News written by Andre Yoskowitz (April, 2013)

Those that have tested the new Samsung Galaxy S4 were frustrated to learn that the size of Samsung's Android variant has ballooned in size, again.

The 16GB model only has 8.82GB of usable space, with the rest taken by the operating system, recovery partitions and pre-installed applications including Samsung's own suite that includes S Voice, S Translator and S Health.

Microsoft caused a stir earlier this year when it was revealed that their 64GB Surface tablet had only 29GB of usable space. The Windows 8 OS was the culprit in that situation.

Samsung does offer a MicroSD slot and larger capacity models, but of course those come with an added price.

Microsoft has begun integrating Skype into Outlook.com, giving email users the ability to make calls and send instant messages.

The preview of the service has been introduced to UK users, with a German and U.S. rollout coming in the next few weeks.

Over the course of the next few months, Microsoft says the rollout will reach all Outlook.com users across the globe. Skype for Outlook.com will include the ability to make voice calls, video calls and messaging.

Once you sync your Skype account to your Outlook.com account, the site will prompt you to install a plugin for your browser, fully enabling the integration.

Says Microsoft: "Even with the best email service, sometimes text isn't enough. We all face those situations where it's just easier to jump on a call to talk something through. Sometimes that quick call can accomplish more than a long email reply. That's why we are bringing Skype audio and video calling to your Outlook.com inbox."

Ubisoft has announced that its expected blockbuster open-world title 'Watch Dogs' will reach North American shores on November 19th.

The game will be available for the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U and on PC at that date. European gamers will have to wait until the 22nd.

Additionally, the PlayStation 4 version will be available as a launch title for the new console, whatever date that happens to be in November.

Finally, Ubisoft says the game will be headed to "other next generation consoles," as well, giving next-gen Xbox fans some hope that they will get a crack at the game this year.

Here is one trailer for the game:

Apple has announced it will be selling $17 billion worth of bonds this year, a record for U.S. investment-grade corporate debt.

The offering was so popular it generated $50 billion in orders.

Demand was so high that underwriters were able to lower the expected yields for the bonds.

Apple's debt offering is in six pieces. Four of the pieces are fixed-rate, being offered with maturities of 3, 5, 10 or 30 years. There are also two tranches of variable rate debt with 3 and 5 year maturities, based on current LIBOR pricing.

Thanks to record low rates for government Treasury bonds, the Apple bonds will not offer too high of a yield. The three year will offer 0.25 percent higher yield than the comparable Treasury, the five year will offer 0.45 higher, 0.80 higher on the 10-year and just 1.05 percent higher on the 30 year.

Apple was recently given the second best credit rating, AA+. Apple has $145 billion in cash, but only $45 billion is liquid and available in the U.S. Bringing the funds home would cost the company a mini fortune in taxes. Instead, they will offer the debt here to fund their $100 billion buyback for investors.

Google has made their excellent Google Now software available to iOS users.

Now comes as part of a broad update to the iOS Google Search app and is compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad. Nearly all of Google's information cards are ported from Android and the service itself is almost identical in look.

While Google Now does support iOS background location feature, it cannot do the same background sync Android users are accustomed to so pulling up locations may take slightly longer. High priority Now card alers will also not use the iOS notification system. Finally, it can pull events from your Google Calendar not the local Apple one.

Says the company: "As with many Google products, Android (and Nexus devices) always give you the best Google experience, but we aim to make our services available to as many people as possible. Android offers more integration opportunities than iOS."

Sony has made its impressive Xperia Tablet Z available for pre-order.

The new tab is a full-sized 10.1-inch tablet that is just 6.9mm thick, even thinner than the iPad Mini.

Under the hood, the tablet runs on Android 4.1, features a 1920x1200 resolution, a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, LTE, NFC, and IR blaster and an 8MP "backside-illuminated sensor" camera. It is all powered by a large 6000mAh battery. Sony also says the device is fully waterproof and dustproof.

Finally, the company is promoting a new feature it calls "S-Force Front Surround 3D," which supposedly helps convey a feeling of surround sound and spacial movement.

"Xperia Tablet Z sets new standards in entertainment by matching premium specifications and Sony technology with cross-device connectivity and a consistent user-experience," said Kaz Tajima, Corporate Vice President, Head of UX Creative Design and Planning, at Sony Mobile Communications. "Xperia Tablet Z reinforces our intention to be a leading player in the premium Android device market, by building on the principles established by Xperia Z and perfectly optimising them for the tablet form factor."

LG has unveiled the Optimus GK, another powerful 5-inch LTE device to be added to their lineup.

The GK will feature high-end specs, but will be exclusive to Korea for the time being.

Based on the Snapdragon 600 chipset, the GK runs on a 1.7 GHz Quad Core Krait 300 with an Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB RAM, has 16GB internal storage, dual 2/13MP camera, Android 4.1 at launch and a microSD slot for added storage.

The phone has a 1080p 5-inch IPS LCD display, a 3100 mAh battery and 4G LTE support alongside the standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.

YouTube has announced that Major League Baseball (MLB) will be offering content via the streaming video site.

Reads the full post:

Major League Baseball is bringing America's favorite pastime to more fans all over the world on YouTube. Expect to see highlights of MLB games from this season about a day or two afterwards, tens of thousands of hours of archived games dating back to 1952, clips from Baseballs Best Classics and Best Moments, and more. In all countries other than the US, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, you can also watch two live games per day during the regular season for free.

Microsoft gave eager fans a brief look at its IllumiRoom projector, first unveiled at CES this year.

As explained by the company, IllumiRoom "is a proof-of-concept system from Microsoft Research. It augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience."

The projector uses Kinect for Windows camera (along with the projector) to combine the on-screen gaming content and your current environment, most likely your bedroom or living room.

IllumiRoom can "change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences." Additionally, the "system uses the appearance and the geometry of the room (captured by Kinect) to adapt the projected visuals in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics."

For our readers that like to get a bit more technical, read the research paper here: IllumiRoom PDF

An internal document sent to employees of Japan's KDDI wireless service has been leaked, revealing that the carrier will begin taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5S on June 20th.

If accurate, the phone will launch in July, ahead of an expected "fall" launch as implied by Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In the document, there is also some pricing information and basic details like the fact that the new device will run on iOS 7.

There is no way to authenticate the document so take this story as a rumor but it would certainly be interesting if Apple is preparing a summer launch.

Additionally, the document claims the iPhone 5S will have a 13MP camera and a fingerprint reader, two rumors which we have heard before.

Another interesting note is Apple's WDC is slated for June 10th-14th, so the pre-orders would start just a week later, which makes sense.

Intel has finally confirmed the launch date for its fourth-generation Haswell chips.

The chips will launch on June 3rd, or as the company says, "in approximately 3,337,200,000,000,000 nanoseconds, Intel will reveal all there is to know about the highly anticipated 4th generation Intel Core processor family."

Desktops, laptops and more importantly convertibles and ultrabooks, are all expected to see boosts thanks to the benefits of the chips. Haswell processors are more battert efficient and have improved built-in graphics performance.

The first Haswell chips are all expected to be quad-core, aimed at high-end notebooks. Intel has created its standard Haswell processors and also ultra-efficient models aimed at convertibles and ultras.

Haswell chart via Cnet:

According to a MyDrivers report, the Galaxy Note III will certainly pack some monster specs.

The report claims the phone will have a 5.99-inch 1080p SAMOLED display and run on a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa Chipset that includes a Quad Core 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex A15 and a Quad Core 1.7 GHz ARM Cortex A7.

Powered by 3GB RAM, the phone will run on Android 4.2.2 at launch, include an S-Pen, have 32GB internal storage and more notably, a removable battery and a microSD slot.

The device is rumored to launch at the upcoming IFA 2013 event in October.

Alleged pic:

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has once again taken shots at the tablet market.

The exec says the traditional tablet will be dead in five years: "In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model."

While Apple, Google and Samsung may disagree with that statement, BlackBerry has a checkered past with tablets. In 2011, the company debuted their PlayBook for $500. Sales were so terrible the company was forced to liquidate, selling the tablets for as low as $169 and taking a large $485 million loss.

Heins says they remain committed to tablets, but any future device depends on how well BlackBerry 10 sales are on phones. So far, Z10 sales have been mediocre but the company has high hopes for the Q10.

Samsung has debuted their Galaxy Tab 3 this week, a low-end 7-inch tablet with one interesting feature, it can make phone calls if you buy the 3G model.

The device keeps the same style as Samsung's recent devices like the Note 8.0, and will debut in white.

Galaxy Tab 3s run on a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, have dual 3/1.5MP cameras, 16GB internal storage and the aforementioned 7-inch screen with a weak 1024x600 resolution.

The tab will run on Android 4.1 at launch, and be powered by 1GB RAM. The same 4,000 mAh battery as its predecessor is standard.

Android fans may be disappointed at the upcoming May I/O event, as it appears that Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will not make its highly-anticipated debut.

Citing recent server logs for Android, which remains part of the Jelly Bean family, Android Police says Android 4.3 is being tested and used in the real world by two Google employees (at the very least).

The build is 4.3 JWR23B.

A Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 were found running the operating system, which makes sense given that Google builds the two devices.

While Google has been quick to introduce new and always much improved operating systems, handset makers and carriers have been slow to keep up. Android 4.2 is still on less than 5 percent of all Android devices.

Browser maker Opera Software has filed suit against Trond Werner Hansen, a former employee and consultant, claiming he took trade secrets to rival Mozilla.

Opera wants $3.4 million in damages (20 million Norwegian Krone).

Hansen worked for the company as an employee from 1999 to 2006 and in 2009 and 2010 as a consultant. During his time, he is credited with creating tabbed browsing, speed dial, mouse gestures and integrated search.

The former employee worked for Mozilla, the team behind Firefox, last year, developing a browser prototype for the iPad. The prototype browser supposedly has a lot of innovations that Opera is either currently working on, or previously worked on.

Hansen was quick to respond with a full blog post (via TNW):

After leaving, and for the next couple of years, I considered developing a new browser that I'll call GB here. [...] GB existed as a concept and ideas, but was never developed, since I chose to focus on other projects. I did in fact meet up with Mozilla, Google and Flock (a first attempt at a social browser) in 2007 to talk about the future of the browser, and it was very tempting to have a go at it, but in the end I chose a different path that year. Needless to say, pursuing to develop the browser would have been a lot of work.

Read more...

According to a new report from research firm Kantar Worldpanel, Android dominated Q1 smartphone sales.

The platform accounted for 64.2 percent of global smartphone sales, followed by Apple.

In the U.S., the figure was not as dominant, with Android taking 49.3 percent share to Apple's 43.7 percent. In Japan it was even closer, 49.2 percent to 45.8 percent. In other nations, it was not even close, most notably Spain, which saw 93.5 percent of smartphone sales run through Android.

Windows Phone made a notable dent, at least in the U.S., moving up to 5.6 percent share from 1.9 percent during the same quarter in 2012. Microsoft may have found a niche, says Kantar analysts; first-time buyers. Over 50 percent of those that upgraded to Windows Phone were coming from a feature phone.

The operating system has also seen trending growth in Europe.

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has said this week that he expects new Q10 device sales to total in the "tens of millions."

The Q10 is the second BlackBerry device to feature the newly revamped BlackBerry 10 operating system. The Q10 also includes a full keyboard, in a throwback to what made the company such a huge hit in the mid-2000s.

"We have very, very good first signs already after the launch in the U.K.," Heins said. "This is going into the installed base of more than 70 million BlackBerry users so we have quite some expectations. We expect several tens of million of units."

The first BlackBerry 10 device, the fully touch Z10, sold 1 million units in its first quarter of availability, a lackluster figure, at best.

BlackBerry's Q10 goes on sale in the U.S. at the end of May through all four major carriers at a price of $250 with contract. This is more expensive than the iPhone and nearly all Android devices so BlackBerry is clearly making a gamble that enterprise users are willing to pay more for a keyboard.

That remains to be seen.

Earlier this month, Dish Network made a large $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel, besting an existing offer from Japanese carrier Softbank.

The company, which has been hoarding cash for a large acquisition, would use Sprint as a compliment to its current offerings, bundling TV, Internet and wireless phone services. Dish offered $17.3 billion in cash and an additional $8.2 billion in stock for complete control of the company. Softbank offered $20 billion for a 70 percent stake and Sprint agreed to the merger last year.

Today, Sprint received a waiver from SoftBank, allowing them to enter into a NDA and preliminary discussions with DISH "for the purpose of clarifying and obtaining further information from DISH regarding its proposal made on April 15, 2013."

What the waiver does not allow, is for Sprint to enter into real negotiations or provide any non-public information.

E-commerce and auction giant Alibaba has purchased a large stake in Sina Weibo, the Chinese equivalent to Twitter.

The company bought an 18 percent stake for $586 million and also retains the right to add another 12 percent in the future.

Monday's deal valued Weibo at $3.3 billion, more than the entire market value of parent Sina. Investors pounced on the opportunity, bringing Sina shares up 10 percent in Monday's trading.

Alibaba also noted it will be working with Sina to improve integration between e-commerce and social networking.

Weibo has about 46 million active users, but recent reports claims that over 50 percent never post.

"We believe that the cooperation of our two robust platforms will bring unique and valuable services to Weibo users, as well as making the mobile Internet a core part of Alibaba's strategy," added Jack Ma, the Alibaba chairman.

According to the CBC, Canada is preparing to tax Bitcoin transactions.

Canada's Revenue Agency says the taxes will be handled in one of two ways. Barter transaction rules apply when Bitcoins are used for goods or services, and capital gains or income tax rules apply when buying or selling as a trade or for other speculation.

The highly volatile currency recently reached all-time highs of over $250 USD per Bitcoin before collapsing to $60. The currency now trades at about $135. The currency first began being used by money launderers and those looking to purchase guns and drugs, but the currency is more mainstream now, with sellers of all types of goods supporting it.

View this great video explaining Bitcoin here:

Bitcoin Explained from Duncan Elms on Vimeo.

Apple took the first steps towards its first ever debt sale, as the company plans to use the money to fund its massive $100 billion share buyback program.

The company filed SEC paperwork and has spoken with Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs.

