Apple’s iOS App Store, which is now home to over 500,000 applications, is currently down according to several tips we have received via email. Preliminary reports of the outage first came in shortly after 2:00 p.m. Eastern. The store is accessible and app pages can be opened, but apps cannot be installed on iPhones, iPads or on iPod touch units. Users report that app updates are not being downloaded either, though available updates to appear on the Updates tab. BGR has confirmed the issues on several iOS devices. Oddly, some users are reporting that installations are working sporadically, while others are not able to install any apps at all. Let us know if the App Store is working for you in the comments below.

UPDATE: Functionality appears to have been restored some time before 2:55 p.m.

It’s more like a pre-prenuptial agreement, but you get the idea. T-Mobile’s parent company, Deutsche Telecom, has confirmed that it stands to receive a $6 billion settlement from AT&T should the companies’ proposed merger fall through. According to DT, a $3 billion cash payment would be made along with additional spectrum and a national roaming agreement. While the exact valuation of the spectrum and roaming agreement was not disclosed, Reuters appraises the two intangibles at close to $3 billion. Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and Department of Justice are all scrutinizing the proposed deal, which would make AT&T the largest wireless provider in the United States. There are sure to be plenty of twists and turns along the way, but once thing is certain: a large sum of money is going to be debited from AT&T’s coffers no matter the regulatory outcome.

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Greenpeace recently released a report titled How dirty is your data: A look at the energy choices that power cloud computing, which graded Amazon, Akamai, Apple, Facebook, Google, HP, IBM, Microsoft, Twitter, and Yahoo across three “green” categories: transparency, infrastructure siting, and mitigating strategy. While Greenpeace offered some praise to the Cupertino-based company for improving transparency and its efforts to move towards cleaner energy, it failed Apple in the “infrastructure siting,” category for choosing to build its new $1 billion iDataCenter — which requires enough energy to power 80,000 U.S. homes –  in North Carolina.

“Apple’s decision to locate its iDataCenter in North Carolina, which has an electrical grid among the dirtiest in the country (61% coal, 31% nuclear) indicates a lack of a corporate commitment to clean energy supply for its cloud operations. The fact that the alternative location for Apple’s iDataCenter was Virginia, where electricity also comes from very dirty sources, is an indication that, in addition to tax incentives, access to inexpensive energy, regardless of its source, is a key driver in Apple’s site selection.”

Hit the jump for more, as well as the official report card.

Facebook also received fail marks for infrastructure siting, and Twitter failed every single category. IBM was the top of the class, and Greenpace said it “should be recognized for its ongoing and comprehensive plan to reduce remissions, in addition to driving significant gains in IT efficiency.”

[Via 9to5 Mac]

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Social networking site Twitter has been dealing with some serious performance issues for the past several hours. The problems seemed to begin earlier today when a handful of users reported seeing unfamiliar tweets and timelines displayed on their Twitter landing page. The issue may have something to do with the new Twitter layout, as the company has temporarily reverted back to the old site design for some users. The site has yet to issue a public statement explaining the issue(s).

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Research In Motion announced this week that its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet will finally launch next month, thus lighting a fire under several analysts excited to resume their PlayBook bashing. Among them was Stifel analyst Doug Reid, who issued a research note on Wednesday suggesting RIM’s first tablet offering will not deliver on the hype. “First, PlayBook’s lack of basic e-mail and calendar functionality (standalone) immediately gates the device’s addressable market to BlackBerry users, a market of only 55 million,” Reid wrote. He also points to the PlayBook’s lack of a substantial app ecosystem as a barrier, but we already know RIM is working on that. In the end, all of the analyst’s points echoed the countless complaints we’re been hearing for months: the need to tether, the small screen size, the app ecosystem, the fact that it’s late to market, and so on. In the end, we still won’t know until we know — though the PlayBook will certainly shock the majority of analysts and pundits if it sees even the slightest modicum of success at this point.

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Our inbox is littered with tips from frustrated Netflix users attempting to stream videos from the site’s service. Reports state that Netflix’s Instant service, in all its forms, has been down for the last several hours. If you were planning to have a nice evening in with your main-squeeze and a slightly dated movie, this certainly would put a damper on those plans. Anyone out there experiencing this?

It’s not the update you’ve been waiting for, rather it’s the update the will allow you to get the update you’ve been waiting for. Of course we’re talking about Windows Phone 7, and the small, quirky code bundle Microsoft has been attempting to rollout for the past two weeks. After halting the update to Samsung handsets back on February 23rd, the company resumed sending the software to users’ devices this week. And unfortunately, it looks like Windows Phone users with Samsung handsets are continuing to have issues — problems Microsoft admits via Twitter it is “aware of” and is “looking into.” The small package being pushed by Microsoft patches Windows Phone’s updater mechanism, preparing it for the more significant NoDo update that is set to bring copy and paste functionality, amongst other things, to WP7 later this month. Not the most impressive software rollout we’ve ever seen, but hopefully Microsoft and friends have this whole mess sorted out by the time NoDo is a gogo. 

