Sony have just announced through their PlayStation Blog that they've released a new system software update which brings the PlayStation 3 to v4.10. Included in v4.10 are some minor changes, but one surprising one, too.
The new system software update requires you to accept a change in Sony's Terms of Service (ToS), and in an "effort for more unity" between PlayStation Network (PSN) and other Sony Entertainment Network services, all "PSN Accounts" will now be named "Sony Entertainment Network Account".
This change is by name only, and does not change the PSN in any form. Games can still be played online, and access to the latest downloadable games and add-ons are still available. System software update v4.10 includes an improved PS3 Internet Browser, with improved display speed. More details on the firmware can be found, here.
We've talked about the Kinect Star Wars bundle before, when it was teased at last years Comic-Con, but now, we're closer than ever to having the Kinect Star Wars Bundle in our hands. Included in the bundle is "Kinect Star Wars", where the game teasing "With no controller in the way you can live out the ultimate "Star Wars" fantasy".
There are five dynamic modes available, Jedi Destiny: Dark Side Rising, Podracing, Rancor Rampage, Galactic Dance Off and Duels of Fate. Also included, and only announced today by Xbox 360 and LucasArts, are new additions to the game, including:
New experiences within Jedi Destiny Mode, including:
o Space battles: As you travel the Galaxy to face an evil that threatens to undermine the fabric of the Republic, you'll engage with forces of the Empire in intense space battles
o Speeder Bikes and Landspeeders: Pilot iconic Speeder Bikes and Landspeeders on your epic journey
Continue reading 'Xbox 360 Kinect Star Wars Bundle & Game arrives April 3rd' (full post) PowerColor have teased everyone on their Facebook page with a glimpse of their new AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPU. Nothing more than it's "our new HD 7970 design posing for the camera" has been said from PowerColor.
What we can see though, are multiple video outputs, looks like the new HD 7970 from PowerColor sports dual DVI, HDMI, and dual DisplayPort. The card is still a dual-slot card, with two big fans on the front of it and a decently thick heatpipe design behind it.
More information on this bad boy as it comes. I do like the black/blue design of it. Reminds me of getting a bruise. This could could be powerful enough to punch the lights out of other HD 7970s, and give them... bruises? We'll find out soon enough. Hopefully our VGA editor is out of hospital by then, but I'm sure he's enjoying his Razer Blade gaming laptop too much, eh? ;)
The latest happenings in the technology world, February 8th, 2012.
Storage:
Intel 520 Series 240GB Solid State Drive - eTeknix
OCZ Synapse Cache 64GB Solid State Drive - ThinkComputing.org
OCZ Synapse Cache 64GB - ocaholic
Cases & Cooling:
Azza Fusion 3000 Full Tower Chassis - OCIA.net
Antec Eleven Hundred - Neoseeker | Hardware Heaven
Cooler Master Elite 431 Plus - Techreaction.net
Continue reading 'Wednesday Morning Roundup' (full post) Our Deal of the Day is Netflix - One Month Free Trial! Instantly watch as many TV episodes & movies as you want!
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Our Download of the Day is the Skyrim Creation Kit.
When we created Skyrim, we set out to make the largest, most engrossing role-playing game we had ever attempted. Now it's about to get a whole lot bigger, thanks to our amazing modding community.
Mod-makers have a long history with Bethesda Game Studios, bringing to life new quests, locations and characters, as well as making changes to game from subtle tweaks to full-blown overhauls. With the Creation Kit, the same tool we used to create Skyrim, there's almost no limit to what can be accomplished - and we're putting that power in your hands.
Best of all, access to the Skyrim Workshop and Creation Kit is free for anybody with a Steam account and a copy of Skyrim.
With the Skyrim Workshop, finding and installing your favorite mods is easier than ever before. Mod-makers will also enjoy a streamlined process for uploading mods directly to Steam.
