The Barnes & Noble NOOK - a rival to Amazon’s Kindle eBook readers - is coming to the UK from mid-October this year.

The WiFi-enabled electronic book readers and compatible eBooks will be available via www.nook.co.uk from the autumn, with high-street and online retail partnerships still to be announced. It’s the first time B&N has offered its NOOK for sale outside the USA.

HTC, which took a stake in cloud-based game streaming service OnLive last year, has been hit by OnLive’s recent restructuring.

It means that HTC - which started working with Sony’s PlayStation Mobile gaming platform earlier this year - is looking at a $40 million loss.

Touchnote, which offers an app that enables consumers to take a photo and send it as a physical postcard, has been forced to update its Olympic-themed promotion due to unprecedented demand.

As a special offer for the Olympics, it partnered with Samsung to run a special offer via the web and for customers with Android smartphones. Postcards could be sent completely free until 31st August 2012 with Samsung’s Olympic sponsorship message on the card.

Mark Bridge writes:

Our first week of Olympics-free news didn’t start well for many people. Google said it was planning to reduce the number of employees at its Motorola Mobility subsidiary by around a fifth, cutting approximately 4,000 employees in a bid to return its mobile phone business to profitability.

UK telephone and broadband company TalkTalk has launched a new mobile phone service for its customers. These offers, which build on the company’s existing virtual network agreement with Vodafone UK, are only open to consumers who’ve chosen one of the company’s fixed-line services.

TalkTalk Mobile promises handsets that are completely free and tariffs that start from £5 a month.