Google, Visa ignite digital wallet wars

The digital wallet wars have begun and credit card giant Visa and search behemoth Google are likely to be among the first to face off in the market, reveals Cnet.

The two are trying to convince consumers to ditch their real wallets for ones that store credit cards and other information on their cellphones.

While several other companies are also planning to roll out digital wallets and mobile payment systems, Visa and Google will be among the first companies whose applications hit the market in the next few months. Google is expected to unveil its Google Wallet by the end of the summer, and Visa will be out with its yet-to-be-named digital wallet sometime this fall.

Samsung has said it is not interested in buying HP's PC business, amid speculation of a potential deal, writes Computing.co.uk.

HP recently revealed that it's looking into the possibility of selling off its PC business, as it shifts focus away from the consumer market and discontinues production of the new TouchPad tablet.

Samsung has been tipped as a potential buyer in some media reports, but Samsung chief executive Choi Gee-sung quashed those rumours. “To put to rest any speculation on this issue, I would like to definitively state that Samsung Electronics will not acquire HP's PC business,” he said.

The first human-like astronaut robot - Robonaut 2 or R2 - has awakened at the International Space Station (ISS) - and already started tweeting, notes the BBC.

“Those electrons feel GOOD! One small step for man, one giant leap for tinman kind,” said the robot's first tweet.

R2 was brought to the ISS in February 2011 on board of space shuttle Discovery. It has been designed to work alongside humans, helping them both inside and outside the station.

Operator body CTIA reckons that Tuesday's earthquake proves US operators need more radio spectrum - and quickly - despite the fact that much of the owned bandwidth lies unused, says The Register.

The call for more spectrum is an oft-repeated mantra, taken up by the US government (and echoed by the UK's), claiming that unless network operators are given more radio spectrum, the entire industry will grind to a halt. But in a press release, the CTIA's CEO points out that it's not just the mobile industry which is at risk.

“Yesterday's earthquake underscored the vital need for our industry to get more spectrum,” he explains, drawing an analogy simple enough for the hard-of-thinking to follow. “Cars are like our mobile devices... Yesterday, a huge number of users were trying to use the same highway at the same time, which caused the jam. With more spectrum, we'd have more lanes that would allow more users.”