The Next Web

We’ve seen tons of parodies and pranks involving Siri, the personal assistant that comes with Apple’s iPhone 4S. But rarely do you see one with serious production value or special effects.

Today we got sent a video called “Psycho Siri” that is so well done, it could pass for a scene straight out of a Hollywood movie. The storyline involves one of the characters finding an abandoned iPhone 4S, but I won’t ruin the rest of it for you.

Try to not get creeped out when Siri says “it’s futile for you to run and hide”.

Twitter is a great platform to get people stoked about anything, if done right. You can promote potato chips like @popchips does, and it could turn into a huge following for your brand and have fun doing it.

Or, you can do it completely wrong and annoy the hell out of people by spamming them on Twitter. Toyota opted for the second choice, spam people.

In what is probably the worst Twitter promotion I’ve seen on the platform since the company launched in 2006, Toyota has created a slew of accounts and is spamming people about what it is calling the “Camry Effect a Friend’ Giveaway!”. The worst part is that they’re all verified accounts, so while Twitter isn’t involved in the promotion, someone at the company definitely knows about it.

Surely a company as big as Toyota did some research first, targeting people who would really be jazzed about this promotion right? Nope. It appears as if all of these accounts are spitting out the same junk to people who use any hashtags or phrases having to do with the Super Bowl. Tweets with hashtags like #giants and #patriots are causing these Camry accounts to reply to you in an effort to get you to sign up to win a car for your friend or something:

The accounts I’ve seen doing this are @CamryEffect, @CamryEffect1, @CamryEffect2, @CamryEffect3, @CamryEffect4, and @CamryEffect5. There are probably more, so you get the picture.

Like I mentioned, the worst part about all of this is that these accounts have all been blessed by Twitter as being “verified”. I’m not sure what the company was thinking when they verified a grip of accounts with similar names. It just screams “spam”.

Take a look at this “promotion” from one of Toyota’s accounts:

All this poor girl did was mention her favorite team, the Patriots. I’ve seen some chitter chatter from friends on the service and they’re all reporting the accounts for spam. So far it hasn’t worked, and hopefully it’s not because these accounts are verified. Twitter has enough to worry about during the Super Bowl weekend, like staying online, and this certainly isn’t a good way to start.

What do you think about Toyota’s promotion? Tell us in the comments!

UPDATE: It appears as if the Twitter accounts owned by Toyota that we mentioned above have all been switched over to “private”, and we received this comment from Toyota:

We apologize to anyone in the Twitterverse who received an unwanted @reply over the past few days. We were excited to share the message of our Camry Effect campaign in a new way and it was never our intention to displease anyone.
We’ve certainly learned from this experience and have suspended the accounts effective immediately to avoid any additional issues.
Kimberley Gardiner, National Digital Marketing & Social Media Manager, Toyota Motor Sales, U.S.A. Inc.

Twitter has signalled its intention to grow its business and revenues in Asia after appointing the executive who headed up Google’s display advertising in the region as vice president of international operations, according to India’s Economic Times.

February 3 was Canadian-born Shailesh Rao‘s final day at Google, where he served as managing director of media and platforms across Asia Pacific and managing director of Google India. In his dual role, Rao managed the company’s display advertising business across the continent and headed up operations in India.

Twitter told Business Week that Rao will come on board later this year to work on the advertising side of its business, but it is unclear exactly what his day-to-day responsibilities and markets will be. The firm is moving to develop its presence and revenue outside of North America and key European markets, having most recently introduced a feature to help it comply with censorship, an introduction that was welcomed in parts of Asia last week.

Twitter’s advertising is predicted to triple over the next two years to hit $540 million by 2014, according to research from eMarketer. Bringing in a seasoned Asia veteran like Rao, who has experience growing ad revenues in the region, is clearly a key move to boost its presence and increase revenue in new and potentially lucrative markets.

The move is also likely to see Twitter tap into Rao’s experience in India. With the service blocked in China, with little sign of anything changing soon, India’s 1.17 billion population makes it the next biggest country in Asia and a logical target for Twitter.

A Google spokesperson confirmed the departure of Rao in a statement that was released on Friday:

We thank Shailesh for his fantastic contributions to Google, and Google India in particular, and wish him the best in his future endeavours.

