Microsoft is already a major investor in Barnes & Noble's Nook business, and now rumors are coming in that the Redmond, Washington based giant is considering buying the Nook business outright for a reported $1 billion.

Last year Microsoft invested $300 million in the Nook in exchange for a 16.8% stake. Now with reports that Barnes & Noble is planning to pull out of the hardware business altogether, it only makes sense for Microsoft to swoop in and buy the hardware business outright.

This would put Microsoft in direct competition with the likes of Amazon and even Google's Play Books. The big question is whether or not Redmond will keep the device running Android, or will we see a Windows 8 version of the Nook released. Would Microsoft even keep the Nook branding? Only time will tell I guess.

The crowdfunding world was blown away when the OUYA raised more than $8.5 million during its Kickstarter campaign for the tiny Android gaming console.

This morning OUYA announced that it has secured an additional $15 million in funding from investors to help with game development, as well as its upcoming retail launch.

Investors include Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers. Other investors include the Mayfield Fund, NVIDIA, Shasta Ventures and Occam Partners. The company has also announced that general partner Kleiner Perkins and former EA executive Bing Gordon will be joining OUYA's board of directors.

The company is well into the shipment process for all of its Kickstarter backers and is preparing its retail launch in the coming months.

The New Zealand government has passed a bill that prevents software from being patented in the country any more. The New Zealand Institute of IT Professionals praised the decision saying that it would lead to innovation on a large scale.

The new policy was part of an amendment to the existing patent bill, which redefines three basic principles:

1. A computer program is not an invention and not a manner of manufacture for the purposes of this Act.
2. Subsection (1) prevents anything from being an invention or a manner of manufacture for the purposes of this Act only to the extent that a claim in a patent or an application relates to a computer program as such.
3. A claim in a patent or an application relates to a computer program as such if the actual contribution made by the alleged invention lies solely in it being a computer program.

I see this as a major step forward and I am sure that the folks over at the Electronic Frontier Foundation are ecstatic this morning. However, not all is as it seems.

The bill still allows the patenting of software when it can be tied to a specific piece of hardware, such as Apple iOS (iPhone and iPad), or the software that runs your Samsung Smart TV. So, while this is a step in the right direction, there is still much room for improvement.

This morning Google and Time released the culmination of a project in which they teamed up with NASA and the US Geological Survey to produce a historical perspective on how Earth has changed over the past 30 years.

The project takes satellite imagery produced by the LandSat program and stitches them together removing clouds and haze to produce animated GIF images of how a region has changed over the past three decades. The Time.com hosted site features a handful of pre-chosen sites such as the Amazon Rainforest, Las Vegas, Dubai, Mendenhall Glacier and the Oil Sands fields in Russia.

The project consists of literally millions of individual images taken by the LandSat satellites that have been orbiting Earth at an altitude of over 400 miles since the 1970's. The project began in 2009 when Google began working with the USGS to make the entire archive of LandSat imagery available to the public.

Google I/O is getting closer by the day and as a result we are learning more about the scheduled events, talks, and what new and exciting things we may see launched at the event. This morning Google pushed out an update to its I/O app for Android that includes some pretty cool features.

Ahead of next week's show opening, this update provides some pretty awesome practical functionality for those who are both attending and not attending the conference. Once signed in with your Google+ account, the updated I/O app will determine if you are attending the conference or not, and will adjust information accordingly.

Attendees will get venue Wi-Fi settings pushed to their mobile device, along with device synced schedules, a widget that displays upcoming scheduled events on the lock screen, NFC badge scanning and even a vector based map. Those not attending will see the Off-Site Attendee mode and will be able to watch live streams, which can be streamed to larger screens via the devices HDMI port. Google has also said that live streams will be available for all sessions for those not attending.

This morning Sony has released its full-year financial report for the 2012 fiscal year that ended in March. While the report is quite long and at points very boring, the major news is that the company managed to squeeze out its first full-year profit in five years.

Strong smartphone sales are being attributed to the new profits, alongside its Vita console. Net income was approximately $458 million which is up from a loss of over $2 billion in 2011. Not all is good news for the electronics giant though, PlayStation 3 sales were down significantly, alongside LCD TV sales, which fell a staggering 38-percent.

Sony said that it expects smartphone sales to increase in 2013 by 27-percent and its LCD TV business to rebound by 16 million units before the fiscal year is up. The company can also expect to see a surge in console sales this fall when its still unpictured PlayStation 4 launches.

