We all know Marissa Mayer is a tech nerd turned fashionista, and it looks like her taste for designer clothes is rubbing off on the search giant.

But unlike the media or mobile industries, the fashion industry appears safe from Google. Google is selling “Google-inspired” scarves and other clothing to the public that were designed by emerging designers. Last year, designers who participated in a Vogue and Council of Fashion Designer program were asked to create a one-of-a-kind item inspired by Google in some way that reflected Google’s aura. Google transformed the finalists creations into iGoogle Artists themes but selected three of the designers to produce and sell their Google-inspired couture.

Here’s the description of the scarf:

Flora Gill designed an oversize, multi-yarn, intarsia hand-knit scarf incorporating silk bias trim with wool and nylon yarn. Inspired by Google’s multi-functionality and diversity, the scarf features Google’s signature colors and is designed to be worn in several ways.

In case you were wondering about the “several ways” you can wear the scarf, I guess you can wear it as a headband, around your neck, or as an armband as a symbol of solidarity with the Googleplex. I don’t know about you, but to me the scarf aesthetically is not worth $300. I mean, come on, for $200 more I could get an iPad.

You can also purchase Peace “Vintage” T Shirt inspired by the point on a Google Map that will set you back by $85. And for any jewelry fans out there, Google is peddling a $200 Old Fashioned Magnifying Glass Pendant, meant to be inspired by Google’s search.

So what’s it like to be one of 200 people in the world to own the $12,950 Leica M7 Hermes? Quite good, as it turns out. Vlad Dusil (that’s his name, so you know where to direct your envy) of Purse Blog is among the chosen few, but he has blessed us with a quick photoshoot and a cursory impressions piece of the hardware itself. He isn’t gonna use it, mind you, as it’s an investment piece — in his words, “This camera will remain in its cozy silk-lined box until I get a worthy cabinet to display it in for a while, then it will go back to rest in its dark box.” Can’t be sure we wouldn’t do the same thing, though, if we had the kind of disposable income that’d afford a $13,000 device.

I can think of so many valid reasons why you need this massive 10 rack HP datacenter: Folding@home, downloading torrents, compiling your homemade videos, backing up your precious ROMs and so on. Just stick it in the backyard and you’ll be good to go. What’s that? $600k only gets you the enclosure and not the blade servers? Oh, well. Maybe you don’t need it after all.

The $600,000 price tag also doesn’t include IT support so you’ll likely need to hire a couple of 14-year old high school rejects to manage the servers. In fact they could probably hang-out in the 20ft x 8ft x 8ft enclosure has it has hookups for air and water. Interested? Expect delivery in about six weeks after you obtain a second mortgage on your home and place your order.

We just checked out Horizon Fuel Cell Technologies’ personal MiniPak fuel cell charger at CES last month, but the company’s already back with another product that promises to take fuel cells where you might not expect them: hobbyist R/C cars. That comes courtesy of the company’s new H-Cell 2.0 hydrogen fuel cell system, which is an add-on kit that’s designed to replicate the full-scale hydrogen systems now being used on actual cars. In fact, it can even be refueled using a model-scale hydrogen refueling station, which itself can be outfitted with solar panels or wind turbines for a completely carbon-free experience. No word on pricing just yet, but the kit will apparently be available on March 15th — head on past the break for a quick video demonstration.

Expect to see Atom-based netbooks speed up a little in the latter half of the year when Intel releases upgraded Atom CPUs able to talk to faster memory than the current lot can manage.

Today’s top-of-the-line netbook Atom, the 1.66GHz N450, connects to DDR 2 Ram through its built-in memory controller. Later this year, Intel will release the N455, which will hook up to DDR 3 memory.

DDR 2 runs at up to 800MHz. DDR 3 can clock at more than double that frequency.

What difference this will make to everyday netbook tasks remains to be seen. According to a report at website Fudzilla, the N455’s CPU core will still be clocked at 1.66GHz.

DDR 3 consumes less power than DDR 2, but since memory isn’t a key netbook power drain, the shift is unlikely to lead to any significant increase in battery life.

Twitter has lifted the lid on its recent advice to many users to reset their passwords for the micro-blogging site.

Originally, it was thought that the guidance had come in response to a common or garden phishing attack. In a post on Tuesday, Twitter explained that the attack was actually far more devious and elaborate.

Hackers established Torrent user sites and forums with hidden backdoors. They waited for these forums to grow in popularity before they harvested login details.

These login credentials were then used in attempts to break into accounts on third party sites such as Twitter. The attack relied on the frequent mistake of using the same password and user ID combination for multiple sites.

In other words, victims are using the same password/userID combo on warez forums and Twitter, a mistake that left them open to attack because unidentified hackers had backdoor access to these forums.

Twitter detected the attack after it became suspicious of a “sudden surge in followers” to two previously obscure accounts last week. Followers of these accounts were advised to change their passwords over concerns that hackers involved in the attack had compromised their accounts to, err, gain more followers on Twitter.

It’s unclear how many profiles were pwned by the attacks or what other sites might have been involved. All might have been prevented via the use of rudimentary password security precautions.

“The takeaway from this is that people are continuing to use the same email address and password (or a variant) on multiple sites,” writes Del Harvey director of Trust and Safety at Twitter. “We strongly suggest that you use different passwords for each service you sign up for,” he adds.

