Latest news

Since Friday night, the group "Anonymous" has taken down multiple websites relating to anti-piracy firms, starting with the MPAA and AiPlex Software and taking down the RIAA just a few hours ago.

Dubbed "Operation Payback," the protest revolves around DDoS attacks on the firm's main sites, located at MPAA.com, MPAA.org, RIAA.com and Aiplex.com.

As of writing, all the sites listed except for MPAA.org are still down.

While the RIAA and MPAA are well known, AiPlex was not until recently when they announced they had been hired by the movie studios to take down The Pirate Bay, the world's largest public tracker.

According to tweets and other notes from the group, it appears the BPI may be the next target for the DDoS attack.

According to a source speaking to TC, Facebook is currently working on a smartphone, one that they hope will rival Android and iOS devices.

Facebook is developing the mobile OS and UI, then working with a third-party to build the actual hardware.

The source says it has become apparent to the social networking giant that iOS and Android are becoming very powerful platforms, and that Facebook's official apps may not be enough to stay competitive.

Joe Hewitt and Matthew Papakipos, two of Facebook's highest-level employees, are said to be working on the project, which would deeply integrate the many social networking features of the site into user's contacts lists.

Hewitt was on the original team that created Firefox and was on the team working on "Parakey" before Facebook purchased it in 2007. Parakey was supposed to be a "Web-based OS." He has also created Facebook's "mobile" and "touch" versions, and the native iPhone apps.

Papkipos was working on the Google Chrome OS until he jumped ship to Facebook this year.

Intel has said this weekend that it will sue anyone who uses the HDCP "Master Key" that was recently leaked to the Web.

The crypto key can be used to break the HDCP tech that limits users from recording digital TV streams and Blu-ray discs.

The technology giant, which developed HDCP, says: "There are laws to protect both the intellectual property involved as well as the content that is created and owned by the content providers. Should a circumvention device be created using this information, we and others would avail ourselves, as appropriate, of those remedies."

Earlier in the week, Intel confirmed that the "master key" was authentic, and could be used to break the content protection scheme.

The HDCP master key, which is 28200 letters and numbers, can be used to create "device keys," thus making all current and future devices "HDCP-free" given the right hardware.

PatentlyApple has discovered a few new patents Apple has filed for this year, and one stood out from the rest.

The Accessory Transceiver would allow iPod Touch owners to make phone calls.

iPod Touches could use the transceiver to connect directly or wirelessly, using the device to enable phone calling.

Apple filed for the patent in the first quarter of 2010 but it has not been granted yet.

It is also important to note that large corporations like Apple have thousands of patents, many for accessories and devices that never come to fruition.

Last month, a Chinese company released the Apple Peel 520, a dock for the iPod Touch which adds a SIM card slot and other functions, for $59.99.

Motorola Co-CEO Sanjay Jha has said today that their much-anticipated Android tablet will be released in early 2011, slightly later than most expected.

Says Jha: "Just as Droid was competitive I think with iPhone, we want to make sure that any tablet that we deliver is competitive in the marketplace. We will only deliver that when that occurs. Hopefully that’s early next year."

Sources close to the project (via Bloomberg) say the tablet will be around 10 inches, just like the rival iPad.

The upcoming tablet will have a TV service built-in, marketed with Verizon.

Motorola's tablet will feature at least Android 2.2 (and possibly 3.0), meaning Adobe Flash playback will be native, giving it another feature not available on the iPad.

Verizon has said this week that it will not sell Windows Phone 7 smartphones until 2011, putting an early dent in Microsoft's plan to sell to a broad market.

Brenda Raney, a spokeswoman for the carrier, said they will support the operating system, but not this year. Despite the move, Raney says: "Our relationship with Microsoft is solid."

Verizon is the most popular carrier in the United States.

One analyst believes that the announcement is certainly not a positive, but also not the end of the world. Says Michael Gartenberg of the Altimeter Group : "The more carriers and the more devices they can bring early on, the more chance they have for mainstream success, but not having Verizon will not make or break it. Look at the iPhone -- you don’t need Verizon to be successful in the U.S. in mobile. On the other hand, it would be good for Microsoft to count Verizon in as a named partner early on."

Microsoft and Verizon had a recent collaboration, the Kin smartphone devices, but sales were extremely low and Verizon shipped back their excess inventory to Microsoft just two months after launch.

Activision CEO Bobby Kotick has said this week that the company will begin to sell video game cutscenes as full-length movies in the near future.

The company plans to sell the movies for "$20 or $30," making them more expensive than the average Blu-ray disc.

Speaking at the Media, Communications & Entertainment Conference, Kotick says games like StarCraft II have such spectacular in-game cinematics that the publisher could edit them into a single full-length feature film which would then be distributed digitally to fans.

Kotick expects to begin selling said films within 5 years.

"If we were to take that hour, or hour an a half, and take it out of the game and we were to go to our audiences, who we have their credit card information a direct relationship, and say to them 'Would you like to have the StarCraft movie?," the CEO asked.

Continuing, Kotick says (via IGN): "My guess is unlike film studios that are really stuck with a model that goes through theatrical distribution and takes a signification amount of the profit away, if we were to go to an audience and say 'We have this great hour and a half of linear video that we'd like to make available to you at a $20 or $30 price point,' you'd have the biggest opening weekend of any film ever."

Despite their best efforts to hide the existence of the handheld, Mortal Kombat's executive producer Shaun Himmerick has said this week that the company has a "PSP2 in the house."

Himmerick had been asked if the developer was creating a game for the PSP or for the 3DS, or both.

