News written by James Delahunty (January, 2014)

Civil and digital rights activists are targeting February 11 as 'the day we fight back' against widespread state surveillance, using the life, work and words of Aaron Swartz as motivation.

It's over a year now since Aaron Swartz took his own life while being prosecuted for the alleged theft of millions of documents from MIT and JSTOR. The 26 year old had given a considerable amount of his time to digital rights and confronting government attempts to infringe too heavily on the free and open Internet.

Swartz gained a lot of respect from his efforts against the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), which was shelved after a global protest against its proposed measures to tackle Internet piracy. His life and work are now the subject of an upcoming documentary called, "The Internet's Own Boy."

Now, just after the anniversary of his untimely death, Internet activists are fired up to make the next month count, and culminate it with an Internet-wide protest on February 11 similar to the protests that shocked the U.S. congress into turning against the controversial SOPA act. This time the target is on the NSA and its activities.

For more information, check out thedaywefightback.org

A U.S. federal judge has blocked Apple's attempt to have antitrust monitor, Michael Bromwich, removed from position.

Apple was found to have conspired to fix e-book prices after a length investigation by the U.S. government which also included settlements from major publishers who were also involved.

U.S. District Judge Denise Cote in Manhattan appointed Michael Bromiwch as an antitrust monitor in October, 2013. Since then, Apple made several complaints about Bromwich. First, it complained that Bromwich was aggressively trying to interview top execs at the company in November, despite his mandate calling for him to review Apple's antitrust policies after 90 days. The iPhone-maker also objected to the $1,100 per hour fee.

Bromwich filed a declaration disputing Apple's claims and detailing difficulties in getting cooperation from the company, prompting Apple to claim he had a personal bias against it. The Justice Department has accused Apple of carrying out a campaign of character assassination against Bromwich.

If that's the case, it hasn't yet been successful as Judge Cote denied Apple's move, saying she wanted the monitorship to work for Apple, which now has an option to appeal.

UK broadcaster Channel 4 has decided to pull its full length programming from YouTube, directing users to its own 4oD catch-up services instead.

Back in 2009, Channel 4 and YouTube announced a partnership that would put the content from its 4oD catch up service on YouTube, hailing it as the first time that a broadcaster had made a comprehensive catch-up schedule available through the service.

Fast forward to 2014 and Channel 4 has had a change of heart.

"As a not-for-profit broadcaster funded by advertising, we put our money back into the programmes themselves," a statement reads when users try to watch full-length programming on YouTube.

"To make the best of this investment, we've decided to focus on bringing online viewers of our full-length shows to our own 4oD apps - such as those on iOS, Android and channel4.com. These apps also allow us to encourage more viewing by recommending programmes we think people will appreciate and to provide viewers with additional services."

Channel 4 will still upload trailers, clips, interviews and other short-length content to YouTube.

'If it was any more real, it would be real,' claims a new strange ad for Xbox One from Microsoft.

The new advert shows a man washing his face in the bathroom, while having strange flashbacks of Xbox One gameplay and seeing wounds acquired in virtual battles momentarily become real on his body.

The message is easy to get; the Xbox One is so real, that if it were any more real, it would be real - yes, that's actually how the ad puts it.

There was a recent study - though controversial over its use of forum users as subjects - that linked extended gameplay with hallucinations of sorts, so maybe it's not the best time to be showing something like that in an ad. Either way, the ad is strange enough to get people to write about it, so it works.

Check it out.

The U.S. Supreme Court will not re-examine the ruling of an appeals court in favor of Newegg that found its Internet shopping cart system did not violate patents held by Soverain.

Soverain Software LLC holds patents related to the "shopping cart" checkout method in use on many e-commerce websites, including Newegg. It filed lawsuits against a long list of companies who use this familiar system for facilitating a virtual online point of exchange.

In a case filed against Newegg, Soverain was successful in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, but after Newegg sppealed, it lost in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit.

The appeals court sided with Newegg on the grounds that the three patents in question referenced an obvious method of transaction.

"Petitioner's notorious 'shopping cart' patent merely applies the common sense concept of a shopping cart to the Internet," Newegg argued in a filing with the Supreme Court.

The top court in the U.S. must have agreed because it decided not to review the case.

"The witch is dead, hurray," Lee Cheng, chief legal office for Newegg, said.

Google has announced that it has entered into an agreement to buy Nest Labs, Inc. for $3.2 billion in cash.

Nest Labs specializes in reinventing common household items in clever ways. It's Nest Learning Thermostat has been a best seller and its recently released Protect smoke and carbon monoxide alarm launched to considerable acclaim and attention.

"Nest's founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, have built a tremendous team that we are excited to welcome into the Google family. They're already delivering amazing products you can buy right now--thermostats that save energy and smoke/CO alarms that can help keep your family safe. We are excited to bring great experiences to more homes in more countries and fulfill their dreams," said Larry Page, CEO of Google.

Those founders, Tony Fadell and Matt Rogers, both worked on the iPod at Apple in their past, and you can even get the Thermostat at Apple stores.

