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BERLIN — Nokia said Tuesday it had settled a two-year-old global patent fight with Apple over smartphone technology through a licensing agreement that will commit Apple to make a one-time payment to its Finnish competitor and to pay regular royalties in the future.

Today we're hosting a media event in San Francisco to talk about search and introduce some new search-related features. We'd like to invite you to tune in live from 9:30 - 11:00am PDT. You can watch the live stream on our new Inside Search site or on the Google YouTube Channel at www.youtube.com/google.

Google's done a ton of talking about search at its Inside Search event today, and two of the biggest new developments are on the desktop. It's just announced that Android-style Voice Search is headed to Chrome (with support for English only, initially), and that it will be joined by a new Search by Image feature (also available in Chrome, or Firefox with an extension).

Music streaming service Pandora has priced its IPO at $16 per share, valuing the company at $2.6 billion. The company originally set the range of its IPO at $7 to $9 per share, at a market cap of $1.3 billion; but upped the range last week to $10 to $12 per share, giving the company a valuation of $1.9 billion.

This week, Paliath posted a raw dump (with some redactions) of some tests conducted with beta versions of iOS5, and conclude that Apple is at least using Azure as a content-delivery network (CDN). The dump file Paliath posted indicates that an image sent through iMessage passes through Microsoft's Binary Large Object (BLOB) Service. Paliath speculates that Apple doesn't actually host the iCloud content, but instead manages links to content.

Pandora has an agreement with an entity called SoundExchange for its streaming rights, that goes to 2015. And between now and 2015, the rates Pandora pays are expected to go up by 37% for songs streamed by free listeners, and by a jaw-dropping 47% for songs streamed by paid subscribers. On top of all that, Pandora has deals with other bodies like BMI and SESAC, to which it pays 1.75% and 0.38% of gross revenue respectively.

Live video of the Lunar Eclipse - and check out the Google Doodle!!

"I don't think you should go after little 8 year olds that are crying and singing Justin Bieber because it's their favorite person in the world," said YouTube Lip-syncer Cubby Squires. U.S. Senate bill 978 would toughen copyright laws and make it illegal to upload lip-synced videos. Squires uploaded a video lip-syncing and dancing to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” to YouTube two years ago. 51 million views later and an appearance on stage with Beyonce… and he's got cyber success.

A bill to amend the criminal penalty provision for criminal infringement of a copyright, and for other purposes.

As we understand it, Project Spartan is the codename for a new platform Facebook is on verge of launching. It’s entirely HTML5-based and the aim is to reach some 100 million users in a key place: mobile. More specifically, the initial target is both surprising and awesome: mobile Safari. Yes, Facebook is about to launch a mobile platform aimed squarely at working on the iPhone (and iPad). But it won’t be distributed through the App Store as a native application, it will be entirely HTML5-based and work in Safari. Why? Because it’s the one area of the device that Facebook will be able to control (or mostly control).

More important than the UI update, however, is how it’s been built and delivered. Behind Xcalibur is a cloud-based platform that moves the intelligence out of the set-top box and into the network. For consumers, the move to a cloud-based system will largely be seamless. But for Comcast, moving to the cloud means it will be able to build new features, improve the user interface and iterate on its product more quickly and easily than if was building for individual set-top boxes.

With this week's launch of a new Google tool called "Me on the Web," Google wants to help users better understand and manage their online identities, as well as learn how to remove unwanted content from Google search results.

earch tool for finding apps on your phone, along with a recommendation engine that can (with your permission) review your installed apps and suggest new ones you'd like, refreshed on a daily basis. The recommendations seem a little offbeat (I have no idea why my 'News' suggestions include the Emma Watson app, unless it's tracking off the Harry Potter Lego game), but we'll see if they improve over time.