PC manufacturer Dell and Paramount Pictures are opening a new front in digital distribution with an offering allowing consumers to order “Iron Man” preloaded into newly purchased computers.

For now, Paramount is the only studio that has signed on, and “Iron Man” — which will be available accompanied by exclusive bonus footage for $20 beginning Tuesday (September 30), the same day as its DVD release — is the only film being offered.

The offering is the first step Dell is taking toward setting up a broader digital content storefront that could create significant competition for Apple’s dominant iTunes Store.

AMD said Monday it is set to roll out its next-generation “Shanghai” chip–minus the mistakes of the last generation.

The No. 2 processor maker wants to make one thing crystal clear: Shanghai is not Barcelona. The latter chip was rolled out in September 2007 to great fanfare only to be delayed a whopping eight months (or more, depending how the delay is calculated) due to production glitches and bugs. The chip was also hampered by speed (core clock frequency) limitations. This gave Intel an opportunity to regain ground it had lost to AMD in the server chip market.

“We had some mis-starts in getting Barcelona to market and wanted to bring as much velocity to Shanghai as possible. Learn from our mistakes and, as a company, never do that again,” said Pat Patla, general manager of AMD’s server and workstation chip business.

Shanghai–targeted at servers–will be AMD’s first 45-nanometer processor. (Barcelona is 65-nanometer.) Typically, the smaller the geometries, the faster and more power efficient the chip. Intel has been shipping 45-nanometer processors since last year and these processors now make up most of Intel’s offerings.

TiVo Inc. and Nero AG of Germany were set to announce Monday that they will be launching a package that turns a Windows PC into a TV recorder, just like a TiVo set-top box.

The kit will cost $199 when it goes on sale Oct. 15, and includes a remote and a TV tuner that plugs into the PC. The interface on the computer screen looks just like the one on a TV equipped with a TiVo box.

It’s not the first software that allows TV recording on the PC. That’s been possible for years on computers equipped with TV tuners, and some versions of Microsoft Corp.’s Windows Vista operating system include the necessary software. But it will be the first time that both the TiVo interface and functions have been replicated on a PC.

The Nero LiquidTV/TiVo PC will go on sale initially in the U.S., Mexico and Canada, but it could open up some markets where TiVo does not yet sell its set-top boxes. Joshua Danovitz, vice president and general manager of international business at TiVo, said the plan is to launch it in Europe next year, including in Nero’s home country, Germany. Britain is the only European country where TiVo currently has subscribers.

“It’s really part of a global TiVo strategy,” Danovitz said.

For people who already have a tuner-equipped PC, Nero - a private company mainly known for CD- and DVD-burning software - will sell the TV recording software separately, for $99. Either way, buyers will get a one-year subscription to TiVo’s program guide updates. Renewal will cost $99 per year.

KDDI has announced that they will be launching a 1Gbps Internet service to single-family home and condo users in October. The service is supposedly synchronous, with 1Gbps in both directions, although the article implies that speeds will vary with location. Cost will be 5,985 yen/month (about US$56.50) for the basic Internet and IP phone service.

Quite a bit has been made lately over Apple’s treatment of developers who want to create apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The company has consistently played games with developers by keeping them in the dark and ensuring that each time an app is rejected they’re given as little information as possible.

Of course, this doesn’t come as a surprise to those of us who have followed Apple all these years. The company has always been suspect of third-party developers and has consistently failed to do the right thing even when it’s faced with a PR firestorm. After all, if the mainstream doesn’t pay attention, who cares?

But it’s that kind of mentality that could get Apple into trouble. Sure, it worked fine for the company with Mac OS X and it has every right in the world to stop apps from getting into its store if they’re undesirable, but that doesn’t stop the onslaught of complaints that Apple is acting in a way that’s more than a little “wrong.”

Apple has stayed quiet on what it takes to gain entry into the App store, the company has given poor reasons why it won’t accept apps, and now it’s believed that Apple’s rejection letters are covered under its non-disclosure agreement, which means developers won’t be able to help each other gain admission to the store.

All the while, developers across the globe are wondering why they thought Apple would do the right thing, given its history.

For all its troubles, the App Store is still being flooded with applications: Russell Beattie found 450 new applications in the store in just one week.

That number may seem high, but given the outcry from developers, I’m willing to bet that the number of applications denied could be much higher. Once again, Apple won’t spill the beans.

So what can developers do? After investing time and money into an application only to be told by Apple that it’s not admitted into the App Store can be a bitter defeat. But now that Android is finally shipping in T-Mobile’s G1, why not jump to Android?

Unlike Apple’s draconian policies, Android is an open platform and Google and the rest won’t spend time trying to stop as many third-party developers from producing apps for the platform.

But the main problem with developing for Android is that the hardware isn’t uniform. Some Android-based phones will sport touch-screens, while others will not. That makes developing applications far more difficult, considering the possibility of dealing with a wide array of hardware. But then again, who cares? Rejected iPhone app developers can still create touch-screen Android apps and for those that don’t have a touch-screen Android phone, well, they’re out of luck.

But perhaps the most compelling reason why developers should defect to Android is because it will finally wake up Steve Jobs and company. Right now, I don’t know why Apple should even care about all these developers crying about their beloved apps. The way I see it, they need Apple; Apple doesn’t need them.

But if they defect to Android and the Android market becomes a real powerhouse, the whole game will change. Suddenly, Apple will need to take notice and realize the error of its ways.

The first Android-powered phone isn’t the only big news on the mobile front this week. Applications for the Android operating system are already making their way to market.

On Thursday, Visa announced plans to make mobile payment-related services for the Android platform, while PacketVideo stepped out on Wednesday with news that it would launch CORE, a multimedia application framework that powers more than 260 million devices worldwide, for Android.

Meanwhile, Namco launched PacMan for the Android operating system. Glu Mobile announced that Bonsai Blast, an all-new action-puzzle game, will launch on Android. And Big in Japan announced ShopSavvy, an application designed to help people do comparative shopping via the Android Market.

“There’s money to be made in the Android marketplace,” said Bill Ho, an analyst at Current Analysis. “Developers, while they are intellectually stimulated by programming, at end of the day they are going into this to make money. So what we see is an ecosystem that’s been built for this.”

Japanese video game maker Nintendo Co Ltd plans to launch a new model of its DS handheld machine that can take pictures and play music by the end of the year, the Nikkei business daily said on Sunday.

The move would pit the top-selling portable game gear with Apple Inc iPod and camera-embedded cellphones in general.

The price for the new machine, which will also be equipped with advanced wireless communications functions, is expected to be below 20,000 yen ($189) in Japan, compared with 16,800 yen for the current model, the Nikkei said.

Nokia will unveil its first touch-screen phone next week in a direct challenge to Apple’s successful iPhone, two industry sources told Reuters on Friday.

LG Electronics, Samsung Electronics and several smaller handset vendors have rolled out their own touch-screen phones over the last two years, while the first handset using Google’s Android platform will also have a touch screen.

But so far, the world’s top mobile phone maker, Nokia, has stuck with traditional screens.

Both sources said Nokia would unveil its new phone — code-named “Tube” — on October 2 at an analyst and media event in London. A Nokia spokeswoman declined to comment.

“The phone is extremely important,” said Gartner analyst Carolina Milanesi. “We have been waiting for the market leader to respond to Apple’s iPhone for a year and a half now. There is a lot of pressure on Nokia.”

A security hole in Adobe Systems Inc software, used to distribute movies and TV shows over the Internet, is giving users free access to record and copy from Amazon.com Inc’s video streaming service.

The problem exposes online video content to the rampant piracy that plagued the music industry during the Napster era and is undermining efforts by retailers, movie studios and television networks to cash in on a huge Web audience.

“It’s a fundamental flaw in the Adobe design. This was designed stupidly,” said Bruce Schneier, a security expert who is also the chief security technology officer at British Telecom.

The flaw rests in Adobe’s Flash video servers that are connected to the company’s players installed in nearly all of the world’s Web-connected computers.

The software doesn’t encrypt online content, but only orders sent to a video player such as start and stop play. To boost download speeds, Adobe dropped a stringent security feature that protects the connection between the Adobe software and its players.

AP reports that Apple Inc. is putting on sale unlocked iPhone 3G in Hong Kong, allowing people to use it with any mobile phone carrier.

The move seems to depart from its previous strategy of introducing the popular device capable of 3G, or third-generation, through specific service providers in 22 nations.

On its Hong Kong Web site, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is advertising direct sales of iPhone 3G, saying people can “buy directly from Apple” and choose their own carrier.

“Phone 3G purchased at the Apple Online Store can be activated with any wireless carrier,” it said on the site.

Offering free shipping, the 8-gigabyte phone goes for $5,400 Hong Kong dollars ($695) while the 16-gigabyte version costs HK$6,200 ($798).

Plenty of social media products allow users to ask questions of a community and rate the best answers in an effort to identify helpful know-it-alls. But what if you need help to figure out what questions to ask in the first place? Google’s new Moderator project is a tool designed for this task. We spoke with Taliver Heath, one of Google’s engineers (and a long-time Arsian) about what inspired Moderator, as well as where the project may be headed.

Moderator is another one of Google’s infamous “20 percent” projects, produced on the 20 percent of Heath’s time that Google allots all of its engineers to work on their own ideas. The simple idea behind Moderator is to offer a public forum in which users can submit questions that they believe should be asked during a specific meeting or event. Other users can then vote on whether they like each question and agree on which should be asked, thereby using the power of crowdsourcing to decide what the most important issues are for the audience. Ideally, a journalist or someone moderating a tech talk or meeting could present these questions, thereby making the most out of what is typically a short amount of time for Q&A.

Oracle Corp. is selling computer hardware for the first time in its 31-year history, signaling an ambition to become more than a one-stop shop for business software.

The expansion announced Wednesday by Chief Executive Larry Ellison calls for Oracle’s sales team to peddle a “database machine” and a smaller storage product, both made by Hewlett-Packard Co. Both pieces of hardware are designed to help companies fetch information stored on Oracle’s database software more quickly while taking up less space in corporate data centers.

Ellison unveiled the products - in development for three years - at an Oracle customer conference attended by nearly 43,000 people.

The database machine will sell for $650,000 and store up to 168 terabytes - “1,400 times larger than Apple’s largest iPod,” Ellison boasted in reference to the 120-gigabyte media device made by the company run by his best friend, Steve Jobs.

As it wades into a new field, Oracle is aiming to undercut other hardware makers like Netezza Corp. that sell so-called “data warehouse appliances.” The Oracle-HP partnership conceivably could also siphon sales from storage providers like EMC Corp. and IBM Corp.