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Sony has launched their highly-anticipated motion controller, the PlayStation Move, a system that should rival the Wii and Microsoft's upcoming Natal motion system.

Says Peter Dille, senior vice president of marketing for Sony Computer Entertainment: "The migration path from the Wii household to the PlayStation 3 household is a pretty natural path, partly because of the experience that you can get on the PlayStation Move but also because of the content that we find on PlayStation 3."

As viewed in the demo video, the Move is used in conjunction with the PlayStation Eye camera and allows for real-time tracking of the player's body movements. As for accuracy?

"Nothing has ever been this precise," say Shuhei Yoshida, president of Sony Computer Electronics Worldwide Studios.

Standalone prices were not revealed but Dille says that a "starter bundle" including a game, the PS Eye and the Move will retail for under $100.

Motorola and Microsoft have announced a new deal today that will make Bing search and maps the default for the smartphone maker's Android-based phones.

The phones will now come with a search widget pre-loaded.

The company signed a similar deal with Baidu last week, to make Baidu the default Web search engine for Android phones sold in China.

The moves come as Google continues its dispute with China over censorship, a fight that has yet to be resolved, and one in which Google threatened to pull its search engine service from the country entirely.

The New York film maker Casey Neistat has made a funny but interesting video this week about the new sensation that is Chatroulette.

For those that have never tried the site, you sign on, hit "New Game" and you are matched up with another person from somewhere in the world who is on their webcam and wants to "chat."

Doing a small independent study, Neistat picked a random Thursday and chatted with 90 different people, finding that 71 percent were men, 15 percent were women, and 14 percent were "perverts." 83 percent were "fairly young" and the rest were older.

chat roulette from Casey Neistat on Vimeo.

Palm, the struggling smartphone maker, continues to see the price of their handsets drop, with Wal-Mart now slashing the price of the Palm Pre Plus for Verizon to $30 with 2-year contract, and the Palm Pixi Plus to free.

If you prefer Amazon, the e-tailer has the Pre Plus for $40 with contract, still a large discount from even just last month, when the phone was retailing for at least $70 with contract.

Citing the price cuts, C.L. King analyst Lawrence Harris downgraded his estimate for 2011 EPS (earnings per share), dropping his expectation of a $0.50 per share loss, to $1.10.

The bigger loss estimate also adds in costs of Palm's costly new advertising campaign for the Pre Plus.

In a letter to the Financial Times, BT Group Chief Executive Ian Livingston suggested that persistent file sharers caught breaking copyright laws should face fines instead of technical sanctions proposed by the UK government. He said that suspending service for persistent infringers as spelled out in the Digital Economy Bill could deny a fair hearing for the accused.

Instead of the technical sanctions outlined in the DEB, Livingston said people could choose to pay a penalty or fight the accusation. Those who dispute accusations could take their case to a new tribunal instead of the courts. The suggestion brings BT in line with the Open Rights Group, which believes such a system would be fairer and less risky than the proposed suspensions and other sanctions.

In the letter - which was also signed by the bosses of TalkTalk, Virgin Media and Orange, as well as Facebook, Google, eBay and Yahoo! - a recent amendment to the Digital Economy Bill faced considerable criticism. The amendment made last week would allow copyright holders to injunct ISPs and force the blocking of specific web addresses.

Reggie Fils-Aime, President and COO of Nintendo of America, has told Forbes that the company is not ready yet to begin work on a new home console to replace the Wii. "When the software developer comes forward with an idea that can't be executed on the current platform, that's when we start thinking seriously about the next system. We're not there yet, from a Wii perspective," he said.

Fils-Aime once against mirrored Nintendo's general attitude toward including the latest technology in games consoles, saying that as an enabler, technology has to enable a new and unique experience for players. "So when people talk about high definition for the Wii console our feedback is that that by itself will not create a brand new experience," he said.

Google Inc. Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said on Wednesday that the company expects an outcome in its dispute with the Chinese government soon. Schmidt made the comments on Wednesday at the Abu Dhabi Media Summit. "I'm going to use the word 'soon', which I will not define otherwise," he said.

"There is no specific timetable. Something will happen soon." In Washington, Nicole Wong, the firm's vice president and deputy general counsel, told the U.S. House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee that the company stands by its decision to stop censorship in China.

"(if) the option is that we will shutter our .cn property and leave the country, we are prepared to do that," she said. At the same time, it was revealed that the United States is mulling a possible legal challenge to China's Internet censorship and related policies which it claims hurt U.S. companies that invest in the Chinese market.

The recent spat between Google and China started in January when the search giant announced that it would stop censoring search results in the country and would leave the market if it had no other choice. The announcement followed a hack targeted at Google's intellectual property and the e-mail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

According to a new blog post, YouTube's mobile site will now come with ad campaigns, giving advertisers a chance to offer up ads to target audiences easier.

Google says the mobile site saw traffic grow by 160 percent in 2009, with tens of millions of videos being streamed everyday on their mobile phones.

