Latest News - Page 2860

GPS manufacturer Magellan will introduce its Cyclo 315 and 505 cycling GPS units to the North American market starting next month. The Cyclo GPS series was originally released by Magellan to the Australian and European markets last year, and must compete with Garmin in a very competitive market.

Both models are 3" and includes a touchscreen, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, smartphone connectivity, and sophisticated ANT+ support so athletes can track heart rate, speed, cadence, and power while out in the saddle. The Cyclo 315 will cost $349.99 and the Cyclo 505 has a starting MSRP of $429 - both models will be available starting in May.

"The Magellan Cyclo GPS line includes models that will appeal to the majority of bike riders in the U.S.," noted Sam Muscariello, Magellan outdoor product marketing director, in a press statement. "From the hardcore triathlete to the body armored mountain biker, even the weekend touring enthusiast, Cyclo has all the right features needed to take cyclists to the next level and help them reach their goals."

Since its launch, Skype has been an important communication tool for both the private and corporate sectors, and when Group Video Calling was launched, it changed the way many of us conference. Unfortunately, Microsoft slapped a $8.99 price tag on this feature by bundling it into the Skype Premium package, and many of us simply moved on to the free group video conferencing platform Google Calls Hangouts. Today Microsoft has seen the errors of its ways and has opened up group video calling for free to everyone.

"For the last few years, we've offered group video calling to Premium users on Windows desktop and Mac and more recently Xbox One," Skype said in a blog post. "Today, we're excited to announce that we're making group video calling free - for all users on these platforms. And, in the future, we'll be enabling group video calling for all our users across more platforms - at no cost."

The change is mostly because Microsoft wanted to bring Skype group video calling to Xbox One and to do that, it needed to make the service free of charge. As of this morning Skype group video calling is available free on Windows desktop, Mac and Xbox One clients. With this new change, Microsoft has also ended the Skype Premium subscription all together, but it will still charge for making domestic and international phone calls.

A new patent application from Apple has shown up online that is for a new holographic display for devices that allows the user to interact with 3D objects. Those 3D objects appear to flat in the air above the surface of the display. The patent application is titled "Interactive three-dimensional display system" and shows a method that Apple has created that allows the user of a device to manipulate 3D objects with gestures and touch.

The display system that patent app outlines has three major parts. One is a display system that creates a primary 3D image. Another is an optical system to translate that first image into a secondary 3D image that floats in the air. The final part is a sensor that logs user input.

Apple also uses a processing unit and control security to give feedback. Images projected with the display are digital. Apple talks about infrared laser or other light emitting devices to project an image into a medium like a non-linear crystal. That medium would be located between two parabolic mirrors. This sounds like an interesting display, but as with all tech that shows up on a patent application, there is no way to know if the tech will ever be used.

GIGABYTE has quite the air-cooling solution in its popular, and very capable WindForce coolers - but the company has just stepped up its game, unveiling its new WaterForce cooler.

GIGABYTE's WaterForce cooling solutions were shown off during the Tech Tour event on April 25, 2014. GIGABYTE's WaterForce solution includes a massive external module that houses the coolant reservoirs, an even bigger radiator with multiple fans, the pumps, and ports for cooling for individual GPUs, that get pushed through to your case through a hub that requires a spare 5.25-inch drive bay.

The company has put some serious time into WaterForce, as the main unit displays temperature for each of the coolant channels, where you can control everything performance-wise, including taking temperatures and noise levels. The tubes then get connected to a WaterForce-capable GPU, which feature full-coverage water blocks that cover the GPU, RAM and VRMs - a nice touch.

It was barely a week ago that AMD released its Catalyst 14.4 RC (Release Candidate) drivers, but now the company has just unleashed its WHQL-certified drivers, the Catalyst 14.4 WHQL set of drivers.

The new drivers support the Radeon R9 295X2 dual-GPU, feature CrossFire frame-pacing improvements for multiple games, full support for OpenGL 4.4, and various bugfixes for its Mantle API. You can grab the new Catalyst 14.4 WHQL drivers right here.

Warner Bros. has finally announced that it is making a Justice League movie, appointing Zack Snyder to direct. Snyder directed the latest Superman reboot, Man of Steel, and is currently working on Man of Steel 2 right now.

As soon as Snyder is finished on Man of Steel 2, he will begin work on Justice League. We have already seen the beginnings of the Justice League movie, after the immense box office-breaking The Avengers movie set in the Marvel universe. Warner Bros. has been itching to repeat this, but had to prepare the DC universe in the movies first, starting with Man of Steel.

Batman is being rebooted, with Ben Affleck to don the suit in Man of Steel 2, or Batman vs. Superman. Gal Gadot is starring in the Man of Steel sequel as Wonder Woman, the first time the Amazonian warrior has been on the big screen. President of Worldwide Productions for Warner Bros., Greg Silverman, said: "The plans for three superhero movies in relatively quick succession show how intent Warner is on catching up with rival Walt Disney Co.'s Marvel Studios in building a cinematic superhero universe after years lagging behind".

