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Tomorrow at the FPD International 2010 trade show in Japan, the Chinese company Hanvon will unveil the first e-reader to include a color e-ink display, giving it a distinct advantage over rivals like the Amazon Kindle and B&N Nook.

Black-and-white e-ink displays are currently used in 90 percent of the world's e-readers, says the NYTimes.

The Apple iPad and the recently launched Nook Color both use LCD color screens.

Jennifer K. Colegrove, director of display technologies at DisplaySearch, described the moment: "This is a very important development. It will bring e-readers to a higher level."

While it is simple to make e-readers with LCD screens, the LCDs tend to take away many advantages of the devices. E-ink screens consume much less battery power and energy and are also readable no matter how bad glare is from sunlight.

Color e-ink screens do have their downsides, however, compared to LCDs. LCD screens will be much sharper, more colorful, and able to handle video. Color e-ink screens have "muted" colors and can only handle "simple animations," notes the NYTimes.

According to a new study published in Fertility and Sterility, using a notebook on your lap for extended periods of time can lead to reduced sperm quality, and there is really nothing we can do about it.

Yelim Sheynkin, a urologist that lead the study from the State University of New York at Stony Brook said: "Millions and millions of men are using laptops now, especially those in the reproductive age range. Within 10 or 15 minutes their scrotal temperature is already above what we consider safe, but they don't feel it."

For the study, 29 men had their scrotal temperature taken with thermometers as they balanced notebooks on their laps.

Even if you are using a lap pad, the temperatures were still dangerous.

Warming the scrotum just 2 degrees Fahrenheit can lead to damaged sperm, adds Sheynkin. After one hour of having a notebook on your lap, your scrotum can heat up as much as 5 degrees Fahrenheit.

One in every six couples in the U.S. has trouble conceiving a baby, with a main culprit being male infertility, says the American Urological Association.

What should you do? Every 15 minutes give your "boys" some time to cool down.

Responding to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative, the MPAA has posted a list of the most "notorious markets" for pirated digital goods outside of the U.S.

The list includes a number of torrent and warez sites that are well known, as well as file-hosting sites and newsgroups clients.

Bob Pisano, interim CEO and President of the MPAA, submitted the list in response to the Office of the US Trade Representative's request for a list of "notorious markets" outside of the U.S.

Pisano noted that 46 percent of revenue brought in by MPAA-member companies is from overseas.

"MPAA has a strong interest in the health and sustainability of these international markets and appreciates USTR’s interest in identifying notorious markets that threaten legitimate commerce, impair legitimate markets’ viability and curb U.S. competitiveness and hurt our overall economic strength. It is critical that our trading partners protect and enforce intellectual property rights," says Pisano.

Samsung has said today that it expects to sell 1 million Galaxy Tab devices by the end of the year, despite just beginning to sell it this week.

The tablet will be available on all four major carriers in the U.S., and on major carriers in the UK, Canada and other nations beginning this week with a staggered roll out.

Says Samsung president of mobile business JK Shin: "I estimate we will be able to sell more than a million units worldwide by the end of this year."

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

The Galaxy Tab is also expected to be the first tablet that can actually compete with the clear market leader, the Apple iPad.

Queen Elizabeth II, the 84-year old British monarch, is now on Facebook, launching a number of official pages that will give updates on her life.

The pages will have videos, photos and news items.

Starting tomorrow, the Queen's pages, as well as Princes Harry and William's, will go live.

Using the pages, 500 million Facebook users can leave comments for Buckingham Palace, or find royal events in their neighborhoods.

The Queen authorized the decision but the pages will be corporate, therefore no one can request friendship from the Royal family.

Last week, Adafruit Industries sent notice that it was giving a $2000 USD prize to anyone who could hack the new Microsoft Kinect to run on devices that aren't the Xbox 360.

Reads the notice:

"Upload your code, examples and documentation to GitHub. First person / group to get RGB out with distance values being used wins, you're smart – you know what would be useful for the community out there. All the code needs to be open source and/or public domain."

