Once dismissed as little more than a hobby for Apple, Apple TV seems to have quietly gathered momentum. Talking at a shareholder meeting in Cupertino, CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company has managed to net over $1 billion through the devices, leading him to quip "it's a little more difficult to call it a hobby these days." It's difficult to tell just how many sales this translates into as the figure includes content sales as well as device sales.
But while $1 billion may sound impressive, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the billions that Apple rakes in from its other product lines. The last figure released suggested that over 13 million apple TV boxes had been sold by May last year, but the sales figures released today relate to the fiscal year that ended in September. For anyone thinking about jumping on the bandwagon, Apple has a new incentive -- a $25 iTunes gift card for anyone who buys a set-top box by 5 March.
On Twitter, analyst Horace Dediu from Asymco described Apple TV as Apple's fastest growing hardware line, estimating a year on year boost of around 80 percent. But with Apple saying that the figures include both hardware and content sales, it's very difficult to say just where the growth lies. Initial reports about the shareholder meeting suggested that Tim Cook's announcement meant that 10 million units had been sold in the fiscal year.
But factoring in money made from content sales makes it impossible to tell -- until Apple is a little more open about sales figures, that is. According to Peter Kafka at re/code, Apple has confirmed that hardware and content sales contribute to the $1 billion. It could be the case that 2013 saw a massive surge of interest in Apple TV in terms of new adopters, but it is also possible that hardware sales are low and the majority of the money is coming from content. There has been no official word about an update to Apple TV, but it would be surprising if new hardware does not make an appearance some time this year.
Image Credit: mehmetcan / Shutterstock
Eighth in a series. The app that’s got me most excited this week isn’t even out yet. 
Spotify is all about streaming music, creating playlists and sharing them with others. Who doesn't relish the idea of creating the ultimate mixtape and sharing with not just their best friend, but the whole world? Music fans love it, and so do the musicians who earn royalties from making their work available.
Christopher Budd
Linux is on a roll lately, as Android and Chromebooks continue to gain marketshare. While this should be a win for the open-source community, many purists do not consider Android or Chrome OS to truly be Linux. Of course this is not true, as both operating systems utilize the Linux kernel. However, I understand where Google detractors are coming from; a distribution like Ubuntu is more the traditional approach to using the kernel.
It sounds like something from a James Bond film -- or something from a creepy news story about a landlord stalking one of his tenants -- but the headline relates to a real story. We're all only too aware of the activities of the NSA and other governmental agencies monitoring the telephone and internet activities of people around the world, but the latest revelations see things taking a turn for the seriously sinister.
As smartphones and tablets evolve, they get faster and gain more features. However, there is one place where they are still lagging -- battery life. Many devices still require daily charging. Not only is this annoying, it is dangerous too. After all, you cannot call 911 from a dead phone.
On April 8, 2014, Microsoft will officially end support for Windows XP. After that date, users of the aging OS will no longer receive new security updates, hotfixes, support options, or online technical content updates.
Chickens and eggs are pains in the butt. No, not the actual bird and its ovum, but the causality dilemma. The old argument asks if a chicken or egg came first. Of course, both answers are a dilemma as you need a chicken to lay an egg and you need an egg to get a chicken.
As you’ll probably guess from its name, 
Microsoft has released a service pack update for the latest version of Office. Service Pack 1 (SP1) promises greater stability, expanded functionality, and security enhancements for Office 2013, SharePoint 2013 and Exchange Server 2013, as well as improved compatibility with Windows 8.1 and Windows Server 2012 R2.
BYOD is in full swing, but most businesses are not prepared for it. In order to maintain a high level of security, companies that embrace the movement, or want to, have to change, or adapt, their existing policies to accommodate the wave of devices their employees are bringing in, which is not what 55 percent of them are doing, according to a 
PCs can make great home entertainment systems, at least in theory. But in practice, having to control everything from a mouse (or keyboard) is a major disadvantage.
2014 is still young, but the tech news has been hot, and much of it surrounds the two new gaming systems on the market. Some of that news has been hype for the upcoming Titanfall, a title that is generating a lot buzz from the gaming community. Microsoft fueled that fire last week with a beta release, now it is stoking the blaze with more news.
AirPlay is, as we all know, Apple’s solution for listening to music wirelessly wherever you are. Leave your Mac in the study and stream music to a wireless speaker in your living room, or beam a TV show from your iPad to the big-screen TV through Apple TV or a HTPC running XBMC. It’s a key part of the media-friendly home.
