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Paramount Home Entertainment has started a new website which will allow fans of the film Paranormal Activity to have their names in the credits of the film when it is released on DVD and Blu-ray next year.

The site, ParanormalActivityProject.com is open until November 9th at midnight and anyone who registers will have their name shown at the end of the credits of the film.

“The success of Paranormal Activity would not have been possible without the million-plus fans who went to the ParanormalMovie.com official Web site and demanded the movie in their home town,” adds Amy Powell, Paramount senior VP of interactive marketing. “They demanded the movie, and they got it. So now we are giving them credit where credit is due.”

The movie, which cost $13,500 to make and has grossed $87.9 million domestically, is by far the most profitable movie (percentage-wise) of all time.

Paramount expects the extended credits to add up to 20 minutes to the film.

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Verizon Wireless has announced plans to double the early termination fee for users of smartphones, from $175 to $350 USD for those that cancel their contracts early.

Verizon spokesman Jim Gerace says the move should begin on November 15th and will be eligible for anyone using BlackBerrys, the DROID, and other smartphones.

Gerace also adds that the termination fee will decline by $10 for every month the user stays with the contract.

“The cost of smart phones is considerably higher than feature phones for which the early termination fees were created years ago at $175,” Gerace notes.

Analysts believe the move will help protect Verizon's bottom line, which takes a hit everytime a user cancels their service and pockets the difference that Verizon subsidized in the first place to sell the contract.

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Google has launched a new privacy control feature this week, dubbed Dashboard, which will allow users to see most of the information that is being collected about them at any given time by the search engine giant.

Dashboard will pull together the data that is accessed whenever a user logs into a Google service such as "summaries of an individual's e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google's video site, YouTube."

The service will not provide any data if you have not logged into the Google services.

Google has been under fire for years from privacy watchdogs which want to know just exactly it is that the search engine giant knows about you.

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Due to its byline stipulations, beginning in December all Blu-ray titles will come with the option to make one "managed copy" (a legal backup).

However, for all current Blu-ray player owners as well as most near term future owners, your player will not have the capability to make the copies, making the feature useless.

AACS-LA chairman Michael Ayers says the Managed Copy is mandatory given the final AACS license and over 600 companies have signed on. Each new movie from December 4th on will come with a link on the disc which will send the player to an authentication server. If it passes, the disc can make a full 1080p copy of the disc. For now though, there are no players capable of making the copies so the links are useless.

Manufacturers are not required to even make such devices but Sony and other AACS-LA members say they expect the first PC drives with the capability to hit by the Q3 2010. The AACS-LA says they won't even have authentication servers up and running until March 31st.

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Myka has launched the Myka ION media center set-top box this weekend, giving users a one-stop shop for Internet video services and video playback via your HDTV.

The ION has an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Processor 330,a NVIDIA ION Graphics Processor, as well as 4GB of RAM, ten USB 2.0 ports, VGA / DVI / HDMI outputs, an eSATA connector and Ethernet.

"Technology has finally caught up with what consumers want out of Internet video services," said Myka President Dan Lovy. "They want to be freed from their computers and watch the growing variety of Web video content on their large-screen, high-definition living room TVs. And they want to do it without a lot of hassle and without video quality suffering.

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According to new CTIA figures, American mobile phones users send 4.1 billion texts per day, adding up to 740 billion for the first six months of 2009.

The numbers show that about 14 texts are sent everyday on average by every American mobile phone user (276 million), although many teens average in the thousands and many users do not even have texts enabled.

Yahoo Tech writer Ben Patterson gives the following example to show off the giant figure in a different light:

Or, how about this: An SMS has a maximum capacity of 160 characters, so let's say (for the sake of example) that your average text message is about 80 characters long. And let's assume that your average novel contains about 100,000 words, and each word has about five letters. So ... assuming all that (and keeping in mind that my math is a little shaky), we here in the States are writing the equivalent of about 656,000 books—all via SMS—every 24 hours. At that rate, we could match the entire catalog of the entire New York Public Library system (which holds about 20.4 million books) in a little over a month.

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Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have ended their lawsuit this week while agreeing to transfer ownership of their remaining part of the service, allowing for the VoIP service to finally be sold to an investor consortium.

In exchange for dropping the legal roadblocks, the co-founders will have a 14 percent stake in the new Skype. The rest of the investors will have a 56 percent stake, and eBay (the current majority owner) will hold a 30 percent stake.

