Latest news

Acer will reveal some great new PC monitors at the upcoming CES event next week, including a gaming monitor with an edge-to-edge frameless design.

The Acer XG270HU claims to be the "world's first gaming monitor with an edge-to-edge frameless" design for its 27-inch, 2,560×1,440 pixel, 144Hz refresh rate display. Acer promises 1ms response time without ghosting and smearing. The frameless monitors are a great evolution for gamers or traders or others who require multiple monitors and would like seamless transitions between the monitors.

XG27OHUs have HDMI, DVI and DisplayPort ports and Acer has added EyeProtect and ComfyView tech to reduce eye strain and reflection from any external light sources.

Shipping in March, the monitor will be available globally. The price has not yet been revealed.

Alcatel OneTouch has announced the launch of their first smartwatch, a budget-friendly device that it will show off at the CES event next week.

The aptly named "Watch" will be circular, come with different straps, dozens of watch faces right out of the gate and include "apps that allow users to monitor daily activity."

Most notably, the company says the Watch will cost "a fraction" of the price that its competitors sell watches for, meaning the device will sell for under the $299 standard price of high-end devices like the Moto 360 (with metal straps) and most likely much less than the $349 base price for the Apple Watch.

While it remains unclear what specs power the device, it appears from the press photos that it does not run on Google's Android Wear platform but rather a proprietary operating system. We will know more on January 6th.

Last year, Apple introduced their upcoming Apple Watch, a sleek smartwatch that the company hopes will bring the smart watch out of the niche and into the mainstream.

There has been a big question since their announcement, however: How many watches will Apple sell in the first year?

Industry analysts seem to be as confused by the question as the common observer is, with wildly different estimates. The watch is the first truly new product from Apple since the iPad (which transformed the tablet market) but there are questions about whether the watch can be nearly as successful as its brother products the iPhone and iPad.

BI has put together a nice chart on which firms are expecting what, with Morgan Stanley's being the craziest (60 million is NOT happening) and Gene Munster at Piper Jaffray with the low at 10 million.

It is important to keep in mind that the Apple Watch starts at $349, likely placing it well out of the price range for the non-techie casual device owner that already has a $700 iPhone and a $500 iPad.

Sony has told that it will be adding free extension to PlayStation Plus members' subscriptions. The down time was caused by a DDoS attack that targeted both Sony's and Microsoft's servers.

Sony thanks the patience of its customers and will be reimbursing the lost subscription time and more. The extension will be five days and will easily cover the lost time – although not the Christmas gaming. Extension will be added automatically.

In addition Sony has decided to provide a discount for any games, TV shows, or movies in one cart purchase. This 10% discount will be given later this month.

Even if the compensation seems like a rather minor one Engadget estimates that the cost of just the extended subscription time to Sony is over $5 million.

A group calling itself H4LT has released the Xbox One software development kit (SDK) to the Internet, meaning we could be seeing homebrew apps in the near future.

The group first teased screenshots of the November Durango XDK (Xbox Development Kit) and has now linked a 478MB .rar file that is available via Mega or torrents.

"We leaked it to the community because if something is shared then...progress is achieved faster than alone. The SDK will basically allow the community to reverse and open doors towards homebrew applications being present on the Xbox One," said a team member in an interview. There is no current exploits known, but with hundreds (or thousands) of eyes on the prize, we could hear something soon.

According to a new report, Martin Scorsese's blockbuster 'The Wolf of Wall Street' was the most pirated film of 2014.

The movie, which stars Leonardo DiCaprio playing real-life fraudster Jordan Belfort, was downloaded illegally over 30 million times, edging out Disney's billion dollar smash hit 'Frozen.' The figures come via piracy-tracking firm Excipio, who says the figures were much higher than in past years.

In third place was Robocop, although the figures include the original 1987 version and the 2014 reboot.

Full list:

Infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay could be finally on the verge of a comeback, three weeks after a raid potentially took the site down for good.

TPB has started a new counter that is counting down to February 1st, with the promise that a big announcement is coming. The counter was previously counting the time since the December 9th raid that took down the site.

Since TPB's domain came back alive two weeks after the raid, there have been a few cryptic messages posted, a link to 'The Interview' and then the counter.

Also of note, the javascript that is used to show off the fireworks running in the back of the counter have the name "allishere.js" perhaps hinting that backups of TPB are available.

Now that the year 2014 is almost in the past, it is time to take a quick look at the past year and wish all of you a happy new year for 2015!

Mobile revolution is reality

It has been evident that some of the most interesting technological development during the last few years has happened in mobile technology or in closely-related cloud services. This year finally underscored this fact for traditional online publishers, too, when suddenly, all over the world, websites started to realize that their audiences are rapidly moving to mobile.

