BGR has posted an open letter from a high-level RIM executive, one that touches on the conditions within the company as its share price, morale and brand reputation all fall to multi-year lows.
The letter in itself is kind of long, but a must read if you have been following the fall of RIM from grace starting in 2008 with the launch of the iPhone 3G and the start of Android.
In his letter, the exec posts a number of "bullet points" on what the company should do in the short-term that will lead to long-term results for the smartphone maker.
Afterwards, I have posted RIM's official response to the letter, which comes off as weak. It is clear the top executives are comfortable with their plan for the future, which practically calls the last 3 years a "transitory period" and little else.
A few numbers to keep in mind before reading:
- RIM's stock price has fallen to $28.80 a share, down from their all-time high of $144 in June 2008.
- RIM's U.S. market share (its bread-and-butter market) has fallen from over 60 percent in 2007 to 21 percent, as of yesterday.
The letter:
To the RIM Senior Management Team:
I have lost confidence.
While I hide it at work, my passion has been sapped. I know I am not alone — the sentiment is widespread and it includes people within your own teams.
Read more...
There are now over 100,000 native iPad apps available in the Apple App Store, an impressive milestone for the tablet whose first generation model launched just 14 months ago.
By comparison, it took 16 months for the App Store to reach 100,000 apps after the launch of the iPhone.
Additionally, the figure is at least 100 times higher than Android's tablet-optimized Honeycomb which is said to have near 1000 native apps.
Apple announced earlier this year that 10 billion apps had been downloaded since July 2008, and the store now has over 350,000 apps.
The Android Market has 250,000 apps while RIM has 17,000. The quickly expanding Windows Marketplace has over 20,000 since its launch last November.
According to BI, the FTC is investigating into Twitter and how it deals with the many companies that build clients, services and apps for the platform.
The company began rolling out "official" services for its platform last year, getting into an area that was dominated by third-party apps like TweetDeck, TwitPic and bit.ly.
Nowadays, the official Twitter client is dominant, and the company has purchased up rival clients like TweetDeck, while shutting down others for various "offenses." The company also banned third-part ad services and fully redesigned the desktop version of Twitter so that video and photo sharing links did not re-direct away from the site.
The investigation may be a relief to entrepreneur Bill Gross, the founder of TweetUp. TweetUp was supposed to be a Twitter ad network, and Gross started buying up Twitter apps and services and even raised money to make a bid for TweetDeck, before Twitter outbid them. The company then shut down a few of Gross' apps for good measure.
Cisco has announced the price for its Cius tablet with the ambiguous "under $750" price point.
Adding to the confusion, the company says added options can bring the price to "below $700 for some customers."
The company will release the tablet on July 31st, coinciding with the end of their fiscal year. The device is aimed at corporate customers.
Cisco's 7-inch Cius will runs on Android 2.2 and weighs 1.5 lbs. Under the hood, the device has a very power-efficient Intel Atom Z615 chip at 1.2GHz.
The company has confirmed the device will be upgraded to Honeycomb but no timetable was provided.
Finally, the company has created "AppHQ" applications native for the Cius and says enterprise customers have shown interest. AppHQ will help "companies create private app storefronts where their employees will be able to find, publish and buy applications for business use," says CW. The store will also let IT managers have control over which Android Market applications can be installed on the device.
Speculation about the upcoming iPhone 5, its specs and its release date has begun to go rampant this month, with multiple analysts fueling the rumor flames.
Last week, Chris Whitmore of Deutsche Bank said he believed Apple would release a "mid-range" iPhone 4S (with pre-paid calling and data option) alongside its new iPhone 5.
Keith Bachman of BMO Capital says there will be no iPhone 5, just an iPhone 4S, which will be Apple's updated new smartphone.
Toni Sacconaghi of Sanford Bernstein notes that Apple needs to offer a cheaper a iPhone, in general, and could possibly do so this year.
Finally, Mike Abramsky of RBC Capital added to the fun this morning saying he expects Apple will drop the price of the iPhone 3GS to $0 with contract and the iPhone 4 to $99 with contract, when it rolls out the iPhone 5, whenever that is.
"While a $49 iPhone is already available (AT&T), psychologically a $0 iPhone provides a compelling offer," adds the analyst (via Barrons).
Abramsky also believes that Apple will release a smaller, pre-paid iPhone, as well, but sometime later in 2012.
AT&T has revealed the first ever "Facebook phone" this week, the HTC Status.
The device is dubbed so because it has its own Facebook button underneath the keypad which will give users a chance to use a deeply integrated Facebook app.
For example, if you are listening to music, by hitting the Facebook button you can instantly share what song you are playing, and same goes for Web browsing and pictures. Simply hit the button to share the site you are on or upload the picture you just took.
When a friend calls, you will see their Facebook picture and current status on the home screen.
HTC Status brings a Facebook experience to people who want to share their experiences with their friends faster and easier than ever before. With a dedicated Facebook share button combined with the hallmark HTC Sense experience, HTC Status makes it easy for people to stay connected to the things that are important to them.
The device itself will run on Android 2.3 with HTC Sense overlay, have a 2.6-inch touch screen with 480 x 320 resolution, 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM, dual-cameras and an 800MHz processor.
MySpace has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million, ending the failed News Corp. era for the social networking site.
Specific Media is a large Ad-targeting firm that should make use of MySpace's remaining traffic.
As part of the deal, News Corp will keep a small equity stake and CEO Mike Jones will step down within the month.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased the company for $580 million in 2005 and quickly saw it disintegrate. From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Initial reports had News Corp. wanting to keep a 20 percent stake but it appears now that Murdoch wants the struggling social network off his books by the end of the year and will keep a much smaller stake, perhaps under 5 percent.
The company put itself up for sale earlier this year asking for $100 million.
One analyst is very bearish on the future prospects of 3D movies.
Analyst Richard Greenfield of BTIG has sent a note to clients this week, urging them to begin to sell any shares they may have in RealD, the company behind the 3D tech seen in most movie theaters.
Greenfield believes that RealD's projection of "75 percent of movies in theaters being 3D" is completely "disconnected from reality" and impossible.
The analyst believes that "consumers will increasingly reject 3D" and ticket sales will fall.
A main problem Greenfield sees with 3D films is how dim they are, especially when adding in special glasses. It has even been reported that Paramount asked exhibitors to brighten up their projectors for Transformers 3, but given that the request will cost more for exhibitors, it is doubtful we will see brighter 3D movies anytime soon.
Hacktivist group 'Anonymous' has released data stolen from Viacom's computer networks as well as user data taken from a Universal Music Group affiliated website.
Furthermore, the group released data from various governments around the world.
The news comes just days after the LulzSec group posted its farewells, after 50 days of hacks that included multiple strikes on different Sony entities and the FBI, SOCA and other authorities.
LulzSec then moved to join Anonymous, with the combined group calling themselves "AntiSec," aimed at taking down "corrupt governments" and "corrupt" corporations, which they argue are all of them.
The group had faced some heat recently from other Web-based groups like "Web Ninjas" and "The Jester," each of which promised to reveal the personal details of the group just like the group did to many innocent users.
Sony CEO Howard Stringer came under intense scrutiny at the company's recent shareholder meeting, with the masses demanding he resign after three years straight of mounting losses.
The CEO of course did not resign, but did note that he took a 16 percent pay cut for the fiscal year, down to $4.27 million.
PlayStation boss Kaz Hirai, long expected to be Stringer's eventual successor, explained that the company's top priority is to reverse the losses in its TV business, which has now lost money for seven straight fiscal years with an anticipated eight straight next year. Sony's fiscal year ends on March 30th each year.
Despite taking the pay cut, Stringer was awarded about $3.5 million worth of Sony stock options, as his usual bonus.
The company posted a loss of $3.21 billion for the most recent fiscal year, mainly due to the tsunami and earthquake disaster in Japan in March. The hacker attacks on the PSN also cost the company $170 million, mainly thanks to security updates and compensation packages it offered afterwards. It is unclear how much revenue they lost in the weeks the service was forced offline.
Zynga, the social gaming behemoth, is filing for an IPO that will value the company at upwards of $20 billion, a new record for "social" media sites and a high for U.S.-based game companies.
The company is behind hits like CityVille, FarmVille, Live Hold Em Poker Pro and Empires & Allies, each of which have multi-millions of active users. CityVille, for example, has 88 million monthly users on Facebook and Zynga games have a total of 271 million active monthly users.
Last month, the professional social network LinkedIn IPO'd and saw huge gains its first day before falling 50 percent over the next three weeks. Having since recovered some, the company has an $8 billion market value despite never having seen a profit. Streaming music service Pandora IPO'd earlier this month and now has a $2.8 billion market value despite never having seen a profit, either.
Zynga is looking to raise about $1.5 billion with its IPO, which would value the company somewhere between $15-$20 billion, higher than Activision Blizzard ($13.26 billion) and Electronic Arts ($7.5 billion).
The company is insanely profitable, already, and made $400 million net profit on $850 million in revenue in 2010. Analysts expect the company to make around $500 million net profit on revenue of $1.5 billion in 2011. The company primarily makes money from the sale of virtual goods (upgraded farm equipment in FarmVille, millions of poker chips in Live Hold Em, etc) since their games are all free.
PayPal has confirmed this week that the service has reached 100 million active users.
Additionally, the company notes that it expects total payment volume for mobile payment transactions to double in 2011 to $3 billion.
The service adds around 1 million active users per month, apparently, as it finished 2010 with 94.4 million.
What PayPal did not elaborate on, is how many transactions need to be completed per month for the company to consider a user "active."
PayPal, purchased by eBay in 2002 for $1.5 billion, now accounts for 39 percent of the auction sites total revenue.
Mobile continues to be a big winner for the service, with the company reporting that 8 million users now actively use the transaction service from their mobile devices, up from 6 million just a few months ago.
Multiple sources are claiming that MySpace will fire 150 of its remaining 400 employees this week, as part of the deal to sell off the company.
One source even believes a few of the employees are eagerly awaiting their pink slips as "I think the management owes the employees severance because of the terrible management mistakes they presided over."
In January, the company laid off 550 employees in the U.S. and internationally, in an effort to cut costs and look more attractive to a buyer.
Since early 2009, the company has laid off 1500 employees.
The two companies looking to buy MySpace for $20-$30 million are Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, and Specific Media, an ad network.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. originally purchased the company for $580 million in 2005, back when Facebook was still in its infancy but traffic has begun to crater, with the service seeing a drop in traffic of 14 percent per month in 2011.
News Corp. is just about ready to part with the death spiraling social network MySpace, at a price at least 70 percent smaller than their asking price.
The two companies looking to buy MySpace for $20-$30 million are Golden Gate Capital, a private equity firm, and Specific Media, an ad network.
Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased the company for $580 million in 2005 and quickly saw it disintegrate. From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Initial reports had News Corp. wanting to keep a 20 percent stake but it appears now that Murdoch wants the struggling social network off his books by the end of the year.
The company put itself up for sale earlier this year asking for $100 million.
According to new figures from Pew Internet Research, e-reader ownership is moving at a blistering pace, outpacing tablets.
E-reader ownership among U.S. adults has jumped from 6 percent to 12 percent in the last six months, while tablets are now owned by 8 percent of U.S. adults, up from 7 percent six months ago.
The leading groups of e-reader ownership are, according to RWW: "Hispanic adults, adults younger than the age of 65, parents of children below the age of 18, college graduates and households with and income of at least $75,000."
Pew's survey was for the period started November 2010 and ended May 2011.
The growth can certainly be explained by the pricing difference between a tablet and an e-reader, with most tablets priced at or around $500 and e-readers priced down as low as $114 but with an average of $140.
The company will update the software making it impossible to downgrade the firmware, says the iPhone Dev Team, the group behind many successful jailbreaks and unlocks.
Members of the iPhone Dev Team saw the change in a recent unlocked developer's version of iOS 5.
For current iPhones/iPod Touch, if you want to restore your device to an earlier firmware, you can use SHSH blobs which timestamp specific times and allow for third-party apps to restore the device.
In the new iOS, the group says "Apple will re-assign your phone a new SHSH blob each time your reboot your device in jailbreak mode, making saved blobs irrelevant since Apple can just reject ones that were saved."
We made money [online] before piracy was real crazy. Nobody's making money now except phone companies, Apple and Google...It's like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There's no boundaries.
