Microsoft’s Cortana assistant has earned a good deal of praise in the early going and the company this week unveiled plans to make it even better. Microsoft says that starting this fall, Cortana will have access to a huge trove of academic information through a new Bing feature that will have “academic data tightly integrated and prominently featured on its search pages.” Microsoft says that this new feature will be part of its Microsoft Academic Search initiative that aims to make scholarly research an integral part of Bing search results and not its own separate category as we see now in Google Scholar.

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Jibo is a very cute, and apparently very intelligent, family friendly robot that will ship to your door at some point in late 2015 to become your home-based personal assistant, assuming you’re ready to pre-order one from Indiegogo right now. The project, led by MIT Robotics pioneer Cynthia Breazeal, is quite interesting, offering users a device that’s able to understand their requests and help out with daily activities and chores.

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Amazon is about to change the way we acquire books once again. According to Gigaom, members of the Kindle Boards discovered a page on Tuesday which appears to reveal an upcoming eBook subscription service called “Kindle Unlimited” which would allow subscribers to access over 600,000 titles and thousands of audiobooks “on any device” for $9.99 a month. Although the test pages have since been removed, you can still find them on Google Cache.

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One of the only things keeping cable subscribers tied to their providers is the never-ending stream of quality content being pumped out by HBO. Whether it’s Game of Thrones, True Detective or The Leftovers, many of us can’t help but gather around the television on Sunday night for hours on end, but it doesn’t alleviate the pain of that $100+ subscription. That’s why it might be time to take advantage of one of the little known secrets of the cable industry.

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Boeing has a new gigantic Dreamliner ready to fly you to a hot destination, Engadget reports, and the company decided to demo the longer 787-9 variant at the Farnborough Airshow in London. To highlight the new aircraft’s powers, 787-9 pilots performed various extreme maneuvers, like steep takeoffs and high-bank turns off the ground – or the kind of airplane action you’ll hopefully never have to experience yourself – with Boeing recording the whole experience on video.

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The purpose of maps applications such as Google Maps or Apple Maps is to help users quickly find a point of interest and provide quick information, directions and navigating help to reach it. However, while maps apps always try to offer the quickest route to a destination, they don’t focus on also providing the most enjoyable experience possible, Wired reports.

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Google has yet to unveil new Nexus hardware this year, but at least the company confirmed at I/O 2014 that it doesn’t plan to cancel its Nexus line of devices, as some reports suggested. Before the conference, Google code sightings revealed an unreleased HTC Volantis tablet. Furthermore, an image published by Google during the developers event may have possibly shown the HTC Nexus tablet that was detailed in previous reports.

YouTube channel My Gadgetic has put together a quick concept video for an HTC Nexus 8 tablet running Android L. The device seems to be inspired by the tablet Google used in its Material Design images posted at the developers conference, featuring a slim design with square corners and stereo speakers with BoomSound.

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Apple on Wednesday agreed to a $450 million settlement to settle claims that the tech giant conspired with five book publishers in an effort to fix eBook prices. Reuters reports that the settlement would provide $400 million to consumers, but is conditioned on the outcome of an ongoing trial in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. “A ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversing the liability finding could under the settlement either reduce the amount Apple pays to $70 million, with $50 million for consumers, or eliminate payments altogether,” Reuters’ Nate Raymond, Alison Frankel and Jonathan Stempel reported.

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Apple on Wednesday agreed to a $450 million settlement to settle claims that the tech giant conspired with five book publishers in an effort to fix eBook prices. Reuters reports that the settlement would provide $400 million to consumers, but is conditioned on the outcome of an ongoing trial in the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York. “A ruling by the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York reversing the liability finding could under the settlement either reduce the amount Apple pays to $70 million, with $50 million for consumers, or eliminate payments altogether,” Reuters’ Nate Raymond, Alison Frankel and Jonathan Stempel reported.

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When Gmail was first launched, it was the best thing to happen to email in just about forever. Over the years, though, Google started tinkering with it to the point where it became less and less like the clean, distraction-free interface that we all fell in love with a decade ago. Thankfully for us, the team at Old Compose have just completely rebuilt their Chrome and Firefox extensions to give you the best way yet to make Gmail just as awesome as you remember it by bringing back the big compose window that Google unceremoniously dumped last year.

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