Because of Apple's brand, it is expected that the company could offer the bonds at rates even cheaper than that of the AAA rated Microsoft, and others. Apple was recently given the second best credit rating, AA+. Apple has $145 billion in cash, but only $45 billion is liquid and available in the U.S. Bringing the funds home would cost the company a mini fortune in taxes.

Investment bankers believe Apple can offer 10 year bonds with an interest rate of 2.2%, 50 basis points higher than Government Treasuries.

The Vermont Telephone Co. (VTel) has begun offering gigabit Internet for just $35 a month, undercutting the only other company that offers such fast speeds, Google.

VTel only has a footprint that covers 17,500 home in the state of Vermont, and the company says 600 homes have signed up.

CEO Michael Guite says he has made it his mission to upgrade the company's phone network to fiber. The company was founded in the 1890s.

Using $94 million in federal stimulus awards for broadband, the company has invested in 1200 miles of fiber.

Vtel is one of 700 rural telephone companies to make a similar switch, but their offering is the fastest. Google offers gigabit fiber in Austin, Texas and Kansas City, for $70 per month or for slightly more bundled with TV.

Sony's Mark Cerny has confirmed this week that the PS4 will have the strongest launch lineup of any PlayStation console.

The exec did not give a title count but did say developer's strong "familiarity" with the hardware led to the large launch lineup.

As revealed, the PS4's architecture will be very similar to the average high-end PC using AMD under the hood. "The launch lineup for PlayStation 4 -- though I unfortunately can't give the title count -- is going to be stronger than any prior PlayStation hardware. And that's a result of that familiarity."

At least two games have been confirmed, blockbusters inFAMOUS: Second Son and Killzone: Shadow Fall.

Cerny also noted that he believes devs will use most of the console's GPU on graphics at first but eventually share it equally between graphics and computation. "There are many, many ways to control how the resources within the GPU are allocated between graphics and compute. Of course, what you can do, and what most launch titles will do, is allocate all of the resources to graphics. And that's perfectly fine, that's great. It's just that the vision is that by the middle of the console lifecycle, that there's a bit more going on with compute."

Over the past weeks, it has been reported that Verizon has been considering buying out the other half of its Verizon Wireless joint venture.

Vodafone currently owns a 45 percent stake in the thriving carrier.

Reuters spoke with six of Vodafone's major investors, who said the asking price would have to be above $120 billion to be acceptable. The six shareholders control 1.3 billion of the 5 billion outstanding Vodafone shares making them huge players.

The recent reports had claimed Verizon was preparing a $100 billion bid, 50:50 in cash and stock.

These investors would also prefer a complete merger between the two companies, as Verizon Wireless is the major profit center for Vodafone.

Now that the company has sold off its remaining assets via auction, THQ creditors have made claims in the bankruptcy case, seeking over $200 million.

The smallest claim is for $2.98 from a Tennessee tax advisor and the largest is for $39 million from THQ Holdings.

A few of the big name claimants are Codemasters at $1 million over unpaid royalties, Double Fine is seeking $595,000 in royalties over PS Plus promotions and Microsoft is seeking $1 million over licensing fees. A few top execs from the company are seeking $2 million, as well, in unpaid salary and severance.

Employees and devs are also seeking outstanding payments for their work on major games like Saints Row 4 and Metro: Last Light.

THQ recently auctioned off the last of their IP including Darksiders, Red Faction and Homeworld, raising over $6 million.

Jeff Bleich, the U.S. Ambassador to Australia has made it his mission to stop 'Game of Thrones' piracy.

Coinciding with the annual UN World Book and Copyright Day, Bleich urged fans of the show to stop illegally downloading the show. He even went as far as to say that the huge amounts of piracy is "as epic and devious as the drama."

Reads the full post:

The file-sharing news website TorrentFreak estimated that Game of Thrones was the most-pirated TV series of 2012. One episode was illegally downloaded about 4,280,000 times through public BitTorrent trackers in 2012, which is about equal to the number of that episode's broadcast viewers. In other words, about half of that episode's viewers stole the program from HBO.

Sony has updated its PSN web store, enabling remote downloads.

The update allows users who purchase PS3 and Vita content to remotely download said content.

Says Sony:

After making a purchase on the Web Store, you will now be able to place your content into a download queue for remote download to your PS3 or PS VITA device.

PlayStation Plus subscribers will be able to take advantage of the automatic update function available through the Plus service to remotely download content purchased from the Web Store to your selected device during the regular automatic update. If you do not have a Plus subscription, any content queued for remote download will automatically begin downloading and installing when the device is manually turned on.

Major video game publisher Activision Blizzard's CEO Robert Kotick was one of the highest paid executives of 2012.

The CEO made $65 million in compensation, thanks to a major stock award.

Kotick's base salary jumped to $2 million, and he received a $56 million stock award. Additionally compensation was performance based.

The company's revenues and net income only saw low single digit growth for 2012, much slower than 2011 when the exec made a much smaller salary and bonus.

Kotick has been a director and CEO of the company since 1991.

Samsung has announced this week that under a new branding scheme, all of the company's Windows PCs will use the Ativ name seen currently on their Windows Phone and convertible offerings.

The first devices will be the Ativ Book 5 Ultrabook and the Ativ Book 6 laptop.

Additionally, previous products have also been renamed. The Series 7 All-In-One is now the Ativ One 7, and the Series 9 is now the Ativ Book 9.

The Ativ Book 5 has a 14-inch 1366 x 768 touchscreen, is powered by a 1.8-GHz Intel Core i5-3337U processor with integrated Intel HD 40000 graphics, and runs on 4GB RAM with 500GB internal storage. The ultrabook starts at $900 in the basic configuration.

Book 6 notebooks have a 15.6-inch 1080p touchscreen, an Intel Core i7 CPU, a Radeon HD 8770M GPU, 8GB RAM and a 1TB hard drive for $1200.

Although the company experimented with it internally, the company has decided against adding any multiplayer components for their upcoming Witcher 3.

The game will now be an "epic, story driven, single player open world RPG experience."

In fact, the developers say they believe the final chapter of the popular series "has no place for meaningful multiplayer."

Added CD Projekt marketing head Michal Platkow-Gilewski: "There's no place for multiplayer in so strongly a story-driven game as The Witcher 3. We want to focus on the single-player experience, delivering more than 100 hours of truly immersive gameplay."

Although the Sony Xperia Z has not found a carrier in the U.S., Best Buy has begun selling an unlocked version of the smartphone.

The phone is selling for $900, however, easily the most expensive phone available. By comparison, the new Galaxy and even the iPhone sell for less unlocked, even in premium configurations.

Even worse, the device will not even work with LTE networks, and only supports 3G.

The device runs on Android 4.1.2, has a 1080p 5-inch display, a 1.4GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 processor, 2GB RAM and a 13MP camera.

KoryoLink, the only 3G operator in North Korea has seen strong growth in 3G userbase over the last 14 months, going from 1 million subscribers to 2 million.

The news comes via KoryoLink CEO Ezz Heikal, and later confirmed by a company spokesperson.

Koryo is a joint venture between large Egyptian company Orascom and the state-run Korea Post and Telecommunications Corporation (KPTC). KoryoLink begun in 2008 under Kim Jong Il but usage has rocketed since Kim Jong-un took over when his father passed.

Earlier this year, KoryoLink began selling uncensored 3G data packages to foreign business people, but the state stopped the practice just weeks later, leaving new subscribers with useless contracts.

North Koreans are blocked from using the 3G unless they go through the censored national Internet.

A Dutchman has been arrested in Spain this week over his alleged role in the major cyber attack on Spamhaus, the attack that some journalists took the liberty of calling the biggest in the history of the Internet.

Sven Olaf Kamphuis, part of the group Stophaus, has been arrested for the attack. The group has stated its goal is to shut down the anti-spam Spamhaus operation.

Kamphuis is expected to be transferred over to the Dutch Public Prosecution Service.

In March, the major DDoS attack "broke the Internet," although that claim has since been discredited. Spamhaus is a network that creates "a real-time blacklist of servers they believe are used to send out spam email." The company directly and indirectly filters up to 80 percent of all daily spam messages, which can sometimes total in the hundreds of millions.

For the first time ever, smartphones have outshipped feature phones over the course of a quarter, at least if IDC data released earlier this week is to be believed.

Overall, the mobile phone market grew 4 percent year-over-year for the Q1 2013 to 418.6 million units. The quarter is seasonably slow following the holiday hangover and a usually slow product release period.

Vendors shipped 216.2 million smartphones during the quarter, good for 51.6 percent share. Samsung and Apple remain the undisputed leaders.

"Phone users want computers in their pockets. The days where phones are used primarily to make phone calls and send text messages are quickly fading away," said Kevin Restivo, senior research analyst with IDC's Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker. "As a result, the balance of smartphone power has shifted to phone makers that are most dependent on smartphones."

The top smartphone OEMs:

The Chernin Group, headed by media heavyweight Peter Chernin, is producing a new series that will be distributed completely through social media, skipping TV.

Titled "@Summerbreak," the show will "air" through Twitter, Tumblr, YouTube and Instagram. AT&T is the sole sponsor of the show, which will launch this summer.

As explained by Variety, "'@SummerBreak' follows a group of real-life graduating seniors culled from high schools in the Westside area of Los Angeles for eight weeks before they depart for college and elsewhere. Instead of the traditional 30- or 60-minute episodic format, the series will play out 24/7 as a series of tweets with photos and videos attached."

Chernin is aiming to target younger viewers, especially on the devices they use the most, tablets and smartphones.

Another interesting point is the company can "adjust the series in real time based on audience data demonstrating which characters are drawing the most interest," unlike traditional media.

Search giant Google spent a massive $291 million on acquisitions during the first quarter, as the company continues to look for ways to boost their already robust revenue.

$150 million of those dollars went to patents and developed technology, with the biggest acquisition being $125 million for Channel Intelligence Inc., a maker of online marketing tools used by retailers.

Google has been actively moving away from its core search-based ad business, expanding into hardware, software and all other types of ads and marketing. The company spent $12.5 billion for Motorola Mobility last year, adding a potent patent portfolio to protect Android.

"These acquisitions generally enhance the breadth and depth of our expertise in engineering and other functional areas, our technologies, and our product offerings," said Google in their quarterly filing to investors.

The WSJ has reported that Samsung is working on building a "rugged" version of its Galaxy S4 smartphone.

Supposedly the phone will be called the S4 Active and will be both waterproof and dust-proof.

Besides the added durability, the phone will be the same in appearance and specs as the flagship S4.

According to the report, Samsung is targeting a July release although it is unclear where the phone will be first released, and which carriers will offer it.

Additionally, the report also claims the company is building another 8-inch tablet that will likely not be part of the Note series.

In an unconventional launch, the mid-end Nokia Lumia 521 for T-Mobile has gone on sale via the Home Shopping Network (HSN).

The network has the phone starting today, priced very competitively at $150 without contract and with a bonus car charger and an extra screen protector.

If you want to be able to actually touch the phone, it will hit Microsoft retail stores and Wal-Marts on May 11th, for the same price.

Strangely, the phone will hit T-Mobile stores on May 22nd.

The phone has a 4-inch display, is powered by a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, 512MB RAM, Windows Phone 8 and has 8GB internal storage.

AOL has shut down its AOL Music division and fired the entire remaining staff.

AOL Music operated the music.aol.com homepage, the sites for The Boot and Tour Tracker, as well as Spinner.

Dan Reilly, the site's editor, confirmed the entire staff was laid off, although that number is still unknown.

After AOL acquired the Huffington Post for $315 million in 2011, it has been slowly consolidating and closing out divisions including Politics Daily, PopEater and StyleList, all of which are now under the Huffington Post Media wing.

AOL Music was once considered a "top online music destination," and Spinner was one of the Internet's first radio services, eventually offering daily downloads, exclusive interviews, album streams and live performances. While once popular, Spinner has fallen out of touch, with interviews and downloads from artists with small followings.

Well, we all just got laid off. AOL Music is finished.

-- Dan Reilly (@danreilly11) April 26, 2013

LivingSocial, the failed daily deals site majority owned by Amazon, has confirmed a massive attack on their servers led to customer data being stolen by hackers.

50 million customers have had their names, emails, passwords and date of birth compromised, but credit card and other financial information were not.

The attack affected customers in all countries LivingSocial is available with the exception of Thailand, Korea, Indonesia and the Philippines.

Reads the internal memo from CEO Tim O'Shaughnessy:

Re: Security Incident
LivingSocialites –
This e-mail is important, so please read it to the end.
We recently experienced a cyber-attack on our computer systems that resulted in unauthorized access to some customer data from our servers. We are actively working with law enforcement to investigate this issue.
The information accessed includes names, email addresses, date of birth for some users, and encrypted passwords -- technically 'hashed' and 'salted' passwords. We never store passwords in plain text.
Two things you should know:
1. * The database that stores customer credit card information was not affected or accessed.
2. * The database that stores merchants' financial and banking information was not affected or accessed.
The security of our customer and merchant information is our priority. We always strive to ensure the security of our customer information, and we are redoubling efforts to prevent any issues in the future.
To ensure our customers and merchants are fully informed and protected, we are notifying those who may have been impacted via email explaining what happened, expiring their passwords, and requesting that they create new passwords. A copy of the note is included below this email.
If you have any questions or concerns, please visit Pulse –https://pulse.livingsocial.com/intranet/Home/more_updates.html -- for a list of frequently asked questions. If you have additional questions that aren't answered in the FAQs, please submit them via email to XXX@livingsocial.com.
Because we anticipate a high call volume and may not be able to answer or return all calls in a responsible fashion, we are likely to temporarily suspend consumer phone-based servicing. We will be devoting all available resources to our web-based servicing.
I apologize for the formality of this note, which the circumstances demand. We need to do the right thing for our customers who place their trust in us, and that is why we're taking the steps described and going above and beyond what's required. We'll all need to work incredibly hard over the coming days and weeks to validate that faith and trust.
– Tim

According to Intel VP and CPO Dan Perlmutter, touchscreen notebook prices could soon hit new lows at $199, but they will run on Android, not Windows.

Intel's current CEO Paul Otellini made similar comments last month, but did not specify what operating system would be seen on the cheap devices. The Android notebooks would run on Intel's Atom processors, the company's response to efficient and powerful ARM tech like Qualcomm's Snapdragon.

"We have a good technology that enables a very cost-effective price point," Perlmutter added. When asked if Windows-based notebooks could hit the same price point, the exec said the price "depends on how Microsoft prices Windows 8. It may be a slightly higher price point."

Additionally, the exec says by the end of next year, notebooks running on Intel's more powerful Core line of processors with Windows 8 could sell for $399 to $499.

The usually reliable Paul Thurrott has reported on the upcoming Xbox successor.

Microsoft confirmed yesterday the console will be unveiled on May 21st at an event on their campus.

Thurrott says the system will be released in early November and will cost $299 with subscription or $499 without. The "subscription" cost is $10 per month for two years and will require an Xbox Live Gold subscription.

The journalist also revealed some more great info on the console. Reads the report:

Windows 8 Core. The next Xbox is based on the "Core" (base) version of Windows 8. This suggests a common apps platform or at least one that is similar to that used by Windows 8. It also suggests that Microsoft could open up this platform to enthusiast developers. (That last bit is supposition on my part.)

No entertainment box. Microsoft originally planned to offer both a "full" version of the next Xbox (with video game playing capabilities) and a lower-end entertainment-oriented version, code-named "Yuma," that didn't provide gaming capabilities. But plans for Yuma are on hold, and no pure entertainment version of the next Xbox will appear in 2013 (or possibly ever).

Read more...

Samsung posted another strong quarter, bringing in an net profit of 7.15 trillion won ($6.45 billion) for the Q1.

The profit was a 50 percent jump year-over-year. Revenues grew to 52.87 trillion won ($47.6 billion), thanks to extremely strong sales of smartphones. The IT & Mobile Communications division brought in 32.82 trillion in revenue by itself.

Samsung is said to have sold a record 69.4 million smartphones during the quarter, taking a 33.1 percent global share, its highest ever.

Apple sold 37.4 million iPhones for the quarter, giving them a 17.9 percent share. LG was third with 10.3 million units sold.

Nintendo has updated the firmware for the Wii U console, in an effort to improve performance and lag times.

Most critics of the system have blamed extremely long load times for even basic functions. The update should improve this lag.

Additionally, the change list notes that "you can now copy data between two USB drives directly, the console can automatically download and install updates in the background, and you can boot directly into the original Wii mode by holding down the B button during startup."

Nintendo also noted that another major update is slated for the summer to further address the same issues.

LG made an interesting statement today during their quarterly earnings report.

The company says it will introduce a smartphone using a flexible OLED screen by the end of the year, likely making it the first phone maker to do so.

Yoon Bu-hyun, the VP of mobile says his division is working very closely with LG Display to bring the phone to shelves by the Q4.

It is unclear how the screen will be used, but most expect a "wraparound" display, something similar to Samsung's prototype at CES (pictured). A wrap device will offer more viewable space and better viewing angles.

LG also promised curved OLED TVs last week.

Nintendo revealed its quarterly earnings this week, and it is becoming clear that the Wii U is a disaster for the company.

For the fiscal year ended March 31st, the company's revenue was just ¥635.422 (£4.2bn), 5 percent below their own forecast. Net income collapsed to ¥7,099m (£420.8m) for the most recent quarter, leading to a yearly loss of ¥60,863m (£403m), the company's second loss in as many years following a decade of strong profitability.

Nintendo specifically cited the yen and weaker than expected sales of the Wii U for their results.

The Wii U has only sold 3.45 million units since launch in November. The old and market saturated Wii sold 3.98 million units in the same time period. For the last quarter, only 300,000 Wii U were sold, a devastatingly low number.

Nintendo expects sales to pickup as a bevy of new games are set for release soon.

Google has purchased the natural language engine startup Wavii.

Apple is said to have placed a bid, as well, but Google offered the more appealing terms.

Wavii specialized in "aggregation technology and natural summarization algorithms" and it was reported that Apple wanted to integrate the company into its Siri division.

Google will bring the 25-person Wavii team into their Knowledge Graph division, and some could do work for Google Now.

Although the terms were not disclosed, the purchase is expected to be around $30 million.

According to Digitimes, panel makers are preparing to build Ultra HD/4K displays for use in notebooks and even tablets.

The displays have resolutions of 3840 x 2160 and are currently only seen in a few TVs and monitors.

Reads the report, "downstream system makers have reportedly been contacting Taiwan-based panel makers about producing Ultra HD tablet panels while Sharp is planning to produce Ultra HD notebook panels.

The sources have yet to reveal whether the panels will be used in products released in 2013, but said that Panasonic is likely to be a major purchaser of the technology."

Sharp will likely use their IGZO transparent compound semiconductor tech, making the panels very high end.

Microsoft has announced a new patent licensing deal with ZTE that will cover all Android and Chrome devices.

The deal comes just a week after the company signed a similar deal with Hon Hai, the parent of Foxconn. Hon Hai is now their largest patent licensee, paying a flat fee for all Android and Chrome devices it manufactures. Hon Hai builds 40 percent of the world's smartphones, so Microsoft's haul should be huge.

ZTE is the fifth largest Android maker in the world, shipping 9.5 million units in the Q4 2012.

Microsoft has similar deals with Samsung, HTC, Quanta, Pegatron and others and is said to make much more off royalty payments of devices they don't make than off the devices they do build, such as Surface tablets.

"Experience has taught us that respect for intellectual property rights is a two-way street and we have always been prepared to respect the rights of others just as we seek respect for our rights," concluded Microsoft general counsel Horacio Gutierrez in a statement.

Yesterday afternoon, Apple released their quarterly earnings report, one of the most anticipated reports in an extremely long time.

The company posted a profit of $9.5 billion of revenues of $43.6 billion, drops across the board but obviously still massive numbers.

iPhone sales remained fairly strong at 37 million, and iPad sales (especially Mini) exploded to 19.5 million. While the iPad figure was nice, it came with a steep decline in ASP (average selling price) due to the Mini's discounted price.

The company also sold less Macs, 3.95 million, and less iPods, down to 5.6 million.

More importantly for investors, Apple guided down their revenue forecasts for next quarter significantly, to $33.5-35.5 billion, down from an expected $38 billion. The company also announced it was authorizing a $60 billion buyback of its own stock, borrowing money to do so instead of using their $145 billion cash hoard.

During the earnings conference call, CEO Tim Cook dismissed rumors that the company would begin shipping iPhones with larger screens. All they would say is that new products are coming this fall, and in 2014, without elaborating.

Earlier today, Microsoft sent out invites for the unveiling of their highly anticipated Xbox successor.

The Redmond giant will reveal the console on May 21st at 1PM EST, and the unveiling will take place at the company's campus in Washington.

Xbox Live boss Larry "Major Nelson" Hryb wrote this of the upcoming console:

On Tuesday May 21st, we'll mark the beginning of a new generation of games, TV and entertainment. On that day, we'll be holding a special press event on the Xbox campus and we invite you to join us via the live global stream that will be available on Xbox.com, Xbox LIVE and broadcast on Spike TV if you are in the US or Canada.

On that day, we'll share our vision for Xbox, and give you a real taste of the future. Then, 19-days later at the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, we'll continue the conversation and showcase our full lineup of blockbuster games.

We are thrilled to pull back the curtain and reveal what we've been working on.

Nokia has teased their latest feature phone, set for launch tomorrow.

The teaser reveals a standard Nokia design with rounded corners and colorful hardware.

By showing off a Z and Shift key, it is clear the device will feature a full QWERTY keypad, a feature rarely seen nowadays.

Most expect the device to be similar to the company's popular Asha 205, and the announcement is coming from the Mobile Phones team, guaranteeing it is not a Lumia phone.

Nokia's feature phones have been aimed at emerging markets in Asia, Europe and Africa.

Microsoft has confirmed a global expansion for its Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets.

The cheaper RT will be launching in Malaysia on April 25th, and in Mexico by the end of May. Additionally, the device will be headed to Korea and Thailand by mid-June.

Surface RT is currently available in 25 nations; Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, China, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal, Russia, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

The more expensive (but better) Surface Pro will be expanding significantly by the end of May, with Microsoft confirming launches in Australia, Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, New Zealand, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. Surface Pro will launch in Korea, Malaysia, Russia, Singapore, and Thailand before the end of June.

To date, the tablet is only available in the U.S., Canada, and very recently China.

LG Display, the second biggest maker of flat-panel displays, posted a profit this quarter that missed analyst expectations.

The company reported a profit of just $3.1 million, compared to expectations of $68 million, for the Q1.

A weaker currency, mixed in with falling sales of displays sold to Apple, led to the disastrous quarter.

LGD is not the first to cite Apple in its reports. Hon Hai, the parent of Foxconn, and the biggest manufacturer of iOS devices, reported their largest revenue decline in 13 years this quarter. Cirrus Logic, another maker of Apple chips, reported a huge amount of oversupply.

Apple is set to report earnings tonight, and is expected to see its first quarter of smaller profits in almost a decade.

Search engine giant has been fined 145,000 euros ($189,230) by German regulators following a long-standing case over Wi-Fi data collecting by their Street View cars.

In 2008 through 2010, the cars captured the data from unsecured networks while driving through taking pictures for their Google Maps/Street View service. Data included emails, passwords and even photos.

"In my view, this is one of the biggest data protection rules violations known. Google's internal control mechanisms must have severely failed," says Hamburg data regulator Johannes Caspar.

French regulators had already hit Google with a similar fine last year, 100,000 euro.

Google has always maintained they never used the data, nor stored it anywhere or ever viewed it.

Doing some quick calculations using Google's recent earnings report, the company makes $190,000 in profit every 7 minutes or so.

Apple has finally added the option to download content later from iTunes, including TV episodes, season passes and movies.

Using iTunes 11 or higher, or an iOS device with iOS 6, you'll have the option to "buy now" and "download later," a good move for bigger content you may not want to start downloading at the time of purchase.

Macworld says if you "tap Later the purchased items will be added to your iTunes account and accessible to stream or download in the future via Apple's iTunes in the Cloud feature."

The new feature is available only if you live in a nation that has iTunes for Cloud for audio and video. There are plenty of countries that do support both, but not all. Check the full list here: iTunes in the Cloud availability

Hackers caused a mini stock market "flash crash" this afternoon after sending a bogus tweet from a hacked Associated Press (AP) Twitter account.

The tweet, posted below, read that there were explosions at the White House and President Barack Obama had been injured. The account was quickly shut down, but the damage had been done.

U.S. markets, including the Dow Jones and S&P 500 fell 1 percent in one minute before rebounding.

White House spokesperson Jay Carney quickly dismissed the story by saying the President was doing just fine. The AP has had all of its Twitter accounts suspended.

According to new comments from Google chairman Eric Schmidt, there will be no consumer Google Glass rollout until 2014.

During an interview the exec was asked when the Google Glass would come to market in which he responded, "there will be thousands of [Google Glass] in use by developers over the next months, and then based on their feedback, we'll make some product changes, and it's probably a year-ish away."

Schmidt also addressed privacy concerns, which are valid given the fact that Google Glass users could record in any situation: "The fact of the matter is that we'll have to develop some new social etiquette. It's obviously not appropriate to wear these glasses in situations where recording is not correct. Companies like Google have a very important responsibility to keep your information safe but you have a responsibility as well which is to understand what you're doing, how you're doing it, and behave appropriately and also keep everything up to date."

The Google Glass glasses were just rolled out to early adopters via the Google Explorers program.

During their quarterly earnings report, streaming giant Netflix announced they had reached 29.17 million domestic subscribers.

The figure means Netflix has finally surpassed HBO, its new rival in original content.

HBO has 28.7 million subscribers, according to the most recent data.

Netflix had a great quarter, adding just over 2 million subscribers, thanks mainly to an upgraded TV catalog and original content like the popular "House of Cards."

On a global scale, HBO is still king, with 114 million subscribers. Netflix only has 36.2 million.

As current Netflix subscribers know, you can simultaneously stream two videos from different devices, allowing couples and families to keep just one account.

Netflix also knows that plenty of people share accounts.

In an effort to combat this and also appeal to larger families that may have more than two people using the service at one time, the company has unveiled a new plan that will allow up to 4 simultaneous streams.

Says CEO Reed Hastings: "A few members with large families run into our 2-simultaneous-stream limit. To best serve these members, we're shortly adding a 4-stream plan, at $11.99 in the U.S."

Hastings notes that he only expects 1 percent of the current subscriber base to use the new plan.

According to new market research, Google Play Store revenues are growing at a much faster pace than Apple, but Apple remains the dominant store in overall sales.

For the first quarter of 2013, all mobile app stores brought in $2.2 billion in revenue, with Apple's App Store accounting for 74 percent of that, at $1.48 billion. Google Play amounted to 18 percent. A second report claims the numbers are different, with Android taking 38.5 percent share. Regardless, Apple still dominates.

Google Play revenue jumped 90 percent quarter-over-quarter, easily beating Apple's 25 percent growth.

"Although Google is catching up, Apple has such a head-start in revenues that, on present trends, we would not expect Google to overtake Apple until sometime in 2016," said Daum, chief analyst at Canalys (via Reuters).

Most of the revenue gap is do to one simple fact; Android offers more games and apps for free than Apple's store does. Additionally, it is much easier to pirate apps on Android.

In just 9 days since its launch in the Google Play Store, the Facebook Home user interface has been downloaded over 500,000 times.

The number is more notable since the software is only available for the HTC One, One X, Samsung Galaxy S3 and S4, and the Note II. Additionally, the software is default on the HTC First.

As explained by the social networking giant, Facebook Home "brings your News Feed to the surface, for access to important social updates without opening up additional applications."

Additionally, Facebook Home includes; Cover Feed, a constant, fresh stream of photos and updates directly from your news feed and is always present as soon as you wake up your phone; Notifications that appear right on your home screen; Chat Heads, the mobile messenger that lets you jump in and out of conversations while you multitask; App Launcher, which lets you view your favorite apps and post right to Facebook from the same spot.

Facebook has unveiled their newly redesigned logo alongside updated icons.

The new logo removes the blue bar that added a 3D effect, and also repositions the large "F."

Overall, the logos and icons are more "flat," following a wider industry trend of simplified logos that are more "visually striking," says Crunch.

