Welcome to The Verge: Weekender edition. Each week, we'll bring you important articles from the previous weeks' original reports, features, and reviews on The Verge. Think of it as a collection of a few of our favorite pieces from the week gone by, which you may have missed, or which you...
Grab some coffee, and start your weekend with a few of our best reads
We now have a dollar amount and a couple of other companies to assign to TiVo's settlement of long-running patent disputes. Thursday, we heard that TiVo had finally settled a suit it had originally filed against Motorola (since bought by Google...
If last month's Amazon sale didn't drive down the price for Bioshock Infinite low enough, Gamefly's PC deal might convince you to download one of this year's best games. Gamefly is offering the first-person shooter for $34.99/£16.99 as part of summer PC sale, but you can save an additional 20 percent and bring the cost down to $27.99/£13.59 by using the code GFDJUN20 in the US or GFDJUN20UK...
Next week is going to be crazy, from start to finish. On Monday, Apple's hosting its annual Worldwide Developers Conference where the company will announce a new version of iOS featuring a much-anticipated visual overhaul by Jony Ive, as well as a new version of OS X. At literally the same time, Microsoft will be holding its Xbox One press conference at E3, where we'll presumably hear a lot about upcoming games for the new console. A few hours later, Sony's PlayStation E3 keynote will kick off, where we'll hopefully get our first actual look at the PS4 — and find out how Sony intends to compete against Microsoft's ambitious living room plans.
And that's just Monday.
We'll be bringing you up-to-the-minute coverage from our Microsoft, Sony, and WWDC liveblogs, and a post-WWDC episode of The Verge Live. You can also expect a full...
Get ready
This year's edition of the Electronic Entertainment Expo — better known as E3 — is important for several reasons. In a world where the need for dedicated game consoles seems to be diminishing, both Sony and Microsoft will be laser-focused on showing you why you need to buy a PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. The two consoles appear to be headed in different directions in terms of strategy:...
It's going to be a busy week
Stephen Colbert: Is this new digital age going to be good?
Eric Schmidt: Yes!
Stephen Colbert: The very first sentence of this damn book is, "The internet is among the few things humans have built that they don’t truly understand." Do you understand the internet?
Eric Schmidt: I do not.
—Eric Schmidt on The Colbert Report, April 2013
Visit almost any website covering mobile phones and you're likely to find comments full of fans arguing over which company's product is the best. To many, the behavior is unbearable, but the UK social media accounts of Samsung, HTC, and LG showed they're not above bickering yesterday on Twitter.
HTC UK started the fight, adding "ouch @SamsungMobileUK" to the end of a tweet celebrating its "hottest phone of 2013" award. Samsung UK fired back noting that it had won three different awards at the same ceremony, before HTC replied accusing Samsung of paying students to write fake reviews for...
Billboards are everywhere, so why not have them do something useful? That's the thinking behind IBM's new "Smarter Cities" campaign, which modifies the regular billboard shape to perform a secondary function. As shown in a promotional video created by the ad company responsible for the posters, a simple curve at the top or bottom of a billboard can create shelter or seating for passers by, while a ground-level protrusion can form a ramp to help people climb stairs.
"What we have right here is the absolute latest in technological innovation! More power than you can handle! More speed than you'll ever need! This is the high-octane, 21st-century future, and it can all be yours — for just $5,999!"
Grab a beverage, kick back, and relax
Following a report from the New York Times that implied that several companies had provided data to the government via "secure portals," Google's chief legal officer David Drummond has taken to Google+ to strenuously deny the allegation. Drummond writes, "We cannot say this more clearly—the...
Do you use services from Microsoft, Google, Apple, or many other major Silicon Valley companies? If so, a long-running government program called PRISM may have been harvesting your photos and other user data, The Washington Post has revealed. The news came just a day after journalist Glenn...
President Obama addressed the US government's controversial domestic surveillance programs on Friday, justifying them in part because of his assessment that "they helped us prevent terrorist attacks," but without mentioning any specific incidents...
It’s the end of the week, which means it’s time to take a look back at some of the latest trailers to make the rounds!
The nine tech companies implicated in the PRISM data-collecting operation yesterday have refuted the allegations by stating that they provide no "direct access" to their servers — but according to The New York Times, the wording is just an artful dodge around the way the systems do in fact...
The Ouya console may not have been all that everyone had hoped for, but that's not stopping other companies from getting in on the game: peripheral designer Mad Catz has its own Android-based gaming console it's calling Project Mojo. Aesthetically, it's a small black slab with an HDMI output and both standard and Micro USB connectors. Unlike other Android consoles it doesn't have its own store; it will run stock...
Samsung's stock-Android Galaxy S4 was announced at Google I/O and HTC's stock One was unveiled at the D11 conference, but apparently those two companies won't be the only ones to offer flagship phones without custom skins. AndroidGeeks has...
Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg is the latest tech company CEO to vehemently deny granting government access to its servers. In a post today, he said he wanted to "respond personally to the outrageous press reports about PRISM," and, like Google and Apple, said that "We hadn't even heard of PRISM...
For Carmen Tarleton, the day started out normally enough. Tarleton, 45, had errands to run, a piano lesson to get to, a house to tidy. Tomorrow was...
Samsung will be unveiling some new Galaxy devices on June 20th, and now we're getting a look at one product that might be in the offing. SamMobile...
One day after revealing that the US government is utilizing a widespread internet surveillance tool called PRISM, The Guardian has now uncovered an 18-page directive that tasks President Obama's senior national security and intelligence officials (including directors of the FBI, CIA, and NSA) with preparing a list of potential foreign targets...
SoftBank has a pretty large bid in place to purchase Sprint, but according to a report from Reuters, it has a backup plan should the proposed purchase fall through. According to three unnamed...
People of Los Angeles — do you like to party? Do you like free booze? Do you enjoy fist-pumping to beats by DJ Trent? Oh, and what about video games, do you like those as well?
If you answered yes to even just one of those questions you're in luck — The Verge and Polygon are kicking off E3 2013 by inviting each and every one of you (open to the public, no need to RSVP!) to our Revenge of the Party Monsters gathering on June 9th, 2013 in the pliable city of Los Angeles, California. If that sounds like something you'd want to attend, here's what you need to know:
