SanDisk has announced the launch of the Sansa Clip+ MP3 player, which uses a microSD slot for added memory.

The player will work with SanDisk's slotRadio and slotMusic cards, which are cards purchased from retailers with preloaded music on them. You can of course add your own music to a microSD card and play it back.

"We made a great product -- the Sansa Clip -- even better," said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. "This small player packs big features, including a new microSD memory card slot that gives music lovers the ability to listen to thousands of additional songs in seconds. It's the perfect player for travelers, busy moms, fitness buffs or anyone looking to enjoy music without the hassle of loading songs from their computer or updating playlists."

The company also says the player is the first Windows 7 certified MP3 player.

The player should be available in multiple colorways, and available at Best Buy on August 31st. 2GB model will sell for $39.99, 4GB will sell for $49.99, and 8GB for $69.99 USD.

Fox will begin experimenting using Twitter to spice up their re-runs, beginning with the shows Fringe and Glee.

The episodes will add Twitter commentary along the bottom of the screen, most from the cast and the producers, but some moderated Tweets from regular fans as well.

The Tweets will come from the FRINGEonFOX and GLEEonFOX Twitter accounts, and cast members and producers will be tweeting live, as the episodes air.

The move marks the first time a major TV network will use Twitter during a prime time broadcast.

LG Electronics has announced that its first AMOLED flat screen TV will be soon available in Korea and rest of the world following next year. LG first revealed the 15 inch AMOLED display in January 2009 during the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas and was supposed to arrive in stores this summer.

Unfortunately LG has yet to release the full details about the device but according to the press photos it should feature at least one HDMI and one USB port. The display measures only 3,2 mm in depth and the vertical viewing angle is adjustable. No word yet on whether the display has an integrated digital tuner.

The display rivals Sony's current AMOLED display known as XEL-1 and is estimated to match the price of it as well. The 11 inch XEL-1 currently retails for around $2,500.

The display will be showcased at IFA 2009 show which launches this Friday in Berlin. According to some rumors Sony will step up in Berlin and show the next generation of its AMOLED displays with a bigger (rumors have it at 21 or 27 inch) XEL-2. LG is going to show off an even bigger 40 inch AMOLED TV in the future as well. Philips, Samsung, Pioneer, anyone, got a 52 incher?

According to industry sources, the DirecTV Group is currently in talks with both TBS and TNT about offering their TV content online.

If the deal goes through, satellite subscribers would be able to watch the cable content on their PCs or TVs via the Internet, on demand.

The deal has not been made of yet, and is still in negotiations, say the anonymous sources, via Yahoo Tech.

Just recently, Time Warner Cable announced it had deals with 12 cable networks to have their content on the Internet.

The 12 networks are TBS, TNT and HBO; CBS Corp.'s CBS network; Syfy from General Electric Co.'s NBC Universal; BBC America, Cablevision Systems Corp.'s AMC, WE tv, IFC, Sundance, Discovery Communications LLC's Discovery and the Smithsonian Channel.

According to John Koller, Sony's Director of Hardware Marketing, the company has made the PSP Go battery non-replaceable in an effort to prevent piracy that has plagued earlier models, most notably the 1000 and 2000 models.

Using the infamous Pandora's Battery, users of past PSP models could easily modify official PSP firmware and therefore play pirated games at their leisure. Sony wanted to avoid the same with the Go.

"We've had a lot of success with the 3000," Koller added via PSInsider. "You won't be able to rip your games and play them on the system, the firmware precludes that. There's no external battery, so there's a number of protections put into place on the system."

Argentina has passed over European and American standards for High-definition television broadcasts, and followed Brazil in opting to adopt the ISDB-T standard for HDTV in the country.

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner made the announcement of its decision to follow Brazil's lead in the region in a highly-competitive market for HDTV broadcasts at a South American summit.

Kirchner ratified a memorandum between the governments of both Argentina and of Japan to introduce the Japanese ISDB-T standard in the country to co-operate together in the sector. Kirchner also signed a cooperation accord on HDTV with Brazil.

Apple France's financial director, Michel Coulomb, met with France's Secretary of State for Trade, Herve Novelli, on Friday to reassure the French government of the iPhone's safety following a burst of media reports about the product in recent weeks. The company stated that reports of iPhones suddenly cracking, and a report about an iPhone exploding, were not due to a defect, but improper handling by users.

Coulomb said that no cases of the iPhone's battery overheating have been detected, and that iPhones with broken screens were damaged by excessive external pressure on the device. Novelli more or less agreed that the explosions didn't appear to be caused by the batteries, and said that non-Apple experts in the United States were examining three problematic iPhones sent from France.

One iPhone user, Frank Benoiton, disagrees with the claim that the screen damage is caused by users. His wife has an iPhone, which suffered a cracked screen recently. "It was not dropped and experienced no unusual shock," he said. He appealed to Orange France to fix the device, but they told him to contact Apple. The iPhone maker initially told him that the screen was broken by a user and so nothing would be done on their part - but then days later reversed its decision and said the phone would be replaced free of charge.

Film Fresh has partnered with DivX Inc. and major movie studios to offer a download-to-own service that sells downloads in the DivX format. Users will be able to download content provided by Warner, Lionsgate, Sony Pictures and Paramount from the street release date and play them on any DivX-enabled devices.

This is the first DivX service of its kind to be available to users in the United States. DivX Inc. already has a download-to-own store in France with Warner Bros. and expects to open a store in other European countries. The new U.S. service is advertised as allowing users to download movies directly from the web, transfer them to USB or to DVD.

The DVD Player option does not appear to be what it seems however. On the Film Fresh website, it gives an option for playback on a "DVD Player", but further reading shows that it requires a "DivX-Certified" device - a conversion from DivX to DVD-Video for these downloads is not likely to be allowed, rather you likely need a DVD player that can play DMF content.

YouTube currently offers a revenue-sharing "partner program" to notable video creators on its website. Launched over a year ago, the Partner Program has vague terms on which a user can be accepted, and currently has several thousand partners. Partners have the opportunity to place ads against their videos, and take the majority of the ad revenue as the content creator.

However, some users often post their own video creations and watch them go "viral". The view count of such videos might be much higher than the average viewing of a user in the Partner Program. In order to expand the program from thousands of users to tens of thousands of users, YouTube will now monitor videos in rising popularity, and at a certain point, e-mail its creator and offer a revenue sharing option to place ads.

The offer won't give all the benefits received by a current Partner, but the revenue sharing is kept the same. According to YouTube spokesman Aaron Zamost, advertisers have been requesting such a feature for some time now, as many thousands of very popular videos that are composed of original content are not tapped for their advertising potential.

Channel 4 has announced that it plans to broadcast 3D television programmes in the UK during the Autumn, beating heavyweight Sky which has already carried out some 3D tests including a live concert by Keane. Channel 4 will broadcast its 3D content using ColorCode, which will provide a normal picture for the naked eye, and a 3D effect with the use of appropriate 3D glasses.

The network said that 3D glasses which can be used to view the programmes will be distributed through the Sainsbury's retail chain. One of the first shows that will be broadcast in 3D will be a show with illusionist Derren Brown, as well as a combination of clips and documentaries in a collection dubbed "The Greatest Ever 3D Moments".

Sky Digital also has plans to commence 3D programmes broadcasting, hoping to make it available to consumers before Christmas.

UK ISP TalkTalk has said that recommendations from the UK Government on ways to solve the Internet piracy problem - which include disconnecting customers who are deemed "repeat offenders" - likely breach fundamental rights. Additionally, provider Virgin Media commented that it is persuasion and not coercion that is the key to cracking down on the estimated 6 million file sharers in the UK.

"This is best done by making sure there are legal alternatives and educating people, writing letters to alleged file-sharers and, if necessary, taking them to court," TalkTalk's director of regulation Andrew Heaney told BBC News, adding that the company is determined as anyone to crack down on illegal activity on its network.

"Disconnecting alleged offenders will be futile given that it is relatively easy for determined file-sharers to mask their identity or their activity to avoid detection," he added. A Virgin Media spokeswoman said the company was concerned that a "heavy-handed, punitive regime will simply alienate consumers," and warnings were also raised about the possible methods of identifying a user by IP address, which might affect users who share an Internet connection.

Kotaku is reporting that a 250GB 'Super' Xbox 360 Elite is possibly on the way, and two retail leaks seem to confirm the fact.

The first ad, from the German Amazon, lists a 250 GB Xbox 360 Elite bundled with Forza Motorsport 3 and 2 wireless controllers for €279.99, about $400 USD.

The second ad, from the South African retailer BT Games, shows the so-called "Super" Elite for R4699, or about $600 USD. The package also includes 2 wireless controllers and a 250GB HDD.

Kotaku got a response from Microsoft as well, who said "We've made no such announcement," on any 250GB Super Elite console, which is a strange move away from the normal "We don't comment on rumors and speculation."

For the week ended August 24th, console sales lagged in Japan again, with the PlayStation 3 seeing the largest drop, 65 percent week-on-week, to 2,052 units sold.

The drop has been attributed to the newly announced Slim PS3 model, which is expected to have strong sales at launch on September 1st.

The DSi and DS Lite led the pack with a combined 65,313 units sold, a 32 percent decline week-on-week.

The Wii saw a 43 percent drop to 26,972 units and the PSP saw a similar drop. The Xbox 360 held up the best among all the consoles, seeing a 2 percent drop to 8979 units sold.

Blockbuster along with partner NCR, is expanding its Blockbuster Express DVD rental kiosks to Big Y grocery stores in the states of Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The kiosks should be in all 57 Big Y locations by September 3rd, says the companies.

NCR currently has over 400 Blockbuster Express machines, in Publix and other grocery stores. Just like rival Redbox, the Blockbuster kiosks rent DVDs for $1 USD a night.

Although it is unclear why, Best Buy has been given a one month exclusive head start for the Universal Blu-ray films Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz.

The two titles are currently available at the retail chain, and Universal says they won't be available anywhere else until September 22nd.

Besy Buy has long been considered the top retailer for Blu-ray films and both films are expected to sell well.

It also appears that Best Buy has been given an exclusive run with the Anchor Bay Entertainment’s Blu-ray Grace which will become available elsewhere on September 15th.

Nintendo has announced the hiring of ex-Warner Bros’ anti-piracy director Neil Boyd, in an effort to put more pressure on retailers who sell DS piracy equipment such as R4 flash carts.

Those that continue to sell the piracy hardware will risk "damaging their relationship" with Nintendo, says MCV.

Boyd is also asking UK ISPs to put a stop to consumers that they know are illegally downloading games. Boyd will work directly for Nintendo’s senior global director for anti-piracy Jodi Daugherty.

“The four key areas in our fight are legal enforcement, consumer awareness, technology and lobbying,” notes Boyd. “Without all those coming together, we won’t solve piracy.”

Boyd warned UK retailers that Nintendo now has “more eyes and ears” on the street looking out for "DS piracy enablers" and says the company is willing to sending cease and desist letters to all who keep selling the devices.

Daugherty also added: “[Stocking these games] damages your sales, and it’s going to damage your relationship with us. We have no problem pursuing customers that continue to take steps to hurt the company.”

According to SCEA senior vice president of marketing Peter Dille, the company is prepared to change the marketing focus of the PlayStation 3 console, focusing more on the console's movie downloading and Blu-ray capabilities.

Dille says the company is looking to "reposition the hardware" to attract new buyers in the family market.

"We have been a game company for years and we would never walk away from that, but research confirmed there is a larger proposition under our nose," added Dille, via the LATimes. "We wanted to reposition as a total entertainment solution. We felt like we can really own entertainment."

Of course the ads will not forget that the console is first and foremost a gaming system, but the "new ad campaign will be aimed at moms and families as well."

One of the new ads calls the system "the greatest gaming, Blu-ray playing, move downloading system around," while a teenager complains that is grandmother is hogging the PS3 to watch movies and not letting him play games.

Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) stockholders have approved the company's decision to purchase the torrent tracker The Pirate Bay today, a non-surprising event given the fact that CEO Hans Pandeya owns the majority of the shares.

The buy price is 60 million Swedish kronor ($8.2 million USD) but questions still linger as to where the money will come from, and whether the stock will be delisted if the acquisition does go through. Trading in the company's shares have been halted since August 21st. The stock exchange recently said that "GGF lacks the ability to inform its stockholders in a correct, relevant and credible way" as to the acquisition and therefore "cannot be allowed to be traded."

Pandeya says the financing for the deal is secure however, although a few of the original investors did leave the venture to avoid all the media attention.

There is also questions as to whether the new legal Pirate Bay can actually work. Let's see if the acquisition goes smoothly first.

China Unicom has announced officially that the iPhone is headed to China, sometime in the Q4 of this year.

The launch will mark the first time the smartphone has reached the Asian nation after years of negotiations.

China has about 690 million mobile subscribers total and Unicom has about 141 million subscribers.

There are some notable differences from the Unicom deal compared to other iPhone deals however. Unicom must sell the phone for three years and will not share any revenue with Apple. The phones will be bought at wholesale prices and resold to consumers with a subsidy by Unicom to lower prices.

Wi-Fi is stripped from the Chinese iPhone, per government ruling. The phone should work with Unicom's new 3G network.

A man in Sweden has been arrested this week over alleged piracy, after 10,000 pirated films were found on a server in his cellar.

Police in Västerås were following a tip from the Swedish Anti-Piracy Agency Antipiratbyrån (APB) and raided the man's house.

The arrested man is believed to be a member of a file sharing release group or a warez site uploader, but there are no other suspects as of yet.

"We shall have to await the results of the technical investigation. As the case in question concerns a server there could be other file sharers either here in Sweden or abroad, it is too early to tell," district chief Fredrik Inglad added, via TheLocal..

The APB says the server had over 90 TB of copyrighted materials.

"We regard the man to be one of the leading figures behind the 'warez scene' syndicate which is responsible for all pirate copying. The police operation will help to stem the flow of pirated material onto the internet," added Henrik Pontén, an ABP lawyer.

Earlier this month, software giant Microsoft was shocked when they lost a patent dispute to i4i and were told that the word processing application Word would be blocked from sales starting in October.

Microsoft has appealed the decision and today has gotten some backup support from the large computer manufacturers (and big Microsoft customers) HP and Dell.

The companies asked the judge in the case to reconsider the injunction, or at least delay it by 120 days.

"The District Court's injunction of Microsoft Word will have an impact far beyond Microsoft," said the Dell and HP brief. "Microsoft Word is ubiquitous among word processing software and is included on [redacted] computers sold by Dell."

The full statement also mapped out how Dell would be hurt severely monetarily and would be forced to "restructure its products."

Apple has approved the Spotify application today, meaning the service will be hitting the App Store soon.

European users must pay a 10 euro monthly subscription and in return receive unlimited streaming of over 8 million songs via Wi-Fi or 3G for iPhone users.

The app took about a month to hit approval although Apple normally takes 2 weeks for "95 percent" of the apps, sparking some criticism that the company was not allowing the app because it might hurt iTunes sales.

The Canadian mobile phone carrier Bell Canada has announced today they have become the second provider in the world to offer the Palm Pre smartphone.

Until today, the phone had only been available via Sprint in the United States, and was launched two months ago.

The 3G capable phone has a 3.1-inch touchscreen with 480x320 resolution and a slider design which hides a full QWERTY keyboard. More notably, the phone uses Palm's own WebOS Linux-based operating system, which offers multitasking for applications and "Synergy" for contacts integration.

The prices however are nowhere near as good as they are in the United States. To buy the phone without contract will cost $600 CAD (about $549 USD) or you can buy it with a 3-year contract for $200 CAD ($183 USD) with a mandatory $45 CAD a month data plan that only offers a measly 500MB of data.

After weeks of leaked catalog ads unofficially showed off the price cut, Microsoft has officially dropped the price of the Xbox 360 Elite today, with the console set to sell for $299 USD beginning tomorrow morning, in the United States.

The Pro model, which features a smaller HDD, will drop to $249.99, and seems to be on the way out, in favor of the Arcade and Elite models.

“With the holiday season right around the corner, it’s already time to start looking for entertainment and gifts that everyone will enjoy,” added Shane Kim, corporate vice president of strategy and business development for the Interactive Entertainment Business at Microsoft Corp. “If you’re looking for deep experiences that don’t require deep pockets, now is the time to purchase an Xbox 360. We’ve got the best games, a vast library of TV shows and movies, new music experiences, more ways to connect friends and family, and so much more on the horizon including ‘Project Natal’ — no controller required.”

