Blizzard Entertainment’s latest World of Warcraft expansion Wrath of the Lich King is barely a week old, but the company’s CEO is promising more expansions in the coming years.

CEO Mike Morhaime spoke with MTV.com’s Tracey John at the New York Wrath of the Lich King launch event and said his team was already brainstorming the next expansion. He added that Blizzard is aiming for one expansion a year.

Expansions will be rolled out continuously for the “foreseeable” future, Morhaime told MTV.com. Further examination of the World of Warcraft lore shows that there is still a huge amount of area that can be added — namely the Maelstrom in the center of the world map and the Emerald Dream. There’s also the interesting south continent that can be seen while questing in the new continent Northrend. Some people speculate the southern continent is the origin of the goblin race.

Blizzard will try to aim for one World of Warcraft expansion annually, but Morhaime admits that it will “probably never get it down to a year”. Simply put, there is just too much content to add and he adds that some players will begin feeling a bit fatigued if expansions come too quickly.

With World of Warcraft surpassing 11 million players, will Blizzard lower to the monthly subscription fee of $14.99? Not a chance, says Morhaime. He contends that players are pretty happy with the current rate and said there really isn’t a better value that you can get in entertainment. To a certain extent he’s right, $15 a month is pretty cheap compared to a night out on the town or a dinner at a decent restaurant, or even relative to a movie ticket and popcorn.

Swedish communications provider TeliaSonera could soon be taking the task of introducing Multimedia Messaging Service functionality to the iPhone.

As media friendly as the iPhone is, it is unable to send or receive MMS, a task even the most basic of cell phones on the market today have no problem with.

Currently, iPhone users wishing to snap a picture and send it off to their friends can only do so via email – which requires using data. More adventurous iPhone users can bring MMS features through an application called SwirlyMMS which requires a jailbroken device.

Telia, and likely many of its iPhone wielding customers, appear to have no intention to sit around and wait for Apple to introduce MMS in a future firmware version – should it ever come. Instead, the Swedish mobile provider is intends to develop an app that will handle the sending of multimedia messages.

Bengt Olsson of TeliaSonera told MacWorld (English translation) that the telecoms company will provide MMS functionality for the iPhone within two months.

However, even if Telia develops such an App, it will have to go through Apple’s certification and approval process before appearing in the App Store. To date, no such app has found its way onto the App Store, perhaps signifying that Apple has no intention of allowing MMS on the iPhone from a third-party.

It seems we’re going to see a lot more of the iPhone following the holiday season. Rumor has it that after Christmas, you can expect to see the iPhone in some Wal-Mart stores.

According to internal correspondence obtained by the Boy Genius Report, Wal-Mart has reached agreement with Apple to offer the iPhone in Wal-Mart and Wal-Mart-managed Sam’s Club Connection Centers nationwide beginning December 28, 2008. AT&T will be supporting the two chains Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club with the activation process.

So aside being able to pick up a HTC G1 on T-Mobile and an iPhone on AT&T at Wal-Mart, what does this mean? Well, for one thing, we reckon it’s wise that Wal-Mart is holding off until after the Christmas rush before it starts stocking iPhones.

Considering the popularity of the device following its launch at the beginning of July, we figure as Christmas looms closer, iPhones will be pretty thin on the ground. Offering them in Wal-Mart stores would mean even less stock to go around. That said, reports say iPhone sales are calming down a little so we wonder why Apple isn’t pushing the phone in as many stores as possible this Christmas.

No news yet on how much the iPhone will cost in Wal-Mart but we’re hoping it will be a little cheaper at Wal-Mart than anywhere else. It’s hard to imagine the not so tech-savvy choosing the iPhone when a cheaper G1 is on the shelf beside it.

Check out the full story on BGR.

Video game peripheral company, Datel, appears to be the first to unravel the latest Sony PSP hardware’s protection systems for the purpose of installing custom firmware and homebrew software.

Ever since the first iteration of the PSP hardware, console modders have installed custom firmware on Sony’s handheld to enable new features and software that aren’t a part of the official feature set. More nefarious uses for the software can also lead to piracy, allowing games to be ran off a Memory Stick Pro Duo.

For all fans of customized PSPs, Datel has developed a specially designed battery and Memory Stick that will enable the service mode on the new PSP-3000 hardware, allowing for firmware downgrades and custom installs.

This development is the latest in the game of cat and mouse between Sony and modders. The original PSP was moddable using only software hacks, while the slimmer, lighter PSP-2000 required a modified battery pack and Memory Pack. The PSP-3000, however, is the first time that the hack will require something that one may not already own.

