Latest News - Page 2787

It looks like one of the bigger rumors for CES 2015, at least for me, is the news of Sony launching its new Xperia Z4 smartphone at the Las Vegas-based event in January 2015.

Sure, the Xperia Z4 will launch with an impressive Snapdragon 805 processor from Qualcomm, a sure-to-be gorgeous 5.4-inch QHD display (which I'll presume is their "Triluminos" panel), Android 5.0 Lollipop, and more than likely, 3GB of RAM will be great - but it's the image sensor in the camera that has me interested. Sony is rumored to be using its next-gen Exmor IMX230 camera sensor, which will have the Z4's camera turning some heads.

The new image sensor works almost like anti-aliasing when it comes to pictures, giving them a much sharper look as if you were using a much more powerful camera. All the other specifications and grunt under the Z4 hood is just gravy, baby.

To counter package theft, and make e-commerce shopping and delivery easier, San Francisco Bay Area startup Doorman will deliver packages to customers. The service costs $4 per package, or frequent ecommerce buyers can pay $19 or $29 per month for the silver and gold packages. Deliveries are made from 6:00PM until midnight, currently available only in San Francisco.

"Once it arrives, we notify you on your phone and then you use the Doorman app to schedule a delivery on your phone until midnight, seven days a week," said Zander Adell, Doorman founder.

Doorman is designed to make it more convenient for residents to receive their packages, while also helping prevent against theft. Throughout some parts in the Bay Area, package theft - taken off house porches and from apartment doorsteps - as thieves tend to take packages while people are away from their house in the afternoon.

Many cybersecurity specialists working for the NSA and GCHQ tend to get burned out, and then head to the private sector. It provides a unique opportunity to hear more about some of the efforts the US government have employed to conduct organized cyberespionage against foreign governments.

For regular Internet users, it doesn't matter whether it's the government or a foreign cybercriminal, cybersecurity must be appreciated and not overlooked. As former government programmers and security experts abandon their government jobs in favor of the private sector, companies want to rely on technology advice from intelligence officials - providing valuable insight into how governments are conducting increased surveillance.

"Whether they're cybercriminals or state sponsored actors, I think a lot of times they can get into a network using a less sophisticated approach or a variant of a known piece of malware... it's a lower risk operationally for them," said Jim Penrose, former NSA employee and part of the department's Tailored Access Operations (TAO) group. "They don't want to fire silver bullets unless it's absolutely necessary; like a zero day or something like that, or a previously unseen piece of malware. Those are really high quality and you want to save those for a time when it's absolutely critical."

Chinese smartphone manufacturer Xiaomi has enjoyed a meteoric rise to become the No. 3 smartphone company in the world - but don't expect it to jump into new markets just for the sake of expansion. Xiaomi is focusing on China, India and Indonesia, for example, while Brazil, Russia, Mexico, Turkey and Thailand will have to wait until later down the road.

"We have to build better and better products making sure they're catered to each market and sold at the best possible price," said Hugo Barra, Xiaomi VP of global operations.

As Xiaomi continues to grow, the company will likely need its own manufacturing plants - and lessen the burden on its partners. However, it appears Xiaomi management is prepared to have new markets wait as it is able to establish itself further - showing impressive logic that other companies don't necessarily appreciate until it's too late.

Last week we reported on Thimbleweed Park, the "true spiritual successor" to the super-awesome Maniac Mansion, which hit Kickstarter with a funding goal of $375,000. Well, one week later, it has been met, and isn't stopping.

At the time of writing, they had $407,384 raised, with 22 days to go. If funding keeps up at this pace, they'll have a couple of million dollars to play with. Stretch Goals are now within reach, with $525,000 unlocking an iOS and Android version of the game. If the team reaches $625,000 they will provide "Talkies" with the team explaining "considered witchcraft and a fantasy of crazy people back in 1987, we'll be adding full voice acting to the English version of Thimbleweed Park. Hmmm... that's good thespian".

It'll be interesting to see backers flying past that $625,000 stretch goal soon, and even more interesting if we see new stretch goals introduced, or additional funding on their website ala Star Citizen.

Halo: The Master Chief Collection has launched with its fair share of problems, which doesn't seem to be any different to all the other games launching in the last month, with developer 343 Industries pledging to make it right.

