News written by Andre Yoskowitz (May, 2010)

Apple has announced the sale of 2 million iPad tablets as of today, a little under a month since the company announced the sale of the 1 millionth unit.

The tablet launched in early April in the United States and the company began selling the device in Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK this past weekend, where excitement reached a fervor.

Says Apple CEO Steve Jobs via press release: "Customers around the world are experiencing the magic of iPad, and seem to be loving it as much as we do. We appreciate their patience, and are working hard to build enough iPads for everyone."

The iPad saw 450,000 sales on launch day, and was touted as Apple's most successful product launch ever.

The extremely popular social networking site Facebook has been blocked in Bangladesh this weekend after pages were found to include satirical images of the prophet Muhammad.

Additionally, satirical images were found of Bengali leaders and one man was even arrested and charged with "spreading malice and insulting the country's leaders."

The block is temporary, and Bengali officials say access will be fully restored once all the images are removed.

Adds the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) (via BBC): Facebook "hurt the religious sentiments of the country's majority Muslim population" by allowing the images of Muhammad.

"Some links in the site also contained obnoxious images of our leaders including the father of the nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the leader of the opposition," notes the group.

Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr last week after the images first appeared.

According to new rumors circulating the Internet, the upcoming updated Apple TV will cost just $99 USD and run on the iPhone OS 4. The device will also run on an A4 processor.

The current model Apple TV, which can be considered a flop by Apple standards, sells for $229.

The new rumors suggest that Apple sees a need to update their device as Google prepares to release their Google TV web content-to-TV delivery system in the next few months.

Originally, the rumor came from Engadget which cited a "source very close to Apple" in saying the upcoming set-top box will have 16GB of flash storage and "be capable of full 1080p HD."

Apple TV can display YouTube videos, images from iPhoto and Flickr, and gets its video content from iTunes, in SD and HD quality. The current model however, has a 160GB HDD.

Late last year, Google announced it intended to buy mobile ad giant AdMob for $750 million USD.

After over six months of delays, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cleared the purchase last week, thanks in part to Google's arch rival Apple.

Apple recently purchased the third largest mobile ad company, Quattro Wireless, and used it as the backbone of its new iAd platform on the iPad and iPhone. The FTC had been concerned that Google (the world's largest ad platform) merging with AdMob (world's largest mobile ad platform) would violate anti-trust laws. Apple joining the fray eased those concerns.

Today, Google has announced the completion of the acquisition.

Says the search giant: "It's clear that mobile advertising is becoming a much larger part of our clients' and partners' strategies and with this acquisition, it's now a central part of our own business. In continuing to invest in this highly competitive area, we'll be bringing together our technology, resources and expertise in search advertising with AdMob's innovative solutions for advertising on mobile websites and in mobile applications."

According to Google's Doubleclick Ad Planner 1000 list, Facebook is the leading website in the world, reaching 540 million unique users, good for over 35 percent of the entire world's Internet population.

The social networking giant had 570 billion page views, topping the list.

Google's list tracks the top 1000 sites in the world, ranked in order by unique user reach. While Google would likely have topped the list, easily, they did not include any of their properties (Google search, YouTube, etc.) in an effort to keep impartiality.

Yahoo was close behind Facebook, at 490 million unique visitors, reaching 31.8 percent of the world's Internet users. In terms of page views, Yahoo could not even compete, with only 70 billion views.

Combined, Microsoft has the most traffic of any company in the world, with Live having 370 million unique visitors, Wikipedia having 310 million unique visitors, MSN having 280 million unique visitors and Microsoft.com having 230 million. In terms of page views, Live had 39 billion, Wiki had 7.9 billion, MSN had 11 billion and Microsoft had 3.3 billion.

Last week Sprint announced that the HTC EVO 4G would hit stores on June 4th. The phone will cost $199 USD with two-year contract.

Today, a user on XDA-Developers has posted a video of the upcoming phone rooted and running Android 2.2 "Froyo," which has not been released on any phone except for the Nexus One.

It is speculated that the phone is one of the few that were given out to I/O conference participants, the Google event last week.

The HTC EVO 4G boasts the most impressive specs on an Android phone yet, with a 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive multi-touchscreen display (with pinch to zoom), Android 2.1 with Sense UI, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Goggles, YouTube, Google Calendar syncing, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot capability for connecting up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices.

Skype has rolled out its long-awaited Skype 2.0 app for the Apple iPhone this weekend, adding the ability to make calls using 3G data.

Until this weekend, iPhone owners could only make Skype calls when connected to the Internet via Wi-Fi.

The company says it has also made "CD quality audio enhancements," which should boost volume and sound quality of the calls.

While the deal may sound great for users who want to cut down on their AT&T phone bill by slashing some minutes and instead using Skype, there is of course a catch.

All 3G Skype-to-Skype calls are free until only the end of August, afterwards there will be a "small" monthly fee.

Full changelog, via 9-5:

Upgrades / improvements include:
- Call using your 3G connection. Skype-to-Skype calls on 3G are free until at least end of August 2010, after which there will be a small monthly fee (operator charges for data will still apply).
- Near CD-quality sound for Skype-to-Skype calls using wideband audio (SILK codec) on iPhone 3GS and 2nd generation iPod touch.
- Enhanced call quality indicator.
- Improved start-up time.
- Fast access to the dial pad from iPhone home screen.

Vudu, the movie streaming service, has announced that Toshiba and Sanyo have begun shipping HDTVs and Blu-ray players with Vudu-support built-in, meaning the service has now followed through on their promise of being available on a plethora of players and TVs from different manufacturers.

The service will be available on the Toshiba BDX2500 and BDX2700 Blu-ray players, which will also give access to CinemaNow and Netflix. Vudu movies can stream in up to 1080p resolution. The player is BD-Live, has analog and HDMI-based 7.1-channel surround, and can playback locally stored media, including H.264, says Electronista.

On April 13th, the Opera Mini 5 application was accepted by Apple into the App Store, and the free browser saw 1 million downloads on its first day.

As of April, says Opera, there are now over 58 million Opera Mini users globally.

Opera Mini uses Opera's servers to render and compress pages, thus increasing speed for the end user, and that tactic was what allowed the browser to be accepted to the App Store.

The iPhone is now the most popular Opera device used in the U.S., beating out the entire RIM BlackBerry line. Despite a much smaller market share, it is also now the 5th most popular device running the browser in the UK, as well.

While many of the millions that have downloaded the browser may done so just to test it, U.S. downloaders were the most likely to keep using it.

In early May we reported that "Hurt Locker" producer Voltage Pictures was preparing to sue thousands of alleged pirates for downloading the film online.

This week, that suit has come to fruition, with Voltage suing 5000 unidentified pirates accused of downloading the 2009 Best Picture.

Says the suit: "A Defendant's distribution of even one unlawful copy of a motion picture can result in the nearly instantaneous worldwide distribution of that single copy to a limitless number of people. The Plaintiff new seeks redress for this rampant infringement of their exclusive rights."

The movie was leaked to the Internet, in full DVD quality, about 6 months before its nationwide release in the U.S. Despite winning Best Picture, the film only grossed $17 million USD domestic in theaters.

Voltage, backed by the U.S. Copyright Group, will begin to subpoena ISPs this week to identify the persons behind the IP addresses that were used to download the unauthorized film copy.

Hon Hai Precision Industry of Taiwan, the owners of manufacturer Foxconn, say they plan to raise worker's salaries by 20 percent amidst a flood of worker suicides at their Chinese factory.

Foxconn is the maker of the Apple iPhone.

Ten employees of the manufacturer have died via suicide this year, with the latest happening this week, and public anger at the company is rising. On Thursday, an 11th employee tried to kill himself, slitting his wrists. He was revived by a medical team.

Edmund Ding of Hon Hai said the salary increase had been planned for months.

One of the factory's employees, surnamed Wang, said the increase should help with current spate of deaths: "It may help the suicide situation, because we workers just need money and the financial pressure on us is great. Every little bit helps."

Line workers at the factory make about 900 yuan ($131.80 USD) per month, and the company was allegedly giving 100,000 yuan to compensate families of suicide victims.

Foxconn has a massive amount of employees in China, around 420,000.

According to new figures from Strategy Analytics, the Sony PlayStation 3 has seen its quarterly global sales market share jump to 31 percent, a large gap up from 18 percent in the same period in 2009.

For the Q1 2010, the Nintendo Wii had 49 percent market share, the PS3 had 31 percent and the Xbox 360 had the remaining 20 percent.

Unit wise, the Wii had 3.5 million sold during the quarter, with the PS3 following at 2.2 million and the Xbox 360 in third at 1.5 million units sold.

Adds David Mercer, principal analyst at Strategy Analytics (via GI): "The PS3 continues to benefit from the price cut last September. This should help the PS3 maintain growth momentum throughout 2010."

The report estimates that for the full year, 17.5 million Wiis will be sold, followed by 14 million PS3s and 10.5 million Xbox 360s. Those numbers work out to about 42 percent share for the Wii, 33 percent for the PS3 and 25 percent for the Xbox 360.

According to new research from the NPD Group, about four percent of U.S. gamers play videogames for almost 50 hours a week, getting the title of "extreme gamers."

These "extreme gamers" play 48.5 hours per week, while the average gamers play around 13 hours per week.

Overall, gaming time went up from 2009, when the average was 12.3 percent.

Interestingly, portable gaming time fell 16 percent, while PC gaming rose 6 percent and console gaming rose 9 percent.

The age of the average gamer rose as well, from 31 to 32 this year, implying that current gamers will continue to play even as they get older.

Adds Anita Frazier, key analyst with NPD (via GI): "With these kinds of shifts in the composition of the gaming consumer and changes in gaming behaviour, it’s clear that the need to understand gamers and their purchase patterns remains critical information to those that develop, market and sell games."

Amazon will unveil a thinner version of the popular Kindle e-reader in August say two sources, who also say the new, updated model will have a more responsive screen.

The display will also have "sharper picture," but will not have color or be touchscreen, as some had speculated.

Amazon introduced the Kindle in 2007 to slow sales, which have since grown, with one report claiming the e-tailer has sold 3.3 million units of the device, to date.

Apple sold over 1 million iPads in just the first month, and international sales began today, with hundreds of thousands of sales expected in the coming weeks.

The device faces increasing pressure from rivals however, as the Apple iPad is a hit, and Sony and Barnes & Noble have both released devices that have better specs than the Kindle, at a comparable price.

The Apple iPad hype reached a fervor today when the tablet began selling in international markets, with fans in the UK and other nations mobbing Apple stores.

Pictures show 600-700 feet lines in Sydney, Tokyo and London and smaller but still large lines in Canada.

The tablet has sold well in the United States, selling over 1 million units in its first month. The unexpectedly high demand caused the international launch to be pushed back a full month.

Rahul Koduri was the first to buy the device at the Sydney location, and says he waited in line for over 24 hours: "It's fantastic, it was so worth the wait," Koduri adds.

The first buyer in the London location was high schooler Jake Lee: "I just came down for the atmosphere, and I don't think I could have waited. I'm a gadget lover."

The device will go on sale in The iPad will go on sale in Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore starting mid-July.

Sony has confirmed today that it will be offering ten free games to new PSPGo owners who register their systems online.

The games included in the deal are not some cheap ports either. Sony says the games included in the deal are: Gran Turismo, LittleBigPlanet, MotorStorm Arctic Edge, Wipeout Pure, Pursuit Force: Extreme Justice, FIFA 2010 World Cup, Need for Speed Shift, Gran Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars, and Assassin's Creed: Bloodlines.

In the past, Sony has offered free games to early PSPGo adopters, and free games to users who upgraded from older PSP handhelds.

While Sony has yet to reveal hardware sales for the Go, the general consensus is that sales have been a complete flop, especially in the EU and UK.

In late April, HP announced it was purchasing the struggling smartphone maker Palm for $1.2 billion. The deal gave HP all of Palm's patents and the WebOS mobile operating system, which some argue is the best mobile OS available today.

Palm had put itself up for sale in the last two months after it became clear that the company's phones were not selling and it only had enough cash to last the next 12 months.

The ink has not even dried on the deal yet, but HP has seen its first setback, with key WebOS developer Matias Duarte jumping ship to Google, to work on the rival Android operating system.

Duarte's move seems to imply the developer has little confidence in the future of WebOS with HP at the helm.

Speaking to an investor's conference, Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has made the revelations that his company plans to release an Andoid tablet soon, as well as a sequel to the very popular Droid smartphone.

The tablet will be between 7 and 10-inces and will act as a "companion product" to HDTVs, adds Jha.

Says the CEO: "We're very focused on participating in this convergence between mobility and home, and I actually think you will see some products from us in a very short period of time."

How soon? Jha would not give any details on a time table, but did say it would run Android, as the open-source operating system remains the company's focus. Refuting recent speculation, the company added it has no plans to create its own mobile OS.

Motorola said to remain competitive, however, it must continue to improve its MotoBLUR user interface, which is seen on phones like the Cliq, which runs Android, with BLUR on top. Jha says BLUR 2.0 will be released later this year, as well.

Microsoft has set some pretty high ambitions for its upcoming Windows Phone 7 smartphone operating system, saying they are aiming to sell 30 million devices with the OS installed by the end of 2011.

The software giant estimates that 40 percent of all mobile phones sold next year will be smartphones, and it seems they want a large piece of that pie.

Currently, only 15 percent of all phones sold are smartphones.

That number is even more over-the-top because Windows Mobile licenses sold have fallen each year, to just 18 million last year.

As a comparison, Apple has sold 51 million of the incredibly popular Phone, in its three iterations, since 2007.

Aiming 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."

Pic via MobileTechWorld:

BoyGeniusReports has posted a small blurb today saying that AT&T has confirmed to its store managers that the Apple iPhone 4G will launch in June.

The site even says that the phone will be ready in early June, meaning the launch could be imminent in the next two weeks.

New to the 4G are a front-facing camera for video conferencing, a better standard camera (including larger lens and flash), a Micro-SIM slot (just like the iPad), 960x640 resolution, a second mic, metallic exterior (not plastic) and split side buttons for volume.

The form factor is very different as well. The back is flat and not rounded, slightly smaller screen, a more "square" design all around with less wasted space, a larger battery, and smaller internal components.

Wal-Mart announced this week that it is slashing the price of the iPhone 3GS in half, with the 16GB 3GS model going on sale for $97 USD with two-year contract. The smartphone currently costs $199 through Apple. The move has led many to believe that Wal-Mart is clearing out remaining stock in anticipation of the new iPhone launch.

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has released a study this week which shows that 30 million Americans have experienced "bill shock" after seeing their monthly mobile phone bill.

"Bill shock" means seeing an unexpected increase in the bill, even if the subscriber has not changed their plan.

3000 people were surveyed by Princeton Survey Research Associates for the FCC, and 2400 had mobile phones. Of those 2400, 17 percent said at least one time in the last year the experienced "bill shock."

The FCC says 17 percent of all mobile phone users in the U.S. adds up to 30 million Americans that have experienced the unexpected increase in their bill.

84 percent of those that had experienced the increase say their carrier did not warn them at all that they were on the verge of exceeding some portion of their plan, be it minutes, texts, or data bandwidth. 35 percent said their bill increased by $50, while 23 percent said the fee was $100 or higher.

The results are part of the FCC's ongoing investigation into "bill shock."

The CTIA, which represents the wireless industry says the real "bill shock" is the excessive taxes and levies that come as part of every bill.

According to "trusted" sources speaking to Edge-Online, Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal motion control camera system will launch with a price tag of $150, much higher than expected by most in the industry.

The system will also launch on October 26th, says the site, in line with expectations of an October release.

Additionally, Microsoft will bundle the camera with an Xbox 360 Arcade console for $300 USD.

European and UK rates would be based "on a number of factors," including the current exchange rate at the time of release, so those prices remain unclear for the time being.

Rival Sony is releasing its PlayStation Move motion control system later this year, bundled with a game, for $100 USD.

Perhaps more notably, Natal (which will be given its official name in June at the E3 event) will cost just $30 less than the Nintendo Wii, which has motion control out of the box and a huge catalog of games.

Facebook, facing increasing criticism over its new privacy settings, has announced it will be rolling out new simplified settings for users over the next week.

The criticism mainly stemmed from the site making all of a user's basic information available to the public, with no opt-out. The new update will allow users to reduce what is shown to the public.

Additionally, USAToday reports that the new settings will add "an opt-out feature for a myriad of non-Facebook applications."

Says CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "A lot of people are upset with us. One of the big takeaways is: Don't mess with the privacy stuff for a really long time."

Facebook has over 450 million users, and recently became the most trafficked site in the United States, surpassing even the mighty Google.

Last week, rival social networking site MySpace simplified their own privacy settings. Said MySpace Co-President Mike Jones: "Given all the noise in the industry, we want to get out and state a clear position so that our users understand that we take privacy very seriously."

Apple has surpassed Microsoft for largest tech company in the world, by market cap, with its stock finishing the day with a market value of $222.1 billion.

Exxon Mobil remains the largest U.S. stock, with a value of $278.6 billion. Microsoft fell to third, with a market cap of $219.2 billion, as of the close of the market today.

Apple saw revenue and profit soar in the Q2 2010, with iPhone sales surging across the world. The quarterly results did not even include the iPad tablet, which has sold over 1 million units since its launch in April.

"Apple really checks all the boxes when you look at the tech sector," adds Ryan Jacob, a fund manager at Jacob Internet Fund in Los Angeles. "Do they have the opportunity to gain share in their markets? What are the prospects for margins? It’s hard to find a company that you can have more confidence in than Apple."

Microsoft and Apple, pioneers of personal computing, have seen a divergence in recent years, with Microsoft having trouble moving away from its mainstay businesses while Apple continues to try to become leaders in new markets, just like it did with the iPod earlier in the decade, the iPhone in the later part of the decade, and the iPad now in 2010.

According to sources close to the talks, it appears the U.S. Justice Department has been looking into whether Apple "unfairly dominates" the digital music market with its popular iTunes store.

The sources say the Justice Department has been contacting music labels and other digital music providers, asking broad questions about the nature of the market in general, and Apple's role in it.

The new inquiries may have been stemmed by accusations in March that Apple was using its giant market share lead to prevent rival Amazon MP3 from debuting new songs exclusively before they hit iTunes a day or two later.

The iTunes store currently has about 70 percent market share, with Amazon trailing at around 9 percent.

Global music sales have fallen from $26.5 billion at the start of the decade to just $17 billion last year, even as digital music sales have exploded.

AT&T has announced today the launch of an AT&T Wi-Fi Hotzone in Times Square, the company's latest effort to ease congestion on their 3G data networks in high-population areas.

The Wi-Fi service was installed on 46th street and 7th avenue and will service a large portion of Times Square.

The Hotzone is free to all of AT&T's subscribers, as long as they have a device that can connect to wireless. This includes smartphones and laptops with 3G LaptopConnect modems.

AT&T has received almost constant criticism for dropped calls and choppy 3G service in New York City and other high-population areas, especially from iPhone users that are notoriously bandwidth hungry.

Says John Donovan, AT&T's CTO (via press release): "Whether they're emailing photos and videos to friends back home, downloading a restaurant review, or ordering discount Broadway tickets online, people in Times Square want the mobile broadband connection that lets them get the most done in the least amount of time. With this pilot AT&T Wi-Fi hotzone, we're examining new ways to combine our Wi-Fi and 3G networks to help ensure that AT&T customers in Times Square always have a fast mobile broadband connection to do what matters most to them. It's another example of how AT&T is exploring the ideal blend of technologies to maximize the mobile experience for our customers in New York City."

Davenport & Company analyst Drake Johnstone has made a bold prediction this week, saying that AT&T would lose up to 40 percent of its iPhone subscribers if the carrier was to lose its exclusivity pact on the iPhone and the smartphone moved to Verizon.

Says Johnstone in a client note: "Over the past several years, AT&T indicated that 40 percent of its new iPhone customers came from other carriers. We estimate that AT&T has 15 million iPhone customers (as of Q-1 10) and believe that AT&T could lose as many as 6 million, or 40 percent, of its iPhone customers when Verizon begins selling the iPhone in 2011."

Because of these expectations, the analyst says: "We are reducing AT&T’s 2011 wireless subscriber additions from 6 million to 2 million (most of these new additions may be lower value connected devices such as eReaders instead of higher value long-term wireless customers), since we believe that Verizon could obtain Apple’s approval to sell and provide wireless service for the iPhone as early as mid-2011."

While the numbers seem sensationalist, they could be a possibility. AT&T does have some measures in place to prevent such an "exodus," however. The company just raised its ETF (early termination fees) to $350 for smartphones, meaning leaving for another carrier could be a pricey transaction. Additionally, family-talk and business-discounted plans are hard to switch to new carriers with, and AT&T says about 80 percent of its customers have those types of plans.

Sony has announced that the PlayStation Store is now the first console marketplace to offer original content from HBO, the premium cable channel.

Owners of the PlayStation 3 and the PSP handheld can now purchase individual episodes or full seasons of their favorite HBO shows, right to their consoles, through the PSN.

As of today, the first two seasons of "True Blood" are available, the first season of "Eastbound and Down," the first three seasons of "Big Love" and the first two seasons of "Entourage."

Additionally, catalog shows such as "The Sopranos," "Sex and the City," "The Wire," "Rome," "Da Ali G Show," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "Flight of the Conchords," are available, although not all seasons are available of each show.

Each episode costs $3 USD, with season prices varying.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Legendary Pictures has bought the rights to create a Mass Effect movie, based on the popular EA-Bioware video game on the Xbox 360.

In talks to write the movie is Mark Protosevich, the man behind the blockbuster I Am Legend, and the movie will be produced by Avi and Ari Arad, or Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni of Legendary.

Mass Effect was released in 2008, and its sequel was just released in 2010. The science fiction game follows a human soldier and his starship in the future, and features many different alien species on a variety of foreign planets.

Avi Arad is the former chairman of Marvel Studios, and is currently developing a film based on the video game "Drake's Fortune."

Says Tull of the game, and subsequent movie: "[Mass Effect] has depth, compelling characters and an engaging back story."

Harmonix has released the demo for the upcoming Rock Band sequel, Green Day: Rock Band and included is a teaser image that seems to imply that the upcoming game will have keyboard support, an all-new instrument for the popular music game series.

Users can download the two-track demo from the XBL Marketplace and play the songs "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Welcome to Paradise."

The image shows off the four standard icons, (mic, guitar, bass, drums) with the keyboard fifth.

The original game of the series sold over 5 million tracks, and led to a revolution in DLC (downloadable content), selling over 40 million tracks.

Rock Band 2 continued strong sales for the franchise, although reviews were not as great.

Pic via JoyStiq:

The Amazon Kindle, the most popular e-reader by market share will eventually have a color version, says CEO Jeff Bezos, but that day is not soon.

Speaking at the e-tailer's shareholder meeting this week, Bezos says that while not impossible, adding color to the Kindle's e-ink display is "a difficult technical challenge" and that the device is "still a long way out."

Bezos adds that he has seen some prototypes "in the lab" but none of them are "ready for prime-time production."

The e-reader market continues to get more and more crowded, especially with Apple's introduction of the iPad tablet in April. The iPad has e-reading capabilities on a full color screen and a connection to the growing Apple iBookStore.

While Bezos refuses to disclose the amount of Kindle devices sold since launch, DisplaySearch reported last month that the number is somewhere in the 3.3 million unit range.

After 11 months of ongoing development, Google Chrome for Macs and Linux is finally stable, moving out of the beta stage.

The company even admitted that for the first few months the popular browser was extremely buggy and should only be used by more advanced users. Today, that is no longer an issue.

Along with the "stable" tag, Chrome for Macs and Linux now include advanced syncing for bookmarks and settings, geolocation APIs, app cache and other HTML5 tools.

Perhaps more notably to the casual end user, the browsers now have access to all 4500 Chrome extensions.

Not included in the new release is built-in Flash, as you will need to manually download it. By Flash 10.1, Google promises a stable version.

Get the Windows version here: Chrome at AfterDawn
Get the now stable Mac and Linux versions here: http://www.google.com/chrome

Microsoft and Netflix have announced today that the video rental service has chosen PlayReady as its DRM of choice for upcoming Netflix-ready streaming devices and apps.

The decision, says Netflix, will allow for subscribers to watch the over 12,000 movies and TV episodes available via "Watch Instantly," the company's popular streaming catalog, on Blu-ray players, Internet-enabled TVs and other devices.

PlayReady is already used for instant streaming on the PC and Macs, and the companies say the first PlayReady devices should hit shelves "as early as this summer."

Says Bill Holmes, vice president of business development at Netflix: "Netflix ready devices are a popular way for our members to instantly watch the huge library of TV episodes and movies available from Netflix that can be watched instantly on their TVs. Netflix is expanding our investment in PlayReady and making PlayReady our primary DRM technology because it best meets the requirements of our content suppliers and device partners while allowing us to benefit from efficiencies in our content delivery infrastructure."

In an ironic twist, Warner Bros. has been sued this week for stealing an anti-piracy technology patent.

Medien Patent Verwaltung(MPV) of Germany is the company doing the accusing, saying Warner and Technicolor began unlawfully using the technology after it was shown to them in 2003.

The studio was shown the technology, which is "a method of marking films with a distinctive code so it could track back sources of piracy to the exact theater in which an unauthorized copy originated," in 2003, says TheHollywoodReporter.

Warner has been using it without paying an licensing fees since 2004, adds the complaint.

Says MPV: "We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly. Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us. However, we had taken care to obtain patents to protect MPV's technology, and we are now in a position where we must assert our rights."

Yankee Stadium, home of the defending World Series champions, has just added the Apple iPad to its prohibited device list, which already included all laptops.

Team officials say it is nothing personal to the iPad, but bunches the tablet in with all laptops.

The ban is a "security-and-safety" issue, they add.

When asked, Major League Baseball said iPad bans are a team-by-team decision, and the New York Mets and the Seattle Mariners have already announced the device is allowed in their respective stadiums.

In April, the iPad was banned in Israel due to wireless standards irregularities, but the ban was subsequently lifted.

Apple has been sued this week over patents relating to its popular iTunes store, in a case that could take down the world's most popular online music store.

The suing company, Sharing Sound, is accusing Apple of infringing patents relating to "djustable length displays of textual and other data," as well as patents related to online music stores.

Sharing Sound says they hold the patent for "distribution of musical products by a web site vendor over the Internet," which seems incredibly broad, and practically describes any music downloading site that has song previews, a shopping cart, and a legal music player.

The exact patent targeting Apple "has a provision that downloaded songs have a unique identifier included in the file to link the files to a particular purchaser," says ArsTechnica.

iTunes infringes on this patent, says the suit, as all songs downloaded through the service have Apple ID, used to identify the original purchaser.

AT&T has settled a class action lawsuit today that will mean that the carrier must unlock all phones locked to their network as long as customers meet a certain set of criteria.

Users of pre-paid phones must "provide proof of purchase of their locked handset," while any contracted user must have "completed a minimum of 90 days of active service," with the account remaining in good standing.

There is one caveat, however: "Handsets for which AT&T has an exclusive sales arrangement with a manufacturer of less than 10 months will have to wait until the 10-month period expires before they can receive an unlocking code."

That means that any phone for which AT&T has an exclusivity pact of over 10 months (namely the Apple iPhone and BlackBerry Bold 9000), then it does not have to issue an unlock code.

The final approval hearing for the settlement is on July 2nd. You can find more information at www.attlockinglawsuits.com.

Wal-Mart has announced, about a month before Apple is set to release the iPhone 4G, that it is slashing the price of the iPhone 3GS in half.

The 16GB 3GS model will go on sale for $97 USD with two-year contract. The smartphone currently costs $197 at Wal-Mart and $199 through Apple.

Despite the iPhone 4G being leaked, Apple has yet to confirm or deny that the phone will be officially released next month.

The annual developer conference starts on June 7th, and Apple has unveiled a new iPhone model each year during the event.

New to the "iPhone HD," are a front-facing camera for video conferencing, a better standard camera (including larger lens and flash), a Micro-SIM slot (just like the iPad), 960x640 resolution, a second mic, metallic exterior (not plastic) and split side buttons for volume.

Hewlett-Packard has announced that it has added at least 50,000 new batteries to its worldwide recall list, adding to the already huge 70,000 number it began recalling in May 2009.

The lithium-ion batteries found in 31 of HP's laptops can potentially overheat and then split apart, which could lead to fires.

Two instances of just that were noted in an initial report by the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC). Since then, 38 more reports have surfaced. Of those reports, there were "11 instances of minor personal injury and 31 instances of minor property damage."

The laptops affected are from the HP Pavilion, Compaq Presario, HP laptops, and HP Compaq lines.

Recalled batteries come from laptops purchased between August 2007 and March 2008.

Despite the seemingly large number, HP says only 3 percent of all notebooks manufactured during the period are affected.

Says the company: "Consumers should immediately remove the batteries referenced above from their notebook computer and contact HP to determine if their battery is included in this recall (even if the battery was previously checked). Consumers with recalled batteries will receive a free replacement battery."

T-Mobile has finally announced the pricing and release date for the myTouch 3G Slide, the successor to the first ever Android phone, the G1.

The device will be released on June 2nd, and will cost $179.99 with two-year contract.

The phone includes a 600 MHz ARM processor, Android 2.1 with HTC Sense and multi-touch support, 512MB of RAM, 512MB internal storage, a 5MP autofocus camera with LED flash, and a free 8GB MicroSD card.

The device has a 3.4-inch HVGA (320 x 480 pixel) touchscreen, and a trackpad as well.

One feature missing from the 2.1 included with the new Slide is "live wallpapers," interactive backgrounds that can be found on high-end devices such as the Nexus One and HTC Incredible.

Swype is the default keyboard, giving users the chance to use the record-breaking text input system that has been in closed beta for some time now.

Wal-Mart has created a new online GameCenter this week, a site that will give "first-look" exclusives, game previews and monetary discounts off new releases.

As a launch promotion, Wal-Mart is giving a $50 off discount for any customer pre-ordering three games, or more.

Says Kelly Thompson, VP of merchandising for Walmart.com: "Walmart Gamecenter combines incredible savings with exclusive gaming content all in a compelling and interactive experience online. Gaming enthusiasts will be drawn in by the exclusive content and developer interviews, while moms will appreciate the special savings only Walmart can offer on the hottest video game titles."

Each month, the GameCenter will update and feature new games, content and special offers.

Additionally, GameCenter customers can trade-in their games and consoles, with the retailer paying all shipping costs.

For the week ended May 17th, the Nintendo DS series of handhelds remains atop the Japanese hardware sales list, with the Sony PSP following close behind.

On an individual basis, however, the PSP-3000 did hold the top spot, with 24,475 units sold.

The critically-hated PSPGo, which removes the UMD drive, and added little else, moved just 871 units for the period.

The PlayStation 3 saw a jump to 20,463 units sold, pushing past the Nintendo Wii, which sold 17,570 for the week.

The new DSi LL, which has a screen increase of 93 percent from past models, continues to sell well.

Yesterday, we reported that four popular movie theaters in New York City had announced the ticket prices for the upcoming Shrek Forever After and for the first time ever, the IMAX 3D prices had reached the $20 threshold.

The theaters reported were the AMC Kips Bay, AMC Loews 34th street, AMC Loews Lincoln Square, and the AMC Empire 42nd street.

AMC now says the prices were incorrect, however, and the any online buyers who purchased for $20 can "visit guest services for a refund."

Reads the company's statement: "Unfortunately, a limited number of theaters posted incorrect pricing for ‘Shrek Forever After,’ which we immediately corrected. Any guest who purchased a ticket at the incorrect price can visit guest services for a refund."

I can confirm the price retraction, as checking the Lincoln Square theater, I was told the price was $19 for the showing.

While we may have not hit the $20 price point yet, at $19 now and rising, it is only a matter of time.

According to a new report from The Diffusion Group (TDG), Americans will be spending more time watching videos online than via broadcast TV by 2020.

The report, titled The Economics of Over-the-Top TV Delivery: How Television Networks Can Shift to Online Content Delivery, says by 2020, viewers will be watching over two hours of online video daily, surpassing the time they spend in front of a TV.

TDG analyst Colin Dixon says Americans only currently watch 22 minutes of video content online, as broadband Internet is still, for the most part, in its infancy.

The report cites the growing number of Internet-capable devices as the main reason for the strong forecast, including set-top boxes, HDTVs with the capability built-in, and Blu-ray players.

As the devices become more standard in households, consumers "won’t be thinking 'I'm watching online video;' they'll be thinking, 'I'm watching TV,'" adds Dixon.

HTC has noted today that "most" of its recent and upcoming Android devices will be getting the 2.2 update (Froyo), during the Q3 this year.

These phones include the Desire, Droid Incredible, MyTouch 3G Slide and the EVO 4G along with other upcoming models.

Availability of the firmware update for older devices (like those released before 2010) was not noted, but seems unlikely, given that many still run on 1.5 or 1.6.

Says HTC: "We are working closely with Google and our other partners to ensure we have the earliest access to everything we need to provide a complete and solid Sense experience on Froyo."

While 2.2 was unveiled earlier this week to rave reviews, Google notes it is not completely finished yet. Device makers should have it within a month, however. (That is of course, unless you have a Nexus One, which has been given an OTA update for 2.2 already).

