India has now demanded that Nokia pay 2.09 billion rupees ($40 million USD) in taxes, claiming the company wrongfully claimed an exemption on software exports.
Nokia, for its part, says the claims have no merit, but they are fully cooperating with Indian tax authorities on the matter.
The new demand is in addition to a recent raid on Nokia's phone manufacturing facility in the nation and its demand for 20.8 billion rupees in back income tax and penalties. Nokia denied those charges, as well.
Indian officials have been increasingly cracking down on alleged tax evasion by multinationals, and big caps like Vodafone, Shell and Cadbury have all received similar demands.
The new demand revolves around a 12 percent service tax that Indian companies can use on software that is developed and used in India. If you export it, you do not have to pay taxes on it. Tax officials allege that Nokia exported the locally developed software to itself, and then used it in products manufactured in India.
Motorola Mobility CEO Dennis Woodside has finally confirmed the existence of the Moto X, a high-end smartphone that has been under development for a year.
Notably, the smartphone will be built in Fort Worth, Texas, unlike most smartphones and electronics which are built overseas.
Motorola has long fallen behind in the smartphone market to rivals like Samsung, but Woodside says the company will be relaunching their entire product line in the next quarter. "We're turning the corner," Woodside added.
The company will also narrow their focus to just a handful of devices, instead of a full lineup of over a dozen like they have now.
Woodside noted that the Texas factory will employee 2000 Americans before August.
In terms of specs and details, they were scant except to say they will have "advanced sensors and will be 'contextually aware' of what's going on around it."
According to a new report, the upcoming Galaxy Note 3 will not use Samsung's own octa-core Exynos 5 CPU but will instead use Qualcomm's fast Snapdragon 800.
There are two possibilities for the omission of the CPU, says the report. Either Samsung has trouble producing the chipset with enough volume for expected sales, or the Snapdragon is just frankly more cost-effective.
The 800 has a quad-core Krait processor with clockspeeds up to 2.3GHz, features the new Adreno 330 GPU, supports 4K and has LTE built-in.
What makes the 800 most impressive is the fact it "leverages its Asymmetrical Multi-Processing (aSMP) design to produce amazing results. Select a task and one the four cores will snap into action. Each core can throttle up and down depending on the task. The result is increased battery efficiency and a whole lot of performance, claims Qualcomm." (Via KYM)
Google has expanded its clean power projects to Africa for the first time, investing $12 million in a 96 MW solar panel farm in South Africa.
When completed, the "Jasper Power Project" will "be able to deliver enough clean power for the equivalent of 30,000 South African homes and will be built in the Northern Cape province near the town of Kimberly," says Om.
U.S.-based solar developer SolarReserve has joined up with South African companyies Intikon Energy and Kensani Group to build the farm.
Altogether, the Jasper farm will cost $260 million, and they have received financing from the Public Investment Corporation, Development Bank of South Africa and the PEACE Humansrus Trust.
State-owned utility Eskom will buy the solar power from the farm when it is up and running.
Microsoft has released a new video defending the look of its upcoming console, the Xbox One.
While it has garnered comparisons to VCRs, Microsoft says the idea was to bring the squares/tiles of its modern-style interface to the hardware.
The company tried "dozens" of designs but ultimately settled on the two-tone, matte and glossy black box.
Microsoft's design team was led by Carl Ledbetter, the man in charge of the slim Xbox 360. Additionally, the company chose the "blackest black creatable" for the controller and Kinect sensor.
Google's popular cloud music streaming service Google Music is finally headed to iOS, years after its debut on Android.
Android boss Sundar Pichai announced the news at the D11 conference in which they also announced the HTC One Nexus edition.
Pichai says the software should be available in "about a month" but there is little other details as of yet.
While Google Music is headed to iOS, it is less clear whether All Access, the company's competitor to Spotify, will be as well. Pichai says their team is "working like crazy" on an iOS version of All Access, it does not appear to be anywhere near ready.
When asked about Windows Phone and BlackBerry, Pichai was as blunt as it gets; they don't have enough users: "We want to reach as many people as possible. For platforms that don't have that many users at scale, we have great HTML5 apps. If they get more users, we will make apps."
Roku has raised $60 million, led by Fidelity and Hearst Corp. as new investors.
Numerous previous investors, including News Corp., BSkyB and Dish invested again, as well. The total the company has now raised is $130 million, says CEO Anthony Wood.
Wood says the company will use the money to make Roku the standard for smart TV operating systems. Wood (rightly) believes that most companies, with the exception of Samsung, will not want to invest in new software for smart TVs, and he wants Roku to ease into that role.
Apple has quietly released a new 16GB iPod Touch model, a first for the latest generation of devices.
The company has discontinued the 4th generation model in favor of the new downsized 5th generation model, and all other 5th generation models remain on sale.
Apple's latest has a 4-inch Retina Display, a dual-core A5 processor, a front-facing HD camera for FaceTime and has the same aesthetic appearance except that Apple has dropped the rear camera.
Additionally, the company has lost the "loop" lanyard hook, in case that turns some customers off.
The new iPod is available for $229 and ships the next day in either black or silver. You can get it here: Apple
After days of leaks, Microsoft has officially unveiled Windows 8.1, the first major update for its unpopular Windows 8 operating system.
Says the software giant: "Windows 8.1 will advance the bold vision set forward with Windows 8 to deliver the next generation of PCs, tablets, and a range of industry devices, and the experiences customers -- both consumers and businesses alike -- need and will just expect moving forward. It's Windows 8 even better.
Not only will Windows 8.1 respond to customer feedback, but it will add new features and functionality that advance the touch experience and mobile computing's potential. Windows 8.1 will deliver improvements and enhancements in key areas like personalization, search, the built-in apps, Windows Store experience, and cloud connectivity. Windows 8.1 will also include big bets for business in areas such as management and security."
The company unveiled a number of improvements, all of which should be welcomed by disgruntled Windows 8 users.
Although they previously denied the rumor, HTC has unveiled the Nexus model of their popular HTC One smartphone.
The move comes less than a month after Samsung and Google made a similar announcement for the Galaxy S4.
Unlike the version that uses HTC's own Sense overlay, the new Nexus model will start with stock Android 4.2.2 and receive updates directly from Google first, just like other Nexus phones and tablets.
Under the hood, the device is exactly the same, running on a powerful quad-core Snapdragon S600, 2GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, a 4MP UltraPixel camera and front-facing speakers.
For the time being, the device will be U.S-only, just like the Galaxy S4, and will work on GSM networks. The SIM is unlocked and the bootloader is unlockable.
In an effort to better compete with Netflix, Amazon has selected their first five original series.
The company released pilots for fourteen shows over the last couple of months, but some failed to impress, including "Zombieland," which was based on the hit movie.
Comedies Alpha House and Betas will be the first two series, joining three children's shows called Annebots, Creative Galaxy and Tumbleleaf.
Alpha House is a satirical political show starring John Goodman and Betas is a comedy centered around a few guys and their Silicon Valley startup.
"We are thrilled at the enthusiastic customer response to our first original pilots,"said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. "We built Amazon Studios so that customers could help decide which stories would make the very best movies and TV shows. It's exciting to see the process in motion, doing exactly what we set out to do. The success of this first set of pilots has given us the push to try this approach with even more shows--this is just the beginning."
Although the Apple App Store remains the king, Google's Play Store is quickly seeing an increase in growth and share in the global app market.
App store analytics firm Distimo says Google Play accounted for 19 percent of all app store revenue in November 2012, and that figure has grown by a full 8 percentage points to 27 percent share as of April 30th.
Despite the growth, the Apple App Store still appears to be the most beneficial for developers. Daily revenue generated by the top 200 apps in the Google Play Store was $1.1 million compared to $5.1 million for the Apple App Store.
The apps include paid applications and free apps with in-app purchase options.
Microsoft has unveiled a new model of the Surface Pro tablet for Japan.
The tablet has 256GB internal storage, a full copy of Office 2013 and of course, Windows 8 Pro.
Available June 7th, prices start at 99,000 yen ($990 USD). At 256GB, it will be the largest capacity tablet available from Microsoft.
Additionally, some customers will get new exclusive Touch Covers, with designs by Beams, Rodeo Crowns and others. Limited to Japan, Microsoft will hold a contest and give away 100 such covers.
Japanese carrier SoftBank has received national security clearance in its efforts to purchase Sprint Nextel for $20.1 billion.
Both companies were notified by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the U.S. and the deal is now expected to close on July 1st.
Dish Network made a competing $25.5 billion bid last month, claiming that SoftBank having control of a U.S. phone network would compromise national security. It appears the CFI did not agree. As part of the new agreement, the companies must "appoint an independent security director to the new Sprint board."
The security director will have to be approved by U.S. agencies and will be the main contact between Sprint Nextel and the government. Regulators will also have oversight on all network-equipment and services purchased by the merged company.
If the acquisition is completed, SoftBank will own 70 percent of Sprint, the U.S.' third-largest carrier.
Last week, it was reported that the new Xbox One would not allow indie developers to self-publish games for the console.
Understandably, developers and gamers alike were very critical of the news but now it appears that Microsoft will include some kind of support for indie development.
"We're going to have an independent creator program," says Don Mattrick, Microsoft's head of interactive entertainment. "We're going to sponsor it. We're going to give people tools. We're going to give more information."
Of the program, itself, Mattrick said "We're going to have an independent creator program... There's no way we're going to build a box that doesn't support that."
The #PS4NoDRM campaign was aimed at stopping the company from using any kind of restrictive DRM as displayed by Microsoft for their Xbox One.
For example, Microsoft is said to be potentially blocking used games unless gamers pay a fee. Other reports claim used games will have to be deactivated from the original device before they can be played on a second device, which would be understandable given that all games must be installed to the hard drive. Regardless, the outcry has been immense.
Besides the aforementioned hashtag, the campaign also used #PS4USEDGAMES on Twitter, aiming the messages at Sony employees and executives. There were plenty of responses, including one from SCEA producer Nick Accordino: "Humbled by the outpouring of passionate PlayStation fans and their willingness to talk to us directly. Please know that we hear you. <3"
According to a new report from Experian, iPhone users spend more time on their phone than Android users.
Usage data shows that Apple fans spend 26 more minutes per day on their iPhones than Android smartphone users do.
On average, Android users spend 49 minutes per day, while iPhone users spend an hour and 15.
Breaking down the phone usage, Android users spend 28 percent of their time on phone calls compared to just 22 percent for iPhone users. Apple users make up for that time by spending 22 percent of their time texting, compared to 16 percent for Android.
Android users browse the Web more often and both spend an equal amount of time on social networking sites or apps.
For the last three years, Blizzard has been rumored to be working on a new MMO dubbed "Project Titan." The game will be its own franchise independent of World of Warcraft, that is if it can ever be actually built.
According to Ars, the company is now cutting back on the project's team and starting all development again from scratch.
At this point the game is expected to launch in 2016.
This would be a serious let down, as Blizzard CEO Mike Morhaime said this in 2011 about the game: "Without giving away any details, we have some of our most experienced MMO developers, people who spent years working on the World of Warcraft team, working on this project."
Blizzard recently revealed that World of Warcraft players are down to 8 million from a peak of 12 million earlier in the decade.
Last night, Apple CEO Tim Cook spoke during the D11 Conference, and he had a lot to say about the future of Apple.
The exec says the company has plenty of more "game-changers" in us, the same sort the helped Apple become the biggest tech company in the world.
Cook confirmed that iOS 7 would be unveiled in two weeks at the annual WWDC, although there is still little know about the operating system outside of rumor and leaks.
When asked about innovation (and the company's recent lack of it), Cook noted: "Many people now say that innovation means a new category. Yes, we're still a company that's going to do that... We have some incredible plans that we've been working on for a while."
Many took this to mean that Apple could be expanding their TV offerings, including the Apple TV set-top box and the long rumored Apple "iTV" HDTV set. All Cook would say in response was "When you look at the TV experience, it's not an experience that people love. It's not an experience that's been brought up to date for this decade." He also noted that the company has sold 13 million Apple TVs since launch, with 6.5 million in the last year, alone.
According to a former AMD employee, Microsoft's new Xbox One deal with the company is valued at over $3 billion.
Bob Feldstein, formerly of AMD and now with Nvidia, let the number slip via his LinkedIn page. On the page, the exec writes that "AMD provided a custom silicon solution to Microsoft for the XBox One, a game console and entertainment device."
Continuing, he says: "My involvement was focused on business management and supply agreement negotiations. This required the coordination of multiple functional teams within AMD, as well as regular customer meetings with leadership teams responsible for handling the challenges of complex, multi-year deals. This project is valued at $3+B."
Although the complete specs are not known just yet, the Xbox One will run on a 64bit AMD architecture and include 8GB RAM.
According to sources, the newly released fourth season of 'Arrested Development' was pirated over 100,000 times in its first 24 hours.
As expected, copies of the show were available via warez and torrent sites minutes after the show launched exclusively on Netflix on Sunday.
While the number may seem low when compared to Game of Thrones and other broadcast hits, it is important to note that Arrested Development is a cult classic with a (growing) audience. Additionally, there are over 35 million Netflix subscribers around the world, with full access.
Netflix continues to invest 9 figures in original content, with three hits so far this year including House of Cards and Hemlock Grove.
Microsoft has filed a dispute over the XboxOne.com, hoping to regain control of the domain.
The dispute was filed with the National Arbitration Forum, an ICANN-approved organization for such matters.
While cyber squatting is a problem, this is not necessarily the case in this situation. The owners of the domain, UK residents, purchased XboxOne.com in December 2011, likely some time before Microsoft decided on naming its Xbox 360 sequel.
Right now the domain is not being used for anything, so Microsoft should have a decent case. Additionally, the software giant is expected to claim the site would be confusing to consumers if not owned by Microsoft.
For now, the dispute will go to the organization, with the result expected before the console's launch in November or December.
Two weeks ago, we reported that the NVIDIA SHIELD "console" would be available for pre-orders through multiple retail partners starting on May 17th.
Today, Nvidia's Vice President of Investor Relations Rob Csongor has said all May pre-orders will ship in August.
The 'console-grade' controller features a 720p display, powered by Tegra 4 and running Android. "SHIELD is the one device that taps into the planet's largest ecosystem of games -- spanning NVIDIA TegraZone, Google Play and Steam," NVIDIA's announcement reads. "Rediscover your Android games with the mobility, control and performance of SHIELD. Connect to your Google Play account to enjoy your favorite movies, music and apps."
NVIDIA SHIELD's specifications:
Tegra 4 – The world's fastest mobile processor delivers rich graphics and unbeatable performance thanks to 72 GPU cores, four CPU cores and 2GB of RAM
Console-grade controller – Precise control thanks to dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttons
Pure Android – Latest Android Jelly Bean operating system from Google, for access to Android games and apps
There's more – NVIDIA put into SHIELD everything we would want in a premium mobile gaming device: 16 GB memory, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, a mini-HDMI output, micro-USB 2.0, a microSD storage slot, a 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
LG had two Android announcements today, one of which was the recently reported white model of the Nexus 4.
The second piece of news is that LG is not working on the upcoming Nexus 5.
News comes via Kim Wong, Head of LG Europe: "There are currently no plans for a Nexus 5 made by us. We don't need that kind of marketing exposure anymore. The Nexus 4 was a great success, even with the supply issues and we have a great relationship with Google. But we won't make the Nexus 5."
LG had been rumored to be working on the device, which should be released sometime between December and February like all of the last Nexus phones have been.
"Nexus 4 set the standard for Android 4.2 Jelly Bean smartphones," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of LG Mobile Communications Company. "Nexus 4 White delivers the same Google experience to consumers in a stylish and attractive color option."
The Nexus 4 has a 4.7-inch 1280-by-768 True HD IPS Plus display (320ppi), runs the latest version of Android and is powered by a quad-core Snapdragon S4 Pro processor and 2GB RAM.
Pricing has not been unveiled but should match the original at $299 for the base model.
BuzzFeed has announced today the start of "CNN BuzzFeed," a YouTube channel that includes content from CNN and is designed to be shared via social media amongst young adults.
At launch, the channel will have about three video per week, with BuzzFeed looking to "tackle" the most serious news events.
Jon Steinberg, BuzzFeed COO, says the company will be investing over $10 million over the next two years to build the platform.
The move is not the first for BuzzFeed, which recently launched a business news site aimed at the 18-34 demographic. All content from the new channel will also be available on CNN.com.
Will the site eventually have ads? "BuzzFeed and CNN will figure out ways to do various ad formats and sponsored content down the road," Mr. Steinberg added (via WSJ).
AT&T has updated their GoPhone prepaid wireless brand significantly this week, adding support for the company's LTE and HSPA+ data networks.
Additionally, the company has now officially added support for the iPhone.