After two weeks of multiplayer matchmaking problems, 343 Industries boss Bonnie Ross took to a letter to fans, writing: "On November 11 we released Halo: The Master Chief Collection. The goal being to create a tribute to Halo fans around the world, and to celebrate the Master Chief's debut on Xbox One. With the initial release of Halo: The Master Chief Collection, however, we have not delivered the experience you deserve. I personally apologize for this on behalf of us all at 343 Industries. Our team is committed to working around the clock until these issues are resolved".

"While our team works on continual improvements and towards solutions, my commitment to you is that we will take care of all owners of Halo: The Master Chief Collection. Our primary and continued focus is first on fixing the issues at hand. Once we've done that, we will detail how we will make this right with our fans," she continued. She closed her letter with: "Please accept my heartfelt apologies for the delay and for the negative aspects of your experience to date. We're doing everything in our power to resolve it as quickly as possible".

Self proclaimed as "Australia's Largest Retailer", Kogan is well known amongst tech savvy Aussie locals as providing a cheaper alternative for devices such as TV's, monitors and camera hardware. However, in latest news they've just released a Windows 8.1 operational laptop for just $329 AUD with decent specifications.

Named the Kogan Atlas X1510 Laptop, this $329 bargain will be released to the public on December the 15th - said to be just in time for Christmas. Based around an Intel N3540 quad-core processor running at 2.16GHz, it comes coupled with 4GB or DDR3L RAM and a 500GB HDD. The display comes in the form of a 15.6-inch screen displaying at 1366 x 768 pixels and sees the device measure at a total of 274mm long, 259mm deep and 2.1kg in weight. Although well-priced, it's not a particularly small object, but it does offer the user a reported 9.5 hours of battery life.

Connectivity is fairly standard on this device, offering up a HDMI port, VGA capabilities, one Gigabit Ethernet port, one USB 3.0 port, three USB 2.0 ports, a headphone and separate microphone port, full-sized SD card reader and provides you with the ability to connect through 802.11ac Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.0. Reportedly being released with a $15 discount for Office 365, this laptop looks good so far - we're interested to see what the build quality, feel and actual operation are like however.

Valve has just updated their rules for trade of Steam gifts, said to hinder key reseller businesses looking to on-sell keys in the form of gifts. New game purchases as a gift will be stored in the buyer's inventory for 30 days before it can be sold or traded - meaning that if you're looking to buy a new game and sell it on, or maybe lend a helping hand to a mate, maybe you should forget about it.

Tony Paloma from Valve has just announced this new ruling, stating: "All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser's inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading. All new games purchased as a gift and placed in the purchaser's inventory will be untradable for 30 days. The gift may still be gifted at any time. The only change is to trading."

This is a bold move by Valve, basically barring any re-seller websites looking to make a living out of key trading - but on the other hand it's a nice move in the fact that many people get burned year after year, purchasing dodgy keys only to have them revoked without refund. Major websites like G2a or Kinguin have not commented on the change as of yet, but they are expected to be hit hardest by these changes.

Public service announcement: Ubisoft doesn't want you trusting day one reviews of The Crew, with the company taking to its official blog to warn gamers that they should wait a while before reading, or trusting reviews.

Ubisoft said: "While we fully anticipate that you might see some reviews immediately at launch - largely built around the preview sessions we facilitated during the past months or the limited content of the closed and open betas - they won't be based on optimal conditions or reflect the finished game". The company continued, adding: "We sincerely hope everyone will take the time to customize their ride as they progress through all five regions, explore every corner of the map solo and with friends, dive into our competitive and cooperative mechanics, race to the end of the main campaign, choose a Faction and compete with your crew in Factions Wars, and so much more".

The company added that The Crew is a social game, which requires servers full of gamers to enjoy the game at its best. Ubisoft added: "The Crew was built from the beginning to be a living playground full of driving fans, so it's only possible to assess our game in its entirety with other real players in the world. And by other, we mean thousands and thousands and thousands of players - something that can't be simulated with a handful of devs playing alongside the press".

Adobe has alerted the public of an urgent update that has just been pushed - designed to patch a major vulnerability that is being exploited by hackers. This isn't the first time that we've seen reports like this issued in 2014, we're happy to see Adobe quickly on the ball to neutralize these threats.

