News archive (5 / 2014)

Motorola Mobility has announced that it will shut down its factory in Texas that was opened to build the Moto X smartphone last year.

The plant, at its peak, employed 3800 workers, but that figure is down to 700 now.

While the company had hoped to show that manufacturing could make its way back to the U.S., it appears the costs remained too high (or demand was too low) to keep the plant open. Motorola is said to have sold 900,000 Moto X in the last quarter, compared to 26 million iPhone 5S, and over 40 million Samsung smartphones.

The Moto X will continue to be built in China and Brazil, confirmed the company.

Motorola's mid-range but cheap devices, like the Moto E and Moto G, have huge followings in nations like India and Brazil, and will therefore not be built in the U.S., where shipping and labor costs would be too high.

Source:
WSJ

According to Swedish source Expressen, Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde has been arrested in Sweden, following a police raid at a farm in the city of Skåne Tonganoxie.

Sunde had been wanted by Interpol since 2012 over copyright infringement violations.

The arrest leaves founder Fredrik Neij as the only fugitive of the group, as Gottfrid Swartholm Warg was arrested in 2009 after evading authorities on hacking charges.

Sunde will likely have to serve his eight month sentence for copyright crimes related to operating The Pirate Bay, and will also face stiff fines.

Source:
Expressen

Psy's "Gangnam Style," first released in July 2012, has reached another massive milestone, becoming the first video to hit 2 billion views on YouTube.

The viral hit was the fastest to 1 billion and surpassed Justin Beiber's "Baby" for the most viewed video of all-time last year.

As a commemoration, Google has added like dancing emojis of Psy around the play counter.

"2 billion views ... they are very honorable and very burdensome numbers," Psy said in response to the news. "With appreciation, I will come back soon with more joyful contents!!" Psy's second hit, "Gentleman," has a measly 690 million views.

Gangnam Stlye remains popular, and actually had 90,000 views in the time it took me to publish this blurb.

According to a new survey by Consumer Reports, 15 percent of all U.S. consumers were victims of personal data breaches in 2013.

Perhaps most shockingly, 62 percent have done nothing since being notified to protect their privacy online.

The report estimates that 11.2 million people were victims of email phishing scams and 29 percent of Americans have been infected with some sort of malware in the last year.

In 2013, there were eight "mega breaches" in which personal details were stolen from at least 10 million people. So far in 2014, that number is likely to go even higher following major breaches at Adobe and eBay (not to mention Heartbleed).

Read the full report here: Consumer Reports

Samsung has begun updating the original Galaxy Gear to Tizen, which should hopefully bring an updated operating system and better efficiency to the watch.

Aesthetically, the watch will look almost the same after the migration from Android, but there will be significant battery life and performance updates.

In addition, you will have a standalone music player, tap input shortcuts and voice commands for the camera.

The new features will closely resemble those of the newer Gear 2 and Gear 2 Neo, which ran Tizen out of the box.

You will have to update via Samsung's own Kies or you can get the firmware manually and upgrade it via USB chord. It is unclear whether it will be available OTA in the near future. It is important to note that you will need to wipe the device, but Samsung will let you backup your data and most third-party app support will be broken following the update.

First reported on in April, it is being reported that Google's new TV platform "Android TV" is ready for prime time and an official unveiling at the Google I/O conference next month.

The TV operating system will be available for smart TVs and set-top boxes and will focus on online streaming services and also Android based video games, making it similar to the newly launched Amazon Fire TV.

As expected, the platform will launch with all the major services on board, including Netflix, Hulu Plus and HBO Go. Hardware partners like LG and Samsung are also expected to be announced with devices ready in the coming months.

A "killer feature" of the platform is 'Pano,' which is the codename for the minimalist user interface. The apps will look like cards familiar to Google Now users, and different content like movies or TV shows can be found instantly when Android TV is turned on.

If you are one of millions who really, really, really do not want to upgrade from the ancient Windows XP operating system, a simple registry hack will give you the ability to continue getting updates, although with significant risks.

With a quick addition to the registry, your XP system will look like it is Windows Embedded POSReady 2009, which allows for five more years of updates.

Microsoft was quick to respond, stating: "We recently became aware of a hack that purportedly aims to provide security updates to Windows XP customers. The security updates that could be installed are intended for Windows Embedded and Windows Server 2003 customers and do not fully protect Windows XP customers. Windows XP customers also run a significant risk of functionality issues with their machines if they install these updates, as they are not tested against Windows XP. The best way for Windows XP customers to protect their systems is to upgrade to a more modern operating system, like Windows 7 or Windows 8.1."

If you are still interested, create a text file and give it a .reg extension. Add the following to the document (this has not been tested by Afterdawn and is also 32-bit only):

SoftBank, Japan's third-largest carrier and parent of Sprint, has admitted that the carrier's 4G LTE network sucks.

CEO Masayoshi Son confirmed the company would need "greater scale" if it could even pretend to compete in the U.S. market dominated by Verizon and AT&T. The U.S.' fourth largest carrier, T-Mobile, has been taking market share quickly thanks to innovative pro-consumer moves like price cuts and true unlimited data.

Sprint has been rumored to be trying to merge with T-Mobile, and Son had kind words for the carrier: "I strongly admire them. I strongly admire the price disruption." The executive also praised the leadership of T-Mobile CEO John Legere.

As far as Sprint's shoddy network is concerned, Son says, "I've only owned the company for six months. It takes a few years to build. We have to design the network."

Research firm IDC has predicted this week that smartphone shipments will hit 1.2 billion units this year, strong growth of 23 percent year-over-year.

Additionally, Android will keep their monster lead, with IDC predicting 80.2 percent market share in 2014.

"What makes smartphone growth so amazing is where the growth will be taking place. Smartphone shipments will more than double between now and 2018 within key emerging markets, including India, Indonesia, and Russia. In addition, China will account for nearly a third of all smartphone shipments in 2018. These – and other markets – will offer multiple opportunities to vendors and carriers alike, but the key will be balancing affordability with expectations," adds Ramon Llamas, Research Manager with IDC's Mobile Phone team.

Apple's market share is not expected to grow as most of the growth nations do not have large markets for phones above the $200 unlocked price range, leaving the iPhone on the outside looking in. Windows Phone continues to see strong growth, but from small figures to begin with. Nokia's lower-end devices remain popular across the globe.

Google has begun ranking ISPs in order of their streaming experience for customers in an effort to ensure ISPs offer service that allows for buffer-free HD streaming on YouTube.

So far, the company has only released a report for U.S. ISPs, but it is expected to move globally in the future.

The report names ISPs as "HD verified" if they can "consistently deliver HD video, a resolution of at least 720p, without buffering or interruptions -- it's HD Verified." YouTube monitored streams for a month, and HD Verified ISPs had to deliver the aforementioned performance at least 90 percent of the time.

Additionally, the report shows which ISPs deliver SD streams without buffering and who delivers the worst performance.

Microsoft is preparing to enter the smartwatch market, with sources claiming the software giant will make the device syncable across iOS, Android and Windows Phone.

The device will focus on fitness, and will continuously measure your heart rate 24/7 (as long as you are wearing it), and Microsoft wants to have the device out before the end of the summer, before Apple has a chance to unveil their iWatch that has been rumored since 2011.

Other than the active heart rate monitoring, the device will be similar to current offerings like the Samsung Gear Fit. The watch will have a color touch screen "about the size of half a stick of gum, positioned on the inside of the wearer's wrist," says Forbes.

Microsoft has slowly moved away from exclusivity, and having the watch available to all smartphone users seems to suggest that trend is here to stay. The company recently unveiled Office for iPad, before the software was even available for its own Windows 8.1 tablets.

According to a new report, Amazon is preparing to get into the streaming music business, adding such an offering to its Prime service that costs $99 per year and offers free streaming movies and TV and free 2-day shipping on millions of items.

The service could launch as early as next month, and will include millions of catalog tracks and newer tracks, as well, as long as they were not released in the last six months.

On that front, Amazon will not be able to compete with market leader Spotify, or newcomers like Beats Music, but that is not the point. The company just raised the price of Prime from $79 to $99 and adding free music will certainly sweeten the pot for those that were on the fence about keeping the service.

Reportedly, Amazon has deals in place with Sony Music and Warner Music and is working on Universal Music. It also has deals in place with prominent indies.

The labels' entire back catalogs will not be available to Amazon, but Amazon will get to choose what to offer, with the sources saying they will likely choose what has been popular on Amazon MP3 and via their retail CD sales to have better cross-selling capability.

HP has confirmed this week that it will keep its deal with Beats Electronics to integrate Beats Audio tech in its higher-end PCs through the end of 2015, despite Apple's recent acquisition of the company.

HP has been allowed to continue development on products with Beats Audio tech and can continue to sell devices with the tech and the Beats logo until the end of 2015.

In its statement, the PC maker says it plans to have an aggressive lineup of products with Beats included in 2014, with up to 20 percent of all their devices using the technology.

Apple just acquired Beats Electronics for $3 billion, so the company's previous relationships with rival smartphone and PC makers are most likely in limbo.

Into the future, Apple is expected to offer the Beats music streaming service alongside their own iTunes a la carte download service.

According to multiple Wall Street analysts, Apple's oft-rumored iWatch smartwatch will be unveiled later in the summer, launching in time for the holidays.

One analyst, Brian Blair of Rosenblatt Securities, spoke with Asian supply chain sources and claims that production will begin in the summer and that the watch will feature a round face, so far unseen with smartwatches except for the unreleased Moto 360.

Barclays wrote in a note to clients that shipments will begin after Thanksgiving, and that the watch will be marketed as a fitness tool.

Each analyst also agreed that the watch will act as a newer version of the digital music player iPod, which is slowly being phased out, having access to newly acquired Beats audio technology, as well as iTunes.

The company's stock is up 11 percent year-to-date, and at its highest level since 2012 despite no new product lines in nearly four years.

Source:
NYPost

With the first Android Wear-powered device just weeks away from launch, Google has now demoed how notifications will work for the upcoming smartwatches.

Google's Senior Developer Advocate Timothy Jordan explained that all Android apps can be extended to the wearable devices with little effort. In fact, with minimal code, developers "can deliver even richer experiences on the wearable by using stacks, pages, and voice replies."

The notifications will take up the lower end of the screen, with the app's icon taking up the top right. You can also use right-to-left gestures to view longer notifications (think long emails) on multiple screens.

Satellite TV giant DISH Network has become the largest company to accept the digital currency Bitcoin.

"We always want to deliver choice and convenience for our customers and that includes the method they use to pay their bills," Bernie Han, DISH executive vice president and chief operating officer, said in a statement. "Bitcoin is becoming a preferred way for some people to transact and we want to accommodate those individuals."

DISH has a market value of $27 billion, significantly higher than other notable companies that have begun accepting the currency. Coinbase will be the payment processor.

"This is a large step forward in the growing momentum of customers paying companies in bitcoin for things we do every day, like watching premium TV," says Coinbase founder Fred Ehrsam.

Bitcoin has remained relatively stable over the past few days, and is worth $570 as of writing.

Eli Peli, Google's official consultant optometrist for Google Glass, scared some potential future owners when he said the wearable could potentially cause pain and discomfort for wearers.

A month later, the ophthalmologist has posted his updated thoughts to "clarify a few points," insisting there are no health risks associated with use of the display.

"First and foremost, I have researched both HMDs and Glass for years and have found no evidence of any health risks," he wrote. Most of his previous statements were in regards to the need to look up when using the device, which is unnatural for most.

So far, Peli says, "very few" Glass users have reported discomfort, and strain disappears after an adjustment period of two days.

Glass is available to anyone in the U.S. who is willing to shell out $1500 for the "Explorer" beta models.

Sony has announced that as a celebration of the service's fourth anniversary, PlayStation Plus subscribers will now have access to two free titles per month via the Instant Game Collection.

Starting in July, the titles in the Instant Game Collection will be available starting the first Wednesday of the month and will be free until the first Wednesday of the following month.

Sony did note that a few of the games that have been available for some time will be phased out and replaced with a new collection. PS Plus subscribers are encouraged to download those games while they are still available.

For June, the new games on PS4 are the twin stick shooter Pixeljunk Shooter Ultimate and the popular mystery puzzler Trine 2: The Complete Story. For the PS3, the new games are NBA 2K14 and the psychological survival game Lone Survivor (Director's Cut).

Leaving PS Plus are Stick it to the Man, Payday 2, Brothers A Tale of Two Sons, Muramasa Rebirth and Everybody's Golf.

Popular cloud-storage service Dropbox has revealed that it has reached 300,000,000 users, adding 100 million since November 2013.

In a brief post on the firm's blog, Dropbox announced the milestone using a graphic of a door with a dropbox logo on it, with notches on the wall next to it showing the company's userbase growth from 100m, to 200m, and now to 300,000,000.

"Thanks for helping us grow," the post was titled, with the body only including the words: "New notch on the wall."

The growth is very impressive when you consider that Dropbox revealed it had hit 200 million users in November 2013, just around a half a year ago. On April 9, it had revealed the number swelled to 275 million.

Ninemsn offices evacuated and bomb squad called in after a 'suspicious package' was delivered to a journalist.

Ubisoft has admitted that it was a PR stunt that simply went wrong. A courier delivered a safe to Ninemsn offices in Australia square earlier this week, with a letter informing a journalist to check his voicemail. However, the journalist had no voicemail.

When staff entered a pin code into the safe, it began to beep. Unsure of what to do, they called the police and evacuated staff from the area.

The bomb squad arrived and opened the safe in the basement of the building, finding only a copy of Watch Dogs, a beanie and a baseball cap, along with a note saying it was embargoed until 5pm.

Ubisoft admitted that the PR stunt didn't go according to plan, as the publisher was unable to leave a crucial voicemail for the journalist explaining what was going on.

