The middle of the 2010 is not a good time for struggling gadgets. Both Microsoft and Plastic Logic have put in doubt the future of two highly touted devices – one that’s already on the market and one that hasn’t seen the light of day.  

Both the Microsoft Kin phone and the Que ProReader device are on shaky ground. The Kin was launched just six weeks ago by the Redmond-based company and hoped to blend social networking with cell phones. The Que ProReader was (or is) an intriguing eReader introduced at CES this year that was specifically tailored to the business audience.

Neither company, it should be noted, has made a formal announcement specifically about their respective products' fate. Microsoft issued a statement that it had decided to focus exclusively on the upcoming Windows Phone 7 and would not be launching Kin in Europe this fall as planned. The Kin team was being integrated with the Windows Phone 7 team.

The company plans to keep working with Verizon with current phones, but it doesn’t sound like many (or any) updates are coming – and new models aren’t likely either.

It’s not a completely shocking move. The Kin has struggled to find an audience since launch, in large part due to price.

The Que’s fate came into doubt when Plastic Logic delayed it for the second time this year – declining to give a new target ship date and canceling all pre-orders. (It was originally scheduled to ship in mid-April.)  

The eReader had many intriguing qualities, including an 8.5x11 inch touchscreen and the ability to read Word and PowerPoint presentations, as well as digital books and PDFs. It could also sync with Outlook, giving users access to email and their calendar.

The hurdle – and it was a big one – was price. The device cost a whopping $650 to $800, more than five times more expensive than current eReaders – and more than many iPad models. 

For years, Hulu has been the great white whale for content streaming devices. Virtually everyone has tried to lure the service beyond its PC roots, with no success.  

That changes today, with the introduction of Hulu Plus, a new premium subscription service from the site. For $9.99 per month, subscribers will be able to access a full season’s worth of their favorite TV shows, rather than a select handful. As part of the rollout, Hulu has also announced it will begin streaming Hulu Plus on a variety of Internet-enabled TVs, Blu-Ray devices and the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 over the coming months.

The free Hulu service won’t go away, as some feared. Hulu Plus is being built on top of the existing platform.

“Hulu Plus is not a replacement for Hulu.com,” said CEO Jason Kilar in a post on the company’s blog. “Hulu Plus is a new, revolutionary ad-supported subscription product that is incremental and complementary to the existing Hulu service. … As a Hulu Plus subscriber, you’ll now also have access to back seasons or full runs of some of TV’s greatest shows. … It’s a treasure chest in the cloud for TV lovers.”  

Having to watch ads on top of the monthly subscription model may not sit well with some customers. The company is rolling the product out at a moderate pace – via invitation only - so it may be a while before it hears a conclusive reaction to the combination. 

When it comes to snagging one of those invites, by the way, Twitter followers and Facebook fans have an advantage over the rest of the population, the company says.

“We’ll be sending out as many invitations as we can each week, and as soon as we’re ready, we’ll remove the need for an invitation and start bringing in new subscribers without delay,” wrote Kilar.

The iPhone 4, which went on sale Thursday, has set a new bar for Apple products. The company sold 1.7 million units of the device in its first 72 hours of availability – a number it could have vastly exceeded if it had been able to keep up with supply.  

The sales numbers come from pre-orders and sales at Apple stores nationwide. But the company gets a second bite at the apple today, when the iPhone 4 goes on sale at AT&T stores. Demand is so strong that people lined up outside of the cell phone carrier’s retail locations this morning, so they could finally get their hands on the phone. Some lines reportedly were over 100 people long.

“This is the most successful product launch in Apple's history,” said Apple chairman Steve Jobs in a statement. “Even so, we apologize to those customers who were turned away because we did not have enough supply.”

Most AT&T stores are likely to be unable to meet demand as well – which (ironically) might make the device even more popular. (Nothing boosts demand more than being unable to acquire something in the retail world.)

The demand, to some extent, was a created event. AT&T allowed many customers to upgrade their existing iPhone without penalty, which helped frontload demand for the new version.

