During a memorial service for Steve Jobs that took place on October 16th, his sister Mona Simpson delivered a touching eulogy that was published in today’s New York Times. Follow the link below to read it in its entirety.

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BlackBerry users have filed a class-action lawsuit against Research In Motion after the company’s massive service outage earlier this month, the Financial Post reported on Wednesday. The suit was officially filed by the Consumer Law Group in the Quebec Superior Court “on behalf of individuals who have BlackBerry smartphones and who pay for a monthly data plan but were unable to access their email, BlackBerry Messenger service (BBM), and/or Internet for the period of October 11 to 14, 2011.” It specifically focuses on “RIM’s failure to take action to either directly compensate BlackBerry users or to indirectly compensate BlackBerry users by arranging for wireless service providers to refunds their customers and to take full responsibility for these damages.” RIM’s BlackBerry outage lasted several days and spanned around the globe. The company’s co-CEO Mike Lazaridis offered a public apology and RIM has offered limited free tech support in addition to a number of free “premium apps” as compensation, however, RIM currently has no plans to reimburse customers for the downtime.

[Via Financial Post]

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Research In Motion co-CEO Mike Lazaridis confirmed on a conference call Thursday morning that all BlackBerry services have been restored globally. The co-chief had issued a video apology to customers earlier on Thursday, offering reassurances that the company was doing everything in its power to resolve service interruptions that had extended into their fourth day. A switch failure followed by a large backlog of emails is being blamed for the service outage, which affected millions of BlackBerry users across Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India, North America and South America. RIM said it is putting fixes in place to prevent a recurrence of this issue in the future, and it is currently considering how it might reimburse carriers and BlackBerry users for the disruption caused by this week’s outages.

T-Mobile intends to offer cellular signal boosters to customers looking to switch carriers due to poor reception at home, according to T-Mobile watcher TmoNews. The move appears to be part of a new program intended to slow service quality-related cancellations, which are apparently a significant problem for the nation’s No. 4 carrier. Beginning on September 7th, T-Mobile will seemingly begin offering in-home signal boosters “when a customer triggers for cancellation of service due to poor in-home coverage,” according to a purported leaked internal memo to T-Mobile staff. The memo also warns that signal boosters should never be offered to customers as an incentive when closing a sale. In order to take the signal booster, which will be free of charge, customers will need to sign a new 2-year service contract and it is unclear if they will be permitted to test the level of improvement afforded by the booster before signing.

[Via Gizmodo]

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Apple’s official iCloud.com website is now live for developers as part of a new beta phase of the service. The website is complete with web applications for Calendar, Contacts, Mail, iCloud for Pages, iWork and Find My iPhone. It also currently has a look and feel very reminiscent of iOS, which we like. We already know that Apple will offer iOS users 5GB of free iCloud storage, but the Cupertino-based company also revealed the official pricing for those who want a bit more storage. Users can sign up for an additional 10GB of storage (15GB total) for $20 per year, 20GB of additional storage for $40 per year, or 50GB of added storage for $100 per year.

Amazon announced on Thursday that it has inked an agreement with NBCUniversal to provide its subscription customers with access to 1,000 Universal Pictures movies. The deal is in addition to the online retailer’s recent agreement with CBS to offer shows such as Star Trek and Cheers to its customers. The new content includes films such as Being John Malkovich, Jetsons, Flipper, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and Billy Elliott. Amazon is largely expected to release at least one tablet in the coming months, which will provide its customers with near instant access to its Amazon Unbox, Amazon Mp3, Kindle, Cloud Music and Cloud Drive services. Comcast owns 51% of NBCUniversal while General Electric owns the remaining 49%. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. Read on for the full press release.

Amazon Announces Digital Video License Agreement with NBCUniversal Domestic TV Distribution

Deal Will Allow Amazon Prime Members to Stream Select Universal Pictures Films

SEATTLE, Jul 28, 2011 (BUSINESS WIRE) –

Amazon.com (NASDAQ:AMZN) today announced a licensing agreement with NBCUniversal Domestic TV Distribution that will allow Amazon Prime members to stream select Universal Pictures movies through Prime Instant Video. This deal with Amazon will bring the total number of Prime instant videos to more than 9,000 movies and TV shows this summer.

Amazon Prime customers will be able to instantly watch popular Universal movies at no additional cost to their membership. Universal titles available to Prime customers will include Oscar winners such as “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,” “Elizabeth,” and “Gosford Park.” For the kids, there’s “Babe,” “Flipper,” and “Jetsons – The Movie,” as well as other favorites like “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas,” “Notting Hill,” “Being John Malkovich”, “Fletch,” and “Billy Elliott.”