In early April we reported that in a decision that would likely take down the giant torrent indexer, a judge had ordered IsoHunt to remove all torrents linking to infringing content.

This week, Judge Stephen Wilson of the US District Court has issued a permanent injunction against the site, telling owner Gary Fung to immediately remove all infringing torrents and prevent access to such copyrighted material.

While the injunction does allow for the site to remain open with a very strict filtering system, it seems that the site has little chance to do so, as Fung could be held in contempt of court if any unauthorized files are found uploaded. This leads many to assume the site will shut down, at least to all U.S. visitors.

The MPAA had sued IsoHunt in 2007, and last year a judge ruled against the indexer, saying it created a venue for illegal file sharing.

Four popular movie theaters in New York City have announced the ticket prices for the upcoming Shrek Forever After and for the first time ever, IMAX 3D prices have reached the $20 threshold.

The theaters are: AMC Kips Bay, AMC Loews 34th street, AMC Loews Lincoln Square, and the AMC Empire 42nd street.

Says media analyst Richard Greenfield of the move: "With the state of the economy remaining questionable, we worry pricing is simply moving up too quickly. The danger is scaring consumers away from the movie theaters."

The new price hike follows a recent round of price increases in March, where theaters in NYC raised IMAX and 3D prices as much as 25 percent. At the time, AMC 34th charged $19.50 for the IMAX 3D showing of "How to Train Your Dragon."

While the price may scare away a number of consumers, AMC seems to think it is worth the risk, given the recent string of blockbuster successes in IMAX 3D showings, including 'Avatar,' 'Dragon' and 'Alice in Wonderland.'

Box office revenue is up 6 percent year-on-year, mainly due to increased price tickets.

Google has announced today that it has started a beta Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) version of their search engine, encrypting the information that is sent between everyday users and the service.

You most likely use an SSL site everyday, as all online banking and most e-commerce sites use it. The URL will start with an "HTTPS" instead of the standard "HTTP." Most sites also use SSL when you are sending private information or creating a password.

Google has been using SSL encryption for Gmail, Google Docs and other services, but plain-old Google search had not used it.

Starting this morning, users can try searching more securely at https://www.google.com.

Adds the search giant: "When you search on https://www.google.com, an encrypted connection is created between your browser and Google. This secured channel helps protect your search terms and your search results pages from being intercepted by a third party on your network. The service includes a modified logo to help indicate that you’re searching using SSL and that you may encounter a somewhat different Google search experience, but as always, remember to check the start of the address bar for “https” and your browser lock indicators."

AT&T has raised the early termination fees for its smartphones, following recent moves by rival Verizon to do the same.

The early termination fee (ETF) is the charge that consumers pay if they cancel their monthly plans before the set expiration date (usually two years).

The ETF will fly from $175 to $325 for all smartphones and netbooks that use a 3G modem.

On the other hand, non-smartphones will have their ETF dropped to $150 from $175.

The new prices take effect on June 1st, so current customers do not need to worry.

The move has very coincidental timing to the upcoming release of the new iPhone 4G, which is expected to sell over 1 million phones in its first weekend. The new ETF will effectively lock-in users to their new iPhone for the duration of the contract. For the time being, the Apple device remains an AT&T exclusive.

Last November, Verizon made the same exact move, raising the price from $175 to $350, right before the launch of the popular Motorola Droid.

Late last year, Google announced it intended to buy mobile ad giant AdMob for $750 million USD.

After over six months of delays, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has cleared the purchase, thanks in part to Google's arch rival Apple.

Earlier this year, Apple purchased the third largest mobile ad company, Quattro Wireless, and used it as the backbone of its new iAd platform on the iPad and iPhone.

The FTC had been concerned that Google (the world's largest ad platform) merging with AdMob (world's largest mobile ad platform) would violate anti-trust laws. Apple joining the fray eased those concerns.

Says Jeff Shinder, former special counsel to the FTC: "The presence of Apple made it for hard for the commission to construct a merger challenge that it felt it could win."

Apple had tried to purchase AdMob first, but Google swooped in with a higher bid.

Last night, Yahoo sent out an invite for a press conference in which it promised an "exciting announcement" relating to "rich online and mobile experiences."

AllThingsD says that mysterious invite will lead to a joint announcement by Nokia and Yahoo that will place Yahoo email, search and other apps on Nokia smartphones.

The partnership is code-named "Project Nike," named after the Greek goddess of victory, and has apparently been in the works for at least three years.

For the most part, Yahoo's mobile initiatives have failed, says the source, but Nokia remains the top smartphone seller in the world by volume, giving the new deal a chance at success.

The deal is said to have been fast-tracked by Yahoo Americas EVP Hilary Schneider.

Adds someone close to the companies: "Recently, Nokia has offered devices that people don’t want and Yahoo has launched mobile services that they don’t want. Perhaps in working together, they will find a way to finally create some value."

Last month, Justin Long, the "Mac" in Apple's popular Mac vs. PC commercials (officially "Get A Mac"), said the ad campaign may be close to its conclusion, ending one of the more effective ad series in history.

He said he had heard from "PC" John Hodgman that Apple was planning to move on.

Today, it appears that prediction has come true, as Apple has officially ended the series of ads, the last of which played in October of last year.

The "Get A Mac" series has been replaced on the Apple site by the "Why You'll Love a Mac" page, which markets Macs over PC counterparts, claiming: "Better Hardware, Better Software, Better OS, Better Support, and It's Compatible."

All of the ads have been removed as well and it is unclear if the ads will play on TV anytime in the future.

According to Piper Jaffrey analyst Gene Munster, the Apple iPad is in extremely low supply in the United States.

Munster sent a note to clients on Friday claiming that the tablet was sold out or "in low supply" at 50 stores his team searched.

About 75 percent of all the stores checked were completely sold out of the popular tablet, with 3G models being sold out everywhere. The other 25 percent of stores had low supply of Wi-Fi only models, in a variety of capacities.

Says Munster: "We note that the stores have implemented a reservation system, by which customers can request to be placed on a waitlist for future iPad shipments, notified upon arrival, and given 24 hours to pick up the iPad."

That system normally takes anywhere between 4 and 7 days.

Additionally, Munster says he doesn't see the tight iPad supply easing until September.

The Netflix app for the iPad, one of the top ten most popular apps since the device's launch in April, has been updated this week, giving users one of their most asked-for features.

With version 1.0.2, users can now connect the iPad to a TV and stream the movie or TV show you are watching on the big screen, freeing you from the 9.7-inch iPad display.

You will need to use one of Apple's VGA, component, or composite dock cables.

The quality will not be great, but you can watch the streams at resolutions up to 1024x768.

While the app is free, to use Netflix's "Watch Instantly" catalog, you will need a subscription at $9.99 a month. The adapter from Apple will also cost you about $30.

Additionally, 1.0.2 fixes some minor bugs that were causing crashes.

The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) has announced, jointly with the Congressional members of the International Anti-Piracy Caucus (IAPC) the first ever Notorious Illegal Sites list, calling out the six most "notorious" sites used for unauthorized downloads of music, movies and other copyrighted works.

Additionally, the groups named Russia, Mexico, China, Canada and Spain as the "Top Priority Countries" for lax anti-piracy efforts.

The sites to make the list are: China’s Baidu, Canada’s IsoHunt, Ukraine’s mp3fiesta, Germany’s RapidShare, Luxembourg’s RMX4U.com and Sweden’s The Pirate Bay.

The groups say these sites and their services provide little other uses than an exchange of unauthorized copyrighted works.

"The release of this report casts a damning spotlight once again on several nations with lax copyright protections and websites that brazenly traffic in copyright theft. I'm particularly struck by the IAPC decision to identify significant global websites that facilitate massive theft; theft that destroys jobs and cuts short the dreams of creators who find it more difficult to attract the capital they need to build their careers. Just last week, five years after the 9-0 Supreme Court landmark decision against Grokster, we saw a federal judge rule against the most significant theft machine in this country – LimeWire. While it took some time for the judicial process to work, we did see that in a nation of laws, those who set up elegant schemes to profit from theft will be stopped. There is basic accountability, although much work needs to be done to achieve a fully accountable Internet space," says Mitch Bainwol, Chairman and CEO, RIAA.

On day two of the Google I/O conference, the search giant has launched Android 2.2 Froyo, the seventh update to the operating system since its launch in September 2008.

While not listed in the official 2.2 post, there are many new features that most users have been expecting and wanting. The main two are the addition of Flash (built-in) and the addition of Wi-Fi tethering. Additionally, desktop to handset music streaming and a "one-handed camera UI" are part of the update.

Google says there are six highlights of the new firmware update, (although I believe they left out the most important in their post which I posted above):

Performance and Speed: The company says the new "Dalvik JIT compiler" will give 2.2 users a 200-500 percent performance boost in "CPU-bound code vs. Android 2.1."

Enterprising capabilities: Google says they have added Microsoft Exchange capabilities such as account auto-discovery and calender sync. There is also easier device management apps that can control security like remote wipe, lockscreen timeout and minimum password.

Amazon has announced this week that it has launched AmazonCrossing, a book imprint that will publish foreign-language books that have been translated into English.

The first book available will be "The King of Kahel," a 2008 French novel which received the prix Renaudot French literary prize.

The book will be out, translated, on November 2nd, and in e-book form the same day.

AmazonCrossing will work exactly like AmazonEncore, which is the e-tailer's first imprint. Encore uses "customer feedback and other data from Amazon sites around the world to identify exceptional books deserving a wider, global audience."

Amazon says it also hopes to sell its book in bookstores around the U.S., in addition to on its website.

Adds Chad Post, publisher of Open Letter Books, a nonprofit press that publishes only works in translation, via PW: "There are many thousands of books out there worthy of being translated and published in English, but that are currently unavailable to us monolingual readers. The more international books that are available in English, the better. It’s exciting to see a company like Amazon investing in such a worthy cause like AmazonCrossing, and in a way that will definitely help expand the audience for literature in translation."

THQ, the popular publisher, has said today that it will become the latest company to force used game buyers to pay a fee to play their purchased games online.

The first title to use the practice will be UFC Undisputed 2010, which has one-time use codes for online play, and therefore will require second hand users to buy a new code.

Used game buyers will have to pay $5 for a new code and access to "Fight Camp" mode, which lets 40 players train together online.

Says the company: "This multiplayer content for UFC Undisputed 2010 will be available via a one-time code included with the game at purchase. Codes for accessing the content will be available for second-time buyers for an additional $5."

THQ's move follows that of EA Sports which recently announced that used game buyers will be charged $10 for an "Online Pass" that allows access to multiplayer functions. Ubisoft says they are actively considering a similar structure.

LifeLock, the ID protection firm that last month was hit with a $12 million fine for "deceptive advertising" has just gotten another hit to its reputation this week.

The company, which has a "$1 million guarantee," says it will spend up to $1 million on any subscriber if the service fails to protect their ID. LifeLock costs $15 per month.

As a publicity stunt to show off the effectiveness of the product, CEO Todd Davis publicly showed off his name and social security number, while saying he is also a LifeLock member.

This week, it is being reported Davis has had his identity stolen 13 times since 2007. In 2007, Davis said: "I'm glad to take the center stage to put mine out there as example, because then we can tell people you can take steps to make this useless to criminals."

Within weeks, Davis' identity was stolen and a man in Georgia used his account to open an AT&T Wireless account, with a bill over $2300.

That was just the beginning, however. The Phoenix News Times is reporting that Davis has had his ID stolen at least 12 times since, with people taking out small loans, Gap credit cards, Verizon wireless accounts and even paying off their energy bills with his name.

This week, Google subtly noted that Android 2.3 "Gingerbread" is set for a Q4 2010 release.

The date was shown off inside the FAQ for the new WebM video format. Google's latest update, 2.2 "Froyo" is expected to be launched today at the I/O conference, which is now in its second day.

WebM is Google's new open source video codec, built on the VP8 codec that was originally developed by On2. Last year, Google purchased On2 for $124 million USD. For audio, the codec uses open source Ogg Vorbis.

The open source codec is Google's answer to the current HTML5 video format war. HTML5 allows for native video embedding in web pages, removing the need for plug-ins like Adobe's Flash or Microsoft's Silverlight. The standard does not specify which format will be used, and that has led to Apple and Microsoft pushing the expensive H.264 format, while Google, Opera, and Mozilla among others are pushing for free, open source formats.

Engadget managed to do a hands-on with the new Nvidia Tegra 2-powered Android tablet today, and it looks very nice, so far.

The powerful Tegra 2 set has dual-core ARM Cortex A9 processors, a chip that is a full generation ahead of the iPad's A4 chip.

Additionally, the tablet has two USB ports (the iPad has none), 1GB of RAM (iPad has 256MB) and a front-facing camera for video conferencing.

The WSVGA screen is 8.9-inches.

There is still no word on when the tablet will be available, or at what price, but for now, it is fun to look at.

In April, giant computer manufacturer HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm for $1.2 billion in cash, including assuming Palm's debt.

Along with the purchase, HP was given full rights to Palm's patents and their WebOS operating system, which many argue is the best smartphone operating system available.

This week, following a strong quarterly earnings report, HP CEO Mark Hurd said the company plans to use WebOS in a variety of products, including tablets and Web-enabled printers.

In response to the deal, Hurd also added (via EW): "[The proposed deal] isn't precisely a smartphone play, as I've seen some people write. It is, for us, strategically broader. We expect to leverage WebOS into a variety of form factors, including ‘slates’ and Web-connected printers."

Yahoo has announced this week that it will acquire the user-generated publishing company Associated Content in an effort to add more pages and in turn attract more advertising revenue.

AC pays all of its 380,000 contributors nominal fees to write niche-related articles on tons of different topics ranging from finance, to health, to travel and beyond. While the financial details of the deal were not revealed, Yahoo will receive a gigantic amount of content and pages that were created for very little money.

"We feel that a contributor-driven model is absolutely part of the future of media," adds Matthew Idema, a VP for Yahoo (via Reuters).

The more content Yahoo has available, the more attractive their pages are to advertisers, many of which have been conservative with their expenditures since 2007.

Adds news industry analyst Ken Doctor of the deal: "It makes them a publisher, essentially. Now they have a lot more content they can serve advertising against."

Rival portal AOL was widely expected to purchase AC, but it appears Yahoo stepped in first.

According to the latest figures from Gartner, Symbian (by Nokia) remains the most popular smartphone operating system worldwide, although it is growing at a much slower pace than its rivals.

Nokia stood on top the leader board for the latest quarter with 24.1 million units sold. RIM, which creates the BlackBerry devices was in second at 10.6 million units sold. Apple, which only has one smartphone, the iPhone, remained in third with 8.3 million units sold. Android, the open-source OS created by Google, managed to surpass Microsoft's Windows Mobile to take fourth, with 5.2 million units sold.

From the group, Android, (by a long shot), saw the strongest growth, 707 percent year-on-year. Apple continued to see strong growth as well, with 112 percent YoY.

Gartner predicts that Android will surpass Apple in the next few quarters, as many more manufacturers are creating Android devices now, or have at least promised devices for the future. Android phones are already outselling the iPhone in the United States.

Tinhte, a site based in Vietnam has posted pics today of a leaked iPod Touch with a camera.

The device has the DVT-1 stamp, meaning it is an early design of a future final product.

Apple is likely to officially launch the new device on June 7th, at their annual conference.

The serial number reveals a "late 2009 third generation Touch," and from the pics and video it all seems pretty legitimate.

The label indicates a 64GB model, and the camera seems to be a 2MP sensor from Omnivision.

Best Buy has announced that its anticipated CinemaNow-based online video download service launch will happen later this month, giving users a chance to buy or rent movies and TV episodes.

The large retailer is moving into a crowded market currently dominated by Amazon and Apple and to a lesser degree by streaming services such as Netflix's Watch Instantly and Vudu, which was recently acquired by Wal-Mart.

The store is based on Sonic's CinemaNow service, and will be built right into devices sold in-store under the Insignia brand. Devices range from DVD and Blu-ray players to HDTV sets.

The service will also be built into the same devices through other manufacturers later in the year.

When the service launches, Best Buy says it expects to have thousands of new releases, indie films, catalog films and TV eps available. Some of the titles will be available on the same day as their DVD counterpart.

Microsoft has sued Salesforce.com this week, claiming the company has been actively infringing on nine of the software giant's patents.

The complaint is significant as it targets patents relating to customer-relationship management (CRM), which is the bread and butter of SalesForce's business.

Microsoft is seeking for an injunction on the features used in SF's software that infringes on the their patents.

Salesforce, which launched in 1999, "sells subscriptions to Internet business software that runs marketing campaigns and tracks sales leads." The company is in direct competition with Microsoft's Dynamics program in the CRM market.

