Regardless of your thoughts on what OS should be used on HP’s TouchPad, work on getting a fully-featured version of Android up and running continues unabated.

There’s been a lot of progress in the past few weeks, but a group of devs revealed today that one crucial piece of the puzzle has just been popped into place: the touch screen finally works!

eBay has brought on former Thomson Reuters Exec Devin Wenig as President of its global Marketplaces business unit, which includes eBay’s online marketplace; eBay’s classifieds sites and ticket marketplace StubHub. Wenig will report to eBay President and CEO John Donahoe.

Wenig most recently served as Chief Executive Officer of Thomson Reuters Markets, where he led the company’s global financial services and media businesses. Wenig also led the integration of Reuters and Thomson following the merger of the two companies. Wenig joined Reuters in 1993 and held a number of senior management positions during his time at the company.

And the fun just goes on, and on, and on.

Following this morning’s news that Sprint is suing AT&T/T-Mobile in an attempt to block their proposed merger, AT&T has just returned with a response. As you might expect, it pretty much boils down to “Yeah, yeah, see you in court. Oh, and here are some reasons we’re awesome.”

Obligatory Minority Report reference. There, it’s out of the way, and we can enjoy this interesting video without worrying about when the allusion is going to drop.

The University of Lincoln in the UK is hosting an interactive exhibition in which users can navigate a number of gigapixel photos by using over-sized gestures tracked by a Kinect. Meanwhile, your experience is enhanced by ambient noise recorded at the location of the photo. Of course, the people and cattle in the pictures don’t move, which kind of breaks the illusion, but it’s a nice touch. Check out the video inside.

Monster Beats by Dr. Dre has a new set of cans on the horizon. Per a FCC filing the headphones are appropriately named Beats Wireless and feature the brand’s trademark unibody construction. Bluetooth is tapped for wireless connectivity but the rest of the headset is pretty much a standard affair. The right can features playback controls along with a mic, making these perfect for your Beats-equipped HTC headset.

Researchers at Tufts University have put together a “molecular motor” that is only about a nanometer across. It’s not the first single-molecule motor ever made, but this one, unlike others, can be activated singly by the minute tip of a scanning electron microscope. They’re working with Guinness to get certified as the smallest motor in the world.

Happy Tuesday after Labor Day everybody! In other news, beloved Internet hangout reddit has spun out of Conde Nast and will become its own independent entity, reddit inc, owned by Conde Nast parent company Advance publications.

In a blog post coincidentally enough entitled “Independence,” reddit General Manager Erik Martin implies that the organizational change was due to a combination of technical issues related to company’s ever expanding growth and a culture clash with Condé Nast.

RIM’s latest touchscreen BlackBerry is launching on Verizon later this week. The Touch 9850 will hit VZW’s online marketplace on the 8th with retail stores getting the handset on the 15th.

The phone taps a 1.2GHz CPU to run BlackBerry 7 on its 3.7-inch touchscreen. A quad-band mobile radio makes the 9850 a global traveler while the rest of the standard suite of WiFi, Bluetooth, and GPS completes the connectivity options. Verizon’s 9850 offering hits at $50 more than Sprint’s Touch model, but $50 less than Verzion’s own 9930 Bold BlackBerry. Not that the price matters as this phone is clearly for the BlackBerry loyalist as Android and the iPhone have clearly taken over as the everyman’s smartphone.

There’s confusion – way too much confusion – about my status at TechCrunch and TechCrunch’s status at Aol after last week’s announcement that I was launching a venture fund, partially backed by Aol.

The multiple conflicting statements made by Aol. On Thursday and Friday of last week are evidence of that confusion, but that isn’t the core issue. My employment relationship with TechCrunch and Aol is not the core issue. The only issue being discussed at this point, the only issue that matters, is TechCrunch editorial independence and self determination. Regardless of my role, if any, going forward.

I believe that Aol should be held to their promise when they acquired us to give TechCrunch complete editorial independence.

Short version: A nice-looking device, and it works more or less as advertised, but the quality of the printing simply isn’t good enough. If you want instant photos, analog is still the way to go.