Latest News - Page 2906

The Gears of War franchise has a following unlike no other in the console gaming community, and today Microsoft took a big step in making its fans much happier. This morning, Microsoft announced that it has purchased all rights to all existing and future games bearing the Gears of War moniker as well as all entertainment experiences and merchandising rights.

The company also announced that a new Gears of War game has already entered production and is being developed by Black Tusk Studios located in Canada. While no official announcement was made regarding which platform the new game will launch on, we can almost bet that it will be exclusive to the Xbox One, and will arrive on PC sometime after console sales begin to fall off. Microsoft says that the franchise's former director of Production, Rod Fergusson, will take on oversite of the new game.

During the first half of last year, Microsoft found itself in a bit of hot water when the British Sky Broadcasting Group took Redmond to court over the SkyDrive name. Following the courts ruling, Microsoft agreed to change its cloud service's name to something else. Today, more than six months later, the new name has arrived.

Microsoft SkyDrive will now be known as Microsoft One Drive, and the company says that the re-branding will take place soon, and that no changes will be made to the service that affects your data. In a statement, Microsoft said: The Service "will continue to operate as you expect and all of your content will be available on OneDrive and OneDrive for Business respectively as the new name is rolled out across the portfolio."

"Changing the name of a product as loved as SkyDrive wasn't easy," admits Microsoft's Ryan Gavin. "We are excited about what is to come, and can't wait to share more." Gavin's statement leads us to believe that Microsoft is planning the launch of new features for OneDrive, but with the service already fully featured, I am not sure what else they could add.

NFL sponsor and tech giant SAP will help bring technology to the Super Bowl experience, providing updated, custom information for football fans. Both companies have provided real-time team and player stats throughout the season, and will be continually improved for future seasons.

Using its own NetBase analytics software, SAP is going to provide an interactive exhibit for football fans in New York City, running through next Sunday. The information provided is based on data collected from social analytics, compiled throughout the season, including positive and negative team sentiment, team support from fans, and social media buzzword tracking.

SAP and other big-money sports sponsors are getting creative to help boost return-on-investment and company brand exposure. The NFL uses SAP cloud computing software and both companies are in the second year of a multi-year business partnership.

Arts and crafts store Michaels is the latest to suffer a data breach, with the Secret Service now lending a hand in the follow-up investigation, the store confirmed over the weekend. Suspected cyber criminals have stolen credit and debit card numbers, immediately sharing news of the breach once it was confirmed.

At least four financial institutions have identified fraudulent activity for card holders after recently shopping at Michaels.

"We are concerned there may have been a data security attack on Michaels that may have affected our customers' payment card information and we are taking aggressive action to determine the nature and scope of the issue," said Chuck Rubin, Michaels CEO, in a statement. "While we have not confirmed a compromise to our systems, we believe it is in the best interest of our customers to alert them to this potential issue so they can take steps to protect themselves, for example, by reviewing their payment card account statements for unauthorized charges."

Digital media experts who met in Hollywood late last week talked about the future of the porn industry, where movies and clips could be shot on wearable devices, such as Google Glass.

Thousands of people from multiple industries met at the W Hollywood Hotel for the XBIZ 360 conference, an event focused on the behind the scenes of the adult film industry. Owners from production companies were able to meet from people all across the world, where many of them agreed that the adult film industry has evolved into a corporate culture.

Miles Long, a director and cinematographer, was at XBIZ 360 on a panel to talk about the adult film industry, and whether it should embrace Ultra HD technology. He said: "It was great to have an intellectual conversation about this. I like this more than the tradition-style conventions".

A smartphone "hangover" plaguing people that check their smartphones after 9:00 p.m. revealed users tend to be more exhausted the next day, according to a new study from Michigan State University. The drop in energy and productivity level is similar to a drinking hangover suffered the morning after partaking too much at the local pub.

"It can be a double-edged sword," said Russell Johnson, MSU assistant professor of management, in a statement. "The night-time use of smartphones appears to have both psychological and physiological effects on people's ability to sleep and on sleep's essential recovery functions."

How everyone feels each day is strongly correlated to healthy sleeping habits, with sleep quality - and quantity - impacting personal health. As more people begin to look for ways to improve sleep, a custom sensor-based inference algorithm is being tested to help educate sleepers and help develop better habits. There also are a growing collection of wearables and accessories that help study - and improve - sleep habits.

Now that Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition is out on next-gen (or current-gen consoles now that they're here), we can get a feel for the performance of the re-done Tomb Raider.

Definitive Edition runs at 1080p at 60FPS on the PlayStation 4, but what about the Xbox One? VideoGamer.com spoke with a Square Enix rep who said: "Delivering the core Tomb Raider gameplay at native 1080p and running at 30fps was always our primary goal given the type of experience Tomb Raider is and the exploration we want players to do. Anything beyond 30fps for this version is gravy".

Then there's the fact that two different studios worked on each version of Tomb Raider: Definitive Edition for each console, with Nixxes taking care of the PS4 version, and United Front Games working on the Xbox One version.

Qualcomm is reportedly hard at work on a new processor, something that should blow most other chips away when it comes out. The chipmaker is rumored to be working on a new SoC that would feature 8 processing cores, and would be 64-bit compatible.

