Sources are reporting that Internet auction mogul, eBay, is close to sealing the deal on their rumored purchase of social bookmarking site, StumbleUpon. As usually is the case, no official confirmation has been announced regarding a business deal between the two companies, but the reported buying price is a cool $75 mill.

StumbleUpon remains one of the only social bookmarking sites not to have some controversy or backlash built against them. Let’s hope that along with a new owner, they keep their integrity intact. — Andrew Dobrow

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Apple CEO Steve Jobs has confirmed that Apple will be releasing LED-backlit Macs by the end of this year. “We plan to introduce our first Macs with LED backlight technology in 2007,” he wrote. “Our ability to completely eliminate fluorescent lamps in all of our displays depends on how fast the LCD industry can transition to LED backlighting for larger displays.”

The confirmation comes in the form of an open letter to shareholders and customers about Apple phasing out mercury lit screens in an attempt to boost environmentally safe technology. — Andrew Dobrow

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With recent confirmation of a sequel to the ever-popular Starcraft series of games, rumors and predictions have been floating around that either Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 will be somehow involved in the MMORPG gaming market. Blizzard is now further expanding this rumor with a job listing posted in the Employment section of their website.

The listing describes the position as a lead programming job for people who think they can “lead an engine-programming team focused on next-generation massively multiplayer online games.” Regardless of whether or not this is for an existing title or something brand new, Blizzard still has an announcement coming up by the end of May. — Andrew Dobrow

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The confirmation of the iPhone barely out of Steve Jobs’ mouth before rumors started popping up about a possible Zune phone in the works from Microsoft. A newly published patent, which was submitted last year by the Gates’ Squad, seems to be the UI of a possible Zune phone. Whatever it is, it’s definitely some kind of interface for a mobile device. The patent describes an interface with dynamic tiles, changing to match the suit of any running application.

Some of the logos displayed on the UI are really interesting actually. There’s one that seems to be the iconic scale of justice. Will the Zune phone double as a lawyer as well? The most important factor we need to know is whether a Zune phone would display blue screens on system errors. If that was the case we’re not sure if we could even think about purchasing it. Hell, for all we know, the Zune 2 could have been planned to be a mobile device all along. — Andrew Dobrow

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Nothing is ever concrete until you see it in this world of Photoshop renderings. Now that we can see the recently announced Xbox 360 QWERTY Controller in the wild, we can offer a full confirmation on Microsoft’s announcement. This is the first public viewing of the QWERTY text input device for Xbox.

The announcement coincides with Microsoft’s announcement that MSN Messenger will soon be available from the Xbox dashboard. The controller will allow for easy text input without the need of a full keyboard. (more…)

Finally a confirmation on the heavily rumored 8 core Mac Pros. Today on the official Apple website, Jobs and friends finally announced the availability of the uber-exciting 8 Core Intel Xeon. This monster is going to have a storage capability of up to..get ready…3 TB! That’s right, 3 whole terabytes. As Apple says with the announcement “consider the bar raised” and we whole heartily agree.

The new Mac Pros will also be capable of holding 16GB of memory, which you’ll probably need if you’re planning on terabyte technology, and also to keep up with the 8 core processing speed. If you add all the goods and want a fully stocked Mac Pro, it’ll cost you a meager $13,118. — Andrew Dobrow

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