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The company had been teetering on the brink for months now.

Game Group, based in the UK, has filed for bankruptcy protection, with UK and Ireland operations being turned over to Pricewaterhousecoopers, the massive accounting firm.

The company was behind the brands of GAME Group plc, Game Stores Group Limited, Gameplay (GB) Limited, Game (Stores) Limited, Games Station Limited, Game (retail) Limited and Gamestation Limited.

Pricewaterhousecoopers (PWC) has already closed down 277 of the company's 610 stores and has taken down the company's website for much needed maintenance. In addition, 2,104 employees are getting laid off.

"A number of parties who have expressed an interest in purchasing part or all of the business and assets of the group," added PWC (via TC). The gaming retailer had suspended trading of its stock on March 21st.

The company went bankrupt due to "serious cashflow and profit issues" brought on by high fixed-costs, "fluctuating capital requirements" and an international strategy that bombed.

A report in the Daily Mail shows the shocking story of Ivan Barker, who had the audacity to rob the same person twice, in broad daylight.

Barker recently stoke the laptop of wheelchair-bound Jacque Mathley. Barker, feeling guilty, later returned to Mathley's house and knocked on the front door. When Mathley answered, Barker said the police had instructed him to apologize and return the device.

Mathley let Barker in the house, and the two chatted. When he eventually went to the bathroom, Barker stole his replacement laptop and left the house.

This time, with a full name and description of the thief, Mathley testified and Barker was given four months in prison.

According to a recent interview, Zynga CEO Mark Pincus says the company is working on its back-end tech in an effort to get their popular games available on home consoles.

The tech revolves around transferring save-states between multiple gaming platforms, says Zebo, and the Xbox 360 was specifically mentioned by the CEO.

Zynga is the social gaming giant behind hits like Mafia Wars, CityVille and FarmVille. On Facebook alone, 200 million gamers play Zynga games each month.

Expanding to consoles is a natural progression for the company, although Zynga developer Brian Reynolds called the Xbox Live demographic "too small" during a presentation last year. Microsoft has over 30 million Xbox Live Gold subscribers.

Additionally, many of the company's popular games rely on touchscreens or are "point-and-click," neither of which will work well with an Xbox 360 controller.

It will be interesting to see if Zynga tries to expand, and what kind of games will make their way over to the console set.

AOL has hired Evercore Partners to help it sell its 800-strong patent portfolio.

The company has confirmed it has received numerous buyout offers from private equity firms, with the firms wanting to take AOL private. Such firms include Providence Equity Partners Inc, TPG Capital and Silver Lake.

So far, no deal has been struck yet.

Starboard Value, a hedge fund that owns 5 percent of AOL, says the firms believe AOL's patent portfolio could bring in over $1 billion in licensing income if used correctly.

The company, once valued at over $100 billion, now has a market cap of just $1.75 billion thanks to slowing advertising growth and the decade-long decline of dial-up revenue.

TiVo has announced changes to its Premiere lineup today.

The current 320GB model will be replaced with a 500GB HDD model, which the company says will be good to store up to 75 hours of HD content.

Along with the storage add comes a price hike, however. The set-top will cost $150, which is compared to the current $100 price tag. The monthly service fee for the box will drop to just $15 per month with a one-year contract, making the box's price hike more easy to swallow.

If you need multiple boxes for the home, that price will drop to $12.99 per box.

Additonally, the other models in the lineup will see price hikes, as well:

- TiVo Premiere XL $249.99: Records two shows at once and up to 150 hours of HD content

- TiVo Premiere Elite $399.99: Records four shows at once and up to 300 hours of HD content

Earlier this month we reported that Instagram, the massively popular iOS photo-filter and sharing app, is finally headed to Android.

Co-founder Kevin Systrom had demoed the app at and even 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.

Today, the company has made a sign-up page available to Android owners, allowing them to be first when the app is eventually released.

By adding your email, you will be notified when the beta is made available. The app is expected to launch in early April.

Register here: Instagram Android

(Pic via NextWeb)

MOG has released its free iPad app this week.

The company's official iPad app follows the release of its native Windows app on Friday.

MOG, the digital music subscription service is already available for iPod Touch, iPhone and Android. MOG has 500,000 active users although it is unclear how many are paying subscribers. To use the mobile apps you will need to be a subscriber.

The company has been in the news recently as it appears Beats Audio, the producer of audio products and equipment is close to purchasing the service.

HTC recently purchased Beats Audio, which was started by hip-hop mogul Dr. Dre and executive Jimmy Iovine, and it appears the companies are not done with acquisitions. Allegedly, Beats and MOG have been in talks for weeks and an announcement could be made next week.

MOG has already raised $33 million in venture capital since launch from investors, and the buyout price is expected to be higher than the current investment. MOG also owns a very successful ad network for music sites.

If accurate, HTC will likely discount the service or even offer it for free with new HTC smartphones as a way to entice new customers. HTC has struggled to keep their growth afloat thanks to the rise of Samsung in the smartphone market.

Research In Motion has announced that it will be giving developers prototypes of its new BlackBerry devices starting in early May.

2000 BlackBerry 10 models will be given out at the BlackBerry Jam conference in Florida, giving the devs a chance to build apps for the newly created operating system.

Says Alec Saunders, RIM's vice-president developer relations: "It's a huge step forward on our path to eventually launching BB10. It's tangible evidence of the company making progress to finally shipping the device."

While the underlying OS will be the same in the test models, the company says the UI will be completely different on finished consumer models: "The experience on this device from a consumer's perspective is not in any way indicative of what the final experience on BlackBerry 10 will be like. We are holding that back to create the interest around that at launch time."

