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Spotify is not in talks with Apple about a possible takeover of the music streaming service despite several media reports.

Apple had been reported to have approached Spotify about a possible acquisition, according to TechCrunch. "Apple and Spotify are in on-again, off-again discussions about an acquisition, but at best it's very early in the process," TechCrunch wrote.

"No firm price has been offered, no term sheet tabled. Still, it's interesting that the two are talking."

However, Spotify spokesman Jim Butcher denied that any such talks have ever taken place. "We wouldn't normally comment on this kind of speculation, but we wanted to make it clear that we have absolutely no intention of selling Spotify," he said.

Spotify's journey from Europe, where it has been quite successful, to the United States has been rocky to say the least. The company still insists that it will manage to get its streaming service to the country by the end of the year. There had been reported that at least some of Spotify's troubles could be due to Apple's influence over record companies.

Dan Hesse. Chief Executive Officer Sprint Nextel Corporation, has cleared up the providers plans for its 4G services over the coming years.

Hesse said that Sprint's 4G network would use WiMAX "full stop," and that the company only played around with WiMAX' competitor, Long Term Evolution (LTE), for testing purposes in case Spring needed to support multi-mode phones that use both formats in the future.

Sprint made the decision to go with WiMAX for its 4G offerings instead of the widely-adopted LTE technology because it would allow the company to establish a 4G network much quicker than the competition. Verizon won't switch on its 4G network until the end of this year, while 2011 is the target for both AT&T and T-Mobile.

"When we had the opportunity to move into 4G, WiMAX was the only 4G interface, and it was perfect with the spectrum we owned," Hesse said. "We moved to establish the network because we didn’t want to wait, and we believe that being first to the market is an advantage."

Additionally, Hesse dismissed reports that Clearwire (which Sprint has a 54 percent stake in) would be working with T-Mobile after Sprint executives left the Clearwire board.

Amazon has been begun taking pre-orders for the T-Mobile model of the Samsung Galaxy Tab, with a price tag of $700 with no contract.

That price makes it $100 more expensive than Verizon sells it for without contract.

With contract, the T-Mobile models sells for the same price as all rivals, $400.

Shipping date for the Galaxy Tab is November 9th from Amazon, with buyers getting it on the 10th.

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

Earlier this week, the Wi-Fi Alliance announced that certification of Wi-Fi Direct products had commenced, for device-to-device transmission of data.

With portable content like photos, videos and music taking center stage in the digital consumer experience, Wi-Fi Direct devices meet an important consumer need: directly connecting devices for applications such as content sharing, synching, printing, and gaming anywhere with ease.

Wi-Fi Direct allows the wireless network requirement to be cut out much more easily between popular consumer devices.

"We designed Wi-Fi Direct to unleash a wide variety of applications which require device connections, but do not need the internet or even a traditional network," said Edgar Figueroa, CEO of the Wi-Fi Alliance.

"Wi-Fi Direct empowers users to connect devices – when, where and how they want to, and our certification program delivers products that work well together, regardless of the brand."

Wi-Fi Direct-certified devices can connect with older Wi-Fi certified devices, enabling a vast range of devices already in use to connect with products implementing Wi-Fi Direct from the certification program's inception. With 82 million Wi-Fi-enabled portable consumer electronics and 216 million Wi-Fi enabled handsets set to ship this year, and growing at annual rates of 26 percent through 2014, consumers will be able to use Wi-Fi Direct to connect a huge range of digital devices.

Recent disputes between Fox and several television signal providers has shown that broadcasters have retained an upper hand in disputes over content fees.

Some analysts believe that Cablevision may have allowed a dispute with Fox to go all the way to a channel blackout because it wanted to see what the government would do. If true, the stunt failed to get the Federal Communications Commission to do anything more than offer to act as a mediator between both companies.

