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BlackBerry has confirmed that they will be releasing a BlackBerry 10 tablet this year.

The company's last effort in the tablet market, the PlayBook, was an incredible failure. Sales were so low that the company was forced to liquidate hundreds of thousands of units at prices $200-$300 below MSRP.

While the company will be updating existing PlayBooks to BB10, as well, the hardware specs have begun to age and the company certainly knows that.

Sarim Aziz, the head of developer relations for Asia Pacific at BlackBerry, says 'the BB10 tablet is definitely coming later this year.'

The exec notes that the company's app store is approaching 100,000 apps after launching with 70,000 last month.

Sony's upcoming 4K movie service will be available to PS4 owners, and will require a ton of bandwidth.

Sony Electronics President and COO Phil Molyneux did not reveal too much about the service, except to note that major bandwidth will be a necessity, as most 4K movies will be over 100 GB large. Today's average Blu-ray-quality HD film can exceed 15-20 GB.

When asked how consumers in the U.S. would be able to handle such large files with typically low Internet speeds, Molyneux says they are certainly "challenges that we have to work through... we've got some very good ideas that will make that a comfortable consumer experience."

The company is also working on improved compression for smaller files, but that is still in early stages.

Earlier this week, the major ISPs in the U.S. rolled out the "six strikes" Copyright Alert System (CAS).

The system is designed to educate pirates on legal alternatives and to push them away from unauthorized downloads.

AT&T, Time Warner and Verizon had already revealed their six strikes proposals and today we have learned what Comcast and Cablevision will do.

For Comcast, the first step is annoying alerts. You will be emailed and receive pop-up notices in your browser if you are believed to have infringed any copyrights. The next step will require a member of the household to log in to their Comcast email account to dismiss the next alert. For strike three and four, Comcast says the language will get "more pronounced and urgent" and you will again have to log in to acknowledge alerts.

Pandora has said today that it will limit free mobile users to just 40 hours per month of music.

The move will help the company control rising royalty costs.

In its blog post, the company says the average free listener normally spends 20 hours listening to music throughout the course of the month, and not necessarily on mobile only.

The company adds that only 4 percent of active users ever hit 40 hours per month.

Per-track royalty rates have jumped 9 percent this year, following a trend since 2009. The rates are expected to rise another 16 percent by 2015.

If you hit the 40 hour mark, you can pay $1 for unlimited listening for the rest of the month, or just continue to listen on your PC.

Amazon has announced today that its Cloud Player is headed to the iPad and iPad Mini.

The tablet-optimized app is now available for free in the Apple App Store, allowing users to stream or download the music stored in the Cloud Player account.

Additionally, you will be able to manage and create playlists from the music.

Any song purchased through Amazon can be streamed for free and the first 250 non-Amazon-purchased tracks can be uploaded for free. After that, the cost is $25 for up to 250,000 songs.

The Cloud Player has been available for Android, the Kindle Fire and some other set-top boxes and TVs for some time. The app was made available to the iPhone during the summer last year.

It only lasted a few hours, but eBay has taken down an auction from a seller claiming to have a pair of Google Glass.

The auction went up to $15,900, showing massive demand for the augmented reality glasses that Google recently unveiled.

In the auction, the seller claimed he was able to purchase the glasses through Google's #ifihadglass competition. Unfortunately for the seller, the claim was completely false, as Google will not be letting winners know until mid-March. In fact, the competition only closed today. Winners are also barred from reselling the devices, as per Google's rules.

Here is the cache of the page (including the awfully written description):

Google Glasses ( Project Glass ) #ifihadglass Glasses

Last week, Canonical released their Ubuntu Touch developer preview for Nexus smartphone and tablet owners.

The company has announced today that at least 20 more devices will soon be able to flash the operating system, allowing for a much wider developer base.

Among the new devices are the Motorola XOOM, Sony Xperia S, Sony Xperia T, Samsung Galaxy S III (international, Verizon Wireless, and AT&T), Huawei Ascend G300, Samsung Galaxy S (GT-I9000), Samsung Galaxy S SCL (GT-I90003), Samsung Galaxy Note, Samsung Galaxy Note II, Samsung Galaxy S II (international), HTC One X, HTC One XL, HTC One X+ (multiple versions), Asus Transformer Infinity, LG Optimus 4x HD, Nexus S, Nexus One, Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 Wi-Fi and the Asus Transformer Pad.

Spotify has given iOS device owners a nice overhaul for their favorite app.

Version 0.6 brings most of the updates Android users have had over the past few months, including the "always-on" Now Playing bottom bar and the navigation sidebar.

Additionally, a few existing bugs have been fixed, such as the lock screen errors.

Full release list:

New: Shiny new interface. You can navigate around the app with a new sidebar. Check it out by swiping left-to-right, or by pressing the ≣ button in the top left of the app.
New: Now Playing bar. You'll always see what you're listening to along the bottom of Spotify. To switch tracks, just swipe along it. Tap or drag to see more information about the current track. Tap the cover art in the extended view to use AirPlay, and disable/enable shuffle and repeat.
New: Track menu. Tap the ... button on any track to see a redesigned context menu.
Fixed: "Track only available online" issues. This would sometimes appear after start-up, or when you'd been offline for a little while. Not any more.
Fixed: Lock screen will now always display the correct track.
Fixed: Shuffle now switches off after you've used "Shuffle Play" on an album or playlist.