Prince is known for his sometimes insane critical statements about the Internet and piracy, going as far as to call the Web "outdated" and "unhip" last year. The artist even took down a popular video from YouTube in which a toddler lip syncs one of his tracks just because his song played in the background and no one paid any royalties.
The artist even added that he was headed to the White House to talk about copyright protection.
ZDnet is reporting that Microsoft may be pushing up its Windows 8 timetable, with an RTM for April 2012, at least a few months earlier than anticipated.
The original plan was for Microsoft to RTM Windows 8 in the early Q3 2012, after betas and RCs. Additionally, Windows 8 for x86, Windows 8 for ARM and Windows 8 Server were also supposed to see similar release dates.
Citing trusted sources, it appears that Microsoft is making a lot of headway and can actually have all versions ready by April 2012.
A full beta will be released in September, in time for the Build conference, with a final RC available for testing in January.
Microsoft's Windows 8 will be optimized for tablets and touch interfaces and include built-in integration with Skype, Zune, Xbox Live and other Microsoft assets.
Capcom has taken a stab at killing the used game market this week with the release of Resident Evil: Mercenaries 3D for the Nintendo 3DS.
The manual for the game specifically states that "saved data on this software cannot be reset," meaning once the game has been finished, the save file cannot be reset to play again from scratch.
It appears that some retailers in Japan will only buy the game back for $6 (it sells brand new MSRP at $40) given Capcom's move.
Time will tell if the anti-consumer ploy will pay off in sales.
According to BGR, who leaked details of an upcoming Nexus device last month, the phone may be called "Nexus Prime" and be manufactured by Samsung.
The smartphone will be the first to run on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which should mix the best aspects of Android 2.3 Gingerbread, Android 3.0 Honeycomb and Google TV.
For specs, the device will feature a 1.5GHz dual-core processor (either an OMAP 4460 or brand new 28nm Snapdragon) and have a SuperAMOLED display, a hallmark of Samsung phones.
Furthermore, the device will be the first to move completely to softkeys, removing all physical menu/home/back buttons.
Adding to the "magic" of the new phone is an LTE radio, 1GB RAM, 1080pHD video support and capture, a 1MP front-side camera and a 5MP standard camera with an "advanced 5-megapixel sensor delivering class-leading image quality in addition to superior low-light performance."
Hulu has reached a tentative deal to renew its rights with Disney, says sources speaking to Bloomberg.
Disney is a co-owner of Hulu, alongside News Corp and NBC.
News Corp. recently signed a new agreement with Hulu and Disney's is expected to be almost identical.
Recently, it came to light that there are potential bidders for the site, including Yahoo, and that the Board of Directors may be willing to sell the company. By having its main components re-signed, Hulu is more attractive to any buyer.
According to the latest figures from comScore, the Apple iPad remains the only relevant tablet, accounting for 99.3 percent of all tablet traffic in the world.
The figures also show Android with a measly 0.6 percent share of traffic and the RIM PlayBook at the remaining 0.1.
Acer, Motorola, RIM and Samsung have all downgraded their tablet shipment expectations for the year while Apple sold 4.69 million tablets in the last quarter, alone.
Apple may face increasing competition, however, when HP releases their TouchPad, running on webOS, later this month, and Microsoft begins rolling out Windows 8 tablets next year.
For now, it appears that the iPad is the only tablet in the world that really matters.
Last June, AT&T confirmed that 114,067 iPad 3G owners had their email information leaked to the Web, with the data being stolen by a group calling themselves Goatse Security.
The group then published the emails, which included prominent politicians, celebrities and even military officials.
Earlier this week, Daniel Spitler pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to computers connected to the Internet and one count of identity theft.
At sentencing, the hacker is facing up to 10 years in prison and $500,000 in fines but will likely see fractions of those maximums.
Adds U.S. Attorney Paul J. Fishman in a statement:
Computer hackers are exacting an increasing toll on our society, damaging individuals and organizations to gain notoriety for themselves. Hacks have serious implications – from the personal devastation of a stolen identity to danger to our national security. In the wake of other recent hacking attacks by loose-knit organizations like Anonymous and LulzSec, Daniel Spitler's guilty plea is a timely reminder of the consequences of treating criminal activity as a competitive sport.
A few of the most notable emails breached were New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson, Diane Sawyer of ABC News, film mogul Harvey Weinstein, NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg and White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel.
Read more...
Turntable.fm has noted today that licensing issues have forced the start-up to block international users from trying the popular social music listening and discovery service.
The site, which requires a Facebook login, lets you "DJ" in a room with other DJ's while others listen on and up or down vote the track. The higher the votes, the more points you get, and credibility, etc.
Included is chat, music uploading and playlists as well as a selection of music already uploaded by other users.
The site has exploded to 140,000 members in a very short time, with venture capitalists beginning to show interest.
Anyone who is interested in a fantastic service, try it here: Turntable.fm
TechUnwrapped has reported today that infamous jailbreaker George 'Geohot' Hotz is now working at Facebook, following his Sony lawsuit.
Earlier this year, Hotz was sued by Sony after the jailbreaker created a custom firmware for the PS3 using a root key.
The custom firmware allowed users to run homebrew and Linux on their devices and Hotz condemned all types of piracy, even blocking it with his firmware. Regardless, Sony was not a fan and took the teen to court.
Hotz and Sony settled after a meaningless trial, and Hotz is no longer able to have a PSN account or ever modify any Sony devices.
The "confirmation" of Hotz' new day job comes via a Facebook post by the jailbreaker in where he says: "Facebook is really an amazing place to work…first hackathon over."
Furthermore, Joshua Hill of the Chronic-Dev Team confirms it via a video:
Foursquare has raised $50 million more in a new round of funding, and the company says it will use that cash to expand internationally and build new products.
The "check-in" social networking app has just surpassed 10 million registered users.
Says CEO Dennis Crowley:
The thing that's most exciting is that we think we're inventing the future here a bit.We're doing things nobody has really done before, and to be able to raise this amount of capital will really allow us to look at the white board and accomplish the goals we have written up there -- things we've been wanting to do for awhile now.
Additionally, the company has just closed on their first major partnership, with credit card company American Express. The partnership will let users get discounts on their monthly statements when they check-in at select retailers and then use their card.
The Foursquare Merchant Platform is used by more than 400,000 merchants, and there's a lot more room to grow there. About 50 percent of our users are coming from outside of the U.S., and we believe there's a lot of room to grow there too. Right now we're seeing a lot of traction in Brazil, a little bit in India and Russia, and we want to keep that going.
LulzSec, the group behind many high-profile hacks in the past two months, has published their last release, and appear to be sailing off into the sunset.
The group has faced some heat recently from other Web-based groups like "Web Ninjas" and "The Jester," each of which promised to reveal the personal details of the group just like the group did to many innocent users.
FTC anti-trust regulators in the U.S. have given Apple approval to buy assets from the bankrupt telecom Nortel Networks.
Intel, Apple, Google and Ericsson have all expressed interest in the over 6000 patents in Nortel's portfolio and each is expected to be granted approval within the week.
Begging on Monday, all patents head to auction and will be sold.
The patents cover a wide range of topics from wireless, data and optical networking, voice, Internet and semiconductors, says Reuters.
Apple and Google will likely be strong bidders for 4G and LTE technologies, while Intel will be interested in the semiconductor patents.
Google's $900 million "stalking horse" opening bid has been approved and will be the starting point for the auction on Monday.
The trade group, which is backed by record labels, has been pushing the government to impose stricter rules to protect IP rights in the U.S and other countries and has also been opposing a proposal that would force mobile phone makers to include FM radio chips in all handsets.
Two quarters ago, the RIAA spent $1.5 million lobbying and $1.4 million in the corresponding quarter last year.
In 2010, the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) proposed the FM chip mandate but has been met with extreme resistance, especially from the Consumer Electronics Association (backed by device makers) who believes adding the chip will just add unneeded weight and cost to devices for a feature many users will not care about.
Electronic Arts (EA) has announced today that user accounts have been breached and data like passwords and mailing addresses have been compromised.
The attack hit a server for developer BioWare, which is owned by EA.
Hackers got in through a backdoor using the 10-year old "Neverwinter Nights" user forums.
Although the compromised data is from BioWare, EA warns that your personal data with EA Games may have been stolen, as well.
EA did make it very clear that no financial data was compromised, but encrypted passwords, names, CD keys, addresses and phone numbers were all stolen. If you have a BioWare or EA Games account, it is prudent to go and change your password as soon as possible.
We take the security of your information very seriously and regret any inconvenience this may have caused you. If your username, email address and/or password on your EA account are similar to those you use on other sites, we recommend changing the password at those sites as well. We advise all of our fans to always be aware of any suspicious emails or account activity and report any suspicious emails and account activity to Customer Support at 1-877-357-6007.
If you have purchased an Android smartphone in the last year, chances are you have been stuck with a device that comes loaded with bloatware, pre-installed apps that are impossible to remove unless you root your device.
Sprint is looking to change that, however, and starting with the release of the HTC EVO 3D it appears that owners can now remove said bloatware without having to go through the hassle of rooting their device and adding a clean ROM.
The carrier says it listened to customer complaints and will continue the practice in the future.
There is no official policy on pre-installed apps from the FCC or other groups so it is at the carrier's discretion how many apps they want to add to phones being sold on their network.
One can only hope that major offenders Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile follow in Sprint's footsteps soon, giving users the freedom to remove apps that they will never use without having to resort to rooting their devices.
Two months after the PSN was hacked and personal data on 101 million customer was compromised, Sony is facing a class-action lawsuit which accuses the company of negligence and lax security.
The suit cites many "confidential" witnesses who claim that Sony's security was far from adequate and very open to attack.
Those attacks on PSN servers caused Sony to take down the service for 24 days, a time when gamers could not play online or access the PS Store.
The "smoking gun" of the lawsuit is the claim that Sony was actually firing people in their security division, prior to the attack (via Ars):
Just two weeks before the April breach, Sony laid off a substantial percentage of its Sony Online Entertainment workforce, including a number of employees in the Network Operations Center, which, according to Confidential Witness 2, is the group that is responsible for preparing for and responding to security breaches, and who ostensibly has the skills to bring the Network's security technology up-to-date.
It has only been almost a year since their last major milestone but growth has accelerated and Facebook has now reached 750 million users, massive growth by any standard.
Facebook would not confirm the number, as it is evidently waiting for the 1 billion milestone but most active watchers believe the number is accurate, or at least very close.
Despite the massive growth, some numbers suggest Facebook has reached saturation in the U.S., where active users fell by 6 million in the last month and where new members joined at a much slower pace than in the past.
In an effort to create new revenue streams, Facebook has begun experimenting with sponsored status updates, which can be commented on by users.
Facebook is set to IPO in the next year and has a current market value of $100 billion, making it one of the largest tech companies in the entire world.
Apple has now released the final feature update for Mac OS X Snow Leopard this week, on the heels of the release of OS X 10.7 Lion.
With the update comes 36 patches in SL and SL Server.
Additionally, if you are still running the older Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard, Apple has released an update for you, as well, fixing 13 bugs.
If you are looking to download Lion eventually, you will probably need the new 10.6.8 Snow Leopard update, as one of the new features is "Enhancements to the Mac App Store to get your Mac ready to upgrade to Mac OS X Lion."
From now on, all updates to Snow Leoaprd will be security related only.
The update will be over 400MB, for those with bandwidth caps.
According to new reports, free-to-play games are headed to Xbox Live.
Microsoft has been rumored to be speaking with developers for some time on adding F2P titles, as well as a micro-transaction service which would allow for quick in-game purchase.
F2P games, like those found on mobile devices, rely on in-game upgrades (like new armor, poker chips, new maps, etc) or on ads to bring in revenue.
The rumor has Microsoft starting the service in early 2012.
Rival Sony has one F2P game for the PS3 and Nintendo has bluntly said they will not be starting a similar service for their consoles. Steam on the PC has support for newly added support for F2P, like the new "freed" game Team Fortress 2.
Sprint has launched its first 4G Android tablet today, the HTC Evo View.
The Evo View can connect to Sprint's Wi-Max 4G data network, but will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread and not the new tablet-optimized Android 3.1 Honeycomb.
Furthermore, the carrier proudly boasts that the Evo View will be the first Android tablet to have Netflix support.
The Netflix app for Android was released for a handful of smartphones last month but tablets had not seen any love for the streaming movie and TV service.
