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Apple and Japanese carrier Softbank have made a deal today that will bring the popular iPad tablet to Japan starting May 28th.

Softbank is third-largest mobile carrier in the nation, and the company says it will begin taking pre-orders on Monday.

The basic Wi-Fi/16GB model will cost 48960 yen which is about $535 USD.

Softbank has been selling the Apple iPhone since 2008, and hopes the Apple products will help it win subscribers against the nation's largest carrier, NTT DoCoMo.

Apple announced this weekend that the iPad was going international, headed to nine new nations including Japan.

The iPad saw 450,000 sales on its launch day, and recently announced 1 million unit sales. Additionally, 15 million apps have already been downloaded from the iPad App Store, as well as almost 2 million e-books from the iBookStore.

Borders, the large book retailer has launched its $150 Kobo e-reader, and started taking pre-orders today.

The device will ship on June 17th, and will tie into Border's upcoming e-book store.

The Kobo is a bare-bones e-reader, and does not include Wi-Fi or 3G connectivity. The device has a 6-inch e-ink display, just like the Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook, but the screen has only 8 levels of gray, not 16 like its rivals.

However, the Kobo does have Bluetooth connectivity and 1GB of internal memory, with an SD slot as well.

Because the device is bare-bones, the price is its main selling point, and may be its only selling point as it is about $100 cheaper than the Kindle and Nook.

The Apple iPad, which includes e-reading capabilities and connection to the iBookStore recently just sold its millionth unit.

AppleInsider is reporting that Apple is writing a new alternative to Flash, dubbed Gianduia.

The technology was first introduced last summer and is being described as "a client-side, standards-based framework for rich Internet apps."

Apple has been using the tech in its retail support applications, including its "One to One" program, the iPhone reservation system and programs for the Genius Bar.

Gianduia makes sense for Apple, considering it has practically banned Adobe Flash from its "i" devices. The company says it will support HTML5, JavaScript and CSS instead.

Adobe, feeling spited by the move, has complained to the FTC, saying Apple's behavior in regards to Flash is in violation of anti-trust laws.

You can read more on the ongoing Apple vs. Adobe "battle" here: Apple vs. Adobe Round 2: Steve Jobs and Shantanu Narayen duke it out

19-year old Thor Morris, a surfer from North Carolina, was arrested last month after his plans to hack dozens of ATM machines was undone by undercover FBI agents.

Morris was arrested after traveling to Houston in an attempt to steal about $300,000 from 35 different ATMs.

FBI agent Karen Ann Marinos said the suspect "planned to use a confidential operator's manual to reprogram a specific brand of ATM so that the machine would issue $20 for every $1 requested."

In an attempt to remain anonymous, Morris purchased a $400 "Walmart Green Dot PrePaid card," which would then be used to withdraw the money from each of the hacked machines. Morris used the alias "Barack Obama" and wore a "Rick James Wig," using an unsecured wireless hotspot to activate the card.

The card was activated as Barack Obama, with a Washington, D.C. address of "1600 Pennsylvania Avenue" to boot.

When Morris tried to re-program one of the machines in Houston, the FBI swooped in on him.

Read the full affidavit here: http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/years/2010/0504101atm1.html

The popular streaming music service Spotify, which continues to see a delayed launch for the United States, is headed to the Netherlands on May 18th.

Spotify is now available in the UK, France, Spain, Sweden, Norway and Finland and has been expected for the U.S. for months now.

CTO Paul Brown says they are currently looking to servers in the U.S., and a launch should be coming this year.

The news of the streaming company heading to Netherlands comes from Tobias Edström, newly minted manager for Spotify Netherlands who says: "I have been here since January working on the launch and searching for an office. Meanwhile my sales and account manager have also come over."

The Netherlands, while not densely populated (it has 17 million citizens) does have very high Internet penetration.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has said this weekend that anti-piracy measures will be increased substantially for the upcoming 3DS handheld, with the company hoping to stop the widespread software piracy that has plagued the DS and DSi.

The console, which is set for launch at the E3 event next month, will include "3D" displays without the need for special glasses.

There is little other known about the console except that it will be released sometime before March 2011.

While he admitted that piracy is not as bad in the United States, in Europe and Asia it is rampant and has led to strong declines in software sales, especially in Europe.

Adds the president: "We fear a kind of thinking is become widespread that paying for software is meaningless. We have a strong sense of crisis about this problem."

Additionally, Iwata added that the 3D functions of the device could be "easily" turned off, so any worries that continued exposure to the 3D would have adverse effects on people's eyes are off base.

Nokia, the world's largest phone maker, has sued Apple again this week, this time over patent infringement related to the iPad 3G.

The five patents "involve technology used to enhance speech and data transmission and antenna innovations for compact devices."

Nokia and Apple are currently in a giant dispute over patents relating to the iPhone, and this latest suit is just the next step in a battle that should continue for years as the two companies fight over smartphone market share.

"We've taken this step to protect the results of our pioneering development and to put an end to continued unlawful use of Nokia's innovation," sasy Paul Melin, general manager of patent licensing at Nokia, via the BBC.

Nokia adds that over the last twenty years they have spent $50 billion USD on R&D, and collected 11,000 patents.

Apple has announced that starting on May 28th, the popular iPad tablet will be headed to Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain, Switzerland and the UK.

In the UK, the device will cost £429 for the basic model (Wi-Fi, 16GB) and £699 for the 3G/Wi-Fi/64GB model.

The iPad saw 450,000 sales on its launch day, and recently announced 1 million unit sales. Additionally, 15 million apps have already been downloaded from the iPad App Store, as well as almost 2 million e-books from the iBookStore.

International would-be buyers can pre-order starting next week.

The prices, at least in the UK, are much more expensive then comparable U.S. pricing, but Apple says it is due to VAT, and higher transport costs.

You can read the full pricing list here: Apple reveals UK iPad prices

The company will release the iPad in 9 more nations in July as well: Austria, Belgium, Hong Kong, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand and Singapore.

Warner Bros., which pioneered the Red2Blu program last year, has started a new DVD2Blu program, making it cheap for DVD owners to upgrade or start their Blu-ray collections.

If you own one of the 91 Warner DVDs listed, you can send in your DVD along with $5-7 and the company will send you back the Blu-ray version.

The pros of the deal are you get to upgrade to Blu for cheap, but the cons are Warner says turnaround can be up to 8 weeks, and there are shipping charges if you don't send in over 7 movies.

A few of the most popular movies are expected to be Dark City: Director's Cut, the Ocean's trilogy, The Departed, V for Vendetta and a few others although the selection is not by any means "great."

The Red2Blu program allowed users to trade in their HD-DVD movies for Blu-rays at a discounted price.

You can check the full selection here: http://www.dvd2blu.com/products.html

Nothing new under the sun one might say. Nokia dominates its homeland with a huge margin to its nearest competitor. However, the most popular handset in Finland was not the Nokia N95 or Nokia 6300 -- both of which did fairly well though -- but a Nokia 2760 (pictured) clamshell dumbphone.

Aalto University (School of Science and Technology) in Finland did a study (pdf) on handset population in Finland. The data was collected from the reporting systems of the largest mobile operators in Finland. Therefore the results indicate not how many units are sold but the percentage of handsets in use.

According to the study, nearly 90 percent of all mobile phones in use are Nokia, Samsung comes second with a mere 5 percent share. Nearly half of the handsets sport S40, which is used in Nokia's feature phones. For the first time ever Symbian surpassed the old Nokia OS in 2009 with a 22 percent share.

The top 15 handsets had a total of five 3G phones, two Eseries and two Nseries phones, and four handsets that do not support packet data at all. The top 15 handsets accounted for nearly 40 percent of all handsets in use. Now, here's the full chart.

