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QNAP changes direction and delivers a fully featured NAS that competes with major OEM enterprise storage servers.
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Intel has inked a deal with Devicescape which could see the inclusion of Devicescape's virtual network into Intel-powered Ultrabooks and tablets. While Intel doesn't actually build these devices, they provide the silicon and software to manufacturers who design and assemble them and then sell them to the general public.
Devicescape has crowdsourced an entire network of open access points around the globe. However, not every access point gets added to Devicescape's network. First, the access point has to pass Devicescpe's standards for speed, reliability and availability. Only then will it be added. Of the 100 million or so access points seen, only 8 million have made the cut.
"Smart Connect will work on lid open and lid closed scenarios," Devicescape CEO David Fraser said via email. "So, you'll be automatically connected no-matter the state of your PC." The connection is completely automatic and works even with the lid closed. Imagine walking into a store and sitting down to find all of your email and RSS feeds synced. The future looks great.
No word on whether or not Intel or its partners would charge for the service, but it is highly unlikely that they would for a couple of reasons. First, the access points are free to Intel and would be accessible by the users without the service. Second, INtel is facing competition from ARM so this would be a way to differentiate their somewhat similar products.
Attorneys representing the now defunct upload site MegaUpload have filed a motion with the court to dismiss criminal piracy charges due to the fact the US had no jurisdiction. "Megaupload does not have an office in the United States, nor has it had one previously," MegaUpload's lawyers wrote in their motion to dismiss. "Service of a criminal summons on Megaupload is therefore impossible."
The filing came today and is just the latest in a long drawn out court battle between MegaUpload and the United States. The sad part is that millions of legitimate users have been affected and their files, some the only copy, have been put into jeopardy at the hands of the US government. The issue at hand is that MegaUpload has never had a US-based agent or office:
Wholly foreign corporations, therefore, may not be prosecuted for alleged violations of federal criminal law unless they waive service In short, a corporation such as Megaupload cannot be brought within the jurisdiction of this Court for criminal proceedings absent its consent.
The company's lawyers have once again asked for funds to be released to allow for a proper defense. DotCom and three other managers are in New Zealand where they continue to fight extradition. "We told the court that the United States lacked probable cause to take down the entire site," said Ira Rothken, the attorney leading MegaUpload's worldwide defense.
Continue reading 'MegaUpload saga: MegaUpload asks US court to dismiss piracy charges' (full post)
According to Sony's market research and general common sense, water proof smartphones are something that everyone wants. Finally enough people have sounded off that Sony has decided to appease them. The Sony Xperia Go appears to replace last year's Xperia Active and the Xperia arco S appears to be an international Xperia arco HD.
Sony Xperia go specifications:
Continue reading 'Sony to introduce two water resistant smartphones Q3 2012' (full post)
A new discovery has been made by a Cambridge University researcher that a chip used by the US military features a security backdoor which could have massive implications on on national security. The chip, which was built in China, cannot simply be reprogrammed as the security backdoor is physically present on the silicon.
Sergei Skorobogatov of Quo Vadis Labs at Cambridge University said:
Our aim was to perform advanced code breaking and to see if there were any unexpected features on the (US Military) chip. We scanned the silicon chip in an affordable time and found a previously unknown backdoor inserted by the manufacturer. This backdoor has a key, which we were able to extract. If you use this key you can disable the chip or reprogram it at will, even if locked by the user with their own key. This particular chip is prevalent in many systems from weapons, nuclear power plants to public transport. In other words, this backdoor access could be turned into an advanced Stuxnet weapon to attack potentially millions of systems. The scale and range of possible attacks has huge implications for National Security and public infrastructure.
Now, let's be fair: it isn't a sure thing that the backdoor was introduced by the Chinese. It's more probable that the backdoor was present in the original design as a debugging tool for the designer. This is a common practice and these backdoors are often present and not malicious.
Thought your FiOS fiber connection wasn't fast enough? Well, you won't have to worry any more as Verizon has just announced speed upgrades to all of the FiOS tiers except for the base 15Mb/s connection. The increase in speed across the board is at least double, and in some cases triple, so there will be no more waiting for downloads.
Even the uploads have seen a boost in speed, though not quite as much as the downloads. Verizon is touting that both a 2-hour HD movie download and a 10GB backup will finish in 22 minutes or less on the faster connection. Verizon is saying that they are increasing the speed because of people needing it for uses like previously described.
There is no announcement regarding pricing. It's possible that there could be a price drop, although I don't see that in the cards. There also could be a price increase, although I don't see that as very likely either. We'll just have to wait until the speed rolls out this coming June. Verizon just needs to get the availability increased as I would love to get this to my house.
Solid state drives are becoming a dime a dozen as more manufacturers intro models at lower and lower prices. These drives often don't sacrifice any performance to save costs. Today OCZ has introduced a new set of Agility 4 SSDs "for Mainstream Users Requiring the Best Price-to-Performance Ratio." We haven't tested that claim quite yet.
The newest line of solid state drives by OCZ is powered by an Everest 2 controller platform and "excels in real-world compressible and incompressible workload performance." OCZ is claiming the drives consistently exceed transfer rates of up to 400MB/s, and up to 85,000 random write IOPS. The press release says: "The dual core controller architecture also includes an advanced error correction code (ECC) engine, dynamic wear-leveling, auto encryption, and Indilinx Ndurance 2.0 technology that addresses and overcomes specific shortcomings of NAND flash memory to extend flash life well beyond the manufacturer's rated program and erase cycle specifications."
"For mainstream storage applications, there is no product better suited in the industry than our Agility 4 SSDs, providing the ultimate in access speed, application performance, endurance and reliability, at price points that most cost-conscious users will find appealing," said Ryan Petersen, CEO of OCZ Technology.
Continue reading 'OCZ intros Indilinx Everest 2-based Agility 4 series SSDs' (full post)
With Computex rapidly approaching, more and more manufacturers are making their Computex plans clear. Today we have learned that ENERMAX will be joining the liquid cooling crowd with a new all-in-one liquid cooling solution. ENERMAX is known for their power supplies, so jumping to liquid cooling is a bit of a stretch.
Currently, we don't know very much, if any thing, about the upcoming liquid cooling solution. All we have is the picture shown above. Since our crew will be in attendance of Computex, we will be sure to get the scoop on the latest addition to the ever more crowded all-in-one liquid cooling market.
In other news, ENERMAX will also be showing off some new power supplies to compliment the liquid cooling solution it is going to be showing off. ENERMAX will unveil the new PLATIMAX models - the higher wattage of 1350W and 1700W! In addition, more new industrial power series will be debuted, including the refreshing 2500W LED Power. If you are attending Computex, they will be exhibiting at TWTC Nangang Exhibition Hall, 1st floor, No. I-1110.
The producers of Far Cry have released a trailer ahead of E3 so that they could advertise the live stream of their press conference. In the video, it shows some pretty good graphics, but these could be pre-rendered which would give them an advantage over actual in-game footage. It doesn't give much of the story away and contains some NSFW language.
Overall, the upcoming game looks pretty good. If you are a Far Cry fan, then you should watch Ubisoft's press conference. It will start June 4 at 3PM PDT and is available on http://www.youtube.com/ubisoft or http://www.uplay.com. This means 6PM for NY, 11PM for London, and June 5 for Paris, Moscow, Tokyo, and Sydney.
We will do our best to bring you the latest Far Cry information from E3 while we are there covering the show. Let us know what you think of the trailer in the comments!
Continue reading 'Far Cry 3: E3 teaser trailer' (full post)
Like overclocking? Are you going to be at Computex Taipei 2012? If so, let me recommend that you head on over to GSkill's booth where 8 professional overclockers will be waiting. There will be several professional overclockers from various manufacturers at the booth doing 4 days on non-stop overclocking on 4 different motherboard manufacturers every day.
If you are going to be in Taipei for Computex, this really cool event will be going on in GSkill's booth which is located at .Computex Taipei 2012, Nangang Exhibition Hall, Booth I0118. It's going to be awesome to watch these professionals overclock everything in sight. You might even pick up an overclocking trick or two.
During a speech at the AllThingsD Conference yesterday, Apple CEO Tim Cook talked about various things, one of these topics was the Apple TV. Cook revealed that Apple was on track to double the sales of the Apple TV this year, where they've already racked up 2.7 million sold. Considering that 3 million were sold throughout the entire of 2011, this is not bad at all.
Cook added that staying in the Apple TV market was uncharacteristic for Apple:
We're not a hobby kind of company as you know. Our tendency is to do very few things. And, if something creeps in and isn't a big success, we get it out of the way and put our energies on something else. With Apple TV though, you see what we've done. We've stuck in this, it's not the fifth leg of the stool. It's not the same size as the iPhone or Mac or tablet business. But last year we sold a little less than three million Apple TVs.
Dell have just outed the XPS One 27 all-in-one PC, which sports a 27-inch screen with a resolution of 2560x1440. One of the good things with the XPS One 27 range is that all configurations ship with third-generation Intel Core processors in the Ivy Bridge flavor.
They ship with either Core i5 or i7 offerings, with up to 16GB of RAM, a standard 1TB 7,200 RPM hard drive which can be upgraded to either a 2TB drive or a 32GB SSD. Adding to this we find Waves MaxxAudio 4, Infinity-branded speakers, a Blu-ray drive and optional 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GT640M GPU.
An optional TV tuner is available, and finishing things off we have four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports with power charge, audio out, HDMI, VGA, mic and headphone jacks an an 8-in-1 memory card reader. Dell's XPS One 27 starts at $1,399 and is available in Asia starting today, expect it to his the US in the next month or so.
Google and Samsung sitting in a tree, C-H-R-O-M-I-N-G. Yeah, you get the point. Samsung have released two new Chrome OS-based products today, the Samsung Series 5 Chromebook and the Series 3 Chromebox. What makes these products stand out from the crowd? The cloud-based OS UI has been updated, and now sports multitouch trackpad support.
Coinciding with the new OS update, are Samsung's two products. The updates OS now sports an app-focused user interface that lets you select which programs you use the most, for easier access. Google Drive is now the data storage system, and deeper integration should come through in the coming weeks.
A revamped media player peeks its head up, too, as well as a brand new photo editor and uploader, as well as remote desktop support for both Windows and Mac. What hardware is inside the new system? According to The Verge's review on the units, the Chromebook sports a 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Celeron 867 processor, 4GB of RAM, a 12.1-inch screen, 1200x800 resolution, multitouch trackpad, Wi-Fi and 3G, two USB 2.0 ports, a 4-in-1 card reader and more than eight hours of battery life.
Continue reading 'Samsung's Series 5 Chromebook and Series 3 Chromebox are here' (full post)
Europe and the Middle East may have enjoyed their Samsung GALAXY S III launch yesterday, but come Thursday, it's Australia's turn. Vodafone Australia is set to live stream the Samsung GALAXY S III launch event from the Vodafone Australia website.
The live stream will start at 09:50 Sydney time, and for anyone around the world, you'll require some time changes, so here you go:
UK Time - 00:50
Eastern - 19:50 (Weds May 30)
Pacific - 16:50 (Weds May 30)
Excitement is definitely building, and it's not long now until the phone splashes down in more countries. Will you watch the live event?
Verizon Wireless have finally done it, they've released a new software update for the GALAXY Nexus from Samsung, 'IMM76K'. Verizon and Samsung both encourage the update, which fixes a heap of e-mail and text problems, calendar issues and more.
The IMM76K Android 4.0.4 update comes in at approximately 39MB in size, and can be manually updated if you choose to do so, an instructional post for it can be found here. Strangely, this is the same update that popped up in early-May, but was yanked by Google.
If you're rocking a GALAXY Nexus on Verizon, you'll probably want to grab this update. Be sure to let us know how you go with it!
Twitter has announced updates to its website which they claim has decreased page load times down to 20% of what they were previously. The old system used the browser to render JavaScript which was groundbreaking at the time. It does have a disadvantage, however, in that it misses out on optimizations only available to the server.
As such, Twitter is bringing some of the front-end grunt work back onto the servers in order to speed up load times. As Twitter says, "To connect you to information in real time, it's important for Twitter to be fast." Part of the change is not using # (hashbang) in the permalink URLs to improve initial load times.
Another update is to decrease the "time to first Tweet." This is where Twitter has managed to decrease page load times to 1/5 of what they were previously. The general, watered down version of how this works is to take the JavaScript out of the equation and render the content on the server. This removes the slowdown from old browsers or slow machines.
There are many other improvements discussed in the post on Twitter's engineering blog, so I encourage you to check it out for yourself if you are interested. The Twitter blog post can be found on Twitter's engineering blog here.
That small little project being worked on by Google is gathering more publicity. In a recent interview with California Lieutenant Governor Gavin Newsom, Sergey allowed Newsom to put the glasses on to see a picture that Sergey had taken with the glasses. When asked, Sergey wouldn't say how the picture was taken, but we do now know that there is a touchpad on the side behind the display.
In the picture above, you can see Mr. Brin operating the touchpad with his finger while looking for the picture he had taken previously. After being found, Newsom got to wear the glasses and commented on them: "You can easily forget you have them on, and sense the capacity of use in the future."
Newsom expressed that he was impressed with the quality of the image taken, especially since the stage isn't ideal for demoing a display. He even commented that the "image was remarkably clear." Brin also let everyone know that those are a rough prototype: "I have some hopes to maybe get it out sometime next year, but that's still a little bit of a hope."
It's likely that the final product will be a fair bit different than the current version, but with the prototype being so well received, it speaks volumes for just how great this product will be. Newsom expressed that the glasses are "a heck of a lot further along than people have imagined." Brin explained Google's view on the glasses: "The idea is that you want to be free to experience the world without futzing with a phone."
With Windows 8 Zune is out and Xbox is in. Zune will be no more, that Microsoft has made abundantly clear. We finally have an answer as to what is replacing it: Xbox. Increasing from its humble roots as a gaming platform, the large brand will become an entire entertainment center for Windows 8 on phones, PCs, tablets, and TVs.
From Microsoft:
This year, Xbox becomes the premium entertainment service for Microsoft. Whether on your PC, tablet, TV or phone, Xbox will be a gateway to the best in music and video, your favorite games and instant access to your friends.
With the launch of Windows 8, we'll bring Xbox entertainment to everyone. With Xbox on Windows 8 devices, we rapidly accelerate the reach of Xbox entertainment from more than 60 million people to hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
This makes sense as Microsoft is working on a new music service for Xbox. Xbox is continually getting new and more varied services so it was only a matter of time before an announcement like this came. I can see where it soon could be an unlimited music, movie, and gaming platform for a single price. Seems simple and the likely way to go.
RIP Zune.
In the wake of the Fukushima disaster many Japanese people are concerned about lasting radiation. The memory of the atomic bomb and its effects is all too recent in their minds. As such, many are worried that the government's numbers about the radiation levels from the disaster are wrong or purposefully changed.
Japan's third largest mobile carrier has announced a smartphone that will be capable of measuring radiation. The smartphone will be easier to carry then a traditional Geiger counter and more stylish too. The device has been designed to allay fears of radiation. The phone, which is set to launch in the summer, will be available in 8 different colors.
Softbank president Masayoshi Son said, "The threat from the nuclear accident cannot be seen by the human eye and continues to be a concern for many people, especially for mothers with small children." This new phone is also a great example of how smartphones can adapt to specific needs. In many ways a smartphone is more powerful than a traditional computer.
Diablo III has been a massively successful game. It's also been a buggy game which has kept users from being able to play. As such, Blizzard is needing to release patches to fix these issues. The first patch that is coming is version 1.0.2 and launches next week. This patch will focus on service issues and hopefully fix the issues that have kept players from playing.
Players are probably more interested in patch 1.0.3 which is the patch that will bring the first in-game balancing. The patch includes changes to the Inferno difficulty mode, blacksmith changes, and item levels shown on 60+ weapons. The developers feel the Inferno difficulty mode has too much spike damage and want to lower the cost of training blacksmiths.
Player-vs-player has also been delayed and is set to come in patch 1.1. Patch 1.1 isn't just about player killing, however, as it will also bring buffs to legendary items. Along with talking updates, Blizzard has released some stats about Diablo III and its players. Players usually create three characters, 80% of which are between level 1 and 30. Only 1.9% of characters have unlocked Inferno difficulty mode.
Let me qualify this with the following: While these appear to be legitimate, valid pictures of the upcoming iPhone case, I am still skeptical due to the fact Apple is ridiculously tight-lipped about products and slips like these don't usually happen. However, with a new CEO the secrecy of Apple could be in decline. If that is the case, I would have so many fewer rumors to post.
The first picture is courtesy of 9to5Mac. In it are two shells, which appear to be larger than the iPhone 4S. The casings show the smaller dock connector along the bottom of the phone along with what appear to be speaker grills and a headphone jack. The larger speaker grills are to accommodate better, larger speakers.
Also, the provider of the picture has said that there are two additional colors that the iPhone will be available in. What those colors are are not known. Again, I would attribute the new colors to the new CEO and the change that comes with a new leader. Engadget has supplied additional photos which depict a device which looks identical to the first set in the first picture. The higher quality pictures indicate that the device is not two-tone but rather just covered in a protective plastic covering.
