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Microsoft has revealed that Office for iPad apps have been downloaded over 12 million times in just a week.

The Redmond-giant made its Office for iPad suite of applications available for Apple's flagship tablet last week, giving iPad users the ability to view Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and OneNote material. In order to create and edited documents, users need to pay a monthly subscription fee.

Microsoft announced the impressive download figures through its Office Twitter account.

More than 12 million downloads of Word, Excel, PPT & OneNote for #iPad from the @AppStore <3 #OfficeforiPad pic.twitter.com/iT2egNPDkj

-- Office (@Office) April 3, 2014

What Microsoft did not divulge however is how many new Office 365 subscriptions that the 12 million downloads translated to. The company is making a bet that users of its previous Office applications for Windows will choose to continue with its Office products on Apple's platform, rather than take advantage of free office apps already available.

Google's Nest has halted sales of its Nest Protect smoke alarm and carbon monoxide detector after discovering a flaw that could delay an alarm going off during a fire.

The Nest Protect: Smoke + Carbon Monoxide alarm is a smart connected device that aims to replace old fashioned smoke alarms. Among its features is 'Nest Wave', which is the ability to disable an alarm by waving at the device.

During routine rigorous testing, Nest discovered a potential flaw that called into question whether Nest Wave could be unintentionally activated. In the worst case scenario, a flaw of this nature could delay an alarm sounding if smoke was detected.

It is important to remember that no reports of such a scenario have been made by any Nest customer, and that this potential flaw was discovered in-house.

Brendan Eich has stepped down from the role of chief executive at Mozilla following a considerable backlash to donations he made to the California Proposition 8 campaign in 2008.

After only being in the position of CEO at Mozilla for a number of weeks, internal unrest saw employees publicly call for Eich to resign. The point of contention was Eich's views on marriage equality with his history of opposition to gay marriage.

Former CEOs Gary Kovacs and John Lilly, along with Shmoop CEO Ellen Siminoff, stepped down from the Mozilla board not long after Eich was promoted. They had hoped for an outsider to take over the role, and believed Eich was a liability for Mozilla, its products, services and customers.

Earlier this week, online dating site OkCupid took a strong stance against Mozilla with Eich at the helm, with a letter to users urging them to drop Firefox while he remains chief executive.

The White House is not very pleased after Samsung used a selfie taken of Red Sox' David Ortiz and President Barack Obama in a promo tweet.

Ortiz took the rare chance to grab a selfie with the President when the Red Sox recently visited the White House. He then went on to tweet the selfie with the words "What an honor! Thanks for the #selfie, @BarackObama," and so far so good. However, Samsung then tweeted the image to its 5.2 million followers, upsetting the White House.

As a general rule, the President's image should not be used for commercial purposes and the White House clearly feels that Samsung did exactly that. The South Korean firm was able to use the content through a pre-existing deal.

"Without getting into counsel's discussions, I can tell you that as a rule, the White House objects to attempts to use the president's likeness for commercial purposes, and we certainly object in this case," said White House spokesman Jay Carney, reports Reuters.

After Samsung tweeted the image, it pointed out through its @SamsungMobileUS account that the photo had been taken with a Galaxy Note 3, which explains why the White House feels Samsung used the President's image to promote its products.

Newly appointed head of Xbox, Phil Spencer, has said that Virtual Reality (VR) is not a fad after Xbox co-creator Ed Fries cast doubt on its potential to help Xbox One beat PS4.

Ed Fries had commented that Microsoft needs to stick to core gaming and services for its users in order to beat PlayStation 4 (PS4) in the current console generation. He stressed that making great gaming content with blockbuster IP and delivering the best services through Xbox could help Microsoft to overcome Sony.

Fries said: "They need better exclusive games than PS4. They need to be more open to indie developers. They need to adopt free to play gaming more aggressively. They need to continue to move Xbox Live forward as the leading online service. They need to show people why they included the new Kinect on every machine by demonstrating a compelling use for it."

In the area of VR however, Fries warned that Microsoft should look at the collapse of 3D demand before taking the VR route to compete with the PS4. Facebook's recent $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift and Sony's own Project Morpheus show that VR is in the pipeline in any event, and Microsoft is known to be developing a VR system of its own, and also has reportedly spent around $150 million on wearable technology assets.

Record labels are targeting the so called 'Facebook of Russia' with a legal case over alleged large-scale copyright infringement by the service.

