Fans of the Sony PSP handheld have likely been disappointed by the lack of new innovation with the system over the past few years, including the flop that is the PSPGo.
If VG247 is correct, however, the still unofficial PSP2 sequel should have some pretty exciting specs, and will hopefully boost Sony's lagging handheld sales.
The site, citing British sources, says the console will not be revealed at the upcoming E3 event, but it will be launched this year, with a 2011 release date.
The handheld has a touch-screen, but will keep physical buttons as well. It has two cameras, one forward-facing for video conferencing and the other, as standard, on the back.
Sources add the console could be Wi-Fi and 3G supportive, which would be a first for the handheld series. UMD will likely be removed totally, just like on the PSPGo.
A preliminary injunction obtained by several major Hollywood studios against the Pirate Bay's provider has forced the infamous BitTorrenttracker offline temporarily while it attempts to carry out backup plans. CB3ROB Ltd. & Co. were prohibited from connecting the Pirate Bay website to the Internet by the Regional Court of Hamburg through the CyberBunker operator.
CB3ROB Managing Director Sven Olaf Kamphuis decided to stop routing the Pirate Bay traffic until his lawyers have carefully read and reviewed the injunction he received. The Pirate Bay will not wait for the lawyers review however, and are already attempting to get the website back online.
To get back online, the site only requires that another provider routes traffic for the Pirate Bay servers. At time of writing the site is still offline but is expected to be back online within a few hours.
The Pirate Bay has kept backup and "Plan B" measures since it was targeted in a raid back in 2006.
According to Stratfor Global Intelligence, 44 workers from a factory in Suzhou, China plan to sue the iPhone contractor Wintek after they were allegedly exposed to poison while cleaning iPhone screens with the chemical "n-hexane."
The firm says 62 workers have been hospitalized in the last 9 months due to n-hexane poisoning. The poisoning is so serious that it can "cause nerve damage and sometimes paralysis."
Stratfor goes on to say that a factory manager at the plant made the workers use the chemical because it dries faster than standard alcohol, and also leaves less streaks. That manager has since been fired.
The issue first went public in January when 2000 protesters began smashing car windows and factory windows over a dispute relating to year-end bonuses.
Adds Stratfor: "Lawsuits of any kind are uncommon in China, where disputes are usually addressed quietly behind closed doors. Much more common is labor abuse, and given the rising power of workers, we can expect to see more such suits, which provide legal outlets for social tension, a constant concern for Beijing."
All current members have until May 31st to continue using the service, but as of May 1st the site stopped accepting any new members.
Lala was a download and streaming music service that gives members a "digital locker" to store their music. What made the company different from iTunes, Amazon MP3, etc, is that Lala would also sell streaming rights to tracks for pennies, allowing for unlimited streaming online of the track, but no physical download if they didn't want it.
As had been rumored in the past, the Xbox 360 Project Natal motion-sensing camera was "confirmed" for an October release earlier this month, by Microsoft Saudi marketing manager Syed Bilal Tariq.
At the time, Tariq said (in reference to Natal's release date): "It is going to be somewhere in October and we will be in a position to confirm the date at E3, which is in June, but definitely it is going to be October 2010."
Today, Microsoft has refuted Tariq's claim, saying that the manager is not even directly employed by the company.
Says the MS rep: "Syed Bilal Tariq is not a [Microsoft] employee. He is a vendor employed through a third-party company on behalf of the Microsoft subsidiary in Saudi Arabia."
The company adds it will reveal the official release date during the E3 expo next month.
According to PreCentral, forum member cdowers has gotten the Palm mobile operating system WebOS to boot on PC hardware, getting it to run on a Dell C600 laptop.
It seems he pulled off the trick by using the WebOS emulator image (which works on x86 processors) and putting it on an IDE hard drive (not the newer SATA standards).
Now, instead of WebOS running on a virtual machine, it is running on a real machine, says the source.
The forum users does say there are four glaring problems still:
1) handle interface issue (touchscreen/gesture area, faux mouse... not to mention the accelerometer issue)
2) drivers. seeing as it's running on top of an x86 kernel... maybe it's just an issue of running a different kernel with some patches? It's hard to say on this one... it really depends on how much palm patched the underlying kernel.
The device has the most powerful specs seen on a smartphone yet, and it will run the Android 2.1firmware.
This weekend, the carrier has given a release date and price for the device, which will hit stores on June 4th. The phone will cost $199 USD with two-year contract.
The EVO 4G has a 4.3-inch WVGA capacitive multi-touchscreen display (with pinch to zoom), Android 2.1 with Sense UI, Google Search, Google Maps, Google Talk, Gmail, Google Goggles, YouTube, Google Calendar syncing, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot capability for connecting up to eight Wi-Fi enabled devices.
Palmhas announced today that the Pre Plus smartphone is now available via AT&T, with little brother the Pixi Plus coming June 6th.
AT&T made note a few weeks ago that the Pre Plus was "coming soon," and that has come to fruition this weekend.
The device will be exactly like the Pre Plus that launched for Verizon earlier this year, except it will use a GSM radio and require a SIM card.
Because the phone has not been selling, (from any carrier), Verizon slashed the price to $30 USD with contract, and has thrown in Mobile HotSpot for free (normally $30 per month). AT&T is not being so generous.
Palm put itself up for sale in the last two months after it became clear that the company's phones were not selling and it only had enough cash to last the next 12 months.
The smartphone maker then reached out to 16 different companies and five gave serious offers. Only HP and Lenovo were named as potential buyers, while two other companies wanted to license Palm's patents, including the mobile operating system WebOS.
HP's first offer was for $1 billion ($4.75 a share), while an unnamed company offered $600 million in cash. The third would-be buyer offered an all-stock transaction. Palm told all three the bids were not competitive and suddenly a fourth company came out and offered $6 per share, as well as the promise that the transaction would happen in the next two weeks.
According to PlayStation University, the PlayStation 3 software attach rate is creeping in on the Xbox 360's, threatening to kill off the old adage that games simply do not sell on the Sony console.
Despite a lower install base, software sales for the PS3 were significantly higher than that of the Xbox 360 in the fiscal 2009, 115.6 million to 103.1 million. The fiscal year runs from May until the end of April.
The new results put lifetime software sales at 290.5 million, still well below the 360's 353.8 million, but catching up quickly.
At 35.7 million PS3 units sold, that puts the attach rate at 8.1. The 360 has 40.2 million lifetime sales, for an attach rate of 8.8.
Both those numbers are higher than the Nintendo Wii, with a 7.7 attach rate, despite much larger hardware and software sales. All three pale in comparison to the aging PS2, which has been out since 2000 and still has a remarkable 10.3 attach rate.
In April we reported that the U.S. Copyright Group had filed lawsuits against 50,000 pirates, each alleged of downloading a number of films including "Steam Experiment," "Far Cry," "Uncross the Stars," "Gray Man" and "Call of the Wild 3D."
The Group has now demanded that Time Warner Cable, one of the largest ISPs in the U.S., hand over the identity of 2000 alleged pirates, and Time Warner has declined, saying it is too expensive, and "exceeds their current staffing capabilities."
The ISP says it would cost them about $45 USD each to send out the info on all the requests.
"Time Warner Cable does not have enough employees to respond to these requests. In a typical month, the company receives an average of 567 IP lookup requests, nearly all of them coming from law enforcement. These lookup requests involve everything from suicide threats to child abduction to terrorist activity," each of which takes "immediate priority" over copyright infringement cases.
AT&T has said this week that all equipment-supply constraints it has for its data network updates should end by August.
Says Operations CEO John Stankey: "It's been a slow process to build capacity...Hopefully, it should be back to normal," after the summer.
AT&T has been actively trying to improve its coverage in key markets in New York and California, but says a lack of cellular radio components and zoning issues has led to a very slow effort in the regions.
The constraint issue has "bottomed" says Stankey, and should improve from here.
For New York at least, dropped calls for consumers using 3G fell 9 percent, but in California, progress has "lagged."
Supply issues have come mainly from Chinese component makers, which was compounded last month by the volcano eruption in Iceland that shut down flights for a number of days.
In April, Apple countersued Kodak , accusing the film pioneer of violating two digital photography patents that Apple owns.
The International Trade Commission (ITC) has said this week that it will investigate into the countersuit, after agreeing to investigate into Kodak's claims earlier this year.
The two patents specifically noted in the suit are patents 6,031,964 and RE38,911, which are "a system and method for using a unified memory architecture to implement a digital camera device," and a "modular digital image processing via an image processing chain with modifiable parameter controls."
The decision by the ITC is not a surprise as it, in most cases, accepts complaints from major corporations. The dispute can take up to years to be resolved, however.
Skype, the extremely popular multi-platform VoIP company has said this week that it does not intend to create any software for the upcoming Windows Phone 7 operating system, at least not currently.
"Instead, [Skype] is concentrating on development around the iPhone, Symbian and Android operating systems," says David Richards, via SmartHouse. "[Although] Dan Neary, [Skype's] Asia Pacific VP was hesitant to explain why no development was taking place for the new Windows Mobile offering, he did say [Skype] was developing new offerings for the iPhone, iPad and Android based phones."
That being said, the report is not an official renouncement, but just a current snapshot of the development status of different Skype applications.
Google has announced that it will be shutting down the Nexus One web store, just months after it launched to little fanfare.
The online store offered the smartphone for sale, while showing off all its specs and giving a virtual tour of the device. The company concedes that consumers want to be able to see and touch smartphones before they buy, however, so the web store has remained a "niche channel for early adopters."
The search giant also says consumers also want a wide range of service plans to chose from, which were not offered via the store.
As of this week, Google will begin making the smartphone available in "more countries," and available in retail stores.
Once the model is spread worldwide, "we'll stop selling handsets via the web store, and will instead use it as an online store window to showcase a variety of Android phones available globally."
Fans of the Sony PSP handheld have likely been disappointed by the lack of new innovation with the system over the past few years, including the flop that is the PSPGo.
A preliminary injunction obtained by several major Hollywood studios against the Pirate Bay's provider has forced the infamous 
According to 
