src – Page 24 – Tech Today w/ Ken May

Apple giving away TV shows and music with ‘Free on iTunes’

Free stuff is always great, especially if people actually want what’s on offer. Apple now has a special section called ” Free on iTunes ” where you can find TV shows and music freebies if you’ve already blown through your monthly entertainment budget. It features TV episodes from 12 Monkeys , Eye Candy and others, as well as music from bands like Purity Ring and Houndmouth. As 9to5 Mac points out, Apple offered a similar service before, but this time, the focus seems to be less on hits and more on material that’s still looking for an audience. Filed under: Software , HD , Apple Comments Via: 9to5 Mac Source: Apple

Bitcoin’s first licensed US exchange opens with approval from 25 states

Virtual currency bitcoin is starting to get its act together. A startup funded with $106 million from the New York Stock Exchange as well as banks and venture capital firms, is set to launch the first licensed US bitcoin exchange. Coinbase reckons it’ll add increased security to traders as well as monitor real-time pricing of the world’s foremost cryptocurrency. If you’ve forgotten , unlike normal currencies, bitcoin is traded virtually and isn’t backed by a central government: reasons why the currency often fluctuates severely. The collapse of Mt. Gox last year stung investors, both professional and otherwise, for a total sum of around half a billion dollars. As the WSJ notes , the value of a bitcoin is currently around $240: it was stood at $1, 200 per ‘coin. The startup’s founders have managed to gain licenses from half of the states’ financial regulators, including (importantly) both New York and California. The exchange can only do business in the states in which it’s gained approval, taking 0.25 percent from most transactions, with the first two months charge-free. The exchange already has 2.2 million “wallets” on file, and plans to operate in 30 countries by the end of the year – it’s already set up in 19 of them. Meanwhile, Gemini ( backed by the Winklevoss twins ), has claimed support from an as-yet unnamed New York bank. The legitimacy of Bitcoin is on the increase, but for those of you hoping that the value of Bitcoins will evaporate into nothing and you’ll never have to read about them again — well, it’s not looking good. Filed under: Internet Comments Source: WSJ

Expedia buys Travelocity, but don’t expect much to change

How much does it cost to buy one of the biggest brands in online travel? Only about $280 million , as it turns out: That’s how much Expedia paid in cash to acquire Travelocity today from its parent company Sabre Corporation (no relation to these the makers of the critically panned Pyramid ). So what does that mean for you, the average vacation-loving consumer? We reached out to Expedia to clarify matters (their spokesperson didn’t offer much in the way of new info), but don’t expect things to change dramatically… if they change at all. Thing is, Expedia already owns a slew of other big-name travel sites – think Hotels.com, Hotwire and Trivago – all of which started off as independent companies before being snapped up by the former Microsoft company. In case you don’t feel like searching, yes, all of those sites still exist and still proffer flight and hotel deals to people in search of their next big sojourn. The events that led to today’s announcement were set into motion back in 2013 when Expedia and Travelocity cooked up a deal that basically saw the former offer its travel platform to be painted over in the latter’s colors and served up to Travelocity customers. In other words, the lines between Travelocity and Expedia have been pretty blurry for the past year and change anyway; it was basically just for Expedia to tap into its rivals pool of loyal customers. And if you don’t like the idea of giving your money to a veritable travel juggernaut? Well, mainstay travel companies Orbitz and TripAdvisor join upstarts like Hipmunk, Kayak and Hitlist as worthy players that have so far escaped Expedia’s clutches. Let’s see how long they hold out. Comments Source: Expedia

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Expedia buys Travelocity, but don’t expect much to change

