Google is working to collect information about Internet users that it can't get from just monitoring its own browser, services, and Android devices. The company has set up a new program called Screenwise, which offers money to users who install a black box on their home network to "measure Internet use." A smaller amount of money will go to those who install a browser extension on their computers that will do the same thing.

Google quietly started up the Screenwise data collection program Tuesday night, taking the e-mail addresses of people who are interested in "add[ing] a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them." For their participation, Google offers the extension users a $5 Amazon gift card for signing up and another $5 gift card for every three months they stay with the program. Less publicly, Google also started looking for people who would install a piece of hardware on their network to do more extensive monitoring.

The Windows 8 Consumer Preview—notably it's not being called a "beta"—will be launched on February 29th. Microsoft will launch it at an event it's hosting in Barcelona to coincide with Mobile World Congress.

Taking full advantage of the opportunity afforded by the leap year, the release will just hit Microsoft's previously announced "late February" date. Redmond has no comment (yet) on whether the event will be Webcast.

Releasing the Consumer Preview of a desktop operating system at a conference for cellular communications might seem strange. But with Windows 8's tablet ambitions and the leaked information that Windows Phone 8 will probably use the Windows 8 kernel, this is a desktop operating system that won't be confined to the desktop.

Read the comments on this post

Music distribution service TuneCore has described the royalties from as "magic money that Apple made exist out of thin air for copyright holders," signaling early support of the service from one part of the music industry. TuneCore CEO Jeff Price made the proclamation in a on Tuesday, making the first iTunes Match royalty payments sound like nothing less than a miracle. Without any details on how much individual musicians are taking home, however, it's not clear whether iTunes Match pays better or worse than similar services.

TuneCore is a service and artists that allows them to distribute their music on major music stores like iTunes and Amazon. The idea is to use TuneCore's resources—instead of the artist's limited resources—to achieve wider distribution to a major audience, and for what amounts to as a minimal cost to the musician. TuneCore isn't the only service that does this—CD Baby is another popular option—but it remains one of the larger collectives of indie musicians online.

The Darkness II is one of the most unabashedly and gleefully gory games of this generation, reveling in its own torrents of blood and shredded viscera. While bullets exploding heads and tearing through flesh aren’t anything new in the video game world, the brutal Darkness executions take the virtual carnage to a whole new level. Bodies are regularly torn in half (both crosswise and lengthwise), skulls and spinal columns are torn out through mouths, bodies are impaled with thrown objects, and entire digestive tracts are forcibly removed through enemies' nether regions.

Given that, it surprisingly never makes the player feel like they’re in need of a shower when the bloodshed is over. Games like Rogue Warrior and Soldier of Fortune were just as brutally violent, yet their uber-serious undercurrents simply made them feel like exercises in virtual sadism. Last year’s Bulletstorm, on the other hand, was so over-the-top and silly that the blood and guts really didn’t make any impact at all. The Darkness II manages to strike the right balance between the two extremes, not only making it a better game than the ones mentioned above, but also making it superior to its predecessor in many ways.

Google issued a beta release of Chrome for Android earlier today. The browser provides support for modern Web standards and includes a number of compelling features that aren't available in the Android's default browser. One noteworthy Chrome desktop feature that isn't included in the mobile port, however, is the integrated Flash runtime.

Adobe has issued a statement confirming that Chrome for Android does not support Flash content. The company also indicated that it does not plan to work with Google to add Flash support to the new mobile browser. Adobe will, however, continue supporting Flash in the current default Android browser.

"Today Google introduced Chrome for Android Beta. As we announced last November, Adobe is no longer developing Flash Player for mobile browsers, and thus Chrome for Android Beta does not support Flash content," wrote Adobe's Flash Platform product manager Bill Howard.

Adobe struggled for years to make the Flash player plugin viable on mobile devices. Though it was able to make Flash work reasonably well on Android phones, results were mixed on other systems. Due to Apple's unwillingness to allow the Flash plugin on iOS and the difficulty that Adobe faced bringing the Flash player to new devices, the plugin never achieved the same ubiquity on phones that it has historically enjoyed on the desktop.

These setbacks caused Adobe to abandon its mobile Flash player strategy last year. The company announced that it would phase out development of its mobile Flash player plugin and not support it on new platforms. Adobe instead focused its mobile Flash efforts on developing tools for deploying Flash content as native mobile applications. It also strengthened its commitment to native Web standards and acknowledged HTML5 as the way forward for building rich mobile Web experiences.

When Google eventually moves to replace the default Android browser with Chrome in future versions of the Android platform, devices that run the operating system will likely no longer be able to play Flash content in the browser.

Read the comments on this post