EA took some time during their recent earnings call to announce that they have laid off around 900 workers, with Blake Jorgensen, Vice President of EA saying: "Our cost reduction plans will reduce our overall headcount by approximately 10 percent".

Jorgensen continued, saying that the restructuring plan and resignation of CEO John Riccitello cost the company around $15 million more than they had estimated in their recent estimate guidance. He also added that they're working toward achieving a 20% operating margin, which is a goal within reach after the layoffs.

It's nearly that time of the year folks, Computex, and now that we're getting closer, ASUS have decided to unveil their Computex 2013 teaser video. Featuring a "We Transform" tag, we should expect another Transformer device.

The video doesn't show off much, but talks about how much ASUS have innovated over the years, and how they'll continue to do so. We should expect the 'ASUS Innovation Showcase' at Computex in June to be quite the event. You can be sure we'll be there covering it, and taking a hands-on look at their devices by yours truly.

CyanogenMod 10.1 has reached a step closer to being a proper 'stable' release, reaching Release Candidate (RC) 1. The final release is now close, according to the team.

CyanogenMod 10.1 RC1 is now available to download for compatible devices, and if you aren't aware of what it is, it's an OS based from Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean, but has a huge cache of additional features. This is the perfect way to upgrade your device if your manufacturer hasn't bothered to do so. The compatibility list, is below:

NASA has decided to get rid of their Windows-powered notebooks on the International Space Station (ISS) and replace with them with Linux-powered counterparts. On top of this, the first humanoid robot in space, R2, is powered by Linux.

Keith Chuvala, who has quite a mouthful of titles, is a United Space Alliance contractor, manager of the Space Operations Computing (SpOC) for NASA, and leader of the ISS's Laptops and Network Integration Teams, recently explained that NASA decided to move away from Windows, and in to the arms of Linux for the ISS's PCs. He said:

We migrated key functions from Windows to Linux because we needed an operating system that was stable and reliable - one that would give us in-house control. So if we needed to patch, adjust, or adapt, we could.

How much does the new flagship Galaxy S4 from Samsung cost to build? According to research firm IHS, just $237. This could be because most of the components sourced for the S4 are from Samsung themselves.

IHS analyst Vincent Leung said: "Samsung's strength is this ability to in-source to itself. They just keep adding to the list of components that they can supply to themselves". The international version of the Galaxy S4, the one that features the eight-core Exynos 5 Octa SoC, costs just $28 per chip. The US version, which features the Qualcomm-made Snapdragon processor, has an estimated cost of $20.

There are at least four versions of the Galaxy S4 being made, with two versions headed to the United States. The two US-bound versions feature a Fujitsu image processor that adds $1.50 to the cost of the phone, with the Korean version having its image processing handled by the on-board Exynos processor. The display and touchscreen are made by Samsung and cost $75, while the 32GB of on-board flash memory costs $28.

Sony Pictures Australia have announced the impending release of the fifth season of AMC TV's groundbreaking drama Breaking Bad on Blu-ray disc, in a feature packed 2 disc set, loaded with over nine hours of extra features.

Available for purchase on June 13th, the latest season of the show further chart Walter White's (Bryan Cranston) elevation to Albuquerque's biggest drug lord with his signature product. But despite the dispatch of his feared competitor and ex-boss, Walter soon finds that life at the top isn't all plain sailing.

Sony have assembled a significant collection of bonus features for the release, including audio commentaries on each and every episode, a never before seen sequence, deleted scenes, outtakes, audition and rehearsal footage, making of featurettes and an artwork gallery.

Someone has taken to The White House's Twitter account, tweeting "Unless you're a Native American, you came from someplace else". This of course, has offended many, with a stream of users attacking @whitehouse with tweets.

You can read some of the replies to @whitehouse here, but it is definitely a weirdly worded tweet. If you're aware of the show 'Veep' on HBO, I'[img]sure they're running into damage control right now and I was right, as there is another tweet, which said "we are a nation of immigrants".

Universal Pictures have taken the unsurprising decision to delay the release of the fourth entry in the Jurassic Park franchise, which was set for June 13th 2014, to an undetermined date. The film which had yet to even cast its lead actors and only established a director, Safety Not Guaranteed's Colin Trevorrow a matter of weeks ago, would not have met its projected date without serious shortcuts, so a little breathing room is not necessarily troublesome.

