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RapidShare has announced this week that an appeals court in Germany has ruled in favor of the file sharing site, saying it could not be found liable for distribution of unauthorized files, and that forcing the company to filter all uploads would "produce too many false positives."

The court ruled in their favor because the company does not make uploaded files publicly available, and the uploaders themselves have control of who sees the links.

In 2008, a different court ruled against the sharing site, saying they were currently not doing enough to combat copyright infringement and that the filter system employed was ineffective.

If that decision had stood, RapidShare would have had to log IP addresses, and "proactively check content before publishing it."

Adds Christian Schmid, founder of RapidShare: "We are very happy about the judgment. The court has confirmed that RapidShare is not responsible for the contents of files uploaded by its users. The judgment shows that attempts to denounce our business model as illegal will not be successful in the long run. With its 1-click-filehosting model, RapidShare responds to legitimate interests of its users and will continue to do so in the future."

SanDisk has announced that it has begun shipping 'official' Xbox 360 USB drives, giving gamers a place to backup their game saves, gamertags, map packs and Arcade game downloads.

The company says the USB drive is "pre-configured for seamless plug and play action," eliminating the need for gamers to take the extra step of formatting their own drives and downloading the initial 360 software update.

Additionally, all drives come with a free one-month membership to Xbox Live Gold.

"Xbox LIVE contains a world of content for gamers to explore and download, including full-length games, movies and music," says Shuki Nir, Senior Vice President and General Manager, Retail, SanDisk. "The Xbox 360 USB Flash Drive by SanDisk is specifically engineered to deliver a great user experience and maximum compatibility with the console, offering gamers greater freedom and flexibility in how they store, manage and enjoy their favorite files."

ZedoMax did a review this week of a new Android tablet (un-branded), and the device, using firmware 2.1, can run Adobe Flash and Air "flawlessly."

The prototype was readily available at the Web 2.0 Expo show, and showed one of the glaring differences between upcoming Android tablets and the Apple iPad which does not support Flash in any form, as the company is pushing HTML5 instead.

An Adobe spokesperson said there will be a "flood" of Android tablets hitting the market in November, although it is unclear what companies are manufacturing them.

Engadget got in contact with Nvidia, who confirmed that the tablet is using a Tegra 2 chip, which helps greatly with the "flawless" Adobe performances. "It is indeed Tegra 2. We worked closely with Adobe to show how next-gen Tegra can bring the complete web to tablets at Web 2.0. You can expect to start seeing Tegra 2 devices appearing this summer, with plenty on the way in the third and fourth quarters of the year."

The high end smartphone Xperia X10 by Sony Ericsson, which disappointed would-be buyers when it launched with the outdated Android firmware version 1.6 will finally get Android 2.1 in the Q4 2010, says the mobile phone maker.

While this may sound like good news, Android 2.2 (Froyo) should already be readily available by then, so the X10 will remain outdated.

Coming with 2.1 for the X10 are "HD video recording, Wireless home connectivity via DLNA and improvements to signature applications Timescape and Mediascape to make them even smarter and richer."

Unfortunately, there was no mention of multi-touch in the update.

Additionally, the company says the Xperia X10 mini and Xperia X10 mini pro will get the update to 2.1 at the same time, sometime after October.

According to some digging by MacRumors, the iPhone OS 4 should allow for 720p video recording support, including video capture, editing and conferencing.

The latest beta SDK shows the update, which allows for a much higher resolution than currently available (640x480).

Macrumors shows the new preset values found in the SDK, which read:

AVCaptureSessionPreset640x480
AVCaptureSessionPreset1280x720

The upcoming iPhone 4G/HD will have a 5MP camera, but it was unclear what kind of video capabilities the hardware was capable of.

The new phone is expected to launch in late June.

For more information on the leaked phone, check here: Gizmodo reveals upcoming iPhone model

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.