The U.S. Labour Department has released new nationwide unemployment figures for June 2009.

According to the report, 467,000 jobs were lost in U.S. in June 2009, with the jobs lost across major industry sectors, including in manufacturing, professional, and industrial industries. Of the June total, 9 million were people who wanted full-time work but simply could not find.

The job losses in June brought the total number of people unemployed in the U.S. to 14.7 million, up from 14.5 million the month before, pushing the U.S. unemployment rate to 9.5 percent, the highest in 26 years.

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Apple has just started to seed the iPhone OS 3.1 Beta to developers on the iPhone Dev Center website. Apple has not disclosed information relating to new features with the update yet. Users who have already installed the update have told us about a few new features they’ve already noticed.

For example, new in iPhone OS 3.1, users can now shorten video clips and save the changes as a new video file instead of overriding the original video file.

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Bernard Madoff has just been given the maximum sentence allowed under law, 150 years in prison, as sought by the prosecution.

Just prior to today’s verdict, Madoff turned around to victims in the courtroom telling them “I left a legacy of shame…I cannot offer you an excuse for my behavior…I’m sorry.” His speech ran for about 6 minutes.

Judge Denny Chin of the U.S. District Court in NY handed down the sentence about 10 minutes ago.

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Many people use Google Maps and other mapping sites to simply look for local business information. However, many developers have leveraged the APIs of thesse sites such as the Google Maps API to create highly useful mashups. Here, we present a list of 23 of the most useful mashups we’ve come across. We hope you find them useful. Did we miss one you think should be on here? Drop a comment and we just might add it.

Multiple Listing Service (MLS)

Search for commercial and real estate property based on various criteria such as price etc

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According to a new Nikkei report, Sony is planning to add cell phone functionality to its mobile gaming device the PSP (PlayStation Portable).

The strategic move comes from intensifying competition from the iPhone that is being pushed more and more as a gaming device.

In fact, companies such as Capcom who have traditionally developed console platform games have announced they would also release select versions for the iPhone platform.

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Update: Porsche has confirmed today that it has rejected the Volkswagen ultimatum

Volkswagen has proposed an offer to rival German carmaker Porsche that would eventually lead to a merger.

Under the proposed plan, the Gulf state of Qatar will get up to a 20 percent stake, Lower Saxony 20 percent, and the two Porsche owners (Porsche and Piech families), would get 40 percent of the newly merged company.

On January 7, 2009, Porsche announced it upped its stake in VW to 50.8 percent and made it clear it wanted financial control over VW with its goal of reaching a 75 percent stake in the firm.

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Facebook today announced it has launched Live Stream Box, a new feature that allows Facebook users to share information via status updates in real-time on any site using the feature.

Live Stream Box is mainly ideal for site owners to add the feature to pages hosting live event coverage, live video streams, live webinars, among other content where people could benefit from sharing information in real-time.

The feature was previously used on CNN during the live online coverage of President Obama’s inauguration to keep people connected.

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The world’s largest software-maker, Microsoft Corp., has launched Hohm, an online web-based service that lets consumers monitor their home energy consumption and rates in real-time and get related energy information.

Users who do not power their homes with a supported company can still use the service to get information about estimated total monthly energy costs for their homes, a breakdown of cost allocation, followed by a recommendations report, by simply answering a series of questions.

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Yesterday we thought the first iPhone GPS turn-by-turn app to become available would be the MobileNavigator from Navigon.

Today, AT&T released its Navigator app, becoming the first full featured voice-prompted turn-by-turn GPS navigation app to become available on the new iPhone in North America.

The AT&T Navigator app offers voice-guided turn-by-turn notifications, 3D maps, automatic rerouting, POIs, local search, current speed, estimated time to arrival, search for lowest gas prices, search results also tell you how far they currently are, among other features.

The app is a free download, but requires a constant monthly fee of $9.95. The subscription also includes app and new map updates.

The app is now available on iTunes.

AT&T Navigator is built by Sunnyvalue, California-based TeleNav.

The AT&T Navigator seems like a good alternative, and a good option for anyone looking for a GPS solution who wants to use the service for say one month and only pay that small amount.

One of the biggest drawbacks of AT&T Navigator, compared to the other GPS iPhone apps such as the one from Navigon and the upcoming one from TomTom, is that the apps are downloaded in real-time on the AT&T app, meaning if you don’t have cellular coverage in an area, it simply won’t work. So, maybe the other higher priced GPS apps are more worth while, and even more cost-effective in the longer run.

It remains to be seen when TomTom will release their confirmed iPhone app.

With the launch of the new iPhone 3G S, the first push IM client for the iPhone has been launched and is now available in iTunes. AIM is the first client to roll out with the new push notifications. The app can remain running and messages, alerts, sounds, and icon badges, and all other notifications happen as they occur. You can customize how the alerts are displayed, you can choose to have them play a sound, a pop up tool tip, or have an icon badge, or any combination. The downside to the app is the free version (iTunes) is supported with advertisements. The full non-ad version costs $2.99 (iTunes).

T-Mobile today confirmed the company will offer its second Google Android powered handset, the myTouch 3G (the HTC Magic). T-Mobile will begin to take pre-orders starting July 8, the device should be available in stores by early August. The company did not offer a firm availability date. The myTouch 3G will be priced at $199 with a new two-year term.

The device offers a 3.2MP camera, 3.2-inch display, WiFi, 4GB preinstalled memory, out of the box support for Google apps such as Google Maps, Picassa, YouTube, among other apps from Google.

