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One of the most popular stories of the day has been the ongoing PlayStation 3 glitch which has blocked gamers from accessing the online PlayStation Network.

Sony promised a fix within 24 hours and has delivered, repairing the glitch and giving users access again to the Internet from their consoles.

The official reason for the bug was problems with the internal clock on older "fat" PS3 consoles. Affected models recognized 2010 as a leap year, which it is not.

"Having the internal clock date change from February 29 to March 1 (both GMT), we have verified that the symptoms are now resolved and that users are able to use their PS3 normally," writes Sony.

As a last resort, the company had told affected gamers to not turn their PS3s on, or risk losing data and trophies.

The European Commission has cleared the proposed merger of Orange and T-Mobile in the UK, a deal that would create the largest mobile operator in the United Kingdom. The Commission cleared the merger after Orange and T-Mobile agreed to make changes to ensure competition in the market and to give up some of the wireless spectrum that would be allocated to the new company.

"I am happy that we managed to resolve the competition issues in this case quickly in close cooperation with the Member State concerned," European Competition Commissioner Joaquin Almunia said in a statement. The Commission had raised concerns about the merger, in particular what effect it would have on 3UK, owned by Hong Kong-based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.

"With the merger... there will be only four players in the UK, hence the concerns about the fate of 3UK," it said," the commission said.

"In order to address the competition concerns... the parties concluded a revised agreement with 3UK which will secure its position as a competitive force on the market. The Commission concluded that the commitments offered by the parties remedy the identified competition concerns."

According to research firm Enterbrain, the ever-popular Nintendo Wii has hit the 10 million unit sold milestone in Japan this week, 170 weeks after its initial launch.

The firm says as of yesterday, Nintendo has sold 10,009,736 units in the nation.

The only console to reach the milestone faster in Japan was the PlayStation 2 which hit the figure in 131 weeks, a full 10 months quicker.

Sony's current generation console, the PlayStation 3 has 4.77 million units sold in Japan, adds the firm, with the Xbox 360 in third at 1.24 million units sold so far.

Sony is still working on a fix for a suspected bug in the clock functionality of the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console that caused a variety of errors and problems for PS3 and PSN gamers since last night. The bug only appears to affect the "fat" older version of the PS3, but not the newer slim models.

Sony has advised users of the non-slim models to leave their consoles off until a bug fix is available, saying that certain functionality might be affected by errors, and a risk of not being able to restore certain data. The PlayStation-maker listed the following problems are being reported by users.

• The date of the PS3 system may be re-set to Jan 1, 2000.
• When the user tries to sign in to the PlayStation Network, the following message appears on the screen; "An error has occurred. You have been signed out of PlayStation Network (8001050F)".
• When the user tries to launch a game, the following error message appears on the screen and the trophy data may disappear; "Failed to install trophies. Please exit your game."
• When the user tries to set the time and date of the system via the Internet, the following message appears on the screen; "The current date and time could not be obtained. (8001050F)"
• Users are not able to play back certain rental video downloaded from the PlayStation Store before the expiration date.

"We hope to resolve this problem within the next 24 hours. In the meantime, if you have a model other than the new slim PS3, we advise that you do not use your PS3 system, as doing so may result in errors in some functionality, such as recording obtained trophies, and not being able to restore certain data." said the company.

The European Commission has put into effect a new EU-wide rule that will cap 'shock' mobile phone bills built-up when users unsuspectingly surf the Internet for extended periods of time without a data plan or when roaming.

Customers must now tell their carrier at what point to cut them off, and if they do not by July 1st, then the cap will be set at 50 euros. On the carrier side, the companies will have to warn users whenever their bill hits 80 percent of the limit.

Adds European Commissioner for Digital Agenda Neelie Kroes: "Protection against data roaming bill shocks is a useful step towards building customers' confidence to use mobile networks to surf the internet when travelling around Europe. Such confidence is essential if people and businesses are to use the internet to its full potential."

Data roaming charges have led to massive bills in the past, with some unlucky users getting hit with $1000+ bills for downloading movies or watching TV while data roaming.