"This is definitely the other side of the line in terms of what it's safe for a PR company to send anonymously to a newsroom. The thing was black, heavy and slightly creepy," Hal Crawford, editor at Ninemsn, told Mumbrella.

"We did check with other newsrooms to see if they had received a similar package as we thought it was a PR stunt, but no-one else had. We weren't panicked at any point, but given there was no note explaining what it was, we had to take sensible precautions."

Spotify has notified its users of unauthorized access detected in its systems and has pushed out an updated Android app in response.

The evidence of the data breached showed that only one single user was affected, and that user has already been contacted by Spotify. Information at risk did not appear to include the users' password, payment or other financial information. There is also no reason to assume that other users are currently at risk.

Nevertheless, Spotify has pushed out a new app for Android devices and disabled older apps, forcing users to upgrade. It also has asked certain Spotify users to re-enter their username and password to log in.

"As always, Spotify does not recommend installing Android applications from anywhere other than Google Play or Amazon Appstore," wrote Oskar Stål, CTO, Spotify.

"At this time there is no action recommended for iOS and Windows Phone users."

'Watch Dogs,' easily the biggest blockbuster multiplatform game of the year so far, has been a drag for PC gamers.

Ubisoft uses its uPlay client as DRM to authenticate players, but many gamers cannot log-in, some were unable to create uPlay accounts, and even more saw their game crash in the middle of missions.

The studio has been working on fixes, and most seem to have been fixed, but not everyone is satisfied yet.

As of 7:30pm EST, Ubisoft says the login issues are almost completely resolved.

Watch Dogs came out this week for PC, PS3, PS4, Xbox 360, and Xbox One.

The authentication issue affecting our online services is almost resolved. Follow @UbisoftSupport for the latest info.

-- Watch Dogs (@watchdogsgame) May 29, 2014

New Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella has made it clear that the company is looking to hold onto its current gaming and search businesses.

While this is not really a surprise, analysts have often asked the company if they plan to divest the properties, both of which have been large drains on the company's resources over time, but have become popular as well.

Nadella says Bing serves about 30 percent of the search market, behind Google by a long shot, but still significant. Besides simple search, Bing also uses the tech to power search products used in Windows 8.1.

Xbox, which recently headed into its third-generation with the launch of the Xbox One last November, is another core product that Nadella has no intent on selling any time soon.

Source:
TechCrunch

Nearly two weeks after it was first reported, Apple has confirmed their acquisition of premium headphone and streaming music company Beats Electronics.

Both companies confirmed the synergies of a merger, which will include the Beats brand remaining separate from Apple's but with Apple selling the headphones and offering iTunes alongside the Beats streaming service.

Beats' head executives Jimmy Iovine and Dr. Dre will now work with Eddy Cue, Apple's head of Internet services. Beats was founded in 2006 by Iovine, the powerful music executive and Dre, the rapper and entrepreneur.

Apple CEO Tim Cook praised the talents of Dr. Dre and Iovine while also praising the new streaming service. "These guys are really unique," Mr. Cook said. "It's like finding the precise grain of sand on the beach. They're rare and very hard to find."

For the $3 billion, Apple is paying $2.6 billion in cash and $400 million in stock. Despite being Apple's largest acquisition of all-time, the purchasing price is barely a dent in the company's incredible $155 billion cash hoard.

Hector Xavier Monsegur aka Sabu, hacker and ex-leader of LulzSec, has been sentenced to time served and set free, after facing potentially over 25 years in jail.

U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska credited the hacker with helping the FBI prevent over 300 cyber attacks and "extraordinary assistance" with law enforcement and the U.S. government.

When Sabu was originally confronted by the FBI over his activities with Anonymous, the hacker immediately began cooperating. "That personal characteristic of turning on a dime and doing good instead of evil is the important factor in this sentence," Preska said. "You've done as much as any human being can do in terms of helping the government to make up for past wrongs and to avert other damage to probably millions of people."

Assistant U.S. Attorney James Pastore asked for leniency during the sentencing. "It's difficult to quantify Mr. Monsegur's cooperation," said Pastore, "He was able to unmask and thwart outright or minimize hundreds of attacks."

Sabu "worked around the clock" recruiting and talking to hackers around the world (then passing the info on) after he began cooperating, while also preventing cyber attacks on major targets including the U.S. Senate, the water supply of a major U.S. city and many corporations and law enforcement agencies.

Google's incredible self-driving car project has taken its next step, with Google unveiling a prototype that does not have brakes nor a steering wheel, thus putting 100 percent of the burden of driving on the car.

Reads Google's release:
"Just imagine: You can take a trip downtown at lunchtime without a 20-minute buffer to find parking. Seniors can keep their freedom even if they can't keep their car keys. And drunk and distracted driving? History.

We're now exploring what fully self-driving vehicles would look like by building some prototypes; they'll be designed to operate safely and autonomously without requiring human intervention. They won't have a steering wheel, accelerator pedal, or brake pedal... because they don't need them. Our software and sensors do all the work. The vehicles will be very basic--we want to learn from them and adapt them as quickly as possible--but they will take you where you want to go at the push of a button. And that's an important step toward improving road safety and transforming mobility for millions of people. "

The cars feature sensors that can detect objects in all directions as far out as 240 yards, and the original prototypes can only go 25 mph as Google has capped the speeds.

According to Sony CEO Kaz Hirai, about 50 percent of all PlayStation 4 owners also subscribe to PlayStation Plus.

To date, the company has sold over 7 million units, suggesting there are at least 3.5 million PS Plus subscribers paying up to $50 per year for access to online multiplayer and cloud saves.

Hirai also noted that the PlayStation Network and Sony Entertainment Network have over 52 million users around the globe.

Last week, we reported that Sony believed the PS4 will be more profitable for the company than the PS2, which sold over 155 million units during its lifetime.

LG has unveiled their oft-leaked G3 flagship device officially, packing the most impressive specs yet seen on a smartphone.

Featuring a 5.5-inch QuadHD 2560 x 1440 IPS display (538ppi), the bezels are also thinner than last year's G2 with a screen ratio of 76.4 percent.

Under the hood is 3GB RAM, a high-end quad-core Snapdragon 801 processor, 32GB internal storage and a microSD slot in case you need more room. On the back side there is a 13MP OIS+ (Optical Image Stabilizer Plus) camera with "revolutionary Laser Auto Focus that can shoot stunningly sharp images in a fraction of the time required by conventional phone cameras" and the device has a massive 3000mAh battery. The smartphone is quad-band, LTE-capable, has NFC and can wirelessly charged.

The wearables market, quickly growing with new products seemingly launching daily from different OEMs, seems to have a few clear winners.

For the Q1 2014, research firm Canalys says Fitbit led the way with about 50 percent of overall shipments, while Pebble (with its new Steel), was a leader for smartwatches.

During the quarter, startup Pebble jumped to 35 percent, followed by Sony at 29 percent and Samsung at 23 percent. The rest of the market took just 13 percent share.

'Pebble Technology launched the Pebble Steel and the Pebble appstore and grew at a healthy rate during Q1, managing to achieve smart band market leadership for the quarter with a 35% share of worldwide shipments, ahead of both Sony and Samsung,' said Chris Jones, VP and Principal Analyst. 'Canalys' quarterly estimates showed that total smart band shipments fell short of half a million units. This is largely because Samsung's shipments were down dramatically quarter on quarter as it had strong sell-in for Q4 and then cleared inventory in preparation for its Gear product refresh in early Q2. The company must make some big steps to improve sell-through and customer satisfaction with its new products.'

Sony CEO Kaz Hirai has said the PlayStation 4 will very likely be more profitable over time than the PlayStation 2, which is quite the feat given that the console is the best selling at all-time at 150 million units shipped.

The PS4 recently reached 7 million units sold since its launch just over 6 months ago.

"It is likely that PS4 will become the platform which exceeds the profits earned with PS2," says Hirai, thanks to strong hardware sales and growing popularity for high margin digital services.

Sales for Sony's gaming division have been growing significantly, and Sony expects to sell 17 million PS4 and PS3 consoles during the current financial year.

Sony takes a small loss per hardware unit sold, but quickly recoups if the customer purchase a couple of games or signs up for PlayStation Plus. There were no options for digital downloads for the PS2, which launched in 2000, but hardware sales were more than significant. The PS3 lost the company hundreds of dollars per console sold, and it took over four years for Sony to break even.

According to Cisco's security research, Microsoft's Silverlight is now the most vulnerable and dangerous plugin, surpassing perennial list toppers like Java and Flash.

The web video and interactive content plugin has seen a large increase in attacks from hackers, say the researchers, and while users are now well aware of the dangers of outdated Java software, many have no clue about Silverlight.

"Silverlight exploits are also ideal because Silverlight continues to gain rich Internet application market share, perhaps surpassing Java, and Microsoft's life cycle schedule suggests Silverlight 5 will be supported through October, 2021," says the report.

Current malware attacks "use a Silverlight file to trigger the same CVE-2013-3896 vulnerability, but packages the exploit differently and attempts obfuscation through AES encryption." The CVE-2013-3986 exploit was already patched four months ago, but a majority of users have outdated Silverlight installs. Silverlight, unlike many Microsoft products, does not self-update.

Earlier this week, it was confirmed that popular online marketplace eBay was hit by a cyber attack and personal information for a substantial amount of users was stolen.

Yesterday, the company urged 145 million users to change their passwords, and to change those passwords on other sites if they use the same username and password elsewhere.

The company acknowledged that emails, encrypted passwords, birth dates and full mailing addresses were stolen during the attack from late March. Financial information and PayPal details were not compromised.

EBay spokeswoman Amanda Miller said the company uses "sophisticated," proprietary hashing and salting for passwords, but security analysts believe it is just a matter of time before they are unscrambled.

The company added that there had not been any increase in fraudulent activity on the site since the breach. Attackers managed to obtain logins for some eBay employees, giving them access to the corporate network and eventually to exploit databases.

Mojang has announced this week that its popular Minecraft game will be headed to the Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PS Vita this summer.

For both of the next-gen consoles, if you own the game for their predecessor console (Xbox 360 or PS3) you can get the updated title for an upgrade price of $5. Otherwise the game will cost $19.99 for new buyers.

The game will be available in the Xbox Live Marketplace in August and Xbox 360 version owners can import saved game data across consoles, as well as move their skins and texture packs over.

For the PS4, you will be able to import saves from the PS3 edition but you cannot import back to the PS3. The Vita version will go on sale at the same time for $20 bundled with the PS3 version.

Vivendi has announced it will sell another piece of its stake in game studio Activision Blizzard.

The corporation says it will be selling half of its remaining stake for over $850 million, looking to use the funds to pay down debt and re-focus on core assets like Universal Music and Canal Plus.

Altogether, the company will be selling 41.5 million shares (almost 6 percent of the company) and this follows Vivendi's sale of almost 85 percent of its share last year for $8.2 billion.

Vivendi says it eventually wants to sell off its entire stake, but cannot move the rest of the shares until 2015 due to its deal with Activision. The company has been selling off assets at a fast pace, recently selling Moroccan phone company Maroc Telecom and France's second largest carrier SFR for over £14 billion.

Activision Blizzard is best known for the Call of Duty series and the popular MMO World of Warcraft series.

The Russian government-backed national telecom Rostelecom has debuted its new search engine, Sputnik.ru, in efforts to rival Google and other major players in the industry including Russia's own Yandex.

Launched in beta, the search engine will have its hands full against Yandex, which has 62 percent share in the nation. Google Russia has 27.6 percent.

Russia's Sputnik 1 satellite was launched into low Earth orbit in the late 1950s, and set off the "space race" between the U.S. and Russia. The name chosen for the search engine will undoubtedly bring back some memories.

The new Sputnik project was run by Alexey Basov, a Rostelekom VP with years of experience at sites and services like Mail.Ru, Begun and SpyLOG. Basov says the engine will have a competitive edge over rivals because it will give access to "everyday necessities." For example, its algorithms will help Russians with "social services" like "finding specific drugs in nearby pharmacies or gasoline prices at specific gas stations."

"We are attempting to make Sputnik a niche search engine, and believe that users ... can work with several search engines to solve various problems," added the executive. "Sputnik is oriented toward providing users with social rather than commercial services."

As of yesterday, Amazon's partnership with HBO officially began in earnest, offering great collections of older streaming content to Prime members.

HBO has made older shows available, as well as newer shows and current shows as long as they have been off the air for three years.

Among the shows available now are full series of The Sopranos, The Wire, Deadwood, Rome, Six Feet Under, Eastbound & Down, Enlightened, Flight of The Conchords, Treme and Band of Brothers. Initial seasons of True Blood and others will be available later in the year.

Amazon Prime costs $99 per year and offers free 2-day shipping on millions of items and the free Instant Video streaming catalog.

Most notably, the deal is an exclusive for Amazon, leaving rivals like Netflix out in the cold. Amazon is said to have paid upwards of $300 million for the content.

Earlier this year, Google added the hands-free voice search "OK Google" command to its desktop Chrome browser, but you needed to install a special extension or become an early tester through Google to use it.

Of course, with any beta software, users were hit with bugs and performance that was not ready for prime time.

As of this week, however, Google has updated Chrome with voice command, as long as you are an American Chrome user with the browser set to US English as a default language. Windows, Mac and Linux versions have all been updated.

Google has left a few examples via their blog post:

Perform searches: Say "Ok Google, how many ounces are in a cup?"
Set a timer: Say "Ok Google, set a timer for 30 minutes"
Create a reminder for Google Now: Say "Ok Google, remind me to pick up dessert at 6pm tonight"

Samsung has confirmed the end of their Samsung Music service (Music Hub), with the service and its features shutting down on July 1st.

