Toshiba Thrive tablet with Android 3.1 ships in July, starting at $430

The Toshiba Thrive tablet will reportedly be up for pre-order beginning June 13, 2011 at Best Buy, along with the usual "office superstores" and "e-commerce players." It will have a mid-July ship date (Engadget says it will be July 10, 2011).
More importantly, the Toshiba Thrive will be shipping with Android 3.1 (codenamed Honeycomb) out-of-the-box, meaning you won't have to deal with the hassle of upgrading the OS yourself. The company may be abandoning its Windows 7 tablet and Chromebook plans, so if you're a Toshiba fan, this looks like your best bet.
The 10.1-inch tablet (1,280 x 800 resolution) is available with three internal storage capacities in Wi-Fi only configurations: the 8GB model is $430, the 16GB model is $480, and the 32GB model is $580. They'll all come with a dual core 1GHz Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, 2MP and 5MP front and rear cameras, Bluetooth 3.0+ connectivity, an SD memory card reader, HDMI and USB 2.0 support. A rather unique feature Toshiba is touting is the ability to swap batteries, unlike most other tablets. The back cover will also be removable and replaceable with other covers that Toshiba will sell in a variety of colors.
The Thrive also has a button to lock the screen orientation, a Toshiba-branded file manager, and Swype pre-installed (you can switch to the stock Android keyboard if you'd like). Toshiba is bundling its Resolution Plus software, which it uses to clean up and upscale video in its TVs and laptops. Most importantly, Toshiba claims the battery is rated up to seven hours of continuous HD video playback, and promises to recharge up to 90 percent in an hour and a half.

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Shocker: Sony hacked again, over a million accounts compromised

It's time for another installment in the never-ending saga of Sony's security blunders. Hackers have reportedly infiltrated the company's movie site, accessing the sensitive information of more than a million accounts. The group, known as LulzSec, claims to have breached SonyPictures.com and swiped users' passwords, email and home addresses, dates of birth, along with any information submitted as part of Sony's data opt-ins.

Detailing the attack on PasteBin, LulzSec said it penetrated the company's infrastructure with a rudimentary SQL injection. Described as "one of the most primitive and common vulnerabilities," the group said it accessed everything with a single injection. In a truly embarrassing discovery, LulzSec reports that none of the user information was encrypted. In other words, Sony stored more than million user passwords in plaintext.

"Why do you put such faith in a company that allows itself to become open to these simple attacks?" the group said. "This is disgraceful and insecure: they were asking for it." LulzSec has published the stolen data on The Pirate Bay. Besides tons of sensitive user information, the group included some 20,000 Sony music coupons, 67,000 "music codes," as well as the layout of Sony's database in case you want to pillage it yourself.

This breach follows a string of recent misfortunes. Sony was forced to disable its PSN and Qriocity services for more than a month after a massive security breach that affected tens of millions of users. That fiasco is projected to cost the company some $171 million and constributes to a massive $3.1 billion loss for its fiscal year 2010. Sony has faced several other attacks in recent months, which are becoming too numerous to list.

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IE losing share, Firefox gains a bit, Chrome used by 1 in 8

With IE9, Firefox 4, and Chrome 11 all out, the second browser war is only getting fiercer. Let's take a look at the market share numbers for last month.
Between April and May, Internet Explorer dropped 0.84 percentage points, just a tad more than the previous month. Firefox, meanwhile, gained 0.08 percentage points, less than what it lost last month. Chrome gained 0.58 percentage points, making it last month's biggest winner. Safari was up 0.13 percentage points. Opera lost 0.11 percentage points.
At 54.27 percent, Internet Explorer has once again hit a new low. IE9, the latest and greatest from Microsoft, last month captured 4.19 percent of the market (up by 1.78 percent percentage points). IE8 lost 1.78 percentage points, but it's still the world's most popular browser. IE7 fell 0.31 percentage points and IE6 fell 0.49 percentage points. We're hoping that IE6 will fall below the 10 percent mark next month.
At 21.71 percent, Firefox is still below the peak it reached last year (24.72 percent). It appears that Firefox 4 is still not helping Mozilla regain overall market share. This is despite the fact that Firefox 4 last month captured a whopping 10.08 percent of the market (up by 4.65 percentage points). Firefox 3.6 lost 4.88 percentage points and Firefox 3.5 lost 0.20 percentage points.
At 12.52 percent, Chrome has hit a new high and is now being used by 1 in 8 of all Internet citizens. The browser's built-in updating system is working wonders for Google. Chrome 11 managed to capture 9.73 percent (up by 9.23 percentage points). Chrome 10 meanwhile fell 8.71 percentage points and Chrome 9 fell 0.06 percentage points.

