Samsung is updating its portable media player with the successor to the Samsung YP-P2, the Samsung P3. The device will be formerly announced in January, joining the media player race alongside the iPod, Toshiba U103 and the non-existant MySpace PMP.

Subtle changes include its rectangular aluminum body and three inch 480 x 272 touchscreen. You can expect it to have Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, FM and many of the other typical photo, audio and video capabilities found in portable media players. Storage capacity will range from 4GB to 32GB with varying prices which will be announced at a later date. Expect this to hit store shelves in early 2009.

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Who does Chris DeWolfe, CEO of MySpace.com, think he is? Michael Arrington of TechCrunch? Because he certainly doesn’t think he’s the CEO of MySpace. If he did, he wouldn’t have come up with the crazy notion that MySpace could compete in what is essentially Apple’s market of portable media players. Seriously, a MySpace-branded portable media player? Are you nuts?

According to Reuters, DeWolfe is only thinking about it. Let’s hope this idea remains a thought never to be realized, lest it joins the ranks of the Zune all the way at the bottom. If Microsoft can’t compete, what makes MySpace think it can? Clearly, it’s the Kool-Aid.

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Tonight, MySpace kicked off its new commercial free music service which doesn’t include any of that bullshit DRM business.  Using its ever popular Flash player, users can purchase songs or add them to a playlist. It’s now possible to create a streaming playlist of as many as 100 songs each that can be shared and ranked.  MySpace music will also offer on-demand, ad-subsidized playback of full tracks in addition to allowing users to purchase unprotected MP3s of songs through Amazon.

Could MySpace music be another competitor for iTunes? It’s certainly looking that way. Just wait until Facebook joins with iTunes commercially. The “Great Social Networking” war is upon us.

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Valleywag has posted a great little exploit from a “Canadian computer guy” that allows you to access any private MySpace profile. Using a Yahoo! Mobile widget portal and a little URL trickery, you can easily browse through any private profile, photos included. I stopped using MySpace about two years ago, so I signed up with a throwaway Dodgit.com e-mail address to see if I could make it work.

Sure enough, it did. Five minutes later I was checking out some hotties from my hometown and scoping out Heidi Montag’s private photo collection, which was nothing special. If you need some new pics to whack off to, give this tutorial a read. After the jump, more proof and linkage.

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Inside sources are saying that the rumor which started out yesterday as a sort of pipe dream is true. Myspace is said to be purchasing photo-sharing website Photobucket for a cool $250 million.

According to an overzealous Photobucket employee, who remains unnamed, the photo site called for an all-hands staff meeting at 10 am yesterday morning to announce the news to its staff. No official announcement has been made, but we consider this a done deal. — Andrew Dobrow
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Taking place January 1 and 2 of 2008, MySpace will open up their ballots and hold a mock presidential election, available to all users. If it was any other social site, we would possibly consider taking it a bit more seriously, but with the spybot addled, junior high filled, leftist mentality of MySpace, there is no doubt on how the ballots will wind up already.

How can they expect to be taken seriously? One thing that has politicians all up in arms is that the MySpace election might help them gauge their popularity. We say, don’t tp much faith into it. The people voting on MySpace aren’t even old enough to buy cigarettes yet. — Andrew Dobrow

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Not exactly a true ‘midi’ pedal in the full sense of the word. The PCB used for the sound system is actually the old innards of a keyboard, connected through Radio Shack foot pedals that Myspacer, Tvkid, had to travel on a 60 mile marathon run, to find enough for his creation.

Running the pedal system through a laptop through a USB midi interface and replacing the PCB keyboard with a drum machine were the finishing touches on this home grown midi simulator. Here’s how Tvkid explains it on his project post:

Just to recap, here’s the process of how it works:

1. Press foot pedal.
2. Foot pedal, connected to PCB, acts like a key on a PC keyboard.
3. The “keyboard” PCB chip sends a standard PS/2 signal to laptop.
4. Virtual keyboard program on laptop gets keyboard command and converts it to MIDI.
5. MIDI is sent to synth unit.
6. Synth unit generates sound and spits it out of my amp, making our music sound even cheesier than before!

Surely one of the coolest blog posts ever posted to MySpace. — Andrew Dobrow

[MySpace Blog via Hack A Day]

Probably the smartest move MySpace, as a business and livelihood, has chosen to take so far. News Corp Inc. announced that MySpace.com will be teaming with the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children to inform the public of Amber Alerts.

For those of you born in a cage, Amber Alerts are the national alert system through law agencies to signal that their is a possibly kidnapped child. Using this system, pictures and last known whereabouts of the child are distributed to all law officials, media outlets, and now, to MySpace.com.

This partnership is somewhat of an odd pairing considering the situations that children get in on MySpace. Though as a business decision, it’s a smart way to get the hawk eyes off of its back for now. Other then the evident selfish reasons why MySpace would make this agreement, having alerts spread through MySpace will be an effective way of spreading the news and identity of the missing child. Increasing the kids chance of a safe recovery.

MySpace has also recently announced it’s development of software that will allow parents to monitor their childs use of MySpace, while also keeping tabs of the age and location the child says they are from. — Andrew Dobrow

MySpace to Distribute Amber Alerts [PhysOrg]

By now everyone in the world knows all about MySpace, and everyone and their mom has one in America. It was cool back when you were a freshman in high school, but once you get out of that stage then its time to either delete it altogether or keep it but don’t be completely obsessed over it. It is a little funny when people pour all of their emotions into their page, so maybe some of those obsessed kids (or adults) should keep theirs just for our own comic relief. It seems as if MySpace wants to dominate more of the world, for they are opening up the flood gates to France. It is said that MySpace is doing this to attract more users; doesn’t MySpace already have enough users? I mean, are 145 million people or whatever not enough for the “greatâ€? MySpace? Maybe they just realized that everyone is getting entirely sick of it, and so they need fresh meat (AKA Europe) to fill the void. One thing is for sure: MySpace is losing popularity. The stats tell it like it is: YouTube has just past MySpace on Alexa. Yes folks, the trend is changing; people would now rather see people make stupid movies than read blogs from emo kids. — Nick Rice

MySpace welcomes French friends [CNN] and YouTube overtakes MySpace on Alexa [techmeme]

Yahoo! is reporting that the largest U.S. cellphone carrier is going to offer integration to the largest social network in the world. What does this mean? Not too much actually. It means that for an extra $2.99 a month you Myspace junkies can get your fix from your Cingular phone. For that 3 bucks you can upload your emo phone pictures, create depressing blog posts, and even respond to that child predator’s message.

With over 130 million users, Myspace has quickly become the largest online social network and is being carried by only one other small phone service, Helio. However, Myspace has said that Cingular’s format will be more functional that than of Helio.

Using the platform should be a breeze, all you need to do is download the Java software application to your phone. Currently, only 30 phone models are supported, with 20 more on the way, accounting for 90% of Cingular’s users. The phone carrier has said that video is not supported, but we should expect it some time in 2007. Yipee. As if the teens of today aren’t on Myspace enough, now they have to be on their phones. — Zach Wilt

Cingular to offer Myspace on cellphones [Yahoo! news]