The BlackBerry 10 smartphones are expected to go on sale in September and will be RIM's last hope at relevancy in the smartphone market in which it is now only a bit player.

Following a recent report that employers are now asking for Facebook details for prospective employees, the social networking giant has responded.

Facebook Chief Privacy Officer Erin Egan says: "If you are a Facebook user you should never have to share your password, let anyone access your account, or do anything that might jeopardize the security of your account or violate the privacy of your friends...As a user, you shouldn't be forced to share your private information and communications just to get a job."

Lawmakers and civil rights groups have been up in arms since the report was published, and with good reason.

Facebook also added: "If an employer sees on Facebook that someone is a member of a protected group [e.g., over a certain age, etc.], that employer may open themselves up to claims of discrimination if they don't hire that person."

A congressional bill blocking employers from seeing prospective employee's Facebook pages is in the works, as well.

Dr. Raymond Soneira of Displaymate Technologies has reported this week that the new iPad's battery gauge is lying when it says "100 percent."

The new iPad holds a significantly larger battery than its predecessor, the iPad 2, and therefore requires many more hours to charge than previous generations.

Soneira says: "I measured the power actually drawn by the AC adapter and found that the new iPad continues to charge for up to 1 hour after it claims to reach 100%. This affects the battery run time if you stop charging when it says 100%."

As stated, if you want full capacity from your new iPad battery, you will need to keep charging the battery for another hour after it says "100 percent" in the meter.

The iPad is certainly not the first device to have a battery gauge which lies but it is likely the most high profile. Apple could potentially fix the issue in future firmware updates.

Rovio has said today that "Angry Birds Space" will not be headed to Windows Phone devices, which should hurt the fledgling operating system.

Says the developer: "We're the No. 1 app in the Windows Phone app store, but it's a big undertaking to support it, and you have to completely rewrite the application."

The popular developer has no plans to bring the game to the platform in the near future although the company did leave the door open saying it is looking to bring the game to "all relevant platforms."

Analysts see the move as a huge blow to Microsoft and Nokia, who are the primary backers of the operating system and have invested many millions into marketing and new designs: "This is a worrying development for Windows Phone because it suggests that Rovio does not have much confidence in its future," says Nomura analyst Richard Windsor. "As the standard version is already number one on the Windows Phone app store, it gives a strong indication that no one else will expect to be making money writing for this platform either."

French President Nicolas Sarkozy has made it illegal for French citizens to visit Web sites that encourage terrorism or hate crimes.

The move comes after the psychotic al-Qaeda-affiliated Mohamed Merah killed Jewish children and French soldiers before dying in a firefight with police officers.

Says Sarkozy: "From now on, any person who habitually consults Web sites that advocate terrorism or that call for hatred and violence will be criminally punished. France will not tolerate forced recruitment or ideological indoctrination on its soil."

The EFF believes Sarkozy has gone too far, saying: "There's no guarantee that criminalizing access to hate speech or terrorist content will end the very real problems of hate crime and terrorism. Extremist violence didn't start with the Internet and it won't end with it, either."

Sarkozy is no stranger to censorship, either. Last month he was caught censoring Twitter users who were critical of him or his administration.

Facebook has confirmed that it did indeed purchase patents from IBM.

"I can confirm that there was a purchase but I don't have any other details to share," said Facebook spokesman Larry Yu.

The purchase was in response to a lawsuit brought by Yahoo, which Facebook also responded to: "We're disappointed that Yahoo!, a longtime business partner of Facebook and a company that has substantially benefited from its association with Facebook, has decided to resort to litigation."

Original story:

According to a new report, Facebook has purchased 750 patents from IBM.

The patents will be used protection as the company defends itself from a new lawsuit brought by Yahoo.

USAT says the patents cover "technologies dealing with software and networking."

Yahoo recently sued Facebook over patent infringement, claiming the social networking giant infringed on up to 10 patents relating to advertising, privacy controls and social networking. Facebook rejected the claims and says it will defend itself in court.

Both IBM and Facebook declined comment on the purchase.

According to multiple investors, the unlimited music streaming service Spotify is raising money again, with a huge valuation.

If accurate, management is valuing the company at about $3.5 billion, a huge jump from its valuation just last year of $1 billion. During the summer of last year, the company raised $100 million at that $1 billion valuation.

So far, investors have been reluctant to invest at the new valuation given that Spotify does not own any of its own content nor does it have exclusive rights to that music content. If the major labels were to pull their music from the service, Spotify would be worthless.

Spotify, which was wildly popular in Europe and expanded to the U.S. during the summer of 2011, allows users to choose music to listen to and stream, for free, for a limited amount of hours per month. Premium accounts, which range from $5-$10 per month, allow unlimited access to the music, including from mobile devices, and higher quality recordings.

If iMore is correct, the next iPhone will be more of the same, with little in the way of innovation.

The iPhone 5 (or possibly just "new iPhone") will have a similar sized screen to current models, at 3.5-inches, while the market has moved towards larger screens, with some even getting as big as 5-inches.

In an effort to make the phone more powerful, the company is looking to "reduce the size of the traditional 30-pin dock connector to something closer akin to a micro-dock so there?d be more room inside for other components" says the site, which will be the most innovative addition to the device.

As expected, the phone will have 4G LTE compatibility and an upgraded processor, either the A5X or an even newer A6 quad-core chip.

The phone will be released in October alongside the launch of iOS 6.