Nintendo is bringing its pocket monsters, Pok&#233mon, to both Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS. A Japanese website reported that this is the first time a first party app from Nintendo will be arriving on hardware not made by it.
Nintendo and Game Freak will be working together to create the original Pokemon title for both iOS AppStore and Android Market.

The new app is basically an on-screen card game based on timing which uses music as well. Users can download it for free though there is a possibility the company would charge for additional cards or music.

The news of Nintendo’s Pok&#233mon app has come when Sony Ericsson’s Xperia Play smartphone is already out in the market, on which users can play PlayStation and PlayStation 2 games as well.

It was just a matter of time before something related to Nintendo also reached smartphones, and luckily for users it is not from some unknown developer.

Some users might be surprised by the arrival of a Nintendo title on iOS devices, which are directly competing with Nintendo for users. Nintendo was earlier trying to sell its titles at high prices, directly taking on the iOS games.

Google Plus App for iOS device will soon be released once Apple approves it for its devices. Erica Joy, executive support technician at Google, said this in a blog posting posted on her Google+ social network account.

We already reported that Google is working on the iPhone following its freshly launched Google+ App for Android devices.

Last month, we reported that popular social network Facebook is working on a Facebook app for iPad and touted it to be a major announcement.

Dubbed as Project Spartan, the Facebook App for iPad will offer full screen photo and video resolutions for the tablet. Besides, Facebook is also reportedly working with third-party developers over the app and its chief executive officer Mark Zuckerberg himself is said to be “heavily investing” in the app. Obviously Facebook is looking to lure all the iPad owners with its new app.

In order to gain the lead in social network app competition, Google has already submitted the Google Plus iOS app that could be for both iPhone and iPad.

Joy didn’t confirm which app it would be but, based on her follow up, it is expected that the app is likely to hit iPad and iPhone together.

The Google+ App for Android is quite sleek, neat and quick in terms of function. Its instant upload feature allows publishing photos in matter of few seconds. However, its group chat option, Huddle, appears as separate app once the users have synced their Google accounts to the Google+ App.

Similar approach is likely to be taken for the Apple iPad 2 that comes with camera at the back as well as the front. That way the users would be able to quickly share the images through Google Plus.

An interesting part is that both Facebook and Google are counting heavily on Apple’s iOS platform for gaining popularity of their respective social network. It is no secret that Apple iPad has started contributing to larger audience that browses web on the tablet.

Facebook is planning to launch “something big” later this month and it is said to be the party spoiler for Google. At this moment, both sides are working on their projects diligently. It is just matter of weeks till Apple approves Google+ app and the new Facebook App for iPad.

Microsoft has rolled out a new version of its Bing application for iPad. Named as Lasso, the new version allows the users to draw a circle around one word or a group of words with their finger to make a new search on Bing.

The usual iPad method involves nine steps compared to only two required by the new version of Bing App for iPad. Those who are comfortable typing on iPad, however, do not need this update.

The Bing team says on the official blog, “From our research, we know that many searches are inspired by things people see on the web. Today, it can be somewhat painful to search on a tablet when you’re engaged in reading something; just copying and pasting pieces of text from a webpage to a search box can take up to nine steps on the iPad. With Lasso you can circle and search in just two steps.”

The new version will also allow the users to go back by up to one week old Bing home page images. Earlier, whenever users had to search for a word on a webpage, they had to select just the right amount of words to select it through a search engine, which was tedious.

The new Bing app takes the hard work out of the process, so the users just have to move their fingers around the words, and once the selection is made, the Bing app automatically conducts the relevant search.

Bing has become popular due to its ability to utilize the iPad features better than others.

The mobile payments market is growing and is expected to touch the $670 billion mark by 2015. The forecast has been made by Juniper Research, which values the current mobile transaction at $240 billion.

Mobile payments do retain a great amount of interest both among the users and the service providers.