Recently voted ’Internet professional of the year’ by the Internet Mobile Association Of India (IAMAI), Rao first joined Google in March 2005 as director of local search based out of its its Mountain View office.

During his time with the company, his projects included launching Google Maps and Google Earth in a number of emerging markets, before he moved to head up operations in India in 2007.

In its well-known annual prediction report, the marketing firm JWT identified ‘objectifying objects’ as one of the key trends that will dominate 2012.

We may spend our day using laptops and tablets, but from postcards to memo books, physical objects still matter when it comes to building memories.

This is something that the American notebook brand Field Notes understands very well; notebooks are about emotions.

The same goes for good ads, and its Valentine’s Day RED BLOODED promotional video nails it:

Sometimes we stumble upon things that make us doubt everything we’ve ever known. This may very well be one of those moments, as Terry Moore explains why most of us have been tying our shoes wrong forever.

As an aside, it seems that left-handed people tend to tie their shoes in the manner that Moore recommends. Are you a lefty? Sound off in the comments.

I’m a huge fan of the split keyboard that was added to the iPad on iOS 5. I have to credit a friend with predicting this addition several months before WWDC actually, he specifically said “a split keyboard on the iPad would make me so happy.”

He got his wish and now I use it all the time to type with my thumbs in vertical mode. It makes it a ton easier to hold the iPad in two hands and still jot out short messages.

Well, in typical Apple fashion, it has managed to sneak in a subtle and invisible addition to the split keyboard that makes it even cooler. It has hidden duplicate buttons invisibly along each end of the split, making it possible to ‘reach over’ the gap to grab a key on the other side without having to use the opposite hand.

This discovery was made by Finer Things’ David Chartier and makes a nice addition for those of us that don’t exactly conform to ‘home row’ practices when typing with our thumbs. If you’re used to crossing over to grab the occasional key that doesn’t belong to that hand, you might even do it subconsciously.

It’s well known that Apple plays with the tap target sizes of buttons invisibly by predicting which letter you’re going to type next. This makes it easier to snag a button that you’re going for next even when you’re stabbing away a bit recklessly. The addition of these invisible additional keys is another great example of invisibly helping a user without their knowledge utilizing subtle and invisible UX design.

You can activate the split keyboard by simply dragging it apart with two fingers or by tapping and holding the keyboard button at the bottom and choosing ‘split keyboard’.

A gym that lets humans generate energy for a Spanish city; open data about obesity levels in the Netherlands; a smart bus network navigation system in Japan, and a wireless network to control street lights; monitor car parking spaces and more in San Francisco. These are just some of the solutions being asked for by cities around the world as part of the Living Labs Global Award.

Living Labs Global is a non-profit association which promotes new technologies and services in cities. In all, twenty cities have partnered with the organisation to identify innovative solutions to problems around tourism, transport, health and open government.

The twenty cities are currently looking for ideas to be submitted, with winning solutions set to be announced in May. From there, pilot projects will test out each winner’s viability.

Previous winners of the competition have included a smart real-time peer-to-peer parking system in Stockholm and an open data citizen participation platform in San Francisco.

The cities taking part this year are Barcelona, Birmingham, Caceres, Cape Town, Coventry, Derry~Londonderry, Eindhoven, Fukuoka, Glasgow, Guadelajara, Hamburg, Lagos, Lavasa, Kristiansand, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro, San Francisco, Sant Cugat, Santiago de Chile and Terrassa.

You can browse everything that the cities are looking for, and submit your idea on the Awards website, but hurry – the deadline is 17 February 2012.

➤ Living Labs Global Award 2012

“Have you ever had the problem of finding something again you have already seen on Facebook or elsewhere on the Internet?,” asked Gerald Bäck, co-founder of Archify. A few vague nods of agreement flickered around the audience as Gerald explained some of the difficulties in remembering where you’ve read a piece of content online.

This was at Startup Bootcamp’s London investor day last week, where twelve startups pitched for investment cash. Archify is a browser plugin which, once installed, saves everything that you browse online – including every update from you and your friends on your social streams. If you search for something on Google, a little overlay will appear telling you that there are also results in Archify.