When both sides could not reach a deal over fees, Fox blacked out content for three million Cablevision subscribers for 15 days. After viewers had already missed two games of the World Series, Cablevision caved in to terms it said were unfair.

The FCC basically claims its hands are tied in such a situation. "Under the present system, the FCC has very few tools with which to protect consumers' interests," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a letter to Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass.

"Current law does not give the agency the tools necessary to prevent service disruptions," he added.

In a statement issued on Sunday, Fox said Cablevision had engineering the entire dispute in a "misguided efforts to effect regulatory change to their benefit."

The U.S. Supreme Court is to hear arguments on Tuesday concerning a federal court's decision to throw out a ban on the sale of violent video games to minors in California.

The original legislation was first signed into law by California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger back in 2005, but it was declared unconstitutional last year by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. It prohibited the sale of titles that depicted "killing, maiming, dismembering, or sexually assaulting an image of a human being" to anybody below the age of 18.

The federal court found that the law violated the minor's constitutional rights under the first and fourteenth amendment. It also found, as did other courts in other U.S. states, that there was insufficient evidence showing that violent games caused physical or psychological harm to minors.

"It's not so much a video game case as a First Amendment case," said George Rose, chief public policy officer at Activision Blizzard Inc. Other gaming companies and the ESA oppose such legislation, pointing out that the industry already takes steps to protect minors from content inappropriate for them.

According to an e-mail sent to subscribers of the Xbox Live service, a mandatory Dashboard update for the Xbox 360 console is due to be pushed out on Monday.

Failing to install the update will make using the Xbox Live service impossible until the update is applied. "On November 1, 2010, there will be a mandatory service update to Xbox LIVE," the message reads. "This update will both add new features to your service and also enhance the interface, navigation, and responsiveness of Xbox LIVE."

A major update for the Xbox 360 Dashboard had been expected before the November launch of the Kinect motion control system for the console, and many users are already using a beta of the update.

"The time required to complete the update will vary based on your Internet connection speed. However, for most users, the update will require between 5 and 10 minutes to complete. You will not be able to use your Xbox 360 console while the update is processing," the message reads.

Asus has said this weekend that the company will release six new tablets in 2011, and one more before the end of 2010.

President Jerry Shen says the company will launch tablets in four different sizes.

The first of the 2011 tablets is a 12-inch slate which will run on an Intel chipset and feature Windows 7. That device will go into mass production in December with sales beginning in January.

THG says Microsoft gave the company a lot of help "when it came to enhancing current touch and UI technologies for the device."

The following two tablets will be of the 7-inch variety, with the first expected to hit in March. The first will be Wi-Fi-only and the second will include "3.5G" data access and phone capabilities.

By the end of March, the company will launch two 9-inch models, the first being a Windows/Intel model and the second being a Nvidia Tegra 2/Android 2.3.

Less than a week after unveiling a prototype of the oft-hyped PlayStation Phone, Engadget has revealed more pictures, and some more slight details.

The device is codenamed "Zeus" and the prototype, at least, is running Android 2.2. The phone is expected to launch with 2.3 Gingerbread.

Furthermore the smartphone will come with an 8GB microSD card, a minimum of 512MB internal storage, and be around 17mm thick, almost exactly the same as the PSPgo.

From the original report:

Engadget says the phone will hit the market "soon," likely in the Q1 2011.

The device will run on Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), with a fast 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 processor, 512MB RAM, 1GB ROM and a 4.1-inch screen.

In the gaming part of the slide-out, the PSP Phone has a multi-touch touchpad, shoulder buttons and a microSD slot.

News Corp. returned their Fox signal to Cablevision subscribers last night, just in time to watch Game 3 of the World Series.

Both companies have agreed "in principle" on a new deal over retransmission fees, and Cablevision subscribers now have their Fox, Fox Deportes, NatGeo Wild and My 9 channels back.

The signals had been blacked out since October 16th, when negotiations between the companies hit a wall.

