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HTC CEO Peter Chou has announced today that his company will move back to open bootloaders on their devices, following considerable customer outcry.

It is unclear which phone will be the first to be released with the unlocked bootloader, but the upcoming EVO 3D is a likely candidate.

Says the CEO:

There has been overwhelmingly [sic] customer feedback that people want access to open bootloaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we've listened. Today, I'm confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience.

PayPal and its parent eBay have sued Google and two executives today over trade secret misappropriation.

The trade secrets were related to mobile payment systems.

Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, two execs formerly of PayPal, helped Google launch their "Wallet" system today. Bedier worked for PayPal for nine years, serving as vice president of platform, mobile and new ventures before moving to Google in January of this year.

Tilenius was VP of e-commerce for eBay until early 2010.

Both are accused of having "misappropriated PayPal trade secrets by disclosing them within Google and to major retailers," says Yahoo.

The suit also claims that PayPal and Google were working together since 2008 on a deal that would make PayPal a payment option for app purchases via the Android Market.

Bedier was the executive in charge of the negotiations with Google at the time.

"At the very point when the companies were negotiating and finalizing the Android-PayPal deal, Bedier was interviewing for a job at Google -- without informing PayPal of this conflicting position," the suit says.

NVIDIA announces YouTube is giving users the ability to view thousands of 3D videos on their NVIDIA 3D Vision PCs and notebooks.

The videos will work with the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. "We're excited to introduce HTML5 and WebM support to the thousands of 3D videos available on YouTube," said Jonathan Huang, 3D Product Manager at YouTube. "By embracing these open standards, NVIDIA 3D Vision users now have a great way of experiencing YouTube's library of 3D content."

With the growth of 3D camcorders for the consumer market, the amount of content that can be created by consumers and uploaded to sites such as YouTube has risen. YouTube's support of NVIDIA 3D Vision technology extends its existing commitment to 3D, enabling even more consumers and 3D enthusiasts to share their 3D videos online.

"Firefox with 3D Vision creates a stunning and smooth 3D video experience using HTML5 video based on open standards," said Jay Sullivan, VP of Products at Mozilla. "3D Vision from NVIDIA is a great example of the rich, innovative experiences that are being built on top of the speed and graphics power that Firefox delivers to the Web."

Social networking site dismissed claims of "scam artist" again.

Facebook Inc has urged a court to throw out a complaint made by a New York man, claiming he owns a substantial amount of the multi-billion valued social networking giant. The lawsuit is a "brazen and outrageous" fraud, according to a filing made with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.

Paul Ceglia claims that back when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, was a student at Harvard University, he entered a contract with him that provides him with a 50 percent stake of Mark's stake.

Facebook and Zuckerberg have dismissed the lawsuit from the very beginning, and have described Mr. Ceglia as "an inveterate scam artist whose misconduct extends across decades and borders."

Prisoners in Chinese labour camps were forced to play online games for hours to make money for the guards.

The practice of excessively playing online games to build up virtual currency (or other virtually valuable assets) is known as "gold farming", and it is particularly rampant in China where estimates put as many as 100,000 gold farmers throughout the region.

Liu Dali, a former prisoner of the Jixi labour camp, used to have to break rocks, dig trenches and other manual hard labour by day, and then was forced at night to play online games to build up virtual credits which the prison guards would then trade for real money.

"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."

Even though playing games excessively is not as physically demanding on the human body as the hard manual labour he was forced to endure, he revealed that there were real consequences for not managing to fill a "quota" for the guards.

Members of the House of Representatives push AT&T chairman for answers on proposed $39 billion buy-out of T-Mobile.

The deal, which would see AT&T become the largest carrier in the United States, has been criticized from all angles because it further reduces the number of wireless carriers. Critics also say that T-Mobile's discount prices in comparison to others might be lost in the merger.

Chairman of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, told the U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet, that the deal is a path to extending the company's reach into rural areas, and other underserved areas in the U.S.

"It's about achieving this with private capital," he said. "We continue to invest at a very aggressive pace."

If the deal were to go ahead, it would mean that 80 percent of U.S. wireless contract customers would be served by just two providers. To go ahead, it needs the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The panel pressing Stephenson for details has no say either way.

A group of Finnish record labels are attempting to get the Pirate Bay BitTorrent website blocked in the country.

The group has filed a petition in court to block access to the controversial BitTorrent tracker, accusing it of providing copyrighted music, movies and other material to Finnish users.

"The development of a legal online market is impossible in Finland if illegal services like The Pirate Bay are freely allowed to continue their operations," said Lauri Rechardt, of the Finnish IFPI branch. The petition asks the courts to force ISP Elisa to block access to the Pirate Bay from subscribers within the country.

This is not the first attempt to block the controversial website in a country, and it wont be the last. The Pirate Bay has survived several raids since it opened initially in 2003, and still remains operation even after its founders were given prison sentences and hefty fines for copyright infringement offenses.

Apple is pushing out a promised update for Mac users to remove and prevent infection of MacDefender variants, as another variant comes out thats harder to avoid.

MacDefender malware, including MacProtector and MacSecurity, were installed by thousands of Mac users who found them in search results targeted by their developers. The scareware works just the same as similar scams work with PCs; presenting fake security scan results and offering to remove the phony malware for a fee.

Some people are thought to have become infected because of the default Safari settings, allowing software to be downloaded and queued for installation.

Those who install it and then fall for the fake results could end up paying as much as $70.

Now a new variant of MacDefender, picked up by security firms, does not require any user permission to install on a system. Intego is recommending that Mac users disable the Safari feature that allows files deemed "safe" to be installed automatically.

