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.