"More and more, we’re seeing Dynamics compete with Salesforce in deals," adds Ray Wang, an analyst with Altimeter Group. "Long term, Salesforce and Microsoft are on a collision course for all enterprise software."

Salesforce had about $1.3 billion in sales last year.

Responds the CRM company: "The resolution of this claim is not expected to have a material adverse effect on our financial condition, but it could be material to the net income or cash flows or both of a particular quarter."

According to VG247, Sony will finally reveal its plans for PlayStation Network premium subscriptions at the upcoming E3 event in June.

The site says they have been assured by sources that nothing in the premium subs will impact the current fee aspects of the service, and the subscriptions are completely optional.

The service will cost under "£50 per year," notes the site.

As an added bonus, all users of the premium subscription will receive a fee PSN game each month, from a choice of up to four that change each month. After a few months, if you count the free games as money back to yourself, you break even on the subscription.

One of the expected new features is an unlimited streaming music app similar to Spotify.

Ubisoft, the games publisher behind the new "always on" DRM, has disappointed investors this week, reporting an almost 18 percent slide in revenue for the fiscal year.

For the year, the company posted sales of $1.1 billion, and a net loss of $54 million.

The loss was mainly due to increases in R&D, which rose to $376 million, up 36 percent year-on-year.

Ubi says its top selling game was Assassin's Creed II (which uses the controversial DRM) and moved 9 million units since launch.

Additionally, Ubi saw its market share in North America rise to 6.8 percent from 5.3 percent last fiscal year. Despite the growth, the overall market, which remains in turmoil, has not helped with ongoing sales, concedes CEO Yves Guillemot: "The global economic crisis had a pronounced impact on the video game industry in 2009, which contracted by nearly 10 per cent year-on-year. Ubisoft's sales were hit particularly hard, falling 18 per cent over the full year despite a stabilisation in the second half of the year, when figures came in on a par with the corresponding period of 2008-09. This overall contraction in sales, combined with additional write-downs recorded for games already launched as well as for upcoming releases, led to a €60 million operating loss."

OnStar has announced today that it has teamed with Google to develop new features to be used in Chevy Volt mobile app.

The app will get its first public showcase at the upcoming Google I/O conference tomorrow in California, where OnStar will show off the Android-leveraged application.

Adds OnStar pres Chis Preuss: "While OnStar will never lose sight of our core focus on safety and security, this relationship is an example of how we're evolving our leadership position in connected vehicle technology. What we're talking about today is only the beginning."

The current Chevy Volt app will get a new "navigation" tab, which will pinpoint the car's location via Google Maps. Then, just like on Android smartphones, users can voice search for destinations and have OnStar turn on turn-by-turn directions.

Additionally, the app will have the following features:

* Charge status display – plugged in or not and voltage (120V or 240V)
* Flexibility to "Charge Now" or schedule charge timing
* Display percentage of battery charge level, electric and total ranges
* Ability to manually set grid-friendly charge mode for off-peak times when electricity rates are lowest
* Send text or email notifications for charge reminders, interruptions and full charge
* Display miles per gallon, electric only miles, and odometer readings
* Shows miles per gallon, EV miles and miles driven for last trip and lifetime
* Remotely start the vehicle to pre-condition the interior temperature

MySpace has taken steps this week to combat Facebook, the behemoth social networking site plagued by criticism over its privacy settings.

The once-extremely-popular site will simplify its own privacy settings over the coming weeks, giving users the "option to select one privacy setting for all information in their profiles, which often include a user's name, birthday, interests and photos."

Profiles can be made public to everyone, MySpace friends only, or MySpace users over 18 only.

Previously, the settings for different sections of their profile were scattered, including the separate controls for privacy on their photos, comments and friend's lists.

Taking a jab at Facebook's recent plights, MySpace Co-President Mike Jones says: "Given all the noise in the industry, we want to get out and state a clear position so that our users understand that we take privacy very seriously."

Spotify, the popular music streaming service available in Europe, has announced today the launch of two new variations of the service, Spotify Open and Spotify Unlimited.

"Unlimited" gives users "round-the-clock," ad-free access to Spotify for €5 a month. Unlike the more expensive "Premium" version, you will not be able to move files to your smartphone or play in offline mode at all. You will need to be connected to the Internet at all times to play the tracks.

Premium is £9.99 per month, however.

"Open" is completely free, but also lacks most of the options of the other variations, including some that are even included in Spotify "Free," which is free but requires an invite to sign up.

Spotify Open lets anyone sign up and receive 20 hours of streaming per month, with no other obligations. You will hear ads, just like in the Free version, however.

You can see the full comparison sheet here:

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE) has written today in their official blog that the PlayStation 3 will soon be getting the MUBI movie streaming service.

The service has a large range of independent, classic and international films and will be available on the console "this autumn."

MUBI was announced first at the Cannes Film Festival and will include "festival gems, classics, famous independent releases and art-house flicks" from such famous directors like Quentin Tarantino, Gus Van Sant and the Coens.

When it launches later this year in the UK, Ireland, France, Italy, Iberia, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Benelux, Australia and New Zealand there will be over 300 films available.

"PlayStation is about great entertainment, from games to content, delivered straight to the living room or enjoyed on the go. Today this ranges from VidZone, the free on demand service music service, through to PlayTV where you can watch, record and rewind live TV at your leisure. MUBI offers the perfect independent counterpoise to our box-office blockbuster, hi-def, video delivery service, catering for the tastes of an ever broader customer base. Add in PS3’s DVD and Blu-ray disc player and we have the perfect ticket for film lovers," says SCEE president Andrew House.

Google has announced that it will purchase Global IP Solutions, a company with technology delivering voice and video over IP.

The move has prompted rumors that the company is trying to add video conferencing to the Android operating system.

GIPS is known for their "high-quality, real-time audio and video streaming via IP," and has been licensing the technology over the years to companies as big as Samsung, Yahoo, AOL and Nortel for their video/video chat services.

The Android video chat rumors began last month when GIPS rolled out its first product that was intended to help developers add video chat to Android phones and tablets.

The search giant will pay $68.2 million for the company, which is a large 27.5 percent premium over the company's closing share price. In January the company said it had a possible buyer and shares have surged 60 percent since.

Roku, the company behind the popular streaming set-top boxes of the same name, has struck a deal with the UFC this week, giving users a chance to stream all major UFC events for the foreseeable future.

The set-top makers first hit the market in 2008 with the Netflix Player, which was created, as the name implies, to stream Netflix's "Watch Instantly" movie collection.

Since then, Roku has updated to include Amazon VOD, Major League Baseball and more content.

Roku adds that the UFC deal includes HD streaming, even for the PPV events.

A subscription to UFC Vault is $60 for six months, or each individual fight costs $2. PPV events, which normally cost up to $45 though your cable box, will cost $45 through Roku as well.

The first event available will be the May 29th fight between champions Rampage Jackson and Rashad Evans. A 3Mbps Internet connection is suggested.

Google has announced today that YouTube has finally been expanded to Africa, marking the sixth (and likely, last) continent the popular video sharing site is available from, locally.

The expansion coincides with the fifth anniversary of the site, and YouTube says the site now gets 2 billion views daily. More on that story here: YouTube celebrates 5th birthday, gets two billion views daily.

Of course the site has been available to users in Africa since launch, but the continent has never had any localized content. Until today, 27 different countries have localized content, stretching five continents.

South Africa will now have its own version of YouTube, which will launch full of content from South African providers, including educational content from universities.

"All in all, we are pleased to be officially putting down roots in South Africa and look forward to working with South African users, partners and advertisers to make the YouTube community even bigger, even more diverse and even brighter than it is today," reads the blog.

According to Dallas Business Journal, video rental giant Blockbuster is once again on the brink of bankruptcy, with their latest financial statement saying cash on hand and cash flow will only give the company 12 months at most.

At that point, the company would not be able to pay off its debts, and Chapter 11 bankruptcy would become "an option."

However, the company said it was just using cautionary language when bringing up the option of Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and that shareholders should not be worried.

At the very least, the company concedes it will need to close more stores as it will not meet the financial goals it hoped for 2010.

"The operating environment continues to be challenging, but we have made significant progress during the past year in reducing costs," adds Jim Keyes, CEO. "We believe we will continue to have adequate liquidity during 2010 through efforts including divesting non-core international assets, significantly improving working capital, continuing to reduce operating costs, and improving credit terms. Since there are execution risks related to these objectives, we are simultaneously pursuing a recapitalization and are in discussions with bond holders and other parties to improve our liquidity."

Research In Motion (RIM) has said it will begin selling the BlackBerry Storm via China Telecom, marking the first time the touchscreen device is available in the nation.

The smartphone will be available in 16 of the country's 31 provinces in the near future, although no date or price was revealed.

The move is seen as a way to compete with China Unicom, which is the current exclusive carrier of the Apple iPhone in the nation. The iPhone has seen such strong sales in China that Apple says sales have risen to over $1.3 billion.

The Storm was widely criticized when it launched in the U.S. in 2008 for its awful screen design and software glitches, and RIM rushed to release the Storm 2 in 2009.

RIM has made the older BlackBerry 8700 available to corporate customers in China since 2006.

At least one analyst thinks RIM's sales in China will be light at first, as it tries to build brand recognition: "Expectations for the BlackBerry should be kept in check, they’re coming from essentially zero market share. RIM is going to have to work very hard with their carrier partners to build the brand," says Matt Thornton, an analyst with Avian Securities, via BW.

According to a new Digitimes report, Apple plans to ship 24 million iPhone 4G units by the end of the year, with their Taiwanese contract manufacturer Foxconn ready to ship 4.5 million in June alone.

While Apple may have giant expectations, 24 million seems over the top. Since 2007, the company has sold just over 50 million units, with three different iterations of the smartphone.

Cnet proposes that the company may be planning a large price cut on the model, which would certainly help move units. Potentially, Apple is readying a CDMA-version of the phone, which would work on Verizon, the largest phone carrier in the nation.

Confirming what Gizmodo revealed last month, Digitimes says the smartphone will have an ARM Cortex A8 processor and 512MB of memory, which is double that of the 3GS, and should give enough power to handle the multi-tasking functions of the iPhone 0S 4.0.

In March, software giant Microsoft was ordered to pay $106 million in damages to a communications company by a jury overseeing a patent infringement lawsuit.

The company in question was VirnetX, which had claimed that the Microsoft had infringed on two patents held by the company.

The patents in question cover methods for establishing Virtual Private Networks (VPN).

Just two days later, VirnetX filed suit again, trying to get the jury to prove that more Microsoft products infringe on their patents, as well.

Microsoft has now announced it has settled the case for $200 million, and will license the technology going forward.

Both companies said they were satisfied with the resolution of the case.

Fans of the Sony PSP handheld have likely been disappointed by the lack of new innovation with the system over the past few years, including the flop that is the PSPGo.

If VG247 is correct, however, the still unofficial PSP2 sequel should have some pretty exciting specs, and will hopefully boost Sony's lagging handheld sales.

The site, citing British sources, says the console will not be revealed at the upcoming E3 event, but it will be launched this year, with a 2011 release date.

The handheld has a touch-screen, but will keep physical buttons as well. It has two cameras, one forward-facing for video conferencing and the other, as standard, on the back.

Sources add the console could be Wi-Fi and 3G supportive, which would be a first for the handheld series. UMD will likely be removed totally, just like on the PSPGo.

According to Stratfor Global Intelligence, 44 workers from a factory in Suzhou, China plan to sue the iPhone contractor Wintek after they were allegedly exposed to poison while cleaning iPhone screens with the chemical "n-hexane."

The firm says 62 workers have been hospitalized in the last 9 months due to n-hexane poisoning. The poisoning is so serious that it can "cause nerve damage and sometimes paralysis."

Stratfor goes on to say that a factory manager at the plant made the workers use the chemical because it dries faster than standard alcohol, and also leaves less streaks. That manager has since been fired.

The issue first went public in January when 2000 protesters began smashing car windows and factory windows over a dispute relating to year-end bonuses.

Adds Stratfor: "Lawsuits of any kind are uncommon in China, where disputes are usually addressed quietly behind closed doors. Much more common is labor abuse, and given the rising power of workers, we can expect to see more such suits, which provide legal outlets for social tension, a constant concern for Beijing."

Just 5 months after purchasing the music streaming service, Apple announced last month that it was planning to shut down Lala, likely signalling that it will be integrated into iTunes.com.

All current members have until May 31st to continue using the service, but as of May 1st the site stopped accepting any new members.

Lala was a download and streaming music service that gives members a "digital locker" to store their music. What made the company different from iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc, is that Lala would also sell streaming rights to tracks for pennies, allowing for unlimited streaming online of the track, but no physical download if they didn't want it.

As had been rumored in the past, the Xbox 360 Project Natal motion-sensing camera was "confirmed" for an October release earlier this month, by Microsoft Saudi marketing manager Syed Bilal Tariq.

At the time, Tariq said (in reference to Natal's release date): "It is going to be somewhere in October and we will be in a position to confirm the date at E3, which is in June, but definitely it is going to be October 2010."

Today, Microsoft has refuted Tariq's claim, saying that the manager is not even directly employed by the company.

Says the MS rep: "Syed Bilal Tariq is not a [Microsoft] employee. He is a vendor employed through a third-party company on behalf of the Microsoft subsidiary in Saudi Arabia."

The company adds it will reveal the official release date during the E3 expo next month.

According to PreCentral, forum member cdowers has gotten the Palm mobile operating system WebOS to boot on PC hardware, getting it to run on a Dell C600 laptop.

It seems he pulled off the trick by using the WebOS emulator image (which works on x86 processors) and putting it on an IDE hard drive (not the newer SATA standards).

Now, instead of WebOS running on a virtual machine, it is running on a real machine, says the source.

The forum users does say there are four glaring problems still:

1) handle interface issue (touchscreen/gesture area, faux mouse... not to mention the accelerometer issue)

2) drivers. seeing as it's running on top of an x86 kernel... maybe it's just an issue of running a different kernel with some patches? It's hard to say on this one... it really depends on how much palm patched the underlying kernel. Read more...

In late March Sprint unveiled the first 4G/WiMAX smartphone for the U.S. market, the HTC EVO 4G.

The device has the most powerful specs seen on a smartphone yet, and it will run the Android 2.1 firmware.

This weekend, the carrier has given a release date and price for the device, which will hit stores on June 4th. The phone will cost $199 USD with two-year contract.

The EVO 4G has a 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive multi-touchscreen display (with pinch to zoom), Android 2.1 with Sense UI, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Goggles, YouTube, Google Calendar syncing, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot capability for connecting up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices.

Palm has announced today that the Pre Plus smartphone is now available via AT&T, with little brother the Pixi Plus coming June 6th.

AT&T made note a few weeks ago that the Pre Plus was "coming soon," and that has come to fruition this weekend.

The device will be exactly like the Pre Plus that launched for Verizon earlier this year, except it will use a GSM radio and require a SIM card.

Because the phone has not been selling, (from any carrier), Verizon slashed the price to $30 USD with contract, and has thrown in Mobile HotSpot for free (normally $30 per month). AT&T is not being so generous.

The leading American GSM carrier will charge $150 for the phone with contract, and Mobile HotSpot tethering will cost the full $30 per month.

In late April, HP announced it was purchasing the struggling smartphone maker Palm for $1.2 billion, and it appears that HP was not the only interested party, with at least four other companies giving serious bids.

Palm put itself up for sale in the last two months after it became clear that the company's phones were not selling and it only had enough cash to last the next 12 months.

The smartphone maker then reached out to 16 different companies and five gave serious offers. Only HP and Lenovo were named as potential buyers, while two other companies wanted to license Palm's patents, including the mobile operating system WebOS.

HP's first offer was for $1 billion ($4.75 a share), while an unnamed company offered $600 million in cash. The third would-be buyer offered an all-stock transaction. Palm told all three the bids were not competitive and suddenly a fourth company came out and offered $6 per share, as well as the promise that the transaction would happen in the next two weeks.

According to PlayStation University, the PlayStation 3 software attach rate is creeping in on the Xbox 360's, threatening to kill off the old adage that games simply do not sell on the Sony console.

Despite a lower install base, software sales for the PS3 were significantly higher than that of the Xbox 360 in the fiscal 2009, 115.6 million to 103.1 million. The fiscal year runs from May until the end of April.

The new results put lifetime software sales at 290.5 million, still well below the 360's 353.8 million, but catching up quickly.

At 35.7 million PS3 units sold, that puts the attach rate at 8.1. The 360 has 40.2 million lifetime sales, for an attach rate of 8.8.

