* News curation app Flipboard, which demoed at Fortune’s 2010 Brainstorm Tech conference, finally launched Flipboard for iPhone. The streamlined version includes a new feature, “Cover Stories,” that pulls recent news articles from various sources along with updates from your social networks and offers them up in one place to read. And whereas the iPad app presented several stories onto each virtual page, Flipboard for iPhone offers up one story per screen — to emphasize photos and readability — with scrolling or “flipping” from story to story consisting of swiping top to bottom or vice versa. (Flipboard)

* Note-syncing startup Evernote, debuted two complementary apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Evernote Food lets users chronicle what they’re eating and drinks via photos, captions, locations, and text. Evernote Hello is intended to augment the experience of meeting people for the first time. When two people meet, Evernote Hello expects users to exchange phones and create a simple profile. According to the company, once that’s done, that profile will keep and show a history of encounters with that person. (Evernote)

* The mobile payments war continues to heat up. After butting heads, Google (GOOG) agreed not to include its mobile technology on handsets sold by Verizon Wireless. (The Wall Street Journal)

* Amazon (AMZN) is expanding its publishing efforts by buying more than 450 titles from Marshall Cavendish Children’s Books. Although the e-commerce giant has published several children’s books in the past, the company says this acquisition marks the company’s first major push in this area of publishing. (The New York Times)

* In a 200-page report, a panel concluded Olympus’s management was “rotten” at the core. The report comes after news surfaced earlier this year that the Japanese company hid almost $1.5 billion in investment losses. (The Wall Street Journal)

* Expect a public beta of Windows 8 to hit this February. (The Verge)

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