Executives had already hinted that the service would shut down this year, and for now the company says consumers should "take the time to download all purchased content and use any remaining vouchers for Samsung Music before July 1, 2014 - after that date they will no longer be available."

The service launched in 2011, and had access to millions of tracks, allowing users to preview tracks before purchasing just like bigger rivals such as iTunes and Google Play Music and Amazon MP3.

One cool feature was that up to 200 songs could be made into a playlist and then cached offline.

Samsung had pre-loaded the app, which many considered bloatware, with their Galaxy S devices, including the recently launched S5.

Source:
TechRadar

Nest Labs has recalled about 440,000 of its Nest Protect smoke detectors, due to safety concerns that a feature glitch could potentially delay an alarm from sounding.

The company halted sales of new devices last month and will be sending an OTA software update to disable the "Nest Wave" feature which lets users silence alerts temporarily just by waving their arms.

Consumers will not have to send back their devices or wait for replacements. You can get a full refund if you do not feel safe, however.

For the time being, after the update Nest Wave will be disabled and grayed out so it can not be re-enabled.

Nest Labs says new buyers will be able to get the Protect "in a few weeks" when it returns to the market.

Source:
CPSC

Google has disclosed that it passed on a $5 billion deal for an unknown foreign company last year, a deal that would have been one of its largest ever.

The deal, which is sure to bring speculation and guesses in the coming days, was revealed in a letter late last year to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

In the letter, the company also adds that it will need up to $30 billion in overseas profits to help fund the acquisitions and licensing it wants to make in 2014. The company spent $1.4 billion on smaller acquisitions last year, mainly robotics companies and the social mapping app Waze.

The SEC had been inquiring about the company's overseas cash, which now tops $35 billion compared to just $25 billion held in the U.S.

Google has already started their acquisitions in grand fashion this year, purchasing smart home thermostat maker Nest Labs for $3.2 billion.

Facebook has unveiled a Shazam-esque TV and music identification service which will allow you to tag what you are listening to or watching in your news feed post.

Friends can then preview the songs for 30 seconds or be linked to the TV show's Facebook page.

The social networking giant built the feature from scratch over the last year, and will rollout over the coming weeks for iOS and Android users. The service can bring up shows from 160 TV stations, and from millions of artists.

Facebook says the new feature is an extension of the "feelings and activity sharing" option unveiled last year. Over 5 billion posts have been shared with feelings or activity since last year, adds the company.

The new service will require users to opt-in, and if you do not, nothing will change with your Facebook experience.

According to BGR, Microsoft is preparing a line of Android-based smartphones to complement their Windows Phones.

The handsets will be sequels to the Nokia X Android phone released earlier this year in India and Latin America.

Microsoft recently completed their $7 billion acquisition of the Finnish handset maker and its patents.

With their Nokia X, the company effectively took the open-source nature of Android and molded it to look like Windows Phone and included a suite of Nokia and Microsoft apps while leaving out Google applications like Gmail, Chrome, and even the Google Play Store. Nokia has its own app store, as well, and Nokia said at the time they hope the phones will be gateways to Lumia Windows Phones and their own growing ecosystem.

Supposedly, the new phones will be priced lower than entry-level Lumias, but higher than white box Android devices.

China has shocked Microsoft this week by banning Windows 8 on government computers.

The restriction came down as part of a larger decree about energy-saving products but the nation's official news agency Xinhua cited security concerns for foreign operating systems as the reason.

Microsoft said it will continue selling Windows 7 to Chinese officials, despite the ban.

Xinhua reported that officials saw the end of security support for Windows XP as a huge threat, as the operating system is still run on over 50 percent of Chinese computers. "The Chinese government obviously cannot ignore the risks of running OS without guaranteed technical support," reported the paper. "It has moved to avoid the awkwardness of being confronted with a similar situation again in future if it continues to purchase computers with foreign OS."

The ban is extended to desktops, laptops and tablets.

Netflix has announced its first major expansion since 2011, with the streaming service headed to Germany, France, Austria, Belgium, Luxembourg and Switzerland.

Rollout dates and prices were not revealed, but the price is expected to be in line with other EU nations.

Altogether, the company's catalog should be available to over 200 million new potential customers.

Each nation will have to abide by different rules, with France being the most stringent. The nation blocks movies from being on subscription VOD for three years after their theatrical run, and the company must offer at least 50 percent European content.

The streaming co. has 48.5 million customers, with 35.7 million in the U.S. The company has set goals of 60 million in the U.S. and 120 million outside, excluding China.

Spotify has announced today that the unlimited streaming music service now has 10 million paying subscribers, along with 40 million monthly active users, large boosts from previous disclosures.

A little over a year ago, the company had 6 million subscribers and 24 million active users, respectively. Paying subscribers get access to either ad-free listening or ad-free listening and mobile access.

"We've had an amazing year, growing from 20 markets to 56 as people from around the world embrace streaming music," added CEO Daniel Ek. "10 million subscribers is an important milestone for both Spotify and the entire music industry. We're widening our lead in the digital music space and will continue to focus on getting everyone in the world to listen to more music."

Additionally, users have created 1.5 billion music playlists. Avicii's "Wake Me Up" is the top streamed song of all-time, at 235 million spins.

The company has a plethora of rivals but remains the most popular streaming music provider. Apple may step into the market soon, however, with rumor being they are prepared to acquire Beats Electronics, the maker of premium headphones and the Beats Music streaming service in the U.S.

According to research firm Strategy Analytics, the market for smartwatches has grown 250 percent in the Q1, with Samsung once again the dominant force like they are in the smartphone world.

The company has shipped over 500,000 Galaxy Gear smartwatches this year, good for 70 percent share.

Most notably, the figures do not even include shipments of the Gear 2, Gear 2 Neo and Gear Fit, which were released last month.

Of course, shipments do not necessarily mean sales through to consumers, but most retailers have improved inventory management and do not overbuy supply they cannot sell (for the most part).

Sony, Pebble and other companies make smartwatches, but sales have been lackluster. Later this year, devices running the new Android Wear operating system are set to launch, including the LG G Watch and the Moto 360, which are expected to help boost sales.

Apple has also long been rumored to be releasing an iWatch, although the company has never confirmed.

Motorola Mobility and Apple have agreed to settle all long-standing patent litigation between the two companies.

Despite the suits being dropped, the new settlement does not include cross-licensing of the patents.

"Apple and Google have also agreed to work together in some areas of patent reform," reads the joint statement.

Multiple cases between the two companies were consolidated in 2012, with the most notable being Motorola's accusation that Apple was infringing on an essential patent relating to smartphone usage of a 3G network.

Some cases were thrown out in 2012 due to lack of evidence, but an appeal revived them last month.

Motorola Mobility is currently owned by Google but its hardware business has been sold to Lenovo while Google keeps most of the patents.

Popcorn Time, the popular app that catalogs and allows streaming of 1080p pirated content, may be the new target of copyright holders, and especially the troll law firms that back some of them.

The German lawfirm GGR Law has reported that a few clients they are representing received demands for cash settlements from the firm Waldorf Frommer alleging copyright infringement.

All of those that received letters swear they have never used or even installed a torrent client on their computers, but each admitted to using streaming services, namely Popcorn Time. In Germany, viewing pirated streams is not illegal, so the letters demanding 815 euros appear to be misplaced.

This is where the story gets muddier, however. Popcorn Time and its variants (Cuevana Storm in this case) use BitTorrent protocols, uploading content to other users while video is being streamed to the viewer. This is usually unknown to the user, as the interface gives the impression that the site is like YouTube and other server-to-client streaming services.

The Pirate Bay's browser for those worried about censorship has been downloaded over 5 million times from the official site since its launch last August.

Of course, the browser is available on other software sites including Afterdawn, so the figure could be potentially much larger.

PirateBrowser is a mix of the Tor client (Vidalia), FireFox Portable browser (with foxyproxy addon) "and some custom configs" to allow you to circumvent censorship. Although it has Tor in it, anonymity is not the point of the Pirate Browser.

The torrent tracker explained at launch that the "PirateBrowser is a bundle package...that allows you to circumvent censorship that certain countries such as Iran, North Korea, United Kingdom, The Netherlands, Belgium, Finland, Denmark, Italy and Ireland impose onto their citizens."

TPB is one of the most universally banned sites on the Web, as governments try to keep their citizens away.

According to multiple sources, YouTube is preparing to purchase videogame streaming company Twitch for over $1 billion in cash.

If it comes to fruition, the deal will be the largest in YouTube's history. The site itself was purchased for just $1.65 billion in 2006 and is valued at over $20 billion now.

Twitch, popular among gamers, allows you to upload or stream live gameplay videos. You can also see sponsored content from popular gaming sites GameSpot, Joystiq and Destructoid. Twitch was started in 2011 by the founders of once-popular streaming site Justin.tv.

The company says it has over 45 million monthly users, and that number is expected to increase as the service was only recently added to the Xbox One after months of being available on the PS4.

Source:
Variety

Google has acquired Quest Visual this week, the developer of the camera-based translation app "Word Lens."

The search giant will integrate the technology into its Google Translate service, with Quest saying it will be incorporated "into Google Translate's broad language coverage and translation capabilities in the future."

Word Lens is available for iOS, Android and Google Glass and uses the smartphone's camera to translate words on print to another language in real time, without even the need to be connected to the Web. The app works great in small doses, especially signs or menus. Trying to translate a full book on the fly will simply not work.

The app and all its respective language packs will be free for the time being while the company is transitioned over to Google.

After a week of speculation, AT&T has officially announced a $48.5 billion acquisition of satellite TV giant DirecTV.

"This is a unique opportunity that will redefine the video entertainment industry and create a company able to offer new bundles and deliver content to consumers across multiple screens – mobile devices, TVs, laptops, cars and even airplanes," said AT&T Chairman and Chief Executive Randall Stephenson.

AT&T will pay $95 per share for DirecTV. DirecTV Chief Executive Mike White added, "This compelling and complementary combination will bring significant benefits to all consumers, shareholders and DirecTV employees."

The boards of both companies approved the deal over the weekend. The deal will face significant regulator scrutiny and is not expected to close for a year.

Both companies are extremely profitable and generate tons of cash. The synergies of both should lead to savings in the future, as well.

Facebook's $19 billion acquisition WhatsApp has disappeared from the Windows Phone Store, with the app now showing up as "no longer published."

The popular messaging company, which has over 500 million users, has not posted any comment since the app went offline for Windows Phone users.

There is speculation that the Windows Phone 8.1 version was just so buggy that it was taken down by the company while being updated to make sure the customer experience is not poor.

Facebook is still waiting final FCC approval for the deal, which was $19 billion at the time of signing but Facebook's stock has fallen significantly since then.

Earlier this year, Microsoft confirmed it was considering added support for external hard drives for the Xbox One.

Now, thanks to a new photo, it appears that day may be coming soon.

Coming via an Xbox One developer, an updated dashboard shows off the external drive support, including how much free space is still available (in this case 586 GB). The developer only says "Soon...." so expect the update in the coming months.

The move will be welcomed by millions of Xbox One owners that had to rely on the console's non-removable 500GB internal drive.

According to the latest NPD figures, the Sony PlayStation 4 was the best selling console for the fourth month in a row, easily beating out the Xbox One.

"Life to date, sales of PS4 and Xbox One hardware have more than doubled the combined sales of PS3 and 360 hardware through their first six months of sales," NPD analyst Liam Callahan added.

Overall console sales jumped 120 percent YoY from April 2013, and hardware saw a 76 percent revenue boost from last year. Hardware grew to $192.8 million while software fell 10 percent to $227.9 million.

Microsoft confirmed it shipped 115,000 Xbox One for the month, and Sony did not reveal an exact number.

Sony has shipped over 7 million PS4 since launch, while Microsoft has shipped just over 5 million. Microsoft is looking to boost sales by dropping Kinect as a mandatory bundle with the console, and selling the device with the motion control accessory for $399, the same price as the PS4. The company has also dropped the need for an Xbox Live Gold subscription if just using entertainment apps like Netflix.

At the request of Swedish authorities, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police have allegedly seized data from a Canadian-based torrent tracker.

The tracker, Sparvar, was hosted by the Montreal-based Netelligent. The site mainly hosted Swedish files and had over 10,000 users.

Netelligent's CIO Mohamed Salamé says the company was served with a legal document demanding the data. "We made a copy of the data with the client's consent," said Salamé.

The seizure appears to have followed complaints filed by the anti-piracy group Rights Alliance. The group took down another popular Swedish torrent site two years ago, Swepiracy.

Canada has long been a hotbed of piracy, according to the International Intellectual Property Alliance (IIPA), with the country being a place to "facilitate and enable massive unauthorized downloading of pirated versions of feature films, TV shows, recorded music, entertainment software, and other copyright materials."

According to multiple reports and first reported by Buzzfeed, AT&T will announce their acquisition of satellite TV giant DirecTV on Monday.

The deal will be close to $50 billion, valuing DTV shares at about $94, a nice premium from Friday's closing price of $86 and a huge premium over the $77 price the shares were trading around when the first reports came out about negotiations.

AT&T is the U.S.' second largest wireless carrier and the company also offers TV and broadband services.

The deal will help AT&T offer wireless, broadband, TV and land line and be a one-stop shop for over 100 million consumers. AT&T has 10.4 million U-Verse Internet (fiber) customers but that number is likely to double in the coming year.

HTC has unveiled the mid-range One Mini 2 this week, a phone that the company calls "selfie-friendly."

The device is a less powerful version of the new One (M8), with a smaller 4.5-inch 720p display.

Under the hood is a quad-core Snapdragon 400, 1GB RAM and 16GB internal storage. Rather than the "Ultrapixel" camera of the M8, the phone has a 13MP sensor and a 5MP camera on the front, making it arguably one of the best devices for "selfies."