“We are very excited to offer Prime members popular Universal films at no additional cost,” said Cameron Janes, director of Amazon Instant Video. “Our customers love movies and now we offer them more than 2,000 movies to choose from with Prime Instant Video.”

Amazon Instant Video is a streaming video service that offers customers more than 90,000 movies and TV shows available to purchase or rent, and with this Universal content included, will offer more than 9,000 movies and TV shows included at no additional cost with an Amazon Prime membership. Customers can instantly watch movies and TV shows from Amazon on a Mac, PC or directly on TV with any of the 300 compatible devices.

Skype confirmed early Thursday morning that some users may experience connection issues signing into the service or making Skype calls. The company says it has identified the problem and has posted instructions for fixing the issue. The good news is it doesn’t look like the outage will be as massive as the one last December, which was later blamed on an overloaded cluster of support servers. If you’re experiencing issues now, hit the jump for some quick fix instructions from Skype. Just don’t blame it on Microsoft, alright?

Update: Skype says Windows users should update their client to the newest version for an immediate and easier fix. A Max OS X update is also on the way.

Windows Vista and Windows 7

1.    Close Skype.
a.    Right-click the Skype icon in the system tray (at the bottom right of the screen)
b.    Choose Quit.
2.    Ensure that “Show hidden files and folders” is switched on.
a.    Click Start, type run and press Enter.
b.    Type control folders and click OK.
c.    Select the View tab and ensure relevant entry is enabled.
3.    Locate the shared.xml file.
a.    Click Start, type run and press Enter.
b.    Type %appdata%\skype and click OK.
c.    Delete the shared.xml file.
4.    Restart Skype. The shared.xml file will be recreated.

Windows XP

1.    Close Skype.
a.    Right-click the Skype icon in the system tray (at the bottom right of the screen)
b.    Choose Quit.
2.    Ensure that “Show hidden files and folders” is switched on.
a.    Click Start and then Run…
b.    Type control folders and click OK.
c.    Select the View tab and ensure relevant entry is enabled.
3.    Locate the shared.xml file.
a.    Click Start and then Run…
b.    Type %appdata%\skype and click OK.
c.    Delete the shared.xml file.
4.    Restart Skype. The shared.xml file will be recreated.

Mac OS X

1. Quit Skype.
2. Go to the folder ~/Library/Application Support/Skype/
3. Delete the file shared.xml (it will be recreated once you open Skype again, this is fine).
4. Start Skype.

Please note that the ~ sign means your home folder. You can find your home folder by opening Finder and selecting Go > Home from the menu bar or pressing Command (Apple), Shift and H keys at the same time.

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Apple has completed a cloud-music streaming deal with record label EMI, according to a report filed by CNET. Citing multiple industry sources, the publication notes that Apple, Sony Music Entertainment and the Universal Music Group are working on agreements as well; a previous report claims that Warner Music Group and Apple already signed a cloud service agreement sometime last month. “Apple will finish behind Google and Amazon in the race to the cloud, but Apple now has the freedom to offer a range of features that rivals are prevented from rolling out because of the licensing restrictions,” continues the article. Rumors state that Apple will use a technology acquired from Lala called “scan and match.” Instead of uploading a subscribers music library to Apple’s cloud-music service, the company would scan a music collection and provide access to the master track it has a license to. Apple and the music labels in question declined to comment on the report when contacted by CNET.

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On Tuesday Slacker introduced a new subscription service called “Slacker Premium Radio.” Slacker Premium allows you to search for artists and play songs, or even full albums, on demand. Similar to Rhapsody, you can also cache songs for offline playback on your phone where a 3G or Wi-Fi signal isn’t available. The streaming radio service said that it offers 6 times the amount of music that Pandora offers, although it remains unclear how its library stacks up against Rhapsody or Microsoft’s Zune service. Slacker Premium Radio is available for the web, Android, iOS, and BlackBerry now for $10 per month.

[Via Phone Scoop]

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The city of New York has teamed up with the FCC and wireless carriers to unveil a new emergency alert system called PLAN. PLAN can notify mobile users in a specific geographic location of a hazardous or potentially life threatening situations. The new system was announced a few days ago at an event at the still-under-construction World Trade Center site, and New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg commented:

One of the many lessons that were reinforced on 9/11 is the importance of getting clear and accurate information to the public–that’s why we’ve made improving our emergency public communications a top priority. As part of this effort, we’re harnessing tech in innovative new ways, which is something I found to be effective in both business and government for improving service delivery.

