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If all smartphones and tablets came with a Kill Switch that could render them inoperable remotely, it could save consumers $2.5 billion per year in the U.S.

That's according to William Duckworth, a statistics professor at Creighton University. His research found that consumers spend around $500 million replacing devices that have been stolen per annum.

When you take into account the money spent by consumers on insurance policies, it gets even worse. According to the study, consumers spend around $2 billion ever year on premium insurance plans obtained through their carrier.

So what is a kill switch? Simply put, a kill switch is a mechanism by which a stolen device could be rendered completely inoperable remotely. This protects consumers on two fronts; the first being that personal information on stolen devices may be inaccessible once it's remotely killed, and the second in a broader sense would reduce crime.

Arguments for and against

An astonishing amount of robberies in the United States involve mobile devices, with estimates reaching up to a third of all thefts in some places. Police and policymakers have often dubbed the problem "apple picking", and see a major disincentive being created for criminals if devices came with Kill Switches by default.

By accounts, the foray of Google's Chromecast dongle into Europe has been a success thus far, as BT Sport joins BBC iPlayer in embracing it.

Chromecast was only officially launched in European markets two weeks ago, but already the indications are that Google's video-beaming dongle is in demand. In the UK, Dixons revealed that it has sold Chromecast every 4.5 seconds on the launch day, comparing the demand to that of Apple's iPad launches.

In Norway, retail chain Elkjøp ran out of supply and had to order an additional 40,000 units from Google to keep up with demand.

Google has sold millions of Chromecasts so far, even though it has just officially entered the European market. The useful tool allows owners beam certain content from PCs, smartphones and tablets to a connected television wirelessly.

Chromecast got a major boost when support was added for BBC's iPlayer app, and now it has also received another in the UK with support for BT Sport reportedly on the horizon too.

BT Sport channels are available to subscribers of BT Broadband services.

(via: Engadget)

The new Xbox boss, Phil Spencer, has promised gamers that gaming will be at the core of taking the brand forward.

Spencer got the nod from Satya Nadella to head up Xbox, Xbox Live, and creative teams including Xbox Music, Xbox Video and Microsoft Studios, and he wants to focus on the strength of gaming for the Xbox One platform and Xbox Live services going forward.

"The growth of the Xbox community, with over 80 million Xbox owners around the world, is built on the foundation of exclusive franchises, new and original IP and the world's most popular cross-platform games," Spencer said.

"Games and gamers have always been at the core of Xbox and the core of my work--and gaming will be our core as we take Xbox forward."

Spencer described the past year as a growth experience for him personally, and for the entire Xbox team. The mission is to build a world-class team to meet the high expectations of a passionate fan base, and create the best gamers and entertainment content.

Spencer obtained his new position at Microsoft as chief executive officer Satya Nadella reforms Microsoft's business units to turn around the company's waning presence in key areas.

LinkedIn has responded to reports about a browser plug-in that claimed to be able to hack e-mail addresses of any users.

The Sell Hack browser plug-in can be installed in Chrome, Safari or Firefox, and it adds a "Hack In" button to every LinkedIn profile that you visit. It claims that with just a click of this button, it can dump the e-mail address information associated with the profile.

Early reports suggested that the tool somehow compromises LinkedIn's system to dump the e-mail addresses. However, at closer look, the plug-in clearly does not work for every profile that you try, whereas it appears to work for profiles of well known individuals.

That led quickly to more skeptical-types assuming that the plug-in is using some other means to find information available elsewhere about a particular user.

According to LinkedIn's senior manager of corporate communications, Krista Canfield, no LinkedIn data has been compromised by the plug-in, and the e-mail addresses that are revealed are not done so through any breach, bug or vulnerability with the site.

LinkedIn warns users on the risks of the plug-in

On Monday, Canfield confirmed that the service had sent a cease and desist letter to address "several violations," and she warned against users installing the plugin.

According to the Asian Nikkei, Apple is in talks to purchase a majority stake in Japanese LCD chip supplier Renesas SP Drivers.

The company designs chips for smartphone displays, and is a joint venture between Renesas, Sharp and Taiwan-based Powerchip.

Apple is reportedly looking into buying Renesas' entire 55 percent stake in the venture for 50 billion yen ($480 million). The company had sales of 60 billion yen last year, with a profit of 6 billion yen ($58 million). If the deal goes through, Sharp will also likely sell their 25 percent stake to Apple.

If accurate, Apple is looking to complete the acquisition by the summer, keeping all of the venture's 240 employees in Japan. Renesas SP is the world's top producer of drivers and controllers for midsize LCDs, with a market share of around 32 percent. The controllers determine energy efficiency for smartphones.

Apple has released models of their iPad Air and iPad Mini with Retina Display with TD-LTE support for the Chinese market.

The new devices will mark the first time Apple's newest products will have support for the 4G network in China.

Says Apple: "The new iPad models give customers the ability to connect to today's most advanced cellular data networks at blazingly fast speeds, so users can surf the web or download email and apps even faster. iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display models supporting TD-LTE also accommodate the TD-SCDMA mobile standard, and join existing iPad Air and iPad mini with Retina display WLAN + Cellular models in support of Personal Hotspot connectivity and other advanced cellular technology (GSM/EDGE, DC-HSDPA, HSPA+) to provide customers in China fast cellular access in whichever iPad model they choose."

Just a week after Amazon once again cut its prices for its cloud services, Microsoft has matched with price cuts for their Azure service.

Azure will see price cuts for compute fall by up to 25 percent, and storage price falls by up to 65 percent. Block Blob storage prices will also fall 65 percent for LRS and 44 percent for GRS, adds the software giant.

