Apple is still working with Verizon on an iPad model that will support Verizon's 3G service says Fox News, citing a source within Verizon.

Earlier this week Fox News reported that AT&T had outbid Verizon and therefore will be the carrier of choice at launch in March. AT&T had not ironed out a deal until six days before the iPad launch event on January 27th, says the report.

Following Fox's note, a few Wall Street firms predicted that a Verizon deal would be signed by the end of 2010. Some say Apple will announce a new iPhone and an iPad, both with Verizon support at June's WWDC event.

Permalink | Comments

---

Arstechnica is reporting today that RealVideo continues its death spiral, this time with C-SPAN getting rid of the streaming video format in favor of Flash and Windows Media.

Says the C-SPAN site: "Due to lack of demand for the RealVideo format, we will be retiring our links to C-SPAN live video streams in the RealVideo format effective March 1, 2010."

The Ars reporter says the codec lives on in a few Government committees, such as the Senate's Committee on Environment and Public Works but the FCC finally upgraded last year to Flash, after previously broadcasting all their meetings on a server that could handle only up to 200 users and produced 240x240 resolution video.

Permalink | Comments

---

Amazon has announced their acquisition of the touchscreen company Touchco, a move that will lead to the next Kindle e-reader being a touchscreen device.

The NY Times says Touchco's "interpolating force-sensitive resistance technology allows for flexible, transparent, pressure-sensitive touch-screens that could cost as little as $10 a square foot."

By comparison, the iPad's touchscreen is more expensive and "cannot detect the unlimited amount of simultaneous touch points that Touchco's technology allows."

Touchco's screens can distinguish between the different pressures produced by a human finger or by a pen stylus.

Permalink | Comments

---

Today's Video Daily comes from Google, which has announced that its upcoming Chrome OS will be used for tablets as well, with some of the concept pictures and a video posted on their blog.

What will make this special compared to the recently unveiled iPad? Looks like we will have to wait and see for the most part.

Permalink | Comments

---

The Hollywood studios have lost a landmark case against the ISP iiNet today after an eight-week trial.

The case would have impacted how Australian ISPs would have had to react to potential pirates, but the judge ruled that iiNet was not responsible for the downloading habits of any of its subscribers.

Justice Cowdroy said all the evidence showed that iiNet was simply providing Internet service for its customers, not facilitating piracy. He did conclude, however, that iiNet had knowledge of infringements occurring and did not anything to stop them, which was fine as the ISP is simply "a legitimate communication facility," not "intended nor designed to infringe copyright."

"iiNet is not responsible if an iiNet user uses that system to bring about copyright infringement ... the law recognises no positive obligation on any person to protect the copyright of another," Justice Cowdroy added.

Permalink | Comments

---

MPEG LA, the company behind the H.264 video-encoding codec, has decided to extended the royalty-free period of the tech until December 31st, 2015, allowing sites to stream using the technology for free.

The current licensing period was set to finish at the end of 2010.

The extension may be a way to "encourage" sites to use H.264 instead of free rival Ogg Theora, which was recently selected by Wikipedia for video playback. H.264 is currently used by the king of web video, however, YouTube.

Lesser rival On2 creates a codec called VP8, and Google recently announced their acquisition of On2, sparking speculation that VP8 would be the new codec of choice for YouTube.

Permalink | Comments

---

A DVD-Screener copy of the highest-grossing film of all-time, Avatar, has hit P2P and torrents today, coming just a few days after Academy members received the screener from Fox.

Until today, telesync versions had been available, and total downloads were estimated at over 2 million just from torrent downloads. The first copy available was Avatar DVDScr xvid - IMAGiNE.

The new screener will likely see many times that amount of downloads, but Fox should have little to worry about as Avatar is the highest grossing movie of all-time and will undoubtedly be the best selling DVD in years and the biggest Blu-ray release of all-time by a long shot.

Permalink | Comments

---

According to the The Symbian Foundation, the world's most popular mobile operating system, Symbian, is going open-source.

Individual developers as well as organizations can now modify the source code "for any purpose."

The Foundation says over 330 million smartphones have shipped worldwide running Symbian and the new move to open-source should attract a plethora of new developers to work on the platform, thus speeding up improvements.

"This is the largest open source migration effort ever," says Lee Williams of the Symbian Foundation, via the BBC. "It will increase rate of evolution and increase the rate of innovation of the platform."

Nokia purchased the software in 2008 and created the Foundation to oversee the transition to open-source. Members of the Foundation include Nokia, AT&T, LG, Motorola, NTT Docomo, Samsung, Sony Ericsson, STMicroelectronics, Texas Instruments and Vodafone.

The move should also help Symbian take back some market share from open-source rival Android and the closed-source iPhone.

Permalink | Comments

---