The phone keeps the front-facing BoomSound stereo speakers of its more expensive brother and the latest Android along with HTC's Sense 6 user interface.

A model built for Europe is set for release next month, with the U.S. to follow later in the year.

The major record labels: Warner Music Group, Universal Music Group and Sony Music have all taken $3 million stakes in the popular music identification app Shazam Entertainment.

Shazam is valued near $500 million so the stakes are relatively small. All the shares are said to have been purchased from a single investor.

The service, which allows you to identify music that is playing anywhere or TV shows that are on TV from your phone, also has partnerships with iTunes, YouTube, Spotify and social media sites so users can purchase the tracks they find almost instantly, or share it on Facebook or Twitter for others to listen.

Shazam is also said to be in talks with Apple to license their song-ID tech for integration in iOS 8.

The company has over 450 million users worldwide and 90 million monthly active users.

Samsung has boasted that sales of the new Galaxy S5 are outpacing those of its predecessor, the Galaxy S4.

J.K. Shin, Samsung's mobile boss, recently said sales topped 11 million since launch, beating out the 10 million first month sales of the S4.

The exec says the sales should lead to higher margins for the quarter and higher market share after Samsung lost some share the last couple of quarters. "It's been a month since we began selling the S5, and out of the gate, sales are much stronger than the Galaxy S4," Shin added. Sales were strongest in the U.S., Germany and Australia.

This is certainly a good sign for Samsung, which saw its first drop in profit for its mobile business since 2011 in the previous quarter. Margins also have fallen to 19.8 percent, compared to over 30 percent at Apple.

The Galaxy S5 is available in 125 nations and with nearly every major carrier.

According to Comcast executive David Cohen, the U.S.' largest cable and Internet provider is looking to make bandwidth caps mandatory for every customer within the next five years.

Within the time frame, Cohen says he expects the company to move completely to the controversial "usage-based model."

"I would also predict that the vast majority of our customers would never be caught in the buying the additional buckets of usage, that we will always want to say the basic level of usage at a sufficiently high level that the vast majority of our customers are not implicated by the usage-based billing plan," Cohen added. "I don't think that's the model that we are heading toward, but five years ago I don't know that I would have heard of something called an iPad. So, very difficult to make predictions."

Comcast started testing a 250GB bandwidth cap in a few pilot cities in 2011, but it did not go over too smoothly with the greater population. The company is still testing in certain cities, but with larger 300 or 600GB caps. In some places, Comcast offers a ridiculous 5GB 'flexible' data account where subscribers get a credit back to their accounts for every month they stay under the amount, and pay overages if they can't.

Minnesota has become the first state to enact the so-called smartphone 'kill switch' in which all new phones must be sold with the ability to be remotely shut down in the event they are stolen.

The law will take full effect in July of next year, but politicians hope the wireless industry will take advantage sooner.

Democratic Rep. Joe Atkins, an advocate of the law, says the new measure will be "a vaccine" for the "epidemic" of mobile phone thefts. With the kill switch, phone owners can disable the phone permanently and wipe the data just by calling their carrier.

"Thus taking away the worth," continued Atkins. "When you take away the worth, you take away the incentive. These thieves that are stealing these things no longer have the incentive to steal 'em."

There are similar bills making their way through California, New York and Illinois' legislature. There a Federal law pending, as well.

In addition to the rule, the Minnesota bill bans retailers from paying cash for used mobile devices, and merchants must document all device info, require the seller to provide their ID and attest to the phone being their property.

AT&T has announced the official launch of their voice-over-LTE (VoLTE) calling service, which will begin rolling out to certain markets next week.

The rollout begins on May 23rd, and will start in notable metros like Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota and Wisconsin.

Reads the carrier's post: "Beginning May 23, AT&T is introducing High Definition (HD) Voice on an all-IP, Voice Over LTE (VoLTE) network in select markets. At AT&T, you won't have to choose between faster data speeds and crystal clear conversations. HD Voice customers can simultaneously talk while surfing the Web at 4G LTE speeds, all on the nation's most reliable 4G LTE network – it's the best of both worlds."

There are a number of devices that can use the service, and its improved call quality, including the latest Galaxy devices. iOS 8 is said to be including support for VoLTE, which would make the iPhone 5, 5S, 5C and upcoming 6 capable of using it.

Adobe's Creative Cloud, which includes access to Photoshop, Acrobat, Lightroom, InDesign and other popular applications for paying monthly subscribers, was down for almost 24 hours this week, causing outrage among thousands of users who need the software for work.

Users in the U.S., Europe and Asia were all affected, starting on May 14th.

Early on, Adobe identified issues with Adobe Login, and put out a statement and tweet that they were working on restoring access. Would-be customers were unable to purchase subscriptions, as well.

Adobe announced last year that its Creative Suite of applications would be moving to the cloud, with apps and files saved locally, but with customers needing to login to their accounts to be able to use the software.

The company apologized for the huge outage, which is caused by "a failure during database maintenance activity."

Reads the blog post:

The next instalment of the legendary saga of Master Chief will land in Xbox One in the form of Halo 5: Guardians, it has been revealed.

343 Industries General Manager Bonnie Ross revealed Halo 5: Guardians today in a piece she wrote about bringing Halo to Xbox One. In the past, Halo has pushed forward Xbox and 343 has been working to ensure that Halo will return on Xbox One and will showcase its capabilities.

"Making a 'Halo; game that runs at 60 frames per second, on dedicated servers, with the scope, features and scale we've been dreaming of for more than a decade, is non-trivial," wrote Ross.

"It's a task that we, at 343 Industries, are taking very seriously to ensure we deliver the 'Halo' game that fans deserve, and a game that is built from the ground up for Xbox One."

You don't need to rush out and buy an Xbox One now to be prepared however, as Halo 5: Guardians is not slated to launch until the fall of 2015. According to Ross, 343 will work hard to get it right, using everything learning from the development of Halo 4, while admitting that Halo 5 will be a much bigger effort than it.

Next year will also witness the Halo television series that counts Steven Spielberg among its creators.

Rockstar Games has announced that its upcoming next-gen game is planned for release in the current fiscal year, which ends on March 31, 2015.

Parent company Take-Two made the revelation during their quarterly earnings report.

Outside of that time frame, the company did not reveal anything about the game, or even whether it will be a sequel to one of their franchises or a whole new IP.

Rockstar has not had a new project announced since Grand Theft Auto V's launch in September of last year.

GTA V, which has sold 33 million copies for PS3 and Xbox 360, is not available for the next-gen PS4 and Xbox One consoles. There have been rumors that a sequel to Red Dead Redemption is likely the next in line for the gaming studio.

Source:
CVG

Google has revealed new updates to its Google Wallet payment system, including the addition of PayPal support.

Reads their post: "Starting today, we're making it possible for people to choose PayPal for their Google Play purchases in 12 countries, including the U.S., Germany, and Canada. When you make a purchase on Google Play in these countries, you'll find PayPal as an option in your Google Wallet; just enter your PayPal account login and you'll easily be able to make purchases. Our goal is to provide users with a frictionless payment experience, and this new integration is another example of how we work with partners from across the payments industry to deliver this to the user."

In addition, carrier billing has been expanded to seven more countries, and now totals 24. Google says about half of Google Play users can now utilize the carrier billing option.

Finally, developers from 13 new nations including Indonesia, Malaysia and Turkey can now sell apps, bringing that total to 45.

Adrian Wong, Google Glass' top electrical engineer, has left the company for VR headset maker Oculus, reports Crunch.

The engineer had been working at Google X, the company's division for future projects like Glass, self-driving cars and more since 2010.

On Facebook, Wong wrote "#FreshStartFridays - Surprise! Today is my last day at Google. Three rollercoaster years with Google[x] and Glass. What amazing memories. Now, time for the next great adventure!"

Wong worked on systems, camera and RF for the consumer version of Glass and was a Senior Hardware Engineer on the Explorer edition. Perhaps most notably, Wong has 10 patents, many relating to Glass-esque headsets such "Wearable Computer with Nearby Object Response", "Wearable Computer with Superimposed Controls and Instructions for External Device", "Method to Autofocus on Near-Eye Display", and "Unlocking a screen using eye tracking information."

Oculus VR was recently acquired by Facebook as the social networking company looks to the future of gaming and entertainment.

Source:
TechCrunch

Sony has started its 'May Madness' PlayStation Store sale this week, dropping the price of 100 games for European and Australian gamers.

Many of the games have significant price cuts and PSOne, PS3, PS4 and PSP/Vita games are included in the sale. Some games are down 70 percent, especially on the PSP side.

The full list:

PS4

EA SPORTS NBA LIVE 14 (PS4)
Was £54.99/€69.99/AU$99.95, now £44.99/€49.99/AU$69.95

Madden NFL 25 (PS4)
Was £54.99/€69.99/AU$99.95, now £44.99/€49.99/AU$69.95

Stealth Inc Ultimate Edition
Was £10.99/€12.99/AU$18.75, now £5.65/€6.59/AU$9.45

PS3

Capcom vs SNK 2
Was £7.99/€9.99/AU$14.45, now £3.99/€4.99/AU$7.35

Sonic Heroes
Was £7.99/€9.99/AU$14.45, now £3.99/€4.99/AU$7.35

3 on 3 NHL Arcade (not available in Bulgaria, Hungary, Qatar)
Was £6.49/€7.99/AU$11.75, now £2.39/€2.99/AU$4.35

Backbreaker Vengeance (not available in Austria, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, Ukraine, UAE)
Was £11.99/€14.99/AU$21.95, now £5.49/€6.99/AU$10.35

Xiaomi, the innovative Chinese company that appears to be able to undercut literally any price in the hardware world, has unveiled its smart MI TV 2, a 49-inch 4K 3D television that will sell for just CN¥3,999 ($640 USD).

The smart TV runs on an Android variant with the company's own TV user interface attached, and allows for sideloading of TV apps.

Powering the TV is a MediaTek MStar 6A918 chip (1.45GHz quad-core CPU, Mali-450 MP4 GPU), 2GB RAM and 8GB internal storage, although there is a microSD slot if you need more space. The TV is just 15.5mm thick.

Even the remote is innovative, as it uses Bluetooth LE, and the TV, if tapped on the bottom, will make the remote beep if you cannot find it around the house. You can also use an Bluetooth-enabled smartphone as a remote using Xiaomi's app, which includes voice and gesture control.

Being that the TV is so thin, the company says they had to separate the audio including a Bluetooth sub-woofer and a wired audio bar. The setup can be used with your mobile devices via Bluetooth, as well, which is very cool.

Major electronics maker Philips has sued Nintendo of America over alleged patent infringement violations.

The company claims that Nintendo has been wilfully selling infringing products for quite some time, and that the gaming company has ignored past requests from Philips.

In question are patents that relate to a "virtual body control device", one that allows users to control certain interfaces using "intuitive" motions and one for a "user interface system based on a pointing device."

Philips says it told Nintendo about the alleged infringement for the first patent back in 2011, but this is the first time it has brought up the second patent.

The company wants a full injunction on infringing products in North America, and it also wants damages. "Infringing products" would include Nintendo's full console lineup and accessories including the Wii, Wii Remote, Wii U, Wii U GamePad, and Wii Mini.

Dong Nguyen, maker of the blockbuster mobile game 'Flappy Bird,' is set to bring the game back in August with new multiplayer features.

Additionally, the game will be "less addictive" than the original, although it is unclear how the developer will make that happen.

Nguyen took the game down from the Android and iOS app stores in February following guilt that players were spending too much time playing the "addictive" game. At the time, the developer was allegedly making $50,000 a week from ads.

The game was downloaded over 50 million times, and is still played by tens of millions.

Microsoft may have inadvertently leaked that the Surface Pro 3 tablet is coming next week, a lot earlier than expected.

The company is holding a press event next week in which it is expected to launch the 8-inch Surface Mini but they could have some more surprises in store.

On one of their support pages, Microsoft notes that Windows 8.1 "adds support to the Surface Pro 3 camera." The Surface Pro 3 has been rumored in the past with a number of outlets guaranteeing a new 'Intel-based Surface' will be unveiled at the May 20th event.

The new device is rumored to have the latest Haswell processor for the best power optimization.

The Trichordist has posted a very interesting document this week, one that shows some in-depth figures about the Beats Music service that is set to be acquired by Apple for over $3 billion.

In the document it is revealed that the service has just 110,000 subscribers, 49,000 individual and 61,000 family plans (most likely through the service's partnership with carrier AT&T).

For the month ended March 31st, the service saw nearly 180 million plays and the service brought in a revenue of just $417,000. Labels collected $248,000 of that figure, while songwriters collected just $23,000 in royalties, good for $0.000126 per play. Market leader Spotify, with over 8 million paying customers, songwriters collect between $0.006 and $0.0084 per play, a significantly higher amount.

Although it is not official (yet), Apple's purchase of Beats is reportedly so the company can have its own streaming music service and the ability to sell high-margin headphone accessories with their devices.

Microsoft has confirmed it will refund Xbox Live Gold members on a pro-rata basis if they no longer want a subscription following the company's decision to allow entertainment apps (and Internet Explorer) to be used for free after years behind a paywall.

Until this week, you needed an Xbox Live Gold membership just to be able to use Netflix, Hulu and other apps. The membership costs $60 per year but is periodically on sale. Rival consoles like the PlayStation 3 and 4 did not have such a requirement, with subscriptions only necessary for multi-player gaming and other features.

The changes go into effect next month, and you will have to make the request before August 31st.

"Once the Xbox One and Xbox 360 system updates become available in June, Xbox Live Gold members who purchased a paid membership before that day can cancel and receive a pro-rata refund of any unused remaining days between the date of cancellation and the date their paid Gold membership ends," says the company.

