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Infinity Ward has said today that it plans to release the Modern Warfare 2 DLC "Stimulus Package" for the PS3 and PC on May 4th, two months after its release on the Xbox 360.

Says IW community manager Robert Bowling via Tweet: "The Modern Warfare 2 Stimulus Package DLC will hit PS3 in North America on May 4th, everywhere else May 5th. PC gets it worldwide on May 4th."

Coinciding with the release, IW will "host a double XP event," allowing gamers to make double experience points while playing multiplayer.

The pack will cost $15 USD, just like it does for the 360, and will add 5 new maps.

Popular video rental company Netflix has announced today that they have signed agreements with Twentieth Century Fox and Universal, which means subscribers will have to wait 28 days to get new releases from the studios, similar to the deal signed with Warner a few months ago.

As part of the deal, Fox will give Netflix a streaming license for Fox TV shows, meaning there is a chance popular shows such as Family Guy will soon be available through Netflix's free "Watch Instantly" service.

Universal, for their part, said that as part of the deal Netflix would get "significantly" more units after the release delay, as well as more streaming movies.

Because of the deal, subscribers will have to wait an extra month for Avatar, the $2 billion blockbuster smash hit that has an April 22nd release date.

Hacker iH8sn0w has said today that he has already jailbroken the brand new iPhone 4.0 OS beta, posting the keys and claiming that he will be releasing the jailbreak in the near future.

Of course, being that the OS is still in beta, Apple will have ample time to patch the exploits before releasing the final product.

Here are the keys:

According to Justin Long, the "Mac" in Apple's popular Mac vs. PC commercials, the ad campaign may be close to its conclusion, ending one of the more effective ad series in history.

Long said that he heard from "PC" John Hodgman that Apple is planning to move on.

"You know, I think they might be done," said Long about the future of the campaign. "In fact, I heard from John, I think they're going to move on. I can't say definitively, which is sad, because not only am I going to miss doing them, but also working with John."

Although he seemed sure, Long would not guarantee the end of the campaign and could not provide any reasons why Apple would end it.

During the Apple press event today, CEO Steve Jobs says the company has sold 450,000 iPads, a strong figure for only 4 full days of sales.

Users have downloaded 3.5 million iPad apps, and downloaded 600,000 iBooks from the iBookstore.

Jobs also noted that the device is sold out at best Buy, and that the company plans to ramp up supply over the coming months.

The launch of the iPad was one of the biggest in Apple's history, with 300,000 units sold on the first day at an average price of over $500 USD.

Engadget has reported today that the Barnes & Noble Nook is set to go on sale at Best Buy brick-and-mortar stores starting April 18th.

The recently launched Apple iPad sells at Best Buy locations as well, and both devices directly compete in the e-reader market.

The iPad sells for $499 at its cheapest, while the Nook sells for $259.

Pic via the source:

Back in January, we reported that Canonical, the group behind Ubuntu Lucid releases, had made a deal with Yahoo to make Yahoo the default Firefox search engine instead of Google.

Today, Canonical has done an about-face, announcing they are switching back to Google with the release of Ubuntu 10.04.

Says Rick Spencer, of Canonical: "However, for the final release, we will use Google as the default provider. I have asked the Ubuntu Desktop team to change the default back to Google as soon as reasonably possible, but certainly by final freeze on April 15th. It was not our intention to “flap” between providers, but the underlying circumstances can change unpredictably. In this case, choosing Google will be familiar to everybody upgrading from 9.10 to 10.04 and the change will only be visible to those who have been part of the development cycle for 10.04."

Michael Geist has reported today that "the RCMP has arrested a Quebec man after a seizure uncovered hundreds of counterfeit video games. The RCMP release states that 'modifying a console and computer is considered an illegal act under Section 342.1 of the Criminal Code and is punishable by imprisonment for up to ten years.'"

At the end of March, the RCMP (Royal Canadian Mounted Police) raided a home in Quebec, which eventually led to the "seizure of hundreds of counterfeit video games and the arrest of one suspect." 300 games were seized and "materials used to modify consoles and illegally reproduce video games" were also taken.

It is unclear what kind of mod chips were found, or for what system, but we will keep you updated.

Nokia has announced the launch of their Comes With Music service in China this week, offering a DRM-free subscription model for those with Nokia handsets.

At launch, the service will be supported on these phones: The Nokia X6 32GB and Nokia X6 16GB, Nokia 5230, Nokia 5330, Nokia 5800w, Nokia 6700s, Nokia E52 and Nokia E72i.

