Latest news

Following the major security breach last month that allowed hackers to collect the usernames and phone numbers of 4.6 million users, Snapchat said earlier this week that it would update the application with a more secure version.

The new version will allow users to opt out of the "Find Friends" feature that was the cause of the breach. The company also says it will block all future attempts to abuse the service or its features.

Over a week after the hack, the company has finally apologized, as well.

Reads the company's blog post:

This morning we released a Snapchat update for Android and iOS that improves Find Friends functionality and allows Snapchatters to opt-out of linking their phone number with their username. This option is available in Settings > Mobile #.

This update also requires new Snapchatters to verify their phone number before using the Find Friends service.

Our team continues to make improvements to the Snapchat service to prevent future attempts to abuse our API. We are sorry for any problems this issue may have caused you and we really appreciate your patience and support.

Motorola has sweetened the pot for its Moto X, adding a free Google Chromecast dongle with purchases of the unlocked device.

The device costs $399 off-contract, and the Chromecast sells for $35 normally through retailers.

From today until January 14th, anyone purchasing the Moto X from Motorola's website will get the dongle free.

Live now, you have to use the promo "STREAM" during checkout.

Get the device here.

Lenovo will expand their Chromebook offerings in the next few months, giving yet another boost to Google's operating system.

Jay Parker, president for Lenovo's North American operations, says there will be "multiple Chromebook models" by the summer at different price points. Lenovo offers Chromebooks for the education market currently.

"I think Chromebooks can be very impactful in the market really quickly," Parker added. "We believe the market will accelerate greatly in the next 12 months."

Lenovo is the world's biggest PC maker, with just over 17 percent market share. The company has been expanding to tablets, smartphones and smart TVs over the past two years.

According to the WSJ, Dish Network will drop their $2.2 billion bid for the bankrupt spectrum owner LightSquared.

The company bid for LightSquared last May after it declared bankruptcy following the FCC denying its application to use L-block spectrum.

Dish has been actively looking to diversify over the past two years, but has been denied at every turn. The company tried to purchase wireless ISP Clearwire but was beaten out by Sprint. The company then tried to buy Sprint, but was outbid by Japanese carrier Softbank. LightSquared was another option for the satellite TV provider.

L-block spectrum is normally used for satellites, but LightSquared spent hundreds of millions redesigning networks to use the spectrum for 4G LTE networks. The FCC denied the application, saying the spectrum would interfere with current GPS services. Dish bid for the company for the spectrum, which they could use for satellite, or to re-apply with a different strategy.

The World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) has announced a new streaming TV app, ushering a new generation for the company that will not tie it to cable networks.

Vince McMahon, Stephanie McMahon, and Paul Levesque (aka Triple H) announced the WWE Network, which will archive all old WWE material and also stream current shows, PPV events and new, original series that will stream exclusively online.

The WWE Network will work on PC and Mac, Android, iOS, Roku, PlayStation, Xbox and other set-tops, as well. Google Chromecast is not officially on the list just yet, but eventually will be.

For $10 a month, users get access to the network, which will replay all currently aired shows (available on TV on USA, Ion and Syfy) and all 12 PPV events, including WrestleMania, will air live through the app with no added charge. The PPVs will likely be the biggest seller of the service, since the events cost $40 each to order.

WWE is a large enough brand that the move, if successful, could lead to more a la carte offerings. The network launches on February 24th in the U.S.

IBM has announced that it will invest $1 billion in a new Watson supercomputing division to exploit its abilities.

Watson is famous for wiping the floor with its human opponents on the U.S. TV quiz show Jeopardy in 2011, displaying its ability interpret natural language, mine massive amounts of information very quickly and respond in natural language.

It did so by rampaging through 200 million pages of stored information (including the entire of Wikipedia), identifying possible answers and providing the one with the highest probability.

Since Jeopardy, Watson went on to be used for utilization management decisions in lung cancer treatment at Memorial Sloan–Kettering Cancer Center.

IBM believes there are more commercial and scientific uses for Watson's abilities and so will invest $1 billion creating a division for it.

"I think [IBM has] developed something that takes us to the next step where information management needs to go," said Gartner researcher, Jamie Popkin.

Google has been fined €150,000 by a French watchdog after it ignored a three month ultimatum to bring its privacy policies in line with French law.

The dispute stems back to a March 2012 decision by Google to consolidate dozens of privacy policies across its web services into one policy that covers all its services, such as GMail, YouTube and Google+. It would combine its data collection and storage practices on its users across all services.

This immediately got the attention of consumer and privacy watchdogs around the world, particularly in Europe, as Google gave its users no choice to opt out of the change.

France's CNIL eventually ordered Google to change its practices to reflect the law in France, but Google apparently ignored the order, prompting the €150,000 fine. CNIL also ordered Google to display its ruling on its French homepage for a 48 hour period within 8 days of being informed.

"The company does not sufficiently inform its users of the conditions in which their personal data are processed, nor of the purposes of this processing," CNIL said in a statement.

Malicious advertisements that made their way onto Yahoo's mainpage may have turned millions of PCs into Bitcoin mining slaves.

Yahoo admitted that for a four day period, the malicious advertisements had managed to get onto its mainpage, putting its users in Europe at risk. Users in the United States, Asia and Latin America escaped the attack, but Dutch cybersecurity firm estimates as many as 27,000 infections were caused every hour.

"From December 31 to January 3 on our European sites, we served some advertisements that did not meet our editorial guidelines - specifically, they spread malware," a statement from Yahoo read.

