Latest News - Page 2884

Oh my... Shaquille O'Neal is making a sequel to Shaq Fu, and has taken to IndieGoGo for the $450,000 he needs to make it happen. You might want to fund it, after you've checked out the trailer below:

Considering Shaq has mountains of money, why does he need to ask for crowdfunded money to get his game off the ground? Here's the explanation:

When Ubisoft delayed Watch Dogs, most expected it to have very nefarious reasoning behind it, but it's not that drastic. Watch Dogs' Senior Producer, Dominic Guay, wrote on Ubisoft's official blog, giving his version of the events.

Guay said it came down to issues with planning and testing, adding that Watch Dogs was complete, and playable from "front-to-back". He said that getting everything together and working like it needed to for launch "takes time", and "it's really hard to predict how much time that's going to take".

So now we know that Watch Dogs was complete, but needed that final spit polish before it was released to the foaming mouths of gamers across the world. Personally, I think there were some last minute performance issues that needed to be fixed up - with some of the videos I've seen (online, and in-person) not looking that great when the action on-screen was hectic. At the end of the day, I just want me some Watch Dogs.

Users will now be able to get their hands-on the first public release of VLC media player for Windows 8 via the Windows store on March 10th, coming this Monday. The announcement was made by VideoLAN via its Twitter account.

Earlier in 2012, VLC started a Kickstarter campaign which ended as a success in raising the necessary funds. Along the way, VideoLAN showed off their work-in-progress media app player. Some time ago, it was reported that VLC received approval and will be placed in the Microsoft app store. Now that the team was able to take care of last minute bug fixes, it was two days away for its release.

The Windows 8 app version would lack in some features on its first release, such as subtitle support. But the app will have support for snap view and content streaming. Seeing that VideoLAN team has prepped the app after a very long time, its just a matter of time VLC media player becomes the good old favourite player for Windows 8 and 8.1.

Former Apple, Inc's CEO John Sculley is going to launch a new smartphone brand for India. He'll be partnering with the former head of Micromax's smartphone division and HTC's India head Ajay Sharma. The team is based on former employees of HTC and Micromax and is funded by a Singapore-based investment and acquisition company 'Inflexionpoint'.

Though the name of the brand is not yet revealed, the unnamed company plans to launch its series of smartphones and feature phones at April. These phones are said to be priced between Rs. 5,000 to Rs. 15,000 which is that's approximately $82- $245.

India has a very large market presence for smartphone enough for a new brand to start, like how other local brands did in the past. According to IDC, in 2012 India has received up to 16.2 million in mobile unit shipments, but grew as high as 44 million in 2013. However, due to the influx of tier 1 and local brands selling phones in almost all price segments, it might be difficult to make any significant impact upon release. However, Ajay Sharma seems very optimistic as he claims he will have a different approach towards positioning and USP.

Target is restructuring following a massive data breach in which the retailer was warned of security issues beforehand, and cybercriminals were able to deploy malware on the company's in-store point-of-sale machines.

"It's a decision that should have been made by the CEO on January 1, not through the resignation of an employee that overlooked critical weakness in the operating model," said Brian Sozzi, Belus Capital Advisors CEO, in a statement to Reuters.

Jacob is the first Target executive to resign - and it's possible others will either receive walking papers, or "quit" - and an interim CIO will be chosen to help move Target's cybersecurity forward. It seems shocking that Jacob didn't quit earlier, or that CEO Gregg Steinhafel didn't show her the door earlier, but expect the company to find an external hire next.

PAPAGO is known for its in-car dash cameras, and with its camera technology being such a success the company has created an entirely new division centered around action cameras. The new PAPAGO GoLife Extreme is the first installment into this line of HD action cameras and represents one of the most affordable of its kind on the market today retailing for just $269.99.

The GoLife Extreme has been designed with ruggedness in mind and features an aluminum alloy body with a crystal clear protective cover over the lens. The camera features a image resolution of 1920x1080 and has an effective field of view of about 160 degrees. Weighing in at just 80-grams the GoLife Extreme is much lighter than the GoPro or Contour HD and comes with a mount as well as a tripod.

The GoLife Extreme also features built-in Wi-Fi which is only used for file transfer, but allows users to view their video capture in real-time via an Android or iOS app on their mobile device. The GoLife Extreme App also allows users to adjust the camera's settings, and save their videos to the cloud. I got a chance to check out the GoLife Extreme for myself at CES 2014 earlier this year and will be utilizing a few of them in an upcoming Maker / DIY project here at TweakTown, so keep your eyes open for that in the coming month!

Tablets and smartphones helped force users into a mobile lifestyle, in which e-mails, content, work, and entertainment need to be optimized for non-PC devices.

Businesses risk downtime, lost productivity, legal problems, and possible customer backlash if data is compromised, especially due to negligence, and presents a unique problem.

"I haven't seen a lot of good products to add to tablets and smartphones - yet," said Bruce Campbell, Clare Computer Solutions VP of Marketing, in a statement to TweakTown. "While malware for these devices is on the rise, the more common problem is these devices being lost or stolen with personal or company data. Software that will enable the device to be 'wiped' clean if stolen or lost is a good idea."

When we first heard rumors about Apple's iPhone 5C we all expected a cheaper version of the iPhone to be released by the company, but sadly that was not the case. The iPhone 5C debuted to the world as a very expensive iPhone 5 wrapped in a new plastic skin, and when asked about a cheaper version, Apple basically laughed in everyone's faces.

As with everything in the consumer-driven world, the consumer will glorify a product or condemn it to obscurity, and it appears that the public has spoken. A new report from VR-Zone is cluing us in on how well the iPhone 5C is actually doing. Since its release, reports have been flooding in that the iPhone 5C is a horrible failure for Apple and this new report suggest that the company has as many as 3 million units sitting in distribution warehouses just collecting dust.

While that may not sound like a big deal, you need to take into consideration that Apple usually has a hard time keeping iPhone's in enough supply to meet demand. With 3 million units sitting idle now, that number could double before Apple releases a new iPhone later this year, and with a manufacturing cost of about $200 each, Apple has roughly $600 million tied up in iPhone 5C units that just wont sell. Fortunately Apple has almost $100 billion sitting idle as well, so $600 million is just another drop in the bucket.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently discussed his country's budding cybersecurity industry, which is tasked with stopping attacks from Islamist militant organizations and cybercriminal groups.

During the interview, Netanyahu was asked about companies purchasing Israeli technologies and whether they should be worried of NSA-like spying behavior.

"My point is that to build in Israel a global center for cybersecurity, in other words to prevent this spying to prevent the piracy, to prevent sabotage" Netanyahu said in an interview transcribed by BloomBerg. "You have user accounts. You have to protect them. You have bank accounts. You have to protect them. You have electricity grids. You have to protect them, traffic systems and aviation systems. All of these can be both individually and national infrastructures could be imperiled by cyber-attacks, are imperiled by cyber-attacks."

Andrew Meldrum, a 30-year-old British citizen, has been found guilty of three counts of unauthorized access to computer material after "fixing" webcams so he could remotely watch as many as three victims.

Meldrum was first suspected after one of the victims reported her computer was acting strangely, and it snowballed from there - one victim spoke with someone else, and victim 2 contacted a third victim - all three had the convicted creeper work on their PCs.

"I would like to thank all witnesses in this investigation but especially the three victims who game evidence on matters that were clearly of a private, intimate and personal nature to them," said Nick Pailthorpe, Southwark Borough CID, in a press statement. "I hope that they can take some consolation in the guilty verdict that sends out a clear message to anyone that this type of intrusion into a person's private life is not acceptable and the Metropolitan Police will support all victims and pursue all suspects."

Fruit jam and jelly company Smucker's reportedly suffered an online store data breach, with customer names, mailing addresses, e-mail, phone numbers, credit and debit card numbers, expiration dates, and verification codes at risk.

Security experts believe a sophisticated Trojan is likely to blame for Smucker's issues, with information siphoned from online web server applications.

"We are extremely disappointed this incident occurred and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause," Smucker's officials said in an online state. "Please be assured, we continue to thoroughly investigate this matter with federal authorities, and have taken steps to rectify the cause of this incident with the Online Store website."

Plextor is gearing up to unveil its new high-performance M6 series of SSDs at the upcoming CEBIT 2014 conference being held next week in Hannover, Germany. Plextor's M6 line-up consist of several form factors of solid state drives including mSATA, M.2, PCIe, and 2.5-inch SATA drives, and the company says that attendees can check out the full lineup on March 10 - 14 in its showcases in the Business Center (Hall 15, Stand A18, Room 18) and at Planet Re-seller (Hall 15, Stand D21, Number 66).

Plextor will show off the new M6S 2.5-inch SSD which features new sustained sequential read / write speeds up to 520 MB/s and 440MB/s and random read / write speeds up to 94,000 and 80,000 IOPS. The M6S will also feature the latest generation of advanced 19nm Toggle NAND flash from Toshiba. The new M6M mSATA SSD will also be on display and features read/write speeds of 520 MB/s and 440MB/s, and random read/write speeds of 94,000 and 80,000 IOPS.

For those looking for extreme performance, the new M6E PCIe SSD will be on display as well. Plextor says that the M6E is the company's first native PCI express SSD solution to eliminate the performance bottleneck of SATA III. The M6e is capable of delivering sequential read / write speeds up to 770/625 MB/s and random read / write speeds of 105,000 / 100,000 IOPS. The M6e is automatically recognized as an AHCI device requiring no additional drivers. When used as a boot disk on a system with UEFI start-up times are cut in half.

If you have ever walked through the oil section in your local store, you have probably seen the yellow Pennzoil bottles sitting on shelves. Pennzoil is sponsoring what may be the coolest thing going on at SXSW 2014 in Austin. The oil company will be letting visitors race in real-world Mario Karts.

The event is called Mario Karting Reimagined and it is inspired by Mario Kart 8 and sponsored in part by Nintendo. Visitors to the show will be able to slip behind the wheel of a real Mario Kart and race around the track in competition with other users.

