Google has a short message for those wondering whether the search giant will soon buy micro-blogging site Twitter: “unlikely.”

That was Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s response Friday when queried on the topic during a wide-ranging interview with journalist Charlie Rose. Schmidt said:

I shouldn’t talk about specific acquisitions. We’re unlikely to buy anything in the short term partly because I think prices are still high. And it’s unfortunate I think we’re in the middle of a cycle. Google is generating a lot of cash. And so we keep that cash in extremely secure banks.

Rose didn’t press Schmidt for more perspective on the micro-blogging site. But earlier in the week during an on-stage chat at the Morgan Stanley Technology Conference in San Francisco, Schmidt called Twitter a “poor man’s” e-mail system. “They have aspects of an e-mail system, but they do not have a full offering,” he said at the conference.

“Twitter’s success is wonderful and it shows you that there are many, many ways to reach and communicate, especially if you are willing to do so publicly,” he said that day while touting the success of Google’s instant messaging system.

Click here to view the embedded video.

However, Schmidt’s comments to Rose about the merger market echo sentiments he expressed during the Morgan Stanley conference: Google will be ready to make a deal when the price is right. “The good news is we have lots of capital,” Schmidt said at the conference. “The bad news is we’re still trying to get everybody into the model that we really want in terms of M&A. And I think it’ll start soon, but it’s pretty inactive right now.”

Schmidt wasn’t asked to describe his ideal model and he didn’t volunteer to elaborate.

“Poor man’s” e-mail aside, if Schmidt is interested in buying Twitter, does he think he can cut a bargain-basement deal? Twitter has already turned down an offer from Facebook reportedly worth $500 million.

During the rest of his hour-long interview with Rose on Friday, Schmidt discussed Google’s origins, how the company arrived at its advertising business model by accident, and his view of future technologies–such as a TV revolution in which Android-powered devices tranform into televisions.

This is a new driver release for the 260 family of drivers. This driver package supports GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, 200, 300, and 400-series desktop GPUs as well as ION desktop GPUs.

New in Release 260.89

Performance

* Increases performance for GeForce GTX 400 Series GPUs in several PC games vs. v258.96 WHQL drivers. The following are examples of some of the most significant improvements measured on Windows 7. Results will vary depending on your GPU and system configuration:

GeForce GTX 480:
+ Up to 10% in StarCraft II (2560×1600 4xAA/16xAF Ultra)
+ Up to 14% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 16% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (SLI – 2560×1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 6% in Aliens vs. Predator (SLI – 1920×1200 noAA – Tessellation on)

GeForce GTX 460:
+ Up to 19% in StarCraft II (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF Ultra)
+ Up to 15% in Battlefield Bad Company 2 (SLI – 2560×1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 12% in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat (2560×1600 noAA)
+ Up to 9% in Aliens vs. Predator (1680×1050 4xAA/16xAF – Tessellation on)
+ Up to 7% in Metro 2033 (1680×1050 noAA – Tessellation on)
+ Up to 11% in Dirt 2 (SLI – 2560×1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 12% in Crysis:Warhead (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF Gamer)
+ Up to 13% in Far Cry 2 (2560×1600 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 12% in H.A.W.X (SLI – 1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF SSAO Very High)
+ Up to 5% in Just Cause 2 (1920×1200 4xAA/16xAF)
+ Up to 22% in Riddick: Assault on Dark Athena (1920×1200 noAA)
+ Up to 5% in 3DMark Vantage (Extreme Preset)