Until this week, GoPhone had allowed iPhone users to sign up, but they could not access 3G data. The new update allows for full access to LTE data and Visual Voicemail. GoPhone will support three separate plans for the iPhone, although only the $65 plan is the only one that makes sense. Customers get unlimited calls and texts and 1GB of data.
If you already owned an iPhone, the update goes live June 21st unless you call in and ask to be updated beforehand.
French camera optics and image sensor analysis firm DxO Labs has reported on the top smartphones of their respective operating systems, finding the Galaxy S4 to outperform its rivals.
Although it did not beat Nokia's 40MP 808 PureView device, the S4 did beat out the Lumia 920 and the iPhone 5 in overall score.
The firm was impressed by the 13MP camera of the S4, and its "fast and accurate autofocus, good auto-exposure, rich colors in different lighting conditions and impressive detail preservation in bright light."
For photos, the device scored a 79 out of 100, ahead of the iPhone 5 at 74/100 and the Lumia 920 at 64 points. On the video end, the iPhone topped the list at 70/100 with the S4 at 68. Taking the score down was "image stabilization performance was poor in low light and autofocus" underperformed, as well.
Samsung has inadvertently confirmed the existence of the Galaxy S4 Mini via their own Samsung Apps website.
The S4 Mini, true to its name, has a smaller 4.3-inch sAMOLED display with qHD resolution (540×960, 256 ppi) compared to the new S4's 4-inch 1080p display.
Under the hood is a 1.6GHz dual-core processor, 2GB RAM, LTE radio, 32GB internal storage, 1.5MP/8MP cameras, a 2100 mAh battery and the whole device runs on Android 4.2.x.
Samsung has included their TouchWiz UX interface and their premium suite of apps.
Minecraft creator Markus "Notch" Persson took to Twitter to show off his VIP invite to Sony's upcoming E3 presser.
Notch received a golden PSone console along with a copy of Dungeon Master 2 and the invite to the company's PS4 event.
The developer has been a critic of Microsoft's recent moves, saying he was unexcited by the new Xbox One adding that he "wanted a game console, not a voice and gesture based TV remote box."
Minecraft, which was never released for the PS3, has sold over 6 million copies on the Xbox 360, a record.
As Notch says, Sony"sure knows how to bribe nerds. ;D"
Got a vip invitation to an e3 event from sony in the form of a gold colored psone. Wow. :D twitter.com/notch/status/3...
Samsung has sent out press invites for a new event it will be holding in June.
The event, to take place in London, will focus on Galaxy, says the company.
Besides Android phones and tablet, Samsung will also show off Ativ devices, which include Windows Phones, Windows 8 and (possibly) Windows RT tablets and phones and convertibles.
Dubbed "Samsung Premiere 2013," the event starts at 2PM EST and the company will livestream the entire thing via YouTube, as well.
Samsung has made the event one week after Apple's annual WWDC and a week before Microsoft's annual BUILD. The month should be a busy time for tech titans.
Last week we reported that Yahoo would be placing a bid to purchase video streaming site Hulu.
Today, ATD is reporting that the bid will be between $600-$800 million, depending on what kind of content deal terms it can get from Hulu's owners, Comcast, Disney and News Corp. (NBC, ABC and Fox on broadcast).
In the past two months, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, PE firm Silverlake, PE firm KKR, Guggenheim Digital and Peter Chernin's The Chernin Group have all expressed interest if not already placed bids for the video site.
The site is currently jointly owned by News Corp., Disney and Comcast (without any management authority) and it is clear that they will not accept under $1 billion as a straight bid, meaning Yahoo's offer seems low.
Major satellite provider Dish Network and small regional carrier nTelos Holdings have announced they are building a broadband service within nTelos' coverage area on the east coast of the U.S.
The carrier is available in Virginia, Maryland and parts of other states.
Dish has been actively trying to diversify past its pay TV roots, and recently made a massive bid for Sprint Nextel. nTelos covers mainly rural customers, and would provide them with faster Internet for the first time.
"We are pleased to team with nTelos on this exciting opportunity to leverage their mobile capabilities along with our technical service infrastructure to develop broadband services," Charlie Ergen, chairman and co-founder of Dish said.
Nokia has filed additional patent cases against HTC in their ongoing legal spat.
The new actions include a second complaint to the U.S. ITC and a new federal suit in California.
"We began actions against HTC in 2012 to end the unauthorized use of our proprietary innovations and technologies,"Nokia said. "Since then, despite the German courts confirming infringements of Nokia patents in HTC products, HTC has shown no intention to end its practices; instead it has tried to shift responsibility to its suppliers. We have therefore taken these further steps to hold HTC accountable for its actions."
Altogether, Nokia has claimed violations on 50 patents around the globe.
So far, HTC has had little comment: "Upon receiving the official document, HTC is to consider all legal options to protect our rights."
According to a new report, Apple is ready to put their oft-rumored lower cost iPhone into production in July.
Supposedly, the handset will be available in a plethora of colors, just like the newer iPod Touch, including Navy, Gold-Orange, White, Gray, Pink, Green, Blue and Yellow-Orange.
Apple will build just 1000 units for a field test in June, before the mass production begins in July.
Although unconfirmed, the iPhone will be made of a shell made of polycarbonate plastic, and could cost $149 through carriers.
Breker sold another of the devices last year for 492,000 euros, and there are said to be only 6 functioning models in the world.
The Apple I, which sold for $666 at the time, was only a circuit board with all "accessories" like a case, keyboard or monitor had to be purchased separately.
This week's auctioned model has Wozniak's signature and includes an old business transaction letter from Jobs.
VB has spoken to sources who have confirmed that Intel will finally get into the tablet market, for real.
The upcoming Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 will use an Intel Atom chip (of the Clover Trail variety), rather than a rival based on ARM architecture.
News of the coup first came via benchmark testing sites that showed a "Samsung Santos 103" running on Intel and Android.
Most likely, the chip will be a 32-nanometer dual-core Atom Z2520 processor, which can be clocked as high as 1.6GHz.
Other sources believe that Samsung will be selling multiple versions of the tablet, one running Atom, the other running their own ARM-based Exynos.
Intel has long tried to get into the mobile market, but their chips, while powerful, are nowhere near as power efficient as rival chips like the Exynos or the Snapdragon Pros from Qualcomm.
Best Buy will begin a month-long promotion tomorrow on its iPhone offerings.
The retailer will slash prices on the iPhone 4, 4S and 5 by $50 with two-year contract at Verizon, AT&T and Sprint.
Additionally, starting tomorrow, Best Buy is cutting the price on the Samsung Galaxy S III by $50 to $49 on AT&T and Sprint, the HTC Droid DNA to $49 (from $200) and the HTC One X to free from $100.
Apple is expected to launch the iPhone 5S in September.
Google has confirmed that developers in Argentina will soon be receiving letters from the search giant stating that "Google Play will no longer be able to accept payments on behalf of developers registered in Argentina starting June 27, 2013."
The new move will apply to both in-app purchases on free apps and paid apps.
Argentina recently passed new restrictive regulations on currency exchanges, leading to the move. Argentine developers have taken to Twitter and other outlets to complaint about the changes, but there is really not too much to be done at the time.
Final payments will be made on July 22nd, and apps will be pulled on the 27th. If developers want to keep their apps in the store they will have to transfer their account to another country, a convenient loophole to get around the restrictions.
According to a new report, Google will be using Samsung as its OLED display component supplier for the Google Glass AR devices.
The glasses, which are currently available only to early adopters, will be made available as consumer devices early next year.
In the report, the sources claim the news is "a really big thing because it means that Google shares confidential information with Samsung on its future projects."
Google and Samsung have long been serious partners, but there have been murmurs that Google is none too happy about Samsung's recent "hi-jacking" of Android for its Galaxy lines. It's true, as many now see Galaxy devices as synonymous with Android itself.
According to the WSJ, Google has plans to finance, build and help operate a massive wireless network that will stretch from sub-Saharan Africa to Southeast Asia.
The ultimate plan is to connect over 1 billion people in emerging countries to the Internet.
Google has been holding discussions with regulators in African nations and has been patching together technology across the countries.
The search giant is said to be "lobbying regulators to use airwaves reserved for television broadcasts, which at lower frequencies can pass through buildings and over longer distances." Additionally, it is working on providing African citizens with low-cost phones and using blimps to transmit signals across greater distances.
Two weeks ago we reported that Facebook was interested in purchasing Israeli mapping startup Waze for up to $1 billion.
Today, it appears that Google is also now in the bidding, and that could up the buying price.
Waze specializes in satellite navigation for mobile devices, and uses members' smartphones to generate maps and traffic data. More importantly, Waze collects user's traveling speed and direction, which is extremely valuable data if monetized correctly. Google Maps and other popular mapping apps do not include such data.
It had been reported that due diligence between Waze and Facebook had been going on for six months and a term sheet had already been signed. The talks seems to have stalled due to Facebook's demand that the whole team relocate to Palo Alto from Israel.
The company currently has 47 million users, with 12 percent coming from the U.S. It also has particularly strong penetration in Brazil and its home country.
Yahoo, fresh off its $1.1 billion acquisition of Tumblr, is another potential buyer for Hulu, the popular streaming site that has put itself up for sale by its owners.
The company made a bid this morning for the site, say sources, although terms are unclear.
In the past two months, DirecTV, Time Warner Cable, PE firm Silverlake, PE firm KKR, Guggenheim Digital and Peter Chernin's The Chernin Group have all expressed interest if not placed bids for the video site.
The site is currently jointly owned by News Corp., Disney and Comcast (via their ownership of NBCU and without any management authority) and it is still unclear what price they are seeking, and how much of the company is actually up for sale.
Any purchase would need to include extended licenses for the broadcasting content provided by the owners, say the sources.
Intel is preparing to launch their new power-efficient Core processors, codenamed Haswell, next month.
The highly-anticipated processors will offer 50 percent better battery life than the current-gen 'Ivy Bridge' processors as the chips were built with notebooks/ultrabooks/tablets in mind.
Word comes via corporate vice president of the Intel Architecture Group Rani Borkar, who also quelled worries that the better battery life would also come at a performance cost to its predecessor.
Borkar also added that standby/idle mode would see battery life improvements of 2000 percent.
Intel says the chips, when used in tablets, will have "similar" battery life to current Android tablets, but performance will be significantly better. That remains to be seen, however, but Intel may finally have a competitor in the space.
According to tax records, the RIAA has had to lay off many employees as revenues continued to sink.
It appears that over the last two years, the major labels have cut back their dues from $33.6 million to $23.6 million, causing the company to layoff 47 of its 107 workers.
The RIAA recently filed its 2012 fiscal year tax return with the IRS.
Besides membership dues, the company makes little other revenue, with total sales coming in at $24.8 million.
$196,378 of that came as "anti-piracy" restitution; awards for damages in lawsuits.
Facebook has confirmed that its expected HTC First launch is indefinitely delayed in the UK and France as the company works on improving its Home software.
Home, which is a user interface on top of stock Android, launched last month in the U.S. and HTC's First smartphone was the first device to launch with the interface natively installed.
The device launched on AT&T but sales have been lackluster, to say the least. The carrier eventually dropped the price from $99 with contract to $0.99 and rumor is they will be dropping the phone completely in the coming weeks.
Home is available for 6 phones, including the latest Galaxy S devices, but ratings have been poor across the board.
When asked about the European delay, Facebook said"We're focusing the next few months on adding customization features that address the feedback we received. While we focus on making Home better, we are going to limit supporting new devices and think it makes a lot of sense for EE and Orange to hold off deploying the HTC First in Europe."
Microsoft has said today it believes that 25 million more Xbox 360s can be sold before the end of the console's life.
The company wants to hit 100 million, despite launching the new Xbox One later this year.
Currently, there has been an estimated 77 million consoles sold globally since launch in 2005.
Interactive Entertainment Business Senior VP Yusuf Mehdi says Microsoft has a 5 year plan for the 25 million consoles sold. This could be a possibility, of course, but not with current prices. If Microsoft were to drop the 360 to $99, that may change.
To get consumers excited, Microsoft is planning a "huge announcement" for E3 which should include a complete dashboard refresh but may include a new version of the hardware, as well.
In regards to the Xbox One, Mehdi says the focus on entertainment and TV could lead to over 300 million sales.
According to the WSJ, HTC has sold 5 million One smartphones, a surprisingly high number that still pales in comparison to the Samsung Galaxy S4, which sold almost 10 million in its first week.
"Orders are pretty good so far and are still more than what we can supply," says a source. "This is partly due to the shortage of components. When the issue is resolved next month, we will have a better idea if it's doing really well or not."
That shortage was a reference to the camera component shortage that led HTC to delay the launch of the phone by a month in most places.
Now that supply is back to normal, HTC has promised to double production.
Microsoft has confirmed that its Kinect motion control sensor built for Windows machines will be released next year.
Kinect for Windows will use the same tech as the upcoming Kinect 2 for the Xbox One, including improved voice and gesture controls.
As part of the new system, Microsoft is introducing tech called Time-of-Flight, "which measures how long it takes for photons to bounce off a person or object" allowing for better accuracy.
Finally, new infrared should help with low-light situations.
"We're continuing our commitment to equipping businesses and organizations with the latest natural technology from Microsoft so that they, in turn, can develop and deploy innovative touch-free applications for their businesses and customers," Microsoft added. "A new Kinect for Windows sensor and software development kit (SDK) are core to that commitment."
Major book publisher Penguin has settled with the U.S. State Attorney General (and others) over the long-standing eBook price case that Apple will take to trial next month.
Penguin will pay $75 million in damages and additional costs to end the antitrust claims against them.
Reports also claim the publisher has settled with EU authorities and will terminate any agency agreements it currently has with Apple.
Other publishers, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group and HarperCollins, have already settled for similar figures and MacMillan settled for $12 million.
"Consumers are entitled to a fair, open and competitive marketplace,"says Attorney General Jepsen. "This agreement is yet another step toward providing restitution to those consumers who were harmed by alleged price-fixing within the eBook market and will further ensure that, going forward, consumers benefit from fair competition in the sale of eBooks."
The "agency model" of pricing had publishers set the price while retailers took a commission, usually 30 percent. This led to higher prices for consumers and gave Apple a way into the market dominated by Amazon.
Samsung has purchased a 10 percent stake in Korea's mobile device maker Pantech for $48 million.
The company says the deal will help "further solidify" its relationship with Pantech, more specifically any joint efforts they currently have for hardware like tablets and smartphones.
Despite the large stake, Samsung says it will be a passive investor, with no input into Pantech management decisions.
Samsung Electronics has agreed to acquire a 10-percent stake in Pantech, valued at approximately KRW 53 billion. The investment is aimed at solidifying our relationship with Pantech, a key component customer of Samsung. Samsung will have no involvement in Pantech's business management in any way or form.
Pantech is a large buyer of Samsung components and presumably the deal will bring the two even closer. Samsung will now be the third largest shareholder behind Qualcomm and Korea Development Bank which have slightly higher stakes.
Sony, Panasonic, Pioneer and Philips of the joint venture One-Blue LLC., have sued Imation Corp. claiming that the company has broken patent laws by selling recordable Blu-ray discs with the official Blu-ray logo.
One-Blue LLC oversees Blu-ray licensing.
The companies claim that Imation selling blank Blu-ray discs with the official logo encourages buyers to use the discs for infringement when recording.
One-Blue claims that"Imation and its Blu-Ray products, including Blu-Ray discs, are especially made for use in an infringement of the patents."
Today during a special event, Microsoft unveiled their hotly anticipated Xbox One console, set for release by the end of the year.
Rather than rehash what they unveiled, please read our earlier article here: Microsoft unveils Xbox One.
What Microsoft did not reveal, was how unfriendly the console will be to the average consumer.
So far, this is what we have learned about the Xbox One from multiple sources:
-The console is not backwards compatible, even for downloaded Xbox 360 games. This was not unexpected, but it still sucks for gamers who paid good money to build collections over the last 7 years.
-Installing games will be mandatory, but at least Microsoft says you can play while it installs. Once you place the disc in and install, you will never have to use the disc again.
-Used games, rented games and borrowed games from friends will not be playable unless you pay a fee to install from that disc. This will effectively kill the second-hand market unless you are willing to pay said "fee."
Amazon has finally expanded their Cloud Drive service to Canada, giving users an online locker to store their digital files for access from their phones and any Internet-connected device.
The e-commerce giant will give all users 5GB of free storage, and additional space will cost you. Amazon did not elaborate except to say "additional storage plans start at CAD $10 a year for 20 GB."
"Millions of customers around the globe have already discovered the benefits of Amazon Cloud Drive to safely store and manage precious files like photos, videos and documents,"said Russell Dicker, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive. "We are proud to bring Amazon Cloud Drive to our customers in Canada. With Amazon Cloud Drive, you can manage and access files across multiple physical devices and you don't have to worry about hard drive crashes. All of your content is stored safely on Amazon's servers and is accessible from anywhere using a PC, Mac or web browser."
Amazon's cloud offering has to compete with plenty of rivals, including those from Google, Apple, Dropbox, Box and more.
Last.fm has announced a new partnership today with MUZU.TV that will add 90,000 music videos to its Internet radio service.
The deal will add videos to each artist's profile page.
Currently, the deal is only good for European users, but Last.fm says support for other countries is coming very soon. It is unclear if the U.S. is part of the plans.
As part of the deal, MUZU will also get support for Last.fm's "scrobbling," which helps track your viewing and listening habits.
Internet radio service Pandora has announced its new "Premieres" station that will allow users to preview upcoming albums up to a week before they go on sale.
Pandora says the service is a "first-of-its kind station," and will include new and established artists.
For example, the first album available is John Fogerty's "Wrote a Song for Everyone," which debuts at the end of the month.
"Pandora Premieres represents a great new discovery platform for our more than 200 million registered users and an equally powerful vehicle for artists, both established and emerging to reach new audiences," says Pandora Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, Tim Westergren. "Never has so targeted a program been delivered on such a massive scale."
To add the station, login to your account and type "Pandora Premieres" into the search field.
Popular music streaming service Spotify has announced today that it will begin publishing top 50 lists for its most-streamed and most-shared songs.
More importantly, the lists will be embedded with links that allow users to stream the tracks without needing to log in or even register a Spotify account.
The company has 24 million active users around the globe and 6 million paid subscribers but is aggressively looking to expand. Although not a direct rival, Pandora has 70 million active users and brings in much more revenue from advertising. Google just created a rival service, as well, Google Play All Access, which offers practically the same service but is backed by the search giant and its ecosystem.
Dubbed the Spotify 50 and the Social 50, the lists will be made available via an embeddable widget that can be placed on any website. The list updates every Monday at noon.
Microsoft has unveiled the next generation of Xbox today, the Xbox One, the All In One Experience that covers your entire TV experience.
Microsoft has unveiled its next generation of consoles, Xbox One. The console, Microsoft says, is an All In One solution for your living room, demoing on stage how quickly the Xbox One can switch to live TV, and use interactive TV features, by just yelling voice commands at the console.
The Xbox One Guide also helps, allowing you to change channels by literally commanding "Watch MTV" or "Show the Guide."
The Xbox One console comes with a 500GB hard drive, USB 3.0 and WiFi Direct. As earlier reported, the Xbox One features a Blu-ray disc drive. It runs "three operating systems," the first being a raw Xbox OS, the second being a Windows Kernel and a third is an OS that lets the two interact. Music, movies and your game saves can all be stored in the cloud too. Unfortunately, we did not get confirmation on the previously rumored specs for the new Xbox, such as the octo-core 1.6GHz, x86 CPU.
Samsung has announced a new notebook today that will include the highest pixels-per-inch display of any book.
The new 13.3-inch QHD laptop will include a 3200 x 1800 resolution with 276 pixels-per-inch (PPI).
By comparison, the Retina MacBook Pro has 227 PPI and the new Google ChromebookPixel has a 239 PPI.
Samsung is following the trend of extremely high-resolution computers. Last week, Sharp announced high PPI IGZO LCD panels for 11.6, 14 and 15.6-inch variants. Toshiba also just announced the 13.3 Kira ultrabook with a 2560 x 1440 display.
Traditional display advertising has been blocked from Tumblr by founder/CEO David Karp so far.
Mayer noted that Tumblr will remain independently operated and Karp will remain the CEO. There will be no Yahoo branding, either.
The executive went as far as to compare the deal to some of the more successful tech "game changers" of the past, including Google's purchase of YouTube and eBay's purchase of PayPal. Of course, Yahoo still has to find a way to make the site worth the investment, to which Mayer says it will "monetize Tumblr in a way that is meaningful ... to the user experience."
Tumblr currently has 300 million unique monthly visitors.
Available on June 26th, the device is contract-free for $649 supporting T-Mobile and AT&T's LTE networks.
"We've worked closely with Samsung to create a special Samsung Galaxy S4 exclusively for Google Play," Google said at launch. "It brings together cutting edge hardware from Samsung with Google's latest software and services -- including the user experience that ships with our popular Nexus devices."
The device is largely the same in terms of specs, except for running the stock Android OS, the lack of a provider lock and an unlocked bootloader. Google has also promised prompt Android updates in line with the Nexus 4.
Jolla, a Finnish mobile startup, has announced its first smartphone running the Sailfish OS.
Sailfish is developed by Jolla in cooperation with the Mer project (based on Intel's MeeGo). It sports a multi-tasking user interface that differentiates it from Android and iOS devices.
Today, Jolla announced its first mobile handset, "Other Half", and gave some limited spec details....
Jolla original design with ample 4.5" Estrade display
Dual core and 4G)
Keep it and share with 16GB + microSD
8MP AF camera
User-replaceable battery
The Other Half
Gesture based Sailfish OS
Android app compliant
Shipping is targeted for the end of the year, and one will cost €399.
Ubisoft is sticking up for Nintendo at a time when others are not.
The publisher says it is confident that Nintendo will make the Wii U a success, saying we know "Nintendo will take steps to ensure that the Wii U is successful in the market."
Ubi's stance is completely opposite that of EA, which just pulled support from the console. One engineer for the studio even called the console "crap" and said Nintendo is "walking dead."
The publisher expanded a bit on its support, noting"As with any new console, it takes some time to grow an established base. Ubisoft has a varied and high-quality line-up for Wii U, with more big titles on the way including Rayman Legends, Watch Dogs, Assassin's Creed IV Black Flag and Splinter Cell Blacklist. We're confident that this will help in continuing to attract gamers to the Wii U system and that Nintendo will take steps to ensure that the Wii U is successful in the market."
Nintendo better start working fast before it is too late.
Existing customers will not have to do anything but new customers will have to wait until June 6th.
The prepaid plans are restricted to 3G and do not include the new fast LTE service making the plans less attractive than similar ones from T-Mobile and Sprint.
The device will sell for around $100, says the company.
Plugging into a display's HDMI port, the PC can run applications and access files that have been stored remotely. Additionally, it will have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth support.
Jeff McNaught, executive director of cloud client computing at Dell, says Ophelia will turn any display into a PC, a basic gaming console or a set-top box.
The device will have access to the Google Play Store, giving users access to 800,000 apps and movies, TV and music. Because Android has Netflix and Hulu Plus apps, users can stream films and TV, as well.
Additionally, Dell is working on a keyboard tech that will let users type more easily when Ophelia is docked to the screen.
Samsung has confirmed that some of its Galaxy S4 handsets have issues connecting to Wi-Fi networks that use certain D-Link routers.
"This is a problem caused by firmware stored on a specific access point in D-Link routers. Customers should update their firmware to the latest version or reboot the access point," said a Samsung spokeswoman.
The most often affected routers are the D-Link model DIR-655 and DIR-855 routers but there are a few others, as well. The issue is not region specific, as all users are affected.
Some users were able to get around the bug by changing the cypher type to TKIP, but that has also had adverse affects on other devices within their networks.
D-Link was quick to issue a statement as they search for a permanent solution: "Recently, a limited number of customers have reported connection issues between their D-Link wireless router, including the DIR-855 and DIR-655, and the Samsung Galaxy S4 handset. Problems include intermittent disconnection from the wireless network, especially while browsing YouTube. Other devices continue to function normally. The problem has also been reported with wireless routers from other manufacturers. D-Link is actively researching this issue now to determine the cause."
Bob Summerwill, a senior software engineer, tweeted (since deleted): "The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet. Nintendo are walking dead at this point."
While the first tweet was harsh enough, the engineer continued: "Nintendo are still operating like it's 1990. Instead [of licensing their hit games for other consoles], they make this awful console."
Why did EA stop developing for the Wii U: "It is an utterly intentional decision to focus our resources on markets which actually matter."
In the same report in which Sandvine concluded that Netflix accounted for over 32 percent of all U.S. downstream traffic, the broadband management company also revealed that torrents account for almost 35 percent of all upstream traffic.
Also of note, SSL traffic increased significantly year-over-year, thanks to an increase in VPN use as torrent users try to remain anonymous.
During peak hours, torrents are good for 34.8% of all upstream data transferred with HTTP in second at 7.5%.
Around the globe, torrent usage was high outside of the U.S., as well, at 21.6 percent in the Asia-Pacific region, and 17.4 percent in Europe.
According to sources, Tumblr feels Yahoo's expected $1.1 billion acquisition offer is too low, and will reject any offer in that price range.
A large acquisition is very likely, say the sources, but it may not end up being by Yahoo.
Previous reports had stated that Yahoo's board is expected to vote on the $1.1 billion cash bid at a special meeting tonight, with an announcement to be made on Monday.
The sources also claim that Yahoo has a lock-up agreement to prevent a bidding war, which could make other offers less likely, at least for now.
Tumblr's demographics fit perfectly into the range Yahoo is now trying to explore, 18-to-24-year-olds.
Twitter has announced a new partnership with the NBA (National Basketball Association) to stream video clips of highlights and recaps.
NBA Digital, which is a joint venture between the NBA and TBS, will post the highlights during the playoffs using the hashtag #NBARapidReplay. No matter the size of the clips, there will be short ads, as well.
CEO Dick Costolo has long said they are aiming to reach $1 billion in sales by 2014, and has been adding video content deal to boost ad revenues.
For example, Twitter recent struck a deal with ESPN to stream highlights from soccer, college football and other less popular sports.
Says the company, "people on Twitter are talking about what they're watching on TV. This is a great way to bring great content onto the platform and have marketers support it."
So far, Sony Pictures, YUM! and Sprint have signed on as advertisers.
Samsung has announced that it is confident they will surpass 10 million units sold of the Galaxy S4 by next week.
More importantly for the company, they expect it to sell over 100 million units during its lifetime.
"We are confident that we will pass more than 10 million sales of the S4 next week. It is selling much faster than the previous model S3," Samsung Electronics co-CEO Shin Jong-kyun said.
The device went on sale on April 27th around the globe and is available in 60 different countries.
"Samsung spent 50 days to pass the 10 million sales mark for the S3. The S4 will be Samsung's first '10 million seller' device less than a month after its official debut,"Shin added.
The company is the biggest phone maker in the world.
While sales have understandably fallen in the last months ahead of the launch of the PS4 and Xbox Infinity, Microsoft remains the undisputed king in the U.S.
The software giant sold 130,000 units in April, giving it the lead for the 28th straight month.
Overall retail spending on the console, including hardware, accessories and software totaled $208 million, most of any console in the nation.
Microsoft will be unveiling the next-generation Xbox on May 21st.
The Pentagon has confirmed that some Apple devices have been cleared to run on defense networks.
iPads and iPhones running iOS 6 will now be allowed on the network.
Last week, the Pentagon said a number of BlackBerry and Samsung devices had been cleared, as well, including the BlackBerry 10 smart phones, BlackBerry PlayBook tablets and Samsung's Android Knox.
"This is a significant step towards establishing a multi-vendor environment that supports a variety of state-of-the-art devices and operating systems," Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart added.
Before today's news, the Pentagon had 600,000 mobile device users with 470,000 using BlackBerry and under 50,000 use Apple or Android as part of test programs.
According to multiple sources, Microsoft is planning a 7.9-inch Surface tablet that it expects to launch in late June.
Additionally, Samsung will be supplying the displays for the tablet.
Consumers have been moving away from the standard full-sized 10-inch tablets and towards smaller form factors which are more portable. Google's Nexus 7 and Apple's 7.9-inch iPad Mini have been major hits. Samsung recently unveiled an 8-inch Galaxy Note that can make calls.
Thanks to those tablets, the 7.5-8-inch market is expected to account for 12 percent of all tablet sales in 2013.
It appears that Yahoo's rumored acquisition of Tumblr is close to fruition.
The company's board will vote on Sunday night whether to approve a $1.1 billion all-cash offer for the photo blogging site.
If approved, the acquisition would be announced on Monday by CEO Marissa Mayer, who is said to have championed for the deal.
Yahoo has been actively looking to make their userbase younger and Tumblr's main demographic is 18-24-year-olds.
Tumblr would be the biggest of new CEO Marissa Mayer's purchases, which have included Summly, Astrid, Jybe and others in the $100 million or less range.
According to a new global poll by Bloomberg, Apple has lost its innovative touch, the "magic" that once led it to become the biggest public company in the world.
71 percent of all poll respondents say the company is no longer an industry innovator, with 28 percent saying they believe it is permanent. 43 percent believe Apple has just lost its way temporarily.
23 percent of respondents remained loyal, saying Apple is still the best in the business while the remaining 6 percent were unsure.
Despite the lack of innovation, the company remains a monster powerhouse in the smartphone and tablet industry. The iPhone accounts for over 60 percent of the smartphone industry's profits and the company brought in $41.7 in net income last year alone.
Apple's shares have struggled in the last year, falling from a high of $702 to just $433 today.
The 'console-grade' controller features a 720p display, powered by Tegra 4 and running Android. "SHIELD is the one device that taps into the planet's largest ecosystem of games -- spanning NVIDIA TegraZone, Google Play and Steam," NVIDIA's announcement reads. "Rediscover your Android games with the mobility, control and performance of SHIELD. Connect to your Google Play account to enjoy your favorite movies, music and apps."
NVIDIA SHIELD's specifications:
Tegra 4 – The world's fastest mobile processor delivers rich graphics and unbeatable performance thanks to 72 GPU cores, four CPU cores and 2GB of RAM
Console-grade controller – Precise control thanks to dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttons
Pure Android – Latest Android Jelly Bean operating system from Google, for access to Android games and apps
There's more – NVIDIA put into SHIELD everything we would want in a premium mobile gaming device: 16 GB memory, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, a mini-HDMI output, micro-USB 2.0, a microSD storage slot, a 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
Speculation quickly grew that other OEMs would make a similar move, but HTC has at least dashed those hopes for their company.
"HTC is not currently planning a 'Nexus Edition' of the HTC One," said the company to SG.
The HTC One is widely regarded as the best piece of hardware to run Android, but there are plenty of critics of HTC's Sense user interface, which was recently updated to its 5th generation.
According to a new IDC report, Android now accounts for 75 percent share of the smartphone market.
For the Q1, IDC says Android and Apple shipped 199.5 million handhelds, up 59 percent year-over-year.
Combined, Android and iOS control 92.3 percent share of smartphone operating systems, leaving very little room for competition from BlackBerry and Windows Phone.
The news was not all bad for Microsoft, however, as Windows Phone surpassed BlackBerry during the quarter, shipping 7 million units good for 3.2 percent share. BlackBerry fell to 4th with 6.3 million shipments and 2.9 percent market share. WP saw 133 percent growth year-over-year, beating out all other OS.
Nokia shipped 79 percent of the Windows Phone devices during the quarter, with HTC accounting for most of the rest.
Multiple sources are reporting today that Yahoo is in active talks to purchase Tumblr, the popular photo blogging service.
The deal could go for as high as $1 billion, which would be the same ballpark as Facebook's acquisition of Instagram last year.
Yahoo has been actively looking to make their userbase younger and Tumblr's main demographic is 18-24-year-olds.
Tumblr would be the biggest of new CEO Marissa Mayer's purchases, which have included Summly, Astrid, Jybe and others in the $100 million or less range.
Spotify has announced they will be updating their desktop standalone application to display play counts for popular tracks when viewing the songs via an artist's profile.
Some users have already gotten the update but Spotify says it will take a couple of weeks to roll out.
"We're committed to making Spotify even more artist and fan-friendly and showing play counts is a clear step in that direction,"said the company. "Now artists can get immediate feedback on how their music is performing on Spotify and fans can keep up to date with popular tracks."
The play counts are global.
In the screenshot below, you can see Daft Punk's latest,'Get Lucky,' has already been played over 22 million times.
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has announced today that Twitter will soon be integrated into the company's portal newsfeed.
Says the exec: "Updates direct from politicians, celebrities, media outlets, and other publishers have become an important source of real-time news and information. 140 characters can connect athletes with their fans, capture live chatter from the red carpet, and inspire global debate. Tweets have become an important information source for many of our users, so we are thrilled to announce our partnership with Twitter to bring Tweets directly into the Yahoo! newsfeed.
As users explore our nearly endless stream of content, we will seamlessly include relevant and personalized Tweets alongside stories from Yahoo! and our other sources. With this greater breadth of compelling content, we're excited to give our users even more opportunities to learn and connect. Users now also have an easy way to discover relevant and interesting people and publishers to follow on Twitter, personalized to their interests and preferences.
Major video game publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has said today that it is not currently developing any games for the Nintendo Wii U.
Spokesperson Jeff Brown told Kotaku today that "we have no games in development for the Wii U currently."
