Around the Web 5.27.09: the Zune HD, a Blockbuster video game rental service, Nokia's troubled app store

Is the Kutcher-Twitter love affair coming to an end?. Credit: dpstyles via Flickr

-- Microsoft says the Zune HD, a touch-screen rival to the iPod, will be out this fall. Boy Genius Report

-- The worldwide recession has created dozens of hot young start-ups in India. AP via LAT

-- Ashton Kutcher threatens to sign off Twitter if the microblogging service partners with a reality TV show. CNN

-- Blockbuster will launch an online video game rental service to better compete with Netflix. Silicon Alley Insider

-- A former TV evangelist buys AmericanLife, a Christian cable network. AP via LAT

-- Twitter's founders say they're planning to stay with the company for the long haul. Bits

-- Time Warner will reportedly decide at a board meeting Thursday whether to spin off AOL. TechCrunch

-- Nokia's app store has a terrible first day, crashing and getting routinely mocked. USA Today

-- Judge Sonia Sotomayor, Obama's Supreme Court nominee, knows a thing or two about computers and technology. Wired

-- Alana Semuels

A note to readers: We're playing around a little with the format of the Tech Blog, so this will be the last day of Around the Web -- for now. Instead, you'll see more short posts referring you to other blogs' takes on interesting tech stories of the day. If you love that idea -- or hate it -- feel free to e-mail us with your concerns. You can find our contact information by clicking on our names in the panel in the right-hand side of the page titled Our Bloggers.

Around the Web 5.26.09: Pan-European song licenses, Nokia's Ovi Store stumbles and Vizio fights back

Will the digital television transition on June 12 catch you unawares? Credit: Brocco Lee via Flickr.

-- About 3 million U.S. households are not ready for the digital television transition, to occur on June 12, about half the number of three months ago. MSNBC

-- Are you one of them? Read this primer on the digital transition and become a DTV guru. ArsTechnica

-- Music labels, under pressure from the European Union, will offer song licenses that apply across EU, not just individual countries. WSJ

-- Nokia's answer to iTunes, dubbed the Ovi Store, falters on day of launch. TechCrunch

-- Vizio fights back, sues Funai Electric for patent infringement. TWICE

-- Warner Bros. aims to become major publisher of iPhone Apps. mocoNews via WashPost

-- Nano-materials can hold your data for a billion years. Slashdot

-- Seiko Epson finds way to manufacture large-screen OLED televisions, using inkjet technology. Engadget

-- Alex Pham

Around the Web 5.22.09: Apple tablet updates, Warner bid for Midway, Data.gov launch

David Kernell, who reportedly hacked Sarah Palin's e-mail in September. Credit: Associated Press

-- Data.gov, the U.S. government's public data catalog, launched. ReadWriteWeb

-- Remember that accused Sarah Palin e-mail hacker? His new defense: The messages were public record. Wired Threat Level

-- Warner Bros. offered $33 million for bankrupt Midway Games. LAT

-- More details have surfaced about the new Apple tablet computer: price less that $1,000, screen as big as 10 inches, due early next year. TechCrunch

-- Bloggers are expecting a much faster iPhone with more storage and a video camera, but no actual Apple tablet announcement at Apple's WWDC. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Another round of phishing scams hit Twitter and Facebook. CNet

-- The judge assigned to the Pirate Bay case was accused of bias. Now, the judge assigned to that bias case is being removed -- yep, for bias. Wired Threat Level

-- As blogging and social media grow, the chances of getting sued for borderline behavior are increasing. WSJ

-- Chris Lesinski

Around the Web 5.21.09: Yahoo's social networks, Google quitters, Mozilla Jetpack

 -- Pandora is still growing, and now they've got aggressive plans to monetize. Wired Epicenter

Tim Westergren of Pandora, confident in its future. Credit: wwwhatsup via Flickr

-- Acer is going to enter the U.S. home server market. CNET News 

-- Mozilla's latest project, Jetpack, could make Firefox extension development as easy as Web development. TechCrunch

-- Twitter isn't opposed to selling ad space to generate revenue. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Gov. Schwarzenegger wants the Supreme Court to reinstate a state law banning the sale and rental of violent video games to minors. LAT/AP

-- Yahoo says that it's shopping for a social network. PaidContent

-- Google is determining which of its employees are most likely to quit using (you guessed it) an algorithm. WSJ

-- Chris Lesinski

Around the Web 5.20.09: Craigslist sues South Carolina AG, Media Center gets Netflix streaming, HP sees dark days

Palm's big bet, the Palm Pre. Credit: Jae C. Hong / Associated Press

-- Prostitution ads seem to be slipping past Craigslist's monitors. CNet

-- But  Henry McMaster isn't slipping past Craigslist's lawyers. The company sued South Carolina's attorney general, asking a court to rule that he has no right to threaten its executives with criminal prosecution for aiding prostitution. Bits

-- Palm is betting its future on the Pre smartphone. LAT

-- Microsoft's Media Center gets the Netflix video streaming service built in. Silicon Alley Insider

- Hungry for an IPO? Underwriters for OpenTable.com's initial public offering, expected this week, raised the price range for the deal to $16 to $18 a share, from $12 to $14. Money & Co.

