'Breaking Bad' App Turns Your Name Into Chemical Element

LISA LACY for ClickZ 12 hours ago

For five seasons, each episode of AMC's Emmy Award-winning series Breaking Bad has begun with a title sequence that includes the symbols for bromine and barium, Br and Ba.

And now, thanks to AMC's Breaking Bad Name Lab app, the show's fans can generate images with symbols from the periodic table in their own names.

Since its launch on June 26, more than 1.4 million people have used the Facebook app — 20,000 of whom accessed it in the first four minutes it was available, according to an AMC rep.

What's more, Breaking Bad has gained 80,000 Facebook fans since the app launched, bringing its likes to a total of 4.7 million. (The show also has 338,000 Twitter followers.)

Calling the end result a "personalized periodic table name," the Name Lab app is accessible viaBreaking Bad's Facebook page and www.breakingbadnamelab.com. Users click "Get Started" and the app automatically generates a "personalized periodic table name" with element symbols replacing various letters in the fan's name.

Fans are then given the option to download a cover photo or profile picture and can share these images on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest and Tumblr. The images also include the hashtag #allbadthingsmustcometoanend — a nod to the critically acclaimed series' eight final episodes, which will begin airing in August.

The app is not the only promotional element to feature names; AMC has also released a promotional poster featuring actor Bryan Cranston, who plays central character Walter White, and the words "Remember My Name."

"We launched the app to complement the tease campaign that is out in the marketplace now, 'All Bad Things Must Come to An End,'" says Gina Hughes, AMC's senior vice president of marketing, in a written statement. "We wanted to give the fans a unique and organic way to engage with the series and build excitement for the final eight episodes, which premiere this summer."

The season finale for the first half of season five, which aired in September 2012, had 2.8 million viewers. AMC says that was up 47% over the season four finale.

Created by writer, producer and director Vince Gilligan and produced by Sony Pictures Television, Breaking Bad follows what AMC describes as "the story of a desperate man who turns to a life of crime to secure his family's financial future."

The series has received seven Emmy Awards and a Peabody. Breaking Bad has also been named to the American Film Institute's list of the Top 10 Programs of the Year in 2008, 2010, 2011 and 2012.

Image courtesy of AMC Name Lap App

This article originally published at ClickZ here

Foursquare Targets Feature-Phone Users With New Nokia App

Foursquare unveiled a new app designed for feature phones on Tuesday, specifically targetingNokia's range of Series 40 handsets.

S40 is a software platform used on the Finnish company's line of mid-range feature phones, as well as on its Asha series, which are marketed as low-end smartphones. Foursquare will be preloaded on new Asha devices worldwide when they hit the market in several months.

"Hundreds of millions of people around the world use Nokia S40 phones, and now they'll all have access to Foursquare," the location-based social network said in a blog post.

In fact, last year, Nokia said it sold 1.5 billion units of its S40 phones. With mobile consumers in developing markets opting to buy feature phones over costlier smartphones, it seems the Finnish company is tapping into the lucrative low-end handset market.

Last week, Nokia debuted two 3G-capable feature phones — each selling for $68 — that are specifically designed to provide users with quick Internet access.

Foursquare launched its original S40 app back in 2011. Those who own an S40 phone can get Foursquare's updated app in Nokia's Ovi Store.

Would you download and use Foursquare on a feature phone? Tell us in the comments, below.

Image courtesy of Janitors

Google Brings Voice Calling Back to Gmail, Now Under Hangouts

Gmail users who upgraded Google Talk to Hangouts back in May were up in arms after discovering that doing so removed the ability to make voice calls. Google addressed this issue on Tuesday after it finally introduced voice calls to Hangouts.

"For those of you who have taken the plunge and are using desktop Hangouts in Gmail, Google+ and the Chrome extension, we've heard loud and clear that you miss the ability to make calls from Gmail, so today, we're happy to announce it's back," Alex Wiesen, a senior software engineer, wrote in a blog post.

