The arguments over whether 3D TV will finally catch on are far from over, but the signs are good in the US at least where Panasonic has apparently sold out its entire allocation of 3D television bundles.

Despite a price tag of $2899 (1,897), Panasonic has had no trouble shifting its stock and the bundle of a 3D ready television, a set of 3D glasses and a 3D Blu-ray player has proven to be a big hit.

Hitoshi Otsuki, Senior Managing Director for Panasonic’s overseas operations, said, “It’s a great opportunity to turn around our TV business.”

Thin on the ground

3D content remains thin on the ground, but with major companies investing heavily in the next generation tech that is a diminishing problem.

James Cameron’s recent box office smash Avatar is proving 3D films are a huge hit with audiences, and UK broadcaster Sky has been pumping huge amounts of time and money into developing its 3D filming of live events like Premiership football, performing arts and tennis.

In truth, Panasonic’s success may well be put down to the relatively limited number of 3D televisions available in the market, but content providers will be pleased to see that there is interest from consumers.

For the past couple of years now, when talking about the Apple TV product, Apple likes to throw out the word “hobby.” It’s as if they’re ashamed of the device. And considering sales are anemic next to Macs, iPods, and iPhones, it’s no big surprise that they talk this way.

But there’s actually nothing to be ashamed of. The Apple TV is a good product. Apple just needs to put some proper time and energy into it, to expand it to its full potential. And news today about the so-called “Google TV” should do just the trick.

Apple and Google are on the verge of war. The formerly close allies are increasingly competing in key spaces for both, and the living room is likely to be a new battleground because it’s still very much up in air. As the New York Times reported yesterday, Google is working with partners including Intel, Sony, and Logitech to bring a Google TV experience into the living room. This is, of course, where the Apple TV resides. And Apple would be foolish to simply cede any ground it does have to its new favorite rival just because it’s focused on other things (*cough* iPad *cough*).

That’s a Microsoft move.

As Nick Bilton points out, this Google TV would be based around the Android platform. This means that the key idea is likely to have third-party developers work on it to make applications built for a television set. That’s easier said than done, but Android’s open nature should yield some interesting results rather quickly.

Apple, meanwhile, is of course anything but open with regard to their devices. In fact, the Apple TV is entirely closed right now, as only Apple is able to modify its software (without hacking it, of course). I suspect that will change, following this revelation.

The idea of running iPhone-style applications on the Apple TV has long been a sexy one. Hell, people have even ported apps over to a TV screen to show how well it could work. The main problem with developing iPhone apps for the Apple TV seems to be resolution. With the iPhone (and iPod touch), Apple offers only one screen size/resolution, ensuring developers have an easy time making great-looking apps while at the same time, making sure end users have a great experience.

But the iPad has already changed everything. With their new device, Apple has kept things as simple as possible by making iPhone apps scale up two times to work on the bigger display, but it’s still shows a willingness to move beyond the one screen size. Unfortunately, with the Apple TV, it can be attached to a screen that could be a huge variety of sizes, so it would be hard to control that.

Google doesn’t care about that because Android already runs on dozens of phones with different screen sizes. But Apple clearly cares about how apps look on its devices (so much so that the iPad itself was likely designed at a strange ratio simply to make scaling apps look as good as possible). So does that mean they start offering an actual Apple TV (as in a screen)? Rumors of that have been around for a long time. Or maybe they black-box apps to a certain resolution similar to what they’re doing on the iPad when an app isn’t scaled up?

Who knows. But what I do know is that upon hearing this Google TV news, the Apple TV became a little less of a “hobby” yesterday.

Aside from calling it a hobby, Steve Jobs has referred to the Apple TV as being a potential “fourth leg” of a chair Apple is building. Leg one is the Mac, leg two is the iPod, leg three is the iPhone, and Jobs had hoped the Apple TV would complete the chair one day. But it seems clear now that he thinks the iPad could be the fourth leg instead.

Screw that. I think it’s time for Apple to build a whole dining room set of furniture. We, as consumers, need a living room arms race between Apple and Google (and Microsoft, TiVo, Roku, Boxee, and the rest) to kick the cable companies’ shitty television user experience to the curb.

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Samsung has confirmed to TechRadar that current Jet owners won’t be getting the BBC iPlayer upgrade.

