Latest News - Page 2889

This morning Twitter launched its long awaited and highly anticipated Initial Public Offering (IPO) on the New York Stock Exchange. Carrying the stock symbol, TWTR, the company went public at the opening bell which was rang by Sir Patrick Stewart himself. Twitter set its opening price to $26 per share, but that did not last very long.

Just seconds after opening, Twitter saw the opening transaction trade with 11 million of its offered 70 million shares sell for over $45 each. This effectively valued Twitter to be worth approximately $25.4 billion, which makes the total IPO to be roughly 1/10th of what the company is valued at. When the day is over and all 70 million shares are gone, Twitter will have raised more than $1.82 billion. While that number is far lower than the $16 billion Facebook raised, I suspect that Twitter will have far less fallout from its IPO than Facebook did.

At the time of this writing, Twitter is trading at $45.30 per share which is up almost 74-percent since the opening bell. How high the stock will rise is anyone's guess. I will update this post with a follow-up when the markets close today at 4pm, so bookmark this page and check back around 5pm for the latest update on how Twitter's IPO went.

Valve is set to light the entire gaming market on fire next year with the company firing on all cylinders with SteamOS, Steam Box, Steam Machines, Steam Controllers, and hopefully a slew of new games like Half-Life 3, Team Fortress 3, Left 4 Dead 3, and more.

Well, Microsoft has now chimed in with some 'advice' from Phil Spencer, Microsoft Studios' VP. He said: "Valve is right down the street from us. They've done a great job of keeping the PC ecosystem strong at a time where I don't mind saying that we could have been more focused on what was going on in PC gaming. We were probably too focused purely on console. With Steam, [Valve has] done an amazing job of building this thing that, in a lot of ways, we should have been building as well at Microsoft."

Spencer thinks that the Linux-based SteamOS will be a hard sell on consumers, and some hard times for Valve moving from developer and distributor to platform holder. He added: "That's an evolutionary jump. They made the jump from building Half-Life to having a set of franchises to running Steam. They did a good job of learning through that. Now they're taking the next job to become a platform company - in some sense a hardware company, but in the truest sense more of an OS company. That's not an easy transition."

We are weeks away from the launch of the Xbox One, and now Microsoft Studios' Vice President, Phil Spencer, has come out and reiterated Microsoft's commitment to PC gaming. The news comes from a chat between Spencer and Shacknews, where Spencer revealed that Microsoft has a few core gamer-focused titles in production for Windows.

Spencer said: "We probably have more individual projects on Windows than we've had in ten years at Microsoft Studios. At the launch of Windows 8, we had about 30 games in the Windows Store. A lot of those you'd consider lightweight or casual games... But we've covered all of that property now. Now we're starting to look at bigger and core gamer things. I'm excited by that."

One of the biggest surprises here is that Spencer noted that cross-platform interactivity and content-sharing will be a key part of Microsoft's strategy going into the future. Spencer added: "For us, we're first-party across all Microsoft devices. We definitely think about ourselves that way in our studios. If you think about a service like Spotify or Netflix, you expect that service to work on any device you have. For some games, it will be similar. I just want to have an Xbox Live account and it works on my phone, on my console, and my Windows machine. And then I'll be able to access my content in a screen-appropriate way."

Earlier this week, BlackBerry announced that its CEO, Thorsten Heins, would be stepping down as the company takes itself off the market and looks to rebuild with a $1 billion investment. While Heins departure might be just what the company needs, it is always sad to see the head of a company leave something he poured his life into.

In a letter pinned to employees this week, Heins has expressed is gratitude to "BlackBerry team members," and said that he feels John Chen will make an excellent choice for interim CEO. He went on to conclude the letter by stating that he is "BlackBerry's biggest fan, and would continue cheering on the company from the sidelines. The memo also states that BlackBerry will be hosting a town hall later this week to address employee concerns, and answer any questions they may have. I have copied the letter below in its entirety.

What is EA thinking? It has been trying to shake off The Consumerist's "Worst Company in America" award, but now a report on Reddit has shown that EA forced itself to unleash Battlefield 4 too early, so that it could have the jump on Call of Duty: Ghosts.

Well, it looks like there are all sorts of issues with Battlefield 4 - myself, no issues here - but according to a QA tester at DICE, EA pumped BF4 through quality control and testing in order to beat COD: Ghosts to the market. This means that the various teams at DICE simply didn't have the time to properly test all of the features of BF4, its guns, weapons, and more. There are massive bugs such as the one that mutes everyone on the server if any player chooses a silencer on a particular weapon.

You can read the entire thing above, which is quite shocking, and disappointing. It means that we'll have to wait months for the game to be more stable, which after the whole BF3 debacle, I was hoping we'd skip this time around.

