Germany is the last major European market with a single iPhone carrier. But not for much longer. Deutsche Telekom-owned carrier T-Mobile’s iPhone exclusivity deal with Apple is nearing expiration and has not been extended.

Inside Tokyo’s bustling Shinagawa train station here, a futuristic-looking vending machine has replaced rows of drink bottles and cans with a 47-inch touch-screen monitor.

When a person stands in front of the screen, a camera captures his image and a sensor determines the person’s gender and approximate age.

Based on that reading, the machine “recommends” drinks that fit the customer’s profile.

QOTD [Digital Daily]
“Google is very good at ‘I need to solve a problem, I need to buy something, I need an answer. Twitter is more ‘I’m interested in many things, I don’t know what I need to know.’”
– Twitter CEO Evan Williams

There is one company that has been more consistently underestimated than any other, whose innovations, growth, and, indeed, survival have been dismissed and denied for nearly all its corporate life. That’s Netflix.

A federal judge in Hawaii ruled last month that a man claiming to be addicted to a videogame can sue the game’s maker for gross negligence in not warning him he could become a joystick junkie.

Apple announced on Wednesday a cornucopia of new hardware and software: sleek iPods, a brand new Internet-enabled video streaming device and new versions of its iOS software and iTunes 10. However, the most impressive to me by far was Ping, the music-only social network that Apple is opening up to its 160 million existing iTunes users.

American workers are mad as hell, and they’re not going to take it anymore. That’s the clear message of flight attendant Steven Slater’s emergence as a “working-class hero,” after he threw his job away with a tirade against passengers and a slide down an exit chute.

With a low $99 price point and syncing capabilities with Netflix, ABC, and Fox, Steve Jobs’ newly overhauled Apple TV is primed for parents, not geeks.

So, there’s a new kind of Android device in the world. The world still isn’t sure just where it is that tablets are the right tool for the job. That granted, this is a nifty product. And I’m developing my own theory of what tablets are for.