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Research In Motion (RIM) has announced it acquired startup tinyHippos without disclosing specifics of the deal.

The Ontario-based developer created a cross-platform mobile application development tool called Ripple. Tyler Lessard of RiM said that tinyHippos was bought by the Blackberry-maker due to its "extensive experience in web and mobile widget/web development."

RIM will launch its Playbook tablet computer next month, warning earlier this week that its earnings were likely to slip due to the financial cost of pushing out the Playbook.

The Canadian firm said it will offer support for Android applications on the tablet. This could enable it to run over 200,000 third-party apps that are available for the Android platform today. It enters a market dominated by Apple and at the same time as many other competing "iPad killers" are due to drop.

Malte Spitz, a German Green party politician, has shown the level of tacking a mobile provider can do as you carry around your phone.

He went through a process to find out exactly what his provider, Deutsche Telekom, knew about his whereabouts over a period of time that he had his phone constantly. Between August 31, 2009 and February 28th, 2010, the operator had saved his longitude and latitude coordinates over 35,000 times.

Privacy experts claim that Spitz actions provide a rare glimpse into how phone companies can track and keep data on us without us ever consenting or having a clue it is happening at all.

Technically, an operator's network needs to know your location all the time. The nearest network equipment to your location is sought every few seconds for optimal call routing purposes, and an operator also needs to track location in cases for billing purposes.

Spitz information however was not gathered and saved from these normal updates, however. "We are all walking around with little tags, and our tag has a phone number associated with it, who we called and what we do with the phone," said Sarah E. Williams, an expert on graphic information at Columbia University's architecture school.

Microsoft has denied that it blocked HTTPS access to Hotmail for several countries.

Instead, the Redmond-based software giant said a mystery bug caused the problems. The issue has since been resolved but Microsoft admits it is still investigating exactly what caused the bug in the first place.

Users in certain countries were unable to switch on the safer HTTPS version of Hotmail. Some questions were raised when it was revealed that Syrian users were getting an error message attempting to do so, due to ongoing political unrest in the country.

"Your Windows Live ID can't use HTTPS automatically because this feature is not available for your account type," a message to users read. Hotmail users who has already opted for HTTPS were not affected in any way.

"We do not intentionally limit support by region or geography and this issue was not restricted to any specific region of the world. We apologize for any inconvenience to our customers that this may have caused," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

The Bahams, Caymen Islands and Fiji were also affected, according to Microsoft.

Apple began selling its hit iPad 2 tablet in 25 countries this weekend, but Reuters says the U.S. is still the cheapest country to buy the device in the world.

The most expensive nation is Denmark, where the base 16GB/Wi-Fi model sells for the equivalent of $700. In the U.S. the same model sells for $500.

Despite the price, lines of customers were common place outside of Apple stores in Asia and Europe, just like they were in the U.S at launch earlier this month.

In the EU, the base model iPad 2 sells for 479 euros (about $678), on average.

Surprisingly, the UK has the iPad 2 for 399 pounds ($642).

According to Cnet, Google is readying its Google Music service for launch, with the search giant already testing the platform internally.

Rumored since at least last October, the platform was last mentioned at the MWC event, where Motorola Mobility boss Sanjay Jha boasted that the Xoom tablet would soon have access to "a music service from Google Mobile services."

The service should allow users to stream music via PCs or Android phones/tablets, as well as purchase songs via the Android Market.

It appears that Google is still negotiating with the labels, however, seeking cloud music rights for user's existing libraries of purchased music.

If true, the service will be a direct competitor to Apple's iTunes, which still controls over 70 percent of the music download market.

The Nintendo 3DS gaming handheld has launched today in the U.S. with some places having launch parties at midnight.

Nintendo is selling the console for $250 in Cosmos Black and Aqua Blue bundles that include a free charging dock and a 2GB SD card. Each 3DS comes with the games Face Raiders and AR Games pre-installed.

Gaming on the 3DS is notable because new games can be playable in 3D without the need for special glasses.

Nintendo released the console in Japan last month and in Europe on Friday.

