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Earlier today, Amazon unveiled their new Fire TV media streaming box for $99, rivaling the popular Apple TV and Roku devices.

Besides streaming movie and TV content, the box also allows for console-esque gaming, with over 100 games available at launch.

In February, Amazon acquired the gaming studio Double Helix to boost their own in-house gaming offerings and the company has unveiled their first game, a sci-fi tower defense shooter dubbed "Sev Zero."

Here is how Amazon Game Studios explains the game: "Earth is threatened by an alien species, the Ne'ahtu. Early in the 22nd century, the Ne'ahtu infected Earth's energy grid with a computer virus that disabled the planet's defenses. Before the Ne'ahtu could strike, computer prodigy Amy Ramanujan neutralized the alien computer virus and saved the planet. Now, the Ne'ahtu are back and Dr. Ramanujan is trying to prevent them from another all-out invasion of Earth. Switching between towers (to launch various missiles and grenades) and face-to-face combat (to attack with machine guns), the player's mission is to join Dr. Ramanujan and defend Earth from the Ne'ahtu.

According to new research from ABI Research, Chromebook shipments jumped to 2.1 million in 2013, as the cheap notebooks remain popular among certain groups.

89 percent of shipments went to North America, and ABI forecasts an average growth rate of 28 percent per year until 2019 when shipments will reach 11 million.

"ABI Research tracked Chromebooks across six regions and found the average selling price (ASP) to be US$338," adds research analyst Stephanie Van Vactor. "This truly budget-driven device is a disruptive force to the portable PC market."

Chromebooks, due to their lower prices, light frames and long battery life, have been popular in the education market.

Source:
Press release: ABI Research

WhatsApp, the world's most popular messaging app, has revealed that the service hit a new record by processing 64 billion messages in one day.

There were 20 billion messages sent and 44 billion messages received by WhatsApp users. The company explains that the numbers are so skewed because group messages are included, which can include many people either receiving or sending one message but having it viewed by many.

The service was recently acquired by social networking giant Facebook in a deal that is worth up to $19 billion, one of the largest acquisitions in the tech space, ever.

Growth appears to be very strong for WhatsApp, who announced 10 months ago that it was processing 27 billion messages per day. The service is likely to announce soon that it has surpassed 500 million monthly active users, as it adds voice calls and other features.

Amazon has unveiled its Fire TV set-top box that can deliver a lot of media from films, games, music and pictures to your living room over Wi-Fi.

The $99 tiny box packs quite a punch in its abilities. It can bring content from your favorite video streaming services - such as Netflix, Prime Instant Video, Hulu Plus, WatchESPN, SHOWTIME - to your HDTV. It can connect your living room TV to your favorite music services too, such as Pandora, TuneIn or iHearRadio, while also supporting services like YouTube.

For family photos and locally stored videos, you can easily stream them over the network to the big screen too.

Regulations in France that would require Netflix to invest in French content and abide by a quota of French content in its service can be avoided by serving from Luxembourg.

France has some cultural protection measures on its books and has previously clashed with U.S. firms, such as Google, and managed to squeeze money out of them for local content production and so forth. Netflix is not interested in bowing to the French government, but it can still reach French users.

According to a report in the WSJ's MarketWatch, Netflix will serve the French market from its headquarters in Luxembourg. Like a lot of other firms, Netflix has a Luxembourg presence for "tax purposes" anyway.

A report in the Les Echos newspaper cited unidentified officials at the French culture ministry in reporting the streaming service's plan to get around the country's regulations.

via: MarketWatch

Ed Fries, an Xbox co-creator, has said that Microsoft's Xbox One console can emerge victorious over Sony's PlayStation 4 (PS4) if Microsoft makes the right moves.

What would be the right moves? By focusing on good execution of software and services, while newer technologies like VR gaming might be worth avoiding for now.

In a Q&A (or AMA) on Yabbly, Fries gave his input on what Microsoft needs to do to overcome Sony, which has seen a better start to this console war with the PS4 thus far.

(UPDATE: Xbox boss Phil Spencer has responded to Ed Fries comments on Virtual Reality.)

"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."

Facebook's recent $2 billion acquisition of Oculus Rift turned a few heads (and made a few explode..) and Sony's own Project Morpheus indicate that VR is in the headlights whether we want it or not. Fries believes that Microsoft needs to take a good hard look at 3D before diving into the deep end.