As for specs, the Evo View 4G has a 7-inch 1024×600 screen, runs on a 1.5-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB RAM, dual cameras and a free stylus.
Although it has been unconfirmed by the private equity firms, multiple reports are claiming that KKR and Silver Lake are in deep talks to purchase domain site giant GoDaddy.com
The private equity firms are reportedly set to drop $2.5 billion for the company.
GoDaddy is the most popular site for commercial and private users to register domain names, and has regularly had Super Bowl commercials, which cost over $2 million per 30 second spot.
The company has been up for sale since September, but there were no bids forthcoming.
Reuters notes that private equity deal flow is up 42 percent so far in 2011.
In an update to our earlier story, it appears the Winklevoss twins will just not quit in their quest to make more money from Facebook.
Despite killing their Supreme Court appeal yesterday, the twins and partner Divya Narendra have launched a new motion today, one that asks the court to figure out whether Zuckerberg and Facebook "intentionally or inadvertently suppressed evidence" in the earlier (now settled case).
Rockstar Games has announced today that they have shipped 4 million units worldwide to date, with the game being a top-seller in the UK and US for multiple weeks consecutively.
Additionally, the game will be released for PC this fall at retail and digitally.
Says Sam Houser, founder of Rockstar Games:
L.A. Noire is a new type of game that makes players see through a detective’s eyes in 1940s Los Angeles. L.A. Noire is a new type of game that makes players see through a detective’s eyes in 1940s Los Angeles. Its unique blend of story, action and crime solving will be perfect to play on PC.
The company also confirms that the game will "feature customization, including keyboard remapping and gamepad functionality to both optimize and customize the performance and user experience."
Furthermore, the PC version will have 3D support, graphical improvements and increased fidelity.
Yesterday we reported that PopCap denied earlier reports that it was being sold for $1 billion to an unnamed buyer, but TechCrunch has posted another report today claiming the deal is still very much on.
Citing multiple sources, the report claims Electronic Arts (EA) is the buyer, with the deal in late-stage negotiations.
At $1 billion, the deal will be a huge hail mary for EA, which has a tiny market value of just $7 billion.
PopCap, the company behind blockbuster games like Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, made over $100 million in revenue last year and is a top social/mobile gaming outfit with around 4.3 million active daily gamers.
EA lacks a strong "casual game" catalog, and the PopCap acquisition is expected to help with that.
Viacom has sued Cablevision today over its mobile streaming content, alleging it is unauthorized.
In April, Cablevision launched its "Optimum App," giving subscribers a chance to stream TV programs via their iPad.
Viacom claims the app violates the two company's current agreement to distribute Viacom programing only on cable TV systems.
The media company is demanding a halt on the streaming and $2 million in damages for each trademark violation.
Cablevision says the Optimum App "falls within our existing cable television licensing agreements with programmers, including Viacom," and will fight the charges.
The cable operator has 3.7 million customers in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut.
I wanted to give something back to the fans that have followed Harry so devotedly over the years, and to bring the stories to a new digital generation.
Because Rowling has all digital rights to the series, she has waited years to release the e-books and will now bypass traditional retailers and sell them directly from Pottermore.com. Scholastic will keep its revenue share of the series.
There was no word on pricing, but the books will go on sale in October.
Seven years after they first filed suit against Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook, it seems the legal drama between Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss and the social networking giant is coming to an end.
The twins have dropped their appeal and settled the case, two months after a judge bluntly told them they must accept the deal.
Along with Harvard classmate, Divya Narendra, the twins filed suit against Facebook in 2004 alleging that the concept for Facebook was stolen from them and their early work on HarvardConnection.
In 2008, Facebook agreed to settle, giving the trio a deal worth $65 million ($45 million in stock), with the majority in Facebook stock. At the time, the group was given $45 million in stock with Facebook valued at $15 billion. The twins filed suit again last year claiming Facebook had internally given itself a $3.7 billion valuation, and so the group was conned out of many more shares in the company.
The federal Judge, Alex Kozinski, killed the appeal in April:
At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached. The Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace. They made a deal that appears quite favorable in light of recent market activity.
Facebook has just named Netflix CEO Reed Hastings to its Board of Directors, opening up a flood of speculation as to whether the two companies will join up in the future on content.
Says Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg of the move:
Reed is an entrepreneur and technologist who has led Netflix to transform the way people watch movies and TV. He has built a culture of continuous rapid innovation, something we share and work hard to build every day.
Adds Hastings:
Facebook is propelling a fundamental change in how people connect with each other and share all kinds of content. I'm looking forward to working with Mark and the rest of the board to help Facebook take advantage of all the opportunities ahead.
Facebook has 600 million users worldwide and Netflix is the top Internet subscription service in the world, with 23 million users in Canada and the U.S.
Other notable members of Facebook's Board are Zuckerberg, Marc Andreessen, Jim Breyer, Donald Graham and Peter Thiel.
Following an investigation into their search business, the FTC is set to subpoena Google, in a move that has sent Google's share price tumbling even further.
Google has fallen another 11 points after having a rough month to $476 per share following the news.
Competitors have accused Google of favoring its own Google-backed service in search results.
Complaints have come from smaller companies like Yelp, and from much bigger companies like Expedia and Microsoft, who each claim Google's behavior "starves" them of traffic, says the WSJ.
The search giant is already under investigation by European regulators for the same anti-trust behavior.
The latest reports speculate that Nokia will unveil their first Windows Phone 7 smartphones on October 26th, months after their deal with Microsoft was made public.
If accurate, the launch date should coincide with Microsoft's release of the Mango update for the operating system, which should add some much needed features.
October 26th is when Nokia World begins in London, where the company will unveil the future of its mobile handsets.
There are still no clear details on what the first Nokia WP7 devices will look like, their specs or how they will stack up against the upcoming Android "superphones" and Apple's iPhone 5.
Nokia has said they will begin mass producing Windows Phone 7 devices in 2012.
PopCap, the company behind blockbuster games like Plants vs. Zombies and Bejeweled, has denied reports today that it is being sold for $1 billion to an unnamed bidder.
Reads a tweet from Jennifer Kye of PopCap:
@MrPope Sorry, I might not have been clear. I was simply stating that @TechCrunch‘s article is not true,” Kye said on her Twitter account. “I’ll be working there next week! My boss confirmed it for me.
In the original article, speculation had been that Zynga was an early bidder but the price got too high, but Google, EA or an Asian company may have been the bidder.
PopCap has 4.3 million active daily gamers, and made $100 million in revenue last year, making it one of the most successful independent gaming outfits in the world.
For now, it appears PopCap's expected IPO is still on track for later this year.
A Competition Commission of India official has said today that a complaint was filed against Apple alleging anti-competitive practices in regards to sales of the iPhone 4 in the nation.
The complaint alleges that Apple has broken the law by only offering the phone via two carrier, Bharti Airtel and Aircel.
Speaking anonymously, the official says the Commission is looking into the complaint and whether it requires further action.
Apple says it has not received notice from the Commission yet but waved off the complaint, adding they sell the iPhone unlocked through the operators and that all data plans bundled by the operators are optional.
As long as you have a GSM SIM card, you can use the unlocked iPhone 4 in India.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced an unlimited movie and TV streaming service that is free to Amazon Prime users and would rival Netflix's Watch Instantly service.
Today the company has added 1000 new movies and TV show episodes, including a good portion in HD.
Amazon says they have added, for example, the last 7 seasons of Sesame Street, with 3 in HD, along with Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles in HD, as well.
Among some of the movies added (from quick glance at the list here) are Training Day, the Right Stuff and Superman: The Movie.
Amazon Prime Instant Videos are available for playback on desktops and over 300 devices including HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes.
The blog LulzSec Exposed has posted today that hacking group LulzSec has now gotten into an apparent online 'war' with long-time hacking group TeaMp0iSoN.
TeaMp0iSoN even defaced the main page of Swen Slootweg, who allegedly goes by the name "Joepie91" in LulzSec (pictured).
Sabu, the alleged leader of the group, tweeted today that TeaMp0iSoN is a joke and hit the wrong target, as Joepie91 is not part of the group.
Earlier in the day, Ryan Clearly was arrested in the UK, an IRC operator for the group, with all irc.lulzco.org chat logs being taken by the FBI, SOCA and Interpol.
Additionally, someone going by the name of "R3d_Penguin" posted a chat log between Topiary (another alleged member) and himself in which Topiary (aka Daniel) admits to being a member and being forced to deny. Topiary also plans to frame another user with the same nickname.
AT&T has announced their unlimited everything prepaid plan today, giving feature phone users a chance to pay $50 a month for unlimited, talk, text and web with an eligible GoPhone.
The plan starts on June 26th and is a 20 percent discount off the price you would be paying with a contract.
Furthermore, the plan offers unlimited texting and IM to Mexico, Canada and 100 other nations.
GoPhones and GoPhone service can be purchased at AT&T retail stores or online.
If you own a smartphone, you can select the unlimited talk and text for $50, but then you must add a tiered data plan starting at $5.
Says Judy Cavalieri, vice president, Voice and Prepaid Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets:
As summer approaches, consumers want a plan that provides even more value as they connect with their loved ones in the U.S and abroad. GoPhone provides customers a unique opportunity to experience the dependability and availability of AT&T’s national wireless network with no long term commitment.
Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has confirmed this week that upcoming Wii U games will be, on average, $50 per title, following the trend of its predecessor, the Wii.
The president did add, however, that established multi-platform games like Call of Duty would "likely" cost the industry standard of $60.
I think there is already some indication that the [current pricing] trend is going to stay here. When you consider some of the most popular franchise – such as Call of Duty or Madden – the publishers can afford to affix a rather expensive price tag on that because the franchise has a premium value. On the other hand, … without an established franchise, they cannot afford to keep that expensive price tag. I believe there will be a wider price range.
If that holds true, Nintendo's most popular games, like Zelda and Mario, will have a $50 price tag, which should be a relief for gamers tired of paying $60 for games.
In news that has been unanimously panned, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has said that the company may begin offering premium versions of its online content via subscriptions.
The company is also looking to partner with traditional media companies in an effort to "help create great content and monetize it properly."
I think content subscriptions on the Internet can be a very viable business.
AOL purchased the Huffington Post in February for $315 million and TechCrunch for $25 million last year, in an effort to add popular content to its portal and network.
The company is best known for being a dial-up giant that purchased Time Warner for $164 billion in 2000, at the height of the tech bubble. The merger is easily the worst transaction in the history of the industry as the bubble popped the next year and AOL never recovered, heading down from a market cap of $240 billion to its current $2 billion, even after being spun off by Time Warner in 2009.
Apple is preparing to release an iOS-powered Apple-branded HDTV this year, says an anonymous former exec of the company speaking to DT.
The company is already in talks with a "major OEM," adds the report, which they speculate to be Samsung, a long-time partner.
Apple will "blow Netflix and all those other guys away" with the HDTV, which will bundle Apple TV and iTunes in a slim, Internet-capable device.
While Samsung (and other OEMs) sell TVs themselves, the source claims it will not be an issue because "if you have to be competing with somebody, you want to be competing with yourself."
A 2011 launch is expected, but the exec does admit that Apple could wait until early 2012 to make sure everything is perfect.
BGR posted earlier this morning that Apple may be ready to unveil the iPhone 5 as early as August, a date that would break tradition from the company's normal September release of new hardware.
Apple is already "late" in releasing a new iPhone as the last few have been released at June's WWDC.
The company used this year's conference to show off Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and the iCloud.
If accurate, the new iPhone could be released in early-mid-August and will feature a fully revamped design.
The rumor (and pic) say the iPhone 5 could have a screen that stretches from end-to-end and have a "teardrop" design like the iPod Touch.
Microsoft has updated its SkyDrive cloud service this week, adding an HTML5 design alongside new features.
Anyone with a Hotmail/Live account can sign up for a free SkyDrive account, which has 25GB free storage space and allows users to collaborate on Office docs, or just share content like music and pictures.
Starting today, we are launching a new version of the SkyDrive website. We took advantage of modern browsers and HTML5 to make SkyDrive faster, easier to navigate, and more beautiful for viewing photos. The new SkyDrive will be rolling out soon, so check back if you don’t see it right away.
SkyDrive's photo sharing will also be improved, and better integrated into Windows Phone 7 when the Mango update hits.
Continues the manager:
Regardless of what screen you have, how big your browser window is, or how many photos you have, SkyDrive always arranges your photos in a clean layout that preserves the original aspect ratio
Microsoft is allegedly porting current Zune HD apps to its Windows Phone 7 smartphone OS line.