Citing new features such as adding multiple phone numbers and video participants to the same call, as well as playing sound effects with the Google Effect app, Wiesen said the newly dubbed "Hangouts calling" is "better than before." He added that calls to the U.S. and Canada are free from countries where Hangouts calling is available, while international rates are reasonably priced.

To make a call, users must click the phone icon in Gmail, and the "Call a phone" menu item inGoogle+ and the Chrome extension. Those who don't yet have Hangouts in Gmail — but want to try it — must click on their profile photo in the chat list, and select "Try the new Hangouts."

Making calls from Hangouts will roll out over the next few days.

Are you excited that voice calling is back in Gmail? Tell us in the comments, below.

[via The Verge]

Homepage image courtesy of Flickr, sneurgaonkar; other images courtesy of Google

French Spy Agency's Headquarters Erased From Google Maps

FERNANDO ALFONSO III for The Daily Dot 1 day ago

After centuries of excess and exposure, France is finally exercising some modesty — at least when it comes to the location of its intelligence agencies.

The headquarters for France's Directorate-General for External Security (DGSE) has been added to the list of censored Google Maps locations after the agency came under scrutiny formonitoring the Internet and phone activity of French citizens.

The clandestine operation has been compared to the National Security Agency's PRISMprogram.

PRISM has worked with tech companies like Google, Facebook and Microsoft to collect Internet data (such as email exchanges, instant messages and file uploads) on Americans for the past six years. Former NSA employee Edward Snowden leaked the details of the program to The Guardian and The Washington Post. Since these news organizations broke the news on PRISM in mid-June, Snowden has been charged with espionage and theft of government property by the U.S. His current whereabouts are unknown.

The details surrounding France's version of PRISM — commonly called “Big Brother” — are sparse. According to France's Le Monde, the government has sunk €600 million ($774.5 million US) into the program, which employs about 5,000 people.

"[T]he Directorate General for External Security (DGSE) systematically collect electromagnetic signals from computers or phones in France, as well as flows between French and abroad," Le Monde reported, according to a Google translation. "All emails, text messages, telephone records, access to Facebook, Twitter, are then stored for years."

The headquarters for the DGSE is located on the outskirts of Paris, about 10 miles from the Eiffel Tower.

Since Google launched its powerful Maps application in 2005, satellite and Street View images of dozens of military outposts, airports, political landmarks and entire countries have been censored. While many, including the White House, have since been revealed to the world, others — like Buffalo's Niagara International Airport — remain obscured.

"[Google] does this using a handful of handy visual tricks — like pixelating, overexposing and cloning the imagery," Motherboard reported. "Other times, governments will opt to show out-of-date or really low-res images, so as to not draw attention to the location, but also hide the details from would-be terrorists."

While the DGSE may be a bit shy to show off its headquarters, the NSA has no problem allowing people to zoom in on its Fort Meade compound.

[via Motherboard]

Image courtesy of Flickr, ostromentsky

This article originally published at The Daily Dot here

Shazam Raises $40 Million, Continues on Path to IPO

Shazam, the company behind the popular music discovery app of the same name, has raised another $40 million to accelerate growth before ultimately going public.

The round of funding announced Monday comes from America Movil, the phone carrier owned by Carlos Slim, formerly the richest man in the world. In addition to the funding, Shazam will enter into a business partnership with America Movil, presumably bringing its media products to the carrier's subscribers and boosting its user base in the process.

As part of the funding announcement, Shazam revealed it now has more than 350 million users, more than twice what it had two years ago, and 70 million monthly active users, up from 22 million two years ago. Part of the goal for the new funding is simply to invest in the infrastructure to support that growth.

"We are growing incredibly quickly. Part of our need is just to buy capacity to support this on ramp of users and people spending more time on the service," Andrew Fisher, executive chairman of Shazam, told Mashable in an interview. "The second part is to innovate faster."

Shazam is focused on innovating its music product — with plans to introduce some notable updates in the coming months — and its television product, which can help viewers discover additional information about ads and programs playing on the screen.

