News archive (2 / 2010)

LG Electronics has announced that it will offer up a 15-inch organic light-emitting diode (OLED) television in Austria in May. This will be the world's largest OLED television available when it launches. The LG 15EL9500 is only 3mm thick and provides an impressive contrast ratio of 10,000,000:1, response time of 0.001ms and what LG describes as "extremely low power consumption".

"The OLED technology uses an organic material that can apply to very thin and even flexible surfaces. Therefore, the 15EL9500 is one of the slimmest TVs in our portfolio and is ideal for any trend-setter," said Reinhard Huebner, Retail Marketing, LG Electronics Austria (translated from German).

A Judge has dismissed a case brought against Sony by a disabled gamer who claimed that people with disabilities were being denied access to Sony services. The gamer, Alexander Stern, had sued Sony Corporation of America, Sony Computer Entertainment America and Sony Online Entertainment because his visual processing impairments made it impossible to use video games created by Sony.

According to the complaint, "his visual processing impairments prevent him from fully enjoying the video games manufactured by Sony, some of which are played on gaming systems with internet connections through which players in different locations can communicate and play with or against one another."

The reference to "gaming systems with internet connections through which players in different locations can communicate" is essentially an argument that it qualifies as "public accommodation", which would be necessary for a discrimination claim under the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), Title III.

The court ruling denied that Sony services are a "place of public accommodation" and thus, cannot be held liable then for violating ADA Title III.

SoundExchange, the establishment that has been tasked with collecting royalties for copyright holders and artists from music streaming services on the Internet, satellite radio and maybe traditional radio soon too, has told artists to label their music properly if they wish to receive their royalties.

SoundExchange Executive Director John Simson wrote in Billboard that the company actually has trouble finding out who owns the copyright to some songs it tracks and claims royalties for. He said the organization had about $40 million in royalties that it collected in 2008, which it could not distribute to artists and copyright owners because it couldn't find them.

Why not? Because the copyright owners didn't attach enough information to the song. Simson pleaded that at the very least, every song should include metadata identifying the artist, song name, album name, label or copyright owner.

SoundExchange also is holding $39 million for artists and copyright holders that simply have not registered with SoundExchange yet.

Apple Inc. has reported that it discovered 17 violations of its Supplier Code of Conduct by foreign suppliers. Apple began carrying out audits back in 2006 when it emerged that workers were being abused and mistreated by a Chinese manufacturer that assembled iPods. Three of the 17 violations involved the hiring of underage workers.

"Across the three facilities, our auditors found records of 11 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, although the workers were no longer underage or no longer in active employment at the time of our audit," Apple said in its report. The auditors reviewed the employment records to analyze how the underage workers were hired, and required each facility to implement better identification verification.

In another three cases, suppliers had contracted with non-certified vendors for the disposal of hazardous waste material. Apple requires each facility to contact certified vendors for this task. They also must engage a third-party consultant and undergo a review of their systems for managing the waste.

Palm has managed to push out the webOS 1.4 update for some of its handset users. The update revolves greatly around the improvements in video recording functionality. It provides the Pre and Pixi with an iPhone-like interface for recording video and then carrying out trimming and simply tasks afterward.

Users can share their videos through Multimedia Messaging, YouTube, Facebook or by sending it through e-mail with the device. The update comes with support for Flash 10.1, making the Pre and Pixi the first handsets to fully support in-browser Flash videos and games, and other Flash-based content.

Some other features that are not as noticeable include a change that pulses the LED for notifications even if the phone is in "asleep" state, sorting e-mail by different criteria and better integration between calling and messaging features.

The update is available today for Sprint users, and also available to Movistar and O2 subscribers in Europe. Users of other services will have to wait a little while longer.

Intel plans to release a faster version of its Atom N450 processor for use with Netbooks on Monday. The new N470 is almost identical to the N450 except that it has gotten a speed increase from 1.66GHz to 1.83GHz. The chip will feature fairly quickly in new netbook offerings from laptop makers, as the segment remains popular among consumers.

The Atom processors are built to be more energy efficient. The company uses a different architecture to achieve this goal, but the trade-off is lower performance. Netbooks generally sell for less than $350, which puts restraints on how much an Atom processor should cost manufacturers.

Intel is also reportedly on track to deliver a new "Moorestown" Atom chip targeted for use with smartphones and mobile Internet devices. The new chip is expected to be unveiled by Intel later this year. The company's manufacturing relationship with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is currently on hold according to a report in the New York Times.

SanDisk has made upbeat comments on the near-future market for flash memory products. The U.S. flash-memory maker raised its revenue forecast for the first quarter, prompting a 2 percent rise in shares after a 2.2 percent rise in the regular session on the Nasdaq. It now forecasts its Q1 revenue to be between $925 million and $1 billion, up from $875 - $950 million.

SanDisk CFO Judy Bruner said the company is comfortable that 2010 revenue will be at the high-end of its $4 - $4.4 billion forecast. Chief Executive Eli Harari said he expects the growth in the industry for flash industry over the next decade to "dwarf" the growth of the previous ten years in the sector.

"What is different really over the next decade is that the scale of the business, I believe, the growth ahead is going to be on a bigger scale," Harari said at an investor meeting. He expects SanDisk to ship 1 billion units over the next two years. In the previous three years, SanDisk shipped 1 billion units.

SanDisk is the No.1 manufacturer of NAND flash memory cards used in devices like digital cameras. It rivals consumer electronics heavy-weights including Samsung Electronics, Toshiba Corp and Hynix Semiconductor.

The gaming industry in China is continuing to enjoy rapid growth, spurred on by increasing numbers of Chinese citizens getting access to the Internet. In 2009, the industry earned 26 billion yuan, or about $3.8 billion, which was an increase of 39.5 percent over the previous year. Games developers overseas are looking at the market as a high priority investment.

However, it is the domestic game developers that will continue to get large pieces of the pie, according to experts. Games offered up by homegrown firms are more closely tailored to the tastes and preferences of Chinese people. "Foreign game developers are having a tough time competing in China," said Daniel H. Vlad, a senior analyst at JLM Pacific Epoch.

"So far only one Western game, World of Warcraft, has really succeeded in China. Chinese users spend significantly more time playing games than their Western counterparts. Foreign games typically fail to deliver enough content... Chinese gamers eventually lose interest and move on."

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has enabled SWF Verification for its catch-up Internet-video service. SWF Verification is effectively a content protection mechanism, in that its use can block out unauthorized software from accessing content. In this case, users of Open Source software (such as Xbox Media Center - or XBMC) can no longer access videos from BBC's iPlayer.

Adobe has effectively made it impossible for develops to create a fully-compatible open source Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) client. RTMP is used by Flash for streaming video, and it is publicly documented, but Adobe has guarded the RTMP content protection measures. SWF Verification is a security measure that can lock out an unauthorized client from multimedia content.

Content becomes accessible only by specific SWF files, and is controlled by the use of an authorization key. Fail to provide the authorization key and the video won't be retrieved. The principal intention of SWF Verification to guard against piracy (ripping videos) but regular honest users are once again caught in the crossfire.

The UK's Digital Economy Bill (DEB) may have a negative effect on establishments that offer open Wi-Fi access to users. Libraries, Universities, Cafes and other small businesses will not be exempt from anti-piracy policies in the Digital Economy Bill, meaning that a small business offering WiFi might be warned and held responsible for copyright infringement of somebody using their WiFi access.

Lilian Edwards, professor of internet law at Sheffield University, said that the scenario as described by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) would effectively "outlaw open Wi-Fi for small businesses," while leaving the likes of Universities and public Libraries in an uncertain position.

"This is going to be a very unfortunate measure for small businesses, particularly in a recession, many of whom are using open free Wi-Fi very effectively as a way to get the punters in," Edwards said. "Even if they password protect, they then have two options — to pay someone like The Cloud to manage it for them, or take responsibility themselves for becoming an ISP effectively, and keep records for everyone they assign connections to, which is an impossible burden for a small cafe."

U.S. Senator Herbert Kohl (D), chairman of the Subcommittee on Antitrust, Competition Policy and Consumer Rights, has written a letter to NBC Chief Executive Jeff Zucker asking for an explanation of a Pay-TV link to Internet-based Winter Olympics videos. Kohl expressed concerns that certain content on the NBC site is only viewable by those who have Pay-TV subscriptions.

Kohl has a very valid concern in this case, because if NBC wanted to raise revenue from its coverage of the Vancouver events, it could simply charge users for premium online content. Instead, when users register to view the games' feeds, they are asked to verify themselves as a Cable TV, Satellite TV or IPTV service subscriber - in other words, a subscriber to services provided by a third party.

This raises enormous suspicions for a politician in Kohl's place, as Comcast/NBC Universal merger is looming. "I fear that this practice of locking up certain content only for pay-TV subscribers may be a preview of what is to come with respect to TV programing shown on the Internet, particularly in the context of the proposed Comcast/NBC Universal merger," Kohl wrote in the letter to NBC.

For those of us who regularly work with malware-infested machine as part of our jobs, rogue anti-malware software is absolutely nothing new. In Windows XP in particular, rogue software often portrays itself as Windows Security Center (while disabling the actual Security Center) to provide false warnings to users about (usually) non-existent virus and spyware infections.

Now, Microsoft has spotted a rogue piece of scareware that portrays itself as its Security Essentials suite (as have I on one laptop already), which is freely available to Windows users that have genuine software installed. As usual, the rogue anti-malware client lists a bunch of bullsh** infections before asking a user to pay a fee to purchase a "full" non-trial version of Security Essentials.

Here is what it looks like...

Click to Enlarge (Credit: Technet)

A Texas appellate court has ordered Whitney Harper to pay $27,750 in fines for illegal sharing of 27 tracks when she was 15 years old, throwing out the old judgment that had ordered her to pay just $7400.

The first decision had given Harper the "innocent infringers" exemption, via the DMCA, meaning she could be fined a number under the minimum $750 per track, as stated in the law.

Harper shared the files via Limewire seven years ago, back when she was a 15-year old high school cheerleader, and says she thought the sharing was the same as Internet radio.

"Harper cannot rely on her purported legal naivety [sic] to defeat the … bar to her innocent infringer defense," said the court.

Said the woman, two years in court: "I knew I was listening to music. I didn't have an understanding of file sharing."

We reported two weeks ago that an NES console with an opened copy of Stadium Events sold for $13,000, a high premium, although there are only known to be around 10 copies of the game in existence.

Today, that number has been blown out of the water, with a sealed NTSC copy of the game selling for $41,300 today, alone.

Read the auction:
"An online article states that, “The North American, or NTSC, version of Stadium Events is universally accepted as the rarest licensed NES game available for purchase in North America”. As the article continues, “ONLY ONE OF WHICH IS FACTORY SEALED”. If this is true then THIS IS that “ONLY” game that is factory sealed. This is truly an opportunity of a lifetime.

The PAL versions (many listed for sale here on EBay) were never recalled and therefore are not nearly as valuable as this NTSC version I am selling. Not only is this a NTSC version - it is factory sealed, the box alone (opened) is estimated at approximately $10,000. Do your research - this is truly ONE OF A KIND!!"

Two days ago we reported that there was a massive phishing attack being worked through Twitter, with people you are following sending personal messages asking you to click on a link that promptly took you to a new landing page where you are asked to sign in to Twitter.

By signing in, users were having their accounts stolen, and used to send more of the messages to other victims.

Today, Twitter finally released a warning about the attack:

Over the past few days, Twitter has been helping folks victimized by a phishing attack. Phishing is a deceitful process by which an attempt is made to acquire sensitive information such as Twitter usernames and passwords. The bad guys masquerade as someone you trust and may send you a Direct Message (DM) with a link. This DM may say something along the lines of, "LOL that you??" followed by a link to a fake Twitter login page. If you enter your credentials on that fraudulent page, the phishers can sign in as you and trick more people.

Anatomy of A Phishing Scam

Generally a phishing attack against Twitter users breaks down to a three-part process. First, accounts compromised in the manner described above send out messages to all accounts following them. Second, accounts that are newly compromised send out more messages. Third, the scammers behind the phishing attack make an attempt at monetization by sending out spam links instead of links to a fake login page. We fight phishing scams by detecting affected accounts and resetting passwords. However, it's better to stop them before they start.

Although not in our normal niche, this article was too interesting to pass up.

Eurocopter has created a new helicopter blade, dubbed Blue Edge, that significantly reduces noise from the rotor blades. Testing on an EC155 helicopter has seen noise reduced by 4 decibels.

Says Wired: "The technologies are able to reduce noise by minimizing the blade-vortex interaction of the main rotor on a helicopter. Blade-vortex interaction is the source of the pulsating sound most of us are familiar with when helicopters fly overhead. The noise is created when a rotor blade hits the wake vortex left behind from the blade in front of it."

Current Hulu investor Providence Equity Partners has invested $50 million into the new Qiyi online video service started by search giant Baidu.

The service, as promised, should be a Hulu-esque ad-supported streaming service for China, including censorship.

Providence is the biggest investor by far, with Reuters reporting that the service has $60 million in backing, with the other $10 million coming from Baidu itself.

According to TC, China has over 500 million Internet users, but the online video market only brings in about $25 million in revenue per quarter. Analysts expect that number to at least triple by 2012.

The business rating and review site Yelp has been sued this week by two law firms, which are alleging unfair business practices and extortion.

The class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of a veterinary hospital in California which asked Yelp to remove a negative review, but was then denied. Afterward, sales representatives from Yelp called the hospital at least once a week demanding a check for $300 to make bad reviews go away.

This is the second time Yelp has been accused of extorting from small businesses, with East Bay Express accusing them last year in a broad report.

Yelp responded to the new case, via TechCrunch: "Yelp provides a valuable service to millions of consumers and businesses based on our trusted content. The allegations are demonstrably false, since many businesses that advertise on Yelp have both negative and positive reviews. These businesses realize that both kinds of feedback provide authenticity and value. Running a good business is hard; filing a lawsuit is easy. While we haven’t seen the suit in question, we will dispute it aggressively."

The new PopCap release Plants vs Zombies has become the fastest and highest grossing iPhone game launch in history, with over 300,000 apps sold in the first 9 days, for a gross over $1 million.

"Plants vs Zombies is our latest major franchise to make the jump to iPhone, and from the early customer and critical feedback it appears to be a great adaptation of the game," added Andrew Stein, director of mobile business development at PopCap, via GI.biz. "There's always a concern when bringing a computer game to a mobile, pocket-sized device that something will get lost in the process, but in this case the overwhelming consensus is that Plants vs Zombies is even more fun on the smaller touch screen."

Additionally, PopCap's Bejeweled 2 became the first paid app to reach 3 million sales.

According to UnwiredView, the CDMA version of the Google Nexus One has been approved by the FCC, meaning the smartphone should be headed to Verizon in the near future.

The approved phone has model name PB99300, whereas the GSM version currently available is PB99100.

Neither Google or Verizon would give a specific date, or a price, but expect the phone sometime in March, with a similar price to that of its GSM counterpart on T-Mobile, at $180 with contract.


Pic via Unwired:

A student at Pentucket Regional High School in Massachusetts saw their iPod Touch spontaneously explode while it was sitting on her desk during class this week, and fire officials were forced to come and clear out the room.

West Newbury fire Chief Scott Berkenbush says: "Some chemicals had come out, so we checked and made sure it was OK and cleared the scene. No one was transported. The teenager was checked out by (American Medical Response technicians) and not transported."

This is at least the third documented case for iPods simply exploding, but so far Apple has not claimed any liability. Furthermore, the Consumer Product Safety Commission has implied that lithium batteries may be more to blame than the Apple hardware.

Adding as a joke, Berkenbush said: "iPod is the new Toyota. I think the problem is with the battery itself. If any moisture gets on it or it falls in a puddle, it can spark."

As we reported earlier this week, Apple announced that the iTunes download store has reached a new milestone of 10 billion music downloads.

The winner, was a 71-year old man named Louie Sulcer, who won after downloading the 1958 hit "Guess Things Happen That Way" by Johnny Cash. He won a $10,000 iTunes gift card.

The first look at the upcoming Symbian^4 mobile operating system from Nokia, an effort to try to steal back market share from iPhone and Android.

Sony Corp. has announced a new line-up of flat-panel televisions that feature hardware for tuning into Freeview HD content. The consumer electronics giant confirmed that the 19-strong TV line-up will go on sale beginning this weekend. Seven types of BRAVIAs branded TV will be available in different sizes.

The HX703 is available in 40-inch and 46-inch varieties, sport 200Hz frame interpolation and are 3D-capable. The 40-inch model is priced at £1200 while the 46-inch model will set you back £1500.

Wayne Shu was indicted by a federal grand jury for selling counterfeit copies of software made by Redmond-based software giant Microsoft Corp. The 44-year old Battle Ground, Washington man has been selling the illicit goods over the Internet for no less than 10 years.

He now stands charged with six counts of conducting mail fraud, trafficking in counterfeit goods and also in illicit labels. According to the prosecution, Microsoft had sent Wayne Shu multiple cease and desist letters over his activity but that the illegal trading just continued regardless.

The indictment seeks the forfeiture of Shu's home and "luxury car", as well as $1.7 million. A mail fraud conviction can land a criminal up to 20 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. Shu allegedly operated companies under the name Micro Sharp, Micro Sharp Technology, Microsharp.com and Meet Your Price.

On Thursday, AMD revealed the new ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card, promising to supply gamers with cutting-edge features and performance from its "award winning" Radeon HD 5800 series. The company was quick to mention that the 5830 debuts with a price tag of less than $250 in its press release.

The ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card comes with full support for Microsoft DirectX 11, and also features support for ATI's Eyefinity technology if that's your thing, and ATI Stream capabilities.

"The ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card makes enthusiast-level performance even more accessible to gamers, adding another compelling choice to the award-winning ATI Radeon HD 5800 series," said Matt Skynner, vice president and general manager, AMD Graphics Division.

"Cutting-edge features such as full DirectX 11 support, ATI Eyefinity multi-display capabilities and ATI Stream technology position the ATI Radeon HD 5830 graphics card to become a favorite with the gaming community."

A Taiwanese company that provides displays and electronics components for Nokia, Apple and others has confirmed that more employees than previously thought were poisoned by a chemical used in the manufacturing processes at the plant. Last summer, it emerged that between 47 and 49 employees were sickened by exposure to n-hexane, and now a Wintek spokesman admitted the figure is actually 62.

The toxic chemical can cause muscular degeneration and problems with vision. It affects workers that are exposed to it in high concentration, although symptoms can arise long after the actual exposure. N-hexane is used to be clean new displays. Wintek has confirmed that it no longer uses the toxic chemical following the poisoning of its employees.

Of the 62 employees made ill by n-hexane, a Wintek spokesman said 41 remain hospitalized. A recent report of a death linked to the exposure was denied by the company, which said the person it referred to had died from a heart attack. Since Nokia is a recipient of products from the company, it issued a statement on the issue.

Square Enix is bringing back the beginning of an incredible story of success in the games industry on the iPhone and iPod Touch platform. The original Final Fantasy and Final Fantasy II are now available for the iPhone and iPod Touch.

Later versions of the game are particularly popular but the franchise has been a huge success since it launched on Nintendo hardware in the late 1980s.

The new versions of the game feature revitalized sounds, graphics and icons when compared to the original 1987/1988 Nintendo releases of the titles. The games feature control systems optimized for the iPhone/iPod Touch touch-screen hardware, according to the Square Enix press release.

The games are currently available from the App Store for $9 a piece, not a bad price since both titles will offer hours of gameplay.

Google Inc. has once again run into some trouble in Europe, this time over privacy concerns related to Google's Street View service. Launched in the United States in 2007, Google Street View now adds photos of real-life scenes from cities around the world to Google's maps. To protect privacy, Google utilizes software to blur out faces and license plates.

Now, Google's decision to keep all "unblurred" photographs in storage for a year has been questioned in Europe. The company has also been given suggestions that it should give more advanced warning that one of its Street View vans was going to be in an area.

In a statement, Google said that its year-long retention of original photographs was "legitimate and justified", and said that its website already posts notifications of where Street View cameras will be in operation.

Google's data privacy chief Peter Fleischer was given the suggestions by the head of the EU data protection agencies, Alex Turk, in a letter. EU Justice Commissioner, Viviane Reding, also commented that Europe has "high standards for data protection" and that she expected that "all companies play according to the rules of the game."

Being interviewed at the Nintendo Media Summit yesterday, Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime has warned would-be buyers to expect hardware shortages of the Wii at least until the end of March.

Fils-Aime attributes the shortages to the unexpected record sales in December, where the company sold 3.8 million units.

"On the Wii hardware side, we are back to a situation where demand is exceeding supply and we’re going to be in that situation through the end of March," says Fils-Aime. "You can't sell 3.8m units in one month without that suction of demand pulling product through the distribution channel."

The president continued: "It obviously caught us a little bit off-guard and we're rapidly trying to rectify the situation."

After selling the record amount of Wiis in December, sales fell off 31 percent in January, leading many analysts to ask Nintendo whether there was supply issues.

Sony America publisher relations senior VP Rob Dyer has admitted this week that the PSP Go handheld "confused" buyers, and that sales have struggled.