Here are more of the updates:

Nintendo has confirmed that its Wii U Virtual Console will launch in the U.S. on Tuesday.

At launch, a full roster of NES and SNES titles will be available including hits like Super Mario World, F-Zero, Excitebike, Donkey Kong Jr, Super Metroid and Mega Man.

Additionally, the company will bring the cult classic hit "Earthbound" to the Virtual Console later in the year.

Moving forward, titles from handhelds such as the Game Boy Advance will also be made available via the service.

Because most old games did not offer save points, Nintendo has created "Restore Points" for them, allowing gamers to pause and restart later.

Benchmarking company Futuremark recently tested 258 Android devices.

Using their 3DMark benchmark tests, the Ouya came in 92nd place in performance, falling far behind newer flagship phones like the, Galaxy S4, Nexus 4 and HTC One and tablets such as the Xperia Tablet Z and Galaxy Note 8.

Of course, the test were run on the Kickstarter dev kits and really only test raw technical capabilities. The console uses a quad-core Tegra 3 T33.

The device raised almost $9 million from Kickstarter, but most reviews have claimed the dev models are not ready for retail. The retail boxes go on sale via retailers like Amazon in early June.

Full list here: Futuremark

Nintendo long stayed away from digital sales, but that changed last year as Nintendo fell behind rivals.

President Reggie Fils-Aime now says digital downloads are bringing healthy profits to the company, and the figure is still trending higher.

"We have 15 Nintendo-published titles available, both physically and digitally [on the 3DS]," says Fils-Aime. "So far in 2013, of those 15 available in this format, 11 percent of sales have come through full digital downloads of those games."

Some games are more successful than others, such as Fire Emblem Awakening. The game has sold 240,000 units, 80,000 of which have been in digital.

The exec was outright giddy about the prospects of the 3DS, which has seen strong sales, in hardware and software: "When the NPD numbers come out later this week, you're going to see life-to-date 3DS game sales surpass 20 million units in the US. And that's just physical. It doesn't include digital sales. ... So far in 2013 - through April 15 - 3DS game sales are up 55 percent versus last year, counting both physical and digital."

An ex-Sega engineer has shown off a "Sega Pluto" prototype console that was never released.

The console is a Sega Saturn in hardware and software, but also included a built-in NetLink 28.8k dial-up modem for Internet connectivity and online multiplayer.

There are only two Pluto models in existence, and the unit shown off is a fully functioning NTSC model.

Says the engineer, "After a good 14 years or so of sitting on this, I've decided it's time to share a little bit of Sega lore with those who would appreciate it most. Sega is a company with a history of turmoil. Employee turnover is a sad theme, and the Sonic Reaper (as we call him) strikes all too frequently. As such, the past gets forgotten quickly - treasures from the previous generation are quickly cast aside, as a new regime tries to make a name for themselves (or justify their existence).

"As such, some of said treasures get left on laid-off-peoples' desks. And in a beautiful twist of fate, this beauty ended up finding its way to my desk, and then in a box with the rest of my stuff when I left Sega. I was told that only two of these prototypes were made - and this is #2." Read more...

After auctioning off most of their intellectual property in January, bankrupt gaming company THQ has auctioned off the rest of their IP.

Some of the more notable properties were Red Faction, Darksiders and Homeworld.

There were 17 bids made, and the IP is expected to bring in $6 million. The offers will now be presented to the bankruptcy court, and the sales will be completed by May.

The IP was split into 6 different auctions; Darksiders series; Red Faction series; Homeworld series; MX series; Other Owned Software, including Big Beach Sports, Destroy All Humans!, Summoner, and more; Other Licensed Software, including Marvel Super Hero, Supreme Commander, Worms, and more.

Crytek, makers of Crysis, are expected to have bid for Darksiders.

Nintendo has released the 3DS XL Circle Pad Pro in the US.

The accessory adds an additional analog stick to the handheld console, and is compatible with a number of games including hits like Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate, Resident Evil: Revelations, Metal Gear Solid: Snake Eater 3D and Kid Icarus: Uprising.

Nintendo is selling the peripheral exclusively through their online store in the U.S., for $20.

President Satoru Iwata said last year the company would not be selling a refreshed 3DS XL with two analogs, preferring to keep the form factor smaller.


The Circle Pad Pro had been available in Japan and Europe.

MSI has unveiled their All-in-One gaming PC, a few months after announcing it at CES.

The AG2712 packs a massive 27-inch 1080p matte display with 10-point multitouch support.

Under the hood is a mobile Core i7 CPU and a Nvidia GTX 670MX graphics card with 3GB of dedicated memory. The system is powered by 12GB DDR3 RAM which can be expanded to 16GB. Making bootup quick is a 128GB SSD and internal storage is a 1TB 3.5" HDD.

MSI has added a 2MP webcam, a Blu-ray drive, a 3-in-1 card reader, two 5W speakers, Gigabit ethernet, four USB 3.0 ports, HDMI-out, HDMI-in (that's a big deal) and the other standard ports and features.

Twitter has announced that it will killing off support for the Internet Explorer 6 and 7 browsers in its Twitter for Websites service.

While the current (basic) functionality will still work, Twitter will no longer care about the browsers. If features break IE6 or 7 in the future, so be it.

Twitter for Websites lets devs and content publishers embed Tweets into apps, websites and more. The company says by dumping old browser support, they can execute "simpler, faster, smaller code."

These are the features that will be killed after May 13th:

The Tweet button, Follow button, embedded Tweets and timelines will cease to be initialized in IE6. The script will detect the unsupported browser and silently exit, but the content from the embed codes will remain in place.

Factory functions for the creation of widgets will be defined, but will return false to any callback provided in IE6. Widgets will still be rendered in IE7, but the browser will have limited support and future features may not be implemented.

Read more...

E-tailing behemoth Amazon has announced it will expand operations to Russia.

The company has opened its first office in the nation, to be lead by Arkady Vitrouk, the director of Kindle Content for Amazon in Russia.

By doing some digging, it also appears Amazon is hiring Russia-specific positions for the Kindle business, including a senior product manager for Kindle content pricing, and a principal for content acquisition for Kindle Russia.

Additionally, Amazon has applied for patents in Russia for storage and delivery of goods; the storage of electronic texts and media files and book publishing, all the divisions you could imagine for them in an expansion.

Amazon recently announced it was taking its Android Appstore to 200 new countries.

Russia does not have a strong delivery infrastructure, and credit card penetration is light, as well, which could prove to be issues for Amazon at the onset.

Twitter has confirmed that it will be shutting down TweetDeck AIR, TweetDeck for Android and TweetDeck for iPhone on May 7th.

The company first announced the news in March without a definitive time frame.

Additionally, all Facebook integration to TweetDeck products will be shut down, as well. TweetDeck for Mac and PC will remain active, and will update alongside the Chrome versions.

Twitter purchased the company in May, 2011 for $40 million, three years after it launched. The app grew very popular with Android and iOS power users.

Lookout, the popular security suite for Android devices has announced the discovery of BadNews, a malware family that has affected many downloaders.

The affected applications have been downloaded up to 9 million times, combined, and Google has only just shut down the developer accounts and the applications thanks to Lookout's warning.

In their report, firm describes the malware: "BadNews masquerades as an innocent, if somewhat aggressive advertising network. This is one of the first times that we've seen a malicious distribution network clearly posing as an ad network. Because it's challenging to get malicious bad code into Google play, the authors of Badnews created a malicious advertising network, as a front, that would push malware out to infected devices at a later date in order to pass the app scrutiny. Badnews has the ability to send fake news messages, prompt users to install applications and sends sensitive information such as the phone number and device ID to its Command and Control (C&C) server. BadNews uses its ability to display fake news messages in order to push out other types of monetization malware and promote affiliated apps."

Yahoo has announced this week that it will be killing off even more services this month as it continues to streamline.

The company will shut down Upcoming, Yahoo Deals, Yahoo SMS Alerts, Yahoo Kids, older versions of Yahoo Mail and J2ME apps for Mail and Messengers.

Earlier this month, the company killed off seven products, including Avatars, the Yahoo BlackBerry app, Clues, app search, Sports IQ, Message Boards, and its Updates API.

Says Yahoo: "Ultimately, we're making these changes in an effort to sharpen our focus. By continuing to hone in on our core products and experiences, we'll be able to make our existing products the very best they can be."

Additionally, Yahoo breaks down the product kills (via TNW):

Here's the breakdown:

Upcoming: On April 30, it will be shut down along with support for the Upcoming API. If you have uploaded events to the site, you can download your information here.
Yahoo Deals: On April 30, it will be shut down. If you have coupons, you can find instructions on how to save them here.
Yahoo SMS Alerts: On April 30, it will be shut down. Yahoo is instead pushing users to stay up-to-date via its mobile apps including Yahoo News, Yahoo Weather, Yahoo Sports, Yahoo Finance, and horoscope alerts on Yahoo.com. You can still go to alerts.yahoo.com and select to receive your alerts via email or Yahoo! Messenger.
Yahoo Kids: On April 30, it will be shut down. Yahoo recommends its users who are under 13 can instead register for a Yahoo ID through the company's Family Accounts program, use Yahoo Mail, Messenger, and Movies.
Yahoo Mail and Messenger feature phone (J2ME) apps: On April 30, they will be shut down. Yahoo will continue to support Yahoo Mail and Messenger via mobile web for feature phone users. Everyone else is told to use Yahoo Mail apps for Android, iOS, and Windows 8 or Yahoo Messenger apps for Android and iOS.
Older versions of Yahoo Mail (including Yahoo Mail Classic): Beginning the week of June 3, they will be shut down. Users will be switched to the new Yahoo Mail. Users on dial-up or an older browser will be moved to a basic (HTML only) version of the new Yahoo Mail.

Asus, long the manufacturing leader of graphics cards, has quietly fallen to third in the market.

PALiT and PC Partner moved into first and second place, respectively.

While PALiT does most of its sales under its own brand name, it also builds cards under the brands Galaxy, Gainward, Yuan, Vvikoo, Daytona and XpertVision. PALiT only sells cards using Nvidia GPUs.

PC Partner does not sell using its own name, and brands completely under the "Zotac" and "Sapphire" names. Sapphire uses only AMD chips and Zotac only Nvidia.

Fourth place was taken by MSI and fifth by Gigabyte, the popular motherboard makers.

Earlier this week, Verizon Wireless reported their Q1 2013 quarterly earnings, showing some impressive results.

The carrier, which is the biggest in the U.S., added 677,000 new postpaid subscribers, up 35 percent year-over-year.

VZW now has 98.9 million retail customers, 30 percent of which are using the company's "share everything" plans which gives subscribers a "bucket" of data that can be shared within a family or a family of devices, like smartphones and tablets.

Total revenue was $29.4 billion, a modest 4.2 percent increase year-over-year.

7.2 million smartphones were activated during the quarter, 5.9 million of which had LTE support. Verizon now says 61 percent of its subscribers have smartphones, an all-time high.

According to an FT report, Nokia is considering building a 5-inch Lumia device for sale this year.

The device will offer the biggest screen yet on a Lumia, and could push "phablet" territory dominated by the Galaxy Note.

Additionally, the company will be unveiling several other high-end Lumias, including one with true PureView hardware, a 40MP camera.

Nokia shipped 5.6 million Lumia phones during the Q1 2013, a good gain from the Q4 where they shipped 4.4 million units. Both those figures, however, are much lower than smartphone kings Samsung and Apple, which are expected to have sold 95 million smartphones combined during the quarter.

E-tailing giant Amazon has stepped up their efforts to compete with Netflix and will be posting eight comedy pilots to its site, for free.

The pilots will be free, but any show selected to run for a full season will be available only through the Prime streaming service.

Amazon Prime costs $79 per year and gives buyers free 2-day shipping on all orders, free access to Kindle titles, unlimited access to the streaming movie/TV catalog and cheap overnight shipping options.

Roy Price, director of Amazon Studios, says "The production quality had to be really high; we have top people and terrific casts." The pilots are said to have cost the company over $10 million to produce.

Besides the comedies, Amazon is also expanding into original kid's shows.

According to Samsung mobile boss J.K. Shin, the company is considering using mobile memory chips from rival SK Hynix.

The company makes DRAM chips, and has Apple as its biggest customer.

Supply has tightened over the last year in the DRAM market, and prices have reflected such a move.

Samsung is the world's biggest DRAM maker, and the company uses its own chips for its popular Galaxy smartphones. Samsung expects to have so many S4 available for sale, however, that it has looked into other companies due to diminishing supply.

Analysts believe Samsung can sell 10 million GS4 per month, surpassing its predecessors by a large margin.

Netflix's new original series, 'Hemlock Grove,' is available for streaming as of Friday.

The 'supernatural' horror series is directed by Eli Roth (of Hostel fame), and takes place in a small town that has suddenly begun seeing werewolf and other monster attacks.

Streaming king Netflix has been ramping up their original content, trying to compete with HBO. The first two series, 'Lilhammer' and 'House of Cards' have been hits, and the company is bringing the cult classic 'Arrested Development' back next month for a final season. Later this year, 'Orange is the New Black" will be released, and next year a major sci-fi series called "Sense8" will be made available.

As with all Netflix original series, you can view all episodes already, without having to wait week to week.

Trailer is RED BAND, meaning there is some slight nudity and foul language.

Toshiba has announced its entrant in the high-end ultrabook market with its Kirabook device.

The notebook runs on Windows 8, has a 13.3-inch display with a large resolution of 2560 x 1444 and 221 ppi, on par with the Macbook Pro with Retina Display. The display is also 10-point multi-touch.

Under the hood is either a 3rd-gen Core i5 or Core i7, 8GB of 1600 MHz RAM, and 256GB of solid state storage.

The magnesium alloy chassis is just 0.7-inches thick and the laptop is extremely light at just 2.6 pounds.

"At the core of the KIRA brand are products derived from inspired engineering," said Carl Pinto, vice president of marketing, Toshiba America Information Systems, Inc., Digital Products Division. "Products that will carry the KIRA name will be more than a collection of the latest hardware technologies, but a statement of craftsmanship, fit and finish, and features built for the consumer's benefit, not technology's sake."

According to NPD's latest figures, the video game industry saw another 10 percent year-over-year drop, continuing the trend of double digit declines.

