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According to sources close to the talks, Warner Music Group and Google Inc.'s YouTube video-sharing website are finalizing an agreement that will allow Warner music videos to be featured on the website. YouTube had to pull all video content owned by Warner from the website in December over a dispute over licensing rights.

Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group and EMI Music have all previously renewed deals with YouTube, keeping their content on the website. If the negotiations between Warner and YouTube are successful, then music from the likes of Madonna and Green Day will appear on the website again.

The deal may also open the door to Warner being involved in the new music video venture from YouTube, called Vevo. The new service is backed by Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. Talks of Warner being involved with Vevo are at "early stages", according to Reuters sources.

Music industry insiders have said that web video is rapidly catching up with radio and television as one of the most important music discovery tools for the market.

The SD Association will lead a public technical discussion at CEATAC on October 7. Secure Digital eXtended Capacity (SDXC) cards come in the same size card as regular SD cards, but have the potential to offer up to 2TB storage on a card the size of a stamp. SDXC accelerates SD interface read/write speeds up to 104 megabytes per second.

The SD Association will have a road map for data transfer bus interface speed up to 300 megabytes per second in the coming months. "The SDXC memory card specification creates innovative content and media opportunities for manufacturers and service providers and transcends removable memory’s traditional role in consumer electronics strategies," said James Taylor, president of the Alliance.

"At CEATEC, we'll reveal the SDXC memory card specification from the perspectives of memory card and device manufacturers and users. We'll also look at the many benefits and opportunities manufacturers and service providers win by implementing this new technology."

Nero has unveiled the Nero MobileSync software for smartphones. MobileSync is the first offering from Nero's new "hardware-agnostic" platform of products for mobile handsets, Netbooks, gaming consoles and Ultra-Mobile PCs. Nero MobileSync for smartphones is designed to allow the management, sharing and creation of content between the desktop, the mobile handset, and the Web regardless of the mobile device in use.

"The ability to easily move content between the desktop, the Web and the handset has the potential to become a source of competitive differentiation in the mobile marketplace," said Irene Berlinsky, Research Analyst, IDC. "Consumers increasingly want to access personal content across multiple screens –such as the PC, TV, and wireless phone – and Nero MobileSync positions Nero as a player in the fixed-mobile convergence space."

By allowing users to easily move PIM, music, videos and photos of their choice between the mobile handset, the desktop and the cloud, Nero is providing an opportunity for distinct financial benefits to select network carrier and handheld device partners. Nero MobileSync is available to mobile OEMs now.

Nintendo has updated the Wii console firmware to version 4.2 this week, promising the new menu “provides behind-the-scene fixes that will not affect features but will improve the overall system performance.”

Unfortunately for gamers currently using the Homebrew Channel, the update “will also check for and automatically remove such save data (unauthorized modifications to save data or program files) or program files.”

Nintendo's meaning here is clear. Firmware 4.2 will completely delete the Homebrew Channel, and any file related to it, most notably the DVD Player, USB loader and the ability to make your Wii region-free.

If you are running the Homebrew Channel, it is safe to say you do not want to update to 4.2 just yet, as Nintendo seems to be tackling piracy head-on.

Several hundred comments have been posted on an official Sony blog post announcing the v3.01 firmware release. Some of these comments are complaints, and seem to focus on issues with the console's Blu-ray drive after updating. Users report that the console no longer boots games or Blu-ray discs following the updates but some say that DVD-Video functionality still seems to work properly.

Other problems are being reported too, such as regular problems with sound, some with specific games. "I just cannot understand why Sony says its a hardware failure. If it was hardware, then wouldn't BR discs not even work? Playing a BR movie for 10 minutes then freezing does not sound like hardware to me. Same with PS3 games, why work for 10 minutes then freeze?," one upset poster wrote.

"Does anyone else have the freezing problem with only BR? I just tried a DVD and watched the whole Step Brothers movie." The next user says that while he can still play games, the interface for media listings is "screwed", as he has to constantly scroll a list of content or it will "disappear".

Palm's webOS 1.2 update for the Pre didn't launch as expected last week, but is expected to become available sometime during this week. It is reported that a test of a revamped App Catalog is what triggered the delay. A PreCentral source said that the software update will provide native sync for the iTunes 9 software when it is released, which will undoubtedly up the tension between Apple and Palm over the Pre-iTunes dispute.

The source said that Apple's blocking of iTunes syncing has never caused a delay in the release of new software. In fact, the source claimed that the first attempt to break sync between the software and the device was fixed in just five minutes, by simply changing the USB VendorID to mimic Apple's ID.

JVC has introduced the new PICSIO GC-FM1 in Japan. The 5.8x2-inch camera features an 8-megapixel still photo sensor that can record video at 2.03 megapixels in a 4:3 aspect ratio at 1080p (or optionally 720p, VGA and QVGA). It records content in the H.264 video format at 30 frames per second and stores the content on SD or SDHC flash memory cards. It has a 2-inch LCD screen.

The Federal Communication Commission (FCC) in the United States is seeking input from industry players before October 23rd on an attempt to expand the wireless spectrum as part of the National Broadband Plan. The regulator is seeking comments on whether the "prime bands" below 3.7GHz are sufficient for near- and long-term demands. The bands are considered ideal for wireless data and video transmission.

The FCC wants to get input on the ability of the current spectrum to support future build-outs and what bands would suit mobile or fixed broadband connections best, and what issues could potentially stand in the way of moving spectrum.

AT&T, ClearWire, Ericsson, T-Mobile and Motorola have already expressed the need for a new spectrum as demand in the area continues to grow in the country, whereas others have said the best solution is to seek methods to more efficiently utilize the spectrum that is currently licensed. T-Mobile in particular wants to see the re-auctioning of the 700MHz band.

As if things weren't bad enough for the proposed acquisition of the Pirate Bay by Global Gaming Factory X, the company's chief executive officer Hans Pandeya has lost control of his assets. A Swedish court found that Pandeya owes about $400,000, including interest, to Johan Sellstrom, a former business partner in Global Gaming. The court ruled that the state will take control of his assets until enough can be sold to pay back Sellstrom.

"I was pleased to find that the Court has ruled that my promissory note is indeed genuine," Sellstrom said in an e-mail to CNET. "More importantly, they agreed that a lien against Pandeya's net assets had to be put into effect immediately in order to prevent evasive measures on his part. I look forward to a hasty process in order to minimize the damage that Hans Pandeya has caused the share holders of GGF and wish them all the luck with the acquisition."

Pandeya called the claims "bogus" and says he paid back Sellstrom already in a property deal that eventually went bad. He went on to say that the court's decision may harm GGFX' acquisition of the Pirate Bay website, since affect his ability to raise capital. Pandeya had said he would use his own assets as security on any loan he received to help the company acquire the Pirate Bay.

The European Commission (EC) has noted today that all MP3 players sold in the European Union will soon come with a required "default setting," in an effort to "discourage" users from listening to music at volume levels that will eventually hurt their hearing.

The group will revise the standards after reports from a scientific committee concluded that prolonged "exposure to loud playback" would eventually cause permanent damage to one's hearing.

The EC estimates that up to 100 million people, mainly younger users, use MP3 players every day and that 10 percent of those users are headed for permanent damage.

There are two main problems with MP3 players and volume control, says the EC, one of which is that many users use them in loud areas such as buses and subways and are therefore forced to raise the volume. The second problem is "prolonged use."

The scientific committee says listening to music at under 80 dBA (decibels adjusted) is perfectly fine but your risk factor goes up exponentially for every dB (A) after that. At 100 dB (A), only 1 hour of playback is recommended, per week.

The default setting will likely be in the 65-75 dB (A) range, and users raising the volume higher will be greeted with an on-screen warning.

Apple has announced today that the ever-popular App Store has hit 2 billion downloads, with over 85,000 apps now available to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

“The rate of App Store downloads continues to accelerate with users downloading a staggering two billion apps in just over a year, including more than half a billion apps this quarter alone,” added Apple CEO Steve Jobs. “The App Store has reinvented what you can do with a mobile handheld device, and our users are clearly loving it.”

The marketplace hit 1.5 billion downloads in July, and is clearly seeing exponential growth.

The devices are available in 77 countries.

Toshiba UK announced the new Qosmio X500 intended to be used by gamers. The Qosmio X500 offers high performance processing power, combined with the latest graphics capabilities, to deliver a great mobile gaming experience. It is powered by Intel's latest Quad Core processors and the latest nVIDIA GeForce graphics, and sports a large 18.4-inch TruBrite Full HD LCD screen with 16:9 aspect ratio at a resolution of 1920x1080.

It includes stereo speakers made by audio specialists Harman Kardon. The Qosmio X500 also features a rewritable Blu-ray drive (BD-RE) and Toshiba's Resolution+ upscaling technology, enabling the standard definition DVDs and video files to be upconverted to near high definition quality. It also features an HD web camera, allowing users to record HD video and webchat in wide screen 16:9 format.

The people at Xiph.org have released Theora 1.1, a year after releasing Theora 1.0. The format itself hasn't been altered; existing Theora videos will be decoded fine with the new decoder and the new encoder will produce bitstreams that work with existing Theora players.

The update is largely an improvement for the Theora encoder which improves video quality over v1.0, brings rate control for live streaming, two-pass mode, consistent CPU usage and a more efficient decoder.

The Theora 1.1 release fixes a problem for its users, which was the production of "fuzzy video". The following pictures are from Xiph developer Monty. Click to open both in new tabs and flick between them to see the difference.

Just one day after Amazon dropped the price of the popular Palm Pre smartphone to $100 USD, Wal-Mart has begun selling the phone for $80 USD with two-year contract with exclusive carrier Sprint.

The 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.

$80 is the cheapest the phone has ever sold for, and will likely help boost sales headed into the holiday season.

Microsoft Corp. has reportedly informed wireless carriers by letter that they can no longer use the Musiwave mobile tunes service once their contracts expire, a source told The Register. Musiwave drives more than 50 million downloads a year for the likes of T-Mobile, Vodafone, and Orange. It has licensing deals with the major record labels covering 3.3 million tracks and 250,000 artists.

The service underpins music, video and ringtone services operated by wireless carriers around the world (but not in the U.S.). The report seems to indicate that Microsoft is incorporating Musiwave into the Zune Marketplace and Xbox 360 games console - making it a Microsoft-exclusive technology that compares somewhat to Apple's iTunes exclusivity.

Musiwave's withdrawal from wireless carriers opens up the market for rivals such as RealNetworks and Livewire Mobile. "We're building a team in Redmond to help power Zune Marketplace," reads another Musiwave listing. "This job would work towards the overall strategy and collaborate closely with the Zune Redmond team and the Musiwave Paris team."

Myles Weathers, of Springfield, Massachusetts, has pleaded guilty today to stealing over 3000 DVDs that had been sent to customers through Netflix, using his job as a postal worker to do so.

Weathers began stealing the discs in January 2007 and was arrested one year later. Netflix had alerted the authorities and the Springfield post office that up to 100 movies a week were disappearing from the branch.

The former postal worker was arrested on the spot when he was filmed taking the DVDs from their packages and stuffing them in his jacket or backpack.

Sentencing is set for December 23rd and Weathers will face 10-16 months and a fine of $38,000 to be paid back to Netflix.

According to a new NPD analysis, Blu-ray will finally break into the mainstream in 2010, especially as prices continue to drop.

The company researched consumers using Blu-ray set-top boxes (not including the PS3) in February 2008 and in August of this year, and the figures clearly showed that BD is out of the "early adopter" phase and into the "dreamers" phase which is the group that wants the new technology but are "deterred by price."

Regardless, NPD says falling prices, strong holiday sales, and a slowing uptrending economy will finally push Blu-ray from "niche" technology to "mainstream."

In the 2008 study, over 64 percent of users were early adopters, which only account for 20 percent of the entire market. By August however, the number had been reduced to 38 percent, and replaced by "dreamers" and "sensibles," a group full of middle aged families who like the technology but waited some time before investing. Those two groups account for over 40 percent of the entire market.

A meeting that was called for British musicians to discuss UK government proposals on how to tackle illegal file sharing has come to a consensus that file-sharers should have their bandwidth "squeezed" for persistent copyright infringement. The congregation of more than 100 artists came to the agreement that file sharers should not have their Internet accounts suspended.

Artists including Lily Allen, George Michael, Annie Lennox, Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien and Pink Floyd drummer Nick Mason signed a statement. It calls for two warning letters to be issued to users when they are caught sharing music illegally before their bandwidth speeds are restricted for certain purposes.

The idea would be to "render sharing of media files impractical while leaving basic e-mail and web access functional." Lily Allen, who was the target of quite a large amount of criticism for running her mouth on the issue while technically breaching copyright law on the exact same website, was applauded by the audience for her campaign to "alert music lovers to the threat that illegal downloading presents to our industry."

Sales of Sony's PlayStation 3 (PS3) consoles last week in Japan totaled 51,055, toughly an 8 percent drop from 55,344 units the week before. The result is relatively stable considering the release of the PS3 Slim had driven sales up to 151,000 units suddenly in the country, leading to some speculation about whether the console would see a lasting boost from the new model.

The only gaming hardware to outperform the PS3 last week was, unsurprisingly, the Nintendo DSi handheld console, which moved 66,073 units during the week. The older DS Lite, sold 13,555 units. Nintendo's Wii console dropped to 16,698 unit sales from the 17,568 sales the week before. Xbox 360 sales sunk from 7568 sales to 4965.

Pokemon Soul Silver and Pokemon Heart Gold, both for the DS platform, topped the gaming charts in the country, followed by Tales of Vesperia for the PS3 and Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakkyuu Portable 4 for the PSP.

Intel Corporation showed off three high-performance quad-core Core i7 mobile processors (code name Clarksfield) at the Intel Developer Forum. They debuted alongside the new Intel PM55 Mobile Express Chipset. The company claims the CPU-chipset combination of Core i7 and PM55 easily provides the best laptop experience for gaming, digital media, photos and other multi-threaded tasks.

"With intelligent features like Intel Turbo Boost Technology, Intel Hyper-Threading Technology and a host of others, Intel has revolutionized the laptop PC processor, delivering performance when you need it, energy efficiency when you don't," said Dadi Perlmutter, executive vice president and general manager, Intel Architecture Group.

"For the first time, mobile users can choose a laptop that delivers Internet-server like speed, right in their laps for the most demanding tasks, from intense gaming to digital video editing and social media applications."

Earlier this week, French parliament approved the highly controversial 'three strikes' law for Internet pirates, giving authorities the power to disconnect multiple time offenders from the Web completely.

The bill has been advocated by the media companies for some time now but has faced critical opposition in most nations. The media companies have also thrown around a lot of big numbers to justify the law, for example saying that music piracy costs the UK economy £200 million every year.

The ISPs have begun to fight back however, and BT in the UK has recently stated that the three strikes laws would cost ISPs £1 million a day in lost customers and infrastructure costs. Doing some quick math and we see that the £365 million it will cost ISPs is a lot more damaging then the "£200 million" that music piracy is costing the economy. Of course, both figures have little to no solid data to back them up, but still a very interesting debate.

In a letter to the Federal Communication Commission (FCC), AT&T accused Google of ignoring FCC regulations and called the company a hypocrite over its policies with the Google Voice application. Long-distance providers, such as AT&T, are required to pay fees to local phone companies for access to their landline networks, and FCC regulations ban long-distance providers from call blocking.

The result is that if AT&T, or another long-distance provider, wants to continue operating as a long-distance provider, then they cannot ignore local/rural areas and simply have to pay fees to the local phone companies. The rule, which has been in place since 2007, is seen as unfair by the providers who say the fees they are charged are too expensive.

In AT&T's letter, the company asked the FCC to review this decision. However, the letter is mostly aimed at Google Voice. Google Voice does not connect to all markets - the company blocks the application from connecting phone calls in certain rural areas. To AT&T, this is an unfair advantage over AT&T and other long-distance providers that are not allowed to block calls to select rural areas.

"By openly flaunting the call blocking prohibition that applies to its competitors, Google is acting in a manner inconsistent with the spirit, if not the letter, of the FCC's fourth principle contained in its Internet Policy Statement," Robert Quinn, senior vice president of federal regulatory affairs at AT&T, said. "Ironically, Google is also flouting the so-called 'fifth principle of non-discrimination' for which Google has so fervently advocated."

Jeff Reifman, a blogger who dubs himself a "Seattle-based technologist, writer and media advocate," has written an extremely interesting post this week about software giant Microsoft, accusing the company of avoiding up to $700 million USD in taxes over the past decade plus by having its software licensing office in Reno, Nevada instead of Redmond, Washington.

Making the "avoidance" even more notable, is that Washington State is currently in the midst of a $430 million USD budget deficit, one that would be turned to a surplus if Microsoft was paying their taxes.

Says Reifman: "Over the past thirteen years, I estimate that Microsoft has avoided paying more than $707 million in B & O taxes on sales of its corporate software licenses. Although the majority of its software development is performed in Washington State, Microsoft records its estimated $18 billion in licensing revenue per year through a corporate office in Reno, Nevada where there is no licensing tax."

He continues: "Under the state's .484 percent software royalty tax(lowered from 1.5 percent in 1998 after industry lobbying), I estimate that Microsoft should have paid more than $90 million in 2008 and $87 million in 2009 in state taxes."

Earlier this week, AMD launched its most powerful processor to date (based on raw compute horsepower measured in FLOPS), found in its next-generation ATI Radeon HD 5800 series graphics cards. The Radeon HD 5800 series is the first to fully support Microsoft DirectX 11, which will be shipping with the Windows 7 operating system. AMD will initially release two cards: the ATI Radeon HD 5870 and the ATI Radeon HD 5850, each with 1GB GDDR5 memory.

The 5800 series will be supported by a handful of add-in-board companies, including ASUS, Club 3D, Diamond Multimedia, Force3D, GIGABYTE, HIS, MSI, Multimedia, PowerColor, SAPPHIRE Technology, VisionTek and XFX. "With the ATI Radeon HD 5800 series of graphics cards driven by the most powerful processor on the planet, AMD is changing the game, both in terms of performance and the experience," said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Products Group, AMD.

Users of Apple's iPhone 3G and 3GS are finally able to use the MMS functionality added to the handset with the iPhone 3.0 software update on AT&T's network. The capability came at 1pm Eastern Time, meeting the time announced earlier this week by AT&T. Activation of MMS requires that the iPhone OS 3.1 along with a carrier settings update be installed on the device. MMS is not available for the first generation iPhone.

The updates allow iPhone users to send pictures and videos using the phone's messaging applications. MMS is available with the standard text messaging plan from AT&T; 200 messages per month for $5, 1,500 messages per month for $15 or $20 for unlimited messages.

On Friday, AT&T also updated the pricing for refurbished iPhone 3G models, setting the price at $49 for an 8GB model, and $99 for a 16GB model.

Apple has added a support page for MMS activation.

Apple is reportedly ready to introduce a new 2009 Mac product line with a new family of iMacs, according to AppleInsider sources. The new iMacs were reportedly finalized early in September and have been in production at Taiwanese product lines for about two weeks. The systems are expected to feature a thinner industrial design, and to offer more affordable models for consumers.

The new models are expected to take design cues from Apple's relatively new LED-lit Cinema Display products. Rumors about the new line-up suggest that support for Blu-ray - which Apple CEO Steve Jobs once referred to as a "bag of hurt" from a licensing perspective - would finally be present. That would possibly be a feature of a premium iMac model.

Apple's corporate and educational sales teams have been offering volume customers discounts of between $100 and $200 this month on existing iMac models, according to reports. Representatives allegedly stressed to buyers that the offer would only be available for a week or so, possibly anxious to clear existing inventories before showing new products.

Starz has announced that a lot of their classic and new movie content is now available via iTunes, bringing films from Overture Films, Anchor Bay Films, Anchor Bay Entertainment, and Manga Entertainment to the popular downloading platform.

Among the content available today is Sunshine Cleaning, Head Case, Martin Lawrence Presents 1st Amendment Stand-up, and Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone, says the company.

Among films coming in the very near future are The Hills Have Eyes, Phantasm, The Haunted World of El Superbeasto; The Education of Charlie Banks, The Grand, Lower Learning, Sex and Death 101 and Surfer, Dude, Dead Space: Downfall, Hellboy: Blood and Iron, Hellboy: Sword of Storms, and Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie.

"We are very pleased to be expanding our offerings on iTunes to now include a wide array of current and library feature films from Overture Films, Anchor Bay Entertainment, and Manga Entertainment, in addition to the popular Manga Entertainment and Starz Originals TV content," added Marc DeBevoise, senior vice president, digital media, business development and strategy for Starz Media and lead executive for Starz Digital Media.

After weeks of rumors, the Palm Pre is finally under $100 USD, with Amazon dropping the price to $99.99 with 2-year contract, a $50 discount off Sprint's official price, after rebate.

Sprint had planned to offer $100 rebates but strangely pulled the deal within hours of starting the promotion. The company called the deal an "error."

Sprint spokesperson Mark Elliott added that retail partners can "set their own price for devices," but declined to say if Sprint would soon be matching the price.

The 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 Pre is headed to the UK on October 16th.

The new release X-Men Origins: Wolverine is selling well on Blu-ray, says 20th Century Fox, with over 20 percent of sales coming in the HD format. On average, Blu-rays account for 12.5 percent of all sales.

Although they would not give numbers, the studio said Wolverine was their best ever selling Blu-ray, beating out Quantum of Solace, which was released in March.

“Wolverine launched this summer [season] in theaters and is now doing the same for the holiday season in home entertainment,” added Simon Swart, executive VP/general manager at Fox. “Wolverine is Fox’s biggest selling Blu-ray ever.”

The studio also added that the movie's BD Live features were the most popular ever.

Sony Japan has slashed the price of the PSP-3000 model in the nation, cutting the MSRP by 15 percent and dropping the handheld to a price cheaper than that of more popular rival, the Nintendo DS/DSi.

The price cut will drop the MSRP from JPY 19,800 ($219 USD) to JPY 16,800 ($185 USD), pricing it significantly cheaper than the DS which retails for JPY 18,900 ($209 USD).

The price cut will occur before the release of the PSPgo on November 1st.

There was no word on whether Japan would be the only to see the price reduction.

According to Arstechnica, using stats from the mobile advertising firm AdMob, iPhone owners have been reluctant to upgrade their phones to firmware 3.1, with most remaining at 3.0x or even 2.2.

Overall, says the data, only 23 percent were running of iPhone owners were running 3.1, while 51 percent were running 3.0x and another 26 percent were running 2.2.1 or earlier.

The numbers come from ad requests via apps, so users still running 1.x software are not even included in the report.

The report also shows that iPod Touch users are not fans of paying for their firmware updates, with only 35 percent of users updating.

Pic via Ars:

In yet another bizarre demand, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers (ASCAP) is demanding that mobile operators pay licensing fees because their customers use ringtones. In a nutshell, according to ASCAP, when your mobile phone rings with a copyrighted ringtone, it counts as a public performance.

Even more bizarre is Verizon's agreement to pay $5 million to ASCAP as an interim license fee for ringtone use by its users. ASCAP is the same group that considers girl scouts singing around campfires as a public performance, so their latest assertion is only mildly ridiculous in comparison to that, but it did provoke the ire of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

The EFF is urging a federal court to reject the "outlandish" claim made by ASCAP. Mobile carriers pay royalties for ringtones that they sell to their customers, but even in that case, ASCAP told a federal court that each time a phone rings and plays these recordings, the phone user is violating copyright law.

Intel Corporation demonstrated the anticipated Larrabee graphics processor earlier this week at the Intel Developer Forum. Sean Maloney, chief sales and marketing officer for Intel, showed off a working version of the chip rendering a game environment built on ray tracing, a resource demanding technique for generating high-quality 3D graphics and often used with professional animated features.

