The Pirate Bay, one of the largest BitTorrent tracker websites, that allows peer-to-peer file sharing and is infamous to host torrent links to copyrighted content on users' computers, is in legal soup vide a verdict from a Swedish Court of law. The Court has convicted four men responsible for running the website after its founding anti-copyright group, Piratebyran gave up control. The four men, Frederik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, Carl Lundstrom and Peter Sunde were found guilty of multiple counts of copyright infringement, and sentenced to one year's imprisonment. A fine of around US $3.5 million was further issued, with each of the four having to pay around $905,000.

The verdict comes as a victory for record companies, that welcome it, despite the fine imposed not being anywhere close to the $17.5 million + damages, several groups of record companies were pushing for. Speaking in a video address hosted on the website, Peter Sunde described the verdict as "bizarre". "It's so bizarre that we were convicted at all and it's even more bizarre that we were [convicted] as a team. The court said we were organized. I can't get Gottfrid out of bed in the morning. If you're going to convict us, convict us of disorganized crime" he said. Speaking about the fine, he said "We can't pay and we wouldn't pay. Even if I had the money I would rather burn everything I owned, and I wouldn't even give them the ashes."

The official PLAYSTATION blog posted today that as of next month the second generation Sony PLAYSTATION game console will be sold for as low as $99 MSRP, down from $129. PLAYSTATION 2 recently sold 50 million units in North America, and now the console is cheaper than ever. First released almost nine years ago in year 2000, the PS2 is still loyal to its owners. To date the console offers over 1900 game titles as well as some of the latest games such as MLB '09, Ghostbusters: The Video Game, Guitar Hero Metallica and MotorStorm: Arctic Edge.
The new price sounds almost too good to be true, but let us remind you that tommorow is April fools' day.

Intel's Atom series of processors gets credit for reinvigorating the ULPC and SFF PC segments that had been niche markets run by smaller players such as VIA, Freescale, and ARM. The Atom Z500 series single-core chips operate at speeds ranging from 1.1 to 1.86 GHz, with phenomenally low energy footprints - under 2.2 Watts.

One of the company's newest additions to the range, the Z550, could hit the 2.00 GHz mark, while consuming less than 2.4 Watts. Another chip in the making, Z515, will have dynamic clock-speed between 800 MHz and 1.33 GHz depending on the processing load. The Z515 could end up being an MID maker's favourite, not that Z550 won't be used in devices that small. Sony just might pack the 2.00 GHz chip on an upcoming variant of the VAIO P.

NVIDIA Corporation today announced that it has signed a tools and middleware license agreement for PLAYSTATION 3 (PS3) with Sony Computer Entertainment Inc (SCEI). As a result, the binary version of the NVIDIA PhysX technology software development kit (SDK) is now available to registered PS3 developers for free download and use on the SCEI Developer Network.

The NVIDIA PhysX technology software development kit SDK consists of a full-featured API and robust physics engine, designed to give developers, animators, level designers, and artists unprecedented creative control over character and object physical interactions by allowing them to author and preview physics effects in real time. The continued adoption of NVIDIA PhysX technology by the world's leading content developers is resulting in games that not only look as realistic as possible, but also provides gaming experiences where the world's literally come to life: environments become highly interactive with effects such as persistent debris, including shattered glass and weapons ammunition, trees that bend in the wind, and water that flows with body and force.

Sony-Optiarc, a subsidiary of Sony, is preparing the new AD-7240S DVD-Writer drive that is built to write DVDs at 24X. The drive rivals Lite-On, which is already out with a drive that burns DVDs this fast. The drive has a standard-sized internal form factor, and uses the SATA interface. It features adaptive self-tuning and burns media at the following speeds: Up to 24X for single-layer DVD-R/+R; 12X for dual-layer DVD-R/+R, DVD-RAM, and DVD-R9; 48X and 32X for CD writing and re-writing respectively. The drive will reach retail by next month.

