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Texas Instruments has said today that Netflix has given their OMAP 4 platform Netflix HD certification, meaning all future OMAP 4-based devices will have built-in capability to stream HD Netflix films.

Says TI (via PCM):

Essentially, [Netflix HD] is a new app, which can be pre-installed on an OEM's device that has itself obtained Netflix certification. The app can also be installed on a certified device that is already on the market, through a secure OTA (over the air) upgrade.

A few OMAP 4 devices coming in the near future are the LG Thrill 4G, the LG Optimus 3D and allegedly the Droid 3.

Netflix is only currently available on a few Android devices, and the company has blatantly said that fragmentation has made it very tough to roll out the service to more devices.

Adds Fred Cohen, director of the OMAP User Experience team at TI:

As a reminder, Verizon plans to get rid of its unlimited smartphone data plans beginning tomorrow, July 7th, instead moving to tiered structure just like rival AT&T.

The company will now offer 75MB for $10 a month, 2GB for $30, 5GB for $50 and 10GB for $80.

If you exceed your tier, the cost is $10 per GB above.

It appears the 75MB plan is available only for feature phones, fortunately, as the data is hardly enough to cover a week of use, even for the lightest smartphone users.

Subscribers with unlimited data plans are "grandfathered" in, meaning they can keep it when they upgrade or renew their contracts. If you ever drop it, however, you can never get it back.

Additionally, Verizon is ending its free tethering testing, and users will now have to pay $30 a month to use LTE mobile hotspot.

AT&T offers somewhat cheaper plans with 200MB for $15, 2GB for $25 and 4GB with tethering for $45.

(Pic via Techspot)

According to the latest figures from research firm ComScore, Android and iOS have once again gained U.S. market share at the expense of RIM.

For the three months ended May 2011, Android jumped 5.1 points to 38.1 percent while Apple took a smaller gain of 1.2 points to 26.6 percent share.

RIM, following the trend of the last three years, saw another large decline, this time of 4.2 points to 24.7 percent.

Microsoft, 6 months after the launch of its Windows Phone 7 OS, lost significant share, as well, down 1.9 points to just 5.8 percent.

U.S. smartphone ownership in itself grew by 11 percent, to 78.6 million owners.

(Pic via Cnet)

Netflix has announced it will be expanding its streaming service to Mexico, South and Central America and the Caribbea later this year.

The company will expand to 43 new countries with a staggered rollout.

Users in the new countries will be able to watch global and local TV shows in English, Spanish or Portuguese.

Just like in the U.S., the service will be viewable on computers, mobile devices and TVs.

Says the company via its official blog:

Netflix members in the U.S. and Canada have really taken to watching instantly. We feel great about being able to offer the same combination of convenience, choice and value to people in Mexico, Central America, South America and the Caribbean.

In 2010, Netflix expanded the streaming service to Canada, its first step to move internationally.

It is unclear what the service will be priced at in the new nations.

AT&T has noted today that it will finally offer standard insurance for all iPhone models under their Mobile Insurance Program.

Beginning on July 17th, the popular Apple smartphones will be eligible, at $5 a month.

The carrier's standard insurance program offers protection against loss, theft, physical/liquid damage and mechanical/electrical failure.

iPhone 3GS or earlier will have a $50 deductible per claim while the iPhone 4 will have a $125 deductible, standard for smartphones.

One caveat: "Customers can only enroll within 30 days of a new activation or upgrade, prior activations or upgrades outside of 30 days are not eligible."

Until now, you had to pay a ridiculous $12 per month and $200 deductible for iPhone insurance through a third-party supported by AT&T.

Google has already submitted a Google+ app for the Apple App Store, and says it is waiting for approval.

The app was submitted sometime "prior to today" so given Apple's standard approval process, users could see an app as soon as this week.

For now, anyone who has access to the social network can run the mobile/touch version of the service from their iPhone, on any browser.

Android users have a native app.

One Google technician does note that she does not know if the app will be optimized for the iPad, but does not believe it will be at launch.

Google+ launched earlier this week on an invite-only basis and Google was even forced to shut down invites due to "insane demand."

There were a few 'scary' headlines out there today about Apple being hacked by Anonymous, with many users being scared that their iTunes account had fallen into malevolent hands.

CNNMoney says there is nothing to worry about, as the "hack" only revealed 27 user accounts, and none of those are even iTunes accounts.

The SQL injection managed to steal 27 names and encrypted passwords from an online survey at the Apple Business Intelligence website.

Apple has since taken the survey down.

If you are one of 225 million iTunes users, breathe easy, your details are safe.

More details here: Pastebin

According to the extremely hit-and-miss Digitimes site, Sony is starting production on the PlayStation 4 (PS4) later this year for an expected 2012 launch.

The report cites Taiwan-based component makers who also claim that the PS4 will feature a Kinect-esque motion control system.

Says Digi:

Sony will have Taiwan-based partners begin production of PlayStation 4 (PS4) featuring body movement-based control like Kinect at the end of 2011 for launch in 2012, according to Taiwan-based component makers.

Foxconn and Pegatron Technology, assemblers of PS3, will undertake assembly of PS4 as well, the sources pointed out. The planned shipment volume of PS4 in 2012 is at least 20 million units, the sources indicated.

