Latest News - Page 2897

Boutique gaming company Feenix has launched the Aria gaming headset, aimed towards providing gamers with better quality sound than regular headphones.

Using Japanese pine wood for the acoustic chamber, coupled with 50mm neodymium magnet drivers, Feenix wanted to bring audiophile sound to the gaming market. Aria owners have an immersive experience with 100% memory foam that surround the ear, and an independent clip microphone that provides "studio-grade recording" ability.

"For years gamers have been misled as to what they should be looking for in a gaming heaset," said Ashkon Shayani, Feenix Creative Director, in a press release. "Their choices have had nothing but poor sound quality, gimmicky features, and unnaturally over pronounced bass. The Aria focuses on providing high grade audio and reproducing sounds perfectly in studio monitor fashion. The result is the ability to hear sounds you never knew existed."

It appears that Sprint has yet again beat its competition to being the first to bring Android 4.4 to its high-end smartphones. Earlier this week, Sprint became the first US carrier to release the Android KitKat update for the Galaxy S4 Today it announced that Galaxy Note 3 devices on its service have began receiving the KitKat treatment as well.

Similar to the update for the Galaxy S4, and HTC One, the download is just over 500MB and is available as an OTA download. Android 4.4 brings several new features to the Galaxy Note 3 as well, including music album art on the lock screen, launcher selection setting, a camera shortcut on the lock screen and an overall improved user interface. Notifications of the update should pop up automatically, but users can also check for the update within the settings menu. Galaxy Note 3 devices on the Sprint network should show firmware version N900PVPUCNAB after the update completes.

The LED light bulb is slowly starting to replace the normal incandescent all around the world thanks to its longer life and green design. Philips is one of many companies that already offer LED light bulbs that can be controlled via a smartphone app. Philips first announced its iOS controlled LED lights in 2012.

The company has been tweaking those lights and has announced a new lighting system for retail stores that will not only light the way for shoppers; it will also help them find what they are looking for. The lighting system is intelligent and works with an app running on the user's smartphone.

The smartphone app knows where the user is in the store at all times thanks to connectivity from the lights in the ceiling. The app can help the user find exactly what they are looking for in the store isles without having to hunt someone who works there. That is a big benefit to the shopper and the lighting system helps the store too by offering the shopper timely discounts and coupons as they shop.

The first time Microsoft stepped into the tablet market with the original Surface RT and Surface Pro tablets, the hardware didn't do so well. The Surface tablets were priced too high for many buyers and the Windows RT OS proved to be unpopular with consumers and hardware partners. Microsoft came back more recently with new versions of the Surface tablet including the Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2.

Those new tablets were received with mostly positive reviews and have proven more successful than the first versions. One thing that has been common since Microsoft launched the first Surface tablets is that the devices don't offer mobile broadband connectivity. The surface line has always been Wi-Fi only.

A new FCC filing has turned up that suggests Microsoft is getting ready to put 4G LTE connectivity under the hood of the Surface tablets. Microsoft's Panos Panay, VP of Surface at Microsoft had said in the past that a future Surface product would have LTE connectivity.

A couple days ago, we mentioned that rumors were circulating that Tesla and Apple had met up. The rumors were thought to indicate Apple wanted to buy the electric car marker. Another possibility was that Apple and Tesla were meeting about a battery factory. Both firms want to drive down the cost of lithium batteries.

Apple isn't the sort of company that will ever comment on rumors, other than to say that it won't comment on rumors. Tesla CEO Elon Musk on the other hand has never been afraid to tell people what he thinks or what is going on. Musk recently confirmed that Tesla had in fact talked with Apple.

Musk wouldn't say what exactly the meeting was about. He noted that he though Apple buying a car company was a good idea, but also said that the chances of Tesla selling were "very unlikely." Musk also noted that he would be willing to talk about selling if that meant his goal of making an affordable mass market EV would be closer to reality.

Volvo is a name that usually brings to mind safe, if rather boring cars and SUVs. Volvo has announced that it will be on hand at Mobile World Congress in Spain to show off its new delivery service. That new delivery service is called Roam Delivery.

The idea is that the Roam Delivery service will allow owners of Volvo cars to accept deliveries and drop packages off for pickup directly from their car. The service will use Volvo digital keys and allows the owner of the car to choose their vehicle as the drop off or pick up location. When the order is ready to be delivered, the owner of the car will get a message via text.

The digital key will allow the delivery person access to the vehicle where they can leave what you ordered or pick things up to ship them off. The owner of the car is notified when the car is opened and when it is closed again. The digital key is a onetime use item and ceases to function after the car is closed.

In a report commissioned by Emulex Corporation, the research team at Forrester recently surveyed 158 IT professionals regarding managing business-critical applications and the infrastructure surrounding them. Of the respondents, nearly 90% are in a management role or above and consider themselves infrastructure professionals.

Of these respondents, 56% said that over 25% of their critical performance issues cannot be solved within 24 hours. Further, that the most difficult problems can take well over a month to fix, with the majority of the time being wasted on just figuring out what is going on.

