Latest news

According to new data from GfK, Android has surpassed Symbian as the most popular smartphone OS in Asia.

Smartphone sales in Asia have grown 270 percent year-over-year to 4.7 million units.

In defining "Asia," GfK uses sales from Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea, Taiwan, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

"Our Q3 report shows that Android has recently overtaken Symbian as the most popular smartphone OS in the context of Asia as a whole, in both value and unit sales. However, it is interesting to note the difference in OS trends when we look at findings in North and Southeast Asia separately," says the research firm.

Globally, Android has jumped to second place, with over 26 percent share, behind Symbian at around 38 percent.

Google is currently in talks with Filmyard Holdings in an effort to purchase the digital rights to Miramax's extensive movie archive.

The rights would help Google give YouTube a larger collection of feature-length content, which it currently lacks.

Miramax has over 700 films in its catalog.

Although unconfirmed, Netflix has been said to be in talks with Miramax, as well, trying to secure the rights to add the library to its "Watch Instantly" streaming service. Netflix currently offers 20,000 movies and TV shows.

Miramax was just sold earlier this year by Disney for $660 million.

YouTube has said recently that 36 hours of video are posted every minute to the video sharing site.

Guns N' Roses lead singer Axl Rose has sued Activision this week for $20 million, claiming that the developer's use of the song "Welcome to the Jungle" in the game Guitar Hero 3 violated an imagery deal.

Rose says Activision had promised to not include any images of former band member "Slash" in exchange for Rose authorizing the song to be used in the game. Additionally, Rose made it clear he wanted no mention of Slash's new band, Velvet Revolver, in the game.

The complaint says: "Activision began spinning a web of lies and deception to conceal its true intentions to not only feature Slash and VR prominently in 'GH III,' but also promote the game by emphasizing and reinforcing an association between Slash and Guns N Roses and the band's song 'Welcome to the Jungle.'"

As pictured, the cover of Guitar Hero 3 has a pretty obvious animated Slash, prominently in the center of the cover art.

Rose says he immediately rescinded all authorization for the song, but Activision "lied" and claimed the Slash-character was just for promotional use.

"This lawsuit is about protecting Guns N' Roses and 'Welcome to the Jungle,' and is about holding Activision accountable for its misuse of these incredibly valuable assets," adds Rose's lawyer Skip Miller. "The relief we are seeking is disgorgement of profits and compensatory and punitive damages."

Expected to fetch up to $200,000 in auction, a 1976 Apple 1 computer, one of just 200 ever built, has sold for $174,000 through Christie's auction house.

Each Apple I computer was hand-built by Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak.

The device up for sale was #82 of the 200, and sold with original packaging, manuals and a letter from CEO Steve Jobs. There are only 30-50 left in the world.

Apple I computers have 8KB of memory and an eight-bit processor.

Read the auction description:

"The first Apple computer, and the first personal computer with a fully assembled motherboard, heralding the home computer revolution.

"Introduced in July 1976, the Apple I was sold without a casing, power supply, keyboard or monitor. However, because the motherboard was completely pre-assembled, it represented a major step forward in comparison with the competing self-assembly kits of the day."

News Corp and Apple's rumored digital-only newspaper, dubbed "The Daily," may be hitting tablets as soon as December 9th, say new sources.

The Daily will be available on the iPad at launch, exclusively, with an event planned for December 9th to launch the paper.

Both Rupert Murdoch and Steve Jobs will be in attendance.

So far, it seems like the newspaper will be a national paper with "tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence" that is more "fun" to read than traditional papers.

News Corp will hire 100 staff writers for the project, each of which is expect to cover breaking news and other "beats."

The Daily will cost just $.99 per week.

Verizon has announced this week that it will be adding a new, speedier tier to its FiOS fiber broadband offering, offering as high as 150Mbit/sec downstream and 34Mbit upstream.

The service will cost users $195 per month.

So far, Verizon is rolling out the service to 12 U.S. states, and D.C., with small businesses and residential consumers expected to be able to use it fully by the end of the year.

Verizon currently offers a 50/20Mbit plan for $140 per month, their fastest offering.

New customers or upgrading customers must sign up for a one-year agreement to get the $195 price for the new incredibly fast option.

FiOS is currently available to 12.5 million households in the U.S. with Verizon expecting to expand reach to 18 million.

With a 150Mbit connection, users can download full two-hour 1080p HD movies in under 4 minutes and average music tracks in 300 milliseconds.

Spotify has revealed their 2009 financials today, and it appears that the company saw a hefty loss for the last year.

Revenue grew to £11.32 million but costs rose to £18.82 million, not including distribution costs of £608,711 and administrative expenses of £8.29 million.

Overall, the company saw a £16.4 million loss.

Revenue came mainly from subscriptions, with £6.81 million coming from monthly subscribers. The rest of the revenue came from advertisements, to the tune of £4.51 million.

Spotify had seven million users in Europe by the end of the financial year, but only 250,000 paying subscribers.

"2009 saw us focus on establishing a new and innovative music service and bringing it to millions of people across Europe. The groundwork laid in our launch year has been crucial to the significant achievements made in 2010. Further strengthening and expansion of the service remains our top priority," says the company.

Apple has announced today that iOS 4.2 is now available for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch, adding a number of new features.

