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Skype has announced today that it has started new subscription plans that will allow for cheaper calls to the United States from over 170 countries, with plans starting as low as $1.09 per month.

The expected most popular package is the one that includes unlimited calls to U.S. and Canadian mobile and landlines which costs $2.95 per month. U.S. buyers can get unlimited calls to landlines in 39 other countries for $6 a month. The most expensive package is $12.95 per month and gets you unlimited calls to 40 countries including the U.S.

To get the cheap $1.09 a month plans, users have to select packages that allow calls to only one country. Packages to allow calls to certain regions, like "Western Europe," are also available.

Subscriptions can be purchased monthly, for three months, or for a year, with automatic renewals.

All subscriptions come with voicemail and call forwarding and can be purchased with credit cards, PayPal or bank transfers.

Although the packages say "unlimited," there are some restrictions, as Skype allows only 10,000 minutes per month, or a maximum of six hours per day.

You can view the countries and the restrictions here: http://www.skype.com/legal/terms/fair_usage/

Microsoft has finally priced their KIN smartphones today, as well as confirmed that they will be released on May 13th, with tomorrow as the first day to pre-order the device from carrier Verizon.

The KIN One will sell for $50 with contract, and the KIN Two will sell for $100 with contract, entry-level prices for smartphones, but a bit more expensive than most expected.

For both phones, you will need to send in a $100 rebate.

The Verizon plans for the phones start at $40 for the voice and an extra $30 for the unlimited data plans.

Kin One:


- Has a compact full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 5MP camera with LED flash
- 4GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

Kin Two:


- Full QWERTY keypad
- Multitouch screen
- 8MP camera with LED flash, HD video recording
- 8GB memory
- "Media player powered by Zune."

Wal-Mart has begun selling the Nintendo Wii console for $179 USD, a discount off the $199 price tag.

Additionally, the console comes with a free game, one of 13 top-sellers, most of which still retail for over $40 USD. Shipping is $7 unless you ship the item to a store, which is free pickup.

The games listed are: Animal Crossing: City Folk, Cabela's Big Game Hunter 2010 w/ Gun (Wii), EA Sports Active (Wii), Just Dance (Wii), Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (Wii), Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games (Wii), Mario Kart w/ Wheel (Wii), Mario Party 8 (Wii), Mario Super Sluggers (Wii), New Super Mario Bros. (Wii), Super Smash Bros. Brawl (Wii), Wii Music (Wii) and Wii Sports Resort with Wii MotionPlus (Wii).

Lars O'Mara, an 18-year-old senior at Panhandle HS has been arrested after planting a fake "bomb" in the school's bathroom.

The "bomb" was just an original Game Boy handheld, an old cell phone, and a bunch of wires.

Another student alerted the police after seeing the device taped underneath a sink, and the school was quickly evacuated.

The police say O'Mara admitted to the hoax, and did so to "gain popularity and get people out of class."

The student now faces felony charges of manufacturing a hoax explosive device.

According to Canalys, smartphone shipments worldwide continue to grow at explosive rates, with Q1 2010 shipments reaching 55 million, a full 67 percent year-on-year growth.

Nokia, which has a strong presence in Europe, had the largest share of the pie, at 38.8 percent, or 21,429,680 units shipped. YoY the company saw 56.6 growth in shipments.

In second place, with a very strong presence in the U.S., was RIM at 10,589,260 units shipped, a 45 percent growth YoY, and good for 19.2 percent of the market.

In third, with the largest growth was Apple, which jumped 130.8 percent to 8.72 million units shipped, good for 15.9 percent of the market.

Rounding out the top 5 are HTC and Motorola with 5.1 and 4.7 percent of the market, respectively. "Others," including LG, Samsung, Sony and others account for the remaining 16.3 percent.

Just a day after sources said it was set to happen, the popular ABC iPad app has been updated to support streaming 3G, giving users a chance to stream their videos on-the-go.

Version 1.1.1004 is the latest version now available in the Apple App Store.

The update was submitted a week ago as the iPad 3G was set for release last Friday.

The ABC app was at times the top free app available, and is currently number 5 in the iPad App Store.

Among the new features are:

- 3G streaming (requires a 3G capable device)
- Landscape orientation support for all screens
- Support for the iPad's orientation lock
- Updated player controls that are more responsive
- Improved display of parental ratings
- Numerous other bug fixes and stability enhancements

It is still unclear what kind of bandwidth restrictions AT&T has imposed on streaming via 3G, but reportedly the video streams will be capped at 64 Kb/s, strongly degrading quality.

Google has said today that the upcoming Chrome beta is the fastest and most efficient yet, seeing a 30 percent increase in the V8 benchmark and 35 percent in the SunSpider benchmark test.

Over the years, Chrome's performance has jumped 213 and 305 percent, respectively, on the benchmark tests. (see the picture)

Users of the latest beta can synchronize their bookmarks on multiple computers as well as browser preferences such as homepage/startup settings, language and themes.

Additionally, you can also now install and use Chrome extensions in "incognito" mode.

Finally, the beta release "contains the goodness of some new HTML5 features, namely Geolocation APIs, App Cache, web sockets, and file drag-and-drop capabilities. Additionally, this is the first Chrome beta that features initial integration of the Adobe Flash Player plug-in with Chrome, so that you can browse a rich, dynamic web with added security and stability -- you’ll automatically receive security and feature updates for Flash Player with Chrome’s auto-update mechanism."

You can download the beta here: https://www.afterdawn.com/software/network/browsers/google_chrome.cfm

On Thursday, Nintendo will report its earnings for the fiscal year ended March 31st, and for the first time since 2004, its profit is expected to be lower than the previous year's.

The company says it expects a profit of 230 billion yen ($2.42 billion USD), down from their record fiscal 2009 where the company made 279 billion yen ($2.94 billion USD).

