Latest News - Page 2133

Paying for Google services has previously been a struggle as Google didn't have a unified payment platform, forcing users into fiddling with multiple applications such as Google Wallet and Android Pay. But this will all change with Google announcing that a new consolidated payment option is on the way, dubbed Google Pay.

Originally the first Google NFC-activated payment option was called Google Wallet, then it was decided that the name was to be changed to Android Pay and now the titan company wants to bring all of its payment options under a single umbrella titled Google Pay. In attempts to keep the competition interesting between Apple and Google, Google Pay can be used for all of Google's services such as the Play Store and all NFC-enabled payment transactions for Google products.

The re-branding stage is already underway as Google Pay has been spotted in several locations such as AirBnB, Dice, Fandango, HungryHouse and Instacart. Google says that the "Bringing everything into one brand is just the first step for Google Pay" so we can expect that as the year continues on we will be hearing more updates for the new service as more convenience is supplied to Google's users.

The recent adoption of VR headsets is being taken quite healthily by the gaming community, as we move into the new year Sony wants to reward those that purchased their PlayStation VR with a wider choice of games, in fact they expect "over 280" titles by the end of the year.

Reported by Nikkei, Sony expects to bring much more titles to the VR library, by the end of 2018 the company wants to hit "over 280" titles. As we are experiencing the bleed-in effect for VR into the gaming community we can expect some of these games will not be as amazing as something like Resident Evil 7 or Skyrim in VR, as developers are still trying to flesh out ideas that utilize the full VR experience.

While some games might be a little disappointing this isn't going to stop Sony's updates to the PSVR software, the headset and the VR experience is only going to get better with time, so by the end of 2018 I'm sure we will see some massive improvements in not only the games coming to PSVR but also to VR experience as a whole.

The open world genre seems to be quite attracting to developers these days as many games seem to be adopting the genre in hopes of widening the universe that their game is built around.

Sometimes players of open world games say that their attachment to the main characters is diluted down by the sheer size of the world. Cory Barlog, the director of God of War seems to agree with this and says that his franchise will be taking a more "wide linear" approach, rather than jumping straight into massive open world.

In a recent interview with GameInformer, Barlog delves into the open world genre, bringing some good points about the genre disadvantages. Barlog says that when he was playing open world games that the experience felt more like "homework" as the list of things he "had" to do was to away from the character development.

Back in 2016, a League of Legends streamer going by the name of Tyler1 was banned by Riot as he was deemed detrimental to the communities health, Riot labeled the streamer as "a genuine jerk" but now his account has been returned to him.

Tyler1 has described himself as rehabilitated and that must of been enough for Riot, an account review has passed the standards of Riot, which then lifted the ban. As the old streamer was originally not allowed to stream League of Legends at all that ban has also been lifted which has created a massive influx of viewers curious to Tyler1's return.

The stream titled "THE RETURN" has been so popular that it has broken Twitches record for a single streamer being watched at once with 378,000 viewers, Faker originally held the record with 245,000 concurrent viewers on his first ever live stream back in February last year.

CES 2018 - HTC announced their higher-res Vive Pro headset at CES this year, but also announced their own wireless adapter for the current-gen Vive, making the wired VR experience wireless.

HTC's own adapter is powered by Intel's WiGig technology, which lives on a huge 60Hz band, which aims for the lowest latency and interference right now. HTC won't be releasing this new wireless VR adapter for the Vive until the summer, and they haven't shared a price on it just yet either.

We don't know about battery life with the wireless adapter, but anything over an hour or two would be impressive. TPCast has their own wireless Vive adapter and sell it for $299 without around two hours of battery life, just for comparison.

CES 2018 - It can't be CES without some crazy contraption or concept vehicle, with Texas-based Bell Helicopters unveiling its new electric flying taxi.

Bell only has the cabin of the flying taxi on show at CES, with a future event to unveil its new electric flying taxi in detail. Bell's director of innovation, Scott Drennen, explains: "We're just keeping our particular propulsion system in configuration to ourselves right now, to keep our competition on their on their heels".

Drennen continued: "This vehicle is going to be a part of the Internet of Things. The customer will be experiencing a part of the Internet of Things as they travel in the vehicle, with the connectivity that's going to happen from the place they took off from to the place they're going, with the ability to connect to friends, workers, colleagues, et cetera".

CES 2018 - Qualcomm has just announced their new QCC5100 Low Power Bluetooth SoC and while it might not sound like much, the company is promising it increase Bluetooth power consumption by up to 65%.

This means that any device powered by the QCC5100 could provide audio playback times of many days, and not just many hours. Senior VP and GM of Qualcomm's Voice & Music business unit, Anthony Murray, explained that the new QCC5100 chip transmits much more power which will reduce the amount of times headphones cut in and out when you're moving through a busy place or on transportation.

