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Although the service was supposed to end after six months, Spotify has announced it has extended its unlimited free streaming indefinitely.

Spotify, which has different tiers, will leave the free (with advertising) service available to all customers who do not wish to purchase a premium $10 subscription. For $10 per month, the ads are removed and you can stream the service from mobile devices like phones and tablets.

The service has been very successful since its launch in 2011 in the U.S., converting 3 million of its 10 million "active users" to paying accounts.

It is unclear why Spotify has decided to extend the "honeymoon" (their word, not mine) but many speculate it is because they have advertisers lining up due to their popularity.

It appears that Android has only brought Google $550 million in revenue since its launch in 2008.

The numbers came to light as part of Google's ongoing settlement talks with Oracle ahead of the patent infringement trial that will begin in mid-April.

Additionally, Apple products have brought Google four times as much revenue as Android did, thanks to Google Search via Safari, the iPhone/iPad and Google Maps.

The figure suggests the company makes less than $10 per Android handset per year, with over 220 million devices activated since 2008.

In the lawsuit, Google had offered to pay Oracle a small percentage of Android revenue if the company could prove Google had violated patents related to the mobile OS. Oracle scoffed at the deal, claiming it was too low, and instead took the search giant to court. The company sued Google in 2010 and is looking for billions in damages.

While Hulu Plus has been available for numerous Android devices since last year, only two of those devices were tablets, leaving fans out in the cold.

As of today, Hulu has made its Plus service available for 7 new tablets, along with a new UI.

The new devices are the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime, Eee Pad Transformer, Motorola Xoom, Motorola Xyboard 10.1, Toshiba Thrive, Acer Iconia, and LG G-Slate.

Hulu's new UI has a completely "updated design with large, colorful thumbnails for each show, and side-to-side navigation," says Verge.

According to the WSJ, Google will indeed begin selling its own tablets this year, as rumored.

The move will be a way for the company to drive Android tablet sales, which have been lackluster over the past two years in competing against Apple.

Over the past few months, rumors have surfaced repeatedly that Asus is building a "Nexus" tablet that will sell for $150 and include specs that beat out the $200 Amazon Kindle Fire.

The tablet will feature "vanilla" Android 4.0 or even Android 5.0 Jelly Bean, staying away from user interfaces like HTC's Sense or Samsung's TouchWiz. Jelly Bean is expected to be launched in June.

More importantly, Google will open its own online store to sell the tablets, similar to how it sold the Nexus One in 2009. That move should help the company better compete with Amazon and Apple, who promote their products right from their highly trafficked homepages.

Over the past few days, rumors of a $100 'Xbox Lite' being released next year have been making the rounds.

The rumor came via famous "Microsoft leaker" MS Nerd, who says the cheap console will launch next year with an ARM processor.

Additionally, the Lite will run all games, media apps and support the Kinect, making it a fully functional Xbox console, at a $100 price point not seen on gaming consoles since Sony dropped the price of its PS2 to $99.

The device will come before (or possibly alongside) the rumored next-generation Xbox Next (Xbox 720/Durango), which is expected to be a powerhouse and will likely launch with a hefty price tag expected to be above $500.

Microsoft did not deny the rumor, but rather left with the standard "no comment:"

The Xbox 360 has found new ways to extend its lifecycle like introducing the world to controller-free experiences with Kinect and re-inventing the console with a new dashboard and new entertainment content partnerships. We are always thinking about what is next for our platform and how to continue to defy the lifecycle convention. Beyond that we do not comment on rumors or speculation.

According to a new court filing, Google had offered to pay Oracle a small percentage of Android revenue if the company could prove Google had violated patents related to the mobile OS.

Oracle scoffed at the deal, claiming it was too low, and instead took the search giant to court. The company sued Google in 2010 and is looking for billions in damages.

Google offered to pay 0.5 percent of Android revenue on one of the patents in question until December 2012 and 0.015 percent on the second patent until April 2018. Additionally, the search giant offered $2.8 million as a settlement for the infringement.

Judge William Alsup also told Oracle that its original claim of seven patents was too bloated, so the company reduced it to two.

The trial will begin on April 16th if there is no settlement.

According to the WSJ, Facebook is aiming for May to go public.

The newspaper says Facebook has halted all trading of its shares on the secondary market, likely meaning it is looking to give a final count on outstanding shares.

Facebook filed for the IPO in February with the SEC.

Mark Zuckerberg and co. are expected to raise around $5 billion, giving the company a value of $100 billion. With such a valuation the company will be one of the largest tech companies in the world, only behind behemoths like IBM, Google, Apple, Microsoft and Intel.

Zuckerberg will become the world's youngest multi-billionaire as he owns 28 percent of the company. Others employees will become rich, as well, including Napster founder Sean Parker, who was an early investor and once held the title of President.

According to Kotaku, the successor to the PlayStation 3 is codenamed "Orbis" and will be released in 2013.

The details "come from a reliable source who is not authorized to talk publicly about next-gen hardware but has shared correct information with us before," says Kotaku.

Orbis in itself does not mean too much, standing for "circle" or "ring" in Latin. The site speculates, however, that it could be called Orbis Vita, which in turn means "the circle of life." The PS Vita, Sony's newly released handheld, could have a large part in the next-generation console if this is true.

