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Last year, Microsoft announced it was purchasing Nokia's devices and services businesses for $7.2 billion, following regulatory approval on multiple continents.

Expected to close in March, the companies have confirmed that the deal will close instead in April.

Reads the short press release:

Nokia today announced that it now expects the transaction whereby the company will sell substantially all of its Devices & Services business and license its patents to Microsoft to close in April 2014. This compares with Nokia's previous expectation on the transaction closing in the first quarter of 2014, which Nokia communicated when the company first announced the transaction on September 3, 2013. Nokia and Microsoft remain committed to the transaction.

As previously communicated, the closing of the transaction is subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions. Nokia and Microsoft have already received most of the required regulatory approvals, including approvals from the European Commission and the U.S. Department of Justice. Furthermore, Nokia and Microsoft continue to make good progress related to the closing conditions and integration planning. However, the transaction is pending approvals from certain antitrust authorities in Asia which are still conducting their reviews.

Ex-Microsoft software architect Alex Kibkalo has been arrested and is now facing criminal charges of leaking trade secrets.

Supposedly, the programmer received a poor performance review and thought it would be wise to get some payback on the Redmond giant by leaking Windows 8 code and screenshots to a French tech blogger. Additionally, he leaked some Windows 7 program files and an internal system to fight software piracy called the "Activation Server Software Development Kit."

Microsoft brought their concerns to the FBI in July, after their own corporate investigators tagged him as leaking the Windows 8 code. Kibkalo is said to have admitted giving the info to the blogger, after meeting in an online forum.

Kibkalo worked for Microsoft in Russia and Lebanon. The Activation Server SDK was spread around with the ultimate goal of having developers reverse engineer the code and easily crack the protection on Microsoft products. In September, 2012, the blogger sent the SDK to a Microsoft employee to have it verified for authenticity. The employee went right to a supervisor who notified corporate investigations.

Michael Robertson, the former CEO of now-defunct digital music locker MP3tunes, has been found liable for copyright infringement in the long-standing case brought by the record labels, namely EMI Group.

In addition, MP3tunes was found to be willfully blind to copyright infringement on its site, allowing unauthorized music to be distributed and saved to cloud lockers. MP3tunes also sold independent music without DRM starting in 2005.

Following the verdict, jurors will now decide on damages for all of the copyright claims.

EMI filed the suit in 2007, claiming the company's services "enabled infringement of copyrights in sound recordings, musical compositions and cover art." There were over 2100 copyrights abused, said EMI. During the trial, Robertson's lawyers argued he should not be held liable, and that the record companies had made most of the music available online for free as promotional copies.

If users were abusing the locker system, MP3tunes shut down those accounts, argued the lawyer. It appears, the jury did not agree. MP3tunes declared bankruptcy in 2012, so it is unclear what kind of damages will ever make it to the coffers at EMI, which has also since been broken up and acquired by multiple parties.

According to Billboard, Apple is finally considering launching iTunes for Android, as well as an unlimited on-demand streaming service to rival Spotify, Google All Play and the rumored upcoming Amazon Prime Music.

Apple would launch its popular music store for Android because digital downloads have now possibly peaked and are in decline. Streaming services have taken much of the share, as physical music demand continues its trend to zero.

Overall, digital downloads saw a 1 percent decline year-over-year to $2.4 billion while total music industry sales stayed stagnant at $7 billion, where it has been for the last 4 years.

Android is the top smartphone operating system on the planet, by far, so adding iTunes could bring in a new demographic of customers. The service will directly compete with Google's own Play Store.

HTC will be livestreaming its official announcement and unveiling of the All New HTC One (One 2014).

The company is announcing the device in just under two days at dual events in London and New York City.

Updating their previous flagship, the new device has a 5-inch 1080p screen, a Snapdragon 801 processor, dual UltraPixel cameras and run on Android 4.4 right out of the box along with the latest HTC Sense user interface.

HTC has also added a microSD slot for the device, which should be a welcome upgrade for consumers who like lots of apps and have large collections of music and movies.

Check for more info here.

After months of rumors that the app would be shut down, Twitter has confirmed the death of its #Music service.

The iOS app is already gone from the App Store but if you have it installed already the service will continue to run until April 18th.

April 18th is the one-year anniversary of when the microblogging giant launched the app.

Download numbers were never great, and project boss Kevin Thau left his position late last year to join Jelly.

Walmart has begun offering a nice $50 discount on the new Titanfall Xbox One bundle, selling the console for $450.

The deal is available both online and in-store, although it has sold out online in quick order.

Walmart has also made the standard console available for the same price, if you aren't a fan of Titanfall and multiplayer mech fighting.

By itself, Titanfall sells for $60, making the $450 deal a nice discount for those looking to get the console.

Check it here.

The Canadian-based hip-hop group "Aint No Love" has become the first to accept Bitcoin with their latest album.

Aint No Love has made their album, 'Tears of Joy' available on iTunes but also on BitTorrent for free, through FrostWire and its newly introduced Bitcoin tipping option.

New February builds of Frostwire for Windows, Mac and Linux includes the feature. Besides Bitcoin, the donation feature also supports less widely used Litecoin, Dogecoin and industry standard PayPal.

When clicking through, you will be met with a custom donation page, the first time torrents have had a true monetization option. "Using Bitcoin has definitely widened our reach to people who don't necessarily listen to our type of music, but like that we get down with Bitcoin, and started listening to our music, which is a cool thing in itself," says lead singer Saidah Conrad (via TF).