Apple's next-gen MacBook Air will arrive as an 11.6-inch device, but the feats of engineering required to get it thinner than the already-thin MacBook Air we all know and love have seen the company hire another watchmaker, according to our friends over at MobileGeek.

MobileGeek's sources in the supply industry claim that Apple's next MacBook Air will be "even thinner, lighter, and above all more compact". According to people familiar with the matter, Apple has hired an extra watchmaker for the development of the new MBA. The watchmaker has the experience in working with highly complex, and very small components.

What Apple wants to see, is an 11.6-inch MacBook Air released, but on the dimensions of the classic 10.1-inch netbook form factor. If there's a company that can get the engineering and design right, it's Apple. It should be quite the small notebook when released later this year.

Most people who have played Fallout 3 loved the idea of the wearable Pip-Boy 3000 device, well, a five-member group called Team Reno have done just that - created a Pip-Boy 3000 like device.

Team Reno created the device as part of NASA's SpaceApps Challenge, which saw designers creating wearable technology for future space travelers. Team Reno's device was capable of displaying relative humidity, altitude, latitude and longitude, atmospheric pressure, ambient temperature, object temperature, and radiation levels.

The team wrote about their entry, saying: "We wanted to make a piece of popular science fiction into a reality so we chose the Pip-Boy 3000 from the game Fallout 3. The goal was to bring environmental sensors into an easy-to-use cuff device that could help a wearer determine if their environment is safe for navigation or helmet removal".

An increase in the popularity of online gambling has created a successful underground market for money laundering, according to a new McAfee study.

To make matters worse, Internet anonymity and such a wide variety of payment options gives criminals the chance to exchange stolen funds, bitcoins, and currency.

"As a result, illegal proceeds can be laundered by wagering them on one end of a transaction and receiving the payouts as gambling wins on the other end," according to the McAfee report. "Gambling wins can also be exchanged as payment for illegal goods or services changing hands elsewhere."

It seems that there are a number of people experiencing issues with their brand new Samsung Galaxy S5 smartphones, where the camera is popping up with a "Warning: Camera Failed" error.

Affected users are being asked to contact Samsung's customer care, with the company stating: "We have learned that a limited number of Galaxy S5 devices may have an issue that causes 'Camera Failure' pop-up error message. We ask that customers affected call 1-888-987-4357 or visit their carrier for service under Samsung's standard limited warranty".

Then when typing up this news, I remembered writing about Samsung reportedly having issues manufacturing enough of the cameras for the Galaxy S5 last month. Samsung was reportedly having troubles getting the 16-megapixel rear-facing camera modules thin enough to fit into the already-thin frame on its now-available flagship smartphone.

Readers over the age of 25 will probably have less than fond memories of trying to retrieve precious data from floppy disks - the once popular, but extremely delicate data storage from a by-gone era. Whilst there is debate on how long these disks can hold their data (and they depend on huge variances), researchers have pulled off an impossible task - pulling data off nearly thirty year old discs from the Amiga 1000 computer. And the data wasn't just any old fluff, but an incredibly important insight into an emerging art form, by one of the world's most revered artists.

Pop artist Andy Warhol, commissioned by the Amiga Corporation in 1985 to produce digital art to promote the Amiga 1000, produced a number of images which called on his frequent subjects such as the Campbell's Soup tin, a self portrait and actresses Marilyn Monroe and Debbie Harry - the making of the latter which can be found below.

Whilst the 5.25" disks became the property of the Warhol Museum in Pennsylvania, curators had no means to read the discs and so they lay dormant, until arousing the attention of artist Cory Arcangel who led a successful effort to extract the data.

ASUS has teamed up with Kingston to build its first SSD, the HyperXpress SSD. The ASUS HyperXpress SSD is built into a 9.5mm-thick 2.5-inch form-factor drive, featuring the SATA Express interface - something that ASUS' upcoming motherboards will feature.

Inside of the HyperXpress is a host-agnostic RAID 0 array of two mSATA-based 6Gbps-capable SSDs, wired together on a host controller built by ASMedia. ASUS has shown this off to various media, stating that future versions of the drive could feature two M.2 SSDs versus using mSATA drives. The drive was tested with sequential rates as high as 778MB/sec. We should see and hear more about the ASUS HyperXpress SSD at Computex in June.

EA and DICE are finally getting around to solving the rubber-banding issues that have plagued Battlefield 4 since its launch. DICE said at the beginning of the month that it had plans to upgrade the BF4 servers as the developer was "unhappy" with the performance when rubber-banding came into play.

When DICE released the latest Naval Strike DLC, the problem was even more apparent, where DICE said the issue stemmed from "a configuration of certain hardware types dedicated to 64-player matches". DICE has reportedly done considerable testing on the new hardware to make sure the rubber-banding issues were fixed, and that performance is already better on the new servers.

DICE's VIce President and General Manager, Karl Magnus Troedsson said: "While the process took longer than we would've liked, we wanted to be 100 percent sure it was done right and that the long-term solution was properly in place".

Epic Games recently released its 4.1 update where it provided details of its plans that will help any independent game developers who wish to make a game using Unreal Engine 4.

