E-mail is about communicating with friends, coworkers and the world at large. So why should users have to switch over to Facebook or Twitter to post a status update? That seems to be the thinking behind the news that Google will roll more social-networking features into Gmail, the fastest-growing e-mail service.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Google will announce later this week a new Gmail feature that allows users to post ongoing streams of status updates while using the web-based e-mail service. A source told the Journal that Google will eventually seek to allow users to stream other Google services like YouTube videos and Picasa photos.

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Just weeks before Apple officially rolls out the iPad, financial analysts are making pricing predictions. But could the analysis itself hinder the initial demand for the pricey tablet computer?

The much-anticipated iPad is priced at $499 for the 16GB model, $599 for the 32GB model, and $699 for the 64GB model — all available in March. The 3G models won’t be available until April and will sell for $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for the 32GB model and $829 for the 64GB model.

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The Chinese government has arrested three hackers who were running an online hacker-training business. The trio of hackers operated Black Hawk Safety Net, a company that collected nearly $1 million from more than 120,000 members.

The three unidentified individuals were arrested after using the now-defunct 3800CC.com web site to train and provide the necessary tools to wannabe hackers, according to the state-run Xinhua news agency. Government authorities seized $249,000 in cash, nine servers, five computers and a car from the company.

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Barnes & Noble said Monday that its popular nook e-book reader is back in stock online and will be rolling out in the majority of the bookseller’s U.S. stores this week. Customers also will be able to enjoy exclusive Valentine’s Day-themed online content this month, the company said.

The nook differs in several ways from many of the e-readers announced at the Consumer Electronics Show, which suffer from either high prices or little access to consumer channels, said Forrester Research Vice President James McQuivey.

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Leading business-software maker SAP AG (NYSE: SAP) on Monday announced a strategic shift in the corporate suite. Léo Apotheker has resigned as CEO and member of the SAP executive board, effective immediately. The abrupt decision came as part of a “mutual agreement” with the company’s supervisory board not to extend Apotheker’s contract as a member of the executive board.

Apotheker joined SAP, which is based in Germany but well-known worldwide, more than 20 years ago. The company didn’t offer details on severance or his future plans.

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The good news for Apple is that it has clearly accomplished its objective of getting the word out about its new iPad tablet computer. The media blitz that began weeks before CEO Steve Jobs’ Jan. 27 launch in San Francisco garnered front-page coverage in 47 states and 24 countries. So you’d practically have had to turn off your TV and computer and avoid newspapers to not know about it.

The bad news is that with about a month until the product starts shipping, people aren’t likely to line up to get their hands on an iPad, according to a follow-up survey from Retrevo Pulse.

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IBM on Monday unveiled high-capacity servers that are the first to be based on its new, multi-core POWER7 chip. The company said the new product line is designed “to manage the most demanding emerging applications,” including high-capacity smart electrical grids and real-time analytics for financial markets.

The servers are optimized for processing huge workloads of simultaneous transactions, data handling, and analysis. IBM said they offer “dramatic improvements” in price versus performance, energy savings, and server virtualization.

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IBM on Monday unveiled high-capacity servers that are the first to be based on its new, multi-core POWER7 chip. The company said the new product line is designed “to manage the most demanding emerging applications,” including high-capacity smart electrical grids and real-time analytics for financial markets.

The servers are optimized for processing huge workloads of simultaneous transactions, data handling, and analysis. IBM said they offer “dramatic improvements” in price versus performance, energy savings, and server virtualization.

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Location-finding applications that give iPhone users information about weather, restaurants or traffic are fine. But if they give information to third parties for targeted advertising, the deal is off.

That’s the message Apple sent to developers this week. The computer giant posted a message on its Developer Connection blog encouraging its partners to use the core location framework, but only for programs that provide “beneficial information,” such as the weather forecast or where to find ATMs.

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Just when Facebook users get used to a new interface, engineers at the social network press the redesign button. Once again, Facebook has made changes it says will make navigating easier.

For the last several months, Facebook has been testing changes to the navigation tools, and on Friday it began rolling out the changes to some of its 350 million users, according to Facebook engineer Jing Chen.

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After a light start to the year, Microsoft is getting ready to dump a heavy load on the shoulders of IT administrators. On Patch Tuesday next week, Microsoft will release 13 patches.

Five of the bulletins carry the maximum security rating of critical. Seven are rated important and one is rated moderate. The bulletins address 26 vulnerabilities.

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IBM opened its latest data center on Friday in North Carolina. Big Blue said the $362 million, 100,000-square-foot facility at its Research Triangle Park campus is designed to support cloud computing and other new computing models.

According to IBM, the new data center cuts technology infrastructure costs and complexity for clients while raising quality and speeding services deployment. Big Blue’s data center also has green implications because it uses only half the energy of most facilities its size.

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The trend toward TV anywhere took another step forward Thursday as AT&T announced that it will support Sling Media’s mobile application on its 3G network. Sling, whose player app is already in use on the carrier’s Wi-Fi network, released a player for the iPhone late last year.

The announcement reverses a decision by AT&T last spring not to allow the Sling iPhone app because it would increase congestion on its 3G network. In Thursday’s announcement, AT&T noted that Sling has developed its wireless app to “make efficient use of 3G network bandwidth” and to “conserve the finite wireless spectrum available to the wireless industry.”

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What’s Apple’s problem with Flash? Three years after the introduction of the iPhone, Apple’s refusal to include Flash on its soon-to-be-released iPad has sparked another kerfuffle between Apple and Flash maker Adobe Systems.

In a lengthy blog post, Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch railed against Apple’s Flash avoidance and detailed why Flash has become successful on the non-iPhone part of the web. From its humble start allowing low-bandwidth vector animations on the web, Flash now includes animation, streaming audio, rich interactivity, arbitrary fonts, two-way audio/video communication, local storage, and “enabling the video revolution on the web,” Lynch wrote.

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Amazon.com has reportedly purchased a leading touchscreen innovator in an apparent bid to add more functionality to its Kindle e-book reader. With Apple set to begin shipping its highly anticipated iPad tablet computer in less than two months with an iBooks application and multimedia capability, Amazon is under pressure to keep its share of the market.

Amazon has also announced an application store and this week produced a software development kit for “active content” that includes sample code and a simulator. The company plans to add puzzles, games and travel guides to selections that readers can download.

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