Latest news

Earlier this week, satellite provider Dish decide to start on the road to kill conventional TV as we know it introducing "Sling TV."

The new "Sling TV" service will cost $20 per month, be available online and on mobile, and include 10 popular channels: TNT, TBS, CNN, Food Network, HGTV, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, the Disney Channel, ESPN, and ESPN2.

While in theory, the practically ala carte service is great for cord cutters, especially given the access to ESPN and big-time sports programming, but under the hood there are quite a few caveats, as well. Only one person can watch Sling TV at any given time. You will need a streaming device and the Sling TV app to get the TV on your big screen. Roku will support it out of the box, Apple TV will not. Local broadcasting is missing such as NBC, CBS, FOX, and ABC.

At $20, the service is still expensive especially since most cord cutters will be paying $7.99 for Hulu, $7.99 for Netflix and whatever price the standalone HBO Go will cost, but the Sling TV is a right first step to unbundling expensive TV packages with hundreds of channels you don't care about.

Here is an early demo of the service in action:

Marvel has confirmed the release date for their Netflix exclusive 'Daredevil' series: April 10th.

All thirteen hour-long episodes will be available on day one, in all countries where Netflix is streaming.

From Marvel's own description: "Marvel's Daredevil" follows the journey of Matt Murdock, who was blinded as a young boy but imbued with extraordinary senses, now fighting against injustice by day as a lawyer, and by night as the super hero Daredevil in modern day Hell's Kitchen, New York City.

The series stars Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock/Daredevil, Deborah Ann Woll as Karen Page, Elden Henson as Foggy Nelson with Rosario Dawson as Claire Temple and Vincent D'Onofrio as Wilson Fisk.

Netflix's original content deal with Marvel is one of its largest and likely one of its most important given the demographics that Marvel and Disney command.

Neil Young's super Hi-Fi music player and Kickstarter blockbuster "Pono" is now available for $399.

Last year, Pono closed its campaign at $6.2 million raised, good for the third best campaign on the crowdfunding site, ever.

The company just launched the Pono music store this morning, allowing consumers to purchase high-quality audio files that will cost you more than the average iTunes or Google Play download but flat out sound better. Creator Neil Young wants consumers to know that music sounds better than your streaming services and digital downloads: "I didn't listen to music for the last 15 years because I hated the way it sounded and it made me pissed off and I couldn't enjoy it any more," he said at CES. "I could only hear what was missing."

Unfortunately, at $399 and with more expensive song downloads, the player promises to be a hit only among a niche crowd. Young doesn't seem to care: "I'm a musician. I want people to hear my art. A lot of people feel the same way," Young said. "In my mind, this is a success already because it lives."

The device has two output jacks, one for headphones and a stereo mini-plug analog output for home audio. The Pono Music store offers music in FLAC with quality ranging from CD lossless quality recordings: 1411 kbps (44.1 kHz/16 bit) FLAC files all the way to Ultra-high resolution recordings: 9216 kbps (192 kHz/24 bit) FLAC files.

After a two year absence in the world's most populous nation, Lenovo will be bringing back Motorola smartphones to China.

Lenovo acquired Motorola's handset business from Google last year in an effort to boost their mobile offerings around the world.

The flagship Moto X will go on sale in February, followed by the Moto X Pro and Moto G in the Q2.

"It's been about two years since we actively launched products in China," said Motorola today. "Lenovo has been clear for some time that bringing Motorola back to China was going to be a priority. It's something we've been working very hard on since the close of the acquisition."

Lenovo completed their acquisition in October for nearly $3 billion.

According to a new source, LG is looking to bring a WebOS-based smartwatch to market early next year.

"We're going to slowly try to build an (software) ecosystem around areas we can have more control over," said the source, speaking at CES. The company currently has a few smartwatches available running on Google's Android Wear platform.

The phone will be able to make phone calls without being synced to a smartphone, added the source, suggesting a built-in cell radio is in the works.