Epic Games' Unreal Engine 4.1 is now available to the public and indie developers, provided they're signed up in its $19/mo subscription plan. The company also said that the designers could be eligible for some free tools for indie developers to make games.

They've also mentioned in its notes that it will be providing full support for SteamOS and Linux, therefore giving more choice and platform options for indie developers. This move made by Epic will provide easy options for those game developers who wish to have their games powered by Unreal Engine 4 beyond Windows powered PCs, and even for Sony PS4 and Xbox One.

Finding interesting news stories on Facebook has become increasingly hard to do over the last few years, and that is mainly due to the dilution of the news feed caused by so many useless and noninformative pages. Today Facebook launched a new service that is aimed at making it much easier to find what news stories are trending on the service, and it's called FB NewsWire.

FB Newswire is powered by Storyful, one of the leading social content discovery services. The new service aggregates news content that has been shared publicly on Facebook originating from individuals and organizations from around the world. Facebook says that it has designed FB Newswire for Journalist and individuals in an effort to make the hot topics and trending news better accessible. As a long-time tech journalist, I can attest to how big of a role Facebook plays in story discovery, and will definitely put this new service to use.

In the mid 1900's most states adopted laws that forced car manufacturers to only sell their vehicles through independent local dealers instead of through their own sales dealerships. While these laws prevented market domination of a single manufacturer, it has become a hinderance for smaller manufacturers such as Tesla to get their vehicles sold in many states. Today the Federal Trade Commission finally voiced its opinion on the banning of direct Tesla vehicle sales by several states.

"For decades, local laws in many states have required consumers to purchase their cars solely from local, independent auto dealers. Removing these regulatory impediments may be essential to allow consumers access to new ways of shopping that have become available in many other industries," reads a post written by FTC directors Andy Gavil, Debbie Feinstein and Marty Gaynor.

Tesla sold just 22,000 cars last year which is barely a fraction of the 15 million total sales the entire new car industry sold. In the post, the FTC says that that number hardly makes Tesla a serious threat, and these lawns need changing. "What it could represent is a real change to the way cars are sold that might allow Tesla to expand in the future and prove attractive to other manufacturers, whether established or new ones that have yet to emerge, and consumers. Efforts to litigate, legislate, and regulate to eliminate Tesla's perceived threat have forced it to battle jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction for the simple right to sell its automobiles directly to consumers," the statement continued.

One of many storage and multimedia product manufacturer Transcend has launched JetDrive upgrade kits for MacBook systems. The upgrade kit is made specifically for professional photographers, videographers and graphic artists. Just like standard upgrade kits, these also come with an SSD/HDD to USB 3.0 enclosure, screw driver for T5 and P5 screws and even a travel pouch.

Transcend assures that its upgrade kits can provide up to 560 MB/s transfer speeds via SATA 6Gb/s, therefore promising to provide faster boot up and application load along with increased storage capacity. The drives also support TRIM.

It also comes with JetDrive Toolbox which uses S.M.A.R.T. data to display health status of the Transcend JetDrive SSD. These drives are backed by 5 year warranty support and the enclosures have warranty support of up to 2 years. In JetDrive 420, Transcend lists its performance numbers- Sequential Read up to 485MB/s and Sequential Write up to 410MB/s. The Jetdrive 500 is assured with Sequential Read of up to 495MB/s and Sequential Write of up to 427MB/s.

If you're in the market for a new smartphone, you really need to consider the OnePlus One smartphone - it has some of the best hardware baked inside of it, at just $299. It also runs CyanogenMod, which is a heavily modified Android ROM.

But how does it compare to the other super competitively priced Android-based smartphone, the Nexus 5? Well, Geek.com has booted both the smartphones up, with the OnePlus One taking just a couple of seconds to have the user in the OS, while the still-fast Nexus 5 takes much longer. I can't wait to get my hands-on the OnePlus One.

Two people from the Danish Geodata Agency have created a 1:1 model of Denmark in the most popular indie game, Minecraft.

This project was made by the agency's Simon Kokkendoft and Thorbjørn Nielsen who built the entire country using virtual block. The two used the data from their Geodata Agency to make an accurate 'block' version of Denmark.

The duo planned this project keeping environment and education in mind. According to the news report by Danish's news agency, the duo hopes that this Minecraft version of Denmark will be introduced in local schools so that students can learn everything from urban planning to environment preservation.

The last few months have seen fevered speculation that Director Peter Jackson would revisit the title of the forthcoming final entry in the Hobbitt franchise - There and Back Again, fuelled by the complete absence of promotional posters, trailers, or even a plug on last week's Desolation of Smaug Blu-ray release. Today, Jackson has taken to Facebook to confirm that he and Warner Bros have jointly decided to do just that.

In the long winded entry, Jackson has taken great pains to explain the rationale of renaming the film The Battle of Five Armies, and I must agree with most of them. Additionally, the new title has more aggressive undertones and probably appeals even more strongly to the established fan base.

Jackson also mentions the upcoming Blu-ray extended cut version of The Desolation of Smaug which will come with an additional 25 minutes of footage, far extending the extra 10 minutes that was granted to the extended cut of the already bloated An Unexpected Journey.