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The upcoming Windows Phone 8 devices by Nokia will be heading to AT&T exclusively in the United States when they launch in November. This seems like a bad plan for Nokia as they need to expand their customer base so that they can return to profitability and relevance in today's smartphone market.

Jeff Bradley, senior vice president of Devices and Developer Services at AT&T Mobility said, "Exclusive to our customers and featuring unique innovations in imaging technology, wireless charging and a bright, sensitive display - all on the nation's largest 4G network - the Lumia 920 will be one of the hottest phones for the holidays."

AT&T will also be carrying the HTC 8X, another Windows Phone 8 device. They appear to want to continue their dominance as the top Windows Phone carrier as they reminded everyone that they have sold more Windows Phones than any other carrier to date. I don't think that Windows Phone 8 is enough to make users switch carriers, though.

Google is sharpening its job axe in anticipation of slicing more jobs out of the Motorola Mobility division. During the second quarter, Motorola reported an operating loss of $233 million. Google slashed 4,000 jobs (roughly 20 percent) of Motorola's workforce in August as a way to trim down costs, and it looks as though they are trimming some more.

"Motorola has continued to refine its planned restructuring actions and now expects to broaden those actions to include additional geographic regions outside of the U.S.," Google said in a statement.

What this should be read as is "we're cutting more jobs." But cutting jobs is only one part of the restructuring plan. After all, cutting jobs costs money as Google's upping of its estimated severance costs proves. Google upped the estimate 9 percent to $300 million, not exactly cost saving in the short term.

Michigan State University scientists have figured out a way to ensure that tech geeks around the world will continue to have gold to use in their electronic connectors. If you didn't know, all of those 1000-2000 pins on a modern CPU are coated in gold, along with the pins in expansion slots on the motherboard.

Professors Kazem Kashefi and Adam Brown utilized the bacteria Cupriavidus Metallidurans to process a naturally occurring toxic gas known as Gold Chloride into 99.9% pure 24-carat gold. You can see the apparatus that was used in the experiment in the above picture. And no, it's not magical.

The bacteria used was discovered to be up to 25 times more resistant to toxic environments than previously thought. This discovery prompted the experiment that resulted in the production of gold. It's a rather simple affair, too. The bacteria is placed into a small bowl into which the toxic Gold Chloride gas is pumped.

We reported yesterday that Google would be coming out with Street View for it's mobile web-based Maps application. There was some debate as to whether or not it would be today that we saw the fruit of Google's labor, and it turns out that iOS6 users don't have to wait any longer to get access to one of the most popular Google Maps features.

While Street View is now available on iOS 6, the system is a bit laggy due to it being web-based. That said, it is still the only way to see a destination before arriving there. I'm sure most users will be overjoyed at getting the feature back. It will at least work as a stop-gap measure until Google releases a native Maps app for iOS.

While they haven't said they are working on one, it's highly unlikely that Google would take a miss on the large user database they could have for gaining traffic information and other information. Google explains how to use Street View on their web app:

We knew it was coming, but Facebook have confirmed some amazing stats for the biggest social network ever. Facebook reached their one billion monthly active users (MAU) on September 14, at 12:45 PM Pacific time.

Since the launch of the social network, they've experienced 1.13 trillion likes, 140.3 billion friends connected, 219 billion photos uploaded, 17 billion location-tagged posts and check-ins, and 62.6 million songs have been played 22 billion times - enough music to fill around 210,000 years of music.

Facebook's numbers found that the median age of a Facebook user is 22, with the top five countries connected to Facebook when they reached the one billion MAU milestone were Brazil, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the US. The social network enjoys an insane 600 million mobile users.

Apple have just signed off on a deal with Australian-based Microlatch, where they'll work on fingerprint recognition technology. Ex-Commonwealth Bank head, and now major Microlatch investor, David Murray, claims that the help Apple are after, is related to mobile payments using near-field communications (NFC) technology.

Microlatch has patented fingerprint technology that is said to meet banking security standards, all without the need for central processing - something Murray calls a "self-registering" system. The iPhone 5 may not have NFC technology, but with this latest deal it looks like Apple are one step closer to an NFC filled future.

We already have Passbook in iOS 6, with this possibly the start of Apple's NFC journey. Apple's iPhone 5S might sport NFC tech, but would they be too late to the game? Or will they do it in a way that really beats their competitors' NFC-based smartphones?

Scientists from the NanoRobotics Laboratory at École Polytechnique de Montreal in Canada have discovered a way of directing nanobots (nano-sized robots) inside the human body. If you're unfamiliar with nanobots, the nano-sized robots are so small that they can only be seen under a microscope.

These bots can be guided toward specific parts of the body that were too dangerous to risk surgery over - and is considered a huge breakthrough in cancer treatment. The technology is still in its infancy, with human testing not even a thought for now, but there are a few robotics firms including Quantum International, Intuitive Surgical, iRobot Corporation, and Dover Corporation, who are all committed to pushing this nanobot technology.

