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Microsoft will dip its toes into the original TV programming pool starting in June, with a total of six series ready to roll out.

Following the success of shows like House of Cards, more players are looking to original programming for future revenues, and to lure consumers to their content delivery platforms without paying high fees to secure rights to popular third-party shows.

Among Microsoft's line-up is a collaboration with Channel Four in the UK called "Humans", an English-language adaptation of Sveriges Television and Matador Film's acclaimed series "Real Humans."

The features 'Synths', which are robotic servants that have the likeness of their live counterparts.

"'Humans' not only questions personal relationships, we loved how this sci-fi show toys with reality and our connection to technology," said Xbox Entertainment Studios President Nancy Tellem.

Tellem was recruited by Microsoft 19 months ago to spearhead its foray into TV show production.

Another production through the Microsoft studio is a reality show called "Every Street United", which is timed to coincide with the World Cup this summer. Users will be able to unlock extra scenes and play mini-games based on the show.

The Intellectual Crime Property Unit of the City of London police will be targeting users of piracy sites with adverts of their own.

An infringing website list (IWL) has already been created by the police force. The first step is to contact the owner or operators of the site and encourage them to voluntarily change their practices. If that fails, the police target the revenue sources by contacting 60 brands, agencies and advertising technology businesses with instruction to cut them off.

The idea of starving piracy sites of revenue is not a new idea at all, but it is intriguing that police intend to ad their own messages to the sites for users to read. How they intend to do this is unknown, but it will be interesting to witness.

"Together we have created a process that first and foremost encourages offenders to change their behaviour so they are operating within the law," said DCI Andy Fyfe, head of the PIPCU.

"However, if they refuse to comply we now have the means to persuade businesses to move their advertising to different platforms and, if offending continues, for registrars to suspend the websites."


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Police crack down on Game of Thrones illegal downloads: www.bbc.co.uk

Microsoft is still thinking through its options as it works on ways to bring Xbox 360 titles to the Xbox One console.

Since the Xbox One console adopted X86 architecture instead of the PowerPC-powered Xbox 360, it was always going to be a challenge to bring Xbox 360 titles to the new console. "It turns out to be hard to emulate the PowerPC stuff on the X86 stuff," Microsoft's Frank Savage said during a panel discussion at Microsoft's Build conference.

"There are [plans], but we're not done thinking them through yet, unfortunately," he added.

It may be possible that Microsoft will give up on trying to go with the emulation route, and will simply follow Sony's PlayStation Now model, which uses the cloud instead to deliver PS3 experiences on the PS4 console.

Xbox One director Albert Penello told GameSpot last year that it could be possible that Microsoft will use the Azure cloud platform to stream Xbox 360 games to Xbox One owners.

Earlier this week, Amazon broke its silence on its long-awaited set-top box: the Fire TV.

The device, which rivals a growing amount of consumer set-tops and HDMI dongles including those from Apple, Roku, WD and Google, is another gateway to Amazon's ever growing ecosystem of applications, games, movies, TV and cloud storage.

In differentiating itself from other similar devices, Amazon has promised better gaming, better voice search and of course, the easiest access to your Amazon life. It succeeds in may of its endeavors, but the biggest question remains whether the device is worth shelling out $99 for a set-top so similar to what you may already own.

Design, Remote and Set Up

The Fire TV is as plain as you can get, but it remains sleek, at least compared to rival boxes. The tiny black box is thin, perfectly square and does a good job of hiding its port on the back. There is a small LED light on the front that lets you know the box is turned on, but other than that there is nothing else to speak of. It blends perfectly into your entertainment center, or will subtly complement your TV.

Thanks to the Xbox One's independent developer program, it appears that a Plex client is on the way for the console.

Developer Tyson Edwards says he has been approved by Microsoft to develop a Plex client, which could be a game changer for the console that currently lacks decent streaming from home servers with dedicated apps.