Archify is like your own personal browsing archive. In addition to indexing all the content you’ve viewed, Archify also takes a screenshot of each page you visit, allowing you to not only find content, but view it exactly the way it looked on the day you visited the page.

Archify is three guys from Vienna - Gerald Bäck, Max Kossatz and Walter Palmetshofer -  who have launched startups previously but sold them last year to concentrate their efforts on Archify. It’s currently in private beta and they’re hoping to launch it publicly by the end of Q1 2012. For now, you’ll have to submit your email address and wait for an invite – or if you can’t wait, The Next Web has 100 invites to give away (see further down).

How Archify works

So…how does Archify work? Well, when you activate your account, your browser should automatically detect the correct plugin and prompt you to install it – this works with all the major browsers, including Firefox, Chrome, Internet Explorer and Safari. You then set up your account, including username and password, and you can choose to register without connecting your Twitter and Facebook accounts if you like. However, if you connect with your social media accounts, it will enable you to archive your browsing there too.

As it’s a browser plugin, Archify works away in the background snapping your every search. When you enter keywords in into a search engine, an overlay appears informing you that there are search items with your keywords included already in your Archify archive. It’s worth noting here, that the product was previously called egoArchive, and this branding still exists on the plugin for the moment, though it will change in the coming weeks.

You can either click on the link within the overlay, or you can visit your account at Archify.com any time to search directly within it.

The one thing I’d say is the search box within Archify seems needlessly big and dominates the page, as you can see here:

Archify also lets you filter your search results to include just your search engine browsing history, or Facebook and Twitter. It also lets you specify time-frames, including the last day, week or month.

Your search results also let you delete specific archives, share them with the social sphere and even favorite them – the latter meaning you can choose to search specific results that you have personally bookmarked as ‘important’.

 So…what exactly does Archify record?

When you browse a website that uses the secure https protocol, Archify doesn’t record the pages – after all, most people don’t want their online banking pages saved for posterity. And if your Twitter’s Always use https is enabled, it won’t record your Twitter browsing either, though if you’re accessing Facebook, Twitter or any site using http they’ll be archived. It’s worth noting here that Archify won’t record your browsing if you’re in private ‘incognito’ mode.

However, when you choose to actively ‘connect’ Archify with Facebook and Twitter, Archify automatically archives all updates from your friends on Facebook and all the tweets from the people you follow on Twitter, as well as your own tweets and updates. This happens in the background, regardless of whether you actually visit Twitter or Facebook.

Interestingly, all your browsing is stored to your Archify account, meaning that no matter what browser you’re using on what computer, your online activity will be archived in a centralized repository in the cloud. Assuming you have the plug-in installed on each browser, of course.

Plugin updates will be rolled out prior to the full public launch, and we’re told that new versions due out imminently will also archive a user’s geo-position and display it in their search results as a marker. This means that in the future, you will be able to search for what pages you viewed on a given day in a specific location.

In terms of money, basic Archify accounts will always be free to use. In the coming months, more features will be added, including social-graph technologies, additional filters and labels, some of which will be available as part of a premium service offering. However, for the duration of the alpha and public beta, all features will be available to all users.

The verdict…and the invites

Archify is certainly an interesting project, and it does what it professes to do. Of course, it’s still in development so there are a few bugs – for example, some versions of Firefox don’t yet have the overlay feature built into the browser, though this is being fixed. And there are a few other niggles here and there which will be ironed out as the tool is developed.

It’s probably worth mentioning the performance too – there’s a danger with such plugins that they will adversely affect your computer’s processing power. I installed Archify and forgot it was there until I decided to check out exactly what it had been recording.

Meanwhile, The Next Web has 100 invites to giveaway – first come, first served. Simply visit this link, and the special invite key should already be filled in – it’s tnw01. Just complete the rest of your details and you should be good to go. But you’ll need to be quick…if you miss one of the 100 invites, you can submit your email address and join the waiting list.

➤ Archify

It’s not often you would see a rugby app featured on The Next Web but with the RBS 6 Nations rugby tournament commencing today, Europeans will be finding that comfy spot on their sofa to take in the best that England, Scotland, Wales, France, Italy and Ireland have to offer.