Explaining the findings, senior analyst, Juniper Research, David Snow, said, “Our analysis shows that emerging segments such as physical goods payments, NFC and money transfers will fuel market growth by a factor of 2.7 times by 2015. Digital goods is the largest segment and, although forecast to more than double, it is not growing as quickly as some of the newer segments.”

The Juniper Research report says that 75 per cent of the mobile payments would come from North America, Western Europe, and East Asian countries. A look at the current mobile payments scene suggests most of the transactions currently come from the purchase of digital goods, which is expected to be 40 per cent of the total market by 2015.

The increase in the mobile payments would be driven largely by the rapid adoption of mobile ticketing, NFC contactless payments, physical goods purchases and money transfers as it is expected the users in both developed and developing countries would start using their mobiles for day to day transactions.

Those markets where credit cards or banks are not used in large volumes but have a large number of cellphones in circulation may turn out to be just the right kind of market for the mobile payments evangelists.

Only some time ago, another research report (of Forrester) said that the mobile payments in the US would become worth $31 billion by 2016. But the Juniper Research forecast is for worldwide mobile payments, whereas Forrester’s report is only for the US. Juniper Research also sees the mobile payments replacing the wallets altogether, whereas Forrester just seems to be taking mostly digital goods purchase into account.

The Juniper Research report further says, “Some 20 countries are expected to launch NFC services in the next 18 months, resulting in transactions approaching $50 billion worldwide by 2014. Meanwhile, the need for financial access in developing countries is such that active mobile money users will double by 2013 and drive transaction values accordingly.”

Google has released an update for its maps application for Android based devices. Amongst the others, the star feature of this update is the addition of the navigation for public transit.

So now with the new Google Maps, people will be able to get turn by turn navigation while driving, and stop by stop navigation while using the public transportation system.

Transit Navigation uses GPS to determine your current location along your route and alerts you when it’s time to get off or make a transfer. After starting your trip with Transit Navigation, you can open another application or put your phone away entirely; Google Maps will still display an alert in your notification bar and vibrate your phone when your stop is coming up.

This would be particularly helpful if you’re traveling in a foreign country, local language of which you do not know and hence can’t read the route maps or understand the announcements.

Although very useful, the transit navigation is still in the beta phase which means that there might be some minor issues with the newly added feature. Presently, the public transit navigation feature provides details and travel direction for both bus and metro routes in four major cities in India including Bengaluru, Chennai, Kolkata and Delhi.

Besides, the Google maps application has also upgraded the search suggestions which will give faster and more accurate results. Along with that, Google Maps has also updated the directions that will tell the users the fastest possible route to the destination while using Google maps.

This update requires an Android OS 2.1+ device and works anywhere Google Maps is currently available.

You can download Google Maps 5.7 on your Android device manually or can also visit the Android Marketplace to do the same. Alternatively follow this link.

Amazon cloud users, who pay at least $20 per year, could now get unlimited music storage and free storage for all MP3 and other music purchases made through Amazon.com. It will now become easier for the users to store their music library on the Amazon Cloud Drive and listen to them through Amazon Cloud Player.

“Customers are already enjoying Cloud Drive and Cloud Player and now for just $20 a year, customers can get unlimited space for music,” said Craig Pape director of Amazon Music.

Craig added, “Additionally, we are adding free storage for all MP3s purchased from Amazon MP3, and support for the iPad. Our customers love Cloud Drive and Cloud Player, and we’re excited to innovate these services on their behalf.”

The company has also added an iPad friendly Amazon Cloud Player. Initially available on PCs and Android devices, the Cloud Player later made its way to iOS devices as well, though the support was not officially announced.

Amazon did score a point over Apple and Google by launching its cloud service earlier, but Apple’s forthcoming iCloud service has an advantage in terms of its tie ups with music labels, which the other two don’t have.

The Google Music Beta, on the other hand, provides free storage up to 20,000 music tracks to the users but so far no details about Google subscription plans are available.

The Amazon users would also be able to upload documents, videos and photos to the storage but the unlimited storage option would only be applicable to the music files. This is only a limited time offer and it’s not clear for how long Amazon would continue with the offer.