Latest news

Previously run as "ESPN360.com," the sports network has relaunched the site as ESPN3.com today, with optimized Flash 10 video quality as well as new social networking features.

Says ESPN of the new features:

* New Viewing Modes – Multiple options to watch live events, including picture-in-picture and split screens;
* New Scoreboard Module – Up-to-the-minute scores from hundreds of sports leagues from around the world;
* Stats – In-depth event stats that allow fans to track the event they’re watching;
* Chat – Interact with other fans watching the game;
* Enhanced Schedule – Users will be able to find a specific event via improved navigation;
* Social Networking Tools –Update your Facebook and Twitter status.

Additionally, starting later in April and then in June, the company will offer "downloadable enhancements" such as:

* More HD-quality streaming with the NBA Playoffs followed by the 2010 FIFA World Cup and 2010 US Open tennis;
* DVR functionality where fans will be able to pause, rewind and fast forward through live programming;
* A Key Plays feature where users will be able to jump to key scoring plays and pivotal moments at any time during the game.

The New York Times has upped the price of its e-subscription packages, jacking up the price to $20 per month from $15 for e-edition and Kindle subscribers. The e-edition of the paper available to iPad users will cost $20, as well.

Current users will get to keep their current prices until October 2nd, while any new subscribers will have to pay the new prices starting this week.

It is unclear how many users will pay the extra money to have the specially produced versions of the sites instead of just using the free version of the site available online, but most analysts expect that number will not be high.

Most consumers are smart enough to know the price of delivering an e-product is a lot cheaper than the print counterpart, but at $20 per month, the price difference is not very significant.

Hyundai has announced that all new buyers of the Equus luxury sedan will receive an Apple iPad, one that comes pre-loaded with a digital version of the car's owner's manual.

The tablet will also have a pre-loaded Hyundai app which will make service appointments easier.

Mike Bloxham, director of insight and research at Ball State University's Center for Media Design says: "They are trying to position themselves as a modern, in-touch, technologically savvy brand. It is the sort of innovation you would expect from BMW or Mercedes, but not Hyundai."

Hyundai is known for ultra-budget cars but will try to steal some luxury market share from competitors such as Lexus and Mercedes-Benz. The Equus will sell for around $55,000 USD, a far cry from some of Hyundai's budget cars like the Accent which sells for $10,000.

Musclenerd, of the iPhone Dev Team has released a video this weekend showing off the iPad, already jailbroken, giving users access to the iPad software.

So far, the root access is just a hack, but within the next month iPad owners will likely be able to jailbreak their devices with a one-click app such as BlackRa1n, and install third-party apps through Cydia or Ice.

The iPad Guide site had this to say about the hack: "The video shows that the jailbreak provides a root shell with what appears to be full access to the iPad filesystem. The video walks shows connection to the iPad via ssh, exploration of the OS and kernel version information (uname), a view of running processes, moving applications out of the iPad's applications directory (and then restarting Springboard via the shell to show the results) and finally, rebooting the iPad via the jailbroken root shell.

Mind you, this isn't yet so functional a jailbreak that it is going to be of much interest to the average user, but as Musclenerd's latest Twitter update indicates, a joint effort by several members of the iPhone Dev Team is now underway to get 'everything working.'"

CNNMoney is reporting today that Apple has outsold even the most radical predictions for the iPad, selling 700,000 units during its launch weekend.

The estimates come from Piper Jaffray's Gene Munster, an analyst who specializes in Apple products.

Reads the article: In a report to clients issued Saturday night, Munster's estimated that by midnight Sunday, Apple will have sold 600,000 to 700,000 iPads, including pre-orders — more than double his relatively conservative pre-launch estimate of 200,000 to 300,000. (Other analysts had published estimates of 300,000 to 400,000.)

When the original iPhone began sales in 2007, Apple took 74 days to hit 1 million sales. The latest iteration however, the iPhone 3GS took 3 days to hit the same milestone.

