The online music streaming service market is going to get even more crowded as Beats continues to push forward with plans to launch their own streaming service known as Daisy. We've reported rumors about Beats possibly working with Apple in regards to the latter starting a streaming service, though this looks less likely with the news of Beats securing a $60 million investment.

The $60 million investment comes from Access Industries, Marc Rowan, James Packer, and some others. The investment will be used to help launch Daisy, which is currently backed by Beats Electronics LLC. Co-founder Jimmy Iovine:

Beats was always about helping people re-discover the magic in the experience of listening to music. Now that we are well along the way to addressing the quality of audio playback with Beats headphones and speakers, Daisy allows us to re-introduce the same magic into the process of music discovery and consumption.

This, coupled with rumors of YouTube possibly launching their own streaming service, could lead to increased competition in the marketplace.

Microsoft has been hit with a massive 561 million euro fine, which equates to around $732 million US, for removing the option to pick a different default browser in Windows 7 SP1. Microsoft had previously settled the EU over claims that making Internet Explorer the default browser was anti-competitive.

Microsoft had agreed to provide the option of several different web browsers when Windows was installed or configured. When the company released Service Pack 1 for Windows 7, the option to select a web browser was removed. Microsoft says that a technical error prevented the option screen from showing.

It took Microsoft 14 months and complaints from the EU to get the problem resolved. The EU has now fined Microsoft over the issue, though it's not as bad as it could have been. EU law allows for the fine to be up to 10 percent of the company's revenue, meaning the fine could have been as high as $7.4 billion.

"We take full responsibility for the technical error that caused this problem and have apologized for it," a Microsoft spokesperson said.

Amidst massive budget cuts, and an overall reduction in funding, NASA somehow manages to continue to be able to wow us on a regular basis. This time the space agency has released the first full map of the planet Mercury's surface.

The first planet in our solar system has not received much scientific attention over the course of modern space science mostly because it is too close to the sun to properly observe from earth. NASA's Messenger spacecraft has managed to negate that issue and since 2011 has been hard at work mapping the surface of Mercury.

NASA's Mariner spacecraft had previously imaged the surface of Mercury, but only managed to capture less than half the surface during a flyby in 1974 and 1975. Messenger is the first spacecraft to orbit the closest planet to the sun and used modern technology to image the surface.

This Thursday Facebook will be holding a big press event where it is expected to announce the first major change to its Timeline feature since release in 2006. We are hearing speculation that the news feed may be broken down into multiple categories and would be configurable.

TechCrunch is reporting that in addition to the multiple news feeds, we will also see large timeline photos, and image based ads adorning the service. When tech news site Mashable reached out to Facebook and asked for a comment, they replied "We don't comment on rumor and speculation".

If the rumors are true, then we will see the new multiple feed feature somewhere at the top near the search bar as well as a new photo feed that would exclusively feature images uploaded through the Facebook and Instagram apps. My only worry is that the rollout of Facebook's last big announcement, Graph Search, has not even began to get started, so how long would it be before everyone had access to these new features?

It seemed that the whole tech community was up in arms over Microsoft's decision to tie all retail licenses of its Office 2013 to single install on a single PC, which could not be transferred, if you upgrade machines. Redmond has taken notice and reversed that decision.

Today Microsoft announced that it is changing policy and will now allow users to transfer their retail Office 2013 license to a new PC "if the old one fails." The new changes will be updated in the license agreement in future updates, but said that the change is effective immediately.

There are of course limitations, including only being able to transfer the license every 90 days and you can still only run the license on one piece of hardware at a time. We are glad Microsoft has recanted their decision to limit the use of its software, and we hope they will continue to think of the customer over the bottom line.

News Corp just unveiled its next push into the education sector. The ASUS manufactured Amplify 10-inch Android Tablet is being billed as a budget tablet for the classroom.

The tablets will come pre-loaded with Google Apps for Education and basic encyclopedia apps. Battery life is quoted as being somewhere in the eight hour range, and is swappable, unlike most other tablets on the market.

The tablet is being made available through AT&T and will run schools a mere $299 each for a 3G model and $349 for 4G. Each tablet will carry a $99 annual data subscription. That may sound like a lot, but the real savings is the ability to load digital text books and forever forget the heavy dead tree based books of the past.

Recently I reported on Ford teaming up with Spotify to offer in-car hands-free music streaming, and it seems that Volvo is now jumping on that same bandwagon. The company announced today that it has teamed up with Spotify to bring forth a hands-free in-car music system.

Dubbed Sensus Connected Touch, the system will allow users to stream music via a 3G/4G connection and control everything with simple voice commands or a dash mounted touch screen. The system is powered by Android - Volvo promises to keep it updated regularly.