-- You know that talk of a tech-industry recovery? HP isn't seeing it. NYT

--Yahoo Search got an upgrade designed to kill off the idea of 10 blue links. Wired

-- Second Life generates 15 billion minutes in online calls. VentureBeat

-- Google CEO Eric Schmidt: We can be friends with Twitter without getting married. Telegraph

-- Alana Semuels

Around the Web 5.19.09: Daimler invests in Tesla, Palm Pre due June 6, exercise games overwhelm

Tesla Motors, which makes the all-electric Tesla Roadster, sold a 10% stake in the Silicon Valley company to auto giant Daimler. Credit: Bob Chamberlin / Los Angeles Times

-- The Palm Pre gets a launch date: June 6. The company's best hope for competing in the smartphone market will cost $199.99 after rebates with a two-year contract. CNet

-- Er, yeah, June 6 is two days before the Steve Jobs-less Apple developers conference. Is Palm trying to own the news cycle? CrunchGear

-- The movie industry is booming. Video games based on movies? Not so much. Company Town

-- Boston loses more relevance in the high-tech ecosystem as Greylock Partners moves to Silicon Valley. Bits

-- Old meets new: Automaker Daimler took a nearly 10% stake in Tesla Motors, the Silicon Valley electric car company. Wired

-- Can an algorithm help stem an employee brain drain? Google is trying to find out. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Wolfram Alpha, a new kind of search engine supported by 10 terabytes of data from thousands of sources, finally launched. LAT

-- How many exercise video games is too many? VentureBeat

-- Chris Gaither

Around the Web 5.18.09: OpenTable's IPO, the Internet's secret passwords, Twitter and small businesses

Food from the Kogi BBQ truck is sold with the help of Twitter. Credit: inuyaki.com via Flickr

-- Those "secret questions" you answer to help you remember the password to your 8 million Internet accounts might not be so secret after all. Technology Review

-- New phones and operating systems have cellphone makers hoping for a big summer. NYT

-- Small businesses that use Twitter often have good results, boosting daily sales at one pizza joint 15%. Ad Age

-- Facebook apps might make more money than Facebook in 2009. Silicon Alley Insider

-- OpenTable goes public this week, in one of the first Silicon Valley IPOs in a loooong time. BoomTown

-- People spend more time on social networks than they do e-mailing. NYT

-- Soldiers are using online dating sites to meet members of the opposite sex, sometimes while stationed abroad. USA Today

-- Workers at Chinese search engine Baidu decide to end a strike for now. PaidContent

-- Google's Eric Schmidt gave the commencement address at Carnegie Mellon on Sunday. TechCrunch

-- The San Francisco Giants are experimenting with a site that changes the prices of tickets based on demand. NYT

-- Alana Semuels

Around the Web 5.15.09: Hulu numbers, game sales drop and newspaper woes

A student at Neumont University gets caught by the photographer at in inopportune moment. Credit: Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times

-- Different measurement firms are coming to astonishingly divergent numbers when it comes to streams on Hulu. NYT

-- Video game sales dropped 17% in April, in spite of recent confidence in the industry. LAT

-- The Wall Street Journal's Martin Peers proclaimed that the NYT has no choice but to sell itself. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Or, the NYT could start charging for content -- which the Executive Editor explained at a staff meeting this week. New York Observer

-- Facebook will begin to "verify" apps, among other things, to spur "quality." VentureBeat

-- At Utah's Neumont University, geeks feel at home -- at the expense of the stereotypical social exploits of college. LAT

-- Chris Lesinski

Around the Web 5.14.09: RealNetworks bites back, iPhone slinging banned, WSJ issues Twitter rules

The Eee Keyboard, coming in June. There's a whole computer in there. Credit: Yoshi5000 via Flickr

-- The Eee Keyboard has the whole computer built right in, and it's coming in June. Engadget

-- AT&T restricts the SlingPlayer for iPhone to Wi-Fi connection only. "Slinging" over AT&T's cellular network violates the company's terms of service. SiliconBeat

-- RealNetworks is suing the six major movie studios, calling antitrust on their resistance to allowing DVD ripping. Bits

-- With all the hoopla around having sold a billion applications, Apple has made only $20 million-$45 million on its app store. PaidContent.org

-- According to research on Intel's Atom CPU, the netbook trend seems to be fading. Fast Company

-- Google just made switching e-mail archives and contacts to Gmail a snap. AOL, Yahoo and Hotmail have reason to be concerned. TechCrunch

-- Journalists at the Wall Street Journal were served a list of rules about how exactly they can use social media sites, especially Twitter. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Chris Lesinski

Around the Web 5.13.09: Intel gets fined, Verizon dumps phone lines, Twitter changes reply system

Intel gets slapped with a record fine. Credit: Axel Buhrmann via Flickr

-- European regulators fine Intel $1.45 billion for trying to discourage customers from working with competitor AMD. LAT

-- AT&T speaks on its decision to remove 3G streaming capability from the iPhone SlingPlayer app. Engadget

-- Verizon sells 15% of its residential and small business phone lines to Frontier so it can focus on bigger cities. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Women's blog network BlogHer raises $7 million despite difficult times for fundraising. PaidContent

-- Google unveils new features at a big event it calls Searchology. LAT

-- After Kanye West complains, Twitter removes a fake account under his name. Silicon Alley Insider

-- France adopts a plan to kick people off the Internet if they are found to pirate content three times. NYT

-- Twitter changes its reply system after new users are confused. TechCrunch

-- Our obsession with gadgets could triple the world's electronic bills in the next two decades. Silicon Alley Insider

-- Love the Star Trek movie? Check out where parts were filmed in these exotic California locations. Wired

-- Alana Semuels