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The streaming music industry has entered an increasingly fast race to grab users and find new ways to monetize the business, while offering "free" streaming. Last week both Spotify and Rdio announced free versions of their services, but now Spotify wants to go a step further, giving back to the people who make the music.

The company plans to allow artists to hawk their merchandise on the website. Spotify is partnering with Topspin to make this new revenue stream possible.

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According to rumors that have been popping up over the past few months, Nokia is preparing to launch a new Windows Phone 8 handset called Lumia 929. The smartphone is expected to bear the Verizon logo, as an exclusive model designed for the US mobile operator. It should be the successor of the Lumia 928, that was introduced in the first half of last year.

One might naturally assume that, when the Lumia 929 actually goes on sale, Verizon's online and brick and mortar stores would be the first places to offer the Windows Phone. The mobile operator's logo implies it. Well, the Lumia 929 is now available, but at Chinese online retailer Taobao.

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California-based password management software specialist SplashData has released the results of its annual list of the internet’s worst passwords.

For the first time "password" has been knocked off the number one slot. This doesn’t mean people are getting more security minded, however, as it's been replaced by the equally obvious "123456".

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Microsoft’s botched December 2013 firmware update caused Surface Pro 2 owners several problems, most notably a 'wake and battery drain' issue.

Microsoft was aware of the bugs and having pulled the flawed update on 18 December (a week after it was pushed out through Windows Update), vowed to fix the glitches it had caused as soon as possible. Over the weekend the company rolled out a patch designed to overcome the biggest issue which saw Microsoft’s next generation Intel-based tablets suffering from reduced battery life, crashes when put to sleep, and unexpected wake-ups.

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When you hear the word pirate associated with a TV show there is likely one immediate thought that springs to your mind, and it isn’t a skull and crossbones or eye patch. But today that is changing, as a brand new program debuts in a unique way.

A new show from Starz network titled Black Sails is set to debut next weekend, but the network has a surprise in store for viewers. You can actually watch the very first episode right now. The premier show is available through the Starz website, in conjunction with YouTube.

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Unless you have been living under a rock for many months, you couldn't help but be aware of the activities of the NSA. They certainly knew what you were up to, even when you were hiding under that rock. Campaigners have been calling for reform ever since Edward Snowden blew the lid off previously secret surveillance of telephone calls and web activity of millions of users in America and around the world. In an address at the Justice Department, President Obama gave details of some reforms to surveillance, but at the same time remained defensive of the National Security Agency.

Referring to surveillance (or spying, if you will) carried out in the 1960s, Obama said: "In the long twilight struggle against communism, we had been reminded that the very liberties that we sought to preserve could not be sacrificed at the altar of national security". The speech continued, making the obligatory nods to terrorism, "weapons of mass destruction" and September 11th; all very emotive stuff. This heartstring tugging was cited as the reason the intelligence community in general -- including the NSA -- needed to up its game. They "suddenly needed to do far more than the traditional mission of monitoring hostile powers and gathering information for policymakers."

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Now that CES 2014 is completely out of the way (although there was still time for me to pick my favorite tech from the show), it's back to business as usual. For many a company, business as usual means security issues, and Microsoft suffered at the hands of The Syrian Electronic Army. Again. The earlier security issues at Target were found to be far worse than first thought, affecting an estimated 100 million customers, and a potential security flaw was identified in Starbucks' mobile apps. For the antivirus side of protection, Kaspersky's Internet Security was named product of the year by AV-Comparatives.

Hoping against hope that new tech isn’t embraced for the sake of embracing new tech, I pondered the need for curved screens. In the mobile world, KitKat started to roll out to the Samsung Galaxy Note 3 and also announced the company somewhat deceptively named Galaxy Tab3 Lite, which is in fact no lighter than the non Lite version, other than in terms of hardware specs.

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Google has released a brand new version of its experimental Chrome browser with the arrival of Google Chrome Canary 34. The main new highlight in this release is supported for Google Now cards.

Google Now is Google’s card-based service that delivers useful information throughout the day -- it’s available as part of the Google Search app for Android and iOS, and is now being rolled out on the desktop too.

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These days, our PCs are shipping with ever increasing amounts of RAM. The idea is that more RAM helps boost performance, but the fact is that if you have 8GB or more of RAM then it’s likely there will be numerous times when that memory isn’t being utilized to the full.

One way to make maximum mileage from systems with larger amounts of memory is with a RAM disk, and the free-for-personal-use SoftPerfect RAM Disk handles the job perfectly.

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When it comes to sports, I am a born loser. As much as I love my favorite New York teams, they aren't exactly winners -- Mets, Knicks, Jets and Islanders. Following these teams is a quick path to depression. As bad as I am at picking teams to root for, I am probably worse at picking things to invest in.

A good example is Bitcoin -- I thought about buying some bitcoins as an investment a few years back, but convinced myself it was foolish. After all, it was risky and lacked legitimacy. While hindsight is 20/20, had I bought some, I would have made a substantial profit. Not only that, more and more legitimate businesses are accepting the virtual currency as a payment option. Today, the NBA franchise Sacramento Kings announces that it too will soon begin accepting it.

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It's a rare business package these days that doesn't claim to offer some form of social capability.

With the launch of Saleslogix 8.1, marketing and CRM specialist Swiftpage has added a number of features to help sales staff interact with their customers by displaying their social networking activity within the package.

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Third in a series. The holiday season is well and truly behind us now and there's lots of big and important new releases and updates in the App Store this week. One of the most significant is a new app from Google which sees the search giant challenging Apple’s own iTunes Store (albeit with some very important Apple-appeasing limitations).

Elsewhere, cloud storage service Box announced that it has rewritten its app to make it "super-fast, simpler to use and more immersive", and as an incentive for users to try it out the app now comes with 50 GB of storage for free, which definitely makes it worth the download. You can read more about the update here.

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Streaming the music you want continues to become easier, with more choice of services and increasingly better pricing. But prices can’t get any better than free, and that seems to be where this market is now headed.

Today Rdio joins Spotify in announcing it will now host free streaming on the web. "That means you can listen to 20 million songs plus all the albums, playlists, and stations you love anywhere there’s a computer. Absolutely free", the service announces.

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Almost 3.5 million British children under the age of eight have tablets and nearly 4 million learned to use a smartphone or tablet before they were three.

New research from price comparison and switching service uSwitch reveals a growing nation of cyber tots with 29 percent learning to use a touch screen device before the age of three and 11 percent before they were two.

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For a long time, dedicated websites and apps have been able to separate the audio content in YouTube videos, in order for users to download it for offline playback. Even the full-blown YouTube app that was developed by Microsoft for Windows Phone offered a similar feature, which allowed users to grab the whole video instead and store it on their smartphone.

Ripping the audio from YouTube videos can come in handy for those who want to enjoy their favorite tracks, but may find themselves in areas without good-enough cellular coverage for YouTube streaming. I have experienced this scenario first-hand while traveling. For Windows Phone users, there are a couple of apps that can get this job done, with MusicTube being one of the most appealing choices.

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