The Blu-ray Disc Association has revealed this weekend two updates to the Blu-ray specification, the BDXL(High Capacity Recordable and Rewritable discs) and the IH-BD (Intra-Hybrid discs).

BDXL will be aimed at the commercial segment, and will allow for write-once ability on 100GB and 128GB capacity discs. Current dual-layer discs can only hold 50GB. Despite being aimed at the commercial market, the Association says a consumer version of the 3/4 layer discs will be available to Japan and the U.S. as well.

"Professional industries have expressed a desire to find optical disc solutions that enable them to transition away from magnetic media for their archiving needs," adds Victor Matsuda, Blu-ray Disc Association Global Promotions Committee chair. "Leveraging Blu-ray Disc to meet this need provides professional enterprises with a compact, stable and long term solution for archiving large amounts of sensitive data, video and graphic images using a proven and widely accepted optical technology."

This will be a blurb article as there is not too much info as of yet, but the official Netflix blog has posted an entry this evening all but promising a streaming app for the Apple iPhone.

Reads the post:

"Steve Swasey, VP of Corporate Communications, here. Terrific response to our news today about Netflix on the iPad. For those of you asking whether Netflix will be on the iPhone and iPod Touch: We wouldn't invite you to dinner without planning to serve dessert. In other words, we're working on it so stay tuned."

Netflix has an app already for the iPad tablet, and some sites are already calling it a must-have "killer app."

Sharp has shown off new 3D displays this week, displays intended for mobile devices with 3-inch screens.

The devices could handle 3D animation, and the demo showed off 3D photos and 3D video.

Making the tech even better is the fact that it does not require special glasses, as the displays send different images to each eye. The technology can be used with gaming handhelds, mobile phones, and digital cameras.

"The arrival of mobile 3D is just around the corner," says Executive Managing Officer Yoshisuke Hasegawa.

The AP says the demo showed off some notable "ghosting," but Sharp says the final product will have no such problems.

Nintendo announced recently that they would begin selling a new 3DS handheld, which will likely use the Sharp displays.

Facebook has announced they have acquired the photo sharing service Divvyshot, and will be integrating the site in the next few weeks.

3 billion photos are uploaded each month to Facebook, and Divvyshot is a premiere service that makes it easier for multiple users to contribute to an online photo album.

Reads Divvyshot's blog post:

"We are excited to announce that we’ve received an offer we can’t refuse. Facebook recently reached out to us about acquiring Divvyshot. The more we’ve learned about the team, their direction, and their product, the more excited we’ve become about this opportunity.

As a result, we’ve reached an agreement with Facebook for them to acquire many of the company’s assets. We will join the Facebook engineering team and focus on Facebook Photos.

We’re thrilled to work with some of the most talented engineers in the world in a dynamic and fun environment. The choice was easy. Facebook is well known as a company where engineers are given the resources and freedom to build cool stuff and, as a result, the only place where we felt that we would fit in.

Divvyshot will begin winding down operations as of today. Existing users can continue to use Divvyshot; however no new accounts will be issued and our iPhone application will no longer be available for download. We’ve always given users access to their original-resolution photos and we hope that this feature will make the transition off Divvyshot easier. For details on how to download your event’s photos, see our blog post: “How can I download my photos as a ZIP archive?”

In 2004, luxury jeweler Tiffany & Co. sued online auction site eBay over trademark infringement and dilution, accusing eBay of helping in the sale of counterfeit goods via the auction site.

eBay, in its defense, says they do not put any of the goods up for sale themselves, and spend millions each year to track down counterfeiters and remove any such listings.

This week a U.S. appeals court has ruled in favor of eBay, on all accounts.

"It is true that eBay did not itself sell counterfeit Tiffany goods; only the fraudulent vendors did, and that is in part why we conclude that eBay did not infringe Tiffany's mark,"reads the ruling. "But eBay did affirmatively advertise the goods sold through its site as Tiffany merchandise."

Tiffany says it is considering an appeal.

Niko Partners, the market research firm, has reported this week that they expect the Chinese video game industry to grow to $9.2 billion USD by 2014, over a double from 2010.

