Report: Microsoft to Release a Windows Overhaul Next Year

The next version of Windows is slated to arrive by April 2015.

The new iteration, Windows 9, is currently codenamed "Threshold," according to a report from blogger Paul Thurrott. Thurrott claims Microsoft will release more details about its Windows-related plans at its Build developer conference in April 2014.

Those plans might include an update to Windows 8.1 as well as Windows Phone 8.1, both of which should ship in April 2014.

Microsoft will reportedly overhaul its Metro design language in Windows 9, and although it won't be released as an alpha version during the Build conference, the company plans to launch three milestone releases of Windows 9 before the final version hits shelves.

Of course, these plans could change. But it's almost certain that Microsoft isn't too happy with the adoption rate of Windows 8.1, which stood at just 3.60% this month.

Source: Mashable.com

Samsung's Market Cap Loses $8 Billion on Profit Growth Concerns

Samsung is off to a rocky start this year.

Samsung Electronics' stock declined by nearly 5% in trading Thursday on the Korea Stock Exchange, shaving off $8.8 billion from the company's market cap, according to The Wall Street Journal. The drop comes amid growing concerns that Samsung's profit growth is slowing.

The South Korean company is expected to report an operating profit of more than $9 billion for the fourth quarter, according to a survey of analysts. That's more than the overall revenues of many tech companies, but it represents a 9.2% increase from the same quarter a year earlier. By comparison, Samsung's profit in the third quarter was up 26% year-over-year.

Declining profit growth was a top concern for Samsung for much of 2013. Analysts are worried about Samsung's mounting marketing expenses and slowing demand for high-end smartphones, among other factors.

Source: Mashable.com

'The Washington Post' Was the Most-Tweeted Newspaper of 2013

The Washington Post generated the most content-driven tweets of any newspaper in 2013, racking up 275,193 tweets per week on average, just edging out the New York Times at 261,422 tweets per week.

The report from Searchmetrics highlights the newspapers and stories that generated the most tweets last year. USA Today's story "Texas gunman brain dead; may be tied to Colo. slayings" was the individual newspaper story with the most tweets of the year — a whopping 408,816.

WaPo held the title for the next four most-tweeted articles in the list, with the paper's story on gunman Adam Lanza receiving 361,259 tweets.

Twitter has become an important part of media efforts to reach the widest possible audience.Pinterest also drives a large amount of traffic, but Facebook reigns among social media sites. A study from 2013 showed that 10.4% of all publisher traffic originated from Facebook.

Social media sites still pale in comparison to Google, which accounts for nearly 25% of all internet traffic, more than Facebook, Netflix and Twitter combined, according to internet analytics firm Deepfield.

Source: Mashable.com 

The Best iPhone Calendar App Just Came to iPad

The golden age of iPhone calendar apps kicked off a little more than a year ago.

In the span of a few months in late 2012 and early 2013, Fantastical, Tempo and Sunrise all launched smart calendar tools that rethought the traditional design and functionality of calendar apps. Apple later appeared to borrow some of this design with the iOS 7 update to the default calendar app. Now, what is arguably the best of these calendar apps is coming to the iPad.

Sunrise, an app developed by two former Foursquare designers, launched for iPad on Thursday with all the perks of the iPhone version and some new options. You can scroll through a list of the day's scheduled events, as you would with the iPhone version, or take advantage of a new weekly and monthly viewing mode, which offers a clearer picture of how much free time you have. The iPhone version has also been updated to offer a three-day work week view.

Both versions of the app also make it easy to enter in scheduled items on the go. The app offers a quick pull-down list of generic events — call, coffee, meeting, etc — which you can tap to add to the calendar. You can then add a map of the location, select other contacts attending the event and add additional notes.

Sunrise pulls in relevant information from social networks like Facebook and LinkedIn, directions from Google Maps and weather reports. The app supports Google and iCloud calendars.

Source: Mashable.com

CREDO Mobile Publishes Industry's First Transparency Report

CREDO Mobile, a small California cellphone carrier with around 125,000 subscribers, became the first U.S. telephone company to release a transparency report on Thursday, ahead of AT&T, and Verizon, which have promised they'd publish their own at the end of last month.

After the first revelations of secret National Security Agency surveillance programs stared coming out at the beginning of the summer of 2013, Internet giants began to deny their involvement, and push for more transparency. Some companies, like Facebook, Apple and Yahoo, published their first transparency reports.

Verizon, AT&T and other telecom companies, reportedly hand in all their customers' phone records to the NSA. But the companies remained practically silent for six months, except for when they answered a series of questions posed by Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.).

Their answers revealed that they had received 1.1 million data requests in 2012. No data about 2013 was released.

Then, on Dec. 19, Verizon announced it would soon publish data on the government requests it had received. And AT&T followed Verizon's lead the next day.

But Verizon and AT&T have still to fulfill their promises. CREDO Mobile, which bills itself as a "business that works for progressive social change," stole their thunder on Thursday.