The Larrabee chip was used in conjunction with the hexa-core "Gulftown" processor scheduled for release next year. The graphics processor is based on "Westmere" 32-nanometer architecture. Intel's first Westmere-based chip is due to ship in the final quarter of 2009.

Maloney said that Larrabee will eventually be used for a discrete graphics card used in high-end gaming PCs and workstations. "We've got a discrete product coming up," he said. It will be incorporated in system-on-a-chip (SoC) products for handheld devices, according to Maloney. He said it will be an easier programming platform for developers since it is built on x86 architecture.

Valve is appealing a decision by Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification that denied Left 4 Dead 2 a rating in the country, effectively banning the game in the territory. In all other territories, the game has received an 18+ or Mature rating, given by ESRB, USK, CERO, KGRB etc. but in Australia there is no 18+ certificate for videogames on the market.

"The title has been rated in the majority of the world and awaiting final ratings in the UK and New Zealand, where final ratings are expected in the coming days. Meanwhile, the ruling in Australia from the OFLC has been appealed by Valve," a statement from the Valve reads.

The OFLC said that the game depicts "unrelenting violance" and is unsuitable to be given a rating of 15+, the highest it could be given in the country. "It's funny that a place like Australia, which has come up with some pretty violent material in the past with something like Mad Max, can effectively ban videogames for the same reason," an Electronic Arts spokesperson said.

Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) has confirmed to Kotaku that PlayStation Portable (PSP) owners will not be able to exchange their games on Universal Media Disc (UMD) media to PSPGo digital copies before the launch of PSPGo next week. The PSPGo does not feature a UMD drive, and relies on Internet purchases to download games that can be installed on the system.

"We were evaluating a UMD conversion program, but due to legal and technical reasons we will not be offering the program at this time," a Sony Computer Entertainment of America spokesman told Kotaku. The statement is in contrast to comments from this year's E3 in Los Angeles where Sony officials said they hoped to have a plan in place to transfer customers' UMD titles to PSPGo at launch.

The European Commission is preparing a mandate for the manufacturers of portable media players (PMP), to address concerns about consumer hearing loss due to noise levels of players. Meglena Kuneva, European Commissioner for Consumer Affairs, will present details of the mandate to develop standards for personal music player manufacturers, which will apply to MP3 player makers and music-capable mobile handset makers.

The details are not available yet, but it will emphasize the need for manufacturers to take steps to protect the hearing of their customers. The EU Scientific Committee on Emerging and Newly Identified Health Risks reported recently that between 5 percent and 10 percent of listeners are risking permanent hearing loss by listening to a PMP for an hour a day over the course of several years.

The Royal National Institute for Deaf People in the UK is supporting the Commissioner's Mandate, and confirmed to The Register that the document will be presented before the European Parliament.

Nintendo has revealed a new Wii Sports Resort bundle that includes two MotionPlus accessories instead of the previous one. The extra controller will add $10 to the price tag, which would be a saving of $10 over buying an additional MotionPlus accessory after getting the original bundle.

"Shoppers are looking for value as we head into the holiday season, and this Wii Sports Resort bundle is a gift that players of all ages and experience levels can enjoy," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing. "Best of all, it instantly gets multiple members of the household engaged in playing as soon as the package is opened."

The new bundle will sell for $59.99. The MotionPlus accessory alone sells for $19.99. Nintendo's Wii console has easily led the generation (of home consoles) in terms of unit sales, but lately has seen a price drop in response to the new PS3 Slim and Xbox 360 price cuts. Additionally, motion control technology for both is on the horizon, leading to some speculation of a new Nintendo console in a couple of years.

Intel Corporation has invested in TransGaming's GameTree.tv service, which will provide games-on-demand for High-definition television (HDTV) screens from the second quarter of 2010. It will deliver the content through consumer electronics products and set-top boxes, based on Intel CE Media processors.

"Innovation is at the heart of TransGaming's GameTree.tv Service which represents the culmination of technology, user experience, and the economic model required to realise sustainable innovation in the digital home," commented Vikas Gupta, CEO of TransGaming.

"We are extremely pleased to be working with Intel on this important and exciting initiative. We are driving new monetisation models for content developers, OEMs, and operators around the world." TransGaming is already working with Electronic Arts and Ubisoft to produce titles for the service, available for sale, rental and subscription.

"The GameTree.TV service provides the platform to bring PC games to TV, which in turn offers new opportunities to the consumer electronics industry," said Eric Kim, SVP of the Intel Digital Home Group.

Apple Inc. has updated its main websites with information about the environmental impact of its products, and what the company has done, and is doing, to improve its line of products from an environmental perspective. Some of the details are pretty interesting too, such as the details of Mac OS X regulating the processor even between keystrokes in order to save power.

The information includes details such as the emissions produced per hour of using a certain product, and the recycling efforts related to them. It also gives details on what the company is doing in its own facilities to cut down power consumption. "Designing green products includes considering the environmental impact of the materials used to make them," reads Apple's Web site.

"From the glass, plastic, and metal in our products to the paper and ink in our packaging, our goal is to continue leading the industry in reducing or eliminating environmentally harmful substances." Another interesting piece of information is a comparison between the packaging of the 2006 13-inch MacBook and the 2009 13-inch MacBook.

The company notes that by reducing the packaging by 40 percent between the 2006 and 2009 products, it can ship 50 percent more boxes in each airline shipping container, saving one 747 flight for every 32,000 units that are shipped.

Toshiba Corp.'s first television to feature the Cell processor (also used with the PlayStation 3 console) is on track for its intended release this year. The product is to hit the Japanese market first in Q4 2009. The company first promised a Cell-based TV in 2007 and then showed off a prototype at CES 2008 in Las Vegas.

Toshiba said it uses the Cell processor to provide exceptionally high-quality video playback, picture upscaling and picture-in-picture (PIP) functionality capable to extend to dozens of channels simultaneously.

Masaaki Oosumi, President of Toshiba's Digital Media Network Company, confirmed that the TV with market under the company's Regza brand, and it will be the company's flagship model. He likened the impact of the Cell telly's appearance to the arrival of color television, but did admit it will be pricey.

At the Intel Developer Forum, Intel Corporation executives Eric Kim and Justin Rattner discussed what is needed when the full Internet converges with broadcast networks, laying out the opportunities to make the TV experience more visual, more personal and more interactive.

As the senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Digital Home Group, Eric Kim unveiled the Intel Atom processor CE4100 SoC, the newest in a family of consumer electronics (CE) media processors, and announced efforts with several key industry players including Adobe, CBS, Cisco and TransGaming which are helping to make the vision of interactive TV a reality in the short-term.

"At the center of the TV evolution is more processing power, which we deliver with the CE4100 media processor, built on the Intel Atom core and optimized for IPTV digital set-tops, connected media players and digital TVs," said Kim. "With its performance and high-resolution graphics capabilities, CE manufacturers and software developers now have a platform for real innovation."

Finnish mobile handset giant Nokia has found itself in the midst of a legal dispute in Brazil over its Ovi brand. Brazilian firm Ouvi Divulgacao e Marketing em Celulares Ltda claims that Nokia is abusing the Ovi brand in the country to compete directly with Ouvi. Nokia believes the brand, introduced in 2007, is different enough from Ouvi to co-exist, and points out that it is a Finnish word with a different meaning (windows, doors).

"What Nokia apparently has not realized is that the 190 million inhabitants of Brazil speak Portuguese and not Finnish," said Tore Haugland, chief executive of Ouvi told Reuters. "We are sure that the Brazilian court will rule in our favor and we look forward to Nokia removing the Ovi brand from all the phones that have been shipped in Brazil and stopping using and mentioning this brand in Brazil."

Ouvi also registered the ovi.com.br domain name in 2004 because the pronunciation of Ovi and Ouvi in Brazilian Portuguese is the same. "We have our brand name also as part of the company name, which in Brazilian law counts higher than a registered trademark," Ouvi's Haugland said. A court decision on the case is expected any day.

Microsoft Corp. has responded to the release of Google's Chrome Frame for Internet Explorer with criticism. The company has argued that the plug-in, which adds support for HTML 5 and speeds up Javascript, could double the security woes of users if installed.

"It's not necessarily that plug-ins aren't or can't be secure, but that running a browser within a browser doubles the potential attack surface in a way that we don't see is particularly helpful," said Amy Bazdukas, Microsoft's general manager for IE.

She claimed that by installing Chrome Frame, Internet Explorer users are essentially breaking the private browsing protections included with IE8. "Chrome Frame breaks the privacy model of IE. Users are not going to be able to use IE's privacy features, something that's not made apparent to users. They're essentially circumvented."

She also responded to Google's claim that IE users are looking for faster Javascript support and HTML 5. "HTML 5 is not a completed standard," she noted. "We're working on it very actively, and we see a lot of promise in it. But it's premature to support it."

At the Tokyo game show press conference on Wednesday, Gran Turismo producer Kaz Yamauchi jumped on stage to give out new details on the anticipated PlayStation 3 (PS3) title. The biggest detail by far of course was the announcement of a March 2010 launch of the title in Japan. Unfortunately, it was not clear whether other regions would have to wait until later, or if it would be a worldwide release.

Gran Turismo 5 was originally speculated to ship in 2009. Kaz revealed that the game will include an impressive 950 cars to choose from (including all the newest hybrid and electric cars), along with 20 courses with 70 variations. A new physics system is included with car damage features and movable objects on the track.

Game modes include single player, split screen, two player arcade and GT Mode. In GT Mode there is a world map, My Garage, Car Dealer, Tuning Ship, Championship Race and License Test. An online replay album is also features, with the ability to export replays to YouTube. Text and voice chat is also included in online features, along with a photo album.

Microsoft has dismissed rumors that the company is planning to bid for game publisher Electronic Arts. "We have no plans to acquire EA," Phil Spencer, corporate vice president of Microsoft Game Studios, told Reuters. "They remain a very important partner to us. No acquisitions."

Shares in Electronic Arts jumped 8 percent on speculation that the software giant was interest in acquiring the company.

Spencer declined to comment to Reuters on whether Microsoft and Electronic Arts have had held talks at some point about such a move. EA tried and failed last year to buy up rival Take Two Interactive. The Madden maker is often named as a target for Time Warner and Walt Disney Co. by traders.

The Redwood-city publisher has a market value of roughly $6.5 billion.

Lily Allen appears to have decided to completely gut her music career because she apparently cannot make any money from recorded music anymore. The performer said she has no plans to tour or make a new album. "Just so you know, I have not renegotiated my record contract and have no plans to make another record," she said on their anti-file sharing blog.

"The days of me making money from recording music has been and gone as far as I'm concerned, so I don't (at this point) stand to profit from legislation." The move comes after Lily Allen found herself on the opposite side of artists in the UK such as Radiohead and Robbie Williams over proposed measures to tackle illegal file sharing that included disconnecting pirates from the Internet.

The brief controversy was entertaining though, not least because Lily Allen found herself accused of copyright infringement too. Torrentfreak called out Allen for 1:1 copying an article from Techdirt without attributing it to the site on her blog. She responded with, "I THINK ITS QUITE OVIOUS [sic] THAT I WASNT TRYING TO PASS OF THOSE WORDS AS MY OWN , HERE IS A LINK TO THE WEBSIITE I ACQUIRED THE PIECE FROM," seemingly misreading the accusation as plagiarism.

Nintendo has issued a press release confirming that the price of the Wii console will be cut $50 to $199 in the United States starting on September 27. Nintendo finally made cuts to the price of the Wii after Microsoft and Sony made changes to their offerings in the market.

Key upcoming releases for the Nintendo Wii console include Wii Fit Plus, launching on Oct. 4, and the first truly multiplayer Mario title, New Super Mario Bros. Wii. "Wii has reached more video game players than any game system before because it attracts everyone—both men and women, and people of all ages," said Cammie Dunaway, Nintendo of America's executive vice president of Sales & Marketing.

"Our research shows there are 50 million Americans thinking about becoming gamers, and this more affordable price point and our vast array of new software mean many of them can now make the leap and find experiences that appeal to them, whatever their tastes or level of gaming experience."

Sony has announced today that any owner of UMD games who want to upgrade to the new UMD-less PSPgo will receive three free games via digital download if they choose to do so.

The newly dubbed PSPgo Rewards program "involves registering a PSPgo on PSN, then logging on to PSN with an existing PSP with a UMD in the drive, which allows you to download a special PSPgo theme and then presents you with a voucher via email for use with the PSPgo," says Gi.biz.

There are 17 titles available to download through the program, and you could choose any 3. The titles are: Killzone: Liberation, SOCOM: US Navy SEALs Fireteam Bravo 3, WipEout Pure, Everybody's Golf, echochrome, Buzz!: Brain Bender, Buzz!: Master Quiz, LocoRoco and Patapon.

After over a week of rumors , Sony has confirmed that they will be launching a line of 250GB slim PS3 bundles.

The first bundle, available October 1st, will include inFamous or two Platinum titles.

The second bundle will include Uncharted 2, and will be released on October 16th.

Three days later, the third bundle will be released, and will include the Blu-rays X-Men Origins: Wolverine and The Dark Knight as well as a Blu-ray remote.

Each of the bundles will retail in the UK for GBP 284.99.

In Japan, December 17th will see the release of Final Fantasy XIII bundle for 41,600 yen, about $450 USD.

"Following the great success of the new, smaller, 120GB PS3, which sold over one million units in its first three weeks on sale, the 250GB model has the same hardware specifications as the current model, but with greater storage space, to offer consumers even more choice," says Sony, via GamesIndustry.biz.

Sony has said today that sales of the recently released slim PS3 have hit 1 million in the three weeks since its launch.

The console went on sale in North America and Europe on September 1st and in Japan on the 3rd.

The new slimmer model costs 29,980 yen in Japan, $299 USD in North America and 299 euros in Europe.

"The console packs cutting-edge technologies, including the (pre-installed) 120 gigabyte hard-disk drive and Blu-ray capability, at a lower price," adds Sony Computer Entertainment spokeswoman Makiko Noda, via the AP.

"The new PS3 has been doing very well, and one of the reasons for this is the price," noted SCE president Kaz Hirai. "As a system in the living room, we have managed to realise this price without making any changes to what is good about it."

O2 has announced that the popular smartphone Palm Pre will will be released in the UK on October 16th, making it available via their direct store as well as Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U and other retail partners.

The phone will be free if you sign up for 18 or 24-month contracts, which cost £73.41 or £44.05 per month.

The 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.

Ronan Dunne, CEO of Telefonica O2 UK added: “Today’s announcement reinforces O2’s position as the home of the smartphone. With the addition of the excellent Palm Pre to our already extensive portfolio, we will continue to offer our customers the widest range of the very best devices on the market today.”

“There’s a lot of excitement about Palm Pre in Europe as we continue to expand Palm webOS products across new carriers and countries,” notes Jon Rubinstein chairman and chief executive officer, Palm, Inc. “We look forward to launching Palm Pre with O2 so people in the UK can see firsthand how Palm webOS offers a new and better smartphone experience.”

This week we reported that rumors of Microsoft-branded phones had surfaced again, and a prototype sketch of the Turtle handset made its way around the Web.

Today, Gizmodo is reporting that the two phones, dubbed Turtle and Pure, will be made by Sharp, but will be branded by Microsoft.

The site says the phones are in the "later stages" of the development cycle and will be aimed at the younger demographic, likely teens.

The pics, via Gizmodo:

Appeals court judges have called the $290 million damages awarded to i4i in a patent infringement lawsuit against Microsoft. i4i had originally won its case against Microsoft, which resulted in $290 million damages to be paid by Microsoft and an injunction against the sale of Microsoft's Word 2003 and Word 2007 applications.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit stayed that injunction earlier this month. Judge Kimberly Moore of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit took issue with the calculation of the damages; specifically that it assumed that users who bought a $90 version of the software from Microsoft would have paid considerably higher to pay for an alternative.

"Not everyone who is willing to pay $90 or $200 for a product is willing to pay $500," she said. The grilling wasn't just for i4i's side however, as Judge Alvin Schall pressed Microsoft's representatives on a claim that there is "no direct evidence" that anyone at Microsoft actually read the patent in question.

"I find it hard to believe that Microsoft didn't read the patent," the Judge said. i4i claims it approached Microsoft in 2000 for licensing negotiations, and that the two companies made joint presentations but never reached an agreement. Microsoft has acknowledged being in contact with i4i about the XML patent, but it has asked the appeals court to overturn the lower court's decision.

John Donahoe, Chief Executive of auction-giant eBay Inc., said that despite recent lawsuits over the underlying technology used in Skype, the $1.9 billion sale of majority interest in the Internet communication service will go ahead. "This deal is going to close," Donahoe told the annual summit of Shop.org, adding that Skype will be very successful under the "right ownership structure."

Joltid Ltd, a Swedish company owned by the original creators of Skype, Joost and Kazaa, Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, sued eBay for allegedly using its software without authorization.

There had been some fears that the lawsuit could derail the $1.9 billion deal with Netscape founder Marc Andreessen's Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Silver Lake and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board.

However, Donahoe showed Reuters an e-mail sent on Wednesday morning to him by eBay Chief Financial Officer Bob Swan that said no "show stoppers" had been identified in the recent litigation. "We're marching along," Donahoe said, adding that he expected that by November, the deal will have been completed.

AMD has confirmed to Maximum PC that it will release a Hexa-core (6 cores) processor (codename Thuban) next year that will be backwards compatible with AM3 and AM2+ socket-equipped motherboards. The confirmation comes after numerous rumors suggested that the company had a new 6-core chip in the works. "We are all about platform longevity and long-lived upgrade paths," an AMD spokesman said.

The comment is likely a jab at Intel for offering three different incompatible socket infrastructures currently for Desktop computers. The "Thuban" chip is expected to be marketed as the Phenom II X6, and is derived from the Opteron chip that surfaced earlier in the summer. It will feature all six cores on single 45nm die.

Thuban is likely to pack 904 million transistors in a 346mm2 chip, compared to Intel's Core-i7-975's 262mm2/731 million transistors and the Core i5-750's 296mm2/774 million transistors. It is expected to feature 3MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache.

There have been some calls lately for fees to be introduced for viewing TV shows episodes and other content on the BBC's popular iPlayer. Lorraine Heggessey, chief executive of TV production company Talkback Thames, said that users of the site should be charged "micro payments" to use the online catch up service.

Tony Cohen, chief executive of Talkback's parent company Fremantle Media, is also conducting a feasibility study of the concept. The increasing support in the industry to introduce fees for the service come as advertising revenue in the commercial TV sector falls.

However, while research conducted by Fremantle allegedly suggests that consumers would be willing to pay up to £2 for some shows, the BBC says that it has no plans to introduce fees to use the service, on the grounds that viewers already pay for it. "The cost of the BBC iPlayer is covered by the licence fee, so UK users have already paid for this service," said a spokesperson.

The service was launched on Christmas day in 2007 after £6 million was spent developing it. Now, during peak hours, it pumps out approximately 12GB of data per second to UK viewers. Media industry expert Steve Hewlett says that the idea of paying to watch TV programmes online makes sense, in theory.

UK retailers GAME has announced that in the six months to July 31, it earned GBP £177.3 million in sales of pre-owned game titles, accounting for a quarter of all revenue during the period. "We achieved year on year growth in pre-owned sales, which increased 12.3 percent and now account for 25.7 per cent of total sales," said chairman Peter Lewis.

"In our online business we increased revenues by 12.1 per cent. Our Reward Card membership has increased by over 1 million customers since the start of the year to more than 13.3m," he added. Total sales for the 33 weeks to September 19 were down 8.8 percent, with like-for-likes down 16.6 percent in the period.

However, Lewis said the company is optimistic about the results that will come from the second half of 2009. "In the second half, the installed base of third generation consoles will continue to build. The recent manufacturer price reductions on the Microsoft Xbox 360 Elite and Sony's new model PlayStation 3 are helping to stimulate the market for hardware." he said.

Apple Inc. and Eight Mile Style LLC, Eminem's music publisher, are set to decide a 2007 lawsuit by a jury-less trial later this week in Detroit unless a late settlement is reached. Eight Mile claims that Apple did not have the appropriate permissions to sell 93 songs in a downloadable format through the iTunes music store. Also being sued is Aftermath Entertainment for approving the digital downloads.

"The case did not settle today and we are expecting to start trial first thing tomorrow morning," Howard Hertz, a lawyer for Eight Mile Style, said on Wednesday. The lawsuit alleges that Apple wrongfully gained $2.58 million from iTunes downloads, including $466,916 from sales of the track "Lose Yourself".

In a stunning demand, the lawsuit also seeks a cut of $16 million in iPod sales profits it alleges could be attributed to the 93 tracks. Eight Mile is also seeking $4.03 million from Aftermath Entertainment. Eight Mile agreed in 1998 and 2003 that "Eminem would create master sound recordings embodying compositions, and that Aftermath would own those masters," Apple's attorneys said in a court filing.

Intel has surprised some industry experts by showing off working 22-nanometer SRAM chips, proving that Moore's Law still has some fight left in it. Moore's Law, applied to chips, predicts a doubling of the number of transistors in chips roughly every 2 years.

Some industry experts admitted that they didn't believe that it was possible - considering that the new Intel chip contains three billion transistors in an area the size of a fingernail. Even with that, Intel said that there could be chips coming that push the physical limits even further.

"Moore's Law is not a law of physics, it's a law of human inventiveness," Intel president and chief executive Paul Otellini told BBC News. "There is nothing that says that humans can't continue to invent." The company is currently producing and selling chips based on 45nm technology, and will move to 32nm later in the year.

"We have at least four generations of what we are shipping today in development. That is as far out as we have ever been able to develop things," Otellini said. "Not everything is done but it gets harder for sure. It requires more invention and more money and it's our job to continue that pace."

The Federal Communication Commission's (FCC) proposals to ensure all traffic on the Internet is treated equally has come under fire from some wireless providers and politicians. The FCC wants to ensure that Internet Service Providers (ISP) cannot slow down or block bandwidth-hungry usage such as video streaming.

However, mobile operators claim that this new regulation would serve to damage innovation in the industry. FCC chairman Julius Genachowski said that doing nothing was not an option, and previously stated that the rules were "not about government regulation of the Internet".

"History's lesson is clear. Ensuring a robust and open internet is the best thing we can do to promote investment and innovation," he said. "And while there are some who see every policy decision as either pro-business or pro-consumer, I reject that approach; it's not the right way to see technology's role in America."

However, the inclusion of wireless Internet traffic upset some in the industry. "We are concerned the FCC appears ready to extend the entire array of net neutrality requirements to what is perhaps the most competitive consumer market in America - wireless services," said AT&T's Jim Cicconi.

According to the Minister for Digital Britain Stephen Timms, the controversial UK "broadband tax" should "be law" soon, meaning every citizen with a fixed line telephone will have to pay a 50 pence a month tax.

Timms added that the tax will be part of the larger Finance Bill set to be presented to parliament before the next election.

Tory MP John Whittingdale adds that the tax is expected to raise about £175 million a year "to fund high speed networks."

The bill is expected to face opposition, mostly from the Conservative party.

"I'm confident the Conservative party will oppose it. I object to it on the basis that it is another tax and is aimed at people who are using old technology," added Mr Whittingdale.

Reiterated Timms: "We want to make high speed networks nationally available. The next-generation fund will help that and we will legislate for it this side of a general election."

The bill is "full steam ahead," adds business secretary, Lord Mandelson.

The South Korean government has announced today that they have agreed to allow the Apple iPhone to sell in the nation, a big victory for Apple breaking into the very exclusive market.

The decision, made by the Korea Communications Commission, is one of the few times the nation has allowed phones from foreign brands in.

The Korean-based Samsung and LG benefited the most from Korea's closed door policy, and currently sit as the second and third largest makers of mobile handsets in the world, only falling behind Nokia.

Notably for Apple, South Korea has one of the highest population, percentage-wise, of cell phone users in Asia, with over 93 percent of the 49 million citizens subscribing to mobile carriers.

