Latest news

The Google Nexus One is set to go on sale in the UK via Vodafone starting on April 30th with the "superphone" being available for as cheap as free depending on the contract.

After just a couple of days on pre-order, the phone is already sold out, meaning either demand was very high or supply was low, with many assuming the latter.

For anyone ordering the device, Vodafone is sending off this message: "Thank you for placing your order, reference number [redacted]. Unfortunately we have suffered a surprisingly high demand for the Nexus One From Google, which means that it is unexpectedly out of stock. Please accept our sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused. We hope to have further stock available within 7-10 working days and will contact you again once your order has been dispatched."

The U.S. launch was considered rather sluggish, but Google says the phone has already helped their bottom line.

After over three years of release, the Nintendo Wii finally has a new colorway, a slick black headed to U.S. retail shelves on May 9th.

So far the date has been confirmed by Target and GameStop in the U.S., and confirmed for May 23rd in Canada by Future Shop.

The Wii itself will be completely identical to the white model currently available (minus the color, obviously) and will come bundled with a Wii remote, Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort and a Wii MotionPlus for $199.

The black colorway has been available in Japan since late last year, and has sold pretty well.

Worldwide, Nintendo has sold 70 million Wii units.

AOL has sold one of the pioneers of instant messaging, ICQ, to Digital Sky Technologies Limited (DST) for $187.5 million USD.

Despite losing popularity in the United States to other services such as MSN Messenger and AIM, ICQ remains the most popular IM service in Russia and other smaller international markets.

"The acquisition of ICQ is a strategic enhancement of our business in Russia and Eastern Europe. ICQ’s long-standing brand name and its sizeable loyal customer base together represent a very attractive opportunity to further strengthen our position in the region," says Yuri Milner, Chief Executive Officer of DST.

ICQ was created in 1996 by Mirabilis of Israel, and AOL purchased the parent company in 1998.

Besides Russia, ICQ is a leader in Israel and the Czech Republic, where users spend over 5 hours a day on the service.

Adds Tim Armstrong, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of AOL: "As AOL continues its turnaround effort, we’re fortunate to find a great home for ICQ with DST. DST is a leading innovator in the Internet investment space and has a significant presence in the markets where ICQ is strong. Founded and run in Israel, ICQ has been a revolutionary company on the Internet. We wish them great success as a part of DST and will be rooting for them going forward."

Giant computer manufacturer HP has agreed to purchase the struggling smartphone maker Palm today for $1.2 billion in cash, including assuming Palm's debt.

Palm put itself up for sale in the last two months after it became clear that the company's phones were not selling and it only had enough cash to last the next 12 months. Palm was entertaining offers from HTC, Lenovo, RIM and others, but HP was never really listed as a likely candidate.

Although Palm has arguably the best smartphone OS available (WebOS), the company has struggled to sell its flagship Pre (Plus) and Pixi (Plus) models, forcing retailers to slash the price to as low as $0 in an effort to get them off shelves.

Gizmodo editor Jason Chen has had his home computers seized this week by California's Rapid Enforcement Allied Computer Team.

The team was working on a warrant from the Superior Court of San Mateo.

Chen recently revealed the upcoming iPhone 4G/HD, which was dropped in a bar by Apple developer Gray Powell, and eventually purchased by Gizmodo for $5000 USD.

New to the "iPhone HD," are a front-facing camera for video conferencing, a better standard camera (including larger lens and flash), a Micro-SIM slot (just like the iPad), 960x640 resolution, a second mic, metallic exterior (not plastic) and split side buttons for volume.

After the report went up, Apple demanded its prototype back.

All pics via Gizmodo:

According to data from market research firm FADE (Forecasting and Analyzing Digital Entertainment), Xbox Live Arcade sales in March 2010 were the best ever, with a full 41 percent year-on-year growth from last year.

Revenue topped $10 million USD for the first month ever, and growth was strong from the preceding months, where revenue were under $7 million each month.

Overall, for 2010, revenue has grown by 5 percent year-on-year but if March's trend continues, expect that number to be much higher.

Analysts have attributed the boost to Microsoft's "Block Party" promotion, which highlighted a group of games, including the popular Toy Soldiers which brought in $3 million in revenue by itself.

The full list, via GI:

* Toy Soliders - 209,000 units ($3.14m)
* Perfect Dark - 161,000 units ($1.61m)
* Trials HD - 53,000 units ($0.80m)
* Battlefield 1943 - 37,000 units ($0.56m)
* Castle Crashers - 34,000 units ($0.51m)
* Hasbro Family Game Night - 32,000 units ($0.32m)
* Scrap Metal - 18,000 units ($0.27m)
* Marvel vs. Capcom - 25,000 units ($0.25m)
* Shadow Complex - 13,000 units ($0.20m)
* Magic: The Gathering - 16,000 units ($0.16m)

In late October we reported that Microsoft was blocking all "unlicensed" Xbox 360 storage devices, successfully forcing gamers to only purchase memory cards sold by Microsoft, at a higher price.

Large peripheral manufacturer Datel struck back in late November, filing an antitrust lawsuit.

In response, Microsoft filed motions to have the case dismissed but a judge has thrown out those motions today, clearing the way for Datel's suit to move forward. Because the motions were dismissed, the two parties will now meet in preparation of their upcoming June 2nd hearing.

Microsoft recently sued the UK-based accessory maker over its Xbox 360 controllers, claiming the company illegally copied the design.

Verizon has announced that FiOS TV users can now stream YouTube and Internet Radio directly from their displays, using their remote controls or smartphone.

Subscribers can access the music and video sharing site via Media Manager, which is now available to all FiOS TV owners, instead of just DVR customers.

