It took just under 2 weeks for Mark Zuckerberg to fall well off the 40 richest billionaires list.
The company's shares fell to $28.18 today, down from the $38 IPO price from May 18th, easily the biggest failure for an IPO of this nature in the last decade.
Zuckerbeg, for his part, has been losing about $16 million per hour of his fortune, which now stands at $14.4 billion. Of course, Zuckerberg still remains extremely, extremely rich, and has zero complaints, but his fortune has declined in the last week by a figure that is equal to the annual GDP of more than 20 countries on earth.
Facebook, as a company, started with a value of $104 billion but has since been torpedoed to its current $61 billion valuation which many believe is a lot more reasonable for the social networking giant.
Google and Samsung have announced the launch of the first desktop 'Chromebox' this week.
The Chromebox will cost just $329 and comes in a small case, familiar to past owners of Mac Minis.
Powered by Google's cloud-based ChromeOS operating system, the mini-desktop has an 1.9GHz dual-core Intel Celeron B840 (Sandy Bridge) CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 16GB SSD and WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0.
With just an 8-inch footprint, the device packs a decent amount of ports including 6 USB ports, a 3.5mm combination headphone / mic jack, DVI output, gigabitEthernet and two DisplayPort connectors.
Perhaps most notably, the device will run on ChromeOS 19, the latest version of the OS which makes it a lot more usable and Windows-like. Instead of being browser-only like in the past, the new OS update will look more like the traditional Windows systems in terms of app and window management. Finally, boot time is a remarkable 5 seconds.
Amazon's European streaming video service LoveFilm has proudly announced an exclusive multi-year licensing agreement with NBCUniversal.
Known as the "Netflix of Europe," LoveFilm has been quietly expanding its streaming library with exclusive deals, including those with Disney, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros., Entertainment One and StudioCanal.
The titles available to LoveFilm users due to the new Universal deal include hits like Kick-Ass, American Reunion, Despicable Me, Safe House, Senna and the brand new Battleship.
Furthermore, the unreleased Bourne Legacy and Snow White and The Huntsman will be available, making the selection top notch.
"LoveFilm is proud to offer its members access to the highest-quality content across multiple platforms from another of the world's most respected studios," added Jim Buckle, managing director of LoveFilm. "NBCUniversal is also LoveFilm's latest exclusive streaming deal in our quest to deliver the widest choice of content on as many platforms as possible."
Last year, a historical flood in Thailand left 13 million people homeless and a significant amount of factories with over 3 feet of water.
Many of those factories were used to produce hard drives and the flood led to high demand and small supply, an unfortunate situation for consumers. In April, the research firm IDC said that although supply is coming back quickly, the HDD makers are in no rush to drop the prices back to pre-flood times. They were right.
Full supply has returned to the market, but prices have yet to come back to earth. In fact, higher prices have now become the "new normal."
Before the flood, the average 2TB HDD was selling for anywhere between $70 and $90 from top manufacturers like Seagate and Western Digital. When the flood first hit, those prices were jacked up to over $250 in most cases, before falling back to $150-170. As of today, the average price is hovering around $120, a 40-70 percent increase from pre-flood times.
For their 'troubles,' both Western Digital and Seagate are bringing in record profits and their stock prices are exploding. Seagate, for one, has seen its stock shares grow 182 percent since the flood and its profit margins grow to over 25 percent, its highest in a decade.
Last week we reported on Facebook hiring former Apple engineers in an effort to begin creating their own smartphone.
Today, Paul Amsellem, a marketing 'expert' for the Mobile Network Group, has said he predicts Facebook will buy Nokia in the next year on route to creating the 'FacePhone.'
The phone itself will hit the market within 18 months, and will run on Windows Phone 8.
Says Amsellem: "Facebook will launch the FacePhone. And whether it has a blue color and a logo with a big F on it, it will definitely be disruptive. Even at this moment, Facebook doesn't know what it will look like, but they need to do it."
Here is where Amsellem's predictions gets a bit rougher, however. The expert says Facebook will eventually acquire Nokia for $10 billion, or if that falls through, they can acquire RIM (maker of the BlackBerry) for $6 billion. Nokia currently has a value above $10 billion and would almost certainly need to sell at a premium. RIM has a value below $6 billion and is continuing to collapse, so a $6 billion buyout could make sense, if the company could get over its Canadian pride.
Amazon has announced today the launch of its Instant Video service on the Xbox 360.
With the release of the new app, Xbox Live Gold subscribers that also have Amazon Prime subscriptions will have access to all of Amazon's 17,000 movies and TV episodes.
Amazon Prime costs $79 per year and gives active Amazon buyers free 2-day shipping on most items and discounted $3.99 shipping on overnight or even same-day.
New to the Xbox is "Watchlist," which allows you to "manage your queue and purchased content into a playlist from your computer."
Additionally, you can use Kinect to navigate the app with voice and motion gestures or use the remote if you do not have a Kinect. You won't be able to purchase content through the app, just yet, but you can use WhisperSync, meaning you can start an episode/movie on your computer/Kindle Fire/etc and finish it on the 360 right from where you left off.
Over the weekend, a German console site called PlayNation revealed pictures of the alleged PS4 spec sheet along with some additional data on the console, which is set for release at the end of next year.
We did not run the story originally, as most of these stories end up being complete hoaxes, but we have decided to post the specs and data here today to see what our readers think.
The site posted documents allegedly leaked directly from Sony on the PS4, which is codenamed "Orbis." The console will have strong integration with the Vita handheld, and will also introduce a new service dubbed "Iris."
Here's the spec sheet:
CPU – Cell Broadband Engine X @ 3.2GHz – 16PPE's – 128 SPE's
GPU – Custom Nvidia/SCEI "quantum Leap" @2GHz
Memory – 10GB XDR2 + 10GB GDDR6
Storage Capacity – 250GB/320GB Model depending
OS – Sony Aether Video Resolution – 2160p 2D – 1080p 3D
Audio – 11.1
Media Formats – PS4 Game Disc – PS3 Game Disc – PS2 Game Disc – PS1 Game Disc – HD Blu Ray Disc – DVD – CD Controller Input – Dualshock 4 – Dualshock 3 – PS Iris – PS Vita – PS Omni – PS Certified Xperia – Sony Tablet – PS Move – PS Eye – Sixaxis Connectivity – USB 3.0 – HDMI 1.4 – Bluetooth 4.0 – WiFi b/g/n – DLNA – Ethernet – PS Vita – Memory Cards SD/MMC/etc
Although Nintendo has suggested they are looking to change the Wii U name to avoid confusion amongst buyers, they are running out of time to do so.
The console will be officially unveiled at the E3 event next month, and for now Nintendo has been done little to imply a new name is coming.
Over the weekend, Nintendo added the Wii U logo to its official press site and gave the console its own official Facebook page, as well. Of course, these can be changed in the near future but that begs the question of why Nintendo would add them in the first place with E3 so soon.
Before the Wii launched, the console was known as the 'Revolution,' but Nintendo switched the name six months before release. The Wii U is set for a November release.
Nintendo has had a rough year following the release of the 3DS handheld, which many believe had too similar a name to their previous generation handhelds to differentiate, along with much too high of a price tag.
The latest report out of China has implied that Foxconn's Shenzhen plant has now received orders to build trial run sets of the oft-rumored HDTV.
Of course the report comes from anonymous sources; however, there has been evidence for months that Apple is working on such a device.
The alleged device will be powered by a Siri-esque search system, and has the potential to be the first TV to allow a la carte channel selections for those who do not want to pay for a full cable or satellite subscription that includes hundreds of channels they may never watch.
Apple has never confirmed such a product, much like they do not confirm upcoming iOS devices until launch day.
According to a new report by The New York Times, Facebook is frantically expanding it efforts to create their first branded smartphone, and hopes to have one available in 2013.
Codenamed 'Buffy,' the project has been adding group members, including seven former Apple software and hardware engineers. The engineers worked on the iPhone and one worked on the iPad during their time with the company.
Apparently, CEO Mark Zuckerberg "is worried that if he doesn't create a mobile phone in the near future that Facebook will simply become an app on other mobile platforms."
Facebook is partnering with HTC to create the device, which will have its own exclusive platform. The OS itself will be based on Google's Android, says the report.
With the recent acquisition of Instagram and the creation of Facebook Camera, the company already has the basics for an Android-based Facebook ecosystem. Additionally, the company is purported to be looking into purchasing Opera Software, the maker of the popular Opera browsers, to create its own browser.
Struggling smartphone maker RIM is said to be planning a restructuring that will cause 2000 employees to be laid off.
The company has only 16,500 employees around the globe so the layoffs will be significant, says the report from Globe and Mail.
If accurate, the layoffs "will sweep across departments, ranging from senior positions in RIM's legal division to human resources, finance, sales, and marketing" and hit before June 1st.
RIM reported horrible earnings in the first quarter, including an 80 percent drop in BlackBerry device shipments. Rival operating systems like Android and iOS have seen extremely strong year-over-year growth, adding to RIM's woes. Perhaps worst of all, RIM's upcoming BlackBerry 10 devices are expected to be completely outdated compared to its rivals, even with over a year of preparation.
Over the past 6 months, the company has seen its former co-CEO Jim Balsillie resign, its CTO David Yach leave and COO of Global Operations Jim Rowan resign, as well.
Bharti Airtel, the top mobile carrier in India, says it added 2.01 million new mobile subscribers in April, strong growth for the company and the nation.
Airtel has 183.3 million total subscribers.
Reliance Communications, the second largest carrier, does not disclose its figures through Industry body Cellular Operators Association of India. Vodafone, number three in the nation, added 820,000 new subscribers to bring its total to 151.3 million.
In fourth, Idea Cellular added 1.49 million mobile customers during the month and fifth-placed Telenor India jumped 1.12 million to 43.6 million.
For comparison's sake, the largest carrier in the U.S., Verizon Wireless, has 110 million subscribers. And second place carrier AT&T has 104 million.
Ericsson, the world's largest mobile network equipment maker, has been fined by the U.S. Department of Commerce for violating export restrictions by shipping equipment to Cuba.
The company's Panamanian subsidiary was fined $1.75 million for the violation and the two groups reached an agreement earlier this week.
According to sources, Ericsson had been operating a "scheme" in which broken equipment was shipped from Cuba to the U.S. for repair after employees masked the origin of the shipment. The equipment was then sent back to Cuba from the U.S., after similar masking including falsification of documents.
Ericsson de Panama voluntarily disclosed the violations after uncovering the shipments which were set up by three former employees. The employees were fired.
In total, the penalty covered 262 violations of federal regulations from the years of 2004-2007, for $320,000 worth of equipment.
Despite its previous deal falling apart, it appears that Dell will complete their anticipated purchase of Quest, a security software maker.
Dell will offer $23-$26 per share for the software company, similar to the previous deal that fell apart thanks to Dell's awful quarterly earnings.
Back in March, Quest received a $23 per share offer from Insight Venture Partners. Quest did not accept the offer, however, saying during its shopping period it received multiple offers: "The alternative proposals are reasonably expected to lead to a superior proposal."
Dell has been actively purchasing software companies over the past year, making five high and low profile acquisitions including SonicWall and Wyse.
The company is also said to be in talks to purchase BMC Software with its $17.2 billion cash hoard.
The Chronic Dev Team has released the latest version of their untethered jailbreak for iOS devices running 5.1.1.
Says the blog post: "After copious amounts of work and many sleepless nights, Absinthe 2.0 is finally here to jailbreak your device."
As with past updates, Absinthe 2.0 was a "large collaborative effort between Chronic Dev Team and the iPhone Dev Team." Together, the groups call themselves the "Jailbreak Dream Team."
By jailbreaking your device, you gain access to the Cydia app store, (for apps that may not have been allowed into the official store) as well as access to ability to customize the operating system and "sideload" apps that have not been purchased through the store. Although jailbreaking is perfectly legal, Apple warns it will void your warranty with them, unfortunately.
IBM has understandably blocked the voice-activated digital assistant from its work networks.
As 'Big Blue' confirms, Siri has been blocked due to the fact that Siri sends everything you ever say to her to an Apple data center. IBM CIO Jeanette Horan says: 'The company worries that the spoken queries might be stored somewhere.'
While some might call IBM paranoid, Horan has reason to worry, thanks to this passage in Apple's Software License Agreement: 'When you use Siri or Dictation, the things you say will be recorded and sent to Apple in order to convert what you say into text.'
Additionally, Siri collects other info, like your contact's names and other 'unspecified user data,' in order to help the assistant give you better responses.
It is unclear how long Apple stores the data, but you have to agree to the user agreement before you can use it.
Cisco has decided to pull the plug on its failed Cius tablet.
The Cius, which was released in 2010 and aimed at enterprise customers, had a focus on business video conferencing and specifically boasted about its compatibility with other Cisco apps like WebEx, Jabber, and Quad.
There was little marketing for the device on the consumer side, and it is clear now that it did not resonate well with business users, either.
If you were in the market for a Cius, Cisco says it will still sell your company one "in limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases."
Continuing to focus on enterprise, Cisco says they will work to bring their most popular apps to other tablet platforms like Android, iOS and most likely Windows 8.
Although Samsung unveiled the flagship device earlier this month, there has yet to be a set timetable for its release outside of Europe.
Today, the Verge is reporting that the device will hit American and Canadian shores on June 20th. The proof comes via a leaked screenshot that was quickly taken down.
For Canadian fans, the phone will be available via Virgin, Rogers, Bell and Telus.
On the American side, the carriers remain unclear with the exception of T-Mobile, who will be getting the metallic blue version.
July 11th should see the release of the white model of the phone, along with a T-Mobile version of the popular Galaxy Note.
For now consider the date's rumor, but Samsung officials did give "June" as a general timeframe when speaking in regards to the GSIII.
Thanks to a contract negotiation dispute between Amazon and the Independent Publishers Group, the giant e-tailer pulled 5000 titles from the Kindle Store back in February.
As of today, however, the books have returned after the two parties reached an agreement.
Earlier in the year, when it came time for the contract to be renegotiated, IPG's president Mark Suchomel said Amazon proposed new terms that were "substantially changed" from the previous terms, meaning lower revenue for the authors. Suchomel is said to have offered terms comparable to other publishers in the marketplace, but Amazon did not agree and pulled the electronic books whilst keeping the physical titles available for sale.
There was no word on the intricacies of the new deal, but clearly they must be more favorable to everyone involved then in past negotiations.
The dispute is not the first Amazon has had with publishers in recent years, as many used to accuse Amazon of having a monopoly on the market. Apple and the major publishers were recently sued by the DOJ for allegedly colluding to break Amazon's "stranglehold" on the market.
Apple has announced the start of a "Free App of the Week" promotion, finally.
Starting with 'Cut the Rope: Experiments,' the company will offer a new free app each week.
In the past, the company offered some discounted or free apps through their Facebook page but never a prominent promotion in the actual store.
Furthermore, Apple has added new "Editor's Choice" picks in the App Store, removing the old "Staff Favorites" section. As expected, the U.S. version of the store has Facebook Camera as its top Editor's Choice.
Apple has opened the Editor's Choice section to the Mac App Store, as well.
According to a new Pocket-Lint report, Facebook is looking into purchasing Opera Software, the company behind the Opera browser.
By purchasing Opera, the company would then create its own "Facebook Browser" that will come with built-in plug-ins and features that will help you more easily keep up with the latest updates in your social life.
Of course, Facebook would be taking on some major heavyweights in Google, Microsoft, Mozilla and Apple. The company will likely prove to be little competition to the leaders, however, despite its 900 million users.
Opera is used by many millions around the world, and its mobile browser is free and popular, as well. By acquiring the company, Facebook would save the hassles of building a fully functionally browser from scratch.
The browser company claims to have 200 million worldwide users.
Felix Roque, the mayor of West New York in New Jersey, has been arrested after hacking a site that was calling for a recall on his election.
Roque allegedly had his son Joseph hack the site and then threaten the creator. Both have been arrested.
Started in February, the recallroque.com site was created by other Hudson County government officials.
Joseph Roque conducted Google searches for "hacking a Go Daddy site," "recallroque log-in," and "html hacking tutorial" and was finally able to gain control of the account. On February 8th, the wanna-be hacker cancelled the domain name and killed off the site.
The very next day, Mayor Rogue called the owner of the site, claimed that he knew the man was responsible for the site and also said he had "a friend in high level of government who had shut the Recall Website down." The Mayor then threatened that "everyone would pay for getting involved against him."
Roque and his son have now been charged with counts of "unauthorized access to computers in furtherance of causing damage to protected computers; causing damage to protected computers; and conspiracy to commit those crimes."
More rumors and info are abound in regards to Google's still unconfirmed new Nexus tablet.
According to CNBC, the tablet has been passed around the Google headquarters for some time and will come out over the summer.
The device is said to be aimed at killing the Amazon Kindle Fire, which runs a custom version of Android and has a fully different ecosystem than Google's. Amazon has its own browser, its own app store, its own cloud storage, its own music store, its own ebook store and its own streaming movie store.
If accurate, the source says the tablet will cost between $200 to $250 and include a much-higher resolution screen and a front-side camera for video chat.
Rumor has it the device will be unveiled at the Google I/O conference on June 25th for July mass release.
