French iPhone sales: Mobile operator, Orange, reports that close to 30,000 iPhones have been purchased in the first week of sales. Of those, approximately 1,500 were sold without contract and could be unlocked for an additional €100. Orange telecom expects to sell 100,000 iPhones in France by December 31st.

Google goes Apple gaga: Google has opened the "Google Mac Playground" to showcase its developers "20% time" open source projects. For iPhone tinkerers, check out iPhoneDisk. It allows you to read and write files to your iPhone over USB.

Speaking of iPhone and Google, Google's home page has been given an iPhone makeover. Users who navigate to google.com on their iPhones will be redirected to the new tabbed site.

Intel chip schedule: Intel will ship its new 45nm Penryn-based Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Extreme dual core processor on January 6th, just in time for CES and the Mac Expo. These sure would be great in a ultra-portable MacBook.