Both those numbers are higher than the Nintendo Wii, with a 7.7 attach rate, despite much larger hardware and software sales. All three pale in comparison to the aging PS2, which has been out since 2000 and still has a remarkable 10.3 attach rate.

In April we reported that the U.S. Copyright Group had filed lawsuits against 50,000 pirates, each alleged of downloading a number of films including "Steam Experiment," "Far Cry," "Uncross the Stars," "Gray Man" and "Call of the Wild 3D."

The Group has now demanded that Time Warner Cable, one of the largest ISPs in the U.S., hand over the identity of 2000 alleged pirates, and Time Warner has declined, saying it is too expensive, and "exceeds their current staffing capabilities."

The ISP says it would cost them about $45 USD each to send out the info on all the requests.

"Time Warner Cable does not have enough employees to respond to these requests. In a typical month, the company receives an average of 567 IP lookup requests, nearly all of them coming from law enforcement. These lookup requests involve everything from suicide threats to child abduction to terrorist activity," each of which takes "immediate priority" over copyright infringement cases.

AT&T has said this week that all equipment-supply constraints it has for its data network updates should end by August.

Says Operations CEO John Stankey: "It's been a slow process to build capacity...Hopefully, it should be back to normal," after the summer.

AT&T has been actively trying to improve its coverage in key markets in New York and California, but says a lack of cellular radio components and zoning issues has led to a very slow effort in the regions.

The constraint issue has "bottomed" says Stankey, and should improve from here.

For New York at least, dropped calls for consumers using 3G fell 9 percent, but in California, progress has "lagged."

Supply issues have come mainly from Chinese component makers, which was compounded last month by the volcano eruption in Iceland that shut down flights for a number of days.

In January, Eastman Kodak said it was suing smartphone makers RIM and Apple for patent violations relating to the cameras used in BlackBerrys and the iPhone.

In April, Apple countersued Kodak , accusing the film pioneer of violating two digital photography patents that Apple owns.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) has said this week that it will investigate into the countersuit, after agreeing to investigate into Kodak's claims earlier this year.

The two patents specifically noted in the suit are patents 6,031,964 and RE38,911, which are "a system and method for using a unified memory architecture to implement a digital camera device," and a "modular digital image processing via an image processing chain with modifiable parameter controls."

The decision by the ITC is not a surprise as it, in most cases, accepts complaints from major corporations. The dispute can take up to years to be resolved, however.

Skype, the extremely popular multi-platform VoIP company has said this week that it does not intend to create any software for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system, at least not currently.

"Instead, [Skype] is concentrating on development around the iPhone, Symbian and Android operating systems," says David Richards, via SmartHouse. "[Although] Dan Neary, [Skype's] Asia Pacific VP was hesitant to explain why no development was taking place for the new Windows Mobile offering, he did say [Skype] was developing new offerings for the iPhone, iPad and Android based phones."

That being said, the report is not an official renouncement, but just a current snapshot of the development status of different Skype applications.

Regardless, it seems the Windows Phone 7 is having some issues with developer support, as just recently Mozilla announced it would not be building Firefox Mobile for the OS.

Google has announced that it will be shutting down the Nexus One web store, just months after it launched to little fanfare.

The online store offered the smartphone for sale, while showing off all its specs and giving a virtual tour of the device. The company concedes that consumers want to be able to see and touch smartphones before they buy, however, so the web store has remained a "niche channel for early adopters."

The search giant also says consumers also want a wide range of service plans to chose from, which were not offered via the store.

As of this week, Google will begin making the smartphone available in "more countries," and available in retail stores.

Once the model is spread worldwide, "we'll stop selling handsets via the web store, and will instead use it as an online store window to showcase a variety of Android phones available globally."

Google Voice, the new beta service that allows users to have their voicemails transcribed and sent as emails as well as send free text messages, is now open, "priority" status, to students with valid .edu email addresses.

It has been hard to get invites to the service so far, but if you are a student, you get one within 24 hours.

Head over to google.com/voice/students and enter an email address that that ends in .edu, and you get the invite within 24 hours. (I tried it, it works)

The service is only available in the U.S., and I recommend that if you get it, and own an Android phone, get the free app from the market, it makes the service a lot more handy.

You can check out all the videos on the service here: youtube.com/googlevoice

According to Google CEO Eric Schmidt, 65,000 smartphones running the Android operating system are shipped everyday now, showing continued strong growth for the OS which launched in late 2008.

The OS is used on 34 different mobile devices in 50 countries, he adds.

"It looks like Android is going to be either the number one or number two player" in the smartphone market, Schmidt said during the shareholders meeting.

Schmidt also adds that the 65,000 figure may be conservatively low: "Our partners are shipping about 65,000 Android handsets per day but if you check the blogosphere you'll discover there are some reports that that number might be quite low."

Major rival Apple, which only sells one smartphone (the iPhone), had about 8.75 million units sold in the last quarter, so the 65,000 a day figure would put the two companies almost on par.

Nintendo this week has filed another lawsuit against an online retailer that continues to sell R4 flash carts.

Flash carts are used to run homebrew and other legal features on the Nintendo DS and DSi handhelds, but also allow for the easy playback of pirated ROMs.

Just last month, Nintendo blamed piracy for a massive 50 percent drop in software sales in Europe.

The suit was filed against NXPGAME, which has continued selling the devices and ignored all cease-and-desist letters from Nintendo.

The owners behind NXPGAME previously shut down their site and stopped selling the R4, but then within weeks had set up an "identical business at a different website address," redirecting old traffic to the new site.

Wal-Mart is set to begin selling the Apple iPad in 2010 in the U.S., says one of the company's executives.

"We anticipate being able to have the iPad later this year," says Gary Severson, senior vice president of entertainment for Wal-Mart’s U.S. stores.

The exec would not provide any timetable, however, or whether they would offer a discount off the MSRP.

In the past month, Apple has sold 1 million iPads, its strongest new product launch.

So far, the device is only available through Apple directly or at Best Buy brick-and-mortar stores.

The Wi-Fi/16GB version of the iPad is available for $499, and the most expensive, the 3G/Wi-Fi/64GB version, sells for $829 USD.

Adobe has taken an interesting new route in their ongoing feud with Apple, starting a new ad campaign highlighting the company's "love" for the electronics giant.

The full page ads ran in giant newspapers such as The NY Times and the Wall Street Journal and is accompanied by a site, promoting Adobe's message.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has called Adobe's Flash technology outdated and unreliable, and has practically banned it from their "i" devices. Jobs also adds that Flash was designed for desktops using a mouse, and not appropriate for small, touchscreen devices.

The ad is only 82 words, and starts with: "We love creativity," "We love innovation," "We love apps," and finishes with: "What we don't love is anybody taking away your freedom to choose what you create, how you create it, and what you experience on the Web."

According to the latest NPD figures, U.S. video game sales crumbled in April, with hardware falling 37 percent year-on-year and software falling 22 percent.

The overall 26 percent decline was the fourth largest such collapse since the turn of the century.

Sales fell to $766.2 million USD, after regularly topping $1 billion.

The Nintendo Wii remained the top-selling home console for the month, despite sales falling. The Xbox 360 came in second, just beating out the PS3.

Sales of the DS/DSi handheld fell over 50 percent to 440,800, but the console was still the clear winner for the month.

"The portable side of the industry contributed more than its fair share to the industry decline," added NPD analyst Anita Frazier.

The full hardware sales figures:

DS – 440,800
Wii – 277,200
Xbox 360 – 185,450
PS3 – 180,800
PSP – 65,500

Sony, along with their quarterly earnings, has revealed the sales figures for their gaming consoles.

Overall sales were down 10.2 percent for the fiscal year ended March 2010, but the PlayStation 3 was up significantly, from 10.3 to 13 million.

The overall decrease can be attributed to the fall of the PSP handheld and the aging PlayStation 2.

PSP sales were down large from 14 million to 9.9 million and the PlayStation 2 fell marginally from 7.9 million to 7.3 million.

The company reported an operating loss of $889.1 million USD for the year, slightly down from the $900 million+ loss last year.

Software sales on the PS3 jumped to 115.3 million from 103.7 million last year, while PS2 game sales collapsed to 35.7 million from 83.5 million. PSP game title sales fell as well from 50.3 million to 44.4 million.

Sony has announced today that the PlayStation 3 hardware is finally profitable, and the company expects its game business to be profitable for the year as well.

"The game business achieved a profit in the fourth quarter due to strong sales of first-party software and the elimination of negative margins on the PS3," adds Nobuyuki Oneda, Sony's new chief financial officer.

The fourth quarter ended March 31st, 2010.

The hardware had been sold for less than cost since its release in November 2006, and high manufacturing costs made the console a continued money loser until just recently.

In late 2009, Sony released a "Slim" version of the PS3, which has more streamlined internals, and a cheaper price tag which led to an increase in sales. Manufacturing costs continue to fall as well, and it appears that Sony will reap the benefits of a profitable fiscal year.

For the fiscal year ended March 31st, Sony lost almost $900 million USD for their games division. That will change this year. "For this year we expect to be able to generate at least double-digit profits," adds Oneda, via BusinessWeek.

Paramount has announced today that they are recalling the very popular Saving Private Ryan Blu-ray, due to an unexpected audio glitch.

The movie sold 100,000 copies last week, and was the second-best selling Blu-ray for the week, behind Avatar, which continues to see strong sales.

The glitch occurs in Chapter 15 of the special edition Blu-ray, and Paramount blames the problem on a botched authoring process by vendor Technicolor.

The film went on sale on May 4th and the problem discs were sold in North America, the UK and Benelux territories.

Paramount has pulled all the current inventory from retail shelves and anyone who purchased the disc last week can request a replacement here: (888) 370-8621.

The German top court has ruled this week that Internet users must password-protect their Wi-Fi, or face a fine if someone accesses their connection and then downloads music or movies illegally.

Those with unsecured connections face up to a 100 euro fine if "a third party takes advantage" and is then caught doing so.

"Private users are obligated to check whether their wireless connection is adequately secured to the danger of unauthorized third parties abusing it to commit copyright violation," reads the court decision.

With that being said, the court did say the users were not responsible for the illegal content downloaded by those accessing their unsecured connections.

Additionally, the court said users would only be expected to add a password when they first set up their router, and not need to constantly update to the latest protections as they become available.

The ruling followed a lawsuit filed by a musician who sued an individual user for illegally downloading his music. The user proved he was away on vacation when the music was downloaded, but did admit he had unsecured Wi-Fi.

In April, Google announced the addition of "drag-and-drop" attachment support, giving users a chance to drag attachments from their respective folders right into an email or message without the need to hit the "attach file" button.

Today, the search giant has expanded that feature to include images, letting you drag in the image to any email or message right from any folder on your computer.

Additionally, it allows for resizing.

For now the attachment support feature works in Chrome and Firefox but the image support only works in Chrome.

Blockbuster, which has over 6000 "Express" kiosks, has announced that they are expanding to Kwik Trip convenience stores starting this week.

The Express kiosks will now be placed in 300 of the convenience stores in Iowa, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

NCR, the company which operates the kiosks, says it hopes to expand to 10,000 kiosks in operation by July, in an effort to compete against RedBox, which has over 25,000 kiosks currently operating across the nation.

A few months ago, Blockbuster acquired small kiosk maker DVDPlay, allowing for an expansion into the west coast, most notably in California, Denver and Chicago.

In March, the rental company announced it had reached a deal with Warner Bros. to have new Warner releases available for rental day-and-day with release date, and a full 28 days before rivals Redbox and Netflix get them. That deal does not expand to the Express kiosks, however.

The once-extremely popular file sharing service LimeWire has been found liable of copyright infringement today in a 4-year-old lawsuit brought against them by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) threatening to put the final nail in the company's coffin.

U.S. District Judge Kimba M. Wood noted that users of LimeWire perform "a substantial amount of copyright infringement" and that LimeWire "has not taken meaningful steps to mitigate infringement."

The RIAA's lawsuit was seeking up to $150,000 USD per infringement, and the suit alleged that 93 percent of LimeWire's traffic was unauthorized file sharing. At its peak, LimeWire had 50 million unique users.

Adds the RIAA (via Wired): "LimeWire is one of the largest remaining commercial peer-to-peer services. Unlike other P2P services that negotiated licenses, imposed filters or otherwise chose to discontinue their illegal conduct following the Supreme Court’s decision in the Grokster case, LimeWire instead thumbed its nose at the law and creators."

Samsung has said they plan to invest $21 billion USD into new businesses such as solar cells, LED tech and even bio-pharmaceuticals.

The statement adds that the investment will help develop five new businesses for the company, add 45,000 jobs, and add $40 billion in additional revenue by 2020.

"Governments around the world are now investing in green industries to address the issues of depleting energy resources and the protection of our planet’s environment, which present pressing challenges to the global community," Samsung added in their prepared statement.

About 25 percent of the investment will be for solar cells "using crystalline silicon technology and thin film technology." Another 20 percent will be invested in rechargeable batteries for hybrid vehicles. An even larger chunk, around 35 percent, will be invested in LED technology ranging from TV back-lights to outdoor lighting.

The rest will be split between bio-pharmaceuticals and electronic healthcare equipment, says Samsung, which is currently a leader in the HDTV, mobile phone and chip markets.

The Hollywood Reporter has reported today that producers of the recent Best Picture winning film "The Hurt Locker" are preparing to sue thousands of alleged pirates, and that the case could be filed as soon as this week.

The U.S. Copyright Group, which has sued tens of thousands of alleged torrent users this year, has teamed up with Voltage Pictures, the team behind the movie, and the filing is said to include "tens of thousands (of pirates), if not more."

The movie was leaked to the Internet, in full DVD quality, about 6 months before its nationwide release in the U.S. Despite winning Best Picture, the film only grossed $17 million USD.

When filed, the plaintiffs must subpoena ISP records, and lawyers for the U.S Copyright Group say 75 percent of ISPs asked have cooperated in doing so.

Back in April, the Group sued 50,000 users, and says that over 40 percent have already settled with no cases going to court.

Google has announced that it will give YouTube fans a chance to share their videos with more privacy, offering "private" and now "unlisted" options alongside the standard "public" option.

For "private," you can invite up to 25 friends to view the video, and that is it. Unless you have been invited, you cannot view the video.

The new "unlisted" feature gives you the chance to remain "semi-private," by keeping the video not indexed in the YouTube search engine or on the user's personal channel. Anyone who has the link can watch the video, and they can share it as well, so your video will spread almost literally by "word of mouth."

That being said, the options should be welcomed by YouTube users that would like to keep their videos private, or private to a degree.

Read the full blog post here: YouTube Blog

In early March, Apple sued rival smartphone maker HTC over violation of patents related to the iPhone, accusing HTC of infringing on up to 20 patents relating to the popular smartphone's hardware and user interface.

Today, HTC has counter-sued, claiming that Apple is infringing on five of their own patents.

The device maker is asking the International Trade Commission (ITC) to halt all sales and import of the Apple iPhone 3G/S, iPad and iPod Touch.

Says HTC in a press statement: "As the innovator of the original Windows Mobile PocketPC Phone Edition in 2002 and the first Android smartphone in 2008, HTC believes the industry should be driven by healthy competition and innovation that offer consumers the best, most accessible mobile experiences possible. We are taking this action against Apple to protect our intellectual property, our industry partners, and most importantly our customers that use HTC phones."

Top movie rental company Netflix has quietly begun offering HD streaming of its "Watch Instantly" streaming service for PC and Mac users, many months after it made HD streaming available to console and set-top box users.

Computer users, however, have had to stick with plain old SD streams, which is probably okay if you are watching on a monitor but discouraged users that wanted to connect their media servers to an HDTV and save on having to purchase a set-top box or console.

So far it seems the titles available for HD streaming is limited, but GL says it should be about half of all streams soon.

If you are unsure the movie you want is available for HD streaming on the PC, hover the mouse over the cover art and check if it says "HD Available."

As with HD streams through set-top boxes like Roku and the PS3, HD is only available up to 720p.

Facebook, the second most viewed website in the United States, has increasingly seen criticism for the way it handles privacy matters and today the new setting changes have been deemed "unacceptable" by EU data protection authorities.

The authority, the Article 29 Working Party wrote in a letter that the new changes are "detrimental to the user."

The default settings, changed in the last month, made it so every user is searchable by search engines, even if the user does not explicitly sign off on it.

Third party applications can also take data from the profiles and use it to bring more personalized ads, but the group says that also should be explicitly signed off on by the user.

Finally, the group says "that it would breach data protection law if they use personal data contained on an individual profile page for commercial purposes without consent."

Microsoft has announced that the Office 2010 suite, the latest in the long line of the popular word processing bundle, is now available online and in stores.

New to the 2010 version is the addition of Office Web apps, which are free for consumers to use online, allowing for saved files in the cloud as well as collaboration and sharing.

