Micron Technology has teased that it would offer up triple-level cell NAND flash made using the 16nm process, which could see consumers enjoying cheaper flash-based goods, including cheaper SSDs going into 2015.

Mark Adams, President of Micron, said during a conference call with investors and financial analysts: "Our 16nm NAND yields have been very positive and position us well from a cost perspective. We are currently planning to ship 16nm TLC [NAND flash] in calendar Q4 in order to better position our portfolio from a cost perspective in the retail and consumer segments".

The reason why this is important, is that with current NAND flash storage devices, such as SSDs and more, is that they based on MLC (multi-level cell) tech. Where TLC NAND on the other hand, has been used for memory cards, audio players, USB drives and more. MLC is much more durable than TLC, with typical MLC NAND cells lasting for 3000-10,000 erase/write cycles, where TLC-based NAND usually lasts for under 1000 of those same erase/write cycles. In order for TLC NAND to take off, durability and reliability need to be much higher than what we have now - something Micron is working on, hard.

During the Warner Music YouTube blackout in 2009, Warner musicians sold more songs and albums during the hiatus, indicating YouTube hurts music album sales, according to Fairfield University and the University of Colorado.

The research believes top music labels lose out in total sales due to listeners heading to YouTube to listen to new songs - and watch music videos - instead of purchasing individual tracks and albums.

"We showed that the removal of content from YouTube had a casual impact on album sales by upwards of on average 10,000 units per week for top albums," according to the research. "While a great deal has been said about the potential role of these services in promoting and discovering new artists and music, our results cast some double on this widely believed notion, at least with regards to top selling albums."

If you are a fan of Netflix original programming, the streaming network has a new series that is coming and production has started. The new series is called Marco Polo and is a series not based on the summer time swimming pool game, but rather on the adventures of the explorer Marco Polo.

The show will have ten episodes for the first seasons and they will shoot in locations around the world. Shoot locations include Italy, Kazakhstan, and Pinewood Studios in Malaysia. The series will premiere in late 2014.

No exact premiere date has been announced at this time. The show follows Marco Polo as his journey takes him into the center of a war in China in the 13th century. The show sounds very exciting promising martial arts and spectacular battles.

GPS company Garmin has announced the Edge 1000 cycling GPS unit, featuring new technologies to appease cyclists with deeper pockets. The device has a full-color 3" touchscreen providing 240x400 resolution, and a reported battery life up to 15 hours.

Although running GPS units from Garmin have greatly advanced, some in the cycling industry think enough wasn't being done to promote new bike-centric GPS units. However, Garmin pulled out all of the stops with the Edge 1000, including built-in Wi-Fi so map data can be downloaded faster - and GPS-based turn-by-turn directions while out in the saddle.

Cyclists can also use ANT+ sensors to connect the Edge 1000 to a heart rate monitor, power meters, or cadence sensors, Garmin said in the press release.

Land Rover is showing off one of the coolest concept technologies I've seen in a car recently. The tech is called invisible bonnet, bonnet being a hood for those of us in the US. The tech uses a camera in the front of the Land Rover that shoots data to some sort of HUD inside the car.

The result is what appears to be an invisible hood that allows the driver to see through the car to get a look at what is under the vehicle. This could be a great feature to keep Land Rover drivers from getting stuck when off-roading. If you have ever driven off road, you know just because an obstacle makes it past the bumper doesn't mean it will make it past all the hardware under the car.

Land Rover will be showing the new invisible bonnet tech off at the New York International Motors Show. The tech is pure concept right now and there is no word of it coming to a production vehicle. In addition to seeing the surface under the car, the tech will also show the driver the position of the wheels and their angle.

If you are a PS4 gamer that has been counting the days until you can get your hands-on the fantastic game The Last of US, you are certainly not alone. The first confirmation we had that the game was in the works for the PS4 came from an unknown Sony manager late last month.

Real confirmation came today when a banner for the game turned up on the Sony Entertainment Network online store. That banner did bring with it a big question though. Did it land early before Sony meant it to, or is someone just missing the error the banner gives when you click it?