Other apps reported to work on the system are: Google Maps, iGO-Powered GPS and TuneIn Radio. The Sensus Connected Touch will be sold as a dealer option and will be available for the V40, V40 Cross Country, S60, V60, XC60, V70, XC70 and S80 car models.

Apple has been trying for a while now to bring forth its own version of a music streaming service. For the most part, the venture has been stifled by failed royalty negations between artist and record labels.

We are hearing reports that Apple's Tim Cook has met with Beats Electronics CEO Jimmy Iovine in an effort to discuss all things about music streaming. This meeting comes hot on the announcement by Beats that it will be launching its own subscription streaming service dubbed Daisy.

Apple is keeping things quiet (as usual) about the meeting, only saying that the meeting was "informational" and covered a vast range of topics. With streaming services out there that do a very good job already, is there really a need for an Apple branded subscription based music streaming service?

Word on the street is that Samsung, the dominating everything-electronics giant, will be pulling its Windows RT-based ATIV Tab hybrid from the German market due to very weak demand. This news is not much of a surprise as the company has already pulled back plans to launch the ATIV Tab in the US.

Both Heise.de and MobileGeeks are reporting that Samsung will cease to offer the ATIV Tab sometime in the coming days in Germany as well as a few other European markets. This news comes after Samsung consulted with retailers who had no good news about demand for the Windows RT based tablet.

Samsung has reportedly confirmed these rumors at CeBIT, with an exec saying it "sees no market for RT in Germany and other European countries." At the time of this post, the ATIV Tab is still listed for sale by Amazon.de priced at 605 euros. What do our German and European readers think about this? Is there a market for Windows RT based devices in your country? Let us know in the comments.

Five-year-old Danny Kitchen asked his parents for the password to their iPad so that he could download a free game, which turned into a nightmare for the Kitchen's, as Danny racked up a $2500 bill in add-on purchases to his mother's credit card.

The culprit? Zombies vs. Ninjas, which is definitely a free game, but Danny ordered extra "darts" and "bombs" to battle those nasty zombies, where weapons range right up to $99.99. Danny's mother had no idea what was happening until she noticed 19 e-mails from iTunes in the morning, receipts of her son's purchases.

Sharon didn't think anything of the emails, putting it down to multiple invoices of the one receipt. She ignored it until her credit card company called her regarding the suspicious activity. Sharon told Mashable:

I still find it incredible that he managed to do it. He only had the iPad for ten to 15 minutes, so he could've only done the deed within this amount of time. He thought he wasn't doing anything wrong. He was reprimanded and told off, but he was crying. He realized there were going to be consequences and I said, 'You better run and hide,' and he says, 'But mommy, where shall I hide?' I felt so sorry for him and couldn't be mad.

Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Ben in the US having some issues with his system, which he believes is his OCZ Vector SSD.

Q: I have an OCZ Vector 128gb SSD and I have reinstalled windows on it several times, yet it keeps failing, AND I keep getting the the blue screen of death, so now I am back on my western digital 2tb hard drive, and I am wondering, did I waste money on this OCZ?

A: You can view the answer to Ben's question right here.

We've already seen what ASRock are working on, but what about Gigabyte? They haven't been sleeping by the looks of things, with the new Z87 range of motherboards, built for overclockers, being noticed at CeBIT.

The best of the bunch, the GA-Z87X-OC, is built with a full 8 Phase Solid VRM using DRMOS, International Rectifier MOSFETs, which should give some crazy stability when pushing that overclock. The Z87X-OC includes that sexy orange and black design we've come to know and love from Gigabyte, as well as the usual buttons for enthusiasts on the board - BCLCK, Turbo, Gear, Power switches at the side of DIMM slots, Voltage measuring points, Debug LED and a Dual BIOS switch.

We should expect to see more from Gigabyte at Computex in June, where more consumer-ready boards should be unveiled. There's more in the Z87 range from Gigabyte, with the GA-Z87X-UD5H, GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H and GIGABYTE GA-Z87X-UD3H being shown off at Gigabyte's CeBIT 2013 booth.

SGI has launched the new InfiniteStorage 5600, a next-generation high performance storage platform. SGI has a huge presence in the storage market, delivering over 600 Petabytes of storage last year alone. This next gen RAID platform provides the highest throughput for its footprint, spindle count, watts consumption and investment dollars. Designed to capitalize on many forms of storage, from SSDs to HDDs, this platform is well suited for high performance computing, research and analysis, simulation and modeling.

The flexible modular architecture of this new system allows customers to tune their specific performance and capacity requirements. The IS5600 can intermix multiple drive types and enclosure densities, ranging from 4TB high capacity drives to extreme performance SSDs in a single, scalable system.

With a tremendous advantage in MB/s per spindle over competing solutions, the IS5600 provides higher performance with fewer spindles than any other solution on the market.