Robert Federowicz, CEO of Quantum, has said:

While Apple couldn't even get close to analysts' estimates on first-week iPhone 5 sales of 8-10 million, falling short and only reaching 5 million, Samsung's Galaxy S III is doing very, very well. Analytics firm Localytics says that demand for the S III hasn't slowed down, even during the $1 billion loss of the patent trial to Apple, and the release of the iPhone 5.

The analytics firm tracks what kind of smartphones access thousands of mobile apps using their mobile analytics platform, where they say that they've seen a 9% average increase of new Galaxy S III devices since the first week of August. New Galaxy S III sales grew by 16% during the week of Apple's victory in the patent trial, and grew another 15% during the week the Cupertino-based company announced their iPhone 5.

Localytics also thinks that Apple did Samsung a favor by suing them since "the deluge of post-litigation press coverage both drove general attention to Samsung and suggested that Samsung devices were similar enough to iPhones to be an option for many consumers."

Quite the surprise today, with news that Cliff "CliffyB" Bleszinski has decided to leave game developer, Epic Games. Epic Games are the development team behind huge titles such as the Unreal series, and Gears of War series of games.

Bleszinski has been with Epic for over 20 years, and had influence on some of those most memorable games of our time such as Jazz Jackrabbit, Unreal, Gears of War, and more. Tim Sweeney, Epic's founder, CEO and technical director, had the following to say:

A touchscreen-based MacBook Pro is here, modded and ready to be pre-ordered. Modbook announced the preorders for their Modbook Pro, hitting a huge price of $3,500. What makes the Modbook Pro so special? Well, it's a touchscreen 13.3-inch MacBook Pro, with a stylus pen to boot.

It's also fully customizable, where you can option it to come with either OS X Mountain Lion, OS X Mountain Lion with Windows 7 on Boot Camp, or just Windows 7. It's a wonderful thing to have all of that choice. Hardware-wise, you can configure the Modbook Pro with a 2.5GHz Core i5 processor, or upgrade it right up to a 2.9GHz-clocked Core i7 chip. Memory can be ramped right up to 16GB and storage can kick it up to a 480GB SSD drive.

Modbook Pro brings the best of both words, infusing the hardware of Apple's 13.3-inch MBP, with a Wacom Penabled pen tablet digitizer, all on an etched paper-emulating ForceGlass screen. If you want to order one of these bad boys, you'll need a $500 deposit with each order. The Modbook Pro's come with a 12-month warranty.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is set to announce something that is being dubbed as a "historic milestone" during an interview with Matt Lauer on the TODAY show, tomorrow. Zuckerberg's interview will be the first television interview post-IPO, and with the historic milestone being thrown around, most people are wondering what the Facebook founder could announce.

We know that Facebook could smash through 1 billion users, but are they all active? This could be the announcement, and the social network probably burst through 1 billion users a while ago, but daily active users is a completely different number - this could be the 'historic milestone' - one billion active users. No other site can claim this, and no other site is even close. Competing social network, Twitter, has 555 million users for example.

Digital marketing agency, iCrossing, examined Facebook's usage and based on the site's growth rate, the firm estimated that Facebook would hit one billion users sometime in August this year. Facebook have also had quite an amazing last six months, growing from 800 million users, to close to one billion. In the past three years, we've seen the social networking site go from 300 million users, to close to (if not more than) a billion now. Insane.

YouTube has loads of content. Hours of video are uploaded every second, some of it legitimate home footage and some of it infringing footage. Formerly, if a content owner alleged that a video contained their copyrighted material, YouTube would allow them to monetize the content or take it down.

YouTube has updated this process so that users who have had their video taken down can appeal the claim. Furthermore, YouTube has updated the algorithms to detect false take-down notices, so this should help reduce the number of automated mass take-downs that shouldn't have been taken down.

"Users have always had the ability to dispute Content ID claims on their videos if they believe those claims are invalid. Prior to today, if a content owner rejected that dispute, the user was left with no recourse for certain types of Content ID claims (e.g., monetize claims). Based upon feedback from our community, today we're introducing an appeals process that gives eligible users a new choice when dealing with a rejected dispute. When the user files an appeal, a content owner has two options: release the claim or file a formal DMCA notification."

Large data is becoming more and more prevalent, especially with the rise of the cloud. People are collecting larger collections of music, videos, and files. As Internet speeds continue to increase, the web will become even more media intensive and require larger hard drives to store all of this data.

This is where TDK's new work shines. They have managed to squish 1.5TB into a single square inch, which is really impressive. At this density, a single platter inside the drive will be able to hold 2TB. Just remember how 2TB was hard to achieve just a few years ago. Now, imagine squishing 3 platters into a drive.

That would equate to a 6TB drive, seemingly more than enough for most desktop users, and an increase for servers that are running multiple 2TB drives. The new technology also has implications on mobile 2.5-inch drives. Mobile users will be able to carry more on their internal drive and shouldn't need to rely on an external solution.

