Gadgetory

we're ordering up a low-fat triple shot of mobile news to perk you up I'm Bridget Carey and this is your cnet update Starbucks has partnered with square and invested 25 million dollars into the mobile payments company that you know for this little credit card scanner dongle this holiday season you'll be able to buy a cup of joe by showing the cashier a barcode on your phone screen with the pay with square app instead of taking out your wallet but wait a second you could do all that already with the Starbucks app there's no extra perk you get for using the square app the Starbucks app actually has more benefits like giving you rewards for frequent visits so why the partnership well right now it matters because it'll raise awareness of the square brand it'll get the public more comfortable with the concept of pain with a phone but in time as they work together Starbucks could add more features like never having to take out your phone you see many small businesses already use that technology with square you just walk up and say your name and that's how you pay that's that you walk out but Starbucks isn't going that far with the technology at least not yet a government report says we need to test and update the standards of how much cell phone radio frequency we expose ourselves to before it's unhealthy the Federal Communications Commission set the exposure limit standards 15 years ago and that was before we were holding phones to our heads for hours and putting the phone in our jean pockets the report is from the US government accountability office and it doesn't say that cell phones are not safe it's just that we need to do better to test the effects of today's cell phone use you heard of complaints about the working conditions at Apple's factories well now Samsung is under fire an investigation from China labor watch says that children are being hired and working long hours at the factory that makes Samsung phones and DVD players Samsung quickly responded sending out a statement that it's flying out to the factory to investigate the claims if you use google docs for creating spreadsheets there's a new feature that lets you lock down cells to prevent others from editing it's called protected ranges and it's helpful if you have multiple people working on document and today's appt to watch is one that takes caller ID to the cell phone era whitepages launched a free Android app current caller ID it shows you who is calling even if that number is not in your address book it also shows social connections to that number and it will hit you with local news and weather based on the incoming call that might be a lot to take in before you actually answer the call but hey it's better than wondering if you should pick up or not that's your tech news update you can get more details on today's stories at cnet com / update from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey