Firmly in the rumour section, but the iTunes Store has been down for a few hours this morning, and we're getting a few reports that it's due to movies going live.

While it's been a little bit longer than we expected, the fact is that we are expecting movies any day now, so this could be promising.

Stay tuned for more. 

The Olympics start tomorrow, and if you're not yet excited by the idea of athletes pushing themselves to the limit in a country where the cabs are bugged and the towns are filled with gadget refuse, then you never will be.

Because of the similarity in time zones between China and Australia, there are going to be a lot of people wasting their work day watching the games. Telstra have an agreement with Channel 7 to show Olympic coverage over their NextG mobiles, Yahoo7 will also have online video streaming of the games.

If, however, you got excited by the Reuters article detailing the IOCs decision to showcase games highlights on YouTube, you're destined for disappointment - the YouTube channel isn't available to Australians, thanks to the Yahoo!7 deal.

Let's just hope that Yahoo!7 doesn't drop the ball when it comes to their Olympic video coverage - Channel 7 have never been known for their willingness to offer users what they want, when they want it...

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NBC's scheduled coverage of the 2008 Olympics is absolutely breathtaking in its scope: It's broadcasting over 3,600 hours of the world's greatest athletes performing feats that reveal how shapeless and amoebic the rest of humanity is--that's 1,000 more hours than the last 12 Summer Olympics combined. The internet is a huge component of their nearly omniscient coverage. You can even download and watch full-length events. But NBC has a fat red warning on the page: If you've got metered or capped broadband, you might want to think twice before downloading. It's the first shot by major media in the next great battle for the internet's future. Here's why you—and most media companies—should be worried about the new wave of internet pricing.

AU: Obviously this is all US-centric, but it's worth watching considering how bad our broadband situation is down here...

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Oh, Google is just so great! They have the best free email, calendar, chat, photo and document sharing services, so why not use them all? Well, here's why: they can lock you out of your entire account without any explanation or any way to get it back, pretty much erasing your online existence. It happened to Nick Saber.

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Google's dutiful camera vans have finished canvassing Tokyo, which means today you can now tour some of the world's most geek-friendly real estate in "electric town" Akihabara without the 14 hour plane flight. The folks at Mars Mag have put together a tour of some of their favourite Linux Maid Cafes, Dream PC builders, arcade palaces and electronics megastores that call Akihabara home.

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When we brought you news of Steve Jobs' displeasure at the stumbling launch of MobileMe, we wondered what was happening in the management structure of the service. The chaps at Valleywag have worked it out, and it's a classic. The guy now in charge of MobileMe, and all of Apple's online services—Eddy Cue—was actually originally in charge of the iTunes Store: the place where service outages really messed up the iPhone 3G's launch. Remember the iPocalypse? Hmmm. That now makes us wonder what happened to Cue's former boss Sina Tamaddon (on the right in the pic) and Rob Schoeben, who was in charge of MobileMe's launch. Did they too get punishment promotions? [Valleywag]

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The MobileMe launch was a massive flusteruck--even Steve said so. Our long national nightmare is over though, right? Well, Om is reporting that their whole net infrastructure is a few years behind where it should be, and if it's as bad as he's heard, "then there is no way Apple can get over its current spate of problems."

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Ars has decided to the release the full email Steve Jobs sent to Apple employees declaring that "MobileMe was simply not up to Apple's standards." There's actually not much you haven't already read, other than the additional admonishment that it "was not our finest hour." Granted, that probably means at least 20 more people were flayed than we originally believed. Here's the whole thing:

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