The myTouch 3G will also come pre-installed with a new app from Geodelic that helps you find information

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The first more advanced GPS turn-by-turn navigation app to launch on the iPhone seems to be the MobileNavigator Europe app from Navigon. The app is now listed on iTunes and marked as “available soon” on the company website.

The app features 2D and 3D displays, most recent NAVTEQ maps with 2.1M+ European POIs, Real Sign Post display, Take Me Home function, Speed Assistant, portrait and landscape support, among many other features. The complete feature set can be found here.

The app currently only supports maps of select European areas. The total download size required on your iPhone is 1.65GB.

This app is very aggressively priced at $94.99.

The same company also offers its app on other platforms such as Symbian and Windows Mobile.

The other large players in the GPS navigation space such as TomTom will also offer their own iPhone apps (see the TomTom iPhone video here) given how lucrative the app store can be. The iPhone now offers TomTom the possibility of a real revenue stream given how closed the iPhone OS is when it comes to cracked software, compared to other platforms TomTom is available on such as Symbian.

The other big player in the space, Garmin, has opted to develop its own branded smartphone dubbed the Nuvifone (see hands on video) with its GPS app installed. Although unveiled on February 12, 2009, the Nuvifone is still not on the horizon for a release. Although unannounced, we can likely expect Garmin to also release an iPhone version as well to remain competitive.

Update: Nortel is working on removing its shares from stock exchanges

The largest telecom equipment maker Nortel Networks Corp. has just announced the company will actually now liquidate, after entering chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January 2009.

Nortel confirmed Nokia Siemens would buy its most lucrative carrier-networks division, CDMA assets, and its wireless-research division for $650 million.

The deal is expected to close, pending regulatory approval (July 30 in Canada, July 28 in the United States), in Q3 2009.

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Flickr has just updated its mobile client to show you nearby photos based on your GPS location.

The web-based app can now present you geo-tagged photos within a certain radius of your GPS location. As you move around a city, you’ll have to manually refresh the site to see updated photos in your location.

The mobile app is not as in-depth as the PC browser version in terms of features. The PC version map is more interactive as it lets you base your search on the distance from the center point, the time the photo was taken, or by “interestingness”. Also, you can’t toggle the map between Satellite, Map and Hybrid modes on the mobile version, for that, you’ll need to download Google Maps or another mobile mapping application such as the new MapQuest for iPhone.

The app could be useful if you are near landmarks or a recent past event.

Currently, the feature only works on the iPhone (requires OS 3.0) and Android powered devices.

The new feature is web-based and does not require you to install any app. You can access it from http://m.flickr.com by clicking the “Photos taken nearby” link. Unfortunately, the feature requires you to be logged into Flickr to use it.

The most popular and free online encyclopedia Wikipedia will get video support according to a new MIT report. The new video support is expected to launch within 4 months.

Contributors will be able to easily add video to posts via a new “Add Media” option. Users can then select to add videos from existing repositories including the Internet Arhive, Metavid, and existing content from Wikipedia. Users can also upload their own video and even select to embed clips rather than an entire video.

Wikipedia will also later include features to annotate videos from a web-based app.

Apple today released the new iPhone OS 3.0 for everyone to download, as promised at WWDC last week. Check out our complete iPhone OS 3.0 and WWDC roundup for complete details and features of the new OS. To download the new iPhone OS 3.0, simply follow these simple instructions.

1. Connect your iPhone to your computer

2. Launch iTunes, and highlight your iPhone in the left pain

3. Click on “Check for Update” in the iPhone Summary pain

4. Hit Download & Install

5, That’s it!

The BlackBerry maker Research In Motion (RIM) today officially announced the new BlackBerry Tour smartphone.

“BlackBerry continues to be the top selling smartphone brand in North America and we are proud to add this powerful new 3G world phone to our successful product portfolio,” said Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO at Research In Motion.

The BlackBerry Tour supports 3G EV-DO Rev. A networks in North America, as well as 3G UMTS/HSPA (2100Mhz) and quad-band EDGE/GPRS/GSM networks abroad.

The BlackBerry Tour features a chic black finish with chrome highlights (112mm x 62mm x 14.2mm and 130g). It includes a full-QWERTY keyboard. In addition, the large (2.44″), bright display (480×360 resolution at 245 ppi) delivers the highest resolution available on a BB smartphone.

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Microsoft is continuing to work on lowering costs amid the recession, and now as a new cost cutting move, the company has stopped paying for employee mobile data on personal non-Microsoft Windows Mobile powered devices.

Until now, Microsoft would reimburse the monthly data costs for the iPhone, and BlackBerry devices. Microsoft will now only reimburse employees who have a Windows Mobile handset. However, not all Microsoft divisions are affected. We can confirm that Razorfish (a Microsoft advertising agency) will not be affected and those employees will continue to be reimbursed for any mobile phone they choose to use, including the new iPhone 3G S and the Palm Pre.

It is not surprising that Microsoft has decided to stop reimbursing employees who use competitive handsets. Very few companies even reimburse employees for use of a personal phone to begin with.

Facebook Usernames are now live. You can now register your “facebook.com/username” to easily share your Facebook profile with friends. This was one feature Facebook was missing that other services offered that made it easy to share your profile, such as Twitter.

Your Facebook profile has went from a complicated URL structure of http://facebook.com/profile.php?id=111111111 to http://facebook.com/yourname

The feature has just gone live, and in about 15 minutes after the launch, there have been over 500,000 registered usernames, so grab yours before it’s gone.