Gamers spent just $992.5 million on consoles, software and accessories for the month of March, down from $1.1 billion last year.

While the trend itself is very disheartening for the industry, it is important to note that the reports do not include digital sales, which have become very popular especially through outlets like Xbox Live. Additionally, the PS4 and Xbox Next will launch later this year, so gamers are shrewdly staying away from purchases as they wait on the new contenders.

As has become commonplace, hardware sales saw the biggest decline, down 32 percent to $221.6 million. Software sales were up 2 percent to $602.4 million, a nice reprieve.

Voddler, the "Spotify for video" film and TV streaming service, has expanded globally.

The service had been available in Scandinavia and Spain, and has about 1.2 million users.

Starting this week, Voddler is expanding to the rest of Europe and Russia, with North America, Asia, South America over the next month.

Noted CEO and founder Marcus Bäcklund (via Crunch), "We have partnered with carriers in the past for VOD, and I think it's possible to do that in the future as well here, but what we are really trying to do here is offer an independent and open platform for everyone."

Voddler's "LiveShelf" offers a catalog of 5000 videos from "leading film studios, including Hollywood majors" which you can rent for $5 or buy for $10. Some are available for free and all can be viewed on mobile, tablet PC and TV screens.

"ViewShare" allows users to share content with others, letting up to 10 viewers watch your content.

Google has revealed the terms of service for the Google Glass augmented reality eyewear, and there are some pretty clear restrictions.

The $1500 glasses are being sent to a select few thousand early adopters.

Reads the ToS: "You may not resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person. If you resell, loan, transfer, or give your device to any other person without Google's authorization, Google reserves the right to deactivate the device, and neither you nor the unauthorized person using the device will be entitled to any refund, product support, or product warranty."

Each device is registered to the owner's Google account, making it easy to see if it has been transferred or sold.

Microsoft was the first to report their U.S. console sales figures for March, claiming the top spot in the nation for the 27th straight month.

The company sold 261,000 units in the U.S., besting the PS3 and the practically dead Nintendo Wii.

March NPD's: 261k Xbox's sold in the US. Number 1 for the 27th straight month

-- Larry Hryb (@majornelson) April 18, 2013

Amazon has announced the expansion of their Android Appstore.

Developers can now submit apps for distribution in almost 200 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, India, South Africa, South Korea, "and even Papua New Guinea and Vatican City."

Users of Android devices in the nations (not just Kindles) can start downloading apps "in the coming months."

"Amazon's platform is a complete end-to-end solution for developers wanting to build, market and monetize their apps and games on Kindle Fire and Android devices," said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. "Allowing developers to target distribution of their apps and games in even more international countries is yet another important milestone as we strive to serve consumers and developers globally. Many of our existing developers have localized their apps and games for international consumers, and we look forward to working with new developers that have been waiting to bring their apps to more Amazon customers across the globe."

After a one day delay, the parody Steve Jobs movie 'iSteve' is now available for viewing online.

The movie will star Justin Long as Jobs and Jorge Garcia of 'Lost' as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak. The movie will be about 80 minutes long.

iSteve comes on the heels of Ashton Kutcher's 'jOBS' biopic being delayed, and Aaron Sorkin's Sony-backed Jobs biopic being set for release in late 2014.

The movie is a satire of biopics in general and will stretch facts and stick completely to Funny or Die's comedy roots, although the long-form film is certainly a move away from the site's regular content, which are 5 minute clips or shorter.

View it here: iSteve

According to the Verge, the upcoming Windows Blue update (Windows 8.1) will include the option to boot to desktop, bypassing the current "Modern" UI.

The boot option will send users directly to the traditional desktop they've been accustomed to, skipping over the Modern UI which includes tiles that are better suited to touchscreen environments.

Microsoft will have the option disabled by default, but sources say the option to boot to desktop will be easy to find and enable.

Many of Windows 8's functionality will remain intact with the option enabled, including access to the Charms and Start Screen, as well as search and all other "hot corner" functions.

Google Executive Chairman Eric Schmidt has revealed the latest Android activation figures.

Last month, the company was seeing 1.4 million activations daily but that number has increased to 1.5 million as of this week.

The exec says Google is on pace to reach one billion total activations by the holidays. The company saw 750 million at the end of February so the figure would be a huge jump.

Schmidt further noted that a key to achieving exponential growth, or reaching the "next five billion people looking to get connected" will be getting devices to a sub-$100 price point.

AT&T has opened its pre-order pages for the Samsung Galaxy S4.

The device will sell for $199 with contract, or $640 without.

Samsung's latest has a 5-inch 1080p super AMOLED display with 441ppi. The screen is also protected by Corning's latest Gorilla Glass 3 and can be used with gloves thanks to "mitten tech." Under the hood the phone is powered by a Samsung Exynos 5 (international) or Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (North America), has 2GB RAM, 16-64GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, a removable 2600 mAh battery, 100 Mbps Cat 3 LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The device also has an IR blaster, turning it into a full remote control. The device is a thin 7.9mm.

The rear camera is 13-megapixel camera while the front camera is 2-megapixels.

OKCupid, the popular online dating site, has said today it will accept Bitcoin as currency for users who want to pay to access premium features on the site.

Users pay on average $12 per month to be part of the "A-List," which allows them to view profiles anonymously. There are over 4 million active users.

The site says real prices will still be in dollars and will use real-time exchange rates for Bitcoin. Each Bitcoin is currently valued at $68, following a volatile two weeks in which the price jumped from $30 to $250 and back.

When asked why, Sam Yagan, one of the company's founders, had this to say: "Our plan is to liquidate our holdings daily and turn them into US dollars. There's an open question as to how much liquidity there is. I think there's going to be a tremendous amount of volatility. One of the reasons why we want to be early in the mix is so we can learn."

View this great video explaining Bitcoin here:

Bitcoin Explained from Duncan Elms on Vimeo.

Google has published the specifications for its Google Glass wearable device alongside the release of the Mirror API for Glass apps.

Glass features a 640 x 360 display which is the "equivalent of a 25-inch high definition screen from eight feet away."

The device also features a 5MP camera capable of up to 720p video and audio "that comes via a bone conduction transducer." Glass has 16GB internal storage, but only 12GB is available. Glass will be able to sync with Google Drive, as well.

Glass will 'fit any face' and include adjustable nose pads in two different sizes.

Google says Glass' battery will last up to "one full day of typical use," but video recording and other processor-intensive apps will lower that estimate. The headwear supports 802.11b/g Wi-Fi, connects to any Bluetooth phone and will support GPS and SMS through an app called "MyGlass" for Android.

Following the delay of the smartphone, at least one carrier has confirmed a release date for the HTC One.

T-Mobile USA says the phone will be available on April 24th, and should include Wi-Fi Calling.

The One will cost $99 upfront, just like the iPhone 5. Thanks to the company's new "Uncarrier" plans, you will pay $20 a month for 24 months, for a total of $579 over two years.

An unlimited everything plan, including unlimited data, costs $70 per month.

@aleyda0330 T-Mobile announced it will be launching the HTC One (LTE) April 24! ^AG

-- T-Mobile USA (@TMobileHelp) April 16, 2013

Speaking at the Dive Into Mobile conference today, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum had some impressive figures to reveal for the application.

The exec says the the company has reached 200 million active monthly users, noting that the number is bigger than Twitter's base.

Additionally, Koum says the cross-platform messaging app averages 8 billion inbound and 12 million outbound messages per day.

Those numbers are even more notable given that WhatsApp only has 50 engineers.

WhatsApp costs just $0.99 per year and is available for iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Windows Phone.

Jolla, the Finnish mobile developer, appears to be ready to unveil their first smartphone in early May.

The company, which was started by the directors of the Nokia N9 project (now ex-Nokia employees), have been working on a new OS as a successor to the discontinued MeeGo project since 2011.

Chairman Antti Saarnio confirmed the company's official announcement on the phone will be made in early May, with pre-orders to kick off later in May. The company will use the pre-order funding to manufacture the devices. They'll be using a Finnish Kickstarter-like funding platform that was not specified.

Perhaps most notably, customers will be allowed to choose how their device looks like. Each will have a different pricing scheme that will be revealed in May.

"We want Jolla to be a movement. We want Jolla fans to able to contribute in earlier stages. They'll be the ones who make sure that the phone will be available and they'll get it first," added Saarnio to Digitoday.fi.

Antti Saarnio does not have any updates on when the first devices will land on our hands.

Bankrupt Eastman Kodak has announced today that it has agreed to sell document-imaging assets to Brother for $210 million, setting a starting bid if other companies want to compete for them.

Brother, which sells office equipment like multi-function printers, will also assume $67 million in customer prepayment liabilities.

In its effort to emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy, the company has been selling assets and slimming down. Kodak sold $525 million worth of digital-imaging patents last year, shut down their consumer inkjet printer unit, and is searching for buyers for its consumer film and photo kiosks.

The eventual goal is to emerge as a profitable company working with commercial printing and packaging.

Google has updated the iOS YouTube app to support live broadcasts.

Starting with version 1.3 of the app, Apple fans can stream live concerts and other events via their tablets and smartphones.

Full changelist:

* Quick access to new uploads from subscriptions via "My Subscriptions" feed on the Guide
* Access to Live streams
* Queue up videos to play on TV
* One Channel branding for video creator channels
* Stability and performance improvements

Comcast has begun telling customers that it is preparing to encrypt its basic cable signals, meaning some customers will need a new digital adapter if they want to even receive any basic programming.

The adapters will be free in some markets, and one model will work with third-party set-top boxes, like those by Scientific Atlanta and Motorola.

If you already use Comcast set-top boxes connected to all your TVs, you need not worry, but if you have any devices connected directly to the cable outlet without a set-top, you will need the adapter.

The adapters will be tiny boxes that include their own remote control and connect to the TV through the coaxial cable.

"We are beginning to proactively notify customers in select markets that we will begin to encrypt limited basic channels as now permitted by last year's FCC B1 Encryption Order," said the company (via OM). "While the vast majority of our customers won't be impacted because they already have digital equipment connected to their TVs, we understand this will be a change for a small number of customers and will be making it as convenient as possible for them to get the digital equipment they may need to continue watching limited basic channels."

Early this morning, satellite TV provider Dish Network made a large $25.5 billion bid for Sprint Nextel, besting an existing offer from Japanese carrier Softbank.

The company, which has been hoarding cash for a large acquisition, would use Sprint as a compliment to its current offerings, bundling TV, Internet and wireless phone services.

During a conference call, Dish Chairman Charlie Ergen said "consumers have two necessities in life; food and shelter. But after that, you probably get to your mobile device and your TV as three and four. . . . You want to be able to be connected no matter where you are, and you want to be able to watch your television no matter where you are."

Dish offered $17.3 billion in cash and an additional $8.2 billion in stock for complete control of the company. Softbank offered $20 billion for a 70 percent stake.

While the satellite company has 14 million customers, the merger would give it access to Sprint's 55 million customers, opening up a huge market for potential satellite services sales. Additionally, the company would get access to Sprint's spectrum and airwaves.

Mozilla has announced that its mobile Firefox OS will be expanding to five countries for a global launch in June.

So far, the OS has only been available to developers and has yet to see a consumer launch.

Mozilla CEO Gary Kovacs had this to say, during his Dive into Mobile keynote, "We plan to launch in five countries in June and 11 more by the end of the year. We plan to hit Venezuela, Poland, Brazil, Portugal and Spain. ... We'll hit the U.S. in 2014."

When asked why emerging markets were being targeted rather than the U.S, UK, etc, Kovacs added: "In Silicon Valley we tend to see the world through high-end devices. But that's not true in the rest of the world. So in the short term, we're launching in emerging markets where Firefox is particularly strong. ... It didn't make sense for us to launch a version-one device around the world."

Struggling electronics maker Sharp is reportedly eyeing buyers for its large stake in Pioneer, another consumer tech company.

The company would use the proceeds of the sale to help pay off its substantial debt burden, most notably a portion of its $2.14 billion convertible debt note that's coming due in September.

Sharp has a 9.2 percent stake in Pioneer, making it the company's largest shareholder.

Even if Sharp sells its share, the companies would still collaborate and Pioneer would keep its own 0.8 percent share in Sharp.

According to the WSJ, Microsoft is working on a touch-enabled smartwatch to rival Samsung and Apple's supposed devices.

In 2004, the company created a smartwatch product called "Spot" that used FM radio signals to stream news headlines, stock quotes, weather and instant messages from Windows Messenger.

The watch was ahead of its time, however, and was discontinued in 2008.

Wearable designs are the new "hot" industry, with Nike offering fitness bands, Google offering augmented reality eye wear and Samsung and Apple expected to offer watches later this year (or early 2014) built on Android or iOS.

According to Bloomberg, Dish Network has informally had conversations with Deutsche Telekom in an effort to merge with the company's American carrier, T-Mobile USA.

Such a deal would let Dish bundle wireless service with their satellite-TV offerings.

Deutsche Telekom is said to be considering such a bid, but will only give it real thought after they close their acquisition of MetroPCS later this year.

T-Mobile USA has 42 million customers and is the fourth largest carrier in the States. After closing the purchase of MetroPCS, Telekom is spinning off the unit so it can trade publicly on the NY Stock Exchange.

The last company who tried to acquire T-Mobile, AT&T, was rejected by government regulators, leaving T-Mobile with a breakup fee gift of over $4 billion.

According to new figures from the Association of American Publishers, ebook sales have taken a significant share of book industry revenues.

Ebook accounted for 22.5 percent of overall revenue in 2012, up from 16.98 percent in 2011.

The biggest winners within the ebook world were adult fiction, adult nonfiction and religion. Overall, the industry saw a nice boost in revenue, up 6.2 percent from 2011 to $7.1 billion.

The report was not all roses, however, as it showed the growth slowed and ebooks may be nearing a plateau that will be tough to cross.

Additionally, dedicated ereader sales are falling as more consumers begin to use their tablets and smartphones to read.

In February, the U.S. House of Representatives banned Spotify from member's computers.

Citing a decade-old rule that was put in place during the times of Napster, all "P2P technologies" are still banned from House computers in an effort to avoid malware and illegal file sharing.

As of this week, however, Spotify is back.