CeBIT 2013 - One of the final great videos we'll see from Johannes Knapp after his trip to MWC and CeBIT 2013 is of the MSI WindTop AG2712 AIO PC.

This new all-in-one computer from MSI is claimed to be the world's first true gaming AIO and MSI does manage to back that claim up with some pretty solid specs. It comes packing an Intel Core i7 3630QM processor running at 2.4GHz, up to 16GB of DDR3 memory and a speedy NVIDIA GeForce GTX 670MX CPU with 3GB of GDDR5 memory.

The screen included on the unit is 27-inches in size with a solid 1920 x 1080 resolution and includes 10 point multitouch support. The screen is also of the non-glare type, which Johannes liked during his hands-on with the unit. The unit includes a whole bunch of I/O options, with one of the better being HDMI IN, allowing you to use the AIO as a television for other HDMI devices such as your PS3 or Xbox 360.

Ah, Thief, a game I remember from the 90s as a huge leap in terms of stealth games. Now we're finally seeing a reboot of the franchise from Eidos Montreal who have been working on the Thief reboot for years, reports Game Informer.

The rebooted Thief will be released on the PS4 and PC, as well as other next-gen consoles. The above trailer doesn't show you much, but is more of a confirmation that we're to expect Thief. The new game will see series hero Garrett returning to Gothic, an industrial metropolis known as just the 'City'. We should hear more on the game soon now that it has been announced.

Google are looking to expand into yet another area of the market, with Reuters reporting that the Mountain View-based search giant are apparently working with retailers on a same-day delivery service, along the lines of Amazon Prime and eBay Now and local dispatchers like Postmates' GetItNow.

TechCrunch reported on the story too, where they said the search giant would grab your purchased goods from local retailers, and deliver them to your door through third-party couriers. Google would charge just $64-$69 a year for the service, while Reuters' source said a small fee per purchase might also be tacked on. Either way, it's not expensive - well, not for someone like me in Australia anyway.

Reuters have reported that Google are already testing this out in the Bay Area in "recent weeks".

Yesterday we had a look at a few of ASRock's Haswell-based motherboard offerings, but the pictures weren't too shabby. We're back today with some much better pictures, where we can take a closer look at their upcoming motherboards.

The shots are in perfect detail, of each board - the B85M, H87 Pro4, Z87 Extreme6 and Z87 Pro4-M. We have shots of each, as well as the inputs on the back of each board, let's start with the B85M:

The introduction of 12Gb/s SAS products has just inched closer, with LSI firing the initial salvos of this new technology by being the first to ship OEMs a 12Gb/s product. Several key players are lining up to provide customers with 12Gb/s products, but LSI has apparently taken the lead in this race with the CeBIT announcement.

LSI is currently shipping the LSISAS3108 12GB/s SAS ROC and the LSISAS3008 12Gb/s SAS I/O controller. The new Invader controllers can top 6GB/s in throughput and 915,000 IOPS.

At FMS 2012 we were able to spot some of LSIs new 12Gb/s gear with the MiniSAS HD connections to the rear of the controller. These connections provide 12Gb/s speed in a smaller form factor.

It has been two months since the WiFi Alliance and Wireless Gigabit Alliance shook hands, and planned this adventure, but now the time is here and their powers have been combined. The two companies have been working together on developing and building the 60GHz wireless standard.

But instead, they've decided that it was better to make the partnership official, in order to get the most out of their work together. Their long-term plans include expanding WiGig's capabilities and implementing a baseline interoperability certification program by early next year. The combined effort could push forward a large growth, with ABI Research forecasting that we'll see annual shipments of 1.8 billion devices sporting both WiFi and WiGig support by 2016.

In this Twitter weekly giveaway we have teamed up with GIGABYTE to giveaway a hot new motherboard. We're talking about just any motherboard; we're talking about the new and impressive X79S-UP5-WIFI. It's an enthusiast-class board with server like features since it uses the impressive high-end Intel C606 Express chipset.

In our review of the X79S-UP5-WIFI, our motherboard editor Shane Baxtor had the following to say:

"When it comes to the features, we've got a strong line up thanks to the eight SAS ports that are brought to the table via the C606 chipset. Along with that we've got all the usual inclusions like USB 3.0 and dual Gigabit networking to name just a few things. The other big feature, though, comes in the bundle via the included WiFi / Bluetooth card that adds another layer of connectivity to the board.

Overall GIGABYTE has put together a really strong motherboard that's a great option for anyone who is looking at going down the path of an LGA 2011 build. The toughest decision when it comes to buying a new high-end PC at the moment is do you go down the LGA 2011 path with a X79 / C606 based chipset or follow the impressive LGA 1155 based CPU's with an Z77 chipset, which has proven itself extremely well."

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