The blog LulzSec Exposed has posted today that hacking group LulzSec has now gotten into an apparent online 'war' with long-time hacking group TeaMp0iSoN.

TeaMp0iSoN even defaced the main page of Swen Slootweg, who allegedly goes by the name "Joepie91" in LulzSec (pictured).

Sabu, the alleged leader of the group, tweeted today that TeaMp0iSoN is a joke and hit the wrong target, as Joepie91 is not part of the group.

Earlier in the day, Ryan Clearly was arrested in the UK, an IRC operator for the group, with all irc.lulzco.org chat logs being taken by the FBI, SOCA and Interpol.

Additionally, someone going by the name of "R3d_Penguin" posted a chat log between Topiary (another alleged member) and himself in which Topiary (aka Daniel) admits to being a member and being forced to deny. Topiary also plans to frame another user with the same nickname.

That chat log is here.

Overall, it has been an eventful start to the week for LulzSec in the news, whether or not any of it is real.

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AT&T has announced their unlimited everything prepaid plan today, giving feature phone users a chance to pay $50 a month for unlimited, talk, text and web with an eligible GoPhone.

The plan starts on June 26th and is a 20 percent discount off the price you would be paying with a contract.

Furthermore, the plan offers unlimited texting and IM to Mexico, Canada and 100 other nations.

GoPhones and GoPhone service can be purchased at AT&T retail stores or online.

If you own a smartphone, you can select the unlimited talk and text for $50, but then you must add a tiered data plan starting at $5.

Says Judy Cavalieri, vice president, Voice and Prepaid Products, AT&T Mobility and Consumer Markets:

As summer approaches, consumers want a plan that provides even more value as they connect with their loved ones in the U.S and abroad. GoPhone provides customers a unique opportunity to experience the dependability and availability of AT&T's national wireless network with no long term commitment.

More info here: AT&T GoPhone online

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Nintendo President Satoru Iwata has confirmed this week that upcoming Wii U games will be, on average, $50 per title, following the trend of its predecessor, the Wii.

The president did add, however, that established multi-platform games like Call of Duty would "likely" cost the industry standard of $60.

Says Iwata (via GR):

I think there is already some indication that the [current pricing] trend is going to stay here. When you consider some of the most popular franchise – such as Call of Duty or Madden – the publishers can afford to affix a rather expensive price tag on that because the franchise has a premium value. On the other hand, … without an established franchise, they cannot afford to keep that expensive price tag. I believe there will be a wider price range.

If that holds true, Nintendo's most popular games, like Zelda and Mario, will have a $50 price tag, which should be a relief for gamers tired of paying $60 for games.

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In news that has been unanimously panned, AOL CEO Tim Armstrong has said that the company may begin offering premium versions of its online content via subscriptions.

The company is also looking to partner with traditional media companies in an effort to "help create great content and monetize it properly."

Adds Armstrong:

I think content subscriptions on the Internet can be a very viable business.

AOL purchased the Huffington Post in February for $315 million and TechCrunch for $25 million last year, in an effort to add popular content to its portal and network.

The company is best known for being a dial-up giant that purchased Time Warner for $164 billion in 2000, at the height of the tech bubble. The merger is easily the worst transaction in the history of the industry as the bubble popped the next year and AOL never recovered, heading down from a market cap of $240 billion to its current $2 billion, even after being spun off by Time Warner in 2009.

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Apple is preparing to release an iOS-powered Apple-branded HDTV this year, says an anonymous former exec of the company speaking to DT.

The company is already in talks with a "major OEM," adds the report, which they speculate to be Samsung, a long-time partner.

Apple will "blow Netflix and all those other guys away" with the HDTV, which will bundle Apple TV and iTunes in a slim, Internet-capable device.

While Samsung (and other OEMs) sell TVs themselves, the source claims it will not be an issue because "if you have to be competing with somebody, you want to be competing with yourself."

A 2011 launch is expected, but the exec does admit that Apple could wait until early 2012 to make sure everything is perfect.

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BGR posted earlier this morning that Apple may be ready to unveil the iPhone 5 as early as August, a date that would break tradition from the company's normal September release of new hardware.