Datel said that it had to engineer an “advanced IC controller” inside its tool in order to crack the new PSP. Dubbed the Lite Blue Tool, the product is set to hit November 28 at in the UK and North America and will set you back ₤19.99 and $29.99 respectively.

Read more at MaxConsole.

HP brings its TouchSmart touch-screen technology to the consumer notebook space with today’s announcement of the TouchSmart tx2 notebook PC, the first consumer notebook with a multi-touch display.

The 4.5-pound TouchSmart tx2 features a 12.1-inch touch-screen (1280x800 resolution) that can be pivoted 180 degrees or folded flat for writing. Users can interact with the computer using their fingertip, the included stylus, or with the conventional trackpad and keyboard.

The multi-touch technology recognizes “pinch” movements to resize objects and windows, “rotate” movements to rotate an object clockwise or counterclockwise, and “flick” movements to move objects left or right at speeds relevant to the speed of your finger movement. Single and double taps are also recognized, as are press-and-drag movements.

Users can also draw and write on the screen, which should feel much more natural than it does on HP’s line of TouchSmart desktops. The included handwriting-recognition software can automatically convert handwriting into typed text. The machine also includes HP’s MediaSmart software for viewing photos, listening to music, and watching video.

HP has developed an optional easel-like stand ($49.99) that can hold the notebook, with its screen folded flat, at an angle convenient for watching movies and slideshows. The included infrared remote control can be tucked inside the notebook when not in use.

The base model TouchSmart tx2 is priced at $1,149.99 and features an AMD Athlon Turion X2 dual-core CPU (model QL-64) running at 2.1GHz, 3GB of DDR2 memory, a 250GB, 5,400RPM hard drive, and a SuperMulti 8x DVD burner. Graphics are provided by an ATI Radeon HD 3200 GPU with 64MB of memory. The machine comes with a gigabit wired-network interface and an 802.11g wireless card. An integrated webcam is also included.

Customers can choose from a host of optional components, including more powerful AMD CPUs, more memory, larger hard drives, a fingerprint reader, and different operating-system choices (the base model comes with the 32-bit version of Windows Vista Home Premium).

A Federal court judge has dismissed Psystar’s anti-competitive lawsuit against Apple. Northern District of California Federal Court judge William Alsup handed down a 19-page ruling that said Apple is not abusing its position in the market.

Psystar, the maker of Apple clones or “Hackintoshes”, had alleged that the company illegally restricts installation of its Mac OS operating systems on computers.

Psystar began selling Mac clones, complete with the Leopard operating system, earlier this year. Unfortunately for them, Apple’s EULA expressly restricts the installation of Mac OS X to genuine Apple hardware. Apple sued Psystar in July and, you guessed it, Psystar counter sued.

Psystar lawyers alleged, under federal and state anti-competitive laws, that Apple prevents people from entering the Mac OS market. Apple has always contended that there really isn’t a Mac OS market because the computers and operating system are married into a single product. In addition, Judge Alsup said that Psystar couldn’t prove that Mac OS is “so unique that it suffers no actual or potential competitors.”

What Psystar sells isn’t unique and hobbyists have been creating “hackintoshes” for years. There are complete guides on the Internet and the hardware portion of the build is actually quite easy and inexpensive. Lifehacker published a how-to article last year detailing a build for approximately $800.

Judge Alsup has allowed Psystar to file a counter argument by December 8th. Apple’s case against Psystar continues as normal.

Both Apple and Psystar haven’t given any public statements about the ruling.

Chief Yahoo! and soon to be former CEO of the internet search giant has authored a post on the company’s official blog, letting users know that he will soon be leaving Yahoo! and no, it is not all lowercase.

News about Yang’s departure hit the wires late on Monday afternoon and spread like wildfire. Soon enough, everyone knew and everyone was talking about it. Yesterday, BoomTown published a copy of the official email Jerry sent to Yahoo! staff detailing his reasons for leaving. Today sees a similar announcement on Yahoo!’s Yodel blog.

While we’re not quite sure why Yahoo! or Yang feel the need to make three announcements (okay, so the memo wasn’t an official announcement but the company no doubt knew it would get out), it seems both are eager to drive home the message that a new leader is on the horizon.

Yang’s post, similar to the mail he sent to staff outlines why he came on board as CEO last June and remains adamant in his belief that, despite a tough external environment, the company has made real progress toward the goal of restructuring Yahoo!.

After talk of how proud he is of the company and its staff, Jerry assures readers that he will always bleed purple. Surprisingly, while many of Yang’s decisions have been criticised, the majority of comments are supportive and wish Yang well in his future endeavours. The full memo is pasted below. Click here to go directly to the Yodel post.

As you’ve no doubt already read, I’ve decided that I will step down from my role as Chief Executive Officer after my successor has been selected.

