Ed Oswald

Move over iPad and iPhone -- the fastest selling consumer electronics device is not made by Apple. Microsoft said Wednesday that its Kinect motion-sensing controller has sold 10 million units since its launch last November. In the first 60 days alone, the company said eight million Kinects were sold.

Guinness World Records has dubbed the device the "fastest selling consumer electronics device ever," with an average daily sell-through of 133,333 units per day from the period of November 4, 2010 through January 3, 2011. Those rates are far above that of either the iPod or the iPad, which Apple has been keen to boast as the 'fastest ever' in the past.

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In a bold move likely aimed at bolstering its software business, HP CEO Leo Apotheker revealed in an interview with BusinessWeek published Wednesday that its WebOS operating system will make it on to every HP PC by 2012. Apotheker's comments confirm earlier ones made at the launch of the TouchPad last month.

At the time, the company said it planned to expand WebOS beyond its current home on tablet and smartphone devices. The move would signal a shift in strategy for HP, which currently only sees about two percent of revenues come from software. Compare this to its hardware business, which makes up about 70 percent of all sales.

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Some may see it as capitulation to Apple's longstanding position on Flash, others as acceptance of trends in digital media. Either way, Adobe has apparently decided to insulate itself from the threat of HTML5 by releasing a Flash-to-HTML5 converter codenamed "Wallaby." The free application is built on its Adobe AIR platform.

Adobe says that the application will be able to convert most Flash files by simply dragging and dropping into the Wallaby interface. The release of the tool is especially significant for iOS users -- meaning developers will now have an easier way of making their Flash sites compatible with the iPhone and iPad devices.

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In a move that highlights Facebook's ever increasing presence in our daily digital lives, the social networking site announced with Warner Bros. that it would begin offering streaming movie rentals. The first movie to be offered would be The Dark Knight, available to those who liked the movie's page.

The title would be available for 30 Facebook credits or $3 USD, and the movie would be available for immediate viewing following purchase. Warner said that it plans to offer additional titles in the coming months, although it did not specify which movies would be sold.

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Amongst all the other things that Verizon and AT&T can lob at each other in the ever increasingly bitter battle for iPhone subscribers is this: Mean download speed for iPhone 4 on AT&T is twice that on Verizon. This is according to Metrico Wireless, a Maryland-based independent wireless performance research firm. That said, Web pages load in about the same amount of time on iPhone 4's running on either network.

Metrico took thousands of measurements to gauge wireless data on both carriers. While AT&T's iPhone was faster at downloading data, results were notably mixed elsewhere. AT&T performed about 10 percent better in moving vehicles at downloading data. Conversly, when uploading data while stationary the Verizon iPhone performed about 10 percent better in terms of completing data transfer sessions.

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Likely aiming to attract those familiar with RIM's BlackBerry, Samsung on Monday debuted the Galaxy Pro, an Android smartphone that combines a full QWERTY keyboard and a 2.8" touch-screen display. The device will ship in the UK later this month and across Europe, the Middle East, and Southeast Asia shortly after.

The phone appears to be targeted to the lower end of the business segment as well as the everyday consumer. The Pro will have Flash support and an included 3-megapixel camera, but for the business-centric user it will include Exchange and tethering capabilities. It also would include Samsung's TouchWiz user interface.

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Wednesday's announcement of the iPad 2 has seemingly caught Apple's biggest competitor off guard, and Samsung is apparently reevaluating its next moves. In comments to Korea-based Yonhap News Agency, Samsung's mobile head Lee Don-joo said that the next iPad's sleek new design and competitive price are challenges.

The Korean electronics manufacturer's Galaxy Tab tablet is widely considered the biggest threat to the iPad's dominance in the sector. About two million have sold since its debut last September, making it the best selling tablet next to the iPad.

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MobileMe's expected refresh was notably absent from Apple's event Wednesday announcing the debut of the iPad 2, however Cupertino may be working behind the scenes to make a revamp of the cloud service part of a larger push towards streaming content.

Sources have told Bloomberg that Apple is currently in negotiations with several record labels including Universal, Sony, Warner, and EMI with hopes that an agreement could be reached by midyear. Apple wants the labels to allow unlimited access to their content across multiple devices.

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After more than four years in prison, Robert Soloway is now a free man. Dubbed the 'Spam King' for his role as the head of a spam ring that sent an estimated 10 trillion junk e-mails between 2003 and 2007, Soloway is now busy reintegrating himself into everyday life, according to Wired.

He was first arrested in May 2007 and charged with 35 counts including fraud, identity theft, and money laundering, and sentenced in July 2008. Soloway was widely considered one of the top ten spammers in the world, and had also lost multimillion dollar suits to Microsoft and an Oklahoma ISP as a result of his actions.

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Aiming to harness some of the buzz surrounding deal of the day websites as of late, Microsoft said Thursday it had partnered with The Dealmap. The San Francisco-based aggregator site takes content from about 200 sites like Groupon and LivingSocial, and lists them on a single page organized by city.

Instead of attempting to create its own program, or look to acquire an existing service like Google's failed buyout of Groupon last year, Microsoft believed it easiest to partner with an aggregator like The Dealmap to bring a deals offering to Bing users.

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Some Android users are finding out the hard way the perils of an open platform, as Google was forced to take down 21 apps in the Android Market after it was found they contained malware. According to Android Police, which first broke the story on Tuesday, these apps may have been downloaded a combined 200,000 times.

The apps performed a variety of malicious activities, including root exploits, the stealing of phone data, and even acting as a Trojan horse to open the door for the device to download more malicious code. Google quickly pulled the apps from the store after being informed of the issue, and remotely wiped the apps from user devices.

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A former Apple manager faces up to 20 years in prison after pleading guilty Monday in federal court to charges he accepted kickbacks from suppliers. Paul Shin Devine, formerly a supply manager for the Cupertino company, was first charged in August of last year on 23 counts including money laundering, wire fraud, conspiracy, and kickbacks.

The deal reached Monday calls for Devine to only plead guilty to one charge from each of the types, meaning the sentencing set for June 6 would only involve five charges. "Mr. Devine is a good man who made a mistake, and now he's trying to make amends," his lawyer told Reuters in an interview.

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Google said late Monday that it would have e-mail access restored to those who found themselves locked out of their accounts due to a glitch in a storage update applied to Gmail servers on Sunday. The company noticed the update was malfunctioning and pulled it before it could cause additional trouble.

As opposed to the .08% of all Gmail users affected, Google revised that number down to .02%. This translates to about 34,000 or so locked out of their accounts, versus the 136,000 originally thought to be affected.

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Apple seems to be set to release a cheaper iPhone after the company's executives made some uncharacteristically frank comments during an analyst meeting with Bernstein Research analyst Toni Sacconaghi. Chief operating officer Tim Cook appears to have all but confirmed a cheaper iPhone is in the works.

Cook told Sacconaghi that the Cupertino company wants its iPhone to not be just a device "for the rich," and said the company is planning "clever" things for the prepaid market. He acknowledged that China, a major mobile market which the company is now focusing heavily on, is a country which has a large prepay base.

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Google was still working to restore access to its Gmail e-mail service to a handful of customers on Monday, a day after an outage prevented a few users from accessing their e-mails. A message posted to the Google Apps status page at 10:40pm Eastern Sunday said engineers were "working to restore full access," and full access would be restored in the "near future."

No update had been provided as to if the issue had been fully resolved, although the company noted the issue affected only .08% of the total Gmail user base.

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