A federal appeals court has upheld an earlier ruling that determined Apple conspired with publishers to raise digital book prices. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit voted 2-to-1 in agreement of Judge Denise Cote’s 2013 decision when the case originally played out in the U.S. District Court in Manhattan. Apple and five publishers had been accused by the Justice Department of conspiring to increase prices above Amazon’s standard for new e-books through an ‘agency pricing’ model. The publishers settled prior to the trial, but Apple opted to fight the accusation. Continue reading Appeals Court Agrees That Apple Conspired on E-Book Pricing

Sony has launched its own crowdfunding platform called First Flight that plans to help finance projects developed by the company’s employees and promote new business ideas. The platform also provides backers with the opportunity to directly purchase and pre-order new products. “First Flight currently offers pre-orders for two Sony-affiliated projects — the MESH Smart DIY kit, and the FES e-ink watch,” reports The Verge. “A third, a sleek all-in-one remote called the HUIS Remote Controller, is already 20 percent of the way to its 5 million yen (about $40,820) crowdfunding goal.” First Flight is initially available to Japanese consumers only.

Uber plans to purchase assets from Microsoft Bing, including about 100 employees presently involved with image collection activities. The deal, confirmed by both companies, is expected to help Uber bolster its mapping efforts. “A firm doesn’t hire 100 specific-focus engineers in a single move if it doesn’t have large product aspirations,” suggests TechCrunch, also speculating that Microsoft is selling some of its image collection with plans to retain licensing rights. “The new Uber kids are the folks who worked to get image data into Bing, meaning that the search engine’s 3D, aerial and street footage is in large part their doing. You can therefore start to presume what Uber has in mind.”

More than 21 million gaming fans tuned in to Twitch during the Electronic Entertainment Expo, nearly twice as many viewers as the year before. Concurrent viewership peaked at 840,000, according to Amazon-owned Twitch. The streaming site’s coverage included live press events and action from the Los Angeles Convention Center showroom floor. Roughly 1,800 streamers provided their own commentary, the first time Twitch allowed them to do so from its E3 channel. “Last year, Twitch became the fourth-largest source of U.S. Internet traffic, trailing Netflix, Google and Apple, according to research firm DeepField,” The Wall Street Journal reports.

In Part 2 of our E3 overview, we look at the featured products and emergence of virtual reality. E3 operates with a familiar orchestration: Press events, lavish floor displays and private parties with big name bands. The Who, for instance, entertained guests of Electronic Arts. The layout of the exhibit floor gathers the platform players — Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo — in the Convention Center’s West Hall and fills the South Hall with the major game developers. In a sign of where VR leader Oculus fits into the spectrum, its booth anchored a prominent corner of the platform-centric West Hall. Continue reading Perspective: In Reality, VR Not the Only Game at E3 (Part 2)

Nintendo plans to continue developing games for its Wii U and 3DS consoles as the company preps the release of its secretive “NX” platform. The company “will start from zero” with the new hardware, Nintendo President Satoru Iwata said during the company’s annual meeting, also noting that the platform will be separate from plans to develop mobile games with DeNA. According to Nintendo, details on the NX platform will not be made available until sometime next year. Due to an overall negative response regarding the quality of its E3 announcements, the company “has been forced to offer up more information to satisfy fans and investors,” suggests Wired UK.

In a deal valued at 1.3 billion euros (about $1.45 billion), Discovery Communications has paid for exclusive rights to broadcast four Olympic Games across most of Europe from 2018 to 2024. The rights include broadcast and pay TV, the Internet and mobile. The deal, announced by Discovery yesterday, marks the first time that a single media company has paid for exclusive rights to broadcast the Olympics across Europe. Discovery plans to make at least 200 hours of the Summer Olympics and 100 hours of the Winter Games available on free-to-air television. Continue reading Discovery Acquires European Rights to Four Olympic Games

Findaway launched its Playaway audio player in 2006, a device that came pre-loaded with one audiobook. Despite distribution deals with Borders and Barnes & Noble, the product failed to gain traction, likely due to the lack of customization options. However, since libraries are in the business of passing one item from person to person, the device had some appeal. Now the company is introducing its Playaway Launchpad, designed specifically for the children’s sections of libraries. The device comes pre-loaded with educational apps developed by app maker Fingerprint. Continue reading Findaway Launches Tablet Specifically Designed for Libraries