"It’s not an operator-based offering, it’s a retail-based offering. Consumers can walk into those 80,000 stores, buy the Nokia handset and activate Comes With Music," says Nokia’s director of global music Adam Mirabella, via Music Ally.

The company says the catalog will be 50 percent "local repertoire."

China is infamous for its high piracy rates, but Mirabella says going DRM-free, among other things, should win over some fans: "People will be getting all the metadata and album art, good clean files authorised by the music companies, the highest quality files and something that's virus-free. This marketplace is begging for a legal opportunity. The music companies, publishing companies and artists have not really been able to generate any revenue in this marketplace. They're all looking for somebody with a strong footprint and presence, to see if there’s something they can do to build the business back."

As promised earlier this month, hacker Geohot has made it so users can continue to use the OtherOS feature stripped by Sony with firmware update v3.21.

Reads geohot's blog post:

OtherOS Supported on "3.21OO"
Here is a video demoing my "custom firmware". It's not any sort of version string change; I would have added something showing off the new features of 3.21, but oh wait, there aren't any.

This can be installed without having to open up your PS3, just by restoring a custom generated PUP file, but only from 3.15 or previous. It's possible this CFW will also work on the slim to actually *enable* OtherOS; I'll know when my infectus gets here.

No release date yet, use the proxy hack to play online with 3.15

Note to the people who removed OtherOS, you are potentially turning 100000+ legit users into "hackers." There was a huge(20x) traffic spike to this blog after the announcement of 3.21. If I had ads on this site I guess I'd be thanking you.

Today Apple gave a sneak peek of the next generation of their iPhone OS software. This is the operating system that powers the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Steve Jobs took the stage at Apple's Cupertino, California headquarters at 10AM and began by talking about the success of the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. Then he moved on to the changes in version 4 of the iPhone OS.


Multitasking
As expected there will be multitasking available for third party apps. That functionality is currently only available to the built in iPod software.

Jobs said, "we weren't the first to this party, but we're gonna be the best. Just like cut and paste."

Demonstrating the multitasking capabilities on an iPhone, he double-clicked the phone's Home button and a list of running apps appeared above the Dock at the bottom of the screen.

AOL, infamous for terrible investments, has announced that they will either sell or shut down the social networking site Bebo, which they bought for $850 million just two years ago.

"Bebo, unfortunately, is a business that has been declining and, as a result, would require significant investment in order to compete in the competitive social networking space," said Jon Brod, executive vice president of AOL. "AOL is not in a position at this time to further fund and support Bebo in pursuing a turnaround in social networking."

At the time of the acquisition, AOL was still part of Time Warner, part of a merger that many have called the worst deal of all-time. (AOL had to take a $99 billion dollar loss in 2002.)

Bebo saw only 5 million unique visitors last month, compared to 112 million for Facebook, and Bebo continues to see declining traffic.

Infinity Ward, the developer behind the blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has said today that sales of the Stimulus Package DLC have jumped to 2.5 million in its first week of availability.

The DLC costs $15 USD and adds three multiplayer maps alongside updating two of the original maps.

The developer also notes that the DLC was downloaded 1 million times in its first 24 hours of availability.

Activision, the publisher behind the game, also added that the sales were a record for the Xbox 360.

Microsoft has announced it will be launching Silverlight 4 next week, just a month after releasing the Release Candidate at the MIX10 event.

Silverlight is a web application framework that brings together multimedia, graphics, animations and interactivity into one runtime environment.

Says a spokesman: "April 13 is the launch, but we haven't announced a specific date for the release. Silverlight 4 will be available later this month.")

Here is a list of the updated features for the new software: http://timheuer.com/blog/archive/2010/03/15/whats-new-in-silverlight-4-rc-mix10.aspx

The American Society of Media Photographers, the Graphic Artists Guild, the Picture Archive Council of America, the North American Nature Photography Association, and the Professional Photographers of America have all joined together to sue Google over copyright infringement, claiming that the search giant has scanned millions of books and magazines that include copyrighted images, then displaying those images without consent.

The suit was filed in the same court where Google's long standing Book Search settlement is being considered. In that case, Google agreed to pay a $125 million settlement to compensate the rights holders.

Adds ASMP General Counsel Victor Perlman: "We are seeking justice and fair compensation for visual artists whose work appears in the twelve million books and other publications Google has illegally scanned to date. In doing so, we are giving voice to thousands of disenfranchised creators of visual artworks whose rights we hope to enforce through this class action."

Google responded, via eweek: "We are confident that Google Books is fully compliant with U.S. and international copyright law."