The news comes via the latest Zune Insider podcast and transcribed here:
The apps that we have built internally for Zune [HD], we’re actually looking at porting those over to Windows Phone. Right now, our focus for the app team is, more apps for Zune [HD]. Zune [HD] owners would like to hear that there’s more stuff coming. So that’s definitely the case.
Microsoft announced earlier this year that it would be ending the physical Zune line, with the HD being the last of the company's media players.
"Zune" as a brand will live on as software in WP7, Xbox Live and on the PC.
HP has now begun selling a wireless mouse than connects to the computer via Wi-Fi, eliminating the need for Bluetooth or RF.
The HP Wi-Fi mobile mouse connects to Windows 7 computers through adhoc, meaning the mouse should not ruin the connecting PC's ability to connect to access points.
Currently, most wireless mice connect via built-in Bluetooth hardware or via dongles.
LinkedIn, the professional social network that has seen strong growth in the past few years might have its first legitimate competitor.
BranchOut, an app on Facebook that does everything that LinkedIn does, saw its userbase jump from 32,000 to just over 900,000 (and growing) in the last week, following the addition of job listings on the front page.
The app originally launched in August 2010 with $24 million in venture funding but saw extremely stagnant growth as developers worked out designs and core features.
LinkedIn recently IPOd to huge demand, with a public offering price of $45 which quickly traded up to $123 on its first day.
Since then, however, LinkedIn has fallen to $60 a share as traders and investors cool to the idea of the social network.
Eizo Nanao, the popular Japanese computer display maker has announced their DuraVision FDH3601 36.4-inch display this week.
Making the display important is the fact that it has 4Kx2K resolution (4096x2160).
Current "Full HD" 1080p monitors and TVs have a resolution of just 1920x1080.
Furthermore, the DuraVision is LED-backlit, has 1,000:1 contrast ratio, 700cd/m2 brightness, two DVI-D ports, two DisplayPorts (HDCP) and an EcoView Sense sensor, meaning the display will turn itself off given certain parameters.
Set for release on September 7th in Japan, the display has an expected life of 2 years (if on 24/7) and will cost a slight fortune at $36,000.
Buying the company for an undisclosed amount, Google has confirmed it has purchased DVR and CE Extender company SageTV, which will be immediately integrated into GoogleTV.
SageTV's digital recording software allows users to run media centers for video/audio/picture playback and "its Placeshifter software lets users watch TV on any device with a high-speed Internet connection."
Reads the site of the acquired company:
Since 2002, we’ve worked to change the TV viewing experience by building cutting-edge software and technology that allows you to create and control your media center from multiple devices. And as the media landscape continues to evolve, we think it’s time our vision of entertainment management grows as well. By teaming up with Google, we believe our ideas will reach an even larger audience of users worldwide on many different products, platforms and services.
SageTV has shut down its site, minus the splash page talking about the acquisition, but the founders of the company said all current SageTV software and set-top box owners will have nothing to worry about in terms of ongoing support for their products.
ChevronWP7, the group who released the aptly named ChevronWP7 jailbreaking tool for Windows Phone 7 devices earlier this year has posted this week that a Microsoft-sanctioned version of the software is coming soon, for a small fee.
After releasing the tool, which allows users to install homebrew on their phones, the group was contacted by Microsoft and it appears the two have worked together to create a legal way for users to get the most out of their devices.
Says the group:
As announced on the Windows Phone Dev Podcast, we will soon be launching an approved Windows Phone unlocking service as part of ChevronWP7 Labs. This will be available to developers across all skill levels and all regions.
The service will require a small fee — currently via PayPal — to offset costs but we assure you it will be more affordable than the App Hub. Those who wish to write and immediately publish apps are recommended to sign up to the App Hub instead.
Best Buy has noted this weekend that it will be expanding its current UK-only cloud music platform to the U.S. in an effort to challenge recent launches from Apple, Amazon and Google.
The new U.S. Music Cloud service will be available for BlackBerry and Android users.
Just like its rivals, the Music Cloud will allow users to upload their collections online and play it back wherever they have an Internet connection, saving space on their devices.
In the UK, the service is available for BB, Android and iOS.
Over the last 24 hours we have identified that unauthorized entry was gained to our Sega Pass database. We immediately took the appropriate action to protect our consumers' data and isolate the location of the breach. We have launched an investigation into the extent of the breach of our public systems.
LulzSec did not take credit for the attack, and even asked the company for details so they could attack the group that did it.
ICANN is set to approve the biggest move in Internet domain awarding history, allowing brand owners to own their own brands on the web, like .apple, .microsoft and thousands of others.
Following a special board meeting tomorrow, the move is expected to be enacted.
Currently, there are 22 top-level domains such as .com, .org, etc, and 250 country-level domains like .ly (Libya) and .uk.
If enacted, the move will give major brands a better way to control their presence online, and give them better ways to add visibility to their sites in search results. If it is approved this coming week, the window to apply will start in January and last 90 days.
Applications cost $185,000 and the applicant must have full proof of claim to the name they are purchasing.
If you have been following AfterDawn for the past month, or broad technology news in general you have undoubtedly heard of the group LulzSec, responsible for multiple hacks on Sony, Sega, Cia.gov, a site for the U.S. Senate and countless others.
Over the past week, however, a group calling themselves "Web Ninjas" have posted a blog called LulzSec Exposed, with the group's main purpose being "exposing" the members of LulzSec.
So far, the group has posted numerous chatlogs from alleged LulzSec leaders and members and even "Doxed" five of them, posting their pictures, names, addresses, emails, and in one unfortunate guy's case, his social security number and IP address.
One 'exposed' member is a contributory journalist for The Huffington Post, Guardian UK and other large sites.
The FTC has approved Microsoft's $8.5 billion bid for VoIP giant Skype, just weeks after its proposal.
Microsoft plans to integrate the popular service into its Windows Phone 7, Windows 8, Microsoft Office and Xbox Live platforms.
The deal is Microsoft's largest ever and is one of the biggest deals the industry has seen in the last decade.
Skype has almost 200 million users that use the service to make phone and video calls around the world. Skype is free for Skype-to-Skype communications and costs minimal fees to call land lines and mobile devices.
Google is said to have bid $4 billion for the service, so Microsoft completely overpaid (by most accounts) but if executed correctly, the move could pay off in the long run.
Consumer Reports has reported today that the new Nook Simple Touch Reader is their highest-rated e-ink e-reader, ever, ahead of Amazon's market leading Kindle.
Barnes & Noble launched its first Nook in 2009, to strong reviews, but never better reviews than the comparable Kindle.
The latest Nook, just like its predecessor and the Kindles, uses E-Ink Pearl Tech and offers weeks of standby battery life on one charge. Differentiating the device is its touchscreen E-Ink, allowing for quick page flipping with no buttons.
CR says the Simple Touch "matches or bests—albeit modestly—its Amazon competitor in almost every aspect of performance. Among the attributes on which we score the devices equally is battery life; despite a power struggle between B&N and Amazon over which device runs for longer, we give both equal credit for a claimed battery life of five days or more."
The latest generation Kindle and the Nook Simple both cost $140 for Wi-Fi-only models.
Netflix has reported today that Sony has temporarily pulled its movies from the company's streaming library, due to a dispute with Starz.
Says the company:
You may have noticed that Sony movies through StarzPlay are not currently available to watch instantly. This is the result of a temporary contract issue between Sony and Starz and, while these two valued partners work through their differences, we hope you are enjoying the wide variety of new movies and TV shows added daily.
Some of the popular new releases like "Easy A" are no longer available, but Netflix is confident the films will be back when the dispute is resolved.
"Historically, video game products have not been available at grocery stores, drugstores or convenience stores,"added Joel Resnik, vice president of games at Redbox. "We make it very convenient by having our kiosks in front of the places people are at every day."
Gamers can reserve games online via Redbox's website.
Over a year after the launch of the iPad the device still notably lacks a native Facebook app.
Sources are reporting today, however, that the social networking giant may be prepared to launch the app in the "coming weeks."
The same sources say Facebook has been developing the app for a year now and will perfectly compliment the iPad's larger touch screen interface and UI.
It appears the app will have tablet-optimized versions of Facebook Chat and Groups, and direct integration of the tablet's cameras. The video and camera apps are allegedly "amazing, offering full resolution and full-screen images."
In 2010, a similar incident claimed the life of an Indian woman using a Chinese-made knockoff phone.
"Shanzhai" (Chinese imitation) mobile devices have become very popular in India due to their cheap prices, but the Indian government has tried to crack down as the devices usually lack IMEI numbers and have untested batteries that are considered hazardous.
It took six months, but it appears that Spotify has closed its last funding round.
Raising $100 million from DST, Accel and Kleiner Perkins, the company is now valued at around $1 billion.
After 15 months of delays, it also appears that the service is ready to launch in the U.S. in July, with an exec alluding to the date but not giving an official confirmation.
Spotify has been negotiating with the Big 4 labels for over a year now and has finally stuck deals with Universal Music Group, months after striking deals with smaller labels EMI and Sony.
Warner Music Group remains the last holdout, but sources claim that a deal is imminent within a week.
Nokia Europe VP Victor Saeijs has confirmed today that the company's first Windows Phone 7 devices will launch in at least 6 European nations, first.
Speaking at the 2011 Mobile Telecompaper conference, Saeijs noted that the Netherlands, France, Germany, UK, Spain and Italy would be the first.
The exec also says the Netherlands will be very important to the launch, as Nokia has a significant market share there for smartphones.
Saeijs would not give a timeframe but did confirm that the first devices would launch this year, and that himself and other execs were already carrying early prototypes.
RIM, the makers of the once-popular BlackBerry smartphones, has seen its stock fall to its lowest point in 5 years following another quarter of horrible earnings.
The stock is now down 62 percent from its high this year, and is trading down 23 percent today to $27.50 per share.
Two months ago, the company downgraded its own revenue forecast for the quarter, yet somehow still managed to miss its own downgraded forecast, by a significant amount.
Additionally, the company drastically reduced its earnings and revenue forecast for the entire fiscal 2012.
Adding to the misery, the phone maker noted that its new phones would not hit stores until after the start of the "back-to-school" period.
While analysts remain excited for the launch of BlackBerrys with the new QNX operating system, some have called it "vaporware," due to RIM's lack of a roadmap. The company only says the devices will hit "sometime in 2012."
PlayBook sales were a slight bright spot, but they did not even put a dent in iPad or Android tablet market share.
Sources speaking to The Daily say that funnyman Dave Chappelle may be ready to come back with a new show, but it won't be through traditional cable or broadcast but instead via Hulu, Netflix, or another on-demand streaming platform.
Chappelle walked away from his hit show Chappelle's Show in 2006, breaking a contract that would have paid him $50 million over 2 years.
The actor then took refuge in Africa for months, breaking away from the fame the show had brought him.
When asked later why he left such a massive contract, Chappelle said that Comedy Central put too much pressure on him for deadlines, etc, and it stymied his creativity.
With a new deal on a streaming platform, the actor would likely get to be "his own boss" again.
LulzSec has released 62,000 email/password combinations today, although it is unclear where the data was stolen from.
Because many users keep the same combinations for multiple sites, some users have already reported that their Gmail, Facebook, Twitter and other accounts have all been hacked.
The point of the release is to cause "chaos" and the plan seems to be working, at least for now.
Outside of the release, LulzSec has also started a war with 4Chan and Anonymous, following 4Chan's move to DDoS anything related to Lulz after LulzSec DDoS'd games like EVE Online and Minecraft. On its Twitter page, LulzSec has been giving tips on how to annoy 4Chan users:
Everybody visit this cool and edgy imageboard, they love new members!Ask them how to triforce and how to become legion.
Mozilla launched Firefox 4 earlier this year to much fanfare, but it seems that Firefox 5 is almost ready to go.
Following the launch of 4, Mozilla confirmed it was moving towards the Google Chrome model of development, where updated versions are released every few months, following time in developer and beta channels.
Each upgrade is not a complete re-haul of the former version, but rather tweaked versions with added features, sometimes major. Google Chrome is now in version 12 despite being launched years after Firefox.
The Firefox 5 RC has performance and speed boosts, as well as improved support for "future-web" tech like HTML5 and JavaScript rendering.