Qualcomm's new QCC5110 also supports Bluetooth 5, something that was only announced last year, and so far only found idn flagship smartphones like the Samsung Galaxy S8 and Apple iPhone X.

CES 2018 - At last years Superbowl halftime show Intel displayed a drone-based light show, at this years CES Intel gave the same treatment at their keynote and also introduced a new version of a drone called the 'Shooting Star Mini.'

These very small drones are completely safe to fly in-doors and also have the ability to be able to self-detect where they are in the space of the room, while in conjunction to the other drones partnered with them. At the keynote these drones danced to the song 'Stargazing' by Kygo, the performance was a preprogrammed routine implemented in the numerous drones that were combined together to create the light show.

Unfortunately these drones will not be available on the consumer level as Intel only intends them to be used for specific light show events such as the one at CES. Instead of being individually controlled, Intel say that one person can control up to 100 of them at once, which in turn when following the pre-programmed choreography will produce a immaculate light show.

Most people know that Dogecoin started off as a joke, with the parody coin named after the internet meme from a few years ago that featured a Shiba Inu Dog, and has gone ballistic ever since.

Dogecoin is now worth $0.01 and while it sounds like nothing, remember that Dogecoin flat lined for years at $0.0001, so the rise to $0.1 is actually significant. Big enough to drive the market cap of Dogecoin to $1.8 billion, which is crazy as this started off as a joke and a lot of people are making serious bank from it.

The founder of Dogecoin, Jackson Palmer, has talked about the recent price rise by saying: "I have a lot of faith in the Dogecoin Core development team to keep the software stable and secure, but I think it says a lot about the state of the cryptocurrency space in general that a currency with a dog on it which hasn't released a software update in over 2 years has a $1B+ market cap".

CES 2018 - Facebook was on the stage during Qualcomm's CES 2018 press conference, announcing that the new Oculus Go, a standalone VR headset that is powered by the Snapdragon 821 processor, and built by Chinese giant Xiaomi.

Hugo Barra, Facebook VR boss who used to work for Xiaomi, announced that Xiaomi is Oculus' hardware partner for the new Oculus Go VR headset. Xiaomi is also forging ahead on its own Mi VR Standalone headset specifically for the Chinese market, powered by the same internals as the Oculus Go, including Qualcomm's Snapdragon 821.

There aren't any more specifics on the Oculus Go just yet, but we should have pricing and more details in the coming weeks.

CES 2018 - Sony has announced their latest 4K Ultra Short Throw Projector, or the LSPX-A1 at CES 2018, something the company will be launching in the spring for $30,000.

Sony's new LSPX-A1 is built to be placed only 9.6 inches from the wall, projecting a 4K image at up to 120 inches, which is not too damn bad at all. Sony's latest last projector reaches 2500 lumens peak brightness, so it's not lacking there either.

Sony says that the new projector packs the company's "unique 4K SXRD projection and HDR technology" in order to blast the 4K video "with unprecedented detail, color and contrast".

CES 2018 - LG is entering into the smart fridge with a new look and style, mixed in with a bunch of new features, with their new InstaView ThinQ changing up the refrigerator game.

LG's new InstaView ThinQ smart refrigerator packs a 29-inch touchscreen that when tapped twice, becomes transparent so that you can see inside of your fridge. Super cool. LG has been in the touch-your-fridge game for a while now, where they had their Smart InstaView Door-in-Door that run a full version of Windows 10, some two years ago but in the end the company never shipped the fridge.

This new version lets you control your food management using LG's own webOS software with a mix of Amazon Alexa, something that lets owners tag food with virtual stickers and expiration dates, as well as pushing automatic reminders to you when things are running low or about to go off. Very cool.

CES 2018 - Pizza Hut just introduced the world's first fully autonomous delivery concept vehicle, partnering with Toyota with the e-Palette, an autonomous delivery van that could deliver fresh hot pizzas, too.

Pizza Hut US president Artie Starrs explains: "We are focused on technology-based solutions that enable our team members and drivers to deliver even better customer experiences. With Toyota, we are excited to be partnering with an undisputed leader in human mobility with a reputation for innovation, reliability and efficiency, as we define the pizza delivery experience of the future".

The company has plans to use current pizza delivery drivers in their testing, where Pizza Hut will take the data of delivery drivers in order to create a safer and more efficient platform in their algorithm.

CES 2018 - NVIDIA might have announced its new 65-inch 4K 120Hz G-Sync TVs, specifically with the new ASUS ROG Swift PG65, but the company is also quick to release a new GeForce 390.65 drivers that includes a security patch for Spectre vulnerability.

NVIDIA's new GeForce 390.65 drivers also include support for the Freestyle beta, which lets gamers apply post-processing filters to your game, while you play. This can be done from an in-game overlay, letting you change the entire style of the game with adjustments to color and saturation and post-process filters.