Apple has seen its smartphone market share grow to 36.6 percent in Japan following release of the latest iPhones by DoCoMo.

Compared to the period ended March 31st last year, the growth is significant, as Apple had just 25.5 percent share. Apple shipped 14.43 million phones to Japan in the last fiscal year.

DoCoMo, Japan's largest wireless carrier by subscribers, began offering the iPhone in September. Other smaller carriers like SoftBank have been selling the iPhone for a number of years.

In the nation, Sharp was second with 5.14 million phones shipped (13 percent) and Sony next at 4.84 million handsets good for a 12.3 percent share. Samsung was low on the list at 5.7 percent share.

9to5Mac has put out an intensive roundup of rumors for the upcoming Apple iPhone 6, including its screen size, release date, resolution and other features.

As expected, the company will show off an iPhone with a larger display (rumored to be 4.7 inches), and the company is preparing for a larger resolution of 1704 x 960 to keep the ppi high enough to qualify for "Retina."

Of course, such a move will require software changes (here comes iOS 8) from Apple and also from developers.

The new move will keep the same 16:9 aspect ratio of the iPhone 5, iPhone 5s, and iPhone 5c.

Apple is also rumored to have a 5.5-inch edition of the iPhone 6 in the works, but a 4.7-inch version seems much more plausible at this point.

Sony has reported another massive loss this year, 138 billion yen ($1.3 billion), thanks to a writedown for its sold PC business.

Additionally, the company has forecasted much more losses to come as it continues its turnaround efforts.

At $1.3 billion for the fiscal year ended March 2014, the loss tripled the 2013 fiscal year. The company forecasted a 50 billion yen ($490 million) loss for the next fiscal year with sales not expected to grow either.

Most of the losses came from selling their Vaio PC business, including major restructuring costs and the wind down of excess component inventory. In addition, Sony saw significant value loss in its battery and disc manufacturing businesses.

CEO Kazuo Hirai and 40 other senior executives have declined their entire annual bonuses, a show of faith for the poor performance of the company.

Sony also lost money in TV hardware, mobile, devices and video games for the year, while it was profitable in its music, TV production and movie divisions.

Not all was terrible, however, as sales rose 14 percent to 7.7 trillion yen ($76 billion) for the year.

George R.R. Martin, author of the hit 'Game of Thrones' series, still writes his books on a DOS machine using WordStar 4.0 as his processing system.

The author made the revelation on Conan's late night talk show.

"I actually have two computers," Martin said during the interview. "I have a computer I browse the Internet with and I get my email on, and I do my taxes on. And then I have my writing computer, which is a DOS machine, not connected to the Internet. I use WordStar 4.0 as my word processing system."

WordStar was first released in the 1970s but had been mostly discontinued by the mid-1990s.

"I actually like it, it does everything I want a word processing program to do and it doesn't do anything else," Martin added. "I don't want any help. I hate some of these modern systems where you type a lower case letter and it becomes a capital letter. I don't want a capital. If I wanted a capital, I would have typed a capital. I know how to work the shift key."

Sony has denied recent reports that it has halted all OLED development.

The reports had claimed that Sony was focusing on 4K rather than OLED into the future, after investing in OLED since at least 2007.

Sony owns 20 percent of the 4K market, and sales are actually increasing, which gives some hope to the company's TV business, which has lost billions over the past five years and is being spun-off later this year.

Says the electronics giant: "Sony has made no announcement in this regard. Sony continues developing and looking into reliable ways to mass produce OLED displays for consumers while continuing to build experience via providing OLED displays for professional, medical and broadcast use."

OLED TVs, which are extremely thin and light and feature the best color reproduction, have not been popular with consumers of yet due to high prices and low supply, with just Sony and LG really offering any devices so far. 4K on the other hand, has already reached consumer price points with offerings from all major OEMs.

We now have some press renders of the upcoming LG G3, the company's latest flagship.

The design of the phone features a great looking brushed metal finish, and nice curved corners with a thin bezel display.

LG's power house will feature a 5.5-inch display with a QHD 1440 x 2560 pixel resolution, 3GB RAM, a 13MP OIS camera and Qualcomm's latest quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor.

The company is expected to officially announce the device on May 27th.

According to new reports, Samsung may be preparing a Google Glass competitor dubbed the Gear Glass, with release set for this year.

The Gear Glass will look almost identical to Google's wearable, which only just went on sale to the general public this week in beta form for $1500.

Samsung's eyewear will run on the open-source Tizen operating system, which Samsung has been improving for a couple of years but has yet to be seen on a consumer device outside of digital cameras and more recently, smart watches.

In the report, Samsung is quoted as saying: "We rolled out the smartwatch first, and have secured a considerable amount of smart glass-related technology and patents. Following the roll out of our smart watch Galaxy Gear in September last year, we are slated to introduce our smart glass Gear Glass this September."

The IFA conference begins September 5th.

Xbox One will soon come without Kinect to compete in pricing with the PS4, but what does the decision mean for the future of Microsoft's console?

On the surface of it, offering a $100 cheaper Xbox One model to consumers is the right move for Microsoft. As it stands, Microsoft has shipped a couple of million less Xbox One units than Sony has confirmed sales for the PS4, which undoubtedly has Microsoft uneasy even at such an early stage.

A lower-cost console without Kinect will likely help Microsoft to claw back some ground on the PS4, but what does it mean for Microsoft's overall vision for Xbox One and the future of the console?

Bundling Kinect with Xbox One may have given Microsoft a $100 disadvantage in cost on the market, but it was the cost of Xbox One having something unique to it, and something that was present wherever there was an Xbox One console rather than an optional peripheral.

You just have to look at the initial reaction from developer Harmonix to Microsoft's announcement on Twitter to see that the news isn't necessarily good for all. Director of Publishing and PR at Harmonix, John Drake, sums it up in a few words.

Oh, great. Super great.

-- johntdrake (@johntdrake) May 13, 2014

Popular mobile notetaking app Evernote has proudly announced a significant milestone, 101 million users.

Reads the company's post:

"There are two ways to look at this. On the one hand, there are more than 100 million people whose lives have been touched, even a little bit, by something we made. On the other hand, there are still about 7 billion people who've never used any Evernote product.

Both are pretty inspirational!

When we launched the Evernote service in 2008, our intuition was that the world was about to go through a big change in how people worked. There were many note takers and productivity tools around at the time but they all felt out of date; they were becoming less and less relevant to people's lives.

We set out to redefine the meaning of productivity for modern busy people. We want Evernote to become your workspace; the place where you do all of the everyday things that keep your life moving forward.

Yahoo has acquired the self-destructing Blink mobile messaging app and will shut it down soon, following its recent trend of acquiring startups and shutting down their applications or services while integrating to Yahoo's core businesses.

All Blink employees including its founder will now be joining Yahoo.

The product had to compete with giant Snapchat, among others, but still had over 100,000 downloads of its iOS and Android apps before it was acquired.

Blink launched over a year ago on iOS and had features like the ability to text and share voice message and video, some features that only recently came to Snapchat.

The company was popular in the U.S., as well as the Middle East, and was working on more Arabic-catered localization into the future.

Source:
Crunch

Prolific leaker and tweeter Evleaks has shown off a picture of the so-called LG Uni8, the company's first Windows Phone 8 device.

LG was one of the initial OEMs with original Windows Phone devices, but has since stayed away from the world's #3 smartphone OS, instead working exclusively on Android-based devices.

Nokia, which was recently acquired by Windows Phone developer Microsoft, is the operating system's top producer of smartphones, accounting for over 80 percent of sales.

There had been worry that Microsoft would forget about other manufacturers after it concluded purchasing the large hardware maker.

Google has finally made good on their promise to launch Glass, making the beta Explorer models available to anyone in the U.S., as long as they have product on hand.

At the Explorer price of $1,500, you will be getting a beta product in both hardware and software, but previously you had to be accepted by Google to get a device, and there were under 10,000 "Explorers."

Says the search giant: "Last week we told you we'd be trying out new ways to find Explorers. Well, we weren't kidding. We learned a lot when we opened our site a few weeks ago, so we've decided to move to a more open beta. We're still in the Explorer Program while we continue to improve our hardware and software, but starting today anyone in the US can buy the Glass Explorer Edition, as long as we have it on hand.

We're ready to keep meeting new Explorers, and we can't wait to hear all your experiences and feedback to continue to make Glass even better, ahead of our wider consumer release."

You can place on order for Glass here: Google Glass. Google will also include free shades and frames with the purchase.

Sonos has unveiled a huge refresh for their mobile iOS and Android apps, including the addition of universal search.

If you use multiple services with your Sonos, there was the annoyance of having to select a single service to find the streaming music you wanted, but that will no longer be a problem. Searching for an artist will bring up the musician's music across all platforms (Spotify, Pandora, Rdio, Google Play, etc).

Additionally, you can now create playlists from tracks across platforms and even set scheduled play times.

"From the beginning, we've been focused on creating the best possible experience with music in the home. With software at our core, we build products that we can easily adapt, so we can bring you more from Sonos the longer you have it," adds Sonos.

Blizzard has revealed that the new Diablo III: Reaper of Souls expansion will be available as part of a console exclusive Ultimate Evil Edition bundle.

The package will be released on August 19th for the PS3, PS4, Xbox 360 and Xbox One.

Blizzard is selling the bundle for $59.99 for the PS4 and Xbox One, and just $39.99 for the PS3 and Xbox 360.

Diablo III launched for the older consoles last September, and current player can continue to play their characters with the update. PS3 characters can be transferred to the upcoming PS3 and PS4 editions and the same for the Xbox versions.

As part of the new bundle, there are some new features and the addition of four-player multiplayer.

Voltage Pictures, infamous for filing thousands of lawsuits against alleged file sharers, has continued their ways, suing about 70 'John Doe' defendants who have allegedly pirated the Oscar winning film 'Dallas Buyers Club.'

All of accused torrent users are from Michigan, and are customers of just two ISPs: Comcast and Wide Open West.

Voltage filed the motion asking judges for the right to serve subpoenas to the ISPs to find the real identities of the John Does.

The studio says it used forensic software to identify the IP addresses of the John Does, and it now needs the real identities to try to take cash settlements from unlucky downloaders. The firms that Voltage use for such lawsuits are notorious for bullying and intimidating, and have even been sanctioned in the past for such tactics.

Back in February, the companies filed similar suits against Dallas Buyers Club downloaders in Colorado and Ohio.

Motorola has made their Moto E smartphone official, with the device launching in India first.

The cheap yet powerful device will sell for 6,999 rupees (about $115), and will be a great first smartphone for potentially hundreds of millions of feature phone users in the populous nation.

"We have been looking all over the world and obviously also at the Indian market and there are still about 65% to 70% of consumers still using feature phones," added Magnus Ahlqvist, corporate vice president for Europe, Middle East and Africa business at Motorola. After India, the phone will rollout to the UK, Mexico, Spain, Brazil and Canada.

The device has a 4.3-inch display with 540 by 960 pixel resolution (256ppi) with Gorilla Glass 3 and an anti-smudge coating. On the design front, the phone looks almost identical to the Moto G, just slightly smaller. The phone is powered by a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200 processor and 1GB RAM with 4GB of available internal storage and a microSD slot.

Popcorn Time, the app dubbed the 'Netflix of Piracy,' has been updated to major beta 3.

The developers say the new beta has major improvements to the code, and the list of new features include a brand new interface, updates to bookmarks, user settings, TV series listings, better codec support, keyboard shortcuts and new language support.

Says the app maker, "We're really proud of bringing all these new features for you and we want to thank all the Popcorn Time community for supporting us and helping us with this new release."

Get the app here at AfterDawn at top speeds if interested: Popcorn Time Beta 3

Ever wish you could silence people in your Twitter stream without necessarily having to unfollow them? Soon enough, you will be able to.

The new "Mute" option will let you hide tweets and other activity from people you follow, but they will still be able to interact with you, including replies, favorites, direct messages and retweets.

Mute is great for when someone you follow begins ranting, or live tweeting events that you do not care about and it is filling up your entire timeline. Mutes can be reversed at any time, and you do not have to unfollow them just to re-follow them later (which can be awkward).

The function will be available through the officials iOS, Android apps and Twitter's desktop site. Third-party clients have already added it in most cases, or will be soon.

If you already have access it to it, check the "more" link on an tweet and then click "mute @username."

As previously reported, AT&T is in active negotiations to purchase satellite TV giant DirecTV, in what is expected to be one of the largest mergers in telecom history.

According to new sources, the price could top $50 billion, with an offering to shareholders of $90-95 compared to a recent closing price of $86.

Reports of AT&T's interest first began on May 1st, when the company's stock was in the mid-$70s. There are still many details being worked on, including the size of a break-up fee if the deal falls through, and roles for key DirecTV executives in the new company.

Even if AT&T were to make a formal bid, there are no guarantees the deal will make it past significant regulatory hurdles in the U.S. DirecTV has seen stagnant subscriber growth for its core satellite business, and rival Dish Network has been acquiring huge amounts of wireless spectrum, hinting at expansions into other endeavors. AT&T would make a good partner if DTV were looking for spectrum, and the combined subscriber base would be able to counter the behemoth of a combined Comcast/Time Warner Cable, which is also facing regulator scrutiny.

Take-Two Interactive has revealed that Grand Theft Auto 5 has sold-in a staggering 33 million copies since it was released in September 2013.

The critically-acclaimed Rockstar Games blockbuster reached over $1 billion in sales in just three days on the market, and is now thought to be closing in on $2 billion with its impressive global performance.

"Grand Theft Auto V was the best-selling console video game of 2013 in North America, Latin America and Europe combined. To date, Grand Theft Auto V has sold-in more than 33 million units," Take-Two's latest fiscal year report states.

Rockstar has yet to offer additional downloadable content for Grand Theft Auto 5, and considering how successful it has been at retail, such content has considerable revenue potential.

