The app will alert taxpayers who file online when their refund will be deposited or mailed to them within 72 hours after the IRS acknowledges receipt of a return. Those who file by mail will have to wait three to four weeks before they can monitor the progress of their refund, Bloomberg reports. 

The agency said personal tax information is encrypted, so taxpayers can safely access it. Taxpayers can download the IRS app at the Apple App Store, or the Android Marketplace.

The short-range radio technology, known as Near Field Communication, is expected to be built into smart phones in the coming years. It is also envisioned for ticketing and card payments. Assa Abloy says it wanted to test the system before expanding it to other hotels, commercial buildings and homes.

Greger Johansson, a telecommunications analyst at research firm Redeye, said NFC is a hot technology in the mobile phone market. But he said few models have incorporated it so far and it will take “several years” before it becomes widely used.

“It’s not just a matter of incorporating the technology into the phones,” he said. “You need someone who can read it too. There are quite a few players involved so it will take a while until it works well.”

The head of Assa Abloy’s mobile keys division, Daniel Berg, acknowledged that participants in the trial may find it cumbersome to have an extra mobile phone.

But once people have the technology in their own phones, he said, it will save them time at check-in and improve security because the access credentials in a lost phone can be revoked remotely.

He said the phone technology works with existing radio-enabled locks, so hotels can continue giving key cards to visitors who don’t have the new technology in their phones.

Zogby online polls tend not to rank among the most reliable in the world of opinion surveying, and my gut sense on reading the press release was that it was highly unlikely that Californian iPhone users were gung ho Palinites. Indeed, as I was searching through the CALinnovates Web site to learn more about the organization, I learned that earlier in the year, the group had been touting a California-specific poll that found iPhone users more likely to support Jerry Brown for Governor while Blackberry users favored Whitman. So go figure.

But why would a California tech policy group think the iPhone Tea Party connection was worthy paying attention to in the first place?

The answer, I think, lies in some additional polling information that CALinnovates mentions in the press release, almost in passing.

All likely voters are three times more likely to support a hands off approach to the Internet and supportive of not adding regulations. Of those voters, nearly 70 percent of iPhone and Android users and 50 percent of Blackberry users support keeping the Internet free of additional regulation.

And there you have it. Keeping the Internet free of additional regulation! Which, I’m pretty sure, means opposing FCC efforts to ensure universal broadband access to the Internet, as well as blocking beefed up requirements for “net neutrality” — the effort to prevent Internet service providers from deciding how fast data gets transmitted via the Net, according to how much content providers pay.

iPhone users, regardless of party affiliation, should be suspicious. What if AT&T could decide that video provided by Apple would be delivered more quickly to your phone than video from Google, or Comcast’s Hulu network, simply because Apple paid the telco a premium?

But a new competitor has broken out of the pack. It’s Samsung, the Korean mega-giant technology company, and its line of Galaxy S phones — also running Android — is a serious challenger. In the few weeks it’s been on the market, the line has sold over a million units, according to trade press reports.

The Galaxy S series runs on all four of the big U.S. networks: Verizon, Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile. The phones differ in mostly small ways, including the names, depending on which carrier is selling it. After using the Epic 4G model that runs on Sprint’s network (Samsung loaned it to me), I’m quite impressed. In fact, if I were buying a new phone today, it would probably be one of these.

The characteristics common to the full line of Galaxy S phones include (among many other things) a stunning 4-inch “Super AMOLED” (active matrix organic light emitting diode) screen with a resolution of 480×800, which strikes me as a nearly ideal size for a mobile device, at least one you intend to carry in your pocket; a fast central processor that makes applications launch fast and run smoothly; GPS for mapping and location services; camera optics that are good enough for most uses; and Android 2.1, not the most recent version of the system, though Samsung and the carriers promise updates soon.

The screen’s vibrant colors and just-right dimensions are a serious competitive advantage, at least for the moment. I found the 4.3-inch screen on another Sprint phone, the EVO, a tiny bit too big for everyday use, though that phone has a number of other advantages including a built-in kickstand, the lack of which on other phones remains a puzzlement. Screen size is entirely a matter of taste, however, and Apple’s “retina display” on the new iPhone 4 is yet another step forward in resolution, though it’s currently stuck in the 3.5-inch size that Apple decrees for all iPhones.

Sprint’s Galaxy S Epic 4G is, indeed, pretty epic — and it has some features the other carrier’s Galaxy phones can’t match. The most obvious is the built-in, slide-out keyboard. For keyboard junkies who can’t imagine a smartphone without one, this is a big deal. The oddities in the layout (what’s the Function key doing above Caps?) aside, it’s responsive and generally easy to use.

Except that I never used it, because even though I loathe on-screen keyboards I can — on the Galaxy phone, my Nexus One and a growing number of other models — use Swype. This brilliant software add-on lets me create words using the on-screen keyboard by dragging my finger from letter to letter; the software is smart enough to almost always guess what word I’m creating, and offers a pop-up menu with suggestions when it’s not sure. I’ll tell you more about Swype in another posting, but suffice it to say that it’s utterly transformed my idea of what’s possible on a phone without a physical keyboard.

The Epic has cameras facing in both directions (including one that looks at the user). We’re still early in this genre, so it’s not essential even though it’s a nice feature and matches the new iPhones and a few other phones in that category. The main camera records HD, and while I wasn’t all that impressed with the quality of the video, having this feature at all is potentially valuable for some folks. Keep in mind that even if you can record HD, the screen’s limitations mean you can’t play it back in the same resolution on the phone itself.

I wasn’t overly thrilled with Samsung’s “TouchWiz” interface, the latest manufacturer and carrier noodling with Android. I know they all feel obliged to give users a custom experience, and while there are some useful elements to this, notably the easy social-network updating, I tend to be old-school in thinking users are able to make more of their own decisions.

I have no idea how well the 4G works, because so far I haven’t been in a city that has it. But the 3G is fairly speedy already; Web browsing was more than fast enough for my tastes, and even higher-quality YouTube videos came through without undue delay. When If I do find myself in a 4G city I’ll update this post.

 The Epic battery is rated for 7.5 hours of talk time and 21 days of standby. I have no idea what that means in the real world (at least mine), where I use the phone for a variety of tasks apart from talking on the phone. (The phone quality was fine, by the way.)

For my purposes, the Epic 4G shone most as a media player. The music playback, while not having quite as intuitive a user interface as an iPod, had more than good enough audio quality for my aging ears. Video playback was superb. I watched a movie on a plane ride, and the time, um, flew by. Samsung is working on an online media hub of its own, to launch later this year. And speaking of media, one of this screen’s greatest benefits is in reading; Kindle and other e-reader software turns this screen into a nearly ideal way to read books.

The actual cost of a new smartphone depends on the carrier and plan. Sprint’s pricing is simple, but not cheap. In fact, you effectively pay for 4G even if you can’t get it. The base price is $250 plus just under $100 a month for the “unlimited” voice and data plan; there are less expensive plans with more limited voice calling.

The Galaxy S models show that Samsung is a serious player in the new smartphone world. I’ll be looking forward to seeing what other Android manufacturers (and RIM and Nokia, for that matter, not to mention the upcoming revision of Microsoft’s mobile Windows platform) do with their next lines. As is always the case, no matter what I buy next I’ll have buyer’s regret a month later — because that’s the kind of development pace we’re seeing in this field.