Kiran Upadhyay

For about six years after its early 2005 launch, it looked like there was nothing that could stop the runaway success of Blizzard's World of Warcraft, which grew to a peak of 12 million paid subscribers by the end of 2010. Since then, though, the game has seen a long, mostly uninterrupted slide in its player numbers, with only 6.8 million subscribers as of July. Blizzard obviously isn't happy about this trend for one of its biggest products but seems to have accepted that things aren't going to change any time soon. "We really don’t know if [World of Warcraft] will grow again,” lead game designer Tom Chilton told MCV in a recent interview. "It is possible, but I wouldn't say it's something that we expect. Our goal is to make the most compelling content we can." A new expansion pack like the upcoming Warlords of Draenor could juice those subscriber numbers, as previous expansion packs have seemed to do. Chilton seems to see a bit of diminishing r

Taking over a city’s intersections and making all the lights green to cause chaos is a pretty bog-standard Evil Techno Bad Guy tactic on TV and in movies, but according to a research team at the University of Michigan, doing it in real life is within the realm of anyone with a laptop and the right kind of radio. In a paper published this month, the researchers describe how they very simply and very quickly seized control of an entire system of almost 100 intersections in an unnamed Michigan city from a single ingress point. The exercise was conducted on actual stoplights deployed at live intersections, "with cooperation from a road agency located in Michigan." As is typical in large urban areas, the traffic lights in the subject city are networked in a tree-type topology, allowing them to pass information to and receive instruction from a central management point. The network is IP-based, with all the nodes (intersections and management computers) on a single subnet. In o

United States copyright regulators are agreeing with Wikipedia's conclusion that a monkey's selfie cannot be copyrighted by a nature photographer whose camera was swiped by the ape in the jungle. The animal's selfie went viral. The US Copyright Office, in a 1,222-page report discussing federal copyright law, said that a "photograph taken by a monkey" is unprotected intellectual property "The Office will not register works produced by nature, animals, or plants. Likewise, the Office cannot register a work purportedly created by divine or supernatural beings, although the Office may register a work where the application or the deposit copy state that the work was inspired by a divine spirit," said the draft report, " Compendium of US Copyright Office Practices, Third Edition ." [PDF] The report comes two weeks after Wikimedia, the US-based operation that runs Wikipedia, announced that the public, not British photojournalist David Slater, m

If you purchased the iPhone 5 early in its life and your battery seems to need charging more often than usual, pay attention: Apple has just announced an iPhone 5 battery replacement program for phones that "may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently." The affected phones were all sold in the first few months of the iPhone 5's life, between September of 2012 and January of 2013. Apple's program page, linked above, will tell you if your phone is eligible based on its serial number, which can be found in iOS' Settings app under the "About" subheading. Affected users will need to take their phone to an Apple service provider, an Apple Retail Store, or make arrangements with Apple's phone support technicians. Before taking your phone in for repair, Apple recommends that you back your data up using iCloud or iTunes, turn off the Find My iPhone service, and reset the phone to its factory default settings. The

Apple has created an iPhone 5 battery replacement program after it released a statement saying that it had discovered a “very small percentage” of units “may suddenly experience shorter battery life or need to be charged more frequently.” This iPhone 5 battery replacement program is the second to arrive. Late last year, Apple had a replacement program for iPhone 5s units with battery life issues. Apple says the affected iPhone 5 units were sold between the month of it’s launch, September 2012, and January 2013. The support site features a tool to check if your serial number belongs to a faulty iPhone 5. The replacement program is available at Apple Retail Stores, Authorized Apple Service Providers, and via AppleCare, in the US and China first. Those outside those countries will have to wait till August 29th. As per us usual, you’re advised to backup you data, Turn off Find my iPhone, and Erase all Content and Settings before arriving to get the battery replaced. If you had

Growing Android fragmentation — or device diversity if you prefer — has been visualized in a new report by crowdsourced cell phone signal startup OpenSignal, which has surveyed 682,000 devices to build its annual peek at Google’s mobile OS ecosystem. While OpenSignal’s mid-2012 OpenSignal survey recorded just under 4,000 different Android devices using its software over the prior 12 months, its 2013 report saw that figure grow almost 3x, to near 12,000. This year’s report shows continued expansion in the number of different Android devices in use, with the survey identifying 18,796 unique Android devices — a growth rate of around 60 percent, year on year. The data also shows a slight dip in dominance for leading Android OEM Samsung, which takes a 43 percent share of the Android device market over the surveyed period, vs. 47.5 percent in the year ago report. That tallies with a slowdown in Samsung’s growth this year that has taken a little of the sheen off the phone giant. Inter

Zomato, the restaurant search and discovery service that’s raised a whopping $55 million in VC, is making good on its promise to continue expanding to more countries beyond its origins in India. The 2008-founded company — which counts Yelp, IAC-owned Urbanspoon, Priceline-acquired OpenTable, and TripAdvisor as competitors — is adding a presence in Central and Eastern Europe by means of two local acquisitions. It’s gobbled up the Czech Republic’s Lunchtime.cz and Slovakia’s Obedovat.sk — the leading restaurant guides in their respective countries, according to Zomato — for a combined $3.25 million. This follows the acquisition of New Zealand-based restaurant search service MenuMania in July and means the service is now available in various cities in 15 countries, with the startup targeting a further ten or so in the coming months. Zomato co-founder Pankaj Chaddah tells me this will include, Poland, Ireland, Malaysia, Vietnam, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait and Canada — with the U.S. nota