Less than a week before their official announcement Neogaf has posted what appears to be the hardware specs for the upcoming Wii 2 (Project Cafe).
If the leaked specs are accurate, the system will bring a very powerful console, Blu-ray support, backwards compatibility and finally, HD graphics.
The leaked specs:
Graphics:
Custom AMD RV770 Chip “WOLF” @ 766Mhz on 32nm process
1398 Gflops
CPU:
Custom IBM Power 6 Chip “FOX” on 32nm process
4 cores, each two way SMT-capable and clocked at 3.5 GHz
175.9 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance (single-precision)
87.6 GFLOPS theoretical peak performance (double-precision)
Memory:
512 MB XDR2 DRAM main memory
+ 1024 GDDR5 video memory
+ 16 MB eDRAM
Storage:
2.5-inch SATA hard drive with 250 GB / 320 GB capacity
Expanded storage via SD and SDHC card memory (up to 64 GB)
Twitter may be ready to introduce its own photo-sharing service as early as this week, say multiple reports.
The service will be announced tomorrow at the D9 Conference in California, with CEO Dick Costolo as keynote speaker.
Currently, there are a number of competing photo services for Twitter, with the most popular being TwitPic, Lockerz and Yfrog.
The new service shouldn't be anything too mind blowing, but will be likely integrated into Twitter's official Android, iOS, BlackBerry and Web apps/sites.
Twitter recently acquired popular client TweetDeck for $40 million.
Nokia, the world's largest mobile phone maker, saw its stock fall to a 13-year low today after the struggling company warned its fiscal year outlook would fall way short of previous guidance.
The company was down as much as 16 percent today to $6.79 per share, a number last seen in June 1998.
Nokia lowered its operating margin to 0 percent for the Q2 2011, down from an expected 6-9 percent, a massive collapse.
I think it is devastating now that shortly after the AGM we have this very negative news out from Nokia. Q2 and Q3 is one story, but I think this will raise doubts about the potential recovery trend based on Mango.
What worries more is that Nokia will not be the only one with Mango and the Nokia hardware and user interface has to be more compelling than those from competitors.
Given the internal turmoil that will be generated by this news it is increasingly difficult to see that Nokia can leapfrog one handset generation and be on par with the competition in early 2012. Investors should be more than concerned about the dividend possibility.
In a strange move for the company, Apple has pre-announced that it will unveil the iCloud, iOS 5 and OS X Lion next week at its annual Developer's Conference.
CEO Steve Jobs will do the unveiling and the keynote speech, despite still being on medical leave for cancer.
In launching the iCloud service, Apple is said to have deals in place with Sony, Warner and EMI but not with Universal, the world's largest record label. Users will be able to upload their music to a "cloud" server, thus saving space on their hard drives and smartphone memory while being able to stream their whole libraries when connected to the Internet, and from anywhere.
OS X Lion is the company's latest Mac operating system while iOS 5 is the latest operating system for the iPod Touch, iPhone and iPad. It is unclear what new features the mobile OS will bring.
The official press statement:
Apple to Unveil Next Generation Software at Keynote Address on Monday, June 6
Apple Worldwide Developers Conference 2011
CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Apple® CEO Steve Jobs and a team of Apple executives will kick off the company’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) with a keynote address on Monday, June 6 at 10:00 a.m. At the keynote, Apple will unveil its next generation software – Lion, the eighth major release of Mac OS® X; iOS 5, the next version of Apple’s advanced mobile operating system which powers iPad®, iPhone® and iPod touch®; and iCloud®, Apple’s upcoming cloud services offering.
Samsung has confirmed today that it will stick with the Android mobile OS for its upcoming tablets.
Notes Samsung mobile boss JK Shin: "We'll continue to work with Android on future tablets."
The company has already announced the new Galaxy Tab 8.9 and 10.1, both of which will run Android Honeycomb 3.1. They expect tablet sales to rise to 7.5 million this year.
Samsung, despite being a major player in the mobile phone business, has trailed Apple in the tablet and smartphone market and both companies are now in a flurry of lawsuits against each other over alleged patent violations.
Sony has noted today that the PlayStation Network and the PlayStation Store will be full restored in all territories except for Japan, Hong Kong and South Korea by the end of the week.
The EU and NA territories have had online gaming and other features restored for a number of weeks, but no access to the PlayStation Store.
Adds Sony:
The company implemented considerable security enhancements to the network infrastructure, as well as conducted testing of the payment process and commerce functions.
We have been conducting additional testing and further security verification of our commerce functions in order to bring the PlayStation Network completely back online so that our fans can again enjoy the first class entertainment experience they have come to love. We appreciate the patience and support shown during this time.
When the PS Store is restored, users will be able to download their free games from a list of 5 that includes such classics like Little Big Planet and Infamous.
ZiiLABS has showed off their new line of Jaguar Honeycomb tablets for OEMs this week, introducing the powerful "energy efficient" Android devices at Computex 2011.
The company, owned by Creative, uses their own processors, specifically the ZiiLABS ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 StemCell Processors.
As consumer demand for a wide-range of smarter, more connected tablets increases, so do the OEMs' needs to innovate while also shrinking their time-to-market. The JAGUAR platform combines our deep understanding and experience working on consumer devices and tablets with our ZMS processors, reference platforms, software and certification know-how to deliver a state-of-the-art platform that minimizes the complexities of introducing next-generation tablets.
Timing is everything and a frenzied land-grab is taking place in the tablet computing market. Android 3.X and ZMS-20 are designed and engineered specifically for this new and exciting tablet market where growth is expected to approach 100 million next year. The JAGUAR platforms based on ZiiLABS' ZMS-20 and ZMS-40 processors push performances to a new level that the world has never seen before and OEMs and ODMs can leverage this with JAGUAR to quickly stake a sizeable claim in this explosive market.
Nvidia showed off their quad-core Kal-El (Tegra 3) processors at the Mobile World Congress, going as far as to say that the first tablets with the powerful processors should be available by August.
Smartphones using the processor could be available before Christmas, added the company.
Today, we have our first Tegra 3 rumor, with sources claimingMotorola will be first with a quad-core tablet, with that device coming as soon as late August, in time for "back-to-school" specials.
Nvidia CEO Jen-Hsun Huang says they have 10 OEMs working on Tegra 3 devices, but would not name the companies or give a time table.
The Tegra 3 features performance up to 500 percent better than the dual-core Tegra 2 processors and gaming performance that far outperforms any current device.
PBS has confirmed that hackers planted a fake story on their website late Saturday night after taking over the company's computer systems.
The group, identifying themselves as "The Lulz Boat," posted a fake story that famous rapper Tuapc Shakur, murdered in 1996, was really alive and living in New Zealand.
Additionally, the group started posting email and passwords for PBS users.
The group still had control as of this morning, posting defaced pages at an alarming rate.
Via the group's Twitter page, the Lulz Boat say they were angry about a recently aired "Frontline" episode about WikiLeaks.
ViewSonic has showed off a 10-inch tablet today, one that dual-boots Android and Windows 7 and runs on Intel's brand new Oak Trail processor.
The ViewPad 10Pro will run Windows 7 Professional and Android 2.2, with users able to switch the operating system by pressing one button on the display. The tablet can do so by virtually running Android using BlueStacks technology.
Intel unveiled the 1.5GHz processor Oak Trail chips in April, the first designs that Intel has put out that can compete with ARM chips seen in mostly all current smartphones and tablets.
Additionally, the tablet has 32GB Internal storage, a 3500 mAh battery and dual cameras.
The tablet will be significantly heavier than the market leading Apple iPad 2, weighing 28.21 ounces compared to 21.16 ounces. The device is expected to be priced at $800 when it goes on sale in Taiwan next month.
Asus has launched the ultraportable Eee PC X101 netbook today, a device that can run Windows 7 or MeeGo.
The netbook is just 0.7 inches thick and weighs in at 2.1 pounds.
If you opt for the MeeGo model, the netbook will run you just $200, a new leg down in netbook pricing.
MeeGo, originally a mobile OS created by Intel and Nokia, includes an app store, runs perfectly on Intel Atom processors and has good third-party support (relatively).
The Eee PC X101 will run on a new Intel Atom N435 processor and a special X101H model will have a hard drive/SSD hybrid drive.
Asus has shown off their much-hyped tablet/phone hybrid device, the Padfone.
The smartphone can be placed into a dock built-in to the back of the tablet, allowing users to have all the features of a phone (calls, GPS, texting, etc) on the larger screen of the tablet.
There were little other details revealed on a hardware basis, but the tablet will be 10.1-inches while the phone will have a large 4.3-inch screen.
Asus did not reveal pricing or a set release date.
It appears this weekend that Google has pulled a number of popular gaming emulators from the Android Market.
All were created by developer Yongzh and include Nesoid, Snesoid, Gensoid, N64oid, and Gameboid.
The developer says his account was removed without any prior warnings and he is now looking to move his emulators to the third-party "SlideME" app store.
Just last month, Google pulled the PSX emulator, PSX4droid from the Market, as well.
While emulators are legal, as standalone apps, 9 times out of 10, the ROMS (games) used by gamers are obtained illegally thus making the whole legal standing of the software sketchy.
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of social networking giant Facebook has said this week that his new personal challenge is to "be thankful for the food I have to eat."
In doing so, Zuckerberg says he will only eat meat from animals he has killed himself.
Says the world's youngest billionaire:
I think many people forget that a living being has to die for you to eat meat, so my goal revolves around not letting myself forget that and being thankful for what I have.
Since moving to the new diet, Zuckerberg says I have "basically become a vegetarian since the only meat I'm eating is from animals I've killed myself."
One of his favorite foods, lobster, was tough to eat as he was forced to boil it alive. However, "the most interesting thing was how special it felt to eat it after having not eaten any seafood or meat in a while."
Zuckerberg has also killed chickens, goats and pigs.
Nokia has won a partial review of the patent case it lost to Apple in March, with the six-member ITC reviewing 2 of the 6 patent claims that were thrown out by an ITC judge earlier in the year.
The ITC will focus on a few specific terms in the two patents.
Nokia is looking for a full injunction on the iPhone in the United States.
The first patent relates to speaker and antenna quality and the other is for reducing energy consumed by phone cameras.
Nokia first filed the lawsuit in October 2009, asking for the injunction and demanding royalties from all iPhones sold.
The latest rumor, and "confirmed" by a couple of photos, is that Sony will name their upcoming NGP handheld "PlayStation Vita."
Vita is the Latin term for "Life," which could absolutely be a reasonable name for the system.
Additionally, psvita.com has the same technical contact as psp.com, Sony.
Whether the rumor is true or not, we will know the official name of the system at Sony's E3 keynote on June 6th.
For controls, the updated handheld adds dual micro-analog sticks, giving gamers a feature they begged for on the original PSP.
The device has a massive 5-inch multi-touch OLED screen with 960×544 resolution, a multi-touch panel on the back and will run on a quad-core ARM cortex processor.
Sony has added tilt-sensitive SIXAXIS controls, standard and front-side cameras, GPS, an electric compass, Wi-Fi and 3G support, and access to Android gaming.
TechHog has posted what they claim to be the upcoming Google Nexus 3 flagship Android device, one that will run on Android's "Ice Cream Sandwich" platform.
ICS will be the first Android version to mix 3.1 Honeycomb (optimized for tablets) and the Android 2.x series built for smartphones.
In the leaked photo, the alleged HTC-built Nexus 3 will remove all physical buttons, the signature home/back/menu keys.
Additionally, the site also says that the company is working on both HSPA+ and CDMA versions, one for AT&T and one for Sprint.
While many will decry that the photo is faked, the editor of the original piece says the photo is edited, but only to remove items that would otherwise lead a trail back to the Google employee source.
In a open letter sent to members of Congress this week, Sony Computer Entertainment boss Kaz Hirai has said that he cannot guarantee the PlayStation Network will not be hacked again despite new policy changes and added security measures.
Last month, Sony took down the PSN following multiple security breaches that left 101 million gamers with their personal data stolen including addresses, phone numbers and even credit cards.
Wrote Hirai:
No security system is absolutely foolproof, and changing conditions in the future can make a currently secure environment less secure.
These gaps in what we know are not for lack of trying by experts, but rather an unfortunate testament to the skill of those who perpetrated the attacks. Some aspects of the intrusion may never be known.
Sony has still not found the identities of the hackers except to subtly accuse the hacking group "Anonymous."
Apple has settled their lawsuit against teenager Fei Lam, although the settlement figures were undisclosed.
In 2010, Fei Lam, a 17-year-old student from Queens, NY, started the website whiteiphone4now.com which sold unauthorized kits to turn your black iPhone 4 into a white version.
Lam had secured a large supply of white iPhone 4 parts from Foxconn in China, even though Apple had delayed the model until February 2011.
Horace Dediu of Asymco has posted some interesting figures today, noting that Microsoft has actually made a lot more money off Android phone sales than it does off of phones sold running Windows Phone 7, its own operating system.
Citigroup analysts says that HTC pays Microsoft $5 for every Android device sold, which will add up to an expected $150 million in revenue this year.
So far, Microsoft has sold just 2 million Windows Phone 7 licenses at an estimated $15 per license. $30 million is significantly less than what the company will make from HTC only this year.
Microsoft is expected to strike similar deals with other Android manufacturers that it has sued over the past two years over patent disputes.
When they do, revenue from Android could outshine WP7 sales for at least a couple of years.
Recent reports stated that Apple was considering using a new Samsung AMOLED display for their upcoming iPad 3 tablet but OLED-display.net says this is highly unlikely as production will not be able to hold up to expected demand.
The site says Samsung would not be able to produce enough 9.7-inch screens, especially since the company has already announced it will sticking to smaller and medium sized panels, mainly for smartphones.
Samsung's expected capacity is 8 million 4-inch AMOLED displays per month for the next six months. Tablet-sized displays are also said to have been delayed until early 2012.
The company will also use the larger (6 or 7-inch displays) for their own upcoming Galaxy Tab tablets.
Adds Barry Young, director of the OLED Association:
If anything, it would have to be after 2011, maybe 2012. It's just not going to happen for Apple.
The Apple iPhone 4 has finally made its way to India, 11 months after its global launch.
India has 800 million mobile phone subscribers but 3G has been slow to rollout in the nation, making smartphones a tougher sell. Smartphone sales only account for 5 percent of all mobile sales.
Aircel will sell the 16GB iPhone 4 for 34,500 rupees ($764 USD) or 40,900 rupees ($906 USD) for the larger 32GB version.
Bharti Airtel, the clear market leader in the country, will have similar pricing, and does already offer older models of the iPhone.
In 2011, however, Aircel and others have begun aggressive rollouts of 3G services and smartphone sales are expected to double in 2011 year-over-year.
Weeks after it restored access in the United States and Europe, Sony has said today that it will begin restoring the PSN in Asia beginning on Saturday.
Sony says online gaming and chat will be restored in Japan, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand this week. PSN will be down in South Korea and Hong Kong indefinitely.
The Asian rollout was delayed because officials in Japan and other nations forced Sony to prove that its services were completely secured following the breaches that led to 101 million gamers having their personal info stolen.
As "compensation," Sony is also giving a gift package to gamers in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia just like it has in the NA and EU regions.
Sony noted last week that the breaches will cost the company $171 million.
Just weeks after acquiring the struggling movie rental company Blockbuster, Dish Network has dropped prices across the board for in-store rentals at the 1700 stores that are still open.
Starting today, thousands of films will be just 99 cents per day, matching the price of the popular Redbox kiosks.
Additionally, brand new releases will be $2.99 for the first day, and 99 cents for each day thereafter.
Says the CEO of Blockbuster, Michael Kelly (via THR):
Our customers are seeking a better value - we’ve answered with new pricing and the flexibility of single day rentals. Our new pricing gives our customers the best of both worlds: access to the latest releases – many 28 days before Netflix and Redbox – and the most movies at low prices.
As a special promotion, Dish has started unlimited movie rentals in-store through July 4th. If you rent a new release (priced at $2.99) you can get any other movie (priced $1.99 or less) for free on the first day. You can then return that free film and get another one for free.
