Latest news

Sony has pushed out PS4 firmware version 1.51 today, "boosting" overall stability of the console.

In addition, the minor patch brings some UI tweaks, says Sony.

Reads the blog post: "With this minor required update, stability of system software has been improved. In addition, minor refinements to elements of the system UI (such as clearly indicating when a user downloads a game and a game patch at the same time) have been introduced."

"In the North American region, automatic downloads for system and game updates are enabled by default when PS4 is in stand-by mode," added Lempel. "Once system software update 1.51 is available later tonight, your PS4 will automatically download it, enabling you to update quickly and easily."

The system launched on November 15th and has seen two required updates so far.

For Apple fans who like to shop online, your experience just got easier.

The Cupertino giant has released their dedicated Apple Store app for the iPad, bringing a gesture-based UI and a list of all available Apple products, including tablets, smartphones and accessories.

As compared to its iPhone equivalent, the iPad app allows you to change the amount of products shown on the screen with pinch to zoom, and you can even remove all texts to see a minimalist 4 x 6 grid of product photos.

Would-be buyers can purchase and customize the products directly through the app before purchasing or setting up in-store pickup.

Additionally, the app brings a "Now Trending" section, an always updating listing of the most popular products based on user purchases, reviews or what they are sharing socially.

Get the app here.

Cupid Media, the company behind niche online dating sites like ChristianCupid.com, was hacked earlier this year and over 42 million unencrypted names, dates of birth, emails and passwords were stolen.

The hack took place in January, and the company did not admit to it until forced to by security researcher Brian Krebs.

Krebs discovered the files on the same server where user information stolen from Adobe last month was being stored. Adobe used some low-end encryption on their data, but Cupid Media almost shockingly stored everything in plain text.

Cupid Media's managing director Andrew Bolton says that in January when the hack occurred, "we took what we believed to be appropriate actions to notify affected customers and reset passwords for a particular group of user accounts. We are currently in the process of double-checking that all affected accounts have had their passwords reset and have received an email notification."

Only active users have been notified, which Bolton says "is considerably less than the 42 million that you have previously quoted". Since the breach, the company has begun salting and hashing, an industry standard that is also easily broken but at least offers some protection.

MOGA has announced the launch of the first iOS 7 game controller today, the Ace Power.

The controller plugs into the lightning port of the iPhone 5, 5C, 5S and fifth-generation iPod Touch, and has standard dual analog sticks, a D-pad, multiple action buttons and trigger L1/R1/L2/R2 buttons.

Additionally, the controller will charge your device while in use, allowing for extended gameplay time.

Many who have reviewed the controller have panned it, however, citing a lack of testing by developers who may have already implemented support into their apps. For example, the virtual buttons still show up on the screen regardless of whether the controller is plugged in or not.

Furthermore, there is huge noticeable lag when trying to play via AirPlay, making it unusable.

At $99, most reviewers claim the controller feels cheap, but it will be available in Apple retail stores as well as online if you want to test it.

Amazon has dropped the price of the Verizon model of the Motorola Moto X, selling the standard black and white case units for just one cent with a new two-year contract.

The deal represents the cheapest offer on the flagship device, so far, as it costs $99 to get a customized version through Moto Maker.

Yesterday, Motorola began rolling out Android 4.4 KitKat for the device, so at one penny the Moto X from Amazon is certainly the cheapest way to get your hands on the latest Android.

The device has a 4.7-inch AMOLED 720p display, Android 4.4 (with minor Motorola bloat), a 10MP "ClearPixel" camera, and a new Motorola X8 chipset that includes a powerful 1.7GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4, an Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB RAM and built-in specialized processors for natural language processing. The Moto X has a motion-sensitive Active Display, always-on Google Now voice commands and a camera activation gesture that requires just two wrist twists.

In October, Apple CEO Tim Cook took to Twitter to celebrate the approval of Apple's new 'spaceship' campus by the Cupertino City Council.

After that approval, the council needed one more approval vote (mainly a formality) and as of this morning, the campus has received its final approval.

Construction is slated to begin this year as Apple demolishes the current HP office buildings that stand at the site.

As part of the approval, Apple will begin a 20-year-long development agreement with Cupertino and increase the annual taxes it pays to the city. Last year, the council refunded 50 percent of the taxes Apple paid, $12.7 million, and moving forward that figure will be 35 percent.

Apple has dubbed the building "Campus 2," and it is almost one mile in circumference with 3.1 million square feet. The location will house an Office, Research and Development Building, a 1,000 seat Corporate Auditorium, a Corporate Fitness Center, 300,000 feet of Research Facilities, a Central Plant, a 150-acre interior courtyard and be home to 12,000 employees.

Russian email giant Mail.ru has expanded to the U.S. with the new brand name, My.com, launching an email, IM and gaming service.

myMail is an email client for iOS and Android users that allows for Gmail, AOL, Outlook and Yahoo to be supported (and other POP/IMAP) and includes realtime push notifications when you receive emails.

Mail.ru's new myChat application is an IM service similar to WhatsApp, Line and others, and offers instant messaging, VoIP and voice calling. There is also, of course, emojis and stickers.

The company confirmed that the myCamera photo editing app would be coming soon.

Check out the new offerings here.

As leaked last month, Comcast has made their Xfinity TV Store available, selling movies and TV shows through user's cable boxes.

Until now, Comcast had offered pay-per-view and VOD rentals, but the new Store offers permanent downloads.

Pricing will be similar to rivals, such as Vudu, iTunes, Google and Amazon.

Comcast says you can steam the videos on PCs if you prefer using the Xfinity Purchases site, and iOS and Android apps are already available, as well.

More information via Comcast's video:

Gaming sotfware company E-Sports Entertainment Association (ESEA) has been fined $1 million after it was discovered they secretly added Bitcoin mining software as part of a standard product update this year.

14,000 customers received the code, which helped ESEA mine 30 Bitcoins over two weeks in May. At current prices, those coins are worth a little over $17,000. "What transpired the past two weeks is a case of an employee acting on his own and without authorization to access our community through our company's resources," ESEA co-founder Craig Levine said at the time.

The company blamed a single employee, who has been fired. Regardless, the company is facing a class-action lawsuit in California over the situation.

As part of the settlement, ESEA will pay $325,000 of the fine, and will only need to pay the rest of the penalty if it is ever caught "misbehaving" again. "These defendants illegally hijacked thousands of people's personal computers without their knowledge or consent, and in doing so gained the ability to monitor their activities, mine for virtual currency that had real dollar value, and otherwise invade and damage their computers," the attorney general's office said.

Qualcomm unveiled a new set of chips today, including the Snapdragon 805 aimed at mobile devices and UltraHD streaming.

The quad-core processor will "deliver the highest-quality mobile video, imaging, and graphics experiences" and the company confirms it is the best performing chip to date. The Snapdragon 805 includes the Adreno 420 graphics processor, "with up to 40 percent more graphics processing power" than current Adreno 330 chips. The chip can be clocked up to 2.5 GHz per core. Furthermore, it's "able to stream more video content at higher quality using less power and it allows for sharper, higher resolution photos in low light and advanced post-processing features."

Additionally, the company also unveiled its Gobi 9x35 fourth-generation 4G LTE modem, and a new RF transceiver chip, the WTR3925. Both of these wildly improved chips display "significant improvements in performance, power consumption, and printed circuit board area requirements." The Gobi 9x35 used 20nm dye, the smallest yet, allowing for even thinner and lighter devices moving forward.

Amazon has updated the operating system of their popular Kindle Paperwhite e-reader, following a similar update to their Kindle Fire HD line of tablets.

Among the new enhancements are Goodreads integration and new parental controls. Amazon says the rollout is expected wirelessly over the coming days or it can be manually installed by downloading the file through Amazon.

For Goodreads, which Amazon purchased earlier this year, you will be able to directly share passages from the book with Goodreads friends, as well as see what others are reading. You can then rate the book after you are done.

On the parental control side, Kindle "FreeTime" allows parents to set daily and long-term reading goals, which come with achievement awards

Google has made their Nexus Wireless Charger available this week through the Google Play Store.

The charger is a small, 60 x 60 x 12.5 mm all-black box that can charge a Nexus 4, Nexus 5 and Nexus 7 FHD (along with other Qi-compatible devices).

Priced at $49.99, the charger will ship in one to two business days.

If you are interested, you can get the charger here: Nexus Wireless Charger

According to a Snapchat spokesperson, the company is now processing 400 million photos per day, even more than Facebook.

Facebook, the king of social media, said recently that users upload 350 million photos per day.

It is unclear how Snapchat is calculating their figure, but Cnet suggests that the company counts the same "snap" multiple times as most Snapchat users send the same message to multiple friends.

Numbers appear to be jumping, as CEO Evan Spiegel announced in June that 200 million snaps were being uploaded daily.

Snapchat recently turned down multiple cash offers above $3 billion, waiting instead for higher offers or to go public.

Motorola has announced today that the new Android 4.4 KitKat operating system is now available to Moto X owners, at least if you are on Verizon.

The rollout will begin just three weeks after the launch of the Google Nexus 5 (and with it, KitKat) and it even beats Google's older Nexus devices like the Nexus 4, and the Google Play Experience versions of the Samsung Galaxy S4 and HTC One.

Motorola's Moto X, which features an almost stock Android, will get the 4.4 updates, including the new UI refresh, emojis, smart dialer and Google Now enhancements.

Other carriers will begin their Moto X Android 4.4 rollouts "very soon."

More info here.

Microsoft has confirmed today that its live gameplay streaming feature has been delayed until next year.

The streaming, which uses Twitch.tv, will be made available during the "first part" of 2014.

Says Microsoft: "We know the ability to instantly broadcast gameplay is something the gaming community is excited about, and we are too. We are working to ensure the initial Twitch on Xbox One broadcasting experience meets the expectations of the Twitch community, so while this feature won't be available right away, we'll let you know as soon as it is ready. Our goal is to deliver it during the first part of 2014."

Twitch and live streaming is available on the PlayStation 4, which has quickly become one of the more popular features of the new console.

Although the streaming is delayed, Xbox One owners will still be able to record gameplay clips for up to five minutes and then upload them to SkyDrive or Xbox Live. Gamers can also view outside streams through Twitch while they wait for the app to be updated next year.