No iPhone for Verizon? That seems to be the implication in news this week via AppleInsider. According to a Wall Street analyst with RBC Capital Markets, Verizon and Apple have not been able to come to an agreement on bringing the iPhone to Verizon. Apparently, both companies have issues with the deal; Verizon is wary of the iPhone cannibalizing Android's market share, and Apple may not want to settle for a lesser marketing campaign to lighten the impact of iPhone sales.

As you know, I already have an iPhone 4 (and needed one for my job, obviously) so I had no choice but to re-up my contract with AT&T. But what about you? Are you one of the people who decided to wait to buy the iPhone 4 for a chance to get a contract with Verizon? Do you think this really means the end of a deal between the two companies? I'm interested to know what people will do with this information, so please chime-in in the comments!

This week's apps include a fun way to see if your friends are telling the truth and a line-drawing game that has you hurling axes at approaching bad guys.

Lie Detector PRO (99 cents) is a fun app that allegedly can detect whether you are generally a liar or generally truthful, but mostly it's just fun to play with. To start the test, place the iPhone in your hand, read the instructions, and hit Next. From there you will be asked a series of questions onscreen and you will need to speak your answers out loud.

The app supposedly measures your stress level, the tonality of your voice, and whether your hands are shaking to detect if you are dishonest in your replies. The questions are mostly simple ("What is your first name?") with some more-personal questions ("Are you in love?"), and you end the test by speaking off the cuff for 10 seconds so the app can analyze your voice.

Does Lie Detector Pro work? Probably not, but in my testing, walking around the office to see who is the biggest liar was certainly a lot of fun for all involved. The app does not allow you to ask specific questions, which is probably a good thing because we wouldn't want people to end relationships with best friends over a lie detector test on the iPhone. Still, Lie Detector Pro is a great party trick and it's even fun just to see what score you get by trying to lie convincingly on every question. Anyone who wants a good app for hanging out with your friends to see who is the most honest (allegedly) will like this simple app.

Axe in Face--Defense of the Daffodils (99 cents) is a silly, yet challenging game that borrows elements from many classic iPhone games in the iTunes App Store to make for a fun time waster. The object of the game is to defend a garden of daffodils from an approaching onslaught of baddies (think Plants vs. Zombies) by drawing a path from your viking warrior across the screen to throw your ax.

The ax will return to you like a boomerang, which comes in handy for hitting foes as the ax circles back around, but be careful not to draw complex paths because you won't be able to throw another ax until it returns to your hand. Much of the fun comes from trying to hit multiple enemies with one throw and you'll get a score bonus for hitting larger multiples. But if just one attacker gets past your defenses, your beautiful daffodil garden will be trampled and the game ends.

As you progress through Axe in Face, you're given more variation on the game mechanic to keep it interesting. In higher levels, you'll have more enemies to deal with along with unique enemies that require special skills to kill them. One enemy blocks himself with a pine tree that can only be beaten by throwing the ax through an onscreen fire first, then hitting the tree to sizzle the tree and the bad guy within. As the enemies get harder, you're also given a special advantage: some enemies drop small red orbs that fill up your lighting orb. When your lightning orb is full you can strike three enemies with lighting by pressing a button--great for when the game gets particularly hectic.

Axe in Face comes with only 32 levels of increasingly difficult action, but I'm hoping later updates will add more levels (and magic skills) to this cool game. Overall, if you want a fun line-drawing game, Axe in Face--Defense of the Daffodils is an excellent and affordable time-waster.

What's your favorite iPhone app? What's the lowest percentage (most honest) you've scored in Lie Detector Pro? Do you like the action in Axe in Face--Defense of the Daffodils? Let me know in the comments!

Are you the victim of frequent Rickrolls? The time-honored, and now passe trend of being tricked into thinking you were seeing one video and ending up seeing a rendition of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" instead?

Well then we have some good news for you: there's a new Firefox add-on called RickRemoval that solves this problem entirely. Install it, and it will do a quick check on the page, as it's loading, to spot Astley's video and keep it from playing. It's also nice enough to put up a little message alerting you to the fact, and offering to load it anyway.

The add-on works off blacklists of well-known Rickroll video pages and video links, along with scouring any site that's not on that list to look for words or phrases that look suspicious.

Now, its only a matter of time before someone combines this with the Justin Bieber Internet eraser.

Originally posted at Web Crawler

Chrome, like Android, got its start as a technology geared for individuals, not companies. And just as Google updated Android with features such as Microsoft Exchange support, Chrome is being refashioned for a broader world of corporate use.

The results of the work can be seen at Google's Chrome administrative information site. The site includes quick-start guides for administrators, policy templates for setting group permissions, and a list of tweakable settings that can be enforced through policies.

For example, administrators can use the settings to prohibit use of particular plug-ins, set the home page, disable synchronization services, and set the interval for checking Chrome's automated update service. That includes halting automatic updates altogether.

Chrome has caught on among early adopters and has tens of millions of users. Getting corporate buy-in could help the browser's prospects, and with it Google's ambition to make the Web a more powerful foundation for applications rather than just Web pages to visit.

It took years for Firefox to attain some legitimacy among corporations, but Chrome in some ways could have an easier time. With Firefox, Mozilla helped fight for the idea that Web pages should be built to conform to various Web standards rather than to just work on the dominant browser, Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

That message caught on, with the upcoming IE9 aggressively embracing many of those standards. For Google, it means it's easier for a new browser to catch on since compatibility issues are less troublesome.

Even with easier compatibility, though, corporate IT personnel are not known for their enthusiasm for embracing new software. They're often naturally conservative, since change can break internal applications, confuse users, and bring other complications. Letting administrators set Chrome behavior will, though, make it more palatable.

Originally posted at Deep Tech