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At Nokia's Connection event in Singapore, the handset manufacturer unveiled its first (and last) MeeGo-based phones, the N9 and its developer counterpart, the N950. The N9, once representative of Nokia's vision for its smartphone future, the heir apparent to Nokia's Symbian, is now just a model of "what could have been."

Too bad it's so gorgeous then.

"Mobile is the largest technology platform in history," began Paul Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, leading the opening keynote at his company's Uplinq conference this morning in San Diego. "And it has become a force for social change."

Jacobs focused his talk on the continuing evolution of mobile, the opportunities for developers and how advances in mobile computing are empowering developers to change the lives of people everywhere. He talked about augmented reality, 3D technologies, peer-to-peer gaming, sensors the "Internet of Things" and other chipset-based innovations both arriving now and expected in the future.

Mobile payment outfit BilltoMobile is today launching its service globally, covering over 200 mobile carriers in more than 60 countries worldwide. The service allows customers to pay for online purchases using their mobile phones. Currently, the company has relationships with three of the top four U.S. carriers (Verizon, AT&T and Sprint) for its direct carrier billing service. It's also popular in the Asian market, thanks to key investor Danal Co., Ltd. from Seoul, South Korea, a company with a long history in this market.

Through a newly announced partnership with Mobile First, the company will now reach billions more subscribers in the EU, Asia and South America, it says.

Google has been busy updating features at Google News recently and today it has announced a redesign of the product intended to give richer content while eliminating clutter on the page.

Google News has always been sparse but powerful. Its beauty is in the algorithm as it finds top story you are looking for along with every other story that has been written on that subject. But, like a lot of things Google, the interface was a little mundane. The new Google News is still not the most vibrant location for news discovery, but it is a nice step forward.

Nokia announced today it would soon discontinue the use of the "Ovi" brand, the name it has used for its services offerings since 2007. The Ovi brand encompasses Ovi Maps, Ovi Mail, the Ovi Store, and more, all of which will now be rebranded as "Nokia" services. The decision, according to Nokia EVP and Chief Marketing Officer Jerri DeVard, will allow the company to centralize its services identity under one brand, not two.

However, DeVard assures us, all service roadmaps will continue as planned.

A new social network launched today around the sharing and engagement of news. XYDO takes the social graph and turns it into a network of news that is automatically curated through users Twitter and Facebook streams. Think Digg and Reddit, add social news feeds automatically and you have XYDO.

Digg and Reddit were two of the quintessential wave of Web 2.0 companies. They aggregated news thought user submission, allowed people to vote articles up or down and built large communities of engagement. XYDO is not that much different but adds the layer of the social graph, making its user base much wider. In its private beta it had around 7,000 users whose social graphs extended to 1.1 million people, giving XYDO an incredible reach of content.

It's been a big week for mobile app developers, thanks, for the most part, to the AppNation conference held in San Francisco. From Qualcomm's AR platform to Opera's new developer program, many of these mobile announcements made headlines across the Web. Others, however, flew a little under the radar.  Below we've rounded up some of our favorite stories from the past week, including those from the event and elsewhere.

Yesterday, the Associated Press announced that it would augment its syndicated news offerings with content taken from non-profit organizations. According to the announcement:

"Newspapers, for the first time, will be able to request that feeds of nonprofit materials be delivered directly into their content management systems through AP's Webfeeds software. The project will begin testing with nonprofit organizations in California and will use Internet delivery feeds that have been put in place at newspapers over the past year."

The open-source, Linux-based MeeGo mobile operating system (OS) created from the merger of Intel's Moblin and Nokia's Maemo platforms may be headed for a comeback thanks to LG Electronics. Once the future of Nokia's high-end smartphones, MeeGo was abandoned by Nokia in favor of Microsoft's Windows Phone in February of this year. Without Nokia's involvement, MeeGo's chances in the marketplace appeared dim.

But now, according to a member of MeeGo's steering committee, the OS is seeing renewed interest from other handset makers, including new committee member LG.

In the spirit of keeping you up-to-date on mobile industry news and changes, we've rounded up a few items you may have missed over the last week or so. This round-up includes an update on the games network OpenFeint, details about Sencha Touch 1.1's release, the latest numbers for the Windows Phone 7 platform and a new, open source Bing Maps SDK.

Let us know if you would like round-ups like these to be a more regular feature here on ReadWriteMobile.