The legal complaint has been made under the guidance of the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) trade group, with Universal Music Group, Warner and Sony Music all filing a case.

VKontakte has been described as the 'Facebook of Russia', and it has been accused by the record companies of amassing a huge library of music that it does not have to rights to offer as part of its service. The goal is to get a Russian court to force MK to remove infringing files from its service.

"We have repeatedly highlighted this problem over a long period of time," said IFPI chief exec Frances Moore.

"We have encouraged VK to cease its infringements and negotiate with record companies to become a licensed service. To date the company has taken no meaningful steps to tackle the problem, so today legal proceedings are being commenced."

VK has been noted as a problematic service in the US Trade Representative's annual report for four consecutive years now.

Ouya chief executive Julie Uhrman has stressed that Amazon's new Fire TV box is not solely dedicated to games like Ouya is, dismissing claims that Fire TV will damage the Android console.

Amazon launched its Fire TV set-top box yesterday. The device sells for $99 with optional gaming controllers at $39.99 each. It plays Android games and has plenty of support from big name studios in its corner.

Gaming is definitely not Fire TV's main purpose; even Amazon admits to that. Still, the availability of Fire TV had some commentators writing off Ouya's survival chances, as Amazon is such a giant to grapple with and games developers will be very interested in Fire TV going forward.

"Just as Amazon blazed a trail for a new way of selling online, Ouya invented a new way to think about console games. But for us, games are not simply an 'added bonus', they are the whole point," Uhrman said to CVG.

"Ouya is solely dedicated to the devs creating games, and the players who play them, their ideal experience is all we think about."

That said, Amazon has made a few splashes that suggest gaming will be more important to it going forward. It recently acquired Double Helix, and hired designers Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who worked on Portal and Far Cry 2, respectively.

Several charities are warning about increasing reports from victims of 'revenge porn', and feel the example set in some U.S. states must be followed to curb the growing problem.

In a nutshell, 'revenge porn' is sexually explicit material uploaded by ex-partners after relationships have gone sour. In some cases, victims even had their personal details posted publicly along with the explicit material.

In the UK, several charitable organizations have voiced concerns over rising levels of such incidents, including the National Stalking Helpline, Women's Aid and the UK Safer Internet Centre, reports the BBC News website.

Several states in the U.S. have already introduced laws that tackle revenge porn, and have been tested. In New Jersey, a man was jailed for six months for posting explicit photos of an ex-partner whom he has been in a relationship with for over ten years.

She said she made a stupid mistake by giving him the pictures in the first place, but that she never thought he would do something like this. The pictures spread quickly from being on three sites, to over 200, causing the woman considerable distress.

Microsoft has confirmed that Ridley Scott is part of a new Halo project in development, but has not been liberal with details as of yet.

According to Microsoft, Scott will serve as executive producer on the project, but it is completely unclear what is under production. Halo has had trouble making it to the big screen, and sadly this project isn't likely to put it there either.

Microsoft maintains that it won't clash with the Halo show under development at Xbox Entertainment Studios, which boasts Steven Spielberg's contribution.

Nevertheless, Scott has been involved in projects like Blade Runner, and more recently Prometheus, so associating his name does arouse curiosity. The new project will be directed by Sergio Mimica-Gezzan, who worked on Battlestar Galactica.

Looks like we will have to wait to here more on this one.

Source: Joystiq

While Amazon's new Fire TV set-top box supports an optional controller and has a games library already available, the web giant insists that it is not intended to be a games console.

Instead, the primary competitors for the $99 set-top box are intended to be Apple TV and Roku, as the primary function of the device is to stream video and audio content from web services like Netflix.

"This isn't trying to be a console, but we do think there's a great opportunity there in between a console and a smartphone for fun, quality games," said Amazon's Kindle VP Pete Larsen, in an interview with Engadget.

The gaming features are intended to attract people who play games on smartphones and tablets, but who would not buy a PS4, Xbox One or Wii U for their own reasons.

That said, Amazon has made a few splashes that suggest gaming will be more important to it going forward. It recently acquired Double Helix, and hired designers Kim Swift and Clint Hocking, who worked on Portal and Far Cry 2, respectively.

Yahoo has expanded its anti-surveillance encryption to cover traffic between data centers, and has promised to deliver an encrypted Yahoo Messenger within months.