On its official blog, Nest said that it will continue to operate as a separate company under Google's ownership, and that of course, iOS devices will still be able to interact with Nest products.

"We're thrilled to join Google. With their support, Nest will be even better placed to build simple, thoughtful devices that make life easier at home, and that have a positive impact on the world," Tony Fadell, CEO of Nest, said.

BioShock Infinite will be available free to PlayStation Plus subscribers from tomorrow, and Sony is launching its 14 for '14 set of discounts for PS3 and PS Vita games.

The critically-acclaimed chapter in the BioShock franchise will be available free to PS Plus subscribers on PlayStation 3 (PS3) through Instant Game Collection from tomorrow. The game typically sells for $40 in the PlayStation Store.

In addition, Sony announced that the 14 for '14 Sale starts tomorrow offering huge discounts on selected PS3 and PlayStation Vita titles.

"Starting tomorrow, January 14th, and running through January 20th, we've got a sweet lineup of 14 PS3 games and 14 PS Vita games on sale," Sony announced via the PlayStation Blog.

For PS Plus subscribers, discounts are as high as 75 percent off - here's the details.

SimCity players who were bugged about the requirement to keep a constant-on Internet connection to play single player games will be happy to hear that will soon change.

The upcoming Update 10 will make it possible to play SimCity offline, it has been announced. "When we launch it, all of your previously downloaded content will be available to you anytime, anywhere, without the need for an internet connection," said Patrick Buechner, General Manager of the Maxis Emeryville studio.

"We are in the late phases of wrapping up its development and while we want to get it into your hands as soon as possible, our priority is to make sure that it's as polished as possible before we release it."

Your saved games in Single Player Mode are stored locally, so you can save and load to your heart's content.

Buechner noted that the update is also good news for the community of Modders.

"They can now make modifications to the game and its components without compromising the integrity of the Online game," he said.

The launch of SimCity last year was marred by server problems that made playing the game impossible for many players.

A U.S. court has found that users who posted anonymous negative reviews of a carpet cleaning business should be identified.

The users posted negative reviews about Hadeed Carpet Cleaning - owned by complainant Joe Hadeed - to the Yelp service, which enables consumers to post reviews of local businesses and counts 47 million reviews over the past decade.

Mr Hadeed argues that seven negative reviewers had never used his service, and so their anonymity should not be protected. The Virginia court found that Hadeen provided sufficient reason for it to think that the reviewers may never have used the carpet-cleaning service.

"Generally, a Yelp review is entitled to First Amendment protection because it is a person's opinion about a business that they patronised," the Judge said in a statement, reports the BBC.

"If the reviewer was never a customer of the business, then the review is not an opinion; instead the review is based on a false statement."

If the review is based on a false statement, then the reviewer is not protected by the First Amendment, according to the Judge.

Yelp strongly disagrees with the court's ruling. "We are disappointed that the Virginia Court of Appeals has issued a ruling that fails to adequately protect free speech rights on the internet, and which allows businesses to seek personal details about website users -- without any evidence of wrongdoing -- in efforts to silence online critics," said Vince Sollitto, a spokesman for Yelp.

China is lifting its 13 year ban on gaming consoles in the region, but is writing new rules that consoles and content need to abide by to be sold in the market.

The news that China was lifting its ban on game consoles - enacted in the year 2000 - will undoubtedly have grabbed the attention of Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony, as it may give them access to a $10 billion market dominated by PC games and mobile gaming.

However, you have to remember this is China we're talking about, so there's likely to be strings. Cai Wu, who heads up China's Ministry of Culture, said at a press conference that the government body is drafting new rules on video game consoles that will be sold in the Shanghai free-trade zone.

"Things that are hostile to China, or not in conformity with the outlook of China's government, won't be allowed," Cai said, reports Bloomberg, which attended the Beijing press conference.

"We want to open the window a crack to get some fresh air, but we still need a screen to block the flies and mosquitoes."

Consoles have long been made in China and sold in the rest of the world due to the lower production costs in the country, but Chinese citizens were not allowed to own one. Consoles were still sold in China though through the country's considerable black markets.

Microsoft's official blog on its Technet website, and two of its Twitter feeds were compromised by the Syrian Electronic Army over the weekend.

Messages were posted to the blog and to the Twitter accounts informing users to avoid using Microsoft services. The two Twitter accounts in question were the @MSFTnews and @XboxSupport accounts, which Microsoft shut down for "maintenance".

It has since said the accounts were temporarily affected but that no customer information had been stolen or leaked in any attack.

The SEA group - which frequently posts messages in support of Bashar al-Assad - apparently have relied on phishing attacks in the past to get login credentials from targets within media organizations, such as the Washington Post, the BBC, AP, Skype, the New York Times, the Guardian, the Financial Times and Reuters.

In a separate incident over the weekend, the MIT website was compromised for about an hour by group claiming to be Anonymous. The homepage redirected users to a page about web surveillance. It appeared to be timed with the one-year anniversary of the death of Aaron Swartz, who committed suicide on January 11 2013 in the middle of an aggressive prosecution campaign against him for allegedly downloading millions of academic articles from a database run out of MIT.

