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Music identification app Shazam has been updated for iOS this week, with version 5.0 bringing significant upgrades and features.

The app can now take just 1 second to successfully tag a music track, and can also find TV content.

Older versions of the app took as long as 30 seconds for tagging.

Along with the new speed boosts, the app has "improved" sharing with social networks while also adding Brazilian Portugese, Korean, and Spanish to the language support.

"We are committed to continually enhancing the Shazam App to ensure we deliver an industry-leading experience," said Alex Musil, EVP Product for Shazam. "With the release of Shazam 5.0 for iPhone and iPod touch, Shazam fans will be able to get the information they're looking for almost instantaneously, giving them lightning-fast access to content and a deeper experience surrounding the song, TV show or TV advertisement they have just tagged. Shazam delivers the fastest and most exciting way to discover, explore, purchase and share music, access more content about television shows, and get more information and even buy products and services from the world?s leading brands."

MetroPCS has announced that its unlimited-everything plan will be getting a price hike, and others will get throttling.

The plan, which used to cost $60, will now cost $70 per month. For $70, users get unlimited voice calls, texting, 4G LTE data, email and Rhapsody and MetroStudio video on-demand. The music or video services are new additions, and may be worth the extra price as they normally cost $10 per month, each.

Metro's $60 unlimited plan, which removes the MetroStudio, will begin throttling data after 5GB. The $50 unlimited plan will throttle after 2.5GB and removes both Rhapsody and MetroStudio. A $40 plan is available but speeds are throttled after just 250MB.

Says the regional carrier: "Even though 4G LTE speeds may be reduced, because of the 'always on' nature of our 4G LTE network, the experience for the majority of what a customer does on a daily basis, like Facebook, web surfing, etc., should continue to be solid."

The U.S.' third-largest carrier, Sprint, has confirmed today that its 4G LTE network will remain unlimited to subscribers, just like their 3G and WiMax networks are.

Rep Nichole Cappitelli confirmed the fact that LTE data plans would still have an unlimited option.

Sprint is rolling out their LTE network starting next year, after a failed experiment with the 4G-esque WiMAX.

The carrier remains the only of the majors to have a truly unlimited experience, as Verizon and AT&T have moved to tiered pricing and T-Mobile throttles data after 2GB of monthly usage.

Grooveshark has confirmed today that it has terminated its licensing contract with EMI, leaving the music streaming service with an uncertain future.

Says the company (Cnet): "Grooveshark was recently forced to make the difficult decision to part ways with EMI due to EMI's currently unsustainable streaming rates and EMI's pending merger with Universal Music Group, which we consider monopolistic and in violation of antitrust laws. To date, Grooveshark has paid over $2.6 million to EMI, but we have yet to find sustainable streaming rates."

The company has now lost support from the Big 4 labels and there is a pending lawsuit from each of them, as well. EMI also claims Grooveshark owes the label over $100,000.

While Grooveshark will now have to take down EMI's original recordings, but the music will most likely remain since user contributions are allowed on the service and not taken down until a DMCA notice is received by the service.

Google and Paramount Pictures have signed a licensing agreement for 500 films, bringing the movies to YouTube and Google Play in the U.S. and Canada.

With the deal, Google's catalog will jump to 8950 movies available. Most of the movies will be available for rental immediately, but some will be added over the next few months.

Says Malik Ducard, director of content partnerships at YouTube (via THR): "Paramount Pictures is one of the biggest movies studios on the planet. We're thrilled to bring nearly 500 of their films to movie fans in the U.S. and Canada on YouTube and Google Play."

Google currently has deals with Disney, Sony, Universal, Warner Bros. and 10 indie companies.

Making the deal somewhat funny is the fact that Paramount is owned by Viacom, who is currently in the appeal stage of a billion dollar lawsuit against YouTube for copyright infringement.

Folder and cloud sync service Dropbox has announced that referral bonuses will be doubled for the future.

Instead of the normal 250MB you get from referring someone who signs up for the service, you will now get an extra 500MB of space with a cap of 16GB.

Additionally, the person signing up will get an extra 500MB of free space to start the account, while Pro users will get 1GB with a cap of 32GB.

If you have been making referrals in the past, you will be receiving the new extra space, as well, over the next few days.

Until this week, the "double space" program had been available only to users with .edu accounts, aka students.

Last month, Yahoo sued Facebook over patent infringement. Today, Facebook has returned the favor.

Says the social networking giant: "From the outset, we said we would defend ourselves vigorously against Yahoo's lawsuit, and today we filed our answer as well as counter-claims against Yahoo for infringing ten of Facebook's patents. While we are asserting patent claims of our own, we do so in response to Yahoo's short-sighted decision to attack one of its partners and prioritize litigation over innovation."

Yahoo, in their original suit, said the patents are related to methods and systems for advertising on the Internet. The new suit accuses Yahoo of infringing on patents relating to its homepage, content optimization, relevance engine, Flickr photo-sharing service and advertising.

Yahoo's response to the suit: "We have only just received Facebook's answer and counterclaims, but on their face we believe they are without merit and nothing more than a cynical attempt to distract from the weakness of its defense. As we have made clear from the outset, the unauthorized use of our patented technology is unacceptable and must be resolved appropriately. Other leading companies license these technologies, and Facebook must do the same or change the way it operates. We have proposed that Facebook join us in discussions to resolve the matter, but our overtures have been rejected. As a result, we are prepared to continue to seek redress through the courts."

