According to "trusted" sources speaking to Edge-Online, Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal motion control camera system will launch with a price tag of $150, much higher than expected by most in the industry.
The system will also launch on October 26th, says the site, in line with expectations of an October release.
European and UK rates would be based "on a number of factors," including the current exchange rate at the time of release, so those prices remain unclear for the time being.
Rival Sony is releasing its PlayStation Move motion control system later this year, bundled with a game, for $100 USD.
Perhaps more notably, Natal (which will be given its official name in June at the E3 event) will cost just $30 less than the Nintendo Wii, which has motion control out of the box and a huge catalog of games.
Facebook, facing increasing criticism over its new privacy settings, has announced it will be rolling out new simplified settings for users over the next week.
The criticism mainly stemmed from the site making all of a user's basic information available to the public, with no opt-out. The new update will allow users to reduce what is shown to the public.
Additionally, USAToday reports that the new settings will add "an opt-out feature for a myriad of non-Facebook applications."
Says CEO Mark Zuckerberg: "A lot of people are upset with us. One of the big takeaways is: Don't mess with the privacy stuff for a really long time."
Last week, rival social networking site MySpacesimplified their own privacy settings. Said MySpace Co-President Mike Jones: "Given all the noise in the industry, we want to get out and state a clear position so that our users understand that we take privacy very seriously."
Apple has surpassed Microsoft for largest tech company in the world, by market cap, with its stock finishing the day with a market value of $222.1 billion.
Exxon Mobil remains the largest U.S. stock, with a value of $278.6 billion. Microsoft fell to third, with a market cap of $219.2 billion, as of the close of the market today.
Apple saw revenue and profit soar in the Q2 2010, with iPhone sales surging across the world. The quarterly results did not even include the iPad tablet, which has sold over 1 million units since its launch in April.
"Apple really checks all the boxes when you look at the tech sector," adds Ryan Jacob, a fund manager at Jacob Internet Fund in Los Angeles. "Do they have the opportunity to gain share in their markets? What are the prospects for margins? It’s hard to find a company that you can have more confidence in than Apple."
Microsoft and Apple, pioneers of personal computing, have seen a divergence in recent years, with Microsoft having trouble moving away from its mainstay businesses while Apple continues to try to become leaders in new markets, just like it did with the iPod earlier in the decade, the iPhone in the later part of the decade, and the iPad now in 2010.
According to sources close to the talks, it appears the U.S. Justice Department has been looking into whether Apple "unfairly dominates" the digital music market with its popular iTunes store.
The sources say the Justice Department has been contacting music labels and other digital music providers, asking broad questions about the nature of the market in general, and Apple's role in it.
The new inquiries may have been stemmed by accusations in March that Apple was using its giant market share lead to prevent rival Amazon MP3 from debuting new songs exclusively before they hit iTunes a day or two later.
The iTunes store currently has about 70 percent market share, with Amazon trailing at around 9 percent.
Global music sales have fallen from $26.5 billion at the start of the decade to just $17 billion last year, even as digital music sales have exploded.
AT&T has announced today the launch of an AT&T Wi-Fi Hotzone in Times Square, the company's latest effort to ease congestion on their 3G data networks in high-population areas.
The Wi-Fi service was installed on 46th street and 7th avenue and will service a large portion of Times Square.
The Hotzone is free to all of AT&T's subscribers, as long as they have a device that can connect to wireless. This includes smartphones and laptops with 3G LaptopConnect modems.
AT&T has received almost constant criticism for dropped calls and choppy 3G service in New York City and other high-population areas, especially from iPhone users that are notoriously bandwidth hungry.
Says John Donovan, AT&T's CTO (via press release): "Whether they're emailing photos and videos to friends back home, downloading a restaurant review, or ordering discount Broadway tickets online, people in Times Square want the mobile broadband connection that lets them get the most done in the least amount of time. With this pilot AT&T Wi-Fi hotzone, we're examining new ways to combine our Wi-Fi and 3G networks to help ensure that AT&T customers in Times Square always have a fast mobile broadband connection to do what matters most to them. It's another example of how AT&T is exploring the ideal blend of technologies to maximize the mobile experience for our customers in New York City."
Davenport & Company analyst Drake Johnstone has made a bold prediction this week, saying that AT&T would lose up to 40 percent of its iPhone subscribers if the carrier was to lose its exclusivity pact on the iPhone and the smartphone moved to Verizon.
Says Johnstone in a client note: "Over the past several years, AT&T indicated that 40 percent of its new iPhone customers came from other carriers. We estimate that AT&T has 15 million iPhone customers (as of Q-1 10) and believe that AT&T could lose as many as 6 million, or 40 percent, of its iPhone customers when Verizon begins selling the iPhone in 2011."
Because of these expectations, the analyst says: "We are reducing AT&T’s 2011 wireless subscriber additions from 6 million to 2 million (most of these new additions may be lower value connected devices such as eReaders instead of higher value long-term wireless customers), since we believe that Verizon could obtain Apple’s approval to sell and provide wireless service for the iPhone as early as mid-2011."
While the numbers seem sensationalist, they could be a possibility. AT&T does have some measures in place to prevent such an "exodus," however. The company just raised its ETF (early termination fees) to $350 for smartphones, meaning leaving for another carrier could be a pricey transaction. Additionally, family-talk and business-discounted plans are hard to switch to new carriers with, and AT&T says about 80 percent of its customers have those types of plans.
Sony has announced that the PlayStation Store is now the first console marketplace to offer original content from HBO, the premium cable channel.
Owners of the PlayStation 3 and the PSP handheld can now purchase individual episodes or full seasons of their favorite HBO shows, right to their consoles, through the PSN.
As of today, the first two seasons of "True Blood" are available, the first season of "Eastbound and Down," the first three seasons of "Big Love" and the first two seasons of "Entourage."
Additionally, catalog shows such as "The Sopranos," "Sex and the City," "The Wire," "Rome," "Da Ali G Show," "Curb Your Enthusiasm," and "Flight of the Conchords," are available, although not all seasons are available of each show.
Each episode costs $3 USD, with season prices varying.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, Legendary Pictures has bought the rights to create a Mass Effect movie, based on the popular EA-Bioware video game on the Xbox 360.
In talks to write the movie is Mark Protosevich, the man behind the blockbuster I Am Legend, and the movie will be produced by Avi and Ari Arad, or Thomas Tull and Jon Jashni of Legendary.
Mass Effect was released in 2008, and its sequel was just released in 2010. The science fiction game follows a human soldier and his starship in the future, and features many different alien species on a variety of foreign planets.
Avi Arad is the former chairman of Marvel Studios, and is currently developing a film based on the video game "Drake's Fortune."
Says Tull of the game, and subsequent movie: "[Mass Effect] has depth, compelling characters and an engaging back story."
Harmonix has released the demo for the upcoming Rock Band sequel, Green Day: Rock Band and included is a teaser image that seems to imply that the upcoming game will have keyboard support, an all-new instrument for the popular music game series.
Users can download the two-track demo from the XBL Marketplace and play the songs "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" and "Welcome to Paradise."
The image shows off the four standard icons, (mic, guitar, bass, drums) with the keyboard fifth.
The original game of the series sold over 5 million tracks, and led to a revolution in DLC (downloadable content), selling over 40 million tracks.
Rock Band 2 continued strong sales for the franchise, although reviews were not as great.
The Amazon Kindle, the most popular e-reader by market share will eventually have a color version, says CEO Jeff Bezos, but that day is not soon.
Speaking at the e-tailer's shareholder meeting this week, Bezos says that while not impossible, adding color to the Kindle's e-ink display is "a difficult technical challenge" and that the device is "still a long way out."
Bezos adds that he has seen some prototypes "in the lab" but none of them are "ready for prime-time production."
The e-reader market continues to get more and more crowded, especially with Apple's introduction of the iPad tablet in April. The iPad has e-reading capabilities on a full color screen and a connection to the growing AppleiBookStore.
While Bezos refuses to disclose the amount of Kindle devices sold since launch, DisplaySearchreported last month that the number is somewhere in the 3.3 million unit range.
After 11 months of ongoing development, Google Chrome for Macs and Linux is finally stable, moving out of the beta stage.
The company even admitted that for the first few months the popular browser was extremely buggy and should only be used by more advanced users. Today, that is no longer an issue.
Along with the "stable" tag, Chrome for Macs and Linux now include advanced syncing for bookmarks and settings, geolocation APIs, app cache and other HTML5 tools.
Perhaps more notably to the casual end user, the browsers now have access to all 4500 Chrome extensions.
Not included in the new release is built-in Flash, as you will need to manually download it. By Flash 10.1, Google promises a stable version.
Microsoft and Netflix have announced today that the video rental service has chosen PlayReady as its DRM of choice for upcoming Netflix-ready streaming devices and apps.
The decision, says Netflix, will allow for subscribers to watch the over 12,000 movies and TV episodes available via "Watch Instantly," the company's popular streaming catalog, on Blu-ray players, Internet-enabled TVs and other devices.
PlayReady is already used for instant streaming on the PC and Macs, and the companies say the first PlayReady devices should hit shelves "as early as this summer."
Says Bill Holmes, vice president of business development at Netflix: "Netflix ready devices are a popular way for our members to instantly watch the huge library of TV episodes and movies available from Netflix that can be watched instantly on their TVs. Netflix is expanding our investment in PlayReady and making PlayReady our primary DRM technology because it best meets the requirements of our content suppliers and device partners while allowing us to benefit from efficiencies in our content delivery infrastructure."
In an ironic twist, Warner Bros. has been sued this week for stealing an anti-piracy technology patent.
Medien Patent Verwaltung(MPV) of Germany is the company doing the accusing, saying Warner and Technicolor began unlawfully using the technology after it was shown to them in 2003.
The studio was shown the technology, which is "a method of marking films with a distinctive code so it could track back sources of piracy to the exact theater in which an unauthorized copy originated," in 2003, says TheHollywoodReporter.
Warner has been using it without paying an licensing fees since 2004, adds the complaint.
Says MPV: "We disclosed our anti-piracy technology to Warner Bros. in 2003 at their request, under strict confidentiality, expecting to be treated fairly. Instead, they started using our technology extensively without our permission and without any accounting to us. However, we had taken care to obtain patents to protect MPV's technology, and we are now in a position where we must assert our rights."
Yankee Stadium, home of the defending World Series champions, has just added the Apple iPad to its prohibited device list, which already included all laptops.
Team officials say it is nothing personal to the iPad, but bunches the tablet in with all laptops.
The ban is a "security-and-safety" issue, they add.
When asked, Major League Baseball said iPad bans are a team-by-team decision, and the New York Mets and the Seattle Mariners have already announced the device is allowed in their respective stadiums.
In April, the iPad was banned in Israel due to wireless standards irregularities, but the ban was subsequently lifted.
Apple has been sued this week over patents relating to its popular iTunes store, in a case that could take down the world's most popular online music store.
The suing company, Sharing Sound, is accusing Apple of infringing patents relating to "djustable length displays of textual and other data," as well as patents related to online music stores.
Sharing Sound says they hold the patent for "distribution of musical products by a web site vendor over the Internet," which seems incredibly broad, and practically describes any music downloading site that has song previews, a shopping cart, and a legal music player.
The exact patent targeting Apple "has a provision that downloaded songs have a unique identifier included in the file to link the files to a particular purchaser," says ArsTechnica.
iTunes infringes on this patent, says the suit, as all songs downloaded through the service have Apple ID, used to identify the original purchaser.
According to "trusted" sources speaking to Edge-Online, Microsoft's upcoming Project Natal motion control camera system will launch with a price tag of $150, much higher than expected by most in the industry.
Facebook, facing increasing criticism over its new privacy settings, has announced it will be rolling out new simplified settings for users over the next week.