The banner cries out for gamers to pre-order the game now, but when you click it, you get an error message rather than the pre-order page. The question is did the banner go live early before the purchase page was ready, or did some hapless web admin just link it to a bad page?

Logitech has rolled out a new keyboard that is aimed squarely at the users out there who are watching video and playing games on the big screen in the living room. The new keyboard is called the Logitech Illuminated Living-Room Keyboard K830.

As the name suggests, the keyboard has backlit keys. An ambient light sensor on the keyboard automatically adjusts the backlight brightness to suit the conditions of the room and save power. Power comes from an internal rechargeable battery.

One of the biggest challenges with a HTPC is controlling the mouse, the K830 has an integrated track pad. Connectivity to the PC comes from a Logitech Unifying receiver that has 2.4GHz tech and a 33-foot range. Logitech says that the keyboard is good for ten days of use per charge.

AMD's Athlon and Sempron lines are back and now in APU form. This morning AMD announced the launch of its new quad-core and dual-core Kabini APUs, and the new Socket AM1 platform. Kabini brings back the legendary Athlon and Sempron brands and pairs them up with AMD's award-winning Graphics Core Next architecture and Jaguar CPU cores to form a flexible and powerful APU platform.

"AMD consistently builds on its industry leading technology by continuing to offer a diversified product stack which is proven today with the availability ofthe AM1 platform with "sockete" Sempron and Athlon APUs designed for the mainstream market," said Bernd Lienhard, corporate vice president and general manager, Client Business Unit, AMD. "With quad-core performance and AMD Radeon graphics the AM1 platform is an affordable solution that provides great flexibility due to an infrastructure built to deliver a multitude of options to our end users and system builders."

The new quad-core Athlon 5150 and 5350 APUs feature a 25W TDP and feature a 2.05GHz and 1.6GHz CPU clock respectively. Both Athlon APUs feature Radeon R3 graphics with 128 GCN cores each which is clocked at 600MHz with a 1600MHz memory clock. Each Athlon APU is capable of supporting two USB 3.0, 8 USB 2.0, and 2 SATA 6GB/s ports. MSRP on the Athlon 5350 is set at $59 while the 5150 will retail for $49.

Oculus VR is ramping up its Rift DK2 unit, which features a 1920x1080 display inside of the VR headset. GameFace Labs is a company you may not have heard of, but it has just announced that it is the first company to show off a prototype VR headset with a 2.5K display.

2.5K is just a fancy way of saying 2560x1440, where at this resolution, it is pushing out 78% more pixels than a 1080p-based display, such as the Oculus Rift DK2. Ed Mason, CEO of GameFace Labs explains: "The upgrade to 1280 x 1440 per eye is monumental. Individual pixels are hard to detect at first glance, making it a more immersive and comfortable experience in every single game and experience that we've tried. A lot of the 'presence' described by devs at the Valve [prototype VR headset] demonstration can be attributed to their use of higher resolution (and lower persistence) panels, which has a noticeable impact in suspending disbelief and tricking the brain".

Better yet, the company is just stopping at 2.5K, as it wants to get one of the most powerful mobile solutions into its VR headset, making mobile VR a reality. This is actually something I talked about Oculus VR doing, but it seems that GameFace Labs is the one we should be watching. The company is rubbing up against NVIDIA's very impressive Tegra K1 aka Jetson, which is a super powerful system-on-a-chip (SoC) solution that has a quad-core processor running at 2.3GHz with a 192-core GPU.

Microsoft has been talking about the upcoming Windows 8.1 Update 1 for months now, and today the Redmond, Washington-based giant has finally released the update to the public. Windows 8.1 users can head over to Windows Update and install Update 1 to their system now, or you can wait and let Windows run the update for you when your automatic updates are scheduled to run.

"Windows 8.1 Update and Windows RT 8.1 Update include improvements to make Windows more familiar and convenient for devices that use touch and mouse input and to make Windows available on a wider variety of devices, so you have more to choose from. Windows 8.1 Update and Windows RT 8.1 Update also include security and performance updates, and they must be installed for your PC to receive any future security updates for Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1," Microsoft said in a release.

Below is a list of the changes Windows 8.1 Update 1 brings to the table.