News written by Andre Yoskowitz (July, 2014)

EA and Microsoft have announced a new subscription game service for Xbox One gamers.

The new service, EA Access, will cost $5 per month or $30 per year and give access to downloadable games through "The Vault," a small but growing collection of EA games.

At launch, EA Access will have just four games: FIFA 14, Madden NFL 25, Peggle 2, and Battlefield 4, with the promise of more being added in the near future.

In addition to the cheap gaming on older games, EA Access members also get 10 percent off EA games and other content including DLC and free trials of new EA games up to five days before their retail dates.

You can buy passes to EA Access on Amazon and at GameStop.

Rhapsody has announced that its music streaming services now have over 2 million paying subscribers.

The company owns Rhapsody, Napster and the newer unRadio services.

Altogether, the services are available in 32 countries but growth has been notably slow. The company announced 1 million paying subscribers back in 2011.

In its efforts to strengthen growth, the company is expanding further into Europe, using the assets it acquired in the UK, France and Germany from Napster in 2012.

"We are very satisfied with the development of Napster in France and the successful co-operation with SFR," said Thorsten Schliesche, Napster SVP and GM for Europe, noted in a statement. "France is one of the fastest growing markets in Europe. The success of our service proves that customers are eager for a blend of on-demand and mobile data bundles." Read more...

Apple has received European clearance for its $3 billion acquisition of premium headphone maker Beats Electronics.

The European Commission says the merger "did not raise concerns because the combined (headphone) market share of Apple and Beats Electronics is low."

There have not been any real concerns about the acquisition, given that Beats has plenty of competition in the industry including Bose, Sony, Sennheiser, and many more.

Apple has no dedicated headphone presence, and the deal is expected to pass in the U.S. in the very near future.

Facebook will be removing messaging functionality from its iPhone and Android apps in the next week, meaning if you want to continue to use the social network to chat you will need to get the standalone Messenger app for your device.

The company first required European users to download Messenger back in April, and the results have been "positive."

If you are accessing Facebook from Windows Phones, iPads, the mobile Web site, Paper or via desktops, you can continue to use the built-in chat without the need for a separate app.

Facebook is sending push notifications that chat is disappearing without the standalone app, and an email will also be sent explaining the move.

Says the social network: "In the next few days, we're continuing to notify more people that if they want to send and receive Facebook messages, they'll need to download the Messenger app. As we've said, our goal is to focus development efforts on making Messenger the best mobile messaging experience possible and avoid the confusion of having separate Facebook mobile messaging experiences. Messenger is used by more than 200 million people every month, and we'll keep working to make it an even more engaging way to connect with people."

Chinese powerhouse startup Xiaomi has expanded into the fitness tracker market, unveiling the new Mi Band.

The tracker is ridiculously cheap at CN¥79 ($13 USD) although Xiaomi does not sell outside of China yet, so getting a Mi Band in the U.S. will require going through an unlicensed third party.

Mi Bands will track your steps, track your sleeping patterns, work as a smart alarm clock (vibrate to wake you) and can last up to 30 days on a single charge, putting the Fitbit to shame by a huge margin.

In addition, if you have a Xiaomi phone, the band can unlock it wirelessly if close enough.

Xiaomi currently has a value of over $10 billion, especially notable for a three-year old company.

EA has made their old Sims 2 Ultimate Collection available for free via Origin until July 31st.

The game launched in 2004 from original developer Maxis and had expansion packs and other DLC released until 2008. In 2009, there was the release of Sims 3 and later this year will see the release of Sims 4.

If you want the game, EA has provided instructions:

According to a new report, Google and Motorola are working on a new flagship smartphone that will be significantly larger than any previous Nexus device.

The device will be 5.9 inches and include a fingerprint reader, reads the report.

Most of the basis for the report comes from screenshot of Google's issue tracker that references a device running Android L on a Google-built kernel, suggesting a Nexus device although not guaranteeing.

There had been reports that Google was looking to kill off its Nexus program in exchange for the new Android Silver OEM program, but Google later denied those reports, at least for this 2014.

Premium audio hardware maker Bose has sued Beats Electronics over alleged patent infringement related to noise cancelling headphones.

Bose has accused the company of willfully infringing on five of its patents. By claiming the infringement was willful, Bose says it lost profits and sales and will be seeking large damages.

The patents are related to "active noise reduction" technology, which Bose has been using in consumer products since the early 2000s.

In addition, Bose filed a complaint with the U.S. ITC, seeking an injunction on imports of Beat's noise-cancelling headphones into the country. "We are committed to protecting our investment, protecting our customers, and defending the patents we own," said Bose.

Beats was recently acquired by Apple for $3 billion, so the startup's attorney team has seen a significant upgrade.

Pay TV giant BSkyB will pay about $9 billion to purchase 21st Century Fox assets in Germany and Italy, creating an empire that will have over 20 million customers in Europe.

BSkyB will pay in cash, debt, its entire stake in the popular The National Geographic Channel (valued at near $600 million) and also with a stock offering.

The deal adds to Fox's cash hoard as it looks to purchase media giant Time Warner and its prized jewel: HBO. Fox chairman Rupert Murdoch bid $80 billion for Time Warner last month but was rejected in his initial offering.

With the acquisition of Sky Deutschland and Sky Italia, BSkyB will now operate in Britain, Ireland, Germany, Austria and Italy. BSkyB has over 10 million subscribers in Britain, where it offers pay TV, premium sports, movies and even U.S.-based programming.

While Pay TV is a standard in the U.S. and Britain, the rest of Europe has not signed up with similar gusto. Only 30 million of the 97 million households in Germany and Italy currently have Pay TV packages.

Late night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel decided to have some fun on Hollywood Boulevard with Apple fanboys and the non-techie crowd, showing off the alleged new Apple iTime smartwatch.

The show bought a $20 Casio watch, glued an Apple logo to the back, and went around asking people if they liked features like "being able to tell time and see the date" and if they liked the fact that the watch was "always in airplane mode."

A few Apple fanboys only cared that it was an Apple device, and didn't care that it clearly was not a real smartwatch.

Check the video here and laugh, or cry:

Yesterday, the piracy scene erupted when a DVD-quality release of the upcoming 'Expendables 3' was leaked, a full three weeks before the movie's U.S. release date on August 15th.

In 24 hours, multiple versions of the movies have been downloaded well over 1 million times and it is still unclear how such a good copy was available so early and who leaked it.

While many movies see camera versions released within days (if not hours) of their release, DVD-quality copies are a whole different story. During Academy Award season it is not uncommon to see blockbusters leak online, but the Expendables 3 is not likely to be nominated for anything.

There have been some notable leaks in the past including workprint versions (missing some final effects and scenes) of X-Men Origins: Wolverine and Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, although there have not been any recently.

It is notable to note that production company Nu Image sued over 20,000 BitTorrent downloaders of the original Expendables film and could be gearing up to do so again.

After ten years of existence, The Pirate Bay finally has a real mobile site that makes the torrent tracker easier to access from your smartphones and tablets.

Dubbed "The Mobile Bay," the mobile site is the first of a few upcoming expansions by the site. Expected in the future are dedicated TV, movie and music sites.

Eventually, an RSS portal is also expected.

Until now, without a dedicated app or mobile site, users had to muddle through the desktop version of the site on their mobile devices. The new Mobile Bay offers much better functionality and an interface that can actually be navigated easily with a touchscreen.

Check a comparison of after and before:



(Via Ernesto)

Sony will follow in Microsoft's footsteps and add 3D Blu-ray support for their next-gen console with the release of system firmware update v1.75.

Rival Microsoft just revealed that their dashboard update would include 3D Blu-ray support, among other notable features.

1.75 is set for release next week, following this week's mandatory 1.74 update which brought minor stability and performance enhancements.

While the update is great for headlines, it will likely matter very little for consumers who do not have a 3D-capable TV nor care for 3D Blu-rays.

Windows Phone users now have an official Uber app.

Until this week, Windows Phone owners needed to access Uber through their browser, which was not as mobile-friendly as a standalone app is.

Uber is a billion-dollar startup that allows would-be passengers to use mobile apps to connect with drivers of vehicles for hire and ridesharing services. Passengers can also track which cars are around their area using the apps.

The taxi service company is now available in 150 cities in 41 countries, despite still being banned and protested in many places due to its ability to destroy the existing taxi industry.

Just like the existing iOS and Android apps, the Windows Phone version allows you to track vehicles, save a credit card on file to never worry about having enough cash, and compare rates for calling for a vehicle.

Don Bui, an immigrant from Vietnam who is now a naturalized US citizen, will possibly owe porn studio Malibu Media $1.7 million after the judge ruled against him in a copyright case.

The studio has filed thousands of lawsuits against "John Doe" defendants in the U.S., collecting a couple of thousands of dollars from scared file sharers who do not want to go to court. Nearly all of the cases have been settled but Bui decided to let the case go to judgement.

Bui admitted to downloading and keeping 57 unauthorized Malibu Media movies from Kickass Torrents. He tried to blame the torrent protocol and Kickass Torrents, however, claiming that he had no idea how torrents work saw nothing wrong in "ordering movies" from Kickass Torrents. The torrent tracker should have told users that the files were unauthorized, argued the lawyer who went as far as to call Malibu "copyright trolls," a term they have heard countless times in the past years.

Read US District Court Judge Jonker's ruling:

Following a quick maintenance that took the game offline, Bungie's 'Destiny' beta is now available for Xbox 360 and Xbox One owners.

Codes for the Xbox beta have been (and are currently) being sent via email if you pre-ordered the game or received a code from a different method.

PlayStation owners have been using the beta since last week thanks to an exclusive pact between Sony and Bungie, and the beta ends on July 27th.

If you log in and play after 2PM Pacific on Saturday, July 26, Bungie says you will get an "exclusive emblem" that can be used in the final version.

Destiny is set for launch on the PS3, PS4, XBO and Xbox 360 on September 9th.

While it is likely more convenient to use a fingerprint reader, Motorola has introduced new 'digital tattoos' that will allow you to unlock your smartphone without having to input a password or PIN.

Moto X owners in the U.S. can purchase the temporary tattoos (10 for $10) from Vivalnk, which are basically NFC stickers that are flexible enough and thin enough to be worn on the body unobtrusively.

The company says the tattoos should last about one work week, and are waterproof. They can be removed at any point.

To unlock the device you just tap your Moto X to the tattoo, which is certainly convenient but paying $10 every 50 days to unlock your phone in a "fun" way is going to be a dealbreaker for most.

Earlier this week, NBA star Kobe Bryant was photographed on the Apple campus meeting with Apple executive and lead designer Jony Ive.

The media was quick to report that Ive wanted Kobe's thoughts on the upcoming iWatch, which will supposedly have a number of innovative health and fitness features.

Kobe did not reveal what was discussed specifically but did say that he "spent the day talking with Jony picking his brain about product." What did Jony ask him? "Jony wanted to know, how do I prepare? How do I prepare, how do I study, how do I view the game. How do you build your game. My response was much like you build products. You think sequentially. Yeah, you look at the end result of what you want to create, but there are so many other little things that go into this massive entity or device. It's no different than building my basketball game. You start with where you want your game to be, where you want to make your game the most unstoppable, or hard to deal with, and now you work backwards from there and you start building it one piece at a time, one move at a time, one counter at a time. There's a lot of similarities there."

Amazon has added hundreds of thousands of tracks to its fledgling Prime Music streaming service.

In June, the e-commerce giant said the service launched with over a million tracks and hundreds of curated playlists, which have now been expanded, as well. The service allows for unlimited streaming without any ads as long as you are a Prime subscriber. Prime costs $99 per year and offers free 2-day shipping on millions of products, free access to Amazon's streaming movie/TV catalog and hundreds of thousands of books for free via Kindle.

A few of the more popular artists added (or updated) today are David Guetta, Al Green, Miles Davis, Kendrick Lamar, Linkin Park, Shakira, Deadmau5, Ella Fitzgerald, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Neil Young, DJ Snake & Lil Jon, Young the Giant, A$AP Rocky, Elvis, Oasis, Kacey Musgraves, Ray Charles, Panic! at the Disco, Wyclef Jean, Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Skrillex and John Coltrane, says the company.

While the deal is certainly great for Prime users, there are some notable songs and artists missing. As of writing, Universal Music Group's entire massive catalog is not available, unless you want to purchase the tracks via Aamzon MP3. Additionally, there are no brand new tracks like you would find on Spotify, as all the tracks available are older than six months.

Starting tomorrow, Apple's new Mac OS X Yosemite will go into public beta, allowing anyone with an Apple ID to test it out.

The updated operating system has a refreshed design, better integration with your iOS devices and features flatter icons well known to iPhone users.

Apple does note that the beta will be limited and not include all promised features of the final consumer release. This is mainly because a lot of those features are directly dependent on iOS 8, which will not be released until September.

When Yosemite does launch in full in September or October, it will be free for all current Mac users.

Get started with the beta tomorrow using this link here.

Popular torrent company Vuze has released a new lightweight client for users that may not necessarily need the plethora of features found in their namesake client.

Vuze Leap is now in beta and features a more simple interface that will use up much less of your computer's resources.

Says the company: "We sought to deliver a simpler experience as a counterpart to the powerful, full-featured core Vuze BitTorrent Client that has pleased millions of users for years. Even with file-sharing being a part of internet usage for years, we continued to hear, from some users a desire to have a simpler experience that was less resource intensive."

The Vuze Leap offers built-in search, allowing you to search without having to go to individual sites or ever leaving the software. The search appears to bring back mainly results that could be done with a Google search but will likely integrate more torrent trackers in the future.

During Microsoft's recent quarterly earnings report, new CEO Satya Nadella made headlines by stating that "we will streamline the next version of Windows from three operating systems into one single converged operating system for screens of all sizes."

The news would have certainly been massive, given that Windows is currently available in multiple iterations depending on what type of device you have. Phones have Windows Phones, tablets have Windows RT or Windows 8/8.1 and desktops have Windows 8.1 (not to mention all iterations of Windows before that).

Later in the conference call, however, Nadella clarified what he meant, and the announcement is no longer as spectacular as it could have been.

In his clarification, the CEO says "one Windows" means that moving forward a single team will work on all Windows iterations, including Windows Embedded and the Xbox One OS. That team works under the unified Operating System Group. Each version of Windows will be built on a "common core," otherwise known as the NT core. Each OS will be built on top of the core to make best use of form factor/screen size.

Apple reported their latest earnings yesterday and the company had another standard if not mundane quarter.

The company had $37.43 billion in revenue for the quarter, and $7.7 billion in profit.

iPad sales were the biggest disappointment, with the company selling 13.3 million tablets compared to an expected 13.8 million. Sales of the device were down 9 percent year-over-year.

The sales slowdown was mainly in the U.S., but sales of the iPad saw over 50 percent growth in China and over 60 percent in the Middle East. Thanks to the new partnership with IBM, Apple expects tablet sales to continue to grow around the world, especially in the enterprise market.

iPhone sales were in-line, up 13 percent year-over-year to 35.2 million with the iPhone 5C overtaking the old iPhone 4S for low-end sales.

Macs saw some of the best growth, up 18 percent to 4.4 million as the company continues to lower prices on popular items like the Macbook Air. iPod sales are down to 2.9 million, down 36 percent year-over-year, although the amount of units sold were more than expected.

Flurry, well known in the mobile industry for its in-depth analytics, has been acquired for over $200 million by Yahoo.

Yahoo continues to eat up startups in its ongoing efforts "to re-imagine users' daily habits" and focus on mobile.

As the company says of the acquisition: "Analytics are critical for all mobile developers to understand and optimize their applications. Yahoo and Flurry are reinvesting in developers and continuing to build great analytics products. The combined scale of the two companies will accelerate revenue growth for thousands of developers and publishers across the mobile ecosystem."

Flurry posted some of their more impressive data points, including the fact that 170,000 developers use Flurry Analytics, the company sees over 5.5 billion app sessions per day, app activity from 1.4 billion devices per month and the fact that Flurry works in 150 countries gaining extensive reach. Flurry Analytics are seen in 7 apps per device, quite a high number.

"Yahoo's growth in mobile traffic comes from great people and great products," said Scott Burke, SVP Advertising Technology. "Flurry's success is the result of years of committed investment by a passionate team to create an indispensable platform for mobile developers. We want to harness our collective innovative spirit and bolster the mobile ecosystem by providing developers the analytics and monetization solutions to drive their success." Read more...

Aereo became a household name over the past year as the tiny startup took on broadcast giants like CBS, Fox and Disney in an effort to stay alive.

The Supreme Court recently stomped on that dream, ruling that Aereo, which offers cloud DVR access to the broadcast channels in HD anywhere for $8 per month, violates the copyrights of the content providers. Aereo then tried to become a cable company, but that was rejected, as well, as the company awaits its final fate via a lower court ruling.

Even though the company was famous, it does not appear that the brand recognition really helped sales, at least not as of December 31, 2013.

According to a U.S. Copyright Office letter, as of the end of last year Aereo only had 77,596 subscribers, with over 30 percent coming from New York City where Aereo first launched. The company expanded significantly in 2014, so the figures could conceivably be much higher now, but even with 100 percent growth the numbers will still be low when compared to popular streaming services.

While the images of the upcoming NVIDIA SHIELD tablet leaked earlier this month, it remained unclear what was under the hood. We now have the full spec sheet and a release date, as well.

"The newest member of the SHIELD family" is set to be officially launched on July 22nd, and will join the SHIELD gaming handheld.

While the handheld gaming device had excellent specs, the software ecosystem was severely lacking at launch and the device was priced too high, leading to lackluster sales. After a few months, however, Nvidia updated the software, adding some killer features like Gamepad Mapper and GameStream.

The new tablet will include all the same features but will also be a tablet, giving flexibility to consumers who may not want just a gaming device. The specs are also excellent, and the device is one of the first with Nvidia's K1 processor.

Full specs:

Tegra K1 Processor (192 core Kepler GPU, 2.2 GHz Quad Core A15 CPU)
2GB RAM
8-inch Full HD IPS display (1920×1200)
Front facing stereo speakers and dual bass reflex port
4K Ultra-HD ready
Micro SD slot
Bluetooth 4.0, GPS, dual-band a/b/g/n WiFI
Integrated Stylus
19.75 WHr battery (up to 10-hours HD video playback)

Earlier this week, during its quarterly earnings conference call, Google announced that its partners have sold over one million Chromebooks to schools in the last quarter.

