Google Wallet, the mobile payment system that takes advantage of Android's Near Field Communications (NFC) capabilities, launched on Monday.

Google first announced the service last May, and the search company showed how users could enter their credit card information into the Google Wallet app, and then tap their phone on an NFC reader to make payments. Citi, MasterCard, First Data and Sprint were the first financial and carrier partners to go along with the service, and approximately 15 retail partners announced their support for the "single tap" payment program as well.

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Like lots of people, I was ready to buy Samsung Galaxy S II from AT&T yesterday. Based on information released during the launch announcement late last month, the hot smartphone was scheduled to release on September 18. The day has passed with no sale, and AT&T customers are livid. So now, the wireless carrier has given people yet another reason to complain. Can you say screw up?

Somebody wants this phone. As I write, 2,763 people have responded to our poll: "Will you buy Galaxy S II?" Hot damn, 75.43 percent plan to do so within 3 months. Only 8.72 percent responded: "No, I'm getting iPhone". In the interests of communicating when the phone will be available and to let AT&T know just how angry people are, I'm posting this followup to yesterday's "Say, AT&T, where's Samsung Galaxy S II?". I don't have the when yet, but I expect an answer from AT&T, which I asked before starting to write.

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A good-looking spy sips a cocktail after ingeniously breaking into a high-security compound and then casually walks away with some confidential documents. That's what spies do in the movies. In the real world they are more likely to use a keyboard.

Spying is about collecting information. When information was still written on pieces of paper, a spy had to physically go and steal it. These days information is data on computers and networks, so modern spying is often carried out with the help of malware. The cyber spies use trojans and backdoors to infect their targets’ computers, giving them access to the data even from the other side of the world.

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Ghisler Software has announced the release of Total Commander 8 Beta, a new version of its shareware file manager tool, designed to improve on the rather basic options offered by Windows Explorer. Version 8 is notable for introducing the first dedicated 64-bit build of Total Commander, designed to run exclusively on 64-bit operating systems.

Total Commander 8’s other changes are more minor in scope: a handful of new minor and tweaked features coupled with a raft of bug fixes. Version 8 is not designed to be run on production machines -- users are directed to the latest stable release, Total Commander 7.56 instead.

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Finnish mobile phone company Nokia has been deleted from the Stoxx Europe 50 index, a benchmark index owned by Deutsche Börse and the SIX Swiss Exchange Group that tallies the top 50 largest European corporations.

Late in August, Stoxx announced that Nokia would be delisted from the Stoxx 50 index, along with three banks: Intesa Sanpaolo and Unicredit from Italy, and GRP Societe Generale from France. Meaning the former powerhouse mobile phone maker is no longer big enough to be considered one of Europe's biggest corporations.

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When it comes to social networks, there is one to suit every occasion. MySpace has the music market covered while LinkedIn caters for the business side of things. The likes of Facebook have become more of an everyday social network, but the fact that there are so many to choose from does not mean that there isn’t room for another network, particularly if it fills a niche; this is precisely what LocalHero aims to do.

Rather than being a social network that simply enables you to keep in touch with your friends, family and colleagues, LocalHero has been designed to make it easier for people that need help to get in touch with people that can offer help. Working much like other social networks, LocalHero enables you to build up a list of friends and you can share details about your skills so people that need help can see what you might be useful for.

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Sysinternals products are some of the best Windows system utilities around, packed with features, and perfect for troubleshooting or just generally finding out more about what’s happening on your PC.

Launching them can be a problem, though, because they’re portable. So you’ll typically have to save them all in a folder somewhere, remember that location, switch to it as and when required, remember which file name corresponds to which utility, and so on. Or, alternatively, you could simply use the Sysinternals Suite Installer, which does just about everything a Sysinternals installer would do, including creating a Start menu group and shortcuts so it’s easy to locate and launch whatever tool you need.

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Netflix's woes took a strange twist on Sunday night, in an 11:59 p.m. EDT blog post by CEO Reed Hastings. "I messed up", he begins. Yeah, based on subscriber losses and punishing shareholders, Hasting puts it mildly.

