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Opera has a right to be very happy with the immediate results of its browser software for the iPhone becoming available. After being approved by Apple Inc. for the iPhone, the Opera browser went on to be downloaded over one million times by iPhone users on its first day of availability.

Apple's approval of the Opera browser for iPhone on April 13 opened a new market that Apple had safely guarded up until this point. "Apple said 'Yes', and iPhone users around the world said, 'Yes, please'," the Norwegian firm said in a statement.

Opera's browsers claims to have some advantages over Apple's own loaded browser. For one thing, it claims it can deliver downloads six time faster than Apple's own browser, and that it could cut data traffic by up to 90 percent, an area where the iPhone has come to attention.

Some mobile phone networks have experienced problems from the heavy data traffic demands from iPhone users.

Ahead of the May 21 release of "Shrek Forever After", Dreamworks Animation has confirmed that it is planning to convert the older Shrek titles to 3D for release on Blu-ray. "Our movies exist in digital files to begin with. To go back and rebuild to a quality 3D experience is not inexpensive, but we are about to achieve a pretty high quality result," company CEO Jeffrey Katzenberg said Wednesday.

Speaking at the National Association of Broadcasters convention, he was optimistic about the rate of innovation in 3D filmmaking. "We are just beginning to see big capital investments made into the area of post 2D-to-3D conversion. Right now it's at the most rudimentary," he said.

The recent release of "Clash of the Titans" has received much scrutiny, prompting some concerns within the industry that poor 3D releases will threaten the rollout of the "format". Concerns aside, Katzenberg feels comfortable enough with 3D to be optimistic about its potential with older titles.

DigiProtect, which works with ACS:Law in the UK to send thousands of threatening letters to alleged Internet pirates, has defended its work from growing criticism. UK consumer magazine Which? received complaints from people saying they were wrongly accused of copyright infringement crimes.

The letters sent to Internet users orders them to either pay a fine or face going to court. However, the firm told the BBC that it is just acting to protect its rights-holders, whom it declined to mention by name but described as "musicians or producers."

DigiProtect identifies when a client's content is being shared illegally on a network and attempts to acquire the IP address of the sharer. With this information, its lawyers can get a court order enabling the retrieval of the physical address of the user associated with the Internet connection account.

Users receive letters telling them to pay around £700 per infringement or face court action. Service provider O2 has not been impressed with the targeting of its customers, condemning attempts to "bully or threaten" them.

ACS:Law and DigiProtect deny that they bully O2 customers. "The approach we use is the only proven effective proceeding," DigiProtect told the BBC. "With the infinite number of products offered on file-sharing networks, no other process would even be possible, this is just another example of the astronomical dimensions that file-sharing has taken on."

Toshiba Corp. got a boost from surging PC sales in the United States in the first quarter of the year, jumping 50 percent compared to the same period of 2009. Jeff Barney, general manager of digital products for Toshiba America, said the company sold 1.5 million PC units in the January - March period in the United States thanks to growing consumer demand.

Barney revealed that average selling prices leveled during the quarter after falling for some time. He said he expected 35 percent growth in the U.S. consumer PC market in the coming six months along with single-digit growth from enterprise customers. Toshiba is the fourth largest PC vendor in the United States and the fifth largest globally.

The company is also planning to roll out tablet-style computing devices similar to the iPad later in the year. Barney said the plan was to launch "slate" PCs this year running either Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system, or Google's mobile Android OS.

"We definitely see a place for the slate, we see there's a market there. It'll be expansive like netbooks, it won't be cannibalistic," he said. He added that a Windows version of the tablet would be priced higher than Android, but that Android users could tap thousands of programs available in the Android Market.

New attention has been given to a BitTorrent exploit that surfaced in November last year following the passing of the Digital Economy Bill in the UK. The widespread belief - or hope - appears to be that this 86 lines of C# can actually make BitTorrent downloading untraceable.

The code, named SeedFuc*er (though not censored), can be used by a BitTorrent user to fake the IP address of a source where a file could be downloaded, or it could be used to flood a BitTorrent with dozens of fake peers.

The truth is this probably wouldn't help a user to escape identification at all, although it could be used as an annoyance for investigators by flooding them with fake peers and fake data. Tracking companies confirm what material is being shared and from where, so there is no reason to believe the 86 lines of code will make the slightest bit of a difference to a user.

