Latest News - Page 2949

Headphone maker Beats by Dre is looking to sever its partnership with smartphone manufacturer HTC in hopes that it will pick up a new investor who can pump new money into the company. The midrange audio accessory manufacturer is said to be planning to buy out HTC as it begins talks with an investor that will provide debt financing and who will take a minority ownership in the company in the coming weeks.

The two companies first partnered up in 2011 when HTC began losing ground to rival Samsung. The partnership was expected to breathe new life into sales of the Asian smartphone manufacturer's products, but the numbers that were predicted never materialized. HTC invested $300 million for a 50 percent stake in the company as well as exclusively of the Beats audio IP used in smartphones.

Earlier this year, HTC sold back 25 percent of its stake to Beats for $150 million but retained the mobile exclusively rights. With a final buyback imminent, sources are saying that HTC will most likely retain those exclusivity rights after the deal is finished. On the bright side, the deal will inject some much-needed cash into HTC's coffers, which could set it up to once again claim the top spot in the mobile market.

Today, LinkedIn announced that it has launched a new Page for Universities feature that allows post-K-12 educational institutions to have their own featured page similar to the pages companies currently have. LinkedIn is hoping that this new feature will better help high school students choose the right university for them.

The program launched today with over 200 universities participating worldwide. Each university's page displays very important metrics such as where the majority of the institution's alumni work and what careers many of its alumni go into. Universities can set up their respective page for its community similar to how pages on Facebook work. They can then assign page managers who can post announcements and updates to the page for anyone that is following. LinkedIn's Christina Allen officially announced the new Pages for Universities in a blog post that I have copied below (source #2).

Every PC in use today has a small piece of hardware built into the chipset that is known as a real-time-clock. This is a piece of hardware that keeps accurate track of time even when the PC is turned off. This little piece of hardware is used by all benchmarking programs to keep an accurate track of time to determine how well a system performs. Unfortunately, Microsoft decided to change things up in the way their software accesses the real-time-clock in Windows 8, and as a result, popular benchmarking results website HWBot has made the decision to ban the operating system from their results.

The issues arise when users attempt to change their clock frequencies in software and not at boot time. By changing the CPU-based clock frequency , the software algorithms that Windows 8 employs to keep track of time are massively skewed, which greatly hinders Windows 8's ability to keep accurate time. YouTube user Massman89 has posted a video that demonstrates this by underclocking the BLCK from 130 MHz to 122MHz. In the video, Windows 8 loses track of time by 18 seconds over a five minute period. If you increase the clock rate by 6 percent, Windows 8 internally gains 18 seconds.

These extra 18 seconds per five minutes means that a benchmark that is set to run for five minutes will actually run for five minutes and 18 seconds, giving the benchmark an extra 18 seconds to render 6 percent more frames or complete 6 percent more floating-point calculations. This skews the benchmark score by around 6 percent. While some may see this as an easily fixable issue, HWBot is taking things quite seriously and has decided to ban Windows 8 results altogether.

As many of us are either gamers or PC enthusiasts, we often overlook the more office / productivity oriented mice and keyboards that are available on the market. Today, Microsoft unveiled two new keyboard and mice combos to its Sculpt line of Ergonomic peripherals. The company designs these new models based on the input from more than 5,300 workers that say they experience discomfort on a daily basis when working with traditional keyboards and mice.

First, we have the boomerang shaped Sculpt Ergonomic Desktop bundle, which features an oddly shaped key layout with a wide split in the middle. Microsoft says this split provides the perfect angle which allows users to rest their hands more naturally on the keyboard. This set also includes a separate wireless number pad and wireless mouse, which has also been redesigned to fit more naturally in the user's hand.

The second offering unveiled today is dubbed the Sculpt Comfort Desktop Bundle and features a more traditional looking keyboard with a curved typing service and flat numerical keypad. A detachable palm rest is present alongside a split spacebar. The mouse included in this set also features a new design that integrates a Windows touch tab that allows users to swipe over this blue button to view or cycle through open applications.

It looks like Google pressed a wrong button on Friday, most likely in the TGIF celebrations, taking down every single service that the Mountain View-based giant has to offer. This obviously includes Google Search, Gmail, YouTube, and every service in between.

According to analytics firm GoSquared, worldwide Internet traffic dropped by a whopping 40% during those hectic 120 seconds, as you can see in the graph, above. Most companies and website owners were scratching their heads for a few minutes, because when Google goes down, it would be like not being able to breathe oxygen for those two minutes - sheer panic. Google came back online two minutes later, to the relief of, well, everyone.

Google should hopefully come out with a report next week, which should stun, and scare thousands across the world.