Finding and Installing Mods
Ready to begin a whole new adventure? Finding mods for Skyrim is as simple as visiting the Skyrim Workshop in the Steam Community. Here you're able to browse the most popular, newest or highest-rated mods of all time, as well as searching for specific content via tags such as "Armor", "Quests", "Dungeons", and more.
Continue reading 'Download of the Day: Skyrim Creation Kit' (full post) Our Download of the Day is Google Chrome for Android Beta (for Android 4.0).
In 2008, we launched Google Chrome to help make the web better. We're excited that millions of people around the world use Chrome as their primary browser and we want to keep improving that experience. Today, we're introducing Chrome for Android Beta, which brings many of the things you've come to love about Chrome to your Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich phone or tablet. Like the desktop version, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but it also features seamless sign-in and sync so you can take your personalized web browsing experience with you wherever you go, across devices.
Speed
With Chrome for Android, you can search, navigate and browse fast-Chrome fast. You can scroll through web pages as quickly as you can flick your finger. When searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so pages appear instantly. And of course, both search and navigation can all be done quickly from the Chrome omnibox.
Simplicity
Chrome for Android is designed from the ground up for mobile devices. ...
Continue reading 'Mobile App of the Day: Google Chrome for Android Beta (Android 4.0 only)' (full post)
I've only had my Samsung Galaxy S II for a few months now, but I now know what true love is. According to South Korea's Electronic Times News, the next-generation Galaxy S will be one of the thinnest smartphones ever released, and will arrive in May.
Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S III is said to be just 7mm thick, which is roughly 1.5mm thinner than the already super-thin Galaxy S II, 2.3mm thinner than the Apple iPhone 4S and just a hair thinner than Motorola's Droid Razr. The way Samsung were able to achieve this 7mm profile? They reportedly used components that are 10- to 20-percent thinner than standard parts, including the printed circuit board, connectors and miscellaneous chips.
The Galaxy S III is said to sport a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 2-megapixel front-facing camera, LTE-powered, HD Super AMOLED Plus screen, and runs Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. Separate rumors of the Galaxy S III say it will feature a 12-megapixel camera and 64GB storage.
Paradox CEO, Fred Wester, is a man of important words. He has revealed the amazing growth of his companies digital distribution revenue. In his own words, he has said:
My own experience of digital distribution is that we made 1.5 percent of our revenue from digital distribution in 2006, while the digital number in 2011 was over 95%.
Did you see that? From 1.5-percent of their revenue, to a whopping 95-percent, in just 5 short years. In these 5 years we've seen retailers go from selling tonnes of retail boxed games, to the App Store opening, the Android Market arriving and more. Steam is generating more and more income, and other digital distribution methods such as GOG, and Origin.
Continue reading 'Paradox: 95% of our revenue is from digital distribution' (full post) Ever wanted to create a mod for Skyrim? Come on, we know you have. Today you can. Bethesda have released their Creation Kit, which really lets Skyrim loose, and sets the boundaries to virtually infinity, and beyond.
The Skyrim Workshop and Creation Kit are free for anyone with a copy of Skyrim and a Steam account. Finding mods for Skyrim is as simple as visiting the Skyrim Workshop in the Steam Community. From there, you can browse the most popular, newest or highest-rated mods of all time. On top of this, you can specifically search for content via tags such as "Armor", "Quests", "Dungeons", and so on.
Creating your mod is a litter harder, of course, you'll need to install the Creation Kit, from the Tools section of your Steam Library. If you run into any problems, the wiki over at http://www.CreationKit.com is an amazing resource for modders of all skill levels. When you've polished your mod and want to unleash it to the world, just choose "Upload plugin and archive to Steam", from within the File menu of the Creation Kit.
You'll be asked to name your mod, add a description, content tags and a thumbnail. Once your upload is complete, the Creation Kit will notify you.
Go forth, Skyrim fans! Mod, mod, mod!
