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Speaking today at a Web summit in Ireland, music publisher Kobalt shocked by stating that its European artists actually collected more from Spotify than they did from iTunes for the first time ever.

Royalties from the streaming service for the Q1 2014 were actually 13 percent higher than those received from iTunes purchases. In the Q3 2013, that figure was 32 percent higher from iTunes showing how quickly the tides have turned.

"Spotify overtaking iTunes in Europe is an important new milestone in streaming," added Willard Ahdritz, founder and chief executive of Kobalt.

While Kobalt's data may be unique (other larger publishers have not confirmed), the publisher does have 6000 songwriters and artists, including half of the UK's top 10 Billboard songs for this week, giving it some say in the industry as a whole.

Thanks to a new report, we have some details about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S6 flagship, codenamed Project Zero.

It is unclear what size display the new phone will feature, but it is expected to have a QHD (2560x1440) resolution that is quickly becoming standard in the high-end industry.

The camera's sensor has been updated to the IMX240, which is equal to the one seen in the Galaxy Note 4. Samsung has not yet decided on a 16MP or 20MP camera, although the 16MP OIS camera is expected given the only slight upgrades from this year's S5 model.

On the front side, the "selfie" camera is upgraded to a 5MP unit, and under the hood are 32GB, 64GB and 128GB variants, which is also quickly becoming standard. Samsung will use their own Exynos 7420 processor, which is a 64-bit chip with four Cortex-A53 and four Cortex-A57 cores. In addition, the company will use its own LTE modem (Exynos Modem 333), as the company moves to build the entire device in-house.

Another interesting feature is the detail that the Galaxy S6 will use the Broadcom BCM4773 chip, a new SoC that combines GPS and most other sensors (Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc) onto a single chip leading to a significant reduction in battery drainage.

Google has announced that its Google Maps service and apps have been updated with new "material design" to fit the style of Android 5.0 Lollipop, bringing some exciting new features with it, as well. The update extends to iOS, as well.

Says Google: "Over the next few days, when you open up Google Maps on your Android or iPhone, you'll be greeted by bright colors and a fresh new design. This new look is all about creating surfaces and shadows that echo the real world; with Google Maps' new material feel, layers and buttons come to life so you know just where to touch to get directions, recommendations and imagery."

One of the best new features is the addition of restaurant reservations directly from Maps. You can reserve using OpenTable (U.S.-only for now) right from apps after searching for the restaurant (or any nearby restaurant).

In addition, you can now get pricing and wait time estimates for Uber (if you have Uber installed) right from within Maps.

For the full changelog, see here.

Microsoft has halted the retail sale of some versions of its still-popular Windows 7 operating system, and of its successor Windows 8.

Specifically, Microsoft is no longer peddling copies of the Home Basic, Home Premium or Ultimate versions of Windows 7 to customers. Windows 8 is also no longer available at retail from Microsoft, as the Redmond-based giant just wants it to go away at this point. Of course, you can still buy Windows 8.1 from Microsoft, which already has a larger market share than Windows 8.

Many retail stores will still have stocks of the older versions of Windows so it is not impossible to buy a genuine copy just yet, and probably won't be for a while. Microsoft is hoping that the 2015 launch of Windows 10 will let it put the Windows 8 fiasco to bed and move on, but it also has to convince Windows 7 users that there is a need to upgrade.

More than half of all Windows users are running a version of Windows 7 presently, while estimates of Windows XP usage still range around 17%, with some commercial customers finding it tricky to move away from the 13 year old OS.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Microsoft ends retail sales of Windows 7 and 8: www.bbc.com

Police have targeted members of a file sharing forum called Boerse, searching 121 apartments in 14 states in Germany.

The raids were announced by the office of the Cologne public prosecutor on Tuesday. They targeted people allegedly sharing music, movies and other products illegally through a portal "boerse.bz."

More than 400 officers were involved in raids of 121 apartments across 14 states. The press release indicates that uploaders profited up to several thousand users per month from their activities.

