In a break from tradition we’ll start with the bad. Virgin Media announced this week that it would be  snooping into 40% of it’s customers traffic using a technology called CView, which conducts Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) in an effort to determine the rate of music piracy across it’s network. Yes that’s right, Virgin is going to examine everything that goes to and from your computer if you happen to be in the lucky 40%. What does this really mean? Well if you’re pirating music across an unencrypted network like BitTorrent, VM will know and what they’ll do about it is unknown. Virgin are set to launch a music service in conjunction with Universal and their official line is that they want to gauge piracy levels. I don’t know about you, but piracy or not, I don’t want people snooping at everything I do or send across the Internet including email, IM, Waves and surfing. Maybe it’s time to protect yourself by changing providers or using a SSL tunnel to a proxy you trust.

Well that’s the bad out the way, how about the ugly? Are you living off Daddy’s trust fund or have recently come into a load of money? Do you have £1.92m burning a hole in your pocket? Well I’ve got just the thing for you. How about a solid gold iPhone encrusted with 136 flawless diamonds just in the front bezel? The iPhone 3GS supreme features a very rare, single cut, 7.1 carat diamond for a home button and 53 flawless diamonds making up the Apple logo on the back. Nice. But I think I’ll stick with a vanilla 3GS thanks, all that gold can’t be good for reception.

On with the good and more Apple rumours this week. Apple names it’s hardware via strict numerical numbering system, a single generation number followed by a decimal iteration number. For instance the current generation of Macbook Pro is  5,3 for the mid-2009 15″ model. An iPhone identified as 3,1 has been spotted by a software analytics program operating in the San Francisco area. The current iPhone 3GS carries an iPhone 2,1 identifier and it was spotted in much the same way in testing in October 2008, eight months before it’s eventual release. What does this mean? Well, we already knew Apple was likely to release a new iPhone in just over 6 months time, but the 3,1 identifier indicates that Apple will consider this a major hardware refresh. Whether this means a move to a PA Semi ARM chip, an OLED screen or a forward facing camera for mobile iChat is anyone’s guess. Others have speculated that the 3,1 moniker actually refers to the iTablet/iSlat/iPad, which is entirely possible as current rumours suggest that the fabled device will use the iPhone OS rather than a fully fledged OSX. I guess time will tell but my money is on another iPhone iteration.

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Speaking of video calling, Fring bought one-way video calling to the iPhone this week with an app update. While one-way video is not particularly useful, other so you with the iPhone can see the other person, given hardware limitations, it’s better than nothing right? Maybe this’ll be more useful with the iPhone 4th Gen?

How about a solar powered aeroplane? Not possible you say, can’t generate enough juice from the sun to fly a plane. Well if you meant something like a 747 you’d be spot on, no chance with current solar energy tech, but how about something with the wing span of an Airbus but only the weight of a car? Well a one Captain Piccard (I kid you not), having successfully conducted runway testing has managed the first ever solar powered flight. OK, they only managed a 28 second flight at the dizzying height of one meter for 350 meters, but it’s a start right? Whether this proof of concept will ever produce something that you can actually use to fly to somewhere exotic it’s unlikely without a huge leap in photovoltaic tech, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a fantastic achievement. Next step for Bertrand Piccard and his team is a 36 hour day-night-day flight, so best of luck chaps, I’m routing for you.

In other news this week, Google has killed off development of Gears now that HTML 5 is making headway. Google’s plan for Gears was to introduce the concept of rich, offline webapps like Google Docs, Wave and Gmail and force adoption of a standard that did away with the need for plug-ins like HTML5. Now that it’s mission is complete, Gears will cease development but be maintained for the near future, as more and more browsers become HTML5 compliant.

Facebook also broke news this week that it’s reached an enormous 350m users, that’s more people than many small countries, and that it’s beefing up it’s privacy measures to help keep it’s users safe. Facebook also said that regional networks are going the way of the Dodo as they’re no longer functional due to the total number of users. Regional networks were designed to help people find each other and allow only certain people to see your information. Now that some regional networks have in excess of 1m people in them, they no longer fulfil the purpose they were designed to do. Fair enough I say, it’s not like I absolutely need regional networks with all the other work, college and misc networks available to connect to friends.

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With Google about to make the PND market pretty mixed up with it’s free turn-by-turn navigation software for Android and others, GPS manufacturers like TomTom have been searching for weapons to fend off the Google invasion. Step forward Voice Skins, the folks behind other amusing celebrity voice packs like Homer Simpson, with what could be the best voice to hit your TomTom, Snoop Dogg. Fancy Mr. Dogg on your TomTom? Well for the bargain price of $12.95 you too can get Snoop to guide you to your destination. Eat that Google!

That’s your lot for this week, check back next Friday for more cherry picked stories from the tech world for your reading pleasure.

It’s that time again, time to review some of my cherry picked smaller stories of the week for those that might have missed them. This time round we’ve got an Adobe Flash update that doesn’t suck. OK, sucks a little less. Flash 10.1 beta was unleashed to the willing public with GPU video acceleration for certain Nvidia cards on Windows, but perhaps more importantly reduced CPU usage across all platforms. What does this mean? YouTube that doesn’t make your Mac or PC red-line that’s what. A step in the right direction Adobe, maybe Flash isn’t a lost cause after all. I’ve certainly seen some improvements on my netbook and Mac.