Google has updated the image files used by YouTube to its own, lean WebP format, and says the site should now run much quicker.

The company has used the image format for its Play Store on Android (and on the Web) for some time now.

Reads the blog post:

The WebP team at Google focuses on making the web better through smaller, faster-loading images. We've seen that WebP compares favorably with other contemporary image formats, but our team has been hard at work to make WebP even faster and more capable. A few months ago, we added support for animated WebP images to Chrome, making WebP the first unified format that can address the key use cases of JPEG, PNG and GIF files. The recent release of libwebp 0.4.0, currently in Chrome's Beta channel, is a culmination of numerous encoder and decoder optimizations that make encoding lossless images twice as fast, and decrease lossless decode time by 25%.

While the WebP team was delivering these improvements, other teams at Google have been busy deploying WebP in their own products. Google Play's online store, redesigned mid-last year, replaced png images with lossless WebP, reducing image file sizes by nearly 35%. Another major WebP rollout is currently in progress: YouTube video thumbnails are starting to be served in WebP with initial results indicating up to a 10% reduction in page load time.

Microsoft has announced this week that it will give you $100 off a new Surface Pro 2 or select new PCs valued at $599 or more if you decide to get rid of that old Windows XP machine.

If you are near a Microsoft store, you can bring the old device in for trade-in, or if you are purchasing online you just have to make the purchase from a computer that Microsoft detects as running Windows XP. While this hardly seems fair to someone near a Microsoft store, there are only a few locations anyway and those consumers can opt to buy online, also.

In addition, Microsoft is offering free 90-day premium support for the new device and a free PC migration software to bring all your data, apps and preferences over to your new computer.

The deal ends June 15th, and Microsoft's support of Windows XP ends next month.

Check the select PCs and more details here.

Earlier this week, Microsoft unveiled the next step for their gaming graphics API, DirectX 12.

The key enhancement of the upgrade will be on performance. PC utilization will be improved significantly, better spreading the computing across multiple cores.

Reads the company's blog post:

DirectX 12 introduces the next version of Direct3D, the graphics API at the heart of DirectX. Direct3D is one of the most critical pieces of a game or game engine, and we've redesigned it to be faster and more efficient than ever before. Direct3D 12 enables richer scenes, more objects, and full utilization of modern GPU hardware. And it isn't just for high-end gaming PCs either – Direct3D 12 works across all the Microsoft devices you care about. From phones and tablets, to laptops and desktops, and, of course, Xbox One, Direct3D 12 is the API you've been waiting for.

Two more streaming radio services have dropped music curating provider The Echo Nest, less than a month after it was acquired by market leader Spotify.

Rdio was the first to drop the service, last week, followed by Rhapsody and Napster (same company) today.

Says Rhapsody: "Echo Nest has been a good partner, but we have never been completely satisfied with recommendations from any third party." The company will now "invest heavily" in their own technologies, and that users should not experience any difference.

Spotify, at the time of acquisition, said the company would remain independent and that all existing contracts would be fulfilled, even with rival services.

The company still powers Vevo, MTV, MOG, IHeartRadio and more.

Sony has unveiled their first original TV show available via PlayStation consoles, a supernatural thriller called "Powers."

"It's about having a broad range of broadcast content to replicate the live TV experience," president and group CEO of Sony Computer Entertainment Andrew House added.

The show is being produced by Sony Pictures TV, and will be streamable through the PlayStation Network just like other content.

Sony says the show will be a "fantasy drama" about a group of people with supernatural powers. Differentiating itself from other similar plot lines, the main character is a detective investigating crimes committed by those with superhero abilities.

"It overlays extremely well with the demographics of the PlayStation," CEO of Sony Entertainment Michael Lynton noted, when asked about whether gamers would buy into the show. It remains unclear when it will "air" and if it will cost money.

Rival Microsoft announced last year an initiative to bring original content to the Xbox.

MtGox, the major Bitcoin exchange that filed for bankruptcy earlier this year, has said in a statement that they have found 200,000 of their missing bitcoins.

The coins were found in an old digital wallet from 2011, and have a value of about $115 million.

Despite the major find, the company is still missing 650,000 of its own and customer's bitcoins.

"MtGox had certain old-format wallets which were used in the past and which, MtGox thought, no longer held any bitcoins," said Mt Gox CEO Mark Karpeles, "however on March 7, 2014, MtGox confirmed that an old-format wallet which was used prior to June 2011 held a balance of approximately 200,000 bitcoin."

To avoid having the new find stolen by hackers, the coins were moved to offline wallets this week.

Hackers have stolen the rest of the coins, which amount to about 7 percent of all bitcoins ever mined.

Turkey's telecommunications regulator has blocked Twitter, following a threat by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

There is a major election next week, and the PM has been linked to a massive corruption probe in the nation. The government was recently given expanded oversight over the Internet, and is apparently not afraid to use it.

Turkey is one of the most social media-friendly nations in the world, with 79 percent of citizens using some form of service, including Twitter and Facebook. Twitter claims Turkey is a top 10 user of the microblogging platform, globally.

Erdogan has called Twitter a "malice to society" and threatened to "eradicate" it earlier today. "Access to Twitter may be blocked as a last resort to avert the unjust treatment of our citizens in case of a continuation of this ignorance of the court rulings," the PM's office said in a statement. Courts have ruled that certain links were to be removed, but users kept on retweeting them anyways.

Twitter has seen restrictions and outright bans in nations where there are no restrictions on freedoms, including China, Iran, North Korea, Cuba, Libya, Pakistan and Syria.