The company had hinted last week that its upcoming blockbuster Star Wars games would not be headed to the Wii U, but it seems there are no games headed to the struggling console.
In 2011, the companies announced their "unprecedented" partnership for the Wii U but Brown says the company has fulfilled their obligations and no longer have to develop for the system.
Whether or not EA stops developing for the Wii U for good, this news is certainly not good given that the Xbox Infinity and PS4 are right around the corner.
Google not only pointed out that this is a violation of the terms of the YouTube API, but that it also denies the creators of the content ad revenue for their work.
Microsoft issued a statement in response, saying essentially that it would absolutely show the advertisements, but that Google needs to come to the table.
YouTube is consistently one of the top apps downloaded by smartphone users on all platforms, but Google has refused to work with us to develop an app on par with other platforms. Since we updated the YouTube app to ensure our mutual customers a similar YouTube experience, ratings and feedback have been overwhelmingly positive. We'd be more than happy to include advertising but need Google to provide us access to the necessary APIs. In light of Larry Page's comments today calling for more interoperability and less negativity, we look forward to solving this matter together for our mutual customers.
The statement refers to Larry Page's comments earlier today that industry negativity was holding back progress, and said that Google "struggle with people like Microsoft."
Microsoft's Surface Pro tablet PC running Windows 8 will be available in the United Kingdom from May 23.
The Surface Pro is Microsoft's effort to Showcase Windows 8 Pro. It is coming to the UK with similarly hefty price tags compared to other regions, with the 64GB device costing £719, and the 128GB config costing £799.
"The response to Surface RT has already been great to see," said Robert Epstein, UK Surface Lead.
"There has been strong anticipation for Surface Pro in the UK and we're excited to be able to offer people a fully blown Windows 8 PC packed with powerful processing features in the innovative Surface design."
Surface Pro, powered by an Intel Core i5 processor, is equivalent to a full-blown Windows 8 laptop that also boasts tablet capabilities.
YouTube subscribers with Channels claiming more than 1,000 subscribers might be eligible to enable YouTube Live.
Over the past year, many YouTube channels were able to take advantage of YouTube Live for sports events and music events and so on. Now, YouTube is expanding YouTube Live to far more users.
Basically, if a channel has over 1,000 subscribers and is in good standing, then they are eligible for live streaming. All that needs to be done is a click of an "Enable" button on the Account Features page.
Eligible subscribers can enjoy these key features:
You get real-time transcoding in the cloud, so you only need to send us your highest quality stream and we make it instantly available in all resolutions and device formats
You can show multiple camera angles, add closed captions, and insert ads and slates
Viewers can watch the live stream from any device, get the best quality constantly adjusting to their Internet connection, and can skip back and forth in the live stream
Electronic Arts is dropping its controversial Online Pass program after three years, due to disapproval from customers.
EA's Online Pass consists of a one-time code that a buyer of a new game can use to unlock Online services and content. If the game is then sold on second hand to another player, then that player needed to pay a $10 fee to unlock the same services.
Frankly, if it took EA this long to realize that gamers don't like these measures, they need to clean their ears out.
"Yes, we're discontinuing Online Pass," John Roseburg, Senior Director, Corporate Communications at EA, told VentureBeat.
"None of our new EA titles will include that feature. Initially launched as an effort to package a full menu of online content and services, many players didn't respond to the format. We've listened to the feedback and decided to do away with it moving forward."
A German federal court has ordered Google to clean up its Auto Complete service on the Google.DE search engine.
In a decision that baffled Google, the German court has told it that it must ensure terms generated by auto-complete are not offensive or defamatory. The decision overturned prior ruling from two lower German courts.
The case started with a complaint from an unnamed businessman in Germany who claimed auto-complete linked him with "Scientology" and "Fraud."
The court has ordered Google to remove "defamatory word combinations" when told about them.
Google's auto-complete makes search string suggestions based on the frequency of searches by other Google users, and the search giant claims it has very little control over the combination of words that auto-complete might serve up. If a large group of people search a name with a keyword like "fraud" after it, then it's likely other users will see that search as an auto-complete recommendation.
A Google spokesman said the company is disappointed with the decision of the court, and said it was "incomprehensible" that Google could be seen as liable for the search content of its users.
Internet giant Amazon has come under fire for the relatively low tax it pays in the United Kingdom, whilst racking up billions worth of sales.
Amazon reportedly paid $3.7 million of tax despite UK sales being around $6.5 billion - or around £4 billion. Amazon's figures also show that it received £2.5 million in government grants during 2012.
Tax avoidance has become a hot topic in the UK, and Prime Minister David Cameron is calling for action at the international level to stop large corporations from shifting profits around the world to avoid paying adequate tax.
In Amazon's case, all sales to British customers are routed through affiliate "Amazon EU Sari", located in Luxembourg. Amazon EU Sari employs around 500 staff, while Amazon employs 4,191 people in the UK, and thousands more indirectly through contracting agencies.
"The government clearly needs to do a detailed study on how to handle the tax implications of e-commerce,"John Hemming, a member of the Liberal Democrats, said. On the opposite side of the House, Labour MP Nick Smith is calling on the HMRC to go through Amazon's tax arrangements with a fine-tooth comb.
"We have a PS4 version in mind for the future" Polyphony Digital president Kazunori Yamauchi told GameSpot.
"But for this holiday season we thought that it would be best for users to release the PS3 version. I thought the best scenario would be for the game to come out, and we're planning to have new content, and DLC every few months."
The iconic franchise has reached a whopping 70 million sales since it first captured gamers attention in the 1990s. All of the cars and tracks from Gran Turismo 5 - which has sold 10 million copies - will be present in GT6, but the car lineup will expand to over 1,200. There will be a total of 33 locations (71 different layouts) available, including the UK's famous Silverstone Circuit.
Four UK-based men who were allegedly involved with several cyber crime cases as part of the Lulzsec group have pleaded guilty.
Ryan Ackroyd, Jake Davis, Mustafa al-Bassam and Ryan Cleary will be sentenced next week at the Southwark Crown Court. They are alleged to have been part of a group called Lulzsec, which authorities blame for a series of attacks in 2011 against targets including Sony Pictures, Electronic Arts and even the Metropolitan Police's Serious Organised Crime Agency.
"It's clear from the evidence that they intended to achieve extensive national and international notoriety and publicity," said Prosecutor Sandip Patel, according to the BBC.
"This is not about young immature men messing about. They are at the cutting edge of a contemporary and emerging species of criminal offender known as a cybercriminal."
According to Strategy Analytics, Samsung took 94.7 percent of all Android smartphone profits in the Q1 this year, leaving everybody else in the dust.
By their calculations, the Android phone business saw profits of $5.3 billion for the quarter, of which Samsung made $5.1 billion.
LG took second place, at $100 million in profits, good for 2.5 percent share. The other $100 million in profits were shared by ZTE, Sony, HTC, Huawei and others.
"An efficient supply chain, sleek products and crisp marketing have been among the main drivers of Samsung's impressive profitability" says Strategy Analytics. When asked about LG, "it currently lacks the volume scale needed to match Samsung's outsized profits," concludes the firm.
Google has written a cease and desist letter to Microsoft, demanding that it remove an updates YouTube app for the Windows Phone operating systems.
Microsoft recently released an updated YouTube app for Windows Phone that raised some eyebrows as it clearly seemed to violate the terms and conditions of the YouTube API. At the center of Google's anger is the deliberate blocking out of ads by the app.
"Unfortunately, by blocking advertising and allowing downloads of videos, your application cuts off a valuable ongoing revenue source for creators, and causes harm to the thriving content ecosystem on YouTube," Google wrote to Todd Brix, Senior Director of Windows Phone Apps Team.
Another noted issue with the updated app since it was released is its apparent ability to download YouTube videos locally, making them available to other apps on the system.
A U.S. Judge has denied class-action status to a copyright infringement lawsuit against YouTube that would have included thousands of claimants from all over the world.
U.S. District Judge Louis Stanton in Manhattan refused to certify a worldwide class of copyright owners in the lawsuit, which stretches back to 2007. The same judge also recently threw out a $1 billion lawsuit Viacom had originally filed against Google in 2007 over the unauthorized use of clips from The Daily Show, South Park and other programmes.
Today, he gave Google yet another major boost by denying class action status to another lawsuit filed around the same time, which included the English Premier League, the French Tennis Federation, the National Music Publishers' Association and others.
"The suggestion that a class action of these dimensions can be managed with judicial resourcefulness is flattering, but unrealistic,"Stanton wrote. "Generally speaking, copyright claims are poor candidates for class-action treatment."
One part of the proposed class would have included videos that were removed after YouTube received a DMCA takedown request, as well as music used in YouTube videos with prior permission.
HP has announced two new convertibles today, the aptly named SlateBook x2 and Split x2.
Both devices include detachable tablet displays and a battery-boasting keyboard dock but that is mostly where the similarities stop.
The SlateBook x2 is a high-end 10.2-inch Android tablet that runs on Android 4.2.2, has a quad-core Tegra 4 processor (yes, the new Tegra 4), 1920 x 1200 resolution, 400 nits of brightness, 2GB RAM, and 16GB internal storage. The dock has two USB ports, an SD card slot, and HDMI port and a battery life of over 8 hours.
HP has priced the convertible competively, as well, at $479.99.
Sundar Pichai, Google's senior vice president for Chrome and Android, announced today the Chrome has reached 750 million monthly active users, gaining an incredible 300 million in the last month.
Unsurprisingly, most of the growth is coming from mobile, where the company continues improve their Chrome mobile app almost weekly.
During the presentation the exec says Google is aiming to improve the browsing experience in a "multiscreen world." One example is the browser will be able to mimic actions on different devices, such as a game on their tablet will sync instantly to their desktop browser, mimicking all controls.
Performance updates have been substantial, as well, with the mobile app seeing an improvement by "more than 50 percent."
By some accounts, Chrome is the most popular browser in the world, followed by Internet Explorer and Firefox.
Apple has announced that their popular App Store has reached 50 billion downloads since launch in 2008.
The company had started a "50 Billion App Countdown" promotion two weeks ago, and the winner of the promotion (the 50 billionth download) will get a $10,000 gift card valid at the App Store, Mac App Store, or towards any iTunes Store content.
The fifty downloaders after the 50th billionth will each receive $500 gift cards, as well.
Apple is now seeing 50 million downloads per day, and the number continues to grow. There are just over 850,000 apps in the store.
The company saw 40 billion downloads earlier this year, 30 billion in June of 2012, and 10 million in December 2010.
As expected, Google's popular "Google Now" voice search service is headed to your PC, via Chrome or the ChromeOS operating system.
Google search boss Amit Singhal said the voice search tech would be available this week on your computer via the Chrome browser, along with new cards including movie times and reviews, TV shows, video games and public transit commute times.
A "card" is really a tab of information that comes in response to a recent search. Additionally, cards sync to your Gmail and calendar and previous searches and can remind you of upcoming flights, upcoming games from your favorite sports team, and appointments.
On the desktop, you just have to say "Google" to activate the voice search, and then ask away.
"This experience is rapidly developing and will take some time before it becomes the dominant search experience. There are several complex problems to solve, but our investment and commitment to getting there sooner rather than later are immense," Singhal concluded (via BI).
Google used their I/O conference today to unveil their oft-rumored unlimited streaming music subscription service, dubbed "Google Play Music All Access," or just "All Access" for short.
The service will rival Spotify, Rdio and others, and should prove to be major competition given Google's deep integration in Android and its hundreds of millions of users.
At $9.99 per month, the service will offer unlimited streaming music from the major record labels (UMG, Warner and Sony) and indie labels and be available on mobile devices as well as the standard desktop option. Clear market leader Spotify costs the same amount but there is a free option that is not unlimited and does not include mobile access.
One great deal from Google, is if you sign up before June 30th, the premium service is just $7.99 per month.
Google is making it possible for U.S. users over the age of 18 to send money as an attachment in Gmail with Google Wallet integration.
It's free to send money if your bank account is linked to Google Wallet or using your Google Wallet Balance, but low fees do apple for a linked credit or debit card (flat fee of 2.9% per transaction), while receiving funds is always free.
To send money in Gmail, hover over the attachment paperclip, click the $ icon to attach money to your message, enter the amount you wish to send, and press send.
The option is rolling out to U.S. users over the age of 18 over the coming months, so keep an eye out for it. Sending money through Gmail is limited to a Desktop for the time being, though you can quite easily use Google Wallet to send and receive money through mobile.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) in the UK is set to grill Google on its tax affairs in the region on Thursday, for the second time.
Between 2006 and 2011, Google reportedly generated more than $18 billion in revenue from UK sales, but paid just $16 million in taxes. Matt Brittin, a former head of Google in the UK, told the PAC in November 2012 that Google was not taxes on the profits of its advertising business in the UK, because the sales were made from the Republic of Ireland.
"When Google appeared before the Committee last year we were told they were not selling in the UK. There appears to be a clear discrepancy between that and the evidence that has now been uncovered by Reuters," said Committee chairwoman, Margaret Hodge.
"This hearing is their chance to explain themselves."
Due to a stagnating economic recovery and a growing national debt in the UK, questions have been asked about potential tax avoidance by major corporations in the UK. Google joins Amazon, Microsoft, Apple and Starbucks in the firing line of British politicians.
A report suggests that Microsoft is planning to phase out its Microsoft Points system, used to purchase content across several of its services.
The Verge is citing sources close to Microsoft in reporting that the Redmond giant will get rid of the Points system and allow customers to purchase content using real-world currency transactions (credit card, debit card etc.) and also will adopt an iTunes-like gift card.
The Points system has been in place as a means to sell content through Xbox LIVE, where 400 Microsoft Points can be purchased for $5. The system has been criticised often in the past for multiple reasons, but primarily because it can be a hassle for users who often would find themselves needing to buy more Points than necessary in order to make a transaction.
Reports last year suggested Microsoft would have made the change by the end of 2012, which will also apply to the Windows Store and the Windows Phone Store. Microsoft is likely to announce the change at E3 next month.
Gran Turismo 6 has been unveiled, and will be available this holiday season on the PlayStation 3 console.
Gran Turismo creator Kazunori Yamauchi made the announcement today at a Silverstone event held to celebrate 15 years of the series. The iconic franchise has reached a whopping 70 million sales since it first captured gamers attention in the 1990s.
Features revealed today include stunning new tracks and cars and an overhauled user interface. There's also a new engine, which will improve game operation.
All of the cars and tracks from Gran Turismo 5 - which has sold 10 million copies - will be present in GT6, but the car lineup will expand to over 1,200. There will be a total of 33 locations (71 different layouts) available, including the UK's famous Silverstone Circuit.
"It is amazing to think that it is 15 years since we first released Gran Turismo," said Kazunori Yamauchi, during the announcement at Silverstone Circuit.
"Things have changed a lot since then and now Gran Turismo 6 is a further evolution of my dream. We're pleased to deliver GT 6 to PlayStation 3 as we have a very loyal community on that platform. However, we have refactored the game to make it very flexible and expandable, with a view to making many future developments.
Swedish prosecutors are going after the Pirate Bay again, this time telling a court that the .SE domain names used to access the site should be revoked.
Specifically, the prosecutors are looking to Sweden's Internet Infrastructure Foundation - which handles .SE domain name registrations - to "de-register" the domains, thepiratebay.se and piratebay.se.
"They have been used as a means to commit crime," prosecutor Fredrik Ingblad said on Wednesday, according to the Reuters news agency.
"There is a significant criminal copyright infringement which causes a great deal of damage to many."
The Internet Infrastructure Foundation does not seem enthusiastic to follow through on the requests, pointing out that people would still be able to block the controversial website.
"People who want to use the site would get to it anyway,"Maria Ekelund, a spokeswoman for the Foundation, said.
The Pirate Bay is currently run by an unknown group.
Google has given Samsung's Galaxy S4 the Nexus treatment, showing it off at the Google I/O 2013 conference.
The Samsung Galaxy S4 variant runs Android 4.2 Jelly Bean and will be available contract-free for $649 supporting T-Mobile and AT&T's LTE networks. It will join the rest of Google's Nexus line-up on Google Play from June 26.
"We've worked closely with Samsung to create a special Samsung Galaxy S4 exclusively for Google Play," Google said.
"It brings together cutting edge hardware from Samsung with Google's latest software and services -- including the user experience that ships with our popular Nexus devices."
The device is largely the same in terms of specs, except for running the stock Android OS, the lack of a provider lock and an unlocked bootloader. Google has also promised prompt Android updates.
Google revealed at the I/O 2013 conference that there has been more than 900 million Android devices activated so far.
With such an astonishing figure, it's not difficult to understand why Google Play has just passed 48 billion apps delivered. At time of typing, Apple's App Store is approaching 50,000,000,000 apps delivered since it was launched (about 3 million to go at the moment).