Acknowledging another long-time criticism, Dyer says the expensive $250 price has not helped sales any, with the cheaper PSP-3000 model handily outselling its newer brother.

"Yeah, I think the higher price point didn't help matters any," Dyer said, via IpodNN.

Since the release of the PSP Go, Sony has done nothing but lose market share to the DS/DSi, and even the iPod Touch, which are cheaper and have big fan bases.

Sprint has confirmed leaked WebOS 1.4 update details today, with many rumored features confirmed.

Video recording is coming, Adobe Flash 10.1 for the Palm Pre, and a Flash beta app for other Palm devices are also in the update.

Electronista says the "Universal Search now includes EAS (Exchange) GAL corporate address look up, while the application launcher now gives users more feedback. The Pre Button in the gesture area will now blink until a notification is acknowledged."

Formatting, browser and time zone bugs have been fixed as well. Emails are now sortable and numbers can be dialed directly from SMS messages without need to load the contacts.

The update is expected tomorrow.

Samsung and Skype have announced that the upcoming Samsung LED 7000 and 8000 series HDTVs will come with built-in Skype software allowing for video and voice chats via your TV.

The first model will begin shipping in the "first half of 2010."

"Our consumers want their televisions to be a 'one-stop shop' for entertainment and communication delivered with the highest quality," added Kevin Kyungshik Lee, Vice President of Visual Display at Samsung Electronics. "Including Skype on our TVs meets that expectation perfectly. We're thrilled that Samsung's consumers can now use our TVs to experience the rich video and voice communication that hundreds of millions of Skype users worldwide enjoy."

The HDTVs were first introduced at the CES show last month.

You will need to buy and connect a camera, which is available through both companies, and obviously have a Skype account, which can even be created through the remote control of the TV.

Adobe's Mark Doherty has shot back today at critics that have been reporting that Flash 10.1 kills the battery life of Android devices, posting a video in its defense.

The 17-minute video shows Doherty running a video on the non-mobile YouTube site, and after its done, shows the battery meter which has seen only 6 percent of the battery drained.

Doherty even goes on to say that they have tested a two-hour movie and still had life left.

(You can skip up until the 16 minute point)

Battery Performance with Flash Player 10.1 on the Nexus One from Mark Doherty on Vimeo.

Kotaku is reporting that Valve has hinted at Steam getting Mac OS X support sometime in the near future, giving Mac fans a chance to experience the largest online gaming digital distribution service.

warriorlax5506 of the Valve forum looked through the files of the newest open beta and found tons of Mac OS X-specific graphics, as well as menu files.

While there may not be that many Mac owners out there in comparison to Windows, Valve publishing partners Electronic Arts, PopCap Games and Take-Two all produce Mac versions of their games.

Twitter has been hit by a massive phishing attack over the last 24 hours, with users being PMed messages that read "This you???," followed by a link that directs you to a site to login with your Twitter details.

I can tell you this is indeed happening, as I've received two already. If you receive one, tell your friends/family to change their passwords.

Apple Inc. is apparently considering to provide options for 'explicit' applications to the company's popular App Store. This comes just days after Apple began removing applications that contained sexual or suggestive content without prior warning or notification to the developers.

The move was mostly criticized by the developers and by the tech media, possibly prompting Apple's decision to search for a compromise. The applications that Apple removed mostly just contained semi-nudity or innuendo. Some developers felt they were being punished for the content despite being given the green light for the applications by Apple in the first place.

"Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them. If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple," a statement from Apple read at the time.

An Apple spokesperson confirmed to Gizmodo that something was being considered as a compromise but that it's "not going to happen any time soon."

Cablevision has announced that it plans to launch its RS-DVR (Remote Storage-Digital Video Recorder) service in April. The company first announced plans to launch the RS-DVR in 2006 but was immediately hit with litigation from content companies. After a long battle, Cablevision won its case on appeal and the U.S. Supreme Court rejected a further appeal by film studios and TV networks.

The RS-DVR service will allow customers to record and access content on Cablevision's servers through the Internet. This allows Cablevision to cut costs of purchasing DVRs for subscribers and also the costs of sending out technicians to install new boxes.

"By year-end we intend to cease buying physical DVRs as we begin deploying our network-based DVR solution throughout our footprint," Cablevision Chief Operating Officer Tom Rutledge said Thursday. Comcast and Time Warner Cable Inc. also plan to launch similar services soon, as they had sat out Cablevision's legal dispute to verify that such a service is legal.

Microsoft Corp. has announced that it plans to end support for older versions (or operating systems running older service packs) in the coming months. On April 13, the Redmond-based software giant will cease support for Windows Vista RTM (Windows Vista without service packs). On July 13, it will end support for all versions of Windows 2000 and also for Windows XP SP2.

"Back in October 2009 we talked about upcoming dates for end of support for certain Windows XP and Windows Vista versions," said Brandon LeBlanc, Microsoft's in-house Windows blogger. "Those dates are getting closer and this is the time to remind customers running these versions that there is a need to take action."

Microsoft will also be ending support for Windows Server 2000 on July 13. Windows Server 2003 will be moved from Mainstream Support to Extended Support on the same date meaning Microsoft won't provide no charge incident response, warranty, feature requests or design changes.

"We recommend that those of you still on Windows XP SP2 install the latest service pack available via the Microsoft Update Web site—Windows XP Service Pack 3—or look at moving to Windows 7," LeBlanc said. "Keeping your PC up to date and as safe as possible is something that people need to think about beyond just being on the latest service pack."

Cinema chain Odeon has announced that it reversed its decision to boycott the 3D theatrical release of Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland. The chain is concerned that the decision to release Alice in Wonderland on DVD just 12 weeks after the theatrical release will set a new benchmark. Movies are usually released around 17 weeks after being shown in theaters.

"The Odeon and UCI Cinema Group is pleased to announce that, following detailed negotiations with the Walt Disney Company Ltd, an enduring agreement has been reached encompassing all the different aspects of both companies' commercial relationship," Odeon said in a statement.

"As a result of this agreement, Odeon is pleased to confirm that it will be able to continue with its plans for significant investment in new cinemas, in digital technology, in 3D capability and the other exciting developments designed for the increased enjoyment of all its customers."

Neither companies revealed any details on the agreement reached between both. Either way, Odeon movie theaters will be showing Alice in Wonderland in 3D in the UK, Ireland and Italy after all. Tim Burton had said he was upset by Odeon's decision to boycott the film. "I feel terrible about it," the director told the BBC's Breakfast programme. "To me it doesn't make anybody look good."

Apple has announced that the iTunes download store has reached a new milestone of 10 billion music downloads. The 10 billionth song, "Guess Things Happen That Way" by Johnny Cash, was purchased by Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Georgia. As the winner of the iTunes Countdown to 10 Billion Songs, Louie will receive a $10,000 iTunes Gift Card.

"We're grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone," said Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of Internet Services. "We're proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering."

Over 12 million songs are available from the iTunes store. It also offers 55,000 TV episodes and 8,500 movies for download. iTunes is the number one music retailer in the world and features the world’s largest music catalog.

Combined with the iPod, iTunes has been an incredible success story for Apple.

Nintendo has announced that 76 titles for the Wii console have sold more than one million copies. The tally splits up into 54 third-party titles and 22 first-party titles. As for the DS handheld consoles, 108 titles have now sold more than 1 million copies, split into 63 third-party titles and 45 first-party titles.

Nintendo made the announcements at the company's Media Summit in San Francisco yesterday. It also announced that Super Mario Galaxy 2 will be released on May 23rd in the United States, and that the new Nintendo DSi XL handheld console will be released in the United States on March 28 in North America.

Microsoft Corp. has won a court decision that will allow it to attempt to topple a botnet by cutting off its methods of communicating with its creators. A federal judge in Alexandria, Virginia, granted a request from Microsoft to have 277 Internet domains deactivated, all of which are linked to the Botnet in question, identified as Waledac.

The judges order requires Verisign Inc. to temporarily suspend the suspect addresses, in an attempt to sever communications channels to the botnet before operators can establish links to the network.

Internet security firm NetWitness announced in February that a new computer virus had penetrated at least 2,500 organizations, breaching around 75,000 computers.

Botnets are networks of compromised computers that can be controlled by a centralized source, generally to dish out spam, carry out distributed denial of service attacks on targets and other illegal activities.

Compared to 2008, buyers of music downloads through the Internet actually deceased in 2009 by about one million people. The figures come from the NPD Group, but Russ Crupnick, an NPD senior industry analyst, believes there is no reason for the music industry to panic about the declining digital music customers.

Speaking at the Digital Music East conference on Wednesday, he told a gathering of music and technology executives that most of the lost customers were older users who had only recently started using the Internet for the first time and decided to try out music download sites.

In fact, the average music downloader is now spending more money on music than previously. Consumers spend an average of $50 a year on music downloads, up from $33. "You got some maturity in the marketplace," Crupnick told the audience.

"If I ran a record label, the first thing I would do is go out and hire a consumer promotion person from Kraft or Colgate. The consumer is saying they wanted to be promoted to and persuaded to come try this." He suggested that the music industry follow the examples of Kraft and Colgate and attempt to entice consumers with promotions such as bundled songs at low prices.

Nintendo announced on Wednesday that the latest revision of its DS handheld console line-up will make its way to North America at the end of March. The DSi XL is already available to buy for consumer in Japan. It features larger screens than the other DS models currently on the market.

The console will launch in North America on March 28th. Nintendo also announced plans to launch the DSi XL in Australia on March 15th this week. Last month, Nintendo sold about 420,000 DS units in the United States in January, while rival Sony moved around 100,000 PlayStation Portable (PSP) units, according to figures given by NPD.

The DSi XL includes two 4.2-inch screens, compared to 3.2-inch screens on the DSi. The console also comes with pre-installed games and applications, in the case of North America it is Brain Age Express: Arts & Letters, Brain Age Express: Math and Photo Clock, the DSi browser and Flipnote Studio applications.

It's nothing new to see copyright lobbyists making absurd claims about the evils of piracy, but a group called the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has sunk to a new low. In a report to the office of the US Trade Representative (USTR) they claim that merely encouraging the use of free or open source software by government agencies promotes piracy.

The report was submitted as part of the USTR's annual review of international intellectual property enforcement issues. The purpose of this process is supposed to be identifying countries which aren't doing enough to combat IP infringement.

One solution that's becoming popular is promoting free and open source software. Such a solution addresses the economic reality that the price of software is a leading cause of piracy, especially in poorer countries.

In their 498 page report the IIPA urges the USTR to bully countries like Indonesia, Vietnam, and Thailand into discarding policies giving preference to open source software. It even goes so far as to say just promoting the use of such software "encourages a mindset that does not give due consideration to the value to intellectual creations."

Large textbook publishers Bedford, Freeman & Worth and Macmillan, Cengage Learning, Elsevier, The McGraw-Hill Companies and Pearson filed a lawsuit against file sharing host Rapidshare earlier this month, and today have gained an injunction, meaning the service must now proactively filter about 150 textbook titles, or face a hefty fine.

The suit cited all 148 titles to which the publishers owned the copyright, and demanded that digital copies be taken down, and not allowed to be distributed at all.

Because of the new injunction, if any of the books is ever found available on Rapidshare, the company could face a fine up to 250,000 euros.

"This ruling is an important step forward. Not only does it affirm that file-sharing copyrighted content without permission is against the law, but it attaches a hefty financial punishment to the host, in this case Rapidshare, for noncompliance," adds Tom Allen, CEO of the Association of American Publishers, via TF. "Consider this a shot across the bow for others who attempt to profit from the theft of copyrighted works online."

Last year, in the US, a law known as PRO-IP was signed into law. It mandated the creation of a Justice Department position responsible for the enforcement of intellectual property rights. The second part of that law, requesting comments about IP enforcement issues from the public, is now underway.

Specifically, they are looking for "written submissions from the public identifying the costs to the U.S. economy resulting from infringement of intellectual property rights, both direct and indirect, including any impact on the creation or maintenance of jobs."

Comments should be emailed to the Office of Management & Budget (intellectualproperty@omb.eop.gov) and must be received by March 24.

Comments received by the deadline will be published on a government webpage, so make sure you don't include anything you wouldn't want available to the general public.

PRO-IP (the Prioritizing Resources and Organization for Intellectual Property Act of 2008) is a thinly veiled excuse to divert government resources to the entertainment industry's war against P2P file sharing.

The Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) being brokered by the U.S. government on behalf of the entertainment industry has caught the attention of the European Data Protection Supervisor, Peter Hustinx. He authored an opinion paper on several topics that include ACTA, and said he was concerned that it violated the legal rights of citizens in nations across Europe.

"The EDPS strongly encourages the European Commission to establish a public and transparent dialogue on ACTA, possibly by means of a public consultation, which would also help ensuring that the measures to be adopted are compliant with EU privacy and data protection law requirements," Hustinx writes in his opinion piece. ACTA has already found itself in the line of fire from the ACLU and the Electronic Frontier Foundation for some of its provisions.

A look at the minimum system requirements for the upcoming blockbuster Just Cause 2 shows that the title won't work on installations of Windows XP. This would represent one of the first high profile releases not to be supported by the still-popular Microsoft operating system. The requirements specifies that an operating system newer than XP is required, and provides a hint why.

The game requires at least DirectX 10. Windows XP can only officially go as far as DirectX 9, meaning that gamers would need to be using Windows Vista or Windows 7 to play the game. A recent hardware/software survey from Steam showed that 42.15 percent of its users were in fact still running the Windows XP operating system, although Windows 7 was becoming popular very fast.

Of course, there have been several methods used to install DirectX 10 on Windows XP since it was launched, none of which are supported by Microsoft and several of which have no support from their original authors either. So maybe it is "technically" possible to run it on Windows XP, but it is a shame that users should have to install a hacked DirectX 10 package and probably patch the game files themselves to play it on Windows XP.

Amazon.com incorrectly lists XP as supported in search results.

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
• Processor: Dual-core CPU with SSE3 (Athlon 64 X2 4200 / Pentium D 3GHz)
• Graphics Card: Nvidia Geforce 8800 Series / ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro with 256MB memory or equivalent DX10 card with 256MB memory
• Memory: 2GB RAM
• DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10
• Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
• Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
• Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible sound card
• Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
• Input: Keyboard and mouse (Microsoft Xbox 360 controller optional)

• Operating System: Microsoft Windows Vista or Windows 7 (Windows XP is unsupported)
• Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo 2.6GHz or AMD Phenom X3 2.4GHz
• Graphics Card: Nvidia GeForce GTS 250 Series with 512MB / ATI Radeon HD 5750 Series with 512MB or equivalent DX10 card with 512MB memory
• Memory: 3GB
• DirectX: Microsoft DirectX 10.1 with Vista SP1
• Hard Drive: 10GB of free drive space
• Optical Drive: DVD-ROM drive
• Sound Card: 100% DirectX 10 compatible Dolby Digital 5.1 sound card
• Internet Connection: Internet connection required for product activation
• Input: Keyboard and mouse (Xbox 360 controller optional)

LG Display has increased fears of rapid supply growth of LCD panels by announcing it is considering constructing a new LCD production line to meet demands. Manufacturers of LCD television products have been enjoying a healthy level of demand for LCD flat-screens, bolstered recently by Chinese holidays and sporting events like the Winter Olympics.

However, concerns are taking root in the industry that it may return to a state of oversupply as manufacturers beef up production to capitalize on the demand. Controlling supply is important for players in the industry to maintain profit margins for the technology.

"Although demand is strong, growing capacity will become increasingly burdensome for the industry," said Jason Kang, an analyst at NH Investment & Securities. "Supply is already growing and the growth will be faster next year."

LG plans to begin operation of a separate production line in the first half of 2010, while Taiwanese rivals are increasing factory utilization. "We are considering increasing capacity because we have been unable to meet all client demand for some time," said an LG Display spokesman. "But nothing has been decided yet."

Cablevision is set to trial a new concept service in New York, where it serves 3 million homes. A household with both Cablevision Internet access and cable television services will be able to take part. Basically, the service will use your Internet connection to stream pretty much anything from your computer screen to your television, delivered as your own personal TV channel through your cable.

Titled PC to TV Media Relay, Cablevision is offering the service to customers in an attempt to provide innovative and useful solutions for home media consumption as sites like Hulu become more popular. In order to use the service, a user only needs to install software on a Windows-based machines. Cablevision will market it as enabling online viewing on a television with the push of a button.

Pricing for the service has yet to be decided, and users of Macs will be included as soon as software for the platform is developed. The move follows a service from Comcast called On Demand Online, launched last year to offer cable programming to subscribers of both Comcast Internet and cable TV services.

Consumer Focus, a consumer watchdog that operates in the United Kingdom, has called for the region's copyright laws to be adjusted after research showed most consumers are unaware of copyright law. Millions of people are totally unaware that they regularly break the law in the UK, according to Consumer Focus. Their great crimes? Ripping and format shifting.

Consumers regularly rip CDs to computers as MP3 or other digital file formats for convenience, a practice which could very well be illegal depending on the circumstances. The same user would then break the law again by transferring those files to a portable media player device; a practice known as format shifting (technically, just ripping to a computer is format shifting, but the CD -> MP3 player example is usually given).

Some rights holders believe format shifting should be illegal, and that consumers should have to pay again to consume the same content on a different format. In a poll of 2,026 people, 73 percent were totally unaware of what they could legally copy or record. Jill Johnstone, of Consumer Focus, said that the law does not take the advance of technology over the past decade into account and needs to be changed.

The European Commission has set its sights on Google Inc. following a number of complaints alleging that Google unfairly indexes search results in order to bury results from competitors. Google admitted that the European Commission was following up on three complaints made against U.S. giant, and protests its innocence while pledging to cooperate.

"Though each case raises slightly different issues, the question they ultimately pose is whether Google is doing anything to choke off competition or hurt our users and partners," senior competition counsel Julia Holtz said. "This is not the case."

The complaints were made against Google by Microsoft's Ciao! from Bing, eJustice.fr (a French legal search engine) and Foundem, a British price comparison website. Google has said it is confident that its operations conform to competition laws in the European Union.

Ciao! was a longtime user of Google's Adsense platform, and began to raise complaints about the terms of the arrangement when Microsoft bought it out in 2008. "We always try to listen carefully if someone has a real concern and we work hard to put our users' interests first and to compete fair and square in the market," Holtz said.

According to a MediaPost report, Twitter will be launching an official advertising platform, with head of product management and monetization Anamitra Banerji confirming it at the IAB Annual Leadership Meeting.

The platform is "only in the test phase," however. When asked how it would work, Banerji says it will be "explicitly clear that a sponsor paid for the ad," and it will be "relevant and useful, so the user doesn’t think of it as an ad."

As reported today, the company says they receive and distribute about 600 Tweets every second, reaching a popularity almost as high as Facebook, meaning advertising revenue could be very high if done correctly.

We will keep you updated when the platform is better explained.

PCWorld has reported this week the results of their annual 13-city 3G wireless data test, and the changes in results from last year are drastic.

Averaging the lowest average download and upload speeds last year, AT&T has brought itself back, registering the best average speeds for this year, including the best performance in 10 of the 13 cities, besting rivals Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint.

AT&T average download speed grew to 1410 kbps, and reliability increased as well.

Before posting the charts, here is how the source reports their testing:
Before getting into the details of our test results, a few words about the testing and the data. During December and January, PCWorld and our testing partner, Novarum Inc., tested the download speeds, upload speeds, and network dependability of the AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, and Verizon 3G networks from 20 locations in each of 13 U.S. cities. Altogether we ran more than 51,000 separate tests covering 850 square miles of wireless cell coverage servicing 7 million wireless subscribers (see “How We Do the Testing”).

At each testing location, we connected to the 3G network via both laptops and smartphones. The laptop tests accurately measured the capacity and performance potential of a given network, while the smartphone tests approximated the real-world connection speeds users of these popular devices might experience, given the less-powerful processors and 3G radios that the devices contain.

Although it was announced months ago, Google has officially dated the end of Internet Explorer 6 support via YouTube, with March 13th being that day.

The date was posted under YouTube Help, with the header: "When does older browser support end for YouTube and what does this mean?" The answer reads: "Support stops on March 13th. Stopped support essentially means that some future features on YouTube will be rolled out that won’t work in older browsers."

YouTube will also notify visitors using IE6 to change browsers whenever they try to access the site.

Google has also announced that IE6 support will be dropped from Google Docs starting March 1st.

Pic via Mashable:

Apple shipped 24.89 million iPhone units in 2009, making it the top shipped smartphone for the year.

The numbers come from industry group Gartner, which showed off smartphone market share.

Phones with the Symbian OS remained on top with 80.88 million units shipped, with RIM second at 34.35 million smartphones shipped for the year. Finishing off the list are Windows Mobile, Linux, Android, and WebOS.

Percentage-wise, Symbian controlled 46.9 percent, RIM followed at 19.9 percent, Apple with 14.4 percent, WinMo at 8.7 percent, Linux at 4.7 percent, Android at 3.9 percent and WebOS at 0.7 percent.

Overall, 1.211 billion phones were shipped in 2009, down from 1.222 billion in 2008.