According to the latest figures from comScore, Android now controls over 50 percent of the U.S. smartphone market.

Up 17 points from last year, Android is now on 50.4 percent of all smartphones in America. The research firm says there are now 104 million smartphone users in the nation.

iPhone ownership has grown, as well, now taking 30 percent share, up 5 points from last year.

RIM, the maker of BlackBerrys, fell to 13 percent share, and Microsoft took 4 percent share. RIM has seen the largest decline over the years, falling from over 40 percent in 2008 before the launch of the iPhone to its 13 percent today.

Microsoft, with a new partnership with Nokia, is looking to take more share of the smartphone market and the Nokia Lumia 900 for AT&T is the group's first flagship for the U.S.

Amazon has announced that its Prime Instant Video streaming service is now available on the PlayStation 3.

Says the e-tailer:

Good news -- Prime Instant Video is now available on PlayStation 3. Since launching a year ago, we've more than tripled our library, including titles such as Sons of Anarchy, Downton Abbey, Lost, Glee, 24, Deadliest Catch, SpongeBob SquarePants, Office Space, The Graduate, The Last Emperor, The Thin Red Line, The Last of the Mohicans, and Brokeback Mountain.

Prime members get unlimited instant streaming of these titles and 17,000 more. If you're already a Prime member, just register your PlayStation 3 and start watching now. If not, start your one-month free trial of Amazon Prime today.

Amazon Prime is a $79 per year service offered by the company to customers who want to take advantage of free 2-day shipping and $3.99 same-day or overnight shipping on all items sold or fulfilled by Amazon.

You can also rent or buy 120,000 movies and TV episodes.

More details here: Amazon Instant Video on PlayStation 3

Wii U Daily has revealed the alleged launch date for the upcoming Nintendo Wii U console.

Citing an email obtained by the editor, the launch is expected for November 18th in North America, with a Japanese launch a week afterwards.

The email was sent to Japanese retailer Media Land's employees.

Nintendo has remained very quiet about the Wii U since its big splash during last year's E3 event. The company confirmed a 2012 release but this is the first we have heard of a more concrete date.

In 2006, the gaming giant released the Wii on November 19th so the rumor at least makes sense. However, the company almost always releases its consoles in its home nation of Japan before the U.S. so take this with a grain of salt.

In an interview today with CNBC, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster has said he believes RIM is "going out of business."

The analyst was asked whether he thought there was room in the market for the BlackBerry maker, which he flatly answered "No."

RIM recently had a terrible earnings quarter, showing a loss of $125 million compared to a profit of $1 billion in the same period last year. The company's new BlackBerry 10 devices have been delayed for so long that they are already outdated and are still months away from release.

Additionally, the analyst says Apple stock shares will head to $1000 a share, making the company close to being worth $1 trillion.

On the Windows Phone front, Munster says Nokia and Microsoft are strong together but the market has become a "two-horse race between Apple and Samsung."

Late last month, Instagram, the massively popular photo-filter and sharing app, made a signup page available for would-be early adopters of the application for Android.

As of an hour ago, anyone who signed up to be notified has received an email to download the application.

When demoing the app, co-founder Kevin Systrom noted that "in some ways, it's better than our iOS app. It's crazy." The app will give Android owners a chance to share their filtered photos on Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and other social networks in addition to email and messaging.

Download it here: Instagram in the Google Play Store

Despite not being on too many devices as of yet, Android 4.x Ice Cream Sandwich is being adopted more quickly.

For the two-week period ended April 2nd, ICS jumped to 2.9 percent share, compared to 1.6 percent share beforehand.

ICS was only at 1 percent as of February, thanks to being available only on the Galaxy Nexus and the Asus Transformer Prime, but a consistent rollout is making the distribution of the OS pick up quickly.

The number is of course, still tiny, but the jump is promising for Google's biggest update of the operating system.

Android 2.3 Gingerbread remains the leader, at 63.7 percent, followed by Froyo (2.2) at 23.1 percent.

According to sources cited by VG247, the Xbox Next (codenamed Durango) will launch in time for the holidays of 2013.

Additionally, the console will come standard with a Blu-ray drive, say the sources.

On a darker note, however, the sources say Microsoft will require an "always-on" Internet connection in an effort to block out piracy. The DRM scheme, which has been seen on PC games from Ubisoft, requires gamers to have an active Internet connection, even if playing in single-player mode.

More notably are the specs expected for the upcoming console. The sources says the machine will have two GPUs, be variants of the AMD 7000 series, but not run in an SLI/CrossFire formation. Instead, the GPUs "will be able to work independently, drawing separate items simultaneously."

Additionally, the new console will have "four or six cores," with one devoted to Kinect and one reserved for the OS.

Windows 8 will make it a lot easier for consumers to reformat their computers, removing the need for a disc.

If you scroll to the bottom of the "General" tab in the Windows 8 settings page, you can choose one of two actions if your computer is running sluggishly or has been taken over by malware.

The first option is a PC "refresh," which will re-install Windows 8 without removing your system data or files. The option will even leave some of your apps unaffected.

A second option is to completely start fresh, with a "reset," which will remove all data from the PC and restore it to its factory state. The Reset option is very similar to what is available on ultrabooks, which have custom versions of Windows and protected partitions to allow for quick reformats to factory "out of the box" condition.

The new options will be similar to how Android and iOS smartphones/tablets allow you to quickly wipe your data and start fresh with just one or two clicks.