At the time, the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer had this to say, "To help protect House data, our IT policy generally prohibits the use of peer-to-peer (P2P) technologies while operating within the secure network. While Spotify is currently not authorized, the CAO has and will continue to work with outside vendors to enable the popular services that improve member communication capabilities."

T-Mobile USA was very satisfied with the first day sales of the iPhone.

After years of not offering the Apple flagship, the company recently announced it would sell the device, at a price cheaper than rival carriers.

"Today (Friday) has been gangbusters for T-Mobile," said Chief Marketing Officer Mike Sievert. "We experienced lines out the door this morning at nearly all of our almost 3,000 stores nationwide."

Of course, the lines mostly dissipated by later in the day, but it's not often that T-Mobile sees lines.

Thanks to the company's new "Uncarrier" plans, the iPhone 5 will sell with two options. You can purchase the device at full price at time of purchase, or purchase it for $99 upfront and pay out $20 a month for 24 months, for a total of $579 over two years. If you want an iPhone 4 or 4S, the installment plan cost is just $15 or $70 down with a $15 or $20 monthly charge, respectively.

According to a new IHS report, netbooks will go completely extinct by 2015.

At one time, (not so long ago) netbook sales were huge, but the launch of the iPad began their demise prematurely.

In 2010, 32 million units were sold, but in that year Apple unveiled the iPad. Sales dropped to 21 million the next year and 14 million last year as customers moved to ultrabooks and cheaper tablets that were more powerful and included touch features.

This year, sales are expected to fall to 4 million, and then less than a million next year as "last-time builds to satisfy contractual obligations to customers."

"Once a white-hot PC product that sold in the tens of millions of units annually," IHS added, "netbook computers are now marking their final days, with the rise of tablets causing their shipments to wind down to virtually zero after next year. The iPad and other tablets came in a new form factor that excited consumers while also offering improved computing capabilities, leading to a massive loss of interest in netbooks."

(Chart via Register)

According to Topeka Capital analyst Brian White, the oft-rumored lower cost iPhones are a "lock" for release this year.

White has been speaking with all suppliers he can in Asia for the last two weeks, picking up any news and gossip he can.

Reads the client note: "Yes, A Lower-Priced iPhone is in the Works and Expected This July. At the China trade show, we had the opportunity to interact with various suppliers and vendors, including those working with Apple. Our general takeaway around Apple is that a lower-priced iPhone and the iPhone 5S will be announced together in June and launched in July."

The phone is expected to have the same 4-inch screen of the iPhone 5, but with cheaper curved plastic hardware that will come in different colorways, similar to the recent generation iPod Touch.

White also says he expects the phone to sell unlocked for $400, compared to $600 or higher for the iPhone 5 (and the upcoming 5S).

Facebook has announced today that the Facebook Home user interface is available on five Android devices.

Besides the HTC First, which features the software, the UI is available for the HTC One X, HTC One X+, Samsung Galaxy S III, and Samsung Galaxy Note II. HTC One and Galaxy S4 owners will have the ability to install the UI after the phones launch later this month.

Facebook's launcher is only available to U.S. users, however, for the time being.

As explained by the social networking giant, Facebook Home "brings your News Feed to the surface, for access to important social updates without opening up additional applications."

Additionally, Facebook Home includes; Cover Feed, a constant, fresh stream of photos and updates directly from your news feed and is always present as soon as you wake up your phone; Notifications that appear right on your home screen; Chat Heads, the mobile messenger that lets you jump in and out of conversations while you multitask; App Launcher, which lets you view your favorite apps and post right to Facebook from the same spot.

After four months, the Department of Justice has approved Google's sale of its Motorola Home set-top division to Arris for $2.35 billion.

The deal is expected to close next week. Arris is a provider of high-speed Internet equipment.

Google will own 7.85 percent of Arris after the deal, with Comcast taking a similar share for $150 million.

"We share a similar vision and strategy with Arris for the industry's migration to IP. The combination of our solutions, expert technologists and roadmaps promises to transform how service providers deliver the smart, simple connected home to consumers throughout the world," said Marwan Fawaz, executive vice president of Motorola Mobility.

While being outside of Google's realm, the set-top box business also proved to be a liability as TiVo is seeking billions in a patent lawsuit that is currently ongoing. The deal was finally approved in December after Google said it would foot most of the bill if TiVo were to win. TiVo has already won over $1 billion from Verizon, Dish and others for similar lawsuits implying the final settlement could be in the $300-$500 million range.

According to sources, Apple is on the verge of signing their first Internet radio licensing agreement, with an iRadio announcement "imminent."

As early as next week, the company could announce the agreement with Universal Music Group (UMG) and potentially Warner Music, as well.

The service will be similar to Pandora in allowing free streaming of music that is turned into playlists by algorithms designed to give users a good selection of music similar to what they have chosen as a base, whether it be artist, song or genre.

Pandora currently pays 12 cents for every 100 songs streamed, and reports claimed Apple was trying to leverage their iTunes power to get that down to 6 cents. The labels did not buy the bluff and new reports say Apple will pay prices "neck-and-neck" with existing services.

While Pandora is the current market leader with 200 million users, Apple and its army could certainly challenge that number if the service works as advertised.

Apple has settled a recent lawsuit in which they were accused of not honoring warranties of their iOS devices including the iPhone and iPod Touch.

In settling, Apple admits to no wrongdoing, and will pay out $53 million to tens of thousands of customers.

The case, which could have cost Apple a lot more if they did not settle, revolved around the so-called "white tape indicator" found in the device. The little strip of tape helps gauge water damage and will turn pink or red depending on the severity of the water damage. Apple refused to repair hardware without a white tape.

This is all fine and good, except for the fact that the tape maker, 3M, admitted that humidity could cause the damage, as well, not just direct water damage.

The settlement is for owners of the iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, and the first three generations of the iPod Touch who were refused repairs or replacements due to water damage. The payouts are expected to be large, even above $100.

USB-IF has announced this week that updated USB 3.0 specs have boosted peak bandwidth to 10Gb/s, ensuring the specification will now be able to compete with Thunderbolt.

The update to "SuperSpeed USB" will require new cables, but they are backward compatible with all existing USB connectors/cables.

"With the new SuperSpeed USB enhancement to increase performance up to 10Gb/s data rate, coupled with the USB power delivery specification capable of delivering up to 100 watts of power to USB-enabled devices, consumers will soon be able to have one USB cable to support all their needs," said Jeff Ravencraft, USB-IF president and COO.

The spec will still lag Thunderbolt, which can use full 10Gb/s bandwidth in both directions, using a single cable. USB 3.0 still cannot.

Rockstar Games has announced today that it has made all of its original 'Grand Theft Auto' radio stations available via iTunes and Spotify, a move that should delight fans of the series.

The official sets are available as playlists including all the radio stations you could listen to in your car during the games.

There is one note: "Please note that this is all the music from these stations that's currently available on each service – some songs don't yet exist on either Spotify or iTunes, but we're hoping to be able to add the original songs within our control where possible soon."

Another cool addition is "for those nostalgic for some of the commercials from these games, be sure to check out The Advertising Council repository if you haven't before - a proper collection of radio adverts from the archives of LC, VC and SA's historical radio dials..."

Head over to Rockstar to get all the links to every station: Official Grand Theft Auto Radio Playlists on Spotify and iTunes

Netflix CEO Reed Hastings shunned traditional media and took advantage of new federal rules in regards to disclosures of information via social media.

The exec posted on Facebook yesterday, disclosing that subscribers have watched 4 billion hours of video in the last three months alone.

Reads the post, "House of Cards fav quote: 'look at the bigger picture.' Over the last three months, you all watched over 4 billion hours on Netflix."

The company ran into trouble in July after Hastings revealed similar information on Facebook. The SEC began an investigation into whether it was appropriate for execs to reveal information that might move the company's stock via social media. It recently ruled that companies could do so but they must tell investors beforehand which sites they will be using. Netflix announced on Wednesday that it would disclose information via its blogs, Facebook and Twitter.

According to Iran's Fars state news, a Tehran scientist has registered his invention, "The Aryayek Time Traveling Machine."

The device can predict up to eight years into the future "in a print out after taking readings from the touch of a user," says Ali Razeghi, the inventor and managing director of Iran's Centre for Strategic Inventions.

Complex algorithms can predict so far out with "98 percent accuracy." Razeghi notes he has been working on the project for the last 10 years and has 179 registered inventions.

"My invention easily fits into the size of a personal computer case and can predict details of the next 5-8 years of the life of its users. It will not take you into the future, it will bring the future to you," claims the scientist.

"Naturally a government that can see five years into the future would be able to prepare itself for challenges that might destabilize it," he added. "As such we expect to market this invention among states as well as individuals once we reach a mass production stage."

Of course, Razeghi took a parting shot at the U.S. and China: "The Americans are trying to make this invention by spending millions of dollars on it where I have already achieved it by a fraction of the cost. The reason that we are not launching our prototype at this stage is that the Chinese will steal the idea and produce it in millions overnight."

After months of rumors, it's official; LinkedIn has purchased popular newsreader app startup Pulse.

The sale price is reported to be $90 million, well above the initial rumors of $50 million last month.

Pulse, developed by Alphonso Labs, is available for iOS, Android and on desktops. The company says over 25 million people use Pulse to read their news, from 190 countries.

LinkedIn has been actively looking into ways to distribute content for users and Pulse is a highly-rated application.

Adam Orth, Microsoft Studios' creative director, has resigned from the company.

The exec started a major controversy last week by obnoxiously and sarcastically mocking those on Twitter that believed 'always-on' DRM was a bad potential choice for Microsoft's upcoming Xbox successor.

Orth started the controversy by tweeting that he "didn't get the drama" over rumors of the always-on DRM. Such DRM would require an Internet connection to play your games, even in single player mode.

The exec then went on to mock, comparing the DRM to owning a phone in an area you know has bad reception.

Microsoft had to come out with an official statement hours later, apologizing for the exec's tweets.

Samsung has announced today the launch of their Galaxy MEGA series,

The Galaxy MEGA 5.8 will have a 5.8-inch screen and the MEGA 6.3 will have a 6.3-inch screen, even larger than the company's own extremely popular Note series.

"We are aware of a great potential in the bigger screen for extensive viewing multimedia, web browsing, and more," said JK Shin, CEO and Head of IT & Mobile Business, Samsung Electronics. "We are excited to provide another choice to meet our consumers' varying lifestyles, all while maintaining the high-quality features of the award-winning GALAXY series."

The 5.8 runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), a 1.4GHz dual core processor, 1.5GB RAM, 8GB internal storage, dual cameras (1.9MP/8MP), a 2600mAh battery, and HSPA＋21/5.76.

On the high end, the 6.3 also runs on Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), is powered by a 1.7GHz dual core processor, 1.5GB RAM, dual cameras (1.9MP/8MP), 16GB internal storage, a 3200mAh battery and LTE100/50Mbps, HSPA＋21/5.76 radios.

According to the WSJ, Microsoft is indeed developing their oft-rumored 7-inch Surface tablet.

The device will launch this year and will compete against the iPad Mini, the Google Nexus 7 and Amazon's Kindle Fire HD.

Besides the new tablet, Microsoft is also expected to drop the price of its existing Surface devices and flagship software.

Microsoft did not initially plan to offer a smaller device, but the huge success of the iPad Mini forced the company to change their mind.

Tablets are becoming increasingly important for manufacturers, as PC sales have fallen off a cliff in recent months. In fact, the Q1 saw a 14 percent dive year-over-year, the worst quarter in history thanks in part to slow sales of Windows 8.

IDC has released some shocking figures for the PC industry.

According to the research firm, PC shipments fell 14 percent in the Q1, the biggest drop on record.

Global units shipped fell to 76.3 million, almost double the drop IDC was expecting.

For the most part, consumers completely ignored Windows 8, instead opting for smartphones and tablets. Enterprise customers chose to stick with Microsoft's Windows 7 instead of updating, as well. The new user interface of Windows 8 was "disorienting" for users, says IDC, and touch-enabled PCs are still out of favorable price ranges.

The last time the PC market saw a decline this large was the Q3 2001, following the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

HP remained the top PC maker with 16 percent market share, followed closely by Lenovo at 15 percent. Dell remained in third at 12 percent.

Lenovo, however, was the only company to not see a decline in shipments year-over-year. HP saw a decline of 24 percent, Dell saw shipments decline 11 percent, but Lenovo actually saw growth, most notably in the U.S.

Hon Hai Precision Industry, the parent of Foxconn, reported earnings this week, and they were not pretty.

The company, which is Apple's main manufacturer, saw a 19 percent dip in revenue for the Q1 thanks to weaker demand for the iPhone.

Total revenue for the quarter was $26.96 billion, down from $33 billion in the Q4 2012 and $33.5 billion for the Q1 2012.

"A quarterly decline was expected, but not a yearly decline," added KGI Securities analyst Ming-chi Kuo. "This shows that Hon Hai's revenue depends too much on Apple, and iPhone orders corrected more than expected."

Hon Hai makes 65 percent of its revenue from assembling iPhones (and iPads and iPod Touches) and other work for Apple.

T-Mobile USA has announced a new trade-in program for iPhones that will allow users to buy new devices at a discount.

The iPhone 5 (and 4/4S) go on sale via T-Mobile on Friday and the trade-in program is available until mid-June.

Thanks to the company's new "Uncarrier" plans, the iPhone 5 will sell with two options. You can purchase the device at full price at time of purchase, or purchase it for $99 upfront and pay out $20 a month for 24 months, for a total of $579 over two years. If you want an iPhone 4 or 4S, the installment plan cost is just $15 or $70 down with a $15 or $20 monthly charge, respectively.

If you trade in an iPhone 4 or 4S (from any carrier), the iPhone 5 will be free upfront, with the first 6 months of financing free, as well.

Google has announced that its Google Play Music service has been expanded to seven new nations.

The new countries are Australia, New Zealand, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg, Ireland, and Portugal.

Google Play Music is notable as it allows users to save up to 20,000 song for free in the cloud and then stream it from anywhere they are logged in, including Android devices. You can also purchase over 13 million tracks.

The service debuted in the U.S. in late 2011 and was later made available in France, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain and the UK.

Google is expected to eventually include a streaming service similar to Spotify in its offering.

