According to sources close to the company, it seems as though AOL may be in the process of breaking up the company before merging it with portal giant Yahoo.

The break-up will require a number of complicated transactions and so far the plans are still in the exploratory stage, with Yahoo having not been contacted yet.

AOL will firstly separate its dial-up Internet service and its display advertising business.

"You can drive the pieces into people's hands that could pay top dollar for them and create value, or spin them off," added one of the sources (via Reuters).

For the past couple of years, new AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has invested millions of dollars in purchasing content sites, including TechCrunch and others, turning AOL into a leading portal site.

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AVG has pulled their latest update for AVG Free 2011 this week after it crashed systems running Windows 7 64-bit.

The antivirus database update is 271.1.1/3292 (432/3292) and has since been pulled after user outrage.

After being updated, AVG 2011 was prompting a system restart, which is then followed with a "STOP: cc0000135" error that completely crashes your system.

To be able to boot your system after the crash, AVG has made a "Rescue CD" available.

You can also use the package to boot from a USB drive.

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ViewSonic has begun shipping their G tablet this week, making it available at retailers like Office Depot.

The price for the tablet is $400, $100 under the price of the cheapest Apple iPad, which offers 16GB of storage and Wi-Fi support.

ViewSonic's G has a 10-inch display with 1024x600 resolution, and runs on a powerful 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC.

Additionally, the tablet has 512MB or RAM, a 16GB SSD, a USB 2.0 port, a microSD slot, 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity and a 1.3MP frontside camera for video conferencing.

On the downside, the tablet has a stated battery life of 8 hours, and weighs 1.55 pounds, slightly heavier thatn the iPad and with an hour worse battery life.

While the tablet runs on Android 2.2 Froyo, it is unclear whether Android Market access is native since ViewSonic has its own "G Tablet Apps Store."

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Although still unconfirmed (the software hasn't been released yet), the French site Logic Sunrise has reported that PlayStation 3 firmware version 3.50 has finally been jailbroken.

The firmware has been hacked by the developer team behind X3Max, a USB dongle used to jailbreak or downgrade other firmwares.

Says the site (translated):

"This marks the third major advance in the world of hack Playstation 3: Jailbroken firmware 3.50 the PS3 by Team X3 with X3max without need for a downgrade! The X3 team has managed to run homebrew on official firmware 3.50 without downgrading! The downgrade is still possible."

The software update will be free, but it is unclear if it will work on anything but the X3max.

For now, take the report and video as rumor until the actual software is released, likely within 48 hours.

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It appears that Apple has amended its ongoing lawsuit against Motorola this week, adding 12 more alleged patent violations, bringing the total to 24.

In their own suit, Motorola says Apple has infringed on 18 of their patents.

Motorola sued Apple in October, just days before Apple sued HTC for patent violations. HTC and Motorola sell the most popular Android smartphones.

At the time, Apple CEO Steve Jobs said: "We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We've decided to do something about it."

The patents relate to 3G, GPRS, 802.11 wireless and antenna design, and OS user interfaces.

Since 2009, Apple has been sued 27 times over alleged patent violations.

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Samsung has said today that they have sold 1 million Galaxy Tab tablets already, surpassing their expectations.

When the device launched two months ago, Samsung said it expected to just hit 1 million sales by the end of the year.

The device sells on all four major carriers in the U.S., and on a number of carriers worldwide.

Both Verizon and AT&T said recently they were "encouraged" by Tab sales, but neither revealed specific numbers.

For comparison's sake, the market leader Apple iPad hit 1 million sales in just 30 days, and sales have recently topped 8 million.

Samsung's tablet runs on Android 2.2, has a 1GHz processor, a 7-inch multi-touch screen and dual cameras.

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Following Wednesday's blurry "spy" video of the device, we now have a nice, clear "hands on" with the upcoming Sony Ericsson PSP Phone (Z1), although the smartphone still does not have any gaming content available for it.

The oft-rumored device could see an official announcement as soon as December 9th.

It will run on Android 2.3 Gingerbread, a 1GHz Qualcomm chip, have a 4.1-inch multi-touchscreen, a 5MP camera, 512MB of RAM, a 5 megapixel camera and 1GB of internal storage.

The smartphone will also have a dedicated gaming app store.

Gaming will be made possible via a slide-out control similar to the PSP.

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Google has sent out invites for a December 7th event relating to the Chrome OS, likely unveiling the first netbook to run on the operating system.

Chrome OS was revealed last year to much fanfare, but so far there has been little actually unveiled about the OS.

Google has said in the past that the Chrome OS will run on netbooks and desktops (machines with keyboards) while their popular Android mobile OS will remain on all touchscreen devices, like tablets and smartphones.

A Chrome OS machine can boot in seconds, faster than systems running Windows, Mac OSX or Linux.

The first netbook running Chrome OS will likely not be available for the mass market, with under 100,000 expected to be available.

Google's Chrome OS is still in beta, and mass market netbooks running the operating system are expected to launch in the first quarter 2011.

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