Research in Motion, the company behind the Blackberry
, is still fighting Apple tooth and nail in the smartphone market – and it’s not planning to cede the tablet space to the company, either.
The company today unveiled its Playbook tablet, a 7-inch 9.7mm-thick device that’s due early next year in the U.S., with plans for an international roll-out in the second quarter of 2011.
Steve Wadsworth, president of Disney’s 
Interactive Media Group – the division overseeing video games, online virtual worlds and the company’s mobile efforts – has resigned after an 11-year tenure with the company.
The departure leaves a vacuum at one of the company’s most important – but often troubled – divisions.
The growing threat of Web video distribution 
is one the cable industry needs to pay closer attention to, according to the CEO of Verizon. Ivan Seidenberg, at a Goldman media conference in NY, told attendees he doesn’t expect future generations of customers to have any interest in buying cable bundles.
“Young people are pretty smart. They’re not going to pay for something they don’t need to,” he said. “Over the top is going to be a pretty big issue for cable.”
The advent of the app era has certainly 
changed how people view their phones, but its real impact has been less on telecommunications – and more on the electronics industry.
A new study by Deloitte, released today, finds that mobile apps actually aren’t a key driver on smartphone sales, but they do play a big role in people’s decision-making when they’re looking for something like a gaming console or GPS.
Don’t expect to see “The Big Bang Theory” or “Smallville”
among Apple TV’s rentals anytime soon.
Warner Bros., the studio behind those and several other hit shows, is among one of the highest profile holdouts for the service – and recent comments by CEO Barry Meyer would seem to indicate the company has no plans to change its mind soon.
If you had trouble accessing the Web sites 
for the MPAA and RIAA earlier today, you’ve got 4chan to blame.
The infamous Internet imageboard (and hangout of film piracy advocates) launched a coordinated DDoS (distributed denial-of-service) attack on the industry sites Monday – allegedly in a retaliatory move for the trades’ moves to squash filesharing Websites.
Windows Mobile 7 might be the most
radical (and promising) operating system from the company’s mobile division in years, but the road to retail isn’t going to be perfectly smooth.
Verizon, which was famously burned by Microsoft with the Kin earlier this year, has announced it will not carry phones using the service at launch – or at all this year. It will be some unnamed date in 2011 before the company begins supporting the OS.
You have to give it to Sony. When 
they made the decision to join the 3D battlefield, they jumped in with both feet.
Starting Tuesday, Sept. 21, every PlayStation 3 on the market will begin supporting 3D playback. (The move will come via a free software update.) That instantly puts 3D hardware into 38 million homes worldwide.
As if the television industry didn’t have enough 
to worry about with video games stealing eyeballs away from its programming, now it might have to worry about advertisers jumping ship as well.
A new study from Nielsen of six EA Sports titles found that in-game ads for Gatorade boosted household dollars spent on the sports drink by 24 percent.
Chris Morris: Journalist 