Gazelle, a site to trade-in your electronics for cash with free shipping, has said this week that BlackBerry trade-ins are at all-time highs, even jumping as high as 80 percent the week the iPhone 4S was released.
To a much lesser degree, Android and iPhone 3GS, 4 trade-ins saw spikes, as well.
Additionally, RIM's recent network issues, in which users lost emails and instant messages for almost 48 hours, helped cause the mass exodus from the struggling smartphone maker.
For an example of what Gazelle does, you head to the site, input the product you are looking to trade-in, post if there are any functional or cosmetic issues and then the site gives you a buy back price. If you accept the price, you send in the device with a provided label and are credited the money.
Older BlackBerrys like the Bold 9000 trade-in for under $40 while the new Bold 9900 can net you back $300.
China-based mobile phone maker ZTE has passed Apple to jump into fourth place.
ZTE shipped 18 million mobile phones in the Q3, just ahead of Apple's 17.1 million, says Strategy Analytics.
Despite seeing negative growth, Nokia remained the top vendor at 106.6 million.
Samsung came in second at 88 million, thanks to strong smartphone growth.
LG managed to hold to third despite a huge decline to 21.1 million handsets shipped.
Says the research firm:
Despite ongoing economic volatility, global handset shipments grew a relatively healthy 14 percent annually to reach 390 million units in Q3 2011. ZTE was the star performer as it captured 5 percent market share and overtook Apple to become the world?s fourth largest handset vendor. ZTE?s growth is being driven by competitive pricing of entry-level models for feature phones and Android smartphones.
The Wall Street Journal has seen the future, and it is ebooks.
Future print and online publications of the popular newspaper will now include bestseller rankings for ebook sales, alongside their print counterparts.
There will be four lists added, says Mash, "combined ebook and hard copy sales of fiction, combined ebook and hard copy sales of non-fiction, ebook-only sales of fiction, and ebook-only sales of non-fiction."
Amazon, Apple, Barnes and Noble and Google will be among the retailers that pass on numbers to Nielsen, where the WSJ takes its figures from.
The WSJ will follow the New York Times and USA Today who include similar lists.
Hulu has announced today that they have signed an agreement to stream in-season episodes of CW content.
Very similar to the deal just made with Netflix, the agreement allows for episodes for the next 5 years. Hulu Plus subscribers will get in-season episodes of the content the next day.
Free Hulu users will get the in-season episodes 8 days after they air.
The shows available are "Ringer," "Hart of Dixie, "The Secret Circle," "The Vampire Diaries," "Gossip Girl," "Supernatural," "Nikita," "90210" and "America's Next Top Model."
Says the CW:
Our new arrangement with Hulu only affirms the incredible value of The CW?s series, as well as amplifying the immense power of the broadcast network model. As we increase the amount of year round original programming on The CW, this deal provides our shows with greater exposure on a new platform, helping build even more awareness that will drive viewers back to the network and its affiliates. We see this as a win for everyone involved, the network, the stations, Hulu and ultimately, the viewers.
Because the MPAA took down the service so quickly I doubt anyone here go to use it, I will first post a bit of history.
Zediva launched in January and has become very popular because it streamed new releases and did not have delay windows like Netflix and Redbox do for physical discs.
The company "rents" users a physical DVD player at Zediva and a DVD and allows them to control it via online streaming. What had helped the company become so popular was the prices of the movies. You could buy 10 streams for $10, including new releases. Zediva claimed to be legal and argued it did not need licenses because it is just like a brick-and-mortar rental company. When a customer rented a DVD, that physical DVD was then taken out of circulation, and the company did not create any digital copies.
In April, the MPAA set out on a crusade to shut the service down and they have now succeeded.
The MPAA argued that Zediva wasn't holding private exhibitions of its movies as it claimed but was instead infringing its "exclusive rights to perform their works publicly." The Judge agreed.
Barnes and Noble will release their Nook Color 2 e-reader/tablet on November 7th, a full week before Amazon jumps into the market with the Kindle Fire.
The first Nook Color, released earlier this year, was very popular as it was only $250 and was easily hacked to run its native operating system, Android 2.2.
Additionally, custom ROMs like CyanogenMod were easily flashable turning the cheap device into a fully fledged Android tablet, albeit underpowered.
The Kindle Fire will be the cheapest tablet on the market at $199, and include Amazon's ecosystem of music, video, Kindle ebooks, cloud storage and shopping. Additionally, the tablet will run on the "Silk" browser for faster performance and quicker loading times.
Samsung easily leaped past Apple as the world's top smartphone maker in the Q3.
For the quarter ended September 30th, Samsung saw a 44 percent jump in shipments and raised guidance for the holiday quarter.
Overall, Samsung shipped 27.8 million for the quarter, good for 23.8 percent of the global market. While Apple does not release "shipped" figures, the company only sold 17.1 million iPhones during the quarter and there is literally no chance that there were 10.7 million unsold devices.
Profits from the division (smartphones, tablets, feature phones) accounted for 60 percent of the company's $2.2 billion profit.
While the number is certainly nice for Samsung, the figures are expected to tighten in the Q4 thanks to the holiday seasonality and the release of the iPhone 4S.
HP has confirmed that it will soon release a competitor to the MacBook Air in the ultraportable market.
"Ultrabooks," as they are called, are extremely light, fast and have long battery life due to integrated graphics chips.
Says Todd Bradley, executive vice president of HP's Personal Systems Group:
We're very focused on having a suite in that ultramobile space, and you'll see that very soon.
Following in the market pioneered by Apple and Dell; Acer, Toshiba, Asus and Lenovo have released ultrabooks in the past few months, mainly 13.3-inch devices that weigh in under 3 pounds.
According to multiple sources, the upcoming massive Apple Store in Grand Central is set for launch before Black Friday, the official start of the holiday shopping season.
Construction on the store will end on November 11th.
Apple bought out the space currently rented by Charlie Palmer's Metrazur restaurant for $5 million, ensuring Palmer breaks his lease 8 years early.
The MTA says Apple will pay $1.1 million rent per year, a significantly higher amount than Metrazur, which was paying $263,997.
Besides the space in the east balcony, Apple will take the vacant, adjacent balcony, as well. Overall, the company will occupy 23,000 square feet, making Grand Central its 3rd largest store.
Coinstar has announced their quarterly earnings today, surprising some.
The company is raising the price on Redbox kiosk rentals from $1 to $1.20, effective the end of the month.
Execs say Blu-rays and video game rentals will still cost $1.50 and $2.00 with no price hikes.
Says the company:
We remain committed to providing redbox consumers access to the latest movies at an incredible value. This marks the first price increase for a redbox standard definitionDVD rental in eight years. The change is primarily due to the increase in operating expenses, including the recent increase in debit card interchange fees as a result of the Durbin Amendment.
Overall, Coinstar says their Redbox business surpassed $1 billion dollars in revenue for the year.
Nintendo has confirmed today that it will see its first ever annual net loss, mainly due to a strong yen and weak sales of their software and hardware.
Because the yen continues to strengthen against the USD and the euro, Nintendo has been forced to reduce its earnings.
Additionally, the failed 3DS handheld has caused losses as Nintendo was forced to slash the price of the device just months after launch.
Nintendo will see a loss of 20 billion yen ($258 million) for the quarter. Last year the company had a 30 billion yen gain.
Finally, Nintendo chopped its forecast for 3DS sales down 30 percent to 50 million in its first year of availability.
In 2010, Mozilla added Bing as a search option when launching Firefox for the first time.
Before that, Google was the default option.
Today, Mozilla has introduced a new version of Firefox that comes with Bing as default and includes the Bing Awesome Bar.
The company says:
Now Firefox users who are Bing enthusiasts can use Firefox with Bing to use the Web the way they want without having to take extra steps to navigate or customize their settings to Bing.
Firefox with Bing offers the latest version of Firefox with Bing set as your home page and the default setting in the search box and AwesomeBar (where you can also type in queries as well as Web addresses). If you already have the latest version of Firefox, then you just need to download the Bing Search for Firefox Add-on to set the same preferences.
The new version, optional to those who want it, is available here: Firefox with Bing
Warner Bros. has announced that they will do their best Disney impression and soon take Harry Potter films out of distribution and into a "vault" of sorts.
On December 29th, the studio will stop shipping copies of all 8 movies in the historic franchise.
The studio will release the films again in the future as special re-release editions, likely with a higher price tag.
'Harry Potter' DVDs have grossed $5 billion worldwide for Warner Bros. and over $7 billion in theaters.
Disney began the trend of archiving their titles to release them later at full price as special "limited" editions.
Blockbuster (now part of Dish Network), has been forced to buy new Warner releases on the open market, as the studio wants to expand its 28-day rental release window to the company.
Warner, and all the major studios, have had similar deals in place with rivals Netflix and Redbox for some time now.
With a 28-day delayed release window, rental companies get new releases 28 days after their physical release, giving studios one uninterrupted month for potential DVD/Blu-ray sales.
In response, Blockbuster has purchased new films like Horrible Bosses and The Green Lantern on the open market and made them available to subscribers.
They felt it was important to continue to offer day-and-date rental so rather than work with us they went around us.
The question is: how do we make ownership more valuable and attractive? We have started the process of creating a window in bricks-and-mortar DVD and Blu-ray rental.
The once-popular NinjaVideo pirated movie streaming site, taken down in 2010 as part of the government's ongoing "Operation in our Sites" initiative has now seen two more admins plead guilty to their part in running the site.
NV's "head of security" Jeremy Lynn Andrew of Oregon and "uploader supervisor" Joshua David Evans of Washington now face up to 5 years in prison and a $250,000 fine for copyright infringement and conspiracy.
Evans was responsible for supervising all uploaders to the site and carrying out background checks on anyone looking to speak the admin team. Evans pleaded guilty to pre-release of the movie Iron Man 2 before its American release date.
Andrew was the moderator of the site and monitored the NV servers for any hack attacks.
NinjaVideo made $505,000 in income during its run and most of that money will have to be paid back by the guilty admins. The head admin of NV, Hana Beshara, recently pleaded guilty to negotiating agreements with advertisers and is said to have pocketed $200,000 of the income. Her sentencing is set for January and she will have to pay the money back. Evans will have to pay back $26,600 and Andrew $5250. Co-founder Matthew Smith pleaded guilty to the same charges as Evans and will be sentenced in December.
The device will have HTML5 support, however, along with JavaScript 1.7 and cookies.
While Flash may not be supported at launch, the report suggests it could be added in a later firmware update.
The original PSP faced a similar problem, and basic support was only added a year later via firmware.
The Vita will run on an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor and be powered by a quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU.
Featuring a 5-inch capacitive multitouch OLED screen (with 16 million colors), the device will be 7.16 by 0.73 by 3.28 inches. Furthermore, the Vita has 512MB memory and 128MB VRAM in its graphics processor.
We have yet to decide whether or not to offer video game discs. The decision will have little financial impact either way.
Originally, the CEO had said: "Members have been asking for video games for many years, and now that DVD by mail has its own team, we are finally getting it done."
Sprint, following its 16th straight losing quarter, has said today that it may need up to $7 billion in capital going forward to pay for its upcoming network upgrade and new handsets, including the iPhone.
The company will refinance $4 billion of its current debt and look to secure $1-$3 billion in new financing from suppliers.
What is clear, however, is that company is in trouble. Sprint has $20 billion in outstanding debt, with 60 percent coming due before 2016. The company only has $4 billion in cash and liquid investments.
Additionally, the company's massive $20 billion bet on the iPhone has cost their credit rating, which is now B1, well below "investment grade" and barely above "junk."
For the quarter, the company lost $300 million, down from a $900 million loss year-over-year.
Sprint, Apple's newest iPhone 4S partner, has been seeing an increasing amount of criticism for the extremely slow speeds of its 3G network when using the device.
A leaked internal email shows that Sprint is aware of the "nationwide issue" relating to the slow data and is looking into ways to fix it.
Reviewers and critics says the 3G speed, thanks to the new influx of iPhone owners, was down to an average of just 400 kbps, well below the over 1 Mbps seen on rival carriers.
Despite the internal email, the company's public statement paints a very different picture:
Overall, iPhone performance on the Sprint network is consistent with our expectations and the rest of our high-end portfolio. Sprint also did benchmarking of Sprint's iPhone against competitor's iPhones and the testing showed little to no performance difference.
Sprint allegedly broke the bank for the iPhone, paying Apple $20 billion over the next 4 years for iPhone devices.
Nexus One owners, it may finally be time to upgrade your handsets.
Google has confirmed today that the original Google flagship device, the Nexus One, is "too old" to receive the update to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and therefore will not be getting the update.
Nexus S users, on the other hand, will be getting the upgrade "within weeks" of its launch.
The Nexus One was released in January 2010 and was the first device to run Android 2.1.
Finally, responding to Microsoft CEO's statement that users "need a computer science degree" to use Android phones, Google's Hugo Barra says "Android, especially this new version 4.0, is an incredibly intuitive platform - the best one we've ever built. There are power user features, but there is no need for an instruction manual or a computer science degree."
According to the Steve Jobs biography the Apple iPad was initially slated to run on an Intel Atom processor before execs convinced the former CEO that ARMSoC would work better.
Jobs and Jonathan Ive, the VP of Industrial Design at Apple and one of Job's best friends, began development on the tablet in 2004, filing for patent applications and creating sketches of the multi-touch-based iOS. How the tablet would be powered was very much up for discussion, however.
In 2005, Apple made the move to Intel x86 chips in its Mac computers and the company had a good working relationship with Intel. Jobs expected to use the Atom processors in its upcoming iPad tablets.
In 2008, however, the company purchased PA Semi, who was creating the SoC for the iPhones. Jobs was very satisfied with the chips and later would say that Intel "too slow and not too flexible" to create something for the iOS devices.
Japanese officials have confirmed that computers in the Parliament have been infected with a nasty virus.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Osamu Fujimura told reporters that a server and three computers used by members of the lower house were infected. Local media reported that the virus was used to hack into the computers to steal log-in info and e-mails.
The reports says the virus spread after members opened email attachments.
Last month, Japanese defense contractors were hit by similar attacks, with the attackers looking to steal classified military data.
There was no indication on where the attacks are coming from.
In September, Netflix announced it had signed a streaming content deal for upcoming movies with DreamWorks Animation, the studio behind blockbuster hits like the Shrek franchise.
While the deal is already signed, Netflix will begin streaming the brand new films in 2013. Catalog movies like Shrek, Kung Fu Panda, Antz and more will be added over time. In 2013, DWA has three titles set for release, "The Croods," "Turbo," and "Peabody & Sherman."
Today, the first pieces of content from DWA are available to Netflix subscribers; "spooky" Haloween mini-series including characters from "Shrek" and "Monsters vs. Aliens."
Additionally, animated TV show "Father of the Pride" and the movie "Joseph, King of Dreams" are now available.
According to Digitimes, Apple's iPhone 5 will support 4G LTE, the first iPhone to do so.
The iPhone 5, which will likely have a June 2012 release date, will come with the embedded 4G LTE radio giving access to fast speeds on AT&T and Verizon in the U.S.
