Blackberry’s push notifications are now available to any developer who’d like to stick ‘em in any Blackberry app. Since battery-friendly push is the best part of owning a Blackberry, this update sounds fantastic. More

It’s no TouchFLO or SPB Mobile Shell, but it turns out you will be able theme Windows Phone 7 Series … a little. Although we’ve only ever seen the classy “dark” theme with the black background, Microsoft just demoed a “light” theme with dark text on a white background. Earth-shattering, we know.

Whether for real or for show, Google tried to make the world believe it would use Android OS as a bargaining chip during the company’s terse, slow negotiations with China. Now, the company has seemingly abandoned that option. During an educational webcast about the future of Google’s mobile business, CFO Patrick Pichette told viewers that he expected the company’s Android platform to do well in China despite all the recent threats and ultimatums in the country. “The Android platform is available to everybody,” said Pichette, “and China is obviously another great market in which Android should flourish.” Good to hear that Google and China are finally in accordance , right? Thing is, with China circumventing Android’s default search engine, Google’s stance against Chinese censorship of search depended on taking Android handsets hostage

Intel’s six-core, twelve-threaded Core i7-980X Extreme Edition has turned the hardcore gaming community on its head, and just about everyone is scrounging around in a (mostly futile) attempt to locate $999. For those in dire need of an entire system replacement, it seems that today’s the day to start looking. Shortly after we heard that this 32nm Gulftown chip would be landing with Alienware and Origin PC rigs, a veritable plethora of other outfits have shown up to make similar announcements. Digital Storm has popped an overclocked (4.4GHz) version into its Black|OPS machine (which conveniently starts at $5,642, while CyberPower is now offering the silicon in its Black Mamba, Black Pearl and Gamer Xtreme 3D machines. Maingear’s also sliding said CPU into its world-beating Shift “supercomputer,” and anyone shopping a high-end Velocity Micro system will also see the option. We suspect most every other PC maker in existence will be following suit soon, so if your prefab PC builder hasn’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, just hold tight

Navigon is one of our favorite navigation apps . Which is why we’re pretty excited at the prospect of being able to buy it piecemeal: starting today, instead of buying maps for all of North America for $80, you can buy a MyRegion map of the East, Central, or Western US for $25. More

Given the legally-disputed origins of the JooJoo and the current shipping delays , you’d think Fusion Garage would scrupulously maintain a squeaky-clean image with its customers as it leads up to launch, but it looks like it wasn’t quite prepared to handle refunds in a sensible way — we just confirmed that the company asked a customer for his bank account information in order to deposit a refund directly after running into some troubles with PayPal. Here’s the relevant exchange: “Support Joojoo” wrote: Dear Rony, We have checked this at our end and there seems to be a problem with refunding via paypal. To avoid any further wait time, could you send us your bank name, bank account name, bank account number, sort or swift code and your bank address. We will have a direct transfer done to your bank account. If you could provide us the details today, we will ensure that the refund hits your bank account by friday of this week

Apple seems to have a projector fetish lately. They have been filing projector-related patents left , right and center. The latest one describes ways to incorporate micro-projectors in many Apple products, from iPhone to MacBook to an Airport Express wireless router. More

From Bill Buxton ’s presentation to the Mix conference about user interfaces, one of the first 3rd-party apps created with Microsoft’s recently released WinPho 7 SDK : A cheeky Twitter app, for electrical telegraph operators. [ Mix 2010 ] More

To be honest, I’m sad and disappointed that there haven’t been more watches inspired by the Alien spaceship before. But the Cabestan Nostromo was clearly worth the wait. It’s even got crystal windows on its sides. More

One day, you’re going to die. And when you do, you online presence—like your social network profiles, your blog comments, and your web services—will serve as your very first memorial. Here’s how it’ll play out. More