Well, this is interesting: physicists have reportedly discovered a new method of recording data onto hard drives, where the fruits of their labor could see mechanical-based hard drives jump in speeds, up to hundreds of times faster. Heat is the key.
A hard disk drive is a magnetic storage device, which, unlike magnetic tapes, allows random access. The recording surface of a hard drive consists of hundreds of billions of tiny portions that can be magnetized in a particular polar direction to represent 0s or 1s. Recording data flips the direction, which is currently done using an external magnetic field.
A team of researchers led by Thomas Ostler at the University of York, UK have discovered that a short burst of heat can do the job much faster. This is where things get karazay. Up until now, it was thought that heat could only assist in remagnetisation when used in conjunction with a magnetic field. This knowledge base has changed: zapping a magnet with a laser for less than one trillionth of a second, momentarily raising the temperature by over 800-degrees Celcius, can have the same effect.
It is said that using this new method could lead to hard drives that are capable of recording terabytes of information per second, which is hundreds of times faster than today's technology.
Salt, here take it. Let's get onto the goss! Leaked information has floated up from the depths of the Internet from Lenzfire, where they've published some specifications for the upcoming GeForce 600-series. I'll say it again, here's your salt.
This news has me excited. Lenzfire's sources claim that NVIDIA's Kepler GTX680 should be up to 45-percent faster than AMD's fastest Radeon HD 7970 GPU. The interesting part here is that the GeForce GTX680 is said to have just 2GB of RAM, compared to the 7970's 3GB, and is still 45-percent faster. What helps here is the GTX680 reportedly has twice as many stream processors, and backed up by the entire Kepler range being PCI-E 3.0 compliant.
The GeForce GTX680 will reportedly launch with a $649 price, so for just $100 more, you're getting a Team Green card that is 45-percent faster. This could be some very dangerous news for AMD. On a different note, specs of a dual-GPU Kepler-based card are here too.
Keep in mind, that the specs, whilst impressive... could be dominated quite early into their life as AMD are already working on their revised GCN-based HD 8000-series of GPUs. This could be why AMD jumped the gun and released them ahead of NVIDIA.
Continue reading 'RumorTT: NVIDIA Kepler GPU lineup leaked!' (full post) Google have released Chrome for Android Beta, exclusive (for now) for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich devices. Exactly like the desktop-based Chrome, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but also sports seamless sign-in and sync, so you can take your personalized web browsing experience anywhere you go.
Chrome for Android Beta is built for speed, so when searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so that pages appear to load instantaneously. Chrome for Android is built from the ground up for mobile devices, where Google have reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen smartphone, as they do on the larger-screen tablet.
Privacy is a big deal for Chrome, and Chrome with Android Beta is no different. Chrome for Android Beta includes the famous incognito mode for private browsing as well as fine-grained privacy options.
Continue reading 'Google release Chrome for Android Beta, just for Android 4.0 devices for now' (full post) 12345. Such an amazingly hard password, something that no one else on Earth has probably ever used. Well, except for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. Anonymous broke into the mail server of the Syrian Ministry of Presidential Affairs, where they gained access to 78 inboxes of Assad's staff, according to a report from Israeli daily Haaretz.
The password '12345' was associated with several of the e-mail accounts. Victims of Anonymous' latest attack were Mansour Fadlallah Azzam, who is the Minister of Presidential Affairs, as well as Bouthaina Shaaban, who is Assad's media adviser.
Haaretz obtained, and published one e-mail that included documents intended to prepare al-Assad for his December 2011 interview with Barbara Walters. In the interview, he said that the Syrian government was not killing its own people:
We don't kill our people. No government in the world kills its people, unless it's led by a crazy person.
I've been waiting for this new Spider-Man movie for a while now, where it completely reboots the franchise and takes a different "untold story" when compared to the Sam Raimi-directed Spider-Man movies. This one is directed by Marc Webb, and stars Andrew Garfield, Emma Stone, Rhys Ifans, Denis Leary, Martin Sheen, Sally Field and more.
