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During their keynote last night, Sony revealed the next step in their mobile strategy.

The company has renamed their PlayStation Suite to PlayStation Mobile and added their first third-party partner, HTC.

HTC's One X appears to be the first PlayStation Mobile-certified device, giving would-be gamers a chance to play games on a good device not created by Sony.

The PlayStation Mobile developer program has been in open beta since April.

Hopefully Sony will expand these partnerships to all major Android smartphone makers in the near future.

Toshiba has finally revealed the ultrabook they teased at CES, the Satellite U845.

The ultrabook will be the cheapest available, at a $699 MSRP.

For your money, you get a 14-inch display with 1366 x 768 resolution and a 500GB hard drive. The boot drive is a 16GB SSD for faster start-up.

At the base price, your ultrabook is powered by a Sandy Bridge Core i3 CPU. Ivy Bridge will be available at higher price points. Ports include Ethernet, HDMI, VGA, two USB 2.0 sockets and one powered USB 3.0 connection. As with other Toshiba ultras, the keyboard is backlit.

The device is not necessarily light, however, at 3.8 pounds.

Nintendo had arguably the best keynote of the week, since they showed off their new hardware, the Wii U.

Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo of America, started off the program showing the final design of the GamePad tablet and the Wii U hardware itself, in sleek black.

The company then confirmed New Super Mario Bros. U, which is of course similar to past games but with new features and mechanics. 5 players can play, one with the tablet and four others with Wii motes. There also seemed to be a new suit that comes from eating acorns. You can also play with Yoshi.



Next, Fils-Aime announced that Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Video, and YouTube content will be available to Wii U gamers in the future: "In the future, we'll show you how the Wii U will integrate and elevate entertainment in your living room."

The boss then showed a montage of upcoming games including Batman Arkham City: Armor Edition, Darksiders 2, Tank! Tank! Tank!, Tekken Tag Tournament, Trine 2: Director's Cut, Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor's Edge, Mass Effect 3 and Aliens: Colonial Marines. Ubisoft had 8 titles in total with the coolest being ZombiU, which really showcased the Wii U's tablet features:

During their keynote yesterday, Microsoft confirmed Internet Explorer is headed to the Xbox 360.

The browser's expansion had been oft-alluded to over the course of the last six months.

As with most other features of the Xbox 360, you will need a Xbox Live Gold membership to access it. Microsoft did not give an exact date except to say it will be released in the fall.

Internet Explorer for Xbox will bring "for the first time, a fast, fluid, Web experience in the living room," said Mark Witten during his speech.

The "coolest" part of the demo was the use of Smart Glass. By integrating the platform into the browser, users can "scroll around the page, click links, and pinch and zoom from their smartphone or tablet."

Vid/pic via Cnet:

Sony has unveiled their first ultrabooks this week, the VAIO T series and VAIO Series Z.

The first is the VAIO T13, an aluminum case with a 13.3-inch display (1366-by-768 resolution), your choice of a new Intel Ivy Bridge ultra-low-voltage processor, an SSD and HDD, and ports like USB, VGA, HDMI, SD and Memory Stick.

Unfortunately, the T13 isn't the lightest or thinnest ultrabook on the market, weighing in at 3.5 pounds and .71-inches thick. It is, however, one of the cheapest around, starting at $769.99.

The Series Z has a 13.1-inch screen with a full 1080p resolution, weighs in at 2.6 pounds and is thinner, at .66-inches thick.

Although their devices control just 3 percent of the global market, devs are flocking to the Marketplace, which has now seen its 100,000th app published.

AAWP says apps are being published at a rate of 313 per day.

Over the last three months, alone, 26,493 apps have been added. Overall, 23,825 different publishers have submitted apps.

Of the over 100,000 published, there are 88,371 apps live (available for download, across 60 countries).

Surprisingly, the market hit the milestone faster than Android did but slower than iOS.

AAWP also notes that "it took Windows Phone 14 months to reach 50,000 apps, but only another 5 months to double that figure to 100,000. The 50,000 app mark was reached on December 27th, 2011, the 60,000 mark on January 22nd, 2012, the 70,000 mark on February 23rd, and the 80,000 milestone on March 26th, the 90,000 milestone on April 30th. It has taken an additional 33 days to reach the 100,000 mark."

At their press event yesterday, Sony unveiled some important news for the PS Vita handheld.

The company announced that popular apps like Hulu Plus and Crackle will be hitting the handheld, "soon."

Unfortunately for those abroad, the streaming video services are U.S.-only, but they should be welcome additions to those with subscriptions.

Sony recently added a dedicated YouTube app to the device, and MLB.TV, Amazon Instant Video, Vudu, Sony Music Unlimited, and ESPN logo are expected to be added in the future.

Secondly, Sony noted that PSOne Classics are headed to the PS Vita store over the summer, finally giving gamers the chance to purchase the games for their handheld.

When Google announced their plan to buy Motorola Mobility (MMI) last year the deal was widely praised by mobile industry analysts who predicted Motorola's phone patents would give Google the leverage needed to force Apple into a cross licensing agreement. Nearly ten months later, Google has finally cleared all the regulatory hurdles and the buyout is complete, but if anything it seems that the licensing disputes have multiplied and Google seems willing to fight dirtier than their opponents just to prolong the fight..

