News written by James Delahunty (April, 2014)

Mozilla has released Firefox 29.0 for Desktop PCs, packing a new UI look, a new menu and a new improved Firefox Sync feature.

The new interface is definitely easy on the eyes, particularly how the open tab is more prominent at the top of the screen while background tabs fade. The old Firefox button has disappeared and has been replaced with a new menu button, like that seen in Google's Chrome browser.

When you click the button in Chrome, you get a text drop-list of options you can click, but Firefox 29.0 goes a step further with a new improved menu that includes icons you can click.

Also on the menu is an option to Sign in to Sync. Mozilla has improved the Sync feature by making it account-based so you can now easily retain all of your settings, bookmarks, history and also sync tabs across PCs and other devices.

Under the hood, Mozilla has finalized and enabled the GamePad API which it has been working on since Firefox 24. The GamePad API will make it possible to control games within Firefox using a proper controller.

You can download Firefox 29.0 FINAL for Windows from AfterDawn now.

Netflix has signed a deal with Verizon to pay for direct access to its network, easing congestion concerns and improving quality and performance for subscribers.

The deal is very similar to the one stuck between Netflix and Comcast recently. It means Netflix will pay Verizon for direct access to its broadband networks, avoiding more congested routes that can lower the quality of service for Netflix users trying to stream films and TV shows.

Such deals are signed by Netflix reluctantly, and the service still maintains it is not its responsibility to pay for bandwidth usage of broadband provider's customers. In the past, Netflix has even offered to pay for equipment to help deliver videos more efficiently but broadband companies want them simply to pay for prioritized access.

Verizon, Comcast and others say that Netflix puts considerable strain on the "last mile" connections to customers' homes. This has been growing problem as bandwidth usage in the United States increases with more digital content delivery services being used, and that leaves open the question of who is responsible for paying for necessary upgrades.

The revelation of a vulnerability affecting all supported versions of Internet Explorer this week highlights the risks of continuing to run Windows XP without Microsoft's support behind it.

Earlier this month, Microsoft finally ended support for the Windows XP operating system after close to 13 years since it was first released. Coming up to that date, the Redmond-based giant persistently warned users clinging to the OS that it will be become far more risky to keep running Windows XP going forward.

Many home users, and even corporate/governmental networks still run Windows XP on systems. The UK government even paid Microsoft millions to provide extended support to avoid upgrading thousands of PCs that still run XP. For consumers and most businesses running XP though, there is no extended support.

This week, Microsoft has revealed a major vulnerability in Internet Explorer affecting all supported versions across all client operating systems, and didn't rule out an out-of-cycle update to fix the problem. Such an update is likely to be released with reports of the vulnerability being exploited in the wild, and with Patch Tuesday still a couple of weeks away.

After lying buried for 30 years, a documentary film crew has dug up copies of E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial for Atari 2600 from an Alamogordo, New Mexico landfill.

The 1982 E.T. title was developed for the Atari 2600 games console and is considered to be one of the biggest commercial failures ever in the video games industry, and one of the worst video games of all time. The game itself was developed in only a matter of weeks after the rights were secured in order to be available for sale during the busy holiday season.

Atari suffered massive financial losses during the next two years and E.T. The Extra Terrestrial has been cited as a major source of those losses, and for contributing to an industry slump throughout 1983.

For the past 30 years, it was understood throughout the industry that millions of copies of the failed game were buried in a landfill in Alamogordo, New Mexico, and later covered over with concrete. In 2013, plans were revealed to dig up this piece of video games history.

Today, those copies of that terrible video game have finally seen light again. Fuel Entertainment (the documentary crew), Xbox Entertainment Studios and LightBox Entertainment were given permission to excavate the site several weeks ago, and that digging is currently underway.

The FCC has come under fire this past week with the emergence of proposals to allow Internet Service Providers to charge fees for access to 'fast lanes' on their networks.

It was as recent as December 2010 when the FCC put forth its proposals to preserve the free and open Internet by way of regulation that would, undoubtedly, nip any such two-speed system in the bud. U.S. service providers would like to be able to charge bandwidth-hungry services like Netflix to provide them with prioritized access to their network's users, and it seems that until now the FCC has been completely opposed to such access fees.

The FCC's Open Internet Order, dated December 23, 2010, spells out three basic rules which were Transparency, No blocking, and No unreasonable discrimination.

"Fixed broadband providers may not unreasonably discriminate in transmitting lawful network traffic," it reads.

The key word may be "unreasonably", but later on in the same document, the FCC makes clear its disagreement with the main arguments in favor of paid prioritization (e.g. that third party paid prioritization would aid network investment, while regulating against it would hurt investment) and states that, "it is unlikely that pay for priority would satisfy the 'no unreasonable discrimination' standard."

Unlucky owners of Samsung's shiny new Galaxy S5 have reported a major problem with the device, which renders the 16 megapixel camera disabled.

As usual, the first reports of the flaw emerged on Internet forums and social media and all seem to be the same story, including a message being displayed on the device reading: "Warning: Camera Failed." After receiving the error, the Galaxy S5 camera is disabled permanently. DIY solutions, such as flashing new software, have failed to fix the problem.

Owners have been taking their phones back to stores and have, in cases, received replacement devices to rectify the problem.

"Samsung is committed to providing the best experience for customers. We have learned that a limited number of Galaxy S 5 devices may have an issue that causes 'Camera Failure' pop-up error message. We ask that customers affected call 1-888-987-4357 or visit their carrier for service under Samsung's standard limited warranty," Samsung said in a statement obtained by Droid-Life.

Verizon Wireless has acknowledged the issue and urged affected customers to get in touch.

Facebook has acquired the popular Moves fitness app for iOS and Android, according to developer ProtoGeo Oy.

Moves tracks your physical activity throughout the day, telling you how many steps you have taken, how many minutes you cycled for and how far you ran, and so forth. It is intended to offer a clean activity diary, and has been downloaded over four million time.

"We're joining Facebook's talented team to work on building and improving their products and services with a shared mission of supporting simple, efficient tools for more than a billion people," a blog post on the Moves app website reads.

It promises users that the Moves experience will not be changed and will continue to operate as a stand-along app.

As of now, there are no plans to change that stance of commingle data with Facebook.

Satya Nadella welcomes the Nokia Devices and Services business to the Microsoft family as the multi-billion deal announced in September 2013 is completed.

Nokia shareholders had previously given the nod of approval to the deal, and regulatory bodies around the world also signed off on it. Stephen Elop, who served as President and CEO of Nokia, is the executive vice president of Microsoft Devices Group, overseeing an expanded devices business that includes Lumia smartphones and tablets, Nokia mobile phones, Xbox hardware, Surface, Perceptive Pixel (PPI) products, and accessories.

"Today we welcome the Nokia Devices and Services business to our family. The mobile capabilities and assets they bring will advance our transformation," said Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella.

"Together with our partners, we remain focused on delivering innovation more rapidly in our mobile-first, cloud-first world."

As announced previously, Microsoft will not acquire the factory in Masan, South Korea, and the factory in Chennai, India, will stay with Nokia due to the tax liens on Nokia's assets in India that prevent transfer.

Microsoft will continue to provide support for feature phones, the Asha family, and the Nokia X family of devices, announced at the Mobile World Congress in February.

According to a report, Amazon will pay $300 million over three years to stream several of HBO's older, successful shows.

Amazon and HBO announced a deal that will bring some of HBO's catalog of shows to Amazon's Prime service from May 21 this year, marking the first time the premium cable channel has licensed its programming to a third party.

Included in the deal are past hits like "The Sopranos," "The Wire" and the first seasons of current hits like "True Blood." For Game of Thrones however, that will still be limited to HBO Go.

