge" to move VLC's core C++ code into Java, which is used on Android.

Adds the developer (via Om)

Having to create an application in Java that will load a C library in order to run VLC code is part of the issues we have. Moreover, most API to manage graphics (OpenGL) or audio can only be accessed from Java which mean that we decode audio and video in C but then give the images and audio samples to Java to be able to render them.

Android 2.3 has made it easier to run native C++ code, but the developer says "VLC for Android will work for every Android version since 1.5," meaning they will continue to port the code.

VLC for Android will even work with 3.0 Honeycomb, although a fully tablet-optimized version will be released after the smartphone app.

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Sony Europe president Andrew House has said today that digital downloads of upcoming NGP games will be available the same day as their retail counterparts, which are available on a type of flash media.

All games will be available as digital downloads, and House even admits that some games will only be digital, with no physical version.

Says the president (via electronista):

One thing we learnt from PSP, is that we want to have simultaneous delivery in digital and physical for NGP. Just to clarify that, all games that appear physically will be made available digitally. Not necessarily all games have to be made available physically. And having the option of a digital-only method affords more creative risk-taking, and that's because you don't-have that in-built risk of physical inventory.

House expects NGP gaming will move to a tiered structure, where larger, "premium" games will still command higher prices but other, smaller titles will be available for download only, at a cheaper price point.

For controls, the handheld adds dual micro-analog sticks, giving gamers a feature they begged for on the original PSP.

The device has a massive 5-inch multi-touch OLED screen with 960×544 resolution, a multi-touch panel on the back and will run on a quad-core ARM cortex processor.

Sony has added tilt-sensitive SIXAXIS controls, standard and front-side cameras, GPS, an electric compass, Wi-Fi and 3G support, and access to Android gaming.

The NGP is expected to sell for $300, $50 more than the rival Nintendo 3DS.

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