News archive (11 / 2009)

South Korea, the latest nation to begin offering the Apple iPhone, has seen about 60,000 units sold on launch day, a far cry from the 1 million sold in the US for the iPhone 3GS but a large bump from the estimated 5000 sold in the first week in China.

The phone is available through carrier KT Corp, and Korea has one of the largest mobile phone subscriber bases in Asia.

"We're hoping that this iPhone will be a trigger point for the smartphone market in Korea," says Yang Hyun-mi, KT's chief strategy officer. Hyun-mi also offered that smartphones only control 1 percent of the mobile market in the nation.

Korean-based Samsung and LG dominate the market but have stayed away from smartphones due to government regulations.

The large retailer HMV has slashed the price of the PSPgo by GBP 75 to GBP 149.99 in the UK, less than two months after its release to less-than-stellar critical reviews.

The handheld started with an MSRP of GBP 224.99 but after one week HMV had already slashed the price to GBP 200 due to lack of demand.

Early on, Australian retailer EB Games decided to not stock the console, a sentiment shared by a few other retailers.

Don McCabe, managing director of the UK game chain Chips had the harshest words for the PSPgo handheld, saying he expects the console to "fail miserably" in the market.

In a move that should send waves through the torrent community, the under-the-radar private torrent tracker SceneTorrents has officially closed, after over four years of being open.

The NFO of the site's final torrent reads as follows:

"By now most of you already know that ScT will be going offline permanently.

However, due to pending legal issues, we are not at liberty to speak freely about why we’ve chosen to take down the site. Members of our staff were arrested and will be undergoing the entire length of the judicial process. Obviously, in the case of criminal proceedings, it would be downright foolish to comment any further on the situation;

Please bear this in mind and wish them the best of luck.

There have been several theories as to where the donation money (of the recent months) has gone. We’d like to take this opportunity to put all skepticism to rest.

The money was used to purchase new hardware that would ensure our spot as the fastest tracker on the net.

Barnes & Noble has announced that the highly-anticipated launch of the Nook e-reader will be pushed back one week due to overly high demand, with the gadget now hitting retail shops on December 7th.

Just last week the book retailer announced that the Nook was out of stock and any consumer purchasing after the 20th would not receive their device until January 4th, or even later.

B&N also notes that there will be a "very limited number" of Nooks in stores and that most of their current supply will be shipped out to those who pre-ordered online. The device costs $259 USD.

The Nook is the first e-reader that is expected to significantly compete with market leader Amazon's Kindle, and the Nook has superior hardware including Wi-Fi, a microSD slot for added memory and a second touch screen, in color, which is used for control and navigation. The Kindle has none of those features, but does have superior battery life.

The European Commission (EC) has accused six TV and monitor companies of running a cartel in the cathode-ray tube (CRT) market, charging the companies after a two-year long investigation.

The companies in question are Philips, LG Electronics, Chunghwa Picture Tubes, Matsushita, Samsung and Toshiba.

The complaint is that the manufacturers colluded in an effort to keep CRT screen prices artificially high in the midst of falling demand. CRT TVs and monitors have almost completely left the market, at least in western Europe, and the Japanese and North American markets, replaced by thinner LCD sets.

However, the CRT sets are "still widely used in Southern and Eastern Europe, especially for TVs," as well as "still made for a couple of emerging markets," says EC spokesperson Jonathan Todd, via CW.

Psystar, the Mac clone maker that was taken down earlier this month, had some very ambitious plans it appears for their illegal Mac clones, suckering venture capitalists in with expectations that were overly bold.

According to slides Psystar showed off to potential investors, the company expected to sell 12 million systems in 2011 for their "aggressive growth model" or 1.45 million systems that year for their "conservative growth model."

Other predictions were as follows: "Under its conservative projections, Psystar told investors it would sell 70,000 computers in 2009, 470,000 systems in 2010 and 1.45 million machines in 2011. The firm’s aggressive growth model, however, put those numbers at 130,000, 1.87 million and 12 million during 2009, 2010 and 2011, respectively."

In comparison, Apple, selling legal Macs, sold only 10.4 million systems for the 12 months ended September 30, 2009.

For 2009, Psystar sold 768 computers, a joke compared even to their conservative 70,000 unit prediction.

Windows 7 has surpassed the Mac OS X in market share, moving to almost 6 percent in its first month of release. All Mac OS X versions combined have an estimated 5.27 percent market share, according to Net Applications.

"It's safe to say that Windows 7's daily share did peak above Mac's weekly share," said Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president at Net Applications, to PCWorld.

Overall, Windows market share increased marginally to 92.64 percent for the week ended November 21st, up from 92.52 percent.

"We may be seeing an uptick in overall Windows share this month," added Vizzaccaro. "This isn't too rare, but if we see three or four months in a row of Windows regaining market share, that would be a significant trend change."

Windows 7 market share has been growing steadily since launch, increasing over 20 percent each week.

Popular DVR maker TiVo and ISP Virgin Media have announced a partnership this week, one that will see TiVo develop Virgin's upcoming HD set-top boxes.

TiVo will create a custom interface and in exchange Virgin "will be the exclusive distributor of TiVo service and hardware in the UK," says Electronista. Virgin has been losing market share to rival BSkyB in the UK and the company hopes the new generation of HD boxes will help them compete.

The boxes, besides playing back SD and HD streams from Virgin, will include online services such as the BBC iPlayer and itv.com.

The set-tops should go on sale in 2010.

The once-giant torrent tracker Mininova has removed all illegal torrents this week, following the ruling of a Netherlands court that told the tracker that it must begin removing links to unauthorized downloads.

Mininova used to have a "notice and take down" policy in which copyright-holders would have to flag the content before it would be taken down. The court ruled that policy insufficient.

The tracker is now only host to a limited "featured content" service which offers legally licensed files.

Adds Tim Kuik, director of BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy group: "We applaud the fact that Mininova now uses the BitTorrent technology for legal business. We are not against the technology but only against the use of that technology for illegal purposes."

Mininova did say they are still considering an appeal but at this point it seems less and less likely.

The huge launch of Modern Warfare 2 has helped the popular Call of Duty franchise to reach a new milestone, passing the $3 billion USD revenue mark, says publisher Activision.

Overall, the six CoD titles have sold 55 million units with Modern Warfare 2 crushing recent entertainment launch records by taking in $550 million USD in its first five days of availability.

In just its first day, the game sold 4.7 million units in the US and UK markets. The new milestone has Activision Blizzard CEO Robert Kotick calling the franchise one of the "greatest entertainment franchises of all time."

"If you consider the number of hours our audiences are engaged in playing Call of Duty games, it is likely to be one of the most viewed of all entertainment experiences in modern history," he continued..

Lenovo, the world's fourth-largest PC manufacturer, has announced today that it will be purchasing back its recently sold mobile phone business, in an effort to push into the smartphone market.

The company had sold the unit last year for $100 million USD to focus more on PCs but now that the "technologies are now converging," says the AP, the mobile business area is creating a "significant growth opportunity."

Lenovo will pay $200 million to buy the unit back from the group of investors it sold it to last year.

"The Directors now consider that it is appropriate to move aggressively to capture the opportunity in the mobile internet business," says the company.

The strong sales of the newly launched DSi LL in Japan have given the overall hardware charts a boost this week, according to Media Create's latest figures.

The larger, updated handheld sold 100,553 units in its first week, less than the DSi's launch of 170,000 but significantly higher than the PSPgo's launch week of 28,000.

Added to DS Lite and DSi sales, total Nintendo handheld sales amounted to 137,674 for the week. PSP sales were 37,326 units with most coming from the PSP-3000 model.

Wii sales increased to 32,844, but still lagged behind the momentum-building PS3 at almost 35,000. The Xbox 360 continued its slow sales in the nation, at 4085 units.

According to Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, the Wii has dominant control over the female home console "primary players" market in the United States, totaling 80 percent.

As reported by Kotaku from the BMO Capital Markets event today, Fils-Aime showed a chart with the Wii at 80 percent of the market, the Xbox 360 at 11 percent and the PS3 controlling the rest of the pie. Handhelds and PC gamers were not included.

The definition of "primary players" is those that are the main users of the console in a household, and Fils-Aime said there were 11.7 million female primary players in the US, with 9.36 million of those playing the Wii.

"This didn't happen by accident," Fils-Aime added. "It's the result of a deliberate attempt to expand the market."

One day after announcing that an upcoming firmware update would add native PDF support and improve overall battery life by over 80 percent, Amazon has announced that the Kindle update is now live and available for download.

The update is free and can be downloaded via the Kindle's built-in wireless connection.

Additionally, Electronista adds that "users can now manually rotate their screens as they see fit in the smaller Kindles, with they five-way controller switching up its functions to suit."

The update is live for the Kindle 2 and Kindle DX, although the DX already had native PDF support. For the DX, however, PDFs will be more efficiently cropped and the screen save will go on after 20 minutes of viewing time instead of the previous five.

The original Kindle will get native PDF support "soon" with no set timetable.

The Royal Navy's Weapons Engineering School has purchased 230 PSP handhelds which they will load with training programs for officers, reports The Times.

The console is seen as equally effective as textbooks and more portable. Overall, the Navy has cut training costs down to GBP 200 per hour.

The first officers to receive the training PSPs are" marine warfare engineering technicians, who are responsible for radar, sonar, VHF radio and communications systems."

"You have a voiceover as well as a presentation to explain it, instead of having to sit there and read it from a book and fix it in your own mind," adds leading engineering technician Chris Colpus. "As soon as people know they are going on a course, they are going to want to get their hands on these as quickly as possible so you can get a heads-up on the maths."

Goldstriker's Stuart Hughes has showed off the most expensive phone ever created today, the iPhone 3GS Supreme, with a value of $3.2 million USD.

The mobile took 10 months to create and was commissioned by an "Australian gold mining magnate" who clearly had a lot of money on hand now that the value of gold has reached new all-time highs.

The Supreme has 22K solid gold casing, and the front bezel is studded with 136 diamonds. Hughes adds that the "rear logo has 53 flawless diamonds and the front navigation button is home to a very rare diamond at 7.1 cts."

Italian police targeted a factory manufacturing counterfeit discs intended for export around Europe last week. The Italian Fiscal Police (GdF) raided the Bologna-based plant, which was producing unlicensed box sets that included music, films and TV programming. The raid followed an investigation into an unlicensed box set "Masterbox", which contained music by international artists such as Bob Dylan, Depeche Mode, Eminem, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga and Tiziano Ferro.

Masterbox box sets had previously been manufactured in Poland, but the operation moved to Italy following raids by Polish police in February 2009. At that point, nine million copyright infringing albums in total were estimated to have been distributed around Europe, with an estimated trade value of around €19 million being put on the previous 15 editions of the box set series produced in the plant.

FPM worked with the Italian Fiscal Police to investigate the manufacturing plant that was producing new editions of the Masterbox series, while IFPI coordinated industry enquiries across Europe in support of the official investigation.

The New York Times is citing sources familiar with plans to bring about an "iTunes for magazines"; an online newsstand to be developed by Time Inc., Condo Nast and Heasrt. According to the "people with knowledge of the plans," the new venture may be announced in early December. The move is being made to counter continually declining print circulation for U.S. magazines.

The website would reportedly offer consumers the chance to buy print or electronic copies of their magazines. It would also develop software standards for viewing the content on iPhones, Blackberrys, eBook readers and other devices. According to the New York Observer, John Squires, a Time executive, would be the chief executive officer of the new online venture.

"The consortium provides one point of contact for the consumer," the Observer quoted an unidentified source as saying. "When you come to the main store, you can get the content any way you want." U.S. newspaper and magazine publishers have witnessed a steep decline in print advertising revenue as more of their readers turn to free content on the Internet to get their news.

Acer Inc., the world's second largest PC manufacturer, located in Taiwan, has revealed that the launch of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows 7 operating system has been positive for year-end PC sales, with gains meeting expectations. Chairman & CEO of Acer Group Gianfranco Lanci said the company is keeping its quarterly revenue outlook and maintaining a 15 percent sales growth target for the coming year.

"When we saw the features of Windows 7, we already knew that it would be good for demand," Lanci told reporters on Thursday. "We have no plans to revise." Acer is the market leader in low-cost netbooks and laptop PCs. It expects sales to stay flat from the previous quarter and expects sales to rise 25 percent from the last year.

Acer's competitors, including Dell Inc and Hewlett-Packard, also experienced sales growth after the launch of Microsoft's latest operating system. Acer reported a quarterly net profit of $108 million last month, a rise of 14 percent from the previous year. It expects to ship 42 million units in the netbook market in 2010, which would represent a growth of 50 percent.

The Iraqi government has launched its own YouTube channel aimed at countering the "lies" from the media and to show off the government's "successes". Nuri al-Maliki, Shi'ite Prime Minister, said that the channel will help the government to dispel the "lies and misleading information in the news." He is seeking re-election early next year.

Several moves made recently in Iraq have sparked fears that the government may be trying to crack down on the media, which has had unprecedented freedom since Saddam Hussein was ousted. Several local and foreign lawsuits were filed against media outlets that were critical of Maliki or of his government. Additionally, new regulations for broadcasters and moves to censor books and the Internet were made.

It is unknown how much effect the YouTube channel could really have in Iraq, where only a small few actually have Internet access at home. Even in those cases, they rely on low bandwidth connections that would be unsuitable for video streaming. Of course, the YouTube channel does not allow users to leave any comments.

Sony Executive Deputy President Hiroshi Yoshioka has predicated by the year ending March 2013, between a third and half of all Sony Corp. television sets sold will include 3D features. Yoshioka also acknowledged that a key issue contributing to the company's losses in the TV business is its reliance on a third party for panels. Sony buys panels from South Korean giant Samsung Electronics Co., which use LED-lacklight technology.

He said that the joint venture with Samsung has produced difficulties as well as having many positive effects too on Sony's products. "They were a competitor," he said, without giving any details on when Sony might be planning on producing its own displays of this type. While LED-backlit TVs have proven to be a success for Samsung, Sony may try to fight back by focusing on producing larger organic light-emitting diode (OLED) televisions.

OLED's produce light on the display's surface and therefore lack the need for any illumination from behind. The company already produces 11-inch OLED TVs, but Yoshioka admitted Sony engineers are experiencing hurdles while trying to produce larger panels. Until Sony can offer a full sized OLED television, the company will look for opportunities with 3D.

According to AFP sources, Comcast might seal a deal to buy a controlling stake in NBC Universal from General Electric next week. General Electric owns 80 percent of NBC Universal, with Vivendi owning the remaining 20 percent stake. In order for any deal to go ahead between GE and Comcast, GE will have to get a green light from Vivendi. The AFP source said that GE chief executive Jeffrey Immelt flew to Paris to discuss the proposed deal with Vivendi.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that the deal would value NBC Universal at about $30 billion. NBC Universal holdings include the NBC network, one of the four major U.S. television networks (along with ABC, Fox and CBS), Universal Pictures, finance channel CNBC and news network MSNBC.

"It is possible that Mr. Immelt's conversations with Vivendi chief executive Jean-Bernard Levy will lead to a general agreement on a sale Wednesday or in coming days, although there would likely still be some details to hammer out," the Journal reported.

In the latest "WTF"-type news, BoingBoing is reporting that a Japanese man, who goes by the name Sal9000, has married his virtual video game character Nene Anegasaki, from the DS game "Love Plus."

The wedding took place at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, and had a real priest, real audience, and a slideshow of the happy couple's favorite memories.

The event was posted on Japan's Nico Nico Douga, a strange but popular video sharing site.

Below is BB's video report on the wedding, and we wish the bride and groom a happy life together.



And a picture of Sal9000 at the beach with his wife:

Analyst Doug Creutz of the Cowen Group has said today that the "Wii bubble could be deflating," as gamers plan to spend much less on Wii titles this holiday season in comparison to last year.

According to Gamasutra, Creutz used a survey of console owners which asked their purchase intentions for the holiday season and it appears that PS3 and Xbox 360 owners plan to buy more games this year, while Wii owners plan to buy less.

Creutz does say the numbers may be skewed however because over 50 percent of Wii owners also own a rival console, and only 23 percent of those who own multiple consider the Wii their "main platform."

"While core gamers who own a Wii own more Wii games on average than casual Wii owners, the average title ownership spread between the two categories of gamers is much lower than it is for owners of Xbox 360 and PS3 console," he added.

Additionally, Creutz says Wii hardware sales do not correlate to software success, as proven by NPD numbers that show publishers have not done as well while Wii sales were through the roof in 2008.

Amazon has announced that the Kindle 2 has now been given native PDF support, removing the annoying conversion process formerly necessary to convert PDFs to Kindle formats for playback.

The firmware update will be available "soon" and will install wirelessly when you connect to the Internet from your device. Users can email PDFs to their Kindle address or manually load them via USB transfer.

Just as importantly, Amazon says the firmware update will significantly update the Kindle 2's battery life by up to 85 percent when connected to wireless. Previously, users had about 4 days of battery life with wireless enabled. That has been bumped up to a week.

The original Kindle should also be getting the PDF support.

Microsoft has noted today that over two million Xbox Live subscribers logged into the new Facebook app from their consoles in the first week of availability, the most popular of the new additions.

At the same time, Twitter, Zune Video and Last.fm were integrated to the console and Microsoft says 500,000 Last.fm accounts were created in just the first day.

Adds Microsoft spokesperson David Dennis: There have also been "tweets from nearly every market where we have Xbox Live."

Says Microsoft exec Neil Thompson: "It's just about giving people choice and giving them a slightly different experience. The Facebook and Twitter applications are bespoke to the service, they do have Xbox Live unique features, such as being able to see which Xbox Live friends are online, et cetera. And over time I'm sure that will evolve as well."

New York state officials are preparing to use Xbox Live to broadcast emergency alerts such as natural disasters and terrorist attacks.

The New York state Emergency Management Office says they are planning to test alerts over TV, radio, the Internet and the gaming consoles in an effort to "reach younger residents who spend more time on the Xbox, PlayStation," then on traditional media outlets.

New York state deputy chief information officer Rico Singleton added (via IW): The decision was made mainly "considering the amount of time our youth spend on video games."