To appreciate the implications of where we are now you first need to understand how we got here. In fact you can trace the current web of lawsuits and patent claims all the way back to the 1990s when the US appeals court which holds the final authority over all patent cases (short of the Supreme Court) began broadening their interpretation of patent laws, suddenly rejecting a long established test and claiming that the standard it represented had never, in fact, existed at all. At the time it was perhaps reasonable to consider whether a bit of code could, in fact, be novel and original enough to be patented. At the same time they could have explored whether it is possible to narrow down a patent definition to a point where it protects only the novel and inobvious bits.

Sony hasn't let too much slip about its upcoming blockbuster God of War Ascension but today showed off a few minutes of gameplay that look just as awesome as past games in the series.

Other than explaining that the game will offer a cooperative mode, there is still little else revealed about the game, which is a Playstation exclusive and one of the most popular series for the consoles, ever.

The game is set for release in March 2013.

Sony saved the best for last today during its E3 press conference, showing off amazing gameplay footage for the upcoming "The Last of Us" blockbuster.

The game, developed by Naughty Dog, is a post-apocalyptic third-person survival action-adventure video game with two main protagonists, 14-year old Ellie and the older Joel.

In the footage/trailer, we follow both characters as they fight their way through an abandoned hotel.

Making the gameplay so incredible is the uniqueness of each situation, the subtleties of the environment/atmosphere and the actual fighting itself.

See it here:

Despite Facebook's ban on kids under the age of 13, there are millions of users out there who simply lie about their age to access the site.

The social networking giant has said today it is now testing ways for those young kids to participate in the site without needing to lie to gain access.

Although unconfirmed, the most likely way will be for the kids to have accounts connected to those of their parents or guardians, in which the parents have supervision of the account.

Facebook currently has the ban since it is federal law to obtain parental consent if a site or company wants to collect information about those under 13. Facebook relies on such information, and likely believes the parental consent requirement is much more extra effort than it's worth so a ban is just easier.

It is estimated there are over 7.5 million children on Facebook under the age of 13 who lied about their age to gain access.

Today during its E3 keynote, Microsoft showed its first trailer and gameplay footage for the much-anticipated Halo 4 title.

The game will hit shelves on November 6 2012.

Making this game different is the fact that Bungie Studios did not develop this one, after creating the first three. Halo 4 was developed by Microsoft's 343 Industries.

For those that have played the past games, Halo 4 takes place in the aftermath of Halo 3 and will continue the story of Master Chief as he "returns to confront his own destiny and face an ancient evil that threatens the fate of the entire universe."

The Xbox 360 exclusive will supposedly be the start of a new Halo trilogy.

Vid via Cnet:

ABI Research has posted their latest "Media Tablet Market Share Tracker" data and with it there were some interesting developments for the Q1 2012.

Apple shipped 11.8 million tablets during the quarter, thanks to the release of the new iPad and a price drop on previous models, crushing the competition.

Samsung came in second place with 1.1 million shipments, followed by Amazon.

Overall, there were 18.2 million devices shipped during the quarter, an 185 percent year-over-year gain. From the fourth quarter, shipments were understandably down significantly, 33 percent from the busy holiday season.

"A pattern similar to smartphones is also occurring in tablets," added Jeff Orr, group director, consumer research. "Apple and Samsung have demonstrated staying power while other tablet vendors ebb and flow like the tide."

RIM saw its shipments explode 233 percent, thanks to a price cut of their PlayBook tablet.

Apple continues to hold a 65 percent market share for shipments.

As reported last month, Google has purchased the ad-bar service Meebo.

Says Meebo: "We are happy to announce that Meebo has entered into an agreement to be acquired by Google!
For more than seven years we've been helping publishers find deeper relationships with their users and to make their sites more social and engaging.

Together with Google, we're super jazzed to roll up our sleeves and get cracking on even bigger and better ways to help users and website owners alike.

We've had a blast building Meebo so far and we're really excited to start the next leg of our journey.
Thank you all for coming along for the ride!"

Original story:

Google is on the verge of acquiring the Meebo social and messaging service. If accurate, the price tag could be as high as $100 million, say reliable sources.

The company was created in 2005 as an instant messaging add-on for browsers and has been expanded to a "full suite" of social and mobile apps. More importantly, the apps are available to consumers and publishers, each with the intention of making online communication easier. Meebo also has a new advertising format, the "Meebo Bar," which is found on many popular sites.

As expected, Microsoft has unveiled their Xbox Music service today during E3.

The service will be made available to Xbox 360, Windows 8 and Windows Phone users later in the year.

As is their new ecosystem standard, the service will use the Metro interface, and include a social networking aspect to see what friends are listening to.

Furthermore, Microsoft has kept the Zune Smart DJ feature from years past. The entire library of music will be over 30 million tracks.

Although not expressly saying it, the service will also be available on iOS, Android, and on desktops, as well.



(Pic via Verge)