The issue comes through arbitrary code execution due to a but in how a de-referenced pointer to memory is handled and has been rated as a critical issue. Adobe's new update covers Windows, Linux and OS X platforms, claiming that they are now provided with "additional hardening" against the flaw known as CVE-2014-8439 which was uncovered and patched in the past.

Exploit kits are designed to deliver Malware to website visitors through methods of deception or taking advantage of vulnerabilities. Kafeine discovered this Flash flaw in October this year, with this method becoming implemented in two more exploit kits named Astrum and Nuclear. Microsoft users have received an automatic patch update, through security advisory 2755801 and Chrome has applied this update personally. OS X users should update their Flash Player to version 15.0.0.239.

Apple has become the first company to jump over the $700 billion milestone, thanks to a rise in shares pushing them to this evaluation earlier today.

Apple shares experienced an almost-one percent rise this morning in the US market, seeing them now valued at $119.75 and meaning their market capitalization was made equal to around $701.7 billion.

This marks a massive 48% rise in 2014, with constant improvement seen since April. Reportedly due to Apple claiming they will go to extra measures to boost their share price, they announced its first stock split in nine years - claiming it would buy back another $30 billion in stock. This coupled with a quarterly dividend raise has shown massive success for the tech giant.

Voted in my personal top five worst advertisements of all time, the 3DHEAD was seen popping up around the internet in recent times - consistently claiming to be much better than what Oculus had to offer, the title even including the words "Oculus killer". Featuring amazing specification as a 2K resolution, the ability to use it in conjunction with controllers on your PC and the ability to make your voice one of the most annoying things on the planet - what's not to love?

Thanks to a Reddit thread made by 'crazy_goat', we've come to the knowledge that 3DHEAD has just randomly disappeared off the internet. This post contains information including the disappearance from the internet and following the apparently crazy original investor - Alki David.

How crazy could he be? Billionaires often make silly technology investments without knowing the full information, surely! Alongside David offering millions of dollars to Chris Brown and Drake to fight in a boxing match, he also once tried to convince news outlets that he had aired the first assisted suicide live on the internet as publicity for his website.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) wants Visa and Mastercard to "recommit their efforts" in the evolving fight against illegal activity online. And the focus isn't on counterfeiting or gambling - it's dedicated to online copyright infringement.

Following the demise of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), the RIAA and MPAA have gone back to the drawing board in their continued fight against Internet piracy. Political lobbying remains an active objective that won't go away, with the group's calling upon politicians to continue pressuring companies.

Here is what Leahy said (via press statement):

The Microsoft Xbox One and Sony PlayStation 4 game consoles are selling extremely well - but that doesn't necessarily mean everyone is happy. Carl Ledbetter, who was project manager behind the Xbox One's physical design, recently responded against criticism of the Xbox One's bulkiness.

While the Xbox One is heavier and bigger than the Xbox 360 - at a time when consumers seemingly want to see more hardware packed into streamlined designs - Ledbetter understands not everyone will be happy when a console is released. He explained the growing pains - and what is done to overcome certain hardware design barriers that many people seem to take for granted.

"Everybody gets frustrated, because what we want is for everything to be wafer thin, not get hot and just be a snap to put together," Ledbetter said. "But the reality is that there are very real issues around cooling when you're pushing some number of watts in the processor, therefore the thing has to have some size to it. There's always an interesting dynamic between engineering and design, and constraints around performance.

32 years on from the release of the original, Ridley Scott is preparing to revisit the world of 'Blade Runner', with a sequel which will see Harrison Ford reprise his role of is-he or isn't-he-a-replicant Deckard. But now, the 76 year old director has announced that he won't be behind the camera for 'Blade Runner 2', but will serve as producer.

Speaking to Variety whilst on the promo rounds for his latest picture, 'Exodus: Gods and Kings', Scott has confirmed some more details on the story, written by the original 'Blade Runner' scribe Hampton Fancher.

'Blade Runner 2' is expected to go into production next year, for a 2017 release - the 35th anniversary of the original.

Sonim has just unveiled the "world's most rugged LTE/Wi-Fi/Android smartphone" with its new XP7 Extreme, featuring a 4-inch 800x480 "glove touchscreen" and oh-so-much more. The company has taken to Indiegogo to raise $150,000 for this awesome device, with the campaign ending on January 7, 2015.

The 4-inch display may be low-res in this QHD world we live in, but it is a high-visible display which is viewable in direct sunlight, a powerful 103 dB speaker, the keys and screen can be used with heavy or wet gloves, it's rated at IP68, which means the XP7 Extreme can be fully submerged in water at up to 6.5 feet, for up to 30 minutes, as well as being rated at IP69, for resistance to high temperature pressure wash.

The Sonim XP7 Extreme is also drop and impact resistant, surviving drops up to 6.5 feet onto concrete, from any angle. It can be used in temperatures ranging from -4C to 131F, can survive in extreme pressures of up to one metric ton, is resistant to oils and chemicals, and is also puncture resistant. But don't worry, Sonim (even with all these technologies keeping it safe) still offer a 3-year comprehensive warranty, covering accidental damage.

Whilst the first teaser for 'Jurassic World' wasn't supposed to be released until Thursday, it seems Universal wanted to get out a little earlier to get some clear space before the launch of the 'Star Wars' teaser and have outed their first look at the 2015 blockbuster - and it's a doozy.

Showing the kinds of things I've wanted to see for years - a fully functional and operative park akin to a theme park, and something I didn't expect to see, I gotta say, 'Jurassic World' has now surpassed 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' as my most anticipated film of the 2015 blockbuster season.

'Jurassic World' hits 3D, 2D and IMAX screens worldwide in June 2015.

Hardware maker Intel wanted to rely on its desktop, laptop and server CPUs, and missed the mobile boat when the smartphone and tablet markets began to soar. The company has managed to get its CPUs in tablets, giving away millions of chips to manufacturers, and will continue to expand its offerings in 2015.

"All is not well," said Andy Bryant, Intel board chairman, when speaking at the Intel annual investor meeting. "We are aware we're losing logs of money trying to gain presence in the mobility space. I'm not proud of the money we're losing, but I'm not embarrassed by it. This is the price we pay for sitting on the sidelines for a number of years. We're fighting our way back into a market. We will improve this. We will not accept a business to lose billions of dollars. We are getting back in."

Despite dropping growth in the tablet market - as saturation continues to increase - the mobile market will remain a viable goal for hardware manufacturers. Even though Intel has greatly struggled trying to enter the space, profitability in smartphones, tablets, and other devices can be achieved.

The tablet market has seen massive deceleration this year, and while year-over-year growth still accounted for 7.2 percent, the figure is down from 52.5 percent in 2013, according to the IDC research group. There will be 235.7 million tablets shipped in 2014, and is a clear indicator consumers need full functionality of PCs and smartphones.

Android has seen 16 percent year-over-year tablet market growth, now amounting for 67.7 percent of the market - Apple iOS is the No. 2 spot, but struggled, losing 12.7 percent year-over-year. Microsoft Windows saw 67.3 percent year-over-year and now has 4.6 percent control of the tablet market.

"The tablet market continues to be impacted by a few major trends happening in relevant markets," said Ryan Reith, IDC Program Director. "In the early stages of the tablet market, device lifecycles were expected to resemble those of smartphones, with replacement occurring every 2-3 years. What has played out instead is that many tablet owners are holding onto their devices for more than 3 years and in some instances more than 4 years. We believe the two major drivers for longer than expected tablet lifecycles are legacy software support for older products, especially within iOS, and the increased use of smartphones for a variety of computing tasks."

AMD is reportedly stepping away from the tablet chip market as they enter into yet another restructuring period. AMD has struggled financially over the last several years, and the low-margin tablet market isn't likely to provide them much relief. Tablet sales are declining, and the market is awash in Apple and economically-priced Chinese tablets. The beleaguered AMD is changing their focus to the low-wattage CPU space and custom chips for their customers, such as the Microsoft XBOX and the Sony PlayStation 4.

These two custom projects are projected to provide AMD with billion in sales alone, and they indicate that other custom projects are in the works. AMD is not releasing a new tablet chip this year, instead staying with their Mullins chip for the entirety of next year. AMD does not provide chip roadmaps more than a year out, so it is hard to determine if they will ever offer a new line of their currently unsuccessful tablet processors. Intel has also recently took a drubbing in the tablet PC market, as outlined during their recent investor conference, and has shifted priorities as they move forward.

The tablet market is continuing to decline, in large part due to competing smartphones that offer incredible performance and ever-larger screen sizes.