Adobe Systems said on Tuesday that it patched a critical vulnerability that affected the Adobe Download Manager. The Download Manager is used when Internet users download Flash or Reader software from Adobes websites.

A critical vulnerability was discovered that could be used by attackers to remotely install malicious software on a victims PC. In order to fulfill an exploit, an attacker would lead the victim to a special modified link on the adobe.com domain.

The combination of the two combined to make a very serious security threat. The download manager is usually removed from a users' PC as soon as a computer is restarted. Users of the download manager in the past can ensure security by making sure the directory - C:Program FilesNOS - is not present.

More information on the issue is available at:
http://www.adobe.com/support/security/bulletins/apsb10-08.html

Acer has decided to halt its efforts to develop and market an e-book reader to compete with Amazon's Kindle, Sony Readers and now, Apple's iPad. The company only revealed last month that it was working on an e-book reader with the intention to launch in mid-year, but has had a change of heart and now would prefer to sit back and watch how the market develops first, Acer chairman Wang Jeng-tang said.

He said that the hardware is standing by, just in case the market does prove to be successful. Jeng-tang said that the question is whether or not e-book readers can break away from their current niche market and into the mainstream. Until consumers clearly display that they are willing to open their wallets to buy e-book readers, Acer does not see the business as being profitable.

The head of Acer's IT Products division, Jim Wong, revealed its efforts and intentions for an e-book reader in late January, but at the time did hint that Acer might adjust its product line-up based on what new device Apple would bring to the market this year. Just six days later, Apple launched the iPad, which the company asserts is a perfect solution for e-books.

DisplaySearch announced this week that sales of televisions grew in Q4 2009 when compared to the same period of 2008. Helped by strong LCD sales, the worldwide market for televisions recovered from recession-struck Q4 2008. LCD shipments for the quarter were up 50 percent compared to the same quarter of 2008, while plasma rose 6 percent and CRT declined 37 percent.

In 2009, consumers worldwide bought about 211 million new televisions. In Q4 alone, 50.73 millions LCDs were shipped, followed by 12.31 million CRTs and 4.72 plasma TVs. DisplaySearch estimates that a dismal 400 OLED TV sets shipped in Q4 2009, up from 207 in the same period of 2008.

Sony made a decision to step back from OLED, which has considerable production challenges. The OLED TVs that were actually available were priced accordingly. Instead, Sony has decided to focus on LED technologies and the emerging interest in 3D TV.

Unsurprisingly, South Korean giant Samsung was the leader during the quarter with a share of about 23.9 percent by revenue. LG followed far behind with 13 percent, then Sony at 11.5 percent.

Barnes & Noble CEO Steve Riggio has reassured investors that the Nook e-reader is still selling well, and that the iPad should have little effect on the company's bottom line.

Because the book store offers e-books from its bookstore on many platforms, says Riggio, hardware is less important.

Riggio calls the Nook a "halo" device that is used mainly to get customers into stores, or to visit the e-book store.

Given the "strategic nature" of the e-book business, Riggio would not give any hard numbers for sales but called it the best selling device the company has.

In a podcast ahead of the Global Investment Conference in London, UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown singled out the games industry in the region as one of its most successful sectors. The games industry in the UK is "leading the way" in Europe, according to Brown. "We're leading the way in creative industries: by far the biggest producer of computer games in Europe," he said.

"And we're leading the way in digital communications. In a country with only one per cent of the world's population, more than a third of all internet traffic is routed through UK servers." TIGA, a trade association that represents the games industry in the UK, did not miss the opportunity to use the prime minister's comments to lobby on behalf of the industry.

"We warmly welcome Prime Minster Gordon Brown's comments and urge him to act quickly to introduce a Games Tax Relief as outlined by TIGA2, for the UK games development industry in the coming Budget," said TIGA CEO Richard Wilson.

Intel Corporation has revealed that it too was hit by a sophisticated cyberattack in January 2010, around the same time that Google Inc. publicly announced that its services were the target of an attack from China. Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy stressed that there was no current link between the two attacks. "The only connection is timing," Mulloy said.

However, the company did point out the similarity to the attack on Google in its annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. As many as 30 targets were involved in a sophisticated attack in January, and researchers claim to be closing in on those responsible as they follow the trail back to the source of the events.

One freelance security researcher with links to the Chinese government is suspected of authoring the code used against Google at least, and a trail allegedly leads back to two schools in the country. The Chinese government, and both schools, deny and dismiss both charges.

According to a survey conducted by Nielsen Games, U.S. consumers spend about 4.9 percent of their budgets for home entertainment content during a month on video game titles. Buyers of video game titles spend more than non-gaming households on products such as Blu-ray/DVD titles, music and other things.

In households with "active buyers" of video games, the share for gaming expenditure rises to 9.3 percent.

Nielsen said that the research shows the share spent on video games comes at the expense of particularly traditional media, such as magazines, books and newspapers. Regular home TV packages also are of less priority on "active gaming" households.

Compared to other forms of home entertainment, the category for videogames beats print media at 4.2 percent, premium TV packages at 4.1 percent and Blu-ray/DVD title purchases at 3.5 percent. It should come as no shock that music stands at 2.8 percent.

The games industry took a hammering in the second half of 2009 in particularly due to the recession straining consumer spending.

Publishing giant Macmillan has announced today the launch of it's own DynamicBooks software platform, allowing professors to edit digital textbooks without approval of the original author.

The instructors can add or delete text, re-arrange chapters, and add their own media and charts, using a simple online authoring tool.

The digital textbooks will go up for sale via dynamicbooks.com and through college book stores, and will be quite significantly cheaper then their print counterparts. For example, the New York Times shows the book "Psychology," which has MSRP of $135, but retails for about $120 at most big book stores. The DynamicBooks version will retail for $48.76 and can be viewed on computers and the iPhone.

Android and iPad support is expected soon.

Due to a dispute over the DVD release plans of Tim Burton's new Alice in Wonderland movie, Odeon movie theaters in the UK, Ireland and Italy will not screen the film. Walt Disney Pictures has decided to release the movie on DVD only 12 weeks after it is shown in theaters, instead of the usual 17 weeks.

Odean theaters in Germany, Austria, Spain and Portugal will show Alice in Wonderland however, as there is a longer gap between theatrical and DVD release in those countries. The company said it is worried that Disney's decision to reduce the gap to 12 weeks will "inevitably set a new benchmark" making the 12 week gap more common.

Other cinema chains in Britain have also cried foul about the 12 week gap to the DVD release, but so far no others have chosen to boycott the movie in the region. Odeon said that it had invested "considerable sums of money" in digital projection equipment to display 3D movies and a shorter window to screen films undermines that investment.

The Cineworld chain announced last week that it reached a "satisfactory compromise" with Disney and so would be screening the movie in 150 of its screens in Britain.

Intel Corporation and a group of 24 venture capital firms have announced an investment plan for companies in the United States. Venture capital firms including Advanced Technology Ventures, Braemar Energy Ventures and Bridgescale Partners will invest $3.5 billion in companies that develop promising technology in the United States.

Intel President Paul Otellini said that the firm would cough up $200 million itself toward the plan. "The members of this alliance have committed to invest $3.5 billion in promising clean technology, information technology and biotechnology companies over approximately two years," Otellini said in a speech at the Brookings Institution think tank.

Additionally, Intel also announced plans for it and other companies to double their hiring of college graduates in the country, creating more than 10,500 new jobs. Otellini estimated the total annual paychecks would total more than $1 billion.

The companies that have vowed to take on more college graduates are..

• Adobe Systems Inc.
• Autodesk Inc
• Broadcom Corp
• CDW LLC CDW.UL
• Cisco Systems Inc.
• Dell Inc.
• eBay Inc
• EMC Corp
• General Electric Co
• Google Inc
• Hewlett-Packard Co
• Intel Corporation
• Liberty Mutual Group
• Marvell Technology Group Ltd
• Marvell Semiconductor
• Microsoft Corp
• Yahoo Inc

Grow Up Australia is a campaign group in support of an '18' rating for video games in the country, which is the only developer first-world country to not have such a rating. The group's campaign has gathered 16,055 signatures which will be delivered to the Attorney General's Department.

EB Games strongly supports the campaign, and displayed posters in all of its 250+ Australian stores encouraging supporters to sign the online petition.

The Attorney General's Department had asked for public opinions, for or against the issue, back in December 2009, and until February 28, members of the public have their chance to give an opinion on it.

"Support for the introduction of the R18+ rating has been overwhelming with ninety-nine percent of the submissions made through the website in favour of the change," said Aaron John Percival, one of the founders of Grow up Australia.

Google Inc. has reportedly resumed talks with Chinese officials on the issue of Internet censorship in the country. Google threatened last month to exit the country rather than bow to government censorship policies that force it to filter search results. The company's change of heart came after a cyberattack, sourced in China, and aimed at the company's valuable source code as well as the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

The U.S. Government got itself involved in the situation in the following weeks, with President Barack Obama saying he was troubled by the attacks and was seeking answers from the Chinese government. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also covered the topic in a general speech about the affect Internet censorship can have on states.

Researchers now believe a Chinese freelance security consultant with ties to the Chinese government was the author of the code used in attacks against Google and 30 other companies. The trail apparently leads back to computers at two schools in the country. Both the schools and the Chinese government deny the claims.

Since Google's ultimatum, the search giant has continued serving filtered results to Internet users in the country and has not commented on discussions with officials.

After the lawsuit over Harriton High School's alleged webcam surveillance triggered an FBI investigation, you would hope school officials would come clean about what they characterize as completely legitimate security activities. Yet Lower Merion School District's response to parents seems to raise more questions than it answers.

In a statement on the district's website, Superintendent Dr. Christopher W. McGinley seems to imply it was against school policy for students to take the laptops home. He wrote "this feature was limited to taking a still image of the computer user and an image of the desktop in order to help locate the reported missing, lost, or stolen computer (this includes tracking down a loaner computer that, against regulations, might be taken off campus)."

A FAQ on the district's website clearly states that laptops may be taken off campus as long as the student has paid for the optional insurance offered by the district.

A group of TV and music industry personalities have written a letter to members of parliament in the UK urging them to vote in favor of anti-piracy measures outlined in the Digital Economy Bill. Signatories include Simon Cowell, author Sir Terry Pratchett, Tim Bevan, Stephen Garrett and Paul Greengrass. Bevan is co-chairman of Working Title Films, Garrett is a leading TV producer and Greengrass is director of movies such as United 93 and two Bourne titles.

One of the clauses in the Digital Economy Bill would punish file sharers by cutting their access to the Internet. Internet Service Providers (ISP) fiercely oppose the plan, saying that it is not their job to police the Internet or spy on their customers. "Britain is admired for its creativity and its sense of fair play," the letter to MPs reads, adding that the country's artists "contribute more than 7% to the UK economy".

"The digital economy bill.... will ensure that British creators, entertainment companies, and the 1.8 million people who work in and around the cultural sector are respected and rewarded in the future as they have been in the past," it states.

Gartner research said on Tuesday that it expects sales of mobile handsets to rebound in 2010 after declining in 2009 for the first time in eight years. The firm expects handset sales to increase more strongly than expected as economies recover from the global recession that cut into the consumer electronics market. Handset vendors are also upping competition by pushing cheaper smartphones to entice consumers.

The market declined 1 percent in 2009. Market leader Nokia Corp. had expected growth of about 10 percent for 2010, but Gartner is more optimistic, predicting a rise of about 11-13 percent this year in the sector.

"The economy seems to be stabilizing more into a recovery trend than we forecast back in December," Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi said. "Sales will return to low-double-digit growth, but competition will continue to put a strain on vendors' margins."

Cheaper model smartphones will grow about 46 percent from 172.4 million units sold in 2009, according to Gartner research. The enormous growth in volume will be driven by falling prices for smartphones and competitive deals from network operators.

According to a Facebook post, Best Buy will begin offering the Motorola Devour for $99 starting February 25th, alongside price drops of the Droid and the Droid Eris.

With activation and 2-year agreement, the Devour will cost $99, the Droid will drop to $99, and the Droid Eris will be free.

Reads the post:

"We lowered our prices on the Droid Eris by HTC to Free, DROID by Motorola to $99.99, and on February 25th are introducing the MOTOROLA DEVOUR™ with MOTOBLUR™ at $99.99. Pricing requires 2 year activation. Activation and termination fees apply. Handsets may vary by store. See store for details."

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has written to over 100 firms and organizations warning about a widespread, on-going data breach due to misuse of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing software. The FTC did not specify who it contacted, but said it included public and private institutions including schools and companies that employee as few as 8 people to others than employ tens of thousands.

The FTC said that sensitive data about customers and employees had been shared from computer networks to virtually anybody in the world connected to the Internet and P2P file-sharing networks. "Unfortunately, companies and institutions of all sizes are vulnerable to serious P2P-related breaches, placing consumers' sensitive information at risk," FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz said.

These types of data breaches are serious because of their potential to facilitate identify theft or fraud. "For example, we found health-related information, financial records, and driver's license and social security numbers -- the kind of information that could lead to identity theft," Leibowitz said.

A UK government proposal to charge citizens with fixed phone lines a levy of 50p per month in order to fund broadband plans in the Digital Economy Bill has been condemned as "unfair" by members of parliament. The Business Innovation and Skills Committee said that most affected by the new levy would not benefit from the ultra-fast broadband services the government is pushing.

The government says that upgrading its broadband networks is the best way to drive further investment, maintaining that such measures are vial to the UK's economic growth. "We believe that a 50p levy placed on fixed telecommunication lines is an ill-directed charge," the committee asserts. "It will place a disproportionate cost on a majority who will not, or are unable to, reap the benefits of that charge."

Also included in the broadband plans is a goal to provide a minimum of 2Mbps Internet anywhere in Britain by 2012. The committee does agree with this part of the goal in principal, although it criticizes the government for not being more specific. Broadband speeds vary for customers throughout the day, and can also vary based on the distance between a home and an exchange.

TiVo Inc. has reached out to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) over concerns that the use of Switched Digital Video (SDV) technology by Cable providers will destroy its business. While traditional cable infrastructure delivers all available channels at once to subscribers' receivers, SDV will deliver only the channels currently being accessed.

The benefits of SDV are obvious; savings in bandwidth for one and the possibility of setting up systems with multiple times the channels currently being offered to subscribers. The system requires a receiver to send an upstream signal to a cable headend to request a signal be sent down the cable; a TiVo box cannot do this and relies on infrastructure that allows it to simply lock on to the available signals.

In a nutshell, this means that a TiVo box cannot change a channel on a SDV-based system, whereas a provider-issued box can. TiVo attacks the industry in a filing with the FCC on the issue, pointing out that TiVo is the "only major competitive entrant left standing" in the DVR space. It attributes this position to Cable's historical reluctance to open networks to third-party hardware, as opposed to natural free-market forces.

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics is aiming to be the first TV-maker to offer a full HD 1080p LED-backlit 3D television in Europe. It will begin shipments of its 3D-capable units to Europe next month along with expansions of its 8 and 7-series LEDs and 6-series LCDs.

For plasma proponents, Samsung is aiming to ship 3D plasma televisions to Europe in "late Spring". The company will also release its new BD-C6900, a 3D Blu-ray player, and will offer 9-series LEDs and the HT-C6930W home theater rig in Spring.

3D models come with "wireless-ready" capabilities and sport a built-in Ethernet connection to access the company's Internet@TV online applications store. Among the media downloads being offered from the service is software from the History Channel, Cartoon Network, Google's Picasa and BBC's iPlayer.

Twitter has boasted that its users now send out 50 million 140-character-or-less tweets per day, or about six hundred per second. The micro-blogging giant, which is usually mute about much of its statistics, revealed the milestone on Monday. The site had five thousand tweets every day back in 2007, which went up to 300,000 per day in 2008.

In 2009, tweets had grown to an impressive 2.5 million every day, according to Kevin Weil, a member of Twitter's analytics team. "Tweets grew 1,400 percent last year to 35 million per day," Weil said. "Today, we are seeing 50 million tweets per day -- that's an average of 600 tweets per second."

The total number of Twitter users is unknown to the public, kept as an internal statistic at the company since it launched.

Considering that the 50,000,000 figure only represents the amount of tweets made by users, the actual number of tweets delivered by the service would be much higher, with tweets being shown for all followers of a user. Furthermore, Twitter omitted messages that were posted from accounts identified as spam from the total figures.

The European Commission (EC) is set to approve a merger between Orange and T-Mobile, which will create the largest mobile phone company in the United Kingdom. A request from the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) to the Commission to launch its own independent investigation spurred both operators into action to alleviate any concerns that regulators might have with the merger.

Among the concerns were the dominant share the new company would have over the scarce wireless spectrum and what the merger would have meant to the UK's smallest mobile phone network; 3. Despite being the smallest network in the UK, 3 can be credited with driving price competition in the UK in recent years.

In order to fend off a lengthy competition-probe in the UK, T-Mobile and Orange came to a deal with 3, which is owned by Hong Kong conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

Under the new deal, 3 will get access to 3,000 more mast sites across the UK. This would bring its total access to 16,000 sites and give it the largest 3G network in the United Kingdom. As for concerns about the wireless spectrum, T-Mobile and Orange agreed that the new mobile network would give back a quarter of the spectrum allotted to it for use by rivals to provide wireless broadband services.

PreCentral is reporting today that the Palm webOS 1.4 firmware update should hit Sprint and Verizon phones by the 25th, with rollout expected to last for up to a week.

100,000 devices will get the OTA rollout at a time, but users can manually install it from the update launcher if they want it right when it launches.

The update should bring video recording capability, Flash 10.1 compatibility, speed and battery improvements, as well as LED alerts on by default.

According to the New York Times, Wal-Mart is set to purchase VUDU, the premium video streaming service, as a way to compete against iTunes, Netflix and cable VOD.

The move marks the third time Wal-Mart has tried to compete in the realm of video rental. In 2004, it started a DVD-by-mail service, but closed it in 2005 and set its customers right to Netflix as part of a deal.

In 2007, they started an a la carte music download program with full blessing from the major record labels, but killed the service in 2008 after Apple surpassed them as the biggest music retailer in the United States.

Vudu offers the most HD movies, and offers the best quality, but has remained for the most part, obscure, as it does not have broad marketing.

Nokia and Sky have teamed up to introduce a new application that will give smartphone users a way to watch live Premiership football matches on their Nokia handsets.

The app is free from the Ovi Store, and will also allow users to watch on-demand highlights, or program their Sky+ boxes to record the games.

So far, the app is compatible with the Nokia N97, Nokia N97 mini, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic and the Nokia 5530, with Nokia 5230 and X6 support expected soon. 10 other handsets will get a watered down version without live broadcasts but with the other features.

Rupert Englander of Nokia adds (via PCAdvisor): "Modern lifestyles have driven demand for great mobile content and services on-the-go, and it's great to know that this app will make a real difference to Nokia users."

Google has been sued today by Harvard Law School student Eva S. Hibnick, who has started a class-action lawsuit against the search giant "on behalf of Gmail users," claiming that the new Buzz social networking service is a breach of user privacy.

Buzz is a voluntary add on to Gmail, but all users are automatically enrolled and have to opt-out if they don't want to use it.

"The social networking industry is going too far," Hibnick added, saying she was disgusted that upon opening Gmail, she was already being "followed" by people on her contact list that Google had chosen for her.

Law School student Benjamin R. Osborn, who is aiding Hibnick, doesn't say whether he believes Google intentionally breached privacy. "I don't know what Google’s motive is in all of this," Osborn says, via the Harvard Crimson newspaper. "I think they were just trying to jump-start their social network." However, "[Buzz] has already violated people’s privacy. Damages have been incurred. And we want Google to change its conduct in the future."

In early January, YouTube launched a video rental service that allowed users to rent films from the Sundance Film Festival. The service has not necessarily strived, but today the streaming giant has announced an expansion of the service.

The films cost $3.99 to rent for 48-hours, but the NYTimes reported that YouTube and the content providers only netted $10,709.16 in revenue, from 2684 views.

New publishers that have signed up for the service, however, include Anime Network, Bay View Fitness, Cerebellum Corp, FineCooking, FineWoodworking.com, FitnessChannel, FUNimation Entertainment, GolfLink.com, Language Tree, Questar Entertainment, Terwilliger Productions, TravelVideoStore.com and UFOTV Studios, says NewTeeVee.

Pricing and availability will differ by publisher.

Last week we reported that Ubisoft's new Assassin's Creed 2 for PC was given DRM that requires a constant Internet connection for the game to work. If your Internet drops for any reason, you are kicked from the game, losing all progress you have made since the last save.

Ubisoft has defended their actions today, via an interview with CVG.

The full interview (definitely worth reading if you were critical of the previous article):

What's the problem this DRM is trying to address?
Ubi are increasingly concerned about piracy on the PC.
"It's a huge problem - you know it, I know it, other people know it. It really is a very important issue that all serious companies need to address," says their spokesperson. But they also believe that their online services will make PC gaming better. "The real idea is that if you offer a game that is better when you buy it, then people will actually buy it. We wouldn't have built it if we thought that it was really going to piss off our customers."