Nintendo blamed the lowered profits on a strong yen last year, and the price cut on the Wii console last October, from $250 to $200 USD.

Analysts had expected a full fiscal year profit of 229 billion yen.

The company is also expecting to have sold 20 million Wii units and 30 million DS/DSi during the period, but some analysts seem to think they are sandbagging. "We are expecting the results to be better than the company forecasts for the Wii," notes Yuta Sakurai of Nomura Securities. "Christmas shopping was strong."

According to a breaking new WSJ article, search giant Google will begin selling e-books in late June, setting up a showdown between themselves and Apple and Amazon, who are currently the major players in the e-book market with their Kindle and iBook stores.

Word of the launch comes from Chris Palma, Google's manager for strategic-partner development, today at a Google panel sponsored by the Book Industry Study Group. The panel was called: "The Book on Google: Is the Future of Publishing in the Cloud?"

Google has said they want to begin distributing e-books for over a year now, but there was never a set timetable. Where it will differentiate from Amazon and Apple is that it will "allow users to access books from a broad range of sites using multiple devices."

The new service will be called Google Editions, and will integrated into Google's massive books search service, which currently offers some scanned titles for free or previews for others with links to buy the physical copy.

The Songwriters Guild of America has made it clear with a note this weekend, via Ars, that music piracy is worse than bank robbery, and that the FBI should begin prosecuting all file-sharers civilly and criminally.

"There are numerous economic crimes of much lesser magnitude (such as bank robbery) that are routinely and fully investigated, for which law enforcement agencies such as the FBI have significant resources," says the SGA. "By contrast, online copyright piracy dwarfs bank robbery in causing economic losses, yet the FBI has limited criminal investigative interest and no civil mandate whatsoever to pursue this devastating economic harm. This inequity must change."

The Guild goes on to say that the DOJ (Department of Justice) needs to class illegal file-sharing as a "serious" crime. "Unfortunately, this misguided attitude allows domestic and foreign pirates to decimate an industry—intellectual property—where the United States enjoys a true global competitive advantage," they add.

Additionally, the SGA says that the federal government should immediately begin bringing civil copyright lawsuits against offenders. Currently, any lawsuits against illegal file-sharers come from the private sector.

Sony has announced the launch of an extended warranty program for PlayStation 3 and PSP owners dubbed the PlayStation Protection Program.

Using the service you can extend your factory warranty to up to three years, with the first additional year (for the PS3) costing $45. To save money, a two year extension is just $60. Both consoles start with a one-year manufacturers warranty.

For the PSP, the warranty extension is even cheaper, at $30 for the first year or $40 for two years. Additionally, since handheld consoles are very prone to drops and accidents, Sony is offering accidental damage waiver for an additional $10 on the warranty. In two years, if you happen to drop your PSP down a flight of stairs and then accidentally step on it, Sony will replace it.

Says Sony: "The PlayStation brand has long been synonymous with the highest quality in engineering and design, and it's because of the reliability of the PS3 and PSP systems that we can offer the PlayStation Protection Plan. We have heard from consumers that they're interested in an extended service plan that's backed directly by SCEA and leverages our technical expertise. While both the PS3 and PSP systems are designed with future-proof technology and built for long lifecycles, we're looking forward to offering this service to consumers looking for added peace of mind."

Last month, Netflix announced it was sending out Wii streaming discs to all that signed up for them, giving Nintendo console owners a chance to watch movies and TV shows from Netflix's "Watch Instantly" collection through their console.

Yesterday, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime said that almost one million Wii owners have now "participated" in the service, but it is unclear how many of those remain active, and how many of those just ordered the disc without ever expecting to use the service.

Netflix, during its last earnings report stated that it has about 14 million subscribers in the U.S., a number that has been greatly boosted by making the streaming service readily available to PS3, Xbox 360 and now Wii owners.

Samsung has announced the breakdown of which operating systems will be used on their upcoming smartphones, with Android being the clear winner.

The company said 50 percent of all new smartphones will come with the open source Android, the operating system that has been quickly growing in popularity since Google released it in late 2008.

Of the remaining share, 33 percent will use the Bada OS, Samsung's own new operating system, which had its first SDK released in December.

"Customer response for bada-based smartphones is very strong," adds Samsung.

It is unclear what operating system or systems will use up the last 17 percent, but the educated guess is Windows Phone 7.

Twitter will launch "embeddable" tweets starting Tuesday, allowing users to easily embed any tweet within a web document.

To date, trying to reproduce a quotable tweet is not an easy task, with the only options being either taking a screenshot and posting the image, or copying the quote and pasting it on your own HTML page. The first doesn't allow for Google and other search engines to index the tweet and the latter leaves out relevant info such as a member's name or avatar.

With the new feature, users can take a quick "snippet" of code that will include the author's name, links, avatar and a panel that allows you to head back to the original author's page.

You can view the Twitter blog post here: http://media.twitter.com/392/tweets-quotes

And an example of the embed (all links work in the original):

ABC's extremely popular streaming app for the iPad is set to get updated very soon, bringing 3G support. Currently the app only supports streaming movies and TV shows when connected to Wi-Fi.

The app was submitted to the App Store, pending approval in the past 10 days, and it should get approval soon.

The ABC app was at times the top free app available, and is currently number 6 in the iPad App Store.

While the Wi-Fi-only version was not a problem during the first weeks when the only iPad version available was Wi-Fi-only, Apple has since released a 3G-supporting version and most users take their device on the go. Wi-Fi is not always available when walking the streets.

AppAdvice says that "ABC didn't include a lower-quality, backup streaming capability in the first version of its app," because of its love for HD-quality streaming, as seen for example on ABC.com.