Thanks to a new partnership between charity Teach First and search giant Google, English teachers specializing in computer science will receive free "teaching aids, such as Raspberry Pi's or Arduino starter kits".
Google's chairman Eric Schmidt said thanks to the investment, the UK will no longer risk "losing a generation of scientists."
Schmidt has openly criticized the UK's move away from teaching how to create software and moving more on how to use it.
Says the chariman: "Put simply, technology breakthroughs can't happen without the scientists and engineers to make them. The challenge that society faces is to equip enough people, with the right skills and mindset, and to get them to work on the most important problems."
Teach First takes "exceptional" grad student teachers and puts them in a six-week training program "before deploying them to schools where they teach classes over a two-year period," says the BBC.
Google has revealed the interesting data this week.
The search giant has to remove more than 1 million links to infringing content each month, including links to movies, music, software and video games from its search results.
Unsurprisingly, Microsoft sent the most requests during the month, sending a full 543,378.
As part of the DMCA, the company must remove links if they have been reported by copyright holders. Google admits it complies with over 97 percent of requests, which must be submitted via an online form and is then approved by a Google algorithm or a dedicated team.
For those other 2-3 percent, the requests are rejected "because the form is incomplete, the web page doesn't exist or we look at it and say we don't think it is infringing."
Outside of Microsoft, the BPI and NBC sent the next most requests, totaling about 300,000. The sites with the most links removed were filestube.com, torrents.eu and 4shared.com.
In total, Google 1.24 million requests from 1,296 copyright owners.
Facebook has unveiled their latest application for iOS today, called 'Facebook Camera.'
The app will make it easier for Facebook users to take pictures, edit them, and share them on the social networking site.
Says Dirk Stoop, a Facebook product manager for photos: "We can basically show you more photos on the app, so we can make a more immersive experience around your photos. On the side of publishing these photos, Facebook Camera lets you upload much higher resolution photos at up to 2,048 by 2,048 pixels wide."
As most active users know, the default for current pictures is much lower, usually in the 800x800 range.
Building on its acquisition of Instagram, the company has also added photo filters to Facebook. There will be 15 filters and also include cropping and straightening tools within the app.
Facebook recently acquired Instagram for $1 billion. The photo sharing app has 40 million users on Android and iOS.
The American Civil Liberties Union has created an infographic for mass distribution that shows some scary figures related to the U.S. National Security Agency.
Since 9/11, the Agency has been able to "spy" on electronic communications without the need for court-approved warrants. The group has a large complex in Utah that cost $2 billion and holds the data.
According to multiple sources, Google is preparing to begin shipping their first 7-inch branded tablet next month.
The Asus-built tablet will be the first "Nexus" Android tablet, coming with a vanilla version of Android 4.0 that does not include any third-party user interface or bloatware apps.
Rumors have been swirling for months about the tablet, which was first reported to be released in May. The device had to be pushed back to July due to "design issues," says the report.
Supply chain sources say Google has ordered 600,000 tablets for June with a plan to ship 2.5 million by the end of the year.
If past rumors prove accurate, the device will run on a powerful dual-core processor, include mid-to-high end specs and sell for just $150, undercutting the feature-strapped Amazon Kindle Fire.
Cnet is reporting today that the FBI is in the process of creating a new unit that will be able to spy on your conversations that take place using wireless communications, like Skype.
The new unit will be called the "Domestic Communications Assistance Center."
Reads the source: "DCAC's mandate is broad, covering everything from trying to intercept and decode Skype conversations to building custom wiretap hardware or analyzing the gigabytes of data that a wireless provider or social network might turn over in response to a court order. It's also designed to serve as a kind of surveillance help desk for state, local, and other federal police."
Talks for the new unit have been around for over four years, and will be "the technological component of the bureau's 'Going Dark' Internet wiretapping push, which was allocated $54 million by a Senate committee last month."
President Barack Obama has mandated today that all major federal government agency sites must become optimized for mobile devices within a year.
By "optimized," the President means at least two key services must be available on mobile phones and tablets.
Additionally, the agencies must create websites to report "on their mobile progress." These sites must be published within 90 days.
Reads the White House press release:
Innovators in the private sector and the Federal Government have used these technological advances to fundamentally change how they serve their customers. However, it is time for the Federal Government to do more. For far too long, the American people have been forced to navigate a labyrinth of information across
different Government programs in order to find the services they need. In addition, at a time when Americans increasingly pay bills and buy tickets on mobile devices, Government services often are not optimized for smartphones or tablets, assuming the services are even available online.
Bill no. S06779 will look to block anonymous speech online.
Lawmakers in the state want to cut down on "mean-spirited and baseless political attacks" and also "turn the spotlight on cyberbullies by forcing them to reveal their identity."
The bill itself is described by lawmakers as "an act to amend the civil rights law, in relation to protecting a person's right to know who is behind an anonymous internet posting."
If the legislation were to ever be passed, an admin/owner of any website hosted in New York can, by request, remove comments "posted on his or her website by an anonymous poster unless such anonymous poster agreed to attach his or her name to the post and confirm that his or her IP address, legal name and home address are accurate." Furthermore, all website admins must have valid contact information "clearly visible in any sections where comments are posted."
There will be, of course, potential First Amendment issues with the bill, says Kevin Bankston, a staff attorney with the Center for Democracy and Technology. The lawyer says "this statute would essentially destroy the ability to speak anonymously online on sites in New York and provide a heckler's veto to anybody who disagrees with or doesn't like what an anonymous poster said."
Sony and Samsung have both started blocking retailers from offering discounts on their HDTVs.
The move is said to protect the "manufacturers' margins and the retailers' profits by preventing "showrooming," where customers check out models in person before buying them for less online."
The so-called "showrooming" has become common place nowadays, as most retailers cannot match the price of their online counterparts, many of whom do not have the overhead costs of actual brick-and-mortar stores.
Apple has used similar tactics in the past, very successfully, but it is unclear if Sony and Samsung will fare the same. In the TV world, Samsung is undoubtedly the king, but will people pay for a Sony set with a higher price tag than other similar sets from rivals like LG or Panasonic? Probably not.
In the last month, alone, Sony has raised the price of their high-end sets by $1000, and Samsung is expected to make a similar move soon. Samsung also says it will begin charging a premium for its laptops.
An ITC judge has ruled this week that Microsoft Xbox 360 should be banned from import into the U.S. due to violations of Motorola patents.
The console violates four patents, says Law Judge David Shaw. Shaw made his original ruling in April and has now recommended a full injunction on sales and import into the States Shaw made his initial ruling against Microsoft in April, and now recommends a ban on sales and import of the game console.
Gamers should not fret, however, as Shaw's ruling needs approval from the ITC board of commissioners, with a deadline of August 23rd. After that, if the board approves, then they will still need to get a signature from the President before the ban goes into effect.
Blizzard Activision has proudly boasted today that Diablo 3 is the fastest selling PC game of all-time.
The game sold 3.5 million copies in just 24 hours, not including the 1.2 million people who were given the game after signing up for a World of Warcraft annual pass earlier this year.
Overall, there are now 6.3 million people playing the popular game.
"We're definitely thrilled that so many people around the world were excited to pick up their copy of Diablo 3 and jump in the moment it went live," said Mike Morhaime, CEO and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment. "We also regret that our preparations were not enough to ensure everyone had a seamless experience when they did so. I want to reaffirm our commitment to make sure the millions of Diablo 3 players out there have a great experience with the game moving forward, and I also want to thank them for their ongoing support."
On the retail front, both GameStop and Amazon have both called the game one of the best video game launches in their histories.
In January, Samsung unveiled its "Chromebox" device at CES.
Since then, however, there has been little in the way of news for the device, which is a mini-PC run by Chrome OS.
This week, a full product listing showed up on the TigerDirect website, before it was taken down. Although unconfirmed, it appears the PC will run on a 1.9 GHz Intel Celeron B840 dual core processor, have 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 16GB solid state disk, and 6 USB ports.
The MSRP (or at least Tiger's selling price) was put at $329.99.
Google's Chrome OS is a web-based cloud operating system, where you must be online to take advantage of any feature, including writing documents using Google Docs. The OS boots very quickly (13 seconds on average), and let's you re-open previous data quickly thanks to cloud sync.
Foxconn has announced that it will spend over $200 million to build a new factory dedicated to AppleiOS devices.
The new factory will total 430,000 square feet and will employ up to 36,000 workers.
According to sources, the factory will output $1 billion of Apple products every year.
Construction begins in October, and is expected to be completed by earl 2013.
Last month, Apple and Foxconn announced they would share the initial costs of improving Chinese factories where millions of iOS devices are already built. In February, wages were raised, on average, 21 percent for its workers and last month the two companies reached an agreement to hire new workers and cut overtime for existing workers.
Dolby has announced that the HQ music download service e-onkyo music will be the first online music storefront to feature Dolby TrueHD 5.1-channel surround sound.
The upgrade to the music service will occur on May 30th in Japan and in September for the rest of the world.
There will not be too many tracks available, with only 100 albums (1,000 tracks) available in the HQ format at launch.
Onkyo started the e-onkyo service in 2005 and updated the HQ DRM-free formats in 2010.
Shinsuke Yamashita, President and Representative Director, Onkyo Entertainment Technology Corporation, adds: "We are very happy that e-onkyo music will start distribution with Dolby TrueHD lossless audio, thanks to the cooperation of Dolby. The evolution of network audio and PC audio means that users can enjoy high-resolution sound with data volumes greater than those that are possible on a CD. And we are aiming to achieve even further growth in our music distribution business. Through the collaboration between our two companies, we intend to increase our breadth of content and improve the user's listening experience, in a way that only high-quality surround sound distribution can."
The U.S.' major ISPs have announced they will be making more free Wi-Fi hotspots available to customers.
Comcast, Time Warner, Cablevision, Bright House and Cox are all part of the deal. The companies are five of the nation's largest cable and Internet providers.
The agreement will allow any subscriber of those ISPs to use free Wi-Fi from the other ISPs, no matter where you are. For example, Cablevision is only New York City based, but if you were to travel to Philadelphia, you can use Comcast's free Wi-Fi hotspots there despite not being a customer of theirs.
Over 50,000 "CableWifi" hotspots will be made available in the next few months to competitor's customers.
"We believe that WiFi is a superior approach to mobile data," says Kristin Dolan, Cablevision's head of project management. "Cable providers are best positioned to build the highest-capacity national network offering customers fast and reliable Internet connections when away from their home or business broadband service."
A similar service has been available to TWC, Comcast and Cablevision subscribers since 2010, but only in the northeast.
According to multiple supply chain sources, Apple is testing the iPhone 5 with a larger display.
The new device will feature a 3.9-inch display and have 1136 x 640 resolution, much larger than the 3.5-inch screen seen on the current generation Apple phones that feature a nice 640 x 960 Retina Display.
Currently floating around the Apple campus in disguised cases, the prototype phones are "in the PreEVT stage of development and are codenamed N41AP (5,1) and N42AP (5,2)", says 9to5.
The screen will still be 1.94-inches wide, but will grow another 3.45-inches tall. The new resolution will be close to 16:9, moving away from Apple's standard 3:2.
If accurate, the reports say iOS 6 will be custom built to take advantage of the new display. The home screen will get a fifth row of icons in addition to the stationary app dock and an updated user interface.
Spike TV has proudly announced that it will be live streaming the upcoming Nintendo E3 press conference.
The gaming company will unveil an almost completed model of the Wii U, alongside some game play.
Spike will play the entire conference without commercial interruption starting at 12:00 PM EST on June 5.
Sony and Microsoft are not expected to reveal any new hardware, but both companies will focus on first-party games and upgraded online services that better integrate movies and music.
Earlier this week, a QA tester at Traveller's Tales Games posted a picture of the updated Wii U controller on Twitter before quickly removing it. In the updated controller, Nintendo has added actual analog sticks, upgrading from the "nubs" showed off last year and seen on the 3DS handheld.
Microsoft has said today it expected 350 million devices running Windows 7 to be shipped this year, alone.
The figure comes just as Microsoft prepares to release the final version of its Windows 8 operating system, expected to hit in October.
If the shipment number is correct, "it makes Windows the most popular single system,"says CEO Steve Ballmer.
Windows 8 will be the company's first true try at the current media tablet market, and will work on ARM-based devices. With its new "Metro" interface, designed for touch devices, the company hopes to take share away from market leader Apple.
Thanks to Windows 8, research firm IDC believes global PC shipments will break out of their current "funk" and grow 5 percent in 2012 compared to just 1.8 percent last year.
The MPAA's CEO Chris Dodd has finally admitted that the group's tactics of comparing piracy to stealing is a bad choice.
Over the last decade (or longer), the media industry has used the word "theft" to describe piracy and "thieves" for those that engage in the copying or unauthorized sharing of movies.
As we have posted here on Afterdawn many times before, the following video has been a mainstay of the MPAA's video archives:
Dodd appears to have softened his stance in that regard, however, stating: "We're going to have to be more subtle and consumer-oriented. We're on the wrong track if we describe this as thievery."
As you can tell, the MPAA may still believe it is stealing to pirate a movie, but they just won't use that term anymore.
Popular music streaming service Spotify has expanded to Australia and New Zealand.
Spotify's full offering of 16 million tracks will be available to both new markets as it aggressively expands internationally.
The service launched in the summer of 2011 in the U.S., and has been extremely successful in turning free users into paying subscribers.
More notably, unlike in other nations, Aussies and Kiwis will have unlimited free access to the tracks. In the U.S. and other regions, the unlimited access only lasted 6 months before moving to a capped streaming plan, usually just 10 hours per month.
There are two premium accounts, as is standard. For $4.99 per month, you will have unlimited desktop access with no ads and for $9.99 you get full mobile access as well, including offline caching.
One of the richest men in the world has just gotten a little bit poorer.
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's fortune fell $2.2 billion today after investors and Wall Street sold off shares in Facebook, dropping the company's stock 11 percent just one day after it went public.
After today's fall, the company is valued at $93 billion and Zuckerberg has a 24 percent share, making him the 26th richest person on the planet.
Other co-founder Dustin Moskovitz and Eduardo Saverin saw their shares depreciate, as well, with Moskovitz's $4.5 billion in shares down $580 million and Saverin's $1.8 billion stake was down $230 million.
The company has been quick to spend its newfound capital, purchasing social gifting app Karma and paying $1 billion for the ever-popular iOS and Android photo editor Instagram.
Tenenbaum, the former doctorate student who was convicted of illegally sharing 30 tracks via P2P has had his Supreme Court petition declined, sending the case back to the district court from which it came.
The alleged pirate was originally fined $675,000 for sharing the tracks, but the fine was reduced to $67,500 in 2010, after a judge deemed the original penalty unconstitutional and "excessive." Seeking an even further reduction, Tenenbaum tried unsuccessfully in 2011 to petition to the district court and actually had his reduction reversed back to $675,000 after the major labels and RIAA appealed.
In this case, the trial will go on, bouncing between appeals.
Says the lawyer defending Tenenbaum (pro-bono): "This is where we feel we're being pushed down a rat hole. The award is lowered but the plaintiffs, the recording companies, are given the option of whether to accept the award or go through another trial. It's like a way of keeping us in litigation forever."
Hulu has announced today that it will premiere three new original shows alongside seven "exclusively licensed" television shows that had not been available to U.S. consumers.
As the company explains, the new series are each 30 minutes long and "include Richard Linklater's "Up To Speed;" a travel series hosted by Timothy "Speed" Levitch; Kevin Smith's "Spoilers," a 10-episode movie revue that combines animated shorts and group chats and "We Got Next" A scripted comedy that follows a four-man pickup basketball team."
Each series has a budget that matches their cable equivalents.
"We've got less nighttime hours to work with," adds Andy Forssell, senior vice president of content at Hulu. "That means we were searching for quirky, really well-done shows that can stand up next to last night's TV."
Hulu has said they will spend $500 million this year on licensing and producing shows.
According to the latest figures by StatCounter, Google's Chrome browser is now the most popular in the world, knocking Internet Explorer from the throne after more than a decade.
For the week ended May 20th, Chrome took first, just edging out IE and gaining more share on rival Firefox.
In the U.S., IE is still the big dog, and in Europe, Firefox is king. However, in Asia and South America, Chrome
is the clear leader with the browser taking 50 percent share of the entire South American continent.
Globally, for the week, Chrome is on top at 31.88 percent share, followed by IE at 31.47 percent. Firefox remains in third at a respectable 26.42 percent, gaining for the month, as well.
Safari continued to gain a snail's pace, taking 7.37 percent.
The BlackBerry Developer Team has announced today that PlayBook tablet owners will be getting an upgrade to the BlackBerry 10 operating system expected to hit later this year.
Unfortunately for current phone owners, the Team confirmed that anyone with a BlackBerry 7 smartphone will have to buy a new phone if they want the BB10 "goodness."
While the BB10 news is a positive for PlayBook owners, it comes with a catch. The update will not be released until after the first BB10 smartphone is released.
The much-anticipated OS will bring a better on-screen keyboard, a cascading user interface for multitasking and other features that should have been on past versions of the OS.
In one of the more useful uses of the motion control system, reseachers have begun using Kinect as a surgical assistant.
First, German researchers turned the system into a "interactive augmented reality X-ray machine" and now Microsoft Research is in the early stages of using the Kinect sensor as a surgical assistant.