The karts will be able to run over Pennzoil logos on the track that will give their Kart special powers. You won't get to toss turtle shells at your opponents, but the power-ups will make the cart slower or faster. The racing action will be broadcast at SXSW on a big Jumbotron for everyone to see.

Fitness tracking devices are very popular today with a number of companies offering wearable devices to track your vitals. Many of these devices are wearables in the form a of a watch with embedded sensors. If you are the sort of person that doesn't like to wear watches, but you want to monitor your health Azoi has a case for your iPhone that might be perfect.

The case is called the Wello and it works with sensors to monitor your health functions and present them via an iPhone app. The case can measure your blood pressure, ECG, heart rate, blood oxygen, temperature, ling function, and more.

It appears that the smartphone case doesn't offer you statistics in real-time; you have to stop and hold the case for it to work. There are sensors embedded on the case that gather your data. The case also supports remote access allowing family members or others to keep an eye on your statistics.

Trying to keep PCs and devices safe from increasing numbers of cyberattacks hasn't been easy, with sophisticated malicious code targeting PCs.

Even with elevated malicious attacks in the wild, there are a few basic steps that can be done to boost defenses before something critical occurs.

The first step: "Make sure you have up-to-date Anti-Virus software - preferably not the freeware versions," said Bruce Campbell, IT outsourcing company Clare Computer Solutions, in a statement to TweakTown. "For home users, make sure you activate the Norton or McAfee that comes with the computer, and renew it every year."

One of the most prolific types of theft around the world today is the theft of smartphones. The reason is that smartphones are very common, worth a lot of money, and relatively easy to steal and resell. Authorities around the world are working with carriers in an effort to help curb theft.

The carriers are introducing methods that will make stolen or lost devices unusable for whoever has them. The hope is that by making it known that the smartphone a thief steals won't work the thefts will stop. Sprint has announced that it will begin adding all lost and stolen smartphones its customers report to an international stolen property database.

The database is called CheckMend and it will be open to carriers and police to use. The idea is that by listing all of the devices users buying a used phone can check to see if it has been reported stolen or lost. If the device shows up on the list Sprint won't activate the phone.

HTC has rolled out a new budget smartphone that aims at offering maximum value to the user. The smartphone is called the HTC Desire 310 and it will land in Taiwan next month. The smartphone promises seamless multitasking, video creation, and smooth web surfing for the entry-level users.

The phone has a 1.3GHz quad-core processor that promises enough power for smooth mobile gaming and other needs. The phone runs Android for the OS and has HTC BlinkFeed for the home screen. The phone supports an offline reading mode that lets the user save up to 120 articles when they are on Wi-Fi networks to read when networks aren't available.

The Desire 310 has a 4.5-inch screen with an unspecified resolution. Don't expect high resolution since this is a budget smartphone. The 301 also has a 5MP rear camera for shooting images and video. HTC is staying mum on pricing right now and there is no word on availability outside Taiwan.

Back in January, we mentioned that IBM had sold its low-end x86 server business to Lenovo. As part of the deal, Lenovo would get a facility in China where the servers were made and the staff working at that facility. It seems that the workers at the IBM International System Technology Company factory in Shenzhen aren't happy about the deal.

About 1000 workers at that factory have been on strike and the factory has stopped manufacturing for at least four days. One of the striking workers says that the strike will continue. The worker noted that so far the company had ignored the demands of the workers.

As you can guess, the strike has to do with money. The workers want better pay to move to Lenovo or they want better severance packages if they choose to leave the company. An IBM spokesperson says that the deals offered to these workers are on par with what they have now.

A Mexican website that was a source for information containing, news, discussion and point of view from many protestors about the new President of Mexico Enrique Peña Nieto at a wake of a controversy in December 1st 2012. The website 1dmx.org grew over the time.

When the protests' first anniversary was near, the website included information about organized campaign against a bill that was going to criminalize protest in Mexico and even made preparations to document the entire protests. However, but December 2nd 2013, the website was taken offline by its host 'GoDaddy' without any notice.

The U.S. based GoDaddy hosting company told the site owners that the site was suspended as it was a part of an ongoing law enforcement investigation. It was also revealed that the office who is in charge of the investigation was lead by Special Agent Homeland Security investigations, US embassy in Mexico City. It was also found that the contact email to this agency was from 'ice.dhs.gov' domain, which is used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement department.

Russia Today America anchor, Liz Wahl, resigned on air during her broadcast on Wednesday, stating that she could no longer work at the Kremlin-funded network after Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Wahl said that she feels "many ethical and moral challenges," especially since her grandparents fled to the US during the Soviet era, "ironically to escape the Soviet Union". She continued: "Personally I cannot be part of a network funded by the Russian government which whitewashes the actions of Putin. I'm proud to be an American and believe in disseminating the truth, and that is why after this newscast I'm resigning".

RT America flew to defensive maneuvers, calling Wahl's on-air resignation a "self-promotional stunt". In a statement to BuzzFeed, RT America said: