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Wikimedia, the parent of the Wikipedia encyclopedia, has revealed plans to offer their 25 million articles via text message.

The plan is to offer the information to users in developing markets where smartphones, and especially Internet connections, are rare.

Users will be able to text the site for specific articles and have it texted back within seconds.

The new initiative will be funded by a $600,000 grant from the Knight Foundation, a large nonprofit media and journalism support organization.

Wikipedia also offers "Wikipedia Zero," a text-only low-bandwidth version of the encyclopedia for those with slower Internet. Launched in 2011, Zero has just been rolled out to 330 million users in Russia, Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Read more about the initiatives here: The Knight Foundation

Best Buy has confirmed that all Windows 8 touchscreen computers will have a discount, at least for the next two weeks.

Beginning tomorrow, and ending March 9th, the PCs will be priced with a $100 discount.

Notably, it appears that Best Buy will be part of the subsidizing, eating part of the cost of the discount along with Intel, Microsoft and the PC OEMs.

Not included in the discount? The Surface or other Windows tablets.

You can check the list here starting tomorrow: Best Buy

Google has sent out invites for their 2013 I/O conference, which is slated for May 15th-17th this year.

The event will be held at the Moscone Center West in San Francisco and the company says registration will go live on March 13th at 7AM PST.

Prices are on par with last year's, with student pricing locked at $300 and general pricing at $900. The tickets sold out in under 15 minutes last year.

The event will be shared, live, via Google Developers Live and I/O Extended viewing parties, if you cannot secure a ticket in time.

Google has greatly impressed over the last few years with their I/O event, last year unveiling the Google Glass project, the Nexus 7 tablet, Google Now and Android 4.1.

During the console's unveiling earlier this week, Sony announced that the PlayStation 4 would have 4K resolution support.

Today, however, PlayStation Executive Shuhei Yoshida says the PS4 will support 4K for video and photos but not for games.

Additionally, 3D functionality will no longer be a focus for the console.

Says Yoshida: "The PS4 supports 4K output, but only for photos and videos -- not games. PS4 games do not work on 4K." In regards to 3D, "it's not a focus. But it does do it better. The basic capability is higher so more games will run at 1080p at 60 frames so it's an easier and better experience when you watch on 3D TV."

The exec then elaborated on the company's 3D strategy.

"3D was a big thing a couple of years ago -- we made it a big thing because it was lead by the consumer electronics side of Sony and we liked what we could do on PS3 using 3D stereoscopic," Yoshida added. "But now the consumer electronics side of Sony, or all of the companies have shifted focus from 3D TV to something else, so if they're not talking about it, why would we?"

The theft of Apple portable devices has become so widespread in New York City that the NYPD has created a dedicated team to catch the thieves.

All Apple devices, when stolen, are tracked by the police and Apple, who can usually track the location of the device thanks to its IMEI.

"We're looking for ways to find individuals who have stolen Apple products and return the products to their original owners," said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne (via NYP). "It is being done to learn the pattern who is stealing."

Just recently, an iPad was tracked as far as the Dominican Republic and recovered. 74 percent of devices are found within New York City, however, says the police.

With the new dedicated team, the NYPD hopes to recover even more of the devices.

According to multiple reports, Microsoft is preparing to reveal their Xbox successor at an event in April.

Sony recently showed off features and some gameplay demos for its upcoming PlayStation 4, although the company did not unveil the actual hardware itself. The console is set for launch in November.

Giving more credence to the rumor is the fact that Microsoft partner Ustechs has already registered the domain XboxEvent.com. Ustechs has partnered with Microsoft in the past for previous media briefings like last year's E3.

The new Xbox is expected to launch with Kinect 2, a Blu-ray drive, majorly improved specs and improved speech recognition, much like Apple's Siri service. Supposedly, it will support "wake on voice", natural language controls and provide for speech-to-text.

After trying their hand at the high-end smartphone market with little success, sources are claiming that Nokia will get back to its roots and try to dominate the low-end handset market and emerging markets.

The new phones will compete with devices from ZTE and Huawei, which are cheap and run on Android.

Nokia once ruled the smartphone world with its Symbian phones, controlling over 80 percent share. That share has gone to practically zero since the release of the iPhone and the launch of Android.

Last year, the device maker began selling its Windows Phone-based Lumia phones, in an effort to take share away from Apple and Samsung. Sales have been accelerating for their high-end devices, but most of Nokia's revenue still comes from the low-end market.

The sources claim Nokia will introduce a low-end Nokia at next week's Mobile World Congress, for global launch in emerging markets.

In 2011, Orange purchased a 49 percent share of video sharing site Dailymotion for $78 million, with the expectation that they would eventually purchase the rest.

This week, Orange has announced it has spent $80.6 million for the remaining stake, giving the company complete ownership.

The deal closed on January 10th, says Orange's recent quarterly earnings statements.

Dailymotion averages 2.5 billion views per month and 106 million unique visitors, making it one of the most popular video sharing sites on the planet. However, the site pales in comparison to Google's YouTube in regards to traffic. The site is also profitable, mainly thanks to its huge popularity in France, where it is the video sharing site of choice.