The data is courtesy of Net Applications, which looks at 160 million visitors per month. As you can see above, the situation at TechSpot is slightly different: Firefox is first, IE is second, Chrome is third, Safari is fourth, and Opera is fifth. The only browser to gain share at TechSpot between April and May was Chrome.

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Cellphones, Cameras Apple camera patent could stop smartphone bootleggers in their tracks

Apple is always filing patents for strange and fantastic things that never seem to find their way into actual products. But an application published today details some interesting tech that we could actually see getting jammed into a future iPhone (for better or worse). By pairing an infrared sensor with the camera already on board, portable devices could receive data from transmitters placed, well, wherever. Beyond simply blasting out text and opening links like a glorified QR code, transmitters could disable certain features, such as the camera, to prevent recording at movie theaters and music venues. If completely shutting off the cam seems a bit heavy-handed, watermarks can also be applied to photos identifying businesses or copyrighted content. Some potential uses are a little less Big Brother, like museums beaming information about exhibits to a user's or launching an audio tour. Obviously third parties would have to get behind the IR push and there's no guarantee that Apple will put this in a future iProduct. Still, we're a little worried that the days of blurry YouTube concert videos may be coming to an end.

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Sony NGP soaks up the pre-E3 glitz in official demo videos

With E3 2011 just around the corner, expectations for Nintendo announcements are mighty high, but you can get a glimpse at the heat Sony's packing before another day goes by. The official PlayStation.Blog spat out some footage of the quad-core NGP in action, and it's not just playing last-gen games; rather, there's yet another glimpse at Uncharted, a brand new platformer called Sound Shapes where you build levels with a music sequencer (and which procedurally generates tunes as you play) and a taste of the cross-platform PS3 vs. NGP wireless racing you can expect in Wipeout HD. There's definitely a lot of dual-analog action here, but demonstrators are also taking advantage of that five-inch touchscreen, and Wipeout will apparently use the front-facing camera to beam taunt-filled pictures and video of the victor to the losers in each race.

You'll note that Sony's focusing on software over hardware here, and that's not by accident -- the company's careful to state that we're looking at early dev units. "They're the right size, but they don't possess that final PlayStation-quality fit and finish," says the official blog, "What you'll eventually be able to pick up in a store will look a heck of a lot better." Two more vids after the break.

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Defamation settlement requires Malaysian man to apologize 100 times on Twitter

The punishment, the saying goes, should fit the crime. When working within the legal system, however, it can be pretty tough to come up with a truly appropriate sentence. Settlements, on the other hand, offer a little more room for creativity, and after a Malaysian political aide / social activist used Twitter to air a grievance about a pregnant friend's employer, the publishing company turned to the social network for inspiration. Fahmi Fadzil tweeted an apology shortly after, but BluInc Media wasn't satiated. The two parties finally reached an elementary school-esque out of court decision, requiring Fadzil to apologize for his initial statement 100 times on the microblogging service. He began the apology today at 9:00AM his time, and will continue on until June 4th, as per the rules of the agreement. Those looking to inject a little diversity into their Twitter stream may want to wait a bit before following the guy.

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OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 and RevoDrive Hybrid hands-on (video)

We got a chance to spend some time with the lovely folks from OCZ here at Computex for a tour of their latest and greatest SSD products, the RevoDrive 3 X2 and RevoDrive Hybrid. Both are PCIe x4 cards featuring up to 4 SandForce SF-2200 controllers and RAID 0 (striping) for blazing performance. The RevoDrive 3 X2 is available in capacities from 240GB ($699) to 960GB and improves upon the RevoDrive X2 with TRIM support and double the performance. We were treated to a demo that achieved truly ludicrous speeds -- 1.5GBps reads and 1.2GBps writes -- the kind of numbers that'll perk up even the most jaded PC enthusiast. The RevoDrive Hybrid builds upon the same SSD technology as the RevoDrive 3 X2 to cache the contents of a 2.5-inch hard drive, with capacities starting at 500GB with a 60GB cache ($350). OCZ's demo showed a 20 times performance improvement going from a regular hard drive to the RevoDrive Hybrid. Both products are expected to ship in July, but we suggest you ogle them right now in the gallery below and in our hands-on video after the break.

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