Review: ZapMyTV alpha

Nokia has today announced the highly anticipated N900 (aka Rover, RX-51) Maemo 5 handset. The mobile computer is packed with a 3,5 inch 800x480 resistive touchscreen, 600MHz ARM Cortex-A8 processor, OpenGL ES 2.0 graphics accelerator, 32GB of flash memory, WiFi, A-GPS, 3,5mm AV connector, 5 megapixel camera with dual LED flash, FM transmitter and quad band GSM/EDGE and WCDMA at 900/1700/2100MHz -- yes, it's a phone too!

The press release boldly states that the device is "designed for computer-grade performance in a compact size" with the help of Linux-based Maemo 5 OS, browser based on Mozilla technology, Adobe Flash 9.4 support and last but definitely not least 1 gigabyte of application memory (256MB RAM and 768MB virtual memory).

The phone/mobile computer/internet tablet/superman will be showcased next week at Nokia World and will go on sale in selected markets in October 2009 with an estimated retail price of 500 euros before sales taxes.

Nokia Conversations has kindly released couple of videos that give a nice little sneak preview what is the company's first Maemo-based phone.

A Dutch judge has today killed the large torrent tracker Mininova, telling the site to either delete all copyrighted content from the tracker, or pay a €5 million penalty.

The site had been charged with "contributory copyright infringement," by the Dutch anti-piracy agency BREIN, as the site did no direct copyright infringement.

Mininova notably removed links if copyright holders flagged them, but as with all trackers, when one went down, five would take its place, making the whole situation redundant.

The new court decision says Mininova was profiting from "inciting copyright infringement" and made over €1 million in 2007 on ad sales. Estimates have said about 90 percent of Mininova content is infringing.

The site must now "adopt proactive filtering" of copyrighted content or face a large fine.

According to an "insider" who posted completely accurate info about the Slim PS3 months before its official release, a PSP-4000 is coming soon, one that will still have the UMD drive, unlike the PSP Go which has it removed.

The insider, who allegedly works in Sony's PS3 hardware department, was correct on the details of the Slim PS3 and PS3 firmware 3.0 and says the 4000 will be out "sooner than you realize" and that Sony will begin phasing out the 3000 very soon.

Besides noting that it will include a UMD drive, the source says not much else, and says the 4000 will be like the Slim PS3, "nothing to actually get excited about."

In an interview this week, Sony Computer Entertainment Europe president Andrew House has said the company expects a "a huge amount of growth for the [console] business" following the recent PS3 price cut and the release of the Slim PS3.

"I think what I've heard anecdotally is that this is the point people were waiting for - a redesigned model and, in Euros, a significant price reduction," House says, via GI.biz. "That's people's cue to jump into the business."

"I think as well that the pleasing thing when I look at the European landscape is that this is coming on what was already pretty robust sales, year-on-year. Even at the higher price point our PS3 numbers have been bang on track through this year, against a challenging economic environment."

"So I think we feel this can only mean a huge amount of growth for the business, particularly in the next three months. It's an exciting time, and it's great for us to be able to continue to deliver on the Sony promise - evolving, changing and hopefully delivering a better value proposition to the consumer," he concluded.

For the third time now in just a matter of weeks, a leaked catalog ad is showing the Xbox 360 Elite set for a price cut to $299 USD.

The latest ad, from Target and posted by Engadget, also shows a price drop on the 60GB Pro model that should lead the model to its ultimate demise.

Expected price cut date is August 30th.

In other news however, retailers in the UK will be soon raising the price of the Arcade Xbox 360 to GBP 159.99 beginning on September 1st due to the weakening USD.



Via Kotaku:

According to Sony America President Kaz Hirai, the company is set to take a loss on every Slim PS3 unit sold.

The console was launched last week after months of speculation, and will hit on September 1st with a pricetag of $299 USD/ 299 EU/ £249 / 29,980 YEN.

"If you're just talking about the hardware alone, the quick answer is yes," Hirai added, via the Times Online.

He did note afterwards however: "That makes good headlines, but I don't actually know that that's the true nature of the business that we're all in, whether it's PlayStation, Xbox or the Wii. I think the better indicator is to look at the business as a whole platform, to ask: are you profitable in terms of the hardware, software and peripherals. And the answer to that question is yes on a gross profit level since the last fiscal year."

Yesterday, the large public torrent tracker The Pirate Bay was taken down by Swedish police, and many users believed it was the end of the site, for good.

Today however, TPB admins have re-opened the site using a new ISP, with the tracker itself expected to be back up soon as well.

In re-opening the site, the Pirate Bay team has also posted a statement that uses one of Winston Churchill's famous World War II speeches. It may be over the top, but their message is pretty clear.

The speech:

"We have, ourselves, full confidence that if all do their duty, if nothing is neglected, and if the best arrangements are made, as they are being made, we shall prove ourselves once more able to defend our Internets, to ride out the storm of war, and to outlive the menace of tyranny, if necessary for years, if necessary alone.

Even though large parts of Internets and many old and famous trackers have fallen or may fall into the grip of the Ifpi and all the odious apparatus of MPAA rule, we shall not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the ef-nets and darknets, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Internets, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the baywords.org, we shall fight on the /. and on the digg, we shall fight in the courts; we shall never surrender, and if, which I do not for a moment believe, the Internets or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the Anon Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in Cerf’s good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Redbox has launched a new site today, SaveLowCostDVDs.com, in an effort to make public the current lawsuits the company has against Universal Studios Home Entertainment, 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment, and Warner Home Video.

The site shows off all related news stories to the suits, and also shows videos of Redbox president Mitch Lowe.

Redbox currently has 18,000 kiosks, and rents movies out for $1 USD per night. Studios like Universal, Fox, and Warner have pulled their new releases from the kiosks until one month after release date.

The Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) has accused the computer manufacturer Dell of 'dishonest business practices' this week, claiming that the company does not always honor its much advertised 'next-day parts and labor warranty.'

CREW has created a new website as well with the banner posted below, and has asked any user that has been wronged by Dell to post any similar issues. The group has also formally complained to the DC Attorney General.

The group says that the manufacturer is advertising false claims and specifically notes a recent $3.35 million settlement in January over similar issues.

“According to its website, ‘Dell puts you back to work fast.’ But for many customers, including me, that simply is not true. If Dell won’t honor its warranties, CREW, with help from the public, will hold Dell accountable. When a consumer pays for next day service, she should receive next day service,” says CREW executive director Melanie Sloan.

“If people in 34 states had enough problems with Dell for state attorneys general to step in, and Dell still refused to honor my warranty after the company settled that matter, then other people likely are having problems with Dell right now. Honoring a warranty is a matter of ethics and at CREW, we take action when confronted with unethical conduct. We hope D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles will share our concern that Dell is engaged in deceptive marketing practices by failing to honor its warranties and launch an immediate investigation.”

RealNetworks has submitted their Rhapsody music subscription service to the Apple App Store this week, and is currently waiting on approval.

The app will allow users to stream unlimited music on their iPhone/iPod Touch for $14.99 a month. The app itself will be free as long as you have a Rhapsody To Go account.

The bigger question however is whether Apple will accept the application, being that it will possibly compete against Apple's iTunes platform.

Rhapsody offers over 8 million songs.

Rhapsody on iPhone from Rhapsody on Vimeo.

Nokia has announced the launch of their first netbook today, the Nokia Booklet 3G which boasts some pretty powerful specs.

“A growing number of people want the computing power of a PC with the full benefits of mobility,” adds Kai Oistamo, Nokia’s Executive Vice President for Devices. “We are in the business of connecting people and the Nokia Booklet 3G is a natural evolution for us. Nokia has a long and rich heritage in mobility and with the outstanding battery life, premium design and all day, always on connectivity, we will create something quite compelling. In doing so we will make the personal computer more social, more helpful and more personal.”

The netbook also promises a strong integration with Ovi, including Ovi Maps, Music Store and Ovi Cloud Storage. Easy sync to Nokia devices is also in the cards.

The full specs:

* Intel Atom Chipset (Z530 running at 1.6 Ghz). No fan, which means near silent running.

Apple and Amazon Video On Demand have started rival promotions this week on digital movie and TV downloads, offering movies for under $5 USD and offering rentals for .99.

New digital films will also cost $14.99 at Amazon now, a discount from their previous $16.99 price tag, and occasionally cheaper than their physical media counterparts.

As an example, both sites have slashed the price of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a May release, to $9.99 USD, while the DVD sells for $15 and the Blu-ray for $25.

Most competitors, such as CinemaNow and VUDU, offer new releases for over $17 USD.

FutureSource analyst David Sidebottom adds that Amazon has been trying to steal iTunes market share in the music market, with aggressive pricing. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they did the same on the video side."

The best deals, however, are on TV shows, with over 9 full seasons of popular shows available for under $5 USD.

A New York appeals court has ruled in favor of Yahoo this weekend, claiming its Launchcast Internet radio service is not required to pay royalties to copyright holders for songs it plays. The losing party was Sony BMG Music.

The claim by Yahoo was that Launchcast did not give users enough controls to be considered "an interactive service," which would require the royalty fees to be paid.

The judges added that Yahoo would only have to pay licensing fees to SoundExchange, the nonprofit organization that collects royalties for musicians.

"It's an immediate loss for the recording industry," notes Rey Sanchez, chairman of the department of music, media and industry at the University of Miami and a voting member of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, via Reuters.

"If the service had been deemed interactive, Yahoo would have to negotiate fees with every record label to use their songs. Instead, it only has to pay licensing fees."

According to data from Chitika, Linux users vastly prefer the Google search engine over Bing.

The data was compiled from 163 million searches done between July 30th and August 16th.

Despite growing market share, Bing falls flat for Linux users, with Google taking almost 95 percent share. Yahoo is hardly any better.

For the second time this month, a leaked catalog picture shows that Microsoft is set to drop the price of the Xbox 360 Elite to $299 USD.

The first leak, from Meijer, was uploaded to Kotaku two weeks ago. The latest, through Engadget, shows a Wal-Mart flyer showing off the same price cut.

Expected cut date, August 30th.



Via Kotaku:

According to an interview with Arstechnica, Sony’s Director of hardware marketing John Koller has made it clear that PlayStation 3 backwards compatibility will not be coming back to the console, ever.

The original PS3 models supported PS2 games, using certain hardware, and European consoles supported the games via software emulation. Later versions, such as the 40GB model in North America, removed BWC.

Says Koller: "It's not coming back, so let me put that on the table...It's not as big as a purchase intent driver as you may be hearing," he says. "We've got such a substantial lineup of titles on the PS3; most people are buying the PS3 for PS3 games. They've buying it for PS3 games and Blu-ray movies."

"That won't be returning," he concludes.

The Nintendo DSi was once again at the top of Japanese hardware sales for the week ended August 16th, propping up an otherwise sluggish week.

95,957 units of the handheld were sold for the week, including 7921 older DS Lite consoles. The Nintendo Wii was in second place, moving 47,732 units. Following behind was the Sony PSP handheld, which saw a 15 percent increase in sales, to 39,882 units.

The biggest "winner" for the week was the Xbox 360 which saw a 70 percent increase in sales to 9162 units.

The PS3 lagged behind at 5944 units sold, but is expected to see a giant jump sales after the release of the Slim PS3 on September 1st.

Full chart, via GI.biz:

According to a new Piper Jaffray note this week, analyst Gene Munster says he expects Apple to eventually get into the HDTV market providing a full home entertainment system alongside the Apple TV media device.

Additionally, Munster says that a new, updated Apple TV is coming before Christmas, including DVR and a monthly sub to iTunes TV shows.

"We believe Apple is exploring a subscription-based offering for its TV content in iTunes," says Munster, via The Street. "Apple could leverage its deep library of content with many network and cable channel content owners to provide unlimited access to a sub-library of its TV shows for a standard monthly fee."

Adds Apple COO Tim Cook of the Apple TV:

"It is clear that the movie rental business has really helped Apple TV and there are more and more customers that want to try it," he says, noting that sales were up 300 percent year-on-year. "We're going to continue to invest in it, because we fundamentally believe there is something there for us in the future."

As for the HDTV, Munster expects a 2011 debut, and the completion of a full Apple home entertainment center.

According to a new TechCrunch article, Yahoo has begun advertising Internet Explorer all over its portal, telling Firefox users they could switch to the “new, safer Internet Explorer 8″.

Last year, when Yahoo was not in cooperation with Microsoft the company had quite a different banner, telling users to switch to the “NEW safer, faster Firefox 3.″

Pictures via TC:

According to a new Bernstein Research note, the research team believes Apple will sell over 80 million iPhones in 2012, a giant increase from current sales.

For 2008, the company shipped almost 14 million iPhones and expects to sell over 30 million in 2009. The research company sets expectations at 50 million for fiscal 2011 as well.

The largest growth factor is the iPhone's expansion to new carriers, most notably Verizon in the US in 2011, when their exclusivity deal with AT&T runs out.

In a different note, RBC Capital Markets iPhone shipments will increase to over 82 million by 2012, enough to take an almost 20 percent market share of the smartphone market.

"Despite the iPhone’s introduction more than two years ago, competitors continue to lag iPhone’s sleek touchscreen experience, robust third-party applications platform, and tight multimedia integration," Mike Abramsky of RBC says, via Apple Insider. "Off the strength of its brand, innovation, and customer loyalty, Apple is expected to retain its premium carrier subsidy versus competitors, sustaining above-peer margins for its smartphones. We believe Apple will sustain its lead in content, games, and apps, which we expect to expand to include mobile commerce, user-generated content, advanced gaming, etc."

A Chinese court has sentenced four pirates to jailtime and given the site a 11 million yuan ($1.6 million USD) fine for their part in distributing pirated software, including Windows XP and Office.

The BSA applauded the decision, calling it the first successful large scale online piracy conviction in the nation.

Hong Lei and Sun Xiansheng, who ran the website, received three and a half years each, as well as 1 million yuan ($146,000) fines. Two other pirates received two year prison sentences as well as 100,000 yuan ($14,600) fines.

The largest fine however, was given to the Chengdu Share Software Net Co., which ran the pirate's site. The company was fined 8.7 million yuan ($1.3 million) and had 3 million yuan ($439,000) of its revenue taken in forfeiture.

Over 10 million people downloaded software from the site in its few years of operation.

"The verdict of this case represents the end of China's largest online software piracy syndicate and marks a milestone in China's efforts to crack down on Internet piracy," added the BSA.

Roku, creators of the Roku Digital Video Player, have announced that they will be redesigning the interface of their set-top player so it works more like the Netflix interface via an Xbox 360.

Microsoft updated the Netflix Xbox Live interface last week with the release of the Dashboard update.

Says Roku spokesman Brian Jacquet, via VideoBusiness, "browse and add functions for ordering Netflix’s digital titles, similar to the new features on Xbox 360 will be integrated into Roku’s new navigation."

The Irish ISP Eircom will begin blocking traffic to the public torrent tracker The Pirate Bay on September 1st, doing what many other Irish ISPs have refused to.

Thanks to a settlement with the Big 4 record labels in January, Eircom already uses a three-strikes law for pirates who are repeat offenders. The deal also had a clause that stated access must be cut off to the Pirate Bay if requested.

Just this week, the ISP UPC said it would not comply with the label's request to block traffic to the Pirate Bay. “Should the rights holders proceed with their threat of legal action if UPC fails to block access to Pirate Bay, UPC has every intention of vigorously defending its position in court,” added a company spokesperson, via The Irish Times.

Justice Peter Charleton of the High Court issued the blocking order in July, added that the music being "stolen" is “by hard-working artists, some of whom indeed may be very wealthy, but some of whom may be trying to do their very best to making a living out of what they love”.

Amazon has warned U.S. buyers that there will be supply shortages of the Slim PS3 when it launches September 1st.

In response, the e-tailer says they will be limiting sales to one console per household.

"As you may know, the PlayStation 3 120 GB is in great demand, and there are shortages of this product across the US," says Amazon.

"In an effort to provide as many customers as possible with the opportunity to purchase PlayStation 3 120 GB, we are limiting the total number of PlayStation 3 120 GB units that can be purchased. As a result, each household may only purchase one PlayStation 3 120 GB unit."

Amazon UK made a similar statement yesterday, however they are allowing up to 5 consoles per household.

Panasonic has introduced the first in-car Blu-ray player today in Japan, dubbed the CY-BB1000D, which includes a 1280x720 resolution 7-inch screen that will playback Blu-ray films in 720p.

The player supports Bonus View features but not BD-Live as there is no active way to connect to the Internet.

The CY-BB1000D will hit Japan next month and will sell for about $1060 USD. There was no word on a NA or EU release.

Sony has told GI.biz today that the PSP Go will be finally headed to the UK on October 1st, launching with a retail price of GBP 224.99.

