Latest News - Page 2866

Paramount Pictures will release a 3D version of "Noah," but it will not be available in the United States, as the studio hopes to generate added revenue in 65 foreign markets.

"Noah" won't be available in 3D for U.S., U.K., Australian and French markets, with the audience expected to embrace "the combination of the pedigree of the director and the cast and the dramatic elements of the story," The Hollywood Reporter learned.

Although 3D technology has piqued interest in movie goers and consumers, they are still rather unwilling to pay even more for 3D in the theater - and don't trust 3D HDTVs at home quite yet. It will be revealing to see which movies are released in 3D while at the theater and which geographic markets are targeted.

When you combine the rise of digital cameras with the boom in social media, and then cross the two with an increase in popularity of outdoor activities, you develop a need for a way to take photos in any environment, no matter how demanding it may be. Ricoh thinks that it may have solved this issue with its new WG-4 and WG-20 ruggedized, waterproof digital cameras.

The WG-4 comes in two varieties; one with GPS, and One without GPS. Both models feature a 16-megapixel CMOS sensor with an ISO range up to 6400, and an aperture of f/2.0 combine for excellent low-light performance. A zoom range of 25mm up to 100mm ensure that you always get the shot no matter if you need to shoot something wide or tight. The WG-4 series featres 29 shooting modes, which includes 16 scene presets, as well as full HD video recording. A rear 3-inch LCD is available as well to help in composing the perfect shot.

The WG20 features a lesser 14-megapixel camera, and only 5X zoom, but has a digital microscope feature with five LED lights for extreme close up macro shots. A 2.7-inch rear LCD is present and video recording at 720p is on board. All three cameras are waterproof to 45-feet for up to two hours, 32-feet for the WG-20, as well as being dust-proof, shock-resistant, able to survive crushing weight of up to 220-pounds, and resistant to temperatures as low as 14f.

External hard drives are one of the most convenient devices a person on the go can have, but they are quite fragile when it comes to falls from desk, rough handling, and frequent trips to and from inside a full backpack. With the recent drop in SSD prices, more companies are forgoing the external spinner and opting for something more solid.

Today Apacer launched its new AS710, a portable SSD that is designed to be carried with you where ever you may go. The company said that the AS710 is the first external SSD that is equipped with both a SATA III interface as well as USB 3.0 connectivity, which provides unparalleled speeds. Real-world testing shows that the SATA III interface is capable of sequential read speeds up to 550MB/s and sequential write speeds of 530MB/s. The external drive itself can reach speeds of 380MB/s and 420MB/sec through a USB 3.0 connection. This means that it takes less than 15 seconds to copy a 5GB video file over to the drive when using USB 3.0.

The Apacer AS710 is available at a capacity of 128GB and measures in at just 7mm thick. Its stylish exterior housing is comprised of aluminum with a black finish and machined edges for a very sleek look. The device features 30G anti-vibration protection as well as 3000G anti-shock protection. The SSD itself supports Microsoft Windows-To-Go,which allows one to store the start-up system from his/her Windows 8 Enterprise install directly onto the SSD. Additionally the drive boasts built-in advanced wear leveling and Error Correction Code (ECC) functions and supports Win7 Trim command, ensuring enhanced reliability of data transmission and longer service life for higher stability of data storage.

Should Apple make an Android-powered smartphone? Steve Wozniak seems to think so. In a recent interview with WIRED, Wozniak said that he feels that Apple would do well competing in the Android market space. He said, "There's nothing that would keep Apple out of the Android market as a secondary phone market, We could compete very well... People don't really choose their smartphones based on features," added Wosniak. "I think Apple is superior at being able to say no."

"People like the precious looks of styling and manufacturing that we do in our product compared to the other Android offerings. We could play in two arenas at the same time," Wozniak said. "The great products really come from secret development," he said. "You put small teams of great people on them and they aren't bothered by other people commenting on what they're doing while they're doing it. A whole new category of products doesn't happen very often. It might happen once a decade. Sometimes you have to wait for one of those to come about."

I have to agree with this statement, as the numbers do not lie. Apple has a cult following for its iPhone, and even people who do not like the current versions continue to buy the device because they feel that they have to if they wish to stay relevant in their social circles. If Apple were to release an iPhoneDroid, iAndroid or any device running Android, people would buy it with out question, not because of Android, but because of Apple's false sense of high-quality, and the idea that just because its Apple-made, it is a superior device.

