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According to Sony Division 2 Software Development Head Muneki Shimada, the company's new proprietary (and expensive) Vita memory cards are more secure, and have guaranteed performance.

By creating their own cards, with specified read/write speeds, they can guarantee the performance, instead of hoping that gamers pay to get better class cards.

Adding more security is a good thing, for Sony, who is looking to avoid having their new Vita ravaged by piracy like the original PSP was.

Furthermore, the new memory cards can't be used as "mass storage" on PCs, it will only sync with a proprietary Sony management program. The program is not optional, but required.

By using the program, Shimada says (via Shack) "you do not need to remember which folder contains data on the memory card," making it easier to find files.

The management program is ready for Windows and Mac.

Sony is selling the cards at $30 for 4GB, $45 for 8GB, $70 for 16GB or $120 for 32GB.

The Apple iPhone 4S will hit 6 new countries later this month, on December 16th.

Most notably from the new batch are BRIC nations Brazil and Russia, two of the most populated countries on the planet.

Additionally, the device is headed to Taiwan, the Philippines, South Africa, and Malaysia on the same date.

In Brazil, carrier Claro posted the release date but did not include prices. Grey market phones there have been selling for as much as $2000.

Russian retailers are already taking pre-orders.

A member of the board of Dutch music collection agency Buma/Stemra has resigned in the midst of a scandal around accusations he tried to shake down a composer who was merely asking him to do his job.

Jochem Gerrits is accused of demanding Melchior Rietveldt turn over a third of his royalties in exchange for bringing the matter before the agency's board. Rietveldt's claim revolves around a piece of music he wrote for Dutch anti-piracy firm BREIN to use in a video.

Rietveldt says the music has been distributed on tens of millions of Dutch DVDs, which isn't covered in the contract he signed for the piece. He is looking for more than 1 million eurosin royalties.

It's unclear what part BREIN may have played in the music being used without authorization, but it doesn't appear they have any connection with Gerrits' actions.

Gerrits made the demand in a phone call with Rietveldt's lawyer, not realizing the call was being recorded. Although he claims his statements are being taken out of context, they seem to stand on their own.

According to TorrentFreak, when asked why the composer should share the money with him, he said, "It could be because a lot of people in the industry know that they are in trouble when I get involved."

After weeks of speculation, Acer has officially launched their ICONIA TAB A200, a slightly outdated tablet with Honeycomb and a Tegra 2 dual-core processor.

Nicely, the tablet will be upgraded to Android 4.0 late next month.

The device has 1GB RAM, 8GB or 16GB of storage, is a thick 12.4 mm, has a resolution of 1280 x 800 and a large 3260mAh battery.

Additionally, Acer has added its "Acer Ring" UI to Android, which adds better multi-tasking features and screenshot capabilities.

Finally, the tablet has a 2MP front-side camera and full USB port next to a microSD slot.

(Specs, pics via netbooknews)

TNW is reporting today that sources have told them the public Windows 8 beta will be released in February.

The operating system has long been rumored to have a September 2012 release date, and the new beta date still leaves that month as a very viable option.

It is unclear what will be added in the beta, as a feature set has not been released, yet.

There has been a developer preview released, and some earlier versions of the OS were leaked, but each had noticeable features missing, including the email function.

Check our guide on how to Install Windows 8 Dev Preview in VMware Workstation here.

HBO Co-President Eric Kessler has not so subtly said this week that Netflix will never get any of the company's original programming.

The company has massively popular series like True Blood, Game of Thrones, Entourage and Boardwalk Empire, among a plethora of others.

Kessler called streaming companies "competitors" and also went as far as to say that the current spike in "chord cutting," where consumers cancel their cable TV service, will reverse when the economy recovers.

HBO currently offers its TV shows online and on mobile devices to subscribers via HBO Go, which has been a very popular option since its launch.

Earlier this year, Netflix and HBO publicly bid against each other for the right's to David Fincher's "House Of Cards," with Netflix winning out after offering conditions no other reasonable company could match.

Carter Nicholas of eDataSource has noted today that Amazon has sold 850,000 Kindle Fire tablets through their own site, alone, with many more expected from other retailers.

Says the CEO: "Our estimate is that Amazon.com has now sold 850,000 units direct from the Amazon.com site. Total sales would be substantially larger. Amazon may have sold as many as 2 million or more so far when you consider all sales channels."

For example, Best Buy has said the tablet is selling extremely well, but we wont see actual figures until their quarterly earnings report later this month.

Amazon did not confirm that figure but did say (via Cnet) "even before the busy holiday shopping weekend, we'd already sold millions of the new Kindle family and Kindle Fire was the bestselling product across all of Amazon.com."

With sales of their PlayBook tablet remaining low, even with significant discounts, Research In Motion seems to be caught between a rock and a hard place.

They have just announced a negative adjustment of $485 million to their Q3 financials to account for unsold tablet inventory. At the same time, the company remains commited to the tablet market and believes sales will improve with aggresive promotions.

A company statement says:

As previously disclosed, RIM has a high level of BlackBerry PlayBook inventory. The Company now believes that an increase in promotional activity is required to drive sell-through to end customers. This is due to several factors, including recent shifts in the competitive dynamics of the tablet market and a delay in the release of the PlayBook OS 2.0 software. As a result, RIM will record a provision that reflects the current market environment and allows it to expand upon the aggressive level of promotional activity recently employed by the Company in order to drive PlayBook adoption around the world.