The original YooStar was a product that screamed to be called a game – only its creators adamantly resisted the label, saying it was an interactive social experience. Now under new management, the company is embracing its play roots and coming to consoles in the near future.  

The concept is a simple one: Movie karaoke. Users are able to take famous film scenes and swap themselves in for one or both of the actors on screen. (The well-known “it’s dark and we’re wearing sunglasses” scene from “The Blues Brothers” is a popular choice.) With the dawn of Microsoft’s Kinect controller, though, it’s easier than ever to jump in – and YooStar may finally live up to its potential. (The game will also be published for the PlayStation 3.)

The original experience was something of an onerous one. PC-only, it required you to set up a green screen in your home and read your lines off of a computer monitor (which are typically much smaller than living room TVs). The console version does away with the green screen and the bigger screen makes it much easier to read the script.

“I thought the approach on the PC was interesting, but the risk/reward of the sytem was difficult – and I thought it could be a barrier to entry,” says new YooStar president and CEO Greg Fischbach. “What was so surprising was how well it performed at retail.”

The revamped YooStar – formally called “YooStar 2” - features the expected sandbox mode, letting people jump right in and act out scenes from their favorite films (and upload them to social media sites), but it also includes a career gameplay mode that rates your performance and requires you to hit certain milestones before advancing.

Like before, the game will ship with a set number of film clips in the box – 60 this time, versus the dreadfully skimpy 12 with the original game. Over 400 more will be available for purchase – with that number expanding all the time.

We ran a review of the original YooStar game here at Variety when it first shipped - and gave it fair to middling marks. The new game still has plenty of issues with ghosting and shadows (a result, perhaps, of the green screen going away), but it already shows a lot more potential. If the tech matters can be worked out, this could be one of the games that brings the existing gamer market over to Microsoft and Sony's new motion controllers. 

If you have even a passing curiosity in the tech world, you probably heard that the iPhone hits stores today. And even if you didn’t, there’s a fair chance you passed a long line of people at your local Apple store.  

This fourth phone from the company in four years is already a phenomenon. Pre-orders were 10 times higher than previous products, including last year’s 3GS. (600,000 preorders were logged on the first day.) It got so bad, in fact, that Apple’s site had to keep moving back the ship date for people ordering online, as it was unable to keep up with demand.

The new iPhone is packed with new features, including the ability to shoot high definition video and easily edit it on the phone. The device will record video at resolutions of up to 720p, shooting at 30 fps – which could make it a possible tool for guerilla video shoots from indie filmmakers.

It’s 24 percent thinner than existing iPhones and has a screen quality that’s four times that of the 3GS, with resolutions of up to 960 x 640. It also has a better battery life.

It’s already a winner – and it follows another milestone for the company. Earlier this week, Apple announced that the iPad has passed sales of 3 million units in just 80 days. That’s twice as many as analysts were predicting the company would sell this quarter.

Listen closely and you’ll hear investors cheering. 

Oh YouTube… not you too.

The Vuvuzela – which has sprung to fame thanks to the World Cup – has popped up on the viral video service, bringing its droning angry buzz sound with it. A new button slipped onto the site’s videos recently, letting masochists add the sound to videos they watch.

To add it, look for a soccer ball icon to the right of the resolution settings. Click it and – well, brace yourself.

Need a sample? Here’s a behind the scenes video Pixar put out about the making of “Toy Story 3”. See if you can make out anything that’s being said once your click the soccer ball.

(Note: This is likely a short term promotion that may disappear with as little warning as it appeared – so enjoy it while you can.) 

With the one year anniversary of Michael Jackson’s sudden death approaching, Ubisoft announced last week that it would be releasing “Michael Jackson: The Game” later this year.  

It’s a title that makes sense, especially as the dance genre seems ready to explode, but we were curious: How did the French publisher and the King of Pop come together in the first place? It turns out to be a pretty interesting story.

It all started at E3 2009 – when Ubisoft’s management had a breakfast meeting with Jackson’s team, says Ubisoft CEO Yves Guillemot.

