Adobe has posted its first-ever $1 billion quarter, a large 32 percent growth year-over-year.

For their record fourth quarter, Adobe posted revenue of $1.008 billion, up from $757 million in the same period last year.

In the 3Q this year, Adobe posted revenue of $990 million.

For the year, the company saw revenue explode 29 percent, from $2.95 billion to $3.8 billion.

Adds CEO Shantanu Narayen:

"We posted our first billion dollar quarter and record annual revenue in 2010, driven by outstanding performance across all of our major businesses, and we are entering 2011 with strong momentum."

Net income was a solid $384 million, up from $265.2 million in the Q4 2009.

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The Lord Chief Justice for England and Wales, Lord Judge (not a typo, that is his surname), has given the green light for tweeting inside a court room.

He said that using mobile devices to send tweets out for the general public's consumption during proceedings is fine if the judge believes it will not interfere with the administration of justice. The recording of sounds or images during a court hearing remains illegal.

The question around using social networking sites such as Twitter from a court room came to light as journalists used mobile handsets to tweet from the court room at a bail hearing of Julian Assange, founder of the Wikileaks website.

"The use of an unobtrusive, hand-held, virtually silent piece of modern equipment for the purposes of simultaneous reporting of proceedings to the outside world as they unfold in court is unlikely to interfere with the proper administration of justice," Lord Judge ruled.

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Toshiba Corp. will show off its 3D television sets that do not require that a viewer to wear glasses to witness the 3D effect from the displays.

At CEATEC in Japan earlier this year, Toshiba's 12-inch and a 20-inch 3D glasses-free televisions drew large crowds that wanted to experience it first hand. The displays featured a thin sheet of small lenses in front of the display that split light from the television to one of nine points in front of the TV.

To witness the 3D effect, a viewer needs to view from one of these spots. Toshiba will bring the televisions to the International Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas in January. "It has been three months, I think we should show [the TVs] with better technology," said Masaaki Oosumi, president of Toshiba's digital media network unit.

Oosumi recognized that to make a splash in the United States, the televisions would have to offer a good 3D effect without glasses and be larger than the screens currently shown. While both the 12-inch and 20-inch products go on sale in Japan before the end of the month, he expects the U.S. market would require sets that are 40-inches or larger.

"Next year is the key year to extend development of the technology and extend the screen size," said Oosumi.

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A British conservative MP is pushing for Internet Service Providers (ISP) to be forced to block Internet pornography by default to its subscribers.

Claire Perry, elected Member of Parliament (MP) for Devizes this year, is using children as usual as an excuse for the government-forced censorship. "We are not coming at this from an anti-porn perspective. We just want to make sure our children aren't stumbling across things we don't want them to see." she told the Sunday Times.

The British government will meet with UK ISPs next month to discuss censoring Internet porn, including the possibility of implementing a system that would force Internet subscribers to request access to pornographic content. The Internet Service Providers' Association (ISPA) in the UK is (obviously) uninterested in such a system being put in place.

Putting aside the inevitable negative reaction from British Internet users who would have to inform their ISP of their intention to view pornographic material, ISPA also points out that such a system would be extremely difficult to implement and would be very expensive to maintain.

It brings up a lot of questions on not only how it would work, but whether such action is the role of a government in a region like Great Britain. Who would make the decisions on what material is porn and what isn't? (is nudity, pornography? what about "suggestive posing?", for example), and who would pay to setup and maintain such a system in the first place?

Also, would this not be the British government mandating that ISPs do a job that should be done (and is done) by parents instead? Do an ample amount of software packages aimed at blocking pornography from children not already exist on the market for parents to use if they feel the need?

Perhaps the most important question is, if a government can force ISPs to block all Internet pornography, what is to stop it from mandating similar censorship for anything else?

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A Sony Corp. executive has revealed that the electronics giant is likely to fall short of its LCD television sales target this year.

Sony Executive Deputy President Hiroshi Yoshioka revealed to media sources that the company would struggle to make the division profitable this year, reports Reuters. He also said the company is not expecting a substantial change in the business for the next financial year either.

This year has been a good year for sales of new television sets in the Japan, driven by the digitization of terrestrial broadcasting and a government stimulus plan. However, these factors won't help Sony beyond December in the country.

