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According to a new study from TNS Digital Life, the Japanese have the least amount of friends on social networking sites, while Malaysian web users have the most.

Users in Malaysia have an average of 233 friends, followed closely by Brazil at 231. Japanese users only had an average of 29 friends.

Chinese web users, despite heavy use of social networks, had a low average of 68 friends.

In terms of time spent on social networking sites, Malaysians averaged 9 hours per week, with Russian users following at 8.1 hours and Turkish users in third at 7.7 hours per week.

"This study covers more than twice as many markets as any other research," added Matthew Froggatt, TNS chief development officer. "It is the first truly global research into online activities, including all the key emerging markets… We have also researched beyond basic behavior to provide more detailed data into attitudes and emotional drivers of that behavior."

You can read the full study here: Global ‘Digital Life’ research project reveals major changes in online behaviour

According to the latest iSuppli figures, Dell has fought its way back into second place in global PC sales after losing the spot to Acer over nine months ago.

HP, despite losing share, remained on top, at 18.1 percent market share. Sales dipped 6.3 percent from the first quarter.

Dell sales fell as well, but Acer fell farther. Dell took 12.8 percent share for the quarter, with Acer falling to 12.4 percent.

Rounding out the top five were Lenovo and Toshiba. The China-based PC maker saw huge 18.6 percent growth from the first quarter moving up to 10.1 percent global share. Toshiba stagnated, falling slightly to 5.4 percent global share.

Dozens of other computer makers made up the remaining 41.2 percent, but all have less than 5 percent share.

Nokia retained the top spot in the global smartphone market, according to iSuppli, even gaining share in the Q2.

Android's growing popularity was evident by gains seen by a few handset makers, especially HTC and Samsung.

Nokia took the top spot with a 39.7 percent share, showing 11.6 percent growth from the first quarter. RIM, the makers of the BlackBerry line, remained in second at 18.5 percent, seeing a slight decline in share despite shipping more devices.

Apple took a dive while remaining in third place at 13.9 percent. The iPhone maker dropped from 15.7 percent last quarter on slowing shipments.

Seeing massive growth thanks to Android sales, HTC shipments grew 63 percent and market share jumped to 8 percent. Samsung saw 55.6 percent growth in shipments, moving up to 4.5 percent market share.

According to TechCrunch, Apple will likely not make a phone that supports LTE 4G until 2012.

Major carrier Verizon will begin to rollout its LTE network this year, with full rollout expected by the end of 2011.

AT&T will begin their rollout next year.

The site says Apple is waiting for the technology to mature before supporting it, as the LTE transition is expected to be slow at the start.

Furthermore, the site says instead the company will release a dual mode GSM-CDMA iPhone that will work with T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. Rival Sprint uses WiMax 4G for its smartphones.

LTE promises downstream speeds up to 500 percent faster than current 3G.

Wedbush's Michael Pachter revealed in a note he sent to investors that Bungie's Halo: Reach will have pushed U.S. games industry sales figures back into positive territory following three straight months of dismal results.

Pachter predicts that U.S. games software sales for September will hit $665 million, representing a 2.4 percent increase over September 2009. The increase would be larger if it wasn't for a decline in the music games genre. Last year, Guitar Hero 5 and Rock Band: The Beatles helped to boost the genre, while Pachter predicts this time around, Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock only sold 100,000 units.

Overall, Pachter expected rhythm genre sales to be down more than $100 million for the month, from $116 million to just $15 million.

He expects FIFA 11 and Dead Rising 2 to be among the best selling titles for the month, while he expects sales of Sony's PlayStation Move to be "modest" at best.

Apple Inc. has been awarded a trademark for the catchphrase, "There's an App for That", which is widely used in campaigns for Apple's iPhone, iPod touch and iPad products. The company filed for the trademark in December 2009, citing its first commercial use in January 2009.

The trademark applies to "retail store services featuring computer software provided via the Internet and other computer and electronic communication networks; retail store services featuring computer software for use on handheld mobile digital electronic devices and other consumer electronics."

It was filed in the Advertising, Business and Retail Services, Computer and Software Services and Scientific Services categories. The phrase has become quite popular and has been parodied on occasion. It refers to the growing focus on the App Store, used by millions of Apple product users to find apps for specific purposes among hundreds of thousands of others.

