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Apple has sued Samsung today, again, escalating its already massive attack on the company and its smartphones.

The latest suit is related to the new Galaxy Nexus, which Apple claims infringes on the company's "slide-to-unlock" feature patent.

Apple patented the feature with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in October 2011. In 2006, Apple received a "utility model" registration for the same feature, in Germany. As explained by FOSS Patent a "utility model is a limited fast-track patent that companies are allowed to file for alongside traditional patents, and Apple has done both for the "slide-to-unlock" in Germany."

Because utility models do not carry the "presumption of validity" needed for court rulings, the new case is not expected to be settled soon.

Notion Ink has revealed their upcoming Adam II tablet.

The device will run on a Texas Instruments 4400 series dual-core processor, Android 4.0.x ICS and a PowerVR SGX5xx GPU.

Furthermore, Notion Ink will be using a slightly tweaked Android OS, "using a restructured Modular Based Software Architecture. These "Application Authoring Tools" will give developers and would-be programmers the ability to customize apps via a new drag-and-drop system," says Notion.

Adds the company: "This System will help consumers, professionals and students become productive as they will be able to use the tablet as a logic analyzer, medical imaging device, signal acquisition and processing, 3D modeling and multi-media."

There was no word on price or release date. The original Adam just received Android 4.0 in alpha form.

Yesterday, the U.S. government shut down Megaupload.com, one of the largest and longest running cyberlockers in the business. Its founder, Kim Dotcom, and a handful of employees were arrested and charged with copyright infringement.

One of the more interesting points of the story is the fact that on the now-defunct site, the rapper and producer Swizz Beatz was noted as the CEO of the company. Beatz, whose real name is Kasseem Dean had been listed with the title for months but was nowhere to be seen in the 72-page indictment.

Time did some investigating and found that Dean was negotiating to be CEO, but it never came to fruition.

Says Megaupload's lawyer: "To my knowledge, Swizz Beatz was never involved in any meaningful way. He was negotiating to become the CEO, but it was never official."

The rapper has yet to comment on the shut down.

The Singapore carrier M1 has made their camera-less iPhone available to the masses, a week after leaking the product pages for the device.

Phones with cameras are not allowed to be used by soldiers in the nation, and all citizens are required to fulfill two years of mandatory military service.

The modified iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S will cost S$49 ($38 USD) than the versions with cameras. You also have to purchase the devices with a 2-year data contract, as there is no unlocked model available. Apple's original warranty is also void due to the modification, so bear that in mind.

If you are a current iPhone owner, the carrier will not service the phone to remove the camera.

M1 will also offer a one-year warranty for the hefty cost of S$321 ($250 USD).

Other carriers in the nation are looking to offer similar deals, soon.

Last month, Microsoft unveiled the Windows 8 Windows Store, where developers can sell apps.

Starting in February, devs can sell apps for a minimum $1.49 up to $999. Like other app stores Microsoft will take 30 percent revenue, but if your app is popular and brings over $25,000, the cut is reduced to 20 percent.

In-app transactions have the same split, if they use Microsoft's billing system. Windows Store developer accounts cost $49.

More details were revealed today by the software giant including that purchased apps will be restricted to five Windows 8 PCs. If you have a new device, you will need to remove another authorized user from the mix.

Additionally, "the install experience of Windows 8 apps is designed to be simple, with minimal download details, rather like Microsoft's Metro design," explains Verge. "We don?t believe you should have to stare at a progress bar and count every second as it goes by," notes Microsoft's Jonathan Wang. Users will be sent a notification when the download is complete.

The iOS jailbreaking "dream team" of the iPhone Dev Team, Chronic Dev Team and pod2G have gotten a working jailbreak solution for iPhone 4S and iPad 2 users.

A4-powered iOS devices, such as the iPhone 4, have had the untethered jailbreak since last month.

The Chronic Dev Team has released the "Absinthe" tool for OSX, with Windows and Linux versions coming soon.

Get more details here: http://pod2g-ios.blogspot.com/

Just 48 hours after an Internet-wide protest "blackout," congressional leaders have indefinitely postponed the SOPA and PIPA anti-piracy bills.

Democratic majority leader Senator Harry Reid made the announcement this afternoon via Twitter, the microblogging service that was instrumental in getting the word out about the bills in the first place.

While the voting on the bills has been killed for now, the underlying issues will still be fiercely debated and will likely come back in another form later. Says Reid (using Twitter shortening and slang): "There's no reason that legitimate issues raised about PROTECT IP can't be resolved. Counterfeiting & piracy cost 1000s of jobs yearly. Americans rightfully expect to be fairly compensated 4 their work. I'm optimistic that we can reach compromise on PROTECT IP in coming week."

Republican rep Lamar Smith, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called off his plans to draft a version of the anti-piracy act: "The committee remains committed to finding a solution to the problem of online piracy that protects American intellectual property and innovation. The House Judiciary Committee will postpone consideration of the legislation until there is wider agreement on a solution."

ZTE has let it slip this week that it costs £20 ($30 USD) to license Windows Phone 7, far more than previously assumed.

TrustedReviews came with the news after being told by Portfolio Manager for ZTE UK, Santiago Sierra at the UK launch of the ZTE Tania.

Android, on the other hand, costs $0 to license, but Microsoft has their hand in that cookie jar, as well. The software giant receives license royalties from 70 percent of Android handset makers, taking between $5-$15 for each device sold.

Most notably, Microsoft receives payments from Samsung, LG and HTC, three of the largest smartphone makers in the world.

Thanks to Amazon's Kindle Fire, the news collecting app Pulse has seen a huge surge in downloads.

