Join the online party with Leo LaPorte at TWiTLive.tv for “24 Hours of iPhone” as Leo talks with many web personalities about their plans for the iPhone 3G release.

Apple has officially released the latest version of iTunes (7.7) as well as opened the iPhone/iPod AppStore for business.  Currently the AppStore has around 500 applications, 25% of those being completly free to download and use, including a good number of games, social media software, business and finance apps and more.

iTunes 7.7 is available now via the Apple Software Update on MacOS and Windows.

The Chief Technology Officer of Segway (yes, the scooter) is joining Apple as VP of Apple Product Design. The announcement that came from the Segway chat forums started with; “Doug Field, the chief technology officer at Segway who heads their entire engineering team (and has since Day 1), is leaving Segway to become a VP of product design at Apple.” Field is said to be a big fan of Apple products and, their designs.

This could be interesting to the geeky world. Considering Apple’s new VP of Product Design spent quite some time on a “personal transport vehicle”. What’s next from Apple? A car that has all the bells and whistles of an iPhone? Or maybe the “iScooter”! We could definitely see some products coming from Apple in the future that were tailored for our own vehicles. Maybe Apple will improve on the GPS navigators or Satellite Radio for our cars. We’ll see.

iPhone Atlas is running a story about the mystery screws that can be seen on the bottom of the new iPhone 3G in some pictures including the one to the left (source: iPhone Atlas).

As some may be aware, the first generation iPhone did not have a user-replaceable battery.  This required owners to bring their iPhone into an Apple or AT&T store to have the battery replaced in the event that it actually died and could not be recharged.

Apple has not, as of yet, said wiether or not the 3G iPhone will include the ability for the end consumer to replace the battery, however the inclusion of visible screws on an Apple device is add.  All previous iPods and the current generation iPhone have a very smooth and solid design.  Not only does that “hidden screw” design help keep the look and feel of the device consistant from any viewed angle, but it also helps prevent the average consumer from opening up the device and potentially damaging it.

[Source: ShackNews]

ShackNews is reporting that Cevat Yerli, CEO of Crytek, estimated that PC gaming piracy currently could potentially be around 15:1 to 20:1.  Thats 15 to 20 PC game pirates for every 1 legitimate PC gamer.

“It’s crazy how the ratio between sales to piracy is probably 1 to 15 to 1 to 20 right now,” Yerli told IGN. “For one sale there are 15 to 20 pirates and pirate versions, and that’s a big shame for the PC industry.”

Yerli added that he hoped to see some change with the release of Crytek’s upcoming shooter follow-up Crysis Warhead. When asked if the game would include anti-piracy measures similar to Electronic Arts’ activation protocols in the PC edition of BioWare’s Mass Effect, the CEO didn’t directly specify but hinted at some new ideas.

“Effectively, if the game isn’t an online game or multiplayer game—there are challenges regardless of what you do—the game can be cracked. The effort is to make it more difficult to crack, and certainly we’re going to make it more difficult this time with Warhead.”

An interesting article over on TorrentFreak.com about how the MPAA, according to themselves (the MPAA), do not require evidence to convict movie pirates.

Quote from the article…

“MPAA Quote : It is often very difficult, and in some cases, impossible, to provide such direct proof when confronting modern forms of copyright infringement, whether over P2P networks or otherwise; understandably, copyright infringers typically do not keep records of infringement.

TorrentFreak Article: So, the MPAA is basically saying that is is too hard to come up with solid evidence, and because of this, they should not have to proove anything. Makes perfect sense doesn’t it? The MPAA wrote the brief in response to a request from a federal Judge last month, who called for a briefing on the claim that having files stored in “shared folders” infringes copyright.”

[ Continue Reading At TorrentFreak.com ]

Recently, we wrote a quick article on YoBird and, their plan to gain as much hype as possible by using social media outlets. In specific we were focusing on their use of Twitter and the massive number of people they were following. Over the past week we have been speaking with Yobird and, conducting an e-mail based interview.

If you look at the site, you will see a countdown to their launch day. Originally, TGM was going to do an article on the company itself and, what they are about. However, things changed when YoBird posted information about their Twitter account being banned. This was when our curiosity was piqued even more. Our questions began to be a little more direct, curious as to whether Yobird was an actual company or, possibly a Twitter competitor. Or, was this a marketing experiment for another company.

Read More

[ From HotHardware.com ]

Google has been very vocal on its stance for net neutrality. Now, Richard Whitt–Senior Policy Director for Google–announces that Google will take an even more active role in the debate by arming consumers with the tools to determine first-hand if their broadband connections are being monkeyed with by their ISPs:

“We’re trying to develop tools, software tools…that allow people to detect what’s happening with their broadband connections, so they can let [ISPs] know that they’re not happy with what they’re getting — that they think certain services are being tampered with,” Google senior policy director Richard Whitt said this morning during a panel discussion at Santa Clara University, an hour south of San Francisco.