Notes BGR: On May 8th, "a surgeon at Guy's and St. Thomas' hospital in London used a custom Kinect installation to browse through medical images and real-time X-rays while repairing an aneurism in a patient's aorta."
Overall, the new system will allow surgeons to call up images and perform other tasks without needing to actually touch a screen or item, avoiding contamination and saving time.
"Up until now, I'd been calling out across the room to one of our technical assistants, asking them to manipulate the image, rotate one way, rotate the other, pan up, pan down, zoom in, zoom out," adds Tom Carrell, a consultant vascular surgeon at Guy's and St Thomas'. "I thought this was going to be a lot more awkward to start off with, but I was very pleased with the way it went today."
There have been rumors for months that Nintendo will update their Wii U controllers before showing off the final version of the console at this year's E3 event.
This weekend, a QA tester at Traveller's Tales Games posted a picture of the updated controller on Twitter before quickly removing it.
In the updated controller, Nintendo has added actual analog sticks, upgrading from the "nubs" showed off last year and seen on the 3DS handheld.
Secondly, the Start and Select buttons have been moved to the right side of the controller from the center, making them more accessible.
Finally, Nintendo has added the Wii U branding and two small squares, both of which have unknown qualities.
The recently released Raspberry Pi is set to get its very own camera module.
For $35 you get a 3.3-inch wide board with a 700 MHz ARM11, 256MB RAM, HDMI-out, SD card slot, a USB port, ethernet, audio jack and Broadcom VideoCore IV GPU. The first 20,000 units shipped in April, while countless thousands of others wait for theirs to arrive.
The team has begun working on accessories for the mini-PC, and has posted the first pictures taken from the prototype camera module. The camera itself connects to some of the pins on the system board.
In prototype form, the creators of the Pi used a 14MP sensor but the final commercial version will certainly use something smaller to save on costs.
Reads the release:
I was sent this image this morning from Gert (not pictured), Naush (right eye and half-moustache) and JamesH (stripy shirt and chin). It's not a terribly exciting photo ? until you realise that it's the first picture ever taken from the prototype camera add-on board we're developing for release later in the year, which will plug into those CSI pins we expose in the middle of the Raspberry Pi.
Read more...
Six years after its purchase, Nokia is selling its New York headquarters at a large loss.
In 2006, the company purchased the office building in Harrison, NY and reconstructed it, spending just above $30 million in the process.
This week, the company has sold the building to biotech company Histogenetics for $12 million. Michael Rao, president of New York Commercial Realty Group, who represents the buyer, was very happy with the deal: "It's a great deal for 12 million bucks. The building is gorgeous. It's so spectacular."
Nokia was forced to put the building on the market as part of a global downsizing to save on costs as the company struggles to remain relevant.
The company posted a large $1.7 billion loss in the recent quarter after losing $1.2 billion in the first quarter as its Windows Phone devices just started heading to market.
Quick access to contact details When you search for an e-mail address [in Gmail], the search results will now show you contact details in addition to that person's [Google] profile photo [if he or she has one] and the e-mails sent from and to them. From here, you can start a chat, call their phone and more. Plus, if your contacts have a Google+ profile, this information will stay up to date automatically. You can get to these same results in a variety of ways including from the people widget, contacts, and the chat list search menu.
Improved circle integration and circle search In addition to adding contact details to search results, we've made some improvements to the [Google+] circles integration announced in December. When you select a circle, you'll now see profile photos of people in that circle at the top right of the page. Plus, when you click on these images you'll be taken directly to search results with contact details.
Read more...
Apple has announced their plans to spend $900 million to open new retail locations across the world.
In 2012, the company will open 40 new retail shops. The new locations are headed to Germany, Spain, Australia, France, Canada, the UK and the U.S.
In the U.S., the first location will be in the City Creek Center mall in Salt Lake City. Allegedly, the mall offered Apple up to "five years of occupancy, rent-free" as incentive to open up ship there. The second location will be in Bakersfield, California.
9to5 has this to say of the international locations: "Apple has taken up the remainder of a 15-year lease (10 years remaining) for a new store in the Drake Circus Shopping Centre in Plymouth, U.K. Apple also has plans for a new retail location at Market Mall in Calgary, Alberta. It is smaller than the new U.K. store?and many others?at just 5,448 square-feet. However, Apple plans to move to a new space within the mall that will offer a curved 77-foot wide storefront and 7, 287 square-feet within a year of moving in. The store is expected to open sometime this year."
Digitimes has reported this week that Amazon is preparing a 10-inch Kindle Fire tablet for release in the Q3 this year.
On the other end, the site has also been reporting that Apple is looking to create a smaller iPad, one that will compete with the current generation Kindle Fire in the 7-inch market.
Amazon has never released an official count on how many Kindle Fire units have been sold, but the number is expected to be over 6 million. Research firms have pegged the Kindle Fire at having 54 percent market share of all Android tablets, even though it only has a 10 percent share of the overall tablet market, well behind the market leading iPad.
Making the 10-inch rumored Fire most notable is the rumored price. Because Amazon does not care to make the money on the hardware itself and instead makes it all back on the apps, music, movie end, the tablet will likely sell for $300, well below the base price of the iPad at $500.
Dubbed GameStop Mobile, the new service is a mobile virtual network operator based on AT&T's spectrum and network.
For $55 a month, GameStop sells its own SIM cards and service that run on AT&T's network with unlimited voice and tiered data. For $20 you can get even more limited data and voice calls as part of a "pay-as-you-go" service.
The company has seen its share of struggles in the past years, as profits and revenues disappear. With e-tailers offering better prices and with gamers finally turning wise to GameStop's rip off for used game trade-ins, the company has had its issues remaining profitable.
For the time being, the move could lead to the retailer selling unlocked smartphones, as well, through a trade-in program similar to what it does with console hardware and used games.
In one of the stranger cross promotions we've seen this year, the Chili's restaurant chain is offering free Android phones.
To promote their new app, the company is offering a free Android smartphone (it is unclear which one) if you buy $25 worth of food through the Chili's website.
The device will come with a two-year contract, so it isn't necessarily completely "free" but it could be an okay deal for someone looking for a new phone.
Two months ago, Sony promised to update their dual-screen Tablet P to Android 4.0 and the company has finally delivered.
The Tablet P will get the upgrade on May 24th.
Although Sony made the press release in Japanese, it is expected to be a global rollout.
Running on Android 3.2, the device has dual 5.5-inch displays with 1024x480 resolution each, a 1GHz Tegra 2 dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, dual cameras 0.3/5MP and just 4GB internal storage. The tablet does have 4G HSPA+ capability, as well.
If you do not care for Sony's version of 4.0, you can root the device using these instructions: Sony Tablet P already rooted
Facebook has purchased the social gifting app "Karma."
The move comes on the heels of the social networking behemoth purchasing Instagram and Lightbox, looking to expand their social footprint on mobiles.
Karma does not do all too much except let users connect to the network via the app and send others gifts.
Reads the press release:
We founded Karma with the goal of adding the sentiment and meaning back into gift giving. That's what Karma is all about. That's what the Karma team set out to achieve.
Over the last year, we've built a new e-commerce platform from the ground up. We've been honored to partner with amazing brands to create a curated catalog of products. We made those products instantly giftable in a brand new way. And we harnessed the power of Facebook's social network to ensure you never miss a chance to show someone you care. The phenomenal response and feedback we've heard from customers has more than exceeded our expectations. And we're just getting started - today we take social gifting to the next level.
We're thrilled to announce that Karma has been acquired by Facebook. The service that Karma provides will continue to operate in full force. By combining the incredible passion of our community with Facebook's platform we can delight users in new and meaningful ways. As we say... only good things will follow.
Read more...
HTC has announced that the T-Mobile version of the Sesation 4G is getting Android 4.0 as we speak.
To manually initiate the download, head over to your "Settings" app, press "About Phone" then "HTC Software Updates" and finally follow the instructions to download the update.
T-Mobile will allow you to download via Wi-Fi or 3G/4G.
Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich)
Sense 3.6
System bar enhancements to easily view recent apps.
Re-sizeable widgets
Lock screen actions including pull down notifications and adjust volume while device is locked
Data usage controls
Face Unlock
Home screen folders
Improved battery life
The most anticipated Android device of the year is now available for pre-order, unlocked.
Amazon and Expansys-USA have put the smartphone up for sale, with a range of prices starting at $700 and going up to $850 for some crazier third-party sellers.
The model up for sale is the unlocked international GSM version, meaning it will work on AT&T and T-Mobile USA here in the States, but without LTE for AT&T.
"Pebble Blue" and "Marble White" are available colors from multiple sellers.
Samsung noted earlier this week that the company has seen 9 million pre-orders for the upcoming device from 100 global carriers. The device goes on sale in Germany first on May 29th and then everyone else throughout June.
The flagship phone has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, a powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and an 8MP camera, all of which are high-end. What should differentiate the phone from others in the market is its software, which Samsung has customized and tweaked to the point where it does not feel too much like the stock "vanilla" Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich you may be accustomed to.
According to multiple sources, Google is looking to move the new Motorola Mobility headquarters to Chicago.
The search giant is looking for an office with at least 500,000 square feet in downtown Chicago. The site would need to hold 3000 employees.
Mobility is currently headquartered in Libertyville, Illinois.
Most had anticipated that Google would move the company over to San Francisco, so the reports are surprsing.
Google will officially acquire the company next week after finally gaining approval from Chinese regulators. Google purchased the company for $12.5 billion last year pending approval.
According to reports, Verizon is looking to raise speeds on their FiOS broadband network, but at a price.
The speed bump will hit all four tiers of the service, with the mid-end 25Mbps download tier being bumped to 50Mbps and the 35 Mbps service hopping to 75 Mbps downstream.
On the low end, the 15Mbps service seems to be unchanged, as is the extremely fast 150Mbps high-end tier. If accurate, Verizon is looking to offer a 300 Mbps tier, as well, which would blow away any current competitors.
The reports claims the changes could be coming as soon as June 18th but Verizon has not commented.
Even if the speed increases don't come to fruition, consumers are almost guaranteed to see the price jump: "I think that you'll see us do some price increases here over the next two quarters," says CFO Fran Shammo.
Google must keep Android "open and free" for the next five years in order to gain China's approval for its acquisition of Motorola Mobility.
All major outlets are reporting that Google has agreed to those terms, and the acquisition will close next week.
While it is unclear why this was a necessary requirement, it was likely included to make sure that Google would not give hardware maker Motorola Mobility preferential treatment such as early access to new versions of the operating system.
Google has never indicated it would close off the OS to other hardware makers, but it has been oft-rumored that the search giant is looking to get into the hardware game.
Furthermore, Android is owned, technically, by the Open Handset Alliance, not just Google.
Adds Google: "Our stance since we agreed to acquire Motorola has not changed, and we look forward to closing the deal."
jOBS, the Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, will begin filming in the original garage Apple was founded in.
Filming begins in June and the scenes in the garage will continue with the "project's commitment to accuracy and authenticity."
Straight from the release, the film is described as an accurate portrayal of Apple founder "Steve Jobs' most defining and personal moments, motivations, and the people that drove him. The film covers Jobs from his early years as an impressionable youth and wayward hippie, through his initial successes and infamous ousting, to his storybook return and ultimate triumphs as a man who set out to change the world and did just that."
Production on the picture began when Jobs retired in August of last year, a few months before his death. The script came after "exhaustive research and interviews with Steve Jobs' friends, colleagues, and mentors to develop the most truthful and gripping picture of Jobs' life."
In total, the movie will cover Job's life from 1971 until 2000, right before the launch of the original iPod.
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has announced today that the company will reduce the amount it subsidizes for new phones.
The move will help the company "raise revenue," says the exec.
In addition to not giving back to the consumer, AT&T will follow Verizon's lead and create shared data plans for multiple devices and families who prefer to share a "bucket" of data, minutes and texts.
"We need to...allow customers to connect those tablets to some of the existing data plans that they have to be able to share them in a way that will drive more revenue for us, but also give a good deal to customers," says de la Vega.
The company also plans to "keep 2012 smartphone sales limited to 2011 levels to cut down on upgrade costs" including subsidies on new devices. "You can take it to the bank that our thrust is to lower that in every case we can."
What this means for consumers is higher prices up front, even when you sign up for a new two-year contract.
Microsoft has shown off another large change to the upcoming Windows 8's desktop user interface.
The company has removed the popular Aero Glass UI that was first shown off with Vista and then in Windows 7.
By dropping Aero, Windows 8 will have visual changes including "flattening surfaces, removing reflections, and scaling back distracting gradients."
In response to questions about whether it will be tough for users to learn the new OS, which has some stark changes from past OS, the company does not seem to be worried: "We will help people get off on the right foot and we have confidence that people will quickly find the new paradigms to be second-nature."
Windows 8 Release Preview launches next month and the final release of the OS is expected to launch in late October.
A hacker by the name of "Nyre" has claimed responsibility for the recent DDoS attack on The Pirate Bay.
The torrenttracker went down temporarily on Wednesday following a lash out at Anonymous for their DDoS attack on Virgin Media, one of the ISPs blocking access to the Pirate Bay.
Nyre took credit by posting on Pastebin: "I am highly against Anonymous. I do not support Anonymous anymore. I sometimes help the feds. The Pirate Bay was a press-release website for Anonymous, then I had a idea, why not take it down? Why not make it impossible for Anonymous? Get on your knees, Anonymous. I am a one-man army. I am not a hacker. I am a security killer."
It is unclear what Nyre used for the attack, but it is clear he has some sort of large botnet at his disposal.
Virgin Media's main website in the UK was forced down for some time last week. A group initially claimed responsibility for it on Twitter, and hinted that it was revenge for blocking the Pirate Bay.
21-year-old Gareth Crosskey has been sentenced to one-year in prison for hacking into an American's Facebook account.
Crosskey plead guilty to two counts of breaching the UK's Computer Misuse Act of 1990.
The UK citizen was accused of hacking into the account on January 12, 2011. It remains unclear why he hacked the account and what relationship there was between the two.
After the crime, the victim contacted the FBI who eventually traced the source back to the UK. U.S. agents then passed the case onto the Metropolitan Police Central e-crime Unit (PCeU).
The official charges were one count of using a computer to gain unauthorised access to a program/data and one count of performing unauthorised acts with intent to impair operation of, or prevent/hinder access to, a computer.
"The PCeU are working to detect and bring before the courts those responsible for this type of offence. Today's result should act as a deterrant to any individuals thinking of participating in this type of criminal activity," added PCeU spokesperson (via ZDet). "By taking swift action, PCeU officers were able to quickly detain Crosskey thereby preventing further disruption to the victim."
According to Microsoft themselves, Windows Phone has just surpassed the iPhone in the world's largest market.
The software giant says the mobile operating system has taken 7 percent market share in the nation, beating out Apple's popular device at 6 percent.
Adds Michel van der Bel, Microsoft's Chief Operating Officer for the Greater China Region (via Cnet): "We've only just begun," with smartphone and tablet sales. Additionally, the company is looking to increase business sales.
While the figure is certainly a small victory, the company has Android to worry about. The popular OS is on 69 percent of smartphones in the nation leaving all competitors in the dust.
Microsoft's joint venture with Nokia has been a minor success in the U.S. but has fared poorly in other large markets like the UK.
Just like in years past, Microsoft has brought the promotion back in time for the summer.
Students in the U.S. who purchase a Windows-based PC for $699 or more at certain retailers will receive a free 4GB Xbox 360 gaming console.
The promotion starts on Sunday in America and on May 18th in Canada. Canadian students get a slightly better deal, only needing to buy a $599 PC.
American retailers included in the deal are Best Buy, Dell.com, Fry's Electronics, HPDirect.com, Microsoft Stores, and NewEgg.com. For Canada, Best Buy, Dell.ca, Future Shop, Staples and The Source are included companies.
In addition, if you wait until June 2nd, you can purchase the PC, get a $15 upgrade to the new Windows 8 and get the free console to take best advantage of all of Microsoft's deals.
Despite hype not seen since Google's IPO in 2004, Facebook's debut in the market has failed to impress investors with shares up just 2 percent as of writing.
Priced initially at $38, giving the company a value of $104 billion, the shares are now trading at $39, leaving the social networking giant with a $107 billion valuation.
Says one market broker: "We have got some unhappy guys out there. They were hoping for Facebook to be considerably better. I bet there are a lot of disappointed people in the market."
The stock jumped as high as $45 today but has quickly returned to earth. Popularity of the shares are certainly not to blame as 450 million have already traded and the NASDAQ is even having issues filling orders due to such huge demand.
Facebook, like other Internet-based companies in the new "social bubble" will trade at a massive premium to its earnings. While companies like Apple trade at just 14 times what they bring in, Facebook will trade at 107 times.
Yahoo is preparing to sell off its most profitable venture of all time.
The portal company seems finally ready to part with Chinese giant Alibaba, selling their 40 percent stake for an expected $7 billion.
If accurate, the reports say the deal could be announced on Monday.
After taxes, Yahoo will use all of the money to buy back their own stock.
On the other end, Alibaba will then move towards an IPO. Yahoo Japan (which is a separate company) will then sell 25 percent share, leaving the company on its own with the exception of a small 10 percent share owned by Yahoo Japan.
