As soon as the rumor broke that Apple would be renaming its struggling Apple TV to iTV, to better fit with the company’s i[Device] naming system, I thought to myself, “Isn’t ITV the name of a television network in England that always misses key goals in soccer games?” Yes, yes it is. In fact, the network isn’t too keen on Apple using the name iTV, and has promised to “vigorously defend” its IP.

The Tea Party, the “American socio-political movement that emerged in 2009 through a series of locally and nationally coordinated protests,” and known for its colorful protest signs (as seen here), hates Net Neutrality. Why does the Tea Party hate Net Neutrality? “I think the clearest thing is it’s an affront to free speech and free markets.” Thus spoke Jaime Radtke, chairwoman of the Virginia Tea Party Patriot Federation. Net Neutrality is an affront to free speech? Did I wake up in Bizarro World?

Students have another choice when it comes to electronic textbooks. CourseSmart has released an iPad App, and the company says that 90 percent of the “core textbooks” out there are available.

All of us here are totally geeking out over every single word that comes out of John Carmack’s mouth at the keynote address at this year’s QuakeCon, but one of the more interesting things he said had to do with motion controls like the Kinect and PlayStation Move. In short, he has no interest in them right now. Oh snap.

Am I QuakeCon this year? No, of course not because that would have actually been fun. But I do know this: John Carmack just announced that he’s got the Rage engine running on an iPhone. At 60 frames per second, no less. Ridiculous, yes.

Captain America Landon Donovan is the cover boy for FIFA 11 here in North America. Well, Kaká, of Brazil, is the real cover athlete, but Donovan and Carlos Vela, of Mexico, share the cover with him.

Yes, Dr. Wager, Jr. will be on the cover of Lucha Libre AAA: Heroes Del Ring. You’ll recall that Dr. Wagner, Jr.’s team won a blistering match at E3 back in June, earning him the right to be on the game’s cover. But then controversy hit!

There will be at least two special editions of Call of Duty: Black Ops. There’s the Hardened Edition and the Prestige Edition, the Prestige being the fancier of the two. But let’s start with the Hardened Edition.

What does John Carmack have up his sleeve? We’ll find out in just a few hours as QuakeCon 2010 kicks off. The great, great man tweeted a few hours ago that he will show something “neat and unannounced” at the show. Speculate!

And now it looks like Microsoft is getting into the mobile video game “space.” Redmond has posted on its careers Web site that it is looking for people to staff its new MGS Mobile Gaming studio. (MGS stands for Microsoft Games.) You have a better chance of attracting their attention if you have C# and Xbox Live programming experience.

I’ve written about plenty of green things in the past, but never a green wallet. That ends today! It’s called the Holstee wallet, and it’s made entirely out of recycled material from Delhi, India. Pretty neat, I think you’ll agree.

Amazon may want release an update to its “Every Word” Kindle game. It’s been discovered that a variant of the “n word” is included in the game as a viable, points-scoring word. You really don’t want to see that, no.

You go to Japan and their vending machines are pretty much Prothean technology come to life. You go to a Wal-Mart in Florida and the vending machines are powered by steam. Is that changing? Maybe. The local Fox affiliate has a fun story about Next Generation Vending and Food Service, a Mass.-based company that specializes in, yes, next generation vending machines. Biometrics, credit cards, touchscreens, the works.

Guess who’s the athlete with the most social network fans in the world. Go ahead, guess! OK, no more guessing: the answer is Cristiano Ronaldo. Good for him.

Hold onto your hats. A new version of the Zeus trojan, called Zeus3, has wreaked havoc on thousands of bank accounts worldwide, stealing just over $1 million. The best part? There’s pretty much no way to detect the trojan if it’s on your system. Hooray for humanity, right?

Oh boy, another Duke Nukem story. It seems that the lawsuit between 3D Realms and Take 2 has been settled, and now Duke Nukem Forever is in the capable hands of Gearbox, developer of Borderlands and the Brothers In Arms series. The question is: who could possibly care?

Google, ahem, has sent out mysterious invitations for a mobile event to be held tomorrow. That’s an event about mobile, mind, not a roaming event. Nobody actually knows what the event will be about, but there’s plenty of hearsay and conjecture to going around.

Samsung is the latest company to get into the tablet business. This, despite the fact that the tablet business is going nowhere, fast. Well, unless your name is Apple and you consider the iPad a tablet. In any event, behold! It’s the Samsung Galaxy Tab, and it will makes its official debut at European trade show IFA in September.

It’s been several days since Wikileaks went from being an obscure whistle-blower Web site to one that has attracted international attention, not to mention condemnation. The latest meme going around right now is that Julian Assange, the editor-in-chief and de facto “face” of Wikileaks, has lost his standing with people, organizations, and governments that otherwise would be on his side, all things being equal. Even more pronounced: the U.S. government is trying to convince its foreign allies to limit his travel and bring criminal charges against him.

Google’s in an odd bind these days. It’s far and away the biggest Internet company out there, and with that size and position comes great responsibility, to echo the sentiment found in Spider-Man. It drew heat yesterday—and rightly so—for joining forces with Verizon to help draw up “rules” for the Internet, as if the Internet needs rules be successful. Now the Wall Street Journal has published a report detailing the company’s ongoing, internal discussions surrounding its possible use of the one thing that makes it so valuable: your information. At one point will it be seen that Google has “crossed the line” with respect to its use of your information?

You’ll soon be able to watch “Dinner for Schmucks” via Netflix instant streaming. The company inked a deal with Epix, a new pay TV channel, for the rights to Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate movies. The deal cost Netflix $1 billion. That’s quite a bit of money, yes.

Looks like Google and Verizon were, in fact, in talks over Net Neutrality after all, calling it a “thorny” issue, no less. Hm. Both parties announced, a few moments ago, the creation of a codified framework that they will submit to lawmakers in hopes of being enshrined into law. Many of the ideas are fairly benign, such as giving the FCC power to regulate the Internet a little more forcefully. Other ideas, such as the wholesale exclusion of wireless Internet from any sort of Net Neutrality controls, are a little more controversial.

Here we have a video—a glimpse, really—of Call of Duty: Black Ops’ mutli-player mode. It looks awfully familiar, which, granted, may be the entire point, but as I asked the other day: at what point does burnout set in?

Here’s an odd one. Popular BitTorrent site TorrentReactor has announced that it has “bought” a small Russian town, Gar, for just under $150,000, and that the town will rename itself in honor of the site. Sounds like a bunch of nonsense, right? It kind of is, but then it kinda of isn’t, too. Oh dear.