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Rdio continues its global rollout.

The streaming music service will now be available in seven new nations; Mexico, Ireland, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, and Austria.

With the expansion, Rdio is now available in 30 nations, mainly in North America and Europe.

"Rdio is the best product on the market for discovering music," says Drew Larner, CEO of Rdio, "and we will continue to improve that discovery experience by developing smarter tools to surface artists and songs our users love. By opening the social circle to seven new international markets, we're making Rdio an increasingly global way to play, discover, and share music."

The service is almost identical to Spotify and has 18 million tracks available. You can stream for free for the first 6 months (up to a certain amount of hours) and $5 per month gets you unlimited web streaming. $10 per month gets you unlimited web and mobile streaming.

According to Joystiq, Sony stores across the U.S. have slashed the price of the PS Vita 3G model.

The stores are selling the console for $199.97, a full $100 cheaper than its retail price.

3G bundles include the console, an 8GB memory card and also a voucher for a free PSN game, as long as you sign up for the actual data plan.

Employees confirmed the price drop is permanent as the model is being discontinued.

Online, the console is still selling for $249 with the bundle.

According to sources, professional social network LinkedIn will be buying popular newsreader app 'Pulse' for at least $50 million.

The purchase price could even be as high as $100 million, with Microsoft and Yahoo having thrown bids in, as well.

Pulse, developed by Alphonso Labs, is available for iOS, Android and on desktops.

The company says over 20 million people use Pulse to read their news, from 190 countries.

Senator Claire McCaskill has stated this month that she will write a new bill that will allow passengers to use their electronics during all times of their flight.

In a letter to FAA Administrator Michael Huerta, the democrat cited her "concern" with the admin's "lack of direct engagement" on expanding the long-standing rules on electronics use during takeoff and landing.

The current set of rules, which bans passengers from using their phones, tablets, e-readers and other electronics below 10,000 feet is "preposterous," says McCaskill. The new rule would not apply to cellphone use, however, which would still be banned.

McCaskill first began discussions with Huerta in December and received a response in February that the FAA shared an "interest in taking a fresh look at these issues." The FAA is collecting comments from the aviation and technology industries and has also created the Aviation Rulemaking Committee with recommendations expected by the end of July. McCaskill does not think that it quick enough.

"I didn't think it said anything," McCaskill said of Huerta's response. "It just basically said, 'We're in a process and we're looking at the process.' So the next step in the process is calling the stakeholders in ourselves and beginning to try to pull together the right legislation."

At this week's SXSW event, Mozilla's VP of Product Jay Sullivan says there will be no Firefox mobile browser for iOS coming.

The company does not agree with Apple's attitude towards third-party browsers.

For example, Apple's Safari uses the Nitro JavaScript engine while the company forces third-party browsers to use the less-efficient and slower UIWebView.

More importantly, Sullivan says, Apple places too many restrictions. These restrictions would not allow Mozilla to build the kind of browser that they want to, says Sullivan.

'Dishonored' lead designer Christophe Carrier says he is delighted Sony decided to add so much RAM to its upcoming PlayStation 4 console.

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

"We were PC gamers at the beginning. We love PC games, and we had to make games on consoles. But the main problem was memory. The processors are good, but the memory, for our games, is the most important. So it's great," added Carrier.

Additionally, the PS4 will use an AMD x86-based processor, just like the Wii U, and supposedly the Xbox 8, as well, which should make cross-platform streamlining easier.

Thanks to a new SEC filing, it appears that Microsoft may be ready to change its stance on creating a Surface-branded reference phone for Windows Phone 8.

Nokia made the filing, which is important as the company remains the top Windows Phone partner for Microsoft. Reads the filing: "Microsoft may make strategic decisions or changes that may be detrimental to us. For example, in addition to the Surface tablet, Microsoft may broaden its strategy to sell other mobile devices under its own brand, including smartphones. This could lead Microsoft to focus more on their own devices and less on mobile devices of other manufacturers that operate on the Windows Phone platform, including Nokia."

While the rest of the filing is standard disclosures about risk, the same wording was not used last year.

Microsoft is rumored to be in the concept stage of such a phone, despite long saying it would only make its own hardware as a "Plan B" to formal OEM partners.

(Mock via Verge)

After years with the corporation, Sir Howard Stringer will retire from his position as chairman of the board of directors for Sony.

The move was widely expected as Stringer was replaced as CEO and president last year and as part of the agreement he stayed on the board for a transitional period of one year.

