Latest news

A couple of interesting articles have emerged in the days before Aerosmith starts its 2014 World Tour, namely how the members of the band made most of their money.

Despite selling over 150 million albums since the 1970s, it appears that the band made most of their money from licensing their name and songs to Activision and to Disney.

In 2007, the band licensed 29 songs to Activision for the soon-to-be launched "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith," and the game sold over 4 million copies in its lifetime. Activision CEO Bobby Kotick confirmed that the band's "version of Guitar Hero generated far more in revenues than any Aerosmith album ever has."

Additionally, the band's name and music is all over Disney World's "Rock N Roller Coaster," another licensing agreement.

Artists traditionally make much less money from their own album sales or digital downloads than from licensing and concerts, and in this case that is certainly true. Album sales continue to tank, in general, and "going platinum" is now rarefied air.

Roku is now the undisputed king of streaming media set-top boxes.

From its humble beginnings just five years ago, Roku has seen its sales and market share grow significantly and the set-tops now account for about 46 percent of all set-top box sales in the U.S.

Additionally, Rokus have the greatest usage of set-top owners, even defeating the Apple TV.

The data comes via research firm Parks Associates, who says that the gap for sales and usage is still widening between Apple TV and Roku. 44 percent of U.S. households with streaming media players use Roku the most, compared to 26 percent for the Apple TV. That gap was only 13 percent last year.

Parks concluded that Roku's long-time close association with Netflix and its 1700 channel apps (far and away the most of any box) and its three-tier pricing model has led to better sales and usage. Perhaps most importantly, is the fact that Apple still treats the Apple TV like a hobby product, without regular updates. This could be changing, however, as Apple confirmed $1 billion in content sales (including the hardware's $99 price tag) in the last year.

An interesting piece of information from NPD DisplaySearch's latest Quarterly Mobile PC Shipment and Forecast Report shows that tablets actually saw a decline year-over-year in the Q1 2014, marking the first time the industry has seen a YoY decline.

56 million tablets were shipped for the quarter, and as a result, NPD dropped their annual forecast to 285 million from 315 million, a rather significant reduction.

"Tablet PC demand in 2014 is being impacted by falling demand for seven-inch-class sizes in emerging regions and in China, where many local white-box brands have experienced lower-than-expected shipment growth," noted Hisakazu Torii, vice president, smart application research at NPD DisplaySearch. "Most major brands have recently reduced their business plans for 2014. There is a risk that the replacement cycle for tablet PCs will lengthen beyond the one to two year range unless brands can develop more attractive usage scenarios."

The major reason cited for the drop was increasing competition from phablet smartphones that have screen sizes 5.5-inches or higher and can do everything a 7-inch tablet can, and usually more.

Tablet makers have begun moving towards 7.9-8.9-inch models to combat the effects, and also getting much larger with tablets equaling laptop sizes at over 12 inches, as well.

Earlier this year, following Federal Trade Commission (FTC) efforts, Apple was forced to look deeper into apps that would have allowed kids to make purchases without their parent's consent during a brief period.

With all new app purchases, including in-app for existing apps, iOS users now have to type in their password again no matter what, every time, an easy deterrent for children who do not know them.

Less than a week after the FTC went after Apple, the company had already turned on its biggest competitor, Google, pointing out articles that also criticized the Google Play Store of the same issue of potential unauthorized purchases.

Google had previously had a 30 minute window in which the password did not have to be re-entered, allowing kids to rack up hundreds of dollars in charges in a short period without express consent from their parents. Apple had a 15-minute window, and at the time the FTC said they received tens of thousands of complaints from parents who were reporting millions in unauthorized charges.

Apple refunded $32.5 million in total and closed the password window.

Massive satellite broadcaster Dish Network (DISH) has met with FCC officials in an effort to try to get the proposed Time Warner Cable and Comcast merger blocked.

The deal will "present serious competitive concerns for the broadband and video marketplaces and therefore should be denied," the TV provider writes in their FCC filing. In addition, "a combined Comcast-TWC will be able to exercise its enormous size to leverage programming content in anti-competitive ways," claims DISH.

In the past, large deals have been allowed when either one or both companies makes concessions (such as selling spectrum in a wireless deal), but DISH does not believe there are "any conditions that would remedy the harms that would result from the merger."

