During its Developer Day at the Mobile World Congress, Samsung has unveiled its Wallet app for Android.

Google Chrome might soon be getting an easy way to tell you which open tabs are making noise. The new functionality is part of the latest Chromium build, and features an EQ animation over the noisy tab’s favicon (see video below) to tell you that it’s doing audio stuff. Chromium is the open source project that fuels Google’s Chrome browser, and is often the first place to see new features.

Google and Microsoft have been feuding for more than a decade, with Microsoft regularly calling Google out for anti-competitive behavior in search. As AllThingsD pointed out today, one issue that has come up is the lack of a YouTube app for Windows Phone.

Keeping track of everyone in the news isn’t easy. Summer is a free Chrome extension that provides short biographical details on everyone mentioned in a news story without having to leave the page you’re reading.

Using a smart NLP algorithm, the browser add-on recognizes objects, such as names and companies, in the articles you read. Summer gives you a social snapshot of the people mentioned in a sidebar widget to put what you’re reading in context.

There’s a lot of controversy over Apple’s new Maps app, which has replaced Google Maps in iOS 6. Some people hate it, some people like it. One thing is for sure though: the icon is terrible.

If you look very closely, the directions on the icon aren’t just ridiculous—they’re extremely dangerous.

Entrepreneur Nik Cubrilovic noticed this and made this awesome illustration:

Yes, it’s possible. With this simple browser extension for Google Chrome, you can listen to Pandora without ads and without having to click “I’m still listening” after every hour.

The practice of removing ads from free copyrighted content is a controversial topic. Many people are strongly against it. I’m against the majority of ad-blocking services, but there’s something about uninterrupted, commercial-free music that I love. Commercials don’t usually bother me, but when I’m writing, working out, or doing anything else where I’m “in the zone,” audio commercials get me out of my flow.

Technology has become a large part of nearly everyone’s life, and fast and convenient information is always available at our fingertips. However, psychologists are warning people about developing an over-reliance on tablet and mobile applications. 

Alright, here is the heavily anticipated part II of my favorite apps of Android devices, specifically in part II, rooted devices. These apps will only work on devices that have been rooted. There are a lot of very good tutorials to help you root your device, Droid Life has an extensive archive of all the latest and greatest root news separated out by device. There are also many options like the one-click superuser option. Just find a tutorial that you can use and is easy to understand.

With all this excitement over my new Nook and of course I have been using my Droid for a long time now it’s clear to at least me that I love my Android devices. I thought after this long with playing with all these toys I would write something quick to share what I think are my favorite and most necessary Android apps. I’m sure there’s a million of these post out everywhere by now but there’s got to be more room on the internet for just one more.

Facebook has acquired the Israeli startup Snaptu, a creator of smartphone-like applications for non-smartphone phones, for an estimated $70 million.  Snaptu was founded in 2007 as Moblica, and was funded by Sequioa Capital and Carmel Ventures.

Facebook got in touch with Snaptu earlier this year to help with the creation of their feature phone app, which provides a smartphone quality Facebook experience that includes contact syncing and a home screen similar to that of the Facebook app for iPhone and Android.  Facebook chose Snaptu because its technology works on more than 2,500 mobile devices.

“We soon decided that working as part of the Facebook team offered the best opportunity to keep accelerating the pace of our product development,” Snaptu said in their blog post about the acquisition, “And joining Facebook means we can make an even bigger impact on the world.”