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Are You Willing to Pay to Watch Video Clips Online?

Would you pay to see some of the Internet's best video clips first? Vessel, a new service trying to change the way that short video pieces make money on the Internet and mobile devices, is betting on it.

Instead of free-for-all distribution supported solely by advertising, Vessel will charge $3 per month for exclusive early access to clips of musicians, sporting events, comedians and many other forms of entertainment not available on YouTube or any other digital video service for at least three days. CEO Jason Kilar, formerly head of Hulu Plus, believes Vessel's model will be able to pay video producers about $50 per 1,000 views of their clips on the site. That compares with just $2.20 per 1,000 views of ad-supported video at sites such as YouTube, Kilar says.

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Instagram Introduces New App for Photo Collages

Instagram's latest stand-alone app, released Monday, lets users combine multiple photos and post them as a single image.

Called Layout, it is the second app that Facebook-owned Instagram has released. Last August, it came out with Hyperlapse, which lets users create time-lapse videos to share on Instagram.

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YouTube Debuts Videos for Second Music Awards

YouTube on Monday premiered videos from 14 musicians as it tried a new, virtual-only format for the second edition of its music awards.

The giant video-sharing site had searched for a new approach after a mixed reaction to its inaugural event in 2013, which featured a livestreamed show from New York that appeared aimed at creating a new-media rival to the MTV Video Music Awards.

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No Amazon? No Problem for Pakistan's e-Commerce Pioneers

For Shayaan Tahir, it all began when an order he placed on Amazon for a new iPod was rejected because the online giant would not deliver electronics to Pakistan.

Frustrated, he decided to take matters into his own hands and founded one of Pakistan's first e-commerce ventures -- a sector that today is booming.

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With 'Dead Rising,' a New Approach for a Game Adaptation

When a pair of filmmakers first approached video game publisher Capcom about crafting a live-action movie based on their popular zombie series "Dead Rising," they were asked to prove themselves in a very specific way: The creators behind such video game franchises as "Street Fighter" and "Resident Evil" handed the movie producers a game controller.

"They told me, 'Show me you love the game,'" said Tomas Harlan, who along with business partner Tim Carter, is the brains behind Contradiction Films. The independent production company last brought supernatural martial-arts fighters to life with "Mortal Kombat: Legacy," a series of web shorts set in the world of Midway's long-running punch-out series.

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Can't Remember your Password? Here are 2 New Ways to Log in

Tired of trying to remember a different password for each of your online accounts? Or worried about re-using the same password too many times? You're not alone. Tech experts agree that traditional passwords are annoying, outmoded and too easily hacked.

This week, Yahoo and Microsoft offered up some alternatives: Yahoo says it can text temporary passwords to users' phones each time they want to sign into their Yahoo accounts. Microsoft says it is building facial-recognition and fingerprint-identification technology into Windows 10, the new computer operating system coming this summer, so users can log on with their fingertip or face. The two approaches drew different reviews.

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Software Developer Hopes to Turn Rehab into Video Game

A broken arm as a boy led Cosmin Mihaiu and some inventive colleagues to turn tedious physical rehabilitation exercises into a game that they hope can make it easier for people to recover from injuries.

The Romania-born software engineer demonstrated the game Thursday at the prestigious TED Conference in Vancouver, showing how it can be played on the motion-sensing video game platform Kinect for Micosoft's Xbox.

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China Finally Gets Official PlayStations, Minus some Games

Japanese electronics giant Sony on Friday launched its PlayStation gaming console in China, where authorities impose strict controls on content, but some popular titles including "Grand Theft Auto" and "Call of Duty" were not available.

China last year authorized the domestic sale of game consoles through its first free-trade zone (FTZ) in Shanghai, ending a 2000 ban that authorities argued was aimed at protecting the country's youth.

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As Explorer Loses Ground, Microsoft Readies New Web Browser

Look out, Internet Explorer. After 20 years of competing against rival web browsers, Microsoft is gearing up to launch its own alternative to its once-dominant Internet surfing program.

Microsoft has built a new web browser designed for the modern web and mobile devices to go with its new Windows 10 operating system that's coming later this year. Explorer will still be available, but Microsoft hinted this week that its new — and as-yet unnamed — browser will get top billing in the future.

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Sony Launches U.S. Subscription TV, Competing with Cable

Sony announced Wednesday it was launching an Internet subscription television service that includes live feeds from major broadcast networks, mounting a challenge to the cable TV model.

PlayStation Vue, a cloud-based TV service, will initially be available in New York, Chicago and Philadelphia to customers with the PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 3 game consoles, and later to customers with Apple iPads.

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