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A new patent from Apple indicates that the company will start offering the ability to transfer songs to your friends with the future iPhone using Near Field Communication (NFC). U.S. Patent & Trademark Office published on April 26 that the patent specifically talks about transferring digital content from one user’s account to another.

NFC is not currently available on any iDevice. Apple plans to use the feature to make the data transfer by tapping devices together. You can send the gifts with a personal voice message as well as an image. It means that you can send a singing telegram to your friend with a copy of your favorite song. The sender will be charged for a song if the receiver decides to download it.

If your account has not enough cash to do the transaction, the receiving person will be given the option to pay for the purchase and download it anyway. It’s a weird option for gift giving, but it will come in handy if your friend loves a song you’re playing at a party and wants to tap their phone and buy the track themselves.

The automatic message translation on Gmail is no longer an experiment. Now, the popular email platform will automatically translate email from one language to another. It makes mailing a lot simpler as you can get an email in Japanese and have it translated into English, or communicate with your friend in French without the need to learn the language. They introduce the feature for the first time in Gmail Labs on May 2009.

Jeff Chin, the Product Manager for Google Translate said in his blog post, “Some people wanted to easily read newsletters from abroad. Another person telling us how he set his mom’s Gmail to translate anything to her native language.”

“Message translation was one of the most popular things in labs, so we decided that it was time to graduate from Gmail Labs into the real world,” he added.

The service will be implemented to all Gmail users in the next few days. When you receive an email in different language, you can simply click “Translate message” button on the header of the email to translate it. Bilingual user is able to turn off the feature.

Motion tracking game technology that might be in your room can find a way into U.S. military helicopters. The army use Microsoft Kinect as a low cost solution for their smarter cockpits to track what pilots see or do. They think that it will be beneficial if it responds quickly to human needs in a combat.

Microsoft Kinect for Xbox now already recognizes faces, gestures, and voices in almost all ambient light condition for only $150. This gaming technology looks like a bargain next to the expensive military helmets to track pilot’s head movements or eye gaze with magnetic sensors or infrared detectors. Army’s solicitation for the small business innovation research program said, “New technology from gaming world has the potential to reduce the cost of adding head tracking to conventional helicopters.”

The intelligent cockpits may feature virtual controls and displays, report on damage based on where the pilot looks, identify target outside the cockpit, or even track the pilot’s mental and physical health based on their motions.

This might be a brighter solution not only for combat pilot, but also soldiers in ground vehicles at work stations, commercial airline pilots, and civilian drivers.

The iconic Apple’s iPhone was actually come with a physical keyboard. Reportedly, Apple considered the phone design before they release the phone on its touchscreen-only form factor. Tony Fadell, the previous Senior Vice President of the iPod division in Apple talked about the iphone on its early days ina recording of On The Verge on Friday. Fadell worked at Apple for 18 iPod generatoins and the first 3 generations of iPhone before he started his own company, Nest, in 2010.

According to Fadell, there were three original versions of the iPhone at that day: iPod + iPhone, a device called the iPhone, and the iPhone as we know today and was released in 2007. Fadell worked for the iPhone through iPhone 3GS and said he loved the touchscreen only version.

Apple was a pioneer with iPhone’s original design, as there are many smartphone makers today who decided to follow. Most smartphones on the market today are touchscreen, offering only a few buttons with virtual keyboard rather than the physical keyboard.

On its initial launch, people are upset because Apple didn’t include a physical keyboard. But now, the world knows which one is better. What do you think?

Google has announced on Thursday that they are selling their 3D modeling tool, Google Sketchup. This is an unusual effort for the tech giant, as they are highly known for acquiring companies more than selling it. Trimble Navigation has purchased the platform. Unfortunately, the amount of money isn’t revealed.

For your information, Google acquired SketchUp in 2006 and used the tool for design building models in Google Earth.

SketchUp wrote on its official Google blog, “In its time with Google, SketchUp has become one of the most popular 3D modeling tools in the world with over 30 million SketchUp activations last year. We’re really proud of the accomplishments, but there’s still so much we want to do and we think we’ve found a way to benefit everyone.”

Trimble, SketchUp’s new parent, is a company known for surveying, marine navigaiton equipment, and mapping. SketchUp claims that Trimble’s commitment will help them to return to the core communities for both veteran and new modelers, designers, and makers. SketchUp promised that they will keep the free version of the problem which is used by a wider audience.

Do you think it will be the right step for SketchUp to operate under Trimble?