Latest news

Despite numerous online reports that the company was shutting down completely and firing all its employees, Psystar's lawyers have called the reports untrue, and that the company will continue to fight in court.

K.A.D. Camara, of Camara & Sibley says: "Psystar does not intend to shut down permanently."

The Psystar site was down yesterday but has since been re-opened, possibly as a way to squash the rumors.

The illegal Mac clone maker was issued a permanent injunction to stop selling hardware running Apple's Mac OS X operating system and they have until December 31st to comply.

Psystar only remains a company, it appears, to fight in court the legality of the $50 Rebel EFI software that allows Intel-based PC users to install and run Mac OS X. "Customers can buy Rebel EFI, a machine from us or from Dell, and with Rebel EFI, install OS X on whatever computer they please," noted Camara.

According to an Impress report, the Apple iPhone owns about 46 percent of the entire Japanese smartphone market, with the iPhone 3GS controlling 21.4 percent and the older iPhone 3G controlling 24.6 percent.

Domestic smartphone sales have taken a giant hit thanks to the Apple devices, with the Sharp's Windows Mobile-based Advanced W-ZERO3 losing half of its market share in just one year, falling to third place.

77 percent of iPhone users use data for over 30 minutes every day, with Android users a distant second at 66.8 percent. WinMo users are even farther behind at 54.6 percent.

Albert Gonzalez, the 28 year-old hacker convicted of stealing and reselling over 170 million credit and ATM card numbers, has asked the presiding judge in his case for a reduced sentence, citing Asperger's syndrome, a form of autism.

In September, Gonzalez pleaded guilty to 20 counts of identity theft, wire fraud, computer fraud and conspiracy after hacking the corporate systems of TJX Companies, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority, Dave & Buster's, Hannaford Brothers, 7-Eleven and Heartland Payment Systems.

Gonzalez's lawyers have submitted a psychiatrist evaluation which concluded that the hacker's behavior did indeed shows signs of Asperger's.

The convicted felon faces 15 to 25 years for his crimes and is asking the judge for a sentence closer to 15.

Sony has announced that owners of the Sony Reader e-reader device will have more content available to them via the Reader Store, including new magazine and newspaper subscriptions.

The New York Post and the Wall Street Journal will be available as subscriptions, and the Reader Daily Edition will get daily downloads from popular papers such as the Boston Globe, the International Herald Tribune, the New York Times and almost a dozen others.

Barron's and other magazines will arrive via the e-reader as they would if you had ordered a physical copy, weekly, bi-weekly or monthly.

There was no word on price.

Following a disappointing quarter that showed a 4 percent decrease in sales and a 60 percent drop in revenue, Palm CEO Jon Rubinstein has confirmed the upcoming webOS firmware update, likely version 1.3.5 for its smartphone line.

For the quarter, Palm shipped 780,000 phones, but only sold 573,000, a 4 percent drop year-on-year. Losses totaled $85.3 million USD and revenue fell from $191.6 million to $78.1 million. Palm's stock fell as much as 18 percent after the news.

The firmware update will remove the app limit cap of 64MB, and will improve overall performance, stability and speed. Wi-Fi reception will be stronger and the Pixi will see more features added.

Rubinstein did not say when the update will hit, but many believe it will come at the CES event next month alongside the debut of new Palm smartphone models.

According to a new Tweet from Sprint, the carrier's Android devices will update in the next couple of months from firmware 1.5 to 2.1, skipping over 1.6 and 2.0 completely.

Says the Twitter update: "Slight clarification on Android OS updates for the HTC Hero & Samsung Moment. Will be updating straight to Android 2.1, not 2.0, in 1H2010."

2.1, shown off most recently on the Nexus One, will have "3D elements," animated backgrounds, a webOS-like pull-out app and preview tray, as well as more home screens among other improvements.

Released just this week, the Zune HD Twitter app is already being updated after users criticized the application for automatically censoring any explicit words written by users in their Tweets. Perhaps more upsetting was the fact that there was no option to turn the censoring off.

The censoring is a new trick for a Twitter app, with more popular clients such as TweetDeck not even having censorship as an option. Twitter's direct site does not censor either.

Microsoft responded within hours to the online complaints (via Cnet): "The recently released Twitter for Zune HD application has been abbreviating some explicit words in tweets when viewed on the device. However, these explicit words do appear in their full text on the Twitter site or on any other Twitter client. We have identified the issue and are taking steps to update the application as soon as possible to ensure Twitter for Zune HD users are able to view tweets in their original state."

The latest beta build of the popular torrent client uTorrent has added video streaming support, giving users the chance to preview and play their video files while they are downloading.

“Our hope is to transform getting media using uTorrent from a ‘load-wait-watch-tomorrow’ to more of a ‘point-click-watch’ experience,” says Simon Morris, BitTorrent VP of Product Management.

uTorrent is not the first client to add the feature, but uTorrent is the most popular client in the US and Europe, by far.

The new column, "Stream," is pretty straightforward. Hit the Play button and the video will begin to stream, however when it begins depends on how much you have downloaded and how many seeds. The better seeded, the better.

