Nintendo has announced the launch of its WiiWare game download service for the Nintendo Wii. This launch comes almost a year after Nintendo announced the WiiWare game development platform last June. If you’ve hooked up your Wii game console to the Internet you can connect to the Wii shop channel, buy some Wii points and start downloading some new games online.

The Wii points exchange rate is at $1 USD to 100 Wii points and the online games run from 500 to 1,500 Wii points each with six games initially available. The service offers games built my independent developers that they can then post and sell through the Wii Shop Channel. The initial game lineup is different in the U.S. than those launching in Japan with the single exception of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As a King, which launches in both.

Here it is. RIM has finally taken the wraps off the Blackberry 9000 we’ve been hearing rumors about and officially launched the Blackberry Bold. Reportedly the latest smartphone from Research In Motion gets the “Bold” name from the exceptionally crisp and bright display that comes with it.

That display comes as a 480×320 pixel, 65,000 color VGA screen that according to Crave is better than anything else they have ever seen. The other most notable feature is the wireless connection options available on this guy. It’s a GSM 850/900/1800/1900 phone and has HSDPA/UMTS (850/1900/2100) support which has never before been available on a Blackberry, and apparently they’ve done it right without sacrificing battery life in the process. Let’s also not forget that the Blackberry Bold is also connected via Wi-Fi (a/b/g), Bluetooth 2.0 and GPS.

Microsoft has put on an announcement through one of its many channels that Office 2007 owners can expect Microsoft Office 2007 Service Pack 1 to show up in their Windows Automatic Updates sometime on or after June 16. The Office 2007 SP1 has been available since December of last year but Microsoft has been careful about forcing it into the general population of Office users.

As they had done with Office 2003, they are giving a 30 day warning/notice that the automatic update is coming. They also said that not everyone will see it at the same time since they will rolling it out a little at a time to be sure that their servers can handle the download requests.

If you have a PSP slim and you’re up to date with the firmware you may have been thinking about taking advantage Skype through the Wi-Fi connection on your PSP. One of the hurdles might have been getting your hands on a headset to use with the Skype feature, which seems to have taken an awful long time. In fact, you may remember that the Japan launch was delayed due to something wrong with the headset microphone.

Well, now SCEA has finally come around and yesterday launched the Skype compatible headset to make it easier to get some free VoIP calls from your PSP – one more thing that makes that portable game console just plain cool. The headset comes with stereo sound and a microphone for $30, which is more than we had heard, but at least its available now.

PSP Skype Headset via PSPFanBoy

This week EA announced the release of Boom Blox for the Nintendo Wii, the first game created by the company in partnership with Steven Spielberg. The game takes players through a destructive path of blowing their way through puzzling challenges in 5 different “worlds” as a single player, co-op or multi-player modes for up to 4 players at a time.

The game features more than two dozen “blocky” characters, each with their own personality and of course with Steve Spielberg involved there ended up being a lot of “explosive action” throughout the game. Through funny gestures by the characters and using some potentially destructive tools in the game such as bowling balls and fire hoses players can bust their way through the challenges.

Iomega has released a new drive called the Camo eGo hard drive for those that may want to stand out from the crowd at the office but blend in with the forest. The new eGo portable hard drive is powered solely by USB 2.0 and has a very decent capacity of 250GB inside its camouflaged frame.

The drive is also surrounded with a black “Power Grip” to help keep a hand-hold on it, but if you do end up losing your grip you can hope that the DropGuard technology does all that is says for drops up to 5 feet. The eGo Camo Portable drive is compatible with Windows Vista/XP/2000 and Max OS X.

We had already seen some iPhone price cuts overseas for what many felt was to help clear out the non-3G inventory of phones in Europe, but now it appears that O2 has complete run out of stock with the 8GB and 16GB iPhones. We’ve still seen no official word on the release date, price or specs of a 3G iPhone but we can’t imagine it could be far off now that the inventory in the UK is depleted.

O2

According to a report in the NYT, Grand Theft Auto IV reached sales of over $500 million in its first seven days on the market. Take Two Interactive said the game sold approximately 6 million copies worldwide since its launch last Tuesday.

The numbers significantly exceeded expectations of many analysts who expected to see around 5 million copies sold in the first two weeks. Take Two also stated that 3.6 million of those copies were sold the first day of the launch globally for around $310 million in sales. This number even exceeds the numbers we saw for the Halo 3 launch for both first day and first week sales.

Apple has recently announced the beta release of the 5th version of the iPhone SDK, which contains the framework, tools and compilers for making your own custom applications for Apple’s iPhone operating system. It provides also provides a simulator to run your apps on, which represents both the iPhone and the iPod touch. There doesn’t appear to be a lot of changes to this kit other than bringing it up to the latest OS version, but the download is free and there’s no sense working with the older version.

iPhone Developers

Unlikely to bring the fanfare that the Canadian iPhone launch did, or even Zune’s own U.S. launch over a year ago, but nevertheless the Zune is launching in Canada on June 13. We had heard that the Canadians were going to get the media player from Microsoft on their own store shelves sometime in the near future, but no one had put a date on it until now. Microsoft is going to launch the 4, 8 and 80 GB capacity players with prices from $140 to $250 Canadian dollars. The launch will be limited to models in red, black and pink colors, only.

via Engadget

Those looking for a nice alternative to the iPhone may have found Apple’s biggest competitor in the smartphone market with HTC’s recent launch of the Touch Diamond. The Diamond is the latest in High Tech Computer’s line of Touch smartphones, and looks to be the best one yet.

The Touch Diamond runs on Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional and in addition to the many common features of popular smartphones it has some custom applications built in for watching YouTube video and taking advantage of Google’s mapping service. To top it off, HTC has included a 2.8-inch VGA touchscreen which they claim brings near print quality viewing.

Verizon told us they would be getting the Blackberry Curve some time in May and they’ve come through on their promise. It’s now only a week into May and Verizon is already showing the Curve available on their site, priced at $219.99 with a two year contract and $100 online discount. This model doesn’t have the Wi-Fi or the pale gold color like we’ve seen at T-Mobile, but also comes a little bit cheaper.

For those sticking it out with the device, Microsoft released a whole mess of new features today with the Zune version 2.5 software update. The new feature set is led by the Zune Card, TV downloads and a number of smaller, but highly requested items.

A subscription with the Zune Card allows you to pick up copies of favorite songs from your best buddies who also have a Zune. If you don’t subscribe you can still see others Zune Card information but you’ll have to pay to listen to their favorite tracks.

Good news for more Apple fans around the world as Vodafone announced today that it has made an agreement with Apple to bring the iPhone to ten new markets sometime yet this year. Vodafone says it will offer the iPhone to its customers for purchase and use on the Vodafone network in Australia, the Czech Republic, Egypt, Greece, Italy, India, Portugal, New Zealand, South Africa and Turkey.

Vodafone

Kensington unveiled a couple of new battery pack/charger combos on Monday for use with Apple’s iPhone and iPods. They didn’t waste any time thinking up snappy names in this case however as the two new products simply go by “Battery Pack and Charger” and “Mini Battery Pack and Charger”. Both work with the iPhone and any current iPod models (except the 3rd generation iPod).

The larger of the two retails for $69.99 and measures not a lot smaller than the iPhone itself at 4.0″L X 0.37″H X 2.2″W, but promises to extend the life of the iPhone for up to 6 hours of talk time, 100 hours of music or 21 hours of video. It charges through a USB connection and can connect to the iPhone or an iPod through the dock port, powering and charging it simultaneously. It also sports a cool looking little LED battery meter.