Adding to confirmation of "Orbis" is the active developer portal. Just like vita.scedevnet.com is the portal for Vita devs, orbis.scedev.net leads to a working address.

Some bad news on the front of gaming is that the Orbis will not be backwards compatible with PS3 games, nor will it allow used games. The console (and your PSN account) will lock out games already attached to other people's consoles. This rumor is start to steam roll, after sites speculated Microsoft was working on a similar scheme.

Motorola's one-time flagship tablet, the Motorola Xoom, is likely to get the Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich update in the near future.

There is one small hitch, however, as it seems that only Xoom Wi-Fi owners will get the update, not those that locked in a contract with Verizon for 3G service.

The Xoom was recently updated to Android 4.0.3, which is significantly better than the outdated Gingerbread Android 2.3 seen on some newer tablets (not to mention Honeycomb). Ice Cream Sandwich was Google's biggest update to the operating system, ever.

Motorola released the device in February 2011. The tablet has a 10.1-inch screen, a dual-core processor, 1GB RAM, 32GB storage, and still sells for $499 retail.

Get an early version of the update here: Xoom 4.0.4

Changelog here: Xoom enhancements

Apple is emailing all buyers of the new iPad in Australia offering them a refund for their purchase.

The move comes right after Australia's Competition and Consumer Commission accused the company of misleading advertising. The group has also taken legal action to "ensure Apple makes consumers aware its third-generation iPad cannot connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia due to technical incompatibility."

Apple has also agreed to post warnings that the third-generation iPad "is not compatible with current Australian 4G LTE networks and WiMAX networks."

Australia only has one LTE network, run by carrier Telstra. Telstra's network, however, works on different frequencies than one compatible with the new iPad. In its advertising, Apple said the "iPad with WiFi can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, which it cannot do," complains the ACCC.

According to VentureBeat, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was never a fan of the name "Siri" for the company's virtual assistant technology.

Dag Kittlaus, the co-founder of Siri, says Jobs was very reluctant with keeping the name when it came time to integrate it into the iPhone 4S, but eventually signed off.

Kittlaus says Siri means "beautiful woman who leads you to victory" in Norwegian, and it also happened to be the name he was going to give his daughter, until he ended up having a baby boy. The name always stuck, however, and was first in his mind when it came time to name the software.

This was not the first time that Jobs was resistant to a name that later became iconic. Jobs famously disliked the name 'iPod' before it went on to define an era of digital music.

Samsung has announced it has shipped 5 million Galaxy Note units since launch last October.

The number is impressive for what was expected to be a niche device, given its large display and included stylus pen.

Additionally, the Note should arrive in Japan on April 6th, thanks to carrier NTT DoCoMo. NTT says they will have the 4G LTE version of the phone, with the actual device being dubbed the "Docomo Next Series Galaxy Note SC-05D."

The device is just the third LTE phone in the nation, and will run on NTT's "Xi" LTE network.

Galaxy Note devices in Japan have a large 5.3-inch HD Super AMOLED screen (1280×800 resolution), run on dual-core 1.5 GHz Snapdragon S3 processors, have 1 GB RAM, 32GB internal storage, LTE support and Samsung's own stylus pen with input software called S-Pen

In December, Hasbro sued Asus over the Transformer Prime name used in the company's new flagship tablet.

The toy company was seeking an injunction on the tablet due to brand copyright violations. Transformers Prime is an animated TV series that launched in 2010, a new generation of the popular TV series from the 80s.

As of this week, the case has been thrown out, with a judge not agreeing with Hasbro's claims: "There is nothing gimmicky about the Eee Pad Transformer or the Eee Pad Transformer Prime, nor can it be said that there is any similarity in the use or function between Hasbro and Asus's products."

Asus seems to have won the case because their device does indeed "transform" from a tablet to a laptop when adding the optional dock.

After years of rumor, it appears that Google's cloud storage platform "Drive" is finally ready to be launched.

According to Om, the platform will launch in the first week of April with 1GB of free storage for users.

Market leader Dropbox offers 2GB of storage and easy ways to gain more. Amazon, Apple and Microsoft also offer cloud solutions with more free storage, putting Google at a disadvantage right from the start, at least in terms of available space. However, the API is expected to allow third-party apps to store data to your Drive, which would be a fantastic addition for Android owners. If accurate, you could back up all your apps and data right to Drive and restore it from another device when you log in, similar to how Titanium Backup uses Dropbox if you have a rooted device.

Last month, a leaked screenshot of the interface made its way around the Web, showing a deep integration with the Google suite of applications and services.

A conditional access software developer that Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. purchased in 1992 has been accused of hacking a rival's systems in order to sabotage them.

The rival, ITV Digital, closed up shop in 2002.

NDS, the accused developer, is said to have hacked ITV, leaking codes and other information that allowed pirates to counterfeit smart cards, giving anyone access to paid TV, for free.

Lee Gibling, who set up the popular 90s website "The House of Ill-Compute," is the whistleblower in the new case against a News Corp. company. Gibling says he was paid to publish the stolen info and codes, and he was hired by NDS' Ray Adams, who at the time was the head of UK-based security.

After ITV went under, News Corp.'s SkyTV became the UK's only pay network.