Jerry Yang Chief Yahoo and CEO

Some people are willing to pay anything for a front-row seat to the upcoming inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, but they won’t be able to buy the tickets on eBay anymore. At the urging of Senator Dianne Feinstein and the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, the world’s most popular online auction house has pulled all existing sales of the tickets. In some cases, the sellers were asking upwards of $40,000 per ticket.

The funny thing is, the 240,000 “front-row” tickets are free and will be distributed the week before the inauguration by Congressional Representatives and Senators. Other seats nearby and along the parade route are selling for approximately $25 and up. Obama will be inaugurated on January 20th, 2009, and the National Park Service estimates that more than one million people will attend the inauguration.

To prevent further sales, Senator Dianne Feinstein introduced legislation yesterday that would make scalping inauguration tickets a misdemeanor punishable by a fine and up to one year imprisonment. The bill is expected to pass.

Scalpers taking advantage of free tickets is a common occurrence and some readers may remember last year’s free Bon Jovi concert in Central Park New York. 60,000 free tickets were handed out for that concert, but some of them ended up on Craigslist and eBay for as much as $1500 each.

This time Craigslist is being used for a different reason. Many of the Washington DC-area hotels are sold out and nearby homeowners are offering up their houses and rooms for up to $20,000 for the week. In one Craigslist ad, one person was renting out his apartment rooms for a princely sum of $1700 per night.

A spider is running amuck aboard the International Space Station although NASA denies any arachnid wrongdoings.

According to a news article over on FOXNews, two orb weaver spiders were actually launched into space last Friday as part of a science experiment aimed towards earth-bound students between grades K-12. The lovely couple was accompanied by painted lady butterfly larvae, with the sole intention for students to compare both insect species living in weightlessness to identical insects found on Earth. For the butterflies, students are to compare the life cycles; for the spiders, students are to study how they weave webs without gravity.

Astronauts checked out the spiders Monday and reported that the spun webs were more of a tangled mess than the symmetrical versions earthlings are accustomed to walking into. "The web was more or less three-dimensional and it looked like it was all over the inside of the spider hab," said NASA astronaut Sandra Magnus, the space station’s science officer. "We took some pictures of it, so hopefully they will turn out."

In other words, it was more like a tangled, disorganized mess.

However, it seems one of the spiders, having grown irritated with its habitat, broke free and is nowhere to be seen. No doubt the poor spider is having artistic troubles and is looking for a good place to drown its sorrows.

According to the space station’s flight director, they’re not really "missing" the spider at all, and thus the explanation gets a little strange. "The way it was explained to me, he came out of his bedroom and may be into the living room of the house." NASA event confirmed that the arachnid hasn’t "gone amuck" even though no one knows were the insect really is or how it escaped its frigid prison in the first place.

Kirk Shireman, NASA’s deputy station program manager, seems pretty confident that they’ll uncover the spider eventually. "I’m sure we’ll find him spinning a web sometime here in the next few days."

Yeah, buddy. We’ve played Doom 3, we’ve watched sci-fi movies. We know what spiders holed up in space are capable of.

Internet providers pulled the plug on U.S.-based McColo Corp., a company assisting in the distribution of more than half of the junk e-mail Internet users deal with on a daily basis.

Enhance your lovemaking now! Just blow your allergies away! Connect with local sexy singles! Be your own boss! Don’t let debt slow you down! She likes it beefy and you should too! Sound familiar? It should, as subject lines like these invade consumer inboxes by the millions every day. But for now - or at least for the next few days - that may change, resulting in access to e-mails that don’t require censoring or a filter thanks to the termination of one web hosting service company: the McColo Corporation.

Although it may seem like a good time to fire up the barbecue pit and break out the karaoke machine, the small victory won against the evil gangs responsible for most of the junk e-mail flooding inboxes doesn’t mean that the battle is won. In fact, experts say that the evildoers are like cockroaches, and that they will find a new place to dig in and spread their nasty disease. However, until that time comes, and it will come soon like a bad rash that just won’t go away, Internet users should enjoy the short-lived holiday gift while they can.

According to this article by the Associate Press, the holiday season is the busiest time of the year for spammers, and the hustlers who originally used McColo Corp to distribute the spam is now looking for other means to access infected PCs. Many mainstream consumers have no idea how spam works, only gripe and moan when a huge load fills their inbox. Most spam comes from networks of infected computers worldwide, PCs owned by consumers who have no idea their computers are sending out tons of junk e-mail every day. Spammers require remote access to these computers and a hosting service such as McColo Corp that is willing to "look the other way" when the commands are being transmitted to those infected PCs.