The handheld sells for $249 USD and EUR 249, which is what the the original "fat" version sold for in 2005, however the handheld is selling at a premium in the UK, where it originally sold for GBP 199.99.

Also beginning October 1st, and announced at GamesCom, Sony will be launching PSP Minis, small games (100MB and under), that looks like direct competition to Apple and iPhone App Store. Sony says their will be 50 titles available by the end of the year.

Additionally, the PSP will get a "Digital Reader" by December, that will allow users to read comic books on their handheld from Marvel.

Yesterday at the GamesCom event, Sony unveiled the long anticipated Slim PS3, noting the console would include a 120GB HDD and will launch on September 1st with a pricetag of $299 USD/ 299 EU/ £249 / 29,980 YEN.

The Slim will feature a 32 percent smaller and 36 percent lighter form factor and will also consume 34 percent less power. Notably, the Slim removes the otherOS ability (addition of Linux on partition) but adds Bravia Sync so users can control the PS3 via their Sony HDTV.

Today, PS3NEWS is reporting that a CECH-2000B Slim model has been filed with the FCC featuring a 250GB hard drive.

The article says the documents were filed by Sand Dollar Enterprise a company "represented by SCEA's General Council, Riley Russell."

Last week, Microsoft was handed the stunning decision that they had violated a patent pertaining to Extensible Markup Language (XML) and would be forced to stop selling Word, its flagship word processor, available as part of the Office suit that brings the company $3 billion in revenue every year.

The software giant has filed an appeal however, trying to stay the injunction claiming that if upheld, the injunction would cause "irreparable harm" to the company.

If the appeal does not work, Microsoft will have to cease sales of Word 2003 and 2007 within 60 days and pay $290 million USD to i4i who controls the patent.

"If left undisturbed, the district court's injunction will inflict irreparable harm on Microsoft by potentially keeping the centerpiece of its product line out of the market for months," added Microsoft.

Microsoft also added that the injunction would hurt much more than the company's bottom line, stating it would disrupt most retailer and hardware partners, such as Best Buy, HP, Dell and others.

In 2004, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN took down the once large ed2K link site ShareConnector, which had aided in finding files (or parts of files) on the eDonkey2000 network with software such as eMule.

The site came back in 2006 but in 2007, the admin Adi was taken to trial and acquitted of any complicity to criminal copyright infringement. After that, the site went down and now remains as a host for eDonkey and other tutorials.

Interestingly today however, Adi added a blog post saying that BREIN is back to appeal the 2007 case, and a court case is upcoming.

Says the post:

Recently, I got a letter from the Department of Justice, stating that they want a re-trial which they desperately lost back in July 24 2007.
I’m really surprised that they want another shot at trying to make us look as criminals. Nobody expected the DoJ to go for an appeal after an embarrassing defeat 2 years ago.

Redbox has filed an antitrust lawsuit against Warner Home Video over their recent decision to deny kiosk operators access to new releases until four weeks after they go on sale to the public. Redbox already has cases pending against Fox and Universal over the same issue.

In a statement, Redbox President Mitch Lowe said "Redbox will continue to offer our consumers access to all major new releases including Warner Home Video at our more than 15,000 locations nationwide."

Warner is reportedly requiring kiosk operators and DVD by mail services to agree to their profit sharing demands if they want to get movies at the same time as traditional rental outlets like Blockbuster.

This follows yesterday's decision by a federal judge allowing the suit against Universal to go forward, rejecting a motion to dismiss by Universal lawyers.

By contrast, Redbox recently came to an agreement over profit sharing with Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, ensuring that studio's movies will remain available in the biggest chain of rental kiosk's.

Last week we reported on the imminent launch of the Dell Android phone, the Mini3i. Today, the phone has gone live, with mobile163 getting pictures.

The specs:
* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE class 12
* Size: 68.6cc
* 103g grams weight
* Dimensions: 58 x 122 x 11.7mm
* Display: 3.5″ nHD 640×360 LCD, 18-bit, 262K colors
* OTA capable
* Microsoft Exchange support
* Google, AIM, Yahoo and MSN IM support
* 3 megapixel auto-focus, flash, 8x digital zoom camera with 30fps video shooting mode, built in photo editor
* USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
* A-GPS
* On-screen QWERTY keyboard, hardwriting recognition, multi touch UI
* MicroSD slot
* NO 3G OR WI-FI

Netscape Communications founder Marc Andreessen has launched a new web browser, dubbed RockMelt along with two former partners, Eric Vishria and Tim Howes.

Howes and Andreessen sold their company, Opsware Inc to Hewlett-Packard two years ago for $1.6 billion USD.

Not much else is known about the browser but it appears that it will be designed in some way to work directly with Facebook. Andreessen is a board member of the social networking site.

"There are all kinds of things that you would do differently if you are building a browser from scratch," added Andressen in a past interview with the NYTimes.

You can sign up for the mailing list here:

RockMelt.com

According to a GameInformer article, the Xbox 360 still has a high failure rate, of 54.2 percent, due to the dreaded RROD, e74, and other errors, a number much higher than its current console rivals.

The PlayStation 3 had a 10.6 percent failure rate and the Wii was even lower, at 6.8 percent.

The survey used 5000 readers, but the article does mention a few notes to go along with the numbers. The Xbox 360 is the mot used console of the three, with 40 percent of respondents saying they use it 3-5 hours per day compared to 37 percent for PS3 owners and under 20 percent for Wii users, meaning the numbers may be a bit skewed.

Additionally, those surveyed found Microsoft to have the most "unhelpful customer service," with consoles taking almost a month to be repaired or replaced, compared to 8 days for a PS3 or a Wii. 56 percent of respondents found Nintendo customer service "very helpful" compared to 51.1 percent for Sony and a measly 37.7 percent for Microsoft.

Blockbuster has announced that they will begin offering a service that allows users to watch movies via their Motorola handsets.

The rental company is stepping into mobile video for the first time, and has been struggling for years now, losing market share and customers to rivals such as Netflix and RedBox.

There was not too much details available on the plan however the company said it would be an expansion of the OnDemand movie download service that is currently available through set-top boxes.

There was no word on release date, file format, or price.

Kevin Lewis, Blockbuster's vice president for digital entertainment, did add however that the service would debut with "thousands of films" available.

Today at their press conference during the GamesCom 2009 event, Sony has announced the long hyped Slim PS3, along with across the board price cuts on current models, a PlayStation Network update and the addition of Firmware 3.0.

According to Joystiq, the PlayStation Network will be down tomorrow from noon to 2PM EST for "maintenance," conveniently timed as Sony is set to have a press conference at the GamesCom event.

While the service is down, PSP and PS3 gamers will not be able to play online or access the store.

Rumors have been floating around that the store is closed so Sony can release, unannounced, firmware 3.0 which could possibly bring software emulation for PS2 backwards compatibility.

GamesCom is the expected announcement date for long awaited PS3 price cuts.

A judge has ruled today that Matthew Miller of Delaware must pay $210,000 in damages and court costs for selling hundreds of counterfeit copies of popular software on the auction site iOffer.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) adds that the software includes Photoshop, Office and software from Autodesk. Miller would pirate copies of the software, burn them to DVDs, and sell them to customers for about $10 USD.

Miller was caught after he agreed to sell $11,900 worth of software to an undercover agent for $45 USD.

The fine is $195,000 in damages and another $15,000 in court costs and lawyer fess. Miller must also delete all "infringing" copies of the software in "his posession."

Jenny Blank, the BSA's senior director of legal affairs, added: "In the course of our efforts to stop software piracy, BSA and its member companies rarely take action against individuals. We prefer to educate and inform the public about the risks and consequences of using illegal software. But there are instances when the activities of individuals are both reprehensible and blatant, requiring the BSA and its members to act swiftly and definitively."

"This kind of piracy is arguably one of the most devious types of Internet-based piracy because it involves actual sales of unlicensed software to consumers," says Blank. "Consumers should be aware that the majority of these 'too-good-to-be-true' offers originate from unscrupulous vendors. Not only are the products and services offered by these individuals often shoddy, counterfeit or downright fraudulent, but the consumer may be tricked into giving away sensitive financial and identifying information. You may think you're saving money, but in the end, it could be far more costly."

According to a new study from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the average age of adult video gamers is now 35, and video gamers are also fatter, less healthy and more depressed than non-gamers.

The study used data from 500 adults in Washington aged 19-90. About 45 percent of the adults studied reported playing games. Washington was chosen because Seattle has the highest Internet usage level in the US.

The CDC team, says the BBC, studied the perception of "mood, personality, health status, physical and mental health, body mass index (BMI) and quality of life" of the gamers.

The study found that female video gamers were less healthy and were more depressed that non-gamers while male gamers had higher BMIs.

CDC's James B. Weaver added:

"Health risk factors, specifically a higher BMI and a larger number of poor mental-health days, differentiated adult video game players from non-gamers. Video game players also reported lower extraversion, consistent with research on adolescents that linked video-game playing to a sedentary lifestyle and overweight status."

Japanese porn producers have sued 10,000 South Korean Internet users this week over breach of copyright for their part in uploading copywritten adult films to sites and P2P networks.

The lawsuit was filed in Seoul and the Gyeonggi province however National Police Agency spokesmen refused comment.

"Police will look into the case to see whether there was any breach of the law before deciding whether to initiate criminal probes against them," added a police officer, off the record, via the AP.

The lawsuits claim the distribution of the porn is "very harmful to juveniles," and should be stopped.

"We selected about 10,000 user IDs that earned financial benefits from habitually uploading pornography on websites," added an unnamed official.

The porn producers are looking for financial damages.

The online retailers FNAC and Pixmania, of Portugal and Spain, have cut the price of their current 80GB PlayStation 3 stock by €100, down to €300, making a move that many expect Sony to officially announce next week.

Also anticipated alongside the price cuts is the release of a Slim PS3, which will cost about the same price and will include a 120GB HDD and slimmer design, and cooler processor.

PixMania PS3 Link

FNAC PS3 link bundle + Infamous

Thanks to the XM radio show Covino and Rich, the world now has video of what appears to be a third generation iPod Touch, which includes a camera and a microphone, two highly anticipated additions.

In proof of the authenticity, the hosts show a 2009 copyright and a chrome back which does not yet have any logos or legal notices.

View the video here:
Covino and Rich Apple iPod Touch third generation video proof

In a letter brief filed in the ongoing court battle between Apple and the "Mac clone maker" Psystar, Apple has accused Psystar of destroying valuable evidence. Psystar sells what it calls "Open Computers", and gives an option to have Mac OS X Leopard pre-installed on a new system. Apple guards its operating system software for use with its computers only, and it sued Psystar, alleging that it breached the DMCA and the Max OS X license.

Apple claims that in order for Psystar's systems to have been made Mac-compatible, Psystar had to circumvent technical elements of the software that prevents its unauthorized use. The company accused Psystar of improperly modifying or reverse engineering its software to enable it to run on these unauthorized systems - Psystar's "Open Computers".

"Defendant, Psystar Corporation, has destroyed relevant evidence that it was legally required to preserve. Specifically, Psystar has overwritten -- i.e., erased -- infringing versions of the software code used on computers sold to its customers," the letter reads. Apple says that Psystar has erased prior versions of its software. This discovery was made when the company deposed Rodolfo Pedraza, CEO of Psystar, in order to discover how the company was circumventing the "technological protection measures".

After registering as a legitimate political party in the United Kingdom, the UK Pirate Party received over 100 new members per hour, according to its leader. "It has exceeded all expectations. Put it this way, donations have been coming in so fast that PayPal were concerned we were a fraudulent site," said Andrew Peter Robinson, party leader.

He continued: "The party was born of the feeling at the last European elections that there was no one to vote for and a group of us were jealous of people in Sweden who could vote for the Pirate Party." The party intends to contest as many seats as funding and resources will allow and may even contest a by-election if one shows up before the general election.

However, Robinson is keeping a perspective on the reality of the Pirate Party's chances to gain any power. "We're not going to win any seats but we can get these issues discussed," he told The Register. As for the issues that the Party wants to get discussed, Robinson said the following: "The system as it is doesn't reward artists. Typical record contracts now grant 95 per cent of revenues to the record label, not the band. Reorganizing that would help make up for a lot of the shortfall from cutting the length of copyright."

The Nintendo Wii console has sold over 800,000 units in the United Kingdom since early January, according to data obtained by GamesIndustry.biz earlier this week. Some confusion had arisen from a GAME financial statement which would suggested that the Wii and DS performances had slowed considerably in the UK.

The newer Nintendo DSi model has sold 370,000 units in the UK since it emerged, giving it a faster rate of sale than the original DS and DS Lite in its first four months. Still going strong however, the Nintendo DS Lite has sold 680,000 units in the UK in 2009 so far.

In June we reported that small BitTorrent client uTorrent was far and away the most popular client and the numbers remain the same two months later, according to TorrentFreak.

BitComet continues to lose market share, which is easily eaten up by front runners uTorrent and Vuze.

The data comes from over 165,000 unique users and is collected by the Tribler team from Delft University of Technology.

The "other" category holds 20 different clients that failed to reach the 1 percent plateau. "Unknown" clients were unidentifiable by libTorrent and thus get their own category.

Transmission for Macs and Linux saw the biggest share gains, moving up 44 percent to almost 3 percent of total market share. Vuze saw strong gains as well.

The full chart from TF:

In just another confirmation of an upcoming, and highly anticipated price cut, a CAG user has taken a picture of an FYE poster that shows that the 80GB model of the PlayStation 3 will see a price drop to $299 USD and the 160GB model will drop to $399.

Sony is expected to announce the price cut at the Gamecon event next week, along with the probable release of a Slim model PS3.

Last September, Minnesota woman Jammie Thomas was convicted of sharing 24 unauthorized tracks via P2P and was told to pay the RIAA $220,000 in damages. Thomas was granted a retrial however, and the case went to verdict again in June.

Thomas was found to have "committed willful violation" of the copyrights on all 24 songs and the jury awarded the RIAA and the media companies $1.92 million USD, equivalent to $80,000 for each song.

Today, the U.S. Department of Justice has called the gigantic fine constitutional, and acceptable.

The legal brief, via Cnet, says: "Congress took into account the need to deter the millions of users of new media from infringing copyrights in an environment where many violators believe that they will go unnoticed."

Prosecutors, during the case, made sure to note that current intellectual property laws allow copyright holders to sue for up to $150,000 USD per work "stolen."

Yesterday we reported that China Unicom had made a large purchase of 5 million iPhone 3GS units, but today the carrier is denying the reports, calling the rumors "definitely not true."

China Unicom’s spokesman Yi Difei added that “talks between us and Apple have been going on for some time”, but no deal has been made as of yet, as some hurdles have not been cleared.

Apple spokeswoman in beijing Tiffany Yang also added that there was still no official word on the iPhone's launch in China.

We will keep you updated.

According to video game market analyst Michael Pachter, PlayStation 3 stock is dwindling in the UK and Japan, implying a new model (Slim PS3) is in the works as well as possible price cuts.

Speaking to VG247, Pachter noted that retail channels in both regions are "drying up" with orders being held until the end of the month.

"The retail commentary I’ve seen has come out of the UK. We heard Japanese retail a few weeks ago say they weren’t going to be getting any more PS3s after August 8, and now we’re starting to hear UK retail say they cannot re-order PS3s until month-end," added Pachter. "And that suggests there will be a model change."

Pachter also said the upcoming Gamecom should bring big news from Sony, the PS3 Slim, as well as a price cut on the current models.

"If Sony’s practice is the same as it was in the past, and the Slim is more of a redesign of the components to drive down cost, then I think we will get a price cut."

The UK retailer Argos has announced it has discontinued sales of the 60GB model of the Xbox 360, adding more fuel to the rumor that the model is being phased out and that the 120GB Elite model will be coming down in price to fill the price point at $299 USD or GBP 169.

"We are very sorry but Microsoft have discontinued this line," says the retailer's site.

Earlier this week, a leaked Meijer catalog revealed that in the United States at least, the Elite was coming down in price on August 30th.

The much anticipated price cut should occur at the same time as Sony's long rumored PlayStation 3 price cut and possible release of a Slim PS3.

Last week we reported that Dell was set to release an Android-based phone in China, and today BoyGeniusReport has the specs and an early, blurry pic.

The phone is "launch ready" and could launch as soon as next Monday.

