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Giant e-tailer Amazon has announced that it will be introducing a new, cheaper version of its Kindle DX e-reader, lowering the price to remain competitive.

The updated model will also have a sharper screen.

Amazon charged $489 for the first generation DX, but the new generation model will sell for $379.

Additionally, Amazon says the new DX will handle PDFs better, including the ability to zoom, which was the top complaint for the original device.

Pre-orders on the second generation model start today and the device will ship on July 7th.

The Kindle DX is different from its brother Kindle device because it has a large 9.7-inch screen. Amazon had hoped the DX would eventually replace textbooks on college campuses.

In 2008, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made headlines when he called Blu-ray "a bag of hurt."

At the time, Jobs said: "Blu-ray is just a bag of hurt. It's great to watch the movies, but the licensing of the tech is so complex, we're waiting till things settle down and Blu-ray takes off in the marketplace."

Two years later, Blu-ray has become more mainstream, but Steve Jobs seems to have the same distaste for the HD format.

A MacRumors reader sent an email to Jobs asking about the future of Blu-ray on Mac computers.

Reads his response: "Blu-ray is looking more and more like one of the high end audio formats that appeared as the successor to the CD - like it will be beaten by Internet downloadable formats."

Hulu announced yesterday the launch of Hulu Plus, a premium version of the popular streaming site that will cost $10 per month.

Buyers of the subscription get expanded content, and the ability to play the shows on their HDTVs, Blu-ray players, Xbox 360 (with Gold subscription), PS3 and iPad and iPhone.

Hulu Plus gives users season passes for most current shows, which is a massive improvement from only being able to watch the trailing five episodes of a given show. You will also be able to watch back seasons of the shows.

Today, Technologizer is reporting that Hulu Plus will only be available to PS3 users who have a PlayStation Plus subscription, which costs $50 per year, or $18 for 90 days.

On top of that, Hulu Plus is still ad-supported, meaning if you want the service on your PS3 (or Xbox 360) you will need to pay for two premium subscriptions and still see ads.

Amazon has announced it will purchase the popular site Woot.com, the site that became famous for selling just one item at a time, usually at a large discount from its normal prices.

Retailers use sites like Woot to either dump excess inventory or introduce new customers to their brand of products.

Consumers, on the other hand, get the thrill of racing other would-be buyers for a sharply discounted item.

Woot launched in 2004 and now has 2.75 million registered users. The site sells all types of items, but mostly electronics. For example, today's Woot item is the Apple iPod Nano 8GB, 5th Generation , selling for $99 USD, a big discount from even Amazon, which has the same item listed at $125.

Amazon was Woot's only outside investor, when they bought a piece in 2006.

The NYTimes explains that Woot is also a wholesale distributor, which distributes to Target, Amazon, and others.

Starbucks says its free Wi-Fi program will go live tomorrow in U.S. and Canadian stores, allowing users to access free Internet from over 7500 shops in the nations.

There are about 6750 U.S. locations and 750 in Canada.

Until now, free Wi-Fi at Starbucks was limited to two hours, and you had to be part of the company's Rewards program. The new, unlimited offering is simple one-click, removing the need for a username and password.

"Our customers were asking for a simplified Wi-Fi offering, and free Wi-Fi has been a top request on MyStarbucksIdea.com. We’re excited to turn this feedback into action and believe our customers will be delighted with the enhanced experience they’ll find in Starbucks stores," adds Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz.

In the fall, Starbucks will introduce the Starbucks Digital Network, a partnership with Yahoo! that will give consumers "free, unrestricted access to a collection of paid sites and services, exclusive content and previews, free downloads and local community news."

In 2007, Dell was sued over selling faulty computers to not only individual consumers, but also to corporations and big Universities who needed Dell's OptiPlex business units.

New documents, finally unsealed in the long-standing case, show that Dell employees knew that the company was selling faulty units, and decided to instead play off the issues, allowing the corporations and schools use the computers, at risk to their business.

In a twist of irony, the firm defending Dell in the suit had 1000 Dell computers run into trouble, and the PC manufacturer refused to fix them.

Internal documents also show that Dell shipped almost 12 million computers from May 2003 to July 2005, knowing full well they were at risk of failing.

In 2005, the company took a $300 million charge to fix and replace faulty computers, and will pay up to $100 million this year to settle with the SEC for shady accounting practices.

The problems affecting the millions of computers had to do with bad capacitors found on motherboards being built by Taiwanese suppliers. After three years, the capacitors had a 97 percent chance of popping and leaking fluid.

Microsoft has confirmed today that they are 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.

Says Microsoft: "We have made the decision to focus exclusively on Windows Phone 7 and we will not ship KIN in Europe this fall as planned. Additionally, we are integrating our KIN team with the Windows Phone 7 team, incorporating valuable ideas and technologies from KIN into future Windows Phone releases. We will continue to work with Verizon in the U.S. to sell current KIN phones."

Pulling the plug is a glaring admission of failure from the Microsoft team, which released the phone just two months ago, after almost two years of development.

The Kin series failed for many reasons, but the main factor was price. For low-end smartphones aimed at teenagers, Microsoft and Verizon still forced consumers to buy a $70 mandatory voice+data+texting plan. For the same price, you could have a top-end Android device, or head to AT&T for an iPhone.

