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>> The iPhone may come to Wal-Mart. Twitter ditches instant messaging. And the government is watching you play World of Warcraft. It's Monday, October 13. I'm Natali Del Conte, and it's time to get Loaded.
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There are rumors afoot that the iPhone is coming to Wal-Mart. I don't think I would believe this if the iPhone hadn't already come to Best Buy. The Boy Genius reports that this could happen in mid-November. In fact, Apple rumors are flying like Frisbees lately, especially given the fact that there's a press conference tomorrow. Apple has invited CNET TV to come to the launch of what looks to be a new line of laptops. The Loaded crew, of course, won't be able to make it because we're here in New York, but you can bet we'll be covering it out of our San Francisco office, so stay tuned to CNET TV, and we will put an end to those rumors soon.
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In other Apple news, the company is extending the offer for K through 12 students to take field trips to Apple stores from now until November 21st. The field trips last an hour, and the students can use the Mac to design anything they want when they're there. They'll even go home with a free T-shirt. I know other companies do things like this, but it seems a lot like early childhood brainwashing. Then again, you got to get them early.
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Zoho is becoming a lot more like Google with its new mail application that offers offline support. Zoho is an online office suite of applications. In my opinion it's been the best one on the market, but people still use Google Docs because they already have Google accounts. Now that Zoho has mail, too, people are more likely to use Zoho products within that community. The offline function is great so you can email even when you're not connected to the Internet. Ironically Zoho uses Google Gears for this offline function, which is funny because Gmail doesn't have offline functionality. Google usually does what Zoho does just a few months later, though, so we can expect Gmail to get offline support soon.
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After only two years it looks as though the Federal Communications Commission is going to back a proposal by M2Z Networks to build out a free wireless network across the country. M2Z submitted a proposal back in 2006 asking for permission to build a nationwide wireless network over unused radio frequency. I personally did not expect the government to allow this because it just made too much sense and seemed too simple. Plus there was just so much red tape. But the FCC has just released a new report that says that they do back this idea, and they don't believe it would interfere with other adjacent spectrum owned by the cell phone carriers. This is a very exciting turn of events. To learn more about this effort, which it should be noted is different from the white space movement, go to M2Znetworks.com.
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Twitter no longer supports instant message updates and notifications. It used to, but the service was spotty at best. The company posted a blog late last week saying that they just cannot keep their instant messaging integration running smoothly. I do appreciate this kind of honesty. The company admits that they're service was wonky over the summer, and they had to prioritize their features in order to keep their core product up and running. So IM is the first of these of these things to go since only a small percentage of their users were really using it. They do expect to bring it back. If you were on of those people who really like twittering over IM, might I suggest an Adobe AIR application or desktop client such as twhirl or Twitterific? You won't miss the IM, I promise.
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LG has confirmed that a new protophone is on its way. It's a 3G-touchscreen phone, but it also had a slide out keyboard. It also does have a five-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, and a full browser. It will launch in Europe sometime in Q4, but as of now, there is no US release date. It will cost 600 Euros, which is way too many US dollars, 815 to be precise. But that is the cost of being fabulous.
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Pandora has come to the Samsung Instinct. It's now its own application that lets you listen to Internet radio stations of your own creation over the Instinct's Wi-Fire 3G network. The odd thing is that this application costs $2.99 per month, yet it's free on the iPhone. Hey Sprint, little advice. That's no way to behave if you wanna be an iPhone killer.
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YouTube has started to run full-length TV shows from our parent company CBS. This is the first time YouTube has had full episodes of TV programs, rather than just clips. Google says that they hope to have content deals with other networks, but for now CBS is the only network cooperating. YouTube is clearly aiming for more ad revenue and to compete directly with Hulu. Full-length TV episodes will be available in the theater mode that we discussed last week.
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We're a little over a week away from the T-Mobile G1 phone launch, but it already looks like it's gonna be a success. The phone sold out online in just the first few days it was available for preorder, and now there are reports that T-Mobile has already sold one point five million units. The phone won't be available to take home until October 22nd, but there are a lot of T-Mobile customers who want an answer to the iPhone. I'm interested to see how this phone really does. I haven't seen anyone camping out at T-Mobile stores the way they did for the iPhone, but we'll keep an eye out.
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Verizon is considering charging companies 3 cents more per text message. These are not texts that you send. These are texts that companies send to you. For the most part, you subscribe to these things like Twitter SMS or sports scores. Most likely this fee increase would not be passed onto to you. The companies that send them would pay, but consumers are still worried that the fee would somehow trickle down. Also, an additional 3 cents per text message could discourage certain companies from offering SMS alerts, since they don't likely make that much on them in the first place. Verizon says this is not a final plan; just a consideration at this point, but honestly, right now is not the right time to talk about SMS price hikes. The carriers have already been called out for price gouging for text messages. We know that they make an insane amount of profit in this area. They don't need to charge more. Verizon, we're on to you.
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World of Warcraft players, the government's watching you. The US office of the Director of National Intelligence has commissioned an $800,000.00 study to learn more about cyber behavior. They're officially looking for cyber behaviors that are normative, acceptable, or favorable. They want to know which risky cyber behaviors could predict real life criminal activity. The study will look into social interactions on sites like Facebook and World of Warcraft to find out whether these activities suggest a quote, "unwillingness to abide by rules." So behave yourself. If you're spending an inordinate amount of time on these sites, Big Brother is watching you.
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Those are all your headlines for today, but before I sign off, I want to wish all my Canadian viewers a Happy Thanksgiving, and my American viewers a Happy Columbus Day. If you have the day off, I'm jealous of you. I will see you tomorrow. Thank you for watching. I'm Natali Del Conte with CNET TV, and you've just been Loaded.
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