Sony has long said the PS3 will enjoy a 10-year lifespan like its predecessor but there have been ongoing rumors for years now that the company is planning the PS4 for 2012 or 2013. The PS3 launched in 2006.

As pictured, Fox New's political news Twitter stream was hacked last night, with the hackers tweeting fake messages about President Obama being assassinated.

The President is safe and sound in the White House, celebrating the Independence Day holiday.

Shockingly, the hacked tweets remained posted on the stream for over 7 hours (as pictured) before someone in the news organization got the memo to remove them.

Vice president and general manager of Fox News Digital Jeff Misenti says:

We will be requesting a detailed investigation from Twitter about how this occurred, and measures to prevent future unauthorized access into FoxNews.com accounts.

Barnes & Noble, the proud owners of the highest-rated dedicated e-reader, ever, are giving users even more incentive to pick up a new Nook.

As of this weekend, anyone who walks into a Barnes & Noble brick-and-mortar store with a rival e-reader and purchases a new Nook Color or Nook Simple Touch will be given a 2GB microSD card filled with "$315" worth of free e-books.

A few of the 30 books provided are classics like "Robinson Crusoe" and "Don Quixote" and you can check the full list here: 30 Free Nook books

The Nook Color (more of a tablet than an e-reader, retails for $250 and the brand-new Nook Simple Touch (the highest-rated dedicated e-reader, ever) retails for just $140.

Barnes & Noble is of course hoping that many will show off their old Amazon Kindle and "upgrade" to the Nook Simple, and the cheap promotion should also help drive foot traffic to the struggling stores.

Twitter has announced a new milestone on its trek to rule the world; there are now 200 million tweets sent every single day.

In 2008, that figure was 500,000, in 2009 it was 2 million and in 2010 the number was 65 million.

Says the micro-blogging company:

For perspective, every day, the world writes the equivalent of a 10 million-page book in Tweets or 8,163 copies of Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Reading this much text would take more than 31 years and stacking this many copies of War and Peace would reach the height of about 1,470 feet, nearly the ground-to-roof height of Taiwan’s Taipei 101, the second tallest building in the world.

Twitter also posted the top "Trending Topics" for the first 6 months of 2011 which included AH1N1, Egyptian President Mubarak, Rebecca Black and the infamous Charlie Sheen.

Despite the fact that no devices featuring Tegra 3 "Kal-El" processors have hit the market yet, Nvidia is actively working on the Tegra 4, codename "Wayne," say sources.

According to the sources, "Wayne" will come in two separate builds, one for smartphones and one for tablets and low-powered netbooks/notebooks.

The first build will be a quad-core design at 1.5GHz built on the ARM Cortex-A15 and a 24-core GPU. Power consumption should be on the level of the current-generation Kal-El Tegra 3 SoC.

Wayne's second build, however, is almost jaw-dropping, given its purpose is for mobile devices. The build will feature eight ARM processing cores and 32-to-64 GPU cores. Each will be DirectX 11+ compliant and even support OpenGL 4.x, OpenCL 1.x and PhysX.

Nvidia is expected to release the Wayne SoC in fall 2012.

Apple has released the "gold master" build of their upcoming Mac OS X Lion operating system to developers, implying the OS is ready to ship and should be available to Mac fans within the next week or two.

"Gold Master" for Apple is what RTM is to Microsoft Windows builds.

Last month, the company showed off the OS, which will only cost $30 because it is available solely as a digital download from the Mac App Store.

Speculation has Apple releasing the OS officially on either July 6th or possibly July 14th.

Because the OS is a bit over 4GB, Apple notes that users with capped bandwidth can head to any Apple retail store and use the Wi-Fi there without any hassle.

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

Samsung has announced today that the Galaxy S II is the hottest smartphone in the world, hitting 3 million units sold in just 55 days.

Making the number much more impressive is that fact that the device has not even reached U.S. shores yet, with expected launch date sometime in August.

At 3 million in 55 days, the sales eclipse the original Galaxy's 85 days for the milestone.

The phone is also Samsung's fastest selling phone, ever.

When the device hits the U.S., it will sell as the Samsung Function on Verizon, the Within on Sprint and the Attain on AT&T. There is no word on a T-Mobile release, yet.

Samsung has lofty expectations for 10 million sales of the Galaxy S II by the end of the year.

Biggest Xbox 360 game of the year in major, and very early leak.

A development copy of Epic's Gears of War 3 has leaked onto the Internet and is available on torrent sites, file lockers and Usenet. The copy is a raw dump that can only be played on a modified Xbox 360 console that has undergone a JTAG hack.

Gears of War 3 is the conclusion to one of the most memorable series in the current video game generation. It is due to be released on September 20, in about 11 weeks time from now.

The leak will undoubtedly anger Epic because of the time between now and the release, and as the game is reportedly unfinished in parts. However, since it can only be played on JTAG-hacked Xbox 360 consoles, that really cuts down the number of people who will be able to pirate and play it.

The 7.5GB dump is in English and was posted to an Xbox 360 group on Usenet yesterday.

"This is a developer copy (Not completly final) of the game with achievements, Single Player/Coop Campaign and System Link Multiplayer (See you online on XLink Kai ^^).
Some missions at the end of the campaign seam to be missing - so decide for yourself if you want to wait for the retail or not!"