According to a report, three more well-known U.S. retailers suffered cyber attacks and data breaches over the holidays.

U.S. retailers Target and Neiman Marcus already disclosed data breaches that hit them during the holiday season last year. In Target's case, as many as 110 million people may have been affected by the data breaches which included some credit card information, but mostly other personal information such as names, e-mail addresses and so on.

Now, a Reuters report cites sources saying that three more U.S. retailers suffered similar attacks over the holidays or earlier in the year, but these have not been made public yet. The sources did not identify which retailers were hacked, only to say they had outlets in malls and are well known.

The attacks are believed to originate in Eastern Europe, and may be linked. Stolen credit card information can be used to make counterfeit cards, while other personal information can be used in phishing attacks against victims or identity theft.

A blog that displays and details source code shown on screen in TV Shows and movies is gaining considerable attention.

Have you ever watched a TV show or a movie that used either science- or techno-jargon too liberally as part of its plot? This could probably apply to a lot of Sci-Fi shows and movies, where the characters have gotten themselves into a spot of bother, only to have their sharp intellect and admirable knowledge of physics or whatever it may be, come to the rescue.

Quite often we are treated to a Chopra-like avalanche of sciency-sounding words which lead to a conclusion. The sciency stuff is not supposed to matter, it is not supposed to be scrutinized, all you should care about as the viewer is what it enables the characters to do. That can be difficult if you have even the slightest bit of knowledge in a field potentially being butchered on screen, so you have to work that little bit harder to suspend your disbelief.

When it comes to physics and other science stuff though, sometimes we can chalk it up to the story being set in the future when we know more about the nature of reality and can exploit the natural world that little bit more efficiently.

A Netflix show has just claimed its first Golden Globe award, further cementing the provider's ability to produce content on par with shows made for TV.

The Golden Globe went to Robin Wright for Best Actress in a TV Drama for her work in House of Cards. Wright plays Claire Underwood, wife of Kevin Spacey's Francis Underwood, in the drama that covers Francis' revenge on those who betrayed him when he was stepped over for the position of Secretary of State.

House of Cards was also nominated for nine Emmy Awards last September, of which it won three, making Netflix the first company to win the awards for shows only available online.

Turning to producing its own content for exclusive streaming on Netflix was a natural move for the company, but still considerably risky. Services like Netflix find themselves, in many ways, at the mercy of content providers and broadcasters as they seek to license shows for customers to watch. Such fees could eat away at revenue and could increase when it comes time to renew deals.

By taking the role as content producer as well, Netflix can avoid such problems, but still has to invest considerable resources to have the shows produced, as well as the cost of featuring stars.

A photo allegedly showing another view of the prototype Nokia smartphone running Android has surfaced.

It emerged late last year that Nokia had been testing an Android prototype device in case it was unsuccessful with Windows Phone smartphones. Of course, when Microsoft announced it was to acquire Nokia's phone business, such a prototype likely lost any chance of ever coming to fruition.

Still, details and some photos have previously leaked allegedly showing Nokia's prototype design, and here is another one that surfaced from a microblog in China.

@evleaks the engineering prototype of Nokia Normandy http://t.co/zHS3OGdtC6 pic.twitter.com/jXgkLuCKVc

-- sea (@seamissu) January 12, 2014

According to a report, Microsoft's upcoming 'Threshold' will be shipped as 'Windows 9' in April 2015.

That's according to Paul Thurrott's Supersite for Windows, which has previously disclosed information about a major revamp at Microsoft called 'Threshold'.

Microsoft is currently working on Update 1 for Windows 8.1, and on Windows Phone 8.1, but apparently is quite eager to get the "Windows 8" generation well and truly over. According to Thurrott, Microsoft will reveal its plans publicly for the next major Windows version (codename Threshold) at BUILD 2014 this April, which Microsoft will brand as "Windows 9."

At BUILD, Microsoft will provide its vision for the next generation of Windows, scaling back the secrecy of the Sinofsky era. There will be no alpha builds of the operating system though as it won't even enter development until that month.

Within the next year, before BUILD 2015, Microsoft will deliver three milestones of the operating system before final release (betas, release candidate and so forth.) Threshold will reportedly fix the Metro design language used by Windows, which may include a rumored Windowed mode that works on the Destkop as well.

A nationwide probe has been launched in the United States involving more than 30 states, examining the data breach that affected tens of millions of Target customers.

Target had originally revealed that card details of more than 40 million had been stolen in a data breach during the busy holiday period. It then confirmed earlier this week that as many as 70 million guest users had also had their personal information compromised to some degree.

"A breach of this magnitude is extremely disconcerting and we are participating in a multi-state investigation to discover the circumstances that led to this breach," Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said.

The stolen credit card details could be used to make false magnetic strip credit cards, security experts have warned. Other personal information can also be used in phishing attacks.

Pizza Hut has said that Xbox Live gamers bought over a million dollars worth of pizzas from its Xbox Live apps in four months.

The Pizza Hut app on Xbox Live launched in April of last year, featuring the chain's menu and also supporting Kinect and voice commands for customers to customize their own pizzas.

"It's been a source of unbelievable growth for us," Pizza Hut director of public relations Doug Terfehr told Polygon.

"Just the explosion of people who wanted to download it, experiment with it, play with it with Kinect. As soon as we did one, everyone was contacting us to do the next [one]."

Terfehr said that Pizza Hut is certainly not done in the space, but did not elaborate on whether the chain plans to bring apps to other gaming platforms.

Samsung's executive VP of its visual display business HS Kim believes affordable OLED TVs are still several years away, but is optimistic on the transition to UHD.

Samsung and LG were the only two companies to sell OLED televisions in 2013, but with prices starting from around $9,000. OLED televisions make good impressions on reviewers but they are priced far out of the wider market that Samsung has dominated for years.

"Not many consumers tried to purchase OLED TVs at that price," Kim said. "Price was our greatest barrier. So our attempt to expand the market didn't really go well. I'm really, really terribly sorry to say this, but it will take more time. ... I believe it will take around three to four years."

Just a year ago, Kim had predicted it would take 2-3 years to make mass market OLED televisions, but there are difficulties plaguing the manufacturing process of OLED TVs.

Kim believes that the transition to Ultra-HD content will happen much faster than the transition to High-definition did nearly a decade ago. Content providers have made intentions clear to start offering 4K this year, with companies like Netflix in a prime position to benefit from the change.

GameStop has said it wants to sell PlayStation Now services to its customers, despite the launch of the PlayStation Now posing some questions about the future of its business model.

Right after Sony detailed PlayStation Now at the Consumer Electronics Show, shares in the GameSpot claim plummeted around 9 percent. Sony intends to to stream back-catalogue games from the cloud to customers either as individual digital rentals, or through a subscription service.

A beta for the service launches this month, starting with Sony's PlayStation 3 and PlayStation 4 consoles. Support for PSVita, Bravia TVs and other devices will come later.

"GameStop has built a $600MM digital business, with most of the digital games sold through our stores. Similar to how we worked closely with our partner Sony to successfully sell the PlayStation Plus service, we are looking forward to working with them on including the new PlayStation Now service as part of our portfolio of gaming products we offer our customers," a representative for the company told GameSpot.

A U.S. appeals court has said that Apple does not infringe patents held by Google's Motorola Mobility in the production of its iPhone smartphones.

It upheld a decision made by the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) in April, 2013. The case stems back to a 2010 complaint from Motorola that Apple's technology infringes six patents held by the firm, but the ITC found that Apple violates none of the six.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit only examined one of the six in the appeal, and sided with Apple and the ITC.

"We're disappointed in this decision and are evaluating our options," Motorola said in a statement.

The U.S. Supreme Court will review broadcasters case against Aereo, which transmits broadcast TV signals to Internet-connected devices.

Thus far, Aereo has survived in its legal tussle with U.S. broadcasters. The service uses tiny dime-sized antennas to pick up broadcast signals. It then allows users to sign up and use those antennas to watch broadcast TV from any support device, and also offers DVR functionality.

Broadcasters, including Fox, Comcast, CBS, ABC and Disney, have argued that Aereo violates copyright law by broadcasting signals without paying fees.

Aereo also urged the Supreme Court to review the case as it seeks legal clarity to move ahead with plans to expand its service to new areas.

The court will hear arguments from both sides in April and make a decision by July.

Samsung has responded to a previous report that some of its smartphones are affected by serious security vulnerabilities.

The initial report claimed the discovery of serious security vulnerabilities in the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone, and other models made by the Korean firm that run its KNOX security software, that could allow attackers to intercept data sent to and from Samsung devices.

Samsung now claims that the research details a classic Man in the Middle attack, and does not identify a flaw in its KNOX system.

After discussing the research with the original researchers, Samsung has verified that the exploit uses legitimate Android network functions in an unintended way to intercept unencrypted network connections from/to applications on the mobile device. This research did not identify a flaw or bug in Samsung KNOX or Android; it demonstrated a classic Man in the Middle (MitM) attack, which is possible at any point on the network to see unencrypted application data. The research specifically showed this is also possible via a user-installed program, reaffirming the importance of encrypting application data before sending it to the Internet. Android development practices encourage that this be done by each application using SSL/TLS. Where that's not possible (for example, to support standards-based unencrypted protocols, such as HTTP), Android provides built-in VPN and support for third-party VPN solutions to protect data. Use of either of those standard security technologies would have prevented an attack based on a user-installed local application.

Target has revealed that guest visitors to its service were also affected by the previously disclosed security breaches.

This theft is not a new breach, but was uncovered as part of the ongoing investigation. At this time, the investigation has determined that the stolen information includes names, mailing addresses, phone numbers or email addresses for up to 70 million individuals.

These are separate from the payment card data previously disclosed by the retailer.