To accompany today’s matches, a new official has been commissioned to help armchair rugby fans enjoy the spectacle, fusing sport with a little bit of social to deliver RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge, an informative and fun game app for iOS and Android.

RBS says it is rugby’s first ever interactive in-game companion app, from what we have seen, it could be right. The Challenge app compliments the company’s existing fixtures application, delivering scores, stats, gameplay in the form of an in-game quiz and a social scoring system to pit people against their friends via Facebook Connect.

The app is best used when matches are in progress, with RBS pushing trivia questions to smartphone and tablet owners as events occur on the pitch. Think Toby Flood will make that conversion for England following a try? Back him and be rewarded with a points win should he score. Each answer will be compared to other gamers, and your friends if they are connected to the app from their devices.

All of your results can be automatically shared to your Facebook wall, motivating others to join you and show you their rugby knowledge.

  

The app will activate 40 minutes before each live match and enable fans to test their rugby knowledge with a few pre-match questions. It doesn’t matter which app you use or on what device, RBS will make sure that scores are updated in real-time, enabling you to face-off against your friends and family from either your tablet or smartphone.

The app also saves your data so you can add to your score throughout the Championship, tracking where you stand on the leader board based on your selected supported nation, matches, or friends playing.

RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge is available to download now; if you fancy yourself as a bit of a rugby pundit and want to take on your mates, make sure you grab it today before the France vs Italy match kicks off at 2:30pm GMT.

➤ RBS 6 Nations Live Challenge – iOS | Android

Amazon has amended listings for its Kindle Touch e-reader, enabling visitors to Amazon.com to ship the keyboardless device to a large number of countries outside of the US.

The eBook Reader spotted the modification, noting the amended product description – Kindle Touch, Wi-Fi, 6″ E Ink Display – for international shipment – and addition of a dropdown which customers can specify which country  the device can be shipped to.

Whilst a number of regions can be selected and allow customers to ship their touch-sensitive Kindle internationally, some are still unavailable to select, including the UK, Germany, Italy, Spain and France — instead directing customers to their local Amazon website.

There’s a reason for this, although Amazon won’t tell you why.

The Kindle range is the bestselling product range on Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.de, Amazon.fr, Amazon.es and Amazon.it, at least over the holiday season. Instead of quietly rolling out the Kindle Touch worldwide, Amazon has slightly capped its launch in these countries so that it can give them a dedicated launch, suggesting to us that it will soon debut the Kindle Fire also on those European shores.

If you live outside of those five countries, you can now get your hands on your very own Kindle Touch, although for the time being you will not be able to buy the 3G-enabled model.

For those of you living in Amazon’s ‘hot’ regions, we guess its only a matter of time before Amazon sends its press release onto the newswires, finally launching the rest of the Kindle family.

Fab.com is hot, hot, hot. The daily deals site has seen some amazing growth in the past four months alone, and it doesn’t look to be slowing down at all.

Today, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg shared some interesting stats and trends on his personal blog about the company.

Most notably, Fab saw its direct traffic pass traffic from email for the first time since ever last month. That means that the company has serious brand reputation which could be driving some wild word of mouth advertising.

In his post, Goldberg shared a graph showing the jump:

His insights on why this is?

We believe that the rise in direct traffic is because of 3 reasons:
- Mobile visits now account for nearly 1/3 of all visits.
- More and more people are just typing in www.fab.com into their browser at 11am ET / 8am PT each day instead of waiting to click on our emails.
- With 2 million members now, growing by 450,000 in January 2012 alone, we’ve reached a bit of a tipping point in general awareness of Fab.

The fact that its email traffic has dominated so much is a testament to how much its members love the service. That much traffic just from email campaigns is impressive.

Speaking of hot services, Goldberg also pointed out that Pinterest has now passed Twitter in referral traffic to the site, a pretty impressive feat for a service that’s still in its infancy as well.

Once every few weeks a new app hits Apple’s app store that has a very hidden, yet very sought after feature, tethering.

We reported on one just a few weeks ago, called QuasiDisk, which has since been taken down by Apple. Another app called “PayUpSucker” also saw a similar fate.

According to InformationWeek, a new one called “iRandomizer Numbers” has found its way onto the store and might be able to stay there the entire weekend, since Apple’s reviewers don’t tend to work weekend shifts.

