Earlier this week Microsoft announced that it would cut Xbox 360 prices in Japan by 30% in an attempt to bolster their abysmal sales. Sales in Japan folks, not here, so calm yourselves. It looks like they have not forgot about their home nation. Starting on Friday, Microsoft will slash the prices on all three versions of it’s consoles. Yay! The Xbox 360 Arcade will fall to $199, booting the Wii out of it’s place as the lowest priced gaming console. Prices on the other two consoles are expected to drop by $50 bringing the prices of the mid-range Xbox 360 model to $299 and the high-end Xbox 360 elite to $399. Boo-yah! Who’s up for a quick beating in Madden?

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We just got our hands on some interesting photos of the upcoming ASUS N10 notebooks set to be released the third week of this month. For starters, they’re pretty tiny. You know, with them rocking 10.2″ screens and all… In terms of specs and features, here’s what we got from the leaked docs:

• 10.2″ LED 1024×600 screen
• Windows Vista / Windows XP
• 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU
• NVIDIA GeForce Go 9300M GS 256MB graphics card
• 2GB RAM
• 250GB 5400rpm HD
• One ExpressCard slot
• One HDMI port
• Three USB 2.0 ports
• 1.3 megapixel webcam
• Fingerprint reader
• 3.5 lbs

You also get around 6.5 hours of runtime with the included 6-cell battery, a switch to toggle either the built-in motherboard graphics, or the sexy NVIDIA chip, Altec Lansing speakers, and a totally cool face recgozition software that will enable you to securely unlock your PC. That sums up most of the specs, but what about price? Well, the specific model we listed above is the ASUS N10J-B1 and will retail for $849 in the next couple weeks, but look for the N10J-A1 to retail for $749, and the N10E-A1 to run you $649. Check out all the slides in our gallery, ok?

Click on over to our ASUS N10 notebook gallery!

Dear New Yorkers,

It has come to our attention that you lucky bastards are able to purchase pre-release Blackberry Bolds for a mere $1,300 right there in Manhattan. While this price is nothing short of egregious, we’re a little jealous that you can walk to your local mom and pop Blackberry shop and pick one up (sort of). BlackberryBusiness.com is selling pre-release Bolds at a “special offer” of $1,299.99 on their web site. According to Joe at Blackberry Business, who was holding the last one in his hand to make a sale as I spoke with him, “We got five a couple days ago, but we’re all sold out now.” Joe must be happy to have made some big money on pre-release 9000s.

Looks like you’re too late. Tsk tsk. Of note, even though the site shows pictures of an AT&T branded Bold, the ones available were unbranded.

Thanks, Robby!

Via [BBC]

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Every time Google drops a new product, the internets go wild with excitement, speculation, and general madness. All of this hoopla is generally for good reason, as the boys down in Mountain View have a history of rolling out revolutionary services that quickly gain ubiquitous presence in our everyday lives. The recent introduction of the Chrome browser was no exception to this rule, though if the EULA is any indication of Google’s plans, we might want to hold off on wide-scale adoption. According to several clauses in the user license, Google assumes ownership of anything you post, publish, and/or create while using their new browser. Sound fishy? Check this out: “By submitting, posting or displaying the content you give Google a perpetual, irrevocable, worldwide, royalty-free, and non-exclusive license to reproduce, adapt, modify, translate, publish, publicly perform, publicly display and distribute any Content which you submit, post or display on or through, the Services.” We can’t think of any reason why this would be a necessary step for Google to take, and its inclusion raises a serious red flag about the company’s intentions, especially considering their well known “Don’t be evil” motto. Peep the sections after the jump courtesy of the fine folks over at Gizmodo, and sound off here in the comments.

UPDATE: Google has responded to this one in record time. Noting the general level of scrutiny and dis-satisfaction around the web in regards to their invasive privacy policy, the company states that they ”are working quickly to remove language from Section 11 of the current Google Chrome terms of service. This change will apply retroactively to all users who have downloaded Google Chrome.” Kudos, Google!

Thanks, Jose!

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Smart playlists are sooooo 2007 - all the cool kids use genius playlists. Late last month, Kevin Rose shared some Apple rumors with us that have since gained a pretty huge amount of momentum. The iPod nano and Touch revisions are all but confirmed and it looks like pricing will be revisited as well. Then yesterday of course, Apple sent out some invites to a special “Let’s Rock” event to be held on September 9th. Let’s Rock you say? Sounds pretty focused; iPods and iTunes will almost certainly be the talking points. In the meatime however, Rose has handed out a bit more detail with regards to the iTunes 8.0 revision he spoke of in his video last month. Firstly, he described a new music recommendation feature that will be called genius playlists according to reports. Apparently iTunes 8.0 will be able to analyze certain qualities of a song and generate a playlist. It will be like having your own local Pandora; sort of. Less interestingly, Rose describes some new “trippy visualizations” that can accompany playback. It’s hard to care about that but since Rose claims to have seen them first hand it does give his claims some additional credibility.

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The Dell mini notebook that we first laid eyes on back in May looks to be all set to become official this week. Geared towards web surfing and light usage, Dell’s Inspiron 910 could be quite an entry into the mini notebook space. While specs have yet to become official, there is a good deal being reported at this point and everything is looking pretty on point. Apparently the sub-10 inch notebook will weigh in around 2.2 pounds and will sport an 8.9 inch screen and three USB 2.0 ports. The guts will include a 1.6 GHz Atom processor, up to 1 GB of RAM, integrated WiFi and a built-in camera. It also looks like the Inspiron 910 will sport SSD for storage and will vary in size up to 16 GB. Of course 16 GB isn’t going to get you very far these days even in a netbook, so rumor has it that Dell has worked out a deal with online storage leader Box.net to include a cloud storage solution out of the box. Stuff all that into a portable that is said to start under $400 and you may very well have a winner on your hands - even in candy apple red (don’t worry, it’ll be available in black as well).