While Android is utilized by a cornucopia of handset manufacturers, Windows Phone is primarily a Nokia-only affair. Sure, there are other manufacturers that use Microsoft's mobile OS, such as HTC and Samsung, but let's be honest -- if you buy a Windows Phone, you want a Nokia. For a company like Apple, being the sole manufacturer of iOS is by design. However, Microsoft's business has always been about working with as many hardware partners as possible.
Another week, another spate of security related news. In the latest of a recent run of high-profile hacks, Kickstarter announced that 
Health and technology is not a new relationship. For years, exercise equipment such as an elliptical or stationary bike has been fitted with computers to track progress and heart-rate. Hell, many medical discoveries were made in space thanks to NASA. However, having dongles communicate with a smartphone is still a relatively new market. The existence of this market underscores people's increasing interest in positive health and well-being.
While the gold-standard of office suites remains Microsoft's Office, many competitors are trying to catch up. While Libreoffice is a nice alternative, it has failed to truly take off beyond Linux users and people who don't want to spend money or cant afford to buy Microsoft's solution.
Google has updated its cross-platform browser with the release of 
If the announcement of Facebook paying $19 billion in cash and stock for 
Every day, I speak with hundreds of people on social media, IRC and instant messenger. However, I rarely get to see the person face to face. The closest I get is their profile pic. Heck, even those can be faked; a hairy old man can pretend to be a 21 year old female college student -- trust me on this.
In 2006, I co-founded Four Kitchens, a web design and development consultancy that specializes in working with open-source software. As an open-source business, we are frequently asked about the benefits of open source. The way I explain it to most people is like this: The open-source business model is service-driven, and the closed-source model is product-driven.
Todd Ross Nienkerk is a Digital Strategist and Partner at Austin, Texas-based 
BitTorrent has announced the availability of 
I purchased four Nest Protect wired smoke detectors direct from Nest at the end of January. I live in the UK, they were shipped from Holland, and so took five days to arrive. No big deal. I got an electrician friend round to fit them, and he made an interesting discovery -- the power cables connected to my existing smoke detectors were dead (the devices still worked as they were running off batteries, and past false alarms showed they were linked together, so there was no safety risk). The only way to connect my new Nest devices was to do a massive rewiring job. I decided to speak to Nest and swap my wired models for wireless battery ones.
Publishing its 
My e-mail inbox this morning contains 118,306 messages totaling about seven gigabytes. I really should so something about that but who has the time? So I keep a lot of crap around longer than I should. I have, for example, every message I have sent or received since 1992 when I registered cringely.com. Those obviously occupy a lot more than seven gigabytes, though interestingly enough the total is less than 20 GB. My storage strategy has been a mixed bag of disks and cloud services and probably stuff I’ve forgotten along the way. So I’ve decided to clean it up by standardizing on Microsoft’s OneDrive (formerly SkyDrive) cloud storage service, 
If you wanna be my lover, you've got to...err, enough of that. If there is one thing that technology enthusiasts love, it's the Spice Girls. Yes, their girl-power pop is the soundtrack for computer programmers, gamers and IT professionals the world over. In the BetaNews newsroom, we often have arguments over which Spice Girl is best. While I am partial to Baby Spice, Mark loves Scary.
Amazon Coins have mostly flown beneath the radar -- you don't really hear much about them, but you probably know of their existence. That's because, in the past, they were available only for Kindle Fire tablets. Despite the popularity of those devices, the Coins haven't made big news.
One small but welcome addition to Windows 8 is its support for ISO files. Right-click your image, select Mount, and it’s immediately available as a virtual drive, which you can browse, read or write like any other.
No one could argue very convincingly that mobile isn’t one of the most disruptive, transformational factors in business -- and in life -- today. Consumers are armed 24/7 with ever more powerful smartphones and tablets. But most aren’t dying to download the app you paid handsomely to develop.
Stefan Debois is Co-founder & CEO of Survey Anyplace. 
When people think of Dell, they usually associate the company with cheap Windows computers and the "
Smart TVs have become all the rage, bringing the world of apps into the living room. But other devices, like Blu-ray players and set-top boxes, can do the same thing. Now TiVo, a pioneer in the DVR field, is partnering with Opera to bring its app store to customers.
It offers a simple to use interface that allows you to set multiple quiet hours schedules, and the volume level during and after the fact. It also works for appointments, by hooking into your accounts.
