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In late April, HP announced it was purchasing the struggling smartphone maker Palm for $1.2 billion, after at least four other companies gave serious bids.

Palm had put itself up for sale in March after it became clear that the company's phones were not selling and it only had enough cash to last the next 12 months.

At the time, the smartphone maker reached out to 16 different companies and five gave serious offers. Only HP and Lenovo were named as potential buyers, while two other companies wanted to license Palm's patents, including the mobile operating system WebOS.

After Palm accepted HP's bid, which gave shareholders $5.70 a share, angry stock owners brought a class action lawsuit against the smartphone builder, arguing that they did not get the best deal. That suit has been settled today.

According to a note from Kaufman Bros. analyst Shaw Wu, who closely follows Apple, the iPhone 4 should be headed to another network this coming fall, with T-Mobile the likely candidate.

Wu cites weekly check-ins with Apple suppliers, and concludes that AT&T will be the exclusive carrier for only nine more months, at the very most.

T-Mobile is the front runner simply because its GSM technology is similar to AT&Ts whereas Sprint and Verizon use CDMA variants.

Wu also notes that T-Mobile sees the iPhone as a way to win back customers it has lost to AT&T so they are more likely to settle for Apple's terms, which usually includes a share of revenue.

Peter Dobrow of T-Mobile USA responded to the rumor: "T-Mobile does not comment on rumor or speculation...Would we like to offer the iPhone to T-Mobile customers in the U.S.? You bet. Ultimately though it is Apple's decision on who carries its product."

AT&T has confirmed today that 114,067 iPad 3G owners have had their email information leaked to the Web, with the data being stolen by a group calling themselves Goatse Security.

The group published the emails, which included prominent politicians, celebrities and even military officials.

AT&T says that only email addresses were leaked, however, with any sensitive data like credit card numbers not being compromised.

Reads the AT&T press release: "AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC IDS. The only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device. This issue was escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses. The person or group who discovered this gap did not contact AT&T. We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained. We take customer privacy very seriously and while we have fixed this problem, we apologize to our customers who were impacted."

Here writing my annual AfterDawn birthday post - and I'm feeling old. Can't believe it was eleven years ago we launched this site/obsession/hobby of ours, AfterDawn.com.. Wow. Anyway, today is our site's 11th birthday -- in an online world, that equals to something like 75,000 years in "real world" time. You know, 11 years ago, the dominant search engine was still Alta Vista and "social media" meant something like "going to a movie theater with your friends" :-) Times change..

Anyway, another year has passed and lots of things have changed. First and foremost, we finally launched a new version of our site back in March. The new design is accompanied with a completely new, language-independent backend. That has helped us with our localization projects and during the past 6 months, we have launched Spanish, Norwegian and Dutch beta versions of our site.

Despite the fact that AfterDawn has been around since the last millennium, our intention is to continue to improve our site's content and technology. We expect to launch several new language versions of our site during the next year or so, and also plan to go our site's sections through, one by one, trying to find ways on how to improve each section's usability.

Sony has announced today that 3D games will be available for the PlayStation 3 starting tomorrow. Anybody with the latest firmware will have the ability to play them, but you will need a 3D-capable HDTV, as well, and stereoscopic glasses.

At the same time, the company announced its first line of 3D-capable BRAVIA HDTVs, each of which will come bundled with a pack of 3D games.

The first four games available are Wipeout HD 3D, Super Stardust HD 3D, PAIN 3D and MotorStorm Pacific Rift 3D.

MotorStorm is just a demo, and for PAIN "the stereoscopic 3D content will include the Downtown area and tutorial along with three modes, including two new modes created specifically with stereoscopic 3D in mind, Alien Toss and Ice Breaker."

The other two are full games.

Finally, Sony introduced "The Fight: Lights Out" in stereoscopic 3D, which will use the upcoming PlayStation Move motion control system.

Reuters has gotten the rumor mill in full swing today by posting that a premium, pay-for Hulu is headed to the Xbox 360 and iPad soon.

