Latest news

Ubisoft has unintentionally outed the fact that 'Watch Dogs 2' is real and it has developers.

Thanks to the LinkedIn profile of Senior Gameplay Programmer Julien Risse, we know that the game is in development, as Risse has been working on it.

There is little else known about the upcoming game, but it is expected we will see more at this year's E3 event in June.

Although most people probably thought it was shuttered years ago anyways, the music sharing service Grooveshark has officially shut down.

The record labels will take over control of the Grooveshark name, its patents and copyrights, and the existing database will be completely wiped. The decision comes on the heels of a court ruling this year in which Grooveshark was defeated, and could have faced damages of up to $150,000 for 5000 different infringing songs.

Grooveshark also apologized for its copyright infringements, and recommending popular services like Spotify.

Here is the full statement from Grooveshark:

Today we are shutting down Grooveshark.

We started out nearly ten years ago with the goal of helping fans share and discover music. But despite best of intentions, we made very serious mistakes. We failed to secure licenses from rights holders for the vast amount of music on the service.

That was wrong. We apologize. Without reservation.

As part of a settlement agreement with the major record companies, we have agreed to cease operations immediately, wipe clean all the data on our servers and hand over ownership of this website, our mobile apps and intellectual property, including our patents and copyrights.

Microsoft has launched the fun and likely inaccurate website that uses facial recognition to guess your age.

You upload a picture to the site and Microsoft will spit back out your gender and your age, although some viral pictures show responses that have been hilariously wrong.

Microsoft is using machine learning to recognize millions of photos across the Web, with the end goal being "obtaining real time insights" on the data.

Says the Microsoft blog post: "We were playing with Microsoft's newly released Face detection API's through a webpage called http://how-old.net. This page lets users upload a picture and have the API predict the age and gender of any faces recognized in that picture. We sent email to a group of several hundred people asking them to try the page for a few minutes and give us feedback – optimistically hoping that at least 50 people would give it a shot. We monitored our real time analytics dashboard to track usage and, within a few minutes, the number of people using the site vastly exceeded the number of people we had sent our email to...We were shocked. Within a few hours, over 35,000 users had hit the page from all over the world (about 29k of them from Turkey, as it turned out – apparently there were a bunch of tweets from Turkey mentioning this page). What a great example of people having fun thanks to the power of ML!"

Just like last year, T-Mobile subscribers are getting a nice gift from the carrier, especially if you are a baseball fan.

Starting tomorrow, if you download the MLB At Bat app using your T-Mobile data connection (don't worry, it's only about 40MB), you will get a free Premium package that normally costs $19.99.

As per T-Mobile, At Bat Premium brings you every game:

•Stream the MLB.TV Game of the Day (blackout restrictions apply)
•Track every pitch
•Watch in-game highlights
•Access live look-ins on key plays

Check out more about the promotion here.

TAG Heuer's smartwatch will launch in November and cost about $1400, say sources, a price tag lower than expected for the luxury watch maker.

There is little known about the watch, but the company did announce a partnership with Google and Intel last month for joint development of the watch.

The new device will have a battery life of 40 hours, significantly higher than all existing Android Wear devices and over double the battery life of the new Apple Watch, which has an average range of 18 hours with use.

"I hope they sell millions and millions and millions of them," said Jean-Claude Biver, the head of watchmaking activities for parent company LVMH Louis Vutton Moet Hennesy SE, of the Apple Watch. "The more they sell the more a few people will want something different and come to TAG Heuer."

Earlier this year, AT&T settled with the U.S. FTC over "cramming," a practice in which the carrier allowed third-parties to charge customers for services without their knowledge and then hiding the charges deep in the billing statement.

AT&T will pay $105 million to the FTC to settle the charges, and any subscriber to the wireless carrier needs to complete the paperwork for a refund by tomorrow.

Many of the unwanted charges were as expensive as $9.99 per month, and included services that provided daily horoscope text messages or 30 second ringtones. The charges would then show up on your bill under the banner of AT&T monthly service charges, thus making them easy to miss.

More shockingly, the FTC charged that AT&T kept 35 percent of the revenue brought in from cramming, which amounted to tens of millions of dollars per year.

If you think you may be eligible, call 877-819-9692. If you know you are eligible, you can submit for the refund here: FTC. Because the government is handling the refund, you can expect your refund within the next nine months.

Hulu CEO Mike Hopkins has announced that there are now nearly 9 million paying subscribers to the streaming TV and movies on-demand service.

That figure is over 50 percent higher than last year, a significant jump for the premium service that costs $7.99 per month. "2015 is the year Hulu will break out," Hopkins boasted.

Total streams were up 77 percent in the last quarter, and viewers streamed over 700 million hours in first 90 days of the year, a huge 83 percent jump year-over-year. Those metrics are great for Hulu and Hopkins also noted that the average Hulu subscriber is watching about 30 percent more content this year than last year.

Hulu also announced a new deal with AMC to stream content that AMC makes from its own studio, which includes the brand new 'Fear the Walking Dead' spinoff series.

The service is owned by Disney, Fox and Comcast (NBCU) and therefore offers nearly all the traditional broadcast content you would be watching on TV regularly. There is a free Hulu that offers some library content and new episodes of popular shows a week after they air, along with ads while the $7.99 option still has ads but offers more full catalogs and episodes of new shows the day after they air on TV.

Evernote has rolled out their new pricing tiers, launching a "Plus" tier that sits comfortably between their free offering and the more fully featured "Premium" offering.

For the free option, you get up to 60MB of monthly uploads, cross platform sync and the ability to share and discuss within Evernote. For most people, this will be all you need, but if you are working in a team, the other options may be preferable.

