Next week, Apple will launch Game Center for the iPhone and the iPod touch. The app and platform will allow video game players to track one another’s achievements, create multiplayer matches and discover new games.

The features are comparable to those found in Xbox Live, the PlayStation Network and Steam — online gaming services used by Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC gamers, respectively. Third parties have implemented similar features for iPhone games using their own networks, but the Apple Game Center will be built into the tools it gives to developers of iOS apps, securing an edge over the existing networks.

Game Center will be one of many new features included in iOS 4.1, a new version of the iPhone and iPod touch operating system. Apple unveiled that and several other entertainment-related products at a live event today, including an updated iPod touch with the same screen and processor found in the iPhone 4.

Video game developer Epic Games joined Steve Jobs on stage to demonstrate a graphically impressive 3D game tentatively titled Project Sword that utilizes both the new hardware and the Game Center service. When one player invited another to join him in a one-on-one battle, the invitee received a push notification informing him of the challenge. He tapped accept and moments later was squaring off against his friend over the network.

Game Center will be free on all iOS devices. iOS 4.1 for iPhone and iPod touch will launch sometime next week, but the iPad version (iOS 4.2) won’t arrive until November.

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While there’s no iPhone app that can help you avoid hitting your thumb with a hammer, falling off a ladder or stepping in a tray of paint, certain apps can be a useful addition to your tool kit when attempting some DIY projects.

Here are five great apps that will assist you in illumination, estimation, decoration, organization and for those green-thumbed folk among you, even propagation. So grab your safety goggles and strap on the tool belt – handyman help awaits.

1. Sherwin-Williams ColorSnap

iPhone owners are privy to a large number of fantastic color-related apps, but this is our top choice for the DIYer as it offers some practical features. Say you’re out just living your life and suddenly you spot the exact shade (or shades) you’d love to decorate your kitchen with. Just snap a picture of the hue and this app will help you match it to the nearest Sherwin-Williams paint color.

You can also take the selected color and create a custom palette either based on your own choices, or from auto-generated suggestions. If you want a second opinion on your selected palette, you can share it via e-mail or Facebook, and then once you’ve made your final choice, the app offers map-based store locations and directions so you can go and purchase the Vogue Green and Java Brown you have your heart set on.

It goes without saying that the color representations (or matches) on the iPhone will depend on the quality of the light, and the paint may not be exactly the same as you’ve been seeing on your phone’s display. But it’s a free, high-tech alternative to endless sample strips, and a great way to record a favored shade on the go and match it to real-life products.

Cost: Free

2. KAD Software’s Estimation Apps

If you’re the type who can look at a wall, squint convincingly and suck in a breath before stating, with absolute confidence, “we’ll need 267 six by six tiles,” then skip these apps. But for anyone else who’s not a born guesstimator or mathlete, stay right here, as KAD Software’s apps might be of great help.

The company offers a bunch of estimation apps for all aspects of home improvement. Whether you need to know how many rolls of wallpaper you need, or how many cans of paint, or how much lumber, acoustic ceiling, sheathing, asphalt, and so on, these $0.99 apps are great.

There are free online tools that can help you with estimation needs, but if you’re in middle of Home Depot staring blankly at your room dimensions scribbled on a scrap of paper, you might want a slightly more portable solution that’s going to give you an accurate estimate.

Cost: $0.99 per app

3. Real Tools

First, we are not suggesting that “Real Tools” can replace your 18-inch Waterloo steel split-lid cantilever tool box with its precious cargo, but it could help you out in a fix.

With 18 “tools” in total, (16 of which work with later models of the iPod touch) the most useful are a ruler, the spirit level, flashlight, various digital angle gauges, a virtual tape measure and a plumb bob.

The claim from the developers is that if you wanted to buy all the tools included in this app in the real world it would set you back $1,200.00. We’re not sure about that, but what we can say is that the app looks, feels, and sounds good. Also, the tools we did test as per the list above, worked perfectly.

Cost: $1.99

4. Task This

Keeping a project on track can be half the battle for those of us that are less than motivated to really do it ourselves. So a project management app that can send you timely reminders to get to it, might be just what you need to turn your project from in-progress to ticked off the to-do list.

Task This is a really good place to start because its design and categories works really well for a DIY project.

There’s more to this app than we’re going to cover here (especially when you take into account the web sync options with www.task-this.com) but as far as home improvement planning goes, we’re interested in the app’s “projects,” shopping” and “reminders” functionality.

As you’d imagine, “shopping” lets you create lists of items associated to your projects, or standalone lists as well. Projects can be created with time parameters, status indicators and priority settings, and reminders can be set via push notifications (which will appear in the app’s calendar) to alert you at key points throughout.

As a free app, it’s rather good-looking and as comprehensive as many paid options out there.

