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Gawker, the parent company behind tech site Gizmodo, has said this weekend that they have reached an agreement with authorities in California where they will give all material relevant to the investigation, in exchange for receiving back items seized from editor Jason Chen's home.

In April, Gizmodo leaked a prototype iPhone 4 model to the world, and within the month, California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team had seized Chen's computers, working on a warrant from the Superior Court of San Mateo.

The iPhone 4 model was dropped in a bar by Apple developer Gray Powell, and eventually purchased by Gizmodo for $5000 USD.

On request from Apple, the district attorney's office had opened an investigation into whether Gawker had done anything illegal in the matter.

The warrant has been withdrawn now, with Chen's belongings returned to him.

"Mr. Chen and Gizmodo have agreed to cooperate with our investigation," adds Chris Feasel, deputy district attorney for San Mateo County.

In late June, Microsoft confirmed they were pulling the plug on the Kin One and Kin Two smartphones, after sales fell well below expectations.

Additionally, the Kin phones will not make it to Europe as promised, and the entire Kin team has been moved over to the company's Windows Phone 7 division.

Today, the devices have seen the last nail in their respective coffins, as Verizon has opted to return all unsold devices to Microsoft, with online and in-store sales suspended as of this weekend.

Although it is still unclear how many Kin devices were sold, but nearly all estimates put units sold between 503 and 9000, an incredibly low number for a device sold on the nation's most popular network.

Verizon is now only selling some accessories for the phones.

Facebook will announce this week that the social networking giant has reached 500 million members, a gigantic milestone projected for 2010 earlier in the year.

As a way to celebrate the achievement, the company will launch "Facebook Stories," a "visual memorial" to the ways that the site has changed people's lives for the better.

The figures come from Facebook marketing boss Randi Zuckerberg last week, who says while past announcements have just been about the numbers, this announcement will be "about the users."

Facebook Stories will sort user-submitted stories by location and theme.

A few of the themes are "finding love" and "natural disasters," and the stories will be capped at 420 characters, the same as a status update.

You can already submit stories here: Facebook Stories

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has said this weekend that the company must delay its South Korean launch of the iPhone 4, as they still cannot secure government approval in that nation.

"It's going to take just a little bit longer to get government approval there," notes Jobs.

South Korea was one of the eighteen nations that had a July release date for the popular smartphone.

The other 17 still have active July release dates set.

KT, the exclusive carrier for the device in South Korea would not give a time frame for release: "I believe you were confounded by the news that the iPhone 4 launch is delayed. But it does not change (the fact) that the iPhone 4 will be launched."

The nation saw their first iPhone, the 3GS offered in 2009, almost three years after the launch of the original iPhone.

In late May we reported that "Hurt Locker" producer Voltage Pictures was suing thousands of alleged pirates for downloading the film online.

Voltage sued 5000 unidentified pirates accused of downloading the 2009 Best Picture, and the company said a lot more were coming.

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

Voltage is backed by the U.S. Copyright Group, a group devoted to suing alleged pirates on behalf of independent film production companies.

After the pirates were identified by their IP addresses they were sent letters demanding $1500 to settle. If the case eventually goes to court, Voltage says it will be seeking $150,000 in damages.

The U.S. Copyright Group will begin the second round of lawsuits starting August 1st, says THR, with up to 45,000 more suits expected.

Boxee CPO Zach Klein has released a video today showing off a production model of the highly anticipated Boxee Box.

The video implies that Boxee will begin mass production on the box now, with a release date not too far in the future.

Boxee's "sinking box" design is still intact, but it has been given a slightly more refined look and a more fingerprint-resistant finish.

The Box is a media hub, as well as a set-top box, whose primary purpose is to stream music, photos and video from within a local network or use streaming services such as Pandora and video sites.

Boxee Box uses a fast NVIDIA Tegra chipset, which will allow for 1080p video playback and hardware-accelerated Flash 10.1.

The hardware is expected to sell for $180.

The first Boxee Box arrived from the D-Link Factory from Zach Klein on Vimeo.

If you have been following AfterDawn over the past two weeks, you have undoubtedly read about "antennagate," Apple's ongoing iPhone 4 situation.

The iPhone 4, due to flawed hardware engineering, drops phone calls when held in the left hand, as your hand covers the antenna.

Yesterday, CEO Steve Jobs announced the company would be providing free cases to iPhone 4 buyers, as the bumpers would eliminate the antenna issues.

Jobs says the number of dropped calls per dials is tiny, but so far the problem has been a PR disaster for Apple.

Whoopi Goldberg, of the popular TV show "The View," went on a rant yesterday about the iPhone and its dropped calls, saying it made her so angry that she threw the phone out of her car, "murdering" it.

Watch the video here:

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, who left the company as an executive in the 80s while fighting cancer, has pledged $7 billion of his $13.5 billion fortune to philanthropy after he dies.

The decision follows the footsteps of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, who have both pledged billions to philanthropy.

