Latest news

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.

Just a month after Microsoft launched their Office suite for iPad, Google has responded by releasing Google Docs and Google Sheets for iOS.

Until now, any productivity content you may have had was restricted to Google Drive or the Web browser, which were not overall great experiences. Additionally, Google's PowerPoint-equivalent Slides is "coming soon" but has not reached the App Store like its brothers.

Google has had dedicated apps for Android for some time.

Reads the release for Docs:

Create, edit & collaborate with others on documents from your iPod, iPhone, or iPad with the free Google Docs app.

With Google Docs you can:

-Create new documents or open and edit any that you started on the web or another device.
-Share documents and work together with others in the same document at the same time
-Get stuff done anytime–even without an internet connection
-Add and respond to comments
-Never worry about losing your work–everything is automatically saved as you type

The U.S. Supreme Court has sided with Microsoft in a case in which it was accused of antitrust practices nearly twenty years ago.

Novell, which once developed word-processing program WordPerfect, accused Microsoft of witholding key software components while building Windows 95, thus making it much harder for rivals to build software that could run smoothly on the operating system.

By doing so, WordPerfect had its development severely slowed, said Novell, causing Microsoft Word to move forward and become the dominate word processing program. Novell had claimed that Microsoft "made its own operating system less attractive to consumers in order to crush competition and protect its operating system monopoly."

The Supreme Court Justices rejected the appeal and did not make any comment.

Source:
Bloomberg

Last night, Sony released v1.70 firmware update for the PlayStation 4, adding numerous key features including HDCP disabling and the addition of ShareFactory.

Unfortunately, users have flocked to Reddit to note issues and bugs they are having with the update.

One Reddit user reported a black screen bug upon disabling HDCP. After disabling HDCP and launching SHAREfactory, the user wrote: "After playing around with a BF4 clip for a few minutes, and being quite impressed I realized I couldn't hear any sound. So I backed out, went to Amazon to quickly play some TV to check that sound was working (quicker than loading a game, or so I thought) and went straight to a black screen. Despite numerous reboots, I've since been unable to connect directly from PS4–>HDMI–>TV. I just get the black screen."

Jeffrey Katzenberg, CEO of DreamWorks Animation and longtime movie industry veteran, had a few interesting proposals for the future of movies.

Katzenberg says in the future, you will be able to pay for movies according to the size of the screen you want to watch them on. After a quick run in theaters, the exec says you will be able to purchase the movie or rent, depending on the display size. Says Katzenberg: "A movie screen will be $15. A 75-inch TV will be $4. A smartphone will be $1.99," for example.

Extended movie theater runs will no longer be necessary if the new model is adapted. "I think the model will change and you won't pay for the window of availability. A movie will come out and you will have 17 days, that's exactly three weekends, which is 95% of the revenue for 98% of movies," he explains.

As far as the future of the industry is concerned, the CEO admits that "movies are not a growth business" and that the whole industry will need to "reinvent the enterprise of movies" over the next decade.

Source:
Variety

Last month, Microsoft unveiled their suite of Office applications for iPads. The popular apps saw 12 million downloads in their first week.

Today, the software giant updated the apps, adding the ability to print along with some other improvements. Microsoft says printing was the top requested feature since launch.

Says Microsoft: "Your top request is here! You can now print Word documents, Excel spreadsheets, and PowerPoint presentations to an AirPrintTM printer. In Word for iPad, you can choose to print a document with or without markup. In Excel, print a selected range, a single worksheet or an entire spreadsheet. Of course, you can select the pages or slides you want to print."

Additionally, the company has added "SmartGuides" in PowerPoint to help align pictures, shapes, text and more within the slide. The update also fixes some bugs and improves overall performance.