The gist is this: After jacking up the price of combined DVD rentals and streaming by an astonishing 60 percent, Hastings presents an unexpected solution: Netflix is splitting its streaming and DVD rental business into two operations. The DVD biz will be called Qwikster. It's totally unimaginative nomenclature and doesn't the least bit describe the DVD business. Shouldn't Reed be fixing problems, rather than be creating more of them?

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There are plenty of free online storage providers around, but most provide only one or two gigabytes of space in their basic accounts: not much, by modern standards.

Minus stands out, though, by offering a whole 10GB, free of charge. The service supports files up to 2GB in size; these can be private, shared individually through links, or entirely open to public view; and there are no transfer limits, very useful if you’ve large files you’d like to distribute and you’re worried about potential bandwidth costs. And these are just some of the plus points of the Minus service.

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It really should have been obvious, but in case you were confused, ARM versions of Windows 8 will not be able to run x86 apps and vice-versa. In fact, Microsoft has said as much in the past. This is a model Microsoft has used unsuccessfully in the past, but are things different now? Will ISVs make more than one binary?

Vague talk about the universal nature of Windows Metro apps led some to assume that such apps will run on any Windows 8 installation, either ARM- or x86-based. This is not the case. Metro apps will be composed either of x86 binary code or ARM binary code, and each can only run on the appropriate CPU.

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Sprint launched its version, the Epic 4G, on September 16 and AT&T's Galaxy S II was supposed to be available today. Have you seen it? Where is it hiding? What is AT&T doing with it? And if iPhone 5's launch is so close, why wait even one more day?

These are the perplexing questions AT&T is unlikely to answer on a Sunday. So I called my local AT&T store, and a few others, to ask if they're selling the S2 as announced. Nope. One store rep checked AT&T's internal website, where the phone listed as "coming soon". That person expected but couldn't confirm price of "probably one-ninety-nine". Rep at a different store had been briefed on the S2 last week, but not given a selling price. The launch could come in a couple weeks, the rep said. Sprint's S2 is a sweet $199.99 with two-year contract -- and it's available now.

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Apple has been doing a good job covering it up.

As I've so often asserted: In business, perception is everything. Successful companies often create positive perceptions about their brands, products and business practices. But there also is the tactic of misdirection, of controlling perceptions by getting people to look somewhere else so that they miss flaws with the company's products or business strategies. Apple uses "magical" to describe some of its products. Magicians are all about getting people to look over there so they don't see the secret behind the trick over here. Apple's patent assault on Samsung, and even HTC, is very much misdirection, so that eyes turned away from iPhone 5 problems.

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Another week, another slew of software releases and app updates. The undoubted headline stealer is the release of the Developer Preview of Windows 8, but there have been plenty of other releases worthy of investigation for anyone not interested in Microsoft’s up-coming operating system. Available in both 32- and 64-bit varieties, the Microsoft Windows 8 Developer Preview is freely available for anyone to install, not just developers -- although there is also a version available that includes developer tools.

While the successor to Windows 7 is showing great signs of promise, it’s probably not a good idea to use it as your main operating system or use it for handling any mission critical data. But for seasoned users and anyone keep to keep on the cutting edge of software development, the preview gives you a chance to try out the Metro interface and a redesigned Explorer interface.

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The Justice Department's move to block AT&T's planned merger with T-Mobile gathered steam today with attorneys general from seven states signing on to the effort. An amended complaint was filed Friday, adding California, Illinois, Massachusetts, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Washington as co-plaintiffs.

California was one of the first states to voice its concerns with the deal, and began an investigation in May. Officials in other states have expressed their unease with the combination of the nation's second and fourth biggest wireless carriers, all but ensuring that the deal will need serious alterations if it has any hope of being approved.

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Security vendors will have an increasingly hard time making a case for expensive subscriptions as Microsoft keeps pushing Windows to be "secure enough" out of the box. Windows 8 adds a number of impressive features that really should make a difference in the "ecosystem".

The main feature chart for security improvements in Windows 8 is described by the ubiquitous Steven Sinofsky of Microsoft in this blog entry entitled "Protecting you from malware".

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