Facebook has started its figthback against Google and its Google+ project. The company has just released a Java-based version of its mobile application, which should extend its reach to just about every mobile platform out there.

The app is compatible with 2,500 Java-enabled phones and gives you access to the most popular features of the social network such as News Feed, Inbox, and Photos and it also enables you to upload photos and find friends from your phone’s contacts. The app should work on just about any platform that did not have an app already.

Facebook has optimized their new application to use less data, so your cell phone charges do not go through the roof. Whats more the company has reached an agreement with several carriers, which will offer free data access to this app for 90 days. That means that you will not have to pay for the data used by the Facebook app for a full three months.

Dell Thunder premieres in Korea under the Venue name. Dell Venue packs 4.1-inch AMOLED display covered with scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass and runs on Android v2.2 Froyo.

We were waiting for the official announcement of Dell Thunder since its first leak back in April. But its just now that the ex-Thunder becomes official. Its called Dell Venue and will be launched in Korea this month for about $600.

The name is rather interesting, since Dell already got a similar name for their Windows Phone 7-running and QWERTY-packing Venue Pro.

Dell Venue features 4.1-inch WVGA AMOLED capacitive display covered with the scratch-resistant Gorilla Glass, 8 megapixel camera with HD recording and all-round connectivity. Dell was mum on the rest of the specs but we guess the long rumored specifications should be correct.

The first three US smartphones powered by the Windows Phone 7 are the HTC HD7 and Surround and the Samsung Focus. The HD7 can now be found at the T-Mobile stores, while the Surround and the Focus are now available from ATT. All three can also be purchased online.

Normally, all three are priced at 200 USD (with a new 2-year contract) but if you shop around, you could get the HTC HD7 for as low as 150 USD with a new contract with T-Mobile and the price of the HTC Surround could drop to 100 USD.

The regular reader will be well aware of my love affair with data sets, statistics, graph and infographics of all kinds so I got quite a treat when I came across this report from Chetan Sharma on the growth in mobile data usage in the US

Mobile data in the US is taking off in a big way, usage is way way up and revenues are doing likewise. In fact in Q3 of this year alone revenues were a whopping $14 billion. The total projected service revenue for all of 2010 is a very hefty $55 billion. I should point out that this data revenue is not just being driven by mobile phones, or rather smartphones, but by e-readers tablets and all manner of connected devices.

Its the actual data usage itself though that provides the most striking numbers with a projection that 2010 will see U.S. users eat through a full exabyte of data. Translated into per customer usage thats 325 MB per user per month, or a 112% increase year on year. That level of usage places the US, once one of the backwaters of the mobile data world, second in terms of per capita mobile data usage with Sweden being the only country surpassing them.

Remember the Dell Thunder and the other weather-themed droids that leaked in April? The Thunder even starred in a video. No, it's not official yet but it already has its first preview!

Engadget got their hands on a couple of Dell Thunder prototypes and managed to confirm some specs while raising questions about others. The units were far from production ready – one ran Android 1.6 Cupcake, the other 2.1 Eclair and the software had support for hardware that wasn’t present (e.g. an HDMI port).

And both Thunders had LCD screens rather than the AMOLEDs we were expecting. This could be just for the prototype (or is Dell feeling the AMOLED shortage too?). Anyway, one of the screens had the usual 480×800 WVGA resolution, though Engadget claim the other screen had a resolution possibly as high as 1280×768.

Video Below!

Apparently if you drag audio and video files over to your iDisk, you can now stream those selfsame files from the cloud. It's not quite a Celestial Jukebox it's only 20GB max but it could be useful for those who are into listening to a new album on the go without sideloading in iTunes.

Everyone is talking about iTunes in the cloud and this ain't it. However, it's an interesting addition to a seemingly dead service in the iTunes universe.

The 3D craze continues to find its way into the cell phone market. Sharp has today announced plans to launch a smartphone that features both the 3D screen (pictured) and the3D camera the company unveiled earlier this year. While this doesn't come as much of a surprise, a Sharp representative today stressed the phone will be available by year end – globally.

Commanding a market share of about 25%, Sharp leads the cell phone industry in its home market of Japan but has been rather cautious in selling phones internationally in the past years. In the smartphone segment, the company has (even in Japan) not much to offer (provided you don’t see those Japanese “super feature phones” as smartphones).

There are no details yet regarding  pricing, specs, exact launch dates and target markets.

But to recap, the 3D parallax barrier display Sharp showed in April doesn’t require glasses to view 3D images and is actually a touchscreen (3.4 inches) made for the Nintendo 3DS, Nintendo’s next portable console.

Amazing Essentially on a pair of glasses that's equipped with a battery, LEDs, a microcomputer, and a magnetic direction sensor even though the system (unfortunately) needs more hardware to make it actually work.

All that users need to do is to input the destination on a portable mini computer (the user's current location is detected via GPS). The main bullet point is the magnetic detection sensor that can detect which way the user is facing. If the user starts walking in a certain direction, the LEDs attached to the glasses light up in green or red, indicating whether it's the right or wrong direction.

That way, users are guided to their destination without having to look at a display the whole time, which makes this PNS more convenient and less dangerous to use, according to the makers of the navigation system, the Nakajima Lab at the University of Electro-Communications in Tokyo.

Here is the Video:

You loved Visa and Device Fidelity's attempts at turning your iPhone into a credit card. You were dazzled by the possibility of leaving behind that 1mm of inconvenience next time you go out for burritos. However, you lamented the possibility that such a dream may never come true.

Lament no more, friends, for today, Bloomberg reported that AT&T, Verizon, and T-mobile are plotting together to bring near-field communication payment systems to their phones in a big way.

So big, in fact, that reports are saying that they willcompete against credit giants Visa and Mastercard, partnering instead with Discover Financial Services to process the payments, and Barclays Plc to handle the accounts.

This will, of course, require not only new payment equipment in retail outlets, but also a new piece of technology integrated with a phone that people actually use (cue Visa’s iPhone case), but with the three biggest phone carriers in the US getting behind the project, expect a solution to this problem to come soon.

A pilot program is about to start in Atlanta and three other cities, where people will be able to pay with a wave of their “smartphone”, but I have no idea if this will involve a whole new phone, a case for their existing (and compatible) phone, or a sticker for the back of any phone/thing (which Mastercard have already started trialling).

Who knows which company or solution will win out in this war, but there’s one thing you should expect: your phone will eventually replace your wallet.