There was no word on when the iPhone will be released in South Korea, but it is expected that other smartphone makers will apply to have their phones sold in the nation now, including RIM.

Google has announced the release of Google Chrome Frame, a plug-in for Internet Explorer that will bring "HTML5 and other open web technologies" to the browser.

Says Google:

"We're building Google Chrome Frame to help web developers deliver faster, richer applications like Google Wave. Recent JavaScript performance improvements and the emergence of HTML5 have enabled web applications to do things that could previously only be done by desktop software. One challenge developers face in using these new technologies is that they are not yet supported by Internet Explorer. Developers can't afford to ignore IE — most people use some version of IE — so they end up spending lots of time implementing work-arounds or limiting the functionality of their apps.

With Google Chrome Frame, developers can now take advantage of the latest open web technologies, even in Internet Explorer. From a faster Javascript engine, to support for current web technologies like HTML5's offline capabilities and < canvas >, to modern CSS/Layout handling, Google Chrome Frame enables these features within IE with no additional coding or testing for different browser versions.

On September 16th, the Dutch-based retailer Nedgame announced that they would not stock the PSP Go, claiming that the handheld was overpriced and forced a monopoly on game sales, killing the used games market.

Today, it appears that the large retailer EB Games will not stock the PSP Go either, however, only in Australia.

EB Games does not mention the handheld at all on its site, and Kotaku reports that calling Sydney-based stores confirms the fact.

Sony Australia added: "In relation to our business and the launch of PSPgo, we are already experiencing solid support for launch day on October 1 in Australia. Retail support of the PSP platform, includes both PSP-3000 and PSPgo. Many retailers will choose to range both PSP models side-by-side, as we continue to offer expanded choice for the consumer for the handheld device platform. As with any new product, there will be continued discussions with retail partners to continue to expand reach over time in line with growth of the entire PSP platform."

Rumors have been flying for weeks that Nintendo is set to drop the price of the Wii gaming console to $199 USD next week, but it appears UK gamers will not get the same luxury.

Gamesindustry.biz is reporting that instead of a price cut, the UK will see new retail bundles that include the Wii MotionPlus accessories and two games.

The console retails for GBP 199 but the new bundle will add Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, and the MotionPlus peripheral.

A few retailers have already listed the bundle, and it is expected to go on sale within two weeks.

Nintendo called the bundle talk "rumour and speculation".

According to a new report from Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry, Motorola is planning to release over 10 Android-based mobile phones in the next year, a very short time frame given that the company only released their first Android phone this month.

Citing industry sources, Chowdry adds that the phones will sell for $40 to $400 USD, aimed at different demographics.

Motorola currently has only a 5.5 percent market share, a strong decline from the 17 percent it held in 2004, at the height of the Razr V3 fad, and analysts mostly agree that Android phones are Motorola's last chance to steal back market share still dominated worldwide by Nokia, Samsung and more recently, Apple.

Last week, France's lower house approved the extremely controversial "three-strikes" law for Internet pirates, giving authorities the power to disconnect multiple time offenders from the Internet completely.

Today, the Internet Piracy law was approved by the French parliament, however critics from the Socialist party immediately announced an appeal, just minutes after the decision.

The bill passed with a final vote of 258 to 131.

The French Culture Ministry, after the bill passed the lower house, said they expect about 1000 French Internet users to be kicked offline, every day. Besides being disconnected, pirates also face a fine as high as euro 300,000 (about $440,000 USD).

Unknowing parents whose kids use the family computer to download unauthorized content are also subject to the law, which will have the family's Internet cut off for a month along with a euro 3,750 fine.

During an interview with Reuters, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings spoke out about the future of the physical DVD, as well as Netflix's plans for the iPhone, Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and possible competition from YouTube

The interview in its entirety:

Reuters: What will Netflix subscribers gain from the improvements in the recommendation system?

Hastings: It’s doubling the quality of our movie recommendation and that helps our subscribers get more enjoyment from movies. Because more often they love the movie they watch. More often the movies recommended will will turn out to be movies that you love. If you watch a couple of movies and don’t like many, you start to watch (sports and other programming). If every movie is incredible, you start to watch more.

Reuters: Netflix video streams on Microsoft’s Xbox Live system. What about the PS3 and Wii?
Hastings: Eventually we want to be on all the game consoles, all the Blu-ray players, all the Internet TVs. So we are working in parallel with all of those efforts. Currently our Xbox deal is exclusive and we haven’t characterized it more than that.

A letter sent by the USB Implementers Forum to both Apple Inc and Palm has stated that Apple has the right to alter its iTunes software to block Palm's Pre device from syncing. When the Pre was launched, Palm said it would be iTunes-compatible; and it was. However, Apple had warned that the iTunes capabilities would only last weeks, and then kept its promise by blocking the Pre with an update.

Palm wasn't going to sit still over the issue however, and a wrote 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. Apple had blocked the Pre from syncing with iTunes by checking the idVendor descriptor when connected.

The Palm letter informed USB-IF of the WebOS update, which would change the Pre's Vendor ID to the same as Apple's in order to regain iTunes support. "Interoperability is central to any standard-setting organization," the letter read, "because, without widespread interoperability, many of the benefits of standardized (as opposed to proprietary) technologies are lost."

Microsoft has confirmed that it is working on a new wireless adapter for the Xbox 360 console that is compatible with the new 802.11n specification. The current (original) WiFi adapter is compatible with 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g wireless networking, but the new speedy 802.11n will soon be available to Xbox 360 users should they choose to buy the additional component for the console.

Over the past few weeks, several photographs and other source of information (such as FCC filings) have shown up and been examined thoroughly - pretty much revealing that Microsoft had such a product in the works.

The company has not yet revealed all details about the new adapter (not least how much it costs, or whether or not it will completely replace the existing adapter).

No launch date or potential price has been revealed by the company either.

Having already seen changes to the palette availability in the Nintendo DSi range in the United States and Japan, Nintendo has confirmed that it will offer the Nintendo DSi in more colors in Europe.

Currently, the DSi is only available in the traditional black and white flavors in Europe, but recent reports and leaked information had suggested that Nintendo would be making a change to the available models in Europe soon.

The company will offer DSi handheld consoles in metallic blue, light blue and red from October 23 on in the region. All of the new models will arrive with Flipnote Studio and Facebook features pre-installed.

As an added bonus, users of the new DSi consoles that access the DSi Show before March 31 2010, will receive 100 DSi points for nothing.

A leaked Sega U.S. document has indicated a date for the release of motion control technology for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console. It also additionally included details on the availability of PS2 games through the PlayStation Network (PSN) online service and the availability of Dreamcast titles for download as well.

The document is a summary of a meeting held between Sega and Sony on August 5 this year. It pinpoints a March 2010 launch for PlayStation 3 motion control initially in Japan, with the goal of selling between 4-5 million units.

While the document suggested that price and bundle details may have been clarified by September 1, it doesn't hint any of that information.

It is likely that Kaz Hirai's keynote speech at the Tokyo Game Show this week will include talk of the Motion Controllers in more detail. As for the PlayStation Network (PSN) predictions, the document stated that Sony intends to sell PS2 titles (such as GTA: Vice City) via PSN, and may also sell popular Dreamcast titles with marketing support in exchange for a long period of exclusivity.

British artists have been commenting on some proposed measures to tackle illegal file sharing of music in the region, with the likes of Radiohead and Annie Lennox being opposed, and Lilly Allen and James Blunt supporting. The debate is about the plan to force Internet Service Providers to punish "repeat offenders" by slowing down Internet connections, issue warnings and eventually cutting off a connection.

The Featured Artists Coalition, or FAC, which touts Annie Lennox, Radiohead and Robbie Williams among its members, is opposed to the plans. "By demanding blanket suspension powers from the government, the industry is in danger of cutting off a promotional tool that is of great use to fledgling artists who seek to create a buzz around themselves yet don't have the financial support of a major label," the group stated.

FAC went on to say that the proposed measures could not be possible without widespread invasion of personal privacy - but don't get it wrong, FAC is opposed to illegal file sharing itself, branding sites that benefit from it as "thieving rascals" that should be prosecuted. Lilly Allen however, disagrees with FAC, and has the backing of James Blunt in doing so.

Microsoft has started a new promotion this week, offering a $50 USD rebate on the Xbox 360 Elite console. The promotion is through Microsoft and Netflix, and is available to all 50 states in the US.

Dell Home has the Xbox 360 Elite 120GB Console for $300 but you can use an additional 15% off coupon 6FWJ247J1P44CK bringing the total down to $255 USD. With the rebate and using Dell DPA the total price for your new shiny Elite is $197.

For more information on the rebate, please visit this link: Xbox 360 Elite Rebate.

The rebate is good for any purchase between today and October 5th, and you will need an "ORIGINAL UPC Code from the product box with the product name and barcode clearly identified from the product (click here to see UPC location)"

You will also need "a copy of your sales receipt that clearly shows the date and store name where you purchased your product as well as a printed copy of the e-rebate form."

News Corp.'s MySpace is to launch a new video service within the next several months with the help of Hulu.com. Rupert Murdoch had commented earlier this year that he plans to reshape MySpace into an entertainment hub.

News Corp. owns MySpace and a large chunk of the Hulu video service. Sources told CNET that Murdoch plans to push the MySpace video service through content including feature films, TV shows and other things.

News Corp. intends to transform MySpace into something that is more attractive and useful to users, while also attracting advertisers.

Currently, MySpace does host some of Hulu's TV shows and a small number of feature-length films, but it is nowhere near the level of competitors such as Netflix's Watch Now service.

"MySpace's intention is to do a much better job of monetizing the video area," said one source. It will be interesting to see whether MySpace will offer downloads and subscription services, as Hulu is considering offering a pay-per-view option to users to gain revenue.

NEC Electronics has announced its new USB 3.0 (or, SuperSpeed USB) system-on-a-chip (SOC) design solution that could bring forth USB 3.0-equipped hardware very soon. The company's new SOC is designed to work with NEC's USB-IF Certified USB 3.0 Host Controller.

NEC Electronics expects rapid adoption of the solution by customers developing mass storage, display and video applications, especially as the need to transfer larger and larger amounts of information from PCs to external hard-drives, portable electronics devices, and flash-based drives continues to grow.

"NEC Electronics has earned a reputation for delivering dedicated customer service and high-quality, reliable custom products. In fact, these qualities are cornerstones of the NEC Electronics culture," said Osamu Matsushima, general manager, ASIC Solutions Division, NEC Electronics Corporation. "Combining our USB leadership with our years of experience delivering custom SOC and standard solutions, the new SOC design solution provides customers with a one-stop-shop for implementing their system solutions on time and within budget."

LucidPort Technology, a semiconductor company developing SuperSpeed USB and Wireless USB controllers, leveraged NEC Electronics USB 3.0 SOC design solution in the development of its USB300, a single chip USB 3.0 to SATA-II bridge designed for external storage devices.

Corel Corporation announced the availability of WinDVD 2010 last week, the latest version of the world's most widely used DVD playback software. The software improves its Blu-ray and BD-Live features and uses new GPU-based upscaling to convert SD video to HD output. Increased format support lets you watch popular video formats, even direct from your camera or camcorder.

The software is also designed for the latest technologies in Windows 7, giving users hands-on control when used with Windows Touch enabled hardware. "With more than 200 million units sold around the world, WinDVD is widely recognized as the industry's best DVD and Blu-ray playback software and with the latest version we wanted to take our users' experiences with the software even further," said Nick Davies, Senior Vice President of Product Management and Product Marketing at Corel.

In August, the World Trade Organization (WTO) decided in favor of the United States in a dispute over the sale of American films, books and music in China.

Today, China has appealed the decision, however the documents are not public as of yet.

The ruling had pitted China against the US, over China's internal decision to force American products to be routed through state-owned companies. Over the past decade China has limited the amount of foreign products that enter the Chinese market, while at the same time exporting the most goods and creating a gigantic surplus.

The August decision was almost completely in favor of the US and its complaining parties, Warner Bros., Disney, Paramount, Universal, 20th Century Fox, EMI, Sony Music Entertainment, McGraw Hill and Simon & Schuster.

The WTO agreed rules were being broken, but did not agree with the US on the argument that the censorship was slowing sales in the nation.

The appellate ruling is not expected until January.

Rumors have surfaced again today over the highly anticipated Microsoft-branded mobile phone, and ZDnet compiled all the rumors into one page.

Dubbed Pink for the time being, the smartphone will include premium service such as the Zune Marketplace and the phone will likely have many of the features of the T-Mobile Sidekick, given that Microsoft acquired the boys behind the Sidekick last year.

The Pink will also use the upcoming Windows Mobile 7, however the OS is not expected to be available until the Q3 2010. There is still a chance however, that we will see an early prototype of the Pink at the CES event in January.

Here is a alleged drawing of one of the two Pink phones, nicknamed "Turtle":

In June, the three major motion picture studios, Lionsgate, Paramount, and MGM jointly announced the launch of Epix, an HD online streaming service and HD TV station that will allow users to watch the studio's films, in HD.

The studios have said this week that the expected launch date of late October is still in the cards, and launch day will see blockbuster films on the service, including "Iron Man."

Epix is, technically, a studio-controlled venture that will give cable operators and distributors an easier way to shop for rights for movies on video-on-demand and online video. It may all sound good, but the studios have been having a little trouble securing carriage deals. Comcast even went as far as to say that they are not looking for any new TV-with-fee channels.

Epix only currently has a deal with Verizon FiOS, meaning the site will be available to a minuscule 2.5 million US citizens. The company is in talks with Dish, which would add 14 million households, but currently the talks are just that, talks.

The founders of the P2P VoIP Internet communication service Skype - Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom - have filed a lawsuit against the former chairman of Joost, Michael Volpi, for allegedly stealing trade secrets relating to the P2P technology at the core of Skype and Joost.

Volpi was fired just last week, and at the time Joost announced that it was investigation his actions while he was chief executive and chairman of the Web TV firm. Friis and Zennstrom have already taken legal action against eBay recently through their company Joltid, which they claim owns the technology used by the Skype software.

The auction giant had warned the markets back in July that questions were being raised about the ownership of the technology central to Skype. Plans for an IPO were blocked by a disagreement over patents. eBay originally paid $2.6 billion for Skype.

The new lawsuit alleges that Michael Volpi stole confidential and highly proprietary information. It was filed in a Delaware court.

Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced the new Adobe Flash Platform Services, which enabled content providers and advertisers to measure and monetize applications across social networks, desktops and mobile devices. Adobe Flash Platform Services are online, hosted services that allow developers to add innovative capabilities to Web applications.

With the growth of social media, advertisers and publishers are looking to more predictable and effective methods to reach audiences. There are many benefits to using sharable, social applications to connect with customers; however, it can be difficult to get users to install the applications.

The new Distribution service from Adobe helps solve these challenges. The solution includes a unified management tool to effectively promote, measure and monetize Web applications and games. "Our customers rely on the Adobe Flash Platform to make rich and compelling applications that work across operating systems and screens," said David Wadhwani, general manager and vice president at Adobe.

"The new services from Adobe allow Flash Platform developers, advertisers, game makers and other content publishers to connect with an even larger audience more effectively, and grow revenue opportunities."

Netflix has paid out a $1 million reward to a seven-member international research group after the group won a contest held by Netflix to improve its predictions of movies a customer might like to view. The contest was launched in 2006 and witnessed 51,000 contestants from 186 countries participate ever since.

"I was stunned at how the Netflix Prize created its own economy of researchers competing and collaborating," Netflix CEO Reed Hastings said. BellKor's Pragmatic Chaos, the winning team, had improved Netflix movie recommendations success by more than 10 percent to claim the prize.

Technically however, it had drawn with a rival group called the Ensemble at a 10.6 percent improvement, but it was declared the winner at an awards ceremony on Monday because it submitted its final entry just a few minutes before Ensemble managed to.

Netflix has more than 100,000 films and TV shows available, so making improvements to its recommendation system is far from easy, but will undoubtedly result in long-term revenue gains that easily surpass $1 million.

Apple Inc. is investigating battery issues arising from updating an iPhone to the v3.1 operation system, following a lot of messages about the issue being posted on the Apple support forums. Users are reporting that after the update, the battery drains very quickly after being charged, and that performing a restore on the device using iTunes as suggested by Apple, failed to fix the problem.

Some users are being contacted by AppleCare helpdesk reps with a list of 11 follow-up questions focused on the battery. Additionally, an unsigned battery life logger is being offered for download that will collect information about the phone's battery life while it is in use.

Using various App Store applications, Push or Exchange e-mail, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and other features can drain an iPhone battery a lot faster than regular use. However, the users complaining of the issue (mostly iPhone 3GS users) can't seem to get the problem solved by disabling features, system restores or other common suggestions from Apple support.

Vodafone, the world's largest mobile phone operator (in terms of revenue), has inked a new deal with Warner Music Group that completes its collection of deals with major music labels.

The Warner deal will see music from artists such as James Blunt being made available by Vodafone without any copy protection mechanism included that would not just make copying harder, but also lock music to certain devices.

The operator had previously signed deals with the EMI group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music. Vodafone is now the first global mobile phone operator that will offer over-the-air downloads of music from all four major record companies.

"The response to the DRM-free offering in all the markets where it has launched has been incredibly enthusiastic," said Pieter Knook, Vodafone Internet Services Director. "Our customers love ... the flexibility that DRM-free on mobile gives them."

The record labels continue to seek out new deals where DRM is now negotiable, as it tries to fill revenue gaps created by falling CD sales, rising piracy and other economic factors since the start of the century.

Microsoft's Bing search engine took more market share from Google Inc. during August, according to new data. A research note from JPMorgan cited data from industry tracker comScore to show that Microsoft's search share had grown from 8.9 percent in July, to 9.3 percent in August in the United States.

The Bing search engine was launched by the Redmond giant in June 2009.

Google's share of the search market in the United States in August only declined by 0.01 percent - standing at about 64.6 percent - whereas the overall U.S. search market volume increased 15.5% from July. The U.S. search market volume increased 19.2 percent compared to August 2008.

Yahoo Inc. took second place behind Google, with a market share of 19.3 percent, almost unchanged from July.

Seagate has shipped the new Barracuda XT hard drive with 2TB of storage capacity, 64MB cache, spindle speed of 7200RPM and its most notable feature of SATA 3.0 - or put another way - up to 6Gb/s transfer rate. Of course, in order to benefit from the SATA interface in the drive, you will need a compatible motherboard, such as an Intel P55-equipped motherboard.

The drive is, of course, backward compatible with older revisions of the SATA interface, meaning you can buy one and avoid paying for the latest motherboards, like those shown off recently at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, until you are ready. The 2TB capacity is also an attractive feature, but Seagate was beaten to that goal by Western Digital.

Nevertheless, it is the second Seagate 2TB drive, with the Barracuda LP announced in April (with spindle speed of just 5900RPM for low power consumption). Seagate expects the new drives to be used in high performance servers or high end gaming rigs for the near future. However, it's $299 price tag might ruin its appeal for the moment.

At the Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum 2009 in Taipei, ArcSoft showed off its PowerMobia Mobile Broadcast TV application. It is designed for users to watch live TV broadcasts on their portable devices. It supports a variety of standards including T-DMB/DAB, DVB-H, DVB-T, One Segment, and CMMB. The Mobile Broadcast TV solution is offered either as a consumer-ready application, fully developed and ready to use, or as an Application Development Kit (ADK).

"ArcSoft works closely with Samsung LSI to bring TV entertainment onto mobile devices," said David Cao, ArcSoft's VP and General Manager of Mobile Group. "We are honored to be the only software vendor chosen to demonstrate broadcast TV solution in Samsung Mobile Solutions Forum 2009, an event to discuss present and future trend of mobile solutions. We look forward to further success in our collaboration with Samsung LSI."

This solution includes full software stack such as audio and video codecs, ESG/EPG, tuning and scanning, and integration with conditional access (CA) solutions. Advanced TV functions such as time-shift playback and PVR features are also provided.

JoyStiq is reporting today that they have received pictures from Norwegian GameStop employees which show clearly that Sony is planning five 250GB Slim PS3 bundles for Europe.

The five bundles, which will include the new Slim PS3 with a 250GB HDD and one game will include the games Need For Speed: Shift, Assassin's Creed 2, Ratchet and Clank Future: A Crack in Time, Uncharted 2, and FIFA 10.

The images show the prices as 3799 kr, 500 kr more expensive than the 120GB model Slim PS3 in Norway. There were no release dates however.

Sony continues to deny comment on any of the rumored bundles.

According to an interview with the Financial Times, Square Enix president Yoichi Wada has noted that he expects Nintendo to release an updated Wii console by 2011, offering a new type of controller as well as more "next-gen" functionality.

What this added functionality is up for debate, some are speculating that a Blu-ray may even be added. Wada also speculated that upcoming Sony and Microsoft motion control systems will have little impact on the market.

"Present game machines already have a lot of functions: they are a network terminal, a Blu-ray or DVD player, and a gaming machine," says Wada.

"Compared to these three pillars, the [new motion] controllers are quite limited, so the impact may be small. They are an extension of the gaming function."

Wada did however, compliment Microsoft's Natal tech.

"As a user interface it's fantastic and I think it will become standard," he noted.

In a presentation today at a Washington DC think tank today FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski outlined a his vision for a more proactive approach to net neutrality. In his prepared remarks he unveiled a proposal to amend his agency's official stance on internet regulation.

The FCC's current guidelines were outlined in a 2005 policy statement and consist of four basic principles.

• 1 To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice.


• 2 To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement.


• 3 To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.


• 4 To encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The giant e-tailer Amazon has begun a new line dubbed Amazon Basics today, selling private label electronics accessories such as DVD-R, HDMI cables and USB cables.

“We saw an opportunity to create a line of consumer electronics basics that combine quality and low prices for an overall focus on value,” added Paul Ryder, Amazon’s vice president of consumer electronics.

Amazon Basics, available here, is only a few products now, but Amazon promises the range will grow. You won't be seeing any Amazon HDTVs anytime soon however, as the company plans to stick to "inexpensive accessories."

By offering the inexpensive items, Amazon can still increase their margins by completely cutting out the middleman. Amazon is certainly not the first e-tailer to start private label sales. Newegg has been selling highly popular computer peripherals such as cases under the name Rosewill for some time.

The prices are pretty decent as well, with a 100-pack of DVD-R selling for $19 USD and 6-foot HDMI cables selling for about $8 USD. It won't put Monoprice out of business, but it's certainly reasonable compared to Monster cables.

Earlier this week, a leaked Toys R Us catalog showed an upcoming $50 USD Wii price cut, and just yesterday, a leaked newspaper circular showed a Best Buy ad with the same price cut and a September 27th date.

Today, Kotaku is reporting that Nintendo is finally officially confirming the price drop, saying so during a retailer conference call.

The "official" date is infact the 27th and Nintendojo says they had someone listening to the call, despite Nintendo not going public with the information just yet.

We shall see this week.

According to a PreCentral report, the GSM model of the popular Palm Pre smartphone should be coming soon, at least sometime in the "autumn."

Previous reports had pegged the phone as being launched vaguely as "before the end of 2009."

The O2 website in Germany shows the Pre as "Exklusiv ab Herbst bei O2," meaning "autumn," and PreCentral thinks late October is the likely launch date.

Updates coming when official date, as well as price are announced.

According to Electronista, the Microsoft Zune HD is seeing extremely high sales so far since its launch on Tuesday, with many big retailers already seeing backorders or complete sell outs.

Dell customers have to wait until November for their pre-order Zunes to ship, and dell has even offered another $20 USD off the purchase price to keep people happy.

The 32GB model at Amazon is backordered for 1-3 weeks, and the 16GB model appears to be headed there soon as well.

Best Buy is backordered in both models and Fry's is completely sold out of the 16GB unit.

However, the official Microsoft store is selling both models with no supply constraints.

You can read our review on the player here: Unboxing the Zune HD and Zune software 4

According to the Chinese-language Commercial Times, the PC giants HPand Dell have made orders for 3D notebooks from parts maker Wistron, who is also currently in negotiations with Lenovo and Sony for a similar orders.

Interestingly, Wistron's 3D notebooks uses 3D systems from their own patents, cutting much of the costs of licensing, and leaving the 3D notebooks at a price not much higher than traditional notebooks.

There were little other details, but many expect at least a few of the companies to show off their 3D hardware at the upcoming CES event in January.

We will keep you updated.

Warner Home Video has announced they will be offering Blu-ray Disc revenue-sharing through Rentrak, a company that provides transactional media measurement and analytical services to the entertainment and media industries.

The deal was not fully disclosed, but it seems like rental outlets will have to sign up for Warner's DVD revenue-sharing offer first before they can get the same luxury for BD.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and Lionsgate are the only other major studios to offer the BD revenue sharing, but a few indies are said to be contemplating as well, including Summit Home Entertainment, Anchor Bay Entertainment, E1/Koch and Magnolia Home Entertainment.

"Warner has developed an impressive track record with respect to creating and marketing film properties that resonate with the consumer," adds Marty Graham, president of the home entertainment division at Rentrak, via VB. "We are thrilled to be able to offer both Warner's DVD and Blu-ray Disc new release content to retailers participating in our revenue-sharing program."

Currently in Japan there are hundreds of websites that allow for Japanese mobile phone users to download free music, right to their phones, and quickly, depending on the speed of their data networks.

The RIAJ (Recording Industry Association of Japan) wants to put an end to that however and is currently in talks with the Japanese cell phone carriers for a large operation that will shut down the free music sites, or turn them into pay sites, while also taking more control of the mobile handset industry.

The Yomiuri Online says that over 70 million songs are downloaded "legally" every year via mobile phones in Japan, with another 400 million being downloaded from unauthorized sources.

The new operation will work as follows: When a song is downloaded, it is first checked by the mobile phone operator and if it is from a legal source, it is fine. If they are not, users will receive a note that tells them they are "killing the Japanese music industry," and should stop doing so immediately.

Akihabara brings up a good point however when they note that Japanese legal sources are a complete ripoff. The average sell price is 300 Yen per song from legit mobile download servers, an equivalent of just under $3 USD. In America we complain about $1 USD.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski has announced the group will be proposing new rules over net neutrality that will block ISPs from "throttling" any data across their networks.

Last year, the ISP Comcast came under fire after it was found to be intentionally throttling data from torrent downloaders and uploaders, sometimes slowing their speeds down to nothing.

Advocacy groups went on the offensive claiming that if net neutrality laws were not updated, ISPs such as Comcast could eventually throttle legitimate streaming of TV shows and movies, simply because it would compete with Comcast's cable TV services.

The new rules will ban all "throttling" and would apply to wireless service providers through 3G and eventually 4G, as well.

The ISPs say that throttling is a necessary evil as BitTorrent use eats up massive bandwidth thus leaving other users with slower Internet. It is unclear whether this has ever been proved.

Microsoft has started an interesting promotion this week, offering the upcoming Windows 7 operating system to anyone with a valid .edu email for just $30 USD, a giant discount off the OS' normally $100-plus price tag.

The official site, here: Windows 7 offer, has the following instructions:

How do I Buy?

1. Check that your PC can run Windows 7 with the Windows Upgrade Advisor.
2. Enter your college/university email address.
3. If you’re eligible, you’ll receive an email with purchase details.
4. Click on the link provided in the email to proceed with your purchase.
5. Purchase your license/product key.
6. Checkout and download!

Am I Eligible? Yes, if…

√ You qualify if you have a valid .EDU e-mail OR an e-mail address through one of the educational institutions listed here.
√ You are enrolled in coursework, current proof or enrollment may be required in the United States.
√ Your PC is able to run Windows 7 - use this tool to check. THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT!

There are a couple of catches I saw however, especially compared to the "upgrade" promotion Microsoft has last month. You can only download the 32-bit OR 64-bit digital download for this offer, and the physical disc costs an extra $13. For the physical one, you receive both versions and the disc.

Google has released the full text of their letter to the FCC regarding Apple's App Store rejection policies. It directly contradicts a claim Apple made last month that the Google Voice app wasn't rejected, but is in fact still being considered.

According to the letter Apple Senior Vice President of Worldwide Product Marketing Phil Schiller personally informed Google's Alan Eustace on April 10 that the Google Voice app had been rejected.

The FCC's investigation originally seemed to be focused on AT&T's role in rejecting apps. Had they been behind the decision it would clearly have been within the scope of FCC authority.

Having determined that it was solely Apple's decision to reject the Google Voice app, it's not even clear that the agency has any jurisdiction over the matter.

What may be more interesting is what, if any, affect the facts uncovered might have on the DMCA rulemaking process by the Library of Congress. The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is asking for an anti-circumvention exemption on jailbreaking mobile phones.

One of EFF's primary arguments is the anti-competitive nature of the App Store rejection process. The Google Voice decision would seem to underscore that point.

ASCAP and BMI, the two major US agencies that collect music performance royalties, are pushing to establish new royalties from online music and video stores. They want to begin collecting a performance royalty for downloads of songs and videos that include music.

The proposed new royalties are intended to address the trend of reduced public performances, such as radio and television broadcasts.

Of course it's not as though songwriters aren't already getting paid for downloads. They receive a mechanical royalty each time a song is downloaded and a synchronization fee if their composition is used in a TV show or movie.

In other words it works like CD and DVD sales.

The added royalties would essentially charge consumers twice. Once to cover the distribution and then again for the right to play the file.

John Potter, Executive Director of the Digital Media Association (DiMA) told CNet "This is a turf battle. They are saying, 'The songwriters aren't getting paid.' Baloney. Songwriters are getting paid. They're paid sync rights and (mechanical) rights. They aren't getting paid for the public performance in a download because there is no public performance in a download."

The Internet TV startup company ZillionTV, which was set to launch this month , has been delayed to the Q3 2010, despite full backing by the Hollywood studios.

The company acknowledged that they must change their original plans, as their current strategy will not bring in enough ad revenue.

Says MCN, the company is now "embarking on an "expanded distribution" strategy that will include pilot trials of a direct-to-consumer offering, while maintaining the primary focus on continued partnerships with telcos, CEO Mitch Berman said. In addition, ZillionTV is hoping to land deals with consumer-electronics manufacturers to embed the service into Internet-connected devices."

ZillionTV CEO Mitch Berman added: "Going through [service providers] is a good idea -- we have a motivated partner who can deliver a service with guaranteed quality. But we can't cover the entire country... We can expand in cracks around the country where we don't have partners."

The service has backing from Walt Disney, 20th Century Fox Television, NBC Universal, Sony and Warner Bros as well as Visa and Sigma Designs.

Sony Computer Entertainment Asia president Tetsuhiko Yasuda has noted this week at the GC Asia conference in Singapore that the company will continue its anti-piracy efforts in South-East Asia, and added a strong warning to the governments of those nations where piracy is rampant.

Yasuda specifically commended Singapore, adding: "I would like to extend my gratitude to the solid efforts that the Singapore government has made. However, with just a moment of relaxation in efforts to uphold copyright protection, it's possible that the same old problem will occur again.

"Therefore it is essential for the country to understand that upholding copyright protection is indispensable for the stable development of the software industry."

The president continued on by noting the company's recent deal with Nanyang Polytechnic, which will teach college students how to develop for the PS3.

"In that situation, those students who have made game development their life's dream will suffer the most, and will possibly damage their motivation for creating games," he warned, before requesting that fair treatment should be given to overseas IP as well as that produced locally.

According to the LATimes, the California Energy Commission is actively considering banning sales of "energy-hungry" HDTVs, setting a new efficiency standard that will help offset the massive energy use in the state.

If the proposal goes through, sales of all non energy-efficient models will be banned by 2011 and even more strict standards will occur in 2013.

The public has a 45-day period to comment on the proposal, beginning Monday, and approval goes to vote in November. If approved, California's electricity consumption will drop enough to save $8.1 billion USD in 10 years.

If approved, the Consumer Electronics Association says about 25 percent of all HDTVs available will have to be removed from store shelves. The group also notes that any would-be customer could simply drive over a state and buy a non-restricted TV if they choose to however.

VideoBusiness has posted a new leaked newspaper circular that shows that Nintendo will drop the price of the Wii console to $199 USD, a $50 cut off its launch day retail price of $250.

Earlier this week, we reported that a leaked Toys 'R' Us ad showed the price drop, but nothing was confirmed.

The new Best Buy ad shows the price cut coming on September 27th.

Despite the leaks, a Nintendo spokesperson still added that “Nintendo does not respond to rumors and speculation.”

The price cut follows the recent slashes by Sony and Microsoft, each of which dropped the price of their consoles to $299 and have seen a recent boost in sales.

New accounting rules being considered by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) would allow Apple to stop charging for major revisions to the iPod Touch's OS. The FASB sets guidelines for Generally Accepted Accounting Practices (GAAP) on behalf of the US Securities and Echange Commission.

The two major OS updates released so far, coinciding with the introduction of the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, have been free for the iPhone but not the iPod Touch. This is a result of how revenue for each is recorded on Apple's books.

Income from iPhone sales is currently spread across a two year period. This is due to a GAAP requirement that revenue from new features must coincide with the time they are delivered.

Because the revenue from iPod Touch sales are recorded all at once they are forced to charge a minimal fee for them. Despite the low price, paying anything for a product that's free for other customers has upset a lot of iPod owners.

After this year's update it has also left App Store developers with the dilemma of writing apps either for the latest OS version or the largest potential customer base.

A Cuban man has been freed after being sentenced to two years in prison for posting a YouTube video protesting a food shortage in the country. Juan Carlos Gonzalez Marcos was sentenced last month after the video had receiver 450,000 views since it was posted in April. Instead, he was sent to a psychiatric hospital for three weeks of treatment for alcoholism.

"It's a corrective decision very unusual for a government known for its rigidity," said Elizardo Sanchez, spokesman for the independent Cuban Commission on Human Rights. He said it was likely the result of "international public opinion." Gonzalez was originally seen drunk in a video where he pushed away a person being interviewed about reggaeton.

"What we need here is a little bit of jama," he shouted (jama being slang for food). "We need food, we're hungry here. Listen to what Panfilo tells you from Cuba: food." He then published a video on YouTube, sober, where he recanted the message. On August 4 he was detained by police and sentenced the following week for two years for "dangerousness."

Microsoft Corp. has filed a number of lawsuits against companies that use malicious advertisements in order to trick Windows users into installing useless "security" software. Scareware ads generally appear as system scan utilities, which report that they have found critical problems, and suggest the user simply "click to fix the problem". On click, the user is brought to a website selling fake anti-malware utilities.

In many cases, the software they receive is not only fake, but malicious in nature. The credit card numbers used to buy the software are then often used for fraudulent purposes later on or sold on to scammers, along with all the personal information offered up by the concerned victim. Recently, the New York Times website was tricked into running a scareware advertisement, which made headlines.

"These guys have decided to go full-court press on this, because it's obviously very profitable," said Paul Ferguson, a researcher with antivirus vendor Trend Micro. Microsoft's round of lawsuits target DirectAd Solutions, Soft Solutions, qiweroqw.com, ote2008.info and ITmeter, but they are "John Doe" lawsuits - that is Microsoft of the identities of the owners yet.

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has appealed to regulator Ofcom to be allowed to use encryption on Freeview HD data to prevent piracy. Of course, the request was immediately criticized as under licensing rules, the BBC is not allowed to encrypt video or audio streams. However, the BBC is requesting it be allowed to encrypt the data associated with TV listings, which in effect will stop set-top boxes from decoding TV content.

"We are committed to ensuring that public service content remains free to air i.e. unencrypted," the broadcaster said in a statement. "However, HD content holders have begun to expect a degree of content management on the Freeview HD platform and therefore broadcasters have recognised that a form of copy protection is needed."

A vocal critic of the plan is Labour MP Tom Watson, who says the plan results in limiting consumer choices. "In an attempt to satisfy the fears of powerful rights holders, the BBC will prohibit millions of people from programming their existing set top boxes," he in a blog entry. "If implemented this will make it difficult to view or record HDTV broadcasts with free software. Where's the consumer interest in that settlement?"

On the day of its release in the United States, Microsoft confirmed that the Zune HD media player will function as a games device, with 3D versions of Project Gotham Racing: Ferrari Edition, Vans Sk8: Pool Service and Audiosurf: Tilt expected to become available by the end of the year. The games will be available from the Zune Marketplace, along with applications for a variety of services including Twitter, MSN and Facebook.

"With today's announcement, the Zune business is growing into a comprehensive entertainment service that's no longer tied to any one screen or device," said Enrique Rodriguez, corporate vice president of the TV, video and music business at Microsoft. "Zune lets consumers connect to their music, TV shows and movie content and enjoy it on the three screens they use every day."

Users have access to a wide range of multimedia through the Zune software running on a PC, or over a WiFi connection if it is available. The Zune HD costs $219.99 for the 16GB version and $289.99 for the 32GB version. It is only currently available in the United States with no plans to release to any other territory being announced yet, but Microsoft will be bringing the brand to Europe when "Zune starts to deliver video content to users through the Xbox Live Video Marketplace".

Check our review of the device here: Unboxing the Zune HD

The founders of the Internet phone company Skype have sued eBay today, alleging that the auction giant broke copyright law when they altered and shared the P2P source code behind the software.

Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, the billionaire founders of the software, filed the copyright lawsuit this week. eBay purchased Skype for over $3 billion USD in 2005 but the founders retained ownership of the source code and licensed it to eBay for use.

The founders are seeking an injunction as well as statutory damages that could reach as high as the billions. They two men already filed a similar suit earlier this year in the UK which is expected to go to trial in 2010.

eBay recently announced they would sell most of Skype to a group of private investors for $1.9 billion USD and it is unclear whether the suits will block or delay the sale.

“Litigation often will delay a deal, and there is often a lot of pressure on companies to settle litigation in advance of a deal,” added Michael Klausner, a Stanford Law professor.

Microsoft has confirmed another 250GB Xbox 360 bundle, this time for the UK.

Yesterday the company revealed a Modern Warfare 2 bundle for the US, costing $399 USD.

The UK bundle will include the game Forza Motorsport 3 and will come with the console, a headset, the 250GB HDD, two wireless controllers and will retail for £249.

The Redmond giant also stated it will not sell the HDD separately as it currently does with its 120GB drive.

Unboxing the Zune HD media player and Zune software 4.0

Last week, the would-be Pirate Bay buyer Global Gaming Factory X (GGF), was kicked out of the Swedish stock exchange Aktietorget for giving investors false information to exchange regulators.

Shares in the company had been halted for some time even before the ticker was kicked, as Aktietorget said the company "lacks the ability to inform its stockholders in a correct, relevant and credible way."

Today however, GGF has made a comeback, this time on the Mangoldlistan Swedish stock exchange. The Mangoldlistan only lists seven companies however, and is run by a securities broker firm.

Questions still remain as to whether GGF has sufficient funds to acquire The Pirate Bay. In August, GGF bid 60 million Swedish kronor ($8.6 million USD) for the troubled public torrent tracker.

Via the band's official website, Smashing Pumpkins lead singer Billy Corgan has announced that the band's upcoming album, Teargarden by Kaleidyscope will be released completely free, and feature 44 tracks.

The songs will be completely free through the band's website and will not even require an email address to download.

Says Corgan: "Each song will be made available absolutely for free, to anyone anywhere. There will be no strings attached. Free will mean free, which means you won't have to sign up for anything, give an email address, or jump through a hoop. You will be able to go and take the song or songs as you wish, as many times as you wish."

In order to make money, the band will sell "highly limited edition EP's (of 4 songs each times 11)." The EPs will come with art and will serve as "collectors items" for long time fans, adds Corgan.

The band may "also offer other variations for sale, say for example a digital single with a demo version of a song."

Corgan oncludes: The commitment that is most important is the one I'm making to you: that the music of 'Teargarden by Kaleidyscope' will be available for free to everyone. All 44 songs: free for ALL.

According to the Kindle Nation Daily blog, the Amazon Kindle edition of the new Dan Brown novel The Lost Symbol is outselling its hardcover counterpart, an interesting development.

It is important to note however that the hardcover has been on sale, via pre-order, for 150 days already and it would appear that most excited buyers put in there orders sometime during that period. The Kindle edition is also significantly cheaper.

The whole situation is interesting to note however, as the Kindle edition is outselling any book available at Amazon, whether in print or digital, a good sign for the device, which many have called overly expensive for its functionality.

According to the android-developers blog, the latest Android firmware update SDK, dubbed Donut and officially version 1.6, is now available for download.

Quick Search Box

Well on the way to profitability and its 1 billion user goal, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has posted today on his blog that the site has reached 300 million users today, as well as gone "cash flow positive."

Zuckerberg added however that 300 million is just the beginning and the site "is just getting started on our goal of connecting everyone."

Perhaps more interestingly is the fact that the site is now profitable, much earlier than expected. "Earlier this year, we said we expected to be cash flow positive sometime in 2010," Zuckerberg added. "And I'm pleased to share that we achieved this milestone last quarter."

You can read the full Facebook post here: 300 Million and On by Mark Zuckerberg

The Dutch-based retailer Nedgame has posted on its website that they refuse to stock the new PSP Go handheld, citing a few reasons as to why they will not.

According to the site, they will continue to support the PSP-3000 model in "abundance" but they will not stock the Go, ever.

The reasons the retailer posted for not stocking the Go are as follows (original text was in Dutch):

- The Go has a much higher MSRP, at 249 euro compared to 169 euro for the 3000 model.

- No UMD drive means games MUST be purchased through Sony, at a price determined by Sony.

- No chance of reselling the games or trading with friends.

- No chance of buying the games cheaper, used.

- No way to play imported games (US, EU, J)

- All games you "virtually" purchase become "virtually worthless" after the purchase.

Blockbuster has announced it will be closing up to 1000 of its retail stores over the next 15 months in an effort to cut costs and "improve four-wall profitability".

The SEC filing states that the video rental company will be closing most unprofitable locations, which account for about 15 percent of the company's 7000 overall stores.

About 300 stores will be closed this year as "normal closures" and another 350 will be closed as "accelerated closures." Next year will see about 100 "normal closures" and another 150 "accelerated closures." The overall number will total 900-1000.

"All these stores are candidate stores," said Blockbuster spokesperson Randy Hargrove, via CNet. "Although we may in fact close that many stores, if we can renegotiate leases or remodel stores to make them more profitable, that number might go down."

At the same time, Blockbuster kiosks are expected to grow to 10,000 by the end of 2010, from their current 500.

Iowa senator Tom Harkin recently became chairman of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee, following the death of Senator Ted Kennedy. On Monday, Harkin vowed to look into the possibilities of cancer risks from mobile phone use. He said he was concerned that nobody was able to definitively prove that mobile phones could not cause cancer.

"I'm reminded of this nation's experience with cigarettes. Decades passed between the first warnings about smoking tobacco and the final definitive conclusion that cigarettes cause lung cancer," Harkin said. It is estimated that 4 billion people worldwide use mobile phones regularly.

Harkin called a hearing of the Appropriations Committee's Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, to examine the issue on Monday. "I will pursue this beyond this panel, with the National Institutes of Health," he said afterward.

However, Harkin should be aware that an enormous amount of research has been conducted already on this issue, and no link has ever been found to prove that mobile phones do cause cancer. Simply saying that nobody has been able to disprove it does not make it more plausible, and it is slightly concerning at least that an elected Senator would pursue something on the grounds that nobody could disprove its existence - but it isn't surprising.

A leaked Toys R Us catalog has sparked reports that Nintendo will drop the price of the Wii console in the United States to $199, a cut of $50 from the price tag. The new price is expected to take effect by September 27, according to Kotaku.

The leaked Toys R Us catalog reflects a previous alleged upcoming Wal-Mart advertisement that appeared to indicate the same price drop.

The Wii has remained at its $249.99 price tag, costing more than an Xbox 360 Arcade and now just $50 short of a PlayStation 3 (PS3) console. The Wal-Mart advertisement gave the impression that the price drop would come a bit later than the 27th, but if it is official then it won't be long before it is announced.

"Nintendo does not comment on rumors and speculation," the company said to Kotaku when asked to verify the price cut.

Swedish Internet Service Provider (ISP), Black Internet, was ordered by a Stockholm court to cut off the Pirate Bay from its service or face a fine of up to 500,000 kronor per day.

Black Internet complied with the order, which forced the Pirate Bay to relocate in order to get back online. At the time, Black Internet's CEO Victor Möller said that the company would not appeal the verdict.

However, the company has had a change of heart. "This is a very important question for all ISPs and we can't just lay down," Möller said, confirming to IDG that the company would appeal the decision after all.

The reasons given for not appealing the verdict at first were the typical reasons; the possible costs, time and other resources it would take to fight it.

"The district court made a very controversial decision. The entire ISP business needs some clarity in this matter. A door has been opened and we don't know what's behind it," he said yesterday.

The news of the appeal comes just days after Global Gaming Factory was removed form the stock exchange after being found guilty of serious infringements. Despite that, GGF's boss Hans Pandeya said the company still plans to buy the Pirate Bay.

According to data released by iSuppli, Intel Corp. has built on its lead in the global microprocessor market. Intel received 81 percent of all revenue made from microprocessors in the second quarter of 2009; a 2 percent rise compared to the figures from last year.

It represented the highest level it has had in almost four years, after achieving an 82 percent share in the third quarter of 2005.

Both Intel and Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) reported lower revenues than a year earlier because of a decline in PC shipments. Intel benefited as the global PC market began to recover, according to iSuppli analyst Matthew Wilkins.

Because AMD's average pricing for a microprocessor was lower than that of 2008, it did not gain from the small sequential rise in sales of new PCs.

While Intel saw strong demand for products in all segments, only the netbook segment provided Intel with any growth over the previous year, at about 13 percent. Last month, the chip-maker upped its third-quarter sales forecast due to stronger than expected demand for its processors.

Infinity Ward, the developer behind the much anticipated Modern Warfare 2, has confirmed tonight that Microsoft is planning a 250GB Xbox 360 Elite that will bundle the game along with a custom colorway.

The Modern Warfare 2 Limited Edition bundle will include the larger capacity console, the game and two wireless controllers, and will cost $399 USD.

There was no word on when the console would hit stores but the game is set for early November release.

Google has updated their Chrome browser this week to a stable version 3.0, and also announced that an official Mac version will be available before the end of the year.

Chrome has been on the market for almost one year now, and has seen quick upgrades, mainly speed tweaks as well as compatibility updates. In comparison, Mozilla Firefox has been around for over five years and is currently in working version 3.5.

The browser market is still dominated by Internet Explorer, which (with combining versions 6,7,8), has about 67 percent market share. Firefox, Chrome and Safari have been taking share steadily however, and IE's share has degraded from 95 percent in 2003. Chrome currently has just under 3 percent market share.

"If at the two-year birthday we're not at least 5 percent (market share), I will be exceptionally disappointed. And if at the three year birthday we're not at 10 percent, I will be exceptionally disappointed," added Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson.

Despite his public goals, Upson says Google's internal goals are even more steep.

Ben Creasey, VidZone's head of production, has announced the update of the service, and the inclusion of a good number of improvements.

The full list of improvements, via the Europe PSN blog:

Pre-roll advertising will be shown no more than once every 15 minutes – No more adverts after every video, guaranteed!

16:9 support, true full screen display – This means that if the video is shot in widescreen, it will display in its full widescreen glory on your TV.

Virtual Keyboard is now supported in Search – Use your external or the standard PlayStation virtual keyboard to type instead of scrolling through each letter.

VidZone Search is faster and improved – Faster searching and you are now able to search for special characters (ie you can now search for P!nk etc)

Start up time is reduced – No more waiting about to get partying!

