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I have wrote a few articles about the HP touchpad being discounted $100. First it was just a discount that was supposed to be over a weekend and then they made it permanent. Well it looks like those price cuts didn’t help much. A source has reported that Best Buy has received 270,000 Touchpads and they have only sold 25,000 which is less than 10% of the stock. Best Buy has also said that they not willing to pay for all of them because of the space it is taking up in the warehouse and in the stores. They have even reported to want to send them back to HP. The problem just isn’t Best Buy apparently other retailers are struggling as well. Wal-Mart, Fry’s and Microcenter are also having problems selling them and now with these price cuts of the HP tablet it is said people are willing to wait to see if HP makes them even cheaper.

So as you may know Apple and Starbucks have had a long time partnership which gives Starbucks customers a way to download free music from the Apple iTunes Music store. Now Starbucks and Apple are working together to give people a paid application for free. Now when you go to the register you can find free cards at the cash register that have codes that can be entered at the app store or iTunes to get the free application. Shazam Encore is scheduled to be the first app to be given away, and this app sells for $5.99. That is a very good deal considering the fact that most music $1.29. So I am sure this will be even more successful than the music giveaways.

It seems Anonymous is keeping busy after a letter about the Facebook attack on November 5th they have taken on the San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit open data services. They have released thousands of names, email addresses, home addresses and phone numbers from what is believed to be the myBart.org website. This hack is said to be part of a planned effort by Anonymous to bring BART down in retaliation for its shutdown of cell service on Thursday night at some of the stations to disrupt planned demonstrations over police shootings. Here is a press release from Anonymous from Saturday:
1. Begin a “Black Fax and E-Mail Bomb action”, where it would fill every inbox and fax machine at BART with thousands of copies of its message claiming the outage was unacceptable. A list of those email addresses just been posted to Pastebin, a site commonly used by hackers to share text anonymously.

2. It would remove BART’s website for exactly six hours. Intended to be twice as long as BART shut off cell phones for. This has yet to materialize.

3. A “physical protest” will take place at the Civic Center Bart Station at 5PM Pacific Time. BART has issued a statement warning users of possible disruption to its train services on the day.
As per usual Anonymous is serious about keeping peoples rights in hand and if they are infringed upon in any way they most likely will strike and this is another showing that they will.

Facebook and Google+ have been battle against each since the newest social site Google+ launched. This new battle is over the games people love to play on Facebook. Facebook is making some enhancements to these games to battle Google’s games. The biggest enhancement is to post announcements about particular user achievements on your friends’ Facebook pages. If you pass up your friend’s score in a game, you can easily brag about that and make your friends more competitive. You can also boast about your movement up a game leader board. Facebook users can also utilize new bookmarks on the home page to see their top apps more easily. Plus on top of it I have heard that Google+ takes a lot less commissions on the games they you purchase content for which is nice for developers. I think Google+ is really taking advantage of the other revenue streams that they have vs. Facebook and with better developers most likely developing for the Google+ platform maybe what Facebook has added won’t be enough.

So over the weekend I informed everyone if they didn’t already know it that there was going to be a price cut of $100 dollars on both the 16GB and 32GB touchpad. So the HP brass thought it would be a good idea to make a permanent price cut of $100 to the 16GB and 32GB model which in my opinion is where the thing should of been priced in the first place. This is going to make the HP run extremely strong now, with these price points they have a chance of putting a dent in the market and making HP the number 2 sold tablet behind the iPad 2. This is a good deal for someone looking for a tablet but can’t afford that extra $100 for the iPad 2. I will keep my eye on the HP tablet and see what other moves it will have instore but right now they are making the right moves to penetrate the market better.

So in my readings this week I came across an article that is very interesting. It is about a letter sent out by the famous group Anonymous in which they state they are going to take down facebook on November 5th 2011. The letter cites the privacy concerns and the problems involved with deleting your Facebook account. It is no surprise that Anonymous will face off against Facebook. With privacy concerns and Anonymous being Anonymous well they will fight for the right of privacy and anonymity. Facebook should be very careful because Anonymous has proven they are not to be reckoned with and with them calling their shot on November 5th, 2011. Below is the letter they wrote to Facebook warning them and informing us on the privacy issues with Facebook.
Press:
Twitter : https://twitter.com/OP_Facebook

http://piratepad.net/YCPcpwrl09

Irc.Anonops.Li #OpFaceBook
Message:

Attention citizens of the world,

We wish to get your attention, hoping you heed the warnings as follows:
Your medium of communication you all so dearly adore will be destroyed. If you are a willing hacktivist or a guy who just wants to protect the freedom of information then join the cause and kill facebook for the sake of your own privacy.

