Latest news

CNBC is saying today that Facebook will launch a streaming music player, likely in partnership with MOG or Spotify.

Says CNBC's Jon Fortt:

Yes indeed, next month is going to be a big one for music. I'm hearing from someone familiar with the plans that Facebook will launch its long rumored music service at the F8 conference on September 22nd.

Now it seems likely that Facebook won't actually host the music, but will partner with others who do that. But Facebook to launch their platform at F8 on September 22nd.

BI speculates MOG will be the partner due to what their CEO recently said:

MOG, a subscription-based music streaming service, already has a strong relationship with Facebook. It uses Facebook's social graph to help subscribers discover new artists based on those their friends already "like" on Facebook.

No other music service has that kind of access to Facebook's social graph. MOG also has a new HTML5-based player that Hyman said could be easily integrated directly into Facebook.

Sony has unveiled its latest Reader e-reading device, the world's lightest ever.

The company says the Reader weighs 5.9 ounces and is just 8.9mm thin with one-month of standby battery life.

Sony's Reader Wi-Fi uses an E Ink Pearl display and can handle EPUB, PDF and TXT formats. Everything else is pretty standard for an e-reader.

Featuring 2GB storage, Sony says you can fit 1200 eBooks, and there is a microSD slot, regardless.

Finally, Sony is also offering a limited edition Pottermore version of the Reader Wi-Fi which includes a voucher for a free download of the first version of the popular Harry Potter series.

Full specs:

Model name

PRS-T1

Display:

E-Ink Pearl™ v220
- Screen Size: 15.2cm (6 inches)
- Gray Scale: 16-levels gray scale
- Resolution: 600 x 800 pixels

Touch-screen

Clear Touch Infrared technology

Battery life (continuous playback)

-A single charge lasts over one month with wireless off based on a half-hour of daily reading time. *1
-Read on a single battery charge up to 3 weeks with wireless on. *1

CNN has purchased the popular iPad media company Zite.

Zite, which has digital magazine/newspaper tech, delivers media depending on the user's personal preferences.

If you are a finance fan, your Zite magazine will be packed with finance-based articles and media. Same goes for sports, tech, politics, gaming, etc.

CNN says it will let Zite run as it currently is, with no layoffs or shakeups.

The news company has a notoriously ugly mobile site and so could eventually begin using Zite's tech to create an improved experience for its own users.

Sony has now shown off the specs of the Tablet S, set for release this month.

The tablet has a 9.4-inch screen, a "magazine" form factor, a Tegra 2 dual core processor, dual cameras and Honeycomb.

If you purchase the Wi-Fi-only version you get Honeycomb 3.1 (with Sony UI overlay) and if you buy the more expensive Wi-Fi/3G version you get 3.2 (with similar UI overlay).

The tablet comes with either 16GB or 32GB of internal storage, DLNA compatibility, an IR port (to use as universal remote), an SD card slot, Sony's Crackle and eReader apps and Sony's "QuickView" tech for faster browsing.

Finally, the tablet is the first to be Playstation Certified which means it can play PSX games from the PS Store.

The tablet costs $499 for the base 16GB/Wi-Fi model.

AT&T has announced that the first tablet with Android 3.1, the HTC Jetstream, will hit the carrier next week.

The 10-inch tablet (with 1280x768 resolution) weighs 1.56 pounds, runs on a dual-core 1.5GHz processor, has 8MP and 1.3MP cameras, 32GB internal storage and 4G support.

Furthermore, HTC says the device will have the popular Sense UI overlay.

Going on sale on September 4th, the tablet will cost $700 with contract or $850 without.

Additionally, if you want 4G data, AT&T is offering $15/250MB, $25/2GB and $35/3GB per month.

The Windows Phone 7 Marketplace has, according to one unofficial source, reached 30,000 apps.

To put the number in perspective, there are close to 500,000 iPhone apps available in the iTunes store and Android Market boasts more than 200,000 apps. Of course between them they also serve nearly two thirds of the global smartphone market.

According to Windows Phone Applist, who track various statistics about Windows Phone development, there are currently just over 30,000 apps in the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace.

The U.S. government has filed to block AT&T much maligned proposed acquisition of T-Mobile USA for $39 billion.

If successfully blocked, AT&T will have to pay a huge breakup fee of $3 billion to Deutsche Telekom (TMo's parent company) as well as $4 billion worth of wireless spectrum.

Says the DOJ:

AT&T’s elimination of T-Mobile as an independent, low- priced rival would remove a significant competitive force from the market.

The DOJ complaint seeks a court order blocking any arrangement implementing the deal.

Additionally, the DOJ says blocking the deal will help save jobs in the U.S.

AT&T just responded:

We are surprised and disappointed by today’s action, particularly since we have met repeatedly with the DOJ.

It has been available for months in Europe, and has set pre-sale records in the U.S., but Samsung has finally announced the Galaxy S II for three major U.S. carriers.

For Sprint, the device will be called the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G and for T-Mobile the device will be called the T-Mobile Galaxy S II. AT&T only said their device would be unveiled in "the coming weeks."

