Jordan Kahn

WSJ reports Google is in the midst of finishing negotiations with media companies that would see the YouTube investing $100 million to fund original TV quality content. That content would debut on “dozens of free channels with professional-grade shows” expected to launch sometime in 2012. The report also mentions deals with celebrities such as Tony Hawk.

“YouTube, the world’s largest video site, is putting up more than $100 million in cash advances to get some of the content produced, said the people. YouTube will recoup the funds from advertising revenue it sells against the content, later splitting ad revenue with the partners, these people said. YouTube hopes the new channels, which are expected to roll out sometime next year, will draw in big money from advertisers, they said.” 

Some of the companies said to be in talks with Google include Warner Bros., News Corp.’s ShineReveille (Ugly Betty, The Office), RTL Group’s FremantleMedia Ltd. (The X Factor, The Price is Right), Anthony Zuiker (CSI creator), and a number of other companies that produce programs for channels like HGTV, Discovery, and VH1. Of course Google plans on making its money back in ad revenue.

We’re not sure how this will play into their plans to spend $100-$200 million on premium Hollywood content.

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Google has quietly opened its first “Google store” in London this morning. The store, which at this point only sells Chromebooks and and accessories, is actually a 285 square foot store within a store, as it’s situated inside of the Tottenham Court Road PC World.

According to a report from the London Evening Standard, this “low-key experiment” could be a sign of bigger things to come for Google in the retail space if successful. Google UK’s head of consumer marketing Arvind Desikan has this to say:

“It is our first foray into physical retail. This is a new channel for us and it’s still very, very early days. It’s something Google is going to play with and see where it leads.”

Based on research showing roughly 80 percent of laptops are sold through brick and mortar retail shops, Google’s betting Chromezone will be the best place to sell their Chromebooks:

“We found anecdotally that when people tried the device and played with it, that made a huge difference to their understanding of what the Chromebook is all about. People will be able to go in and have a play with the devices. We want to see whether people understand what this device is all about and monitor their reaction when they try it out.”

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Virgin Mobile USA just officially announced the LG Optimus Slider and HTC Wildfire S, their latest Android handsets coming to Best Buy at the end of October.

We told you about a Best Buy leak a few days ago confirming the Optimus Slider’s specs, which is really just a refreshed version of the $99 Optimus V. The specs are largely unchanged from the V apart from the slide-out hardware QWERTY keyboard and Android 2.3. If you’re not familiar with that device, expect the Slider to sport a 3.2-inch color LCD touhcscreen, 3.2 megapixel main camera, WiFi/3G, and 4 hours battery life (3 days standby). You’ll be able to grab it on October 17 from Virgin, or on October 31st at Best Buy and RadioShack for $200. It will hit Target November 6, and November 13 in Sprint stores.

Also announced today is the HTC Wildfire S, the first HTC device on Virgin. The Wildfire S will comes with a 3.2-inch HVGA touchscreen display, 5 megapixel main camera with flash, 600MHz processor, 3G/WiFi, Android 2.3 and HTC Sense on top. The silver model will be available exclusively to Virgin customers (and Best Buy). You’ll be able to pick it up for $200 on October 23 through RadioShack and Best Buy.

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Universum has released their global talent attraction index of the world’s most attractive employers in 2011, with Google topping the list for the engineering category, and for the third consecutive year taking the #1 spot among all businesses.

“The talent market for business career seekers is being dominated by the professional services firms, known for being great places to launch a career, and by companies that offer a new working culture in a dynamic environment. For the last 3 years we have been seeing Google leading the pack and it will take a strong player with a clear talent strategy to steal this number one spot”, says Lovisa Öhnell, head of Research and Consulting at Universum.

Other notable tech companies on the list include Apple at #9 among businesses and #7 among engineering, Microsoft at #3 for both businesses and engineering, Intel comes in a #5 for engineering (#38 for businesses), and IBM at #2 for engineering (#16 among businesses)

Universum’s global talent attraction index takes its data from student’s employer preferences in the top 12 economies (based on GDP) including Brazil, Canada,China, France, Germany, India, Italy, Japan, Russia, Spain, U.K., and U.S. Check out the full list of 50 here.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1o6TBezfSpU&feature=player_embedded]

Skype pushed out version 2.5 of their Android app that sees video support added to an additional 14 devices (full list below) bringing the total to 41.

