What was rumored earlier this week is now official; Disney is purchasing social gaming company Playdom, buying up the firm for which it already has an investment stake.

The company will pay at least $563.2 million for the start-up, with the price moving to $763.2 million if certain performance-based incentives are hit.

Playdom says it has over 42 million monthly active users, making it the fourth-largest developer on Facebook based on that metric.

Zynga remains the clear market leader in the space, with over 200 million monthly users on Facebook.

The social site has the most popular game on MySpace, "Mobsters," and a few other popular games such as "Big City Life," "Social City," "Bloodlines," and "Wild Ones."

Says Janco Partners analyst Mike Hickey of the deal: "When you look for growth in the near and medium term, it's digital online that will likely be the real contributor. It definitely gives a bit more credibility to the market opportunity."

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The popular Amazon Kindle e-reader has sold out online, with no estimated date for availability.

MaximumPC thinks there may be more to the normally common occurrence, saying there may be a system glitch, or even a "stealth launch" of a new Kindle model in the works.

Fans of the system will remember that the last time the Kindle was "sold out," Amazon debuted the Kindle 2.

Bloomberg reported last week that the e-tailer was planning to release the Kindle 3, a slimmer model with the sharper Pearl eInk display used by the new, updated Kindle DX.

You can check the Kindle here: Amazon Kindle

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Yahoo Japan, the biggest portal in the nation, has said today it will use Google's search engine to power its search instead of following Yahoo Inc.'s decision to use Microsoft's Bing for search.

By teaming up with Google, the venture will control almost 100 percent of the search market in the world's second largest economy.

Yahoo went with Microsoft after U.S. regulators blocked a deal with Google under anti-monopoly laws. Yahoo Inc. owns about 30 percent of Yahoo Japan.

Additionally, Yahoo Japan will "also adopt Google's search-linked advertisement delivery system and feed its data to Google sites," says Reuters.

Yahoo Japan President Masahiro Inoue said they thoroughly looked into both Microsoft's and Google's search technology and they found Microsoft's "not strong" enough for its needs. A main example cited was Japanese language search capabilities.

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After months of speculation, Apple has finally, officially introduced their Magic Trackpad desktop companion.

The Trackpad allows desktop users to enjoy multitouch gestures, just like notebook users have enjoyed for years.

Apple's latest device connects to a Mac via Bluetooth, and will work from up to 33 feet away. The Magic Trackpad promises "months" of battery life.

The company says supported gestures are "two-finger scrolling, pinching to zoom, rotating with your fingertips, three-finger swiping, and activating Exposé or switching between applications with four fingers."

Apple's Magic Trackpad is priced at $69.

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AT&T has finally priced the Dell Streak mini-tablet, selling the 5-inch tablet/phone for $300 with two-year contract and $550 without.

It is still unclear when the Streak will hit retail stores, but Dell and AT&T are already accepting pre-orders on the device.

The first colorway available will be black with red.

Dell launched the tablet/phone in the UK in June, to mixed reviews.

The device has a 5-inch display, phone capabilities, browsing capability, runs the Android OS and has a 5MP camera.

Unfortunately, the device uses Android 1.6, the now obsolete software which has been replaced on most new Android devices by 2.1 Eclair. An update to Froyo 2.2 is promised for later in the year, however.

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Amazon has said today that deceased author Stieg Larsson has become the first in the Kindle Million Club, an honor bestowed to authors that have produced over one million Kindle e-book sales.

The Club is only for paid books, not counting the 1.8 million books available for free via the Kindle Store.

Larsson died in 2004 of a heart attack, and was best known for his "Millennium Trilogy" mystery crime novels. All three books, "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," "The Girl Who Played with Fire" and "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest" are top ten all-time best sellers for Kindle.

Four other authors; Charlaine Harris, Stephenie Meyer, James Patterson, and Nora Roberts have each sold over 500,000 Kindle books.

E-books, while increasing daily in sales, still have a way to go before catching up to their print brothers. In the United States, e-books account for 8.48 percent of all book sales, according to the Association of American Publishers.