The new SoC would feature eight Krait64 general-purpose cores designed in-house at Qualcomm, and would be compatible with ARMv8 architecture with up to 4MB of cache and a 2.5GHz clock speed. We should also expect Adreno 430 graphics on-board (up from the 330 series) with a 500MHz frequency, LPDDR3/LPDDR4 memory controller, and various special purpose hardware/accelerators.

Qualcomm's new SoC would be made on the 20nm process over at TSMC. We should expect it to arrive as the Snapdragon 810 series, with two versions: MSM8994 with integrated baseband and APQ8094 that will require an external telecommunications chip.

Just over two years ago, I was sitting with CapTherm at a dinner as we vaguely discussed a cooler they had been working on, and from the energy and enthusiasm in which they went into detail about this product with, we knew there was something big on the horizon. CapTherm has been in the business of offering many ideas and devices to bring cooling levels down in datacenter, PC, LED, and even cool things for military applications.

As it turns out, they were talking about the MP-1120 multiphase cooling system. This is not a water cooler or some take on a very compact AIO; this is a whole different breed of cooler. First, they needed to devise a better metallurgical structure of the materials used, because we all know that copper and aluminum have been used in every manner and have hit sort of a stall point in efficiency.

This is where they turn to explosion welding where layers of metal, no matter their difference, are set under a layer of high explosives, and detonated to weld these normally incompatible materials together, like titanium welded to copper that is then welded to stainless steel. Steps are also taken afterward to make these materials not only decent to look at, but they also have a slick addition by using a sight glass.

Former National Security Agency (NSA) IT contractor Edward Snowden could be able to stay in Russia for more than one year, as the Russian government said they don't plan to send him packing.

Snowden, currently in Russia on a temporary one-year asylum, has offers from Brazil and several Central American countries interested in taking him in - but Alexy Pushkov, the Russian Foreign Affairs Committee legislator, noted that Snowden could stay longer. The 30-year-old American is now free to stay in Russia, working for private Russian companies, until he is ready to return back to the U.S.

During a recent online chat, Snowden said he would like to one day return to the United States, but that cannot happen unless he's granted protection under the federal Whistleblower Protection Act - which doesn't apply to former government contractors. Meanwhile, Snowden continues to claim he didn't carry out actions for Russia or any other foreign government, though some U.S. lawmakers still aren't so sure about that.

US researchers and scientists have developed the Space-Based Telescopes for Actionable Refinement of Ephemeris, or STARE, which is basically a bunch of small satellites that orbit the Earth, helping satellites avoid collisions with space junk - so, really, space cops.

These 'space cops' have the researchers seeing a future of deploying countless satellites into Earth's orbit, with the space cops then relaying information about potential collisions between satellites and space debris back to Earth, which would then send alternative coordinates to the satellites that are in trouble.

A ground-based satellite was used to refine the orbit of the NORAD 27006 satellite, which was based on the first four observations made within 24 hours. The team managed to predict NORAD's satellite trajectory to within 50m, in under 36 hours. Considering that current technology is only capable of working out the pace of a space object within a 1km range, which gives ground operators the hard time of weeding through thousands of false alarms, for that one rock that might cause trouble.

For the time it took smartphone displays to shift from 720p to 1080p - around 18 months - Qualcomm has now stated that it shouldn't be long before 4K smartphones are the norm.

Qualcomm's Vice President of Marketing, Tim McDonough, spoke with TrustedReviews and said: "I think 4K is one of the primary things you are seeing from us. 4K is pretty cool because it means that not only can you do 4K video, but once you can push that number of pixels and the chip has the ability to do 4K video, anything that is multimedia related - think about gaming - that gets better too".

McDonough teased that it shouldn't be long before we have full 4K smartphones, not just SoCs that are capable of driving 4K. Qualcomm's Snapdragon 805 is capable of driving Ultra HD, as well as shooting 4K video and playing it back. He adds: "It has already sampled and we said the first half of 2014 [for devices to launch]".

DICE is asking for gamers' feedback to help balance Battlefield 4 gameplay, something that will be baked into future patches for the first-person shooter.

The developer said in its blog: "We have a wide range of tweaks planned to further balance the core gameplay of Battlefield 4 in upcoming patches. But we need your help in identifying next steps". Players can provide feedback on five potential changes that are being worked on.

These changes include the way weapons and vehicles take and receive damage, with simple yes/no voting. The five tweaks include improving air defense for attack boats, increasing the FGM-148's damage against tanks, changing damage on the stealth jet cannons, altering fast attack craft cannons, and buffing certain shells on the MBT and IFV.

Today, a new report was released from ZDNet's Mary Jo Foley, that stated that Microsoft is planning on releasing the first update to Windows 8.1 as early as March 11th, the same day the company has scheduled to push out its monthly security updates. This throws off analyst expectations for Microsoft's Build conference, which was expected to be centered around Windows 8.1.1.