"We're focused on this category that we describe as media engagement," Fisher says. "Applying emerging technologies like audio recognition — and potentially image recognition — make it as easy as possible for people to engage with the media and brands they're interested in."

While some startups turn to large funding rounds to delay or avoid going public, Fisher says the timetable for Shazam's IPO has not changed — though he won't get much more specific.

"It certainly will not be 2013. It will be looking out from there," he says. "Shazam needs to get through another phase of growth before we are ready to go on the public markets."

Shazam was founded in 2000 and has raised $75 million in funding to date.

Images courtesy of Shazam

Google Doodle Marks 66th Anniversary of Roswell UFO Incident

Google has unveiled an interactive Doodle to mark the 66th anniversary of the Roswell UFOincident.

The Doodle is a brief point-and-click adventure game in which users must help an alien, whose UFO crash-landed on earth, return home. Upon completion, Google provides users with the search results for "Roswell UFO incident."

In early July 1947, witnesses reported seeing flying saucers and unidentified material on the ground in Roswell, N.M. Conspiracy theories about aliens visiting earth became widespread following a July 8 news report in The Roswell Daily Record. Headlined "RAAF Captures Flying Saucer On Ranch in Roswell Region," the article said the Roswell Army Air Field's intelligence office recovered a "flying saucer" after a local rancher found it on his property.

Check out the Doodle game, here; then tell us what you think in the comments.

Homepage image courtesy of Flickr, Thierry Dulieu; screenshot image courtesy of Google

Everything Gmail Knows About You and Your Friends, Visualized

BRIAN FUNG for National Journal   43 minutes ago

When Google hands over email records to the government, it includes basic envelope information, or metadata, that reveals the names and email addresses of senders and recipients in your account. The feds, in turn, can mine that information for patterns that might be useful in a law enforcement investigation.

What kind of relationships do they typically find? Thanks to the researchers at theMassachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab, you can now find out. They've developed a tool called Immersion that taps into your Gmail and displays the results as an interactive graphic. (That's mine, above.)

The chart depicts all of your contacts as nodes, and the gray lines between those nodes represent connections between people by email. The larger the circle, the more prominent that person is in your digital life.

A word of warning for the privacy conscious: To use the service, you need to give MIT permission to analyze your email metadata. Once you've done so, it'll take a few minutes to compile everything. When you're done, you're given the option to delete your metadata from MIT's servers.

What you see in my chart are five and a half years' worth of emails. The yellow circles indicate family and close family friends. All of my college friends are in red, and my D.C. friends are in green. Blue nodes denote my colleagues at The Atlantic; pink, my coworkers at National Journal; and gray, people who generally don't share connections with the other major networks in my life.

In all, MIT counted 606 "collaborators" in my inbox, totaling some 83,000 emails. But you can also break down that data by year, month or even the past week. Pretty amazing stuff — and a good reminder not only how much information Google knows about you, but what that information can uncover about other people. If you can learn this much just from looking at one account, imagine what crunching hundreds or thousands of interconnected accounts must be like.

Image courtesy of MIT Media Lab

This article originally published at National Journal here

Harry Potter's Diagon Alley Is Now on Google Street View

The shops of Diagon Alley from Harry Potter are now on Google Maps' Street View.

It's no Marauder's Map, but Google now lets you explore the set of Diagon Alley from the Warner Bros. Studio Tour in London. In Street View mode, you can see 360-degree images of Ollivanders Wand Shop, Weasleys’ Wizard Wheezes joke shop and Mr. Mulpepper’s Apothecary.

The Diagon Alley set brings to life the shop setting from J.K. Rowling's legendary Harry Potterseries of seven best-selling books, which grew into a successful eight-movie franchise. Warner Bros. Studio Tour says the Diagon Alley set took more than three months to build, and it took six months to create over 20,000 products to put on the shops' shelves.

