Google has announced an Android programming tool that'll let people develop mobile applications without any formal programming skills. Instead, you design the way the app looks by dragging 'blocks' on a computer screen. Each block can affect the app's behaviour by storing information or performing certain actions under specific conditions.

Research company IDC Financial Insights has published a survey that shows mobile banking usage in the United States has almost doubled in the last 12 months. In fact, usage was up across all channels; branch, ATM, debit card, card centre, online and mobile. SMS text messages were the most popular form of mobile banking. However, the company points out that mobile banking is still not a mainstream channel and says it offers few revenue opportunities.

Mark Bridge writes:

I remember the launch of Carweek back in the 1990s. It was a motoring magazine produced as a weekly glossy newspaper; a novel format, although one that probably led to its demise. 'Spy shots' of prototype cars seemed then – as now – to be much sought-after, despite them often not showing much resemblance to the finished product. Indeed, I often wondered how you could possibly road-test the handling of a new car when it was covered with unflattering body parts that served to disguise its shape.

NTP Incorporated – co-founded by the late Thomas J Campana, who invented many of the technologies used in wireless email – has filed lawsuits against Apple, Google, HTC, LG Electronics, Microsoft and Motorola in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The company says eight of its patents, which relate to the wireless delivery of electronic mail, have been infringed.

NTP is probably best-known for a lengthy legal case with Research in Motion that's now been settled. The US government was forced to intervene after RIM was ordered to stop infringing the patents, which would have shut down BlackBerry email in the United States.