Today, user "AlexP" of the NUI Group Community Forums has posted a video doing exactly what the contest asks for, so it seems like that $2000 may have a new owner.

The Kinect is being controlled via a PC in the video, but there are little other details.

When shown the video, Microsoft was not happy with the "hacking."

"Microsoft does not condone the modification of its products. With Kinect, Microsoft built in numerous hardware and software safeguards designed to reduce the chances of product tampering. Microsoft will continue to make advances in these types of safeguards and work closely with law enforcement and product safety groups to keep Kinect tamper-resistant," says the company, via Cnet.

Bank of America and Citigroup, two of the U.S.' largest banks, are prepared to allow employees use of the Apple iPhone for their corporate email needs, moving away from the BlackBerrys.

Both banks are currently testing smartphone software that will make the iPhone secure enough for corporate messages, says Bloomberg.

RIM BlackBerrys, once the standard for corporate smartphones, have been abandoned by a number of large corporations, with the latest being Dell, which said it would be switching from BBs to Windows Phone 7 devices made by themselves.

Says one analyst: "People are delighted with their iPhones and Android phones and they want to use them for work. The result is RIM now has real competition for corporate customers."

Apple CEO Steve Jobs said last month that a full 80 percent of the Fortune 500 list is testing software that will let their employees use iPhones or Android devices for corporate email, moving away from BlackBerrys.

CultofMac is reporting today that Apple was first offered the technology behind the newly launched Kinect motion control system, but they were too much of a "pain in the ass" for a deal to work.

The site reports of a flight from Europe to San Francisco where the editor had a chance to meet with Inon Beracha, the CEO of PrimeSense, the company behind Kinect's motion control tech.

Engineers in the Israeli military created the technology and Beracha was trying to find a big time partner to commercialize it. The company expected it to "revolutionize" gaming and computer interfaces.

PrimeSense was shopping the tech in 2008, and went first to Apple, who seemed like a "natural" fit.

However, Apple, in Apple-esque fashion, asked Beracha to sign tons of NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) and legal agreements which the CEO would not agree to, saying the tech was "so hot" he could sell it to anyone.

"Apple is a pain in the ass," he concluded, with a smile.

On Friday, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sold $1.3 billion worth of his shares in the company, while downplaying any worries that he was planning to leave the company or had lost faith in its future.

The sale will reduce Ballmer's share in the software giant by almost 12 percent.

Ballmer also noted that he will sell hundreds of millions worth of more shares by the end of the year as the 54-year old exec is planning to "diversify his investments and plan for taxes," says Reuters.

Says the CEO: "Even though this is a personal financial matter, I want to be clear about this to avoid any confusion. I am excited about our new products and the potential for our technology to change people's lives, and I remain fully committed to Microsoft and its success."

Ballmer started in the company as a business manager in 1980, becoming CEO in 2000.

The CEO sold 49 million shares and plans to sell another 26 by the end of the year. After the sales, Ballmer will still have over 325 million shares of the company, which is currently trading at $26.85 a share.

Google has confirmed today that the query prediction technology Google Instant is now available on smartphones, as promised in September by the search giant.

'Instant' anticipates users' searches while they type it, a feature which is invaluable on smartphones as loading times can be slower than on desktops. Typing is often more of a hassle, as well.

"Like the desktop version of Google Instant, when you type on your mobile device you’ll see predictions of what you might be searching for," said Google engineer Steve Kanefsky.

Google predicts the searches by using analysis of billions of queries. By doing so, the company can guess the letters and word combos a user was likely to type.

IW explains that "AJAX and HTML implementation updates search results pages dynamically so as to eliminate the need to load a new page with every new query."

Android 2.2 and iPhone users can enable Instant from the Google homepage via their phones.

Skyfire, the browser application which promises Flash playback on iOS devices, is back in the App Store now, "in batches," after being pulled from the iOS App Store yesterday thanks to extreme demand.