“They said ‘Michael wants to do a game with you. You have to come up with a concept that he likes,’” says Guillemot. “Automatically we said ‘yeah, we would love to do a deal with him – and we would love to do a dancing and singing game.”

The representatives took the idea back to Jackson, who was in rehearsals for the upcoming “This Is It” comeback tour. He liked what he heard and arranged a meeting with the Ubisoft team three weeks after the show.

Three days before that meeting, Jackson died in L.A.

Development on the game continued – even though there was no certainty that it would carry Jackson’s name. Ubisoft’s thinking was that even without the name recognition, there were the elements of a good game there.

“After a while, we were able to continue the conversations with the estate and we managed to come to an agreement,” says Guillemot.

Players will get the chance to step into Jackson’s glitter glove this holiday season. 

You’ve probably heard the story: A YouTube user creates a video. It goes viral and becomes an Internet sensation – but suddenly, it’s gone. More often than not, that’s because of copyright issues – and quite frequently, it’s specifically because the creator didn't have the proper rights to use the music he or she selected.  

Now, Rumblefish and YouTube have teamed up to give users the opportunity to license music performances for their videos, ensuring that they won’t be taken down without warning.

FriendlyMusic.com, a standalone site working in conjunction with YouTube, will sell rights to over 35,000 independent artists and labels for $1.99 each. The license is for noncommercial use only and lasts as long as the video is online.

It’s a start – but it’s a pretty shaky one. FriendlyMusic has none of the name artists that are likely to be particularly appealing to most people. Rumblefish has not signed any major labels, though it says “name artists” will be added in the months to come.

“We hope this is the first step toward a much bigger trend toward content companies being much more user friendly with their licensing models,” says Glenn Brown, head of music partnerships for YouTube. “What this does is give users upfront clarity that we haven’t seen before today. … It’s a great innovation in that regard.”

Rumblefish, which cuts deals with musicians and companies looking for background music, first partnered with YouTube in 2008 to create AudioSwap, a service that gives  users the opportunity to swap out soundtracks, with the artist getting attribution in the video - but completely replacing the existing soundtrack. The new service will offer a bit more flexibility. 

Barnes & Noble’s nook eReader has hardly been struggling, but the company’s device hasn’t exactly been top of mind for most shoppers. The iPad and Amazon Kindle tend to leap to most people’s minds first. Today, the company is taking steps to change that.  

It’s doing so in a way that makes a lot of sense: Cost. Barnes & Noble has announced a new version of the nook that eschews the 3G connection and only uses Wi-Fi. They’ve smartly priced it at $149.

To make itself more competitive in the broader market, the company has also cut the price of its Wi-Fi/3G model from $149 to $199. That’s $40 cheaper than the primary Kindle. The 3G/Wi-Fi version, which is a better apples-to-apples comparison, remains $10 more, but with the nook’s extra features (such as eBook lending to friends), it’s still a big step.

The Kindle DX remains at an astonishingly expensive $489.

This isn’t going to be enough to derail the iPad’s momentum, but let’s face it – the eReader market is quickly becoming a battle for second place. It will, however, keep Barnes & Noble in the race – and should really begin to show significant benefits around the holiday season.

(Edit: The original post should have pointed out that Amazon's $189 price for the Kindle was in reaction to Barnes & Noble's move. The device was selling for $259 as early as yesterday.)

Indie and amateur filmmakers looking to add some historical context to their works have a new outlet.  

The recently launched CriticalPast.com offers an extensive collection of royalty-free photos and video footage, most of which hasn’t been online previously. With video of everything from Coney Island in the 1890s to World War II to news reports on 1994’s Whitewater scandal, the site has things covered.

All footage can be previewed for free – and downloading a rights-free copy runs anywhere from $1.97 (for low resolution versions) to $180 for high-def clips. (Most professional clips run from $30 to $180.) All totaled, the site claims to have over 57,000 video clips available and more than 7 million still images.

It’s an interesting way for history buffs to waste time – but for filmmakers who are trying to establish the feel of a period, it could be a low cost way to incorporate that time into their product.