Latest news

VG247 has come upon some screenshots of the debug build of the upcoming PlayStation 3 firmware update, version 3.20, which shows that 3D video output will soon be an option.

With developers now testing the 3.20 update, it shouldn't be too long until it hits gamers, likely within the next couple of months.

The new leak follows what Sony's John Koller confirmed last month, that "It’s gonna take just a simple firmware update which most people do regularly anyway, and that’s all it’s gonna take to accolade the PS3 to 3D gaming."

Users will of course need a 3D-capable HDTV and 3D glasses, which many consider a gimmick, but it is nice to know the option will be there, regardless.

Google has taken down a few of the most popular music blogs available on Blogger this week, leading to an avalanche of criticism. Google, for their part says the sites were taken down after repeated copyright claims.

A few of the most popular sites, Pop Tarts, Masala, I Rock Cleveland, To Die By Your Side, It's a Rap and Living Ears were taken down without warning, but a few are back up, at their same URLs.

Blogger product manager Rick Klau wrote of the controversy: If Google receives "multiple [Digital Millennium Copyright Act] complaints about the same blog, and [we] have no indication that the offending content is being used in an authorized manner, we will remove the blog."

For their part, many of the sites in question have taken down songs before without question when asked, and some have the songs up legally.

LG has announced at the Integrated Systems Europe show this week that it will be bringing a 15-inch OLED HDTV to the U.S. market by July.

The display will also be the first mass produced OLED TV to achieve 720p resolution, managing 1366x768. The OLED display will have a contrast ratio of over 1,000,000:1.

It is unclear what the price of the display will be, but it is expected to be between $1800 and $2200.

A game collector has just paid an astonishing price for a 20-year old NES console on eBay, $13,105, and no, that isn't a typo.

The system came included with one of the top three rarest Nintendo classic games in existence, Stadium Events, which was released in 1987 by Bandai. There are said to be only 10 copies of the game left in the world.

Besides Stadium Events, the console came included with copies of a few other games, but the system wouldn't have likely topped $100, even with the other games.

View the auction here: ORIGINAL NINTENDO GAME SYSTEM LOT/ CONTROLLER/ 5 GAMES

The EU is expected to approve the search deal between Yahoo and Microsoft, says Reuters, with the 10-year partnership going into effect soon after approval.

The European Commission has until February 19th to approve or block the deal.

"I expect clearance without any concessions next Friday," says the insider source.

The partnership is expected to help both Bing and Yahoo take some market share from Google in the search engine market, although Google has an estimated 90 percent of global share compared to 7.4 percent for Bing and Yahoo combined.

True Move, the current exclusive Thai iPhone carrier should have some competition coming its way soon, with an industry source telling Reuters that Total Access Communications will soon begin selling the phone, starting in March.

TAC is owned by Telenor of Norway, which sells the iPhone in a few countries.

True Move has had its monopoly since January 2009, with 100,000 sold in the time frame. The carrier says it hopes to sell another 120,000 in 2010.

Thailand is one of a few Asian nations that have over 90 percent mobile phone saturation rate.

TiVo has started the process to bring closed captions to DVR boxes, filing a patent this month with the USPTO.

Enhanced Television (ETV) and other closed captioning technology will be used to deliver the data.

ETV metadata has been recently integrated into most cable broadcasts, and the new patent will give TiVo a way to deliver the data in a "more interactive method," says Electronista. The interactive menu will include the text, sound effects and a digital video.

Samsung's first Bada OS phone has been leaked today, dubbed the Wave, and featuring 720p video recording among other notable features.

The touchscreen device has a 3.3-inch Super AMOLED display, a 1GHz processor, 5MP camera, 2GB internal memory, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. The display is said to be "incredibly" vibrant and removes all outdoor visibility issues.

Bada has the apps menu, contacts, and calling always pinned on the homescreen, and widgets are available for news, weather and more. Multi-touch is standard.

The phone should ship in April.

Skyfire has announced their acquisition of Kolbysoft, the team behind the Steel Web browser on Android devices.

The Skyfire browser is available currently for Windows Mobile and Symbian Series 60 devices and offers full Adobe Flash and Microsoft Silverlight support through cloud-based processing.

Steel is a free, popular browser available in the Android Marketplace.

Financials of the deal were not revealed.

Confirming yesterday's reports that the company was headed directly to bankruptcy, Veoh founder Dmitry Shapiro has said that the company would be liquidating and filing Chapter 7 bankruptcy.

Says Shapiro, speaking about the lawsuit Universal Music Group filed against them in 2008: "The distraction of the legal battles, and the challenges of the broader macro-economic climate have led to our Chapter 7 bankruptcy."

Chapter 7, unlike Chapter 11 usually means the company is shutdown for good, rather than reorganized. The liquidation confirms that.

Private investors had invested $70 million in the streaming site.

Both Sony and Microsoft have revealed the numbers behind their console online services, with both services growing significantly over the year.

Sony CEO Jack Tretton says that the free PlayStation Network (PSN) now has over 40 million users, with the service growing 155 percent in December alone.

Says Tretton: "We’ve also successfully established that we’re not just a disc-based powerhouse, but we’re also a digital powerhouse. PlayStation Network experienced huge growth last year, marking its best revenue month in December – a 155% increase in sales from the previous year. More than 40 million of you all over the world are coming to PlayStation Network to access multimedia content and to enhance your social gaming experiences."

Microsoft says Gold subscription XBL members now total 23 million. Additionally, users logged in at the same time reached an all-time high last month, hitting 2.3 million.

After falling to under 10 percent in December, Bing has regained some ground in search engine market share, moving up to 10.9 percent. Google, the dominant market leader, fell 1 percent to 66.3 percent overall, with Yahoo remaining in second at 14.5 percent share.

Smaller rivals AOL, Ask and MyWeb combined for 5.5 percent, a small gap up from December.

The charts:

January:


December:

Compaq has launched its new AirLife "smartbook" this week, an interesting move away from skimpy netbooks.

The AirLife includes a Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, has 3g wireless built-in, Wi-Fi and runs the Android operating system.

Most notably, the smartbook includes a 10.1-inch, 1024x600-pixel touchscreen TFT display, allowing for multi-touch.

There is a 16GB SSD, so internal memory may become a problem fast, but the computer should also load everything lighting quick. The battery life is promised at 12 hours, with 10 days of standby.

There was no word on price or availability as of yet, but subsidized the smartbook is expected to cost under $300.

iTunes is on its way to hitting 10 billion music downloads, and to celebrate the milestone, the company is giving away a $10,000 iTunes gift card to a lucky winner.

Check the promo here if you are interested: http://www.apple.com/itunes/10-billion-song-countdown/entryform/

Google Chrome for Mac beta, which was first released in December, has updated today to version 5.0.307, adding extensions and bookmark sync among other features.

There are currently over 2200 extensions available in the Chrome gallery.

Users with multiple computers can now sync bookmarks as well, no matter if you have a PC, Linux or Mac machine.