IBLOG SPACE

If you’re a big fan of PlayStation gaming, you need to be aware that Sony has announced PlayStation Network will be down for almost the entire day today. Sony is saying that the PlayStation Network will be off-line for routine scheduled maintenance Thursday, February 2 from about 6 AM until midnight PST. This is certainly an extended outage that will bother some users since it’s right in the middle of the time when most use the PlayStation Network. The good news is Sony claims that most online play will be unaffected. Sony also notes that users who are already signed into their account on the PlayStation Network before the maintenance starts should be able to stay signed into their accounts. However, a number of services will be unavailable for the entire length of maintenance. The services that will be unavailable during maintenance includes the PlayStation Store via the PS3, PSP, and Media Go. PlayStation Network users will also be unable to access account management and account regi

PayPal has been around for many years now and is the standard for paying for things on eBay. PayPal is generating huge revenues and is the source of some significant ire for many online shoppers. I know many users of PayPal have been waiting for quality alternative for a long time. It looks like the quality alternative could possibly be a new startup called Stripe. Interestingly, some of the founders of PayPal are backing Stripe. Stripe counts among its backers Peter Thiel and Elon Musk, which is rather interesting to me. Those two backers must think Stripe has a chance to compete with PayPal considering they helped start PayPal. Theil and Musk aren’t the only backers of Stripe; Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz also back the startup. The brain trust behind Stripe are brothers Patrick and John Collison from Limerick, Ireland. The two brothers dropped out of MIT and Harvard to focus on starting up Stripe. Stripe is a streamlined service that will allow people to accept payments on

FBI investigators may have infected MegaUpload‘s computers with spyware so as to monitor Skype and email messaging, it’s been suggested, with sources within the Microsoft-owned VoIP company claiming it was not asked to turn over conversation logs. Multiple chat records were included by the FBI within its case against MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom and other employees at the file-sharing site, dating back as much as five years, though exactly how the US government acquired them is unclear. Sources within Skype tell CNET that no approach was made to them to release private logs. However, a spyware leak from within MegaUpload’s own computers looks more likely to be the cause. “Electronic evidence was obtained though search warrants,” a spokesman for the US Attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia said, “which are reviewed and approved by a US court.” The suggestion is that the FBI deployed a tool called CIPAV, or “Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier”, which has been previo

Vizio has confirmed pricing for its 21:9 aspect HDTVs, the Vizio XVT 3D CinemaWide TrueLED Smart TV, a 58-inch set whose name is almost as broad as its LCD panel. Announced at CES last month, the CinemaWide promises to deliver the authentic movie theater experience to your living room, with a 2560 x 1080 display, though it’ll cost you more than a few boxes of popcorn: from $3,499, in fact. That’s quite a few theater tickets-worth, though you do at least get the reassurance that if you’re sitting on gum it’s probably your own. The extra-wide panel obviously comes into its own when you’re watching cinema-cut content, though it also makes navigating through smart TV menus more straightforward: you can have a Full HD picture on-screen at the same time as a browser bar. The panel itself uses edge LED lighting and has a 120Hz refresh rate and 400 nits brightness. It includes passive 3D and 32 zones of Smart Dimming, along with picture-in-picture and various SRS pseudo-surround sound. Connect

Sony’s new CEO and President Kazuo Hirai has his work cut out for him: the company’s fiscal Q3 2011 results are out, and Sony’s revenues are down roughly $2bn (159bn yen) pointing to an even more miserable full-year loss than hitherto expected. Sony blamed Thai flooding, an increasingly competitive market landscape – particularly in the smartphone business – and the continued strength of the yen for its net operating loss of $1.18bn along with sales drooping 17.4-percent year-on-year. Among the primary culprits were LCD TVs and the PlayStation 3. Meanwhile, the S-LCD business – Sony’s share of which has now been sold off to partner Samsung – contributed to a loss despite Samsung paying for Sony’s half, because the company’s shares went cheaply when they were sold last month. Repairs after the flooding in Thailand cost $114m, though much of that was covered by insurance. Profit from LCD televisions declined, thanks to lower retail prices that didn’t cover Sony’s own costs, while the com

If you happen to be in the slim minority of people who owns a Google TV-equipped Sony device, there’s an update heading your way this week. The new version of Google’s operating system for the big screen will make the TV-optimized version of Chrome run a bit speedier. It also adds support for Blu-ray 3D movies. The search giant confirmed that the update is in the works through the official Google TV Twitter account. The company promised to roll out the new firmware “this week.” Of course, this update only applies to the Sony Internet TV line from around a year ago, and the 3D aspect applies to the small numer of Sony Blu-ray players with Google TV functionality. It does not include the Logitech Revue which was discontinued due to sluggish sales. Google TV is hoping for a major comeback in 2012, with much-needed support finally confirmed from other high-end television manufacturers. But the question remains whether or not consumers see any value in having what is essentially a computer

We’ve all heard the expression that space is the final frontier. But for scientists who have been drilling for 20 years to get through to a vast, untouched lake buried under Antarctic ice, there’s still new places to explore right here on Earth. And soon that lake, having been trapped for more than 20 million years, will be navigable, and there might even be previously unseen life forms down there. If you’ve seen the movie “The Thing,” we know what you’re thinking right now. The parallels are pretty stark. But Lake Vostok probably won’t reveal any sentient alien spacecraft unfortunately. Nevertheless, it is an enormous scientific breakthrough. And the discoveries will not end with Lake Vostok. In fact, this is only the beginning of what could be centuries of work in uncovering newly realized structures in the mysterious continent. Scientists in the region have confirmed there are more than 200 lakes below the surface of the ice of Antarctica. Lake Vostok, the one that has taken two dec

In honor of Valentine’s Day, Match.com decided to figure out what the correlation was between promiscuity and smartphone platform ownership. That’s Match.com for you. The result was that 62% of Android phone owners are willing to have sex after the first date. That sets Google’s mobile operating system ahead of all other competitors. The least likely? Those stuffy Blackberry owners. Specifically, less than half, only 48% of those with a Blackberry said they’re willing to take that dive. The other 52% are probably either working on advancing their career or still trying to figure out what an iPhone is. On that note, 57% of iPhone owners admitted they could be swept off their feet and into the bedroom in the course of one night. And those aren’t the only statistics Match.com found. It also revealed that 72% of Android users have sought out online dating sites, compared to 58% of iPhone owners and just 50% of Blackberry customers. So Android wins there too; Android users also topped the c

D’oh! Homer isn’t the only Simpsons character who can tell you when the next left turn you’ll need to make is. TomTom has just landed a new agreement that brings the blue-headed wife Marge, as well as Mr. Burns into the picture. It isn’t talked about as much since the novelty wore off, but celebrity voice guidance is one of TomTom’s most distinct differentiating factors over the competition. Personally, we pity the fool who doesn’t have Mr. T or someone equally as iconic giving them their turn-by-turn, sattlite-assisted directions. Then again, these vanity voice skins don’t come cheap. Each character or celebrity costs $12.95. In addition, if you opt for a custom voice, the GPS will not speak the names of the individual streets. So while the default computerized voice can tell you, “Turn left on 5th Avenue,” Marge Simpson only has the ability to tell you to “turn left.” Not all TomTom units have the ability to generate spoken street names, though. So in case you haven’t been keeping up

PS3 owners who want to get a taste of the latest is survival horror action will have to wait a couple months. That is, unless they also have an Xbox 360. Publisher Capcom has decided to bring the Resident Evil 6 demo to Microsoft’s console ahead of its Sony rival. No doubt it has some coaxing from Microsoft, which has almost single-handedly brought the phrase “timed exclusivity” to mainstream lexicon. The biggest irritant to PS3 gamers is that the Xbox 360 gets Call of Duty add-on content months before they do, but this time the timed exclusivity bit happens before the base game is even released. The RE6 demo will go live for Xbox 360 owners on July 3, while anyone wanting to sweat through the preview with a DualShock will have to wait until September 4. That’s the way the cookie crumbles. A Capcom spokesperson was quoted by GamingTarget.com as saying, “This was a strategic business decision.” As a footnote, this demo will only be available to gamers who purchase the other Capcom titl

Did you that it’s actually illegal for Netflix to share your movie “rental” history with the public? There’s a law called the Video Privacy Protection Act (VPPA), passed in 1988, to that effect. And now Netflix is facing a Congressional subcommittee because of its Facebook app that allows users to willingly share their streaming information online. And unfortunately, some Senators are refusing to accept changes that should be made to the 24-year-old measure. Interestingly, the VPPA came about after a Supreme Court nominee, Robert Bork, found a list of his video rental records printed in a news publication. Let’s just say they weren’t all Disney flicks, and Bork didn’t receive approval for the nomination. So its origins are about keeping politicians protected from their own personal lives, which is why you can imagine there is some resistance to change. The House of Representatives passed an amended version of the law last month, giving users the ability to consent to having their info

In what is perhaps one of the most controversial cases the Food and Drug Administration has ever participated in, there’s a new argument that’s making some pretty heavy waves. In essence, the FDA says that a person’s individual body can be categorized as a “drug” and is thus subject to all the government-mandated regulations about interstate commerce and the like. That’s the meta-level, theoretical interpretation so let’s take a look at the specific case that has led to this wild claim. At issue is a Colorado clinic which performs a non-surgical treatment called Regenexx-SD. It’s used for patients who have joint or bone pain, and the process involves using adult stem cells. Other than that, no drugs are used so the clinic has been operating without the stringent restrictions in place by the FDA. But now the FDA is arguing that stem cells, which exist in every living human, are drugs and thus subject to government regulation. What is particularly cumbersome for the clinic is if the FDA

There’s an extra day in February this year, and Microsoft will apparently capitalize on that extra time as the date for which the next iteration of Halo will be revealed. Halo 4 will be the focus of a company ‘Spring Showcase’ event, according to translations of a Finnish magazine. The game was announced in a very brief manner at last year’s E3, but this event will reportedly give a much more complete look. Despite its name, Halo 4 will be the eighth title in the Halo franchise, but it will pick up with the legacy that Halo 3 left. There had been speculation before E3 that Halo 4 would be developed for the Xbox 720 (or whatever the next Xbox happens to be called), but those rumors were quickly quashed. As far as game mechanics are concerned, players will once again actually play as Master Chief. The official description of the game is as follows: “Set in the aftermath of Halo 3, Master Chief returns to confront his own destiny and face an ancient evil that threatens the fate of the ent

Samsung might be taking a page out of the Apple playbook and preparing to launch a smartphone that falls in between the Galaxy S II and the Galaxy S III. What will potentially be called the “Galaxy S II Plus” has appeared in a benchmark database, An3DBenchXL. This could be the reason why the manufacturer revealed it would not be displaying the SIII at this month’s Mobile World Congress. The benchmark data show the Galaxy S 2+ with Android 2.3.4 installed, a WVGA display and a 1.5 GHz processor. This would place it ahead of the Galaxy S II’s 1.2 GHz CPU. This naming convention is becoming increasingly commonplace. Samsung did it with the last generation of Galaxy S phones, and who can forget the iPhone 3GS and the iPhone 4S? After all, there are only so many numbers you can climb before it just looks ridiculous, and if you churn them out on an annual basis those numbers run up quickly. As for Mobile World Congress, even though the S3 will be a no-show, we do know that a refreshed Galax

Though we do not yet have an official release date for the fourth of the self-titled DROID family from Verizon, it has officially landed on the site which always deploys a DROID before it’s dropped in real life to Verizon. At DroidDoes.com you can plainly see this next in a long line of Motorola Android devices carried by Verizon, it spinning gleefully for your amusement as you prepare for its launch here in the February winter of 2012. The latest leaked roadmap we’ve seen has February 9th listed as the release date for this device, just so you know. This handset is a Verizon-branded Motorola DROID device, this meaning that it’ll come packed with an official Google-made suite of applications as well as Verizon’s own additions, plus a Motorola custom user interface. This device has a 1.2GHz OMAP4 dual-core processor from Texas Instruments, a 4-inch qHD display, 4G LTE connectivity, and a lovely slide-out QWERTY keyboard. The look of it reminds one very much of the Droid RAZR and the Dro

The cult classic video game still undergoing development and exploding in popularity on both the web browser and mobile platforms has been approved in LEGO form. There’s a brand new set coming through officially through the LEGO project known as CUUSOO – this program being a socially judged creation platform for LEGO fans who want to see their projects made into real LEGO-carried sets for stores. With the Minecraft set having reached 10,000 votes, LEGO will officially be making a set! People submitting to CUUSOO requires that you get an idea, create the project you dream of, post it up to the site, get 10,000 supporters, and whammo! You’ve got your own project. If your project passes the CUUSOO review here, it will be produced by LEGO and you the creator will receive 1% of total net sales throughout the project’s lifespan. Have a peek at the CUUSOO concept here in this fancy animated video: Then know that the creator of this Minecraft project was none other than the developers of the g

Facebook officially filed its IPO today and the documents reveal that the social network’s $3.71 billion revenue in 2011 has been dependent largely on its successful partnership with Zynga. Although Facebook generates a majority of its revenue from advertising, Zynga is responsible for almost all of the network’s “Payments” revenue, worth 12% of total revenue. Revenue for the company is basically divided into two categories, the first being “Advertising” and the second being “Payments and other fees.” Advertising accounted for 85% of revenue in 2011, versus 95% in 2010 and 98% in 2009. The Payments and other fees revenue comes from payment processing fees related to the sales of virtual goods through game apps, a majority of which are through those made by Zynga. Zynga has developed a variety of popular games for Facebook, including Farmville, Mafia Wars, and Words with Friends. The company also purchases ads from Facebook and its games generate a significant number of page views that

Not one week after the security group known as Symantec announced that they’d discovered the largest malware attack in the history of Android planted firmly in the guts of the official market, they’ve announced that there is no such infection. In fact, the malware the group said it’d found, Android.Counterclank, is actually just an overly-aggressive adware code. This is in accordance with a report put out by rival security group Lookout whom has essentially “told them so” late last month – always double check! While there are quite a few applications on the market that have the code in question on them at this point, and at least 1 million but up to 5 million users have already downloaded it in one way or another, there’s nothing to fear. As Symantec notes, this software is only capable of doing a few disagreeable things to your Android device instead of a whole lot, the latter being the one that gets a code into the “malware” category. Instead, we’re only talking about the following:

Apple today released its latest Mac OS X Lion update with version 10.7.3 that also includes Safari 5.1.3. The update brings several bug fixes for improved performance and compatibility. It also adds several new languages and RAW image file support for new cameras. Specifically with bug fixes, the updates resolves a WiFi connection issue that has been occurring when Macs with Lion awake from sleep. Compatibility issues with Microsoft Windows file sharing and printing Microsoft Word documents have also been addressed. The new languages now supported include Catalan, Croatian, Greek, Hebrew, Romanian, Slovak, Thai, and Ukrainian. RAW image file support now extends to several new cameras, including the latest Olympus PEN cameras, the Nikon J1 and V1, and the latest Sony Alpha and NEX cameras. The update is over 700MB in size and is available for download now. For more details on what improvements the update brings, visit the release notes.

The social network known as Facebook has officially signed its Initial Public Offering, authorized by Ernst & Young LLP as having shares of its common stock available to the world today. Facebook seeks to raise $5 billion USD, just about half of what analysts were expecting on the whole. In the filing, its apparent that Facebook’s current cash, cash equivalents, and marketable securities totals in at $3,908,000,000 – that’s a lot of bank. Similar numbers can be seen in working capital at $3,705,000,000 and total stockholders’ equity at 4,899,000,000 – that being over 5 billion USD in pro form. Total assets, the biggest of the sets, sits at over 6 billion USD. As it was signed on February 1st, 2012, “We consent to the reference to our firm under the caption “Experts” and the use of our report dated February 1, 2012, in the Registration Statement (Form S-1) and related Prospectus of Facebook, Inc. for the registration of shares of its common stock.” In a chat which shows the total as

Following the outcry over Google’s new privacy policy, including opportunistic attack ads from Microsoft, the search giant is planning to put out its own campaign to clear up any misconceptions. Google is purchasing ads on websites such as the Washington Post in an attempt to define its new privacy policy before critics further misconstrue the changes. Google has insisted that the change to its privacy policy does not collect any more information from users, but simply streamlines the privacy policy across its multiple services into one single document. The online ads it has purchased display a simple message saying, “We’re changing our Privacy Policy. Not your privacy controls.” Privacy advocates reacted strongly when Google first announced the change, fearing that it would make it harder for people to control their own information. The US Congress also got involved, shooting a long list of questions to Google, which it must respond to later this month.

Manufacturer of all things wireless: products, technologies, and services, Qualcomm, have announced their first quarter earnings, Q1 being for them a season ending on December 25, 2011. “This quarter,” said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm, has been “another record quarter with revenues, earnings and MSM shipments reaching all-time highs.” They can praise the Snapdragon for that, and a fully integrated experience on mobile devices and a future full of smart televisions galore – let’s talk about how! Qualcomm’s revenues are up 14% over the last quarter of 2011 and up a whopping 40% over this same period last year, sitting them in cool and pretty at $4.68 billion. This puts them up to $1.55 billion in operating income, an amount which puts them 24% and 25% higher than they were last year and last quarter, respectively. Their net income is right up around the O.I. with 1.40 billion, this up 20% from Q1 2011 and 33% from Q4 2011. Things are looking up all around! In the est

A Sony rep has confirmed that PlayStation Vita game titles coming to the US will be cheaper if purchased and downloaded directly from the PlayStation Network as opposed to buying the boxed copies. Discounted digital copies have been confirmed for the PS Vita in Japan, but the company has yet to make an official announcement as to whether the discount would extend to the US. The PS Vita has been available in Japan since last December and will be launching in the US on February 22 along with more than 20 game titles. Since Sony is pushing for more digital downloads, it only makes sense to give consumers added incentive with discounted digital copies. Best Buy has already begun selling codes to redeem games from the PlayStation Network for MLB 12 The Show at $35.99, Reality Fighters at $26.99, and Uncharted: Golden Abyss at $44.99. The difference is about a 10% discount from boxed copies. ShackNews reached out to Sony regarding the matter and a company rep responded with the following con

Not one whole heck of a lot of news is written or read these days about the iPad Nano, one of the last devices to have been designed and released by Apple since their attention switched to purely iPhone and iPad in that sized market. But what we’ve got here appears very much to be an upgrade to the iPod Nano line, and the folks at Apple.pro have a collection of photos which depict it having a 1.3-megapixel camera! This may seem to the average citizen to be a fool’s errand as the current iPod nano has a clip on the back that would block and camera attempts – but lo! There it is! It’s not often that you get a leak of an Apple product in photo form, much less do you get so very many photos as these folks have taken. The model you’re looking at here has the same sized body and apparently nearly the same weight as the current 6th generation iPod Nano, but has a 1.3 megapixel camera capable of video and photo embedded in its back. There’s also a hole in the back clip so the camera can see th

Police in Romania have arrested hacker TinKode, who is notorious for hacking into US military and government websites. The 20-year-old IT student, Razvan Manole Cernaianu, was accused of breaking into NASA and Pentagon servers, stealing confidential information, and then posting it on his personal blog. Cernaianu also offered for sale software that he claimed would allow others to hack into these servers. He even demonstrated in videos how he carried out his attacks on the US government websites. However, the motivations behind his exploits were more to point out security flaws than for financial gain or anything truly malicious. As TinKode, Cernaianu often published the security flaws of the websites he hacked into over the last few years, including high-profile websites of the US Army, NASA, the UK Royal Navy, the European Space Agency, MySQL, and Google. Regardless of his intentions, authorities claim that his actions have caused significant damage to the servers and hacking into we

A wave of cameras is coming to crash upon the shores of the public late this winter, and the most recent tease is a Pentax K-01 mirrorless shooter designed by no less than Marc Newson. It may seem a bit odd to those of you who are familiar with the work of Newson as his most famous work is that of a “biomorphism” full of flowing lines and a tendency to refrain from all sharp edges. What this camera appears to be instead of that is a rather blunt looking instrument with features piled onto one another in a series of transformers. Of course a good photographer is only concerned with the photo in the end, not the look of the tool. This new set of “leaked” or “teased” photos shows an interchangeable lens-having camera with one whole heck of a lot of working add-ons to go with it. There’s a rather notable 40mm f/2.8 lens in a fabulously thin profile sitting here in this future setup, and the whole device is set for awesome quick changes with what appears to be an HDR toggle for easy access.

Today we’re taking a look at an application which will allow you to continue your everyday reading of the newspapers you love, minus the paper, and minus the web browser formatting. This is PressReader, and with it you’ll be getting the newspaper you love delivered to your iPad, your iPhone, your Android tablet, or your Android phone! You can either have your favorite paper delivered one time for a flat fee or can get a subscription to all newspapers at once for a low monthly drop of change. What we’ve got running here is an iPad 2 and an iPhone 4S to show you the differences between interfaces here in tablet and smartphone. They aren’t many, but they are there, and you can see instantly that this app really works better on the bigger display. That said, it works just as fast to use it on your phone whatever that phone may be. You get access to all of the pages you’d normally get in your newspaper, including advertisements and the funnies, all in this new digital format. If you’re real

The newest set of everyone’s favorite set of one-tone over-ear headphones are headed your way with Urbanears 2012 Spring/Summer collection. This headphone brand is known for its optimization of sound and matching preferences in size, style, design, function, and close relation to the music they’re blasting. This newest collection includes Cream, Sage, and Grape colorways to continue to engage your head in the finest of flat color magic. This collection is also known as Urbanears’ 2012SS series, and are available right this moment for all lovers of design, fashionable color-coding, and everyone else who ever wanted a pair of all-yellow jammers. You can now get your own pair of phones or earbuds, several different styles available, in yellow, army green, blue, red, black, gray, white, grape, cream, and sage. Grab the whole rainbow, why don’t you? For those of you that’ve never before seen these lovely phones in any of their many iterations, have a peek at the Plattan here in its first bi

The market is preparing itself for one of the largest IPO openings in recent memory with the launch of Facebook, the group today being said to be choosing Morgan Stanley to take the lead at the start. This Initial Public Offering is said to be setting Facebook up for 10 billion in raised funds. Four sources with knowledge of the matter speaking anonymously with Bloomberg have let them know that Facebook is likely to choose FB as their stock symbol with an opening after the close of U.S. markets today. Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Barclays Plc and Bank of America Corp. are said to be joining in on helping with the sale, and the global co-head of Morgan Stanley Michael Grimes is being called lucky at the head of the pack. Bloomberg data shows Morgan Stanley to have the biggest share of business underwriting in USA initial offers by Internet companies in 2011 – this looks to be another great start to a year in that category for sure. If Facebook is able to raise as

I can’t say I approve of what’s going on in the gaming industry today when I read something as nasty as what you’re about to experience. What follows is an internal memo sent out by Zynga CEO Mark Pincus to his developers, engineers, and the like, congratulating them on their hard work in the face of accusations that they’ve copied the idea for developer Niblebit’s game Tiny Tower with their own game Dream Heights. Pincus has been known to speak on points like this in similar ways before, but his famous “just copy what they do and do it until you get their numbers” remark has never fully been substantiated with proof – until now. Though we’ll never know if Pincus really did make the “numbers” remark word for word, we can now read a memo leaked from the inner sanctum at Zynga, this memo showing off exactly what it means to be a part of Zynga and their development crew. Pincus makes it very clear here that they have no regrets in creating games that essentially copy the models of others,

Regional wireless carrier US cellular debuts its LTE network plans today, and while they’re not the first provider in the US to get true 4G, they hope to grow their network quickly. To start there’s four markets getting the upgrade: Milwaukee, Madison and Racine in Wisconsin, Des Moines, Cedar Rapids and Davenport in Iowa, Portland and Bangor, Maine, Wichita Falls, Texas, Lawton, Oklahoma and Greenville, North Carolina. Two devices will go on sale when the network goes live: the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and the new Galaxy S Aviator, basically a retread of Verizon’s DROID CHARGE. The devices aren’t anything we haven’t seen before, but they’re still pretty high-end for US Cellular, which tends to get cheap and/or hand-me-down models from the Big Four. The Galaxy Tab 10.1 is the same Tegra 2-powered slate you know (and perhaps love), with a 1280×800 LCD screen, 16GB of storage space, Android 3.2 Honeycomb and the addition of a 4G LTE radio. The Galaxy S Aviator (nee DROID CHARGE) comes wit

Over the past few weeks, the folks at Symantec have gathered and released a “malware” warning for millions of Android Market users, and today Microsoft is taking advantage of the breakdown. Though the idea that the spread of what Symantec said was malware might NOT have been malware in the first place, just a powerful advertisement bit of software, Microsoft isn’t about to let an opportunity like this slide. This week Ben Rudolph, aka @BenThePCGuy has laid down a challenge for future Windows Phone users: tell them their #DROIDRAGE stories of how bad “adware” is on Android. This is not the first time Microsoft has taken advantage of Google’s misfortune (or perhaps misstep) today, the first time being Microsoft actually taking out ads that told the world that “Putting People First” is what they’ve got to hold up. Google is being cut into here because of the Privacy Policy changes that took place recently. Now comes the double fire with the bringing back up of #DROIDRAGE. This #DROIDRAGE

Apple’s attempts to ban Samsung’s redesigned Galaxy Tab 10.1N in Germany, along with the Galaxy Nexus, have failed, with the courts ruling that Apple’s touchscreen patent was likely to be revoked in short order. “Samsung has shown that it is more likely than not that the patent will be revoked because of a technology that was already on the market before the intellectual property had been filed for protection,” Judge Andreas Mueller told the Munich Regional Court today, Bloomberg reports. The patent in question covers scrolling display behaviors, namely the way in which a software list shows that the user has reached the bottom. Apple argued that its implementation, as patented, differs from any previous list systems. Samsung, however, argued that the patent hadn’t exceeded the nine month period during which it could be contested, and that no sales ban should be implemented until that had expired. The court agreed, and Samsung free to sell the Galaxy Tab 10.1N in the German market. The

The Samsung Retro style NX200 has been announced for Germany, the same country where we first laid eyes on the NX200 just a few weeks ago at IFA. This device is a brand new outer-shelled version of the original NX200 with a two-toned silver and black design with essentially the same set of specifications as the first release. Look like the fabulous yesteryear shooter with all the goodness of the future under the hood that you’ll be picking up this Spring season? Or heck, you could head to Germany or order one in and still have it this winter! This device has DSLR-like picture quality without a doubt, it having a 20.3 megapixel APS-C CMOS sensor, full HD video recording support, sensitivity up to 12,800 ISO, and that’s all inside the center. There’s also a 3-inch AMOLED VGA display on the back for your loving tapping, rings around the sides for straps, a sassy looking set of red and silver accents, and just for fun, i-Function lens support! Have a peek at our hands-on with the original

Dedicated email messenger specialist Peek has finally killed off its first-gen device, dropping support for the handheld in favor of its multi-platform cloud strategy. Launched in September 2008, the Peek promised a far simpler – and cheaper – mobile email experience than what you’d get from a smartphone, pulling in unlimited messages over GPRS for around $10 per month. The original Peek spawned a successor, the Peek9, which is still active today. That threw in unlimited SMS messaging, though the service has since been deactivated as Peek’s text message gateway partner shut down. Instead, Peek is looking to its so-called “Genius Cloud”, designed to run on any hardware from a basic dumbphone through featurephones and up to full smartphones. Peek’s servers handle data from Twitter, Facebook, email accounts and FourSquare, squirting real-time updates to devices running Android, BREW, Java and other platforms. The company currently offers Peek for Android, a trimmed down “Peek Mail” client

Yes, you read that right, there’s a teaser for an advertisement, one that’ll be longer we must expect, made by Samsung for the Superbowl reveal of the newest version of the Samsung Galaxy Note. This device will be more than likely basically the same as the one we’ve gotten our hands on back at CES 2012 for AT&T, but should have perhaps some soft of feature or another that’ll have us on our seats edge for such a big reveal. This newest ad is part of a series of “Samsunged” ads made by Samsung to tease Apple on their long lines and iPhone fans galore. This advertisement is but one piece of the puzzle that’s been coming together over the past few weeks and months. The Samsung series of commercials here have each been cutting into the Apple fan culture by showing these fans standing in line for long periods of time complaining about their iPhones, especially on how terrible it is to wait in line for one out on the street. You and I know that the best Apple stores are indoors, of course

Facebook ‘s much-rumored IPO isn’t enough for the tech industry; they want social network founder Mark Zuckerberg to throw in some of that old razzle dazzle with a tidbit to loyal users. Widely expected to be announced later today, the IPO will supposedly see Facebook attempt to raise as much as $10bn, with big investors tipped to flock to the coveted stock. Unfortunately, your average IPO doesn’t hold much room for small investors to get a foot in the door. That’s where Zuckerberg’s offbeat attitude to Facebook’s users is tipped to come in. Analysts suspect the unconventional CEO will make some provision for Facebook’s 800m members – without whom, of course, he’d not have a business – to get in on the action, the Washington Post reports. Exactly what that might look like is unclear, though according to one IPO expert it could be the introduction of a new type of floatation. “I’ve been hoping that Facebook would use this opportunity to try a new method to bring in retail investors” An

Webcams aren’t new, and WiFi isn’t new, but it’s taken a while for WiFi-enabled video streaming cameras to come down to a level where remote home surveillance is reasonably affordable. Dropcam’s second-gen offering, the Dropcam HD, is a compact webcam with integrated wireless network connectivity, together with a suite of online and smartphone apps that all link up with the company’s cloud-based backbone. We’ve been under the watchful eye of the Dropcam HD; check out the full SlashGear review after the cut. Hardware Dropcam’s is rightly proud of the HD: its first-gen hardware, the Echo, was designed externally, but the company brought development in-house for this new model. The end result is something that looks far more consumer-friendly than the blocky white Echo. The Dropcam HD itself is a small glossy black puck that slots into a detachable metal stand with a posable base: together, they’re 4.5-inches high and about 3.15-inches across. The hinged base is stiff enough to stay at wh