Well, it's Japan-only for now, but the Wii is finally starting to compete with the PS3 and Xbox 360 in the only category in which it's in third place: Media center functionality. CinemaNow, apparently, is the guinea pig of choice.

Sonic (makers of Roxio) are bringing CinemaNow to the Wii. CinemaNow, in case you've forgotten, offers streaming movies (a catalog of about 14,000), short films, and concerts for rent or purchase. They haven't gotten much of a foothold here in the States despite being around since 1999, even after being bought by Blockbuster a few years back. They've got a decent catalog, especially for new releases, and have partnered with all kinds of software, so the Wii should be no problem for them.

It might be more of a toe in the water than a real balls-out jump, but we're glad Nintendo is open to expanding the Wii's media capabilities. Remember, it's Japan-only for now, but we wouldn't be surprised to see this kind of integration appear Stateside. Press release to follow. [CinemaNow]

Fujisoft Teams with Sonic Solutions to Deliver Hollywood Hits to

Nintendo Wii Game Console

Roxio CinemaNow Begins Streaming Movies from Paramount Pictures

Novato, California (June 25, 2009) - Sonic Solutions® (NASDAQ: SNIC), today announced that it is partnering with Fujisoft Incorporated to deliver premium entertainment to the Nintendo Wii game console. Sonic's Roxio CinemaNow® will be providing Hollywood content, beginning with new releases and catalog titles from Paramount Pictures, for Fujisoft's video-on-demand service in Japan, called "Minna no Theater Wii" (Everyone's Theater Wii). The companies will continue to work together in order to expand the range of entertainment available for virtually instant streaming to the TV via the popular game console.

"Sonic is a key content partner, enabling us to greatly enrich the video entertainment options available to Wii customers," said Minoru Yoshida, Executive Managing Director, Fujisoft. "We look forward to continuing our partnership with Sonic and providing consumers trouble-free access to more great Hollywood entertainment at home."

"Increasingly, consumers are looking to access and enjoy movies via their connected entertainment devices, whether at home or on-the-go," said Alex Carloss, Executive Vice President, Digital Distribution, Paramount Digital Entertainment. "Therefore we are delighted to become the first major studio offering video-on-demand through the Nintendo Wii."

Roxio CinemaNow offers a broad selection of regularly updated premium video entertainment for rental or purchase, including new releases from major Hollywood studios often on the same day the DVD is available in stores. CinemaNow's cloud-based media services power devices from multiple manufacturers, forming a connected ecosystem that consumers can use to seamlessly choose, move and view video entertainment.

"Fujisoft is a renowned technology thought leader and major supplier of embedded software for everything from mobile devices to digital home electronics, so we are extremely pleased to be collaborating with them to bring Hollywood movies to the Wii," said Mark Ely, executive vice president of strategy, Sonic Solutions. "Thanks to this new relationship with Fujisoft, consumers now have another convenient way to access high-quality entertainment from Roxio CinemaNow."

Premium entertainment from Roxio CinemaNow is currently available on a range of devices including Blu-ray Disc players from LG Electronics, Dell PCs, and Archos portable media players. As well as being available on a range of consumer electronics, Roxio CinemaNow is currently powering internet movie delivery for Blockbuster and is instantly accessible through Bestbuy.com.

Simple, dock-form iPod projectors have typically been either a) imaginary lust objects or b) forsaken concepts. Landing next month, the iJector is neither of those things, in that it's going be to available. Unfortunately, we've already spotted a few dealbreakers.

In the most abstract sense, the iJector is fine: it can project videos at a reasonable brightness to diagonal sizes of 50 inches, plays back amplified stereo audio, and has a proper "made for iPod" device certification. It'll work with just about any video-enable iProduct—possibly, though not definitely—excluding the iPhone 3GS.

Now, look closer. That (up to) 50 inches of projected imagery will be resolved at a comically low 557

Following a small software update last week, a swath of Garmin's product line started exhibiting some troubling symptoms, like freezing, constant update prompts, and death. Now, Garmin has apologized, rolled out a firmware fix, and will repair bricked units.

The first round of fixes, which are available in Garmin's WebUpdater app, will remedy signal acquisition, freezing and update prompt problems for of the Nuvi 7x5 series of navigators. Updates for the similarly afflicted 800 series, n

Listen up, porn purveyors of the world: This is the first iPhone application to contain bare boobs. The $1.99 app for iPhone and iPod touch only showed girls in lingerie and bikinis until now, according to its developer:

We uploaded nude topless pics today. This is the first app to have nudity.

This is not just an application that downloads softcore content from the Web, bypassing Apple's censorship. There is no censorship here, as this is truly an Apple approved app "rated 17+" for "frequent/intense sexual content or nudity" and "frequent/intense mature/suggestive theme."

My fellow citizens, in case you didn't already noticed with the Debby-Approved™ iPhone vibrator app, a New Era has begun. Expect Apple application business to explode as the Hustlers, Vivids, and Playboys of this world invade the biggest smartphone application store in the planet. [iTunes App Store via Macenstein]

Listen up, porn purveyors of the world: This is the first iPhone application to contain bare boobs. The $1.99 app for iPhone and iPod touch only showed girls in lingerie and bikinis until now, according to its developer:

We uploaded nude topless pics today. This is the first app to have nudity.