Windows 8.1 Update 1 is expected to refine the operating system and will reduce memory usage and disk space requirements to help lower-end tablets really shine with the OS. Microsoft hopes that these lower system requirements will help the OS gain some market share in the mobile arena, and become popular among low-end tablet manufacturers. We are expecting to see Windows 9 launch in October, so maybe Build will be all about Windows 9 and its return to a more traditional desktop.

A research team completely crowdfunded, is using a machine learning algorithm to examine the cells of rare individuals who are immune to HIV, and are looking to make a vaccine from their efforts.

The team is known as The Immunity Project, which promises a revolutionary method to reach its goals, vowing to revolutionize how we look at vaccines in general, too. Pharmaceutical companies projects can, and do cost billions of dollars - but this project could solve a very large problem, and is simply crowdfunded.

The Immunity Project is run by researchers out of Harvard, Stanford and MIT, with some big names on the roster: the creators of the Internet's first spam filter, an artificial intelligence and machine learning specialist at Microsoft, and the founder of Flow Pharma and drug delivery system specialist.

Late last year, Pete Lau, former VP of Oppo announced the formation of a new company aimed at disrupting the current smartphone arena. He named the company OnePlus and set out to build the highest quality smartphone in the world. With just over a month in the books, OnePlus has just released a statement that says its first phone will make it to market by June of this year.

OnePlus has officially named its first foray into the smartphone world, the OnePlus One, and says that it will be "Built using only the best components and 2014 flagship specs, both inside and out." While I am sure that statement made HTC take notice, I am quite excited myself to see what this phone may include both hardware and software wise. As far as aesthetics, the OnePlus said the folowing about the phone: "Industrial design wise, we're confident our phone is more attractive than just about any other on the market."

While no official specs have been released, we expect the phone to feature a screen size greater than 5-inches with a resolution of 1080p or 1440p. Ram should be in the 2-4GB range while the processor is most likely Qualcomm's flagship chip. Storage would be set between 64GB and 128GB, with expansion via microSD card built-in. We do know that CyanogenMod will be serving up the Android-based operating system for the device, and believe it to be Android 4.3 or 4.4.

If WhatsApp is king of app-based text messaging, then Aviary rules the photograph editing app world. Today the company announced that it has hit a massive milestone in the success of its company. Aviary announced that its app for Android and iOS has been used to edit over 10 billion photos since its launch.

The company says that its success is largely due to the fact that its SDK is so popular with developers who have added the apps editing tools to their own apps and websites. Aviary has been integrated with more than 7,000 partner apps, with big names such as Pic Stitch, Tango, and even SquareSpace using features from the software. Aviary says that it now has over 70 million active monthly users and that it expects growth to continue in 2014.

In a statement the company said:

This morning, Cougar unveiled its latest mid-tower PC chassis that has been designed with gamers in mind. The all new MX300 features a rugged honeycomb mesh front facade that allows ample airflow through the case. The MX300 is designed to provide gamers with an aggressive style while packing in all of the latest high-performance hardware.

The MX300 is able to accommodate discrete GPUs up to 310mm in length as well as three 3.5-inch hard drives. For those who still use optical drives, the new chassis has room for three 5.25-inch drives as well. The entire drive system features tool-less mounting solutions for added convenience. The top of the case features dual USB 3.0 ports, while support for up to 7 120mm fans can be found on the inside. Cable management solutions have been provided inside the chassis for a clean and efficient setup as well.

All in all, the MX300 from Cougar appears to be a solid mid-tower chassis that is perfect for those building a gaming PC but are not ready to spend the cash needed to get a premium full-tower chassis. Personally I would have liked to seen more space for 3.5-inch or 2.5-inch hard drives and the removal of the 5.25-inch bays. The amount of fan options mean that there is ample room for cooling solutions and it looks like you may even be able to fit in a 240mm radiator from a AiO cooling system.

Microsoft has something to cheer about after the company saw strong year-over-year sales for the Xbox 360 game console, with the next-generation Xbox One also posting strong sales figures. The company sold 7.4 million Xbox 360 and Xbox One game consoles during the holiday shopping season, as Microsoft competes with the Sony PlayStation 4 in the game console market.

In addition, the Microsoft Surface line of tablets saw revenue double, reaching $893 million from the previous quarter, as the company continues to try and invade the mobile market. Overall device revenue increased a massive 68 percent, reaching $4.73 billion, outpacing investor estimates.

However, Microsoft is still dealing with Windows revenue shrinking, as consumers and business users still waffle about embracing Windows 8/8.1, which will be a continued battle. The company once dominated software sales offering its products on CDs and DVDs, but expanding to the cloud - and increasing hardware sales - has continued to be a slippery slope for the tech giant.

Owners of HTC's flagship, the One, will be happy to hear that the company has just announced that it has released its Android 4.4, KitKat, update to carrier level testing. This means that each service provider who carries the HTC One will now begin testing the update with their devices, and if everything passes, the updates should begin rolling out shortly.

There is no set time limit on carrier testing, and any one of them could reject the update if it does not play well with each network in question. HTC says that certification could come as early as next week, but even so, it could take weeks before the carriers stage an OTA update roll out. Unfortunately, European HTC One owners will have to wait longer for their 4.4 update as HTC had no comment on when it may roll out.