The Next Web’s Weekly Recap: Nexus One Released and CES Announcements

Welcome to The Next Web’s Weekly Recap. Also make sure to subscribe to The Next Web’s Podcast (iTunes or XML) where we analyze, rant and have fun with the weekly tech news.

This week saw the release of Google’s Nexus One Phone as well as a bunch of tech announcements at the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. We also announced the dates this week of The Next Web Conference 2010 happening in Amsterdam.

Announcing The Next Web Conference 2010
This week we announced the dates for The Next Web Conference (fifth edition) which is be held the April 27-29 2010 in Amsterdam. Last year we welcomed 900+ guests from over 25 countries and 25 Startups launched their company on the main stage. We look forward this year being bigger than ever. You can snag your tickets here.

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The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

The Next Web Weekly Podcast
This week we brought on a fiber-optics specialist to get a little geeky and also argued on what is going to be the dominant mobile platform in the coming years. We also discuss Avatar, Microsoft’s Project Natal as well as a mix of other stuff. Check it out!

Google’s Nexus One Released
The highly anticipated Google phone was unveiled this week and is available for purchase now directly from Google. The unlocked version is $529 and the subsidized contract version with T-Mobile (if you’re in the USA) is $179. In coming months it will be available with Vodafone (for Europe) and Verizon plans too. Check out the full Nexus One specifications cheat sheet as well as a comparison of the Nexus One to the other major smartphones on the market.

CES and the Crunchies
Two big industry events occurred this week including the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas as well the Crunchies in San Francisco. The Crunchies saw Facebook lead the way in the awards and CES saw a bunch of new product announcements. Check out CNET for a summary of all the announcements a highlights from CES. We covered a couple of the big announcements including Skype’s plans to be built into to TVs as well as Pandora’s partnering with Pioneer to bring their popular music streaming service to cars.

Quick Hits

• The latest rumors point to a March release date for Apple’s tablet.
• While Twitter gets all the criticism for being down, new data this week shows it actually has more uptime that Facebook.
• Location based social network Foursquare now lets you check in anywhere in the world.
• A couple big acquisitions this week including Seesmic acquiring Ping.fm and movie review site Flixster buying competitor Rotten Tomatoes.
• Apple could be getting a little nicer to devs in terms of the iPhone app approval process. A recent experience by Ralph indicates this.
• Jason Calacanis reveals his top tech products of 2009 and Boris takes a look forward at the state of technology in 2010.
• Twitalyzer, a tool for analyzing Twitter stats, released Version 2 of their popular application.
• Facebook launched a new version of their iPhone app that finally is able to provide push notifications.
• A great article by Anil Dash on how no one “really” has a million followers on Twitter.
• Boxee beta goes live to the public.
• Apple moves towards a web based iTunes by introducing streaming music previews without iTunes.
• The Web 2.0 suicide machine that deletes your Facebook profile among others was banned this week by Facebook.
• Android users were happy this week as Evernote launched a new version of their mobile application.
• Tweetdeck’s iPhone app was updated and now includes some new map integration. In other Tweetdeck news, Sky News now orders all journalists to install the application on their computer.
• France is considering taxing Google, MSN, Yahoo for online advertising revenue.
• Google launching “Pay per Call” mobile ads for phone numbers that are clicked in ads.
• A collection of all the best viral videos of 2009.