Mt. Gox CEO Mark Karpeles must go to the United States to answer questions as part of the Bitcoin exchange's bankruptcy case.

Karpeles has been ordered to present himself at the offices of his law firm, Baker & McKenzie, in Dallas on April 17. Last month, he requested that a Dallas court grant the failed crypotcurrency exchange Chapter 15 bankruptcy protection, after a class action lawsuit had been filed by clients.

Mt. Gox clients want answers about what happened to 750,000 bitcoins that the exchange claimed were stolen by hackers. Some clients allege that insiders stole the Bitcoins, and claims by former employees that there was worries about the use of customers' money as far back as 2012 won't serve to quieten such rumors.

At a May 20 hearing, Mt. Gox must prove that it should be granted bankruptcy protection, and U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Stacey Jernigan is adamant that Karpeles will be present in the U.S. and not Japan.

"If he avails himself of this court, my God, he is going to get himself over here," she said while ordering Mr. Karpeles to appear, and was not amused when one of his attorneys suggested that the Baker & McKenzie firm may replace Karpeles as the "foreign representative" of Mt. Gox in the bankruptcy court.

Following a slew of updates for devices made by HTC, Samsung and others, KitKat now claims a 5.3 percent adoption among Android devices.

The data comes from Google in its latest statistics mined from Google Play visitors, tracking those that run Android Froyo (v2.2), Gingerbread (v2.3.3, v2.3.7), Honeycomb (v3.2), Ice Cream Sandwich (v4.0.3, v4.0.4), Jelly Bean (v4.1.x, v4.2.x, v4.3) and KitKat (v4.4).

Specifically, the data came from Google Play visitors on Android devices during a 7-day period ending April 1.

KitKat has more than doubled its share since Google last shared its statistics with the Android developer community last month, when its penetration stood at 2.5 percent. Since then, KitKat updates for popular devices have continued to roll-out, finally giving the latest Android flavor the boost it has been waiting for.

Jelly Bean is still the King of the Droids for now though, with a combined 61 percent share. Gingerbread follows with 17.8 percent and Ice Cream Sandwich claims 14.3 percent.

Sources and Recommended Reading
Android Developer Dashboard with latest stats: https://developer.android.com/

Music streaming veteran Spotify is welcoming you to the dark side with its gorgeous new design and feature enhancements.

Spotify 1.0 has arrived and responded to user feedback with a darker new interface that will roll out across its services on every platform, starting today.

The new layout intends to make content the focus of our attention, as it "pops" out in its new dark surroundings. "Playing your favorite music has never looked so good," we are told.

In addition to turning the lights down, Spotify has also made some helpful feature changes. Your Music is a new way to browse and organize your favorite music tracks and albums. You can save albums and songs to your collection effortlessly, and create playlists that will suit your every mood and need.

In addition, Spotify has revamped its Browse feature so that it can serve up more localized, and relevant content for you.

The new design and features roll-out from today, April 2, across Desktop, iPhone and the web platform.

For the third time in just a couple of years, Apple and Samsung have gone to trial in a patent dispute case, with the Cupertino-based iPhone maker asking for a staggering $2 billion.

The trial commenced on Tuesday in a San Jose, California federal court. Apple is asking the jury to award it $2 billion in damages from the South Korean firm, which it accuses of violating a group of patents. It also wants a sales ban against allegedly infringing Samsung devices to be imposed.

Apple had previously won a $930 million reward when a different jury sided with it, but U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh refused to issue a permanent injunction against Samsung devices.

The South Korean consumer electronics firm is aggressively defending itself from claims made by Apple that it "slavishly" copied its iPhone and iPad tablets, and is now insisting that Apple's real target is its nemesis, Google.

New trial, new patents

So what is Apple accusing Samsung of violating at this trial? There are five key patents covering software features in the iOS-running iPhones, and Android-running Samsung devices, that Apple claims are being violated.

The first covers a feature familiar to all smartphone users: slide-to-lock. On an iOS device, a user manually pushes a slidebar from left to right in order to unlock the device, and Apple claims Samsung devices copy this feature. However, the slide-to-lock feature in Android and Samsung's devices is notable different to that on Apple's devices.

Boxee.tv, the Web-based TV service owned by Samsung, has seen its forums hacked and personal data stolen on 158,000 users.