According to 01.net, Sony will release the NGP this year in Japan only, with Europe and North America getting the handheld in early 2012.
Furthermore, Sony will have to downgrade some of the console's powerful specs, in order to stay competitive with the Nintendo 3DS' $250 price tag.
01.net gets a slight benefit of the doubt for the report because they leaked the full accurate specs for the NGP two weeks before it was unveiled officially by Sony.
If accurate, Sony will sell the low-end (non-3G) NGP for $250, but with 256MB RAM instead of the 512MB announced. The company may also remove most of the 16GB internal flash memory, meaning there may be a cloud offering or gamers will have to buy external storage.
To make up for cutting the RAM in half, Sony will allegedly reduce "the size of the OS footprint in memory."
Nokia CEO Stephen Elop has said this week that the company will continue to support phones running the Symbian OS until 2016.
Earlier this year, Nokia made a billion dollar pact with Microsoft to turn Windows Phone 7 into its primary smartphone OS, pretty much leaving Symbian for dead.
Says Elop:
We're in a period where the investment in Symbian absolutely continues.
Even as we go through a transition towards our primary smartphone platform, Windows Phone, you will see that continued investment. And I know there's been questions about--so how long does that continue--and we've now been very clear about that, that software updates to Symbian devices are expected until at least 2016. So there's a long history still to be paved for Symbian in the future.
Elop adds that the company will continue all customer service for Symbian customers.
Netflix has updated their Android app this afternoon, adding support for three more devices.
In addition to the Droid Incredible, Nexus One, EVO 4G, T-Mobile G2 and Samsung Nexus S, the app now supports the original Motorola Droid, the LG Revolution and the Casio G'zOne Commando C771, as long as the phones have Android 2.2.
The company also listed a few bug fixes:
-Fixed application failure on startup when phone's embedded storage space is almost full.
-Removed check that prevented attempt to playback on unsupported devices.
While the device check has been removed, reports have come in that the support is still very hit-or-miss on devices that are not officially on the supported list, including the new Thunderbolt.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has said today that profits for the company coming from China is only $1.25 billion per year, about 1/50th of the software giant's overall revenue of $62 billion.
The CEO says that number could jump to $7.5 billion if China had better piracy control.
Speaking to Chinese employees today, Ballmer said "our revenue in China will be about a twentieth of our revenue in the United States," even though the company sells the same amount of PCs in both countries.
Additionally, the CEO says the company makes six times as much per PC sold in India as it does in China, ever since India initiated stricter piracy controls in the country.
Developer CD Projekt has announced today that the official 1.1 update for The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings will strip all DRM that came with the game originally.
Additionally, the patch allows gamers to install and play the game on any amount of computers they want, whereas before it was restricted to 3 machines.
Says the developer:
Our goal is to make our fans and customers happy and to reward them for buying our game and DRM schemes does not support our philosophy as they might create obstacles for users of legally bought copies.
Our approach to countering piracy is to incorporate superior value in the legal version. This means it has to be superior in every respect: less troublesome to use and install, with full support, and with access to additional content and services. So, we felt keeping the DRM would mainly hurt our legitimate users.
This is completely in line with what we said before the release of The Witcher 2. We felt DRM was necessary to prevent the game being pirated and leaked before release. This purpose has been served, so we are pleased to let our users enjoy the full freedom of game usage they deserve.
Google has introduced their "Wallet" automatic mobile phone payment system today, turning NFC-enabled devices into credit cards.
Users with Android devices will be able to pay for groceries or other items by waving their phones in front of NFC readers.
Google, alongside launching their daily deal site Google Offers, says it envisions Android devices eventually being a "personal financial hub" for coupons, loyalty points, payments, receipts and more.
As a way to not scare the credit card firms, Google will not take any share of the fees generated from Wallet payments, instead relying on added revenue from traffic, ads and Google Offers.
Wallet will launch over the summer, with trials starting sooner in NYC and San Francisco. A few of the retailers that will soon accept mobile payments are Macy’s, Subway, Walgreens, Toys “R” Us, Bloomingdale’s and Guess.
As with physical credit cards, users have zero liability if there are fraudulent purchases and users need a PIN number to access the app, meaning the chip can't be accessed by hackers.
There has been overwhelmingly [sic] customer feedback that people want access to open bootloaders on HTC phones. I want you to know that we've listened. Today, I'm confirming we will no longer be locking the bootloaders on our devices. Thanks for your passion, support and patience.
Current HTC phone owners will likely have to stick with waiting for the boys and girls over at XDA to get their devices more open, however.
PayPal and its parent eBay have sued Google and two executives today over trade secret misappropriation.
The trade secrets were related to mobile payment systems.
Osama Bedier and Stephanie Tilenius, two execs formerly of PayPal, helped Google launch their "Wallet" system today. Bedier worked for PayPal for nine years, serving as vice president of platform, mobile and new ventures before moving to Google in January of this year.
Tilenius was VP of e-commerce for eBay until early 2010.
Both are accused of having "misappropriated PayPal trade secrets by disclosing them within Google and to major retailers," says Yahoo.
The suit also claims that PayPal and Google were working together since 2008 on a deal that would make PayPal a payment option for app purchases via the Android Market.
Bedier was the executive in charge of the negotiations with Google at the time.
"At the very point when the companies were negotiating and finalizing the Android-PayPal deal, Bedier was interviewing for a job at Google -- without informing PayPal of this conflicting position," the suit says.
NVIDIA announces YouTube is giving users the ability to view thousands of 3D videos on their NVIDIA 3D Vision PCs and notebooks.
The videos will work with the latest version of the Mozilla Firefox web browser. "We're excited to introduce HTML5 and WebM support to the thousands of 3D videos available on YouTube," said Jonathan Huang, 3D Product Manager at YouTube. "By embracing these open standards, NVIDIA 3D Vision users now have a great way of experiencing YouTube's library of 3D content."
With the growth of 3D camcorders for the consumer market, the amount of content that can be created by consumers and uploaded to sites such as YouTube has risen. YouTube's support of NVIDIA 3D Vision technology extends its existing commitment to 3D, enabling even more consumers and 3D enthusiasts to share their 3D videos online.
"Firefox with 3D Vision creates a stunning and smooth 3D video experience using HTML5 video based on open standards," said Jay Sullivan, VP of Products at Mozilla. "3D Vision from NVIDIA is a great example of the rich, innovative experiences that are being built on top of the speed and graphics power that Firefox delivers to the Web."
Social networking site dismissed claims of "scam artist" again.
Facebook Inc has urged a court to throw out a complaint made by a New York man, claiming he owns a substantial amount of the multi-billion valued social networking giant. The lawsuit is a "brazen and outrageous" fraud, according to a filing made with the U.S. District Court for the Western District of New York.
Paul Ceglia claims that back when Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook founder and CEO, was a student at Harvard University, he entered a contract with him that provides him with a 50 percent stake of Mark's stake.
Facebook and Zuckerberg have dismissed the lawsuit from the very beginning, and have described Mr. Ceglia as "an inveterate scam artist whose misconduct extends across decades and borders."
Prisoners in Chinese labour camps were forced to play online games for hours to make money for the guards.
The practice of excessively playing online games to build up virtual currency (or other virtually valuable assets) is known as "gold farming", and it is particularly rampant in China where estimates put as many as 100,000 gold farmers throughout the region.
Liu Dali, a former prisoner of the Jixi labour camp, used to have to break rocks, dig trenches and other manual hard labour by day, and then was forced at night to play online games to build up virtual credits which the prison guards would then trade for real money.
"Prison bosses made more money forcing inmates to play games than they do forcing people to do manual labour," Liu told the Guardian. "There were 300 prisoners forced to play games. We worked 12-hour shifts in the camp. I heard them say they could earn 5,000-6,000rmb [£470-570] a day. We didn't see any of the money. The computers were never turned off."
Even though playing games excessively is not as physically demanding on the human body as the hard manual labour he was forced to endure, he revealed that there were real consequences for not managing to fill a "quota" for the guards.
Members of the House of Representatives push AT&T chairman for answers on proposed $39 billion buy-out of T-Mobile.
The deal, which would see AT&T become the largest carrier in the United States, has been criticized from all angles because it further reduces the number of wireless carriers. Critics also say that T-Mobile's discount prices in comparison to others might be lost in the merger.
Chairman of AT&T, Randall Stephenson, told the U.S. House of Representatives' subcommittee on intellectual property, competition and the Internet, that the deal is a path to extending the company's reach into rural areas, and other underserved areas in the U.S.
"It's about achieving this with private capital,"he said. "We continue to invest at a very aggressive pace."
If the deal were to go ahead, it would mean that 80 percent of U.S. wireless contract customers would be served by just two providers. To go ahead, it needs the approval of the U.S. Department of Justice (DoJ) and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC). The panel pressing Stephenson for details has no say either way.
A group of Finnish record labels are attempting to get the Pirate Bay BitTorrent website blocked in the country.
The group has filed a petition in court to block access to the controversial BitTorrent tracker, accusing it of providing copyrighted music, movies and other material to Finnish users.
"The development of a legal online market is impossible in Finland if illegal services like The Pirate Bay are freely allowed to continue their operations," said Lauri Rechardt, of the Finnish IFPI branch. The petition asks the courts to force ISP Elisa to block access to the Pirate Bay from subscribers within the country.
This is not the first attempt to block the controversial website in a country, and it wont be the last. The Pirate Bay has survived several raids since it opened initially in 2003, and still remains operation even after its founders were given prison sentences and hefty fines for copyright infringement offenses.
Apple is pushing out a promised update for Mac users to remove and prevent infection of MacDefender variants, as another variant comes out thats harder to avoid.
MacDefender malware, including MacProtector and MacSecurity, were installed by thousands of Mac users who found them in search results targeted by their developers. The scareware works just the same as similar scams work with PCs; presenting fake security scan results and offering to remove the phony malware for a fee.
Some people are thought to have become infected because of the default Safari settings, allowing software to be downloaded and queued for installation.
Now a new variant of MacDefender, picked up by security firms, does not require any user permission to install on a system. Intego is recommending that Mac users disable the Safari feature that allows files deemed "safe" to be installed automatically.
The new MacDefender variant is also spreading the same was as the older ones, by targeting popular Mac-related search results.
Independent label in the UK visits schools to educate kids about the work that goes into making music, and how illegal downloading threatens the whole system.
Shed Records, an independent record label in London, is visiting schools and allowing children to use some of its equipment to put together their own music tracks. The aim is to teach the students how much work goes into making just one track, and how many people have to be paid for their part in the process.
The effort is being backed by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI), which represents the recorded music industry in the UK.
They want the children to understand that it is not just artists who lose out to piracy. "A whole army of people work behind the scenes to bring you new, fresh music," said Paul Shedden, Head of Label at Shed Records.
"Everything from the songwriters through to production, artists, engineers, radio pluggers, PR companies all those people need to get paid. Otherwise they can't continue doing the jobs they love and the music you love will stop coming out."
Currently, the scheme is targeting five schools as a trial, and if successful, the plan is to extend nationally, with other labels around the country providing similar sessions in schools.
Chief Financial Officer confirms that increased R&D costs in Sony's books are largely due to next generation console development.
Masaru Kato, Sony CFO and executive video president, was asked about the increased costs of research and development for the company, following the release of its annual earnings report on Thursday.
"We have a portable NGP to be launched later this year, so we have development expenses to be incurred for this product and for the home equipment,"Kato said.
"The PS3 still has a product life, but this is a platform business, so for the future platform--when we'll be introducing what product I cannot discuss that--but our development work is already under way, so the costs are incurred there."
Nintendo confirmed rumors of an upcoming Wii successor last month, saying the console would be playable at E3 next month. Microsoft also started looking to fill positions for the development of next generation Xbox products in March.
UK websites given one more year to comply with EU cookie laws.
The EU's Privacy and Communications Directive comes into force today, but it is clear that most of Europe is lagging behind its requirements. It mandates that Internet users be offered to give their consent before cookies storing information on their usage are saved and then later retrievable by websites.
In the UK, the government has said it needs more time to find the best solution, favoring light-touch regulation.
"We recognise that some website users have real concerns around online privacy but also recognise that cookies play a key role in the smooth running of the Internet,"said communications minister Ed Vaizey. "But it will take some time for workable technical solutions to be developed, evaluated and rolled out so we have decided that a phased in approach is right."
The UK government has already formed a working group with browser developers to see if a browser-based solution can be found. Internet Explorer 9 and Firefox already offer settings to protect users from services with college and harvest data, and Google is building "Do Not Track" features into Chrome.
Software that would be used for France's 'three strikes' anti-piracy policy found to be tremendously flawed.
Last week, plans to implement a three strikes policy in France that could lead to the disconnection of file sharers caught sharing illegal files were put on hold after it was revealed the company tasked with tracking activity had been hacked.
TMG's server software could then be examined by hackers to understand how it works. The result shows that the software is very insecure, and should cause concerns about TMG's involvement in the three strikes policy.
TMG servers were running a custom administrative program written in Delphi, which didn't require any authentication at all. Basically, anyone could connect to port 8500 and start sending commands directly to the server.
While the commands supported were limited to shutting down, rebooting, start/stop P2P client, software updates and others, they were sufficient to allow hackers to do whatever they wanted with the servers.
For example, the update command connects to an FTP server, retrieves a file and then automatically executes it. Remarkably, it does not have a pre-set FTP server and literally allows for any FTP server to be specified as part of the update command.
Intel CFO reveals firm would consider producing non-Intel silicon chips for selected customers.
Speaking to journalists after an investor event in London, Intel chief financial officer Stacy Smith said a proposal to use the company's manufacturing capacity to produce chips that were not based on Intel processor cores would trigger an in-depth discussion, depending on the specifics.
"There are certain customers that would be interesting to us and certain customers that wouldn't. If Apple or Sony came to us and said: 'I want to do a product that involves your IA (Intel architecture) core and put some of my IP around it,' I wouldn't blink. That would be fantastic business for us."Smith said.
"Then you get into the middle ground of 'I don't want it to be a IA core, I want it to be my own custom designed core,' and then you are only getting the manufacturing margin, and that would be a much more in-depth discussion and analysis."
Architecture developed by Intel is at the core of the vast majority of all PCs in the world, and Intel remains far ahead of its competition in that area, having just announced its new "3D" transistor technology that will let it produce faster chips that consume less energy.
Internet communications giant stops working for thousands of users.
Social networking sites like Twitter lit up with reports today that Skype wouldn't work for users, and the official Skype website went down under heavy traffic from concerned users. The problem affected those on Windows, OS X and Linux systems.
Skype's official blog has reported since that the source of the problem has been identified, and that a fix should be released later today. The speed of the response is much better than a December outage, caused by a software bug, which took the service down for two days.
In the meantime, users can decide to get Skype working again by locating and deleting a file on their systems.
In Windows, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "%appdata%Skype" directory.
In OS X, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "~/Library/Application Support/Skype" (where ~ is your Home folder).
On Linux systems, delete the "shared.xml" file from the "/home/YourLinuxUserName/.Skype" directory.
In all cases, restart Skype after deleting the file and that should fix all connection problems if you do not want to hold on for a fix.
HTC Corporation is expected to bring a new line of tablet PCs to the market before the end of the year.
According to a report from DigiTimes, the first of the devices will enter production in June. The HTC Puccini has been spotted in the wild, and details out so far suggest it is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8660 1.5GHz processor and is based on Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
The device reported features a hybrid touch-screen display with both capacitive and resistive capabilities. A new digital stylus offers users a new way to interact with the tablet device. It also will be 4G-capable and is expected to head to the United States on the back of AT&T's network.
If the details are true, then HTC's upcoming offering would challenge its rivals in terms of power and performance.
However the company has not yet confirmed anything about the Puccini tablet PC.
Danish man in his 20s pays high cost for uploading DVD Screener because he was "bored".
In February of last year, anti-piracy group Antipiratgruppen (APG) carried out a raid on a house in Herning, Denmark. The target of the raid was a man in his last 20s, who was identified as a source uploader of a DVD screener copy of the Anders Matthesen movie "Black Balloon" using the Pirate Bay.
The man, whose username was Icenfire, did not upload much else to Pirate Bay, yet at the time of the raid, the significance of it was played up by APG, with lawyer Maria Fredenslund claiming to have uncovered "massive violations of copyright."
After taking out an injunction to stop Icenfire from continuing any piracy activity, APG said it would review evidence and seek compensation for losses. APG said that Icenfire was targeted because he was the initial uploader, but they they would not "sue him to hell."
A District Court in Herning has now ordered the man to pay 150,000 kroner ($28,200) to compensate for losses due to the activity, and an additional 40,000 kroner ($7,500) in legal fees.
"It is a very important decision because it establishes that it is a serious violation of the law to be the first to make illegal material freely available to other users,"said Fredenslund in response to the fine.
An independent researcher has demonstrated a flaw in Internet Explorer that he says can be used to steal access credentials to Facebook, Twitter and hoards of other sites.
He calls the technique "cookiejacking", as it relies on the cookie information stored by the web browser to keep users access credentials and other information for certain websites. Depending on many conditions, stealing cookie credentials (which is by no means a new attack method) could allow a hacker to access the account of a victim on a certain website.
In this case, the Italian researcher, Rosario Valotta, finds that to exploit the flaw, you need to persuade a victim to click an item in the browser, drag it and then drop it somewhere. While it sounds like a difficult task, Valotta put it to test with his Facebook account with surprising results.
He built a puzzle which allows a user to use their pointer to undress a photo of an attractive woman. The drag/drop motion needed by the puzzle is enough to exploit the flaw in IE.
"I published this game online on FaceBook and in less than three days, more than 80 cookies were sent to my server,"he said. "And I've only got 150 friends."
Two-day forum in Paris highlights rift in philosophy between tech giants and policy makers.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, and Google Inc. Chairman Eric Schmidt used the e-G8 forum in Paris to warn governments to be very careful when it comes to regulations and restrictions imposed on the Internet.
Zuckerberg received a warm reception at e-G8, with comments about how Facebook was used as a tool in the creation and rise of democracy movements in the Arab world. "People tell me on the one hand 'it's great you played such a big role in the Arab spring, but it's also kind of scary because you enable all this sharing and collect information on people',"Zuckerberg said.
"But it's hard to have one without the other .... You can't isolate some things you like about the Internet and control other things that you don't."
Eric Schmidt had also put his views forward on a number of occasions. He warned that technology moves forward faster than any government, and so it would be unwise to legislate quickly without understanding the possible consequences of the actions.
Movie and video games rental service confirms the acquisition of the digital distribution service.
GameFly officially confirmed that it has acquired Direct2Drive, but did not offer up any financial details of the deal with IGN. News Corporation (IGN owner) will maintain a minority stake in GameFly and will have a representative on the company board.
However, News Corp (or IGN) will not play any direct part in the future running of GameFly or Direct2Drive. Currently, Direct2Drive offers 3,000 games for PC and Mac users.
"We're very excited to bring the D2D team on board at GameFly and expand our ability to deliver games to consumers,"said GameFly CEO David Hodess.
"Only GameFly can offer a complete library of physical and digital games for the PC, Mac and consoles in one place."
BitTorrent remains #1 in the United States for peak upstream traffic, with 52.01 percent, but Netflix again tops the Downstream chart with 29.70 percent (Downstream traffic is great than upstream by about 4:1).
In regions where there are very few legal services, P2P services dominate the charts. In Latin America, for instance, the Ares Galaxy file sharing network accounts for 15.48 percent of peak-time traffic just behind HTTP.
Netflix is helped by the nature of its relatively inexpensive bundles, and a broad number of platforms on which subscribers can view content streamed directly from Netflix.
Skype founder Niklas Zennstrom predicts that Microsoft will capitalize on its $8.5 billion acquisition of the service.
"Skype's full potential hasn't been realized yet," he said in an interview at the e-G8 forum underway in Paris. He suggests that Microsoft could push Skype into higher places if they expand it more into the mobile territory and if they make dramatic improvements to the quality of video calling on the Internet.
"I think that Microsoft has a huge opportunity to integrate it into a lot of their different services,"Zennstrom said. "Of course they have so many different assets. If they do a good job integrating Skype, the company can grow even more."
Zennstrom will sell all of his shares in Skype once the Microsoft deal closes, and will no longer retain a management role at the company which he founded with Janus Friis in 2003. Skype has grown a lot since then, and touts 145 million users per month. eBay also owned Skype from 2005 until a consortium (of which Zennstrom was a part) bought it back in in 2009.
Microsoft can combine Skype services with many of its own existing products and services. One possibility is integrating it to the popular Outlook application so to provide video conferencing for business users. It will likely use Skype to boost its position in the mobile space however, after making several moves in the territory recently, such as partnering with Nokia.
Twitter will alert users that they are being pursued if they are forced to hand over user information to authorities.
Tony Wang, who heads up Twitter's European operations, commented when asked about an online privacy dispute that is beginning to boil over in the UK. "Platforms should have responsibility not to defend the user, but to protect that user's right to defend him or herself,"said Wang.
On several occasions, information has shown up on Twitter that could be found to violate the law in the UK. This often includes personal information about people in the public eye, such as celebrities and athletes.
The case that has brought the questionable legality of some tweets to the front pages started with a so called superinjunction granted to a Premier League footballer when it became clear that the mainstream media was throwing around a story alleging he had an affair.
When a superinjunction of this nature is issued, the mainstream media (newspapers and their websites, television news stations etc.) generally honor it. However, it becomes blurry when you consider that a UK citizen can use Twitter to publish that information quite easily, and it can quickly spread across the site.
YouTube has just turned six years old, and has more milestones to report to the world on its relentless growth.
Founded in 2005, YouTube's ease of use and potential has attracted hundreds of millions of people to the service. The idea that a video in almost any format could be uploaded by the user, and then converted and provided on its own YouTube page (and could be embedded anywhere else) attracted drones of people to the service.
That growth only seems to accelerate for YouTube, which is now reporting that over 48 hours of video is uploaded to the site every single minute. So in just one minute, two whole days of video content has been added to YouTube's incredibly vast digital vaults.
To compare that to last year, it represents a 100% increase in the amount of content being uploaded at any given time.
All of that content needs viewers to have any purpose on the video sharing giant, and YouTube is now reporting that it delivers 3 billion video views every single day.
Now YouTube is challenging its users to keep up the momentum , so that it can one day in the near future reach 72 hours of video footage per minute, and 4 billion daily views. To help this, the service is constantly making improvements to aid content creators and to provide its service on as many platforms as possible.
According to Eurogamer, Microsoft is set to announce full stereoscopic 3D features for the Xbox 360 games console very soon.
The report says that the support works exactly like the PlayStation 3's 3D effects, providing HDMI stereoscopic 3D in the 1280x1470 twin 720p framebuffer configuration, giving a 720p image per eye.
"They'd be mad not to do it, is all I can say,"said Eurogamer's source, who is said to be close to continued Xbox 360 development. "The machine is not only very capable, it's more capable than the PlayStation 3 of doing stereo, assuming you don't have one of the old crappy ones with the composite leads... assuming you have a HDMI Xbox."
The source went on to hint that the announcement will be made at E3 this year. "Microsoft is going to have to go on stage to say something, aren't they?"
The PS3 officially got stereoscopic 3D functionality last June bia a firmware update, and is still the only console to offer it as a feature. Some titles for the Xbox 360 do tout the effect, but render using 3D techniques based on the principle of two distinct images crammed into one 720p framebuffer.
The widely reported mass suing of sharers of the Oscar-winning Hurt Locker movie has bloated to include 24,583 file sharers.
This new number puts it on top of the list for the most number of potential defendants in a file sharing case, just ahead of the lawsuit against sharers of the "Expendables" movie, which initially took aim at 23,322 sharers. Both lawsuits are being managed by Washington, DC-based law firm Dunlap, Grubb and Weaver.
Filed last year, the Hurt Locker lawsuit originally targeted about 5,000 file sharers, but has jumped to almost 25,000 since. Of the 24,583 people, 10,532 subscribe to Comcast services, 5,239 to Verizon, 2,699 to Charter and 1,750 to Time Warner.
This mammoth mass-lawsuit won't be carried out quickly however, as both Charter and Verizon have only agreed to provide between 100 and 150 subscriber identities per months, whereas Comcast hasn't agreed to hand over any details at all yet.
TorrentFreak is hosting documents that list all targeted IP addresses in the Hurt Locker case.
According to reports, Nvidia's Project Denver CPU will feature x86 hardware emulation.
Just like China's Loongson processors, the emulation will be achieved by use of an extra hardware layer, though it will come with a speed penalty of between 15% and 20% (still better than the Loongson's 30 percent penalty). Nvidia is expected to launch the CPU around 2013-2014.
Adding the x86 emulation to the package will help the graphics chip maker to better compete with Intel Corporation and Advanced Micro Devices.
Project Denver is expected to launch around the same time as Nvidia's Maxwell GPU architecture, both of which could be interlinked to provide a very high-performance computing platform to drive the next generation of computers.
Its design allows it to be used for products that range from Desktop PCs right up to high-resource supercomputers.
To celebrate the annual Towel Day we here at AfterDawn decided to give away a bunch of AfterDawn towels. How clever!
In order to enter the drawing, just comment on this article, like it on Facebook or Tweet about it. If you include an appropriately towel-themed picture of yourself, your chances to win will increase fortytwofold!
Apple has decided to acknowledge the Mac Defender malware variants and says it will help fight the FakeAV software through an update.
Recently, Mac users started reporting problems with several fake security products. The Mac Defender family of malware products works the same as countless FakeAV/scareware products that target Windows users. It will alert the user of the system to fake malware results and then try to scam a credit card number to clean the system.
At first, Apple seemed to completely ignore the malware to the disapproval of many users. The company even reportedly told its AppleCare and retail staff not to acknowledge it to customers and strangely, not to remove it from users' computers.
Now Apple seems to have had a change of heart, posting an online support document with removal instructions and promising an update for Macs that will attempt to prevent future infection.
"A recent phishing scam has targeted Mac users by redirecting them from legitimate websites to fake websites which tell them that their computer is infected with a virus,"Apple wrote in its support document. "In the coming days, Apple will deliver a Mac OS X software update that will automatically find and remove Mac Defender malware and its known variants. The update will also help protect users by providing an explicit warning if they download this malware."
A security researcher has blasted Siemens for comments made by the company downplaying security vulnerabilities in its industrial control systems.
Dillon Beresford wrote that the German company was downplaying the threat of findings he made while testing a Siemens programmable logic controller (PLC). "The vulnerabilities are far reaching and affect every industrialized nation across the globe," he wrote in an e-mail posted to a public security list.
"This is a very serious issue. As an independent security researcher and professional security analyst, my obligation is not to Siemens but to their consumers."
Siemens PLC equipment is used in all sectors of industry, being found at oil refineries, manufacturing plants and waste treatment facilities. Their security has been called into question following the Stuxnet discovery and analysis, which apparently targeted Siemens equipment used as part of Iran's nuclear program.
Beresford discovered several security bugs with a Siemens PLC he got through his employer, NSS Labs. He took issue with comments of Siemens representatives made to the media, which claimed the bugs were discovered "under special lab conditions with unlimited access to protocols and controllers," and that the vulnerabilities would be difficult for hackers to exploit.
Everything Everywhere (partnership of T-Mobile and Orange) and BT are looking for volunteers to test new high-speed broadband in the UK.
Volunteers in South Newquay, Cornwall, will take part in the trial from September to December. The object is to see whether the LTE 4G network can provide a high-speed broadband service in rural areas where it would be too expensive to lay down new high-speed lines.
The network will provide speeds up to 100Mbit or faster to the volunteers. Some of them will be given wireless rotuers capable of connecting to the 4G network and providing Internet throughout a house, while others will be asked to test wireless dongles.
"Instead of building two networks, we're trying to do it with one," explained Emin Gurdeneli, VP of network services at Everything Everywhere.
"The customer will enjoy a broadband service at their premises, at their home etc, as if they had acquired it in the usual way. What will be different is our delivery mechanism."
4G technology is expected to roll out properly in the UK by 2014, with networks set to bid on the 4G spectrum early next year. For the trial, BT and Everything Everywhere have been granted part of the 800Mhz spectrum, which is currently used for analogue television, which is in the process of being phased out in the UK.
TiVo Inc. has posted a quarterly profit following a legal settlement over patent infringement that provided the DVR maker with a windfall of cash.
The company agreed a settlement with Dish Network Corp and Echostar Corp in a patent dispute that stretches back several years related to DVR technology. It posted a profit of $139 million for the quarter, compared to a $14.2 million loss in the same period a year before.
A $175.7 million gain pushed the company's books into the black for now even as revenue fell by 25 percent to $45.8 million during the quarter.
The settlement agreement called for an initial payment of $300 million and a following $200 million to be paid in six installments before 2017. Both Dish and Echostar are controlled by Charlie Ergen.
Reuters cites sources in reporting that Google will unveil its mobile payments service on Thursday.
The Internet giant has teamed up with Mastercard Inc. and Citigroup Inc. to develop a system where users of some Android phones can use them to pay for purchases instead of using a credit card. It has signed up partners including Macy's, American Eagle Outfitters and Subway.
The Wall Street Journal reported on the effort back in March, but was unsure whether the service would initially be limited to New York as speculated, or go nationwide.
Google has invited reporters to an event on Thursday where a Reuters source confirms it will take the wraps off the mobile payment service, which will work initially with phones from Sprint Nextel Corp running Android.
While similar NFC payment technology is in use in Asia, some Nordic countries and elsewhere around the world to pay for goods and services, it has been slow to come to the United States. This has been due to a combination of bickering within the industry over the technology, regulatory hurdles and concerns that consumers would ignore it.
Rumors suggest that Microsoft's upcoming Windows iteration could show up at the D: AllThingsDigital conference next week.
Microsoft is expected to launch Windows 8 for Desktop and Notebook PCs sometime around the end of 2012, going by the company's Windows release patterns. However, the Redmond-based software giant is expected to unveil a version of Windows 8 for tablet PCs and smartphones this year.
The company committed to supporting ARM microprocessors in Windows 8, and to provide a new interface designed specifically for multi-touch input. It was reported that Microsoft would publicly show off Windows 8 for tablets sometime before the end of June this year, with an eye on releasing it on devices by years' end.
Steven Sinofsky, President of Windows and Windows Live Division at Microsoft, has had an appearance confirmed for next week's conference and the odds are on that Windows 8 will get its first proper public demonstration at it.
Eric Schmidt, executive chairman at Google Inc., has said proposed anti-piracy blocks on websites such as The Pirate Bay would be a disaster for free speech in Western countries.
Speaking at Google's "Big Tent" conference in London, he said the Internet giant would be prepared to fight against any laws that mandate blocking access to websites deemed to be hosting pirated content. Schmidt feels that such a move would set a disastrous precedent around the world.
"I would be very, very careful if I were a government about arbitrarily implementing simple solutions to complex problems,"he said.
"So, 'let's whack off the DNS'. Okay, that seems like an appealing solution but it sets a very bad precedent because now another country will say 'I don't like free speech so I'll whack off all those DNSs' – that country would be China."
In the UK, the Digital Economy Act mandates such piracy blocking mechanisms be put in place. "It doesn't seem right. I would be very, very careful about that stuff. If the UK government do it the wrong way it could have disastrous precedent setting in other areas," Schmidt said.
Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has said that kids under 13 years of age should be able to use the social networking service.
As things stand, the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (1998) determines that children under the age of 13 should not be able to use such services for their own protection. Zuckerberg disagrees with the law and has said he would be willing to fight it.
"That will be a fight we take on at some point,"he said. "My philosophy is that for education you need to start at a really, really young age. Because of the legal restrictions we haven't even begun this learning process. If they're lifted then we'd start to learn what works."
Speaking at a summit on innovation in California schools, Zuckerberg said finding ways to improve education was one of his passions.
While critics have concerns about children's privacy and cyberbullying as they upload content to sites like Facebook, it is becoming increasingly apparent that implementing effective age restriction mechanisms on websites is not easy.
Consumer Reports estimated that 7.5 million kids under the age of 13 are regularly using Facebook.
The PlayStation network will remain partially down until 8pm today, says Sony, as the company works on account access maintenance.
While you may have some issues getting into your account, online gaming will still be available.
Says Sony of the maintenance:
During this time, registration and Account Management will be inaccessible, including the password reset process. While some users may experience difficulty signing in to PSN, the majority of consumers will be able to play online as well as sign in to external sites that require PSN authentication.
The company also denied rumors that the PlayStation Store would be restored today, saying instead that "we're still targeting restoration of all services by the end of this month."
Yahoo has said it will be rolling out a beta of its latest Yahoo Mail over the coming weeks, dubbing the service as the "best Yahoo Mail ever."
The update will hit Yahoo's 277 million free email users, and promises to be "faster, safer, easier to use, and offers a seamless experience across PC, mobile and tablet devices."
Furthermore, the company says it will offer unlimited storage. Rival Gmail offers 7.6GB, which is the most of the free offerings, currently.
Hotmail/Live has the biggest share of the market, at 327 million users, followed by Yahoo and Gmail at 220 million users. Gmail and Yahoo, however, have been chipping away at Hotmail for years now.
Says Blake Irving, Yahoo chief product officer:
Yahoo's vision for online communications brings together all the tools that people use to connect -- e-mail, chat, SMS, and social updates -- and makes it easier for them to share content and engage in conversations with the people that matter most to them.We're delivering on this strategy with the latest version of Yahoo Mail, providing our hundreds of millions of users worldwide with a fun, engaging and constantly connected experience across desktop, mobile and tablet devices that keeps the conversation going -- anytime, anywhere.
Sony has confirmed another security breach today, with a hacker taking info on 8500 accounts from a Sony Music Entertainment Greece site where music fans can subscribe to newsletters.
The attack occurred on Sunday, the same day that security firm Sophos made it public that the sites were vulnerable.
Info stolen included usernames, passwords, email addresses and phone numbers. Because the site did not require credit card numbers, that info was fortunately not stolen.
Sony has been hit with at least 5 attacks over the last month, with 101 million users having their personal info stolen by hackers. The PSN was down for three weeks following the first attack on April 17th.
Microsoft is set to appeal an EU antitrust fine that it calls "excessive" and "undeserved."
The 900 million euro fine, imposed in 2008, was a record at the time.
Microsoft was accused of failing to provide info that would let products better run on Windows.
Since the decision, Microsoft was attacked by the EU again, but decided to settle. Users are now given the choice to choose their own browser with all new Windows computers instead of using Internet Explorer right out of the box.
This case would not have arisen if the Commission had been as explicit with respect to rates which it wanted Microsoft to charge as it had been with all other terms of licensing proposed by Microsoft.
The General Court should give its ruling on the appeal within 12 months.
In 2008, iTunes accidentally leaked the Raconteurs' Consolers of the Lonely Back and in 2009, the Norwegian version of the store leaked Kelly Clarkson's "All I Ever Wanted" one month early.
Opera has released the Mini 6 mobile browser for iOS today.
The new browser is optimized for the iPad, and features up to 90 percent "compression of data traffic" which should increase speed for end users as well as decreased data costs.
Additionally, the new iOS version includes "panning and zooming in one motion," share buttons to send content to email, social networking sites and more, and a fully redesigned skin and menus.
Says CEO Lars Boilesen:
The Opera Mini browser has always kicked up the tempo when downloading pages; now the browsing flows along to a smooth, easy beat.
In April 2010, before the iPad's launch, Opera released Mini 5, which saw 1.2 million downloads in its first day.
Microsoft has unveiled Windows Phone 7.1 "Mango" today, with 500 new features.
The new firmware update will bring better social networking integration, a full search revamp, app upgrades, new communications updates and many more features.
For social networking, Mango will let users import their Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn contacts with one-click. The native Facebook app will also get revamped, including face detection software and "check-ins."
The update will allow WP7 owners to create groups of contacts as live tiles which you can then "see the latest status updates and quickly send a text, email or IM to the whole group, right from the start screen."
Updating the search, user can activate visual search using the phone's camera, voice search or music search. You can also narrow down results with Local Scouts which "provides location-specific results that highlight important information about establishments and events in your immediate area. Clicking through on any link brings up general information as well as reviews gleaned from popular user-generated sites."
Apple has approved the 500,000th app to the iOS App Store today, another large milestone for the ever growing store.
By comparison, the Android Market has just over 200,000 apps, Nokia's now defunct Ovi Store had 50,000 and BlackBerry World and Windows Phone 7 Marketplace both have under 25,000.
It is important to note that active apps are just about 400,000 due to replacements and removals, however.
Thanks to http://www.facebook.com/500kapps, a joint effort by Chomp, 148apps and Chillingo, we have an awesome infographic about the milestone, available here:
Barnes & Noble has unveiled its latest e-reader today at a special launch event.
The device will be smaller (about the size of a paperback book) and weigh just 7.5 ounces.
Differentiating itself from the more popular Kindle readers and its own predecessors, the new Nook will have two months of battery life and a 6-inch touchscreen Pearl display with e-ink.
The latest Kindles have 1 month battery life, and do not feature touchscreens. The Apple iPad and the company's own Nook Color feature LCD screens and therefore have battery life of under 12 hours.
B&N's latest Nook will also 2GB built-in storage (enough for thousands of books), a MicroSD expansion slot, and Wi-Fi. The device will run on an Android 2.1 variant.
The Nook is up for pre-order and will start shipping on June 10th for $139.
B&N has also dropped the MSRP of the original Wi-Fi Nook to $119 and 3G Nook to $169.
Twitter has completed their acquisition of TweetDeck, one of the most popular clients for the microblogging service.
The purchase ended for just over $40 million in cash and stock with the closing papers signed today.
TweetDeck had been previously linked to UberMedia, who was looking to purchase the client for $30 million and had an exclusive negotiating window that ran out. Uber has the top Twitter app for BlackBerry (UberSocial) and the "highest rated" Twitter app for Android, Twidroyd and has been allegedly cooking up a plan for a "Twitter killing" service.
As arguably the best Twitter client around (and accounting for 13 percent of all tweets sent on a daily basis), TweetDeck is a hot commodity for the microblogging platform and remains the top app for "power users," those who tweet many times per day from many different devices.
TweetDeck also allows users to connect their LinkedIn and Facebook platforms to one app.
Sony has given a revised forecast for their fiscal year today, adding a large loss resulting from the earthquake and tsunami tragedy in Japan and the security breach of the PlayStation Network.
The company says the PSN breach will cost Sony $171.1 million and the earthquake will cost them a devastating $1.8 billion.
PSN costs were mainly attributed to the cost of the free 1-year of ID theft protection the company is offering all affected, as well as the free games/PlayStation Plus and customer support costs.
So far, we have not received any confirmed reports of customer identity theft issues, nor confirmed any misuse of credit cards from the cyber-attack. Those are key variables, and if that changes, the costs could change.
In addition, in connection with the data breach, class action lawsuits have been filed against Sony and certain of its subsidiaries and regulatory inquiries have begun; however, those are all at a preliminary stage, so we are not able to include the possible outcome of any of them in our results forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2012 at this moment.
The first Nokias based on Windows Phone will have the Qualcomm chipset.
Our aim is to build a vibrant ecosystem around Nokia and the Windows Phone OS and with that intent we are naturally continuing discussions with a number of chipset suppliers for our future product portfolio.
Other possible suppliers are ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments.
China Telecom Chairman Wang Xiaochu has confirmed this weekend that his company is actively speaking with Apple in an effort to bring a CDMA iPhone to China.
Rival China Unicom, which is the largest carrier in the nation, has had an exclusive contract with Apple but that deal expires this year.
Earlier this week, Liberty Media offered $17 per share, or $1 billion for giant book retailer Barnes & Noble.
Shares of the company, however, jumped to $18.33 by the close on Friday, as Wall Streets expects a competing bid.
Furthermore, many believe the bid undervalues the company, which has been struggling for years now.
Liberty is bidding for the company in an effort to continue the strong sales and growth of the Nook e-reader and Nook Color e-reader/tablet.
Finally, the offer is conditional on founder and current Chairman Leonard Riggio keeping a stake in his company and staying involved in running the company.
Barnes & Noble has around 30 percent of the e-book market, has 720 superstores, and has been up for sale since August.
I see "Failed to fetch license for [movie title] (error 49)” when I try to download a movie.
You'll receive this "Error 49" message if you attempt to play a movie on a rooted device. Rooted devices are currently unsupported due to requirements related to copyright protection.
For now, the issue is not widespread as the rentals are only available to Android 3.1 Honeycomb users (less than 1 percent of all devices) but it will become a bigger issue when the rentals make their way to Android 2.2 devices in the coming summer months.
Playboy has gone around Apple's "no nudity" App store stipulations and made its full archive of magazines available for iPad users, via the i.playboy.com site and not through the store.
The site will cost $8 per month, or $60 per year, or a highly discounted $100 for 2 years.
In early January, founder Hugh Hefner tweeted that the archive would be available online by March, so it appears the plans saw unforeseen delays.
In addition to the standard photos of naked women, the web pages will also include exclusive videos and content recommendations from a group of "high-profile panel of celebrated individuals from art, design, fashion, media and technology."
According to a new BBC documentary called "Secrets of Superbrands," MRIs of Apple "fanboys" and people who consider themselves "very religious" were very similar, with the same part of the brain being lit up for both.
In short, Apple "fanboys" and religious zealots have the same cranial reactions.
Furthermore, the documentary goes as far as to compare Apple Stores to cathedrals:
Apple stores often feature stone or other types of austere, simple flooring like a church with products mounted on pedestals like individual altars.
Apple Store launches can also be like religious experiences (via BI):
The scenes I witnessed at the opening of the new Apple store in London's Covent Garden were more like an evangelical prayer meeting than a chance to buy a phone or a laptop.
Inside the store, glassy-eyed staff were whipped up into a frenzy of excitement, jumping up and down, clapping and shouting. When the doors finally opened, they hysterically "high-fived" and cheered hundreds of delirious customers flooding in through the doors for hours on end.
The engineer says that at any given time, 30 percent of all SanDisk memory cards being used in the world are fakes.
Most of the cards are no-name brands being sold with SanDisk stickers and packaging.
Many of the cards also offer worse performance than the buyer would assume, for example, Class 4 SD cards being sold as Class 10 cards.
Additionally, a separate report states that eBay is a lead marketplace for the counterfeit goods, with around 70 percent of all memory cards being sold on the auction site being seen as fake or rebranded.
Google has confirmed that it will stop digitizing old newspapers, blaming publishers who were looking to make money off the archives instead of just leaving them free online like Google wanted.
All old digital articles will be found at news.google.com/archivesearch but the collection will not grow starting today.
Says Google of the move:
We work closely with newspaper partners on a number of initiatives, and as part of the Google News Archives digitization program we collaborated to make older newspapers accessible and searchable online.
"We don't plan to introduce any further features or functionality to the Google News Archives, and we are no longer accepting new microfilm or digital files for processing.
There are currently 3.5 million issues available in the collection, from 2000 different newspapers.
A March 23rd, 1752 edition of the Halifax Gazette in Nova Scotia is the oldest issue available.
In April, the MPAA surprised no one by filing a copyright infringement suit against streaming site Zediva, claiming the site does not have proper licenses from the studios.
Zediva launched in January and has become very popular because it streams new releases and does not have delay windows like Netflix and Redbox do for physical discs.
The company "rents" users a DVD player and DVD and allows them to control it via online streaming, for the cheap price of $2.
Today, Zediva has countersued the MPAA whilst demanding a judge sanction.
Zediva has claimed it does not need licenses because it is just "like" a brick-and-mortar rental company. When a customer rents a DVD, it takes it out of circulation, and does not create any digital copies.
The only difference between watching a rented DVD on the DVD player in one’s living room and watching a rented DVD using Zediva is that rather than connecting to the DVD player with a short cable, Zediva lets users connect to the DVD player over the internet.
According to Bloomberg, Apple is all set to launch their iTunes cloud service, having secured licensing agreements with three of the Big 4 labels.
Apple has reached agreements with EMI, Warner Music Group and Sony Music and is close to a deal with Universal Music Group, the largest label in the world.
The new cloud offering would let users save their music on Apple's servers and access it from their iOS devices, wherever they have Internet.
Differentiating the iCloud service from rival offerings by Amazon and Google, is the fact that about 10 to 20 seconds of the music will be saved internally to your device, meaning no delay at all when starting streaming.
Apple, although unconfirmed, may be ready to launch the service at their developer's conference, starting on June 6th.
It appears that Verizon will finally go through with killing off their smartphone unlimited data plans, moving to a tiered structure like rival AT&T's.
Additionally, the carrier will start "Family Data Plans," which will let families on the same plan share data for a cheaper price just like they do with voice minutes and texts.
I think it's safe to assume that at some point you are going to have mega-plans (for data) and people are going to share that mega-plan based on the number of devices within their family. That's just a logical progression.
AT&T's plans are currently $15 for 200MB and $25 for 2GB.
Research firm Gartner has spelled out Android and Apple's dominance in the global smartphone market, revealing the Q1 sales figures today.
Android moved to 36 percent share from 9.6 percent in the Q1 2010, with sales increasing to 36 million from 5 million year-over-year (YoY).
Symbian, the now defunct smartphone OS, fell from 44.2 percent share to 27.4 percent, even though sales increased to 27.6 million from 24.1 million. Symbian should eventually fall to 0 as Symbian has been left for dead by Nokia as they move on to Windows Phone 7.
Apple's iOS saw 16.9 million sales and 16.8 percent share, up from 15.3 percent share and 8.4 million sales.
RIM, despite growth for its BlackBerry smartphones, saw market share collapse to 12.9 percent from 19.7 percent. Sales increased to 13 million from 10.75 million.
Microsoft saw a weak introduction for its Windows Phone 7 line and market share fell to 3.6 percent from 6.8 percent. Sales saw a minor fall, from 3.7 million to 3.66 million.
Research firm Gartner has reported today that Nokia's market share continues its multi-year decline, falling to 25.1 percent, its lowest reading since 1997.
In the Q1 2010, Nokia's share was 30.6 percent, so the drop was very steep.
Samsung held its second spot, at 16.1 percent, followed by LG at 5.6 percent.
Apple moved to 3.9 percent share, the only manufacturer in the top 5 to see a gain year-over-year.
Overall, mobile phone sales were up 19 percent YoY, and smartphone sales amounted to 23.6 percent of all phones sold.
Starting on May 22nd, Microsoft will begin offering free Xbox 360 consoles to students who purchase a new Windows 7 PC with a price tag over $700.
Says the company:
You can buy any kind of PC, although we recommend a few specifically for students like the HP Pavillion DM4 a great entertainment system on the go, the Dell Inspiron 14r a stylish powerful 14” PC, and the Samsung Series 9 a computer that has been described as looking like it is about to rocket off the runway. Ask Ben the PC guy, he has one! If you are still trying to figure out what might be the best option for you, you can use the PC Scout, an interactive app available on windows.com that helps you find a perfect match.
If you have a .edu email address you can purchase your new PC through one of our participating retailers including Dell.com, HP.com or Microsoft Store. If you don't have a .edu address or prefer to walk into a store, touch the PCs and test their features, bring your Student ID into Best Buy or any Microsoft Store retail location Check with your chosen retailer for additional specifics they may have in place.
Thanks to the Hargreaves report, which reviews UK copyright law, it appears that a few of the more archaic points of the laws will be revised for the digital age.
One such law makes it illegal for UK residents to rip DVDs, CDs and Blu-rays to your PC, even if you are simply trying to rip some MP3s from a CD to place it on your media player.
While there has been very little enforcement of the law in history, software for ripping discs is illegal in the UK. Hargreaves says this puts UK at an unfair economic position against other countries, including the US.
My recommendations set out how the intellectual property framework can promote innovation and economic growth in the UK economy.
They are designed to enhance the economic potential of the UK's creative industries and to ensure that the emergence of high technology businesses, especially smaller businesses, in other sectors are not impeded by our IP laws.
Additionally, the report wants the rules relaxed on parodies and reworkings of original content, which should help users who want to upload covers and other videos to YouTube.
LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, has seen its stock jump as high as 170 percent in its first day of trading, seeing a peak of $122.70 per share.
The company's IPO price was $45 per share and the stock opened at over $80 per share at 9:30 this morning.
As of writing, the stock is trading at $102, good for 125 percent gain.
The company raised $353 million in the deal, selling 8 percent of its shares. The company was valued at $4.3 billion, which was clearly a huge undersell by the underwriting banks.
If anything is clear from today's action is that a social networking bubble has just begun, with Facebook, Groupon, Zynga and other companies expected to IPO in the next couple of years.
LinkedIn currently has 102 million users, slowing revenue growth from ads and subscriptions, and has never turned a profit.
Following in the footsteps of other ISPs like Comcast, AT&T began its broadband bandwidth caps earlier this month, giving subscribers "generous" caps of 150-250GB, depending on your subscription package.
The company claimed that only 2 percent of all users ever go over 250GB, so the cap will hardly affect anyone.
New data from Netflix (via DSL) makes it abundantly clear that those caps may be "generous" now but they will not be in the very near future.
Netflix now accounts for 30% of peak bandwidth usage in the U.S., with the average user streaming 40GB of movies and TV shows per month.
That number explodes to 80GB per month for users that stream through their Xbox 360 console. Overall, one quarter of all Netflix traffic comes through the 360, second only to the PlayStation 3, which accounts for almost 31 percent.
How long until these console users, who likely also game online occasionally, download DLC and possibly download movies from iTunesHD reach their caps?
According to Microsoft, one in every fourteen downloads is malware, and that Internet Explorer 8 and 9 blocks up to 5 million attacks, daily.
The figures come alongside a post boasting of the Application Reputation mechanism in Internet Explorer 9.
AR uses URL-based tactics to see if the site uses malware, and also check links and files.
Says Jeb Haber, the program manager lead for SmartScreen says:
Using reputation helps protect users from newly released malware programs - pretending to be legitimate software programs - that are not yet detected by existing defense mechanisms.
Reputation also enables IE9 to remove unnecessary warnings for downloads with an established positive reputation. Both publishers and individual applications build reputation. For example, a digitally signed application from a well-known publisher that has been widely downloaded has a better reputation than an unsigned application that has not yet been downloaded widely and has just been posted on a newly created Web site.
Google has announced today that it is currently fixing an Android security flaw that was brought to the public's attention last week by German researchers.
The group explained on Friday that some Google account authentication tokens were apparently being sent OTA unencrypted, leaving users with their data freely available if they were on public Wi-Fi.
Hackers using simple software could steal account info for Google Calendar, Contacts and Picasa accounts.
Users with Android 2.3.4 are free of the issue, but 98.4 percent of Android devices run Android 2.3.3 or lower, making the fix useless for the vast majority.
Google has begun rolling out the server-side patch this week for Android 1.5 - 2.3.3, and it will be completed by the end of the week.
Today we're starting to roll out a fix which addresses a potential security flaw that could, under certain circumstances, allow a third party access to data available in calendar and contacts. This fix requires no action from users and will roll out globally over the next few days.
We were quite happy to see last week that Apple has submitted a new requirement to (European telecoms standards body) ETSI for a smaller SIM form factor -- smaller than the one that goes in iPhone 4 and iPad.
They have done that through the standardization route, through ETSI, with the sponsorship of some major mobile operators, Orange being one of them.
Processing would take some time, but thew first devices using those SIM cards could be out next year.
Intel has confirmed today that it will introduce over 10 new tablet running its own chips, trying to steal some market share from mobile architecture giant ARM Holdings.
The company will show off the designs at the Computex computer trade show which starts on May 31st.
Asus and other companies are expected to unveil tablets at the event, as well.
Overall, 35 Intel chip-based tablets are expected to ship throughout the year.
Intel is launching their "Oak Trail" chips soon, boasting low power consumption.
Within three days of the company restoring the PSN after over 3 weeks of downtime, Sony has had to take down its PSN web logins, thanks to a password exploit.
Users trying to sign in via Playstation.com, the PlayStation forums, PlayStation Blog, Qriocity.com or the Music Unlimited are greeted with the following message:
The server is currently down for maintenance. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please try again later.
Unfortunately this also means that those who are still trying to change their password ... via Playstation.com or Qriocity.com will be unable to do so for the time being. This is due to essential maintenance and at present it is unclear how long this will take. In the meantime you will still be able to sign into PSN via your PlayStation 3 and PSP devices to connect to game services and view Trophy/Friends information.
Verizon will bring the Xperia Play smartphone to the U.S. next week, May 26th.
Sony's "PlayStation Phone" is an Android device that has slide-out gaming controls.
The device has been available in Europe for two months now but the American launch kept getting delayed.
Sony's smartphone will come pre-loaded with Madden NFL 11, Bruce Lee Dragon Warrior, Asphalt 6: Adrenaline, The Sims 3, Star Battalion, Crash Bandicoot, and Tetris.
The smartphone will cost $200 with 2-year contract.
We've always been called stupidly ambitious ... we make very big games.
It's the biggest map that we've done and that Rockstar have done, so there's a lot of detail in there, and also a lot of actor's performances - 21 hours worth.
As new buyers will see, the team was able to use enhanced compression tech, bringing the game to a robust three DVDs.
It was a struggle, however: "It took a lot of effort to get down to three discs."
On the other hand, Sony's version fits easily on one 50GB Blu-ray disc, with zero compression issues.
BGR made headlines yesterday claiming that a "solid Apple source" had told them that the company is planning a major product launch this week, in celebration of their 10th retail anniversary.
The site explains:
-There’s an overnight shift planned for around 10-15 individuals at each Apple Store to work from late Saturday all the way through mid-Sunday.
-During the overnight shift, it’s going to be required that employees lock cell phones in the main office. They will also have to sign an NDA with Apple.
-There are a wide variety of roles, we’re told, for the overnight shift. This includes all visuals staff, a manager, a business team member, a few Genius team members, one back-of-house employee, and a few generic Apple specialists.
-Apple stores have apparently already received hardware to install, and are expecting more hardware to come on Friday or Saturday. All materials that Apple stores have received have been instructed to be under lock and key until after close on Saturday night.
Although only partially confirmed, we reported earlier this week that Amazon is working on a full family of Android devices for the holidays, including a smartphone, a 6-inch tablet and a 10-inch tablet.
There are little other details but today BGR is saying that the larger tablet will be the first to run on Nvidia's "Kal-El" quad-core processor.
Additionally, the smaller entry level tablet will run on the Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor, with a higher clock speed than seen in most current tablets.
In terms of pricing, speculation is the 6-inch tablet will match Barnes & Noble's $250 Nook Color, while the larger tablet will sell for $400, which would really put a squeeze on Apple, Samsung and others.
To me it is important to give my children names that are not used anywhere else, at least not in Israel. If once people gave Biblical names and that was the icon, then today [the Facebook Like] is one of the most famous icons in the world.
Like Adler is the third child from Lior and Vardit Adler. Their other two kids are Dvash ("Honey" in Hebrew) and Pie.
The mother adds: "Like has a nice, international ring to it."
LittleBigPlanet (PSP)
ModNation Racers
Pursuit Force
Killzone Liberation
The downloads will be available for 30 days after the PlayStation Store is restored, but Sony has not given a set date for that yet except that it will be before the end of the month.
Additionally, Sony is giving away "Ooblag’s Alien Casino" PSN game to all affected users, as well.
Verizon has announced that it is expanding its 4G LTE network to a few new cities this week.
New cities to get the fast mobile Internet are Pensacola, Mobile, Denver, Montgomery, Gainesville, Tallahassee, Philadelphia, and Fayetteville-Lumberton, NC.
The carrier launched the LTE network in 30 major cities last year and tests have found it to be faster than AT&T and Sprint's rival networks.
Verizon has hopes of rolling out its entire network by the end of 2012.
Samsung has made it official, Android 2.3 Gingerbread is headed to the Galaxy S, Galaxy Ace/Gio/Fit/Mini and the Galaxy Tab.
Gingerbread brings a few new features, including an updated user interface.
Samsung says 2.3 for the Galaxy devices will bring:
Faster Performance – Multimedia content now has a lower CPU consumption rate, while support for more powerful 3D Graphics enables an enhanced mobile gaming experience.
Upgraded Usability – The user interface has been improved, enabling faster access and control and a more intuitive user experience. Users will also benefit from improved copy-and-paste functionality.
Starting today, the upgrade will roll out to the UK and Nordic countries, moving on to EU, North America, Asia and Africa afterwards.
RIM has confirmed that it is recalling 1000 BlackBerry Playbooks thanks to a software glitch.
The company says a few of the 16GB models "were shipped with an OS build that may result in the devices being unable to properly load software upon initial set-up."
Most the affected devices are still in the distribution channel, fortunately, but RIM says about 1000 have made it into consumer's hands.
If you are having issues, the company says: "In the small number of cases where a customer received a PlayBook that is unable to properly load software upon initial set-up, they can contact RIM for assistance."
The recall marks another setback for the tablet, which had good critical reception but has been panned for its lack of native email/calender/contacts apps.
RIM recently showed off the apps, as well as the ability to use Android Market apps with little visual difference than on an Android device.
Netflix has announced it has signed a multi-year agreement with Miramax to bring hundreds of films to its "Watch Instantly" streaming library.
A few of the more recognizable films in the catalog are "Pulp Fiction," "Shakespeare in Love," "The English Patient," "Good Will Hunting," "Bad Santa," "Scream," "Spy Kids," "The Piano" and "Kill Bill."
Starting in June, Miramax will add dozens of titles at a time "on a rotating basis."
The financials were not revealed but Netflix is expected to be paying over $100 million.
Says Netflix COO Ted Sarandos:
Netflix is thrilled to enter into this deal with the new team at Miramax. Existing relationships with management and a shared affinity for these great films make this an important deal for both companies and for our members, who will enjoy instantly watching movies from one of the truly great film libraries for many years to come.
And adds Miramax CEO Mike Lang:
From day one, we've been very clear about the importance of digital and our desire to respond to the significant pent-up demand for our films -- delivering to consumers whenever and wherever they want. This agreement is an important first step in our digital strategy. Netflix has always been a trailblazer, with a tremendous track record of innovation and quality customer service. We're thrilled to now be in business with them as we build and revitalize the proud Miramax brand.
Nokia has quickly shot down the rumor that Microsoft is ready to purchase the company's smartphone unit.
The rumor came from questionable Russian blogger Eldar Murtazin, who has hit some homeruns in the past but more recently has come under fire for sensationalist posts that have not come true.
Murtazin says that Microsoft is ready to buy Nokia's smartphone unit next week, with both company's "in a rush" to complete the deal by the end of 2011.
Nokia's Uk Communications Director Mark Squires has crushed the rumor quickly, however:
We typically don’t comment on rumors. But we have to say that Eldar’s rumors are getting obviously less accurate with every passing moment.
Earlier today, Nokia killed off its Ovi brand, which powered Nokia's app store, Maps, search and more.
Mozilla has said today that it will begin auto-updating users of the no-longer-supported Firefox 3.5 next month to 3.6, if users have selected auto-updates.
The company says there are still 12 million users of 3.5, which debuted in early 2009.
Firefox 3.5 is no longer supported, and the last security patch was sent out last month.
We are treating the automatic update checkbox enabled as a 'Yes, I want Mozilla to keep me updated. Previously as a courtesy we had people opt-in between major versions due to the potential jarring nature of the update. We feel the difference between 3.5 and 3.6 is not severe and with 3.5 reaching end-of-life 3.6 is the security update for 3.5 users.
The browser company says most users have auto-updates selected.
Mozilla does admit they would prefer that 3.6 users upgrade to Firefox 4, which was launched last month to much fanfare (and many, many downloads).
The Japanese government has confirmed that it has blocked Sony from relaunching the PSN in its country, citing security concerns.
Sony launched the PSN, after nearly a one-month absence, in Europe, Australia and North America over the last two days.
Says Kazushige Nobutani, Japan's director of media and content in the country's Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry:
As of May 13, Sony was incomplete in exercising measures that they said they will do on the May 1 press conference.
Despite the complaints from Japan, Sony responded (via Cnet) that the PSN has had its security beefed up after the hacking incident led to the compromise of 101 million accounts:
The company has made considerable enhancements to the data security, including updating and adding advanced security technologies; additional software monitoring and penetration and vulnerability testing; and increased levels of encryption and additional firewalls. The company also added a variety of other measures to the network infrastructure, including an early-warning system for unusual activity patterns that could signal an attempt to compromise the network.
The U.S. ITC has ruled in favor of Eastman Kodak this week, claiming the company's camera technology does not violate Apple's patents.
Two of the patents were ruled to not be infringing while the third was "invalid." The decision will go to the six-member ITC for a final review.
Apple opened the case in April 2010, counter-suing Kodak after the camera patent company sued Apple and RIM over patents related to how images are previewed on smartphones.
Kodak's original complaint was also ruled against by the ITC, meaning there have been no winners in this ongoing dispute.
That ruling is headed to the ITC panel for final review, as well.
Earlier this year, Sony Ericsson sued Clearwire over its logo, claiming it is too similar to its own logo and therefore would confuse consumers, especially if Clearwire eventually came out with smartphones, like it planned.
Says SE:
Over the past year, Sony Ericsson grew concerned that Clearwire's logos were moving progressively closer to Sony Ericsson's registered logo. Since Clearwire also previously announced it would enter the field of mobile devices by launching a smartphone, Sony Ericsson brought the litigation in January 2011 and sought a preliminary injunction against Clearwire to prohibit its further use of the logos.
In response, Clearwire represented to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia that it had no present intention to launch a smartphone. This representation effectively provided Sony Ericsson with much of the emergency relief it sought.
Because Clearwire is no longer planning a phone, Ericsson has dropped the case, but it can bring it back in the future should the same concerns arise.
As of 10pm yesterday, Sony has partially restored the PlayStation Network and Qriocity, almost one month since it was shutdown following a security breach on April 17th.
Gamers can now play online, use the chat service and download music. All other services are still down, and the PSN is still completely down in Asia.
Following the attack, Sony confirmed that over 101 million users have had their personal data compromised, including names, profiles, addresses and credit card details.
Sony promised to return service on May 7th but could not as the Network continued to remain unsecured.
Bloomberg says the company "boosted security for PlayStation Network and Qriocity by increasing the number of firewalls between servers and adding software to monitor intrusions and system vulnerabilities."
Sony also added a new chief information security officer.
The company says all services, in all regions, will be fully functional by May 31st.
As a compromise for the downtime, Sony is offering all users 1 free year of identity theft protection and insurance, two free PS3 games, and a free month to PlayStation Plus.
According to Internet security expert John Bumgarner, Sony's computer networks are still not fully secured, even 28 days after hackers attacked the PSN and SOE, compromising the personal data of 101 million gamers.
Bumgarner says he found "a handful of security flaws" in the company's networks while studying its systems online. The security expert apparently found a "potential bonanza for hackers by using little more than a web browser, Google's search engine and a basic understanding of Internet security systems."
The expert knows what he is talking about, being the chief technology officer for the U.S. Cyber Consequences Unit and a U.S. military special operations veteran.
Over the past week, Bumgarner says that Sony did fix three of the five flaws he had found.
Several glaring flaws still remain, however, and that is without the expert trying to break into password-protected sites or exploit any vulnerabilities.
As a small compromise for the downtime, Sony is offering all users 1 free year of identity theft protection and insurance, two free PS3 games, and a free month to PlayStation Plus.
AT&T has confirmed a record break-up fee if regulators do not approve its proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA.
The carrier will pay $6 billion in fees and other benefits to T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom, a record by a large stretch, implying AT&T has a strong belief the deal will be approved.
$3 billion would flow directly in cash, but Deutsche Telekom would also receive spectrum and a national roaming agreement. The company did not put a value on that, but according to analysts' estimates the spectrum and roaming agreement would amount to $3 billion.
The spectrum is likely worth the bulk share, or $2 billion, with the roaming agreement worth the rest.
That being said, Deutsche Telekom CEO Rene Obermann says he believes the deal will be approved sometime before June of 2012.
If it proves to be accurate, AandMe is reporting today that Amazon is working on a full family of Android devices for the holidays, including a smartphone, a 6-inch tablet and a 10-inch tablet.
The site says the rumor comes from an "industry insider with direct knowledge of the project. The information was shared with me in a recent face-to-face meeting and I believe the source to be trustworthy."
There are little other details because the rumors are unconfirmed, but the editor believes that Amazon may even consider a set-top box with Google TV, alongside the other devices.
In terms of pricing, speculation is the 6-inch tablet will match Barnes & Noble's $250 Nook Color, while the larger tablet will sell for $400 and the phone for $200 with contract.
Amazon could even undercut those prices by a decent amount by subsidizing the devices with ads (like the Kindle) or taking a short-term loss on the hardware in an effort to sell more apps, music, movies and especially, books.
According to Jeffries analyst Peter Misek, the upcoming iPhone will be called the "iPhone 4S," not the "iPhone 5" as anticipated.
The device will be released in September, adds the analyst, citing "industry checks."
Perhaps more notably, Misek says Apple will expand the smartphone to Sprint, T-Mobile and China Mobile, making it available to hundreds of millions of more potential customers.
The iPhone 4S will include better cameras, a dual-core A5 processor, HSPA+ support and some minor changes to the form factor, adds Misek.
This year, Apple is not expected to launch the iPhone at their June developer conference, instead they are expected to unveil iOS 5 and Mac OSX Lion.
Adobe has launched Flash Player 10.3 for Windows, Mac and Linux systems this morning, as well as for Android phones and tablets including Android 3.1 Honeycomb.
The company says the latest Flash Player update includes "improved stability, stronger security and user privacy protection, and new desktop audio/video capabilities for businesses and developers."
Adobe posted most of the new features of the improved software:
Media measurement (desktop only) – Measuring video usage just got easier. Using Adobe® SiteCatalyst® with Flash Player 10.3, developers can implement video analytics for websites with as little as two lines of code for the first time. Media Measurement for Flash Player allows companies to get real-time, aggregated reporting of how their video content is distributed, what their audience reach is, and how much video is played. Mobile support will be available in an upcoming release.
Acoustic echo cancellation (desktop only) – With Flash Player 10.3, developers can create real-time online collaboration experiences with high-quality audio for telephony, in-game voice chat, and group conferencing applications. Developers can take advantage of acoustic echo cancellation, noise suppression, voice activity detection, and automatic compensation for various microphone input levels. End users will be able to experience higher quality audio facilitating smoother conversation flow, without using a headset.
Research firm Gartner has noted this week that it believes SSD drives will get much cheaper in 2012, in time for the market to have a break out.
SSD, 2.5-inch form factor NAND Flash chips that offer better speeds and reliability over traditional HDDs, have yet to reach mainstream popularity due to extremely high prices.
128GB SSD models sell for, on average, $225 while for that price you can purchase three 2TB HDDs. Certainly the average consumer would prefer 6TB of storage to a measly 128GB for the same price.
Over the past two years, however, SSD prices have marginally fallen, while capacities have increased thanks to better manufacturing processes.
Gartner says it expects SSD prices to fall to about $1 per GB next year, still not "cheap" but certainly more affordable than current prices.
Samsung will show off their upcoming 300dpi WQXGA PenTile RGBW prototype tablet display at next week's SID Display 2011 conference, says the company.
The impressive 10.1-inch LCD display will have 2560 x 1600 resolution.
Pixel density is 300dpi meaning the resolution will fit in the definition of "Retina Display," as defined by Apple.
Says the company in the press release:
Samsung’s PenTile display technology is the only display technology that operates at 40 percent less power yet provides twice that of Full HD-viewing performance for consumers compared to legacy RGB stripe LCDs. There is no other commercial display technology on the market today that offers this high of a resolution and pixel density in a 10.1-inch size display.
LimeWire has decided to settle with the record labels in their federal copyright infringement suit, paying $105 million and finally marking the very end of an era.
After five years of litigation, LimeWire will pay out the money to 13 record labels; Arista, Atlantic, BMG Music, Capitol, Elektra, Interscope, Laface, Motown, Priority, Sony BMG, UMG, Virgin and Warner Brothers
LimeWire was shut down in October by judge Kimba Wood, who ruled that the company behind the P2P service was liable for wrongfully assisting users in pirating digital recordings.
Had the trial continue on to a jury, LimeWire was facing penalties of up to $1.5 billion, $150,000 maximum each for 10,000 tracks.
At its peak, LimeWire had 50 million monthly users, sharing hundreds of millions of tracks.
Edge is reporting today that retailers are starting to see the effects of the over 3-week-long PSN outage, with an influx of consumers trading their PS3s in for cash or Xbox 360s.
Furthermore, sales of PSN points cards are almost non-existent and the ratio has begun to shift for multi-platform games, with Xbox taking the lion's share.
One manager at a UK retailer had this to say:
In the first week of downtime we did not really see any major change in sales or trades. However from the second week onwards we have seen an increase of over 200 per cent on PS3 consoles being traded in, split almost 50/50 between those trading for cash and those taking a 360 instead.
A different retailer said most of those trading in their systems are from the "hardcore online shooter crowd," gamers that spend many hours online looking to level up. Black Ops and/or Modern Warfare 2 were cited in many cases.
PS3 sales have also taken a hit (says independent retailer in Germany):
We’re just ten days into the month and already we have an increase of 200 per cent in PS3s coming into the store compared to all of March. Normally we sell them really fast, but not this time. We’ve only sold 30 to 40 per cent of our inventory right now.
Netflix has announced the launch of the long awaited streaming app for Android devices, however, it is only available on five devices.
As of right now, the app is available for the Nexus S, Nexus One, T-Mobile G2, HTC Evo 4G and HTC Incredible.
You must be running Android 2.2 (or 2.3 for Nexus S) to download the app.
Netflix was clear to explain why the small selection of phones:
The Android platform is gaining rapid adoption in the mobile world and presents a great opportunity to reach more of our members. Because the platform has evolved so rapidly, there are some significant challenges associated with developing a streaming video application for this ecosystem. One of these challenges is the lack of standard streaming playback features that the Netflix application can use to gain broad penetration across all available Android phones. In the absence of standardization, we have to test each individual handset and launch only on those that can support playback. We are aggressively qualifying phones and look forward to expanding the list of phones on which the Netflix app will be supported. We anticipate that many of these technical challenges will be resolved in the coming months and that we will be able to provide a Netflix application that will work on a large majority of Android phones.
Nintendo has announced that the 3DS "eShop" will be added with a firmware update on June 6th for North America and June 7th for Europe and Japan.
Additionally, the update will bring the much-anticipated web browser to the handheld, and add DSiWare transfer.
Says Nintendo:
By downloading the free update via a broadband internet connection, Nintendo 3DS users can enjoy a number of new features and enhancements including an internet browser and access to the Nintendo eShop, where users can browse and purchase downloadable content.
The 3DS, which offers 3D gaming without the need for glasses, has been selling well in Japan, Europe and North America since launch in March, despite a large price tag.
Facebook has come clean this week, admitting to secretly hiring a PR firm that planted negative stories about Google in newspapers and websites.
The social networking giant hired top-5 PR firm Burson-Marsteller to tell newspaper editors to investigate into whether Google was invading the privacy of its users.
Burson-Marsteller even offered to help noted blogger Christopher Soghoian write an op-ed that would have bashed Google. The PR firm promised the story could be placed later in the Huffington Post and the Washington Post. Soghoian instead released all the emails and declined the offer.
While many believed the "unnamed client" was either Apple or Microsoft, it turns out Facebook has an ax to grind and hates the fact that Google is trying to use Facebook data in its own social-networking services, like Social Circle.
Social Circle lets Gmail users see info about their Google and Facebook friends, but also their "secondary connections," or friends of friends.
The explosion of computer sales when Windows 7 launched, as well as the huge increase in netbook sales at that time, are much more to blame for weak consumer PC sales growth than the iPad. Overall it appears that the vast majority of iPad purchases to-date have been incremental to the consumer technology industry.
The percentage of consumers looking to buy Windows notebooks under $500 has grown 21 percent since October, while the percentage of consumers looking for more expensive computers has fallen 25 percent in the same time frame.
According to the latest Nielsen figures, overall music sales in the U.S. have increased for the first time in years, mainly thanks to extremely strong sales of the Beatles digital catalog.
For the YTD (year-to-date) period, sales were up 1.6 percent, with digital track sales up 9.6 percent, making up for continued declines in physical CD sales.
Until the Beatles finally put their entire catalog on sale via digital distribution last November, growth in digital sales has slowed to just 3 percent, after seeing triple digit growth for most of the previous decade.
The sustained sales may also be attributed to Apple's strong marketing campaign for the Beatles music, which may have led an older generation to start buying music.
Vinyl record sales were also up 37 percent year-over-year, as the records have become a new "trend" for younger buyers.
As reported this week, Google has launched the beta of their Google Music cloud service.
To nobody's surprise, the record labels are not happy, since Google decided to launch without any licensing deals in place.
The record labels gave Amazon the same angry treatment when they launched their CloudDrive last month.
Google Music lets users upload their music to an online server which can be played back in a Web browser or via a native Android app. In beta, the service is free but will eventually cost money.
It appears the negotiations between the labels and Google failed because the labels kept trying to raise rates and even tried to get Google to sign off on blocking "piracy sites" from Google searches.
According to numerous reports, Samsung has begun rolling out the Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread update to the original Galaxy Tab tablet.
2.3.3 may be the last firmware upgrade Galaxy Tab owners will receive, however, as Android 3.0 Honeycomb is not expected to ever make the trip.
Gingerbread adds a number of UI improvements, as well as some other features. NFC support is added but useless since the tablet does not have the chip built-in.
Samsung's new updated Galaxy Tab 10.1 is set for release soon, and will come with Honeycomb, dual-core processor and many other improvements including a larger screen and thinner bezel.
According to a new survey by Crucial, the average user replaces their computer after 4.5 years.
The survey polled 1000 PC owners in the US, UK and France, and it appears that over half of those polled believe their computer should last "much longer" than three years but admit they don't.
Most of those that upgraded their PC blamed "slow speeds," although it is unclear if these users had fast Internet connections, slow HDDs, viruses or just old hardware.
A solid 50 percent of those surveyed said they upgraded simply beacuse they hated something about their PC.
Comically, 35 percent of those polled said they were more scared about upgrading their computer manually than dealing with a house spider.
The software industry is being robbed blind. Nearly $59 billion worth of products were stolen last year--and the rates of theft are completely out of control in the world's fastest-growing markets.
The BSA has members from the software industry including all heavy hitters like Apple, Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec and McAfee.
As has been the trend for years, "emerging markets" accounted for most of the piracy, $32 billion worth in 2010.
Piracy rates jumped to 64 percent in Central Europe, Eastern Europe and Latin America. The Asian-Pacific region jumped to 60 percent, as well.
North America has the lowest piracy rate, again, at 21 percent.
The survival of the Angry Birds is at stake. Dish out revenge on the green pigs who stole the Birds’ eggs. Use the unique destructive powers of the Angry Birds to lay waste to the pigs’ fortified castles. Angry Birds features hours of gameplay, challenging physics-based castle demolition, and lots of replay value. Each of the 70 levels requires logic, skill, and brute force to crush the enemy.
“Lemme tell ya, these ain’t no ordinary finches we’re talkin’ about. These here are the Angry Birds, the ones that’s gonna kick you in the ‘nads. And they’re the ones on your side. They must be from Galapadapados, or sumptin’.” – Col. Angus, Bird Expert.
Samsung's model will have a 12.1-inch display, 1280x800 resolution, 8 second boot time and 8 hour battery life. The device runs on a dual core 1.66 GHz Intel Atom N570 processor, has an HD webcam, a mini-VGA port, 2 USB ports and will weigh just 3.3 pounds.
A Wi-Fi-only version will sell for $429 while a 3G version will sell for $499.
The Acer model will be smaller and have an 11.6-inch display, 8 second boot time, dual core Intel Atom processor, 2 USB ports, an HD webcam, optional 3G and HDMI-out.
Acer's Chromebook will sell for $350 as Wi-Fi-only.
VUPEN Security has announced the discovery of a vulnerability in Google's Chrome browser software.
Google Chrome has survived assaults at the Pwn2Own contest for the last three years. Now, French security firm VUPEN says it is unhappy to announced that it has officially "Pwned" Google Chrome and its protective Sandbox measures.
VUPEN uploaded a video of the browser exploit in action which bypasses all security features including ASLR/DEP/Sandbox, without exploiting a Windows kernel vulnerability. It works on all Windows systems and with the latest versions of the Chrome browser.
In the video, a web page is loaded displaying just a text message - "Your browser is being Pwned!" - and after a few seconds of inactivity (and without a visible crash in Chrome), the windows calculator application runs. According to the VUPEN write-up, the calculator executable is downloaded and executed.
At Pwn2Own in March this year, VUPEN successfully attacked Safari in much the same way. A specially crafted web page was loaded and several seconds later, the Mac OS X calculator application was launched and a file was written to the hard drive to demonstrate that the Sandbox had been compromised.
Google has introduced Android@Home today during their I/O conference, a service that it will give users a chance to control their home's lights and other appliances using an Android device.
The new remote is dubbed "Project Tungsten."
Using Android@home, users can also send their brand new Google Music cloud library to any computer or stereo in the home.
Making it even more interesting is the fact that if you have appliances that do not have built-in Wi-Fi, future items will have a protocol to make them compatible.
One example Google used was CDs selling with an NFC device inside the case. When you tap the case with your Android device with NFC, the entire album's content is uploaded to your cloud music library.
Following our ongoing coverage of Google's I/O conference, the search giant has announced streaming movie rentals for the Android Market, giving users one of their most asked for features.
Unfortunately, the service is only live for Honeycomb tablets and your home computer, for now.
The updated movie service will be available for phones and tablets running Android 2.2 Froyo and 2.3 Gingerbread "in a few weeks."
Google has just launched their oft-delayed Google Music service in beta, live now at music.google.com.
You can head over now to request an invitation using your Gmail account.
For the service, you can upload up to 20,000 tracks to the cloud and stream the music from any computer or Android device.
The service will initially be free, and currently only for U.S. users.
For those with Honeycomb tablets, the service uses CoverFlow-esque browsing, and you can "Genius" tracks using InstantMix, which will then create a 25-song playlist of similar music.
Google adds that if you lose Internet, "the songs you've recently played will automatically be available offline."
If the embedded link doesn't work, click here to watch video: Google Music beta
Finally, Android devices will now be able to act as USB hosts, meaning users can import photos directly from cameras to tablets. The devices will even be able to support Xbox controllers.
In what will become the largest unauthorized torrent downloading lawsuit in U.S. history, the U.S. Copyright Group is expected to sue 23,000 file sharers for downloading the Sylvester Stallone hit film "The Expendables."
A federal judge has given the Group the rights to subpoena ISPs to find the identity of those who downloaded the film, which means that 23,000 number may be a lowball figure.
Subpoenas will begin being sent out on Thursday.
Under the U.S. Copyright Act, damages allowed per infringement are $150,000 and the group will ask for that in each case.
Of course, they will also offer a settlement payment of $3000. If every accused downloader settles, the lawyers will make a cool $69 million.
Electronic Arts (EA) CEO John Riccitiello has noted this week that the company will eventually move completely to digital distribution, killing off physical discs.
Says the CEO during the company's quarterly earnings conference call:
Over the coming years, we will transform EA from a packaged goods company, to a fully integrated Digital entertainment company. We're transforming EA to a games as a service model by focusing on three new strategies.
#1: IP. We believe we are driving the strongest portfolio of IP in the industry with EA Sports, FIFA, Hasbro, Madden, Pogo, Battlefield, Need for Speed, The Sims, Tetris, Dragon Age, Mass Effect and more. We fully intend to make these properties into year-round businesses that lead their sectors across a range of platforms.
Following two nights of speculation, Microsoft has confirmed it will be purchasing Skype for $8.5 billion in cash.
The deal has already been approved by both boards of directors.
Skype has 170 million "connected users" and those users ran over 207 billion minutes of voice and video in 2010.
Microsoft says:
The acquisition will increase the accessibility of real-time video and voice communications, bringing benefits to both consumers and enterprise users and generating significant new business and revenue opportunities. The combination will extend Skype’s world-class brand and the reach of its networked platform, while enhancing Microsoft’s existing portfolio of real-time communications products and services.
Skype will be added to the Xbox 360, Kinect, Windows Phone, Lync, Outlook, Xbox Live "and other communities."
The service itself, will continue to run independently.
Concludes Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer:
Skype is a phenomenal service that is loved by millions of people around the world. Together we will create the future of real-time communications so people can easily stay connected to family, friends, clients and colleagues anywhere in the world.
Microsoft is on the verge of purchasing Internet phone company Skype for over $7 billion, in what would be the company's largest ever acquisition.
Negotiations are in the final stages but the deal could still fall apart, say multiple sources speaking to WSJ.
Skype has 663 million users globally and says 207 billion minutes of voice and video calls were made over the service in 2010.
In 2007, Microsoft overpaid for online advertising firm aQuantive, paying $6 billion in what is their current largest deal, ever. In 2008, Microsoft offered $48 billion for Yahoo but was turned down and eventually the deal collapsed. Yahoo is valued at $25 billion today so it certainly appears that Microsoft dodged a bullet.
The Skype deal will be very expensive given the company's history of no profits.
In 2010, Skype had nice revenue of $860 million but lost $7 million. Google and Facebook were reported as being interested in the VoIP company, as well.
Google has confirmed that it will be adding 3000 movies to its YouTube movie rental service.
It is unclear what films will be available but reports have stated that Sony Pictures, Universal Pictures and Warner Bros. have all signed up.
Says Salar Kamangar, Head of YouTube:
Today, we’re going to start adding around 3,000 new movie titles for rent available to users in the U.S. (more on this in a post later today) that will be accompanied by reviews and behind-the-scenes movie extras. Whether it’s short movie trailers, funny movie parodies or full-length blockbuster films, we encourage you to sit back and settle in to the YouTube movies experience.
In addition to expanding our movie offerings, we’re also bolstering our investment in the content that’s already being viewed by hundred of millions of people on YouTube. Our 20,000+ partners—folks like Machinima, Annoying Orange and Ryan Higa—are producing original content for the web and commanding TV-size audiences for their own brand of programming. Through YouTube Next, we’re helping fuel the creation of this type of content with initiatives like the YouTube Creator Institute and YouTube NextUp, following past initiatives like Partner Grants (which brought us Key of Awesome, creators of one of 2010’s most-watched videos) and $1,000 B&H Photo credits. In the coming year, we’ll bring even more content to YouTube. Building on the success of Partner Grants and YouTube NextUp, we’re providing even more resources to creators who you’ll know from TV or Hollywood, and to existing YouTube partners who have already built loyal audiences on the site. Look out for more details on this in the coming months.
In Google's latest note on Android release figures, it appears that 2.3 Gingerbread is still not seeing any distribution, with the operating system being seen on only 4 percent of all Android devices.
The 4 percent is a slow but gradual growth from the 1.7 percent share it held in March, although many current devices do not even have a timeframe for receiving 2.3.
Android 2.2 Froyo kept increasing its share, this time to 66 percent.
Google's tablet-centric Android 3.0 Honeycomb is only on 0.3 percent of all devices, showing widespread lack of adoption for the Xoom. At .3 percent share, it would imply that only 150,000-200,000 Xoom units have been sold since launch.
Nvidia has confirmed its plans to purchase the mobile chipmaker Icera for $367 million in cash in an effort to better compete with Qualcomm and Intel.
The deal will let Nvidia join the market for baseband/radio chips.
With the deal, Nvidia should be able to package its Tegra processors with cellular baseband chips, making it more potent.
The company says Icera should help it double revenue generated from sales of each tablet/smartphone.
Both Qualcomm and Intel offer combos of processors and radio chips, although Intel has yet to see much demand for its mobile processors or architectures.
According to the annual BrandZ Global Top 100, Apple is now the most valuable brand in the world, beating out perennial winner Google.
Apple blasted 84 percent year-over-year to a value of $153 billion, ahead of Google at $112 billion.
IBM jumped 17 percent, as well, enough to hold third place at $100 billion and leave McDonald’s in fourth at $81 billion.
"It’s clear that every single Apple employee, from Steve Jobs and Tim Cook to the summer interns, see protecting and nurturing that brand as a top priority," adds Millward Brown Chief Executive Officer Eileen Campbell in the report. "Tablet computing also drove value growth not just for Apple, but also for the providers who support yet another networked device."
Facebook saw the largest jump, running 246 percent to $19.1 billion, good for 35th on the list.
In other big news, Amazon overtook Wal-Mart as the most-valuable retail brand, jumping to 14th as Wal-Mart stayed in 15th.
Microsoft has revealed some of the new features coming with the Windows Phone 7 "Mango" update, and WP7 users should be excited for them.
Users will get native podcast support, turn-by-turn voice direction in Bing Maps, voice-recognition SMS, Bing Vision and Bing Audio (like Shazam/SoundHound/MusicID).
Bing Audio will be integrated right into Bing search, and will work just like similar products. Press a button while you are listening to a song you want to remember or buy (or don't know) and the service will connect you to a match.
The US, Great Britian, France, Italy, Germany and Spain will be the first with Bing Audio support.
Bing Vision is a camera-based search app, that will read barcodes, MS Tags, QR codes and text through OCR.
The hacking group Anonymous has taken time to write a full PR release responding to accusations that it was behind the massive PSN hack that has compromised the personal data of 101.6 million gamers.
Two weeks ago, Sony hinted that they found files on the attacked server that imply Anonymous was behind the attack, and the media has gone even deeper in accusing the group.
I have posted the entire PR release below, or you can read it here (with clickable cites).
"SONY, I AM DISAPPOINT"
For Immediate Distribution
Press Release
May 7th, 2011
A 'HiveMind Effort' from
Anonymous Holdings LLC (Bermuda)
Yesterday, an article appeared in Financial Times, alleging Anonymous' involvement in the data and identity theft of some hundred million users of Sony's Playstation Network and Sony Online Entertainment. This crime is now being investigated by the Homeland Security Agency (HSA), the Department of Justice (DOJ), and other legal entities.
Once again Anonymous has been blamed for a security breach, this time by the journalist Joseph Menn, in his article "Hackers point finger over Sony incursion" [1]. Here, Anonymous wishes to lay out our case against these allegations and false assumptions:
Last week, Sony outlined its plans to give all PSN users in the U.S. free identity protection and $1 million insurance for a year.
The insurance will cover legal expenses, identity-restoration costs and lost wages if your ID is stolen.
Sony admitted last week that 101.6 million accounts were compromised by two "highly sophisticated attack" on Sony's servers on April 17th.
Today, the company has outlined its plans for similar protection for European users affected by the downtime.
Says Sony:
As I have explained previously, creating a similar offering for the many countries within the SCEE region is a very complicated process. Each country has a different way of handling identity theft; some offer relatively sophisticated services whilst others are much more modest.
We are currently in the process of identifying how we manage this situation and once the programme is ready to launch, we will provide details of exactly which services are available in each country and explain how to sign up. We hope to do this early next week.
Samsung has noted today that its upcoming Galaxy S II already has 3 million pre-orders worldwide, not including the U.S. where the phone hasn't gone up for sale, yet.
In Samsung's home country of Korea, the phone is already on pace to outsell the iPhone 4, which has been on sale for over 9 months.
The smartphone has a 4.27-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, Android 2.3.4, a 1.2GHz Samsung dual-core processor, an 8.49mm thin chassis (at lowest), an 8MP camera with autofocus and 1080p recording, NFC support, a 2MP front-side camera and HSPA+, WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 3.0+HS.
Furthermore, the device will run on Samsung's updated TouchWiz UI.
There is still no set date for launch in the U.S. following a delay from late March.
Although the company has had to delay the resurrection of the PSN, Sony is looking to make amends to frustrated gamers and will offer up two free PS3 games to everyone affected.
Users will get to choose the games from a small 5-lot of select titles.
For now, it is unclear what those titles will be, however.
Additionally, Sony announced last week that it would be offering everyone a free 30-day trial to the premium PlayStation Plus service.
After first announcing that the service would be up by yesterday, over the weekend Sony confirmed that they would have to delay the return of the service to an unknown time.
Please be assured that we are continuing to work around the clock to have some PlayStation Network and Qriocity services restored and will provide you with specific details shortly.
Daily deal behemoth Groupon has teamed up with Live Nation this week, in an effort to bring discounted ticket deals.
The new venture, GrouponLive, is already available if you want to use your email to subscribe to deals but deals won't start until the summer.
Live Nation Entertainment, a venture by Live Nation and Ticketmaster, currently promotes 20,000 shows every year.
Says Groupon CEO Andrew Mason:
With unprecedented access to Live Nation's expansive roster of performers and events, GrouponLive will be the destination for exclusive live event deals. We're excited to work with Live Nation to further deliver on our commitment to offer amazing local experiences to our subscribers.
Adds Michael Rapino, President and Chief Executive Officer of Live Nation Entertainment:
GrouponLive represents a new channel to drive value for fans, while helping artists and others to reach ever larger audiences. By adding this channel to our ticketing platform, we will also provide our venue partners with another option for driving ticket sales across a wide range of events. Our success is based on selling tickets and filling seats and GrouponLive gives us another platform to achieve this.
Launched with just Android compatibility, Amazon's Cloud Player has now been updated to work with iOS devices like the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch.
While Android owners have a native app for the Cloud Player, iOS device owners need to stream the music via the Safari browser.
Open Safari, head over to the Cloud Player site, ignore the "your browser is not supported warning" and sign into your account.
From there, just click on the playlist/track you want to hear and it will begin streaming within the browser. Volume and controls work as usual and will even play in the background.
Unfortunately, on iOS you can't rearrange the songs in playlists or upload new files because the latter requires Flash.
Electronic Arts (EA) has said this weekend that all reports that the company is already working on software development for the next-gen Xbox console are false.
Reports had stated that EA had been given a working kit of the Xbox 360's successor in an effort to start game development early.
EA spokesperson Jeff Brown says, however, "this story is a total fabrication - 100 percent not true."
The original reports suggested that Microsoft could be ready to announce that new console at this year's E3, rivaling Nintendo's launch of the Wii 2 (Project Cafe).
For now, we will assume that Microsoft is not working on an Xbox 360 successor, and will have it available by 2015, at the end of a 10-year cycle.
The Asus Eee Pad Transformer just reached American shores last week but has quickly seen huge demand and shortages.
Asus says today that they expect to produce 100,000 in May and 210,000 in June, and that all shortages are demand-based, and not due to component shortages or rumored quality control problems at their plants.
When asked when the shortages would stop, Asus responded:
We will see a significant alleviation in the month of June and if the demand continues to increase substantially then we will have to continue to ramp up production in order to fulfill our customers' demand.
Additionally, the company says: "The current demand surpasses our expectations by far."
The Transformer is different from most other tablets because it offers an easily attachable keyboard dock that turns the tablet into a netbook. The dock has a second battery, meaning you will have around 16 hours total of battery life, compared to just 9 hours or so in the tablet by itself.
Hysteria over the launch of the iPad 2 has led to four would-be buyers being injured, and a glass door being smashed through at the Beijing flagship Apple store.
The state press says four people were taken to the hospital after "a foreign" Apple employee jumped into the crowd "to beat" people who had allegedly cut in line.
In response, the crowd smashed the glass front door and rushed the store in anger, leaving those four injured.
Just like in the United States and other nations, there were hours worth of lines for the iPad 2, which just went on sale in China this weekend.
The store closed and has not yet re-opened, and a sign has been posted saying "queue jumping and the unauthorised sales of Apple products would not be tolerated."
It appears that Apple will go environmentally friendly with the release of Mac OS X Lion this summer, saying goodbye to physical discs and instead making the operating system available via the Mac App Store as a digital download.
The disc will be available if a user requests it (or has slow broadband/dial-up) but the digital download will be the default.
Apple launched the Mac App Store in January and it is expected to be a major component of 10.7 Lion.
If accurate, the move is part of a broader plan by Apple to lose the SuperDrive altogether, with upcoming MacBook Pros expected to remove the drive in an effort to make thinner notebooks with better battery life.
Apple is expected to reveal Lion at their June event instead of the iPhone 5.
According to the latest comScore MobiLens survey, Android continues to take smartphone market share at a rapid pace, and mainly all at the expense of RIM's BlackBerry line.
The survey polls over 30,000 American smartphone owners.
For the month ended March 31st, BlackBerry fell to 27.1 percent share, with Android jumping to 34.7 percent.
In this very quick guide we will teach our users how to keep updated with the latest AfterDawn news via the excellent (and FREE) Pulse news reader app for Android (and iOS).
Following the breach of security that has caused 100 million accounts to have their data compromised, Sony is now considering offering rewards for info that leads to the arrest and prosecution of those responsible for the hacks.
So far, Sony has not decided on whether to offer the reward but is actively considering.
The PSN has been down since April 17th, when Sony says it detected an attack and promptly shut down the service. Unfortunately, it was not quick enough, and 77 million accounts had their personal data stolen. Last week, Sony confirmed that another 25 million accounts were hacked from their Online division, which was then shut down, as well.
Yesterday, Sony Chairman Howard Stringer apologized for the multi-week outage of the PSN and offered all affected users in the U.S. one year of free identity-theft protection.
The company will offer $1 million insurance per user, which will cover legal expenses, identity-restoration costs and lost wages if your ID is stolen.
T-Mobile saw a massive spike in customer desertions last quarter, mainly due to "competitive pressures."
The carrier lost 471,000 net contract customers in the Q1, compared to 318,000 in the Q3 and just 77,000 in the same period last year.
Overall subscribers fell by 99,000 for the quarter as new and renewing customers could not make up the difference.
T-Mobile says "the decline in net contract customers was driven primarily by fewer contract gross customer additions and continued high contract churn due to competitive pressures."
For the quarter, the carrier showed $135 million profit, down from $362 million in 2010. Revenue was down also.
Earlier this year AT&T announced it was purchasing T-Mobile for $39 billion. That deal requires at least 10 more months before it can be approved by anti-trust regulators, however.
There are two new rumors today about the RIM PlayBook, one that the Sprint 3G model has been delayed and the other that a 10-inch model of the tablet is imminent.
If accurate, the 10-inch version of the tablet will be announced at the end of RIM's BlackBerry World, while the CDMA 3G version of the Sprint tablet has been delayed indefinitely.
The Sprint device was supposed to hit May 8th, but the new release date is unknown.
Says a briefing: "The launch of the BlackBerry PlayBook Tablet has been delayed for all Dealers. The new launch date will be communicated as soon as it is available."
Sprint's 4G model is still on track for its summer release, however.
A 10-inch model of the tablet would be put in more direct competition with the iPad 2 and Xoom (in terms of size).
According to new reports, iOS 5 may finally bring the ability to receive OTA updates from carriers, specifically Verizon and AT&T.
The two carriers are currently in talk with Apple over how to best make the updates work.
Apple will need to shrink the current size of its updates, say sources, with current iOS 4 downloads topping 500MB.
To get around this, the sources say "we believe that Apple will make the updates much smaller by using incremental patches rather than full OS downloads."
The Apple iPhone 5 is expected to be released later this year, possibly September, running on iOS 5 and with a dual-core A5 processor, 3G FaceTime capability, NFC and a better camera. There is also a chance that Apple will redo the form factor.
Warner Music Group has announced today that it has sold itself to the investment firm Access Industries for $3.3 billion, including assumption of debt.
Access will pay $8.25 per share, a 4 percent premium over the company's closing price yesterday but about 40 percent higher than the company's average share price of the last year.
Says Edgar Bronfman Jr., Warner Music’s chairman and chief executive (via NYT):
We are delighted that Access will be the new steward of this outstanding business. They are supportive of the company’s vision, growth strategy and artists, while bringing a fresh entrepreneurial perspective and expertise in technology and media.
Following the close of the WMG deal, many analysts expect Access to go after EMI, another Big 4 label that has been shopped by its debtors for years now.
The latest rumor in the microprocessor space has Apple moving away from Intel and instead adopting ARM architectures for its laptops.
Apple will make the move when ARM releases 64-bit versions of its processors, likely at the end of 2012.
The source accurately reported in 2009 that Apple would begin moving away from Nvidia, and mostly all new iMacs now either have an AMD Radeon or Intel integrated GPU.
Additionally, Apple will "presumably" move their desktops to ARM, as well, with the deal all but set in stone.
Apple currently uses ARM architectures in iOS devices.
Sony Chairman Howard Stringer has apologized for the multi-week outage of the PSN and has offered all affected users in the U.S. one year of free identity-theft protection.
The company will offer $1 million insurance per user, which will cover legal expenses, identity-restoration costs and lost wages if your ID is stolen.
Debix has been hired to do the monitoring in the U.S. and it is unclear when international PSN users will get the same treatment.
Sony admitted this week that 101.6 million accounts were compromised by two "highly sophisticated attack" on Sony's servers on April 17th.
If you want the $1 million insurance, you have until June 18th to sign up for Debix's AllClear ID Plus protection service.
I know this is a frustrating time for all of you. Let me assure you that the resources of this company have been focused on investigating the entire nature and impact of the cyber attack we've all experienced and on fixing it.
Last year, AT&T began locking down all Android devices, blocking sideloading of apps for "security reasons."
Today, it appears that AT&T has removed that restriction, following considerable criticism.
In the newly launched Infuse 4G, users have confirmed that "Install from Unknown sources" is available in settings.
Outside from downloading pirated apps (which was likely AT&T's concern), there are a plethora of legal reasons to need to sideload applications, including the newly launched Amazon Appstore.
The Infuse 4G goes on sale next week for $200 with contract.
According to IRC chat logs acquired by Cnet, a group of hackers is planning a third cyber attack on Sony, which is still reeling from two attacks that have taken the PSN down for two weeks and left 100 million customers with data exposed.
The upcoming attack is planned for this weekend, and the hackers claim to already have access to some of Sony's servers.
Furthermore, the hackers plan to publicize all of the info they steal, including names, addresses and credit card numbers.
Earlier this week, Sony revealed that a "highly sophisticated, planned" attack hit Sony's servers and they took down PSN as soon as it was detected. The company also implied that the group Anonymous had something to do with it, as there was a file planted on the server named "Anonymous" which included the statement "We are Legion," one of the group's mottoes.
Anonymous, twice now, has denied being part of the attack.
Speaking to investors this week, Barnes & Noble has announced that it will reveal a new tablet or e-reader on May 24th, with many speculating it will include Android 3.0 Honeycomb.
In a meeting with investor analysts on May 4, 2011, Barnes & Noble ... indicated it expects to make an announcement on May 24, 2011 regarding the launch of a new eReader device.
B&N currently offers the e-ink Nook and the 7-inch tablet/e-reader hybrid Nook Color, which was recently updated to support Android 2.2 and Flash video.
There are no other details about what the new Nook will bring, but most expect it to be a Honeycomb tablet.
Possibly, B&N may be updating the e-ink Nook, instead, to be slimmer and include more features, just like Amazon has done multiple times with their market leading Kindle e-reader.
B&N is currently in a patent dispute with Microsoft, who sued them last month over the Nook and Android.
CNET has been sued this week for distributing 220 million copies of LimeWire over the years.
The record labels say CNET parent CBS Interactive profited from the free downloads, which accounted for 95 percent of all LimeWire downloads since 2008.
The CBS defendants received massive amounts of revenue from P2P provders on a ‘pay per download’ basis and also from advertising revenues generated by advertisements placed on the download screen for P2P software.
The suit also claims CBS was "well aware" of LimeWire's infamy as an "infringement tool" yet continued to offer the client and "videos, articles and other media that instructed how to use P2P software to locate pirated copies of copyrighted works and remove electronic protections placed on digital music files."
LimeWire was shut down last year and had 50 million active users at its peak.
Netflix has confirmed that it has fired a call center worker that was caught stealing credit card numbers from customers of the rental service.
The data theft was discovered on April 4th and the worker was promptly fired.
Says Netflix Senior Counsel Sharon Williamson in a letter to the office of the New Hampshire Attorney General:
The worker accessed over approximately the past two months, without authorization, the credit card information of some Netflix customers who spoke with the individual over the telephone.
We do everything we can to safeguard our members' personal data and privacy, and when there's an issue like this we deal with it swiftly and decisively.
Netflix has only confirmed that two people had their info stolen, but there may be more.
Sony has submitted their written responses to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce over the massive cyber-attack that has taken down the PSN for two weeks and exposed personal info for up to 77 million gamers.
You can view the PDFs of the report, "The Threat of Data Theft to American Consumers" here.
The most shocking part of the report is the fact that they imply the group "Anonymous" in the attack, even though the group has denied any involvement.
Says Sony:
Sony has been the victim of a very carefully planned, very professional, highly sophisticated criminal cyber attack.
We discovered that the intruders had planted a file on one of our Sony Online Entertainment servers named “Anonymous” with the words “We are Legion.”
By April 25, forensic teams were able to confirm the scope of the personal data they believed had been taken, and could not rule out whether credit card information had been accessed. On April 26, we notified customers of those facts.
As of today, the major credit card companies have not reported any fraudulent transactions that they believe are the direct result of this cyber attack.
Nintendo has announced it will begin officially selling the Wii console for $150 bundled, starting May 15th.
The bundle includes a Wii remote, Mario Kart, and a steering wheel.
Nintendo will continue to sell the $169.99 bundle (which includes Wii Sports Resort and Wii Sports) until inventory runs out. From there, that price point will be discontinued.
Says Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime:
There is quite a bit more volume to be sold on the Wii home console. And the way we are going to get there is by offering the system at this low price and by including a key software title like Mario Kart."
Mario Kart has sold over 10 million copies, making it one of the most popular games on the console.
Overall the Wii has sold 86 million Wii consoles, to date.
Popular retailer Express has begun selling its entire catalog via Facebook today.
Users to the Shop Express tab of the company's Facebook Page can browse and purchase all the merchandise, just as if they were on the official site.
Adding to its normal features, users can also "like" clothing, and recommend items via posts on friend's walls.
Your account, along with real-time inventory and pricing, is synced across all of Express' sites and mobile apps, allowing for seamless shopping, says the company.
We continue to look for ways that the customer can interact with the brand on their own schedule and at their convenience, so that we bring down as many barriers as possible.
Apple has introduced the refreshed line of iMacs this week, running on quad-core processors, adding a built-in HD webcam for FaceTime and Intel's new Thunderbolt interface.
The new computers will be available as 21.5-inch (1920x1080 resolution) or 27-inch (2560x1440), and each are LED-backlit.
Starting at $1199, the 21.5-inch has a 2.5GHz Intel quad-core Core i5 with 6MB on-chip shared L3 cache, 4GB RAM, a small 500GB HDD and a 512MB GDDR5 AMD Radeon HD6750M video card.
The more expensive model starts at $1499 and has a 2.7GHz i5, a 1TB HDD and an AMD Radeon HD 6770M. It can also be upgraded (very expensively) to a 2.8Ghz i7 processor, a 2TB HDD and a 256GB SSD as a secondary (or primary) drive.
Moving up to the 27-inch models, starting at $1699 you can get a configuration with a 2.7GHz i5, a 1TB HDD and an AMD Radeon HD 6770M.
Warner Bros. has announced the acquisition of the movie review site Rotten Tomatoes and its parent, the "social" movie site Flixster.
As part of the deal, Flixster will still run independently but will expand beyond its current movie discovery niche.
It is unclear how much the studio paid, but WSJ reports the value of the sites at $60-90 million.
Says Warner:
Warner Bros. Home Entertainment Group will utilize the powerful Flixster brand and technical expertise to launch a number of initiatives designed to grow digital content ownership, including the recently announced consumer application “Digital Everywhere.” This studio-agnostic application will be the ultimate destination for consumers to organize and access their entire digital library from anywhere on the device of their choice, as well as to share recommendations and discover new content. The Flixster acquisition and “Digital Everywhere,” combined with the Studio’s support of the UltraViolet format are all part of an overall strategy to give consumers even more freedom, utility and value for their digital purchases.
Nielsen has announced today that for the first time since 1992, the amount of U.S. households with a TV set has fallen.
The 2012 Advance/Preliminary TV Household Universe Estimate (UE) fell to 114.7 million, from 115.9 a year ago.
Furthermore, Nielsen says U.S. homes with a TV set is now at 96.7 percent, down from its peak of 98.9 percent.
The company claims the 2012 UE drop can be attributed to:
Digital Transition: The summer of 2009 marked a significant milestone with a shift from analog to digital broadcasting. Following the transition, consumers were only able to view digital broadcasts via a set with a built-in digital tuner (i.e., a newer TV set) or an analog TV set connected to a digital-to-analog converter box, cable or satellite. TV penetration first dipped after this transition; the permanence of this trend was acknowledged in 2010 after the number of TV households did not rebound over time.
Economics: As with previous periods of belt-tightening, the cost of owning a TV is a factor in this UE decline; TV penetration first saw sustained decreases in second quarter 2009. Lower-income, rural homes were particularly affected.
After being in advanced talks for a few weeks now, it appears Twitter will acquire the popular TweetDeck client, for somewhere around $50 million.
The claims come via Crunch who says the announcement should be made this week.
As arguably the best Twitter client around (and accounting for 13 percent of all tweets sent on a daily basis), TweetDeck is a hot commodity for the microblogging platform and remains the top app for "power users," those who tweet many times per day from many different devices.
TweetDeck also allows users to connect their LinkedIn and Facebook platforms to one app.
TweetDeck had been previously linked to UberMedia, who was looking to purchase the client for $30 million and had an exclusive negotiating window that ran out. Uber has the top Twitter app for BlackBerry (UberSocial) and the "highest rated" Twitter app for Android, Twidroyd and has been allegedly cooking up a plan for a "Twitter killing" service so on Twitter's end, the new purchase makes perfect sense.
The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will be getting Facebook and video chat apps in the next month, giving owners two of their most wanted demands.
RIM says the FB app was built specifically for the PlayBook's larger screen, working off the BlackBerry's popular smartphone app.
As is standard, the app will allow for watching videos and viewing photos, using FB chat, commenting/liking, and viewing other friend's profiles.
Says RIM's social networking boss:
There are over 30 million users of our Facebook for BlackBerry smartphones app who are staying in touch with their social network while on the go. Now with Facebook for BlackBerry PlayBook we can also offer customers highly engaging social experiences optimized for the PlayBook, including the ability to share FaceBook pictures and videos with friends and family on an HDTV.
Giving users a native video chat app (like FaceTime for iOS), PlayBook owners can use Wi-Fi and the built-in 5MP front-side camera to video or voice chat with other PlayBook owners.
Speaking over the weekend, PlayStation head Kaz Hirai admitted that up to 10 million user's credit card info were possibly stolen.
Apologizing, Hirai says: "We deeply apologize for the inconvenience we have caused."
The company does say that it does not believe any credit card info was actually stolen, but it is the first admission that comes complete with a figure.
When the PSN relaunches this week, everyone will need to download a system update and change their passwords.
As a small form of compensation, Sony will start a "Welcome Back" program, offering up some "entertainment content" for free and a free 30-day subscription to the premium PlayStation Plus.
Variety says that videogame publisher Ubisoft has launched their own movie studio, Ubisoft Motion Pictures, in an effort to adapt their own game franchises for the big screen.
The company says the film division will be headed by Jean-Julien Baronnet, the former CEO of Luc Besson's EuropaCorp.
Producer Didier Lupfer will lead production and development and Jean de Rivieres, an ex-distribution boss at Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures France will be in charge of marketing and international sales.
Ubisoft has a number of properties that could easily be adapted for the big screen, including "Assassin's Creed" and "Splinter Cell." Their "Prince of Persia" franchise was made into a movie last year and grossed $335 million despite mediocre reviews.
Dear Valued SOE (Sony Online Entertainment) Customers,
We have had to take the SOE service down temporarily. In the course of our investigation into the intrusion into our systems we have discovered an issue that warrants enough concern for us to take the service down effective immediately. We will provide an update later today (Monday).
We apologize for any inconvenience and greatly appreciate your patience.
Last week Sony said that SOE had not been affected by the massive PSN hack, but it seems there may now be worries related to the "external intrusion."
AT&T has started its DSL and U-Verse bandwidth caps today, two months after announcing the move.
DSL users will have a 150GB cap while U-Verse subscribers will have a 250GB cap.
Anyone who exceeds the limit three times will be charged $10 for every extra 50GB of data consumed.
The new policy goes into effect today for new and existing customers.
AT&T says it will send notifications when you reach 65 percent of the cap, 90 percent and finally when you hit the full cap. The company will also give all subscribers software to help them track their usage.
The caps will affect under 2 percent of users, says the ISP, subscribers who use "a disproportionate" amount of data and slow down networks for others.
AT&T notes that the average subscriber uses 18GB of bandwidth per month.
Sony announced earlier today that they will slowly be bringing back the PlayStation Network and Qriocity over the next week, and some unconfirmed reports already have the service up-and-running in Japan.
The company will also be ramping up security on the network in response to the largest security breach in the company's history, with personal info (and possibly but not likely credit card info) stolen from 77 million accounts.
Finally, Sony says they will be setting up a new customer appreciation program to thank everyone for waiting almost two weeks for PSN to come back up.
Sony says:
Third-party experts have conducted extensive tests to verify the security strength of the PlayStation Network and Qriocity services. With these measures in place, SCE and SNEI plan to start a phased rollout by region of the services shortly.
The new security features include:
-Added automated software monitoring and configuration management to help defend against new attacks
-Enhanced levels of data protection and encryption
-Enhanced ability to detect software intrusions within the network, unauthorized access and unusual activity patterns
Warner Music Group could be sold at the end of the week for $3 billion, say sources, as all final buyout bids for the Big 4 record label are due tomorrow.
So far, the two competing bids are coming from Len Blavatnik's Access Industry and a joint bid by Tom and Alec Gores' Platinum Equity and Gores Group.
Warner says two major labels (BMG and Sony) were bidding, as well, but "fell short of what Warner's board was looking for from strategic buyers." It appears that Warner wants a premium from labels as the transaction will take much longer to complete, given anti-trust review.
With all that being said, insiders are still skeptical that an actual deal will be completed.
Warner put itself up for sale in January, following years of declining music sales.
"The key issues for Warner Music's board are price and simplicity of the transaction process," say the sources.
Warner has $1.9 billion in debt, and is only expected to make $333 million in income before interest, depreciation and amortization, for the fiscal 2012.
Less than a week before their official announcement Neogaf has posted what appears to be the hardware specs for the upcoming Wii 2 (Project Cafe).
Twitter may be ready to introduce its own photo-sharing service as early as this week, say multiple reports.