News came in overnight that NASA has decided to call off all efforts dedicated to repairing its crippled Kepler Space Telescope. The 0.95-meter space telescope was launched four years ago with the task of discovering Earth-size planets orbiting nearby stars. The mission has widely been considered a success with hundreds of new planets now catalogued.

A few months back, the telescope's gyroscopic reaction wheels began failing, and this makes precisely aligning the telescope for stable long exposure shots impossible. Kepler resides in such a high orbit that even if we had a servicing robot or still flew space shuttles, we would simply not be able to reach it and as such, NASA has decided to end all efforts attempting to revive the telescope.

With Kepler gone and the Hubble space telescope quickly nearing its end of life, our only hope for outer space imaging sources now relies on the constantly threatened James Web Space Telescope. Unfortunately, it appears that every time our lawmakers start talking budgets, the James Webb is always the first to take the hit. I don't normally do this sort of thing, but if you like the images that the Hubble provides, and think hunting for new earth-like planets is a good thing, then please contact your local congressman and let them know that the James Webb space telescope is a good thing.

It was not that long ago that I remember hanging out in the RepRap IRC channel and Forums and chatting about this awesome new DIY 3D printer project so many of us were obsessed with. Of course, I'm talking about the original RepRap model "Darwin." One of the major questions was how do we create the printed parts needed to build it without having a printer on hand.

Everyone seemed to have their solution, including a man named Bre Pettis. He had found this Cartesian robot that could be built using simple iron pipe from hardware stores. Around the same time another man who went by the name Hoken joined the conversation and thus the McWire RepStrap was born. Those two guys that I spent so many hours chatting with in the IRC channel eventually went on to found Makerbot Industries, the company responsible for bringing 3-D printing to mainstream.

Earlier this year, the company announced that it was in the process of being acquired by 3-D printing giant Stratasys, and today they announced that the acquisition is completed. In the deal, Petis and the other shareholders of Makerbot will receive a total of 4.7 million shares of Stratasys stock in exchange for 100 percent of Makerbot's outstanding capital stock.

It's no secret that copyright and patent trolls are not the most ethical of creatures. In fact, many regard them as little more than the scum of the earth. Today, website Torrentfreak has released a report that shows just how immoral and unethical copyright trolls can be.

The report says that Comcast has confirmed that a Pirate Bay user going by the name "Sharkmp4" has been directly linked to the notorious copyright troll Prenda Law. In a weird turn of events, The Pirate Bay actually helped Comcast expose the copyright troll who is running a honeypot on the popular torrent listing service.

The exposure came after a June report released by Delvan Neville, who works for a company that monitors BitTorrent users, that accused Prenda of running the so-called honeypot. The report says that the law firm was the major seeder of the very files they claim to be protecting. The Pirate Bay jumped in and exposed the IP address that Sharkmp4 was using, which matched up with Prenda's IP address.

It has been 35 years since NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft blasted off from terra firma and headed into the final frontier. During this journey, the space probe has visited Saturn, Jupiter, and has even managed to leave our solar system. Well maybe it has left, or maybe it is still here. Not even NASA is sure whether or not Voyager 1 has reached interstellar space.

If you're a space buff like me, I know what you're thinking, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced last year that Voyager 1 has in fact left our solar system and is now streaking through interstellar space. Unfortunately, the original Voyager science team seems to think otherwise.

To toss even more confusion into the mix, both the University of Maryland as well as Boston University both agree that Voyager 1 actually reached interstellar space on July 27, 2012, and for the moment, NASA has agreed to simply disagree and released a statement saying that they simply have no idea where Voyager 1 actually it.

The introduction of newer, smaller flash geometries will require sophisticated error correction ability to maximize endurance of the NAND. As NAND matures, it almost seems counter-intuitive that we will lose endurance as NAND shrinks, but economics have a hand in the smaller NAND geometries. In order to provide a more economical and accessible product through shrinks, endurance suffers as a trade-off.

One of LSI's core competencies has always been strong ECC techniques, which originated with their extensive hard drive controller experience. The addition of these new LSI SHIELD error correction technologies shows a sign of some of the mutual benefits from the LSI/SandForce acquisition.

Enabling advanced Low-Density Parity Check (LDPC) allows LSI SandForce to create a stable solution that will mesh well with not only lower endurance MLC and TLC, but will also wring extra endurance out of current generation NAND as well. This is accomplished through a variety of techniques, including an adaptive method of adjusting the level of ECC during the life of the SSD.

At the Flash Memory Summit 2013, LSI SandForce gave us a teaser of one of the new features that will be featured on the next generation of SandForce flash storage processors.

