Latest news

Google has said this week that it will begin winding down "Google Labs," the company's more experimental prototypes.

Says the search giant:

While we’ve learned a huge amount by launching very early prototypes in Labs, we believe that greater focus is crucial if we’re to make the most of the extraordinary opportunities ahead.

In many cases, this will mean ending Labs experiments—in others we’ll incorporate Labs products and technologies into different product areas. And many of the Labs products that are Android apps today will continue to be available on Android Market.

AMD, the company behind the Xbox 360's GPU, has said this week that the upcoming next-gen Xbox model will offer graphics on par with those seen in the blockbuster film "Avatar."

The company says the Xbox will launch with those graphic capabilities, making it much more powerful and advanced than current gaming consoles and PCs, even those with the most expensive video cards.

Director of ISV relationships at AMD Neal Robison would not confirm that the company is working on the hardware for the Xbox, but it would make sense for Microsoft to keep their existing relationships in tact.

Furthermore, Robison says AI in games like Grand Theft Auto will be given individual mentalities, removing them from the unrealistic "mob mentality" of current games.

For example, Robison notes (via Examiner), that in current games, if someone is shot, the entire group around will likely run away and yell in a mob. In the future, each pedestrian will have their own mindset and perform their own action.

Amazon has signed a new agreement with CBS that will Amazon Prime users access to 2000 new TV episodes.

The deal includes full seasons of newer content like "Numb3rs" and "Medium" along with older content like "Star Trek."

Amazon Prime costs $79 per year and gives users free access to all the streaming content and free 2-day shipping on all items they purchase.

The Prime library now has over 8000 movies and shows, small in comparison to Netflix's more established 20,000-strong library.

With the new deal, Amazon is no longer expected to bid for on-demand streaming platform Hulu.

According to BI, Yahoo would be willing to purchase on-demand streaming TV service Hulu for $2 billion, as long as certain demands are met.

Hulu is owned by Disney (ABC), News Corp. (Fox), Comcast (NBCU) and private equity firm Providence.

Yahoo is only willing to make the deal if Hulu guarantees them 4-5 years of exclusive access to the media content.

Hulu, on the other hand, seems to be only willing to give 2 years of exclusivity, albeit with 5 years guaranteed access to the content.

Says one source:

If [Hulu's content creating owners] came out and said, we've renewed [Hulu's exclusive rights] for four years at the same terms we have today – it's really easy to model [a valuation between] $1 billion and $2 billion – maybe more.

Without four or five years of exclusive streaming rights to TV shows and movies, Hulu is not worth anything.

Apple has completely blown out their quarterly earnings report this afternoon, on the back of strong growth in China and record iPad sales.

Profits for the quarter were $7.31 billion, up 125 percent year-over-year, and revenue was $28.57 billion, up 82 percent YoY.

Following the report, Apple, which closed the day at $376.85 jumped to as high as $405 per share, a new all-time high.

Additionally, the company confirmed it will be releasing Mac OS X 10.7 Lion tomorrow, as reported earlier.

iPhone sales jumped 142 percent to 20.34 million units (a record) and iPad sales jumped to 9.25 million units (also a record).

Says CEO Steve Jobs:

We're thrilled to deliver our best quarter ever, with revenue up 82 percent and profits up 125 percent. Right now, we're very focused and excited about bringing iOS 5 and iCloud to our users this fall.

China's Internet population has risen to 485 million, but growth is slowing.

For the six months ended June, China's online population rose 6.1 percent, still strong but significantly lower than the 9.4 percent increase for the first six months of 2010.

In 2008, growth was 20.5 percent, and overall China has doubled their Internet population since 2007.

Total Chinese Internet penetration stands at just 36.2 percent, while the U.S. is at 77.3 percent and other nations have 90+ percent penetration.

With over 800 million Chinese still without Internet (or even computers in a lot of cases) there is still room for explosive growth in the nation, says the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC)

Social networking behemoth Facebook is severely lagging in customer satisfaction, says the 2011 American Customer Satisfaction Index E-Business Report produced by ForeSee Results (via Cnet).

The network was last in the report which analyzed how users feel about news sites, search engines, and social networks.

Facebook got a 66/100, the lowest of all companies measured.

Says Facebook of the report:

We take user feedback seriously, and strive to create a simple, fast, and innovative service that enables people to connect with their friends in a safe environment. More than half of our users visit Facebook every day, and we're constantly enhancing our products to offer people the best possible experience. Indeed, a report published last month by the Pew Internet and American Life Project highlighted the positive impact Facebook has had in people's lives.

The FBI will have arrested 15 alleged 'Anonymous' hackers by the end of today, in a nationwide raid.