The Pulse app, which uses RSS-feeds to bring together the news you want to read from the sites you want to read, was the de-facto news reader for the Kindle Fire, as Amazon placed it on its homescreen right out of the box.

Additionally, the app is popular on Honeycomb tablets and on the iPad, but downloads were flat until the Fire. In fact, in 2011, Pulse downloads went from 1 million to 11 million and the app is now seeing 1.5 million downloads every month. Altogether, users have read 1.39 billion stories and shared 9.8 million stories.

Over the course of the year, Pulse managed to secure 250 publishing partners including ESPN and the WSJ.

AfterDawn has a great quick guide on how to add our stream to your Pulse news reader.

Infographic via TC:

Earlier today, the U.S. government shut down Megaupload.com, one of the largest and longest running cyberlockers in the business.

Its founders and a handful of employees have been arrested, as well, and charged with copyright infringement.

The indictment and arrests come just one day after major websites including Wikipedia and Google staged anti-SOPA "blackouts." SOPA was created to fight piracy, but has seen massive criticism due to its ability to shut down sites with very little appeal time, at the behest of media companies or other content owners.

Megaupload and its owners are accused of taking over $500 million from copyright holders due to piracy, and cashing in on $175 million in profits from ads and premium subscriptions.

Calling the group "Mega Conspiracy," the indictment reads: "In exchange for payment, the Mega Conspiracy provides fast reproduction and distribution of infringing copies of copyrighted works from its servers located around the world."

On top of the arrests, 18 domain names were seized, $50 million in assets were seized, and 20 search warrants were executed around the world.

Samsung announced last week it was merging its own touchscreen OS, Bada, with the Linux-based Tizen OS.

Tizen is a joint collaboration between Intel and Samsung. Tizen was born from the ashes of MeeGo, which was an Intel-Nokia smartphone OS before Nokia left it for dead and jumped to Windows Phone.

Today, it appears the mobile phone giant is stepping back from its announcement, claiming that no decision has been made: "We are carefully looking at it as an option to make the platforms serve better for customers."

Most likely, Samsung will confirm the merger once a final product is done.

Samsung launched Bada in 2010 in an effort to update the operating system on their low-end smartphones and their touchscreen feature phones. The OS has multi-tasking, an app store and a completely rehauled UI that looks somewhat similar to Android.

Following news that Megaupload and Megavideo were shut down by ICE, the hacktivist group Anonymous set off on a tale of vengeance.

The group managed to take down the sites for the RIAA, the MPAA, Universal Music Group and Justice.org, the Department of Justice's official Web page.

Anonymous' twitter accounts @Anonops, @AnonymousIRC and @YourAnonNews confirmed the hits and some of the sites remain down or slow. The hacking collective added (in jest) that the MPAA, UMG and RIAA should just say, "for #SOPA supporters their#SOPAblackout is today."

SOPA and PIPA, the two bills trying to make their way through Congress, have been in the headlines for weeks now as major tech companies and hundreds of thousands of everyday Internet users fight to have freedom from censorship.

By taking down 10 sites in 20 minutes, Anonymous managed to pull off their largest attack, ever, this morning.

Today Apple held a press event in New York City to show off the new textbook oriented iBooks app with improved HTML5 support.

These improvements are being used in newly added high school textbooks from publishers who cover 90 percent of the market.

The textbooks will offer interactive content like you might see on the web and advanced features for taking notes. There is also a free WYSIWYG authoring app available from the Mac App Store.

With prices limited to $14.99 per textbook and students owning them forever, it seems like a good deal on the surface. But is it really? Actually there seem to be more questions than answers.

If the student owns the textbook, does that mean schools will have to buy one for each student every year? If so, is it really worth the price? Sure, they can keep using them indefinitely, but how many will?

And who will be paying for all the iPads required? You won't find many schools with that kind of money. They haven't said anything about DRM, so presumably the textbooks will use it. Doesn't that mean no desktop, laptop, or Android support?

Until we have meaningful answers to those questions, it's hard to get behind the textbook initiative. On the other hand, if you have an interest in electronic reference books, the improvements to iBooks seem promising.

As you've undoubtedly noticed, today was the anti-SOPA blackout for hundreds of major sites in the U.S., most notably Wikipedia, which remains dark in silent protest.

AfterDawn is also using Google's blackout landing page.

Today, former Senator and current MPAA CEO Chris Dodd had his say on the blackout:

Only days after the White House and chief sponsors of the legislation responded to the major concern expressed by opponents and then called for all parties to work cooperatively together, some technology business interests are resorting to stunts that punish their users or turn them into their corporate pawns, rather than coming to the table to find solutions to a problem that all now seem to agree is very real and damaging.

It is an irresponsible response and a disservice to people who rely on them for information and use their services. It is also an abuse of power given the freedoms these companies enjoy in the marketplace today. It?s a dangerous and troubling development when the platforms that serve as gateways to information intentionally skew the facts to incite their users in order to further their corporate interests.

Sony looks like it is about ready to shut down its failed "Dash" experiment.

The "personal Internet viewer" alarm clocks saw some popularity when they were released but horrible reviews nailed the coffin.

Reads Sony's site: "Beginning February 29, 2012, the Sony dash developer website (http://dash.sonydeveloper.com) will close and no longer support development of new applications. This closure includes the dash developer forum and dash developer support email address (dash-support@sonydeveloper.com) which will close on March 31, 2012. Sony dash applications will remain available. Thank you for your contributions and we encourage you to continue your development activity on Sony's other platforms available at SonyDeveloper.com."

The original Dash machine has a 7-inch touchscreen, 800x480 resolution, a 500Mhz processor and 256MB DDR2 RAM.

What makes the alarm clocks popular is access to 1500 apps for weather, traffic, social networking, movies, music and games.