Additionally, the market is under-performing in the United States where unemployment remains very high. Best Buy shocked its investors last week by announcing a drop in quarterly sales at its existing stores in the U.S, saying that sales of 3D television sets fell behind industry expectations.

Sony had hoped that its 3D offerings would help to drive its sales of LCD TVs to 25 million units in the year to March 2011. Yoshioka said sales of Sony's 3D sets would not fall too far behind the company's 2.5 million unit target, and said sales of its Google TV product was in line with expectations.

"Talking to customers, there are some who are worried about how much content has been prepared and others who mistakenly assume that 3D TVs can only show images in 3D," Yoshioka said.

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The Wall Street Journal reported that Google Inc. has requested that manufacturers of televisions based on its software delay their release, citing sources close to the company.

Several major electronics companies are getting ready to bring Google TV-ready television sets to the market around the world. Google has allegedly asked them now to delay the planned introduction of the televisions to the market, saying it will give the company time to improve the software.

Televisions armed with Google TV software lets users browse the Internet and use applications without the need for an external set-top-box. Sony Corp. and Logitech already have introduced devices based on Google TV.

Despite Google's request, WSJ is reporting that Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd will still go ahead with the launch of its Google TV products at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January.

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LG Group, which includes LG Electronics, LG Display and LG Innotek, has announced it will increase its investment in 2011 by 12 percent.

The $18.2 billion investment will focus on strengthening its position in the market for smartphone handsets, as well as give it an extra boost in its TVs and display devices segment. While two million Optimus One smartphones have been sold since its October launch, LG's handset business is making losses.

"The focus for 2011 will be bolstering our core businesses of smartphones, tablets, TVs and large-sized displays and also supporting new growth engines such as solar cell, new types of displays and small-sized display panels for smartphones and tablets," the group said in a statement.

The electronics units of LG will spend about £12.9 billion of the total $18.2 billion. LG Display is the world's No. 2 maker of televisions.

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eBay Inc., the world's online auction giant, has announced it will buy Germany's largest shopping club, Brands4Friends.

The company will acquire Brands4Friends to boost its position in the European markets in a deal worth $200 million. It will obtain Brands4Friends' equity interests in SecretSales.com, a UK shopping site and in the Japanese brands4friend.jp service.

The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2011, and eBay said it does not expect the acquisition to have a material impact on its financial results for the year.

Brands4Friends was founded in 2007 and employees around 200 people at present. It boasts 3.5 million members in Germany and sells fashion and lifestyle brands including Diesel and Calvin Klien.

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China Mobile, which has the largest mobile telecommunications network in the world, revealed that it hit a massive 579.6 million subscribers in November.

The state-owned enterprise, listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and the Hong Kong stock exchange, said the figure included 18.8 million users of its relatively new 3G Network. China Mobile also is said to be the most valuable mobile telecommunications company in the world.

Rapid expansion of China Mobile's 2G network across mainland China meant that by 2006, over 97 percent of China's massive population lived in an area where there was reception, giving it a much greater share of rural market than any of its competitors.

Behind China Mobile in the market is China Unicom. The provider said its mobile subscribers rose to 165.5 million during November. Of the total, it reports 12.8 million use its 3G network.

China's third largest provider, China Telecom (mobile services - it remains China's largest fixed-line provider), saw its subscriber-base increase to 88 million.

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Motorola has taken a shot at the iPad and Galaxy Tab today, while at the same time hyping up its upcoming Android 3.0 Honeycomb tablet.

The teaser video (posted), shows a museum of tablets, starting with an Egyptian Hieroglyphics Tablet from 3200 BC and concluding with the iPad and Galaxy Tab, released earlier in 2010.

Motorola, via @MotoMobile, tweeted today: "Might want to hold off on that tablet purchase until 2011," before linking the video.

The company will launch the Android tablet at CES 2011 next year.

In all CGI, the video walks the viewers through a museum of tablets, starting with the aforementioned Egyptian Hieroglyphics Tablet, moving to the Ten Commandments, then the Rosetta Stone, Mayan tablets, 1989's GriDPad and finally the 2010 tablets before panning back to a Motorola stand with a bee buzzing around it, in a reference to Honeycomb.

PCMag has some blurry pics of the tablet here.

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After being in closed beta since early this year, alternative text input software Swype has moved to open beta, giving most Android users a chance to try the application.