Furthermore, in the report, the site says Nokia, RIM and Sony Ericsson will launch their first LTE phones next year, as well.
JP Morgan analyst Douglas Anmuth has upped his expectation for Kindle Fire sales in the Q4, from 3 million to 5 million.
Basing the new number on supply chain checks, the analyst says "production momentum" for the tablet is ever-increasing, suggesting extremely strong pre-order demand.
Manufacturers have been experiencing rush orders in the past weeks, reads the research note.
Furthermore, the note says that Amazon will create a 10-inch model next year with a 3G radio.
Some reports have Amazon seeing 50,000 pre-orders per day for the $199 tablet which is built around the Amazon ecosystem but lacks some standard features like a mic and camera.
Motorola has announced when and what devices will receive the hotly anticipated Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0 update, Google's biggest Android update ever.
The company says a number of devices will receive the update exactly 6 weeks after Google releases the final version of the operating system.
Google and Samsung unveiled the Galaxy Nexus (with 4.0) last week to great applause. The device will go on sale next month and will be the first device with the upgrade.
Motorola says the first three devices to receive the update are the Droid Razr, Droid Bionic, and the Xoom tablet.
Additionally, the company says they'll confirm other devices after Google pushes the final operating system to the public.
RIM has been sued over the name "BBX," the name of their upcoming smartphone operating system based on QNX software.
Basis International, a New Mexican company, owns the trademark for BBX, and has owned it since 1995.
As the company explains, "Basis' BBX is a set of tools and languages that help developers write programs for multiple operating systems. Basis has been using the BBX name since as early as 1985 and got a trademark in 1995."
There is one small discrepancy, and that is the fact that Basis uses the term "BBx" with a lower case x. BBx stands for Business BASIC eXtended.
The parties' respective BBX products are clearly related. By way of example only, a software application created with BASIS' BBX to run on the Android or iOS mobile devices will also run on RIM's BBX for BlackBerry products.
[Our customers and prospective customers are] likely to wrongly believe that software applications created using BASIS' development tools are only compatible with RIM's BBX operating system, thus impairing and destroying BASIS' reputation for providing software development tools for cross-platform development.
Android's open source strategy is the main factor for its success. Being a free platform has expanded the Android device install base, which in turn has driven growth in the number of third party multi-platform and mobile operator app stores.
The expansion of the install base is indeed coming at a fast pace. In the last quarter alone, as users waited for the iPhone 4S, Android shipments grew 36 percent.
Apple users appear to use more apps, however, or at least test them out more. For every 1 Android app downloaded, Apple users download 2, says the firm.
Following comments in the "Steve Jobs" biography in which the Apple founder says he "finally cracked" the secret into making a great TV, Apple analyst Gene Munster has said this week that the company is readying an HDTV for launch next year.
Munster says Apple is working on prototypes as we speak and there will be a 50-inch model "iTV" on the market by September.
Finally, former Apple employee Jordan Golson says he expects the announcement as early as January, citing unnamed sources.
Golson says he has heard Apple is working "with a Korean manufacturer," (LG or Samsung) on the sourcing panels.
The writer believes that the "revolutionary" product Steve Jobs is said to have been working on the week of his death is the iTV, not next year's iPhone 5.
In September, Netflix outraged subscribers by announcing that they would be splitting the DVD-by-mail and streaming services of their company. The new company for DVDs, called Qwikster, would have its own login portal and would require subscribers to log in to both Netflix and Qwikster if they want to change their respective queues.
The move came on top of the already unpopular decision by Netflix to raise prices on those that wanted both services, from $9 to $16. Fortunately, the company decided to kill of the idea of Qwikster, but it was already too late and the damage had been done.
During today's quarterly earnings report, Netflix says they lost 800,000 subscribers, finishing the quarter at 23.8 million. The company had expected to stay above 24 million.
While the company expected a drop in mail customers, streaming customers took a hit also, down to 21.45 million from 21.8 million.
CEO Reed Hastings admitted the price rise "hurt our hard‐earned reputation, and stalled our domestic growth." More shockingly, the company says all its expansions will force earnings into the red in the Q1 2012.
Music teacher Brian Kingrey has won $1 million for throwing a perfect game in MLB 2K11.
2K sports offered the prize to the first person to throw a perfect game after the game's April launch.
The teacher says he knew nothing about baseball, and even had to go to Google to learn the basics of the game.
After researching for two weeks, Kingrey decided to use ace pitcher Roy Halladay against the leagues worst team, the Houston Astros.
Halladay finished the season 19-6 with a 2.35 ERA and 208 strikeouts. The Astros, on the other hand, finished the season 56-106.
Says the teacher:
My best match-up was going to be the Phillies with their star pitcher, Roy Halladay, against the Houston Astros. I'd research, play for five hours, eat, sleep, repeat for two weeks.
There are issues with embedding, but you can view the video here:
Apple has announced today that the MacBook Pro line will see improved specs, with the price remaining the same.
The 13, 15 and 17-inch models will all see the across-the-board upgrades.
Starting at $1200, the 13-inch Pro will now run a 2.4Ghz dual-core Intel i5 processor, 4GB RAM and a 500GB hard drive.
The larger models will run on 2.4GHz quad-core i7 processors, 4GB RAM and 750GB hard drives.
For the GPUs, the smaller models come with AMD Radeon HD 6750M with 512MB RAM or you can upgrade to an AMD Radeon HD 6770M with 1GB RAM for $400 more. The 17-inch model will run the AMD 6770M with 1GB RAM.
Surprisingly, Apple has decided to stick with older Bluetooth tech instead of upgrading to 4.0 like it did for its MacBook Air refresh this year.
Netflix has said today it will expand its streaming catalog to the UK and Ireland starting next year.
The move will put Netflix in direct competition with Amazon's LoveFilm, which has literally been called "the Netflix of the UK" for some time now.
There was no word on the pricing, but the service costs $7.99 per month in the U.S.
Netflix is not likely to introduce their DVD-by-mail service in the new nations.
The Watch Instantly streaming library now has 21,000 titles. The full catalog is available to U.S. users and Canadian users have a smaller catalog. The company is expanding, this year, into Latin America and the Caribbean.
Anonymous has taken credit for taking down 40 child pornography sites and leaking the names of 1500 members of one of those sites.
Starting last week, Anonymous members were browsing "the Hidden Wiki," a secret 'guidebook' site that indexes hundreds of "underground" pages that are invisible to to search engines and to regular everyday users.
The 1589 pedophiles of a child porn picture sharing site called Lolita City got their info posted to Pastebin.
All of the sites taken down are part of a "darknet," invisible, anonymous and encrypted. Some of the hidden sites in the TOR-based darknet include ways to get fake IDs, steroids or even hire assassins.
To access the site you must have a TOR browser plug-in installed.
Anonymous says they found a site called "Hard Candy" initially, which promised links to child pornography. All of the sites linked were hosted at Freedom Hosting. The group issued a warning to the host to take down the links immediately, which they refused to do. The group then took down the server. It was back up the next day but Anonymous took it down, once again.
Microsoft has signed their 10th Android patent deal this weekend, coming into money via Compal Electronics of China.
The company has coerced deals out of Samsung, HTC, Wistron, Quanta, Acer and General Dynamics Itronix.
As with past deals the patent agreement covers all Android or Chrome OS tablets, smartphones and e-readers Compal creates.
Compal, while not a household name in the U.S., produces smartphones/tablets/e-readers for third parties and has a massive $28 billion revenue per year.
We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Compal, one of the leaders in the original design manufacturing, or ODM, industry. Together with the license agreements signed in the past few months with Wistron and Quanta Computer, today's agreement with Compal means more than half of the world's ODM industry for Android and Chrome devices is now under license to Microsoft's patent portfolio.
Read more...
During the company's quarterly conference call, AT&T mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega noted that following the release of the iPhone 4S, iPhone 3GS demand has increased significantly.
AT&T dropped the price of the now two-year old device to $0 with 2-year contract, the first time an Apple smartphone has been available for free.
We have another device that I think is going to dramatically change those people that are on smartphones and quick messaging devices, the [iPhone] 3GS, which is free with a 2-year contract. We've seen a tremendous, tremendous demand for that device even though it's a generation old. And actually, we're getting more new subscribers coming on the 3GS on the average than other devices. So we also have an inventory sold out on that device.
iPhone 4S sales have been through the roof for AT&T, Verizon and Sprint following its release last week and the death of founder Steve Jobs.
According to the latest comScore "Video Metrix" figures, 182 million U.S. Web users watched online video content in September, with a total of 39.8 billion videos viewed.
On average, each viewer watched 19.5 hours for the month.
Google Sites (aka YouTube) led the way with 161 million uniques, with legal music video service VEVO in second at 57.3 million. Google sites accounted for 18.6 billion of the videos viewed.
Microsoft Sites were in third at 54 million uniques followed closely by Viacom Digital at 53 million.
Also notably, Hulu saw 27 million uniques for the month.
MetroPCS, the fifth largest carrier in the U.S., has turned into the front runner for AT&T, T-Mobile assets including spectrum and subscribers.
The companies are forced to sell the assets if they want the $39 billion merger to go through.
People familiar with the deal say MetroPCS' deal would be under $3 billion and is still being negotiated.
AT&T is said to have approached MetroPCS, Dish Network, Leap Wireless and others to sell off the assets. Metro has the strongest balance sheet, and the largest cash hoard.
MetroPCS has 9.1 million subscribers, compared to 91 million for AT&T and 34 million for T-Mobile. The spectrum would help them cut capital costs and expand.
According to multiple sources, Google is potentially looking into buying Yahoo.
The search giant would partner with two private-equity firms to fund the purchase, which would be only for Yahoo's core business.
While the talks are early stage and Google could just be seeing what the selling price is for a rival, there is little chance a deal would pass anti-trust regulators, regardless.
Google is said to be looking into the deal as it would love to sell ads on Yahoo's web sites, some of which, like Yahoo Finance and Mail bring in hundreds of millions of visitors per month.
Yahoo, which is up for sale after dumping their CEO and seeing their stock struggle, has seen a rumored plethora of potential suitors including AOL, Alibaba and Microsoft.
Vizio has noted today that they are bundling 90 free days of Hulu Plus to anyone who purchases the Vizio 8 tablet.
If you have already purchased the tablet, update the application and the 3-month freebie will be installed.
The tablet runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, weighs 1.2 pounds, has an 8-inch screen with 1024x768 resolution, Wi-Fi only, 1GHz processor, 4GB storage, MicroSD slot, HDMI slot, three speakers and a front-facing video camera for video chat.
Vizio's main selling point on the tablet outside of the price is its integration with VIA, which will control not only all Vizio devices in the house but also "up to 95 percent of all home theater accessories, including televisions and sound systems" with its IR controller.
The tablet retails for $299 but is cheaper on Wal-Mart and Amazon.
Despite a two-week union strike from 40,000 of its workers, Verizon had a strong earnings quarter, mainly thanks to brisk sales of Android and iPhone phones.
The carrier activated 2 million iPhones in the quarter, while rival AT&T activated 2.7 million.
Overall, Verizon activated 1.3 million new wireless users, with 882,000 going under new contracts.
Francis J. Shammo, CFO of Verizon, noted of the iPhone activations (which were considered light):
We anticipate that the strong demand we're seeing for the new iPhone 4S will bring even more new customers.
80 percent of iPhone activations were upgrades, while 20 percent came from rival carriers.
Although it was abundantly clear the carrier was going to have the device, Verizon has finally made it official.
The Galaxy Nexus, unveiled earlier this week as the new Android 4.0 flagship device will be available "later this year," says the carrier.
For Verizon, the specs of the device are:
· 4G LTE customers can expect fast download speeds of 5 to 12 megabits per second (Mbps) and upload speeds of 2 to 5 Mbps in 4G LTE mobile broadband coverage areas
· Android 4.0, Ice Cream Sandwich
· First smartphone to feature a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED display (1280 x 720)
· 1.2 GHz dual-core processor with 1GB RAM · 5-megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, zero shutter lag and 1080pfull HDvideo capture · 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera for video chatting
· Near Field Communications (NFC) enabled
· Android Beam allows customers to quickly share Web pages, apps and YouTube videos with friends by simply tapping compatible phones together
· Support for Google mobile services, Android Market, Gmail, Google Maps 5.0 with 3D maps, Google Earth, Movie Studio, YouTube, syncing with Google Calendar and a redesigned Google＋ app
Stanley "MC Hammer" Burrell has announced the launch of his own search engine, dubbed WireDoo.
The former popular 90's rapper made the announcement at this week's Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco.
Hammer's search engine will go up against behemoth rivals Google and Bing but the plan is to create "relationship-driven searches" and "go beyond the generalities that give you more relative information in a consistent way in a new environment," says CBS.
The first example given was a simple search for a zip code. WireDoo will bring you the relevant info, but will also add info like schools, homes and hospitals. Going "deeper," clicking on schools, for example, brings you to detailed info like academic performance index scores, teachers' credentials and truancy rates.
Sprint has said this week that they are removing the unlimited 4G data option that has been available for tablets, notebooks, USB cards, Mobile Hotspot modems for over a year.
The broadband service will not see a price hike, but the unlimited 4G feature will be removed as of next month.
Users will still have their limited 3G data plan they pay for (3GB, 5GB, 10GB) but the free unlimited 4G feature will be removed.
Sprint had offered the free add-on as they rolled out their 4G WiMax offering to new cities.
Smartphone owners, especially new iPhone 4S buyers should not fret, however:
This change does not apply to phone plans. Sprint continues to be the only national wireless carrier to offer unlimited data use without throttling for smartphones, on both our 3G and 4G networks.
Samsung has finally given the official pricing and release details for their upcoming Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus.
Last month, Samsung introduced the small form factor tablet to their Galaxy line.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has Android 3.2, runs on a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4G, 1GB RAM, 16GB or 32GB internal storage and a microSD slot.
Additionally, the device has 1080p playback support, dual-cameras 3/2MP with LED flash.
Samsung is charging $399 for the 16GB model or $499 for the 32GB version with a November 13th release date.
The service, which comes included with physical movie discs and allows users to have a digital copy remain in a "digital locker" for viewing has been hit with terrible reviews on Amazon and elsewhere.
"Green Lantern," by Warner Bros., is the first film to come including the service.
Here are two examples of reviews the service is getting:
This review does not relate to the movie, but it is focused on the ridiculous process to download the digital copy. After creating accounts for both Flixster and Ultraviolet, linking the accounts, enabling WB to view my personal information, the system hangs and doesn't download the movie. I contacted Ultraviolet first with the issues and error messages. After a day, I was told this is not an Ultraviolet issue, but a Flixster problem. I then contacted Flixster. They responded by sending me to the FAQ. To date, I have not gotten a proper response from Flixster on the error messages. I plan on canceling both accounts and will NEVER buy another DVD tied to Ultraviolet. This is a complete rip off and WB should be ashamed of this dreadful service. Please do yourself a favor and don't buy the movie with the digital copy. If you want a digital version, just got to iTunes.
RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian has said today that he expects the PlayStation 4 to launch before the Xbox Next.
Recent rumors have pegged the Xbox Next as having a late 2013, early 2014 launch.
