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TiVo Inc. has posted a quarterly profit following a legal settlement over patent infringement that provided the DVR maker with a windfall of cash.

The company agreed a settlement with Dish Network Corp and Echostar Corp in a patent dispute that stretches back several years related to DVR technology. It posted a profit of $139 million for the quarter, compared to a $14.2 million loss in the same period a year before.

A $175.7 million gain pushed the company's books into the black for now even as revenue fell by 25 percent to $45.8 million during the quarter.

The settlement agreement called for an initial payment of $300 million and a following $200 million to be paid in six installments before 2017. Both Dish and Echostar are controlled by Charlie Ergen.

Reuters cites sources in reporting that Google will unveil its mobile payments service on Thursday.

The Internet giant has teamed up with Mastercard Inc. and Citigroup Inc. to develop a system where users of some Android phones can use them to pay for purchases instead of using a credit card. It has signed up partners including Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway.

The Wall Street Journal reported on the effort back in March, but was unsure whether the service would initially be limited to New York as speculated, or go nationwide.

Google has invited reporters to an event on Thursday where a Reuters source confirms it will take the wraps off the mobile payment service, which will work initially with phones from Sprint Nextel Corp running Android.

While similar NFC payment technology is in use in Asia, some Nordic countries and elsewhere around the world to pay for goods and services, it has been slow to come to the United States. This has been due to a combination of bickering within the industry over the technology, regulatory hurdles and concerns that consumers would ignore it.

Rumors suggest that Microsoft's upcoming Windows iteration could show up at the D: AllThingsDigital conference next week.

Microsoft is expected to launch Windows 8 for Desktop and Notebook PCs sometime around the end of 2012, going by the company's Windows release patterns. However, the Redmond-based software giant is expected to unveil a version of Windows 8 for tablet PCs and smartphones this year.

The company committed to supporting ARM microprocessors in Windows 8, and to provide a new interface designed specifically for multi-touch input. It was reported that Microsoft would publicly show off Windows 8 for tablets sometime before the end of June this year, with an eye on releasing it on devices by years' end.

Steven Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, has had an appearance confirmed for next week's conference and the odds are on that Windows 8 will get its first proper public demonstration at it.

Eric Schmidt, executive chairman at Google Inc., has said proposed anti-piracy blocks on websites such as The Pirate Bay would be a disaster for free speech in Western countries.

Speaking at Google's "Big Tent" conference in London, he said the Internet giant would be prepared to fight against any laws that mandate blocking access to websites deemed to be hosting pirated content. Schmidt feels that such a move would set a disastrous precedent around the world.

"I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily implementing simple solutions to complex problems," he said.

"So, 'let's whack off the DNS'. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say 'I don't like free speech so I'll whack off all those DNSs' – that country would be China."

In the UK, the Digital Economy Act mandates such piracy blocking mechanisms be put in place. "It doesn't seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff. If the UK government do it the wrong way it could have disastrous precedent setting in other areas," Schmidt said.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that kids under 13 years of age should be able to use the social networking service.

As things stand, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (1998) determines that children under the age of 13 should not be able to use such services for their own protection. Zuckerberg disagrees with the law and has said he would be willing to fight it.

"That will be a fight we take on at some point," he said. "My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. Because of the legal restrictions we haven't even begun this learning process. If they're lifted then we'd start to learn what works."

Speaking at a summit on innovation in California schools, Zuckerberg said finding ways to improve education was one of his passions.

While critics have concerns about children's privacy and cyberbullying as they upload content to sites like Facebook, it is becoming increasingly apparent that implementing effective age restriction mechanisms on websites is not easy.

Consumer Reports estimated that 7.5 million kids under the age of 13 are regularly using Facebook.

The PlayStation network will remain partially down until 8pm today, says Sony, as the company works on account access maintenance.

While you may have some issues getting into your account, online gaming will still be available.

Says Sony of the maintenance:

During this time, registration and Account Management will be inaccessible, including the password reset process. While some users may experience difficulty signing in to PSN, the majority of consumers will be able to play online as well as sign in to external sites that require PSN authentication.

Yahoo has said it will be rolling out a beta of its latest Yahoo Mail over the coming weeks, dubbing the service as the "best Yahoo Mail ever."

The update will hit Yahoo's 277 million free email users, and promises to be "faster, safer, easier to use, and offers a seamless experience across PC, mobile and tablet devices."

Furthermore, the company says it will offer unlimited storage. Rival Gmail offers 7.6GB, which is the most of the free offerings, currently.

Hotmail/Live has the biggest share of the market, at 327 million users, followed by Yahoo and Gmail at 220 million users. Gmail and Yahoo, however, have been chipping away at Hotmail for years now.

Says Blake Irving, Yahoo chief product officer:

Yahoo's vision for online communications brings together all the tools that people use to connect -- e-mail, chat, SMS, and social updates -- and makes it easier for them to share content and engage in conversations with the people that matter most to them.We're delivering on this strategy with the latest version of Yahoo Mail, providing our hundreds of millions of users worldwide with a fun, engaging and constantly connected experience across desktop, mobile and tablet devices that keeps the conversation going -- anytime, anywhere.

