Kindle Unlimited brings endless reading and listening to customers

Kindle Touch

Amazon already gives Prime customers access to a Kindle lending library, allowing the user to "borrow" books each month. But for some of the more voracious types, this may not provide enough material for a month's worth of entertainment.

For those customers, the retail giant has unveiled Kindle Unlimited, bringing all of the reading and listening needed to satisfy anyone, regardless of how fast he or she can read.

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Mozilla takes Firefox OS to new markets and devices, including India

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Not to be outdone by Google's Android operating system, Mozilla wishes to push its own mobile platform out to customers. The organization is aiming mostly at the low-end market, but that will be expanding in the future.

The mobile platform initially debuted on just two devices, but Mozilla has managed to scare up a few more partners to produce its product.

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BBM for Windows Phone available to beta testers

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You may recall that, earlier this month, BBM finally made its way to Windows Phone Store, after arriving on Android and iOS last year. It was not made publicly available, as BlackBerry chose to conduct a beta testing trial before its official launch.

As one of the folks who quickly signed up for the beta program, I just received an email from BlackBerry detailing what sort of features are available to test, what the known problems are, and how to provide feedback. Here is what fellow beta testers can expect.

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RE: Was it good for you? -- 8 percent of people check emails after sex

digital couple

Email is often cited as the killer app which popularized the internet. You might think that by now we'd have moved on but a new survey of 1,000 US email users from mail app provider My.com suggests we're just as in love with our inboxes as ever.

There are currently around 3.9 billion email accounts worldwide and the number is expected to increase by around 27 percent this year. We're also spending more time on our email these days with 46 percent of users admitting to spending an hour or more a day reading their messages.

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[Updated] Lenovo ends sales of small-screen Windows tablets in US due to lack of interest

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Microsoft is keen to get its tiled OS on as many devices, from as many hardware makers, as possible. It introduced the license-free Windows with Bing back in May as part of this push, but prior to that, at Build 2014, it announced it would be offering Windows for free to OEMs and ODMs on all tablets smaller than nine inches.

The dream of an army of smaller devices running Windows 8.1 has suffered a major setback now though with news that one of the largest Windows device makers, Lenovo, has decided to kill off its smaller tablets in the US, citing lack of interest.

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Honda's Asimo robot can now run, jump and recognize voices

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The latest upgrade to Honda's Asimo has given the robot enhanced intelligence, the ability to run 5.6mph and enabled it to perform complex sign language.

Asimo was first introduced in 2000 and is seen as one of the leading attempts at creating a humanoid robot.

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Dell Latitude E5540: a well-specified corporate laptop [Review]

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In all the furor over super-slim Ultrabooks and magically transforming hybrids, it's sometimes easy to forget that some people just need a basic portable. The Dell Latitude E5540 is aimed at those people. It's not a fundamentally exciting notebook by any stretch of the imagination, but it could be just what your company needs as a standard-issue everyday workhorse.

The design of the E5540 is decidedly inconspicuous, with matte black plastic the order of the day all round. This is very much a sober corporate notebook that won't cause any commotion in the meeting room. The full width of the 15in chassis has been used to provide a separate keypad alongside the keyboard, as well as discrete volume control buttons at the top. The keys are full-sized and have a comfortably firm action, making touch typing for long durations very pleasant. However, the keyboard isn't backlit, which is an unusual omission for a work-oriented laptop.

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Bing offers complainers a right to be forgotten from search results

Bing offers complainers a right to be forgotten.

If you live in Europe and don't like the fact that Binging yourself throws up results you'd rather didn’t appear, Microsoft has created a form you can use to request removal of these links from searches. (Yeah, ok…Bing doesn't really work as a verb in the same way as Google. Lesson learned.) Not all that long ago, Google was forced to consider censoring search results that people considered to be out of date, incorrect or irrelevant -- it's a ruling that has been dubbed the right to be forgotten. A form was set up to make it easier for people with complaints to get in touch, and now Microsoft has followed suit and created a Request to Block Bing Search Results In Europe form.