Explore Diagon Alley for yourself on Google Maps. It's a fun experience for Harry Potter fans, but it makes me wonder what adventures Harry, Ron and Hermione would have missed out on if they had Google Maps and never got lost.

Images courtesy of Warner Bros. Studio Tour London

Dell Considers Move Into Wearable Computing

Dell is considering a move into wearable computing, a potential growth area that might offset sinking PC sales.

The company is "exploring ideas in that space," Sam Burd, Dell's global vice president of personal computing, told The Guardian. "Looking ahead five years, we expect devices and form factors to continue to change. There will still be a need for 'static' computing on desktops, but there will be a real need for mobile devices. There's a lot of discussion about how that fits into wearable devices like we've seen with Google Glass and watches. We're looking at a world of lots of connected devices."

Wearable computing these days looks like an oasis compared to PCs. PC shipments plunged13.9% in the first quarter, according to IDC. That was the biggest decline since IDC began tracking the market in 1994. Dell's end-user computing business, meanwhile, fell 9% in the company's first quarter and its operating margin dropped 65%.

Wearable computing is still in its early stages. Google just started shipping its Glass headsets to several thousand "explorers" in April and the Pebble smart watch is hitting retail this month. Meanwhile, other entries into the category — like a smart watch from Apple — are merely rumors at this point.

For Dell, a company in the process of trying to go private, wearable computing presents a more profitable alternative.

Image via Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

The Man Who Invented the Computer Mouse Has Died

Douglas Engelbart, the man who invented the computer mouse and helped develop many of the basic computing technologies we now take for granted, has died. He was 88.

The news appears to have first been announced via a tweet from the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif. SRI International, where Engelbart did much of his work and which represents the Douglas Engelbart Institute, confirmed Engelbart's death to Mashable.

It was just announced that Computer History Museum 2005 Fellow, Doug Engelbart passed away early this morning.... http://t.co/OqRWSXUuOR

— Computer History (@ComputerHistory) July 3, 2013

Engelbart gave the first demonstration of a computer mouse on December 9, 1968, which has since been dubbed the "Mother of All Demos." In addition to the mouse, Engelbart showed many technologies now common in computing, including video conferencing, word processing, hypertext and collaborative editing (watch a video of the demo below). His research also pioneered the way for graphical user interfaces.

More than a year before the demo, Engelbart applied for a patent on the mouse, which he received in 1970. It was a simple wooden shell with two metal wheels, which the application describes as an "X-Y position indicator control for movement of the hand to move a cursor over the display on a cathode-ray tube."

Engelbart was involved in developing the precursor to the Internet, ARPANET. With funding from DARPA (then ARPA), Engelbart's team was on the receiving end of the first message transmitted over the network, the letters "lo" (it was supposed to be "login" but the system crashed). Engelbart's research lab, called ARC, eventually managed the ARPANET node connections.

Engelbart received many awards for his research, including the National Medal of Technology, which he accepted from President Bill Clinton in 2000. He also received a Computer Pioneer Award from the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and even had his home state of Oregon declare January 24, 2002 "Douglas C. Engelbart Day."

Engelbart is survived by his wife, Karen O'Leary Engelbart, four children and nine grandchildren, according to Wikipedia.

Image courtesy of SRI International; homepage courtesy of Flickr, Larry Johnson

Time Warner Cable Eyes Apple TV App

JOE WHITE for AppAdvice   Jun 05, 2013

Following the launch of a Time Warner Cable app for Roku in March, the cable telecommunications company is looking to launch its application on other platforms, including Apple TV, according to FierceCable.

At Time Warner Cable’s investor conference on Tuesday, CEO Glenn Britt told his audience that the company’s interests extend beyond Roku, according to FierceCable's report. Concerning the potential of new platforms, Britt said:

“You should assume we’re talking to everyone who makes devices like this, whether it’s Samsung smart TVs, Apple, Microsoft.”

Time Warner Cable’s Roku app allows subscribers to stream about 300 cable channels on the digital receiver. Yet it remains to be seen if Apple and Time Warner Cable have come to an agreement.