The specs:

* Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE class 12
* Size: 68.6cc
* 103g grams weight
* Dimensions: 58 x 122 x 11.7mm
* Display: 3.5″ nHD 640×360 LCD, 18-bit, 262K colors
* OTA capable
* Microsoft Exchange support
* Google, AIM, Yahoo and MSN IM support
* 3 megapixel auto-focus, flash, 8x digital zoom camera with 30fps video shooting mode, built in photo editor
* USB 2.0, Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR
* A-GPS
* On-screen QWERTY keyboard, hardwriting recognition, multi touch UI
* MicroSD slot

Pic via BGR:

Apple and AT&T have been sued this week in Louisiana over alleged misrepresentation of MMS availability on the iPhone.

The class action suit says, according to TGDaily, that "both companies aggressively promoted the MMS features of iPhone OS 3.0 and the iPhone 3GS using advertising on TV, radio, newspapers, direct mailers, and on the Internet," although it was not really available.

There are so far over 10,000 people represented by the suit.

AT&T is added in the suit because plaintiffs allege that the carrier does not have cell towers that support MMS. As proof they point to the WWDC 2009 keynote where an Apple created slide does not show AT&T as a vendor that supports MMS.

It will be interesting to see where the suit goes, given that AT&T has noted that MMS support will be coming "by late summer."

Earlier this month, China Unicom and Apple finally came to an agreement to bring the popular smartphone, the iPhone, to China, albeit with Wi-Fi missing.

Today, showing they mean business, the Chinese carrier has ordered 5 million iPhone 3GS units, for about $1.46 billion USD. As a notable comparison, Apple sold just over 5 million iPhone units globally in the last quarter.

Says China Unicom GM of Customer Development Yu Zaonan, via BGR, the 3GS will sell for ¥2,400/$352 (16GB model) or ¥4,800/$704 (32GB model).

Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst from Sanford C Bernstein, expects Apple to make profit of ¥1100 for each unit sold.

A new study, conducted by Pear Analytics, has revealed that most of the Tweets written on Twitter are "pointless babble."

The study placed Tweets into six categories, pointless babble, conversational, pass-along value, spam, news and self-promotion and found that most Tweets fell into the first category.

"Mostly many people still perceive Twitter as just mindless babble of people telling you what they are doing minute-by-minute; as if you care they are eating a sandwich at the moment," said Ryan Kelly, a study researcher, via Channel Wire.

The study used 2000 English-language Tweets from Americans, taking in Tweets for 6 hours a day, for two weeks period.

The "pointless babble" category was over 44 percent, followed by "conversational" at 37.6 percent, "pass-along value" in third at 8.7 percent, "self-promotion" at 5.85 percent and finally "news" at 3.6 percent.

"With the new face of Twitter, it will be interesting to see if they take a heavier role in news, or continue to be a source for people to share their current activities that have little to do with everyone else," added Pear Analytics researchers. "We will be conducting this same study every quarter to identify other trends in usage."

Gartner has released their second quarter smartphone sales data this week, which shows Nokia clearly still in the lead, but slowly losing market share to RIM, Apple and HTC.

The numbers are for worldwide sales and shows Nokia with 45 percent market share, down 2.4 percent year-on-year. Apple exploded to 13.3 percent from 2.8 percent and RIM and HTC made smaller gains at the expense of Nokia, Fujitsu and "other" companies.

The chart, via AIS:

Following a number of complaints at the revelation that Sony imposed a block on Intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) in some VAIO models - which is present in the Core 2 Duo chip that ships with affected VAIO notebooks - Sony has promised The Register that it will make an effort to clarify the policy more clearly on its websites.

Customers were unhappy to learn about the limitation in the VAIO BIOS after buying a model which Sony recommends for the upcoming Windows 7, because it blocks Windows 7's XP-mode. It is a feature that has received considerable media attention and put some minds at ease about going with Windows 7, so it isn't inconceivable that customers who saw Sony advertise VAIO notebooks for Windows 7 assumed they could use this feature, even if they didn't know the VT technology is included in the CPU.

If they did know, then they most likely would have been unaware that Sony has disabled it since its advertisements fail to declare the fact. "I'll take the action to be clearer on our site that VT will not be enabled," Senior manager for product marketing Xavier Lauwaert promised The Register.

In another challenge to Amazon's Kindle, Sony has decided to do away with its proprietary software and instead convert all of its e-book store into the ePub industry standard format. Sony made the move to "allows Sony to make its e-book store compatible with multiple devices and its Reader devices open to multiple sources for content," according to the Japanese consumer electronics giant.

It said that converting its e-book store to ePub is an effort to take the confusion out of the digital book formats. Instead of using its proprietary copy protection software on the Sony Reader, it will use an anti-copying solution that has been developed by Adobe with multi-platform support.

"Consumers should not have to worry about which device works with which store," Steve Haber, president of Sony's Digital Reading Business Division, said in a statement. "With a common format and common content protection solution they will be able to shop around for the content they want regardless of where they get it or what device they use."

The International Digital Publishing Forum backs the ePub format, which was developed by a group of 60 companies and organizations.

A claim made that an Apple iPhone exploded in France is the first such report involving an iPhone, after several have been made about the company's iPod since it was released. Marie-Dominique Kolega says her 18 year old son was struck in the eye after his girlfriend's iPhone started hissing, and shattered. She has threatened to file a complaint against Apple over the incident.

"My son was frightened but he did not lose an eye," Kolega, of Aix-en-Provence in southern France, told AFP. US television station KIRO recently did a report on a number of cases of exploding iPods that have led to injuries or property damage. The station claimed that Apple's lawyers had tried to prevent it from getting access to 800 pages of documents from the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) in California.

In the pages were information about 15 burn and fire-related incidents that have been blamed on Apple's iPods. The documents put the blame on overheating lithium-ion batteries, and stated that reports dropped off when Apple changed the batteries in use.

Google Inc.'s plan to acquire On2 Technologies in a deal worth around $106.5 million may not go as smoothly as both had hoped. Some On2 shareholders are unhappy with the deal, which they believe undervalues their stock, as well as other terms of the deal. They also point out that the deal was announced just one day before the company released its best quarterly results in 18 months.

A lawsuit, seeking class-action status, was filed in Delaware Chancery Court on Monday. It requests a permanent injunction blocking the deal from going ahead, as well as calling the defendants to account for all damages caused. But does the deal really undervalue the stock, when the 60 cents a share deal represented a 57 percent premium from the closing price of On2's stock the day it was announced?

Well, the lawsuit says that on May 13, On2 stock was traded at 65 cents and that in 2008, the price reached $1.16. According to Reuters, the stock started the second quarter at 30 cents and ended it above 40 cents. "Defendants rushed to announce the proposed transaction at $0.60 per share on August 5th ahead of the positive earnings results announced the next day, thereby placing a cap on the company's stock price," the suit reads.

AT&T Inc. has filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) against Cablevision Systems Corp, alleging anti-competitive practices. AT&T is seeking to gain access to HD programming from the Madison Square Garden (MSG) network, which is the same goal as Verizon Communications Inc, which filed a similar complaint with the FCC just last month.

The content they seek to gain access to includes games played by the New York Knicks basketball team, New York Rangers, New York Islanders and the New Jersey Devils ice hockey teams. According to AT&T, in its complaint to the FCC, Cablevision engages in conduct that prevents other providers from offering a competing service to customers, which is claims is against FCC rules.

AT&T providers the programming to customers in Connecticut but in standard definition. "Their customers already receive every single game offered on MSG and MSG Plus," Cablevision said. "Now they want the FCC to force MSG to hand over its HD programming, which is a product of many years of technological development and investment. The idea that a phone company more than 15 times our size needs a regulatory bailout is absurd."

The U.S. games industry has seen its fifth straight month of double-digital decline news from the NPD Group. Combining all hardware, software and accessories on the market, gaming sales dropped 29 percent from July 2008 during the month, raking in around $848.90 million compared to last July's $1.19 billion total.

A dramatic drop was witnessed for hardware, with sales falling 37 percent. The Nintendo DS platform topped the charts having sold 538,900 units, but the Nintendo Wii had an uncharacteristic month, selling 252,500 units. While lower than usual for the Wii, it still beat the Xbox 360 by almost 50,000 units. Microsoft's console took third place with 202,900 units - 2,000 shy of its July 2008 total.

In fourth place, Sony's PlayStation Portable (PSP) moved 122,800 units, followed by the PlayStation 3 (PS3) with 121,800 units and finally, the PlayStation 2 (PS2) at 108,000 units. Total hardware sales amounted to $280.94 million. Software sales dropped 26 percent in July compared to July 2008, bringing in $436.99 million. Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort topped the charts, selling 508,200 copies. The only other title to make it to the top 10 was Electronic Arts' NCAA Football.

Following in the footsteps of Fox and Universal, Warner Entertainment has apparently decided to deny DVD rental kiosk operator Redbox access to new releases until a month after traditional brick and mortar stores get them.

Home Media Magazine is reporting that Warner Home Video has revised the terms of their wholesaler agreements to forbid sales to any kiosk operator. Instead those companies will be forced to cut deals directly with WHV.

This would allow them to require a 28 day waiting period as part of any agreement made directly with them.

While this move may prove advantageous to Redbox in their lawsuits against Universal and Fox, in which they are making antitrust claims, the effect on Warner Home Video revenue may be a much bigger problem for the studio.

Warner's plan can only succeed if consumers are choosing kiosks because of the movies they have rather than for reasons of convenience.

They are clearly presuming people who currently rent from Redbox when they leave a store or fast food restaurant would go out of their way to rent a movie somewhere else instead of choosing a different movie.

According to newly leaked emails, it appears that Microsoft knew about i4i's XML patent but decided to go ahead with Word anyways.

"We saw [i4i's products] some time ago and met its creators. Word 11 will make it obsolete," said one email from Martin Sawicki, a member of Microsoft's XML for Word development team. "It looks great for XP though."

The email was written before the release of Office 2003, when Word was in its 11th edition.

Microsoft lost the case yesterday to i4i, and a judge ruled that the software giant must cease selling Word 2003 and 2007 in the United States in 60 days, cutting into a $3 billion revenue business.

Microsoft has a plethora of options, but a few seem most likely if an appeal fails. The company can update Word to circumvent the infringing aspects, which IW explains is the "program's ability to open and read documents that contain custom XML—a form of the Extensible Markup Language format." The company could also settle with i4i for royalties. If anything, Microsoft can buy the patent or the company. Regardless, Word will still be on retail shelves in 60 days.

The latest Apple rumor today from multiple Internet sources is that the company has scheduled an event for the week of September 7th, most likely to announce a new iPod Touch as well as iTunes 9 and "Cocktail".

Apple normally holds an event after Labor Day, normally to launch updated iPods and iTunes software so the date does not seem to far out of the ordinary.

The expected iPod Touch revision will add a camera and a mic, as well as video recording and editing software.

The event would also put Steve Jobs back in the spotlight for a keynote address, his first since returning to work after a 2009 liver transplant.

According to Cowan and Company analyst Doug Creutz, the upcoming expected price cuts on the Sony PS3, Microsoft Xbox 360 and Nintendo Wii may not help spark sales in the United States as predicted.

Creutz says the ongoing economic downturn has consumers still pressured and even large discounts may not help boost the lagging market.

"We are concerned that, given pressures on the consumer, price cuts may not have the stimulative impact to hardware and software sales that they have had in the past," says Creutz.

The analyst did note however that price cuts would benefit each console, if the Wii was cut to $199, PS3 160GB down $100, and the Xbox 360 Elite to $299.

"We expect hardware price cuts on all platforms by September, with announcements possibly as early as next week’s Gamescom," Creutz noted, via GI.biz.

On Wednesday, a California appeals court overturned a previous ruling that had declared Kaleidescape's DVD storage machine legal, siding with the film industry in the dispute. The decision mirrors a court decision the previous day that resulted in an injunction being placed on RealNetworks' RealDVD software and Facet prototype HDD-equipped DVD player.

In March 2007, a District court judge agreed with Kaleidescape's position that nothing in the Content Scrambling System (CSS) license it obtained from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA) forbade it from creating hardware that could copy and store digital content from movie DVDs. The appeals court disagreed.

"We're obviously disappointed by the court's decision" said Michael Malcolm, Kaleidescape's CEO. "Our plan is to go to the Supreme Court of California. We're confident that were not in breach of our contract with the DVDCCA and until then our products remain fully legal and licensed."

Microsoft has had a long-running campaign against businesses that use and/or sell pirated copies of its software, whether its actually sold as a counterfeit product on a disc, or a pre-installed on a HDD by a PC dealer. In the UK, it has taken action against more than 100 high street retailers in just the last 18 months or so.

One of the companies that it caught, and is now working with, is PC Support in Worcester. Christine Throup of the company, told The Register, "We recognize that we weren’t installing Microsoft software correctly, and that’s something we take seriously. We’ll be working with Microsoft over the next few weeks to make sure what we do falls within their software rules from now on."

Ten other companies also have reached a settlement with Microsoft having been caught in the act (list at source). Microsoft reminds consumers that PCs with pre-loaded Windows installations should also come with the appropriate documents to prove that it is genuine software.

The company provides a discounted replacement service for consumers who unknowingly bought unlicensed copies of Microsoft's operating systems.

The creators of the PlayStaion 3 (PS3) and Wii consoles, and the iPhone, have been handed yet another patent dispute complaint, this time from a company called Bandspeed. The company filed a lawsuit in the Western District Court of Texas last week. It claims that the manner in which the said products handle wireless communication channels infringes on two of its patents.

The first patent was issued in 2006 and details a method for a device to select a wireless channel to facilitate communication based on performance, which the second patent, issued on August 4, 2009, details managing the channels, again based on performance. Bandspeed describes itself as the "leader in next-generation Wi-Fi management."

The company alleges that Apple, Nintendo and Sony's products are infringing its patents, and is seeking damages from the court and a permanent injunction to prevent continued violation.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) has handed a victory to the United States in a complaint made in 2007 against China over the its system for the import of American media products including music, movies, magazines, books and other products. The U.S. has maintained that China's imposed limitations have helped a large counterfeit market to flourish in the country.

The WTO ruling has ordered the Chinese government to ease up on the limitations on foreign films, music and print, but it did not make any ruling on Chinese censorship. According to the ruling, China was breaking international trade rules by blocking foreign-owned companies from acting as importers and wholesale providers of media products.

"China expresses regret that the panel did not reject the US complaint about the import and distribution of printed material, films and music," China's commerce ministry spokesman Yao Jian said in a statement. "China will carefully evaluate the panel's report and does not rule out appealing on issues of concern to the Chinese side."

The United States called the WTO ruling significant. The ruling also specifically stated that China's policy of preventing U.S. music download companies from offering their services to Chinese customers was breaking trade rules.

Debian-developer Joey Hess posted a blog entry with some worrying details of how Palm Pre communicates with the company. From reading log files Hess found on his Pre, it would appear that the device alerts Palm of where you are (using GPS), what applications you are using and for how long, and when they crash. All of this is done with no notification of such data being sent, and no opt-out method appears to be available.

"I'm shocked that GPS location info is apparently being sent to Palm on a daily basis," Hess told The Register. "It seems both unnecessary and a large privacy risk." The Register went on to contact Palm about the issue and received a statement.

"Our privacy policy is like many policies in the industry and includes very detailed language about potential scenarios in which we might use a customer’s information, all toward a goal of offering a great user experience. For instance, when location based services are used, we collect their information to give them relevant local results in Google Maps. We appreciate the trust that users give us with their information, and have no intention to violate that trust."

After receiving take-down notices from the Recording Industry of South Africa (RISA) requesting that two International websites be blocked, the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA) has decided not to comply. Specifically, the RISA had requested the blocking of Soundike.com and GoMusicNow.ur, because the services sell tracks for as low as $0.09 each.

The local Nokia Music Store charges easily ten times the amount for song and album downloads. The ISPA responded to the take-down notices on behalf of its members, rejecting the request and maintaining that it is not up to the ISPA what sites should be blocked.

"It isn't up to ISPA to decide whether or not websites should be blocked. It is up to ISPA to assist and advise its members in dealing with take-down notices made in terms of the ECT Act," said ISPA GM Ant Brooks.

"The take-down notices ISPA's members received from RiSA were requests to block access to certain Internet sites hosted outside of South Africa. The take-down notice process in the ECT Act can only be used to request the removal of content hosted on the network of the service provider to whom that take-down notice is sent."

Tom Group, a Chinese conglomerate, announced on Wednesday that it plans to bring the popular music streaming service Spotify to the Chinese market. The Spotify service comes in both a free (when you can get it) service supported by advertising, and a premium subscription service. Not only does the Tom Group want to make it available to Internet users on a computer in China, but also to provide it over mobile phones, a Spotify service not yet available elsewhere.