Additionally, one of the consortium members had to be dropped, as the co-founders had legal claims against them in a related matter.

eBay will receive $1.9 billion in cash for part of their stake, as well as a $125 million note payable over time. The deal should close in the next few months.

"We are very pleased to have the litigation resolved. We remain confident in a great future for Skype, and we look forward to working with Niklas, Janus and the other investors as partners to help the company achieve its full potential," adds Silver Lake, one of the main consortium partners.

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Over at least the last decade, the popular belief with the Internet and technology in general is that as it evolves, users become more isolated from the world. A new U.S. survey is concluding the exact opposite, saying that the Internet and mobile phones actually enhances user's "social worlds.'

The study, dubbed "Social Isolation and New Technology," by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, says users now have much larger and diverse social networks.

"When we examine people's full personal network... Internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks," say the researchers. "Our key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology."

The survey was conducted via phone and includes 2512 adults, and states that since 1985 when the Internet really began its mainstream infancy, social isolation has remained unchanged. 6 percent of the adult population "has no one with whom to discuss important matters" in the new study, an insignificant increase from 1985.

"Discussion networks" have decreased by 30 percent since 1985, says the survey, and have become less diverse however those with active Internet connections and mobile phones usually take part in Internet activities that brings them connections to more diverse networks. For example, those using phones have 12 percent larger discussion networks and those that use IM clients such as MSN, AIM and others have 9 larger networks. Diversity shoots even higher for those with phones, jumping 25 percent in "diversity of core networks." It is 15 percent higher for those who even just use the Internet for emails and reading news.

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The iPhone App developer Storm8 has been sued this week by Michael Turner, who claims that the developer is 'stealing' user's phone numbers, a clear violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The class action suit is on behalf of all who have purchased apps from Storm8 and have had their phone number "phoned home" by the apps.

Storm8 admits to collecting the numbers but has called it a glitch in their source code. They also say the problem has since been corrected. In his suit, Turner says "glitches" would never lead to the collection of phone numbers and that the developer created specialized code in their games to do so.

The developer has yet to respond to any questions about how a bug in code can lead to phone number collection and has not publicly spoken about whether the numbers remained saved in Storm8 databases.

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Amazon, Pixar and Disney have started a deep Blu-ray promotion this week, as well as dropping the prices on the much anticipated titles Up and Monster's Inc.

The large e-tailer has dropped the price of Up to $19.99 for the 4-disc Blu-ray edition (includes digital copy and standard DVD), a giant drop off its MSRP of $45. Monster's Inc. has also been dropped to $23 for the same 4-disc BD edition, a steep drop from its $41 MSRP. If you purchase the two together, Amazon is also offering $10 off just for buying the combo. Some quick math shows that you are getting two brand new Blu-rays, two standard DVDs and two digital copies for $33 shipped.

Additionally, Disney and Pixar are offering an extra $10 off if you purchase another BD from a selection of Disney and Pixar films.

Via the promotion here: Disney, Pixar Blu-ray promotion

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According to new IDC figures, RIM BlackBerry has once again surpassed Apple for smartphone market share, moving 30 percent for the quarter to 19 percent, above Apple's 17.1 percent.

The report cites the launch of the Tour and the Curve 8520 as key factors in the giant leap. BlackBerry also has better distribution in "key" countries, says IDC.

Nokia remained the clear leader at 37.9 percent and HTC grew to 5.6 percent while Samsung lost share, falling to 3.5 percent. HTC's growth was mainly attributed to the popularity of the myTouch 3G (HTC Magic).

On the whole, the smartphone market jumped 4.2 percent to 43.3 million units.

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Direct2Drive, the PC gaming digital distribution service, has said today that they will not be selling the expected blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 because it includes rival Valve's "Steamworks."

Steamworks includes auto-updating, anti-cheating, Achievements and Steam Cloud technology.

D2D calls the technology DRM however and says they will not sell the game because "we don’t believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse."

As an alternative, D2D will offer a $5 USD off coupon for other Activision titles and says they will never support any products with Steamworks, due to its forced nature.

After D2D made its decision, many other digital stores joined in the boycott, including GamersGate and Impulse. Says Impulse: "We share some of the same concerns as Direct2Drive over the bundling of the Steam client with the game. The most obvious issue is the forced inclusion of a competitor's store that blocks us from carrying the game."

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