Today Seagate announced that its Samsung HDD division has began shipping the all new Spinpoint M9T, a 2.5-inch HDD that measures in at just 9.5mm thick. This makes its the worlds thinnest 2TB HDD. The drive is targeted at OEMs of ultra-thin devices such as UltraBooks, Ultra-thin notebooks, and other portable devices needing large amounts of storage space.

"The M9T combines the highest areal density shipping in a single storage device with an innovative design that fits into mainstream notebook applications. While other 2TB are solutions on the market are 15 mm thick, the vast majority of mobile devices are designed to use a 9.5 mm drive; with the M9T, those devices can now have 2TB of storage, enabling a richer computing experience," said Dave Frankovich, senior product line manager, Samsung HDD.

"Samsung HDD with the new Spinpoint M9T continues to lead the effort in aerial density in a small form factor to supply our channel partners and customers with the highest-capacity and thinnest storage solution in the market," said Doug DeHaan, general manager, Samsung HDD division. "With consumer demand for storage capacity continuing to grow in mobile applications, the M9T answers this demand and is positioned to fulfill capacity needs in virtually any application."

Microsoft is looking to take on Spotify and Pandora in terms of free music streaming with its Xbox Music service on the Xbox One. The company confirmed in a tweet, that Xbox One owners will not have to subscribe to Xbox Music to stream music to the console, but that they would experience the occasional advertisement as a result.

This aligns Xbox Music on the Xbox One with the services Windows and Web versions which also allow free streaming through the use of advertisements. Unfortunately, Microsoft made no mention on if the Xbox 360 would be getting this same feature, or if it were exclusive to the Xbox One. With music streaming becoming more popular than illegal downloading these days, Microsoft is making a good move here and should compete well with other free streaming services like Spotify and Pandora.

It's not often that find a watch that I would consider wearing on my wrist every day, but the Oscilloscope Watch project on Kickstarter is something I would wear every day! The Oscilloscope Watch has all the features of a modern watch combined with all the features of the popular Xprotolab (Oscilloscope, Waveform Generator, Logic Analyzer, Protocol Sniffer, Frequency Counter).

The Oscilloscope Watch is powered by an 8-bit XMEGA microcontroller that is programmed in C or Assembly and can be hacked by anyone with basic embedded electronics programming knowledge. The device is said to have a battery life of 12 hours when in Oscilloscope mode, but could last more than 30 days when in watch mode.

The current prototype features a high-contrast OLED screen, but depending on battery life in the production model, this could change to a 1.28-inch e-paper display that features a very high refresh rate. The projects founder, Gabriel Anzziani has set the funding goal to $60,000 and with 11 days left, he needs to raise another $9,000 to meet that goal. I feel that this is an awesome project and a pledge of just $99 will land you an Oscilloscope Watch, so what are you waiting for?

This morning the SD Association announced the all new Ultra High Speed (UHS) Speed Class 3 (U3) alongside a new designation symbol to identify products capable of recording 4K2K videos. This new speed class and symbol will be featured exclusively on SDXC UHS-I and UHS-II memory cards and devices and SDHC UHS-I and UHS-II memory cards and devices.

"The world's favorite SD memory card continues to evolve and meet shifting industry needs," said Brian Kumagai, president of the SD Association. "Our new UHS Speed Class 3 standard will give consumers and businesses more flexibility and capability as the market shifts to 4K2K video formats. Both SDXC and SDHC memory card standards already offer the massive storage needed to support 4K2k video with enough room to store photos, music, documents and other data on a single portable card."

The new UHS U3 compatible SD cards will feature a lightening fast 30Mb/second sustained minimum write speed which is critical when shooting ultra high resolution 4K2K video. This new speed standard will also facilitate faster write times in high-megapixel DSLR cameras as well as high-bitrate audio recording devices. New devices offering the UHS Speed Class 3 will be backwards compatible and will work with existing SD memory cards.

If you haven't heard about Lavabit, well, it was the e-mail service that Edward Snowden used until it was pretty much forced to close its electronic doors. The creator of the service, Ladar Levison, has now launched a Kickstarter campaign, where he's trying to raise funds for a dark mail encrypted e-mail service.

The dark mail service requires $196,608 in order to take the Lavabit source code and bake it into a free, and open-source project with the new dark mail protocol. Dark mail is looking to deliver a next-generation form of e-mail with end-to-end encryption, free from the prying eyes of our governments and their spy agencies.

The campaign will also be delivering the first dark mail clients to Windows, Mac, Linux, Android and iOS.

Apple's new iPad Air uses some impressive display technology from IGZO, which has resulted in a reduction of weight of over 25%. Most of ths is thanks to lowered power consumption, which allows the iPad Air to feature a thinner battery, too.