So what's in it for gamers?
Ubi say there are three advantages to their online services. The first: you don't need a disc. The second: that you can install the game on as many PCs as you like, as many times as you like. And the third: the automatic uploading of savegames to Ubisoft's servers.

Mitsubishi has unveiled new upscaling technology today, one that will upconvert 1080p Full HD content to 4K2K.

The company says the upscaling is possible thanks to new algorithms and software.

Mitsubishi does note that the tech cannot yet upscale Blu-ray content, despite support for HDMI 1.4.

The technology will be added to upcoming 4K2K HDTVs, in the same way that current TVs have SD upscaling technology built-in.

A man arrested for recording 2008's mega-hit movie The Dark Knight has been sentenced to 2 years in prison and ordered to pay nearly $25,000 in restitution.

The sentence isn't exactly surprising. Recording movies in a theater has been a federal felony in the US since 2005, when the Family Entertainment and Copyright Act was passed.

What's much more interesting in this case is the MPAA's official statement on the sentence (PDF). They're calling it "an appropriate sentence for a very serious crime." And the reason given? It's because "The theft of films by camcording is a serious threat to the health of the motion picture industry."

Perhaps this case isn't the best one for making those sorts of arguments. Despite widespread availability of the movie through P2P networks, The Dark Knight was the top grossing movie in the US for all of 2008 by a wide margin.

With more than half a billion dollars in box office receipts, it beat the number two movie, Iron Man, by more than $200 million according to the MPAA's own figures (PDF). In fact despite slightly lower theater attendance for the year, The Dark Knight eventually became the fifth highest grossing movie of all time.

Vevo CEO Rio Caraeff has stated that the company is currently developing an app that will bring music videos to your HDTV via the upcoming Boxee Box set-top box.

The company has distribution partners in YouTube and AOL, and is looking to continually expand.

Boxee, which is currently in beta, has said they have almost 1 million users that have downloaded the software, and that number is expected to continue growing.

Vevo is a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment, using YouTube as a backend, and with financial support from AT&T and Abu Dhabi Media Co..

9-to-5Mac has reported an interesting finding today, showing off what seems to be pretty concrete proof that future iPhone OS products such as later model iPads or iPhones will include video chatting support.

Found tucked away in the 3.2 SDK, are a few icons relating to video calling, such as "decline or end video" and "accept video."

There are also some video chat related strings, as pictured.

Of course it makes more sense that this may only be available for the iPad (which is expected to have a front facing camera) but future iPhones may get a second camera, it wouldn't be that far out of the realm of possibility.

AndroidCentral has posted a video of the Google Nexus One running a new custom ROM that was ported from the HTC Desire. The new ROM has HTC Sense, and has Flash 10.1 support.

IntoMobile is reporting that the latest beta of the redsn0w jailbreaking utility, version 0.9.3 has brought back iPhone 3G data tethering to jailbroken devices, even for those with OS 3.1.2.

The new redsn0w uses an IPCC tethering hack, one that was overridden by Apple recently, but it appears the cat-and-mouse game is back on.

The site posts a little how-to as well:

Okay, maybe a little guidance is in order here. For clarification, you’ll need the redsn0w 0.9.3 beta to get the IPCC tethering hack working again – find at the bottom of the page via the link above (or here). Once you’ve run redsn0w, you’ll have to download a custom IPCC file (carrier bundle), which tells your iPhone that you are allowed to tether on a given carrier.

1. Point your iPhone Safari browser here, and download an IPCC file that corresponds to your region and carrier.
2. Once downloaded, install the IPCC file and replace your existing carrier bundle.
3. Navigate to Settings > General > Network on your iPhone to enable tethering.
4. You now have tethering enabled on your iPhone 3G/3GS running iPhone OS 3.1.2!

Silicon Alley Insider has posted their "Chart of the Day," and it is very interesting how such a simple chart can show how so much has changed, in not a very long period of time.

For the three year period ended December 2009, Windows Mobile fell from over 35 percent smartphone market share to about 17 percent, losing incredible amounts of share to Apple, RIM, and although not pictured, Android.

Making the chart even more notable is the fact that Apple only has one device, the iPhone, whereas Windows Mobile can be the operating system for any number of mobile devices.

The figures are via ComScore, which is known for its accuracy.

Motorola has released a full 7 minute tour of their upcoming Devour smartphone for Verizon, showing off all the features of the device.

Earlier this week we reported that a lawsuit had been filed in US District Court accusing administrators at Lower Merion School District in Rosemont, PA of using webcams on a school-issued laptop to illegally spy on a student.

Today, the FBI has opened an investigation into the allegations, which is considered illegal wiretapping and a violation of student's privacy.

District Superintendent Christopher McGinley denied the allegations: "At no time did any high school administrator have the ability or actually access the security-tracking software. We believe that the administrator at Harriton has been unfairly portrayed and unjustly attacked in connection with her attempts to be supportive of a student and his family. The district never did and never would use such tactics as a basis for disciplinary action."

AppAdvice has posted a report today that the highly-hyped Apple iPad should go up for pre-order on the 25th, a little over a month before its release date on March 29th.

Citing a "reliable source," the site says the pre-order is for the U.S. only, and will be limited to the Wi-Fi model only. The 3G versions will not go up for pre-sale until later.

Apple will not comment on rumors, but recently made the news when it was revealed that the company was keeping all freight details private, keeping launch proximity a secret.

Finnish mobile handset giant Nokia Corp. has scrapped its 6216 NFC handset. The 6216 was set to be the third Near Field Communication (NFC) equipped handset, but also the first that would see the operator's SIM control the payment system through the Single Wire Protocol (SWP). China Unicom had planned an NFC service launch and had chosen the SWP architecture.

"We felt the quality of the consumer experience was not what it needed to be," Nokia told NFC World when asked about the cancellation of the 6216. Nokia objects to giving total control to the operator instead of the handset itself.

Using NFC technology, users can avail of a proximity payment system to carry out transactions, such as paying for public transport.

Besides having the NFC to facilitate wireless communications, the handset would also need a lot of various elements to be stored safely that control the system securely. Operators have lobbied for the SWP standard which would store all of this important data in the SIM and facilitate such features, but Nokia would prefer that the secure module be embedded in the handset itself.

Apple Inc. has reportedly thrown out a bunch of applications for the iPhone that contain adult content under a new policy that bans all "overtly sexual content". Developers have been getting notices from Apple informing them that their applications have been removed from the App Store, without any prior warning or notification of a change in policy.

This could be a setback for some small app companies that were developing for the platform. On the Go Girls had half of its portfolio removed from the app store, while Jens Ltd was left with only one application remaining; and the purge is apparently on-going. A number of apps provided by Maxim were removed too, showing that established brands aren't being ignored either. Playboy's latest app is reportedly still up.

"Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them. If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple," a statement from Apple reads.

Sprint has announced that new 4G-compatible handsets will be available in the U.S. in the first half of 2010. The handsets will be dual-mode phones capable of using Sprint's 3G network in the U.S., while also using its 4G network when it becomes available. There is no information yet on who will be manufacturing the 4G-capable handsets for Sprint.

The operator, along with Clearwire, offers the only commercially available 4G network in the United States. It backed WiMAX for its technology, which is faster to marker than Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Sprint and Clearwire offer WiMAX in a number of large cities in the country, and continue to roll-out the network in more cities. AT&T and Verizon have opted to use LTE for their 4G networks.

Currently, the only use for Sprint's network is USB modems for Internet connectivity. The operator has said in the past that handset devices would become available, but none have materialized so far. Now, Forbes reports that handsets capable of using the 4G network will become available for subscribers in the first half of 2010.

Charles Nesson, William F. Weld Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, who defends Joel Tenenbaum in his dispute with record labels, said that Joel has only caused $21 worth of damages from his activities. Tenenbaum was told to pay $675,000 in damages to record companies for downloading and sharing 30 songs using the Kazaa software. Nesson has described the damages as "monstrous and shocking."

"Had he purchased the 30 songs on iTunes, he would have paid 99 cents apiece, of which Apple would have passed on 70 cents to the record companies," Nesson argues. "Assuming, contrary to fact, that the record companies have zero costs so that every cent returned to them is profit, the total return would have been $21.00."

Record companies say that statutory damages are a fair way to deal with P2P file sharing, since nobody really knows how many times a user downloaded any of the 30 tracks from Tenenbaum, or from most P2P users. Nesson believes that the actual loss of revenue caused by Tenenbaum's actions should instead be the amount of money he would have paid for the songs had be opted to purchase them legally.

According to a concept that surfaced in the US Patent & Trademark Office's online database, Sony may be looking to exploit the growing market for gaming accessories by developing a Universal Game Console Controller. The LCD touch-screen gamepad could emulate controllers for Nintendo systems, Microsoft systems and even some older legacy hardware.

The information on the concept says it could "emulate the controllers of popular game consoles, such as…the PlayStation, a controller made by Nintendo, Xbox game controllers made by Microsoft, Amiga CD-32 controllers, Atari Jaguar controllers, Gravis Gamepad controllers, Sega controllers, and Turbographics controllers." The button layout of the gamepads would be displayed on the LCD screen, which could store three types of control schemes at a time.

A special receiver would be used to pass controller data, and the pad could come with rumble functions as well as integrated speakers. "It may now be appreciated that among other advantages, the controller provides for backward compatibility so that it may be programmed to emulate the key layout of an older controller that may no longer be available," the filing reads.

A new letter has been posted to the Free Software Foundation (FSF) website, which is interesting and worth a read.

The full post:


Dear Google,

With your purchase of On2, you now own both the world's largest video site (YouTube) and all the patents behind a new high performance video codec -- VP8. Just think what you can achieve by releasing the VP8 codec under an irrevocable royalty-free license and pushing it out to users on YouTube? You can end the web's dependence on patent-encumbered video formats and proprietary software (Flash).

To sit on this technology or merely use it as a bargaining chip would be a disservice to the free world, while bringing at best limited short-term benefits to your company. To free VP8 without recommending it to YouTube users would be a wasted opportunity and damaging to free software browsers like Firefox. We all want you to do the right thing. Free VP8, and use it on YouTube!

Why this would be amazing

The world would have a new free format unencumbered by software patents. Viewers, video creators, free software developers, hardware makers -- everyone -- would have another way to distribute video without patents, fees, and restrictions. The free video format Ogg Theora was already at least as good for web video (see a comparison) as its nonfree competitor H.264, and we never did agree with your objections to using it. But since you made the decision to purchase VP8, presumably you're confident it can meet even those objections, and using it on YouTube is a no-brainer.

Director James Cameron has announced that his epic blockbuster hit Avatar will be released on DVD and Blu-ray in April, although the first version released will not be in 3D.

The original Cameron quote is as follows: "It's all right on schedule. We'll do the Blu-ray and the standard def DVD April 22nd, that's our plan as of right now, and that'll be pretty much bare bones. And then we'll do a value-added DVD and a 3-D Blu-ray in I think November sometime."

Fox however, has stated that the 3D version is not coming out in November. Says the spokesperson: "3-D is in the conceptual stage and 'Avatar' will not be out on 3-D Blu-ray in November."

'Avatar,' released in December, has quickly become the highest-grossing film of all-time (not adjusted for ticket inflation), and is the highest-grossing film in U.S., Chinese, Russian, Spanish, U.K history.

Redbox will begin adding Blu-ray titles to its 22,000 kiosks starting in the Q2 2010, says parent company Coinstar CEO Paul Davis.

So far, the company has been only testing Blu-ray releases in its kiosks.

"[Blu-ray] strengthens our position to meet consumer demand," adds Davis, although he concedes that they will not cost $1.00 like DVD releases do. When asked about the price, he said they have not determined a price, but they will "for sure be higher than our standard DVDs."

According to Sony Ericsson president Bert Nordberg, the company rejected the opportunity to build the Google Nexus One, saying that it did not want to gain a reputation as a subcontractor. After SE turned down the offer, HTC gladly took the chance to manufacture the smartphone.

Although sales of the Nexus One have been rather small by most standards, HTC gained tons of publicity from the partnership, with their CEO given a few minutes to talk at the much-hyped Nexus One launch last month about his company and the brand itself.

Sony Ericsson has seen over $1 billion in losses over the past year, and continues to lose market share to rivals, leading to over 2000 layoffs.

Attendees of the National Association of Photoshop Professionals (NAPP) have received a limited-edition Adobe Photoshop 1.0 app for their iPhones, a nostalgic throwback to the original program, which was released in 1990.

"I really wanted to do something special to commemorate 20 years of Photoshop, and the best thing I thought of was a nostalgic iPhone app," says Russell Brown, Adobe's Senior Creative Director, who was around for the original release of 1.0. "Since I had less than two weeks to make it happen, I came to the best iPhone team I knew, who were able to use their Corona SDK to pull it off with utmost speed and faithfulness to the original product."

The United States International Trade Commission has agreed to investigate into the patent complaints filed by Apple against rival Nokia, in their ongoing litigation battle.

Starting last October, Nokia sued Apple over patents relating to technologies used in the iPhone. Apple then countersued, and eventually asked the ITC to step in. Apple is seeking an injunction on some Nokia products, and Nokia is looking for royalty payments, payments that will likely be in the hundreds of millions per year.

The ITC is already looking into Nokia's claims.

Google has had their request to become an electricity marketer accepted today by U.S. energy regulators, allowing the search giant to begin buying and selling bulk power.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission backed Google's application, reads the WSJ, allowing the company to become a market-based rate authority. Google's application stated that it does not own any generators or transmission lines, and will not use its position for retail purposes.

Most marketers are utility or power generator companies, but a few corporations, like Kimberly-Clark, have been granted the authority as well, given the large amount of power they use. Google says it will use the title to manage its own energy supplies, and to "gain better access to renewable power."

"We made this filing so we can have more flexibility in procuring power for Google's own operations, including our data centers. FERC authority will improve our ability to hedge our purchases of energy and incorporate renewables," adds Google spokeswoman Niki Fenwick.

The Lanxiang Vocational School in China has denied a recent report that stated the school was the source of the recent cyber attacks on Google.

"Investigation in the staff found no trace the attacks originated from our school," added Li Zixiang, party chief at Lanxiang Vocational School in Shandong Province.

Lanxiang was created to train computer scientists for the military, and the New York Times reported earlier in the week that the cyber attacks on Google, Microsoft and other US companies was sourced from Lanxiang.

The school currently has 20,000 students, learning all types of vocational skills.

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has made an interesting note this week, saying that if they had sufficient funding they would create their own smartphone operating system.

Additionally, Jha said now that Windows Mobile has updated to version 7, the company will consider using it again, after writing it off for years.

Says Jha, via the WSJ: "If I had more money for R&D, I'd be developing an operating platform." In regards to Windows Phone: "I'm open to it...I think I need diversity in our portfolio."

Motorola remains committed to Android, the operating system that practically saved the company from bankruptcy, but it seems Motorola is looking to open up to other operating systems in the next year.

In compliance with a legal agreement made between Microsoft Corp. and the European Commission, Microsoft's Windows Update service will begin sending out a "browser choice" update for Internet Explorer users in Europe. The update will be delivered to users of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7. It gives the user an option to install, or get more information about, a different browser than Internet Explorer.

Microsoft made a legally binding commitment that PC manufacturers and users will continue to be able to install any browser on the Windows operating system, and to use any browser as the default browser. It also pledged to keep it possible to turn access off to Internet Explorer. As part of Microsoft's commitments, which resolve a number of competition law issues in Europe, Microsoft offered to provide users with an opportunity to install a different web browser like Firefox or Safari.

External testing of the browser choice screen will begin in the United Kingdom, France and Belgium next week, so any users from those countries can download the browser selection screen from Windows Update then. A phased roll-out of the update across the European Union will begin on March 1. For most users, the update will install via Automatic Updates. The update will display two different screens...

Introduction Screen

Selection Screen

GamesIndustry.biz has spoken to some games retailers about moves made lately by game publishers that could potentially hurt the sale of pre-owned games, or preempt further measures that could have the same effect. Electronic Arts is experimenting with "Project Ten Dollar", which provides downloadable content with titles to buyers of new games, but requires consumers who buy a second hand copy to pay for the DLC content.

Just this week, Sony also made a discouraging decision to include a voucher with the latest SOCOM title for the PSP that can be used online to unlock online content for the game. However, if a game is sold back to a store and bought pre-owned, the new owner would have to pay $20 for a new voucher to unlock the same features. Unsurprisingly, Sony describes it as an anti-piracy move.

The broad consensus among those who spoke to GamesIndustry.biz (link requires registration) about the two new systems is that it they hurt consumers. "The person you're pissing off the most is the consumer," Chipsworld MD Don McCabe told GI.biz. "This affects [them] directly - they pay the same amount of money and yet the resale value is much reduced. From a retailer's point of view, they'll just readjust [the price] bearing in mind you have to buy the voucher."

The International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA) has given a document to the U.S. Trade Representative, damning Canada's laws with regard to copyright and intellectual property protection. The document was provided on the last day of the U.S. government's "Special 301" process which targets some of the world's worst countries with regard to the protection of intellectual properly.

Canada has long been a target of process, due to perceived weaknesses in the countries laws. According to the IIPA document, Canada is "fast gaining a reputation as a haven where technologically sophisticated international piracy organizations can operate with virtual impunity." It points out that four of the top ten "illicit BitTorrent sites" are located in Canada.

The IIPA says that Canada must be put on the highest-level "priority watch list". The group which represents the MPAA, RIAA, NMPA, ESA, BSA and more, wants the U.S. government to pressure the Canadian government to fix its laws. Among the things objected to be the IIPA is the permission for libraries to "format shift" items before the become obsolete, a CAN$500 limit on statutory damages for copyright infringement for private use and the legality of DRM circumvention for the creation of fair use copies.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has reportedly taken the opportunity to diss Adobe Flash technology again. Several weeks ago, after the iPad was unveiled by Apple, Adobe kicked up a fuss about the lack of Flash support with the product and released information on what iPad users would miss out on without it.

During a recent trip by Jobs - courting newspaper publishers with an iPad in hand - Steve spoke to some Wall Street Journal staff about Adobe's Flash technology. He told the staff that he dislikes flash technology because it crashes Macs due to its bugs, and that it is a CPU hog when it is in use.

He went on to point out that Flash is a source of security holes - which is true when Internet users do not keep their Flash add-on up to the latest version for sure. He compared the iPad's lack of Flash support to the dropping of floppy drives from Macs, as well as legacy data ports and other "dying technologies".

In recent weeks, Adobe has attempted to re-assure users about the performance of its software, noting that Flash 10.1 should deliver significant improvements over older versions. Steve Jobs however feels that its time for Flash to replaced on the web with Javascript, H.264 video and other alternatives to the Flash technology.

A Russian researcher has released attack code to exploit a critical vulnerability found in Mozilla's latest version of the Firefox web browser. It triggers a heap corruption vulnerability in the open-source browser that can allow attacks to execute malicious code remotely. He added it as a module to Vulndisco, which is an add-on for the Immunity Canvas automated exploitation system sold to security professionals.

"We've played a lot with it in our labs - it was very reliable," Evgeny Legerov, founder of Moscow-based Intevydis, told The Register. "Works against the default install of Firefox 3.6. We've tested it on XP and Vista." Mozilla issued Firefox 3.5.7 (for those who haven't upgraded to Firefox 3.6 yet) during the week to address security concerns, one of which was described as a heap corruption vulnerability.

Legerov said that the bug fixed by Firefox 3.5.7 is not the same one that he is exploiting in the lab however. While currently only being available to security researchers that pay a fee, details of the attack could spread with time.

The Newspaper Publishers Association (NPA) has called on the BBC Trust to block the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) from providing new applications for the iPhone and (later) Blackerry. The BBC announced at the Mobile World Congress that it would offer new iPhone apps to provide BBC News and BBC Sport content to mobile users. The move was always going to be scrutinized by private news content providers who would see the BBC as a threat to a commercial business model on mobile platforms.

"Not for the first time, the BBC is preparing to muscle into a nascent market and trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers," said David Newell, director of the NPA. "This is not, as the BBC argues, an extension of its existing online service, but an intrusion into a very tightly defined, separate market." The BBC disagrees with this assessment however, and says that it is providing the apps at the request of TV-license-payers who wanted more options to consume content (they technically paid for) with mobile phones.

"They tell us that they want to access the digital services that they have paid for at a time and place that suits them," BBC's Erik Huggers said. "We are catching up with our audiences, and the same content that we broadcast on television and make available online can now be better enjoyed on the move."

Microsoft has identified a malware infection that caused Windows systems to crash when installing a security update last week. The malware in question disguises itself using rootkit methods, and modifies the operating system kernel; changes that led to the system crashing when the update was installing.

"The restarts are the result of modifications the Alureon rootkit makes to Windows Kernel binaries, which places these systems in an unstable state," Mike Reavey, director of the Microsoft Security Response Center, wrote. "In every investigated incident, we have not found quality issues with security update MS10-015."

Until a solution is available, Microsoft will not offer the patch for 32-bit Windows through Automatic Updates, but will offer it for 64-bit systems.