Filling in the form is absolutely no guarantee that a search result will be removed -- and it is important to remember that this is only about removing links from search results, not removing actual content. Or, as Microsoft puts it in the form:

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Grandfathered into the 25GB OneDrive plan? Microsoft has not reduced your storage

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When Microsoft introduced SkyDrive, it provided every customer with 25GB of storage space for free. The company later reduced this to only 7GB, but existing users were grandfathered into their plans and allowed to retain the old amount of cloud space.

Now the company has quietly reduced that down to only 15GB -- sort of. No official announcement was made regarding this move -- users simply learn of it by checking available storage within their accounts. But all is not what it appears to be at first.

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CyberLink Media Suite 12 arrives, supports creating and editing 4K video

cyberlink

CyberLink has announced the release of CyberLink Media Suite 12, its vast and comprehensive collection of playback, editing and convent creation tools.

Highlights include new support for creating and playing back UltraHD 4K Video. The suite can now also play and convert H.265 content, and CyberLink claims new 64-bit video and photo editing engines deliver 3x faster rendering speed over the 32-bit versions.

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Not a DirecTV subscriber? You can now get NFL Sunday Ticket (maybe)

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It's hard to believe it's already that time, but NFL training camps begin opening over the next couple of weeks. It's also the time when, traditionally, DirecTV subscribers grab Sunday Ticket, as there are usually early-bird prices.

This year, though, you may just be able to snag a subscription to the Ticket, without being a customer of the satellite provider. Stipulations for this abound.

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New Android ransomware pretends to be FBI porn warning

Smartphone anger

The large number of devices out there means that Android is becoming an increasingly popular target for malware writers. Ransomware which has previously been a mainly Windows problem is becoming an issue too.

The latest piece of malware discovered by mobile security specialist Lookout attempts to extort money with a scary message claiming to be from the FBI. It claims the user has broken the law by visiting pornography and child abuse websites.

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Google Chrome tweaks notification popups, adds crash recovery browser bubble

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Google has unveiled Chrome 36 FINAL for Windows, Mac and Linux, with Chrome for Android 36 rolling out shortly. The desktop update adds a couple of user interface tweaks under the label "rich notifications improvements".

It also updates the incognito browsing page, adds a browser crash recovery bubble that could help prevent data loss and extends the Chrome App Launcher to Linux, plus adds various under-the-hood tweaks.

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Microsoft to cut 18,000 jobs as part of new restructuring plan

Job Jobs Cut Cuts

Today, as part of an expected restructuring plan, Microsoft announces that it will cut 18,000 jobs within a year. The company claims this move will "simplify its organization and align the recently acquired Nokia Devices and Services business with the company's overall strategy". Yes, basically, Microsoft wants to get rid of excess employees, and the software giant is doing so following Satya Nadella's last memo to employees.

Of the 18,000 jobs to be cut, 12,500 positions are to be eliminated as a direct result of its deal with Nokia. The job cuts are not expected to be carried out completely until the end of June, 2015, and will cost Microsoft between $1.1 and $1.6 billion, which includes between $750 and $800 million in severance packages. The writing has been on the wall since the Devices and Services purchase was finalized earlier this year.

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Got Windows Phone 8.1 through Preview for Developers? Lumia Cyan upgrades may fail

Lumia-Cyan-update-Start-screen

Microsoft has introduced Preview for Developers to give Windows Phone users early access to new releases, specifically betas, of the tiled operating mobile system. The program is also supposed to ensure a seamless upgrade path to the official firmware, once it is available.

While I have had no issues upgrading to an official firmware ever since I started using Preview for Developers in late-2013, it looks like there might be a problem in upgrading to Lumia Cyan for those of us who have relied on the program to install Windows Phone 8.1.

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