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Interacting with Xbox 360 using a Nokia Lumia smartphone.

Running the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango operating system, Nokia's Lumia smartphones can take advantage of Xbox Live features. In a demo video, posted by Nokia Conversations, "Krissy" from Microsoft demonstrates using a Nokia Lumia prototype phone to connect with an Xbox 360 console nearby.

In blog posts describing the demo, it's admitted that there were limits as to what could be shown from the demo stand at this time, with apparently plenty more to come in the near-future.

HP will keep Personal Systems Group (PSG) after evaluation.

The company announced on Thursday that it has completed an evaluation of strategic alternatives for its PSG division, deciding that the unit will remain part of the company.

The evaluation revealed the depth of the integration that has occurred across key operations such as supply chain, IT and procurement. It also detailed the significant extent to which PSG contributes to HP's solutions portfolio and overall brand value.

"HP objectively evaluated the strategic, financial and operational impact of spinning off PSG. It?s clear after our analysis that keeping PSG within HP is right for customers and partners, right for shareholders, and right for employees," said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer.

"HP is committed to PSG, and together we are stronger."

PSG is the No.1 manufacture of personal computers in the world, with revenues totalling $40.7 billion last year.

According to multiple sources, the upcoming massive Apple Store in Grand Central is set for launch before Black Friday, the official start of the holiday shopping season.

Construction on the store will end on November 11th.

Apple bought out the space currently rented by Charlie Palmer's Metrazur restaurant for $5 million, ensuring Palmer breaks his lease 8 years early.

The MTA says Apple will pay $1.1 million rent per year, a significantly higher amount than Metrazur, which was paying $263,997.

Besides the space in the east balcony, Apple will take the vacant, adjacent balcony, as well. Overall, the company will occupy 23,000 square feet, making Grand Central its 3rd largest store.

During their Q3 earnings call today, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told analysts they expect the lifetime value of an iPhone customer to be 50 percent higher than for other smartphone users.

Although the iPhone was not available through Sprint until just after the beginning of Q4, meaning its impact isn't reflected in the Q3 numbers, Hesse and CFO Joe Euteneuer made a point of emphasizing the importance of the iPhone to their operations over the life of their 4 year deal with Apple.

Over that period, Sprint is obligated to spend a minimum of around $15.5 billion according to Eutenuer. This is nearly $5 billion less than was previously rumored.

Hesse predicted:

We expect the customer lifetime value of an iPhone customer to be at least 50 percent, yes at least 50 percent, greater than a typical smartphone user, driven primarily by more efficient use of our network and lower churn.

iPhone users are expected to use significantly less 3G than the typical user of a dual mode 3G/4G device. Even adjusting for more total new customers being added to the network, we believe we'll put less load on our 3G network than we would have if we did not carry the iPhone.

LightSquared, a US company intent on building a nationwide wholesale LTE network, has announced yet another proposed solution for the GPS interference issues which have delayed FCC approval of their service.

LightSquared's problems stem from their proposal to transmit terrestrial mobile data on frequencies normally reserved for satellite communication. The frequency range they would be using is directly adjacent to the frequencies used for high precision GPS.

Because they are terrestrial, rather than satellite based, LightSquared's signals would be significantly more powerful, resulting in them overpowering the GPS signals. This would render GPS units used for applications ranging from aviation to agriculture to military operations effectively useless.

Despite claims in the past that a new antenna design for their towers would alleviate the problem, testing by the government's National Telecommunications and Information Administration resulted in a different conclusion. FCC approval of their service is contingent on NTIA approval.

In September the company announced the development of a filter which could be used to retrofit existing GPS equipment to filter out LightSquared's signal, but only offered to pay for the cost of modifying those units used by the federal government.

Coinstar has announced their quarterly earnings today, surprising some.

The company is raising the price on Redbox kiosk rentals from $1 to $1.20, effective the end of the month.

Execs say Blu-rays and video game rentals will still cost $1.50 and $2.00 with no price hikes.

Says the company:

We remain committed to providing redbox consumers access to the latest movies at an incredible value. This marks the first price increase for a redbox standard definition DVD rental in eight years. The change is primarily due to the increase in operating expenses, including the recent increase in debit card interchange fees as a result of the Durbin Amendment.

Nintendo has confirmed today that it will see its first ever annual net loss, mainly due to a strong yen and weak sales of their software and hardware.

Because the yen continues to strengthen against the USD and the euro, Nintendo has been forced to reduce its earnings.

Additionally, the failed 3DS handheld has caused losses as Nintendo was forced to slash the price of the device just months after launch.

Nintendo will see a loss of 20 billion yen ($258 million) for the quarter. Last year the company had a 30 billion yen gain.

Finally, Nintendo chopped its forecast for 3DS sales down 30 percent to 50 million in its first year of availability.

In 2010, Mozilla added Bing as a search option when launching Firefox for the first time.

Before that, Google was the default option.

Today, Mozilla has introduced a new version of Firefox that comes with Bing as default and includes the Bing Awesome Bar.

The company says:

Now Firefox users who are Bing enthusiasts can use Firefox with Bing to use the Web the way they want without having to take extra steps to navigate or customize their settings to Bing.