However, changes in legislation or the outcomes of civil cases have had an effect on how some users share files. Napster's downfall was largely the centralized nature of its network and was then replaced with decentralized networks. Warnings and other threats prompted users to stop using public BitTorrent trackers and opt for private trackers instead.

The FCC will, for the first time ever, be collecting data about the performance of consumer broadband internet connections across the US.

In the past data has been provided by ISPs, and FCC officials have admitted it was worthless while still releasing reports based on it.

In order to get some real world data the FCC has contracted with SamKnows, a company who has worked with UK telecom regulators at Ofcom for similar purposes. Their most recent work showed that users of the most popular UK broadband services were only getting about half the speed advertised.

After soliciting volunteers who have broadband internet service from across the US, SamKnows will be providing specially modified routers which will analyze various aspects of each user's connection. In addition to providing the data and analysis to the FCC, SamKnows will allow participants to view data about their individual connections.

Details on the methodology to be used for the study will be released by the FCC within the next few days.

According to SamKnows' website they will begin taking applications from the public to participate in the study "in the next couple of weeks."

The House of Representatives has just passed a new legislation that will ban all forms of malicious Caller ID "spoofing," the art of using a fake caller ID to trick victims into revealing personal information.

The bill, which passed with a "voice vote," is intended to stop spoofing before it gets more prominent. Proponents of the bill say new technology is making spoofing much easier, and the technology is cheap or even free.

Rep. Eliot Engel, a Democrat in N.Y. who is also the chief sponsor of the bill, cited one case where the police busted an identify theft ring which had stolen over $15 million from 6000 victims using different spoofing scams including pretending to be banks.

The bill, H.R. 1258, will completely outlaw spoofing technology if it used for deceiving or harmful intent. Legitimate uses, such as spoofing to protect identities of certain users or companies, will still be allowed. Those found to be abusing the technology can be fined and even spend time in jail.

The legislation still requires Senate approval.

Submitted last month and accepted just yesterday by Apple, the Opera Mini 5 application is now at the head of all "Top Apps" lists, from every country in which the App Store is available.

There are over 50 million Opera Mini users globally.

Opera Mini uses Opera's servers to render and compress pages, thus increasing speed for the end user, and also working around Apple's stringent rules.

The company says users of the iPhone over AT&T's slower 2G Edge data will definitely feel the "uptake in speed."

Whether all the downloads are just a curiosity or proof that iPhone/iPod Touch users are looking for choice within their hardware remains to be seen, but it seems pretty clear that Opera will be gaining a significant amount of users.

Speaking at the "Chirp" conference earlier today, Twitter founder Evan Williams has said that Android devices will finally be getting an official Twitter app in the near future.

What remains unclear is whether the official app will be a rehash of "Tweetie," (the very popular app which was just purchased by Twitter), a new app developed by the company, or an app created jointly with mobile device makers, such as the BlackBerry Twitter App for, you guessed it, Blackberrys.

Tweetie, one of the most popular Twitter apps for the iPhone, was just acquired last Saturday and will be renamed "Twitter for iPhone," as well as go free.

The Blackberry Twitter App was also dubbed the "official" Twitter app for the platform.

The company also announced two days ago that an official Twitter iPad app was on the way.

Microsoft Corp. revealed on Wednesday that it is investigating reports of harsh working conditions at a Chinese factory that products products for the Redmond-based software giant. The National Labor Committee released a report on Tuesday about harsh treatment of workers at a KYE Systems Corp. factory in the city of Dongguan in Guangdong province.

It accuses KYE of recruiting hundreds of 16 and 17 year olds who work 15 hour shifts, six and seven days a week. The report said that in 2007 and 2008 before the economic downturn hit badly, workers were at the factory as many as 97 hours per week, whilst working for over 80 of those hours.

In 2009, workers were at the facility 83 hours a week and working 68 hours. In addition to the long working hours - for which workers were paid just 65 cents an hour of which only 52 cents is "take-home pay" after deductions are made for factory food expenses - workers were not allowed to talk, listen to any music or even use the bathroom during working hours.

