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Spotify’s Daniel Ek responds to Taylor Swift: we’ve paid artists $2 billion

Nov11
by on November 11, 2014 at 2:40 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Daniel Ek, Insider, Music, spotify, streaming, Taylor Swift

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Spotify CEO Daniel Ek has struck back at Taylor Swift after she removed her music from the service last week. In a lengthy blog post outlining everything he believes his company does for musicians, Ek says Spotify has “paid out more than two billion dollars to labels, publishers and collecting societies for distribution to songwriters and recording artists.” He goes on to break down that $2 billion dollar figure into “a billion dollars from the time we started Spotify in 2008 to last year and another billion dollars since then.” He goes on to claim that those $2 billion dollars…

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Amazon opens Cloud Drive to third-party developers with new API

Nov11
by on November 11, 2014 at 2:38 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Insider

More than three years after the launch of its online storage service Cloud Drive, Amazon has revealed it’s opening things up to third-party apps. This means that developers can now integrate Cloud Drive into their own apps, which will prove useful if they’re looking to offer a consumer-focused photo-sharing service (for example) requiring an abundance of remote storage space. With the Cloud Drive API, this saves developers from having to worry about setting up their own servers. And for existing Cloud Drive customers, it means they can use their Amazon account details to log-in and edit their existing documents, photos…

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Honor 6 review: The £250 smartphone that delivers on specs, but not style

Nov11
by on November 11, 2014 at 2:21 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Gadgets, Mobile, Product Reviews

Honor6_feat
The Honor 6, whatever a press release or standalone brand page may tell you, is a Huawei device. The phone shell itself won’t give many clues either, it’s simply branded as ‘Honor’. But open up that box and look at the cables or charger and you’ll find the true device maker’s brand. Actually, if you look really closely at the back of the phone you can make out the words “powered by Huawei” displayed faintly at the bottom. The reason for the new branding in Europe is obvious: Huawei isn’t exactly a household name here. Sure, if you’re even a…

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Microsoft unifies Lync and Skype communication platforms for enterprise users

Nov11
by on November 11, 2014 at 2:00 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Lync, skype

Skype for Business
Following Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella’s vision to ‘reinvent productivity‘, the company is hard at work turning its enterprise-focused communications platform Lync into Skype for Business. The idea behind the transformation is to “give organizations reach to hundreds of millions of Skype users outside the walls of their business.” While Lync allowed enterprise users to chat and call colleagues within their organizations, the next version of the platform will see a new client experience, a new server release and updates to the service in Office 365.   Users will get Skype’s call monitor to keep active calls visible while working with other…

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Groupon vs. GNOME: open-source foundation launches trademark battle

Nov11
by on November 11, 2014 at 1:40 pm
Posted In: Around the Web, Design & Dev, Gnome, Gnome foundation, Groupon, Insider, Open source

Gnome Foundation

Groupon launched an iPad-based checkout platform called Gnome in May 2014. However, the name Gnome already had a long history in the world of open-source software. The GNOME Project has been in use as a GNU/Linux and BSD desktop for 17 years and was registered as a trademark by The GNOME Foundation in 2006. GNOME technology can also be found in TVs, tablets, phones and other consumer devices. Crucially, for the potential clash between the GNOME Foundation and Groupon, the SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service system is based on GNOME. The GNOME Foundation has announced that it is setting…

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