Says the post: "Today, we're launching ads on the home, search, and browse pages of the American and Japanese YouTube mobile websites (m.youtube.com from your mobile browser). This is a great way for advertisers to reach YouTube viewers across multiple platforms. In fact, at launch YouTube will immediately provide one of the largest audiences for a mobile ad campaign anywhere on the mobile web. And because YouTube mobile attracts early adopters, the site can deliver to advertisers a coveted demographic of tech savvy trendsetters."

The company points to early adopter campaigns by Sony and Kia, in which both companies were pleased with the audience they reached.

According to a new survey from security firm Barracuda Labs, 73 percent of Twitter accounts remain "inactive," with less than 10 total Tweets.

Despite the large numbers, Barracuda says the number is down, from 79 percent in June of last year.

34 percent of Twitter users have never even made one Tweet.

A few of the other stats:

-74 percent of Twitter users have under 10 followers.
-60 percent follow less than 10 people
-34 percent of users have more followers than people they are following
-Growth jumped 21 percent in April 2009, when Ashton Kutcher was on the verge of hitting 1 million followers.

Which group Tweets the most? Let's check the chart:

Those with around 700-1000 followers seem to Tweet the most, with celebrities and those with millions of followers not Tweeting nearly as much.

Google has launched the Apps Marketplace today, an online store designed to give third-party developers a chance to sell their Web applications to the over 25 million users of Google Apps such as Gmail, Docs and more.

The apps will need to support an OpenID sign-on as well as OAuth-authorized access, and from there the apps can be made available. When installed, the apps will be integrated into the menu of Google Apps.

"With administrator approval, [third-party apps] may interact with calendar, email, document and/or contact data to increase productivity," adds Chris Vander Mey, senior product manager for Google Apps. "Administrators can manage the applications from the familiar Google Apps control panel, and employees can open them from within Google Apps."

On the developer side, to gain access to the marketplace is a $100 fee, and then Google takes 20 percent of application revenue.

View the marketplace here: http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/home

View the first part of the launch video:

Members of European Parliament are united in opposing the European Commission's secret negotiation of the highly controversial ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) treaty. They voted 663 to 13 in favor of a resolution requiring the Commission, the European Union's representative in ACTA negotiations, to share all information about the talks with them.

Besides the lack of transparency in the negotiations, MEPs have concerns about provisions which would dictate how intellectual property protection in EU member states would work.

This would include what's covered, for how long, and even the definition of fair use and types of penalties for infringement. In other words it could require a substantial rewrite of most European IP law.

They are also concerned about language that could be at odds with EU privacy rights. They are demanding that the European Commission provide proof that no fundamental rights would be impacted.

The resolution "Calls on the Commission to conduct an impact assessment of the implementation of ACTA with regard to fundamental rights and data protection," and "consult with Parliament in a timely manner about the results of the assessment."

First unveiled at the CES event earlier this year, the Android-based Spring Design Alex e-reader should begin shipping by "early Spring," says the company, after production and software delays have held it back so far.

Visiting the Spring Design store (pic below), the Alex Store says you should be able to start ordering the device by the "first week of March," which clearly has come and gone.

The company has told Engadget however that "that there were some slight issues with the order page and that it should be up within the “next week or two."

The Alex runs Android 1.6, has a 6-inch E-Ink top screen and a 3.5-inch color, touchscreen on bottom.



Pic via Slashgear:

Sex.com, one of the most expensive domain names on the Internet, will go up for auction on March 18th with an opening bid of $1 million.

The domain was originally purchased for under $100 in 1994, and then sold in 2006 for $14 million to Escom LLC, who could not afford the payments and then defaulted the site to DOM Partners, the lender who backed the $14 million bid.

The question remains as to whether Sex.com is worth $1 million, let alone the $14 million it sold for just a few years ago. Even so, auctioneer Richard Maltz says: "We don't know who's serious and who's not, but prospective bidders need a $1 million certified check. It should be interesting."

We will report on the final selling price on the 18th.

According to the latest February data from comScore, Bing continues to take more search market share, again at the expense of Yahoo.

Market leader Google grew from 65.4 percent to 65.5 percent while Yahoo fell from 17 percent to 16.8 percent. Bing was the biggest riser, from 11.3 percent to 11.5 percent.

Ask remained about flat at 3.7 percent, and AOL stayed completely flat at 2.5 percent.

Overall, total US core search volume increased 10.4 percent year-on-year.

Gizmodo is reporting today that Sony Japan has announced the release of standalone shutter glasses that can be used alongside the company's upcoming 3D-supporting HDTVs.

Roughly converted from yen, the Sony TDG-BR100 and TDG-BR50 active shutter glasses will cost $133 each, with a June release date. The infrared emitter necessary to drive the glasses will cost $55 extra.

Besides the high price for the TVs themselves, the glasses are in themselves a significant investment, especially for a family with kids.

Giz does note however that Sony's prices are way above what the norm should be, and one manufacturer even says "their shutter glasses would cost about 1/4 Sony's current asking price."