Latest News - Page 2954

BlackBerry's launch of BlackBerry Messenger (BBM) for Android and iOS is quickly approaching and today, the company's CEO confirmed that they have began pushing out beta invitations to both Android and iOS users in an attempt to thwart off any major bugs on launch day. While we have no definitive date on when the messaging platform will debut on either of the mobile operating systems, we do know that it will happen sometime this summer. With the beta launching today, the official public launch can not be very far away.

An image of the BBM app running on a Samsung Galaxy SIII has popped up on BGR recently that gives us a glimpse of how the app will look on the Android platform. The report also says that users of Android 4.0 or higher will be getting the invitations before iOS users but as to why, we are still unsure. It is also unclear as to why BlackBerry is pushing out its proprietary messaging service to the rival OS' in the first place as BBM has widely been thought of a BlackBerry's final ace-in-the-hole. Our only guess is that the company is looking for other sources of revenue as its hardware business continues to sink out of popularity.

During its launch event, Microsoft spent a good amount of time talking up the benefits of the new cloud computing aspect the Xbox One will feature. While we expected the company to boast about high performance gains, we reserved judgement until we saw some numbers come from the developer side of things. Today, we got just what we were waiting for and honestly, the news was a lot better than we expected.

In a recent interview with OXM, Dan Greenawalt, the creative director for Forza 5, said that the new cloud computing aspect of the Xbox one created a "tremendous opportunity" for the game's AI to become better than ever. The game uses the cloud-based processing power to handle the game's "Drivatar" AI, something that saves 10 to 20 percent of the processing load that the actual Xbox One hardware sees.

Greenawalt says that by letting the cloud handle the AI side, the performance of Drivatar can be boosted by as much as 600 percent, letting the Xbox One hardware use that freed 20 percent of processing power on something else. 600 percent sounds like an almost too good to be true gain, but when you really think about it, it is actually very feasible. If the Xbox One's hardware has to handle the Drivatar AI, it must juggle it within the 10 billion other lines of code that it must process every second. When offloaded to the cloud, the Drivatar AI can be focused on exclusively and performance numbers could in theory rise exponentially.

Today, V-MODA announced two new high-end accessories for use with its award winning Crossfade M-100 headphones. The BoomPro and CoilPro are aimed at enhancing the audio experience for even the most hardcore gamers as well as the Podcaster and Skype user. The BoomPro is a universal, hi-fi boom mic that instantly enhances voice clarity while greatly reducing background noise. It plugs directly into the audio jack of the CrossFade M-100 and a built-in on-cable Control Clip allows for quick adjustment of volume controls.

The CoilPro is a professional grade coiled extension cable that allows users to move up to 12 feet away from their battle station. The company says that this extension cable is perfect for the DJ booth, production studio, or for use while on a Skype call or other times when you may need to stay connected but move freely around your room or office. The cable is reinforced with an inner reinforcement strand of kevlar, which should prevent any stress breakage from occurring. Both of these new accessories are available from V-MODA and Amazon for $30.

"With the launch of these new accessories, V-MODA is raising the bar for headphone versatility. Up until now, there hasn't been a professional quality boom mic for high-end headphone enthusiasts and gamers," states Val Kolton, Chief Visionary Officer at V-MODA. "BoomPro opens up a world of opportunity, converting headphones like M-100 into an incredibly versatile headset for gamers, business professionals, podcasters and anybody who wants extreme clarity for their phone or conference calls. CoilPro bolsters M-100's appeal within the professional audio, music instrument and DJ community. As a musician, I can attest that the last thing you want to worry about is not having enough slack on your headphone cable while playing guitar or drums at home or spinning in the DJ booth. This gives you additional reach so you can focus on creating boundless music."

Today, a new user manual has surfaced for what appears to be a new flip style phone from Samsung. Engadget is reporting that the device will be part of the company's Galaxy line of smartphones. Dubbed the Galaxy Folder, this new phone will feature what appear to be 3.7-inch AMOLED displays on each side of the top half.

A dual-core QUALCOMM Snapdragon 400 processor, 2GB of RAM, and full LTE support will also be onboard. The phone resembles the now old-school Motorola Razr, which was in its day was the king of the flip phone form-factor. We can see a rear-facing camera with what appears to be an LED-based flash along with a front shooter of unknown spec. The design is similar to a phone the company released last year in China, and for all intents and purposes, it is safe to assume that this is where the Galaxy Folder will end up as well.