According to a report from Re/code, the deal will cost Amazon $300 million over a three year period, which is well within Amazon's reach having generated sales of $75 billion last year.

Amazon is reportedly spending at least $1 billion per year to build up its streaming choices for customers, as it battles for a larger share of the space.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
HBO's Amazon Haul Is Big -- But Not as Big as You Might Think: www.recode.net

Google has given a refund to Android users after a paid Anti-Virus app in the Google Play store was shown to do nothing.

Virus Shield claimed to offer one-click virus protection for Android users, promising to prevent the installation of malicious or risky apps on a device. It climbed up the downloads chart with over 10,000 downloads.

However, when Android Police decompiled the app and had a look at what it does, it turned out to be completely useless. For $3.99, the app only switched to a new icon when it was activated, and did nothing else.

"We're reaching out to you because you recently purchased the 'Virus Shield' app on Google Play," Google wrote to buyers of the dud app, via e-mail.

"This app made the false claim that it provided one-click virus protection; in reality, it did not. Google Play's policies strictly prohibit false claims like these, and in light of this, we're refunding you for your 'Virus Shield' purchase. You should see funds returned to your account within the next 14 days."

In addition, Google will give affected customers $5 credit to be used in the Google Play store.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Google refunding buyers of fake anti-virus app: www.bbc.com/news/
Virus shield is 'a total scam': www.androidpolice.com

A feature spotted in the Chrome OS dev channel may indicate that Chromebooks will soon be unlocked using asmartphone.

The unfinished feature is called "Easy Unlock" and it can be enabled manually, but it doesn't really do anything as of yet.

Trying to use the feature brings up a three-step process. The first page explains that your phone can "Easy Unlock" all your devices. "You can instantly unlock your Chromebook when you and your phone are nearby, no password necessary."

The first of the three steps is to "Find your phone", but it does absolutely nothing as of yet. It appears to search for something but it is likely looking for an app that hasn't been released yet.

Google's Android operating system rose above Apple's iOS with 53 percent of activations in the United States during Q1 of this year.

In the final quarter of 2013, Apple's iOS accounted for the largest share of activations in the U.S. at 48 percent, ahead of Android at 46 percent. Now iOS has fallen to second place with 42 percent of activations, behind Android's 53 percent total.

Both Windows Phone and BlackBerry could only manage around 1 percent of activations each, while non-smartphones accounted for the rest.

The data comes from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).

"In a quarter without any significant phone launch, more buyers chose Android phones than iOS," said Josh Lowitz, Partner and Co-Founder of CIRP.

"It increased its share considerably over the previous quarter, when it had only 46% of activations. iOS share of activations fell from 48% in the previous quarter, the first full quarter with iPhone 5S and 5C sales."

Apple's iOS did grow slightly faster than Android however when you take into account new phone purchases that replaced older non-smartphones or devices made by rivals. Both BlackBerry and Windows Phone lost users, though the biggest loser was basic feature phones, and that certainly will do no harm.

Google and Facebook have come under fire from a powerful source in Europe concerning their business practices and treatment of Internet users' privacy.

Axel Springer chief executive Mathias Dopfner wrote an open letter to Google chairman Eric Schmidt in which he described the company as a monopoly, and its top brass as seeking to operate in a 'legal vacuum' without the hassles of anti-trust and privacy, a kind of 'superstate.'

Dopfner's open letter was published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper, which is not one of the 200 newspapers and magazines that Axel Springer publishes. It came after a column written by Eric Schmidt said the relationship between both companies was challenging, but that they had managed a multi-year deal regardless.

On that relationship, Dopfner said he admired Google's entrepreneurial success and was happy to have a relationship with the firm, but that it wasn't like there was much of an alternative for Axel Springer to choose from.

The letter cautioned Google that monopolies do not survive long throughout the history of economics.

Technology companies are becoming too powerful

The open letter argued that tech firms like Google and Facebook are becoming too powerful, more than most people are aware.

Can a pledge from the smartphone industry to include anti-theft features in all smartphones sold after July 2015 stop the 'apple picking' problem in U.S. cities?

Earlier this week, the CTIA trade association announced an agreement between smartphone manufacturers and wireless carriers to include anti-theft features in smartphones made and sold after July 2015 in the United States. The commitment is a response to a growing problem in U.S. cities of smartphone theft, sometimes with tragic consequences.

The announcement arrived as the debate about measures to protect smartphone users on U.S. city streets was heating up again.

The Smartphone Anti-Theft Voluntary Commitment

New smartphone models manufactured after July 2015 and sold in the United States will include anti-theft tools at no additional cost to the customer. These tools will offer smartphone owners a variety of options to avail of in the event that a smartphone is stolen to protect their data and privacy, and in a broader sense to disincentivize smartphone theft.

A victim will be able to remotely wipe data from the stolen device, such as personal information in the form of messages, e-mails, contacts and so forth, and can also render the device inoperable to an unauthorized user except to contact emergency services.

Starting from tomorrow, Xbox One gamers will be able to share gameplay footage directly to their YouTube channel.

Microsoft has confirmed that the YouTube app on Xbox One will get an update that integrates the Game DVR and Upload apps with YouTube, simplifying the process of capturing and sharing your clips now on the world's video portal.

You will be able to use Game DVR to catch gameplay moments and then edit them in Upload studio, and then by just clicking a button inside the YouTube app you can send it straight to your YouTube channel.

The YouTube app update also adds the ability to watch YouTube videos in Snap Mode, add YouTube videos to your Pins, earn Media Achievements and add YouTube channels to OneGuide.

The update will start rolling out tomorrow, Tuesday, April 8.

Qualcomm has announced the Snapdragon 810 and Snapsragon 808 chips that will power next-generation smartphones from 2015.

The chipmaker says the 810 and 808 are its most powerful chips yet, with vast improvements for video, imaging, graphics and connectivity. Both 64-bit chips implement Cat 6 LTE Advanced on-chip, designed with 20nm fabrication technology which delivers more performance at comparatively low power consumption.

The Snapdragon 810 is definitely the one to covet of the two. Here is a run down of what it boasts.

Snapdragon 810

• 20nm technology
• Four Cortex A57 cores for intensive, power hungry tasks
• Four Cortex A53 cores for non-intensive tasks
• Supports 4K Displays (external via HDMI 1.4)
• 14-bit dual Image Signal Processors, 1.2GP/s throughput, image sensors up to 55MP
• High-speed LPDDR4 memory
• New Adreno 430 Graphics Processing Unit
• Adreno 430 is 30 percent faster than Adreno 420, 100 percent faster for GPGPU operations.
• Adreno 430 reduces power consumption by up to 20 percent
• Integrated CAT-6 LTE Advanced on-chip
• Supports VIVE 2-stream 802.11ac with MU-MIMO
• Bluetooth 4.1, USB 3.0, NFC and Qualcomm IZat location core

• 20nm technology
• Two Cortext A57 cores for intensive, power hungry tasks
• Four Cortex A53 cores for non-intensive tasks
• Supports 2K Displays, WQXGA (2560x1600), (External 4k via HDMI1.4)
• LPDDR3 memory
• Adreno 418 GPU
• Adreno 418 GPU provides 20 percent faster graphics performance than predecessor Adreno 330
• Integrated CAT-6 LTE Advanced on-chip

As the fourth season of Game of Thrones kicked off on Sunday night, HBO Go crashed and burned under the demand from HBO subscribers.

HBO is perfectly entitled to guard its blockbusters close to its chest while web streaming services fight over content licensing and make their own programming, but if it insists on limiting Game of Throne's web availability to its own HBO Go service, at the very least make sure it can handle the demand.

After the premiere of the fourth season of Games of Thrones aired last night, the demand to see it through HBO Go hit the roof, then blew the roof off altogether. HBO Go acknowledged the trouble it was having in a tweet.

