Google will start its controversial Street View service with its navigable 360-degree photo maps in 20 cities in Germany this year, the Californian company has announced. This service integrated into Google Maps will give users the opportunity to explore cities virtually, to retrieve local directions, to find a new apartment, house or property, or to check the maps and photos for vacation planning. At the beginning, Google Street will be available in Germany for these cities: Berlin, Bielefeld, Bochum, Bonn, Bremen, Cologne, Dortmund, Dresden, Duisburg, Dusseldorf, Essen, Frankfort/Main, Hamburg, Hanover, Leipzig, Mannheim, Munich, Nuremberg, Stuttgart and Wuppertal. But unlike in the United States and in 22 other countries around the world, some people in Germany see Street View as an interference with their privacy in an unacceptable way. Some do also think that Google Street View with its detailed street level maps may have potential applications for thieves or terrorists. The strange thing is: According to Google, Germans have already become loyal users of the Street View service.

A small crowd gathered at the Media Markt store at Alexa mall in Berlin (close to Alexanderplatz) to buy the Apple iPad on the first day of sale. However, you could still see the running of a few hasty Apple fans and even one guy tripping. Media Markt did not say how many iPad devices they had in store today, it might already be sold out.

This weekend I exchanged my cell phone for my camera and hit the road for Kreuzberg, that quarter of Berlin that is famous for its multicultural life and spirit. Just as every other year the Carnival of Cultures is presenting the cultural and ethnic diversity of Berlin and promoting the peaceful coexistence of its different cultures. Members of Berlin’s ethnic communities make their cultures – traditional or modern – visible to Berliners and Berlin visitors equally. As home to more than 450,000 people from around the world Berlin is the most international city in Germany. Here are some of my impressions of this year’s street parade.

It’s not the 8.1-megapixel camera, the 1-GHz Snapdragon processor or HSPA and WiFi connectivity that make the Android 1.6 smartphone Sony Ericsson X10 unique – it’s rather the new interface “User Experience (UX)” with its Timescape and Mediascape sections. Watch this video to see how Timescape and Mediascape work on the Sony Ericsson X10.

Apps expand the range of functions of smartphones: They run on the Internet or on the phone and deliver news, weather or status updates of social networking contacts, offer direct access to web pages and online services, open documents and email attachments or help in another way. Such applications can be downloaded from web portals to the mobile for free or at cost. The most well-known app store is the App Store service for the iPhone, the iPod Touch and the iPad which is part of the Apple iTunes Store. Here users can find applications developed with the iPhone Software Developer Kit (SDK). But there are several other app stores by different operators around. The problem with all these different download and mobile device platforms is: They are not fully compatible. In fact, most systems are rather walled gardens with apps especially developed for their mobile systems and with specific download platforms pegged to.

Last weekend in Leipzig. Hecticness, disoriented tourists blocking the streets, dressed up teenagers. During this year’s book fair in Leipzig, the city definitely wasn’t the calmest place to be. You could even wonder, why booksellers and publishers always complain about how decreasingly people read. Who needs printed books anymore? Why endanger the rainforests when we could read everything digitised? However, e-book-readers weren’t the most popular thing in Leipzig. Actually, they seemed to be banished to a single hall while the rest of the fairground was completely filled with madness.

The HTC Legend smartphone is now available at Vodafone stores in Germany. With a contract over 24 months the touchscreen smartphone costs between EUR 79.90 and EUR 179.90, without contract the purchase price amounts to EUR 419.90. The smartphone’s body measures 112 x 56,3 x 11,5 millimeters and is made out of one solid piece of aluminimum with a brushed metallic finish and shows the same bend as the HTC Hero. The HTC Legend is powered by 600 MHz processor by Qualcomm and runs on Android 2.1 with HTC Sense user interface and is geared towards the use of classical Google web services such as Search, Mail or Maps, but it also supports Microsoft Exchange.

With more and more people having a netbook or a smartphone with WiFi support and more and more people taking their mobiles on their trips to other countries, WiFi hotspots become hot again. For example, by using a free WiFi hotspot in Berlin mobile phone or netbook users from other countries save high data roaming expenses – all it might take to access the internet for free is to get a password at the counter and order one or two coffees during the online session. We have updated our overview of cafes, bars and hotels in Berlin that offer free WiFi to their guests.

While movie fans have traveled to Berlin this week, the mobile industry met in Barcelona. At the Mobile World Congress 2010 show manufacturers, providers and network suppliers presented latest devices and upcoming trends. Some of it – like eye-controlled earphones by Japanese operator NTT Docomo – seems weird, other things like higher data transmission rates over 4G networks or efforts to introduce standards to the world of smartphone apps sound rather promising. And, of course, handset manufacturers showed lots of new devices with new features. Here is a short wrap up of the most interesting phones and platforms of the show.

Yes, it is the Apple iPhone again, still object of heated discussions among smartphone users. In Germany, only operator T-Mobile may sell the iPhone with contract (and SIM lock), devices available on the open market (and without SIM lock) are imported. Whichever way buyers choose in order to become part of the iPhone community, compared to most other smartphones the Apple phone is very expensive. At German stores, purchase prices for an imported iPhone 3G S without SIM lock begin at EUR 645.00. Still, it is one of the most popular mobile phones in the country. Now, it is also possible to get the iPhone 3G 8GB with a prepaid starter package of T-Mobile by finance purchase.