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Verizon has announced the latest milestone today.

In a press statement, the company says their VOD catalog is now at 30,000 monthly titles, half of which are free.

The service is available to customers of the company's FiOS TV offering.

Additionally, the cable company says subscribers can rent/watch 4000 movies and TV episodes on their PC, mobile or HDTV with "Flex View."

Finally, Verizon says it will become the first cable operator to offer VOD rentals with a 48-hour window. All other companies only offer 24 hours for rentals.

Dish and Blockbuster are expected to announce their new streaming service this week, taking advantage of the recent weakness in market leader Netflix.

At launch, the service will only be for Dish subscribers, but is expected to have a wide release later this year.

Calling it "the most comprehensive home entertainment package ever," Dish will unveil the details on Friday.

Blockbuster, which was saved from death earlier this year by Dish, has come back leaner in the brick-and-mortar business but stronger in its online presence with a DVD-by-mail service and a VOD service.

Although unconfirmed, there are reports that the new offering could include Starz content. Netflix will lose its Starz content in February when a four-year deal runs out.

If Apple's numerous lawsuits against Android go badly for Samsung, they may already have their future strategy mapped out in the form of Bada.

Announced with little fanfare in 2009, Bada isn't exactly an OS. It's more of a middleware application layer which is tied closely with an embedded OS called Nucleus RTOS.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Samsung has plans to make Bada open source next year. If true, this may be purely a PR move. It's unclear exactly what the value of Bada is to other phone vendors since it only supports a single embedded OS right now.

That means won't run on the standard ARM chips used in most smartphones. This is intentional since it was initially created for emerging markets like China where cost trumps performance. Of course, that might be the point. If Android disappears, Samsung will want a replacement for it in places like the US and Europe. That means developing a new OS, probably based on Linux since Bada is already built to work in a POSIX environment.

Samsung has put significant development efforts into an app ecosystem for Bada. While there isn't a big app selection yet, particularly for the markets Android dominates, it's still not a bad starting point. At the very least, it could be seen as a head start in establishing a developer community.

As the presumed October launch of the iPhone 5 gets closer, signs that Samsung may launch a series of patent lawsuits to block sales of the device continue to surface.

Over the weekend a report came out of South Korea that Samsung is leaning toward a suit blocking sales of the next iPhone in that country. Now it seems they may take the same approach in Europe.

Samsung had no comment on the claim from an unnamed source according to a Reuters article.

From Apple's point of view, the obvious question is what, exactly, do they stand to gain from killing Android?

The iPhone is by far the most successful smartphone on the planet. If they are planning to introduce a discount model based on the iPhone 4, and that seems likely, it stands a good chance of being the number two model.

The hype of a new iPhone is unmatched by any competitor. In fact, you could argue Samsung's Galaxy S II's public visibility was increased more by Apple's legal campaign than anything Samsung could have done.

Google Wallet was launched yesterday exclusively for Sprint customers using the Nexus S 4G Android phone. It is a new payment system which uses Near Field Communication (NFC), enabling your phone to communicate directly with a merchant's point of sale hardware.

Google's initial partner in processing payments for Google Wallet is MasterCard. That means retailers will need to have a MasterCard PayPass terminal installed. Those are currently rare.

Google has indicated they are working on support for Visa, Discover & American Express cards as well.

If your MasterCard isn't issued by Citi, another partner, you will have to transfer funds to a Google Prepaid MasterCard to use them with Google Wallet. You can also transfer funds from non-MasterCard sources.

To find retailers who accept Google Wallet payments, you can use the tool on Google's website or PayPass locators from MasterCard on their website or in their Android app. You can also look for various logos on or around their card processing terminals.

Last week, while showing off their upcoming Windows 8 operating system, Microsoft dropped a bombshell, explaining that HTML5 "Metro-style apps" for Windows 8 would be "plug-in free."

Rather than using plug-ins like Silverlight to render content on web pages, it will rely on HTML5, said Microsoft. This is similar to the approach taken by Apple for Mobile Safari on the iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad.

Today, Adobe has said that Flash will be the exception to rule, due to Adobe AIR.

Says the post by Adobe:

Adobe is about enabling content publishers and developers to deliver the richest experiences for their users, independent of technology, including HTML5 and Flash. We are working closely with Microsoft, Google, Apple and others in the HTML community to drive innovation in HTML5, to make it as rich as possible for delivering world-class content on the open Web and through App Stores.

Although Samsung's Galaxy S II has only been available in the US for a short time, rumors are already beginning to surface about its successor, the Galaxy S III.

A report from an anonymous source posting on the 4chan message board claims to list specs for the phone. The information is claimed to come directly from someone at Samsung.

If the leak is genuine, it looks to be an impressive unit:

• 2GHZ processor
• 1.5GB RAM
• 32GB storage
• 4.65" Super AMOLED display
• 1280×1024 resolution
• 10 Megapixel camera
• FullHD (1080p) video recording @ 60fps

Thanks to its second high-profile case in which an employee lost a prototype of an upcoming iPhone, Apple is hiring two new security personnel in an effort to fight theft of its product.

Additionally, the new personnel will be in charge of fighting against the growing amount of counterfeiting done of Apple products.