Apple is already "late" in releasing a new iPhone as the last few have been released at June's WWDC.

The company used this year's conference to show off Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5 and the iCloud.

If accurate, the new iPhone could be released in early-mid-August and will feature a fully revamped design.

The rumor (and pic) say the iPhone 5 could have a screen that stretches from end-to-end and have a "teardrop" design like the iPod Touch.

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Microsoft has updated its SkyDrive cloud service this week, adding an HTML5 design alongside new features.

Anyone with a Hotmail/Live account can sign up for a free SkyDrive account, which has 25GB free storage space and allows users to collaborate on Office docs, or just share content like music and pictures.

Says SkyDrive's program manager (via Lint):

Starting today, we are launching a new version of the SkyDrive website. We took advantage of modern browsers and HTML5 to make SkyDrive faster, easier to navigate, and more beautiful for viewing photos. The new SkyDrive will be rolling out soon, so check back if you don't see it right away.

SkyDrive's photo sharing will also be improved, and better integrated into Windows Phone 7 when the Mango update hits.

Continues the manager:

Regardless of what screen you have, how big your browser window is, or how many photos you have, SkyDrive always arranges your photos in a clean layout that preserves the original aspect ratio

If you are using Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9, the company adds that you can pin the Drive to the taskbar for quick use.

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UPDATE: Sources say the bidder was Yahoo.

The Wall Street Journal is reporting that popular on-demand streaming service Hulu has received a buyout offer and is now mulling selling itself.

Reads one journalist's tweets:

WSJ: Hulu is weighing whether to sell itself after a potential buyer approached it with an offer -- Sources. Story to follow

Another journalist tweet reads:

Sources tell me it's NOT GOOGLE who made the offer for HULU

There is no word on who the company may be, but it appears the Hulu's board is now seeking all options.

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Popular cloud-storage solution experiences huge security lapse.

Dropbox founder and CTO Arash Ferdowsi used the company's blog to explain a major bug with the Dropbox authentication mechanism. On Sunday, Dropbox updated some code and unknowingly introduced a bug affecting its authentication mechanism, which potentially exposed its users data to anybody.

Between 1:54pm and 5:41pm (Pacific time), users could have logged into accounts without the correct password. Ferdowsi says that a very small number of logins were made during that time (much less than 1 percent of userbase.) After the problem was discovered, it was fixed (and was live) within minutes.

Dropbox is now conducting an investigation to determine if any accounts were improperly accessed. Upon finding the bug, all logged in sessions were ended as a precaution. If the company finds that any unauthorized account use happened during the time the system was vulnerable, it will alert the account holder immediately.

"This should never have happened. We are scrutinizing our controls and we will be implementing additional safeguards to prevent this from happening again.," Ferdowsi said.

"We are sorry for this and regardless of how many people were ultimately affected, any exposure at all is unacceptable to us. We will continue to provide regular updates."

If you have any reason to believe that your Dropbox contents have been accessed or altered, you can get in touch with the Dropbox team at support@dropbox.com.

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Metropolitan Police arrest 19 year old man; media links case to LulzSec group.

Police officers from the Metropolitan Police Central e-Crime Unit (PCeU) carried out the arrest as part of a pre-planned intelligence-led operation, which included cooperation with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States.

The Met statement does not mention the group LulzSec by name, but it does say the investigation being carried out involves network intrusions and Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks against international business and intelligence agencies by what it believes is the same group of hackers.

The Met statement comes the same day as confirmation by the UK Office for National Statistics (ONC) that it is investigating a claim that LulzSec has accessed data from the 2011 Census. "We are working with our security advisers and contractors to establish whether there is any substance to this. The 2011 Census places the highest priority on maintaining the security of personal data," the ONC said in a statement.

"At this stage we have no evidence to suggest that any such compromise has occurred."

The 19 year old suspect targeted by the e-Crime Unit was detained on suspicion of Computer Misuse Act, and Fraud Act offences and was taken to a central London police station, where he remains in custody to undergo questioning.

A significant amount of material seized from his home is also being examined.