Overall, there were about 76 million PCs sold in the whole world for the quarter, so 1 million for a niche product selling to a niche market is incredibly strong.

Chromebooks are popular in schools due to their price, full keyboards when compared to iPads, and easier administrator tools from a single console.

Looking to the future, Google recently announced the expansion of their Google Play for Education app and e-book store to Chromebooks from tablets, meaning more educational tools and textbooks will be available for the devices. Additionally, a school can share and fund a Google Play for Education account for teachers allowing them to buy apps, books and more for the class or individual students.

Source:
Crunch

If you own a Windows Phone device and have been dying to get your hands on BlackBerry Messenger (BBM), your time has almost come.

The application is available now in the Windows Phone Store, but only those in the beta tester program will be able to download and use it. BlackBerry opened the beta program last week and it filled up within a couple of days.

BBM hit Android and iOS last year, and has been popular since. The company says the move added over 40 million registered users from September to December of last year.

Windows Phone beta users will incur significant bugs, a few of which have already been documented including:

Microsoft has revealed the details of the upcoming August Xbox One update, which include eight featured additions/changes.

The features are new activity feed updates, an expansion for the Friends section on Home, low battery notifications, the ability to disable notifications when playing video, mobile purchases, 3D Blu-ray support, OneGuide expansion and a 'last time seen' addition to your Friends list.

In the console's activity feed interface, the layout will now be a single scrolling list "that is longer and includes more content." In addition, you can now post on your feeds and "like" and comment on other items, similar to Facebook. You can also share your game clips either privately or publicly to the feed. SmartGlass will be integrated, as well.

If you are looking to kinda stalk your friends list, it will now reveal the last time your friend has been online and what they were playing. The Home area has been expanded showing friend's current activity, the top trending games they could be playing and also a Gamerscore leaderboard.

According to the latest comScore data, Yahoo's search market share has reached an all-time low, at just below 10 percent.

Overall, desktop search declined for the fifth month in a row, as mobile continued to grow at a fast pace.

Yahoo's fall has been anticipated since its "search alliance" deal with Microsoft has led to a combined 29 percent for Bing and Yahoo but has made Bing the priority.

Google remained the clear leader for desktop search, at 67.6 percent, followed by Bing at 19.2 percent and Yahoo at 9.8 percent. All others accounted for 3.4 percent.

The report does not include mobile figures but Google is said to have about 85 percent share of the quickly growing mobile market.

Earlier this month, the Supreme Court ruled against online TV broadcast and DVR startup Aereo, effectively killing the company.

In its efforts to regain its status, Aereo asked to be reconsidered as a "cable company" under copyright law, allowing it to continue operating but with official re-transmission licenses from the major media companies.

This week, US copyright officials have told Aereo executives that they will not consider the startup a cable company under current copyright law. "In the view of the Copyright Office, internet retransmissions of broadcast television fall outside the scope of the Section 111 license," the Copyright Office wrote in its letter to Aereo.

Aereo's filings will not be declined outright, since Aereo has appealed to a lower court and the case is still being heard. The Copyright Office has therefore provisionally accepted the application.

Read more about the Supreme Court decision here.

As part of their resolution of a European Commission concern, Google has announced that it will no longer call free games that also include in-app purchases "free."

The EU asked both Google and Apple to change the way they market such apps in their app stores, including informing customers about how payments work and adding game developer's contact info.

Besides ending "free" as a term, Google will also create "targeted guidelines" for the games that prevent encouraging kids to buy in-app items.

While Apple disagrees, the EC also says the iPhone and iPad maker has "regrettably" not provided any solutions for the same concerns but has promised to.

Apple responded quickly to the remarks: "Apple takes great pride in leading the industry in parental controls that are incredibly easy to use and help ensure a great experience for parents and children on the App Store. The parental controls in iOS are strong, intuitive and customizable. And over the last year we made sure any app which enables customers to make in-app purchases is clearly marked. We've also created a Kids Section on the App Store with even stronger protections to cover apps designed for children younger than 13. Read more...

Prolific leaker @Evleaks has released an artist reproduction of what the upcoming HTC Android Wear-based smartwatch will look like, including a render of the UI (just for kicks).

Although it is a reproduction, the render is said to be identical to the original source, although it is unclear why the original could not be posted.

If accurate, the watch will be rectangular just like the other two Android Wear watches on the market, the LG G Watch and Samsung Gear Live, but it will include a metal band.

HTC has confirmed they are looking into an Android Wear device, but has never given much confirmation past that.

Larger image here:

As leaked two days ago, Amazon's Kindle Unlimited ebook service is now official and live.

The monthly subscription service costs $9.99 and gives you access to over 600,000 ebooks and over 2000 audiobooks. You can read as many books as you want while paying for the service, but the access disappears if you ever cancel.

Amazon will immediately be the biggest player on the block, taking on little known Oyster (500,000 titles for $9.95 a month) and Scribd (400,000 titles for $8.99 per month).

A few of the featured titles are best sellers like the Harry Potter series, the Hunger Games series, the Lord of the Rings series and Michael Lewis' latest, 'Flash Boys.' There are also plenty of classics like Animal Farm and even a large amount of books from the For Dummies series. Unlimited also includes Kindle Singles, popular short titles under 100 pages.

"With Kindle Unlimited, you won't have to think twice before you try a new author or genre--you can just start reading and listening," Russ Grandinetti, senior vice president of Kindle, said in a statement.

All books have Whispersync, Popular Highlights, X-Ray, customer reviews, and Goodreads integration.

Console sales remained hot in June, with gamers spending $736.4 million during the month in the U.S.

The NPD Group says the figure is up 24 percent year-over-year, thanks again to strong sales of the Sony PlayStation 4. Hardware was the leading driver of the gains, at $292.7 million, up 106 percent year-over-year.

Software was down 3 percent to $286.8 million (YoY), mainly because last June saw the release of hit 'The Last of Us.' "Sales of launch titles in June 2014 did not compare favorably to those launched in June 2013, which included the PS3 exclusive The Last of Us, along with Nintendo's Animal Crossing: New Leaf, and a retail version of Minecraft for the Xbox 360," said NPD analyst Liam Callahan.

As always, NPD's figures do not include digital downloads, mobile games or used game sales. Those numbers are likely to have grown since last year. Watch Dogs, Mario Kart 8 and Minecraft were three top hits for June. Watch Dogs has seen over 8 million copies sold around the globe and is Ubisoft's biggest hit in quite some time, if ever. Mario Kart continued to impress, taking its total sales to 885,000 in a month on just one console, compared to four consoles for most of the rest of the list.

In addition to their announced 18,000 layoffs, Microsoft will also be shutting down their Xbox Entertainment Studios, which so far has been a major failure for the company.

The studio was supposed to bring original content to the Xbox, but so far in two years there has only been one completed project. The Atari documentary will be released, and the much-awaited Halo series will be completed, as well.

Xbox head Phil Spencer is looking to keep with CEO Satya Nadella's move towards focusing and building the core of Microsoft (gaming, mobile and cloud).

Original and premium content was a slam dunk from Microsoft's perspective, especially given the large Xbox Live userbase. The company hired CBS TV head Nancy Tellem to run the studio, and quickly signed up major scripts like Halo. It just never happened.

Microsoft will continue to look for original programming but will not develop it in-house, like HBO, Netflix and Hulu do.

Former Nokia CEO and current Microsoft exec Stephen Elop has written a long email to employees explaining the newly announced 18,000 layoffs and the future of the company.

Microsoft announced that 12,500 of the layoffs would be from Nokia, whose handset division was just acquired for nearly $8 billion.

Here is the email in its entirety (it's a long one):

Microsoft's strategy is focused on productivity and our desire to help people "do more." As the Microsoft Devices Group, our role is to light up this strategy for people. We are the team creating the hardware that showcases the finest of Microsoft's digital work and digital life experiences, and we will be the confluence of the best of Microsoft's applications, operating systems and cloud services.

To align with Microsoft's strategy, we plan to focus our efforts. Given the wide range of device experiences, we must concentrate on the areas where we can add the most value. The roots of this company and our future are in productivity and helping people get things done. Our fundamental focus – for phones, Surface, for meetings with devices like PPI, Xbox hardware and new areas of innovation -- is to build on that strength. While our direction in the majority of our teams is largely unchanging, we have had an opportunity to plan carefully about the alignment of phones within Microsoft as the transferring Nokia team continues with its integration process.

Read more...

As expected, Microsoft announced a round of layoffs today although the number was well beyond all expectations.

New CEO Satya Nadella announced the company will eliminate up to 18,000 jobs, far and away the largest in its history at 14 percent of the total workforce.

Most of the layoffs will come from the newly acquired Nokia, at 12,500 factory and professional positions being released. At Microsoft itself, all the layoffs will come from sales, marketing and engineering. Microsoft says it will take up to a $1.6 billion charge for the layoffs in the 2015 fiscal year.

13,000 of the cuts were made today and the rest will be done before June 30th, 2015. Additionally, Microsoft's infamous layers of management will be reduced, allowing for quicker decisions.

