Who knew that credit card processing would be the new hotness for smartphones? The Square mobile payment system has been making waves by letting small businesses receive credit card payment directly on their smartphones. Now, mophie and Intuit are looking to get in on the same action with their Complete Card Solution for iPhone. It’s a $179 package that includes both mophie’s card-swiping phone case and the 3.0 version of Intuit’s GoPayment app. After a quick application users are said to be approved (or, erm, declined) within 15 minutes and can immediately start accepting payments.

A single account can also cover up to 50 users, meaning an entire sales team could be equipped with these devices. But this case, which encrypts every credit card number before it gets to the phone, will only work with the iPhone 3G/S.

The Japan Sumo Association has carried out their decision to hand out 60 iPads to 51 wrestling club in the country. The idea was to improve communication between the wrestlers themselves and the sports body. The Association decided that the wrestlers’ fingers weren’t small enough for ordinary mobile phones and that iPads might help them not to miss the information sent by fax or phone – something that had often happened before.

However, first of all the Association’s princely gesture was aimed at making amends after some scandals that involved gangsters, match-fixing and illegal gambling. Sumo came under harsh criticism for the lack of investigation and control, which was partly due to poor communication.

Regular Mercedes-Benz tuner Brabus today showed off a special package for the S600 that gives it an Apple-focused mobile office. The S600 iBusiness package gives the two rear seats an iPad each as well as a 64GB iPod touch. Both of the iPads can not only be used for work but can control the car’s audio, navigation and phone systems.
A Mac mini is shared by both with a central 15.2-inch LCD and two breakout USB ports in the rear to attach peripherals. Brabus provides one mouse but two Apple Wireless Keyboards to let either passenger control the Mac, and the entire rear seat electronics can reach the Internet on the road.

And it’s all built into a car that goes from 0 to 62 in 4.0 seconds, with a top speed of 211 miles per hour, runs on a 750HP. There’s leather everywhere, wood trim, color-changing interior lighting, LED running lights outside, the sport steering wheel.

Brabus doesn’t give a price, but the car itself (without any options) starts around $150k.

Yesterday Facebook released some astonishing statistic results showing an astronomical number of monthly active users – over 100 million on iPhones, almost 60 million on BlackBerry and 12 million on the Android client. However, double-checking, these numbers seem a little bit strange: can there really be more than 100 million iPhone users, when by June 2010 only 100 million iOS devices had been sold, and this includes the iPod touch, iPad and iPhone? Turns out, the explanation is just in the definition of “active”. Here’s how a Facebook spokesman accounted for the figures:

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The recently released application MiTime for the iPhone 4 fixes and activates FaceTime on unlocked iPhone 4s that run on T-Mobile USA or other unofficial unsupported carriers. According to the MiTime’s description, it should work with almost any carrier in the world. You should be able to receive international SMS messages to activate FaceTime via MiTime.

The application MiTime sends two international SMS messages for activation, so it can not be free. Thus, until there is no other way to activate FaceTime on unlocked iPhone 4s, this is the only way with an affordable price.

More information and tutorial is here.

Facebook has released some statistics for its mobile application on different platforms, and the results are pretty interesting to look at. iPhone is right ahead with more than 104 mln active monthly users. BlackBerry goes second, with almost 60 mln, while Android is enjoying no more than 12 mln users. So, what do these numbers tell us? Last counted, there are more than 500 mln users of Facebook across the world, and it turns out that more than a third of them are using mobile applications. Quite an impressive figure!

The Japan Sumo Association is having trouble with the wrestlers and its managers. To put it simply, they don’t hear from them – either by fax or by phone! So, the sports body came up with a 21^st-century solution: iPads. The tablets will be distributed among 51 wrestling clubs in the country and they are expected to improve the communication speed. Maybe the 10-inch dimensions of the devices will be exactly right for these sportsmen, whose fingers are a little bit too large to use mobile phones comfortably?

iPhone and Android users will now be able to keep up to date with Google Finance web application that has just been made available for mobile devices.

The markets don’t stop when you leave your desk, so we’re bringing the markets to you. Our new design gives you a unified experience across desktop and Android or iPhone phones, offering nearly all the same features and functionality on both. You can easily access the new site when you do a Google search for stock tickers or company names on your mobile device, or when you tap the “Finance” tab on the Google mobile homepage.
Now no matter where you are, you can keep up with your portfolio, the latest market news, and the sectors you care about, with real time quotes and data — all at a glance.

