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TF has put out a bio on file-sharing giant MegaUpload's owner Kim Schmitz, and it is apparently very lucrative to own the site.

Schmitz, who has been convicted in the past of insider trading, computer fraud and embezzlement, has just purchased New Zealand's most expensive home, for $20 million USD.

"Kimble," as he is sometimes referred to, was born in 1974, and by 1998 had been given two year's probation for hacking into corporate networks. In 2001, Schmitz scammed stock traders by announcing he would invest 50 million euro in the verge-of-bankruptcy company Letsbuyit.com, although he did not have the money to do so. He did, however, hold hundreds of thousands of shares at a low price. The scam netted Kimble $1.5 million in profits, and an insider-trading conviction a year later.

Schmitz has also pulled multiple PR stunts such as faking his own death and offering $10 million for the capture of Osama Bin Laden. He has also admitted to bribing police officers, driving at 240 km/h on public roads in Belgium, and even smashing a friends car off the road during a race.

Kimble owns a Rolls-Royce Phantom with the license plate GOD.

Nielsen has released their latest smartphone OS market share numbers, and despite previous reports, it appears that the iPhone OS still has a clear lead over Android.

Year-over-year, smartphone ownership went up from 16 percent to 23 percent of overall mobile consumers.

RIM BlackBerrys were still the clear leader, at 35 percent, but quarter-on-quarter (QoQ) the OS lost 2 percent share.

The Apple iPhone was in second at 28 percent, seeing strong 2 percent growth QoQ. Microsoft's struggling Windows Mobile platform lost 2 percent to 19 percent, but still good for third place.

The up and coming Android platform grew 2 percent, as well, to 9 percent and continues to see strong growth since its launch in late 2008.

iPhone users were the most loyal, with 80 percent saying their next phone would again be an iPhone. 70 percent on Android owners said their next phone would be an Android device again. The numbers get lower from there.

AndroidGuys has reported today on the first sighting of MetroPCS' first-ever Android smartphone offering.

The device is unnamed, so far, but looks similar to the Motorola Cliq, and the source has four images.

Motorola's upcoming device will run on Android 2.1, have a MOTOBLUR UI layer and have a 600MHz CPU.

It will also have a full slide-out QWERTY keypad and a 3.2MP camera.

Oddly out of place is a giant "Home" button surrounded by a purple circle. It is unclear what the circle's use is.

MetroPCS offers a $50 unlimited voice, text and data plan, the cheapest in the industry.

Last week, AT&T announced that they were dropping their $30 unlimited data plans for smartphones and netbook new users, while creating cheaper plans at the same time.

Existing subscribers can keep the unlimited plan but anyone signing up with the carrier after tonight cannot sign up for the $30 all-you-can-eat package.

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 and will give smartphone, tablet, netbook users 2GB of data for the month. For every 1GB over the cap they go, they will be charged $10, another expensive proposition.

The carrier says, however, that 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, a significant number of which will surpass 2GB monthly.

It should be interesting to see the horror stories coming from iPad and iPhone users when they have to pay over $50 per month for bandwidth.

CNET is reporting this weekend that they have uncovered documents revealing that the music trade group RIAA wants LimeWire shut down for good.

The RIAA has requested that a Manhattan District Court give them a permanent injunction against the P2P client, effectively shutting it down in the United States.

Write the RIAA lawyers: "Every day that Lime Wire's conduct continues unabated guarantees harm to plaintiffs that money damages cannot and will not compensate. The scope of the infringements that Lime Wire induced...boggles the mind."

Last month, Judge Kimba Wood found the once-extremely popular file sharing service liable of copyright infringement in a 4-year-old lawsuit brought against them by the RIAA. The decision was seen as the final nail in the company's coffin.

Kimba will now meet with LimeWire and the RIAA's representatives, where the judge can grant the injunction and seal the service's fate.

Developer ZodTTD, best known for his work on emulators for the iPhone, has said today that a PlayStation 1 (PSX) emulator is very close to being launched for Android devices running firmware 2.0 or later.

Without giving any timetable, ZodTTD also noted that an N64 emulator was coming in the future.

ZodTTD partnered with Nesoid and Gameboid authors to use the interface that is likely familiar to Android users that have been using the NES and GB emulators for months.

The PSX emulator will have the ability for fullscreen, and controls works via the touchscreen, physical buttons and the trackball, depending on what your device has and your personal preference.

Currently, the emulator cannot yet hit the "sweetspot" of 60fps, but performance increases are expected for upcoming builds.

In what can only be described as incredible, a woman in California has found her two missing children, reported missing in 1995, using the social networking giant Facebook.

According to Deputy District Attorney Kurt Rowley, the children's father, Faustino Utrera ran off with the kids, but the mother found her eldest daughter's Facebook profile after searching for it a few months ago.

The two kids, now aged 16 and 17, have been placed in the custody of the state of Florida.

Rowley described the mother's feelings: "You can imagine the feelings she's having, not seeing her children for so many years and knowing they've bonded with another family. But at the same time they're almost within her grasp."

Florida has put out an arrest warrant on Utrera.

Rowley did note that the eldest daughter initially told her mother she did not want to be in contact with her, or re-establish any relationship.

More details have leaked today about the Motorola Xtreme, the highly-anticipated sequel to the Droid smartphone.

The Android phone had been dubbed the "Shadow" for months.

Motorola's upcoming Xtreme will run a customized Android 2.1, possibly include the MotoBLUR UI, and will likely be released in late July.

The new details, from Droidlife say the device will sport an 8MP camera and 720p video recording.