IHS iSuppli has released its cost analysis, which points out that Apple's iPad Air uses just 36 LEDs to light the display, which is down from as many as 84 LEDs in previous models of the iPad. The iOS giant has also reduced the thickness of the display assembly, so with all of this display-related changes, we can see that the company has been capable of improving the size and weight of the new iPad Air.

But, does this lead to a better-looking display? Not exactly. Ray Soneria from DisplayMate Technologies has said that while the IGZO-based technology in the iPad Air has allowed for a thinner, more battery-friendly tablet, it doesn't look as good as something like the Kindle Fire HDX 8.9 display, which is based on LTPS (low temperature polysilicon technology). LTPS offers even better performance, and lower power requirements than the IGZO display.

Back when Valve first announced SteamOS, we all knew that it would be something big, and today we got a glimpse of just how big it may be. 4A Games, the guys behind Metro: Last Light have just finished porting the game to Linux with full support for SteamOS, and a visit to the games page on Steam (Source link below) will confirm this.

A report from Shacknews, states that Metro: Last Light will be fully compatible with SteamOS and the Steam Controller in time for those lucky 300 to play on their beta-edition Steam Machines. Metro: Last Light is available now on Steam for just $39.99, but lets be honest, who has time to play with both Battlefield 4 and Call of Duty: Ghosts both out right now!

Today Nikon introduced a new DSLR that is sure to make many aging photographers feel nostalgic. The new retro-inspired Nikon Df is actually a state of the art DSLR that features a 16.2-megapixel full frame imaging sensor, the same one featured in the D4. The body of the new Df is constructed of magnesium and weighs in at just 710-grams.

The new Nikon Df features an ISO range of 100-12,800 and can be expanded to 50-204,800 which will ensure that even the darkest lit environments will photograph nice and bright. An Expeed Image Processor is on board to facilitate the quick writing of images to the camera's storage card. Shutter life is said to be a whopping 150,000 cycles, and the shutter can snap open at 1/1,400th of a second.

The camera is compatible with all vintage Nikon non-AI lenses as well as the company's current Nikkor line of premium autofocus lenses. Unlike many analyst speculated, the Df does in fact feature a traditional mirror design as all proper professional DSLRs should. Rounding things out is a 3.2-inch LCD screen that has a pixel density of 921 dots. The new Nikon Df will arrive on November 28th at a pricing point of $4,414 with a 50mm kit lens.

It's that time again everyone! Of course I am talking about the arrival of a new Humble Bundle and a fun and easy way to support some great charities. The new Humble Bundle features 6 games from Warner Bros. Games including Batman: Arkham Asylum GOTY, F.E.A.R. 2: Project Origin, F.E.A.R. 3, and Lord of the Rings: War in the North.

For those who wish to pay a little extra to beat the average, ($4.56 at the time of this writing) you will also pick up Steam keys for Batman: Arkham City GOTY, and Scribblenauts Unlimited. This bundles chosen charity is the We Can Be Heroes foundation, which is designed to raise awareness and critical funds needed to fight the devastating hunger crisis in the Horn of Africa and bring help and hope to eight million people who are in urgent need of assistance.

I have purchased almost every humble bundle and weekly sale that has been offered so far, and today is no exception. I urge everyone to jump in and even if you can only afford to donate $1 you will land some sweet games, and help out a deserving charity at the same time. Do you plan on purchasing the new Humble Bundle? Let us know in the comments. For more on the We Can Be Heroes charity, check out the video below.

Yesterday it appeared that OCZ's stock was in a downward fall that was unstoppable before leveling off near the closing bell at $0.73. Today the stock fell yet another 38-percent to just $0.39 per share at its lowest, and like yesterday it rebounded slightly and closed at $0.44 per share.

As of this posting, OCZ has yet to release an official statement, and this has further led to investor confidence falling. A quick Google search will turn up dozens of industry analyst questioning just how long the company has left before it is forced to fill bankruptcy, and even more complaints on forums across the internet where customers are complaining about failed Vertex SSD drives.

While I am still mystified about the company's lack of response to this crisis, I have developed a new theory on what may be going on. A few weeks back we reported that Toshiba might be looking to buy OCZ outright, but nothing ever materialized from this. I have a very small suspicion that OCZ may be keeping quiet in order to force their price even lower to draw in someone looking to pick them up at what might be a steal. This would wash the company's leaders hands of things and they would get off with a nice payday.

This morning Activision announced the official launch of the next installment in its Call of Duty franchise. Call of Duty: Ghost is built an all new, next-generation engine and places players in a battle scenario where they are heavily outnumbered and outgunned. This is a first for the series, and Activision is billing it as an "Epic Thrill Ride" that takes the franchise to the next level.