"Tom will work toward unveiling a localized version of Spotify in Greater China in the near future," a statement from the company on Wednesday, said. The Chinese government indicates that as many as 338 million people in China use the Internet. Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-shing owns the majority of the Tom Group, which also counts eBay and Skype as International partners.

According to the Financial Times, Spotify is close to securing new investment from Ka-shing's charitable foundation, which along with Wellington Partners and others will flood another $50 million into Spotify, valuing the service at around $250 million.

Nokia and Microsoft Corp. announced an agreement yesterday that will bring Microsoft Office software to Nokia smartphones. The software will coming with Nokia handsets from next year, and will include Microsoft Office Communicator Mobile, which will be followed by other applications.

"This agreement represents an important milestone for both companies and the industry," Stephen Elop, the president of Microsoft Business Division, said. "It's the first time Microsoft will develop rich Office Mobile applications for another smartphone platform. With more than 200 million smartphone customers globally, Nokia is the world's largest smartphone manufacturer and a natural partner for us."

Nokia smartphone users will be able to use popular Microsoft programs such as Word, PowerPoint, Excel and OneNote to edit and share Office documents, but both companies stressed they will be still rivals when it comes to mobile operating system software. "Nokia and Microsoft do compete in some areas and we will continue to do so," said Elop. "At Microsoft we remain deeply committed to Windows Mobile."

In a giant decision today, a federal district court judge has ruled against Microsoft, and told the software company it must stop selling the extremely popular Word word processing software in the United States.

The victor company, i4i, has only 30 employees but claims Microsoft violated a patent pertaining to Extensible Markup Language (XML). The judge agreed.

Microsoft has 60 days to appeal, or cease selling Word, a key component of the Office bundle. The company was also fined $290 million USD. Microsoft says Office accounts for over $3 billion USD in sales per year.

"It's not a question of fear or pride or anything else," added Loudon Owen, i4i chairman, via USA Today. "We're very respectful of Microsoft, but when you're in the right you have to persevere."

Microsoft will obviously appeal.

"We are disappointed by the court's ruling," says Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz. "We believe the evidence clearly demonstrated that we do not infringe and that the i4i patent is invalid."

i4i has the patent for "customized XML," which has been the default format for Word files since the 2007 edition. If the ruling stands, Microsoft would not be allowed to sell the 2003 or 2007 editions.

Redbox, a DVD rental Kiosk service that operates 17,900 kiosks in the U.S., has filed a lawsuit against 20th Century Fox for attempting to delay new releases from its machines. Fox, like Universal before it, believe that Redbox' $1 rental fee and $7 DVD sales seriously undervalue the product, and will do damage to DVD sales by diverting consumers away from stores like Blockbuster where they are surrounded by new DVDs to buy.

The lawsuit was filed on Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Delaware. Redbox had previously sued Universal for the same tactics and is awaiting a decision. The Fox lawsuit accuses the studio of violating antitrust laws by reducing consumer choice in the marketplace, as well as increasing prices that consumers must pay.

Not all studios feel the same way as Fox and Universal however. Sony Pictures reached a deal with Redbox to offer Sony titles for rental, as long as Redbox destroyed the rental DVDs instead of selling them when their rental life is over. Lions Gate Entertainment Group also agreed on Tuesday to make its films available to Redbox immediately.

The UK's first Pirate Party has officially registered as a political party, meaning it can now raise funds and push its candidates in the next general election. The Party hopes to emulate the same popularity as the Swedish Pirate Party has gotten, largely due to the attention surrounding the Pirate Bay.

"Getting to this stage has been a long process, we've had to elect officers, raise funds, fill out forms, meet with some (very helpful) people at the Electoral Commission, and learn far more about electoral law and the special party funding rules that apply to Gibraltar than any same person would ever want to," a site announcement reads.

"Now the party can really start. It's time for us to tell the world that we exist, to recruit members, raise funds and gear up to fight the General Election. The officers and web team have built the framework that the party needs to get going, now it's time for YOU to make things happen.

"Join the party, tell the media about the party,tell your friends about the party, take part in policy and news debates on the forum, join our Facebook group, donate or set up a regular payment to provide financial support, set up a branch in your constituency, school or workplace, join the specialist workings groups for members with key skills like lawyers and journalists and volunteer to take part in canvassing and campaigning in your constituency at the general election..."

The Free60 Project - which aims to open up the Xbox 360 to homebrew to the same degree as the original Xbox (or as close as can be achieved) - has warned those who have not already gotten the Tuesday Xbox 360 update to avoid the update altogether. There are two main reasons for this. Firstly, its the first Xbox 360 update to overwrite the first stage bootloader of the system.

Any failure when this process is under-way could badly damage an Xbox 360, according to Free60. The second reason is Microsoft's intention for doing this. According to Free60, a vulnerability exists which can be used to boot Linux, or other operating systems, on the Xbox 360 console, and that this hack will be released very soon. The Tuesday update fixes the vulnerability.

Here is the full Free60 take on the update...

On Tuesday, Microsoft has released an Xbox 360 software update that overwrites the first stage bootloader of the system. Although there have been numerous software updates for Microsoft's gaming console in the past, this is the first one to overwrite the vital boot block. Any failure while updating this will break the Xbox 360 beyond repair. Statistics from other systems have shown that about one in a thousand bootloader updates goes wrong, and unless Microsoft has a novel solution to this problem, this puts tens of thousands of Xboxes at risk.

Intel has licensed Scalable Link Interface (SLI) technology from Nvidia for use with its new Nehalem processors and chipsets. Intel Nehalem is the successor to the Core microarchitecture, and uses a 45-nanometer manufacturing method. The first processor released using the architecture is Intel's Core i7.

Intel has licensed the SLI technology from Nvidia in order to add improved support for multiple graphics processors to its Nehalem processors and chipsets in high-end gaming machines. The licensing however, does not include next-generation products being developed by Intel that incorporate a CPU and graphics technology on a single chip.

The company has also been improving the graphics capabilities in its chipsets, cutting into Nvidia's market in PCs. In response, Nvidia is pushing its own chipsets to compete with Intel. The SLI technology, which enables a motherboard to support as many as three Nvidia Geforce cards, has also been recently licensed by motherboard manufacturers including Asus, EVGA, Gigabyte and MSI.

A federal Judge has stung RealNetworks badly by issuing a preliminary injunction preventing the company from selling its RealDVD software, which costs $30 a pop. Additionally, the company's prototype DVD player, Facet, will now also be blocked from sale. RealDVD allowed consumers to make copies of their DVDs onto their computers, while Facet is a HDD-equipped DVD player. The company has maintained that the software is entirely legal.

This case became important because it can answer the question of whether consumers in the U.S. are allowed to make copies of their DVD movies. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) regards Facet and RealDVD as tools of piracy that could cost the industry a lot of money, and claimed they were illegal under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Real argued that because it has licensed Content Scrambling System (CSS) from the DVD Copy Control Association (DVD-CCA), that its software and prototype DVD player do not break provisions surrounding the circumvention of copy protection, disregarding ARccOS and RipGuard.

Frederick Wood, of Seattle, has been convicted and sentenced to 39 months in prison in prison this week for using the infamous P2P client Limewire to steal personal information from over 100 unsuspecting sharers.

Kathryn Warma, assistant U.S. attorney in the Computer Hacking and Internet Crimes Unit of the U.S. Attorney's Office says the identify theft is very common, but not to many people know it exists.

Wood, says Warma, would type keywords such as "tax return" or "bank account" into the Limewire search box which allowed him to download files with that type of personal information from shared folders of naive or unsuspecting Limewire users.

The convicted felon also searched specifically for college financial aid forms, says PCWorld, which include "exhaustive personal and financial information about the family." Wood would then use the info to open accounts, receive credit cards, and make purchases in their names.

"Many of the victims are parents who don't realize that Limewire is on their home computer," added Warma.

Last week we reported that Microsoft was planning to kill off the Xbox 360 Pro model, while at the same time lowering the price of the larger capacity Elite model.

Today, Kotaku is reporting that rumor is indeed fact, and a Meijer catalog leak shows the Elite seeing a price drop on August 30th, alongside the imminent phase out of the Pro model.

The Elite will see its price drop to $299, leaving only two options on the market, the $199 HDD-less Arcade model and the now $300, 120GB HDD Elite.

Of course, "Microsoft does not comment on rumors or speculation," but we know better already.

Pic via Kotaku:

Jon Lech Johansen, known notoriously as “DVD Jon” for his work in cracking the CSS encryption on DVDs, had received a subpoena this week as part of the Apple iTunes anti-trust case.

The subpoena was sent so everyone involved can gather any relevant documents that Johansen may still have, says Electronista.

DVD Jon has been asked to "provide any communications with Apple regarding his efforts to make iPods inter-operable with content purchased outside of iTunes, along with discussions relating to syncing iTunes purchases with non-Apple media players."

More specifically, the subpoena asks for any documents involving the FairPlay DRM scheme. DVD Jon created software that circumvents FairPlay as well as Windows Media protection, using the legal method of re-encoding the song on the fly in its original program, removing the DRM.

According to Chinese site 163.com, and reported in English by TechCrunch, Dell is set to launch a China-only mobile phone soon, using the Android platform, and dubbed the mini3i.

The device will be distributed through China Mobile, and should launch later this week.

The mini31, known as an Ophone, is expected to be one of a few similar devices, coming from HTC, Lenovo and Dell and each using Android operating systems.

Ophones use TD-SCDMA (Time Division Synchronous Code Division Multiple Access), China's 3G equivalent, meaning importing the phones to the EU or US will not be worth it if you need data.

According to new Nielsen data, gamers spent the most time in history this June playing video games, with the Sony PlayStation 2 taking the lead for most minutes.

Playtime was up 21 percent year-on-year, and the PS2 regained the top spot from the Xbox 360. Average playing time was 768 minutes for June, or about 25.6 minutes per day.

The 360 has been on the rise since last year, at the expense of the Wii, but the giant console base of the PS2 is hard to beat.

In terms of gender, the Wii is on top by far for women, with 360 on top for male gamers.

Netflix has revealed that it will hold a second challenge to improve the movie recommendation systems offered by the service to its customer. The revelation came from chief product officer, Neil Hunt, even before the company has announced the winner of the $1 million prize for the first challenge.

The contest was launched in 2006 by the DVD rental giant, aimed at improving predictions of titles customers might be interested in by 10 percent. Contestants from 186 countries, amounting to 51,000 people, decided to give it a shot. Right now, two teams called BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos and The Ensemble top the leader board with The Ensemble just edging Bellkor's with 10.10 percent compared to 10.09 percent.

The winner will be announced in late September when Netflix will announce the details of the second competition. "While the first contest has been remarkable, we think Netflix Prize 2 will be more challenging, more fun, and even more useful to the field," Hunt wrote.

In a recent interview, John Carmack of id Software, touched briefly on the next generation of gaming systems that will replace the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles. The interview, with Polish site CD-Action, is primarily about id Software's upcoming shooter Rage, but it is the few words he dedicated to the next-generation of gaming that had caught the interview in tech site's radar.

"The whole jockeying for who's gonna release next gen console first is very interesting and really divorced from the technical side of things. Whether Sony wants to try and jump the gun to, you know, to prevent the same kind of 360 lag from happening to them again seems likely. As developers, we would really like to see this generation stretch as long as possible, you know, we'd like to see it be quite a few more years before a next-gen console comes out, but I suspect someone will wind up shipping something earlier rather than later," Carmack says.

Amazon and other sources are now displaying the price you will have to pay if you are interested in investing in one of Microsoft's Zune HD portable media players. Amazon has the Zune EHD-00001 HD 16GB Video MP3 Player priced at $219.99, and the Zune HD 32GB Video MP3 Player (Platinum) priced at $289.99.

It's unclear how much the players will cost in the UK and other European countries in the event of a launch, but $220 is roughly £133/€155 and $290 is roughly £175/€204. The Zune HD features a 3.5-inch Organic Light-emmiting Diode (OLED) screen in a 16:9 display aspect ratio.

The Zune HD, which also features a HDMI port and a HD Radio receiver, is expected to become available in North America next month, with Amazon not revealing any launch date for the products (but of course, Amazon U.S. has market both models as available for pre-order).

U.S. market research firm Strategy Analytics (SA) is reporting that two of South Korea's top consumer electronics manufacturers have captured almost half of the North American mobile handset market in Q2 2009. It reports that Samsung Electronics Co. and LG Electronics Inc. had a combined market share of 47.3 percent during the quarter in North America.

Samsung sold more units than LG, with a total of 11.7 million Samsung handsets being sold in the United States and Canada during the quarter. This converts into about 24.7 percent of the market share in the region. LG manufacturers handsets sold 10.7 million units in the region during the quarter, representing about 22.6 percent of the market.

In contrast to these figures, Nokia Corp., the Finland-based handset maker that dominates the global market outright, captured just 6.8 percent of the market, down from 7.9 percent in Q1 2009. The success of the Samsung and LG phones is attributed to both companies stepping up efforts in the region to provide a diverse range of products.

Sharp Corporation will introduce 13 new models of its AQUOS DX Series LCD TV with a built-in Blu-ray Disc recorder. They will come in a variety of 26-, 32-, 40-, 46- and 52-inch sizes. This second edition of the DX Series brings more advanced functions such as even better images and ease-of-use.

The recording function is improved with the 7X extended HD video recording (7X mode), which allows extended recording time while retaining the same exact full-HD quality as the original high-definition broadcast.

This second edition of the DX Series brings more advanced functions such as even better images and ease-of-use. With the New Motion Guide, users can be watching TV while selecting another program on TV or the Internet, or a program recorded on Blu-ray Disc.

The much anticipated Xbox 360 dashboard update is ready to roll beginning tomorrow (August 11th) and will include a plethora of new updates for console owners.

Says Xbox.com:

Games on Demand

Enjoy the convenience of finding and buying new games right from the comfort of your own living room. Download a wide selection of full Xbox 360 games over Xbox LIVE. Games on Demand will be available for purchase on Xbox LIVE starting August 11 as part of the Xbox LIVE Update. You will be able to browse and purchase games through the Xbox LIVE Marketplace on the Web starting August 13.

* Shop- Games on Demand are found in the Game Marketplace and include a large library of favorite titles right from the start. More titles are added every Tuesday, so check back whenever you’re in the mood for a great new game.
* Purchase - Purchase full games using Microsoft points or a credit card. Games are downloaded directly to your console (hard drive required), and your purchase history is stored by Xbox LIVE, meaning you can delete games and re-download them again if you run out of space.
* Playing and Sharing - As with other LIVE content, your game license is linked to your Xbox LIVE account. Download your purchased games to any console you are logged into with your Gamertag, and anyone else can play on the console that your game was originally downloaded to. No physical disc is required to play these games!
* Find Manuals - Game manuals can be viewed, downloaded, or printed from Xbox.com. Just locate your game in Web Marketplace and select “See Game Manual”.

Convicted copyright infringer Joel Tenenbaum has opened a FAQ on his website today to help explain the recent file sharing judgment against him.

Earlier this month, Tenenbaum was convicted of sharing 20 songs via file sharing networks such as Limewire and Kazaa and a jury ruled he owed the RIAA and media companies $675,000 USD.

The FAQ, entitled, FAQs: what did you do, why so much, and what now? explains what the convicted file sharer did, why the giant sum, and what his plans for an appeal are.

Says the page:

Q: What did you do with 30 songs that got you nailed?
A: I downloaded them and shared them on Kazaa. They also proved in court (because I admitted it) that I used Limewire, iMesh, Morpheus, Napster, and Audiogalaxy, but it doesn’t matter.

Q: Isn’t that a huge friggin’ number just for that?
A: The RIAA and the Judge in this case succeeded in convincing the jury that the DMCA act of 1999 (http://www.copyright.gov/title17/92chap5.html) should be applied here. The ranges specified are:

A deadline imposed by a court of law ordering that The Pirate Bay block all traffic coming from the Netherlands has passed quietly, AP reports. The order imposes fines for every day that The Pirate Bay does not comply, amounting to $42,000 per day. The deadline has passed, and there is no sign that The Pirate Bay has complied in any way with the order.

According to Stichting Brein, a Dutch group that is involved in a lot of anti-Internet piracy cases, said that the Pirate Bay founders are planning to challenge the Amsterdam District Court ruling, but Brein is confident that the challenge will ultimately fail.

In any case, Brein says that it won't demand the $42,000 per day in damages unless the site continues to operate in the current form after it is due to be bought on August 27.

Toshiba claims that it will be the first tech company to ship 64GB Secure Digital eXtended Capacity (SDXC) memory cards. The company projects that it will begin shipping the new flash memory cards that utilize the exFAT (FAT 64) file system by Spring 2010.

When announced in January earlier this year, it was revealed that the capacity limit would be around 2 terabytes (TB) of data, but 64GB is certainly a long way away from 2TB.

Toshiba's new cards, according to the company, will support HS104 data transfer technology offering up to 60MB/s write speed and 35MB/s write speed.

Toshiba was mute on how much the new card will cost, but it can of course be expected to be quite high for an SD card.

Owners of some Sony VAIO laptops have voiced their anger about a Sony-imposed limitation that will block XP Virtualization in Windows 7. We all know VAIO isn't exactly cheap, and this is not a case of the VAIO missing hardware required for the welcomed Windows 7 feature. The affected laptops (such as the Z series) utilize an Intel Core 2 Duo processor that has Intel's Virtualization Technology (VT) built in.

However, the Intel VT is disabled on the affected laptops, and it doesn't appear that Sony is willing to change that anytime soon, but did say it would enable VT on "some" VAIO models in the future. The question is being asked whether Sony has the right to do this, considering owners did "buy" the laptop with the VT-capable processor built in - yet they are being prevented by Sony from utilizing it fully.

Sony's position on it is that Sony engineers were, "concerned that enabling VT would expose our systems to malicious code that could go very deep in the Operating System structure of the PC and completely disable the latter."

It's not exactly a headline any of us would have expected soon just a couple of years ago, but the former cheerleader of the HD DVD format, Toshiba, has applied to join the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). The company is set to introduce products that use the Blu-ray format, which beat the HD DVD format in becoming the standard disc format for High-definition video content.

"As a market leader in digital technologies, Toshiba provides a wide range of advanced digital products, such as DVD recorders and players, HDTVs and notebook PCs that support a wide range of storage devices, including hard disk drives (HDD), DVD, and SD Cards. In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA." a statement from Toshiba reads.

Toshiba aims to introduce digital products that support the Blu-ray format, including BD players and notebook PCs integrating BD drives, in the course of this year. Details of the products, including the timing of regional launches, are now under consideration.

Global Gaming Factor's CEO Hans Pandeya recently received a letter from IFPI general council Jo Oliver informing him that the trade group will be lobbying the Swedish authorities to block any money transaction between the company the Pirate Bay, and that they would push for Global Gaming to be forced to turn over information about the acquisition.

It had been speculated that the IFPI was intending to intercept the money instead of it being paid to Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Carl Lundstrom. A court found them guilty of copyright offenses back in April and sentenced them to one year in prison along with a $3.6 million fine.

Fredrik Neij however maintains that they have not owned the Pirate Bay since 2006, but the record labels allege that Neij himself is in control of Reservella, the company that is the listed owner of the site. The letter sent to Pandeya also gives the IFPI's position on the Pirate Bay's possible practices after it is sold.

"We need to warn you that if GGF takes responsibility for The Pirate Bay service in its current form, or if GGF operates The Pirate Bay in any way in violation of applicable copyright law, we will be forced to take legal action," the letter reads. Pandeya is of the opinion that the Pirate Bay can eventually be turned into a legal service.

Firefox 3.6 Alpha – code named Namoroka Alpha 1 - has become available to download from the Mozilla Developer Center, and is built on a pre-release version of the Gecko 1.9.2 platform. The release is only intended for developers and testers, but if curiosity is your thing, it is available for all.

New Features

• Compositor (Phase 1), which moves Gecko to using one native widget per top-level content document. See this blog post or bug 374980 for more details.
  
• A new focus model, described here and tracked in bug 178324
  
• The chromedir attribute has been replaced with a pseudoclass
  
• Several new CSS3 properties including background size and gradients for background images
  
• Speed improvements to the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine
  
• Startup and responsiveness improvements throughout the application

According to a new comparison chart posted via the official Rogers site and screened by BoyGeniusReports, it appears that Apple will be releasing an 8GB model iPhone 3GS in Canada, a smaller capacity then has been otherwise available for the popular smartphone.

The 8GB model will be cheaper than current versions for sale, and should give Canadian consumers the chance to get the phone without its usual price tag. Notably however, 8GB will not leave you much room for movies or music.

According to sources speaking to BoyGeniusReport, the upcoming iTunes 9.0 software update will include Blu-ray support and iPhone App management, along with social networking integration.

Blu-ray support would be a welcome addition, and the App management would allow users to connect their iPhone or iPod Touch and visually manage the apps.

Social networking integration would allow easy access to Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm.

For now, this is rumor and Apple has not confirmed or denied any of the details or a release date for iTunes 9.

App management, via TechCrunch:

According to JAIB, via figures from PinchMedia, the percentage of iPhone users that are using jailbroken phones is on the rise, moving from 7 percent to 8.43 percent from June to the end of July.

Also notably, the percentage of sessions from jailbroken iPhones increased to 6.65 percent from 6.2 percent.

The quick rise could possibly be attributed to the recent denial from the App Store of the Google Voice Mobile app last week, which led to developer Sean Kovacs putting the app up for free on Cydia, the software application store available to jailbroken iPhone/Touch users.

The two popular digital distribution services Steam and Direct2Drive have begun a indie game promotion this weekend, each slashing prices drastically.

Steam is offering, via their "Weekend Deal," ten top sellers, Audiosurf, Blueberry Garden, Braid, Crayon Physics Deluxe, Darwinia, Everyday Shooter, Gish, Mr. Robot, The Path and World of Goo bundled for $30 USD. Most sell independently for $10 each.

Direct2Drive, from their end, is offering a "Best of Indie" bundle which includes the popular games Zeno Clash, Defense Grid: The Awakening, Democracy 2, The Path and Cogs for $17.75 USD.

You can check the full listings here:

Steam Indie Sale

Direct2Drive Indie sale

NBC Sports has announced it will be moving all its HD video-streaming feeds to the latest build of Microsoft's Silverlight, including the upcoming 2010 Winter Olympics.

The broadcaster will use Silverlight 3 across all its HD sports broadcasts, and committed to Microsoft after testing "many different technologies", says Perkins Miller, senior vice president of Digital Media at NBC Sports, via VB.

NBC Sports used Silverlight for the stunning HD feeds of the Summer Olympics in China last year, and this year used Silverlight to stream over 35 hours of Wimbeldon tennis coverage.

The most popular BitTorrent client, uTorrent has moved onto version 2.0, albeit in beta form for the time being, and promises tons of updates and changes.

-- 2009-08-04: Version 2.0 Beta (build 16081)
- Change: disable toolbar offers for Wine installs
- Feature: New Setup guide & Speedtest.
- Change: uninstaller is added to all user profiles
- Fix: crash when assigning new label to torrents from RSS
- Change: Incomplete downloads sort after completed downloads if sorting by "Completed On"
- Feature: Add Moldova to peer flags
- Change: Added upnp host cache to speed up upnp nat resolution on misbehaving routers
- Fix: maintain category list selection on update for some edge cases
- Change: if selected, install start menu and desktop shortcuts to all users instead of only current user
- Feature: Grayscale disabled toolbar buttons
- Fix: fixed uTP selective ack bug (would cause connections to stall and time out)
- Fix: fixed uTP fast re-send bug (would sometimes re-send packets that shouldn't be re-sent)
- Change: prompt to take associations in installer only if any others exist
- Fix: buffer overrun vulnerability in create torrent dialog
- Fix: uTP recovers faster after timeout
- Feature: uTP supports window sizes smaller than the packet size
- Change: reduced uTP overhead slightly by ramping up packet sizes at lower rates
- Feature: enable and disable toolbar buttons according to selected torrents
- Change: UAC must be completed to install in Vista or higher
- Fix: memory leaks in main window, protocol associations, settings dialog, general tab
- Change: Tweaks to Ask toolbar offer
- Feature: UDP tracker support
- Fix: only change run on startup if installer is shown
- Change: added support for 3:rd party applications to more easily be configured to access the uTorrent web UI, i.e. to pair the applications
- Fix: make "alternate upload rate when seeding" apply when the seeding is set by the scheduler
- Fix: align "Web Seeds" in torrent creation dialog
- Fix: translated strings in uninstaller
- Fix: http seeds would not reconnect after stopping and starting torrent
- Fix: http seed for multifile torrents
- Fix: regression in 15562 that caused frequent crashes
- Feature: New installer with EULA, file association
- Fix: uTP issue on low-latency high-throughput networks
- Fix: copying long filenames to clipboard no longer results in garbage or crash
- Fix: fixed web seed support for multi-file torrents
- Change: torrent whose "Force Recheck" is greyed out will not recheck when asked through multi-torrent selections
- Fix: when adding torrents through URLs via commandline, we would always open the add torrent dialog
- Fix: handle multi file torrents with web seed urls that incorrectly don't end with a slash
- Fix: make sure web seed urls end with a slash for multifile torrents
- Fix: setup Vista firewall
- Fix: remove settings on Vista during un-installation
- Feature: New "Transfer Cap" pane in Preferences
- Feature: uTP can be enabled or disabled using "Enable bandwidth management" checkbox in Preferences
- Fix: Check at startup for incompatible versions of NVIDIA nForce firewall

Gov. Pat Quinn of the state of Illinois will sign an amendment to the state's Vehicle Code this week, making Illinois the 17th state in the US to have a ban on texting (text messaging) while driving.

The bill does have the exception however if the driver pulls over to park, or puts the car in neutral while stopped in traffic.

Since last year, 16 states have banned texting while driving including Oregon, New Hampshire, Alaska, Arkansas, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Louisiana, Maryland, Minnesota, New Jersey, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, Washington and Washington DC.

There are currently senators planning to push a bill that would make it federally illegal to text while driving. Recent studies have shown increased accident rates caused in part thanks to texting and show that texters are at substantially increased risk of getting into accidents.

"With drunk driving it was important to pass tough laws, but the laws won't really have any effect unless they're enforced and the public knows about it and it's properly adjudicated," says Barbara Harsha of the Governor's Highway Safety Association. "So passing a law isn't the solution, it's only part of it."

The satellite provider Dish Network has announced a deal with Image Entertainment that will bring Image's library to Dish's 14 million subscribers via pay-per-view and VOD.

“We’re very pleased to be working with Dish Network to bring our vast library of entertainment content to their subscribers,” added Steve Saltman, senior VP of worldwide television for Image. “This agreement greatly expands our ability to deliver programming into households across the country.”

Andy Karofsky, VP of programming for Dish, says, via VB: “Dish Network is excited to bring even more PPV and VOD offerings to our already substantial collection of more than 6,000 titles. Image Entertainment offers a great selection of HD movies, television series, comedy specials and other sought-after programming we’re confident our viewers will enjoy.”

Panasonic has announced the launch of Amazon VOD on their current Blu-ray player set-top line, finally enabling the service after promising it months ago.

The enabling comes with the latest firmware upgrade for the players, and will bring Amazon VOD and its 45,000 movies and TV episodes to the players, including over 1000 movies and shows in HD. You must register first with Amazon VOD to access the service.

The players with Amazon VOD access are the DMP-BD60, the DMP-BD80, the dual Blu-ray/VHS DMP-BD70V model and the DMP-BD15.

“The introduction of Amazon Video On Demand to our Viera Cast offerings gives every owner of a 2009 Panasonic Blu-ray player access to a vast collection of movies and TV shows, including HD-quality new releases, on virtually any digital television,” added Richard Simone, Panasonic’s entertainment group director. “And you can take it on the road with you too with Panasonic’s Viera Cast-enabled, B15 portable Blu-ray Disc player.”

“Panasonic and Amazon Video On Demand have built a great customer experience that easily allows customers to shop, purchase or rent from our library of over 45,000 movies and TV shows with no subscription fees,” concludes Bill Carr, Amazon VP of music and video. “Using Panasonic's line of Viera Cast-enabled Blu-ray players, even more customers can now instantly experience Amazon’s compelling HD-quality, new release movies and TV shows from their living room.”

TiVo has announced a new deal with Rovi that will bring Rovi TV movie and music data to many of TiVo's DVRs and other services.

The exact terms were not revealed but MCN says Rovi will provide "entertainment metadata including program and movie descriptions, rich-media content, celebrity biographies, original editorial content, cast and credits information, album reviews and other information."

Rovi currently has metadata for 1 million TV episodes, 400,000 movies and 13 million music tracks.

"It is important for TiVo to be able to provide our subscribers and technology distributors worldwide a broad range of data and we are pleased that Rovi's data solutions gives us the ability to provide even more movies, music, and TV show information to them," adds TiVo general manager and vice president of international Joshua Danovitz.

YouTube has posted "Community Guideline Tips" on its Community Guidelines page, clarifying what kind of content will prompt a video removal by the site. YouTube's user-driven video flagging system helps it to remove inappropriate content, and according to YouTube, staff work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to ensure that the site's contents stay acceptable for viewing.

Still, it has published some tips on the Community Guidelines page, probably due to some criticism of the guidelines being too vague to determine what would be inappropriate in cases. Here are some examples...

Hate Speech
"Hate speech" refers to content that promotes hatred against members of a protected group. For instance, racist or sexist content may be considered hate speech. Sometimes there is a fine line between what is and what is not considered hate speech. For instance, it is generally okay to criticize a nation, but not okay to make insulting generalizations about people of a particular nationality.

Shocking and Disgusting
The world is a dangerous place. Sometimes people do get hurt and it’s inevitable that these events may be documented on YouTube. However, it’s not okay to post violent or gory content that’s primarily intended to be shocking, sensational or disrespectful. If a video is particularly graphic or disturbing, it should be balanced with additional context and information. For instance, including a clip from a slaughter house in a video on factory farming may be appropriate. However, stringing together unrelated and gruesome clips of animals being slaughtered in a video may be considered gratuitous if its purpose is to shock rather than illustrate.

Apple finally launched its iTunes music store in Latin America recently. The digital music download store was launched in Mexico on August 4, the first in the region. America Movil, the dominant mobile carrier in Mexico, had been offering the iPhone for over a year and it launched the iPhone 3GS in the country and several others on July 31.

According to Pyramid Research, the Latin American smart-phone market will rise to 30 percent of all handset sales in the region by 2014, up from just 3 percent last year, and Apple's share of the market could reach 15 percent in 2009 largely due to America Movil subsidizing the older version of the iPhone with a two year contract.

Music industry estimates put mobile sales accounting for more than 80 percent of digital music revenue in Latin America last year, and now over-the-air downloads are being looked at to provide growth in the market. Carriers also will push feature-packed smart-phones in an attempt to get more revenue through downloaded data by customers.

According to Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi, Apple's iPhone accounted for about 8 percent of the handset industry revenue, but possibly around 32 percent of the industry operating profits, during the first half of 2009. He attributed the success to the "first mover" advantage and compared the iPhone / App Store tie to the very successful iPod / iTunes tie.

"Our analysis indicates that Apple's iPhone accounted for only eight per cent of handset industry revenues but 32 per cent of industry operating profits in the first half 2009," Sacconaghi wrote in a note to clients. "Even if we exclude the operating losses generated by Motorola and Sony Ericsson, Apple still accounted for 25 per cent of industry profits."

In yet another example of how law enforcement can use online video and other content to find criminal or dangerous behavior and then do something about it in the "real world", a police investigation has been launched by Quebec provincial police over a YouTube video which shows a 7 year old driving an SUV.

The kid is in the driving seat cruising along a country road as he is cheered on by his family. His father, in the passenger seat cheerfully notes as he passes 40km/h that it's "a little fast", but later on when he hits 70km/h, he laughs and says, "he's rolling, he's rolling."

His mother is sitting behind the driver's seat with a little girl on her lap, and an older boy sitting beside her - none wearing seat belts. Bloggers picked up on the video and started writing about it. It was removed from YouTube but re-surfaced again later on the site and on other video sites.

"Since seeing this video, we've opened an investigation," Sgt. Chantal Mackels of the Quebec provincial police, said Monday. "Once the investigation is over with, we'll give it to the Crown prosecutor who will analyze it and decide if he's issuing a criminal offence."

According to figures acquired by GamesIndustry.biz, Nintendo's Wii Sports Resort title has been very successful in Europe as well as its strong performance in North America and Japan. The company revealed that it has sold more than 600,000 copies of the MotionPlus-enhanced title in Europe since it was release in July 24, taking just under two weeks to pass the 600,000 tally.

Within eight days of its release in the United States, the title sold over half a million copies. It is the third fastest selling game for the Wii platform in Japan as it topped the charts in the region for two straight weeks and caused a noticeable surge in the sales of Wii hardware.

In the UK, the game topped the all-format sales charts for two weeks running. The sales figures solidified it as the fourth most popular title for the platform to date in the United Kingdom.