Reads Nadella's post: "The first step to building the right organization for our ambitions is to realign our workforce...It's important to note that while we are eliminating roles in some areas, we are adding roles in certain other strategic areas. My promise to you is that we will go through this process in the most thoughtful and transparent way possible. We will offer severance to all employees impacted by these changes, as well as job transition help in many locations, and everyone can expect to be treated with the respect they deserve for their contributions to this company."

The media industry went berserk today when it was discovered that Rupert Murdoch and 21st Century Fox had bid $80 billion for Time Warner and its prized possession: HBO.

Time Warner turned down the proposal but many say the saga is nowhere near over. Murdoch is said to be determined and higher bids are likely coming.

A merger of the two companies would create a behemoth. Besides HBO, the companies would control Fox broadcasting, Warner Bros. studios, and 20th Century Fox. One notable takeaway from the reports is that Fox planned to sell CNN if it acquired Time Warner, which it hopes would allay some anti-trust fears.

The industry is ripe for mergers, especially as cable companies head towards mergers and better leverage in content negotiations. Before the Time Warner bid, Fox had been considering buying Scripps, the owner of HGTV and Food Network, and Univision, the largest Spanish language cable network.

In addition, the takeover would give Fox major broadcasting rights for NBA, NCAA and MLB sports, on top of their current NASCAR and other rights.

In their rejection of the offer, CEO Jeff Bewkes says "our business plans will create significantly more value for the company and our shareholders, and that's superior to any proposal that Fox is in a position to offer." Also, other potential partners like Comcast and AT&T are in the middle of consolidations that may or may not go through, so Time Warner believes it is not a great time to take a takeover offer.

Amazon has begun testing a new "Kindle Unlimited" subscription service for $9.99, allowing users to read or listen to over 600,000 ebooks and audiobooks at a flat price.

While the test is not public, some pages popped up on the Kindle message boards and were promptly taken down after users noticed.

Such a service would compete directly with Scribd and Oyster, although neither of those companies offer audiobooks.

From what can be surmised from the pages, Algonquin, Bloomsbury, Harvard University Press, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Open Road Media, W.W. Norton and Workman are all publishers that are participating. The majors do not appear to be participating yet. Many of the titles were also older titles already available in the Kindle Owners Lending Library, which gives $99/year Prime subscribers one free book per month.

In the audiobook section, Amazon says there are 7351 "Whispersync for Voice" titles available.

Apple has conditionally agreed to pay $450 million to settle claims that it fixed e-book prices in conspiracy with the major book publishers.

$400 million will go to consumers, with the rest going to state and federal agencies.

The settlement is conditioned on an appeal in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York where the settlement could be entirely reversed. "While we cannot predict the outcome of the appeal with certainty, we are confident in the case we made against Apple at trial," Connecticut Attorney General George Jepsen said.

Apple reached the settlement last month, but the terms were not disclosed. The tech giant avoided a trial in which they were facing over $800 million in claims.

In 2012, the U.S. Department of Justice sued Apple and five of the largest book publishers claiming that the companies conspired to break Amazon's dominance of the ebook market and its wholesale pricing. At the time, Amazon would buy the rights to the books at wholesale prices and then priced them at whatever they chose, often times underpricing hit books to get traffic to their site and get more people to buy the Kindle hardware. Apple, who was launching its own bookstore with the launch of the iPad, changed the game to the "agency model" in which Apple sells the books at the prices dictated by the publisher but takes a 30 percent cut. This pushed the average price of ebooks from $9.99 to $12-14 or even higher in many cases.

The Senate has passed bill S. 517, allowing consumers to unlock their phones when it is time to switch carriers.

S. 517 aka the Unlocking Consumer Choice and Wireless Competition Act, will make it once again legal to unlock your phones when your contract is up. The right had been an exemption in the DMCA, but it was revoked when the Library of Congress ruled phone software is protected by copyright and that unlocking could potentially be a copyright violation.

"This straightforward restoring bill is about promoting consumer rights," says Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) "When consumers finish the terms of their contract, they should be able to keep their phones and make their own decision about which wireless provider to use."

The Senate passed the bill unanimously and it now goes to the House.

It appears the console makers are now looking into ways to let gamers, devs test out unfinished games before their final launch, similar to how some PC game publishers do.

PlayStation VP of Publisher and Developer Relations Adam Boyes says that putting out PS4 games before final release is "one of the massive conversations we have internally."

"We're figuring out what's ok," Boyes continued. "We obviously have our tech requirement checklist that people have to adhere to. So we're internally discussing, what does that list look like this? What are the caveats? Stuff like this. So it's still a project that a lot of minds are considering. No details yet, but it's something on the top of my mind every day."

Microsoft is also looking into giving developers early access to Xbox One titles. ID@Xbox director Chris Charla noted: "Right now on Xbox One and Xbox 360, you can do betas. When we talk about early access, it typically means a game that you buy and it evolves over time to become 1.0, so you're buying it before it's 1.0 – Minecraft on PC is a perfect example."

Giant semi Intel announced their quarterly earnings last night, reporting another strong quarter thanks to an 'improved' PC market.

The company earned $2.8 billion on revenue of $13.8 billion and even raised their fiscal year revenue outlook. The company will buyback up to $20 billion in stock, which will increase the value of the company's share.

"This change in our capital structure is the continuation of a multi-year focus on creating value and returning cash to our shareholders, and reinforces our confidence in the business," CFO Stacy J. Smith said during the report.

Most impressively, gross margins remained flat at 66 percent and revenue for the upcoming quarter should improve to $14.4 billion.

Intel continues its foray into the mobile world and has set a lofty goal of powering 40 million tablets by the end of the year, despite missing out on the first three years, literally, of tablet growth enjoyed by Qualcomm and to a lesser extent, Nvidia. Intel powers both Windows and Android tablets.

Earlier today we reported on Apple's partnership with IBM to control the enterprise market.

The deal is groundbreaking in that two giants have teamed up their resources to make industry specific apps that work flawlessly for iOS and include Apple's AppleCare support into the future.

Read more that story here.

CEO Tim Cook sent a memo to employees today about the deal, which emphasizes the synergies. The memo in its entirety:

Team,

Today, we announced a groundbreaking new partnership with IBM that will enable enterprises to put the power of big data analytics at their employees' fingertips on their iOS device. This exclusive global partnership brings together Apple's legendary ease-of-use and integrated hardware and software with IBM's unmatched industry depth, enterprise software and expertise in big data analytics.

It also builds on the incredible momentum in Apple's enterprise business. iPhone and iPad can be found in 98% of the Fortune 500. People love to use iOS devices and Apple delivers the things companies need most--security and scalable deployment along with a powerful platform for apps. With this announcement, we're now putting IBM's renowned big data analytics at iOS users' fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple. This is a radical step for enterprise and something only Apple and IBM can deliver.

Read more...

Last night, tech giants Apple and IBM announced a partnership in which IBM will build enterprise applications for the iPhone and iPad as the companies aim to entirely control the business market for mobiles.

The over 100 business apps will run exclusively on iOS and IBM will also sell Apple products with industry-specific apps to its massive network of clients around the globe.

"iPhone and iPad are the best mobile devices in the world and have transformed the way people work with over 98 percent of the Fortune 500 and over 92 percent of the Global 500 using iOS devices in their business today," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO. "For the first time ever we're putting IBM's renowned big data analytics at iOS users' fingertips, which opens up a large market opportunity for Apple. This is a radical step for enterprise and something that only Apple and IBM can deliver."

Among the applications being built include analytics, device management, security, consulting and cloud services. Apple's AppleCare will cover support of the apps.

In 2011, when Google launched its Google+ social network, the search giant angered many users by requiring that the page include their real name.

Google had the novel idea that if your real name was attached to a comment you were making, you were less likely to be belligerent (or violent). It turns out, more than a few people are still willing to make awful comments, even with their real name attached.

The restriction hurt users that had to use other names for safety reasons, and many commentators, especially on YouTube, just stopped commenting. Google has heard the complaints for years and has now decided to drop any name restrictions for Google+.

Reads the Google+ post:

When we launched Google+ over three years ago, we had a lot of restrictions on what name you could use on your profile. This helped create a community made up of real people, but it also excluded a number of people who wanted to be part of it without using their real names.

Over the years, as Google+ grew and its community became established, we steadily opened up this policy, from allowing +Page owners to use any name of their choosing to letting YouTube users bring their usernames into Google+. Today, we are taking the last step: there are no more restrictions on what name you can use.

Read more...

Giant e-commerce site Alibaba has signed a new licensing deal with U.S. entertainment company Lionsgate in which Alibaba will stream the company's movie and TV content in mainland China.

Alibaba will offer the content through their own set-top boxes, which are expected to add the content next month. Among Lionsgate's more popular content is "The Hunger Games" series, the "Twilight" series and the "Saw" series. On the TV side, Lionsgate is home to "Mad Men" and "Nurse Jackie" among others.

It is unclear if all that content will make it through Chinese censors, but Lionsgate catalog is quite large, regardless.

"This cooperation signals our ongoing commitment to advance our vision of making digital media entertainment available to our customers anywhere, anytime," said Patrick Liu, president of Alibaba Group's digital entertainment business unit.

