Online news site Search Engine Land reported that a New York retailer was recently approached by Google asking if staff could film the interior of his shop.

The film crew took pictures in all directions, every six feet, along with a number of product shots.

Search Engine Land suggests such pictures will be added to Google Maps, allowing users to click on a shop’s frontage and virtually enter the store.

Asked to comment on the story, a Google spokesperson said: “We are always experimenting with new features for Google Maps. We have nothing further to announce at this time.”

This means the official UK version of the iPad will first land in late March, and will be followed just days later by the better specified but more expensive 3G variant.

Steve Jobs said at the time of launch that the international iPad data plans would be announced in June or July, so observers have taken this to mean that a deal to provide data in the UK had been struck sooner than expected.

Apple was remaining tight-lipped at the time of writing over the iPad’s UK pricing, but it has been forecast to start at about £400. The American retail price is from $499.

A number of networks, including Orange, O2 and Vodafone, have been tipped to provide the data, which will be enabled through microSIM cards – different to those seen in your average mobile.

TechRadar reported, however, that this would mean that users on a decent price plan for their phone wouldn’t be able to just buy a 3G iPad and surf the net using our existing mobile phone SIMs.

And although rumours of a data supply deal are in the air, no news has yet been announced about the winners.

Explaining some of the background to the ruling to Reuters, an American Justice Department official said the deal was amended last year in line with recommendations it made in its initial judgment.

“They made substantial progress but in our view they haven’t gone far enough,” the official told the news agency.

The department criticised the agreement for requiring authors to “opt out” of having their books digitalised. This differs from existing copyright law, where authors are usually required to approve the use of their works.

It also noted that class representatives inappropriately spoke for foreign authors with books published in the United States as well as for authors of “orphan works,” essentially copyright holders who cannot be identified or located.

Google’s exclusive access to these orphan works “remains unaddressed, producing a less than optimal result from a competition standpoint,” the department said. The pricing mechanisms also came under criticism from the department on anti-trust grounds.

American District Judge Denny Chin has scheduled a hearing on the settlement for February 18.

Google noted the praise from the department, and added in a statement: “We look forward to Judge Chin’s review of the statement of interest from the department and the comments from the many supporters who have filed submissions.”

The agreement is designed to settle a 2005 class action lawsuit filed against Google by authors and publishers who had accused the search engine giant of copyright infringement for scanning collections of books from four universities and the New York Public Library.

The Justice Department recommended in September that the agreement be rejected.

Critics of the deal include Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, the National Writers Union and Consumer Watchdog.

In mid-December, three library associations stopped short of seeking to halt to Google’s digital books plan, but asked for Justice Department oversight to ensure that institutional subscriptions were reasonably priced.

Information Week has reported that government officials have already voiced such concerns, and quotes Phil Bellaria, the director of scenario planning for the federal government’s Omnibus Broadband initiative as saying: “With the iPad pointing to even greater demand for mobile broadband on the horizon, we must ensure that network congestion doesn’t choke off a service that consumers clearly find so appealing or frustrate mobile broadband’s ability to keep us competitive in the global broadband economy.”

With just one company, AT&T, licensed to provide network services for the iPhone and now, the iPad, Bellaria believes that the US could experience a repeat of the scenario of the mid-1990s, when AOL first launched unlimited dial-up broadband services.

In his Information Week blog, Ed Hansberry recalls: “I had a number of friends and co-workers that were unable to get online for days at a time, and even when they could get on, they risked being knocked off during their session.”

And although he is hopeful that AT&T will this time be better equipped to cope, he believes that the company could alienate subscribers if they do experience problems with their broadband service: “I don’t see a national crisis in the making, but I can see frustration levels grow for current AT&T subscribers as precious bandwidth has to be shared with another device that will likely demand more data per device than the iPhone does.”

Founder Mark Zuckerberg used the Facebook Blog to announce that the social media site would this week be passing 400 million users – which is more than the combined populations of the US, UK, Ireland and Australia.