Other enhancements in the update include landscape support and the ability to zoom in on video calls, improved bluetooth support, and the usual bug fixes and performance improvements that will “boost the user experience of Skype for Android”. You can also now edit and delete instant messages.

As part of the announcement, Skype noted the app will come pre-installed on various Motorola smarpthones and tablets including the Xoom and Atrix.

You can grab Skype 2.5 from the Android market now. Full list of newly supported devices below, or get a full list from the Market.

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Goldman Sachs predicts Microsoft will earn $444 million in revenue from July 1, 2011 to June 30, 2012 (fiscal year 2012) from “cross-license” agreements with Android vendors.

This comes from estimated royalties of $3 to $6 per Android handset. The most publicized deal is with HTC seeing a $5 royalty per device paid to Microsoft, however Microsoft recently signed up Samsung to a similar patent related cross-licensing agreement for their Android-based tablets and smartphones. This prompted claims of extortion from Google, who has long vowed to protect OEMs that deploy Android on their products. Others have signed similar deals with Microsoft.

Yesterday’s announcements from Amazon for their new Kindle lineup have lead to fears that they too might have to cough up a royalty to Microsoft.

The report from BI notes that this is still a drop in the bucket to Microsoft’s overall estimated revenue of $75 billion for fiscal 2012 (even if it is more than revenue from Windows Phone licences):

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In its evaluation of Google’s proposed $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola mobility, the U.S. Department of Justice has called for a “second request”, which essentially means the DOJ is asking for more information to further review the deal.

While Google doesn’t appear to be too worried about the request, they did note this means they wouldn’t be “closing right away”. A post from Google’s Public Policy Blog explains the situation as “pretty routine”, claiming they’ve received similar requests in prior acquisitions.

From Google:

While this means we won’t be closing right away, we’re confident that the DOJ will conclude that the rapidly growing mobile ecosystem will remain highly competitive after this deal closes. We’ll be working closely and cooperatively with them as they continue their review.

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The forthcoming version of Android, codenamed Ice Cream Sandwich, is confirmed to arrive sometime in the October/November timeframe and until now we haven’t got a really good look at it. The video below (via Engadget) is a two minute demo courtesy of an eBay shopper who claims to have received his Samsung Nexus S with a fresh installation of a pretty recent build of ICS (build IRK48).

Notables include redesigned menus, lock screen animation, widgets, camera UI, notification bar, a new Google Apps icon containing various Google services, and a vertical multitasking menu similar to Gingerbread that’s accessible from the home button. You can check out the video for yourself below.

Google recently posted documents on the Android dev blog giving insights into preparing Honeycomb apps to run on Ice Cream Sandwich in preparation for the launch.

[viddler id=e3aea318&w=545&h=307]

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This morning word broke that Microsoft and Samsung entered a cross-licensing agreement that would see Samsung paying royalties on their smartphones and tablets running Android. This prompted the following statement from Google:

“This is the same tactic we’ve seen time and again from Microsoft. Failing to succeed in the smartphone market, they are resorting to legal measures to extort profit from others’ achievements and hinder the pace of innovation. We remain focused on building new technology and supporting Android partners.”

After these claims of extortion, Microsoft’s head of communications Fran Shaw took to Twitter (above), to respond. His second Tweet read, “I would encourage the folks in MV in slowly read graf 5 of our blog on the topic today. Here’s the link again: bit.ly/oZbi3X”

The paragraph he’s referring to is below, which clearly shows Microsoft’s intent to continuing pursuing these types of deals with other Android vendors.

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Google has just announced (via Forbes) a new $75 million fund to assist home owners in installing photovoltaic solar panels.