Sony has confirmed another security breach today, with a hacker taking info on 8500 accounts from a Sony Music Entertainment Greece site where music fans can subscribe to newsletters.

The attack occurred on Sunday, the same day that security firm Sophos made it public that the sites were vulnerable.

Info stolen included usernames, passwords, email addresses and phone numbers. Because the site did not require credit card numbers, that info was fortunately not stolen.

The site is currently shutdown and will be restored after a full security review.

Sony has been hit with at least 5 attacks over the last month, with 101 million users having their personal info stolen by hackers. The PSN was down for three weeks following the first attack on April 17th.

Microsoft is set to appeal an EU antitrust fine that it calls "excessive" and "undeserved."

The 900 million euro fine, imposed in 2008, was a record at the time.

Microsoft was accused of failing to provide info that would let products better run on Windows.

Since the decision, Microsoft was attacked by the EU again, but decided to settle. Users are now given the choice to choose their own browser with all new Windows computers instead of using Internet Explorer right out of the box.

Says Microsoft's lawyer Jean Francois Bellis:

The fine was most undeserved.

This case would not have arisen if the Commission had been as explicit with respect to rates which it wanted Microsoft to charge as it had been with all other terms of licensing proposed by Microsoft.

Earlier this week, the much-anticipated new album from Bon Iver leaked to P2P, warez and torrents sites, the latest in a very long line of leaks.

It appears that iTunes is to blame for the leak, however, with Apple apologizing for the mistake.

Instead of just adding the disc's first single "Calgary" to iTunes, an employee put the whole album online a la carte.

The album is supposed to go on sale June 21st.

Apple corrected the problem very quickly but hundreds had already downloaded the album.

In 2008, iTunes accidentally leaked the Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely Back and in 2009, the Norwegian version of the store leaked Kelly Clarkson's "All I Ever Wanted" one month early.

Opera has released the Mini 6 mobile browser for iOS today.

The new browser is optimized for the iPad, and features up to 90 percent "compression of data traffic" which should increase speed for end users as well as decreased data costs.

Additionally, the new iOS version includes "panning and zooming in one motion," share buttons to send content to email, social networking sites and more, and a fully redesigned skin and menus.

Says CEO Lars Boilesen:

The Opera Mini browser has always kicked up the tempo when downloading pages; now the browsing flows along to a smooth, easy beat.

Microsoft has unveiled Windows Phone 7.1 "Mango" today, with 500 new features.

The new firmware update will bring better social networking integration, a full search revamp, app upgrades, new communications updates and many more features.

For social networking, Mango will let users import their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn contacts with one-click. The native Facebook app will also get revamped, including face detection software and "check-ins."

The update will allow WP7 owners to create groups of contacts as live tiles which you can then "see the latest status updates and quickly send a text, email or IM to the whole group, right from the start screen."

Updating the search, user can activate visual search using the phone's camera, voice search or music search. You can also narrow down results with Local Scouts which "provides location-specific results that highlight important information about establishments and events in your immediate area. Clicking through on any link brings up general information as well as reviews gleaned from popular user-generated sites."

Apple has approved the 500,000th app to the iOS App Store today, another large milestone for the ever growing store.

By comparison, the Android Market has just over 200,000 apps, Nokia's now defunct Ovi Store had 50,000 and BlackBerry World and Windows Phone 7 Marketplace both have under 25,000.

It is important to note that active apps are just about 400,000 due to replacements and removals, however.

Thanks to http://www.facebook.com/500kapps, a joint effort by Chomp, 148apps and Chillingo, we have an awesome infographic about the milestone, available here:

Barnes & Noble has unveiled its latest e-reader today at a special launch event.

The device will be smaller (about the size of a paperback book) and weigh just 7.5 ounces.

Differentiating itself from the more popular Kindle readers and its own predecessors, the new Nook will have two months of battery life and a 6-inch touchscreen Pearl display with e-ink.

The latest Kindles have 1 month battery life, and do not feature touchscreens. The Apple iPad and the company's own Nook Color feature LCD screens and therefore have battery life of under 12 hours.

B&N's latest Nook will also 2GB built-in storage (enough for thousands of books), a MicroSD expansion slot, and Wi-Fi. The device will run on an Android 2.1 variant.

The Nook is up for pre-order and will start shipping on June 10th for $139.

B&N has also dropped the MSRP of the original Wi-Fi Nook to $119 and 3G Nook to $169.

(Pic via Cnet)

Twitter has completed their acquisition of TweetDeck, one of the most popular clients for the microblogging service.

The purchase ended for just over $40 million in cash and stock with the closing papers signed today.

TweetDeck had been previously linked to UberMedia, who was looking to purchase the client for $30 million and had an exclusive negotiating window that ran out. Uber has the top Twitter app for BlackBerry (UberSocial) and the "highest rated" Twitter app for Android, Twidroyd and has been allegedly cooking up a plan for a "Twitter killing" service.

As arguably the best Twitter client around (and accounting for 13 percent of all tweets sent on a daily basis), TweetDeck is a hot commodity for the microblogging platform and remains the top app for "power users," those who tweet many times per day from many different devices.

TweetDeck also allows users to connect their LinkedIn and Facebook platforms to one app.