For those that have not used the software or seen commercials, Swype lets users slide their finger over the touchscreen to spell words, allowing for typing speeds much faster than normal input, or even physical keyboard input.

Using predictive design, the software will determine what word you are trying to type, even if you spell it wrong when sliding.

Current beta users will get a nice upgrade, as well. Reads the Swype site:

First and foremost - We've resolved an accuracy issue that was introduced in the last beta update. Refer to the changelog for more detail on this critical fix.

Second - Swype BETA for Android now supports Double-Tap-to-Edit! Swype choose a wrong word? Just tap the word twice to bring up the word choice window, pick the correct word, and the cursor will return to wherever it was before. It doesn't get any simpler! See a video demonstration, and check out our other tips and tricks.

And Third - Swype BETA for Android now includes a Voice-to-Text button (available for QWERTY layouts ONLY)! You MUST have Google Voice Search pre-integrated in your ROM for this feature to work. We wish everyone could access it, and are working to adapt our existing code to support versions of Voice Search downloaded from the market, as well as other voice search providers, in our next update.

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Roku, despite new competition from Apple, Google and others, seems to be striving in the set-top market, set to hit its millionth sale by the end of the year.

Revenue will surpass $50 million for 2010 and expects revenue to top $100 million in 2011.

Roku CEO Anthony Wood says a huge portion of its sales (25 percent) come from Amazon, which currently shows the $80 Roku XD at #9 on the best-selling gadgets list, followed by the $100 XDS player at #11.

Rivals, like the $100 Apple TV, are further down the list at #23, followed way further down by the Logitech Revue at #110 and the Boxee Box at #171.

At the same price as the Apple TV, the XDS offers more features, including 1080p output.

To stay relevant, Roku will "counter with broader retail distribution, more products via licensing deals (such as the new Netgear Roku device), and more channels, bringing more content to its devices," adds BI.

You can read our review of the original Roku set-top here: Review: The Roku Digital Video Player

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Microsoft is currently working on improving Kinect accuracy by 400 percent, making it so the motion-control system can even read finger movements and hand rotations.

The team behind Kinect is working on a compression technology that will allow a much larger amount of data to pass from the Kinect to the Xbox 360.

When completed, Microsoft will update the hardware with a firmware update to allow the new technology.

The current depth sensor, explains EG is limited to 320x240 resolution and 30 fps, but the update will expand it to 640x480.

The USB controller interface is capable of a full 35MB/s but currently uses only 15MB/s.

"This artificial limit is in place because multiple USB devices can be used at once on an Xbox 360. But Microsoft is working on a technology to allow greater throughput in this regard," adds Eurogamer.

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AT&T and Qualcomm have jointly announced today that the carrier will purchase the wireless spectrum licenses in the 700 MHz band from the telecom R&D company for $1.925 billion.

By doing so, AT&T will be able to offer 4G mobile broadband to millions of more customers in the near future.

Qualcomm was using the licenses to support the failed FLO TV service. The company has said it will fully shutdown the service in March.

The press release explains that the "spectrum covers more than 300 million people total nationwide: 12 MHz of Lower 700 MHz D and E block spectrum covers more than 70 million people in five of the top 15 U.S. metropolitan areas - New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Los Angeles and San Francisco; 6 MHz of Lower 700 MHz D block spectrum covers more than 230 million people across the rest of the U.S."

AT&T will begin deploying the new spectrum once handset manufacturers begin releasing compatible phones.

Both companies expect the sale to close in the Q2 2011.

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Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has taken a vacation to China this month, taking time to meet with Baidu CEO Robin Li.

Baidu is considered the 'Google of China,' being far-and-away the most used search engine in the nation.

China has 1.3 billion citizens, and Facebook, along with other social networking sites, is banned in the country.

Zuckerberg has made it clear he has interest in the Chinese market, which has over 400 million active Internet users.

A spokesperson for Baidu was quick to quash any rumors that the search giant may be interested in buying Facebook: "Rumors that Baidu is about to acquire Facebook are greatly exaggerated. C'mon people. Robin and Mark have known each other for a while. Mark's interest in China is well known. Keep the speculation in check."

Zuckerberg has been learning Mandarin all year, studying one hour per day as a way to "understand the language, the culture, the mindset -- it's just such an important part of the world."

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