Latest news

Yesterday, we reported that Nintendo had announced a price drop for the 3DS handheld, following lackluster sales.

Starting August 12th, the console will cost just $170, down from $250.

Blaming himself for the poor sales performance of the device, president Satoru Iwata cut his salary in half, an almost unprecedented move for an exec.

Research firm IHS iSuppli recently did a component teardown of the console and found that the cost of parts was $100.71. Manufacturing costs turned the bill into $103.25. An old adage is that companies wholesale the items at half the retail price (unless you are Apple), so it can be implied that Nintendo is wholesaling the 3DS at $85 per unit, which would leave them with a glaring loss per sale.

This is of course speculation, however, as it is unclear what price Nintendo is and will sell their console for to retailers.

Thanks to a leaked video, we can see how Microsoft employees really feel about Gmail.

The video shows "Gmail Man," who is some kind of delivery man that scans your snail mail and then shows a related ad after finding certain keywords.

Furthermore, the video pushes Microsoft's Office 365 as an alternative.

Microsoft created the video just days after Google launched their "Email Intervention" campaign, in an effort to get Hotmail/Live and Yahoo Mail users to switch over to Gmail.

Both are decently funny.

Google's Email Intervention video:



Microsoft's leaked video:

Market research firm IDC has noted this week that global mobile phone growth was not as strong as expected.

Sales of smartphones, however, were up 76 percent as the world moves away from feature phone to always-connected devices.

Feature phone sales declined 4 percent, the first decline since 2009, leading to overall growth of just 11.3 percent in the quarter.

Says IDC analyst Ramon Llamas:

While this is not a new trend—smartphones have been the primary engine of growth for the last several quarters—it does mark something of a transition point, as demonstrated by the growing number and variety of smartphones featured in the vendors’ portfolios.

Apple was the top smartphone vendor in the world and fourth overall, despite only having one phone and no feature phones.

Nokia remained the top phone seller in the world, and fell dramatically to third in smartphone sales behind Samsung.

Android continued its trek for control of the smartphone market in June, taking 39 percent of the U.S. market.

Apple's iOS continued to grow, as well, despite only having one phone, with the iPhone taking 28 percent share for the month.

RIM lost share, as expected, down to 20 percent for the month. As recently as 2009, RIM had over 45 percent share.

In terms of handset vendors, Apple remained the clear leader with 28 percent share with HTC in second at 20 percent. HTC sells Android phones and Windows-based devices, as well.

Motorola, which only sells Android, took 11 percent followed by Samsung at 10 percent.

The U.S. DOJ has requested more info from Google over its acquisition of AdMeld.

Google acquired the large advertising optimization platform for publishers for $400 million in June, pending anti-trust review.

Says Neal Mohan,VP of display advertising at Google:

This doesn’t surprise us, as today’s display advertising industry is very new and highly complex."But we’ll work to enable this review to be concluded as quickly as possible—display advertising is highly competitive and fast moving, and we don’t want our efforts to bring better services to our clients to be delayed.

The move is the third major acquisition for Google in the online ad space, with the search giant paying $3.1 billion for DoubleClick in 2007 and $750 million for AdMob in 2009.

Japanese firm will not exit LCD joint venture with Samsung.

Sony Corp. has moved to squash rumors that it will exit an LCD joint venture with South Korea's Samsung Electronics. The rumors surfaced as Sony is heading for an eight straight year of losses in its televisions division.

Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper, first reported the rumor. It said that Samsung was in talks with Sony on how the joint venture, S-LCD, would be broken up. It quoted an unidentified industry source close to the situation in its report.

In April this year, both companies were reported to have cut capital in S-LCD by over $500 million, as Sony looked to cut its TV losses and Samsung put more focus into next generation display technology.

Chinese hackers blamed for web breaches.

South Korea is blaming hackers located in China for stealing data from 35 million accounts on a popular social networking site in the country. Hackers are said to have stolen e-mail addresses, phone numbers, names and some encrypted information from the Cyworld website and the Nate web portable. Both are run by SK Telecom.

The details of the large data breach were revealed by the Korean Communications Commission, which claims it traced the incursion back to sources located in China.

The Nate web portal provided e-mail access and other features, while the Cyworld social site let users share images and updates with friends.

South Korea has experienced a spate of hacking incidents in recent times. A government-backed bank was targeted in April in one incident, and in May, data on more than 1.8 million customers was stolen from Hyundai Capital. Other attacks have targeted government ministries, the National Assembly and U.S. Forces located in Korea.

British broadcaster to put bespoke content behind pay wall.

ITV will conduct a trial which will charge online viewers for access to some video content. The proposal is to charge for access to content such as the channel's back catalogue of drama, and also for webisodes of soaps like Coronation Street.

Viewers who use ITV Player to catch up on weekly shows will not be subject to the new charge however. Adam Crozier, ITV chief executive, said the move is part of ITV's attempts to diversify its revenue stream.

ITV said its advertising revenue fell 6 percent in the three months to June 30, after rising 12 percent in the previous quarter, but it has reported a rise in pre-tax profits to £181 million (from £97 million) for the first six months of 2011.

At present, ITV is trying to establish what kind of content that users would be willing to pay for, and to work out the details on how to charge for the access (subscription fees, one-off-payments, pay per view etc.) The trial of a new system will start privately.

Researcher identifies offenders among batch of 10,000 Android applications.

Security researcher Neil Daswani, of security firm Dasient, has revealed that around 8 percent of apps on the Android market are leaking private information. He said that the firm studied the behaviour of 10,000 applications for Android and found 800 of them were leaking data.

Eleven of the applications were found to be sending unwanted SMS messages, while the majority of the rest would connect to servers to send data. Daswani will present the findings of the firm at the Black Hat Conference due to start this weekend in Las Vegas.