The new Jet Ultra edition, which was announced recently (despite being on sale for weeks) is essentially the same phone as the Jet S8000 launched last year.

However, it has a few minor tweaks and polishes: it’s now available in black with a chrome rim, BBC iPlayer is included as standard and integrated social networking.

The Jet is dead, long live the Jet

The thing is the phone is essentially the same under the hood, so we hoped current Jet owners would be getting the upgrade.

Sadly, that’s not the case, as Samsung bluntly told us today:

“At present the software will not be available for the [existing] Jet handsets”

So despite having the same processor and innards, if you’re in love with the Jet’s chassis but just can’t sleep at the thought of others having the iPlayer, you’re plum out of luck.

Yahoo has just confirmed that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Citizen Sports.

Citizen Sports has a range of products related to fantasy and real-life sports, most of which incorporate social features. Along with web based leagues and applications on Facebook, the company also offers applications for the iPhone and Android. These applications will nicely complement Yahoo Sports, which offers a number of hugely popular fantasy sports leagues.

Citizen Sports raised $10 million from Radar Ventures in 2005, when it was previously called Protrade.

The news confirms AllThingsD’s report earlier this week that Yahoo was considering buying a sports site.

Press release below:

SUNNYVALE, Calif, March 17, 2010 — As part of its ongoing commitment to be the center of people’s online lives, Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Citizen Sports (www.citizensports.com), a company that brings the world of sports to fans favorite social networking sites and mobile devices through innovative applications. This acquisition will strengthen Yahoo!s social strategy of enriching, aggregating and distributing social content from across the entire Web, and offering a highly customizable social experience.

Yahoo! is in a unique position to combine our deep expertise in content and aggregation technology to offer a highly personalized social experience, said Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president, Consumer Products Group, Yahoo!. Sports has been among the earliest online categories to experience rapid social proliferation, and the combination of Citizen Sports leading products with our world-class sports experience on Yahoo! Sports is a win-win for sports fans globally.

Millions of people across the globe use Citizen Sports array of social and mobile products to play fantasy sports, fill out brackets, check live scores and read up-to-the minute news on sports including football, hockey, soccer, baseball, racing, rugby, hockey and cricket. Yahoo! Sports content will be integrated into these products, creating a seamless experience for sports fans wherever they are. On Yahoo! Sports, users will be able to broadcast their allegiances, create or join a conversation with friends and fans and cheer for their teams through Citizen Sports applications. This integration will further transform Yahoo! into a more personally relevant experience, drive deeper user engagement and create opportunities for advertisers to interact with audiences in new environments.

As the #1 destination for online Sports with more than 39 million monthly unique users in the U.S.*, Yahoo! Sports provides people with the most timely, relevant and comprehensive sports news, information and programming. Citizen Sports network of popular applications for Facebook, MySpace, hi5, iPhone and Android span professional, college and high school sports.

Citizen Sports was founded with the intent to enable fans to access news, scores and fantasy games on the platform of their choice, said Mike Kerns, founder and CEO of Citizen Sports. We look forward to becoming a part of Yahoo! and bringing our social experiences to their 600 million users around the globe.

Citizen Sports was founded by Mike Kerns and Jeff Ma in 2004. Since then the company has brought together millions of sports fans from around the world to enjoy sports and connect with their friends. Citizen Sports is based in San Francisco.

Yahoo! expects to complete this acquisition in the second quarter of 2010. Financial terms were not disclosed.

It turns out Samsung hasn’t come out with its own version of a Windows Phone 7 Series device it was Microsoft all along.

We looked at the photos recently published of Samsung’s supposed WP7S mobile, and couldn’t help but notice the chassis looked blindingly similar to the Samsung i8910HD.

So we did a little digging, and found that it’s the very same device just given a facelift by Microsoft.

“The launch was from Microsoft, not Samsung, and they used the i8910HD to demo Windows 7,” said a Samsung spokesperson.

“It’s not yet clear whether existing i8910HD users will be able to upgrade to Windows 7 as this demo was a one-off.”

So what is it?

So Microsoft must have an upgraded i8910HD on its hands, as we know the minimum spec to be a 1GHz processor with a WVGA screen the Samsung model has none of these.

It does, however, have the three buttons on the front. These were originally for calling, menu and hanging up but Ballmer’s Bunch has popped the Start, Search and Back keys on them instead.

We’ll put our necks out here and say this Symbian phone won’t upgrade to Windows Phone 7 Series but we’d love a device with 720p video recording, if you don’t mind.

When bashing AT&T’s network, two cities usually come up above all others: New York City and San Francisco. AT&T has even acknowledged just how bad it is in those cities. But they’ve also said for a while that they’re working on making it better. And apparently now that work is far enough along that they’re emailing customers about it.

Over the past week, AT&T has been emailing its customers in San Francisco to let them know that the network is getting better. “We wanted you to be among the first to know! We recently enhanced the 3G network in the greater San Francisco area to provide better in-building 3G coverage, fewer dropped calls and a better overall wireless experience,” says the email.

It continues, “With better coverage on the nation’s fastest 3G network, there’s never been a better time to be an AT&T customer.” In other words, “things are getting better, please don’t leave.”

Hopefully, it’s a good sign if AT&T feels comfortable enough about its network to email its customers. Another good sign: AT&T did a great job this past week keeping its network stable during the SXSW festival (after failing badly last year). Still, AT&T has been saying for a while that they’re working on fixing the network in San Francisco, and on any given day it can be as bad as ever.

Below, find the full email being sent:

We wanted you to be among the first to know! We recently enhanced the 3G networkin the greater San Francisco area to provide better in-building 3G coverage, fewer dropped calls and a better overall wireless experience.

The great news is coverage inNorthern California will continue to improve as we expand capacity, optimize and add more sites in the coming months.

With better coverage on the nation’s fastest 3G network, there’s never been a better time to be an AT&T customer.

We thank you for your continued loyalty and look forward to sharing more good news soon.

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It is likely that you will not get the chance to visit Mars in your lifetime. Unless, that is, you are a billionaire set to live till the year 2050 or beyond!

However, a new project has accurately mapped a 3D visualisation of martian terrain, providing one of the most accurate 3D animations of the red planet ever seen.

British animation breakthrough

The latest vision of Mars comes from British 3D animator Doug Ellison, who has created a virtual camera that flies 300 feet above the martian terrain in the southwest corner of Candor Chasima and the immense Valles Marineris canyon system.

“After looking at hundreds of pictures of Mars over the years, this visualization made me realize how alien the martian terrain really is,” notes Discovery News’ Ray Villard. “Yes, as on Earth aeolian and hydrological processes sculpt Mars, but it’s all in 1/3rd gravity! So the towering spires, steep sand dunes, buttes and other features look spindly.”

The virtual 3D martian terrain was built from a comparison of pairs of NASA Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter HiRISE views

The animator has now set up a fascinating YouTube channel called MARS3DdotCOM with other visualizations for you to marvel at.

We’ve had lots of emails from MySpace employees with their response to our most recent post about the crumbling mid level management structure. “If youre a MySpace employee and feel differently, please contact us anonymously,” we said. And they did contact us. But they don’t feel differently. There was also a great discussion in the comments section to that post where a few MySpace employees chimed in both pro and against the company.

But the emails were most telling. One wasn’t anonymous and the writer asked to keep it off record, and we’ll respect that. But he wrote at length about high level execs “chewing out” the lower ranks, in public. And lots of exec level nepotism hires.

This is a theme brought up by another employee, writing anonymously. He or she confirmed that too many mid level managers are leaving the company, and talks about more yelling at employees in public (“Maple” refers to 407 North Maple Drive, the address of MySpace HQ, “Jason” refers to Co-president Jason “Hell Yeah” Hirschhorn):

Dear TechCrunch-

I always enjoy your article on the drama at my company MySpace but Ive never felt the urge to write until now. I guess Im writing you because your article was ABSOLUTELY dead on. Because of that, my morale isnt really high and I really dont give much of a shit anymore.

Well, the hole goes deeper than that. Many departments are losing much of the middle layer of actual star performers, but people who cant get anything done due to the crazy BS in Maple. For example, 2 directors in Jasons product org are gone recently: (Director of Analytics Joe Schantz who went to Yahoo), Director of Product Mahesh Angadi. Other senior middle managers like Sr Product Manager Charles Pham, who went to CitySearch and Sr. Online Marketing Manager, Laura Coltrin left and is now at EventBrite. What do these particular people have in common? Besides being huge losses for MySpace, they were all re-orged under his royal heighn-ass, Jason. People dont want to work for that moron hes just consolidating power.