The data stolen is partial in nature, but in cases where Target has an e-mail address it will attempt to contact those affected.

"I know that it is frustrating for our guests to learn that this information was taken and we are truly sorry they are having to endure this," said Gregg Steinhafel, chairman, president and chief executive officer, Target.

"I also want our guests to know that understanding and sharing the facts related to this incident is important to me and the entire Target team."

Target is offering one year of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection to all guests who shopped its U.S. stores.

More Information: target.com/databreach

IBM has announced that it will invest $1 billion in a new Watson supercomputing division to exploit its abilities.

Watson is famous for wiping the floor with its human opponents on the U.S. TV quiz show Jeopardy in 2011, displaying its ability interpret natural language, mine massive amounts of information very quickly and respond in natural language.

It did so by rampaging through 200 million pages of stored information (including the entire of Wikipedia), identifying possible answers and providing the one with the highest probability.

Since Jeopardy, Watson went on to be used for utilization management decisions in lung cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center.

IBM believes there are more commercial and scientific uses for Watson's abilities and so will invest $1 billion creating a division for it.

"I think [IBM has] developed something that takes us to the next step where information management needs to go," said Gartner researcher, Jamie Popkin.

Google has been fined €150,000 by a French watchdog after it ignored a three month ultimatum to bring its privacy policies in line with French law.

The dispute stems back to a March 2012 decision by Google to consolidate dozens of privacy policies across its web services into one policy that covers all its services, such as GMail, YouTube and Google+. It would combine its data collection and storage practices on its users across all services.

This immediately got the attention of consumer and privacy watchdogs around the world, particularly in Europe, as Google gave its users no choice to opt out of the change.

France's CNIL eventually ordered Google to change its practices to reflect the law in France, but Google apparently ignored the order, prompting the €150,000 fine. CNIL also ordered Google to display its ruling on its French homepage for a 48 hour period within 8 days of being informed.

"The company does not sufficiently inform its users of the conditions in which their personal data are processed, nor of the purposes of this processing," CNIL said in a statement.

Malicious advertisements that made their way onto Yahoo's mainpage may have turned millions of PCs into Bitcoin mining slaves.

Yahoo admitted that for a four day period, the malicious advertisements had managed to get onto its mainpage, putting its users in Europe at risk. Users in the United States, Asia and Latin America escaped the attack, but Dutch cybersecurity firm estimates as many as 27,000 infections were caused every hour.

"From December 31 to January 3 on our European sites, we served some advertisements that did not meet our editorial guidelines - specifically, they spread malware," a statement from Yahoo read.

For those affected, the attack essentially turned the infected machine into a Bitcoin mining bot for the attackers. This would affect the performance of the computer, and also use more electricity / battery charge.

Such Bitcoin mining botnets - or bitnets - are becoming more common as cybercriminals exploit the value of the creation process of Bitcoin currency and its real-world value to generate revenue.

Amazon will stream episodes of CBS' upcoming Spielberg-produced science fiction drama Extant four days after their air.

It will stream the new TV show episodes through its Prime Instant Video on Kindle and on game consoles, free to subscribers of the service, mirroring a similar deal it has with PBS for Downton Abbey.

Extant is a new science fiction drama that will air on CBS. It claims Steven Spielberg as executive producer and will star Halle Berry as Molly, a female astronaut who returns home to her family after spending a year in space.

CBS places a 13-episode straight-to-series order in August 2013. It will debut this summer.

Samsung intends to release the Galaxy S5 smartphone by April with significant design improvements, and is also studying the use of eye-scanning technology.

Samsung executive Lee Young Hee told Bloomberg that the South Korean firm is aware that its customers didn't notice much of a difference - in terms of design - between the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4 smartphones, but that there will be considerable changes for the Galaxy S5's design.

"When we moved to S4 from S3, it's partly true that consumers couldn't really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market reaction wasn't as big," she said.

"For the S5, we will go back to the basics. Mostly, it's about the display and the feel of the cover."

Of course, working on the cover and display will only get you so far in this highly competitive business, and given that the launch of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c appeared to cut into the Galaxy S4, the next Samsung flagship smartphone will have to find other ways to differentiate.

One area could be the use of an eye-scanner in Samsung's high-end devices.

The chief executives of Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics have agreed to attend a mediation session in the coming weeks as they prepare to go to trial in a patent row.

The meeting will take place sometime between now and February 19, with only in-house lawyers accompanying Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Legal teams for both consumer electronics firms reportedly met on January 6 to discuss settlement opportunities.

The mediation agreement comes ahead of a trial showdown in March over Apple's claims that Samsung infringed its patents in the design of its Galaxy-branded mobile devices.

U.S. juries have so far awarded Apple around $930 million in damages in previous trials between the two.

The upcoming Halo TV show will not be 'filler' and will be 'done the right way', Microsoft's Phil Spencer has assured fans of the popular franchise.

