Ever since it became stable enough to use on a day-to-day basis on a Mac last year, Google Chrome has been my browser of choice. Other browsers have been adding some nice features — but Chrome keeps adding them faster. And today on its second birthday, that rate of change isn’t slowing down.

Google has officially rolled out Chrome 6 as the latest stable version of the browser today. This shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone using the dev or beta builds of the browser, but it’s nonetheless an important mark as it means it’s stable enough for mass consumption.

It looks like we’re back to square one again. Dell has matched HP’s $2 billion offer to buy 3PAR, and HP upped the ante today with an offer worth $33 per share or $2.4 billion. 3PAR has accepted HP’s bid.

Dell had previously signed an agreement to acquire 3PAR for $18 per share or $1.13 billion, with a provision for matching competing bids. HP then effectively outbid the company and offered $1.6 billion, but Dell matched that offer yesterday, after which HP made a renewed bid for $1.8 billion. HP then offered $2 billion last Friday.

Cisco this morning announced its intent to acquire privately-held Arch Rock, which specializes in IP-based wireless sensor network technology with a focus on energy and environmental monitoring and Smart Grid applications.

Financial terms of the transaction are not being disclosed.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong hinted that this was coming, but this morning Google and AOL announced a five-year renewal of the search deal between the two companies. Google will continue to power search across AOL’s content network and properties. The partnership will be expanded to include mobile search and YouTube.

Armstrong said in a statement “Today is another important step in the turnaround of AOL…AOL users will be getting a better search and search ads experience from the best search company in the world – Google. After nearly a decade-long partnership in search, we’re looking forward to expanding our global relationship to mobile search and YouTube. All aspects of our partnership will be improved by this deal.”

Thanks to a partnership with Vlingo, owners of Android 2.0 or higher-equipped phones can now check in to Foursquare and update their status on Facebook and Twitter simply by speaking into their phones.

To try it out, download the free Vlingo app to your Android handset.

Using your voice, you can then update your location status on Foursquare by saying “check into Logan Airport”, locate your friends with commands like “where are my friends?” and “who’s nearby?” as well as send shout-outs to your buddies (e.g. “shout at Logan Airport waiting to board a plane to San Francisco”).

The iTunes-for-apps, Allmyapps, has just announced its first round of funding with French VC fund, Elaia Partners – the same firm that has backed French all-stars like Goom Radio, Goojet and Criteo. With 1 million in the bank, the Paris-based company founded in June 2009 plans to focus on product development and emerge as the leading Microsoft-dedicated app store.

Just so happens that Allmyapps, founded by Thibauld Favre and Arnaud Coulondre, is also the company that won the startup pitch competition at TechCrunch Paris in March.

A new study by email software purveyor Xobni confirms what we bloggers know to be true, there’s actually no such thing as a day off in the Internet age (Want more visceral proof than an email study? Check out the timestamp of this post).

Information anxiety has pretty much put the kibosh on “time off” as two out of three Americans and Brits check their email outside of regular business hours (ha) and half of Americans email while on vacation (double ha).

The Xobni study, an online survey of 2,200 British and American adults conducted in August, holds that the traditional 9-5 work day has gone the way of the Dodo, due to the fact that Americans and Brits can’t stop checking their email. Apparently we sneak a peak at our inboxes while on vacation, weekends, sick days and even when we are (gasp!) in bed.

App store analytics provider Distimo yesterday published its latest report, once again zooming in on the pricing of mobile applications across a variety of platforms.

Consistent with its previous findings, Google’s Android Market has by far the largest share of free applications available compared to other mobile app store, but the gap is also widening.

In July 2010, 60% of all applications on Android Market were free of charge, representing an increase of 3% since May 2010 when it was 57%.

Okay, here’s the deal, if you are a startup unveiling a location-based service in a market saturated with location-based services please tell us what is unique about you vs. the 800 or so other services out there and please please whatever you do don’t copy the RULE.fm pitch, which we liked the first time around.

WhereMark

“We are writing to you in an awkward state of euphoria and exhaustion. This combination is resulting from 15 months of being strung out on more Diet Coke than a human should consume, a sleep debt rivaling the national deficit, and finally going live with our startups newest service.”

RULE.fm

“Another late night, we’re tired, hopped up on caffeine, malnourished and could probably use a shower…but man do we love this startup S#!T. We are sitting here with the launch of our productivity tool rule.fm ( http://rule.fm – screenshots attached) around the corner.”

Withings, the Paris-based company behind the famous tweeting wifi body scale, has just scored 3 million euros from French VC firm, Ventech. It’s the company’s first round of funding and will be used primarily for the development of 2 new products, which should come out within the next 6 months.

For anyone who isn’t already familiar with the company’s first product, the tweeting wifi body scale, it’s a terrific wifi-connected device that tracks your weight. May sound simple but it can recognize up to 8 users and allows you to transfer your weight information to a computer, iPhone or iPad – which is where the Tweeting comes from, obviously. The product launched officially last year on June 25 goes for €129 in France and is a great little way to track a fitness program or diet.

On Tuesday, Google was slapped with a breach of contract class action lawsuit alleging that its Nexus One smartphone failed to maintain 3G connectivity and that the Mountain View company not only made misleading claims about the product’s capabilities but also failed to adequately support customers in search of answers.

Plaintiff Nathan Nabors of Florida is seeking damages and class action interest on behalf of residents of his home state as well as California who have bought the Nexus One since its January debut.

The only defendant named in the suit is Google – in other words, manufacturer HTC and exclusive 3G carrier T-Mobile USA are not included in the suit. The potential size of the classes is not specified in the complaint.

