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Netflix has announced this weekend that they have signed a new licensing agreement to stream AMC's hit zombie show "The Walking Dead."

The streaming company will have the exclusive rights in the United States and Canada.

Additionally, Netflix will have the non-exclusive rights for more AMC, IFC and Sundance Channel content.

Thanks to previous deals, Netflix streams "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," the two most popular shows on AMC.

While adding content at a blistering pace, Netflix has seen a reversal of fortune this year after a few key business moves. In the summer, they announced that the very popular streaming/1-DVD-out plan would no longer be available for $9 and instead would be split into two $8 services. Netflix then completely spun-off its DVD service, naming the new platform Qwikster.

Netflix's stock has fallen from $300 to $115 since June following the announcements.

According to Experian Simmons, about 129 million people of the U.S. population uses social media.

That figure amounts to 41 percent of the entire population of the nation.

98 percent of online users, aged 18-24, use social media, an astounding number, while 97 percent of adults aged 24-34 use the platforms. Even the older generation, 65 and older, have 73 percent of people using social media.

It is unclear exactly how these figures are calculated but Experian "claims it uses leading technologies to format, cleanse and load data that is acquired directly from government sources and industry leading vendors," says TNW.

A few other notable statistics include the fact that 46 percent of online adults use social media to communicated with friends, up from just 32 percent in 2009 and 30 percent of Hispanic consumers saying they use social media to follow companies and music artists, compared to 18 percent for non-Hispanic population.

Hulu CEO Jason Killar has noted today that premium subscription service Hulu Plus will soon amount to over half of the company's revenue.

Free Hulu allows users to stream the last 3-5 episodes of a current season, while Hulu Plus offers full back catalogs. Both services have ads.

Hulu has content from Fox, ABC and NBC.

Killar says Hulu Plus reached one million paying subscribers in August:

Based on our research, we believe this represents the fastest ramp ever to 1 million paid subscribers among any video subscription service in the US.

The service is also now available in Japan and on 120 million devices including mobile devices, tablets and Blu-ray players.

Hulu Plus costs $8 per month with no contract.

It appears that movie streaming giant Netflix is looking to revive the Comedy Central comedy "Reno 911!"

Netflix's chief creative officer Ted Sarandos has had meetings with Reno 911! producers Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher, although that is as far as the process has gone. The show was cancelled in 2009.

For now, the lead stars of the show, Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Robert Ben Garant, have not signed any deal that would lead to them returning but they absolutely could.

Additionally, Comedy Central still retains the rights to the show. Netflix would have first run rights, but eventually syndicated episodes would be available back on Comedy Central, say industry insiders.

Netflix has been in headlines recently for their bidding war with Showtime over new episodes of the extremely popular but cancelled show "Arrested Development."

Sony Pictures is preparing a very large bid to acquire the feature rights to the upcoming "Steve Jobs" biography written by CNN chairman and Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson.

The deal is expected to be at least "$1 million against $3 million" for the rights and Mark Gordon seems to be signed up to produce. Gordon is best known for Saving Private Ryan.

Sony Pictures recently put together the Social Network and Moneyball based off popular books so the new move seems to be a "good fit."

Isaacson's book was set for a November 21st release but following the passing of Jobs this week, the book's release date has been pushed to October 24th.

"Steve Jobs" is the only autobiography ever authorized by the former Apple CEO.

AT&T has revealed that 200,000 Apple iPhone 4S were sold in the first 12 hours of availability.

The carrier is seeing "extraordinary demand" for the smartphone, which was revealed the day before the passing of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.

Verizon and Sprint did not reveal pre-order figures but demand is expected to be strong for both carriers, as well. Sprint is a first-time entry into the iPhone market.

The iPhone set the record last June, with 1.7 million devices being sold in the first 72 hours. This was when AT&T was the exclusive carrier.

Apple is expected to sell 27 million iPhones this quarter.

Although unconfirmed by the military, it appears that the computers used to control Reaper and Predator drones have been hit by a nasty keylogger.

The drone control facility, located at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, controls the unmanned flights on missions into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other nations.

Because of the nature of the missions, computers at the base are not allowed to be connected to the Internet, in an effort to block hacking or the infection of malware. The Creech base, however, is one of few permitted to use USB flash drives to transfer mission data between computers.

It is this special permission that seems to have allowed the computers to become infected.

For now, the keylogger has not cause any issues (as all it does is record keystrokes) but the base is having issues removing it from the system. Flights are still being manned remotely, day in and day out.

According to the latest poll from Harris Interactive, 15 percent of Americans currently own an e-reader while at least another 15 percent want to purchase one in the near future (six months).

The ownership figure was just 8 percent last year.

Adds Regina A. Corso, director of the Harris Poll (via BizR):

Overall, two in five Americans (40%) read 11 or more books a year with one in five reading 21 or more books in a year (19%). But among those who have an e-reader, over one-third read 11-20 books a year (36%) and over one-quarter read 21 or more books in an average year (26%).

The research makes the obvious conclusion that e-readers are the future.

There will always be a place for books in hard cover or paperback. But, there must also be a place for reading devices as well. Readers are quickly catching on to this wave as have the booksellers. This is a huge transition time for publishing companies and how they adapt will determine who is still standing ten years from now.

According to sources, Dell may be backing out of their planned Windows Phone 7 Mango devices.

It appears that the computer giant could even be considering dropping out of WP7 devices, in general.

