(Credit: Flickr / mauricio giraldo)

With Nintendo recently admitting that its Wii U console has flopped — slashing its sales forecasts for the device by 70 percent, despite U.S. spending on games consoles reaching a three-year high — the rumor mill has been abuzz with reports that the Japanese games manufacturer would exit the hardware business altogether, and instead focus on creating games for existing smartphones and tablets.

Google has removed two Chrome extensions from its web store after it was discovered that they were serving unauthorized ads in violation of the company’s terms of service. Both “Add to Feedly” and “Tweet This Page” contained hidden code that served “undesirable” ads to their users while they were browsing the web, The Wall Street Journal reports.

I crossed the 3-million Google+ circles line this morning.

It’s weird and thrilling to have so many “followers,” and to be sandwiched in circle counts between Paris Hilton, who has a couple hundred thousand more circles than I do, and Rihanna, who will probably catch up to me and pass me at some point in the future. (One of the great things about Google+ is that the geeks hold their own against entertainers in popularity.)

But mostly, it’s been an eye-opening adventure for me. Here’s what I learned along the way. 

BlackBerry and Windows Phone might be having a hard time trying to break up the monopoly on mobile software held by Android and iOS, but that hasn’t stopped the Chinese government from having a go with a platform of its own.

Built by a company called Shanghai Liantong in conjunction with ISCAS (Institute of Software at the Chinese Academy of Sciences), COS — which stands for China Operating System — aims to take on Android and iOS by providing better localization for things like language input and cloud services.

Finger prick testing could soon be a thing of the past for people with diabetes, thanks to new smart contact lenses being developed by Google that measure glucose levels in your tears. The lenses have tiny chips and LEDs embedded within them, which light up to notify the wearer that their glucose levels have crossed certain thresholds.