One of the most exciting new developments is the ability to reclaim some of the extra capacity provided from LSI SandForce's DuraWrite engine. With their compression engine, LSI SandForce's flash storage processors actually write less data down to the NAND than what was sent from the host. In current products this delivers excellent increases in both endurance and performance, with the controller effectively utilizing the extra space as bonus overprovisioning.

LSI SandForce has decided to hand some of that excess capacity back to the customer by allowing users to use this 'hidden' extra spare area on the SSD. The new DuraWrite Virtual Capacity (DVC) feature dynamically adjusts the amount of extra capacity available to the user determined by the amount of data compression.

For my first piece of the night, I have a juicy rumor concerning Sony's upcoming smartphone codenamed "Honami." The rumor comes from a user China-based social networking site, Weibo, who posted a presentation on Honami.

The presentation included a slide of the smartphone itself, stating it would be capable of shooting 4K videos. Sony's Honami smartphone could really put them in the spotlight, with rumors pegging the device to feature a 5-inch 1920x1080-pixel display, as well as the speedy and capable Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC.

There were also rumors that Honami would sport a 20.7-megapixel rear-facing camera, which would be more than capable of shooting Ultra HD video. The presentation also said that the Honami would support a 4000x2000 resolution, but 4K televisions have a resolution of 'just' 3840x2160.

Today, Rockstar Games released an all-new trailer of online gameplay footage from his upcoming title Grand Theft Auto V. With the official launch of the game growing closer, the company is doing all it can to generate as much hype as possible. Earlier this week, we saw Rockstar release a website parody of a municipality tourist site, and today the company released a three minute long trailer of gameplay footage.

I have never been more excited for a game to launch than I have for Grand Theft Auto V; the online feature appears to be everything we have hoped and dreamed it would be. The trailer alludes to a completely open world filled with hundreds of online players who can do everything from fly planes, drive cars, and even team up to form a band of thieves to rob a bank. Users can earn money by completing online missions and then use that money to buy weapons, vehicle upgrades, and even houses at which your friends can visit when they come online.

I have been hoping for months now that Rockstar would officially announce that Grand Theft Auto V would be released on PC, and after getting my hopes up earlier in the week, I have pretty much accepted the fact that I will be buying an Xbox 360 so I can play the game on launch day. Rockstar, if you're out there listening, please make the decision to put this game on the PC!

Today, Acer announced the release of three new ultra high-resolution monitors aimed at enhancing the quality of your computing experience. Of the three new monitors released, two of them are being dubbed as highly ergonomic, while the third is a Windows 8-compatible touchscreen. All three models feature IPS panel displays that offer 178 degrees of uninhibited viewing as well as 100,000,000 to 1 contrast ratio.

Up first is the 27-inch Acer T272HUL that boasts an impressive 2560x1440 pixel resolution, which is officially being given the term "extreme definition." This monitor is able to display 1.07 billion colors across its 10-point touchscreen. Featuring a silver asymmetrical stand and a clear plastic edge that extends always down to the desktop surface, this sleek, ultramodern monitor is the perfect choice for Windows 8 users looking for that ultra high definition experience.

Up next, we have the two more normal looking monitors, the B276HUL and the B296CL. The smaller 27-inch model features a 2560x1440 pixel resolution, while the much larger 29-inch screen features a smaller resolution of 2560x1080 pixels. Both models are capable of displaying 16.7 million colors and feature a base that allows the screen to rotate into portrait orientation. Both monitors feature DVI-D, Display Port, and two HDMI ports. Additionally, a four port USB 3.0 hub is present.

Something that will put a snake in Apple's boot would be for Google to launch its Nexus 5 smartphone, and price it like the Nexus 4. Well, it looks like Google may just do that according to some news from MyDrivers.

The Chinese publication reports that the Nexus 5 will arrive at the same price as its predecessor, at just $299. In order to get the price down that low, Google will have to make some compromises. First, we should expect the internals to include Qualcomm's Snapdragon 600 SoC, 2GB of RAM, and a 10-megapixel rear-facing camera.

We should expect a 5-inch (or so) 1920x1080-pixel display, and Android 5.0 "Key Lime Pie." When compared to the LG G2, it won't be as powerful, as LG's G2 features a 5.2-inch Full HD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC, and a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera with optical image stabilization.

Google has really been stepping up their game when it comes to what they capture using their Street View cameras. With recent treks to the top of Mount Fuji, the tallest building in the world, and even the Eiffel tower, the company has taken thousands of photos that were never used or were shots of behind-the-scenes activities.

Instead of letting these images go to waste, Google has put together a behind-the-scenes site that offers a plethora of extra information about the shoots which include photos, videos, audio tours and actual accounts of how the imagery was gathered by those who put in the footwork.