Says Stephen Elop, president of Microsoft's business division: "Along with Office 2010, Microsoft also released the SharePoint 2010 collaboration suite. Office 2010 and SharePoint 2010 define the future of productivity. With the 2010 set of products, organizations will save, innovate, and grow as their people benefit from working across the PC, phone, and browser."

Additionally to the Web apps are new broadcast capabilities for PowerPoint, auto-preview for Word and "Sparklines" for Excel which can "generate trend visualization graphics."

Microsoft has been actively promoting the Web apps as it competes with Google for cloud-based word processing. Google Docs is actively used by millions of users.

AndroidPolice has posted a full report on the performance of the Google Nexus One running the upcoming Android 2.2, which has yet to be released to the public but has been tested by a developer from the site, Ian Douglas.

All the features of 2.2 will be revealed at the May 19th I/O conference, but so far all we know is that it will have Flash 10.1 built-in. Additionally, we know it has a new home screen.

To test the performance of the device running 2.2, Police is using a tool called Linpack. As the authors of the program could explain it better than I ever could, here is their description of the tool: "The LINPACK Benchmarks are a measure of a system’s floating point computing power. Introduced by Jack Dongarra, they measure how fast a computer solves a dense N by N system of linear equations Ax = b, which is a common task in engineering. The solution is obtained by Gaussian elimination with partial pivoting, with 2/3*N3 + 2*N2 floating point operations. The result is reported in Millions of FLoating-point Operations Per Second (MFLOP/s, sometimes simply called FLOPS). Read more...

Film streaming service Blinkbox has announced the release of a PS3 platform that will use the console's browser and optimizes the system's controllers.

Gamers in the UK can download the films for 99p each, and TV episodes can be downloaded for 39p. To purchase the films for keeps costs £2.99.

"The PS3 is the first of a number of devices to which we will be bringing Blinkbox, enabling customers to use our service on their TVs for instant streaming of new blockbuster movies - available on the same day as their release on DVD - as well as a growing library of free ad-supported titles," adds CEO Michael Comish. "As a console owner myself, I knew that fellow gamers wanted access to the very largest selection of movies for instant viewing, and did not want to lose valuable hard-drive space or have to wait for their downloads."

The Blinkbox webpage automatically resizes for all TV sizes.

Blinkbox has some very new films available currently, such as Avatar, the Hangover and Sherlock Holmes. You can check the site here: http://www.blinkbox.com/

Rumored in the past, the Xbox 360 Project Natal motion-sensing camera has been confirmed for an October release, this time by Microsoft Saudi marketing manager Syed Bilal Tariq.

The official release date was expected to be unveiled at the E3 event next month.

GamertagRadio was interviewing the manager and asked when the device would hit Saudi Arabia. He responded that it would be available on the same day as the North American and EU launches.

Says Tariq: "It is going to be somewhere in October and we will be in a position to confirm the date at E3, which is in June, but definitely it is going to be October 2010."

Microsoft has always said an "autumn launch" was the time frame for the release but strayed away from an actual date.

Natal is still the codename for the device which is expected to have its final consumer name revealed at E3.

Google has announced new features added to Google Maps for Android today, with the latest update adding biking directions, a Navigation shortcut right from the homescreen and the ability to share places with friends instantly.

The update, version 4.2, is available now through the Android Market.

Biking Directions:


Biking directions give users the ability to see bike-only trails, roads with lanes, or roads that are at least accessible to bikers. There is also a terrain layer, so you can see when that huge hill is coming.

Google Navigation shortcut


Pretty straight forward, but the Navigation shortcut gives users the ability to get right into the Navigation feature of Maps. Hit the icon, speak or type your destination (or pick one from your contacts) and voila! you are ready to go.

Sharing

From the Navigation search results page, "share this place" is the last feature. You can share the info of where you are going with one tap to anyone you want. If you want to bring people to you, you can take a snapshot of your current location using the "My Location" dot or "Latitude." You can even tweet it.

Kaleidescape has announced the launch of its new M500 and M300 Blu-ray players.

The more expensive player gives users the ability to rip Blu-ray discs (as well as DVDs and CDs) to your home server, which "can then be played back instantly by M500 and M300 Players, creating the world's first multi-zone movie server for Blu-ray."

Because the studios would not have ever signed off on it otherwise, the original Blu-ray disc must remain in the drive to playback the ripped content from the server, but it will save your drive's laser.

The company says it is "developing a disc loader which will keep a large number of discs present within the Kaleidescape system. It will also provide bulk import, and make it easy to find and retrieve a disc."

Adds Michael Malcolm, Kaleidescape's founder, chairman and CEO: "We have invested a great amount of time and resources in developing the M-Class architecture, which is our platform for future innovation. We now have the tools to improve our world-renowned user experience and offer an even greater variety of content."

Yesterday, we reported that the latest NPD figures showed the Android operating system had finally overtaken the iPhone for the number two spot in the U.S. smartphone market share, taking 28 percent in the latest quarter.

RIM's BlackBerry OS remains the clear leader at 36 percent, with the iPhone OS in third place at 21 percent for the Q1 2010.

Today, Apple has responded, saying that the NPD figures are limited and not important anyways, as Apple leads in global market share.

Says spokesperson Natalie Harrison: "This is a very limited report on 150,000 US consumers responding to an online survey and does not account for the more than 85 million iPhone and iPod touch customers worldwide...IDC figures show that iPhone has 16.1 percent of the smartphone market and growing, far outselling Android on a worldwide basis. We had a record quarter with iPhone sales growing by 131 percent and with our new iPhone OS 4.0 software coming this summer, we see no signs of the competition catching up anytime soon."

According to ComputerWorld, an advertising firm called Landor Associates is currently working on an ad campaign for the upcoming iPhone HD, except not for AT&T, but instead for Verizon.

For the last three years, the iPhone in the United States has been exclusively on AT&T and it was reported this week that Apple had signed a 5-year pact originally in 2007 that would keep the two companies exclusive until 2012.

Landor has done all of Verizon's branding since 2007, and the new rumor is that the latest big ad campaign will be to promote the iPhone HD, set for a June launch.

The campaign will likely go side-by-side with a TV campaign from Apple's current iPhone agency TBWA.

The rumored phone will add a front-facing camera for video conferencing, a better standard camera (including larger lens and flash), a Micro-SIM slot (just like the iPad), 960x640 resolution, a second mic, metallic exterior (not plastic) and split side buttons for volume as well as a completely new form factor.

Thanks to a picture posted on Flickr (originally in Korean here), it appears that 3D gaming is headed to the Xbox 360 sometime in the near future, with Microsoft and LG entering into a "strategic" partnership.

The companies have signed a Memorandum of Understanding for Marketing (MOU) and will jointly market the upcoming product.

Buyers of the LED 3D HDTV models 55LX9500 and 47LX9500 will get a couple of Xbox 360 3D games, although it is unclear what those games may be.

Says Microsoft America of the new partnership: "3D games are available today on Xbox 360 and will continue to evolve. Today, you can buy a 3DTV and wear glasses to play games like Avatar and "Batman: Arkham Asylum." The promotional partnership with LG announced in South Korea today is specific to the South Korean market, but is further evidence that as 3D adoption grows, Xbox 360 will support 3D games and entertainment."

According to the latest Business Software Alliance (BSA) report, pirates cost software companies over $50 billion USD in 2009, with Asian nations accounting for a large amount of those losses.

Despite increases in anti-piracy efforts, 43 percent of all software being used on computers right now is pirated, up from 41 percent in 2008, reads the report.

Globally, losses mounted to $51.4 billion, with a whopping $16.5 billion coming from the Asia-Pacific region.

Overall, the BSA says the increase in piracy is thanks to the strong growth of PC owners in India, China and Brazil.

Victor Lim, a VP at IDC (which jointly carried out the study with the BSA) says that despite pirates software rates falling in 54 nations, it rose or stayed neutral in 57. Piracy rate in the Asia-Pacific territories was 59 percent, meaning that of of the 900 million pieces of commercial software installed in 2009, 530 million were unlicensed.

"This study makes clear that while efforts to bring down piracy levels in the Asia-Pacific are enjoying some success, dollar losses at over 16.5 billion (dollars) remain the highest in the world," adds Jeffrey Hardee, BSA's vice president and regional director. "This is unacceptable and there is still much to be done to engage governments, businesses and consumers on the risks and impact of software piracy."

NEC has announced today that its video content identification technology will be supported in the upcoming MPEG-7 video standard, meaning content owners that release videos with the standard can "detect illegal copies" uploaded to the Internet almost instantly.

The company says each frame has its own unique signature, meaning that doing any editing to the file or analog or camera copies will completely alter the overall signature of the original video.

NEC says "these developments are expected to significantly reduce the time and cost of manual content inspections as well as improve the scale and accuracy of content assessment."

Among the features of the video content identification technology are:

Accurate detection of copied or altered video content
Video signatures are extracted for each frame based on differences in the luminance between sets of sub-regions on a frame that are defined by a variety of locations, sizes, and shapes. Video signatures represent a unique fingerprint that can be individually detected frame by frame. This technology is capable of accurately detecting video content with that was created with such editing operations as analog capturing (*3), re-encoding (*4) and caption overlay (*5), which was conventionally very difficult to detect.

The creator of the extremely popular show American Idol, Simon Fuller, has seen his roster of artists hit a new iTunes milestone, 160 million songs downloaded.

Fuller's artist management company 19 Entertainment said some of the more famous artists in the group are idol winners Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood and former and present British singers The Spice Girls and Annie Lennox.

"He is without question the biggest manager of the digital age," says Fred Bronson, author of "The Billboard Book of Number One Hits."

Fuller had teamed up with iTunes right at the start, in 2003 when legal digital music was still in its infancy. "I felt there was a real synergy with what I do, which is launching new artists and TV shows, and what iTunes does, which is to sell music in an immediate and interactive way," Fuller added via Reuters.

Engadget has reported today that Apple and AT&T originally signed a five-year exclusivity pact in 2007 with the launch of the original iPhone, although it is unclear whether that deal is still in effect, just three years later.

The site found the official details out after reading a 2008 court filing by Apple, although a USAToday report made it clear in 2007 that AT&T was the exclusive distributor of the phone in the United States. Verizon also passed on the original deal.

The filing was necessary because Apple and AT&T were the subject of a class-action lawsuit filed in 2007, which claimed that the carrier had a monopoly over iPhone customers, since after their contract expired, they could not jump to another carrier, as the handset was locked down.

Nilay Patel of Engadget says the real question may be whether the deal is still in effect, or been reworked since 2008: "Contracts can be canceled, amended, and breached in many ways, and AT&T's spotty recent service history plus the explosion of the iPhone and the mobile market in general have given Apple any number of reasons to revisit the deal. In addition, the two companies obviously hit the negotiating table again to hammer out the iPad's pricing plans, and there's no way of knowing whether that deal involves the iPhone as well."

According to the latest NPD figures, the Android operating system has finally overtaken the iPhone for the number two spot in the U.S. smartphone market share, taking 28 percent in the latest quarter.

RIM's BlackBerry OS remains the clear leader at 36 percent, with the iPhone OS in third place at 21 percent for the Q1 2010.

"As in the past, carrier distribution and promotion have played a crucial role in determining smartphone market share," adds Ross Rubin, executive director of industry analysis for NPD. "In order to compete with the iPhone, Verizon Wireless has expanded its buy-one-get-one offer beyond RIM devices to now include all of their smartphones."

Some of the prominent phones to be used in the BOGO promotions were the Motorola Droid and the BlackBerry Curve, both strong sellers.

Overall, AT&T subscribers accounted for 32 percent of all smartphone sales with Verizon close behind at 30 percent.

Adds Rubin: "Recent previews of BlackBerry 6, the recently announced acquisition of Palm by HP, and the pending release of Windows Phone 7 demonstrates the industry’s willingness to make investments to address consumer demand for smartphones and other mobile devices. Carriers continue to offer attractive pricing for devices, but will need to present other data-plan options to attract more customers in the future."

Vodafone, Orange and O2 have all priced their iPad 3G data plans, with each offering micro-SIM cards, now.

O2 offers the following price tiers:

500MB per day- £2.00
1GB per month- £10.00
3GB per month- £15.00

Orange offers the following pricing:

200MB per day- £2.00
1GB per week- £7.50
3GB per month- £15.00
10GB per month- £25.00

Vodafone is the only to offer unlimited, and offers the following:

1GB per month- £10.00
Unlimited per month- £25.00

Additionally, Orange and O2 offer unlimited Wi-Fi through "BT Openzone" hotspots.

The iPad will go on sale in the UK on May 28th and will cost £429 for the basic model (Wi-Fi, 16GB) and £699 for the 3G/Wi-Fi/64GB model.

Nokia, which announced two months ago it was beginning a "Design by Community" project to create a new phone, has said this week that the project is almost completed, with fans finishing voting on what they want the most in the new smartphone device.

By the end of the month, Nokia designers will have turned out some mockups of the upcoming device.

UnwiredView says fans voted and decided that the phone would be the following: "10mm thin monoblock made out of aluminum. Its features should include: a 4 inch capacitive touchscreen display, open source operating system, unlimited multitasking, Wi-Fi 802.11 n/b/g, USB 3.0, HDMI, Dolby surround sound, and an 8MP camera with 4X optical zoom, dual LED and Xenon flash, and HD video recording."

Twitter users, especially those that had gained a large following over the years, were shocked earlier today when their number of followers was reset to 0.

While the numbers were back to normal soon, the reset had to be done to kill off a bug that was being exploited to force celebrities to "follow" anybody who was using the bug.

"We identified and resolved a bug that permitted a user to "force" other users to follow them. We're now working to rollback all abuse of the bug that took place," said the company in a blog post.

Fortunately, adds the company, the glitch did not make private tweets public.

The extremely easy glitch involved tweeting the term "accept (whoever)" and then refreshing. Suddenly, Ashton Kutcher or whoever else you wanted was your fan.

UK citizen Paul Chambers has been convicted this week of sending a 'menacing' tweet via Twitter, with the British Court fining him £1000 and slapping him with a criminal record.

In early January, the airport in South Yorkshire was closed due to excessive snow and Chambers was so mad that he wrote: "Crap! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s*** together otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!"

Airport security officials saw the tweet and then passed on the complaint to the local authorities.

Chambers lost his job after being arrested, and appears to be the first person to ever be convicted of a crime just for tweeting.

Although the tweet was a joke, the Doncaster Magistrates' Court found Chambers guilty of sending threatening messages and therefore imposed the steep fine.

Chambers says he is considering an appeal, as the criminal record jeopardizes his chances of securing a new job.

According to Nintendo's latest financials, the Wii console has topped 70 million units sold worldwide, seeing 20.53 million sales in the fiscal year ended March 31st, 2010.

The number, 70.93 million, is good for about 49 percent of the home console market, with rivals Xbox 360 and PS3 controlling 27 and 24 percent, respectively.

For the year, sales of the Wii hardware jumped in Japan to 2.38 million from 2.06 million, but sales in the Americas fell drastically from 12.93 million to 9.86 million. In the EU and other nations, sales fell from 10.96 million to 8.30 million.

Overall, software sales decreased, but "million-seller titles" jumped from 54 to 79.

Software sales fell from 204.58 million to 191.81 million, with sales only rising in Japan.

Apple has filed trademarks today for iTunes Live, which implies that the company is getting ready to increase its current live music offerings via the iTunes platform.

So far, Apple has offered a lot of live performances pre-recorded at Apple Stores around the globe (such as NY, LA, London, Montreal, Tokyo and Munich).

TechCrunch says the trademark is filed under two classes:

- Online retail store services in the field of entertainment featuring prerecorded musical, audio and audiovisual content

- Entertainment services, namely, arranging and conducting of concerts and live musical performances

While the trademark could be nothing, chances are there are more live performances coming in the near future to the most popular music download platform in the world.

Motorola Milestone owners in the UK have finally gotten their long-awaited Android 2.1 update this weekend, weeks after American DROID owners got the update.

2.1, or "eclair" brings some notable features, such as Speech-to-text, live wallpapers (as seen on the Nexus One), and nine home pages for all those users who have tons of apps.

Reads the Facebook post: UK Milestone owners - At last, the 2.1 upgrade rolls out today. Thank you for your patience and we hope you enjoy enhancements such Speech to Text, live wallpapers, up to 9 home screens, and added security for exchange server users. The update is available now via PC download from Motorola Direct.

If you do not want to download the update manually, it should be available OTA over the course of this week.

Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates have become the first three countries to get Internet addresses in non-Latin characters, being approved in Arabic this week by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN).

Registrations for websites using the new domains will start soon, and Egypt has already given approval to three companies to use the new Arabic suffix.

