As Apple and HTC prepare to duke it out inside a courtroom, fans of both companies' smartphones are taking sides on the Web.

The news of Apple's suing over 20 patents the iPhone maker claims are being infringed on by HTC was a trending topic on Twitter early Tuesday, as thousands of new tweets every minute came in. But fan forums were abuzz over the lawsuit as well.

Over at Phandroid, a site that tracks developments regarding Android phones, which includes HTC, the general reaction was a mix of disgust with both the patent system and Apple. The Android … Read more

Netflix currently offers its streaming software through the browser, and on all three major gaming consoles. Could the iPhone be next?

The DVD rental and streaming service is at least considering it. The blog Hacking Netflix reported Monday night that some customers are being asked if they would use a Wi-Fi version of the streaming software on their iPhone.

Here is the text of one of the questions in the survey:

Imagine that Netflix offers its subscribers the ability to instantly watch movies & TV episodes on their iPhone. The selection availability to instantly watch includes some new releases, lots … Read more

The imagined inventions of Victorian-era French novelist Albert Robida may be coming closer to reality.

Who, you ask? Robida was an illustrator and writer for popular science-fiction magazines, and is sometimes compared to Jules Verne. In his 1890 novel "Le Vingtieme siecle. La vie electrique," he described something called a "telephonoscope." Since then, we've seen telephonoscopes--basically videophones--in everything from "The Jetsons" to "Blade Runner." What we haven't seen is the videophone in our living rooms.

That may finally be changing.

The common use of videophones could happen through three technologies that separately aren't exactly considered bleeding edge today: high-speed Internet, a television, and Skype. Samsung says it will put the VoIP calling service Skype as an application on its televisions, allowing phone calls to be made on camera right from a couch, just like Jane Jetson talking into her TV set. The Samsung Skype-enabled TV follows similar announcements from Panasonic and LG at the Consumer Electronics Show in January.

The models will range from to $1,200 to $2,000 for Panasonic's set. Samsung and LG have not yet announced how much they will charge.

The Skype on TV application should work similarly on all three models, which in turn should closely mimic the version of the application that many people use to make free PC to PC calls, or for a fee, PC to landline. Skype accounts are free to set up and can be activated using the TV's remote control right on the screen. The video calls will also be free, as will voice calls between Skype users. Using Skype to call traditional landline and mobile phones is a few cents per minute. Calls can be answered while watching a program, but it's not yet possible to both talk and continue to watch uninterrupted.

By the time these models actually hit stores in late spring there should be three TV makers offering Skype on their TVs. And not just any three TV makers, but the world's largest overall (Samsung sells practically one of every five TVs sold), the leader in plasmas (Panasonic), and LG, which is close behind Samsung, selling 15 percent of all TVs. … Read more

Though Boxee is working on its dedicated Boxee box, the software maker is still trying to keep up with Apple TV.

The free software that streams Web content directly to the TV will once again work with an Apple TV box, according to a posting on the company's blog. There's no official Apple support for Boxee, but it's been a back-and-forth between Apple TV software updates and Boxee updgrading its own beta software.

Boxee's instructions are here if you want a little programming adventure in your life. If you already have Boxee Alpha installed, it's … Read more

CUPERTINO, Calif.--The presence of one of the world's pre-eminent environmentalists at Apple's shareholder meeting Thursday was the subject of much of the morning's pointed discussion.

As expected, Apple's attitude on environmental and sustainability issues was one of the main concerns of the stockholders present Thursday, followed closely by the company's immense pile of cash. But early harsh comments about former Vice President Al Gore's record set the tone.

Gore was seated in the first row, along with his six fellow board members, in Apple's Town Hall auditorium as several stockholders took turns … Read more

Once a year the people who own stock in Apple get a chance to make their voice heard regarding the direction of the company.

This year, that's Thursday. Though the issues up for vote on the ballot this year are nothing out of the ordinary--reelecting the same slate of board members, changes to employee stock plans, salary, and other compensation for the Apple's top executives--there's always the wild card of shareholder proposals.

Investors overall should have little to complain about when it comes to the company's finances. Apple posted a profit of $3.37 billion, or $… Read more

It turns out Apple isn't the only company readying a touch-screen tablet computer.

We say that half-jokingly, of course. In the last few months, quite a few companies have signaled their intentions to go head-to-head (or at least offer an alternative) to Apple's much-ballyhooed iPad, which should hit stores in March. Hewlett-Packard, Dell, Acer, and Sony have or are in the process of readying gadgets they say will compete with the iPad. We've seen some demonstrations at the Consumer Electronics Show and other trade shows, but several gadget makers admitted to waiting to see what Apple was going to do before setting the specifications and price of their competing touch-screen tablets.

Now that they know, what are they going to do about it? That might sound a bit silly considering companies like HP, Dell, and Acer have larger market share than Apple--when it comes to computers. But in other, faster-growing areas--smartphones and music players--Apple's popularity far outstrips theirs. And in a new device category (it's reasonable to consider this a new category) they're all essentially starting from scratch.

So how will every company not named Apple try to compete for your touch-screen tablet computing dollar, assuming such a dollar exists? They will try to emphasize something about theirs being better, of course, be it in terms of price, style, speeds and feeds, or the movies, books, games, or TV shows available via their gadget. Dell, for example, providing evidence that an old dog can at least attempt new tricks, tends to emphasize style these days. HP's commercials try to sell you on how easily their product fit into your lifestyle.

More than anything, they should try to avoid selling it as a computer, in the classic laptop computer sense. If Dell and HP and Acer and their compatriots do that, they'll end up trying to convince people to spend money on basically yet another Netbook; something that's sort of like a PC, but not quite. It's just smaller, cheaper, and with less functionality than a traditional PC. And after sophisticated smartphones and cheaper Netbooks, do consumers really need yet another device that's not quite a laptop?… Read more

Streaming-video service Vudu will soon be a service of the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart confirmed late Monday.

Wal-Mart has agreed to buy Vudu for an undisclosed sum, and the deal is expected to close within the next few weeks. The New York Times first reported the story Monday morning when the two companies began to tell their TV manufacturing and film studio partners that the deal was set to go.

Vudu has a catalog of 16,000 video titles that can be downloaded to several different brands of TVs and Blu-ray players, either as a rental or purchase. Wal-Mart … Read more

Apple CEO Steve Jobs has reportedly continued his campaign against Adobe's Flash video technology, this time at a meeting with The Wall Street Journal, according to a report in Valleywag.

People who were at a recent meeting Jobs had with some of the paper's executives told the Gawker-owned site that Jobs dismissed Flash as "a CPU hog," full of "security holes," and "old technology" and would therefore not be including the technology on the iPad, or presumably, the iPhone. (Adobe did recently promise to make the Mac version of its browser plug-in … Read more