The Kindle e-reader recently dropped in price from $250 to $190, and Amazon also released an updated Kindle DX for $379, a steep price drop off the first-generation device which sold for $489.

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The first ever Android phone, the T-Mobile G1 by HTC, has finally been removed from T-Mobile's online and brick-and-mortar stores, marking the end of an era.

Android's first smartphone launched in September, 2008.

Frankly, it was only a matter of time before T-Mobile decided to drop the device as its 528 MHz processor, 3.2 inch display, and Android 1.6 OS are obsolete. The phone is also bulky.

While you can root your G1 to have Android 2.1 Eclair, it never ran as fast as you would hope, as the device was not made to handle the new software updates.

The G1's likely replacement is the HTC G1 Blaze, which has an expected September 9th release date. The phone will have a 1GHz processor and a 3.7-inch screen, along with a full QWERTY keypad.

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Continuing its foray into the digital distribution world, giant video game retailer GameSpot has announced it intends to purchase the social gaming site Kongregate for an undisclosed amount.

GameSpot has been, for a long time, a brick-and-mortar business, with little pull in the digital distribution world.

Kongregate has 10 million players monthly, each of which uses the site to play Flash games while interacting with other players.

The site charges for virtual items and extra digital content and makes some money through advertisement.

GameSpot says the acquisition will complete by August 1st, and founders Jim and Emily Greer will remain to lead the company.

Speaking of the acquisition, Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter said: "The addition of Kongregate is intended to hasten the transformation of GameStop's website from a purely e-commerce site to a gaming platform."

Pachter believes the company only paid between $12 million and $40 million for the site.

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Following yesterday's announcement of a new DMCA exemption for jailbreaking mobile phones, an Apple representative sidestepped questions about whether the company plans to take action against individuals publishing jailbreaking tools.

Based on the company's filing with the Library Of Congress during the DMCA rulemaking process, they consider jailbreaking copyright infringement.

In that filing Apple said modification of the iPhone's bootloader and OS and the installation of that modified code on an iPhone infringes on their reproduction and modification rights under copyright law.

They also claim ownership of even the copy of the iOS on every iPhone.

The iOS license agreement does, in fact, state, "You own the media on which the iPhone Software is recorded but Apple and/or Apple's licensor(s) retain ownership of the iPhone software itself."

However, in her report recommending adoption of the jailbreaking exemption Register Of Copyrights Marybeth Peters noted differences between iPhone software & the caselaw Apple cited in defense of their ownership claim. She pointed out, "law relating to who is the owner of a copy of a computer program under Section 117 is in flux."

She was referring to the section of US copyright law which deals with copying software. She also cited a 2009 case in which similar license terms for AutoCAD were found to be invalid.

Failing to find a concrete standard for ownership, she determined that modifying the iPhone's OS for purposes of interoperability meets the requirements for fair use. While this isn't a definitive legal ruling, which would require a federal judge's decision, it is likely to carry significant weight should Apple's infringement claim be tested in court.

Peters went on to criticize the entire basis for Apple's objections, stating, "While a copyright owner might try to restrict the programs that can be run on a particular operating system, copyright law is not the vehicle for imposition of such restrictions ."

Instead of addressing the copyright question, an Apple PR representative told Cult Of Mac Publisher Leander Kahney, "we know that jailbreaking can severely degrade the [iPhone] experience."

She added, "the vast majority of customers do not jailbreak their iPhones as this can violate the warranty and can cause the iPhone to become unstable and not work reliably."

When asked whether the company would pursue legal cases against companies marketing or selling jailbreaking software, she simply stated that they haven't gone after anyone in the past.

And Apple has already had more than three years to go after jailbreakers for violating the DMCA. But what happens if jailbreaking goes mainstream as a result of the new exemption?

What if a company like Adobe or Google were to publicly embrace jailbreaking in order to distribute apps Apple doesn't want on the iPhone?

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