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Following in the footsteps of the iPhone 3GS Supreme, which cost an "Australian gold mining magnate" $3 million, comes the PlayStation 3 Supreme, a gold and diamond encrusted system that will cost you about £200,000.

Created by Stuart Hughes, the Supreme has 1600 grams of 22 carat gold and the disc loading entrance has 58 "superbly cut 0.5 carat diamonds" as well.

Stuart Hughes says they have three units available. Hey, at least its cheaper then the £299,995 Stuart Hughes Wii.

After word spread that Apple had rented a stage for a "major" announcement in January, the rumor mill was at full speed that the oft-rumored Apple-branded tablet may finally be a reality.

The Financial Times, the Wall Street Journal and Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster all had stories over the past few days, claiming that a "a major product announcement" was set for January. Munster gives it a 50/50 chance of being the tablet, while the WSJ says Apple is already debriefing media companies on how their content would work on the devices.

Munster said the tablet would likely be 7-10 inches, and would be priced between $500-700, giving it competitiveness in the netbook market without actually being a netbook. The tablet's OS would be a tweaked iPhone OS, or a multi-touch-enabled Mac OS X.

Additionally, the device could have 3G wireless integrated, and could be sold through cell phone carriers. Covering all bases, the tablet could also include e-book software for books that could eventually be sold through the iTunes Store.

Comcast, the ISP found guilty of throttling bandwidth of BitTorrent users without first letting the public or the FCC know, has settled its class-action lawsuit today, agreeing to pay $16 million (minus $3 million in fees) to customers who were affected by their actions.

Says the ISP: "We are pleased to have reached a settlement in these consolidated class action lawsuits. Although we continue to believe that our network management practices were appropriate and in the best interests of our customers, we prefer to put this matter behind us and avoid a potentially lengthy and distracting legal dispute that would serve no useful purpose."

Comcast was sued by customers who claimed the throttling of P2P traffic violated consumer-protection laws by misrepresenting the service they were paying for, which claimed "unfettered" broadband in TV commercials and online.

The FCC got involved after the word of the throttling went public via bloggers, and the committee ruled that Comcast must change its network-management practices. The ruling was appealed however, and the new case begins in early January.

Large book retailer Borders has confirmed this week that the chain does not intend to build and sell their own e-reader, despite rivals Amazon and Barnes & Nobles seeing strong demand for their e-reader devices, the Kindle and the Nook.

CEO Ron Marshall added: "I don't anticipate us doing our own e-reader for a whole variety of reasons, not least of which is that we're not a technology company. We're booksellers."

Instead, the retailer will partner with the new Kobo e-book service, and make its book collection and content available to as many e-readers as it can. Kobo is set to launch in March, and Borders owns a 20 percent stake in the venture.

The e-book service should include a library of two million purchasable books, 1.8 million free books, and subscriptions for newspapers and magazine. Kobo will be compatible with the Nook, Sony Readers, iPhones, Android devices and BlackBerrys. Notably absent from the list is the Kindle.

A U.S. federal court has ruled against torrent indexer isoHunt today, ruling the site is guilty of inducing copyright infringement. Claiming the case is so similar to that of Napster and Grokster in the 1990s, the case will not get a full trial and was given summary judgment.

The case, which began in 2006 when Columbia, Disney, Tristar, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal and Warner Bros issued a complaint against the site and owner Gary Fung, seems to be finally over, with the site seemingly going the way of Mininova, which removed all illegal torrents in November, at least in the U.S. It should continue to run full steam in Canada.

The ruling says Fung ran the site with “purposeful, culpable expression and conduct, aimed at promoting infringing uses of the websites.”

In their case, the defendants pointed out many cases in which users of the site were encouraged to pirate, including torrent categories such as "top 20 movies," or the ‘Box Office Movies’ section of the site which encouraged users to upload the top 20 highest-grossing movies of all time.

Final Fantasy XIII, the latest game in the franchise that has sold 92 million copies, has helped boost PlayStation 3 sales in Japan, despite its hefty price tag of 9,240 yen ($103 USD).

"Make no mistake, this should help lift sales of the PlayStation," adds Yusuke Tsunoda, analyst for Tokai Tokyo Securities. "The Wii has peaked out, but PlayStation is still on the upswing."

The game doesn't go on sale in Europe or the U.S. until March, but developer Square Enix says it expects 2 million copies of the game to sell in Japan by that time. Investment bank Barclays says it expects worldwide sales of the game to reach almost 6 million.

In Japan, 1 million units were sold on opening day, and Enterbrain says the game will likely increase PS3 sales by 500,000 units.

According to former Microsoft executive and current Google exec Don Dodge, the software giant is now like how "IBM was in 1985" with stagnant growth, and slow innovation.

Although Microsoft remains the leader in a few areas, namely its operating system and productivity suite, competitors are trailing not so far behind, with Google and Apple being "faster" and "more innovative."

"Very few companies can dominate an industry for more than 20 years," Dodge said. "It is just the natural competitive cycle."

Dodge also says that tech companies perform better with company founders still at the helm, and Microsoft has lost this advantage with Bill Gates and Paul Allen stepping down from their daily roles. Steve Jobs of Apple, as well as Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google remain active at the heads of their respective companies.

The former executive also named a few of Microsoft's glaring failures, calling Windows Mobile "obviously behind" the trend which is now led by the iPhone, and newcomer Android. Vista was a "large disappointment" as well, but Windows 7 helped to "redeem" that mistake.