Samsung has noted that the company has seen 9 million pre-orders for its upcoming Galaxy S III smartphone.
The orders have come in from over 100 global carriers, making the device a massive success even a month before launch in most places. The device goes on sale in Germany first on May 29th.
Furthermore, the company's smartphone factory in South Korea was said to be running at full capacity of 5 million units per month.
The device has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, a powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and an 8MP camera, all of which are high-end but not leaps and bounds better than previous generation devices.
However, what should differentiate the phone from others in the market is its software, which Samsung has customized and tweaked to the point where it does not feel too much like the stock "vanilla" Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich you may be accustomed to.
Simon & Schuster have settled their long standing ebook price fixing case.
Earlier in the year, the US Department of Justice filed an antitrust suit against Simon & Schuster and four other major publishers, as well as Apple over the alleged price fixing.
Additionally, 15 states and Puerto Rico filed their own suits. HarperCollins and Hachette quickly reached agreements to avoid court while S&S needed to "discuss" their settlement. Penguin and Apple are fighting the charges.
As of today, however, US District Court Judge Denise Cote agreed to dismiss S&S from the suit as the settlement was reached with the states and the fed.
The case stretches back to 2010 with the debut of the first iPad from Apple. The tablet quickly became a competitor for Amazon's Kindle line of e-readers. Amazon had been charging low prices ($9.99 for new releases) in order to push up purchases of its electronic readers.
Publishers were concerned about Amazon selling e-books at such low prices (often sold for less than Amazon paid for them) because consumers might become accustomed to the lower prices. Also, publishers feared being in the same situation as record labels were in when iTunes picked up stream, but Apple insisted on keeping single song costs at 99c. Amazon offering consistently steep discounts might discourage other traditional retail partners from offering e-books altogether, alleged the suit.
Earlier today, Iran's Foreign Ministry threatened to sue Google after the search giant removed the name "Persian Gulf" from its Google Maps service.
Says a Ministry spokesperson: "One of the seditionist acts taken as part of the soft war against the Iranian nation has been Google's shameless act to drop the name 'Persian Gulf' which is ... against historical documents. We have put on our agenda to make an official complaint against Google."
The Gulf itself has long been a controversial topic, with Iran calling it the Persian Gulf and Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Iraq calling it the Arabian Gulf. Different descriptions offend the rival parties and it looks like Google likely just removed the name to remove a potentially offensive adjective.
This is not the first time Iran has pulled such a stunt. In 2010, the nation tried to ban any airline from its airspace if it did not call the waterway the Persian Gulf.
Amazon is looking to add advertisements to the welcome screen of the popular Amazon Kindle Fire tablet.
The news comes via an executive at an ad agency who says Amazon approached them. The ads will not come cheap, however, with an agency needing to spend at least $600,000 for any package on the tablet.
Each ad campaign will run for two months and also include inventory from the "Special Offers" product. The Special Offers section leads tablet owners to product pages for items.
For a cool $1 million, advertisers get even more ad inventory, are added to Amazon's public-relations push, and get the special offers page.
Amazon is expected to release a larger, updated model of the Kindle Fire later in the summer.
Earlier today, Apple began censoring the word "jailbreak" in any content seen in the iTunes Store.
For example, the Thin Lizzy song "Jailbreak" was censored to read "J*******k," which is complete nonsense. Other artists got the same treatment, as well.
The issue has since been rectified.
Jailbreaking of course also references that processing of rooting an iOS device to allow custom software and the Cydia store of apps. The store rivals the official iOS App Store, and includes free and paid apps, themes and more.
The process of jailbreaking is not illegal, but doing so will void your Apple warranty.
T-Mobile USA has begun selling new off-contract mobile broadband plans for users who only occasionally need data.
For $15, you can get a 1-week pass and 300MB of data. For $25 you get 1.5GB and a 1-month pass. Jumping up to $35, you get one month and 3.5GB while $50 will buy you 5GB.
You get access to T-Mobile's 3G and 4G HSPA+ networks.
Starting May 20th, users can purchase the new plans anywhere, although the 3.5GB and 5GB plans are exclusively at Wal-Mart until July 20th.
HP is considering eliminating 25,000 jobs, say sources.
The company is looking to slash costs, and 25,000 would be a full 7 percent of its workforce.
Up to 15,000 of the job cuts will come from the enterprise services group, the group that sells information technology services.
The job cuts will not be straight firings, however, and instead will come as an early-retirement package. By reducing 25,000 jobs, the company could save $2 billion per year.
HP has seen its earnings fall as consumers move away from PCs and move to mobile devices like tablets. The company recently went through a management change, making Meg Whitman CEO and removing Leo Apotheker who tried his best to ruin the company.
Spotify, the popular social music service, has just been valued at $4 billion.
The company is starting to raise money this week in a new "mega funding" round, say multiple sources, although Spotify itself would not comment.
Goldman Sachs will participate in the new funding round, and account for the first $100 million. Other firms are in discussions and the total funding could reach $220 million.
The news comes on the heels of Facebook's $16 billion IPO today, which values the company at $104 billion. The social networking giant's shares will sell to the public tomorrow, and could end much higher than the current value.
Spotify currently has 10 million registered users around the globe, 30 percent of which are paying subscribers, a significant figure.
The study found that most of the pirates are male, and aged between 25 and 44.
22 percent of those who admitted to piracy said they did it "occasionally" while 26 percent said "rarely."
Says the BSA's report: "The sheer volume of software piracy remains alarming, considering the security risks posed by illegal software and the importance of the industry to the digital economy in the single market."
"The software industry is a major contributor to growth and competitiveness in Europe and reducing piracy would deliver benefits for the European Economy, industry and consumers alike."
Of course, the BSA had some figures to throw in as well, claiming that 33 percent of all software installed last year was unlicensed, with a commercial value of 10.4 billion euro.
The founders of OpenSignalMaps have collected data from 681,900 devices and come up with some interesting Android news.
The group saw 3997 unique devices, a number that is inflated due to the usage of custom ROMs. Custom ROMs, which are installed after a user roots his phone or tablet, overwrites the android.build.MODEL variable.
In total, 1363 devices appear only once, meaning those users were running custom ROMs, each of which were tweaked even more than the standard downloads from groups like CyanogenMod.
Samsung was the most popular Android brand, followed by HTC. Gingerbread 2.3 remained the most used version of the OS, with the new 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich taking just 8.5 percent share.
Says the report: "We've collected signal data from 195 countries - the variety of Android devices and manufacturers has been crucial in allowing the OS to reach so many markets. For example the 5 countries where OSM gets most use are: US, Brazil, China, Russia, Mexico. From what we're seeing the developing world is no longer developing but leading Europe."
Last week we reported that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin had renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Singapore.
By doing so, it looks like the billionaire will save about $67 million in federal income taxes, and that number will grow if the company's share price grows after it IPOs on Friday.
Saverin, who helped found the company with $15,000 of his money, was once a 40 percent owner. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg is said to have used shady tactics to reduce Saverin's stake by creating a new LLC in a different state that then purchased the original company and diluted his shares. Regardless, Saverin is said to be a 2-4 percent owner of the company, which should bring him a windfall of $2-4 billion tomorrow.
To come up with the savings on the tax bill, sources applied a 15 percent long-term capital gains rate to the shares expected price.
Saverin, for his part, has said his decision to move last September had little do with taxes and was completely due to his need to be a world traveler.
After losing a patent case to Apple, HTC has been forced to begin shipping custom Android builds in the U.S.
Had they not, the company would have faced an import block at U.S. customs for the infringing devices, says The Verge.
The first two devices that would have faced the block are the new One X and Evo 4GLTE, both of which have clear differences from their international counterparts.
During the case, the ITC found that the stock Android messaging app, HTC's own messaging app and the stock Android browser all infringed upon Apple patent #5,946,647 for "data tapping." Verge explains that the "ITC also specifically found that Apple's patent claims were limited to the system both detecting data structures like phone numbers and email addresses in text and then presenting a menu of options when those detected structures are clicked."
Google has taken time today to respond to the numerous complaints it's been hearing in regards to its new Google Music policy changes.
Changing the policy of their popular Google Music streaming service, Google made it that you can only authorize up to 10 devices to use the service, and if you need more, you will need to deauthorize one of the previous 10. You are also only allowed to do this 4 times per year.
This became a problem for users who like to wipe their devices on a regular basis, or flash custom ROMs, as the 10 device quota can easily be filled in little time.
Google has decided to suspend the limit for the time being.
Here is the response to the complaints:
Yesterday we made a change to our device policy for music on Google Play. Any user can associate up to 10 devices to his or her account. Once you have connected 10 devices, you may add a new device only by deauthorizing an existing one from your account, and you may do this up to four times per year.
Read more...
Shares of behemoth electronics company Samsung took a dive today after a report surfaced that Apple would be ordering chips from rival Elpida instead of them.
The report claims Apple placed a massive mobile dynamic random access memory (DRAM) order with Elpida in Japan, accounting for half of the facilities total chip production.
Samsung is the world's largest DRAM maker, and Elpida recently declared bankruptcy before being revived by American rival Micron. Other DRAM rival SE Hynix also saw a large 10 percent drop on the day.
"It looks like Apple doesn't want to see Samsung and hynix dominate the chip market. Apple wants to maintain its bargaining power by keeping Elpida running," noted Choi Do-yeon, an analyst at LIG Investment & Securities.
None of the companies involved had comment on the report.
A Verizon Wireless exec let the point slip today during an investor conference.
Communications CFO Fran Shammo said unlimited data is about to die, even for grandfathered customers who have had it for years. All new and existing customers will be forced to sign up for a tiered "data share" plan if they want to use 4G LTE.
The $30-a-month unlimited data plan will cease to exist starting this summer.
For the time being, the data share plans have still not been unveiled in detail but they will allow families or individuals to share a "bucket" of data, minutes and text across different devices.
Verizon first eliminated the unlimited plan last July for new users, but allowed existing customer to keep it. At the time the company did say, however, that the policy was subject to change.
Microsoft will now begin cleaning away all your pre-loaded PC bloatware for $99.
As most new pre-built PC owners know, the bloat/crapware is installed by the hardware makers and paid by the vendors (usually). Examples of the bloatware include subscriptions to anti-virus software, e-reading alternatives, Adobe products, "tuning" software, vendor specific help links, and Best Buy junk like links to Geek Squad.
For the $99 fee, Microsoft will remove all the bloatware, install Microsoft Security Essentials, offer 90 days of premium phone support and even reformat Windows 7 including data transfer.
Unfortunately, the program is only available at actual Microsoft Stores, which there are only 16 of in the U.S., mainly situated around California.
While it doesn't eliminate the problem (of bloatware being sold to highest bidder), this is at least a step in the right direction for the average consumer.
With new phones that dwarf the iPhone becoming mainstream, it appears Apple will finally update the popular phone's design to account for a bigger screen.
According to channel checks, Apple looks to be buying bigger screens from Asian suppliers that are at least 4-inches.
All previous models of the device have 3.5-inch screens, including the most recent iPhone 4S.
Apple is said to be working with LG, Japan Display and Sharp but not with Samsung, who is the company's largest competitor in the smartphone arena.
Samsung shipped 44.5 million smartphones last quarter, beating out Apple at 35.1 million although both company's continue to see exponential growth.
The expensive, failed wireless network project LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy protection.
LightSquared, which had been hoping to deliver a 4G network to over 200 million people in the U.S., was blocked by U.S. regulators. After testing and research, it was found the LightSquared network interfered with critical GPS networks used by police and emergency officials.
The company was allowed to manage the $15 million remaining it has in cash whilst in bankruptcy, as it is the only money that is not owed to lenders. The cash is expected to take the company until mid-July.
Overall, the company owes over $2.29 billion outstanding to different lenders.
Mainly thanks to spectrum, the company does have listed assets of $4.48 billion.
Diverging from tradition, it appears that Google will unveil its Android 5.0 Jelly Bean operating system on not just one Nexus smartphone, but on multiple.
If accurate, the WSJ report states the OS could debut on five Nexus phones later this year.
The move away from a single phone for new OS introductions would be a huge move for Google, who has long been rumored to be looking to get into the hardware smartphone business itself. The Nexus line is popular because the phones are the first to feature the latest Android OS and also feature a "vanilla" version of the OS, with no third-party user overlays like HTC Sense or Samsung TouchWiz.
In the report, the newspaper says Google will rollout the new phones, unlocked, in the U.S., Asia and Europe via the Google Play Store and through brick-and-mortar stores.
Microsoft will begin a promotion in June to reward late Windows 7 PC buyers.
The promotion, which will begin June 2nd, will allow any buyer of a new Windows 7-based PC to upgrade to the upcoming Windows 8 Pro for just $14.99. The normal price is expected to be upward of $79 for an upgrade copy when the operating system hits in October or November.
As in past years, the promotion makes sense since consumers (unless they are desperate) are usually willing to wait a few months to upgrade or purchase a new PC if they now a new operating system is coming.
This promotion however, is slightly different as any kind of Windows 7 will be upgradeable to the Pro version of Windows 8, which is the higher-end and more expensive version of the OS.
The deal is valid until January 31st of next year.
RapidGator.net, one of the largest cyberlockers out there, has been shut down.
After January's demise of MegaUpload, RapidGator was the fastest growing of the cyberlockers that vied for the market share left behind.
In four months, the site gained over 5 million users. In Alexa ratings (of traffic), the site exploded from the 100,000th most popular site on the Web to 287th as of last week.
As of today, however, users cannot reach the site, thanks to a dispute with their Web host: "Our hoster have suspended our account. We are working on possible solution."
It is unclear what the issues are, and whether the cyberlocker is looking for a new host. Back in February, the site was blocked by PayPal and they said they were shutting down but instead decided to stay open.
The federal government, with help from the Hollywood studios, has updated the iconic DVD/Blu-ray anti-piracy warnings seen on all new releases.
Instead of just one logo, the new warnings now have three, including one from IPR and one from Homeland Security (seen below).
The original logo has been around since 2004 on all new home releases, and includes text noting that pirates can face jail time and a large fine if they ever decide to rip a movie, make a backup, or share the files illegally.
In the new version, there is a Homeland Security Investigations "special agent" badge reflecting the power the group has had since 2008 in Web matters and there is a second page for the National Intellectual Property Center.
The popular streaming music service Rdio has begun rolling out its new redesign to everyone.
Rdio showed off the redesign at SXSW in March, but kept it under wraps for most users until this week.
What's new?
A new look and feel - More than just a boring spreadsheet of songs, new Rdio puts music and people front and center.
All in one place - Spend less time navigating. Music, playlists and your network are in one view.
Add entire albums to playlists - One of Rdio's most-requested features is now a reality.
Browse even faster - Find music at lightning speed because pages remember your place. Browse a continuous stream of albums, explore one and easily return to the place you left off.
Listen with your network - From the People Sidebar, see what your network is listening to in real-time and listen along with one-click.
Let your network inspire your listening - Wondering if you'll like an album in the charts or why it appeared in your Heavy Rotation? Under every album, hover over photos to see exactly who listened to it.
Sharing made simple - Drag and drop music into playlists or collection and share with others on Rdio without missing a beat. Music can also be shared on Facebook, Twitter or via email.
Read more...
The iPhone Dev Team has updated the popular jailbreaking tool.
As announced last month, the group has released an updated version of the tool, one that adds a major new feature. Users can now downgrade any current iOS device to an earlier version of the Apple mobile OS.
After opening redsn0w 0.9.11b1, interested users will find a new "restore" option after clicking through "Extras -> Even More."
In order to restore the previous OSs, you will have to have backed up your personalized SHSH blobs using either the TinyUmbrella utility or Cydia's own TSS@Home function.
Last week, Foxconn chairman Terry Gou revealed in a speech that the company was making preparations to start manufacturing a television from Apple. Development or manufacturing of the device had not stared just yet, but was about to get underway.
Today, the company has rebuffed the original report, saying the CEO did not make any such comments.
Foxconn says Terry Gou "made it very clear that he would neither confirm nor speculate about Foxconn's involvement in the product," and that the company does not talk about current product lines.
"At no time did [Gou] confirm that Foxconn was in development or manufacturing stages for any product for any of its customers," continues Foxconn. "He did say that Foxconn is always prepared to meet the manufacturing needs of customers should they determine that they wish to work with Foxconn in the production of any of their products."
The oft-rumored "iTV" is expected to be a high-end television featuring Siri, FaceTime voice calling, and potentially a la carte cable channels.
According to multiple sources, Amazon will launch a new version of the Kindle e-reader that includes front-lighting similar to the new Nook Simple with GlowLight.
If accurate, the new e-reader will be ready to hit stores by July. The new device will still run on a monochrome E Ink display.
Additionally, the company will also bring a new version of the Kindle Fire to the table in time for the holiday season. The new tablet will be bigger, at 8.9 inches.
Rival Barnes & Noble was first to the market with their glow Nook, but Amazon is never too far behind.
The new device is expected to cost just $10 more than current Kindle prices, which start at $79 with ads.
Back at the MWC event in February, Asus unveiled its "device-within-a-device," the PadFone.
Today, the company has put together a promotional video for the device, which shows off the impressive unit.