The system taps into the existing Emergency Alert System that notifies the public of an emergency by radio or TV, though PLAN (Personalized Localized Alerting Network), takes emergency alerts into the modern age with a pretty smart system. With a compatible phone, your mobile device will be able to receive an emergency alert based on your geographical location. For instance, if there was an alert about an imminent threat to public safety for New Jersey (nobody likes New Jersey) and you were not in New Jersey at the time, you would not get the alert. PLAN consists of three alerts: those issues by the President, alerts warning of imminent threats, and Amber Alerts. The last two can be blocked by an individual but not an alert from the President. The system will be available in New York and Washington, D.C. by the end of the year, and will roll out nationally by April of 2012.

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Reports have begun sprouting up all over the Internet claiming that Comcast, and a handful of other ISPs, are blocking access to torrent treasure trove, The Pirate Bay. Being a Comcast customer here in Boston, I thought it might be a good time to test the reports. My findings: yup, they’re definitely blocking it. Attempts to navigate to thepiratebay.org result in a timeout error — I even switched DNS servers to make sure it wasn’t a name-server record error causing the behavior. After firing up my trusty VPN client and initiating a session, connectivity to the site was immediately restored. Comcast now has more impetus to bar connections to the torrent index — its merger with NBC Universal means that the ISP owns content that is potentially being shared illegally — but the blocking of sites that do not further a corporation’s interests is a very slippery slope. I’ve reached out to Comcast for comment and will report back with any additional information provided. Anyone else seeing this behavior? If so, drop us a comment and let us know where you are and what ISP you’re using.

UPDATE: Comcast has issued the following statement to BGR: “We’re not blocking PirateBay [The Pirate Bay] and reports online indicate users from several ISPs around the world are affected. We have FAQs about our network management practices available here.”

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French blog Consomac has discovered an interesting bit of intel inside Apple’s latest developer build of Mac OS X Lion. The information insinuates that users of the company’s MobileMe cloud service will be prompted to upgrade to an offering dubbed “Castle” at some point in the future. It is unclear if Castle will be the new name of an expanded cloud-service offering — iCloud? — or rather the name of an update to the current service. The company’s World Wide Developer Conference is set to take place next month, and we’re sure most of the details will be ironed out by then.

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Following up on a rumor from yesterday, Digital Daily‘s John Paczkowski has confirmed that Apple has purchased the domain name icloud.com — henceforth to be known as iCloud, we’re sure. “Sources in a position to know” confirmed to the publication that Swedish company Xcerion has sold the domain to Apple, although they could not confirm that the Cupertino-based company paid $4.5 million for it as was reported yesterday. Apple is widely expected to launch a cloud-based service in the very near future.

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Included in Apple’s “Q&A on Location Data” press release this morning was a rare and concrete statement that pointed to a future project the company is working on. “Apple is now collecting anonymous traffic data to build a crowd-sourced traffic database with the goal of providing iPhone users an improved traffic service in the next couple of years,” reads the release. Currently, iOS offers its users traffic-data through the bundled Google Maps application. It is unclear whether Apple is collecting this information to supplement the aforementioned offering, or — as rumors suggest — to build a new application that is less reliant on Google. Either way, it is an unusual statement from the Cupertino-based company about a future service.

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According to Peter Kafka over at All Things D, Apple’s presumed cloud-based music service will not be all that dissimilar from Amazon’s. The report details that Apple, like Amazon, will allow iTunes users to store newly purchased tracks and already-owned digital music in an online locker. Unlike Amazon, however, the Cupertino company is looking for deals with major record labels.“They’ve been very aggressive and thoughtful about it,” said an industry executive speaking with Kafka. “It feels like they want to go pretty soon.” The report also notes that the industry buy-in and licensing will allow Apple to store a single, master copy of a digital music file on its services and share that file with authorized users — making the company’s storage schema much more streamlined. Amazon’s Cloud Drive implementation is based on its S3 storage service and functions more like a cloud-based hard drive — every time a user buys a track it’s uploaded to that specific users online locker. “Sources tell me that Apple has already procured deals from at least two of the big four labels (Universal Music Group, Warner Music Group, Sony and EMI) within the last two months,” writes Kafka. “One source tells me Apple content boss Eddy Cue will be in New York tomorrow to try to finalize remaining deals.” Apple has some experience with cloud-based services as it has offered its MobileMe service — formerly iTools and .Mac — since early 2000.

UPDATE: CNET is now reporting that Apple and Warner Music Group reached a deal this afternoon: “Apple has an agreement with Warner Music Group to offer the record label’s tracks on iTunes’ upcoming cloud-music service.”

Read [All Things D] Read [CNET]