That was fast.

Plaintiffs have sued Carrier IQ, and phone makers HTC and Samsung for violating federal wiretapping laws this week, just one day after the U.S. Senate got involved in the scandal.

For the past few weeks, there has been much ado about Carrier IQ, the software unknowingly pre-loaded in over 140 million smartphones around the world.

The company has been accused of being a rootkit/keylogger pre-installed on Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Nokia devices around the world. The software quietly watches and logs all keystrokes entered into the device, including texts. It also monitors location, when you shut your phone off, and who you call.

In the latest suit, violations of the Federal Wiretap Act, if convicted, will cost the company $100 per day, per violation. Conservatively saying that the company has been spying on you for 6 months, the fine could be as high as $2,520,000,000,000.

Thanks to the Android-x86.org group, the new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system has been ported to work on x86 processors like those made by AMD and Intel.

With the port, the OS should be able to be used on notebooks without any need for virtualization.

Additionally, the OS could be made available for x86 tablets in the near future, as well.

The current port is still a "work-in-progress" and has broken support for audio, cameras, wired networking and hardware acceleration.

What does work, however, is full multitouch, Wi-Fi and graphics acceleration.

IPO is one of the year's most anticipated.

Zynga plans to sell 100 million shares at $8.95 to $10 per share, amounting to around 14.3 percent of the company. It hopes it will raised $925 million, which is less than the FarmVille-developer had previously planned to aim for.

The IPO would value Zynga between $7.7 billion and $9.04 billion. Electronic Arts has a market value of $7.73 billion, while Activision Blizzard Inc's sites at $14.21 billion.

Zynga was established five years ago, and got its success with viral games such as FarmVille. The games are free to play, but Zynga makes money by selling virtual items in the games to players.

Zynga's IPO follows that of Groupon Inc and LinkedIn Corp earlier this year. Both helped to revive a market for first-time share sales that had remained weak in recent years.

Best Buy, Rhapsody complete deal that spells end for Napster.

Music pirates today are arguably spoiled by mega-fast Internet connections, BitTorrent and file locker services; but in 1999, Napster was the King of free music. Teenage readers will only remember Napster as just another legitimate digital music service among, frankly, too many.

When Napster first launched in 1999, it acted as a P2P file sharing service for music, and quickly became a huge source of pirated music files. The recording industry erupted into chaos in response, as people all over the world opened their libraries of MP3 files to each other.

The centralized nature of Napster's network worked against it however, and just a couple of years after it came along, it was forced shut by court order. Following its death, dozens of new services popped up to replace it, learning from Napster's mistakes and riding on a massive explosive of new broadband connections around the world.

Since then, Napster has reformed and come back as a legal service. In 2008, retailer Best Buy put up $121 million to acquire Napster.

Last month it was revealed that Best Buy and Rhapsody had reached a deal that would see Napster subscribers and other assets transferred to Rhapsody. That deal has now been closed and Napster.com simply sends users to Rhapsody now, suggesting that it's curtains for the brand name that caused so much chaos.

App provides easiest way to search for under-fire software.

The Voodoo Carrier IQ detector, available from the Android Market, aims to provide as easy a way as possible to check if your Android-based device carries the Carrier IQ "rootkit" or not.

The app is unfinished and doesn't provide 100% reliable results just yet (description also warns that Anti-Carrier IQ fixes can generate false positives) but the developer has gone open source and is inviting enthusiasts to join him to update the app.

Nevertheless, the app has gotten more or less blanket positive reviews on the Android Market.

Check it out from: market.android.com

Samsung had hoped to release the tablet for sale today at 4pm.

High Court Justice John Dyson Heydon today extended a ban on the release of Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1, taking time to consider Apple Inc.'s request for permission to appeal the decision of a lower court that lifted the ban on the Samsung device late last week.

"A stay for one week will cost Samsung, in effect, one week's trade," Heydon said, following a 90-minute hearing in Sydney. He acknowledged that the stay would hurt Samsung but "not to extend the status quo is likely to be injurious to Apple."

Samsung had hoped to push plenty of the tablets into the Australian market this weekend in time for the busy holiday season. It had previously stated that if it cannot get its product into the Australian market for the Christmas period, then it would cancel its launch in the country altogether.

"This is a critical period of time," Katrina Howard, Samsung's lawyer, told Justice Heydon. "Even one day can make a difference."

Samsung said it believes that Apple has no basis for its application for leave to appeal.

SOPA would threaten Internet freedom? - "Blatantly false", says lawmaker.

Lamar S. Smith, U.S. Representative for Texas's 21st congressional district, has come to the defense of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which has faced considerable opposition from some of the world's largest tech firms, and pretty much every consumer / digital rights group.

Smith chairs the House Judiciary Committee and is the lead sponsor of the bill. Writing in the National Review Online, Smith stressed that SOPA only targets websites that are "dedicated" to illegal activity, whether it be peddling counterfeit goods or pirated movies.

He argued that the United States congress could not just sit back and watch as some of America's most profitable and productive industries come under attack, to the tune of up to $100 billion per year. One of SOPA's main functions would be to block revenue to rogue websites, the majority of which would be located outside the United States, and vehemently rejected claims that legitimate websites would get caught in the middle.

"Websites like Facebook and YouTube that host user content are not 'dedicated to' illegal activity, and they certainly do not make a business out of 'facilitating' the illegal sale and distribution of counterfeit or pirated goods," Smith wrote.