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Former RIM executive Raymond Reddy reportedly believes that the upcoming BlackBerry PlayBook will flop. In an interview with Business Insider, Reddy — who was in corporate development with RIM until 2008 when he left to start his own company — is said to have voiced several concerns surrounding the PlayBook that could apparently lead to a D.O.A. launch. His main concerns, according to the report, are timing, developer support and the platform’s reliance on tethering with BlackBerry phones. Reddy thinks the PlayBook may be late due to difficulties RIM is having while porting and tweaking the QNX operating system on which the device is based. He also thinks that the tablet won’t have many apps available at launch, and that the requirement to tether the PlayBook to a BlackBerry phone in order to use certain functionality could be off-putting for potential users. The BlackBerry PlayBook will be RIM’s first tablet device and it is expected to launch later this quarter.

UPDATE: A representative of Raymond Reddy emailed BGR to indicate that the original headline and sentiment conveyed in the Business Insider piece linked below misrepresented Reddy’s sentiment. It appears that Reddy never said the PlayBook would not succeed as was originally reported by Business Insider, though the source article has since been updated without notation.

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John Gruber of Daring Fireball has a “well-placed” source who informed him that Microsoft sold a mere 503 KINs before the handset was given its end-of-life papers on June 30th. Speculative rumors of the device’s dismal sales figures have been tossed around willy-nilly over the last several week, and five hundred was a popular guess; others quoting anonymous sources pegged sales at “over 1,000 but under 10,000.” One Microsoft employee told website Business Insider:

“We had a huge launch party on campus and I bet that party cost more than the amount of revenues we took in on the product.  As an employee, I am embarrassed.  As a shareholder, I am pissed.  It’s one thing to incubate products and bring them to a proof-of-concept to see what works, but it’s something else to launch.  I suspect we launched because we felt like we HAD to so we could save face because we were trying to build buzz, but overall – huge fail.”

Ouch. Anyone out there know somone who picked up a KIN?

UPDATE: PocketNow is reporting that the KIN’s Facebook application actually registers itself when a user activates it. Currently, FB is reporting that the KIN has 8,810 active users, making Gruber’s 503 number very inaccurate.

[Read Daring Fireball] [Read Business Insider]

Sorry to be the bearers of bad news for T-Mobile Sidekick customers that are still without data after nearly two weeks, but it appears that you’ve got little to no chance of ever getting any information you had stored on Danger’s servers back. Said T-Mobile today:

“Regrettably, based on Microsoft/Danger’s latest recovery assessment of their systems, we must now inform you that personal information stored on your device – such as contacts, calendar entries, to-do lists or photos – that is no longer on your Sidekick almost certainly has been lost as a result of a server failure at Microsoft/Danger.”

Ouch. Can someone please check that Perez Hilton hasn’t had a heart attack? Just to clarify, there is a difference between no data access, which is now restored, and device data on handset. Because of this, T-Mobile urges you not to turn off your Sidekick or let its battery die.

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These days it’s pretty much a given that whenever a new smartphone is launched, its carriers will give a few away in hopes of drumming up every last little bit of buzz head of release. Everyone knows the odds of winning one of these contests are horrible but the truth is we’re all winners thanks to those glorious contest laws that dictate the full-retail price of prizes be made clear. In the case of the Bell Palm Pre, the MSRP looks as if it will be $650 CAD (or $649.95 in Bell’s crazy world where its CFO seems to have something of a fetish for five-cent coins), which is about the same as Sprint. It might seem a bit pricey but hey, the money that will be paid out to the genius who put a picture of the Treo Pro on the Palm Pre contest literature has to come from somewhere.

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When it comes to branding, marketing, advertising, PR and the general concepts surrounding efforts to sell stuff, Apple is one of the best in the business — hands down. Love Apple products or hate them, there’s really no question it knows how design an attractive product and make it even more attractive using marcom. As such, the company is always meticulous with the messages it delivers, the wording it chooses and the quality of its marketing/advertising — well, almost always.

Its latest product, the iPhone 3GS, is a smash hit. It launched this past Friday in fewer countries than the iPhone 3G did last year and still managed to sell over a million handsets in its opening weekend — more units than its predecessor in fact. Remarkable. There is a major fault in Apple’s new handset however, that we likely wouldn’t have seen under Stevo’s watch: the branding. Yes, we’re sure Jobs played a major role in naming the device and we can’t believe “3GS” is what the crew in Cupertino landed on but considering how peculiar and unfriendly to search engines the name is, one would think the company would take particular care in referring to the handset. Nope. According to Apple, the official name of its new handset is “iPhone 3GS”. Fair enough. Take a look at Apple’s website at the time of this writing however, and you’ll find no less than a hundred references to the “iPhone 3G S” — with a space between the “3G” and the “S”. Crazy. This is also how the handset was presented when it was introduced earlier this month: “3G S”.