A new study from the Pew Internet & American Life Project has revealed that 61 percent of Americans now get their news online, although local TV remains the most popular method of getting the news.

Overall, 50 percent of Americans read local print newspapers, and 17 percent read national papers. 59 percent of Americans get their news from online and offline sources, with only 2 percent getting their news exclusively from online sources.

Figuring out where users get their news is not as easy, however. 65 percent do not have a favorite site, and 80 percent use 2-5 sites for their daily news. 56 percent use portals such as Google News, Yahoo News or AOL, and younger users follow specific news organizations or journalists via Twitter and Facebook.

18 percent listen to daily podcasts from the news organizations.

What are people searching for when they go online? 81 percent looks for the weather, 73 looks for national events, 66 percent look for health events, 64 percent look up finance or other business. Rounding up the top 5 is international events, at 62 percent.

Pics via RWW:

Thanks to a new investor note by Canaccord Adams analyst Peter Misek, it appears that Apple will have hardware shortages for the iPad tablet this month, claiming that manufacturer Foxconn has an "unspecified production problem."

For its first month of availability, Apple may only have 300,000 tablets available for ship, about a third of what Apple's internal hopes had been.

Misek even believes that Apple may push back launch until April, to ensure they have 1 million tablets ready to ship.

Initially, the iPad was delayed thanks to "glass strength issues," says Electronista, and production was slowed to make sure quality was up to par.

Apple has declined to comment.

Continuing to create a unified Ovi brand, Nokia will change their current Music Store to Ovi Music, selling DRM-free music tracks.

Under the Ovi brand, Nokia offers games, GPS maps, videos, and now music. The brand started on specific smartphones but has now expanded to most of the Finnish company's mobile phones.

As is the current trend, Ovi Music will offer the tracks in DRM-free format, allowing for playback on all devices.

Ovi Music, when fully integrated, will be available here: Nokia Music.

On February 15th, Microsoft unveiled the Windows Phone 7 Series, the long anticipated new generation of the Windows Mobile series.

The operating system tries to differentiate itself from the iPhone and Android phones, which use home screens of widgets and icons, and Microsoft says it has tried to blend applications together for a more "integrated experience," allowing the OS and applications to "share information with the user in a natural and seamless fashion."

The homescreens include "People," "Pictures," "Games," "Music+Video," "Office," and "Marketplace."

Today, Engadget has shown off the first Windows Phone 7 partner device, from LG, although it is still a prototype. There is little details on the actual hardware, but they have posted a quick video and some pictures.

Some gamers who have tried to play popular PS3 titles today might have had a nasty shock. Thousands of users are being prompted with an error - "8001050F – Hardware failure. Cannot update Firmware or connect to Internet" - and report not being able to connect to the PlayStation Network (PSN), play certain titles offline, access or play downloaded PSN content and more.

The fault is being blamed on a bug with the consoles clock or calendar which oddly set the date back to Dec 31, 1999 for many users in the switchover from February to March. Sony is well aware of the issue and made a statement earlier. "We have found out that some users are experiencing a network connection failure when signing on to PlayStation Network," the PlayStation maker said.

"We are currently looking in to the issue to identify the cause of this network connection failure and will update further information as necessary on the PlayStation blog and official website. We appreciate your understanding and continued support."

The problem only seems to affect users of older "fat" PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles, while owners of the Slim PS3 models reportedly have no problems so far.

The BBC Trust has revealed to The Register that it will not investigate a move by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) that resulted in open source software being unable to play content from the iPlayer service. The BBC blocked out open source implementations of the Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) streaming content from the iPlayer service through the use of SWF Verification.

"The decision to block open source plugins is a matter for BBC Management. The Trust has not received any complaints on this issue and has no plans to look into it further at present," a BBC Trust spokeswoman told The Register.

Adobe has effectively made it impossible for develops to create a fully-compatible open source Real-Time Messaging Protocol (RTMP) client. RTMP is used by Flash for streaming video, and it is publicly documented, but Adobe has guarded the RTMP content protection measures. SWF Verification is a security measure that can lock out an unauthorized client from multimedia content.