The launch titles are as follows:

Three of the titles will be Nintendo-published, and all titles have an MSRP of $39.99:

- Pilotwings Resort
- Steel Diver
- nintendogs + cats

- Super Street Fighter IV 3D Edition from CAPCOM
- The Sims 3 from EA
- Madden NFL Football from EA SPORTS
- Pro Evolution Soccer 2011 3D from Konami Digital Entertainment, Inc.
- LEGO Star Wars III: The Clone Wars from LucasArts
- RIDGE RACER 3D from NAMCO BANDAI Games America Inc.
- Super Monkey Ball 3D from SEGA
- BUST-A-MOVE UNIVERSE from Square-Enix, Inc.
- SAMURAI WARRIORS: Chronicles from TECMO KOEI AMERICA Corp.
- Asphalt 3D from UBISOFT
- Combat of Giants: Dinosaurs 3D from UBISOFT
- Rayman 3D from UBISOFT
- Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon Shadow Wars from UBISOFT

AMD has publicly called out competitor NVIDIA over a performance claim made by the graphics chip-maker.

Dave Erskine, Senior Public Relations Manager for Graphics Desktop at AMD, wrote on a company blog about how it prides itself on achieving excellence in its products and the integrity of its messageing. As an example, he used the flag-ship AMD Radeon HD 6990, describing how the company came to claim it was the World's Fastest Graphics Card.

"We had designed it to be a game-changer and we hit the bull's eye. The result: The AMD Radeon HD 6990 achieved the highest default single graphics card score of X3303 using the industry standard 3DMark11 benchmark," Erskine wrote.

"And when we launched it, we issued a press release in which we proudly called it the 'World's Fastest Graphics Card' and fully disclosed the basis upon which we made that claim."

Earlier this week, NVIDIA issued its own press release, announcing the GTX 590 graphics chip. They also claimed in the press information that the GTX 590 was the World's Fastest Graphics Card. Erskine said that the folks at AMD combed through all the available information, looking for anything that could substantiate NVIDIA's claim.

Acer's stab at the market for tablet PCs is hitting Europe on April 8 this year.

It will launch its first two Iconia Tab models, which are the Windows 7-equipped W500 and the Android-equipped A500, each with a base price of £449. Each packs a 10.1-inch 1280x800 LED-backlit touchscreen.

The W500 runs on AMD's Brazos technology, featuring a 1GHz C-50 APU with Radeon HD 6250 graphics, 2GB of memory and a 32GB solid-state disk drive. It also features an SD card reader, HDMI-output, G-sensor and built-in 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi. The system runs Microsoft's Windows 7 Home Premium operating system.

The A500 runs on NVIDIA's Tegra 2 technology. It features 1GB of RAM and 32GB of flash storage. It features a read 5 megapixel camera and front 2 megapixel camera. It features 3G support, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, a micsoSD card slot, HDMI-output and two USB ports. It runs the Android 3.0 (Honecomb) operating system.

The W500 can also come with 3G at an additional cost and also can be bundled with a keyboard dock which also includes Ethernet and dual USB 2.0 connectors.

Google has pushed out an update for its Chrome browser addressing some serious bugs.

The Chrome stable and beta channels have been updated to 10.0.648.204 for Windows, Mac, Linux and Chrome Frame. The update addresses some performance and stability issues in the browser, and includes six security fixes. Additionally, support for the password manager has been added on Linux.

Security fixes include..

• [72517] High CVE-2011-1291: Buffer error in base string handling.
• [73216] High CVE-2011-1292: Use-after-free in the frame loader.
• [73595] High CVE-2011-1293: Use-after-free in HTMLCollection.
• [74562] High CVE-2011-1294: Stale pointer in CSS handling.
• [74991] High CVE-2011-1295: DOM tree corruption with broken node parentage.
• [75170] High CVE-2011-1296: Stale pointer in SVG text handling.

AMD manager has gone into damage control over comments he made about the DirectX API in a recent interview with Bit-Tech.

Richard Huddy, manager of AMD's GPU division, commented that developers wanted the DirectX API to "go away", saying developers had made such admissions in conversations. He hinted that DirectX and other APIs get in the way of creating some amazing computer graphics.

However, in a newer interview with CRN, Huddy seemed to be backing off the stance and even claimed the comments shouldn't be taken literally. "The [Bit-tech] interview started off being about OpenGL, and the way APIs are developed," Huddy said.

"Obviously there's pressure from Microsoft on hardware vendors to develop DirectX in a variety of ways. We spend a great deal of time getting feedback from game developers in the early phase of our hardware development, for products that are two or three years away from going to market."

