Well, that must be embarrassing: Nokia gets a fancy countdown clock set up on its Facebook page as a teaser for something new on Symbian, and the file it set up still says “belle_fb_TeaserMain” in it. It doesn’t anymore, but the cat’s already out of the bag; on Wednesday morning Espoo will most likely unveil Belle, its forthcoming bump up from Symbian Anna. We’re unsure of the exact details that’ll be shared, though we’ve already seen enough of the new update to know what to expect: with a couple lengthy videos (embedded below), multitudes of screenshots and a leaked version of Belle floating around somewhere, there isn’t much of a mystery left to shed light on. That said, we’re still hoping we’ll see some device announcements as well as dates and device compatibility. Perhaps Mr. Elop just wants us to think it’s Belle, in which case this would be the best teaser of all, because last we heard Mr. Elop is no longer interested in Symbian.

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To whet Texans’ appetite for open-cockpit cars that turn left and right, Red Bull put David Coulthard in its Formula 1 publicity chassis and turned him loose on the streets of Austin. This may technically qualify as “messing with Texas.”

Believe it or not, webOS chief Stephen DeWitt told AllThingsD on Monday that webOS is going to be a popular platform on a variety of connected devices. The outlook seems somewhat unusual given that HP publicly nuked its plans to continue development of smartphones and tablets based on its just-acquired webOS software. And right now it seems that the platform itself has been put “on hold” although it’s expected to appear on PCs and printers possibly next year.

The problem HP currently faces is that it’s not sure where the future of webOS resides. There are a number of options on the tablet including licensing out the operating system to other manufacturers, partner with a single company to produce devices, shift its webOS focus from smartphones and tablets entirely and a few other ideas. And despite what’s happened since HP acquired (and dismantled) Palm, there are external third parties still interested in the software.

“We’ve had a number of discussions and there’s a lot of interest around webOS,” said DeWit.

One aspect of the webOS future seems certain: it will arrive on HP desktops and printers. “We are continuing with our webOS-on-Windows work,” DeWitt said. The company will honor its previous commitments, but when that will take place he wouldn’t say, only indicating that the company will reveal its plans when it’s ready.

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Researchers at the Computer Vision Center in the Autonomous University of Barcelona in Spain and at the Psychology of Princeton University claim to have developed a technology that can determine whether your traits fall in categories such as attractive or threatening with an accuracy level of at least 90 percent.

The idea here is, for example, to use such a system for new human interaction technologies online – or simply services such as partnership sites. “The perception of dominance has been shown to be an important part of social roles at different stages of life, and to play a role in mate selection,” said Mario Rojas from the University of Barcelona. “If the information on which the evaluation of faces is based could be automatically learned, it could be modeled and used as a tool for designing better interactive systems.”

The scientists said that were able to use machine learning techniques to train a computer system to evaluate nine different facial traits, including attractive, competent, trustworthy, dominant, mean, frightening, extroverted, threatening, and likable.

The algorithm was tested on a set of synthetic facial images that were generated based on the opinions of people which facial features express certain traits, such as trustworthiness or dominance. A subset of these images was used to teach the computer how to read a face and the remaining pictures were used to test what the computer had learned. The result? Three traits, dominant, threatening and mean, were found to be predictable with accuracies between 91 percent and 96 percent.

Another result included the conclusion that the area around the eyes contains more information about attractiveness, while the area around the mouth is more informative about extroversion.

SOURCE via Eurekalert

Now that HP is liquidating its stock of TouchPad tablets with a “fire sale” which initially kicked off on Friday evening (instead of dumping them all in a landfill), what will consumers actually do with their new $100 tablet? The good news is that HP plans to continue support for both models, offering updates to the webOS system when needed.

But for those who don’t want webOS on the device, there’s even more good news: a port of Google 3.x “Honeycomb” is on the way. The project is in the good hands of the RootzWiki-based collective which aims to keep the project “as open as possible.”

According to this post, the first step will be to build with Gingerbread following the Android Open Source Project. Once the team is able to boot the device using Gingerbread, they’ll switch over to CyanogenMOD CM7 and continue on until a stable beta is reached. After that, they will continue to provide bug fixes for the Gingerbread build, but also begin working on a full Honeycomb port.

“If Ice Cream Sandwich (ICS) is released before or during our development of the Honeycomb port, we will stop and begin work on ICS,” the Touchdriod team states. Thomas Sohmers, one of the developers behind the project, also adds that they plan to have “a screen based button system similar to Honeycomb within Gingerbread.”

To keep up with the porting progress, head here. The group is also accepting donations via PayPal just in case someone accidentally bricks their TouchPad tablet in the process or if one needs to be taken apart for any reason.

Sunday Skype announced that it is acquiring mobile group messaging service provider GroupMe. According to Skype, the latter company has created an “incredibly sticky” group messaging experience that works across mobile devices and platforms, making it a perfect addition to the Skype client’s library of features.

“This acquisition is another step towards our vision to provide a global multi-modal and multi-platform communications experience,” Skype said in a blog. “It complements our existing leadership in voice and video communications by providing best in class mobile text-based communications and innovative features around group messaging that enable users to connect, share locations and photos and make plans with their closest ties.”

“This latest acquisition, coupled with our acquisition of Qik earlier this year, augments our role as an innovator in driving unique mobile user experiences,” the company added.

The news arrives months after Microsoft Corp purchased Skype Global for $8.5 billion in cash from the investor group led by Silver Lake. Skype will become a new business division within Microsoft, and Skype CEO Tony Bates will assume the title of president of the Microsoft Skype Division, reporting directly to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

“Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world,” said Ballmer in May. “Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.”

Microsoft said that Skype will support devices like Xbox and Kinect, Windows Phone and “a wide array of Windows devices.” In turn, Microsoft will connect Skype users with Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live and other communities, and will also continue to invest in and support Skype clients on non-Microsoft platforms.

As for the latest acquisition, GroupMe was founded in 2010 at the Techcrunch Disrupt Hackathon and is headquartered in New York, New York. The company informed its users on Saturday by way of a company blog, thanking everyone who used the service over the past year for making it such an immediate success.

“This has been a remarkable year for GroupMe, and we believe that this is a big win. And not just a big win for GroupMe and our amazing investors, but also for New York City,” the blog reads. “As part of the deal, GroupMe will remain in New York, team intact, working on our standalone application. The major difference will be that we will now have access to Skype’s 175 million monthly connected users. 175 million people. That’s a very big deal.”

Terms of the acquisition will not be disclosed, Skype said.

Most of the Circuit of the Americas outside of Austin is just a cleared dirt track, but that didn’t stop David Coulthard from ripping it up in the Red Bull demonstration car while being chased by cowboys. An epic video is clearly in the making with the Capitol donuts from this weekend.