Daily Roundup: Home theater holiday gift guide, Ubisoft’s Snowdrop engine, NSA Xbox Live spying and more!
You might say the day is never really done in consumer technology news. Your workday, however, hopefully draws to a close at some point. This is the Daily Roundup on Engadget, a quick peek back at the top headlines for the past 24 hours — all ha…
Microsoft accounts now let you flag suspicious activity before it’s a problem
Internet account security is frequently a black box; you may not know that something’s wrong until there’s a notification email or a credit card bill. If you use a Microsoft account, though, you now have some preventative tools. A new security u…
Hour of Code campaign teaches programming in 30,000 US schools (video)
Code.org wants to make computer science a staple of the classroom, and it’s taking a big step toward that goal today with the launch of its Hour of Code campaign. Over 30,000 US schools (35,000 worldwide) will devote at least one hour this week to…
Halo: Spartan Assault coming to Xbox One on December 24th for $15
We knew Halo: Spartan Assault would be making its debut on Xbox One at some point this month, but today Major Nelson made the title’s release date official. Starting December 24th, the new series spinoff will be available as a digital download for…
EU regulator warns Nokia against starting a new career as a patent troll
Nokia, by which we mean the parts of the Finnish phone maker that Microsoft hasn’t absorbed into its mobile business, has been warned off using its leftover patents to become a troll. According to the AP, EU Commissioner VP Joaquin Almunia said he…
Microsoft and Google lead coalition demanding limits on government surveillance
In October, the tech industry’s biggest companies petitioned congress to reform the US Government’s surveillance policies. Now, the firms are taking their pleas global. Microsoft, Apple, Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Yahoo and AOL (Engadget’s parent…
Switched On: Expunging Xbox
Each week Ross Rubin contributes Switched On, a column about consumer technology.
The last installment of Switched On discussed the merits of Microsoft divesting itself of Bing. While Bing is still firmly embroiled in a duel with a company that h…
Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition coming to PS4 and Xbox One January 28th, but you can pre-order now
Lara Croft is making her way to Sony’s and Microsoft’s latest gaming consoles next month. At Spike’s VGX show, we got our first glimpse of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition, which will be available for both PlayStation 4 and Xbox One on January 28th…
Bing for Android now refreshes your wallpaper once a day
Tired of staring at your smartphone’s wallpaper, but can’t bring yourself to change it? Microsoft is remedying what is surely the most first-world of first-world problems with an update to Bing for Android. Version 4.2.0 of the app not only gets a…
Microsoft Research and University of Melbourne open center to study social natural interfaces
According to Microsoft this will be “the world’s first joint research center dedicated to studying and perfecting the social applications of NUI [natural user interfaces].” That’s about as incredibly specific as these sorts of claims get, but stil…
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