Panasonic, Philips and Sony are currently working with other Blu-ray Disc patent holders to establish a one-stop-shop license for Blu-ray Disc products. This license, which covers essential patents for Blu-ray Disc, DVD and CD, will be introduced in the middle of this year. The license program will be offered by a new independent licensing company that will be based in the United States with branch offices in Asia, Europe and Latin America. The CEO of the new license company will be Mr. Gerald Rosenthal, former head of IP at IBM and more recently CEO of Open Invention Network. "By establishing a new licensing entity that offers a single license for Blu-ray Disc products at attractive rates, I am confident that it will foster the growth of the Blu-ray Disc market and serve the interest of all companies participating in this market, be it as licensee or licensor." said Mr. Rosenthal.

Sony has now made its PlayStation Portable console more colerfull than ever, by adding four new colors. The lovely PSP-3000 is now available in "carnival" Blue, Red, Yellow and Green colors. All models are expected to ship sometime in March and sell as starter kit for ¥19,800 (about $223), or with a 4GB Memory Stick and a 2200mAh battery for ¥24,800 (about $279). Sony is also going to release special PSP cases that match your PSP's desired color.

Playstation 3 Firmware 2.60 Released, Adds Photo Gallery and DivX 3.11 Support

News of the latest update to Sony's Playstation 3 console emerged yesterday on the official Playstation Blog and according to Engadget, the update is around 140MB. The update also adds guest store access, to allow users who do not have a Playstation Network account, to browse through the online store. A video walkthrough of the new features in the update can be found here. An extract from the blog follows:

The PS3 firmware update (v2.60) is designed primarily to enhance the system's media capabilities. The key feature is a new Photo Gallery application, which delivers a suite of tools for sorting through and displaying your digital photo collection. Digital pictures can be organized in groups according to various criteria, including the camera used to take the photos, the event date and time, colors in the photos, as well as the number, ages, or facial expressions of the people pictured. You can also create slideshows set to music and build photo playlists with an easy-to-use interface. The Photo Gallery application will need to be installed separately from the XMB after you update your PS3's firmware. To install the Photo Gallery application, go to the Photo section on the XMB, select Photo Gallery and press the X button.

Valve Corporation and Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) today announce the availability of many SOE Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO) titles on Steam, a leading platform for the delivery and management of PC games and digital content with over 15 million accounts around the world.

The SOE developed and/or published titles now available include the complete EverQuest (EQ) and EverQuest II (EQII) collections, as well as Vanguard: Saga of Heroes and Pirates of the Burning Sea. To kick off this monumental event, Pirates of the Burning Sea, Vanguard: Saga of Heroes, EQ Secrets of Faydwer and EQII Rise of Kunark are being offered via Steam for a special introductory price during the first 10 days the games are available for purchase. New SOE game accounts for the game purchased will also receive 30 days of gameplay (this offer excludes existing game and Station Access accounts).

Announced nine years ago back in 2000, Sony's PlayStation 2 is without a doubt a major success for the company. The console is so good in fact, that today Sony said it has sold 50 million PlayStation 2 units in North America alone, a new milestone. Sales of the iconic console still remain strong, although now we have new consoles like PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. According to the most recently available figures from the NPD Group, which tracks U.S. sales only, in November Americans bought 206,000 units of the PlayStation 2. These are some remarkable numbers. In comparison, Microsoft's original Xbox console sold a total of 14.5 million units and is already long gone. Nintendo's GameCube, another PS2 competitor, sold 12 million units in North America, not even close to PS2 numbers. Today PlayStation 2 costs roughly $130, down from its original $300 price tag from nine years ago, and still offers the latest game titles, emulation of some PS1 titles, video and audio DVD playback, and a numerous hacks that allow installing desktop hard drives, playing of DivX movies, running spare copies of games and so on.