Alibaba's Wasu Rainbow set-tops currently offer local and foreign TV on-demand.

According to a Chinese daily, the Apple iWatch will come in three different models when it launches this year.

The first model will sport a 1.6-inch display while the other two will be higher end 1.8-inch models with one featuring a sapphire crystal display.

It is unclear what other differences the models will have but the sapphire version will assuredly be the most expensive.

Rumors have been flying for years about the watch, but have picked up in recent months with all types of news outlets reporting on leaked specs. The WSJ reported there would three different models, as well, while Reuters reported the iWatch would have a massive 2.5-inch display.

As always, the time frame is the same, with Apple expected to announce the watch in September or early October.

Box has declared an end to the "storage wars" this week, offering unlimited storage space to business customers.

While the company offered unlimited storage to "Enterprise" subscribers, it has now been extended to all corporate clients.

"Storage only matters when it's a roadblock, and we're excited to make these limits a thing of the past for our Business customers as well," said CEO Aaron Levie. "This may seem like the escalation of a storage war, but we're actually approaching the end of one."

Box was on the ropes in recent weeks as the startup faced increased competition from giants like Microsoft, Google and Amazon. Amazon, for example, just started their own enterprise cloud storage and collaboration service Zocalo.

In addition, the company has announced new beta integration features with Microsoft Office 365, (Box for Office 2013 and Box for Outlook 2013) which allows users to open, edit, save, and share any file from Box within Word, PowerPoint, and Excel.

Taiwanese semi MediaTek has officially announced the world's first octa-core 64-bit SoC.

The chip can support a 2K display, and the company says it truly has eight cores, unlike other "octa-core" devices. The MT6795 chipset has 4G LTE radio support, and is clocked at 2.2GHz using the company's proprietary CorePilot technology for "multi-processor performance and thermal control."

Among the other high-end specs are dual-channel LPDDR3 DRAM at 933MHz, the highest bandwidth we've seen yet.

Full feature set:

Does movie piracy hurt sales and cost jobs? The MPAA and other trade groups would certainly have you believe that it does but at least on economist believes that notion is bunk.

Economist Koleman Strumpf, professor at the University of Kansas School of Business, released data and his conclusion based on data from 150 of the largest movies released between the years of 2003 and 2009. The data came via a "popular BitTorrent tracker" and revenue projections from the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX) to see what impact piracy really had on movies.

"There is no evidence in my empirical results of file-sharing having a significant impact on theatrical revenue," Strumpf says. "My best guess estimate is that file sharing reduced the first month box office by $200 million over 2003-2009, which is only three tenths of a percent of what movies actually earned. I am unable to reject the hypothesis that there is no impact at all of file-sharing on revenues."

Last month, Google had their annual I/O developer conference, unveiling a plethora of new software, hardware and features over a sprawling two and a half hour event.

As a flashback (and maybe to make us remember), Google has put out their Google I/O 2014 highlights video, which includes the keynote, sessions, Developer Sandbox, and After Hours.

The video is short, but if you want to view the sessions or the entire keynote, you can still do so, in HD, here: Google Events

During their show, Google showed off the next iteration of Android, "L," Android Auto for cars, Android TV for the big screen, Google Fit for fitness tracking and updates to Google Glass, Chrome OS, Android Wear and everything in between.

Read our articles from Google I/O here: Google I/O 2014

Tech behemoth Microsoft is looking to cut some costs as it integrates its new Nokia handset unit, planning layoffs that would be the company's largest this decade.

The new restructuring could end up being the company's largest in its history, even surpassing the 5800 laid off in 2009 during the tail end of the financial crisis. Most of the layoffs will be in divisions that overlap with Nokia, most notably engineering and marketing.

While the plans are not yet public, new CEO Satya Nadella has been calling for sweeping changes including more focus on efficiency and reducing redundancies. The company plans to focus on mobile devices, the cloud and productivity software into the future, obvious choices as other revenue streams dry up. "Nothing is off the table in how we think about shifting our culture," Nadella said last week.

The company now has 127,000 employees, with almost 30,000 of those coming via the Nokia acquisition. There are almost certainly thousands of redundancies with numbers that big.

Expect more clarity next week during Microsoft's quarterly earnings report.

For gamers who missed out on the early alpha, the upcoming beta for the blockbuster "Destiny" game is right around the corner.

Starting on July 17th, PlayStation owners will get access to the two-week long beta, followed by pre-order holders on the 23rd. Until now, there was very little known about what the beta would entail but we now have a pretty clear picture.

Developer Bungie took to Reddit to post a brief snippet on what we can expect: Four story chapters, four multiplayer maps, a co-op strike mission and a full world to explore. Nice. The alpha, for comparison, only had two multiplayer maps and some minor missions.

The FPS role playing game from the development team behind Halo, has promised the most inter-connected world yet, allowing gamers to create a dynamic experience that is not controlled by the developers.

Destiny launches in full on September 9th for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

LG has developed a new 18-inch flexible OLED that can roll up like a newspaper.

The display has a resolution of 1200 x 810 but most impressively can be rolled up like a paper, sporting a 3cm radius.

While still in prototype, LG is confident that the displays will be available on large HDTVs in the near future. Says the company: "We are confident that by 2017, we will successfully develop an Ultra HD flexible and transparent OLED panel of more than 60 inches."

At that size, the displays would be much larger than anything we have seen to date. Curved displays have been used on a few smartphones but there has been no real practical use for them. Full flexible displays have been shown off in sizes ranging from 1 to 4 inches.

Many in the corporate world are excited for such displays as it would make presentations easier, especially when traveling where traditional screens may not be available.

Mobile fans who are tired of jumping from app to app are in for a treat.

The music ID/discovery app Shazam has been updated to allow for users to stream the full track rather than just a short preview, thanks to a partnership with Rdio. Both companies say the feature is free, as long as you have both services (Rdio needs a subscription).

Within the Shazam app, just click the Rdio preview button to listen to the full track, no need to be led to the external Rdio app. If you don't have the Rdio app, you will be prompted to install it.

"It's tedious to leave and come back," notes Daniel Danker, Shazam's chief product officer. "What we're launching today is supercharged with Rdio -- the play button gets an Rdio logo in it, literally every play button in Shazam will have one once it's connected."

Even better for Rdio users, the tracks previewed or listened through Shazam are collected into a playlist.

Connected KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has released another research note this week, claiming that Apple's alleged iPhone 6 phablet model could be delayed until 2015.

Apple is expected to announce a 4.7-inch iPhone 6 this fall, but there has also been speculation that the company will release a 5.5-inch phablet model, as well.

Kuo notes that Apple is already struggling to get production ready for the 4.7-inch model due to new technology for the display (Sapphire anyone?) and the colors on the redesigned metal casing. "These problems will likely be even more complicated with a larger size," he added. The in-cell touch panels in particular, appear to be having touch sensitivity issues on the sides of the display which is compounded as the size gets larger.

If the company can fix the issues, the 5.5-inch device will not be available until early December, or so, much later than an average iPhone launch.

Raspberry Pi, the cult classic micro-computer, is now in its "final evolution."

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has announced that Model B+ is now available for the standard $35 price, from manufacturing partners element14 and RS/Allied Components.

Supposedly, the new model is less "power hungry" but will keep most of the same features under the hood, including the same 512MB RAM.

Among the changes are:

General purpose input/output: The GPIO header now has an increased number of 40 pins for more reading from sensors or writing output.

USB: The Model B+ now has four USB 2.0 ports, up from two on Model B.

Lower power consumption: Model B+ uses less power of between 0.5W and 1W.

Micro SD: The old SD card slot has been replaced with a micro SD version.

Better audio: There is now a low-noise power supply.

Improved form factor: The USB connectors have been aligned with the board edge, composite video has been moved onto the 3.5mm jack, and there are now four squarely-placed mounting holes.

Microsoft will not allow Chromebooks to have another hot selling holiday season without at least trying to compete.

COO Kevin Turner revealed that Acer, Toshiba and HP will all release Windows laptops for under $250 this year, although Acer's is already available.

The Acer machine has a 15.6-inch display and a 2.16GHz Celeron processor along with a 500GB HDD. Toshiba's $250 device will have a 11.6-inch display, weighs just 2.4 pounds and has a 32GB SSD. There was no details on HP's $199 "Stream" Windows machine, but it's hard to imagine what specs are involved at such a cheap price.

"We are going to participate at the low-end," says Turner. "We've got a great value proposition against Chromebooks, we are not ceding the market to anyone."

While Microsoft is now competing on price, it remains to be seen if the underpowered devices can match the smooth performance of a Chromebook.

AdDuplex has put out their monthly report on Windows Phone, showing what phones are most popular for the platform, and where.

The report on the smartphone industry's third biggest OS is always interesting, especially since by all reports, the industry is a duopoly led by Android and iOS.

AdDuplex is a "cross-promotion network for Windows Phone and Windows 8 apps," allowing developers to promote their apps through other apps. This relationship allows the company to have in-depth knowledge across the globe of what phones are being used.

For the month, the top three most popular devices remained the Lumia 520, Lumia 625 and the Lumia 920, although each had smaller share than in May. The Lumia 520's successor, the Lumia 630, jumped to 20th place and should continue to prosper as 520 sales have flatlined.

