Technology

New Billboard charts will track the most popular music on Twitter

Twitter is full of conversations about music, and the company wants those tweets to be important outside the world of the social network. To that end, Twitter has now partnered with Billboard to work on real-time charts that the companies hope will be "the new industry standard for tracking and surfacing the conversation around music as it happens."

The charts will monitor conversations about artists, tracks, and albums, and it will show which top musicians are the most talked about at any given moment. Another chart will highlight up-and-coming acts, many of which stir up buzz on social networks long before they're recognized by major industry players. Once the charts launch in the next few weeks, Billboard will publish them on its...

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Can Facebook's best game escape Facebook?

Life is short, and Hero Generations takes that idea to its logical extreme. Each move you make represents a year in your character's life, and so an entire existence lasts just a few minutes — you won't finish your epic quest in a single lifetime. It's a game about choosing between venturing out into the great unknown and making it easier for your offspring to ultimately save the world. Hero Generations first launched on Facebook in 2011, but it was never really a good fit on a platform devoted to time sinks like FarmVille and Bejeweled. "It was really an experiment to see if I could put a game with depth and meaning onto the biggest game market around," says designer Scott Brodie.

Now he's attempting to bring the game back through a...

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Live: Microsoft's new CEO takes the stage for the first time

Cloud and mobile are expected to be focus points as Satya Nadella details Microsoft's future.

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Amazon may reveal its set-top box next week in New York

In just a week from now, we'll likely find out the truth about Amazon's living room ambitions. The company has sent out invites for an event in New York on Wednesday, April 2nd, that promises to offer an "update for our video business." Amazon has long been rumored to be working on a set-top box for the living room to compete with the likes of the Apple TV and other products.

The most recent rumors say that the device will run a version of Android and will be able to play games. A leaked image revealed what the game controller for the set-top box could look like.

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Government requests to Google have more than doubled in the past four years

Google released its latest transparency report today, revealing tens of thousands of law enforcement requests from across the world. In the second half of 2013, the report lists more than 27,000 requests for user data from around the world, affecting more than 42,000 different accounts. It's a 120 percent jump in requests over the past four years, something legal director Richard Salgado attributes the jump to "more and more governments start[ing] to exercise their authority to make requests" in the years since the company began reporting.

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Songza now cues up the blues when it rains

Songza has always been about the feels — about finding the right music to match any moment, whether it's waking up on a Sunday morning, pre-gaming in your apartment with friends, or moping over a breakup. The service even offers a "3 AM Airport" station that provides relevant jams for when you're stuck in an empty airport at 3 AM, or want to feel like you are. Today, the company is adding another factor to its recommendations engine — the weather.

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4DX movie theater will make you wet this summer

Movie theater visitors in Los Angeles: prepare to be thrown around, blasted with air, and sprayed in the face with a fine mist. South Korean company CJ Group's '4DX' movie technology — in which 3D film showings are augmented with wind, light, fog, water, and scent effects — is coming to a US theater for the first time this summer.

The technology will be installed at Regal Cinemas LA Live Stadium 14 in downtown Los Angeles. 4DX technology is already present in theaters in other countries, including Taiwan, Bulgaria, Columbia, and its native South Korea, at a cost of between $1.5 and $2 million per venue. Visiting a theater boasting the technology in Nagoya, Japan, The Verge's Sam Byford said that although his viewing of Iron Man 3...

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Thursday, March 27, 2014