The new MacDefender variant is also spreading the same was as the older ones, by targeting popular Mac-related search results.

Independent label in the UK visits schools to educate kids about the work that goes into making music, and how illegal downloading threatens the whole system.

Shed Records, an independent record label in London, is visiting schools and allowing children to use some of its equipment to put together their own music tracks. The aim is to teach the students how much work goes into making just one track, and how many people have to be paid for their part in the process.

The effort is being backed by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the recorded music industry in the UK.

They want the children to understand that it is not just artists who lose out to piracy. "A whole army of people work behind the scenes to bring you new, fresh music," said Paul Shedden, Head of Label at Shed Records.

"Everything from the songwriters through to production, artists, engineers, radio pluggers, PR companies all those people need to get paid. Otherwise they can't continue doing the jobs they love and the music you love will stop coming out."

Currently, the scheme is targeting five schools as a trial, and if successful, the plan is to extend nationally, with other labels around the country providing similar sessions in schools.

Chief Financial Officer confirms that increased R&D costs in Sony's books are largely due to next generation console development.

Masaru Kato, Sony CFO and executive video president, was asked about the increased costs of research and development for the company, following the release of its annual earnings report on Thursday.

"We have a portable NGP to be launched later this year, so we have development expenses to be incurred for this product and for the home equipment," Kato said.

"The PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform--when we'll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that--but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there."

Nintendo confirmed rumors of an upcoming Wii successor last month, saying the console would be playable at E3 next month. Microsoft also started looking to fill positions for the development of next generation Xbox products in March.

UK websites given one more year to comply with EU cookie laws.

The EU's Privacy and Communications Directive comes into force today, but it is clear that most of Europe is lagging behind its requirements. It mandates that Internet users be offered to give their consent before cookies storing information on their usage are saved and then later retrievable by websites.

In the UK, the government has said it needs more time to find the best solution, favoring light-touch regulation.

"We recognise that some website users have real concerns around online privacy but also recognise that cookies play a key role in the smooth running of the Internet," said communications minister Ed Vaizey. "But it will take some time for workable technical solutions to be developed, evaluated and rolled out so we have decided that a phased in approach is right."

The UK government has already formed a working group with browser developers to see if a browser-based solution can be found. Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox already offer settings to protect users from services with college and harvest data, and Google is building "Do Not Track" features into Chrome.

Software that would be used for France's 'three strikes' anti-piracy policy found to be tremendously flawed.

Last week, plans to implement a three strikes policy in France that could lead to the disconnection of file sharers caught sharing illegal files were put on hold after it was revealed the company tasked with tracking activity had been hacked.

TMG's server software could then be examined by hackers to understand how it works. The result shows that the software is very insecure, and should cause concerns about TMG's involvement in the three strikes policy.

TMG servers were running a custom administrative program written in Delphi, which didn't require any authentication at all. Basically, anyone could connect to port 8500 and start sending commands directly to the server.

While the commands supported were limited to shutting down, rebooting, start/stop P2P client, software updates and others, they were sufficient to allow hackers to do whatever they wanted with the servers.

For example, the update command connects to an FTP server, retrieves a file and then automatically executes it. Remarkably, it does not have a pre-set FTP server and literally allows for any FTP server to be specified as part of the update command.

Intel CFO reveals firm would consider producing non-Intel silicon chips for selected customers.

Speaking to journalists after an investor event in London, Intel chief financial officer Stacy Smith said a proposal to use the company's manufacturing capacity to produce chips that were not based on Intel processor cores would trigger an in-depth discussion, depending on the specifics.

"There are certain customers that would be interesting to us and certain customers that wouldn't. If Apple or Sony came to us and said: 'I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP around it,' I wouldn't blink. That would be fantastic business for us." Smith said.

"Then you get into the middle ground of 'I don't want it to be a IA core, I want it to be my own custom designed core,' and then you are only getting the manufacturing margin, and that would be a much more in-depth discussion and analysis."

Architecture developed by Intel is at the core of the vast majority of all PCs in the world, and Intel remains far ahead of its competition in that area, having just announced its new "3D" transistor technology that will let it produce faster chips that consume less energy.

Internet communications giant stops working for thousands of users.

Social networking sites like Twitter lit up with reports today that Skype wouldn't work for users, and the official Skype website went down under heavy traffic from concerned users. The problem affected those on Windows, OS X and Linux systems.

Skype's official blog has reported since that the source of the problem has been identified, and that a fix should be released later today. The speed of the response is much better than a December outage, caused by a software bug, which took the service down for two days.

In the meantime, users can decide to get Skype working again by locating and deleting a file on their systems.

In Windows, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "%appdata%Skype" directory.

In OS X, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "~/Library/Application Support/Skype" (where ~ is your Home folder).

On Linux systems, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "/home/YourLinuxUserName/.Skype" directory.

In all cases, restart Skype after deleting the file and that should fix all connection problems if you do not want to hold on for a fix.

HTC Corporation is expected to bring a new line of tablet PCs to the market before the end of the year.

According to a report from DigiTimes, the first of the devices will enter production in June. The HTC Puccini has been spotted in the wild, and details out so far suggest it is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 1.5GHz processor and is based on Android 3.0 Honeycomb.

The device reported features a hybrid touch-screen display with both capacitive and resistive capabilities. A new digital stylus offers users a new way to interact with the tablet device. It also will be 4G-capable and is expected to head to the United States on the back of AT&T's network.

If the details are true, then HTC's upcoming offering would challenge its rivals in terms of power and performance.

However the company has not yet confirmed anything about the Puccini tablet PC.