Audio volume on music videos can now be normalized – Each video will play at the same volume meaning no more volume control surfing

Motorola CEO Sanjay Jha has noted this week that the handset maker is currently in talks with other U.S. carriers in an effort to sell the new Cliq Android phone on a carrier besides T-Mobile.

Most analysts and speculators believe the second carrier will be Verizon Wireless but Jha stayed mostly mum on the subject.

Added Jha: The company is "in talks with all large operators in U.S. and is fairly hopeful we will begin to engage with all the U.S. operators."

Jha also noted again that a new Android phone is in the works, and should be launched within the next two months.

The company recently announced that the same phone, dubbed the Dext however, and with some subtle differences, will hit the UK via the carrier Orange beginning later this month as well, with pre-orders beginning on the 22nd.

The Dext will also be headed to South America and the rest of the EU, added the company, but just like with the US Cliq release, there is no set time table.

As is now standard, the phone has 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5MP camera, and a 3.1-inch 480x360 resolution touchscreen as well as QWERTY keypad. Notably, the device is lacking the trackball found on most Android devices.

France's lower house has today approved the extremely controversial "three-strikes" law for Internet pirates, giving authorities the power to disconnect multiple time offenders from the Internet completely.

The media industry has been behind the bill in the UK, France and other nations for some time now, but strong criticism, from groups who claim the bill will threaten our civil liberties, has kept it as just a bill for over a year now.

The French Culture Ministry has said they expect about 1000 French Internet users to be kicked offline, every day, if the bill becomes law. Besides being disconnected, pirates also face a fine as high as euro 300,000 (about $440,000 USD).

Unknowing parents whose kids use the family computer to download unauthorized content are also subject to the law, which will have the family's Internet cut off for a month along with a euro 3,750 fine.

The National Assembly voted to pass the bill with a final tally of 285-225 in favor.

Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand added: "Artists will remember that we at last had the courage to break with the laissez-faire approach and protect their rights from people who want to turn the net into their libertarian utopia."

A federal judge has dismissed a 2007 lawsuit brought against online video site Veoh Networks Inc. by Universal Music Group. The lawsuit alleged that Veoh was aiding and abetting copyright infringement on its video service. However, U.S. District Judge Howard Matz on Friday disagreed with Universal Music Group and found that Veoh was taking reasonable steps to prevent and take down infringing videos uploaded by users.

Veoh CEO Dmitry Shapiro welcomes the judge's decision as a "great victory". The lawsuit costs the company millions of dollars in defense fees. "We've been dragging a giant boulder on a chain. This frees us," Shapiro said. "This lawsuit was simply Universal's attempt to prevent innovation and shut down the company."

Universal said it will appeal the decision to the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. "The balance between copyright holders and technology that Congress sought in enacting the DMCA has been upended by this decision," Universal said in a statement. Settlement talks between the two over the past couple of years have always amounted to nothing.

SanDisk Corporation unveiled its new Extreme Pro CompactFlash memory cards on Monday, designed for professional photographers and other pro-users. The new cards on offer from SanDisk range in capacity from 16GB to 64GB, with write speeds that reach as high as 90MB/s, due to the SanDisk Power Core Controller's dual-lane architecture and software algorithms.

"The new SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash line is the direct result of SanDisk's passion, commitment, and break-through engineering innovation to provide best-in-class flash memory cards for professional photography," said Eric Bone, vice president, retail product marketing, SanDisk. "The SanDisk Power Core Controller delivers unmatched write speed and reliability, providing photographers with a spectacular combination of performance, capacity and peace of mind that images are safely stored."

SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards are fully compatible with any camera, card reader or other device that supports CompactFlash cards. A SanDisk Extreme Pro ExpressCard Adapter is optimized to take advantage of the SanDisk Extreme Pro CompactFlash card's read speed. The reader carries an MSRP of $49.99 and will be available in late October on SanDisk.com and at select retailers.

If you think back a few short years, you might remember a very controversial copy protection technology (XCP) used on a number of Sony BMG CD titles. The DRM used a rootkit to bury itself deep into the operating system and it was very hard to remove. Sony BMG settled a case with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in the United States over the incident, but it stands as the biggest example of DRM going too far.

The incident still is causing ripples however. A German court has ordered a retailer to pay compensation to a man who has claimed financial losses due to the DRM. He had put a CD with the anti-piracy software on it into a number of his computers over time and the end result eventually was many hours dealing with virus alerts, attempted removals and restoring lost data.

He claimed that the incident caused him to lose man hours dealing with the situation, and sued over lost income. He claimed $2,200 in damages should be paid to him as a result of the rootkit infection, which came from an Anastacia CD. The German court ordered the retailer to pay the plaintiff about $1,750 in damages, according to Heise.de (German source).

According to a new Arstechnica report, a few iPhone users have had their MMS enabled via AT&T, a couple of weeks prior to the expected rollout launch date of September 25th.

You can check by heading to Settings > General > Network and then checking to see if you have a "Cellular Data Network" menu. You can also look in the native text messaging app, and check for a camera icon.

AT&T delayed the MMS rollout to make sure the "network was ready to handle a record volume of MMS traffic." They also noted that if you already pay for SMS, MMS would be added free of charge.

Pic via Ars:

Academics at the University of Warwick have taken advantage of the Xbox 360 GPU chip's parallel processing abilities to crunch data as part of scientific study. The Warwick team harnessed a single Xbox 360 Graphical Processing Unit (GPU) to model how electrical signals in the heart moved around damaged cardiac cells. It is an example of how technology being used for gaming can also be used to perform functions vital to modern research at a fraction of the cost.

The PlayStation 3's technology has also been used by researchers to build powerful number-crunching clusters for relatively low costs. Dr Simon Scarle, a researcher on the team, a researcher on the Warwick team, previously worked as a software engineer a Microsoft's Rare studio, which enabled him to tap into the power of GPU technology.

"You don't quite get the full whammy of a cluster, but its close," he said. "Instead of pumping out stunning graphics, it's reworked; in the case of my research, rather than calculating the position of a structure and texture it's now working out the different chemical levels in a cell."

He believes it is the first time that such a project has been carried out with chips from the Xbox 360. He believes that it is entirely possible to link many Xbox's together, in a similar way that has been done with the PS3. "It could be done, but you would have to go over the internet - through something like Xbox live - rather than a standard method," he said.

The Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) is pushing for an agreement with music download sites and other entities in Japan that would see digital rights management (DRM) copy protection software being placed on mobile phones in the country. In Japan, handsets are branded, supplied and managed by the network operators themselves. Every year, about 330 million tracks are sold legally and delivered over-the-air in Japan.

It is estimated that as many as 400 million tracks are shared illegally each year. The Financial Times reported the story, citing anonymous participants in the talks. If the plan were to go ahead, when a user attempts to play a song on a mobile phone, the device would first consult online servers to check whether the file was legitimate.

If it wasn't legitimate, then the song simply wouldn't play. If the companies involved came to an agreement soon, then the technology could be rolled out in the country as early as 2011. Of course, there are some big questions that need to be asked about its practicality. What about legally "ripped" tracks from a purchased CD? How could they possibly be verified - or would they simply not be allowed to play on the phone either? What about free music?

According to TmoNews, T-Mobile will begin taking pre-orders for the much-hyped Motorola Cliq on October 19th in the United States, with actual release date set most likely for around November 10th.

On average, T-Mobile begins pre-orders three weeks before official release date.

The source has the leaked ad page, but that should be enough for time being.

The company recently announced that the same phone, dubbed the Dext however, and with some subtle differences, will hit the UK via the carrier Orange beginning later this month as well, with pre-orders beginning on the 22nd.

The Dext will also be headed to South America and the rest of the EU, added the company, but just like with the US Cliq release, there is no set time table.

As is now standard, the phone has 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5MP camera, and a 3.1-inch 480x360 resolution touchscreen as well as QWERTY keypad. Notably, the device is lacking the trackball found on most Android devices.

LG Electronics has announced the launch of their first ever Android-based mobile phone, the LG-GW620.

The LG-GW620 has a 3-inch touchscreen and a full slider QWERTY keyboard. The camera is 5MP but otherwise, details were scarce.

“The LG-GW620 will appeal to first-time smartphone customers by offering a new and different kind of user experience,” adds Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company via the press release. “Our objective is to provide a wide selection of smartphones to satisfy the diverse preferences of today’s consumers. This Android phone is just one of many smartphone models we plan to introduce worldwide in the years ahead.”

Interestingly, the press release spoke more about LG's upcoming Windows Mobile-based smartphones, which will use 6.5 and should be out before the end of the year.

The LG-GW620 will hit the EU in the Q4, with no US date set.

Last week we reported that sources were claiming a 250GB model of the new Slim PS3 was "a definite by October," and a source speaking to EuroGamer today seems to corroborate that report.

The 250GB model, says the source, will come in three separate bundles, with the first being released in the UK in late October.

The first will be an Uncharted 2 bundle, which will be released when the game is released, on October 23rd. The second, in Spain, will be released with FIFA 10. The last will include wither Assassin's Creed 2 or GT5, neither of which will be released until late November.

The bundles in the UK will cost £299.99.

Sony declined to comment on speculation.

According to their official web store, Apple has slashed the price of their 160GB model Apple TV while at the same time killing the lower capacity 40GB model.

The 160GB model now sells for $229, what the 40GB model was selling for, and will be the only model available for the time being.

The price drop follows recent predictions by Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster, which reported in a note to clients that the 40GB model looked to be phasing out, and that he believed a price cut was coming in the 160GB, most likely at the 'Rock and Roll' live event. It happened less then a week later.

Munster also said a major interface upgrade should be coming soon, most likely based on an iTunes subscription service. The analyst also believes a new Apple TV hardware is in the works, with no set timetable, that will include DVR capabilities.

Adds Munster, originally via Apple Insider, "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 ($30 or $40 per month). Such a product would effectively replace a consumer's monthly cable bill (~$85/month) and offer access to current and older episodes of select shows on select channels."

Another Guide has been added to our collection in the latest round of additions and updates. This one shows how to use an application called Synergy to control multiple computer systems with the same keyboard and mouse. In the guide it is used to provide a dual-screen setup with an older computer/monitor and a spare laptop. Moving control from one system to the next is as simple as moving the pointer off of the side of the screen.

Synergy also allows you to share a clipboard across multiple systems too (text and bitmap data work fine). The only thing necessary is that both systems are connected to the same network and firewalls do not block their access to the network. It can be a useful program for a free dual-screen setup.

It is cross-platform (runs on Windows, Linux and Mac) but we have kept the Linux and Mac off of the guide for now because there are some limitations that the Synergy team is currently working out. The project does have good goals however, and for now, it works very well. Time and time again, adding a second screen to your workspace is suggested to significantly boost your productivity.

According to a report in the Sunday Telegraph, Germany group Deutsche Telekom is on the verge of submitting a bid for the third largest mobile phone operator in the United States, Sprint Nextel.

With Sprint Nextel's market valuation topping 10.6 billion, Deutsche Telekom would surely need to call on a cash injection from shareholders, among whom is the German government itself with a 32 percent stake.

The report cites sources familiar with the matter as saying the company will make a bid for Sprint within the coming weeks.

The news comes after Deutsche Telekom's T-Mobile business in the UK announced a merger with France Telecom's Orange UK arm, which would result in the largest provider in the mobile phone market in Britain.

The report states that neither Deutsche Telekom or Sprint Nextel would provide a comment on the story.

The NPD Group followed up its recent sales figures for the U.S. games industry in the month of August with a new study titled "Kids & Cross-Entertainment Behaviors." It suggests that a way for the games industry to recover from a recent slump in sales would be to increase targeting of the 12-and-under demographic. In the first half of 2009, kids of 12 and under accounted for 24 percent of games industry sales.

Households with kids in the age group account for 45 percent of total industry sales. The study notes that 57 percent of kids aged between 2 and 12 play games, while 62 percent use a computer.

"According to the US Census Bureau, there are 53.4 million [kids] ages 12 and under in the US, accounting for 17 percent of the population," NPD analyst Anita Frazier said as part of the study. "Yet for many industries, games included, they account for a much larger portion of total sales."

Frazier also noted that the "Tween" demographic is a good target, with 75 percent in the age group playing games regularly.

The popular bands Blur and Radiohead have teamed up to fight the British government's plan to begin "three strikes" laws against Internet pirates, one that has pirates kicked off the Internet for downloading unauthorized music three times.

The FAC (Featured Artists Coalition), will represent the "best interests" of the recording artists, and believes that file sharing in fact is better for the artist, as it encourages concert ticket sales and merchandising. The FAC does conceit that file sharing hurts record sales however.

The Radiohead guitarist Ed O’Brien adds: “My generation grew up with the point of view that you pay for your music. Every generation has a different method.

"File sharing is like a sampler, like taping your mate’s music. You go, ‘I like that, I’ll go and buy the album’. Or, ‘you know what, I’ll go and see them live’. What’s going on is a huge paradigm shift.”

Blur drummer Dave Rowntree also added: “The fact that file sharing goes on, and is as popular as it is, is an incredibly positive thing for the music industry. The fact is that music is so popular that people are willing to break the law to get it."

All the bands in the group add that file sharing is bringing their music to new generations of fans, those that did not grow up with a radio, and instead grew up with the Internet.

A European Union investigation into online retailers that sell electronic goods has found that over half of the 369 websites checked were breaking European laws and regulations that exist to protect consumers. The sites sell mobile phones, DVD players and games consoles in 28 European countries (all EU member states except Slovakia - and also included Norway and Iceland).

"We know from the level of complaints coming into European Consumer Centres that this is a real problem area for consumers," said EU consumer commissioner Meglena Kuneva. "We discovered that more than half of the retailers selling online electronic goods are letting consumers down."

200 of the sites were chosen because of their size (largest 200), and the extras were chosen because they were subjects of past complaints. 203 of the 369 are now facing further investigation. Two-thirds (66 percent) failed to explain that consumers had the right to return a product within 7 days of receiving it without having to provide a reason, or that a faulty product must be repaired or replaced for at least two years after purchase - regardless of manufacturer warranty.

Porn companies from the United States and Japan have been very disappointed with the outcome of a complaint made against 10,000 Internet users in South Korea they accused of pirating their content. Prosecutors only managed to charge 10 people with breach of copyright following the complaint. The porn companies have come back and let their grievances known, and now plan to re-file the complaint next week, against 65,000 alleged violators.

The companies allege that the pirates have exploited their content for profit. "Now, we've drawn up a new list of some 65,000 users who fit this guideline," lawyer Kim Han-Seo said. "We'll see whether the prosecutors will press charges against them all." He said that some users had managed to earn up to 30 million won ($24,170) from other users "clicking on the pirated content."

If that allegation is true, then it is certainly a different offense than sharing files for free. Kim went on to explain their displeasure at the fact that South Korean authorities had acted swiftly and decisively after a local mainstream Blockbuster, Haeundae, leaked onto the Internet and was downloaded 100,000 times after.

"We believe that the prosecution should not be discriminatory in applying copyright laws," he said. "Illegal copying and distribution run rampant in Korea because it is one of the world's most wired countries. We decided to take legal action to minimize our past business losses and to protect anticipated future profits."

Albert Gonzalez, the 28 year old hacker accused of stealing and reselling over 170 million credit and ATM card numbers, has pleaded guilty this week to identity theft, wire fraud, computer fraud and conspiracy among 20 counts.

Gonzalez will also forfeit his Miami condo, a 2006 BMW 330i, thousands of dollars in jewelry and $2.7 million USD in cash.

Sentencing is set for December 8th, and Gonzalez is expected to be given 20 years, the maximum for his charges.

The hacker stole the credit card numbers using sql injection and packet sniffer malware software to create backdoors into the corporate systems of retailer chains TJX Companies, BJ's Wholesale Club, OfficeMax, Boston Market, Barnes & Noble, Sports Authority and Dave & Buster's. Gonazalez and two other conspirators also used wardriving, hacking using accessible Wi-Fi in retail stores. One of the conspirators is 7-foot-tall Stephen Watt, a Morgan Stanley investment banker who wrote the sniffing programs.

The three hackers would then sell the numbers or encode the data onto magnetic strips of blank ATM cards, using them to withdraw thousands of dollars from ATM machines.

We've been working on updating some of our stone-age guides (yes, we get the complaints ;-) ) and adding a few new ones as well, for anyone who is interested. Decided just to mention a couple here that were written as a result of recommendation. The first one uses a freeware utility to download Windows Updates for any Windows OS after 2000 (not 7 just yet), make an ISO and burn to disc.

The disc (or alternatively USB) will provide an automated install then on a Windows machine. It's a very useful program if computer repairs are part of your business. It also can download all updates for Microsoft Office 2000, XP, 2003 or 2007 and automate the installation.

Read: Create DVD with all Windows & Office Updates

The second is just an update to a simple guide for saving YouTube videos to your hard drive. I had been asked about saving YouTube HD videos and remembered a simple JavaScript bookmark I had set just to do that, so I added it as a second page to the guide. I looked for the original source but found it has been scattered pretty far across the Internet, so I couldn't find it anymore (so kudos, whoever you are).

According to a Financial Post report, Canadian carrier Rogers will be bringing the newly launched Motorola Cliq Android phone to Canada in 2010.

"There will be a Motorola Android device in our portfolio in 2010," says Rogers Wireless president Rob Bruce.

Motorola is planning more Android phones, but it seems likely Rogers will be launching the Cliq.

The company recently announced that the same phone, dubbed the Dext however, and with some subtle differences, will hit the UK via the carrier Orange beginning later this month as well, with pre-orders beginning on the 22nd.

The Dext will also be headed to South America and the rest of the EU, added the company, but just like with the US Cliq release, there is no set time table.

As is now standard, the phone has 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5MP camera, and a 3.1-inch 480x360 resolution touchscreen as well as QWERTY keypad. Notably, the device is lacking the trackball found on most Android devices.

Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment has announced they will be expanding their Blu-ray 'Diamond Collection', adding 12 new titles including The Lion King, Bambi, Cinderella, The Little Mermaid, Peter Pan, Lady and the Tramp, The Jungle Book, 101 Dalmatians and Pinocchio.

The 'Diamond' collection is considered the studio's high-end BD line, just like the 'Platinum' collection was for standard DVD.

The releases will be staggered, two per calender year, with Fantasia and Beauty and the Beast set for 2010. Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs will be the first Diamond available, hitting shelves on October 6th. Just like the Platinum collection before it, each Diamond title will include a plethora of new bonus features and will only be available in limited quantities for a limited period.

One of the bonus features for Snow WHite, as explained by VideoBusiness is "‘Magic Mirror,’ which the studio touts as its first use of artificial intelligence in a film. The Blu-ray-exclusive technology recognizes viewing patterns and suggests where viewers should go next in the film for an overall personal experience."

“Walt Disney’s gift of telling captivating and engaging stories was matched only by his passion for presenting them in the most spectacular way,” adds Dick Cook, chairman of The Walt Disney Studios. “We are proud to continue his pursuit of excellence with ‘The Diamond Collection,’ which brings the films that are the foundation of our company to audiences of all ages across the globe.”

Toy retailer Toys "R" Us has announced the launch of a videogame trade-in program, one that will be available in all of its stores throughout the US.

The program itself will be similar to that of GameStop's, as well as Best Buy's, who accept games via vending machines or through sales desks.

Gift cards for the chain are given in exchange for the used games, which can be from literally every system you own, including Atari 2600, PlayStation, PlayStation2, Xbox, Nintendo Game Boy, Nintendo 64, Nintendo NES, Intellivision and Sega Genesis.

"The video game trade-in program is another way we're providing customers with additional value when they visit our stores," added Bill Lee, the company's VP and divisional merchandise manager. "This program is designed to make the exchange process completely hassle-free for customers by accepting games from even the oldest systems."

The trade-in program beings today, with ads circulating in newspapers and online.

It was something of a mystery as to why Apple's latest changes to the popular iPod Touch did not include a video camera as expected, while the iPod nano did. Rumors and a mounting pile of evidence before the September 9 "Rock and Roll" event pointed toward the camera being a certain upgrade, but when the unveiling happened, it turned out that not a whole lot seemed to have changed for the iPod Touch.

Explaining it to the New York Times, Apple CEO Steve Jobs commented that the reason for its exclusion was for marketing and cost reasons. Basically, Apple was now marketing the iPod Touch as a portable gaming device, and adding a camera would increase costs. The cheapest iPod Touch now costs $199 to buy.

However, inside the new iPod Touch, there is space that seems to have been deliberately left for a Nano-like camera that would have been positioned exactly where it was expected to be. A teardown by iFixit revealed the camera space. "It appears that Apple left in room for a camera in the top of the device," the solutions provider said. "There is a 6mm x 6mm x 3mm space between the Broadcom chip and the wireless antenna. There isn't enough depth for an iPhone-style autofocus still camera, but just enough room for the camera that Apple used in the 5th generation iPod nano."

A recent "tweet-tirade" from Courtney Love following the likeness of deceased Nirvana front-man, Kurt Cobain, appearing in the latest installment of the Guitar Hero gaming franchise, included a message of intent to sue Activision. Love claims she never agreed to Cobain's final appearance in the video-game, in particular the possibility to have his character lip-sync to Bon Jovi.

Most of Love's outburst about the issue were in response to a video posted (see below) by Everett True of Cobain in GH5 and a very critical personal thought on it aimed at Courtney Love and Dave Grohl (ex-Nirvana drummer and current Foo Fighters front-man) - essentially blaming them for the appearance of Cobain in the video game.

"[I] never signed off on the avatar, let alone this f***ing feature!" Courtney wrote. "There's been four breaches of a very strict contract." Her responses to Everett True were defensive and pointed the finger at Grohl. "He was always a bad seed and is still riding the s**t while I take bullets. If there's a hell, he's going. I'm not," she ranted.

The Guitar Hero developers appear to remember a positive experience of working with Courtney. "Courtney supplied us with photos and videos," said Activision vice president Tim Riley. "She picked the wardrobe and hairstyle, which turned out to be the 'Teen Spirit' look, then we went back and forth over changes – some subtle, some not so subtle ... She wanted a sort of athletic definition but not overly so."

Vivid Entertainment, the largest adult entertainment video production company in the world, is interested in distributing pornographic content through the PlayStation Network (PSN), and then possibly with Xbox Live or on the Wii console. Vivid owner, Steve Hirsch, hopes to convince Sony first, having had trouble initially offering Vivid titles on the Blu-ray Disc format.

"Our point is pretty simple," Hirsch told Kotaku. "As long as age verification is in place that (Sony) feels comfortable with we see no reason why adults shouldn't be allowed to access adult movies on the Playstation 3." The company is drafting a formal request that will be sent to Sony Computer Entertainment, but has not yet discussed the prospect with the console maker.

The decision to approach Sony about PSN porn comes after some pornographic content has become available from Japan's DDM.TV on the PS3 console. "They had made it clear in the past they were not interested," Hirsch said. "Now that they have agreed to in some way allow adult films on the Japanese platform we are going to move forward and make a formal request."

Microsoft has confirmed to Ars Technica what the blogosphere has reported as rumor for the past few weeks; Microsoft has no plans to sell the Zune HD portable media player outside of the United States. With the first Zune model, Microsoft only managed to get the Zune as far as Canada. "For the time being the Zune HD device will remain US-only," a Microsoft spokesperson told Ars.

"Right now we are focused on deploying an exciting service in the form of Zune Video to 18 markets. We are looking at potential future hardware experiences for these markets, but do not have anything to announce right now." Microsoft's other Zune models are to be discontinued in favor of the new Zune HD, which comes with 16GB or 32GB capacity.

When Ars asked about a rumored 64GB model, the spokesman said that the company has no plan to develop it right now. "We are constantly looking at other options and evaluating what consumers are looking for," said the Microsoft spokesperson. "That said, we have not announced any plans to offer a larger device."