A year ago, in February 2009, Facebook announced it had passed the 175 million active users mark and in December last year that figure hit 350 million – so 50 million more have joined its ranks in just two months.

The anniversary has been marked by the launch of a series of new navigation tools for the site, “including a couple that people have requested a lot”, according to Zuckerburg.

The physical changes include a drop-down menu on each member’s homepage listing their newest notifications, requests and messages.

When a member writes on another’s wall or tags them in a photo, that person will see a red bubble appear in the left-hand corner of the page, which becomes a drop-down menu.

In the last year a raft of developments have come out of Facebook, not least the implementation of Facebook Connect on more than 80,000 websites since it was made generally available in December 2008.

Zuckerberg ended his blog post by saying: “After the launch we’re going to celebrate with a Hackathon – an event where all of us stay up all night coding and building out our new ideas for our next wave of products for you.

“We look forward to continuing to serve you for many more years.”

A video posted by a Google engineer on the Chromium website earlier this week, shows a touchscreen tablet computer running Google’s Chrome operating system. Analysts believe Google could be preparing to launch its own tablet computer, to rival Apple’s recently announced iPad.

Further evidence can be found by looking at changes being made to Google’s Chromium open source code. The Chromium development website has a number of pictures showing user interface concepts, while changes to the source code which would allow for vertical tabs, suggest the release of a tablet is getting closer.

A survey carried out by digital marketing firms ExactTarget and Econsultancy also found digital marketing would account for 24 per cent of total marketing budgets in 2010.

Businesses from across the world participated in the survey, but the majority were UK and US-based.

-          Out of all the firms asked, 46 per cent said they were planning to increase their overall marketing budget for 2010.

-          Spending on social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter will be increased by 70 per cent of companies.

-          Over 50 per cent of companies plan to increase budgets for mobile marketing.

Linus Gregoriadis, research director at Econsultancy, said: “Digital evangelists have long been trying to get the big brands to spend more on online marketing (especially display advertising), and social media is now helping to give impetus to a second wave of marketers who are moving budgets online.

“Why? Because they see digital as crucial to brand reputation, and they’re right.”

A separate survey was released earlier this week by market-based strategy consultancy, AMR International. It found online spending on business to business marketing will grow by 8 per cent during the coming year, followed by a 14 per cent rise in 2012.

The New York-based start-up company, a spin out from New York University, specialises in touch-screen technology.

Industry commentators believe combining Touchco’s multi-touch technology with Amazon’s popular Kindle e-reader would create a device which could directly compete with Apple’s new iPad.

A report by the New York Times quoted a source familiar with the deal, who said Amazon will merge Touchco’s technology and staff into its Kindle hardware division, based in Cupertino, California.

The paper said Touchco’s technology works well with LED screens such as those used by the iPad. It uses resistors which are sensitive to varying levels of pressure and can distinguish between a finger and the tip of a pen for example.

Both Amazon and Touchco have declined to comment. The terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Google has threatened to end its business dealings in China following a dispute over the censorship of search results on Google.cn and recent cyber attacks on the Google email accounts of human rights campaigners.

A report by the Washington Post said neither organisation would comment on a possible collaboration, but a source speaking to the paper on condition of anonymity said “the alliance is being designed to allow the two organizations to share critical information without violating Google’s policies or laws that protect the privacy of Americans’ online communications.”

The source said the partnership would not involve the NSA looking at users’ searches or emails.

The operating system’s code, which is said to be used by around 330 million handsets, can now be modified by individuals for any purpose. The decision to make the code open source was announced in 2008, with the intention of attracting new developers keen to improve Symbian.

Speaking to the BBC, Lee Williams of The Symbian Foundation, said: “This is the largest open source migration effort ever. It will increase rate of evolution and increase the rate of innovation of the platform.

“The development community is now empowered to shape the future of the mobile industry, and rapid innovation on a global scale will be the result.”

John Delaney, an analyst with IDC, said: “It’s increasingly important for smartphone platforms to offer developers something unique. The placing into open source of the world’s most widely-used smartphone platform emphatically fits that bill. It will be exciting to see where this takes the industry.”