The 'App Store' format is being emulated by other players in the mobile space, hoping to keep up with Apple in functionality and usability.

The High Court in Dublin has ruled that there is no precedent in Irish law to force Internet Service Providers (ISP) to identify and disconnect subscribers accused to sharing music and other content illegally over the Internet. UPC, one of the largest ISPs in Ireland, is not now required to take part in the same three strikes program that Ireland's largest ISP, Eircom, is currently using.

UPC would have been required to first send an informal warning to customers accused of sharing music illegally. Then it would have to send more stern threats of disconnection, followed by a seven day disconnection. After this stage, a customer could be disconnected for up to a year if the activity continued.

While the High Court decision is based on Irish law, it was pointed out by the court that this could mean Irish law does not comply with European law agreed by EU member states including Ireland itself. Whether this means the Irish government will step in to provide legislation for the issue or not remains to be seen.

Mr. Justice Peter Charleton made the ruling. He had previously condemned the impact Internet piracy has on the industry when the Eircom case was in the media, saying at the time that piracy "not only undermines the record companies' business but ruins the ability of a generation of creative people in Ireland, and elsewhere, to establish a viable living."

It seems that Foxconn cannot keep itself out of the news and for all of the wrong reasons. After several highly-publicized suicides by Foxconn workers, a new leaked report shows that not much has actually changed at Foxconn. The Beijing-based Global Times reported on a study conducted by 60 teachers and students from 20 Universities in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

Fourteen investigators were able to enter the company and experience life inside Foxconn for themselves. According to the report, at least 16.4 percent of Foxconn employees have been subject to "some kind of corporal violence," like that seen in a recently released video of employees being assaulted by Foxconn security.

More than 38 percent claimed that their privacy has been invaded and 54.6 percent felt indignant toward management. Foxconn had announced a 30 percent pay rise for its employees following a number of suicides, but the report states that raises only amounted to 9.1 percent and that workers were also deprived of, "many of their welfare terms like subsidies, bonuses and so on."

The report focuses a lot on interns working for Foxconn. While interns are only allowed to work eight hours per day, some plants had them on ten hour shifts and night shifts. By having no contracts with interns, Foxconn doesn't have to pay "social welfare" costs for them, which means if they are injured at work due to a lack of supervision, the interns will have to pay their own medical expenses.

Hitachi Global Storage Technologies has announced the industry's fastest and most power-efficient, 10K RPM, 6Gb/s Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) Enterprise hard drive, the Hitachi Ultrastar C10K600. The C10K600 is a 2.5-inch drive family that offers capacities of 300GB, 450GB and 600GB, rivaling 3.5-inch drives that also offer 10,000 RPM.

The Ultrastar C10K600 drive also sets a new standard for energy-efficiency with an operating power specification that is at least 22 percent lower than the competition, according to Hitachi.

"The Ultrastar C10K600 is closely aligned with customer requirements for increased performance, improved server/storage density, greater power efficiency and lower total cost of ownership," said Brendan Collins, vice president of Product Marketing, Hitachi GST.

"We are proud to establish new power and performance benchmarks with our latest Ultrastar drives, while delivering to customers the proven quality and reliability they have come to expect from Hitachi."

The new Ultrastar C10K600 drive family offers optional Bulk Data Encryption for hard-drive-level data security. These self-encrypting models are designed to the Trusted Computing Group's Enterprise A Security Subsystem Class encryption specification and allow customers to reduce costs associated with drive retirement and extend drive life by enabling swift and secure repurposing of drives.

TDK has shown off prototype 1TB optical discs at CEATEC in Japan. The company managed to create the 1-terabyte disc by cramming together 16 layers, each holding 32GB. TDK succeeded in forming 16 layers by developing a disc material with a high light transmittance.

"The material has already been used for part of a Blu-ray disc," the company said. "So, it does not have a problem of, for example, durability."

The disc uses the same numerical aperture as Blu-ray Disc (0.85), which TDK says means many existing technologies for the Blu-ray Disc format can be applied. It takes the same time to read one layer of the TDK disc as it does to read a Blu-ray layer.