Image via Mario Tama/Getty Images

This article originally published at AppAdvice here

Google Glass Adds Its First Website Browser

Google finally added a website browser to Google Glass. The company announced a few new updates to its high-tech specs on Monday, making it easier to find new content and communicate hands-free.

"We've been exploring ways to let you quickly dive deeper and get exactly the information you need, right when you need it," the company wrote in a Google+ post. "To test it out, search for something and then tap on the 'View website' screen to bring up the web page."

When a user is on a webpage, different commands on Google Glass' touchpad will mimic a mouse's movements on a laptop or a finger's movements on a touchscreen. For example, to scroll down a webpage, a user must slide his finger forward on the touchpad.

To zoom, slide two fingers forward or backward. Hold two fingers down on the touchpad and move your head around to pan; as you look around, tap to select the center of the screen.

The company wrote that it is also ramping up efforts to help users better communicate hands-free with others. Now, you can ask Glass to read text messages aloud or use voice commands to write and send responses.

Google added that the updates will automatically be pushed to Glass in the upcoming days.

The Potential Behind Wearable Gadgets

Another, more clinical name better describes these products: quantified-self devices. It's more of a mouthful, but it better captures the goal: to record our interactions with the world and then turn that data into something easily understood, giving us insights in how we might change our behavior for the better.

It's a straightforward goal, but until recently it was extremely difficult to achieve with a small, reasonably priced consumer gadget. Technological progress, however, gives wearable gadgets a twin engine. They are small, cheap sensors and they work with ever-more-powerful smartphones, continuously connected to the cloud. Now, the ability to capture data from the body and instantly process that data into something useful is truly in the palm of your hand.

"For a long time people have been wanting to track health and make good decisions, and now they have the tools to do it," says Brad Kittredge, director of product management at Jawbone, which makes the UP fitness bracelet.

The Tech Behind Wearables

Almost all wearable sensors connect to a smartphone or tablet in some way, using the phone's data connection as its path to the cloud, where most data processing takes place. More than halfof all mobile subscribers in the U.S. are smartphone owners, and every one of those smartphones is a technological marvel that any wearable can take advantage of.

Besides its network connection, one of the key ingredients the smartphone brings to the table its display, especially recent models like the HTC One, which brought full HD resolution (1,920 x 1,080) to smartphones. "It's most important because you can understand the data and go deeper into it to figure out what it’s telling you," Kittredge says.

In addition, smartphones are typically also our gateways to social networks. Part of the reason behind the explosion of wearable tech is that people want to share their data, especially their achievements. You only have to look at how often you see a Nike+ Fuelband score in your Facebook feed to see how influential the social component can be in wearable technology.

Smartphones are so advanced now, it's fair to ask, why do we even need separate sensor devices at all? After all, today's phones are equipped with light sensors, accelerometers and even gyroscopes — why does someone need to wear a separate device to track things like movement?

"Wearable sensors have to be inherently wearable, that allows for a number of use cases the phone doesn’t — on your skin, on your body," says Kittredge. "The wearable can see whether you’re awake and asleep. It can also interact with you: The UP can nudge you to wake you up during light sleep, for example."

In addition, while sensors on cellphones have improved dramatically over the last few years, there are a few things they lack. An altimeter, which precisely measures altitude, is not a standard sensor you'll find on a smartphone, so something like the Striiv, which promises to track personal movement, including stair climbing, needs its own hardware.

Kittredge points out that wearing a device — as opposed to just carrying a cellphone — often changes behavior.

"When you have something you’re wearing, you're cognizant that you’re wearing it," he says. "We find that people move 26% more while wearing the UP."

Measuring our bodies — whether it's movement, sleep or meals — is just step one. The most important part is turning that data into something comprehensible we can act upon. Most wearables pair with an app that shows your activity over time, letting you spot patterns and change what you do. Jawbone takes this a step further with its UP platform, importing data from other services and letting those services access the data from the UP bracelet.