Allen and Gates founded Microsoft in 1975, and the company was long the largest tech company in the world, only recently overtaken by Apple in terms of market cap.

Over the last twenty years, through his Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the billionaire has handed out $1 billion in grants.

"Today I also want to announce that my philanthropic efforts will continue after my lifetime," said Allen. "I've planned for many years now that the majority of my estate will be left to philanthropy to continue the work of the Foundation and to fund nonprofit scientific research."

There was no word on how the money would be directed after his death.

During his Q&A session yesterday, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revived the iPhone on Verizon rumors for the United States.

When asked about how the Apple headquarters in Cupertino has such good cell and data reception, Jobs said: "We’ve got strong signal here. We have AT&T and Verizon cell sites on campus."

While the comment could be innocent given the fact that Verizon is the most popular carrier in the United States, the flames of Verizon iPhone rumors over the years have been rekindled thanks to the comment.

Apple could be in development of a Verizon iPhone, and needs the cell site, no one outside of Apple knows.

Last month, Bloomberg cited sources that claimed Apple will make a Verizon iPhone 4 available starting in January. That rumor is of course still unconfirmed.

Although hardware saw a nice jump for the month, NPD has reported that June U.S. video game industry sales continued the long term downtrend, with overall sales falling 6 percent year-on-year (YoY), to $1.1 billion USD.

Hardware sales saw a nice five percent pop, to $401.7 million, and accessories saw a similar jump to $169.6 million.

Software dragged the entire industry down, falling 15 percent YoY to $531.3 million.

On the hardware side, the DS series led the way, at 510,700 units sold. The Xbox 360 saw a nice boost, moving to 451,700 units sold, beating out the Wii, which sold 422,500 units for the period.

Following behind were the Sony consoles, with the PS3 at 304,800 and the dying PSP handheld at 121,000.

On the software side, Red Dead Redemption continues to be a blockbuster, selling almost a million more units in June.

According to Google CFO Patrick Pichetter, the search giant had to spend about $100 million to defend itself from Viacom's $1 billion copyright lawsuit against video giant YouTube.

It is important to note that the case did not even make it to trial so the expected attorney's fees would likely have been much higher.

Last month, a judge threw out the case, saying Google was protected under the DMCA's "safe harbor" provision.

Viacom has promised an appeal, but their chances of a victory seem slim, at best.

"Safe Harbor" protects sites such as YouTube from being sued for copyright infringement, as long as they are actively taking down infringing material when asked by content holders. In his judgement, the judge pointed to a day when Viacom gave Google a takedown notice with 100,000 URLs, and the site took down all the videos within 24 hours.

According to Verizon, the wireless carrier has sold out of their first batch of Motorola Droid X smartphones, with would-be buyers needing to wait for at least a week for the next shipment.

The site says anyone who orders now will not receive their phone until the 25th.

Additionally, brick-and-mortar sites seem to be in low stock, as well, with most retail stores called saying they are out of stock.

Most stores were given 50 of the device, which sold out before noon on launch day.

The device has a 4.3-inch, 16:9 multitouch display with 854x480 resolution, a 1GHz OMAP processor, 512MB RAM, HDMI-out, DLNA support, GPS, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi and Hotspot tethering.

Google has confirmed today that the Android Market has hit 70,000 apps available, well on its way to 100,000 before the end of the year.

Google's Senior VP of Product Management Jonathan Rosenberg confirmed the number during the search giant's Q2 earnings call this week.

Furthermore, Android search grew by 300 percent in the first half of 2010, with strong growth expected to continue in the second half. Overall revenue jumped by 24 percent year-on-year and profit increased by 19 percent, as well.

AndroLib, the Android data collection service recently said over 1 billion apps have been downloaded from the Android Market.

Google says there are 160,000 Android-based devices being activated daily.

Google has announced that HTC has shipped the last batch of Nexus One superphones, meaning the phone has reached the end of its lifespan once Google sells the remaining stock.

"Once we sell these devices, the Nexus One will no longer be available online from Google," adds the search giant.

Due to lack of interest, the company will move sales from online to some brick-and-mortar retailers. A few of these locations are Vodafone stores in Western Europe, I Wireless in the U.S. and KT store in Korea.

Developers would still be able to access the phone through a "partner," although it is unclear who.

The Google Nexus One is one of the few phones to officially receive the Android 2.2 Froyo update.

Google offered the device for $530 unlocked or $180 with contract through T-Mobile.

Speaking at Apple's Cupertiono, California headquarters this morning, CEO Steve Jobs announced the company will be providing free cases to iPhone 4 buyers. The cases are intended to address a growing controversy over the phone's design flaw, which can cause dropped calls when it is held in a particular way.

Although the problem has only affected a small percentage of users, the controversy surrounding Apple's response has been a PR disaster.

While still not admitting there is anything wrong with the phone's design, Jobs did admit that iPhone users on AT&T have experienced slightly more dropped calls with the new model compared to the previous one.