NVIDIA 3D Vision

* With Release 260 drivers, the installation process for 3D Vision has changed.
* Adds NVIDIA 3D Vision streaming support for Firefox 4 and Google Chrome web browsers.
* Adds support for Sony’s 3D Sweep Panorama picture format added to NVIDIA 3D Photo Viewer (Sony digital cameras that can capture 3D Sweep Panorama pictures include NEX-5/NEX-3, Alpha a560/a580 and Cyber-shot DSC-WX5/DSC-TX9/DSC-T99 models).
* Adds support for new 3D Vision Desktop LCD monitors: BenQ X2410 and NEC F23W2A
* Adds support for new 3D Vision projectors: Sanyo PDG-DWL2500 and ViewSonic PJD6251
* Added the following 3D Vision game profiles:

o Arcania: Gothic 4
o Fallout: New Vegas
o FIFA 11
o Formula 1 Racing
o Final Fantasy XIV Benchmark
o Guild Wars 2
o Kane & Lynch 2 – Dog Days
o Lead and Gold
o Lego Harry Potter
o Live For Speed
o Lost Planet 2
o Moonbase Alpha
o Serious Sam HD – The Second Encounter
o Shrek Forever After
o Singularity
o Vitua Tennis 2009
o Virtua Tennis 3

* Update the following 3D Vision game profiles

o Drakensang: The Dark Eye – updated in-game compatibility text
o Mafia II – updated profile to properly for 3D Vision-Rating
o StarCraft II – fixed profile to properly recognize the retail game executable name and match the 3D Vision rating of “Good”
o Super Commander – fixed HUD elements
o TRINE – new profiles fixes that allow the game to be rated “3D Vision-Ready” when used with the TRINE patch v1.08, available via Steam.

NVIDIA SLI

* Adds or enhances SLI profiles for the following PC games:

o City of Heroes: Going Rogue
o Alien Swarm
o Dead Rising 2
o Front Mission Evolved
o Kane and Lynch 2: Dog Days
o LEGO: Harry Potter

Other Improvements

* Adds support for OpenGL 4.1 for GeForce 400 series GPUs.
* Upgrades PhysX System Software to version 9.10.0514.
* Improves compatibility for older PC games (DirectX 7 to DirectX 9) running on Windows 7 (examples: Gothic, Gothic II, Falcon 4.0: Allied Force, Links 2003, Independence War II – Edge of Chaos, and X2: Wolverine\\\’s Revenge).
* Adds drag and drop display arrangement support to the “Set up multiple displays” page.
* Includes numerous bug fixes. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.
* Users without US English operating systems can select their language and download the International driver.

Additional Information

* Supports the new GPU-accelerated features in Adobe CS5.
* Supports GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with Adobe Flash 10.1. Learn more here.
* Supports the new version of MotionDSP’s video enhancement software, vReveal, which adds support for HD output. NVIDIA customers can download a free version of vReveal that supports up to SD output here.
* Supports DirectCompute with Windows 7 and GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports OpenGL 3.3 for GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
* Supports single GPU and NVIDIA SLI technology on DirectX 9, DirectX 10, DirectX 11, and OpenGL, including 3-way SLI, Quad SLI, and SLI support on SLI-certified Intel X58-based motherboards.
* Supports GPU overclocking and temperature monitoring by installing NVIDIA System Tools software.

Download

GeForce Forceware 260.89 Windows XP 32-bit
GeForce Forceware 260.89 Win 7 | Vista 32-bit
GeForce Forceware 260.89 Win 7 | Vista 64-bit

Google has introduced Priority Inbox, a new Gmail tool that aims to prioritize e-mails based on their importance. Gmail has always been pretty good at filtering junk mail into the “spam” folder.

But today, in addition to spam, people get a lot of mail that isn’t outright junk but isn’t very important—bologna, or “bacn.” So we’ve evolved Gmail’s filter to address this problem and extended it to not only classify outright spam, but also to help users separate this “bologna” from the important stuff. In a way, Priority Inbox is like your personal assistant, helping you focus on the messages that matter without requiring you to set up complex rules.

Priority Inbox splits your inbox into three sections: “Important and unread,” “Starred” and “Everything else”.

As messages come in, Gmail automatically flags some of them as important. Gmail uses a variety of signals to predict which messages are important, including the people you email most (if you email Bob a lot, a message from Bob is probably important) and which messages you open and reply to (these are likely more important than the ones you skip over). And as you use Gmail, it will get better at categorizing messages for you.

Click here to view the embedded video.

After denying the rumors for the better part of a year Google has finally come clean on its attempt to enter the operating system world.