"With the API, we’re trying to deliver that in a way that’s unique," says Kittredge. "Using that API, you can pull in the sources of data that you care about and track it in a way that you want. The more signals you can capture, the more we can understand the connection points and patterns."

As this data collection becomes more sweeping and sophisticated, the future could see it incorporated with our medical care. Your doctor might be able to make better recommendations, for example, if he could see how much you move in the course of a typical day, or what you eat. Eventually, insurance companies could get involved, possibly giving customers who use a wearable device lower rates — as long as they share that data.

That possibility brings with it obvious privacy concerns, especially given the recent news aboutNSA surveillance of people's data. Kittredge says the conversation between health-care providers and the wearable industry has begun, and that the concerns are being addressed.

"From a cultural standpoint, we're more aware of the pros and cons of sharing data," Kittredge says. "I think there’s real potential, but people will have to be very cognizant of Big Brother." 

"We don’t think that’s what this is. I think a lot of people would be interested in sharing their data with their doctor."

What do you think: Are wearables a passing fad, or will they become ever-more intertwined with our digital lives? Let us know in the comments.

Image by Dan Kitwood/Getty Images Entertainment/Getty Images; Nike

Microsoft Developing Smartphones to Detect Your Mood

Microsoft is working on new smartphone technology that can sense your mood and automatically share it with friends on social networking sites.

A research paper written by Microsoft Research in Asia — and first discovered by Techworld Australia — reveals the company is experimenting with smartphone "mood sensors" that can detect how you are feeling. The technology — called MoodScope — would allow users to automatically share those moods with friends in real time on networks such as Facebook.

Some sensors measure light and acceleration, but MoodScope would measure the mental state of its users and classify participants as feeling tense, happy, upset, bored, calm, stressed or excited.

"[P]rivacy concerns aside, these moods would enhance social networks by allowing users to share mood states automatically," the researchers wrote in a paper.

"Users would be able to know better how and when to communicate with others."

Microsoft said this could help inform others of your mood before you speak with them — with advantages like knowing ahead of time that your boss is upset.

"Mood sensing can enable users to digitally communicate closer to the way they would in real life," the report read. "For mood sharing, an automatic mood sensor will not only improve the usability but also more importantly, lower the social barrier for a user to share their mood: we do not directly tell others our mood very often, but we do not try to conceal our mood very often either."

According to the report, Microsoft has already built a prototype that could infer your mood with about 66% accuracy, on average. In a study with 32 participants, the accuracy level of detecting a mood jumped to 95% after two months of training.

Microsoft said other services could benefit from mood detection, too.

"Video and music recommender systems such as Netflix or Spotify would benefit from using mood as an input to their recommendation algorithms," the researchers wrote. "By knowing the user’s mood and building preferences based on previously selected items, these providers could recommend different media to match the user’s current mood."

Mashable composite; image via iStockphoto, MrIncredible

Wi-Fi Tech Sees Through Walls

JESSE EMSPAK for Discovery News 2 days ago

We've seen terahertz cameras that can look through walls and X-ray scanners that fit in the palm of your hand. Now, scientists at MIT have developed a way to track movement through walls using Wi-Fi signals.

The idea is pretty simple: take two transmitters and one receiver. Each transmitter sends out a signal that is precisely 180 degrees out of phase with the other, so the two cancel each other out, and the receiving antenna “hears” nothing.

But put any moving object in the area, and it reflects the signals. The signals don’t cancel out, and where once there was no radio “noise” at all, now radio energy is emanating off the moving object or person. A still object also reflects radio waves, but the time it takes for a wave to bounce back to the receiver stays the same, and the reflections will still cancel out.

The invention — which Dina Katabi, an electrical engineering professor, and her graduate student Fadel Adib are developing — is called Wi-Vi. The two will present it at the Sigcomm conference in Hong Kong this August.

There are several uses for this technology. A small handheld detector could find people buried under tons of rubble, showing rescue workers where to look, or police could use it to see if there is someone inside a room.

