PayPal has announced a cool new way to transfer money from one person to another. It involves the use of the NFC technology found in some of today’s smartphones.

To make this work, all you have to do is install the PayPal widget on your phone. Then you enter the amount that you want to receive in this widget and touch your phone to the person’s phone who will be sending you the money. Once the phone vibrates, the other person is asked to enter their pin number, following which the transaction is completed and you get the money along with a confirmation email. Read more »

They took their sweet time with it but Twitter has finally updated the Android version of their mobile app to include two of the most requested features; push notifications and multiple accounts.

As the name suggests, push notifications gives you updates about your @mentions, direct messages and tweets instantly without you having to manually refresh or set an automatic refresh duration. Having personally tested this feature I can say it works as advertised. Read more »

Nokia may not care much about MeeGo but they sure do care about the N9 a lot and are doing their best to keep interest alive in the product alive. Their recent effort in achieving this goal involves creating a series of six ultra quick and interlinked nine second ads for the N9. Nokia claims these are the world’s quickest ads.

Each of the six ads are based around one of the N9′s key feature, such as the swipe gesture, web browser, social media connectivity, maps, camera and the all-screen design. All six ads are on YouTube now and after watching them all, I must they didn’t make a lot of sense. But I guess they are not supposed to make a lot of sense. Read more »

Apple has released the third beta of the iOS 5 for developers. Along with performance update and bug fixes, this new update also adds a lot of minor changes across the OS.

For starters, you now have the option to enable or disable location services while setting up the phone. You also have more options to choose from for enabling or disabling location services. There is an option of disabling voice roaming now along with data. Read more »

Taking a screenshot on Android continues to be a massive pain in the posterior. After three years and five versions Google still hasn’t incorporated this feature in the OS. And if that wasn’t bad enough there is no solution in the form of a third-party app on the Android Market, at least not without rooting your phone first. If you don’t want to root your only other option is using the Android SDK on your PC.

CyanogenMod has announced that they will be adding the ability to take native screenshots by long-pressing the power button in v7.1. It also brings back touch-to-focus on HTC phones. The v7.1.0 RC1 is currently available for you to try and has been deemed stable enough for daily use. Read more »

Continuing with their newly adopted speedy release cycle for Firefox, Mozilla has now launched the first beta for the Firefox 6 desktop browser for Windows, Mac and Linux based computers along with the Android version.

The following are the list of changes in the desktop version of Firefox 6: Read more »

HTC Thunderbolt users on Verizon are being treated to a new software update, v1.70.605.0. Unfortunately, this won’t update the phone to Gingerbread but brings with it some nice new features as well as fixes some issues with the current firmware.

For starters it reduces the number of power cycles and resets on the phone. There is also an improvement in data connectivity. Apart from that you get enhanced call history view, tabbed layout in application menu, people search function, Backup Assistant, Desktop cradle app and the addition of NY Times as a bookmark in the browser. Read more »

So far there has been a lack of a good turn-by-turn navigation software for the Windows Phone 7 platform. So to address this issue, Garmin has stepped in and released their StreetPilot app on the Windows Marketplace.

The app costs a hefty $39.99 but comes with a host of features such as the aforementioned voice prompted, turn-by-turn navigation, real time traffic updates, integrated local search, lane assist with junction view, current weather with forecast, etc. Read more »

Although the Motorola Xoom launched with the bragging rights of being the first ever Honeycomb tablet, it never really tasted the kind of successes that Motorola (or Google) may have been hoping for. Not only was it considerably overshadowed by the iPad, it also got forgotten when newer and more exciting Honeycomb tablets started appearing.

One of the reasons for its lackluster sales could be attributed to its high price. So to address this Motorola has finally slashed the price of the base model by $100, bringing it down to $499. This, coupled with the fact that it has 32GB on-board storage, unlike 16GB on most of its similarly priced rivals, makes it bit better value. Read more »

The juggernaut that is the iOS App Store has reached yet another landmark. Apple is now reporting that users have downloaded over 15 billion apps till now from range of 425,000 apps out of which 100,000 are native iPad apps. Apple also said that they have collectively paid developers a cool $2.5 billion, while earning about a billion dollars for themselves thanks to the 70:30 policy.

Whichever way you look at them, those are some serious numbers, especially for a store that came into existence only three years ago. I’m sure Apple competitors would kill to have these numbers, apart from Android which is the only one that comes close. Of course, while it may not be so great for the competitors, the developers are laughing all the way to the bank and even the customers couldn’t be happier with the kind of choice they have. Here’s to another 15 billion downloads. Read more »

According to a 30-day survey conducted by Nielsen, games is the most popular category of apps downloaded and used in the US on mobile phones. 64% of the users that were asked said they played games on their phones, with 60% using weather apps and 56% using social networking apps. Also, 93% said that they wouldn’t mind spending their money for a game, as compared to 87% for apps in the entertainment category and 84% for productivity.

On an average, users spend 7.8 hours playing games on their phones. iOS users spend the maximum amount of time, clocking at 14.7 hours while Android users come second with 9.3 hours. Those with BlackBerries, Windows Mobile/Phone devices and feature phones spend less than under 5 hours each Read more »

Stephen Elop may have said that Nokia will not be looking back at MeeGo even if the N9 becomes a success but that does not mean Nokia will be abandoning it altogether after launch.

This assurance comes from Nokia’s Head of Portfolio Management, Klas Ström, who tweeted that Nokia will continue to support the N9 for years and release several software updates for it. We hope Nokia doesn’t plan on launching a buggy device to be actually needing those updates badly but it is nice to know in case it does have a problem you won’t be left out in the cold. Read more »

Although the Americans weren’t exactly starved of good free online music services (Rdio, Grooveshark, Zune Pass, just to name a few) they were deprived of the fabulous Spotify that the Europeans know and love. But not for long. Spotify has just announced that they will be bringing their musical goodness to the good people of Unites States of America.

No launch dates have been mentioned so far but Spotify has started accepting invites on their website. The service is currently being tested in the US and should be available for use soon. Meanwhile you can continue rocking whatever service you have been using so far. Read more »

The popular iPad has reached yet another milestone where it has grabbed 1.03% of the global web browser market share as of June, 2011. This includes all the web browser, including desktop ones like Internet Explorer and Firefox. To put these figures into perspective, the eight year-old desktop Safari browser has a market share of 7.15% whereas the fifteen year-old Opera browser has a mere 1.11% market share as of April, 2011.

These figures are even higher in the US, where the iPad accounts for 2.1% whereas the iPhone and Android devices have 2.9% and 2.6% market share respectively. Read more »

The LG Optimus 3D has just started selling in the UK and along with it are coming some exclusive 3D games for it, courtesy of Gameloft.

You will now be able to play popular titles such as Asphalt 6, N.O.V.A. 2 and Let’s Golf 2 in all their three dimensional glory on the Optimus 3D’s glasses-free 3D display. And that’s not all Read more »