"A malware compromise of this type is serious, and if customers cannot confirm removal of the Alureon rootkit using their chosen anti-virus/anti-malware software, the most secure recommendation is for the owner of the system to back up important files and completely restore the system from a cleanly formatted disk," Microsoft said.

Torrent.ru, the Russian-based torrent indexing site that serves 4 million users, has had its domain name suspended today, effectively taking down the site at its current location.

The large indexer, which has over 1 million active torrents, had the domain name suspended by RU-Center, the nation's largest registrar and web-host.

According to Andrey Vorobiev, Director of Public Relations (via TorrentFreak), "the domain was blocked on the orders of the Investigative Division of the regional prosecutor’s office in Chertanovskaya, Moscow, but could not disclose the reasons."

For now, the site is back up at Rutracker.org, but it remains unseen whether that new domain will be taken down by the authorities as well.

According to Mashable, CBS looks to be on the verge of dropping the price of their TV episodes on iTunes from $1.99 to $0.99, with CEO Les Moonves saying specifically that "there are certain shows that will be sold on Apple for 99 cents."

Although many networks price down older content, MediaMemo says that the context of the quote shows CBS is "planning on changing its pricing structure on more than a one-off basis."

If the move does take place, rivals like NBC and Fox will likely be forced to drop their prices as well for TV shows. At under a dollar, consumers will be more willing to purchase the content, but it is unclear what kind of hit margins will take for the content holders.

Their is no deal set in stone yet, but Apple and CBS are currently in negotiations.

Google has started its own YouTube channel to "explain" Google Voice, all of its features, and how they work.

Watch all 10 videos in the series here: http://www.youtube.com/googlevoice

According to a new research report from the Entertainment Software Association (ESA), about 9.78 million pirated games were downloaded in December, although the trade group says its numbers are skewed, to the lower side.

Only 200 of the most popular games were part of the survey, and downloads were only counted from P2P services and torrent trackers. One-click hosts such as Megaupload and Hotfile were not included.

"These figures under-represent the true magnitude of online game piracy," says the ESA, via GI.biz. "They address only downloads of a small selection of ESA member titles. And while they account for illegal downloads that occur over select P2P platforms, they do not account for downloads that occur from 'cyberlockers' or 'one-click' hosting sites, which continue to account for high volumes of infringing downloads."

Entertainment Weekly has reported that a young couple got married on Valentine's Day, at an Apple Store, with, you guessed it, the priest dressed as CEO Steve Jobs.

Says EW: "The happy couple is Josh and Ting Li, who confirm to EW that this was their real wedding. They first bonded over a mutual fascination with all things clickwheel, Josh says. “We got to know each other because Ting was looking to buy an iPod…and I managed to strike up a conversation that way.” Romance blossomed for the two iLovebirds. “I used to joke that the Apple Store is my church because I am not religious, and I loved everything Apple,” Josh adds. “Ting then came up with the idea of having the wedding there.” They haven’t decided yet where to have a reception, but I hear Cupertino is lovely this time of year.
I think this renegade Apple store wedding trumps the Halo wedding, but can it top that Star Wars wedding? What about a Katamari Damancy wedding?"

According to a new report from MediaMemo, content providers are eager to bring the popular TV and movie streaming service Hulu to the Apple iPad, but the normally free service will become a paid subscription service if it does get exported to the tablet.

Hulu has been long said to be exploring subscription plans, as a way to bring the site a healthier profit.

The first problem for Hulu on the iPad would be Apple's lack of Flash support. Although the partners behind Hulu are looking to create an Apple-friendly version of the site, that seems to be in early development still. It is "unlikely" that any version of Hulu will be available for the iPad launch in late March.

We will keep you updated.

Nearly a third of all Netflix subscribers with broadband internet connections stream video to their TVs using the company's Watch Instantly service according to a new report from TDG.

That figure includes 24.6% who use both their computer and TV for Netflix streaming and 7.2% who watch exclusively on a TV. Another 30.7% only use their computer.

Even though the remaining 37.5% don't use the service at all, the majority are at least familiar with it.

The increasing number of viewers streaming video to TVs is a reflection of the company's long term thinking. In fact Netflix has taken a smart approach to the streaming business from the very beginning, when it was little more than a novelty.

Perhaps the most important detail of their strategy has been the understanding that some things are worth more when you give them away.

That's not to say streaming video has no value. But its value hasn't been in producing a unique revenue stream. Instead they've used it to promote their DVD by mail business and help them continue to increase their subscriber base.

The decision not to charge extra for streaming has allowed them to make other good decisions, such as avoiding overpriced content deals.

Apple has doubled the previous cap imposed on iPhone owners when trying to download applications via AT&T 3G.

Until today, users could download apps with a limit of 10MB in size, with any larger downloads having to be done via Wi-Fi. Users can now download apps up to 20MB in size.

Although criticized, the caps are imposed to help AT&T save bandwidth on an already overworked network.

After nearly a year's worth of work, the new version of AfterDawn's backend and layout is almost ready for the prime time. Still some minor bugs need to be fixed, a few mysterious issues need to be addressed, etc. but it is almost ready (we'd say 99% done) and you can test it now.

So, please visit AfterDawn "v4" at:

http://www.v4.afterdawn.com/

or click here to view this news article in the new layout.

Let us know your thoughts. Post your comments to this news article or use our feedback form to contact us directly. I must also mention that the site wont function properly if you're using IE6, Netscape 3.x, Mosaic or any other browser that is almost a decade old. Furthermore, many sections of the site utilize -- to very small degree, I must say -- JavaScript, so it is recommended to have it turned on in your browser's settings.

According to a lawsuit filed recently in US District Court, administrators at Lower Merion School District in Rosemont, PA used the webcam on a school issued laptop to illegally spy on a student. School officials are accused of violating federal wiretapping laws, as well as the student's civil rights.

The laptop is one of more than 2,000 issued to district high school students in order to give them access to school resources at all times. Each of the laptops is equipped with remote access software for locating the computers and secretly activating the onboard webcam in case they're stolen.

But that's not all it was used for according to the parents of Blake Robbins. They say their son was disciplined late last year for "improper behavior" based on a picture taken secretly by someone at the school who was monitoring him remotely.

Rather than admitting improper activities of their own, the school district appears to be going into full denial mode.

Verizon has begun OTA updates for the HTC Droid Eris, giving owners Android 2.1, the newest firmware available from Google, even before Motorola Droid users have gotten it.

Users at Droid-Life have had mixed results however: "it's now sounding more and more like eris users truly are receiving some sort of an update to 2.1. some are reporting that sense ui is missing while others apparently still have it. and now after our source has confirmed an update request from a droid user, we have to wonder what verizon has done this time. this is shaping up to be a huge disaster for htc, motorola and verizon," reads the post.

HTC had confirmed the update was coming on Tuesday, but did not give a date.

Verizon has released apps for Android and Windows Mobile users today that will allow smartphone users to use their phones as remote controls for FiOS TVs.

The remotes can navigate playback, schedule DVR programming, and set parental controls.

To sync you will need the app, be on the same wireless network, and select the phone from a FiOS TV widget, says Electronista.

For now the remote app works with the Motorola Droid and the HTC Imagio, but Verizon says more supported phones are coming.

BGR is reporting today that a GSM Palm Pixi-esque smartphone should be headed to carrier T-Mobile soon, with Palm and T-Mo in the "final stages" of launch plans.

Currently, Palm's new line has been CDMA only, with the Palm Pre and Pixi on Sprint and the Palm Pre and Pixi Plus models on Verizon.

The next big mobile phone event is the CTIA next month, and will likely be a launching ground for any big announcements.

Verizon offers the Pixi Plus for $80 with contract, cheaper than Sprint offers the inferior Palm Pixi (non-Plus).

At this week's Mobile World Congress Show Daily, it appears that Sony Ericsson has hinted at the possible creation of a PSP phone.

Says President Bert Nordberg, via electronista: "We missed the window for high-end and touchscreen devices big time. Part of the recovery will be much better design and closer work with our partner Sony... In the past there was no tie-up between us, the PSP platform and Sony, but you can expect to hear much more about that."

There have been many rumors of a "PSP phone" in the past, but not to many have come with basis directly from the mouth of the President of the company.

Should be interesting to keep an eye on.

RSJ IT Solutions of Australia has lost a lawsuit to Nintendo today, and will have to pay the gaming company $520,000 in damages for selling the R4 flash cart, a device used to run homebrew on the Nintendo DS handheld.

Along with the fine, Nintendo has won an injunction forcing the company to cease sales of the device via any site it owns, most notably gadgetgear.com.au.

Additionally, the two owners of the site are banned from selling the devices anywhere in Australia. Both must identify the suppliers from where they purchased the R4 carts, which will likely lead to more lawsuits from Nintendo.

Despite the legal uses of the R4 flash cart, it also allows for easy playback of pirated games, which is why Nintendo has filed over a dozen lawsuits in many different countries trying to stop sellers and importers of the device.

Amazon has announced today the launch of the free Kindle application for RIM BlackBerry users, giving the smartphone users access to over 400,000 e-books.

The app, aptly named "Kindle for Blackberry," is free and available to BlackBerry users on any carrier in the United States.

"Since the launch of our popular Kindle for iPhone app last year, customers have been asking us to bring a similar experience to the BlackBerry," adds Ian Freed, Vice President, Amazon Kindle, via Yahoo.

The company had promised the app "soon" in December.

Larry "Major" Nelson, Xbox Live community director, has Tweeted today that many Midway games available via Xbox Live Aracde have been removed for the time being due to issues over publisher rights.

Says the post: "Some XBLA titles are no longer available for purchase from Xbox Live Arcade due to publisher evolving rights and permissions."

Nelson then listed the titles, which are: Cyberball, Defender, Paperboy, Rootbeer Tapper, Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3, Robotron, Joust, Gauntlet and Smash TV. "If you purchased any of those titles... you will still be able to play them or re-download 'em. And no, it's not Game Room related."

Midway, which filed for bankruptcy in 2009, is now mostly owned by Warner Bros., who snatched up profitable assets.

CVG has received a review copy of Ubisoft's new Assassin's Creed 2 for PC and it appears that the DRM being used by the publisher requires a constant Internet connection for the game to work. If your Internet drops for any reason, you are kicked from the game, losing all progress you have made since the last save.

The article says you can't even start the game without Internet, as you will be greeted by an error message. Making matters even worse, you are still kicked back to the main menu if the game loses connection to the "Ubisoft Master servers," which may not even be your fault.

There is really nothing else to say about this except the fact that clearly, publishers have not gotten the hint yet that ALL games are cracked, and released online without DRM and this latest DRM is just hurting PAYING customers.

Following on the heels of expected approval in the EU, the United States Department of Justice is also expected to approve of the Yahoo/Microsoft search deal, sometime within the next 30 days.

As with the European Commission, the DOJ is expected to give unconditional approval.

The deal was originally announced in July, and will last 10 years when approved.

You can read more about the deal here: Yahoo and Microsoft to start ad partnership

According to a new report from The Nielsen Group, most people aren't willing to pay for the online content they get for free now.

At first glance the report looks favorable for proponents of locking content behind paywalls. More than 40% of the 27,000 survey respondents in 52 countries said they either have paid for or would consider paying for newspaper content online. About 35% indicated said the same about online (music) radio.

But The Devil is in the details. When it comes to paying for content the most important detail seems to be quality.

More than 70% of people surveyed indicated they would only pay for content if it's better than what they currently get for free. More than 60% would expect the freedom to copy, share or otherwise use paid content in whatever way they choose.

This would seem to be at odds with what's actually being proposed in the entertainment and news industries.

News providers who favor paywalls routinely bully people for daring to copy short passages from their articles. Even when it's clearly fair use.

TV executives who favor charging for online video don't even want viewers watching their officially approved streams (including ads) using a program like Boxee or a game console like the PS3.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) will investigate a complaint made by Eastman Kodak Co. related to smartphones made by Apple and Research In Motion, the body announced on Wednesday. "The products at issue in this investigation are smartphones with built-in cameras," the agency said in a statement. The Kodak complaint was filed with the ITC on January 14th this year, while Kodak filed two lawsuits against Apple for patent infringement on the same day.

The patents in question relate to the image preview and image size functions of digital cameras and other things. Kodak is seeking compensation for the use of its technology, and is open to talks with Apple and RIM on licensing. For now however, it is requesting the ITC block Apple and RIM from importing devices that infringe its patents.

Hit badly by the recession, Kodak is looking at its patent portfolio as a long-term source of revenue. The company projects licensing revenue averaging at least $250 - $350 million each year for the coming several years.

The SOCOM: US Navy SEALS Fireteam Bravo 3 title for Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) handheld platform is the first to require online activation in order to unlock certain features. When it was released on Tuesday in the U.S., it came with a voucher code that had to be redeemed online to unlock online play features. Sony claims that the measure is aimed at curbing piracy of PSP games.

"Today's consumers are more tech savvy and better connected to the internet than ever before. Piracy continues to be an issue of concern for the PSP platform. SOCOM: U.S. Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3 is a trial run for a new initiative we are exploring for the platform," said SCEA director of hardware marketing John Koller.

South Korean consumer electronics giant Samsung Electronics Co. is enjoying growth spurred by sharp rises in sales of its flat-panel televisions. In 2006, Samsung overtook Sony as the biggest seller of television sets in the world. Since that time, the company has watched its TV business almost double in size. It has an advantage in that it constructed its own manufacturing base instead of outsourcing like some of its rivals.

This gives Samsung complete control over costs and quality. "We may have to invest in some capacity this year," said Samsung's Kim Yang-gyu. The company will spend $136 million to expand a factory based in Slovakia. Samsung's share of the market stands at around 17.2 percent, ahead of LG at 14.8 percent. It shipped 38 million televisions last year.

LCD sets accounted for 27.5 million of the total, and 3.5 million were Plasma. The remainder of shipments were CRT televisions. This year, the company hopes to ship 45 million televisions, with LCD and Plasma accounting for 39 million.

Dutch developers have set out to prove a point about the safety of certain social networking practices in a very public way. A new website they have constructed - Please Rob Me - lists information about empty homes gathered from Twitter. The site scrutinizes users of Foursquare, which is based on a person's current location in the real world.

"It started with me and a friend looking at our Twitter feeds and seeing more and more Foursquare posts," said Boy Van Amstel, one of PleaseRobMe's developers. "People were checking in at their house, or their girlfriend's or friend's house, and sharing the address - I don't think they were aware of how much they were sharing."

PleaseRobMe.com re-posts tweets from users who have chosen to alert the world of their whereabouts automatically on Twitter, which in turn reveals when they leave their homes. Of course the site does have a brief disclaimer explaining that it is not intended to be used as a tool to aid burglars.

"The website is not a tool for burglary," said Mr Van Amstel. "The point we're getting at is that not long ago it was questionable to share your full name on the internet. We've gone past that point by 1000 miles." He said that the site is basically just a Twitter search tool and nothing new, adding that anyone who can write HTML and a little javascript could create it.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) is planning to deliver sports and news content via iPhone applications from April this year. The apps for Apple devices will be followed by versions for RIM's BlackBerry handsets and Google's Android software. Sky and the Daily Telegraph already offer free apps for the same purpose, whereas the Guardian charges £2.39 for its applications.

The BBC said that the move is being made because more and more people are using "sophisticated handheld devices" to view content. The move will raise tensions with publishers of paid-for content or content supported by other means. "Whilst the BBC's impulse to enter an already crowded news and sport apps market place is understandable, the move belies the fundamentally competitive nature of the Corporation's approach to new services," Emily Bell, director of digital content at the Guardian, told BBC News.

Ventura Content filed a $6.75 million complaint against the owners of Brazzers on Tuesday, which operates adult entertainment "tube" sites. Ventura is the copyright-holding company for Pink Visual studios. Tube sites are YouTube-like video portals that host and stream thousands of adult videos for free to Internet users. Such websites are (unsurprisingly) among the most viewed websites on earth. The adult entertainment industry has been at odds with such sites for some time now.

In the lawsuit filed by Ventura against Mansef Productions and Interhub (owners of Brazzers), there are 45 examples of copyright infringing content on keezmovies.com, pornhub.com, extremetube.com and tube8.com. "These Tube Sites maintain the fiction that they offer a forum for consumers to upload and share their own original 'user-generated' adult video content; however in reality, they function as repositories for an extensive collection of infringing adult videos," Ventura states in the suit.

It goes on to compare the sites to file-sharing services such as Napster and Grokster, adding that piracy is a threat to the entire adult entertainment industry. "I think that the general consensus is that tube sites have really put a dent in the adult entertainment industry," says industry analyst Rhett Pardon of XBIZ Research. The online area of the industry is estimated to be a $6 - $12 billion business.

Sony Computer Entertainment Japan (SCEJ) has announced that the Torne DVR for the PS3 will be released in the nation next month, and will support Japan's terrestrial digital broadcasts.

The Torne connects via a USB port, and will allow users to record TV to the PS3 HDD or to external hard drives. Eight external drives can be registered to use the recorder.

The DVR will retail for the equivalent of $110, and Sony will bundle a 250GB PS3 with Torne for $470.

Google has donated $2 million USD this week to the Wikimedia Foundation, the parent company behind Wikipedia, Wikimedia Commons, Wiktionary and Wikibooks.

Although the company was not in desperate need of money, the $2 million donation should be a welcome relief, regardless. Wikimedia raised $8 million for the year, after 230,000 people donated, on average, $33 USD.

Wikimedia communications chief Jay Walsh added: "Many have speculated as to the relationship between our organizations before, but with this news we're pleased to clarify their great role as a philanthropic supporter for the Foundation."

Apple's iBook store will sell e-books protected with DRM, says the LA Times, with sources saying it will likely be FairPlay copy protection.

E-book market share leader Amazon has been criticized for using DRM for e-books they sell for the Kindle device, and it appears that Apple will employ the same tactics.

FairPlay will restrict the amount of devices that are authorized to read the e-book, with the number likely being between 3-5.

The iPad iBook store will sell the books in the open ePub standard. Five publishers have already signed deals to sell via the iBook store and have accepted FairPlay; Penguin, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette.

Sony has announced the addition of Netflix streaming to its Dash personal Internet viewer, making all 17,000 "Watch Instantly" TV episodes and movies available through the device.

"We're continuing to develop innovative products that bring online music, news, video and more into our customers' homes in real time," says Brennan Mullin, senior vice president of Sony Electronics' personal imaging and audio business. "By adding content from Netflix and Demand Media to our dash product, Sony is giving consumers a new, convenient way to enjoy some of the highest quality entertainment and most useful information available on the Internet today."

The Dash has a 7-inch touchscreen and will be available starting April for $199.

Pic via Engadget:

After months of delays, Google's proposed $134 million merger with video software compression company On2 has finally been accepted by On2 shareholders and the company says the deal should close on Friday.

From the press release:

Under the terms of the merger agreement, as amended, each outstanding share of On2 Common Stock (other than shares owned by (a) Google, Oxide Inc., Oxide LLC or On2 and (b) any On2 stockholders who are entitled to and who properly exercise appraisal rights under Delaware law) will be cancelled and extinguished and will be automatically converted into the right to receive (1) $0.15 in cash; (2) 0.0010 of a share of Google Class A Common Stock; and (3) cash in lieu of any fractional share of Google Class A Common Stock (after aggregating all fractional shares of Google Class A Common Stock issuable to such On2 stockholders), without interest.

Google raised their offer by 20 percent last month.

According to new Compete figures, Facebook has become the second most popular site in the United States, just barely surpassing Yahoo which has held the spot for some time.

The last time the top spots switched was in early 2008, when Google surpassed Yahoo.

Overall, 148 million US users visited Google in January, with Facebook seeing 133.6 million. Yahoo fell to third, at 132 million.

Following in Netflix's footsteps, rental giant Redbox has agreed to wait 28 days before making new Warner releases available via their kiosks.

The delay will give Warner's "retail partners a period of exclusivity," which the studio hopes will help offset continued declines in DVD sales as well as give VOD a better chance at succeeding.

"The 28-day window for Redbox balances the economics of our relationship while continuing to offer great value to their customers," adds Warner Home Video president Ron Sanders. "This accord establishes a mutually beneficial relationship that will foster an ongoing and productive partnership."

With the agreement, Warner and Redbox have dropped any pending lawsuits against each other, as well.

HBO has announced the launch of HBO Go, an online streaming video service that will allow users to watch the premium channel's exclusive content at their own leisure.

The only catch is you have to already be a subscriber to HBO or Cinemax TV services, but surely no one thought HBO would give away all these movies for free, right?

An advantage HBO has over competition in VOD is their popular exclusives like True Blood, Entourage and others.

So far it seems that subscribers will only be able to login to HBO Go if they are a Comcast or FiOS subscriber, and it is unclear when the service will be available to those not using those ISPs.

Screenshot via DigitalTrends:

Boxee has announced the latest update to their beta service, version 0.9.20.10708, just about a month after the launch of the service.

The company says in the 37 days since launch, 150,000 new users have joined Boxee, 3 million apps were launched and 1.5 million movies or TV episodes were watched.

Although the update has little new features, it has over 500 bug fixes, which should make the service much more stable for the end user.