Managing the fund, which will see approximately 3,000 photovoltaic solar panel systems installed in Arizona, Colorado, and California, is San Fran-based Clean Power Finance. The fund will be handed out in leases and power purchases, the first option giving you the ability to finance the hardware, and the latter the option of just purchasing power.

The equipment itself will be solely owned by Google. Clean Power Finance will only make the financing packages available via installers American Vision Solar, California Solar Systems, and SunLogic. This follows Google’s $280 million fund for residents of San Mateo managed by SolarCity.

Back in 2009, Google installed their own 1.6MW solar installation on the roof of the Googleplex.

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International LGBT+ equality organization All Out has just posted this petition asking Android users to support the removal of “Is My Son Gay”, an app currently in the Marketplace that aims to figure out a person’s sexual preference based on a clearly homophobic questionnaire.

Hopefully Google will remove the app soon, as they’ve done with similarly offensive apps in the past. Below are some of the questions included in the app’s quiz, if you’re interested in what all the fuss is about.

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MiYSklcTk6w]

Today Google engineer Owen Prater announced in the video statement above it is now possible to share Circles on Google+. From your Circles page, you can now select to share one Circle with any other. A post will be made allowing others to easily view and join the circle you’ve shared.

Shared circles wont continue to update as you make changes, however, allowing you to keep future changes to a Circle you’ve shared private. Others won’t see what you’ve named the circle either. Try it out!

From the announcement:

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After Samsung this morning announced they have sold 10 million Galaxy S II’s into retail channels, T-Mobile has made their own variant official with an October 10th pre-order date and $229 price tag.

While the majority of the specs on the device mirror other Galaxy S II variations, the real story here is support for T-Mobile’s 4G HSPA+ 42 Mbps network thanks to the switch from Samsung’s Exnos processor to a 1.5GHz Qualcom dual-core Snapdragon chip.

Other features are similar to the Epic 4G and other variants including a 4.52-inch Super AMOLED display, 8-megapixel main camera, NFC capabilities, 16GB internal storage, and Android 2.3.4.

The device will officially hit retail stores on October 12th. The $229 price point will of course require the usual two-year agreement in addition to a $50 rebate.

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In a new study from Nielsen for the month of August, Android is continuing to grow reaching 43% of all smartphone owners, up from 40% in July. This in contrast to Apple’s 28% share, which according to Nielsen, has been static since June.

It’s important to note, however, that Android’s increase was largely due to the decline of the “other” category, which fell from 13% to 11% thanks to poor performance from Microsoft and Palm. RIM also lost share falling 1 percentage point to 18%, which contributed to Android rise as well. Of course this also the first summer where Android wasn’t met with a new iPhone to compete for new smartphone acquirers.

The report is quick to note that the introduction of a new iPhone next month could easily sway the numbers in Apple’s favor, at the very least for recent acquirers, which the survey put Apple at 28% in comparison to an impressive 56% for Android during the month of August.
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We got our first look at Motorola’s upcoming Xoom 2 tablet a few days back, but now have a few quite clear shots (via Engadget) that will give you a better view of the smaller 8.2-inch, 9mm thick, LTE Android tablet, and the larger variant sporting similar specs.

While the specs aren’t exactly confirmed, the report speculates from the images that both devices are approximately the same thickness of the 9.3mm iPhone 4, and the rear facing buttons appear to be a volume rocker and power button. The tipster who provided the images also apparently confirmed LTE capability for both models and 5-megapixel HD rear cameras.

Not too long about we told you about a similar looking mystery Motorola tablet being spotted in the wild by This is my next who claimed to see micro USB and micro HDMI ports.

We’ll of course keep you updated as we learn more. More images after the break.

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Samsung today announced two new Galaxy S II  variants for the Korean market including the Galaxy S II LTE and Galaxy S II HD LTE, the latter packs in a gorgeous 1280 x 720, 4.65-inch Super AMOLED HD display.

