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Web use measurement vendor Net Applications has revealed that Windows 7 crossed a 20 percent share mark last month, an accomplishment not ever achieved by Windows Vista.

Net Applications gathers information on Operating System usage from 40,000 websites it monitors, accounting for 160 million unique visitors. It found that in December, Windows 7's share rose 1.2 percentage points to 20.9 percent, crossing a barrier that Vista never managed to.

It's heavily criticized predecessor fell to just 12.1 percent in December, a drop of half a percentage point. This represents the lowest share Vista has claimed since July 2008. Usage of Windows Vista peaked in October 2009 at 18.8 percent, which by no coincidence is also the month Windows 7 was released.

Windows XP use fell to 56.7 percent in December, dropping 1.2 percentage points. It's plunge over the fourth quarter of 2010 was measured at about 3.3 percent, accelerating from 2.4 percent in the third quarter of 2010 and 2 percent in the second quarter.

The Walt Disney Company has announced that it will release at least 15 Blu-ray 3D titles over the coming year.

Among the list of films already revealed by Disney are the animated classics The Lion Kind and Beauty And The Beast. As for more recent titles, the list includes the recent TRON: Legacy and the box-office smash hit Tangled.

"As our contemporary library of 3D content continues to grow, and the original artists and filmmakers meticulously 'dimensionalize' their work for release on the Blu-ray 3D format, we will be offering movie-lovers the most incredible in-home entertainment experience they will ever have," noted Lori MacPherson, Executive Vice President and General Manager, Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment.

"In addition to offering new releases day-and-date in 3D and further cementing our leadership in the marketplace, we're thrilled that consumers will have the exclusive Blu-ray 3D experience of two of the most celebrated Disney animated features, The Lion King and Beauty and the Beast, in their homes."

BitTorrent, Inc. has announced a new milestone in the usage of its original BitTorrent Mainline client, and its popular µTorrent client.

The company announced yesterday that its software products have grown to over 100 million worldwide monthly (active) users. Each day, an average of over 400,000 downloads of the clients are made by Internet users, while 20 million are using them any given day.

It has also announced that its software is available in 52 languages and that clients are checking in (for updates etc.) from over 220 different countries every day.

Microchip superpower Intel is plotting its own movie / video service to compete with the likes of iTunes and Amazon in 2011.

Intel's Insider service will offer movies in full 1080p resolution for rental or purchase to users of Core 2011-powered laptops or desktop computers. What sets Intel's outfit aside from the ever-growing number of competing similar services is that it provides content protection in the hardware, being tied to the second generation Core processors.

Intel's Erik Reid has said the plan is to offer content at the same time as it becomes available on Blu-ray and DVD. So far the chip giant has already struck deals with Warner Bros and CinemaNow.

Last week, a hacking group called "fail0verflow" presented the PlayStation 3 "private key," a master code that Sony uses to authorize code on all retail consoles.

Knowing the root key means any hacker can gain full control of the PS3 system, without needing to jailbreak it using a USB dongle.

Today, infamous iPhone hacker Geohot released the root key to the world, beating fail0verflow to the punch.

Reads the post:

erk: C0 CE FE 84 C2 27 F7 5B D0 7A 7E B8 46 50 9F 93 B2 38 E7 70 DA CB 9F F4 A3 88 F8 12 48 2B E2 1B
riv: 47 EE 74 54 E4 77 4C C9 B8 96 0C 7B 59 F4 C1 4D
pub: C2 D4 AA F3 19 35 50 19 AF 99 D4 4E 2B 58 CA 29 25 2C 89 12 3D 11 D6 21 8F 40 B1 38 CA B2 9B 71 01 F3 AE B7 2A 97 50 19
R: 80 6E 07 8F A1 52 97 90 CE 1A AE 02 BA DD 6F AA A6 AF 74 17
n: E1 3A 7E BC 3A CC EB 1C B5 6C C8 60 FC AB DB 6A 04 8C 55 E1
K: BA 90 55 91 68 61 B9 77 ED CB ED 92 00 50 92 F6 6C 7A 3D 8D
Da: C5 B2 BF A1 A4 13 DD 16 F2 6D 31 C0 F2 ED 47 20 DC FB 06 70

All Hotmail users who had their email go missing, or had their inboxes automatically moved into the "deleted" folder, now have them back, says Microsoft.

Says the software giant:

"We have restored the e-mails to those who were effected.If you are still missing your e-mails, please post your issue here (please note that you need to be logged in to the windowslivehelp.com site to be able to post) with as much detailed information as possible (How much wasn't restored, and any specifics that you may have) We sincerely apologize and thank you for your continued patience."

Users had bombarded Microsoft with complaints over how their inboxes had suddenly disappeared after the New Year's holiday, with some users even pleading with Microsoft to bring their messages back, some of which included pictures of their kids.

Hotmail/Live remains the most used e-mail service in the world, with 360 million users.

Microsoft would not elaborate on what happened but did say we "identified the source of the issue."

As predicted at launch, Samsung has confirmed they have sold 10 million Galaxy S smartphones, just 6 months after launch.

One Galaxy S was sold every two seconds since launch, said the company.

4 million of the units were sold in North America, with another 2.5 million sold in Europe, and 2 million sold in Korea, home of Samsung.

The remaining sales came from different nations around Asia.

Says JK Shin, President and Head of Mobile Communications Business at Samsung Electronics (via IW):

The Galaxy S is the result of our 22 year heritage in the mobile industry. It is the realization of our concept of 'the Smart Life' - we wanted to makes users' lives more convenient, more exciting, and more integrated. Today's milestone shows that we have succeeded: 10 million Galaxy S users around the world are living the Smart Life.