PhoneArena has released a demo video showcasing gaming with a Nvidia Tegra 4 processor.

The company is using a reference tablet running the upcoming processing suite, and the site was able to test it at Mobile World Congress.

A few of the games that were pre-loaded were Vampire Hunter and Dead on Arrival 2, both of which are said to have played beautifully.

Nvidia says there are just 5 games that are optimized for the processor, Burn Zombie Burn, Carie: Blood Mansion, CODEX: The Warrior, Dead on Arrival 2, and RU Golf.

Check the video here:

Kim Dotcom has announced that he plans to add an encrypted email service to the newly launched "Mega" file sharing service.

The larger than life Internet rights activist recently announced that the service reached 3 million registered users in just one month of availability, with those users storing 125 million files.

Dotcom says, "it took [US cloud storage company] Dropbox two years to achieve that. We can see really high demand for this storage."

He then mentioned the email service, saying "we're going to extend this to secure email which is fully encrypted so that you won't have to worry that a government or internet service provider will be looking at your email."

Dotcom is still facing charges over Megaupload, which was the largest file sharing site on the planet before it was raided last year and shut down for good.

Earlier this week, HTC America announced that it would settle with the FCC over claims it did not "take adequate steps to eliminate security flaws" that eventually put millions of smartphone owner's data at risk of being stolen.

The FCC had claimed that HTC built millions of phones with security flaws that allowed for third-party applications to "evade Android's permission-based security model." Android, which will always give users notice if data is being revealed to third parties, was prevented from doing so by the flaws built into the HTC smartphones.

FTC officials had strong words for other OEMs that may be considering following in HTC's footsteps.

"To settle the case - the FTC's first against a device manufacturer - HTC has agreed to a far-reaching settlement that imposes a first-of-its-kind remedy: patching vulnerabilities on millions of mobile devices," FTC senior attorney Lesley Fair wrote in the commission's Bureau of Consumer Protection blog.

According to NPD, users of P2P services to download unauthorized music has fallen 17 percent year-over-year in the U.S. as consumers move towards legal alternatives.

Due to the drop, overall volume of illegally downloaded music fell 26 percent, a number that must certainly excite the record labels.

NPD's annual survey showed that piracy as a whole (for music) is falling in nearly every category.

Music files ripped from CDs owned by family/friends/acquaintances dropped by 44 percent, the number of files shared between hard drives fell by 25 percent and the volume of music downloads from cyber lockers fell by 28 percent reads the survey.

For most of those surveyed, the reason given for the slowdown in piracy was the readily available legal alternatives, such as Spotify, that offer unlimited offerings with the ability to search for tracks, new and old.

Today at the Mobile World Congress convention, LG unveiled the "world's smallest" wireless charger, clocking in at just 6.9-cm in diameter.

The device will use the Qi standard seen on rival chargers, and it also uses "electromagnetic induction technology, meaning users will be required to place their mobile device directly on the wireless charger itself in order to replenish the battery," says TH.

Dubbed the WCP-300, the new charger is compatible with standard 5-pin micro-USB chargers, and the company says the LG Nexus 4 and the LG Spectrum 2 can use the charger right out of the box.

"Wireless charging is the holy grail of smartphone user convenience," noted Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "With the WCP-300, LG was able to deliver both portability with top-class charging capabilities in a device no larger than a typical beverage coaster."

According to CEO Kevin Systrom, Instagram has now reached 100 million users.

The number is impressive in its own right, but even more so considering the exec made a similar announcement a year ago boasting 27 million users.

Reads part of the blog post: "Now, nearly two and a half years later, over 100 million people use Instagram every month. It's easy to see this as an accomplishment for a company, but I think the truth is that it's an accomplishment for our community. Now, more than ever, people are capturing the world in real-time using Instagram--sharing images from the farthest corners of the globe. What we see as a result is a world more connected and understood through photographs."

While the company was growing quickly on its own, it surely has had help after being acquired by Facebook for $1 billion last year. Zuckerberg and co. have integrated the service into the News Feed and added some marketing muscle.

Read the rest of the post here: Instagram 100 million

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie has signed a bill this week legalizing Internet gambling in the state, making NJ the largest such state to do so.

The bill will be on a 10-year trial basis, and Christie also "raised the taxes on the Atlantic City casinos' online winnings from 10 to 15 percent."

Nevada and Delaware were the only other states to have legalized online betting, but they are notably smaller in population than New Jersey.

"This was a critical decision, and one that I did not make lightly," Christie added. "But with the proper regulatory framework and safeguards that I insisted on including in the bill, I am confident that we are offering a responsible yet exciting option that will make Atlantic City more competitive while also bringing financial benefits to New Jersey as a whole."

The move will bring added revenue to the state, and also (hopefully) attract new gamblers to the physical casinos spread across Atlantic City. Comps such as free hotel rooms, tickets to shows, and meals and drinks can be accrued online and then redeemed in person.

Governor Christies' full speech: