Indeed, says the source, as part of a move that goes against the shrinking retail space, Amazon would open a number of branded retail stores there, and soon.

It's not entirely crazy. As we reported earlier this year, Amazon has already jumped headfirst into the peripherals market with a line of low-cost branded merch called AmazonBasics.

Now there's allegedly a secret land grab going on behind closed doors to stock some of that merchandise. The sites are described as "high profile," possibly in locations recently vacated by the Borders book chain. [Times Online]

Images are about all that's offered up here. No specs, no dates, no explanation. Just pics and some well-groomed fingernails:

We'll keep an eye out for more. [BGR]

Interestingly, the Times says that LaLa went to Apple to be acquired, and what Apple's after is LaLa's engineers, with their cloud service-y brains.

Apple's official response is that they "buy smaller technology companies all the time, and we generally do not comment on our purpose or plans." Hmmm. [NYT]

Previously: NY Times reporter Brad Stone says that Apple has agreed to acquire the streaming music service LaLa as rumored, and the NYT is currently updating their story.

Boy Genius Report hears that the deal will last only three days, from December 4th (tomorrow!) to the 7th. There's one caveat: The deal doesn't allow for a free Droid. If you buy either a Droid or a Droid Eris, you can get a Droid Eris for free (after rebate). A little lame, but if you split the cost with somebody else, it's still a pretty solid deal for two of the top Android phones on the market. You'll just have to figure out who gets the Terminator Phone and who gets the prettier Last Year's Model.

The deal also includes the enV Touch and enV 3, if you're into that kind of thing. Still unconfirmed, but we've got no reason to doubt it. [Boy Genius Report]

The 3,1 phone was spotted in an analytics report from November for the iPhone app iBART.

This isn't the first time something with that ID popped up on the rumor radar. In August, 3,1 was discovered hiding in iPhone firmware files. However, as MacRumors notes, this is the first time the marker's been "seen" gallivanting out in public.

Also noteworthy is the timing of the discovery: In October 2008, Apple starting testing the 3GS in and around the San Francisco area. [MacRumors]

• $100 off MacBook Pros
• $100 off iMacs
• $20 off iPod touches
• $20 off iPod nanos
• $20 off Apple TV

And assorted other minor cuts on accessories like AirPort routers, wireless keyboards and the Magic Mouse. I was hoping for a better deal on a Time Capsule, personally. Supposedly, these deals are for the online store only, not the brick & mortar locations, so there's more to come. [BGR]

The key feature about Arrandale, versus current Core i5/i7 processors, is that it's manufactured using a 32nm process, meaning it'll be less power hungry. Remember the jump to the Penryn Core 2 chips a couple years ago? Same speeds, better efficiency? Like that. The three coming out in the first half of 2010 are the Core i7-640UM (1.2GHz), Core i7-620UM (1.06GHz) and Core i5-520UM, all for "ultra thin" laptops.

We'll also see some 32nm chips for the desktop, codenamed Clarksdale, announced in January. Mmm, chips. [Digitimes]

Multiple sources hint that the camera will be a number of things, including "premium," "compact" and that it will feature at least two interchangeable lenses at launch, possibly in December.

More details, discovered and translated by Photo Rumors, include:

* APS-C sensor
* Mirror Loose house with live-view
* Not so much larger than the GR-D cameras
* The same operation / control that the GR-D
* Electronic viewfinder accessory shoe for optional

More to come, as Photo Rumors appears to be updating their posts with some regularity today. [Photo Rumors]

Looks like Sony Ericsson borrowed heavily from the Zune HD playbook for this one, but we're not complaining—the Zune HD has the only media UI that's capable of competing with the iPhone's. Let's count the influences: First is the homescreen, which has a layout very similar to the Zune HD's QuickPlay menu. Instead of just giving you a boring list of Artists, Albums, and Snoooore, it shows Favorites (like the Zune HD's Pins), Recently Added and Recently Played, not-so-coincidentally the exact same options in the Zune HD menu. Below that you get two options from PlayNow, a kind of Pandora-like Sony store, including Top 30 and Recommendations. This stuff is super useful for anyone with a large, frequently-updated media collection.

At the bottom of every screen is a crossbar much like the Zune HD's, but that one's legitimate Sony—they pioneered that UI with XMB on PS3 and PSP. It's a great idea, so we're glad it shows up here as well. Other Zune HD influences? How about the art on the artist and album pages? When selecting Kanye West from the artist list, a photo of his smug little chipmunk face shows up on the top of the list of albums, and when selecting his album The College Dropout, the album art pops up above the tracklist—just like on the Zune HD.

Of course, a warning before the video says that this is for conceptual and internal use only (whoops!) so for all we know, Rachael's media playback won't look anything like this. But we hope it does—Android's music playback software is embarrassingly dated and this video shows a level of gloss that frankly blows me away. We could be seeing the first smartphone featuring Rachael very soon, too: Like, four days from now soon. We've got no idea on carrier, price, capacity, or any other hard details quite yet.

In case that was all too long for you? I want this thing. Right now. [SE-Blog via SE-Nse, thanks Scotsboyuk!]

Why Extras—which are like DVD extras, with bonus clips, interviews and photo galleries, but for iTunes movies—is just now on its way to Apple TV is sorta mystifying, even for their most neglected product. (What does Apple have against its tinier boxes?) It's like, the thing Apple makes expressly to plug into your TV, where you might want to watch those things.

Since Apple TV 2.0, the last major update to the sad little box happened almost two years ago, maybe, just maybe, there's more to Apple TV 3.0 than just Extras and iTunes LP. Or you know, not. [AppleInsider]

Though it's been speculated that the Droid Eris will run Android 1.6 and sport a hard-to-get-excited-about 528MHz Qualcomm CPU, it would be the cheapest Android phone yet in the US. Verizon didn't mention it at all today, so we might be a touch skeptical of it making that rumored Nov. 6 launch date, but we'll see. [gdgt via Twitter]

Without Intel supporting the standard, motherboard manufacturers and gadget makers alike would probably hold off on using USB 3.0, since it would require a relatively expensive third-party controller (as it does now). An Intel rep said he hadn't heard of such a delay, but with Intel focused on its next-gen Nehalem chips (and given the company's neglect of wireless USB), it's not impossible. We'll keep you updated if we get confirmation either way. [EE Times via Tech Report]

It's rumored that Nvidia has won a contract to supply Nintendo with Tegra chips for the next generation DS. The specific chip Nintendo plans on using is unknown, so we don't know exactly how powerful the next model could be. Considering the current DS runs on two incredibly slow processors, any Tegra would be a huge boost in power.

As a bonus, the source reports that the new hardware should allow backwards compatibility. Hopefully not à la PSP Go, where backwards compatibility really means you have to buy all the games you already own again. [Bright Side of the News via Electronista]

The author only mentions video recording at 720p/24 fps, no talk of 1080p at all. What's worse is that the article pegs the D3s, body only, at £4,200. For comparison, since we only have British pricing for the moment, the 1080p-capable Canon 5D Mk II retails for £2,300.

The D3s supposedly features amazing high ISO abilities, but the lack of 1080p video recording would still be a huge bummer. Hopefully, either the BJP left out some crucial details, or Nikon has some surprises in store for us. [British Journal of Photography via Nikon Rumors]

T-Mo News claims it's not a phone or a promotion, which suggests it might be some kind of coverage rollout—T-Mo certainly could use a more widespread network, since they've already got some sweet phones to take advantage of one. Apparently T-Mobile staff are being trained for an imminent release or rollout of Project Black starting this week, but again, we have no idea what this actually is (or if it even exists, really). Rumors have been bubbling from a couple different sources (Phone Arena and T-Mo News, mostly), so the rumor may have something real behind it, but we don't know much for sure yet. We'll keep you updated as soon as we figure out what this secret project actually is. [Electronista and T-Mo News]

According to TechCrunch, UK company INQ is developing the full-out Spotify phone for telecommunications provider Telia. And with recent news that Spotify service is expanding to television (in Sweden), the handset would be a notable multimedia force—even if the iPhone app makes an easier upsell.

So theoretically, if Spotify made its way to the US, and if the Spotify phone made its way to the US, we'd all have Spotify phones. Yes, all. Every single citizen of the United States of America. [TechCrunch and TechCrunch UK and image]

That's the scoop gleaned off the LinkIn Profile for Robert Morgan, Senior Research & Development at Microsoft, anyway:

Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP, and IBM.

Robert Morgan is working to get IA-128 working backwards with full binary compatibility on the existing IA-64 instructions in the hardware simulation to work for Windows 8 and definitely Windows 9.

Ars has a ton more super-nerdy tidbits about what's possible in Windows 8 that's worth checking out, if you're a supernerd, anyway. [Ars]

The Chinese version of the phone was simply not fit for the US market, lacking 3G and Wi-Fi, but according to a tipster, Dell will change some of the internals before it debuts here. The tipster specifically names an improved camera (5MP, up from 3MP) but we'll assume that if the rumor is true, it'll also get a bump in the wireless department to 3G. Interestingly, Dell is said to be messing with Android's internals for some reason, making some apps incompatible, though we can't imagine what purpose that would serve other than customer frustration.

The phone is said to be thinner than the iPhone, though with a similar icon list and feels "plasticky, like the Palm Pre," which would be fairly in line with the Chinese model. This is unconfirmed for now, but we'll keep you updated if we hear anything else on Dell's possibly entering the US smartphone arena. [Crunchgear]