Apple may not want to admit it, but the Android OS has already surpassed their iOS in smartphone market share in the United States (by some accounts), and is catching up internationally.

AdMob, the mobile analytics and tracking firm that was recently purchased by Google, has released their latest mobile metrics report, which is a "monthly snapshot of the smartphone industry based on data generated by ad requests within its network of 23,000 mobile websites and mobile applications."

The report shows that Android is rapidly rising internationally, in terms of share, thanks to a plethora of new smartphones using the popular mobile operating system.

As of May 2010, iOS leads the way at 40 percent international market share, with Android closing in at 26 percent. Symbian, by Nokia is in third at 24 percent. Blackberry OS, despite being popular in the United States, is in fourth at 6 percent. Windows Mobile, once dominant, fell to a measly 2 percent. Palm's WebOS and "other" make up the rest of the numbers.

Since the introduction of their new iPhone 4, Apple has been getting complaints of reception problems related to users bridging a gap in the steel band around the phone's edge during normal use. Despite acknowledging that the issue exists, Apple has consistently defended their design and characterized the problem as a user issue.

The problem occurs when the device is cupped in the user's left hand in such a way that a gap in the steel band around the edge is bridged. Among other things, the band serves as a pair of antennas which are separated by this gap.

Holding the iPhone 4 in this way has been found to degrade or completely block phone and data service.

Sprint has said today that they are seeing shortages of the popular HTC EVO 4G smartphone, with CEO Dan Hesse saying some areas have had much higher-than-expected demand.

Hesse went as far as to say that he wishes there was more supply at launch, on June 4th.

"The device is more popular than we or HTC could foresee," said the CEO, via Reuters.

The CEO was then asked if the spot shortages was due to component shortages in Asia, but Hesse referred those questions over to HTC, which said there were no shortages.

"We're certainly doing everything we can to ensure we're supplying devices as quickly as possible. We're seeing greater demand for our products than we ever have in the past," said HTC spokesman Keith Nowak.

Additionally, HTC is also seeing spot shortages of the Droid Incredible, which is sold by Verizon.

Bloomberg is reporting today that Apple and Verizon have made a deal to bring the iPhone 4 to the US' largest wireless carrier.

AT&T has exclusively been home to the iPhone since its original launch in 2007, and rumors of Verizon getting the device have cropped up every few months.

The device will be available in January, with pre-orders likely starting at Christmas.

Apple recently sold 1.7 million iPhone 4 in just three days of availability, the company's strongest launch ever, by far.

This is still not confirmed by Apple or Verizon, so take it as rumor for now. But this rumor may finally have legs.

We will keep you updated.

Hulu has announced today the launch of Hulu Plus, a premium version of the popular streaming site that will cost $10 per month.

Buyers of the subscription get expanded content, and the ability to play the shows on their HDTVs, Blu-ray players, Xbox 360 (with Gold subscription), PS3 and iPad and iPhone.

The PlayStation 3 is the first to get the service, starting in a couple of weeks, with the Xbox 360 getting the service in early 2011. HDTVs from Sony and Vizio will also get the service in "the fall."

Most importantly, Hulu Plus gives users season passes for most current shows, which is a massive improvement from only being able to watch the trailing five episodes of a given show. You will also be able to watch back seasons of the shows.

There are currently 2000 full TV episodes available for Hulu Plus, including older shows from the 80s and 90s.

On the downside, Hulu Plus will still be ad-supported.

Last week, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6.4 with "Crash Protection" which isolates third-party plug-ins when they crash, if you are using the Windows or Linux versions of the browser, allowing the main browser to remain stable.

Today, the company has had to rush out another small update, after the company was bombarded by complaints from Farmville players, the popular game available through Facebook.

The complaints mainly came from users with older computers, which were seeing the game crash from within their browser due to Firefox's update.

How "Crash Protection" works, explains Mozilla, is if Flash, QuickTime or Silverlight crash or become unresponsive for over 10 seconds, the browser kills the plug-in.

Barnes & Noble has reported a large fourth quarter loss this week, citing its expensive push into the e-book and e-reader markets.

Additionally, the company forecasted lower future earnings, as it keeps expanding into aforementioned markets.

For the fourth quarter ended May, the company lost $32 million, compared with a $3 million loss in the same period last year.

Revenue, however, rose to $1.32 billion from $1.1 billion, beating analyst expectations.

The book company recently slashed the price of the Nook Android e-reader from $260 to $200, and introduced a 3G-stripped Wi-Fi only version for $150.

B&N's move prompted Amazon to drop the price of their market leading Kindle to $190.

After a quick private beta period, MSpot has opened their cloud streaming service to everyone, allowing for 2GB free and unlimited streaming of your own music libraries from the cloud.

The service works to your PC, Mac and Android-based smartphones or netbooks.

If you have over 2GB music you want to have everywhere (and most do), then you can purchase an MSpot storage plan for $3 a month (12 GB), $5 a month (22 GB), $10 a month for 52 GB or $14 per month for a massive 102 GB.

MSpot's media player works in IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari.

If you are running an Android device with firmware 2.1 or higher, you can download an app "that can set aside local phone storage and both stream and download songs to whatever amount of space you allow it to take up on your SD card or built-in storage," says CNet.