The PadFone runs on Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, is powered by a Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor at 1.5GHz, has a 4.3" Super AMOLED qHD display, an 8MP rear shooter (featuring a 5-element f/2.2 lens) and a stylus that also works as a headset.
On the tablet side, there was not too much info except that it will have a 10.1-inch screen. Between the dock, phone and tablet (check the video) there will be over 14,000mAh of battery power leading to extremely long battery life of up to 102 hours. The device looks very, very intriguing, to say the least.
According to sources, Microsoft's upcoming gaming console will be named "Xbox 8."
The console, which is going by the codename "Durango," was previously rumored to be called Xbox Next, Xbox 720 and Xbox Infinity.
Xbox 8 makes sense given the company's other lines of business. Windows 8 is set for release in October, and the Windows Phone platform is expected to be upgraded to version 8 (dubbed Apollo) at the same time.
The sources cited by thisisxbox say developers have already received alpha versions of the console (in non-console form) that include an Oban chipset made by IBM.
Additionally, the 'Infinity' name will remain around, says the site, becoming an enhanced form of the current Xbox Live. Infinity will connect all Windows 8 digital downloads and apps across the platforms.
Finally the system will include a "service that will bring all current-gen digital stock into a next-gen era on the new console ? it is the backwards compatible functions," says the site.
Nokia has announced the launch of its ebook service "Nokia Reading" in certain European nations.
The service is available in Germany, France, Italy, Russia, Spain and the UK, with a wider rollout expected later in the year.
Available in the Marketplace now, the app is available toLumia 610, 710, 800 and 900 owners and can be found under the "Nokia Collection."
As with other similar services, the Reading app will make ebooks available in multiple languages. Type is resizable, and Nokia devices each ClearBlack Display "that helps reduce reflections on the screen, and Microsoft?s ClearType technology which renders fonts cleanly, without jagged curves."
Into the future, updates will add audio books and a virtual news magazine.
Thanks to Activision's recent quarterly earnings report, we have some concrete figures on the company's Call of Duty Elite "experiment."
10 million gamers have registered for the service, and a full 2 million are premium subscribers.
That figure in of itself is a 33 percent jump since January, larger growth than expected.
Activision charges $50 for membership, meaning Activision has brought in $100 million in revenue from the service.
"The audience response to Call of Duty Elite's premium service has been beyond our expectations, and we want to thank Call of Duty players around the world for their unprecedented enthusiasm. The number of gamers who have registered for Call of Duty Elite further illustrates how this service is poised to redefine social gaming and set a new bar for interactive entertainment," said Bobby Kotick, CEO, Activision Blizzard, last month.
HP executives have quietly confirmed the company will be bringing Windows 8 tablets to market.
Additionally, the devices will each include HP's own new cloud service to let users store data online and synchronize files between multiple devices.
After the failure (and post-death success) of the webOS-based HP Touchpad, new CEO Meg Whitman said last year the company would return to the tablet game, with most expecting Windows 8 to be the operating system of choice.
Recent leaked documents showed a 10-inch HP tablet running Windows 8, in early prototype form.
There was no word on pricing or release dates for the tablets, although the OS itself is expected to reach consumers in October.
Noted video game analyst Michael Pachter briefly interviewed Sony America CEO Jack Tretton this weekend.
When asked about his thoughts on blocking used games, the CEO says in his personal opinion he is "opposed to blocking used games."
Furthermore, the exec believes used games are "great for consumers" and a move to block them would incredibly "anti-consumer."
Unfortunately, Tretton had to make it clear he was speaking as an individual and not on behalf of Sony. He added he was unclear on Sony's thoughts on the matter.
Since talk of the next-generation consoles have heated up in the last two months, one rumor still persists, that of Microsoft and Sony looking to add technology that will block the playback of games on more than one console, effectively killing the used games market. Neither company has confirmed or denied such a move.
The Thai government has signed a deal this week that will make them buyers of a large amount of Android tablets.
For $32.5 million, the government will purchase 400,000 Android 4.0 tablets from Shenzhen Scope. The agency will then deploy the tablets for educational purposes, similar to a deal India signed last year.
Additionally, if the original order works out, the government has an option to purchase another 530,000 tablets, at the same price of about $80 per unit.
The tablets themselves are none too shabby, having a 7-inch screen, 8GB storage, 1GB RAM and Ice Cream Sandwich. The devices are the Scopad SP0712.
Shenzhen Scope believes they can attract similar deals from other governments, as well: "Thailand is the first country in which we have provided large numbers of tablets for students. Now we are talking with other governments to provide this kind of tablet device for [other] students, including Pakistan, Brazil and South Africa."
Finnish mobile gaming giant Rovio has announced the name of their upcoming game.
The successor to the unequaled mobile blockbuster 'Angry Birds' will be named "Amazing Alex" and will be based on the game Casey's Contraptions. The company just acquired the game three days ago.
Rovio says the game will have educational aspects, and will involve "a curious young boy who loves to build things."
Casey's Contraptions was released for the iPad last year and saw moderate success. To proceed through the game, gamers must guide Casey to create Rube Goldberg devices from different objects.
Says Rovio: "The gameplay is a perfect fit in our arsenal with its approachable, fun, and highly addictive take on the physics puzzler genre. We are currently reworking the title to enhance it, and getting ready to reintroduce it in a true "expect the unexpected" Rovio style launch to an even larger audience."
Angry Birds recently reached 1 billion downloads, and the game helped Rovio see a profit of $100 million in the first quarter 2012, alone.
Verizon Wireless has announced today that its 4G LTE network will be expanded to 27 new markets in time for the summer season.
Starting on May 17th, communities in "Sea Bright, Monmouth Beach, Belmar, Point Pleasant, Toms River, Atlantic City and into Cape May County will have access" to the 4G network.
Notes the carrier: "The size of our 4G LTE network gives us a significant competitive advantage over competitors as it enables more residents, small businesses and local government to take advantage of the speed and connectivity benefits offered by this advanced technology. We are committed to continuing the aggressive rollout of our 4G LTE network in 2012."
The carrier currently offers 22 LTE-capable devices, including smartphones, tablets, notebooks and hotspot modems.
Verizon's LTE was recently rated the fastest 4G in the nation, beating out AT&T handily and destroying Sprint. T-Mobile is set to launch their LTE network next year.
Market research firm Strand Consult has reported on the recent decline in SMS revenue for carriers and the reasons for it.
While it is well known that global instant messaging services like BlackBerry Messenger, iMessage, Google Talk and WhatsApp are having significant impact on the carrier's text messaging revenue, Strand added one more name to the list; Facebook.
Says the report: "If you look at how most operators market and sell SMS, you will see that most operators charge the customer for each individual SMS he or she sends. In practice this means that the customer has a choice between sending an SMS that the customer knows costs money, or alternatively use his flat rate data subscription to write a message via Facebook if the recipient is on Facebook."
Strand continues: "In many ways one can compare Facebook's development in the mobile industry to how the Internet affected the media industry. Market players like Google, Skype, Twitter and MSN are only marginally important to the mobile industry compared to Facebook. The biggest difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook is a communication tool that people use to keep in touch with their family and friends every day."
Google is on the verge of acquiring the Meebo social and messaging service.
If accurate, the price tag could be as high as $100 million, say reliable sources.
The company was created in 2005 as an instant messaging add-on for browsers and has been expanded to a "full suite" of social and mobile apps. More importantly, the apps are available to consumers and publishers, each with the intention of making online communication easier.
Meebo Messenger, a variant of the original add-on, still exists today. The company is currently creating a tool to "create an interest profile to get new and timely information about the things that matter to you."
The company has raised over $60 million in venture capital since its inception.
After being convicted in 2009 and losing appeals, the time has finally come for the founders of the infamous torrenttracker The Pirate Bay to "do their time" in prison.
Peter Sunde, Gottfrid Svartholm and Fredrik Neik will all likely face jail time in the Västervik Norra facility in Sweden while the fourth founder, Carl Lundström, will spend the next eight months under house arrest in his Stockholm apartment.
One of those men, Peter Sunde, was supposed to begin his sentence this week but has postponed his plight in the eleventh hour, filing a plea with the Swedish government requesting clemency, citing health concerns. Additionally, Sunde says he fears for the future of his micro-payment business, Flattr.
Without his presence, the company would lose its place in the market, reads Sunde's plea: "The idea for the company came from Peter himself, and he has a tremendous commitment to it. Peter's name and reputation in the industry will open many doors. The company has received a substantial amount of risk capital which has mostly been used to develop the product. After about two years development, the product is now basically ready to begin shipping to partners and large sites. A prerequisite for further development is that Peter is left on the company."
According to new StatCounter figures, mobile now accounts for 10 percent of all Internet usage worldwide, double the number from just 18 months ago.
Asia is seeing the biggest share of the traffic, up to 18 percent of total net usage, but most other nations are seeing strong growth, as well.
The figure makes sense given the fact that smartphone shipments rose 40 percent year-on-year to 144.9 million during the last quarter, alone. Tablet sales remain strong, as well, mainly thanks to the iPad.
Breaking the growth by region shows significant across the globe for the period. Asia saw 192 percent growth since 2010 for mobile Internet, while Europe saw 183 percent. Oceania saw 162 percent growth while Africa saw 155 percent.
North America was the laggard, thanks to their already strong smartphone population. North America growth came in at 69 percent.
The HBO blockbuster hit show "Game of Thrones" is well on its way to becoming the most pirated TV show in 2012.
According to data from P2P analysis firm Big Champagne, the show has been downloaded over 25 million times on public torrent trackers, alone, since April, when the show's second season began.
"It certainly appears to be the most pirated show of the year," notes John Robinson, a senior media analyst with Big Champagne. "The fact that it's consistently at the top of the Pirate Bay's top one hundred TV show chart seems like a pretty in-your-face leading indicator of the huge volume at which this is being shared."
Looking back, the first season of Game of Thrones was the second most pirated TV season of all time, right behind the latest season of "Dexter."
However, the latest season of GoT is already handily beating the last season of Dexter, as per this chart:
Although HTC claims that AT&T has not allowed them to unlock their own bootloader for the One X, the development community has gone ahead and taken care of the issue.
Thanks to a poster on XDA Developers, there is now a one-click rooting solution for the new flagship Android device.
By having root access, owner's can backup their apps and data easier, remove bloatware, overclock the processor and have additional access to their phone's system.
HTC's One X device is the high-end model among three new phone "HTC One" branded phones.
The device has a large 4.7-inch display with 1,280x720-pixelHDresolution and Gorilla Glass. The phone runs on Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4.0, and the phone maker has decided to keep three buttons, one for back, home and running/recent apps.
At an event in Palo Alto this week, Sony and Google have unveiled their latest Google TVset-top box.
For now, there is only a non-working prototype of the device, but it should be a significant evolution to previous devices, especially the Logitech Revue. The Revue failed so spectacularly that it caused the ouster of the company's CEO and a $90 million loss.
What makes the new box special is the remote control, which is a "double sided device with a keyboard on one side and a track pad and other buttons in the other," explains Phandroid.
The hardware itself will be nothing too special, and be cased in a simple black set-top box.
Sony says the device is coming this summer, with more word and demo at the upcoming Google I/O conference.
T-Mobile USA has announced it has lost another 510,000 subscribers this quarter, failing to stop the bleeding of the past few years.
The loss was the 10th straight quarterly subscriber decline for the carrier, which is the fourth largest in the U.S. at 33 million customers.
Many blame T-Mobile's fate on the lack of Apple's popular iPhone device, as it remains the only major carrier to not carry it. The company is expected to launch an LTE network next year, and get the iPhone, but it may be too late by then.
Additionally, the carrier held off an all "strategic plans" during the end of 2011, as the company was sold to AT&T for $39 billion. However, the takeover was stopped by the FCC and Department of Justice, who sued to block the merger due to monopoly concerns. That break in moving forward has left the carrier struggling to keep up, say most analysts. Because of the broken merger, however, the company was given billions in break-up fees and spectrum, leaving the carrier with money and opportunity for the future.
The extremely popular Kickstarter project Pebble has sold out, 8 days ahead of its expected close date.
Pebble, which smashed all Kickstarter funding records, reached $10 million and 85,000 units pre-ordered, causing founder Eric Migicovsky to shut down the funding process earlier than its May 18th end date.
Migicovsky also announced that the company has had to double its team from five employees to ten.
The Pebble is compatible with iOS and Android and has a 1.26-inch 144 x 168-pixel black and white ePaper display with a backlight. The device syncs to your phone or tablet via Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and the company just added support for Bluetooth 4.0 via a future firmware update.
Additionally, the watch has a three-axis accelerometer, a vibrating motor and four control buttons for volume and more.
At CES, Samsung followed in LG's footsteps in unveiling a 55-inch OLED TV for the masses.
Differentiating the TV is its "Super OLED" panel which "has self-emitting RGB sub-pixels and is faster than LED," says the company. OLED panels will provide "accurate color reproduction and 'true-to-life picture quality,'" and the OLED display will "virtually eliminate motion blur," as well, noted Samsung, at the time.
Furthermore, the TV included Samsung's newly introduced "Smart Interaction" technology, which includes an integrated webcam and two mics for motion and voice control. For example, you can turn on/off the TV, raise the volume, use some apps, facial recognition and even search via the built-in browser using the interface. The TV will be powered by a dual-core processor.
Today, Samsung has said the TV will be available "during the second half of this year in the domestic market" (meaning South Korea) at an equivalent cost of $9000 USD, making it more than double the price of the next most expensive 55-inch display in the market.
Apple and Foxconn have announced today they will share the initial costs of improving Chinese factories where millions of iOS devices are built.
Foxconn CEO Terry Gou would not give a figure on the costs but with over 1 million workers the upgrades will certainly not come cheap. Adds the exec:
"We've discovered that this (improving factory conditions) is not a cost. It is a competitive strength. I believe Apple sees this as a competitive strength along with us, and so we will split the initial costs."
In February, wages were raised, on average, 21 percent for its workers and last month the two companies reached an agreement to hire new workers and cut overtime for existing workers.
Foxconn has become infamous for a string of suicides in 2010 and 2011 in which workers killed themselves to have their families collect on a higher payout than they would have made in years of working.
According to multiple sources, Microsoft has been pitching their Windows Phone platform to Facebook in an effort to bring a joint venture smartphone to the market.
It is unclear how far any discussions have gone, but the partnership does make sense given the two companies share similar rivals in Apple and Google.
Windows Phone, despite a high-profile release, has only managed to take 2 percent of the smartphone market, falling well behind Android and iOS.
Microsoft's latest devices (built by Nokia) have been selling better than expected in the U.S. but are barely moving overseas.
Facebook has over 900 million users and significant brand loyalty so exploring a partnership, at least, could do wonders for both companies.
RIM has announced today that the U.S. Department of Defense has approved agency use of a number of BlackBerry 7 smartphones.
After successful testing by U.S. Army and Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) sponsors and partners, the following phones are now listed on DISA's Unified Communications Approved Product List (UCAPL):
BlackBerry Bold 9900 and 9930 (touch screen with keyboard)
BlackBerry Torch 9810 (touch screen with slide out keyboard)
BlackBerry Torch 9850 and 9860 (full screen touch screen)
BlackBerry Curve 9360 (keyboard)
"The Army introduced a wide range of new apps and capabilities for their BlackBerry users last year, and these new BlackBerry 7 smartphones will now enable Army users, and all DoD users, to experience an even greater level of performance on new smartphones that include features such as voice activated universal search, Near Field Communications, Augmented Reality, and Social Feeds 2.0 just to name a few," says Scott Totzke, SVP, BlackBerry Security Group at RIM. "RIM's unwavering focus on security and RIM's achievement of key security certifications including FIPS 140-2 validation and Common Criteria EAL4+ accreditation continue to be very important to many of our DoD and enterprise customers, but leveraging the full power of BlackBerry smartphones is also important as it helps them realize the full potential of their investment in the BlackBerry platform."
Samsung has purchased the cloud music and movie provider mSpot for $9 million.
The service will be prominently featured in Samsung's ecosystem including being added to all upcoming Samsung phones and tablets as a "featured app."
"mSpot shares our vision to bring a best-in-class cloud and streaming entertainment experience to consumers, and they've backed it up with innovative technical solutions from a great engineering team,"added TJ Kang, senior vice president of Samsung Electronics' media solution center.
The service allows users to upload their own music and stream it wherever there is an Internet connection, similar to Google Music. Users are also given 5GB free storage and unlimited access on one mobile device.
If you have an Android device, playing a song will also launch a related streaming music station, similar to Pandora or Slacker.
This morning, a report hit the wire that AOL was looking to sell its popular Engadget and TechCrunch tech content sites.
AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has denied the report, claiming it is "100 percent untrue."
Adds Armstrong: "We are planning to invest in those properties, not sell them." The CEO did note that he had held discussions with other companies for investment opportunities but it seems that AOL will invest in the blogs itself.
TechCrunch backed the story, as well, noting "a gaggle of Aol folks decided it might be smart to turn TC, Engadget and some other tech properties (including some yet to be acquired) into a separate company/entity, valued at $200 million. Eventually, as Armstrong alludes to in [the] Ad Age article, the plan was scrapped."
The site then criticized the editor of the original report, who happened to be a former TC writer: "We figure this story got skewed because PandoDaily is going through its own troubles, and looking for a target to project its drama onto; Sometimes not wanting to seem weak makes you seem weak."