There is no mention (that I can find) of what operating system the device will run, but it could theoretically feature Tizen or Android, but my bet is on Tizen. The company has been working long and hard on developing the new OS and this would be the perfect platform to show it off. If you are interested in checking out the user manual, head over to Source #2 below.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA employee who blew the whistle on PRISM, has been sitting in a isolated room at the Moscow Airport since June 23 and has not been allowed to leave or fly to another country. Today, he met with his lawyer in hopes of seeing his temporary request for asylum granted.

Today around 2:18 BST, Snowden met with his Russian Lawyer, Anatoly Kucherena, and shortly there after, the lawyer addressed the press saying that Snowden would be staying in the airport's transit zone for now. He said that the immigration officials are still looking at the request for asylum and are drawing the process out. Snowden withdrew the permanent request and filled a temporary one which would allow him up to one year, but comments from Kucherena seem to sound like Snowden might stay in Russia permanently.

Reports are coming in that a new over-the-air update to BlackBerry's BB10 OS includes a major bug that is randomly deleting SMS messages on some devices. The update is meant to improve operational functionality of BB10 devices such as the Z10 and Q10, but no one expected it to begin deleting text messages at random.

Some reports are coming in that says the update has even blocked SMS messaging entirely on their device. The issue appears to be widespread, but the bug appears to affect each device differently. Some users just experience the message deletion, while some only delete random messages from a message chain, while still other devices are seeing the messaging blocked entirely. BlackBerry has yet to confirm the issue, and we would recommend that you do not install the update until a fix has been released.

Too many times has a video been uploaded to YouTube of a person talking into their smartphone with it in portrait orientation, and way too many selfie videos have been ruined by a propped up smartphone falling to the floor. Canon noticed these issues and decided to take a stand and help bring forth a new era of selfie video production to the world. This morning, the camera making giant announced a new video camera dubbed the Vixia mini.

The Vixia mini features an f/2.8 fisheye lens which offers excellent low-light wide-angle coverage out of the box. This equates to a 160-degree field of view for video, but it can also capture still images at up to 170 degrees, which is said to be close to the 35mm format. The Vixia's 12.8-megapixel CMOS sensor is backed up by Canon's Digic DV4 image processor for lightning fast recording. Capable of full 1080p HD footage at 30 frames per second, the camera is also design to capture full HD stereo sound thanks to a pair of built-in mics. The Vixia mini is available now at major electronic retailers at an MSRP of $300.

As I predicted, set-top box manufacturers are scared of Google's new Chromecast HDMI media streaming dongle, and rightfully so. The little device costs just one-third of what comparable devices cost from other major brands. With companies like Netflix, Vimeo, Spotify, HBO, and PLEX either supporting Chromecast or planning support, the $35 dongle looks more appealing than anything else.

Today, Apple has dropped the price on its refurbished Apple TV box from about $85 to just $75. Is this because of Google's success with the $35 Chromecast? That could be it, but Apple does have a history of reevaluating their refurbished prices and dropping them if the market is slow, so it really could be either of the reasons. A brand new Apple TV unit retails for about $99 new, so there is little value in choosing the refurb over the new, but my bet is to go with the $35 Chromecast.

The Australian Finance Review has just published a new story that suggests that the NSA may have hardware level backdoors built into current generation AMD and Intel processors. Leading security expert Steve Blank says that he first caught on to the practice when he noticed that the NSA had access to Microsoft emails before they were encrypted. He says that he would be extremely surprised if the NSA did not have access to a processor microcode level backdoor on every PC in America.

His reasoning behind the theory is quite simple. The sheer power needed to brute force crack AES 256-bit encryption on a single file would be equivalent to "the power of 10 million suns" and that a hardware backdoor would require almost no effort to enter and would allow agents access inside your PC in a matter of minutes. Jonathan Brossard, another expert in the security field, demonstrated this as a proof of concept at last year's Black Hat conference. These backdoors are made possible because they are placed inside the microcode which is stored on the chip itself and gets updated every time Microsoft, Apple, or any other OS pushes out an update.

Yesterday, Comedy Central launched its new CC: Stand-Up app on the Xbox 360. The new stand-up comedy app brings over 6,000 videos from more than 700 comedians straight to your living room for the first time ever. Comedy Central says that the app is different from the iOS and Android versions as the Xbox app focuses more on long term viewing rather than on discovery of new comedians and new material.