In addition to selling off its VAIO PC business unit, Sony also plans to spin off its TV lineup as 5,000 employees will be given walking papers by 2015, according to recent reports.

As part of its latest restructuring plan, Sony announced it will cut 5,000 global jobs by March 2015 - and hopes to cut almost $1 billion per year in fixed costs. Sony also plans to spin off its TV division into an independent company within the next five months.

Japanese electronics manufacturers have struggled to compete against rising global competition, especially from Korean and Chinese rivals. Japan Industrial Partners will secure the Sony PC division, ensuring it won't head to Lenovo, the Chinese PC manufacturer that is No. 1 in global sales.

World of Warcraft still holds the title of most popular MMORPG despite the game itself being a decade old, and today fans are getting a glimpse of what the next expansion will bring. Titled Warlords of Draenor, the fourth expansion takes WoW to the next level with upgrades in graphics in the form of much more detail being added to the character models as well as the actual game world.

Unfortunately, Blizzard has decided to keep the same game engine it has been using for years, and while the improvements will make the game look much better, its graphics will still lag behind current gaming standards by a few years. In the image below, you can see some of the new facial expressions and overall added detail to the Orc model for Warlords of Draenor.

As far as things go on the actual game-play side, this new expansion will be returning to WoW's roots and diving heavily into dungeon content to allow players to easily level up, and gearing up for those long raid sessions you have scheduled for Thursday night at 9pm. Additionally, a new Raid finder engine will be utilized so that raids can scale in difficulty based on the raids group size. Furthermore, a new Mythic level difficulty will be added which raids can participate in if they have 20 members.

Cyber criminals accelerated their focus on attacking mobile devices in 2013, with more than 11.6 million devices compromised as malware becomes increasingly sophisticated.

Google Android devices made up 60 percent of infected devices, with mobile malware sampling drastically increasing 20 times in 2013. Smartphone makers installing Android - and software developers - are slowly making changes to ensure they are able to offer more advanced security software alternatives.

"Not only is Android the largest smartphone market, unlike iPhone and BlackBerry, it allows apps to be loaded from third-party sites," said Kevin McNamee, Alcatel-Lucent Security architect, in a statement. "This provides cybercriminals with an unpoliced mechanism to distribute their malware which can easily evade detection by device-based anti-virus. Thus, in 2013 we saw an increased trend towards operators offering network based anti-virus security to subscribers as a service."

We have been expecting to see NVIDIA's successor to its Kepler GPU for some time now, and this morning images were leaked on VideoCards.com that are said to be the first Maxwell architecture GPUs off the line. Although a but blurry, the GPU's are clearly visible, but something unexpected lies below the surface.

The GM107-400 and GM107-300 pictured above both feature the same CUDA cores found in the GK106 chip but utilize the memory bus of the GK107 which shrinks the die by about 30-percent. This also allows the cards to consume significantly less power, so much so that the GeForce GTX 750 cards featuring the GM107-300 will not require any power connector on the board.

The GM107-300 is built on a 28nm process with a die size of 156mm square. It features 768 CUDA cores with a 128-bit memory bus. The GM107-400 is also built on a 28nm process and has a die size of 156mm square, but differs with 960 CUDA cores. Both chips feature a TDP of about 75 watts with the GM107-300 variant being a little cooler. The GM107-300 is slated to be featured in the GeForce GTX 750 while the GM107-400 will find its way into the Ti variant of the same card.

Newly appointed Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella plans to focus on mobile solutions and cloud computing during the early part of his reign as leader.

Nadella takes over for former CEO Steve Ballmer, as Ballmer leaves behind a 14-year-reign that has left many consumers and analysts disappointed. Nadella has served as the executive vice president behind Microsoft's cloud efforts, which doubled its growth last quarter.

The software giant has embraced cloud computing with success, as its Office 365 service is popular among businesses, non-profits, and educational institutions. However, disappointment with Windows 8/8.1 on the desktop and Windows RT and Windows Phone on mobile devices continues to frustrate users.

I still remember watching The Terminator, where they needed to smash the chip inside of the Terminator's head in order to fully destroy it. Well, DARPA on its path for ultimate robotic takeover of the world, is working with IBM on a self-destructing chip - something out of a sci-fi movie.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has awarded a contract to IBM that will see the company develop a CMOS chip that will self-destruct on command. The project is called Vanishing Programmable Resources (VAPR), that will prevent expensive, next-gen, classified military systems - such as a Terminator - from being captured, and reverse engineered by the enemy.

DARPA states on the webpage for VAPR: "It is nearly impossible to track and recover every [electronic] device [on the battlefield], resulting in unintended accumulation in the environment and potential unauthorized use and compromise of intellectual property and technological advantage".

Twitter has just posted its first earnings statement as a public company, with the social network posting a net loss of $511 million for Q4 2013, but ended the year with a total net loss of a staggering $645 million.

The company did double its revenue last year compared to 2012, hitting $664 million. Unfortunately, Twitter's stock price took a huge 16% hit after the news broke. CEO of Twitter, Dick Costolo, said: "Twitter finished a great year with our strongest financial quarter to date. We are the only platform that is public, real-time, conversational, and widely distributed, and I'm excited by the number of initiatives we have underway to further build upon the Twitter experience".

Twitter attributed the $645 million loss to "$521 million of stock-based compensation expense, of which $406 million was for restricted stock units previously granted to employees, for which no expense had been recognized, until the effective date of our initial public offering in accordance with [Generally Agreed Accounting Principles]".

Annual revenues from mobile augmented reality technology will eclipse $1.2 billion by 2015, according to Juniper Research, as the market continues to evolve at a rapid pace.

The mobile AR market reached just $180 million in 2013, as consumers and businesses become more familiar with mobile applications and services available. Specifically, video games, which accounted for 40 percent of AR downloads last year will help drive the industry in 2014 and 2015, respectively, though entertainment, lifestyle, and enterprise AR also is slated to increase.

As more companies appreciate the importance of mobile technologies, brands such as Nestle, Heinz, Uniliver, and other major corporations want to use AR to engage customers.

Today, ATP announced the release of the all new Velocity SI-LITE, an industrial-grade SATA II SLC SSD that is designed for use in rugged environments where flash storage is needed. The SI-LITE SSD utilizes the latest generation SLC Flash with industrial grade performance, endurance and wide temperature ranges to meet the unique requirements of the industrial market space.

ATP says that the Velocity SI-LITE features data-integrity-calibrated firmware technologies that protect the data storage device against various power-down and intensive read/write scenarios, which would damage lower-grade solid state storage. The drive offers sequential read speed of up to 181 MB/s and sequential write of up to 133 MB/s, and features up to 2,700 4KB Random Read IOPS.

Today, Linksys announced a new network attached storage system that is aimed at small to medium businesses that have a need for network video recording. The new LNR0208C is a standalone NVR system and is based on a Marvell 2GHz processor and a custom OS based on Linux. The device supports Linksys' full line of IP cameras as well as third-party cameras that utilize the ONVIF profile S standard.

The LNR0208C is capable of recording up to eight video streams at once and features remote live-view and playback capabilities. Additionally the device is capable of being linked up with any other NVR on the network to provide additional storage capacity. The LNR0208C features two hot-swappable bays for up to 8TB of storage capacity, with additional connectivity via dual eSATA ports, three USB 2.0 ports, and Gigabit Ethernet. The device also features four digital in and two digital out ports for connecting sensors and alarms that would trigger video recording.

By now most of you know that I live, eat, breath and sleep 3D printing, and its a hobby that I have enjoyed for the better part of a decade now. A few months ago during an interview with Sixense CEO, Amir Rubin, I was let in on a little project they were working on called MakeVR. Then just a few weeks ago at CES 2014 I had the chance to take a private demo of this software, and it turned my idea of 3D modeling for 3D printing upside down. Today Sixense launched the crowdfunding campaign for MakeVR on Kickstarter.

If Sixense's STEM system revolutionized the way we play games in Virtual Reality, then MakeVR will forever change the way we model 3D objects using VR. MakeVR is being billed as the worlds first immersive 3D modeling application that makes content creation for 3D printing natural, intuitive, and most importantly, fun! Over my years in the hobby, I have used or tried to use just about every 3D modeling program out there, and what I found is that many programs require a degree from a university just to be able to create anything more complex than a cube or sphere. With MakeVR things are so simple and natural that a kid can use the program to create very complex objects with little instruction.

With traditional 3D modeling programs, users have to deal with a mouse and keyboard interface. While this is OK for typical computing and gaming, when it comes to manipulating designs in 3 dimensional space a mouse and keyboard become a hindrance on fluid and dynamic creation. When talking to people about MakeVR I like to compare it to the way Tony Stark manipulates his designs and models in the Iron Man movies. You really do get to just grab the model out of thin air, and mold it into anything you imagination can come up with. In the image below, you will see a sort of cartoonish fire hydrant. In a normal modeling program this would take hours to build, but I watched the model for that hydrant built-in literally less than 20 minutes.

Lockheed Martin has fired the highest powered laser ever tested, with its new 30-kilowatt electric fiber laser. The record-breaking power output was reached by combining many fiber lasers into a single, near-perfect quality beam of light.

This is called Spectrum Beam Combining, which sends beams from multiple fiber laser modules, which each have their own unique wavelength. Combining them all into one super-powerful, high-quality beam. Dr. Ray O. Johnson, Senior VP and CTO of Lockheed Martin says: "Lockheed Martin has opened the aperture for high power, electrically driven laser systems suitable for military applications. Advancements in available laser components, along with the maturity and quality of our innovative beam-combining technology, support our goal of providing lightweight and rugged laser weapon systems for use on military platforms such as aircraft, helicopters, ships and trucks".

The company is aiming for a portable laser solution, with this being a step in that direction. Lockheed Martin received funding from the US Army, which is also working on laser mounted weapons with Boeing.

During an interview with USA Today, John Carmack said that before he joined virtual reality outfit Oculus, he proposed a deal to both Oculus and ZeniMax Media - the parent company of id Software.

Carmack said that he would've joined the worlds of of ZeniMax's games, like the upcoming Wolfenstein: The New Order and Doom 4 to the Oculus Rift. Carmack said: "It would have been a huge win. It seemed like a sensible plan for me". The companies couldn't make an agreement though, which left Carmack "really sad," to which he added: "When it became clear that I wasn't going to have the opportunity to do any work on VR while at id Software, I decided to not renew my contract".

Since November last year Carmack has been working full-time at Oculus VR, where he developing games for the Rift.

Sapphire Technology has announced the R7 250 Ultimate video card, a passively cooled video card based on the AMD Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture. No mechanical moving parts and a passive heat pipe and heat sink cooler that is quiet and fanless creates a great possibility of new video card designs, as demonstrated by Sapphire.

The video card has a core speed of 800MHz with 1GB of DDR5 memory, with Sapphire claiming it's the fastest passively cooled 1280bit GPU currently available. AMD included support for up to three monitors, 4K ultra-high-definition, an HDMI 1.4a port, dual-link DVI port, and DisplayPort 1.2 port.

DirectX 11.1 support is provided and the card is Microsoft Windows 8-compatible, as AMD and Sapphire wanted to ensure latest software is supported.

Rumors have been swirling about a red Nexus 5 for months now, and today those rumors came true. This afternoon, Google and LG announced that they have officially released a red version of the Nexus 5 through the Google Play Store. The Nexus 5 is of course the flagship phone for Android and is equipped with Android 4.4, a 5-inch 1080p IPS display, and a quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 processor.

"The Nexus line has always been about doing things differently and consumers who share this philosophy have been our most loyal fans," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "We're carrying this thinking over to the red Nexus 5, which we think will catch the eye of consumers who want to make an even bolder statement."

The red Nexus 5 will be available on Google Playâ„¢ starting this month in the United States, Canada, U.K., France, Germany, Italy, Spain, Australia, Hong Kong, India, Japan and Korea with wider availability across Europe by the end of the month. Customers will also be able to purchase a red Nexus 5 in retail stores in select markets. The red Nexus 5 retails for $349 for the 16GB version and $399 for the 32GB version on the Google Play Store.

After returning from its mission to the sun (satire), North Korea appears to have kicked its development of Red Star Linux into high gear. New screen shots have surfaced of the OS and they tell two very big tales. First off, the screen shots are square, so North Korea has yet to adopt widescreen technology. Secondly, Kim Jong Un must be a huge fan of Apple's OS X operating system.

Former iterations of the Linux-based OS took on a more Windows 7 desktop appearance, but these new screen captures are clearly a direct rip-off of Apple's OS X. Red Star Linux has been in development in the isolated country for more than a decade now, and this new OS X style version marks the third revision in the OS' history. The screen captures came from, Will Scott, a university professor who spent a semester teaching in Pyongyang at its University of Science.

The operating system does include a Mozilla-based web browser even though Internet access is restricted to most North Korean citizens. The browser is used to access a country-wide intranet that serves up websites for North Korean educational institutions, and government propaganda sites. The OS also features a copy of Wine so that some programs coded for Windows can be run. With such a blatant rip-off of OS X's theme, one is left wondering when we will see the first North Korean knock off iPhone or iPad arrive.