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Mike Cleron, a Google software engineer for the Android operating system, made an ambitious pronouncement onstage at the company's annual conference last week.

"Mango," the next major update to the Windows Phone mobile operating system, will include several notable enhancements for consumers, including turn-by-turn navigation, built-in barcode scanning, voice-to-text speech input, on-device podcast support and a music identification service similar to the popular mobile application Shazam, but available within Bing. Mango, also known as Windows Phone 7.5, is due out this fall.

ING Direct customers can now transfer payments to friends with the bump of a cellphone — no account numbers needed. The bank released an updated version of its iPhone app on Wednesday morning that integrates an API from Bump Technologies, a startup that makes it easy to transfer information between phones by tapping them together.

The average price for a gallon of gas is again approaching $4. But this time, drivers can cope by using their smartphones.

The search-engine giant is facing complaints in South Korea as mobile phones using its Android software gain dominance.

A major software attack that distributed malicious programs to around 260,000 Android phones has put pressure on Google to do more to secure its market for smartphone apps.

A new report predicts that revenues from downloadable applications will reach $38 billion by 2015. It may be hard to remember, but when the Apple iPhone had its debut in early 2007 there were only a few apps available for the device — no Angry Birds, Doodle Jump or Netflix.

When it came to translations, you used to either need an interpreter or a book to navigate another language. That was either costly or cumbersome, respectively. Then the Internet came along and made things significantly easier. Except you had to be chained to your computer to translate something. A year ago, Google made things easier again by launching their Translate app for Android.

HTC may launch an online app store that will sell both applications and e-Books according to a recent rumor.

Tech research company Gartner reports that Google's Android will be in striking distance of Nokia's Symbian system for world champion in mobile operating systems, leaping past Research in Motion's Blackberry and Apple's iPhone iOS.