As a combined company, TWC and Comcast would be far and away the largest cable provider in the U.S., and it would be almost a monopoly in many places, including home run markets like New York City and Los Angeles.

One major concern is how the merged company could leverage their size in negotiating distribution deals with content suppliers. In addition, both companies are also ISPs and would have the ability to block out rival video services if they so choose.

Avast, the makers of security products for mobile and desktop devices, are claiming that Android's built-in factory reset option does a poor job of really deleting your personal information.

Potentially hundreds of millions of Android users have used the option to wipe their phone before selling it, donating it, or trading it in for a new upgrade, which leaves a scary amount of data out there.

The security firm purchased 20 used Android smartphones from eBay and was able to recover 40,000 photos (including 250 nude selfies of men and 750 of nude or partially nude women), 750 emails and texts, 250 contacts and even the identities of four of the owners.

Avast mobile division president Jude McColgan says the resets are only "at the application layer" while "users thought they were doing a clean wipe and factory reinstall" that should have removed all of their data from the disks. The company used easily accessible forensic tools and drive imaging programs like FTK Imager to recover the data.

In their report, the company added: "Although at first glance the phones appeared thoroughly erased, we quickly retrieved a lot of private data. In most cases, we got to the low-level analysis, which helped us recover SMS and chat messages." Of course, there are not too many people out there that would know to use drive imaging programs to recover wiped data from a phone they bought on eBay, but the implications are terrifying for those that do. Avast does recommend their own Mobile Security application with Anti-Theft app (for free) for those that want a more secure erase.

Microsoft has confirmed that the Kinect v2 for Windows will begin shipping on July 15th, with the motion control system now available for pre-order.

The device is available in Microsoft's UK and U.S. online stores with a price of $199/£159.

Microsoft had originally offered the Kinect only as part of their Xbox gaming consoles, and the Xbox One launched with it as a mandatory bundle. Only recently did the company move away from that policy, selling the console with Kinect for $100 less.

With a launch for Windows, the system's uses are multiplied although Microsoft says the unit does not have any software included and should be used with the Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0. There are only a few notable apps so far that have been designed for the system on Windows, but there are surely plenty more to come with the updated v2 model.

Pre-order the system here: Microsoft Store

In what is becoming standard procedure at this point, Adobe has issued a critical patch for its Flash software this week.

The update will patch a major security flaw that allowed attackers to exploit users of popular services including Twitter, Instagram, Amazon and eBay.

Flash version 14.0.0.145 is available for all major operating systems.

The flaw allowed hackers to steal cookies for authentications at thousands of major sites and services, and could also allow for remote access of an affected device. Most of the aforementioned sites have fixed the error on their own back end, but Adobe has marked the update as highly important and with the highest threat level.

Windows 8 users using Chome or IE will likely have already received the automatic update for the Flash Player and everyone else can manually download the patch.

Android Wear, the first true step into the future of smartwatches has arrived via the LG G Watch and the Samsung Gear Live.

Companies as small as Pebble and as large as Samsung have tried their hands at smartwatches but so far there have been no winners in the industry. Pebble with its Pebble Steel, is the clear style winner, but the device itself lacks application support and a capable touch screen.

Samsung has built a number of watches, but has even had to change the operating system used to Tizen from Android almost a year after launch. That is almost unheard of, and personified one of the biggest issues with smartwatches: a lack of an ecosystem that could support them.

Google saw the problem and beat Apple to the punch with the launch of Android Wear, which is clearly a 1.0 product, but a strong start with good developer support.

We've tested the LG G Watch for a couple of days now and you can read on for our thoughts on the first device to run Android Wear.

According to the latest data from Kantar Worldpanel, Android continues to gain market share in the U.S., pulling away from iOS significantly as of the end of May 2014.

Android now has a dominant 61.9 percent of the U.S. market, ahead of Apple at 32.5 percent. The new level is a low for Apple, reaching a number not seen since before the iPhone 4s' launch in 2011.

Windows Phone continued its extremely slow growth, and now controls 3.8 percent of the market. BlackBerry has almost completely played itself out of the market, now at 1.3 percent. All other operating systems accounted for 0.6 percent share.