RealNetworks is making a small 9 percent cut of its music division staff following a drop in subscribers to its Rhapsody music service. The company reported last week that it had lost 50,000 of its 800,000 subscribers over the past three months, mostly due to a rise in the number of credit card defaults brought on by the economic turmoil that impacted credit services in the United States severely.

Viacom's MTV Networks owns part of the Rhapsody music service, which is a prime example of a successful music subscription service for those who advocate the model in the digital music distribution business. The model has the support of major music companies but is struggling to take a hold on consumers who prefer to own their music - or at least think they own it.

Additionally, a failed partnership with telecom company Comcast lost the company a gigantic 1.1 million radio subscribers. The tally fell from 1.2 million to just 75,000 after Comcast discontinued the service. RealNetworks revenue for the second quarter fell by 11 percent to $135.7 million, according to the company.

20th Century Fox has decided to follow Universal Studios by forcing distributors to stop selling new DVDs to Redbox, which operates low-cost DVD rental kiosks. Fox does not have any distribution deal with Redbox, instead DVD distributors such as Ingram and VPD, who do have deals with Fox and other studios, provide the rental service with DVDs. Fox believes the low costs undervalue the product and threaten DVD sales.

The studio has warned distributors not to sell DVDs to the service until at least 30 days after release. Coinstar and a McDonald's subsidiary jointly own Redbox, which has kiosks at 10,000 retail locations in the United States, such as McDonald's restaurants, Wal-Mart and other store. They rent out DVDs at $1 per day and sell used DVDs for $7 a piece.

Each kiosk rents out an average of 50 titles per day, and there are more kiosks than Blockbuster stores. Users can even reserve movies on the Internet in advance and get them from a specific Kiosk. The movie studios don't take issue solely with the low prices, but also worry that the kiosks are cutting down the number of customers that will visit Blockbuster and other stores where they are more likely to buy new DVDs.

According to Internet security company F-Secure, the cyberattacks that disrupted service at Twitter, Facebook and LiveJournal on Thursday were targeted at just a single blogger. The attacks appear to be politically motivated, as the targeted user, "Cyxymu", is a pro-Georgian blogger, and they also came a year after the short Russia-Georgia conflict over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.

The Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks were aimed specifically at the users' personal pages on the sites. Some commentary suggests the attacks came from Russian nationalists who have control over vast botnets, whereas Cyxymu claims it came from the Russian government itself as a means to silence its critics.

"Launching DDoS attacks against services like Facebook is the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don't like one of the newscasters," F-Secure researcher Mikko Hyponnen said. "The amount of collateral damage is huge. Millions of users of Twitter, LiveJournal, and Facebook have been experiencing problems because of this attack."

Facebook said on Friday that its service has returned to normal for its 250 million users. "Yesterday's attack appears to be directed at an individual who has a presence on a number of sites, rather than the sites themselves," the company said in a release. "Specifically, the person is an activist blogger and a botnet was directed to request his pages at such a rate that it impacted service for other users."

LG has noted that their upcoming 15-inch OLED TV will hit store shelves by December, as it is currently in production, says OLED-Display.

LG's OLED Sales and Marketing VP, Won Kim, added that the TV went into production in July and the TV will hit Korea in December followed by a global launch.

The company says the TV will have a 30,000 hour lifespan, and will have a bigger resolution than Sony's XEL-1, which has a 960x540 resolution.

Microsoft Corp. and chip makers including Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) are working on the DirectX 11 application programming interface (API) to maximize its potential for more realistic graphics, improved multimedia performance and other features in Windows 7. Software designed to unload tasks from the CPU to graphics processing cores is not new, but Microsoft aims to maximize on the potential of breaking up tasks to multiple cores in its new operating system.

Nvidia is using DirectX 11 with Windows 7 and its own hardware to accelerate certain tasks, such as image manipulation. "Microsoft did a number of things within the operating system that allow us to take the computing horsepower we developed for visual computing and apply it to a range of tasks that have never been seen before," said Ned Finkle, vice president of strategic marketing at Nvidia.

Neal Robison, director of independent software vendor relations at AMD, said that DirectX 11 efficiently harnesses the huge potential of parallel processing with GPUs. "We're going to see gaming at a whole new level of realism that you've never been able to experience before because it just hasn't been possible," he said, while giving another example of how Windows 7 will use the technology to push interoperability by automatically converting video on-the-fly to an appropriate format while transferring to a portable device.

Microsoft has launched the newly updated Games for Windows Live, version 3.

According to the press release, a few things have been updated, including an in-game marketplace, account management tools, piracy protection, and a new theme.

In-game Marketplace

The biggest feature is the in-game marketplace, which lets you purchase items for your game from within the game itself. You no longer have to exit your game to view or purchase Game Add-ons.

Once you've bought something, Games for Windows - LIVE will download the Game Add-ons and install it all from within the game. You no longer have to leave the game experience to grab the latest addition to your favorite game! You can also re-download previous purchases if you need to as well.

Account Management

You can manage your Games for Windows - LIVE account without leaving the comfort of your game with these features:

Purchase Microsoft Points with a credit card

Buying Microsoft Points from within Street Fighter IV

Edit your credit card information

According to a new roadmap, it appears TDK is set to become the first company to offer a 3.5" hard drive with 2.5TB capacity.

The storage company is currently testing 640GB drive platters that will fit in standard 3.5" drives, and could, with 4 platters, offer 2.56TB of data capacity.

Any mass production would not start until November however, with peak production likely starting in January.

TDK is also planning to create 640GB thin notebook drives, which will be in full production by December. Rival Seagate has already announced a similar notebook drive however, with no launch date.

Konami has announced that they will begin reissuing popular Sony PlayStation 2 games in Europe soon, confirming recent Internet rumors.

"They are proper reissues," says the publisher, via Eurogamer. "Konami has put them out at budget price because of demand. They are re-manufactured. They are ours."

The games set for reissue are: Suikoden Tactics, Zone of the Enders: The 2nd Runner, Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Silent Hill 2, 3 and 4.

"We've manufactured certain amounts depending on the title," Konami noted, "and they're being bought by wholesalers so will likely pop up in independent rather than chain stores."

The games will cost anywhere between GBP 10 and GBP 20, with most probably towards the higher end of the spectrum.

Los Angeles Superior Court spokeswoman Vania Stuelp told attorneys on Wednesday that Activision notified the court of a settlement reached over a lawsuit aimed at blocking the release of "Brutal Legend". Activision has claimed to still own the rights to Brutal Legend, which was developed by San Francisco-based Double Fine Productions and due to be released by Electronic Arts.

Activision claimed that Double Fine had failed to deliver the title on time and that it still owned the rights to it. Double Fine countersued Activision, alleging that Activision had terminated its agreement to release the title following a failed attempt to make it part of the "Guitar Hero" series of games.

A hearing scheduled for Thursday morning to decide on whether an injunction would be imposed was canceled, though Superior Court Judge Craig Karlan had indicated that he was inclined to deny Activision's requested. Brutal Legend features Jack Black as a band roadie transported to a mythical world to battle evil.

Satellite television provider Dish Network has filed a lawsuit against ESPN, alleging that the company has broken an agreement by giving better terms to Dish Network rivals. Dish claims that the 2005 agreement between both companies prohibits ESPN from offering better provisions to DirecTV Inc. and Comcast to carry ESPN's networks.

The lawsuit, which is seeking at least $1 million in damages, was filed earlier this week in a New York federal court. ESPN doesn't agree with Dish Networks' take on the situation. ESPN spokeswoman Katina Arnold said that the company was in full compliance with the 2005 agreement with Dish Network, and thus would defend itself against the legal action brought by it.

Warner Home Video has sued the "disc destruction" company IWMB for $10 million USD, claiming that the company was not destroying the DVDs and Blu-rays as promised, and instead selling them for full profit.

The company has a contract in place to destroy excess title inventory caused by retail returns of unsold movies, but instead, alleges Warner, they sell the movies at below market prices to small retailers. Warner claims IWMB has already sold 750,000 of the discs.

The studio is claiming that they stand to lose over $10 million in revenue due to IWMB's actions, because the cheaper products cannibalize Warner's market priced movies.

“The illegal sales of Warner product have caused WHV substantial injury and unless enjoined, threaten irreparable harm to WHV,” reads the lawsuit, via VideoBusiness. “Defendants’ sale of the Warner product at lower-than-market prices not only deprived WHV of the benefit of possession of the product, but has also undermined and diluted the value of the home video titles.”

New pictures of Xbox 360 console packaging allegedly from GameStop have been spread around and seem to confirm rumors that suggest Microsoft is dumping the Xbox 360 Pro model. The picture, shown below, shows an Xbox 360 Arcade box (left) compared to a newer box (right), with the newer box only showing the Xbox 360 Arcade, and Xbox 360 Elite versions of the console.

Source: Kotaku

The sheer potential of solid-state drives to boost the performance and other aspects of computers is starting to show in the regular announcements of SSD developments from manufacturers. The drive to capture a large piece of the pie is accelerating the evolution of the technology, and one of the major factors under focus now is capacity, with a race to catch up to the standard HDD.

Toshiba has begun volume shipments of new SSD drives with capacities of up to 512GB. These drives are already featured in new (expensive!) Toshiba laptops. The new drives, offering capacities of 64GB, 128GB, 256GB and 512GB are manufactured on a 43-nanometer process using multi-level cell (MLC) technology, and available in either a 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch enclosure.

For whatever improvements the SSDs might offer over a standard run-of-the-mill HDD, the price is a hard pill to swallow. The component costs themselves aren't quite clear yet, but consider that a Toshiba Portege R600 laptop with a 512GB SSD will set you back $3,499.

Sharp and Sony have announced that both consumer electronics companies have entered into a joint venture agreement. The joint venture is related to the production of LCD panels and modules.

Sharp Display Products Corporation (SDP) took over the LCD production plant in Sakai City, Japan which is still under construction, in early July.

It will manufacture mostly 32-inch LCD screens. Sony will invest over $100 million in SDP, which will make SDP a Sharp/Sony joint venture. As part of the agreement, Sony will cough up 34 percent of the $4 billion cost of the Sakai City plant, and will receive a portion of the products produced at the plant as well as another in Southern Japan.

Sony already has another LCD joint venture established with Samsung, and also sources panels from Taiwan-based AU Optronics.

Following the recent issue surrounding the deletion of George Orwell works (1984, Animal Farm) from users' Kindle readers, anti-DRM activists Defective By Design has targeted the device with a new petition. The text of the petition reads...

We believe in a way of life based on the free exchange of ideas, in which books have and will continue to play a central role. Devices like Amazon's are trying to determine how people will interact with books, but Amazon's use of DRM to control and monitor users and their books constitutes a clear threat to the free exchange of ideas.

That is why we readers, authors, publishers, and librarians demand that Amazon remove all DRM, including any ability to control or access the user's library, from the Kindle.

Amazon's assurances that it will refrain from the worst abuses of this power do not address the problem. Amazon should not have this power in the first place. Until they give it up they will be tempted to use it, or they could be forced to by governments or narrow private interests. Whatever Amazon's reasons for imposing this control may be, they are not as important as the public's freedom to use books without interference or supervision.

Microsoft has come out in defense of the much-anticipated Windows 7 operating system after a number of blogs and other sources flaunted a discovered bug as a potential "show-stopper". Some had reported that a bug with the operating system's CHKDSK utility could delay the planned rollout, which is being watched closely as hopes are high of Windows 7 providing a much needed jab in the arm for the PC industry.

Screenshots of the Windows Task Manager depicting the CHKDSK process eating up several gigabytes of memory (apparently leading to a BSOD in cases) have circulated around the blogosphere, but Microsoft is denying that the bug is in the Windows software. Instead, Microsoft is pointing at a chipset controller issue as the culprit and advising customers to update their chipset drivers to the latest versions providing by the motherboard manufacturer.

Microsoft's Windows division President Steven Sinofsky said that the company has not reproduced the crash or experienced any crashes with CHKDSK in any measurable number. "While we appreciate the drama of 'critical bug' and then the pickup of 'showstopper' that I’ve seen, we might take a step back and realize that this might not have that defcon level," he said.

According to figures published by Enterbrain, Nintendo's DSi handheld console has sold more than 3 million units in Japan since its launch in November 2008. The latest version in the DS series was marked as having moved 3,062,920 units as of August 2, showing that the sales milestone for the device was achieved in nine months on the market.

In Nintendo's quarterly results published last week, the company noted that 3.65 million DSi units had been sold in the three months ending June 30th, part of the total 6.68 million units sold to date.

In the NPD figures for June 2009, a particularly bad month for the industry, Nintendo noted that 424,000 units of the total 766,000 DS units sold (representing more unit sales than all other consoles combined) were of the new DSi model.

Kyrgyzstan's largest torrent tracker, Torrent.kg has been shut down this week over copyright infringement violations, with police seizing all of the site's servers.

The country, which borders China, has a population of 5.5 million, many of which use torrents for movies and music.

The site, when taken down, read: “For reasons beyond our control the site is temporarily suspended. The administration hopes for a speedy solution to all problems. We apologize for any inconvenience caused.”

The owner of the site, via the site's forum, says he expects the site to be back up soon, and is asking users to not remove any torrents from their clients as of yet.

Adds Tolkun Umaraliev, a blogger from Kyrgyzstan, via TF: “Piracy cannot be stopped in Kyrgyzstan, because people – consumers – do not really know what piracy is, and that it is illegal. Since the fall of the Soviet Union, our market has been filled with underground VHS cassettes of Hollywood movies poorly translated into Russian and underground audio cassettes of western singers. And their prices were reasonable – consumers could afford them.”

Microsoft has announced the lineup for its upcoming Games on Demand service today, which will launch on August 11th alongside the Xbox Live Dashboard update.

The games can be purchased with a credit card or using MS points. There was no word on pricing details, however some forum users are claiming Bioshock will cost $30 USD.

According to IGN, here is the full list, including US v Europe releases.

* Assassin's Creed
* BioShock (US only)
* Burnout Paradise
* Call of Duty 2
* Dance Dance Revolution Universe (US only)
* The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion
* Fight Night Round 3
* Kameo: Elements of Power
* Karaoke Revolution American Idol Encore (US only)
* LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
* Mass Effect
* Meet The Robinsons
* MX vs. ATV Untamed
* Need for Speed Carbon
* Need for Speed: Most Wanted
* Perfect Dark Zero
* Prey
* Ridge Racer 6 (US only)
* Rockstar Games Presents Table Tennis
* SEGA Rally Revo (Europe only)
* Sonic the Hedgehog (US only)
* Test Drive Unlimited
* Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six Vegas
* Tomb Raider Legend (Europe only)
* Viva Pinata
* Viva Pinata: Trouble in Paradise

Back in 2006, EliteTorrents admin Scott McCausland received five months in jail for his part in the pre-release upload of Star Wars Episode III. After his sentence however, he was put on a government monitoring list, and forced to wear an ankle bracelet and have his computer monitored at all times.

This week however, he has finally come off that monitoring list, and is off probation.

Says McCausland, via TF: “I have officially been off probation since July 12th. What a great feeling to finally be free from the clutches of evil (or the federal government). It was actually a really easy time on probation. It was 2 years, dealing once a month with my probation officer… who was really a great person.”

“I haven’t had a clear head since May 25th, 2005. Over 4 years of what I would call the worst period of my life is over,” he adds.

Following in the footsteps of other big name "pirates" such as Peter Sunde, McCausland hopes to move on and forward with his life.

“I will be hopefully starting back to school for my MBA in the spring. And I am getting married in May 2010. Aside from the economy, I couldn’t ask for anything more,” he concluded.

When Google announced their plans to buy On2 Technologies there weren't a lot of people who knew immediately what they were buying. On2 is pretty well known among digital video enthusiasts, but not even a blip on the radar in the wider world.

If you don't already know who they are, On2 Technologies has been developing video software for more than a decade. Past products include the codec on which the open source OGG Theora is based.

On2 specializes in web and mobile phone video solutions, like the tools they make for Adobe Flash authoring.

Obviously Google already has a significant presence in the web video world just with their ownership of YouTube. With the introduction of their Chrome OS and Chrome Browser it's an obvious time for them to want more input into streaming video delivery.

Many tech analysts are suggesting this is a move primarily intended to reduce costs assocaited with YouTube. But their Chrome browser and netbook OS may explain it even better.

Just a week after shutting down the large Argentinean file-sharing site Qsound, the anti-piracy group IFPI has shut down two more sites, Zona-mp3.com.ar and Deathvalley.com.ar.

