Latest news

Apple has won their appeal in a class-action lawsuit that was aiming to hold the company responsible for possible hearing loss caused by iPods.

The appeals court said that the plaintiffs failed to show that iPod use posed "unreasonable risk of noise-induced hearing loss."

Apple has sold over 220 million iPods since 2001, and each unit comes with a warning telling users to listen to their music and movies at "safe" volume levels.

"The plaintiffs do not allege the iPods failed to do anything they were designed to do nor do they allege that they, or any others, have suffered or are substantially certain to suffer inevitable hearing loss or other injury from iPod use," Senior Judge David Thompson added. "At most, the plaintiffs plead a potential risk of hearing loss not to themselves, but to other unidentified iPod users," he concluded.

Jack Yates, an employee of an LA DVD duplication company, made a private copy of Paramount's 2008 flop The Love Guru before the movie hit theaters, and decided to distribute it to his family and some friends.

One promotional copy was supposed to be created for the Jay Leno show, but Yates made two copies instead. He was captured on surveillance camera however, and in 2008, Yates pleaded guilty to the theft and was sentenced to six months in prison.

One of the friends he distributed the film to decided to upload it to public torrent tracker Mininova, and this week Mischa Wynhausen has pleaded guilty to uploading the copy and was sentenced to three years probation.

While Wynhausen’s was much more severe than that of Yates, Yates initially lied to authorities and denied the crime. They then promptly showed him video of his theft. Wynhausen cooperated from the outset.

Regardless of the pre-release upload, the Love Guru was a complete flop, both critically and at the box office where it only made $40 million worldwide with a production budget over $60 million.

The latest rumor from the boys over at BoyGeniusReport is that the upcoming Nexus One Android phone will have multiple models, the first of which will be for T-Mobile users (confirmed) and the second will have native AT&T 3G support.

The AT&T model will a "second unlocked" version, says the report, with the first model being locked to T-Mobile.

Confirmation will come on January 5th.

Pic via Engadget:

The James Cameron epic Avatar has already surpassed the $1 billion milestone globally, making it the fourth-biggest movie of all-time, in just 16 days of release.

According to figures from Fox, the movie has hit $1.02 billion, with about $350 million or so being domestic box office sales. The distributor expects overall domestic sales to surpass $500 million.

The top three movies of all time are Cameron's Titanic at $1.8 billion, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King at $1.12 billion, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest at $1.07 billion. Avatar is expected to move into 2nd place by the end of the month.

"This is like a freight train out of control," added Fox distribution executive Bert Livingston. "It just keeps on going."

Expected to add to foreign sales is the fact that Avatar has just begun playing in China, and will reach Italy next week.

Avatar had a reported production budget of $230 million with a marketing budget of $130 million.

Alfred Hightower, wanted in Indiana for drug dealing and possession has been apprehended in Canada this week after Blizzard gave up his personal details from the popular online game World of Warcraft.

Deputy Matt Robertson and Major Steve Rogers were in charge of the investigation and say the breakthrough came after a tipster somewhat mentioned Hightower's addiction to the online phenomenom. "We received information that this guy was a regular player of an online game, which was referred to as 'some warlock and witches' game," said Roberson. "None of that information was sound enough to pursue on its own, but putting everything we had together gave me enough evidence to send a subpoena to Blizzard Entertainment. I knew exactly what he was playing — World of Warcraft. I used to play it. It's one of the largest online games in the world."

The so-called "subpoena" was just a polite request to Blizzard, but it paid off as the developer released Hightower's IP address, account information, billing address and his online screen name to the authorities.

Ex-Google China president Kai-Fu Lee has thrown in his own predictions for the much-hyped but still not official Apple iSlate tablet, saying that he believes the tablet will be unveiled January 26th, will cost under $1000 USD and will have 3D graphics.

Lee continued: "Most surprising: Apple predicts production of nearly 10 million [units] in the first year!"

The exec cited a close friend with knowledge of the situation, which seems more credible given Lee's former title and his former job at Apple in the 90s.

The iSlate will have a 10.1-inch multi-touch screen, support for e-books and videoconferencing, "3D graphics support" and a virtual keyboard like the one used on the iPhone/iPod Touch.

Continuing on, Lee says the device will weigh half of what the MacBook Air weighs.

Amazon has released the list for sales for 2009 in the "Video Games" category of the site, including all games, consoles, and accessories.