"CREDO has a decades-long record fighting for the civil liberties, not just of our phone customers, but of all Americans,” Michael Kieschnick, CEO of CREDO, said in a press release. "Despite the shocking revelations of NSA abuses, the U.S. government continues to defend unconstitutional programs to systematically spy on Americans. So it’s up to companies like ours to lift the curtain to the extent allowed by law and fight for our customers’ constitutional rights."

CREDO's transparency report isn't that revealing: in 2013 the company only received a grand total of 16 data requests from federal, state, and local authorities. But it's still a first for a U.S. telephone or cellphone company.

In the report, the company reveals it answered 14 of those requests, but none involved the content of its customers' communications. Interestingly, CREDO also has a detailed break down of each requests, listing the agency that issued it, and even precisely what kind of request it was — whether it was an administrative subpoena, a grand jury subpoena, or an emergency request, for example.

Just like what Internet giants did in their own reports, CREDO also denounced the gag order it is subjected to when it comes to data requests related to national security issues, including those coming from the NSA or the FBI through the controversial National Security Letters.

"It may not be possible for CREDO or any telecom carrier to release to the public a full transparency report," the company wrote on its site. "As the USA PATRIOT Act and other statutes give law enforcement the ability to prevent companies from disclosing whether or not they have received certain orders."

Source: Mashable.com

Any Google+ User Can Now Email You Without Your Address

Google+ is hoping to expand your digital address book.

An update to the social network now allows Google+ users to send and receive emails from other Google+ connections even if they have never exchanged email addresses.

A new setting lets users specify whether they would like to receive emails from people in their circles, extended circles, or anyone on Google+. (They can also choose not to participate in this feature.) Any resulting messages will appear in the recipient's Gmail inbox alongside a note that the message was received "via your Google+ profile," according to Google's blog spot.

Google+ users were already able to message one another through hangouts, but the email functionality adds a more professional messaging option. Instead of a short, instant message-style interaction, users will soon be able to write as they would in other professional email settings while also including the info in their Google profile.

Users who agree to receive email via Goggle+ are not offering up their email addresses. Those remain private unless a user chooses to respond to a Google+ email, at which point the correspondence continues like any normal email exchange. In order to send a message via Google+, a user must share his or her email address with the recipient. In this instance, when a user begins to type a recipient's name into the "To" box at the top of the email, Google+ profile images will crop up alongside potential recipients.

If a user receives a Google+ message form someone outside his circles, the message will automatically appear in Gmail's "social" folder, not the "primary" folder.

Google is rolling out the feature over the next few days and will alert users via email when they have the option to change their settings.

Source: Mashable.com

Samsung ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition: A Sleek Laptop Gets Bigger and Better

LAS VEGAS — Samsung's Book 9 is one of the better laptop designs you can buy, and it's (literally) getting a big upgrade for 2014. The ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition, introduced at CES, is a 15.6-inch model that sports the same curved wedge design that made the original Series 9 apleasure to use.

Like last year's Book 9 Plus, the Book 9 2014 Edition has a full HD display and includes the SideSync software package that makes the Ultrabook your Galaxy phone's best friend: Notifications are shared, for example, and screen mirroring is effortless.

Although the screen is on the big side (most laptops this size have a 15.4-inch display), Samsung still emphasizes portability with its new ATIV model: It's just 0.63 inch at the thickest point, and 3.92 pounds. By comparison, the 15.4-inch MacBook Pro with Retina Display is 4.46 pounds.

Samsung says it's made some improvements to the display, including a better coating for the screen that cuts down on reflectivity but doesn't compromise its touchscreen response. The viewing angle is 178 degrees, and the brightness gets a bump to 300 nits from 250 in last year's model. With the upgrade to Intel's Haswell chips, battery life jumps up, too: Samsung rates the laptop at 14 hours.

Audiophiles will have lots to celebrate about the ATIV Samsung Book 9 2014 Edition since it contains a Wolfson digital-to-analog converter for lossless audio. That means you'll get studio-quality sound from the device as long as the source is lossless, too. As it happens, Samsung is also introducing lossless audio from its Music Hub (both download and streaming) — the first online music service to do so.

Besides the Book 9, Samsung is debuting a new all-in-one PC at CES. The ATIV One 7 has a slim design with curved edges that's a conscious callback to the company's Galaxy Tab tablets, and it has many of the new upgrades of the Book 9 2014 Edition including full HD resolution, a 178-degree viewing angle and an anti-reflective screen.

On the audio side, the ATIV One 7 also supports lossless audio, but with a twist: It can also act as a Bluetooth speaker while in sleep mode, and it has the hardware — a pair of 7-watt speakers, with tweeters — to do it. The machine also supports aptX to help minimize the audio artifacts that can happen over Bluetooth connections.

In sleep mode, the ATIV One 7 can also still act as a remote server for your content for when you need to access it remotely.

Both the ATIV Book 9 2014 Edition and the One 7 will be available in the first half of the year. No pricing has been announced.

Source: Mashable.com