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Nokia unveiled its first (and last) MeeGo handset today, the Nokia N9.

The first promotional videos from Nokia displaying the new handset were pretty uninformative, and left a lot of readers of Nokia sources asking for more details about the device. Nokia Marketing Manager Jussi Mäkinen filled the gap for a UI tour, and the most complete version of the handset specs were posted online the company.


Nokia N9 MeeGo User Interface Demonstration by Jussi Mäkinen



Nokia N9 Specifications

• Networks: Pentaband WCDMA 850, 900, 1900, 1700, 2100, Quad band GSM/EDGE 850, 900, 1800, 1900
• Speed: HSDPA Cat10: 14.4Mbps, HSUPA: Cat6 5.76Mbps
• Display: 3.9" WVGA (854×480) AMOLED display with curved Gorilla glass, no air gap, anti-glare polarizer
• OS: MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan
• Memory: 1024MB RAM, 16GB/64GB storage
• Camera: 8Mpix auto-focus Carl Zeiss, wide-angle lens, 2x LED flash, Video capturing MPEG-4 SP 720p @ 30fps, 2nd camera for video calls
• Size / Weight: 116.45 mm x 61.2 mm x 7.6–12.1 mm (L x W x T) / 76 cm3/ 135 g
• Connectivity: BT 2.1, GPS, A-GPS, WLAN 802.11abgn, NFC, 3.5mm AV connector, micro USB connector, USB charging
• Processor: ARM Cortex-A8 OMAP3630 1 Ghz, PowerVR SGX530
• Audio: MP3 player, Audio jack: 3.5mm, Supported codecs: mp3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WMA, FLAC.
• Battery: 1450 mAh
   
• Talk time: (GSM/WCDMA) up to 11 h / up to 7 hours
• Standby time: Up to 450 hours (WCDMA), up to 380 hours (GSM)
• Video playback (720p): up to 4.5 hours
• Music playback: up to 50 hours

Analyst Response

Truth be told, Nokia could never have expected to win over analysts by unveiling a MeeGo device so close to the expected arrival of Nokia Windows Phone 7 handsets. Stephen Elop, Nokia CEO, even re-iterated on Tuesday that Windows Phone 7 is Nokia's primary smartphone strategy, with an eye to launching the first device later this year and going to volume shipment in early 2012.

Analysts see this strategy as condemning the N9 to being a niche product, and every handset Nokia unveils before WP7 handsets (the company will release smartphones using its own Symbian OS in the meantime) simply as a stopgap.

"The N9 comes too close to the expected launch of Nokia's Windows Phone device to have any impact on its current smartphone woes," said Ben Wood or CSS Insight, a London-based mobile consultancy firm. "The strength of rival ecosystems leaves little room for MeeGo powered devices. It's difficult to see the N9 being anything more than a niche device ... the N9 will be a tough sell."

The reaction is expected, and it won't do any favors for Nokia's marketing position or Stephen Elop, who hasn't had the greatest of started in his new job. In a leaked memo, Elop likened the company's market position to a man standing on a burning oil rig. Maddening as the comments may be to Nokia employees and shareholders, it is fact that Nokia is taking a beating in the market for smartphones, and is losing ground in the low end of the market to Micromax and China's ZTE.

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Nokia unveiled ealier today the company's first MeeGo touting handset. As previously leaked in the pictures the phone comes in a slate form factor and is called Nokia N9. The phone features a 3,9 inch AMOLED display with 854 by 480 pixel resolution, a single-core one gigahertz CPU, up to 64 gigabytes of storage, and runs MeeGo 1.2 Harmattan.

The slate previously dubbed as codename Lankku was indeed released under the name N9, even though rumors from months and months back had N9 in a QWERTY slider form factor. Adding to the 1GHz CPU the MeeGo phone comes with gigabyte of RAM memory, pentaband WCDMA and quadband GSM, 8 megapixel AF camera with dual LED flash, and all the necessary connectivity features including NFC.

The single piece body is made of polycarbonate and comes with three colors -- black, magenta and cyan. One of the distinct features of N9 is the slightly curved display.

Nokia did not yet give the N9 a release date or estimated price.

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