Looks like there's trouble in the realm. Apologies for the inconvenience. We'll be providing updates, so please stay tuned. #GameofThrones

-- HBO GO (@HBOGO) April 7, 2014

According a WSJ report, Yahoo is looking to jump into online video in a big way with original web series like Netflix' House of Cards.

The Wall Street Journal cites sources familiar with Yahoo's plans in reporting that Yahoo is actively looking to acquire good original programming to rival content available through Netflix, Amazon or on cable TV.

In terms of investment, Yahoo is looking for 10-episode, 30-minute comedies with budgets anywhere from $700,000 to a few million dollars each.

"They want to blow it out big time," the WSJ quotes one of its sources as saying. "They're looking at the same type of shows that Netflix and Amazon are eyeing."

Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer hopes to show advertisers TV-caliber content on April 28 at Yahoo's NewFront event.

Increasing numbers of Americans and viewers elsewhere in the world are turning to on-demand services, catch-up apps and subscription services like Netflix and Hulu to get their fill of TV content. Some have even dropped Cable or Satellite TV subscriptions completely to get all of their content through the web.

Microsoft will dip its toes into the original TV programming pool starting in June, with a total of six series ready to roll out.

Following the success of shows like House of Cards, more players are looking to original programming for future revenues, and to lure consumers to their content delivery platforms without paying high fees to secure rights to popular third-party shows.

Among Microsoft's line-up is a collaboration with Channel Four in the UK called "Humans", an English-language adaptation of Sveriges Television and Matador Film's acclaimed series "Real Humans."

The features 'Synths', which are robotic servants that have the likeness of their live counterparts.

"'Humans' not only questions personal relationships, we loved how this sci-fi show toys with reality and our connection to technology," said Xbox Entertainment Studios President Nancy Tellem.

Tellem was recruited by Microsoft 19 months ago to spearhead its foray into TV show production.

Another production through the Microsoft studio is a reality show called "Every Street United", which is timed to coincide with the World Cup this summer. Users will be able to unlock extra scenes and play mini-games based on the show.

The Intellectual Crime Property Unit of the City of London police will be targeting users of piracy sites with adverts of their own.

An infringing website list (IWL) has already been created by the police force. The first step is to contact the owner or operators of the site and encourage them to voluntarily change their practices. If that fails, the police target the revenue sources by contacting 60 brands, agencies and advertising technology businesses with instruction to cut them off.

The idea of starving piracy sites of revenue is not a new idea at all, but it is intriguing that police intend to ad their own messages to the sites for users to read. How they intend to do this is unknown, but it will be interesting to witness.

"Together we have created a process that first and foremost encourages offenders to change their behaviour so they are operating within the law," said DCI Andy Fyfe, head of the PIPCU.

"However, if they refuse to comply we now have the means to persuade businesses to move their advertising to different platforms and, if offending continues, for registrars to suspend the websites."


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Police crack down on Game of Thrones illegal downloads: www.bbc.co.uk

Microsoft is still thinking through its options as it works on ways to bring Xbox 360 titles to the Xbox One console.

Since the Xbox One console adopted X86 architecture instead of the PowerPC-powered Xbox 360, it was always going to be a challenge to bring Xbox 360 titles to the new console. "It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff," Microsoft's Frank Savage said during a panel discussion at Microsoft's Build conference.

"There are [plans], but we're not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately," he added.

It may be possible that Microsoft will give up on trying to go with the emulation route, and will simply follow Sony's PlayStation Now model, which uses the cloud instead to deliver PS3 experiences on the PS4 console.

Xbox One director Albert Penello told GameSpot last year that it could be possible that Microsoft will use the Azure cloud platform to stream Xbox 360 games to Xbox One owners.

The British government has reportedly signed a milti-million pounds deal with Microsoft to continue using Windows XP in public services across the island.

Windows XP SP3 officially reaches its end of support on Tuesday, April 8, thirteen years after the operating system first launched. After April 8, XP users are strongly recommended to either get a new PC, upgrade to a newer Windows OS, switch to Linux or find a more limited, offline usage for the operating system.

The British government has no plans to rush to upgrade systems across its public services however, and has reportedly signed a £5.548 million deal with Microsoft to continue support through the Redmond giant's "custom support" program.

Brits are not the only ones paying for continued support either; the Dutch are also reportedly using Microsoft's custom support options for over 30,000 computers still running the XP operating system.

The U.S. government also reportedly has hundreds of thousands of systems still running the ageing operating system, for which it will require its own deal with Microsoft.

To be fair to Microsoft, the company has been warning about the EOS for Windows XP for years.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Dutch, British governments pay to keep Windows XP alive: www.arstechnica.com/

Users of Microsoft's Xbox Live service who had trouble with an outage on March 11 are being credited with one week free Gold membership from Microsoft.

According to IGN, Xbox LIVE users who couldn't connect to the service on March 11 have been receiving messages through the Xbox Live Messaging system notifying them of a free week of Gold membership for the trouble they experienced.

"We know you experienced an issue signing in on your Xbox One on 3/11/2014. We apologize and will soon give you 7 days of Xbox Live Gold for your inconvenience," the message reads.

March 11 was also the launch date of Titanfall for Xbox One, which lead some to link the Xbox Live connection issues with the release of the multiplayer, online-only title. That link has since been dismissed, however.

Source: IGN

Insomniac Games has reminded PS3 owners that its Resistance trilogy will no longer have online play from Tuesday, April 8.

Last year, Sony had warned that the Resistance titles would lose online play sometime in early 2014, and that date has since been set to April 8, so if you want one last blast at Resistance online you only have the rest of the weekend and Monday to do it.

There are also no Resistance games currently in development for PlayStation platforms, which makes this online blackout a little bit more significant for fans of the series.

Whether online functionality for PS Vita's Resistance: Burning Skies will also stop on April 8 is unclear for now.

Source: Joystiq

Nintendo is bringing Game Boy Advance titles to the Wii U Virtual Console throughout April, including some titles that will be instantly familiar to GBA gamers.

The first wave of GBA games heading to the Wii U includes Advance Wars, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Metroid Fusion. Those three titles will be launching on April 7, and priced at $7.99 each.

On April 10, Nintendo will also offer Kirby & The Amazing Mirror and WarioWare, Inc., while F-Zero: Maximum Velocity ($6.99) and Golden Sun will be available from April 17.

Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 will be available from April 24.

Nintendo will also offer Super Mario Bros. 3 on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS for $4.99 from April 17, bringing back one of the most celebrated Super Mario games in the history of the franchise.

More details from: Nintendo.com

The Xbox 360 version of Titanfall has already been on sale for a couple of days from some retailers, though the copy will be useless until launch day.

Titanfall is an online-only multiplayer game, so unless you are connected to the servers while playing there is nothing you can really do with it. While some retailers broke the street date for the game by a few days already, customers will be disappointed when the put the disc in an Xbox 360 console and find that the servers won't be online until Tuesday, April 8.

The Xbox 360 version of Titanfall was supposed to be released in early March, but EA pushed back the launch until April 8.

On Xbox One and PC, Titanfall is developed by Respawn Entertainment, while the Xbox 360 version is developed by Bluepoint Games. The developer and publisher are promising as good an experience as possible on Xbox 360. It requires a 1GB install on Xbox 360 consoles with a HDD.

Sony Pictures has filed a DMCA takedown against 'Sintel', a 2010 short film released by the Blender Foundation with all materials available under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The Blender Foundation develops and promotes the open source 3D graphics program Blender. It is a non-profit organization, funded by donations with the stated goal of providing the Internet community with access to 3D technology.

To showcase what you can do with Blender, the Blender Foundation has released several movies since 2006 that were developed with the system.

