Tim Conneally

This week, NBCU/News Corp. joint venture video service Hulu removed its content from CBS Interactive's TV.com without specifying a motive, just like it did with Boxee earlier this week.

While content producers affiliated with CBS and Hulu two are busy sorting out who's entitled to the other's content, third party sites continue to offer content from both services.

As Microsoft ramps up its own retail efforts, Sony will be closing its flagship PlayStation store in the Metreon Mall in San Francisco, California.

It may seem hard to believe, but the 5,500 square foot store has been open for nearly ten years, a substantial chunk of the life of many PlayStation fans. Sony representatives said the lease to the store expires on June 16, and it will not be renewed.

It wasn't long ago that Microsoft's "I'm a PC" campaign took the label originally intended to be a pejorative and made it a badge of honor. Now, Norway's Red (Rødt) Party is trying to do the same with "pirate."

Capitalizing on the furor surrounding the Pirate Bay trial in Sweden, Norway's Red political party has opened a site called Filesharer.org where people who illegally share media files can de-anonymize themselves in support of the Pirate Bay.

Just about one year ago, Google finalized its plug-in for Windows Mobile that brought a Google search field to the WM home screen. Now, the app has expanded to include Maps, Gmail, News, and more in the same small window.

The resulting plug-in is actually more like a Google browser toolbar than anything else, due to the Windows Mobile interface, but the functionality is no less salient.

Where netbooks were originally thought to be a low-cost entry point for consumers, LG is proving it's just as much an entry point for manufacturers with the debut of the HSPA-connected LG-X120 netbook.

South Korean consumer electronics maker LG is known primarily for its displays, mobile phones, and household appliances. It has never had a strong angle in the global PC market, and has yet to enter the top 10 competitors in PC market share.

Echoing iSuppli's research data published last month, NPD market analysis subdivison DisplaySearch released its quarterly report on the flat panel television market, showing its first ever decline in revenue.

With discretionary spending seriously stilted, an overall drop in retail price of TVs did not have quite a stimulative effect, and revenue for the entire TV market dropped by 3%.

This morning, Sprint Nextel reported its fourth quarter earnings, or more accurately, losses. The wireless operator posted a $1.2 billion loss for the quarter, a 14.4% drop in revenue, and a loss of 1.3 million customers.

"In tough economic times, we're generating substantial cash and reducing costs to ensure we remain financially sound," said Sprint Nextel CEO Dan Hesse in a statement this morning. "We already have the cash on hand to be able to meet our debt service requirements at least through the end of 2010."

Freeware media center Boxee is still very young, but offers a comprehensive solution for both managing a user's existent collection of movies, music, and photos, and discovering free online content. Unfortunately, it will be continuing ahead without support from Hulu.

In a blog post entitled Doing hard things, Hulu CEO Jason Kilar today announced that Hulu's content will no longer be available on boxee after this week. Done at the behest of content providers (aka Hollywood Studios), Kilar said that Hulu really had no choice but to suspend support for boxee.

The Swedish language Web site belonging to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry -- which is leading the legal charge against file sharing site The Pirate Bay -- was hacked this afternoon and has been pulled offline.

At around 7:50 pm Central European Time, the Web site for the IFPI -- the international recording industry's representative body -- was replaced with a bulletin, or rather a declaration of war, which read (translated):

Two years ago, the Micro USB spec was standardized, and shortly thereafter, the Open Mobile Terminal Platform (OMTP) announced approved it as the universal standard phone cable.

This week, the OMTP -- sponsored by Ericsson and Nokia, and 35 hardware and software manufacturers across the telecommunications industry -- announced the publication (PDF available here) of the "Common Charging and Local Data Connectivity" (CLD) document -- a sort of industry agreement upon what these Micro USB cables need to provide.

In an attempt to block the Courtroom View Network (CVN) from broadcasting the RIAA v. Tenenbaum trial, the counsel representing the record labels escalated the affair to the US Court of Appeals.

The legal counsel for the defendant in the copyright infringement suit -- a Harvard Law School class led by Charles Nesson of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society -- moved to have the case broadcast online in January. Developments in this aspect of the case today may lead to the hearing's ultimate delay.

Partners in Verizon's most recently announced LTE deployment will include hardware vendors Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent, packet core vendor Starent Networks, and IMS partner Nokia Siemens.

Verizon Executive Vice President and CTO Dick Lynch has been vocally supporting the 4G standard LTE (Long Term Evolution) for two years, and only two months ago said LTE services could begin by December of this year. In Barcelona today, Lynch discussed Verizon's LTE deployment plans, which more realistically anticipate construction to begin in 2010.

Today, Nintendo announced that the next generation of its DS handheld gaming console will be released on April 5 in the Americas, just one day later than last month's predictions.

The DSi has been available in Japan since November, and within the first two days 170,779 units were sold, amounting to more than 85% of the initial shipment, according to Enterbrain. Both of Nintendo's premier game systems, the Wii and DS, have consistently dominated the video game market in sales, and more than 3.04 million DS units were sold in 2008.

Handset manufacturer Nokia and wireless chip maker Qualcomm were in and out of court for the better part of two years. Now, after a six-month truce, they'll be working together on UMTS devices for the North American market.

The companies have agreed upon S60 as the operating system, and Qualcomm's Mobile Station Modem (MSM7, MSM8 series) as the 3G chips. The latest Qualcomm MSM chipset -- the MSM7227 -- is a 12 x 12 HSPA solution with a 600 MHz applications processor, 320 MHz application DSP, and a 400 MHz modem processor designed for smartphones below the $150 price point.

Market research company NPD released its non-game software sales figures for 2008, which showed a nearly 10% overall decline, with operating systems taking the greatest hit, selling 40% less than the previous year.

While the data does not take enterprise software deployments into account, the numbers are quite dramatic when considering the lifespan of the operating systems in the consumer market. Though due consideration can be given to the various Linux operating systems, any changes within their 1% collective market share would have only a minimal effect on the health of the OS market overall.