Earlier this month it was reported that Facebook was in negotiations with Israeli-based crowdsourced mapping and traffic application Waze.

With negotiations having already begun over 6 months ago it was believed that Facebook was looking to acquire the startup for about $1 billion in an effort to expand its mobile presence across platforms.

While that deal was never officially confirmed Bloomberg now reports that Google Inc. is also interested, creating a possible bidding war with the social network and looks to block Facebook from becoming a competitor as a mapping service provider.

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In February, we reported that a $10 million X Prize was fueling a race to make the Tricorder, a fictional medical device featured on Star Trek,  a reality. The Tricorder is a handheld device used for sensor scanning  and data analysis to diagnose various ailments.

One of the contenders for this prize is the Scout, developed by Belgian digital entrepreneur Walter De Brouwer, the CEO of Scanadu. Scanadu, based at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California,  makes medical technology devices for consumers.

However, the Scout was not originally intended for consumers but rather to provide a way for astronauts to monitor their health on the International Space Station and is built on Micrium, the same real-time operation system for SAM (Sample Analysis at Mars) on the Mars Curiosity rover.

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First National Bank’s (FNB) CEO Michael Jordaan has announced his resignation on Twitter.

Jordaan’s tweet reads:

After 10 years at the helm of FNB I will step down at the end of 2013. Thanks for all your support.

— Michael Jordaan (@MichaelJordaan) May 22, 2013

Over the last few years, Jordaan has been at the helm of FNB’s digital marketing strategy that uses technology to differentiate it from other SA banks to make a smarter, easier and more efficient banking experience for customers.

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Square, the developers of Square Register, a  free point of sale app has introduced the Square Stand that lets business owners easily take payments directly from an iPad 2 or 3 (30-pin connector). Once the iPad and Square Stand are connected, its overall sleek and minimal appearance looks nothing like the typical cash registers that we have come to know.

The Square Stand tilts for different viewing angles and can rotate 180 degrees so customers can easily sign for purchase. The integrated credit card swiper keeps credit card information secure after swiping.

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South Africa already has a number of great money transfer solutions. The real challenge is not getting another banking app, but rather finding locations for these applications to convert credit into cash as well as cash into credit, says Bevan Ducasse of wiGroup.

“Mobile money is growing tremendously,” says Ducasse. “Every one of the big four banks as well as Capitec has a mobile banking solution, and we have MTN and Vodacom offering money transfer services as well. The problem of how to enable people without traditional bank accounts to transfer money has been solved. If someone has a cellphone number, you can send them money.”

What does still need to be solved, says Ducasse, is the problem of how to spend money sitting in mobile accounts and wallets. “At some point you still need to be able to deposit and withdraw cash,” he says; “and everything points to the retail footprint in South Africa being the answer.”

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Google has announced the addition of seven new apps coming to Google Glass at this year’s Google I/O which has demonstrated the largest gathering of Google Glass wearers to date.

Glass will be receiving the big name apps that Google calls Glassware that include breaking news alerts from CNN, Twitter, Tumblr and Facebook posts, reminder notes from Evernote and fashion features from Elle.

Currently Path, The New York Times, Google+, Gmail and Google Now are the only official apps available on the wearable computing device while other developers lucky enough to get their hands on a pair, continue to create apps like the Winky app that let you take photographs with a blink of an eye. A group of programmers has also brought facial recognition software to Google Glass with the MedRefGlass app.

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Google’s messaging systems have quickly become a mess – with the launch of Google Chat a decade ago they had a pretty decent headstart. But they quickly branched out into different channels with the launch of Google Voice, and later the Hangouts feature in Google+.

Google Talk was luckily built on the Jabber standard until now, meaning that you could quite easily integrate it with many different clients across many platforms. But Google never launched an official Google Chat client outside Android – until now. The new Google Hangouts app is meant to bring Talk, Hangouts video chat and Google Voice together into one product.

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These days, the iPhone is one of the most popular cameras in the world – but it’s hard to think that it launched with a relatively terrible camera back in 2007. The original iPhone launched with a fixed focus 2MP camera, which did not even have a flash.

The camera has been steadily upgraded, and has been a big focus for Apple since the iPhone 3GS, which was the first iPhone with a decent auto focus lens system.

The camera interface has not changed much though. Despite the massive upgrades in lens and photo quality, the actual UI of the camera is as simple as ever.

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