The news agency is citing two sources close to Hulu that say the site will offer a "premium" service, which will charge a monthly subscription on the popular devices in the very near future.

On the PC, Hulu is currently free, with ad-support. However, users can only watch the trailing five episodes of most TV shows, whereas with a premium subscription, they can watch full seasons, with no ads.

Hulu has quickly become the second most popular online video site, behind YouTube, in the United States, and made over $100 million in advertising revenue in 2009.

Apple, Hulu, and Microsoft declined to comment.

Some believe Hulu's plans is a recipe for disaster: "Many consumers already pay $100 or more monthly for TV, telephony and high-speed Internet access and are unlikely to welcome an incremental fee merely to watch from the Internet some of the programs they already get," said Phil Leigh, an analyst with Inside Digital Media.

While rooted users of the device have had Android 2.2 for some time, T-Mobile has "announced" today that the MyTouch 3G will receive the official firmware update in the near future.

Earlier in the day, HTC Taiwan noted that a few HTC devices have been updated to Android 2.1, with the firmware update expected to go live in the UK later in the month, as well. HTC Hero, Legend and Desire owners should begin receiving the update this week.

HTC also noted last month that the brand new myTouch 3G Slide would get updated to Android 2.2 Froyo, but it was unclear whether original myTouch users would see the update.

According to a leaked internal memo, it does appear the myTouch will get the update, which will add the Genius button, full Microsoft Exchange support and an updated Faves gallery.

Thirteen major record labels have announced they want to freeze all of LimeWire's assets, at the same time accusing the founder of the service of trying to evade millions, and possibly billions in damages over copyright infringement.

Last month, U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood found LimeWire guilty of assisting pirates in downloading unauthorized music and movies, and said that founder Mark Gorton personally "directed and benefited from many of the activities" involved.

Lawyers for the labels filed papers this week accusing Gorton of moving 90 percent of LimeWire's ownership stake to a new entity that he hopes will be shielded from any damages in the lawsuit.

Reads the filing: Gorton and LimeWire "have engaged in a series of fraudulent actions to frustrate a legal judgment in this case...An asset freeze is required in order to ensure that plaintiffs recover at least some of the monetary compensation they are entitled to."

Despite Wood's ruling last month, the labels said a quick search of LimeWire showed every recording in Billboard's Top 40, Top 40 Country, Top 40 Rock and Top 40 Latin Pop charts were still readily available.

Google has launched the popular free Maps Navigation turn-by-turn GPS in 11 new nations, says the search giant, while adding new language packs, as well, to the Search by voice feature.

Android 1.6+ users in Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland can now use the turn-by-turn voice guidance, as long as they update to version 4.2.

Until this week, the turn-by-turn was only available in the U.S. and the U.K.

Google first announced the Maps Navigation app last year, and other mobile companies have adopted similar approaches, like Nokia's Ovi Maps, in an effort to catch up.

The search giant says voice search was first developed for English, and then for Mandarin Chinese and Japanese.

Search by voice can run on the iPhone and BlackBerry phones, as well.

On Monday night, DirecTV began sending out a firmware update for their HD DVRs. Within hours, complaints were trickling in that the software update was making the set-tops unresponsive.

Today, the provider posted a note on their website in an effort to help users get back access to their boxes.

"If your set top box is not responding to either your remote control or front panel button input please be advised that you will need to do the following to resolve the issue," reads the opening statement.

Continued: "Just flip the door down on the front of your set top box and press the red button. Be patient as the box may take up to one minute to respond to this reset. Let the system reboot until either a picture or grey screen appears on your TV. Then press the red button again, which will reboot your system a second time. This should resolve the issue."

The provider did not offer a timetable for a real fix, or why the glitch occurred.

Last October, Western Digital launched the WD TV Live HD media player, and saw strong sales.

