Latest News - Page 2916

Just before the holidays, Google has pushed out a new upgrade to its Glass platform, the December update, or XE12. The new update is available for Glass Explorers, just in time to take pictures from their point of view, of their Christmas dinners. The best updates seem to be the improved iOS support, Hangouts support, and the winking, which is going to have ladies across the world swooning. The full list of updates is below:

iOS app - as we noted earlier, XE12 brings along better support for iOS. Expect an update in iTunes later in the week.

Google Play Music support has been enhanced, and the new Listen menu will let you browse playlists and open radio stations if your an All Access subscriber.

Drobo has just launched the all new DroboApp platform that delivers new functionality to the Drobo 5N network storage array and provides an easy method for third-party app integration. The platform includes 15 initial apps that offer up a wide range of functionality including media servers, remote file access, cloud backup, and even BitTorrent clients.

"The Drobo 5N was designed to deliver the best file sharing experience available," said Jim Sherhart, Vice President of Product Marketing, Drobo. "Extending the functionality with fully supported applications including Plex, Barracuda Copy and ElephantDrive demonstrates our commitment to enhancing value for our existing customers."

"Plex is excited about a fully integrated NAS plus Media Server solution for users to easily store, organize and stream their media," said Shawn Eldridge, Vice President of Strategic Alliances. "Given the exponential growth in personal media being generated today, the combination of Drobo and Plex is the perfect way for users to easily organize and play their media on any screen."

The Microsoft Surface 2 and Surface Pro 2 tablet models are selling out and have been difficult to find this Christmas shopping season. The devices are selling out at the official Microsoft Store and Walmart.com, while a quick look at Amazon.com shows a small supply of the surprisingly popular tablets.

It's plausible Microsoft released smaller shipments to retailers - or the devices are truly becoming popular - but we won't know until early 2014, when analysts are able to estimate sales numbers. Microsoft and the retailers aren't confirming shipment figures, so analyst groups will be left to estimate how the Microsoft tablets did against rival tablets.

Microsoft has found it difficult to compete with the extremely popular Apple iPad and Android-based tablets, but the Windows 8-powered devices are best suited to make a major impact in the enterprise. Meanwhile, analysts believe the Surface 2 tablets will continue to fight for market share in 2014, as Microsoft continues a massive marketing and advertising campaign.

Coby Electronics 32-inch flat screen HDTVs with the model number "TFTV3229" are being recalled due to potential fire risk, according to media reports.

The Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) confirmed there have been at least six reports of TVs overheating, emitting smoke, or igniting in small fires. No reported injuries related to the faulty TVs.The TVs were sold starting in August 2011 until November 2013 at Best Buy, Fry's Electronics, H.H. Gregg, Toys 'R' Us, ABC Warehouse, P.C. Richard and Son, Sears/Kmart, and Nebraska Furniture Mart.

Coby was a Chinese-based high-definition TV manufacturer that is known for selling low-cost, entry-level HDTVs that are drastically cheaper than rival models from Samsung, Sony, LG, Sharp, and other competing companies. Unfortunately, Coby USA is no longer in operation, so the retailers are handling the recall.

Is Google feeling festive, or is the Mountain View-based giant feeling a little T-101ish? Well, Google has acquired robotics engineering company Boston Dynamics, which is best known for its quadrupeds, and super-impressive robots.

We've already seen BigDog, a motorized robot that is capable of walking through ice and snow, the Cheetah - which is capable of running at 29 miles per hour, and a convincing humanoid known as Arnold Schwarzenegger PETMAN. We don't know the business side of the deal, or the exact amount of money it took to acquire the robot maker.

We do know that a $10.8 million contract that the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) had with Boston Dynamics would still be honored after it has been acquired by Google. Something else I find fishy, is that a year ago the Director of DARPA left the defense agency, moving to... Google. Now Google acquires a high-end robotics maker? Yeah... Skynet is getting closer, folks.

Today Lian Li unveiled a new brushed aluminum cubed PC chassis designed for mATX motherboards that features the unique ability to flip open for easy access to internal components. The front hinge design of the PC-V358 is said to allow for ample access to core components of the PC making for a cube style PC that is much easier to work on than traditional small form factor cases.

The PC-V358 features support for 240mm radiators from custom liquid cooling kits or All-in-One kits. The radiator can be mounted on a swing-open bracket which is secured by thumb screws, making for an effortless install of advanced cooling solutions. Two front 120mm fans and a rear 120mm fan handle all of the passive cooling duties by providing ample airflow to all components.

Storage capacity is capped at six 3.5-inch hard drives, and two 2.5-inch SSDs. Alternatively up to 8 2.5-inch drives can be installed with the use of adapters. The PC-V358 has room for a single slim optical drive as well. VGA cards up to 330mm long and PSU's up to 200mm long fit inside, and for those not into liquid cooling, a 130mm tall CPU cooler will fit as well. The new Lian Li PC-V358 will retail for $179 at Newegg.com at the end of this month.

Today VIA announced that it has filed suit against a subsidiary of Asustek as well as four of its employees over allegations of misappropriations of trade secrets. The civil lawsuit has been filed in the Taipei District Court with VIA seeking damages equating to $138 million US.

The lawsuit states that misappropriation of VIA intellectual property related to USB technology occurred and names Asmedia Technology, Asustek, Asmedia Chairman Jerry Shen, Asmedia President Lin Chewei, and other Asmedia employees as those responsible for the misappropriation.

"As a long-time leader in IC design and technology innovation, VIA strongly believes in the importance of protecting intellectual property rights," commented Wenchi Chen, CEO of VIA Technologies, Inc. "In addition to protecting interests of VIA and our shareholders, the aim of this suit is to ensure our industry operates in a healthy market environment that fosters innovation and promotes fair competition." Further information can be found in a excerpt from the official announcement below.

The New Zealand government has inked a deal with James Cameron and major studios for not one, but three Avatar sequels to be filmed in the country. New Zealand Prime Minister, John Key, announced the news, stating that there would be a budget of at least $NZ500 million ($461 million or so) spent locally during its production.

Where Cameron and the movie studios benefit by shooting in NZ, is that if the three Avatar movies meet the requirements of the deal between the NZ government and the studios, they will qualify for a total tax rebate of 25%, which gets pumped into the Avatar movies. The requirements include:

The new movies will reach us on Christmas 2017, 2018, and 2019.

It looks like ASUS could have a great year in 2014 with its PadFone line of devices, with a new PadFone turning up on AnTuTu's benchmark database, which was pulled down quite quick.

The PadFone X, as it was teased, featured the Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC, Android 4.4 KitKat, and smashed into some benchmarks, smacking around a few of the established smartphone heavyweights. The screen resolution on the PadFone X should be 1920x1080, but we don't know what size just yet. 2GB of RAM is featured, and 16GB of on-board flash storage should make the cut.

We should see a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera, backed up by a decent front-facer, but that 5-megapixel camera on the rear is most likely a placeholder for something better in the final consumer version. We should be expecting 8-megapixel cameras by default now. ASUS should unveil the PadFone X sometime in early 2014.

Our friends over at New Gadgets have been on the ground with Bungbungame, a company that took to crowdfunding through Indiegogo for its Project S smartphone.

I've never heard of the Project S smartphone until now, but wow does it pack a punch: 8-core processor, 3GB of RAM, WQHD resolution, a body made from glass and aluminum, but the best bit? Just $299. Yes, $299. We're looking at a 5.8-inch 2560x1440 screen, which is just super impressive, especially given its $299 price.

The Project S is just a prototype right now, but with a finalized design, we should expect everything you see here for $299. For shooting abilities, we have a 16-megapixel rear-facing camera, and a 2-megapixel front-facing snapper. Expandable storage is also featured, which is a nice touch these days.

McLaren's Chief Designer, Frank Stephenson, has teased that a new system will be placed in McLaren's new vehicles, which will replace the ageing windshield wipers with some next-gen wipers.

The new wipers use ultrasound to send 30kHz waves across the vehicle's windshield, which would keep it clear from any debris, even those tiny insect remains that build up on your windshield, even after you've used the wipers over and over. The way it works is by creating a force field that stops rain, snow and insects from even touching the windshield itself.

If McLaren can get this technology working as it has said, I'm sure we'll see most other car makers using McLaren's patent and rolling the technology across vehicles all around the world starting ASAP.

EA DICE has pushed out the December 16 patch for Battlefield 4 on the PC, which fixes a list of bugs, but has its own issues, too. The new update improves BF4's netcode, so that it will hopefully stop "kill trading".

Kill trading is something where two players who fire at each other, and die in the same place. The patch fixes the amount of time where players with high pings should already be dead, but get the kill instead. The patch also fixes:

But, there are new issues: users with NVIDIA GeForce SLI systems, like myself, get massive flickering issues - with the only option to stop this is by disabling SLI. DICE has said: "Both of these have our attention, and we're investigating them."

With Mobile World Congress 2014 under two months away, the rumor mill is working hard at churning out new unconfirmed specs on the most anticipated smartphones of 2014. Today a new rumor has surfaced about the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S5.

The latest rumors include reports of Samsung developing both a plastic and metal framed version of its next-generation flagship, and that they will be sold side by side with the metal version being branded as the premium model. Other reports are suggesting that the phone will feature a Quad-HD 2560x1440 display, 16-megapixel camera, 3GB of RAM, and a 4,000mAh battery.

While the high-resolution screen and metal framed chassis are expected, many analyst suggest that 4GB of RAM and a 2.5GHz processor will be needed to handle the 2560x1440 screen. Android 4.4 will most definitely be on board and an upgrade to Android 5.0 Key Lime Pie will come before years end.

Rumors about a Smartwatch from Apple have been circling for months now, and today information was released from a Chinese technology site that says we could finally see the iWatch next October when the iPhone 6 releases. At the moment the hold-up is said to be that Apple has yet to decide on what size screen the iWatch should have.

The report also states that the iWatch will feature a 100mAh battery, which is 1/20 the power of a standard rechargeable AA battery. In comparison, Samsung's Galaxy Gear features a 315mAh battery and has been heavily criticized over its short battery life. Today's report seems to somewhat confirm a report last month from Digitimes who said the iWatch would be released in Q4 of 2014.

Rumors about secret hidden software in tech devices are as old as tech itself, and since the beginning of personal computing people have been devising clever ways to trick others into formatting their machines. Unfortunately, a new rumor has popped up that has tricked Mac owners into doing just that.

A new infographic is spreading like wildfire around the internet that claims that Apple has been installing Bitcoin mining software into their Mac devices since 2009. The infographic informs users that they can unlock this feature by opening up the terminal and entering the command "sudo rm -rf/*" Unfortunately, this command does not unlock any hidden programs, apps, or features, but actually tells the users Mac to format itself, which causes a loss of all data, and a bricked device.

Apple or Linux gurus who are use to the terminal will instantly know what this command means, but for those who have no clue, let me break it down for you.

Avago, a leading designer and developer of compound semiconductors, has announced their intention to purchase the smaller LSI for $6.6 Billion. Avago, with its market cap of 11.3 Billion, is much larger than LSI, with a cap of 4.32 Billion.

Stocks of both companies are skyrocketing in early trading, with LSI up 38% in the first 6 minutes of trading, and Avago is up 11.7% and climbing.

Avago turned to Silver Lake for partial funding for the venture. Silver Lake, a technology investor, is a common player in the storage space. Silver Lake actually owned, and sold, Avago last year. The Avago deal was the largest payoff for Silver Lake, they received a 5X return on their investment, and have a seat on Avago's board.

The future of memory storage took a big step recently with the announcement from Everspin Technologies and Buffalo Memory that an ST-MRAM cache layer has been incorporated into Buffalo's SS6 industrial SSD. This is the first commercially available SSD to utilize persistent MRAM as a cache layer.

MRAM (magenetoresistive random access memory) is a disruptive technology that looks to change the landscape of memory technology, with many predicting that MRAM will supplant other forms of memory in the near future. In fact, over 20 companies are currently working to develop MRAM products, and mass production from these companies is slated for the 2018 timeframe.

While the industry 'heavies' are 4 years from production, a frontrunner has emerged in Everspin Technologies. They actually have working MRAM in production already, products in the field, and a whopping 600 active patents in their portfolio.

Oculus VR has just secured itself $75 million in Series B funding, with a new lead investor: Andreessen Horowitz. Marc Andreessen is now stepping up to the Oculus board, as well as his partner, Chris Dixon.

What coerced them into investing into virtual reality? Well, Oculus has shown off a new Rift headset, which is said to have solved a lot of the problems that the original Rift headset included. What Andreeseen and Dixon saw, is what the world will see at CES 2014 in just a few weeks time: a brand-new Rift headset, which has a higher resolution, lower latency, and takes away the motion blue of the original Developer Kit.

Over the past year, Oculus has seen John Carmack of id Software, Doom and Quake fame join the team as its Chief Technology Officer, and now this additional funding, virtual reality is ready to be propelled into the hands of consumers across the world in 2014.

Some of you may recall a lawsuit that Nintendo filed and won against an Australian citizen named James Burt. Burt was successfully sued by Nintendo back in 2010 for pirating games for the Nintendo Wii. Nintendo won $1.5 million AUD in the suit, and today it appears that the company has decided to put that in their past.

Burt has just received a statue of Ganon, the evil villain from The Legend of Zelda series. The Statue was given to Burt for being a "Good Customer of Nintendo," something they obviously did not think three years ago. Burt took to Reddit to thank Nintendo, and tell the world that despite the lawsuit, he still loves Nintendo.

It was just a few days ago that a UK court banned the sale of HTC One Mini smartphones after the court ruled that HTC was infringing on patents held by Nokia. Today a UK Court of Appeals has ruled to suspend the injunction banning the sales of the device.

HTC says that it plans to "aggressively appeal the [patent] validity decision," and that it will be be "engaging with chip suppliers on alternative solutions." While the future is not clear on UK imports of the HTC One Mini, it is clear that HTC will fight the previous ruling until the bitter end.