The Nintendo Wii overwhelmed the entire sales list, taking nine out of the top ten spots.

The top 10 list (plus other notables):

01. Wii
02. Wii Remote controller
03. Wii MotionPlus
04. Wii Nunchuk controller
05. New Super Mario Bros. Wii (Wii)
06. Wii Fit Plus (Wii)
07. Wii Sports Resort (Wii)
08. Wii Fit (Wii)
09. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 (Xbox 360)
10. Mario Kart Wii (Wii)

Panasonic and Sony have introduced the new i-MLSE (Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation) method this week, increasing the per-layer storage capacity of Blu-ray discs from the current 25GB to 33.4GB.

Tech-On! says the new method can use existing Blu-ray equipment, a "blue-violet laser diode with a 405 nm wavelength, and an object lens with a numeric aperture (NA) of 0.85."

i-MLSE will be proposed to the BDA for widespread adoption, and Sony being a founding member should mean eventual adoption of the standard.

Google's Chrome browser has surpassed Apple's Safari in market share for the first time ever, according to the latest NetApplications stats, seeing large growth to move to 4.63 percent, just ahead of Safari's 4.46 percent. Overall, Chrome moved 18 percent from 3.93 in November.

Firefox declined to 24.61 percent, and Internet Explorer continued its long term downtrend, falling to 62.29 percent.

Chrome's big jump can mainly be attributed to the release of Chrome for Mac (beta) and the addition of official extensions for Windows users and continued delays by the Mozilla team.

Foxconn Electronics has filed a report today with the Taiwan Stock Exchange (TSE) denying a Digitimes article that had claimed that Foxconn was taking orders for an Orange-branded Android phone.

The manufacturer also added that it has "no intention of competing directly with its clients."

Digitimes says that the Foxconn-Orange deal was done through a sales agent and despite the denial, the manufacturer is indeed developing Android handsets for Orange.

Adds DT: "By acting through arrangements with the sales agent, FIH is able to say it is not violating its policy of not competing directly with its clients, the sources pointed out."

Wireless carrier Orange UK has noted today the launch of "high definition calls", an upgrade to call quality.

The updated voice service will use Wideband Adaptive Multi-Rate (WB-AMR) for speech transmission which allocates 5x more bandwidth for a call than normal 3G voice, while using the same or only slightly more data. Orange says that two users calling each other with HD calling should expect the clarity to be as if both "were actually in the same room."

It is still unclear however if any current handsets can be updated to support WB-AMR, but Orange will have new phones available with the standard supported in 2010 alongside a wider rollout.

LG has released the full specifications for the first American Mobile DTV device, the DP570MH.

The unit has a 7-inch, 480 x 234 resolution screen and can natively playback DVDs via the built-in drive. Making it a "Mobile DTV" device is the fact that it has a TV tuner that can pick up live TV, even while in fast moving vehicles.

The TV can playback live video for 2.5 hours on full charge, and has about 4.5 hours of battery life when used as a DVD player.

Mobile DTV is free, but the device will have $250 MSRP when it ships in a few months.


Pic via Electronista:

The Palm App Catalog has hit its first major milestone today, 1000 apps, giving Pre and Pixi users a myriad of viable options to download for their smartphones.

In comparison however, the Android Market has over 16,000 apps available and the Apple App Store has 100,000.

There was little access given to Palm's webOS SDK in the first few months of the Pre's release which led to little developer support and overall malaise. That should not be a problem now, and especially when the phones go off Sprint exclusivity in the next few months.

Despite a deal looking unlikely as late as December 30th, Fox and Time Warner have come to terms over programming fees, meaning TWC subscribers will not have their Fox and 20 other News Corp. stations pulled.

TWC has over 20 million cable subscribers in metropolitan NYC, LA, and other smaller markets.

Unfortunately, neither company would reveal the financials of the deal. Fox was looking for $1 per month per subscriber for the signal, even though it had once given the programming away for free.

"We're pleased that, after months of negotiations, we were able to reach a fair agreement with Time Warner Cable — one that recognizes the value of our programming," added Chase Carey, News Corp. COO.

The video pretty much speaks for itself here but the FPSECE was updated recently to version 0.10 and with it came multi-touch support. This vid shows the PS1 classic Tekken 3 being played on the HTC HD2 phone with full touchscreen.