Edwards says the client will be based off the current Windows 8 Modern UI Plex app and will also include voice and motion control via Kinect.

Universal Windows apps will not be available until the launch of Windows 8.1 later this year, so the Plex client is probably a few months away at best.

Regardless, the developer says the platform has been quite easy to develop for, which is a good sign.

Source:
Plex for Xbox One is a Go! Plex

Google has added a new section to its Play Store, "People," which shows off what your friends and other users are downloading.

The move comes just days after the search giant added an activity feed to the mobile app,

In the activity feed, you can see your recent reviews, ratings and of course purchases. The People section will show off what friends have recently downloaded or reviewed.

Google says the People feed will be closely tied to Google+, allowing for easier following on the social network and their full profiles.

If you are running Android, you most likely have the feed now.

Source:
9to5Google

The British government has reportedly signed a milti-million pounds deal with Microsoft to continue using Windows XP in public services across the island.

Windows XP SP3 officially reaches its end of support on Tuesday, April 8, thirteen years after the operating system first launched. After April 8, XP users are strongly recommended to either get a new PC, upgrade to a newer Windows OS, switch to Linux or find a more limited, offline usage for the operating system.

The British government has no plans to rush to upgrade systems across its public services however, and has reportedly signed a £5.548 million deal with Microsoft to continue support through the Redmond giant's "custom support" program.

Brits are not the only ones paying for continued support either; the Dutch are also reportedly using Microsoft's custom support options for over 30,000 computers still running the XP operating system.

The U.S. government also reportedly has hundreds of thousands of systems still running the ageing operating system, for which it will require its own deal with Microsoft.

To be fair to Microsoft, the company has been warning about the EOS for Windows XP for years.


Sources and Recommended Reading:
Dutch, British governments pay to keep Windows XP alive: www.arstechnica.com/

Users of Microsoft's Xbox Live service who had trouble with an outage on March 11 are being credited with one week free Gold membership from Microsoft.

According to IGN, Xbox LIVE users who couldn't connect to the service on March 11 have been receiving messages through the Xbox Live Messaging system notifying them of a free week of Gold membership for the trouble they experienced.

"We know you experienced an issue signing in on your Xbox One on 3/11/2014. We apologize and will soon give you 7 days of Xbox Live Gold for your inconvenience," the message reads.

March 11 was also the launch date of Titanfall for Xbox One, which lead some to link the Xbox Live connection issues with the release of the multiplayer, online-only title. That link has since been dismissed, however.

Source: IGN

Insomniac Games has reminded PS3 owners that its Resistance trilogy will no longer have online play from Tuesday, April 8.

Last year, Sony had warned that the Resistance titles would lose online play sometime in early 2014, and that date has since been set to April 8, so if you want one last blast at Resistance online you only have the rest of the weekend and Monday to do it.

There are also no Resistance games currently in development for PlayStation platforms, which makes this online blackout a little bit more significant for fans of the series.

Whether online functionality for PS Vita's Resistance: Burning Skies will also stop on April 8 is unclear for now.

Source: Joystiq

Hundreds of old school gaming fans got a treat yesterday when they were able to play Tetris on the side of the 29-story Circa Center in Philadelphia.

Images of the giant, colorful Tetris shapes were created by the building's embedded LED lights in its external glass facade.

Anyone looking to play used joysticks to maneuver the giant lights. The game was part of the citywide series of events dubbed Philly Tech Week.

Tetris was also chosen to celebrate the upcoming 30th anniversary of the game. Frank Lee, an associate professor of digital media at Drexel University, oversaw the project. "This project began as a personal love letter to the games that I loved when I was a child - Pong last year, Tetris this year. But it ended up as a way of uniting the city of Philadelphia," Lee added.

Lee, who is already the Guinness World Record holder for the world's largest architectural video game display, made a similar stunt by playing Pong last year on the Circa Center.

Nintendo is bringing Game Boy Advance titles to the Wii U Virtual Console throughout April, including some titles that will be instantly familiar to GBA gamers.