Office 2016 will hit desktops later this year

At its Windows 10 event yesterday, Microsoft spent some time showing off how its universal apps would provide a similar experience across devices. Office was certainly part of that conversation, and today, the folks in Redmond revealed that this year’s installment of the apps would arrive before the end of 2015. The update for mobile, labeled Office for Windows 10, will come pre-installed on phones and tablets running Windows 10 free of charge, with touch-enabled Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote and Outlook all included. While we’ll certainly keep our eyes peeled for an exact date, Microsoft says we can expect Office 2016 to arrive during the second half of this year. Who knows, maybe it’ll rollout in time to lend a hand when school starts back up in the fall. Filed under: Software , Microsoft Comments Source: Microsoft

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Office 2016 will hit desktops later this year

Forget detention: Illlinois students might have to forfeit their Facebook passwords

A law that went into effect at the start of 2015 will allow Illinois school districts to demand the social media passwords for students that break the rules or are suspected of cyberbullying. Motherboard received a copy of the letter sent to parents, which details the law: “If your child has an account on a social networking website, e.g., Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, ask.fm, etc., please be aware that State law requires school authorities to notify you that your child may be asked to provide his or her password for these accounts to school officials in certain circumstances.” However, the law doesn’t explicitly state that officials are allowed to demand the passwords: rather, that schools must have a ” process to investigate whether a reported act of bullying is within the permissible scope of the district’s or school’s jurisdiction.” Parents would be notified before the the school asks for a students’ password. Refusal to cooperate could (and we mean could) even lead to criminal charges being pressed. There’s also concerns that how the law is being implemented could be unconstitutional. Talking to Motherboard , Kade Crockford, director of Massachusetts’s American Civil Liberties Union, noted that there are already mechanisms to obtain Facebook data is cyberbullying is bad enough – through the police. Comments Source: Motherboard

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Forget detention: Illlinois students might have to forfeit their Facebook passwords

What’s new in Windows 10 for PCs? A lot.

Coming into today’s Windows 10 event, we already knew a lot about Microsoft’s latest and greatest. The company explained the thinking behind its new OS back in September, and the Technical Preview has been available for months. The core change comes in the form of a revitalized desktop experience — one that puts the best of Windows 7 and 8 into a single package. Windows will also now better match the convertible devices Microsoft is pushing, with a consistent UI across all platforms, but there’s a whole lot more to explore here, including some features detailed today for the first time. Let’s take a closer look. Cortana If you’ve been following Windows Phone at all, you’ll know what Cortana is: Microsoft’s take on a personal digital assistant. The mobile version offers features that are a mix between Siri and Google Now, but the PC version has a few added benefits. Cortana plugs into Windows search, meaning if you ask for “PowerPoint slides about the charity account, ” it’ll search your computer and OneDrive accounts for relevant files. Microsoft is really pushing its natural-language and transcription abilities — onstage, Cortana was asked to “show photos from December, ” which it happily (and quickly) did, and also transcribed and sent an email entirely through voice commands. New, universal apps Perhaps the biggest news, though, even if it doesn’t benefit the majority of Windows users — is that Windows apps will now be universal and run across PC, tablet, phone and even Xbox One . That doesn’t mean PC users won’t be getting new apps as well. Microsoft blazed through a load of new apps for Windows. Most are refreshes of existing offerings, although there’s an entirely new Office suite that includes a new version of Outlook, which uses the Word engine for composing or displaying emails, and a refreshed Photos app. The biggest new addition, though? Project Spartan. Project Spartan As early reports suggested, Project Spartan is a new browser for Windows 10, entirely separate from Internet Explorer. Sure there’s a very clean, almost Chrome-like design, and a brand-new rendering engine, but the focus here is on social sharing. You can highlight and annotate websites before sharing them with friends, kind of like having Skitch built right into your browser. There’s also Cortana integration and a reading view that, much like Pocket, lets you read pages offline. Better settings Windows 10 goes a long way to fixing the fragmented Control Panel and Settings menus currently in Windows 8.1. A unified settings menu is coming, with a clean design and simple options, and there’s also the new Action Center (pictured above), which provides more toggles for switching on or off WiFi and other settings. Notifications will also pop up in this space, which will be synced across devices — if you dismiss a notification on your phone, you won’t see it when you next look at your PC, and vice versa. Continuum Not just the name of John Mayer’s mellow third studio album and an underrated sci-fi series, Continuum is now a big part of improving Windows on convertibles. We got a brief glimpse of it back at Microsoft’s last Windows event, but it’s now been fully explained. If you have, for example, a Surface Pro 3 with the keyboard docked, the experience will be very similar to Windows 7 (or Windows 8.1 in desktop mode). All apps are now windowed, whether they’re the new touch-friendly kind or legacy applications. But say you’re using an app like OneNote, and you want to undock your Surface and use it as a tablet: Do just that, and it’ll automatically expand the app into fullscreen mode, making it easier to use with your fingers. Gaming Sony has let you stream PlayStation 4 games to a Vita from launch. Microsoft’s response? To let anyone stream any Xbox One game to any Windows 10 PC or tablet . Sure, you have to be on the same network, but it’s still pretty massive news. Elsewhere, there’s a new Xbox app for PC and tablet that lets you access your activity feed, messages and friends list. It’ll even display information on games in third-party clients like Steam. Uhh… Holograms? We were promised a couple of surprises today, and it’s fair to say that Microsoft came through with a huge surprise: Windows Holographic . It’s an AR platform, letting you see 3D “projections” using a pair of AR goggles. You’re probably thinking this is some vague pipe dream, but it’s not. Microsoft also showed off HoloLens — a wearable, wire-free computer that will enable Windows Holographic — which the company says will be available at some point “in the Windows 10 time frame.” Free upgrades, but we don’t know when While it’s not really a feature, it’s definitely worth noting: Windows 10 will be free for everyone using Windows 7 or 8.1, provided you upgrade within the first year. As for when you can actually get all these new features on your computer? Microsoft is staying mum about that. The latest preview build, which’ll have many, but not all of the features announced today, is rolling out to Windows Insiders later this month, with a phone-friendly version coming in February. A consumer-ready version is still earmarked for “2015.” Filed under: Desktops , Gaming , Laptops , Tablets , Software , Microsoft Comments

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What’s new in Windows 10 for PCs? A lot.

Windows 10’s browser includes Cortana, note-taking and offline reading

Internet Explorer is dead, long live Project Spartan! Even the most diehard Microsoft fan would probably admit that the Microsoft’s browser has become the punchline to a lot of jokes. The advent of Windows 10 has seen the outfit attempt to fix many of the gripes that users had with the last two generations of the operating system, so perhaps it’s no surprise to see that a replacement browser is in the works. Microsoft has now revealed more information about the browser project, apart from its actual name — for now, it’s codenamed Project Spartan . The new browser is designed to be everything that Internet Explorer isn’t, which is to say light, nimble and secure . To achieve that, Microsoft has built a brand new rendering engine, and given the browser a lean, pared-down look and feel. That means it won’t support Webkit like Chrome and Firefox, however, which may make web developers’ lives more difficult. However, Microsoft said the new engine would give Spartan a far more robust backbone for adding new features. One of those it showed off was “snapping, ” which lets you freeze a web page and clip out specific segments or add comments. From there, you can send whatever you clipped to a colleague using Windows 10’s built-in sharing tool. Another new feature revolves around reading — the new browser will let you reformat web content to make it more digestible, and will integrate Windows 8’s Pocket-like article reading list. In addition, Windows 10 will have built-in support for PDF files, presumably meaning that constant Adobe Reader downloads will no longer be unnecessary. Another big part of Project Spartan will be Cortana integration. Microsoft’s voice-search tool will work more like Google Now in order to predict what information you may need. For instance, if you ask for a flight time, Cortana may notice that a friend or family member already has one scheduled, and suggest that time as a response. Another example: if you’re looking at a restaurant website in the Project Spartan browser, Cortana will offer directions, photos and links to Yelp reviews. Microsoft said that the new browser would come to the PC first, and eventually arrive on Windows Phone devices later. As for Internet Explorer, it’ll be kept alive for compatibility reasons, but anybody migrating to Windows 10 who doesn’t need IE will get the new browser. From what we’ve seen, that’s a good thing — after seeing Spartan, Internet Explorer looks instantly obsolete. Daniel Cooper contributed to this report. Filed under: Internet , Software , Microsoft Comments

Super Bowl XLIX to be livestreamed by NBC

In what has become a tradition since 2012 , the Super Bowl will be streamed online again this year . The kind gesture, which is free of charge to anyone in the US, comes courtesy of NBC — the network that started the trend of livestreaming The Big Game. For Super Bowl XLIX , set to take place on February 1st in Arizona, NBC plans to have an 11-hour block of video coverage over the internet, including pre-game analysis, the popular halftime show and an all-new episode of the primetime series The Blacklist . As Variety points out , the Peacock channel intends to heavily promote its TV Everywhere efforts during the stream, hoping to drive demand for services like the NBC Sports Live Extra app — one that typically requires a pay-TV login. Online viewers can watch Super Bowl XLIX, between the Seattle Seahawks and New England Patriots , on NBC’s website as well the Sports Live Extra application. The latter option, however, is only going to be available for tablets, since Verizon owns the rights for smartphones streams via the NFL Mobile app . For people overseas, NFL GamePass could be a solution, both for live or on-demand streaming , but you’ll have to pay a small fee if that’s how you plan to consume the biggest game of the season. [Image credit: Associated Press] Filed under: Internet , HD Comments Source: Variety

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Super Bowl XLIX to be livestreamed by NBC

Los Angeles’ subway is getting cellphone service and WiFi

A few cities in the US have wireless service in their subway systems , but not Los Angeles. Take a trip to Wilshire Boulevard, for example, and you’ll stay incommunicado until you’re back above ground. You won’t be out of touch for too much longer, though. The city and InSite Wireless have started deploying both cellular service and WiFi at subway stations, beginning with the Red Line. The launch will be modest early on, with four stations getting WiFi by May and cellular service coming in August. LA’s plans are much more ambitious in the next couple of years, however. A second wave should get both the Purple Line and more of the Red Line up and running by June 2016, while the Gold Line railway’s tunnels should be connected by March 2017. As is often the case with these kinds of upgrades, transportation officials see wireless as both a convenience and a necessity. It’s not just for checking Facebook while you’re on your way home from work; you won’t miss important messages that could make you change course, and you might just save a life if you can call 911 without having to leave the station. Some Angelenos will no doubt abuse their newfound freedom (like making you listen to their way-too-loud phone conversations), but it could be worth the sacrifice if the service keeps you in contact with the outside world at a crucial moment. [Image credit: Frederick Dennstedt, Flickr ] Filed under: Cellphones , Transportation , Wireless , Networking , Mobile Comments Via: The Verge Source: Los Angeles Daily News

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Los Angeles’ subway is getting cellphone service and WiFi

Marriott plans to bring Netflix to your hotel room TV

The next time you’re on a trip, you may have something to watch on the hotel room TV besides the usual so-so channels and on-demand movies. Marriott has confirmed to Bloomberg that it’s trialing access to streaming services like Hulu, Netflix and Pandora on TVs in eight of its hotels. It’s not certain what the company will charge (if anything) if it launches this feature in earnest, although it’s reportedly mulling a few options that include a “premium” internet tier with TV streaming on top of the usual WiFi. That last choice might not be very popular when you can already curl up on the bed with your laptop at no extra cost. Having said this, Marriott hasn’t committed to anything yet — there’s a lot left to decide before you can watch House of Cards on a big screen during your vacation. Filed under: Home Entertainment , Internet , HD Comments Via: The Verge , Lucas Shaw (Twitter) Source: Bloomberg (Daily Transcript)