In 2007, Universal Music Group made a stir when it forced YouTube to remove a video of a toddler dancing to Prince's "Let's Go Crazy." YouTube complied with the video removal, leaving mother Stephanie Lenz shocked and angry. Lenz teamed up with the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) to prove that the use of the song in the video constituted fair use.

Lenz and the EFF decided to bring the issue to a judge where they wanted a declaration that the video was "fair use" and was protected under current copyright laws in the United States, and Lenz also sought damages against Universal for the "meritless takedown request". Disputed takedown requests are the subjects of many a rant on YouTube from regular users. In cases, DMCA takedowns have been issued against users as a way to silence them.

Universal didn't want to back down without a fight, saying that Lenz had bad faith and unclean hands in pursuing damages. Unfortunately for Universal, a California district court judge has rejected Universal's assertions and granted partial summary judgment to Lenz. The decision paves the way for Lenz to collect attorneys fees.

Microsoft Corp. has begun offering alternative web browsers to users of its Internet Explorer browser in Europe. Delivered via Windows Update, Windows XP, Vista and 7 users will be prompted to make an "important choice" on what software they want to use to browse the web. The move is part of a settlement with the European Commission.

Users of the mentioned operating systems that have already chosen something other than Internet Explorer as a default browser will not be prompted to make a selection. For users with Automatic Updates switched on, the screen should appear within the next few days without any user intervention. If Automatic Updates are turned off, the download can be gotten from Microsoft's Windows Update site itself.

The full list of Web Browsers on offer:

• Avant
• Chrome
• Firefox
• Flock
• Green Browser
• Internet Explorer
• K-meleon
• Maxthon
• Opera
• Safari
• Sleipnir
• Slim

And here is what to expect to see.

Introduction Screen

When the first screen displays, it will also install a shortcut to the Desktop in case the user would prefer to check it later. In Windows 7, it automatically unpins Internet Explorer from the taskbar. If the user selects any other browser, or even opts to stay with Internet Explorer, then it will have to be pinned to the taskbar manually again. This is done easily by locating an Internet Explorer shortcut in the Start Menu or Desktop, right-clicking on it and clicking "pin this program to taskbar".

Selection Screen

The second screen provides the user with a selection of web browsers to choose from. In accordance with the agreement between Microsoft and the European Commission, the browsers will appear in random order. Additional browsers can be viewed by scrolling to the right. The screen provides three options; "Install" to install the selected browser, "Tell Me More" to get more information about a specific browser (provided by the vendor of the browser) and "Select Later" to make a decision at a later time.

Sony Computer Entertainment America CEO Jack Tretton has made it abundantly clear this weekend that the PlayStation 4 is not coming any time soon.

Tretton says the PS3 is only "in the first 25% to 30% of this generation," meaning there is at least 6 more years before a PS4 is sitting on retail shelves.

"I would say we're sitting in the catbird seat," Tretton added, via CVG. "We've just passed the third year of the PlayStation 3 and we're just hitting our stride. And I don't think anyone is saying, 'This is a five-year cycle; what's new on the horizon?' I can't even imagine what can be done technically beyond the PlayStation 3 in the near future. A question I often get is when we are going to see PlayStation 4. When somebody can craft the technology that exceeds what we're able to do on the PS3, but we are still just starting to harness it."

Although not related, Tretton also said he expected God of War III sales to "blot out the sun."

Androidandme has reported today that all American Android smartphones will be receiving an update to firmware version 2.1, although some will have features missing.

Notably included is the now aging T-Mobile G1, the first Android phone ever, which is still currently running firmware 1.6, like many other devices.

The report does note that some phone will have to be wiped first before they can be upgraded, which shouldn't be too big of a problem as long as you backup your device beforehand. Some phones will also need to be connected to a PC for the install to work, although it is unclear which phones will need the extra effort.

The updates are expected to "still be on schedule for Q2 2010," with the site saying the G1 and the myTouch 3G getting the update first.