The raids also turned up plenty of evidence, with computers, hard drives and plenty of optical media seized for further analysis. Some suspects reportedly have already displayed a willingness to cooperate with the investigation.

Press Release (.DE): www.presseportal.de

Microsoft and Dropbox are teaming up to make life a lot easier for users of both of their products on mobile.

Dropbox users will soon be able to edit Office files from the Dropbox mobile apps, while Office app users will be able to access Dropbox directly. Changes to documents will be synced across devices as normal.

The Office app can use Dropbox to sync documents across devices without having to leave the app, or load the Dropbox app.

Office app users will also be able to share Dropbox links from the app, meaning you can finish up editing a document and share a link to it immediately.

The relevant mobile apps will be updated for iOS and Android smartphones and tablets in the coming weeks, while the features will be extended to the Dropbox website and Office Online for Desktop use in 2015.

According to Dropbox, its users already store over 35 billion Office documents, spreadsheets and presentations.

"That was FANTASTIC! That was the greatest feeling I've ever experienced... and I've watched two of my children be born."

Conan has delivered another one of his "reviews" of a blockbuster video game this week. This time, Conan takes on Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare, and has just a little bit of trouble with it, especially when he has to just cross the street.

The talk show host also has a fascination with Kevin Spacey's look-a-like Jonathan Irons, and how his eyes appear to be "dead".

watching Conan get lead character Jack Mitchell killed over and over again crossing the street makes the entire video though.

Check out another one of Conan's golden Clueless Gamer segments.

Microsoft's next Windows revamp supports the popular Matroska (MKV) container in Media Player, along with immediate support for H.265/HEVC.

The flexibility offered by the MKV multimedia container format has made it popular over the years, particularly with HD content. Typically, on Windows you would need to install a splitter for the container, like Haali Media Splitter, or use a player with built-in support, such as VLC.

With Windows 10, Media Player supports the MKV container out of the box, as confirmed by Gabriel Aul, providing updates on the Windows Insider program on Twitter.

When asked later by another user whether Microsoft will include a codec for H.265/HEVC video streams, Aul confirmed that HEVC is "also supported in-box."

The promise of HEVC is to make it possible to stream and download ultra high resolution video content without having to push up the bitrate to the same degree necessary with other standards.

Windows 10 is set to ship in late in 2015.

The Director of the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) in the UK claims that Twitter, Facebook and other tech firms are in denial about the use of their services by extremists, terrorists and criminals.

Just fresh in the new job as head of Britain's signals intelligence body GCHQ, Robert Hannigan wrote an interesting article for the Financial Times in which he describes the difference between how newer extremists like ISIS use social media and modern Internet services to spread messages and recruit.

When al Queda was public enemy number one in the majority of the first decade of the century, intelligence services were aware of its use of the Internet to recruit and to communicate. Back then, extremists hid their web presence in the dark corners of the web out of the limelight.

Contrast that with how ISIS uses social media. Hannigan points out how ISIS extremists openly use services like Twitter to recruit, and use hashtags to spread a message. They even hijack popular hashtags to expose their material to a wider audience, as was seen during the World Cup and as the Ebola crisis has grown.

Hannigan also pointed out that even in some beheading videos, the perpetrators stop the video before the actual beheading in order to conform to rules and guidelines of services.

As you may have noticed, Taylor Swift has had a public break-up with Spotify, prompting sadness from the service and anger from some fans.

Swift, who's "1989" album just sold shy of 1.3 million copies in its first week - a feat not seen since The Eminem Show sold 1.33 million copies in its second week more than 12 years ago - suddenly removed her entire catalog from the the streaming music service this week.

While Swift has not publicly stated a reason for this decision, her past comments on the value of music and art serve as an explanation. In July, Swift wrote an Op-Ed for the Wall Street Journal, in which she showed considerable distaste for low-royalty streaming services and absolute opposition to the idea of free music.

"In my opinion, the value of an album is, and will continue to be, based on the amount of heart and soul an artist has bled into a body of work, and the financial value that artists (and their labels) place on their music when it goes out into the marketplace," Swift wrote.