Microsoft has updated two of its most popular Xbox Live apps today.
The MLB.tv app, which launched in March in North America, will now be pushed to 18 new nations. Those countries are Australia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, the Russian Federation, South Africa, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Gamers in those nations can now install the premium app and gain access to live and on-demand MLB games.
The free CinenaNow app has also been updated to include new release movies and TV shows. The app gives users access to premium video content, either for rental or for purchase.
Says MajorNelson: "Today, the CinemaNow app in the U.S. will be offer instant access to an extensive library of premium video content for rental and purchase, featuring new release movies and TV shows with no subscription required."
Apple has confirmed the third-generation iPad will be headed to 30 new nations next week.
On May 11th, the tablet will reach Argentina, Aruba, Bolivia, Botswana, Brazil, Cambodia, Chile, Costa Rica, Curacao, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Jamaica, Kenya, Madagascar, Malta, Martinique, Mauritius, Morocco, Peru, Taiwan, Tunisia, and Vietnam.
The next day, Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates will get access to the popular device.
Apple's latest, which adds a more powerful processor and Retina Display, saw strong sales last quarter for the company. The LTE device saw 3 million sales in its first weekend and continues to see millions sold per month.
T-Mobile USA parent Deutsche Telekom is currently in serious discussions with MetroPCS in regards to a merger, sale or other transaction.
The company is considering a "stock-swap transaction that would give the German company control over the combined entity, which would be publicly listed. A second option is for T-Mobile to go public and third option is an outright sale of T-Mobile USA to MetroPCS.
Telekom has been looking to dump T-Mobile USA for over a year, and its $39 billion sale to AT&T last year was blocked by the US Department of Justice.
Despite cheaper prices and a fast network in metro areas, the carrier has been losing contract subscribers to bigger rivals AT&T and Verizon and there has been little stoppage to the exodus.
MetroPCS, a smaller but growing competitor, has been desperately seeking assets from the majors, and would welcome an infusion of customers or spectrum.
T-Mobile USA has 33 million subscribers but lost 1.65 million last year as rivals like Verizon gained over 2 million.
A group claiming to be the Russian branch of 'Anonymous' has taken down the websites of the Kremlin.
The group also claimed responsibility for shuttering sites linked to the Russian president.
More specifically, the sites kremlin.ru and президент.рф have been unavailable for periods although as of posting both seem to be available.
The group tweeted this morning that "Kremlin.ru - TANGO DOWN." Additionally, the company posted screenshots showing the site down across the world.
Although no one claimed responsibility, the Russian Federal Security Service wesbite, fsb.ru, has seen sporadic outages as well today, says RT.
The Kremlin responded to the attacks: "We received threats from Anonymous several days ago but we can't confirm it's exactly this group that attacked the Kremlin.ru website. At the moment we can't establish who's behind the attack. Unfortunately we live at a time when technology security threats have mounted, but we have the means to resist them."
Verizon Wireless has announced that the Droid Incredible 4G will go on sale via the carrier in the "coming weeks."
The device runs on Android 4.0.x, is powered by a powerful 1.2 GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor and has 4G LTE support. The phone also features a 4-inch LCD quarter high definition display, dual cameras and a 1,700 mAh removable battery.
Although pricing was not unveiled, it is expected to sell for $299 with contract, just like most of Verizon's 4G Android devices.
HTC notes Beats Audio tech will be included and the Incredible will have "high quality photo and audio capabilities." Among those features are a camera quick activation feature and HTC Video Pic for shooting stills while capturing video.
The Windows Phone 7 device will go on sale on May 20th.
AT&T has introduced the Samsung Focus 2 this week, another low-priced Windows Phone that will boast 4G LTE support.
The Focus 2 has a 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen, with 800x480 resolution, runs on a 1.4 GHz single-core processor, has 8 GB of internal storage, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a front-facing VGA camera for video chat.
AT&T began selling the Lumia 900 last month for $99.99, marking a new ceiling price for Windows Phone flagships.
For the time being, Windows Phones have not been successful, controlling just 2 percent of the global smartphone market.
Electronic Arts (EA) has promised to reduce its labor force, as well.
The gaming company will invest another $40 million this year towards its digital offerings in a strategy the company calls "The Plan."
"The Plan" was unveiled during the company's most recent quarterly earnings report. The restructuring will begin soon and is expected to be done by September 30th.
Added EA Vice President of Corporate Communications Jeff Brown: "The restructuring charge is related to our move to digital games and services. It impacts a relatively small number of EA's 9,000 employees. Most importantly, EA is hiring and we expect to finish the year with more employees, not fewer."
The struggling game maker, which purchase social gaming company PopCap Games last year for $1.3 billion, added that they do not expect a new title from the company until next quarter, a delay that may hurt their bottom line.
Samsung and Qualcomm have joined the The Alliance for Wireless Power (A4WP) in an effort to create a new wireless charging standard for mobile devices.
The group is looking to create a "worldwide wireless power technology ecosystem." More specifically, the Alliance will develop "new power transfer technologies that will allow for simultaneous charging of multiple devices in cars, on tabletops, and elsewhere." The group will offer a certification program for interested parties.
"The A4WP expects to achieve this capability without the need for costly multi-coil repeaters, which are required for other systems," the group said in a statement. "A single specification is envisioned that will address simultaneous charging of multiple devices ranging from very low power products, such as Bluetooth headsets, to today's most sophisticated tablets."
Besides Qualcomm and Samsung, Ever Win Industries, Gill Industries, Peiker Acustic, Powermat Technologies, and SK Telecom have also committed to the group.
The United States Trade Representative has labeled Canada a haven of piracy, once again.
Algeria, Argentina, Chile, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Pakistan, Russia, Thailand, Ukraine and Venezuela joined Canada on the "Priority Watch List" of the USTR. Each of the countries on the list are accused of not doing enough to protect U.S. copyrights.
Reads the report (posted after the article): "Canada remains on the Priority Watch List in 2012, subject to review if Canada enacts long-awaited copyright legislation. The Government of Canada has given priority to that legislation. The United States welcomes that prioritization and looks forward to studying the legislation once it is finalized, and will consider, among other things, whether it fully implements the WIPO Internet Treaties, and whether it fully addresses the challenges of piracy over the Internet."
Spain, a mainstay on the list, was removed this year after implementing new laws to fight piracy. The new laws were passed weeks after the U.S. threatened to blacklist them for trade.
The report is generally panned due to its lack of facts and is seen as a tool to pressure nations into passing legislation that is applauded by the media companies in the U.S.
Perfect 10, the adult publisher, has sued microblogging service Tumblr over alleged piracy.
The adult company is infamous for its attempts to sue major corporations for using their images without permission but they have not been successful in the past.
Amongst the former recipients of lawsuits are Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Yandex, Giganews, Megaupload, Rapidshare, Depositfiles, Mastercard, Visa and CCBill. The first few were over search engine results with Perfect 10's pictures, the next few were over pictures and videos being hosted on the site's servers and the last few were for providing payment services for allegedly infringing sites.
In the latest case, Perfect 10 has accused Tumblr of failing to remove content when served with DMCA takedown notices.
Reads the complaint: "Tumblr has ignored its obligations under the DMCA. As of the date of this filing, Tumblr has failed to completely process any of Perfect 10's DMCA notices, taking down at most only a handful of the over 200 infringing images identified by Perfect 10, many of which had Perfect 10 copyright notices or watermarks conspicuously placed on the images.Read more...
Dell and Red Hat have signed an OEM agreement this week, giving more options for enterprise customers who are looking for open-source options.
"I think everybody's wanting to have alternatives," adds Ron Pugh, Dell executive director and general manager of the company's OEM solutions group for the Americas (via CW). "Most of our customers have ... seen that there are some benefits [to Linux use] from a time-to-market perspective and working with the open-source community."
Red Hat recently became the first open-source business to reach a $1 billion valuation.
The first verticals in the new partnership will be telecommunications and security equipment manufacturers, where Red Hat is already very prominent.
"We see this as the next step in companies moving from proprietary architecture to building their own things from the ground up to a commodity ... solution, and both companies see that we can help each other," concludes Pugh.
GE, Philips and Sylvania have each showcased LED lightbulbs today that can last for up to two decades.
The bulbs will use much less energy than current generation bulbs, but will cost significantly more due to using LED instead of filaments.
Last month, Philips introduced their LPrize LED, at a cost of $60. The bulb only consumes 9.7 watts while having the equal power of a 60-watt incandescent lamp. Today, the company showed off the EnduraLED, although it has the same power as a 100-watt incandescent bulb while consuming under 15 watts.
Sylvania and Philips's products will hit stores later this year. GE's bulb, which uses 9-watts and can replace 40-watt bulbs, will sell for $50 later this year.
If used for three hours per day, each of the bulbs will last for two decades.
Looking to improve the quality of apps available for Android tablets, Samsung has begun the 2012 Smart App Challenge.
The company has put $4 million aside as prizes to encourage developers to take part in the challenge.
Devs who build the most popular apps for the Galaxy Tab tablets and Galaxy Note hybrid phone will be eligible to win up to $55,000 and there will be 80 winners. Popularity is based on user downloads.
Anyone who wants to create S Pen-based applications using Samsung's own SDK will be eligible for the same prizes but judging will be done by a panel.
Finally, Samsung will give the best apps "mega marketing support" including mentions in press releases and in TV/print ads.
Research firm Nielsen has reported today that over 50 percent of U.S. consumers now own smartphones.
As of March 31st, 2012, 50.4 percent of consumers owned a smartphone compared to 47.8 percent in December.
The growth appears to slowing, however, as previous data showed much faster quarterly growth. The data suggests somewhat of a saturation in the market, at least for the time being.
Nielsen considers all Android, iOS, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone 7 phones to be a smartphone and there is also an "other" category which includes Symbian, webOS, Meego, etc.
The "other" category only accounts for 2.1 percent of all U.S. smartphones, however.
Android took 48.5 percent of the market, followed by the iPhone at 32 percent, RIM at 11.8 percent and Windows Mobile at 4.1 percent. The newer Windows Phone came in at just 1.7 percent.
The European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes has noted today that she does not expect the controversial ACTA bill to become law in the EU.
ACTA is a global trade agreement that is aimed at stopping digital piracy and the exchange of material pirated goods.
While the bill has been signed by the U.S., Canada, Japan and 22 of the 27 EU nations it still needs final approval by the European Commission to become law. Kroes says this is highly "unlikely" due to invasion of privacy concerns.
Adds Kroes: We are "likely to be in a world without SOPA and without ACTA and we now need to find solutions to make the Internet a place of freedom, openness, and innovation fit for all citizens."
The Commissioner does feel an ACTA-esque agreement is inevitable in the future, but the current bill has enormous shortcomings. Citizens' freedom to privacy must not be invaded, she notes. When asked about thoughts on future bills, Kroes says: "Yes the Internet should be open; and yes it should be free. But that is not the same as being a lawless wild west."
Major Chinese PC maker Lenovo will invest $800 million to build new facilities in an effort to better compete in the tablet, smartphone and overall mobile device market.
The facilities will begin operating in October 2013 in Wuhan and will support research and development as well as production and sales.
Lenovo adds the new plants will help the company produce more mobile devices for the international market. The revenue generated from the plants is expected to reach 10 billion yuan ($1.58 billion USD) by the end of 2014 and then 50 billion yuan by then end of 2018.
The company is the second largest PC maker in the world but they have only "skimmed the surface" of the smartphone and tablet market. Lenovo has released a number of "Le" phones in China which have met some commercial success.
China has quickly become the largest market in the world for smartphone shipments, so it makes perfect sense that Lenovo would like to get a larger piece of that pie. The company already controls 9.1 percent of the Chinese smartphone market, up from 1.8 percent in 2011.
As reported last week, Microsoft has made the 4GB Xbox 360 model of the console with Kinect available for $99 as long as you sign up for a two-year contract.
The contract is for Xbox Live Gold at $15 per month, bringing the total cost of the contract and hardware to $459.
If you were to purchase the bundle outright for $299 and purchase Xbox Live Gold subscriptions at $60 (full MSRP) per year, that price would come in at $420, significantly cheaper but with more cost up front.
One caveat of the deal (if you are interested), is you must live near a retail Microsoft Store, which are mainly only in California with some scattered around the U.S. Additionally, you will need to pass a credit check to take advantage of the deal.
Finally, just like with a smartphone contract, if you break the contract early you will be hit with an early termination fee that starts at $250 for the first three months then drops $12 per month afterwards.
EPIX, the joint streaming venture between Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate has announced today the addition of two of 2012's blockbuster films to its catalog.
Marvel Studio's and Paramount's The Avengers and Lionsgate's The Hunger Games will see their on-demand debut via EPIX, online and via EPIX apps on mobile devices.
Both movies are easily the top grossing films so far in 2012, with The Avengers making $650 million worldwide in just one week, and Hunger Games bringing in $620 million in two months.
"EPIX is all about providing its subscribers the biggest and best movies anytime and anywhere. We are thrilled to bring this year's two biggest blockbuster titles to the EPIX slate, providing even more value to our viewers and affiliated distributors. We congratulate our studio partners, Paramount and Lionsgate, on their tremendous success," added EPIX CEO and President Mark Greenberg.
According to multiple sources, Apple has also been in discussions with EPIX in an effort to bring the streaming movie channel to Apple TV users. The talks are ongoing and are in early stages.
In March, Eastman Kodak, the bankrupt photography pioneer, sold their online photo services to Shutterfly for a final price of $23.8 million.
Today, a federal bankruptcy judge has approved the sale, and Kodak will shut down the Kodak Gallery on July 2nd.
Shutterfly offers exactly the same services as Kodak Gallery including free photo-sharing, the ability to get pics printed or put on DVDs, and the ability to have pictures put on mugs, in photobooks and T-shirts.
In an email to current customers, Kodak wrote that users who do not want their photos and accounts transferred over to Shutterfly must opt-out via their site before May 28th. Kodak did warn that the full migration "will be a massive undertaking, involving the movement of billions of photos" and that user's photos may not be fully available until later in the year.
Although the government has not confirmed the move, news out of India is that there has been a massive blocking of torrent and other video-sharing sites.
Sites like The Pirate Bay, KickAssTorrents, BitSnoop and Vimeo have allegedly all been blocked from access in the nation. ISPs, "as per instructions from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT)," have banned access and users will be met with a screen that says something to that effect.
While the ban on the Pirate Bay is certainly not the first in the site's infamous history, Vimeo being blocked has shocked some residents. The site is one of the popular video-sharing sites in the world, and is a hub for amateur filmmakers to share their new work.
The site is much more similar to YouTube than it is to The Pirate Bay, although YouTube is still standing block-free.
It also appears that some ISPs are still letting customers access the sites, but Reliance Communications and Zylog Wi5 are certainly not.
The streaky Digitimes is reporting today that Apple is preparing a cheap $799 version of their popular ultrabook.
If accurate, the MacBook Air will sell for just $799, $200 cheaper than the current base model.
The source claims the Apple supply chain is gearing up for a third quarter release of the device.
While there is no word on specs, it is easy to see why Apple would drop the price on the ultrabook. Rivals like Intel have been aggressively pushing ultrabooks for 2012, with Intel recently stating that $599 ultras will be available by the end of the year, sporting mid-to-high end features.
Amazon has announced its new efforts to create original content for the Amazon Prime streaming video service.
The e-tailer will actively develop comedy and children's TV shows to be distributed over the service which is free to all Amazon Prime subscribers. Prime costs $79 per year and entitles users to free two-day shipping on most items and highly discounted one-day or same-day shipping.
Aspiring writers and filmmakers can submit ideas for television series to the Amazon Studios unit and the company will select one project per month and test it for viability with an audience before taking it to development.
Explains Reuters: "Within 45 days of getting pilot TV scripts, Amazon said it will either extend an option on the project for $10,000 or ask the creator to put the idea on the Amazon Studios website. If the company decides to distribute a full-budget series, the creator will get $55,000 and up to 5 percent of Amazon's net receipts from toy and T-shirt licensing, and other royalties and bonuses."
The move comes on the heels of Netflix putting significant money down to move into the original content business. Netflix's first original series, "Lilyhammer" is available now and four other shows, including a new season of cult-classic "Arrested Development," will hit in 2013.
eBay has confirmed plans to upgrade their search engine to better compete against e-tailing giant Amazon.
"Amazon is on version 8.0 of search. EBay is at 2.0, but they are thinking about how they make this huge leap to 3.0," says Scot Wingo, CEO of ChannelAdvisor. ChannelAdvisor helps merchants sell more online.
eBay's search tech, dubbed "Voyager," has seen a complete overhaul in the last four years after the hiring of Mark Carges as CTO. He hired 100 new employees to bring the total to 150, including several prominent engineers from Microsoft's Bing.
For 2013, the company is working on "Cassini,' the third version of the search engine. Cassini "will trawl full product descriptions, rather than just the titles of listings, and match search queries to photographs of products, while taking into account information about the seller and the buyer," explains Reuters.
Additionally, the new update will take into account past purchases and browsing, making it more tailored to their intent. "Voyager is pretty literal. It takes a query and matches it faithfully against the title of items. It's not intuitive," notes Carges. "Cassini will take the user's query and understand that."