Among the data stolen was names, emails, birth dates, IP addresses, message history and encrypted passwords.

An 800MB file was circulated online last week, and password management service LastPass began warning its customers on Tuesday about the breach. "Please update the password for your boxee.tv account immediately," says the LastPass warning. "The LastPass Security Challenge, located in the Tools menu of the LastPass addon, will help find any other accounts using the same password as the leaked account."

Despite the passwords being cryptographically hashed, they can be eventually cracked.

If you are a Boxee TV user, change your password immediately, and if you can't remember whether you had an account, HaveIBeenPwned? is a great resource to check.

Sources & Additional Material:
Original Report: Arstechnica Security & Hactivism
Check if you have been compromised: HaveIBeenPwned?

It has been ten years since Google opened up its shiny new e-mail service to the public, but only if you had an invite from an existing user.

Before then, GMail was an internal e-mail system for Google employees. Even after it opened to the public for the first time on April 1, 2004, it remained invite-only and at one point, it was reported that invites to the service sold for as high as $150 on EBay, and eventually Google had to move to prevent the selling of accounts. It also remained in beta for a considerable amount of time.

Within a year of operation, GMail users enjoyed 2GB of storage, which was considerably more than Google's standing competitors at the time. It also added more features such as formatted editing. In November 2006, it got its own first mobile applications for devices that could run Java apps.

Over the years, Google has integrated GMail and its other services, with a major change coming with Google Docs in 2007 which made it possible for users getting Office documents and spreadsheet as e-mail attachments to open them in the browser. Google also added IMAP support later the same year.

It wasn't until July 2009 - over five years since the public first got a chance to get a GMail account - that Google announced GMail (and its wider Google Apps) were out of beta.

Samsung has confirmed their new Galaxy Tab4 line of low-end tablets, following leaks from @evleaks and leaks of the FCC documentation for the devices.

Three devices are in the lineup, the Galaxy Tab4 7.0, Galaxy Tab4 8.0 and Galaxy Tab 4 10.1, each differentiated in name by the size of the display.

The design of the tablets is certainly improved from previous models, and has thinner bezels and a lighter form factor. The design is reminiscent of the company's high-end Galaxy TabPRO and NotePRO series.

Under the hood is a different question, as the devices are not packed with high-end specs. The devices have 1200x800 resolution displays, a 1.2GHz quad-core processor, Android 4.4 with Samsung TouchWiz, 1.5GB RAM, 16GB internal storage as a base, a microSD slot for expanded storage, LTE support, and dual cameras: 1.3MP/3MP.

A strange development has occurred in Google's hardware Play Store.

If you are checking out the page for the old Nexus 10 (built by Samsung) underneath the price of the device are the words "coming soon" in regards to the shipping time.

The device has been discounted over the past few weeks at different retailers, with the expectation that Google was clearing out inventory ahead of a new announcement.

While the "coming soon" could just mean Google is waiting on a new shipment of the same tablet, there is hope that the oft-rumored second-generation Nexus 10 may be finally on the way. There have been rumors that Samsung, Asus or LG is building the tablet, which should feature high-end specs.

Check the page here.

Sources:
Google Play Store Nexus 10

The Twitter account of EA's Frostbite engine used April Fool's Day to poke some fun at Nintendo's Wii U system with several tweets, before removing them when users reacted negatively.

EA is not actively working on content for Nintendo's Wii U system, and on April 1 its @FrostbiteEngine twitter account trolled Nintendo with some phony tweets of upcoming content for the system and some cheap shots.

The tweets have since been removed, but not before gaming site Kotaku managed to note them.

"Frostbite now runs on the #WiiU since it is the most powerful Gen4 platform, our renderer is now optimized for Mario and Zelda," one tweet read. Frostbite is EA's videogame engine, and it doesn't work with Wii U.

"Frostbite will power #HalfLife3, coming out summer 2014! #WiiU exclusive," another tweet claimed.

"Good news, we have finally fixed and optimized our 'netcode'. Uses quantum entanglement for Zero Latency connections. Exclusively on #WiiU," the tweets continued, as the dead horse just lay there.

First thing to notice about the tweets is that they aren't all that funny or classy, and plenty of Twitter users responded negatively before the @FrostbiteEngine account promptly removed the tweets.