In a blog post in the Skype Developer Zone, titled "The future of Skype Extras", the company announced that they will shut down the Skype Extras program. Skype will no longer certify any new Extras - though existing Extras will stay certified until their expiration dates. It will continue to distribute applications through the existing Extras Manager in Skype for Windows, but won't add any new Extras.

"Despite the incredible breadth of Extras developed for Skype, simply not enough people were using them to justify our continued support of the Extras programme," the blog post, written by Antoine Bertout, reads. "Unfortunately, effective today, we will shut down the Skype Extras programme."

• We will no longer certify new Extras. However, all existing Extras will stay certified until their expiration dates and all unused test tickets will be reimbursed.
• We will continue to distribute applications through the existing Extras Manager in Skype for Windows, but will no longer add new Extras.
• All public API documents will continue to be maintained.
• Skype will continue to support accessories via the Public API.
• The Skype shop will continue to feature currently listed Extras.

The IEEE announced on Friday that its Standards Board has ratified the 802.11n-2009 amendment, designed to help the data communications industry address the escalating demands placed on enterprise, home and public WLANs with the rise of higher-bandwidth file transfers and next-generation multimedia applications. WLANs based on IEEE 802.11 are widely deployed, with more than 1 million units shipping per day.

The 560-page 802.11n amendment, "WLAN Enhancements for Higher Throughput", will enable rollout of significantly more scalable WLANs that deliver 10-fold-greater data rates than previously defined while ensuring co-existence with legacy systems and security implementations.

802.11n increases the data rate from the current 54 Mbit/s to a maximum of 600 Mbit/s. Devices on the market today can support up to 300 Mbit/s (802.11n draft 2.0) by using 2 Spatial Streams at 40 MHz, marketed as "Draft N" devices. The addition of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) to improve system performance, channel bonding to the physical layer, frame aggregation to the MAC layer, antenna diversity and spatial multiplexing builds upon he older 802.11a, 802.11b and 802.11g standards.

INQ Mobile, the phone maker owned by UK-based carrier Hutchison Whampoa, has announced that it will begin offering Android phones starting next year, the latest in a long line of handset makers which have begun or are planning to offer the Google phones.

There wasn't much more details given about the Android phones, but CEO Frank Meehan, according to Moco, seems very excited for the possibilities brought forth by the Android platform.

“When you look at who do you select, you come to Android” and “currently Android phones on networks that are selling against the iPhone have not performed well. You need to get the experience better.”

We will keep you updated.

In 1992, the Software & Information Industry Association (previously the SPA), released the now infamous (and frankly ridiculous) Don't copy that floppy anti-piracy propaganda video, warning against the dangers of copying software and games. The video features a dancing rapper by the name of MC Double Def DP (Disc Protector).

This month, the group has released the long-awaited sequel, dubbed Don't Copy That 2, and it is available on YouTube in full HD glory. The video remains extremely corny, just like the original, but this time features a college kid who downloads and burns all the latest music albums. There is also a SWAT team and Klingons.

Well worth the watch and the laugh if nothing else. It's not just a copy it's a crime!

On Thursday, Motorola unveiled their first Android phone, the Motorola Cliq, which is to sell in the US via T-Mobile.

The mobile phone company has announced today that the same phone, dubbed the Dext however, and with some subtle differences, will hit the UK via the carrier Orange beginning later this month as well, with pre-orders beginning on the 22nd.

The Dext will also be headed to South America and the rest of the EU, added the company, but just like with the US Cliq release, there is no set time table.

As is now standard, the phone has 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5MP camera, and a touchscreen as well as QWERTY keypad. Notably, the device is lacking the trackball found on most Android devices.

Official specs say the phone uses Android 1.5, but rumor has it the device will ship with 2.0, Google's upcoming promised firmware upgrade.

Qualcomm has announced that their MediaFLO wireless broadcast network will be headed to portable media players such as MP3 players soon, as well as into car systems.

The network uses former analog TV channels and sends digital TV signals to select mobile handsets from carriers AT&T and Verizon. The service costs $15 USD a month and users get 12 or 13 stations.

Qualcomm COO Len Lauer says however that he is not satisfied with consumer adoption of the product so far, and wants to expand into media devices and cars. "We need to be on a lot more devices," Lauer added.

For in-car entertainment, Qualcomm has signed a deal with Audiovox to bring the FLO TV channels to LCDs in cars. Lauer says there are currently 25 million vehicles in the US with LCD video screens in their cars.

Lauer does not stop there however: "You'll see us come out with an MP3-like device fairly soon that also has a full FLO TV capability," Lauer noted, via Yahoo Tech. Accessories are being created to make connectivity easier for existing phones and devices.

According to AndroLib, the popular website used to browse Android Market apps from your PC, the relatively new Market has just hit 10,000 applications, a strong milestone for the platform.

In comparison however, Apple CEO Steve Jobs recently announced that the iPhone App Store has over 75,000 applications available as well as 1.8 billion downloads so far.

Checking AndroLib's statistics page, we can see that the 10k milestone was recently hit, with a good majority of the applications (65 percent) being free.

On Friday, Motorola Inc. shares rose 9 percent on the hopes that the new Cliq "Google Phone" could reverse its string of loss making. The phone, which it developed with Google Inc., pleased analysts that believe it might be the key to boosting its failing handset business. The phone's social networking features in particular caught the attention of analysts.

"Our initial take is favorable, and it seems that Motorola is carving out a niche in the crowded smartphone market by focusing on socially minded demographics as opposed to enterprise users or pro-sumers," RBC analyst Mark Sue said, raising his price target on Motorola shares from $8 to $10.

T-Mobile USA will offer the Cliq in the fourth quarter in the country. Orange planes to sell the phone in Britain and France, while Telefonica will sell it in Spain and America Movil in Latin America. It will be called Dext outside the United States.

Motorola will launch another phone later this year that uses Google's Android software. Some analysts believe that it is Motorola's next big hope to regain market share it lost to Apple, Nokia and Samsung.

An update for the Wii console has caused the BBC iPlayer to stop working on the platform, according to the BBC itself. After the update was released on September 1, forums began to fill with complaints about the iPlayer post-update, which ranged from programmes simply dropping in the middle of viewing, to not working at all.

The system update that has caused the hassle was designed to bring Flash 8 to the Wii's Internet Channel, according to Nintendo. The company was unaware of the BBC iPlayer problems, but the BBC confirmed to Reg Hardware that something definitely went wrong since the update.

"We are currently investigating and hope to resolve the issues with the iPlayer website," the BBC told Reg Hardware. The problem is definitely with the update, since users that haven't applied the update can still use the BBC iPlayer just as before.

Microsoft Corp. has dodged paying Alcatel-Lucent damages of $358 million for patent infringement for now. A federal appeals court rules that Microsoft does not have to pay the damages because of errors in how the damages had been calculated.

Alcatel-Lucent had originally said Microsoft's Outlook and other programs illegally infringed on its patent which covers a method of entering information into fields on a computer screen with no Keyboard.

The U.S. District Court jury had determined that damages Microsoft should pay would have to reflect what the company would have paid up front to license the technology. However, the appeals court said that Alcatel-Lucent had failed to prove that its technology was valuable enough to merit royalties of $358 million.

The court judges told a district court to reconsider the penalty, and in the same ruling, affirmed the underlying verdict against Microsoft, which it claimed was backed by substantial evidence. Alcatel-Lucent said it was disappointed with the court's decision.

A music pirate that was allegedly the head of a piracy syndicate operating across Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific was yesterday sentenced to 15 months jail and 300 hours community service in the Sydney District Court. "These are offences where the deterrence of others is paramount," Judge Colin Charteris said.

"No penalty other than a period of imprisonment is appropriate. What you have done is rob the artists of their work and now you will have to give something back." The man had been convicted on 32 separate charges arising from the illegal manufacturing of more than 50,000 remixed compilation albums.

Judge Charteris said the parliament had made it clear that copyright theft was a serious crime and it was important the courts "protect performers and artists so they can be adequately rewarded for their efforts." The Australian Federal Police and Music Industry Piracy Investigations (MIPI) had broken up the piracy operating, serving 11 warrants across Sydney.

The District Court ordered the jail sentence be conditionally suspended for a period of 3 years.

Starting on Wednesday, Apple pushed out 47 separate fixes for its Mac OS, iPhone and QuickTime products. Some of the fixed issues had the potential to allow attacks seize complete control over a system.

OS X components included Alias Manager, CarbonCore, ClamAV, ColorSync, and CoreGraphics and Adobe Flash. The updates were available for both the Tiger and Leopard versions of the operating system.

The iPhone updates addresses holes in CoreAudio, WebKit and MobileMail. QuickTime, which is no stranger to security updates, also had several security problems that could allow attackers to hijack a machine. They related to how QuickTime handled manipulated H.264 and MPEG-4 files.

One one of the 47 fixes was for the Snow Leopard operating system (though it was updated to fix other issues with the new OS), only recently released. The single fix only updated the Flash software to the latest and most secure version.

Mozilla Corp. pushed out updates for its Firefox web browsers yesterday to address four separate security bugs and several stability issues. Three of the four security bugs have been considered critical. They involve a memory corruption flaw, a bug with "BrowserFeedWriter" and a TreeColumns dangling pointer vulnerability.

It also addressed several stability bugs, such a tendency for the browser to crash when opening the Bookmarks menu on a Mac.

Changes from Firefox v3.5.2 -> v3.5.3

• MFSA 2009-51 Chrome privilege escalation with FeedWriter
• MFSA 2009-50 Location bar spoofing via tall line-height Unicode characters
• MFSA 2009-49 TreeColumns dangling pointer vulnerability
• MFSA 2009-47 Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.9.1.3/1.9.0.14)

NPD has released their latest U.S. video game industry numbers, for the month of August, with PS3 hardware sales seeing a bump due to the Slim PS3 but with software and other consoles seeing strong declines.

Overall, the combined industry (hardware, software, accessories) saw a 16 percent year-on-year decline to $908 million USD. August saw a slight improvement from July however, when full revenue fell to $849 million USD.

Hardware sales fell 25 percent YOY, to $298 million, up just under 10 percent from July's low. The DSi and DS Lite remained on top, with the Wii coming in second and the Xbox 360 and PS3 almost identical in third and fourth. The PSP lagged far behind. Full stats:

Full Hardware Numbers

Sharp has announced they have created a blue-violet semiconductor laser that can read and write up to quadruple-layer (100GB) Blu-ray discs.

The laser has optical output of up to 500mW, much higher than current capacities. According to Tech-On, the laser has "an oscillation wavelength of 405nm and a capability of writing at 8x speed on triple- and quadruple-layer Blu-ray discs."

There was no word on when Sharp will begin mass producing the laser, but they have begun producing a 320mW maximum output semiconductor laser just 3 months ago.

Tech-On explains how the new laser works: "Sharp enhanced the optical output by using a new method of processing the edge face of a resonator. Normally, the edge face of a crystal in a semiconductor laser is protected by a dielectric film. This time, the company formed an aluminum oxynitride (AlON) film between the edge face of the semiconductor laser and the dielectric film by a sputtering method and realized an epitaxial growth where the growth axis of the laser's crystal corresponds to that of the AlON crystal."

Arstechnica has been in touch with Microsoft over recent rumors that the Zune HD will be a US-exclusive, and unfortunately for those hoping for an international release, the rumors happen to be true.

Says the Redmond-based behemoth: "For the time being the Zune HD device will remain US-only. Right now we are focused on deploying an exciting service in the form of Zune Video to 18 markets. We are looking at potential future hardware experiences for these markets, but do not have anything to announce right now."

The move follows that of the original hard-drive based Zune, which was released in America in 2006 and nowhere else until it hit Canada in 2008.

The upcoming Zune HD device features a 3.3-inch OLED touchscreen with 480 x 272 resolution and 16:9 display. It will also include HD radio, Wi-Fi, and 720p HD output via HDMI.

Following the guilty plea of one, and the conviction of a second, four more members of the pre-release piracy group RNS have been indicted on charges of conspiring to commit copyright infringement for their roles in uploading pre-release music, sometimes weeks before the the CD's official street date.

RNS, one of the older groups on the "scene," was started in 1999 by Adil R. Cassim, who even then was distributing music online and RNS grew in reputation as a "pre-release" group.

"The supply of pre-release music was often provided by music industry insiders, such as employees of compact disc manufacturing plants, radio stations, and retailers, who typically receive advance copies of music prior to its commercial release," reads the court documents, via Ars.

It is unclear how many albums the uploaders are accused of sharing, but the US DOJ says the amount of tracks distributed is in the thousands. Each group member had a different task, such as ripping, encoding, server management, and of course, the obtaining of the actual CD before the release date.

According to a Eurogamer report, UK retailers have told the site that a 250GB model of the new Slim PS3 is a "definite" by October.

The unrevealed source says the model will be bundled with one or two games, but those are unknown for time being. The bundle should be unveiled later this month, at the Tokyo Game Show, adds the source.

A different UK retailer noted that consumers will get a bundle with either Assassin's Creed II, Gran Turismo 5 or Uncharted 2, three games set to be blockbuster hits. In Spain, a 250GB PS3 Slim bundle with FIFA 10 has been leaked as well, and will cost EUR 350.

Sony has declined to speculate on rumor, just like they did about the PSP Go and the Slim PS3.

A Finnish textbook rental service Bookabooka.fi which allows students (and others) to rent, lend, sell or donate books has been partially shut down by the Finnish Copyright Information and Anti-piracy Centre (TTVK). Bookabooka was forced to close its renting option due to a claimed copyright violation.

Bookabooka and TTVK are currently trying to find a solution that would satisfy both parties as well as the copyright holders. To settle it for now, Bookabooka offered to pay all income from rental books directly to a designated party.

The conflict was caused by copyright law which states that the author or other copyright holder has the right to determine whether the product can be lent or rented. There is no precedent on how this type of cases should be resolved, said Bookabooka in their official blog (in Finnish). Bookabooka does not own the books nor does it deal with shipment or money transactions, it only provides the information between the users.

The site is currently running without the renting option, but according to Bookabooka CEO Vesa Kaartinen, they are determined to figure out a way to reinstate the service as soon as possible.

DivX has made a licensing agreement today with Panasonic for the next-generation DivX Plus HD technology.

The technology will then be incorporated into Panasonic's UniPhier semiconductor chips which will be placed in HDTVs, Blu-ray players, and other devices that will playback "Plus HD H.264 video in the MKV container at high-definition resolutions up to 1080p."

With the new certification, the devices will play MKV files with AAC audio, created by most softwares, including DivX's own DivX 7.

As predicted, Apple blocked the use of the Palm Pre with iTunes in the latest update for the multimedia application, iTunes 9. Previously, Apple had locked out the Pre handset from iTunes with the iTunes 8.2.1 update. Following the initial block, Palm restored the syncing abilities with the WebOS 1.1.0 update.

The cat and mouse game looks set to continue however, as the Pre is getting a WebOS 1.2 update in the near-future. Before the Pre launched, Palm announced that the new handset would be capable of syncing with the iTunes software. An Apple statement followed, promising that the syncing ability with the Pre won't last very long. It was two months after the launch when Apple blocked it.

Palm wasn't going to sit still over the issue however, and a wrote 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. Apple had blocked the Pre from syncing with iTunes by checking the idVendor descriptor when connected.

Speaking to the New York Times, Apple CEO Steve Jobs revealed that the iPod Touch did not get a camera upgrade in the new 2009 iPod line-up for marketing and cost reasons. Basically, Jobs said that Apple is marketing the iPod Touch primarily as a gaming device now, and that it was important to be able to offer a relatively inexpensive portable device to compete in the market - a camera would apparently have caused some problems here.

The cheapest iPod Touch now costs $199, and includes 8GB of storage capacity. However, it should be noted that the latest iPod Nano models got a camera upgrade without having a negative effect on the price. Even outside Apple there are contradictory examples, such as the dual-screen, dual-camera Nintendo DSi, which sells for $170.

More possible bad news for anybody looking to buy an iPod Touch is that it appears the 8GB model might not be getting an upgraded processor and graphics capabilities like the iPhone 3GS, and the new 32GB and 64GB iPod Touch models.

Motorola has announced their first Android smartphone, the Cliq, which will be available for T-Mobile users and will feature touchscreen slider hardware.

Making the phone unique is its use of MOTOBLUR as a UI, which has customized home screen widgets for social status, weather, messaging and more, without the need to open separate apps.

All info is synced online and is easily resynced even if the phone is lost and then replaced.

As is now standard, the phone has 3G, Wi-Fi, GPS, a 5MP camera, and a touchscreen as well as QWERTY keypad. Notably, the device is lacking the trackball found on most Android devices.

Official specs say the phone uses Android 1.5, but rumor has it the device will ship with 2.0, Google's upcoming promised firmware upgrade.

In August, RealNetworks submitted their Rhapsody app to Apple's App Store, and today it has finally been approved, bringing the music subscription service to iPhone and iPod Touch users.

The approval marks the first time Apple has allowed an on-demand streaming service in the United States. Recently, the company approved of Spotify for European users.

Rhapsody subscribers have to pay $14.99 USD a month to get the unlimited streaming service, but the app itself will be free. The service has over 8 million tracks, and users will be able to stream wherever there is cell service or Wi-Fi.

The service will eventually be updated to cache songs for playback when there is no Internet available.

Adds Neil Smith, vice president of business management for Rhapsody America: The new app will "reach the iPod Touch and iPhone audience that was unavailable to us before."

Notably however, the songs will stream at a lowly 64 kbps, hardly "CD-quality."

Sony's latest Blu-ray player, the BDP-N460, will add for the first time, streaming video and audio, from Netflix, YouTube and Slacker.

The company does note however that regardless of what TV you have attached the wireless will work better with a Linksys WET610N Ethernet-to-Wi-Fi bridge.

The player has oboard decoding of Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio, is BD-Live compliant, and will output HDMI Deep Color. The player can read photos and MP3s off USB drives and will upscale DVDs and AVCHD videos.

The BDP-N460 will begin shipping in October, with a price tag of $250 USD, the same price as other BD players with similar specs, and $50 cheaper than the PS3.

LG has announced that their BD390 Blu-ray player will now support VUDU video streaming, following a firmware update.

VUDU offers over 2200 movies and TV shows in SD or 1080p HD and 5.1-channel audio.

The player now supports Netflix, VUDU, CinemaNow and YouTube.

The BD390 has been applauded for fast loading times, 1GB of onboard memory, as well as its ability to play DivX video files off a USB drive.

The BD player retails for $379.99 USD from most retailers.

Its seems increasingly improbable that the Global Gaming Factory X would acquire Swedish torrent site The Pirate Bay. GGF was today kicked out of the Swedish stock exchange Aktietorget for giving investors false information. The company also broke several other rules within the stock exchange and therefore no transactions are allowed anymore.

According to Aktietoget, GGF gave false information about their financial situation and deals with media corporations. Aktietorget says GGF didn't have the money to buy TPB or deals with copyright holders it claimed to have.

The stock exchange of GGF came to a halt couple weeks ago when Aktietorget said the company "lacks the ability to inform its stockholders in a correct, relevant and credible way."

Head of GGF Hans Pandeya admitted that he gave out some misinformation but didn't do it on purpose. He also promised to pay out TPB by himself if the investors wouldn't join the purchase. However, Pandeya has over 100,000 dollars of unpaid taxes and can't turn GGF stocks into money because the company is no longer listed anywhere.

Microsoft and the large UK retailer Tesco have announced they will be teaming up to provide a new "DVD-quality" movie downloading service that uses Silverlight technology.

Beginning this fall, any Tesco customer who purchases certain DVDs will receive a free "digital copy" of the movie that they can download to their Macs or Windows machines.

In addition to the film, the digital copies will also bring "extra network-connected features such as auto-updated trailers, exclusive bonus content, movie viewing parties with online chat, related music offerings such as MP3s and ring tones, and networked games."

"Tesco is excited to be the first retailer to partner with a broad range of major movie studios to offer this next-generation movie experience," said Rob Salter of Tesco. "For the first time, consumers will be able to enjoy a DVD equivalent experience with digital movies, which paves the way for more advanced viewing experiences enabled through Silverlight."

"This is just the beginning. In the future we expect to offer our customers innovative digital solutions that far exceed the DVD experience and deliver exclusive content, Web events and services wherever and whenever they want them," Salter added.

After Sony recently integrated the BBC iPlayer into the version 3.0 PlayStation 3 firmware update, it has now become the second most popular viewing platform, behind the PC.

The BBC says 10 percent of all iPlayer traffic comes from PS3 accounts, surpassing the Mac, which holds 8.5 percent of all traffic.

"User response to our new iPlayer for PS3 has been amazing," adds Anthony Rose, controller of the BBC's online media group and vision.

"Although it's less than a week since we launched, iPlayer on PS3 now accounts for a massive 10 per cent of all iPlayer viewing, overtaking Mac to be our second most popular platform for IP-delivered content.

"We'll have to wait and see whether this holds up in the coming weeks, but this enthusiastic reception makes it clear that users do want iPlayer on their TV - something that bodes well for Canvas and other IPTV propositions."

PS3 users can playback iPlayer content full screen, at 25fps, due to an upgrade in the PS3's Flash playback abilities.

Apple revealed changes to its iPod line-up during its media event today. Before this, at the event, Apple had also announced they have sold 30 million iPhones, served 1.8 billion Apps, and sold 8.5 billion songs through iTunes. Apple also announced the iPod market share is at 73.8 percent, 225 million iPods sold, and that there are more games for Touch than PSP & NDS. Apple has also introduced iTunes 9, with a full set of new features.

However, most eyes fixed on the Apple event were waiting to hear about what happens now for the iPod line-up. After weeks of rumors and speculation, here it is.

Apple iPod Touch 2009

Apple, speaking at their "Rock n' Roll" live event today, introduced iTunes 9 and with it, a plethora of new features.

The first addition is that of Genius mixes. Apple CEO Steve Jobs explains that the Genius library now has 27 million libraries built from 54 billion analyzed tracks, which will create Genius Mixes, personal radio stations similar to Pandora.

The Genius also works for movies and even applications you have downloaded from the iTunes store.

The second improvement was improved Syncing, as Apple says, for when "you sync to your iPod Touch or iPhone we have made that much better." Users can now choose select playlists, artists, genres, and photos from certain events, certain albums or even photos that only include certain faces. Movies have been give a "recently added" and you can manually choose favorites.

Additionally, Home Sharing makes it easy for users to sync an iTunes library between up to 5 computers in a house. All authorized computers can share music, movies and TV shows between them, and will be viewed as part of a shared group where users can drag and drop content from one library to another.

So far at Apple's media event, the company has touted its 30,000,000 iPhone sales figures, 1.8 billion apps downloads, 75,000 apps available, iTunes 9, 100 million accounts with credit cards, 8.5 billion songs sold, Home media sharing and more. One notable announcement is the current estimated share that Apple's iPod music players have of the MP3 player market.

As things stand, Apple says it has 73.8 percent of the market, followed by 18 percent held by "other", SanDisk at 7.2 percent and Microsoft at 1.1 percent share. Apple's own data shows that 50 percent of new iPod sales are to new customers (didn't previously own one) and the total number of iPod sales is closing in on 225 million units.

The fastest growing model is the iPod Touch, which has sold over 20 million units since it was unveiled two years ago by the company. This means that 40 percent of the "iPhone platform" is accounted for with the iPod Touch (20 million sales for Touch, 30 million sales for iPhone).

Apple CEO Steve Jobs arrived at the "Rock n' Roll" event today and was greeted with a long standing ovation from the audience. Speaking about his health experience in the past couple of years, Jobs credited his life to a man in his 20s who had died in a car crash, and was an organ donor. "I'm very happy to be here today with you all," he said, before thanking Tim Cook and his executive team for the support and how well they ran things in his absence.