There is one problem however, and it lies with the thickneess of the disc. "According to the specifications of the Blu-ray Disc, the thickness of a recording layer has to be 100μm or less," TDK said. "But the recording layer of the new disc is 260μm in thickness. And it causes the aberration of an optical lens."

Microsoft is reportedly planning to shut its Massive Inc. in-game advertisement unit before the end of the month, four years after acquiring the company for between $200 million and $400 million. Insiders told MediaWeek that the general manager JJ Richards was currently seeking another job, while members of its tech and sales team were being assigned to other projects for Microsoft.

According to the sources, Microsoft has even approached rival in-game ad vendor Double Fusion, seeking a high 6 digit or low 7 digit figure. When Microsoft had acquired Massive in 2006, things were looking good for the firm. So good, in fact, that then-Massive-CEO Mitch Davis predicted the in-game ad market to hit $2 billion this year, which it never has approached.

Microsoft's Xbox Live service has also grown rapidly since then, hosting over 25 million users, and it is considered a more attractive advertising target for brands. Also, Microsoft doesn't have to share revenue from Xbox Live advertising with publishers as it would have to for in-game ads.

Yahoo has updated their Messenger app for the iPhone today, moving the software to version 2.0.

With 2.0 comes the ability to two-way video chat over 3G.

iPhone 4 and iPod Touch 4 owners can now chat through Yahoo Messenger via the front or back camera although the front camera is obviously better if you intend to actually see the person on the other end of the line.

Yahoo's update makes it one of the first pieces of software to have direct support for video chat with a desktop client, not just from mobile-to-mobile.

Additionally, the update brings "VoIP out to real-world numbers at discounted rates and free SMS messaging. An iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4, and either third or fourth generation iPod touch players can use extra multitasking features. Pure audio chat is also available."

Although the video has since been removed, a video on YouTube has confirmed that the streaming service Lovefilm is headed to PlayStation 3 consoles next month.

The video was available for a number of hours on the Lovefilm official YouTube channel.

Lovefilm has thousands of movies available for streaming, and is a smaller but similar service to Netflix in the United States and Canada.

The service will be free for all current Lovefilm subscribers. A two-week free-trial will be available for new would-be subscribers.

Amazon is in talks to purchase the rental company, expected to bid up to 200 million pounds for the remaining 58 percent stake they don't already own.

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata has taken a starkly different stance than others in his industry when asked about slowing software sales, citing lack of innovation instead of piracy as the main cause.

The executive was posed the question during a call about the company's revised financial forecast, which was revised to the downside thanks to slow software sales on both the DS and Wii.

Both consoles have just about hit saturation on the global scale.

Singling out an individual game, Iwata says innovative hits like "Art Academy" have sold well everywhere, including in nations where piracy has ravaged sales.

One such country is Spain, which is infamous for piracy levels that far exceed other Western European neighbors.

"Nintendo DS software could not make it to the hit software sales chart in the country for sometime," Iwata said, via GI. "However, when we launched the Nintendo DS software Art Academy in Europe this summer, which shows you how to draw pictures, it was ranked number one on the software sales chart covering all the videogame platforms in Spain. If one software can attract many people and can become a social topic, that software can sell regardless of piracy."

AT&T has announced today that their popular IPTV service U-Verse has been expanded to the Xbox 360 gaming console.

Starting on October 15th, gamers can access the service through their consoles, eliminating the need to purchase a new receiver for their home.

With the launch, AT&T is the first TV provider in the states to offer live TV via the console.

Additionally, the company has announced the launch of "U-Verse Mobile" for upcoming Windows Phone 7 devices.

Starting next month, the Mobile app will be preloaded on AT&T WP7 devices.

"Now you can get our award-winning U-verse services on your big screen TV, online, on your mobile phone, and integrated with your Xbox 360," said David Christopher, chief marketing officer, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets. "Our IPTV strategy is putting AT&T at the forefront by delivering U-verse content where you want it. And now we're extending the U-verse experience to more AT&T smartphone customers with the upcoming launch of U-verse Mobile on Windows Phone 7 devices."

For the 360, subscribers will need to purchase a $99 Xbox Kit which is installed for free by a U-Verse technician. Having a 360, however, eliminates the need for an additional receiver taking up space in the house.