Baird believes that Sony does not want to give Microsoft "first mover's advantage" like they had with the launch of the Xbox 360.
Says the analyst:
I doubt they will be ready for launch in 2013. Between Sony and Microsoft, we expect Sony to be first to market perhaps as early as 2013, but more likely in 2014. There is still a lot of investment for both companies to recoup in the current generation.
Sony has been rumored to have already begun development on PS4 titles, as has Microsoft, although neither company has commented.
This has been a rumor since Wednesday but now appears to be confirmed.
The PlayStation 3 has been jailbroken again, with users playing pirated games that require the latest firmware, v3.73.
Dubbed JB2 (Jailbreak 2), the new jailbreak, is a dongle available in Indonesia.
JB2 costs $45 and can play a large amount of games on burnt/pressed BD media, but not off of the PS3's HDD like in past jailbreaks.
The details on how to burn the games yourself will be available next week, but for now games like PES 2012, FIFA 2012 and God of War Origins have all been confirmed via video:
Earlier this week we reported that C Spire Wireless, a tiny carrier with just 1 million subscribers was set to become the fourth provider in the U.S. to get the iPhone 4S.
T-Mobile, which has 33.6 million subscribers, is the fourth largest carrier in the nation and the only major to not have the Apple smartphone.
Says the company:
We think the iPhone is a good device and we've expressed our interest to Apple to offer it to our customers. Ultimately, it is Apple's decision. The issue remains that Apple has not developed a version of the iPhone with technology that works on our fast 3G and 4G networks.
We believe a capable version of the iPhone for our 3G and 4G networks would offer an additional compelling option for our customers on a fast 4G network. However, the iPhone is not the only option to experience the benefit that smartphones offer.
For now, T-Mobile says they believe their "portfolio will give any iPhone a run for its money," and points out that a lot of their Android devices have better specs, regardless.
Google Music, the cloud locker that is set to expand into a fully fledged music download service in the coming weeks, could be coming with a twist, P2P file sharing.
How the service will work is anyone who purchases a song can share it with friends who can then play it a limited amount of times before deciding if they want to purchase it or not.
If true, the file sharing could be what Andy Rubin was alluding too when he said Music would come with "a little twist - it will have a little Google in it. It won't just be selling 99-cent tracks."
There has been word that Google is missing the catalog of a major label (here's looking at you Warner) but that the company plans to launch the store in the coming weeks, regardless.
Google Music will come into a market dominated by Apple (and to a lesser degree Amazon), but Google certainly has the ecosystem (and Android) to get the service out to millions of consumers.
According to Develop, there are already several projects underway for the upcoming "Xbox Next" console.
Microsoft is looking to a 2013 release for the console, which has been dubbed by some as the "Xbox 720."
Multiple sources, including processor chip manufacturers and middleware firms, say they expect the console to launch in 2013, but early 2014 is a possibility.
Microsoft, of course, declined to comment.
In recent memory, a few tidbits of info have emerged that point towards at least development of the console and one funny easter egg is the reference to an "Xbox 720" in the futuristic robot fighting movie "Real Steel."
Matias Duarte, Senior Director of Android Experience at Google, let it be known after the company's launch of Android 4.0 ICS that all system applications can be removed, including the Chrome-variant browser and email client.
Today, thanks to the SDK, it is clear that carriers were not given the right to override that requirement and users can easily disable and hide such unwanted apps.
Hitting disable will give users the chance to bring the apps back, but disabling will also remove the icon and stop the app from ever running.
According to a note from research firm StatCounter, Google Chrome managed to pass Firefox as the second most used browser last Sunday.
Globally, Chrome took a 26.22 percent share compared to Firefox's 26.16.
The spike did only last a day, however, and Chrome is on pace to move to 24.85 percent share for the month of October, while Firefox falls slightly to 26.68.
Perhaps most notably is the fact that StatCounter says Internet Explorer has fallen under 40 percent for the first time ever, to 39.99 percent.
Just like with all browsers, the market share for Chrome is different on all continents. In North America it sits at just above 20 percent share while in South America it is just under 41 percent share.
According to sources close to tablet PC vendors, 7-inch devices will continue to see price drops as makers compete for share.
7-inch tablets do not have a baseline model like the iPad is for the 10-inch sector so tablet makers can continue to tweak pricing to attract first-time buyers with the smaller tablets.
In just a few months, the average price of 7-inch tablets has dived to $300 from $450, and that number is expected to fall much further now that Amazon has launched the $199 Kindle Fire.
ViewSonic has just released their latest, as well, the ViewPad 7e, which has a 1GHz processor, 512MB RAM, 4GB internal storage, Android 2.3.4 and a $200 price tag.
Amazon's Kindle Fire will start shipping on November 15th and has seen over 500,000 pre-orders already.
Sony has launched its 3D PlayStation display today, with a November 13th release date.
First unveiled at the E3 event this summer, the display is Sony's first "gaming display" for the PlayStation console.
Rather than answer everyone's questions about the display individually, Sony released a huge FAQ which I have posted parts of here:
I pre-ordered the PlayStation 3D Display from a retailer that was offering a free copy of Resistance 3, but I notice that the promotion is no longer being promoted on the website. Am I still getting Resistance 3 for free? Yes. If you pre-ordered the PlayStation 3D Display from a retailer that advertised a free copy of Resistance 3 on or before September 30, 2011, you will still be getting a copy of the game with your shipment. The offer officially ended on October 1st, 2011 and that's the reason retailers had taken down the promotion from their website.
What do I get in the box? The 3D Display was made to play 3D games right out of the box. For the MSRP of $499.99, you get the 3D Display, one pair of 3D Glasses, MotorStorm Apocalypse Blu-ray game, and an HDMI cable. All you need to do is hook up your PS3 system and you?re ready to go.
Does the 3D Display work in normal 2D mode? Yes. You can choose to play games and watch movies in regular high-definition 2D.
What's the difference between Active 3D technology used on the 3D Display and Passive 3D technology used on Passive 3D displays? The most notable difference between the two is the 3D resolution. With active 3D, you get full HD 3D playback. With passive 3D, you will get half the resolution. Active 3D displays require active 3D glasses and passive 3D displays require polarized passive 3D glasses. The 3D Display supports active 3D and the highest resolution.
What 3D games are available right now on the PS3 system? A full list of currently available 3D games is available here. Check back soon - it's updated frequently!
Despite shaky earnings, Groupon is looking to sell shares in an IPO that would value the company at around $12 billion.
While likely still grossly overvalued, the value is a lot smaller than the $25 billion the company was expected to be valued at earlier this year when it first made mention of going public.
The expectations have fallen in recent months alongside a falling stock market and Groupon's revision to its reported revenue, twice cutting it down.
Groupon itself would likely sell shares worth about $500 million to the company.
The daily deal giant has 115 million subscribers in 220 markets. The company also has 9,600 employees. Through the first half of the year, the company had revenue of $688.1 million but remains far from profitable.
Amazon has announced the expansion of their content deal with PBS, adding classic series like Sesame Street and Frontline.
Through its $79-a-year Amazon Prime service, users are given free 2-day shipping on all items through Amazon, and free access to over 12,000 shows and movies on their PCs, tablets and TVs.
Most notably, Amazon Prime Instant Video is a major selling point for the new Kindle Fire, Amazon's first foray into the tablet market. The $199 device is built around Amazon's ecosystem of services including Cloud Drive, Prime, MP3, VOD and their e-tailing store.
Says Amazon:
Our expanded relationship with PBS will bring the total number of titles available for Prime instant video to over 12,000. We are committed to bringing Prime Members and Kindle Fire owners even more compelling content very soon.
PBS joins recently announced FOX television shows 24, Arrested Development, The X-Files, Ally McBeal, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and The Wonder Years.
Coming soon, we'll be adding Malcolm in the Middle, King of the Hill, and episodes from Julia Child's classic cooking series, The French Chef.
According to the owner of a large indie label, Google's long-awaited music store will launch in the coming months, with the Big 4 labels attached.
The indie owner, whose distributor is run by one of the majors, says he was contacted and let know that Google Music will launch in the Q4 with major catalog titles first and more "obscure" titles to follow.
Other sources say Google is allegedly hoping to have the store up and running "in weeks" but is having issues signing on at least one major label.
Google's own head of Android Andy Rubin has confirmed that the service will be "coming soon" but could not confirm any of the other questions posed by the sources.
Rubin did say the service will have "a little twist -it will have a little Google in it. It won't just be selling 99 cent tracks."
For now, Google Music is a free cloud locker for unlimited music that allows streaming on mobiles and any computer where you can log in.
Spotify has expanded its mobile app line to include BlackBerry.
Months after expanding to the U.S. and launching iOS and Android apps, the app has finally made its way to BlackBerry smartphones.
RIM lists the new features:
Million of songs available instantly on your BlackBerry.
Offline playlists listen to music with no mobile connection and avoid using your data allowance
Create and sync playlists
Star your favourite tracks
Search tracks, artists, album
Browse Whats new and Top tracks
Scrobble tracks to Last.fm
Receive music from friends via the inbox
For now, the app only works on GSM devices, the 9780 Bold, 9700 Bold, 9300 Curve, 9000 Bold, and 8520 Curve.
Just like on rival devices, the mobile Spotify requires a $10 premium subscription.
Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said the company is lucky it did not purchase Yahoo! in 2008.
When asked by the speaker "Are you glad you didn't buy Yahoo?," Ballmer responded, "You know, times change. When you ask any CEO [that type of question] after the market has fallen apart, it's 'hallelujah.' Sometimes, you're lucky."
In 2008, Microsoft made a massive unsolicited $47.5 billion bid for Yahoo, in an effort to merge the companies and better compete against Google in major markets. Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang rejected the offer using a poison pill plan.
At the time, Yahoo was valued at around $40 billion. That figure has collapsed to just over $20 billion today, so it does seem that Microsoft got "lucky" in getting rejected.
Microsoft still signed a deal with Yahoo, which allows Microsoft's Bing tech to power Yahoo's search, in exchange for advertising sales.
Additionally, Android users in Canada and Latin America now have streaming access via their smartphones and tablets.
While there are not all that many Honeycomb tablets, users of the Xoom, Iconia, Galaxy Tab and others can download the updated app in the Android Market today.
Android 2.2 and 2.3 (and now 3.x) users have access to streaming movies and TV shows from Netflix's extensive catalog.
Users must be subscribers to Netflix's $7.99 streaming plan.
Much to the chagrin of T-Mobile users, the fourth carrier in the U.S. to have the iPhone 4S is C Spire Wireless, a small regional carrier.
T-Mobile remains the only major carrier in the nation to not have access to the iPhone, with Sprint "betting the bank" to get the device this fall.
C Spire was formerly known as Cellular South and has over 1 million customers in just 4 states. T-Mobile, the smallest of the majors, has 33.6 million customers.
There was no other word on the deal except that C Spire says the phone will only be available to contract subscribers, not pay-as-you-go.
Sony has finally announced the release date for the PS Vita in North America and Europe.
The handheld is set for release in Japan in December but the rest of the world has been told simply to wait while Sony finalized the details.
It appears today that the date is February 22nd, 2012, for everywhere that isn't Japan.
The Vita will run on an ARM Cortex A9 quad-core processor and be powered by a quad-core PowerVR SGX543MP4+ GPU.
Featuring a 5-inch capacitive multitouch OLED screen (with 16 million colors), the device will be 7.16 by 0.73 by 3.28 inches. Furthermore, the Vita has 512MB memory and 128MB VRAM in its graphics processor.
The Android 4.0 ICS device will have a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED screen and dual cameras 1.3/5 MP. Curved design, thin, impressive no-shutter lag camera.
Galaxy Nexus goes on sale in November.
Android 4.0 ICS is far and away the most impressive part of the device, however.
Interface
The new typeface in ICS is dubbed "Roboto" and is specifically designed for HD displays. There are also now live wallpapers available for the lock screen. Speaking of the lock screen, instead of a need for a password or pin, ICS has facial recognition as an option.
Screenshots are now available for all devices, with a quick touch of the power + down volume.
Virtual soft keys run on the bottom of the device and hide when not in use. Widgets are resizable and can drag dropped from the widgets tab into any home screen.
Folders are easily made, such as "games" or "multimedia" and apps just drop right in. To close an app that is open (when multitasking) just flick it off the screen.
Keyboard
The new keyboard has improved error correction, and the spell checker/dictionary are improved, as well. Talk-to-type now writes out words as you speak them, not waiting until after you are done.
Celina Aarons was shocked, to say the least, when her last cellphone bill topped $200,000.
Aarons has two deaf brothers on her plan and since they cannot speak the whole family has unlimited texting and data.
Her usual plan, with T-Mobile, costs $175 per month for the three of them.
The crazy bill came after her brothers spent two weeks in Canada and Aarons was not informed she needed to switch to an international plan. Because they can not speak, her brothers sent around 2,000 texts and downloaded videos (with captions), that sometimes amounted to $2000 per video.
Because clearly no one can afford to pay such a bill, Aarons called the TV show "Help Me Howard" who explained to the carrier the situation.
T-Mobile has reduced the charge to $2500 and given Aarons six months to pay it off, interest-free.
Apple has reported their quarterly earnings this afternoon, missing analyst expectations after seven straight years of huge beats.
The company reported Q4 earnings of $7.05, well below the $7.28 estimate. Revenue came in soft, as well, at $28.3 billion versus the $29.45 billion estimate.
Looking forward to next quarter, the company raised its profit and revenue predictions.
While still wildly profitable, the company sold much less iPhones than expected in the quarter, most likely due to consumers in the U.S. waiting for the iPhone 4S.
Apple sold 17.07 million iPhones in the quarter versus 20 million estimated, while also selling 11.1 million iPads, well above consensus.
Mac sales were also strong, at 4.89 million sold versus 4.4 million estimated.
iPods continued their slow descent into the abyss of items people don't need anymore, at 6.3 million sold compared to lowball estimates of 6.6 million.
Although Samsung is preparing to unveil the Galaxy Nexus (Nexus Prime) in a few hours, NTT DoCoMo has leaked the specs and a picture of the upcoming device.
The Android 4.0 ICS device will have a 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP4460 processor, a 4.65-inch HD Super AMOLED screen and dual cameras 1.3/5 MP.
Samsung is prepared to unveil the phone tonight, a week after its original launch date, with a release date in early November.
Android 4.0 ICS is supposed to be Google's largest firmware update yet, combining the code of Honeycomb 3.0 and Gingerbread 2.3.x.
Catcher Technology, the Taiwanese manufacturer, has shutdown one factory in eastern China this week due to "strange odors" coming from the plant.
The plant is notable because it produces over 60 percent of Apple's Mac uni-body enclosures. The cases are seen on all current MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models. The factory also produces cases for Acer, Dell, Lenovo and Sony, says AI.
Catcher president Allen Horng says shipments from the factory will fall 20 percent this month and as much as 40 percent next month if the plant is not cleared to re-open. "Shipments to our customers will inevitably be affected, We already asked them to make adjustments to their (casings) procurement," says Horng.
Samsung has announced the launch of "ChatOn," the company's first mobile messaging service.