Sprint's model came with a full spec sheet, pricing and availability:

Android 2.3
4.52″ Super AMOLED Plus display
1.2 Ghz dual-core CPU (Samsung Exynos)
WiMax 4G
8 Megapixel rear camera
2 Megapixel front camera
Preloaded apps: Nova 2 HD, Swype, Polaris Office
Bluetooth 3.0
Sprint ID
802.11b/g/n WiFi
WiFi Hotspot for up to 8 device

22-year-old Ashley McDowell of South Carolina was duped out of $180 after two men approached her in a McDonald's parking lot and offered to sell her an iPad.

One of the men, who had a gold tooth, says McDowell, explained that they purchased the tablets in bulk from overseas and were selling for $300. The woman said she only had $180 on her and they quickly accepted her price.

When McDowell got home, she opened the box (a Fedex box, not even an iPad box, mind you) to find a piece of wood with the Apple logo painted on it as well as a "screen" with a replica iPad home screen.

Adding insult to injury, the scammers threw a fake Best Buy sales ticket on top.

Despite dusting the box and "tablet" for prints, the police say they have no leads.

HP, in an unlikely move, will build more TouchPads, in an effort to "meet unfulfilled demand."

Analyst Shawn Wu says the move is just HP fulfilling its contract with Taiwanese manufacturer Compal, which it had cancelled half way through when it shut down the tablet project.

HP is assumed to have ordered 550,000 tablets through Compal.

The TouchPads will be on shelves starting in two weeks and will run through October 31st.

Each retailer has been given the rights to price any inventory at whatever they choose with the base at $99.

More info here: HP will not leave TouchPad users out to dry, one more update coming

The founders of the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay have announced the launch of their own legal cyberlocker, called BayFiles.

The service, like rivals, allows users to upload files and share them online.

BayFiles is also registered as a DMCA agent, meaning they will take down all files that are flagged as unauthorized due to copyright infringement and bans multiple-time offenders.

In the future, the company hopes to expand BayFiles into a "feature-rich" cloud service, a la Dropbox. Just like new services from Amazon, Google and Apple, the platform will allow you to upload your music and stream it from a phone (or from anywhere) as long as you have Internet access.

The service is free to sign up, and free members can upload files up to 500MB.

Premium members (at $7 a month or $63 a year) can upload 5GB files with unlimited storage.

Microsoft is upgrading Windows Explorer in Windows 8 by replacing traditional menus and toolbars with a ribbon interface.

The ribbon interface is the biggest of several changes intended to make Windows Explorer more efficient for common activities, which Microsoft research indicates are currently performed primarily from the context (right-click) menu or keyboard shortcuts.

Thanks to an incomplete selection of options, Windows Explorer's buttons and menus account for less than 15% of all user operations, including copying/moving, viewing properties, renaming, and creating/deleting.

Microsoft concentrated primarily on those common operations in designing the Windows Explorer ribbon's Home tab. The percentages listed for each button indicates how often the operation is expected to be performed.

comScore has released their latest numbers on top smartphone platforms and unsurprisingly Android and Apple continue to grow at the expense of everyone else.

For the three months ended July, Android increased a full 5.4 points from April to 41.8 percent while Apple took a 1 point increase to 27 percent despite only having one device.

RIM got killed, again, with the BlackBerry maker dropping 4 points to 21.7 percent.

Microsoft, even with the launch of Windows Phone 7, continues to get killed also, down another point to 5.7 percent share.

Somehow, Symbian still has some share, 1.9 percent, despite being left for dead by Nokia.

According to Cnet, HP will release at least one future update for its discontinued TouchPad tablet.

On the 19th, HP slashed the price of its 16GB base model to $99 from $499 MSRP in a firesale intended to liquidate all remaining stock. The move worked and HP is said to have sold out nearly all of its inventory.

The company also added that it would no longer create webOS-based hardware, as the company moves increasingly into the software business.

Says HP:

We expect that HP TouchPad owners can look forward to an over-the-air update that will enhance the platform and add functionality and a growing applications catalog.

HP is fully committed to the ongoing support and service of customers who purchased webOS devices...We plan to continue to investigate the best ways to leverage WebOS software and grow the applications.

The company is also giving away free apps.

According to Forrester Research, Amazon could sell 5 million of its still unconfirmed tablet in the Q4, making it a viable competitor to Apple and the iPad.

When the tablet is eventually launched, it is expected to sell for $299 or even $199, well below Apple's base price of $499.

Says the firm:

Thus far, Apple has faced many would-be competitors, but none have gained significant market share. Not only does Amazon have the potential to gain share quickly but its willingness to sell hardware at a loss, as it did with the Kindle, makes Amazon a nasty competitor.

One issue is the amount of native apps for Android tablets, which stand under 300. There are over 100,000 iPad native apps, by comparison.

Amazon will take a loss on every tablet sold but has an extremely strong ecosystem including the Kindle book store for ebooks, Cloud player/Amazon MP3 for music, the Amazon Video store for movies and TV shows, and the Amazon Appstore for Android, where the company takes a 30% chunk of each app sold.