For its fiscal year, Take-Two generated $2.42 billion in revenue which is double for the previous year. For its most recent quarter though, Take-Two posted $30.8 million in losses.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
'Grand Theft Auto 5' Has Sold Nearly $2 Billion: www.forbes.com

Microsoft will offer consumers an Xbox One console without Kinect for $399 from June 9, as it aims to catch up on Sony's lower priced PlayStation 4.

The Kinect-free Xbox One will sell in all markets where the Xbox One is currently sold from June 9, starting at $399. The decision to bundle Kinect with all Xbox One consoles was criticized from the very beginning, not least because it meant the console would cost $100 more than the PS4.

Since launching last year, Sony has sold more than 7 million PS4 consoles and over 20 million PS4 software sales. Microsoft indicated in its Q2 2014 earnings report that 3.9 million Xbox One consoles have shipped to date.

This is not the first time Microsoft has changed strategy with Xbox One based on negative feedback. Not long after announcing the Xbox One, Microsoft started taking fire or its requirement to check in online at least once every 24 hours, and tying games to an Xbox One user raised questions about the ability to play pre-owned games.

In June last year, Microsoft reversed both policies.

Along with the decision to sell an Xbox One without Kinect, Microsoft is also changing Xbox Live so that you will no longer need an Xbox Live Gold account to use apps like Netflix, YouTube, ESPN and more. That decision was likely prompted by the continuing growth of video streaming services, and the growing number of set-top boxes, hardware devices, smart TVs etc. that support them on the market.

According to a report, Xbox One and Xbox 360 owners may soon be able to use Netflix, Hulu and other streaming services without an Xbox Live Gold account.

Considering that Microsoft's main competitors have not put multimedia streaming apps behind a paywall, Microsoft puts itself at a slight disadvantage and should lift the restriction. According to a report from Ars, citting multiple sources within Microsoft, that's just what the company is planning to do.

The report says that the sources have been briefed on the plans ahead of this year's E3 next month. To compensate, Microsoft is expected to put other services behind the paywall, but its unclear whether this means existing services or upcoming services, such as content delivered from Xbox Entertainment Studios.

Ars does warn that it is not set in stone at this point, and that Microsoft could change its mind before its keynote on June 9, but the policy change reportedly comes from Dom Mattrick's departure from the company.


Source: Ars

Microsoft's Office for iPad is still going strong with 27 million downloads since launching in March.

Microsoft had previously celebrated hitting over 12 million downloads in the first week of Office for iPad availability on the Apple tablet, which put it right up at the top of the charts in its category.

Fast forward a month later and Office for iPad has more than doubled that tally with 27 million downloads, according to Microsoft's Office Division manager, Julia White, announcing it at the TechEd customer conference in Houston, Texas.

Microsoft has said that it has more than 4.4 million paid users of the personal versions of Office for iPad, suggesting that a lot of downloads from business users with corporate Office 365 accounts.

Source: BusinessInsider

EA has revealed a list of 50 games that will have online services suspended by July, including titles from the Battlefield and Medal of Honor series.

The games listed are across several platforms but online services will only be ended for the platform specified. The move stems from GameSpy's announcement this month to end all hosted services for games, which impacts the online capabilities of a number of older titles.

Since then, EA has been evaluation options to keep online services up for some titles, but due to technical challenges and concerns about the player experience, it has not reached a solution, and so online services for EA games on the GameSpy platform will be closed down at the end of June.

"We are still investigating community-supported options to preserve online functionality for these titles, such as multiplayer," EA staff wrote. "Significant technical hurdles remain, and at this time we don't have anything to announce."

The full list of games that will have online services suspended on by June 30 is:

• Battlefield 1942 for PC and Mac (including The Road to Rome and Secret Weapons of WW2 expansions)
• Battlefield 2 for PC (including Special Forces expansion)
• Battlefield 2: Modern Combat for PlayStation 2
• Battlefield 2142 for PC and Mac (including Northern Strike expansion)
• Battlefield Vietnam for PC
• Bejeweled (r) 2 for the Wii
• Bulletstorm for PlayStation 3
• Command & Conquer 3: Tiberium Wars for PC and Mac (including Kane's Wrath expansion)
• Command & Conquer: Generals for PC and Mac (including Zero Hour expansion)
• Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 for PC and Mac
• Crysis 2 for PC
• Crysis for PC
• Crysis Wars for PC
• Dracula - Undead Awakening for the Wii
• Dragon Sakura for Nintendo DS
• EA Sports 06 for PC
• F1 2002 for PC
• FIFA Soccer 08 (KOR) for the Wii
• FIFA Soccer 08 for Nintendo DS
• FIFA Soccer 09 for Nintendo DS
• FIFA Soccer 10 for Nintendo DS
• FIFA Street 3 for Nintendo DS
• Full Spectrum Warrior: Ten Hammers for PlayStation 2
• Global Operations for PC
• GREEN DAY: ROCK BAND for the Wii
• James Bond: Nightfire for PC
• Madden NFL 08 for Nintendo DS
• Madden NFL 09 for Nintendo DS
• Master of Orion III for PC
• Medal of Honor: Allied Assault for PC and Mac (including Breakthrough and Spearhead expansions)
• MySims Party for Wii
• MySims Racing for Nintendo DS
• MySims SkyHeroes for the Wii and DS
• NASCAR Sim Racing for PC
• NASCAR Thunder 2003 for PC
• NASCAR Thunder 2004 for PC
• Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 for PC
• Need for Speed: ProStreet for Nintendo DS
• Need for Speed: Undercover for Nintendo DS
• Neverwinter Nights 2 for PC and Mac
• Neverwinter Nights for PC, Mac and Linux (including Hordes of the Underdark and Shadows of Undrentide expansions)
• SimCity Creator for Wii
• Skate It for Nintendo DS
• Sneezies for the Wii
• Spore Creatures for Nintendo DS
• Spore Hero Arena for Nintendo DS
• Star Wars: Battlefront for PC and PlayStation 2
• Star Wars: Battlefront II for PC and PlayStation 2
• THE BEATLES: ROCK BAND for the Wii
• Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 for Nintendo DS

According to a report from South Korea, Samsung's Galaxy S5 has shipped 10 million Galaxy S5 handsets in 25 days, beating the Galaxy S4.

The previously releases Galaxy S4 smartphone reached 10 million shipments in 27 days, and the Galaxy S3 before it hit the milestone after 50 days. Of course, the figures don't represent sales to customers but it shows a considerable demand for the Galaxy S5.

That demand is coming despite some fairly critical reviews of Samsung's latest flagship model, which has been blasted for its "cheap" design characteristics and for lacking hardware innovations.

Shortly after its launch, a shake-up at Samsung saw Chang Dong-hoon step down as head of Samsung's mobile design team, replaced with Lee Min-hyouk. Chang will continue to lead the design center at Samsung though.


Source: www.hankyung.com (Korean)

According to information posted on the official PlayStation website, the hotly-anticipated Watch Dogs will run in 1080p at 60fps, only on the PlayStation 4.

The page for Watch Dogs on the PlayStation website promises the "True Watch_Dogs Experience", with the best graphics on any console and exclusive missions found only on PlayStation.

"Hack everything as you make your way through Chicago's underground as you experience Watch_Dogs in a way that only the PS4 can provide, at 60 Frames Per Second in 1080p."

The page also explained that the four exclusive missions are "timed exclusions" that will be available on PC later.

Watch_Dogs launches on PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 and PC on May 27.

Nintendo has apologized for 'not recognizing' same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life, after a Social Media campaign sought to force changes to the life-simulation world.

In Tomodachi Life, players are represented by their Mii characters and can carry out plenty of different activities in their virtual world, including going on dates with others, and getting married. Two Miis of the same gender cannot marry, however.

This prompted Tye Marini, a 23-year-old man from Arizona, to launch a social media campaign urging Nintendo to permit same-sex marriages in the game, so that he could virtually marry his real-world fiance.

Nintendo responded to the social media campaign, saying that the game would not be changed to allow for virtual gay marriages, and stressing that Nintendo is not trying to "make any form of social commentary" with Tomodachi Life.

That response is fairly reasonable, but the media reaction to it was less so in some quarters, and Nintendo has decided it would be best to apologize for the situation.

"We apologise for disappointing many people by failing to include same-sex relationships in Tomodachi Life. Unfortunately, it is not possible for us to change this game's design, and such a significant development change can't be accomplished with a post-ship patch," a Nintendo statement reads.

Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee is reportedly recovering after suffering a heart attack and undergoing emergency surgery.

The 72 year old was admitted to hospital on Saturday evening whilst suffering from breathing difficulties. Mr Lee had undergone surgery in the 1990s and has reportedly suffered from respiratory problems ever since, even travelling overseas during the Winter to help avoid breathing problems.

The Samsung Medical Center has said that he is now recuperating and in a stable condition following surgery.

Lee has been chairman of Samsung since 1987 after his father died, except for a short spell in 2008-2009 while a tax evasion charge was underway. He has been credited with leading Samsung into a position of leadership in the technology markets.

The Samsung boss has an estimated net worth of around $12.6 billion, ranking among Forbes richest people in the world.

According to a report, Samsung is preparing to launch a new smartphone running the Tizen mobile operating system in India and Russia.

The Wall Street Journal cited sources familiar with Samsung's plans in reporting that the South Korean firm will launch a smartphone in Russia in the coming weeks that runs the Tizen mobile operating system. A launch in India, will reportedly follow later.

This would represent the first proper launch of a smartphone running the OS, after NTT Docomo in Japan cancelled plans to launch a Tizen device earlier this year. It has, however, made an appearance in Samsung's Galaxy Gear devices.

Tizen also ran into trouble in France, when Orange put the brakes on a Tizen phone launch too.

For now, Samsung is looking to grow the operating system in emerging markets and avoid the United States and Europe, but Tizen remains part of its strategy to compete more directly in mobile software and service with Google, and Apple.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Samsung Electronics to Release Tizen Smartphone in Russia, India: online.wsj.com

Mozilla has re-assured Firefox users that the new tab window in Firefox will not become a mess of logos as it prepares to test sponsored content.

The firm published plans for Directory Tiles tests on new tabs back in February, and it was met with a lot of criticism and questions from users. Nevertheless, Mozilla will go ahead with some testing on its pre-release channels to see whether new tabs pages can be made more useful.

Writing on the Mozilla blog, Johnathan Nightingale re-assured users that the firm is not going to, "turn Firefox into a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder; without user control, without user benefit." He added that the community found a lot of language in the original post "hard to decipher."

The upcoming tests are also not about revenue, and none will be collected. "Sponsorship would be the next stage once we are confident that we can deliver user value," wrote Nightingale.

"We'll experiment on Firefox across platforms, and we'll talk about what we learn before anything ships to our release users. And we'll keep listening for feedback and suggestions to make this work better for you. Because that's who we are at Mozilla."

Twitter has finally added new security features including the ability to reset their passwords via SMS, and the addition of suspicious logins notifications.

Until now, Twitter has only allowed for a standard email password reset mechanism.

Of course, the enable the SMS resets, you will need to register your mobile number to the account. Twitter will send a six digit code that expires within 15 minutes, which you can input to login and create a new pass.

"The new process lets you choose the email address or phone number associated with your account where you'd like us to send your reset information. That way, whether you've recently changed your phone number, or are traveling with limited access to your devices, or had an old email address connected to your Twitter account, you've got options," Twitter said.

More importantly for your security, Twitter will be actively searching the location of the login, the device being used, and comparing it to your login history. If it is suspicious, the company will ask the intruder a secret question about the account and send an email notification to the real email on file.

Apple's iPhone trade-in program for U.S. retail stores is now live.

Older iPhone owners (4 and 4S) will be able to get higher trade-in values if moving to an iPhone 5 or 5S.

"It's a beautiful time for an upgrade. You may be eligible for upgrade pricing on a new iPhone. And if you bring in your old iPhone to be recycled, you could get credit toward a new one. Ask us for details," reads one notice.

An email we received, adds the following: "Apple is getting employees to check customers' eligibility for an upgrade, inform them about the iPhone Reuse and Recycling program and push recently increased trade-in values for iPhone 4s and iPhone 4. Apple is now offering up to $99 for an iPhone 4 and $199 for an iPhone 4s. With that value put toward the purchase of a new iPhone 5s, Apple is promoting the deal as being able to upgrade to an iPhone 5s for as little as $0. iLounge first posted images of the memo about the new prices to Apple Store employees."

Last week, Samsung sent out press invites for a an event on May 28th in which the company will talk about "something" health-care related.

Most assumed a new Gear Fit, or an updated fitness band, but that is not the case. "It is not a product announcement," Samsung VP of Operations Stefan Heuser said.

Heuser is a VP for the Samsung Strategy and Innovation Center, the division that invests or partners with companies working on "core" technologies.

The Innovation Center has been quietly working on health care, along with human-computer interfaces and cloud storage.

At this time, there is little else known about the event.

Over the past few months, there have been ongoing rumors that Sprint is looking to bid on T-Mobile US in their ongoing efforts to remain relevant after years of losses and stagnant growth.

If the deal were to go through, which is certainly not a guarantee given the stringent FCC and DOJ, the new merged carrier would be able to compete with AT&T and Verizon in size and scale, breaking the duopoly in the nation. Sprint currently has 54 million subscribers and T-Mobile is quickly catching up, now at 49 million.

T-Mobile, which is majority owned by Deutsche Telekom, is no stranger to proposed acquisitions. AT&T tried to purchase the company in 2011 and the DOJ shut down the merger citing trust issues. For its troubles, T-Mobile received $4 billion in cash as a break-up fee, and additional spectrum. The move helped T-Mobile re-invent itself as the coolest carrier in the nation, and Telekom wants another large break-up fee if Sprint cannot complete the merger, with reports putting the figure at over $1 billion.

