Rogers and CIBC make joint deal for NFC mobile payments in Canada, let you check out with your BlackBerry

Canadians sometimes can’t catch a break: while NFC payments have been relatively common for Americans, Europeans and certainly the Japanese, Canucks have had to largely make do paying with ye olde credit carde. Rogers and national bank CIBC want to put an end to these antediluvian ways: starting later

HTC confirms One X multitasking tweaks in Sense 4

There’s been quite a bit of brouhaha over at xda-developers lately about changes HTC’s made to the way multitasking behaves on the One X compared to stock Ice Cream Sandwich. We’re not just talking about obvious UI differences here — Sense 4′s horizontal, card-like arrangement vs. Android 4.0′s default

Quora Investor Peter Thiel: “The Samwers Are Never Going To Clone Quora,”

There’s been a lot of armchair valuation punditry across the Valley this week. As the Facebook IPO looms, our intricately entwined ecosystem of startups and investors seeks to benefit from the domino effect of a population feeling flush with cash. This is the picture that the WSJ painted in its Quora

Read/Write Daily: Bionic Eyes That Can See Clearly

Today’s theme is improving on life. Nature did a pretty good job of engineering some hardy life forms. But now we’re able to tinker with life ourselves.
We’re further along than you might think.

Researchers have lifted the lid on turtle evolution, a perfect demonstration

Apple slips out new OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion beta, leaves 2007 MacBook Pro in a momentary lurch

Apple looks to be stepping up the frequency of OS X Mountain Lion beta updates after initially keeping the pace slow and steady: it just posted a new, unceremoniously titled 12A206J build for developers. What the update fixes in the Developer Preview isn’t clear, but there are still glitches with Fast

Plastic Logic shutters US offices, gets out of making its own e-readers

Plastic Logic has something of a rollercoaster history, having had to drop the QUE proReader before it even shipped and getting a $700 million cash injection that ultimately swung its attention to Russian schoolchildren. Unfortunately, the UK company’s dreams of a self-branded e-reader are closing down

Google bots learning to read webpages like humans, one step closer to knowing everything

Google just launched its Knowledge Graph, a tool intended to deliver more accurate information by analyzing the way users search. Of course, with a desire to provide better search results comes a need for improved site-reading capabilties. JavaScript and AJAX have traditionally put a wrench in Google

Pinterest Raising $120 Million to Fund International Expansion [REPORT]

Pinterest is raising $120 million in a funding round expected to be announced Thursday or Friday morning, according to multiple sources. The inv…

CinemaNow app comes to Xbox Live

As if gamers needed another video streaming platform on the Xbox 360, Best Buy’s CinemaNow app has now arrived on the Microsoft console. CinemaNow is a platform that allows users to rent or buy movies and TV shows, just like iTunes, Amazon Video On Demand, and Vudu, but without the brand recognition

Sony NEX-F3 and A37 cameras hands-on and sample shots

Sony’s newest NEX and DSLR have already graced these pages — albeit in decidedly unofficial fashion — but the time has come for this duo of shooters to be revealed to the world with the blessing of their maker. In case you didn’t catch the earlier leaks, the NEX-F3 is the replacement for the much-beloved