ReadWriteWeb

News360, a news reader app available on most mobile devices and tablets, has just announced version 2.0, which adds a layer of personalization to the news shown to each user, whereas it was just an aggregator before. The update also launches a beta Web version of the service, so you can use it on the desktop. Finally, the new version adds a timeline view, which allows you to track a story's development over time.

When News360 launched, it simply pulled in coverage of stories from multiple sources, like Google News does, as well as Twitter discussions of the topic. It offered a few ways for users to go more in-depth, with image galleries, great definitions of terms and the ability to manually add more personalized feeds by topic. It certainly provided more content than a human-curated service, like Newsy, but it lacked that human quality of editorial discernment. The new personalization layer in News360 is still automated, but it harnesses the user's own human qualities.

AOL is launching its entry into the increasingly crowded iPad magazine space with the new application AOL Editions. The app is somewhat similar to other high-profile efforts like The Daily, Flipboard, Plus and Zite, but attempts to find its niche by offering a personalized, social, once-daily experience which is also publisher-friendly.

But most importantly, in an effort to further define itself, AOL has made the bold decision to forgo real-time updates in favor of a magazine that you can actually finish reading throughout the course of the day.

The new version of the Android Market promised by Google earlier this month has begun rolling out to Android 2.2+ devices in the wild. The first sightings of the updated mobile application were made by members of the XDA-Developers forum, who have already extracted the mobile application and made it available to others who just can't wait for the download.

In addition to a refreshed user interface, U.S. users will also be able to rent thousands of movies from their device and purchase e-books. These two moves in particular make Android a more competitive option to the Apple iPhone than it had been previously.

With Nokia's company earnings call now behind us, one of the most startling figures indicative of the decline of the mobile phone maker was this: for the first time ever, the Apple iPhone surpassed Nokia in smartphone sales.

Nokia says it sold 16.7 million smartphones in the previous quarter (April through June). During that same time, Apple sold over 20 million iPhones.

Microsoft has announced that developers building mobile applications for its next big release of the Windows Phone operating system, code-named "Mango," will be able to submit those applications to its app marketplace starting in August. Or more specifically, August 22nd.

This news comes at the same time as a rollout of an updated developer portal is underway. The new "App Hub" will support more geographic markets, private distribution options and will offer better application and account management capabilities.

Document hosting and sharing site Scribd is venturing into the mobile space in order to give its publishers an opportunity to attract more readers. With a new mobile reader application called Float, Scribd aggregates content from news sites, magazines, blogs, and Scribd.com as well as from your social networks like Facebook and Twitter. You can also save items you find online to read later in Float, with the use of a specialized browser bookmarklet.

But what's most unique about this app is the way it reformats the text for the small screen. The "floating text" reading experience, which gives the app its name, reflows text originally formatted for the Web for better reading on mobile devices.

Popular iPad magazine app and Apple's iPad App of the Year Flipboard has just released a new version featuring a handful of updates, including one which has the company rethinking a user's first-time experience with the application. Now, instead of having to configure Flipboard with your favorite sources for online news, photos and other topics, a new content guide lets you immediately start browsing well-known websites formatted in an easy-to-read magazine-style layout.

Flipboard has also added built-in search, LinkedIn integration and has reformatted how the links from Twitter appear. But the company's biggest update is still yet to come.

The story behind Stuxnet, the malware targeted at an Iranian nuclear processing station, has been known in general since last fall when a team of researchers at Symantec released this document, which we covered at the time in our article here. But seeing is believing. I had a chance to attend a special briefing at Symantec's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif. where Patrick Gardner, a director in their security group, actually showed us what was involved. It was a real thrill.

Apple will release two new iPhones come September, according to speculation from analyst Chris Witmore of Deutsche Bank: the iPhone 5 and the 4S. The idea makes sense, as it would allow Apple to simultaneously address both the mid-range smartphone market with a more affordable device while also providing a more expensive model for the high-end.

However, the theory appears to be nothing more than that: a theory. Meanwhile, a separate report from Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty states that production for the next iPhone will begin in August.

Who's building the hottest news media technologies in the world? Every year, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation takes on the challenge of judging from hundreds of entrants in the Knight News Challenge and selecting a small number of them to fund with up to $5 million in total backing.

This year, 16 winners from 4 countries were selected, and they are very consistent with cutting edge trends in the tech industry at large. They range from government accountability tracking systems to a tool that sends an SMS to people in water deprived areas when water is available. John S. Bracken runs the Foundation's grant-making in digital media and wrote today on the Knight blog that this year's winners seemed to touch on three common themes: the rise of the hacker/data journalist, a broad interpretation of "news" and the need to make better sense of the stream.