SanDisk Corporation and Sony Corporation today announced the joint development of two expanded formats that will shape the flash memory landscape for years to come. "Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity (Tentative name)" expands the "Memory Stick PRO" format series to achieve a maximum storage capacity of 2-terabytes (TB), while the "Memory Stick HG Micro" format enables a maximum data-transfer speed of 60 megabytes per second (MB/s), making it one of the fastest-smallest memory card formats to date. Format licensing corresponding to the "Memory Stick format for Extended High Capacity" and the "Memory Stick HG Micro" is scheduled to start in 2009.

Sony today took the wraps off of the world's lightest 8-inch notebook- the new VAIO P Series Lifestyle PC. About the size of a business envelope and roughly as thin as a cell phone, the VAIO Lifestyle PC weighs just 1.4 pounds and is small enough to slip into a jacket pocket or handbag while integrating full-PC features. We already know a little something for VAIO P, but let's do the specs again. It's little, but has a high-resolution, 1600x768, LED backlit 8-inch ultra-wide display with Sony's XBRITE-ECO LCD technology. The foundation of VAIO P is its Intel Atom 1.33GHz processor, 2x1GB DDR2 memory, and a 60GB HDD or up to 128GB worth of SSD storage. The VAIO P also has built-in WAN 3G, Atheros 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, webcam, two USB 2.0 ports, one SD slot, one Memory Stick Duo media slot and a lot more. It includes a real-time GPS, and comes standard with Microsoft Windows Vista Home 32-bit pre-installed. The VAIO P Series Lifestyle PC will retail for about $900. It will be available for pre-order in four different colors tomorrow online at Sony, and later next month at all major Sony retailers. The full fact sheet can be viewed here.

The Sony Playstation 2 is the most played game console in the US, according to a study of trends among Americans by Nielsen in its news release whitepaper (PDF). The Nielsen study gave out results in the form of top-10 rankings for several products and the consumers' usage patterns. Nielsen calculated the usage minutes of all consoles found in the home as a percentage. The Playstation 2 ranked top with a usage percentage of 31.7%, trailed by Microsoft Xbox 360 at 17.2%, Nintendo Wii at 13.4%, Microsoft Xbox at 9.7% and Sony Playstation 3 at 7.3%.

Please note that these figures are those of the usage minutes of these consoles and aren't exactly indicative of their market shares. Also taken into account should be the fact that the Playstation 2 is a much older console launched in 1999 while its competitive 6th generation console, the Xbox was launched two years later in 2001. The data was measured from January to October 2008. According to Nielsen "other" includes "any other console found in the home" and it appears portable hardware like the Nintendo DS or the Sony PSP were not included in the research. In related news, the same study suggests the most played PC game title. No guesses here: Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Refer to the whitepaper for more details.

Sony New Zealand has put up a teaser site called, "The Wait Is Over", stating, "On the 9th of January you will change the way you look at laptops. Forever". Other than a glossy Vaio logo and a link to enter a competition, for a chance to, "Win the revolutionary new VAIO", no other information is available. Could it be the world's thinnest laptop? The smallest? Or even the longest battery life? Who knows, all we can do now is speculate and wait for more information to emerge. If you want to see it for yourself, the website can be found here.
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The link is down at the moment, probably due to maintenance or update

PlayStation.BLOG reminds today that PlayStation Home will enter into open beta, and will be available to everyone tomorrow. PlayStation Home is a 3D social gaming community available on PS3 that allows users to interact, communicate and share gaming experiences. Within PlayStation Home, users can create and customize their own unique avatars and explore virtual community in real time where they can communicate freely through text or voice chat. PlayStation Home users will not only be able to enjoy variety of entertainment content such as mini-games, videos and special events along with their friends, but will also be able to create their own community by starting clubs with other PlayStation Home users who share the same interests. Even purchasing customizable furniture and designer clothes will be possible with PlayStation Home. That's only a fraction of the features that will be available initially, not to mention that this is not a final version and there're still many updates to come. PlayStation Home, available as a free download starting December 11th, will launch directly from the PlayStation Home icon on the PlayStation Network column of XMB (XrossMediaBar) on PS3. After that date, SCE will vigorously promote the service and work with its partners to introduce new services. If you want to know more, hit the source link.

