With the economic recession torturing many you would think that sales for companies like Amazon would be down… apparently not. Amazon posted the “best ever” holiday sales this year and the Nintendo Wii helped them do that.

According to a sales report released by Amazon the “Nintendo Wii dominated the top sellers in video games and hardware, including the Wii console, the Wii remote controller and the Wii nunchuk controller”. Apparently the 360 and PS3 did their fair share but paled in comparison to the Wii.

With the news of the Wii having a strong November and December CNET made some calculations to figure out how each console was doing this year. So the Wii sold a whopping 43.75 million units, the 360 sold 26.49 milion units, and the PS3 sold 18.82 million units. Notice how the Wii was 2 million shy from selling as many as the other two combined.

With the gifting part of the holidays coming to and end many new consumers are sitting next to brand new PS3s. In order to ramp up new users Sony decided to post a new how-to video everyday next week. Today they started with the basics: How to create and view a slide show.

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“Listen, we know that something’s going on with Sprint  take the move toward leased access for WiMAX on Clear and the recent big sale of cell towers, for example but this is just getting fishier and fishier. Now, it looks like Sprint is trying to up its total subscriber count by paying Virgin Mobile an additional $2 per customer it signs through the end of the year while also dropping the minimum wireless services tab it was previously obligated to pay. Apparently it takes about 11 yes, eleven  Virgin customers to equal the revenue generated from just one Sprint customer, and since the carrier’s organic subscriber tally has been on the decline lately, maybe it’s starting to rely on its MVNOs to pick up some of the slack.”

Source: Engadget Mobile

What is up with Sprint lately? As Engadget said, they keep getting fishier and fishier. Now they are trying to up its total subscribers? Wow. 

“BENTONVILLE, Ark. - Wal-Mart will start selling Apple’s populariPhone on Sunday, the chain said, confirming earlier reports by employees.

Bentonville-based Wal-Mart Stores Inc. will become the second independent retail chain after Best Buy Inc. to sell the phone. It is also sold at Apple Inc. and AT&T Inc. stores.

Wal-Mart will sell the phones for $2 less than the regular price with a two-year contract: $197 for the 8-gigabyte model, or $297 for the 16-gigabyte model. Best Buy is discounting the phone by $9.

Reports that Wal-Mart would sell the phone, but not the exact launch date or the terms, surfaced early this month through store employees who had been briefed.”

Source: Yahoo!

Good news to everyone not near an Apple, Bestbuy, or AT&T store! Wal-Mart will now be carrying iPhones. Everyone has a Wal-Mart around don’t they? Now when you are out picking up the groceries you can snag one of these 

“Well isn’t this a nice little piece of information to wake up to on Christmas morning. Seems that while we were all sleeping, Clearskies08 was leaving us all a nice present from our friendly neighborhood Rogers/Fido reps upcoming handset presentation. That’s right folks, what you are seeing above is a pic of the 9520 Storm which will soon be available on Rogers in Canada. This device will have 3G HSPA bands for North America and comes with WiFi built into it.

Not only was the 9520 Storm introduced, but the 8200 was as well, the 8200 being a 3G HSDPA Pearl Flip with WiFi and GPS built in AND a second video camera for video calling!!!!!!”

Source: Crackberry

Well Merry Christmas to you Canada dwellers as well. Through Rogers you soon will be able to receive a BlackBerry Storm model for yourself….that includes Wi-Fi! Im starting to get a little jealous over the Wi-Fi . Once you get it though, you will love the storm just as I love mine. 

Welcome to Mobile Brew!

BKFraiders7 will be leading our effort on this site. Please contact him if you want to help.

From everyone at Brewology… HAPPY HOLIDAYS!!!

The wait is almost over. Straight from the dev-team’s mouth, the iPhone 3G has been successfully unlocked through SOFTWARE, just like the original iPhone. The updated unlocking tools are set to hit the net new year’s eve. Maybe your new year’s resolution will be to try every cellular network you possibly can with your iPhone. Here’s a bit from the dev-team about the unlock:

• The target release date for the unlock is New Year’s Eve 2008.
• This unlock method is available to iPhone 3Gs that have 2.11.07 baseband or earlier, we did warn you.
• You can tell what version baseband you have by going to Settings->General->About->Modem Firmware
• The unlock requires a jailbroken 3G iPhone.  It’ll be installable via Cydia and so it doesn’t matter if you have a Mac or PC.
• Please refrain from updating your baseband, regardless of what version you’re at.  We’ll have complete directions on New Year’s Eve.
• We’ll stream a live demo of the unlock before Christmas (see the update at the end of this post)

Ok, yes, it has been a while since the last time anything Wii related was posted, so I’m throwing some information at you!

First up you may have heard, but there is a new revision of the Wii that at this time is unmodifiable. The DVD drive controller chip that is used by modchips to play backups has been completely removed! You can find more information from the original source, as well as photos.

Source: WiiNewz

Now, for all you homebrew junkies, there have been tons of releases, and I mean tons! Because of so many releases, I have just made a list of some of the more recent releases that you can find all over the web. Take a gander, and if anything peaks your interest any of ‘brew below shouldn’t be hard too find.

As always, if you need any help just head over to the Wii Homebrew forums and post your question!

Loaders
Homebrew Channel v1.0.1
Wii Homebrew Launcher 0.12
Wii Gamecube Homebrew Launcher v0.2.2
Homebrew Disc Loader v0.3

Emulators
RIN Wii (16-12-2008)
Hugo GX (081214)
Gnuboy GX (14/12/2008)
SMS Plus GX (081214)
Genesis Plus GX 1.3.0

Apps
The Homebrew Browser v0.2.5
TheGHOST
whiite-linux Installer
Update Downloader
AnyRegion Changer 1.1b
WiiCM PNCalpha1
ftpii 0.0.16
Xyzzy v1.1

Games
BibleQuiz v0.7
Lpairs v1.0
RedSquare v0.5
Minesweeper v1.3
Yahtzwii v1.0
Pieros Wiicross v0.1
Paradroid v0.4
WiiDoom 0.4.1
Arcade Jigsaw

OS
New Gentoo Linux Distro
Xwhiite-linux v0.2

This week's free LittleBigPlanet costume is themed for the holidays. Everyone, meet Santa Sackboy.