"Introducing Arabic domain names is a milestone in Internet history,"says Egyptian Communication and Information Technology Minister Tarek Kamel said in a statement. "This great step will open up new horizons for e-services in Egypt as well as boosting the number of online users and enabling Internet service providers to enter new markets by eliminating language barriers."

Until the recent decision, all websites had to end with ".com" or ".org" among other strings using Latin characters, which could get confusing for nations with no familiarity with the characters.

In late April, Sony was sued in California over its recent firmware update that removed the "OtherOS" feature of the PlayStation 3, a feature that had allowed for the installation of Linux on an HDD partition.

This week, two more class action lawsuits have been filed against the company, one in Georgia and the other in California.

Both cases claim that Sony has made features consumers paid for "inoperable" with the release of firmware version 3.21. The firmware update is "voluntary," but those that do not cannot sign into the PlayStation Network, or play their games online.

Both suits also state that Sony did not properly disclose that they reserved the right to remove built-in features, and that any removal of the "OtherOS" feature was not disclosed in the PS3 TOS, or SSLA (System Software License Agreement).

Late last month iPhone Dev Team member "planetbeing" posted a video showing off a huge accomplishment, the Android OS running on a first-gen iPhone.

This week, "planetbeing" has released a new video, with Android running on the iPhone 3G, giving a lot more iPhone owners the chance to try dual-booting multiple operating systems.

The hacker uses OpeniBoot to boot either the iPhone OS or Android, but he does admit that rebooting is slow "because the NAND and FTL (flash translation layer) drivers aren't optimized yet."

While Wi-Fi, SMS, MMS and other apps work perfectly with Android, the phone loses its "phone" capabilities as audio still does not work through the port. "Planetbeing" says that is currently being worked on, as it is obviously one of the most important parts of having a phone, the ability to make phone calls.

Says the hacker, via DailyTech: "With their help (other developers) I'm sure we'll be able to bring the system to production quality before too long."

One week after computer maker HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm for $1.2 billion in cash, we reported that the company was removing Windows 7 from its much-hyped Slate tablet, instead choosing to use a WebOS variant.

This weekend, "industry insiders" have noted that a WebOS-based tablet dubbed the HP Hurricane is set for release in the Q3 2010.

Says one analyst of the Slate, Paul Mueller, via The Examiner: "It is a really interesting device, but runs as slow as a turtle. I think they could have had something with a faster processor, but that would have led to less battery life than the Slate already had."

Apple and Japanese carrier Softbank have made a deal today that will bring the popular iPad tablet to Japan starting May 28th.

Softbank is third-largest mobile carrier in the nation, and the company says it will begin taking pre-orders on Monday.

The basic Wi-Fi/16GB model will cost 48960 yen which is about $535 USD.

Softbank has been selling the Apple iPhone since 2008, and hopes the Apple products will help it win subscribers against the nation's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo.

Apple announced this weekend that the iPad was going international, headed to nine new nations including Japan.

The iPad saw 450,000 sales on its launch day, and recently announced 1 million unit sales. Additionally, 15 million apps have already been downloaded from the iPad App Store, as well as almost 2 million e-books from the iBookStore.

Borders, the large book retailer has launched its $150 Kobo e-reader, and started taking pre-orders today.

The device will ship on June 17th, and will tie into Border's upcoming e-book store.

The Kobo is a bare-bones e-reader, and does not include Wi-Fi or 3G connectivity. The device has a 6-inch e-ink display, just like the Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook, but the screen has only 8 levels of gray, not 16 like its rivals.

However, the Kobo does have Bluetooth connectivity and 1GB of internal memory, with an SD slot as well.

Because the device is bare-bones, the price is its main selling point, and may be its only selling point as it is about $100 cheaper than the Kindle and Nook.

The Apple iPad, which includes e-reading capabilities and connection to the iBookStore recently just sold its millionth unit.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is writing a new alternative to Flash, dubbed Gianduia.

The technology was first introduced last summer and is being described as "a client-side, standards-based framework for rich Internet apps."

Apple has been using the tech in its retail support applications, including its "One to One" program, the iPhone reservation system and programs for the Genius Bar.

Gianduia makes sense for Apple, considering it has practically banned Adobe Flash from its "i" devices. The company says it will support HTML5, JavaScript and CSS instead.

Adobe, feeling spited by the move, has complained to the FTC, saying Apple's behavior in regards to Flash is in violation of anti-trust laws.

You can read more on the ongoing Apple vs. Adobe "battle" here: Apple vs. Adobe Round 2: Steve Jobs and Shantanu Narayen duke it out

19-year old Thor Morris, a surfer from North Carolina, was arrested last month after his plans to hack dozens of ATM machines was undone by undercover FBI agents.

Morris was arrested after traveling to Houston in an attempt to steal about $300,000 from 35 different ATMs.

FBI agent Karen Ann Marinos said the suspect "planned to use a confidential operator's manual to reprogram a specific brand of ATM so that the machine would issue $20 for every $1 requested."

In an attempt to remain anonymous, Morris purchased a $400 "Walmart Green Dot PrePaid card," which would then be used to withdraw the money from each of the hacked machines. Morris used the alias "Barack Obama" and wore a "Rick James Wig," using an unsecured wireless hotspot to activate the card.

The card was activated as Barack Obama, with a Washington, D.C. address of "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" to boot.

When Morris tried to re-program one of the machines in Houston, the FBI swooped in on him.

Read the full affidavit here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0504101atm1.html

The popular streaming music service Spotify, which continues to see a delayed launch for the United States, is headed to the Netherlands on May 18th.

Spotify is now available in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Finland and has been expected for the U.S. for months now.

CTO Paul Brown says they are currently looking to servers in the U.S., and a launch should be coming this year.

The news of the streaming company heading to Netherlands comes from Tobias Edström, newly minted manager for Spotify Netherlands who says: "I have been here since January working on the launch and searching for an office. Meanwhile my sales and account manager have also come over."

The Netherlands, while not densely populated (it has 17 million citizens) does have very high Internet penetration.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said this weekend that anti-piracy measures will be increased substantially for the upcoming 3DS handheld, with the company hoping to stop the widespread software piracy that has plagued the DS and DSi.

The console, which is set for launch at the E3 event next month, will include "3D" displays without the need for special glasses.

There is little other known about the console except that it will be released sometime before March 2011.

While he admitted that piracy is not as bad in the United States, in Europe and Asia it is rampant and has led to strong declines in software sales, especially in Europe.

Adds the president: "We fear a kind of thinking is become widespread that paying for software is meaningless. We have a strong sense of crisis about this problem."

Additionally, Iwata added that the 3D functions of the device could be "easily" turned off, so any worries that continued exposure to the 3D would have adverse effects on people's eyes are off base.

Nokia, the world's largest phone maker, has sued Apple again this week, this time over patent infringement related to the iPad 3G.

The five patents "involve technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations for compact devices."

Nokia and Apple are currently in a giant dispute over patents relating to the iPhone, and this latest suit is just the next step in a battle that should continue for years as the two companies fight over smartphone market share.

"We've taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia's innovation," sasy Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia, via the BBC.

Nokia adds that over the last twenty years they have spent $50 billion USD on R&D, and collected 11,000 patents.

Apple has announced that starting on May 28th, the popular iPad tablet will be headed to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

In the UK, the device will cost £429 for the basic model (Wi-Fi, 16GB) and £699 for the 3G/Wi-Fi/64GB model.

The iPad saw 450,000 sales on its launch day, and recently announced 1 million unit sales. Additionally, 15 million apps have already been downloaded from the iPad App Store, as well as almost 2 million e-books from the iBookStore.

International would-be buyers can pre-order starting next week.

The prices, at least in the UK, are much more expensive then comparable U.S. pricing, but Apple says it is due to VAT, and higher transport costs.

You can read the full pricing list here: Apple reveals UK iPad prices

The company will release the iPad in 9 more nations in July as well: Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore.

Warner Bros., which pioneered the Red2Blu program last year, has started a new DVD2Blu program, making it cheap for DVD owners to upgrade or start their Blu-ray collections.

If you own one of the 91 Warner DVDs listed, you can send in your DVD along with $5-7 and the company will send you back the Blu-ray version.

The pros of the deal are you get to upgrade to Blu for cheap, but the cons are Warner says turnaround can be up to 8 weeks, and there are shipping charges if you don't send in over 7 movies.

A few of the most popular movies are expected to be Dark City: Director's Cut, the Ocean's trilogy, The Departed, V for Vendetta and a few others although the selection is not by any means "great."

The Red2Blu program allowed users to trade in their HD-DVD movies for Blu-rays at a discounted price.

You can check the full selection here: http://www.dvd2blu.com/products.html

Analysis firm comScore has released the latest mobile subscriber market share numbers, for the month ended March 31st, 2010.

At the end of the period, there were 234 million Americans with mobile phones, with the most popular manufacturer, by fractions, being Samsung at 21.92 percent.

In second place was Motorola with 21.9 percent, and LG just as close behind with 21.8 percent.

Rounding out the top 5 was RIM at 8.3 percent and Nokia at the same percentage. Apple, with only one phone available, came in sixth at 5 percent.

As for top carriers, Verizon led the way at 31.1 percent, AT&T came in second at 25.2 percent, and Sprint and T-Mobile tied for third at 12 percent. Tracfone rounded out the top 5 with 5.1 percent, seeing the biggest growth of all the carriers.

Just weeks after Motorola Co-CEO Greg Brown said the company was going to start making acquisitions and return to growth after years of lagging, it appears the mobile phone maker has purchased mobile OS maker Azingo.

The acquisition was spotted through a LinkedIn profile and the company makes an OS called Azingo Mobile 2.0, which is based on a Linux variant.

Although you have probably never heard of Azingo (I know I hadn't), the OS has a Webkit-based browser, runtime, Flash runtime and full developer tools.

The move is backed by comments by Co-CEO Sanjay Jha, who said recently that the company was looking into owning and running their own operating system: "I’ve always felt that owning your OS is important, provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the leading edge. And I continue to believe that at some point, if we have all of those attributes, that owning our own OS will be a very important thing."

Market research firm Changewave has released their recent survey results today, which reveals that over half of current Verizon subscribers would trade in their phone for an Apple iPhone if it was available on the carrier.

The company polled 4000 mobile phone users.

Of those polled with Verizon subs, 19 percent said they would "very likely" purchase a Verizon iPhone, while another 34 percent would "somewhat likely" purchase the device.

For T-Mobile users, only 11 percent said they would "very likely" buy the device with 28 percent saying "somewhat likely."

The numbers were similar for Sprint, with 11 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

"The survey results show an unprecedented level of pent up demand for the iPhone among Verizon subscribers," adds the survey. "If Verizon were ever to offer the iPhone… [it would have] a profound and likely transformational impact on the industry."

Pic via Mashable:

TouchArcade has posted a video today of a gamer playing Super Nintendo (SNES) on the Apple iPad while using the Wii-mote as a remote control.

The app, snes4iphone, costs $5.99 from the jailbroken app store, Cydia, and the ROMs for games, such as "Super Mario World," as shown in the video, have to be supplied by the gamer.

The iPad was jailbroken this week, with hundreds of apps already submitted to Cydia.

Version 7.0 of snes4iphone must be downloaded, as it allows for Wiimote support on the iPad.

Microsoft has decided this week to take down its 4200 public and private support newsgroups, beginning the clean out on June 1st.

All users of the newsgroups will be pushed to the Microsoft Forums, where they can get support from Microsoft Answers, MSDN and TechNet.

Says the software giant: "Newsgroups run on an outdated and discontinued platform that is no longer supported, making them vulnerable to spam and other usability issues. As a result of our continuous investment in community and the rise of social media, growth in our forums has been consistently increasing since their launch."

Traffic to the newsgroups has fallen 48 percent in the last year, and the company says it will close down the least-used groups first, moving its way to the most popular ones at the end. On the other hand, the Microsoft Forums have grown by 12 percent each month, and now total 15 million visits per month.

"Moving to forums aligns the end user experience with current market trends, reduces the number of redundant support resources with centralized, searchable content, allows users to identify content contributors across forums, and makes contributions more broadly available and impactful," adds an MS spokesperson. "Forums are also moderated by Microsoft to ensure content is accurate and to encourage richer conversations."

RapidShare has announced this week that an appeals court in Germany has ruled in favor of the file sharing site, saying it could not be found liable for distribution of unauthorized files, and that forcing the company to filter all uploads would "produce too many false positives."

The court ruled in their favor because the company does not make uploaded files publicly available, and the uploaders themselves have control of who sees the links.

In 2008, a different court ruled against the sharing site, saying they were currently not doing enough to combat copyright infringement and that the filter system employed was ineffective.

If that decision had stood, RapidShare would have had to log IP addresses, and "proactively check content before publishing it."

Adds Christian Schmid, founder of RapidShare: "We are very happy about the judgment. The court has confirmed that RapidShare is not responsible for the contents of files uploaded by its users. The judgment shows that attempts to denounce our business model as illegal will not be successful in the long run. With its 1-click-filehosting model, RapidShare responds to legitimate interests of its users and will continue to do so in the future."

SanDisk has announced that it has begun shipping 'official' Xbox 360 USB drives, giving gamers a place to backup their game saves, gamertags, map packs and Arcade game downloads.

The company says the USB drive is "pre-configured for seamless plug and play action," eliminating the need for gamers to take the extra step of formatting their own drives and downloading the initial 360 software update.

Additionally, all drives come with a free one-month membership to Xbox Live Gold.

"Xbox LIVE contains a world of content for gamers to explore and download, including full-length games, movies and music," says Shuki Nir, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Retail, SanDisk. "The Xbox 360 USB Flash Drive by SanDisk is specifically engineered to deliver a great user experience and maximum compatibility with the console, offering gamers greater freedom and flexibility in how they store, manage and enjoy their favorite files."

ZedoMax did a review this week of a new Android tablet (un-branded), and the device, using firmware 2.1, can run Adobe Flash and Air "flawlessly."

The prototype was readily available at the Web 2.0 Expo show, and showed one of the glaring differences between upcoming Android tablets and the Apple iPad which does not support Flash in any form, as the company is pushing HTML5 instead.

An Adobe spokesperson said there will be a "flood" of Android tablets hitting the market in November, although it is unclear what companies are manufacturing them.

Engadget got in contact with Nvidia, who confirmed that the tablet is using a Tegra 2 chip, which helps greatly with the "flawless" Adobe performances. "It is indeed Tegra 2. We worked closely with Adobe to show how next-gen Tegra can bring the complete web to tablets at Web 2.0. You can expect to start seeing Tegra 2 devices appearing this summer, with plenty on the way in the third and fourth quarters of the year."

The high end smartphone Xperia X10 by Sony Ericsson, which disappointed would-be buyers when it launched with the outdated Android firmware version 1.6 will finally get Android 2.1 in the Q4 2010, says the mobile phone maker.

While this may sound like good news, Android 2.2 (Froyo) should already be readily available by then, so the X10 will remain outdated.

Coming with 2.1 for the X10 are "HD video recording, Wireless home connectivity via DLNA and improvements to signature applications Timescape and Mediascape to make them even smarter and richer."

Unfortunately, there was no mention of multi-touch in the update.

Additionally, the company says the Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro will get the update to 2.1 at the same time, sometime after October.

According to some digging by MacRumors, the iPhone OS 4 should allow for 720p video recording support, including video capture, editing and conferencing.

The latest beta SDK shows the update, which allows for a much higher resolution than currently available (640x480).

Macrumors shows the new preset values found in the SDK, which read:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640x480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280x720

The upcoming iPhone 4G/HD will have a 5MP camera, but it was unclear what kind of video capabilities the hardware was capable of.

The new phone is expected to launch in late June.

For more information on the leaked phone, check here: Gizmodo reveals upcoming iPhone model

Skype has announced today that it has started new subscription plans that will allow for cheaper calls to the United States from over 170 countries, with plans starting as low as $1.09 per month.

The expected most popular package is the one that includes unlimited calls to U.S. and Canadian mobile and landlines which costs $2.95 per month. U.S. buyers can get unlimited calls to landlines in 39 other countries for $6 a month. The most expensive package is $12.95 per month and gets you unlimited calls to 40 countries including the U.S.

To get the cheap $1.09 a month plans, users have to select packages that allow calls to only one country. Packages to allow calls to certain regions, like "Western Europe," are also available.

Subscriptions can be purchased monthly, for three months, or for a year, with automatic renewals.

All subscriptions come with voicemail and call forwarding and can be purchased with credit cards, PayPal or bank transfers.

Although the packages say "unlimited," there are some restrictions, as Skype allows only 10,000 minutes per month, or a maximum of six hours per day.