There have been multiple reports in the past month suggesting that Apple is preparing to start production on its much-awaited iWatch smartwatch in September.

If connected KGI analyst Ming-Chi Kuo is correct, however, production has already been delayed until November, suggesting inventory will be very low when the watch launches.

Kuo says the watch remains a hardware and software challenge for the company, even after years of development, and therefore the reported time frame is incorrect. While the watch could still launch in October, as expected, there will be tiny supply available. Kuo notes that there will only be 3 million iWatches sold in the Q4, down from an anticipated 10 million.

If previous reports are accurate, the iWatch will sport a 2.5-inch flexible AMOLED display with a sapphire glass cover, two components that Apple has either never used, or never used in such a large size. Apple is also said to having issues meeting high waterproofing standards.

On the software side, the iOS team is having issues redesigning for such a small screen while still keeping deep interoperability with the iPad and iPhone.

Last month, Samsung's head of Tizen, JD Choi, announced proudly that their first smartphone running the OS would be ready for sale in Russia in the Q3.

The expected launch was set for Thursday in Moscow, but as is becoming standard for Tizen, the launch was canceled and the phone delayed.

Samsung said little except to note that "the smartphone will appear on the Russian market later, when we can offer our users a fullest portfolio of applications." The Tizen team did still hold an event for developers in which prototypes were shown off, but the commercial launch still has no time frame.

In fact, the hall that was available for developers was less than half full, and a Samsung executive almost sadly told the crowd that the "most obvious advantage [of developing for the Tizen phone] is that you'll be at the top in a half empty store on a decent premium device." Well, I guess there's that.

Overall, the developers there seems relatively unfazed, likely due to developing thick skin after over three years of delays and setbacks.

Even though demand for PCs has picked up after nearly four years of declines, industry watchers remain skeptical that the industry has anywhere to go but down.

The industry temporarily got a boost this year as corporations and governments used the end of life for Windows XP as an excuse to purchase new Windows 7 or Windows 8 PCs, but a few companies have already claimed that that boost is coming to an end, and soon.

Most concerns come from the emerging markets including China, where demand is already falling again. The industry has been averaging at least 3 percent declines year-over-year since 2010 but saw flat shipments for the quarter ended June 30th.

Other concerns are due to PC's main rivals, tablets and now Chromebooks, the former of which has been seeing triple-digit growth (up until this quarter) and the latter of which remains a very popular item, at least within certain niches. The most recent quarter, in which tablet shipments actually fell, does show there is still demand for notebooks, as long as they are cheap and portable but how long that lasts is also unclear, especially if tablets keep moving towards convertible options that basically turns them into laptops.

We received an email yesterday from pirated movie streaming service Popcorn Time, showing off the upcoming features of its 2.0 version beta software for Android.

Reads the email:

Just wanted to let you know that we just released the new Android beta 2.0 version and for the first time "Androiders" can cast their favorite movies and TV shows to their TV's using their Chromecast device!!!

After the alpha with Chromecast for PC, now comes the Android's turn, and Mac will be next, hopefully in the upcoming weeks.

What else is new?

1. Automatic updates
2. Native UI
3. Faster download rate of movies/TV shows
4. Many bug fixes
5. More devices supported

We're also working hard on bringing built in free VPN, which we have available only on PC at the moment to Android and it should be ready for the next release (beta 2.1) which is a due soon.

The FCC has approved a new $2 billion fund that will help schools build school-wide Wi-Fi networks.

"Because of what we do today, 10 million kids will be connected next year who otherwise wouldn't. That's something to be proud of," FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said.

The funds are guaranteed for the next two years with the "assumption" that funding for the networks will be in place in the future. No guarantees, however.

FCC's Wheeler was asked why the size of the program was not expanded, in which he responded that it was not prudent to just throw money at a program that had been started in the 1990s.

"I hope that going forward we will have the courage to fix this," Democratic FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel added. "I hope going forward we will be bold. Because this is not just a matter of getting schools and libraries connected -- it's a matter of our global competitiveness."

The $2 billion will come from a combination of unused funds and administrative cost-cutting, added the FCC.

A major deal is in the works between music service SoundCloud and the record labels.

The deal, which could close this month, will give the major record labels stakes in the service in return for not suing over copyright violations.

Each label (Universal, Warner and Sony) will receive between a 3-5 percent stake, as well as a percentage of future revenue in the startup. The deal will value the company at about $600 million, cheap compared to other services in the streaming music industry, and also cheaper than an investment round valued the company in February. The difference is likely due to the labels also exchanging licensing rights to millions of songs, thus getting them a discount on the investment.

SoundCloud has over 250 million monthly listeners. The site lets users upload music, podcasts and other audio and then quickly post that content to other sites including social media. In this way, the service is very different than other catalogs like Spotify or Rdio because most of the content is user-uploaded and not copyright music, although many mixes do include copyright tracks.

Samsung has confirmed that their latest in-house Exynos processor will include a built-in LTE radio for the first time.

So far, Qualcomm's Snapdragons have remained the chip of choice for all high-end devices, thanks to their speed, and more recently, their built in GPUs and LTE radios which could not be matched.

The new Exynos ModAP chip has the LTE radio built in, and will be high-end quad-core processor. The radio will supposedly support LTE-Advanced (up to 250Mbps speeds), but being that LTE-A is still in its baby stages, the chip is really a Cat 4 LTE. Rivals like Qualcomm already have Cat 6 chipsets, which would double the speeds of the Cat 4, if you are hooked up to a network that can deliver it.

As expected, the chip was built on the 28nm die process, but it also includes an image signal processor that can process 1080p 30fps video and an "RF companion chip" for easier switching between connectivity types.

Apple has restored the 90-second preview window on iTunes for most of its songs that had been (possibly accidentally) slashed to 30 seconds.

Two days ago, Apple had reduced the song preview time of many tracks (including newer hits) to 30 seconds down from the standard 90 seconds for any song that is longer than 2:30. Some of the tracks have had the time restored, but not all.

It was back in 2010 that Apple took the 30-second preview and extended it to 90 seconds.

Still unclear is why the change happened in the first place, and whether it is permanent.

A couple of interesting articles have emerged in the days before Aerosmith starts its 2014 World Tour, namely how the members of the band made most of their money.

Despite selling over 150 million albums since the 1970s, it appears that the band made most of their money from licensing their name and songs to Activision and to Disney.

In 2007, the band licensed 29 songs to Activision for the soon-to-be launched "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith," and the game sold over 4 million copies in its lifetime. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed that the band's "version of Guitar Hero generated far more in revenues than any Aerosmith album ever has."

Additionally, the band's name and music is all over Disney World's "Rock N Roller Coaster," another licensing agreement.

Artists traditionally make much less money from their own album sales or digital downloads than from licensing and concerts, and in this case that is certainly true. Album sales continue to tank, in general, and "going platinum" is now rarefied air.

Roku is now the undisputed king of streaming media set-top boxes.

From its humble beginnings just five years ago, Roku has seen its sales and market share grow significantly and the set-tops now account for about 46 percent of all set-top box sales in the U.S.

Additionally, Rokus have the greatest usage of set-top owners, even defeating the Apple TV.

The data comes via research firm Parks Associates, who says that the gap for sales and usage is still widening between Apple TV and Roku. 44 percent of U.S. households with streaming media players use Roku the most, compared to 26 percent for the Apple TV. That gap was only 13 percent last year.

Parks concluded that Roku's long-time close association with Netflix and its 1700 channel apps (far and away the most of any box) and its three-tier pricing model has led to better sales and usage. Perhaps most importantly, is the fact that Apple still treats the Apple TV like a hobby product, without regular updates. This could be changing, however, as Apple confirmed $1 billion in content sales (including the hardware's $99 price tag) in the last year.

An interesting piece of information from NPD DisplaySearch's latest Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report shows that tablets actually saw a decline year-over-year in the Q1 2014, marking the first time the industry has seen a YoY decline.

56 million tablets were shipped for the quarter, and as a result, NPD dropped their annual forecast to 285 million from 315 million, a rather significant reduction.

"Tablet PC demand in 2014 is being impacted by falling demand for seven-inch-class sizes in emerging regions and in China, where many local white-box brands have experienced lower-than-expected shipment growth," noted Hisakazu Torii, vice president, smart application research at NPD DisplaySearch. "Most major brands have recently reduced their business plans for 2014. There is a risk that the replacement cycle for tablet PCs will lengthen beyond the one to two year range unless brands can develop more attractive usage scenarios."

The major reason cited for the drop was increasing competition from phablet smartphones that have screen sizes 5.5-inches or higher and can do everything a 7-inch tablet can, and usually more.

Tablet makers have begun moving towards 7.9-8.9-inch models to combat the effects, and also getting much larger with tablets equaling laptop sizes at over 12 inches, as well.

Earlier this year, following Federal Trade Commission (FTC) efforts, Apple was forced to look deeper into apps that would have allowed kids to make purchases without their parent's consent during a brief period.

With all new app purchases, including in-app for existing apps, iOS users now have to type in their password again no matter what, every time, an easy deterrent for children who do not know them.