With so many Android devices on the market, Google Play is more or less guaranteed to chase down and surpass Apple's app tally very soon. This month alone, more than 2.5 billion apps have been delivered from the Google Play store to Android devices.
Such colossal numbers really underline the rapid growth of smartphones and tablet PCs over recent years. Google only purchased Android in 2005, with the first major commercial Android device released in late 2008.
Samsung has confirmed that it has sold more than 6 million Galaxy S4 smartphones since the handset launched on April 26.
"As of the end of April, we supplied four million Galaxy S4 handsets to telecommunication operators around the world," an executive at the company said on Friday, according to South Korean site, The Chosunilbo.
"As of Friday, we have sold more than 6 million units, and we predict that we could break the 10-million mark by as early as the end of this month."
The figures make the S4 easily Samsung's fastest selling smartphone yet. It took 85 days for the S1 to hit a 3 million milestone, then 55 days for the S2 and just 21 days for the S3.
Skype has announced that a preview version of its app is now available for BlackBeery Z10 users.
The app has previously been made available for BlackBerry Q10 users, but now with the rollout of BlackBerry 10.1, Skype is making the preview app available for BlackBerry Z10 users who update the operating system to the latest version.
"When you download the Skype app, you can try all of Skype's popular features, and also see how seamlessly the Skype app integrates with the phone book and the BlackBerry Hub," Skype's blog announcement reads.
"Remember this release is still in preview version. We will continue working with BlackBerry over the next months to refine the performance of the Skype app. So keep an eye for any new Skype updates on BlackBerry World for your device."
Sony is insisting that its entertainment division is not for sale, responding to calls from a Hudge Fund for an IPO of is entertainment unit.
The rumors of such a move pushed Sony shares upward on Tuesday, but a Sony spokesman said in a statement that Sony's entertainment business is vital to its growth strategy and is absolutely "not for sale."
Sony is being urged to hear Third Point's proposal for an IPO, as the iconic Japanese firm is crawling its way back to profitability after major revamps over recent years.
Third Point, managed by billionaire Daniel Loeb, has accumulated about 6 percent of Sony's shares, worth about $1.1 billion, making it the largest stakeholder.
In a letter to Kazou Hirai, Sony chief executive, Loeb said his fund would be willing to put up an additional ~$2 billion (200 billion YEN) to support an IPO of up to a fifth of Sony's entertainment arm.
"The entertainment businesses are important contributors to Sony's growth and are not for sale," Sony said in response to Loeb's proposal. "We look forward to continuing constructive dialogue with our shareholders as we pursue our strategy."
According to Sandvine, the broadband servicing company that tracks traffic, Netflix continues to account for one third of U.S. Internet traffic, and nobody else is even close.
Netflix's share of "prime-time downstream traffic delivered over 'fixed networks'" was 32.5 percent in the most recent report, down marginally from 33 percent in November.
Amazon dropped from 1.75 percent to 1.31 percent and HBO dropped from 0.5 percent to just 0.34 percent. Hulu saw growth, from 1.1 percent to 2.41 percent.
While Netflix is dominant over home networks and Wi-Fi, on mobile devices YouTube remains king. If you are watching a video on your phone, there is a pretty good chance it's on YouTube, says Sandvine.
According to The Verge, Google has taken the next step in their plans to launch a subscription streaming music service.
The report says the search giant has signed licensing deals with UMG and Sony Music, the two largest of the Big 4 record labels. The company is said to have signed a similar deal with Warner Music earlier in the year.
Google is expected to unveil the streaming service at this week's I/O conference, and the service will compete with Spotify, Rdio and others.
If accurate, Google will be the first of the tech titans to get in on the unlimited streaming subscription services market. Amazon and Apple are also said to be exploring options.
All the proceeds go to charity and so far the bidder, going by the name "a********s," has remained anonymous. The auction had stagnated at $605,000 until the last 30 minutes.
CharityBuzz hosted the auction, along with 118 others to support the RFK Center for Justice and Human Rights.
Earlier in the bidding process, bidding totals were running out of control as bidders looked for their 15 seconds of fame knowing they would be outbid. CharityBuzz then implemented bank qualification terms, which slowed the bids to a crawl.
The winner of the auction gets a 60 minute meeting with Cook at Apple's headquarters at a mutually agreed upon date.
An app for Twitch is now available for the Xbox 360 console, allowing you to watch live streaming of gameplay.
Around 800,000 people use Twitch to stream gameplay with 34 million viewers looking on online at Twitch.TV. Now an app for viewing has been made available for Xbox 360/LIVE Gold users, although it would appear to be only in the United States for now.
Users can view top channels by popularity or individual game and the dashboard features curated channels, tournaments and shows happening now.
Twitch will also host an exclusive broadcast following the May 21st Xbox Revealed event next week live at 3pm ET/12m PT.
Facebook has moved to block an app that let users play Russian Roulette with their Facebook account.
Specifically, Social Roulette had a 1 in 6 chance of deleting a Facebook account if a user decided to dare put their Facebook life in its hands. Apparently, Facebook found this app to "violate its platform policy" and so has prevented you from putting the proverbial gun to your Facebook profile's head.
To be more specific, the app could not completely remove an account, but it promised to remove all your posts, friends, apps, likes, photos, and games before deactivating your account.
"Everyone thinks about deleting their account at some point, it's a completely normal reaction to the overwhelming nature of digital culture. Is it time to consider a new development in your life?," the Social Roulette website reads.
"Are you looking for the opportunity to start fresh? Or are you just seeking cheap thrills at the expense of your social network? Maybe it's time for you to play Social Roulette."
For those who decided to give it a shot, they either ended up with a mangled deactivated account, or 5 times out of 6 they had a new message on their timeline that simply read, "I played Social Roulette and survived."
BlackBerry has announced a new BlackBerry Q5 smartphone, which aims at markets outside of North America and at a younger, more price conscious group.
The company was remarkably short on details about the new BlackBerry 10 (BB10) device, but it does retain the iconic QWERTY keyboard and a 3.1-inch touchscreen.
"BlackBerry is excited to bring a new BlackBerry QWERTY smartphone, the BlackBerry Q5, to our customers in selected markets around world," said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of BlackBerry.
"The BlackBerry Q5 gives you the best of everything with its cutting-edge BlackBerry 10 functionality and a physical QWERTY keyboard. It is for youthful fans that are passionate, confident and bold, and it makes it easy for them to have fun, create, share and stay connected."
The new, lower-cost BB10 device will launch in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Asia (including the Asia Pacific region), and Latin America, beginning in July.
How much is low cost exactly? Well, we don't know, as BlackBerry failed to deliver that vital detail, prompting more frowns for analysts.
BlackBerry has confirmed that its popular BlackBerry Messenger - or BBM - will be available for users of Android and iOS devices this summer.
BBM will be supported on iOS 6 and Android 4.0, or later. It marks a change in BlackBerry's services strategy, where once BBM was a major drawing factor of BlackBerry devices. Now, with so many former customers using iOS or Android devices, the company is willing to open it up to other platforms allowing those lost customers to keep in touch with their old BBM contacts.
"For BlackBerry, messaging and collaboration are inseparable from the mobile experience, and the time is definitely right for BBM to become a multi-platform mobile service. BBM has always been one of the most engaging services for BlackBerry customers, enabling them to easily connect while maintaining a valued level of personal privacy. We're excited to offer iOS and Android users the possibility to join the BBM community," said Andrew Bocking, Executive Vice President, Software Product Management and Ecosystem, at BlackBerry.
BBM has more than 60 million monthly active customers, with more than 51 million people using BBM an average of 90 minutes per day. BBM customers collectively send and receive more than 10 billion messages each day, almost half of which are read within 20 seconds of being received.
Users of Outlook.com will be able to chat to users of Google's Talk instant messaging service, but video and audio chats are not supported yet.
Microsoft's revamped e-mail service is putting emphasis on integration of other communications services, recently building in Skype integration and allowing users to contact Facebook friends, Twitter and LinkedIn and so forth.
"We heard that some of you who switched over from Gmail still want to chat with friends stuck on Gmail. Today, we're excited to announce that you can now also chat with your Google friends," wrote Office Blogs' Douglas Pearce.
"And if you're working together on an Office document in SkyDrive, you can send an instant message to a Google contact with just a click. We're rolling out Google chat integration now, so look for it in your inbox over the next couple of days."
NVIDIA's Project SHIELD is now just 'SHIELD', and can be pre-ordered from several retail partners or the NVIDIA website from May 20.
The 'console-grade' controller features a 720p display, powered by Tegra 4 and running Android. "SHIELD is the one device that taps into the planet's largest ecosystem of games -- spanning NVIDIA TegraZone, Google Play and Steam," NVIDIA's announcement reads.
"Rediscover your Android games with the mobility, control and performance of SHIELD. Connect to your Google Play account to enjoy your favorite movies, music and apps."
NVIDIA SHIELD's specifications:
Tegra 4 – The world's fastest mobile processor delivers rich graphics and unbeatable performance thanks to 72 GPU cores, four CPU cores and 2GB of RAM
Console-grade controller – Precise control thanks to dual analog joysticks, a full-sized D-Pad, left and right analog triggers, full-sized bumpers and A/B/X/Y buttons
Integrated speakers – Custom, bass reflex, tuned port audio system – we think this is SHIELD's sleeper feature
Wi-Fi – 802.11n 2X2 MIMO game-speed Wi-Fi for game streaming
Pure Android – Latest Android Jelly Bean operating system from Google, for access to Android games and apps
There's more – NVIDIA put into SHIELD everything we would want in a premium mobile gaming device: 16 GB memory, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, a mini-HDMI output, micro-USB 2.0, a microSD storage slot, a 3.5-mm stereo headphone jack
Microsoft's upcoming major update for the Windows 8 operating system has officially been dubbed 'Windows 8.1', and will be available for free later this year.
The package of updates will address concerns some Windows 8 users have had with the latest home Desktop OS from Microsoft. Some rumored changes included restoring the Start Menu which was dropped in Windows 8 Desktop Mode, and the ability to boot directly to the Desktop interface rather than the tiled Start Screen.
Speaking at the JP Morgan Technology, Media & Telecom Conference in Boston, Tami Reller - Chief Marketing Officer and Chief Financial Officer, Windows - said that Windows 8 users will be able to get the Windows 8.1 update later this year as a free download from the Windows Store.
A public preview of the update will be made available on June 26 for those interested, timed with the Build developer conference in San Francisco.
Amazon has confirmed they have purchased Samsung's screen tech company, Liquavista.
Says Amazon: "We are always looking for new technologies we may be able to incorporate into our products over the long term. The Liquavista team shares our passion for invention and is creating exciting new technologies with a lot of potential. It's still early days, but we're excited about the possibilities and we look forward to working with Liquavista to develop these displays."
The tech, which is extremely power-efficient, will be integrated into upcoming Kindle e-readers. The company has been working on flexible e-displays that support full color and video.
It is unclear how much Amazon paid for the company, but the speculation is under $100 million.
Nintendo has won its appeal in a patent case which had threatened to block imports of the Wii console into the U.S.
The appeals court upheld a January 2012 U.S. ITC ruling in favor of Nintendo.
In 2008, Motiva LLC sued Nintendo claiming the Wii infringed on two patents for 'a system to track a game user's position and body movement.' The appeals court agreed with the ITC that the main motive behind Motiva's litigation was to win damages, not to license or make products using the patents.
"Motiva's litigation was targeted at financial gains, not at encouraging adoption of Motiva's patented technology," Circuit Judge Sharon Prost wrote. "There is simply no reasonable likelihood that, after successful litigation against Nintendo, Motiva's patented technology would have been licensed by partners who would have incorporated it."
Daft Punk streamed their entire new album, Random Access Memories, earlier today via iTunes days before the official retail release.
As expected, the album is available across the Internet now, on all your favorite piracy venues.
Just like iTunes did with Justin Timberlake's new 20/20 Experience, the artist has made their music available to the public in high quality, thus giving the casual pirate an outlet to listen to the tracks without needing to download it.
According to BGR, the HTC First, the first device to feature Facebook's "Home" interface, is about to be dropped from AT&T lineup of devices.
Allegedly, the sales have been so disappointing that exclusive carrier AT&T will be shipping all unsold inventory back to HTC once its contractual obligation to keep them in stores is satisfied.
If true, the news is terrible for HTC and Facebook, both of which were hoping to get the device into as many hands as possible. HTC released the First last month. The report even says the low-end and poorly reviewed HTC Status sold more during its first month than the First did.
Last week AT&T dropped the contract price of the First to $0.99 from $99, sparking conversations that the device was on its way out.
UK mobile operator EE has defended its user data selling practices after a report showed interest from the Metropolitan Police.
Wireless Operators around the world are amassing enormous amounts of data on their users' habits, and marketing it to a variety of potential buyers. EE, in the UK, has come under fire amidst media reports that the Metropolitan Police was interested in buying data.
However, EE blasted the initial report in the Sunday Times, saying it is misleading.
The Times report indicated that Ipsos Mori - which has a deal to sell on EE's user data - had held talks with the Metropolitan Police, and that information from 27 million customers was on offer, including gender, age, postcode, visited websites and so on.
"We would never breach the trust our customers place in us and we always act to comply fully with the Data Protection Act," a statement from EE said.
"The information is anonymised and aggregated, and cannot be used to identify the personal information of individual customers."
It said that Ipsos Mori only has access to data which has been anonymized and grouped into samples of 50 or more people. It does not sell on information that can be attached to any individual user.
The French government is reportedly flirting with the idea of taxing popular consumer electronics products as a way to maintain funding for cultural projects.
It is seeking to find sources of revenue to fund cultural projects during an economic downturn, which the government feels should be exempt from market forces. Since consumers in France spend more money on consumer electronics products like smartphones and tablets, rather than content, it is an area being seriously considered for "culture tax."
The relationship between the socialist government and the major technology companies has been cooling. Recently, Industry Minister Arnaud Montebourg angered Yahoo! by blocking its attempt to buy a majority stake in French-owned Dailymotion.
Such intervention in the marketplace even seemed to stun Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, who has since denied any approval of the move.
Taxing popular products like Apple's iPad and Samsung's Galaxy tablets is proposed by former Canal Plus CEO Pierre Lescure, who was tapped by the French government to find new ways to fund cultural projects.
"Companies that make these tablets must, in a minor way, be made to contribute part of the revenue from their sales to help creators," Culture Minister Aurelie Filipetti said, according to Reuters.
Aereo, the cloud-based DVR service that caused a legal stir when it launched, has simplified its pricing plans ahead of a launch in Boston this week.
Starting with a base plan of $8 per month, consumers will have access to Aereo's cloud-based antenna/DVR technology and 20 hours of DVR storage. For $12 perm month, subscribers will be able to utilize 60 hours of DVR storage.
All new Aereo members will get their first month for free, and can cancel at any time during the free month. Using Aereo's technology, consumers can pause, rewind and fast-forward any program that they are watching live, or save a program for future viewing.
Aereo works on 'smart' devices from tablets to phones to laptop computers. Aereo is currently supported on iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, Chrome, Internet Explorer 9, Firefox, Safari, Opera, AppleTV (via airplay) and Roku devices.
"We looked at our data and it was clear, consumers want a more simple approach to pricing," said Aereo CEO and Founder Chet Kanojia.
"With our new pricing structure, consumers begin with one base plan and then have the ability to upgrade their membership to triple their DVR storage capacity. We want to make it simple and easy for consumers to access our technology and we believe this updated pricing plan accomplishes just that."
Netflix subscribers in the UK and Ireland will be able to watch a variety of movies from The Walt Disney Company, the streaming service has announced.
Disney and Disney Pixar favourites including Ratatouille, Wall-E, The Chronicles of Narnia, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl, as well as Disney classics like Dumbo and The Aristocats, are available to watch instantly, whenever and however members want.
In the coming months, further titles from Disney, Marvel and Dreamworks SKG will be made available, including The Help, War Horse, People Like Us and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.
"We are delighted to be able to offer our members an incredible variety of fantastic family films, from recent hits like Marvel's Avengers Assemble to beloved classics like Mary Poppins," said Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos.
"We aim to make Netflix better all the time and hope members enjoy the rich offering of films we are making available from the Disney studios."
Samsung Electronics has claimed a breakthrough in development of wireless communications technology that will be at the core of 5G networks.
It has developed the world's first adaptive array transceiver technology operating in the millimeter-wave Ka bands for cellular communications. It has been long believed that the millimeter-wave bands had limitations in transmitting data over long distances due to its unfavorable propagation characteristics.
Samsung claims its new adaptive array transceiver technology has proved itself as a successful solution. So far, the South Korean electronics giant claims it can transmit data in the millimeter-wave band at a frequency of 28 GHz at a speed of up to 1.056 Gbps to a distance of up to 2 kilometers.