Anyway, on to other things. The first revelations include that iPhone's new milestone; it has sold 30 million units in its two years of availability. It's dedicated App Store has 75,000 applications available for the device and has so far served a whopping 1.8 billion downloads. If updates were to be counted too, it would be "a few times higher," according to Phil Schiller.

The iPhone 3.1 OS is also ready, and includes among its features, a port of "Genius", which will now be used to recommend what application you might like. It will be available as a free download from today. The recent rumor about record labels offering pre-made ringtones is also true; over 30,000 pre-made ringtones will be available for $1.29 each.

According to Eldar Murtazin of Mobile-review, the newly launched Xperia X2 may be the last Sony Ericsson phone to use Windows Mobile, as the company moves on to Symbian and Android only.

On his Twitter page, Murtzain says "SE denied to support WM in future, X2 possible the last one WM device (one more in development but could be canceled).Sales forecast is bad."

It can be implied by the Tweet, that it appears WinMo phones will not sell well in the future, or at least the company does not believe so.

The leaked yet unreleased SE Satio (Symbian s60) and SE Xperia Rachael (Android) are expected to be launched by the end of the year.

Pandora Radio , the extremely popular streaming music service, is now available for Android handsets, allowing users to create "stations" based on their favorite musicians, songs or composers.

Current Pandora users will already be fully integrated, all existing stations will be saved, as well as bookmarks. You can create new ones through your handsets.

Pandora creates the stations using analysis from the Music Genome Project which is "together we set out to capture the essence of music at the most fundamental level. We ended up assembling literally hundreds of musical attributes or "genes" into a very large Music Genome. Taken together these genes capture the unique and magical musical identity of a song - everything from melody, harmony and rhythm, to instrumentation, orchestration, arrangement, lyrics, and of course the rich world of singing and vocal harmony. It's not about what a band looks like, or what genre they supposedly belong to, or about who buys their records - it's about what each individual song sounds like."

Some pirates of the new Eidos title, Batman: Arkham Asylum (PC version) might be surprised when they realize a certain "problem" in the game prevents them from advancing through it properly. While some pirates might have thought the copy protection mechanisms were beaten when the game loaded properly, Eidos has (at least) one more trick up its sleeve that probably wasn't suspected.

On the Eidos Forums, a user Cheshirec_the_cat might have gotten a surprise with the response from an Administration over the problem he has had with the game.

"Hi!
I've got a problem when it's time to use Batman's glide in the game. When I hold , like it's said to jump from one platform to another, Batman tries to open his wings again and again instead of gliding. So he fels down in a poisoning gas. If somebody could tel me, what should I do there." Cheshirec_the_cat asked on a new thread.

After one user told him to "try buying the game" and commented that it has not even been released publicly for PC yet, an administrator, Keir, summed up the problem for him.

"The problem you have encountered is a hook in the copy protection, to catch out people who try and download cracked versions of the game for free.

According to paidContent:UK, Spotify has been closing free European accounts that have accessed its song library from countries outside their advertisement reach. At least users in Ireland and Lithuania have posted Twitter updates stating that their access has been restricted. Neither of the two countries are officially supported by Spotify and the accounts have been created using a proxy loophole.

Previously Spotify has not restricted accounts that have changed their location from the proxied country to their actual unsupported country but it's obvious that the monetisation of the service is becoming increasingly important.

In an interview, Spotify spokesperson explained that they closed accounts simply because they can't provide ads to the countries. "These users got access to the Spotify service but were not being served any adverts, which fund it… The feedback we’ve received from these (users) has been mostly understanding as they realise we can’t simply give our product away for free." However, the company is hoping "to increase reach in Europe and elsewhere in the future."

Apple has reduced the prices of current generation iPods by as much as 30 percent. According to Engadget, Apple's official online store which is currently offline showed the price drop earlier today. The price cuts will almost certainly be announced at today's "rock and roll" event, held in San Francisco.

The price of the 2nd generation iPod touch 32GB was cut by a whopping 30 percent from $399 to $279 but other touch versions got hefty price cuts as well. 16GB touch dropped from $299 to $249 and 8GB touch from $229 to $189.

In addition the prices of 4th generation 8GB and 16GB nanos were slashed to $129 and $149 respectively. This makes the additional 8GB cost only 20 bucks more compared to previous $50 difference. The classic also received a $20 price cut to $229.

The rumors have it that the price cuts are making room for a new generation of iPods -- at least 5th generation nano and 3rd generation touch -- possibly announced later today.

Microsoft Corp. has been hit with another lawsuit over the Windows Genuine Advantage (WGA) software that is used as an anti-piracy tool for Windows XP. The latest lawsuit - filed in a Washington district court - also makes claims of false advertising and privacy law violations. The false advertising possibly refers to how the WGA tools are offered as security updates and not anti-piracy tools.

Mirroring past lawsuits, the complaint also addresses how WGA phones home to Microsoft on a daily basis with IP addresses and other private information of users. This combined with an alleged difficulty in removing WGA from a system leads the complaint to suggest that it acts no different than spyware.

Two lawsuits filed in 2006 over the same issues have not amounted to any decisions yet, and since then Microsoft has extended modified versions of WGA to Windows Vista, Windows 7 and Microsoft Office. Online validation is generally required to download updates for the products from Microsoft's servers.

It has also come under fire in the past for having allegedly high levels of false positives, where genuine copies of Windows XP were flagged as counterfeit. If that should happen to you, then maybe this tool will help.

Microsoft's monthly Patch Tuesday included five updates this time that address some critical bugs in the newer versions of the operating system. Microsoft did point out, however, that none of the issues apply to the final version of the soon-to-be-released Windows 7 operating system. However, for those running Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008, get your updates.

Two of the flaws involve serious vulnerabilities in networking components of Windows Vista, Server 2003 and 2008 which could let malicious software spread from computer to computer. In total, the five bulletins address eight different vulnerabilities. Those that are most likely to be exploited widely exploit the way in which Windows handles ASF and MP3 multimedia files.

"We've seen similar exploits in the past and all a user would have to do is visit a compromised Web site hosting one of these malicious files, which could be an MP3, WMA or WMV file, and they could become infected," said Symantec Security Response research manager Ben Greenbaum.

The International Trade Commission (ITC) sided with Funai Electric Co back in April by ordering a list of companies that includes Vizio, AmTran, TPV Technology, Top Victory Electronics, Envision and Proview International to stop importing and manufacturing screens that violated patented technology. While the order was made in April, Funai complained last month that infringement was ongoing.

"The commission has determined to institute a formal enforcement proceeding to determine whether the respondents are in violation of the commission's limited exclusion order and cease and desist orders issued in the investigation, and what, if any, enforcement measures are appropriate," the panel said in a statement on Tuesday.

Funai has been involved in several legal disputes in the United States with companies that manufacture or import digital screens. It's own customer service has come under sizable criticism too, mostly to do with its warranty service not functioning as advertised.

Concept code has been published that takes advantage of an unpatched vulnerability in Microsoft's implementation of Server Message Block (SMB), which is a protocol used in File and Printer sharing over a network. Microsoft's Windows Vista, Windows Server 2008 and Windows 7 are all currently affected by the unpatched vulnerability, while Windows 2000 and Windows XP are not affected by it at all.

The concept exploit uses the flaw to force Windows machine into the infamous Blue Screen of Death (BSOD). According to security researchers at the Internet Storm Center (ISC), the problem is defeated by using basic firewall protection. "The exploit needs no authentication, only file sharing enabled with one packet to create a BSOD," ISC researchers warn. "We recommend filtering access to port TCP 445 with a firewall."

Microsoft issued a number of security updates during the day to address some serious vulnerabilities in the Windows operating systems. The SRV2.SYS (SMB) file vulnerability that can cause a BSOD was not included, likely due to the timing of the exploit code's release, but Microsoft did reveal that it is investigating the issue.

Netgear has launched the latest multimedia set-top box in its Digital Entertainer Live line-up. The EVA2000 is an easy-to-use and affordable Internet set-top box that enables viewers to play their digital media collections, YouTube videos and a wide range of other Internet content on big-screen TVs. Users can also view newly released pay-per-view movies from Roxio CinemaNow.

"People are amassing a huge amount of their own downloaded and personal digital music, photos, and videos, as well as consuming more and more Internet video," said Phillip Pyo, NETGEAR's director of product marketing for connected home entertainment products. "According to comScore's Video Metrix service, between January 2007 and July 2009, there was a 331 percent jump in the number of minutes of video watched per average viewer per month. It went from 2 hours, 31 minutes to 8 hours, 20 minutes.

The vast majority of people are still watching these videos on small computer screens, so it's logical to assume that the amount of time spent will continue to increase as devices such as the Digital Entertainer Live make it even easier to watch online video on HDTVs. NETGEAR is thrilled to offer an affordable, content-rich, and easy-to-set-up and -use solution that bridges this gap and enables people to fully enjoy their home media collections and online video from popular Internet sites on the best screen in their home -- their big-screen TVs."

At a news conference in Taipei, Intel showed off a range of new stuff, including several high-performance desktop and low-cost server processors, the new single chip P55 chipset and a range of products from third party manufacturers that support the new Intel technology. On the processor side, the company showed off two new Core i7 processors, Core i7-860 and Core i7-870, and the first Core i5 processor, Core i5-750.

The new desktop chips were formerly codenamed "Lynnfield," and are based on Intel's Nehalem microarchitecture, providing very high performance for digital media, productivity, gaming and other resource hungry tasks. All three are Halogen-free, Lead-free and feature Intel Turbo Boost Technology. The Core i7 processors also support Intel Hyper-Threading Technology.

The new Core i7 and i5 processors are the first Intel processors to integrate both a 16-lane PCI Express 2 graphics port and two-channel memory controller, enabling all input/output and manageability functions to be handled by the single-chip Intel P55 Express Chipset. The P55 Express Chipset is the first from Intel to be composed of one chip, not two.

The ai.rs blog has revealed the Samsung i5700 Galaxy Lite, a "lite" version of company's first Android phone, the Galaxy.

The Lite has a flashless 3.2MP camera and 1GB of memory, very "lite" compared to 5MP and 8GB for its brother.

All other specs seem to be the same, including the touch AMOLED screen.

Pics and vid from the blog:

In June, the Russian Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) began investigating whether Microsoft's decision to slow sales of XP in favor of Vista was a violation of competition laws.

This week, regulators have dropped the investigation, allowing Microsoft to freely continue selling their products as they please.

Other parts of the investigation included why some retailers paid a different price for XP or Vista then other retailers.

Russian users who want to still use XP, Microsoft will begin exchange programs for Vista to XP, from this week until the end of 2009.

According to PreCentral, beginning on October 31st the Palm Pre will begin selling in some areas for $150 USD, a 25 percent price cut off its current price tag.

The discount will be available through third-party retailers such as Best Buy but not directly through Sprint, the exclusive carrier.

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 Pre, despite selling well, must compete in a market full of other smartphones including the iPhone and a number of Android, Symbian and WinMo phones.

Sony Europe has confirmed that four games will be added to the PS3 Platinum line, which sell for GBP 19.99 or less.

The games are Motorstorm: Pacific Rift, Killzone 2, Resistance 2 and Metal Gear Solid 4, all of which sold minimum 400,000 units.

The official release date is not yet known, however October seems most likely. Many of the games already sell for close to the new MSRP.

Current 'Platinum' games are Assassin's Creed, Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion and Ratchet & Clank: Tools of Destruction, all of which were top sellers.

Gi.biz notes that an Amazon UK listing shows Grand Theft Auto IV will also join the Platinum line soon and is already selling for £16.99 via preorder.

Deutsche Telekom AG and France Telecom SA have announced they intend to merge their UK mobile phone divisions, creating the largest mobile operator in the region.

The divisions, T-Mobile and Orange UK, will join as a 50/50 venture. Analysts believe the merger will benefit all UK mobile operators, which will no longer have to continously cut prices just to stay competitive.

"This is another sign that we may be moving into a period of sustained M&A activity as firms look to realize cost savings through consolidation," notes Mark Priest, a trader at ETX Capital in London, via the AP.

Combined, the companies would have 28.4 million subscribers, just over 35 percent of total UK mobile subscribers. The current leader is O2, at 27 percent market share, followed by Vodafone at 25 percent share.

Both companies did say however that some redundancies may have to be cut, leading to job losses.

The deal should be signed in October and finalized by January given it passes anti-trust statutes.

Mexican police have raided the offices of Sony Music in Mexico City this week, seizing master recordings, albums, and cover art of the Grammy award winning artist Alejandro Fernández.

The police were working from a court order.

Fernández spent the first 10 years of his career signed to Sony Music, but left in 2008 for a new deal with Universal. Sony was taking unreleased material from the popular singer, and making an album with it, even though the singer is no longer part of the label. Fernández believes Sony has no right to do so and received the court order.

"Sony assumed that they could take tracks that weren't part of previous albums and release them as an eighth album, as if it were new material, over which they had rights," said Jose Luis Caballero, Fernández's attorney. "It's perfectly clear that the company's contract is limited to seven albums."

During the raid, police seized almost 6500 CDs, master recordings and cover art.

Sony called the raid "surprising and disappointing" and adds "we trust that the Mexican courts will confirm our rights as soon as possible."

Japanese mobile operators may be forced into packet inspection on their mobile networks to identify and cut off pirates. A user who was found to be sharing infringing files over the mobile network would be warned about the activity and then disconnected if it persisted, or alternatively their phone could be rendered unable to play music.

In Japan, handsets are branded, supplied and managed by the network operators themselves. Every year, about 330 million tracks are sold legally and delivered over-the-air in Japan. It is estimated that as many as 400 million tracks are shared illegally each year.

The prospect of cutting off repeat offenders is expected to be discussed next week by the Recording Industry Association of Japan (RIAJ) and the Telecommunications Carriers Association.

Representatives of the Internal Affairs ministry will reportedly also be present. Japan just recently had a much-publicized change of government, and observers will be wondering if the new administration's need to make friends in the industry will influence a decision in favor of the motion.

Asus is planning to bring two ebook readers to the market to take Amazon and Sony head on, according to reports. Asus is one of the world's biggest consumer electronics companies, and in the last couple of years it played a large part in the rise of the netbook, a low-cost alternative to a laptop. Now Asus is planning to bring affordable ebook readers to the market to undercut the Kindle.

The Times Online quotes Jerry Shen, CEO, as source. The report says that the company is expecting to offer two different devices, a budget ebook reader and a more feature-rich premium ebook reader. The readers will have a hinged spine with two screens to emulate a book, with touchscreen controls to flick through pages.

While other ebook readers are offered with a monochrome screen, Asus' ebook readers could show full color images of the pages. Some other possible uses for the ebook reader that are mentioned are using Skype with an available mic and speaker, or viewing webpages.

AppleInsider cites a reliable source that has suggested that either camera-equipped iPods won't be shown at the media event on September 9 hosted by Apple, or that they will be unveiled but won't be available to buy for some time. According to the source, Apple has experience technical problems with the cameras hardware.

Pictures of iPod Touch and Nano cases surfaced online in recent months with holes for a camera lens present in them. No pictures showed up of cases designed for the iPod Classic, which is equipped with a traditional HDD instead of flash memory storage.

Reports have suggested that some iPods in the line-up were to be fitted with the same 3.2 megapixel CMOS image sensors that are used with the iPhone 3GS model. The report of technical problems from AppleInsider also mirrored another report published on Monday by Hardmac, the English-language version of French Apple news site Macbidouille.

Philips has announced during the recent IFA event that they will be the latest company to go 3D, adding the third dimension to their Philips Cinema 21:9 HDTV.

"The technology is ready, but the content is not there yet," said Philips Consumer Lifestyle CEO Andrea Ragnetti. "It has to be based on what consumers really want and currently it is not clear if consumers actually want to wear glasses to watch TV or want it without."

A different spokesperson did add that "3D TV is the ultimate dream for consumers", and Philips decision follows that of Sony and Panasonic.

One glaring difference however, is that Philips is said to be favoring strereoscopic glasses, instead of active shutter glasses like its rival brands.

According to a new report from psychologist Dr. Tracy Alloway, war video games, as well as the game Sudoku, could possibly enhance "working memory," a vital element for lifelong success.

On the other hand, using Twitter, YouTube or spending prolonged time texting will weaken that same "working memory."

Working memory, by definition, is the brain's ability to retain information and use it. Dr. Alloway is an expert in working memory and has concluded in past studies that it is key to success and happiness, even more so than IQ. During job interviews, explains Alloway, candidates with better working memory, will answer questions in a more "impressive" way.

The conclusion came after Alloway began a working memory training program for "slower" learning middle school children, and says in just eight weeks, the children collectively saw on average a "10 point improvements in IQ, literacy and numeracy tests."

In terms of video games, war games, which normally contain planning and strategy, such as the "Total War" series, says Alloway, will train working memory.

"I'm not saying they're good for your socialization skills, but they do make you use your working memory," she added, via the BBC. "You're keeping track of past actions and mapping the actions you're going to take."

Starz has announced the VOD release of the Rob Zombie film The Haunted World of El Superbeasto, testing a new method in which the company debuts the films via on-demand weeks before it premiers in theaters or on DVD.

The film will cost $6.99 USD however, if customers choose to watch it earlier.

The Starz Media senior VP of digital media, business development and strategy Marc DeBevoise did note however that the new VOD debut was simply a test, and the company was testing the waters for possible future releases.

“It’s the right timeframe,” DeBevoise said, via VB. “It’s a totally different piece of content than you see anywhere else. We felt this was the one to really experiment it on.”

Horror films have, in the past, performed well on VOD.

Psystar, the infamous Apple clone maker and public enemy number one for Apple at this time, has revealed in a blog post that it is working on ensuring the recently released OS X Snow Leopard operating system will run on its products. However, it has urged users not to attempt to upgrade to the new operating system yet until Psystar can confirm a safe way to install the new operating system.

"Our development team had been eagerly awaiting the arrival of the official release the next iteration of OS X," the blog post reads. "We have developed new virtualization technologies to allow our Open Computers to interface with the all new Mac OS X like never before, ensuring a seamless computing experience. We support Snow Leopard on all new Psystar machines and we're already taking orders for computers with the latest OS from Apple which will begin to ship next week.

"We ask you not attempt to install the new OS X as it may cause harm to your computer, resulting in a possible re-installation of Leopard OS 10.5 and a loss of data. As with all previous software updates to the OS, Psystar meticulously tests and retests all software updates to confirm their compatibility with older Psystar machines."

Mozilla's recent product roadmap has dated the release of Firefox 4.0, the next major update of the popular web browser, for October - November 2010. The version will offer a new user interface and multi-touch gesture support. Of course before Firefox 4.0 is released, there will be many upgrades set to be released of the browser, such as Firefox 3.6 and Firefox 3.7.

The releases made before Firefox 4.0 will improve Javascript handling performance, improved "form completion tools", pageload enhancements and more. This report however is currently classed only as a draft, and therefore it could change between now and the time that Firefox 4.0, or any of the in-between versions are released.

One thing that is expected with Firefox 4.0 however, is for every individual tab open in the browser window to have its own separate process, like they do in Google Chrome. This reduces the risks of losing a browser session when you have multiple tabs open.

Spotify recently made its way onto mobile phones with the iPhone and Android applications for premium users. However, Spotify put up an article explaining that they didn't, "want to leave out all those people who have a phone that runs the S60 mobile platform." A video was posted on the site showing a demo of Spotify running on S60, which is currently in development.

On it's U.S. PlayStation Blog, Sony Computer Entertainment America (SCEA) has confirmed that it is aware and is actively investigation isolated reports of PS3s behaving badly after the latest firmware, v3.0, has been installed. PS3 3.0 included a lot of aesthetic changes to the XMB as well as the addition of "What's New, Status Indicator, Friends List, PlayStation Store Shortcuts, Personalization and improved Trophies."

However, since it was released, there has been numerous reports made on forums about the console acting badly after the latest firmware update has been installed. "SCEA is aware of reports that PS3 owners are experiencing isolated issues with their PS3 system since installing the most recent system software update (v3.00)," the blog reads.

It continues: "Rest assured that we are looking into the matter and will provide an update here as soon as possible. We apologize for any inconvenience, as it’s our mission to deliver the best consumer experience on all PlayStation platforms."

CyberLink Corp. has announced the availability of MediaShow 5, which helps users to easily organize, fix/restore and share photo and video content with each other. MediaShow 5 is created for consumers to handle the large amounts of digital content that we hoard nowadays, due to the increased usage of digital still cameras and camcorders, often built into mobile phones and other equipment.

"Proliferation of video and photo capture devices such as affordable cameras, camcorders and even cell phones, allows consumers to capture their life stories anytime, anywhere. In fact, we are taking more videos and photos than any generation," said Alice H. Chang, CEO of CyberLink. "MediaShow 5 incorporates the latest video and imaging technologies to help consumers organize, fix, and enhance their media, and then share their life stories."

MediaShow 5 adds many new enhancements for users, including Face Recognition that can make organize/indexing photos much easier, easy solutions for fixing photos and videos captured in poor conditions (low light for example), hardware acceleration (when available) for CPU and GPU to speed up not only the manipulation of content but also conversions of it into formats for specific players and more.

Nokia has revealed its first Internet modem supporting Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology. LTE is generally marketed as 4G, since it is the last step toward the 4th generation of radio technologies designed for mobile networks. It is a set of enhancements to the Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UTMS) to be introduced in 3GPP Release 8.

Nokia's Internet Modem RD-3 supports interoperability with GSM/EDGE and WCDMA/HSPA to make the most out of the global GSM and WCDMA reach right from the start. "Nokia is committed to supporting industry activities aimed at maturing LTE technology to enable the first commercial networks to launch in 2010," says Jani Mäenpää, Project Manager, LTE/SAE Interoperability and Trials, Nokia.

He continued: "Nokia is a founding member in the LTE/SAE Trial Initiative (LSTI) and carries out interoperability testing with a number of network vendors, collaborates with measurement equipment manufacturers and is ready to support operators with their LTE deployment activities. The Nokia Internet Modem RD-3 is used in all these activities."

Following a disastrous week for the PlayStation 3 (PS3) platform in Japan in the week ending August 30th, which witnessed just 1040 unit sales, the PS3 Slim has injected new life into the platform. In the week ending September 6th, sales of the PS3 Slim in Japan jumped to 150,252 units (150,832 units of all PS3 SKUs combined), according to Kotaku.

The sales increase marks the highest PS3 sales in the region to date. In its launch week, the PlayStation 3 (PS3) console sold 88,000 units in Japan. However, the first week sales would have performed much better if it wasn't for unit shortages at the time.

In the UK, the response to the PS3 Slim introduction has also seen a dramatic climb in unit sales for the platform. Chart-Track informed GamesIndustry.biz that sales of the PS3 had jumped 999 percent over the previous week. "The uplift on week 36 on week 35 is plus 999 per cent," revealed Dorian Bloch, director of Chart-Track. "We don't give out the hardware numbers, but never-the-less it's a very large increase."

In Canada (and many other countries), levies are places on the sale of blank media (CDs, DVDs etc.) that are collected and distributed to artists and record companies to make up for lost revenue due to copying. Similar mentions of "iPod tax" that would put levies on MP3 playing hardware depending on the potential storage capacity have also been proposed in several countries in the past few years.

The Canadian Private Copying Collective has paid over $160 million in such levies to 100,000 songwriters, recording artists and record companies since it was established. However, file sharing on the Internet is not covered by any surtax or levy, and it would like the government to change legislation in order to allow it to generate revenue for that too.

If it were to become reality, a government would have to increase the tax on charges for Internet service for "all" users, regardless of whether they download music at all - legally or illegally. Comparing Internet usage to what you can do with a blank CD, the amount of "other possibilities" for practical uses is overwhelmingly larger for the Internet - so this tax would be even more unfair than the blank media levy that punishes all buyers, not just pirates.

According to the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre (CEOP), the vast majority of pedophile activity on the Internet now takes place on public and private P2P networks. Additionally, offenders have become more aware of how law enforcement can track them down, and are exploiting technology made to protect privacy in order to avoid being identified.