The market was $3.57 billion in 2009, and expected to grow to $4.5 billion this year.

"While the global economic downturn hurt videogame publishers in much of the world, China's online game industry reflected no pain in 2009 and gamers continued to embrace online games as the best inexpensive source of social entertainment available," says Lisa Cosmas Hanson, managing partner of Niko Partners. "While the era of online gaming is generating lots of interest and growth opportunity in the West, China is one of the countries where online gaming is a well established market segment that extends its reach to more and more Chinese consumers every year."

Overall, 63 percent of gamers have increased their game playing time in the past year.

Marvel Entertainment has launched the impressive Marvel Comics App for the Apple iPad, giving fans a chance to read over 500 graphic novels at launch including Iron Man, Captain America, Spider-Man, Hulk and Thor.

"We're excited to introduce an unparalleled digital comic experience to our fans with the Marvel Comics App for iPad," adds Dan Buckley, publisher & CEO, Marvel Publishing. "The iPad is the first device that offers us a chance to present digital comics that are even close to replicating the experience of reading a print comic. This new world of digital comics distribution provides us great opportunities to reach new readers, allow consumers to sample our diverse stories and characters, and we believe it will drive these new fans into the App Store and local comic shops each week to find even more."

Continues Ira Rubenstein, the Executive Vice President, Marvel Global Digital Media Group: "As Marvel's digital comics program has developed over the last few years, we've focused on delivering the best possible consumer experience across different services and devices. We're confident that the iPad is one of the best ways to read Marvel digital comics from anywhere, at any time. Since the iPad was announced, we have heard from our Marvel fans that this is the device they really wanted to see our comics on. This is just another step in the evolution of Marvel Digital Comics. We hope you love it as much as we do and we will continue to make the consumer experience even better."

Seton Hill University, the popular liberal arts college in Pennsylvania, has told incoming freshman that they will be receiving both MacBooks and an iPad, starting a new "mobile technology program" initiative.

The laptop will be replaced after their sophomore year. Both devices never have to be returned.

"The iPad was chosen by Seton Hill because of its mobility and the ease with which faculty and students, in the future, will have immediate access to e-textbooks and comprehensive and integrated learning," says Mary Ann Gawelek, provost and dean of the faculty at Seton Hill.

Additionally, the company has upgraded their wired and wireless network infrastructure, moving to 1Gbps Ethernet, adding 200 802.11n access points, and added support for VoIP.

To pay for the technology initiative, students will pay $1000 each year.

Episodic, the live and on-demand video platform for broadcasting has announced today that they have been acquired by Google, which plans to integrate the service into YouTube while keeping the staff on.

Say Noam Lovinsky and Matias Cudich, co-founders of the company:

We are thrilled to announce that Episodic has been acquired by Google. The entire Episodic team is extremely excited about this new partnership and what it means for our customers and the evolution of online video.

The Episodic team will join Google and continue its work to bring a great video experience to the Web, mobile phones and IPTV devices. There will be no interruption in service for existing Episodic customers.

At Episodic, we have always felt that these are the very early days of online video and that there is far more growth to be had. To put it in perspective, our industry is barely 15 years old. We’ve just received our learner’s permit, we still can’t drive without adult supervision and we’re certainly not old enough to buy a drink…legally.

From our earliest discussions with Google, it was clear that the teams shared this belief and together we obviously see huge potential in online video. Our product visions were also complimentary and together we will continue to produce innovative video technology for our customers and their viewers.

Because it is apparently the only way to get the devices to sell, Verizon has slashed the price of the Palm Pre and Pixi Plus models, practically giving the smartphones away.

The Pre Plus is now available for $50 USD for two, and the Pixi Plus is now available for $30 for two.

Additionally, "Mobile Hotspot," which turns the smartphones in Wi-Fi hotspots for your other devices, has now been reduced from $40 a month to free.

For the hotspot, you get a 5GB per month usage cap, but for free, the deal is an absolute steal as most other wireless carriers sell standalone USB modems for $50 or higher per month.