Amazon's prices take effect today while Microsoft's will take effect on May 1st.

In addition, Microsoft has announced other service changes:

OpenText is demanding $268 million in damages from cloud storage company Box, alleging over 200 violations of patent infringement.

The company, which provides enterprise information management software, is also asking for preliminary and permanent injunctions of many of Box's products. The original suit with filed last June, and claims Box is infringing on 12 patents.

Box offers free online storage for consumers and businesses, while charging subscription fees for expanded storage and other premium features.

The company has plans to go public this year, and could be valued in the billions. For the fiscal year ended January 31st, Box saw revenue of $124.2 million, doubling from the year before. Box is not profitable, however, losing money every year since 2005 when it launched.

Every year on April 1, many tech companies and publications put out bogus stories, launch bogus services and make wild claims all in the spirit of fun to celebrate April Fool's Day.

This year is not any different, with some of the usual suspects having a bit of fun. Google is notorious for its April Fool's pranks, and this year treated us all to some more. Firstly, Google planted Pokemon on its Google Maps service, making a challenge for us to find 150 of them, while also replacing its own headquarters with a Pokemon center, along with other notable locations.

In another case, Google's Chrome for Android and iOS got an important feature which allows you to translate a website into emoji. Also, don't forget Google Naps, a new way to utilize Google Maps to find the best place nearby to take a nap!

Another Google property, YouTube, put out a video showing all the new trends it intends to set in 2014, such as "clocking", where you record yourself pretending that you are a ticking clock. Neato!

According to multiple sources, Yahoo is in talks to acquire the major online video service News Distribution Network (NDN), a move that fits right in-line with the company's reported plans to create a video content service to rival YouTube.

The portal site could pay up to $300 million for NDN, and the sources claim the talks are still in preliminary stages.

NDN was quick to deny the rumors, as is standard, stating "We are not in talks to get acquired by Yahoo at this time."

The video service gives news outlets and Web publishers clips about news, sports, politics and other major topics and owning NDN could help Yahoo significantly by expanding its video offerings to thousands of new partners. The company has a catalog of over 100,000 videos, most from local TV news stations. It sells the videos to major news outlets like Bloomberg, and also sells ads to accompany the videos. NDN had 573 million video views in January, making it the fourth-largest video service on the planet.

Yesterday, smartwatch maker Pebble desperately asked its users not to install version 2.1 of their iOS app, as it was broken for many users and had a critical flaw that could break the sync between the watch and the application.

The company said the v2.1 glitch affected "connecting, loading, and managing" the watch.

Pebble announced earlier today that they have submitted a fix to the iOS App Store, and are asking for an expedited review given the nature of the update.

For the time being, Pebble has hidden the app to avoid manual downloads, but it can still be automatically updated if you have such updates enabled through iOS.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has dropped his salary to $1 per year, following the path of other billionaire tech moguls like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, Sergey Brin and others.

Zuckerberg took a $1 salary in 2013 and will do so again in 2014. This follows a base salary of $503,205 in 2012. His overall compensation was $653,165, mainly for use of his private planes and security, fees, fuel, crew and catering costs.

The CEO is one of the richest men in the world, with a current wealth of over $25 billion due to his large ownership stake in the social media giant.

Last year, Zuckerberg sold 60 million shares valued at $3.3 billion, while gifting another 18 million to charity.

Marvell Technology has seen its penalties increase for infringing on hard drive patents owned by Carnegie Mellon University.

Last year, a jury awarded the University $1.17 billion over the patents related to how accurately hard disk- drive circuits read data from high-speed magnetic disks. Mellon first sued Marvell in March 2009 over the patents issued in 2002.

The University said at least nine different Marvell circuit devices used the patents and Marvell sold billions of chips using the technology without permission. The jury agreed. This week, a federal judge increased the damages to $1.54 billion although the award was much less than the maximum $3.75 billion Carnegie was seeking.

"This award is sufficient to penalize Marvell for its egregious behavior and to deter future infringement activities," the judge wrote in his decision. The $3.75 billion in damages would have "severely prejudiced" Marvell and could have threatened the company's future, added the judge.

Speaker hardware company Jawbone has confirmed the acquisition of Playground.fm, the social music playlist app.

Although the terms were undisclosed, sources claim the acquisition cost Jawbone "eight figures." Jawbone has a valuation near $3 billion after raising $250 million last year, and is expected to go public this year.

Playground is free on iOS and claims to be "human-powered radio" which pulls data from your social media and Spotify to build a personalized, curated radio station.

While the service itself is popular, Jawbone likely made the purchase for Playground's patents and its team. One of the top executives is Mehul Trivedi, Apple's original iOS audio engineer.

There is now speculation that Jawbone could start its own Internet radio service that could be included with the company's Jambox products.

Marking the third time in recent weeks that a VR engineer has left Valve, developer Aaron Nicholls is the latest to join Oculus VR.

Oculus confirmed the move through Twitter, stating simply "We're thrilled to welcome Aaron Nicholls to the team! He'll be working out of the Bellevue R&D lab with Atman and crew."

Nicholls helped code and also managed on hit games like Gears of War, Halo 3 and Jade Empire for Microsoft Studios before joining Valve in 2010 to help with design, gameplay and systems.

Facebook recently acquired Oculus VR for $2 billion, bringing the future of gaming to the mainstream.

Last week, Oculus VR announced the hiring of Michael Abrash as its Chief Scientist, a major industry vet leaving Valve. In the tweet, the Atman mentioned is Atman Binstock, who was also previously an engineer on Valve's virtual reality projects.