Having previously made HTTPS default for Yahoo Mail and encrypting mail between Yahoo services and other mail providers that support the SMTPTLS standard, Yahoo has gone a step further. It has announced that traffic between Yahoo data centers is now encrypted, as of March 31.

Revelations about NSA spying programs that leaked in the past year detailed how links between data centers can be targeted for spying programs.

Yahoo pledged to protect its customers by deploying encryption technologies across its services back in November 2013, and so far seems to be on track with the promises made by Marissa Mayer, Yahoo President and Chief Executive Officer.

Other steps taken by Yahoo include switching on HTTPS by default on the Yahoo Homepage and most Yahoo properties. The web giant also implemented the latest in security best-practices, including supporting TLS 1.2, Perfect Forward Secrecy and a 2048-bit RSA key for many of its global properties, and is working to eventually bring all Yahoo sites up to this standard.

A Russian national accused by Microsoft of stealing trade secrets from the company and passing them on to a French blogger has pleaded guilty.

Alex Kibkalo was a Microsoft employee in Lebanon when he allegedly obtained and leaked pre-release updates for the Windows 8 operating system, and also an SDK for Microsoft products that guards against software piracy, the Microsoft Activation Server Software Development Kit.

Kibkalo also reportedly leaked other Windows 8 materials and screenshots, apparently in an effort to get back at Microsoft for a poor performance review.

He allegedly uploaded the stolen materials to his backup storage in July and August of 2012, and provided access to a French blogger, encouraging him to spread the SDK to others who may be able to write "fake activation" codes based on it.

An unidentified individual alerted Microsoft to the leak after being approached by the blogger to examine the SDK.

Kibkalo admitted guilt as part of a plea agreement entered in a federal court in Seattle on Monday. As part of the agreement, Kibkalo will pay $22,500 in restitution and will be jailed for three months.

Chromecast expanded its growing collection of supported services this week, with VUDU, Rdio and Crackle all supporting Google's casting dongle across platforms.

You can now watch the latest movies and TV shows on VUDU with Chromecast (1080p supported) from the Google Chrome web browser through the existing extension on a Desaktop PC or Mac, or you can download VUDU Player for the iOS and Android platforms to cast from smartphones and tablets.

Rdio also now allows you to cast songs, albums, stations, and playlists to your TV while album art will be viewable on screen during playback. Again, all you have to do is press the cast icon in the Rdio iOS, Android or Web apps.

"Rdio on Google Chromecast marks another milestone in Rdio's commitment to delivering the best music experience everywhere," said Anthony Bay, chief executive officer of Rdio.

"Music fans can access Rdio's massive catalog of over 20 million songs or start a station easily, all from Chromecast on their TV."

Finally, Crackle has also updated its iOS and Android apps to support casting movies and short videos from Chromecast.

Sources and Links
Google Cast Chrome Extension: chrome.google.com/webstore/
VUDU Player on iOS: itunes.apple.com/
VUDU App for Android: play.google.com
Crackle App for Android: play.google.com
Crackle App for iOS: tunes.apple.com

Nokia has unveiled their new Lumia 930 smartphone, a device that the company says "beautifully blends the best of Microsoft and Lumia with a collection of features readymade for the needs of today's forward-thinking smartphone owner."

The phone has a 5-inch, 1080p Full HD display (1920×1080; 441ppi) with Gorilla Glass 3 protection and Super Sensitive Touch (to be able to type with gloves on). Under the hood is a 2.2GHz Snapdragon 800 processor, 2GB RAM and 32GB internal storage with 7GB free OneDrive cloud storage. The device also has Dolby Surround Sound integrated. Other standards include Bluetooth 4.0 LE and LTE Cat4 along with wireless charging.

Microsoft has made a huge announcement today, making Windows free for all devices with screens smaller than 9 inches.

The move will include all Windows Phone smartphones and most tablets, and should boost market share for the operating system. The move is good for Windows 8.1 and Windows Phone 8.1, which will hit mobile devices in the coming months.

There had been reports that Microsoft was experimenting with a free version of "Windows 8.1 with Bing," which would have made the OS free but pre-loaded it with Microsoft apps and services.

Microsoft is calling the new version its "Windows for Internet of Things," and it even includes a free year of Office 365.

The company had previously charged $50 per Windows 8.1 license before slashing it earlier this year for some OEMs making tablets.

Source:
Original Report from Build: The Verge