Says the company of bugs they fixed:

* Multilingual keyboard support: under settings->appearance->region to add keyboards
* Significantly improved video quality of our DXVA support
* Regained support for older graphics cards (pre-2.0 pixel shader) which was broken after move to DXVA
* Improved file scanning performance
* Hardware acceleration of H.264 on Intel HD4500 cards
* Hang on FLAC tag read over SMB
* SMB crashes when canceling SMB operations
* Hang on shutdown due to wait for SMB and file scanner
* Hang in file scanner when manually scanning a folder
* Hangs due to excessive locks around database pool
* Hangs when left idle due to UDP sockets leak
* Corrupted graphics on some ATI cards (X1600)
* Log file cycling (every 32M, old log overrides boxee.old.log)
* Present action dialog when clicking on DVD icon to allow browse/eject
* Optimization to file scanning making it less IO intensive
* Fixes to iPhone remote keyboard under Linux
* Added support for m4b playback (audio books)
* Crash in ID3 tag reading (playback and background scanning of some mp3 files)
* Crash in some wav files which contained extra-info in the wav header (playback and background scanning)
* Crash on some rss feeds caused by mis-parsing of empty http headers
* Crash on image extraction from mp3 tags (in some cases)
* win32: fixed runtime error in some cases where vc90 runtime was not installed properly
* Dual screen issues. sometimes a movie would only show black screen when switching screens.
* Allow apps to define properties for rtmp streaming
* Playback of some internet video streams, mainly coming from playlists (partial read of the network buffer was causing wrong codec detection)
* Playlist playback of internet video streams was sometimes using the music player instead of the video player
* Playback of music from history (was not working and now it will open the folder played from)
* Logout was broken enabling logging-in even after password change (was using stored cookie)
* Win32: when launching boxee while another instance is running it will just bring the other instance to front

Sony has discontinued sales of its first generation OLED HDTV in Japan, citing sluggish demand for the display. Sales will continue in other markets, however.

OLED displays are thinner, more energy-efficient and produce much more vibrant and "crisp" images than LCDs and have therefore been touted as the next-generation of TVs.

The decision is an absolute setback for Sony, which in 2007 said the following: "I want this world's first OLED TV to be the symbol of the revival of Sony's technological prowess. I want this to be the flag under which we charge forwards to turn the fortunes around."

The 11-inch OLED TV was selling for the equivalent of $2200 USD.

LG and other manufacturers have promised mass produced 15-inch displays during 2010.

Katherine Evans, a teenager in Florida sued her former principal in 2007 after she was suspended for criticizing a teacher with a Facebook page.

She was suspended for the page, which the principal called "cyber bullying" and in response, Evans sued the principal. Today, a federal judge has ruled that the suit can proceed, and Evans says she is looking to have her suspension expunged from any permanent records as well as a "nominal fee" and the payment of all her legal fees in the matter.

The case should go to trial by the Spring.

"This is an important victory both for Ms. Evans and Internet free speech," says Maria Kayanan, associate legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Florida, via the NYT. "Because it upholds the principle that the right to freedom of speech and expression in America does not depend on the technology used to convey opinions and ideas."

Skype and Verizon Wireless have officially announced a partnership today that will bring the VoIP service to BlackBerry and Android phones starting next month.

The VoIP service will be available over Wi-Fi and 3G and will allow for international calls at rates that are far cheaper then currently charged by carriers.

Skype will come pre-installed on the "BlackBerry Storm 9530, Storm2 9550, Curve 8330, Curve 8530, 8830 World Edition and Tour 9630 smartphones, as well as DROID by Motorola, DROID ERIS by HTC and Motorola DEVOUR," starting in March.

"More and more, what's happening is that your mobile phones are really just personal computers in your pocket," adds Skype CEO Josh Silverman, via RWW. "And people want to use those computers ... to communicate."

As an example of how cheap will benefit users, per minute calling to France using Skype costs $.024 while the same per minute rate for Verizon is $.17. That's right, 8 times more expensive. Of course, you will need to purchase Skype's $3.99-a-month international call subscription but the savings are noticeable if you spend more than even 20 minutes on the phone per month.

Last week we reported on Square, the mobile credit card scanner.

Today, reports are stating that the actual device will cost only $1 USD, and the app to use it will be free. The reader works on any device with a headphone jack, but so far the app only works on iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch.

The service is so cheap because Square will take 2.9 percent of each transaction.

Sony has noted today that it will be holding a full motion controller session at the upcoming GDC event, allowing programmers to get a hands-on with the new "Arc" device.

The session is called 'Introducing the PlayStation 3 Motion Controller', and will be led by Kirk Bender, SCEA developer support, and David Coombes, SCEA platform research manager, says GI.biz.

The one-hour-long presentation will take place on March 11th.

Two well-known hackers, Sherif Hashim and another who goes by the name iH8Sn0w, have had their Apple IDs blocked from accessing the App Store this week.

Hashim created a hack for the iPhone OS 3.1.3 and Sn0w created the XEMN tool that unlocks the radio baseband for iPhone 3G and 3GS with 3.1.3.

The latest move has started an avalanche of worry from users of jailbroken iPhones and iPod Touches who were worried that their accounts might be banned too, but those worries seem unfounded, as Apple does not want to block possible purchases from millions of users on jailbroken devices.

Both hackers Tweeted responses; Hashim: "Your Apple ID was banned for security reasons", that's what i get when i try to go to the app store, they must be really angry :)))))

iH8sn0w: @sherif_hashim lol, they did that to my ih8sn0wyday[@t]googmail.com too. (right after I posted XEMN)...

At the Toy Fair 2010, Mattel has seemingly brought the ever-popular Barbie into the 21st century, with the introduction of the Barbie Video Girl Doll.

The doll has a video camera built-in to her necklace, and an LCD video screen in her back, allowing you to record and see everything the Barbie has seen.

Barbie has a USB port in her back as well, so you can plug her in, and playback the video on a computer or TV. You can record up to 30 minutes of video and later edit it at Barbie.com.

The doll costs $50 USD and will be available in toy stores starting in July.

A Danish man's house was recently raided by representatives of Antipiratgruppen in cooperation with court officials after they tracked him down by IP address. Antipiratgruppen is sponsored by companies in the movie and music industries.

After identifying his IP address through torrents found via The Pirate Bay they were able to to persuade the court to force his ISP to reveal his identity.

Although the group only claims to have foudn evidence from their initial investigation that the man shared a handful of files, Antipiratgruppen claims hard drives seized in the raid will show he is guilty of significantly more acts of copyright infringement.

This is the second high profile raid by the anti-piracy group this year. Last month their target was the admin of a private BitTorrent tracker called EliteBits.

Vodafone has announced the launch of the Vodafone 150, an under-$15 mobile phone designed specifically for 'developing' nations.

The phone will be available in India, Turkey, Ghana, Kenya and 6 other African nations.

Aptina Imaging, "the CMOS imaging leader," has announced today the launch of a 14MP CMOS image sensor for mobile phones, one that can handle recording at 1080p/60fps.

The sensor, the 1.4-micron MT9F011 includes "low power consumption, a four-lane MIPI® data interface (configurable as single, dual or quad lane), Bayer resample for improved video, 1/2.3” optical format, and 25 degree chief ray angle to minimize module height."

Adds Farshid Sabet, Aptina General Manager, Mobile Business Unit: "Aptina continues to enable imaging everywhere. In an increasingly video-centric world, the availability of the MT9F011 and its full HD video combined with unparalleled pixel performance and sensor functionality enables our customers to deliver new and differentiated video products faster. Based on recent interest and design-in activity, the MT9F011 sensor positions us to leverage our strength and capitalize on new opportunities."

The company says samples are currently available and mass production expected in the Q2.

Last week an amendment to their trademark on the iPhone name which suggests a bigger emphasis on making it a dominant gaming platform. The amendment expands the trademark to include handheld units for playing electronic games.

There have been many game apps, both free and commercial, available for the iPhone since the App Store launched in July of 2008. So why extend the trademark now?

One possible explanation is the success of Google Android. Android phones are still far behind the iPhone in market share, but the gap is slowly closing.

In order for the iPhone to continue its stellar growth in the face of increasingly stiff competition Apple needs to emphasize what they offer that competitors don't.

The most obvious area where the iPhone leads competitors is the number of apps available. Out of all the app categories, games are probably the easiest to market to the masses. Handheld gaming is already popular enough to make the Nintendo DS possibly the most successful game platform of the last 3 years.

Although it's perhaps not as universally popular as music playback and mobile email or as innovative as GPS services, games are more dependent on attracting third party developers, which is arguably the biggest advantage Apple has.

Adobe has officially announced Flash Player 10.1 and Adobe AIR for Android today at the Mobile World Congress, setting a time frame as well for its release.

The blog post by The Flash Blog says: I have also been testing a selection of mobile Flash sites, created by key partners like YouTube and ESPN, and I am very excited about the future of Flash in the mobile browser.

Timeframe: Within 3 months.

Watch the video here: Adobe announces Flash Player and AIR for Android

Samsung has launched the i8520 Beam smartphone today, featuring Android 2.1, a projector, Bada user interface, and TouchWiz 3.0 for widgets.

The built-in DLP pico projector "casts a 6-lumen image and has its own customized interface when blown up to the larger size. Samsung has a unique implementation that can show the 5-megapixel camera's sensor image through the projector for specialized situations, like viewing documents in a classroom," says Electronista.

The device has a large 3.7-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen, 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS and 16GB internal memory.

No word on price or availability, but Samsung has likely in time for Summer.

Following months of uncertainty, NetEase has been given official approval for a World of Warcraft launch in China. The notice was posted on the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP) regulatory body Web site.

NetEase can now operate the world's most popular game in the world's most populous nation.

The new approval should also lead to eventual approval of the WoW: Wrath of the Lich King expansion pack, which will benefit Blizzard and NetEase.

"We believe NetEase is well positioned to benefit from continuing strong growth in the Chinese online gaming market. Additionally, NetEase’s licensing deal with Blizzard gives the company the most diversified portfolio of games among its peers," reads one analyst's opinion.

According to Sony senior director of corporate communications Patrick Seybold, PlayStation 3 hardware shortages are likely imminent in the upcoming months, following the extremely high demand of the holiday 2009 months.

"We're working very hard with our retail partners to meet consumer interest, but the demand is tremendously high for the PS3 and we expect tight inventory in the coming months," says Seybold.

Overall, the PS3 saw 36 percent growth year-on-year for January, while rival consoles saw a slowdown.

"The strong demand carrying through the holidays was evident and early in the month we [knew] there was going to be limited supply of the PS3 at retail in January," Seybold continued. "We're working closely with the retail channel to meet this demand, but expect tight supply for the coming months."

Amazon currently only allows sales of one PS3 per household, given the shortages.

Square Enix has confirmed the Final Fantasy XIII Xbox 360 bundles for the UK, today, following the recent confirmation of the bundles for the U.S.

The more expensive bundle will include a 250GB FFXIII-engraved console, two wireless controllers and exclusive avatar downloads (outfits and a Chocobo pet).

The second bundle will include an Elite 360 (120GB model) and a single controller.

The game and bundles are set for release on March 9th.

Pic via CVG:

According to a new survey by Cision and The George Washington University, most journalists and editors now use social media sources when doing research for stories, although most that do agree that information may be less reliable than information gathered from traditional media sources.

All of those surveyed use Google for research, 96 percent use corporate websites, 64 percent use blogs, while 61 percent use Wikipedia, 60 percent use sites such as Facebook and 57 percent use Twitter.

"Mainstream media have clearly hit a tipping point in their reliance on social media for their research and reporting," says Heidi Sullivan, Vice President of Research for Cision. "However, it's also clear that while social media is supplementing the research done by journalists, it is not replacing editors' and reporters' reliance on primary sources, fact-checking and other traditional best practices in journalism."

The results are based on 371 responses from journalists, conducted in September of last year. About 50 percent of those questioned had over 20 years of experience in the field.

Motorola has announced the sequel to the original MOTOBLUR-based phone, the Cliq, launching the Cliq XT (Quench in Europe).

The device will run on Android 1.5 with BLUR for the time being, with an update to 2.1 in the works. The 3.1-inch screen has 320x480 resolution, a 5MP camera with flash and autofocus, support for Adobe Flash Lite, Wi-Fi, 3G, and full GPS.

In terms of availability, Motorola says: QUENCH with MOTOBLUR will be available in multiple regions around the globe beginning in Q1 2010. In the U.S., the device will be called CLIQ XT with MOTOBLUR and will be available exclusively through T-Mobile USA beginning next month.

Announced today at the Mobile World Congress, 27 of the world's largest telecoms have announced the creation of the Wholesale Applications Community, an app store that they hope will rival the iPhone App Store and the Android Market.

The store should encourage developers to create applications for all smartphones and operating systems.

A few of the biggest names involved in the store are AT&T, Sprint, Verizon, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, China Mobile, China Unicom, Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Vodafone, Wind and LG Electronics.

"For customers this means a broader choice of innovative applications and services available on a wider choice of devices than ever before," says the group.

Combined, the group has access to 3 billion customers worldwide.

"Today, I'm proud to introduce Windows Phone 7 Series, the next generation of Windows Phones," stated Steve Ballmer, CEO at Microsoft. "In a crowded market filled with phones that look the same and do the same things, I challenged the team to deliver a different kind of mobile experience. Windows Phone 7 Series marks a turning point toward phones that truly reflect the speed of people's lives and their need to connect to other people and all kinds of seamless experiences."

The company has launched their Windows Mobile/Windows Phone 7 series today, bringing together a new interface that connects Zune music and video, Xbox Live gaming, and an intuitive smartphone operating system.

Trying to differentiate itself from the iPhone and Android phones, which use home screens of widgets and icons, Microsoft says it has tried to blend applications together for a more "integrated experience," allowing the OS and applications to "share information with the user in a natural and seamless fashion."

Today DivX announced a new licensing agreement with mobile phone manufacturer Pantech to develop DivX Certified devices. They will also be working with Qualcomm to certify the Snapdragon IC platform.

Since the inception of the DivX certification program in 2007 more than 60 different phones have been certified. Last year alone they certified 41.

In total more than 250 million DivX Certified devices, ranging from mobile phones to Blu-ray players, have been sold.

In addition they've recently introduced DivX TV, a streaming video solution, for the Android OS. They are demonstrating DivX TV at the Mobile World Congress, going on now in Barcelona, Spain.

"The explosion of video capability on mobile phones clearly illustrates that consumers are seeking out new devices that will allow them to easily move and share the video content they care about across all the screens in their lifestyle," said Kevin Hell, CEO of DivX, Inc. "We believe that mobile devices will play an incredibly important role in the future of video distribution and consumption, and we're pleased that multiple manufacturers recognize the importance of the DivX brand in providing their consumers a seamless, high-quality video experience."

The latest version of the Symbian smartphone platform was unveiled today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain. Named Symbian^3, or S^3 for short, it is expected to be completed by the end of March.

The first devices featuring S^3 should start shipping from Nokia in the third quarter of this year.

New features in Symbian^3 include a multi-touch interface, integrated online music store support, HDMI output capabilities at full HD (1080p) resolution, and a new graphics architecture which takes advantage of hardware acceleration.

Nokia has also released a video previewing what Symbian^3 will look like.


Despite competition from newer platforms such as Apple's iPhone OS and Google Android, Symbian continues to make up about 50% of the global smartphone market.

According to new figures from the ARIA (Australian Recording Industry Association), the Australian music industry has seen growth for the first time since 2003.

Says Slyck: "...wholesale revenues over the full year increased almost 5% when compared to 2008. An increase in overall digital revenues was the key contributing factor to this growth, with digital albums demonstrating an increase of over 60% by revenue, more than offsetting the relatively modest decline in physical CD sales..."

Surely piracy is still killing the music industry?

Defunct online video streaming site TV-Links has won its court case this week, years after it was taken down by Dutch law enforcement officials.

TV-Links was one of the most popular online directories on the Internet, indexing TV shows hosted on streaming video sites, legal and illegal.

In October 2007, following complaints by the U.K.’s Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT), the site was taken down and its admin arrested. The case against the admin and the site was the illegal distribution of copyright protected content.

A judge ruled today that the site was not liable as linking to TV shows is not the same as distributing it.

The decision follows the recent win by Alan Ellis, the former admin of large music private tracker OiNK.

Verizon and Skype are expected to announce a new deal on Tuesday that will bring the VoIP company to the largest cell network in the United States.

The Skype software will work via Wi-Fi and 3G, and seems to be a direct response to AT&T's recent addition of the software.

Skype is currently developing a 3G iPhone app, but it appears that it is still not completed. If the Verizon deal is accurate, the app could be available as soon as the announcement.

We will keep you updated.

In what can only be considered a disappointment, Adobe has confirmed today that the upcoming Windows Mobile 7 will not have Flash support at launch.

"Microsoft and Adobe are working closely together. While the newest version of Windows Phone won't support Flash at initial availability, both companies are working to include a browser plug-in for the full Flash player in future versions of Windows Phone. More details will be shared at Microsoft MIX next month," reads the Adobe statement.

Windows Mobile 7 is expected to be officially launched tomorrow.

VG247 has come upon some screenshots of the debug build of the upcoming PlayStation 3 firmware update, version 3.20, which shows that 3D video output will soon be an option.

With developers now testing the 3.20 update, it shouldn't be too long until it hits gamers, likely within the next couple of months.

The new leak follows what Sony's John Koller confirmed last month, that "It’s gonna take just a simple firmware update which most people do regularly anyway, and that’s all it’s gonna take to accolade the PS3 to 3D gaming."

Users will of course need a 3D-capable HDTV and 3D glasses, which many consider a gimmick, but it is nice to know the option will be there, regardless.

Google has taken down a few of the most popular music blogs available on Blogger this week, leading to an avalanche of criticism. Google, for their part says the sites were taken down after repeated copyright claims.

A few of the most popular sites, Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It's a Rap and Living Ears were taken down without warning, but a few are back up, at their same URLs.

Blogger product manager Rick Klau wrote of the controversy: If Google receives "multiple [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] complaints about the same blog, and [we] have no indication that the offending content is being used in an authorized manner, we will remove the blog."

For their part, many of the sites in question have taken down songs before without question when asked, and some have the songs up legally.

LG has announced at the Integrated Systems Europe show this week that it will be bringing a 15-inch OLED HDTV to the U.S. market by July.

The display will also be the first mass produced OLED TV to achieve 720p resolution, managing 1366x768. The OLED display will have a contrast ratio of over 1,000,000:1.

It is unclear what the price of the display will be, but it is expected to be between $1800 and $2200.

A game collector has just paid an astonishing price for a 20-year old NES console on eBay, $13,105, and no, that isn't a typo.

The system came included with one of the top three rarest Nintendo classic games in existence, Stadium Events, which was released in 1987 by Bandai. There are said to be only 10 copies of the game left in the world.

Besides Stadium Events, the console came included with copies of a few other games, but the system wouldn't have likely topped $100, even with the other games.

View the auction here: ORIGINAL NINTENDO GAME SYSTEM LOT/ CONTROLLER/ 5 GAMES

The EU is expected to approve the search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, says Reuters, with the 10-year partnership going into effect soon after approval.

The European Commission has until February 19th to approve or block the deal.

"I expect clearance without any concessions next Friday," says the insider source.

The partnership is expected to help both Bing and Yahoo take some market share from Google in the search engine market, although Google has an estimated 90 percent of global share compared to 7.4 percent for Bing and Yahoo combined.

True Move, the current exclusive Thai iPhone carrier should have some competition coming its way soon, with an industry source telling Reuters that Total Access Communications will soon begin selling the phone, starting in March.

TAC is owned by Telenor of Norway, which sells the iPhone in a few countries.

True Move has had its monopoly since January 2009, with 100,000 sold in the time frame. The carrier says it hopes to sell another 120,000 in 2010.

Thailand is one of a few Asian nations that have over 90 percent mobile phone saturation rate.

TiVo has started the process to bring closed captions to DVR boxes, filing a patent this month with the USPTO.

Enhanced Television (ETV) and other closed captioning technology will be used to deliver the data.

ETV metadata has been recently integrated into most cable broadcasts, and the new patent will give TiVo a way to deliver the data in a "more interactive method," says Electronista. The interactive menu will include the text, sound effects and a digital video.

Samsung's first Bada OS phone has been leaked today, dubbed the Wave, and featuring 720p video recording among other notable features.

The touchscreen device has a 3.3-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz processor, 5MP camera, 2GB internal memory, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The display is said to be "incredibly" vibrant and removes all outdoor visibility issues.

Bada has the apps menu, contacts, and calling always pinned on the homescreen, and widgets are available for news, weather and more. Multi-touch is standard.

The phone should ship in April.

Skyfire has announced their acquisition of Kolbysoft, the team behind the Steel Web browser on Android devices.

The Skyfire browser is available currently for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 devices and offers full Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight support through cloud-based processing.

Steel is a free, popular browser available in the Android Marketplace.

Financials of the deal were not revealed.

