SlashGear Week in Review - Week 28 2011

Welcome to this week's edition of the SlashGear Week in Review. There was lots of goings on in the tech world as usual so let's get to it. Suppliers have tipped that the PS4 production will begin in late 2011 with a 2012 launch. It's been a long time now since the PS3 hit the market and with a new Nintendo console coming are sure to see new consoles from other gaming firms coming.

Apple was the latest firm to be hacked by the cyberthugs Anonymous and AntiSec. The hackers released a list of names and passwords that they claim came from one of the Apple servers. Apple was found to infringe on two patents held by S3 Graphics. The patents have to do with handling images.

Early in the week the twitter account of Fox News was hacked and the hackers sent out a message claiming that Obama had been shot. The hackers sent out several messages before they were stopped and left Fox News with some explaining to do. ARM is looking at providing a Mali mobile GPU in the next 18 months with serious power. The GPU claims to have the same power as the Xbox 360 and the PS3.

Facebook has blocked the friend export tool to prevent easy migration to Google+ and other services. The tool was a Chrome extension and it was banned on a rule not allowing automated data harvesting. Pegatron is readying 15 million next generation iPhones for a September launch according to sources. Curiously, the source claims the iPhone 5 doesn't seem to have any significant update compared to its predecessor.

SlashGear went on Google+ last week and offered a bunch of invites to our readers to join us. Google+ is pretty cool and we have been having fun with it so far. Wistron has signed a patent agreement with Microsoft for the patents relating to Android devices. It is now added to the growing list of companies paying Microsoft to build Android devices.

Michael Bay was caught sampling a scene from one of his old films called The Island for Transformers 3. Most people aren't surprised that this is happening; I would bet it cuts down on the budget for the film. The iPad 2 can now be jailbroken using the website Jailbreakme.com. Once jailbroken the site makers suggest you get the Cydia store update to block the PDF exploit.

Amazon, AT&T, and Verizon are all now in talks to buy Hulu according to sources. I hope none of the mobile carriers buy the service, I fear they might make it private to their own users. Google has announced that as of August 1 it will delete all Google Profiles that are not public. It doesn't want private profiles on the service.

A German security firm warned that iOS has a major flaw in the way it handles PDFs. The flaw could allow malware to be installed if the user opens a PDF. HTC has admitted that its purchase of S3 Graphics was a patent grab. It will use the patents offensively and I am sure the infringement Apple was making figured into the buy.

The Verizon Droid 3 smartphone went official last week. It claims to be the world's thinnest QWERTY smartphone and looks pretty cool. We reviewed the new Acer Aspire Ethos 8951G notebook computer. The machine is a worthy contender as a desktop replacement with little to complain about.

Insiders are claiming that there will be two iPhones released in September. The sources claim there will be an iPhone 4S and an iPhone 5 launched. An Apple patent app has surfaced that shows a method of moving files from one device to another by pouring them. The patent shows a physical gesture and sound effects for trading files.

Space shuttle Atlantis took off for the final mission for the shuttle fleet on Friday. The mission is STS-135 and after it returns, the shuttle will fly no more. Vizio's Honeycomb Android tablet hit Amazon with a pre-order price of $350. The tablet is pre-order status and the exact ship date isn't offered.

The most expensive phone to make for HTC is the Thunderbolt thanks to the speedy hardware inside. The teardown done by iSuppli suggest the phone costs $262 to build. Thanks for reading this week's edition, see you next time!