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One in five smartphones will have NFC by 2014, according to a new Juniper research report.

Ever since YouTube’s inception in early 2005, the site has been plagued by copyright issues. Manually reviewing every clip uploaded is impossible, with over 35 hours of video submitted each minute. Once YouTube established itself as the de facto standard in online video, the music, television and film industries leant pretty hard on Google Inc. to crack down on the rampant uploading of copyrighted material.

It’s been around ten years since Larry Page held the CEO position at Google, and now that he’s back in charge after Eric Schmidt stepped aside to allow the Google co-founder to take the reigns, it would seem he’s keen to make his mark on the now-huge company, and has this week dramatically reshuffled Google’s top brass

If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. Hot on the heels of the launch of fellow bookseller Amazon’s own Android Appstore, Barnes & Noble has today gone official with what has been rumoured for some time – an App Store for their tablet / eBook reader, the Nook Color.

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti – Finishing up earlier than we expected, thanks to World Vision’s efficiency, we set out yet again, back to PetionVille for our next set of interviews with NetHope partner ESIH (Ecole Supérieure d’Infotronique d’Haiti).

Since Google Inc. announced late last month that the latest version of Android, Honeycomb, would not be open-sourced just yet, many in the development community have cried foul, labelling Google hypocrites and questioning whether Android is really “open,” as Google so loudly proclaims it to be.

Due to some kind of foul-up at Google Inc. a lucky man by the name of Tim Schiesser, who just so happens to be a tech writer, has been given access to a previously unheard-of Android Test Market, where it would seem app developers can trial their wares before releasing them to the general public.

In what many would see as a fairly bizarre move, Apple Inc. yesterday released a new app on the iOS App Store called iAd Gallery, the sole purpose of which is – you guessed it – to be a gallery for iAds. What purpose this app serves is completely unknown.

Sony CEO Howard Stringer has announced his firm will be releasing a tablet by the end of this summer.

When Apple Inc. launched the iPad the most striking thing about the device, which would go on to define the tablet market, was the price. Five hundred dollars for an awesome browsing slate was quite the bargain, especially coming from a company famed for their premium pricing.

Google is trying to make itself seem more attractive to mobile game developers, with Ian Ni-Lewis, Developer Advocate for Games at Google pulling out all the stops to woo the gangly geniuses out of their basements.

In an effort to tackle the ongoing problem of Android fragmentation Google Inc. has apparently issued an ultimatum to its partners that from now on Android Godfather Andy Rubin will check all customisations and must approve them before they are released.

Although Google Inc. may be frying bigger fish right now, the Federal Trade Commission has just announced they have reached a settlement with Google over the search giant’s bungled launch of Buzz last year. The agreement stipulates that Google must submit to independent privacy audits for the next 20 years in order to make sure they do not violate privacy policies again.

Google Inc. has today taken the wraps off yet another enhancement to its increasingly diverse services, the +1 button. At its core the +1 button is the same as a Facebook “Like” button, although it can be deployed anywhere on the Web, most importantly in search results.