To be honest, we can’t remember ever having seen Apple fail so massively in this department. It may seem trivial but companies take branding extremely seriously for several reasons and all of these reasons play key roles in the marketing/sales processes. Apple is cleaning up its site and changing “3G S” to “3GS” but even now there are still a few omissions. The screen cap above was taken this morning and it shows less than a quarter of a page with four mistakes alone.

So welcome back, Mr. Jobs. Time to get to work.

In what has to be one of the sloppiest undertakings we’ve seen in recent history, Nokia has officially announced the N86 8MP today at Mobile World Congress. First it was presumed to be a leak, then it was revealed to be a bungle and now Nokia has finally decided to show off its first 8 megapixel camera phone in Barcelona. In other words, a company that has openly complained about leaks on several occasions went to Singapore and publicly displayed an unannounced handset, allowing it to be handled and photographed by the public. While you try to wrap your head around that one, let’s move on to the specs…

Aside from the 8 megapixel shooter with a shutter speed of up to 1/1000 of a second, f-stop range of 2.4-4.8 and a wide-angle lens that Nokia absurdly states is equal to that of a wide-angle 35mm SLR, the N86 8MP runs S60 3rd Edition FP2 and features a 2.6″ AMOLED QVGA display, 8 GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi and aGPS with Nokia Maps 3.0 pre-installed. Thankfully, it will indeed be available for use in North America by way of our very own tri-band HSPA model though we can’t say for sure if it will launch around the same time as the Euro model. Battery life isn’t terrible with a rated talk-time of 3.9 hours 3G / 6.3 hours EDGE and standby falling in at 11.5 hours 3G / 13 hours EDGE. Last but not least we have the dimensions and the N86 8MP a big boy indeed, coming in at 103.4mm x 51.4mm x 16.5mm and 149g. All in all it’s a handset with a great camera, above average specs and horrible display resolution – Nseries up and down. Expect to see the N86 8MP begin shipping sometime in Q2 for €375 ($474 USD) and hit the jump for some pics and the obligatory press release.

Capture your life in more detail with the Nokia N86 8MP
February 17, 2009

Barcelona, Spain – When Nokia set out to make the best mobile imaging device, it combined wide-angle Carl Zeiss optics and an 8 megapixel sensor, resulting in performance comparable to a stand alone digital camera. The Nokia N86 8MP is designed to excel in both bright and low light conditions, and it’s optimized for both video and still imaging. Its high-speed connectivity ensures easy and convenient sharing. The Nokia N86 8MP is expected to begin shipping in the second quarter of 2009 with an estimated retail price of EUR 375, before taxes and subsidies.

“People demand mobile cameras that take excellent pictures in all light conditions,” says Juha-Pekka Sipponen, Director, Nokia Nseries. “That’s why the aperture of the Nokia N86 8MP is comparable to that of a high-quality, stand-alone digital camera. Whether it’s running with the bulls in Pamplona or capturing the panoramic beauty of a sunrise over Sydney, the Nokia N86 8MP will take brilliantly clear, wide-angle images that are instantly geotagged to be uploaded onto sites like Ovi Share or Flickr.”

Easy enough for a novice to use, the Nokia N86 8MP packs enough punch to impress an experienced photographer. This includes a wide-angle Carl Zeiss Tessar lens for panoramic pictures, shorter latencies and variable aperture for super sharp photos in challenging bright and low light conditions. The fast mechanical shutter ensures pictures with less motion blur while the dual LED camera flash is powerful enough for excellent photography and video capture.

“When it comes to taking the best digital photos, it’s the quality of the lens and the sensor that count, not just the quantity of pixels. The Nokia N86 8MP is the first mobile device with variable aperture, adding to the Carl Zeiss Tessar lens for excellent results. It has never been easier to capture special moments in such a great quality,” says Helmut Heier of Carl Zeiss.

Every detail of the metal-framed Nokia N86 8MP is thoughtfully designed with photography in mind, including 8 GB of internal memory for up to 4,000 images. Like any high-end digital camera, the memory can be increased with an exchangeable 16 GB microSD card. The device also offers a bright OLED screen with scratch resistant hardened glass, easy photo management, full sync capability with a PC and TV-out support for slide shows.

Shipping with the latest version of Nokia Maps and full Ovi integration, the Nokia N86 8MP gives a personal dimension to photos and videos. People can share their location with personal content like geotagged photos. The Nokia N86 8MP comes with a built-in compass, along with an integrated 3-months license for full voice and pedestrian navigation so that happy snappers don’t lose their way when capturing life through the camera lens.

Multimedia features – music, games, video
The Nokia N86 8MP, with its integrated kick stand, is ideal for watching videos and playing games. Each Nokia N86 8MP can play up to 25 hours of music on one charge which can be enjoyed with the Nokia Bluetooth Stereo Headset BH-214 also announced today. People can build a personal music collection from the millions of tracks and playlists available from the Nokia Music Store, where available.

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