Latest News - Page 2951

Microsoft has been scrambling these last couple of weeks, trying everything they can to do last minute tweaks to its next-gen Xbox One console to better compete against Sony's PlayStation 4.

Another change that has been announced today, saw Xbox chief product officer, Marc Whitten, revealing that Kinect will no longer be required in order for the Xbox One to work. He says: "Like online, the console will still function if Kinect isn't plugged in, although you won't be able to use any feature or experience that explicitly uses the sensor."

I have referred to the Xbox One's Kinect sensor as an NSA device, so it looks like the company is listening to people and have removed the requirement of an always-on camera pointing at for your console to work. What's more interesting is the fact that this could lead Microsoft to selling an Xbox One without the Kinect sensor, which might drop it down to the $399 price tag that the PS4 is going for.

Thanks to Paramount Pictures we have an awesome pool of G.I. Joe: Retaliation prizes to give away to ten lucky readers.

A follow-up to the 2009 release of G.I. Joe: Rise Of The Cobra, in this sequel, the G.I. Joes are not only fighting their mortal enemy Cobra; they are forced to contend with threats from within the government that jeopardize their very existence.

One lucky reader will take home the major prize consisting of G.I. Joe: Retaliation on Blu-ray disc, along with a G.I. Joe: Retaliation themed 320GB portable HDD and a G.I. Joe: Retaliation laptop bag. The next nine successful entrants will each take home a copy of G.I. Joe: Retaliation on Blu-ray disc.

Today, Viking Technology announced that SolidFire has selected its SATADIMM SSD to be used as both the cache SSD and boot volume SSD in the company's storage nodes. SolidFire says that this offers enhanced products by increasing both the number and capacity of SSDs in their systems.

For those who might not know, SATADIMM is an enterprise-class SSD built on a Dual In-line Memory Module (DIMM) that fits in an empty DDR3 DIMM slot. These new drives enable both SSD caching as well as boot capabilities without having to utilize a hard drive. SolidFire says that the integration of Viking's SATADIMM SSDs will boost overall system performance and also allow the company to minimize potential human errors such as accidentally removing a boot or cache drive when replacing other failed drives.

"The Viking SATADIMM gives us an additional SSD within the chassis allowing us to dedicate more drives towards storage capacity, while storing boot and metadata information securely inside the system," says Adam Carter, Director of Product Management at SolidFire. "Viking's SATADIMM technology is unique in the market and an important part of our hardware design."

This morning, BlackBerry announced that the company's Board of Directors has formed a special committee that will explore strategic alternatives to enhance value and increase sales in an effort to accelerate BlackBerry 10 sales. The alternatives include options such as possible joint ventures, strategic partnerships, and a sale of the company.

"During the past year, management and the Board have been focused on launching the BlackBerry 10 platform and BES 10, establishing a strong financial position, and evaluating the best approach to delivering long-term value for customers and shareholders," said Timothy Dattels, Chairman of BlackBerry's Special Committee of the Board. "Given the importance and strength of our technology, and the evolving industry and competitive landscape, we believe that now is the right time to explore strategic alternatives."

Thorsten Heins, President and Chief Executive Officer of BlackBerry, added, "We continue to see compelling long-term opportunities for BlackBerry 10, we have exceptional technology that customers are embracing, we have a strong balance sheet and we are pleased with the progress that has been made in our transition. As the Special Committee focuses on exploring alternatives, we will be continuing with our strategy of reducing cost, driving efficiency and accelerating the deployment of BES 10, as well as driving adoption of BlackBerry 10 smartphones, launching the multi-platform BBM social messaging service, and pursuing mobile computing opportunities by leveraging the secure and reliable BlackBerry Global Data Network."

We are proud to announce that from today onwards, we are partnering up with SwiftTest Inc., who are the leaders in infrastructure performance validation for the networked storage industry.

Our collaboration with SwiftTest will see us working together on test suites and benchmarks that will help the consumer enjoy a real-world perspective on the performance of storage devices. SwiftTest offers its SwiftTest Enterprise platform, an easy-to-use GUI-based platform that speeds up test development and allows users to boost their testing and QA processes.

The SwiftTest Enterprise comes pre-configured with a test platform, protocol test suites, and test content that is based on industry standard workloads. But, if you like to tweak, like we do, it comes with fully customizable workloads that can be quickly adjusted to meet the needs of any storage industry organization, or professional storage users.

A document on the NSA.gov website has stated that the government spy agency "touches" 1.6% of the huge 1,826 petabytes of data that crosses the data cables that makes up the Internet each day.

Of this data, the NSA flicks through 29PB of it, or 29 million gigabytes, which is quite the insane number. The NSA says that just 0.025% of that data is selected for review. The document states: "The net effect is that NSA analysts look at 0.00004 percent of the world's traffic in conducing their mission - that's less than one part in a million. Put another way, if a standard basketball court represented the global communications environment, NSA's collection would be represented by an area smaller than a dime on that basketball court."

Throughout the document, the NSA defends its legal basis, dismissing claims that it was conducting dragnet-style operations, except for the instances that fall under the umbrella of counter-terrorism and involve telephone metadata. You can read more on the document here, which is just filled with "it's okay, American citizens, we're not spying on you..."

Thomas "Thompen" Andersson, Battlefield 4's Lead Multiplayer Designer, has explained how the developer is designing Battlefield 4 to "highly encourage" but "never force" team play in the first-person shooter.

DICE's first incentive for players, involves gameplay mechanics, where he continues on the official Battlefield 4 blog: "We want to promote team play by creating great gameplay mechanics such as Field Upgrades, Commander Mode, and a new range of gadgets specifically designed to expand co-operation in the field. We have drastically expanded on the tools and benefits of efficient team play, and as a result we feel Battlefield 4's multiplayer experience is the deepest, most rewarding, and fun experience in the series."

Andersson said he believes EA DICE can "do a better job ... of letting players make more educated choices in their kit loadouts and combat roles" by showing what gadgets do and allowing gamers to compare weapons.

XLGames and 2K are currently working on Civilization Online, an MMO title which is being powered by Crytek's very capable CryEngine 3. The new Civilization Online will shift away from the usual turn-based strategy game, into a single character within one of four societies.

Civilization Online is still centered around the ideas and characteristics that made Civilization the franchise that it is today, but Civilization Online just takes it from a new perspective. From the start of the game, player's will slot into one of four societies, where their task will be to conquer the world as it progresses through the ages.

Civilization Online is a massively, real-time, open world title that will see huge environments for gamer's to explore. There'll also be crafting PvP, resource gathering and other elements built-in. Traditional combat will be a part of Civilization Online, as will the ability to conduct research, build structures and even access an auction house to get rid of the items you have crafted.

NVIDIA have let slip (or have they) by confirming they're working with Microsoft on a next-gen Surface slate. After a three-month stint of beating analysts' estimates, but failing to do anything special on the mobile front, NVIDIA's chief executive, Jen-Hsun Huang spoke with CNET, confirming that they still have a great future ahead of them.

He told CNET: "Now we're going to bring it with the second-generation Surface. We're working really hard on it, and we hope that it's going to be a big success." Microsoft have of course denied the rumors, but so did NVIDIA spokesman Ken Brown, too. Huang didn't confirm whether he was referring to the Surface RT tablet, or the higher-end Surface Pro tablet, I think he meant the latter.

Brown did state that NVIDIA's hardware didn't make it into the current Surface Pro, adding "so make what you will of that." With Microsoft pushed to record a $900 million write-down on the Surface RT, they'll want to not repeat that mistake again and it looks like NVIDIA is now a part of this course correction.

Until just recently, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden used the e-mail services of Lavabit. But now Lavabit has shut its doors, with the owner of Lavabit, Ladar Levison, leaving a very cryptic and scary message stating he walked away from his business as he has "become complicit in crimes against the American public."

It gets a little scarier, with the Lavabit owner saying that until real reform happens, he "would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States." This includes most e-mail services, like GMail, Hotmail, and more.

The full message reads:

Bloomberg must really like Canonical\'s Ubuntu Edge as yesterday they pledged 80,000 to the company\'s crowd funding campaign on Indiegogo. At this point, Canonical has only managed to raise about one quarter of its $32 million goal and with just over 12 days left, things are not looking very good for the Ubuntu Edge smartphone.

So what does Bloomberg get for their $80,000 donation? 115 Ubuntu Edge smartphones are included in the deal alongside several best practice workshops, 30 days of online support that allow the company\'s chief information officers and IT managers to integrate the devices into their system, and--of course--free shipping. If the funding campaign is successful, Canonical hopes to have the phones shipped around March of next year.

Today, Microsoft released an unboxing video of its upcoming next-gen gaming console, the Xbox One. While we have seen many images of the new console, most of them are from the unveiling ceremony or E3, and today is the first time we\'re getting a look at what the final design will be.

The unboxing features what is being called the Xbox One Day One edition. It will feature a Kinect, Day One branded controller, and the Xbox One console itself. Additionally, the company will include what appears to be a wired mono driver headset that will also come with standard editions of the console.

So what\'s changed since we last saw the Xbox One? The final design features a separate power supply brick, an included HDMI cable, and what the company is calling a \"Liquid Black\" finish. The controller now features a built-in battery compartment that is able to accommodate alkaline or rechargeable AA batteries. Charging can be completed via a built-in microUSB port, which will shut down the wireless radio when plugged in and allow you to continue playing your game through the wired connection.

This week, Nikon introduced a new wide-angle zoom lens for its DSLRs that feature APS-C sensors--the DX Series. The focal length is between 18mm and 140mm and the company says that it has been designed to be a versatile all-around shooter.

The new 18-140mm lens features Nikon vibration reduction technology, with Nikon promising that photographers are now able to shoot in low light with a shutter speed up to four stops slower and still keep images blur free. The new lens features 17 elements in 12 groups with one extra-low dispersion element and a single aspherical lens element that delivers excellent resolution and contrast while reducing aberration and color dissection.

The AF-S DX NIKKOR 18-140mm f/3.5-5.6G ED VR retails at an MSRP of $890 and will begin to hit store shelves at the end of this month.

Today, AOL released its earnings report for the second quarter of 2013. The company says that its revenue grew to $541 million, which is up more than 2 percent during the same period last year. This equates to a diluted earnings per share of $0.35.

Net income per quarter was $28.5 million, which was actually significantly lower than the same period in 2012, but AOL was quick to note that this is because it sold $1.1 billion worth of patents to Microsoft in Q2 2012. However, Q2 2013's net income is up $3 million over quarter one 2013.

"AOL takes a major step forward today with another quarter of growth and our agreement to acquire the Adap.tv video marketplace platform that will make AOL a clear global leader in the most important growth segment in our industry - online video," AOL Chairman and CEO Tim Armstrong said in the report. "AOL continued to get leaner during Q2 while growing consumer traffic, growing all advertising revenue lines, and improving our subscription trends."

Today, Facebook has announced that it has finished rolling out its Graph Search feature to everyone using US English as their primary language. Eight months ago, the company launched the advanced search feature to a handful of select beta testers and then began to slowly roll the service out a few months later.

Graph Search lets users search using common phrases such as "pizzerias in my city that my friends have visited and liked." In the early weeks of the beta program, the service received much criticism as the level of search capable was just to much for some people to be comfortable with.

A search phrase such as "photos of friends of my friends at the beach" would return photos of all the friends of your friends who were at the beach. This became a problem because many of those photos featured women in bikinis. Facebook has since restricted certain search phrases and this issue is no longer a problem.

Today, LG Electronics unveiled its latest flagship smartphone in the form of the LG G2. This is the first device introduced under LG's new "G" series which is reserved for premium devices only. LG says that the G2 is a beautifully designed smartphone that brings together functionality and convenience in a comfortable package.

"Our definition of innovation today is technology that truly resonates with consumers," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, who welcomed the guests to the event. "We have always listened to and learned from consumers in pursuit of innovation. We took these insights to new heights in developing LG G2, the most exciting and ambitious mobile phone in our company's history."