Outside of the U.S., Android's share is much higher, averaging over 85 percent in places like China, Brazil and Mexico, and over 75 percent in Italy and France. The only place in which iOS still has the lead is Japan, where Android controls 47 percent share of the nation.

Once famous actress Lindsay Lohan has sued Rockstar Games over a 'Grand Theft Auto V' character that she says was created in her likeness but without her permission.

In the game, the non playable character Lacey Jonas is a blond, young actress who needs help getting away from the paparazzi. Additionally, Lacey lives in the Gentry Manor, said to be based off the real-life Chateau Marmont, a place that Lindsay Lohan did indeed live in.

While the lawsuit is flimsy, Rockstar has been accused of ripping off Lohan's likeness: "[They] incorporated her image, likeness, clothing, outfits, [Lohan's] clothing line products, ensemble in the form of hats, hair style, sunglasses." Lacey Jonas also suffers from an eating disorder, which Lohan did fight in the past, as well.

Working against Lohan and the lawsuit is that fact the model Shelby Welinder was paid by Rockstar Games to have her likeness used for the game, and she has an invoice to prove it.

Rockstar made over $1 billion for the game, making over $800 million in its first week for the biggest entertainment launch of all-time.

Facebook Messenger is finally available, natively, for the iPad.

The app allows you to send text messages, audio messages and other media to your Facebook friends. Most notably, the service also allows you to make voice calls to other Messenger users right from within the app.

Facebook says the feature works over Wi-Fi and over 3G/4G, but the call will count against your data plan if you use cellular.

The social media giant is also looking to get some feedback about the feature, asking all users to rate the quality of the call after it's done. If you have the app installed on both your iPhone and iPad, the app will ring on both to make sure you don't miss it.

Shutterfly, the digital photo printing site, has hired boutique investment bank Qatalyst Partners LLC to help find buyers for the company.

Valued currently at just under $2 billion, the company is said to have potential suitors in the private equity world, as well as potentially from Web storage companies and larger e-commerce sites.

Shutterfly lets customers print their digital photos into real albums, or onto accessories like pillows, iPhone/iPad cases, posters and more. The site also offers greeting cards, invitations, stationery and acquired Kodak Gallery through the Eastman Kodak bankruptcy auction in 2012. The site allows for a Flickr-esque slideshow gallery.

Competition in the space has always been heated, with retailers like CVS and Walgreens offering their own rivals, as well as Snapfish, which is now owned by HP. In an effort to expand, the company has put profits on hold, seeing a loss of $34.2 million in the Q1 on $137 million in revenue. Revenues were up 17 percent year-over-year but the loss was 200 percent worse. The company is expected to see its first annual net loss in its public history this year.

Google has banned the advertisement of pornography on its ad network, specifying sites that contain "graphic sexual acts with intent to arouse including sex acts such as masturbation."

The search giant says it expects most advertisers have already looked into different venues to get their ads out, but those in the industry speak differently. AVN Media, one of the largest in the business, says it was caught by surprise, having used AdWords since 2002.

All those that could potentially be in violation were notified in June with an email:

"Beginning in the coming weeks, we'll no longer accept ads that promote graphic depictions of sexual acts including, but not limited to, hardcore pornography; graphic sexual acts including sex acts such as masturbation; genital, anal, and oral sexual activity.

When we make this change, Google will disapprove all ads and sites that are identified as being in violation of our revised policy. Our system identified your account as potentially affected by this policy change. We ask that you make any necessary changes to your ads and sites to comply so that your campaigns can continue to run."

Porn is one of the most common searches on Google, with the company confirming that searches for "sex," "porn," "free porn" and "porno" totaled 351 million for the month of May.

After being wildly profitable amid strong smartphone sales in 2011 and even in 2012, Taiwanese smartphone maker HTC has fallen on some hard times of late, showing losses for the couple of quarters following a year of falling profits.

Thanks to the new One (M8) and some significant cost cutting, however, it appears the company has turned a corner, reporting a profitable Q2. The company had revenue of $2.17 billion and a small profit of $75 million. This compares favorably in revenue and profit year-over-year.

HTC has cut costs and increased marketing, and it seems the moves paid off with the One M8, which was well received by consumers and critics.

The company is also looking into wearables such as smartwatches, which could help growth into the future.