When you download the app, which is $4.99, simply enter “1984″ in as the minimum number and “31337″ as the maximum number. Tap generate, and boom you’re able to tether any machine to your iPhone and use its 3G connection.

The CEO of the company behind the app, Nick Kramer, told InformationWeek that this feature was originally meant for friends and family:

Reluctantly, I will admit that my application ‘iRandomizer Numbers’ does have a hidden tethering feature. I say reluctantly because I didn’t plan on the feature being released. I designed the tethering functionality for my family and close friends not thinking it would be disseminated outside that circle.

If you don’t want to pay your carrier for tethering, grab the app now before Apple figures it out and takes it down. Pay at your own risk!

➤ iRandomizer Numbers

Just in case you were wondering if Apple would start making lower-priced MacBook airs and other mobile devices based on the ARM chip set, ala Microsoft, the company has no interest according to a report by AppleInsider.

Citi analysts recently met with Apple’s CEO Tim Cook and CFO Peter Openheimer, and one thing was clear: the company is focused on the iPad, as Cook feels like the tablet market could soon overtake that of PCs.

Instead of creating smaller and cheaper version of its MacBook line using ARM chip-sets, the company is going to focus on making the iPad feel more like a PC, or at least give it the capability to do just as much as a desktop or laptop can do.

Analyst Richard Gardner shared that he:

walked away from this meeting with the impression that Apple feels iPad satisfies—or will soon satisfy—the needs of those who might have been interested in such a product.

Given the success of the iPad, it makes complete sense that Apple would stay on its current course. Apple is a software company after all, and it clearly feels like most of the gaps between the PC experience and tablet experience can be solved with a strong operating system.

According to a report by AdAge, Facebook has made a huge hire which will change the way the company markets itself to consumers. In fact, Facebook hasn’t done much marketing of itself at all, so this hire is a one to pay attention to.

Reportedly, Facebook has hired Rebecca Van Dyck to be its head of global marketing. Having spent just 11 months at Levi’s, Van Dyck worked alongside Steve Jobs at Apple during the release of the iPhone, iPad, iPod and iTunes. Needless to say, Van Dyck knows consumers.

Van Dyck’s history is impressive, as you can tell by her previous experience:

- SVP, Chief Marketing Officer at Levi’s (11 Months)
- Sr Director, Worldwide Marketing Communications and Advertising at Apple Inc. (3 years)
- Sr. Director, WorldWide Advertising at Apple (4 years)
- Global Account Director, Nike at Wieden+Kennedy (12 years)

Given that Facebook will be publicly traded within the next three to four months, the company will need to put itself out there to draw more users, developers, and most importantly, businesses to advertise on the platform. Given Van Dyck’s pedigree at Apple, the company could fast become a more user-friendly when looked at from the outside.

We’ve reached out to Facebook for comment and haven’t heard back yet. We’ll let you know if we do, though.

UPDATE: A Facebook spokesperson told us:

We can confirm that Rebecca is joining the marketing team and we are thrilled she’s decided to join us.

Apple has issued an update to its Apple TV software that ads the Genius feature to its Movie and TV sections, reports Appleinsider. It seems clear that this was always coming, but in practice it makes a ton of sense as a counterpart to Netflix’s recommendation engine.

The new sections appear below the Movies and TV Shows sections and dispplay several rows of selections based on recent movies watched. Whatever algorithm is being used it seems fairly loose, and not based directly on genre or actors involved, at least going off of the choices it gave me.

I do love that there is a chick flick followed by Krull, a movie I love but have never watched on my Apple TV. Seems to be a good selection available for both my wife and I, who use the device together. The two rows that follow are based on specific titles, so it’s a tad easier to see how it spins these choices out. One thing that I noticed immediately was that there is a bit of repetition going on across the categories. This could be due to the fact that we only casually use Apple TV rentals and spend a lot more time in Netflix.

The TV selections are nearly spot on, with almost every selection being to either my tastes or my wife’s. I watch more TV than she does on the Apple TV so much of it is curved toward the sci-fi or genre shows, although The Office and Curb Your Enthusiasm, two of her favorites, make a showing as well.

The comparisons to Netflix’ recommendation engine are immediate, of course, and fill in the gaps in the Apple TV’s ‘discovery browsing’ capabilities. This should help in those ‘what to watch’ situations when browsing through movies and their connected properties via the standard browsing just didn’t turn up likely options.

These additions won’t likely convince someone to purchase content instead of watching it for free on Netflix, but it does bring the Apple TV browsing experience more in line with what you can get on the streaming service. That ‘poke around and see what it thinks I will like’ serendipity was missing without Genius.

According to Transit Wireless, a company formed to respond to the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s requirement for a shared wireless infrastructure for NY Transit, New Yorkers can now look forward to cellphone service and free WiFi in 30 more subway platforms over the course of 2012. So far, only two stations have been outfitted by Transit Wireless (14th and 23rd Streets), which happened late last year.

The network was designed to act as a neutral host to extend a variety of wireless carrier services, and numerous carriers have already signed up (notably, AT&T and T-Mobile). The free WiFi access will be sponsored and available to all riders, which should help ease the pain of long subway commutes across the city.

Times Square, Rockefeller Center, Columbus Circle and stations along 96th Street are just some of the many stations that are planned to be wired for cell service this year. According to Kevin Ortiz, a spokesman for the MTA:

Bringing wireless service into our underground subway system reinforces the MTA’s effort to use technology to improve customer convenience that allows them to stay in touch with friends, relatives and business contacts. And by having access to real-time service status updates while underground, riders can better navigate the system.

The WSJ reports that the MTA had previously estimated “the of wiring all 271 subway stations in the transit system at roughly $200 million, a cost being borne entirely by Transit Wireless.” Now, it has been decided that “Transit Wireless and MTA will share proceeds of the company’s contracts with wireless carriers, MTA officials have said, with a minimum annual payment to the transit system of $3.3 million once the cellphone network is complete.”

It’s a sigh of relief for me, as not having cell phone service during a long ride can be a big pain in the case of “emergencies.” That said, I’m not looking forward to hearing every rider yapping on their phones —  probably the modern equivalent of the boom boxes that spanned NY’s subway stations back in the 80s.

Brandon Watson, the leader of the Developer Experience team for Windows Phone 7, is leaving Microsoft for Amazon. Watson had worked for and left Microsoft in the past, and it isn’t surprising that he left a second time, considering that his new job at Amazon will see him serve as the Director of the Kindle Cross Platform team.

While at Microsoft, Brian Watson worked on developer marketing and developer platform products. The details of his departure were first leaked on twitter:

Huh? Where did @BrandonWatson go?

— Ryan Lowdermilk (@ryanlowdermilk) February 3, 2012

ZDNet later confirmed the change:

Watson confirmed his departure via e-mail, telling me  “it was a hard decision, but the opportunity placed in front of me that was too big to pass up.”

So far, no replacement for Watson has been appointed. I’ve asked Microsoft for comment on the company’s plans here and have not received word back.

Watson’s departure follows the lead of Former Windows Corporate Vice President of Strategy Mike Nash, who left Microsoft back in February of 2010. It’s telling that Amazon has chosen to headhunt from Microsoft’s latest and most promising attempt at breaking into the smartphone market.

Color, one of the seven elements of art, is one of the most important aspects of any design. Because of this, it’s surprising that there aren’t many tools available when you require something more than just a color picker.

If you’ve ever needed a quick way to convert colors from RGB to Hex, or needed to grab css codes for a gradient, ColorHexa is an elegant way to do so. Simply search for a single color and you’re presented with an encylopedia-like entry of everything from analogous colors to auto-generated html elements and related shades.

The site is capable of more complex actions, too. You can blend multiple colors together simply by typing them in (e.g.: red+blue) and you’ll be get tons of information on the calculated result.

From ColorHexa:

ColorHexa.com is a free color tool providing information about any color. Just type any color values (view full list here) in the search field and ColorHexa will offer a detailed description and automatically convert it to its equivalent value in Hexadecimal, Binary, RGB, CMYK, HSL, HSV, CIE-Lab, Hunter-Lab, CIE-Luv, CIE-LCH, XYZ and xyY.