"The launch of Call of Duty has become a pop-cultural event shared by millions around the globe. We consider this a huge honour and it drives us to exceed our fans' expectations each and every time," said Eric Hirshberg, CEO of Activision Publishing Inc. "Call of Duty: Ghosts delivers on this promise with an epic thrill ride which takes the franchise to new heights on both current and next gen consoles. The teams at Infinity Ward, Raven and Neversoft have poured their hearts and souls into making this the must have gaming experience of the next generation. And of course, none of this would be possible without the most passionate fans in the world. Today is for them."

The game kicks off when the "Orbital Defense Initiative" or ODIN space station launches a strike on the earth after an intense firefight in space lands the weapon in the wrong hands. With your home destroyed, your brother and you come across an elite group of soldiers who are known as the Ghosts. You join up with their group and fight together as a squad to defend what's left of the earth. Our own Simon Hutchinson will have his full review of the game up soon, so stay tuned to TweakTown for the latest on Call of Duty: Ghosts.

We know that Call of Duty: Ghosts will be filling up all of those pixels natively on 1080p displays on the PlayStation 4, but it won't be doing so on the Xbox One, a console where Call of Duty sells better this generation, anyway.

We've been all over it in the news, because it's a big problem when a game can't run at 1080p at 60FPS on a next-gen console, especially a game like COD: Ghosts. Well, the developer of the game, Infinity Ward, has come out and explained why their title won't be running at native 1080p on the Xbox One. Infinity Ward head honcho, Mark Rubin, said that they had to sacrifice resolution in order to get the game at a continuous 60 frames per second.

He continued: "It's very possible we can get it to native 1080p [resolution]. I mean I've seen it working at 1080p native. 's just we couldn't get the frame rate in the neighbourhood we wanted it to be. And it wasn't a lack of effort. It wasn't that it was like last minute. We had the theoretical hardware for a long time. That's the thing you get pretty quickly and that doesn't change dramatically. It was more about resource allocation. The resource allocation is different on the consoles. That huge web of tangled resources, whether it's threads-based or if it's GPU threads or if it's memory - whatever it is - optimisation is something that could go theoretically on forever."

For two years running, EA has won The Consumerist's "Worst Company in America' award, which has forced the company to look into what it had done to get so many customers angry, and is still working on it to this day according to the freshly-appointed CEO, Andrew Wilson.

Wilson spoke with Polygon, where he said: "Whether you respect the source or not, I think it was a wake up call, and it was absolutely something that we spent a lot of time and energy over, and continue to spend a lot of time and energy over. For us, it was less about, 'How do we not get voted the worst company again?' but more about, 'Okay, are there things that we could do differently or things that we have done that have been misinterpreted that would cause people to feel that way?"

EA's goal, according to Wilson, is to "build great games and services." He added: "What we have been doing over time is really working to either update those things or eliminate those things, and really get back to our focus on games. Because at the end of the day, if we're making great games and services, we won't get voted worst company in America again."

Earlier today, I reported on OCZ's stock taking a nosedive earlier today which saw the stock dip by almost 40-percent. While company stocks rising and falling is the nature of the stock exchange, it is quite unusual for a company to not release a statement in times of extreme fluctuations such as what OCZ saw today, and we are left wondering what is going on.

"OCZ has been dogged by liquidity/solvency fears for some time. The company ended its August quarter with just $10.6m in cash, in spite of raising $13.1M during the quarter. It has also declined to provide November quarter guidance, citing "uncertainties in being able to procure forecasted flash amounts and credit constraints," read an email alert from investor advisement website, Seeking Alpha.

While it is still unclear what is going on, we do know that OCZ is in the midst of major financial troubles and todays dip represents a new 52 week low for the SSD manufacturer. The dip down to $0.65 per share equates to more than 6x OCZ's daily average and the only thing I see happening from this is the company filing bankruptcy within the next week or two. I have dispatched an email to OCZ requesting a comment on today's market decline and have yet to receive a reply, I will update this post if and when more information comes in.

OCZ may have finally came to the end of its journey as a maker of SSDs if this mornings stock trading is any indication. Soon after the markets opened on Monday, OCZ began to see its stock price began to sharply decline from its opening price of $1.07 to just over $0.80 at the time of this writing.

It appears that investors have lost all confidence in OCZ after almost a year of poor performance numbers, high operational cost, and financial woes. OCZ has a monthly overhead of more than $2 million and that is before it pays its employee salaries. You might recall earlier this year when the NASDAQ threatened to Delist OCZ from its index after the company failed to disclose financial earnings. Is this the end of OCZ, or will the stock rebound before the close of trading today? Stay tuned to TweakTown for the latest breaking information on OCZ and all of the happenings in the tech world.