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Rovio, the company behind the blockbuster 'Angry Birds' franchise, has announced the launch of their new "Croods" game based on the movie by DreamWorks Animation.

The movie goes into wide release on the 22nd.

Available for iOS and Android, the game comes with an exclusive short animated clip.

The game will feature the Croods "breaking out of the Stone Age with the use of a new r-evolutionary tool: the IDEA!" You control the Croods as they hunt and gather food and discover new beasts along their travels.

Netflix chief product officer Neil Hunt has said today that he expects the company to offer 4K streaming within two years.

The company is committed to the standard, despite its large bandwidth needs.

Hunt says streaming will be the first arena for 4K, rather than in disc form: "That's because of the challenges involved in upgrading broadcast technologies and the fact that it isn't anticipated within the Blu-ray disc standard. Clearly, we have much work to do with the compression and decode capability, but we expect to be delivering 4K within a year or two with at least some movies."

The exec also notes that House of Cards, the company's original show starring Kevin Spacey, is filmed in 4K.

We will have a round-up after the show, but for now catch the livestream here:

According to a new Bloomberg report, Microsoft's Surface tablets are falling short of sales predictions.

The company has sold 1.5 million Surface tablets since launch, with 400,000 being the new Surface Pros with a full version of Windows 8 but a heftier price tag.

Microsoft had ordered 3 million Surface RT, say the sources, meaning there is plenty of inventory still out there.

By comparison, the global tablet market reached 128.3 million units shipped in 2012, with Apple accounting for just over 50 percent of those.

Despite the tablets being generally well accepted, the company has been hampered by consumer confusion, especially over the two different types of Windows. Windows RT, found on the $500 Surface RT, can only run applications built specifically for its ARM architecture. The $900 Surface Pro runs on an Intel chip so it can use all legacy Windows software.

Amazon has announced today that its Kindle Fire HD 8.9 has been launched for Europe and Japan, while U.S. consumers will see a price cut.

Starting today, the 16GB Wi-Fi version will sell for $269, and the 4G model will start at $399. The Wi-Fi model had been selling for $299 and the 4G model had been selling for $499.

In Europe, the nations to get access to the tablet are the U.K., Germany, France, Italy and Spain.

"We're thrilled with customer reaction to Kindle Fire HD 8.9. Customers tell us they love our large-screen version of Kindle Fire HD for web browsing, email, gaming, watching TV shows, reading magazines, and more," said Dave Limp, Vice President, Amazon Kindle via the press release. "As we expand Kindle Fire HD 8.9 to Europe and Japan, we've been able to increase our production volumes and decrease our costs. Across our business at Amazon, whenever we are able to create cost efficiencies like this, we want to pass the savings along to our customers."

The Kindle Fire HD 8.9 boasts a 1920x1200, 254 ppi display and Dolby audio.

Earlier this week, 'Dishonored' lead designer Christophe Carrier said he was delighted Sony decided to add so much RAM to its upcoming PlayStation 4 console.

The console will have 8GB of GDDR5 RAM, 16 times the 512MB available to PS3 developers.

Today, another developer added similar thoughts. Braid creator Jonathan Blow says the console will compare to PCs due to its memory and speed and streamlined environment.

Blow's latest game, 'The Witness,' will be a PS4 exclusive: "For The Witness we're mostly interested in the base machine and how fast it is - the fact it has faster RAM than a PC, which really helps in shuttling graphics resources around."

"Since the PS4 is not running a heavyweight operating system like Windows that gets in the way of your graphics ... Rendering stuff through Windows has an impact on performance. Since a console is just about games, that doesn't happen, and the equivalent game will run faster. And if you can target to specific hardware you can make it run faster, too."

Google has announced today that it is killing off the popular Google Reader service, among other services as it completes its second round of "spring cleaning."

The company has been killing off small projects and "non-core" projects since 2011. Google Reader is an aggregator that can read Atom and RSS feeds.

Reads the post:

"Everyone has a device, sometimes multiple devices. It's been a long time since we have had this rate of change--it probably hasn't happened since the birth of personal computing 40 years ago. To make the most of these opportunities, we need to focus--otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and lack impact. So today we're announcing some more closures, bringing the total to 70 features or services closed since our spring cleaning began in 2011.

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months."

Google CEO Larry Page has announced today that longtime Android boss Andy Rubin will be stepping down from the position.

Sundar Pichai, the head of Google's Chrome division, will take over Android and will be tasked with balancing any remaining overlaps between Chrome OS, Chrome and Android.

The CEO was quick to note that Rubin was stepping down of his own accord and that he had "exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android and left a really strong leadership team in place." It's unclear what Rubin will do for Google now.

In an email, Rubin says he is "an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google." The exec co-founded Android in 2003, 5 years before a working Android phone hit the market.

Android remains the most popular smartphone OS in the world, found on 70 percent of all devices. OEMs shipped 500 million Android phones last year, 100 percent growth from 2011.