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The folks developing the Android SDK enjoy a good laugh as much as they enjoy coding. Two amusing Easter Eggs have been found in the latest version of the Android SDK. Intermixed in with the usual constants for the accelerometer are the following two values:

• float GRAVITY_DEATH_STAR_I 3.5303614E-7
• float GRAVITY_THE_ISLAND 4.815162

Looks like Star Wars and Lost are two of their fave entertainment choices. Hidden within the camera application is another Easter Egg. Just snap a picture and you will be rewarded with a handsome (?) picture of Bill Lumbergh from “Office Space”. LOL.

Thanks, Chris!

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Ruh roh. Reports are literally flooding in that iPhones across the Northeast are experiencing some major network issues. Reports are also coming from areas further south down the Atlantic coast. So what’s the deal? Well in a nutshell, data is kaput. Users are reporting that 2G and 3G data are both affected which means unless you’re in range of a WiFi hotspot you’re basically toast. Oddly, no other handsets seem to be affected by this outage which poses the question: Huh? In any event, AT&T is admitting that there’s a problem and has opened ticket # TT000008107719 to cover it. Roll call! If you’re experiencing problems drop a comment below and let us know where you are.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Here’s a bit of news for anyone that was frustrated by Samsung’s recent bait-and-switch with their WM 6.1 update for the Blackjack II. After yanking the software from their site last week, the manufacturer has finally re-upped the firmware update, bringing this much-anticipated upate to Blackjack owners near and far. We won’t bore you with the WM 6.1 specs, but we would suggest hitting the link as quickly as you can, as you never know how long Sammy will leave this one up.

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In a scathing response to European Commissioner Viviane Reding’s report on the mobile industry in Europe, Vodafone claims 40M million users, most of them “poor” pay as you go customers, may have to cancel their mobile service if her proposed changes to call termination charges go into effect. Termination charges are the fees mobile operators charge each other (and land line companies) for connecting to their networks. Currently mobile operators in Europe charge each other an average of 8 cents per minute. Reding proposes a reduction of these fees to 1 to 2 cents per minute. A reduction in fees is usually perceived as a good thing except these fees account for 15 to 20% of an operators revenue. That’s a good chunk of change for the mobile operators and the loss of that guaranteed revenue source has them, (well, at least Vodafone) shaking in their boots and spouting forth rhetoric.

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We snagged a picture of Sprint’s Motorola V950 from our leaked roadmap, but now you can see it for yourself as Sprint launched their ruggedized Push To Talk flip phone. The Motorola Renegade V950 is a Qchat-enabled phone so you CDMA and iDEN PTT people can talk nice together. The V950 packs a lot of multimedia features not seen in the usually plain and boring push to talk phones. It sports the following features:

• NFL Mobile Live
• Sprint Music Store
• Sprint TV
• GPS
• Web, email capable
• Built-in 2MP camera with video recording
• Bluetooth (with A2DP)
• Rev. A Broadband speeds

It is also military rated for dust, shock, vibration, blowing rain and humidity. So if you want to throw out the window because your girlfriend just dumped you, feel free to do so. It’s available for $129 after a $50 MIR and with a 2 year agreement. Click through for Sprint’s next ruggedized offering.

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Music lovers in the UK, Nokia now has a new phone for you. The Nokia 5310 XpressMusic ‘Comes With Music’ edition will be the first handset to feature Nokia’s new “Comes with Music” service. Makes sense, right? The subscription model music service allows phone owners one year of free access to Nokia’s music catalog which includes artists from Sony BMG, EMI, Warner Music, and Universal Music Group. Users can download tracks to one phone and one computer and are able keep the downloaded tracks after their free subscription expires. A “relatively high” download limit has been hinted at and PlaysForSure DRM is expected to hinder your overall music experience. After the trial year has ended, you can purchase new music by renewing your subscription (for a fee of course) or by purchasing on a track by track basis. If you buy a new Comes with Music phone, you can transfer your purchased music to your new phone. One little problem with that scenario is how do you coordinate a 12 month subscription service with an 18 month contract? Hmm. Hopefully that question and more will be answered on October 2 when more information about the Comes With Music service will be released at a Nokia event to be held in London.

Enough of the music service, now back to the phone. Only the music service appears to differentiate the new 5310 Comes With Music edition from the original Nokia 5310 XpressMusic phone. The phone will be sold through Carphone Warehouse who will start taking pre-orders today. Carphone Warehouse has an exclusive UK deal until the end of the year so don’t look for the phone outside of the UK anytime soon.

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There you have it people - a week from today Apple will be holding a special event tagged with “Let’s Rock”. The assumption of course, is that several of the rumors that have been floating around will be addressed. Specifically, the fourth generation of the iPod nano is expected to be revealed along will a slightly revised iPod Touch, new iPod Touch software and a pricing revision that will likely affect several iPod models. We would also venture a guess that a few other rumors will be confirmed at the event, including the possible announcement and subsequent release of iTunes 8.0. As for the rest of the rumors (OS X, MacBook, MacBook Pro), this seems like it will be a fairly focused event so we’ll likely have to wait a bit longer for confirmation on those. In case you didn’t get an invite and you feel like trying to crash, the shindig will take place at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco and it’s scheduled for liftoff at 10:00 am PST.

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