Less than a week after the FTC went after Apple, the company had already turned on its biggest competitor, Google, pointing out articles that also criticized the Google Play Store of the same issue of potential unauthorized purchases.

Google had previously had a 30 minute window in which the password did not have to be re-entered, allowing kids to rack up hundreds of dollars in charges in a short period without express consent from their parents. Apple had a 15-minute window, and at the time the FTC said they received tens of thousands of complaints from parents who were reporting millions in unauthorized charges.

Apple refunded $32.5 million in total and closed the password window.

Massive satellite broadcaster Dish Network (DISH) has met with FCC officials in an effort to try to get the proposed Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger blocked.

The deal will "present serious competitive concerns for the broadband and video marketplaces and therefore should be denied," the TV provider writes in their FCC filing. In addition, "a combined Comcast-TWC will be able to exercise its enormous size to leverage programming content in anti-competitive ways," claims DISH.

In the past, large deals have been allowed when either one or both companies makes concessions (such as selling spectrum in a wireless deal), but DISH does not believe there are "any conditions that would remedy the harms that would result from the merger."

As a combined company, TWC and Comcast would be far and away the largest cable provider in the U.S., and it would be almost a monopoly in many places, including home run markets like New York City and Los Angeles.

One major concern is how the merged company could leverage their size in negotiating distribution deals with content suppliers. In addition, both companies are also ISPs and would have the ability to block out rival video services if they so choose.

Avast, the makers of security products for mobile and desktop devices, are claiming that Android's built-in factory reset option does a poor job of really deleting your personal information.

Potentially hundreds of millions of Android users have used the option to wipe their phone before selling it, donating it, or trading it in for a new upgrade, which leaves a scary amount of data out there.

The security firm purchased 20 used Android smartphones from eBay and was able to recover 40,000 photos (including 250 nude selfies of men and 750 of nude or partially nude women), 750 emails and texts, 250 contacts and even the identities of four of the owners.

Avast mobile division president Jude McColgan says the resets are only "at the application layer" while "users thought they were doing a clean wipe and factory reinstall" that should have removed all of their data from the disks. The company used easily accessible forensic tools and drive imaging programs like FTK Imager to recover the data.

In their report, the company added: "Although at first glance the phones appeared thoroughly erased, we quickly retrieved a lot of private data. In most cases, we got to the low-level analysis, which helped us recover SMS and chat messages." Of course, there are not too many people out there that would know to use drive imaging programs to recover wiped data from a phone they bought on eBay, but the implications are terrifying for those that do. Avast does recommend their own Mobile Security application with Anti-Theft app (for free) for those that want a more secure erase.

Microsoft has confirmed that the Kinect v2 for Windows will begin shipping on July 15th, with the motion control system now available for pre-order.

The device is available in Microsoft's UK and U.S. online stores with a price of $199/£159.

Microsoft had originally offered the Kinect only as part of their Xbox gaming consoles, and the Xbox One launched with it as a mandatory bundle. Only recently did the company move away from that policy, selling the console with Kinect for $100 less.

With a launch for Windows, the system's uses are multiplied although Microsoft says the unit does not have any software included and should be used with the Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0. There are only a few notable apps so far that have been designed for the system on Windows, but there are surely plenty more to come with the updated v2 model.

Pre-order the system here: Microsoft Store

In what is becoming standard procedure at this point, Adobe has issued a critical patch for its Flash software this week.

The update will patch a major security flaw that allowed attackers to exploit users of popular services including Twitter, Instagram, Amazon and eBay.

Flash version 14.0.0.145 is available for all major operating systems.

The flaw allowed hackers to steal cookies for authentications at thousands of major sites and services, and could also allow for remote access of an affected device. Most of the aforementioned sites have fixed the error on their own back end, but Adobe has marked the update as highly important and with the highest threat level.

Windows 8 users using Chome or IE will likely have already received the automatic update for the Flash Player and everyone else can manually download the patch.

Android Wear, the first true step into the future of smartwatches has arrived via the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live.

Companies as small as Pebble and as large as Samsung have tried their hands at smartwatches but so far there have been no winners in the industry. Pebble with its Pebble Steel, is the clear style winner, but the device itself lacks application support and a capable touch screen.

Samsung has built a number of watches, but has even had to change the operating system used to Tizen from Android almost a year after launch. That is almost unheard of, and personified one of the biggest issues with smartwatches: a lack of an ecosystem that could support them.

Google saw the problem and beat Apple to the punch with the launch of Android Wear, which is clearly a 1.0 product, but a strong start with good developer support.

We've tested the LG G Watch for a couple of days now and you can read on for our thoughts on the first device to run Android Wear.

According to the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel, Android continues to gain market share in the U.S., pulling away from iOS significantly as of the end of May 2014.

Android now has a dominant 61.9 percent of the U.S. market, ahead of Apple at 32.5 percent. The new level is a low for Apple, reaching a number not seen since before the iPhone 4s' launch in 2011.

Windows Phone continued its extremely slow growth, and now controls 3.8 percent of the market. BlackBerry has almost completely played itself out of the market, now at 1.3 percent. All other operating systems accounted for 0.6 percent share.

Outside of the U.S., Android's share is much higher, averaging over 85 percent in places like China, Brazil and Mexico, and over 75 percent in Italy and France. The only place in which iOS still has the lead is Japan, where Android controls 47 percent share of the nation.

Once famous actress Lindsay Lohan has sued Rockstar Games over a 'Grand Theft Auto V' character that she says was created in her likeness but without her permission.

In the game, the non playable character Lacey Jonas is a blond, young actress who needs help getting away from the paparazzi. Additionally, Lacey lives in the Gentry Manor, said to be based off the real-life Chateau Marmont, a place that Lindsay Lohan did indeed live in.

While the lawsuit is flimsy, Rockstar has been accused of ripping off Lohan's likeness: "[They] incorporated her image, likeness, clothing, outfits, [Lohan's] clothing line products, ensemble in the form of hats, hair style, sunglasses." Lacey Jonas also suffers from an eating disorder, which Lohan did fight in the past, as well.

Working against Lohan and the lawsuit is that fact the model Shelby Welinder was paid by Rockstar Games to have her likeness used for the game, and she has an invoice to prove it.

Rockstar made over $1 billion for the game, making over $800 million in its first week for the biggest entertainment launch of all-time.

Facebook Messenger is finally available, natively, for the iPad.

The app allows you to send text messages, audio messages and other media to your Facebook friends. Most notably, the service also allows you to make voice calls to other Messenger users right from within the app.

Facebook says the feature works over Wi-Fi and over 3G/4G, but the call will count against your data plan if you use cellular.

The social media giant is also looking to get some feedback about the feature, asking all users to rate the quality of the call after it's done. If you have the app installed on both your iPhone and iPad, the app will ring on both to make sure you don't miss it.

Shutterfly, the digital photo printing site, has hired boutique investment bank Qatalyst Partners LLC to help find buyers for the company.

Valued currently at just under $2 billion, the company is said to have potential suitors in the private equity world, as well as potentially from Web storage companies and larger e-commerce sites.

Shutterfly lets customers print their digital photos into real albums, or onto accessories like pillows, iPhone/iPad cases, posters and more. The site also offers greeting cards, invitations, stationery and acquired Kodak Gallery through the Eastman Kodak bankruptcy auction in 2012. The site allows for a Flickr-esque slideshow gallery.

Competition in the space has always been heated, with retailers like CVS and Walgreens offering their own rivals, as well as Snapfish, which is now owned by HP. In an effort to expand, the company has put profits on hold, seeing a loss of $34.2 million in the Q1 on $137 million in revenue. Revenues were up 17 percent year-over-year but the loss was 200 percent worse. The company is expected to see its first annual net loss in its public history this year.

Google has banned the advertisement of pornography on its ad network, specifying sites that contain "graphic sexual acts with intent to arouse including sex acts such as masturbation."

The search giant says it expects most advertisers have already looked into different venues to get their ads out, but those in the industry speak differently. AVN Media, one of the largest in the business, says it was caught by surprise, having used AdWords since 2002.

All those that could potentially be in violation were notified in June with an email:

"Beginning in the coming weeks, we'll no longer accept ads that promote graphic depictions of sexual acts including, but not limited to, hardcore pornography; graphic sexual acts including sex acts such as masturbation; genital, anal, and oral sexual activity.

When we make this change, Google will disapprove all ads and sites that are identified as being in violation of our revised policy. Our system identified your account as potentially affected by this policy change. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your ads and sites to comply so that your campaigns can continue to run."

Porn is one of the most common searches on Google, with the company confirming that searches for "sex," "porn," "free porn" and "porno" totaled 351 million for the month of May.

After being wildly profitable amid strong smartphone sales in 2011 and even in 2012, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC has fallen on some hard times of late, showing losses for the couple of quarters following a year of falling profits.

Thanks to the new One (M8) and some significant cost cutting, however, it appears the company has turned a corner, reporting a profitable Q2. The company had revenue of $2.17 billion and a small profit of $75 million. This compares favorably in revenue and profit year-over-year.

HTC has cut costs and increased marketing, and it seems the moves paid off with the One M8, which was well received by consumers and critics.

The company is also looking into wearables such as smartwatches, which could help growth into the future.