Nokia has moved to quash fears that it may be preparing to drop Symbian-based phones much too quickly.

The Finnish mobile phone giant said it will continue to sell handsets that run Symbian software for a long time after it has started to move devices that run Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 software. The company is expected to begin phasing out Symbian over the coming few years as it rolls out WP7 handsets.

"We will be selling (Symbian) devices long after Windows Phone devices from Nokia have already started to appear," Purnima Kochikar, head of developer relations at Nokia, said in a letter to devs. Symbian phones have lost market share due to competition from iOS and Android models, but it is still strongly profitable for Nokia.

Kochikar said that coming Symbian models will focus on strong integration of services, and that they will use faster processors than their predecessors. They will brought up to GHz+ levels, which is where Nokia's competitors are already at. Both Nokia's N8 and E7 use 680 MHz processors.

If analyst comScore is right about the latest trends for the recently revamped MySpace, then News Corp. has more to cry about.

The industry analyst say its figures show MySpace lost an incredible 10 million users between January and February of this year. Specifically, it reports 63 million users of MySpace in February this year, down from 73 million just a month before.

Compared to last year, comScore says MySpace has lost a massive 50 million users, down from close to 110 million in February 2010. The social networking site has attempted to rebrand itself as an entertainment hub focused on music.

At one time it was considered the number 1 social networking site across the world, but saw its popularity eaten up by Facebook, which now touts over 600 million users. MySpace has recently announced it will slash half of its staff, and reports suggest that News Corp. is looking to sell the service asap.

Having bought it for a princely sum of $330 million back in 2005, News Corp could expect to get as little as $50 million now for MySpace.

It has been reported that Facebook currently kicks about 20,000 underage kids from its service every day.

The minimum age requirement for using the social networking site is 13 years old. Even though Facebook has no way to check up on the actual age of a member, it still manages to remove 20,000 accounts per day of users that appear to have lied about their age to join.

Facebook's chief privacy adviser Mozelle Thompson admits that Facebook's system for identifying and removing accounts held by underage users is "not perfect," but nevertheless, the company is at least doing something to try to uphold the age rule.

The figure sounds like a lot, but it is nothing in comparison to the 600 million and growing users of Facebook. A Pew study that found half of 12 year old's in the United States use social networking sites must also be taken into consideration.

U.S. Senator Al Franken has addressed the issue already, and co-signed a letter to Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg. Franken argues that it should be impossible for underage and teen users of Faacebook to inadvertently share their phone number, home address or other sensitive information publicly where it could be misused.

Apple has been praised by several groups for responding to an online petition to remove an "anti-gay" application from its App Store.

The app, launched by Exodus International, promoted the idea of "curing gay people." In response, a Truth Wins Out petition setup on Change.org received 146,000 signatures from people who wanted to see the application removed from the App Store.

Apple responded by removing the application, prompting praise from several groups. "Apple made a wise and responsible decision to dump an offensive app that demonized gay and lesbian people," said Wayne Besen, Executive Director of Truth Wins Out. "The real winners today are LGBT youth who are safer and less at risk for receiving Exodus' malice and misinformation."

Gary Remafedi, a researcher from the University of Minnesota, had also previously requested that Apple take action against the application, which he said grossly distorted his work to back up its claims.

The American Psychological Association, American Medical Association, American Psychiatric Association, and American Counseling Association have all rejected "ex-gay" therapy, saying that it can result in serious harm to the mental health of participants.

A U.S. Judge's decision to compel Twitter to hand over data of three users linked to the Wikileaks website has been appealed by rights' groups in the United States.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) are challenging the ruling, made earlier this month, which compels Twitter to hand over data on American, Icelandic and Dutch twitter users somehow linked to the controversial website.

"Except in very rare circumstances, the government should not be permitted to obtain information about individuals' private Internet communications in secret," said ACLU staff attorney Aden Fine. "If the ruling is allowed to stand, our client might never know how many other companies have been ordered to turn over information about her, and she may never be able to challenge the invasive requests."

Magistrate Judge Theresa Buchanan rejected claims that seeking the Twitter information violated freedom of speech and privacy, on the basis that the three individuals had already made their Twitter posts and their associations public knowledge voluntarily. She also stressed that the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution protected people against "unreasonable" searches by authorities.