The first wave of GBA games heading to the Wii U includes Advance Wars, Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga and Metroid Fusion. Those three titles will be launching on April 7, and priced at $7.99 each.

On April 10, Nintendo will also offer Kirby & The Amazing Mirror and WarioWare, Inc., while F-Zero: Maximum Velocity ($6.99) and Golden Sun will be available from April 17.

Yoshi's Island: Super Mario Advance 3 will be available from April 24.

Nintendo will also offer Super Mario Bros. 3 on Wii U and Nintendo 3DS for $4.99 from April 17, bringing back one of the most celebrated Super Mario games in the history of the franchise.

More details from: Nintendo.com

The Xbox 360 version of Titanfall has already been on sale for a couple of days from some retailers, though the copy will be useless until launch day.

Titanfall is an online-only multiplayer game, so unless you are connected to the servers while playing there is nothing you can really do with it. While some retailers broke the street date for the game by a few days already, customers will be disappointed when the put the disc in an Xbox 360 console and find that the servers won't be online until Tuesday, April 8.

The Xbox 360 version of Titanfall was supposed to be released in early March, but EA pushed back the launch until April 8.

On Xbox One and PC, Titanfall is developed by Respawn Entertainment, while the Xbox 360 version is developed by Bluepoint Games. The developer and publisher are promising as good an experience as possible on Xbox 360. It requires a 1GB install on Xbox 360 consoles with a HDD.

Sony Pictures has filed a DMCA takedown against 'Sintel', a 2010 short film released by the Blender Foundation with all materials available under a Creative Commons Attribution License.

The Blender Foundation develops and promotes the open source 3D graphics program Blender. It is a non-profit organization, funded by donations with the stated goal of providing the Internet community with access to 3D technology.

To showcase what you can do with Blender, the Blender Foundation has released several movies since 2006 that were developed with the system.

The latest movie is Sintel, which was released in 2010 and has been available on YouTube ever since, until now. Trying to view the video on YouTube now results instead in a notification that the video contains content from Sony Picture Movies and Shows.

Of course, there is one slight problem; Sony Pictures does not own the film or anything in it. All the materials used to make the short film were original materials, and have been licensed as Creative Commons Attribution 3.0, so you can freely share the material.

Twitter, in their ongoing efforts to monetize the platform and bring in revenue, will be introducing fifteen new types of advertisements and better ways to target specific users.

The ad products will roll out over the next six months, and the first few will be available within the month. One of the first new ads will let users click a button to download apps directly via Twitter and then through their respective app stores. They are then returned to Twitter after the download begins.

Twitter's ad revenue, which accounts of nearly all of their current earnings, doubled in the Q4 YoY, to $219.6 million. The company is not profitable. The company is now beta testing a mobile app install ad unit, following in Facebook's footsteps.

Facebook offers a similar mobile advertising product and Facebook users downloaded over 245 million mobile apps after seeing those ads in their news feeds. Many gaming companies prefer to use Facebook due to the popularity of those packages of ads.

Ads have been found in user's timelines since 2010, but top executives have always suggested that they do not want to inundate streams with ads.

According to a new report, at least five important executives have left Samsung's US mobile business in the last two months, a strange and alarming turn of events.

Samsung Telecommunications America (STA) is in charge of mobile devices in the U.S. including smartphones, tablets and smartwatches.

Among those that have left are the head of national sales, the mobile devices product chief, a lead engineer for the Gear smartwatch, the vice president of retail and channel marketing and the director of human resources. The company is in current patent-infringement suits with Apple, and the previous trials have forced STA executives to be witnesses, provide evidence or provide testimony. This may not sit right with current executives.

Samsung was asked for comment on the departures and left a generic statement. "As our US business continues to diversify and expand, we will continue to build an industry-leading organization with people who will contribute to even greater success for Samsung. Some have left voluntarily to pursue other opportunities, and we thank them for their service."