Cost: Free

5. Gardening Toolkit

If you’re lucky enough to have a garden, then this app will help you make the most of it by providing detailed info and advice on planting and care for over 800 varieties of herbs, flowers and vegetables.

For novice gardeners, this handy app will keep you from planting some kind of flimsy fern suited to more tropical climates if you happen to reside in Chicago, by taking your geographical area’s climate into account and letting you know what will grow best.

Once you’ve narrowed down what you want to plant, you can read up on advice, set yourself a to-do list and then create your own garden profile by picking plants from the searchable database. It’s a great at-a-glance look at what’s growing, basic care info, and your own notes.

In addition, a colorful interface offers great photography, while the by-the-month advice section (e.g., August: It’s easy to get distracted by the long summer days, but the garden still needs attention.) will provide ne
w gardeners with time-tailored suggestions on what needs doing in the manner of a kindly, green-thumbed aunt.

Cost: $3.99

More iPhone resources from Mashable:

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– 10 Great iPhone Apps for Growing a Garden
– Top 6 Free World Cup iPhone Apps
– 5 Fantastic Free iPhone E-book Reader Apps
– 10 Essential Money-Saving iPhone Apps
– 10 Best iPhone Apps for Dog Lovers

Image courtesy of iStockphoto, Spiderstock

Google dropped a bombshell today, declaring that it won’t censor Chinese search results after sophisticated attacks on the Gmail accounts of Chinese human activists. This opens the door not only for China to kick Google out of its country, but for a renewal of the battle over censorship and government oppression in China.

I’m going to divide this analysis of the ramifications of Google’s decision into three sections: what this means for China, the impact of the decision on global politics and its potential effect on censorship itself.

What It Means for China: Not Much

Google may be taking a stand and threatening to pull out, but we predict that it won’t be enough to sway the Chinese government to let the Google China search engine run unfiltered, even if world governments apply strong pressure.

Let me make it clear: China has a long and disturbing history of censorship. I could link to hundreds of examples, but I think you get the picture.

Google isn’t the U.S. Government; it doesn’t have the political or technological leverage to make the Chinese government to do anything. Even the U.S. Government has limited influence, due to the economic ties between the two nations and our large debt to the Asian nation.

To think that China would change its rules and allow its citizens unfiltered access to what it believes is objectionable content (e.g. porn), as well as information and images on its greatest atrocities, is absurd. China backing off would weaken its iron-grip hold and open it up to more calls for the abolition of censorship inside its borders.

The end result is that Google will likely be gone from China and censorship will continue, at least in the short term. Only if Google agrees to some less-restricted censorship rules will the search engine be allowed to stay.

China’s about to feel some heat from the rest of the world, though.

The Global Censorship Debate Has Been Reignited

Google pulling out of China won’t be the end of the issue. Members of Congress have been very critical of not only China’s censorship and human rights violations, but of Google for complying with Chinese censors.

Now lawmakers and governments worldwide have another reason to speak out if China kicks Google out. The criticism will mount from institutions, organizations and governments worldwide over China’s decision.

Google’s positioning it so that this is China’s decision, not Google’s, over whether the search engine stays operational within the nation’s borders. This is a smart move on Google’s part and places China in an uncomfortable position.

The world will also begin to focus on the specifics of the attack on Google’s infrastructure. Who was targeted? How deep of a role did China play? What information do they have? What actions can be taken against China?

In the end, though, China is a sovereign nation with one of the world’s largest economies. There will be a lot of head-butting over the next few weeks, but we doubt that anything more severe than condemnations will be issued.

The posturing and criticism will, however, return the spotlight to China and its questionable practices. That is a good thing. The debate has been reignited, which will make us question once again what China is doing on the web and beyond.

The State of Censorship

The world’s focus on major issues comes and goes. It was red-hot on Iran during the Iran Election Crisis and has been on and off when it comes to Chinese censorship and their human rights violations.

Today’s move places the spotlight back on China and the state of censorship, at least for the next few weeks. The 24/7 news cycle will analyze all angles, especially if China does end up kicking Google out. The more information that comes out, the more pressure that will be placed on China.

Even though Google will likely be a casualty of the censorship war, it will not have been taken down in vain. Activists will be reinvigorated, new information will be revealed, and the fight against oppression will continue.

How the war will turn out or when it will end is anybody’s guess. We haven’t even come close to seeing the full implications of Google’s decision. You can bet, though, that the effect will be felt for years to come in political, social and technological circles worldwide.

Research firm Gartner has just put out a list of the top ten mobile applications of the future. Well, not the distant future, but the far off year of 2012. Nothing on the list is all that surprising or, in many cases, even all that new. Instead, the list includes the sorts of technologies that are just now coming into their own and haven’t yet seen widespread adoption as well as the already common technologies that are still experiencing growth.

For many of the categories on this list, there are a number of mobile apps that are already available today. But what Gartner makes clear is that we’re just getting started when it comes to their use.