Talking of YouTube, Google introduced skippable pre-roll adverts this week to YouTube in an effort to finally make some meaningful money from its enormous purchase. It’s not the first time Google’s tried pre-roll adverts however, with previous efforts seeing a 70% bail rate before the video actually starts. Google’s hoping with skippable 15 second ads it will be able to see which ads fit and are acceptable with which content. Google also started the roll out of 1080p video for all the content that’s been uploaded in full HD. Couple this with the improvements Adobe is making to Flash and you might even be able to watch them without having to pack a Core i7!

Swindon is set to become the UK’s first free Wifi town rocking free WiFi across the entire city. Dubbed the ‘Swindon Mesh’, the £1 million wireless network will allow all residents completely free access to the internet. Residents who want greater speed, ‘up to 20Mbits’, will be able to pay Digital City UK for higher bandwidth, but a vast majority should be set with the free service. Those passing through will also be able to hook up via a PAYG scheme in which prices have yet to be set, let’s hope they’re at least competitive. Work starts December and Digital City UK is expecting to roll out the service to all Swindon residents come April 2010. Great, but sorry Swindon I still don’t want to live there, do you?

Talking of Wifi towns, the MPAA shut one down. Yes that’s right, the MPAA shut down a whole town’s municipal wifi after it detected a single copyright infringement. That’s what happens when you give companies the power to crush the little guy without due process or trial. So, if you’re expecting to connect for free in Coshocton, Ohio, sorry you’re out of luck for the foreseeable future just like the 100 or so active residents.

So we’ve seen the Beatles unleash music on apple shaped USB drives, but how about movies on flash drives? OK, you’ve got the odd movie distribution service via SD card, but I think novalty shaped flash drives with your favourite movies on them tops a lowly SD card. Yes that’s right, I’m talking about JJ Abram’s Star Trek hitting the small screen courtesy of some fancy flash drives. The movie comes pre-loaded onto a flash drive shaped like the new Star Trek logo so once you’re done watching the movie you can proudly display it as a piece of Star Trek memorabilia next to your model of the Enterprise and Warf’s head. Michael Bay fans haven’t been left out either with Transformers 2 set to follow soon on appropriately shaped flash drives. Yours for the bargain of £17.99 a pop. Think I’ll stick with the Blu-Ray but maybe that’s just me.

This week has also seen the shuttering of the Pirate Bay torrent tracker. Now it’s not all bad news for those amongst you who use BitTorrent as they’ve set up a Magnet link repository. For those uninitiated, BitTorrent has evolved to support a decentralised structure using the DHT and PEX protocols. Now what that means for you and your, umm, linux downloading friends is that you no longer need a .torrent location file to find and download files over the p2p network. In fact if you’re running one of the more up-to-date clients such as uTorrent or Azureus, you’ve had the magnet-link capability for a while and probably didn’t even know about it. The Pirate Bay is so certain that it’s search engine and magnet-link repository is the way forward for BitTorrent that it’s been canvassing other torrent trackers in an effort to get everyone to move over to the decentralised system. Whether this is a sinister plot by the Pirate Bay’s new owners or an honest to goodness evolution of piracy (and legal p2p) is unclear at this stage. What is clear is that this is an end of an era for BitTorrent and I don’t see it going away anytime soon.

Facebook, everyone’s favourite stalker hangout has made yet another move to conquer your life away from the computer this week. The PS3 saw an update that includes a somewhat weak browser based Facebook integration a rather rushed effort on Sony’s part to match the Xbox 360 which has proper Facebook and Twitter integration. OK, you might want to brag about your Achievements or Trophies to your mates on Stalkerbook or Twatter, but seriously, who is going to sit in front of their TV and use this on an 8-foot interface? I mean the Xbox doesn’t even have a web browser so how are you going to check out the links and pics that your friends send out via TwitFace?

Talking of Facebook, if the fuzz ever comes a knocking, your inane status updates could count as an alibi. Yes, you heard right, a 19-year old Harlem resident was cleared of charges resulting from a mugging in Brooklyn by an alibi provided a status update made on Facebook from his Dad’s house at the time of the crime. Am I the only one who could see this as being really easy to fake? You could just automate a status update, VNC into your computer or just get someone else to update on your profile for you from your computer. Still the courts subpoenaed Facebook for the IP address of the computer that made the status update, which of course pointed to his Father’s house where he claimed to be at the time of the mugging.

Last but not least from my picks of the week, Google Chrome OS. OK, it’s basically an OS built inside Chrome browser. I’m not surprised, that’s exactly what I thought it was going to be. What I am surprised about is that it won’t run on everything, Google doesn’t even support HDDs! I get that it’s meant to totally rely on the cloud for all data and applications, but not even supporting HDDs for local storage? Let’s just say it’s probably not aimed at me, or you reading this for that matter, but perhaps, maybe those non-tech-savvy buying netbooks might get used to it, I’m not sure though.

Pirate Bay has been sold to Global Gaming Factory X for $7.8m, who will take charge in August. Having also purchased ‘p2p 2.0′ software company Peerialism, many are saying that Pirate Bay is going the way of Napster V2.

“We would like to introduce models which entail that content providers and copyright owners get paid for content that is downloaded via the site,” said Global Gaming Factory CEO Hans Pandeya.

TPB blog had this to say:

If the new owners will screw around with the site, nobody will keep using it. That’s the biggest insurance one can have that the site will be run in the way that we all want to. And – you can now not only share files but shares with people. Everybody can indeed be the owner of The Pirate Bay now. That’s awesome and will take the heat of us.

It’ll be interesting whether this new approach works and whether it will be business as usual for TPB.

[Via Engadget]