A few of the arrests took place in San Francisco, New Jersey and Florida, and warrants have been executed in NY and other states, say authorities.

Agents seized computers and other records.

The hacktivists have been linked in the past to attacks on the CIA, Sony, Fox News, the Arizona Department of Corrections, Booz Allen Hamilton and more.

More information on the ongoing raids here: More Than a Dozen Suspected 'Anonymous' Hackers Arrested in Nationwide Sweep

It appears that the hacktivist group Anonymous has been kicked from Google+, along with the group having lost their Gmail and other Google accounts.

The account, "Your Anon News" was taken down for not violating "Community Standards."

Says the group:

What we didn't know at the time is that we were just one of a [handful] of Anonymous accounts that was silenced."

Not only did a few people organized an Operation [against] Google+, but we have started to build our own Social Network.... Welcome to AnonPlus.

AnonPlus was meant to [thwart] government censorship - so that in the case of a government blackout - the people can still be heard.

This social network will also incorporate and facilitate an open source educational environment...allow open communication of ideas - and is essentially a cyber-anarchy formatted environment...allow open exchange of currency via alternative currency....This social network is essentially: The [activists'] dashboard.

Valve has announced this week that it will be tweaking its Steam digital distribution platform in order to boost the speed of game downloads.

Currently, new releases and major sales will cause Steam to slow down significantly, due to the spike in traffic.

The new tweaks will add a larger bandwidth threshold and "Steam will be able to serve content from more locations to reach international users better, and all content will be sent via HTTP."

Furthermore, Steam will be tweaked so users do not have to download as much data. When an update is passed, you will only have to download the modified bits, not the full update.

Finally, the company says "users can also expect new client features, such as download scheduling and priorities, bandwidth throttling, and the ability to update a game while playing."

LulzSec has said that they will release a trove of Rupert Murdoch emails later today, following yesterday's stunt where they hacked The Sun's main page and added their own frontpage article.

On the page, the hacktivists planted a fake story claiming Murdoch had died.

It appears that the hack also gave LulzSec access to News International's email database.

So far, the group has released the email login details of former News International chief exec Rebekah Brooks.

Additionally they posted the mobile phone numbers of three News International execs.

Although unconfirmed, multiple reports are claiming that Apple's Mac OS X Lion operating system will be available tomorrow.

The upgrade is available as a digital download only, for Mac users running 10.6.8 Snow Leopard, and will cost just $30.

Apple retail stores have allegedly received final copies of Lion, in order to upgrade in-store demo units.

Additionally, Apple will be holding employees overnight in order to train them on the new operating system.

For more information on OS X 10.7 Lion check here: Apple WWDC 2011: $30 OS X Lion, iOS 5, free iCloud

Baidu has started a licensed digital music service this week, thanks to an agreement with One-Stop China, a joint venture that includes Universal Music Group, Warner Music and Sony Music among many other smaller labels from China.

OSC will license Baidu all of their catalogs and new releases, all of which can be streamed or downloaded.

Baidu says they will "remunerate music content owners on a per-play and per-download basis for all tracks delivered through the Baidu MP3 Search service, as well as Baidu's newly launched social music platform, ting!."

Membership for ting! is free, and the service is ad-supported.

Adds Baidu CFO Jennifer Li:

Baidu has always striven to provide the best possible experience to our users. Our partnership with One-Stop China marks an exciting new beginning. I'm confident that Baidu, the Chinese music fans, recording artists, and the record companies alike will all benefit from this win-win partnership.

Amazon has begun renting textbooks that can be read on its popular Kindle e-reader.

The giant e-tailer says you can now rent tens of thousands of textbooks from the online Kindle Store.

As an added incentive, Amazon says its prices are as much as 80 percent cheaper than physical book list prices.

Students can rent the books for 30 days at minimum and 1 year as maximum, and renters can buy extra days or even purchase the book in full.

More information is here: Save up to 80% with Kindle Textbook Rental

Former 'News of the World' journalist Sean Hoare has been found dead today, just as news about the scandal involving the paper hits new heights.

Undoubtedly, over the past week, you have read the scandal revolving around the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper, where a young murdered school girl had her phone repeatedly hacked by the paper in an effort to listen to voicemails.

Because the voicemails kept being deleted from the phone, the girl's carrier and parents believed her to be alive for days after her disappearance.

Hoare made it public that former editor Andy Coulson was fully aware of the hacking, and even encouraged it.

Police say they have no reason to believe there was anything suspicious in the journalist's death and did confirm that he was fired from the paper "for drugs and drinking problems."

Coulson was arrested this week as part of a police investigation into misconduct at the paper.