Latest news

In late April, giant retailer Target announced it had begun selling the Amazon Kindle e-reader in 102 of its stores, mainly around Minneapolis and Florida, as a pilot program for a broader launch.

That test program is now done, and Target says a full nation-wide rollout has started, with the full roll-out expected to be completed by June 6th.

Adds Mark Schindele, senior vice president at Target: "Our guest's response to Kindle has been overwhelmingly positive."

The device costs $259 USD at Target, the same price if you were to get it on Amazon.

Amazon's Kindle currently dominates the e-reader market, but has been slowly losing share to new competitors such as the Barnes & Noble Nook and Apple iPad.

The Kindle e-book store has 550,000 titles, the most of any e-store.

Last October, billionaires Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom, the creators of the Kazaa P2P client as well as Skype, announced that they had developed and financed a new unlimited music subscription service dubbed Rdio.

This week, the service has finally launched, working both through a Web browser and on a number of smartphones including Android devices, BlackBerrys and the iPhone.

The service offer unlimited, on-demand access to over five million tracks for a monthly fee of $4.99 USD for Web-only or $9.99 for Web and phone.

While that may sound similar to Rhapsody, which has a loyal, but small following, the founders are emphasizing that Rdio allows users to listen from anywhere in "the cloud," including through their phones, instead of needing to download DRM-laced music locally.

Rdio has content deals with EMI, Sony, UMG and Warner and hundreds of indies, so the selection won't be limited by any means.

Sprint's HTC EVO 4G, the highly reviewed Android phone, goes on sale tomorrow but that hasn't stopped Wal-Mart from offering the phone for $199 USD (same price as other retailers) while waiving the $100 rebate, making it easier for consumers to purchase the phone.

Best Buy and Radio Shack recently announced similar moves.

Sprint also announced a broad, expensive ad campaign highlighting the features of the EVO, which is the first WiMAX-enabled phone available in the U.S.

The HTC EVO 4G boasts the most impressive specs on an Android phone yet. Under the hood is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1GB ROM, 512MB RAM, a 1500 mAh battery and an 8GB microSD card. The device has a 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive multi-touchscreen display (with pinch to zoom), Android 2.1 with Sense UI, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Goggles, YouTube, Google Calendar syncing, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot capability for connecting up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices.

Following their decision to drop the price of the DS line in Japan yesterday, Nintendo has confirmed that a similar price drop is headed to the UK within the month.

Says a Nintendo spokesperson: "In the UK Nintendo will be reducing the trade price of Nintendo DSi to retailers from 18th June 2010."

In Japan, beginning on June 19th, the DS Lite will drop from ¥16,800 to "open pricing," which allows retailers to name their own price on the device. The popular DSi will drop from ¥18,900 to ¥15,000. Dropping from ¥20,000 to ¥18,000 is the new DSi LL, which has 93 percent bigger screens than the DSi.

Over the months we have reported on Ubisoft's controversial "always on" DRM, which forces gamers to stay connected to the Internet at all times, or lose the ability to play their legitimately purchased games.

If the Internet ever cuts out, or the Ubi servers go down, gamers are returned to the main menu, unable to play, losing any additional progress they have made since the last save point.

This weekend, analyst Nicholas Lovell had some harsh words for Ubisoft, and their decision to use the DRM into the future.

"It seems crazy to me that Ubisoft didn't emulate Steam, which by some estimates has more than half the market, and instead went for their own, draconian system. There is no doubt in my mind that pirates now have a better experience than legitimate consumers," says Lovell. "Publishers spend a ton of money on promoting its games. So there are ways to see piracy as the start of a relationship with a future consumer, not theft."

Sony Japan has announced this week that PlayStation 3 owners will receive the first 3D-enabled games for their console starting on June 10th.

The first games, which will require both a 3D-capable HDTV and special glasses, are Wipeout HD, Super Stardust HD and Pain.

While Wipeout and Stardust will be free upgrades to 3D, Pain will require ¥300 (about $3.25) for the upgrade.

June 10th is the release date for Japan, but Sony says more details on the North Americas and EU launches are upcoming at the E3 event which starts on the 14th.

Any console owner with the 3.30 firmware update will be able to playback the games.

Nintendo Japan has announced an across-the-board price cut on their DS handhelds, including the new over sized DSi LL.

Beginning on June 19th, the DS Lite will drop from ¥16,800 to "open pricing," which allows retailers to name their own price on the device.

The popular DSi will drop from ¥18,900 to ¥15,000.

Dropping from ¥20,000 to ¥18,000 is the new DSi LL, which has 93 percent bigger screens than the DSi.

Additionally, Nintendo is releasing new colorways of the DSi LL; Blue, Yellow and Green. The console currently sells in Wine Red, Dark Brown and Natural White colorways.

Nintendo has sold over 30 million DS units (in all iterations) in Japan, and over 125 million worldwide.

Sonic Solutions has announced today that it will acquire digital media company DivX, merging the operations of the company into its own.

Under the terms of the agreement, Sonic will pay about $326 million in cash and stock, with DivX stock holders receiving 0.514 shares of Sonic and $3.75 cash per share. DivX closed the day trading at $8.79, after closing at $6.95 on Tuesday.

Sonic says the deal should close in September, and says the deal will possibly double its EPS (earnings per share) for the fiscal year that starts in April 2011.

For over 20 years, Sonic has provided the software used to press and distribute most DVDs, but the company recently began an expensive endeavor into downloadable content, teaming up with Best Buy for the CinemaNow online movie service.

