Hasta La Gadget!

The Last of Us was certainly one of the popular games released back in 2013. Initially it wasn’t confirmed if the title would make its way to the PlayStation 4, until the PlayStation Eurasian Software Market Manager let it slip on a gaming show that a remastered The Last Of Us will indeed be released for the PS4. Sony itself later confirmed that the title will be released for its new console later this year. Recently The Last Of Us Remastered PS4 price was slashed. Fortunately the company isn’t going to hang those, who had pre-ordered it on the initial price, out to dry.

At E3 2014 Sony formally confirmed the PS4 release date for this title. It will be available for the console on July 29th, 2014. The game can be pre-ordered on the PlayStation Store. Initially it was priced $59.99 though recently the price received a $10 cut, bringing it down to $49.99.

Adam Boyes, Sony’s Vice President of Publisher & Developer Relations, revealed on Twitter that those customers who had pre-ordered the game on its initial price will receive a $10 refund. Boyes says that those customers should expect the refund to be credited in their PSN account within the next 5-7 days.

Since the title doesn’t have the preload feature, even if you pre-order right now you will have to wait until July 29th to be able to download it on your PlayStation 4. If it had the preload feature, you would have been able to download the game before release and then wait for it to be unlocked come release day.

The Last Of Us Remastered PS4 Price Slashed , original content from Ubergizmo. Read our Copyrights and terms of use.

While performing their song “Daughter” in Milan, Italy on Friday night, June 20, Pearl Jam randomly broke out into “Let It Go” from Disney’s “Frozen” for a about 30 seconds. We can finally check “grunge” off our list of “Let It Go” covers that we absolutely need to hear. Watch the amazing clip below.

[h/t Gawker]

Norah O’Donnell grilled Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) on Sunday over how exactly he believes the Obama administration should respond to the growing crisis in Iraq.

The continuing advance of militants in Iraq and how the United States should respond have been the subject of intense debate for the past several weeks. Numerous commentators and politicians have suggested that the U.S. can’t do “nothing,” but have offered few ideas for what the response should look like.

Speaking on Sunday’s “Face the Nation,” Rubio argued that ISIS’s foothold in Iraq is a national security threat to the U.S.

“To do nothing and allow ISIS to establish a base of operation like what al Qaeda had before Afghanistan places us in a very dangerous position from a counterterrorism point of view and puts Americans’ lives on the line down the road,” he said, calling on the Obama administration to “begin to degrade their supply line, their ability to continue to move forward.”

“I hear you saying that, that ‘We can’t do nothing,'” O’Donnell pressed, “But what I’m not hearing from you is what we should be doing — whether we should have more boots on the ground, whether we should do airstrikes immediately. I’m hearing cutting off supply lines. What else?”

“I think that we should cut off ISIS’ access to their command and control structure in structure in Syria, and I think primarily that involves air power,” Rubio responded.

Watch the interview in the clip above.

(h/t Mediaite)

“Both WhatsApp and Secret represent the ascendency of the phone book over the friend graph. It’s back to the future.” – Tweet by David Sachs, Founder/CEO of Yammer

The modern era in many ways has been defined by the one to many movement, ushered in by radio, broadcast television, and then finally the Internet. With the advent of social media platforms, including Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, this power of one to many was extended to the masses.

Now there are signs that we are at an inflection point and could see a rapid shift in the opposite direction. Driven by mobile devices and massive adoption of messaging apps, consumer preference is trending back to the one-to-one connection. This harkens back to my advice for social media success: think telephone not megaphone.

In her 2014 Internet Trends Report, Mary Meeker of venture firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers concluded that people around the world are growing less interested in broadcasting to large audiences à la Facebook. The trend toward interactions with a smaller group of close contacts has fueled the rise of what Meeker calls the “Global Messaging Ecosystem.”

I spoke with Anurag Wadehra, chief marketing officer of LivePerson, a leading provider of digital engagement solutions, about this trend back to one-to-one communication and what it means for brand marketing. As CMO, Anurag must stay ahead of trends in customer communication and interaction, not only to maintain LivePerson product leadership, but also to continually improve how LivePerson communicates with their own customers and prospects.

Anurag Wadehra, CMO LivePerson

Anaraq points out that earlier this year, Facebook acquired WhatsApp, one of the biggest of the messaging apps, for $19 billion. WhatsApp counts 450 million active monthly users who send out an average of 50 billion messages a day, and it adds 1 million users every day. “WhatsApp is the only app we’ve ever seen with higher engagement than Facebook itself,” Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said at the time of the acquisition.

WhatsApp’s competitors are also posting incredible numbers. Tencent WeChat, based in China, has more than 350 million users and has been growing 125% year-over-year. Line, from Japan, boasts nearly 300 million users who tap out 10 billion messages a day. Other key players include Snapchat in the U.S., KakaoTalk in Korea and Viber from Israel.

The ascent of mobile over the more traditional Internet is speeding up. Globally, mobile accounted for 25% of total web use in 2013, up from 14% the previous year. More than 80% of China’s Internet users are mobile, higher than any other country. Even so, Meeker said she sees “lots of upside” in the growth of smartphone users. As of the fourth quarter last year, global smartphone users accounted for only 30% of total mobile phone users. “Someday very soon, everybody will have a smartphone,” says WhatsApp’s mission statement.

Why is mobile messaging so attractive and how has it so quickly become the new standard for connection? One key factor: what Meeker calls the shareable web. Mobile devices make content and rich-media immediately ownable and shareable. According to Meeker, more than 1.8 billion photos are uploaded and shared daily across these platforms. These photos are not findable: more and more people are choosing to share one-to-one, creating richer, more personal connections.

Businesses are looking for the best ways to take advantage of the mobile messaging boom. According to her report, U.S. consumers spend 20% of their time on their mobile devices, but only 4% of U.S. advertising is spent on mobile ads — clearly a mismatch. Meeker estimates that there is $30 billion to be made in mobile ads, and the industry is just leaving that money on the table.

The new era of more intimate messaging presents a major opportunity for businesses not only to convert traffic into buyers, but also to become part of this inner circle of what Anurag calls digital first consumers.

As every e-commerce entity discovers, whenever you can get a customer to chat, one-to-one in real time, that customer is far happier with their experience, and thus far more likely to buy. Messaging apps present an interesting opportunity for brands to have more meaningful engagements with customers and create lasting friendships rather than mere transactions. Eventually, businesses will find they are either included in customers’ mobile messaging apps — or left to watch from the sidelines.

One thing is clear: The customer is the driver and they are connected and communicating with each other very differently than just five years ago. Successful businesses will learn how to engage customers on their terms–the way they want, wherever and whenever they want.

This post was co-authored with Anurag Wadehra, chief marketing officer of LivePerson.

More depressing than the many deaths we witnessed in the Season 4 finale of “Game of Thrones” last week is the fact that we have to wait until next year to return to Westeros.

Sunday nights may be difficult until then, but thanks to awesome fan-made videos you can satiate your “GoT”-loving heart in the meantime. One fan by the name of Steve Love made a video of all his “Game of Thrones” character impressions from Season 4, and it’s frighteningly accurate. From his creepy, wispy impression of Varys to his spot-on Ramsay Snow to his freaky good Karl Tanner, Love certainly knows his “Game of Thrones.” Be amazed by his impressions in the video below — close your eyes and it’ll almost feel like you’re watching an episode.

[h/t Reddit]