Firefox with Bing offers the latest version of Firefox with Bing set as your home page and the default setting in the search box and AwesomeBar (where you can also type in queries as well as Web addresses). If you already have the latest version of Firefox, then you just need to download the Bing Search for Firefox Add-on to set the same preferences.

A version of PROTECT IP, the bill designed to allow the government or copyright holders to effectively shut down websites accused of IP infringement via blacklisting, has been introduced in the US House of Representatives.

Note: This bill has since been renamed SOPA, or The Stop Online Piracy Act

If you thought PROTECT IP was bad, you're really going to hate the House version, called The E-PARASITE Act. It expands on the language in PROTECT IP, which would already give private IP holders get court orders blacklisting websites and forcing ad and payment providers to suspend their accounts.

E-PARASITE includes language allowing those private entities to demand ad and payment providers cut off alleged infringers without involving the courts at all. What's worse, this right would apply to any website which:

is taking, or has taken deliberate actions to avoid confirming a high probability of the use of the U.S.-directed site to carry out acts that constitute a violation of section 501 or 1201 of title 17, United States Code.

Warner Bros. has announced that they will do their best Disney impression and soon take Harry Potter films out of distribution and into a "vault" of sorts.

On December 29th, the studio will stop shipping copies of all 8 movies in the historic franchise.

The studio will release the films again in the future as special re-release editions, likely with a higher price tag.

'Harry Potter' DVDs have grossed $5 billion worldwide for Warner Bros. and over $7 billion in theaters.

Disney began the trend of archiving their titles to release them later at full price as special "limited" editions.

Blockbuster (now part of Dish Network), has been forced to buy new Warner releases on the open market, as the studio wants to expand its 28-day rental release window to the company.

Warner, and all the major studios, have had similar deals in place with rivals Netflix and Redbox for some time now.

With a 28-day delayed release window, rental companies get new releases 28 days after their physical release, giving studios one uninterrupted month for potential DVD/Blu-ray sales.

In response, Blockbuster has purchased new films like Horrible Bosses and The Green Lantern on the open market and made them available to subscribers.

Commented Warner (via THR):

They felt it was important to continue to offer day-and-date rental so rather than work with us they went around us.

The question is: how do we make ownership more valuable and attractive? We have started the process of creating a window in bricks-and-mortar DVD and Blu-ray rental.

Sony has succeeded in their bid to buy out Ericsson's share of their jointly owned Sony Ericsson handset and mobile device company. The deal will cost Sony $1.05 euros and also include a patent cross-licensing deal.

More importantly for Sony, gaining full ownership of Sony Ericsson will clear the way to integrate the company's devices into Sony's online entertainment network and offer a broad range of Sony owned content from companies like Sony Pictures and Sony Music Entertainment.

According to a statement from Sony Chairman, CEO & President Howard Stringer:

We can more rapidly and more widely offer consumers smartphones, laptops, tablets and televisions that seamlessly connect with one another and open up new worlds of online entertainment. This includes Sony?s own acclaimed network services, like the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network,

The once-popular NinjaVideo pirated movie streaming site, taken down in 2010 as part of the government's ongoing "Operation in our Sites" initiative has now seen two more admins plead guilty to their part in running the site.

NV's "head of security" Jeremy Lynn Andrew of Oregon and "uploader supervisor" Joshua David Evans of Washington now face up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for copyright infringement and conspiracy.

Evans was responsible for supervising all uploaders to the site and carrying out background checks on anyone looking to speak the admin team. Evans pleaded guilty to pre-release of the movie Iron Man 2 before its American release date.

Andrew was the moderator of the site and monitored the NV servers for any hack attacks.

NinjaVideo made $505,000 in income during its run and most of that money will have to be paid back by the guilty admins. The head admin of NV, Hana Beshara, recently pleaded guilty to negotiating agreements with advertisers and is said to have pocketed $200,000 of the income. Her sentencing is set for January and she will have to pay the money back. Evans will have to pay back $26,600 and Andrew $5250. Co-founder Matthew Smith pleaded guilty to the same charges as Evans and will be sentenced in December.

An Australian appeals court has granted Samsung's request to take another look at the preliminary injunction barring sales of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in that country as soon as possible.

The ban was ordered 2 weeks ago in Apple's patent infringement case. Previously Apple rejected a last minute licensing agreement offered by Samsung in an attempt to get the tablet on store shelves before Christmas.

According to The Australian, Federal Court Justice Lindsay Foster ruled that the hearing will take place, "on a date or dates to be notified to the parties by the court as soon as practicable."

Meanwhile, Apple is also taking their fight directly to online resellers who continue to sell the tablet to Australian customers. Although the ban only applies to Samsung, it does open the door for Apple to get separate injunctions against individual retailers.

According to a Japanese report, the upcoming Sony PlayStation Vita handheld will not have Flash support at launch.

The device will have HTML5 support, however, along with JavaScript 1.7 and cookies.

While Flash may not be supported at launch, the report suggests it could be added in a later firmware update.

The original PSP faced a similar problem, and basic support was only added a year later via firmware.

The Vita will run on an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor and be powered by a quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU.

Featuring a 5-inch capacitive multitouch OLED screen (with 16 million colors), the device will be 7.16 by 0.73 by 3.28 inches. Furthermore, the Vita has 512MB memory and 128MB VRAM in its graphics processor.