The adaptive array transceiver technology, using 64 antenna elements, can be a viable solution for overcoming the radio propagation loss at millimeter-wave bands, much higher than the conventional frequency bands ranging from several hundred MHz to several GHz.
Don't start thinking about waiting on 5G handsets however, since these networks are still years away from being feasible. Samsung's new developments are promising but the rise of 5G networks will require so much more innovation from all areas of industry and government-funded sources before it is ready for mass usage. 5G services are not expected to be available until around 2020.
Google has decided to pool the free storage you get with Gmail, Google Drive and Google+ Photos, amounting to 15GB you can use for anything.
The change makes perfect sense as Google seeks to make all of its services work seamlessly together; inserting Drive files into e-mails or sharing a photo from Drive on Google+, and so on. It doesn't matter now how much of the 15GB you use on any of the services.
The Google Drive storage page has also been updated to make it clearer how you are using your storage. Simply hover over the pie chart to see a breakdown of your storage use across Drive, Gmail, and Google+ Photos.
Google also has premium storage offers, starting at $4.99 per month for 100GB.
Netflix has updated its Netflix Player for the PS3 console, with a design more akin to the Web Player and those that run on tablet devices.
The key feature in this update is the ability to easily manage your audio and subtitles selections. You can now do that directly in the player on the PS3, without having to return to the browse experience.
Select "Audio & Subtitles" and all options for that title are presented. Members who use the accessory Sony PS3 Blu-ray remote control can access "Audio & Subtitles" directly from the remote control by pressing "Subtitles." Users of the social features can also easily disable sharing of the currently playing Title.
The design and performance of "trickplay" have also been enhanced. The images load much faster, allowing you to quickly find what you are looking for. Also, you can easily go back 10 seconds in the title anytime by simply pressing the left arrow button once on your controller or remote control.
File locker service Mega has removed publicly available 3D gun designs from its service, following orders by founder Kim Dotcom.
The designs were made available by US-based company Defense Distributed, and can be used with certain 3D printers. The company successfully fired the world's first 3D printed gun recently, and made the design available on its website.
The Office of Defense Trade Controls Compliance demanded that the design be removed, and a probe to establish whether the company broke arms control laws relating to overseas shipping is underway.
The design is still being hosting by other sites however, such as the Pirate Bay. Mega's controversial founder, Kim Dotcom, opted to order his staff to remove public copies of the designs from the file locker's servers after being made aware of them.
He denied that he had been contacted by anyone from the U.S. government about the matter, and said the decision was made out of public concern.
"I think it's a serious threat to security of the community. I think it's scary that people can print 3D guns that can't even be detected by metal detectors ... This should concern everybody,"he toldRadio New Zealand.
According to sources, Disney will begin allowing livestreaming of ABC broadcast content to iOS devices in NYC and Philadelphia.
If completely accurate, the news would be huge as major broadcasters have never allowed the viewing of live content via mobile devices.
For the first six weeks, the streaming will be free if you have an iOS device but will eventually only be available to paying subscribers of cable and satellite providers.
Dubbed the "Live" button, the company's app will be updated for cities where ABC owns stations, which at this time is only six metro cities. Disney is in talks with the companies that own ABC affiliates, which would give access to fans in 200 other cities.
The streaming will be made available to Android in the coming months.
E-commerce giant Alibaba has paid $294 million for a 28 percent share in AutoNavi, China's top auto navigation mapping system.
Says the press release: "AutoNavi announced that the company and several entities affiliated with Alibaba Group have agreed to form a strategic alliance to jointly explore and develop location-based e-commerce opportunities. In addition, AutoNavi announced that the parties have entered into definitive agreements whereby Alibaba, through a wholly owned subsidiary, will invest approximately $294M in newly issued preferred and ordinary shares of the company, representing approximately 28% of the company's total issued and outstanding shares on a fully-diluted basis."
AutoNavi has a dominant position in China's growing GPS space, but the deal actually sent the company's shares falling as it was lower than expected. AutoNavi recently surpassed 100 million downloads and competes directly with Google Maps, Baidu and others while controlling a 45 percent share of the China GPS market.
Boston Mayor Thomas Menino has announced that the city will be moving from Microsoft Exchange to Google Apps, the company's own suite of software for enterprise (and government) users.
The mayor has over 20,000 city employees. Boston is not the first municipality to make the switch as a number of large cities, agencies and large corporations have already made the move.
"We are continuing to drive it forward,"added Bill Oates, Boston's chief information officer. "We've been ready, willing, and able to leverage any of these new capabilities."
The CIO says it costs about $100 per year per employee for Microsoft's products. The city says it will cost about $800,000 to move to Google Apps, but the move will save the government $280,000 per year moving forward.
Furthermore, Google's contract terms are said to be much simpler than Microsoft's. Additionally, Google updates all of its software via the Internet, which Microsoft only just began doing, and not even with all of their products.
Google has said this week that it is finishing defining the open-source VP9 video codec standard, with a final date of June 17th.
The company will begin using the next-generation compression codec in Chrome and YouTube on that date.
"Last week, we hosted over 100 guests at a summit meeting for VP9, the WebM Project's next-generation open video codec. We were particularly happy to welcome our friends from YouTube, who spoke about their plans to support VP9 once support lands in Chrome," added Matt Frost, senior business product manager for the WebM Project.
WebM currently combines VP8 for video and Vorbis for audio but is much less used than the H.264 codec.
Verizon has announced this week that it will sell the new high-end NokiaLumia 928.
The Lumia 928 will sell for $99 after rebate and with contract.
Nokia's latest is very similar to the Lumia 920 sold through rival AT&T, except it is lighter and has a slightly different screen.
The 928 weighs 5.7 ounces compared to the 920 at 6.5 ounces. Additionally, the 4.5-inch screen extends to the edges of the phone compared to the curved edges of the 920.
Under the hood is a 1.5GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, a 2,000mAH battery and 32GB internal storage. The camera is impressive with a Carl Zeiss f/2.0 lens, 8.7-megapixel sensor and Xenon flash.
Verizon is also offering $25 in Windows Phone Store credit with purchase that can be used on apps and games.
For the fith time since the 1950s, the RIAA has changed the way they calculate gold and platinum certification for single tracks.
Under the new system, 100 streams of a track will count as one digital download.
To go gold, you need to have 500,000 downloads (or physical copies), one million for platinum, and 2 million or higher for multi-platinum.
The RIAA says they will accept streaming data from YouTube, Spotify, Rdio, VEVO, MOG, Xbox Music, Slacker and Rhapsody with others to be included soon.
"Including music streaming in Gold & Platinum awards marks the continued evolution of the industry's premier program for recognizing artistic achievement, and it reflects the wide spectrum of ways consumers enjoy music from their favorite bands," said Cary Sherman, Chairman & CEO, RIAA. "The music business, along with its incredible array of digital service partners, is offering fans more access to music than ever before. We're thrilled that our awards will now more fully recognize artists' commercial success today."
During their most recent earnings conference call, Sony CFO Masaru Kato confirmed that unlike the PS3, the PS4 will not be a black hole of profits at launch.
The PS3 had an expensive and proprietary Cell processor and included a high-end early model Blu-ray drive before Blu-rays were mainstream.
"Unlike PS3, we are not planning a major loss to be incurred with the launch of PS4,"said Kato. "At the time we developed PS3, we made a lot of in-house investments to develop the Cell chip. Development of the chip saw the silicon processing and all the facilities [as internal investments]. This time, we have a team working on chip development, but we already have existing technology to incorporate. All the facilities will now be invested by our partners, other foundries, so we don't have to make all the investment in-house."
The new system, set for release in November, will use an x86 AMD Jaguar CPU.
According to research firm Canalys, 308.7 million smart mobile devices were shipped in the first quarter, a huge growth rate of 37.4 percent year-over-year.
Google's Android remained king for operating systems, with 59.5 percent share of the devices shipped. Apple took 19.3 percent between iOS and OS X and Microsoft took 18.1 percent share with its Windows 8 and Windows Phone device.
Just a day after the WSJ reported that Microsoft's oft-rumored set-top box was dead in the water, Verge has a different story, claiming the company is preparing an "Xbox TV" set-top for release this year.
The set-top would be a cheap (think $99 or less) alternative to the current-generation Xbox 360, giving users access to all the core entertainment services including content streaming, casual gaming and Web access.
Microsoft will allegedly use a chipset that will allow for an "always-on" device, meaning near instant boot times and quick access to TV and entertainment apps. The current-generation of Roku devices are "always-on," as well, and use shockingly little electricity.
The device will be launched alongside the next-generation Xbox, which will be unveiled on May 21st and be released in November.
According to sources, Microsoft is exploring purchasing the rest of the digital assets of Nook Media that it does not own for $1 billion.
Nook Media is the division of Barnes & Noble that controls the digital book store, Nook hardware and college book stores.
If the report is accurate, Microsoft would control the division and phase out the Android-based tablets (such as the Nook HD+) by the end of the 2014 fiscal year. Nook Media would then move to a model where all Nook content is distributed through dedicated apps and 'third-party partner devices.'
Most likely, Windows 8 tablets will be the partner devices, with a Nook app pre-installed. The more popular Nook e-readers will eventually phase out, as well, following the general trend of consumers moving to tablets and smartphones as "all-purpose" devices.
Microsoft has currently invested $300 million in Nook Media, with another $180 million being used by Nook to develop content for Windows 8 devices. The $300 million gives Microsoft a 16.8 percent stake in the company.
Microsoft has uploaded a couple of videos that poke fun at Google Docs, enlisting Rob Schneider and some other familiar faces.
In the first video, we are warned not to "gamble with Google Docs," and in the second video we're shown how Google Docs is not a productivity team player on the basketball court.
We're not entirely sure they were worth spending money on, but worth a look anyway.
Ouya, the open-source console originally scheduled for commercial release at the beginning of June, has been delayed.
The console will see a three week delay, to June 25th, which likely means there are some additional kinks to be worked out in regards to supply.
More importantly for the company, after raising almost $9 million through Kickstarter, the company has just raised another $15 million from venture capital firms Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Mayfield Fund.
CEO Julie Uhrman says the delay"allows us to do more and get more units into retail quickly. Our demand is already beyond expectations. That's a great problem to have, but it leads to a need for cash."
Kleiner Perkins is a heavy-hitter in the industry, having invested in over 700 ventures leading to 200 initial public offerings.
The console runs on Android and will retail for $99 at major retailers with extra controllers costing $50 each.
The United Space Alliance, the company behind the computers used on the International Space Station has said today that they have migrated the computers to Linux, and away from Windows XP.
With a parting shot to Windows, the Alliance added, "we migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable."
The "dozens of laptops" will now use Debian 6, while other systems on the Space Station already use RedHat and Scientific Linux.
More specifically, Keith Chuvala of the United Space Alliance said the group needed an OS "that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust or adapt, we could."
ExTech says the laptops being upgraded are part of the station's OpsLAN. "The crew use the OpsLAN to perform day-to-day activities, such as viewing stock inventory, controlling scientific experiments, or checking their current location."
YouTube has announced today that they have launched paid channels starting at $0.99.
Says the video sharing site: "Starting today, we're launching a pilot program for a small group of partners that will offer paid channels on YouTube with subscription fees starting at $0.99 per month. Every channel has a 14-day free trial, and many offer discounted yearly rates. For example, Sesame Street will be offering full episodes on their paid channel when it launches. And UFC fans can see classic fights, like a full version of their first event from UFC's new channel. You might run into more of these channels across YouTube, or look here for a list of pilot channels. Once you subscribe from a computer, you'll be able to watch paid channels on your computer, phone, tablet and TV, and soon you'll be able to subscribe to them from more devices."
YouTube started its partner program in 2007, allowing content creators to actually earn revenue on their content. There are currently over 1 million channels generating revenue, says the company.
If you have a channel or are a new content partner, you can get more information about your own paid channel here: Google sign-up
Microsoft's oft-rumored set-top box may be dead in the water, says the WSJ.
The software giant has been supposedly creating a simple set-top to stream video, audio and other content for some time now.
So far, sources say, the design of the product has gone through many prototypes, some of which directly work with the company's Kinect motion-control tech. By being integrated with Kinect, consumers would be able to control menus and content with gestures and motions.
Microsoft has been working towards common experiences across its entire line of products, based on the Windows 8 operating system. This would include the Xbox, Windows Phone and Surface tablets.
For the time being, the set-top appears to be on the backburner especially as the company prepares to unveil its Xbox successor on May 21st.
According to the WSJ, Amazon is actively developing a smartphone with a 3D display to expand their hardware business beyond the Kindle tablets and e-readers.
Additionally, the company is working on a second smartphone and "an audio-only streaming device" as well.
As explained by the report, the high-end 3D phone would not require glasses and "using retina-tracking technology, images on the smartphone would seem to float above the screen like a hologram and appear three-dimensional at all angles. Users may be able to navigate through content using just their eyes."
Sources say Amazon is also potentially working on a set-top box for streaming movie and TV content, and together all the projects are known as Project A, B, C and D, aka the Alphabet Projects.
Amazon has goals of releasing some of the products in the coming months, but the sources claim there is a good chance many will get scrapped, either due to financial concerns or performance.
The issue does not affect any other version of Internet Explorer, but many home and business users still run the ageing web browser.
Microsoft has not yet issued a proper patch for the flaw, and so as a temporary fix it is offering concerned users a one-click Fix It tool that you can get at microsoft.com.
Facebook is reportedly close to buying Israeli start-up Waze for a reported fee of $800 million - $1 billion.
The news was broken by business daily Calcalist, reporting that due diligence is underway and a term sheet was signed. Waze specializes in satellite navigation, and uses members' smartphones to generate maps and traffic data.
In October 2012, it partnered with Facebook to let users share their drive with friends through the social network.
If bought by Facebook, it will be the third acquisition of an Israeli firm by the social giant, after buying Snaptu for $70 million in 2011, and Face.com for $60 million last year.
Following the months of speculation about the next Xbox requiring an always-online Internet connection, Sony reveals it never even considered it.
"Did we consider it? No, we didn't consider it," Sony president of Worldwide Studios, Shuhei Yoshida, told Game Informer magazine.
"The main reason being that many countries don't have robust Internet connections. It makes sense for people to have Internet connections to play online games, but for offline games there are many countries that we saw [that] do not really have robust Internet."
A leaked memo eased months of speculation that Microsoft would require the next Xbox console to be constantly connected to the Internet, even when a connection is unnecessary to play a single-player game.
In the PC area, always-on requirements have seen some snags. SimCity requires a constant Internet connection to play, which was a major problem when server ran into difficulty after launch, for example.
YouTube removed David Bowie's latest music video over "graphic content" that consisted of religious imagery, before admitting it was in error and reinstating it.
The Next Day is the latest video from Bowie from his comeback album of the same name. It features Gary Oldman and Marion Cotillard - the latter appearing to bleed from Stigmata wounds. The video had been removed from YouTube initially over its apparent "graphic content", but was later restored.
"With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call. When it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it," a YouTube spokesman said.
The video is set in a basement bar occupied by religious figures, and shows a priest (Gary Oldman) fighting and then dancing with a prostitute.
AT&T has dropped the price of the HTC First handset running Facebook Home from $99.99, to just $0.99.
The carrier - second largest in the U.S. market - argues that price cutting promotions are not that unusual, but the proximity to the launch of the phone is raising eyebrows. The HTC First, which bundles Facebooks environment and apps, was launched less than a month ago and is available exclusively through AT&T.
"The final verdict on Facebook Home was brutally handed down yesterday with AT&T slashing the price of the HTC First from $99 to $0.99,"Richard Windsor, an independent analyst, said on his Radio Free Mobile blog in as post titled 'Facebook - Jack of one trade.'
"If this was an isolated incident, then one could put it down to poor hardware, but installations and reviews of the software on other devices have also been poor."
Facebook looks to the mobile space as an area for potentially strong growth over the coming years.
Electronic Arts has said it dropped licensing deals with the manufacturers of weapons, citing constitutional rights.
The publisher was criticized for offering links to real-world weapons ahead of the Medal of Honor: Warfighter release, and responded by removing all links to external arms vendors and purging blog posts that endorsed firearms.
EA executive Frank Gibeau told Reuters that its gamers are "telling a story and we have a point of view," and points out that a book author does not need to pay to use the word "Colt."
EA is already engaged in a simial legal battle in U.S. courts, after it received a cease and desist letter from Bell Helicopter for "using" the AH-1Z Viper, the UH-1Y, and the V-22 Osprey in Battlefield 3.
EA has blamed a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack on its servers for connection issues experienced by Battlefield 3 gamers yesterday.
The publisher used its Twitter account to explain the situation to frustrated Battlefield players. "The current BF3 and Battelog outages are a result of activity that appears to be aimed at overwhelming our game servers," it said.
