Chinese Democracy is the Duke Nukem Forever of the music industry. It’s been over 10 years in the making and everyone has lost interest since seeing Axl Rose’s last performance. Then, Los Angeles based blogger Kevin Cogill leaks nine songs from the album which eventually leads his site to crash from high traffic shortly thereafter. No one is sure how he obtained access to the songs but the “band” was pissed and demanded the songs be taken down.

But, the damage had already been done. Users who obtained the tracks had made them available on file-sharing sites. Guns N’ Roses: owned.

Earlier this week Cogill posted a plea for legal help on his blog, writing that, “more and more each day, it looks like I may be indicted.”

Cogill was released after signing a $10,000 signature bond and is scheduled to appear at a preliminary hearing on September 17. Things are not looking good for Kevin as he faces a judicial system of a Chinese Democracy. And here I sat thinking this album would never see the light of day.

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If you thought that the nail biting clock and calendar was weird, check out this different take on the calendar altogether. Oscar Diaz came up with this self-printing concept when he discovered he could control ink bleeding onto paper. You could have a wallpaper calendar to write on, schedule appointments and what not, but where is the fun in writing up your own “To do” list? Rather than that, try having the ink leak all over the paper, telling you what to do that day.

This self-printing technique is unfortunately merely a prototype, so no amount of ink in the world is going to plan your weekend for you. Wouldn’t that be convenient to have your whole week scheduled my a pre-embossed page with ink leaking over it? Mine is telling me to never leave the house, ever, so I won’t.

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Seemingly verified through insider information, sources have confirmed that these screenshots have been leaked from the alpha testing phase of the World of Warcraft’s newest expansion, Wrath of the Lich King. The new expansion will add a new class, the first hero class, the Death Knight, to the WoW world, as well as a new profession called Inscription, new PvP options, plus the new continent of Northrend.

The following screenshots are leaked images from the recently commenced alpha testing, as well as a screenshot of the actual alpha loader itself. This first peek gives us an early sneak peak of the new environments, as well as some of the new enemy races which Blizzard has in mind for game play. Sorry, no Bard class in sight fools. Hit the jump for more. (more…)

For those who are unhappy with the current UIQ user interface employed by SonyEricsson devices, here’s a little something to look forward to. Apparently the UI will have some serious facelift. Here’s a shot snapped from a presentation somewhere, somehow, by somebody. –Sam Chan

We would have been a little more excited if somebody else had leaked their software by mistake and allowed everybody to download for free, nonetheless we are slightly excited to learn that Microsoft Japan mistakenly put Internet Explorer 7 (Japanese version) on Windows Update this afternoon. The above screen cap was taken at 2:57 pm Tokyo time today. Some Japanese users have even managed to install the new browser successfully, keeping in mind that the public release should be in 2008.

The company took the program down and issued an apology afterwards, but we think there’s not much to be sorry about. They even taught people how to uninstall it. Yeah, like we want those extra bugs on your super stable OS. –Sam Chan

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SonyEricsson is preparing an announcement in May; supposedly at least 2 handsets would be introduced, the Shinobu (above, left) and Nicole (above, right). These devices (and the W580i) would use a modified UI with a reorganization of keys, namely the addition of dial-hang up buttons. We enlarged the original pictures so that you can see the SonyEricsson watermark too, please excuse the pixelation. The 5 megapixels prototype we showed you might not be introduced just yet The messaging device(s) that we also reported might be released in the form of their variants, or at a later date.

Shinobu should be a 12.5mm thick HSDPA slider with a large 2.4″ QVGA screen and a 2megaixels fixed focus camera, it should be retailed at about €430 ($550).

Nicole should be a 13mm thick WCDMA candybar with a 2.1″ 176×220 screen and a 2megapixels fixed focus camera, it should be retailed at about €190 ($240). This could be the first phone released with the Sagem ODM deal. –Sam Chan

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Today we saw two pictures of a supposedly Nokia premium phone with QVGA screen, this is speculated to be the brother of 8800 Sirocco: the 8600 Luna. Specs are non-existent for the mean time, but we expect the phone to run on the Symbian Series 40 platform and house a 2 megapixels fixed focus camera. This should not be an April’s fool joke, we’ll keep you updated. –Sam Chan

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Two months ago we saw a design mock-up of a funny swivel phone from Nokia, the tension built up when a source showed us a leaked marketing picture. This was proven to be legit at the company’s announcement this morning, and as we were told, the funky device in the early pictures was indeed the Nokia 5700 XpressMusic phone.

What we do know now is that the phone will run a Symbian S60 OS with a revamped music interface; the dedicated audio chip, support for up to 2GB MicroSD cards and the reasonably good 2 megapixels camera would make this a fairly capable mid-range multimedia UMTS phone. Shipment is due in the 2nd quarter this year, suggested retail price is 350Euro or 460USD. –Sam Chan
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Don’t know what’s the deal with the girl, but the phone is truly hot. Supposedly an updated RAZR (and KRZR) with extra large external screen, and a form factor thinner than KRZR. What’s more is that it supports reading out messages and emails in a computer voice. We don’t know how legit this is yet. More video and pictures after the jump.

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We’re pretty sure that we’re really approaching an announcement now. This morning we found pictures of 2 unannounced phones from SonyEricsson being leaked on Chinese forums. The black phone shown above should be the rumored Sofia (code name, K850i) with a 5 megapixels CCD camera module and xenon flash. (CCD, as found on the Thai I-mobile 902, not CMOS). Pay attention to the newly introduced dial/hang up buttons right next to the 2 softkeys below the screen, the d-pad that merges with the number pad at the middle to fit a pretty large QVGA screen. Also check out the camera illumination icons similar to the K810i, that will light up in camera mode to act as camera option shortcuts. The photos are dated back 3 months ago, so it is possible that SE might make final touchups to the design, as experienced by the K750i and W800i in the past. The Sofia should be a WCDMA device due early Q2 this year, price will be significantly lower than Nokia N95.

Jump to check out the other leaked model: Maria M610i WCDMA messaging device with 3.2 megapixels camera.

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