Just five days ago, Trevorrow tweeted an image from the productions Hawaii location scout with the somewhat non-cryptic descriptor of 'Nublar', implying that the film would be set on the island of the first Jurassic Park film, unlike The Lost World and Jurassic Park 3. Executive Produced by Steven Spielberg and Frank Marshall, from a script by Trevorrow and Derek Connolly a draft of which was apparently received by Universal this week which led to the delay. Universal have no doubt been emboldened by continuing interest in the franchise resulting from the $50 million worldwide gross of Jurassic Park 3D.

Google Earth has been updated, reaching version 7.1.1 and with it, brings some serious changes. First off, we have Street View, letting you zoom right down to, well, street level.

Google have also added some improved search functionality, have made directions allowing you to see a 3D view of transit, walking, bike and driving directions. The user interface has also seen a big improvement, now including a slide-out panel from the left.

EA and DICE have both worked hard on the Frostbite 3 engine, which will be the engine of choice to power many of their next-generation games. But, it looks like EA won't be putting any Frostbite 3-powered games on Nintendo's Wii U console.

Technical Director of the Frostbite project at EA DICE, Johan Andersson, has said that they've tested Frostbite 2 on the Wii U and found the results to be "not too promising", going as far as they "chose not to go down [the] path" of porting over the next-gen engine. EA have around 15 games under development on the Frostbite 3 engine, which means Wii U owners are going to miss out on some seriously huge games.

Games such as Battlefield 4, the next-gen Mass Effect, Star Wars and many, many more. Not only are Wii U owners going to miss out, but this means Nintendo's sales are going to continue to dwindle, even more so when Microsoft and Sony unleash their consoles into gamers' hands.

If you thought your mild overclock was good, or the previous overclocking world record, prepare yourself. Mad222 and John222 from HKEPC have found the golden Core i7 3770K, which has been used to reach a new world record overclock.

The two overclockers used their Core i7 3770K with 1.908 volts pulsating through it to reach a maximum clock speed of 7,208.19MHz - or 7.2GHz! This was achieved using a BCLK of 114.42 on a GIGABYTE Z77X-UP7 motherboard. This overclock is even more special, considering the two overclockers kept Hyper-Threading enabled, which means we have the four physical cores and four logical cores all cranking at 7.2GHz.

Rovio's Bad Piggies for iOS has been updated with new levels and features. For those who don't remember Bad Piggies, it's the spin off of Angry Birds which puts the pigs front and center. The player is tasked with building crazy contraptions to help the pigs reach the birds' eggs.

This latest update brings with it 15 new levels. Additionally, Bad Piggies is now capable of recording your game play so that you can show off your best in-game tricks. A new suction cup gadget has been introduced along with a new spring-loaded boxing glove.

Finally, an all-new sandbox mode has been introduced. Rovio has yet to introduce their new Accounts feature that saves your progress to the cloud. We're sure that the feature isn't too far away from being introduced. The latest version of Bad Piggies is available in the App Store.

According to Shuhei Yoshida, Sony's Worldwide Studios president, Sony never even considered putting always-on DRM in the upcoming PlayStation 4. "Did we consider it? No, we didn't consider it," Yoshida said.

His reasoning makes sense, but unfortunately doesn't preclude Sony from adding always-on DRM on a future console. "The main reason being that many countries don't have robust Internet connections. It makes sense for people to have Internet connections to play online games, but for offline games there are many countries that we saw [that] do not really have robust Internet."

While this is good news, some are still worried that the upcoming Xbox will feature always-on DRM. However, a leaked memo suggests otherwise. Microsoft would have issues if Sony's PlayStation didn't feature always-on DRM and theirs did. It seems as though these companies have learned their lessons from others that always-on DRM is not a good choice.

Apple's iOS 7 beta has started to show up in website logs, suggesting that Apple is testing out the new operating system ahead of its rumored WWDC debut. This isn't the first time that operating systems have shown up in website logs ahead of their launch.

Onswipe, for instance, has seen massive spikes in iOS 7 traffic to the sites they manage. The majority of the iOS 7 traffic is coming from San Francisco and Cupertino, 18.75 percent and 17.9 percent respectively. 75 percent of the iOS 7 traffic is coming from iPhones and 25 percent is coming from iPads.

Apple is widely expected to announce iOS 7 at the WWDC. It's not clear what changes will be included, though there has been talk that it will feature a flat visual design. If iOS 7 makes an appearance at WWDC, you'll be sure to hear about it here.