Sometimes the titles just write themselves. On Tuesday Virgin America and Loopt partnered to offer people two-for-one tickets to Cancun or Los Cabos from California. All you had to do was check in on Loopt at SFO, LAX or one of a variety of taco trucks in San Francisco and Los Angeles in a four hour window.

So how did it go? Loopt says 1,300 people checked in to a single taco truck in San Francisco, and 80% of those people have already bought tickets on Virgin America for flights. It was Virgin’s fifth highest revenue day ever, says Loopt (we’re confirming with Virgin).

Are you addicted to Twitter? Do you have an iPad? Even if the answer to both is “no” right now, after you see Twitter for iPad, those answers are going to change — quickly.

Yes, the wait is over. Launching tonight in the App Store is Twitter for iPad — the first official native iPad app from the company. We all knew it was coming (Twitter even said so a few months ago), but it has been a long wait. It was definitely worth it.

Like most people, I wander into hyperbole from time to time. But it has now been a few days since I first played with Twitter for iPad, and I still think it is hands-down the best iPad app out there. It’s that good. With all due respect to Reeder, Instapaper, Flipboard, and Pulse, this is now going to be my go-to app for just about everything related to reading news. It’s simply such a great experience for reading tweets — and more importantly, reading the links your friends share.

Right now, many of you are likely downloading iTunes 10, the latest version of Apple’s media software. The most notable feature in this new version is Ping, Apple’s first stab at building a music social network (or really any kind of social network). It’s interesting on a number of levels, but even the most basic level is pretty interesting: Ping’s social graph.

First of all, to use Ping at all you have to opt-in to it. While Apple CEO Steve Jobs touted the 160 million built-in users (it’s currently available in iTunes in 23 countries), that’s a bit misleading because many people won’t opt-in to using it — many of them for no other reason than they’re lazy or just don’t care. But assuming you do opt-in to it, the next social layer is interesting as well. Immediately, you’re taken to a Privacy Settings page where Apple asks you how you’d like to use the service. This is where you decide if you want to use the friend model, the follow model, or the lurk model.

If you’re anything like me, you’ve been hitting refresh on the Apple iTunes website waiting for them to put iTunes 10 up for download. Sure, it has said it was available since this morning, but when you click through, it would still be iTunes 9.2.1 with a promise that iTunes 10 was “coming soon.” Links being shared on Twitter were likewise bogus. It was starting to look like a Duke Nukem situation. Well, it took several hours, but it’s finally here.

Apple announced iTunes 10 this morning at their event in San Francisco. The latest version is more than just a minor update, there are several things that have been reworks, including some UI elements. But the biggest addition is obviously Ping, the music social network Apple has baked into iTunes. I got a chance to use it earlier on some demo computers and on the iPhone/iPod touch — it’s very interesting. Now it’s time to see if 160 million built-in users agree.

New York City startup BankSimple today disclosed that it raised its first venture funding in a round led by First Round Capital, Roger Ehrenberg’s IA Ventures, and Village Ventures, along with seed investors SV Angel (Ron Conway) and Nauiokas Park, and Jerry Neumann. But it did not disclose how much it raised. I’ve confirmed that the round was $2.9 million, with an additional $190,000 raised last year in convertible debt (which converted to shares with this round), for a total of $3.1 million raised. Not exactly “a big round,” but more than enough for what BankSimple is trying to do.

Inflection, a company aimed to democratizing the public records system on the web, has raised $30 million in Series A financing led by Matrix Partners and Sutter Hill Ventures.

Founded in 2006, Inflection aggregates public records and data from past and present and currently operates Archives.com, a site that sources historical records made available on the web. Archives is meant to allow people to access birth, death, marriage, divorce, and other historical vital records to get information about deceased members of their families. Currently the site has more than 2 million members conducting searches and sees 3 million unique visitors per month.

We’ve confirmed that wunderkind Jessica Mah is one week away from closing a hotly anticipated round of seed financing for simple online finance management tool InDinero. Confirmed investors in the round (which still has three open spots reserved for valley VIPs like SV Angel) include 500 StartUps‘ Dave McClure, Microsoft’s Fritz Lanman, and YouTube’s Jawed Karim.

Part of the YCombinator class of 2010, InDinero aims to be the Mint for small businesses and is off to a running start as this latest round is set to close between 1 and 1.5 million. We’ve heard reports that she had to turn investors away, and Mah promises that more “juicy details” about the story behind the funding are yet to come.

The hits just keep on coming for Elevation Partners, the one-time digital media, private equity dream team that has reconfigured itself as an investor in late stage Web 2.0 treasures. Earlier this summer, Elevation requested an extension on investing its $1.9 billion fund, and TechCrunch has learned that that request was denied—a move that came as surprise to us and to Elevation, we hear.

So what does that mean? Clearly, LPs are sending a strong message that has to do with Elevation, but also has a lot to do with the broader market: They want to see some returns before they pony up more money. But the news isn’t nearly as bad as it sounds.

Credit card debt is a serious issue for Americans, who have an average of four credit cards each. Defaulting on credit card bills can result in damage to your credit score and even bankruptcy. Y Combinator-backed ReadyForZero is launching today as easy to use web-based platform to help guide consumers out of credit card debt.

The site asks you to import your credit card information, including what types of cards you have, the amount owed, and will then walk you through the same steps a trusted financial advisor would give you. Based on your minimum payments, salary and balance, ReadyForZero will figures out an optimal
strategy for what to pay and when. The site will send you reminders and you can track your progress online. While you cannot actually pay your bills directly from ReadyForZero, the startup will eventually allow users to do this directly from the site.