iPhone OS 3.1 is official, available today

Apple just announced iPhone OS 3.1, which includes Genius recommendations for the App Store. It's available today for free to iPhone users and iPod touch users with 3.0. Developing...

iTunes 9 bringing iTunes LP functionality, 'beautiful new look'

Ready to pay more for the same music? Good! We've just spotted some new "Deluxe Version" albums in iTunes, which apparently are part of the "iTunes LP" experience in the upcoming iTunes 9, if the album blurbs are to be believed. The albums pack in bonus material like art, videos and additional recordings. Sounds just like Cocktail to us, and we're sure Apple will be explaining it all soon enough.

Update: It's more or less official now, complete with a non-working "Download iTunes 9" button and everything. Apple's mainly touting the new interface for the store in this blurb, but we know it's just a front for taking more of our hard-earned cash and putting it in the hands of starving musicians. The nerve.

New features mentioned:

• Improved store navigation, including persistent navigation menu.
• Full window iTunes store. For times when that sidebar is just too much.
• Previews from anywhere in the store -- don't have to drill down to preview.
• iTunes LP includes lyrics, liner notes, video, photos and "more."
• iTunes Extras. It's like DVD extras, but with iTunes. Not clear if it includes director's commentaries, but let's hope.

Update 2: It's now official, and Apple has fleshed out some more functionality.

• Genius Mixes. It's like Genius Playlists, but it plays forever like a radio station.
• App management, letting you set up and arrange your home screens on the iPhone and iPod touch. You can drag and drop to move certain apps or whole pages of apps.
  
• Home sharing enables file transfers between up to five local computers of songs, videos and even apps.

Chinese Scientists Record 40 Minutes of Clear UFO Footage

According to Chinese TV, Chinese scientists at the Purple Mountain Observatory in Nanjing are claiming that they have recorded clear UFO footage while observing total solar eclipse on July 22. Observatory director Ji Hai-sheng says they need to study it:

Purple Mountain Observatory and Chinese Academy of Sciences said that during the July 22 total solar eclipse observation, China had discovered near the sun, by observing staff, an unidentified object, it's physical nature remains to be further studied. Currently manpower is being organized to deal with this data, complete the data analysis and reveal the scientific results and this will take at least one year's time to finalize.

According to Chinese television, students captured the phenomenon with their cameras—shown in the article—claiming that the object appeared as a "glowing blue sphere," and then changed its shape repeatedly.

We will have to wait until the Purple Mountain Observatory releases the actual video, as well as their conclusions. Until then, I am going to go with the standard a) venus lights, b) morning gas, c) dim-sum advertising blimp, d) all of the above.

Disney To Acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 Billion

According to the New York Times (via Topless Robot), Disney has agreed to acquire Marvel Entertainment for $4 billion in cash and stock. This deal gives Disney rights to over Marvel’s 5,000+ characters, not to mention control over Marvel’s licensing, publishing, and film production capabilities. This acquisition is interesting for many reasons, not the least of which is that one year ago Marvel re-upped its contract with Paramount to distribute its next five films, including Iron Man 2, The Avengers, and Thor, among others. Furthermore, there are a plethora of loose ends, licensing-wise, that Disney will have to contend with before this deal starts to show its true worth.

Undoubtedly, the effects of this massive shift in the entertainment industry will be felt for quite some time. This is one of the largest acquisitions in Disney’s recent history, surpassed only by its acquisition of Pixar for $7.4 billion in 2006 (and I think it’s safe to say that deal had a pretty significant impact on both companies involved).

[Via /Film]

AT&T rolling out MMS to iPhone on September 25, tethering "in the future"

AT&T has just announced that MMS -- a much-ballyhooed feature of iPhone OS 3.0 -- will finally be hitting AT&T on September 25. There's still no date for tethering, though the company is holding the line that it'll be offered "in the future." Expanding on the logic behind the tethering delay, they're saying that "by its nature, this function could exponentially increase traffic on the network, and we need to ensure that some of our current upgrades are in place before we can deliver the expanded functionality with the excellent performance that customers expect." We're no network engineers, but "exponentially increase traffic" and "AT&T" are two things we don't typically like to hear in the same sentence -- let's hope the 850MHz, 7.2Mbps, and backhaul upgrades they're cranking on right now go a long way toward sorting that out. As for MMS, they're acknowledging that the release "does indeed fall a few days past the official end of summer," arguing that their support of more iPhone customers than any other carrier in the world made a positive launch experience a bit of a challenge. Of course, virtually every other phone AT&T sells (and has sold for the past several years) supports the same tech, so this feels like a pretty active admission that iPhone users blaze through data-rich features at a pace that the carrier has been ill-equipped to handle.

[Via Engadget]