The latest movie is Sintel, which was released in 2010 and has been available on YouTube ever since, until now. Trying to view the video on YouTube now results instead in a notification that the video contains content from Sony Picture Movies and Shows.

Following the resignation of Brendan Eich from Mozilla amidst a backlash over a donation he made to the California Proposition 8 campaign, Mozilla has come under fire again.

As you would expect, opponents of gay marriage in the United States sympathize with Brendan Eich, and are lashing out at Mozilla after he resigned from his position as chief executive, which he held only for a number of weeks.

One such group is the National Organization for Marriage (NOM), which is calling on consumers to uninstall Mozilla's Firefox browser as a protest.

Facebook has published an interesting research paper on its site surrounding new facial recognition technology called "DeepFace".

In a paper, eerily titled, "Closing the Gap to Human-Level Performance in Face Verification," the researchers detail a system that can confirm that two pictures show the same person accurately 97.25 percent of the time, compared to humans who have been recorded at around 97.53 percent accuracy.

The interesting thing about the technology detailed in the paper is that unlike other facial recognition systems (such as one Facebook currently uses itself), this system does not require a detailed frontal picture of the face.

Instead, it uses "3D modelling" to help it confirm an identity even when a head is turned somewhat in a picture. The DeepFace system conducts its analysis based on more than 120 million different parameters.

"We don't currently use the techniques discussed in the paper on Facebook," said Facebook spokeswoman Lydia Chan, reports CNN.

Intel has also developed technology that can use facial detection cameras and software to determine a person's approximate age and gender, and retrieve information, like ads, that suit.

The specs for Samsung's Galaxy S5 Zoom smartphone have been revealed in a SamMobile report.

Following on from the Samsung Galaxy S4 Zoom, Samsung seem to be releasing a Galaxy S5 Zoom for those who want even better image quality than the Galaxy S5 can offer. The details were leaked in benchmark details, and SamMobile has revealed them.

• SuperAMOLED HD (1280x720) display
• SoC: Six Core Samsung Exynos 5 Hexa (5260), two 1.7GHz Cortex-A15 cores and four 1.3GHz Cortex-A7 cores
• Quad-core ARM Mali-T624 GPU
• 2GB of RAM
• 20.2-Megapixel (5184×3888) camera sensor with Optical Image Stabilisation (OIS)
• 10x optical zoom
• 2.1-Megapixel (1920×1080) front facing camera
• MicroSD
• Android 4.4 KitKat & TouchWiz
• 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi, Wi-Fi Direct
• DLNA
• Bluetooth 4.0
• NFC

Microsoft's Larry Hryb (Major Nelson) has confirmed that the Xbox One console will get support for game storage through external devices in an update coming soon.

The Xbox 360 console got support for external storage in an update back in 2010. Since then the support has expanded to allow external devices up to 32GB in size.

Hryb confirmed that the Xbox One console would also get support for external storage in a comment made on the Xbox One subreddit.

"External game storage is coming soon....I need to check on media support," he said. When asked for details on the limitations for the storage devices, he could only respond, "When I have details on that , I'll let you know."


Sources:
Major Nelson: Xbox One getting external data storage support 'soon': www.joystiq.com
Xbox one - momentum, single comment: www.reddit.com/r/xboxone/

The new Xbox boss Phil Spencer took time out to talk to Larry Hryb (Major Nelson) about how the Xbox brand and technology will be shaped and used in the near-future.

In the interview, Spencer admits that he read plenty of articles and posts from forums about the things that he needs to change at Xbox after the news about his appointment went public. From those, and from gaming forums and social media, he said he received plenty of good ideas, and when asked if he copy and pasted them to his to-do list, he replied: "It sounds corny.. but yes."

As for the immediate plans, Spencer is focused on Microsoft's message and demonstrations for E3, because this year's event will be extremely important to use as an exhibition of changes.

In the interview, Spencer admits that he felt Microsoft made some bad decisions last year but there was plenty of moves in the right direction from the company too.

Check out the interview below...

A new Xbox One system update includes another firmware update for controllers to fix several problems that have been reported by users.

The latest 1404 update (xb_rel_1404.140331-2200) includes a bunch of fixes, among them a firmware update for Xbox One controllers to fix a variety of issues, the second time Microsoft has pushed out a firmware update for controllers since launch.

Users reported problems with controllers disconnecting and also issues with headset quality.

Here's a list of fixes so far from a NeoGAF thread...

• Ongoing fixes and adjustments to the user interface.
• Additional fixes to address audio crackling sound encountered when Dolby Digital is enabled.
• Fixes for Blu-ray software issues that can result in 0x21 or 0x87de07d1 errors.
• Update to address an issue where ejecting a Blu-ray disc after the drive is idle can result in the disc being pulled back in, requiring a second eject command.
• Fix to address Kinect not responding to "yes" or "no" after issuing the "Xbox, turn off" command.
• Updates to reduce or eliminate Blu-ray drive "seeking" sounds after drive is idle (experienced in the 1403 update.)
• *NEW CONTROLLER FIRMWARE UPDATE*
• Update to help address controller disconnect issues.
• Update to help address headset adapter audio quality.
• Fix for LiveTV audio outputting in stereo instead of surround sound.
• Update for the Blu-ray player to fix an issue where it can freeze if left idle or paused for an extended period of time.
• Update to fix an issue where fast forwarding or rewinding an external video source results in screen freezing when surround sound is enabled.
• Fix for video playback stuttering while audio plays back normally in several apps (Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc.)

• Game save progress bar will now display when syncing cloud game saves.
• 50Hz Blu-ray player support for content recorded at 50Hz.
• Improved GameDVR video quality.
• Online friends notification, including the ability to filter notifications to all friends, favorites only, or disable friends online notifications altogether.
• *NEW FEATURE* Requested by the update preview community: Manually install available updates. If a new system update is detected as available, a button will appear under Settings, System that will display "Apply Available System Update." Note: this feature is being enabled after this current update completes installation. This feature will be available to preview when the next update is made available.
• *NEW FEATURE* A new ability to automatically redeem a license code from console messages. For future console messages that include a 5x5 license code, a new option will appear to allow you to automatically redeem the license, versus having to copy and paste the license code.

YouTube was reportedly preparing to launch a subscription music service to rival Spotify and others by the end of 2013, but it was delayed.

A new report suggests that the service has now been delayed again until during the second quarter, or later. The problem, according to sources speaking with Billboard, is that Google higher-ups are insisting that the service is launched "right," and is an immediately viable competitor.

Historically, Google products have launched in limited, beta phases. Even one of Google's most successful services, GMail (which just turned 10 year old) spent a whopping five years in beta after it launched in 2004.

This time the feeling at the company is a YouTube rival to other subscription services must be competitive and must be "right" from day one.

"They feel that there's just too much scrutiny of this product, and that they need to get it right out of the gate," said an unnamed label executive, reports Billboard.

Slysoft owner Giancarlo Bettini has reportedly been found criminally guilty in Antigua of making Blu-ray ripping software.

Slysoft develops and distributes a bunch of tools for DVD, Blu-ray disc creation and ripping. One of those tools is AnyDVD HD, which can decrypt the contents of Blu-ray Discs so that the raw structure containing the content can be ripped from the disc.

According to reports, AACS LA targeted Bettini in Antigua, where Slysoft is located. Due to a clause in Antigua's copyright laws, it is possible to be fined or even imprisoned for distributing tools that circumvent copy protection mechanisms.

Bettini has been found criminally guilty and has been ordered to pay a fine of $30,000 or face imprisonment.

The decision will come as a surprise since Antigua is seen as a very lax territory when it comes to copyright enforcement.

Slysoft and Bettini intend to appeal the verdict, and as of now, all of Slysoft's products are still on sale from the company's website.

Qualcomm is aiming to drastically increase Wi-Fi performance, particularly on networks with a lot of users, with its new MU-MIMO chipsets.

The goal is to achieve better overall Wi-Fi speeds on networks by making more efficient use of network capacity. With standard Wi-Fi, clients are served sequentially; during this time, only one device is sending and receiving information, thus only a small portion of network capacity is being used.

The accumulation of these sequential events creates a drop in throughput and capacity as more devices join the network. MU-MIMO (Multi-User MIMO) enables simultaneous transmission to groups of clients, making more efficient use of available Wi-Fi network capacity and speeding up transmissions.

In order to extract the maximum benefits of MU-MIMO, it must be used on both sides of the connection. To accelerate the benefits of MU-MIMO for more Wi-Fi users, Qualcomm Atheros is providing a complete ecosystem of solutions for networking products, as well as smartphones, tablets, computers, consumer electronics and automobiles.

"Great connectivity is not just about increasing the absolute speed. It's about making better use of network and airtime efficiency to support the growing number of connected devices, services and applications," said Dan Rabinovitsj, senior vice president, Qualcomm Atheros, Inc.

Crackle has announced a multi-year agreement with NBCUniversal that will give it exclusive rights to feature films from the studios library.

Over the next three years, more than 140 titles will roll out from the NBCUniversal, starting from this weekend. The deal gives Crackle the exclusive ad-supported video on demand (AVOD) rights to a variety of feature films including Miami Vice, starring Colin Farrel and Jamie Foxx, Jarhead and Peter Jackson's King Kong.

The Sony-owned Crackle streaming service is available in 21 countries and features some exclusive content, including "Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee," with Jerry Seinfeld.

Financial terms of the deal stuck with NBCUniversal were not disclosed by either party.

"As an ad-supported, over-the-top network we pride ourselves on having a prime selection of premium content. Bringing NBCUniversal's collection of library films to Crackle complements our original programming and reinforces our commitment to provide viewers with even more streaming choices," said Philip Lynch, senior vice president of Digital Networks & Games for Sony Pictures Television.

Samsung has received praise from official due to the inclusion of anti-theft features in the Galaxy S5 smartphone.

Samsung's Galaxy S5 will come with two features: Find My Phone and Reactivation Lock. Find My Phone allows a phone owner to track down their device in the event that it gets stolen or is lost. Reactivation Lock is a feature that can be set to require the owner's account information to perform a reset.

"The decision ... to provide Samsung's Find My Mobile and Reactivation Lock features on Galaxy S5 smartphones and to allow those features to be activated for free is a step forward in our effort to ensure the industry makes effective theft deterrents available on every smartphone sold in America," a joint statement from New York's attorney general, Eric Schneiderman, and San Francisco's district attorney, George Gascon, reads.

The pair have been raising the issue of smartphone theft in the United States as more and more Americans are held up for their phones. They argue that if every smartphone in the United States had a "Kill Switch" that could be activated remotely, it would destroy the value of such items in the black market and reduce the incentive to steal them.

Ahead of its anticipated launch on April 14th on the PlayStation 4 (PS4), you can check out a beta of the Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn this weekend.

To get the beta, just head to the PlayStation Store and search for it this weekend, April 4 - April 7. Remember to uninstall the first beta client if you have it installed.

The beta will take place on live servers. So you will see the same worlds, the same game that 1.8 million players all around the world are already enjoying.

Those who have pre-ordered FFXIV will be able to access the game from April 11 - April 13 before everyone else. You can start building your character, getting a head start and making friends from all over the globe.

Remember, users currently playing Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn on PlayStation 3 are eligible to upgrade to the PlayStation 4 version starting 11 April, 2014 for free.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
FXIV: ARR launching on the PS4 in 14 days!: na.square-enix.com
"PS4" Upgrade Campaign: eu.finalfantasyxiv.com

(via: Engagdet)

The Xbox 360 Edition of Minecraft has reached over 12 million sales, and the Xbox One edition will be coming, eventually.

The milestone was announced by the official Xbox website along with a Q&A with Mojang's Daniel Kaplan about Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition". Kaplan said that they never would have imagined the game being so successful.

"I remember when we started talking about sales numbers that we would be super happy to sell 1 million copies. That would have put us on par with BF1943 and Castle Crashers, which both are awesome games, so that was something to aim for. We never even dreamed of selling 12 million," he said.

The most requested feature addition they are hounded for is bigger worlds, but Kaplan explained that bigger worlds would require the guarantee of a hard drive in every Xbox 360.

"Since not all 360's ship with hard drives that makes things tricky. Luckily, on Xbox One, that's not an issue," he said.

On Xbox One, Kaplan said that the Minecraft: Xbox One Edition" will be coming, "eventually."


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Minecraft Creeps Past 12 Million Sold on Xbox 360: news.xbox.com

Google has been fined €1 million ($1.4 million) in Italy because its Street View vehicles were not clearly recognizable.

Italy's data protection watchdog imposed the fine on Google for not making the Street View cars it used to photograph Italian streets in 2010 clearly recognizable to the general public.

"Cars belonging to the giant of Mountain View roamed Italy's streets without being entirely recognizable as such, therefore not allowing the people present in those places to decide whether to be photographed or not," the Italian regulator said, reports Reuters.

In 2013, Google was fined €145,000 in Germany because its Street View cars had accidentally intercepted payload data from unsecured wireless networks.

It has also been sued for the accidental data collection in the United States, where it is being accused of violating federal wiretap laws.

Turkey's telecoms authority has confirmed that a two week ban on Twitter has been lifted in the country following a court ruling found it breached freedom of expression.

Twitter had been blocked in Turkey for several weeks after leaked audio recordings of top officials were spread around using the microblogging site. Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan dismissed the recordings as illegitimate and claimed they were part of a smear campaign against his government ahead of an election.

Access to Twitter was blocked in the country ahead of the election, and later on Google's YouTube service was also blocked when recordings were uploaded there.

Opponents of the government claimed the move was an authoritarian attempt to bury a corruption scandal that has plagued Erdogan's rule. It was condemned by the international community also.

Earlier this week, a constitutional court found that blocking Twitter violated freedom of expression, and today access was restored for most users in the country, reports Reuters. However, access to YouTube has not been fully restored as of yet.

Google is attempting to trademark the word 'Glass' but is encountering resistance from the U.S. trademark office and at least one other company.

The search giant has already trademarked 'Google Glass', its 'smart glasses' that have yet to hit retail. However, it would much prefer to have a trademark for the word 'Glass' for its product, and submitted an application for it last year.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office responded to Google by letter, in which a trademark examiner had two main concerns. The first concern is the possibility of consumer confusion, due to similarities with existing or pending trademarks.

The second concern is that 'Glass' is just a descriptive term, and descriptive terms are not entitled to trademark protection.

Google completely disagree, of course, and responded with a 1928 page letter consisting mostly of media coverage of Google Glass. It also argues that Glass is not a descriptive term for Google Glass at all, because the frame and display components don't consist of Glass, but instead are made from plastic and titanium.

The Wall Street Journal also reports that Border Stylo, LLC - which develops a browser extension called 'Write on Glass' - has filed a notice of opposition to Google's application.

Microsoft has thanked a five year old boy for discovering a flaw in its Xbox One system that allowed him to log into his Dad's account without a password.

Kristoffer Von Hassel, from San Diego, discovered a way to get into his father's account and play games he wasn't supposed to. When his Dad noticed, his career in computer security took precedent over any displeasure over his account being hacked, and he asked his son to explain to him how he was doing it.

Microsoft has revealed that Office for iPad apps have been downloaded over 12 million times in just a week.

The Redmond-giant made its Office for iPad suite of applications available for Apple's flagship tablet last week, giving iPad users the ability to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote material. In order to create and edited documents, users need to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Microsoft announced the impressive download figures through its Office Twitter account.

More than 12 million downloads of Word, Excel, PPT & OneNote for #iPad from the @AppStore <3 #OfficeforiPad pic.twitter.com/iT2egNPDkj

-- Office (@Office) April 3, 2014

Google's Nest has halted sales of its Nest Protect smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector after discovering a flaw that could delay an alarm going off during a fire.

The Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide alarm is a smart connected device that aims to replace old fashioned smoke alarms. Among its features is 'Nest Wave', which is the ability to disable an alarm by waving at the device.

During routine rigorous testing, Nest discovered a potential flaw that called into question whether Nest Wave could be unintentionally activated. In the worst case scenario, a flaw of this nature could delay an alarm sounding if smoke was detected.

It is important to remember that no reports of such a scenario have been made by any Nest customer, and that this potential flaw was discovered in-house.

Brendan Eich has stepped down from the role of chief executive at Mozilla following a considerable backlash to donations he made to the California Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.

After only being in the position of CEO at Mozilla for a number of weeks, internal unrest saw employees publicly call for Eich to resign. The point of contention was Eich's views on marriage equality with his history of opposition to gay marriage.

Former CEOs Gary Kovacs and John Lilly, along with Shmoop CEO Ellen Siminoff, stepped down from the Mozilla board not long after Eich was promoted. They had hoped for an outsider to take over the role, and believed Eich was a liability for Mozilla, its products, services and customers.

Earlier this week, online dating site OkCupid took a strong stance against Mozilla with Eich at the helm, with a letter to users urging them to drop Firefox while he remains chief executive.

The White House is not very pleased after Samsung used a selfie taken of Red Sox' David Ortiz and President Barack Obama in a promo tweet.

Ortiz took the rare chance to grab a selfie with the President when the Red Sox recently visited the White House. He then went on to tweet the selfie with the words "What an honor! Thanks for the #selfie, @BarackObama," and so far so good. However, Samsung then tweeted the image to its 5.2 million followers, upsetting the White House.

As a general rule, the President's image should not be used for commercial purposes and the White House clearly feels that Samsung did exactly that. The South Korean firm was able to use the content through a pre-existing deal.

"Without getting into counsel's discussions, I can tell you that as a rule, the White House objects to attempts to use the president's likeness for commercial purposes, and we certainly object in this case," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, reports Reuters.

After Samsung tweeted the image, it pointed out through its @SamsungMobileUS account that the photo had been taken with a Galaxy Note 3, which explains why the White House feels Samsung used the President's image to promote its products.

Newly appointed head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has said that Virtual Reality (VR) is not a fad after Xbox co-creator Ed Fries cast doubt on its potential to help Xbox One beat PS4.

Ed Fries had commented that Microsoft needs to stick to core gaming and services for its users in order to beat PlayStation 4 (PS4) in the current console generation. He stressed that making great gaming content with blockbuster IP and delivering the best services through Xbox could help Microsoft to overcome Sony.

Fries said: "They need better exclusive games than PS4. They need to be more open to indie developers. They need to adopt free to play gaming more aggressively. They need to continue to move Xbox Live forward as the leading online service. They need to show people why they included the new Kinect on every machine by demonstrating a compelling use for it."

In the area of VR however, Fries warned that Microsoft should look at the collapse of 3D demand before taking the VR route to compete with the PS4. Facebook's recent $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift and Sony's own Project Morpheus show that VR is in the pipeline in any event, and Microsoft is known to be developing a VR system of its own, and also has reportedly spent around $150 million on wearable technology assets.

Record labels are targeting the so called 'Facebook of Russia' with a legal case over alleged large-scale copyright infringement by the service.

The legal complaint has been made under the guidance of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) trade group, with Universal Music Group, Warner and Sony Music all filing a case.

VKontakte has been described as the 'Facebook of Russia', and it has been accused by the record companies of amassing a huge library of music that it does not have to rights to offer as part of its service. The goal is to get a Russian court to force MK to remove infringing files from its service.

"We have repeatedly highlighted this problem over a long period of time," said IFPI chief exec Frances Moore.

"We have encouraged VK to cease its infringements and negotiate with record companies to become a licensed service. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem, so today legal proceedings are being commenced."

VK has been noted as a problematic service in the US Trade Representative's annual report for four consecutive years now.

Ouya chief executive Julie Uhrman has stressed that Amazon's new Fire TV box is not solely dedicated to games like Ouya is, dismissing claims that Fire TV will damage the Android console.

Amazon launched its Fire TV set-top box yesterday. The device sells for $99 with optional gaming controllers at $39.99 each. It plays Android games and has plenty of support from big name studios in its corner.

Gaming is definitely not Fire TV's main purpose; even Amazon admits to that. Still, the availability of Fire TV had some commentators writing off Ouya's survival chances, as Amazon is such a giant to grapple with and games developers will be very interested in Fire TV going forward.

"Just as Amazon blazed a trail for a new way of selling online, Ouya invented a new way to think about console games. But for us, games are not simply an 'added bonus', they are the whole point," Uhrman said to CVG.

"Ouya is solely dedicated to the devs creating games, and the players who play them, their ideal experience is all we think about."

That said, Amazon has made a few splashes that suggest gaming will be more important to it going forward. It recently acquired Double Helix, and hired designers Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who worked on Portal and Far Cry 2, respectively.

Several charities are warning about increasing reports from victims of 'revenge porn', and feel the example set in some U.S. states must be followed to curb the growing problem.

In a nutshell, 'revenge porn' is sexually explicit material uploaded by ex-partners after relationships have gone sour. In some cases, victims even had their personal details posted publicly along with the explicit material.

In the UK, several charitable organizations have voiced concerns over rising levels of such incidents, including the National Stalking Helpline, Women's Aid and the UK Safer Internet Centre, reports the BBC News website.

Several states in the U.S. have already introduced laws that tackle revenge porn, and have been tested. In New Jersey, a man was jailed for six months for posting explicit photos of an ex-partner whom he has been in a relationship with for over ten years.

She said she made a stupid mistake by giving him the pictures in the first place, but that she never thought he would do something like this. The pictures spread quickly from being on three sites, to over 200, causing the woman considerable distress.

Microsoft has confirmed that Ridley Scott is part of a new Halo project in development, but has not been liberal with details as of yet.

According to Microsoft, Scott will serve as executive producer on the project, but it is completely unclear what is under production. Halo has had trouble making it to the big screen, and sadly this project isn't likely to put it there either.

Microsoft maintains that it won't clash with the Halo show under development at Xbox Entertainment Studios, which boasts Steven Spielberg's contribution.

Nevertheless, Scott has been involved in projects like Blade Runner, and more recently Prometheus, so associating his name does arouse curiosity. The new project will be directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, who worked on Battlestar Galactica.

Looks like we will have to wait to here more on this one.

Source: Joystiq

While Amazon's new Fire TV set-top box supports an optional controller and has a games library already available, the web giant insists that it is not intended to be a games console.

Instead, the primary competitors for the $99 set-top box are intended to be Apple TV and Roku, as the primary function of the device is to stream video and audio content from web services like Netflix.

"This isn't trying to be a console, but we do think there's a great opportunity there in between a console and a smartphone for fun, quality games," said Amazon's Kindle VP Pete Larsen, in an interview with Engadget.

The gaming features are intended to attract people who play games on smartphones and tablets, but who would not buy a PS4, Xbox One or Wii U for their own reasons.

That said, Amazon has made a few splashes that suggest gaming will be more important to it going forward. It recently acquired Double Helix, and hired designers Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who worked on Portal and Far Cry 2, respectively.

Yahoo has expanded its anti-surveillance encryption to cover traffic between data centers, and has promised to deliver an encrypted Yahoo Messenger within months.

