Weekly high-tech hot topics in the blogs: iTunes fraud, YouTube mobile, Firefox 4 beta

Hot topics in the tech blogs for the week ending July 9 include reports of fraud in the iTunes store, new YouTube mobile site is better than native mobile applications, reports of devastatingly low sales for Microsoft's social networking-centric Kin handsets, and Google brings YouTube to the TV with "Leanback."

iTunes Fraud
Apple had to deal with yet another PR nightmare this week. Blogs and online forums started to fill with consumer complaints about the fraudulent use of iTunes accounts to purchase applications and music. Apple later informed one blogger that "an extremely small percentage of users, about 400 of the 150 million iTunes users - that is less than 0.0003% of iTunes users, were impacted."

YouTube Mobile
"YouTube Mobile Goes HTML5, Video Quality Beats Native Apps Hands Down" said bloggers reporting on Google's new YouTube mobile website. The updated site caters to touchscreen devices and improves the experience of browsing, searching and viewing HD videos on your mobile device.

Mozilla announces Firefox 4 beta, gets new look and features
Mozilla, maker of the second most popular web browser on the market, Firefox, announced the much awaited release of the Firefox 4 beta 1 this week. Bloggers applauded the release but warned Mozilla would need to continue to innovate in order to stay ahead of web browser rival Google Chrome.

Number of Kin devices sold devastatingly low
A "Microsoftie" reportedly told Daring Fireball blogger John Gruber the company had "sold a grand total of 503 Kins before they pulled the plug." The news quickly spread across the blogs until it was pointed out that there are around 8,800 people using a Kin-specific Facebook application. "500 or 10,000 sold, this was still a FAIL of epic proportions for Microsoft" said ZDNet.

Youtube Leanback
Want to sit back and watch some classic YouTube content on your TV without having to get up every few minutes to search for the next video to watch? So do people at Google; which is why the company introduced YouTube Leanback. "There's no need to click, search, or browse, unless you want to, of course. Watching YouTube becomes as easy as watching TV" explained Google in a July 7 blog post.