Five hours after going up to sale, the app was showing as "sold out" as the company looked to increase its server capacity.

Skyfire is popular because it takes Flash video, renders and translates it to HTML5 and then redisplays it, showing users a thumbnail they can click to play the video. The browser also works for some Silverlight videos.

The company said at the time: "The user experience was performing well for the first few hours, but as the surge continued, the peak load on our servers and bandwidth caused the video experience to degrade."

CEO Jeff Glueck says today that the browser will be available "in batches" for first time downloaders over the coming week.

"We are taking this approach because Skyfire believes a good user experience should come first, and we would rather have fewer, happier customers, and add new users as we can support them," Glueck added. "We will open the first batches to US users only, with additional country support to follow shortly."

Dell says it will replace its employees' RIM BlackBerry smartphones with Dell phones using Windows Phone 7, starting the transition "soon."

The company says the move will save them 25 percent on their smartphone expenses.

Dell will move all 25,000 employees to the Venue Pro, the recently launched WP7 device.

If you are a current Dell employee and use a BlackBerry, you will be given a Venue Pro along with a voice and data plan. If you do not have a BlackBerry, you will also get the Venue Pro, but with no data plan. Users can hop onto company Wi-Fi when at work or use Wi-Fi at home or around town.

Because they are eliminating BlackBerrys and the need for BlackBerry servers, Dell expects to shave 25 percent off their mobile communications costs.

Dell is also in talks with T-Mobile and Microsoft, looking for other discounts and better plans.

With a parting shot, Dell CFO Brian Gladden added (via EW): "Clearly in this decision we are competing with RIM, because we're kicking them out."

Following Microsoft's launch of the Kinect motion control system yesterday, a couple of reviews from notable sites came in claiming that the "facial recognition" feature of the device was having trouble detecting people of darker skin.

One review, from GameSpot, had this to say: "Testing suggests facial recognition features of Microsoft's motion-sensing camera system might not work properly for some gamers... In testing the Kinect, two dark-skinned GameSpot employees had problems getting the system's facial recognition features to work."

Consumer Reports immediately took to the case, and has reported that Kinect is not "racist" in any way.

The site says that the facial recognition problems stems from lighting in the room and not from a player's skin tone. White or black, if you are in a room with low-level lighting, the system will have problems recognizing your face.

As for actually following the movements of players, CR says even in a pitch black room they had no issues with the Kinect seeing them.

A New York appeals court has reinstated Amazon and Overstock's lawsuit over sales taxes today, a decision that could shape Internet taxation for the future.

Both e-tailers have claimed that New York's state law forcing them to collect sales tax on online purchases is unconstitutional.

The original complaint had been dismissed.

Amazon and Overstock filed their cases in early 2008 and have been collecting taxes on purchases from NY buyers ever since while they await the case.

Cnet got a quote from Brad Maione of the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance: "We're pleased with the decision in light of the fact that the court found that the statute is indeed constitutional. We are confident that we will prevail in the end."

The case should have its merits as a 1992 Supreme Court ruling found that retailers cannot be forced to collect sales tax from customers in other states if they don't have an office in that state. Neither e-tailer has an office in New York state.

New York, when it enacted the law, said online retailers that do not collect taxes have an unfair advantage over brick-and-mortar companies that have to, by law, collect taxes.

IntoMobile has reported today that Android 2.3 Gingerbread may almost be done baking, with an SDK launch expected on November 11th.

Google put up the statue for Gingerbread on their campus two weeks ago, making the firmware update "official" for the first time.

With the statue in place, most expected the upgrade to hit within a month, and November 11th fits that time frame.

The site calls its tipster a "trusted source" for Android news but for now the date must be seen as rumor.

Samsung also has a big smartphone event prepared for next week, where it is expected to launch the Continuum. Rumor has had it that Samsung will also announce the Nexus Two, the first phone to have 2.3.