HTC has shown off their Flyer tablet today, running on Android 2.4 with an updated HTC Sense UI and a very powerful 1.5Ghz processor.

The company did confirm the tablet will be upgradeable to Android 3.0 Honeycomb, the OS optimized for tablets, in the second quarter.

Featuring a 7-inch display, the tablet will be notably smaller than the upcoming Xoom and the Apple iPad, but directly rival the aging Samsung Galaxy Tab.

Because of the completely overhauled HTC Sense UI, the Flyer will have a 3D home screen of widgets, despite a lack of Honeycomb. The tablet will also include the ability to use touch gestures and HTC will provide a stylus to make use of the company's Scribe note-taking technology.

There is little to no information confirmed about Android 2.4, with most speculating that it adds dual-core support.

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Nvidia has unveiled its mobile chipset roadmap today, starting with the quad-core 'Kal-El.'

Kal-El refers to Superman's birth name.

Says Nvidia's senior VP of mobile business Phil Carmack (via PCM):

Just as the world has rallied around the concept of dual core, the world is about to see that quad core raises the bar, delivers a lot more performance, and fits into all mobile platforms.

The rest of the roadmap shows off chips dubbed "Wayne," "Logan," and "Stark," the latter of which will offer 100 times the processing power of the current generation Tegra 2 by 2014.

Kal-El has 5 times the graphics performance of Tegra 2, and Nvidia says it can power a monitor with 2560x1600 resolution. Kal-El also enables "retina tablets," meaning all tablets 10-inches or smaller can have resolution "as high as the eye can perceive, at a comfortable viewing distance."

"This ultra-high resolution really does reduce the strain you feel on your eyes," concludes Carmack.

Perhaps most importantly is overall power consumption, which will be smaller than that of the Tegra 2. Comparing the power of Kal-El to desktop processors, the company says Kal-El scores better on CoreMark than an Intel Core 2 Duo T7200, which launched in 2006.

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This week, at the Mobile World Congress event, Acer unveiled their Iconia Smart smartphone, first announced last November.

The Acer Iconia Smart will have a giant 4.8-inch touchscreen display with 1024x480 resolution, run Android 2.3 Gingerbread and feature a 21:9 aspect ratio.

Acer says the smartphone will run on a single 1GHz Snapdragon processor, have full Dolby Surround Sound technology and a special Acer UI dubbed 'Breeze.'

Furthermore, the device will have an 8MP standard camera with LED flash and a 2MP front-side camera.

Finally, the smartphone will have an HDMI port, 6-axis gyrometer and accelerometer, GPS, HSDPA, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR.

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Research In Motion (RIM) has announced today that they will release LTE and HSPA+ models of the upcoming PlayBook tablet, joining the WiFi and WiMax 4G models that will go on sale in March.

Each of the models will have Bluetooth tethering, mobile hotspots and BlackBerry Bridge, says PCW, a piece of software that lets BlackBerry owners use BBM (Messenger) on the tablet.

It is unclear what carriers will support the tablet, but it's speculated that it will be available through Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.

Price has not been confirmed but has been "leaked" as $500 for a base model, in line with the first generation Apple iPad.

RIM's PlayBook will have a 7-inch LCD screen with 1024x600 resolution, a dual-core 1GHz processor, a 5MP standard camera and a 3MP front-facing camera.

Finally, the company is expanding its BlackBerry World app store to Azerbaijan, Botswana Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, French Guyana, Greece, Guadeloupe, Hungary, Iceland, Kenya, La Réunion, Latvia, Macedonia, Malta, Martinique, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Sweden and Tanzania.

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Last night's showing of "Jeopardy!," which featured former champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter taking on IBM's supercomputer Watson, was the highest rated episode of the show since 2007, drawing an 8.7 household rating.

The taping's draw was 24 percent higher than the show's 2010 average, and a similar (or higher) rating is expected for tonight's continuation episode.

After the first day of the three-day event, Watson was tied with Rutter at $5000 each, with Jennings lagging behind at $2000. The winner will receive $1 million. Second place gets $300,000 and third gets $200,000. IBM will donate all their winnings to charity and Jennings and Rutter will donate half.

At the end of day 2 (which just aired) Watson had taken a commanding lead, with $35,734 to Rutter's $10,400 and Jennings' $4,800. However, the machine did make a huge blunder in the 'Final Jeopardy' question which was in the category "U.S. Cities."

The clue was: "Its largest airport was named for a World War II hero; its second for a World War II battle." Watson answered 'Toronto' while both human competitors answered correctly, with 'Chicago.'

IBM made sure to post an explanation for the Toronto answer:

David Ferrucci, the manager of the Watson project at IBM Research, explained during a viewing of the show on Monday morning that several of things probably confused Watson. First, the category names on Jeopardy! are tricky. The answers often do not exactly fit the category. Watson, in his training phase, learned that categories only weakly suggest the kind of answer that is expected, and, therefore, the machine downgrades their significance. The way the language was parsed provided an advantage for the humans and a disadvantage for Watson, as well. "What US city" wasn't in the question. If it had been, Watson would have given US cities much more weight as it searched for the answer. Adding to the confusion for Watson, there are cities named Toronto in the United States and the Toronto in Canada has an American League baseball team. It probably picked up those facts from the written material it has digested. Also, the machine didn't find much evidence to connect either city's airport to World War II. (Chicago was a very close second on Watson's list of possible answers.) So this is just one of those situations that's a snap for a reasonably knowledgeable human but a true brain teaser for the machine.

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Apple has announced the start of a subscription service which will be available to all publishers of content-based apps sold though the iOS App Store.

The service was first introduced with the release of "The Daily," a collaboration between News Corp and Apple available on the iPad.

Publishers can now sell subscriptions to publications weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly.

Apple takes its customary 30 percent from all app and content sales made through iTunes.

Says CEO Steve Jobs (via PR):

Our philosophy is simple—when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing. All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers.

The App Store has 350,000 apps.

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Twitter CEO Dick Costolo has denied the hot rumor that Google and Facebook are looking to acquire the service for $10 billion.

Says Costolo (via ET):

People write that stuff all the time. I don't know where these things come from, it's just a rumor.

The CEO also added that the microblogging service now has 130 million tweets per day, 30 percent higher than December 2010.

Additionally, Costolo says Twitter is now in the black and the company will soon introduce a "new method of making money, to add to its existing roster of promoted tweets, accounts and trends."

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Multiple reports today have posted different rumors about the upcoming iPhone 5, which still remains unconfirmed but is expected to launch during the summer, one year after the release of the iPhone 4.

Apple will move the iPhone to a 4-inch screen and use a dual-core A5 processor, likely running at 1.2GHz.

The reports come from Taiwanese component suppliers.

Samsung will provide brand new Super PLS (Plane-to-Line Switching) displays to Apple for the iPhone 5, with Apple having purchased a rumored whopping $7 billion worth of the component for the year.

As compared to the IPS displays seen in the iPad/iPhone 4, the Super PLS screens are brighter, have better viewing angles and are cheaper to produce.

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Spanish authorities have arrested a hacker this week who allegedly stole data from 4000 "Nintendo users" and then tried to blackmail the company.

The hacker threatened to contact the country's data protection agency, accusing Nintendo of complete negligence.

When Nintendo ignored his threats, the individual began leaking some of the stolen info online.

Before his arrest, the authorities say the hacker was planning to release all the stolen data.

It remains unclear where the data was stolen from, reports the BBC.

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