Today, Jeff Webber Director of Engineering in Seattle – gave notice (no idea where hes going.)

Oh, and Jason really doesnt get along with Mike. Jason was witnessed ripping one of his VPs a new one when the VP was trying to explain why he was doing something that Mike requested (in front of 6 other people.) Its a mess but it should be fun watching one run the other out of town.

A bunch of other people have their foot out the door – spend some time around Maple, SF or Seattle near the front entrance and watch people disappear for hours at a time or for long lunches. Its almost comical. You see a lot of people going into empty conference room and talking on their cell phones or people going to grab coffee by themselves and chatting on the phone walking down the street. And yeah, Im one of those people.

Anyway, this isnt just due to the fact these idiots are running the company into the ground. The reason why people are leaving now is that MySpace gave out these big secret retention bonuses that had a 2 tier payout. Overall, the ENTIRE bonus was for anywhere from 20% to 100+% of a persons base. The key is that they pay out in two segments you had to be working in December so that you get 25% of the bonus amount). If youre employed here until June, you get the remaining 75% of their bonus. As you can imagine, this is a LOT of money especially at a place that gave tiny annual raises last year (<5% was the average), where we cancelled profit sharing last fiscal year (not sure you knew about that) and with no stock incentive.

Its a huge sign of how bad things are that they are leaving 75% of the bonus on the table. However, since we all know that the ship is sinking, taking 25% in December was good enough. I dont blame them. Im out of here as soon as I get a new gig. I earned that bonus money but Im sick of this place.

Oh and the guy who thought of this bonus plan? Mike. These were given out after the review cycle (August.)

So yeah, you want to write about more defections? Wait until June and then everyone will get paid and bounce. I and others are counting the days. Its kinda funny it was supposed to be a total secret from everyone in the ranks (yes, some people didnt get bonuses, but those people kinda suck so who cares right?) but now everyone is joking about it privately.

-Disgruntled

And one last employee says it’s ok to paraphrase and quote parts of his/her email. This one still has some fight left in ‘em. Here are some of the better parts:

Until a recent reorg of the engineering group (did you cover it? I don’t recall seeing it.), the whole company was segmented into horizontal layers so there was an operations group, a database group, an api group, a front-end group, a search group, a datawarehouse group, etc. Anything but the most minor feature required an obnoxious amount of cross-group interaction and took huge effort just to get everyone on board and the work scheduled. Some of that layering is being done away with, at least that is the stated goal.

In addition to the extreme layering there was a group of people who sat in the middle of the process, able to accept or reject any project; people who didn’t have the business sense to be in bizdev or be product managers and didn’t have the technical ability to be developers. When they accepted a project for development they would (randomly?) select some developers to build it. There were no clear lines of responsibility, no reason for anyone to really care about what they were working on, no reward for success and no punishment for failure (except for layoffs which seem to happen more or less randomly so they don’t fall on either the reward or punishment side). This structure was called ‘the matrix’ and thankfully was a casualty of the reorg. Plus in the big layoffs last spring (before my time) the hardest hit groups were front-line employees, the developers and testers who do the actual work; you had these big design committees arguing back and forth for weeks or months about how and what to do and no one to do it at the end of the day.

A lot of the people who are leaving and have left recently were in charge of this dysfunctional process and are unable or unwilling or just plain sick of trying. Yes a lot of good (better anyway) technical people are leaving or have left and yes there is a lot of detailed knowledge about keeping the current code running going with them.

…

There are other problems besides all of that, God I’m getting sick of writing about this. The technology platform (.net) and development methodology (scrum) and general caliber of developer (although there are exceptions) is more reminiscent of a poorly run enterprise development shop than an Internet company, certainly far far far from what you would find at a startup or Facebook or even Microsoft.

…

Will Mike & Jason succeed at creating something functional out of this godawful mess? Too soon to tell, I think. The first all-hands meeting a couple of days after they took over felt like an old fashioned tent revival or something, I almost expected Zig Ziggler to show up. But I will say that there has been more communication from them in a few weeks than from Owen in several months and they are reaching out to meet with developers working on interesting or important new projects, in short they seem engaged in a way that Owen never did. I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt for now.