July 10 - 10:00am EDT   Both Sprint and Verizon have said late Thursday that they're working to add Wi-Fi to their smartphones to address a significant gap in their networks. Talking to FierceWireless, Sprint business product marketing head Jeff Clemow says his carrier decided months ago to require that all its smartphones use Wi-Fi and will soon put the requirement into effect. As a consequence, a 2010 version of the BlackBerry Tour will add Wi-Fi to the existing EVDO Rev A-based 3G it depends on so far; it only ships without due to a need to get the Tour to stores. [full story]

July 10 - 09:20am EDT   Sony will update its VAIO P series netbook with the release of a second-generation model sometime this fall, most likely around October or November, the company recently revealed. The new model is expected to address the current version's slow boot times, which could range up to 90 seconds in the entry-level models. The news came from a Sony representative at a launch event for the VAIO NW notebook and VAIO W netbook. [full story]

July 10 - 09:00am EDT   Rogers today became the first Canadian cell carrier with a subsidized 3G netbook. Its version of the HP Mini 110 has a built-in 7.2Mbps HSPA modem that connects to the provider's network but is is otherwise close to the factory version of the regular netbook, which has the by now ubiquitous 1.6GHz Atom processor, 1GB of RAM, 160GB hard drive and Windows XP Home install common to most mini notebooks. No custom software has been added. [full story]

July 10 - 08:45am EDT   T-Mobile UK today confirmed through its Twitter feed that the HTC Hero will come to its network, rebadged as the G2 Touch. The carrier doesn't detail how if at all the phone will change from the reference version, but it does say the G2 Touch will ship in July and come for free with a £40 per month, 18-month contract. Orange UK has already said it would offer the phone this month for free on a two-year plan. [full story]

July 10 - 07:35am EDT   Intel today is now claimed to be in formal discussions with Google over backing Android for Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs). Although Intel has its own Moblin Linux platform, those firm making the handhelds in Taiwan say Intel wants to be the choice of hardware for any operating system, including Android. It believes creating a healthy hardware and software environment will help the wider industry, according to DigiTimes. [full story]

July 09 - 11:30pm EDT   Spiderweb Software has announced Avernum 6, the final game in its role-playing series. Set in the world of Avernum, the game takes players to an underground world where a nation of people live inside large tunnels and caverns far below the planets surface. The final chapter has the world of Avernum in chaos, where the mushrooms have withered and died and the people are suffering from hunger. In the midst of the problem the reptilian Slithzerikai have emerged from the low tunnels to battle the weakened people. [full story]

July 09 - 10:30pm EDT   Microsoft tonight launched the public version of Silverlight 3, its animation and video plugin for the web. The rival to Flash is the company's first to use hardware graphics acceleration both for 3D and for offloading the work of decoding video from the main processor. Regardless of graphics power, the update is also the first to promise a near-seamless HD video experience: a "smooth streaming" technique that automatically lowers the bitrate to start playback immediately and quickly brings it back up to provide the maximum quality the connection allows. [full story]

July 09 - 07:55pm EDT   GenArts has announced a monthly rental option for its flagship plugin effects, Sapphire. The plugins can be rented for $170 per month; far less than the $1699 purchase cost of the plug-in for After Effects or Final Cut Pro. This option is designed to allow artists who work on a project basis to avoid purchasing the costly full license of the Adobe After Effects plug-in or an Apple Final Cut Pro FxPlug. GenArts allows rental users to apply up to two months of rental fees as credit towards purchasing a permanent license of Sapphire. [full story]

July 09 - 07:25pm EDT   Newmium has announced yet another internet browser, the Newmium iXBrowser. The browser boasts compatibility with all versions of HTML 4 defined by the World Wide Web Consortium. Offering platform-independent compatibility with all versions of HTML 4 allows website developers to create more consistent cross-platform designs. The Newmium iXBrowser offers compatibility with various operating systems including Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, WinCE, and FreeBSD in 32-bit and 64-bit versions. Newmium claims that the browser not only maintains the same interface throughout each system, but will also display sites the same regardless of operating system. [full story]

July 09 - 07:05pm EDT   Creaceed has released the CeedVocal SDK, which allows developers to build speech recognition into their iPhone applications. The CeedVocal SDK is based on acoustic models developed in English, French and German, providing voice activity detection for each of those languages. The software development kit includes a "phonetizer" that recognizes many common words and up to 5000 developer-defined words. [full story]