The two new "experienced professionals" will join the company that in the past has hired ex-FBI agents as well as intelligence and law enforcement vets to protect their investments.

One security consulting firm, TraceSecurity, says Apple's paranoia is at least warranted:

Corporate espionage, that’s big money. Billion-dollar money. The paranoia is justified. Whatever they’re trying to do, their competitors want to know. Everybody wants to know.

The results of a study by Harris Interactive seem to indicate the adoption of e-book readers is leading to people in the US buying and reading more books.

The numbers include both dedicated e-readers, like the Kindle, and tablet computers with e-reader apps.

Half of all the people surveyed indicated they read the same number of books per year as in previous years. That number is essentially the same for those with and without e-readers.

The difference comes in people who read more or fewer books than before. 35% of respondents with e-readers said they read more books than before, compared to just 16% of those without.

Meanwhile, fewer than 10% of people using e-book readers are reading less, compared to nearly a quarter of non-e-reader users.

It will be interesting to see if the trend continues in the future. Although the survey indicates 15% of people are likely to purchase an e-reader in the next year, that number isn't broken down between dedicated e-readers and tablets.

With even Barnes & Noble apparently moving toward tablets, it's entirely possible they won't. However, for many e-reader buyers a tablet is simply not an option financially.

According to Qualcomm's President of Internet Services, the company plans to slow down on its BREW mobile OS, seen on feature phones for 10 years now.

Says Rob Chandhok (via Om):

[It's] not really the thing that’s in the spotlight for us anymore….we shouldn’t be too surprised: it’s been around for 10 years, there aren’t too many operating systems that have been around with only a couple of revisions in 10 years in the market….the pace might be a little bit slower than it was before, just because the market has changed.

The iPhone 5 may have bigger hurdles to overcome than competition from Android. There is a report that significant production problems could force Apple to push back the launch date.

The most credible reports for Apple's planned launch of the next generation iPhone, primarily based on sources inside mobile carriers both in the US and Europe, say it should be here by the middle of October.

A new story from 9to5 Mac says production delays on one assembly line could delay the launch for a short time, and even lead to shortages of the much anticipated phone for a few months.

They say reports that millions of iPhones have already been produced actually refer to a new bargain version of the iPhone 4, which has been rumored for some time.

If accurate, this could be good news for manufacturers of high end Android phones. A shortage of iPhones over the Christmas season could boost their sales significantly.

Google Executive Chairman Erich Schmidt will defend his company's business practices in a US Senate antitrust subcommittee hearing later this week titled, "The Power of Google: Serving Consumers or Threatening Competition?"

Google has come under heavy fire over the last few years over allegations that it abuses its position as the leading search engine in the US and various other parts of the world. Schmidt will be one of two Google representatives at Wednesday's hearing, and the only one who is actually an employee of the search giant.

Google initially resisted requests for Schmidt and Google CEO Larry Page, who replaced Schmidt in that position, to appear at the hearing. Page, who is in court today working on a potential lawsuit settlement with Oracle, will not be attending.

After his testimony, the committee will hear from a panel mostly representing companies critical of Google. They include Nextag CEO Jeff Katz, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman, and former Assistant US Attorney General Thomas Barnett, who represents Expedia.

Last week, at the BUILD event, Microsoft gave out 5000 Windows 8 developer tablets to attendees.

The Samsung-built tablet is now selling for thousands on eBay in a couple of auctions, with developers or early adopters overly eager to purchase.

One auction, with 7 bids currently up to $2700, has the following:

Here are the specs:
2nd Generation Intel Core i5
Samsung Super PLS 1366x768 display
UEFI BIOS
4GB DDR3
64GB solid state HD
Sensors, USB, micro SD, HDMI
11.6' diagonal, 909g, 12.9mm

Verizon has introduced their first sub-$100 LTE phone today, the Pantech Breakout.

That price point requires a 2-year contract and a minimum 2GB data tier plan, but at $99, the price is significantly cheaper than Verizon's other offerings (unless you do the Amazon promotion).

For specs, the Breakout runs on Gingerbread, has a 1 GHz single-core processor, a 4-inch touchscreen with 800×480 resolution, 720p HD video, Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, GPS, dual cameras, and of course, Verizon's 4G LTE.

In Verizon stores, the cheapest 4G devices you will find are likely the high-end Droid Charge and Thunderbolt, each which retail for $200-250 with contract.

A settlement conference between Oracle and Google in the multi-billion dollar lawsuit over Java patents will take place today with the CEOs of both companies in attendance.

The suit was filed last year by Oracle following their purchase of Sun Microsystems, the creators of Java. It alleges Google willfully infringed on Sun patents and copyrights.

The meetings are part of a court effort to force the two sides into reaching a settlement. Oracle's Larry Ellison and Larry Page of Google were ordered to attend the conference personally by US Magistrate Judge Paul Grewal earlier this month.

They were also instructed to make themselves available for additional conferences which could be required between now and the end of the month.

At the heart of the suit is Android's Dalvik Virtual Machine, which is a core component of the OS. The Dalvik VM is based on an open source implementation of the Java VM developed by the Apache Software Foundation.

If their lawsuit is successful, Oracle could be entitled to a license fee for every Android device sold and each copy of the Android SDK distributed. The SDK is used both for app development and end user device management.