"Our focus must now be on tackling this as a priority," CEOP said in its annual report. "The scale and nature of P2P file sharing involving child abuse images is currently impossible to establish. It is a mode of abuse and image distribution that remains largely unseen to the general public and indeed to the victims themselves."

The agency receives very few reports from the public about child abuse images and videos on P2P networks, and instead get the majority of their reports from Internet industry sources and other non-public sources. To avoid detection, offenders are now increasingly using file encryption software to mask the content being shared on P2P networks; even if investigators download the files, they cannot decrypt them to see their contents.

Ocean Blue Software, based in the UK and Hong Kong, has developed "talking" digital TV technology in conjunction with The Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB). The technology is developed for set top boxes and televisions, and the developers say millions of people worldwide could gain from an improved experience of TV.

On-screen text such as TV programme guides, digital displays and menus will be brought to life with the power of speech because of the new technology. It is hoped it will be adapted across the consumer technology market, offering real benefits to millions of people with sight problems and different forms of impairment around the world.

The technology is now an IABM Design Awards Candidate for 2009. "We are absolutely thrilled to have been shortlisted for the prestigious award," commented Ocean Blue Software CEO Ken Helps. "Ocean Blue constantly strives to develop innovative solutions for the digital TV industry, so we are very pleased with the nomination and look forward to the awards ceremony next month at IBC Amsterdam."

It is compatible with consumer products, such as televisions, that have screen-based menu systems and converts on-screen text into speech output. "We are really excited by this development as it has the potential to significantly improve the lives of nearly 8 million people in the UK alone. These include the blind, visually impaired, deaf, severely dyslexic and the elderly, who can all benefit from this advance in technology," said Steve Tyler, the RNIB's Head of Innovation and Disability Access Services.

In an Open Letter sent to The Times last week, the heads of the major Internet Service Providers (ISP) in the UK, as well as representatives of the Open Rights Group, Which? and Consumer Focus, all protested to the plans to disconnect "repeat offenders" of P2P piracy from the Internet.

"Consumers must be presumed to be innocent unless proven guilty," the letter read. "We must avoid an extrajudicial 'kangaroo court' process where evidence is not tested properly and accused broadband users are denied the right to defend themselves against false accusations."

The letter acknowledged the industry's legitimate concerns about illegal sharing of copyrighted material, but still said the government's proposals for dealing with the issue are "misconceived, and threaten broadband consumers' rights and the development of new, attractive services".

"Without protections, innocent customers will suffer. Any penalty must be proportionate. Disconnecting users from the internet would place serious limits on their freedom of expression." The proposal to disconnect file-sharers came from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS) in late August.

According to the latest data from NetApplications, Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome have once again gained market share from Internet Explorer, a continuing trend for Firefox since 2003, when IE had over 95 percent market share.

IE is currently at 66.97 percent market share, its lowest ever, while Firefox jumped to 22.98 percent. In third place remained Apple Safari, which remained neutral at 4.07 percent. Chrome moved to over 2.84 percent, the biggest gainer in terms of percentage move. Opera, which recently upgraded to version 10 remained unchanged at 2 percent as well.

At IFA in Berlin, Samsung is currently showing off a 7-inch touchscreen remote control that can browse through other TV channels than the one showing on your TV screen. The concept remote needs a second tuner and WiFi link between the two devices for it to work correctly. A user can browser through TV listings on the remote control and watch alternative channels on the 7-inch screen itself.

"The advantage is that if you have a family, your wife [can be] watching one channel, and you can browse on your small device some other channel or zap there without annoying anybody else," said Michael Zöller, a marketing director at Samsung Electronics Europe.

In order to switch the channels being viewed on both, the user can hold down the channel icon on the remote control and then sweep the icon toward the top of the screen, which will send the channel showing on the 7-inch screen, to the big screen main TV set. Since it is just a concept remote control, it has no planned release at the moment.

Toshiba has introduced a new user interface software designed to share content across a home network from a single area. It can connect to a wide variety of multimedia devices and will make it possible to stream videos, music and pictures from devices to TV Sets, laptops, smartphones and media players, all using a simple drag and drop interface.

Toshiba Media Controller can be installed on servers or controllers in the home network to expand multimedia capabilities to all compatible connected devices, which are compliant with DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) guidelines.

"As the use of digital content grows in popularity, Toshiba is committed to enable its customers to easily exchange content between the screens and devices they are using in their everyday lives," says Thomas Teckentrup, General Manager, Toshiba Computer Systems Division "The new Toshiba Media Controller represents a major step in making multimedia files easily available on any compatible device on the home network."

The software is designed particularly for the Windows 7 operating system, and will be installed during the fourth quarter on selected Toshiba laptops to begin with.

Spotify, the unlimited music streaming service, has gone live today for Android and iPhone/iPod Touch owners, allowing European (so far) users to playback over 8 million songs on their devices, for a 10 euro monthly subscription.

Downloading the free app allows you to play the entire catalog, as well as save playlists for an "offline mode" where the songs can be cached and played back when an Internet connection is not available (subway, plane, etc).

The app was approved by Apple just last week, after a lengthy approval process in which many believed the application would be denied as it might take sales away from Apple's iTunes store.

Spotify has received recent investments from major record labels and is now valued at over $200 million USD. Should the service become a hit in the US when it launches later this year, expect the valuation to increase as well.

Nokia's Ovi Store has reached just 10 million downloads in its first three months, according to Kai Oistamo, Nokia's EVP of Devices, with the average user reportedly downloading 6 applications. The tally is a disappointing figure, to say the least, especially when compared against Apple's App Store, which surpassed 100 million downloads in just two months and reached 1.5 billion after a year.

However, there are reasons why Nokia's service hasn't taken off yet. According to Kai, the Ovi Store was marred with performance and other issues right from the start. "We totally underestimated demand on the first day. We had an outage on the first day which was not our plan," he said.

Users of compatible Nokia devices still also have to download the store to their handsets since it is not yet shipping pre-loaded onto devices. It also lacks the easy interface and usage of the iPhone App store. Niklas Savander, Nokia's EVP of services, said that the company needs to utilize its global footprint to make the store successful.

A report in the New York Times focused on the effects that bandwidth usage with Apple's iPhone have had on the AT&T network over the past couple of years. The report dug up details on the history of the AT&T-iPhone tie-up and has discovered that the wireless carrier has continuously struggled to keep up with demand as more and more iPhones are added to the network.

The AT&T network's problems had led to MMS and tethering features made possible in iPhone 3.0 being delayed. "The result is dropped calls, spotty service, delayed text and voice messages and glacial download speeds as AT&T’s cellular network strains to meet the demand," the report states, and goes on to compare the iPhone's usage of bandwidth on the network to a gas-guzzling Hummer.

To back up the comparison, it claims that the average iPhone user consumes ten times the bandwidth of an average Smarthphone user. This is a problem expected to grow to all networks as the other players keep bringing out new devices to take on Apple's iPhone - soon the problem won't be limited to AT&T.

At Apple's press event next week, the company is expected to add pre-made ringtones for iPhones, available from iTunes. The company is hoping to get a cut of the (strangely) large revenues generated each year through the sale of ringtones. Analysts expect that pre-made ringtones could be available directly from iTunes for about $1.29.

Currently, users can buy tracks from iTunes and pay an additional 99c to get a 30 second clip of the track to use as a ringtone. Apple's new ringtones service would be a higher price at $1.29, but lower when you add the original cost of the track.

Research firm SNL Kagan reported that in 2007, sales of ringtones amounted to $714 million, but fell to $541 million the next year. Perhaps more users are realizing that unless you are using a phone with heavy restrictions that you cannot lift, you can create ringtones rather easily out of your music collection.

AT&T has "soft launched" its own TV portal service, offering TV Shows and feature-length movies to users. The site also promises more content for U-Verse subscribers as it evolves. The site will host content from ABC, CBS, NBC Universal, Bravo, MTV, CNBC, VH1, Universal Studios, PBS, Current, Lionsgate and many more. At the current time, it is clearly still under development with many of its clips and TV episodes listed but still unavailable.

"We have started a soft launch of the AT&T Entertainment site. This site will feature free online content available to any consumer. We're finalizing a few final elements, and we'll share more details on our official launch soon. This site is another step forward for our three-screen strategy to provide more content to more customers across any device." AT&T said in an e-mail statement to customers.

Some feature-length movies available on the new AT&T Entertainment site include Along came Polly, Carlito's Way and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Available TV shows include ABC's Lost and Ugly Betty, NBC's The Office and CBS' How I Met Your Mother.

Mozilla Corp. has confirmed that with upcoming versions of the Firefox browser, 3.5.3 and 3.0.14, users will be prompted via the "What's New" landing page if they have outdated and possibly insecure versions of Adobe Flash installed. Flash vulnerabilities are used to install malware on the computers of unsuspecting users running versions vulnerable to exploitation.

The "What's New" landing page is generally automatically loaded when new versions of Firefox are installed. Javascript on the page will detect the Flash version installed on the computer and will prompt the user of available updates. A user running an outdated version of Adobe flash would receive the following warning...

China has implemented more rules and restrictions for online music stores in the country. The changes apply to foreign-sourced tracks. The Chinese government will have to approve each song that originates from outside the country before any of the online music stores sell them. This affects all the big Internet companies with presence in China, including Google, Alibaba (Yahoo) and Baidu.

The Ministry of Culture said that the changes would help to weed out bad content and increase regulation on the market. Providers of music services in the country will have to provide the Ministry of Culture with lyrics of all foreign songs, translated to Chinese.

In addition, they will also have to provide evidence that they have the permission of the rights' holders to sell and distribute the songs in the country. This new change will upset the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) and other music trade bodies, particularly since the World Trade Organization recently sided with 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.

Deluxe Digital Studios, an authoring firm which has developed more than 700 BD Live-enabled discs, has said it is very pleased with the pace at which BD Live usage is growing. Over 25 million people have used BD-Live enabled discs to connect to, and download content from the web in the 9 months since the feature became available for Blu-ray.

Consumers are connecting 4 million discs for online updates each month. "BD Live is a very viable technology," said Peter Staddon, executive VP at Deluxe. "And we're seeing an enormous interest in downloading content." Staddon suggests that a likely new feature for BD-Live will be exclusive versions of film trailers, only available to users of the service.

Downloading new trailers is the more popular activity of BD=Live users. "People will take this further in the coming year, where you might see a theatrical trailer first at Comic-Con, and then there'll be an exclusive trailer just for BD Live," said Staddon. "That is in the strong realm of possibility."

Sony has announced they will be releasing a two-in-one game for the first time on the PlayStation 3, re-releasing the blockbuster hits God of War and God of War 2 on one Blu-ray Disc

The PS3 team, in a not-so-subtle knock at its rivals, says it would not be possible for the Wii or Xbox 360 to place two complex, HD games like the God of War series on one disc, as they use the lower capacity DVD standard while PS3 games use BD. Dual layer DVDs can hold 8.5GB while a dual-layer Blu-ray disc can hold 50GB.

The GOW1/2 combo will be the first of a few other combo releases coming soon, adds Sony.

“There are gamers who are still holding onto their PS2s, and we are currently evaluating these catalog titles and seeing which ones we can move over to PS3 like we are doing with God of War,” added Kim Nguyen, marketing manager for PS3. “It’s a very unique competitive advantage that we have with Blu-ray Disc. [Others] are limited by the capacity of DVDs.”

The combo game will retail for $39.99 USD.

Redbox, the $1-a-night DVD rental kiosk company, is under fire again this week, this time from independent retailers who claim the company's business model is putting the entire industry at risk.

In other news, a new study by research firm SNL Kagan has suggested that the business model will put VOD companies out of business as well. This is all on top of lawsuits Redbox is currently facing from three major studios Fox, Universal and Warner Entertainment , over the low cost rentals.

The main independent retailer group, The Video Buyers Group, says their retailers are "struggling to compete" and the company is looking to the major studios for support in their campaign against Redbox. VBG is in charge of 1700 shops.

The group will be releasing online, print and TV ads showing that movie studios earn less revenue from the $1 USD rentals, and eventually profitability will begin declining as well.

VBG president Ted Engen even boldly stated the following: “Dollar rental kiosks are to the film industry as the Internet was to the music industry. That’s how bad this thing can get.”

With the upcoming firmware update to 1.6, Google is planning a makeover for its Android Market, one that will focus more on paid applications as well as ease of use.

The market currently has over 8000 applications, but developers and users alike have expressed concerns over the navigation of the market and the apps themselves, which can be less then intuitive.

The updated market will allow developers to add screenshots to their apps, as well as full descriptions. Similarly to the popular Apple App Store, the updated market will also now have tabs for latest apps, top free, and top paid. Four new categories will be added; health, sports, comics and themes, which I'm not sure why they were not included in the first place.

Currently the Android Market generates about $5 million USD per month, while the App Store generates over $200 million. It is unclear when 1.6 will be released.

AT&T has utilized YouTube to post an instructional video that explains how the AT&T network works, what upgrades will be made within the coming years and to defend itself against the myriad or criticism it has received online over the iPhone MMS delay. "Hey, it's Seth the Blogger Guy with AT&T, I'm here to talk a little bit about our network; where it stands now, and a bit about where it's going," the video opens, with the host Seth (the Blogger Guy).

"We see the discussions on the web; on blogs, on Twitter, on Facebook, so we thought it would be a good idea to take what's being said head on," Seth remarked. "We've seen a dramatic increase in smartphone use over the past few years. We're proud of that fact, and we're proud that in many ways we've enabled the smartphone revolution."

"But all of that usage has created an astounding amount of data demand. In fact, wireless usage has been growing over 300 percent each year." It's at this point that Seth decides to address the issue of the iPhone MMS delay. The iPhone 3.0 software update brought about the MMS feature, but AT&T decided not to support it on its network until the end of summer - a target is hasn't managed to keep.

Via a press release today, Toshiba has put the final nail in HD DVD's coffin, unveiling their first Blu-ray player, the BDX2000.

The full specs read as follows:

* BD-Live(TM) (Profile 2.0)
* 1080p/ 24 fps Full HD Video Output
* AVCHD Playback
* Toshiba REGZA-LINK(R) (HDMI-CEC)
* Support for enhanced audio formats from Dolby(R) True HD and DTS-HD Master Audio | Essential(TM) Playback
* Bonus View
* SD Card Slot
* ENERGY STAR(R) Certified

"Toshiba is a technology leader in high definition products," says Jodi Sally, Vice President of Marketing, Digital A/V Group. "From listening to our consumers we know they demand access to full high definition content. With the introduction of our BDX2000 we are offering consumers what they want with a breath-taking HD viewing experience to meet the needs of today's home theater."

According to Samsung head of worldwide sales and marketing for PCs Kyu Uhm, OLED notebooks should be coming in 2010, as long as the industry continues to push for them.

Uhm, speaking at the ongoing IFA event in German, says: "Samsung is the largest OLED screen manufacturer. And as soon as it's available commercially for laptops we will adopt it. Probably sometime Q3 next year."

Samsung European product manager Patrick Povel, adds, via Electronista, that OLED-based notebooks will be the industry standard by 2014, citing numerous Gartner reports.

OLED is coming into favor because of how thin screens can be made with them, lower power consumption and much better color palettes as well as higher contrast ratios. OLED is currently used in MP3 players and other smaller devices, but has yet to hit mainstream in HDTVs due to high costs.

Amazon.com has once again apologized to Kindle owners by e-mail for the controversial removal of George Orwell's classics, Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm, after customers had paid for the content. Amazon removed the ebooks from customers' Kindles after realizing they were added to the Kindle library by an unauthorized publisher. Most customers already were refunded for the inconvenience.

The refund however, did not take away the irony that Amazon had displayed a strangely Orwellian central control over the content on customers' Kindles. It's probably safe to assume that most customers didn't realize Amazon had such control over their content, even after they have paid for it.

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos apologized for the incident, describing it as, "stupid, thoughtless, and painfully out of line with our principles." On Thursday, the company contacted affected users and offered to recover the titles to their Kindles for free, or gave an alternative option of a gift certificate worth $30, or a check for the same amount. Those who had both books can claim $60.

The incident not only sparked criticism of Amazon for its post-purchase removal of digital content, but also resulted in a lawsuit and in a petition setup by anti-DRM activists Defective By Design.

In late August, Microsoft officially cut the price of the 120GB Xbox 360 console to $299 USD, but according to Electronista, the large Canadian retailer Future Shop has begun selling the Elite Value Bundle for the same price (330 CAD=300 USD), marking an aggressive push on the unit.

The Value Bundle includes the console, a Wireless Network Adapter (to connect to Wi-Fi) and the game Halo 3. Online buyers also get the game Battlefield: Bad Company, for free. All together, purchasers will get the console and over $120 worth of extras ($70 for adapter, $50 for the games).

According to a press release by the German anti-piracy agency GVU, German police have raided the homes of six men accused of running a private torrent tracker.

Two of those arrested were alleged administrators, and the other four were uploaders accused of renting seedboxes to distribute the unauthorized movies, game, music and software.

The GVU release says the raids netted seven computers, eleven HDDs and over 870 CDs and DVDs. Overall however, the tracker seemed to be pretty small, and only had 2000 members while tracking just under 1000 torrents.

Members and other readers of the release have speculated that the site was targeted because they offered users 30GB free leech for 15 euro a month, thus making them somewhat of a "pay site."

When a recent report from the Strategic Advisory Board for Intellectual Property - a UK government advisory board - claimed seven million people in the UK use file sharing for illegal downloading, the news made headlines. Part of the attention given to the figure came from the 85 page report's estimated billions in economic losses and thousands of job losses each year due to illegal downloading.

However, the More or Less radio program that airs on BBC Radio 4 decided to find how the 7 million figure came about. The Advisory Board said the report was commissioned by a team at University College London, which pointed to Forrester Research for the 7 million figure. However, the cited paper did not include any reference to 7 million illegal downloaders in the UK.

More of Less then contacted one of the authors of the paper, Mark Mulligan, and figured out that the 7 million figure actually came from a report he had written for a subsidiary of Forrester called Jupiter Research. The peculiar thing about this particular paper is who it was commissioned by - the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), a trade group representing music firms in the UK.

Toronto-based i4i has responded to U.S. Court of Appeals ruling granting a stay of an injunction on sales of some Microsoft Office products. The company sued Microsoft for infringing a 1998 XML patent that it holds, in Word 2003 and Word 2007. Last month, a U.S. District court ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million to i4i and issued an injunction that would ban the sale of the Word versions involved.

Microsoft went on to request a stay of the injunction pending an appeal of the original judgment, which was granted. The case is set to be heard on September 23. "Microsoft's scare tactics about the consequences of the injunction cannot shield it from the imminent review of the case by the Federal Circuit Court of Appeal on the September 23 appeal," i4i chairman Loudon Owen said.

He added: "i4i is confident that the Final Judgment in favor of i4i, which included a finding of willful patent infringement by Microsoft and an injunction against Microsoft Word, was the correct decision and that i4i will prevail on the appeal." Microsoft claims Office accounts for over $3 billion in sales per year.

Dish Network and Echostar Corp. have been ordered by a federal Judge to pay about $200 million to TiVo Inc. for violating a permanent injunction that stemmed from a 2004 lawsuit. The lawsuit was brought by TiVo when Dish was distributing DVRs that contained an emulation of TiVo's "Time Warp" feature that enables the pausing of live TV or re-winding.

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.

In June, the federal court found that Dish Network had violated the injunction. TiVo has asked that Dish be made pay $1 billion for using the technology between April 2008 and July 2009. Judge David Folsom of the U.S. District Court in the Eastern District of Texas awarded TiVo $110 million in damages and $90 million in sanctions.

Dish said on Friday that it did not believe the sanctions were warranted, but was happy that the court rejected TiVo's request for $1 billion. "The decision confirms our belief that we designed around TiVo's patent in good faith," Dish said in a statement. "We believe that we ultimately will prevail on appeal."

Microsoft Corp. has successfully managed to get the U.S. Court of Appeals to grant a stay of an injunction imposed on the Redmond software giant that would have blocked the sale of some versions of its Microsoft Word product. The court ruled that Microsoft met the requirements necessary for the stay to be granted, after the corporation requested it two weeks prior.

A federal district court Judge ruled last month that Microsoft violated a patent pertaining to Extensible Markup Language (XML) held by Canadian firm, i4i, and told the company it must stop selling the infringing software; Word 2003 and 2007. Microsoft claims Office accounts for over $3 billion in sales per year.

Had the appeals court not granted the stay, Microsoft would have had to stop selling the products in mid-October. Now the appeals court will hear arguments in the case on September 23. In addition to the injunction, the Judge had ordered Microsoft to pay $290 million in damages.

"We are happy with the result and look forward to presenting our arguments on the main issues on September 23," said Microsoft spokesman Kevin Kutz.

We added a couple of new entries to our Guide section lately. One of these new guides is a relatively simple guide on running potentially harmful executable files safely in Windows. It could be useful for running .EXE files found on file sharing sites or networks, or any program you are otherwise suspicious about.

It utilizes freeware software that some of you more safe users will already be using; Sandboxie. In a nutshell, Sandboxie allows you to run a program (like a potential virus), which "can" read data from the hard drive, but when it tries to write data back (new files, editing files, registry entries etc.) they are caught in the "Sandbox", so to speak.

Sandboxie sets up temporary storage on your hard drive, and will capture data that a program running will try to write to your hard drive. Moreover, you can view the contents of the Sandbox easily to see exactly what changes a program tried to make to your files.

While users of Research in Motion's Blackberry, or Windows Mobile handsets, and a large amount of other Smartphones available were able to send Multimedia Messages (MMS) for years now, AT&T is only going to make it possible for iPhone 3G/3GS users on its network to use the feature on September 25. The iPhone 3.0 software update brought about the capability, but AT&T didn't offer support for the feature.

The carrier said that it wanted to ensure its network could handle the traffic from iPhone owners sending MMS. "The unique capabilities and high usage of the iPhone's multimedia capabilities required us to work on our network MMS architecture to carry the expected record volumes of MMS traffic and ensure an excellent experience from day one," AT&T said in a statement. "We appreciate your patience as we work toward that end."

The lack of MMS capabilities has made AT&T the target of a class-action lawsuit that alleges the carrier misrepresented the features of the iPhone. AT&T has been a constant target of criticism from iPhone owners, which doesn't bode well for the carrier at all now that the iPhone is expected to become available on other carriers in the U.S. soon.

Sony Pictures Home Entertainment is set to start including Descriptive Video Service features to upcoming Blu-ray Disc releases. DVS is an audio feature that can help those with vision problems with their viewing experiences by adding narration of important visual elements on screen, during times mainly where there is no dialog.

The DVS features that will be used are developed by WGBH Media Access Group, which focuses primarily on solutions to make mass media accessible for disabled people. The group estimates that around 12 million movie watchers have some form of vision problem.

The first Blu-ray title from Sony Pictures set to include this feature is The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, which is due to be released on November 3.

Other Sony Pictures releases that will include this feature are District 9, Julie & Julia and The Ugly Truth, none of which have had their release date revealed by the studio just yet.

DivX has announced the corporate acquisition of the Internet TV-streaming company AnySource Media, a move that should allow the digital company to bring movies and TV shows in DivX format to Internet-connected devices such as phones, TVs and Blu-ray players.

DivX CEO Kevin Hell says the move is a “key step of delivering on the vision of the Internet TV experience.”

The deal is for $7.5 million in cash upfront, with another $7.5 million in incentive based payments until 2012.

DivX is a company that distributes and licenses digital-video technologies. The company says there have been over over 100 million DivX Certified devices purchased, including the PS3 among many devices.

AnySource created the Internet Video Navigator software found in many HDTVs, software which allows users to navigate their TVs for music, photos, and videos from online sites such as CinemaNow, Amazon VOD and others. AnySource can handle up to 1080p.