The device sells for all major carriers in the U.S. and is notable for its large 4-inch Super AMOLED display.

Research firm Net Applications has released their year-end browser market share figures and Google's Chrome finished out the year strong, closing at 9.98 percent market share.

Internet Explorer, in all its variations, finished the year at 57.08 percent, followed by Firefox at 22.81 percent.

Firefox started the year at 24.51 percent and IE started the year at 62.39 percent, so both saw considerable declines at the hands of Chrome and Apple's Safari.

Safari jumped from 4.50 percent to 5.89 percent market share from January 1st to December 31st.

Opera, despite releasing version 11 to critical acclaim, saw share drop from 2.39 percent to 2.23 percent.

When breaking down the Internet Explorer versions, IE8 accounted for 33 percent of overall share, with IE6 falling to 13.06 percent and IE7 falling to 8.76 percent.

The U.S. PlayStation Blog has revealed today that the blockbuster game Angry Birds will be hitting the PlayStation Network this week as a PS Mini.

Minis are playable on the PlayStation Portable and the PlayStation 3.

Reads the Minis description of the game:

Angry Birds- The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 63 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.

Earlier in the year, developer Rovio Mobile said they were working on versions of the mobile game for the PS3, Nintendo Wii and Xbox 360.

On just the iOS and Android platforms, the game has already seen over 50 million downloads.

TorrentFreak has released their list of the most pirated TV shows for 2010, and the now-concluded mystery drama "Lost" topped the list.

At 6 million downloads, "Lost" beat out 2009's champion, "Heroes," which was downloaded 5.5 million times.

Rounding out the top 5 were "Dexter" at 4 million downloads, "The Big Bang Theory" at 3.9 million and "House" at 3.3 million.

The site also makes the interesting note that the most downloaded episodes of the shows actually exceeded average TV viewership, especially in shows like Dexter which air on premium channels.

Overall, downloads of the top five shows fell, year-over-year, notes the site.

The full list:

1. Lost
2. Heroes
3. Dexter
4. The Big Bang Theory
5. House
6. How I Met Your Mother
7. 24
8. True Blood
9. Glee
10. Family Guy

AOC, a maker of cheap LCD screens, has announced the launch of a $200 Android tablet which will be fully unveiled at the upcoming CES event.

The AOC Breeze will have an 8-inch screen with 800x600 resolution, 4GB internal memory, a Rockchip CPU and the old Android 2.1 operating system.

Set for release later this month, the tablet will also include a USB port and microSD memory card slot.

The Breeze weighs 1.1 pounds, has a 6-hour claimed battery life for video.

It is unclear if the tablet will have 3G support on top of its standard Wi-Fi.

Vizio, two days after teasing it in a Rose Bowl ad, has introduced their first tablet and smartphone, each of which runs on the Android mobile OS.

The company is the top LCD HDTV maker in the United States.

Dubbed the Via Tablet and the Via Phone, the devices will move away from current 4-button Android setups and include just a "Menu," "Back" and "V" button. It is unclear with the Vizio button will do.

Just like with their Web-connected TVs, the apps menu is separated into "Favorites" and "All Apps."

Apparently, according to the WSJ, the Via devices will have Netflix access, which would be a first for Android devices, through Vizio's Via Plus service.

The Via Phone will have a 4-inch screen, a 1 GHz processor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, GPS, a microSD slot, a front-facing camera for video calls and a rear-facing 5MP camera.

Wang Chen, deputy head of China's propaganda department has revealed some interesting figures this week, including how many pornography sites were taken down in the nation last year.

Chen says:

By November, 350 million pieces of harmful information, including text, pictures and videos, had been deleted. There was a notable improvement in the online cultural environment.

In an effort to remove objectionable content from the Internet, the government checked 1.79 million websites and ended up shutting down 60,000 pornography sites.

5000 citizens were arrested for spreading the porn, and 1332 received "criminal punishment." 58 of those are currently serving 5 year (or longer) prison sentences.

There are currently over 400 million Internet users in China, by far the biggest online population in the world.

China has long blocked Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook and recently announced Skype will be banned soon, as well.

Verizon has dropped the price of the Samsung Galaxy Tab from $600 to $500, putting a pretty significant price gap between the tablet and even the cheapest iPad with 3G access, which retails for $630.

Furthermore, all new Verizon Galaxy Tabs will come with a $60 Samsung MediaHub voucher, giving owners a chance to rent a large amount of movies through the service for free.

Other carriers have been offering the voucher with purchases for the better part of a month.

If you purchased a Tab within the last two weeks, you can bring in the receipt and receive a $100 refund, as well, says the company.

Samsung's tablet runs on Android 2.2, has a 1GHz processor, a 7-inch multi-touch screen and dual cameras.

The Wikimedia Foundation, parent of online encyclopedia Wikipedia has said this weekend that they have raised $16 million, allowing the service to remain ad-free for another year.

Founder Jimmy Wales said the fundraiser was the "shortest" in the company's history, lasting just over 50 days.

Over 500,000 individuals made donations, doubling on 2009's count.

Donors from 140 countries donated an average of $22, and $13.7 million of the donations came via the Internet. The rest came from direct checks.

All the money will go to paying off Wikipedia's ever-increasing infrastructure costs, staffing, program support and grants.

Concluded Wales (via PCM):

This outpouring of support by hundreds of thousands of ordinary people from all walks of life is a testament to the spirit of the Wikimedia movement. Wikipedia is a public resource created and maintained by hundreds of thousands of volunteers, relied on by over 400 million people and paid for by half a million donors. It's truly user-created, supported and maintained.