Microsoft’s Groove Music streaming service (formerly known as XBOX music) will end its run on December 31. Rest in peace.

Microsoft explains that the Groove music app will continue to work as a standalone player for local music, and will continue to be able to stream music stored in OneDrive. Only the streaming service will end.

For streaming, Microsoft has reached out to Groove’s biggest competitor, Spotify. Microsoft has partnered closely with Spotify to promote the service, and is currently developing a new music app for the Windows Store. Customers with existing playlists on Groove Music will be able to export them to Spotify easily via the [...]

Spotify and Hulu has teamed up to bring students affordable entertainment. Their new student bundle nets students both Hulu and Netflix in a single $5 package.

The package includes Spotify Premium and Hulu’s Limited Commercials plan. If you’re subscribed to Spotify Premium Student already, you can tack on the Hulu for free. The vice versa is true if you have an active Hulu Limited Commercials plan subscription.

While the current deal is only available to students, Spotify and Hulu are looking into some sort of plan for all users as well. Spotify’s own ventures in a video platform hasn’t done well, so a tight partnership with one of [...]

If you own a modern Android smartphone, have Allo Messenger, or a Google Home device, one of the most awesome features about it is its ability to respond to voice commands by simply saying “OK Google”. While initially OK Google voice commands felt a bit gimmicky rather than useful, numerous rounds of improvements along with improved voice recognition have made it very useful for doing simple things like calling someone while driving or sending a quick text message from across the room.

Unfortunately, Google doesn’t provide a full list of OK Google commands, but we’ve gone ahead and compiled a list of the most useful OK Google commands [...]

Microsoft announced the Surface laptop and Windows 10 S during its #MicrosoftEDU conference today.

Windows 10 S

Windows 10 S is an overhauled version of Windows RT designed to compete against Google’s Chrome OS. All software for Windows 10 S must be downloaded via the Windows Store, meaning that 3rd party applications won’t be able to run unless they’re approved by Microsoft.

Are the flashbacks of Windows RT haunting you? Don’t be, Microsoft has enhanced Windows 10 S in several ways to avoid a repeat of the same mistake.

The biggest challenge for a single software distribution source is its ecosystem. During the [...]

Own an Android device? Wish you could get lyrics and other information for your favorite songs while you listen to them on your favorite streaming service? Genius’s Behind the Lyrics has the solution for you.

Launched on iOS last year, Behind the Lyrics provides lyrics and interesting facts on songs, giving listeners a deeper look into the musician’s creative insights. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been available for Android users until now.

 

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On Tuesday, a massive Amazon AWS outage caused a four hour outage for many popular sites such as Spotify, Netflix, Reddit, Pinterest, and others. As it may seem that the only thing that could cause an outage like this is like a massive DDOS or other major issue, the truth behind the matter is slightly a bit more embarrasing.

According to a statement recently issued by Amazon, the AWS outage was actually nothing more than an OSI Reference Model Layer 8 issue, or human error. It appears that in the process of removing a small set of servers from Amazon’s billing system, the Amazon AWS employee in charge of the operation fat fingered the command, instead [...]

OK Google

Several years ago, Amazon unveiled the Echo, a smart speaker designed to use Amazon’s Alexa AI (Artificial Intelligence) platform to help make life easier for its customers. While the Amazon Echo’s functionality was relatively basic when it was launched back in 2004, its functionality has improved significantly over the years as newer functionality and additional compatibility with services have been added.

As Amazon’s Echo has been in the market relatively uncontested for the past two years, it was about time someone else jumped into the smart speaker game and who else is more appropriate than Google who revealed back in May that they [...]

Google Home, Google’s new home assistant will be $99 starting now for a limited time in celebration of Black Friday.

For those unfamiliar with Google Home, it’s Google’s “voice-activated speaker powered by Google Assistant”, similar to Amazon’s Echo home assistant. It accepts voice command from the user and feed you the relevant information, just like a real assistant.

The simple, smooth shell is home for a speaker, signal processor, and a touchscreen. Activating the far-field voice recognition mic is as easy as saying “OK Google”. If you have a huge house, multiple Google Homes can be wirelessly linked [...]

Is your internet down today? You’re not alone. A massive DDOS attack against DNS provider, Dyn, has taken down a number of the world’s largest websites including Reddit, Twitter, Spotify, Netflix, Amazon, PayPal and more.

 

What is a DNS?

How did this happen? Well in order to understand how this happened, one must first understand how a DNS works. When any device is hooked onto the internet, it gets an IP address which is a number such as 172.0.0.1. This number identifies your computer to the world, but if you’re say Netflix and you want people to find you as netflix.com rather than 52.26.74.145, you need someone to translate [...]

Amazon has been quite busy over the past few weeks, launching several new services including Twitch Prime, Prime Reading, and now Amazon Music Unlimited.

While Amazon has been offering Prime Music, which offers Prime members streaming of up to 2 million songs at no additional charge, for quite some time, Music Unlimited will offer tens of millions of songs, thousands of hand-curated playlists, and personalized stations for just $7.99 per month or $79 per year ($6.58 per month). Considering Amazon’s biggest competitors Spotify and Google Play Music charge $9.99 per month, Amazon’s Music Unlimited will be $2 to $3.41 cheaper depending on the plan [...]