The app will be preloaded in Bada devices and most future Samsung Android devices.
ChatOn will be released for iOS and BB/BBX in the near future, says the company.
Additionally, the service will be available via desktop, as well.
Although Windows Phone 7 was not specifically mentioned, the app should make its way to the OS eventually, especially considering Samsung is one of the major hardware builders for the platform.
As with rivals like BBM, iOS Messenger, Google Talk and more, users can talk to each other and exchange audio/video when connected to the Internet.
At today's BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011, RIM has announced the launch of BBX, the future of the company.
RIM says the "next generation mobile platform takes the best of the BlackBerry platform and the best of the QNX platform to connect people, devices, content and services."
Additionally, RIM has updated their developer tools, including WebWorks for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets, the Native SDK for the BlackBerry PlayBook and a developer beta of BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 with support for running Android applications.
Says Mike Lazaridis, President and Co-CEO:
With nearly 5 million BlackBerry apps downloaded daily, our customers have made BlackBerry one of the most profitable platforms for developers. At DevCon today, we're giving developers the tools they need to build richer applications and we're providing direction on how to best develop their smartphone and tablet apps as the BlackBerry and QNX platforms converge into our next generation BBX platform.
BBX-OS will support BlackBerry cloud services and all apps created for the PlayBook including Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash and WebWorks/HTML5, as well as the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps.
Read more...
According to The Korean Times, Samsung is already producing the quad-core A6 processor that will be seen in the iPad 3 and iPhone 5.
Apple had allegedly signed a deal with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) for the processors, but now it appears that deal may not be in the works anymore.
The new report says the buyer/supplier relationship will remain into the foreseeable future, as Apple has declared the company a critical partner.
TSMC will still produce a small amount of the chips, perhaps under 10 percent.
Samsung has streamlined the process and is producing the chips at their new plant in Texas.
After just four months, Google+ has reached 40 million users.
Speaking after the company's blowout earnings report, CEO Larry Page said:
We had a great quarter. Revenue was up 33% year on year and our quarterly revenue was just short of $10 billion. Google+ is now open to everyone and we just passed the 40 million user mark. People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started!
Despite the strong amount of signups, traffic has been dwindling as less people find use for the service. When the service moved out of beta, traffic exploded 1200 percent, but the spike was short lived, falling as much as 60 percent from the peak, says Chitika Insights.
Rival Facebook has 750 million users and is the top visited site in the U.S.
According to GigaOM, Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennström are working on an online video service that will compete against market leader Netflix.
The service is to be called Vdio, similar to the entrepreneur's online streaming service Rdio.
For now, the site for Vdio is just a landing page with a "coming soon" sign, but Om says "Skype's founders have apparently been quietly assembling an A-team of media and web technology experts to launch a site that seems destined to replicate the model behind their music subscription site Rdio in the video space."
The service has been secretly under development for two years.
An upcoming closed beta service will let users "instantly watch the best in TV and movies."
The EC is preparing to invest about 9.2 billion euro into broadband infrastructure as the Commission wants faster Internet speeds across the European Union.
Mainly, the plan is aimed at stimulating investment into rural broadband.
Additionally, the EC wants all European households to have, at minimum, 30Mbps broadband connections by 2020, with over 50 percent of the population with 100Mbps by then.
Doing so will make the region for competitive, says the BBC.
The investments, if approved, would begin in 2014 and end in 2020.
According to sources, Microsoft will pay $44 million total to Nokia and Samsung in the coming months to pump Windows Phone 7 in the UK.
Nokia will get the lion's share of the money ($31.5 million) and their first promo images have already leaked for the Nokia 800 (pictured).
Samsung will use the money to promote the Omnia W, which has a 3.7 inch 800 × 480 pixel Super AMOLED display, 1.4GHz processor, dual cameras and HSPA+ 14.4Mbps data support.
Nokia's "Nokia World" event is set for 10 days from now and the company is likely to unveil 2 new devices, each running Windows Phone 7.5 Mango.
New voluntary industry standards will force carrier to send customers who want them real-time alerts if they are near their monthly voice, data or text messaging limits.
The deal with the FCC has been in the works over the last year after reports of "bill shock" has increased significantly. Bill shock is the term given to monthly phone bills that have a severe excess of fees, usually because the user unknowingly went over their data limits.
Over the past year, there have been a few high-profile cases where the bill went as high as $20,000.
Carriers have agreed to start the real-time alerts within 12-18 months.
Nintendo has announced today that the launch of their new slimmed down Wii console, part of the "Holiday Edition" bundle which removes GameCube support, will hit the U.S. on the 23rd.
The console is 30 percent smaller than the original Wii and sits horizontally, saving space by removing GameCube memory card and controller slots.
Bundled with the black colorway console is the New Super Mario Bros. game, a special Super Mario Galaxy soundtrack CD, a black Wii Remote Plus controller and a black Nunchuk controller.
EMI Group, the fourth largest record label, is seeing underwhelming bids, say sources close to its owner Citigroup.
The bank was forced to take over the label this year after the former owner, private equity firm Terra Firma, could not pay back its debts.
Five months ago, the Warner Group (world's 3rd largest label) sold for $3.3 billion, giving Citi faith that they could command a similar price for the label which has 1.3 million songs including recordings by the Beatles, Coldplay and Katy Perry.
EMI has been up for sale since June, after Citi was forced to write down the label's debt by $3.5 billion.
For now, it appears the only bidders on EMI's recorded music division are other labels, with each bidding as high as $1.3 billion, well short of the $3.5 billion Citi hoped for. EMI's publishing unit has received bids as high as $2 billion.
The patents cited in all the complaints are related to telecommunications, three user-interface patents and three covering wireless communications technologies.
Apple and Samsung now have over 10 outstanding patent suits against each other, with Apple looking to get an injunction on sales of the Galaxy Tab and Galaxy line of smartphone and with Samsung looking to get sales of the iPhone and iPad blocked.
Kodak has confirmed today that the company has licensed some of its vast patent portfolio to IMAX, in an effort to stave off bankruptcy and stay viable.
IMAX will license 100 patents related to laser-projection technology used in giant-screen movie theaters.
The deal is not huge, however, with only $50 million in upfront fees and royalties into the future.
This Kodak intellectual property is truly cutting edge, and will be used by IMAX?s esteemed technology group to enhance the cinematic experience for consumers, enable the application of digital technology in our larger and institutional theatres, and make being in business with IMAX even easier and more profitable.
Kodak hopes to sell 1100 patents, and soon, as the company struggles despite sitting on a patent portfolio worth over $2 billion. Kodak has not posted one profitable quarter since 2004.
According to different sources close to the company, Spotify U.S. now has 250,000 paying subscribers.
The number is certainly notable as the platform only launched in the States in July in invite-only beta.
Globally, the company has over 2.5 million paying subscribers.
Spotify continues to expand and has just reached Denmark, the 9th nation to have the service.
The service, which lets users stream limited amounts of music for free (with some ads) or pay a premium for unlimited access (including smartphone/tablet streaming), has been very successful in Europe and the U.S. and has been seen as a strong piracy deterrent.
Mozilla Director of Firefox Engineering Johnathan Nightingale has announced this week that the Android version of their platform will dump the XUL technology used in all desktop Firefox editions.
"Firefox on Android is a critical part of supporting the open Web, and this decision puts us in a position to build the best Firefox possible," added Nightingale.
While Firefox has over 20 percent market share on PCs, it has yet to meaningfully break into the mobile market which is controlled by Apple's Safari and Android's Chrome variant.
By moving away from XUL and into a native Android interface, the browser should use less memory and have a much faster boot time, stuff even the average Joe user cares about.
Concludes Nightingale: "After substantial discussion, we have decided to build future versions of Firefox on Android with a native UI [user interface] instead of the current XUL implementation."
Amazon has brought back their popular 1 cent Verizon smartphone promotion, and you have until Monday to get in on it.
There are 31 models available for just 1 cent (excluding any applicable activation fees from the carrier) and shipping is free two-day for any device purchased.
New phones are available, including the Motorola Droid Bionic and the HTC Thunderbolt which normally cost $300 and $250 with contract, respectively.
There is one Windows Phone 7 device in the bunch, the HTC Trophy.
New customers can sign up and existing customers must add a new line to take advantage.
Google's CEO Larry Page, after announcing quarterly earnings on Thursday afternoon, had some choice words for the company's upcoming Android 4.0 release.
"You won't believe what we have managed to do in this release. We see Android going gangbusters, and we don't see anything that will stop that," says the CEO.
On the same morning, the Google campus received delivery of the giant Ice Cream Sandwich statue (embedded video).
For quarterly earnings, revenue rose to $7.51 billion, well above analyst expectations and profit was $9.72 per share, almost $1 higher than analyst estimates.
Google and Samsung are expected to announce the Nexus Prime flagship phone (and first device with ICS) on October 19th.
Microsoft has announced this week the closing of their $8.5 billion acquisition of Skype.
Notes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:
Skype is a phenomenal product and brand that is loved by hundreds of millions of people around the world. We look forward to working with the Skype team to create new ways for people to stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues ? anytime, anywhere.
The VoIP service will have its own new business division within Microsoft.
Skype CEO Tony Bates will remain as the president of the new Skype division and there will be no layoffs.
Eventually, Skype will be integrated into most of Microsoft's products as part of the suite that includes Zune music, Xbox Live and more.
The guys over at iDownloadBlog have put together an unscientific test on the download/browsing speeds of the different iPhone 4S carriers.
What is clear from the video is that Verizon is best browsing experience, AT&T has the quickest raw download speed, and Sprint fails at everything.
Of course, take the video with a grain of salt as it was taken from a single area, where service for each company may not have been "perfect," including the SpeedTest.
BBC Worldwide has announced the launch of the global BBC iPlayer App for more countries this week, starting with Finland, Sweden and Denmark.
The player launched in 11 nations in July, and Australia last month.
Subscriptions for the streaming service are ?6.99 a month (or ?64.99 for an annual subscription) and the player is available at bbc.com/iplayer/tv.
iPlayer content come from eight genres: News Specials & Documentaries; Entertainment; Drama; Comedy; Science & Nature; Family & Kids and Music & Culture and Lifestyle.
Matthew Littleford, General Manager for Global iPlayer added:
We're proud to be one of the first international broadcasters to give access to our shows in a perfectly packaged app. Reviews of the app have been overwhelmingly positive since its launch in 11 other Western European countries and in Australia earlier this year.
The extension into Finland, Sweden and Denmark is an important step in our strategy of pursuing multiple platforms for our programmes and brands, taking British programmes to new digital audiences around the world in an innovative, creative and easily accessible format. During this pilot phase we have an exciting vision for what this service could become and will develop it based on feedback from within all markets.
Google has announced the death of Buzz, the company's foray into social networking before Google+.
The network gave the company issues when it automatically opted-in all 200 million Gmail users without asking for permission. Google paid $8.5 million to settle the case.
Says Google of the move:
In a few weeks we'll shut down Google Buzz and the Buzz API, and focus instead on Google+. While people obviously won't be able to create new posts after that, they will be able to view their existing content on their Google Profile, and download it using Google Takeout...
...Changing the world takes focus on the future, and honesty about the past. We learned a lot from products like Buzz, and are putting that learning to work every day in our vision for products like Google+. Our users expect great things from us; today's announcements let us focus even more on giving them something truly awesome.
Google Plus has over 40 million users and has been critically applauded for its features.
Bloomberg is reporting today that Apple is on pace to sell up to 4 million iPhone 4S this weekend, the first weekend of availability.
The phone went on sale today in the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the U.K. and will easily outpace last year's 1.7 million iPhone 4 sold in the first weekend.
That figure is not too surprising, however, as the iPhone 4S is now available on three of the major carriers in the U.S.; Sprint, AT&T and Verizon. Last year's June launch was only for A&T.
While the average estimate is for 2.5 million sold, Yankee Group analyst Carl Howe set the high with 4 million.
As with past releases, all Apple stores had lines that filled the block with eager buyers.
The news has sent Apple's stock to within pennies of its all-time high at $422 per share, up 14 percent since the death of founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.
Motorola has launced their Xoom Family edition today.
The tablet runs on Android 3.1, has a 10.1-inch IPS screen, dual-core 1GHz processor, a 5MP camera and 16GB of internal storage.
Most notably, the price has been dropped to $379 and comes with $40 worth of "family" apps. One app is Kid Zone Zoodles, which doesn't allow kids to access apps unless otherwise allowed by the parent.
Additionally, pre-loaded are SimCity Deluxe, Asphalt 6, Netflix, Quickoffice Pro HD and the "MotoPack."
Best Buy is the exclusive seller beginning on October 16th.
Microsoft and Quanta Computers have signed a patent agreement that will cover Android devices.
The agreement will give Quanta coverage under Microsoft's patent portfolio and include the company's smartphones, tablets and "any device running the Android or Chrome Platform."
Just like with past agreements Microsoft has made, the company will receive somewhere in the $5-15 range per device sold.
Says Microsoft:
We are pleased to have reached this agreement with Quanta, and proud of the continued success of our Android licensing program in resolving IP issues surrounding Android and Chrome devices in the marketplace.
The patent agreement is another example of the important role IP plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant IT ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 700 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that make it possible for customers, partners and competitors to access its IP portfolio. The program was developed to open access to Microsoft's significant R&D investments and its growing, broad patent and IP portfolio.
The CyanogenMod team has ported Android to the HP TouchPad, but the devs are encouraging you not to download it yet.
In public alpha, the ROM is still very buggy, and the devs say most apps probably still don't work.
For now, ClockWorkrecovery, multiboot support, ten-point multitouch, functional WiFi, camera support for video chat and limited GPU acceleration are working now, but are also buggy. Wi-Fi disconnects are aplenty, sleep doesn't really work so battery drain is significant
AfterDawn will not be putting together a guide on rooting and adding CM7 to your TouchPad until the platform reaches a stable release or at least a beta.
TorrentFreak has posted a list of the 10 most pirated films of all-time, using weekly data they have compiled since 2006.
What is clear from the list, however, is that despite being massively pirated, all the films did particulary well at the box office, breaking Hollywood's mantra of "piracy killing ticket sales."
The data is gathered from only public torrent trackers since 2006, so please keep that in mind as there are certainly other ways to pirate movies including private trackers, warez sites, p2p and newsgroups. None of those figures are included.
In first is the highest-banking film of all-time, Avatar, followed by the $1 billion grossing The Dark Knight in second.
According to research firms Gartner and IDC, HP remains the top PC company but for the first time ever Lenovo has moved into second, surpassing Dell.
HP controls 17.7 percent share of PC shipments, up from 17.3 percent last year, says Gartner. IDC has similar numbers, with HP at 18.1 percent.
Lenovo, thanks to a huge influx of laptop sales, moved to 13.5 percent from 11.1 percent last year.
Dell remained about even at 11.6 percent.
While sales have been shrinking for a couple of years due to recession and the development of tablets, IDC says there will likely be a large bounce back next year when "ultrabooks" become mainstream.
Ultrabooks are ultra light notebooks with lots of battery life and network connectivity.
The Verge's Joshua Topolsky has posted a note today about Siri's sense of humor.
Last week, Apple launched the iPhone 4S, a minor hardware upgrade to the iPhone 4 and saw 1 million pre-order sales in just 24 hours.
Along with the iPhone 4S, Apple also launched iOS 5 which adds 200 new features.
One of the main sells of the iPhone 4S is the addition of "Siri," a voice activated personal assistant.
As Apple explains: "Siri on iPhone 4S lets you use your voice to send messages, schedule meetings, place phone calls, and more. Ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back. Siri is so easy to use and does so much, you?ll keep finding more and more ways to use it."
It appears, though, that Apple's Siri has a sense of humor when asked certain questions.
I will post a few here, and you can check the rest here.
After an epic global three-day fail, RIM has confirmed that all BlackBerry services are back up and running.
The outages began in Africa, the Middle East and Asia on Monday but had spread to the U.S. and Canada by yesterday.
RIM says all stalled messages and emails have been sent out to devices so users are warned they may have a large influx today.
Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis did note, however, if you are still having issues you will need to pull the battery of your device, reinsert and then reboot.
The CEOs said they might compensate customers:
That is something we plan to come back to these customers on very soon. ... Our priority right up until this moment (has been) making sure the system's up and running. We're going to fully commit to win that trust back.
The iPhone Dev Team have now released the updated beta of redsn0w, the popular tethered jailbreak solution for iOS devices, allowing for jailbreaking of iOS 5.
Because it is in beta, the group says the new iPhone 4S is not yet supported but all other eligible devices should be.
Those devices include the iPod Touch 3G, 4G, iPhone 3GS, 4 and iPad 1, 2.
Although it likely works, the group says the beta is intended for "devs of jailbroken apps that want to debug their applications." Regular users are asked to stay away, for now.
Netflix has signed new streaming distribution deals with Warner Bros. and CBS today, allowing subscribers to watch shows from The CW.
The deal is good for four years and includes access to the station's most popular programs like "The Vampire Diaries," "Gossip Girl," "One Tree Hill," and "Nikita," "Supernatural," "Ringer," "Hart of Dixie," and "The Secret Circle."
Episodes of previous seasons will be available on October 15th with the exception of Supernatural and 90210 which will start in January.
The deal is worth $1 billion over its life.
Says CBS CEO Les Moonves:
This is a forward-thinking agreement for a network whose programming occupies a unique space in the content marketplace. It is a model that opens a new door for The CW programming to expand its audience reach through the terrific Netflix service, and creates a brand-new window for CBS and Warner Bros. to be paid for the content we supply the network. It also further illustrates how new distribution systems are providing premium content suppliers with additive revenue streams while still preserving traditional monetization windows.
Western Digital has announced today that production on hard drives will be slowed down in the next quarter due to severe flooding in Bangkok, Thailand.
The HDD maker has a few facilities in the region.
Floods have caused problems in the region, including transportation and utilities and has even flooded worker's homes.
The company did note that all of its 37,000 employees are currently safe.
Last quarter, WD shipped 32 million HDD from its Thai facilities.
Spotify has announced today their expansion into Denmark, the ninth nation to get access to the unlimited streaming music service.
The streaming company says there will be three versions available, just like in other regions:
Spotify Free. With an invite, you can enjoy on-demand, buffer-free access to millions of songs on your computer, and great social features. Manage your own music files through Spotify, and sync with your mobile phone or iPod. Features occasional advertising.
Spotify Unlimited. All the special features of our free service, but with uninterrupted, ad-free access to Spotify on your computer. All for only 49kr a month.
Spotify Premium. The top-of-the-range Spotify experience. Premium gives you access to all the music, all the time. Listen online or offline, on your computer, your mobile phone and a whole heap of other devices. Enjoy enhanced sound quality and access to exclusive content, competitions and special offers. Premium costs just 99kr a month and is also available in all 7-Eleven stores in Denmark.
According to the Yonhap news agency, Samsung will replace a feature of their Galaxy smartphones in order to get around a sales ban in the Netherlands.
The feature, which relates to a patent for browsing pictures, will be replaced.
Apple and Samsung have been battling over the past year over smartphone patents, with both companies looking to get sales of the rival's devices banned.
The Dutch injunction on the Galaxy mobile smartphones will start on Thursday so Samsung needs to be quick with their software update.
After being hit with outages in Europe, Asia and Africa over the past few days, the BlackBerry outages have now hit home, with Canadian and U.S. users losing access to their email and messaging, as well.
RIM confirmed the outages:
BlackBerry subscribers in the Americas may be experiencing intermittent service delays this [Wednesday] morning. We are working to resolve the situation as quickly as possible and we apologize to our customers for any inconvenience. We will provide a further update as soon as more information is available.
Verizon, Bell Canada and AT&T all noted the outage as well, and said it was up to BlackBerry to fix the problem.
For now, users can expect to experience missed emails followed by flurries of emails as outages switch on and off.
The latest rumor circulating today is that Apple will begin developing an 'iPad Mini' for release next year.
Apple's new tablet will compete with the Amazon Kindle Fire and its $200 price tag.
The report comes from Ticonderoga Securities analyst Brian White (via AI) who says during his tour of China and Taiwan and meeting with component suppliers there have been discussions of Apple's upcoming lower-priced entry to the tablet market.
White says the device will launch in the first months of 2012, a few months after Amazon's November launch date for the Kindle Fire.
Says the analyst:
We believe this lower priced iPad could be priced in the mid-to-high-$200 range. We expect this will be followed by a much more powerful, feature rich standard-priced iPad 3 in (the second quarter of 2012).
Sony has recalled 1.6 million Bravia HDTVs this week after it was revealed that faulty components could lead to fires.
The TVs were sold in the last 4 years and there have been 11 reported incidents in Japan since 2008. While there have been no injuries, a recent report of a "small fire and smoke" coming from a customer's TV prompted the recall.
Spokesperson Yuki Shima says the faulty components are in the backlight systems. These can lead to overheating, melting of the top of the LCD set, or even a small fire.
Sony has been hit with a number of recalls in the past years including one just last month with 2 million batteries in Sony mobile phones needing to be replaced due to overheating.
While there haven't been any reports outside of Japan, the recall is global.
Sony has noted tonight that they have locked down 93,000 user accounts after a new security breach.
Hackers "using very large sets of sign-in IDs and passwords" gained access to 60,000 PSN accounts and 33,000 Sony Online Entertainment accounts.
The attacks occurred throughout the weekend, notes Sony, and affected "less than one-tenth of 1 percent" of all PSN and SOE accounts.
While the hackers did manage to verify sign-in IDs and passwords, credit card info and other personal data were never at risk.
Says Sony Chief Information Security Officer Philip Reitinger (via Cnet):
In this case, given that the data tested against our network consisted of sign-in ID-password pairs, and that the overwhelming majority of the pairs resulted in failed matching attempts, it is likely the data came from another source and not from our Networks.
Making matter worse, the compromised accounts also "showed additional activity prior to being locked," likely meaning unauthorized purchases were made.
Roku has unveiled a new $50 set-top box, the LT, which adds HBO Go support.
The device is the cheapest the company offers, with their most expensive (and popular) device, the XL, selling for $100.
As with other set-tops in their line, the LT offers access to 300 channels including Netflix, Amazon Prime Instant, Hulu Plus, Epix, MLB and NHL packages.
Because of its low price, the LT will not have SD card or Bluetooth support.
All of the current Roku boxes will also receive HBO Go support, when the LT hits stores this month. HBO Go gives HBO subscribers a chance to play back all their favorite shows on their computers, tablets, smartphones and set-top boxes.
Sling Media has announced the launch of a SlingPlayer that is optimized for Android tablets running Honeycomb.
SlingPlayer lets SlingBox hardware owners "extend" their TV to their tablets.
The new software will take advantage of the larger resolutions of tablets alongside performance boosts.
Sling Media says that "new to this release of SlingPlayer is a revamped program guide that makes it easy to browse content choices while continuing to watch TV." On-screen controls are almost exactly as they are on the big-screen.
Adds the company:
A Slingbox is the perfect accessory to an Android tablet. When combined with SlingPlayer, now anyone with an Android device can enjoy a beautiful, personalized TV experience anywhere in the world.
The Sling Player for Honeycomb app costs $29.99, JPY ¥2600, UK GBP £20.99 or Euro EUR 23.99 in the Android Market.
Last week, Google and Samsung shocked the world by postponing the launch of the Nexus Prime.
The device was expected to be "unpacked" today at CTIA.
There was speculation that the postponing was due to the recent death of Apple founder Steve Jobs but there is new speculation that there could be patent issues relating to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, which will be officially launched with the device.
Despite the delay, Phandroid, citing a Verizon insider, says the new launch party will be on November 3rd.
The source is said to be confirmed, although Phandroid cannot explain how they did so.
Last month, Samsung introduced another small form factor tablet to their Galaxy line.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has Android 3.2, runs on a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4G, 16GB or 32GB internal storage and a microSD slot.
Samsung now has a 7-inch tablet, a 7.7-inch model, an 8.9-inch option and a 10.1-inch tablet.
Today, the company has revealed the price in the U.S. for the tablet.
Would-be consumers will have to drop $399 for the 16GB model or $499 for the 32GB version.
it is unclear when the device will hit the U.S. but it is currently available in Europe and Asia.
Spotify, the unlimited music streaming service that launched in the U.S. earlier this year saw a huge growth in revenue in 2010, but still posted a net loss.
Revenue jumped from 11.3 million pounds in 2009 to 63.2 million pounds last year and is expected to jump to 100 million pounds (at least) in 2011 thanks to U.S. exposure.
While Apple does not reveal the exact specifications of its processing units, it appears that the new dual-core A5 chip in the iPhone 4S is underclocked to 800MHz, 200MHz less than the same chip in the iPad 2.
Despite the clocked speed, Apple has lived up to their advertising claims for the iPhone 4S.
Apple says the iPhone 4S has web browsing speeds twice as fast as the iPhone 4 and "7 times the graphic performance." The SunSpider Javascript benchmark, (run by AnandTech for browser speed) measured the 4S at 2,222ms compared to the iPhone 4's 3,921ms.
For the performance claim, Apple scored 73.1 on the GLBenchmark 2.1 compared to 11.2 for the iPhone 4.
Given the benchmark tests, the site believes the clock speed to be around 800Mhz, but as a dual-core it has significant improvements from the A4, which was underclocked to 800MHz, as well, albeit with a single core.
According to new references found in the iOS 5 code, Apple's next Apple TV set-top box will likely add a dual-core A5 processor and 1080p support for the first time.
The A5 processor was just introduced for the new iPhone 4S and has been in the iPad 2 since the Spring.
Currently, the Apple TV is model 2,1, says VB, while the software refers to 3,1.
Thanks to the new processor, 1080p playback will finally be supported as the A4 could only handle up to 720p.
Following DC Entertainment's exclusive deal to bring graphic novels to the upcoming Kindle Fire, rival Barnes & Nobles has now removed 100 graphic novels from its brick-and-mortar stores.
A few of the most notable books are "Watchmen," "Batman: Arkham City" and "Superman: Earth One."
The move is the first time the retailer has been forced to remove books thanks to a rival's decision. B&N says it won't sell titles in-store that it cannot sell in all formats, and that remains a firm policy.
We are disappointed that Barnes & Noble has made the decision to remove these books off their shelves and make them unavailable to their customers.
DC Entertainment will continue to make our content available to our fans and new readers through multiple distribution channels including independent bookstores, locally owned comic book retailers and other widespread means such as online through Amazon and through our apps on iOS and select Android-powered devices as well as new and exciting devices going forward.
RIM has admitted today that European, Middle Eastern and African customers may be experiencing service issues.
In the affected regions, carriers are calling the "service issues" total outages, however.
The maker of BlackBerrys tweeted today: "@BlackBerryHelp Some users in EMEA are experiencing issues. We're investigating, and we apologise for any inconvenience."
"We apologize to any of our customers in Europe, Middle East & Africa still experiencing issues. We'll bring you an update as soon as we can."
Due to the Columbus Day holiday in the U.S. and Thanksgiving holiday in Canada, RIM is understaffed for the issue.
Apple has announced today that iPhone 4S per-orders have topped 1 million on their first day of availability, beating out the record previously set by the iPhone 4.
That previous record was 600,000, in June 2010.
Says Apple of the achievement:
We are blown away with the incredible customer response to iPhone 4S. The first day pre-orders for iPhone 4S have been the most for any new product that Apple has ever launched and we are thrilled that customers love iPhone 4S as much as we do.
While the number does seem impressive, it is important to note that Apple's iPhone 4 pre-order period was cut short last year due to an AT&T technical glitch.
Additionally, there are now 90 new carriers with access to the device, which means pre-orders may not be as huge as the number suggests.
Windows Phone boss Andy Lees has said today that dual-core, LTE-supporting Windows Phone 7 devices are coming soon, as the company pushes its way back into smartphone relevancy.
Notes Lees:
We're not making specific predictions but I think that our momentum is going to build. Our first [release] was about mindshare, and really getting the credibility, and I think [Mango] is really about starting to build unit volume and market share.
The exec says the phone platform is in a good position against the competition, Apple's iOS and Google's Android.
When asked about when dual-core, LTE devices are coming, Lees says soon. He also explains how current devices hold up:
They're all single core, but I suspect that they will be faster in usage than any dual-core phone that you put against it, and that's the point.
The first LTE phones were big and big (users) of the battery, and I think it's possible to do it in a way that is far more efficient, and that's what we will be doing.
Last month, Netflix outraged subscribers by announcing that they would be splitting the DVD-by-mail and streaming services of their company.
The new company for DVDs, called Qwikster, would have its own login portal and would require subscribers to log in to both Netflix and Qwikster if they want to change their respective queues.
This move came on top of the already unpopular decision by Netflix to raise prices on those that wanted both services, from $9 to $16.
Today, Netflix has shut down the idea for Qwikster, based on user feedback.
Consumers value the simplicity Netflix has always offered and we respect that. There is a difference between moving quickly -- which Netflix has done very well for years -- and moving too fast, which is what we did in this case.
Users can switch their DVD and streaming queue from Netflix.com as usual, with their usual login.
Peter Moore, Electronic Arts' (EA) COO, has said today that the company loves the Wii U and expects it to be successful.
The console was shown off to great enthusiasm at this year's E3 event.
Nintendo's upcoming console has a small tablet for a controller, and HDresolution.
Says Moore:
There are no indications that there's anything that feels like it's off target. From our perspective right now, specs are a big deal.
Moore will make a trip to Japan this month in an effort to gain more insight into the console's graphic and computer processing units, along with its price and potential release date.
No one thinks its going to replace an iPad 2 but it is playing into what a consumer feels comfortable with. Our teams are working on it around the world. Our key franchises will be there. We've made that commitment to Nintendo.
Netflix has announced this weekend that they have signed a new licensing agreement to stream AMC's hit zombie show "The Walking Dead."
The streaming company will have the exclusive rights in the United States and Canada.
Additionally, Netflix will have the non-exclusive rights for more AMC, IFC and Sundance Channel content.
Thanks to previous deals, Netflix streams "Mad Men" and "Breaking Bad," the two most popular shows on AMC.