You can get the latest FF5 here at AfterDawn: Firefox 5
On June 16th, 1911, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R) was founded, later changing its name to IBM in 1924.
The company has been an innovating force behind thousands of different products, including floppy disks, the technology behind Social Security and more recently, the AI "Watson" computer.
IBM's vice president of innovation says the company is still around due to its development of tech that contributes to society, as well as the company's openness to risky projects.
Says VP Bernie Meyerson:
We just had an incredible 100-year run because we never lost site of how important it is to innovate. The fact is, innovation comes in all shapes and sizes. We practiced diversity long before it was a legal requirement because we value it [and] it does enable us to be innovative.
When asked his thoughts on Google and Facebook, two companies that are tech giants with much less time on this earth, Meyerson says "they need to be much more diverse."
It's a long way from a cheese slicer to changing the entire infrastructure of a nation. You have to have this broad spectrum because it gives you vision. To avoid these disasters that befall companies where they literally vanish overnight, you have to have your eyes open, constantly looking about. It is possible to live that length of time, but you have to reinvent yourself on an almost daily basis.
The first official "Chromebook" has gone on sale in the United States today, via Samsung.
ChromeOS-based netbooks do not have standard operating systems like Windows or Mac, but instead run on browser-based apps via the Google Chrome browser.
Google has long claimed that ChromeOS will revolutionize portable computing as it eliminates the need for possibly resource intensive apps like anti-virus software and physical hardware like optical drives.
Currently, however, many developers have yet to create apps that are popular for Windows, Mac and Linux for Chrome OS, as the operating system is still in its infant stage.
The Samsung Chromebook sells for $429 (Wi-Fi-only) or $499 (Wi-Fi/3G).
Samsung's model will have a 12.1-inch display, 1280x800 resolution, 8 second boot time and 8 hour battery life. The device runs on a dual core 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N570 processor, has an HD webcam, a mini-VGA port, 2 USB ports and will weigh just 3.3 pounds.
Crunch is reporting this week that social networking behemoth Facebook is moving forward with an HTML5-based mobile platform dubbed Project Spartan, as well as a "geolocation photo swapping app."
The app will be very similar to the extremely popular "Instagram," which allows users to quickly take a pic, edit with some quick filter tricks, and share, all with a few clicks. The source says the app looks like a mix of Instagram, Color and Path.
"Project Spartan," the Facebook mobile platform being developed for HTML5, will be directly aimed at Apple users, who can currently only use HTML5 on their iOS devices with Safari browser.
Apple has unveiled its 2011 "Back-to-School" special offer, and its notably cheap compared to years past.
If a student purchases a new Mac, they will get 10 percent off the computer and a $100 iTunes gift card.
In the past, Apple gave away small capacity iPod Touch devices along with the discount, so this year's "special" is notably cheaper and less appealing.
From Apple's perspective, the deal makes a lot of sense, as Apple will sell more apps/books/music/movies, thus keeping developers happy, as well.
Additionally, Apple normally bundles the iPods when they are trying to clear out some stock for the upcoming refresh of the line, which occurs in September.
This year, however, it is unclear whether there will be new iPods coming in September as a new iPhone is expected to be the major launch at that time.
Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka has said today that the developer's blockbuster smash hit franchise "Angry Birds" now sees 1 million downloads per day.
The news comes a day after the developer said the game (in all iterations) had surpassed 250 million overall downloads.
Vesterbacka also adds that the developer is working on integrating more NFC features into its game, and that the company is set to release a cookbook, as well.
Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio are constant fixtures on "top games" lists for both Android and iOS, and the games are also now available for Macs, PCs, and even within the Chrome browser.
Vesterbacka added that he believes success has come from building a strong brand, focusing on getting fans first, consumers second.
Toshiba and HP have jointly announced that they will team up on cloud services that include support for power, water, gas services and information technology systems.
The Japanese company says "smart community" services will increase to 900 billion yen per year by 2015, up from the current 300 billion yen. The company is under increasing pressure to move away from nuclear power following the tragic earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Toshiba purchased nuclear company Westinghouse in 2006 for $5 billion when it appeared that nuclear power projects were the wave of the future.
The company now expects to push back all nuclear reactor orders (39 in the pipeline) back 3 years as it spends the present focused on renewable energy sources and smart grids, says Reuters.
According to a new report from The Diffusion Group, a full 32 percent of Netflix users plan to cut part of their cable subscription (if not all of it), a figure that has doubled from last year's report.
24 percent cited cost as the main reason, but a full 61 percent cited the availability of online video as their main reason.
66 percent of that group specifically cited Netflix.
Netflix has about 23 million subscribers so the new report could be daunting for cable providers, which have long made it public that they do not believe Netflix and its "Watch Instantly" catalog will affect their core businesses.
The streaming service is also now available on 250 different devices and TVs.
Nintendo has made it official, Wii U games will be on a proprietary disc that is not Blu-ray or DVD.
The confirmation comes via Nintendo president Satoru Iwata following a week of confusion and speculation as to exactly what Wii U games would be published on.
In explaining the move, Iwata says:
We feel that enough people already have devices that are capable of playing DVDs and Blu-ray, such that it didn't warrant the cost involved to build that functionality into the Wii U console because of the patents related to those technologies.
BGR has reported on the upcoming Google Nexus 4G, the latest in the Nexus line of 'flagship' Android devices attached to the Google name.
The smartphone will feature a 1.5GHz dual-core processor (either an OMAP 4460 or brand new 28nm Snapdragon) and have a true 720p "monster-sized" display.
Furthermore, the device will be the first to move completely to softkeys, removing all physical menu/home/back buttons.
Adding to the "magic" of the new phone is an LTE radio, 1GB RAM, 1080pHD video support and capture, a 1MP front-side camera and a 5MP standard camera with an "advanced 5-megapixel sensor delivering class-leading image quality in addition to superior low-light performance."
It is unclear why, but the CIA's website, CIA.gov, is currently down, compliments of LulzSec, the group which has taken down Sony multiple times over the last month.
J.C. Penney has announced this morning the recruitment of Ron Johnson, Apple's current senior vice president of retail, as CEO.
Johnson will start on November 1st, taking over the position from Myron Ullman, who will stay on as executive chairman of the board.
Penney's market value rose a ridiculous $1 billion during trading on Tuesday following the news with investors and traders clearly seeing Johnson as a huge benefit to the company.
The new CEO was also given $50 million worth of warrants, which will replace the Apple equity award that would have been vested in March of next year.
Since Johnson came on board, Apple has expanded from 1 retail store to over 300, and each store brings in, on average, $34 million in profit per year.
Google's $900 million "stalking-horse" bid for 6000 Nortel patents has been approved by the Department of Justice, meaning an auction is set to begin next week.
Nortel has been selling off assets since going bankrupt in 2009 in an effort to pay off creditors. Once trading as high as $600 a share in the tech bubble of the late 90s, Nortel shares now trade for 4 cents.
Google first bid on the patents in April but met with resistance from Apple, Research in Motion, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, Hewlett-Packard and Nokia, each of which filed objections.
The search giant is looking to acquire the patents (which include hundreds of each for wireless, 4G, data networking, optical, voice, and semiconductors) in a defensive move as it fights lawsuits from Oracle and others over its Android operating system.
According to the NPD's latest figures, and a little bit of bragging from the console makers themselves, it appears the Microsoft Xbox 360 won the month of May with 270,000 units sold, a 39 percent boost year-over-year.
The PS3 sold 173,000 consoles, good for a 14 percent bump year-over-year.
Microsoft says it has now topped the list for 11 out of the last 12 months and that the console is expected to have its biggest year. ever, in 2011.
On the downside, however, software sales were down 20 percent year-over-year for the month thanks to a weak release month, comparatively. The top game, easily, was L.A. Noire, with strong sales for the 360 and PS3.
Total industry sales fell 14 percent YoY to $743.1 million, with hardware down 5 percent to $228.9 million and accessories down 6 percent to $114 million.
According to FT, Apple has settled with Nokia over their long-standing iPhone patent dispute.
Apple will now pay Nokia a royalty payment for each iPhone sold.
Following the settlement, Nokia confirmed all patent litigation between the two companies has been withdrawn, as well as the complaints to the US ITC.
Nokia nor Apple detailed the financials of the deal, but most industry specialists say the royalty payments will end up being 1.5 percent of the iPhone's $600 average selling price. At an average of 18 million iPhones being sold each quarter, payments to Nokia will be over $640 million per year.
However, because Apple brought multiple patent complaints against Nokia, as well, the royalty payments could be much lower to take that into account.
Concludes Nokia CEO Stephen Elop:
We are very pleased to have Apple join the growing number of Nokia licensees. This settlement demonstrates Nokia’s industry leading patent portfolio and enables us to focus on further licensing opportunities in the mobile communications market.
The latest report from Asymco says it now costs Apple $1.3 billion to run iTunes on a yearly basis.
Horace Dediu used the numbers from Apple’s latest quarterly earnings and then cross referenced them average prices for music and apps to get a “content margin.”
The numbers used were:
15 Billion iTunes song downloads
130 million book downloads
14 billion app downloads
$2.5 billion paid to developers
225 million accounts
425k apps
90k iPad apps
100k game and entertainment titles
50 million game center accounts
Dediu estimates the monthly content margin now comes in at $113 million, which the editor believes all goes back into running the store and paying for traffic/payment processing and increasing storage capacity.
After 15 years on top, Nomura has said today that both Samsung and Apple will surpass Nokia to become the world's largest smartphone makers, as early as this quarter.
Says the research firm:
Nokia looks set to relinquish its smartphone crown to Samsung and Apple. Further emphasizing the shift in power to Asia is our forecast for HTC to almost match Nokia during 2012.
Samsung will take the top spot, with Apple in second.
Nokia started the smartphone market in 1996 with the "Communicator" but has seen massive struggles in the past few years as Android and iOS pick up steam.
The company has one last chance to regain market share when it begins releasing Windows Phone 7 devices later this year.
Small computer communications company iCloud Communications has filed a lawsuit against Apple, claiming the company's new "iCloud" service infringes on its trademark.
The company wants a full injunction that will block Apple from launching the service.
iCloud Communications says they have been using the trademark for "identical to or closely related" services since 2005. The suit claims that Apple has damaged the trademark with its iCloud launch and "ensuing saturation advertising campaign."
The complaint is asking for "all profits, gains and advantages as well as all monetary damages sustained." Additionally, it asks for the end of the name and for Apple to "deliver for destruction all labels, signs, prints, insignia, letterhead, brochures, business cards, invoices and any other written or recorded material" with iCloud on it.
Apple officially filed for the trademark in the U.S. and Europe last week.
Facebook has not confirmed the news, yet, but their COO did call an IPO "inevitable" just last week.
Perennial money losers Groupon and LinkedIn have filed for IPOs in the last month with massive valuations and gaming behemoth Zynga is expected to go public later this year, as well.
The Cupertino mayor has said this week that there is little to no chance that city officials will reject Apple's plans to build a new 3.1 million square foot "Spaceship" campus.
Says the mayor: "There is no chance that we're saying no."
Jobs appeared before the city council earlier in the week to show off plans for the new campus that will hold 12,000 employees.
The plans will first have to pass environmental checks and pass a public hearing (likely in 2012). Jobs wants to complete the Spaceship by 2015.
Adds Mayor Wong:
In my mind, one of the city council's most important challenges and accomplishments has been to make sure that companies like apple can grow and thrive. While other cities are struggling ... we can grow.
The building will be four stories, be circular in shape and have a large 150-acre interior courtyard. Apple's new architecture will be in addition to the company's main campus.
20-year-old Trevor Harwell, a Mac repairman for Rezitech in Orange County, California has been arrested today and charged with installing software on computers he was fixing that would rig the webcams to capture video of the owners.
Harwell would plant software on the computer that would take control of the computers's webcam and send pop up messages reading: "You need to fix your internal sensor soon." A second pop up error then said: "Try putting your laptop near hot steam for several minutes to clean the sensor."
Following the advice of the error messages, some women would take the laptop into the bathroom with them while they showered, letting the hot water run for a few minutes beforehand.
Apple has stepped up to the plate and will put some of its $60 billion in cash to work defending app developers being attacked by "patent troll" company Lodsys.
In May, Lodsys began sending letters to app developers demanding a 0.575 percent cut of all revenue, due to the fact that they own a patent relating to in-app purchases.