Today, WD has introduced that latest version of the box, the WD TV Live Plus, which adds built-in support for Netflix and MediaFly. If you are a Netflix subscriber with a $8.99 or higher monthly package, they can stream over 12,000 "Watch Instantly" movie and TV titles.

MediaFly offers podcasts from CNN, NBC, MTV and ESPN.

Just like with past versions of the box, the Live Plus will allow for playback of mostly all formats of video and music and pictures. Also built-in is support for Internet radio such as Live365 and Pandora. You can connect the player to the Internet via Wi-Fi or ethernet, and even stream content from your computer via DLNA.

HD playback is available up to 1080p.

Twice lists the compatible file formats, and you would be hard pressed to find a file you cannot play via the Live Plus:

Compatible file formats include: AVI (Xvid, AVC, MPEG1/2/4), MPG/MPEG, VOB, MKV (h.264, x.264, AVC, MPEG1/2/4, VC-1), TS/TP/M2T (MPEG1/2/4, AVC, VC-1), MP4/MOV (MPEG4, h.264), M2TS and WMV9 video format; and JPEG, GIF, TIF/TIFF, BMP and PNG image formats.

Dish Network and Echostar have won a victory this week over TiVo, with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office claiming TiVo's patent claims for "time warp" DVR tech are invalid.

The updated ruling comes after the PTO reexamined the patents for a second time.

TiVo said it would follow the ruling with additional arguments.

The decision could still lead to the satellite companies paying damages to TiVo, but the new PTO ruling could still have long-term ramifications in TiVo's other cases against AT&T and Verizon, says the WSJ.

All the companies have been fighting for years over the patents to the technology that allows for pausing, rewind and fast-forwarding of live TV.

In 2006, Dish and EchoStar were found liable of patent infringement when they began creating their own set-top boxes. The companies are currently in "en banc review," which will spell out the legal ramifications of the case.

Most expect TiVo to win.

HTC Taiwan has noted today that a few HTC devices have been updated to Android 2.1, with the firmware update expected to go live in the UK later in the month, as well.

HTC Hero, Legend and Desire owners should begin receiving the update this week.

Desire owners already run 2.1, but the update will fix security bugs and problems with microSD card accessibility.

While HTC smartphone owners should clearly be happy with the update, many will be disappointed with HTC's lack of a timetable for an update to Android 2.2 Froyo, which brings built-in Adobe Flash support, 400 percent performance boosts, an updated browser and native Apps2SD among many other notable updates.

Google has said in the past that after Android 3.0 Gingerbread is released by the end of the year, the rate of new updates should be standardized for all existing Android devices, a move that should be a welcome relief to older handset owners that usually have to wait longer for firmware updates.

On Monday, Sprint announced that the HTC EVO 4G had broken the carrier's launch day sales record, even selling "three times" as many units as the Palm Pre and Samsung Instinct did combined on their respective first days.

Yesterday, calls to over 20 retailers showed that the phone is sold out, practically everywhere.

This morning, however, Sprint has noted that they overstated June 4th launch day sales, by accident.

Correcting the original statement, the U.S. third biggest carrier said HTC EVO 4G sales at launch were "in line" with that of the Pre and Instinct, combined.

Says Sprint: "We originally reported that the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined. We inadvertently erred in the comparison."

Speaking to MCV, Sony Europe president Andre House says the release of the Sony PSPGo handheld was a test of how consumers would accept digital gaming and the end of physical media.

While the handheld was a complete failure, Sony says it was a good test of the company's future plans in the sector.

Says House: "It was introduced in a mature lifecycle to learn more about what the consumer wanted and we’ve definitely learnt a lot. Is that measured by success in sales? I don’t think it is."

He continues: "One of the reasons we launched PSPgo was to understand where that consumer behaviour was going. We were getting signals from consumers that this was the kind of device that they wanted. But we need to recognise that consumers like their packaged media library."

As far as a "test" goes, Sony certainly overstated consumer willingness to pay an $80 premium for a device that is limited to only digital gaming and adds little else of value.