HTC's new flagship has gone on sale today via AT&T and numerous retailers.
The device will sell for $200 with two-year contract via AT&T or $150 through Amazon. Unsurprisingly, the phone is backordered as of posting, with an 8-day delay expected from Amazon.
HTC's One X device is the high-end model among three new phone "HTC One" branded phones.
The device has a large 4.7-inch display with 1,280x720-pixelHDresolution and Gorilla Glass. The phone runs on Android 4.0 with HTC Sense 4.0, and the phone maker has decided to keep three buttons, one for back, home and running/recent apps.
Along with LTE, the phone will also have a powerful 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 processor.
DataWind, the company behind the $35 Aakash tablet for the Indian market, has introduced two new "UbiSlate" tablets for the nation.
The UbiSlate 7+ and UbiSlate 7C are both considered "premium" devices compared to the Aakash although that word is hardly fitting when compared to American and European tablets that have been released in the last two years.
DataWind's 7+ has a 7-inch, 800 x 480 pixel resistive touchcscreen display with 2GB of internal storage, while the 7c has a capacitive touchscreen display and 4GB of internal storage.
Each tablet is run by a 800MHz single-core processor and 256MB of RAM. There are no cameras or mics, but there are USB and microUSB ports.
Both tablets run on Android 2.2 Froyo, have 2.5G cell modems and have small 3200mAh batteries. The tablets will cost less than $75 and 2GB of data bandwidth costs just $2 per month.
Sprint CEO Daniel Hesse has confirmed he will take a paycut this year following the company's expensive expenditures to get the iPhone.
Hesse will repay $346,000 he has received and will forfeit all additional incentive pay.
"These voluntary actions regarding my personal compensation, which total $3,250,830, will eliminate any benefit for me to the discretionary adjustment the compensation committee made earlier this year,"added the exec.
Sprint invested $15 billion on the iPhone earlier this year, gaining access to the popular smartphone for the next 5 years.
However, Sprint pays Apple a huge amount for the luxury of having the device, paying a subsidy that is $199 more per device than it pays for other smartphones.
The Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory, who filed for bankruptcy protection in February, is close to being acquired by U.S.-based Micron Technology.
Liabilities, as of March 2011, were $5.5 billion and the company's desperate attempts to refinance or get a bailout from the Japanese government failed. Elpida was Japan's last DRAM maker and the company was ultimately done in by a Yen at its strongest levels since the end of World War II. Furthermore, South Korean rivals like Samsung managed to take large market share in a short period of time thanks to cost efficiency.
At the time of the bankruptcy, Elpida and Micron at 12.1 percent market share each.
Micron bid $2.5 billion and pledged to keep the company's plants open and employees hired.
It appears that actually putting together a strong cast and a good story can still lead to strong box office sales.
The Marvel blockbuster "The Avengers" has sailed to a $200 million opening weekend, despite pirated copies being available from the movie's international release a week earlier. The figure is the largest in history, by far, beating out last year's Harry Potter finale by $30 million.
In just one week, the film has brought in an astonishing $650 million internationally. That total is more than individual movies "Thor," "Iron Man," and "Captain America" made during their lifetime runs, although each were successful.
Disney, the distributor of the film, says the final figures may even end of being slightly higher: "There aren't even words, to be honest. I'm running low on double takes. Every time we looked at a number, it just got bigger than what we could have hoped for in the best-case assumption. With this film, this weekend, anything is possible."
The Avengers film stars an all-star cast of superheroes including Iron Man, Hulk, Captain America, Nick Fury and Hawkeye.
According to social media analytics firm SocialBakers, Brazil now has the second largest population on Facebook.
The social networking giant has over 900 million total users from nearly every country on the planet.
After seeing a large jump in the last quarter of 22 percent, Brazil now has 46 million Facebook users, beating out India who has held the spot for some time now.
What has lead to the growth? SocialBakers says: "Brazil owes its success [on Facebook] to brands building high social awareness and a proactive and creative approach in gaining more fans especially in the FMCG, alcohol, beauty and fashion sectors."
Until January, Google's original social network from 2004, Orkut, was the top social network in Brazil and the site still has over 30 million users in the nation. However, the site is beginning to lose support from game and app developers as they move to the greener pastures of Facebook.
According to sources, early manufacturing is already being done for the Xbox Next (Durango).
If accurate, the work is being done in Austin, Texas by Flextronics, the same company that manufactured the original Xbox and the current-gen Xbox 360.
Of course, the manufacturing will not be for retail SKUs but likely for developers to work out debugging.
As has been standard, Microsoft declined comment but did add the following: "Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend its lifecycle like introducing the world to controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships.
"We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention. Beyond that we do not comment on rumours or speculation."
California resident Robert Herskowitz has sued Apple this week for punitive damages.
Apparently, the company double billed him for purchasing a song on iTunes and would not offer a refund.
Last month, Herskowitz purchased the track "Whataya Want from Me" by Adam Lambert and was charged $1.29 twice for the song in an apparent glitch. After reaching out to Apple via email, he received this response:
"Your request for 'Whatya Want from Me' was carefully considered; however, according to the iTunes Store Terms of Sale, all purchases made on the iTunes store are ineligible for refund. This policy matches Apple's refund policies and provides protection for copyrighted materials."
The angered consumer has now filed a lawsuit against Apple seeking an injunction and punitive damages of $5 million. Herskowitz claims there was a breach of contract, breach of faith, unjust enrichment, unfair competition and business law violations.
Over the past few days we have discussed at length the new hardware in the Samsung Galaxy S III, which was, to be completely honest, not revolutionary.
The device has a 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display, a powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor and an 8MP camera, all of which are high-end but not leaps and bounds better than previous generation devices.
However, what should differentiate the phone from others in the market is its software, which Samsung has customized and tweaked to the point where it does not feel too much like the stock "vanilla" Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich you may be accustomed to.
The phone will have an emphasis on "natural interaction," says the company. First off, a feature called "Smart Stay" uses the front-facing camera to monitor your eyes and keep a "bright display for continued viewing pleasure." Even if you have your phone set to go to sleep with inactivity, Smart Stay will keep it on if you are staring at the screen, reading, or otherwise. When your eyes are no longer staring at the screen, the display dims to save battery life, as well.
In a move that has been a long time coming, Verizon has announced it has selected a vendor to help the company deliver users the ability to make texts to 911 emergency services.
With the new ability, those with speaking or hearing disabilities can have the same access to 911 as those without have had for half a century. FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski applauded the carrier for the move, and encouraged others to follow suit.
Says Verizon: "Verizon is at the forefront of 911 public-safety innovations, and today's announcement is another step in making SMS-to-911 service available to those who cannot make a voice call to 911."
The service would require that your device can text, which all phones, smart or not, have the ability to do.
Verizon says the service should launch in early 2013.
Last week, the High Court ruled that all UK ISPs must block The Pirate Bay.
Sky, Everything Everywhere, TalkTalk, O2 and Virgin Media must now block all access to the Swedish file sharing site but it appears the ruling is doing wonders for the site's traffic.
A source from the site has told Torrentfreak that The Pirate Bay's traffic has actually increased by over 12 million following the court ruling. "We should write a thank you letter to the BPI," says the source.
The ban began on Wednesday when Virgin Media's four million customers lost access, followed by other ISPs throughout the week.
As expected, The Pirate Bay did not take the ban lightly, and offered a work-around and a call to arms:
As usual there are easy ways to circumvent the block. Use a VPN service to be anonymous and get an uncensored internet access, you should do this anyhow. Or use TOR, I2P or some other darknet with access to the internets. Change your DNS settings with OpenDNS. Or use googles DNS servers... we could go on...But don't forget that we can't allow this shit to happen. Next time they're coming for something else. And yes, there will be a next time if we don't stop them. Write to your ISP and tell them to appeal the case. Write to your local MPs and tell them that this is not allowed. Make sure your voice is heard. Remember, we're all the pirate bay, and we must stand united against the censorship from our opponents!
First unveiled at the Mobile World Congress event in February, LG will begin shipping the Optimus L7 smartphone this month.
The device will first hit the UK and other nations in Europe, followed by Asia later in the year. There was no word on a U.S. launch.
LG's latest device runs on Android 4.0 ICS, following suit with other LG phones.
In terms of features, the phone has a 4.3-inch WVGA display with "ultra-wide viewing angles," a 1GHz dual-core Cortex A5 processor and a 5MP standard camera with LED flash.
Says the company: "For consumers desiring high-end style and sophistication in a smartphone, LG Optimus L7 offers beauty and performance in one smart package. The L7 is a significant addition to our L-Series portfolio and we are confident that it'll prove highly attractive to users. We expect it to be one of our most popular smartphones."
Last year, Microsoft announced that users with Windows Mobile devices would lose access to the marketplace for the OS on May 9th.
Today, the company has pushed back the date for the shutdown, giving those old smartphone users one more week.
After May 17th, users will not be able to update any apps they've purchased and the apps will be lost forever if the device is ever wiped or even hard reset.
Microsoft does note that if you want to stay with your Windows Mobile device and have lost the apps due to a wipe, you can contact the individual developers and ask them for a copy directly.
As they have been saying for a year now, Microsoft wants you to know it is time to upgrade.
The comments came via an interview with Samsung mobile president J.K. Shin.
Shin, sitting with the WSJ, says the company has certainly embraced the possibility of making mobile company acquisitions. Furthermore, they are "aggressively" hiring foreign software engineers in an effort to remain the top dog in the smartphone world.
Notes Shin: "The technology industry is growing very quickly and it is too much of a burden to try to do everything in-house. There are many qualified workers from India that are very skilled in software. And there are small companies that we can acquire that have good research and development capabilities."
Without naming companies, Shin did shut down the speculation the company is looking into purchasing RIM, the struggling BlackBerry maker.
It has also become clear that Samsung is in fact angry at Google's purchase of Motorola Mobility and its expected foray into the hardware business later this year. However, the company will continue to ridewith Android as it is the top open mobile operating system.
LG has introduced their Optimus LTE2 Android device this week, the first to feature 2GB of RAM.
The unveiling came within a day of Samsung's high-profile 'Unpacked' event, where the company showed off the much-anticipated Galaxy S III.
Outside of the 2GB of RAM, the LTE2 also features some other powerful specs. The device has a 4.7-inch HD IPS display, a dual-core 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 processor, LTE support and a large 2150mAh battery.
The device will go on sale in mid-May, beating out the Galaxy S III which will hit Europe at the end of the month and the U.S. and Canada in June.
Owners of the upcoming flagship device will receive a huge 50GB of free storage through Dropbox.
The deal doubles the recent storage pact between the company and HTC, which was 25GB for anyone with a Sense 4.0 device.
Samsung says the deal will remain valid for two years after you register the Galaxy S III, and afterwards your storage will revert back to whatever you would have had normally.
In 2010, Paul Ceglia claimed he was a 50 percent owner of Facebook, citing a contract signed between him and founder Mark Zuckerberg.
Paul Ceglia says he entered into a contract with Mark Zuckerberg, the CEO of Facebook, for a 50 percent share, doing so for $1000 USD. Ceglia's suit included a copy of the "work for hire" contract the two men allegedly signed in 2003. In return for the $1000 payment, Ceglia "would own a 50 percent interest in the software, programming language and business interests derived from the expansion of the [Facebook] service to a larger audience."
Since the suit was brought, Zuckerberg and Facebook's independent forensic experts have maintained the contract is a complete forgery.
This week, Ceglia was ordered to pay Facebook's lawyers another $16,851, bringing his total sanctions to just above $97,000. The sanctions began in January when Ceglia refused to provide his email passwords to those same forensic experts. The investigators believe the email accounts include an engineering contract between Ceglia and Zuckerberg which did not involve Facebook but did have the future CEO's authentic signature.
If Ceglia cannot afford to pay the fees, he will have to provide financial statements proving so.
AT&T CEO Randall Stephenson has made it clear today that he believes AT&T Mobility should have killed off unlimited mobile data earlier than it did.
The company got rid of the $30 unlimited bandwidth plans last year, moving to a tiered structure instead.
When asked about unlimited data and the iPhone, Stephenson says: "You ask, do you ever look back and ask, do we wish we hadn't [launched the iPhone]? No. No, I never reflect on that. Should we have changed the pricing model sooner? Yes. I wish we had moved quicker to change the pricing model to make sure that people that were consuming the bandwidth were paying for the bandwidth. And so we had a model where the high-end users were being subsidized by the low-end users. We got that model straight ? took a while to get that straight. But no, it has revolutionized our industry, and I don't regret it at all."
The CEO is also delusional after the company lost its multi-billion dollar bid for T-Mobile:
"Make no mistake about it, if you don't find solutions like [acquiring T-Mobile USA], there is nothing but upward pricing pressure in this marketplace. And you're experiencing it and you're living through it today. Since the beginning of the year when that deal got killed, our data prices have gone up 30 percent. You want to upgrade to a smartphone? Every carrier in the industry now has put in place an upgrade fee to try to slow this down. Virtually every carrier is now throttling, meaning when you hit a certain threshold of usage in a given month, your speeds get scaled back to try to reduce the utilization of these networks."
Microsoft has announced that their next security update will patch 23 bugs in Windows, Office, Silverlight and .Net.
The bugs will be fixed in seven security updates, three of which are considered critical.
Andrew Storms, director of security operations at nCircle Security, tracks the number of updates Microsoft issues each month, and says this month is historically high for May. In 2010, the software giant patched two bugs in May and in 2011 that number increased to three.
Says Storms: "May has been a light month, historically, very light. So, this is a big number."
Outside of three critical updates, the other four are dubbed "important," the second-most serious score on Microsoft's scale. Three updates will patch vulnerabilities in Windows, another four will take care of exploits in Office and one will be for Silverlight. (There are 8 because one affects all three).
Nokia has been sued by angry investors this week over the sad turn of events in the company's fortunes over the past year.
Robbins, Geller, Rudman & Dowd, the New York-based law firm, is in charge of the class action suit which names the company, CEO Steven Elop and CFO Timo Ihamuotila.
The suit itself claims that Nokia failed to "halt its deteriorating position in the smartphone market" and withheld that info from its shareholders. When Nokia first announced Windows Phone devices last October, the company's stock was above $7 per share. As of today, the price is 57 percent lower, at $3.15 per share.
Reads the suit: "Two million Lumias in three months is not encouraging; that's the same number that the Nokia N97 (a product which was a large-scale failure) shipped back in 2009, in first three months. Today, if you bring a hit product to market, 5 million in three months should not be a problem (Samsung Galaxy S2). In addition, 10 million Symbian smartphones shipped was expected, but the 16 per cent gross margin in smartphones says these phones were shipped with big discounts in order to defend market shares."
Microsoft has subtly noted today a fact that might upset some users.
Last month, the company noted that Windows Media Center would be an extra-cost option for Windows 8 buyers, and that it will also require Windows 8 Professional.
In their blog post today, the company had this to say: "Acquiring either the Windows 8 Media Center Pack or the Windows 8 Pro Pack gives you Media Center, including DVD playback (in Media Center, not in Media Player), broadcast TV recording and playback (DBV-T/S, ISDB-S/T, DMBH, and ATSC), and VOB file playback."
If you caught it in there, DVD playback is no longer supported via Windows Media Player, even if you pay up for the Media Center.
Windows Media Player will be included with all versions of Windows 8 but "for optical discs playback on new Windows 8 devices, we are going to rely on the many quality solutions on the market, which provide great experiences for both DVD and Blu-ray."
Earlier today, we reported on the hardware of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S III.
The handset maker has listed the "carrier preference" list for the phone on its U.S. signup page, and although it has not been confirmed, the following carriers are listed: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, MetroPCS, US Cellular, and C Spire.
Samsung says the device will hit Europe on May 29th and the U.S. and Canada "in June." In Europe the phone will be a Vodafone exclusive for the first 30 days.
The Discovery Channel has announced its purchase of the internet video service Revision3.
Revision3 produces Web shows about technology, video games, entertainment and other contemporary topics. A few of its most well known shows are "Epic Meal Time," "Tekzilla" and "Film Riot."
The cable network giant, which is valued at $24 billion, will pay about "$30 million" for Revision3 while keeping on all 50 employees.
Revision3 saw its revenue increase by 53 percent in 2011 and video viewership grew more than 350 percent.
Noted Revision's CEO Jim Louderback earlier this year: "We had another amazing year in 2011, and are looking forward to a strong 2012 with our content available anywhere and everywhere. By working with incredibly talented content creators, we have been building a stable of shows that deliver audience numbers as big, or bigger, than most cable shows."
Call of Duty Black Ops II is beating day-one pre-orders for its predecessors.
In fact, the game had 10 times as many day one orders than the original Black Ops I, which was released in 2010. Furthermore, the game is beating out last year's record shattering Modern Warfare 3 by 30 percent.
The game is set for release on November 13th.
Activision Publishing chief Eric Hirshberg noted earlier in the year that he believes the "next Call of Duty will bring meaningful innovation to the series." The exec did not elaborate further but the series has seen some user criticism recently from those who think the series is a lot of "the same" just with a new name and new maps.
2011's Modern Warfare 3 was an unequivocal success, bringing in over $1 billion in sales in just 16 days.
Struggling audio tech licensor Dolby Labs has signed an agreement with Microsoft that will have Dolby products used in the upcoming Windows 8 operating system.
