Google just launched its Google Now app via an update to the Google Search for iOS app. The app appears to be exactly the same as the Android version with the exception of users being able to swipe up to launch the Now application.

Google Now pulls information from all of your Google services like Search, Gmail, Calendar, Maps, Chrome browser history, and anything else that is connected to your Google account, then it provides pertinent information to the smartphone owner before they know they need it. Basically it is a concierge without an annoying voice.

Baris Gultekin, Director of Product Management at Google, had the following to say:

"The history of Search can put Google Now in the best context. It's gone from serving links to being able to serve up links, and images, and videos, and deliver a rich experience. And then we wanted to answer natural questions, both in text and in spoken word. So to us, Google Now is the next step. It is answering the question before you ever ask it."

This morning I stumbled across a new game that combines a trendy electronic beat with touch typing. The game was created by Minecraft developer Notch, and while I am unsure when it was released, it has killed the past 30 minutes of my life.

As you can see, I was able to hit 156 after many attempts that ended in the low 30s. In my defense, I am typing with a partial fingertip on my right hand, and I may or may not have had the sun in my eyes. In any event, give it a try and post your best score below in the comments.

This morning a seemingly legit sales sheet from a Japanese telecom company states that Apple's next-generation iPhone will begin selling via pre-orders on June 20th. The document is the sort of "cheat sheet" that phone retailers hand out to their sales staff to help them memorize the key features of the phones they are pushing.

A few notable details seen on the cheat sheet is that the iPhone 5S will feature iOS 7, and will include a 13MP rear camera. This news does appear to be contradictory to what Apple CEO Tim Cook stated previously during an investment conference call where he said that investors could expect "new and exciting" products this fall.

At the same time Cook did explicitly state "new" products and not "existing hardware refreshes", which is what the iPhone 5S is. So, while things do not look great for a July launch date as stated in the leaked document, it could be entirely possible that we in fact see iPhone 5S' in the hands of consumers by August 1st.

LG have just announced their curved OLED HDTV will be reaching Korean living rooms in the coming months, a perfect display for some multi-monitor PC gaming, in my opinion.

LG Korea have announced through a press release that pre-orders for their curved 55-inch OLED HDTV will go on sale in South Korea for $13,515. The 55-inch curved OLED display is just 4.3mm thick, and is a $3,600 premium over their standard, non-curved display.

Some leaked specifications on Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Note III have floated onto the Internet, and if they're correct, we'll be looking at the fastest smartphone on the market. Check out the specs:

• Samsung Exynos 5 Octa Chipset
• Quad Core 2.0 GHz ARM Cortex A15 + Quad Core 1.7 GHz ARM Cortex A7
• 3 GB Of RAM
• 5.99 Inch 1080p (1920 x 1080 pixels) Super AMOLED display
• 32 GB Of Internal Storage
• MicroSD Card Support
• Removable Battery
• Android 4.2.2 Jelly Bean
• S-Pen

We should hear more about the Note III at IFA 2013 which is in October, until then we'll just have to dream of this phone. What do you think? An 8-core smartphone with 3GB of RAM and a 1080p display. This thing is better specced than most PCs!

It looks like Microsoft are working on rebrandings of multiple services under their wings, which includes Bing, Skype, Yammer and Xbox. Speaking at Design Day 2013, Wolff Olins creative director Todd Simmons and Windows Phone design studio manager Albert Shum talked about the challenges involved when rebranding a company like Microsoft.

Simmons said: "We're still trying to figure out how to put a consumer face on this brand, as an ecosystem". The discussion turned to the creation of the Windows 8 logo, but also talked about revamping other MS brands, where Simmons added: "Other brands are coming along too. Bing, Skype, Yammer, Xbox -- everything is under development".

Considering the next-generation Xbox is only months away, not would be the perfect time to unveil a complete new look for multiple of Microsoft's services.

Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Grant from the UK wanting to know if his 500W power supply would be enough to power an upgrade to a Radeon HD 7950.

Q: Hi, I have an Aerocool Strike-X 500W PSU

My specs are:

• Core i5 3570k, not oc'd
• 500GB 7200RPM HDD
• DVDRW
• 8GB of DDR3 RAM

I would like to add Gigabyte's Radeon HD 7950 non-OC to it.

Will the PSU be ok?

A: You can view the answer to Grant's question right here.

Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with KGI Securities, has a new report forecasting that the product highlight of Apple's upcoming Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) will introduce refreshed MacBook Pro and MacBook Air models.

These refreshed products would see Intel's new Haswell chips inside, the chipmaker's fourth-generation Core processors. Kuo thinks that Apple will continue with non-Retina MacBook Pros, seeing strength in the 13-inch model, leading him to believe we'll see Apple continuing the production of non-Retina models. He says:

Contrary to our previous projection, we now think Apple will continue to make the MacBook Pro alongside the MacBook Air and Retina MacBook Pro because the 13" MacBook Pro remains the most popular product in the MacBook line. Also, there is still demand in emerging markets, where Internet penetration isn't advanced, for optical disk drives.

The analyst believes that the updated non-Retina MacBook Pros could ship right after WWDC, but the new Retina-based MacBook Pro models would ship later down the line due to the more expensive, and harder to make Retina displays.

Steam has just opened its doors to subscription-based games, with the first game on the subscription side of things called Darkfall Unholy Wars. Darkfall Unholy Wars is a PvP focused MMO from Aventurine.

Now that Valve has allowed subscription-based games through their digital distribution service, Steam, the recurring payments to these games can be done within Steam itself. Valve have also promised that "additional subscription-based games will follow".

After five rough years with finances, Sony is poised to post their first annual profit since 2008 thanks to the sale of various assets. The Japanese giant sold their New York City HQ earlier this year, for $1.1 billion, which should give them net cash proceeds of around $770 million to help pay off various debt.

