As the world progresses towards the launch of Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) operating system, developers at Google have sent out clear message to fellow App developers to work on a unified platform. Going forward with the Android ICS launch, there will be no longer classification in between different devices such as tablets and smartphones.

Google, though a post on their developers blog, has sent out clear instruction to developers to work on the application so that they are compatible across platforms.

“Some Honeycomb apps assume that they’ll run only on a large screen, and have baked that into their designs. This assumption is currently true, but will become false with the arrival of ICS, because Android apps are forward-compatible &#151 an app developed for Honeycomb is compatible with a device running ICS, which could be a tablet, a phone, or something else,” Google said on the developer’s blog.

Google has left the option open to the developers as to control the applications from installing on other category of devices if they do not wish it to. So if a developer wants its application to run only on smartphones then thy will have to code it in such a way that it does not allow users to install it on a tablet and vice-verse.

But with this move, many developers will be happy in developing one application which works flawlessly on both platforms rather than being choosy on where to let it work.

Google+, the social network of internet giant Google, has now moved to beta phase, around 90 days after a trail version of it was launched. This means that users now no longer need an invitation to join Google+ as is the case in Facebook.

Google has also launched several new features for the social network including Search and Hangouts.

The new Hangouts feature uses live video to bring people together, face-to-face-. Explaining the new feature, Google in an official blog post said, “In life we connect with others in all sorts of places, at all different times. And the connections you make unexpectedly are often the ones you remember the most. We think Hangouts should keep pace with how you socialise in the real-world, so today we’re launching it on the one device that’s always by your side: your mobile phone. To get started, simply find an active hangout in the Stream, and tap Join.”

Hangouts currently supports Android 2.3+ devices with front-facing cameras while its iOS supported version will be launched soon. The new Google+ App is rolling out to Android Market today.

Google+ was the third attempt of the search giant at a social networking. During its launch, a lot of buzz has been created online as well as offline about how Google Plus is fresh and at the same time appears to be a mash-up of other social networks.

Other interesting features in Google Plus are Stream, Circles, Huddles and Photos. In Stream all posts that include text, images, URLs, links to videos and location are presented in a wide column in the center, which is called the Stream. It is a neat looking timeline with minimum information on it. So posts from any one, including those written by the owner of the Google+ account, will appear on that screen.

Just like several social networks have Lists and Groups, Google Plus has Circles. The Circles icon will give you a list of all the existing and new Circles you have created along with the number of users in each Circle. You can add people to a Circle by tapping the icon on the top right corner of the app.

By default, Google+ has five Circles &#151 Acquaintances, Family, Following, Friends and Work. These are comprehensive enough for basic classification of friends.

Huddles is the group chat option which shows up as a separate app on your device. Using Huddle, you can ask people to join group chat and can invite them by finding them via name or email. The best part is that whether you are a creator or just a participant you can always add more people to Huddle.

Google Plus’ Photos is one of the distinct features of the app. If you have clicked a photo using your phone camera, the Google Plus app caches and uploads that picture online to your Google+ account. The picture is then visible only to you and not to anyone else.

Adobe is set to release Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 with fresh pack of features to make cross-platform entertainment more prominent. The new versions of both software promise to bring 3D games and premium video streaming based applications to mobile as well as desktop platforms. With new versions of both, Adobe promises to enable providing better mobile web experience and also making best of the current generation hardware &#151 smartphones and tablets.

The pre-release versions of Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 will bring hardware accelerated 2D and 3D graphics with 1000x faster rendering compared to the Flash Player 10 and AIR 2 versions. This will be possible only through a pre-release version for the mobile platforms that include Android, iOS and BlackBerry OS. Production release of the same are expected to arrive in near future with no definite time-frame.

Users will not have to go through the headache of downloading and installing the Adobe AIR 3 updates separately as the developers can manage the App version update independently. The Flash Player 11 promises to bring full frame rate videos in HD quality and the premium video content will carry DRM protection as well.

In coming few quarters, we can expect to see massively multiplayer online games, real-time trading apps and several other applications that require heavy data. With the new suite of Adobe tools, web developers can create data intensive applications which can easily talk with and manage data pulling from the backend servers. For instance, an application that shows real time updates in the stock exchange figures right on the mobile and allows trading through the same interface.

We can also expect to see some mobile web based and cross-platform applications for the mobile as well as tablet platforms. Everyone is concerned about smoother mobile web experience and conservation of battery life. Well, the Adobe Flash Player 11 and AIR 3 are expected to ship for mobile devices by early next month.

A day after the launch of its App store for countries other than the USA including India, Amazon has taken back the application store form the newly added countries. Following this, the app store has stopped working and when tried from Delhi (India), it promptly displayed a message saying “the App store is presently not available in your region”. Hence now, the app store seems to be only working in the USA region.

The reasons for the closure of the services within a day of its launch are not clear but one could anticipate that something must have gone terribly wrong that forced Amazon to take the extreme step. A technical glitch could not also be ruled out.

In another development, Amazon had announced $2 give away offer for its users to promote the launch of the Amazon’s App store on Twitter &#151 a step that underlined the seriousness of its motives which thus rules out any long time suspension its its services in countries other than USA .

If the one day launch of the Amazon app store for Android is considered as a trial, it can be very well understood that Amazon is ready with the necessary resources and we can expect the launch of the services for Indian audiences along with the rest of the world soon enough.
But will Amazon roll out the services in all countries at a time manner or in a phased manner that remains to be seen still.

Something big is coming from Facebook. Though the details are not clear, there are some reports which suggest the core experience of the site will turn to Read, Watch and Listen which is likely to be the new incarnation of the already famous “Like” button.

The new initiative seems to be all about content, and it’s becoming clearer Facebook will soon be embracing multimedia in a big way.

It is also likely the content consumption will be better organised for the users. For example, they would be able to know if they have read, watched or listened something. The introduction of new buttons is expected to be announced at the forthcoming F8 developer event which is being organised by Facebook.

Facebook will also be launching a real time ticker along with an updated news feed, all with an eye to make available more relevant content to the users. If there have been new status messages and photos uploaded when the users were absent from the site, the new features would make it easier for the users to access these.

As we reported earlier, digital music of several content providers such as Spotify, MOG, Rhapsody, SoundCloud, iTune s , Napster, Kazaa, Vevo and others will be made available to the users on Facebook.

Warner Brothers already offers video streaming services through its web-service and Facebook is expected to soon announce closer integration with a premium TV content service as well.