Both models are 4G-LTE and NFC capable, include a 1.5GHz dual-core processor, and built-in Bluetooth 3.0 and WiFi a/b/g/n. The non-HD model includes a 4.5-inch display similar to Sprint’s Epic 4G Touch variant. Both devices also feature 1080 HD video capture thanks to the 8-megapixel main camera, 16GB of memory, and run Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

We can’t help but wonder how the HD Galaxy S II will compare to the upcoming 720p Droid Prime, originally rumored to launch as the first 720p smartphone as Verizon’s flagship device and answer to the Galaxy S II. Better yet, we wonder if Samsung has plans to perhaps bring the HD Galaxy S II stateside in the future to compete with the Prime. The Prime, also rumored to have an outer metal shell, run Ice Cream Sandwich, and pack in a Texas Instrument’s OMAP4460 processor, is expected to compete directly with current Galaxy S II variants when it debuts sometime in October/November.

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iFixit is once again ripping apart some of our favorite smartphones, this time giving the tear down treatment to Samsung’s 8.49mm thin Epic 4G touch, also known as the Galaxy S II.

While there isn’t much here we didn’t already know, when it was all said and done the Epic 4G grabbed a 7 out of 10 for repairability (10 being the easiest). Here’s an overview of their findings, more shots after the break.

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This is my next has posted what they believe is a new unannounced Motorola tablet running Android Honeycomb and sporting a seemingly thinner and more tapered design than any current Moto tab .

The report claims micro USB and micro HDMI ports are visible, but the image is quite blurry, to say the least. The Motorola logo is apparently in the upper left corner of the device (when in portrait orientation), but again is too blurry to confirm.

This is my next speculates by the seemingly 16:9 aspect ratio that it might be the rumoured 7-inch tablet hinted by CEO Sanjay Jha to arrive before the holidays. At this point it’s too hard to tell, but the source is reliable and we all know the Motorola Xoom launched earlier this year isn’t going to be enough to fend off its competition.

To add to the mystery, the report notes the smartphone device in the upper right corner of the image with the rather large display is an unknown as well. Your guess is as good as any.

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The image above is from a series of mock ups courtesy of designer Federico Ciccarese 

Coming from a potentially reliable, yet somewhat odd source, details regarding the yet to be announced next-gen Nexus have popped up on Twitter, in poem form.

Twitter user @tfleming223 sent out pieces of a poem he alleged hint at specs and release dates for the forthcoming Ice Cream Sandwich powered Google phone.

The poem (below) hints at a November 3rd launch date on Verizon, Ice Cream Sandwich rather than “ filling your belly with candies, jellies”, and the expected worldphone capabilities with a “GSM or wimax radios inside”. The date would line up with an October/November release of Ice Cream Sandwich, which was was recently confirmed by Eric Schmidt.

The poem even takes a stab at Apple’s upcoming iPhone‘s apparent lack of LTE:
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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bJfuMETQLqs&feature=player_embedded]

We hadn’t heard much from Archos in the past few months regarding their upcoming Honeycomb-powered slates, until today. Archos just put out a press release confirming release dates and official pricing for their Android G9 tablet lineup, originally unveiled back in June.

The 1024 x 768 resolution, 8-inch Archos 80 will start at $299 with 8GB of storage and a 1GHZ dual-core processor and be available for pre-order starting September 20 from ARCHOS.com. Sometime in October, you’ll be able to bump that up to a 1.5GHz OMAP 4 dual-core and 16GB of storage for $329, or 250GB of hard drive-based storage for $369.

Also coming in October is the 1280 x 800 resolution, 10.1-inch Archos 101 G9 that packs in the same 1.5Ghz processor as the higher-end Archos 80, starting at $399 for 16GB, up to $469 for 250GB of hard drive-based storage. Both models are capable of spitting out 1080p via the built-in HDMI port and support for a $50 standard PC 3G stick provides 3G network connectivity.

From the press release:

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Google+ promised devs would soon (finally) get access and today they have started rolling out the first pieces of the Google+ API via the Google Developers page. While it isn’t a full-fledged API (no Circles support) and is read-only as of yet, we’re happy to see you will soon have Google Plus integration included in your favorite apps.

This initial Google+ API supports public data only with read-only access, OAuth 2.0 support, and currently returns only JSON (no XML).

From the Google+ Platform Blog:

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