Perhaps more notably is the fact that iPad users will finally get multitasking.

"iOS 4.2 makes the iPad a completely new product, just in time for the holiday season," added CEO Steve Jobs. "Once again, the iPad with iOS 4.2 will define the target that other tablets will aspire to, but very few, if any, will ever be able to hit."

All iOS device owners will now have multitasking, Folders, Unified Inbox, Game Center, AirPlay and AirPrint.

AirPlay allows for wireless streaming of music, videos and photos from any iOS device to the Apple TV.

AirPrint lets you wirelessly print photos, email, web pages, and documents from your iPad to any AirPrint-enabled printer.

For a more in depth look into the new features, click here: Apple’s iOS 4.2 Available Today for iPad, iPhone & iPod touch

Samsung Electronics has already sold 600,000 units of the Galaxy Tab tablet, says The Korea Herald, in less than a month after launch.

The tablet is available in 30 countries.

In Samsung's home country, Korea, SK Telecom has sold 30,000 units since launch last week.

"We believe tablet PCs will take over a bigger portion of the market next year," adds Samsung’s mobile division head Shin Jong-kyun. "For this year, we’re projecting to sell up to 1 million units."

Apple, the market leader, has sold 8 million iPad tablets since launch in April.

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

Netflix has started their long-anticipated streaming-only plan in the U.S., while also raising the price of its other mixed media subscriptions.

Shares of the company have exploded $15 dollars today following the news, good for an 8 percent gain.

The streaming only plans will be $8 per month, giving users unlimited access to the company's "Watch Instantly" catalog.

All other plans, those that include access to physical discs, as well, will see a price jump, however.

Those price jumps are immediate for new subscribers or will go into effect in January for current subs.

User with a $9 subscription (1-DVD-out) will see their subscription now cost $10. Prices for other plans are seeing similar increases.

Over the years, Netflix has spent close to $1 billion on putting together a streaming catalog that now encompasses 20,000 movies and TV shows.

Inventor Jeff Buske has said he has created new clothing products that should protect flyers from TSA body scanner radiation.

Additionally, the new bras and underwear should help flyers who want to keep their private parts a mystery.

Dubbed "Rocky Flats Gear," Buske says he does not care about the politics of the situation, but instead wants to protect citizens from unwanted radiation.

Women can wear special bras or underwear, and men can wear underwear with a fig leaf design that has properties that will block radiation.

The flexible metals will not trip detectors.

Buske has also made it clear that while the fig leaf will hide your genitals it will not hide a weapon or other items from the scanners.

Check the items here: Rocky Flats Gear

(Pic and story via KFDM)

Mozilla has released their 2009 earnings statement this week, which shows explosive revenue growth for the company.

In 2008, Mozilla had $78 million in revenue, with sales surging to $104 million last year.

It is still unclear how exactly sales jumped so much, but the statement says "a majority of Mozilla revenue continues to be generated from the search functionality included in Mozilla's Firefox product from organizations such as Google, Yahoo, Yandex, Amazon, eBay and a handful of others."

One such example is how Google gives Mozilla a tiny piece of its search ad revenue as long as Mozilla makes Google the default search engine in the popular Firefox browser.

That deal will last through the end of 2011.

Expenses increased to $61 million in 2009.

140 million users worldwide actively use the Firefox browser.

Gleacher & Co analyst Brian Marshall has said today that he believes the upcoming iPad 2 will hit in April 2011, a year after the launch of the first-generation tablet.

Marshall basis the theory on "new manufacturing information."

The new device will likely be available for multiple carriers, and include dual cameras, features that should help it outsell its predecessor.

Says Marshall: "I think April is the proper time-frame for an iPad 2. Since I’m projecting that Apple will release a CDMA iPhone in March, both will help to equalize Apple’s seasonality."

The analyst noted that Apple has commissioned a few Taiwanese companies to "manufacture the iPad 2’s HDI (high density interconnect) boards in early February."

Finally, Marshall says the new iPad may also have a standard mini-USB connection, instead of its proprietary port.

The latest rumor making its rounds today is that News Corp and Apple are preparing to launch a digital-only newspaper, dubbed "The Daily."

"The Daily" will stream to your iPad and other tablets for $.99 per week.

So far, it seems like the newspaper will be a national paper with "tabloid sensibility with a broadsheet intelligence" that is more "fun" to read than traditional papers.

News Corp will hire 100 staff writers for the project, each of which is expect to cover breaking news and other "beats."

Initially, the beta will only be on the iPad, but a full launch is expected early next year, for all devices.

Apple is said to be searching for newspaper subscription plans that would work with iOS App Store, giving Apple a cut of each subscription, and the ad revenue.

Palm, acquired by HP in April, has promised that WebOS 2.0 should be headed to all current Palm smartphones "in the coming months," remaining intentionally vague.

The confirmation comes from Palm Developer Josh Marinacci during the WebOS Developer Day in NYC.

All current devices includes the low-end Pixi all the way to the new Pre 2.

The company also says if you are looking to develop apps for 2.0, you should join the Early Access Program. The reason for such a move is because the 2.0 SDK is still under an NDA and not available to the public.

Palm says the SDK will go public when the current devices receive OTA updates for their devices.