IDC has posted their tablet and e-reader shipment figures for 2010, and it appears that 18 million media tablets were shipped for the year, and 12 million dedicated e-readers.

10 million of those tablets shipped in the Q4 alone.

Apple remained the dominate force, with a 73 percent share of the market, but that number fell substantially from the 93 percent share the company had at the end of the Q3.

Samsung took 17 percent share with their Galaxy Tab, while all other companies took the final 10 percent.

The e-reader market saw significant gains, as well, following the release of the refreshed Amazon Kindle and the Nook Color.

E-reader shipment growth grew 325 percent to 13 million, with the Kindle taking 48 percent share. B&N took second place, with their Nook and Nook Color devices. Pandigital was a close third, followed by Hanvon and Sony to round out the top 5.

IDC expects the media tablet market to hit 50 million shipped in 2011, thanks to the Motorola Xoom and other Android devices but mainly because of the new iPad 2 (pictured).

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AOL is prepared to cut up to 20 percent of its global workforce, this week, with as many as 900 people losing there jobs.

The company will cut 400 jobs in India and 200 in the U.S., while outsourcing another 300 to other companies.

At its peak during the tech bubble, AOL had 20,000 employees. After this week, the company will have just over 4000.

Says CEO Tim Armstrong (via Reuters):

We want to go from taking arrows to catching arrows. Today is a difficult one for our company.

AOL will turn around.

AOL just completed its massive $315 million acquisition of The Huffington Post news site.

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Apple has said today that it will begin selling the iPad 2 online at 4am EST tomorrow morning, give buyers a chance to purchase the tablet before it is available in stores.

Apple stores will begin selling the device at 5pm tomorrow.

All of the company's retail partners, Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target, will begin selling the tablet at 5pm, as well.

Carriers AT&T and Verizon will do the same.

The iPad 2 adds a dual-core A5 processor, is 33 percent thinner, adds two cameras, new magnetic covers, and some first-party apps like iMovie.

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The Chinese Commercial Times paper has reported on a pretty crazy rumor this week, stating that PC giant HP may be looking to sell its entire PC division to Samsung.

Lenovo and Foxconn were also contacted, but apparently do not have the same financial resources to effectively steal the bid away from Samsung.

The deal was close to being sealed in late 2010, but the paper says it was "called off for unknown reasons."

So far, there has been little follow-up on the potentially blockbuster deal.

While the deal would be great for Samsung who is looking to fill its notebook product line gap, the paper speculates that chances of HP selling are very low, as the division still brings in sizable profits and revenue.

HP is the top global laptop vendor and was the top desktop PC seller in the Q4 2010.

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Eurogamer posted an interesting article today, pointing to the Enterking shop when claiming that the Nintendo 3DS may be able to tell when gamers are using a flash cart.

A flash cart gives gamers the ability to play DS and DSi games from a microSD card, or add homebrew apps.

When you connect to the Internet, Nintendo can then see what systems have been playing pirated games and remotely disable them via firmware update.

The Enterking site posted this warning:

Dear customers who resell Nintendo 3DS:

Non-purchase able 3DS system: if you use equipment which is illegal or unapproved by Nintendo or if you do customisation which is unapproved by Nintendo, there is a possibility that Nintendo 3DS becomes non-bootable by system update.

Because of terms of agreement above, Enterking refuses to buy 3DS system with a record of illegal or unapproved equipment.

To protect from leaking your personal and internet connection information we ask customer to format system.

Nintendo responded to the article with the following:

We do not discuss product security details (for obvious reasons), nor can we discuss the details of countermeasures available in the Nintendo 3DS system.

Nintendo 3DS has the most up-to-date technology. The security has been designed to protect both the creative works in the software and to protect the Nintendo 3DS hardware system itself.

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Download it here: Firefox 4 RC

Mozilla has released the first Firefox 4 RC this week, meaning the final release of the browser is likely coming within weeks.

All beta testers have been automatically upgraded to the RC, which has over 8000 bug fixes since the first beta last year.

The browser features a minimalist interface, much improved JavaScript performance, increased HTML5 support (including WebM) and "a revamped plug-in architecture called JetPack," says PCM.

Firefox 4 adds the ability to create tab groups (dubbed Panorama), and adds tab pinning, as well. Frequently used sites, like Gmail and Twitter can be created into App Tabs, which means they will pin, and glow when updated (new tweets, new emails).

As with past versions, you can sync all settings, passwords, bookmarks and open tabs to mobile devices via secured 26-character key.

70 percent of add-ons are compatible with the RC.

Finally, the browser adds "do not track" to the "advanced" settings screen. By checking the option, you are telling sites that you do not want to be tracked for specialized advertising.

Download it here: Firefox 4 RC

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