In the report, Forrester extracts 3 key findings from their research:

Over the last few years Sceptre has gone from a little known brand that pretty much only sold online to a brand that you can find in many large retail stores around the country. The company was first known for computer monitors and TVs, but it has now branched out into other product categories.

One of those other product categories is the portable speaker realm. Sceptre has unveiled its latest Bluetooth speaker called the SoundPal. The speaker uses Bluetooth 2.1 for connectivity with your portable device. It also has NFC tech inside for easy paring with NFC equipped devices.

The SoundPal has a microSD card slot so you can play your digital tunes directly over the speaker without needing to connect a smartphone via Bluetooth. The speaker also has a 3.5mm audio input jack for connecting devices that lack Bluetooth.

The tech world is still shocked this morning at yesterday's news that Facebook is buying WhatsApp for $16 billion, and now new details have emerged that suggest that Facebook was not the only one looking to buy the worlds largest instant messaging service. A new report from Fortune says that WhatsApp turned down an offer of $10 billion from Google when the offer did not include a seat on Google's board of directors.

The report also says that Facebook's CEO, Mark Zukerberg, made the $16 billion offer to WhatsApp co-founder and CEO Jan Koum on the 9th of February and the pair finalized the deal just five days later. The deal was reportedly sealed on Valentines day, when Koum arrived at the Zuckerberg home and interrupted a dinner between Mark and his wife. After finalizing things over chocolate covered strawberries, Koum walked away with a seat on Facebook's board and a few billion dollars richer.

The WhatsApp saga is one of success and triumph as well. As a kid Koum emigrated from the Ukraine to the US where his family relied on welfare to make ends meet for years until they got on their feet. With the $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp by Facebook, Koum will go down in history as one of the great emigrant rags to riches success stories. More importantly though is that Facebook says that will stay true to WhatsApp's philosophy of not collecting user information like gender, addresses or ages for use in targeted advertising.

If you spend lots of time during the day stuck in front of a computer, you are probably out for anything that can make all that computer use more comfortable. There are few things that are more of a literal pain in the neck than having to look down at a computer screen all day because it won't go high enough for your comfort.

There are bunches of monitor stands out there that will lift the screen up to a more comfortable level. Satechi has a new monitor stand that will lift up your screen or notebook and has some features that make it more like a docking station as well.

The monitor stand is called the Satechi F1 Smart Monitor Stand. The device will lift the screen of your computer or notebook up several inches. It also has a quartet of USB 2.0 ports on the front and jacks for your headphones and mic.

Garmin is famous in the GPS world for making products ranging from navigation apps for smartphones to PND devices for cars and watches for athletes and outdoors types. Garmin has announced a new GPS watch that is aimed at athletes that like multiple sports. The new watch is called the fenix 2.

Garmin bills the watch as the ultimate multisport adventure watch and it has features for running, climbing, riding, hiking, skiing, and swimming. The watch is water resistant and can survive the outdoors. It features an altimeter, barometer, and a 3-axis compass.

It also provides GPS navigation for people when they are off the beaten path. It will store breadcrumbs to make sure you can find your way back when needed. The GPS functionality supports up to 10,000 track points and 1000 waypoints. Those GPS details can be shared with other Garmin devices via Bluetooth.

Acer has pulled the covers off the latest smartphones to slip into the firms Liquid range. The last smartphone we talked about form Acer was the Liquid S2. That was the first smartphone to be able to record 4K video. We spent hands on time with the Liquid S2 last year.

Acer's latest Liquid devices include the Liquid E3 and Liquid Z4. The Liquid E3 is the more interesting of the two devices and has a 4.7-inch HD IPS screen. The smartphone also has an 8.9mm thick unibody. Acer fits it with a 2MP front camera with its own LED flash for selfie pics.

The rear camera of the smartphone is an f1.8 13MP unit with fast focus. The smartphone also uses a 1.2GHz quad-core processor 1GB of memory, 4GB of internal storage, Wi-Fi, and GPS. The E3 runs Android 4.2.2 and an upgrade to Android 4.4 KitKat is promised. Launch is set for April in Europe for €199.

The original Oculus Rift development kit (or DK1) is no longer being manufactured by Oculus VR, with the company out of the necessary materials to produce more Rift DK1 units, according to a post on the /r/Oculus section of Reddit.

Oculus VR is "looking for alternate sources for the needed components", but doesn't have a time frame of when additional Rift units will be made available. The company will sell out of its inventory in each region, but once this happens it will halt sales in that particular region until it can deliver new orders to consumers.

Right now, Oculus VR is only selling and shipping Rift DK1 units to the following countries:

Google has made plans to start its Fiber connection in nine cities across the United States. Google also said that it has invited thirty four cities in these nine metros to take a look at what would it take to establish a fiber optic network in their own cities should they wish to do so.

The company has been working very hard to deploy Fiber connections throughout the cities by conducting detailed studies for any factors that may affects its construction plans.