Having previously made HTTPS default for Yahoo Mail and encrypting mail between Yahoo services and other mail providers that support the SMTPTLS standard, Yahoo has gone a step further. It has announced that traffic between Yahoo data centers is now encrypted, as of March 31.

Revelations about NSA spying programs that leaked in the past year detailed how links between data centers can be targeted for spying programs.

Yahoo pledged to protect its customers by deploying encryption technologies across its services back in November 2013, and so far seems to be on track with the promises made by Marissa Mayer, Yahoo President and Chief Executive Officer.

Other steps taken by Yahoo include switching on HTTPS by default on the Yahoo Homepage and most Yahoo properties. The web giant also implemented the latest in security best-practices, including supporting TLS 1.2, Perfect Forward Secrecy and a 2048-bit RSA key for many of its global properties, and is working to eventually bring all Yahoo sites up to this standard.

A Russian national accused by Microsoft of stealing trade secrets from the company and passing them on to a French blogger has pleaded guilty.

Alex Kibkalo was a Microsoft employee in Lebanon when he allegedly obtained and leaked pre-release updates for the Windows 8 operating system, and also an SDK for Microsoft products that guards against software piracy, the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit.

Kibkalo also reportedly leaked other Windows 8 materials and screenshots, apparently in an effort to get back at Microsoft for a poor performance review.

He allegedly uploaded the stolen materials to his backup storage in July and August of 2012, and provided access to a French blogger, encouraging him to spread the SDK to others who may be able to write "fake activation" codes based on it.

An unidentified individual alerted Microsoft to the leak after being approached by the blogger to examine the SDK.

Kibkalo admitted guilt as part of a plea agreement entered in a federal court in Seattle on Monday. As part of the agreement, Kibkalo will pay $22,500 in restitution and will be jailed for three months.

Chromecast expanded its growing collection of supported services this week, with VUDU, Rdio and Crackle all supporting Google's casting dongle across platforms.

You can now watch the latest movies and TV shows on VUDU with Chromecast (1080p supported) from the Google Chrome web browser through the existing extension on a Desaktop PC or Mac, or you can download VUDU Player for the iOS and Android platforms to cast from smartphones and tablets.

Rdio also now allows you to cast songs, albums, stations, and playlists to your TV while album art will be viewable on screen during playback. Again, all you have to do is press the cast icon in the Rdio iOS, Android or Web apps.

"Rdio on Google Chromecast marks another milestone in Rdio's commitment to delivering the best music experience everywhere," said Anthony Bay, chief executive officer of Rdio.

"Music fans can access Rdio's massive catalog of over 20 million songs or start a station easily, all from Chromecast on their TV."

Finally, Crackle has also updated its iOS and Android apps to support casting movies and short videos from Chromecast.

Sources and Links
Google Cast Chrome Extension: chrome.google.com/webstore/
VUDU Player on iOS: itunes.apple.com/
VUDU App for Android: play.google.com
Crackle App for Android: play.google.com
Crackle App for iOS: tunes.apple.com

Amazon has unveiled its Fire TV set-top box that can deliver a lot of media from films, games, music and pictures to your living room over Wi-Fi.

The $99 tiny box packs quite a punch in its abilities. It can bring content from your favorite video streaming services - such as Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, SHOWTIME - to your HDTV. It can connect your living room TV to your favorite music services too, such as Pandora, TuneIn or iHearRadio, while also supporting services like YouTube.

For family photos and locally stored videos, you can easily stream them over the network to the big screen too.

Regulations in France that would require Netflix to invest in French content and abide by a quota of French content in its service can be avoided by serving from Luxembourg.

France has some cultural protection measures on its books and has previously clashed with U.S. firms, such as Google, and managed to squeeze money out of them for local content production and so forth. Netflix is not interested in bowing to the French government, but it can still reach French users.

According to a report in the WSJ's MarketWatch, Netflix will serve the French market from its headquarters in Luxembourg. Like a lot of other firms, Netflix has a Luxembourg presence for "tax purposes" anyway.

A report in the Les Echos newspaper cited unidentified officials at the French culture ministry in reporting the streaming service's plan to get around the country's regulations.

via: MarketWatch

Ed Fries, an Xbox co-creator, has said that Microsoft's Xbox One console can emerge victorious over Sony's PlayStation 4 (PS4) if Microsoft makes the right moves.

What would be the right moves? By focusing on good execution of software and services, while newer technologies like VR gaming might be worth avoiding for now.

In a Q&A (or AMA) on Yabbly, Fries gave his input on what Microsoft needs to do to overcome Sony, which has seen a better start to this console war with the PS4 thus far.

(UPDATE: Xbox boss Phil Spencer has responded to Ed Fries comments on Virtual Reality.)

"They need better exclusive games than PS4. They need to be more open to indie developers. They need to adopt free to play gaming more aggressively. They need to continue to move Xbox Live forward as the leading online service. They need to show people why they included the new Kinect on every machine by demonstrating a compelling use for it."

Facebook's recent $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift turned a few heads (and made a few explode..) and Sony's own Project Morpheus indicate that VR is in the headlights whether we want it or not. Fries believes that Microsoft needs to take a good hard look at 3D before diving into the deep end.

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles must go to the United States to answer questions as part of the Bitcoin exchange's bankruptcy case.

Karpeles has been ordered to present himself at the offices of his law firm, Baker & McKenzie, in Dallas on April 17. Last month, he requested that a Dallas court grant the failed crypotcurrency exchange Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection, after a class action lawsuit had been filed by clients.

Mt. Gox clients want answers about what happened to 750,000 bitcoins that the exchange claimed were stolen by hackers. Some clients allege that insiders stole the Bitcoins, and claims by former employees that there was worries about the use of customers' money as far back as 2012 won't serve to quieten such rumors.

At a May 20 hearing, Mt. Gox must prove that it should be granted bankruptcy protection, and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan is adamant that Karpeles will be present in the U.S. and not Japan.

"If he avails himself of this court, my God, he is going to get himself over here," she said while ordering Mr. Karpeles to appear, and was not amused when one of his attorneys suggested that the Baker & McKenzie firm may replace Karpeles as the "foreign representative" of Mt. Gox in the bankruptcy court.

Following a slew of updates for devices made by HTC, Samsung and others, KitKat now claims a 5.3 percent adoption among Android devices.

The data comes from Google in its latest statistics mined from Google Play visitors, tracking those that run Android Froyo (v2.2), Gingerbread (v2.3.3, v2.3.7), Honeycomb (v3.2), Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0.3, v4.0.4), Jelly Bean (v4.1.x, v4.2.x, v4.3) and KitKat (v4.4).

Specifically, the data came from Google Play visitors on Android devices during a 7-day period ending April 1.

KitKat has more than doubled its share since Google last shared its statistics with the Android developer community last month, when its penetration stood at 2.5 percent. Since then, KitKat updates for popular devices have continued to roll-out, finally giving the latest Android flavor the boost it has been waiting for.

Jelly Bean is still the King of the Droids for now though, with a combined 61 percent share. Gingerbread follows with 17.8 percent and Ice Cream Sandwich claims 14.3 percent.

Sources and Recommended Reading
Android Developer Dashboard with latest stats: https://developer.android.com/

Music streaming veteran Spotify is welcoming you to the dark side with its gorgeous new design and feature enhancements.

Spotify 1.0 has arrived and responded to user feedback with a darker new interface that will roll out across its services on every platform, starting today.

The new layout intends to make content the focus of our attention, as it "pops" out in its new dark surroundings. "Playing your favorite music has never looked so good," we are told.

In addition to turning the lights down, Spotify has also made some helpful feature changes. Your Music is a new way to browse and organize your favorite music tracks and albums. You can save albums and songs to your collection effortlessly, and create playlists that will suit your every mood and need.

