Walmart is desperate to compete with Amazon, Best Buy, and other rivals ahead of Christmas, and have been getting tricked by a price-matching scam. People are creating fake Amazon selling accounts and listing Sony PlayStation 4 units as low as $50, taking a screenshot of the online price, and taking it to a local Walmart to claim their prize. Other sneaky customers were picking up PS4 bundles for $100, but it looks like Walmart has wised up and has altered its price matching policy.

Previously, Walmart was getting scammed into selling $60 Nintendo Wii U and 3DS bundles, thanks to a mistake on the Sears website. Customers quickly jumped on the erroneous listing, and found that Walmart met the price match even with a wrong price on a rivals website.

"We're committed to providing low prices every day," the Walmart website proudly boasts. "On everything. So if you find a lower advertised price on an identical product, tell us and we'll match it. Right at the register."

Powermat wireless charging stations will be introduced into 200 San Francisco Bay Area Starbucks locations, as the company plans to launch nationwide rollout before heading to Europe and Asia within 12 months. The chargers will be built directly into tables and bars inside of Starbucks, and the popular coffee chain hopes to win over patrons with the wireless charging offering.

It was announced earlier this year that Starbucks was testing the wireless charging stations in the Bay Area, but trying to find them in-store proved difficult for many guests. The Power Matter Alliance produces the Powermat technology, and is supported by Starbucks, Google and AT&T.

"The availability of Powermat Spots in Starbucks is transformative for San Francisco Bay residents who no longer have to worry about making it through their day with limited battery power," said Ran Poliakine, Powermat Technologies CEO, in a press statement. "They know that the nearest charge is only as far away as the nearest Starbucks."

The online PC gaming industry will grow from $24.4 billion this year up to an estimated $30.7 billion in 2017, the performance marketing agency Ad2Games and analyst firm Newzoo recently reported. The PC and MMO game market will account for 31 percent of international video game revenue, with Asia, Eastern Europe and Latin America expected to see 95 percent of growth over the next three years.

Trying to expand to attract - and retain - new gamers proves to be extremely expensive, with costs as low as 37 cents up to $5.63 per user, the report indicates.

The sector will see 7.9 percent year-over-year growth over the next three years, while free-to-play video games continue to woo new gamers. These types of games

More than 90 percent of US households currently have at least three or more Internet-connected devices, according to a recent report published by Ericsson. The average household has 5.2 connected devices per household, and that number will increase as the Internet of Things (IoT) continues to be common place.

The Ericsson survey also found that 97 percent of households have at least one mobile phone, while mobile phone saturation continues to increase. By 2020, 90 percent of the global population over six years of age will own a mobile phone - and many phone owners will be using smartphones.

At the end of 2013 there were 1.9 billion smartphone subscriptions, and that number is expected to increase up to 2.7 billion by the end of this year. Analysts believe that number will increase 15 percent each year through 2020, as smartphones become more affordable.

The expansion of 4K content and high frame rate movies present graphically appealing content, but digital animation studios are struggling, a recent industry expert noted. Production schedules could be impacted due to high-resolution images, forcing studios to reconsider how they create films.

"They are both going to present a huge challenge," said Bruno Mahe, Illumination Mac Guff technical head recently told the BBC. Traditional animated films are viewed at 2K resolution with 24 frames per resolution, but 4K boosts the videos up to 4K resolution and 48fps - and it isn't an easy transition.

In addition to slowing down production, studios also need increasingly powerful render farms to produce images and send them to other animation facilities.

Jeremy Gutsche signed up for a 30MB in-flight Internet plan when he boarded his Singapore Airlines flight, priced at $28.99. Once a user goes over the 30MB, they're charged for the data used beyond it, where Gutsche's bill ended up landing on $1171 in additional charges.

Gutsche took to his website, where he wrote: "I had an otherwise enjoyable flight but the sticker shock of being gouged $1,200 made me feel like I was deplaning from Total Bastard Airlines, that old skit from SNL where they kick you off the plane with a 'Buy BYE! If you were a family traveler or someone like my mother, that bill would certainly ruin your vacation".