At launch, NVIDIA has 15 filters with 38 different settings (with some filters packing more than one setting). At launch, NVIDIA is including:

CES 2018 - Samsung might change up the game with the Galaxy S9 and most of that will be happening inside of the smartphone, which should pack the latest from Qualcomm and their Snapdragon 845 and quite possibly a huge change in the camera.

We all know how important the camera is to most people who buy smartphones these days, with Samsung rumored to have a "reimagined" camera inside of the Galaxy S9. The latest rumor is coming from a new trademark placed by Samsung in Korea right before the holidays, which reads "The Camera. Reimagined".

The new rumor was discovered by Galaxy Club and references what should be marketing for the Galaxy S9 when it arrives next year, with the last known rumor for the Galaxy S9+ camera being a dual-snapper but that's it.

CES 2018 - For the last few years I've been exclusively using Corsair gaming keyboards and mice for every single gaming and workstation PC that I have here in my office, and for the entire time I've wished that they were wireless, something Corsair unveiled at CES 2018.

Corsair has announced its new K63 Wireless keyboard, a new 10-keyless wireless keyboard, a first for the company. Corsair packs in 100% Cherry MX Red keys with a blue blacklight, something that's customizable with Corsair's CUE software package.

The keyboard can be used in either 1ms 2.4GHz option, or you can switch it out for the low-latency Bluetooth wireless mode that increases battery life. If you want to not worry about battery life, Corsair has included the ability of plugging in the USB connector while also offering wireless encryption.

CES 2018 - GIGABYTE had a secret motherboard on hand at their CES 2018 ballroom, and we got a sneak peak so we could show you what they have in store for 2018. The AMD AM4 X470-based Aorus Gaming 7 is totally redesigned compared to their X370 Aorus Gaming 7.

The new motherboard has two M.2 slots, one routed to the CPU at x4 PCI-E 3.0 and one to the chipset at x4 PCI-E 2.0, both of them have heat sinks. The motherboard will support current and future AM4 CPUs, but should be compatible with Ryzen-2000 series CPUs/APUs out of the box.

Surprisingly, GIGABYTE decided to go back to the tried-and-true fin-type heat sink, which offers maximum cooling efficiency because of its maximized surface area. The new X470 motherboard features a 10+2 phase VRM controlled by an IR35201 PWM controller. Each power stage uses IR3553 40A PowIRstages for AMD's next gen Zen+ and current CPUs.

CES 2018 - NVIDIA unveiled their new Big Format Gaming Display (BFGD) in the last 24 hours, partnering with various PC-specific companies like ASUS, which has just unveiled their own ROG Swift BFGD PG65.

The new ASUS ROG Swift PG65 is exactly what NVIDIA unveiled, with a huge 65-inch 4K panel with a beautifully smooth 120Hz refresh rate that has G-Sync splashed on top, and a freakin' NVIDIA Shield built-in.

Inside, the PG65 rocks P3 color gamut that will ensure great clarity and color that will also be bright with up to 1000 nits, which is extremely bright.

CES 2018 - HTC were rumored to unveil their new Vive Pro headset at CES, and here we are - with the new Vive Pro aimed at fixing some of the problems that the first-gen Vive headset had.

HTC has bumped the resolution of the dual-OLED panels in the new Vive Pro to 2880x1600 (1400x1600 per eye, and 615PPI) which is a huge 78% increase from the 2160x1200 (1080x1200 per eye) of the first Vive. The increased resolution will make text clearer and visuals pop, with HTC now the leader in VR headset resolutions against Oculus and Windows Mixed Reality headsets.

Next up, HTC included something I've wanted since using the retail Oculus Rift: a redesigned headstrap and built-in headphones. The Vive Pro features a headset that has a sizing dial that lets you balance the headset so that it doesn't feel like it's top heavy at the front.

CES 2018 - HP has unveiled its new Spectre 15 X360 laptop with Intel's and AMD's new Kaby Lake + RX Vega M combo for content creators.

HP's new convertible Spectre 15 X360 laptops come in various configurations, including Intel's recently announced joint venture to include Radeon RX Vega M graphics in its chips. The computer, which is aimed at content creators that need to leverage discrete GPUs for demanding applications, comes with a 4K UHD 15.6-inch IPS display and amped GPU horsepower including an Intel Quad-Core i7-8550U and NVIDIA MX150 config for the base variants--or an Intel 8th Gen CPU paired with AMD Radeon RX Vega M graphics.

The base model starts at $1369 and can be configured with up to 16GB of DDR4-2400MHz RAM, and the laptop comes with a 512GB PCIe NVMe M.2 SSD for storage. Battery life is up to 13.5 hours and the performance laptop weights 4.6 pounds. Ports include: 1 x Thunderbolt 3, 1 x USB 3.0 Type-C, 1 x USB 3.0 Type-A, 1 x HDMI, 1 x Headphone-out/mic-in combo jack.