Wi-Vi differs from traditional X-ray or terahertz wave systems. In that case a beam of radio waves is sent to an object that reflects them back. This kind of detection is just like what your eyes do – seeing reflected light. (Radio waves just happen to be in a different part of the spectrum).

It’s also a twist on a previous attempt at using Wi-Fi routers to see through walls by taking advantage of the signals they emit. Wi-Vi doesn’t require that a router be in place.

The advantage here is that this works with radio frequencies that penetrate walls relatively easily, at least for short distances. The wavelengths are also short, so the antenna doesn’t need to be very large. It also needs just one receiving antenna, so it can be fit onto a hand-held device.

And the reason it uses Wi-Fi type signals is that they aren’t reserved for the military, and are open to use by any device with less need to get approvals from regulators.

via MIT News

Photo via iStockphoto, saffetucuncu

How Microsoft Can Take Over the Living Room

As all eyes look toward Microsoft's announcement of the next generation Xbox and its bid to take on the PlayStation 4 in the gaming space, the company also has an opportunity to broadly take over the burgeoning connected device space. How? By continuing to sell the Xbox 360 — but for a flat $99.99.

Yes, Microsoft has toyed with $99.99 Xbox 360 bundles in the past — but those bundles include a monthly Xbox Live Gold subscription that adds another $120 to the purchase. Instead, Microsoft should lower the price of its Xbox 360 starter pack to $99.99.

Think about it: At $199.99, the Xbox 360 is already one of the better deals out there. Yes, the console is seven — almost eight — years old, but it still plays great games. More importantly, Microsoft has access to some of the most compelling set of services for the living room. Netflix, Amazon Instant, Hulu Plus, Vudu, Comcast, HBO Go, Verizon, The CW, YouTube, Slacker, iHeartRadio, Vevo, Rhapsody and Crackle are just some of the services available for the Xbox 360 — not to mention the official Xbox Music and Xbox Movies & TV apps for buying or streaming content.

That puts the Xbox 360 in Roku territory as having the most broad cross-device support and slightly ahead of the PlayStation 3 (to be fair, the PS3 also has a Blu-ray player but apparently I'm the only person who still likes to buy optical media for the picture, sound and extra features). At $99.99, the Xbox 360 could compete head-to-head with other connected devices for the living room, with the added benefit that it can play games.

When Sony released the PlayStation 2 in 2000, it became an instant hit, thanks in part to its backwards-compatibility with the PSX and the fact that it included a DVD player in an age when standalone DVD players cost as much as a PS2. Almost immediately, the PS2 became the best-selling DVD player of all time.

That kind of flexibility kept the PS2 selling millions of units a year. The Xbox 360 has that same kind of cross-user appeal, only this time in the age of digital and over-the-top services. Already more than 70% of current Xbox 360 buyers buy the unit primarily for its content offerings — not its games.

By selling the Xbox 360 for $99.99, Microsoft could cement its lead in the living room and help push the broader service idea around Xbox Live Gold — as well as any potential broader ecosystem plays with Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox SmartGlass.

A few years ago, I hypothesized that the Xbox could become your cable box. That's increasingly becoming a possibility — not only because of agreements from MVPDs to bring their services to the platform, but because of the bigger shift towards OTT delivery. At $99.99, Microsoft could capitalize on the part of the market that hasn't migrated to a connected device for the living room.

The best part, from Microsoft's perspective, is that using most of these services would still require an Xbox Live Gold account. Those accounts aren't very expensive — you can get a 12-month Gold subscription for under $50 from Amazon and it gives Microsoft additional services revenue.

There will still be room in the market for the Roku and Apple TV devices of the world — but a $99.99 Xbox 360 makes the value proposition of those devices a lot less clear.

If Microsoft is serious about taking over the living room, it has the brand loyalty, the service and the legacy product to do just that.

Photo via iStockphoto, RyanJLane, Xbox screenshot courtesy of Microsoft, composite by Mashable