The new Plus tier offers everything from the free, 1GB of monthly uploads, access to the service offline, you can save up to 250 emails into Evernote and finally, you can password-lock the app on mobile devices to stop family from snooping. The upgraded plan also supports notes up to 50MB compared to the free version at 25MB.

Up in the Premium tier, you get unlimited monthly uploads, all the Plus features, and the ability to convert your notes into presentations, search within Office docs and their attachments, annotate attached PDFs, OCR business cards and share Evernote files with everyone. Notes can be up to 200MB large with the premium account.

The Plus tier is just $2.99 per month or $24.99 annually if you pay it in full, and the Premium tier is $5.99 a month or $49.99 if you pay annually.

LG has officially unveiled its G4 flagship, and even though nearly every aspect of the phone had already been revealed or leaked in the previous two weeks, it is still nice to see the official hands-on and spec sheets.

The phone has a large 5.5-inch, 2560 x 1440 pixel (QHD) display, adds a bit of a curve (to help avoid shattering the screen if you drop it), is powered by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 processor, 3GB of RAM, 32GB of internal storage (microSD expandable), a 3,000mAh removable battery (no QuickCharging or wireless charging available however) and Android 5.1 with LG's own custom UI on top.

Notably, LG says its GPS nav and location services are "twice as accurate" as any other phone but that remains to be seen. Additionally, the company says it is removing lots of bloat, so the devices will seem almost like stock, and 100GB of free Google Drive storage is also included for 24 months.

Different from the G3 (and other devices) is that LG will offer a leather back plate and that the materials used are the same that go into luxury handbags but it is unclear how much a leather G4 will set you back.

The LG G4 is scheduled to reach all major U.S. carriers by the end of May.

Secret, the iOS and Android app that allowed users to share messages anonymously, has shut down for good.

Founder David Byttow posted the decision in an aptly named post called "Sunset" as the site will shut down a mere 14 months after being dubbed the next big thing by venture capitalists and given a value near $100 million.

Here is the post in its entirety:

Microsoft showcased its awesome hologram technology HoloLens today at their annual BUILD developer conference, demoing how it works in conjunction with Windows apps.

The company showed off the tech, which it appears is being aimed at consumers who want to enhance their normal PC usage and also at corporations and that workplace.

Microsoft says it wants developers to get started on developing apps for the holographic versions of Windows and has been provided HoloLens headsets to test at Build.

Check the demo in action:

According to Windows boss Terry Myerson, over 1 billion devices will be running Windows 10 in just three years time, a hugely optimistic forecast that shows how confident the company is with its upcoming operating system that will run on PCs, mobile devices and more.

Myerson also revealed new tools that will let Android and iOS developers port their apps easier to Windows 10, without needing to completely rewrite the app's code.

"One thing we haven't had -- a great Windows release could drive people to refresh their PC," Myerson said in an interview. "I see people with these Windows 7 PCs and I look at a great new 2-in-1 device with touch and I think there's so much more you could have. I'm a little more optimistic."

King Digital has already used the new tools to bring Candy Crush to Windows, and the company says it is happy with the results. The hope is that popular app makers for the two most popular operating systems will convert their apps and games over and help drive usership to Windows.

Perhaps most importantly, Microsoft gave some more info about its Universal Apps, which will work no matter what size the device you are using is. The company says developers can tweak the code to make sure only certain content is seen on specific devices, like 3D holograms that can only be seen on HoloLens, for example. Myers says Disney, Netflix, Evernote, Tencent and other major companies are already creating Universal Apps.

Microsoft's Internet Explorer successor, previously codenamed as 'Project Spartan,' is officially known now as Microsoft Edge.

The software giant announced the details earlier today at their annual BUILD conference and Edge will be the built-in browser for Windows 10 devices.

Outside of the light details Microsoft has revealed in the past few months, there was little else revealed today besides the name and a teaser trailer.

What we do know is that Edge has a built-in reader, sharing features and the ability to take notes; support for the voice-activated Cortana personal assistant; minimalist design; a new rendering engine called EdgeHTML; more simplicity in features and options; tab previews just from scrolling over them and the ability to draw (?) on the page.

Google has released 'Password Alert' this week, a browser extension for Chrome that will help protect against phishing attacks that are out to get your Google credentials.

The new extension is great if you are a user of Google services as it will alert you if you have entered login info to fake Google sign-in pages created to steal your personal info.

Google is able to check this by scanning the page against its vast library of sign-in forms to see if it is a legitimate site or not. If you do get duped, the extension will inform you that it is time to change your password and to change the username/password combo on any other site you may have been using it on. If for some reason you need to submit your Google credentials to a legitimate third-party site, you can choose to ignore the extension's warnings.

Chrome comes with Safe Browsing phishing protection right out of the box, but Password Alert is great for new phishing sites that may not have been analyzed by Google yet.

Read more here via Google.

After a year of building just Android phones, it appears that LG is developing at least one new Windows Phone device.

The LG VW820 has been rumored since December when its existence was inadvertently revealed by an ad network, and we seem to have better proof now.

LG's own Korean website has two listing for the VW820 now, confirmed to be running a Microsoft operating system. Additionally, the phone has been certified by the Bluetooth SIG now, as well.

There are no other details known about the device except for the basic info from the ad network which claims it will be a low-end 4.7-inch 480x854 resolution phone. It also has been suggested the device will run Windows Phone 8.1 and not 10, due to the listings stating "Windows Phone" and not just "Windows," which Microsoft has done for all 10-based devices.