For some of AfterDawn's services, this is already the reality -- one of our sites already has more than 50 percent of its traffic from mobile. And this trend is not going to end, but rather, will accelerate in the future. Thus, all websites must decide if they want to be relevant in coming years and adapt accordingly: responsive design, mobile apps, etc. are going to be even more important in future.

HIGH.FI news aggregator service

Our biggest new service of the year was a news aggregator service called HIGH.FI – a service that aggregates and categorizes news headlines from all over the world and presents those in chronological order.

Chinese smartphone startup Xiaomi has raised $1.1 billion in funding at a massive value of $45 billion, making it one of the world's most valuable private technology companies.

Among the new investors are All-Stars Investment, DST Global, Hopu Investment Management, Yunfeng Capital and GIC.

Xiaomi has risen from unknown to the world's third-largest smartphone maker in under five years, overtaking veteran companies like LG, Lenovo and Sony.

The company sells extremely cheap but high quality smartphones and other devices (including fitness bands and tablets) and is working on building an ecosystem of apps and other services. Xiaomi currently only sells devices in China, which some believe has stunted some of their potential for profit.

According to Sony Pictures, 'The Interview' made $15 million in revenue in online sales and rentals during its first 96 hours of availability.

After the major theaters balked at playing the film on the big screen, Sony decided to release it on Christmas as a $6 rental or a $15 purchase via Xbox Video, Google Play and a few other proprietary on-demand pay streaming sites.

The studio said there were about two million transactions in total but Sony did not break down how many were sales versus rentals.

While the majors did not release the film, a few independent theaters played the movie on about 300 screens, generating an additional $3 million from Christmas until Sunday.

Sony Pictures' controversial comedy The Interview was released a couple days ago on Google Play and Microsoft's Xbox service after Sony themselves released the movie online. Now Apple jumps on the bandwagon a couple of days later, reports Recode.

The movie starring James Franco and Seth Rogen was given the green light by Sony after cancelling the premiere because of threats. Hackers who obtained confidential data in a security breach have been threatening Sony and the theaters for possible releases. The threats have not materialized.

The reason behind Apple's reluctance to add the movie immediately after Sony had contacted the online distributors to release the film was not revealed. The prices are the same $6 for rental and $15 for purchase as they are in the competing services.

One-time photo giant Kodak, newly out of bankruptcy, will try its hand in the mobile device arena starting with the launch of an Android smartphone at next month's CES event.

The company has teamed up with the Bullitt Group for the devices, which will eventually include a line of tablets, as well.

Reads the press release: "Aimed at - but not exclusively for - consumers who want a high-end experience but aren't always as comfortable using increasingly complicated mobile devices as they would like to be, the range of smartphones and tablets will come pre-loaded with bespoke image capture, management and sharing features to offer a rich user experience.

In addition, advanced remote management software will be pre-installed, allowing family members and friends to provide help and support if needed."

Besides the smartphone and tablet, Kodak also says it will launch a Web-connected camera.

Last year, the MPAA seemingly shook up the file sharing industry when they announced they had won a suit against once-popular file hosting site Hotfile and agreed to an $80 million settlement.

According to a new report, however, that headline figure was way exaggerated, and that the cyber locker really settled for just $4 million.

The news comes via a leaked Sony Pictures email. "The studios and Hotfile have reached agreement on settlement, a week before trial was to start. Hotfile has agreed to pay us $4 million, and has entered into a stipulation to have an $80 million judgment entered and the website shut down," read the email from Sony's SVP Legal.

Hotfile was allowed to continue operating after the settlement was entered, but they had to implement an MPAA-approved filter that would supposedly remove all unauthorized content from the their servers. Instead, Hotfile just shut down.

It does appear that the payment was made, in full, but it is unclear how much the MPAA paid out in attorney's fees for the high-profile case.

Since the launch of iOS 8, Videolan's popular media player VLC has been silently absent from the App Store. It appears after three months of silence, it may be returning.

Videolan has not given any update to the disappearance of the app except to say that they did it and not Apple. There was word that the app would return eventually but with no clear timetable.

Felix Paul Kuehne of Videolan says your wait is most likely almost over, however, as the app will return "but probably early next year due to the iTunes Connect holiday shutdown."

Most likely that means the app has been submitted to Apple for approval and that the code is ready to run.

The annual shutdown is in effect from December 22nd to the 29th so iOS fans could see the best media player app available in time for the new year.

According to Kim Dotcom himself, the larger-than-life founder of MEGA helped save Christmas for gamers.

Yesterday we reported that hacking group 'Lizard Squad' had taken down both Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network through a large DDoS attack. Late in the evening, however, access to the networks was slowly being restored, as new console owners finally got a chance to try out their multiplayer gaming.

Dotcom was able to get the DDoS to stop by pretty much bribing the attackers with potentially lifetime free vouchers to Mega's encrypted cloud service.

The Mega founder sent out 3000 free subscriptions that normally cost $99 each, so that he could get back to gaming and so that Lizard Squad would not attack the networks again in the future.