Confirming yesterday's reports that the company was headed directly to bankruptcy, Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro has said that the company would be liquidating and filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Says Shapiro, speaking about the lawsuit Universal Music Group filed against them in 2008: "The distraction of the legal battles, and the challenges of the broader macro-economic climate have led to our Chapter 7 bankruptcy."

Chapter 7, unlike Chapter 11 usually means the company is shutdown for good, rather than reorganized. The liquidation confirms that.

Private investors had invested $70 million in the streaming site.

Both Sony and Microsoft have revealed the numbers behind their console online services, with both services growing significantly over the year.

Sony CEO Jack Tretton says that the free PlayStation Network (PSN) now has over 40 million users, with the service growing 155 percent in December alone.

Says Tretton: "We’ve also successfully established that we’re not just a disc-based powerhouse, but we’re also a digital powerhouse. PlayStation Network experienced huge growth last year, marking its best revenue month in December – a 155% increase in sales from the previous year. More than 40 million of you all over the world are coming to PlayStation Network to access multimedia content and to enhance your social gaming experiences."

Microsoft says Gold subscription XBL members now total 23 million. Additionally, users logged in at the same time reached an all-time high last month, hitting 2.3 million.

After falling to under 10 percent in December, Bing has regained some ground in search engine market share, moving up to 10.9 percent. Google, the dominant market leader, fell 1 percent to 66.3 percent overall, with Yahoo remaining in second at 14.5 percent share.

Smaller rivals AOL, Ask and MyWeb combined for 5.5 percent, a small gap up from December.

The charts:

January:


December:

Compaq has launched its new AirLife "smartbook" this week, an interesting move away from skimpy netbooks.

The AirLife includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, has 3g wireless built-in, Wi-Fi and runs the Android operating system.

Most notably, the smartbook includes a 10.1-inch, 1024x600-pixel touchscreen TFT display, allowing for multi-touch.

There is a 16GB SSD, so internal memory may become a problem fast, but the computer should also load everything lighting quick. The battery life is promised at 12 hours, with 10 days of standby.

There was no word on price or availability as of yet, but subsidized the smartbook is expected to cost under $300.

iTunes is on its way to hitting 10 billion music downloads, and to celebrate the milestone, the company is giving away a $10,000 iTunes gift card to a lucky winner.

Check the promo here if you are interested: http://www.apple.com/itunes/10-billion-song-countdown/entryform/

Google Chrome for Mac beta, which was first released in December, has updated today to version 5.0.307, adding extensions and bookmark sync among other features.

There are currently over 2200 extensions available in the Chrome gallery.

Users with multiple computers can now sync bookmarks as well, no matter if you have a PC, Linux or Mac machine.

2010 started off very poorly for the video game industry, with overall revenue dropping year-on-year by 13 percent, to $1.17 billion USD.

Hardware sales dropped an astounding 21 percent year-on-year, to $353.7 million and software sales were not too much better, dropping 12 percent year-on-year to $597.9 million. Accessories were the lone bright spot, seeing growth of 2 percent to $217 million.

The Wii was the top console seller, as usual, and the Xbox 360 somewhat surprisingly took back second place from the PlayStation 3. The DS/DSi crushed the PSP in the handheld market.

Overall numbers, via GS:

US VIDEO GAMES INDUSTRY - JANUARY 2010
Hardware: $353.7 million (-21%)
Software: $597.9 million (-12%)
Accessories: $217 million (2%)
Total Games: $1.17 billion (-13%)

Microsoft is expected to unveil Windows Mobile 7 on Monday at the Mobile World Congress in Spain, in a final attempt to stop the crushing Windows Mobile market share has taken in the past few years to the iPhone, BlackBerry and Android.

"They seem to have lost the world's attention in smart phones," notes analyst Dan Hays, of the consulting firm PRTM.

Although less likely, Microsoft could possibly reveal a Zune HD-based phone, a long-hyped device that could be the best music playing phone on the market. "If that thing had a phone in it ... that would be a pretty darn good device," added Charles Golvin, analyst with Forrester Research, speaking of the Zune HD. "But my own judgment is that this is kind of their last chance. If Windows Mobile doesn't get it right this time around, they're probably toast."

Windows Mobile phones accounted for only 9 percent of smartphone sales in 2009, down from 13.2 in 2008, and down from over 15 percent in 2007.

Veoh, the "revolutionary online video service that gives users the power to easily discover, watch, and personalize their entertainment viewing experience," has announced today that they will be laying off most of their staff as they head in Chapter 7 bankruptcy in the upcoming months.

The site has yet to find a business model that has worked, and has used all $70 million they received in funding from venture capitalists and large investors such as Time Warner and Goldman Sachs.

CEO and Founder Dmitry Shapiro has been actively looking to sell the company, but Veoh had been embroiled in a lawsuit over copyright with Universal Music Group which had all but killed a possible sale. The funny part was that they won the lawsuit, which ruled the site was protected under the DMCA.

Google has announced the acquisition of Aardvark, the Internet search and social networking started by former Google employees. Neither company would release the financials of the deal, but it appears to be at least $50 million.

The move should help Google compete better with Twitter, and the move comes just one day after Buzz was released, adding social networking features to Google Gmail accounts.

Reuters says Aardvark "has pioneered a new type of Internet search dubbed "social search." Instead of looking at Web pages to find answers to search queries, Aardvark's service taps a person's network of social contacts."

The acquisition is Google's sixth purchase since September, but one of its smallest.

Take a look at Square, the possible future of mobile payments.

The Financial Times is reporting today that Apple has negotiated with content providers to sell standard definition TV shows for $1 an episode, 50 percent cheaper than usual, when the iPad launches.

High definition media will likely remain the same price, although that is still unclear.

It is also unclear what shows will cost $1, and how widespread the availability of the episodes are.

Additionally, the same report is saying that Apple has so far not given up on the idea of an iTunes subscription model, which would cost $30-a-month for unlimited TV episodes.

OpenOffice.org, the powerful, free productivity suite, has updated today to version 3.2, adding a plethora of new features, and fixes.

Although I will not go into all the new features, OpenOffice has a bountiful page with all the updates. You can view that here: OpenOffice.org 3.2 New Features.

To download OpenOffice for the first time, or to update, please download it here: OpenOffice.org v3.2.0 at AfterDawn

The video game rental service GameFly has filed an IPO today, becoming a publicly traded company and raising $50 million USD. The company will trade on the NASDAQ under the ticker GFLY.

The company has 334,000 subscribers and had revenue of $46.4 million for the six months ended September 30th, 2009. Net profit was $3 million, a drop year-on-year.

Additionally, GameFly is also in control of a network of gaming-related sites that bring in about 4.4 million unique users per month.

The company says it will use the IPO money for future growth.

Sony has revealed the company's first two 3D Blu-ray players today, the BDP-S470 and S570 which will be available within a month, and will retail for the relatively cheap $200 USD and $250 USD, respectively.

Both players can be controlled via an iPhone or iPod Touch with a new BD Remote App, which will also show off more content related to the movie right from the device.

The more expensive device has Wi-Fi built-in while the cheaper player has a Wi-Fi dongle available separately.

Full specs:

BDP-S570 Blu-ray Disc Player

Available in February for about $250

* Full HD 1080p single-disc Blu-ray Disc, DVD, CD, SA-CD player
* Blu-ray 3D ready (with firmware update available this summer)
* BRAVIA Monolithic Design
* BRAVIA Internet Video and BD-LIVE™
* IP Content Noise Reduction
* Built-in Wi-Fi® Wireless (802.11) with Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS)
* Entertainment Database Browser with Gracenote technology
* BD Remote (iPhone/iPod touch remote control – free app.)
* Photo/music/video playback via USB and DLNA® (with firmware update)
* DVD upscaling to 1080p with Precision Cinema HD Upscaling
* Dolby® TrueHD and dts®-HD Master Audio™ decoding
* Built-in 1GB Memory

Facebook has announced that Facebook Chat is now available through multiple IM clients, allowing you to chat with Facebook friends without needing to open the site in your browser.

Says the blog post:

We believe you should be able to connect with your Facebook friends everywhere. We're happy to announce that now you can with Facebook Chat. Starting today, the more than two billion chat messages sent on the site every day can be sent from your favorite desktop instant messaging client.

By integrating Facebook Chat with your preferred instant messenger, you'll never miss a message when you have to navigate away from Facebook and you'll be in control of how and where you chat with your Facebook friends. Simply connect your Facebook account with the instant messaging client of your choice and start chatting. You will not need to stay logged in to Facebook.com to continue to access your Facebook friends.

If you don't want all of your online friends to appear, you can adjust which Friend Lists show up in chat by adjusting them on Facebook. To go offline, you can either close your instant messaging client or click "go offline" in your Facebook Chat options. As always, your conversations will remain completely private and only between you and your Facebook friends.
Adjusting Friend Lists that appear in Chat.

Sony's John Koller has confirmed today that the PlayStation 3 will be receiving 3D support over the summer, via multiple firmware updates.

Says Koller, via Pocket-Lint: "3D is a major part of our initiatives in 2010 and we're currently developing 3D stereoscopic games to come in conjunction with the launch of Sony's 3D compatible BRAVIA LCD TV in summer 2010. The amazing thing about the PS3's technology is that all PS3 units that exist in homes and markets will be able to play 3D stereoscopic games as well as 3D BD movies through separate firmware upgrades - something that other platforms are unable to do. We'll be announcing actual game titles separately later, but we think that 3D stereoscopic gaming has a ton of potential, particularly in placing consumers within the actual experience."

3D Blu-ray support will likely be activated first, with 3D gaming made available through the second update. The releases coincide with the release of Sony Bravia 3D HDTVs.

Warner Music Group CEO Edgar Bronfman Jr recently told analysts the company will not be entering into any new licensing deals for ad-supported music.

"Free streaming services are clearly not net positive for the industry, and as far as Warner Music is concerned will not be licensed." said Bronfman during a conference call. He indicated that giving away music with the goal of enticing customers to pay was a losing business strategy.

Bronfman cited the growth of subscription-based services offered by mobile phone providers as the way of the future. These involve device-dependent, DRM-laden files which require a monthly subscription just so music you've already downloaded will continue to play.

The problem is an apparent lack of recognition by Bronfman of how his company grew to the size it is today. Record labels have always used free music to drive sales. The best known of these free services is terrestrial radio.

Non-traditional revenue

According to a new blog post, Twitter is set to begin using BitTorrent on the backend as a way to more efficiently deploy files.

Reads the post:

Anyone who has the battle scars that come from managing a large operational set of computers, like a large popular web site, knows all too well the challenge of deploying a new image site-wide. Often times, this needs to happen fast (think emergency patch) and as with so many other applications on the network, the traditional client-server model breaks down at scale in the face of this challenge.

But now there is an interesting open source project from Twitter that might bring some relief to this particular problem. The project uses BitTorrent technology and is called Murder (per the project page, a “murder” allegedly describes a flock of crows, not some lesser crime than the accusations too-often leveled against the hard-working engineers at BitTorrent, Inc). The distributed nature of BitTorrent means an operation that once took many dozens of minutes, now happens in less than a dozen seconds. These efficiencies will reduce maintenance windows, site downtime and exposure to security vulnerabilities.

YouTube has announced today that they will be adding parental controls, letting parents filter certain videos and block their kids from watching them.

Some of the videos that can now be flagged inappropriate and filtered are those that show off violence or sexual content.

Scott Rubin, head of child safety policy for YouTube says the filtering will remain a challenge: "With 20 hours of video uploaded every minute to YouTube, we really count on our community members … to know our community guidelines, those rules of the road, to flag videos they think violate the rules."

The new parental controls are dubbed "Safety Mode," and it will limit videos flagged as containing nudity, narcotics, graphic violence and news containing violence. All comments are collapsed on open, and if the kids choose to view them, all comments with profanity are filtered. Safety Mode remains locked at all times, even if the user is logged out.

Safety Mode is browser-specific and must be turned on for all browsers that are used on the computer. The controls are also account-specific, and must be turned on for those accounts.

Yesterday, Motorola noted that the long-anticipated Android 2.1 update was headed to the DROID smartphone sometime this week.

Today, they have detailed the update, with Droid users getting many of the top updates that were heralded on the Google Nexus One.

Multi-touch will be available for the browser, Google Maps and the photo gallery. Voice recognition is added, allowing for speech-to-text.

3D Gallery is added for photos, video and album art display, including a 3D stack that moves when the phone is tilted. Additionally, a new News and Weather app widget is added to the homescreen allowing for easy and customizable forecasts and headlines.

Battery life is expected to be improved as well.

Google has announced that it will begin building an ultra fast broadband network to service up to 500,000 customers around the United States, with speeds advertised at about 100 times the current average speed for broadband connections.

The company will use fiber optic lines, and the entire network will be an experiment. The experiment is whether it can sell more Web ads, if it encourages citizens to be on the Internet more. Although the move would put the company in direct competition with Verizon, Time Warner, Comcast and others, a move to a standalone broadband business seems unlikely for the search giant.

Google says to: "Imagine sitting in a rural health clinic, streaming three-dimensional medical imaging over the web and discussing a unique condition with a specialist in New York. Or downloading a high-definition, full-length feature film in less than five minutes. Or collaborating with classmates around the world while watching live 3-D video of a university lecture."

James Burt of Queensland, Australia has agreed to pay Nintendo $1.5 million in damages as compensation for lost revenue caused when Burt uploaded a game before its official release date.

Burt made New Super Mario Bros. for Wii available online in early November, one week before its official Australian street date. As is the case in most countries, distributing games without permission is illegal and carries a hefty fine.

Rather than head to court, Burt and Nintendo settled and came to the $1.5 million figure, which also includes $100,000 to pay for Nintendo's legal fees.

"Nintendo will pursue those who attempt to jeopardise our industry by using all means available to it under the law," says the company.

Adds Nintendo Australia managing director Rose Lappin: "It wasn't just an Australian issue, it was a global issue. There was thousands and thousands of downloads, at a major cost to us and the industry really. It's not just about us. It's about retailers and if they can't sell the games then they have to bear the costs associated with that. Once it's on the internet it's anyone's really."

Google has introduced their own social networking service, dubbed Google Buzz, which will allow Gmail users to share status updates, photos, videos and more. Buzz will be a direct competition to Facebook and Twitter.

In response, Facebook announced today that FB Chat will be integrated into the AIM instant messaging service, which currently has 17 million users. There are 400 million Facebook accounts, as of this week.

There are currently 176 million Gmail users, and Buzz will create a "circle of friends" right from launch that is a group of people in which you communicate the most with through Gtalk or Gmail.

Buzz allows for status updates like Facebook, photo sharing from Picasa and Flickr, video sharing from YouTube, and Twitter messages.

The service is available for mobile phones as well at buzz.google.com.

According to the latest figures from research firm comScore, the Android mobile OS continued to take market share at a fast pace, jumping from 2.5 percent in September to 5.2 percent in December.

On the other hand, RIM, Microsoft and Palm all lost share.

The Apple iPhone gained share as well, jumping from 24.1 percent in September to 25.3 percent in December.

Despite losing share, RIM remained atop the smartphone market share with 41 percent.

Last week Microsoft announced that it was shutting down the Xbox Live service for the original Xbox console starting in April, effectively killing all online play for the orphaned console, as well as for Xbox games that can be played on the Xbox 360.

Bungie, the developer behind the Halo series, says it is saddened that gamers will no longer be able to play Halo 2 online.

"We're all saddened at the realisation that an era is coming to an end but looking back, we're incredibly fortunate to have had such a great run and such strong support from our fans," says Bungie. "Halo 2 has been at or near the top of the Xbox Live charts for original games since it launched over five years ago. We're extremely thankful to everyone who has played, enjoyed and supported Halo 2 over Xbox Live. We've had some great fun together, including far too many humpday losses to even recount."

With that being said, Bungie is inviting all current and former Halo 2 players to have one last battle on April 14th, the last day before the servers go down.

Motorola has announced via Facebook that DROID users will soon be receiving on over-the-air update for Android 2.1, making the phone the second to have the latest firmware, after the Google Nexus One.

It is unclear what will come with the update, but many are speculating that increased multi-touch support is coming along with API changes.

Says the post: "Motorola: Hi all-- we know you are frustrated with the lack of details regarding Android software upgrades and we sincerely apologize for not being able to share info sooner. We're happy to relay the 2.1 upgrade to DROID will start to roll out this week, and we will have more information to share on other device upgrades later ...this week as well. Thanks for your patience and continued support."

According to Cnet, Netflix will add 5.1 surround sound and closed captioning to their Watch Instantly streaming service soon, with 1080p playback coming later in 2011.

Current requirements for streaming include a 5Mbps connection, and it appears that that requirement should not change until 1080p streaming becomes available, even given the extra bandwidth necessary for a 5.1 audio stream.

Microsoft Silverlight, the technology used for the streaming, has supported 1080p streaming since March.

Google has started live phone support for the Nexus One this week, finally giving users a way to directly talk with representatives from the company. Until this week, live, phone support had been redirected to carrier T-Mobile, or hardware manufacturer HTC.

If you had wanted to contact Google, it had to be done through email with 24-hour turnaround.

Because the phone is only available online, many buyers have been reluctant to purchase the "superphone," especially without having support from a representative. Reports have shown that most new purchases of the Nexus One have come from users that have already tried Android in the past and are more familiar with the interface.

Adobe has announced today that Flash 10.1 will only work on Android smartphones running firmware 2.1 or later, a move that disappoints most Android phone owners out there, being that only one phone currently has 2.1, the Google Nexus One. Most Android phones still run firmware 1.5 or 1.6.

Additionally, the company has said browser plugins for Android, webOS and Windows Mobile will be available before June.

Adobe says that over 50 percent of all smartphones will have Flash support by 2012 and that most tablets will support it as well.

Of course, Apple users will probably never see Flash support, given the ongoing battle of words between the two companies.

Following an FCC investigation into the overall industry, Google has slashed the fee for Nexus One owners who decide to drop their contract early.

The early termination fee, or as Google calls it, the "equipment recovery fee," is now dropped from $350 USD to $150 USD for T-Mobile users who purchased the phone but no longer want their T-Mobile contract. The $150 is on top of the $200 that T-Mobile charges for breaking the contract early.

Says Google: "Google's overall financial philosophy with regard to operator service plans remains unchanged: We make no profit from commissions from operators or from equipment recovery fees, and our recovery fees are based on operator charges to Google for early termination of service."

Christopher Poole, founder of the infamous meme site 4chan came out this week claiming that Verizon was "explicitly blocking" access to the site, and it appears Poole may have been right.

Jeff Nelson, a public relations employee for the ISP said via Twitter this morning: "2 of 4Chan affiliates were staging for attacks." However, "They're green-lighted for tonight's network update."

Poole's full post earlier had read: "Over the past 72 hours, we've been receiving reports from Verizon Wireless customers having difficulty accessing the image boards," Poole wrote. "After investigating, we found that Verizon is dropping traffic... only on port 80 (HTTP). No other subdomain/IP/port is affected, which leads us to believe this block is intentional. After an hour and a half on the phone, we've received confirmation from Verizon's Network Repair Bureau (NRB) that we are "explicitly blocked."

Verizon had refused comment until today except to say that they were being bombarded with calls about the issue, adds PCWorld.

Sharp and Samsung have decided to end all ongoing patent infringement disputes over LCD displays this week, although it is unclear what the financial details are of the agreement.

"We have a confidentiality agreement but we can say these conditions will be in favor of Sharp," added Sharp spokeswoman Miyuki Nakayama.

Sharp filed the first suit in 2007, in the U.S., claiming that Samsung infringed on five of its patents relating to LCD modules. The suit then expanded to South Korea, wherein Samsung countersued for patent infringement, as well. The suits expanded to Europe in 2008, before finally being taken in front of the International Trade Commission.

The new settlement includes patent cross-licensing agreements.

The Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader, which sold out within hours when it launched over the holiday season, is finally available for sale again, says the company, with the company ramping up supply and making the device available in-store and online.

If you are looking to buy it in-store, B&N has created an online locator to see if the store near you has any in stock. Check that here: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/instore/.

Online, the device is available for $259 USD with free shipping.

Additionally, current owners can now download Nook firmware version 1.2, which adds the ability to browse "books, magazines, and newspapers via Wi-Fi inside Barnes & Noble stores," says CNet.

Chinese officials have announced this week the bust of a large hacking ring that was allegedly the nation's largest distributor of hacking tools.

The Black Hawk Safety Net, which used the site 3800cc.com as a front, allegedly made $1 million in income in 2009 from 12,000 subscribers.

Three admins were arrested as part of the raid. Strangely, the arrests are said to have taken place three months ago, but only reported this week.

Black Hawk was known more as a hacking "training" group, mainly through the sale of malicious software and instructions on how to use them. In 2007, the group made the news for helping create a virus that took down corporate and government systems in Hubei.

Along with the arrest of 29-year-old Li Qiang and 28-year-old Zhang Lei (the third man was not identified), 1.7 million yuan ($250,000 USD) in assets were seized, mainly in cash and computer equipment.

Hannover House, the video and film distributor has announced today a new deal with Google that will launch a video rental and VOD channel for Hannover on YouTube.

Starting this week, the channel will have 100 films from Hannover House, Elite Entertainment, FOCUSFilms, and Plaza Entertainment.