You can view the countries and the restrictions here: http://www.skype.com/legal/terms/fair_usage/

Microsoft has finally priced their KIN smartphones today, as well as confirmed that they will be released on May 13th, with tomorrow as the first day to pre-order the device from carrier Verizon.

The KIN One will sell for $50 with contract, and the KIN Two will sell for $100 with contract, entry-level prices for smartphones, but a bit more expensive than most expected.

For both phones, you will need to send in a $100 rebate.

The Verizon plans for the phones start at $40 for the voice and an extra $30 for the unlimited data plans.

Kin One:


- Has a compact full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 5MP camera with LED flash
- 4GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

Kin Two:


- Full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 8MP camera with LED flash, HD video recording
- 8GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

Wal-Mart has begun selling the Nintendo Wii console for $179 USD, a discount off the $199 price tag.

Additionally, the console comes with a free game, one of 13 top-sellers, most of which still retail for over $40 USD. Shipping is $7 unless you ship the item to a store, which is free pickup.

The games listed are: Animal Crossing: City Folk, Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2010 w/ Gun (Wii), EA Sports Active (Wii), Just Dance (Wii), Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii), Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii), Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii), Mario Party 8 (Wii), Mario Super Sluggers (Wii), New Super Mario Bros. (Wii), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii), Wii Music (Wii) and Wii Sports Resort with Wii MotionPlus (Wii).

Lars O'Mara, an 18-year-old senior at Panhandle HS has been arrested after planting a fake "bomb" in the school's bathroom.

The "bomb" was just an original Game Boy handheld, an old cell phone, and a bunch of wires.

Another student alerted the police after seeing the device taped underneath a sink, and the school was quickly evacuated.

The police say O'Mara admitted to the hoax, and did so to "gain popularity and get people out of class."

The student now faces felony charges of manufacturing a hoax explosive device.

According to Canalys, smartphone shipments worldwide continue to grow at explosive rates, with Q1 2010 shipments reaching 55 million, a full 67 percent year-on-year growth.

Nokia, which has a strong presence in Europe, had the largest share of the pie, at 38.8 percent, or 21,429,680 units shipped. YoY the company saw 56.6 growth in shipments.

In second place, with a very strong presence in the U.S., was RIM at 10,589,260 units shipped, a 45 percent growth YoY, and good for 19.2 percent of the market.

In third, with the largest growth was Apple, which jumped 130.8 percent to 8.72 million units shipped, good for 15.9 percent of the market.

Rounding out the top 5 are HTC and Motorola with 5.1 and 4.7 percent of the market, respectively. "Others," including LG, Samsung, Sony and others account for the remaining 16.3 percent.

Just a day after sources said it was set to happen, the popular ABC iPad app has been updated to support streaming 3G, giving users a chance to stream their videos on-the-go.

Version 1.1.1004 is the latest version now available in the Apple App Store.

The update was submitted a week ago as the iPad 3G was set for release last Friday.

The ABC app was at times the top free app available, and is currently number 5 in the iPad App Store.

Among the new features are:

- 3G streaming (requires a 3G capable device)
- Landscape orientation support for all screens
- Support for the iPad's orientation lock
- Updated player controls that are more responsive
- Improved display of parental ratings
- Numerous other bug fixes and stability enhancements

It is still unclear what kind of bandwidth restrictions AT&T has imposed on streaming via 3G, but reportedly the video streams will be capped at 64 Kb/s, strongly degrading quality.

Google has said today that the upcoming Chrome beta is the fastest and most efficient yet, seeing a 30 percent increase in the V8 benchmark and 35 percent in the SunSpider benchmark test.

Over the years, Chrome's performance has jumped 213 and 305 percent, respectively, on the benchmark tests. (see the picture)

Users of the latest beta can synchronize their bookmarks on multiple computers as well as browser preferences such as homepage/startup settings, language and themes.

Additionally, you can also now install and use Chrome extensions in "incognito" mode.

Finally, the beta release "contains the goodness of some new HTML5 features, namely Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop capabilities. Additionally, this is the first Chrome beta that features initial integration of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in with Chrome, so that you can browse a rich, dynamic web with added security and stability -- you’ll automatically receive security and feature updates for Flash Player with Chrome’s auto-update mechanism."

You can download the beta here: https://www.afterdawn.com/software/network/browsers/google_chrome.cfm

On Thursday, Nintendo will report its earnings for the fiscal year ended March 31st, and for the first time since 2004, its profit is expected to be lower than the previous year's.

The company says it expects a profit of 230 billion yen ($2.42 billion USD), down from their record fiscal 2009 where the company made 279 billion yen ($2.94 billion USD).

Nintendo blamed the lowered profits on a strong yen last year, and the price cut on the Wii console last October, from $250 to $200 USD.

Analysts had expected a full fiscal year profit of 229 billion yen.

The company is also expecting to have sold 20 million Wii units and 30 million DS/DSi during the period, but some analysts seem to think they are sandbagging. "We are expecting the results to be better than the company forecasts for the Wii," notes Yuta Sakurai of Nomura Securities. "Christmas shopping was strong."

According to a breaking new WSJ article, search giant Google will begin selling e-books in late June, setting up a showdown between themselves and Apple and Amazon, who are currently the major players in the e-book market with their Kindle and iBook stores.

Word of the launch comes from Chris Palma, Google's manager for strategic-partner development, today at a Google panel sponsored by the Book Industry Study Group. The panel was called: "The Book on Google: Is the Future of Publishing in the Cloud?"

Google has said they want to begin distributing e-books for over a year now, but there was never a set timetable. Where it will differentiate from Amazon and Apple is that it will "allow users to access books from a broad range of sites using multiple devices."

The new service will be called Google Editions, and will integrated into Google's massive books search service, which currently offers some scanned titles for free or previews for others with links to buy the physical copy.

The Songwriters Guild of America has made it clear with a note this weekend, via Ars, that music piracy is worse than bank robbery, and that the FBI should begin prosecuting all file-sharers civilly and criminally.

"There are numerous economic crimes of much lesser magnitude (such as bank robbery) that are routinely and fully investigated, for which law enforcement agencies such as the FBI have significant resources," says the SGA. "By contrast, online copyright piracy dwarfs bank robbery in causing economic losses, yet the FBI has limited criminal investigative interest and no civil mandate whatsoever to pursue this devastating economic harm. This inequity must change."

The Guild goes on to say that the DOJ (Department of Justice) needs to class illegal file-sharing as a "serious" crime. "Unfortunately, this misguided attitude allows domestic and foreign pirates to decimate an industry—intellectual property—where the United States enjoys a true global competitive advantage," they add.

Additionally, the SGA says that the federal government should immediately begin bringing civil copyright lawsuits against offenders. Currently, any lawsuits against illegal file-sharers come from the private sector.

Sony has announced the launch of an extended warranty program for PlayStation 3 and PSP owners dubbed the PlayStation Protection Program.

Using the service you can extend your factory warranty to up to three years, with the first additional year (for the PS3) costing $45. To save money, a two year extension is just $60. Both consoles start with a one-year manufacturers warranty.

For the PSP, the warranty extension is even cheaper, at $30 for the first year or $40 for two years. Additionally, since handheld consoles are very prone to drops and accidents, Sony is offering accidental damage waiver for an additional $10 on the warranty. In two years, if you happen to drop your PSP down a flight of stairs and then accidentally step on it, Sony will replace it.

Says Sony: "The PlayStation brand has long been synonymous with the highest quality in engineering and design, and it's because of the reliability of the PS3 and PSP systems that we can offer the PlayStation Protection Plan. We have heard from consumers that they're interested in an extended service plan that's backed directly by SCEA and leverages our technical expertise. While both the PS3 and PSP systems are designed with future-proof technology and built for long lifecycles, we're looking forward to offering this service to consumers looking for added peace of mind."

Last month, Netflix announced it was sending out Wii streaming discs to all that signed up for them, giving Nintendo console owners a chance to watch movies and TV shows from Netflix's "Watch Instantly" collection through their console.

Yesterday, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that almost one million Wii owners have now "participated" in the service, but it is unclear how many of those remain active, and how many of those just ordered the disc without ever expecting to use the service.

Netflix, during its last earnings report stated that it has about 14 million subscribers in the U.S., a number that has been greatly boosted by making the streaming service readily available to PS3, Xbox 360 and now Wii owners.

Samsung has announced the breakdown of which operating systems will be used on their upcoming smartphones, with Android being the clear winner.

The company said 50 percent of all new smartphones will come with the open source Android, the operating system that has been quickly growing in popularity since Google released it in late 2008.

Of the remaining share, 33 percent will use the Bada OS, Samsung's own new operating system, which had its first SDK released in December.

"Customer response for bada-based smartphones is very strong," adds Samsung.

It is unclear what operating system or systems will use up the last 17 percent, but the educated guess is Windows Phone 7.

Twitter will launch "embeddable" tweets starting Tuesday, allowing users to easily embed any tweet within a web document.

To date, trying to reproduce a quotable tweet is not an easy task, with the only options being either taking a screenshot and posting the image, or copying the quote and pasting it on your own HTML page. The first doesn't allow for Google and other search engines to index the tweet and the latter leaves out relevant info such as a member's name or avatar.

With the new feature, users can take a quick "snippet" of code that will include the author's name, links, avatar and a panel that allows you to head back to the original author's page.

You can view the Twitter blog post here: http://media.twitter.com/392/tweets-quotes

And an example of the embed (all links work in the original):

ABC's extremely popular streaming app for the iPad is set to get updated very soon, bringing 3G support. Currently the app only supports streaming movies and TV shows when connected to Wi-Fi.

The app was submitted to the App Store, pending approval in the past 10 days, and it should get approval soon.

The ABC app was at times the top free app available, and is currently number 6 in the iPad App Store.

While the Wi-Fi-only version was not a problem during the first weeks when the only iPad version available was Wi-Fi-only, Apple has since released a 3G-supporting version and most users take their device on the go. Wi-Fi is not always available when walking the streets.

AppAdvice says that "ABC didn't include a lower-quality, backup streaming capability in the first version of its app," because of its love for HD-quality streaming, as seen for example on ABC.com.

Despite the fact that they had already slashed prices on the Palm Pre Plus to very low prices, Verizon has dropped the price on the smartphone again, this time to $30 USD.

Additionally, the Plus comes with free Mobile Hotspot (formerly $30-a-month) and a BOGO (buy-one-get-one-free) option as well.

That's right, so little people want the Palm smartphone that it is being offered at 2 for $30 with free Mobile Hotspot. The Palm Pixi Plus, the little brother of the Pre, is priced at the same point currently but expect the price to drop to $9.99 or lower in the very near future.

Recently, HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker for $1.2 billion in cash, including assuming Palm's debt.

In Mid-April, Microsoft announced that it was releasing its formerly dubbed 'Pink' phones the Kin One and Kin Two, aimed at the teenager set.

Today, reports are stating that the phones go on pre-order this Thursday, with a May 13th release day.

Microsoft has not confirmed the dates, but the reports stem from leaked Verizon posters showing off the dates, so they seem pretty set in stone.

The phones will be available in the U.S. via Verizon and in the UL, Italy, Spain and Germany via Vodafone.

The Kin One specs:

- Has a compact full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 5MP camera with LED flash
- 4GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

The Kin Two specs:

- Full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 8MP camera with LED flash, HD video recording
- 8GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

Apple has announced today that on Friday the company sold its 1 millionth iPad tablet, just one month after its release.

The iPad, in its Wi-Fi-only version, was released on April 3rd, and quickly sold over 300,000 units.

Additionally, iPad owners have downloaded 12 million apps from the App Store, and over 1.5 million e-books from the newly launched iBookStore.

"One million iPads in 28 days—that’s less than half of the 74 days it took to achieve this milestone with iPhone," says CEO Steve Jobs. "Demand continues to exceed supply and we’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more customers."

Developers have created 5000 apps specifically for the iPad, with some of the most popular being legal streaming movie and TV show services such as Netflix.

Users of older Android devices such as the T-Mobile G1 and even newer devices like the Motorola Droid have always complained about the lack of available room for apps downloaded from the Android Market.

Droid users, for example only get 256MB of space, and G1 users much less.

When the company launched the Nexus One, engineers said they were working on a solution, and it appears finally that an official "Apps2SD," the feature found in all rooted ROMs is on the way, giving users almost unlimited (who can possibly fill an 8GB microSD card with apps?) amount of room for their apps, and freeing up internal memory.

Issue 1151 in the Android Code page now says "future release" after months of saying "assigned." The engineer who changed the note, San, had the following to say:

Promised for the "near future" in early March, it appears that Android handsets on the Sprint network will finally receive the 2.1 firmware update.

XDA Developers revealed the screenshot today, a memo leaked from Sprint itself.

The memo says the Samsung Moment will get the update this weekend and the HTC Hero will get it in the next week.

A leaked Best Buy Mobile memo seems to point to the Hero update coming next week as well but seeing is believing in this situation.

The updates will not be OTA as they are both pretty large (80MB and 117MB respectively) so it seems like they will have to be downloaded manually.

Movie Gallery, the parent behind the once popular video rental chain Hollywood Video has announced today that they will close all 2415 remaining U.S. stores, liquidating all inventory and the stores over the next few months.

The company is currently in Chapter 11 bankruptcy, for the second time since 2007.

There are 184 Hollywood Video chains that remain in Canada, and it is unclear whether they will be shut down.

The worst part of the news may be that Movie Gallery had 19,000 employees when they filed for bankruptcy, meaning at least 15,000 more people will be laid off soon from their jobs, depending on how many employees still remain since the bankruptcy filing.

The company is the second largest brick-and-mortar rental chain in the U.S. behind Blockbuster (which is struggling as well). Redbox and Netflix continue to strive, without the need for physical store.

As Apple and Adobe continue to fight over the positive or negative affects of Flash in the mobile universe, browser maker Skyfire has released Skyfire 2.0 for Android, which has pseudo-Flash support giving "access to Flash videos on a web page that otherwise would not play."

The company has said it is creating an iPhone version, that it hopes to submit to the App Store later in the year.

When we say pseduo-Flash support, we really mean it. When the browser identifies any Flash content in a web page, it sends that content to Skyfire's cloud servers which then converts it to HTML5 on-the-fly and streams it back in that format.

Apple has so far refused to allow Flash on "i" devices and at this point has said support is never coming. Skyfire says the cloud support allows for "faster and smoother video playback and extended battery life by off-loading more of the work to cloud servers."

While Android is way more open in terms of Flash than the iPhone OS, Android smartphone users will not see OS-level support of the format until the release of firmware 2.2 (Froyo), which is expected later this year. Skyfire could help those who do not want to wait.

Less than a week after computer maker HP agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm $1.2 billion in cash, sources are noting that it will be removing Windows 7 from the Slate tablet, instead choosing to use a WebOS variant, arguably the best smartphone operating system available.

Sources say HP was not happy with the overall performance of Windows 7 on their unreleased tablet, saying the OS was too power-hungry. Additionally, a Windows 7 license will bring up the price of any final Slate product, and now that HP owns WebOS, the move makes sense.

TechCrunch says also that HP is set to drop the Intel processor used in the tablet, which would completely kill off any chance of Windows 7 being used.

The Slate, in its original state, would have run on Windows 7, would have been $549 at its cheapest, and had an 8.9-inch 1024x600 multi-touch screen. Additionally, the tablet had a 1.6GHz Atom Z530 processor, 1GB RAM, SDHC slot (with support up to 128GB), two cameras, a USB port, a SIM card slot, and five-hour battery life.

In just the next step in the ongoing battle between Adobe and Apple, the former company has decided to give away free smartphones running the Android operating system to its employees.

Although the company hasn't decided on which phone to give away, it is expected it will begin distributing the high-end HTC Incredible.

Adobe additionally announced that it will demo a version of Flash for Android in May, at the Google I/O conference.

The point of the free phones, (which are not mandatory) is a way to give employees more time to practice using Android, as well as Flash Player 10.1.

Google also said that all attendees of the I/O conference will be given either a Motorola Droid or a Nexus One.

According to the latest figures from NetApplications, Google's Chrome browser continues to take market share at a rapid pace, and should be on pace to surpass the 10 percent milestone by the end of the year.

The browser has been out for 19 months, and has no marketing campaign, yet continues to steal share from leaders Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox.

Additionally, Safari continues to take share as well, albeit at a slower pace.

Chrome jumped to 6.73 percent share, from 6.1 percent last month, while Internet Explorer fell to 59.95 and Firefox remained about flat at 24.59 percent. Safari jumped marginally to 4.72 percent.

IE continues to fall since its peak in 2003, when the browser was used by 93 percent of those connected to the Internet. Google and NetApplications have said they expect Chrome to have anywhere between 8.5-10 percent share by the end of 2010.