"We're looking opportunistically at all these different platforms, moving down the chain from biggest to smallest," said Ben Hurst, Viacom Entertainment Group's vice president of mobile and emerging platforms. "We want to get digitally distributed content everywhere." When asked if the company is worried about the new digital content leaching off viewers from its cable channel, Hurst said "We've now introduced fans to a new comedian or have gotten them excited to watch the new special. We view this as additive, not cannibalistic."

Comedy Central also launched a companion site to the Stand-Up app earlier this month named CC: Stand-Up Direct in which users can access the full stand-up library over the net and pay $5 per stream or download. The new Xbox CC: Stand-up app is available free of charge to Xbox Live Gold subscribers, which costs just $5 per month with a one-year agreement.

Late last night, reports started to surface that accused Samsung of rigging the code in its Exynos 5 variant of the Galaxy S4 to boost clock speeds when the device ran specific benchmarks. Our own Anthony Garreffa covered the story shortly after the news broke. This morning, not 12 hours later, Samsung has responded and as one would expect, the company denied everything.

Samsung says that the "BenchmarkBooster" used on the Exynos 5 is not intended to boost frequencies when running certain benchmarks. Normally, I would tend to give the company the benefit of the doubt, but with the code being named "BenchmarkBooster," I am finding it hard to drink this glass of Koolaid. However, regardless of benchmark performance, the Galaxy S4 is still one hell of a phone and with the code in question only boosting performance by 7 percent, does it really matter? Everyday average users could care less about a benchmark result that says this phone performs 1.3564 percent better than another phone.

Samsungs full statement is below.

If we were to just look at the amount of employees Amazon has, and the amount of extra jobs they're creating across the US, one would think they're preparing for the company to get bigger in the near future.

Well, according to a report on BGR, Amazon are looking to refresh its Kindle Fire HD, which would include a huge performance boost from the current device. Amazon are looking to bake in the speedy Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 SoC to reach that high-performance category. We are to expect three new devices from Amazon, ranging from 7 inches up to 8.9 inches.

The first, would be the entry-level 7-inch Kindle Fire, which would receive a refreshed 1280x800-pixel display. The other two models would replace the current Kindle Fire HD 7- and 8.9-inch models, and would include the super-fast, and very capable Snapdragon 800 SoC.

Google released Android 4.3 into the wild last week, but the latest iteration in their mobile OS includes some improvements to Photo Sphere. Photo Sphere is used to take 360-degree photos, and is quite a nice ability of Android.

The latest software improvements to Photo Sphere in Android 4.3 make it easier to upload and share pictures on Google Maps. Google have taken the how-to a step further by providing a couple of handy tips:

How many hours did you put yourself through in Atari's 1984 classic, Paperboy? I know I rode through that game for countless hours, and it looks like I might just do it again with Globacore's new title.

Globacare are a creative technology company who specialize in large multi-touch displays, and have unveiled a new work-in-progress, first-person homage to Paperboy, Paperdude VR. Paperdude VR uses Oculus' VR headset, Rift, as well as Microsoft's motion sensor, Kinect. You can see in the video above that player rides on a stationary bike, attempting to throw newspapers into peoples' mailboxes.

Paperdude VR is a great concept, something that might just keep gamers a bit fitter than they are now. Constantly peddling your bike in a game is sure to keep gamers a bit fitter. The more I see on Oculus Rift, the more I want it.

Canada's Next-Generation Canadarm (NGC) have developed a new version of their robotic space arm that will help out with space exploration. The program itself is designed to support missions in both low-Earth orbit, and deep space.

The next-gen robotic arm will be used for jobs from repairing communications satellites to helping out on manned missions to the moon, asteroids, Mars, and other vast parts of the universe. Alain Ouellet, the Director of Space Exploration Development at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) said:

"With the retirement of the space shuttle, a new generation of crewed space exploration vehicles will soon become available. However, these new vehicles are much smaller in size compared to the space shuttle, and therefore there is a need to adapt the robotic arm technology developed for the shuttle and the International Space Station."

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is one of the company's best-selling smartphones of all time, and one of the hottest devices on the market right now. This all comes down to how it is perceived in the market, and how reviewers (like myself) and users, talk about the phone.

Well, it looks like AnandTech have donned their detective outfit, and found that Samsung have been tweaking the Galaxy S4 to perform better in benchmarks than it does anything else. AnandTech found that the Galaxy S4 has its GPU limited to 480MHz in most apps and games, but when it comes to benchmark tests such as AnTuTu, GLBenchmark 2.5.1 and Quadrant, it overclocks to 533MHz, giving it a huge advantage.

