Following in the footsteps of Apple, one of its biggest competitors, a Google employee left a Nexus 4 prototype at a bar in San Francisco. Refusing a free phone, the man who found it decided to leak details of the device to media outlets.

Turns out Apple isn’t the only one who knows how to lose a smartphone in a bar because it looks like someone at Google did the same thing. To refresh your memory, a man named Brian Hogan found an iPhone 4 prototype in a bar left behind by an Apple engineer. Hogan ended up selling it to Gizmodo for $5,000 and consequently ended up in a lot of trouble. This story ends a little differently.

The bar this time around was the 500 Club in San Francisco. It happened on a Tuesday of last month. Jamin Barton, a bartender nicknamed “Sudsy”, found the phone while closing. At first, he didn’t think anything of it.

“We find about 20 a week,” Barton told Wired. ”Most people come back for them in 15 minutes.”

But this particular phone didn’t seem like the others. Nobody came to pick it up and Barton noticed quite a few peculiar features like a lack of SIM card and a “not for sale” sticker accompanying a Google logo on the rear panel. Once he showed it to fellow 500 Club employee, Dave, it was confirmed to be the upcoming Nexus 4.

The Nexus 4 is the smartphone Google was planning to unveil in New York on October 29, but that event has since been cancelled due to Hurricane Sandy. And, we might add, every detail about the Nexus 4 has already been leaked, including photos of the device. It will be manufactured by LG and have a 4.7 inch display, a quad-core processor, and ship with Android 4.2. If it was meant to be a secret then Google clearly dropped the ball.

Dave took over from there, offering to call Google HQ and explain what had happened. And much like Apple, Google blew the whole thing out of proportion. Brian Katz, Google’s global investigations and intelligence manager, was sent to the 500 Club almost immediately. Dave assured Google that Barton would hand over the phone as long as whoever picked it up confirmed their affiliation with Google.

Long story short, after some drama involving a riot and the local police station, Dave handed the phone over to Katz. In exchange, Katz offered Barton a free phone if he would agree to keep the incident under wraps and not discuss it with the pubic until after the official announcement. Obviously, Barton refused the offer and was paid a freelance fee by Wired for providing photos published alongside the article. Looks like isn’t the only one that’s lost control of its secrets. 

In Jetsetter for the week ending Oct. 27, FIFA players jockey to become replace the Dunbarton Sons football team manager spot in Scotland, Italy's first video game museum opens in Rome, and Indiagames loses its chief after Disney acquisition.

One would think that thanks to the Internet, memes, trends, and brands would be global experiences all the time. We assume that because “Gangam Style” got huge in Korea, then huge in the United States, that it’s also huge in Estonia. The World Wide Web may extend its tendrils into every inch of the world, but culture is still regional. Video games demonstrate it nicely. Sailor Moon hasn’t been big in Japan or the US since the 1990s, but Italy’s so enamored with the evil fighting schoolgirls that it released a Sailor Moon DS game just last year. That’s why there’s Jetsetter.

Welcome back to Jetsetter, Digital Trends’ weekly column looking at the international world of video games. People in the US like their Madden NFL and Call of Duty. You already know that. But do you know about the German development house still making Neo-Geo games? We’ve got your back.

* 75% of applications for Scottish soccer team manager job are from FIFA players.

It’s kind of like The Last Starfighter, but with hooliganism and football instead of aliens! The Dumbarton Sons, a Scottish soccer team, recently fired its manager Alan Adamson. Sons chief exectuive Gilbert Lawrie told The Daily Mail that many people have already applied for the job, but the majority of them only have management experience in EA’s hugely popular FIFA games. “I can tell you I’ve had dozens and dozens of applications and it takes a while to sift through the CVs of people who have won the Champions League on FIFA 12. Probably 75 percent of the applications so far are from people who taken a team from a low ebb to great heights on a computer screen, which is a great achievement for them but perhaps not what we are looking for at this time.” Back to Xbox Live with the lot of you!

* Video game museum opens in Italy.

When in Rome, do as the Romans do and celebrate video game history by visiting Vigamus, Italy’s newest gaming museum. The museum opened for business just one week ago on Oct. 20. “We have problems here recognizing the cultural and artistic value of games,” Vigamus director Marco Accordi Rackards told Edge, “In Italy we don’t have a very solid industry, as developers; we have a strong market, but that doesn’t help very much because people think of video games just as toys—something you buy, sell, promote, not a cultural industry where you create. We want to push the cultural value of video games, to educate those familiar with games and those who aren’t.”

 

* Managing Director of Disney India’s interactive division resigns.