Microsoft will use the Dolby Digital Plus 5.1 and 2.0 channel encoding for Windows 8 PCs and tablets.
OEMs will have to pay a base royalty rate to Dolby for the products once they start shipping the OS in October of this year. OEMs will also have to pay to add the Dolby functionality to optical disc drives.
Dolby told investors last year that Microsoft had not committed to them, but it appears there has been a change of heart.
Chief Executive Officer Kevin Yeaman added: "There will certainly be a shift in the mix of revenue because most of the revenue will now come directly from OEMs where as in the past most of the royalties came from Microsoft and the independent software vendors."
Apple's iPad has regained nearly all of the market share it lost to Amazon in the holiday quarter.
Amazon's Kindle Fire sales slowed down significantly during the first quarter, while iPad sales increased. Apple's market share jumped from 55 percent to 68 percent.
On the other hand, the Kindle Fire's share fell dramatically, from 17 percent down to just 4 percent.
BGC Partners analyst Colin Gillis says the drop was expected as Amazon's Kindle products typically only sell very well during the holiday season when they are purchased as gifts.
Says Gillis: "Fatigue is starting to kick in about six months after a product has launched. And it's natural that Amazon is going to tend to be a better holiday play."
Overall, tablet shipments doubled to 17.4 million units in the Q1, from 7.9 million in the same period in 2011.
Just one month after social gaming giant Zynga purchased the developer of the game, 'Draw Something' is already losing popularity.
The game, created by OMGPOP, is one of the most popular mobile games of all time, seeing 50 million downloads in 50 days for iOS and Android.
Traffic tracking organization AppData says after daily active users peaked on April 3rd at 14.6 million, that number has been falling, down to 10.2 million as of today. In the last week, alone, 700,000 users have left the game, and the pace appears to be accelerating.
There is one caveat to the figures, notes AppData, as the number cited is only for users who signed in via Facebook, not those that used an email to register their accounts.
Zynga purchased OMGPOP last month for $180 million and recently announced it would be selling advertisers the option to have their brand name as part of the game.mments.
Samsung has unveiled their latest, the Galaxy S III, today during an international event.
As expected, the flagship device will have a large 4.8-inch HD Super AMOLED display and be run by an extremely powerful 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos processor.
On the design side, fans of the Galaxy S II should be familiar with the new device, which keeps a similar design and keeps the physical home button (although it has been hidden slightly). Overall, the device is light, as well, weighing in at 4.7 ounces whilst being just 8.6mm thick.
Unlike rumors, the device does not have a 12MP camera but has an 8MP sensor similar to the Galaxy Note. The new pre-installed camera app will include support for dual still/video capture and face tagging for existing contacts.
Like the Galaxy Nexus, the new screen is PenTile (which some will complain about) but it does have 306ppi density and a large 720presolution. The panel itself is Gorilla Glass 2, which should protect the screen from most harm.
Toshiba has priced their massive 13-inch Excite tablet.
The device will go on sale next month with a large $650 base price tag, but the price does make sense given the extra display space.
For the base price, you get the 1600x900 resolution device, 1GB RAM, a Tegra 3 quad-core processor and 32GB internal storage. For $750, you get the 64 GB model. As expected, because of the size of the tablet, it is pretty heavy, as well, at 2.2 pounds. On the other end of the spectrum, Toshiba kept the tablet slim, at 0.4-inches thin.
On the port end, the Excite 13 has an SD slot, MicroHDMI and two USB ports.
A German court has ruled today that Microsoft has infringed on a number of Motorola Mobility patents.
The ruling also demands Microsoft remove their Xbox 360 console and Windows 7 OS from the entire German market.
Despite the ruling, the Redmond giant has been granted a preliminary injunction in the U.S. that will prevent Motorola from enforcing any court orders from other nations. This injunction will likely keep the products on shelves for the future.
Says Microsoft: "Motorola is prohibited from acting on today's decision, and our business in Germany will continue as usual while we appeal this decision and pursue the fundamental issue of Motorola's broken promise."
This week's decision was part of the much larger smartphone patent epic being fought by Apple, Microsoft, Samsung and others. German judge Holger Kircher noted today that Microsoft breached an agreement with Motorola Mobility in "using certain video-compression software in products including Windows 7 and Xbox."
Today's most interesting gaming world rumor is that of the $99 Xbox 360.
Supposedly, Microsoft is looking to begin offering the 4GB Arcade model of the popular console, along with the Kinect motion control system, for just $99 with one large catch.
That catch is buyers must sign up for a two-year Xbox Live Gold contract, at $15 per month. Besides access to the Live service, there may also be added content included, such as Xfinity TV on Demand, as part of the subscription.
If you decide to break the contract early, just like with a smartphone contract, there will be an early termination penalty.
The subsidized console will be something new for the industry, taking cues from the mobile phone world. The current 4GB Xbox 360 (with Kinect) bundle sells for $300, and Xbox Live Gold (two year's worth) can be found for anywhere between $100-$120. If you buy the subsidized console, with the contract, the final price ends up being more expensive at $460, but you have two years to pay off that money, which some people may find preferable.
Google has announced today that one of its "Google Labs" experiments has graduated to the real-world, "Automatic Message Translation."
The search giant will "leverage" Google's translations servers for all emails that may be received in a foreign language. As an example, the company says a business partner in Shanghai could write an email in Mandarin and that message will automatically come to your inbox translated (alongside the original version).
If you do not want auto-translation, Google leaves that option available as well to those that are bilingual (or multilingual). There is also the option for each language to select "do not translate."
Google says they got great positive feedback from their business users on the feature and has now extended it to all its 300 million Gmail users.
The once-ultra popular community news sharing site Digg is expected to be sold to the Washington Post sometime in the near future.
Talks have gotten "serious" and Digg has been looking for a buyer for the last three months.
If the talks were to break down, however, the site has been shopping itself to other large news outlets including CNN. CNN is a good match, as well, as it recently purchased iPad mobile news magazine Zite.
Digg, which was once one of the most popular sites on the web for news aggregation and commentary, has recently lost favor to Reddit. In 2010, Digg redesigned its site, angering long time readers, and traffic has never recovered.
If the deal were to go through, the initial deal would only be for Digg's staff, say sources, not their technology.
Does everyone remember Flashback, the malware infecting hundreds of thousands of Macs? Well it appears the operators of the trojan are netting over $10,000 per day from its victims.
The news comes via Symantec, the security firm behind Norton.
At its peak, over 600,000 Macs were infected with Flashback but after a media push and Apple's release of a patch for a certain vulnerability, that number has been cut in half, at least.
Despite Apple's proactive stance, there was still a six-week delay before a patch was released, giving the malware ample time to infect more devices. "This window of opportunity helped the Flashback Trojan to infect Macs on a large scale. The Flashback authors took advantage of the gap between Oracle and Apple's patches by exploiting vulnerable websites using WordPress and Joomla to add malicious code snippets," adds Symantec.
Because the malware redirects users to websites created by the operators, who receive money from advertisers, the scheme is bringing in about $10,000 a day in revenue, notes Symantec.
For more information on the malware, check our previous reports here and here.
LG will stop producing Windows Phone devices for the time being, instead using that extra capital and focus on more Android phones.
The company will "continue research and development efforts" on the mobile OS, however.
Among the handful of WP7 devices it makes, the recent Optimus 7 has caught a bit of popularity. However, the company notes that WP7 only controls 2 percent of the global smartphone market, not enough to warrant the capital outlay.
Says a spokesperson: "The total unit[s] of Windows Phone sold in the global market is not a meaningful figure."
In 2009, LG made a strong commitment to the platform, setting a roadmap with 26 WP7 phones for 2012, alone. That has clearly changed in a short period as the OS has not yet reached critical mass adoption.
'Angry Birds Space' has hit another milestone, 50 million downloads in just 35 days.
That number has broken the old record for mobile games, which was set earlier in the year by "Draw Something." Draw hit 50 million downloads in 48 days.
Rovio announced last month the game hit 10 million downloads in just 72 hours, shattering previous records. Most importantly for the developer, the game remains popular, sitting at #2 on Google Play and #1 on iTunes.
The game features "zero-gravity," adding a new twist to the game which many believe had begun to go stale despite new levels and scenes being released regularly. 'Space's' levels include floating rocks, planets, birds with new powers and gravity fields that are ever-changing.
Angry Birds Space is available for iOS, Android, Mac OS, and Windows, with a Windows Phone version coming in the future.
Crysis developer's director of creative development Rasmus Hojengaard has backtracked from his infamous comments made last week.
At the time, the exec said he was all for the gaming industry moving towards blocking used games, as it would be "awesome" from a business perspective.
Today, in an interview with CVG, the exec did a complete about-face:
"My comment made in the interview released on the 24th of April, touching upon 'blocking sales of used games,' was not intended to be taken seriously nor representative of the opinion of Crytek."
Original post:
Over the past few months, it has been rumored that the upcoming generation of consoles from Sony and Microsoft will block used games from playing, a move that would kill the entire second market and likely bankrupt retail companies like GameStop.
Read more...
It took just under 2 weeks for Mark Zuckerberg to fall well off the 40 richest billionaires list.
Google and 
Amazon's European 
Last year, a historical flood in Thailand left 13 million people homeless and a significant amount of factories with over 3 feet of water.
Amazon has announced today the launch of its Instant Video service on the Xbox 360.
Over the weekend, a German console site called PlayNation revealed pictures of the alleged PS4 spec sheet along with some additional data on the console, which is set for release at the end of next year.
Although 
The latest report out of China has implied that Foxconn's Shenzhen plant has now received orders to build trial run sets of the oft-rumored 
Struggling smartphone maker RIM is said to be planning a restructuring that will cause 2000 employees to be laid off.
Bharti Airtel, the top mobile carrier in India, says it added 2.01 million new mobile subscribers in April, strong growth for the company and the nation.
Ericsson, the world's largest mobile network equipment maker, has been fined by the U.S. Department of Commerce for violating export restrictions by shipping equipment to Cuba.
Despite its previous deal falling apart, it appears that 
The Chronic Dev Team has released the latest version of their untethered jailbreak for 
IBM has understandably blocked the voice-activated digital assistant from its work networks.
Cisco has decided to pull the plug on its failed Cius tablet.
Although 
Thanks to a contract negotiation dispute between Amazon and the Independent Publishers Group, the giant e-tailer pulled 5000 titles from the Kindle Store back in February.
According to a new 
Felix Roque, the mayor of West New York in New Jersey, has been arrested after hacking a site that was calling for a recall on his election.
More rumors and info are abound in regards to Google's still unconfirmed new Nexus tablet.
Thanks to a new partnership between charity Teach First and search giant Google, English teachers specializing in computer science will receive free "teaching aids, such as Raspberry Pi's or Arduino 
Google has revealed the interesting data this week.
Facebook has unveiled their latest application for 
The American Civil Liberties Union has created an infographic for mass distribution that shows some scary figures related to the U.S. National Security Agency.
President Barack Obama has mandated today that all major federal government agency sites must become optimized for mobile devices within a year.
Bill no. S06779 will look to block anonymous speech online.
An ITC judge has ruled this week that 
Blizzard Activision has proudly boasted today that 
According to Millward Brown Optimor's annual BrandZ study, 
In January, 
Verizon has begun the promotion in an effort to boost sales.
Foxconn has announced that it will spend over $200 million to build a new factory dedicated to 
The U.S.' major ISPs have announced they will be making more free Wi-Fi hotspots available to customers.
According to multiple supply chain sources, 
Spike TV has proudly announced that it will be live 
The MPAA's CEO Chris Dodd has finally admitted that the group's tactics of comparing piracy to stealing is a bad choice.
Popular music 
One of the richest men in the world has just gotten a little bit poorer.
The case of Joel Tenenbaum continues.
Hulu has announced today that it will premiere three new original shows alongside seven "exclusively licensed" television shows that had not been available to U.S. consumers.
According to the latest figures by 
The BlackBerry Developer Team has announced today that PlayBook tablet owners will be getting an upgrade to the BlackBerry 10 operating system expected to hit later this year.
In one of the more useful uses of the motion control system, reseachers have begun using 
There have been rumors for months that 
The recently released Raspberry Pi is set to get its very own camera module.
Six years after its purchase, 
Google has announced new additions to Gmail this week that will help it better integrate with the Google+ social network.
Digitimes has reported this week that Amazon is preparing a 10-inch Kindle Fire tablet for release in the Q3 this year.
GameStop is officially in the mobile business.
In one of the stranger cross promotions we've seen this year, the Chili's restaurant chain is offering free 
Two months ago, 
Facebook has purchased the social gifting app "
According to multiple sources, Google is looking to move the new 
According to reports, Verizon is looking to raise speeds on their FiOS broadband network, but at a price.
Google must keep 
jOBS, the Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher, will begin filming in the original garage 
AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega has announced today that the company will reduce the amount it subsidizes for new phones.
A hacker by the name of "Nyre" has claimed responsibility for the recent 
According to 
Just like in years past, 
Yahoo is preparing to sell off its most profitable venture of all time.
Simon & Schuster have settled their long standing ebook price fixing case.
Earlier today, 
T-Mobile USA has begun selling new off-contract mobile broadband plans for users who only occasionally need data.
According to the latest 
The founders of OpenSignalMaps have collected data from 681,900 devices and come up with some interesting 
Last week we reported that Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin had renounced his U.S. citizenship and moved to Singapore.
After losing a patent case to 
Google has taken time today to respond to the numerous complaints it's been hearing in regards to its new Google Music policy changes.
Shares of behemoth electronics company 
A Verizon Wireless exec let the point slip today during an investor conference.
The expensive, failed wireless network project LightSquared has filed for bankruptcy protection.
Diverging from tradition, it appears that Google will unveil its 
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RapidGator.net, one of the largest cyberlockers out there, has been shut down.
The federal government, with help from the Hollywood studios, has updated the iconic DVD/Blu-ray anti-piracy warnings seen on all new releases.
The popular 
The iPhone Dev Team has updated the popular 
According to multiple sources, Amazon 
Back at the 
According to sources, Microsoft's upcoming gaming console will be named "Xbox 8."
Thanks to Activision's recent quarterly earnings report, we have some concrete figures on the company's 
Noted video game analyst Michael Pachter briefly interviewed 
The Thai government has signed a deal this week that will make them buyers of a large amount of 
Finnish mobile gaming giant Rovio has announced the name of their upcoming game.
After being convicted in 2009 and losing appeals, the time has finally come for the founders of the infamous 
According to new 
The HBO blockbuster hit show "Game of Thrones" is well on its way to becoming the most pirated TV show in 2012.
At an event in Palo Alto this week, 
T-Mobile USA has announced it has lost another 510,000 subscribers this quarter, failing to stop the bleeding of the past few years.
The extremely popular Kickstarter project 
At 
RIM has announced today that the U.S. Department of Defense has approved agency use of a number of BlackBerry 7 smartphones.
This morning, a report hit the wire that AOL was looking to sell its popular Engadget and TechCrunch tech content sites.
A group claiming to be the Russian branch of 'Anonymous' has taken down the websites of the Kremlin.
Verizon Wireless has announced that the Droid Incredible 4G will go on sale via the carrier in the "coming weeks."
The Windows Phone 7 device will go on sale on May 20th.
Electronic Arts (EA) has promised to reduce its labor force, as well.
The United States Trade Representative has labeled Canada a haven of piracy, once again.
Perfect 10, the adult publisher, has sued microblogging service Tumblr over alleged piracy.
Looking to improve the quality of apps available for 
Research firm Nielsen has reported today that over 50 percent of U.S. consumers now own smartphones.
The European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes has noted today that she does not expect the controversial 
Major Chinese PC maker 
EPIX, the joint 
In March, Eastman Kodak, the bankrupt photography pioneer, sold their online photo services to Shutterfly for a final price of $23.8 million.
Although the government has not confirmed the move, news out of India is that there has been a massive blocking of 
The streaky 
Amazon has announced its new efforts to create original content for the Amazon Prime 
eBay has confirmed plans to upgrade their search engine to better compete against e-tailing giant Amazon.
DataWind, the company behind the $35 Aakash tablet for the Indian market, has introduced two new "UbiSlate" tablets for the nation.
Sprint CEO Daniel Hesse has confirmed he will take a paycut this year following the company's expensive expenditures to get the iPhone.
The Japanese chipmaker Elpida Memory, who filed for bankruptcy protection in February, is close to being acquired by U.S.-based Micron Technology.
It appears that actually putting together a strong cast and a good story can still lead to strong box office sales.
Over the past few days we have discussed at length the new hardware in the 
First unveiled at the 
Last year, 
The comments came via an interview with 
Earlier today, we reported on the hardware of the upcoming 
The Discovery Channel has announced its purchase of the internet video service Revision3.
Struggling audio tech licensor 
Just one month after social gaming giant Zynga purchased the developer of the game, 'Draw Something' is already losing popularity.
The once-ultra popular community news sharing site Digg is expected to be sold to the Washington Post sometime in the near future.
Does everyone remember Flashback, the malware infecting hundreds of thousands of Macs? Well it appears the operators of the trojan are netting over $10,000 per day from its victims.
'Angry Birds Space' has hit another milestone, 50 million downloads in just 35 days.