Microsoft has announced a cross-licensing pact with camera and imaging giant Canon, a deal that will affect "a broad range of products and services each company offers, including certain digital imaging and mobile consumer products."

The Redmond giant was quick to boast about their commitment to licensing and IP in general, unsurprising from a company that makes a cut of nearly every Android device that is sold despite not having anything to do with production.

Says the company: "The patent agreement is another example of the important role intellectual property (IP) plays in ensuring a healthy and vibrant technology ecosystem. Since Microsoft launched its IP licensing program in December 2003, the company has entered into more than 1,100 licensing agreements and continues to develop programs that open Microsoft's IP portfolio for customers, partners and competitors."

There is speculation that Microsoft will use the tech for Windows Phone cameras, enhancing the PureView tech seen in a few higher-end Lumias.

Prospective plasma TV buyers beware: Another major OEM is dropping out the market.

Samsung SDI has announced this week that it will be stopping all production on PDP (plasma display panels) by the end of November, marking the end of an era for the company.

As expected, the company cited declining profit margins and increasingly low demand for plasma TVs in general.

The company now says it will "concentrate its resources on growing its energy and materials businesses." In addition, SDI is expected to ramp up LED and 4K TV production, the latter of which is growing in popularity as prices fall.

From all the major OEMs, only LG now remains in the plasma business, as Sony, Sharp and now Samsung have all dropped out in the past years.

Pictures have surfaced on Chinese microblogging site Weibo that show off an unknown new Windows Phone 8.1 device.

The new device will be in addition to the previously rumored "Superman," "Rock" and "McLaren" smartphones expected before the end of the year.

Likely, the newly pictured "Lumia 830" will replace the mid-range Lumia 820 although the design will be different and include an aluminum frame with a polycarbonate back. Other sources claim the phone will be the Lumia 730 (codename Tesla).

On the rear, the camera is flat, implying Nokia will not be including the PureView 41MP sensor seen in other devices, but rather a more standard 8MP or 12MP shooter. The phone will also keep physical capacitive buttons despite the addition of on-screen virtual buttons with Windows Phone 8.1.

There is little else known about the specs of the upcoming device.

VR firm Oculus has begun shipping the Developer Kit 2 of its Rift headset to buyers, just a few months after the initial kits went out.

10,000 devices will be built this month, and Oculus says over half of the units will reach dev's mail boxes by the end of the month.

Over 45,000 consumers pre-ordered the DK2 at $350, and everyone is likely to receive their device by the end of September. The DK2 is the final model before the company releases a consumer version of the Rift next year. Says the company: "We're now over 45,000 DK2 pre-orders, which is incredibly exciting. That said, we're slightly behind in manufacturing and there's currently a high chance that some developers with estimated shipping in July may not have their DK2s shipped until August. We have a team in China working on continued ramp of production at our factory, and we'll work our way through the queue as fast as we can."

As an upgrade to the previous kit, the DK2 now has a 1080p OLED display, a huge improvement on the 720p resolution of the previous model. Additionally, the device comes with a tracking camera that allows for real-time incorporation of your head movements to make the VR experience more natural. The tracking should also reduce blurring and motion sickness, which is a huge positive for consumers.

Microsoft has seemingly put out an endless amount of updates for its Xbox One and Xbox One controller in the past few months and now the company wants to give its gamers a better chance to contribute to the process.

Those in the preview program will now be able to provide feedback on new features they have tested, either through a poll, a quick star-rating and a survey.

Additionally, the quest system that allows previewers to test ongoing tweaks to the console's live-TV setup, will also snap your achievements and will track all of your stats for a yet unknown reason in the future.

Finally, Microsoft has added an option to invite friends to the program, although it it unclear how many gamers will be able to join.

Although there are currently no cars that have Apple's CarPlay support built in, the tech giant has added even more partners to the list.

Apple has added Mazda and most of the Fiat Chrysler group, as well including: Abarth, Alfa Romeo, Chrysler, Dodge, Fiat, Jeep, and Ram. The car manufacturers will all integrate the operating system into their vehicles starting at the beginning of 2015.

Among the company's existing partners are Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, BMW, Ford, Hyundai, GM, and Honda, all of which will have at least one compatible vehicle before the end of 2014.

If you are not in the market for a new car, Alpine and Pioneer are also adding CarPlay support to their consoles, allowing for existing car owners to add the dashboard tech.

iPhone 5, 5C and 5S users can use CarPlay to control phone calls, use Maps, play their music, and have messages dictated to them. When released, cars will have a native CarPlay interface or you can choose to activate Siri from a new voice control button on the steering wheel.

Thanks to a new report, it looks like we have a full spec sheet for the yet unannounced Galaxy Mega 2 (SM-G7508).

The specs come via the GFXBench database, which also highlights the 3D graphic abilities of the device.

Originally marketed as a mid-range device with a massive screen, the original Mega was somewhat popular due to its 6.3-inch (practically a tablet) sized display. The new Mega 2 will have a smaller 5.9-inch device with 720p resolution, but be powered by Qualcomm's new 64-bit Snapdragon 410 quad-core processor at 1.2GHz and 2GB RAM. Graphics are powered by an Adreno 306 GPU. There is only 8GB internal storage, but there is likely a MicroSD slot allowing for expansion.

The device will also ship with Android 4.4.3 KitKat, use the Samsung Touchwiz UI, and should be upgradeable to Android L in the future.

OUYA, the Android gaming set-top box that failed to gain any traction outside of Kickstarter, has started a new annual pass give gamers access to the a nice library of games.

The All-Access Pass costs $60 per year and will give you access to all of the games on OUYA, but there of course some major restrictions to this all-you-can-eat model.

In the finer print, the pass stipulates that all games you can play must have been originally priced at $30 or less. Additionally, all games are not simply available like they would be in Netflix or similar services, you still have to "buy" them at a price of $0.00 by looking through the catalog and selecting each game. All in-game purchases do not have their prices discounted.

The new Pass is available for a limited time only as OUYA continues to test new models to stay afloat.

Recently, the company discussed creating an OUYA SDK for use on set-top boxes by OEMs and also on HDTVs. So far there have not been any major developments on that front.

Source:
Engadget

The VAIO PC brand has returned.

Earlier this year, Sony agreed to sell the brand as it continues to focus on core products including gaming, smartphones and tablets. The willing buyer was investment fund Japan Industrial Partners. The fund specializes in acquiring assets from companies that are looking to shed unwanted or poor performing divisions to help cut costs.

As promised, the deal has closed as of July 1st, and the fund is already selling two new VAIO laptops, the Fit and Pro, both for sale in Japan.

The devices are still available through Sony's online store, although it does not have Sony branding any longer. Sony is a five percent owner of the new VAIO Corp.

Check the products here: VAIO

A couple of weeks after it was reported that Google had offered $15 million for curated playlist streaming music service Songza, the deal is now official.

Reads Songza's email to customers (myself included): "Great news: today Songza is officially joining Google. We can't think of a more inspiring company to be part of in our quest to provide the perfect soundtrack for everything you do. Read more about it on Songza Daily.

You can absolutely keep using Songza as usual (we aren't planning any immediate changes -- other than making Songza faster, smarter, and even more fun to use)."

The six-year old startup has 5.5 million active users, and an acquisition will certainly help Google's playlist features for Google Play Music All-Access. Those features have been lacking since the service's full launch last year. Terms for the new deal were not disclosed.

Songza is popular due to its large offering of curated playlists. Besides time of day, mood and weather, the service can also build work out mixes, mixes for being at work in an office, music for listening in the shower, and everything in between.

The Chinese government, just a month after banning Windows 8 on its employee's computers, has continued the trend, this time banning the Office productivity suite.

Employees have been asked to use alternative (mainly Chinese-based) suites, such as the popular and free Kingsoft Office.

Microsoft was shocked when it was revealed that China was banning the latest Windows, but the company has been promoting Windows 7 in the nation, and has ongoing discussions with officials to get the operating system reinstated in the nation. China has branded Windows 8 a threat to national security.

It has been suggested that Chinese officials were not fond of Microsoft cutting update support to Windows XP, which despite being 13 years old, is still used on over 40 percent of Chinese computers. In fact, the Chinese government only relatively recently ensured that all official computers were running genuine Windows XP, after a long fight with piracy.

Regardless, the fight is getting dirty now, and Microsoft cannot be happy with their cash cows being banned in a nation with over 1 billion computers.

Samsung, the unequivocal king of the Android world, has released its best tablets to date, the Galaxy Tab S line, hoping to strike directly at the Apple Air and iPad Mini with Retina.

Over time, Samsung has pumped out tablet after tablet, all with confusingly similar names and features, and in fact, the Galaxy Tab S is the eleventh tablet from the company in 2014 alone. Each tablet iteration has seen minor technical improvements, and a thinner or lighter design, but so far there is no "killer" model that has been as popular as even the worst selling iPad.

With its Galaxy S Tab, the 10.5-inch model (which we have been using for the past week), is definitely the best the company has ever released, and it compares favorably as the best Android tablet of all-time at its size with the Nexus 10, although the latter is already a year old and its specs cannot compete.

The new tablet has some "killer" hardware features, most notably its display and form factor and its proprietary software is less bloat than it used to be. Read on to get the full review on Samsung's latest.