Additionally, the device will have a large 4.3-inch screen, 16GB of internal storage, a 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, and an HDMI-out port. Perhaps most notably is the 1500-mAh battery which should give significant battery life, even with moderate-to-heavy daily use.

The phone will be released through Verizon.

According to AppleInsider, Apple will launch Safari 5 with "Reader" and built-in Bing next week at the much-hyped WWDC.

The company is expected to launch the new iPhone 4G during the event, as well.

Additionally, the updated browser will have expanded HTML5 support.

The documents, allegedly leaked from Apple, show 25 percent faster JavaScript performance than Safari 4. Safari 5 will also include DNS prefetching to allow faster browsing.

The new "Reader" feature gives Internet users a chance to read articles "in a single, clutter-free page."

In the footsteps of Firefox and Chrome, the newly updated browser will include "Private Browsing" as well.

Safari 4 was released about a year ago.

Full new, rumored specs:

Citing sources familiar with "AOL's strategy," it appears that Microsoft is ready to purchase the popular web portal, which would then be used to outsource web search to the Bing search engine.

Shares of AOL rose 1.3 percent despite a massive sell-off in the broader indexes.

AOL CEO Tim Armstrong recently noted that the company was exploring new web search deals with "more than two potential partners." AOL currently outsources its web search to Google, the clear market leader.

While those discussions are still ongoing, the conclusion could be an outright sale of the company to Microsoft, which has over $37 billion in cash on hand.

AOL is valued at about $2.3 billion.

Both companies declined comment on the matter.

According to Yusuf Mehdi, Senior Vice President of Microsoft's Online Audience Business Group, the company is ending the Bing Cashback program that has been offering users of the Bing search engine a way to make back some money on their purchases from certain retailers.

Mehdi says Bing Cashback was a "test-and-learn" program and after over a year, they will be retiring the feature.

The last day for Cashback purchases is July 30th, 2010.

Why is Microsoft ending the program? "When we originally began to offer the cashback feature, it was designed to help advertisers reach you with compelling offers, and to provide a new type of shopping experience that would change user behavior and attract a bunch of new users to Bing. In lots of ways, this was a great feature – we had over a thousand merchant partners delivering great offers to customers and seeing great ROI on their campaigns, and we were taking some of the advertising revenue and giving it back to customers. But after a couple of years of trying, we did not see the broad adoption that we had hoped for."

Warner Bros. has announced that its hit MMO Lord of the Rings Online will move to free-to-play starting in September.

The publisher tried a similar strategy last year with Dungeons & Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited, and says revenue exploded 500 percent after they made the game free-to-play.

"Dungeons and Dragons Online: Eberron Unlimited was the world’s first truly premium free-to-play online game that ushered in a new era of choice for online gamers seeking quality entertainment," says Jim Crowley, president and CEO of Turbine (via GI). "The popularity of DDO validated the extraordinary demand by gamers for quality entertainment they can experience at their own pace and within their budget. Extending free-to-play to Lord of the Rings Online will offer another premium game to a broad spectrum of fans."

Warner will make money off the game by charging for expansions, quest packs, items, weapons and account services. The company is also starting a VIP program that will give gamers unlimited access to all content for a certain price.

Research firm NPD has noted today that they have been forced to delay the video game industry sales report for May as the company is upgrading its IT architecture.

The report was expected, as it is every month, to be released in the second week of the month. The delay could be as long as three weeks, which would call for the report to hit at the very end of June or even first week of July.

What the benefits are of the IT upgrade are still unclear but appear significant.

May is generally a slow month for the industry, but a few blockbuster games, including Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption and THQ's UFC Undisputed 2010 are expected to boost the results.

April saw sales fall off a cliff, with hardware falling 37 percent year-on-year and software falling 22 percent. The overall 26 percent decline was the fourth largest such collapse since the turn of the century.

Boost Mobile, the American prepaid cell carrier has announced today the launch of the Motorola i1, the world's first Android touchscreen device with "push-to-talk" walkie-talkie features.

The smartphone will be available through Boost, Best Buy, and Best Buy Mobile stores.

Says Neil Lindsay, CMO of Boost Mobile: "Last year Boost disrupted the wireless marketplace with the $50 Monthly Unlimited offer, and we are doing it again with the launch of the Motorola i1. Together with Motorola, we are able to offer the Android experience to those customers who enjoy the walkie-talkie feature. And with 1,100 Best Buy locations, 80 Best Buy Mobile stores and exclusive Boost Mobile stores nationwide, customers will not have to search far to find this hot handset."

The i1 runs some variant of Android 2.1, has a 3.1-inch HVGA display, an optimized Opera Mini 5 browser, Wi-Fi and 3G support, pre-installed SWYPE for quicker messaging and a 5MP camera with autofocus, flash and video.

Cablevision, one of the largest ISPs in the New York City metropolitan area, has said today that they have submitted a proposal to the MTA in an effort to extend free Optimum Wi-Fi onto Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North trains within the next year.

The Wi-Fi is currently available at 200 commuter stops, but the new proposal would extend the Wi-Fi onto the actual trains, giving Internet to Cablevision subscribers whilst in transit.

"Access to the Internet on MTA trains will transform the riding experience, and we believe Cablevision is uniquely positioned to deliver this enhancement through the extension of Optimum WiFi – already the nation’s largest and most advanced WiFi network – onto the rails," says John Bickham, Cablevision’s president of cable and communications. "As a New York-based company already providing popular WiFi access at nearly 200 MTA commuter rail stations we propose to deploy wireless Internet access across the entire MTA system within 12 months of selection, at no cost to the Transportation Authority or taxpayers."

If you are not a Cablevision subscriber, then you can pay for access, at a "reasonable" price.