For example, location-based services (LBS) – there still isn’t one single app which everyone uses to find their friends out in the real world via their mobile phones. Instead, we have a number of similar but competing applications all vying to be the Facebook of location-based apps.

Another example is money payments – this type of service is having more of an impact in the developing world right now where access to banks is more difficult than here in the Western world where people just want the convenience of paying through their mobiles. When was the last time you paid someone or paid at checkout through your mobile phone? Never? That sounds about right.

The List

The full list is as follows:

1. Money Transfer: This refers to people sending money via SMS messages. Like mobile payments, this service has more appeal in developing markets for now. However, there may come a time when even using your debit card seems passé, while paying for something with actual cash seems downright ancient.
2. Location-Based Services: As mentioned above, there are still far too many services to choose from when it comes to location-based social networking, fragmenting the market. Your friends on Loopt are often different than those on Brightkite and that list is different than those on Foursquare. But LBS extends to more than social networks – it includes any application that taps into your phone’s GPS capabilities to offer up location-based services of any kind, whether that’s local business reviews or directions to the nearest Starbucks. Gartner says this will be one of the most disruptive technologies in the future, with a user base growing from 96 million in 2009 to 526 million in 2012.
3. Mobile Search: No, mobile search isn’t new, but on the mobile platform, it may get shaken up a bit. Gartner predicts that consumers won’t necessarily be sticking with the search services they know and use on the Web (think Google, Bing, Yahoo) and instead experiment with using a few different search providers that have “unique technologies” for mobile search. While that statement is a little vague, it sounds like good news for services like Taptu who have entered this field with search offerings designed from the ground-up for mobile devices.
4. Mobile Browsing: Saying that mobile browsing technologies will be heavily used in the future sounds a little bit like stating the obvious. But as Gartner notes, mobile browsing capabilities currently exist only on 60%+ of handsets today. By 2013, that number will climb to 80%, meaning that those who are still using the app-less,more basic feature phones will still be joining the mobile web in mass numbers over the coming years. That’s also good news for web developers who can build mobile web applications to cater to this bunch as opposed to focusing all their efforts into building apps for the numerous mobile platforms like the iPhone, Android, RIM, and others.
5. Mobile Health Monitoring: Another technology whose impact will be felt more heavily in developing markets, mobile health monitoring is still at an early stage of maturity and implementation says Gartner. Project rollouts have been limited to pilot projects for now, but in the coming years the industry will begin to monetize these efforts by offering mobile healthcare monitoring products, services, and solutions to various care delivery organizations.
6. Mobile Payments: Like mobile transfers, mobile payments are more common in developing markets at the moment, but that is quickly changing. Yet even as this type of service grows, Gartner admits there will be challenges. Mobile payments will be a “highly fragmented market” where there will not be “standard practices of deployment,” notes the report. That makes it sound like this is one technology that will still need some work, even when 2012 rolls around.
7. Near Field Communications (NFC): More popular in some European and Asian markets than in the U.S., NFC still isn’t a standard feature on many of today’s phones. That may be about to change, too. In late 2010, Gartner says that NFC-enabled phones will begin to ship in volume, with Asia leading deployments, followed by Europe and North America.
8. Mobile Advertising: Also not new but growing fast, mobile advertising is one of the most important ways to monetize mobile content. Total spending on mobile advertising in 2008 was $530.2 million and it will grow to $7.5 billion in 2012. And mobile advertising will also be used by companies alongside their other campaigns including TV, radio, print, and outdoors.
9. Mobile Instant Messaging: Gartner says that latent user demand and market conditions are conductive to mobile IM’s future adoption. It will appeal to developing markets where mobile phones are often the only connectivity device a user owns. But will it be a major app by 2012? It seems that SMS is still the service to beat, especially in the developing world. We’ll have to wait and see on this one.
10. Mobile Music: Sure, you have the iPhone, but what about your other options? What about mobile music services – especially those for non-iPhone devices? We’re still waiting on Spotify in the U.S., for example, and their competition too. Gartner says that we’re beginning to see new innovative models in this area that will include both device (think “Comes with Music”) and service bundles.

What’s Missing?

A glaring omission from this report is that of Augmented Reality. Gartner had even placed this technology on their “Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies, 2009” report earlier this year. Do they not think that AR will have a major impact by 2012? Considering that’s only a little over a year away, it could just be too soon for AR to see the widespread adoption that we hoped it would have by then. Or it’s possible that – as some have suspected – AR is simply a “cool” way to see and interact with the world around you, but hasn’t produced any “must-have,” highly useful applications just yet. For example, seeing AR views of local businesses and user recommendations is fun, but is it a markedly better experience than using a service like Yelp? For many, that answer today is “no.” AR needs to grow out of being a technology you use “because you can” to one you use “because you have to.” Until it’s the best option to perform a particular task, it may not make Gartner's next list, either.