Apple has now filed a motion to intervene on behalf of the developers, which may have not had the resources for a court battle. Apple has also filed a counterclaim against Lodsys, saying itself and all developers can use the tech.
Apple has an interest in property that is at the center of this dispute, namely, its license to the patents in suit and its business with the developers, which depends on their use of products and services that Apple is expressly licensed under the patents in suit to offer them.
Both Lodsys's complaint and its threats to other Apple developers adversely affect the value of Apple's license and its business with the developers.
Apple has confirmed today that a small number of Verizon iPad 2 tablets have duplicate mobile equipment identifier (MEID) codes, causing issues with accessing the company's 3G network.
Duplicate MEID codes were flashed onto an extremely small number of iPad 2 units for the Verizon 3G network.
Any user having problems accessing the Verizon 3G network are asked to come into Apple stores and replace their defective devices for unaffected ones. Apple seems to be giving $50 store credit as compensation, as well.
Unique MEIDs are harcoded into all smartphones and tablets, so duplications will cause a loss of connectivity to cellular and data networks.
IBM has confirmed this week that it will be providing the microprocessors for the upcoming Nintendo Wii U console, and that the technology will be the same used in the "Watson" supercomputer.
Earlier this year, "Watson" defeated the top earners of all-time on Jeopardy (Ken Jennings and Bruce Rutter), handily.
Watson is able to calculate thousands of algorithms at the same time, while searching its massive database for the right answer. The behemoth computer runs on ninety 32-core IBM Power 750 Express servers and has 16TB of memory and was over 20 feet high.
The all-new, Power-based microprocessor will pack some of IBM's most advanced technology into an energy-saving silicon package that will power Nintendo's brand new entertainment experience for consumers worldwide. IBM's unique embedded DRAM, for example, is capable of feeding the multi-core processor large chunks of data to make for a smooth entertainment experience.
IBM plans to produce millions of chips for Nintendo featuring IBM Silicon on Insulator (SOI) technology at 45 nanometers (45 billionths of a meter). The custom-designed chips will be made at IBM's state-of-the-art 300mm semiconductor development and manufacturing facility in East Fishkill, N.Y.
On May 23rd, Lady Gaga released her much-hyped album "Born This Way," and Amazon quickly dropped the price of the digital album to 99 cents, bringing a huge amount of press to the company's MP3 store.
In fact, the deal went so well that "Born This Way" sold 1.1 million units in its first week (massive by 2011 standards) with 662,000 of those copies being digital.
There was so much demand that Amazon's normally unflappable servers experienced some downtime, adding to the media coverage of the promotion.
Amazon and Lady Gaga were certainly happy, but it appears that the labels and some independent distributors were not.
Merchants have already told Gaga's label, Interscope (part of Universal Music Group) that they will need to return physical CDs, and UMG already shipped 2.1 million CDs before the street date. The label will likely see 400,000 returns, says THR, a rather large number given Lady Gaga's popularity.
Says one independent distributor:
This was a really bad move. Ninety-nine cents is almost free.
According to a Digitimes report, Microsoft may be releasing its own branded Windows 8 tablet next year.
Says the report:
Xbox 360 is currently the only own-brand product line that Microsoft has achieved success [with], while Zune media player, Kin smartphone and own-brand TVs all had unsatisfactory performance. However, Microsoft is still considering to launch an own-brand tablet PC and is proceeding on a low profile.
Microsoft began selling branded Tablet PCs 12 years ago, but the market was not ready and sales were light.
With the creation of Windows 8 however, Microsoft is building an operating system that works for desktops, but has many features optimized for tablets, which have exploded in popularity since the launch of the Apple iPad.
It appears that popular European music streaming site Spotify has signed a deal with Universal Group, meaning it is one step closer to launching in the United States.
Over the past few months, Spotify has signed deals with Sony and EMI which means just Warner Music Group remains as a hold out from the Big 4 labels.
Most in the industry believed Universal would be the toughest of all the labels to negotiate a deal with so a Warner deal seems imminent at this point.
Spotify offers unlimited free streaming music. It is unclear what the business model will be in the United States.
It's a little like a spaceship landed. There is not a straight piece of glass in the building. We know how to make the biggest pieces of glass in the world for architectural use.
The building will be four stories, circular in shape and have a large 150-acre interior courtyard. Apple's new architecture will be in addition to the company's main campus.
That's rather odd, 12,000 people in a building, in one building. But we've seen these office parks with lots of buildings, and they get pretty boring pretty fast, so we'd like to do something better than that. I do think we have a shot at building the best office building in the world.
Google has acquired the large advertising optimization platform for publishers AdMeld for $400 million in cash this week.
The company launched in 2007 with $30 million in venture capital.
Thanks to their initial investments, Foundry Group, Spark Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Time Warner Investments are set to make a large windfall.
CEO Michael Barrett was fired in 2008 from News Corp., after he failed to get MySpace to an unreasonable $1 billion revenue target.
MySpace has since continued its decline, losing $165 million last year alone.
Authorities in Spain have arrested three members of the hacking group Anonymous, each of which was allegedly part of the attack on the PlayStation Network where a file was found on the server with Anonymous' calling card.
The arrests follow a plot by the group to attack Spain’s Central Electoral Board website, among other Spanish sites.
Police have posted pictures of IRC chatlogs in which the suspects detail their plans of attack.
The authorities also note that those arrested "have the capacity to make decisions and direct attacks," and were actively involved in the attacks on the PSN, Egypt, Chile, Iran and Colombia.
This week's arrests come just days after NATO declared Anonymous a cyberthreat that would be "persecuted" and "infiltrated."
Anonymous responded in kind:
Do not make the mistake of believing you can behead a headless snake. If you slice off one head of Hydra, ten more heads will grow in its place. If you cut down one Anon, ten more will join us purely out of anger at your trampling of dissent.
(Pic of Spanish police with Anonymous 'V' masks via TNW)
Following weeks of speculation, HP has officially announced that the TouchPad tablet will launch on July 1st in the U.S.
The tablet will hit the UK, Ireland, France, Germany and Canada within a week of the US launch.
HP is selling the 16GB model for $500 and the 32GB version for $600.
"What makes HP TouchPad a compelling alternative to competing products is webOS," added HP's Jon Rubinstein (via IW). "The platform's unmatched features and flexibility will continue to differentiate HP products from the rest of the market for both personal and professional use. This is only the beginning of what HP's scale can do with webOS."
TouchPads will have a 9.7-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, WebOS run a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, Beats Audio technology, stereo speakers, a 1.3MP front-side camera, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
HP's tablet will weigh 1.6 pounds and feature a gyro, accelerometer, and compass and full Flash support, just like Android.
According to a number of reports, an investor group has now become the front-runner in the bid for struggling social network MySpace.
News Corp, the current owner of the service, is looking to sell a majority stake by the end of the fiscal year, June 30th.
The group would take over full operational control and take an 80 percent ownership stake, leaving News Corp with the rest.
Activision CEO Bobby Kotick added that he had been approached to join the investor group but has not made a decision.
Outside of the investor group, the small social networks Tagged and myYearbook have also expressed interest.
News Corp. threw away $580 million in 2005 to purchase MySpace and has swiftly seen traffic, revenues and profits plummet.
From 2010 to 2011 alone, MySpace traffic fell 48 percent to 35 million unique U.S. visitors. The company had an operating loss of $165 million last year.
Citing a huge drop in sales from Nokia, Texas Instruments was forced to cut its revenue and earnings forecasts last night.
Outside of the mobile phone business, however, TI said all other sectors of their business were performing up to expectations.
TI warned that revenue from its wireless baseband chips were hurt thanks to Nokia, its biggest client, which continues to struggle and has fallen so far that it has become the source of takeover speculation.
The numbers will prove to be a temporary blip, regardless, as TI has already said it will phase out its baseband business by the end of next year.
While baseband was still a significant amount of overall revenue (6 percent), it was a steep fall from the 12 percent it represented last quarter.
Nintendo's Katsuya Eguchi has confirmed today that games for Nintendo's upcoming Wii U console will be on single-layer 25GB "proprietary" discs.
The PlayStation 3 uses Blu-ray discs, mainly single layer, but some games have been put on dual-layer 50GB discs.
When asked, Eguchi denied to comment on the expected 8GB of internal flash memory in the Wii U, but did confirm that external USB drives would be supported.
At E3, Nintendo did not show off the console itself, but instead displayed the incredible new controller, which features a touchscreen and streaming capabilities.
The large controller has a 6.2-inch touchscreen and can work as a standalone gaming device, as well. There are two circle pads, a regular d-pad, shoulder buttons, rumble, a camera/speaker/mic and gyroscope/accelerometer sensors.
The Wii U controller offers gamers a chance to use the second screen for many activities, including catching/pitching the ball in Wii Sports, or even playing hide-and-seek with other controllers.
Last week it was reported that Microsoft was set to drop $9 billion to purchase struggling phone maker Nokia.
Nokia denied that claim outright but there is a new rumor in town; giant mobile phone maker Samsung is looking to buy Nokia's phone business.
Samsung did not deny the latest rumor however, nor did Nokia, with both companies just declining comment "on rumor."
The new reaction is a far cry from Nokia's immediate dismissal of word that Microsoft was prepared to purchase the phone business of Nokia.
Nokia's share price has seen a brutal take down, falling 50 percent in the last 4 months to $6.30 and a full 85 percent from its peak in 2008, before the market collapsed. The stock was as high as $16 per share last year, however.
The company continues to see its market share fall, dropping 14 percent year-over-year alone from 36.1 percent to 31 percent as HTC, Apple and ZTE continue exponential growth.
According to multiple reports, Samsung's new flagship Galaxy S II smartphone will go on sale next month for major U.S. carriers.
The device was first unveiled at the MWC in February and is on sale in Europe and Asia.
It has been dubbed the world's thinnest phone.
Samsung's new "superphone" has a 4.27-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, Android 2.3.4, a 1.2GHz Samsung dual-core processor, an 8.49mm thin chassis (at lowest), an 8MP camera with autofocus and 1080p recording, NFC support, a 2MP front-side camera and HSPA+, WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0+HS.
Furthermore, the device will run on Samsung's updated TouchWiz UI and weighs just 4 ounces.
Samsung said there are already over 4 million pre-orders of the device, which should be a huge seller for the company.
Although unconfirmed, the latest rumor surfacing is that HP's TouchPad tablet will be released on June 22nd.
The date comes via Synnex, and IT equipment company, who has the tablet listed with a 6/22 date.
HP's base 16GB model will sell for $500 and the 32GB for $600.
The company has confirmed a "late June" launch so the date is certainly plausible.
TouchPads will have a 9.7-inch display with 1024x768 resolution, WebOS run a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, Beats Audio technology, stereo speakers, a 1.3MP front-side camera, Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.
HP's tablet will weigh 1.6 pounds and feature a gyro, accelerometer, and compass and full Flash support, just like Android.
Additionally, the tablet's virtual keypad will have a full number row, come with QuickOffice installed, Google Docs support, Dropbox, Box.net, VPN and wireless printing support.
Nintendo had arguably the best E3 keynote of the major gaming companies, unveiling the Wii U console and a plethora of Nintendo 3DS games, all of which should be released by the end of the year.
Nintendo 3DS
The gaming company confirmed the availability of the 3DS eShop and web browser. As a free gift to all gamers, the company is giving away Pokedex 3D and a 3D version of ExciteBike.
Pokedex 3D, which should excite Pokemon fans, let's you scan AR markers to add Pokemon, trade with friends and superimpose any Poke into your pictures.
Access to the Virtual Console is also available now, for $20, for GameBoy and GameBoy Color games.
Wii U
The highlight of the show, of course, was the launch of Project Cafe, for now on known as Wii U.
Nintendo did not show off the console itself, but instead displayed the incredible new controller, which features a touchscreen and streaming capabilities.
The large controller has a 6.2-inch touchscreen and can work as a standalone gaming device, as well. (Pic via ZD).
Read more...
Viewsonic has unveiled its latest Android tablet, a $250 'budget' device dubbed the ViewBook 730.
Running Android 2.2 on an ARM Cortex-A8 1GHz processor, the tablet will be released later this month.
Smaller than most of Viewsonic's other tablets at 7-inches, the tablet has an 800x480 LCD LED backlit display, 8GB internal memory, a small VGA webcam, a mini-USB port, a mini-HDMI port and a microSD slot.
The ViewBook 730 also has RiteTouch, for writers who want to use a Stylus.