In the infamous words of Dr. Evil, the earth is filled with "liquid hot magma." Now, some scientists are looking to drill down into the inner filling of our Earth to do more studying. This is no easy task as the people who have attempted it before will tell you. The price tag will be at least $1 billion USD, with no guarantee of success.

The group of international scientists plan to drill into the mantle in one of three places. The three options are located in the Pacific ocean, along mid-ocean ridge lines where the crust is the thinnest due to the quick forming of said lines. Here, the crust is believed to be as thin as 6km, whereas other parts of Earth have up to an 80km thick crust.

This isn't the first attempt at drilling into the mantle of the Earth. Russia attempted something similar with the Kola Superdeep Borehole, which managed to drill as deep as 12km, though not in the middle of the ocean. "It will be the equivalent of dangling a steel string the width of a human hair in the deep end of a swimming pool and inserting it into a thimble 1/10 mm wide on the bottom, and then drilling a few meters into the foundations."

Apple's new iPhone 5 sports a new charging cable, which the company have dubbed "Lightning". Apple's new Lightning cable is an 8-pin charging cable, which has some built-in measures that won't make it easy for cheap imitation cables - something Apple are sure to make millions from.

Apple's former 30-pin cable was a pretty simple design, where it was based on millions upon millions of cables, accessories, docks, and so forth - cheap imitations were created from its simple design, but it looks like the same game won't be played this time around. Apple are currently charging $30 for a new Lightning cable, which is ridiculous considering the cable would cost next to nothing to manufacture.

CNN have an unnamed source "with knowledge of Apple's manufacturing" who has said that the new Lightning cable comes with new measures which will make imitation that much harder - as they contain a new authentication chip. It won't be impossible for Chinese manufacturers to imitate this new $30 cable, with the source stating:

Samsung's Galaxy Note II is looking like a mighty fine device, for those who want a large 5.5-inch smartphone, but it does have a trick up its sleeve when it comes to rotating your screen. Normally when you're reading something on your smartphone and turn the device, and have "Auto rotation" enabled, it will rotate it when the phone detects physical rotation.

Samsung have gone down a different route with the Note II, adding "Smart rotation". Smart rotation has debuted with the Note II, and is a little different to the Galaxy S III's Smart stay. Smart roation will use the front-facing camera to detect what orientation your face is at, and then match the rotation of the screen with it. So if you rotate your phone into landscape to watch a video clip, but keep your face at the same angle, it won't adjust.

But, if you were laying down and looking at your phone sideways, it would detect this and adjust accordingly. Very cool, and something worth bragging about on the Note II. These little things are what make the phones stand out, and while this is not a killer app by any means, it is building Samsung toward something greater - something magical.

Lenovo, who is a Chinese computer-maker, are set to start manufacturing PCs in the US next year. The company will build a production line in Whitsett, North Carolina, that will allow the the company to be more responsive to US corporate clients' demand for flexible supplies and product customization.

With the production of PCs in the US, the cost will be higher, but it will improve the image of Lenovo in the US. At the moment, they're fourth in market share in regards to shipment numbers. Lenovo's North American President, David Schmook, has said:

We know that Steve Jobs was a visionary, as he is constantly described as such, and nearly a year after the Apple co-founder died, historians have found some information that would confirm he truly was a visionary.

The Next Web writes about a speech Jobs gave nearly thirty years ago in 1983 at the Center for Design innovation. After this speech, Jobs gave a question and answer session that covered a wide variety of topics, where Jobs talked about a "computer in a book", where a user could learn how to use it in just 20 minutes:

The biggest extreme overclocking event this year was held in motherboard capital of Taipei, Taiwan. Sixteen teams representing fourteen countries competed in the fifth Master Overclocking Arena (MOA) held by MSI. Held at the NTU Sports Center in Taipei on the 28th September 2012, this year's MOA event coincided with Typhoon Jelawat, but luckily the extreme weather caused no problems with the competition.

The MOA 2012 Worldwide Grand Final had a strict contest schedule to ensure the event was smooth flowing and on time. After the short opening ceremony where the overclockers were introduced, hardware was randomly selected by pulling out a number from the box that corresponded to a set of motherboards, video cards, processors and RAM.

After all the teams drew their hardware, the contestants were given 90 minutes of preparation time. This time was spent building the machine and installing the heavy CPU pots to contain the icy cold liquid nitrogen (LN2). During this time, testing was also done on the CPU to find its highest clock.

Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were two completely different people, and it really shows with Wozniak's latest comments on Apple. Wozniak recently did an Ask me Anything (AmA) on Reddit, where he responded to a question regarding Apple's current practices, and he had some colorful words for the company:

He continued, where he pointed out that years ago Apple released software on competing platforms such as Windows, where they released iTunes onto Microsoft's popular OS. But, they're not so happy to play well with others now, as we don't see iTunes on Android, he continued: