Ed Oswald

The Internet is about to face one of its most serious issues in its history: experts have warned that the Internet is running out of addresses, and may run out by 2011. At issue is slow adoption of a new system intended to vastly increase the available pool, further complicating matters.

Currently, the web uses IPv4 (Internet Protocol version 4). 32-bit numbers are used, meaning about 4 billion addresses are available. About 94 percent of them have already been allocated. There is a new system, however, called IPv6. That uses 128-bit numbers, and the number of available addresses skyrocket.

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Palo Alto, Calif. based Flipboard launched what it called the "first social magazine" for the iPad Wednesday, however it quickly found out that a much-hyped launch can lead to trouble in keeping the service online for its users.

Tech luminary Robert Scoble twittered incessantly in the hours leading up to the launch, giving few details on the product other than calling it the "killer app" for the iPad and "revolutionary."

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Google's image search service will be getting a revamp this week, aimed at making the search function easier to use, and to provide more relevant results. The redesign is essentially the service's first major makeover since Google Images went live in 2001.

At that time, only 250 million images had been catalogued by the Mountain View, Calif. search company. Now over 10 billion images are indexed. With such an increase in volume, obviously the search functionality will need to improve, as does the way the site displays ever larger results.

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Microsoft announced pricing and availability on Tuesday for its Kinect motion sensing controller for the Xbox 360, saying the device would be available November 4 at a price of $149.99. The release of the Kinect means that Microsoft would square off this holiday season against Sony, who also plans to release its own system.

Microsoft would bundle the Kinect controller and an Xbox 360 console with 4GB of internal memory for $299.99. The console itself would begin selling on its own for $199.99 on August 3, however.

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Social networking company Foursquare is in talks with Microsoft, Google and Yahoo over using its data to help enrich search results, UK paper The Telegraph reported on Monday. According to co-founder Dennis Crowley, the data would be anonymized and then shared.

Foursquare is one of the most rapidly growing social networking services on the Internet. Last week, it signed up its two millionth user, just three months after signing up one million. Word of mouth seems to be driving a lot of the growth, as friends sign up to follow one another.

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Google moved to better its search results by acquiring Metaweb, a San Francisco based company that maintains an open database of "things," and their relationships to one another. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Metaweb's database currently includes some 12 million items, including places, notable people, companies, and movies. Queries to the Google search algorithm would return more relevant results as a result of the company's technology, the company claims.

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Data released by NPD Group Thursday indicates that among a wider slump in the video game industry in June, Microsoft was able to move back into the top spot in console sales for the first time in months. Overall revenues were down six percent year-over-year to $1.1 billion.

Software itself saw a much wider drop, as sales were off some 15 percent to $531 million. It is not exactly clear why sales of video games themselves were much lower, although it could be a lack of blockbuster titles able to buoy the sector as a whole.

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Discovery Communications intellectual property subsidiary Discovery Patent Holdings filed suit against Amazon Wednesday, claiming Amazon's line of Kindle e-book readers infringe on two patents held by the company. The suit is the second between the two companies over such technologies.

Amazon was originally sued by Discovery Communications in March of last year, accusing the company of violation of a comprehensive patent on e-book readers titled "Electronic Book Security and Copyright Protection System" (#7,298,851). This covered the Kindle and Kindle 2 models.

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In a sign that Hewlett Packard is becoming much more serious about WebOS following its acquisition of Palm in April, the company has apparently "tabled" its plans for an Android-powered tablet. The device was originally intended to come to market later this year.

Sources told All Things Digital Thursday that HP has no new timetable for the release of the device. Following a similar fate for the Windows-powered Slate, it certainly seems as if WebOS is the future at the company. It is not known whether the Android project may be restarted.

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French canadian online news site Cyberpresse said Wednesday that Apple had purchased 3D map making company Poly9, possibly indicating the company has plans to enter the competitive online mapping sector with an entry of its own.

The acquisition is the second mapping-related acquisition. A year ago, Apple silently acquired Placebase, a mapping software company. Together, the technology would enable the Cupertino company to produce a product that could be akin to Google Earth.

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Connecticut-based XPRT Ventures said Wednesday that it had sued eBay and its subsidiaries for infringing on six patents related to e-commerce. The company said it shared the technologies "in confidence" with the auction site, but eBay apparently used those technologies for financial gain.

Specifically, the suit alleges Paypal's Pay Later, Buyer Credit, Balance Manager, and the checkout system infringe upon XPRT's technologies. The company is asking for $3.8 billion in damages, and was filed in U.S. District Court in Wilmington, Del.

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Apple continued to be on the losing end of a public relations battle Tuesday over a "Not Recommended" rating from Consumer Reports for its iPhone 4. Some industry watchers have gone as far as to suggest a recall is something the company may need to consider.

The latest round of bad news was courtesy of Wayne State University Professor Matthew Seeger, who told Cult of Mac that the brand image of Apple could be at risk and said the company will be forced to issue a recall.

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Text of a speech made by a government official in China back in April indicates the country plans to require Internet surfers in the country to use their real names. The transcript of the comments by the State Council Information Office's Wang Chen had been removed from the legislature website by Chinese officials.

It is not known why the government moved to scrub Wang's words, although it can be speculated it had to do with the likely unpopularity of such a move. The text was recovered by New York interest group Human Rights in China, the Associated Press reported Tuesday.

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Reacting to the success of its launch in April, Microsoft on Monday said it would allow 10,000 more testers into its Intune computer management service. The offering gives small and midsize companies without a vast IT department the capability to manage their computers via a web-based connection.

When the Intune beta was first made available in April, the initial 1,500 beta slots were filled within 30 hours. The company decided to hold off until this weeks Worldwide Partner Conference to open up the beta again due to the gathering's planned focus on cloud computing.

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All but admitting his company has fallen behind competitors, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer told attendees of its Worldwide Partner Conference Monday that it plans to work hard to bring new tablets and smartphones to the market.

Ballmer's first task in his keynote address was to soften the concerns of partners, who have become more skeptical of MIcrosoft's ability to stay relevant. He said the company is still on track with Windows Phone 7, and that tablet computers from several partners are due within months.

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