The UpStream (Page 418)

A little while ago Sony Ericsson hinted that there might be a PlayStation Phone and now they really seem to be hinting at it, or are they?

Hit the break to find out if for Sony Ericsson, where there is smoke, there is fire.

I know, I told you weeks ago about a possible price cut for Hulu Plus and after reading the press release last week and seeing that it was still $9.99/month, I informed you otherwise. Well, for the first time in a long time, one of our rumors turned out to be correct as this week Hulu Plus announced it was out, available and less than $10/month. That's right, you can now have the awesome that is Hulu Plus for only $7.99/month.

For more on the cool stuff that comes along with this premium package, hit the break.

Today I have the misfortune of being the bearer of bad but not unexpected news - Portal 2 has been delayed again. Its most recent planned release date was February 9, 2011. Now we find out that we will not get the pleasure of playing Co-op Portal until April 20, 2011. Only a 2 month delay, but we all know how this works with Valve. Do any of you actually expect to see Half-Life 2: Episode 3?

Because Valve likes to keep their fans emotionally confused, they released this statement to announce the delay:

This two month slip not only marks the shortest delay in Valve's proud tradition of delays, it represents the approaching convergence of Valve Time and Real Time. Though this convergence spells doom for humanity, it will not affect the new Portal 2 release date.

Thanks for driving us totally mad, Valve.

Now that we have discussed how Tumblr stays around, the next topic is why. It bills itself as a blogging site but in reality it tends to lend itself to being very 4chan. In fact, recently there has been a war building between the anti-social 4channers and the anti-social tumblrs. Sounds thrilling, eh?

Well, it turns out to have been very interesting. You're probably asking yourself, "How is that possible?" The answer is simple - Tumblr seems to have won. Let me explain. Both sites seem to be populated by teenage hackers in their parents basements, but 4chan has several years of recruiting their members ahead of Tumblr. However, after Tumblr users have seemingly stolen Internet memes from 4chan, things have gone crazy.

To find out how crazy, hit the break.

I think that by now everyone knows that Twitter is a huge, worthless hole filled with cash. What you might not know is that Tumblr is right behind them, following the same path.

While there are lots of lessons web applications should learn from Twitter, how to run the business end of things is not one of them. Tumblr never got this message, however, and has been playing the "give us money and we'll figure out who we are later" game that Twitter is so well-known for. Somehow, despite obvious reasons not to, many investors are falling for it.

To take a digital ride back before the dot com bust, hit the break.

If you have been following The UpStream since August of last year, you know very well that Google and Apple have been battling over Google Voice on the iPhone. Apple claimed that Google's Voice app duplicated too many features of the iPhone and that it would be confusing for users.

After over a year and many trips to the FCC (Round 2, Round 3), Google and Apple seem to have figured out a way to move forward. Google's official Voice app has hit the App Store.

For more on the drama, hit the break.