The trailer is above, in all its 1080p glory and looks, well, amazing! The various teasers and smaller trailers haven't shown off anywhere near as much material. We get to see some special FX, the big bad, more Spider-Man, Peter, back story, and more.
We even see the cocky Spider-Man, which is more in line with the comics, another great thing to see. The Lizard is the big reveal here, which is shown gloriously as a tease in the trailer. The scope of the film looks bigger than shown before, I thought it would start off as a slower paced movie, but with the police scene by itself, it seems we're in for a fair amount of action, which is great. Check out the trailer, now!
Motorola is currently fighting Microsoft in a German court over some patents, where the court is inclined to side with Motorola. This could see Microsoft pay Motorola royalties of 2.25-percent in sales of Windows 7, and Xbox 360, among other products. The news comes from Florian Mueller, an intellectual property analyst who tracks worldwide patent disputes in his Foss Patents blog.
Mueller is quoted:
A short summary of today's trial (technically four trials, but organized as one because of overlapping issues) is that the court is inclined to rule, with a decision scheduled for April 17, 2012, that Microsoft Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9, the Windows Media Player and the Xbox 360 infringe on those two patents.
The two patents in question relate to a video compression and decompression technology, covering methods for reducing the amount of bandwidth required for video that is streamed online. It is said that Microsoft violated the patents which are used in its technologies and software including Windows 7, Internet Explorer 9, Windows Media Player and the Xbox 360.
Continue reading 'Motorola is the new Apple, wants royalties from Xbox, Windows 7' (full post) BREAKING: Germany-based computer hardware retailer, Caseking, have just acquired British-based Overclockers. Overclockers UK have had a long-standing achievement of being one of the biggest sellers of computer hardware in the UK.
They've been in a band of just a few, with companies such as Ebuyer, Scan Computers International, Novatech, and Aria PC in selling PC hardware. Overclockers UK have been around since 1999, and have had their HQ in Newcastle-under-lyme.
The takeover involves 40 members of staff who currently work for Overclockers UK, but at the moment it is not known what the acquisition has in store for both Overclockers UK and its employees. The value of the deal is not exactly known either, but it is estimated to come in at 'less than €50 million'. The deal took place on February 1, 2012, and as you probably have guessed, both companies have been quiet about it.
We all know AMD has and still is, going through some troubling times, but there is hopefully some light at the end of that bulldozed tunnel. The bad news continues today with the exit door opening for its chief sales officer, Emilio Ghilardi.
AMD announced the departure just after the close of trading on the New York Stock Exchange, where current CEO Rory Read will take over Ghilardi's sales responsibilities in the meantime, there is a search for a replacement. Ghilardi had worked for AMD since 2008, and started as senior vice president and general manager for Europe, Middle East and Africa. Just a year later he was promoted to chief sales officer.
It's not known what move is next for AMD, when they're set to adopt an "ambidextrous" strategy when it comes to using chips from other companies. The next few months should be some interesting times from the underdog, whether we see them move into areas where they aren't fighting the big bad, Intel. It could be a smart move, where you can't win, go into a market where you have more chance, and less competition. Sounds good to me.
The latest happenings in the technology world, February 7th, 2012.
GPUs:
XFX HD 7970 3GB Black Edition Double Dissipation - Hardware Canucks
Storage:
OWC Mercury Electra 240GB - PureOverclock
Intel 520 SSD Series 240 GB - Technic3D | Techgage | Hardware Secrets | Overclockers Club | Benchmark Reviews
Continue reading 'Tuesday Morning Roundup' (full post) Today's Deal of the Day is Office Depot - 17.3" LED-backlit HP g7-1310us Laptop with 2nd Gen Intel Core i3, 6GB Memory, 640GB HD, DVD Burner, Wireless-N, Bluetooth, Webcam, and More for $449.99 after Rebate with FREE Delivery!
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