This is not just an application that downloads softcore content from the Web, bypassing Apple's censorship. There is no censorship here, as this is truly an Apple approved app "rated 17+" for "frequent/intense sexual content or nudity" and "frequent/intense mature/suggestive theme."

My fellow citizens, in case you didn't already noticed with the Debby-Approved™ iPhone vibrator app, a New Era has begun. Expect Apple application business to explode as the Hustlers, Vivids, and Playboys of this world invade the biggest smartphone application store in the planet. [iTunes App Store via Macenstein]

This flute is the first musical instrument in the history of humankind—one of the first examples of technology—which has surprised everyone demonstrating that music already existed 35,000 years ago. Stone Age Rock Band, here we go.

It was made from the bone of a giant vulture during the Upper Paleolithic. Found in Ach Valley, in the south of Germany, the 8.7-inch long, one-inch diameter instrument has five holes, with two V-shaped notches carved on one side of it. This was the part in which the musician put the lips to blow, according to University of Tubingen's professor Nicholas Conard, the lead author of the discovery. The other end is broken just on the fifth hole.

Also according to the study, it was capable of producing a note range similar to those of modern flutes. Conard also points that while music probably didn't have much to do in the success of the first modern humans, it could have given them an advantage against the Neanderthals:

Upper Palaeolithic music could have contributed to the maintenance of large social networks, and thereby have helped facilitate the demographic and territorial expansion of modern humans compared to the more culturally conservative and isolated Neanderthals

[AFP]

Good old Ray Bradbury (author of Fahrenheit 451, among other sci-fi classics) let loose with a little bit of the crazy when speaking of Yahoo! and the Internet as a whole. He classified the Internet as "meaningless" and "distracting."

Bradbury was speaking in defense of public libraries, and recounted an anecdote of Yahoo! asking him if one of his works could be made available on the Internet. Bradbury's reply? "To hell with you. To hell with you and to hell with the Internet." He further elaborated, "It's distracting. It's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere."

Old people are funny sometimes. [NY Times, image also via NY Times]

Famed Beatles produces and founding member of the Horrible Mugshot Hall of Fame Phil Spector is beginning to serve his 19-year prison sentence for murder, and made a specific request to help him pass the time: An iPod.

Prisoners at Spector's new forced California residence are permitted certain objects, often musical instruments or personal mementos. Spector requested an iPod and a TV, though interestingly not any musical instruments; his wife says he's not likely to want to jam with the other prisoners. We'd love to get a look at Spector's iPod, as long as it's away from Spector himself. The dude is more than a little creepy. [NME, thanks Brian Ashcraft!]

...Steve Jobs' Liver on eBay...A 1TB Xbox...More iPod Touch 3 Case Sightings...Space Shuttle In Pounds and Inches...

• Someone tried to sell what they claimed was Steve Jobs' liver on eBay. "Apple fans in Tennessee were camped outside the hospital and somehow managed to intercept this valuable piece of bio-waste." It was a clever spiel, but as Sean Fallon would say, it was not safe for lunch. eBay yanked the listing, but we screengrabbed it first.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of Steve's health—and who isn't?—some jagoff marketing professor decided to accuse him of illegally withholding information from stockholders. Doesn't he know that SEC laws aren't real laws? He would if he was a law professor or a finance professor. Besides, the smartest harrumphers did their harrumphing back in January. [Cult of Mac]

• A UK site ran a "rumour" with absolutely no attempt at citing a source, suggesting that the next Xbox 360 package, whenever it appears, will have a 1TB drive. So it's really just speculation, and kinda boneheaded speculation at that. Sure, there will be 2.5" 1TB drives in 2010, but it's not going to be the first thing on the Xbox team's wishlist. Or the third or the fifth. [TechRadar UK]

• Remember that iPod Touch 3 case from last night's Remainders? It surfaced again. On some other Chinese accessory site. In red! That must make it real. Or still not. Fun fact: If you save the picture yourself, you can use Photoshop's Hue/Saturation tool to make it any color you want! [DealExtreme]

• Turns out, the reason NASA still uses pounds and inches to measure stuff on the Space Shuttle is that it would cost about $370 million, potentially as much as an entire shuttle mission, to convert everything over. (Incidentally, the Space Shuttle with its accompanying fuel tank and boosters weighs 4.5 million pounds at launch and measures about 2200 inches top to bottom, and to this day nobody can say how many metric kilothingies that is.) [Slashdot]

HTC's been known to slap a polished finish on an existing smartphone OS, first with WinMo's TouchFlo and now Android's Sense. But fret not, HTC G1 and/or Magic/MyTouch owners: HTC's CEO hinted that Sense is coming to existing Android phones.

This is unconfirmed for now, but Peter Chou, the CEO of HTC, reportedly noted that "HTC sense will be available on some other existing devices," after his announcement of the Hero. HTC's existing Android devices are, using the American names for the sake of ease, the G1 and myTouch 3G, which share similar enough hardware that if one received the upgrade, the other likely would as well. Again, this is unconfirmed, but we were pleased enough with Sense that we'd be pretty excited if the rumor was true. [Pocket Lint]