Additional details are scarce but Singleton did say the technology is ready and being tested.

The Xbox online service was the only one mentioned by name but it is extremely likely the alerts will be broadcast via the PlayStation 3 and Wii as well.

Panasonic, the official audio/visual sponsor of the 2010 Winter Olympics, will use the giant event to promote its upcoming line of advanced 3D products, says VB.

Vancouver's David Lam Park will be home to a ‘Panasonic Full HD 3D Theater Pavilion,’ in which the company will offer a plethora of products for demo, such as 3D TVs and 3D Blu-ray Disc players.

VB adds: "Leading up the Olympics, Panasonic is offering consumers a chance to win a trip to the games through an online contest. The company is profiling various athletes working to secure a spot at the Games at the Web site [ link ] and is encouraging people to comment on their progress. One of the fan bloggers will score a free Olympics trip."

Redbox has launched an App Store application this week, alongside another app that will publish codes for people to receive free DVD rentals, usually on Mondays.

The main app will help users find the nearest kiosk to their location as well as reserve titles before they get there.

Redbox says the app should help them jump on the explosive growth of the US smartphone market, in which spending on applications is expected to jump to $4.2 billion in 2013, a ten-fold increase from 2009.

There was a similar Redbox app posted 8 months ago by a third-party however Redbox had Apple take it down so they could release their own. The rental coupon code app will cost $0.99.

Nintendo and 12 partners have announced the launch of a Wii pay-per-view service in Japan this weekend, dubbed Wii no Ma (Wii's Room).

The service will have 120 titles on launch, including episodes from "Sesame Street" and "Pokemon." There will also be older catalog movies as well as TV shows and cartoons.

Variety says a few of the partners include Toei, Yoshimoto Kogyo, TV Asahi, NTV and NHK Enterprises. Perhaps more notably, is the promise that Disney Japan will join the service in the next month along with two other companies.

Each title ranges from 30¥ to 500¥ ($0.33-$5 USD) and can also be played back on the DSi and DSi LL.

The IFPI has emphatically noted today that revenue from legal music sales in Sweden has jumped 18 percent since February, thanks to the strong effort in the nation to crackdown on piracy and the shut down of the admins of the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay.

Physical media sales jumped 9 percent in the reported period and digital sales increased 80 percent.

IFPI chairman and chief executive John Kennedy added (via The Guardian): "The increase in sales in Sweden, set against the backdrop of innovative new digital services and tighter copyright laws, is encouraging.It is too early to say if Sweden has permanently turned a corner, but we hope that users there will permanently switch from unlicensed filesharing networks that give nothing back to the music community to great value legal services whose operators recognize continuous investment is needed to discover and promote the talent of tomorrow."

Many gamers were enthusiastic with last month's announcement by Nintendo that upcoming Wii games would have an included autoplay system, an online help system for gamers struggling with certain chapters of the game.

According to Siliconera, Microsoft has patented their own in-game guide system, although details are still decently vague.

Microsoft director of games platform strategy Andre Vrignaud says the system will be very similar to that of GameFaqs, where gamers can pause the game if they get stuck, hop online and get help from user-submitted guides and tips. The XBL version will allow for screenshots, video clips and audio commentary as well, which is a pretty great innovation.

RIM, maker of the BlackBerry smartphone line, and Motorola have been sued this week by Klausner Technologies over alleged violations in regards to patents for visual voicemail.

Visual voicemail has become the new standard for smartphones because its lets users visually see their voicemails without having to call a number and use a series a dialpad touches to listen or delete said messages.

In regards to Motorola, Klausner says the visual voicemail application used on the Cliq Android phone is unlicensed despite the fact that all other Motorola phones using visual voicemail have licenses from Klausner.

For RIM, the BlackBerry Bold 9700 is under fire, despite other BB models having licensed visual voicemail from Klausner.

Klausner has already settled with Apple and AT&T over the same issue sued Cisco and Avaya in August.

Google has announced today that the free, turn-by-turn Google Maps Navigation GPS app is now available to Android 1.6 users, giving G1 and myTouch users the ability to use the GPS from their smartphones.

Until today, Navigation had been available only on the Droid, which uses Android 2.0, officially. However, G1 and MyTouch users running hacked ROMs did have access. Cliq users still cannot use Navigation as Google has not given over-the-air 1.6 or 2.0 updates for Cliq users.

Notably missing, however, for G1 and MyTouch users is the ability to use the "navigate to" voice command. You must manually type your destination, instead of being able to say "destination, grandma's house," and have the software do the rest of the work.

The main addition to Google Maps that Navigation offers is "layers." You can add satellite view, street view, transit lines and even Wikipedia articles on locations as "layers" to your map. The service will also give you free turn-by-turn directions at street level.

The Nintendo DSi LL launched in Japan last weekend, and was met with large lines of potential buyers.

Today, according to the latest Enterbrain sales figures, the LL has sold 103,524 units in Japan in its first two days of sale, a huge number for a device which many shrugged off as a minor update.

The DSi sold 170,000 in its first two days on sale in comparison, and the PSPgo sold under 40,000.

The newly updated handheld has dual-screens that are 93 percent larger than its predecessors and include a larger stylus as well as downloaded games, right out of the box.

Nintendo says the larger screens will be helpful for users who want to use the Internet browser or who need larger fonts for gaming and Internet.

Get Games, a new digital gaming distribution service, is set to launch today, but should face stiff competition from more established players like Direct2Drive and Steam.

The company will launch with hundreds of titles for download, with a launch promotion of Serious Sam HD for GBP 9.99.

Says co-founder Rupert Loman, of Eurogamer: "The market is read. A lot of the difficult ground work has already been done by others and everyone in the industry is now working on their digital plans - so it's been a relatively easy sell to content creators who are looking to maximise their revenues from as many different routes as possible.

"[The publishers] got it straight away. We've already signed most of the major publishers, alongside some independent developers too. And they are particularly excited that we have a network of websites in 10 European languages and will be taking Get Games across the continent very soon."

When asked about market leader Steam, Loman responded (via GI.biz):

"Clearly for the PC, the Get Games service makes a huge amount of sense and the model has already been proven to work with Steam,.The most exciting thing for me is to see console content starting to be purchased via the web - which is still a more intuitive place to buy content than places like PlayStation Network. We have the hundreds of thousands of gamers on our sites every day, and we know what they like, so this is a huge new opportunity for the console platforms."

TiVo and Google have announced a new alliance today in which the search engine giant will integrate TiVo's TV-viewing data into its measure for advertisements, enhancing "accountability of ad impressions."

Google TV Ads will be given "second-by-second viewing patterns of time-shifted programs" from TiVo to help Google enhance their measurement tools and sell more ads via their online auction site. Google TV Ads was started in 2007 as an experimental way to auction off television ad inventory. Advertisers are only charged if the ad impression is viewed.

"TiVo helps us to more finely calculate how many people are actually watching an ad. It gives us a large footprint of data," says Google spokesman Eric Obenzinger.

“Working with Google is an important milestone for our audience research business and represents a shared approach to developing innovative products and services to help the media industry better understand the effectiveness of ad campaigns in an evolving TV landscape," says Todd Juenger, vice president and general manager of TiVo Audience Research & Measurement.

A criminal complaint filed by Nintendo against the seller of a DS flash cart has been thrown out this week by a Spanish court, with the judge ruling that the devices add legitimate functionality to the handhelds.

The complaint was against the Movilquick Group, a seller of the devices. The flash carts allow for homebrew files, the easier playback of music, e-books and movies, and on the illegal side, the playback of pirated games. Movilquick has long said they are against piracy, and do not support their devices being used to playback unauthorized commercial software.

The judge ruled in favor of them: “Ultimately what occurs is a manipulation of hardware to extend its utility, allowing users to use with both legitimate and illegitimate purposes, but not only illegitimate.”

The judge also noted that just because Nintendo had not included the added functionality to their handheld, it should not stop others from doing so. However, if the company wants to bring a case against Movilquick over patent and trademark issues, they may have a shot in civil court, added the ruling judge.

In late October we reported that Microsoft was blocking all "unlicensed" Xbox 360 storage devices, successfully forcing gamers to only purchase memory cards sold by Microsoft, at a higher price.

Large peripheral manufacturer Datel has struck back today however, filing an antitrust lawsuit.

Says Datel representation Howard Rice: "Microsoft has taken steps to render inoperable the competing Datel memory card for no visible purpose other than to have that market entirely to themselves. They accomplished their recent update by making a system change that will not recognize or allow operation of a memory card with greater capacity than their own. We believe that with the power Microsoft enjoys in the market for Xbox accessories this conduct is unlawful."

At the time of the update, Xbox Live senior exec Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb had said: "If you’ve moved your profile or saved games onto one [unauthorized memory unit] to 'back it up,' you’d better move it back onto an authorized Xbox 360 storage device prior to taking the update. If you continue to use an unauthorized memory unit after the update, you will not be able to access your stored profile or saved games."

Spotify has announced the launch of the music service for the Symbian operating system, available on Nokia smartphones as well as phones from Samsung and Sony Ericsson.

The company says Spotify Mobile is now available on the Nokia 6220 Classic, E71 and 5800 XpressMusic. It is also available on the Samsung GT-I8910 Omnia HD and Sony Ericsson Satio.

Spotify is available on the iPhone and Android devices as well.

If you have a Symbian device, the company says to visit m.spotify.com from your phone to see if it is supported.

SCEE CEO Kaz Hirai has confirmed today that the company will be adding a "premium level" to the PlayStation Network in an effort to speed up revenue growth from the $500 million-plus business.

Users will still be able to play games online, as well as access Netflix and the PlayStation Store, for free, so it is unclear what the premium level will give users.

"We will be building upon our current free [PSN] service offering with premium content and services to start the subscription model," says Hirai.

Hirai then emphasized that the foundations of PSN would remain free.

"SCE will further increase sales by offering users new entertainment through the combination of hardware, software, peripheral, and PlayStation Network," he added. "Especially in the online area, we are studying the possibility of introducing a subscription model, offering premium content and services, in addition to the current free services."

Nintendo America has announced two new limited edition DSi holiday bundles, each of which will include five games pre-loaded.

The "Brain Teaser" bundles will include a white colorway handheld and Brain Age Express Arts & Letters, Sudoku and Math, Clubhouse Games Express: Card Classics and Photo Clock.

The "Mario" bundle will include a Metallic Blue handheld and Mario vs Donkey Kong: Minis March Again, Dr Mario Express, WarioWare: Snapped, Mario Calculator and Mario Clock.

Each bundle will retail for $169.99, the same as the console by itself, while including $20-25 worth of bonuses.

"These limited edition bundles come packed with some of the great Nintendo DSiWare games and applications that have made Nintendo DSi such a big hit with shoppers young and old," added Cammie Dunaway, NoA executive VP of sales and marketing. "The special price and pre-installed titles make the bundles a huge value for the holidays."

It appears that the once "harmless" Jailbroken iPhone worm that was used by a teenager to Rick Roll his friends, has become a bit more malicious, stealing banking data and other personal information.

So far the worm is only affecting jailbroken iPhones in the Netherlands, running SSH, that use ING Direct for their banking needs. Although the number infected is only currently in the hundreds, the worm is spread via shared Wi-Fi so the potential is decently large especially given the increasing amount of public Wi-Fi spots.

The problem, as it was last time, is with users that do not change the default password for SSH (which is "alpine") allowing remote access to the jailbroken phone.

ING and Apple have already released warnings.

Roku has announced the addition of 10 new content channels, giving users more options than the current Netflix, Amazon VOD and MLB TV lineup.

The new channels are Blip.tv, Facebook Photos, Flickr, FrameChannel, Mediafly, MobileTribe, Motionbox, Pandora, Revision3, and TWiT. Each will be available through the newly updated Roku Channel Store interface via their set-top boxes.

The interface will be similar to App Stores, where Roku box owners can choose which apps they want. From there, the content will be sorted as "new," "most popular" and "top-rated."

The firmware update is being rolled out now and should take about two weeks to reach all users.

European users who were thinking of purchasing the Motorola Milestone (the DROID), had one large disadvantage when considering. The lack of Google Maps Navigation, the free turn-by-turn GPS that is included with the DROID in the US.

It appears a user over at XDA Developers has found a hack that will allow users everywhere to use the impressive GPS. Additionally, the T-Mobile G1 can use the Navigation, despite not officially having the Android 2.0 software.

You can view the post with instructions here: Modifying Maps to enable Navigation outside USA

The Nintendo DSi LL has launched in Japan this weekend to strong demand, with Kotaku reporting that many game stores had lines 100-deep with would-be buyers.

The newly updated handheld has dual-screens that are 93 percent larger than its predecessors and include a larger stylus as well as downloaded games, right out of the box.

Nintendo says the larger screens will be helpful for users who want to use the Internet browser or who need larger fonts for gaming and Internet.

The handheld sells for JPY 20,000 (about $220 USD), a premium from the standard DSi which retails for JPY 18,900.

The DSi LL (redubbed XL) will hit the EU and NA markets in the Q1 2010.

China Unicom, the nation's second largest mobile carrier and currently the only to offer the iPhone has said that it expects the smartphone to control one-tenth of all Chinese 3G users in the next "couple of years," a bold prediction for a phone that it said to have sold as little as 5000 units in its first week.

According to a Unicom senior exec however, the company sees strong demand from business users. "We expect the handset to attract over 10 percent of China’s 3G users in the following two to three years."

Chairman Chang Xiaobing went even further by saying that he expects the smartphone to become China's best-selling.

One of the main problems cited for slow sales is the phone's inflated price. Without contract, the higher capacity model sells for 6,999 yuan ($1000+ USD).

There are over 2 million users using gray-market iPhones in China currently.

According to a roadmap revealed earlier this week, Microsoft will look to release their next updated operating system, codename "Windows 8," in 2012.

The move will keep up the pattern Microsoft has developed in launching major releases every four years. The company, according to the slides, considers Windows Server 2008 a major release and the R2 as a "release updates." Notably, Windows 7 is considered a "release update" as well.

Vista, released in 2007, had its release date pushed back three years when the company scrapped all existing work and started fresh after it was decided to base Vista on the then recently released Windows Server 2003.

Verizon Communications CEO Ivan Seidenberg has made some interesting statements in the past and his latest has attracted attention as well.

Seidenberg says that popular online video site Hulu will be gone in two years, as users move on to something new or technology changes.

"When you think of the change, look at Hulu and the dialogue and debate, and you say, O.K. this is in for the next eight to twelve months and in two years it won't matter because the world will have moved on," he said.

To back up his point that technology is evolving fast, he noted the "Sixth Sense" project which is a mini-projector in a cellphone that will allow users to watch video and TV on any surface, wherever and whenever they want.

IFC Entertainment has announced that 53 documentaries and other independent titles will now be available through Netflix's popular Watch Instantly streaming service.

A few of the films included are the Errol Morris documentaries "The Thin Blue Line" and "Gates of Heaven, Christopher Nolan’s debut, "Following," and "When Will I Be Loved." For foreign films, the movies include the hits "Brothers" and "Gabrielle," among many others.

The streaming service is free for users who have unlimited Netflix subscriptions, which start at $8.99, and is available on PC, Macs, and a plethora of devices including the PS3 and Xbox 360.

"Netflix has always championed independent cinema and has creatively built audiences for films in this genre, and we’re excited to give their customers instant access to this wide-ranging collection of independent film,” adds Lisa Schwartz, executive VP at IFC Entertainment, via VB. “Our top priority is to make independent film available to a wider audience, and this partnership further underscores that commitment."

Robert Kyncl, VP of content acquisition at Netflix says: “Partnering with IFC Films gives us the opportunity to expand the number of quality films that our subscribers can watch instantly. This deal reinforces our commitment to bringing diversity to the library and properties like this collection of titles bring us closer to that goal.”

Wal-Mart has unveiled that it will sell a $78 Magnavox Blu-ray player on Black Friday, the cheapest retail price for a BD player this year, undercutting Meijer’s $89 Sylvania Black Friday promotion.

Notably however, neither the Magnavox or the Sylvania models are BD-Live compliant, and will lack Web features such as Netflix-streaming, which is available via Best Buy's $99 Insignia model, which should be the best deal available if the $20 higher price tag is not a deal breaker.

Wal-Mart will also have $9.99 Blu-ray titles such as The Dark Knight, Wanted, Fast and Furious and all the Harry Potter films. For those who have not moved to HD, standard DVDs will be on sale for $1.99 including movies such as Casino Royale, Hellboy II, I Am Legend, Blood Diamond, Underworld and Spaceballs.

According to Olga Puzanova, Sony Europe Senior Manager of Marketing and Programming, the PS3 PSN Video Store is now live in the UK, Germany, France and Spain.

Says the blog post:

We’ve got amazing content lined up for you at launch, loads of latest new releases and all-time favourite classics. I will be updating you weekly via PlayStation Blog with all the new additions.

Now you can save the trip to the shops and enjoy hundreds of films in the comfort of your own sofa on your PS3 or on the go with PSP.

To celebrate the launch we are giving you PlayStation fans something extra! Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code: Two Great Movies for the Price of One! Its simple – you buy Angels & Demons and we e-mail you the voucher for The Da Vinci code. How great is that?

And if you are new to PlayStation we don’t want you to miss out! Just register your new console on PlayStation Network between November 19 and 30 and we will send you a voucher for Transformers movie. Yep, you can own Megan Fox in HD on your PS3 forever!

Earlier this week, the writer and director of the popular movie Zombieland, Rhett Reese, lashed out at pirates of his movie, saying it may lead to a sequel not being shot. He even personally attacked a few Twitter members which had posted about downloading and watching the film from their homes.

Zombieland is available as an R5, and was one of the most popular films via P2P of the last three weeks.

Reese has responded to the bad press however, and taken account for yelling at those on Twitter. He makes some interesting points whether or not you are for or against piracy:

Hi all, since I’m the one who unwittingly started this particular firestorm, here are my thoughts.

My two tweet plea (five if you include my three angry tweets to individuals) began after I read tweet upon tweet for hours, days, weeks, in which people mentioned (or often, bragged) openly about having just watched Zombieland at home for free. I largely shrugged this piracy off as inevitable, but it never felt good to read the tweets. Then I saw the 60 Minutes episode on piracy. And then I read an article about the sheer numbers of downloads of Zombieland in particular. Rightly or wrongly, I felt burned. For the record, I may have been over-dramatic, in my emotional state, in suggesting that downloading could kill Zombieland 2. It could. In our case, the greater hope/expectation is that it won’t. The movie has done very well.

It appears that YouTube has begun blocking use of native video API on some devices, including the popular Popcorn Hour C-200 because they lack a license from the company.

Users can still access videos using Flash but will not be able to directly access YouTube videos.

Many current TV-connecting devices already have the license however, such as TiVO DVRs, Apple TV, and Bravia HDTVs. Handheld devices such as iPods and smartphones are immune from the blocks.

It is still unclear why the change of heart has occurred but many speculate that content providers, who are increasingly more important to current and future revenue for the video streaming site, have had some say in the decision.

South Korea is set to get the Apple iPhone this week for the first time, through the country's second biggest carrier, KT Corp.

The nation, which has 47 million mobile users, is one of the world's most saturated markets. However, smartphones are lacking, and Korean-based Samsung and LG have just recently begun upping their efforts to bring smartphones to South Korea.

With the release of the iPhone, which has mandatory data plans, carriers in the nation hope that the business model will change, adding data to the mix.

KT will be offering an 8GB iPhone 3G, and two newer 16GB and 32GB iPhone 3GS. Users can get the for free or up to 396,000 KRW ($342 USD) depending on what service contract they choose. Monthly contracts range from 45,000 KRW to 95,000 KRW ($38-$82)

California has approved of new energy efficiency requirements for TVs this week, rules that are applauded by environmentalists but were fought fiercely by manufacturers and the Consumer Electronics Association.

The California Energy Commission voted 5-0 in favor of the regulations, and the new rules will save the average household between $18 and $30 a year.

"With today's decision, Californians will still get that great 'hi def' picture without suffering the burden of skyrocketing electricity bills," added National Resources Defense Council senior scientist Noah Horowitz.

The new regulations state that all TVs up to 58-inches must use less than 183 watts by 2011 (a 33 percent reduction) and 116 watts by 2013, a full 50 percent reduction. There are currently over 1000 models that meet the new standards but most Plasma displays do not.

So far the regulations only have one TV manufacturer as a backer, the US' biggest seller of LCD TVs, Vizio.

Barnes & Noble has said today that the Nook e-reader is sold out for 2009, and all orders placed past today will not ship until January 4th.

Those who wanted the e-reader for Christmas will be out of luck, but will receive a certificate "that promises a Nook reader when it ships."

B&N has said the delays are due to high demand, but it is equally as likely that the company is having production-related shortages.

The Nook is based on the Android platform and has removable storage, Wi-Fi, and a color touchscreen, all advantages over the market leader Amazon Kindle.

The popular French mobile gaming company Gameloft has said this weekend that it plans to move away from the Android platform, keeping most of its money in developing for the Apple App Store.

Despite Android's growing popularity and increasing market share, Gameloft says the Android Market is not nearly close to being a polished service.

"We have significantly cut our investment in Android platform, just like ... many others," Gameloft finance director Alexandre de Rochefort said.

"It is not as neatly done as on the iPhone. Google has not been very good to entice customers to actually buy products. On Android nobody is making significant revenue," Rochefort concluded.

"We are selling 400 times more games on iPhone than on Android," Rochefort added, with 13 percent of all revenue for the company coming from iPhone game sales.

Google has announced that they have begun adding automatic captions to videos available via YouTube, giving deaf viewers a much needed service.

Ken Harrenstien, a deaf software engineer who works for Google, is the man behind the machine-generated captions, although they will only appear on 13 channels at launch.

"The majority of user-generated video content online is still inaccessible to people like me," Harrenstien said via the official Google Blog.

Harrenstien says the system, which combines automatic speech recognition with YouTube's current caption system, is not perfect, but that it will "continue to improve with time".

Additionally, users can upload a transcript of their video and Google auto-timing algorithms will match the text to the words on screen as they are spoken.

According to a report today from Expressen.se and translated by TorrentFreak, blockbuster star Lady Gaga made a measly $167 USD (SEK 1150) from the STIM (Swedish Performing Rights Society) after her song "Poker Face" was played one million times via Spotify over a 5-month period.

Spotify, the digital music service seen by some as the best chance the labels have to slow down piracy, appears to not reward the artists, while at the same time adding to the bottom line of the labels that control about 12 percent of the company.

Adds Swedish rapper Dogge Doggelito on the situation: “It is totally sick. We musicians have no rights, you may not charge [for music] anymore." Doggelito adds Lady Gaga could have made much more money driving "an illegal taxi cab."

From the other side, the Swedish music producer Alexander Bard said anything is better than what she made by having her music on The Pirate Bay and other torrent trackers. At least the number was “…more than zero,” he said.

UK lawmakers officially announced the Digital Economy Bill intended to address issues identified by the Digital Britain Report. As expected it makes communications regulators at Ofcom responsible for curbing unauthorized P2P file sharing.

Initially it doesn't go quite as far as entertainment industry representatives would like, and only requires that ISPs forward warning letters about alleged illegal file sharing activity from content owners to their customers.

However, if Ofcom doesn't find that unauthorized downloads have dropped by 70% at some so far unspecified point in the future the Secretary of State would be authorized to ask Parliament for the authority to force ISPs to punish accused file sharers.

This action could include bandwidth caps, daily download limits, and of course the most controversial measure of all - kicking customers off the internet based on nothing but allegations.

ISPs have publicly criticized the idea of putting them in the middle of the fight against P2P-based copyright infringement for a number of reasons ranging from the cost of enforcement to the apparent lack of concern for consumer rights.

Microsoft is starting a promotion this weekend for Xbox Live Silver members, giving them full Gold services, for free, allowing for online gameplay and full access to downloadable content.

A Gold subscription normally costs $50 (or less with discounts) per year and is necessary to play games online as well as access Netflix streaming. Silver members are given nothing but gamer profiles and friends lists.

For the weekend however, all silver members will be given Gold access, in the hopes that they will eventually sign up as a Gold subscriber.

The promotion goes live in the United States and Canada on November 20th at 12:00PM ET / 9:00AM PT until November 23rd at the same time.

In Europe, the promotion goes live from November 25th to November 30th.

During their presentation to investors and shareholders, Sony marked 3D gaming as one of the five keys to the future of the PlayStation 3 and noted that all "PS3 units will be firmware upgradeable to 3D."

Sony added the bold statement that they hope to "lead to the 3D market," and will begin to offer 3D tools to third-party developers in the near future.

Besides the PS3, Sony is looking to incorporate the technology into Bravia HDTVs and the Blu-ray format in general.

The other four keys were motion control, Blu-ray, PSN, and PSP-integration.

Brazil, Latin America's largest video game market will finally officially get the Sony PlayStation 2, albeit at a hugely inflated price that should do little to stop the rampant piracy in the nation.

The console will sell for BRL 799, about $450 USD. Modded consoles that can play pirated games currently sell in the nation for a much cheaper price, so this new announcement is not not expected to help Sony's bottom line in any way.

Games will also cost an inflated BRL 119, about $69 USD for new releases and $57 USD for catalog titles. At launch, only 14 games will be available including blockbusters Gran Turismo 4 and God of War II.

"Brazil is home to a large community of gaming enthusiasts, making the country an ideal opportunity for SCEA to introduce the PlayStation experience to a new legion of fans," adds Sony.

Sony continues to see strong hardware sales in Japan for their consoles, with the PSP/PSPgo leading the way again for the week November 15th.

The handheld sold a combined 45,197 for the week, significantly beating out rival handheld the DS/DSi. The PSP-3000 actually saw an increase week-on-week but extremely weak PSPgo demand dropped the overall figure.

The PS3 led console sales, at 38,498, far ahead of both the Wii and the Xbox 360.

Figures for week ended the 15th:

* 01 PlayStation Portable: 45,197
* 02 Nintendo DS: 38,785
* 03 PlayStation 3: 38,498
* 04 Wii: 26,764
* 05 Xbox 360: 4,124
* 06 PlayStation 2: 2,031

AbingtonIP, a law firm that specializes in consumer class action lawsuits, is actively recruiting Xbox 360 gamers that have had their consoles banned from Xbox Live, in anticipation of a lawsuit.

About 1 million gamers were banned in Microsoft's recent wave of banning those using modified consoles and pirated games.

"Although modification of Xbox consoles is arguably against the terms of use for Xbox/Xbox Live, Microsoft 'conveniently' timed the Xbox console ban to coincide with the release of the new Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 game and less than two months after the release of the very popular Halo 3: ODST game," says the AbingtonIP website (discovered via INCgamer).

"This 'convenient' timing may have resulted in more Xbox Live subscription revenues for Microsoft than it would have generated had these Xbox console bans taken place at some time before the release of Halo 3: ODST and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2."

During a presentation at its media and investors conference today, Sony noted that they are "looking into" a way to make more profits from its free PlayStation Network, and said it was considering a "new revenue stream from subscription."

There is little to no chance that Sony will move the PSN to a subscription-based service like Microsoft does with Xbox Live Gold, and it is likely that Sony just hopes to expand their current pay-for features, such as movie rentals and the upcoming MMO "DC Universe Online."

JoyStiq spoke to a representative, who responded: "We have not made any formal announcements on a subscription based service. We're looking into a variety of options." Perhaps by throwing the words out there the company is testing to see public reaction to a possible pay-for PSN.

HDMI Licensing has announced today that they will be remaking HDMI product labels, in an effort to curb confusion for the different models of cables and products.

By updating the HDMI Adopted Trademark and Logo Usage Guidelines, HDMI Licensing has separated all HDMI cable products into five specific types:

-Standard HDMI cable
-Standard HDMI cable with Ethernet
-Standard automotive HDMI cable
-High-speed HDMI cable
-High-speed HDMI cable with Ethernet

Additionally, says the guideline update (available here):

Adopters may no longer use HDMI version numbers in the labeling, packaging, or promotion of any cable product. This is effective immediately for any references to the HDMI Specification Version 1.4, and Adopters have a one-year grace period for removing references to earlier versions of the HDMI specification when describing their cables.

Effective as of January 1, 2012, all non-cable products cannot make any reference to HDMI version numbers. Until that time Adopters can use HDMI version numbers only when the feature or features associated with that HDMI version number is clearly specified. For instance, a manufacturer can describe a product as featuring "HDMI® v.1.4 with Audio Return Channel and HDMI Ethernet Channel," but may not describe a product as being "HDMI® v.1.4 compliant."

Google has now officially announced information about its Chrome operating system at the press conference. The open source OS was introduced by Google VP Sundar Pichai and Engineering Director Matthew Papakipos.

There was no Beta or other product launches. The final product is planned to be released in a year. However, Google did demonstrate the Chrome OS which promises to bring cloud computing to applications. The source code for the operating system is for all to see here.

EBay has announced that it is had successfully completed the partial sale of its Skype unit, less than a month after the company made a deal with the founders of the software that ended all current litigation.

The auction giant will sell most of its stake for $1.9 billion in cash and a note with principal of $125 million.

EBay will keep a 30 percent stake, meaning the new deal values Skype at $2.75 billion, a small increase from the $2.6 billion it was purchased for by EBay in 2005.

Besides the founders of the software, the rest of Skype was sold to an investment consortium led by Silver Lake and Joltid Limited.

Microsoft has launched a very early beta for Silverlight 4 and the most notable features appear to be Google Chrome browser support, the ability to integrate HTML from within applications and videoconferencing support.

Perhaps as notably is the company's claims that apps will start faster then with Silverlight 3 and will run up to 2x faster.

Adds Electronista: "Developers will be able to incorporate video and audio recording tools, potentially enabling services such as video conferencing using webcams. Highlighted changes to the interface include multi-touch gesture support, drag-and-drop, right-click menus and mouse-wheel scrolling."

Video output can also be encrypted and protected to prevent unauthorized viewers from watching streaming media.

Full beta should be released in a couple of months.

According to PocketLint, the next Flip camcorder from maker Pure Digital will include Wi-Fi, allowing for easier uploading of videos directly to hosting sites.

If the rumors prove true, the new Flip will also include a large slider screen, which will reveal the record and menu buttons. The screen itself will not be touchscreen, which makes sense given the fact that Flip camcorders are popular for their cheaper pricing.

Pure Digital was acquired by networking giant Cisco earlier this year and Wi-Fi support would be a clear indication of the new ownership's direction.

Rumor is the device will ship in the Q2 2010.

Microsoft has said today that its upcoming Internet Explorer 9 browser will "nearly" close the JavaScript performance gap that its current browser version has against rivals Firefox and Chrome.

The claim is notable especially because the software giant only started developing IE9 last month.

Says Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft president of Windows and Windows Live: "We know we have a lot of work to do in some areas of performance. [However], we're getting very close to the other browsers."

Mozilla's director of community development Asa Dotzler says the move is unsurprising but Microsoft still has tons of work to do to match Firefox or Chrome in terms of speed and performance.

"Microsoft dug a huge hole when it mostly abandoned IE6 and the Web from 2001 until 2006. Their early efforts at ramping back up with IE7 were a big disappointment to most Web developers and while their efforts with IE8 were much better, they're still at least a full generation behind the modern browsers," says Dotzler.

Vevo, the joint music video service launched by YouTube, Sony, Universal Music and AT&T will go live December 8th says the company.

"We've been working night and day for months to bring you the best music video and entertainment experience we can dream up, and in just about three weeks you can see it online for yourself," reads the statement.

Vevo was first announced in April and described as a "premium online music video hub" that would share revenue between YouTube (the back-end) and the major labels (front-end). AT&T joined last month and said at the time: "Music and entertainment are two of the broadest-reaching and influential 'passion points' for consumers, and aligning our brand with a new property like Vevo gives us a chance to reach them in fresh, meaningful ways."

The Abu Dhabi Media company is also a founding member, reportedly with a $300 million stake.

Popular TV and movie streaming site Hulu has announced its first music video agreement with a major record label, signing with EMI Music.

The deal will have Hulu stream some concert footage and music videos of EMI artists, starting with exclusive material from singer Norah Jones.

The deal should help Hulu, now the US' second most used streaming video site, to steal some more market share away from giant YouTube, which dominates the market as a whole but especially in music videos.

According to an interview with GI.biz, Sony Europe CEO Andrew House has said that the PlayStation Video Delivery Service will add about 50 new movies each week, adding to the already 2000 title-deep catalog in Europe.

House also noted that the company had increased the offerings of the service by 700 percent since launch.

"It'll be a little bit more complex, because we're trying to maintain that mix between Hollywood content as well as local studio content, and also I think we'll see short form and television become part of that play as well," House added during the interview.

"But I think we're in a good spot - I think we have something like 2000 movies available at launch, which is a pretty substantial library. Break that down to a per-country basis and there's around 800 films available for the UK, for example.

"So we're starting out with a really strong offering - there's plenty there to choose from, a tremendous number of current hits - and then I think we'll grow it somewhere in the region I hope of about an additional 50 movies per week. So that'll encourage return traffic, people coming back, something new for them there to check out - we're feeling fairly comfortable about the content line-up we've got, and that's led us again to this being the right time to launch."

The war between the two new generation high definition digital media formats was raging couple of years ago. The war ended in February 2008 and Blu-ray was crowned the winner after Toshiba quit manufacturing HD DVD deviced. Now almost two years later the HD player market has far more products and prices are dropping steadily. Soon the prices are low enough for an Average Joe to compare the Blu-ray players with the fancy blue laser technology and dated DVD players.

We decided to take five middle price range BD-Live enabled Blu-ray players from leading manufacturers and put them to a test. To compare the standalone players to an old favourite we took PlayStation 3 Slim to test drive as well.

Philips BDP-7300
Pioneer BDP-120
Pioneer BDP-320
PS3 Slim
Samsung BD-P1600
LG BD390

According to TechCrunch, Google will be holding a Chrome OS event tomorrow at their headquarters, showing off the "technical background information" of the operating system as well as demoing a few of the features.

Additionally, Google will be giving a full "complete overview" presentation for the OS which should launch in the Q2 2010.

Google VP of Product Management Sundar Pichai and Google Engineering Director for Google Chrome OS Matthew Papakipos are the featured speakers, which will include a press Q&A afterwards as well.

We will update after the event.

Beijing's leading Intermediate People's Court has ruled today that Microsoft must immediately cease sales of the Chinese versions of Windows 98, 2000, 2003 and XP after it was found that the OSs include fonts created by a local Chinese company, violating licensing agreements.

The ruling should cause a precedent in the region. "(Chinese firms) are going to think of China as a place to have their own litigation strategy, I think that's a trend that's coming," says Michael Vella, head of China litigation and intellectual property rights at Morrison & Foerster LLP. "We saw it in Taiwan. At first, Taiwanese companies were always on the defensive, and in recent years we have seen them initiating litigation."

The ruling specifically stated that Microsoft violated licensing agreements with Zhongyi Electronic, the company which had designed the Chinese character fonts.

Microsoft is prepared to appeal. "Microsoft respects intellectual property rights. We use third party IPs only when we have a legitimate right to do so," read a company press release.

Overall however, the decision will likely not affect Microsoft's bottom line in any way, given the high (80 percent-plus) piracy rates of the operating systems in China and the age of the operating systems in question.

At the Mobile Asia Congress event this week, China Mobile CEO Wang Jianzhou said his company is still in talks with Apple over bringing the iPhone smartphone to the nation, despite Apple's recent deal with China Unicom.

“China Mobile has continued negotiations with Apple to introduce the iPhone on China Mobile's network," he added. The China Unicom deal is non-exclusive.

The talks, which began in 2007 with the original iPhone model, are still held up by a few snags, likely feature-set and pricing. However, "we really are still in talks with Apple. In our negotiations in the past, we insisted on sticking to our conditions. We are still very sincere about completing this negotiation."

The Wi-Fi-crippled and overpriced version available from Unicom has seen underwhelming sales, with some reports placing sales at just 5000 in the first week. In comparison, the iPhone 3GS sold 1 million units in its first weekend in the US.

Last week we reported the rumor that Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal motion sense device was set for a November 2010 launch, along with a cheap £30-50 price tag.

Today, Microsoft has denied the rumors, claiming they are "not accurate."

After launching the Xbox 360 autumn update with Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune Video, Xbox 360 UK president Neil Thompson was asked about the Natal launch day reports. "No. They weren’t accurate, they were rumours. I’ve got nothing more to say about it".

Adding: "We’re still very much in the baking on Natal and there’s a lot of things to get decided on it."

Xbox 360 head of Europe Chris Lewis added (speaking to GI.biz): "Now you know better than to listen to that stuff! We will announce in good time."

VidZone, the popular free PS3 music video service, will begin a full EU rollout this month, 5 months after it launched to much fanfare in the UK.

Starting on November 23rd, the service will be available in the Netherlands, Portugal and Austria and in Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland on December 3.

Finally, on December 10th, users in Belgium, Luxembourg, Switzerland and New Zealand will get access.

The service has exclusive video deals with many big record labels and is very popular in the UK. Users are reminded that when loading VidZone for the first time, that the service will take up to 15 minutes to completely load.

The blockbuster Modern Warfare 2 has crushed all previous entertainment sales records, with a five-day $550 million USD launch, making it the biggest in history.

The game beat out all previous five-day records for the entertainment industry, including videogames, movies and books.

MW2 surpassed Grand Theft Auto IV, which had sales totaling $500 million. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince grossed $394 million in its five-day launch, making it the best movie launch of all time.

"In just five days of sell through, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare has become the largest entertainment launch in history and a pop culture phenomenon," added Activision CEO Bobby Kotick. "The title's success redefines entertainment as million of consumers have chosen to play Modern Warfare 2 at unprecedented levels rather than engage in other forms of media."

Last year Hollywood introduced a new feature called the Digital Copy. It's supposed to be a solution for watching your movies on your portable media player, and has been promoted as the legal alternative to ripping and encoding movies at home.

To date, here at Afterdawn we have been generally dismissive of the entire idea of Digital Copy. It has always seemed like a solution to the wrong problem. Instead of eliminating the ridiculous DRM restrictions on DVD-Video it adds a different type in the hope this will convince people not to rip DVDs.

In the nearly two years since the first Digital Copy enabled DVD went on sale it has become a common feature on new DVDs, and even spread to Blu-ray discs. So instead of just poking fun we're going to take a serious look at the Digital Copy included with the Watchmen Director's Cut DVD to give you a more accurate assessment.

The DRM

At long last the Amazon Kindle e-reader has been made available to Canadian buyers, months after an International version was released to 100 countries with Canada notably absent.

The Kindle model, which costs $259 USD, will sell for around 300 CAD, and Amazon says there are 300,000 books available in Kindle format for Canadian buyers, much less than the 360,000 available for US buyers.

"We know that Canadians are passionate about books and reading, and we're excited to make Kindle available to our customers there," said Ian Freed, vice president of Kindle. "Kindle enables customers around the world including Canada to think of a book and start reading it in under 60 seconds."

After being teased for months and officially released earlier this month, the Dell Adamo XPS ultraportable will begin shipping on December 22nd, in one configuration.

Says Dell:

*Thinnest laptop in the world at 9.99mm
* 13.4-inch widescreen LED HD display
* 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor - delivering ultra-low-voltage mobile performance
* Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
* 4GB 800MHz DDR3 dual-channel memory
* Intel Ultimate-N WiFi Link 5300(802.11a/g/n) Half Mini card and Dell Bluetooth 2.1 adapter
* Up to 5 hours and 17 minutes with an optional extended battery life on a full charge

External options include a $99 DVD-RW drive and a $199 Blu-ray ROM drive.

Microsoft's latest search engine incarnation Bing continues to gain search engine market share, according to October comScore numbers.

From September, the search engine gained over five percent, jumping from 9.4 share to 9.9 percent, mainly at the expense of Yahoo, which fell from 18.8 percent to 18 percent.

Clear leader Google gained 1 percent to move from 64.9 percent share to 65.4.

Minor players Ask and AOL remained unchanged at 3.9 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively.

Bing gained for the fifth straight month, backed by a $100-million dollar ad campaign and promotion by Microsoft.

Activision has noted today that they have in fact removed the controversial airport scene from the blockbuster Modern Warfare 2, but only for the Russian version of the game.

"Other countries have formal ratings boards that we regularly work with. However, Russia does not have a formal ratings entity. As a result, we chose to block the scene after seeking the advice of local counsel," said Activision, via Eurogamer.

The announcement comes after the Internet flared with rumors that the game was being censored by the Russian government and that a console version had been recalled to have the scene removed.

"Reports that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has been banned in Russia are erroneous. Activision only released a PC version of the game in Russia which went on sale on Tuesday, 10th November," the company added.

The controversial airport scene, dubbed "No Russian," shows Russian ultra-nationalist terrorists killing civilians.

Microsoft has updated their Xbox 360 services today, adding the long hyped Facebook, Twitter, Last.fm and Zune Video apps.

"It's the community that drives us forward, and it's the community that allows us to pioneer new ways of connecting people through the entertainment they love," says Neil Thompson, senior director of Microsoft's Entertainment Division in UK & Ireland. "Tonight we're celebrating the transformation of the TV as tomorrow everyone will be able to enjoy some truly exciting interactive entertainment experiences which continues to deliver on our vision of connected entertainment for everyone."

Users will need an Xbox Live Gold subscription to access the services and the full features are as follows (via GI.biz):

After having some of the upcoming PS3 firmware 3.1 features leaked last week, Sony has officially previewed the new update via the PS Blog.

Says the post:

Hi everyone, here’s an early peek at PlayStation 3 (PS3) firmware update (v3.10). The latest update incorporates Facebook into the PS3 experience. By linking your PlayStation Network account to your Facebook account, you will have the option for the PS3 to automatically update your Facebook News Feed with Trophy and PlayStation Store activity. This update also enables developers to set specific criteria in their titles to publish additional game information to your News Feed. You can then check out your updates, and those of your friends, on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media favorites through the PS3’s built-in web browser.

This is just the beginning of our integration with Facebook and we are looking forward to adding new features enhancing the experience in future updates.

Additional highlights from update 3.10 include:

According to a new multi-country study from the Boston Consulting Group, Americans are the least willing to pay for online news, with only 48 percent saying they would pay the premium.

The number was about even with the UK for the lowest figure, and far below most of the other seven countries studied.

In terms of how much they would be willing to pay, the US and Australia tied for lowest at $3, a far cry from Italy where Italians were willing to pay $7 premium for online news.

The five other countries in the survey were Germany, France, Spain, Norway and Finland.

“Consumer willingness and intent to pay is related to the availability of a rich amount of free content,” added John Rose, a senior partner and head of the group’s global media practice, via the NYTimes. “There is more, better, richer free in the United States than anywhere else.”

Rose added that the numbers were not all that surprising, especially in the Western European nations where the numbers were highers, as the news is dominated in those nations by just a few players. In the US, there are so many sources that it will be impossible to not find free sources for the same news.

The BBC has announced the timetable for the much anticipated Freeview HD service, saying that 50 percent off the population will have the service in time for the World Cup next year, and 99 percent will have it by 2012.

The rollout begins in December for major cities, and places like London should have it before March 2010.

Says the BBC: New DVB-T2 technology will deliver an increase in capacity of 67% to the BBC's Multiplex B, efficiently creating the space needed for UK public service broadcasters' HD transmissions. The UK will be the first country in the world to launch this new standard, and its successful implementation is the result of pioneering work by the BBC in collaboration with partners including Ofcom, Arqiva, Siemens and receiver manufacturers. To view Freeview HD, audiences will need equipment containing this new technology. Freeview HD receivers (set-top boxes, digital television recorders and integrated televisions) will be available from early 2010.

Adds Caroline Thomson, the BBC's COO: "This is a terrific step forward, and it's a great achievement that the BBC and its partners have been able to work together to overcome some really difficult technical challenges to bring HD to the Freeview platform through world-leading innovation. We're really excited about the prospect of seeing BBC HD and HD channels from the other public service broadcasters on Freeview next year."

Full timetable:

Google and Spanish-language TV giant Univision have signed a deal this week that will have the Spanish content featured via video sharing giant YouTube.

The deal will include programming from Univision, Galavision and TeleFutura and both companies will share revenue, with Univision "receiving the majority." All revenue will be generated from advertising around the programs while they play.

Over the past year, YouTube has signed similar deals with Disney, Time Warner, Channel 4 and many others.

The latest deal will include full length shows as well as promotional clips including celebrity interviews.

Posted on the main screen of the Creative and ZiiLABS Showcase Green Solutions for Developers at Zii Summit 2009 in China is the interesting notion that a possible Zii Android smartphone may be in the works, using the extremely powerful StemCell Computing Technology found on the Zii Egg device.

Under "Zii Powered Devices" reads the following:

A range of OEM-ready Zii Powered devices will be showcased - powered by ZiiLABS ZMS-05 and ZMS-08 media-rich application processors. The line-up of devices on display include: a Touch Tablet PC, a Netbook, a Web-Box, a 360o Multi-View Camera System, ultra high-performance Speakers, a Piano Keyboard for the PC, and a Portable e-Book Reader. But the highlight of our devices line-up is our Mobile Phone platform. ZiiLABS ushers in a new era of explosive high definition 3D with the Zii Optimized Android Phone platform. The Zii Optimized Android Phone platform gives developers the chance to use the familiar Android OS, but with a difference. Harnessing StemCell Computing Technology found on the ZMS-05 Media Rich Processor, Android is now super-charged with seamless 3D graphics and High Definition video playback performance.

According to Major Nelson, Xbox Live hit a record last week, with 2 million concurrent users on at one time, thanks mainly to the blockbuster that is Modern Warfare 2.

Says Major Nelson's Tweet: "We just hit a new #XboxLIVE record: Over TWO MILLION people connected to the service at once."

The previous record was slightly over 1.5 million, when the New Xbox Expierience (NXE) dashboard update was released last year.

Modern Warfare 2 is said to have shattered launch records for games, selling 4.7 million copies in the UK and the US in just its first day of release, netting $310 million.

In June, we reported that Apple had blocked a fully-licensed Commodore 64 emulator from the App Store, claiming it violated the iPhone SKD Agreement.

Today, developer Manomio has said the app is now available via the App Store, after it has been changed to meet the SDK terms.

At the time, Apple had said:

"We've reviewed C64 1.0 and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it violates the iPhone SDK Agreement 3.3.2. [An application] may not itself install or launch other executable code by any means, including without limitation through the use of a plug-in architecture, calling other frameworks, other APIs or otherwise. No interpreted code may be downloaded and used in an Application except for code that is interpreted and run by Apple's Published APIs and built-in interpreter(s)."

The app costs $5 and currently has 8 games available.

Samsung has launched its latest Android phone this week, the Galaxy Spica (I5700), with EU date set but no such luck for American users.

The Spica has a 3.2-inch touch screen with 320x480 resolution, a 3.2MP camera and an 800MHz processor, much faster than the Spica's predecessor, the Galaxy (I7500).

Notably, the Spica is the first phone with full DivX support, and the microSD slot can hold up to 32GB of memory.

Strangely, the Spica will launch with Android 1.6 (Donut) and not 2.0 (eclair), which includes the free Google Navigation turn-by-turn GPS.

The phone is GSM-based but it is unclear whether it will be headed to AT&T or T-Mobile when it eventually hits the U.S.

Cartoon Network has launched a new DVD-on-demand program for its Adult Swim cartoon content, allowing users to select episodes they want on custom DVDs along with custom artwork.

Fans can select up to 110 minutes of TV episodes, as well as custom artwork, a custom disc face, and custom menu and title. With shipping, the DVDs cost the very reasonable $20 USD.

At launch, the Build-a-DVD will have 100 episodes available from a bunch of popular shows such as "Robot Chicken" and "Sealab 2021." Cartoon Network promises to have its entire library, at over 1000 episodes, available by Christmas.

Make your own here: Adult Swim custom DVD

The emergence of the DVD as a primary source of home entertainment coupled with the introduction of analog video capture and digital TV has made it common for consumers to own hundreds (or even more than a thousand) movies.

That, in turn, has created a market for software to catalog those collections with. Many people want a convenient way to keep track of what they own. Some are also interested in putting that data into a more useful form, such as a printed report or a personal website.

There are a number of programs designed for those purposes, and it can be hard to figure out which one is right for you. I tested five such programs to find the strengths and weaknesses of each one.

Along with each review I've included some basic ratings. Although I think such ratings presents an accurate picture of the software in question, they aren't a substitute for the accompanying text, which goes into detail about my experiences.

And of course there's no substitute for trying software out for yourself. Ant Movie Catalog is free so you can test it as long as you wish. The free version of DVD Profiler allows you access to most of the commercial verson's features as long as you have no more than 50 discs in your collection. The others are offered in trial versions.

Mozilla has released the latest update of the Firefox 3.6 beta, fixing a large 190 bugs from the original release.

Additionally, Yahoo Tech says "all current Firefox 3.6 beta users have been issued an update containing improvements of interest to users as well as web and add-on developers."

Firefox Director Mike Beltzner noted specifically that one of the main bug fixes was a mechanism "to prevent incompatible software from crashing the browser."

For most Firefox users, you will likely want to wait before downloading the new beta, however. "Most add-ons have not yet been upgraded by their authors to be compatible with Firefox 3.6 Beta," Beltzner said.

Judge William Alsup has ruled in favor of Apple this weekend, effectively killing Mac clone maker Psystar, whom the company had accused of copyright infringement.

"In sum, Psystar has violated Apple's exclusive reproduction right, distribution right, and right to create derivative works," Alsup concluded.

Apple started the suit in mid-2008, when Psystar began selling Mac clones with Apple's Mac OS X operating system running on it. Psystar says what it was doing was perfectly legal. Apple did not agree, and pointed to the Mac OS X end user license agreement which states the OS can only be installed on Apple computers.

Psystar had tried to pass their sales on as "fair use" but Judge Alsup said the company "does not even attempt to address the four factors used to determine fair use."

Additionally, Alsup said Psystar violated the DMCA: "Psystar has violated the DMCA by circumventing Apple's protection barrier and trafficking devices designed for circumvention."

The hearing for whether Apple will receive a permanent injunction or other "remedies" is set for December 14th.

Redbox and CinemaNow are teaming up to test a new digital downloads program that will give frequent kiosk customers vouchers to download titles through CinemaNow.

Users who purchase DVD-rental packages will be given gift cards that can be used to redeem downloads via CinemaNow, says company spokesman Christopher Goodrich.

Paul Davis, parent company Coinstar's CEO, says the test marks an early step of what should be Redbox's foray into digital downloads. Coinstar may also look into acquiring a company that specializes in digital delivery, adds Davis.

“We think this is a space that we should be testing in and understand better,” notes Davis. “It’s an interesting space that we’d like to explore.”

During quarterly earnings, Coinstar said Redbox sales have jumped 90 percent from last year, while adding 2700 kiosks.

Marantz America has announced the launch of a new rebate promotion on two of their Blu-ray players, the $800 BD7004 and the $550 BD5004.

The rebate program will run from November 1st to December 31st for all authorized Marantz dealers.

Adds Kevin Zarow, Marantz marketing and product development VP: "With advanced audio and video reproduction capabilities, Blu-ray players are fast becoming essential for people who want to enjoy the very best in home entertainment. This holiday season, many people will be looking to upgrade their home theaters with state-of-the-art Blu-ray players. Our BD7004 and BD5004 multimedia Blu-ray players already offer one of the industry's best values in true high-performance, high-definition audio and video, and with our $100 rebate offer, they present an unmatched price/performance proposition."

The more expensive model features HDMI 1.3a ports, 36-bit deep color, Anchor Bay VRS Technology video scalers for upconversion, can play CDs, DVDs, SD, SDHC and mini and microSD cards.

Blockbuster, the struggling video rental chain, showed another quarterly loss for the Q3 2009, with net loss increasing almost $100 million year-on-year.

The company said the increased loss was due to store closings and a 14 percent drop in same-store sales. Blockbuster plans to reverse the loss by next year using newly refinanced debt agreements and boosting videogame advertising and sales.

Overall, the net loss was $114.1 million for the quarter, along with a drop in revenue of 21 percent to $910.5 million.

The new refinancing agreements will give the chain up to $600 million to invest in more Blockbuster Express kiosks as well as digital movie offerings.

Blockbuster Chief Executive Officer Jim Keyes added: "We temporarily changed our approach... but I can assure you we're glad that phase is over. We've now returned our focus to transforming the core business."

The chain is set to close 960 stores by the end of 2010 and has closed 215 already this year.

Switzerland's federal data protection commissioner Hans Thur has announced plans to sue search engine giant Google over lack of privacy safeguards in the Street View mapping system.

The system allows for users to see full panoramic streetscapes of most cities in US and Europe, including cars, buildings and even people. Google fully blurs faces and license plates, but Thur says it is not enough.

"Faces and vehicle number plates are not made sufficiently anonymous from the point of view of data protection, especially in cases where the persons concerned are shown in sensitive locations, such as outside hospitals, prisons or schools,"says Thur, via UPI.

"We are disappointed that Herr Thur has changed his position on Street View after launch, and that he has not considered our proposals for further improvements to the product," responded Google. "We will vigorously defend Street View in court and we're committed to continue bringing the benefits of this product to Swiss users."

Sprint has officially launched the Palm Pixi today, the entry-level webOS smartphone, and Palm's second smartphone release this year.

The phone is available from Sprint for $100 with two-year contract and after $100 rebate. However, new customers can get the phone for $50 or less from online retailers such as Amazon of WireFly.

The Pixi includes a 2.63-inch multitouch screen, 2MP camera, QWERTY keypad, GPS and "Synergy," contacts integration. The phone is also smaller than the popular Pre.

Additionally, the device has 8GB of storage, GPS, a standard headset jack, and EV-DO. The phone does not have Wi-Fi, however.

The stock price of smartphone maker Palm jumped higher on Friday on the rumor that Nokia is looking to acquire the company.

The rumor resurfaced for the first time since early September, and Palm has been the talk of acquisition,on-and-off for most of the year.

Besides Nokia, Dell and Microsoft have also been cited as potential suitors for Palm, which would help both companies get a foot in the fast growing smartphone market.

Analysts have valued any deal for the smartphone maker at over $2 billion USD.

Earlier this week we reported that 1 million Xbox Live members had been banned from the service for using modified consoles, a significant portion of the 20 million XBL subscribers.

This weekend, 360mods is reporting that a possible workaround is in the works, that will help permanently banned users to access XBL again without having to buy a new console.

Says the post:

As I'm sure all of you know by now, Microsoft has been actively banning users with modified consoles from Xbox Live for the past 1-2 weeks now. The bans have spanned all drives and firmware revisions and the cause (or causes) is not known as of this writing. Details of exactly what a ban means and what functionality is and isn't disabled by a ban can be found HERE.

c4eva has announced that he is working on new firmware for all drives that will be called iXtreme LT (Lite Touch). This firmware will have minimal patching, only what is required to allow backup discs to boot. There will be little (if any) security checks done on the discs by the firmware, meaning that running your backup images through abgx360 and ensuring that they are properly patched and verified will become even more important than it already has been. The idea behind this firmware is to remove as many differences between stock and hacked firmware as possible. Lite-On and Hitachi 1.61 have been canceled and will be replaced by iXtreme LT instead. There is no ETA on the new iXtreme LT firmware so don't ask, we only know that it is in the works. We will update the site as more info is known.

A newly leaked Black Friday ad is showing that giant retailer Best Buy will be slashing Blu-ray prices to their lowest ever, even undercutting Target's recent promotional initiative.

Catalog titles such as The Departed will sell for $7.99 in the high-definition format. New releases, such as Wolverine and Monsters vs Aliens are selling for $9.99. A few more expensive titles, such as the new Gladiator BD, are selling for $12.99, all lower price points than have ever been previously available.

Many DVDs will go on sale for $3.99, such as last year's blockbuster The Dark Knight.

Additionally, Best Buy will be offering Sony and Samsung BD-Live Blu-ray players for $149, matching Amazon and Wal-Mart. Its own Insignia brand players will retail for $99.

Cnet, citing anonymous sources, is reporting that Verizon will begin forwarding RIAA copyright notices to users accused of downloading unauthorized video, gaming and music content.

Verizon will only be "testing" sending the notices, say the sources, and RIAA spokesman Jonathan Lamy has confirmed that Verizon will indeed begin the testing next Thursday.

"We recognize the importance of copyright and the need to enforce those copyrights," added a Verizon spokesman. "Without that enforcement, intellectual property won't be generated at all. At the same time, it's important for our customers to be assured that they won't have their privacy rights trampled."

The letters, as they have in the past, will warn the user that they have been flagged for piracy and should stop or face a fine.

According to a new ConnectedHome2Go report, Comcast's On Demand Online TV streaming service will go live in December, earlier than anticipated.

Comcast, speaking at the NewTeeVee Live Conference this week, also added that cable subscribers will not be charged extra for the service and can play it back on up to three devices.

Time Warner, who jointly developed the service but is dubbing it TV Everywhere, has not announced a launch date for their service.

All that is needed is an active Internet connection and a digital cable subscription from Comcast.

According to new data from WHERE, active users of the much hyped Motorola DROID has doubled in the last few days, suggesting that there are now about 250,000 total units now active.

The WHERE map also shows where the phone is being sold, with New York being the largest adopter, at 12 percent, followed by Los Angeles at 6 percent and Washington DC at 5 percent.

Earlier this week it was reported that 100,000 units had been sold in the opening weekend, so the new numbers suggest positive momentum for the Android 2.0 phone.

The BBC iPlayer is set to have its own Nintendo Wii channel very soon, says Erik Huggers, BBC director of Future Media & Technology.

The popular TV service was available through the Wii's Internet browser but the new dedicated channel will offer full-screen support and an easier to use interface.

The channel goes live November 18th.

"We’re pleased that we’ve been able to work with Nintendo to evolve BBC iPlayer on the Wii, providing a faster, high quality and improved viewing experience," says Huggers.

"It’s important that we offer audiences more ways to access the huge range of BBC content available, and this improved version of BBC iPlayer underlines our commitment to reaching new audiences by making BBC iPlayer available on as many platforms as possible."

Xbox Live will transform into Zune Video next week, allowing Xbox 360 owners to stream HD movies and TV episodes rather than having to download them before playback is available.

Alongside the video upgrades will come social networking features from Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm. All the features were announced at this year's E3 event, but with no timetable.

Xbox Live general manager Marc Whitten made the announcement yesterday, bringing an end to the months of speculation. The service will change on November 17th.

Additionally, Zune Video will offer a larger catalog of 1080p HD films, an upgrade from the current 720p collection.

The Google Chrome OS, first announced back in July, will be available next week, says a TechCrunch report.

The free, open source operating system should be released in a very early form, as promised, with broader support in 2010.

Said Google at the time: "Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work."

Google has said in the past that they are working with EEE, Acer, Adobe, ASUS, Freescale, Hewlett-Packard, Lenovo, Qualcomm, Texas Instruments, and Toshiba, mainly on netbook support.

Dell has officially confirmed that it will be launching the Mini 3 Android smartphone in China and Brazil, bringing the phone to over 540 million mobile subscribers.

In China, the smartphone will be distributed via China Mobile (which has about 500 million subscribers) and in Brazil it will be distributed via Claro, which has over 40 million subscribers.

The phone should be available in China this month, and in Brazil by "the end of the year."

"Our entry ... is a logical extension of Dell's consumer product evolution over the past two years," adds Ron Garriques, president of Dell's global consumer group.

After finally returning to growth in September, the US video game industry declined by 19 percent in October year-on-year, moving down to $1.07 billion from $1.32 billion.

"Based on typical industry seasonality, the industry is on track to generate full-year revenues in the range of $20-$21 billion in the US, which would put it just a bit below last year's sales of $21.3 billion," says NPD analyst Anita Frazier. However, "the continued economic turmoil, and in particular the troubling unemployment rate, is undoubtedly impacting industry sales. ... If consumers' personal outlook continues to erode, they could very well be much more conservative with their holiday shopping this year."

Also of note, the PS3 and the Xbox 360 accounted for almost the same amount of total industry sales, with the 360 accounting for 27 percent and the PS3 accounting for 26. "Total industry sales" refers to hardware, software and accessories.

The Wii was the best selling hardware of the month, with 506,900 units sold at the new, cheaper $199 price point. The PS3 was in second with 320,600 units sold and followed by the Xbox 360 at 249,700.

YouTube has announced it will begin upgrading HD streams to 1080p from the current 720p, offering support for video playback in Full HD.

Spokesperson Chris Dale said engineers have been testing 1080p streams on the system and that the company is now not worried that there will be any infrastructure problems or higher costs for Google, YouTube's owner.

Although there will still be a 10-minute limit, the 2GB file size limit is likely to be increased.

If users have already uploaded videos at 1080p, the video will be automatically re-encoded to playback at the highest quality.

Media center app Boxee, which will head into beta on December 7th to much fanfare, has announced that they will be building a dedicated Boxee set-top box, which will be unveiled on the same date.

Says Boxee:

I am very happy to announce we have signed our first partnership with a CE company. At this point we can not say more about the partner or the specs of the device, but we can tell you we are working closely with them to make sure we deliver a great Boxee experience on it.

We will show mockups of the box and share more details at our upcoming Boxee Beta Unveiling event in Brooklyn, NY on Dec 7th. RSVP here.

Over the next few years there will be a great change in the way we consume entertainment on our TV. The Internet is (finally) coming to the TV and with it will come a whole new world of content, applications and innovations.

We are building Boxee as a platform that would:

* make it easy for users to consume and find content – no matter what the source
* give content owners, aggregators, and developers the tools to create unique experiences with a variety of business models
* enable CE companies to enhance their Connected devices

Long time chip-making rivals AMD and Intel have settled all legal complaints today, with the larger Intel agreeing to pay AMD $1.25 billion USD and setting down new rules to adhere by.

Additionally, both sides agreed on a renewed five-year cross-license agreement. AMD says they are beyond satisfied with the agreement as it will allow the chip makers to compete "on a level playing field."

Intel has been under increased scrutiny in the EU and US for anti-competitive practice but AMD says the new deal relieves most of those complaints.

"The agreement, to a great extent, resolves outstanding disputes between AMD and Intel under the antitrust laws," adds AMD counsel Tom McCoy.

Intel currently controls about 75-80 percent of the entire chip market while AMD controls the rest.

Last month, we reported that the Windows Marketplace had already had its DRM cracked, a week before its official release.

Today, the updated Marketplace has opened for Windows Mobile users, adding a plethora of new features including "stronger anti-piracy protection.'

Says the press release:

"We’ve been gathering input on what we can do to improve the developer experience and have made some subtle but important enhancements to the developer portal to enable easier uploading of images, greater insight into account status and several other refinements based on feedback from developers. Today’s update also provides more advanced anti-piracy protection. While the underlying technical changes will be transparent for customers, developers will now be able to take advantage of these new protections by following the steps outlined in this anti-piracy whitepaper. As always, updates to existing applications can be submitted for free. To learn more about developing applications for Windows phones, head over to the Windows Mobile for Developers site.

Yesterday we reported that handset manufacturer Samsung was dropping Symbian OS support and moving fully to WinMo, Android and Bada, their new proprietary smartphone OS.

Today, Samsung has refuted that claim, saying the original rumor, which quoted senior vice president Don Joo Lee, "is not it line with Samsung's smartphone strategy."

Samsung also gave the following quote: "Samsung is an initial member of Symbian Foundation and continues to cooperate with Symbian Foundation. At the same time, Samsung supports various existing open operating systems including Symbian, Linux, Android, and Windows Mobile. To provide more choices to meet consumers' many different tastes and preferences, we will continue our 'multi-OS' strategy. Our policy is to provide what consumers want when they need."

After selling almost 5 million copies in its first day, the blockbuster smash Modern Warfare 2 had also "killed" the PlayStation Network, causing server overloads earlier in the day.

Says developer Infinity Ward's Rob Bowling: "It's a server overload not a bug in the code. They're working to have servers back up ASAP. MP servers gradually coming back online. Some users may still experience issues."

"Looks like it was the amount of connections at once that killed PSN."

As the day progressed however, the problem was solved and Bowling's last Tweet says: "PS3 Status update of the day: PSN Multiplayer should be running at full capacity. We expect smooth skies ahead."

Scrawl is reporting today that Sony has accidentally leaked a few screenshots for the upcoming PlayStation 3 firmware update, in which you can change your gamercard colors, have direct Facebook integration, and view your pictures in a newly updated way.

The pics have been taken down from the Sony UK site, but JoyStiq still has the thumbnails up (view below).

We will keep you updated.

Rodney Bradford, a teenager in New York City, has been freed after 12 days of incarceration after Facebook confirmed that a Facebook wall post sent at the time of the alleged crime was sent from an IP address matching his father's physical address.

Bradford had been held for almost two weeks on suspicion of armed robbery in the Brooklyn project where he lived.

The teen had maintained his innocence, as did witnesses who said Bradford was in his father's Harlem residence miles away when the crime was committed.

The Facebook post, sent to his girlfriend, asked playfully "where are my pancakes?," about one minute before the robbery took place.

Facebook confirmed that the IP address matched that of the Harlem apartment.

Activision has announced today that the blockbuster release of Modern Warfare 2 has netted $310 million USD in its first day of release, and that is only in the US and the UK.

The release, if the numbers are accurate, would make the game the largest gaming launch of all time, beating out last year's Grand Theft Auto IV release.

Activision also said they believed anywhere between 4.5-5 million units were sold in the two nations, given a boost in the UK by a price drop in many supermarkets.

"The Call of Duty franchise has become a cultural phenomenon showing the power of video games as an entertainment medium," adds Mike Griffith, CEO of Activision Publishing. "The shattering of these entertainment records is a testament to the compelling, cinematic and uniquely engaging experience that the Call of Duty brand delivers. Modern Warfare 2 has taken interactive experience to unprecedented heights setting a new standard for entertainment."

According to a new survey of university students conducted by the University of Reading, the overwhelming majority would prefer to download music than stream it or buy it in-store.

The survey of 10,000 students showed that 75 percent would prefer to download music via iTunes, Amazon MP3 or illegally rather than pay for streaming services such as Spotify.

The source notes the example of TunesPro.com, a legit website which offers music downloads for $0.19, a giant discount off the $1-1.29 that iTunes charges.

Says TunesPro: "We have seen a huge surge of younger people using our site as more and more of torrents and P2P files contain viruses, so our pricing must be competitive enough for the younger students with perhaps less disposable income than professionals. We keep our prices low and concentrate of making money through volume sales. Currently we charge 19c per song and offer a further 10% when a whole album is purchased. We believe this will attract the younger users away from iTunes, which charge almost 6 times more than we do."

Christopher Paul Gilham, the UK man convicted in 2008 of installing and selling modified Xbox, PS1, PS2 and GameCube consoles has had his appeal thrown out of court this week.

Gilham sold the modded consoles, which allow users to play back pirated games, from 2003 until 2006. His appeal was based on the issue of “whether the playing of a counterfeit DVD involves substantial copying of a copyright work.”

The court ruled against him: "The various drawings that result in the images shown on the television screen or monitor are themselves artistic works protected by copyright. The images shown on the screen are copies, and substantial copies, of those works. If the game is the well-known Tomb Raider, for example, the screen displays Lara Croft, a recognizable character who has been created by the labor and skill of the original artist."

Super Talent has announced the launch of the first USB 3.0 flash drive this week, with transfer rates of up to 320MB/sec, about 10x faster then current USB 2.0 drives.

The SuperSpeed USB 3.0 RAIDDrive will be available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB models and will measure 3.7 inches by 1.4 inches with 0.5-inch depth.

The drive works with USB 2.0 ports but at the slower speeds. If using a 3.0 port, the SuperSpeed can handle transfer speeds up to 320MB/sec compared to 480Mbit/sec for 2.0.

The drive is set for release next month but the company has not confirmed a price yet. You can certainly expect the largest capacity to be over $300 USD, however, with the 32GB model likely selling for $75-90.

Blockbuster has begun testing a new movie-rental program that will allow renters to load the movies to SD cards and play them back on their phones or TVs.

Each rental will cost $1.99 USD.

The rentals have DRM that kills the video after a certain expiration date, removing the need for users to return a physical disc. Users can also download the videos "on demand" from the Blockbuster website, but at a higher premium, $3.99.

Although in theory the idea could work, you will be very hard pressed to find mobile phones with full SD card slots, as most use microSD.

Last week Microsoft updated the Zune HD firmware to version 4.3 bringing along with it the ability to play 3D games.

Six games are now available for download in the Zune Marketplace, all of which are free. There is an ad at the start-up of each game. The games are:

* Audiosurf Tilt: Audiosurf creates a rollercoaster ride from any song. Choose any song from your music collection and watch Audiosurf turn it into a unique roller coaster track for you to ride. The song you choose determines the shape, the speed, and the mood of each track. Tilt your Zune like a steering wheel to collect colored blocks and avoid speedbumps. Unlock more than 30 designs, each with its own special theme and color palette.

* Checkers: Enjoy the classic game of Checkers in a beautiful outdoor park setting. Play against the computer or against a friend.

* Lucky Lanes Bowling: Bowl in different game modes: exhibition, blackjack, golf. Play in five different bowling alleys with unique themes, all with the swipe of a finger. Choose from twenty different bowlers and twenty two different ball styles. You can play against the computer or play with up to four friends.

According to research firm Strategy Analytics, Apple has become the most profitable handset maker in the world, just two years after moving into the smartphone market.

For the Q3 2009, Apple overtook Nokia for most profitable mobile phone maker, making an estimated $1.6 billion in profit for their only phone, the iPhone.

Nokia still remains by far the largest smartphone maker, by volume, but the handset maker makes a much lower margin per phone sold than Apple does. Nokia made $1.1 billion in operating profit for the quarter.

"With strong volumes, high wholesale prices and tight cost controls, the PC vendor has successfully broken into the mobile phone market in just two years," added Alex Spektor, an analyst at Strategy Analytics, via Reuters.

For the quarter, Apple sold 7.4 million iPhones with revenue of $4.5 billion, while Nokia sold 108.5 million units for revenue of $10.36 billion.

Last week we reported the rumor of Samsung preparing to phase out the Windows Mobile smartphone OS while at the same time increasing usage of Android and Bada.

Company senior vice president Don Joo Lee is saying however, that WinMo is here to stay, and it is instead the Symbian OS which will be completely dropped, mainly to the advantage of Bada, Samsung's new proprietary OS.

The change will take place starting in 2010, with the Omnia HD being the last phone to incorporate the OS.

Lee says he expects total Samsung shipments to increase to 220 million units in 2010 and the company will "continue to strengthen its deployment in HD displays, high performance CPUs and LTE technology for handsets."

According to a new MCV post, Microsoft is planning a November 2010 launch for its controller-free Project Natal, and will have 5 million units available at launch, alongside 14 games.

The details, say the site, come from a closed tour Microsoft has been having with UK publishers and studios showing off the technology in an effort to increase development.

The device will be available by itself for under £50 ($80 USD) with some publishers saying they expect it to retail for £30, as a way to bring in "impulse buyers." Natal will also be bundled with consoles and games.

So far, Activision, Bethesda, Capcom, Disney, EA, Konami, MTV, Namco Bandai, Sega, Square Enix, THQ and Ubisoft have all committed to creating games for the new technology.

In what would be a stunning figure if proven true, InformationWeek is reporting today that up to 1 million gamers have been banned from Xbox Live in the past two weeks due to playing pirated games using modified consoles.

"All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox Live terms of use, will void their warranty, and result in a ban from Xbox Live," says the Microsoft statement.

Microsoft confirmed the bans but declined to give a specific number instead saying: "We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles have been modified to play pirated game discs. In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox Live community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox Live."

Certainly 1 million can not be considered a "small percentage," but the software giant may not want the negative publicity of admitting to banning 5 percent of all their paying Xbox Live members.

The Motorola DROID, re-dubbed the Milestone, is headed to Canada early next year says carrier Telus, becoming the first Motorola Android phone to reach the nation.

“Teleus’ new 3G+ network gives Canadians access to a world-class selection of mobile devices such as the Motorola Milestone," adds David Neale, Telus senior vice-president of product and services.

The DROID, the only current smartphone to use Android 2.0, launched in the US on November 6th to much fanfare and a strong marketing campaign.

“With Motorola Milestone, Canadians will no longer be limited in what they can do with their smartphones,” says Rick Gadd, vice president of Motorola Canada Mobile Devices. “They will experience the Web the way they’ve always wanted on a mobile device, with lightning fast speeds and pages that show them more.”

No word on pricing.

After accidentally being shown off a week ago by retail giant Costco, the Microsoft 802.11n Wi-Fi adapter is now available officially, via NewEgg, Costco and other online retailers.

The new adapter should provide much more bandwidth then the current line of 802.11g adapters and will use MIMO (multiple in, multiple out) and two antennas to provide a stronger signal and extended range. Microsoft says the new adapters will have double the range of the 802.11g adapters.

Electronista adds that the "adapter is also dual-band and can run on 5GHz to avoid interference as well as 2.4GHz for those with older 802.11n routers or who have to run a mixed-mode network to support legacy devices."

The device sells for between $88-100 USD.

TIGA, the UK game developer trade body has released a new study today which shows that many of the members of the group believe piracy is a problem, but nowhere near a threat to their business survival.

90 percent of the developers called piracy a "constant or increasing," problem but only 10 percent said the threat level was "high." Over 60 percent said the threat level was "low."

50 percent of the developers were against the government's "three strikes" plans to cut users off the Internet for multiple piracy offenses.

Also notably, only 30 percent of the developers believe DRM is a smart solution, while 70 percent think it is part of the problem or an "irrelevance."

"The results of the TIGA piracy survey clearly demonstrate that UK developers are taking the initiative when dealing with the issue of piracy, and looking for new ways of delivering content and communicating directly with their consumers," says TIGA CEO Richard Wilson, via Gamasutra.

"Developers are not complacent in dealing with this problem and are mostly seeking to find solutions for themselves rather than simply relying on the Government to solve the problem of piracy."

In March, Apple added the ability to purchase HD content though iTunes but so far the giant store has had little noteworthy HD films or TV episodes.

Starting today, however, Apple has added an extensive amount of content, including pre-orders for blockbuster movies such as Star Trek and Academy-award winning films such as The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, No Country For Old Men and Pixar's latest, Up.

The news comes after Sony announced that Disney HD content is now available for purchase via the PlayStation Store.

According to analyst Mark McKechnie of Broadpoint AmTech, Motorola and Verizon sold about 100,000 DROID phones in its first weekend of availability.

Verizon is said to have had 200,000 of the smartphone on hand, and most stores sold about half of their stock. Overall, Motorola will sell 1 million phones using Android in the Q4 2009.

100,000 is a very high weekend launch number by normal standards, but the Apple iPhone 3GS sold over 1 million during its launch weekend in June.

“I see the first few days as encouraging,” McKechnie adds. “There seems to be pretty good demand -- they’ve taken the right steps and picked a good partner with Google on the Android side.”

Samsung Electronics has announced the launch of its own mobile operating system, Bada which will "enable developers to create applications for millions of new Samsung mobile phones, and consumers to enjoy a fun and diverse mobile experience."

Bada stands for "ocean" in Samsung's native Korean and is named as such to "convey the limitless variety of potential applications which can be created using the new platform."

Bada will rival Android, Windows Mobile, Symbian, iPhone and other smartphone operating systems.

Says Dr. Hosoo Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of Media Solution Center at Samsung Electronics: “By opening Samsung’s mobile platforms we will be able to provide rich mobile experiences on an increasing number of accessible smartphones.” He added, “bada will be Samsung’s landmark, iconic new platform that brings an unprecedented opportunity for operators, developers and Samsung mobile phone users around the world.”

The SDK will be launched in December.

The new OS X 10.6.2 Snow Leopard update from Apple was released this week with much needed bug fixes but with a few unwanted fixes as well.

'Hackintoshes,' netbooks hacked to run Snow Leopard on Intel Atom processors, will no longer be able to run the operating system.

Mac OS X 10.6.2 will "enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac," says Apple, while fixing 36 bugs and other security updates.

Netbook users did have ample warning, however, via Apple: "You may experience unexpected results if you have third-party system software modifications installed, or if you've modified the operating system through other means."

It will likely not be long until there is a workaround but for now users with netbooks running Snow Leopard should probably not update or risk bricking their "Hackintoshes."

Google has announced that they will be expanding their free airport holiday promotion to 47 airports, including two where the promotion will be permanent.

From now until January 15th, Wi-Fi is free at the following airports:

* Austin (AUS)
* Baltimore (BWI)
* Billings (BIL)
* Boston (BOS)
* Bozeman (BZN)
* Buffalo (BUF)
* Burbank (BUR)
* Central Wisconsin (CWA)
* Charlotte (CLT)
* Des Moines (DSM)
* El Paso (ELP)
* Fort Lauderdale (FLL)
* Fort Myers/SW (RSW)
* Greensboro (GSO)
* Houston (HOU)
* Houston Bush (IAH)
* Indianapolis (IND)
* Jacksonville (JIA)
* Kalamazoo (AZO)
* Las Vegas (LAS)
* Louisville (SDF)
* Madison (MSN)
* Memphis (MEM)
* Miami (MIA)
* Milwaukee (MKE)
* Monterey (MRY)
* Nashville (BNA)
* Newport News (PHF)
* Norfolk (ORF)
* Oklahoma City (OKC)
* Omaha (OMA)
* Orlando (MCO)
* Panama City (PFN)
* Pittsburgh (PIT)
* Portland (PWM)
* Sacramento (SMF)
* San Antonio (SAT)
* San Diego (SAN)
* San Jose (SJC)
* Seattle (SEA)
* South Bend (SBN)
* Spokane (GEG)
* St. Louis (STL)
* State College (SCE)
* Toledo (TOL)
* Traverse City (TVC)
* West Palm Beach (PBI)

Seattle and Burbank will keep the Wi-Fi permanently.

Google is set to purchase the VoIP startup Gizmo5 for $30 million USD in cash, a move that would stop Skype from purchasing the company as rumored.

The move would help Google to expand its Google Voice services to include better VoIP capabilities, allowing for users to actually make calls that can be routed to landlines and mobile phones.

If true, Gizmo5 will help turn Google Voice and Google Talk into true competitors of Skype and other "telephony" companies.

Gizmo5 was started in 2003 by former MP3tunes creator Micheal Robertson, who remains in the news after being sued for his personal assets by the record labels.

The popular open source browser Firefox celebrated its fifth birthday today, in version 3.5 and with over 24 percent market share, its largest tally ever.

Mozilla's Melissa Shapiro adds: Firefox started "with belief that, as the most significant social and technological development of our time, the Internet is a public resource that must remain open and accessible to all."

Firefox has hit over 1 billion downloads worldwide since then and continues to fight market share away from the clear leader, Internet Explorer.

"We've managed to keep Microsoft honest and forced them to release newer versions of their browsers," says Mozilla's Christopher Blizzard. "Firefox's presence was a large factor in Apple being able to ship a browser to its user base as the Mac came back to the market. We've made it possible for third party browser vendors like Google to enter the market."

RadioShack announced this morning that the electronics chain would begin selling the Apple iPhone in its locations beginning in 2010.

In response, Radio Shack's stock jumped to its highest level since November 2007, at a bit over $20.

The company has slowly been moving towards selling more phones, and has T-Mobile and Verizon mobile products currently in its stores.

“The iPhone is another significant vote of confidence for RadioShack’s wireless business,” adds Stephen Chick and Anne McCormick, analysts at FBR Capital Markets Corp. Both expect the stock to continue to outperform the broader markets.

Radioshack will begin selling the iPhone 3GS in New York City this month with a full rollout coming next year.

Netflix has shipped the first 100,000 discs PS3 owners will need to view streaming Netflix content and promises that more are being shipped every day.

Netflix VP of marketing Jessie Becker says: "Jessie Becker here, VP Marketing. We know many of you are excited about being able to instantly watch movies and TV episodes via your PS3, and we’re excited as well. Today we shipped instant streaming discs for PS3 to about 100,000 Netflix members who requested them. After we tune a few more details, we expect to ship to everyone else within a couple of weeks. We’ll send you an email as soon as we ship your instant streaming disc. Keep checking here for updates as well."

The company won't say how many have been requested.

Netflix currently has 17,000 movies and TV shows available via the streaming Watch Instantly service and the PS3 Blu-ray disc is free as long as you request it.

The PlayStation Store will begin offering Disney movies for purchase tomorrow, starting with the blockbuster animated hit Up, the same day as its Blu-ray and DVD release date.

"Up" is just the first of 80 Disney movies set to be available for purchase via the Store, which allows for easy downloads to the PS3 or PSP consoles. Until today, the films had only been available as rentals.

The SD version of Up will sell for $15 and the HD version will cost $16, leaving no real reason to purchase the SD version unless you have low bandwidth.

A few of the other movies available are the Pirates of the Caribbean series, Monsters, Inc., WALL-E, and Bedtime Stories among others. 60 of the 80 are available in HD.

Microsoft is confirming that the new additions of Twitter, Facebook and Last.fm will be restricted to gamers with Xbox Live Gold subscriptions and will be only for users over 18, at least for now.

Xbox's "Major Nelson" Larry Hryb says the move will ensure online safety for those under 18, but does say the Xbox team is working on an update that will allow parental controls to be added to the service through the console's "Family Settings."

"We made this decision because as it stands now, parents aren’t able to use Family Settings to customise which of these applications their children can access. In order to offer an age-appropriate environment for everyone, we decided to turn off these applications for those Gold members under the age of 18," says Hryb.

"We want to make sure everyone was aware, however, that the development team is working on an update that gives parents the choice of which social applications their children can access.

"This means that Xbox Live members between the ages of 13 and 17 will be able to use Facebook, Twitter and Last.fm as long as their parents approve. The team hope to roll this out several weeks after launch and I will update you on the exact date as it gets closer," he concludes.

Nokia has announced today the launch of a charger exchange program after the company recalled 14 million phone chargers due to their risk of shocking users when plugged in.

The phone manufacturer says that during “routine quality control processes," it was uncovered that the plastic covers of the chargers come loose when plugged into live sockets and pose a shock hazard.

All the chargers will be replaced for free.

The exchange program says the affected chargers are "type AC-3E, AC-3U (manufactured between June 15, 2009 and August 9, 2009) and AC-4U (manufactured between April 13, 2009 and October 25, 2009)."

You can check the program site here for more details: Nokia Charger Exchange

According to an investment note from HMC Investment Securities, Samsung is ready to deal the death blow to Windows Mobile by phasing out the mobile operating system in favor of the open source Android.

HMC Analyst Greg Noh says Samsung's use of WinMo will fall from 80 percent this year to 50 percent in 2010 and finally to just 20 percent in 2012.

On the other hand, Samsung will be increasing use of the Android platform by 30 percent each year in the same time frame. Symbian will be killed off by 2011 and a new Samsung OS will eventually control about 50 percent of the company's phones.

The new rumor follows the rumor that HTC, currently the world's largest WinMo device maker, will be switching over 50 percent of their devices to Android in 2010.

Google has announced their acquisition of mobile ad technology provider AdMob for $750 million USD.

Says the search engine giant:

* The deal will bring new innovation and competition to mobile advertising, and will lead to more effective tools for creating, serving, and analyzing emerging mobile ads formats.
* This deal will benefit developers, publishers, and advertisers by improving the performance of mobile advertising, and will provide users with more free or low-cost mobile apps.
* The mobile advertising space will remain highly competitive, with more than a dozen mobile ad networks. The deal is similar to mobile advertising acquisitions that AOL, Microsoft, and Yahoo have made in the past two years.

The deal mainly allows for Google to move into the lucrative app display ad market, which they have had little to no part of so far.

According to an interview with GTTV, Nintendo of America boss Reggie Fils-Aime has vehemently denied the rumors that the company is planning an HD version of the popular Wii for 2010.

Top videogame industry analyst Michael Pachter made waves recently when he reported that he expects an HD version of the Wii next year.

"Michael [Pachter] continues to be the only one who believes this is going to happen,"says Fils-Aime. "I don’t know how forcefully we can say that there is no Wii HD."

That should put the rumors to rest, for now.

Adobe has released the Android version of their popular free Photoshop Mobile app today, giving users a quick and easy way to edit their images.

Users can crop, rotate and flip images as well as add subtle blurs, and perform color adjustments such as desaturation, exposures and tint changes.

You can also upload the pics to a free Photoshop.com account, which allows for up to 2GB of uploads.

The app is free and is available right now from the Android Market.

The Apple iPhone has its first virus, a wonderful Rick Rolling worm that has been infecting jailbroken phones in Australia this week.

The worm, dubbed Ikee, changes the wallpaper of the exploited phones to a picture of Rick Astley and then looks to infect other phones.

Despite being harmless now, "there is a real danger that someone could take this code and make it do something malicious," says Graham Cluley, a technology consultant with security vendor Sophos, however.

So far, the only users vulnerable are those using jailbroken phones with SSH running. Many of the users are still using the default password, allowing for easy access. SSH allows for remote access between the phone and the Internet.

The worm was written by a young Australian, Ashley Towns, who was bored and decided to prank some friends. "It was supposed to be a small prank I definitely wasn't expecting it to get as far as it did," says Towns.

Many of those hit by the virus added that they thanked Towns after for getting them to wise up and change the password.

According to sources speaking to VideoBusiness, Netflix has been discussing the possibility of accepting a one-month delay on new releases as long as the studios who want the delay will cut inventory costs by 50 percent.

The rental giant has been in quiet talks with Warner, Universal and Fox so far, and possibly other studios as well. Not one of the studios has accepted the price drop that Netflix needs to take the delays.

The studios have already imposed the delay on kiosk giant Redbox, which has led to lawsuits from both sides.

Netflix is more gung-ho about the idea as it will reduce costs for the company and consumers and Netflix COO Ted Sarandos even said they pitched the idea to the studios in 2007.

“Creating a rental window is not a punitive action,” says Sarandos. “It’s a decision that the retailers and studios can make together. If the studios can entice a rentailer to create a rental window, I believe that rentailers, studios and consumers can all benefit from it.”

Netflix makes about 70 percent of its revenue on catalog titles so the new release delay should not hit the bottom line significantly, especially if they are saving inventory costs on their main breadwinner.

Microsoft has updated the firmware of the Zune HD today, skipping over version 4.2 and moving directly to 4.3.

Says the software giant:

"Today we released the v4.3 firmware update for Zune HD players; this update adds support for upcoming 3d games and applications, as well as an auto-suggest feature for better text input, and other minor improvements. Enjoy!

What’s new in Zune HD 4.3 Firmware

-Support for the upcoming 3D games and applications.

-Auto Suggest feature for text input.

-Faster web browsing experience.

-Landscape keyboard

-Keyboard option has been added in the settings section.

-New toggle between seek and presets under Radio.

-Under the Internet in settings, you can now toggle to default mobile or desktop webpage layout.

-Artists bios are updated; embedded links to other artists in text.

-Other bug fixes."

Of all the updates, the most popular will likely be the landscape keyboard (which frankly should have been there since the start) and the auto-suggest which will make it much easier to type URLs and other search queries.

Paramount Home Entertainment has started a new website which will allow fans of the film Paranormal Activity to have their names in the credits of the film when it is released on DVD and Blu-ray next year.

The site, ParanormalActivityProject.com is open until November 9th at midnight and anyone who registers will have their name shown at the end of the credits of the film.

“The success of Paranormal Activity would not have been possible without the million-plus fans who went to the ParanormalMovie.com official Web site and demanded the movie in their home town,” adds Amy Powell, Paramount senior VP of interactive marketing. “They demanded the movie, and they got it. So now we are giving them credit where credit is due.”

The movie, which cost $13,500 to make and has grossed $87.9 million domestically, is by far the most profitable movie (percentage-wise) of all time.

Paramount expects the extended credits to add up to 20 minutes to the film.

Verizon Wireless has announced plans to double the early termination fee for users of smartphones, from $175 to $350 USD for those that cancel their contracts early.

Verizon spokesman Jim Gerace says the move should begin on November 15th and will be eligible for anyone using BlackBerrys, the DROID, and other smartphones.

Gerace also adds that the termination fee will decline by $10 for every month the user stays with the contract.

“The cost of smart phones is considerably higher than feature phones for which the early termination fees were created years ago at $175,” Gerace notes.

Analysts believe the move will help protect Verizon's bottom line, which takes a hit everytime a user cancels their service and pockets the difference that Verizon subsidized in the first place to sell the contract.

Google has launched a new privacy control feature this week, dubbed Dashboard, which will allow users to see most of the information that is being collected about them at any given time by the search engine giant.

Dashboard will pull together the data that is accessed whenever a user logs into a Google service such as "summaries of an individual's e-mail, search requests and viewing habits on Google's video site, YouTube."

The service will not provide any data if you have not logged into the Google services.

Google has been under fire for years from privacy watchdogs which want to know just exactly it is that the search engine giant knows about you.

Due to its byline stipulations, beginning in December all Blu-ray titles will come with the option to make one "managed copy" (a legal backup).

However, for all current Blu-ray player owners as well as most near term future owners, your player will not have the capability to make the copies, making the feature useless.

AACS-LA chairman Michael Ayers says the Managed Copy is mandatory given the final AACS license and over 600 companies have signed on. Each new movie from December 4th on will come with a link on the disc which will send the player to an authentication server. If it passes, the disc can make a full 1080p copy of the disc. For now though, there are no players capable of making the copies so the links are useless.

Manufacturers are not required to even make such devices but Sony and other AACS-LA members say they expect the first PC drives with the capability to hit by the Q3 2010. The AACS-LA says they won't even have authentication servers up and running until March 31st.

Myka has launched the Myka ION media center set-top box this weekend, giving users a one-stop shop for Internet video services and video playback via your HDTV.

The ION has an Intel Atom 1.6Ghz Processor 330,a NVIDIA ION Graphics Processor, as well as 4GB of RAM, ten USB 2.0 ports, VGA / DVI / HDMI outputs, an eSATA connector and Ethernet.

"Technology has finally caught up with what consumers want out of Internet video services," said Myka President Dan Lovy. "They want to be freed from their computers and watch the growing variety of Web video content on their large-screen, high-definition living room TVs. And they want to do it without a lot of hassle and without video quality suffering.

According to new CTIA figures, American mobile phones users send 4.1 billion texts per day, adding up to 740 billion for the first six months of 2009.

The numbers show that about 14 texts are sent everyday on average by every American mobile phone user (276 million), although many teens average in the thousands and many users do not even have texts enabled.

Yahoo Tech writer Ben Patterson gives the following example to show off the giant figure in a different light:

Or, how about this: An SMS has a maximum capacity of 160 characters, so let's say (for the sake of example) that your average text message is about 80 characters long. And let's assume that your average novel contains about 100,000 words, and each word has about five letters. So ... assuming all that (and keeping in mind that my math is a little shaky), we here in the States are writing the equivalent of about 656,000 books—all via SMS—every 24 hours. At that rate, we could match the entire catalog of the entire New York Public Library system (which holds about 20.4 million books) in a little over a month.

Skype founders Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom have ended their lawsuit this week while agreeing to transfer ownership of their remaining part of the service, allowing for the VoIP service to finally be sold to an investor consortium.

In exchange for dropping the legal roadblocks, the co-founders will have a 14 percent stake in the new Skype. The rest of the investors will have a 56 percent stake, and eBay (the current majority owner) will hold a 30 percent stake.

Additionally, one of the consortium members had to be dropped, as the co-founders had legal claims against them in a related matter.

eBay will receive $1.9 billion in cash for part of their stake, as well as a $125 million note payable over time. The deal should close in the next few months.

"We are very pleased to have the litigation resolved. We remain confident in a great future for Skype, and we look forward to working with Niklas, Janus and the other investors as partners to help the company achieve its full potential," adds Silver Lake, one of the main consortium partners.

Over at least the last decade, the popular belief with the Internet and technology in general is that as it evolves, users become more isolated from the world. A new U.S. survey is concluding the exact opposite, saying that the Internet and mobile phones actually enhances user's "social worlds.'

The study, dubbed "Social Isolation and New Technology," by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, says users now have much larger and diverse social networks.

"When we examine people's full personal network... Internet use in general and use of social networking services such as Facebook in particular are associated with more diverse social networks," say the researchers. "Our key findings challenge previous research and commonplace fears about the harmful social impact of new technology."

The survey was conducted via phone and includes 2512 adults, and states that since 1985 when the Internet really began its mainstream infancy, social isolation has remained unchanged. 6 percent of the adult population "has no one with whom to discuss important matters" in the new study, an insignificant increase from 1985.

"Discussion networks" have decreased by 30 percent since 1985, says the survey, and have become less diverse however those with active Internet connections and mobile phones usually take part in Internet activities that brings them connections to more diverse networks. For example, those using phones have 12 percent larger discussion networks and those that use IM clients such as MSN, AIM and others have 9 larger networks. Diversity shoots even higher for those with phones, jumping 25 percent in "diversity of core networks." It is 15 percent higher for those who even just use the Internet for emails and reading news.

The iPhone App developer Storm8 has been sued this week by Michael Turner, who claims that the developer is 'stealing' user's phone numbers, a clear violation of the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.

The class action suit is on behalf of all who have purchased apps from Storm8 and have had their phone number "phoned home" by the apps.

Storm8 admits to collecting the numbers but has called it a glitch in their source code. They also say the problem has since been corrected. In his suit, Turner says "glitches" would never lead to the collection of phone numbers and that the developer created specialized code in their games to do so.

The developer has yet to respond to any questions about how a bug in code can lead to phone number collection and has not publicly spoken about whether the numbers remained saved in Storm8 databases.

Amazon, Pixar and Disney have started a deep Blu-ray promotion this week, as well as dropping the prices on the much anticipated titles Up and Monster's Inc.

The large e-tailer has dropped the price of Up to $19.99 for the 4-disc Blu-ray edition (includes digital copy and standard DVD), a giant drop off its MSRP of $45. Monster's Inc. has also been dropped to $23 for the same 4-disc BD edition, a steep drop from its $41 MSRP. If you purchase the two together, Amazon is also offering $10 off just for buying the combo. Some quick math shows that you are getting two brand new Blu-rays, two standard DVDs and two digital copies for $33 shipped.

Additionally, Disney and Pixar are offering an extra $10 off if you purchase another BD from a selection of Disney and Pixar films.

Via the promotion here: Disney, Pixar Blu-ray promotion

According to new IDC figures, RIM BlackBerry has once again surpassed Apple for smartphone market share, moving 30 percent for the quarter to 19 percent, above Apple's 17.1 percent.

The report cites the launch of the Tour and the Curve 8520 as key factors in the giant leap. BlackBerry also has better distribution in "key" countries, says IDC.

Nokia remained the clear leader at 37.9 percent and HTC grew to 5.6 percent while Samsung lost share, falling to 3.5 percent. HTC's growth was mainly attributed to the popularity of the myTouch 3G (HTC Magic).

On the whole, the smartphone market jumped 4.2 percent to 43.3 million units.

Direct2Drive, the PC gaming digital distribution service, has said today that they will not be selling the expected blockbuster Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 because it includes rival Valve's "Steamworks."

Steamworks includes auto-updating, anti-cheating, Achievements and Steam Cloud technology.

D2D calls the technology DRM however and says they will not sell the game because "we don’t believe games should force the user to install a Trojan Horse."

As an alternative, D2D will offer a $5 USD off coupon for other Activision titles and says they will never support any products with Steamworks, due to its forced nature.

After D2D made its decision, many other digital stores joined in the boycott, including GamersGate and Impulse. Says Impulse: "We share some of the same concerns as Direct2Drive over the bundling of the Steam client with the game. The most obvious issue is the forced inclusion of a competitor's store that blocks us from carrying the game."

Media center app Boxee will go into beta stage on December 7th, promising massive changes from the current alpha version of the software.

Boxee, which was based on XBMC code, even asked for feedback from our very own AfterDawn community back in March to help make the beta as great as possible.

As a streaming media center app, Boxee promises to include remote content from Hulu and Netflix among other services.

In beta, Boxee will see a completely new user interface, improved navigation and improved search.

The app is available on Windows machines, Macs and Apple TV.

Check our review of the Boxee in alpha here: Preview: Boxee

After facing technical delays, Microsoft has announced that the Xbox 360 Sky Player is now fully available to all UK and Ireland gamers with no more delays expected.

"As you may know we have been implementing a gradual rollout of the Sky Player on Xbox 360 service since our initial launch, and as of today, 100 per cent of the Xbox base can access Sky Player, and tens of thousands of new users are accessing the service daily," says Microsoft.

"The quality of the service remains of the utmost importance to both Sky and Xbox, and as such we will run further testing over the weekend and continue to monitor the service closely," the press release concludes.

This is a short blurb and is to be considered speculation for the time being, but BoyGeniusReport is reporting today that two separate "inside sources" have told the site that Apple and AT&T are planning on releasing an 8GB iPhone 3GS in the next month for $99 USD as a way to combat the next in a long list of "iPhone Killers," the Motorola DROID.

The DROID, which launched yesterday to much fanfare from rival carrier Verizon, is the first Android phone to handle Android OS 2.0 and the inclusion of Google Navigation for free, a full-on GPS app that rivals apps on the iPhone that cost up to $100 USD.

For more information on the Moto DROID, please check here: Motorola DROID is official

Nintendo boss Satoru Iwata had a few words about piracy on his company's platforms recently, and noted that piracy is an "endless battle" but that the company will continue to fight it for the benefit of not only the software developers but also consumers.

"I recognise there is more software piracy, playing downloaded software data without purchase, than some years ago on many of the current platforms, including Nintendo DS," said Iwata, via GI.biz.

Iwata says that piracy has become more rampant in Europe than in the United States, specifically because many nations there do not have any piracy regulation.

Nintendo will continue to use legal measures, as well as firmware and hardware updates, to combat piracy, but did allude to the fight as a cat-and-mouse chase.

"As the piracy itself is underground, someone somewhere finds out the solution to evade our measures. When we shut one hole of the mice, they have dug a new one somewhere else. We have acknowledged that this is an endless battle and we believe the best measure is to keep fighting it technologically and legally," he concluded.

The EU has ruled to change the Internet piracy "three strikes" bill, in an effort to give more rights to those accused of piracy.

EU Telecoms Commissioner Viviane Reding says EU lawmakers and governments are in agreement after two years of negotiations, that those accused of piracy and facing being cut off from the Internet should have the right to a trial.

The bill goes to final approval in the European Parliament at the end of the month.

Now, with the new guarantee, authorities must be able to prove that users were in fact downloading unauthorized copies of music or movies, and all alleged users are presumed innocent.

"Full due process rights will have to apply in any administrative case, except in cases of duly justified urgency, like serious crime, terrorism, child pornography," adds Spanish lawmaker Alejo Vidal-Quadras. "This is really a step forward."

"This Internet freedom provision is unprecedented ... and (gives) a strong signal that the EU takes fundamental rights very seriously. (It will) substantially enhance consumer rights and consumer choice in Europe's telecoms markets."

After months of teasing the ultraportable, Dell has finally officially launched the Adamo XPS, a notebook thinner than the Macbook Air.

The ultraportable boasts the following specs, via Dell:

*Thinnest laptop in the world at 9.99mm
* 13.4-inch widescreen LED HD display
* 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo ULV processor - delivering ultra-low-voltage mobile performance
* Genuine Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
* 4GB 800MHz DDR3 dual-channel memory
* Intel Ultimate-N WiFi Link 5300(802.11a/g/n) Half Mini card and Dell Bluetooth 2.1 adapter
* Up to 5 hours and 17 minutes with an optional extended battery life on a full charge

The device will run you $1799 in that configuration, more expensive than a similarly equipped Air model.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has been named "CEO of the Decade" this month by Fortune magazine, mainly for the historic marks he has left in multiple industries.

Jobs, best known for being behind the company that created the Mac computer and the iPod media device, won the award after almost 25 years in the business.

Apple was founded in 1985 but Jobs was ousted from his position in the mid-90s. When he returned in 1997, the company's stock price had been deflated to $2. Today the stock stands at $188, about $15 off its all-time high despite a grueling global depression.

Jobs also purchased Pixar in 1986, and was behind helping the studio becoming an animation powerhouse unrivaled in the industry.

Full article here: Steve Jobs: CEO of the decade

Following the gigantic hype of the Motorola DROID Android phone, Verizon has launched their second Android device, to much less fanfare.

The phone, the HTC Droid Eris, is very significant to its manufacturer. The company is a big name in smartphone manufacturing but brand recognition is nowhere near the same stratosphere occupied by Apple, RIM and Motorola.

The Eris will sell for $100 USD with contract, half the price of the DROID, but with an inferior feature set.

The phone features a 5MP camera, 8GB microSD card, and all standard Android 1.6 features.

"We win on design, we win on pricing, and our user experience is already popular," added Jason MacKenzie, HTC's North America unit vice president.

T-Mobile, which exclusively has the G1 Android phone as well as the MyTouch3G and Cliq, has released some Android stats this week, including its forward plans for the Android Market.

According to MobileCrunch here are the stats from T-Mobile:

* Around 50% of myTouch users launch the Market app each day
* 80% of myTouch users launch the browser once a day, and roughly 66% launch it more than once a day
* More than 40% of myTouch users access social sites multiple times each day
* Roughly half of myTouch owners say they have “completely customized” their handsets, though that term seems a bit ambiguous

Perhaps the biggest note from the report is the upcoming addition of "Carrier Billing" to the Android Market. Until now, users needed a Google Checkout account to purchase any games or applications but with carrier billing you can download anything you want and it will be charged to your wireless bill at the end of the month.

The news should help developers sell more applications, and will also make the entire process as easy as click and purchase.

The Big 4 record label EMI sued Bluebeat.com this week, claiming the site is selling unauthorized digital copies of the Beatles albums.

The site sells each track for $0.25 but EMI says they have "not authorized content to be sold on Bluebeat.com."

Bluebeat garnered the attention of the label and curious downloaders because the Beatles tracks have never been officially been digitized, and certainly would not sell for 25 cents when all other tracks on iTunes sell for $1.

Perhaps just as notably, Bluebeat allows for free streaming of some tracks, including those by the Beatles.

Bluebeat, in their defense, say that they actually own the tracks and the copyrights for those tracks. What? MRT, the parent company behind Bluebeat, says they ran the Beatles tracks through psycho-acoustic simulation and added new pictures to the MP3s, thus making them completely new pieces of media. Media of which they own the copyrights for.

For those confused, (everyone), "Psychoacoustic simulations are a synthetic creation of that series of sounds which best expresses the way I believe a particular melody should be heard as a live performance," says MRT CEO Hank Risan.

Although Android 2.0 will not be officially released until Friday, it appears the Google team is already at work on Android 2.1, which should fix a number of bugs and streamline 2.0.

The report comes from Android and Me who says that the site's analytics reports showed that someone using Android 2.1 had visited the site 24 times, accounting for 0.04 percent of the traffic since October 28th.

Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien had some words for the UK government's recent decision to move to "three strikes" piracy laws.

He is completely against the notion of kicking pirates off the Internet but does believe bandwidth throttling could be a better proposition.

It's an interesting and quick video, and I would recommend watching.

The highly secretive Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which has been drafted under non-disclosure agreements and given to different nations with watermarks in case they choose to "leak" it, has had parts of its Internet chapter leaked this week, and is already facing massive criticism from mostly everyone who has read its scary bylines.

Under the new ACTA, the United States and the world should be prepared for the following:

-ISPs as watchdogs: The ISPs will be forced to "proactively" police all user-contributed materials for copyrights. At that point, many of the world's most popular sites won't be able to exist as they do now, such as YouTube or Photobucket or Flickr which will be impossible to regulate given that thousands upon thousands of videos and pictures are uploaded every hour.

-Three Strikes: As in the UK and France, the "three strikes" piracy laws will be in effect, forcing ISPs to cut off multiple time offenders from the Internet after two warnings. If you are accused, you do not receive counsel or a trial.

Nintendo will add fully playable demos for video games to WiiWare in an effort to increase traffic to the stagnant Wii Shopping Channel.

CEO Satoru Iwata confirmed recently to shareholders that WiiWare and DSiWare remain small markets and that the Shopping Channel and the DSi Shop are only browsed by gamers who have looked up games they want to purchase beforehand.

Iwata says by introducing the playable demos, the company hopes to increase traffic to the channel and add to sales. The CEO readily admits that demos will not solve the problem all together, however, says GI.biz.

The demos will start in Japan next month and move globally sometime after.

Sony Japan has announced five new PSP-3000 bundles for the region this week, four of which are being marketed as "Value Packs."

The Value Pack bundles will each include the PSP-3000 and accessories (no games) for JPY 19,800 ($220 USD) and come in different colorways; Vibrant Blue, Piano Black, Pearl White and Radiant Red.

The fifth bundle is a "Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G" bundle that includes the game and special skin. The model will retail for JPY 18,500 ($205 USD).

Each is set for release in early December.

Sony has signed deals with Lucasfilm, Cinetic FilmBuff, ContentFilm International, Image Entertainment, MPI Media Group and New Video this week, bringing tons of new content to the PSN video delivery service in the U.S.

Thanks to the deal, Sony will begin offering Star Wars content such as the animated show The Clone Wars as well as the TV show "Leverage" and many movies for rent or purchase.

Sony says it is actively looking for new content, and that more content from the production companies will be added over time.

The company adds it now has 2300 full-length films and 14,400 TV episodes available via the PSN from 40 studio and network content providers.

Last week China Unicom began selling the Apple iPhone officially in China for the first time ever, making the smartphone available to over 200 million subscribers.

Unicom is seemingly fighting for sales however, and 9to5mac is reporting that only 5000 units have been sold since launch. Bloomberg News adds that Apple expects only 460,000 iPhones to sell in the nation per year, a number less than the amount of grey market units that are sold there (for less than Unicom's price.)

Each model of the official phone (8GB or 32GB) can be purchased with 3-year contract but the prices are very expensive. The smaller capacity model will sell for 4,999 yuan ($700+ USD) and the larger model will sell for 6,999 yuan ($1000+ USD). Each is also lacking Wi-Fi due to government regulation.

Apple has announced that the extremely popular App Store has reached 100,000 apps today, a new milestone for the service.

“The App Store, now with over 100,000 applications available, is clearly a major differentiator for millions of iPhone and iPod touch customers around the world,” adds Philip Schiller, Apple’s senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing. “The iPhone SDK created the first great platform for mobile applications and our customers are loving all of the amazing apps our developers are creating.”

Notes Travis Boatman, vice president of Worldwide Studios, EA Mobile: “The App Store has forever changed the mobile gaming industry and continues to improve. With a global reach of over 50 million iPhone and iPod touch users, the App Store has allowed us to develop high quality EA games that have been a huge success with customers.”

It was just 5 weeks ago that Apple announced the service had hit 85,000 apps, and 2 billion lifetime downloads.

EMI and Apple Corp. (not to be confused with Steve Jobs' Apple) have jointly the announced the release of a limited edition Beatles Stereo USB Apple which will be available worldwide.

The 30,000 USB flash drives will include the "critically acclaimed re-mastered audio for The Beatles’ 14 stereo titles, as well as all of the re-mastered CDs’ visual elements, including 13 mini-documentary films about the studio albums, replicated original UK album art, rare photos and expanded liner notes."

The 16GB drives will include a full Flash user interface and the tracks will be available in FLAC 44.1 Khz 24-bit and 320 Kbps MP3s.

The Apples go on sale December 7th and will cost 200 GPB (about $330 USD).

You can check the full track listing here: Beatles USB Stereo Apples

Microsoft has announced the launch of the Xbox Live Rewards program, giving regular gamers free points "just for doing the stuff Xbox Live members do all the time."

Users can earn free points for renewing Gold subscriptions and can receive rewards whenever they spend in the Marketplace.

A one-month Gold renewal will get users 10 MS points ($0.125 USD) with a cap at 60 MS points. Three month renewals have the same cap and will net you 30 points. The big "winner" is the 12-month renewal, at 250 points and no cap.

Gold and Silver subscribers can also get points for their Marketplace purchases, with users getting 100 MS points for their first purchase. Gold users who continue to use the market will receive monthly discounts off their purchases. 1 percent for the first month, 2 for the second, and so forth until 5 percent.

Finally, users can receive 100 MS points for answering surveys.

It is still unclear how and when you can sign up, however.

Former MP3tunes founder Michael Robertson was sued by EMI two years ago over the site and the company tried to go after his personal assets in an effort to bankrupt him and set an example.

Last year, a judge ruled that EMI could not go after his personal assets and throw that part of the case out.

Unfortunately for Robertson, a new ruling last month gave EMI a loophole to go after the man's personal assets again. A key witness in the case (a former MP3tunes director) was paid off by EMI (allegedly) to change her deposition in the decision.

Today, Robertson has filed an appeal on the decision in New York, a "motion for reconsideration or alternately certification for interlocutory."

We will keep you updated.

You can read more about EMI's "lies" here: MichaelRobertson.com

Spring Design, which recently released its Android-based Alex e-reader, has sued Barnes & Noble over the Nook e-reader, claiming B&N "misappropriated trade secrets" and "violated a non-disclosure agreement surrounding Alex technologies."

The company says it started filing patents for Alex in 2006 and was holding conference calls and meetings with B&N execs beginning in 2009. Alex's feature set was discussed confidentially with those execs under a non-disclosure agreement

Says Eric Kmeic, Sprin Design VP of Sales and Marketing: "Spring Design unfortunately had to take the appropriate action to protect its intellectual property rights. We showed the Alex e-book design to Barnes & Noble in good faith with the intention of working together to provide a superior dual screen e-book to the market."

There is no word on what damages Spring is hoping for or expecting. B&N denied comment.

Best Buy and Sonic Solutions, the owner of the popular Roxio CinemaNow movie service have signed a deal today that will see the giant retailer begin selling Sonic's services.

Says the WSJ: "Sonic said in a federal filing it had issued warrants to purchase 668,711 of its common shares for $100,000. The warrants vest over a two-year period and then Best Buy will be able to buy the shares at $4.98."

Best Buy will begin selling devices with CinemaNow in-store, including DVD drives and computers.

"Our relationship with Sonic Solutions allows Best Buy to quickly establish a strong position in the digital delivery of video entertainment," adds Best Buy CEO Brian Dunn.

Sony Ericsson has released the full spec sheet and pics and videos for the upcoming Xperia X10 smartphone with Android and the phone is extremely powerful.

The phone will feature a 4-inch touch screen with 480x854 resolution, a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8250 processor, Android OS 1.6 (likely updateable to 2.0), UMTS HSPA 800/1900/2100 and GSM GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900, 8.1MP camera with 16x zoom, image stabilization and flash and an included 8GB memory card. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 and 3G are standard as well.

The X10 will use MediaScape and TimeScape UIs, which can be viewed in the video.

Sony Ericsson's first Android device will be available in the Q1 2010 but there is no word on price. Expect it to be over $500 without contract.



Plus a video from SE:

Creative has announced the launch of the Zii MediaBook e-reader, marking the company's entry into the seemingly crowded e-book reader market.

The MediaBook will use Creative's powerful Zii application processor, used in the company's HD media players such as the Zii Egg.

The device will do more than just read books, and will include social networking integration and video playback.

Adds Willie Png, vice president for strategic business, Creative: "The MediaBook will harness videos, pictures, text and services in one device that supports rich media experience."

No word on price or release date but this e-reader should be a game changer.

Video available here: Zii MediaBook

According to new figures from Net Applications, both Firefox and Google Chrome continue to wrestle away market share from long time leader Internet Explorer, with Chrome seeing the strongest growth.

Chrome saw over 10 percent growth to reach 3.58 percent market share, while Firefox continued its ascent moving to 24.07 percent. Apple's Safari still remains in third at 4.42 percent share, mainly due to increased Mac sales.

Net Applications says given Chrome's growth and recent beta release of Chrome 4, the browser will likely surpass Safari, and the 5 percent mark, by February of next year.

Also interestingly was the numbers behind Internet Explorer, which although still the clear market leader at 64.64 percent, is a far cry from the 93 percent share it owned in 2003. Internet Explorer 8, Microsoft's most recent update to the browser, had 18.1 percent share, moving it to within days of surpassing Internet Explorer 7 at 18.2. The eight-year-old and extremely inefficient Internet Explorer 6 remained the leader for the pack, at 23.2 percent.

The results of a new study conducted by Demos, a London-based public policy think tank, once again affirm that the people who download the most music spend more than average buying music legally.

Demos talked to 1,008 UK residents between the ages of 16 and 50. Each respondent was asked about their use of both legal and illegal means to obtain music. Their conclusions match those of other studies conducted in the past.

Of those who said they download from P2P or other unauthorized sources, the number who buy "a lot more" music is almost exactly the same as those who buy "a lot less," at 10% and 11% respectively. Nearly half of illegal downloaders (47%) said it doesn't affect how much music they buy.

That should be the most important fact for record labels, because compared to the population as a whole those unauthorized downloaders buy a lot.

Although the percentage who also buy CDs was almost identical among illegal downloaders and the entire group surveyed, the average amount of money spent was considerably higher - £77 for unauthorized downloaders compared to £51 for all respondents.

In other words most people aren't downloading illegally because they don't want to pay. They do it because they love music.

Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Universal Studios Home Entertainment (USHE) are taking advantage of manufacturing on demand (MOD) technology to offer a selection of movies on DVD which hadn't previously been available. Some have never been released in any home video format.

Movies in the TCM Vault Collection Presented by Universal can be purchased in sets or individually.

An inititial offering, the Universal Cult Horror Collection, is priced at $44.99, with individual titles in the five movie set selling for $19.99 each.

Last week at Cable-Tec, the cable television industry's technical tradeshow, Panasonic showed off TVs and set-top boxes featuring tru2way support. Introduced last year, tru2way is an add-on to CableCard, a technology which enables the decryption of digital (QAM) signals from US cable television operators.

Unlike basic CableCard technology, which doesn't work with interactive services like Video On Demand (VOD), tru2way is designed to be a complete replacement for traditional cable company provided digital cable receivers.

There's been quite a bit of interest from consumer electronics manufacturers, most notably Panasonic. Earlier this year an official from the National Cable Trade Association told the FCC "cooperation and open communication between cable and CE has never been better."

Unfortunately the date by which most US cable customers were supposed to have access to tru2way compatible service (July 9,2009) has come and gone.

Following reports that the large chain cannot pay its rent, Movie Gallery is set to close up to 200 more Hollywood Video stores, about 7 percent of all the company's locations.

The chain is the #2 US movie-rental chain behind Blockbuster but both companies continue to lose users and revenue to Netflix and Redbox and Movie Gallery has been hit very hard in recent years, even filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2007.

The company has closed over 250 stores since the end of summer, with the extra 200 expected by the end of the year. The company has also closed 200 Game Crazy stores this year as well.

According to a leaked ad, Sears plans to drop the prices of many brand name Blu-ray players on Black Friday, the notorious shopping day after Thanksgiving.

The retailer will offer Sony's BDP-S360 and Samsung BD-P1600 for $149 USD, $50 off their MSRP. The deals are decent for brick and mortar retailers, however it is imperative to note that Amazon is selling the players right now for those same prices, with free shipping.

Analysts are already predicting that many brand-name players will be available for $99 on Black Friday from Best Buy and other retailers.

Both players offer BD-Live features and the Samsung has Netflix-streaming ability.

After first being confirmed for Japan and then the EU, the Nintendo DSi XL has now been confirmed for the United States as well, hitting U.S. shores in the Q1 2010.

The DSi XL, besides keeping most of the features of the DSi handheld intact, adds 4.2-inch screens, a 93 percent increase on any current model's screen size.

As with the Japanese and European models, the unit will come with a standard touch pen and a longer touch screen stylus as well as DSiWare software.

Nintendo says the new, larger screens are "designed to let small groups gather around the device for playing games."

The device is expected to retail for about $200 USD, $30 more expensive than the DSi.

The Sony Pictures blockbuster District 9 was given a release date of December 29th this week but more interestingly was the revelation that the Blu-ray version will include a demo of the upcoming God of War III video game on the same disc.

The God of War series is a Sony-exclusive and has been a blockbuster franchise so far, with the first two games selling almost 9 million units combined.

Sony says that gamers can unlock an "exclusive making-of featurette of the game" after they complete the demo included with the movie.

“The combination of District 9 and the game demo of God of War III is an unprecedented home entertainment offering,”notes Lexine Wong, senior executive VP at Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. “We are thrilled to give consumers not only an incredible high-definition presentation of District 9 and the wealth of bonus material about the movie, but also a taste of what is destined to be the biggest videogame of 2010. This pairing of the movie and game demo is just another example of what is possible with the Blu-ray format.”

Confirming the news that has been bugging Nintendo investors for months, president Satoru Iwata says Wii sales are completely stagnant at this point, partially due to the lack of "must-have" games and accessories.

Nintendo's president has admitted that sales of the Wii console have stalled, in part due to a lack of must-have software.

Recently quarterly earnings showed sales had fallen 40 percent year-on-year, from 10 million in the first six months of 2008 to 5.75 million in 2009.

"Wii has stalled," Iwata adds. "We were unable to continually release strong software, and let the nice mood cool. We were unable to show a new game to become 'the next thing.' In the game market, once you’ve lost the momentum, it takes time to recover."

"With the price drop, sales returned to a certain level, but they just did not reach the level of last year around this time. We decided that it would be difficult to sell enough to recover from the poor performance of the first half of the year."

According to Sony's recent quarterly earnings report, PlayStation 3 sales grew to 3.2 million in the Q2 2009 from 2.4 million in the same period in 2008.

Despite this growth, Sony saw heavy losses in the "PlayStation" division and saw sales fall severely as well. Overall, sales revenue fell 24 percent to JPY 352.6 billion. Losses grew to JPY 58.8 billion ($650 million USD).

"In the game business, the deterioration in profitability was mainly due to a decrease in PS2 hardware and software unit sales, and the impact of the appreciation of the yen," said Sony.

PS2 sales were down from 2.5 million to 1.9 million year-on-year. PSP and PS3 game sales were up about 10 percent each and PSP hardware sales fell from 3.2 million to 3 million. The big loser was PS2 software which a drastic 52 percent decline, from 23.2 million to 11.1 million.

For what seems like the millionth time, Nokia has announced it will be killing off the N-Gage gaming platform, moving its focus to the Ovi mobile store instead.

The phone manufacturer has stopped publishing new games in the format and will completely kill the N-Gage Arena and other community features in September 2010.

"As mobile gaming evolves and begins to encompass social gaming, we want to offer one store front with an even broader portfolio of games - games for everyone," said Nokia. "It's much more convenient to have one place to get all your mobile games, and this is what Ovi Store provides."

Handsets including the N-Gage application will continue to ship "for some time" but the company says they will no longer ship any games with the systems.

N-Gage first failed in 2003 as a standalone gaming platform and was originally announced as a smartphone app in 2005. The service hit multiple year delays and was only fully made available in 2008.

According to data from Net Applications, Microsoft's latest operating system, Windows 7, has surpassed 3 percent market share, and is closing in on 4 percent as I type this.

As of this morning, the new OS stood at 3.67 percent market share, growing over a percentage point since last Thursday.

Overall, as of November 1st, Windows (including XP, Vista, and 7) controlled 92.5 percent market share with Macs in second at 5.3 percent. XP still remained dominant, with over 70 percent of total market share. The biggest jumper of the year was the iPhone operating system, which moved to 0.37 from under 0.10 last year.

View the whole chart here:
Net Applications Operating Systems trend

The newly launched Motorola DROID will hit Italy and Germany in the next month, says Motorola, bringing a GSM version of the smartphone to the continent just days after the release of the CDMA version for the Verizon network in the U.S.

The phone will be re-dubbed the MILESTONE and will feature most of the same specs as the Droid with some notable additions and subtractions.

The MILESTONE will include multi-touch support which is oddly disabled for the DROID for the time being. However, the phone will not include the new free Google Navigation GPS system, which is not "ready" for Europe yet. Users will instead get a two-month trial for MOTONAV, Motorola's turn-by-turn GPS.

The full specs of the phone are:
* WCDMA/900/2100, GSM 850/900/1800/1900, HSPA, GPRS connectivity
* Android 2.0 OS
* Full Slide out QWERTY
* 3.7″; WVGA (480 x 854 pixels); 16:9 widescreen; PPI 267
* 5 megapixel camera
* Wi-Fi, GPS, Accelerometer
* 1400 mAh battery

Last Qtrax announced a schedule for rolling out their ad-supported music download service in the Asia Pacific Region.

Qtrax is probably most famous for a PR stunt in which the service was launched without any actual music to download. However, since that time they have been able to get the necessary licensing deals in place to offer a selection of music similar to the now defunct SpiralFrog service.

On2 Technologies, the video compression company Google is acquiring for $106.5 million, announced a net loss of $1.6 million for the third quarter of 2009. It's an improvement over the same quarter last year when they lost nearly $30 million.

"While we are pleased with our third quarter performance, we recognize that our revenue is still subject to quarter-to-quarter variability," said Matt Frost, On2's COO and interim Chief Executive Officer.

Verizon has announced the launch of the Epix HD movie channel this weekend, allow subscribers to watch movies on-demand via their TV or online.

You can check the site at epixhd.com, and the service will cost $10 USD per month.

"We're taking the lead in delivering the richest and best entertainment to movie-lovers, on whatever platform they choose," adds Verizon vice president of content strategy and acquisition Terry Denson.

Epix is a joint venture from Paramount, Lionsgate, MGM and Viacom and will include thousands of films from the studios.

ICANN, the private body in charge of overseeing the foundations of the Internet has voted in favor of allowing characters other than the Roman alphabet for websites, including traditional and simplified Chinese characters, Russian Cyrillic, Korean Hangul and Hebrew among 16 alphabets.

For the time being however, the changes will only be limited to domains run by national governments such as .us or .uk.

ICANN's vote came after six years of discussions into the matter. The group says that about 40 percent of all websites are controlled by national governments with the other 60 percent being "top level" domains such as .net, .com and .org.

"This is only the first step, but it is an incredibly big one and an historic move toward the internationalization of the Internet," said Rod Beckstrom, CEO of ICANN.

Apple has officially begun selling the iPhone smartphone in China, marking the first time the smartphone has been available in the nation with the world's largest amount of mobile subscribers.

China Unicom, the second largest carrier in the nation began selling the phone on Friday, and has two models available, 8GB and 32GB.

Each model can be purchased with 3-year contract but the prices are very expensive, even for an Apple device. The smaller capacity model will sell for 4,999 yuan ($700+ USD) and the larger model will sell for 6,999 yuan ($1000+ USD).

Besides the giant price tag, the Chinese iPhones are Wi-Fi crippled, in accordance with Chines regulations.

Unicom says it hopes to sell 5 million units within 3 years.

Google has officially denied that the company is planning to build their own Android-based phone, saying instead they will continue to improve the new operating system so others can build excellent hardware to use it on.

The rumors of a "Google phone" resurfaced last week when analyst Ashok Kumar reported speaking to Google partners who claimed a Google-branded phone was coming in 2010.

It appears to not be true, however. Says Andy Rubin, Google senior director for Mobile Platforms, via Cnet: “We’re not making hardware. We’re enabling other people to build hardware.”

Rubin also said the move to hardware would be a strong "fundamental shift" away from their current business model, a move the company is not ready to make at this point.

With over a dozen Android phones released or announced already, why would Google need their own branded phone?

The infamous Apple iPhone jailbreaker Geohot, who recently released Blackra1n jailbreaking software for the iPhone firmware 3.1 has now released an updated baseband unlock software dubbed blacksn0w which allow users to use iPhones with 3.1.x firmware on any GSM carrier.

The unlock will be made available on Tuesday and you can check geohot's video here:

Earlier this month, BitTorrent, the company behind the popular torrent clients μTorrent and BitTorrent posted that they were getting ready to "change the game" with the introduction of a new protocol dubbed μTP (micro-Transport Protocol).

The protocol will be available with the launch of uTorrent 2.0 and BitTorrent 7.0.

Says the post:

"The fact is that our BitTorrent clients have become incredibly popular with users downloading large files over the internet. So much so that some observers claim that BitTorrent traffic accounts for 30%, 50%, or even more of all Internet traffic. Regardless of the actual numbers (which we have no way of knowing), it is clear that the popularity of BitTorrent is putting such a burden on ISP networks that they sometimes react by slowing down or interfering with that traffic.

Now there is a whole “net neutrality” debate, partly about whether ISPs should be allowed to interfere with internet traffic from one particular app simply because it is “too popular” – some argue that perhaps ISPs could invest more so that supply meets demand – but this debate is not the focus here. At BitTorrent we like to be a bit more pragmatic, to assert that there is responsibility on the part of both the ISPs and authors of popular applications like BitTorrent to make sure that the internet scales smoothly to meet demand.

Microsoft has confirmed this weekend that the company has performed another round of Xbox Live account banning, killing the service for gamers using pirated copies of games.

"We have taken action against a small percentage of consoles that have been modified to play pirated game discs," said a Microsoft spokesperson, via IGN. "In line with our commitment to combat piracy and support safer and more secure gameplay for the more than 20 million members of our Xbox LIVE community, we are suspending these modded consoles from Xbox LIVE."

The company would not confirm when the bannings started, but the Internet has been flooded with reports of consoles being banned as early as Tuesday.

Continued Microsoft: "All consumers should know that piracy is illegal and that modifying their Xbox 360 console to play pirated discs violates the Xbox LIVE terms of use, will void their warranty and result in a ban from Xbox LIVE. The health of the video game business depends on customers paying for the genuine products and services they receive from manufacturers, retailers, and the third parties that support them."