Believe it or not, but there are still people at HP working on webOS, which is quite amazing given the uncertainty for the future. There’s still a lot of love for Palm’s mobile operating system, no doubt further kindled now that people so many people are enjoying its genius from the discounted Pre phones and TouchPad tablets.

Released today for the dying TouchPad is a fresh version of webOS, updating the outgoing 3.0.2 to the newly released 3.0.4.

Ari Jaaksi, head of webOS services at HP, detailed in his blog some of the new changes:

“We have a big number of TouchPads out there, and we wanted to continue serving users and developers.  We improved performance, added better support for the camera, made connectivity with non-HP phones possible, improved messaging, touched the UI in many places, etc,” Jaaksi wrote. “Also, we’ve got over 1000 applications available for TouchPad through Application Catalogue.”

The webOS team is also working on making things better for developers.

“We have also continued longer term architectural development for webOS. We are working hard around webKit and V8. Those are core engines for the whole webOS. The Enyo framework and developer tools are getting a lot of attention now,” Jaaksi continued. “We have also some very cool development around UI especially in the area of working with many task simultaneously, and using the table screen even more efficiently. The web development model, strong cloud integration, and a fluid and beautiful UI are the cornerstones of webOS.”

The Motorola RAZR is a legendary phone. It is the highest-selling clamshell phone in history, and soon a phone with that same name will be arriving in November.

Motorola today announced the new RAZR, which will be known as the DROID RAZR in the U.S. market as a Verizon exclusive. It earns its name with the thin profile at 7.1 millimeters thick. Powering it is a dual-core 1.2 GHz processor.

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Google has updated its Wallet service to provide a SingleTap experience, offering loyalty credit and retailer discounts. But what’s the point if only one phone is NFC compatible?

Tuesday Google said that American Eagle Outfitters, Bloomingdales, Champs Sports, The Container Store, Foot Locker, Guess, Jamba Juice, Macy’s, OfficeMax and Toys”R”Us are now Google Wallet “SingleTap” merchants. Customers can now pay, redeem offers, and earn loyalty credit simply with a single tap of an NFC-enabled smartphone.

“With Google Wallet in hand, you can walk into a Jamba Juice, American Eagle Outfitters or any other partner store,” said Google’s Spencer Spinnell, Director, Emerging Markets. “Once you’ve ordered that Razzmatazz smoothie or found the right color Slim Jean, head straight to the cashier and tap your phone to pay and save—that’s it. You don’t have to shuffle around to find the right coupon to scan or rewards card to stamp because it all happens in the blink of an eye.”

In addition to the SingleTap merchants, other North American retailers have already signed on to serve as “Tap and Pay” merchants using the MasterCard PayPass system including CVS, Walgreens, RadioShack, Sunco, Jack In The Box and seven others. These Tap and Pay merchants are different from the SingleTap retailers in that they currently don’t offer loyalty credit or special offers.

Consumers interested in checking out the Google Wallet experience can enter their zip code in the “Where It Works” section of the Google Wallet website. This will pull up other participating retailers like McDonald’s, 7-11, BP, Rite Aid, The Home Depot, Petco, Best Buy and many more. Chevron, D’Agostino, Pinkberry and Subway plan to support Google Wallet in the near future, the company said.

However the drawback to Google Wallet, at least for now, is that it’s only available on one phone: the Sprint Nexus S 4G which Google says is receiving the new feature through a software update. Payments also rely on a Citi MasterCard or a virtual Google Prepaid Card (which is funded by your credit card). Users with non-NFC phones can reportedly obtain a special sticker from Google, but reports also indicate that it’s limited — it’s no “quick-and-dirty fix” to make a smartphone NFC-capable. That said, Google Wallet is a great tool in simplifying purchases, but extremely limited. Still, it’s a start.

Tuesday Google said that the Wallet app’s “Offers” tab has been updated to include a new “Featured Offers” section with discounts that are exclusive to Google Wallet. “Today, these include 15-percent off at American Eagle Outfitters, 10-percent off at The Container Store, 15-percent off at Macy’s and an all-fruit smoothie for $2 at Jamba Juice,” the company said in a blog. “There are many more Google Wallet exclusive discounts to come, and you can save your favorites in Google Wallet so they’ll be automatically applied to your bill when you check out.”