With DivX, the company should be able to expand its market, as DivX tech is already embedded in over 300 million devices worldwide, ranging from smartphones to Blu-ray players and HDTVs.

GearLive, citing a source close to Microsoft that is "never wrong," has reported today that the Microsoft Xbox 360 will be the first console to get native Hulu support, with the announcement coming at the E3 event later this month.

Microsoft will show off a subscription-based Hulu, says the source, at E3, which begins on June 14th.

The rest is speculation, but the site says Hulu will be integrated into the Xbox 360 dashboard, just like Netflix and other Xbox Live services are currently.

The subscription fee is still unknown, but it seems improbable the monthly fee will cost over $9.99.

As speculated in the past, a subscription-based Hulu would include full access to all seasons of TV episodes. Users using the free ad-based Hulu normally only get the last 5 trailing episodes of any given season.

AT&T has announced new data plans for their smartphone line, including the iPhone and iPad tablet, which will be less expensive for customers, but will also limit data use.

The cheapest new plan is $15 per month, but will only include 200MB of data. If customers go over the limit, they will be charged $15 extra for every 200MB of data, a very expensive proposition.

A more reasonable plan is $25 per month which gives smartphone, tablet users 2GB of data for the month. For every 1GB over the cap they go, they will be charged $10.

AT&T charges $30 per month for unlimited data plans.

The company says 65 percent of smartphone owners use less than 200MB of data per month, and 98 percent use less than 2GB. For the most part, the only people who need unlimited are iPhone users.

Says Ralph de la Vega, president of AT&T's mobile unit: "We're breaking free from the traditional 'one-size-fits-all' pricing model and making the mobile Internet more affordable to a greater number of people."

The new pricing plans start June 7th.

When Google first introduced their upcoming Chrome OS last November, the company was very quiet on a timetable for the OS' release.

Today, a top exec at the company has tentatively named the "late fall" as the release window for the highly-anticipated operating system.

The OS will initially be designed to work on laptops and netbooks, says Sundar Pichai, Google's head of the Chrome project: "We will be selective on how we come to market because we want to deliver a great user experience. We're thinking on both the hardware and software levels."

Google is looking to take on Microsoft who controls 90 percent of the PC market with their Windows operating systems. After the announcement, Microsoft struck back saying Google's open-source operating system would fail as software developers would have to create different versions of their applications for all the different brands of Chrome OS.

Qualcomm has announced it has begun shipping the world's first dual-CPU Snapdragon chips, built for high-end smartphones.

The company says the Mobile Station Modem (MSM) MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets will run cores up to 1.2GHz.

1 GHz single-core Snapdragon chips can be found in current high-end smartphones such as the Motorola Droid and HTC EVO 4G among others.

"Qualcomm's first-generation Snapdragon chipsets set a new standard for advanced smartphones and smartbook devices, and our second-generation solutions are already shipping in volume," says Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies (via Press Release). "We are very excited by the innovation our customers are already showing as they begin designing products based on our dual-core MSM8260 and MSM8660 chipsets."

According to Taiwan's Industrial Technology Research Institute (ITRI), consumers will likely see mass produced 3D LCD HDTVs that do not require glasses by as early as 2015.

The group showed off an early prototype this week, a 42-inch glasses-free 3D HDTV, with the company claiming it can make displays as large as 65-inches.

Stephen Jeng, director of ITRI's 3D System & Application Division, says consumers are unwilling to pay the extravagant prices for special 3D glasses, with many costing over $100 USD per pair on top of already expensive prices for 3D hardware.

Initially, the ITRI technology will be used in digital billboards and photo-frames, with some already available in the market.

Computerworld, however, is quick to note that the technology is still far away from being mass consumer ready, with images appearing blurry.

The global 3D HDTV market is still in its infancy, with an expected 6.2 million units being sold this year. By 2012, sales are anticipated to grow to over 30 million.

Hitachi-LG Data Storage (HLDS) has announced the launch of HyDrive, the world's first SSD (solid state drive) embedded optical disc drive.

The company says the first drives will be available in August 2010.

First generation drives will have either 32GB or 64GB SSDs, with second generation drives having up to 256GB SSDs. Second generation HyDrives will be ready for mass production starting in March 2011, notes HLDS.

Says HLDS CMO YK Park (via press release): "We are very excited about the potential of this ground-breaking product. The PC industry have come to expect us to lead in optical storage products and HyDrive is the logical next step, where it offers user benefits to PC booting, shutdown and application loading times with typically 30~60% reduction in addition to robust media handling and playback."

HyDrives enables storage on the PC through separate device types, SSD, optical drives, and a traditional HDD, all while saving space.

In April, just 5 months after purchasing the music streaming service, Apple decided to shut down Lala, likely signalling that it would be integrated into iTunes.com.

Apple gave current users until May 31st, but as is the problem with time, that date has come and gone and the service is now gone.

All users with remaining Lala credits will be given iTunes Store credit in the next 14 days and PCMag says "credits will be rounded up to the nearest dollar for refunds less than $10 and to the nearest $5 for refunds greater than $10."

If you don't care for iTunes, you can also request a check refund, which will sent out within the next two week as well.

Lala was a download and streaming music service that gave members a "digital locker" to store their music. What made the company different from iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc, is that Lala would also sell streaming rights to tracks for pennies, allowing for unlimited streaming online of the track, but no download.