Long-running electronics retailer RadioShack is updating its image by referring to itself as "The Shack" in a new campaign.

"This creative is not about changing our name," said Chief Marketing Officer Lee Applbaum, Rather, we're contemporizing the way we want people to think about our brand. THE SHACK speaks to consumers in a fresh, new voice and distinctive creative look that reinforces RadioShack's authority in innovative products, leading brands and knowledgeable, helpful associates."

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Beating Microsoft to the punch, a system update at 5:00 pm EDT this afternoon will turn the Nintendo DSi into the first Facebook-integrated video game system.

At E3 2009 in June, Facebook announced that it would be making its way onto video game consoles through Facebook Connect, the social network's open identification platform. Microsoft, Nintendo, and Electronic Arts all announced that they would be integrating with Facebook.

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A mere three days after the San Jose Mercury News published an interview with Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in which he stated conflicts of interest regarding his membership on Apple's board of directors could be resolved by recusing himself from matters regarding the iPhone, Apple has officially recognized Schmidt's resignation from that board.

Apple's CEO Steve Jobs issued a statement this morning which said, "as Google enters more of Apple's core businesses, with Android and now Chrome OS, Eric's effectiveness as an Apple Board member will be significantly diminished, since he will have to recuse himself from even larger portions of our meetings due to potential conflicts of interest." Schmidt was elected to Apple's board in 2006.

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The jury in the Joel Tenenbaum case has fined the Boston College University student $675,000 for copyright infringement of 30 songs, or $22,500 per track. The award is radically smaller than the $80,000 per track levied against Jammie Thomas-Rasset in a similar infringement trial earlier this year.

The jury was out, according to Copyright & Campaigns' Ben Sheffner, between two and three hours. Judge Nancy Gertner has already announced that she'll review the award to ensure that it does not violate the Constitution's due-process clauses. As for Mr. Tenenbaum, he told Mr. Sheffner that he plans to file for bankruptcy if the award amount stands, as the doctoral candidate (in physics) has no way of paying the fine.

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Because the Joel Tenenbaum trial hasn't been maddening enough, Engadget yesterday had a little item on how the RIAA is claiming that customers ought to just suck it up and accept that DRMed tracks will go poof even if they've been paid for, since no other products or service providers are expected to "provide consumers with perpetual access to creative works." That's interesting coming from a group that claims that alone of all industries, copyright holders somehow deserve to get paid in perpetuity for their output. I guess forever looks a lot longer when it includes server-maintenance duties.

If anyone's got a more enlightened response than "oy" to the Tenenbaum trial's result, I'm all ears. I respect Professor Nesson's legal acumen, and having fair use taken off the table just hours before the trial was probably not a setback from which any legal team could have recovered, but looking over the past year's proceedings -- the defense's push to make its processes open and transparent, the sustained effort to get the trial shown live on the Web, all that -- I wonder if we'd all have have been better off if both Tenenbaum, and Jammie Thomas before him, had simply rolled over.

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Apple's rejection of the Google Voice iPhone app proved to be the last straw, and now the Federal Communications Commission is involved. The FCC has begun an investigation into the matter.

"The Federal Communications Commission has a mission to foster a competitive wireless marketplace, protect and empower consumers, and promote innovation and investment," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said this evening. "Recent news reports raise questions about practices in the mobile marketplace. The Wireless Bureau's inquiry letters to these companies about their practices reflect the Commission's proactive approach to getting the facts and data necessary to make the best policy decisions on behalf of the American people."

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Is three times the price three times the value? That's the question I'm asking about Microsoft's limited-time Windows 7 Family Pack -- three Home Premium upgrade licenses -- for $150. Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard" Family Pack, with five licenses, will sell for $49.

It's a rhetorical question really. Most people with Windows PCs won't have the option of running Snow Leopard. Intel Mac users, by comparison, can run Windows dual-boot, using Apple's Boot Camp, or by way of third-party virtualization software. That said, to qualify for the discounted Family Pack pricing, Mac users would still need Windows XP or Vista.