While adding content at a blistering pace, Netflix has seen a reversal of fortune this year after a few key business moves. In the summer, they announced that the very popular streaming/1-DVD-out plan would no longer be available for $9 and instead would be split into two $8 services. Netflix then completely spun-off its DVD service, naming the new platform Qwikster.
Netflix's stock has fallen from $300 to $115 since June following the announcements.
According to Experian Simmons, about 129 million people of the U.S. population uses social media.
That figure amounts to 41 percent of the entire population of the nation.
98 percent of online users, aged 18-24, use social media, an astounding number, while 97 percent of adults aged 24-34 use the platforms. Even the older generation, 65 and older, have 73 percent of people using social media.
It is unclear exactly how these figures are calculated but Experian "claims it uses leading technologies to format, cleanse and load data that is acquired directly from government sources and industry leading vendors," says TNW.
A few other notable statistics include the fact that 46 percent of online adults use social media to communicated with friends, up from just 32 percent in 2009 and 30 percent of Hispanic consumers saying they use social media to follow companies and music artists, compared to 18 percent for non-Hispanic population.
It appears that movie streaming giant Netflix is looking to revive the Comedy Central comedy "Reno 911!"
Netflix's chief creative officer Ted Sarandos has had meetings with Reno 911! producers Michael Shamberg and Stacy Sher, although that is as far as the process has gone. The show was cancelled in 2009.
For now, the lead stars of the show, Thomas Lennon, Kerri Kenney-Silver and Robert Ben Garant, have not signed any deal that would lead to them returning but they absolutely could.
Additionally, Comedy Central still retains the rights to the show. Netflix would have first run rights, but eventually syndicated episodes would be available back on Comedy Central, say industry insiders.
Netflix has been in headlines recently for their bidding war with Showtime over new episodes of the extremely popular but cancelled show "Arrested Development."
Sony Pictures is preparing a very large bid to acquire the feature rights to the upcoming "Steve Jobs" biography written by CNN chairman and Time Magazine managing editor Walter Isaacson.
The deal is expected to be at least "$1 million against $3 million" for the rights and Mark Gordon seems to be signed up to produce. Gordon is best known for Saving Private Ryan.
Sony Pictures recently put together the Social Network and Moneyball based off popular books so the new move seems to be a "good fit."
Isaacson's book was set for a November 21st release but following the passing of Jobs this week, the book's release date has been pushed to October 24th.
"Steve Jobs" is the only autobiography ever authorized by the former Apple CEO.
AT&T has revealed that 200,000 Apple iPhone 4S were sold in the first 12 hours of availability.
The carrier is seeing "extraordinary demand" for the smartphone, which was revealed the day before the passing of Apple co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs.
Verizon and Sprint did not reveal pre-order figures but demand is expected to be strong for both carriers, as well. Sprint is a first-time entry into the iPhone market.
The iPhone set the record last June, with 1.7 million devices being sold in the first 72 hours. This was when AT&T was the exclusive carrier.
Apple is expected to sell 27 million iPhones this quarter.
Although unconfirmed by the military, it appears that the computers used to control Reaper and Predator drones have been hit by a nasty keylogger.
The drone control facility, located at Nevada's Creech Air Force Base, controls the unmanned flights on missions into Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq and other nations.
Because of the nature of the missions, computers at the base are not allowed to be connected to the Internet, in an effort to block hacking or the infection of malware. The Creech base, however, is one of few permitted to use USB flash drives to transfer mission data between computers.
It is this special permission that seems to have allowed the computers to become infected.
For now, the keylogger has not cause any issues (as all it does is record keystrokes) but the base is having issues removing it from the system. Flights are still being manned remotely, day in and day out.
According to the latest poll from Harris Interactive, 15 percent of Americans currently own an e-reader while at least another 15 percent want to purchase one in the near future (six months).
The ownership figure was just 8 percent last year.
Adds Regina A. Corso, director of the Harris Poll (via BizR):
Overall, two in five Americans (40%) read 11 or more books a year with one in five reading 21 or more books in a year (19%). But among those who have an e-reader, over one-third read 11-20 books a year (36%) and over one-quarter read 21 or more books in an average year (26%).
The research makes the obvious conclusion that e-readers are the future.
There will always be a place for books in hard cover or paperback. But, there must also be a place for reading devices as well. Readers are quickly catching on to this wave as have the booksellers. This is a huge transition time for publishing companies and how they adapt will determine who is still standing ten years from now.
According to sources, Dell may be backing out of their planned Windows Phone 7 Mango devices.
It appears that the computer giant could even be considering dropping out of WP7 devices, in general.
A leaked roadmap earlier this year showed Dell was developing an updated Venue Pro but that seems to be scratched for now.
According to a "high ranking exec" in Dell, the company will not offer any WP devices until Windows Phone 8 Apollo. The company will, however, continue support for the Venue Pro.
All existing WP7 devices will be updated to Mango, soon.
111 men and women were arrested tonight for their part in a massive identity theft ring.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown called the fraud case the largest he'd ever seen, and that the police were still seeking more to arrest. Five "criminal enterprises" were taken down, and theose arrested have been hit with hundreds of criminal charges.
Thousands were robbed from in a ring that stretched as far as China and the Middle East.
Like in past identity theft scams, the criminals would first steal the credit card numbers and relevant info when the customer paid, for example, for dinner at a restaurant. Those numbers were then passed on to "manufacturers" who forge forge Visas, MasterCards, Discover and American Express cards onto blank cards.
The forged cards would then be given to "shoppers," usually younger, pretty women who spend upwards of $1000 at a time at high-end luxury stores. That merchandise was then resold oversees to Chinese, European and the Middle Eastern customers.
Sprint has said today that they will stop selling smartphones and modems that are compatible with Clearwire's WiMax 4G at the end of 2012.
The carrier is expected to transition to its own higher-speed 4G network at that time.
Following the move, Clearwire's stock fell to an all-time low at $1.32, down 30 percent from yesterday.
Sprint is by far Clearwire's largest customer and Sprint is a majority owner of the 4G network.
President of network operations, Steve Elfman, says Sprint's own 4G network will be as large as Clearwire's by the end of 2012, and significantly larger by the end of 2013.
Sprint is moving to LTE, the same network spectrum used by AT&T and Verizon.
According to new figures by Berg Insight, mobile app downloads will reach 98 billion by 2015.
The number will compound at a rate of 56.6 percent from 2010 to 2015.
Revenue from app stores like the Android Market and iOS App Store will jump to $11.8 billion by 2015, as well.
In 2010, that revenue (paid apps, in-app upgrades, subs) grew exponentially to $2.15 billion.
Into the future, Apple will remain the the largest "direct monetizing force behind of mobile applications," with Android in second and Windows Phone in third.
The report also notes that HTML5 "apps" will eventually rule, but until 2015, downloadable apps, based on Flash, Java and other libraries will continue to grow.
Swype, the popular smartphone input technology, has been acquired today for $102.5 million by Nuance.
Nuance is the company behind the FlexT9 keyboard, software that lets users speak, trace, write or tap "Dragon dictation" and "T9 predictive text input technologies" on Android tablets and phones.
Says one analyst of the move (via Reuters):
Nuance is bulking up on the mobile front so that they can have a bigger presence on the next-generation handsets. They can't just stand by and just stick to their core competency of being a voice recognition technology player on mobile.
Swype has quickly become the most popular alternative keyboard for Android and Symbian although rivals are a plenty. TouchType Ltd's SwiftKey X Keyboard, Dasur Ltd's SlideIT Keyboard, Beansoft's Thumb Keyboard and Dexilog LLC's Smart Keyboard Pro are just a few that have gained traction in the past year.
The move is also seen as a way for Nuance to acquire significant patents and create a nicer offering to OEM handset providers.
While Samsung and Google have postponed their Nexus Prime event next week in an apparent show of respect for Steve Jobs, that didn't stop some screenshots of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich from being leaked.
Crunch has 7 shots of the upcoming firmware, and it looks fantastic.
The software update is supposed to blend 3.0 Honeycomb (tablets) with 2.3 Gingerbread (smartphones) while adding new features.
Eventually, the software should integrate Google TV.
Check the pics here, as the world waits for the official launch of the software:
We've got some cracking films to keep everyone entertained through the upcoming winter months and beyond. From blockbusters like The Dark Knight and Reservoir Dogs, to new releases such as Hanna, Fast Five, and Red Riding Hood, and even British classics like Monty Python's The Meaning of Life and Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.
Thanks to its Intel Insider tech, Best Buy's CinemaNow has now added 1080pHD films to its digital download catalog.
The films will be from Warner Bros. and Fox.
Intel Insider "is a hardware-based security technology in second-generation Intel Core processors, which is the fastest-shipping Intel product with more than 75 million units shipped to date," says THR.
Reads a statement from Warner Bros. Digital Distribution:
CinemaNow and Intel are making secure HD content distribution a reality on the personal computer.
Adds 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment:
The partnership with Intel and Best Buy's CinemaNow to bring HD digital downloads of our movies to the PC will expand our reach to millions of devices in the U.S. and potentially more around the world.
Sony is said to be near a deal to buy out Ericsson's half of the joint smartphone venture Sony Ericsson.
The company is looking to reunify its brand, one that has been split in past years.
Tablets, gaming devices and consumer electronics have been sold under the Sony name while smartphone and media players have been sold under the Sony Ericsson brand.
The 10-year pact between the companies comes up for renewal this month, but it appears unlikely it will be renewed if Sony can get a good price.
A deal could be valued at as high as $1.3 billion, dependent on Ericsson's telecoms patents.
The joint venture lost an astounding 836 million euros in 2010.
Earlier this month, Amazon announced its new line of Kindle e-readers, including Touch models and their long-awaited tablet, the Kindle Fire.
Perhaps equally as notable was the pricing on the devices, including a new low, $79, for the new Wi-Fi Kindle (non-touch). The price is so low because the device includes Amazon's "special offers" ads, ads that scroll when the device is turned on and during screen savers but never during reading or shopping.
Amazon has noted today that users can pay up to have those ads removed permanently, for the price of $30 (the difference in price of the non-special-offers Kindle).
The process is easy and can be done from your Amazon account page. Hit the "Manage your Kindle" tab and then the "Manage your Devices" option. From there simply unsubscribe from Special Offers and you will be charged $30.
Removing the Special Offers is only available on the brand-new keyboard-less $79 Kindle and the $99 Kindle Touch.
For Spotify, premium subscribers can stream 15 million songs in 320 kbps quality.
The 802.11n Wi-Fi device also has streaming access to Netflix, Hulu Plus, Pandora, YouTube and many other channels. As in the past, the WD TV Live will play a wide variety of file formats, notably MKV, in full 1080p.
Additionally, WD has shown off their updated WD TV Live Hub, a similar set-top box that also includes 1TB of internal storage. The Hub will require ethernet, however.
Although it won't hit retailers until later this year, the Intel Core i7-2700K processor has already been overclocked to 5GHz, with just air cooling.
The processor used in the experiment was an engineering sample chip used by Intel's partners.
To overclock to such an extreme, the vCore of the CPU was pushed to 1.384V while its multiplier and BCLK clock were set at 50x and 100MHz, respectively, says Soft.
The upcoming Core i7-2700K was built by Intel to replace the flagship Sandy Bridge 2600K.
At its base, the new CPU will have a clock speed of 3.5GHz.
Sony has confirmed it has secured financing from Abu Dhabi to fund their bid for EMI, the fourth largest record label in the world.
Backed by the Abu Dhabi investment fund Mubadala, the company should be able to better compete against other serious bidders which include UMG and WMG, the largest labels in the world.
The current owner of the label is Citigroup, which was forced to take over the company after the old owners could not pay their debts.
Citi is looking for $3 billion for the label.
EMI has labels like Capitol and Virgin, and notable artists like Coldplay and the Beatles.
Anybody using a free plan will have a meter of how much free music they can stream a month, which then refills on the 1st of the next month.
Strangely, there is no set amount of music available. It varies based on how much you listen in a given month.
Just like rival Spotify, the free plan gives access to the desktop version of the software and mobile access will cost a premium.
If you want a premium subscription, its $5 per month for unlimited browser/desktop access and $10 for unlimited browser/desktop, smartphone/tablet streaming and wireless sync for offline listening.
For families, friends, etc, there is a special $18 for 2 or $23 for 3 deal available.
Sources are posting the alleged specs of the upcoming Samsung Nexus Prime, set for launch on Tuesday.
If accurate, the device will be a Verizon exclusive and come with Ice Cream Sandwich, the first device to do so.
Additionally, the ultra-thin 9mm device will have a large 4.65-inch 1280 x 720 Super AMOLED HD display.
The phone will be powered by a Texas Instrument's 1.2GHz OMAP 4460 dual-core Cortex A9 and 1GB RAM.
32GB integrated storage is standard, as are dual cameras (1.3MP/5MP). The device will be LTE 4G capable and will include WiFi a/b/g/n and NFC (with Google Wallet already installed).
HTC is working on an emergency patch to send to affected Android devices.
Earlier this week, it was revealed that a recent HTC update for its Android phones had left the devices wide open for attack and the leak of personal info. More info here: HTC under fire for smartphone privacy vulnerability
Says HTC:
In our ongoing investigation into this recent claim, we have concluded that while this HTC software itself does no harm to customers' data, there is a vulnerability that could potentially be exploited by a malicious third-party application.
Following a short testing period by our carrier partners, the patch will be sent over-the-air to customers, who will be notified to download and install it. We are working very diligently to quickly release a security update that will resolve the issue on affected devices.
The HTC Sense UI flaw comes thanks to the addition of the HTCLogger.apk file, which stores data used for customer support and troubleshooting.
In April, the Department of Justice approved Google's $700 million purchase of ITA Software, the world's largest flight data company.
As part of the approval, Google had to accept certain restrictions, however. One of the major restrictions was that Google must continue to license ITA software to airfare sites "on commercially reasonable terms" and must promise to continue enhancing the software "in a manner consistent" with ITA's development over the past decade.
Google must also use an internal firewall that will block the company from gaining "competitively sensitive information" off of ITA customers.
Today, a U.S. judge has cleared the purchase, as Google has satisfied all the necessary requirements.
U.S. District Judge Robert Wilkins says the agreement is now in "the public interest."
Kapil Sibal, India's telecommunications minister has said today that the government will sell 100,000 tablets at 1,100 rupees ($22 USD) in an effort to boost computer literacy.
The government will first buy the devices from DataWind for 2250 rupees ($46 USD) and then sell the tablets at a subsidized price to schools in the nation.
India will then purchase 10 million tablets over the next 5 years.
The country has one of smallest computer penetration rates, with only 4.2 for every 100 Indians.
It's going to increase the desirability of computing devices for people who wanted them but couldn't afford the price tag. People who are using this device are not going to get the seamless experience of an iPad or a Samsung. There's no comparison.
The Aakash tablet runs on Android, has a 366MHz processor, 256MB RAM, 2GB internal storage, two USB ports, Wi-Fi and cellular connectivity. Additionally, to keep prices at their extremely low point, the battery only has 3 hours of life per charge.
There is not too much else to be said that Apple has not said in their statement.
Jobs was forced to resign in August as CEO of the company he founded as his health deteriorated. He was diagnosed in 2003 with a rare form of pancreatic cancer and took leave from work again in 2009 for a liver transplant.
We will have more in the coming week on Job's innovation and his contribution to the tech and business world as we know it.
From starting a computer company in his parent's garage in 1976 to being in charge of the most valuable public company in the world, Jobs defined an American icon in the technology business.
UBM Techinsights, following the launch of the iPhone 4S yesterday, has released a preliminary cost breakdown for the device and have come up with a $203 cost for the 32GB version.
The component breakdown does not include R&D, shipping or other manufacturing expenses but does give analysts a reasonable way to work out how large a company's margins are on a certain device.
Most expensive, unsurprisingly, were the flash memory at $38, the retina display at $31 and the dual-core Apple A5 chip at $26.
The other "notable" improvements from the iPhone 4, namely the 8MP camera and the dual-mode (CDMA/GSM) radio cost Apple just $9 extra, combined.
For now, the company says the breakdown is preliminary and will be revised when the actual device ships on the 14th.
A U.S. judge has noted today that the multi-billion dollar Oracle, Google patent trial will "likely be postponed" well beyond its expected October 31st start date.
Oracle sued Google last year claiming that the search giant's Android operating system infringes on Oracle's Java patents that were acquired from Sun Microsystems in early 2010.
Additionally, Oracle also brought forth copyright infringement claims and is seeking $6 billion in damages.
U.S. District Judge William Alsup said the trial is expected to be postponed, but only because of an unrelated criminal trial that us taking place at the same time.
Google wants the entire case put on hold, indefinitely.
According to the latest issue of Xbox World magazine, developers Rare, Lionhead and Turn 10 are already prototyping new games for the "Xbox 720," or whatever the console will eventually be named.
"Rare, Lionhead and Turn 10 all have teams in place too. Rare, we hear, are even prototyping ideas for a new 'mature' title," reads the report.
One source says Microsoft will unveil the console at next year's E3 event, for a launch in the holiday season of 2013.
Turn 10, the makers of Forza, have remained on a two year schedule for their games and a late 2013 launch for Forza 5 could perfectly coincide with the release of a new console.
The same goes for Fable and Rare's new "mature" game for the upcoming console.
Although it is likely a joke by the producers of the movie, or possibly even Microsoft to bring some hype, a logo for an "Xbox 720" is visibly seen in the movie trailer for the film "Real Steel."
If you check at 47 seconds into the trailer (embedded below) you can see the logo alongside other logos in the stadium where two robots are preparing to fight.
Of course, there is no official word that Microsoft will name their next console the Xbox 720, and there is no rush as the next console is not expected until at least 2013.
The console launched in 2005 and Microsoft has long held that it will have a decade-long life.
In 2005, Microsoft created some hype for the Xbox 360 by placing an Xbox with a holographic interface into the sci-fi movie "The Island."
Shares of RIM have jumped 14 percent today after an unsubstantiated rumor hit that Vodafone should look into purchasing RIM.
Vodafone declined to comment on the story, but most analysts have brushed off the report. In the past, it has been seen as very unlikely for a wireless carrier to purchase a handset maker.
The Canadian smartphone maker has lost over 60 percent of its value this year and about 84 percent of its value since the launch of iOS and Android.
Alongside delayed products, a failed tablet and a huge decline in revenue, RIM has simply fallen out of favor in the smartphone world, with Android and iOS becoming the only two players in the game. Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 is also being slowly adopted but is being updated faster than any RIM product.
All that being said, RIM still has a market value of $11 billion and is wildly profitable although the those profits are quickly falling.
Microsoft has launched its first native Android app for Hotmail/Live.
The app was created by software developer Seven and directed by Microsoft and will be the first official app for the email service.
Hotmail/Live currently has 360 million active account and is the biggest email provider in the world, ahead of Yahoo and Gmail.
The app will include "push-enabled access to the user inbox, contact list and calendars," says THG.
Microsoft says "it has reengineered Hotmail and the availability of its Android app reflects a commitment to provide a great Hotmail experience to users on whichever smartphones they use."
You can have it synced to your phone from here: Microsoft + Seven Hotmail app or search it from your tablet/smartphone.
HP has completed its $12 billion acquisition of software maker Autonomy today, with Autonomy shareholders overwhelmingly voting for the deal which paid an 80 percent premium to the company's closing price before HP offered.
The deal, and how expensive it is, cost CEO Leo Apotheker his job recently after just 11 months on the job.
New CEO Meg Whitman says the Autonomy purchase is "integral" to HP's expected software expansion.
Autonomy will run as a separate business under the lead of founder Mike Lynch.
HP rival Oracle admitted it was also approached as a potential buyer but CEO Larry Ellison, one of the world's richest men, called the price "absurdly high."
Microsoft has announced today that it will shut down its Zune line of media devices.
Reads the support post:
We recently announced that, going forward, Windows Phone will be the focus of our mobile music and video strategy, and that we will no longer be producing Zune players. So what does this mean for our current Zune users? Absolutely nothing. Your device will continue to work with Zune services just as it does today. And we will continue to honor the warranties of all devices for both current owners and those who buy our very last devices. Customer service has been, and will remain a top priority for us.
Software will continue to be updated, as well as apps, but no more hardware will be sold.
Despite being critically praised, the Zune was too little too late, especially being launched 5 years after the first iPod.
Sprint is preparing to purchase 30.5 million iPhones from Apple, worth around $20 billion, says the WSJ.
The deal will be from 2011-2015 and will finally allow the carrier to become the third in the U.S. to offer the popular smartphones.
At $20 billion over 4 years, CEO Dan Hesse says the company will not begin making money until 2014.
The CEO has told the board of directors that the company will need to double its current customer base to sell that many iPhones, or at least convert all of their current customers.
It appears the board had some reservations, but eventually signed off on the deal. One such reservation was worries that the iPhone would lose popularity by 2015.
The WSJ says the bet is an "all-or-nothing" and could very well bankrupt the company by 2015.
Just 30 minutes from Apple's keynote address and it seems that the company's Japanese site has leaked pictures of the iPhone 4s.
The banner on the site reads (Google translated):
October 14, from 8:00 am to launch the Apple Store. Let staff help you choose the carrier and rate plan is right for you so the iPhone is ready to start using before leaving the store. Learn more.
Additionally, the Japanese site has let slip that an updated Nano is coming, with more fitness functions and a completely rehauled UI.
Please stay tuned for our full coverage of the event at 1pm EST.
Google chairman Eric Schmidt has said today that despite the company's $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola Mobility, the company will not pick favorites in the Android market, and that all current partners will remain equally competitive.
The Android ecosystem is the No. 1 priority, and that we won?t do anything with Motorola, or anybody else by the way, that would screw up the dynamics of that industry. We need strong, hard competition among all the Android players. We won?t play favorites in the way people are concerned about.
The chairman also noted that the company would be acquiring 17,000 patents in the deal, which will certainly help the search engine giant protect its interests.
Main concerns over the acquisition were that Motorola devices would get access to the most updated versions of Android the soonest, thus leaving other companies like HTC, LG, Samsung and Acer at a disadvantage.
According to eDataSource, an online "competitive intelligence" firm, the new Amazon Kindle Fire has 95,000 pre-orders on its first day of availability alone.
eDataSource's panel of 800,000 inboxes allows us to gain insight into eCommerce sales. Within hours we can get a read on hot product launches based on sales from leading eCommerce websites.
The company analyzed purchase receipts received by email and can therefore accurately estimate the daily orders places at major ecommerce sites as well as what products are being purchased.
Amazon just launched the Kindle Fire at $199, with a shipping date of November 15th.
The tablet is, by far, the cheapest in the 7-inch category, and even undercuts the price of the Nook Color by $50, which is more of an e-reader but can be rooted to be an Android tablet.
Apple sold 300,000 iPad tablets on its first day, at $500 or more a pop, and remains the strong market leader. RIM, by comparison, only sold 200,000 PLayBooks the entire last quarter, and has been forced to slash prices.
Read more...
Just like its rivals, the Kindle Touch 3G will not give full access to 3G networks, limiting the device to shopping in the online Kindle Store and browsing Wikipedia.
The upcoming Kindle Touch, Amazon's first touchscreen e-reader, was announced last week at $99 for Wi-Fi-only and $149 for added free 3G access.
Amazon's Kindle Keyboard 3G, released last year, has unlimited 3G access, including full web browsing.
We apologize for the confusion. Our new Kindle Touch 3G enables you to connect to the Kindle Store, download books and periodicals, and access Wikipedia - all over 3G or Wi-Fi. Experimental web browsing (outside of Wikipedia) on Kindle Touch 3G is only available over Wi-Fi. Our Kindle Keyboard 3G will continue to offer experimental web browsing over 3G or Wi-Fi.
Probably not worth the extra $50 now given the wide availability of Wi-Fi hotspots.
The Battlefield 3 limited beta has been hacked, with gamers now able to play all game modes, including the 128-player simultaneous Paris map.
The official beta only allows for 32 players at-a-time in the map, which was originally shown off at E3.
Developer DICE is certainly not happy with the development and has threatened to have users banned if they use the new levels.
Says the DICE rep:
Please avoid temptation and remain on those official servers while we work to have these servers dealt with. Playing on those servers can cause your account to become compromised, stats to be altered or other issues to arise which may lead to having your account banned by EA.
If your account gets banned it does mean any EA game you have your account would also be unavailable.
Wal-Mart and T-mobile have jointly announced the launch of a new no-contract phone plan for users that need Internet and texting more than minutes.
For $30, users get unlimited Internet access, text messages, and 100 minutes for phone calls. Minutes cost 10 cents a minute after 100.
The deal with the retailer is T-Mobile's first since losing its relationship with RadioShack earlier this year.
T-Mobile will now have six prepaid phones via Wal-Mart, including one 4G device.
As with their contract devices, T-Mobile will throttle your Internet speed after a certain point, which for these phones is 5GB. There are no overages, however, making it a far superior choice to data plans from Verizon or AT&T which cost $50 per month for 5GB and then overages after.
According to researcher Trevor Eckhart, a recent update to HTCAndroid devices has led to the installation of tools that collect personal info without permission.
The update, which adds android.permission.INTERNET, accesses location history, phone numbers, SMS data and a list of user accounts, but potentially leaks more personal data.
Phones like the EVO 3D now expose network info, including IP addresses; full memory info; active notifications in the notification bar, including notification text; list of installed apps, including permissions used, user ids, versions; and more, says PCM.
HTC, in response, says it "takes our customers' security very seriously, and we are working to investigate this claim as quickly as possible. We will provide an update as soon as we're able to determine the accuracy of the claim and what steps, if any, need to be taken."
If you have a rooted device, you can remove the update "HTCloggers" at /system/app/HtcLoggers.apk.
Sony has confirmed this week that the upcoming Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception will require a PSN Pass.
In an interview, Sony Spain Software Manager Juan Jiménez says the PSN Pass will be needed for online play.
The PSN Pass, which means second-hand users need to buy a code from Sony for $10 to be able to play online, was introduced this year with the launch of Resistance 3.
According to Mashable, Apple and Facebook had a huge falling out due to the, you guessed it, HP TouchPad.
Around three months ago, before the tablet's demise, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs visited Mark Zuckerberg multiple times to yell at him about the company's connection with the webOS-based HP TouchPad.
Facebook was, at the time, preparing to launch a webOS app for the social network.
HP wanted a native Facebook app first and Apple wanted a native FB app first for the iPad. FB develops their own apps for Android and iOS, while HP was in charge of creating their own webOS app, just like RIM and Microsoft do for their respective platforms.
Acquiescing to Apple, Zuckerberg, despite not being able to block HP's launch, restricted HP?s access to its APIs.
According to a survey conducted by Games comparison and marketplace site Playr2.com, 51 percent of gamers don't care for 3D consoles.
The survey of 1001 "self-professed gamers" saw 51 percent vote against the introduction of 3D tech into future console releases while 47 percent said they would welcome the tech. The remaining 2 percent were undecided.
For those that were not in favor, 44 percent called it "unnecessary" and 28 percent said they were unimpressed by previous 3D offerings. The rest felt that the 3D tech would "impair the gaming experience."
Overall, 73 percent of those surveyed called 3DTVs "impractical" in general.
Rumors are constantly flying around about the next big console releases, so we wanted to see what gamers would think about the possibility of a 3D enabled console. It was surprising to see that the majority were against it, but many seemed to be disappointed by the technology on the Nintendo 3DS and wouldn't like to see the technology spread to other consoles.
Read more...
Microsoft has updated its MSE (Microsoft Security Essentials) antivirus definitions this weekend after an earlier released update began detecting Google Chrome as malware and deleting it.
The first reported incident came from the Chrome help forums:
This morning, after I started up the PC, a Windows Security box popped up and said I had a Security Problem that needed to be removed. I clicked the Details button and saw that it was 'PWS:Win32/Zbot.' I clicked the Remove button and restarted my PC. Now I do not have Chrome. It has been removed or uninstalled.
Microsoft, after updating the definitions, acknowledged and apologized for the mistake:
An incorrect detection for PWS:Win32/Zbot was identified and as a result, Google Chrome was inadvertently blocked and in some cases removed from customers PCs. We have already fixed the issue..., but approximately 3,000 customers were impacted.
Google, forced to act on the stupid mistake, placed a large red banner on its support pages reading "Alert: Google Chrome has been incorrectly marked as malware by Microsoft security software."Read more...
China Unicom says Apple's upcoming iPhone 5 will have support for the HSPA+ 21Mbps network, advertised as 4G although not technically 4G.
The large Chinese carrier revealed the info at the Macworld Asia event this week.
Showing off the evolution of the iPhone, the fifth spot (with a blank picture) showed the iPhone 5 and no other mention except for the HSPA+ network support.
Current model iPhones only have 3G support.
The slide leads credence to the rumors that have flatly stated the iPhone 5 will not have an LTE radio. At least it will have an updated modem.
LTE 4G remains elusive in the U.S. and abroad with Verizon's network available in just a few states, and AT&T's just being rolled out this month.
The creative group of fanboys at BENM.AT have built a hardware mockup of the iPhone 5 which they say has a 98 percent chance of being the real thing.
Showing off the device in the video below, the group took all the rumors, supply chain checks and leaked case designs and created the anticipated smartphone.
Their iPhone 5 is significantly thinner, has a curved design like the iPad 2, a wider form factor, and a larger screen.
Finally, the device will have a rectangular and capacitive home button that can be used for swipe gestures including logging in.
Google's Chrome picked up about half a percentage point, but remains the fastest growing browser. Year-over-year, Chrome jumped from 9 percent to 16 percent, while IE stayed about flat from 56 percent. Firefox took the biggest hit, from 24 percent to 20 percent.
The report expects Internet Explorer to remain flat into the future with the release of Windows 8 and IE 10 next year.
Gears of War 3 has set the bar as the top game launch of the year, kicking off the biggest holiday in Xbox history with a bang. While we don't share sales projections, we're really happy with the results thus far and are kicking off what promises to be our biggest holiday yet in Xbox history.