Along with studying topography (such as hills, flood zones, etc.), housing density and condition of the local infrastructure, they require the following information:

Final Fantasy gamers rejoice! According to series producer Yoshinori Kitase, it looks like future Final Fantasy games will make their way to the PC. Kitase talked with Eurogamer, saying that while the series has a long history on consoles, this could change moving into the future.

Kitase said: "Let's not forget, when we developed the Final Fantasy 13 series, all three titles, at the early stages of development we were working on PC. Then we had to port it to the consoles. As far as the technology is concerned, it would have been possible for us to make a PC version, but we decided against it for two reasons: we looked at the market situation and we didn't think it would be a good idea, and also it would have involved lots of complex issues like security. So we decided not to do it this time around".

It's interesting to note that Kitase said it "would have been possible for us to make a PC version" but there were reasons behind it. He continued: "But we see potential in it and there are lots of regions and countries where PC is very strong. So in terms of our hope of being able to deliver our games to every single country in the world and to as many gamers as possible, yes, we would definitely be interested in pursuing that route in the future".

According to leading market tracker, Jon Peddie Research (JPR), GPU shipments increased in Q4 2013. During this three-month period, AMD lost market share against its rivals in Intel and NVIDIA.

JPR reports that the PC market increased 1.8% quarter-to-quarter in Q4 2013, but declined 8.5% year-over-year. 66% of PCs shipped for the year used integrated graphics, with just 34% of PCs featuring discrete GPUs. Shipments of GPUs rose 1.5% from the previous quarter, but down 2.4% from the same time of 2012.

If we look at the numbers, AMD's overall units shipped dropped 10.4%, with Intel's total shipments increased 5.1% from the third quarter, with NVIDIA's grab increasing by 3.4% compared to Q3 2013. With year-over-year numbers, AMD's market share slipped 5.4%, Intel increased by 5.4%, and NVIDIA also saw an increase, of 0.9%.

We reported yesterday that the Samsung Galaxy S5 specs had arrived in leaked form, all but confirming its 2K display. But, what if Samsung were to release multiple Galaxy S5 models, with the 'premium' model arriving with the 2560x1440, or 2K, panel?

Samsung is expected to announce the Galaxy S5 next week, but not as we would originally have thought. We could expect multiple models to be announced, one that would be more along the lines of the Galaxy S4 possibly, with the second model being the 'premium' handset, sporting the 2K display. OLED-Display.net is reporting from an unnamed Korean industry insider that Samsung is planning a standard, and premium version of the Galaxy S5.

The standard version would feature a 1920x1080 display, while the premium model will feature the higher-res display, pumping 2560x1440 pixels onto the screen. Samsung has reportedly experienced issues manufacturing the 2K display, which means it will launch "a few months later". But I'm sure that the 560ppi display will be worth it.

We've heard a bit about Sony's venture into virtual reality, but nothing has entered actual reality just yet. Another tease is here, with an industry insider hinting that Sony would show off a VR headset for the PS4 at E3 2014 in June.

Ahsan Rasheed, or thuway on Twitter, posted on the social network: "Ugh I just got a bit of info I was sworn to secrecy on :-/. VR is going to be amazing. You will say KANDO". He continued: "Very interesting solutions, multiple prototypes, but the end product is Hnnnnng. Say hello to Gran Turismo 7", suggesting that Sony is indeed working on its own VR headset.

If you were excited with that news, prepare your VR underwear for the next bit: Rasheed also mentioned PS4 VR in one last final tweet, where he listed upcoming Sony projects:

Steve Perlman, has something that could truly solve some of the problems we have with mobile data congestion, dead zones and more, with his new 'pCell' device.

Current cellular networks use a tower to transmit a radio signal, forming a large cell that provides wireless signal to all mobile devices within that area. This umbrella of signal will feed out whatever you need in terms of data or calls. Cell tower capacity is then shared through mobile devices, taking turns to avoid interfering with each other, and once more people enter the area, speeds can drop.

Companies simply can't just add more antennas in order to prepare for the increased demand, as their signals would be disrupted if they're placed too close together. This is where Artemis Networks' pCell technology comes into play, as it enhances the signal itself, with multiple waves combining to form stronger waves.

We've had a couple of teases of Fallout 4 lately, one where the trademark was filed and we thought it was close to being announced, and another teasing that 'nuclear winter is coming soon'. Both of those, seem to be weird, detailed dreams to the news we're about to break to you.

Bethesda's game director, Todd Howard, has come out and publicly said: "We don't [have a timeframe for our next game announcement], but I think it's gonna be a while". We've gotten fairly used to all the questions and curiosity over the years. Everyone wants information. Right now, we're just trying to figure out which of our ideas are going to stick and finding an appropriate time to talk about it.

It's not all bad news, as it seems that the PC is important to the developer, where Howard was enthusiastic about the best platform in the world. He said: "PC is resurgent. Skyrim did better than we've ever done on PC by a large, large number. And that's where the mods are. That feeds the game for a long time. And it's exciting that the new consoles are very PC-like. That opens up avenues for us going forward to do things that we've wanted to do in the past. There are kind of random ideas we're working on right now, and it's like, 'Wow, I think there's potential here to do some really cool stuff".