Google launched the Google Wallet app back on September 19 which works with over 300,000 MasterCard PayPass merchant locations. VISA licensed its payWave NFC system to Google the next day, although there are no signs of VISA-based participating retailers listed on Google’s website.

SOURCE via Google

RIM might last week have faced the worst service outage in company history, but the Waterloo-based phone manufacturer isn’t going to dwell on the past. While last week saw Mike Lazaridis apologizing on camera for the service disruptions, today, the co-CEO was busy unveiling BBX, the next generation of BlackBerry OS.

Similar to the way Google’s Ice Cream Sandwich is a mash-up of Gingerbread and Honeycomb, RIM says BBX is a combination of the old BlackBerry OS and QNX, the operating system RIM acquired last year and is now powering the PlayBook tablet.

The BBX platform will support BlackBerry cloud services and development environments for HTML5 and native developers. According to RIM, BBX will also support apps developed using any of the tools already available for the PlayBook (including Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash and WebWorks/HTML5, as well as the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps) on future BBX-based tablets and smartphones.

BlackBerry users can also look forward to a new BlackBerry Cascades UI Framework for that will provide smooth 3D animations and deep integration with BBM and Push services. RIM says that a beta version will be available before the end of fall.

SOURCE via Engadget

Apple boldly rejected Samsung’s settlement offer in Australia, and so the cat fight just keep going. The latter certainly isn’t afraid of striking back in its enemy’s front yard you see. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Samsung’s set up a pop-up store merely meters away from Apple’s Sydney store, all for just stealing the thunder from the iPhone 4S launch last Friday. The campaign? For the first ten customers each day up to Friday, the Korean giant’s offering its Galaxy S II for just $2 sans contract — no wonder the line’s already longer than Apple’s, according to the Herald. But of course, Samsung’s also effectively funding some of these folks for their iPhone 4S from next door, so it’s pretty much a win-win situation for both companies. See? There’s always a happy ending.

SOURCE via The Sydney Morning Herald

British researchers have found a new way to track the spread of diseases in locations that lack traditional mapping support.

Google Earth has become a scientific tool for tracking in areas that do not allow health workers to record infections that are tied to street names and house numbers. Researchers from the British Wellcome Trust used Earth and GPS data to pinpoint the presence of Typhoid in Kathmandu, Nepal, which adds to the ability to track mutations of a disease via DNA sequencing.

The researchers found that the typhoid infection rate is not related to the density of the population. Instead, the study showed that the likelihood of infection increased the closer people lived to water spouts and the lower the geographic elevation. Typhoid, which is caused by the two bacteria salmonella typhi and salmonella paratyphi, is believed to be connected to faecal contamination of ground water during the monsoon time. The researchers discovered a particular strain of the salmonella paratyphi was spreading downstream from the focus area, which indicated that people at lower elevations are at higher risk to contract typhoid.

When the scientists analyzed the bacteria and their variations and their appearance, they found that typhoid infections are transmitted predominantly through the environment and not through people. They concluded that “improvements in infrastructure are fundamental to the control and elimination of typhoid.”

As long as people are exposed to poor water quality, vaccines may have little effect and there is little chance that a community can get rid of the infection carriers. “Without integrating improvements in infrastructure alongside other control measures such as diagnosis, treatment and vaccination, it is unlikely that typhoid can be adequately controlled in places like Kathmandu in the long-term,” they said.

SOURCE via Eureka Alert

Since its introduction, Microsoft’s second generation Xbox 360 has had nary a stand-alone HDD option aside from the company’s proprietary 250GB drive, priced at a spendy $130 — this despite those occasional limited edition consoles packing a massive 320GBs of space. That’s soon to change, however, as Major Nelson’s announced a new 320GB HDD for the 360, set to be available this month. Possibly in an attempt to sweeten the deal, this platter maintains the 250GB’s $130 cost of adoption, and comes pre-loaded with Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars (sadly though, no Lego love for Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Slovakia or Japan, where the game won’t be available). Notably, rather than dropping the 250GB drive’s price, it’s now curiously absent from the Xbox website (and we won’t hold our breath waiting for it to pop up again either). Nothing like a good ol’ fashioned pricing premium for official Xbox storage, right?

SOURCE via Joystiq