The companies will also continue their exclusive relationship into the future, possibly with a Kinect title.
We've enjoyed a terrific partnership with Epic Games throughout the 'Gears of War' trilogy, and the success of the franchise is a testament to the strength of that relationship and our work together. We look forward to working with Epic in the future.
We are very interested in Yahoo. Our Alibaba group is important to Yahoo, and Yahoo is important to us? All the serious buyers interested in Yahoo have talked to us.
Alibaba is China-based and is one of the largest online marketplaces for business-to-business trade around the world. Additionally, the group has a payment platform, a shopping search engine, and cloud computing services.
Yahoo has a 40 percent stake in Alibaba.com, and it is one of the company's biggest money producers.
To gain that stake, Yahoo gave its Yahoo China business completely to Alibaba and invested $1 billion.
Earlier this year, Voltage Pictures filed a lawsuit against 24,583 defendants for allegedly downloading and sharing pirated copies of the Oscar-winning picture "The Hurt Locker."
Today, the studio has let 22,000 of those defendants off the hook, voluntarily dismissing them "without prejudice."
Voltage will still seek damages from the remaining 2500 defendants, although many of those being sued still have not been identified positively. The studio continues to work with ISPs to link the IPs correctly.
The studio had 120 days to serve them with papers, but many of the anonymous defendants filed motions with their ISPs, slowing the process to a crawl.
In circumstances where a Doe [unidentified] defendant has not filed the motion and only sent it to the ISP, most ISPs withhold the identifying information so that the Doe defendant can then file the motion with the court. Further, plaintiff's counsel has been informed by the ISPs that numerous Doe defendants have recently re-filed their motions or have filed motions for reconsideration of the Court's prior rulings.
Apple is expected to launch iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 on Tuesday.
The company has accidentally let slip the iPhone 4S, referencing the product in its latest iTunes beta.
AppleInsider looked into the info.plist file of the MobileDevices bundle in iTunes 10.5 beta 9 and found multiple references to the iPhone 4S, which has yet to be formally launched.
The device is expected to look just like the current iPhone 4 but be dual-mode, meaning it will work on GSM and CDMA networks. It will also likely have a boost in the processor department.
Each of the upcoming devices will run iOS 5, and could have voice recognition technology.
Hitachi and LG's joint venture has pleaded guilty to price fixing scheme and will pay a $21.1 million fine.
The price fixing and bid-rigging came with the sale of optical disk drives, said the U.S. Justice Department.
Dubbed Hitachi-LG Data Storage, the joint company was accused of 15 counts of conspiracy and wire fraud.
In 2009, Hitachi-LG, Sony, Toshiba and others all received subpoenas from the DOJ in a probe on their sales of disk drives. Said Sharis Pozen, acting head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, at the time: "The bid-rigging and price-fixing conspiracies involving optical disk drives undermined competition and innovation in the high tech industry."
In the plea agreement, the company has agreed to assist the ongoing investigation and work on internal compliance.
According to a recent disclosure, Motorola Mobility spent $530,000 lobbying in the Q2.
The company lobbied the federal government on spectrum allocation and patent reform, reads the report.
Additionally, the hardware company lobbied congress on cable set-top boxes, which is half of the company's hardware offerings. The other half is smartphones.
In the first quarter, the company spent $470,000 on lobbying.
Last month, Google purchased Motorola Mobility for $12 billion, in order to gain their patent portfolio and protect Android.
Eastman Kodak, which released the world's first consumer camera in 1888, stands as close to bankruptcy as possible, and now has a market value of just $230 million.
In 1997, the company had a market value of $31 billion, before the revolution of digital photography began. The company has not had a profit since early 2007 and its stock market shares now trade for under $1.
The most valuable part of the company is now its digital imaging patents, which have a value of $2 billion.
While Kodak says it has no intention of filing for bankruptcy, the stock has fallen to a price not seen since the 1970s as investors assume the worse.
Potential buyers of the $2 billion patent portfolio have been scared away as they could be sued by Kodak creditors if the company goes bankrupt. Most experts believe Kodak should just go bankrupt and then sell the patents to pay off creditors.
According to an IHS iSuppli estimate, the upcoming Amazon Kindle Fire tablet will cost $209.63 to make, meaning Amazon is losing money on every unit sold.
The giant e-tailer is selling the tablet for $199 starting November 21st.
Components that go into the Fire cost $191.65, says IHS, while miscellaneous manufacturing expenses bring the total to the stated estimate. It is unclear if the miscellaneous expenses include shipping and R&D.
If so, Amazon is losing just $10 per device sold, which can easily be made up if user's use the integrated Amazon app store or buy music, movies.
Dubbed the "Gillette model," Amazon loses money upfront, but gets the product into as many hands as possible. It is called the Gillette model because Procter & Gamble sells their Gillette razors at a loss upfront, then makes a killing on selling the blades later at huge markup.
When further costs outside of materials and manufacturing are added in -- and the $199 price of the tablet is factored along with the expected sales of digital content per device -- Amazon is likely to generate a marginal profit of $10 on each Kindle Fire sold.
According to a report in the British papers, Mark Bradford, a father of three, was playing a round of Call of Duty multiplayer online against a teen last week.
The teen sniped Bradford, killing his character repeatedly in the game, and then teased him via headset about it.
Bradford, who is 46, then allegedly drove to the teen's house and choked the child, resulting in a scratch and reddening of the neck, says Cnet.
The adult is now out on bail, but will be back in court later this month.
Samsung has added another small form factor tablet to their line.
The Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus has Android 3.2, runs on a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 802.11n Wi-Fi, 4G, 16GB or 32GB internal storage and a microSD slot.
Samsung now has a 7-inch tablet, a 7.7-inch model, an 8.9-inch option and a 10.1-inch tablet.
The company says the tablet will launch in Indonesia and Austria at the end of October, and everywhere else, afterwards.
There was no word on price, but with the Kindle Fire coming in November at $199 the consumer is not likely to pay over $300.
Best Buy has dropped the price of the HTC Flyer to $299 from its launch price of $499, effective tomorrow.
While the tablet was popular for the 7-inch demographic, it was clearly overpriced considering the market leader iPad 2, at 9.7-inches, sells for the same price.
The Flyer runs on Android 2.3.3 (upgradeable to Honeycomb eventually), has a 1.5 GHz single-core processor, 1GB RAM, 16GB internal storage, a 5MP camera and a 1.3MP front-side camera.
Additionally, the tablet has a Sense 3.0 UI and a special stylus for easier typing.
The price cut is likely due to the launch of the Amazon Kindle Fire, which will retail for $199 and is expected to quickly become the leader in the 7-inch space.
Gazelle, a site to trade-in your electronics for cash with free shipping, has said this week that BlackBerry trade-ins are at all-time highs, even jumping as high as 80 percent the week the iPhone 4S was released.
China-based mobile phone maker ZTE has passed 
Hulu has announced today that they have signed an agreement to stream in-season episodes of CW content.
Because the 
Barnes and Noble will release their Nook Color 2 e-reader/tablet on November 7th, a full week before Amazon jumps into the market with the Kindle Fire.
According to multiple 
Coinstar has announced their quarterly earnings today, surprising some.
In 2010, 
Warner Bros. has announced that they will do their best Disney impression and soon take Harry Potter films out of distribution and into a "vault" of sorts.
Blockbuster (now part of Dish Network), has been forced to buy new Warner releases on the open market, as the studio wants to expand its 28-day rental release window to the company.
The once-popular NinjaVideo pirated movie 
According 
During the summer, when Netflix decided to split its 
Sprint, following its 16th straight losing quarter, has said today that it may need up to $7 billion in capital going forward to pay for its upcoming network upgrade and new handsets, including the iPhone.
According to the Steve Jobs biography the 
Japanese officials have confirmed that computers in the Parliament have been infected with a nasty virus.
In September, Netflix announced it had signed a 
JP Morgan analyst Douglas Anmuth has upped his expectation for Kindle Fire sales in the Q4, from 3 million to 5 million.
RIM has been sued over the name "BBX," the name of their upcoming smartphone operating system based on QNX software.
According to the latest figures from ABI Research, 
In September, Netflix outraged subscribers by announcing that they would be splitting the DVD-by-mail and 
Music teacher Brian Kingrey has won $1 million for throwing a perfect game in MLB 2K11.
Anonymous has taken credit for taking down 40 child pornography sites and leaking the names of 1500 members of one of those sites.
Google has announced that their digital movie rental store for 
Hackers got the best of Microsoft's popular YouTube channel this weekend.
During the company's quarterly conference call, AT&T mobility CEO Ralph de la Vega noted that following the release of the 
Earlier this year, cloud gaming company OnLive started a challenge on its Facebook page.
According to the latest comScore "Video Metrix" figures, 182 million U.S. Web users watched online video content in September, with a total of 39.8 billion videos viewed.
MetroPCS, the fifth largest carrier in the U.S., has turned into the front runner for AT&T, T-Mobile assets including spectrum and subscribers.
According to multiple 
Despite a two-week union strike from 40,000 of its workers, Verizon had a strong earnings quarter, mainly thanks to brisk sales of 
Stanley "MC Hammer" Burrell has announced the launch of his own search engine, dubbed WireDoo.
Ultraviolet appears to be a fail, for now.
RW Baird analyst Colin Sebastian has said today that he expects the PlayStation 4 to launch before the Xbox Next.
This has been a rumor since Wednesday but now appears to be confirmed.
Earlier this week we reported that C Spire Wireless, a tiny carrier with just 1 million subscribers was set to become the fourth provider in the U.S. to get the 
Google Music, the cloud locker that is set to expand into a fully fledged music download service in the coming weeks, could be coming with a twist, 
According to 
Last week, Rockstar announced that as a 10-year-anniversary treat, the developer would be re-releasing GTA III for 
Google has confirmed.
According to a note from research firm StatCounter, 
According to 
Despite shaky earnings, Groupon is looking to sell shares in an IPO that would value the company at around $12 billion.
Amazon has announced the expansion of their content deal with PBS, adding classic series like Sesame Street and Frontline.
Speaking at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco this week, 
Netflix has announced today that they have added 
Much to the chagrin of T-Mobile users, the fourth carrier in the U.S. to have the 
Celina Aarons was shocked, to say the least, when her last cellphone bill topped $200,000.
Although 
Catcher Technology, the Taiwanese manufacturer, has shutdown one factory in eastern China this week due to "strange odors" coming from the plant.
According to 
After just four months, Google+ has reached 40 million users.
According to 
The EC is preparing to invest about 9.2 billion euro into broadband infrastructure as the Commission wants faster Internet speeds across the European Union.
According to 
New voluntary industry standards will force carrier to send customers who want them real-time alerts if they are near their monthly voice, data or text messaging limits.
According to new StatCouter figures, it took two years but Windows 7 has surpassed its older brother XP in market share.
EMI Group, the fourth largest record label, is seeing underwhelming bids, say 
Kodak has confirmed today that the company has licensed some of its vast patent portfolio to IMAX, in an effort to stave off bankruptcy and stay viable.
According to different 
Amazon has brought back their popular 1 cent Verizon smartphone promotion, and you have until Monday to get in on it.
Google's CEO Larry Page, after announcing quarterly earnings on Thursday afternoon, had some choice words for the company's upcoming 
Since its inception, users of the popular Google Voice service have requested the addition of MMS support.
BBC Worldwide has announced the launch of the global BBC iPlayer App for more countries this week, starting with Finland, Sweden and Denmark.
After delaying the launch party of the Nexus Prime (and 
The CyanogenMod team has ported 
The Verge's Joshua Topolsky has posted a note today about Siri's sense of humor.
After an epic global three-day fail, RIM has confirmed that all BlackBerry services are back up and running.
The iPhone Dev Team have now released the updated beta of redsn0w, the popular tethered jailbreak solution for 
According to the Yonhap news agency, 
After being hit with outages in Europe, Asia and Africa over the past few days, the BlackBerry outages have now hit home, with Canadian and U.S. users losing access to their email and messaging, as well.
Smartphone maker 
Zynga, the social gaming giant, has launched 10 new products today, their biggest push ever as the company competes to control the market.
Roku has unveiled a new $50 
Sling Media has announced the launch of a SlingPlayer that is optimized for 
T-Mobile has 
Last week, Google and 
Last month, 
According to new references found in the 
Following DC Entertainment's exclusive deal to bring graphic novels to the upcoming Kindle Fire, rival Barnes & Nobles has now removed 100 graphic novels from its brick-and-mortar stores.
Windows Phone boss Andy Lees has said today that dual-core, LTE-supporting Windows Phone 7 devices are coming soon, as the company pushes its way back into smartphone relevancy.
Later this month, 
Peter Moore, Electronic Arts' (EA) COO, has said today that the company loves the 
Netflix has announced this weekend that they have signed a new licensing agreement to stream AMC's hit zombie show "The Walking Dead."
According to 
Hulu CEO Jason Killar has noted today that premium subscription service Hulu Plus will soon amount to over half of the company's revenue.
It appears that movie 
AT&T has revealed that 200,000 
Although unconfirmed by the military, 
According to the latest poll from Harris Interactive, 15 percent of Americans currently own an e-reader while at least another 15 percent want to purchase one in the near future (six months).
According to 
111 men and women were arrested tonight for their part in a massive identity theft ring.
According to new figures by 
Swype, the popular smartphone input technology, has been acquired today for $102.5 million by Nuance.
While 
Thanks to its 
Although it won't hit retailers until later this year, the 
Popular music 
Kapil Sibal, India's telecommunications minister has said today that the government will sell 100,000 tablets at 1,100 rupees ($22 USD) in an effort to boost computer literacy.
According to the latest issue of Xbox World magazine, developers Rare, Lionhead and Turn 10 are already prototyping new games for the "Xbox 720," or whatever the console will eventually be named.
Although it is likely a joke by the producers of the movie, or possibly even 
Microsoft has announced today that it will shut down its Zune line of media devices.
Just 30 minutes from Apple's keynote address and it seems that the company's Japanese site has leaked pictures of the iPhone 4s.
A video that shows off the upcoming Xbox Live fall 
Just like its rivals, the Kindle Touch 3G will not give full access to 3G networks, limiting the device to shopping in the online Kindle Store and browsing Wikipedia.
The Battlefield 3 limited beta has been hacked, with gamers now able to play all game modes, including the 128-player simultaneous Paris map.
Wal-Mart and T-mobile have jointly announced the launch of a new no-contract phone plan for users that need Internet and texting more than minutes.
According to a survey conducted by Games comparison and marketplace site Playr2.com, 51 percent of gamers don't care for 3D consoles.
Google has added a helicopter 3D view of the route to their popular Maps 
China Unicom says Apple's upcoming iPhone 5 will have support for the HSPA+ 21Mbps network, advertised as 4G although not technically 4G.
According to the latest research report from 
The popular mobile video chat app Tango is now making its way desktop PCs.
Epic Game's blockbuster title 
According to multiple sources, Alibaba CEO Jack Ma is "very interested" in buying Yahoo.
Earlier this year, 
According to a recent disclosure, 
According to a report in the British papers, Mark Bradford, a father of three, was playing a round of 
Best Buy has dropped the price of the 