The new Google OS (???) will be based on their fast and (in many security experts opinions) insecure Chrome Browser.

The core design is Google Chrome running with a windowing system on a Linux Kernel. The developer’s blog for the new OS sounds very much like a Mac add. Including making the comment “we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don’t have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work”.

The new Chrome OS is also not meant to interfere with Android as the two are separate projects. Android was meant to be multi platform (netbooks to smart boxes) while Chrome OS is for Web Centric use and will be on netbooks to desktops. The Developer’s Blog made an interesting statement that choice drives innovation. (a very true statement) I guess this even goes for competing with yourself.

Read more here

The chaps from Google uploaded a video tour of one of its container data centers. This video was first presented at the Google Efficient Data Centers Summit last week. Always fun stuff to look at !

Click here to view the embedded video.

Microsoft has announced plans to launch a mapping service, GeoSynth, that will take on Google’s Street View mapping feature, according to Pocket-lint. The new service will use Photosynth technology to merge high-definition photos taken and submitted by the general public, and then relate the content according to geographic data.

The program could also be connected to Virtual Earth, potentially enabling users to browse street-level views of almost any location worldwide.

According to Virtual Earth technology specialist Johannes Kebeck, the system will take the best images from a location to create a single image of a specific landmark. All geo-tagged images submitted by users will be uploaded into a central database that combines them into a larger detailed picture of the area.

Microsoft also made an announcement that Virtual Earth will support Silverlight in a beta to be released this summer. The company claims users will be able to access map tiles roughly nine times faster in its Internet Explorer 8 browser, or five times faster in Google’s Chrome browser.

Geosynth is expected to launch sometime later this year.

Another day, another new feature in Gmail Labs. This one could be more useful than most, as it’s something you probably have a reason to use with some frequency. It’s called ‘Undo Send,’ and as the name suggests, it lets you take back a sent email, as long as you act quickly enough.

After enabling the feature, Undo Send works much like Gmail’s other ‘undo’ features. When you send an email, you get a message confirming it has been sent, along with a link to ‘Undo.’ This message lasts for 5 seconds, at which point you lose the opportunity to take it back. While that might not be much time, it’s probably enough to pull back emails where you forget an attachment, forget to cc someone, or catch an obvious typo.

Well, hey .. it’s handy.

In other interesting news today, there is a chance that Google maps spotted the lost city of Atlantis ? If this is true, and it is simply a data artifact as they claim, where are all the other lines like this on the bottom of the ocean? Or is Google claiming that only data from that area was collected using a boat that drives in perfectly square patterns? Fascinating.

From what it sounds like, a British aeronautical engineer was playing around with the new Google Earth 5.0, which includes undersea data, and noticed something funny off the coast of Africa, about 600 miles west of the Canary Islands, that resembled a pattern of a street grid. According to the United Kingdom’s Press Association, the pattern of streets equated to an area the size of Wales. In case you’ve had more important things to read about for the past few thousand years, Atlantis was a legendary island city first mentioned by Plato, allegedly a hard-core naval power located somewhere near North Africa that disappeared when it sank into the ocean. Guess global warming was a problem back then, too.

Anyway, most people think that Plato made it up, kind of like how those guys in Georgia made up the story about shooting Bigfoot, but others just won’t stop believin’. So this guy is trawling the ocean floor with Google Earth–ah, if only we had that kind of free time on our hands–and was quick to announce his discovery. It looks like The Telegraph reported the story first, adding that the exact coordinates are 31 15’15.53N, 24 15’30.53W.

Incoming search terms:

• 31 1515 53N 24 1530 53W
• 31 15\15 53N 24 15\30 53W
• 31 15’15 53N 24 15’30 53W
• 31 1515 53N， 24 1530 53W
• 31 15´15 53n 24 15´30 53w
• google earth funny coordinates
• 31 15′15 53N 24 15′30 53W
• 31 15\15 53N 24 15\ 30 53W
• - 31 15 \15 53N 24 15\ 30 53W
• 31 1515 53N 24 1530 53W atlantis