Facebook has added Snapchat-like photo filter features to its iOS app that allow users to customize images with text, filters and stickers on their Facebook profiles. “A Facebook spokesperson told The Verge that the company was rolling out the features as ‘a new place to house photo-editing tools,’ accessed by pressing the new icon in the lower left-hand corner of your chosen photo.” After Facebook failed to acquire Snapchat in 2013 for $3 billion, the social giant attempted to duplicate the popular service with Poke and Slingshot, but they proved less than popular. The new photo uploader, also being tested on Android, aims to leverage the growing popularity of editing features available on social media.

Sonos connected speaker systems will feature Apple Music integration by the end of this year, the companies confirmed. However, Apple Music will not be included with the speakers when the streaming music service launches today. The speaker company already has deals with Apple-owned Beats Music, Pandora, SoundCloud and Spotify. “Beats was working on a ‘Sonos killer’ — a $750 home speaker that connected to music streaming services via Wi-Fi — before Apple acquired the company in May, and subsequently shut the project down,” reports Business Insider. “Beats is thought to have run into problems with the device during development and ended up switching chip supplier.”

If you were not at E3, the recent Electronic Entertainment Expo, you might think that the great expanse of the Los Angeles Convention Center was wall-to-wall virtual reality. Despite VR’s headline domination, it was a different story on the floor where impressive visuals and sophisticated gameplay ignited the crowd. Even jaded game industry media could not contain their excitement. As IGN enthused after the Sony press conference, for instance, “That may be the best E3 press event ever.” We divided our overview into two parts: the evolution of E3 and direction of the gaming industry, followed by a breakdown of this year’s top products. Continue reading Perspective: In Reality, VR Not the Only Game at E3 (Part 1)

Satellite radio provider SiriusXM announced on Friday that it would settle a lawsuit over copyright issues by paying $210 million to record companies Sony, Universal, Warner and indie label Abkco for broadcasting songs produced prior to 1972. The ongoing lawsuit has been watched carefully by the music industry. Since federal copyright protection was not extended to recordings until 1972, a number of digital radio services have not been paying royalties when they play older songs. “The settlement may open the door to millions of dollars in new royalty payments for older performers, who in many cases have not been paid from Internet and satellite radio,” suggests The New York Times.

SanDisk’s new high-capacity microSD card, first announced this spring, is now available from a number of retailers for $240. Touted by SanDisk as the “world’s first 200GB microSD card,” it was originally estimated to run in the $400 range. And while the current price may still surprise some consumers, the card provides transfer speeds up to 90MB per second, which is nearly double the speed of its 128GB counterpart. According to SanDisk, the read speed will allow users to transfer up to 1,200 photos between devices in a single minute. And the card can store up to 20 hours of HD video. Continue reading SanDisk’s 200GB microSD Card Holds 20 Hours of HD Video

Google announced the launch of News Lab, an online tool designed to help journalists with their reporting efforts by connecting them with various programs, data and resources. “The site will feature a number of tools for newsrooms, including tutorials and best practices on how to use Google products in reporting, as well as provide access to the recently updated Google Trends service, and more,” TechCrunch explains. “It will also showcase Google’s numerous efforts surrounding new media partnerships and citizen reporting.” Google recently announced the launch of YouTube Newswire with social news agency Storyful and a series of initiatives created to support and verify news posted on YouTube.

Electrical engineers at the University of California, San Diego have announced a new method to extend the range that laser light beams can travel in fiber-optic glass wires. The development “could double the capacity of fiber-optic circuits, potentially opening the way for networks to carry more data over long distances while significantly reducing their cost,” reports The New York Times. The researchers “predistort” the data transmitted via laser beams by creating a frequency comb using precise and evenly spaced signals in order to encode the data prior to sending. This reportedly helps the information travel more efficiently over great distances, one of the current challenges for networks that carry increasing amounts of data.