If, for some reason, Volume Manager does not fit the bill there is another app, that is called Quiet Hours, which offers similar functionality.
Video Comparer
Yes, you are reading those specs right. Rather than use a chintzy ARM processor, this tablet utilizes an Intel Atom chip and the full Windows 8.1 operating system -- not RT. While this will allow you to run legacy Windows programs if you need them, you should still avoid doing so. Sure, choice is good and having the legacy option is a plus, but the small screen still works best with Modern UI apps.
I took this tablet on a recent business trip, instead of my 10-inch iPad, and really enjoyed the smaller footprint and ability to charge by microUSB. Since my Android phone uses that charging standard too, I had one less wire to pack. I also own a Nexus 7 which is a great tablet too. With that said, boy-oh-boy, a 7 inch screen is just not ideal for anything other than maybe playing video games. An 8-inch display adds just enough extra screen real estate to be more usable.
Video Comparer
With security breaches on the rise, such as the recent 
Erik Knight is the founder of 
Microsoft is expanding its collection of Bing apps on Windows Phone with the addition of Bing Health & Fitness. The offering, that debuted on Windows 8.1 last year, is meant for "Microsoft testing purposes only", but is available to download for other users as well, provided they want to eat healthy and stay in shape.
WindowsX has updated both of its skinning tools, 
It is usually Bill Gates who is heralded for his philanthropy, but according to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, it is 
Leave a PC unattended for a while and the standard lock screen keeps it reasonably safe. Press Win+L, the lock screen appears, and only someone who knows your password will be able to restore the desktop.
Laplink Software has released 
As someone who was born in the 80's and raised on Long Island, I am by default a De La Soul fan. They were the people that taught me Hip-Hop didn't have to be about violence and gangs. The trio was about peace, rhyming and having fun. Sadly, this cost them a bit of street credibility as they earned a "soft" label. However, true Hip-Hop heads know De La Soul is legit.
A person's genitals do not define their gender. At least that is what some people believe. As a trained Sociologist, I accept that forces beyond biology define how a person identifies. In other words, a person may identify as a man, despite having female reproductive organs. Maybe they identify as something else altogether.
In the technology community, we have quite a few nerds and geeks (myself included). These types of people often like the same things -- video games, Mountain Dew and Star Wars to name a few. The problem is, media on discs, like DVD or Blu-Ray, are old hat; streaming media is where it's at.
The spread of BYOD means that employees increasingly expect a seamless experience, accessing content on the device of their choice.
Apple overtakes Microsoft! That’s not a headline you'd expect to read, and when you look at sales of Macs versus Windows desktops, Macs and Windows laptops, or any combination of these, it is Windows devices that are always going to come out on top. But look at things from a different angle and it is a very different story. In Q4 2013, the number of Apple devices sold exceeded the number of Windows PCs sold around the world.
With even budget PCs now including at least 4GB RAM, application memory usage isn' the issue it used to be. But if you're using an underpowered computer -- or a program with a memory leak -- then you could still run short of RAM, drastically cutting your system performance.
Rick Rotondo is VP of marketing and publication relations at 
The sad state of affairs with the status of today's cord-cutting is that most channel apps and websites still include the requirement that demands the customer to verify a TV service provider. It's not the best solution, but for now it seems we must deal with it.
CRM has been around for a long time, but don't be tempted to think that it's on the way out. Companies are seeing CRM technology as a major part of their digital initiatives in order to improve customer experience.
Threats to Mac OS X, Linux and Android systems have increased over the past year as the malware landscape has evolved.
Translation services from Google, Bing and others mean it's now very easy to translate plain text, and there are a host of apps and browser extensions available to simplify the process further. Translating text embedded in an image requires a little more work, but Screen Translator is an open source tool which may be able to help.
The Windows desktop is a great place to work, when you're running two or three programs. Launch 10, 20, maybe 30, and life becomes rather more difficult. Application windows are everywhere, taskbar buttons become tiny, even Alt+Tab becomes awkward to use.
Yesterday I wrote about the forthcoming 
Browse just about any Windows tips site and you’ll find tutorials on how to customize various Explorer right-click menus. Adding the ability to open the command prompt at a particular folder is a particular favorite; shutting down your system from the desktop right-click menu is another.
HTC is a brand that has fallen from the lofty heights it enjoyed just a few years ago. Today, the company releases fourth quarter earnings and the figures do not make for particularly happy reading.