Gutsche said that he visited around 155 webpages, checked his e-mail, and uploaded some PowerPoint presentations. He then estimated that his PowerPoint presentation cost around $100 to upload, adding that "I hope my team liked it". OnAir, the firm responsible for the in-flight Wi-Fi told The Wall Street Journal that the purchase process is "entirely transparent", and that "To consume several hundred megabytes during one flight takes much more than basic email viewing, for example downloading heavy attachments, cloud access and using Skype".

Intel may be struggling in the mobile market, but things could change with the news that the chipmaker will soon combine its mobile divisions with its CPU-making division.

Bloomberg is reporting the news, after speaking with Intel's spokesman, Chuck Malloy, who said: "The lines are blurring between PCs, tablets, phablets and phones. The idea is to accelerate the implementation and create some efficiency so that we can move even faster". With Intel close to its goal of shipping 40 million tablet processors in 2014, the company still isn't hitting its stride when it comes to profitability in the mobile market, mainly because of its big subsidies to have them on-board in the first place.

LinkNYC, a new "communications network" has announced its plans to turn all of New York City's existing payphones into public Wi-Fi stations, with Superman being the most disappointed with this news.

The new Wi-Fi kiosks will be taller, and narrower than the average phone booth, but will still have ads plastered all over them. These Wi-Fi stations will boast "up to gigabit speeds", doubling as charging stations for devices, which is a nice touch. The new Wi-Fi network is part of a "public-private" collaboration between LinkNYC, the Mayor's Office of Technology and Innovation, DoITT, and CityBridge. A collective of New York-based companies, such as Qualcomm, Antenna, Comark, and Transit Wireless are also involved.

Not only will the phone booths be turned into Wi-Fi hotspots, but the LinkNYC kiosks will have touch screens that will provide information about the city itself, as well as allowing for free domestic phone calls. LinkNYC has said that the network will be "the fastest and largest free municipal Wi-Fi deployment in the world" and that it will be "more than 20 times fast than the average home Internet service in NYC" including a "seamless roaming experience from Link to Link". The best bit? LinkNYC said that the free gigabit Wi-Fi across NYC will be done "at no cost to taxpayers" with all of its revenue being secured through advertising, with around $500 million being made over the next 12 or so years. The roll out begins early 2015, with up to 10,000 Links to be installed across five boroughs of the city at first.

WhatsApp for Android is currently being updated, with the latest version providing end-to-end encryption. Previously, WhatsApp couldn't decrypt user messages, even if they wanted to for legal reasons. Most have said that it is the strongest encryption on any major text service.

The company has teamed up with Open Whisper Systems in order to usher in the secure feature, with Open Whisper responsible for multiple apps, but mostly TextSecure that had WhatsApp noticing them. This forces forward security to keep messages encrypted, even if the key is compromised in the future.

Open Whisper Systems spent around six months preparing TextSecure for WhatsApp, but at the moment it's locked to Android only. There's no word on when the iOS version will be updated, but it should roll out in the future at some point.

Maniac Mansion is one of those games I will forever cherish, with the point-and-click adventure game being one of the big Lucasfilm Games of their time. Well, Ron Gilbert and Gary Winnick are now making something they're calling "the true spiritual successor" to Maniac Mansion, called Thimbleweed Park.

The developing duo are taking Thimbleweed Park to Kickstarter, hoping to hit $375,000 in required funds to get the point-and-click adventure off the ground. When explaining the game, they say it "cuts to the core of what made classic point-and-click adventure games so special ... It's deep, it's challenging, it's funny, it's everything you loved about adventure games". On Kickstarter, it says: "It's like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you've never played before".

Thimbleweed Park will tell the tale of a pair of "washed-up detectives" who are in charge of an investigation into a death in Thimbleweed Park that "once boasted an opulent hotel, a vibrant business district and the state's largest pillow factory, but now teeters on the edge of oblivion and continues to exist for no real reason".