Latest news

Amazon has started their 1 cent smartphone promotion again.

Head over to Amazon Wireless and check a decent selection of Android and BlackBerry devices are practically free.

Part of the list (via Into):

HTC: Freestyle , HD7S, Inspire 4G, DROID INCREDIBLE 2, ThunderBolt 4G, EVO Shift 4G, Inspire 4G, Trophy, Status
Motorola: DROID X2, XPRT, Atrix 4G, DROID 3 Global, DROID PRO
RIM: BlackBerry Torch 9810, BlackBerry Torch 9860
Samsung: Infuse 4G, DROID CHARGE 4G, Stratosphere 4G, Nexus S 4G, Captivate, Focus, Conquer 4G, Doubletime, Transform, Replenish
Sony Ericsson: Xperia PLAY

Hitachi has announced it will begin selling 4TB drives this month.

The new Deskstar 7K4000 hard drives will be some of the first in their capacity with 7200rpm spindle speed.

Xbit explains that the "model (HDS724040ALE640) boasts 4TB capacity and uses five previous-generation 800GB platters with 446Gb/square inch areal density, Serial ATA-600 interface, 64MB cache as well as 7200rpm spindle speed."

The new hard disk drives also use the 4K format.

Additionally, the company will offer Deskstar 5K4000 drives with slower 5400rpm speed. Those drives also use five 800GB platters and not newer 1TB plates.

For now, the higher capacity drive is available in Japan for ¥28800 ($377), an expensive price even with the baked-in "flood" premium.

In an effort to turn around its struggling electronics and TV businesses, Sony has replaced its president and CEO Sir Howard Stringer with current consumer electronics boss Kazuo Hirai.

Stringer will move to a board member position. The exec had this to say: "Kaz is a globally focused executive for whom technology and the cloud are familiar territory, content is highly valued, and digital transformation is second nature. I believe his tough-mindedness and leadership skills will be of great benefit to the company and its customers in the months and years ahead."

Hirai, at 51, will be Sony's youngest CEO ever.

The new CEO will have a tough road as Sony is no longer the name it used to be. The company has fallen far behind Samsung in the TV business, and has almost been erased off the map in the media player, tablet, and smartphone markets. The company has seen four straight years of losses, and a generationally-strong Yen is certainly not helping matters.

Redbox has let its current wholesale deal with Warner Bros. expire as the two companies fight over the now standard "delay window" on new releases.

In the current deal, in exchange for drastically reduced prices, Redbox would have to wait 28 days after release to make new titles available for rent. Warner, in its new deal, wanted to up the delay window to 56 days, outraging rental companies and consumers alike.

Now, Redbox will have to purchase the titles from retailers at a much higher price, but they are free to offer the movies on day one.

Redbox senior vice president of marketing Gary Cohen would only comment to say it "will work to provide Warner Bros.' movies through alternate means."

Warner shot back: "The consumer is best served by a windowing and pricing structure that ensures a healthy film business continuing to deliver quality movies. We hope to continue discussions with Redbox and reach a mutually agreed upon solution to this situation, but we fully intend to do what is best for our business, our consumers and the industry as a whole."

According to Xbox's Larry Hryb, the Xbox 360 is adding CinemaNow and Crackle apps to its entertainment center.

Posted earlier today, "Major Nelson" writes: New apps are now available on Xbox LIVE: Crackle (Australia, Canada, UK & US) and CinemaNow (US)

Crackle is Sony's free movie and TV streaming service and CinemaNow is the movie and TV rental/purchase service. The Crackle catalog is small but CinemaNow's is significant.

Microsoft has been making significant investments into its Xbox Live service over the past year, in an effort to turn it into an entertainment "powerhouse." The service now offers, besides gaming, live streaming TV, video and music.

Facebook, the behemoth social network with over 850 million users around the globe has finally filed to go public.

The offering will be the largest ever, surpassing Google's in 2004. The company will go by the ticker "FB" later this year and the major banks Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs are the underwriters.

In their S-1 document, the social network reveals it had revenue of $3.71 billion in 2011, up from $1.97 billion the year before. Net income was $1 billion, compared with $606 million the year before, making the site wildly profitable. However, using simple math, Facebook is averaging just over $1 profit per user, a very low number by any metric.

Social gaming giant Zynga "accounted for approximately 12 percent of its revenue in 2011," showing how strongly the gaming company's fate is tied to Facebook.

When the company goes public, it will raise $5 billion, with a company valuation over $75 billion. CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has a 28.4 percent stake in the company, making him one of the richest men in the world. The valuation will put Facebook squarely ahead of most major companies in the world.

Nintendo has announced a new deal with free-hotspot.com to offer free Wi-Fi hotspots to European 3DS owners.

The deal will give gamers access to just over 5000 hotspots around the continent.

Free-Hotspot has hotspots in chains like McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and Subway, Ibis Hotels and Etap Hotels.

To get access, 3DS owners just need to download the browser and update to the latest system firmware. When completed, the device will automatically connect when in range.

Users will be able to browse the web for free, or play multiplayer games with friends or online.

Samsung has confirmed today that it will not be launching the Galaxy S III smartphone this month, as rumored.

Many had speculated the phone would be put on display at this month's Mobile World Congress in Spain and Samsung had even suggested it last year. Unfortunately, the company has had to delay the launch:

"The successor to the Galaxy S II smartphone will be unveiled at a separate Samsung-hosted event in the first half of the year, closer to commercial availability of the product," said a spokesperson. (Verge)

Samsung's latest note seems to be in-line with other reports which speculated the launch could come in June, when the phone would be available globally and in the U.S. There was a multi-month lag between launches for the Galaxy S II that the company wants to avoid this time around.

