New stuff on Techradar: Local news is dying – and why you should care.

It’s not an either/or thing: knowing about the latest tech from across the pond doesn’t mean you don’t care about what’s happening in your town. But you can only care about things you know about.

Also, I’ve updated the browser battle piece to cover the new Chrome 2 beta and the final release of Internet Explorer 8. I still think Firefox is the best everyday browser (on PC) right now, but Chrome 2 is seriously bloody quick. On slower PCs or netbooks, that’s the one I’d go for.

There’s a new beta of Chrome 2. It’s fast, but there are still a few things missing.

Also: iPhone 3.0 – it’s all about the apps.

It helps if you remember that the iPhone isn’t really a phone. It’s a portable computer that just happens to make phone calls, an operating system that’s going to be available on 30 million devices.

What’s important isn’t what Apple is adding for end users, but what it’s giving developers. With version 3.0, they’ve just been given a whole bunch of new toys to play with

It’s all going a bit Batman. Who’s going to keep Google on the straight and narrow?

We’re not suggesting that Google’s founders dress up like animals and beat up bad guys in their spare time, although if they do then we’d love to see the evidence. But online, Google is developing superpowers – and sooner or later, those powers will turn Google to the dark side.

A whole bunch of browser-related things up on Techradar today. First of all: Come in Internet Explorer, your time is up:

Imagine if the browser wars were a horse race. Safari’s owner is a bit up himself, but the horse is young, sleek and hungry. Chrome is probably still a little bit too young, but he’s fast and full of potential. Firefox turns up late as always, but it’s the bookies’ and the public’s favourite. And Internet Explorer is a donkey.

It’s the result of two lots of tests, one of which compared Safari, Firefox, Chrome and IE on a reasonably well-specced PC, and one which looked at Netbooks (sorry, I meant to update the link days ago). Internet Explorer did badly in both of them:

If browsers were cars, it seems that Safari would be a Bugatti Veyron while Internet Explorer would be a knackered old Austin Allegro. Towing a caravan. On fire.

Wired Magazine has a fascinating piece about the rise of the netbook:

For years now, without anyone really noticing, the PC industry has functioned like a car company selling SUVs: It pushed absurdly powerful machines because the profit margins were high, while customers lapped up the fantasy that they could go off-roading, even though they never did.

And Richard Cobbett’s posted a great piece about the Kindle and ebooks in general:

I’m aware that there are some people who will happily read a novel on the iPhone. These people are crazy.

More words on the Internet. First, six companies Google should buy including, yep, Twitter:

Google’s search spiders are amazing things, but they can’t do what Twitter Search does: let you see in real time what six million people are saying. Bringing Twitter into the fold could work in two ways: as a search tool in its own right, and as a way to refine web results based on ‘trending’ – that is, up and coming – topics people are chatting about. For Twitter users, Google could offer better reliability: while Google Mail has been up and down a bit over the last few months, you’re still much more likely to see the Twitter Fail Whale than have problems with a Google site.

Then, 3G sucks when you’re in the sticks.

On a good day, outside, you’ll see the little 3G icon. Go indoors, though, and it disappears. That’s on a good day. On a bad day, like yesterday, there’s no 3G signal at all. We couldn’t even use GSM. Phone calls? Yes. Data? Nope.

The further from the cities you go, the worse it gets. And Scotland, like Wales, Northern Ireland and the North of England, doesn’t have too many big cities. If you stick to the big motorways, the cities and the very biggest towns you’ll get decent coverage. Everywhere else – and in Scotland, most of the country is everywhere else – you won’t.