WebOS, the mobile operating system made popular in 2009 by Palm before it went bankrupt, was then sold to HP who could not figure out how to monetize it and eventually sold to LG last year. LG now uses the OS as a backbone for its smart TVs and home appliances. The TVs have been successful, with LG selling over 1 million in just the first half of 2014.

Music execs and now billionaires Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine have been sued by former business partner Noel Lee, who claims the two used a "sham" transaction to reduce his stake before selling the company to Apple this year for $3 billion.

Lee is the founder of Monster, the "premium" audio and video cable company that originally helped co-design Beats headphones.

The plaintiff says he "lost millions" after the two music execs took full control of Beats after selling a majority of the company to HTC in 2012 and also that Dre had "little involvement" in creating the headphones that bear his name. When the company was sold to HTC in 2012, both Iovine and Dre made about $100 million each, and at the same time diluted Lee's share of the company from 5 percent to 1.25 percent.

Lee then sold his stake for $5.5 million in 2013. Had he still had his 5% stake, Lee says he would have made $150 million from the Apple acquisition.

In the suit, Lee claims that Dr Dre and Jimmy Iovine "made millions off the work of Monster and Lee, while the plaintiffs lost millions."

Source:
BBC

Blu, the U.S.-based smartphone maker that sells millions of devices in developing nations every year but is still unknown in America is back with another new Android phone with some features that can't be beat.

The latest, Vivo Air, will sell for just $199 unlocked and is 5.1mm thin and just 3.5 ounces heavy, giving it the title of thinnest and lightest device out there.

Blu says the phone is made of a aluminum magnesium alloy and it has a design similar to the latest iPhones. Android 4.4 powers the phone with 5.0 available later in the year.

Under the hood is a MediaTek MT6592 processor, 1GB of RAM, and a Mali GPU, all of which likely provide mid-range performance. Users have 16GB of internal storage. The display is a 720p, 4.8-inch screen and the Vivo Air has dual 5MP/8MP cameras. There is no LTE support.

iPhone, Nexus and Galaxy Note owners will certainly not be swayed, but for $199 off-contract, there is a chance Blu could start gaining some recognition.

Dell really came to play this CES, unveiling their new XPS 13 notebook with an edge-to-edge display and other great ultrabook specs.

Starting at $800, the new XPS 13 has the 13.3-inch 1080p display, a 5th-gen Core i3 processor, 4GB RAM, 128GB SSD, 2x2 802.11ac Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, two USB 3.0 ports, a Mini DisplayPort, an SD slot, Windows 8.1 and a 3.5mm headphone jack. The battery life is stated at 11 hours. Adding $150 gets you Windows 8.1 Pro and a Core i5, while another $100 gets you a Core i7 and 8GB RAM. The notebooks have a backlit keyboard and weigh just 2.6 pounds.

In addition, you can upgrade the display to 3200x1800 and the SSD to 512 GB, but that will take your price above $1400, no longer in the value category.

According to new reports, the Apple Watch is expected to hit stores and start shipping by the end of March, with employees beginning training in mid-February.

Employees will head out to Cupertino, California and Austin, Texas from February 9th to February 16th and then return to train other employees at local stores.

Apple unveiled the long-awaited smartwatch back in September, but could not give an exact timeframe for its release.

There will be three models of the Watch released, "Standard," "Sport" and "Edition." The sport edition is said to be the cheapest, at $349 while the "Edition" model is rumored to be stainless steel and include a sapphire crystal watch face for $499.

Read more about the Apple Watch here at Afterdawn.

Legendary developer Shigeru Miyamoto has confirmed that the highly awaited 'Star Fox Wii U' will be playable at E3 in June.

"We'll have a version of it ready at E3 that everyone can play," he said, which is exciting for fans.

Miyamoto added a few other small tidbits about the title, which was first unveiled at last year's E3 event. "One of the questions that we often get is 'How is the GamePad being used in any particular game?'" Miyamoto added. "Star Fox is a game where having two screens is really important and it works really well."