Sony released version 2.53 software update for the Playstation 3 game console. The new release brings in a host of feature tune-ups, feature additions and security fixes. This update is characterised by the introduction of full-screen Adobe Flash video playback for the web-browser, with the addition of Adobe Flash Player 9 to the browser. Others include minor user interface related changes that enhance the user experience. Ideally stability related issues should be addressed by this firmware release. The update can be installed from the console's own interface when connected to the internet, or by means of a PC download and when the update is bundled as a requirement on game discs. To learn more about this update, visit this page.

It appears that the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with Dell, HP and Toshiba, have issued another laptop battery recall for Sony branded batteries. It's very unfortunate that the Sony battery fiasco is still a problem. According to the new data, Lithium-Ion batteries used in about 35,000 Hewlett-Packard, Toshiba and Dell Notebook Computers can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. The information is based on 19 reports of laptop batteries still overheating, including 17 reports of flames/fire (10 resulting in minor property damage). Consumers should immediately remove the recalled battery from their notebook computer, and contact their computer manufacturer to determine if their battery is included in the recall and to request a free replacement battery. The bad battery packs are used in laptops from all kinds, including models retailing from $700 to models that cost around $3000. There's a list of the models in danger below, that might help.

As part of its frequent updates, Sony announced today that new firmware versions for its PLAYSTATION3 and PSP (PlayStation Portable) consoles will very soon be available to their owners. Let's start with the v5.00 update for PSP. In this version, you'll notice the addition of the PlayStation Network icon on the XMB. You can now sign up for PlayStation Network, manage your account and access PlayStation Store directly from your PSP - meaning you can download games, demos and trailers directly to your PSP while you are on-the-go. Update v5.00 also adds a sleep timer option that can be used while you are playing music on your PSP. In addition, v5.00 adds a full screen keyboard option for text entry and redesigned background of the XMB. You'll be able to find all of the information on Firmware v5.00 here once it goes live. The PLAYSTATION3 firmware version 2.50 includes a ton of new enhancements. To see each one of them, you'll need to go past the "Read full story" marker.

In yet another PR posted yesterday Sony debuted its third generation internal Blu-ray Disc (BD) writer for the computer aftermarket, which at about $400 achieves a new level of affordability for BD enthusiasts. The new BWU-300S model burns single and dual layer BD-R media at up to 8X speed, recording a full 25GB disc in about 15 minutes and a full 50GB disc in about 30 minutes. The 8X recording speed is achieved using 6X compatible BD-R media. The drive also records DVDs at up to 16X, CDs up to 48X, and supports DVD-RAM recording. The internal BWU-300S features a Serial ATA (SATA) interface and standard 5.25-inch form-factor for easy installation inside a desktop PC with Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista operating systems. It comes bundled with a "Men in Black" Blu-ray Disc from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Also included with the drive is CyberLink's software suite for capturing, authoring, editing, burning and viewing high-definition personal content. The BWU-300S drive will be available through select retailers, resellers and directly at Sony Style starting next month. Pre-orders are now being accepted by Sony on the website.

Yesterday Sony took the wraps off the world's lightest computer with Blu-ray Disc technology - the VAIO TT Series notebook. Available in two models VAIO TT160 and VAIO TT198, both laptops come housed in a lightweight carbon-fiber chassis, weight just 2.87 pounds and are less than 1-inch thin, but have different hardware installed. The TT160 series comes with a 1.2GHz U9200 Intel Centrino 2 processor (3MB L2 cache), 3GB PC3-6400 memory and 160GB 5400rpm SATA hard drive, while the TT198 features a 1.4GHz U9300 CPU (3MB L2 cache), 4GB PC3-6400 memory and 2x128GB SATA solid state drives in RAID. Sony offers both models with a 11.1-inch XBRITE-DuraView widescreen LCD that also has LED backlight. This screen boasts 16:9 HD 1366x768 wide resolution. Future owners who want to pay a premium price can also purchase a Blu-Ray writer drive. The TT models start at $2,000. The BD version will go for about $2,700, while the SSD model (128GB) for around $2,750. Available colors include premium carbon black, silk black, champagne gold and crimson red. Retailers will start selling the TT series starting this fall. Click here for any additional information.