His response: "We're not launching day one on all consoles like that. We are looking at them; we have a PSP2 in the house and we're looking at the engine, like what can it support."

"Always a big thing for us is the performance. We're running at 60 fps, what can we do and do we have to build all the art assets over. We're definitely looking at them. PSP2 looks like it's a pretty powerful machine. We don't have a 3DS system in house yet, but we're looking to get one, and we'll certainly look at what its power is."

If the company is already sending PSP2 units out, before Nintendo is sending out the 3DS (which has been officially launched but not priced), there is a chance the handheld could be here in time for the holidays.

U.S. President Barack Obama has endorsed the National STEM Video Game Challenge, a campaign to "promote and support student learning" in the areas of science, tech, engineering and math (STEM) by developing video games.

Says the President: "Our success as a nation depends on strengthening America's role as the world's engine of discovery and innovation. I applaud partners in the National STEM Video Game Challenge for lending their resources, expertise, and their enthusiasm to the task of strengthening America's leadership in the 21st century by improving education in science, technology, engineering and math."

There are two categories for game developers, the "Developer Prize" for developers creating games aimed at children aged 4-9, and the "Youth Prize" for actual kid developers aged 10-13.

The top reward in the "Developer Prize" is $50,000. Other prizes inlcude "a Collegiate Prize of $25K for the best undergraduate or graduate student submission" and a "prize of $25K for the best submission that has the greatest potential to reach undeserved populations."

Adds Michael Gallagher of the ESA: "Video games are improving and advancing the way Americans are living, working and playing. The acknowledgement and appreciation of President Obama, our partners in this campaign and leading child advocates, is a strong endorsement of the amazing potential and benefit that games can have on children."

Sony has said today that the company is well on its way to meet its forecasted PlayStation 3 fiscal year sales target of 15 million units.

The current fiscal year ends in March 2011.

"As of the end of August, sales look a bit better than we expected," noted Kazuo Hirai, president of Sony Computer Entertainment (via Reuters).

Hirai, although bullish on the forecast, did remain somewhat muted, adding that the year-end holiday shopping season would be the real marker of how many units gets sold for the year.

Overall, the gaming industry has seen strong losses this year compared to 2009, with August alone seeing a 10 percent decline.

Sony plans to release its upcoming Move motion control system later this month.

Multiple outlets are reporting this week that Apple is set to announce a newspaper subscription plan for the iPad tablet, one where revenue will be shared by the publishers and Apple.

As part of the deal, Apple will implement an opt-in feature that will let users share their personal info with publications. The publishers need that info to share demographics with advertisers.

Both parties have been in negotiations for such a plan since before the iPad launched in April. Publishers would not agree to the plan without the opt-in feature, calling demographic data "the most valuable asset."

Although the exact figures are unclear, it is believed the deal will give Apple a 30 percent cut of all subscriptions sold, similar to the share they take for music.

Additionally, Apple might take as much as 40 percent of advertising revenue.

According to the latest comScore figures, Google slightly lost some share in the search engine market for August, with Yahoo and Bing picking up the slack.

For the month, Google fell to 65.4 percent from 65.8 percent in July and 66.2 percent in June.

Yahoo rose to 17.4 percent, up from 16.7 percent in June and 17.1 percent in July.

Microsoft's Bing engine remained about flat, moving from 11.0 percent in June and July to 11.1 percent in August.

Rounding out the top 5 were Ask at 3.8 percent and AOL at 2.3 percent, both flat.

Overall, about 15.7 billion explicit core searches were conducted in August.

Speaking at the Sony TGS press conference, the company has let it be known that PlayStation 3 firmware update 3.50 will be released September 21st.

The firmware update is notable because it will give gamers Blu-ray 3D support for their console.

PS3 owners have had 3D gaming support for months, thanks to a past firmware update.

Sony recently updated the console to version 3.42, which breaks the ability of users to jailbreak the console using PSJailbreak/PSGroove/PSFreedom.

The BDA signed off on the final Blu-ray 3D specification in December.

Thanks to a Japanese forum poster, we now have concrete evidence that Sony is at least considering creating a peripheral that would give PlayStation 3 owners a way to play their PS2 games.

The new patent filed by Sony Computer Entertainment Japan shows off a "Compatibility Adapter," a peripheral that contains necessary parts to playback PS2 games, but will work when attached to a PS3.

When the PS3 launched in 2006, gamers were given full hardware backward compatibility, but later versions of the console removed the hardware and added software-based emulation instead.

Sony later removed all backward compatibility, in an effort to shed costs.

While the peripheral is interesting, there cannot be too many people still wanting to play PS2 games out there, especially as the console reaches the very end stages of its life.

View the patent here: PS2 compatibility adapter patent (Warning, it's in Japanese)

Google has confirmed this week that they have fired David Barksdale, an engineer who was accused of accessing Gmail and Google Voice accounts of minors and then using the information from chat logs and emails.

Barksdale was a site reliability engineer, a position which granted him access to user accounts.

The dismissed employee accessed the accounts of teenagers he met at a local technology group, then taunted them with information he uncovered.

Google fired Barksdale in July, after receiving multiple complaints from the parents of a few of the teenagers.

"We dismissed David Barksdale for breaking Google's strict internal privacy policies," said Bill Coughran, senior vice president of engineering at Google (via PCM). "We carefully control the number of employees who have access to our systems, and we regularly upgrade our security controls--for example, we are significantly increasing the amount of time we spend auditing our logs to ensure those controls are effective. That said, a limited number of people will always need to access these systems if we are to operate them properly--which is why we take any breach so seriously."