The S III will likely come with a quad-core processor among other new additions.

T-Mobile has started a new unlimited plan in Europe, a move that will likely cause other mobile providers to rethink their own packages.

The deal, which costs £41 a month with two-year contract, will include unlimited calls, texts and data.

Making the plan even more notable, is there is no "fair use policy" in effect either, like T-Mobile US has, meaning unlimited really is unlimited.

T-Mobile's entire catalog is available, and that includes the iPhone, Blackberrys and Android smartphones, among others.

Says the company: "Over the past two years we have seen a rise in mobile internet use of over 250%, which reflects the consumer trend of being 'always on' wherever they are. However, consumers also want to retain a more personal level of communication by calling or sending a text."

Finally, the icing on the cake is the phones can be used for free tethering, as well, making the new "Full Monty" plan likely the best smartphone plan available on the planet.

The UK box office broke 1 billion pounds last year, for the first time in history.

The British Film Institute's research says the market can thank Harry Potter, a stuttering king and "The Inbetweeners."

Overall sales came in at just over £1.04 billion ($1.63 billion) excluding Irish sales.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 came in first with £73 million in sales, followed by King's Speech at £46 million and the Inbetweeners at £45 million. The overall market rose 5 percent from 2010 as did admissions.

The milestone was likely hit not only due to strong ticket sales, however. Ticket prices rose 17.5 percent across the board starting in January 2011.

Concludes the Institute (via THR): "2011's production figures are further evidence that the UK is home to some of the world's most talented and sought-after film-making talent. Coupled with our excellent infrastructure and facilities, the U.K. film industry is continuing to have a positive impact on the economy, which at the moment is something which should be celebrated and of which we should be proud."

RedLynx, a Finnish video game developer that was purchased by Ubisoft last year, has denied this week that it leaked its own game to torrent sites.

Their latest game, Trials Evolution, recently made its public debut via The Pirate Bay, and immediate blame was thrown back on the developers, who have been known to be pirates.

In 2009, CEO Tero Virtala admitted that the company put the first "Trials" game online, "taking advantage" of piracy: "What we did actually, on day one, we put [the PC edition of Trials] immediately on all the torrent networks ourselves."

Virtala was quick to deny this leak, however: "We want to be clear that [leaking Trials Evolution] is not something we did ourselves."

Yesterday we reported that the hosting companies behind Megaupload's data were about ready to pull the plug on the data since the company could no longer pay them. All of the cyberlocker's assets are currently frozen.

Today, Megaupload users can rejoice as the two services have negotiated a deal to buy the data an extra two weeks of life. The deal could last even longer, says Megaupload lead attorney Ira Rothken:

"The hosting companies have been gracious enough to provide additional time so we can work out some kind of arrangement with the government."

Original Story:

According to the AP, all of the data ever stored on Megaupload could be deleted as soon as Thursday.

The mass-erase will not discriminate with the files, either, legal or illegal.

Megaupload has used the companies Carpathia Hosting Inc. and Cogent Communications Group Inc to store user data, but because the service's assets are frozen, they can no longer afford to pay the hosting companies.

Major email providers Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL have teamed up with PayPal, Bank of America, Fidelity and other companies to create DMARC.org, a technical specification to fight off the ever-increasing amount of phishing attacks.

To get even more technical, the site reads as follows: "DMARC, which stands for "Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance", is a technical specification created by a group of organizations that want to help reduce the potential for email-based abuse by solving a couple of long-standing operational, deployment, and reporting issues related to email authentication protocols.

DMARC standardizes how email receivers perform email authentication using the well-known SPF and DKIM mechanisms. This means that senders will experience consistent authentication results for their messages at AOL, Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! and any other email receiver implementing DMARC. We hope this will encourage senders to more broadly authenticate their outbound email which can make email a more reliable way to communicate."

The other companies involved are Comcast, Facebook, TDP, Agari, American Greetings, LinkedIn, Cloudmark and ReturnPath.

9to5mac has reported today that the upcoming iPhone 5 will have NFC support, and developers are already building apps.

Apparently, Apple iOS engineers are "heavy into NFC" and devs are "confident enough to bet the app development on."

What remains unclear is who Apple will partner with for its payment systems, and the report has some speculation based on recent reports and interviews.

First comes from Ed McLaughlin, the boss of emerging payments at MasterCard: "The timeline is always as rapid as it makes sense for consumers. (In regards to mass NFC adoption) That's a combination of having a critical mass of the merchants, which is what you're seeing right now, and getting devices into the hands of consumers. I don't know of a handset manufacturer that isn't in process of making sure their stuff is PayPass ready."

McLaughlin would not specifically say Apple, however except to say, "well, anytime someone with a major base moves forward, it advances what you're doing. So of course [Apple is necessary in NFC reaching critical mass]."

Over the past few days, innocent Battlefield 3 fans have been banned from playing the game, causing widespread anger.

Electronic Arts (EA) has addressed the issues today, blaming "select 3rd party services" for the issues.

In a blog post, the publisher says: "Together with the 3rd party service providers we have taken steps to remove the faulty bans, and improve the protection against future fake bans. We have determined that the root cause resulting in the server bans is not directly related to Battlefield 3, but rather related to select 3rd party services which server owners can use in conjunction with PunkBuster to protect their servers.

"If you are able to log in to Battlelog, your account has not been banned by EA or DICE so there is no need to contact Customer Support. This issue did not affect Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 players of Battlefield 3."

For now, the post also tells affected players to try "joining other PunkBuster enabled servers."