At last E3's demo, the developers showed off flight and combat, with the GamePad being used to display the cockpit of the ship while you fly and the TV screen giving the first person view of the combat.

Can't wait to see what else is revealed in June.

Source:

Popular mobile messaging service WhatsApp has reached 700 million monthly active users, continuing its extremely strong growth.

Co-founder Jan Koum made the announcement via Facebook, the company that acquired WhatsApp last year for $21 billion.

The latest figure is certainly impressive given that WhatsApp hit 500 million in April. Users are now sending 30 billion messages per day, added Koum.

"As humbled and excited as we are by these numbers and our continued growth, we're even more excited to keep building a great product in 2015," Koum concluded.

After teasing the device last week, one-time camera and film giant Kodak has used CES to introduce their first smartphone.

The mid-range IM5 is a basic smartphone with some special camera features but it is unclear who the device will appeal to.

Kodak's device has a 5-inch 720p touchscreen, a low-end 1.7 GHz octa-core processor, 1GB RAM, 8GB internal storage (with microSD expansion), Android 4.4 and dual 5MP/13MP cameras.

The company's "unique image management software" will have built-in social media sharing, editing (including filters) and the ability to print right from the app, since it will be compatible with many home printers.

Kodak is putting the IM5 up for sale in Europe for €229 off-contract starting in March and later in the U.S. for $249.

Source:
Kodak

Microsoft has made its Office for Android tablets app available to all via Google Play.

The software was only available as invite-only previously, but the beta is now available to all (as long as you have KitKat and Lollipop).

Says the Redmond giant: "Over the last two months, we have heard from people all over the world who want the power of Office on their Android tablet. The feedback we've received through this initial phase of preview has helped us shape and optimize the Office experience for Android tablet users. Your feedback also helps us plan and prioritize future feature updates.

Today, we are excited to announce that we are further expanding the preview. We want more feedback from more users to ensure that Office apps work well on a range of different Android tablets before launching the official apps. To participate in the preview, you can use an ARM-based Android tablet running KitKat or Lollipop, with a screen size between 7″ and 10.1″. Starting today, anyone can go to Google Play and download the Word, Excel and PowerPoint preview apps. No waitlist. No requesting access. Just go and download the apps!"

Try it out here.

Blake Jareds, a 24-year old New Yorker, was able to abuse Uber's promotional codes to get over $50,000 in free rides before the company canceled his account.

The company offers credits when you refer friends, and Jareds used some pretty ingenious ways to get thousands of people to sign up under his referral link.

BusinessInsider explains how he pulled it off:

Step 1: Jareds changed his Uber promo code from a random string of letters code to "uber$20FreeRide."
Step 2: He sent out a mass email via MailChimp to about 700 people from his email contact lists. It had a 40% open rate and about 5% click rate, the former finance student tells us.
Step 3: Jareds posted a link to a subreddit where users submit deals for free stuff. "This is where I believe Uber claims I breached their guidelines," Jareds tells us.
Step 4: The combination of the "uber$20freeride" promo code and Reddit earned Jareds' link a high level of search-engine optimization. It "propelled my referral link to one of the top links on Google if a person searched for 'Uber promotion code' or a variant of such. This is where I would say 90% of the 2,000+ people who signed up came from."
His credit was canceled, but Uber later reinstated his account and credited him $500.

Google received 345 million DMCA takedown notices last year, up 75 percent from the record amount it saw in 2013.

Surprising no one, Rapidgator, Uploaded and 4shared were the sites that were hosting the most alleged copyrighted material and Google received the most takedowns for links from those sites.

Also unsurprisingly, UK music trade group BPI requested 60 million links be taken down, easily the most of any company or group.

Google has actively tried to appease copyright owners and recently made significant tweaks to their search engine algorithms to downgrade known piracy sites and services.