You'd think the funny business would stop there, but it doesn't. Samsung have also souped up the CPU clock speed in certain benchmarks, where in GLBenchmark 2.5.1, the CPU clock speed is at 1.2GHz, and never drops below that. But in GFXBench 2.7, the GPU clocks between 500Mhz and higher. AnandTech even found a string that shows the Galaxy S4 is hardcoded to specifically perform better in specific applications for benchmark testing with "Quadrant standard, advanced, and professional, linpack (free, not paid), Benchmark Pi, and AnTuTu" being mentioned.

Not even two days ago, TCL announced their new 50-inch 4K-capable TV for the US market, costing only $999. Australian's are usually the last market that most companies cater for, but TCL have decided to go Down Under early.

The company have announced the TCL E5691, which is a 65-inch edge-lit LED 4K/UHD TV, for $4999. Expensive, but considering high-end 65-inch 1080p HDTVs are around that price in Australia, you can't complain too much. TCL will be cramming in SMS on Demand, SMH.TV, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter and other apps into the TV. As for inputs, we have three HDMI inputs, 3D-support, and a USB port that supports Time Shift PVR settings.

The TCL T5691 provides a 4096x2160 resolution, and will upscale HD content to 4K, meaning that your Blu-ray movies will look a little nicer than they usually do. TCL will be releasing other sizes, which has my interest more. We start with the 40-inch for $899, a 46-inch model for $1199, a 50-inch version for $1399 and a non-3D version that comes in 32-inch for $549.

Earlier today iBUYPOWER unveil their new competition-grade gaming systems that involved a partnership with Computer Logic Gaming, and now they're just announced a partnership with AMD that sees their Valkyrie and Revolt systems powered by AMD CPUs.

First up, the Valkyrie is available with AMD's high-end A10 quad-core CPU and a Radeon HD 8970M GPU with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. The AMD-based Valkyrie systems can be configured with both an SSD and a HDD for the best of both worlds, super-speed and huge storage. iBUYPOWER also decided to offer an AMD option on their Revolt system, where customers can choose an AMD A10-6800K quad-core CPU. This means that the Revolt remains "the industry's leading benchmark in compact, high-performance gaming systems" according to iBUYPOWER.

Darren Su, Vice President of iBUYPOWER has said: "At iBUYPOWER, one of our core strengths is being able to offer customers a wide selection of configurations for any of our systems. Yes, we're about producing the best performing systems, but we also want to answer the call for choice. With new Revolts and Valkryies featuring AMD components, we cater to our customer's needs."

Today, iBUYPOWER and Computer Logic Gaming (CLG) have teamed up to launch several new custom-designed, high-performance gaming systems that are sure to give any gamer the advantage needed when competing in competition level events. iBUYPOWER says that the systems were designed from the ground up and built around the needs of a hardcore competition gamer and that all of the new systems have been tested by teams from iBUYPOWER and CLG to ensure that every aspect of the systems were tweaked to perfection.

The new systems come in three unique configurations and are encased in a "Custom Laser-Etched Chassis" which bears the CLG logo on the case's side panel window. "We've stayed true to our mission since day one of committing to the eSports scene. We want to support and give back to the community," said Darren Su, VP of iBUYPOWER. "CLG told us that fans demanded something competitive and we listened."

Available with up to an Intel Core i7-4770K CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 780 graphics, 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory, 256GB SSD + 1TB HDD, and sealed-loop liquid-cooling, each of the CLG systems will most definitely plow through any game you chose to throw at it. "I'm a computer enthusiast, and as the owner of CLG, I care a lot about what we put our brand on. The specs to price ratio on the CLG edition iBUYPOWER computers are great, which makes me happy to be working with them," said HotshotGG, Owner of CLG. "Plus, have you seen the custom case designs?"

Today, Mach Xtreme announced the launch of its new LX series of USB 3.0 compatible flash drives. The MX-LX series is aimed at those who are looking for a fast USB 3.0 thumb drive but still want high-capacity and affordability. Mach Xtreme says that the new flash drives are based on a native USB 3.0 controller chip and implement advanced dual-channel technology.

Mach Xtreme says that the LX flash drives reach up to 190MB/s read and 85MB/s write performance and are available in capacities of 8GB all the way up to 64GB. No information on pricing or availability were given at the time of writing, but you can head over to the company's product page (Source #2) for more information on pricing as it becomes available.