ColorHexa will also generate matching color schemes such as complementary, split complementary, analogous, triadic, tetradic and monochromatic colors. So you will be able to know what colors best suit with the one you chose. It is also possible to blend colors together or create a gradient between them

The site’s design is sleek and simple, as it should be, and is snappy enough to suit any workflow. It’s definitely worth a look, especially if you’ve ever found yourself bouncing back and forth between your browser and Photoshop for color information.

> ColorHexa

You might also want to check out this list of 9 resources to inspire your next color palette.

Google has removed the Verizon version of its Galaxy Nexus from all support pages and its list of Android Open Source Project products, effectively nixing it from its flagship ‘Nexus’ program, reports The Verge. The move has been attributed to Verizon’s continued reluctance to support the Google Wallet feature. Updates below.

Verizon has been dragging its feet on adopting the Google Wallet standard for a while now, with Verizon’s Jeffrey Nelson blaming its desire to have the “best security and user experience” in payment systems for the delay.

The delay has apparently been too long for Google and it has orphaned the Galaxy Nexus from its flagship program. Google responded with the following statement when asked about the removal of support documents from its system:

Google is also a developer within this ecosystem and we want to offer the apps we develop such as Google Wallet, so people have access to the full range of functionality offered by the platform.

This appears to place the blame for the change squarely on the backs of Verizon’s failure to adopt the Google Wallet standard. This news comes just a day after indications that the GSM (read AT&T) version of the Galaxy Nexus in the US would support the Google Wallet payment system.

Under this new arrangement, the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus won’t get updates pushed out immediately from Google and would need to get them solely from the carrier. This sort of kills the point of it being a ‘Nexus’ device, which traditionally gets updates almost immediately after Google issues them.

This is a very aggressive case of Google exercising one of its ‘big sticks’, the availability of software updates, in order to force carriers and makers to toe the line when it comes to feature updates. Unfortunately, this is likely to hurt customers more than it does Verizon as they will now be waiting longer for software updates and, if the lockout continues, may end up getting a version of Ice Cream Sandwich that has a bunch of ‘special Verizon additions’ instead of the stock version that they’re used to.

As a Verizon Galaxy Nexus user myself, I’m fairly torn. I want to see the carriers have less control over the software on my phone and would like every Android feature to arrive there unaltered, but delaying updates is a fairly consumer-hostile way to make this happen. How this plays out should be very interesting indeed.

Update: Verizon has reached out to The Verge to say that it will continue to support the Verizon version of the Galaxy Nexus with official firmware updates and that its earlier response that referred to Google Wallet was ‘incorrect’. So, that’s good news for consumers, but still leaves the future of Google Wallet in question.

Fresh off the leaked Windows Phone 8 news that seemed to signal the end of Zune as we know it, Microsoft has a new deal out that seems to paint a very different picture.

Let’s go back a few days to the leaked Windows Phone 8 news, and what it had to say about Zune. We’ll quote PocketNow, the original source for the leak:

Moreover, Windows Phone 8 will reportedly scrap integration with the desktop Zune client in favor of a syncing relationship with a dedicated companion application. In other words, Microsoft is bringing back a (presumably) richer version of ActiveSync after letting that program die out for the most part.

The Xbox Companion app, currently found on Windows Phones, will see a partner client on Windows 8. Skydrive support promises seamless sharing of data between devices; Belfiore gives the example of instantly having one’s music collection available on a newly-purchased Windows Phone, without the need for a PC sync. It sounds like the tagline for this so-called Windows 2012 relaunch, or “Windows reimagined,” will be “The New Familiar.”

Call us crazy, but that sounded like a strong signal to us here at TNW that Zune is losing every last ounce of its cachet. One reason we have been bullish on Zune (in the sense of it not dying) in the last year was that its stock rose with the sale of each Windows Phone handset. If that ends, Zune is simply the bastard software child of a failed hardware-based music push of yesteryear.

Enter today’s news: At Microsoft Stores, if you pick up a Windows Phone handset there, you will be given a full year Zune Pass. Given that the expected Windows Phone 8 launch date is within the next 12 months, this makes no sense, assuming that Zune and Windows Phone are set to part ways.

We have no idea what is going on here, but it sounds like some classic confusion at a company who is famed for having warring business units.