"We recognized a need for a tablet device that offers users an excellent multimedia experience with a very affordable value proposition," adds Michael Holstein, ViewSonic's vice president of business development. "From the pre-installed Amazon Kindle eReader to full Amazon app integration and Flash 10.1 support, our new ViewBook 730 enables consumers to do all the fun things that they want to do on a tablet without the added cost for features they don't need."
LulzSec, the hacking group that has hacked multiple Sony sites over the past week, is at it again, this time releasing source code from the Sony Computer Entertainment Developer Network.
Furthermore, the group released internal network maps of Sony BMG. In separate attacks from different groups, Sony Pictures Russia was taken down after an SQL injection and Sony Music Brazil was defaced.
Reads the confirmation post from the group (via Cnet):
Today is Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company is expected to launch iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud.
Mac OS X Lion
The company says there are now 54 million Mac users, globally. Growth has beaten the market for 5 years now, "thanks to products like MacBook Air."
Notebooks like Air, Pro are now 73 percent of all Apple PC sales.
With OS X Lion, Apple has added 250 new features including: Multitouch Gestures (momentum scrolling, multitouch taps, pinch to zoom); Full Screen Apps (quick control to toggle apps to FS); Mission Control ("a single unified interface accessible via a gesture that offers a bird's eye view of whats going on at your Mac.") Launchpad, Resume and Autosave are now added, like iOS.
Best of all, the download will only be 4GB and cost just $30.
iOS 5
Apple says there are now over 200 million iOS 5 devices, with iOS being the top mobile operating system on the market (44% share).
25 million iPads have been sold since launch in 2010. iTunes hits 15 billion downloads, top retailer for music in the world.
iOS 5 Beta will be released for Apple TV, iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, iPhone 4 CDMA, iPod Touch 3Gen, iPod Touch 4Gen and all iPad models.
Read more...
Microsoft's E3 keynote went off today with none too many surprises, but the company did show off some very interesting new uses for the Kinect motion control system, among other new launches.
Bloomberg has reported this weekend that Nokia has lost so much value over the past few years that its stock is now worth 50 percent less than if the company was sold and broken up.
At its peak, Nokia was worth $300 billion before Apple and Google introduced their smartphone operating systems but is now worth just over $25 billion.
If you were to separate its mobile, infrastructure equipment, mapping software and accounting businesses, Bloomberg says the company would be worth $39 billion, based on current comparable valuations of patents.
There has been speculation that Microsoft is willing to buy Nokia's mobile phone business, but Nokia has denied the rumors.
Nokia's stock currently trades at $6.65 per share, the lowest it has since 1998.
As of yesterday, Sony has made their PSN "Welcome Back" program available to all 100 million affected users, offering numerous games and services as "compensation" for the security breach.
The Welcome Back program offers users two free games (from a list), Ooblag’s Alien Casino (PSN game), free 30 day subscription to PSN+ and virtual items for PS Home.
Earlier this week we reported that the hacking group that took down PBS had hacked Sony and posted the info online, adding another chapter to the long saga of security breaches that have plagued the company since April.
"LulzSec" posted that they had broken into the servers of Sony Pictures Entertainment websites and stole personal info for 1 million customers.
The group then posted names, addresses, emails and passwords for 150,000 customers on the Internet, bashing Sony in the process.
Sony Pictures has admitted the attack occurred, and apologized for the inconvenience.
Says CEO Michael Lynton:
The cybercrime wave that has affected Sony companies and a number of government agencies, businesses and individuals in recent months has hit Sony Pictures as well. We have confirmed that a breach has occurred and have taken action to protect against further intrusion.
Media Create has said that Nintendo Wii sales in Japan have fallen dramatically for the week ended May 29th, ahead of Nintendo's launch of the "Project Cafe" Wii successor at E3 next week.
The console only sold 7438 units for the week, good for 4th in hardware sales.
Last month, the company announced it would show off the oft-rumored Wii 2/Project Cafe at E3 alongside playable demos.
Although unconfirmed, the controller will likely be able to stream content from the console, and the console will move to Blu-ray and 1080p support.
Sales (and profits) have been falling for Nintendo over the past year as the console reaches almost peak saturation worldwide. 86 million units have been sold since launch.
The rumored specs of the upcoming console after the break.
According to security firm Trend Micro, Gmail isn't the only email service under attack, with Yahoo and Hotmail/Live users seeing some of the same issues that Google's users have in recent weeks.
Google claimed the attacks on its service, mainly to steal account details and emails of prominent US government officials, Chinese political activists and journalists came from China.
It is unclear whether the attacks on the other major email services came from China, as well.
Google contained the phishing campaign, accounts had their security beefed up and the authorities were notified.
The attacks on Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail showed "significant similarities," to the Google attacks, notes Trend Micro in its report.
While the attack on Yahoo seemed a run-of-the-mill attack to steal cookies, the Hotmail attack was much more malicious.
Unlike other email-based attacks that require users to open the message and to click an embedded link or to download and execute an attachment, this attack's execution merely requires users to preview the message in their browsers.
Beginning next week, Nintendo will begin offering 25,000 public Wi-Fi hotspots for 3DS gamers, giving them a chance to download from the eShop or play online games even when not at home.
Thanks to a partnership with Simon Property Group, a massive real estate owner/developer, the free Wi-Fi will go live at 200 Simon shopping malls in the U.S. on June 7th.
With the new 200 hotspots, 3DS gamers now have access at over 25,000 spots, including 1000 Best Buy stores and 24,000 AT&T hotspots.
Notes Nintendo America president Reggie Fils-Aime (via 24/7):
With thousands of free Wi-Fi access points through our alliances, Nintendo 3DS users across the country can instantly enjoy one-of-a-kind entertainment experiences wherever and whenever they like.
In addition to a strong lineup of games and the ability to view 3D content without special glasses, the system makes it easy for people to connect with their surroundings and each other, even when they’re away from home.
As the popularity of the drives increase, unsurprisingly more manufacturers are trying to get into the game, with Lite-On IT being the latest to join in.
The company says that beginning in the Q3 it will begin manufacturing SSD, starting with smaller 32-64GB internal models for PC OEMs.
Lite-On IT is currently a maker of optical disk drives but has factories that can be adapted to the now much more effective manufacturing processes of building SSD.
The company believes 70 percent of its revenue from the market will come from notebook PCs, with retail, server and industrial PC markets accounting for the rest.
Marvell HyperDuo tech will also be utilized for the drives, adds the company.
Starting on August 1st, Google will drop support for old browsers.
Such browsers include Internet Explorer 6 and 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 3.5 (or lower).
If you choose to not upgrade (or cannot), Google says unfortunately:
In these older browsers you may have trouble using certain features in Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Docs and Google Sites, and eventually these apps may stop working entirely.
Figures from StatCounter and NetApplications seem to imply that about 17 percent of the world will need to upgrade their browsers, mainly thanks to a huge number of IE6 users in China (over 25 percent).
Venkat Panchapakesan, VP of engineering at Google, says the move is necessary for the future:
These new browsers are more than just a modern convenience, they are a necessity for what the future holds. For web applications to spring even farther ahead of traditional software, our teams need to make use of new capabilities available in modern browsers.
Malaysian social activist Fahmi Fadzil has agreed to apologize on Twitter 100 times after losing a defamation case brought by BluInc Media, a magazine company.
In January, Fadzil tweeted that one of his pregnant friends had been ill treated by her employers at the magazine.
Within a week, BluInc Media had sent a letter accusing Fadzil of defamation.
Marking at least the 7th time now, Sony has had another database hacked, this time with 120 users having their info (including passwords and mobile phone numbers) compromised.
Lebanese-based hacker "Idahc" hacked a small database of Sony Europe and then released the data on all the users.
Each of those users now has their username, password (in plain text no less), mobile numbers, work emails and websites available for all to see.
Idahc says he used a very simple SQL injection to access the database, which housed the user's data completely unprotected.
The hacker also hit the Canadian Sony Ericsson site last month, using similar methods.
In what amounted to little more than a botched robbery attempt, a man dressed in a white shirt and a white hooded mask crashed a stolen car through the front of an Apple Store in Greensboro, North Carolina.
A security guard described the man as white, and wearing a full "white ninja suit."
Nothing was taken from the store after the crash, and the guard says the ninja vanished from the scene immediately.
There was no other comment except to say that the car was a stolen Honda Accord from somewhere in the state and that the crash took place at 4:40 AM.
Speculation has begun to crop up that Sony may be looking to buy Netflix or IMAX, two extremely high-profile companies, in an effort to boost revenue.
Reports claim Sony is already negotiating a bid for IMAX, but others believe Netflix would be an equally attractive acquisition.
IMAX, while a cash cow, would be hard to integrate to Sony's existing products (outside of Sony Pictures) whereas on the other hand Netflix better integrates into the PS3, HDTVs and other Web-connected devices that have become Sony's bread and butter.
According to merger arbitrage specialist Sachin Shah, Sony has:
A lot of cash on their balance sheet to put to work if they wanted to. They could do multiple deals and it could start becoming exciting for shareholders.
It’s hard for me to believe that these guys have destroyed that much value in such a short time. Stringer really has to do something to revitalize the company. For Sony to continue to compete, they’re going to have to start doing deals.
Microsoft has confirmed that it will be killing off support for Windows Mobile 6.x phones starting on July 15th.
Developers can still create apps for the WM6 marketplace and users will be able to download them forever, or until the marketplace is shut down.
Those same developers are angry however, as Microsoft pulling support of the devices leaves little reason for users to download new apps if they will be upgrading their devices in the near future.
Some have questioned the move as recent data suggests WM6 is still selling better than new Windows Phone 7 devices, at least in the last quarter.
Groupon has filed for an IPO today, looking to raise $750 million in its first sale.
Trading under the ticker "GRPN," the gigantic daily deal site will likely go public within weeks.
The company has raised $1 billion from private investors after being founded in 2008 and has seen explosive growth since then.
CEO Andrew Mason did note, however, that the company has seen massive losses in the last two years and the losses will continue into the foreseeable future as they "continue to invest in growth."
In 2010, Groupon had revenue of $713 million and recorded a net loss of $456 million. For the first quarter of 2011, revenue exploded to $644.7 million, but losses remained, with a net loss of $147 million for the quarter.
Adds the CEO:
We anticipate that our operating expenses will increase substantially in the foreseeable future as we continue to invest to increase our subscriber base, increase the number and variety of deals we offer each day, expand our marketing channels, expand our operations, hire additional employees and develop our technology platform.
The hacking group that took down PBS earlier this week has hacked Sony and posted the info online, adding another chapter to the long saga of security breaches that have plagued the company since April.
"LulzSec" posted that they broke into the servers of Sony Pictures Entertainment websites and stole personal info for 1 million customers.
The group then posted names, addresses, emails and passwords for some customers on the Internet, bashing Sony in the process.
From a single injection, we accessed EVERYTHING. Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?
At 6 serious attacks and 102 million user's info stolen in 2 months, Sony has become a massive target for hacking groups and it has hurt the bottom line. The company said last month that the attacks would lead to a $170 million writedown in the current quarter.
The Shanghai Daily has reported today that 17-year-old teenager Anhui Province Zheng sold his kidney to be able to purchase an Apple iPad 2.
Zheng sold his kidney for about $3000 USD, but says now that his health is worsening.
"I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan," says the teen.
The hospital in which his surgery was performed did not meet safety qualifications for organ removal/transplants but claimed they knew nothing of the surgery after police probed them.
After selling the kidney, Zheng bought an iPad 2 and an iPhone but when pressed by his mother as to where he got them he explained the surgery.
According to the June 1st stats from Net Applications, Internet Explorer continues to see their global browser market share fall, mainly at the hands of Google's Chrome.
IE, in all variations fell to 52.87 percent market share, with Internet Explorer 8 being the largest part of that share at 31.28 percent. Microsoft's latest, IE9, jumped to 4.19 percent despite not being available to Windows XP users.
Newly launched Firefox 4 already beat out Firefox 3.6, at 10.08 percent to 9.14 percent. Altogether, Firefox accounted for 21 percent share.
Google's Chrome moved to 11.86 percent share, with Chrome 11 leading the way.
This afternoon, Microsoft unveiled Windows 8, the upcoming operating system that should be a complete overhaul from Windows 7, released in 2009.
The goal of the OS, Microsoft says, is for users to have the same great experience whether they are on a tablet or on a desktop.