The G2 features a 5.2-inch full HD 1080x1920 IPS display that packs 423 pixels per inch, and is powered by a quad-core QUALCOMM Snapdragon 800 clocked in at 2.26Ghz. 2 GB of low-power DDR3 800 is present and a 3000mAH battery keep things up and running for quite a long time. A 13-megapixel rear camera handles imaging duties, while a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera is in control of the selfies.

This morning Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift, announced a new addition to the team. The company said that id Software co-founder and legendary programmer John Carmack has joined the Oculus team as the company's new Chief Technical Officer. Oculus says that Carmack "is one of the brightest minds of our generation - pioneer, visionary, and industry legend. There are very few people in the world that can contribute to the Oculus Rift and the future of virtual reality like John can."

For those of you who might be too young to remember, John Carmack is the brains behind revolutionary pioneer first-person shooter games such as DOOM, QUAKE, RAGE and Wolfenstein. Carmack is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of 3-D graphics and has recently worked as a programmer in the aerospace industry at Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack prepared a statement which I have pasted below.

Oculus says that Carmack has been involved in the project since its pre-Kickstarter days, and that he is a true believer in the future of virtual reality. They went on to say that he was the first developer to actually integrate the Oculus Rift into a videogame during the prototype stage without the aid of an SDK. The company says that John will work in the new Dallas office that will open soon, and have put out the call for a few key hires to help them bring their dream to reality. If you're interested in applying head over to Source #2, and you can follow Oculus and Carmack on Twitter at Source #3 & 4 respectively.

Google have been hiding Android 5.0 "Key Lime Pie" behind some very sealed doors, but it looks like the first sliver of information has leaked out on Google's next-gen mobile OS.

Members of the Chromium Project are used to seeing countless Android builds, but the latest one is from a Chromium user who spotted a posting of bug 267659, who reported an issue with Cloud Print by listing out his devices. The Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 were both listed, running Android built KRS36B. These few digits and letters are very significant, to those who know what to look for.

The most important part? The "K" in KRS36B, which stands for "Key" in Key Lime Pie. All previous releases for Jelly Bean start with "J", and it continues backwards with "I" for Ice Cream Sandwich, "G" for Gingerbread, and so on. The most recent build pushed out to the original Nexus devices was JWR66V, so we have "J" for Jelly Bean, obviously.

Samsung has been working on Tizen for a while now, but in case you didn't know what Tizen was, you might want to do some light reading. Tizen is Samsung's mobile OS, that will see a bright future for the South Korean giant in the years to come.

But now there's some new information on just how much faith Samsung have in Tizen, with co-CEO, J.K. Shin, who runs Samsung's IT and Mobile Communications Division saying that Tizen is more than a small project for the company, and it isn't just a "simple alternative for Android." Shin sees a future of Tizen powering more than smartphones, a future where the mobile OS would move into vehicles and other industries.

Shin continues: "There are many convergences not only among IT gadgets, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and cameras, but also among different industries like cars, bio, or banks. Cross-convergence is the one [area] Samsung can do best since we do have various parts and finished products."

According to AMD's Vice President of Channel Sales, Roy Taylor, NVIDIA's CUDA and PhysX platforms are an utter failure. How does he get to that conclusion? Because the industry doesn't like proprietary standards.

Taylor continued: "NVIDIA should be congratulated for its invention. As a trend, GPGPU is absolutely fantastic and fabulous. But that was then, this is now. Now, collectively our industry doesn't want a proprietary standard. That's why people are migrating to OpenCL." The AMD VP says that Intel will continue adding more GPU to their die.

Taylor said that with Intel's Sandy Bridge platform, 17% of the die was GPU. Ivy Bridge notched that up to 27%, and Haswell sees 32% of its die reserved for GPU silicon. He thinks that Intel will eventually use the term APU, but not for a little while yet. He adds: "We think the reason they're doing that is because of GPGPU. It's not because of games. I think they see that HSA is an absolutely unstoppable force. I just don't know why they don't call [Haswell] an APU... it seems just like pride. If you remember [ATI] tried to join the coin term VPU... 'No, no, no, it's a VPU not a GPU,' they would say. GPU just became widely adopted they just quietly adopted it, and I believe Intel will do the same. Look [Intel] it's an APU, why are you protesting?"