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Leaker flier gives clue on UK release date.

The successor to the PSP, the PlayStation Vita handheld, is due to be released sometime this fall. Comments from Sony suggest that the global rollout will initiate this fall but its unknown whether it will be available in its three main territories by the end of the year (North America, Europe and Japan).

IGN posted a scan of a Blockbuster flier from the UK that suggests the PS Vita handheld console will be released in the region on October 28. The flier lists it among upcoming games releases, pricing the WiFi only model at £229.99 and 3G model at £279.99.

The flier was posted last week and IGN attempted to contact Blockbuster for confirmation that its real without any luck. Sony only reiterated that the handheld console will started a phased rollout later on in the year.

Source: IGN

RIMM has confirmed the long-rumored BlackBerry 9900 and a few new "Torch" devices, including a fully touchscreen version.

Each of the phones will run on the new BlackBerry 7 OS. BlackBerry 7 "introduces a next generation BlackBerry browser with a significantly faster, more fluid web browsing experience that is among the best in the industry. Combining the dramatically improved performance of the advanced WebKit browser engine together with the powerful hardware enhancements found in the BlackBerry 7 based smartphones delivers browsing results that are up to 40% faster than BlackBerry® 6 based smartphones and up to 100% faster than BlackBerry® 5 based smartphones*.

Additional enhancements to this next generation BlackBerry browser have also optimized zooming and panning for smoother web navigation and optimized HTML5 performance for incredible gaming and video experiences," says the press release. There are also tons of other "goodies" with BB7, including built-in premium apps, and BBM6.

The company says the launch (later this month) will be its largest ever, with 5 phones in total being launched.

CA Security Advisory details Android call snooping trojan.

There has been a lot of attention focused lately on the growth of malware in circulation for the popular Android smartphone operating system. Some past discoveries include applications that leak private information on Internet and other use, record text messages and information on calls made and received which can be uploaded to a remove server.

This new Trojan takes things a step further by actually recording phone calls to local storage in the AMR format before uploading them to a server specific by the attacker.

The Trojan dubs itself the "Android System Messenger" and asks for permission upon installation to be allowed to incept outgoing calls. This should act as a warning for users, but the truth is most users see these messages all too often and end up just ignoring them. The same problem is seen with User Account Control prompts on Windows, where users allow a program to execute even if they have no idea what it is.

When installed, the malware drops a configuration file to the device which will include information on the remote server to upload the files. When a call is made, the conversation is recorded to a .amr file located in a directory "shangzhou/callrecord". The directory hints at a Chinese origin for the malware.

Lawsuit against tens of thousands of alleged Expendables pirates suffers jurisdiction setback.

All in all, the lawsuit targeted 23,322 alleged pirates identifiable only by the IP address used. For a time it was the biggest file sharing lawsuit seen yet, though it was surpassed by the Hurt Locker lawsuit later on.

Now a U.S. District Court of Columbia has dealt the case a major setback that casts doubt over whether over 99 percent of the alleged pirates will be pursued at all. Judge Robert Wilkins ruled that the vast majority of alleged pirates cannot be pursued through his court because they fall out of the court's jurisdiction.

"Plaintiff has only shown good cause for, and will only be entitled to discovery related to, those John Does for whom there is a good faith basis to believe may reside in the District of Columbia," Wilkins wrote in his ruling.

"Plaintiff can establish such a good faith basis for residence or personal jurisdiction by utilizing geolocation services that are generally available to the public to derive the approximate location of the IP addresses identified for each punitive defendant."

Time Warner has confirmed today that their popular HBO Go streaming service is headed to more devices, including the PS3, Xbox 360 and Internet-connected TVs.

CEO Jeff Bewkes says the service, which has been available via web browsers and smart devices like the iPad, has exceeded expectations of popularity and will therefore be expanded.

If you are an HBO subscriber, you can view all episodes of HBO original series on-demand, streaming from your phone, tablet or browser.

Overall, the apps for the service have been downloaded 4 million times, and users with the app watch more of HBO's content than those with subscriptions that don't use it.

It is unclear when the expansion will occur, or how long the gaming consoles will take to have native apps.

Last week we reported on a survey by consulting company AptiQuant, which claimed that Internet Explorer users scored lower than other browser users on a standard IQ test.

Following deeper research into the company by the BBC, it appears that the whole survey was a very elaborate hoax.

AptiQuant claimed to have begun in 2006, but their website was actually started on July 14th, 2011.

Furthermore, all of the staff's bios were stolen from an established French company.

The company has not responded to any attempts of contact, and their Twitter page has been suspended.

In the original report, the fake company had claimed:

The group tested 100,000 participants while monitoring what browser they used.

A "population average" for IQ tests is 100, but Internet Explorer users scored below average. IE 6 users scored the worst of all, at just over 80. IE6 was released in 2001.

Users of Opera, Camino and Explorer with Chrome Frame scored the highest, with over 110. Opera users scored over 120.

According to the latest StatCounter data, Google's Chrome has now become the second most popular browser in the UK, whilst growing to 22.14 percent global share in July.

In June, the browser controlled 20.65 percent share.

Internet Explorer and Firefox lost some share to Chrome with IE falling from 43.58 percent to 42.45 percent and Firefox falling from 28.34 percent to 27.95 percent.