Sony Computer Entertainment just announced the simultaneous global launch of its free Life with PlayStation PS3 service for PLAYSTATION 3. Life with PlayStation is a new lifestyle service that offers users a new visual and interactive way to use their PS3 to access news and information from around the world, only possible on the PS3's feature-rich platform. Initially, Live Channel will worldwide news and and information such as time, weather and live camera images provided by The Earth Television Network of nearly 60 cities around the globe. All this is free of charge and requires your PS3 to be connected to Internet only. PS3 users can easily join Life with PlayStation by simply clicking the Folding@home icon on the network column of XMB (XrossMediaBar) that will update to Life with PlayStation. For more information, please see the official website here.

Sony released two models of the Vaio laptop, the Vaio CS and Vaio NS. Both these models come with Blu-ray drives, with the option of having them without the drives as well. The Vaio NS comes with a 15.4" display and is powered by a 2.00 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 processor. It comes with 3 GB of DDR2 memory and a 250 GB hard drive. Additionally, the Sony Vaio NS has an integrated A/V mode, featuring a dedicated menu for quicker access to nine user-selected programs. With the Blu-ray drive installed, the product range starts at US $1000. Without it, the range starts at $650.

The Vaio CS features a smaller 14.1" screen with the same optional Blu-ray drive feature. It comes with the much more powerful Intel Core 2 Duo P8400 processor at 2.26 GHz, 4 GB of memory, and a 320 GB hard drive. It also offers a uniquely configured keyboard, designed with spacing between the keys, for a more comfortable typing experience. The notebook has a 12-tone music analyzer that translates your music into a colorful LED light show. Prices start at $970 without the Blu-ray drive, and $1070 with it.

Notebook PC makers and users desire the realism and performance of a discrete graphics processing unit (GPU), but they still demand maximum battery life. Now Sony, Fujitsu Siemens, and BenQ have announced the availability of notebooks that let users dynamically switch between a discrete NVIDIA GeForce GPU and Intel Centrino 2 integrated graphics without rebooting, giving users the choice of more visual computing performance or reducing power demands to extend battery life.

All GeForce 9M Series GPUs support the hybrid graphics feature, but the notebook must be designed to support the technology. The hybrid graphics feature is currently available in the following new notebook models:

Yet another overheating drama has struck Sony's laptop subdivision. As of today a potential overheating issue has been discovered in the following notebook PC models:

• VGN-TZ100 series
• VGN-TZ200 series
• VGN-TZ300 series
• VGN-TZ2000 series

The issue involves a small number of units which may overheat due to a wiring problem. Sony has initiated a voluntary program to perform a free inspection and, if necessary, a repair to ensure these units meet our high quality standards. To find out if your VAIO TZ notebook is one of the affected units, please visit this link here. After a quick check of the product code and the serial number located on the bottom of your notebook, you'll know whether to worry or not. Please follow the information found here if your laptop is affected.

The Leipzig Games Convention has become a playground for one more announcement that's worth knowing. This time Sony is officially updating its game console line-up with the introduction of PlayStation Portable 3000. As the name suggests this is the third update for PSP and it comes to bring a built-in mic for VoIP calls and a new LCD that improves both the color range as well as the contrast over the original version of the 4.3-inch display. The home button of the PSP 3000 has also been redesigned. It is now called "PS Button" and has the PlayStation logo on it, instead of just the "Home" sign used in previous two versions, otherwise it has the same function. Other than that the console looks just like the older PSP 2000. First PSP 3000s should start shipping on October 15th for 199 Euros ($294) and be sold as bundles that will either include a game like FIFA 09 or the Go! communications pack.