U.S. Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney has made the historic decision to announce his running mate for the 2012 election via a mobile app called "Mitt's VP." The application is available for iOS and Android, and requires users to have a "MyMitt" account on the candidate's personal website.

When Romney's vice president is chosen, users of the app will be pushed a notification "before the press and just about everyone else (except maybe Ann)."

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Today marks the day when Facebook lets everyone know of their financial state, with the company announcing their second quarter 2012 results this evening when the market closes. Perhaps not so coincidentally, a rumor of a new Facebook branded phone from HTC has surfaced right before the company's financial announcements.

HTC and Facebook have collaborated before, and the result was the HTC Status. The device is no longer available from AT&T, and let's just say it's not due to high demand. HTC is currently in a weak financial state, and their smartphones make up about 14 percent of the market in the United States. So, from the start there is a limited reach.

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How many times do you look at your phone when you are at your computer? If you are working in an office you may well have done the decent thing and turned down your volume – this means that there is no way of knowing when you receive an SMS or some other notification that you may need to see. This is where DeskNotifier and DeskNotifier for Android can help, enabling you to see notification in Windows.

You’ll need to install both the desktop and Android version of the app and you can choose between using it when your phone or tablet is connect to your computer via USB, or over Wi-Fi. Whenever a notification appears on your Android device, a similar alert will be generated in the form of a taskbar balloon popup. You can also choose to have a sound played, but if you have switched off sounds on your Android device, this may only be useful if you are useful headphones.

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Whenever I think about tablets v. PCs, I remember a bold prediction of old: “Son, 10 years from now everyone will drive an electric car!” When was that, 20 years ago? We’ve all read something like that from someone believing to be clairvoyant.

I read similar articles almost every day where the writer plays the same old broken record: tablets are the death of PCs, or some other flamboyant thing that’s bound to get interest -- with the hope that the reader will agree with the author. It's like almost everyone is set on sending the PC down to the gates of Hell. But why should I agree with their assertions when I actually need a PC?

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It’s a new day, but not quite so new malware on Google Play. Symantec caught a Trojan posing as game titles Super Mario Bros and GTA 3 Moscow City on the Android app store. Uh-oh, they had been up on the market since June 24, infiltrating somewhere between 50,000 – 100,000 smart phones, says Symantec's Irfan Asrar. "We would like to thank Android Security for immediately revoking the threat after we notified them of this discovery".

Both of the game apps are the Trojan known as Dropdialer. Once it gains access to a phone, the Trojan pulls in another package called Activator.apk through Dropbox. Then it goes ahead and wreaks havoc by sending texts to premium-rate text numbers. "The premium SMS is targeting Eastern Europe", Asrar says. Then, in the most subtle manner, the malware gets rid of the secondary payload by effectively removing all traces of what it has been doing.

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Android-owning coffee addicts living in United Kingdom and Canada can, from today, start paying for their brewed beverages and food using a new Starbucks app. Once installed, all you have to do is link it to an existing Starbucks card and order some drinks. The app will display a barcode for the barista to scan, resulting in the total being automatically debited from the linked card.

You can use the app to add some credit (using a credit card or PayPal account), check your balance, view your previous transactions, and track Stars in the My Starbucks Rewards program. You can also transfer credit between cards if you’re running low and a friend is happy to help. If you’re not sure where the nearest Starbucks is, the app will show you on a map. If you lose your phone, or have it stolen, all you need to do is cancel your Starbucks card and that will prevent the finder/thief from enjoying a Venti Doubleshot Caramel Macchiato, or similar, at your expense.

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In May, Google+ debuted for iPhone in Apple's app store, soon followed by an app for Android. Two weeks ago, at the I/O developer conference, Google updated the Android app again, with a lighter tone design similar to the actual Google Plus web pages as well as design support for tablet UI. The wait is over, Apple tablet users. Google+ for iPad is now available in the iTunes App Store.

The app includes a boatload of new features across the board, such as the above mentioned support for tablets, with rotation orientation. It now supports the use of 'pinch' gesture to expand posts to add comments. You can also use the 'two fingers to drag' gesture to drag posts in your stream to reshare. Enabled now is the ability to attach instant upload photos to any post you make.

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It sounds like a silly question. After all, Android is more popular than ever, with new “hero” phones and tablets arriving almost every week. However, for all of the platform’s success, there’s one aspect that remains a lingering blight on Google’s otherwise shiny success story: Software piracy.

