Call it coincidence if you want, but a December 7th press conference to launch the NFC Forum's new Certification Program likely has something to do with NFC read / write support built into Google's new Android 2.3 "Gingerbread." An OS that could be officially unveiled as early as today according to a cheeky blog post by Notion Ink that includes this bullet:



"6th December is another big day for Android and you will find out how fast Notion Ink can work. (Eden is extremely compatible with 2.3)."

Recall how gung-ho Eric Schmidt was on the topic of Near Field Communication while demonstrating it using a still unannounced Nexus S with an embedded NFC chip at the Web 2.0 Summit. That was way back on November 16th when Schmidt promised a Gingerbread release "in like the next few weeks." According to the NFC Forum, a device must be certified in order to display the official "N-Mark" (pictured) -- a symbol for NFC that tells you where to touch in order to initiate NFC services on your device. So, Google... anything you'd like to announce before Tuesday?P.S. Almost forgot that Google's Andy Rubin will be kicking off the D: Dive into Mobile event later today. We'll be there live just in case Andy feels like introducing something pungent and tasty during the opening session scheduled for 6:30pm San Francisco time.