The show is in production at the Xbox Entertainment Studios and will be produced by Steven Spielberg, but Microsoft is not expanding the popular franchise to new media just to do it. That's according to Microsoft Studios VP Phil Spencer, who insists it will not be 'filler'.

"I definitely don't think of it as filler. Halo, you could argue, is the most important entertainment IP that Microsoft owns," Spencer said to OXM.

"I can't use the word filler anywhere near Halo, it just won't work. If we're going to do a television series with Halo, we're going to do it the right way, and we're going to do it because we think it really matters."

Spencer referred the Walking Dead series as an example of a successful IP across media.

"I'm a big Walking Dead fan. I've read the comics and graphic novels; the IP has grown and became more accessible as it hit TV, then went to video games where it did incredibly well, and I think that strategy of growing and deepening what the franchise and IP is about is a good strategy for an IP holder," he said.

Shares in retailer GameStop fell 9 percent earlier this week as Sony detailed its new PlayStation Now game streaming/rental service at CES.

It would appear investors are cooling to GameStop as Sony offers customers a way to stream older PlayStation games to their PS4 and other devices. Customers will use PlayStation Now as a rental service either on a game by game basis, or through a subscription package.

The service is powered by Gaikai, which was acquired by Sony for $380 million in mid-2012.

PlayStation Now and similar services could affect GameStop's business if it reduces the number of customers shopping for games from previous generations. Of course, PlayStation Now and other streaming services still face limitations in the form of high-speed Internet availability for seamless gameplay.

Just under three years ago, GameStop acquired Spawn Labs' streaming service, which is being worked on by the retailers' R&D department.

Sky, an Internet provider in the UK, has tweaked its pornography filter to allow access to the TorrentFreak news website.

It emerged that TorrentFreak was blocked from subscribers of Sky Internet services if the ISP's pornography filter was enabled. By default, all new Sky customers have to opt out, rather than opt in to the pornography censorship program.

While these blocks - mandated by the UK government - are intended to protect children from stumbling across pornographic content, they also have the side effect of blocking file sharing websites. TorrentFreak presents a lot of news around the legal and technical issues of file sharing services, and in the past has published content objecting to censorship. Somehow, this non-erotic source was included in Sky's porn filter.

That's not much of a surprise however, as past examples of unintended blocking included sites that offer sex education content, and even rape victim support sources.

"The categorisation of torrentfreak.com has now been updated so that the site will no longer be filtered by Sky Broadband Shield," the firm told the BBC.

A virtual currency has launched early despite a legal threat sent from a representative of the artist Kanye West.

Originally called Coinye West, the new virtual currency decided to change its name to CoinyeCoin after a lawyer of Kanye West sent a cease and desist letter. In the letter, Kanye's lawyer claimed that consumers are likely to mistakenly believe that Mr West is the source of the service.

It was due to launch on Saturday, but has instead begun operations now and from a domain name registered in India after switching from a US-Based domain provider.

The virtual currency can now be mined using software that can be downloaded from the website at coinyeco.in.

"We want to release this to the public before the man can try to crush it," the Wall Street Journal reported one of the developers as saying. "They'll still come after us, but that's OK."

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has joined the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), it has been announced.

As a member, the MPAA will be represented on the advisory committee and be a part of the standards review process, gaining access to W3C materials before public release. Needless to say this announcement - made via Twitter - raises more than a few eyebrows.

The W3C is one of the most respected organizations in the tech universe, and for good reason. It is considered - and behaves as - the international standards organization for the World Wide Web. It counts not far from 400 members, and is led by founder Tim Berners-Lee, who is often described as the inventor of the World Wide Web which are you using now.

W3C standards are vitally important because they are adhered to by browser/application developers and acknowledged in the design of most of the world's web services. If you think about the most problematic elements of your WWW experience, they typically are associated with web sources that stray from W3C standards to add additional functionality or usability, such as sites that use Adobe's proprietary Flash plug-in to operator correctly.

Vizio has unveiled its first P-Series Ultra HD TVs, starting at just $1,000 for a 50-inch LED-backlit set.

Vizio has unveiled its beautiful new range of Ultra HD TVs. The new P-Series Ultra HD Full-Array LED Smart TV collection starts at $999.99 for a 50-inch set, and ranges to $2,5999.99 for a 70-inch set.

All P-Series TVs features a backlight that consists of 64 Active LED Zones, fine-tuned to the smallest detail with Active Pixel Tuning technology. The result is Dynamic Contrast Ratios up to 50,000,000:1. For Ultra HD (4K) video content, P-Series TVs pack a dedicated VM50 motion and picture-processing engine that renders every image with incredible detail and the latest HDMI standard for display of Ultra HD content up to 60fps.

The P-Series are Smart TVs with a wide range of apps and features, powered by a new V6 processor which combines a quad-core GPU and a dual-core CPU. For connection to the web, all of the models features 802.11ac Wi-Fi support.

Since 4K content is likely to be delivered primarily from web streaming sources, each P-Series model has a HEVC (H.265) codec built-in, which can be used by Ultra HD-enabled apps like Netflix.

