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Ubisoft has announced that its expected blockbuster open-world title 'Watch Dogs' will reach North American shores on November 19th.

The game will be available for the PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U and on PC at that date. European gamers will have to wait until the 22nd.

Additionally, the PlayStation 4 version will be available as a launch title for the new console, whatever date that happens to be in November.

Finally, Ubisoft says the game will be headed to "other next generation consoles," as well, giving next-gen Xbox fans some hope that they will get a crack at the game this year.

Here is one trailer for the game:

Apple has announced it will be selling $17 billion worth of bonds this year, a record for U.S. investment-grade corporate debt.

The offering was so popular it generated $50 billion in orders.

Demand was so high that underwriters were able to lower the expected yields for the bonds.

Apple's debt offering is in six pieces. Four of the pieces are fixed-rate, being offered with maturities of 3, 5, 10 or 30 years. There are also two tranches of variable rate debt with 3 and 5 year maturities, based on current LIBOR pricing.

Thanks to record low rates for government Treasury bonds, the Apple bonds will not offer too high of a yield. The three year will offer 0.25 percent higher yield than the comparable Treasury, the five year will offer 0.45 higher, 0.80 higher on the 10-year and just 1.05 percent higher on the 30 year.

Apple was recently given the second best credit rating, AA+. Apple has $145 billion in cash, but only $45 billion is liquid and available in the U.S. Bringing the funds home would cost the company a mini fortune in taxes. Instead, they will offer the debt here to fund their $100 billion buyback for investors.

Google has made their excellent Google Now software available to iOS users.

Now comes as part of a broad update to the iOS Google Search app and is compatible with both the iPhone and the iPad. Nearly all of Google's information cards are ported from Android and the service itself is almost identical in look.

While Google Now does support iOS background location feature, it cannot do the same background sync Android users are accustomed to so pulling up locations may take slightly longer. High priority Now card alers will also not use the iOS notification system. Finally, it can pull events from your Google Calendar not the local Apple one.

Says the company: "As with many Google products, Android (and Nexus devices) always give you the best Google experience, but we aim to make our services available to as many people as possible. Android offers more integration opportunities than iOS."

Sony has made its impressive Xperia Tablet Z available for pre-order.

The new tab is a full-sized 10.1-inch tablet that is just 6.9mm thick, even thinner than the iPad Mini.

Under the hood, the tablet runs on Android 4.1, features a 1920x1200 resolution, a quad-core 1.5GHz processor, LTE, NFC, and IR blaster and an 8MP "backside-illuminated sensor" camera. It is all powered by a large 6000mAh battery. Sony also says the device is fully waterproof and dustproof.

Finally, the company is promoting a new feature it calls "S-Force Front Surround 3D," which supposedly helps convey a feeling of surround sound and spacial movement.

"Xperia Tablet Z sets new standards in entertainment by matching premium specifications and Sony technology with cross-device connectivity and a consistent user-experience," said Kaz Tajima, Corporate Vice President, Head of UX Creative Design and Planning, at Sony Mobile Communications. "Xperia Tablet Z reinforces our intention to be a leading player in the premium Android device market, by building on the principles established by Xperia Z and perfectly optimising them for the tablet form factor."

LG has unveiled the Optimus GK, another powerful 5-inch LTE device to be added to their lineup.

The GK will feature high-end specs, but will be exclusive to Korea for the time being.

Based on the Snapdragon 600 chipset, the GK runs on a 1.7 GHz Quad Core Krait 300 with an Adreno 320 GPU, 2GB RAM, has 16GB internal storage, dual 2/13MP camera, Android 4.1 at launch and a microSD slot for added storage.

The phone has a 1080p 5-inch IPS LCD display, a 3100 mAh battery and 4G LTE support alongside the standard Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, etc.

YouTube has announced that Major League Baseball (MLB) will be offering content via the streaming video site.

Reads the full post:

Major League Baseball is bringing America's favorite pastime to more fans all over the world on YouTube. Expect to see highlights of MLB games from this season about a day or two afterwards, tens of thousands of hours of archived games dating back to 1952, clips from Baseballs Best Classics and Best Moments, and more. In all countries other than the US, Canada, South Korea, Taiwan and Japan, you can also watch two live games per day during the regular season for free.

Microsoft gave eager fans a brief look at its IllumiRoom projector, first unveiled at CES this year.

As explained by the company, IllumiRoom "is a proof-of-concept system from Microsoft Research. It augments the area surrounding a television screen with projected visualizations to enhance the traditional living room entertainment experience."

The projector uses Kinect for Windows camera (along with the projector) to combine the on-screen gaming content and your current environment, most likely your bedroom or living room.

IllumiRoom can "change the appearance of the room, induce apparent motion, extend the field of view, and enable entirely new game experiences." Additionally, the "system uses the appearance and the geometry of the room (captured by Kinect) to adapt the projected visuals in real-time without any need to custom pre-process the graphics."

For our readers that like to get a bit more technical, read the research paper here: IllumiRoom PDF

An internal document sent to employees of Japan's KDDI wireless service has been leaked, revealing that the carrier will begin taking pre-orders for the iPhone 5S on June 20th.

If accurate, the phone will launch in July, ahead of an expected "fall" launch as implied by Apple CEO Tim Cook.

In the document, there is also some pricing information and basic details like the fact that the new device will run on iOS 7.

There is no way to authenticate the document so take this story as a rumor but it would certainly be interesting if Apple is preparing a summer launch.

Additionally, the document claims the iPhone 5S will have a 13MP camera and a fingerprint reader, two rumors which we have heard before.

Another interesting note is Apple's WDC is slated for June 10th-14th, so the pre-orders would start just a week later, which makes sense.

Intel has finally confirmed the launch date for its fourth-generation Haswell chips.

The chips will launch on June 3rd, or as the company says, "in approximately 3,337,200,000,000,000 nanoseconds, Intel will reveal all there is to know about the highly anticipated 4th generation Intel Core processor family."

Desktops, laptops and more importantly convertibles and ultrabooks, are all expected to see boosts thanks to the benefits of the chips. Haswell processors are more battert efficient and have improved built-in graphics performance.

The first Haswell chips are all expected to be quad-core, aimed at high-end notebooks. Intel has created its standard Haswell processors and also ultra-efficient models aimed at convertibles and ultras.

Haswell chart via Cnet:

According to a MyDrivers report, the Galaxy Note III will certainly pack some monster specs.

The report claims the phone will have a 5.99-inch 1080p SAMOLED display and run on a Samsung Exynos 5 Octa Chipset that includes a Quad Core 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex A15 and a Quad Core 1.7 GHz ARM Cortex A7.

Powered by 3GB RAM, the phone will run on Android 4.2.2 at launch, include an S-Pen, have 32GB internal storage and more notably, a removable battery and a microSD slot.

The device is rumored to launch at the upcoming IFA 2013 event in October.

Alleged pic:

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has once again taken shots at the tablet market.

The exec says the traditional tablet will be dead in five years: "In five years I don't think there'll be a reason to have a tablet anymore. Maybe a big screen in your workspace, but not a tablet as such. Tablets themselves are not a good business model."

While Apple, Google and Samsung may disagree with that statement, BlackBerry has a checkered past with tablets. In 2011, the company debuted their PlayBook for $500. Sales were so terrible the company was forced to liquidate, selling the tablets for as low as $169 and taking a large $485 million loss.

Heins says they remain committed to tablets, but any future device depends on how well BlackBerry 10 sales are on phones. So far, Z10 sales have been mediocre but the company has high hopes for the Q10.

Samsung has debuted their Galaxy Tab 3 this week, a low-end 7-inch tablet with one interesting feature, it can make phone calls if you buy the 3G model.

The device keeps the same style as Samsung's recent devices like the Note 8.0, and will debut in white.

Galaxy Tab 3s run on a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, have dual 3/1.5MP cameras, 16GB internal storage and the aforementioned 7-inch screen with a weak 1024x600 resolution.

The tab will run on Android 4.1 at launch, and be powered by 1GB RAM. The same 4,000 mAh battery as its predecessor is standard.

Android fans may be disappointed at the upcoming May I/O event, as it appears that Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will not make its highly-anticipated debut.

Citing recent server logs for Android, which remains part of the Jelly Bean family, Android Police says Android 4.3 is being tested and used in the real world by two Google employees (at the very least).

The build is 4.3 JWR23B.

A Nexus 4 and a Nexus 7 were found running the operating system, which makes sense given that Google builds the two devices.

While Google has been quick to introduce new and always much improved operating systems, handset makers and carriers have been slow to keep up. Android 4.2 is still on less than 5 percent of all Android devices.

Browser maker Opera Software has filed suit against Trond Werner Hansen, a former employee and consultant, claiming he took trade secrets to rival Mozilla.

Opera wants $3.4 million in damages (20 million Norwegian Krone).

Hansen worked for the company as an employee from 1999 to 2006 and in 2009 and 2010 as a consultant. During his time, he is credited with creating tabbed browsing, speed dial, mouse gestures and integrated search.

The former employee worked for Mozilla, the team behind Firefox, last year, developing a browser prototype for the iPad. The prototype browser supposedly has a lot of innovations that Opera is either currently working on, or previously worked on.

Hansen was quick to respond with a full blog post (via TNW):

After leaving, and for the next couple of years, I considered developing a new browser that I'll call GB here. [...] GB existed as a concept and ideas, but was never developed, since I chose to focus on other projects. I did in fact meet up with Mozilla, Google and Flock (a first attempt at a social browser) in 2007 to talk about the future of the browser, and it was very tempting to have a go at it, but in the end I chose a different path that year. Needless to say, pursuing to develop the browser would have been a lot of work.

According to a new report from research firm Kantar Worldpanel, Android dominated Q1 smartphone sales.

The platform accounted for 64.2 percent of global smartphone sales, followed by Apple.

In the U.S., the figure was not as dominant, with Android taking 49.3 percent share to Apple's 43.7 percent. In Japan it was even closer, 49.2 percent to 45.8 percent. In other nations, it was not even close, most notably Spain, which saw 93.5 percent of smartphone sales run through Android.

Windows Phone made a notable dent, at least in the U.S., moving up to 5.6 percent share from 1.9 percent during the same quarter in 2012. Microsoft may have found a niche, says Kantar analysts; first-time buyers. Over 50 percent of those that upgraded to Windows Phone were coming from a feature phone.

The operating system has also seen trending growth in Europe.