"Adding YouTube and Internet Radio to FiOS TV further expands our customers' digital home-entertainment world by giving them access to an unprecedented amount of online content on the biggest screen in their home – their TV," adds Shawn Strickland, vice president of consumer strategy for Verizon. "When customers connect their homes to our all-fiber network, their TV and Internet worlds seamlessly come together to create experiences cable can't deliver. We are working with some of the most popular companies on the Web to create a high-quality, engaging Internet-to-TV experience that will only grow richer with time."

Users can even use their Motorola Droid phone as a remote control if they download a free "Mobile Remote" app from the Android Market.

Research In Motion has shown off their upcoming BlackBerry OS 6 today, which improves on most of the past OS features, with much improved touch support.

Th new browser has tab switching, favorites, multi-touch, using WebKit. The tabs have transparent overlay.

There is an updated media player, one that looks much more like the cover-flow used by Apple in the iPhone.

BGR adds: "RIM has finally implemented system-wide kinetic scrolling with rubberbanding. This makes the experience a bit more fluid when scrolling through lists, web pages, emails, and the like. There is also multitouch system-wide, from the web browser to the photos application, and yes, pinch to zoom is in there."

Overall, the OS looks more modern, with the messaging/email inbox's looking much cleaner and updated. Thumbnails are larger and clearer so users can see where the messages they are receiving originated from (Twitter, email, text, Facebook, etc)

LOK-IT has unveiled their latest Secure Flash Drive, a portable drive with a full PIN keypad.

There are two versions available, one with a five-key PIN, or a second with ten keys. Both drives use 256-bit AES encryption and remain encrypted until the correct PIN code is typed in.

The drives can be used in Windows, Mac or Linux computers.

Anyone trying to brute force hack the PIN number will be stopped in their tracks, as after ten failed attempts the drive must be reformatted.

There are 2GB, 4GB, 8GB and 16GB capacities available.

According to a new DigiTimes report, the Barnes & Noble Nook e-reader outsold the Amazon Kindle, although both were outsold by the Apple iPad.

Mingchi Kuo, analyst at Digitimes, says manufacturers shipped more Nooks than Kindles, with the Nook accounting for 53 percent of all e-readers shipped to the U.S. for the month of March 2010.

That being said, shipped units does not always lead to sold units (speak to Palm about that), but it still appears that Nook devices are selling well and demand remains high.

Overall, global e-reader shipments for the Q1 2010 were 1.43 million units.

Although the iPad is not considered solely an e-reader, the device outsold both the Kindle and the Nook, with 750,000 units already sold in the U.S.

SurferGirl, known for her pretty spot-on predictions regarding Microsoft and the Xbox 360 has put a blog post this week with two main highlights.

She says Microsoft will be revealing a Slim Xbox 360 bundled with Natal at one of their press conferences during the upcoming E3 event.

Additionally, the updated console will be getting a new logo, and all Slim models will also be in a black colorway, including Natal. The underlying feeling is that most HDTV owners own glossy black televisions, and a white Natal would not fit in.

The second highlight of the post is SurferGirl saying that an Xbox 360 version of Metal Gear Solid is coming, and will work with Natal.

You can read the post here: SurferGirl Strikes Back

PlayStation University is reporting today that Sony's latest PlayStation 3 hardware updates should help the console finally become profitable without the aid of software sales.

The new motherboard of the Slim units have an improved RSX GPU, one that uses about 15 percent less power, and almost completely eliminates the possibility of the 'yellow light of death'.

There has not been a breakdown completed yet of the new hardware, but the original Slim PS3 was said to bring the console to almost breakeven in terms of profitability so the new GPU should likely make the hardware profitable for the first time since the console's launch in 2006.

The new RSX GPU is 40nm, an update from the larger, less efficient 65nm version seen in all past models.

Adding to the efficiency, the new Slim unit features two 128MB XDR RAM chips instead of four 64MB chips, a new cooling assembly, as well as a lighter power supply.

RLSLOG, the most popular torrent release news site, has been taken down this week after its hosting company received a takedown request from Universal Music Group.

The site says it is moving to a new host, as it does not, and will not ever host copyrighted material.

Regulars of the site were greeted with this message: "RLSLOG.net was suspended by its German hosting company after removal request from law firm representing Universal Music, although we never hosted any files or copyrighted data on our server. Our site is strictly informative."

TF interviewed the founder of the site that said the site was not given any prior notice before being taken down, and apologized for the downtime.

Last year Google took action to filter some of RLSLOG'S pages from its search engine results, after complaints were filed by copyright holders.

The world's highest grossing movie of all-time, the blockbuster Avatar, has now also become the fastest-selling Blu-ray disc of all-time, selling 2.7 million units in just four days.

The previous record holder was the blockbuster The Dark Knight, which has sold 2.5 million discs in 18 months.

Avatar, on DVD and Blu-ray has already sold upwards of 7 million units, putting it on pace to become the best-selling title of the decade.

20th Century Fox, the distributor behind the film says cumulative first day sales were 3.2 million, with 2 million coming from DVD sales and the rest from Blu-ray. In recent memory, the Dark Knight launched with 2.7 million units (2.1 million on DVD) and Twilight: New Moon saw 4 million units sold in its first two days. Avatar's two-day number was around 5.5 million.

Says James Finn of Fox, via Deadline: "Grocery and drug stores sold more Avatar [2D] in one day than they sold of The Dark Knight during its entire life on shelves. This shows that the audience for the home entertainment release far out weighs the fan boy base. It's a cultural phenomenon…again. Employees and customers alike are dressing up as Na'vis in stores around the country, and this is a home entertainment release like no other."