Disney’s been bulking up its video game development in India, acquiring Indiagames and its shareholder UTV back in March. While Disney brought many of the developers and executives at those companies into the newly formed Disney UTV Digital, an exodus of employees are is starting within the company. Medianama reported this week that Disney UTV managing director Samir Bangara, one of the chief architects of Indiagames, has resigned. More are expected to follow his lead. For anyone in the west unfamiliar, Indiagames is that nation’s equivalent of Ubisoft subsidiary Gameloft, pumping out a number of popular iPhone and iPad titles like its series Cricket Fever.

Are you struggling to learn Windows 8? These eight top tips will help you grasp Microsoft's new OS quickly.

Windows 8 includes many new features which give users the opportunity to use Windows in different ways. A new interface, and new ways to interact with your computer, as well as new shortcuts, new menus and an entirely new class of apps, are all waiting within the new OS. All of these features can be useful, that is, if you know how to use them. Learning these tricks is easier and more useful if you actually try them out, so grab your Windows 8 device and give it a go as we dive in and take a look at eight new tricks for Windows 8.

Search by category

Windows 7 included a search feature that was handy, but Windows 8 ups the ante by providing even better search functionality via the Windows 8 UI. It’s now possible to filter your search by apps, settings, or files. You can access the search function from any screen by placing your cursor in the upper right hand corner of your display. This will activate the “Charms” bar, which includes a magnifying glass for search. The result is familiar. Select a category and type in what you’re looking for.

It’s also possible to access search using hotkeys. Win + F will take you to Files, Win + W will take you to Settings, and Win + Q will take you to Apps.

Manipulate the Start screen

Windows populates the new user interface with tiles automatically, but, since every user is different, it may not pick the best apps for you. However, it is possible to un-pin and re-size tiles just by right-clicking on them. Want to modify multiple tiles? Simply right-click on them in succession to do so. Tiles can also be moved using the good ol’ drag-and-drop technique.

You’ll also notice that the tiles are placed in groups. To modify them, click on the minimize button in the lower right-hand corner (it’s very small, next to the scroll bar), and then right-click groups to add names or delete them.

What about pinning all-new apps or functons? For that, go to the Apps search page and find what you want to add to the Start menu. Right-click and then click Pin to Start. This only works for apps — not settings or files.

Tab through Windows 8 apps only

Alt + Tab is a classic shortcut for moving through different app windows quickly. Now it is being joined by a new hotkey: Win + Tab. Pressing these two together will bring up a new interface on the left-hand side of the screen that lets you move only through Windows 8 apps. It’s a nice way of multi-tasking when you are not in the classic desktop environment.

Gain context and snap windows

The top of a new Windows 8 app is an important part of the app interface. Once inside the app, placing the mouse cursor on the top of the screen will turn the cursor into a hand. Once that’s happened, you can right-click to open up a context menu that will provide a few useful options. It’s usually not much, but the specifics depend on the app.

Doing this also lets you use the new snap features in the Windows 8 interface. To activate this, left-click and drag downwards, and the window will shrink. Now, drag the window to the right or left and watch it automatically snap to that portion of the screen. You can use this to watch information in one Windows 8 app while primarily using another. This will continue to function in the desktop if you go to it after snapping a Windows 8 app to the left or right side of the screen.

Access settings quickly

Underneath the new interface, all of the old Windows 7 utilities are — for the most part — still there. That being said, you may not need to access them often due to a new PC settings interface. You can access setting by searching for “PC settings” or by pressing Win + I and the clicking the Change PC Settings link at the bottom. This new interface will let you handle basic settings pertaining to network connectivity, privacy, and currently-connected devices, among other things. This is often the fastest way to change basic settings.

That same Win + I menu can also be used to power off your computer or change screen brightness without having to open the Change PC Settings link.

Learn Ribbon and the Quick Access toolbar

Windows 8′s other big interface change is the addition of the Ribbon to Internet Explorer. The icon-driven UI replaces the text-menu interface of  the old version. However, it only sometimes appears by default. To summon it, you need to use the new option tabs at the top of Explorer (Home, Share, View, etc.). You also an click the tack icon at the upper right or you can use the Ctrl + F1 hotkey.

When Ribbon is not active you will see the slimmer Quick Access toolbar. It has only a few fuctions by default, but users can add more. To do this, open the Ribbon, right-click on an icon, and then click “add to Quick Access toolbar.”

Get to know your history

One of the best feature in Windows 8 is File History. It’s an automatic update service that  can back up information to a second drive and also lets you selectively restore data. First, however, you have to open and access it. To do this, search for File history in the  settings search. Open it, and then click the Turn On button. File History handles the rest.

If the drive you want to back up to is not selected you can change drives by clicking the “Select a drive” link on the left. You also can restore files by clicking the “Restore personal files” link.

Access system functions with an old-fashioned hotkey

Though Windows 8 tosses out the old Start button, it does add another menu that can be of use. The menu doesn’t have a particular name, but it’s accessed using the Win + X hotkey and it appears where Start used to be (the lower left hand side).

