Gmail isn't just about e-mail anymore: it's also a phone. Google launched the ability to make voice calls to any traditional phone number from a Gmail account Wednesday. It's a blend of Gmail and Google Voice technology that allows users to dial numbers from their computers as well as receive incoming calls through one's Google Voice number. Gmail users can link their Google Voice accounts with their Gmail accounts to have their in-boxes treated like just another line that will ring when people call their Google Voice numbers, and their Google Voice number will appear on the incoming call screen of those they are calling. A Google Voice account isn't required to use the service, but international calls will be funded through Google Voice accounts. Calls to phone numbers in the U.S. and Canada will be free, and will cost 2 cents a minute to several other countries such as France and the U.K. The service should be rolling out to Gmail users in the U.S. on Wednesday, with international availability coming at an unspecified later date.

eBay's PayPal is in talks with Google to about adding its payment service to Android devices, according to a Bloomberg report Friday.

Not only is open-source software thriving in systems management but across businesses as a whole, according to a new survey released Tuesday. A nearly 4-year-long survey of open-source systems management usage compiled by open-source software developer Zenoss showed that 98 percent of the respondents said they used open-source software in their enterprises.

Have you ever been stopped by a police officer and been tempted to whip out one of your fine portable gadgets and film the encounter?

LAS VEGAS--Hackers competing in a social engineering contest at the Defcon conference here on Friday were able to trick random employees at 10 major U.S. tech, oil, and retail companies into giving them sensitive information over the phone that could be used in targeted computer attacks on the companies. "Every single company, if it was a security audit, would have failed," Christopher Hadnagy, operations manager for Offensive Security, a training and penetration testing company, told CNET after the first day of the contest, which wraps up Saturday and targets BP, Shell, Google, PG&E, Microsoft, Apple, Cisco, Ford, Coke, and Pepsi. "Not one company shut us down, although certain employees within the company did. But we (participants) were able to call right back and get another employee that was more willing to comply." The organizers declined to offer specific comments about any one of the companies targeted by the contest or say which companies are faring better or worse than the others. But they said they'd release a report with aggregated information in a few weeks. "The point isn't to shame anyone. It's to bring awareness to this attack vector, which is probably the easiest way to hack a corporation today," said Mati Aharoni, lead trainer at Offensive Security. "We really don't want to see anyone get harmed or get in trouble."

Do you ever feel like you're being followed? Do you ever wonder whether someone (other than Google) knows your every move because they see it?

Will Intel chips land in the iPhone and iPad? They may if reports are correct that Intel is on the verge of buying Germany-based Infineon's wireless chip unit.

The rumors of a $149 price tag for Microsoft's Kinect accessory for the Xbox 360 were true.

It may be true that no cell phone is perfect, but the handset world isn't taking too kindly to Apple CEO Steve Jobs' public assertion that other smartphones suffer from the same antenna and signal problems that have been widely reported regarding the iPhone 4. And, in what's turned into an ugly back-and-forth PR mud fight, Apple is firing back by making its internal signal test results public to insist that it's not just pulling rivals' flaws out of thin air.

Any laptop or Netbook that's more than a few years old is probably running out of storage space right about now. These days, it's tough to get by with only, say, 80GB or 120GB.