USA Today's Eleventh Hour Google Phone Facts/Speculation/Hype

USA Today mostly rehashes what we've heard about Google's plans, but they add a few unique contributions to the growing rumor pile. First, they peg Google's partners as "includ[ing] Sprint, Motorola, Samsung and Japanese wireless giant NTT DoCoMo"—WSJ is betting Sprint, T-Mobile, and HTC, with Samsung and other hardware companies as possibilities. (Reuters also says Samsung.) Also, while the Linux-based OS is nothing new, the tip that it'll be overlaid with Java is.

Final worthwhile bits: Spring is the worldwide ship date, and a weird mention that the "Google Phone...could blow open this model by providing easy access to the Internet at PC-type speeds." Juicy, pertinent info or random hypothetical? We'll know soon.

The WSJ Ponders How Google Will Change Phones (Verdict: Feature Explosion)

The Wall Street Journal tweaks the hype for Google's supposedly hours-away mobile announcement with a boilerplate of speculation about how Google's open platform will bust open the wireless industry by igniting "a race among Silicon Valley developers, long shut out of the wireless industry, to come up with new applications for cellphones," like HDTV, multiplayer mobile games, actual multi-tasking, and other exciting, previously impossible coolness. Bonus rumormongering: Sprint and T-Mobile name-checked again as Google's probable partners

Nokia Delays N-Gage Game Portal as Warner Pulls from Its Music Store

Yes, the title could have been "Nokia's Crappy Friday": Reuters says the N-Gage gaming service and the new music store are "among the cornerstones" of Nokia's big mobile-content push, yet today neither one is where it's supposed to be.

The new N-Gage gaming service, unveiled in August and due to launch this month, will now go live in December.

"Software testing is taking a bit more time than what we had expected," [spokesperson] Kari Tuutti said. "We are talking about a couple of weeks."

Of greater concern is the music store. Nokia stuck its toe in the OTA download water this week in the UK, but Warner Music Group—one Fourth of the Big Four—promptly pulled its content from the service. WMG had no objection to the site itself, but rather to MOSH, Nokia's legal P2P filesharing service.

Already, over 6 million people have used MOSH to exchange files. Nokia assures that copyrights are protected by Audible Magic, a scanning system that checks files as they pass through the service. Clearly, that's not enough reassurance for WMG.

And if I might add: What the hell are 6 million people exchanging if not some variety of copyrighted content? Original demo tapes and manuscripts? Seriously.

source
gizmodo.com

Sony's Rumored $99 PS2 Makes Up for No PS3 Backwards Compatibility,

Despite the PS3 being the greatest home entertainment/gaming machine in history, people are reluctant to move on from their trusty, much-loved PS2s. You can't blame 'em, as good games are still coming out for it and it has perhaps the best back catalogue of any console ever. That's why it kind of makes sense that Sony may be planning to drop a new, power-brickless $99 PS2 model on us next year. This could, of course, be related to Sony's boneheaded decision to drop all backwards compatibility from the new 40GB PS3 model. You wouldn't do that just to try to move some cheap PS2s, would you Sony? I'd like to think that a move that low is below even you, but I wouldn't put it past you. [