"Our first two multimedia adventures enable you to experience the Canadian Arctic in Iqaluit, Canada, and the world's tallest building, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, UAE," Street View program manager Deanna Yick says in a post introducing the new material. "We also invite you to enjoy photos and videos from our past journeys to the Grand Canyon, the base camp of Mount Everest, the Amazon Basin, the Great Barrier Reef and the NASA Kennedy Space Center - minus the extreme temperatures and long plane rides!"

Flash Memory Summit 2013 - Mechanical data storage may be getting somewhat overlooked these days in favor of the faster, more energy-efficient SSDs that are flooding the consumer and enterprise markets, but as one would expect, the major hard drive manufacturers have taken notice. Announced this week at Flash Memory Summit in Santa Clara, California, HGST, Seagate, Toshiba, and Western Digital have all teamed up to form the Storage Products Association (SPA).

"HDDs are a crucial technology for storing the ever expanding data that humans and our machines are generating," said Tom Coughlin, president of storage industry analyst firm Coughlin Associates. "Hard disk drives combined with flash memory can provide users the speed they need while providing affordable mass storage. With continued development of advanced storage technology and storage architectures these amazing storage devices will provide a home for the world's accessible data and serve every type of content users for many years to come."

"We have seen the demand for storage products shift dramatically over the last ten years with the emergence of cloud computing, Internet search, social networks, big data and mobile computing," said Mark Grace, senior vice president of marketing, HGST, and member of the SPA board of directors. "This period of remarkable change is driving the need for innovative and reliable high-performance and high-capacity storage with the best TCO, especially in the areas of hyperscale cloud datacenter infrastructures and cold storage environments. As storage companies, SPA members are at the forefront of this change, focused on evolving products to support changing market needs."

Today, website VR-Zone is confirming the existence of Samsung's upcoming Galaxy Gear smartwatch. A newly released report says that Samsung will launch the Galaxy Gear on September 4 at the 2013 IFA show in Germany.

VR-Zone says that the Galaxy Gear, model number SM-V700, will function as an accessory to Samsung's Galaxy line of smartphones and tablets and will feature a flexible display. A recently filed patent says that the device will feature a power button, menu buttons, a USB port for data transfer and charging, and a capacitive back which will sense heart rate and other biometric data.

The patent went on to describe the Galaxy Gear as a "wearable digital electronic devices in the form of a wristwatch, wrist band, or bangle capable of providing access to the Internet and for sending and receiving phone calls , electronic mails, and messages." While no official confirmation has been released, VR-Zone is usually spot on with their predictions and as such, I to fully expect to see the Galaxy Gear unveiled at IFA 2013.

Today, Google rolled out a major update to its Google+ application for Android. Some of the updated features include the ability to easily switch between multiple Google+ accounts with just a couple of taps from your fingers. This is similar to how account switching works in Gmail for Android. Google has also built in Google Apps for Business, which will allow users to share content if their apps administrator has enable Google+.

Google Drive photos and videos are now also accessible from within the Google+ app and will allow users the option to view and/or share them straight from Google+. The company says that Drive photos in particular will get enhanced and Awesome'd automatically now. Additionally, Google has improved location sharing by adding even more controls that allow you to share your pinpoint or city-level location with others on a circle-by-circle basis.

Finally, Google announced that Messenger is going away for good and that Hangouts will now become the de facto Google messaging service. At first, you will see messenger disappear on Android, with iOS soon following. Beginning later today, Google will allow all users to download the entirety of their messenger conversations--including text and photos--from Google Takeout. The refresh also includes other updates like pull-to-refresh and several other UI and backend enhancements. Google said that they will leave it up to us to figure out what those are.

It appears that LG is planning a return to the tablet market and is planning a 8.3-inch Android-based slate under its premium G series name. Originally leaked through the blog Techblog.gr, the new device will allegedly be named the G Pad. This will be LG's first foray back into the tablet world since its failed Optimus Pad back in 2011.

The G pad is said to feature an 8.3-inch touchscreen that packs a pixel resolution of 1920x1200, an unnamed quad-core processor, and 2GB of RAM. Some industry analysts are speculating that the overall dimensions of the device will be 8.3 inches with the actual screen only being 8 inches. This would put it in the same class as Samsung's Galaxy Note 8.0, which has an overall measurement of 8.3 inches wide.

The screen resolution of 1920x1200 lands it alongside other tablet such as ASUS' Transformer Pad and Google's newly released next-gen Nexus 7. If LG can manage to keep the cost down and can price it similar to the Nexus 7, we can see this new tablet flying off the shelves. No information has surfaced on a possible launch window, but we will be sure to keep you up to date on things as it unfolds.