Controlling the Smart TV can be done using a backlit QWERTY keyboard remote, or some apps can be controlled using Android and Apple iOS smartphones and tablets when the TV and device are on the same WiFi network. YouTube and Netflix provide initial support for this "second screen" control, where you can use your mobile device to select content to play on screen.

Sony has revealed that as of December 28, 2013, it had sold 4.2 million PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles.

That represents a very encouraging early result for Sony, which has a long-stated goal of selling five million PS4s by the end of its current financial year, ending March.

By contrast, Microsoft sold 3 million Xbox One consoles before the end of December. The PlayStation 4 (PS4) launched two weeks before the Xbox One in North America though.

Sony sold over a million PS4s on day one, and saw that figure rise to 2.1 million by early December. Strong holiday demand doubled the tally by December 28.

The figures were revealed by Andrew House, President and Group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment, at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas.

Apple's App Store has an incredible year in 2013, with customers spending more than $10 billion on the service.

In December alone, Apple customers downloaded more than 3 billion apps from the service, generating over $1 billion in just that month. To date, developers have earned over $15 billion from the App Store.

"We'd like to thank our customers for making 2013 the best year ever for the App Store," said Eddy Cue, Apple's senior vice president of Internet Software and Services.

"The lineup of apps for the holiday season was astonishing and we look forward to seeing what developers create in 2014."

The revolutionary App Store offers more than one million apps to iPhone, iPad and iPod touch users in 155 countries around the world, with more than 500,000 native iPad apps available.

App Store customers can choose from an incredible range of apps in 24 categories, including newspapers and magazines offered in Newsstand, games, business, news, sports, health & fitness, travel and kids.

According to a forecast from research group Gartner, more than one billion devices running Android will be sold in 2014.

It is predicting a 26 percent increase over 2013, amounting to over 1.1 billion tablets, phones and other tech gadgets that will be sold running the operating system. China is one of those major sources of growth, though Gartner doesn't see this as particularly good news for Google as devices sold with Android in the country typically have Google services stripped.

"Android has the volume even if you can say Apple still has the value," said Ranjit Atwal, research director at Gartner's Global Forecasting team.

"But the question for Google is how it leverages its huge number of users. Many of the handset owners in emerging markets will have bought low-end phones and won't be buying many apps at this stage. The key for Google is to ensure they upgrade to other mid-tier Android devices."

Sales of devices running iOS and Mac OS will hit 344 million in 2014, according to Gartner, while devices sold running Microsoft's Windows operating systems will hit 360 million - increases of 28 percent and 10 percent respectively.

Toshiba has unveiled its first entry into the growing Chromebook market, featuring a 13.3-inch screen.

The Haswell-driven Chromebook will be available for $279.99 MSRP from February. It features a 13.3-inch diagonal HD TruBrite display with a native 1366 x 768 screen resolution, and weighs just 3.3lb with a 0.8-inch profile.

Under the hood, it packs a Haswell-based Intel Celeron processor plus 2GB of RAM, and a 16GB solid state drive (with 100GB Google Drive storage). It features two USB 3.0 ports, a full-sized HDMI output port, a security lock slot and memory card reader.

For connectivity it supports Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-F. The battery lasts up to 9 hours from a full charge.

Rovi will demonstrate some new DivX technologies at CES, including High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC/H.265) streaming in 4K.

DivX plans to host a range of demonstrations of DivX HEVC technology including DivX Live and DivX HEVC UltraHD/4K in collaboration with industry leaders. DivX is also launching updates to DivX 10 and its MainConcept HEVC SDK to enable consumers and professionals to apply the benefits of the latest compression technology to reduce file sizes and create UltraHD/4K content experiences.

DivX 10.1 supports the free creation, playback and streaming of high-quality DivX HEVC video up to 4K. The latest update also adds new pre-defined encoding modes to DivX Converter, a DLNA Controller to DivX Player, and support for offline playback of DivX Plus Streaming content.

During the CES show, DivX will demo live encoding and decoding flow of streaming DivX HEVC UltraHD (4K) video to a set top box. The low power live Ultra HD HEVC encoder is planned to run on the KALRAY MPPA MANYCORE processor and stream to a Bouygues Telecom Bbox set top box service.

HEVC (H.265) promises much better compression rates than AVC/H.264, up to 50 percent in tests, putting it in a great position to drive the switch to 4K streaming.

You can now see what Alienware's first official Steam Machine will look like before it launches this year.

The prototype is certainly small and compact compared to the gaming PC line-up offered under Dell's Alienware brand, but the now-private firm is offering up next to no details about this product ahead of its launch this year, only that its designed with a quiet cooling system and will perform in line with a gaming notebook.

"With the introduction of the X51 system nearly two years ago, Alienware kicked off an evolution of small form factor PC gaming systems designed for every living area," said Frank Azor, Co-Founder and General Manager of Alienware.

"When Valve and Alienware began collaborating on our vision for a PC gaming console several years ago we could clearly see we were on to revolutionizing PC Gaming forever."