Microsoft showed off a new start screen that looks reminiscent of the tile-based UI of Windows Phone 7.
All programs can be viewed as tiles, and clickable with a mouse, or with the touch of a finger.
Windows 8 will also run two types of apps. The first are standard Windows apps while the others are HTML5/Javascript apps and should be optimized for tablets because they are "web-powered."
The OS will bring a touch interface, an app market, backwards compatibility, and an easier way for developers to share in revenue.
For those with lower-end systems, Microsoft says W8 will use less resources than even Windows 7.
HP has now added more batteries to its recall list, with each being a potential safety hazard according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission.
So far, HP has recalled 162,600 lithium ion batteries from HP and Compaq notebooks sold between July 2007 and July 2008.
The CPSC says the batteries in those 31 models of laptops can possibly "overheat and rupture, posing fire and burn hazards."
Overall, there have been 40 incidents of overheating/rupturing since May 2010, with 7 customers being burnt. There were 36 counts of property damage, as well.
HP notebook owners are encouraged to check this website to see if your model is part of the recall. HP replaces the batteries for free.
The latest rumors claim that Microsoft will drop the price of the Xbox 360 next week at the E3 event.
A sponsored ad from Target on the official E3 site shows an Xbox 360 250 GBKinect bundle for $299.99, $100 lower than current retail price.
For now, however, if you click-through the ad you get led to a product page with the full $399.99 price so it could possibly be an error.
If the price drop does occur, it is reasonable to assume the rest of the line will see similar cuts, with many expecting the low-end 4GB Xbox 360 to hit $149.99.
Microsoft is also expected to launch an enhanced version of the Kinect motion control system.
Last week we reported that Sony CFO Masaru Kato implied the PlayStation 4 was already in development after saying increased R&D costs in Sony's books were largely due to next generation console development.
Today, the CFO has cleared up the statement, saying it was misconstrued.
"As for home consoles, the PS3 still has a product life," said Kato originally. "But this is a platform business, so for future platforms, though I can’t say what we are going to release when, our development work is under way."
Those costs were mainly because of the PS Vita (NGP/PSP 2) he confirmed today, adding:
This is a good opportunity to clarify this. Some people misread what I said.
Any time we launch a product, from that day we already start thinking about the next one. This is just a general statement.
The massive blockbuster that is Rovio's Angry Birds franchise is now headed to your TV.
Roku, the company behind many popular streaming set-top boxes has confirmed that the game will be part of a wider launch of casual games for the platform.
In July, Roku will make Angry Birds, Angry Birds Seasons and Angry Birds Rio available to set-top box owners.
Additionally, Roku will start an Angry Birds "channel" which features animated shorts and sell merchandise via the Roku Channel Store.
Roku CEO Anthony Wood also added that more announcements on casual games for the boxes were upcoming in the next weeks.
This is complete rumor, but the story is picking up steam around the Web.
Eldar Murtazin has Tweeted today that Microsoft is set to purchase Nokia's mobile phone business for $19 billion cash.
Murtazin said two weeks ago that the software giant was in talks with Nokia about purchasing the unit, but a Nokia spokesperson shot down the report saying "Eldar’s rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment."
Reads the latest Tweet:
One small software company decided last week that they could spent 19 bln USD to buy a part of small phone vendor. Thats it.
Nielsen has revealed the latest U.S. smartphone market share, and Android continues to lead the pack.
Overall, 37 percent of Americans now have a smartphone, with 36 percent of those users running Android.
Apple held second place at 26 percent with its iPhone, while RIM held third with 23 percent for its BlackBerry devices.
Windows Phone 7 moved into 1 percent share, months after launch.
As for data usage, Nielsen pored over 65,000 monthly bills and saw that Android users run about 582MB of data per month, compared to 492MB for iPhone users.
BGR has posted an open letter from a high-level RIM executive, one that touches on the conditions within the company as its share price, morale and brand reputation all fall to multi-year lows.
There are now over 100,000 native iPad apps available in the 
According to 
Cisco has announced the price for its Cius tablet with the ambiguous "under $750" price point.
Speculation about the upcoming iPhone 5, its specs and its release date has begun to go rampant this month, with multiple analysts fueling the rumor flames.
AT&T has revealed the first ever "Facebook phone" this week, the 
MySpace has been sold to Specific Media for $35 million, ending the failed News Corp. era for the social networking site.
One analyst is very bearish on the future prospects of 3D movies.
Hacktivist group 'Anonymous' has released data stolen from Viacom's computer networks as well as user data taken from a Universal Music Group affiliated website.
Zynga, the social gaming behemoth, is filing for an IPO that will value the company at upwards of $20 billion, a new record for "social" media sites and a high for U.S.-based game companies.
PayPal has confirmed this week that the service has reached 100 million active users.
According to new figures from Pew Internet Research, e-reader ownership is moving at a blistering pace, outpacing tablets.
Prince, the influential musician, has said today that he will not release any new music until piracy is less of a factor.
The company's stock sure seems to believe it.
Capcom has taken a stab at killing the used game market this week with the release of Resident Evil: 
According to 
According to 
Hulu has reached a tentative deal to renew its rights with Disney, says sources speaking to 
According to the latest figures from comScore, the 
Last June, AT&T confirmed that 114,067 iPad 3G owners had their email information leaked to the Web, with the data being stolen by a group calling themselves Goatse Security.
Turntable.fm has noted today that licensing issues have forced the start-up to block international users from trying the popular social music listening and discovery service.
Foursquare has raised $50 million more in a new round of funding, and the company says it will use that cash to expand internationally and build new products.
LulzSec, the group behind many high-profile hacks in the past two months, has published their last release, and appear to be sailing off into the sunset.
FTC anti-trust regulators in the U.S. have given 
Archos has announced two new Android 3.1 Honeycomb tablets this week, each using a 7mm "Thin HDD" to pack 250GB of internal storage.
No wonder they have to sue so many file sharers.
Electronic Arts (EA) has announced today that user accounts have been breached and data like passwords and mailing addresses have been compromised.
If you have purchased an Android smartphone in the last year, chances are you have been stuck with a device that comes loaded with 
Two months after the PSN was hacked and personal data on 101 million customer was compromised, 
According to new 
Sprint has launched its first 4G Android tablet today, the 
A few new 
Although it has been unconfirmed by the private equity firms, multiple reports are claiming that KKR and Silver Lake are in deep talks to purchase domain site giant GoDaddy.com
In an update to our earlier story, it appears the Winklevoss twins will just not quit in their quest to make more money from Facebook.
Rockstar Games has announced today that they have shipped 4 million units worldwide to date, with the game being a top-seller in the UK and US for multiple weeks consecutively.
Yesterday we reported that PopCap 
Viacom has sued Cablevision today over its mobile 
Hulu has announced today that they have expanded their Hulu Plus premium service to a number of Android devices.
J.K. Rowling, the billionaire author behind 'Harry Potter' has confirmed that the global blockbuster series is finally coming in e-book form.
Following an investigation into their search business, the FTC is set to subpoena Google, in a move that has sent Google's share price tumbling even further.
The latest 
A Competition Commission of India official has said today that a complaint was filed against 
Earlier this year, Amazon announced an unlimited movie and TV 
The blog LulzSec Exposed has posted today that hacking group LulzSec has now gotten into an apparent online 'war' with long-time hacking group TeaMp0iSoN.
AT&T has announced their unlimited everything prepaid plan today, giving feature phone users a chance to pay $50 a month for unlimited, 
In news that has been unanimously panned, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has said that the company may begin offering premium versions of its online content via subscriptions.
Huawei, the largest Chinese mobile phone-network maker, has launched its latest tablet this week, the 7-inch MediaPad.
Starting July 7th, Verizon will move to tiered data plans, and to no one's surprise, the plans are expensive.
LinkedIn, the professional social network that has seen strong growth in the past few years might have its first legitimate competitor.
Buying the company for an undisclosed amount, Google has confirmed it has purchased 
Netflix was down tonight temporarily with users trying to access the site from the Web or other devices getting the error posted at right.
ChevronWP7, the group who released the aptly named ChevronWP7 jailbreaking tool for Windows Phone 7 devices earlier this year has posted this week that a Microsoft-sanctioned version of the software is coming soon, for a small fee.
Best Buy has noted this weekend that it will be expanding its current UK-only cloud music platform to the U.S. in an effort to challenge recent launches from 
Sega has noted they are investigating into the hack on their servers on Friday whilst taking all the appropriate steps to secure data.
ICANN is set to approve the biggest move in Internet domain awarding history, allowing brand owners to own their own brands on the web, like .apple, .microsoft and thousands of others.
If you have been following AfterDawn for the past month, or broad technology news in general you have undoubtedly heard of the group LulzSec, responsible for multiple hacks on Sony, Sega, Cia.gov, a site for the U.S. Senate and countless others.
The FTC has approved Microsoft's $8.5 billion bid for VoIP giant 
As of today, Redbox has gone nationwide with video games for their rental kiosks, following a year-long testing period.
25-year-old Dhanji Damor of Gujarat, India has died this week, after his Chinese knockoff phone electrocuted him while making a call.
Sources speaking to 
LulzSec has released 62,000 email/password combinations today, although it is unclear where the data was stolen from.
On June 16th, 1911, the Computing-Tabulating-Recording Company (C-T-R) was founded, later changing its name to IBM in 1924.
The first official "Chromebook" has gone on sale in the United States today, via 
Rovio's Peter Vesterbacka has said today that the developer's blockbuster smash hit franchise "Angry Birds" now sees 1 million downloads per day.
It is unclear why, but the CIA's website, CIA.gov, is currently down, compliments of LulzSec, the group which has taken down 
BBC Worldwide is expected to announce today that their oft-delayed international iPlayer will cost $10 per month.
J.C. Penney has announced this morning the recruitment of Ron Johnson, Apple's current senior vice president of retail, as CEO.
Google's $900 million "stalking-horse" bid for 6000 Nortel patents 
According to the NPD's latest figures, and a little bit of bragging from the console makers themselves, it appears the 
The 'Anonymous' group of hackers has promised action against the Federal Reserve and its chairman Ben Bernanke in a video dubbed "Ctrl+Alt+Bernanke."
The latest report from Asymco says it now costs 
After 15 years on top, 
Small computer communications company iCloud Communications has filed a lawsuit against 
The Cupertino mayor has said this week that there is little to no chance that city officials will reject Apple's plans to build a new 3.1 million square foot "Spaceship" campus.
20-year-old Trevor Harwell, a Mac repairman for Rezitech in Orange County, California has been arrested today and charged with installing software on computers he was fixing that would rig the webcams to 
According to a 
Google has acquired the large advertising optimization platform for publishers AdMeld for $400 million in cash this week.
Authorities in Spain have arrested three members of the hacking group Anonymous, each of which was allegedly part of the attack on the PlayStation Network where a file was found on the server with Anonymous' calling card.
Following weeks of speculation, 
Citing a huge drop in sales from 
Nintendo's Katsuya Eguchi 
Citigroup has confirmed that a security breach has given hackers access to basic info for 1 percent of its bank card customers.
According to multiple 
Today is Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference, where the company is expected to launch iOS 5, Mac OS X Lion and iCloud.
One day until Microsoft's E3 keynote, the recurring rumor seems to be that the company will unveil the Xbox Live 'Diamond' TV service.
As of yesterday, 
Earlier this week we reported that the hacking group that took down PBS had hacked 
According to security firm Trend Micro, Gmail isn't the only email service under attack, with Yahoo and Hotmail/Live users seeing some of the same issues that Google's users have in recent weeks.
Beginning next week, 
As the popularity of the drives increase, unsurprisingly more manufacturers are trying to get into the game, with Lite-On IT being the latest to join in.
Malaysian social activist Fahmi Fadzil has agreed to apologize on Twitter 100 times after losing a defamation case brought by BluInc Media, a magazine company.
Marking at least the 7th time now, 
In what amounted to little more than a botched robbery attempt, a 
comScore has posted new figures for U.S. smartphone market share and to no one's surprise, Android 
Electronic Arts is just about ready to launch its own digital distribution platform, one that will rival Valve's popular Steam.
Groupon has filed for an IPO today, looking to raise $750 million in its first sale.
The Shanghai Daily has 
According to the June 1st stats from 
The massive blockbuster that is Rovio's Angry Birds franchise is now headed to your TV.
Nielsen has revealed the latest U.S. smartphone market share, and Android continues to lead the pack.