Wal-Mart has announced today that they have reset all Vudu customer passwords after data was stolen during an office robbery last month.

Reads the email: "On March 24, 2013, there was a break in at the VUDU office and a number of items were stolen, including hard drives. These hard drives contained customer data including names, email addresses, mailing addresses, account activity, dates of birth, and encrypted passwords, but NO full credit card numbers. We are proactively retiring and resetting all passwords and notifying all customers. As another level of protection for customers we are also providing AllClear ID identity protection services. We reported the theft to law enforcement immediately, and are cooperating fully with their investigation."

Being that the break-in was on the 24th, it's unclear why Wal-Mart took so long to perform the reset and tell customers.

As with all hacks and data thefts, Vudu encourages customers to change their passwords on other sites if they use the same username and to be mindful of phishing emails.

Vudu is a download and streaming video service available on hundreds on devices.

Earlier this week we reported that popular mobile messaging app WhatsApp was rumored to be in negotiations with Google over a buyout, one that could cost the search giant up to $1 billion.

Today, Neeraj Arora, WhatsApp's business development head, has denied the report.

Last year, a similar rumor hit, with Facebook as the potential buyer. At the time, the company denied the rumor, as well, saying it was "not factually accurate."

WhatsApp remains the leader in the market, but rivals like LINE are quickly joining them, including newer features and poaching customers. WhatsApp costs $0.99 for one year of service and is available on Android and iOS and Windows Phone as a cross-platform messaging service. The service processes billions of apps per day and is always a top 5 paid app in all 100 countries it is available in.

Microsoft has said today that its Surface Pro tablet "meet or exceeds" warranty laws in China, denying Chinese reports that the coverage did not meet requirements.

The Pro and its components are covered by a 24-month warranty, which is consistent with Chinese law, says Ogilvy Public Relations, part of Microsoft's PR team.

Chinese media had reported that the company only offered a one-year warranty on the device, not meeting requirements. The company recently began selling the Surface Pro in China after selling the Surface RT for months.

"We stand behind our products with a manufacturer's warranty, which is additional to our commitment to honor any statutory obligation as either a manufacturer or retailer, to repair or replace a faulty product," Microsoft said in the statement.

According to sources, Microsoft will soon be updating Windows Phone 8 to support 1080p resolutions.

An update "before the end of the year" will allow manufacturers to build 5-inch (or larger) phones with 1080p displays, on par with rival operating systems. WP8 currently supports up to 720p resolution.

The update will be "General Distribution Release (GDR3) for Windows Phone," and will likely be in place before the holiday season, allowing OEMs to build devices in time for their busy season.

Additionally, the GDR3 update will add support for more Qualcomm processors, including quad-core.

Microsoft will use an AMD processor in its upcoming Xbox console, say sources, allowing the company to keep costs lower and giving developers an easier way to create games.

The Wii U and the upcoming PlayStation 4 both use AMD chips.

Reports claim the "Xbox will use an AMD system-on-a-chip that combines powerful "Jaguar" central processing units with graphics chips," moving away from IBM's PowerPC tech seen in the Xbox 360. This will make Xbox 360 games incompatible, however.

Next-gen consoles will greatly benefit by moving to the x86 platform, as developers have been actively building games for PCs and will find it easier to port such games between platforms.

"We'll probably see many more titles because the console makers are saying the publishers are back in the driver's seat," said Richard Doherty, president of technology consulting firm Envisioneering Group. "Developers won't have to reinvent various features, such as smoke, shading and reflections for each machine and can essentially create once and port once, and be done."

Earlier today, a pre-release beta version of the upcoming Facebook Home made its way to the Net.

The software officially launches on April 12th with the release of the HTC First, and will be compatible with five other devices, as well. This version seems to have had no issues being installed on Google's Nexus 4 and Nexus 7, however.

"Chat Heads" was not working, and there was a 720p resolution restriction, but other than that the software seemed to be running decently.

By this afternoon, however, Facebook had stopped the party, shutting off apps access to their servers. If you are really interested in the interface, Friday is not too far away.

Read more about the software here: Facebook and HTC unveil "Facebook Home" for the HTC First

Support for Microsoft Windows 7 RTM (without Service Pack 1) will end tomorrow, so it is certainly time to upgrade if you have not yet.

End of support means no more updates or security fixes for your operating system, leaving it more vulnerable to attack.

Says Microsoft: "Every Windows product has a lifecycle. The lifecycle begins when a product is released and ends when it's no longer supported or sold. Knowing key dates in this lifecycle helps you make informed decisions about when to upgrade or make other changes to your software."

Windows 7 with SP1 loses support in February 2015, but you can pay for extended support (including security fixes) until 2020.

Get Windows 7 SP1 here: Microsoft

HTC reported their quarterly earnings this morning, disappointing investors with their lowest profit, ever.

Profits for the quarter were just $2.85 million, compared to $33 million last quarter and $345 million during the Q1 in 2012.

Revenue fell to $1.4 billion, down from $2 billion last quarter.

The news comes at a terrible time for HTC, which just had to delay their flagship device, the One. A shortage of ultrapixel cameras means the One has only been launched in three markets so far, compared to the 80 HTC wanted to have it in by the end of March. The company will now have to compete directly with Samsung's Galaxy S4 when it launches at the end of April in 155 nations.

HTC recently unveiled its First phone, the first device to include Facebook Home, a new user interface that tightly integrates Facebook and Instagram features.

According to multiple sources, Microsoft will hold their long-awaited Xbox event on May 21st.

It appears the company had been planning a late April launch event, but instead had to delay.

During the event, Microsoft will provide the first real concrete details of the Xbox Next (codename Durango) and the company's ongoing plans for Xbox in 2013.

The console will have a full unveiling at this year's E3 event in June, with a holiday season release planned.

Sources say the new Xbox software will be based on Windows 8, allowing for better connectivity with Windows Phones, Windows PCs, Surface tablets and more.

Sony has announced today the release date and prices for its high-end 4K televisions first unveiled at CES this year.

The Bravia XBR-55X900A (55-inch) and XBR-65X900A (65-inch) will cost $5000 and $7000, and will be made available to consumers of April 21st.

Each of the sets have passive 3D, edge-lit displays and built-in Wi-Fi, which are higher-end specs but also helped Sony keep the prices down to a point where consumers may potentially be willing to invest.

"These new models will be arriving in homes just before the summer and are sure to bring the enhanced viewing experience of 4K TV to a whole new audience," said Mike Lucas, senior vice president, Sony Electronics Home Division. "Our TVs deliver a vibrant and natural picture that is four-times clearer than high definition. As for content, these new sets enhance all of the video people are watching today, and this summer our 4K media player, followed in fall by the video distribution service will demonstrate how Sony continues to lead in bringing the 4K entertainment experience to viewers."

According to a report from suppliers, the recent increase in DDR3 memory prices has led video card vendors to raise prices across the board.

The retail prices have (or will) jump 10 to 15 percent, a significant increase for the end user.

Reports say only DDR3 is affected, so high end cards with DDR5 will not be included. Many budget cards still use the lower-end memory, however.

Perhaps worse is the notion that the prices will not drop back to previous norms in the next six months, unless manufacturers offer promotions, says the report.

Popular mobile messaging app WhatsApp is rumored to be in negotiations with Google over a buyout, one that could cost the search giant $1 billion.

Supposedly, the talks began five weeks ago, but WhatsApp is playing "hard ball" while trying to get the most money out of the deal.

While Google Talk and Google Hangouts are part of the Google suite, there has been very little innovation in the space for the company, allowing smaller startups to move in.

WhatsApp remains the leader in the market, but rivals like LINE are quickly joining them, including newer features and poaching customers. WhatsApp costs $0.99 for one year of service and is available on Android and iOS and Windows Phone as a cross-platform messaging service. The service processes billions of apps per day and is always a top 5 paid app in all 100 countries it is available in.

HTC has confirmed that their new Facebook Phone, the "First," will actually run stock Android underneath the Facebook Home user interface.

Perhaps more notably, Facebook Home can be disabled with a few clicks, leaving you with a stock Android phone if you ever get sick of Facebook experience.

HTC has not built a device without HTC Sense (or other overlays) since 2010's G2.

The company says the device has a 4.3-inch display, a Qualcomm 400 Snapdragon dual-core processor, 16GB internal storage and 1GB RAM. The phone has a larger 2000 mAh battery and dual 1.5MP/5MP cameras. As explained by Facebook at the launch event on Thursday, Facebook Home "brings your News Feed to the surface, for access to important social updates without opening up additional applications."

More information here: Facebook and HTC unveil "Facebook Home" for the HTC First

Retailers in the UK have begun taking pre-orders for the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone, the second BB10 device to be made available by BlackBerry.

The device will not be cheap. An unlocked model will sell for £579.95, but O2, Orange, Vodafone and EE will each have versions if you prefer to get on a two-year contract.

For example, TNW says O2 has unlimited calls and texts with 1GB of data for £32 per month while other carriers are more expensive. EE has the only LTE network in the UK, and their similar plan starts at £41 per month.

The device will be available by the end of the month.

Q10 devices are notable due to their full QWERTY keyboards and small 3.1-inch touchscreen. Under the hood is a dual-core TI OMAP 4470 1.5GHz, 2GB RAM and 16GB of internal storage (microSD slot can expand another 32GB).

Nokia has expanded their Nokia+ Music subscription service to Windows 8 and Windows RT devices.

The update will give PC and tablet users a new way to stream unlimited music, if they do not want to use the alternatives like Last.Fm, Rdio and Pandora.

Nokia+ is a mix of the services, focusing on playlists that work like Pandora does. You type in the genre, artist or song and the service mixes a station for you. You can also import your own music and play from your own collection.

For $3.99 per month, the service also offers unlimited skips, offline playback, and 256kbps streaming quality.

Samsung has announced quarterly earnings guidance this week, saying they expect $7.7 billion in profits for the Q1 2013, a large 53 percent jump year-over-year (YoY).

While still massive, the profit will be slightly smaller than the company's fourth quarter record of $8.3 billion and break Samsung's five quarter streak of new records.

The company will announce the earnings later this month.

Seeing a slight dip was expected as the Galaxy S4 is not ready for launch until later this month, meaning there should be a strong sales bump in the Q2.

Samsung sold over 70 million smartphones during the quarter, according to estimates.

Dell has unveiled their Linux version of the Alienware X51 slimline desktop PC, running on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS.

The console has base specs of a 3.3GHz dual-core Core i3-3220, 6GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 645 GPU with 1GB of GDDR5 RAM. That model will cost you $599.

At the high-end, you can upgrade to a Core i7, 8GB of RAM, and a GeForce GTX 660 with 1.5GB of RAM for $1,049.

As a "slim" model, the PC is 12.5 inches high, 12.5 inches long and 3.74 inches wide.

By moving to Linux, you can save $100 off the base model compared to the Windows 7 equivalent.

Dell says you can play 90 games with the gaming PC, thanks to Steam for Linux, which is a disappointing number compared to the almost 2000 games available for Windows PCs.

Samsung has announced a Wi-Fi-only version of their Android-based Galaxy Camera.

Galaxy Cameras offer Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, a 4.8-inch HD Super Clear LCD panel, a 1.4GHz quad-core processor and 16MP BSI CMOS sensor with 21x optical zoom. Former models had included an HSPA+ chip for 3G, as well as the standard Wi-Fi. Because the camera ships with Android, users have access to all 700,000 apps in the Google Play Store, as well.

The previous model cost $499 and required a monthly data plan. The new model will cost $450 and not require any data.

"The Galaxy Camera Wi-Fi blends cutting-edge digital imaging technology with Samsung's latest line of class-leading Android devices," added Ron Gazzola, VP of Marketing for the Digital Imaging division of Samsung Electronics America. "Focusing on features that simplify the user experience, the Galaxy Camera Wi-Fi offers an intuitive approach to feature-rich photography, without the need to be constantly connected."

Google may have inadvertently leaked the next site for its Google Fiber initiative.

The company posted a press/business leader invite for an upcoming joint event in the city, leading to much speculation as to whether the city would be next to get the fast Internet offering.

Google's invite read: "The City of Austin and Google will make a very important announcement that will have a positive impact on Austinites and the future of the city."

The event is set for Tuesday at 11 AM.

Google Fiber offers easily the best deal for Internet and TV in the U.S. but is so far only available as a pilot in Kansas City.

While BlackBerry has officially launched the Q10 (part of the N-Series) and the Z10 flagship (part of L-Series), there has been little stated about their R-Series.

Today we have the first picture of the BlackBerry 10 Curve, part of the R-Series.

The phone is rumored to have worse specs than the Z10 and Q10 (including less RAM) but will include the full keyboard familiar to BlackBerry Curve owners.

Perhaps most notably, the phones will be part of BlackBerry's affordable line.

According to Reuters, former News Corp. president Peter Chernin has bid $500 million for Hulu, the popular online video streaming company.

The site is a joint effort between Disney and News Corp, but the owners have been looking to buy each other out or sell the company since last month.

Chernin is certainly familiar with Hulu as he helped create the site in 2007 and is a former board member. He now runs media holding company The Chernin Group in which he has passive stakes in tech companies like Pandora.

Hulu has over 3 million paying subscribers and generated revenue of $700 million last year from ads and monthly subscriptions.

Retailers have begun slashing prices on various iPads, implying a new, updated version of the tablet is coming in the near future.

Wal-Mart has cut the price of the popular iPad Mini (16GB Wi-Fi) to $299 from $329. The device was launched in September.

Best Buy slashed the price of the third-generation (early 2012) iPad by 30 percent, a large clearance. The 16GB+Wi-Fi version is down from $449 to $314 and the 64GB model is down to $454.

The company says a lot of stock is already sold out, but some stores still have stock.

While the price cuts certainly suggest a new model of the iPad is coming soon (or at least an updated Mini), Wal-Mart denied that was the case: "Some have asked us if we think this signals the possibility of a new iPad to be released. That is not the case. Walmart's move is due to consumer demand and our commitment to providing the best price, not potential new product introductions."

Microsoft has responded to the outcry following one of their employee's comments on Twitter.