For those affected, the attack essentially turned the infected machine into a Bitcoin mining bot for the attackers. This would affect the performance of the computer, and also use more electricity / battery charge.

Such Bitcoin mining botnets - or bitnets - are becoming more common as cybercriminals exploit the value of the creation process of Bitcoin currency and its real-world value to generate revenue.

Amazon will stream episodes of CBS' upcoming Spielberg-produced science fiction drama Extant four days after their air.

It will stream the new TV show episodes through its Prime Instant Video on Kindle and on game consoles, free to subscribers of the service, mirroring a similar deal it has with PBS for Downton Abbey.

Extant is a new science fiction drama that will air on CBS. It claims Steven Spielberg as executive producer and will star Halle Berry as Molly, a female astronaut who returns home to her family after spending a year in space.

CBS places a 13-episode straight-to-series order in August 2013. It will debut this summer.

Samsung intends to release the Galaxy S5 smartphone by April with significant design improvements, and is also studying the use of eye-scanning technology.

Samsung executive Lee Young Hee told Bloomberg that the South Korean firm is aware that its customers didn't notice much of a difference - in terms of design - between the Galaxy S3 and Galaxy S4 smartphones, but that there will be considerable changes for the Galaxy S5's design.

"When we moved to S4 from S3, it's partly true that consumers couldn't really feel much difference between the two products from the physical perspective, so the market reaction wasn't as big," she said.

"For the S5, we will go back to the basics. Mostly, it's about the display and the feel of the cover."

Of course, working on the cover and display will only get you so far in this highly competitive business, and given that the launch of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c appeared to cut into the Galaxy S4, the next Samsung flagship smartphone will have to find other ways to differentiate.

One area could be the use of an eye-scanner in Samsung's high-end devices.

The chief executives of Apple Inc. and Samsung Electronics have agreed to attend a mediation session in the coming weeks as they prepare to go to trial in a patent row.

The meeting will take place sometime between now and February 19, with only in-house lawyers accompanying Samsung CEO Oh-Hyun Kwon and Apple CEO Tim Cook. Legal teams for both consumer electronics firms reportedly met on January 6 to discuss settlement opportunities.

The mediation agreement comes ahead of a trial showdown in March over Apple's claims that Samsung infringed its patents in the design of its Galaxy-branded mobile devices.

U.S. juries have so far awarded Apple around $930 million in damages in previous trials between the two.

The upcoming Halo TV show will not be 'filler' and will be 'done the right way', Microsoft's Phil Spencer has assured fans of the popular franchise.

The show is in production at the Xbox Entertainment Studios and will be produced by Steven Spielberg, but Microsoft is not expanding the popular franchise to new media just to do it. That's according to Microsoft Studios VP Phil Spencer, who insists it will not be 'filler'.

"I definitely don't think of it as filler. Halo, you could argue, is the most important entertainment IP that Microsoft owns," Spencer said to OXM.

"I can't use the word filler anywhere near Halo, it just won't work. If we're going to do a television series with Halo, we're going to do it the right way, and we're going to do it because we think it really matters."

Spencer referred the Walking Dead series as an example of a successful IP across media.

"I'm a big Walking Dead fan. I've read the comics and graphic novels; the IP has grown and became more accessible as it hit TV, then went to video games where it did incredibly well, and I think that strategy of growing and deepening what the franchise and IP is about is a good strategy for an IP holder," he said.

Shares in retailer GameStop fell 9 percent earlier this week as Sony detailed its new PlayStation Now game streaming/rental service at CES.

It would appear investors are cooling to GameStop as Sony offers customers a way to stream older PlayStation games to their PS4 and other devices. Customers will use PlayStation Now as a rental service either on a game by game basis, or through a subscription package.

The service is powered by Gaikai, which was acquired by Sony for $380 million in mid-2012.

PlayStation Now and similar services could affect GameStop's business if it reduces the number of customers shopping for games from previous generations. Of course, PlayStation Now and other streaming services still face limitations in the form of high-speed Internet availability for seamless gameplay.

Just under three years ago, GameStop acquired Spawn Labs' streaming service, which is being worked on by the retailers' R&D department.

Motorola has sent out press invites for an event on January 14th where the company will launch a new "addition to the European Motorola family of products."

It is unclear what the next product will be, but it will most likely be the next in the Moto X family that launched last year.

At the time, the company said, "essentially, the Moto X is the first device in a new product portfolio, basically a new family of devices. Because it is the first one, the Moto X has had a real buzz around it, but the US launch is not about the US being Motorola's priority at all, there are devices coming to Europe. We can't share what they are as of yet, but they are from the same family. They are cool and they are exciting and there is a lot in Europe coming up."

The event takes place in London.

Dell promised to unveil a 4K PC monitor for "sub-$1000" at CES and they have certainly followed through on that promise.

The company has revealed their 28-inch P2815Q UltraHD monitor for just $699, going on sale later this month. The monitor has 3840x2160 resolution.

Dell did not reveal other specs. Even Dell's other UltraSharp 4K models are priced at double or triple the P2815Q so the specs are likely lower everywhere except for the screen.

The monitor will likely lose some of the ports seen in previous models, such as DisplayPort, mini-DisplayPort, and 6-in-1 media card readers, but that remains unclear.

Both Lenovo and Asus also used CES to unveil cheaper 4K monitors at the 28-inch size, but theirs will sell for $799.