Today Google introduce Google Earth for iPhone and iPod touch. With just a swipe of your finger you can fly from Peoria to Paris to Papua New Guinea, or anywhere in between. It may be small, but it brings all the power of Google Earth to the palm of your hand, including all of the same global imagery and 3D terrain. You can even browse any of 8 million Panoramio photos or read Wikipedia articles.

With Google Earth for iPhone, you can:
• Tilt your iPhone to adjust your view to see mountainous terrain
• View the Panoramio layer and browse the millions of geo-located photos from around the world
• View geo-located Wikipedia articles
• Use the ‘Location’ feature to fly to your current location
• Search for cities, places and business around the globe with Google Local Search

It’s available today in 18 languages and 22 countries in the iTunes App Store.

Radio-frequency identification (RFID)-enabled devices, already popular for contactless payments and transit fare systems, are now being offered as options for more identity verification documents in certain parts of the United States. Government officials, various companies, and consumers are all fond of the convenience the new cards offer, but ongoing research continues to raise questions regarding the security of these these solutions.

These problems are not confined to any particular country or company. Earlier this month, a pair of Dutch security researchers published a paper detailing fundamental defects in the cryptographic cipher behind NXP Semiconductor’s MIFARE Classic technology (currently used in hundreds of mass-transit systems worldwide). Six days earlier, an unknown member of The Hacker’s Choice demonstrated how he was able to fool an airport RFID scanner with a picture of Elvis Presley and his corresponding personal data. Skip back to August, and we’ve got Dutch security researcher Jeroen van Beek discussing how he duplicated RFID passport chips after investing just $120 in hardware. And, of course, there’s the the Massachussets Bay Transit Authority’s attempt to prevent a team of students from MIT from revealing the holes they found in the MBTA’s CharlieCard system, which was built on NXP’s MIFARE Classic technology.

The unfortunate truth is that most of us don’t eat enough fruits and vegetables, which contain chemicals that protect us against cancer, cardiovascular disorders, and other degenerative diseases. For decades, the National Cancer Institute of America has been promoting a diet that contains at least five portions of fruits and vegetables, but over 75 percent of Americans ignore the advice. To help us out, food scientists are trying to modify crop plants to give us a bigger dose of helpful chemicals in those items that we do eat. Today in Nature Biotechnology, European scientists report that they have made a purple tomato that significantly extended the life span of cancer-prone mice.

The scientists were interested in anthocyanins, bioactive chemicals that are found in high concentrations in blackberries and blueberries. Many research groups have determined that these chemicals have high antioxidant activities and modulate cellular signaling pathways in ways that promote health. The researchers chose to enhance tomatoes, as they are a popular food crop and can be easily incorporated into a variety of meals. Tomatoes already contain very small amounts of flavonoids like anthocyanins, so it should be straightforward to give them a boost.

OpenOffice.org 3.0 was downloaded 3 million times in its first week, with about 80% of the downloads by Windows users, an official with the group said in a blog post last week.

The successful introduction of the open source office suite came despite the group’s download servers being temporarily overwhelmed by demand for the new software last week.

Only 221,000 downloads by Linux users were recorded, leading John McCreesh, head of marketing for OpenOffice.org, to suggest a massive undercount. McCreesh said 90% of Linux users traditionally receive OpenOffice.org updates straight from their Linux distribution’s vendor, which would explain the relatively low Linux count.

Many non-English versions of OpenOffice.org are also distributed by alternate Web sites, and OpenOffice.org is still widely distributed via free CD-ROMs in magazines, said McCreesh.

With the undercount included, OpenOffice.org 3.0 may already be installed on up to 5 million computers worldwide, McCreesh said in a blog post.