As we reported last week, Dell and HP have been in a heated bidding war over storage solutions company 3PAR, where Dell started the whole thing with a $1.1 billion offer. HP joined the game, and now has emerged victorious — by paying a stunning $2.4 billion for 3PAR, over twice the amount that was originally bid (and confirmed by 3PAR). Congrats, HP! Sorta…

Popularity: 1% [?]

At today’s Apple media event, Apple’s Steve Jobs finally unveiled when the new Game Center will be shipping: in a few days with iOS 4.1. Game Center is for iOS what Xbox Live is for the Xbox 360, and will offer iOS gamers to play games together, leaderboards, friends lists and much more. For more details, check out DigitalBattle.

Popularity: 1% [?]

Just as rumor predicted, Apple has announced a new Apple TV, and yes, it’s not called iTV as previously reported. The new TV is much smaller and is a streaming device only, meaning it has no internal hard drive. It will offer iTunes rentals and purchases, and as we reported yesterday, Netflix streaming. The ne Apple TV will ship in a month and will cost just $100.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Gmail is by far the best and most popular email app, and they’ve made continuous improvements for years, and now they’ve launched “Priority inbox”, which sorts your email automatically based on what kind of mail you read and reply to. Watch the video above for more details on how it works.

Popularity: 3% [?]

According to new reports, Google is in talks with Hollywood studios to offer movie rentals on YouTube for $5 a pop as streams, which is a few bucks more than they cost on comparable services like iTunes. Google has been testing movie rentals a few months ago with a select few indie titles, and now the company is set to expand significantly. We’ll have to wait and see what kind of deal is struck with the studios.

Popularity: 2% [?]

Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has filed lawsuits against Google, Apple and Facebook via his company Interval Licensing LLC, which holds a number of patents related to the web. The patents in question (via Mashable):

• United States Patent No. 6,263,507 issued for an invention entitled “Browser for Use in Navigating a Body of Information, With Particular Application to Browsing Information Represented By Audiovisual Data.”
• United States Patent No. 6,034,652 issued for an invention entitled “Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device.”
• United States Patent No. 6,788,314 issued for an invention entitled “Attention Manager for Occupying the Peripheral Attention of a Person in the Vicinity of a Display Device.”
• United States Patent No. 6,757,682 issued for an invention entitled “Alerting Users to Items of Current Interest.”

As you can see, they’re pretty vague and Allen can pretty much sue every tech company and website out there.

UPDATE: It turns out that Paul Allen has sued quite a few companies besides Apple, Google and Facebook. The list now includes: AOL, , ebay, Netflix, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Staples, Yahoo, and YouTube.

Popularity: 5% [?]

Storage software and solutions company 3PAR has been getting a lot of interest from Dell and HP, and now the two tech giants are competing over 3PAr. Yesterday, Dell offered $1.6 billion for 3PAR, and today, HP countered that with a $1.8 billion offer. The whole thing started on August 15, when Dell offered $1.15 billion for the company, but HP made a counter offer before the papers were signed.

Popularity: 3% [?]

Apple has announced that it will hold a special event, the way it does every September, on September 1, where it will reportedly reveal new iPods and a newly revamped Apple TV, rumored to be named iTV. Apple is also said to be introducing a 99-cent TV show rental program, but none of these things are confirmed — as usual we’ll have to wait and see.

Popularity: 5% [?]