Unfortunately, for spammers, McColo Corp seemed to be the choke point for the entire spamming industry. According to IronPort, a security firm owned by Cisco Systems Inc., worldwide spam volume actually dropped from 153 billion e-mail messages to 64 billion messages when McColo’s main Internet connections were terminated on November 11. The Washington Post also reports that McColo Corp was under surveillance over the last four months as Security Fix gathered data to shut the web hosting service down.

“We looked into it a bit, saw the size and scope of the problem [Security Fix was] reporting and said ‘Holy cow! Within the hour we had terminated all of our connections to them,” stated Benny Ng of Hurricane Electric after Security Fix contacted the Internet provider on Monday. Global Crossing, another one of McColo’s major Internet providers, said Tuesday afternoon that it would cooperate fully with law enforcement.

Although a temporary setback, the Internet connection terminations didn’t stop McColo from getting back online. The Associated Press reports that the company sweet-talked a Swedish Internet provider for new connection, launching back online on Sunday. However, after security researches contacted the Internet provider, McColo once again found itself back offline. Currently clicking on the company’s website results in a page load error, and apparently McColo officials are not responding to e-mails, phone calls, instant messaging, or promises to enlarge "that special muscle."

But again, the victory was only brief. IronPort reports that spam volume is climbing once again, and had reached an estimated 71 billion messages on Monday. Is that surprising? Certainly not. If it weren’t for spam, companies like Symantec and McAfee wouldn’t make money from anti-spam software. It’s a business, and conspiracy theorists may agree that the two are interlinked somehow. Should security researchers turn their watchful eye on anti-spam software developers? Perhaps. But for now, companies like McColo should be tracked down and forced to eat Spam by the bucketfuls.

Still, while McColo may be down for the count, the junk e-mail roaches are still out there, infesting dark corners, crawling, breeding and infecting more and more victims every day. The junk e-mail disease we call "spam" will never go away until these groups are exterminated. Period.

Star Trek Online, recently brought back from the dead after the demise of Perpetual Entertainment, might actually head to consoles in addition to the planned PC version.

Unfortunately, that’s all just speculation stemming from a recent job posting over on Craigslist. Whether or not the listing is legit remains to be seen, as the online auction site is usually reserved for hooking up with naughty girls and junk nobody really wants. However Cryptic Studios, the masterminds behind Champions Online, an upcoming MMORPG set for the Xbox 360 and the PC, is also busily working on the highly-anticipated, long-awaited, much-desired (and Kevin-is-laying-it-on-rather-thick-so-cut-it-out-moron) MMORPG, Star Trek Online.

What’s exciting about the Craigslist posting is that the developer is currently looking for a PlayStation 3 engine programmer. According to the developer, interested programmers will need to be extremely proficient in C programming and debugging as well as having a thorough understanding of Sony’s console.

"Are you interested in a challenge?" the job listing teases. "We have developed a flexible, cutting edge MMO platform to power games like Champions and Star Trek Online. It runs on PC and XBOX 360 - now we want to support PS3 too. Are you an expert PS3 coder? Do you enjoy squeezing every last drop of performance and spare memory out of the system?"

After reading the listing, there’s no question that Cryptic plans to expend its MMO engine to the PlayStation 3, but whether or not Star Trek Online will be a part of the expansion is still up in the air. Currently Cryptic has not announced the official host for the MMORPG, however it’s likely that the developer will mimic Champions Online and bring the game to the Xbox 360 console as indicated by the game’s FAQ.

Star Trek Online was originally in development over at Perpetual Entertainment, however in January 2008, the company announced that it would no longer be working on the project, and sold off the license and assets (except for the code) to an unnamed San Francisco development studio; all STO developers were laid off shortly thereafter. Previously the company canceled development of another MMORPG, Gods and Heroes: Rome Rising, and PR firm Kohnke Communications quickly retaliated with a lawsuit claiming breach of contract. Kohnke also alleged that Perpetual sold the STO license to P2 Entertainment before liquidating its assets, and did not notify Kohnke of the transaction.

Although Kohnke eventually dismissed its lawsuit against the company (due to a mutual resolution), P2 Entertainment closed its doors in February 2008. A countdown timer thus appeared on Cryptic Studio’s website, confirming that the company was indeed developing the MMORPG, and that the project is no longer in limbo. According to Cryptic Studios, the game will take place twenty-six years after Star Trek Nemesis (2409), allowing gamers to assume the roles of Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Klingon, Orion, Gorn and "several others." Cryptic also states that "technology has advanced and the galaxy is a much more volatile place."

It will be interesting to see if the MMORPG makes its way to both consoles. If that were the case, would PC gamers be able to interact with console players? "We would like that to be the case," says the company. "There is nothing technologically keeping us from making it so."

Currently Star Trek Online is slated to hit store shelves in Fall 2009.