Simply put, the rampant piracy of apps on “rooted” Android devices is killing developer momentum, with many devs resorting to unpopular and often intrusive in-app advertising and other gimmicks to make up for the gap in traditional Google Play revenue. And with the Android enthusiast community seemingly obsessed with “rooting” every new device that comes to market -- thus making it easier for unscrupulous users to pirate apps and/or bypass normal app security mechanisms -- the problem only  gets worse.

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Everyone needs to keep their life organized and any tool that can help with this is welcome. One such piece of software is EssentialPIM, which has just been updated to version 5.0. The headline new feature: synchronization with both iOS and Android devices; a companion Android app is available for download from Google Play, while an iOS app is expected in the App Store in the near future. But this is not the only new feature in this handy PIM which bears quite a resemblance to Microsoft Outlook.

The app can be used to manage your contacts, calendars, email accounts, notes, passwords and much more. Available in Free, Portable and Pro varieties, the program has been updated to include support for multiple SMTP servers as well as the ability to configure an unlimited number of identities in the mail component.

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Today, China is a wonderful place for corporations around the world. The financial crisis laws don’t necessarily apply to China as they do to other places like Europe or the United States. So it comes natural for companies to invest more and more to expand into the Chinese market.

Since the end of 2011, China has surpassed the United States as the world"s largest phone market, which is great news for handset manufacturers. Smartphones also play an interesting role, as developers get interested in writing applications for the Chinese market, which would bring revenues to corporations like Apple and Google through their online stores, App Store and Google Play.

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A bug in Apple's App Store updating mechanism caused some recently downloaded apps to crash on startup. The issue affects several popular apps including Instapaper and Angry Birds Space, and made Fourth of July stressful for many developers.

The issue appears to have cropped up after changes in Apple's app distribution. The glitch not only affects iOS apps but also those obtained through the Mac App Store, leading some to believe the issue may reside in Apple's FairPlay DRM mechanism.

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Credit and debit cards haven’t evolved much since their introduction. The principle behind any payment card is the same now as it was 50 years ago. You pay with a plastic card, which is the opposite of technology evolution. It’s something that’s a given in our lives: we can’t live without one. But can we?

The residents of the old Continent, Europe, are still reluctant to let go of cash, as 57 percent of all purchases are still paid the old fashioned way. Credit cards can’t change that, and it looks like nothing can that’s already on the market. The solution to this problem? An entirely new technology, near field communications.

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There's a certain, sweet justice: While Apple stomps all over Android licensees in the courts after falling out with Google, Chrome tops both iPad and iPhone App Stores. Last week, Google's browser invaded iOS -- eh, was granted admittance to the App Store -- and is ready to put Safari out to pasture.

On the other hand, the competition isn't exactly stellar. Chrome beats out Pinger, CSR Racing and Talking Ted on iPhone. (What? No cat video app?) But there is now a choice among browsers. On the desktop, Chrome retained its No. 1 usage share position in June, according to StatCounter. The question now: How long before Chrome deeply encroaches on Safari on iOS?

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VideoLAN’s VLC, the hugely popular open source cross-platform media player, has finally been released for Android. Before you get too excited though, this is a beta version ported from iOS, so will only run on devices with an ARMv7 CPU and NEON. It has a rather basic UI and some performance issues too. In fact, according to VLC, "It might kill your kitten, destroy your house and start the Mayan apocalypse. Use it at your own risk".

If the limitations don’t put you off, and you have no qualms about potentially initiating the end of the world, the app offers the ability to play most local audio and video files (stored in its media library or any folders on your device), as well as network streams. It supports auto-rotation, aspect ratio adjustments, volume gestures, multi-track audio and subtitles.

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From the halls of Adobe come the bells of impending death tolls. The master slayed its dragon. Flash is dead. The words from Adobe today in a public blog post mark another major blow to Flash, at least in the mobile form. The company announced that it will no longer develop Flash for Android after Android 4.0. There will be no certified implementations for Android 4.1.

Earlier this week, during its developer conference, Google officially unveiled the newest Android version -- Jellybean -- which replaces the stock browser with Chrome, for which Flash already isn't available. Google released Chrome for Android beta, supporting on v4 Ice Cream Sandwich, in February. From that perspective, the announcement, and timing, isn't super surprising.

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