Qsound had 1,500 registered users sharing music files and the IFPI says the "site contained more than 2,000 posts linking to around 3,000 unauthorized music files before it was closed."

Zona-mp3 had 11,000 users "and more than 2,000 postings of mostly local rock repertoire, was shut down after local labels organization CAPIF notified the site’s Internet service provider."

Deathvalley, the largest of the three, had 30,000 members and was dedicated to music piracy as well.

OCZ has announced the launch of their Colossus solid-state drive (SSD), which will offer an impressive 1TB of storage space.

The drive will be aimed at consumers needing an external drive and will be specifically marketed to gamers, due to its extremely fast speed and high capacity.

ComputerWorld says the drive will use a Indilinx controller and will "come with two or four controllers depending on the capacity, and can be configured for internal RAID 0 for increased performance."

Each controller is a virtual drive, running off a seperate RAID controller.

The drive has "a maximum sequential read rate of 261MB/sec and a maximum sequential write rate of the same rate."
"The initial results we have tested show that the Colossus really excels in the small file random reads/writes," an OCZ spokeswoman said, via CW.

Now however, comes the only catch, the extreme price tag. A standard 1TB 3.5" HDD costs between $70-120 depending on model and make. The Colossus will run you $2200 USD. Maybe a thing to consider before throwing it in that new rig you have been making.

According to the DigiTimes, Sony has ordered enough supplies for one million PS3 consoles for the Q3 2009, a number double the quarter before it.

The news has led to even more speculation that a Slim PS3 is coming this month, alongside an imminent price cut on current models.

The announcement is expected at the GamesCom event on August 18th, where Sony will have a three-hour press conference.

Earlier this week, Amazon dropped the price of the 160GB Uncharted bundle by $50 USD, prompting even more speculation of a price cut coming.

Palm has written a letter of protest to the USB Implementers Forum (USB-IF), the non-profit organization that maintains the Universal Serial Bus (USB) specification and promotes the interface. The Palm letter concerns Apple's iTunes update (8.2.1) which blocked the Palm Pre from being used with the iTunes software in exactly the same way as an iPod is. iTunes even identified a Palm Pre as an iPod and showed iPod artwork when connected.

The support for Apple's iTunes software was seen as an important selling point for the Palm Pre. The device was able to fool iTunes into identifying it as an Apple product by manipulating the USB standard's device descriptors. Apple's iTunes blocks access to any device that isn't an Apple product by checking the idVendor descriptor when connected.

AT&T has told the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that Apple Inc. is to blame for the rejection of the Google Voice application from the iPhone app store. According to AT&T, the company does not manage to approve any applications for the App Store at all. The FCC had asked Apple and AT&T to explain the process by which Apps are approved or rejected, and to what extend AT&T is involved in any given decision.

AT&T's claim that is does not approve or reject applications for the App Store is not entirely true however, as it clearly had some sway over App limitations at least. The Slingbox and Skype apps have been forced to go WiFi-only in order to be listed in the App Store, largely due to network congestion fears from AT&T.

Even Apple CEO Steve Jobs stated that AT&T is "policing" VoIP applications, attributing Skype's limitations to the carrier. The new issue highlights what is being seen as a rift between both companies in recent times which even saw Apple accused of making several swipes at AT&T at its Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC).

Dish Network Corp. and sister company, EchoStar Corp., announced on Tuesday that the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has delivered it an initial favorable ruling in a patent dispute with DVR-pioneer TiVo Inc. The case surrounds a lawsuit originally filed by TiVo against Dish in 2004 over TiVo's "Time Warp" feature that enables the pausing of live TV or re-winding.

Tuesday's decision by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office rejects TiVo's software claims that are at the core of the lawsuit. TiVo won its initial lawsuit against Dish, and Dish was ordered to pay $105 million to TiVo. While the case was on appeal, Dish decided to take a workaround solution and downloaded modified software to DVR's in use by its customers.

TiVo protested saying the workaround software still infringes its patent and prevailed when it asked a District court for an injunction. Dish appealed the case. Responding to Tuesday's decision, TiVo points out that it is only a preliminary finding, and that the company has not yet had the opportunity to present its views.

A Japanese Nintendo DS game pirate has been sentenced to 2.5 years in prison and given a nearly $100,000 USD fine, after being convicted of making 1000 ROMs of DS games available for download.

The man, Yoshiaki Asagiri, was arrested in late 2008 and was charged with "distributing games online without permission" and the "breaking of Japanese copyright law," says Kotaku.

The sentencing judge called Asagiri's crime a "trampling" of the efforts of the game developers and publishers, who have spent time and money on bringing the games to the public.

Nintendo has stepped up their efforts against piracy of late, with the new decision following right on the footsteps of a DSi firmware update that has completely killed off flash carts used to play pirated games and run unauthorized software.

Sony unveiled two new e-readers on Tuesday which will compete with Amazon's popular Kindle e-book readers in the emerging market for digital books, one of which stands $100 less than the Kindle. The Sony Reader Touch Edition sports a 6-inch touchscreen, and has a price tag of $299 just like Amazon's latest Kindle.

The second new e-reader has a smaller 5-inch (not touchscreen) screen. Dubbed the Reader Pocket Edition, the portable e-reader will cost $199. Both new e-readers will be available in August. From the details revealed by Sony, it's a mixed bag when compared to the Amazon readers.

Google Inc. has announced that it plans to acquire web video-compression expert On2 Technologies Inc. in an all-stock deal worth an estimated $106.5 million. On2 Technologies pioneers video compression technology geared toward providing high quality video on the web at ever-decreasing file sizes, to help address the bandwidth challenges that are brought up by the rise of online video.

Google, which owns YouTube, the largest video-sharing hub in the world, can only benefit from acquiring a well-known company such as On2. "Today video is an essential part of the Web experience, and we believe high-quality video compression technology should be a part of the Web platform," said Sundar Pichai, Google's vice president for product management in a statement.

The deal, which the search engine-giant expects to complete in the fourth quarter, will provide On2 shareholders 60 cents worth of Google class A common shares for each outstanding On2 share they hold, amounting to a 57% premium compared to the closing price on Tuesday.

A California state college student was arrested for modifying gaming console hardware to bypass copy protection technology. Matthew Lloyd Crippen, 27, or Anaheim was taken into custody by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents on Monday following indictment by a federal grand jury on two counts of violating provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), each count carrying a maximum of five years imprisonment.

Crippen is accused of profiting by modifying Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo video game consoles to enable booting of pirate copies of video games. Investigators seized more than a dozen video game consoles which were found in his home. "Playing with games in this way is not a game -- it is criminal," said Robert Schoch, special agent in charge of the ICE investigations office in Los Angeles.

The popular e-tailer Amazon has slashed the price of the Uncharted 160GB Sony PlayStation 3 model, offering the system for $449 USD to American customers.

The bundle includes the game "Uncharted: Drake's Fortune" as well as a ticket to download "PAIN". The move is just another push in the direction of an upcoming PS3 price cut, expected at Gamescom on August 18th.

Reports have claimed that PS3 manufacturing costs have dropped 70 percent since launch in 2006, meaning the 80GB costs a bit over $260 to manufacture.

Amazon 160GB PS3 model

According to unnamed executives familiar with the situation, Netflix is preparing to bring its "Watch Instantly" streaming service to the Nintendo Wii and the Apple iPhone/iPod Touch via Wi-Fi.

"Watch Instantly" allows Netflix subscribers to view over 12,000 movies and TV episodes, via the Xbox 360, LG Blu-ray players, TiVos, Sony Bravia HDTVs and many other devices. If Multichannel's report is accurate, the service could be heading to three new devices, and soon.

Important to note however, is that the iPhone/Touch app would most likely block the viewing of content over the 3G, due to AT&T's alleged throttling of bandwidth intense applications. So far, most bandwidth intensive video content apps have been relegated to Wi-Fi only.

Thanks to the leak by a Zune MVP on Twitter, the world now has over 20 new leaked photos of the upcoming Zune HD media device.

The Twitter link was taken down due to suspected NDAviolations, says the source, but they managed to download most of the pics.

The device has been rumored to be launching in September or October, the same month the alleged iPod Touch 3 is set to launch, with camera and microphone.

The screenshots show off the HD radio interface as well as cover art, but nothing else. Hopefully soon we will learn more details, including price.

View the pics here: Zune HD leaked photos

According to a "reliable" source speaking to PlayStation Insider, August 18th will bring the much anticipated Sony PlayStation 3 price cut, possibly alongside the launch of the equally hyped Slim PS3 model.

The rumor also says there will be other price cuts in the "PS family of products" leading to speculation that a PSP model could be seeing a cut as well.

Fueling the fire of the rumor is the fact that on the 18th, Sony has planned a 3 hour press event at GamesCom in Germany.

Even more so, says PSInsider, 7-Eleven franchises in Japan will stop taking orders for 80GB PS3s this week, discontinuing the model "for the manufacturer," leading to even more speculation.

Since the introduction of the CD it has become easy to own music practically forever. But as CD collections grow it can be difficult to keep track of what you have.

Fortunately the simultaneous development of the personal computer makes it easy to do just that. And several programs have been written to help you keep track of your discs.

CD Archiver

According to BoyGeniusReport, Verizon has slashed the prices of their current smartphone line, bringing most to $99 USD with two-year contract.

BGR speculates that an entire new line of smartphones are headed our way soon, and the price cuts will help clear out inventory.

Specifically noted is the Touch Pro, which dropped from $419 to $99, most likely as a phase out for the upcoming Touch Pro 2.

Check the phones here: Verizon Wireless

According to his latest blog post, The Pirate Bay founder and spokesperson Peter Sunde is stepping down from his position, hoping to move along with his life, one that has been under media scrutiny for years now.

Says the post:

"The past years I’ve been very active in the discussion of the current state and the future states of the internets. It’s an important cause and I will not give the fight up.

However, I have decided to not be the spokes person for The Pirate Bay anymore. The reasons are many but most importantly it takes too much of my time. I want to build something new and I want to focus my energy in a different direction. I have projects waiting to be finished, a book is waiting to be finalized and many more books are waiting to be read.

Our issues has been raised to another level and it’s time for biological dispersal. At the same time, I have a feeling of being sessile when I need to be the most motile creature ever. The regeneration will continue with me in another place.

Today marks the end of a small era for me, but I am simply leaving a role in order to be a person instead.

Nintendo has announced Facebook integration in the DSi handheld, following a recent firmware update that will now allow you to upload pictures taken on the handheld right to your FB profile.

The integration is now available in the US, EU, Australia and Japan.

According to GI.biz, "the update means that when users are reviewing photos they have stored in their DSi camera album, they see a Facebook icon on the touchscreen which, when tapped, instantly transmits the photo to the user's Facebook profile."

"Facebook and Nintendo DSi build on the trend of personalisation that is so important to consumers," adds Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive VP of sales and marketing. "We're giving people the tools to express themselves in creative new ways and show off the results to their friends and family on Facebook."

According to Sony's recent earnings figures, the company has sold 24 million PlayStation 3 units globally since the console's launch in late 2006.

Total software sales, including PSN downloads for games, hit 190 million overall.

Overall, however, the picture was not rosy for Sony's financials, which followed the lower than expected numbers at Microsoft from last week.

The PlayStation division, which includes PS3, PS2, PSP and Viao PC/notebook sales, saw a year-on-year decline of 37.4 percent leading to an overall company-wide JPY $37.1 billion loss (about $389 million USD)

The Nintendo Wii remains the clear leader, with a 51 million unit install base, followed by the Xbox 360, at 31 million.

Nero AG has released a freeware data burning utility for the Microsoft Windows platform. The new freeware tool is limited to data discs and CD, DVD copies, but it is totally free and is not time limited (not to be confused with the 15 day trial of Nero 9). A cut down copy of the software might be exactly what some users were looking for in the first place, as Nero's increasingly bulky releases have prompted criticism of the products.

Of course, a tool like ImgBurn can do pretty much everything, and more, compared to the new Nero freeware tool, but the tool keeps the ease-of-use of Nero StartSmart that might be more attractive to users new to burning. The freeware version will work with Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7.

Download Nero 9 - Free version v9.4.12.3 from:
https://www.afterdawn.com/software/video_software/dvd-r_tools/nero_free.cfm

According to a new survey on 'American Internet habits' reported by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, online movie watching has doubled over the last two years.

35 percent of those surveyed said they had watched a TV show or movie online in 2009, up from 16 percent in 2007. About 25 percent of those watching content said they did so through their TV.

Says VB, "According to Pew, 62% of online users watched video through a sharing site in April, topping the 46% of Internet users who used a social networking site, the 19% who downloaded a podcast and the 11% that updated their status on Twitter."

89 percent of adults 18 to 29 now watch online video, with over 36 percent doing so on a daily basis.

VuNow has announced that they have added Roxio CinemaNow content to their VuNow Internet TV service.

The service allows users to watch video content directly from their TVs without the need for a PC. The service connects to YouTube, many global TV stations, and now over 10,000 CinemaNow movies.

"VuNow offers consumers the broadest choice of online video content for today's living room," added Prakash Bhalerao, Verismo Networks CEO. "By partnering with Sonic, we're able to give our customers even more entertainment options - from TV episodes to Hollywood new releases."

A VuNow Pod, used to access the content, costs $129 USD.

Sonic Solutions has announced that they will finally be bringing HD streaming to its Roxio CinemaNow online video service, using a new technology dubbed Sonic CineVision Adaptive HD which the company promises will make films look Blu-ray-esque in 1080p full HD.

Sonic's competitors, such as iTunes, Amazon, VUDU, and Sony have all had HD streaming or downloads for some time now.

CineVision Adaptive HD will also be available "as part of the company’s CineVision Master Encoding system" says TWICE, "enabling others to maximize the quality of streaming video content."

The CineVision Master Encoding system is used in current Blu-ray production, so the company says the streaming quality will be second to none.

The FIMI (Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana) and the FPM (Federation against Musical Piracy) have declared their intent to sue the founders of the torrent trackerThe Pirate Bay, seeking monetary damages of 1 million euros.

The move follows the recent lawsuit against the site by the Hollywood studios, the decision of a Netherlands court that the site must be blocked in the region, and the fact that the proposed purchase of the site by Global Gaming Factory seems to be on the brink of failure.

The lawsuit will be against the site's founders, Peter Sunde, Fredrik Neij and Gottfrid Svartholm.

Adds Enzo Mazza, President of FIMI, via TF (in regards to the proposed sale): “The claim is also based on the principle that by selling the site to others, the founders have confirmed that the whole illegal operation of The Pirate Bay was to make a profit and it is therefore unacceptable that someone can take the money and then escape without repairing the damage.”

According to Sony Corp. CEO Nobuyuki Oneda, manufacturing costs for the PlayStation 3 have dropped 70 percent since the console's launch in 2006, leading to more speculation that a price cut is coming soon.

"The cost reduction since we introduced the PS3 is very substantial and this is on schedule," said Oneda, via GI.biz "We don't disclose how much of the PlayStation 3, specifically the cost deduction, was achieved during the past two years. But that is on schedule." When asked for exact figures, he added: "About 70 percent, roughly-speaking."

At launch, the console cost, (unconfirmed), $800 USD per unit, meaning Sony was losing a substantial amount of money on each console shipped.

As of January 2008, costs had reportedly fallen 50 percent to $400 USD and now, according to the latest report, the console will cost $265 to manufacture, meaning Sony is actually making money on hardware sales, finally.

The 80GB model of the console retails for $400 USD.

After just three hours of deliberations, a jury has ruled that convicted pirate Joel Tenenbaum has willfully infringed on copyrights, and has awarded the RIAA and the media companies $675,000 USD, $22,500 for each of the 30 songs he admitted to sharing.

In some ways, Tenenbaum should be grateful, as the jury could have awarded up to $150,000 in penalties per track. In the recent ruling against Jammie Thomas-Rasset, the jury awarded the RIAA $1.92 million USD, on only 24 tracks.

Tenenbaums Harvard Law professor Charles Nesson added of the decision: "It's a bankrupting award."

"I'm disappointed, but not surprised, but I'm thankful that it wasn't much bigger, that it wasn't millions," Tenenbaum added, via Arstechnica. Tenenbaum also specifically noted that if he loses on appeal, he will be forced into bankruptcy.

On the other hand, the RIAA was ecstatic with the jury's decision: "We are grateful for the jury’s service and their recognition of the impact of illegal downloading on the music community. We appreciate that Mr. Tenenbaum finally acknowledged that artists and music companies deserve to be paid for their work. From the beginning that’s what this case has been about. We only wish he had done so sooner rather than lie about his illegal behavior."