The FCC's final Report and Order regarding the use of radio spectrum (including the portion freed up after the DTV transition) was made public today, revealing that the guidelines for developing white space devices will take effect March 19.

These guidelines are regarded as the first step toward the actual production of new communications devices that capitalize on the newly vacated spectrum. Though the document was finalized in November, before the DTV transition was delayed,
Jake Ward of the Wireless Innovation Alliance informed Betanews this afternoon that the actual rulemaking will likely be unaffected by the transition's delay.

Today, the world's top cell phone manufacturer and top soft phone client announced they have partnered to bring Skype to Nokia's N-series of handsets.

Nokia's N97, which the company yesterday pegged for launch in June, will be the flagship Skype-enabled N-series device. The N97's address book will incorporate Skype contacts and enable presence for both voice and instant message chats when the device is connected to a 3G signal or Wi-Fi.

Only into its second day, the criminal copyright infringement case against file sharing site The Pirate Bay has already begun to crumble.

Exposing a clear misunderstanding of how .torrent files work, the prosecution was forced to drop all charges except those of "making available," a term common among all file sharing suits.

Today at day two of GSMA in Barcelona, HTC officially unveiled the sequel to the G1 Android phone, called the HTC Magic. The device will be launched in Europe on Vodafone this Spring.

The HTC Magic retains the distinctive "kicktail" that has become the identifying design trait of the G1, although the chassis is much thinner and sleeker than its predecessor. HTC was able to lighten up the device by eliminating the membrane keyboard of the G1 and replacing it with the touchscreen keypad found in the "Cupcake" Android update. HTC also made sure to remind us in its brief premier video (found below) that we can "make a flick" with the new Android device, since the Cupcake update also unlocks video capture mode.

Today marked the first day of the criminal copyright infringement suit against The Pirate Bay that was initiated in Sweden one year ago by Warner Brothers, Columbia Pictures, Sony BMG, EMI, Universal, Metro Goldwin Mayer and 20th Century Fox.

The Pirate Bay's founders, Peter Kolmisoppi, Gottfrid Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Fredrik Neij, all claimed "not guilty," and Swedish prosecutors laid down the framework of the suit. The main accusation is that The Pirate Bay was in fact a commercial site with Carl Lundstrom as chief shareholder and financier, where income was drawn from advertising.

Today is without a doubt the day of highest pixel density in mobile phone history. Top three handset manufacturers Nokia, Samsung, and Sony Ericsson all unveiled additions to their 2009 cellular phone lines that are heavily stacked in the imaging department.

Nokia announced its N86 touchscreen dual-slider, the company's latest addition to its premium N Series. The HSDPA device runs Symbian S60 3rd edition (feature pack 2), and features a 2.6-inch OLED display. The N86's big gun is its 8-megapixel (3280 x 2464) camera, which comes with dual LED flash, Carl Zeiss Tessar optics, and a 1/1000 second mechanical shutter, a feature not commonly found in phones.

At the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Microsoft gave a grand tour of the new iteration of Windows Mobile, along with My Phone, the company's MobileMe equivalent.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer in November semi-officially confirmed that Windows Mobile 6.5 would be released in the second half of 2009, after a long run-up with rumors and speculation about Redmond's progress in the touchscreen OS field. What wasn't "officially" noted at the time was that devices running older versions of Windows Mobile would not be able to upgrade. Rather, it will only be available as the pre-installed OS on new devices.

When Betanews took a closer look at LG's watch phone at CES in January, the only thing separating these quasi-sci-fi devices from reality was a mobile carrier willing to bless them with subsidies.

Today, France's Orange announced that it will be the first mobile operator to bring the watch phone to market.

Today at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Nokia announced that its Ovi suite of mobile applications will be getting its own App store in May, and Microsoft announced Windows Marketplace for Windows Mobile devices.

Nokia's store fits into the company's Ovi suite of mobile services, and will appropriately be named The Ovi Store. It will carry the applications, games, videos, podcasts, widgets, and "personalization content" (likely wallpaper and ringtones) previously found on Download!, MOSH, and WidSets, now combined into a single location.

Market research group NPD has released its latest tally of sales in the video game industry, which continues to grow despite worsening economic conditions.

Last September, MIT professor Henry Jenkins III called video games some of the "great equalizers" in digital media. He referred to video games as "convergent transmedia," or a single medium made up of other media: graphic design, music, coding, voice acting, script and dialogue writing, and so on.

Yesterday, the Author's Guild aired complaints about the Kindle 2's new onboard text-to-speech function from predictive text specialists Nuance Communications, warning that the function could eventually cut into the audiobook market.

The group said, "This presents a significant challenge to the publishing industry. Audiobooks surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2007; e-book sales are just a small fraction of that. While the audio quality of the Kindle 2, judging from Amazon's promotional materials, is best described as serviceable, it's far better than the text-to-speech audio of just a few years ago. We expect this software to improve rapidly."

This week, Google cranked out several tools that exploit the search company's strength in the LBS (location based service) model. Betanews took a look at one for Android, and one for Gmail.

Google Labs is a repository of potentially advantageous little gadgets, so when new product is pushed through, it usually warrants solid consideration. On Tuesday, a Gmail lab was premiered that carried a solid concept: Show the geographic origin of a user's e-mails as a signature.

After Microsoft ended the Windows 7 Beta 1 downloads this week, reports of the appearance of a new leaked build quickly began to roll in. Users who didn't get a chance to download Beta 1 are now turning to BitTorrent sites to get the newer, leaked release.

Though reportedly "nothing major," the 7022 build is dated January 15, and includes Internet Explorer 8 RC 1. Windows 7 Beta 1 was build 7000.

So begins a new day for the venerable YouTube, the popular video streaming site is testing downloadable videos which include both a free and a for-pay model.

Thai Tran, Product Manager at YouTube announced today in the site's official blog that YouTube is "going offline." That is to say, it is giving video owners the option to make their videos downloadable under the Creative Commons License. Also, the option to make the videos available through a Google Checkout purchase is being tested.

T-Mobile's G1 will be getting its first full-featured navigation system on February 24 when Telenav releases its GPS Navigator for Android.

First available directly through Telenav's site, the navigation software will hit the Android market shortly thereafter, when it begins offering for-pay apps.