You may remember seeing an eBay auction for a NIB Optimus Maximus keyboard a few weeks ago on Engadget. As you can imagine, the news generated a lot of excitement -- particularly from the folks at eBay, who decided it would be a sweet item to feature on their homepage. Thus the auction was ended quickly and relisted in accordance with special rules and regulations, and now some poor, poor soul (or wealthy, as it were) is the proud owner of an auctioned Optimus Maximus. Hey, it only cost $2,750... or just a little bit less than double the list price ($1564.72). Oh you crazy eBayers.

[Via TG Daily]

Don't you dare criticize TiVo's ad collecting / disseminating department for slacking off, as just months after it launched StopWatch to offer up second-by-second viewing data, the company is planning to also hand over demographic information about its customers. The move is certainly likely to shift TiVo into Big Brother's list of most highly-regarded outfits, as the information that will soon be shared with advertisers (we're hearing it may be opt-in only, however) includes "age, income, marital status and ethnicity." There's no telling how much coinage TiVo will be raking in for such detailed data, but at least willing users can now watch intently knowing full well that they're letting it all (and we mean all) hang out.

Update: Turns out this is indeed an opt-in program. Thanks, Jake!

[Via Reuters]

While quite a few reports seemed pretty confident that Sony was indeed looking to sell its PS3 chip production facilities to Toshiba, Sony has now hit back with denials. Reportedly, the firm stated that it was "looking at ways to improve its chip operations but had reached no decision on whether to sell it," and just in case you needed a bit of proof from the other side, a spokesman for Toshiba "also said that no deal had been decided." According to Sony spokesman Tomio Takizawa, "nothing concrete has been decided," so until we hear otherwise, we'll take his word for it.

Considering that some retail locales in America are still having trouble keeping a fresh supply of Wii consoles in stock (whilst the PlayStation 3 units tend collect thin layers of dust), it's no surprise to see such dramatic sales figures surface. Sure enough, Enterbrain's latest report demonstrates that Nintendo's darling moved into 270,974 new households in June, while only 41,628 PS3s were sold in the same timeframe; just to compare, the even older Xbox 360 was able to sell 17,616 units. That brings the overall sales figures to date for Nintendo to nearly 2.76 million, while Sony has yet to break the magical one million in units sold. But don't count Sony out just yet -- it's coming back, remember?

We've seen oodles of showdowns (regarding sales or otherwise) between the current consoles, and it always seems that the financial numbers games prove the most interesting (or downright incorrect). While we'd already heard that the Xbox 360 didn't fare so well compared to its predecessor, now we're hearing that Microsoft's latest has actually lost the first-four-month battle to Sony's PlayStation 3 -- at least in America. According to a spokesperson from NPD, "figures show that the PS3 is selling slightly faster in the US than the Xbox 360 did at the same stage in its release," which comes after the somewhat disappointing (but unsurprising) European release. Unfortunately, the charts, graphs, and nitty gritty that never seems to follow such bold claims are expectedly missing in this instance as well, but we're sure a counter report of some kind isn't too far behind.

[Via GigaGamez]

You may have noticed that nearly four months after both the Wii and PlayStation 3 hit the market, Nintendo's console is generally still more difficult to locate than Sony's counterpart -- especially the widely unwanted 20GB flavor. While rumors galore have been floating around, it looks like one of the largest PS3 retailers are pulling the plug on the (so to speak) cheapo version, leaving Best Buy consumers with exactly two options, either cough up the $600 required to cop the 60GB edition, or look elsewhere for their gaming satisfaction. According to Joystiq, they have checked with numerous Best Buy locales and have confirmed the "Discontinued" status that was recently printed out from a BB computer system, which means that the flow of 20GB units into Best Buy stores should all but stop here in the very near future. No word on whether the creators of the 20GB PS3 sauce will be drying up their production as well, however.