Apple may be preparing to purchase Anobit, an fabless Israeli firm that specializes in flash storage solutions for mobile and enterprise markets. The Cupertino-based company could be willing to spend between $400 million and $500 million on Anobit, Calcalist reported Tuesday. Anobit’s website says its memory signal processing (MSP) technology “significantly improves endurance, performance and cost of flash storage products and systems.” Apple is reportedly already an Anobit customer for it...

Pogoplug on Monday announced its new Pogoplug Cloud storage service that provides 5GB of free storage for new customers. Pogoplug will allow you to store music, movies and photos in the cloud and then stream the files down to your Android or iOS device. Like iCloud, Pogoplug Cloud also has an auto-upload feature that automatically sends new files to your Pogoplug account. We gave the service a quick test early Monday morning and liked that it took just a few seconds to get started. Once we registered and down...

During the AsiaD conference in Hong Kong on Wednesday, Google’s Android boss Andy Rubin said his company’s upcoming music store “will have a little twist.” Rubin confirmed Google “won’t just be selling 99 cent tracks,” which suggests it might take a subscription-based approach, or even offer ad-based free listening as Spotify does. Google Music beta already allows users to store up to 20,000 in the cloud. Reportedly, Google is only close to sealing a deal with EMI snd...

If you’re currently an active MobileMe subscriber, Apple may soon offer you an incentive to move all of your data over to its new iCloud service. From the day the service goes public until June 30th of next year users who move their data to iCloud will receive 25GB of free iCloud storage for as long as their iCloud account is active, 9to5 Mac reported on Monday. Every iCloud user will receive 5GB free from the get-go and and an additional 10GB will cost $20 per year. An extra 20GB will cost $40 per year...

Japanese blog Macotakara.jp is reporting from parts makers in Asia that Apple’s upcoming MacBook Air refresh, expected in the next two weeks, will use super-speedy 400Mbps NAND flash storage chips. In addition to being incredibly fast — even faster that the current MacBook Air solution, which uses an mSATA connector to connect the SSD to the motherboard — these new NAND flash storage chips would be soldered directly to the motherboard, bypassing any connector. If true, this new change would result i...

Apple’s senior manager in charge of its new iCloud solution has left the company to join online healthcare startup HealthTeacher. John Herbold held senior positions on the iCloud team and the MobileMe team before that, and he worked on a number of other projects while at Apple. Herbold joins HealthTeacher as Vice President of Product, focusing on digital engagement. “John has a proven background of engaging audiences across the devices we use to learn,play, socialize and be entertained,” said Sco...

The DROID Incredible 2 recently landed on Verizon Wireless, and it has some tough shoes to fill. When the original launched, it was BGR’s favorite Android phone to date despite stiff competition from the Motorola DROID, which launched at the same time. The DROID Incredible 2 packs some decent hardware, like a 1GHz processor, an 8-megapixel camera capable of recording 720p video, and more, but its specs — and data speeds — don’t match those of phones at the higher end of Verizon’s portfo...

mSpot just took the wraps off of its new Radio Spotter Beta app for Android, which will allow users to listen to their own cloud-based music, as well as tunes from streaming radio stations. It works like this: you can match any song you’re playing from your own collection to a radio station to continue playing similar music, or you can select a specific radio station based on genre directly from the application itself. There’s even a new mSpot Music Android application with the built-in Radio Spot...

Google announced and launched its Music Beta service on Tuesday, and record execs aren’t too pleased with its decision to move ahead before reaching a deal. “People are pissed,” one record label exec told Hollywood Reporter, which explained in one article why it took so long for Google and the music industry to reach an agreement. Reportedly, Google offered some labels larger advances than others, which resulted in some firms holding out for more money. Similarly, the music industry is conce...

After years of waiting from BlackBerry users, the ultimate BlackBerry has finally been made official. We broke the story on the next generation BlackBerry Bold 9900/9930, and we even spent some one-on-one time with it, but there is nothing like an official announcement, right? As far as specs, it’s everything we reported it would be — 1.2GHz processor, 2.8-inch capacitive touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, 5 megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording, 8GB of onboard storage, and more. As far as ava...

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 t...

According to the latest Internet rumor, Apple’s presumed cloud-based service may be getting a familiar moniker. Blog GigaOM is reporting that the Cupertino company has purchased the domain name iCloud.com from Swedish company Xcerion. We wouldn’t be surprised if the rumor turned out to be true, Apple has had a love affair with the vowel “i” since the early 1990′s, although, as TechCrunch points out, the iPad was thought to be called the iSlate at one point. The report states that...

Today’s one of those days when we wish we lived in South Korea. Samsung’s hot new Galaxy S II — which packs a dual-core Orion CPU, an 8 megapixel camera, a 4.27-inch Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen, and more — hits the South Korean market on all three of the country’s wireless carriers. Samsung shipped more than 14 million of the first generation Galaxy S devices, and it hopes to sell at least 10 million Galaxy S II handsets as the device makes its debut in 120 countries and on 140 differe...

Might as well let other major mobile operating system manufacturers in on the location-tracking scandal fun, no? While Apple, and to a much lesser extent Google, have come under fire for their phone location storage practices, other major OS manufacturers have been silent. We’re not sure being the “squeaky wheel” would pay dividends in this instance. That hasn’t stopped the media from asking, however, and CNET posed the question to Microsoft: what do you track?“Microsoft says it...