Earlier in the day Adam Orth, creative director at Microsoft Game Studios, began tweeting about defending "always-on" practices such as DRM used by gaming companies. His tweets seemed to suggest that the upcoming Xbox Next/Xbox 8/Xbox 720 would use such practices.

Microsoft was quick to respond to the claims: "We apologize for the inappropriate comments made by an employee on Twitter yesterday. This person is not a spokesperson for Microsoft, and his personal views do not reflect the customer centric approach we take to our products or how we would communicate directly with our loyal consumers. We are very sorry if this offended anyone, however we have not made any announcements about our product roadmap, and have no further comment on this matter."

T-Mobile has begun taking pre-orders for the iPhone today, making it the last major carrier in the U.S. to do so. The phone goes on sale April 12th.

The carrier will offer the iPhone 4, 4S and 5, and the iPhone 5 will be compatible with the company's 3G, 4G HSPA+ and LTE networks.

Thanks to the company's new "Uncarrier" plans, the iPhone 5 will sell with two options. You can purchase the device at full price at time of purchase, or purchase it for $99 upfront and pay out $20 a month for 24 months, for a total of $579 over two years.

If you want an iPhone 4 or 4S, the installment plan cost is just $15 or $70 down with a $15 or $20 monthly charge, respectively.

T-Mobile also notes that the iPhone 5 will support "HD Voice," which the company defines as high definition voice calling with background noise reduction.

After being vague for months, Netflix has announced the official debut date for the fourth season of the cult classic comedy Arrested Development.

The series will be available starting May 26th, and will actually feature 15 new episodes, compared to the 13 previously revealed.

Subscribers in the U.S., UK, Canada, Ireland, Latin America and the Nordic regions will have access starting 12:01 AM Pacific Time.

Unlike broadcast TV, the entire season will be available at the same time, allowing fans to marathon if they so choose to.

We've made a huge mistake. There are actually 15 NEW episodes of #ArrestedDevelopment launching on @netflix May 26

-- Netflix Canada (@Netflix_CA) April 4, 2013

HTC and Facebook unveiled Facebook Home today, an Android-based user interface that highlights "the Facebook experience."

The HTC First will be the first (no pun intended) smartphone to include the software, and it will be available exclusively through AT&T in the U.S.

HTC says the device has a 4.3-inch display, a Qualcomm 400 Snapdragon dual-core processor, 16GB internal storage and 1GB RAM. The phone has a larger 2000 mAh battery and dual 1.5MP/5MP cameras.

As explained by the social networking giant, Facebook Home "brings your News Feed to the surface, for access to important social updates without opening up additional applications."

Additionally, Facebook Home includes; Cover Feed, a constant, fresh stream of photos and updates directly from your news feed and is always present as soon as you wake up your phone; Notifications that appear right on your home screen; Chat Heads, the mobile messenger that lets you jump in and out of conversations while you multitask; App Launcher, which lets you view your favorite apps and post right to Facebook from the same spot

Samsung has announced a major partnership with Best Buy today, with the latter adding 1400 Samsung Experience Shops within their retail locations across the U.S.

The Experience Shops will be run by "Samsung Experience Consultants" who are trained to provide demonstrations and give instructions on all Samsung mobile products including smartphones, tablets, laptops, connected cameras and accessories.

Additionally, "Smart Service" at the Shops will help customers with Samsung account set up, warranty issues and registration and all "post purchase support."

Best Buy locations currently have dedicated Apple counters, but they are not manned by Apple employees.

According to Apple analyst Brian White of Topeka Capital, Apple's oft-rumored HDTV will come with a ring-shaped motion controller, allowing users to control their TV with the wave or point of a finger.

In his client note, the analyst claims Apple will finally launch the TV later this year, and it will "revolutionize the TV experience forever."

The iRing will be one of the centerpieces of the new experience, as it acts as "a navigation pointer," enhancing motion detection and replacing some of the basic functions of a remote control.

Additionally, White says all TVs will come with a "mini iTV" 9.7-inch display that can be used phone calls, video conferencing and to view other content: "Essentially, we believe the 'mini iTV' screens will be able to capture content from the 60-inch 'iTV' across a distance of up to 200 meters, allowing a user to view 'iTV' content in the kitchen, washroom, garage, bedroom, backyard, etc. We believe Apple will offer one 'mini iTV' per 'iTV,' but package options will include up to four screens (i.e., one screen is part of the standard package and pay extra for each additional."

According to a new Digitimes report, Samsung has some pretty lofty ambitions for 2013.

The company wants to sell 500 million feature and smartphones this year, a number that will require strong growth.

In 2012, IDC reports that Samsung shipped 406 million devices, so this year's growth will have to exceed 23 percent to reach the 500 million mark.

From 2011, Samsung saw 21 percent growth, mainly due to strong sales of their Galaxy S III and Galaxy Note 2 smartphones.

The company's latest flagship, the Galaxy S4 is set for launch around the globe in the coming months, and is expected to be a hit seller.

Google has released their early April OS version share update, and Android 4.x saw a nice boost from earlier in the year.

Jelly Bean, versions 4.1.x and 4.2.x, are now on 25 percent of all Android devices, jumping from 16.5 percent last month.

Gingerbread (version 2.3.x), is still on 39.8 percent of devices, followed by Ice Cream Sandwich (4.0.x) on 29.3 percent and all other versions combining for 6 percent.

The Android Devs say the huge jump was most likely due to a new method of calculating the figures. The numbers were formerly pulled from devices that checked into Google servers but now (and moving forward) will be calculated by visits to the Google Play Store.

Reads the post: "The new device dashboards are based on the devices of users who visit the Google Play Store (rather than devices that have checked-in to Google servers). As a result, the dashboards more accurately reflect the users most engaged in the Android and Google Play ecosystem--and thus most likely to download and use your apps."

A day ahead of the major Facebook event tomorrow, a few sites have posted leaks of the alleged Facebook Phone.

The phone is supposedly called the HTC First, and will feature Facebook's Android variant, rumored to be called "Home."

If accurate, the device itself does look like a rather generic HTC device, but it is also unclear who the phone will be marketed to.

As reported, the Facebook Home will be a modified version of Android that includes deep integration with the social network. It will keep most of Android's foundations but will have "all sorts of extra Facebook functionality built in." The home screen would be highly dedicated to Facebook. This could include a widget reading Facebook news feed stories, and easy access to Facebook Messenger, Facebook voice calls and picture uploads.

The event is scheduled for 10AM PST tomorrow.

LG has confirmed that it will be launching phones this year that run on the Mozilla Firefox mobile operating system.

The phones will launch in the South American nations of Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela as well as in Spain.

Additionally, the company will expand its launch to Hungary, Mexico, Serbia, Montenegro and Poland during the Q4 2013 and Q1 2014.

The company was quick to note, however, that "LG's planned launch of Firefox phones is a means to meet diversifying consumer needs but this doesn't indicate any shift away from Android."

ZTE and Huawei have also announced Firefox phones, but major player Samsung has already stated they will not be building phones with the OS.

Rovio, the Finnish gaming company behind the 'Angry Birds' franchise, has reported a very profitable 2012.

The company reported revenue of $200 million with a $71 million profit.

Overall revenue grew 101 percent year-over-year, from a bit above $96 million in 2011.

In 2012, the company released four new games; Angry Birds Space, Amazing Alex, Bad Piggies, and Angry Birds Star Wars. More importantly, however, the company teamed up with major retailers like Walmart to sell consumer products like shirts, plushes and even sodas.

Rovio CMO Pete Vesterbacka has long called Disney its aspiration, in regards to becoming a huge entertainment brand.

Former Windows Phone GM Charlie Kindel has announced this week that he has been hired by Amazon, fueling rumors that Amazon's oft-rumored smartphone may be in the works.

Kindel's LinkedIn profile says his role is "director of something secret" and he is already looking to "build a new team going after a totally new area for Amazon."

In his past life, Kindel worked for Microsoft working with mobile developers.

Last year, the former head of Windows Phone Developer Experience, Brandon Watson, joined Amazon's Kindle team.

Sony has announced today that the Epix streaming service is now available to PlayStation 3 users in the U.S.

The VOD catalog has 3000 movies all available in HD, alongside comedy specials, concerts and some sporting events.

Sony added that all PSN members will get a 14-day free trial. If you subscribe to PlayStation Plus, you will be able to watch one movie for free every week for the whole year.

It is unclear which movies will be available for free, however.

Finally, the company notes that a PS Vita mobile app will be available very soon.

The former owner and operator of a piracy index (linking) site has been sentenced to five months jailtime in Italy.

Additionally, the 43-year old, Giampiero Mantellassi, will have to pay a 5000 euro fine and 15,000 euros in compensation to the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE)

The site was Vedogratis.it, and it linked to movies that were available illegally on streaming portals. The site first opened in 2008, and authorities say it generated ad revenue from over 50,000 daily users.

Mantellassi claimed the site did nothing wrong as it did not host any of the content, but apparently that argument did not work.

HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has made comments this weekend that other media companies would do well to listen to.

The executive claims that the massive amount of piracy for their hit show, Game of Thrones, does not hurt DVD/Blu-ray sales at all, and is actually a compliment.

It was recently revealed that each episode of the show sees over 4.3 million illegal downloads, making it the most-pirated TV show in the world, beating out perennial faves like 'Dexter.'

"I probably shouldn't be saying this, but it is a compliment of sorts," adds Lombardo (via Freak). "[Piracy is] something that comes along with having a wildly successful show on a subscription network." When asked if consumers are still going out to buy the discs, Lombardo replied, "The demand is there. And it certainly didn't negatively impact the DVD sales."

AT&T has announced this week that it will be the exclusive carrier for HTC's 64GB model of the upcoming 'One' flagship.

The carrier confirmed the fact via a promotional video on the company YouTube account.

HTC will be offering 8GB, 16GB and 32GB models, as well, depending on your carrier.

The company recently had to delay their flagship due to component supply issues related to the new 'Ultrapixel' camera. HTC says the phone will reach the U.S. before the end of April.

HTC also recently announced it had seen "several hundred thousand" pre-orders so far in the U.S., spread out between Sprint, T-Mobile USA and AT&T. Verizon has not yet been confirmed as a carrier for the device.

In a creative April Fool's jokes aimed at their biggest detractors, the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay has announced today that it has moved its servers to the U.S., and will forever be known now as "Freedom Bay."

Reads the post:

You probably heard about our recent move to North Korea.

Many of you rightfully bashed us for siding with a dictatorship. We want you to know that we have listened to your critique.

So without further due, we hereby announce that we have moved our servers from the evil North Korea to the greatest f***in nation in the entire world.

The United States of America, f*** yeah!

We have worked closely with the awesome american government to establish a strong military graded server park that will endure any nuclear attacks that Kim Jong Un and his evil allies will send at Us.

Along with this move to the greatest country in the universe, we will soon remove all torrents from North Korea, China, Iran, France and Islamistan. American torrents will be seeded with extra power, to ensure that you'll get your american dose extra fast.

Read more...

Apple has been denied in their attempt to trademark the iPad Mini.

The US Patents and Trademarks Office denied the application, claiming that Apple can't trademark "iPad Mini" because the law does not allow them to trademark the word mini, which is simply a description of something in miniature form.

Reads the letter: "The term "MINI" in the applied for mark is also descriptive of a feature of applicant's product. Specifically, the attached evidence shows this wording means "something that is distinctively smaller than other members of its type or class". See attached definition. The word "mini" has been held merely descriptive of goods that are produced and sold in miniature form. The examining attorney has also attached evidence from an internet search showing third party descriptive use of the term "mini" to describe the small size of various handheld digital devices. See attached evidence. Therefore, the wording merely describes a feature of applicant's goods, namely, a small sized handheld tablet computer."

Reads Google's latest blog post:

Gmail launched nine years ago on April 1st, 2004. Since then you've been able to use hundreds of new features that push the boundaries of what email can do and make it easier to get things done.

Starting today, you'll get to experience the next big step for Gmail, Gmail Blue. Watch the video to learn more:

Google has announced today that video sharing behemoth YouTube will be shutting down tomorrow, for good, with all content being deleted.

Apparently, YouTube was really just an eight year long contest, and the best video of all-time will now be voted on by an expert panel of judges that includes famous viral video celebrities like Antoine Dodson and Charlie of "Charlie Bit My Finger."

YouTube says the voting will take about a decade to complete, and the billions of videos submitted have been narrowed down to just 150,000.

The winner will get $500 as a creative stipend for their next video, and an MP3 player.

Thanks to a leaked roadmap, it appears that BlackBerry is working on a new tablet and a phablet, as well.

The map shows off this quarter's Z10 and Q10 smartphones, but also shows off a tablet slated for the Q3/Q4 and a phablet dubbed the U10, set for the Q4 2013 or Q1 2014.

Additionally, there appears to be a large smartphone device that has a full QWERTY keypad, as well, but that is way off in the Q2 2014.

BlackBerry's last attempt at a tablet was a complete failure, and the company eventually had to take a $500 million write-down on excess inventory that had to be liquidated at prices $300-$400 lower than the MSRP.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation has confirmed today that its $25 Model A board is now available for purchase via reseller Allied Electronics.

Until this week, only the Model B, which costs $35 and includes ethernet, had been available to U.S. and UK buyers.

The cheaper model was created with lower power consumption in mind, and indeed uses 30 percent less power than the B. It also includes half the RAM of the B, only one USB port (compared to 2), and no ethernet.

Model A sales began in Europe in February, and the Foundation says sales have been a "few thousand a week."

The Foundation recently sold its 1 millionth Model B board in January.

Epic Games showed off a quick demo video of its Unreal Engine 4 at GDC, an amazingly powerful piece of tech.

In the demo, the company shows off different filters.

As they note, the demo is "running 100% in-engine in real time, showing off UE4's high-end rendering features as well as the latest tools."

Check the video here:

Today is World Backup Day, a tradition that started on Reddit in 2011 but has caught on with the rest of the world since.

There are plenty of great options to backup your data, including the built in options for Windows and OS X if you own an external hard drive.

Check this guide if you are a Windows user: Backup and Restore

Try this guide if you are a Mac user: Time Machine

If you prefer to have a little more power over your backups, check our plethora of backup tools here at Afterdawn: Software section

Of course, you are willing to have your files in the cloud, Box is a great alternative, with 5GB free space.