News Corp. was asking for $150 million in retransmission fees, more than Cablevision pays for ABC, NBC and CBS combined.

Terms of the new deal were not disclosed.

United States Senators have said it is unlikely that Cyber security legislation will pass this year as the 111th Congress comes to an end.

Recognizing that critical infrastructure of the United States depends on computer and network systems, legislators are debating what powers should be given to the U.S. President to respond to, and handle situations such as cyber attacks.

Countries like the United Kingdom and the United States have expressed concerns that some critical systems (health, transport, defense etc.) could be affected by cyber attacks launched by cyber criminals or rogue states. Lawmakers in the U.S. are looking to pass new legislation that would give the President powers to handle attacks from the Internet or threats of attacks, but say that any legislation is unlikely to pass this year.

"I'm not optimistic of major cyber security legislation passing at this late time." Republican staff director on the Senate Intelligence Committee Louis Tucker said. "Considering the objections to some of the cyber bills out there, comprehensive legislation will probably have to wait until next year."

Facebook has sent out invites to members of the press to attend an event that will focus on Facebook's mobile offerings.

The event is sure to re-spark the immediately-denied rumors that there is a Facebook-branded handset (or handsets) on the horizon. The media event will be held at Facebook's Palo Alto headquarters next Wednesday.

The social networking giant recently revealed that of its 500 million members, approximately 150 million use the website from their mobile phones. It offers native software applications for handsets as well as hosting a mobile-friendly version of its site.

That is likely to be the main focus of the event. A Facebook spokesperson denied rumors back in December that the company was working with device manufacturers on Facebook-branded handsets, saying that building phones is just not what Facebook does.

Thom Dunning, director of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications, has said that GPUs are the future of supercomputing.

Dunning said high-performance computing solutions will continue to move toward graphics processing units for more power. China has just recently claimed to have the fastest supercomputer on the planet, the Tianhe-1A, which uses 7,168 Nvidia Tesla M2050 GPUs and 14,336 Intel Xeon CPUs.

This GPU-CPU hybrid system is what Dunning expects to be the future in the area.

"What we're really seeing in the efforts in China as well as the ones we have in the U.S. is that GPUs are what the future will look like," Dunning said. "What we're seeing is the beginning of something that's going to be happening all over the world."

He said that the migration to such systems will accelerate when chipmakers can provide combined high-performance CPU and GPU functions on the same chip. "If they start to solve some of these other problems like putting [the GPU and CPU] together on a chip, that's when you'll start to see a lot software rewritten," according to Dunning.

Roku Developer Program Manager, "Patrick", has announced on the company's official forum that PlayOn-compatible channels have been removed and can no longer be added.

Anybody already subscribed to a channel will be able to keep it for now, although it is unclear for how long. Roku has said that neither Roku, or the developer of the channel are affiliated in any way with PlayOn.

Hi everyone,

While we understand that many of you are excited about a PlayOn-compatible Channel and may be using it, it unfortunately presents the possibility of legal exposure for us. As a result, the current PlayOn channels have been removed and are no longer available to add to your Roku player.

Patrick

Apple has responded to a lawsuit brought against it by Motorola earlier this month with its own patent infringement lawsuits.

The Cupertino-based iPhone-maker sued Motorola alleging the company's smartphone line-up and the operating system used by its handsets violate the company's intellectual property. Apple filed the two lawsuits on Friday in the U.S. district court in Wisconsin.

Earlier this month, Motorola filed a complaint with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) claiming that Apple's "i" devices infringe on their patents, as well as some Mac computers in its line-up. The three complaints include 18 patents, all of which relate to "early-stage innovations developed by Motorola in key technology areas found on many of Apple's core products and associated services, including MobileMe and the App Store."

The patents are related to "wireless communication technologies, such as WCDMA (3G), GPRS, 802.11 and antenna design, and key smartphone technologies including wireless email, proximity sensing, software application management, location-based services and multi-device synchronization."