Internet Explorer has continued its gentle drift southwards, having missed any boost from last year’s release of IE 8 and the sales onslaught behind Windows 7.

Meanwhile, rival Firefox saw its forward market-share march apparently halted by continued uptake of Google’s Chrome for the month of January.

Netmarketshare numbers for January 2009 reveal that Microsoft’s browser has lost more than seven per cent market share compared a year ago, taking it to a new low of 62.12 per cent for all versions of IE. The browser is also down from 62.69 per cent in December 2009.

IE 8, released in March 2009, has 22.37 per cent market share, just inching past the browser-that-won’t die, IE 6, on 20 per cent. While it was crowing about IE’s growth and overlooking the market share decline, Microsoft repeated past calls for customers to abandon IE 6.

The decline in market share for Microsoft’s browser came despite what should have been a fillip produced by the sale of new PCs running Windows 7 during the last three months of 2009. Microsoft last week claimed 60 million licenses of Windows 7 have been sold to date, a fact that saw income for its Windows business unit grow 98 per cent to $5.3bn on revenue that also grew 69 per cent to $6.9bn.

Firefox seems to have lost a fraction of its market share to Google’s Chrome according to Netmarketshare. Firefox’s market share for January was 24.43 per cent versus 24.61 per cent in December. Chrome scored 5.22 per cent, up from 4.63 per cent. A year ago, Firefox had 22.11 per cent market share while Chrome scored 1.52 per cent.

Microsoft investigating reports of battery-expiration problems about which a number of Windows 7 users are complaining.

On TechNet, there’s a growing thread of complaints about the battery issues. In some cases, users said Windows 7 appears to be draining their batteries too quickly, especially in the case of netbooks. Other users said Windows 7 was providing them with warnings that their batteries were in danger of expiring or damaged, even when they were fully charged and fine. It’s unclear whether it is only users upgrading from Vista to Windows 7 who are being affected, or whether the problem also is hitting those with brand-new Windows 7 PCs.

The complaints about problems with Windows 7 and batteries predate the release to manufacturing of the operating system last summer. But some in the TechNet forum claim Windows 7 beta and Release Candidate (RC) builds didn’t experience these problems, but the final RTM version did.

On February 2, Microsoft officials said they were looking into the reports in conjunction with PC makers.

Twitter is locking many users out of the system this morning, and sending them notices that they need to change their passwords in order to regain access to the service, due to concerns over a possible phishing attack.

While some people are worried that the e-mails might have actually been a phishing attack, there’s a flood of tweetsfrom users having received the same message after effectively getting denied access to their accounts, so this seems 100% legit.

Earlier this week Apple unveiled its long awaited tablet, now known as the Apple iPad. While much of the conversation has been around justifying the purchase, others have been more concerned with the name. First, there was a sketch on MADtv a few years back about an iPad feminine product, and now it’s coming to light that as of this writing, three companies (Fujitsu, MagTek, and STMicroelectronics) have been using the name iPad as either the name of their device, or as an acronym. 

Now the big question is whether or not Apple is violating any trademarks and if so, if the company will either have to change the name of its new tablet or reach a settlement. 

Since I’m not an attorney, I reached out to Doug Wolf, Co-Chair Trademarks, from Wolf Greenfield & Sacks for his opinion, and have quoted him below: [disclaimer: Doug has advised me in the past] 

    “Just because Fujitsu has the senior rights does not mean that they can stop Apple. They need to demonstrate that they are in a sufficiently close marketplace or other such factors so that the consuming public may be confused as to source. Would someone buying the Apple iPad believe it comes from Fujistu (or vice-versa)? Not sure that this is necessarily the case since the purposes of the goods seem to have some difference and the price points are probably significant.
Plus, the Apple product will have the housemark APPLE all over the place (and Fujitsu will have its mark) that many of the determinative factors in trademark infringement analysis may possibly favor APPLE. 

    One interesting note, but not of real trademark significance, is that Apple filed this application in Trinidad to establish an early date (July 2009) and then filed in the US. They also filed the mark in the name of a company called IP Application Development which is probably intended to preclude detection. They need to be very careful if they are going to transfer that mark to Apple, Inc. since they need to have set up IP as a legitimate business rather than
merely for filing and transferring the mark to Apple, Inc. later. If they created the holding company merely for the purpose of filing the application with the decision to transfer later, they could be jeopardizing their filing. 

    Finally, one of the problems with marks like IPAD is that the fewer the letters, the more likely you will have a crowded field. The Trademark Office basically gives no weight to the letter “I” since it has been determined to stand for electronic or internet. I understand the goal of Apple to continue its family of “I” marks, but it carries many difficulties in creating a distinguished brand when the number of other short “I” marks already exist.”

I then asked Doug if Apple runs the risk of losing this battle if more companies surface that have been using the name iPad. His response is below: 

    “No. Picking a 4 letter mark with the first letter being “generic” is very difficult, almost impossible to clear. I am sure that they have litigation in the budget and/or money to try to buy these other marks.” 

With Apple now being a $50+ billion company, according to Steve Jobs, I’d say that there’s plenty of money in there for some litigation. 

It will be interesting to see what happens next. Apple was previously in a trademark dispute with Cisco over the iPhone name, but then both sides reached an agreement, allowing each to be free to use the “iPhone” trademark on their products throughout the world. Will the same thing happen again for Apple? We’ll see soon enough.