Because of its growing usage, Android is becoming a target of malware authors. Google is trying to keep up and has removed many suspicious applications from the Android market in the past.

While Apple extensively probes applications before it approves them for addition to the App Store, Android applications are not subject to the same level of regulation, which is seen mostly as a good thing but also comes with the side effect of malware.

In the case of Android apps leaking personal data, the vast majority of them can be avoided if users read the permission requirements of the applications.

Stuart Hughes has outdone itself this time.

The brand behind such excess as the $3 million iPhone and the £200,000 PlayStation 3 has gone prehistoric this week, designing the "iPad 2 History Edition."

Selling for the very reasonable price of £5,000,000 ($8.2 million USD), the iPad 2 has a frame built from T-Rex dinosaur fossil, alongside the usual diamonds and gold.

Reads the description:

Undoubtably the world?s most unique gadget is the Ipad 2 Gold History Edition. Encrusted with 12.5 cts of I'F' Flawless diamonds, a magnificent total of 53 individually set sparkling gems dwell beautifully in solid 24ct Apple logo with rear section formed again in 24ct gold weighing an immense 2,000 grams.

The unrivalled imagination towards the craftmanship of the iapd is down to its main front frame which is made from the oldest rock the world has to offer in the form of Ammolite , sourced from Canada this stone is over 75 million years old. However to make this masterpiece even more individual, sections of a 65 million year old T-REX Dinosaur's thigh bone was splintered and then shaved into the Ammolite , then finished off with ultimate jewel , as single cut 8.5ct flawless diamond inlaid in its own platinum surround with 12 outer flawless diamonds.

Alibaba, one of China's largest e-commerce companies, has announced the launch of its own mobile OS today.

The OS will run on smartphones and tablets.

Dubbed "Aliyun OS", the Linux-based OS was launched with the aim of promoting Alibaba's online products in China.

The company showed off a smartphone with the OS and said it will go on sale Saturday in China for 2,680 yuan ($415).

Aliyun can run Android apps and HTML5/JavaScript Web-based apps.

Each Aliyun smartphone will have 20 built-in Cloud-based apps that access Alibaba's numerous services. The apps include Internet search, barcode scanner, and a daily deal/group buying app.

The first phone with the OS is called the K-Touch Cloud-Smart Phone W700, and includes a Nvidia Tegra 2 1GHz dual-core processor and 3.8-inch touchscreen.

LightSquared and Sprint have signed a 15-year deal, with the former paying Sprint to build and operate a nationwide LTE network.

The company will pay Sprint $9 billion in cash in the first 11 years, along with $4.5 billion in credits. Sprint can use those credits to acquire capacity from LightSquared once the network is up and running.

Says LS CEO Sanjiv Ahuja:

The benefit this provides is an acceleration of our buildout and at very efficient costs. This is very, very significant for LightSquared’s ability to build its business.

LS says with the deal it can offer services to 260 million Americans by the end of 2014, a year earlier than previously expected.

Sprint already had $5 billion earmarked for network upgrades within the next 5 years, so the latest deal will be a good source of revenue for the carrier. Additionally, the company can use LightSquared's network if capacity on their own WiMax network becomes overburdened.

Hollywood claims victory that will see Usenet-indexing site blocked.

BT has been ordered by a High Court judge to block access to Newzbin2, a website that indexes contents of Usenet binary newsgroups, and makes it possible to download NZB files that combine with newsreader software to download binary files.

A previous version of Newzbin has been ordered to clean up its indexing, but it was sold off to a new group outside UK jurisdiction. The member-only website which charges a very low fee for access does not host any illegal material itself, but can used in a way similar to a torrent site to gain access to such material.

"In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin 2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes," Justice Arnold wrote in his ruling.

"It knows that the users of Newzbin 2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin 2."

Windows 7 flaw found to miscalculate available capacity on blank Blu-ray media.

If you have tried to burn data to a blank Blu-ray media and received a bizarre error instructing you to keep your BD writer's firmware up to date, then you are not the only one. Microsoft has acknowledged that a flaw in the Windows 7 operating system causes it to miscalculate available capacity on blank Blu-ray media.

The problem arises when users try to burn more than 23GB or data to a single layer BD-R(E) disc, or 46GB to a dual layer disc. The burning process fails and the user is presented with an error message.

"The disc wasn't burned successfully. Make sure that you have the latest firmware for your CD or DVD burner installed, and then try again," it reads.

The problem, according to Microsoft's own documentation, "occurs because Windows 7 does not calculate the write capacity of BD-R correctly." Unfortunately, Microsoft Support does not give any indication for when the problem will be fixed, and the workaround is hardly a credible solution.

Officials act on bogus Apple stores following exposure by blogger.

Chinese officials in Kunming City have moved to shut down a number of retail stores that were designed to look exactly like Apple stores. The BirdAbroad blog (edited by an American woman living in China) exposed the elaborate fake stores in the city, prompting trade officials to investigate.

In total, five stores were found to be posing as Apple retail outlets. Of the five, two have so far been shut down because their owners lacked a business license. The blogger interviewed staff at one of the stores, who were utterly convinced that they worked for Apple Inc.

The stores were described by the blogger as the "best ripoff stores we had ever seen," copying key elements from Apple's chain, including a winding staircase, upstairs seating areas and even similar t-shirts on the staff along with the ID lanyards.

What exposed the phony nature of the stores however was the shoddy construction on closer inspection, and the fact that the shop front had the words "Apple Store" on them. "Apple never writes 'Apple Store' on its signs - it just puts up the glowing, iconic fruit," wrote BirdAbroad.