A leaked roadmap earlier this year showed Dell was developing an updated Venue Pro but that seems to be scratched for now.

According to a "high ranking exec" in Dell, the company will not offer any WP devices until Windows Phone 8 Apollo. The company will, however, continue support for the Venue Pro.

All existing WP7 devices will be updated to Mango, soon.

111 men and women were arrested tonight for their part in a massive identity theft ring.

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown called the fraud case the largest he'd ever seen, and that the police were still seeking more to arrest. Five "criminal enterprises" were taken down, and theose arrested have been hit with hundreds of criminal charges.

The fraud, based in Queens, has been operating since at least 2010 and involved bank tellers, restaurant employees and other service employees.

Thousands were robbed from in a ring that stretched as far as China and the Middle East.

Like in past identity theft scams, the criminals would first steal the credit card numbers and relevant info when the customer paid, for example, for dinner at a restaurant. Those numbers were then passed on to "manufacturers" who forge forge Visas, MasterCards, Discover and American Express cards onto blank cards.

The forged cards would then be given to "shoppers," usually younger, pretty women who spend upwards of $1000 at a time at high-end luxury stores. That merchandise was then resold oversees to Chinese, European and the Middle Eastern customers.

Sprint has said today that they will stop selling smartphones and modems that are compatible with Clearwire's WiMax 4G at the end of 2012.

The carrier is expected to transition to its own higher-speed 4G network at that time.

Following the move, Clearwire's stock fell to an all-time low at $1.32, down 30 percent from yesterday.

Sprint is by far Clearwire's largest customer and Sprint is a majority owner of the 4G network.

President of network operations, Steve Elfman, says Sprint's own 4G network will be as large as Clearwire's by the end of 2012, and significantly larger by the end of 2013.

Sprint is moving to LTE, the same network spectrum used by AT&T and Verizon.

According to new figures by Berg Insight, mobile app downloads will reach 98 billion by 2015.

The number will compound at a rate of 56.6 percent from 2010 to 2015.

Revenue from app stores like the Android Market and iOS App Store will jump to $11.8 billion by 2015, as well.

In 2010, that revenue (paid apps, in-app upgrades, subs) grew exponentially to $2.15 billion.

Into the future, Apple will remain the the largest "direct monetizing force behind of mobile applications," with Android in second and Windows Phone in third.

The report also notes that HTML5 "apps" will eventually rule, but until 2015, downloadable apps, based on Flash, Java and other libraries will continue to grow.

Yesterday FCC Chairmain Julius Genachowski outlined a plan he says will increase broadband Internet penetration in rural parts of the US, delivering service to 18 million people.

The plan he is proposing would involve major changes to rules for the Universal Service Fund (USF) and Intercarrier Compensation (ICC) system, both of which were created to subsidize rural phone service.

Explaining his position on the current USF rules, he said:

USF is outdated. It still focuses on the telephone, while high-speed Internet is rapidly becoming our essential communications platform not only for voice, but for text and video, and is an indispensable platform for innovation and job creation.

He was even more critical of the ICC system:

Like USF, the current ICC system is unfair to American consumers: It forces hundreds of millions of consumers across the country to pay higher bills to subsidize monthly local telephone bills as low as $8 for other consumers. The current ICC system is also creating substantial uncertainty and widespread disputes, which are being fought in courthouses and state commissions throughout the country, about the proper treatment of Voice over IP traffic for ICC purposes. And ICC hasn't adapted to technology and marketplace changes, creating competitive distortions and loopholes that companies have exploited in devious ways to game the system.

Swype, the popular smartphone input technology, has been acquired today for $102.5 million by Nuance.

Nuance is the company behind the FlexT9 keyboard, software that lets users speak, trace, write or tap "Dragon dictation" and "T9 predictive text input technologies" on Android tablets and phones.

Says one analyst of the move (via Reuters):

Nuance is bulking up on the mobile front so that they can have a bigger presence on the next-generation handsets. They can't just stand by and just stick to their core competency of being a voice recognition technology player on mobile.

Swype has quickly become the most popular alternative keyboard for Android and Symbian although rivals are a plenty. TouchType Ltd's SwiftKey X Keyboard, Dasur Ltd's SlideIT Keyboard, Beansoft's Thumb Keyboard and Dexilog LLC's Smart Keyboard Pro are just a few that have gained traction in the past year.

The move is also seen as a way for Nuance to acquire significant patents and create a nicer offering to OEM handset providers.

Samsung and Google have postponed the much anticipated unveiling of the new Nexus Prime smartphone.

Although they were a little vague on the details, a statement from Samsung indicates they have cancelled the entire Samsung Mobile Unpacked event where the new phone was set to be unveiled in San Diego. Based on its wording, most people are speculating Samsung felt it would be inappropriate to have a big product announcement so soon after the news of Steve Jobs' death.

Samsung's statement on the postponement reads (via BoyGeniusReport):

Samsung and Google have decided to postpone the Samsung Mobile Unpacked event during the CTIA in San Diego, previously scheduled for Oct. 11. Under the current circumstances, both parties have agreed that this is not the appropriate time for the announcement of a new product. We would ask for the understanding of our clients and media for any inconvenience caused. We will announce a new date and venue in due course.

Much of the anticipation over the event was over the phone's use of the new Android release, Ice Cream Sandwich. For now you will have to satisfy your curiosity with screenshots which have already been leaked.