From this menu it’s possible to access a number of utilities like Control Panel, Task Manager, and the Device Manager. It’s an old-fashioned menu that uses a gray background with black text but it will appear in either the desktop environment or the new Windows 8 UI.

Do you use or know of any good Windows 8 tips and tricks? Let us know below.

With real productivity apps, a clever keyboard cover and a well-engineered design, the Surface tablet stands a real chance of cutting into iPad sales… if Microsoft will throw enough money at the marketing.

All these “killer this” and “killer that” comparisons get out of control. Every new challenger is hyped as the killer of what came before. But sometimes, it’s true. The iPad really turned out to be a PC killer; folks bought iPads instead of buying new PCs, and that market took a pretty big hit. Apple pulled this off by building something that changed the rules for a PC, and we saw it differently.

Where the PC was about performance, the iPad was about portability. Where the PC was about mice and keyboards, the iPad opted for touch, and where the PC was generally about productivity, the iPad was about entertainment.

But it forced a hard choice that most of us didn’t really want to make: tablet or laptop? This was because the iPad was really a netbook that swapped the keyboard and mouse for a touchscreen, and the iPad’s shortcomings made it a very difficult product to live on exclusively. Most iPad buyers had to keep their PCs or buy MacBooks, and that took what was already an expensive solution and increased it.

With the Surface, Microsoft is trying to reverse the deck and do to Apple what Apple did to it.

Productivity

The Surface comes with Microsoft Office, the unchallenged, dominant desktop productivity product in the market. In fact, the ARM-based Surface actually bundles in Office, so you get productivity capability out of the box, putting it ahead of most PCs. But let’s not stop there, because unlike Apple, Microsoft isn’t being as restrictive of apps that fall into their turf. For instance, the apps can share data, so you can be looking up restaurants on one screen, and then simply click to bring up navigation, or some other app that can use the information from that initial screen. Microsoft also designed in a high degree of accuracy, so you can use a stylus, a tool typically preferred over a finger for creating art or editing pictures. These aren’t netbooks with touchscreens instead of keyboards, they are full PCs. That generally means you should be able to leave the laptop at home or in the office more often.

Designed from the inside out

Apple designs from the outside in. While this does result in beautiful products, it also results in painful problems like Antennagate, or cost problems, which may explain why the iPad mini is priced a whopping 60 percent above the rest of the market. This is also why the first iPhone, when it was presented, was pretty much a pretty brick that took months to get working. When car companies take this approach, you get rolling art that costs a fortune to maintain and isn’t very reliable.

Microsoft made big point of designing from the inside out. Engineers got the product properly equipped, adequately reinforced, and balanced before designers wrapped the result in a pretty case. The end result is a tablet with a screen optimized for movies and video, a balance that makes it feel lighter than it is, and a full set of features. (It’s missing a 4G radio, but because only about 10 percent of tablets have WAN radios turned on.) Microsoft even put in a fast-charge battery, so you can go from dead to near full charge in around two hours. Oh, and another in-your-face move is that while Apple uses magnetic plugs to charge for their laptops (which uniquely saves the laptop if you trip over the cord), it doesn’t appear on the iPad. The Surface does have this magnetic design. When Apple and Microsoft signed the last cross licensing agreement, Microsoft agreed not to copy the iPad. Instead, it ripped a part off the MacBook to improve its own tablet. Now that really is getting in Apple’s face.

The necessity of a keyboard

A few years back, before the iPad, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs were on stage, and Bill said something to the effect that tablets were the future for mobile PCs. Steve pretty much said that only idiots would buy a tablet, because a keyboard was simply too irreplaceable.

Now, both the iPad and Surface tablets have optional magnetic covers, but only Microsoft’s comes with a built-in keyboard. This makes it look like the Surface Tablet is a better presentation of Jobs’ vision than the iPad, and that is about as “in your face” as we can get.

I think it would be fun to run the clip of Steve Jobs calling tablets without keyboards stupid right after a clip of Tim Cook talking about tablets with keyboards as the ugly result of refrigerators and toasters mating, and then follow it with the number of iPad keyboards sold (the market for this has turned out to be impressively large).

Marketing is key

After seeing the cringe-worthy Olympics ads that Apple did, I’m convinced that a lot of talented people left the company after Steve Jobs passed. This gives Microsoft the potential to out-market Apple this round. Kathleen Hall’s advertising team at Microsoft is considered one of the best in the business, but Microsoft traditionally underfunds advertising. If it does that here, this potential Apple killer will follow the Zune into the dustbin of history. The initial TV ads are good, but they’ll need Apple-like seeding and sustained marketing programs (read: loads of cash) to assure this “killer” product reaches its potential. If it opens its wallet wide enough for that, Microsoft may do to Apple what Apple did to it with the iPod, iPhone and iPad, and find that revenge can be oh so sweet.