Another contribution to the profit is the weaker yen, something that helped increase the value of their overseas earnings, something that Sony expects to report a net profit of 40 billion yen for the fiscal year which ended on March 31, up from their previous estimate of 20 billion yen. Sony are scheduled to post their three-month earnings on May 9.

DisplayMate have some glowing words about the Samsung Galaxy S4, saying that the new display on the S4 is bigger and more beautiful than any of Samsung's previous smartphone displays.

DisplayMate have gone as far as saying that the S4 display doesn't just give Samsung's smartphone line a huge boost, but actually represents "a major enhancement and improvement over the Galaxy S III" and that it is "a good reason to consider trading up" for the screen improvements alone.

The image quality experts have said that the only display that matches the S4 is the iPhone 5.

Sony are now taking preorders for their Xperia Tablet Z, a 10.1-inch slick-looking slate. The Sony Xperia Tablet Z features a 'Full HD Reality Display' which provides us with a 1920x1080 WUXGA screen.

Cranking along inside the Tablet Z we have a 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 Pro processor, 2GB of RAM, an 8-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing camera. The 16GB black model is $499.99, while the 32GB model is $599.99. Both versions include a free cradle accessory for those who order before May 24. You can get this offer at the Sony Tablet preorder page.

LG have just begun rolling out their new F Series of smartphones, starting with the Optimus F5. The new F Series is aimed toward mid-range customers, but still features a high-end design and LTE capabilities.

The Optimus F5 launches in France starting on April 29, and will jump across the pond in the weeks and months to follow. The Optimus F5 packs a Qualcomm 1.2GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, and a 4.3-inch 960x540 display. Camera-wise, we have a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera backed up by a 1.3-megapixel front facer. Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean is splashed on top.

Some people are getting their hands on the latest and greatest smartphone from Samsung, the Galaxy S4, and now we're finding a little bit more information on what you get out of the box.

The 16GB version of the Galaxy S4 comes with 45% of its storage used, giving consumers just 55% of the storage they paid for. The bloat that is being packed into the phone is based on the Sprint model and might change carrier to carrier, but not by much. This isn't too much of a problem as the S4 has expandable storage through microSD cards, but taking up nearly half of the internal storage isn't a great start.

Not only will Nintendo not be holding a press conference during this years E3, but Valve won't be, either. It's not like Valve had a huge history of hosting events, but with Steam Box being talked about, most thought we'd see some action at E3 2013.

ValveTime posted the above tweet, a screencap from an e-mail from Valve's vice president of marketing, Doug Lombardi. Lombardi states that Valve will be not exhibiting at E3 this year, and leaves it at that.

Google Glass can't get here soon enough, but now there's cause for celebration. Google developer Stephen Lau took to his Google+ page to talk about Glass, and how they "intentionally left the device unlocked" so that "you guys could hack it and do crazy fun shit with it". His full quote:

THIS.

 

Not to bring anybody down... but seriously... we intentionally left the device unlocked so you guys could hack it and do crazy fun shit with it. I mean, FFS, you paid $1500 for it... go to town on it. Show me something cool.

I think it's great that Google are leaving it unlocked, and I truly can't wait to see what developers can do with an unlocked wearable computer. Keep in mind that there is a difference between 'unlocked' and 'rooting', which you can read about on Lau's Google+ page where people are getting quite heated over the topic.

Up until now, NVIDIA's PhysX technology hasn't been used in games all that well. Even today, it's still just a technology demo, and a technology acquisition by NVIDIA, but they continue to keep their heads down and work on the physics technology.

There's a new simulation using PhysX, which you can check out in the above video. The demo is the result of research by Miles Macklin and Matthias Muller. They have a paper published about it, which you can read here, with some details below:

AMD have released some new drivers, getting ready for May, with the Catalyst 13.5 Beta drivers. The new drivers support the latest dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990, so if you're fortunate to have one of those, you'll need to acquire these drivers.

The following improvements are offered up on the Radeon HD 7000 Series GPUs:

• Far Cry 3: Improves performance up to 4% with Anti-Aliasing enabled
• Shogun II: Improves performance up to 20% with 8x Anti-Aliasing enabled
• Tomb Raider: Improves performance up to 6%
• Bioshock: Improves performance up to 6%
• Borderlands 2: Improves performance up to 17%

You can grab the Catalyst 13.5 Beta drivers here.

We still have very little concrete information about the upcoming Xbox 720 that Microsoft will officially unveil on May 21. We do know that Sony is pushing the sharing of in-game video aspect with the PlayStation 4 and we doubt that Microsoft will miss out on the opportunity presented by this feature.

According to Polygon's sources, Microsoft's version will be a bit different. The Xbox 720 will feature DVR-like recording, allowing users to rewind and watch or share highlights. This feature will be able to be turned off or set to occur when certain triggers occur, such as a headshot or Achievement.

If Microsoft does tie this DVR feature into the Achievements system, it could be really cool. It would also mark one of the largest overhauls of the Achievement system, which currently does very little. These captured videos would then, of course, be able to be shared on sites such as YouTube.

Like all things, until an official confirmation is made, take this with a grain of salt.

LivingSocial, the company that helps users get better deals, announced that they have been hacked. The company notes that the hackers did not gain access to any credit card information. As a precaution, LivingSocial is sending out an e-mail to 50 million of its users informing them of the hack.

LivingSocial hasn't detailed how the hack occurred, but they have said that names, birthdays, e-mail addresses, and encrypted passwords were compromised. Given enough time and the correct tools, those encrypted passwords can be decrypted. Combine the password with the e-mail and the hackers could gain access to other sites.

If you use the same e-mail/password combination on any other sites, you're encouraged to change your passwords right away.