Derekaw said: "The Windows 8 experiment continues. It's like being part of a beta program". And he’s right, it is. Every iteration of the OS moves further and further away from the original release. It feels as if Microsoft is now just trying features out in the hope of finally coming up with something that appeals to everyone.
Firefox is my favorite browser, but I don't use it. While that sounds crazy, and it sort of is, there is a method to my madness. You see, Google Chrome utilizes Google accounts, which makes my life easier.
Deciding which browser extensions are trustworthy has always been an uncertain business. If an add-on is highly rated, with plenty of users, then it should be safe… But as the 
The biggest news of the week has to be the appointment of 
You might think that Russia has just about enough on its plate at the moment, what with having the Winter Olympics to host and fending off 
The app market has exploded but only a few apps will survive in the long haul. The ability to monetize will be the defining factor. Fortunately, innovations in mobile technology have emerged to make monetization possible with in-app advertising and in-app purchase models.
Colin Jeavons is the President and CEO of 
Derrick Wlodarz is an IT Specialist who owns Park Ridge, IL (USA) based technology consulting & service company 
At first glance 
The struggling musician is an almost iconic figure in today's culture. For every one that makes it, thousands sadly fail. Having talent is obviously the biggest key to success, but even that sometimes isn't enough. It needs to be combined with a bit of luck to get noticed.
Himanshu Sareen is the founder and CEO of NYC based software development firm 
Installing a reliable antivirus package is a key part of maintaining your PC’s security, but there’s more you can do. It’s just as important to ensure you keep up-to-date with the latest software patches, blocking security vulnerabilities before malware can exploit them.
Microsoft has a new CEO in former cloud and server chief Satya Nadella and readers have been asking me what this means? Certainly Nadella was the least bad of the internal candidates but an external selection would have been better. Whether it works out well or not probably comes down to Bill Gates, who leaves his job as chairman to become Nadella’s top technical advisor.
If you're browsing the web and find an image you'd like to keep, then the procedure is almost always the same: right-click, select "Save image as", and choose your preferred destination. That's simple enough, too, but if you’re saving lots of pictures in the same session then it can get a little tedious.
The name 37signals may not mean much to people outside of tech and business circles. This is a company that produces something that is better known than its own name: Basecamp. The very fact that 37signals is primarily, or even solely, associated with Basecamp seems as good a reason as any to consider a rebrand, and this is precisely what the company is doing. While some people content themselves with blowing out candles on a cake, 37signals celebrates its tenth birthday by renaming itself Basecamp.
VirusTotal has announced the addition of AegisLab as a new file scanning engine. The Taiwanese company was already working with VirusTotal on its URL scanner, but this should raise its profile significantly.
VideoLAN has released 
Paying a bounty for vulnerabilities has become more commonplace. Last month, Google announced it was offering 
As technology advances, so does the potential for its misuse. As smartphones gain better cameras and higher speed data connections, the likelihood of sharing naughty photos and videos increases. Sadly, this can end up harming both parties if it leaks online. The person in the photo or video can be embarrassed and the person that shares the content can possibly be charged with new "revenge porn" laws.
Firefox is a great browser in many ways, but malware protection isn’t one of them. The program tries to keep you away from dangerous sites, but isn’t particularly effective, and in our tests both Internet Explorer and Chrome do a much better job of keeping you safe.
According to Steve Jobs, Android is the best mobile OS -- for porn. He infamously declared that people who want porn should buy Android, because iOS would be porn-free. With that said, porn can be accessed on both iOS and Android by using a web browser (so I've heard).
Ventis Media, Inc has released 
2014 is not proving to be a very good year for security -- and it is not just down to the 
I have to admit I look forward to seeing 
University researchers have developed an app that can reveal when others are tracking your location amid growing concerns that many people are oblivious to their data being accessed.
Today is a big day if you happen to be a fan of American football. It's Super Bowl Sunday, and the stage is set for the Seattle Seahawks and Denver Broncos to collide at Met-Life Stadium. The ads and the game itself, bring millions of viewers from all over the world, and the NFL has chosen this day to unveil its new mobile service.
Chris P.C. has announced the release of 
The Low-level PC monitoring utility 
Phew! Well it seems that 2014 is finally in full swing -- the past seven days have been the busiest in a while. It was a busy week for security. A piece of malware came to light that was using Windows computers as a means of 