"YouTube and Google are uniquely positioned to reinvent the entire video-on-demand consumer model," says Eric Parkinson, C.E.O. "Their reach is unsurpassed, and their consumer pricing model is extremely competitive, in many cases beating traditional video rental costs. With more and more consumers moving toward video-on-demand as a convenient way to view movies, the Hannover House movie channel venture with YouTube will prove invaluable to our company."

"We believe that video-on-demand will continue to grow over the next few years into a major revenue source for the company. The technology has reached the point where films can be quickly and safely streamed directly to consumers, and this creates an immediacy not previously available. Additionally, video-on-demand eliminates the inventory, freight and storage costs associated with hard goods items such as DVDs and Blu-ray units."

BenQ has introduced the world's thinnest 21.5” W LED monitor, which promises "top of the line" performance as well.

Dubbed the BenQ V2220/V2220H, the 15mm-thick monitor has a 10,000,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio and offers Full HD 1080p playback.

DeviceMag adds that "the LED monitor has been designed in such a way that it possesses the ability to reveal detail in darkly lit areas of the screen rendered as undifferentiated blocks on less capable displays."

The monitor is also considered "green," given that it cuts down power consumption by 28.6 percent compared to CCFL models.

After first being blocked in 2008, an Italian court has once again ruled that ISPs in the nation must block access to the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay, leaving millions of users without access to one of the most popular sites on the planet.

In the original case, after an appeal by the Pirate Bay, the Court of Bergamo ruled that foreign websites cannot be blocked over alleged copyright infringement. Fast forward until today and the Supreme Court has ruled that ISPs can indeed be forced to block torrent sites, even if they are foreign-based.

The ruling says any site that offers torrent links to connect to copyrighted material is "engaging in criminal activity," says TF.

Of course there are proxies, and thousands of other smaller sites that are not yet blocked, so it is not as if Italian torrent fans are in complete trouble.

After one week of suspended sales, physical books published by Macmillan have now returned to Amazon, ending the dispute that begun last week over the price of digital books (e-books).

Macmillan wanted the end of the set-price $9.99 e-book rate that Amazon has had for best-sellers, claiming it is too low and under-values books in general.

As a result, Amazon stopped offering both the e-book and physical copies of Macmillan titles but as of this past weekend Amazon responded by saying: We have to "accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own titles, and we will want to offer them to you even at prices we believe are needlessly high for e-books."

For now on, e-books from Macmillan will be priced from $12.99 to $14.99 at launch, with prices changing over time.

Although it is unclear whether the price cuts are temporary or permanent, Microsoft has cut the prices of their Zune HD models from $220 to $200 for the 16GB model and from $300 to $270 for the 32GB version.

Amazon and Wal-Mart have taken the cut a bit deeper, dropping the prices to $190 and $250, respectively.

Microsoft has implied that the prices are temporary "sales" prices but has not said when the promo will end, if ever. At the current price point, the Zune HD offers a discount from a comparable iPod Touch, the market leader for media devices.

The software giant still has under 5 percent market share while Apple controls over 70 percent.

According to BBLeaks, the upcoming BlackBerry Internet Service (BIS) 3.0 details have been leaked, and it appears that BB owners will be getting better support for Gmail among other significant updates.

For Gmail, BlackBerry owners can now create labels, as well as use a plugin that will sync the unread/read status of your emails to Gmail wherever you are using it.

Additionally, the leak shows added support for Open Office document file types, as well as Windows Media Audio (WMA).

It is still unclear when BIS 3 will be released but many are guessing it could hit as early as this month's MWC event.

According to the latest IDC numbers, vendors shipped 54.5 million smartphones in the Q4 2009, a record, and a 39 percent increase year-on-year.

Nokia led the pack with 67.7 million for all of 2009, 39 percent of the market. RIM came in second with 34.5 million shipments for the year, good for 20 percent share. Apple rode a strong Q3 and Q4 to come in third, with 14 percent share and 25 million units shipped.

Overall, 2009 shipments totaled 174 million, up 15 percent year-on-year.

Thanks to the DROID, Motorola was number four for the Q4, but still came in 7th overall for the year.

More details have been released on the upcoming Motorola Devour from Verizon, and it appears that the Android device will launch with Adobe Flash Lite, giving the phone the Flash support that no other Android device has had yet, including more expensive brother phone, the Verizon Motorola DROID.

Flash Lite works with Flash 9 content and will work using the built-in browser.

The latest update to Google Maps 3.4 has enabled multi-touch for the Motorola DROID, with pinch-to-zoom now available for the device, at least while using the popular app.

Last week Google updated the Nexus One to have multi-touch, silencing critics who had claimed that Google was purposely leaving out multi-touch for a number of different reasons including not wanting to pay patent royalties to rival Apple.

I updated my G1 to Maps 3.4 today and pinch-to-zoom didn't work so it seems as though this may be DROID-only for time being.

Yesterday we reported that Microsoft had slashed the price of the 120GB Xbox 360 HDD in Europe, while at the same time releasing a 250GB HDD in Japan.

Today they have announced the same offer for the United States, with the price officially dropping from $149.99 to $129.99 "while supplies last."

The software giant would not elaborate on whether this was the end of the 120GB model HDD, but it appears that way. Expect a 250GB HDD release in the EU and US territories soon enough.

According to a pretty long thread over at Zune.net, it appears that Zune Pass subscription holders have seen their music disappear in the last week, for no reason whatsoever.

Says the first post of the thread:

"Anyone else finding more content either not available, album only or music that was offered (Spoon/Arcade Fire) now just gone? This seems to be happening more and more over the past few months. Just wondering if anyone else has been having the same issues when looking for music?

Seems to defeat the purpose of paying $15 a month for a subscription and purchase service."

If you are a Zune Pass owner, check the full thread here and any responses from Microsoft.

According to figures from Forecasting and Analysing Digital Entertainment (FADE), the Xbox Live Arcade has hit $103 million in revenue for the year 2009, a giant 34 percent increase year-on-year.

The best-sellers were mainly at the $15 USD mark, and overall average price for downloadable games rose from $8.33 to $9.12 in the same time period.

Battlefield 1943 was the highest grossing game, accounting for $12.5 million in sales with an estimated 800,000 units sold.

The average XBL user spent $2.79 on Arcade for 2009, a drop from 2008.

There are currently over 20 million with XBL accounts.

Microsoft has noted that it will be dropping the price of the 120GB Xbox 360 HDD in Europe, as well as releasing an external 250GB HDD for the console in Japan.

The 120GB drive will drop from £99.99 to £79.99, "while supplies last," with many expecting that a 250GB HDD release will come after all supplies are exhausted.

"Microsoft is now offering a standalone 250GB hard drive in Japan to provide consumers in Japan more storage options for their games and entertainment," says Microsoft. "We work closely with retailers to determine the best approach for our products on a region-by-region basis. In Europe, the 120GB hard drive is available for an ERP of €129.99 / £79.99 while supplies last. We also offer other storage options for consumers to choose from such as the Xbox Live 60GB Starter Pack that includes a 60GB hard drive, three-month subscription to Xbox LIVE, ethernet cable and wired headset for an ERP of €79.99 / £59.99."

In June 2008, Sling Media introduced an iPhone-version of the SlingPlayer software, however, it only worked over Wi-Fi, and not AT&T's 3G data service.

As of this week, it appears a 3G-compatible version is coming.

Say the companies:

"Just as we've worked with Sling Media in this instance, we look forward to collaborating with other developers so that mobile customers can access a wider, more bandwidth-sensitive, and powerful range of applications in the future," said Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "Collaboration with developers like Sling Media ensures that all apps are optimized for our 3G network to conserve wireless spectrum and reduce the risk that an app will cause such extreme levels of congestion that they disrupt the experience of other wireless customers. Our focus continues to be on delivering the nation's most advanced mobile broadband experience and giving our customers the widest possible array of mobile applications."

The upgrade is free to existing customers.

Deutsche Telekom AG is actively considering an IPO for its T-Mobile USA branch, as a way to help pay for the carrier's large upcoming infrastructure buildout.

Telekom is Europe's largest mobile phone carrier, but T-Mobile remains in fourth place in the US. It is currently in talks with banks for an underwriter of the public offering.

The company has already spent $3 billion on 3G infrastructure in the U.S., and Telekom's share price has fallen despite one of the largest stock market rallies in history.

DT and T-Mobile declined comment on the report.

A newly launched site called TVGorge is promoting what millions of international citizens have wanted for years from streaming site Hulu; free access to tons of TV shows, legally.

The site uses "indexing techniques" to gather content from tons of legal TV streaming sites around the world. It claims TV.com, Hulu, TVGuide and TVDuck as "partners." The site does not store video files on its own servers and simply uses links or embeds from other sites.

There are currently 120 TV shows available, with full seasons available for shows such as Californication, 24 and 30 Rock, among many others.

Although the site claims legality, it will be interesting to see how long until some content holder puts an end to the site, or at least the international part.

Twentieth Century Fox has filed six new lawsuits this week, all against alleged sellers of a workprint version of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which was leaked online one month before the film's theatrical release.

The DVDs containing the pirated film were being sold on iOffer.com, Craigslist.org and Sell.com before the movie's release date.

A few of the lawsuits are for different movies, including "Marley & Me," "Avatar" and "Bride Wars." Fox employees purchased the discs from these sellers over the course of the last year.

Fox says it is seeking up to $150,000 per infringement.

"This kind of conduct not only violates the law, it’s just plain wrong," Fox added. "We filed these lawsuits today to protect our creative professionals and the intellectual property they spend years developing."

Almost a year later, the FBI and Fox have still been unable to track down the earliest leak of the workprint copy.

Microsoft has announced today that they will be discontinuing Xbox Live service for the original Xbox console starting in April. The move will effectively kill all online play for the orphaned console, as well as for Xbox games that can be played on the Xbox 360.

"This isn’t a decision we made lightly, but after careful consideration, it is clear this will provide the greatest benefit to the Xbox Live community," says XBL general manager Marc Whitten.

Whitten does admit that some games still have significant amounts of players, such as Halo 2, but all things must come to an end. Says the GM: "There’s no greater example of the power of the Xbox Live community than the Halo franchise. Halo 2 has had an amazing run on Live, with a dedicated community more than five years after launch and well into the next generation of consoles. It has fundamentally changed the way we play videogames. And while it’s difficult to see that run come to an end, the Halo franchise continues to act as the benchmark for multiplayer gaming in this generation, with Halo 3, Halo 3: ODST and soon Halo: Reach on Xbox 360."

Voddler, an internet-based on demand video service, has just received 2.6 million euros in venture capital. Based out of Sweden, Voddler offers video streams for a variety of TV and movie titles.

Voddler has been in business since 2005. Currently their service is in beta and boasts 400,000 users in Sweden who had watched 1 million titles as of January.

They plan to expand into Norway in the first quarter of this year, followed by launches in Denmark and Finland.

Voddler is similar to Spotify, a streaming music service also based out of Sweden. Titles can be viewed for free, paid for by advertising.

In the future Voddler will also begin offering a premium service where users can pay directly to avoid the ads.

Sometimes seems like Netflix and Hulu are the only serious streaming video services because they get so much press. But competition from companies like Voddler will be essential for the market to grow, particularly outside the US.

Apple is still working with Verizon on an iPad model that will support Verizon's 3G service says Fox News, citing a source within Verizon.

Earlier this week Fox News reported that AT&T had outbid Verizon and therefore will be the carrier of choice at launch in March. AT&T had not ironed out a deal until six days before the iPad launch event on January 27th, says the report.

Following Fox's note, a few Wall Street firms predicted that a Verizon deal would be signed by the end of 2010. Some say Apple will announce a new iPhone and an iPad, both with Verizon support at June's WWDC event.

Arstechnica is reporting today that RealVideo continues its death spiral, this time with C-SPAN getting rid of the streaming video format in favor of Flash and Windows Media.

Says the C-SPAN site: "Due to lack of demand for the RealVideo format, we will be retiring our links to C-SPAN live video streams in the RealVideo format effective March 1, 2010."

The Ars reporter says the codec lives on in a few Government committees, such as the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works but the FCC finally upgraded last year to Flash, after previously broadcasting all their meetings on a server that could handle only up to 200 users and produced 240x240 resolution video.

Amazon has announced their acquisition of the touchscreen company Touchco, a move that will lead to the next Kindle e-reader being a touchscreen device.

The NY Times says Touchco's "interpolating force-sensitive resistance technology allows for flexible, transparent, pressure-sensitive touch-screens that could cost as little as $10 a square foot."

By comparison, the iPad's touchscreen is more expensive and "cannot detect the unlimited amount of simultaneous touch points that Touchco's technology allows."

Touchco's screens can distinguish between the different pressures produced by a human finger or by a pen stylus.

Today's Video Daily comes from Google, which has announced that its upcoming Chrome OS will be used for tablets as well, with some of the concept pictures and a video posted on their blog.

What will make this special compared to the recently unveiled iPad? Looks like we will have to wait and see for the most part.

The Hollywood studios have lost a landmark case against the ISP iiNet today after an eight-week trial.

The case would have impacted how Australian ISPs would have had to react to potential pirates, but the judge ruled that iiNet was not responsible for the downloading habits of any of its subscribers.

Justice Cowdroy said all the evidence showed that iiNet was simply providing Internet service for its customers, not facilitating piracy. He did conclude, however, that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not anything to stop them, which was fine as the ISP is simply "a legitimate communication facility," not "intended nor designed to infringe copyright."

"iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement ... the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another," Justice Cowdroy added.

MPEG LA, the company behind the H.264 video-encoding codec, has decided to extended the royalty-free period of the tech until December 31st, 2015, allowing sites to stream using the technology for free.

The current licensing period was set to finish at the end of 2010.

The extension may be a way to "encourage" sites to use H.264 instead of free rival Ogg Theora, which was recently selected by Wikipedia for video playback. H.264 is currently used by the king of web video, however, YouTube.

Lesser rival On2 creates a codec called VP8, and Google recently announced their acquisition of On2, sparking speculation that VP8 would be the new codec of choice for YouTube.

A DVD-Screener copy of the highest-grossing film of all-time, Avatar, has hit P2P and torrents today, coming just a few days after Academy members received the screener from Fox.

Until today, telesync versions had been available, and total downloads were estimated at over 2 million just from torrent downloads. The first copy available was Avatar DVDScr xvid - IMAGiNE.

The new screener will likely see many times that amount of downloads, but Fox should have little to worry about as Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all-time and will undoubtedly be the best selling DVD in years and the biggest Blu-ray release of all-time by a long shot.

According to the The Symbian Foundation, the world's most popular mobile operating system, Symbian, is going open-source.

Individual developers as well as organizations can now modify the source code "for any purpose."

The Foundation says over 330 million smartphones have shipped worldwide running Symbian and the new move to open-source should attract a plethora of new developers to work on the platform, thus speeding up improvements.

"This is the largest open source migration effort ever," says Lee Williams of the Symbian Foundation, via the BBC. "It will increase rate of evolution and increase the rate of innovation of the platform."

Nokia purchased the software in 2008 and created the Foundation to oversee the transition to open-source. Members of the Foundation include Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

Apple has released iPhone OS update 3.1.3, and along with the bug fixes and security patches comes the inevitable breaking of jailbroken devices.

Creators of jailbreaking tools such as Redsn0w, Blackra1n, and PwnageTool have warned jailbroken iPhone/Touch users to not update to the latest firmware just yet. In fact, Redsn0w was updated just yesterday to work with OS update 3.1.2.

For now, if you want to keep your device jailbroken, do not update to 3.1.3, and be careful with the unpatched security exploits.

Twitter director of Trust and Safety Del Harvey has posted today that it will be forcing a number of users to change their passwords this week after it was discovered that hackers had used torrent sites to steal access to user's data.

"As part of our ongoing efforts to monitor our user base for odd activity, we noticed a sudden surge in followers for a couple of accounts in the last five days. Given the circumstances surrounding this we felt it was best to push out a password reset to accounts that were following these suspicious users," said Harvey.

It is unclear how many users are affected.

The details were stolen from third-party torrent sites that require logins. Because many users use the same information for multiple sites, the hackers used the torrent site logins for Twitter as well.

"As a general rule, if you signed up for a torrent forum or torrent site built by a third party, you should probably change your password there," adds Harvey. "The takeaway from this is that people are continuing to use the same email address and password (or variant) on multiple sites. We strongly suggest that you use different passwords for each service you sign up for."

Fox News is reporting that Verizon and AT&T fought over having their 3G service available to future iPad owners and that AT&T won the rights by outbidding the competition.

iPad 3G costs $30 USD monthly for unlimited, or $15 for 250MB data plans, a price about half the cost of what 3G service would normally cost from AT&T for a netbook or modem owner.

Verizon had no comment on the report, and AT&T did not either except to say it's happy to be the "main carrier partner" for the iPad.

After months of leaks and rumors, Verizon has officially unveiled the Motorola Devour, and will begin selling it in March.

Touted as a younger brother to the DROID, the new phone will have the MOTOBLUR interface and run Android 1.6, at least at launch.

The Devour has a slider QWERTY keypad, a 3.1-inch HVGA screen and an optical trackpad. It will use Verizon's EV-DO Rev, 3G and has Wi-Fi b/g and Stereo Bluetooth support. The GPS receiver and 3.2MP camera are standard.

The device will come bundled with an 8GB microSD memory card.

No word on pricing yet.

According to an interview with IGN, Sony senior VP of marketing Peter Dille says the company is on the fast track to passing the Xbox 360 in sales soon, also saying that the PS3 will still be around in 10 years, and the 360 will not.

"We can be passionate fans, but I don't think they'll be around in 10 years so I'm very confident we'll pass them within that time frame," says Dille. "I mean, we've got 31 million [units sold] worldwide right now - they've got 39 million [units sold]. I don't even need to go out 10 years. I'm not going to make any predictions for your interview today other than we'll pass them, but you look at where we are today and where they are today, and they had an opportunity to sprint as far ahead of us as possible when they had the head start. Well, we're breathing down their necks and they can see us in the rearview mirror and it's not going to take too long to pass them."

Additionally, Dille confirmed that the company would begin adding subscription models to PSN, although gaming would remain completely free.

Apple has released a patch this week for the iPhone/iPod Touch that should fix five exploits, a few of which could have allowed remote access to the device in question.

If a user opened an infected audio or image file, or hit a malicious FTP server, hackers could run code remotely, taking control of the device.

Another of the exploits could allow hackers to bypass the password on a locked device, as long as they had access to the actual device.

The update is for those with iPhone OS 3.1.3.

Full support page here: About the security content of iPhone OS 3.1.3 and iPhone OS 3.1.3 for iPod touch

Google has announced today that Nexus One owners will be receiving an over-the-air update for their smartphones this week, one that adds a number of features, the most prominent being multi-touch support.

Full update:

Google Goggles: this mobile application will now be available directly on your device by launching it from your All Apps menu. Just use your Nexus One camera to start searching the web

Google Maps: the Maps application with be updated to a new version, Google Maps 3.4, which will include:

* Starred items synchronized with maps.google.com - access your favorite places from your phone or computer
* Search suggestions from your personal maps.google.com history - makes it easy to search for places you've searched for before
* Night mode in Google Maps Navigation - automatically changes your screen at night for easier viewing and driving

Pinch-to-zoom functionality: devices will now include a new pinch-to-zoom mechanism in the phone's Browser, Gallery and Maps applications

3G connectivity: we will provide a general fix to help improve 3G connectivity on some Nexus One phones

Our first Video Daily piece today is another interesting video showing off a Nokia smartphone in action, this time connecting it to LEGO Mindstorms NXT and using both to solve a Rubik's Cube puzzle.

Using an ARM processor, the NXT scans the cube, maps it out and uses the algorithms needed to solve it.

uTorrent 2.0 Final is now available, says the official site, moving out of the beta stage it has been in since August.

Feature overview from the creators:

UDP trackers are a different protocol for tracker communication that uses significantly less processing power on the tracker end. It's important for us to support this because trackers have limited resources, so this should allow them to support many more users with their current hardware and not crash under the load.

uTP is an alternative communication method for BitTorrent traffic that allows the client to automatically regulate its bandwidth usage to avoid adversely impacting your internet connection. This will allow you or other users on the network to download their torrents but still allow others on the network to function with little difference. This does not require any additional setup.
In addition, uTP in this version has added its own form of STUN, a method of getting incoming connections without direct connectivity to the Internet. This allows µTorrent to punch holes through routers and firewalls to increase connectivity and improve speeds. It is even possible to connect two firewalled peers through uTP's NAT traversal feature.

A few reports have surfaced today that the Apple iPad will likely launch with a camera, despite it not being showed off during Apple's tablet unveiling last week.

A screenshot from the event shows a dot above the screen that looks very much like a camera. A screenshot from the iPad emulator (via the SDK) shows the clear option to "take a photo."

Additionally, Mac repair company Mission Repair is already receiving replacement parts for fixing the iPad, and one employee has showed off a pic of where a camera would fit perfectly.

We will keep you updated.






Pics via Wired, MacNN and CultofMac.