Workers who broke the "rules" were forced to clean the factory's bathrooms as punishment. "The workers have no rights, as every single labor law in China is violated," the report alleged. "Microsoft's and other companies' codes of conduct have zero impact."

Japanese adult entertainment firms are threatening lawsuits against companies located in Taiwan for copyright infringement. Among those threatened parties are Internet and mobile phones operators and cable channels. A lawyer for eight separate Japanese adult entertainment firms said they have lost millions of dollars in potential revenue over the illegal activity.

"My clients suffered huge losses because they cannot collect royalties for the adult videos," said lawyer Michael Chien, estimating it to be around 1 billion Taiwan dollars, or roughly US$33 Million, every year. "Screening and selling the videos without authorisation is unacceptable. Taiwan should do more to protect intellectual property rights."

Chunghwa Telecom and Taiwan Mobile, the largest mobile phone operators in the country, have been identified by the eight adult entertainment producers as violators of the their copyright.

The companies, which account for about a third of all Japanese pornography content, have demanded that the firms pay royalties and remove unlicensed videos from their services within a month.

Twitter co-founder Biz Stone revealed on Wednesday that the popular micro-blogging source has over 105 million registered users. The site is now adding 300,000 new users a day to its service, which launched back in 2006. The site receives about 180 million unique visitors a month, Stone revealed to software developers at the "Chirp" development conference.

Speaking to over 1,000 software developers in attendance, he revealed the figures of registered users and traffic for the first time. The company told of how many Twitter users access the service through software applications created by third-party developers. Twitter has started to create its own similar software solutions as well as buying up some, which might not be good news for many of the developers.

"It is clearly a tension and it is why we are trying to show where we are going," Twitter co-founder Evan Williams said, adding that it was natural for Internet services to have both complementary and competitive relationships with third parties that develop software building on its technology platforms.

"There are thousands of ways to use Twitter that haven't even been imagined yet. There is so much left to invent. It is really early and we can do it together," Evans told the crowd.

According to an ITWorld report, Adobe is on the verge of suing Apple, as the two companies continue to battle over Apple's strong rejection of Flash support on their devices.

The report cites "sources close to Adobe" when saying a lawsuit is in the works in the coming weeks.

Over the course of a few months, the niceties between the two companies has broken down, with Apple practically saying Flash is not good enough to be on the iPad and one Adobe developer going as far as to tell Apple to screw itself.

Officially, Adobe is keeping mum on the subject and says it is still creating a Packager for iPhone OS tech, although it has almost been completely banned by Apple thanks to new SDK language which bans cross-platform compilers as the one launched with Adobe Creative Suite 5. Not just targeting Adobe, the new SDK language also blocks Microsoft Silverlight.

According to Apple press contact Natalie Harrison, the company will need to delay the international launch of the iPad, citing extremely high demand, and supply that can't hold up.

As of April 8th, CEO Steve Jobs said the company had sold 450,000 iPads, in the United States alone, and that number is likely over 600,000 now.

Reads the press statement:

"Although we have delivered more than 500,000 iPads during its first week, demand is far higher than we predicted and will likely continue to exceed our supply over the next several weeks as more people see and touch an iPad™. We have also taken a large number of pre-orders for iPad 3G models for delivery by the end of April."

Additionally, the press release says the "surprisingly strong demand" has forced Apple to rethink their international launch, and the devices won't hit overseas until the end of May.

On May 10th, international pre-orders will go live and Apple will give pricing for the different models of the device.

According to new data by the research firm The Diffusion Group, the Sony PlayStation 3 has the highest percentage of 'connected' console users, with 78 percent of users connected to the Internet.

Rival Xbox 360 had 73 percent connected, and the Nintendo Wii came in third at 54 percent.

Although it is the leader, the number for the PS3 is actually surprisingly low given the fact that the console has built-in Wi-Fi.

Adds Diffusion Group director of research Michael Greeson (via Gamasutra): "Today's game consoles are increasingly connected to the internet, not just to enhance their gaming experience but to access the growing variety of online media-video."

The survey polled 2000 console users with broadband, in the U.S.

Concluding the report, Greeson says that all three consoles "are best positioned to become the first mainstream over-the-top (OTT) video delivery platform," especially given that Netflix free streaming is now available for all three platforms.