Facebook has been selling information to government agencies and giving clandestine access to information security firms so that they can spy on people from all around the world. Some of these so-called whitehat infosec firms are working for authoritarian governments, such as those of Egypt and Syria.

Everything you do on Facebook stays on Facebook regardless of your “privacy” settings, and deleting your account is impossible, even if you “delete” your account, all your personal info stays on Facebook and can be recovered at any time. Changing the privacy settings to make your Facebook account more “private” is also a delusion. Facebook knows more about you than your family. http://www.physorg.com/news170614271.htmlhttp://itgrunts.com/2010/10/07/facebook-steals-numbers-and-data-from-your-iph….

You cannot hide from the reality in which you, the people of the internet, live in. Facebook is the opposite of the Antisec cause. You are not safe from them nor from any government. One day you will look back on this and realise what we have done here is right, you will thank the rulers of the internet, we are not harming you but saving you.

The riots are underway. It is not a battle over the future of privacy and publicity. It is a battle for choice and informed consent. It’s unfolding because people are being raped, tickled, molested, and confused into doing things where they don’t understand the consequences. Facebook keeps saying that it gives users choices, but that is completely false. It gives users the illusion of and hides the details away from them “for their own good” while they then make millions off of you. When a service is “free,” it really means they’re making money off of you and your information.

Think for a while and prepare for a day that will go down in history. November 5 2011, #opfacebook . Engaged.

This is our world now. We exist without nationality, without religious bias. We have the right to not be surveilled, not be stalked, and not be used for profit. We have the right to not live as slaves.

We are anonymous
We are legion
We do not forgive
We do not forget
Expect us

So with the tons of lawsuits going around about copyright infringement there has been more than 200,000 people that have been sued for allegedly sharing copyrighted material online. These lawsuits added up go into the hundreds of millions of dollars. So once the lawsuits are actually filed the companies suing will over a settlement that can go anywhere from a few hundred up to a couple of thousand, dollars and that would avoid a trail and maybe even more financial penalties. The actual number that is being sued since the start of 2010 stands at a staggering 201,828. Most of all the defendants in the case are accused of sharing copyrighted files via a bittorrent and just over 1k allegedly use the eD2k network. So if you are a bittorrent user I would be careful on what you download because they are prime to take you on.

The sue happy nature of companies has been tried and true over these last few months. Mainly Apple suing phone companies over designs and likeness of phones being too close to the iPhone design. Well Apple is about to get a taste of that type of justice as a suit has been filed for patent infringement. The court’s document on Count 1 states that “Apple sells or offers to sell within this district, computer systems, including but not limited to the MacBook Pro, that utilize the Mac OSX operating system that infringes at least claim 1 of the OSS [Operating System Solutions] Patent.”

Here is what the claim actually states:
The lawsuit specifically states that Apple’s OS X violates “at least Claim 1″ of the OSS patent. The claim in question reads as follows:
“A method for fast booting a computer system, comprising the steps of: A. performing a power on self test (POST) of basic input output system (BIOS) when the system is powered on or reset is requested; B. checking whether a boot configuration information including a system booting state which was created while executing a previous normal booting process exists or not; C. storing the boot configuration information from execution of the POST operation before loading a graphic interface (GUI) program, based on the checking result; and D. loading the graphic user interface (GUI) program.”
This is just a small taste of the legal mombojumbo that is being carried in this. I don’t normally write about court cases because I find them boring for the most part but seeing Apple doing all this suing it is nice to know their hands aren’t clean either.

So it took around 10 months but finally Netflix has reached one million users in Canada. That’s a 100,000 subscriptions per month and yet they still find a need to change the pricing structure with all of this growth. The funny part was that Netflix actually rewarded the one millionth subscriber with a lifetime subscription to the Netflix streaming service. Well with the packages being broken up next month that will be nice to have, free streaming movies for life, I’ll take it! The big things is if Netflix will see more growth or see a decline once the change over happens. Most think it will be a minor decline with the September price changes but after a few months of fall out I am sure they will grow again.

So looking for a HP TouchPad? Well I will tell you there is a deal going on in which if you purchase a Touchpad you will save $100 off instantly. This goes for both the 16GB and 32GB versions making them $399.99 and $499.99 respectively. This seems to be happening over this weekend but there is yet another deal that I heard about from Staples. Staples seems to have a $100 coupon for just any HPTouchpad. That means you can get the 16GB or the 32GB. Although both of these deals are only good till Sunday August 7th so there is still time. With all the commercials I see for this thing it is no wonder that HP will try to push the market with a deal like this, no other touchpad that I am aware of offers any discounts on the item itself, so let’s see if there is an influx of HP Touchpads sold over this weekend.