Reports indicate that Orange is also looking for an American investor to buy a small stake: "It is clear that to accelerate the development of the company, Dailymotion needs to find a solid strategic partner, probably American, that is capable of opening the doors to the US market. Beyond this, we are very happy with what has been achieved in the past few months (revenue growth of 55% in 2012). Our partnership with Dailymotion is an excellent illustration of the pertinence of our content strategy."

Thanks to Comcast's recent earnings report, we can see that NBCU had to spend $195 million to buy back that half of MSNBC.com that it didn't own.

The "M" in MSNBC was for owner Microsoft, and the site was rebranded to NBCNews.com after the purchase.

In the filing, the company says the final purchase price was $195 million, "net of $100 million of cash and cash equivalents held at MSNBC.com that were acquired in the transaction."

The site is now dedicated to the political-based cable news outlet.

French president François Hollande has announced this week that the government will make a large investment to ensure that every household in France will have high-speed broadband by 2023.

The president expects half of the population to get the Internet by the end of 2017.

"High-speed broadband strengthens [France's] businesses competitiveness and the quality of [its] public services. [It] will bring more fluidity, more simplicity for communications between business, their customers, and the public sector as well," Hollande added.

Altogether, the investment required will be €20 billion, with a mix of public and private funds. Telcos will likely have to give €7 billion to fund the infrastructure in densely populated areas.

An ad hoc public body will be set up to coordinate the investments over the next 10 years.

North Korea will now allow foreigners to use the Internet on their mobile phones, the second time in recent memory that the country has relaxed its normally stringent rules.

Unfortunately, if you are a citizen of the nation, you will not get access to the new mobile Internet service that will be offered by Koryolink.

Koryo is a joint venture between the Korea Post & Telecommunications Corporation and Egypt's Orascom Telecom Media and Technology Holding SAE.

The service will launch by March 1st, and will be 3G, not the newer 4G LTE network seen in the U.S. and other nations.

Until last month, foreigners could not even bring their own cellphones into the country, but that rule was relaxed as long as they use Koryolink SIM cards.

According to new reports, BlackBerry 10 users will not be getting a native Instagram app.

While the large smartphone ecosystem does have native apps for majors like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn, Instagram is reaching that level of mainstream and the news, if accurate, is a blow to the fledgling platform.

Say the sources: "There will be no [native] Instagram for BB10 for now. Frankly, I'm not sure there will ever be."

For BB users, the company is simply working on porting its Android version, but that will not offer the same experience as an app built on BlackBerry's "Cascades" SDK.

When asked, BlackBerry had little to say. "We have a strong partnership and are actively engaged around Instagram support for BB10 but we do not have an availability date at this point."

Google has introduced their new 'Pixel' Chromebook today, featuring the "highest resolution screen that's ever been shipped on a laptop."

To that effect, the screen has a 239 ppi, beating out Apple's Retina Display and its 220 ppi.

Google SVP of Chrome and Apps Sundar Pichai says the Pixel will be a reference device for Google's hardware partners and also be aimed at power users.

Under the hood is an Intel Core i5 processor, 4 GB DDR3 RAM, integrated Intel HD Graphics 4000, Dual-band WiFi 802.11 a/b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0 and a backlit keyboard. The device features a 12.85-inch 2560 x 1700 touch-sensitive Gorilla Glass screen and weighs 3.35 pounds, on par with other Chromebooks.

Last year, Google publicly announced it would be demoting all accused piracy sites in its search rankings.

This week, the RIAA has said the search giant is ineffective at preventing piracy, and the sites are just as easy to find as they ever were.

The RIAA, which is a trade group for the major record labels, initially applauded the decision but now seems to have turned to their usual negativity.

"We have found no evidence that Google's policy has had a demonstrable impact on demoting sites with large amounts of piracy," the RIAA added. "These sites consistently appear at the top of Google's search results for popular songs or artists."

For their report, the group searched for Billboard Top 100 hits, such as "Diamond" by Rihanna and "Locked Out of Heaven" by Bruno Mars.

The group tracked sites that Google themselves identify as "serial infringers" in their Copyright Transparency Report, and says that they were still "on page 1" in Google search results "over 98 percent of the time." Google defines a serial ingfringer as a site that is accused multiple times of hosting unauthorized content by copyright holders.

Canonical has released the Ubuntu Touch Developer Preview today for smartphones and tablets.

The full launch of the operating system is set for 2014, with the first dedicated devices expected to hit later in 2014.

As you can imagine, the preview is somewhat unstable and is a work in progress.

The Developer Preview will work on Google devices, only, namely the Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10. That being said, you will still need to check compatibility, as some builds of the Nexus devices will not work, notably the Sprint and Verizon models of the Galaxy Nexus.

Canonical says this release is intended for developers, as the voice calling, browser, media player, camera and gallery apps work, but not much else. Ubuntu's voice search tool is also working.

Get the Preview here: Ubuntu Image

Follow the instructions here: Ubuntu Wiki