Analysis firm comScore has released the latest mobile subscriber market share numbers, for the month ended March 31st, 2010.

At the end of the period, there were 234 million Americans with mobile phones, with the most popular manufacturer, by fractions, being Samsung at 21.92 percent.

In second place was Motorola with 21.9 percent, and LG just as close behind with 21.8 percent.

Rounding out the top 5 was RIM at 8.3 percent and Nokia at the same percentage. Apple, with only one phone available, came in sixth at 5 percent.

As for top carriers, Verizon led the way at 31.1 percent, AT&T came in second at 25.2 percent, and Sprint and T-Mobile tied for third at 12 percent. Tracfone rounded out the top 5 with 5.1 percent, seeing the biggest growth of all the carriers.

Just weeks after Motorola Co-CEO Greg Brown said the company was going to start making acquisitions and return to growth after years of lagging, it appears the mobile phone maker has purchased mobile OS maker Azingo.

The acquisition was spotted through a LinkedIn profile and the company makes an OS called Azingo Mobile 2.0, which is based on a Linux variant.

Although you have probably never heard of Azingo (I know I hadn't), the OS has a Webkit-based browser, runtime, Flash runtime and full developer tools.

The move is backed by comments by Co-CEO Sanjay Jha, who said recently that the company was looking into owning and running their own operating system: "I’ve always felt that owning your OS is important, provided you have an ecosystem, you have all the services and you have an ability and the scale to execute on keeping that OS at the leading edge. And I continue to believe that at some point, if we have all of those attributes, that owning our own OS will be a very important thing."

Market research firm Changewave has released their recent survey results today, which reveals that over half of current Verizon subscribers would trade in their phone for an Apple iPhone if it was available on the carrier.

The company polled 4000 mobile phone users.

Of those polled with Verizon subs, 19 percent said they would "very likely" purchase a Verizon iPhone, while another 34 percent would "somewhat likely" purchase the device.

For T-Mobile users, only 11 percent said they would "very likely" buy the device with 28 percent saying "somewhat likely."

The numbers were similar for Sprint, with 11 percent and 33 percent, respectively.

"The survey results show an unprecedented level of pent up demand for the iPhone among Verizon subscribers," adds the survey. "If Verizon were ever to offer the iPhone… [it would have] a profound and likely transformational impact on the industry."

Pic via Mashable:

TouchArcade has posted a video today of a gamer playing Super Nintendo (SNES) on the Apple iPad while using the Wii-mote as a remote control.

The app, snes4iphone, costs $5.99 from the jailbroken app store, Cydia, and the ROMs for games, such as "Super Mario World," as shown in the video, have to be supplied by the gamer.

The iPad was jailbroken this week, with hundreds of apps already submitted to Cydia.

Version 7.0 of snes4iphone must be downloaded, as it allows for Wiimote support on the iPad.

Microsoft has decided this week to take down its 4200 public and private support newsgroups, beginning the clean out on June 1st.

All users of the newsgroups will be pushed to the Microsoft Forums, where they can get support from Microsoft Answers, MSDN and TechNet.

Says the software giant: "Newsgroups run on an outdated and discontinued platform that is no longer supported, making them vulnerable to spam and other usability issues. As a result of our continuous investment in community and the rise of social media, growth in our forums has been consistently increasing since their launch."

Traffic to the newsgroups has fallen 48 percent in the last year, and the company says it will close down the least-used groups first, moving its way to the most popular ones at the end. On the other hand, the Microsoft Forums have grown by 12 percent each month, and now total 15 million visits per month.

"Moving to forums aligns the end user experience with current market trends, reduces the number of redundant support resources with centralized, searchable content, allows users to identify content contributors across forums, and makes contributions more broadly available and impactful," adds an MS spokesperson. "Forums are also moderated by Microsoft to ensure content is accurate and to encourage richer conversations."