In addition, Telekom will not accept a buyout unless key T-Mobile executives keep their titles, and that the brand remains intact, meaning "T-Mobile," "Uncarrier" and other terms are not going away any time soon. CEO John Legere would need to be placed at the helm of the new company or at least have full oversight of the joint companies.

Initially leaked via Twitter and then confirmed by postings on retailer websites, the Motorola Moto E appears to be on the way.

The phone will be familiar to Moto G owners, as the design remains almost identical, with the speaker grille having moved.

Officially, the phone is expected to launch in the next few days, and the device will feature a 4.3-inch 960x540 display, a dual-core 1.2Ghz Snapdragon processor, 1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage (microSD slot included) and a 5MP rear camera.

It took more than a few years, but it appears that major ISPs in the UK have struck a deal with the entertainment industry in which alleged pirates will receive alerts and educational letters informing them of their wrongdoing.

The U.S. has had a similar system in place since last year, a "six-strike" system in which alleged pirates receive educational letters and alerts, as well, and could eventually have their Internet temporarily shut off by the sixth strike.

BT, Sky, TalkTalk and Virgin Media have signed on, and the first letters will be sent out next year.

The deal comes via a deal with the BPI and MPA (film and music), and the letters will not have any punitive measures, which the trade groups had begged for. There will also not be any database of those who have been sent letters, which the groups had asked for, as well.

Educational letters will be "promoting an increase in awareness" of legal alternatives, and the rights holders will pay £750,000 to each ISP to set up the system.

Source:
BBC

As expected, and announced a bit earlier for the European and UK markets, new Netflix users will be seeing a price raise in the U.S. and Canada.

New subscribers will see their monthly bill at $8.99 compared to the current $7.99 and current users will keep their $7.99 price for two years, including HD video streams.

Additionally, Netflix will be offering a $7.99 plan where users can only stream in SD (standard definition) and only on device at any time. The more expensive plan allows for streaming on two screens simultaneously.

All new users get a free trial, and you can change between plans at any time.

Netflix has confirmed that its impending price hike is no longer impending.

Overseas, European and UK users will see their subscriptions jump by £1 and €1, to £6.99 and €8.99, respectively.

Current customers will get to keep their existing price for two years.

Netflix first announced the changes during their quarterly earnings report last month.

The streaming company offers tens of thousands of TV episodes and movies and is most notable for its original content including House of Cards, Arrested Development and more.

Nokia's Lumia series photography lead, Ari Partinen, today announced on Twitter that he has quit his job at Microsoft and will be joining Apple's team in Cupertino, California in June.

Partinen is one of the figures behind Nokia's revolutionary oversampling technology, first introduced in Nokia Pureview 808 and later brought to Windows Phone-era in form of Nokia Lumia 1020.

Superb camera and imaging features have been among few strong marketing claims in Microsoft's attempt to grow its marketshare as it lags far behind Android and iOS, and so losing Partinen is going to be a big blow to Microsoft's camera division -- and a huge win for Apple.

Here's Partinen's original tweet:

According to the Financial Times, and later vetted by other outlets, Apple is preparing to purchase Beats Electronics for up to $3.2 billion.

Beats is popular for their headphones and more recently their music-streaming service that competes with Spotify and other unlimited streaming companies.

Apple has long been rumored to be developing their own streaming service, but it appears they could not innovate quickly enough, which could prove to be a negative turning point in the ongoing saga of Apple, a company that has not released a truly new product since the iPad in 2010.

Through its iTunes store, Apple created the market for music digital downloads, but there are plenty in the industry that believe that model is dead. Streaming services, where subscribers pay $5 to $10 for unlimited listens of huge catalogs, continue to see strong growth, especially through mobile devices.

Nintendo will develop and sell new hardware consoles aimed at emerging markets as it fights to climb out of a global slump it has fallen into in recent years.

Despite having a head start of a year, Nintendo's Wii U sales are actually lower than that of Sony's PlayStation 4 (PS4) consoles, despite the latter only launching in the holiday season in 2013. Consumers in major western markets are overlooking Nintendo's latest hardware and it is showing on the bottom line in big red figures.

In an effort to turn itself around, Nintendo will look for growth through the development and sale of new hardware. This hardware will be aimed at emerging markets and will not simply be cut downs of the Wii U and other items it sells.

"We want to make new things, with new thinking rather than a cheaper version of what we currently have," Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said, reports Bloomberg.

"The product and price balance must be made from scratch."

The timing is good considering that China only recently lifted its decade+ ban on video game console sales in the country, although there are still considerable factors to take into account launching in China.

A large number of Internet and tech firms have signed an open letter to the FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler opposing Net Neutrality proposals that could lead the way to paid prioritization.

Recent reports suggested that internal documents at the FCC proposed to allow Internet Service Providers (ISP) to negotiate a type of paid prioritization for better access to subscribers. Of course, the proposal has been widely condemned, as it is a clear break away from the FCC's position on paid prioritization in recent years.

Stating their objections to the possible rules change, a large number of Internet and tech firms have signed an open letter to Chairman Wheeler and the FCC, in which they argue essentially that the proposal is a major shift from the historical and traditional norm, and that it could seriously hurt innovation on the Internet.

"According to recent news reports, the Commission intends to propose rules that would enable phone and cable Internet service providers to discriminate both technically and financially against Internet companies and to impose new tolls on them. If these reports are correct, this represents a grave threat to the Internet," the letter reads.

"According to recent news reports, the Commission intends to propose rules that would enable phone and cable Internet service providers to discriminate both technically and financially against Internet companies and to impose new tolls on them. If these reports are correct, this represents a grave threat to the Internet."

Samsung has confirmed that Chang Dong-hoon has been replaced as the head of its mobile design team.

Chang had reportedly offered to resign his position as head of Samsung's mobile design team just last week. The Galaxy S5 smartphone launched recently and was met with criticism of its design and lack of hardware innovations. The plastic case design of the handset prompted the most negativity among reviewers.

Lee Min-hyouk, Samsung's vice president for mobile design, will take over Chang's position as head of the mobile design team, while Chang will continue to lead the design center at Samsung.

"The realignment will enable Chang to focus more on his role as head of the Design Strategy Team, the company's corporate design centre which is responsible for long-term design strategy across all of Samsung's businesses, including Mobile Communications," Samsung said in a statement.

Samsung's Galaxy-branded smartphones and tablets have been its flagship brand for several years now, helping it to overtake and surpass bitter mobile rival Apple globally in terms of smartphone sales.


Sources and Recommanded Reading:
Samsung Electronics replaces mobile design head: in.reuters.com

Google has released an update for its Google Maps apps on Android and iOS adding a proper Offline Maps mode that could come in very handy.

Previously versions of the app had the ability to cache offline maps for later use, but it was a more limited functionality that was cut out by Google. This upset some users to the point that they had to revert back to older versions of the apps.

Now with the release of Google Maps v3.0 for iOS and Maps for Android v8.0, Google has introduced a more useful Offline Mode, which could help your tremendously on your travels if you are not guaranteed a consistent data connection.

All you have to do is search for an area and tap on its place info sheet, then when available, you can select "Save map to use offline," and give your map a custom name, like "Toronto Vacation." It will then be available as a Saved Map when you tap the profile icon next to the search box in the top-right corner of the app. It is the same on both platforms.

The new Maps apps also can inform you which lane you should be driving in to make sure you don't take the wrong lane and end up in a jam. There has also been improvements to the search nearby feature, allowing you to apply filters like opening hours, ratings, prices and so on so you can find a bar or restaurant to suit your needs and tastes.

We've known for quite a while that HTC One (M8) will have a little brother like its predecessor. HTC One mini 2 or whatever it might be called has been rumored and leaked since February. Now we've got assurance that it indeed is coming – and we have a price as well!

According to rumors the smaller version of M8 will sport the same aluminum body but the display has been reduced to 4.5 inches. The resolution of the display is said to be 720p, the SOAC is Snapdragon 400 instead of 801 and the camera loses its UltraPixel name but gains megapixels (13mpix vs 4mpix).

According to the two different online retailers in Finland the model will be released next Tuesday, May 13th. It will be priced at around 520 euros which is a whopping $720 and approximately $580 before taxes. That doesn't sound too inexpensive for a smartphone with a 720p display.

It's also worth noting that the retailers call it HTC One Mini M8 instead of the rumored HTC One mini 2.

HBO's wildly popular Game of Throne has set yet another record for BitTorrent sharing after the latest episode was spread across the world.

Game of Thrones is already a heavily pirated TV show due to its exceptionally large fan base, and HBO's reluctance to license it to streaming services like Netflix.

It is extremely popular on torrent sites, and has been breaking records during the airing, and subsequent uploading, of episodes of recent seasons. The latest episode of Game of Thrones is estimated to have been downloaded around 1.5 million times within a day.

That's not the big deal however, the big deal is that the Demonii tracker reported that over 200,000 people were sharing one single torrent for it at the same time. 163,496 were sharing a complete copy while 43,558 were still leeching.

207,054 is pretty impressive, but probably won't give HBO much reason to be happy.

Read more: TorrentFreak

Yet another bug with the iOS lock screen has been revealed, and it affects iOS 7.1.1 too.

Apple's iOS operating system has had a few lock screen bugs in its time. One such bug allowed access to a variety of apps on the device which could allow an attacker to steal private information, while another one that hit iOS 7 would allow non-emergency phone calls by simply hammering the button until it got stuck and crashed the screen.

Those flaws have been fixed, but a new one has surfaced. This one was shown off by Egyptian programmer Sherif Hashim, and it allows you to use Siri to get to the Contacts of an iPhone without unlocking the device.

In a demo video, Hashim tries unsuccessful to access to the iPhone's contacts by commanding Siri, while the handset is locked. However, he then goes on to give Siri a "Call" demand instead, and Siri helpfully asks who he would like to call. From here, Hashim can gain access to the full list of contacts on the handset.

So far, no other feature has been found to be accessible by tricking Siri.

Until it is fixed, the simplest way to avoid this flaw being exploited is to disable Siri access when the phone is locked, which you can do under Settings - Passcode.

Xbox head Phil Spencer has denied rumors that a handheld Xbox console (or Xbox Surface) is on Microsoft's short list of upcoming projects.

"I don't think we'll do a dedicated handheld gaming device," he confirmed.

For the time being, all of Microsoft's mobile gaming will be dedicated to Windows Phone and Windows-based tablets, with a possibility that future Windows Phones could use Xbox controllers and stream to the large screen without lag.

This is not the first time Microsoft has denied a gaming handheld is in the works, and it probably won't be the last but it truly seems like Microsoft wants nothing to do with that industry dominated by the Nintendo DS/3DS line.

According to "five sources" close to the company, Comcast may soon begin offering streaming video games from major publisher EA via their X1 cable box.

The companies have allegedly been testing the service for two years, and the streaming games will include hit franchises like FIFA and Madden.

Comcast's X1 cable box, the most high-end in the industry including a full interface, operating system and apps, also has the ability for voice control.

If accurate, the move would be the boldest by a cable company trying to get into the gaming world and fend off powerful rivals like Amazon and their set-top FireTV, which includes the ability to play games with a full-sized controller.

Comcast is currently in the process of acquiring Time Warner Cable for $45 billion, combining the biggest cable companies in the U.S. into a behemoth.

According to sources, Xbox Studios is in negotiations with premium cable channel Showtime to develop a live-action 'Halo' series.

The drama is supposedly high priority for Microsoft's Nancy Tellem, who is in charge of bringing original content to Windows and Xbox devices.

If the deal is struck, it would be a first in the industry as the series would air on Showtime and on Xbox as well, with more interactivity built in for gamers. Showtime would get the episodes first.

Steven Spielberg's Amblin TV has been developing the drama with Xbox Studios for over a year, with a script by screenwriter Stuart Beattie.

Xbox Live has 48 million users, but has lacked original content.

SanDisk has announced this week the launch of the world's first enterprise-class 4TB SSD using 19nm process technology.

Additionally, the company showed off new Lightning II performance SSDs with capacities up to 1.6TB.

Looking into the future, SanDisk confirmed Optimus MAX branded 6TB and 8TB SSDs at the 2.5-inch form factor for 2015, promising they will be first to market.

"We see reaching the 4TB mark as really just the beginning and expect to continue doubling the capacity every year or two, far outpacing the growth for traditional HDDs," Manuel Martull, SanDisk's product & solutions marketing director said.

The 4TB SSD can reach 400 MBps sequential reads and writes and up to 75,000 random I/Os per second (IOPS) for reads and writes, notes the company. The drive is aimed at those with data warehousing, media streaming and web server needs.

Pricing was not revealed since pricing for enterprise-class drives are determined by the third-party sellers.

Apple has acquired the power-efficient LED startup LuxVue, although financial terms were not disclosed (Apple never does).

The micro-LED maker will be integrated to help Apple in its "hardware innovations areas" say sources, which could mean the tech will be used in upcoming iPhones or iPads (or maybe even an iWatch).

There is also the potential that Apple may be looking to start building their own device screens in-house, cutting out other manufacturers like Samsung and Sharp and Japan Display.

So far, LuxVue has allegedly seen a breakthrough in display tech, allowing for much better power efficiency than currently seen in LED.

The company has raised $43 million in venture capital funding to date.

Earlier this week, a federal jury ruled in favor of Apple in its ongoing patent war against rival Samsung.

Samsung infringed on two patents, ruled the jury, and Apple was awarded almost $120 million in damages, a fraction of the total $2.2 billion it had demanded.

On the other side, Apple was also found to have infringed on a Samsung patent, and Samsung was awarded $158,400.

The ruling follows Apple's victory in 2012 where it was awarded $1 billion in damages from a few more serious patent violations.