You can change the media player used for the streaming in the configuration page, and it is recommended to use VLC or MPC.

Avatar, the epic blockbuster from director James Cameron was released today worldwide but some viewers of German midnight showings were foiled by DRM, when the protection system caused the video to not be decoded for the digital 3D showing.

Originally reported by Heise.de, the digital 3D copies sent to German theaters had problems with its encryption and therefore could not be decoded.

TorrentFreak says "the complex DRM system, which involves several certificates and server-delivered time-sensitive keys for hard drives and projectors, failed in a way consistent with the movie’s epic status. Unfortunately, after working for several hours cinema workers failed to decrypt 150 gigabytes of data, which resulted in at least one location reverting back to the 2D version."

“We regret the failures and the associated discomfort, but we are confident that we will be able to play the premiere both in 2D and in 3D,”added Oliver Fock, general manager of CineStar group.

The Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA) has announced the release of the final Blu-ray 3D specifications this week, creating a uniform policy for future Blu-ray 3D compatibility, both for hardware and software.

The specification will also allow for the PS3 to playback BD 3D content in 3D.

Blu-ray.com adds that "the specification allows every player and movie supporting it to deliver full HD 1080p resolution to each eye. Moreover, the specification is display agnostic, meaning that Blu-ray 3D products will deliver the 3-D image to any compatible 3-D display, regardless of whether that display uses LCD, plasma or other technology and regardless of what 3-D technology the display uses to deliver the image to the viewer's eyes."

The PS3 PlayStation Home service has hit 10 million users, says Sony, a new milestone.

Additionally, Sony announced the launch of three new Home themes, based on Uncharted 2, Ratchet and Clank: A Crack in Time and MotorStorm.

"PlayStation Home is fast becoming the meeting place of choice between users and developers," added Dan Hill, SCEE European Home business manager.

"Every new game space enhances the overall experience for consumers, offering more variety, more choice and more enjoyment from a PlayStation Home session. The more game spaces there are, the better it gets, and the number of spaces keeps on growing."

"For developers, there's no better way of driving interest in their titles than giving fans a hands-on, interactive experience based around the game itself. A game space in PlayStation Home ought to be a core element of every studio's marketing strategy for new titles."

Facebook today has completed their privacy settings re-haul, and frankly it is pretty scary what is now available for the whole world to see. In an ironic moment, founder Mark Zuckerberg had his previously hidden personal photos plastered all over the Internet after the changes some of which show the founder "shirtless, romantic and even clutching a teddy bear."

One of the main changes is the addition of Publicly Available Information. Before, you were allowed to hide all info besides your name, but now PAI means that Your name, Gender, Profile photo, Current city, Friends, Networks, and Fan pages are available to all Facebook users, always, as well as search engines unless you specifically cut that part out.

If you are an active Facebook user, it is probably smart to check the Settings->Privacy Settings page and make sure you read through all the options.

It appears that the Google Nexus One smartphone may not be the only wild card the search engine giant has up its sleeve as the Washington Post is reporting that the company is creating a Chrome OS Netbook as well.

The sources say that Google is actively in talks with one hardware manufacturer about building a Google netbook, built directly to the specifications of the company. The company has even been given an RFP (request for proposal).

The netbook, if true, would hit for the 2010 holiday season and would be sold directly by Google. There will also be mobile connections, meaning it may be available with subsidy from AT&T or other carriers.

The WP article speculates that Google will move away from the Intel Atom processors found in most current netbooks and instead move to an ARM CPU, possibly the extremely powerful and not-energy-hungry Nvidia Tegra.

According to USA Today, citing data from the FBI, gaming console thefts have risen a giant 285 percent since 2007, mainly due to the jump in popularity of consoles in general, especially handhelds such as the DS and the PSP.

FBI representative Anthony Weiner adds: "They seem to become bigger targets for theft. It's the omnipresent, miniature electronics crime paradox: Even as crime goes down, when you have more electronics, you have more theft."

In 2007, overall gaming system thefts was 11,074. That number jumped to 21,732 in 2008 and has jumped to 42,615 so far in 2009. On the other hand, overall property crime (including electronics thefts) has fallen from 10 million in 2006 to 9.8 million in 2009.

Notes Larry J. Siegel, criminologist at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell: "Criminals are rational. They steal things that have high value, are easily transportable and easily sold. The most expensive thing in my house is my refrigerator, but nobody is trying to steal my refrigerator."

PSP and PSPgo owners can now download graphic novels to their handhelds from popular publishers such as Disney and Marvel via the PSN Digital Comics service which has gone live today.

There are currently 550 issues available at launch and prices range from $0.99 to $2.99. There are popular titles such as X-Men and Spider-Man already available.

To download the novels, users will have to update to the latest firmware update, install the reader, and then download what they want.

USAToday adds: I've tested out the Reader with a couple issues of Astonishing X-Men, and it seems to work pretty well. The readers uses an autoflow feature, where users click the directional pad to move between panels. Sometimes, the readers zooms in and out to show key sections of the panel or to get a better view of the text. Users also have the option of manually zooming and moving through the panels if they choose. The comics look sharp on the classic PSP model I used to test the reader.