"Thank you for being understanding. We are going to try our best to get everyone back onto the battlefield as soon as possible."
Microsoft will release a preview version of its anticipated Windows 8 update at Build, the company has confirmed.
The Redmond giant is preparing a major update to the latest iteration of its consumer operating system, codenamed Windows Blue, following continued criticism of Windows 8's user interface changes since Windows 7.
Windows 8 aimed to both continue offering a Desktop environment for PC users, whilst also looking to get in on growing tablet PC sales. However, merging the two different environments has led to user confusion and an avalanche of criticism aimed at Microsoft.
For example, it is speculated that the Windows Blue update will restore the Start Menu in the Desktop environment, after it became clear that some long-time Windows users who upgraded were having trouble even figuring out how to shut down their PCs.
The update also is expected to allow users to boot directly into the Destkop mode, avoiding the Start Screen (Metro) where they have to select a tile to get to the Destkop.
Microsoft revealed that Windows 8 has sold over 100 million licenses since launch in October 2012, but a look at the figures show that sales for the first four months of 2013 were around 40 million, indicating Windows 8 is not following the accelerating growth in sales seen by Windows 7, which sold 240 million licenses in its first 12 months on the market.
BitTorrent is showing off its new Bundle Alpha, describing it as a multimedia format and selling it as a solution for direct-to-fan content delivery.
A BitTorrent Bundle can include a range of content, some of which might only be accessible by entering a key, or for example could be completely free but require a user enter an e-mail address.
BitTorrent explains the idea behind the new format as essentially a way to cut out the middle man. A couple of decades ago the middle man was the record store. The record store was replaced by the market chains, and then they were replaced by online middle men, like iTunes and Amazon.
The BitTorrent Bundle is not an album, an MP3, or an MOV. It's a multimedia format. It's an early build of a new type of torrent file where fan interaction, like email collection or donation, happens inside the torrent.
"We're collaborating with electronic music innovators Ultra Music to see what happens when you let people choose how they want to connect with content," BitTorrent's Matt Mason, wrote.
"Ultra's BitTorrent Bundle is a behind-the-scenes look at Kaskade's 2012 'Freaks of Nature' tour, designed to support the artist's May 14th documentary release. It's a flyer. It's a direct-to-fan social object. And it's the world's largest stage; ready to reach 170 million fans from all over the world."
Activision Blizzard has revealed that 1.3 million World of Warcraft subscribers have dumped the game in the past three months.
That drop represents about 14 percent of all WoW users, and is made up mostly of players located in the East where the publisher has made considerable efforts to get and retain players. Activision Blizzard has blamed the rise of free-to-play games for the subscriber loss.
It has told investors to expect subscriber figures to dip even lower.
"It's important to note that the nature of online games has changed, and with the environment becoming far more competitive," said chief executive Bobby Kotick.
"To address this, we're working to release new content more frequently to keep our players engaged longer and make it easier for lapsed players to come back into the game."
Despite the drop, WoW remains the most popular subscriber-based game in the world with 8.3 million players. In 2010, subscribers peaked at 12 million.
Microsoft has noted this week that it will not be following Adobe in killing off packaged software for Web-based subscriptions, at least not yet.
Earlier this week, Adobe ended packaged sales of its Creative Suite software, moving instead to its $50-per-month Creative Cloud and other subscription plans.
Microsoft Office spokesman Clint Patterson says they agree with Adobe that the future is software-as-a-service, "however, unlike Adobe, we think people's shift from packaged software to subscription services will take time." Subscriptions are preferable, says Patterson, because the apps will always remain up to date and subscribers can use the apps across multiple devices.
When asked how much time they think the transition will take, Microsoft says "within a decade" all customers will have been subscribed to the Web-based subscription services. "In the meantime, we are committed to offering choice--premier software sold as a package and powerful services sold as a subscription," Patterson added (via Cnet).
Ouya, the little open-source game console that could, has received very high marks for repairability by iFixit.
iFixit tears down consoles, phone, tablets and other devices to see what hardware is used and grades the devices on how easy they are to repair if something were to go wrong.
The console, which costs just $99 for consumers, is three inches across by three inches high and deep. Under the hood is 1GB SDRAM, a Nvidia Tegra 3 CPU, a Texas Instruments power management tool and comically, five metal weights used to make the console more bottom heavy and not topple over and to keep the cables connected in the back more stable.
Scoring a 9 places the Ouya in rare company, as many current generation devices are almost impossible to repair on your own if something were to happen. For example, the new Microsoft Surface Pro tablet scored a 1/10, with the company calling it impossible to repair.
Additionally, iFixit tore apart the controllers (which cost $50 after the first one) and found they are powered by an ARM Cortex M3 processor. The company says the joysticks are soldered to the circuit board, however, meaning if the joysticks are damaged you will likely have to completely replace the controller.
According to sources, Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has met with Hulu executives, with a potential bid on the horizon.
Hulu, the premium streaming site owned by News Corp., Disney and Comcast (NBCU) has been up for sale for a couple of months and has some big time suitors.
Yahoo recently tried to purchase video streaming site DailyMotion, but was blocked by the French government. It appears Yahoo is trying to get into the digital content business but Hulu would certainly be more expensive than DailyMotion would have been.
Mayer is said to have had an "extensive getting-to-know-you meeting" with Hulu COO Henrique De Castro.
Hulu recently announced that the streaming site saw 1 billion videos streamed in the Q1, the first time that milestone has been surpassed in a single quarter. Additionally, the service now has over four million premium Hulu Plus subscribers, each paying $8 per month.
T-Mobile USA released their Q1 earnings this week, showing strong sales of the iPhone since launch on April 12th.
While the iPhone was not part of the quarterly earnings, the carrier proudly boasted the figure. Overall, revenue fell 7 percent year-over-year for the quarter ended March 31st.
Adjusted earnings were $1.2 billion, which was also down a bit over 7 percent year-over-year.
T-Mobile USA was recently spun off from parent Deutsche Telekom after its acquisition of major pre-paid player MetroPCS
"Our first quarter operating metrics and financial results are showing positive impact from the changes we began making in the fourth quarter," CEO John Legere said in a statement. "Things only get more exciting from here, having brought T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS together to create the wireless industry's value leader and premier challenger."
The company saw a boost of 579,000 total subscribers in the quarter, losing 199,000 contract subscribers.
Google Glass early adopters will be receiving an OTA software update this week, if you have not already.
The update patches and fixes a number of annoying glitches and bugs and adds new features. The update is just the first of many before the device's official commercial launch next year.
Change to sync policy: require power + wifi for background uploads
Crash reporting
Incoming G+ notifications (direct shares, comments, +mentions), including ability to comment and +1
Incoming Hangout notifications
Transcription of queries & messages is now wicked-fast
Long-press to search from anywhere in the UI (no longer just from off)
International number dialing + SMS
Hop animation on disallowed swipes in the UI
New On-Head Detection calibration flow
Show device Serial Number on Device Info card
More reliable estimation of battery charge remaining
New recipient-list mosaic
Seagate Technology has announced the launch of their first client solid state drive (SSD) and the next generation of their enterprise SSDs.
Dubbed the Seagate 600, the consumer drive will be the centerpiece of the company's new flash strategy.
"We are pleased to announce these new flash memory products. With these new drives, Seagate solidifies its commitment to the flash-based storage market by delivering enterprise SSDs and server-side solutions as well as client solutions," said Gary Gentry, senior vice president and general manager of Seagate's solid state drive business. "By adding more SSDs to our family of hard disk and solid state hybrid drives, we now have the broadest portfolio of storage products in the industry, delivering one-stop shopping for our customers and partners. And we're just getting started. Seagate is committed to becoming a premier supplier of both solid state drives and storage class memory products. We have put in place a winning strategy for developing multiple high value, flash based products and solutions for our customers."
The 600 is being touted as a laptop upgrade, offering faster boot-up speeds and better performance than traditional hard drives. Additionally, the drive "is available in multiple z-heights including an industry-first, diminutive 5mm-high drive making it ideal for most ultra-thin devices as well as standard laptop systems."
Microsoft has announced today that they Windows Phone 8 version of the official YouTube app has been completely redesigned by Google.
The app will now "make the most of WP8 features."
With the update, Windows users can now pin videos, playlists, channels and even a search button to start as a Live Tile. The tile flips and can show either the popular video from your subscriptions, or the latest.
Additionally, the company says: "A new and innovative playlist design gives you easy access to videos using a touch-friendly filmstrip. Just want to listen to a video? It now plays in the background even when the screen is locked."
You also have better integration for sharing to social networks, and sharing via email and text.
Microsoft says an update for older Windows Phone 7.5 devices is coming in the next few weeks.
Bill Gates, during an explanation of his former company's rationale for building the Surface tablet, says iPad users are frustrated by the lack of PC-esque features.
The Surface, however, is the first "post-PC" device to bring the "portability of the tablet but the richness of the PC."
In regards to the iPad, which is far and away the most popular tablet, Gates says, "A lot of those users are frustrated, they can't type, they can't create documents, they don't have Office there."
The Surface has been a tough sell, given that the first version released included a crippled version of Windows and the second version has a price tag higher than most notebooks with better specs and more expensive than the iPad.
In the last quarter, Apple sold almost 20 million iPads. Microsoft sold 900,000 Surface.
The extension had allowed users to download any song available via the streaming service as an MP3.
Apparently there had been no encryption in Spotify's web player, which was launched about six months in the U.S. and UK. The new patch adds encryption.
Although Google took down the extension, it is still available via GitHub. All users had to do after installing the extension was begin playing the song they wanted and a full, DRM-free file was downloaded.
An Algerian man accused of developing, marketing, distributing and controlling the SpyEye malware has been extradited to the United States.
Hamza Bendelladj - who went by the handle Bx1 - has been charged with one count of conspiring to commit wire and bank fraud, 10 counts of wire fraud, one count of conspiracy to commit computer fraud and 11 counts of computer fraud.
Bendelladj was apprehended at Suvarnabhumi Airport in Bangkok, Thailand, while he was in transit from Malaysia to Egypt in January. He was extradited from Thailand to the United States on May 2, 2013.
"Hamza Bendelladj has been extradited to the United States to face charges of controlling and selling a nefarious computer virus designed to pry into computers and extract personal financial information," said Acting Assistant Attorney General Raman.
"The indictment charges Bendelladj and his co-conspirators with operating servers designed to control the personal computers of unsuspecting individuals and aggressively marketing their virus to other international cybercriminals intent on stealing sensitive information. The extradition of Bendelladj to face charges in the United States demonstrates our steadfast determination to bring cybercriminals to justice, no matter where they operate."
Google has failed in a test case challenging a YouTube video removal under Russian laws on Internet content.
A YouTube video was placed on a Russian blacklist in February, forcing the removal of the content (or blocking via ISPs). The video in question shows a woman using make-up and a razor blade to make it look like she cut her wrist.
Google decided to block the offending clip in Russia, or else it risked having its YouTube service blocked entirely. It then appealing the inclusion of the video on the list, using it as a test case to have the regulations of the blacklist clarified.
A Russian court has decided against Google's challenge.
"We do not believe the goal of the law was to limit access to videos that are clearly intended to entertain viewers," Google said, responding to the decision.
In the second half of 2012, Google said it received 114 requests to take down content in Russia, 107 of which were directly linked to the new law. That compares to just 6 requests in the first half of 2012.
A board member of the U.S. top derivatives regulator has hinted that BitCoin could be subject to the same rules it enforces on derivatives trading.
Bart Chilton of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) said he requested staff explore whether consumers need more protection against BitCoin mishaps, following a dramatic and sudden collapse in BitCoin value last month.
"Here's what I know for sure: we could regulate it if we wanted. That is very clear," he told Reuters.
The CFTC's role has been expanded since the 2007-2009 financial crisis, which has been linked by many experts to the lack of adequate regulation on complex derivatives. Since there are no physical "BitCoins", Chilton argues that people investing in the currency are not participating in the cash markets, and are then in the remit of the CFTC's regulatory mandate.
"There is potentially a federal role here, and we have to make sure that we're on guard that whatever is traded is appropriately regulated," Chilton said.
On April 10, the value of a BitCoin plunged from $260 to $130.
Nokia chief executive Stephen Elop has said that the Finnish mobile giant remains dedicated to the Windows Phone platforms for its smartphone devices.
Figures released for Nokia's first quarter showed incremental gains in its smartphone business, which offers Lumia-branded devices running Microsoft's Windows Phone mobile operating systems.
While the figures did show a slight uptick for its smartphone business, concerns were raised about a plunge in sales of Nokia's cheaper feature phones - largely aimed at customers in emerging markets - which have been a traditional strong point of Nokia's strategy.
"We make adjustments as we go. But it's very clear to us that in today's war of ecosystems, we've made a very clear decisions to focus on Windows Phone with our Lumia product line. And it is with that that we will compete with competitors like Samsung and Android," Elop said, according to the Reuters news agency.
Some analysts had speculated that the drop in basic phone sales might require Nokia to make a radical change in strategy, such as dropping Microsoft's mobile operating system in favor of Android.
Electronic Arts and the Walt Disney Co have signed a multi-year licensing deal that will see EA develop video games based on the Star Wars universe.
EA will develop Star Wars video games for games consoles, PCs and mobile devices, though Disney retains rights to develop online and mobile games. The pair did not reveal the financial terms of the agreement.
EA reportedly invested between $100 million and $300 million developing Star Wars: The Old Republic, an MMO that made use over 1,000 voice actors. EA struggled to retain players - who pay a monthly fee - and has since offered 15 game levels for free as well as a free-to-play version of the game.
Disney acquired Lucasfilm Ltd last year for $4.05 billion, and has since shut down the 30-year-old LucasArts games studio that it inherited as part of the deal, preferring to license the Star Wars brand to other publishers.
The Sims 4 will not require an always-on Internet connection, according to EA and developer Maxis.
The launch of SimCity was marred for some users due to server errors which left the game unplayable. The developer, Maxis, insisted that the always-on Internet connection requirement for SimCity was necessary and not part of a Digital Rights Management (DRM) system.
After announcing the new Sims 4 title for 2014, Maxis and EA have confirmed that the game is a single player offline experience, which might come as a relief to some Sims fans.
Requiring that gamers have a constant Internet connection for single player games (or game modes) has been a controversial topic in the past few years. While most such requirements are part of anti-piracy measures, critics claim that they don't tend to halt piracy at all and just put legitimate customers at risk.
Those intending to buy the new Xbox console when it launches will have been pleased to hear that a previously reported requirement to have a constant Internet connection for all gameplay has been dismissed.
Microsoft's cloud storage service has hit a milestone of 250 million users, aided by a boost since the launch of Windows 8 in October, 2012.
Since the new Microsoft operating system launched, SkyDrive has seen 50 million new users flock to the service. It has also been aided by becoming the default save location for the latest Office software/services from the Redmond giant.
Recently, it has enjoyed improved mobile support with app updates across platforms, and increased security measures with two-step verification and Extended Validation Certificates integrated on SkyDrive.com.
Soon, Outlook.com users will also be able to attach anything from SkyDrive to an e-mail.
Here is an infographic from SkyDrive to highlight its 250 million user milestone.
Microsoft Corp has revealed that it has sold over 100 million licenses for its flagship Windows 8 operating system in the six months since its launch.
On the face of it, the figure puts Windows 8 license sales in line with Windows 7 sales after its first six months. Examining the figures a little more leaves less room for optimism however, indicating that Windows 8 is not likely to witness the same escalating sales as Windows 7.
In its first year of availability, Windows 7 reached 240 million sales. Microsoft would hope that Windows 8 can mimic such continued growth in its next six months on the market, but considering that early January sales figures for the new operating system were reported at 60 million, that would suggest sales of 40 million licenses in the previous four months.
Microsoft is well aware of the problem that it faces.
"Is it perfect? No. Are there things we need to change? Absolutely. We are being very real about what needs to change and changing it as thoughtfully and quickly as we can",said Tami Reller, head of business and marketing strategy for Windows.
According to Ars, citing an internal Microsoft email, the upcoming Xbox sequel will not require an always-on Internet connection, as widely rumored.
The memo was allegedly sent to employees working on Durango, Microsoft's codename for the console. "Durango is designed to deliver the future of entertainment while engineered to be tolerant of today's Internet. There are a number of scenarios that our users expect to work without an Internet connection, and those should 'just work' regardless of their current connection status. Those include, but are not limited to: playing a Blu-ray disc, watching live TV, and yes playing a single player game."
Additionally, the report confirms that the Xbox will have an HDMI input, allowing for cable boxes to be connected for live TV viewing. The console is expected to include TV listings and guides.
Microsoft will unveil the console at a press event on May 21st.
Disney has announced a new multi-year licensing agreement with Electronic Arts (EA) for new games based on the popular Star Wars stories and characters.