Stringer will retire in June. He was CEO of the company from 2005 to 2012.

While the company had many continuous years of losses during his term and loss of brand recognition, Stringer grew the company's film and TV businesses, which remain strongly profitable.

Stringer says he will use his retirement to pursue "personal and philanthropic interest to me, namely medicine and education."

Netflix has (kind of) confirmed that its original programming is quite expensive.

Creative Artists Agency agent Peter Micelli, speaking during a media event at UCLA, says the streaming company is creating shows for at least $3.8 million per episode, with some going well above.

Micelli: "The cheapest show is $3.8 million an episode ... 'House of Cards' started at $4.5 million and (executive producer David) Fincher took it way above that. The next series is 'Hemlock Grove' and they're doing that for about $4 million an episode ... 'Orange is the New Black' is just under $4 million as well. They're huge budgets shows, doing things in a huge way."

By contrast, average broadcast shows rarely go above $4 million per episode.

According to Jun Dong-soo, Samsung memory chip division president, Windows 8 will not lead to the revival of the struggling global PC market.

"The global PC industry is steadily shrinking despite the launch of Windows 8. I think the Windows 8 system is no better than the previous Windows Vista platform," added the exec.

Samsung itself is cutting down production on PC memory chips in 2013, as the market remains volatile.

Jun was very harsh on Microsoft, blaming the company's new operating system and consumer's "underwhelming reception to Windows 8" as partial reasons for the stagnant sales of PCs. Of course, Jun also blamed tablets and smartphones, as well.

Microsoft, for its part, says Windows 8 sales remain at levels near Windows 7's during its first months of availability.

Marvel has finally made its unlimited digital comics subscription available to iOS users.

The app will give access to 13,000 issues from the last 70 years for unlimited reading.

Prices range from $10 per month to a discounted $60 for 12 months. You can get a free trial but upgrading a full subscription will have to be done away from the app since Marvel is trying to avoid Apple's 30 percent cut of all in-app transactions.

Subscribers get full access via the app and also to the archive via their browsers. You can select up to six comics for offline reading.

{Pic via AI}

Google will leave Pwnium 3 this year with their wallets intact.

The Chrome OS operating system survived all attacks, with no winning exploits found. The search giant had been offering up to $3.14159 million in prize money.

Google did say they were still evaluating some hacks for potential partial credit.

For the event, Google was offering the following two reward levels, which were higher than past years as the company really focused on its operating system:

$110,000: browser or system level compromise in guest mode or as a logged-in user, delivered via a web page.

$150,000: compromise with device persistence -- guest to guest with interim reboot, delivered via a web page.

Partial credit was offered to those for incomplete or unreliable exploits.

Google will soon be settling with the attorneys general representing 30 American states over the accusation that its Street View cars collected data from unsecured Wi-Fi networks during their travels.

The search giant will pay $7 million to be distributed amongst the states.

A settlement will be a long time coming as the case was brought in 2010. The so called "WiSpy" case referred to data collected between 2007 and 2010.

At first, Google denied collecting any data before flipping and admitting they had collected by accident. Later in the case, they admitted that the system was built by a "rogue engineer" and they still had payload data.

Google has always said it did nothing with the data: "We work hard to get privacy right at Google. But in this case we didn't, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue."

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins has said this weekend that while the company is creating less expensive devices to compete in the emerging markets, it will not challenge Asian rivals that are pricing phones as low as $50.

"Understand where you are playing and resist being talked into segments that you know will not serve your purpose and will not result in shareholder value," said the exec. "You will not see us getting into the 50-, 60-buck phone segment. This is not BlackBerry."

He added: "You will see new products being launched this year based on BlackBerry 10, all fully LTE-capable, the whole 10 yards that are more geared towards those price bands where people need to be."

For example, the new Z10 sells for $600 unsubsidized, a price far out of the range of the average consumer in India, Brazil, and other emerging markets.

However, the executive says that all supply to India has already been exhausted, showing that maybe high-end phones do have their place in the nation.

T-Mobile USA has announced that business customers will be able to purchase the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone starting tomorrow.

Delivery is expected to be three days if you order on Monday.

BlackBerry sells the device in 21 nations, but U.S. carriers require longer testing periods. AT&T is expected to make the device available to all consumers on March 22nd and Verizon broadly said "by the end of the month."

The company needs the Z10 to be a hit in the U.S., where they make 20 percent of their revenue. The company will have an uphill battle against Samsung and Apple, which control the lion's share of the U.S. market with their Android and iOS offerings.