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On Friday, Adobe issued an out-of-cycle security update to Flash Player, Adobe Reader and Acrobat that fixes several critical cross-platform vulnerabilities, one of which is related to Microsoft's Active Template Library (ATL) vulnerability announced earlier this week.

The software affected in today's update is:

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Apple today issued the iPhone 3.0.1 software update in response to a well-known vulnerability which could let a remote user hijack any iPhone with a simple series of SMS text messages.

This patch was actually expected to come before the Black Hat 2009 conference, where security researcher and co-author of The Mac Hacker's Handbook Charlie Miller exposed the methods of executing this hack.

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The Lenovo OEM key that leaked earlier this week and allowed Windows 7 Ultimate to be cracked is being blacklisted, according to a blog post last night from Alex Kochis, Director of Genuine Windows at Microsoft.

Kochis says, "Yesterday we were alerted to reports of a leak of a special product key issued to an OEM partner of ours. The key is for use with Windows 7 Ultimate RTM product that is meant to be pre-installed by the OEM on new PCs to be shipped later this year. As such, the use of this key requires having a PC from the manufacturer it was issued to. We've worked with that manufacturer so that customers who purchase genuine copies of Windows 7 from this manufacturer will experience no issues validating their copy of Windows 7. At the same time we will seek to alert customers who are using the leaked key that they are running a non-genuine copy of Windows. It's important to note that no PCs will be sold that will use this key."

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Microsoft has placed a $149.99 price tag on the Windows 7 Family Pack, which lets as many as three PCs in a single household upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium edition. Users in Canada will pay $199.99.

Microsoft's official blogger Brandon LeBlanc confirmed the three-license pack last week, but did not include the price.

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Firefox total downloads: millions

Firefox has hit its milestone billionth download of all time. To celebrate the occasion, Mozilla will be launching onebillionplusyou.com on Monday, a hub for information about the achievement, and a place for Firefox users to show their love for the browser by uploading pictures of themselves representing Firefox across the globe (though they'll have a tough time beating this guy.)

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A British hacker who broke into 97 military and NASA computer systems -- looking, he claims, for evidence about UFOs -- will be tried in America, where if convicted he may face a sentence of up to 70 years. Gary McKinnon has been appealing in the British judicial system to avoid extradition to these shores.

Mr. McKinnon doesn't deny that he hacked into the computers in 2001-02, but has stated that he wasn't attempting to compromise US security but to find secret information on unidentified flying objects -- a particular obsession for the 43-year-old man, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. He asked instead for trial in the UK, stating that trial and incarceration in the US could be highly debilitating due to his condition.

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A Michigan teen has filed suit in Seattle against Amazon, maker of the Kindle eReader, for deleting a copy of 1984 on which he was keeping notes for his AP English coursework. Justin Gawronski is suing in order to impress on Amazon the importance of not simply deleting purchased texts -- whatever their copyright or licensing status.

The suit, which seeks class-action status for those affected by the deletion several weeks ago, also names Antoine J. Bruguier, a Kindle owner from Milpitas, California. KamberEdelson is the Chicago-based legal team handling the suit.

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Thursday was a far more lively day in the Joel Tenenbaum copyright infringement case, as the defendant admitted that he had downloaded -- and that he had not been forthright in his written discovery responses about having done so. Mr. Tenenbaum also took responsibility for uploading and downloading from multiple peer-to-peer services, confirmed that he'd listened to all 30 now-no-longer-contested songs (nuking his own legal team's earlier assertion that some of the 30 might have been spoofed files), and suggested that his mom -- a lawyer -- might have given him some shaky advice on how to answer RIAA fact-finding efforts.

It was, in other words, defeat-- defeat to such a degree that the Joel Fights Back group blog run by the defense team is currently headed by a post titled "Joel FOUGHT back." In that post, Debbie Rosenbaum, one of the students who stuck with the case to its bitter end, writes that "Although we could not win this case, we are proud to have highlighted the abuses and the inefficiency with which the music industry burdens the court system."

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