Google today launched a new app for Android called “Field Trip” that offers information based on your specific location, including local history, restaurants and architectural highlights. Touted as “your guide to the cool, hidden, and unique things in the world,” the app runs in the background and pops up automatically when it detects nearby points …

If you’re like me, you’re constantly grabbing for your smartphone or iPad when you watch TV to look up an actor, a movie review or something else that piqued your interest. This morning as I commuted to work, I started a shopping search on my smartphone that I cut short, figuring I’d complete it  with plans to hopefully make a …

A privacy-enhancing iOS app called Clueful that was yanked from the App Store for an unknown reason this summer has been re-released as a Web app. The app is available for free online and has data on more than 100,000 apps and allows users to add comments about apps and how developers handle data. Apple screens apps for bad behavior …

The country’s top trade agency handed Apple a mixed ruling today in its dispute with Google-owned Motorola Mobility over patents covering 3G wireless technology. The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that Apple did not violate three Motorola patents, including one that a judge had found the company to be infringing. But the agency sent a fourth patent — which the …

AT&T has temporarily disabled a frequency emitted by 16 towers that were found to be interfering with police and firefighter radio communications in Oakland, Calif., the San Francisco Chronicle reported today. The towers were causing radio failures, particularly when a police car was within a quarter to half a mile of one of them, said David Cruise, Oakland’s public safety …

The Federal Communications Commission should review its cell phone radio-frequency (RF) exposure limit, which was set 15 years ago, because it does not include testing for potential harm from holding phones directly against the body or factor in the latest research, a government report recommended today. When the RF exposure limit of 1.6 watts per kilogram specific absorption rate (SAR) …

LG Electronics of South Korea is cutting between 20 percent and 30 percent of its overseas staff in its mobile phone unit and is planning similar measures domestically, according to a report in the Korea Economic Daily. The handset manufacturer, which is struggling to recover from five consecutive quarters of losses, is closing some unprofitable units and laying off staff …

Google stock and the federal government now have something in common: they’ve both been downgraded by Standard & Poor’s. Of course, being downgraded by the ratings agency that famously whiffed on highly questionable real estate bonds might be considered a badge of honor in some circles. But the move by S&P does point to considerable market fears about Google’s gutsy …

Monterrey Bay Aquarium releases Seafood Watch app for Android. Monterey Bay Aquarium You’re at a restaurant and want to order the tiger shrimp. Sounds tasty, but is it an ethical choice from a marine conservation point of view? Not if it’s imported and caught in the wild, according to the Monterey Bay Aquarium’s new Seafood Watch app for Android. Tiger …

BARCELONA, Spain–Later this year you’ll be able to pay for clothes, taxi fare, and dinner with your mobile phone and leave your credit cards and cash at home. Visa is planning a commercial rollout in the U.S. in the second half of this year of a service for allowing allow people to turn their existing smartphones into electronic wallets. It …