For the first time since 2005, Yahoo has redesigned its Yahoo Mail service, which currently has 280 million users.

The main update is the addition of social networking, meaning users can update their Twitter and Facebook statuses from within Yahoo Mail.

Yahoo says the revamped service will work twice as fast as Gmail and Live/Hotmail.

Additionally, texting and IMs have been updated, as well as the ability to view photos and videos from Flickr, Picasa and YouTube from within your inbox.

"People spend more than 30 billion minutes a month on Yahoo Mail," says Dave McDowell, Yahoo Mail senior product director. "It is a critically important product to our users and this represents [the] most significant upgrade to Yahoo mail in five years."

Yahoo has also added priority messages, the service Google added to Gmail a couple of months ago.

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Apple has expanded the iOS App Store to China this week, giving Chinese users a chance to view localized feature apps and charts in Simplified Chinese.

Furthermore, the company has launched a Chinese online retail store which offers free shipping, free engraving and free customization for Mac products.

Apple just launched the iPhone 4 in China on September 25th, selling out all supply in 24 hours.

PCMag reminds us that Lenovo chairman Liu Chuanzhi once said: "We are lucky that Steve Jobs has such a bad temper and doesn't care about China. If Apple were to spend the same effort on the Chinese consumer as we do, we would be in trouble."

It appears that Lenovo will need increase their "effort" now.

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Alexandra Tobias of Florida has plead guilty to murder today, months after killing her 3-month-old son for interrupting her game of Farmville.

Farmville is a game on Facebook where users own their own farms and interact with other farm owners from around the world.

In January, Tobias was playing the computer game and became angry after her baby Dylan started crying.

She shook the baby out of anger, smoked a cigarette and then shook the baby again, says The Florida Times-Union.

Tobias will receive a minimum of 25 years for the charge of second-degree murder.

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For the six fiscal months ended September 30th, 2010, Nintendo saw its first semi-annual loss in seven years, thanks mostly to a steep decline in DS handheld sales.

Year-over-year, DS sales (which include DS Lite, DSi and DSi XL) dropped to 6.69 million worldwide, from 11.7 million in the same period last year.

The drop in sales makes sense though, given that the market has been very close to saturation for some time. Additionally, the Nintendo 3DS is set for launch early next year, so consumers appear to be bidding their time and waiting on the new, updated handheld.

Helping contribute to Nintendo's falling bottom line was Wii sales, which fell from 5.75 million to 4.97 million in the same time periods.

With falling console sales came falling software sales, as well.

The Yen has made significant gains against the US Dollar in the past two years, leaving Nintendo's net income down 34 percent.

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GigaOM is reporting today that Apple is currently working with SIM-card pioneer Gemalto to create a special SIM card that would give consumers a chance to buy an iPhone online (or at Apple retail stores) and then activate it through the iOS App Store, eliminating the need to go to a carrier's store.

SIM cards hold subscriber information as well as contacts and are used in GSM devices.

Gemalto's special new card will be integrated right into the iPhone (in European nations), giving consumers the chance to choose a carrier at the time of purchase and getting the handset up and running almost instantly, without needing to head over to a carrier store.

European carriers have expressed some concern, as it could potentially stop millions of consumers from headed into stores, where they might be inclined to buy accessories or even other devices.

Gemalto was recently in the news for suing Google, HTC, Motorola and Samsung over a patent related to the Android mobile operating system. More specifically, Gemalto is suing over a patent relating to the JavaCard, a technology which allows for Java apps to run on SIM cards.

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Sony has announced today that they will be releasing a standalone 320GB PlayStation 3 console soon, pricing the console at $350.

Additionally, the company is still selling the 320GB system bundled with PlayStation Move, the PS Eye and "Sports Champion" for $400.

Making the system intriguing is the fact that Sony sells their low-end 160GB model for $300, so upgrading may even be cheaper than buying a 160GB model and adding your own HDD (unless you already have one laying around).

For September, Sony saw 312,000 PlayStation 3 sales in the U.S., a steep 37 percent drop year-over-year, although in August 2009 the company dropped the price of the PS3, leading to extremely strong sales for the period.

Sony has also reported that they have shipped 1 million Move motion controllers in the Americas for the PlayStation 3 in just 30 days since launch. Sony Europe reported 1.5 million sales for the EU during the same time.

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Mike Beltzner, the Director of Firefox has said today that release candidates (RC) for Firefox 4 will be available at the beginning of 2011.

Beta 7 of the new browser is set for release in the next week.

Mozilla says Beta 7 will be a "code freeze" for the browser, meaning that new features can no longer be added afterwards.

After b7, the browser will be delivered to add-on developers.

Says Beltzner:

"As those who have been tracking our nightly builds know, great things are happening with Firefox 4. The user interface changes are converging, the graphics and layout features are wrapping up, and recently the JavaScript engine was dramatically improved. The result is a fast, capable Firefox that provides better speed and responsiveness for web applications and users. Completing this work is taking longer than initial estimates indicated as we track down regressions and sources of instability. As part of our commitment to beta users, we will not ship software before it is ready.

Development on Firefox 4 has not slowed down and strong progress is being made daily. However, based on the delays in completing the "feature complete" Beta 7 milestone against which our Add-on developers and third-party software developers can develop, as well as considering the amount of work remaining to prepare Firefox 4 for final release, we have revised our beta and release candidate schedule: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox/4/Beta

The frequent beta releases have been extremely helpful in identifying compatibility issues with existing web content, so we plan on continuing to release beta milestones through the end of December. Our estimate is now that release candidate builds will ship in early 2011, with a final release date close behind. Please note that, as always, this schedule is subject to change based on feedback from users and community members."

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Today the iPad 3G went on sale at AT&T stores across the US. Meanwhile, Verizon introduced a competing deal, bundling a regular iPad with a WiFi hotspot.

Verizon's bundled alternatives are priced essentially the same as their 3G counterparts. They are charging $629 for the 16GB model, $729 for 32GB or $829 for 64GB.

Data plan details are similar, but not exactly the same. While AT&T offers a choice of 250MB or 2GB per month for $14.99 and $25 respectively, Verizon customers can choose from 1GB per month for $20, 3GB for $35, 5GB for $50 or 10GB for $80.

Of course the availability of the iPad from Verizon has led to more speculation about the oft-rumored, but never confirmed, partnership between Apple and Verizon for a CDMA version of the iPhone. Many industry analysts and tech bloggers have suggested this is further proof such a device must be on the way.

In reality there are only two conclusions you can legitimately draw from this development, neither of which is much of a revelation. Verizon wants to compete with AT&T and Apple wants to sell more iPads.

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