Windows Phone 7.8 update will arrive in 2013

Two execs, Alyssa Cutright and Alex Petrov (who hadn’t even started at the company yet!), have been dropped by Square, according to AllThingsD. Cutright was Square’s vice president of international, while Petrov was going to be the new vice president of partnerships. [Source: AllThingsD]

Today, 3M and Nanosys announced that “quantum dot technology” (tiny nanoparticles that emit light) are almost ready to be built into smartphones, tablets, and TVs. [Source: 3M via Mashable]

Although HP’s stock was up 13% in after-hours trading, the company’s PC sales keep plummeting, down 20% for the year. Meanwhile, although CEO Meg Whitman was once a fan of Windows 8, today she namedropped the company’s non-Windows products at every opportunity. [Source: Business Insider]

Yelp has dealt with claims for a long time that say the company benefits businesses that advertise with it by featuring those reviews more prominently. Today, Yelp’s VP of Communications and Public Affairs fired back at these claims, saying, “The sensational allegation that Yelp manipulates reviews and ratings to reward advertisers or punish non-advertisers… is not — and has never been — true.” [Source: Yelp via The Next Web]

Google Trends now has charts updated monthly that list the top searches in over 40 categories. A smattering of top searches — actor: Salena Gomez; athlete: Michael Jordan; authors: William Shakespeare. [Source: Google Trends]

The microsoft cofounder announced via Twitter that his band the Underthinkers will be putting out its debut album, “Everywhere at Once.” Amazon describes it as full of “blues-based rock guitar nuggets.” [Source: BetaBeat]

HP reported earnings per share of $.87, while analysts predicted $.81. Revenue was weaker at $27.58 billion, while the street had predicted $28 billion. [Source: Hewlett Packard]

Pittsburgh-based GiftCards.com will buy San Francisco-based startup Giftly to grow its mobile platform. Giftly has raised about $2.8 million in venture capital. It will remain in San Francisco but rolled into GiftCards.com. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed. [Source: TechCrunch]

Twitter is rolling out two-step authentication for user accounts. Coming in the wake of a series of a account hacks, the feature asks users to enter a six-digit code from their mobile phones after they have signed in via username and password. The feature can be enabled in Twitter’s settings menu, although it doesn’t yet seem available to everyone. [Source: The Verge]

French startup Cookening has launched today, targeting tourists who want to eat homecooked meals. Cookening lets people invite travelers into their homes, Airbnb style, for paid meals. Cookening takes a 20 percent cut of the price as commission. [Source: The Next Web]

Google has revamped its Drive app for Android, adding a grid view for documents and files, and adding a new scanning feature. The update also offers offline support, letting you download copies of your files to your devices. [Source: Google]

Adobe has acquired Thumb Labs, the New York-based company that developed Behance’s mobile apps. The deal is effectively an acqui-hire, meaning the entire team – consisting of fewer than 10 people – will move in SoHo offices of Behance, which is owned by Adobe. [Source: The Next Web]

Twitter has updated its Twitter for Mac today. One big improvement listed is Notification Center integration. [Source: 9to5Mac]

Michael Gartenberg has left his job as a tech analyst at Gartner Inc for a job at Apple. According to sources, Gartenberg will be working on Apple’s marketing team under global marketing chief Phil Schiller. [Source: Forbes]

Amazon has submitted plans for a new headquarters in Seattle. The building is reportedly a mixture of a skyscraper, tri-sphere, and a bio-dome-like space. [Source: TechCrunch]

Runscope, a startup that offers tools to monitor API traffic and address the problems with broken APIs, announced today that it has $1.1 million in seed funding. Funding came from True Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz. [Source: TechCrunch]

Rumors have been circulating that Microsoft’s upcoming Internet Explorer 11 will support WebGL. The latest hint of this came from a Vine teaser that stated ”what’s next? WebGL?”. [Source: The Verge]

At the Future in Review conference today Collaborate.com launched its program today. The company aims to make an online mapping platform that goes above and beyond Google Earth. [Source: CNET]

LexisNexis has announced that it will be closing its Bellevue offices by the end of the year. According to GeekWire 80 jobs will be affected by this development. [Source: GeekWire]