In addition, Spotify has revamped its Browse feature so that it can serve up more localized, and relevant content for you.

The new design and features roll-out from today, April 2, across Desktop, iPhone and the web platform.

For the third time in just a couple of years, Apple and Samsung have gone to trial in a patent dispute case, with the Cupertino-based iPhone maker asking for a staggering $2 billion.

The trial commenced on Tuesday in a San Jose, California federal court. Apple is asking the jury to award it $2 billion in damages from the South Korean firm, which it accuses of violating a group of patents. It also wants a sales ban against allegedly infringing Samsung devices to be imposed.

Apple had previously won a $930 million reward when a different jury sided with it, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh refused to issue a permanent injunction against Samsung devices.

The South Korean consumer electronics firm is aggressively defending itself from claims made by Apple that it "slavishly" copied its iPhone and iPad tablets, and is now insisting that Apple's real target is its nemesis, Google.

New trial, new patents

So what is Apple accusing Samsung of violating at this trial? There are five key patents covering software features in the iOS-running iPhones, and Android-running Samsung devices, that Apple claims are being violated.

The first covers a feature familiar to all smartphone users: slide-to-lock. On an iOS device, a user manually pushes a slidebar from left to right in order to unlock the device, and Apple claims Samsung devices copy this feature. However, the slide-to-lock feature in Android and Samsung's devices is notable different to that on Apple's devices.

It has been ten years since Google opened up its shiny new e-mail service to the public, but only if you had an invite from an existing user.

Before then, GMail was an internal e-mail system for Google employees. Even after it opened to the public for the first time on April 1, 2004, it remained invite-only and at one point, it was reported that invites to the service sold for as high as $150 on EBay, and eventually Google had to move to prevent the selling of accounts. It also remained in beta for a considerable amount of time.

Within a year of operation, GMail users enjoyed 2GB of storage, which was considerably more than Google's standing competitors at the time. It also added more features such as formatted editing. In November 2006, it got its own first mobile applications for devices that could run Java apps.

Over the years, Google has integrated GMail and its other services, with a major change coming with Google Docs in 2007 which made it possible for users getting Office documents and spreadsheet as e-mail attachments to open them in the browser. Google also added IMAP support later the same year.

It wasn't until July 2009 - over five years since the public first got a chance to get a GMail account - that Google announced GMail (and its wider Google Apps) were out of beta.

The Twitter account of EA's Frostbite engine used April Fool's Day to poke some fun at Nintendo's Wii U system with several tweets, before removing them when users reacted negatively.

EA is not actively working on content for Nintendo's Wii U system, and on April 1 its @FrostbiteEngine twitter account trolled Nintendo with some phony tweets of upcoming content for the system and some cheap shots.

The tweets have since been removed, but not before gaming site Kotaku managed to note them.

"Frostbite now runs on the #WiiU since it is the most powerful Gen4 platform, our renderer is now optimized for Mario and Zelda," one tweet read. Frostbite is EA's videogame engine, and it doesn't work with Wii U.

"Frostbite will power #HalfLife3, coming out summer 2014! #WiiU exclusive," another tweet claimed.

"Good news, we have finally fixed and optimized our 'netcode'. Uses quantum entanglement for Zero Latency connections. Exclusively on #WiiU," the tweets continued, as the dead horse just lay there.

First thing to notice about the tweets is that they aren't all that funny or classy, and plenty of Twitter users responded negatively before the @FrostbiteEngine account promptly removed the tweets.

If all smartphones and tablets came with a Kill Switch that could render them inoperable remotely, it could save consumers $2.5 billion per year in the U.S.

That's according to William Duckworth, a statistics professor at Creighton University. His research found that consumers spend around $500 million replacing devices that have been stolen per annum.

When you take into account the money spent by consumers on insurance policies, it gets even worse. According to the study, consumers spend around $2 billion ever year on premium insurance plans obtained through their carrier.

So what is a kill switch? Simply put, a kill switch is a mechanism by which a stolen device could be rendered completely inoperable remotely. This protects consumers on two fronts; the first being that personal information on stolen devices may be inaccessible once it's remotely killed, and the second in a broader sense would reduce crime.

Arguments for and against

An astonishing amount of robberies in the United States involve mobile devices, with estimates reaching up to a third of all thefts in some places. Police and policymakers have often dubbed the problem "apple picking", and see a major disincentive being created for criminals if devices came with Kill Switches by default.

By accounts, the foray of Google's Chromecast dongle into Europe has been a success thus far, as BT Sport joins BBC iPlayer in embracing it.

Chromecast was only officially launched in European markets two weeks ago, but already the indications are that Google's video-beaming dongle is in demand. In the UK, Dixons revealed that it has sold Chromecast every 4.5 seconds on the launch day, comparing the demand to that of Apple's iPad launches.

In Norway, retail chain Elkjøp ran out of supply and had to order an additional 40,000 units from Google to keep up with demand.

Google has sold millions of Chromecasts so far, even though it has just officially entered the European market. The useful tool allows owners beam certain content from PCs, smartphones and tablets to a connected television wirelessly.

Chromecast got a major boost when support was added for BBC's iPlayer app, and now it has also received another in the UK with support for BT Sport reportedly on the horizon too.

BT Sport channels are available to subscribers of BT Broadband services.

(via: Engadget)

The new Xbox boss, Phil Spencer, has promised gamers that gaming will be at the core of taking the brand forward.

Spencer got the nod from Satya Nadella to head up Xbox, Xbox Live, and creative teams including Xbox Music, Xbox Video and Microsoft Studios, and he wants to focus on the strength of gaming for the Xbox One platform and Xbox Live services going forward.

"The growth of the Xbox community, with over 80 million Xbox owners around the world, is built on the foundation of exclusive franchises, new and original IP and the world's most popular cross-platform games," Spencer said.

"Games and gamers have always been at the core of Xbox and the core of my work--and gaming will be our core as we take Xbox forward."

Spencer described the past year as a growth experience for him personally, and for the entire Xbox team. The mission is to build a world-class team to meet the high expectations of a passionate fan base, and create the best gamers and entertainment content.

Spencer obtained his new position at Microsoft as chief executive officer Satya Nadella reforms Microsoft's business units to turn around the company's waning presence in key areas.

LinkedIn has responded to reports about a browser plug-in that claimed to be able to hack e-mail addresses of any users.

The Sell Hack browser plug-in can be installed in Chrome, Safari or Firefox, and it adds a "Hack In" button to every LinkedIn profile that you visit. It claims that with just a click of this button, it can dump the e-mail address information associated with the profile.

Early reports suggested that the tool somehow compromises LinkedIn's system to dump the e-mail addresses. However, at closer look, the plug-in clearly does not work for every profile that you try, whereas it appears to work for profiles of well known individuals.

That led quickly to more skeptical-types assuming that the plug-in is using some other means to find information available elsewhere about a particular user.

According to LinkedIn's senior manager of corporate communications, Krista Canfield, no LinkedIn data has been compromised by the plug-in, and the e-mail addresses that are revealed are not done so through any breach, bug or vulnerability with the site.

LinkedIn warns users on the risks of the plug-in

On Monday, Canfield confirmed that the service had sent a cease and desist letter to address "several violations," and she warned against users installing the plugin.

Every year on April 1, many tech companies and publications put out bogus stories, launch bogus services and make wild claims all in the spirit of fun to celebrate April Fool's Day.

This year is not any different, with some of the usual suspects having a bit of fun. Google is notorious for its April Fool's pranks, and this year treated us all to some more. Firstly, Google planted Pokemon on its Google Maps service, making a challenge for us to find 150 of them, while also replacing its own headquarters with a Pokemon center, along with other notable locations.