Less than 24 hours before the company unveils the most-anticipated phone of the year, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide marketing Phil Schiller went on the defensive, attacking Samsung and Android in general.

The exec called Android "fragmented" and says Apple's research shows that four times as many iPhone users have switched over from Android as have switched from iPhone to Android.

Continuing the tirade, he added "Android is often given as a free replacement for a feature phone and the experience isn't as good as an iPhone."

"When you take an Android device out of the box, you have to sign up to nine accounts with different vendors to get the experience iOS comes with. They don't work seamlessly together."

Apple and Samsung continue to battle in the smartphone market, with the companies combining for over 95 percent of all the profits in the industry. It is not often that Apple goes on the defensive in this manner, especially since it is giving extra media attention to Samsung for their big day. The company continues to have innovation issues, and its stock is 39 percent lower than it was last summer.

Verizon will have their own souped-up version of the Nokia Lumia 920, starting next month.

Dubbed the Lumia 928, the handset will feature aluminum casing and a "xenon and LED flash combination for the 8-megapixel PureView camera," says Verge report.

Additionally, the 928 will be just 10.2mm at its thinnest point and lighter than the 920.

Furthermore, the device will have support for "simultaneous voice and LTE (SVLTE)," unlike the iPhone 5 for Verizon, which does not allow browsing while making a voice call.

All other specs remain the same, a 4.5-inch IPS LCD capacitive touchscreen with 768 x 1280 resolution, a dual-core 1.5 GHz Krait processor, 1GB RAM and 32GB internal storage.

While Amazon has never disclosed how many shoppers have signed up for their Prime program, Morningstar is reporting that the figure has just surpassed 10 million.

Amazon Prime costs $79 per year (or half if you are a student or new mother) and offers free two-day shipping, $3.99 overnight shipping and access to Amazon's streaming video catalog.

More importantly for the e-tailer, the report suggests that Prime now accounts for 30 percent of Amazon's entire operating income, making the club wildly profitable.

Amazon has an active customer base of about 180 million, but Prime members accounted for 9 percent of all purchases, a massive imbalance. The report says Prime members spend $1,224 a year versus $505 for non-Prime users.

In the report, Morningstar says that Amazon made about $78 per Prime member in 2012, after taking out the cost of expedited shipping and the streaming video licensing. Since Amazon breaks even on its shipping and other costs through purchases customers make, the subscription fee itself is completely profit to them.

Netflix proudly announced this morning that users can now link their accounts to social networking behemoth Facebook.

Dubbed "Netflix Social," the partnership was a longtime coming, and came into being after Congress amended a video sharing law from the 1980s. International users have had similar features since last year.

Social will allow streaming members to see what their friends are watching, and will add "Friends' Favorites" and "Watched by your friends" rows to the current "Recently Watched" and "Top 10 for You" (and many other) rows.

Netflix says the service will be available to all U.S. Netflix streaming users by the end of the week, and Facebook posting will be completely optional.

"There are few better ways to find a movie or TV series you'll love than hearing about it from your friends," said Tom Willerer, vice president of product innovation at Netflix. "Facebook already makes it easy for our international members to connect with friends over TV shows and movies and we're thrilled to now bring this experience to our U.S. members."

Netflix has released the February figures for its ISP SPEED INDEX, which tracks which service providers offer the best Netflix streaming experience.

Says Netflix:

"More than 33 million global members view over 1 billion hours of TV shows and movies streaming from Netflix per month. We use the data associated with the streaming experience to compare ISPs and give you monthly insight into which ISPs deliver the best Netflix experience."

In the U.S., there were two clear winners, Google's ridiculously fast Fiber offerings (as of know only available in Kansas City) and Cablevision, the ISP of choice for a lot of New York and New Jersey.

Cox saw a large jump of five spaces, while the rest of the majors in the U.S. stayed about the same, with each offering similar speeds.

Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter, known for his wild calls on the video game industry (many of which have been accurate), says this week that he expects the price of the games to go up with the next generation of consoles.

Today, gamers pay as high as $60 for new games, Pachter says PS4 and Xbox 8 games will retail for $70.

The analyst made his prediction during the week's South by Southwest (SXSW) event, in which he also claimed that Microsoft would win the next generation, just as it did this one.

Despite saying Microsoft would win, he also predicted that the PS4 would thrive during the generation and outperform the PS3. Nintendo will remain undisputed software king but hardware sales will nosedive compared to their previous hits like the DS and Wii.

Thanks to Tinh tế, we have a newly leaked Motorola smartphone that seems to have more Google integration than previous handsets.

The prototype is different in design than the company's Kevlar-coated devices we have seen in recent times, like the Razr and Maxx. In fact, the design leads many to believe it may be an upcoming Atrix.

While there are little other details known, the device has a 720p SAMOLED display, and the bezel is notably thinner although the phone itself is not as light or thin as previous Atrix.

Additionally, the device is running an updated version of Android, without the bloat and nonsense of Blur or any other third-party UI.