Leo Laporte was one of the creators and co-hosts of the TV show The Screen Savers on TechTV around 1998. Laporte left in 2004 because of a disagreement with one of TechTV’s investors. Laporte has attempted several different TV and radio shows in between 2004 and 2008. And then he started a podcast called This WEEK in TECH (TWiT.TV).

At the Online News Association last week, Laporte said that TWiT earned $1.5 million. The operating cost of running the program is $350,000 so that gives the company $1.15 million in profit. Every year Laporte’s revenue has been doubling too. Laporte charges advertisers $70 CPM. Some of TWiT’s regular guests on the program include Kevin Rose, Justine Ezarik, and Michael Arrington.

Around the time that the Palm Pre was released, Laporte’s ethics were questioned by Arrington and the two got into a verbal argument. The major problem with TWiT.TV is that revenue is generated entirely by Laporte’s credibility and desire to constantly air podcasts. If a company was ever to buy TWiT.TV, then they would have to make Laporte sign an extended long-term contract.

The Samsung Behold II has a 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, flash, video recording, 3.2″ AMOLED display, WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, and 16GB microSD expansion. The phone appears to be powered by Google Android and has a TouchWiz user interface. The phone has a 3D cube menu for rotating between different applications. Prices and availability is currently not known, but we are nearly certain that it will be here in time for the holidays.

If you’re getting bored of those generic factory Xbox 360 controllers, the console mod company XCM has a solution for you. The above pictured Blue Blood 360 has a seablue shell with glowing LED buttons on top of a Xbox 360 standard controller. For those of you that enjoy playing video games in the dark, checking out this device might be worth your while and the $30 price tag that comes along with it.

If your BlackBerry has a WiFi collection, your current telecomm provider is T-Mobile, and you work for a major corporation then you may soon have the ability to make phone calls over your WiFi connection. That means when you talk to people at the office and walk around the building, as long as you have a WiFi connection you won’t have any dropped calls. And then when you leave the office building, the phone will automatically pick up the T-Mobile network connection so calls won’t be dropped. Of course this type of service won’t be free, there will be a monthly charge on top of normal services offered.

Windows Mobile Marketplace opened for developers back in July and now the mobile store is officially open for business. Currently the only way to access the store is through the Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. The Windows Mobile Marketplace opened one day ahead of schedule and there are about 20,000 Windows Mobile applications on the store as of right now.

The HTC Pure is expected to go on sale as early as tomorrow, but word on the streets is that some stores are already selling the device. The HTC Pure appears to customized version of the Touch Diamond2. The cost is $149.99 with 2 year agreement and $100 mail-in rebate. The HTC Pure will be powered by Windows Mobile 6.5 and is a touchscreen.

Over the weekend, Nintendo launched Wii Fit Plus. This video game will most likely become one of the best selling games during the holiday season as its predecessor was at the top of the gaming charts for a long period. The game will be available for purchase in 2 ways:
1. Game + balance board
2. Just the game for users who bought the original game plus the board

The Wii Fit Plus has 20 new games which includes Segway and skateboarding. Workouts can be made from between 5 minutes and 1 hour. The game+balance board combo sells for $99.99 and the game itself costs $19.99. The Wii Fit Plus can also read data from the original game on the Wii. The original Wii Fit sold well over 8 million copies since the game launched in May 2008.

Lotus Notes is IBM’s equivalent of Microsoft Outlook/Entourage and Google’s GMail. Aside from being installed on corporate machines, we did not see much of a web-based presence of the service until now.

IBM has launched a new service called LotusLive iNotes. This service has e-mail, calendar, and contact management services. The price of the service is $3 per user per month. This beats the cost of using Google Apps as they charge $50 per user per year.

IBM launched this service in order to win approval from companies that are seeking a more mobile way for employees to perform business duties away from the desk. The technology used for LotusLive iNotes is based on technology developed by Outblaze, a Hong Kong based company that IBM bought out in January 2009.