Apple's Safari continued its constant but tortoiselike growth, moving from 5.07 to 5.17 percent share.

If the current trend continues, Chrome may see its way into second place in global share by the end of the year.

According to government sources, the UK will finally legalize the personal ripping of CDs and DVDs for media players or for personal use.

Prime Minister David Cameron recommended the move in his review of the UK IP framework created by Professor Ian Hargreaves a few months ago.

Hargreaves rightfully pronounced that Britain's copyright laws, written 300 years ago, were "obstructing" innovation and growth, and new laws could add 8 billion pounds to the struggling economy.

To date, the practice of ripping CDs for personal use is legal in all European nations except for Ireland, Britain and Malta.

Additionally, the government will begin allowing exception to copyright for parody.

Google has announced today that they have expanded their Gmail calling program to 38 languages.

Since 2010, U.S.-based Gmail users could use the email service to call landline and mobile phones directly from their web browser, and that service has now been expanded internationally.

Outside of standard USD, you can now purchase calling credit in Euros, British Pound or Canadian dollars.

Furthermore, the search giant says it has lowered its calling rates, for example, "$0.10 (or €0.08) per minute to call mobile phones in the U.K., France or Germany (landlines are $0.02/min), $0.15/minute to call mobile phones in Mexico and $0.02/min to call any phone number in China and India."

The full list, with 150 destinations is here: Gmail rates page

Google also reiterated that calls within U.S. and Canada will remain free for the rest of 2011.

It has taken awhile, but Windows XP's global market share has finally fallen under 50 percent, to 49.69 percent.

Despite the fall, the OS remains the most popular operating system in the world.

Windows 7 was the main reason for the decline of its older brother, with the new OS moving up to 27.92 percent.

Apple's Mac OS X continued its rise, as well, shooting to 5.56 percent share.

Microsoft's "failed" Vista OS controlled third with 9.27 percent share, followed by the iPhone, JavaME, the iPad and Android with much smaller percentages.

Full figures here: NetApplications OS version trend

Finnish media company AfterDawn Oy has established two new localized versions of Tom's Hardware and AfterDawn.com in Denmark.

AfterDawn.dk hosts AfterDawn's software collection and some other basic services you would find at AfterDawn.com, while Tom's Hardware Denmark (tomshardware.dk) specializes in thorough tech-related news, product reviews and in-depth technical articles primarily edited by Martin Graversen and Michael Larsen, two recent additions to the AfterDawn team with backgrounds in Danish tech media.

Tom's Hardware, which boasts over 30 million readers per month, is owned by Bestofmedia Group. Through a licensing agreement with the French company, AfterDawn Oy is tasked with establishing a presence of Tom's Hardware in all the Nordic countries.

Tom's Hardware Finland went live last year, and AfterDawn Oy will launch Tom's Hardware in Norway over the coming weeks, and in Sweden later on in the year.

Danish AfterDawn: www.afterdawn.dk

Tom's Hardware Denmark: www.tomshardware.dk

Android has now taken almost 50 percent of global smartphone market share.

According to research firm Canalys, strong growth in the Asia-Pacific region has helped the smartphone OS to become the top platform in 35 of 56 countries tracked with 48 percent share overall and 51.9 million units shipped.

Apple remained in second place, at 19 percent, after shipping a record 20.3 million iPhones last quarter.

BlackBerry-maker Research in Motion continued its multi-year slide, falling to 12 percent from 33 percent share last year.

Windows Phone 7 brought up the rear at 1 percent share.

Samsung saw strong growth on Android devices, shipping 17 million devices on the back of strong Galaxy S sales. The number was a massive 421 percent larger than last year.

Taiwanese manufacturer Foxconn has said it will replace some of its workers in the next three years, replacing them with 1 million robots.

The company, most notably known for manufacturing iOS products among thousands of other devices, has 995,000 employees in the Chinese mainland, and another 200,000 elsewhere.

By replacing human workers with robots, the company will curb rising labor expenses and improve efficiency, says chairman Terry Gou (via xinhuanet).

Foxconn has been in the news in the past year due to a string of suicides by workers.

Average line workers at the factory make about 900 yuan ($140 USD) per month.

Update: Sony has said this weekend they will not reduce the RAM in the Vita, but they will also not reveal the final specs meaning it could still be 256MB instead of the rumored 512MB.

According to developer Novarama's CEO Dani Sánchez-Crespo, the upcoming Sony PlayStation Vita will indeed see the rumored RAM reduction.

Originally pegged at 512MB of RAM, the handheld will have just half of that.

When asked if the cut would cause any problems for developers, Sanchez-Crespo says:

That won’t affect us. It’s actually good for developers to work under constraint. Generally for Vita, we still have a whole lot of headroom in terms of GPU power, CPU power and indeed RAM.

Following the security breach of the PlayStation Network in April, Sony said the attacks would cost the company $170-178 million over the course of the 2012 fiscal year.

Today, somewhat surprisingly, executive vice president and chief financial officer Masaru Kato said "the [total] cost may be smaller than the original cost estimate."

The exec did say that "that was the May forecast. The first quarter cost was within our expected range."

Furthermore, PSN usership has returned to levels before the hack:

Most recently, user logins to the PlayStation Network in North America have returned to a similar level as before the cyber attacks.

Many customers have already returned to our service. At one point people were concerned, [but the] impact will not be as great as we originally estimated.