"Music is art, and art is important and rare. Important, rare things are valuable. Valuable things should be paid for. It's my opinion that music should not be free, and my prediction is that individual artists and their labels will someday decide what an album's price point is."

The last of the original founders of the notorious Pirate Bay BitTorrent site is in custody in Thailand ahead of an expected extradition to Sweden.

36-year old Fredrik Neij was arrested on Monday at the border with Laos reportedly wearing the exact same shirt he is wearing in a wanted poster. He has been a wanted man for several years after fleeing Sweden while out on bail, following a 2009 conviction for copyright infringement offences.

While no extradition deal exists between Sweden and Thailand, officials said they were working with Thai authorities to bring him back to his home country, according to The Local.

Another original founder of the popular share site, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg, had also fled to Asia. He failed to attend an appeal hearing in Sweden in 2010, prompting an international arrest warrant being issued. In 2012, he was extradited from Cambodia to Denmark to face unrelated charges of hacking offences, resulting in a conviction and a three and a half year sentence in Denmark.

Peter Sunde was arrested in may in Sweden after he had also been on the run for two years. Carl Lundstroem was also sentenced to a year in prison as a "site financier".

A music video recorded on the International Space Station (ISS) by retired Cdr Chris Hadfield has returned to YouTube, following the resolution of some copyright/legal issues.

It drew a very positive reaction from a global audience when it was uploaded to YouTube last year as Canadian Cdr Chris Hadfield was preparing to return to Earth from orbit after a six month stay on the International Space Station.

In his spare time, Hatfield recorded footage to be used in a music video of David Bowie's iconic Space Oddity. Under an agreement with Bowie and others, the video stayed on YouTube for a year before it had to be removed.

In that time, it received 23,489,187 views on YouTube, and had been reported across the web and replayed on TV all over the globe, pushing its exposure to hundreds of millions of people.

"The reasons we originally made the video were multifold. It was in response to repeated widespread requests via social media. It was a fun Saturday project with my son, Evan. It was a continuation of the other music that I was playing and recording while on ISS," writes Hadfield.

The Internet Archive has opened access to a library containing over 900 arcade games that are playable in-browser, although some may not work quite well just yet.

The games range from the very early days of arcade gaming with simple black and white interfaces, up to later developments in color and featuring digitized voices, images and music.

Dubbed the "Internet Arcade", the library provides research, comparison and entertainment to users.

Be warned though that some games won't work as nicely as others. They are emulated in JSMAME, part of the JSMESS software package, and aren't completely bug-free by any means. Additionally, some aren't really suited to a keyboard / mouse input.

Still, you can have fun shutgunning through them at: archive.org.

BlackBerry has announced a new update for its popular BBM messaging service that includes a few new features that should sit well with users.

The company says the heart of the release is better privacy features.

Here is the full list:

Timed Messages: Set how long contacts have access to messages and pictures shared in a chat*
Message Retraction: 'Retract' a message to remove it from your BBM chat*
A quicker sticker picker: Adding stickers to your BBM chats is now even quicker with a new picker
HD Picture Transfer: It's easier than ever to get a high quality version of the pictures you receive in BBM
Discover Music: See what music your contacts are listening to in BBM Feeds.

With these new features, now is the time to get your friends on BBM to start enjoying the unmatched level of privacy and control.

BlackBerry also noted that a premium BBM is coming soon, but for the time being the "Timed Messages and Message Retraction features are premium features that will be available free and without restriction over the next three months. After this time, unrestricted access to these features will become part of a broader bundle of features that will be offered as part of a BBM subscription."

According to new company data, the average Tinder user is checking their app 11 times per day, an addicting behavior rivaled by Facebook and Instagram.

Additionally, the average users spends 77 minutes per day on the app, which is a ridiculous amount of time given that all you have to do is swipe left or right whenever a matched profile shows up. If you are interested, you swipe right and can then chat with the other user, which is likely where most of the 77 minutes is going, one can assume.

The company also added that it it nearing 50 million users, much higher than other rival dating apps and services.

Source:
NYT