EA has already confirmed at least three new Star Wars titles for gamers across multiple platforms while Disney has kept the rights to develop mobile and social titles.
"This agreement demonstrates our commitment to creating quality game experiences that drive the popularity of the Star Wars franchise for years to come," said John Pleasants, Co-President of Disney Interactive. "Collaborating with one of the world's premier game developers will allow us to bring an amazing portfolio of new Star Wars titles to our fans around the world."
"Every developer dreams of creating games for the Star Wars universe," said EA Labels President Frank Gibeau. "Three of our top studios will fulfill that dream, crafting epic adventures for Star Wars fans. DICE and Visceral will produce new games, joining the BioWare team which continues to develop for the Star Wars franchise. The new experiences we create may borrow from films, but the games will be entirely original with all new stories and gameplay."
It is unclear how much EA paid to receive the exclusive rights. Disney purchased LucasFilm last year for $4 billion.
The Senate has passed a bill that will allow states to tax online sales, even if the retailer does not have a brick-and-mortar presence in the state.
Passed by a margin of 69 to 27, the bill will now head to the House where it is expected to see bigger resistance despite a public backing by President Barack Obama.
Currently, states can only require retailers to collect sales tax if they have a physical presence, whether a retail store or a headquarters or a distribution warehouse. Online retailers (in most states) do not have to collect sales tax, including behemoths like Amazon and eBay and major online retailers like Newegg and TigerDirect.
The bill would require businesses with revenue above $1 million to collect taxes for all products they sell online, through radio and in catalogs. The sales tax would then have to be sent back to the state where the shopper lives.
Critics of the bill claim small retailers will have expensive obligations now to figure out sales tax rules for 50 states and collect and remit such taxes at varying rates. eBay has been a massive opponent of the bill. Says eBay president John Donahoe: "Giant retailers have a requirement to collect sales taxes nationwide because they have physical presence nationwide. Likewise, today small retail stores and online retailers collect sales taxes for the one state where they are located. That's a fair requirement."
The Pentagon has said this week that a number of BlackBerry and Samsung devices have been cleared for use on Defense Department networks, meaning the military will soon be open to more devices and technology.
Lieutenant Colonel Damien Pickart says BlackBerry 10 smart phones, BlackBerry PlayBook tablets and Samsung's Android Knox have been cleared.
"This is a significant step towards establishing a multi-vendor environment that supports a variety of state-of-the-art devices and operating systems," Pickart added.
Additionally, the LT says iOS 6.0 devices are expected to get clearance later this month.
The news is huge, as will the contracts for OEMs. The Pentagon has 600,000 mobile device users. 470,000 use BlackBerry and under 50,000 use Apple or Android as part of test programs.
Any device cleared had to pass a security review process approved by the Defense Information Systems Agency.
Earlier this year, we reported that the Antiguan government looked to be planning to launch a site that will sell movies, music and software without giving a dime back to the copyright holders.
The U.S. has a trade blockade with the island due to its offering of Internet gambling services, even though the WTO had ruled in Antigua's favor multiple times. Antiguan officials hope to make some income back through the new warez site.
Gambling was a major business for Antigua, up until a couple of years ago when the U.S. took the unprecedented step of shutting down all American access to gambling sites, most notably sports betting and poker. "What was once a multi-billion dollar industry in our country, employing almost 5 percent of our population has now shrunk to virtually nothing," said Antigua's High Commissioner to London Carl Roberts, at the time.
The WTO previously ruled that the U.S. block of Antiguan gambling companies violated free-trade. The group then ruled that Antigua can "suspend U.S. copyrights up to $21 million annually." The government now plans to use this option, selling U.S. media to customers worldwide (up to $21 million worth), without giving a penny to the copyright holders.
Nook Media, the joint venture between Barnes & Noble and Microsoft, has announced today a major promotional price cut for their Nook HD and Nook HD+ tablets.
From today through Mother's Day, the NOOK HD is available for $149 (8GB) and $179 (16GB), and the NOOK HD+ is $179 (16GB) or $209 (32GB), down at least $20 from current prices.
"In recognition that the best gift for Mother's Day is now even better, we're proud to offer this special limited-time offer for our award-winning 7- and 9-inch tablets," said Jamie Iannone, president of NOOK Media. "NOOK HD and NOOK HD+ are not only beautifully designed, lightweight devices with stunning displays, they now offer customers the most reading and entertainment content we've ever offered, at the best prices ever."
The deals are actually better than they seem due to the fact that Barnes & Noble has opened the tablets up to Chrome and the Google Play Store, making over 700,000 apps available alongside music, books and movies through Google.
ComScore has released their latest U.S. smartphone share data for the period ended March 31st.
Compared to the start of the new year, Google fell 1.4 percentage points, to 52 percent global share, as Apple jumped 2.7 percentage points to 39 percent.
BlackBerry fell significantly from 6.4 percent to 5.2 percent while Microsoft remained relatively flat, gaining 0.1 percent share to 3 percent.
On an individual company basis, Apple controlled 39 percent share, besting Samsung at 21.7 percent. HTC, Motorola and LG rounded out the top five, unsurprisingly.
ComScore collects data from installed user bases and not from handset sales.
Acer has unveiled their previously announced convertible, the Aspire P3.
The ultrabook convertible, which is an 11-inch tablet with a keyboard cover, has no physical connectors and uses Bluetooth.
Acer's latest runs on either an Intel Core i3 or i5 processor, the 11.6-inch IPS 1,366x768 resolution display, 2 or 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 60 or 120GB of SSD internal storage, Intel HD 4000 graphics, dual cameras 1.3MP/5MP and a single USB 3.0 port and a Micro-HDMI port.
Of course, the tablet runs on Windows 8 Pro.
The Aspire P3 sells for $799 base, cheaper than the Microsoft Surface Pro by a long shot.
AT&T Mobility is preparing to launch a new prepaid brand dubbed "All In One" starting on June 15.
At the heart of the brand is a $50 per month smartphone plan and a $35 per month subscription for feature phones.
The plans are expected to include unlimited text and talk and 100MB data for feature phones and unlimited text, talk and 2GB of HSPA+ data for smartphones. Additionally, there may also be a $70 plan that includes 5GB of data, aimed at bigger data hogs.
AT&T will test the brand in Florida and Texas this month as a pilot before the full launch next month.
Rivals like Verizon have recently unveiled prepaid plans, and T-Mobile USA dropped subsidies altogether for new cheaper unlimited plans.
Facebook and Timelines Inc. have settled their trademark case.
Timelines Inc., the owner and operator of Timelines.com, sued Facebook in 2011 after the company rehauled its profile pages as a "timeline." The site helps users create and collaborate on historical timelines. The company has registered trademarks for "Timelines," "Timelines.com" and its own "Timelines" logo.
The social networking giant, for its defense, claimed "timeline" was generic and therefore constituted fair use. Facebook then tried to get a summary judgement but was denied, meaning the case would have gone to trial very soon.
Without revealing financial details, Facebook said"We are also party to various legal proceedings and claims which arise in the ordinary course of business. Among these legal matters, in two cases, Summit 6 LLC v. Research in Motion Corporation et al., and Timelines, Inc. v. Facebook, Inc., we have reached agreements to settle the matters. The cost of settlement in each case, which is included in the accompanying condensed consolidated financial statements for the three months ended March 31, 2013, was not material to our business, financial condition, or results of operations."
U.S. Cellular, a regional carrier, has announced it will begin offering Apple products later in the year, although details were scant.
During their quarterly earnings release, the company noted"we have a number of strategies in progress to increase loyalty and attract more customers, including our announcement today that we will begin offering Apple products later this year. By further strengthening our device portfolio, we'll give consumers another great reason to switch to U.S. Cellular, and enable our existing customers to choose from an even wider variety of iconic smartphones, and enjoy the outstanding U.S. Cellular customer experiences they deserve. Our smartphone penetration is currently 43 percent of core market customers and growing quickly. We believe there will be strong, ongoing demand for smartphones and data products and services from our customers, and we have significant room for growth in this area."
In 2011, U.S. Cellular made headlines when it refused to carry the iPhone due to Apple's "unacceptable terms." Apple normally requires carriers accept a certain amount of devices over the course of three years.
Netflix has said this week that wherever it begins offering its legal streaming content, torrent traffic falls dramatically.
Chief Content Officer Ted Sarandos noted, "the best way to combat piracy isn't legislatively or criminally but by giving good options."
The streaming site has 30 million subscribers in the U.S. and is becoming popular in other nations, as well.
Sarandos says the data backs Netflix's claim: "One of the things is we get ISPs to publicize their connection speeds – and when we launch in a territory the BitTorrent traffic drops as the Netflix traffic grows. So I think people do want a great experience and they want access – people are mostly honest."
Benedict Evans of Enders Analysis posted a great chart for clients this week, reflecting how the mobile phone market has turned into a two horse race.
The chart reflects overall handset revenue in the industry since 2010, for the top eight companies.
Samsung and Apple have quickly devoured the competition, accounting for $52 billion combined in revenue in the last quarter. The rest of the group combined for just over $16 billion.
Although they showed strength earlier on, Nokia and BlackBerry have seen their revenues collapse in recent years.
According to the Diffusion Group's "Defining the In-Home CE and Network Ecosystem 2013" report, set-top boxes are not as popular as Smart TVs for Internet connectivity on the big screen.
25 percent of households with broadband own a Smart TV with an embedded app platform, compared to 14 percent for set-top boxes, which include the Apple TV, Boxee and Roku, among others.
The figure for smart TVs jumped from 12 percent at the end of 2011 to 25 percent at the end of 2012. Set-tops saw slower growth, from 12 percent to the aforementioned 14 percent.
While ownership may have been higher, only 69 percent of smart TV owners were even connected to the Internet. It is safe to assume that set-top owners are all connected to the Web, otherwise the boxes themselves are rather useless except for playing local content.
To the dismay of thousands of happy users, Twitter announced last month that it was shutting down the popular TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone clients on May 7th.
Today, the funeral has been postponed, at least until June.
Reads Twitter's post:
We're extending the API v1 retirement date from May 7, 2013 to June 11, 2013, in order to accommodate additional blackout testing.
You can find a recap of what to expect on the final retirement date here. We'll announce the date and time of the next blackout test from @twitterapi soon.
If you have any questions about the retirement of REST API v1, legacy widgets, or the discontinuation of "basic auth" support in the Streaming API, please ask them in this forum.
Thanks everyone!
Twitter purchased the company in May, 2011 for $40 million, three years after it launched. The app grew very popular with Android and iOS power users.
The company has faced criticism, especially since the huge amount of space is taken by the operating system, recovery partitions and pre-installed applications including Samsung's own suite that includes S Voice, S Translator and S Health.
Samsungdefended the phone this week. "For the Galaxy S4 16GB model, approximately 6.85GB occupies [the] system part of internal memory, which is 1GB bigger than that of the Galaxy S3, in order to provide [a] high resolution display and more powerful features to our consumers." The company then added, "to offer the ultimate mobile experience to our users, Samsung provides [a] microSD slot on Galaxy S4 for extension of memory."
According to the latest NPD figures, 72 percent of American gamers now do at least some gaming online.
That number is 5 percent higher than last year's report.
U.S. gamers who used the PC to play games online fell to 68 percent, somewhat surprisingly. Those using mobile devices like tablets and smartphones for gaming rose 12 percent year-over-year to 56 percent.
The survey was conducted over the last two months and completed by 8800 Americans of varying ages.
According to a new report, LG has agreed to build the upcoming Nexus 5, marking the second Google phone they have created.
The company released the Nexus 4 late last year, a $300 reference device running high-end specs and the latest version of vanilla Android.
Additionally, the report says LG wants to work closer with Google on existing partnerships and projects such as Google TV and moving forward, Google Glass.
LG is the third largest smartphone maker behind Samsung and Apple, with 4.8 percent of the global market.
The device is expected for the holidays this year.
Long one of the world's most popular gaming franchises, EA will be skipping Nintendo's Wii U for its Madden games this year.
The company released Madden NFL 2013 for the console last year, but the new Madden NFL 25 will not be making an appearance.
Speaking to Nintendo World Report, an EA rep says "we will not be releasing a Wii U version of Madden NFL in 2013. However, we have a strong partnership with Nintendo and will continue to evaluate opportunities for delivering additional Madden NFL products for Nintendo fans in the future."
The news is certainly not good for Nintendo, who has struggle mightily to sell Wii U consoles.
According to new IDC figures, Microsoft shipped just 900,000 Surface tablets in the Q1.
Most of the tablets sold were Surface Pro, which are more powerful (and more expensive) as it appears Microsoft has left its crippled Surface RT to die.
Despite the lackluster quarter, Microsoft managed to take 1.8 percent tablet market share. Apple dominated, with 40 percent share, with Samsung in second at 18 percent share.
When adding in Windows 8 tablets not sold by Microsoft, the numbers jumped to 1.8 million and 3.7 percent share.
As IDC concluded, "Windows-based tablets continue to struggle to gain traction in the market." The research firm notes that Microsoft needs to move to a smaller 8-inch form factor.
Hulu reported quarterly figures this week, showing continued strong momentum.
The streaming site saw 1 billion videos streamed in the Q1, the first time that milestone has been surpassed in a single quarter.
Additionally, the service now has over four million premium Hulu Plus subscribers, each paying $8 per month. In the Q1 2012, that figure was around 2 million, showing strong growth.
For their Hulu streaming, PCs remain the top choice, with TVs coming in second and mobile devices finally seeing a blip, to as much as 10-15 percent of all streams, says the company. In 2011, mobile viewership was under 1 percent.
Importantly for advertisers, user engagement remained strong, keeping users for an average of 45 minutes.
Instantwatcher, a company that catalogs Netflix's streaming catalog says the site will lose almost 1800 titles in May.
All 15 seasons of South Park are set to disappear as are some older films like Goldfinger and Dr. No. Netflix's current licensing deals with MGM and Warner Bros. and some other studios are set to expire.
The drop will be the largest since Netflix's deal with Starz expired last year, but many of the movies in this case are on the older side.
Netflix had this to say (via Verge): "The vast majority of the titles that expire on Wednesday are older features that were aggregated by Epix. We recently added many great, more recent titles such as ParaNorman (Universal), Hunger Games (Epix), Safe (Epix) and Bachelorette (Weinstein). Tomorrow we will also add MI:2, among many other titles.
Netflix is a dynamic service, we constantly update the TV shows and movies that are available to our members. We will add more than 500 titles May 1, but we also have titles expiring, this ebb and flow happens all the time."
Large U.S. retailer Best Buy has sold off its Carphone Warehouse stake, exiting Europe after a failed attempt to expand outside of its home base.
The company sold its 50 percent stake for $775 million, about 37 percent of what it paid for it 5 years ago.
"The sale allows management to eliminate the European distraction, as it has been a much-debated topic in the investment community for some time," JP Morgan analyst Christopher Horvers said. "It also fully unwinds an ill-timed conquest into Europe."
Best Buy paid $2.1 billion in 2008 for the 50 percent stake in the independent mobile seller's retail operations. The company had aspirations to put Best Buy stores across Europe, but that plan did not work out, thanks in great part to the ongoing recession in the Euro nations.
On a scale of 1-10, with 1 being the best, the S4 scored a poor 7.0, compared to 5.0 for the iPhone and a 6.5 for Samsung's Galaxy S III.
In the tests, the phone is dropped and also dunked in water.
The large display of the S4, along with a "more slippery grip," make it more susceptible to damage, says the company. "While the S4 proved slightly more water resistant than its predecessor the S3, Samsung's new Galaxy phone actually performed worse in most other categories," SquareTrade said in a statement.
Samsung's new flagship is expected to be a massive hit, with internal expectations for over 50 million units sold in the first few months of release.
The team behind the WiiKey are now claiming that the Wii U has been fully hacked.
Says the group: "Yes, its real - we have now completely reversed the WiiU drive authentification, disk encryption, file system, and everything else needed for this next generation K3y. Stay tuned for updates!"
If you own a Wii and are into homebrew and other hacks, you have likely heard of the original Wii Key, a product that allows you to bypass all Nintendo copy protection schemes to run unapproved applications.
Additionally, the hacks allow gamers to play games right off of USB media.
If it's true, the news is a very big deal for Nintendo, which has struggled to move consoles and sell games for its latest system. Nintendo, for its part, is not worried yet: "Nintendo is aware that a hacking group claims to have compromised Wii U security. However, we have no reports of illegal Wii U games nor unauthorized applications playable on the system while in Wii U mode. Nintendo continuously monitors all threats to its products' security and will use technology and will take the necessary legal steps to prevent the facilitation of piracy."
India has now demanded that Nokia pay 2.09 billion rupees ($40 million USD) in taxes, claiming the company wrongfully claimed an exemption on software exports.
According to a new report, the upcoming 