AnandTech is reporting today that the Unreal Engine 3, the technology behind games such as Gears of War 2, has now been successfully run on an iPhone 3GS and a 3rd gen iPod Touch.

Says the editor: "The demo is both playable and has a flythrough. It’s using a modified Unreal Tournament level previously shown off at GDC. A virtual thumbstick on the left side of the screen controls your movement, while tracking your thumb in the lower right corner of the screen controls the camera. Just tap the screen to shoot. Mark said this is a tech test bed and they’re experimenting with several different control schemes including ones with tilt."

There is obviously more to be added, but the news is impressive to say the least. CES should bring more answers as well, says Epic, the company behind the engine.

Submitted earlier this month for approval, Qik's live streaming app is now available in the iPhone App Store.

The new updated app, dubbed Qik Live improves on the popular software which before could only record and upload video. Live allows for real-time streaming of your recorded video and works via the 3G cell network or Wi-Fi, and will work for all generations of the iPhone.

Streams can be public for all Qik users or private, as well as optional geo-locating, down to exact street and position. Movement will then create a virtual map trail for others to follow.

Qik Live is free but you must have 3.1 firmware installed.

According to a Harris Interactive survey of U.S. Internet users, it appears the average users spends about 13 hours a week online, however, the range is very large.

Over the past decade, online time has doubled from just under 7 hours in 1999 to the current survey results. At its peak, in October 2008 (during the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the upcoming election of President Obama), online time was over 14 hours.

For age breakdowns, the group spending the most time online was the 30-39 age group, with an average of 18 hours. 25-29 year-olds spent 17 hours on average, as did 40-49 year-olds. In total, there are about 184 million adults online, the same number for the most part as 2008.

“The increase in the number of hours spent online in the last two years compared to all previous years is striking. It probably reflects a growing ability to use the Internet, an increase in sites and applications, increased TV watching online and increased purchasing online,” said Harris. “Also, hours online may have increased because of the recession. Going online is free; going out usually costs money.”

Warner, Universal and Fox, three of the major Hollywood studios, announced in the last quarter that the popular Redbox kiosks would not be allowed to offer new releases of their films for the first 30 days after launch, taking a shot at the growing kiosk market which offers movie rentals for $1-a-night. The three studios account for 40 percent off the entire rental market.

Redbox has signed workaround agreements and continues to offer the titles, and has sued the studios as well. The kiosks continue to offer street-date films from Sony, Disney, Paramount and others.

According to Merriman Curhan Ford analyst Eric Wold, new popular releases such as The Hangover from Warner and Inglourious Basterds from Universal were stocked in about 85 percent of all Redbox kiosks on launch day, but it is still unclear whether they have one disc of the title, or twenty.

"We know that copy depth on workaround titles is going to be lower than for titles [Redbox gets] through distribution agreements," Wold told VB. "But in my discussions with Coinstar, they stress their workarounds are centered around getting as many copies in as many kiosks by Friday night."

Microsoft has applied for a a patent dubbed "Avatars Individualized by Physical Characteristics," meaning the company is considering introducing avatars that will look the gamer behind the controller.

Says the application, via Eurogamer: "An Avatar generator for a virtual environment reflects a physiological characteristic of the user, injecting a degree of reality into the capabilities or appearance. Thereby, many of the incentives of the real world are replicated in a virtual environment.Physiological data that reflect a degree of health of the real person can be linked to rewards of capabilities of a gaming Avatar, an amount of time budgeted to play, or a visible indication. Thereby, people are encouraged to exercise. Physiological data that reflect the health and perhaps also mood also improve social interaction in virtual environments. People seeking to meet and become acquainted with particular types of people are not thwarted by the artificiality of Avatars."

The data can accessed from third-party health repositories, a physiological sensor, or a health care smart-card.

Telefonica has announced its purchase of the VoIP provider Jajah for 145 million euro ($210 million USD).

Jajah is available in 200 countries and has a consumer base "in the millions." The service is used in many social networking apps as well as instant messaging (IM) clients.

The deal will be completed when it gains official approval from the Spanish version of the FTC, the CNC.

Telefonica is the first major carrier to purchase a VoIP provider, likely signaling the worry that traditional voice services on mobile phones will move to Internet calling in the next few years, especially with the broader release of 4G networking.

In November, Google announced its intent to purchase mobile advertising giant AdMob for $750 million USD.

This week, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has said they are looking closer into the deal, seeing if the purchase would violate anti-trust regulations.

Google notes that mostly all acquisitions that get "second requests" from the FTC still end up getting approved, however, the time frame for the acquisition is now in the hands of the anti-trust regulators.

"We know that closer scrutiny has been one consequence of Google's success," adds Paul Feng, a Google product manage. The company remains optimistic the purchase will be approved.

According to TechCrunch, about 500,000 Barnes & Noble's Nook e-readers will have shipped by March, despite the company only making 60,000 of the device available in December 2009.

ODM Foxconn will step up manufacturing in the new year after B&N's low supply in 2009 despite high demand.

The bookseller has also told would-be consumers that new online orders will not ship until February 1st, leaving many consumers waiting over a month for their device.

In comparison, the Amazon Kindle is said to have sold between 300,000-500,000 units in its first full year in 2007, however, the technology available in the Nook and even the Kindle 2 is a far cry from the original e-reader device.