"Today's ruling reinforces what courts around the world have already found: that Samsung willfully stole our ideas and copied our products," Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet said at the time. Among the software, code and patents that Samsung allegedly stole were related to word correction, slide to unlock, quick links, background syncing and universal search.

Popular video clip sharing platform Vine has updated its Web site, adding search, navigation and discovery features including playlists, Editor's picks and more.

Best of all, all the content is available to everyone without the need for a Vine account or even to login if you do have an account.

In addition, users will have access to trending tags, channels and popular pages, similar to the mobile apps.

Vine has kept the recently launched TV mode, which allows for full-screen and TV playback.

The company, which was acquired by Twitter last year, has been relatively quiet with plans and features so the newly revamped site is certainly a pleasant surprise.

Nintendo has denied the rumor that it will be revealing a new console at this year's E3 event, squashing hopes that the company could be preparing a sequel to its failed Wii U.

"I can confirm Nintendo is not revealing any hardware at this year's E3," reads the official statement.

There have been rumors for the past year that Nintendo is working on its new "Fusion" console. Most recently, IGN and other outlets reported that trusted sources including third-party developers and former Nintendo employees had confirmed the new hardware.

While the company may not be unveiling new consoles, there certainly could be a revision to the Wii U or a new accessory or peripheral.

For a look back at the rumored specs of the Fusion, check our previous report here.

Nintendo's keynote at E3 is scheduled for June 10th.

Thanks to the end of quarter research report from Strategy Analytics, we have a better look into how the major operating systems are faring in the tablet market.

Overall, global shipments reached 57.6 million for the Q1, with Android and iOS dominating as expected. Android had a near 66 percent share, followed by iOS at 28 percent and Windows moving up slowly to a 6 percent share.

Peter King, Director of Tablets at Strategy Analytics, said, "Global Tablet shipments reached 57.6 million units in Q1 2014, up 19 percent from 48.3 million in Q1 2013. Android continues to make steady progress and now commands two thirds of the tablet market share.

Apple iOS shipments (sell-in) were 16.4 million iPads in Q1 2014 which declined 16 percent annually, but Apple claimed that due to channel inventory changes which were reduced significantly from the same period last year, sell-through only declined 3 percent. We believe that the disappointing performance in the early part of the calendar year is because Apple has changed its product release cycle to the holiday timeframe. iOS will likely lose share over the next several months to refreshed Android products, but we believe Apple will win back meaningful high-end market share during the final months of the calendar year."

T-Mobile USA had another great quarter, adding 2.4 million new net customers for the Q1.

The carrier, which remains the fourth largest in the nation, once again saw bigger net additions than rivals AT&T and Verizon, and revenue grew 47 percent quarter-over-quarter to $6.88 billion.

Despite the growth, aggressive discounting took its toll as the company lost $151 million for the quarter.

T-Mobile has attacked the wireless industry of late, offering cheap unlimited plans, no-contracts, easier phone upgrade plans, free international roaming and texts and paying off ETFs from other carriers.

Kim Dotcom's latest venture, MEGA, has seen explosive growth in the last six months, with uploads tripling and now totaling 500 million per month.

The founder, always one to challenge authorities, has thanked industry trade groups RIAA and MPAA, (as well as the US Department of Justice) for their lawsuits and added publicity for the sites. The entertainment industry was key in shutting down file sharing colossus Megaupload in 2012.

"There are several growth factors. People spend more time at the computer due to the cold weather, the lawsuits by MPAA and RIAA which advertised Mega, and the ongoing advertising from the dumbest ever U.S. Department of Justice case," Dotcom noted.

"We are experiencing massive growth. We can't add new servers and bandwidth fast enough," Dotcom concluded.

MEGA, which has prioritized security and privacy, also started to get a boost when it was revealed that the NSA was using surveillance techniques on U.S. and foreign citizens. MEGA uses encryption on all files and servers.

John Carmack, the legendary creator of Doom and new CTO for Oculus VR, has been accused of stealing intellectual property (IP) when he left for his new position.

id Software, the company he co-founded (and now owned by ZeniMax) sent a claim to Oculus with bold accusations: "It was only through the concerted efforts of Mr. Carmack, using technology developed over many years at, and owned by, ZeniMax, that [Oculus founder] Mr. Luckey was able to transform his garage-based pipe dream into a working reality."

Of course, Oculus VR has responded and denied the allegations: "It's unfortunate, but when there's this type of transaction, people come out of the woodwork with ridiculous and absurd claims. We intend to vigorously defend Oculus and its investors to the fullest extent."

Carmack defended himself, as well, adding: "No work I have ever done has been patented. Zenimax owns the code that I wrote, but they don't own VR."

ZeniMax, when asked for comment, offered a long response.

Samsung is preparing a new event in which it will unveil upcoming health-based apps or devices.

The event will take place on May 28th and promises a "new conversation around health."

Samsung recently unveiled its Gear Fit fitness band, and its Galaxy line of devices have been using a powerful S-Health app for the last couple of years.

Most likely, Samsung will unveil upcoming components for the Fit and future iterations, and a conversation about health related apps.

Source:

According to BGR and 'trusted sources,' we may have an authentic render of the alleged upcoming Amazon 3D smartphone.

The device does not appear to be anything special, with a standard metal body, curved edges, dual speakers and a "home" button like the Galaxy and iPhone lines.

Of course, the most notable feature is the extra cameras to add the depth, eye tracking and "3D" sensors to the device. For its standard cameras, the device will have a 13MP rear camera and a 12MP selfie camera.

Additionally, the phone is expected to have a 4.7-inch display, a quad-core processor, 2GB RAM, Amazon's Fire OS operating system, and a special data and content plan known as Prime Data but otherwise a mystery.

Amazon is said to be preparing a launch at the end of June.

Box, the popular cloud storage service, will need to sell itself to survive, says at least one tech analyst.

The company, which had been planning to go public this year, has supposedly delayed those plans following a "wreck" in technology stocks over the past few months where some stocks have fallen over 25 percent, including Facebook, Amazon and many newer IPOs like FireEye and Splunk.

Supposedly, founder and CEO Aaron Levie originally denied his board the ability to sell the company but there may be a search for buyers again now that the IPO has been delayed.

Sam Hamadeh, CEO of PrivCo, an analyst firm for private companies, left a tough assessment of the company's prospects: "Box was not and is not ready for prime time for the IPO market, and it would have difficulty surviving in the wilderness of the public markets ...Box's only realistic option is to sell the company."

"Box was bleeding cash, could not seem to decide if it is a consumer app company or an enterprise software company, and has powerful competitors in Amazon, Google, Apple and others who were initiating a price war," he adds. "And Box simply cannot ever win a price war against rivals like those."

UFC parent Zuffa has sued a major torrent uploader, seeking $32 million in damages.

Going by the online handle "Secludedly," the uploader allegedly uploaded 124 UFC events to popular sites like The Pirate Bay and KickassTorrents. Zuffa has accused the man of copyright infringement, fraud, breach of contract, and more.

Steven A. Messina, aka Secludedly, is a 27-year-old from Staten Island, New York, is one of three defendants of the suit, as well as an unknown business entity.

"Defendants have, on over 124 occasions, used the torrent websites known as kickass.to and thepiratebay.se to upload, distribute and publicly display the Broadcasts to the users of said websites," the lawsuit states. Secludedly also accepted PayPal donations for his work, thus profiting off the copyright infringement.

Seeking damages of $150,000 per infringement, the company also alleges that the uploader violated the Federal Communications Act willfully, and is asking for an additional $110,000 per infringement. The total is $32.2 million. "Defendants, wishing to use Plaintiff's Broadcasts for their own commercial gain, surreptitiously gained access to Plaintiff's Broadcasts by purchasing the programming through their satellite TV provider, without proper authorization, at residential rates, and subsequently copying the Broadcasts and uploading them to the users of the websites known as kickass and thepiratebay.se" adds the suit.

Earlier this week, popular photo sharing app Snapchat added new features including the ability to text and video chat.

"The goal has always been to move beyond messaging," says founder Evan Spiegel. "We're trying to take the traditional text conversation and make it better."

Snapchat, which allows users to send photo messages that disappear within a few seconds, will allow for more in-depth conversations with the updated features, and the easy ability to switch modes within the app.

"If I'm walking around and want to show you something, why do I have to switch apps?" Spiegel concluded. "It stops the conversation and makes it a transaction, rather than free-flowing."

Spiegel added that video chatting works on Wi-Fi and cell data, and audio was prioritized so even if the picture degrades, the audio should remain clear.

Source:
Yahoo

According to sources, AT&T has approached DirecTV about acquiring the satellite TV giant.

Given the current value of DTV, any deal would have to be over $40 billion, making it one of the largest deals in history.

If a merger were to occur, the new company could compete in size and scale with the colossus of Comcast were it to complete its proposed merger with Time Warner Cable. Comcast's deal was for $45 billion in cash and stock.

In order to get the deal passed by regulators, Comcast has agreed to give up 1.4 million subscribers to Charter Communications, a smaller cable company, and has agreed to spin-off a new company that Charter is a 33 percent owner of, which will have 2.5 million subscribers.

Source:
Business Insider

Sony has once again slashed its operating profit forecasts for the fiscal year, this time by 70 percent.

The electronics giant cited its exit from the PC market as the main culprit, with the move costing them up to $300 million in added costs.

Operating profit expectations for the fiscal year were reduced from ¥80bn ($780 million USD) to ¥26bn ($253 million USD), and the company's DVD and CD-ROM production unit booked a ¥25bn ($250 million) impairment loss.

The company still expects a large net loss of ¥130bn ($1.27 billion), a stark contrast from the net profit the company had forecasted over a year ago.

New CEO Kaz Hirai has been tightening the focus of the company since taking the reigns, and has shuttering and selling businesses that do not fit in the core Sony wishes to achieve. The company has also sold buildings and other tangible assets, netting billions.

Hirai also announced that the company's TV business would be spun off, after losing nearly $8 billion over the past decade. The PC division has been sold. Sony's new focuses are on mobile, imaging and gaming, where its PlayStation 4 console has been a major hit so far.

Sprint, who has been rumored to be preparing a bid for rival T-Mobile, is closer to doing so after meeting with banks in order to make debt arrangements.

CFO Joe Euteneuer and Treasurer Greg Block met with as many as six banks to structure the financing of the bid, which could be as high as $40 billion.

Sprint was recently acquired by Japan's third-largest carrier, SoftBank, and a merger of Sprint (third largest carrier in the U.S.) and T-Mobile (a close fourth) is likely just another inevitably in the ever consolidating industry.

The Federal Communications Commission and the Department of Justice will have to approve such a deal, which is not a definite. A merger would reduce costs between the giants, and expand capacity. Sprint would also have to agree to a deal termination fee, in case regulators break up the effort. When AT&T tried to acquire T-Mobile and was blocked by regulators, they had to pay $6 billion, literally paying T-Mobile to become a much stronger rival.

Sprint is the only major carrier to continue to lose subscribers, and the only carrier to report losses nearly every quarter. T-Mobile, on the other hand, has gained millions of new subscribers in the last year after ditching contracts, dropping the price of monthly bills for unlimited options, and adding free features like international roaming.

Motorola has sent press invites for an event in London on May 13th where the company will unveil a new smartphone.

"Connect more people to the world's information and each other, and they can do great things," reads the invite. "Introducing the next smartphone from Motorola to make these connections happen. Made to last. Priced for all."

The rumored device to be introduced is the Moto E, which will be second generation of the popular Moto G, which sells for $179 and features a spec sheet normally found outside of that price range. The Moto E reportedly has a 4.3-inch screen, a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 4GB internal storage, a 5MP camera and a 1900mAh battery.

The low-end specs are enhanced by dual SIM capabilities and a digital TV tuner and near-stock Android 4.4.

Facebook has confirmed that the Oculus Rift virtual reality headset could go on sale for consumers next year.

The social networking giant purchased Oculus earlier this year for $2 billion, and the team says they will be greatly "disappointed" if there is not a consumer headset available before 2016.

Currently, there is no word on eventual pricing, and there are not enough games to justify a full launch, but developers are actively working on support for games.

While the company has two versions available for demo (Crystal Cove and DK2), supposedly the company has a secret room in their offices in LA that houses a better device, one that in "user testing it gets to a level of realism where almost all people feel that it's realistic.. Imagine everything you can see now, but it's a little bit pixelated. Eventually that [pixelation] will go away," says Andreeseen Horowitz partner Chris Dixon. Horowitz, the noted VC firm, is an investor in the company.

Dixon said that Facebook bought the company after CEO Mark Zuckerberg went into that room and tested the headset.

Last week, we reported that Microsoft had confirmed a zero-day vulnerability that put a large portion of the world's computer users at risk. The exploit affects Internet Explorer 6, 7, 8, 9, 10 and 11 and Windows XP users are especially vulnerable since the company no longer supports the operating system.

Despite the OS being end-of-life (EOL), Microsoft has released an update for Windows XP (and everyone else).

Via Microsoft's blog post:

The security of our products is something we take incredibly seriously, so the news coverage of the last few days about a vulnerability in Internet Explorer (IE) has been tough for our customers and for us. We take a huge amount of pride that, among widely used browsers, IE is the safest in the world due to its secure development and ability to protect customers, even in the face of cybercriminals who want to break it.

Acer has jumped into the wearables market with its Liquid Leap smart band.

Without revealing too many details, the company says the fitness band is 17mm wide, pairs with smartphones and will come bundled in some markets with the new Acer Liquid Jade smartphone.

The company expects to launch the devices in July, but a North American release is not in the cards.

Acer says the touchscreen device can blend fitness tracking with notifications, likely having less functionality than current offerings from Samsung and others. It is also unclear what operating system will power the Leap.