Additionally, Dell announced that the Alienware X51 desktop will be available as a Steam Machine in 2014.

Corning Incorporated has announced its new Antimicrobial Corning Gorilla Glass at the Consumer Electronics Show.

Like door handles, counter tops, remote controls and gaming controllers, mobile devices and touch screens can easily accumulate all kinds of microbiology as people use them. In fact, some research into mobile phones would make germaphobes shiver at the nasties that can be found lurking on their expensive devices.

Corning Incorporated is looking to exploit our collective distaste for our microscopic distant cousins with its new Antimicrobial Gorilla Glass. It will inhibit the growth of algae, mold, mildew, fungi, and bacteria with the help of ionic silver, which is incorporated into the glass surface for sustained activity.

"This innovation combines best-in-class antimicrobial function without compromising Gorilla Glass properties. Our specialty glass provides an excellent substrate for engineering antimicrobial and other functional attributes to help expand the capabilities of our Corning Gorilla Glass and address the needs of new markets," said James R. Steiner, senior vice president and general manager, Corning Specialty Materials.

The new glass is being tested by a variety of manufacturers with high volume production demonstrated. There are already solutions in the market for devices and shared-touch surfaces, like antibacterial wipes, but each manufacturer has different advice on their use.

Intel will stop using the McAfee brand name through this year, distancing itself from the brand associated with controversial founder John McAfee.

The chipmaker announced at CES it would be rebranding products as "Intel Security" instead, and that it could take up to a year to make the switch. The McAfee company will survive as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intel though.

John McAfee's antics probably prompted Intel to rebrand its products. In June 2013, John was featured in a video with instructions on how to remove McAfee Antivirus from your computer. Of course, the video was laced with guns, women, drugs and plenty of profanity, and ended with a permanent uninstall solution delivered with a gun.

What does John feel about this rebranding? He's ecstatic!

"I am now everlastingly grateful to Intel for freeing me from this terrible association with the worst software on the planet. These are not my words, but the words of millions of irate users," he said, reports the BBC News website.

"My elation at Intel's decision is beyond words."

Video: How to Uninstall McAfee Antivirus with John McAfee (CONTENT WARNING!)

LG is showing off its new flexible 77-inch OLED TV at the Consumer Electronics Show.

OLED panels, curved form factor and 4K (UHD) resolution are what seem to be the buzz in the past year as the hype of 3D viewing at home wanes. LG has packed all three into its beautiful 77-inch TV at CES.

You can manually adjust the curvature of the display using the remote control to suit your preferences, which is why LG is describing it as the first "bendable" UHD OLED TV.

"LG's Flexible OLED TV is a product that has to be seen to be believed because it defies description," said H. H. (Hyun-hwoi) Ha President and CEO of LG's Home Entertainment Company.

"What curved is to flat, flexible is to curved. LG continues to lead the evolution of televisions into the next generation."

LG will bring the final product to the U.S. market either in the second half of 2014, or early next year.

Samsung has revealed its 2014 UHD TV line-up at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, including a 105-inch curved set.

The 105-inch curved LCD TV touts a 5120 x 2160 resolution and a 21:9 aspect ratio. The 11 million pixel display is complimented with Samsung's Auto Depth Enhancer technology (exclusive to its curved UHD TV sets only).

It can produce a more immersive experience by examining images to identify areas that are in the background of the shot, and adjusting the contrast to produce a 3D-like effect without glasses.

Google's Android operating system will be integrated with vehicles made by Audi, Honda, GM and Hyunda through the new Open Automotive Alliance (OAA).

The Open Automotive Alliance (OAA) is a group consisting of Audi, GM, Google, Honda, Hyundai and NVIDIA with the stated goal of bringing the Android platform to cars throughout 2014 and beyond. The OAA is dedicated to a common platform that will drive innovation, and make technology in the car safer and more intuitive for everyone.

"Millions of people are already familiar with Android and use it everyday," said Sundar Pichai, SVP of Android, Chrome & Apps at Google.

"The expansion of the Android platform into automotive will allow our industry partners to more easily integrate mobile technology into cars and offer drivers a familiar, seamless experience so they can focus on the road."

The first cars with Android integration are expected by the end of 2014, with an open invitation being issued to other car manufacturers to join the OAA.

Website: openautoalliance.net

China has suspended a ban on the sale of foreign video game consoles that was enforced in 2000.

At the time, the Chinese authorities cited possible negative effects on the mental health and well-being of players. Of course, since then consoles have been available at a premium cost through China's enormous black market.

For those unwilling to break the law, PC gaming is more than enough in the $14 billion market.

China's State Council announced the temporary suspension of the sales ban on its website, but did not elaborate on how long console sales will be permitted, or why the ban was lifted now.

Internet cafes in China are frequently packed with online gamers, as PC gaming dominates the market with over a two-thirds share. Browser gaming accounted for 15.4 percent of the market, followed by mobile gaming at 13.5 percent.

The Chinese gaming market grew to 83.17 billion yuan (US$ 13.7 billion) in 2013, up 38 percent from 2012.