You can download the new Google Finance webapp from your device by visiting finance.google.com.

New report from Associated Press reveals that this Friday Nokia acquired a company named Motally, though there was no information on the terms of the deal. Such a strategic move is pointed on boosting Nokia’s Ovi platform and making it more interesting for mobile software developers.

“The Finnish company says the acquisition Friday underscores its attempt to improve mobile Web browsing analytics for software developers of its Internet services, that are struggling to match competitor Apple Inc.”

Motally is a small analytics firm that was founded in 2008 and has only eight employees.

Apple did not acquire any analytics firms yet though it has strong partnership with a few of them.

NearFieldCommunications World reports that Apple has recently hired Benjamin Vigier as its new product manager for mobile commerce. Vigier is described as an expert in near field communications (NFC) having been in the field since 2004. Apple also has published a number of patent applications related to NFC technology. That means, that Apple’s mobile devises can be used as an electronic wallet and payment system.

Near Field Communications is short range wireless communication technology (~4 inches) that is used in mobile phones for a variety of applications including mobile ticketing, mobile payments, interactive advertising and more. The same site had previously reported that Apple has had prototype devices already outfitted with the required radio-frequency identification (RFID) chips.

Vigier joined Apple in July 2010. And now he is a product manager for mobile commerce.

As you may know, few days ago Apple had released a new version of iOS for all its mobile devices except first-generation iPhone and iPod touch, so owners of the latter are still not protected from a security flaw that allows hackers to obtain a remote control of their handsets. In fact, the latest compatible version for them is currently iOS 3.1.3.

But Saurik (who is known as a developer of Cydia) recently announced on the Dev-Team blog that he released a PDF patch that is compatible with any iOS version down to 2.x. It can be found in Cydia if you’ll search for “PDF Patch”. After installing it you can check if the patch is working properly with visiting jailbreakme.com page. After sliding the box to jailbreak you should only see the star background (and not a dialog box), which means you are no longer vulnerable.
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Apple has removed the updated of the Camera+ application from the App Store within two weeks. It happened because Cupertino found out that the current app has some hidden downsides allowing let the volume buttons on the iPhone side to act as a camera shutter button, each time a user comes opens Mobile Safari and searches for the URL camplus://enablevolumesnap.

It definitely violates the regulations and rules of Apple, that’s why the company decided to get rid of this application quite unceremoniously. What does it mean? It means that when you try to buy the app, you’ll get the following error: “the item you are trying to purchase is currently unavailable”.

The developer of the Camera+ photography application, TapTapTap, might think about creating new versions of the app in future, but we hope it won’t have such “surprises”.

Today Adobe has announced a new Photoshop application for the devices based on iOS while giving a new image to its previous limited functional application Photoshop.com Mobile for the Apple iPhone. Now it has got a new name Adobe Photoshop Express. Here you’ll find a great number of new features for the iPad sporting the larger screen space, support for the device and improved user interface (UI).

Does it have pros and cons?

Yes! There is no support for the Retina Display of the new iPhone 4. It is quite disappointing for many users.

First Apple’s iAd was Nissan Leaf ad. Users who viewed Nissan’s Leaf electric car iAd spent 90 seconds with the interactive advertisement — ten times longer than customers will spend with a traditional ad. Moreover, people are five times more likely to click on interactive advertisement than they are a traditional online display ad. One more proof of iAd success was made by Unilever, maker of Dove shower products, said its initial advertisement proved to be successful, with 20 percent of viewers checking the ad multiple times, and a percentage in the double digits seeking further information about the product. iAds are also popular among iPhone users,  because they don’t have to leave their app and launch a browser to view them.

iAd success helps Apple to take up more than half of the mobile advertising market in 2010. And developers, too, have found success with the new iAd platform: Apple providing them a 60 percent cut of the advertising revenue.

Today Apple released patches for its iOS that address a security hole in Mobile Safari, which allowed users to jailbreak their iDevices. The PDF exploit they used also allowed hackers to gain remote control over the device with an iOS.

iOS 4.0.2 is available for:

• iPod touch 2G
• iPod touch 3G
• iPhone 3G
• iPhone 3GS
• iPhone 4.

Apple did NOT release the patch for the first generation iPhones.

iOS 3.2.2 is intended to use on the iPad and iPad 3G.

You can update your device via the links above or simply by connecting your device to iTunes and clicking Update. But note, if you want to continue using jailbreak you should not update your handset/tablet and don’t forget to backup your SHSH blobs.