Latest News - Page 2974

ASUS are ready to launch their first storage product in the form of the Asus Raidr storage card under their Republic of Gamer brand of products. What makes the ASUS Raidr device stand out from the crowd is its reliance on the PCIe 2.0 x2 port it'll use in your system, oh and those blistering read/write speeds.

We're looking at dual LSI SandForce SD-2281 controllers using Toshiba's 19nm 16k page size MLC sync-NAND flash. Sequential read and writes are impressive, with the 240GB drive capable of 830MB/sec read, and 810MB/sec write. The 120GB is slightly slower, with 765MB/sec and 775MB/sec for read and write, respectively. ASUS' Raidr PCIe card is capable of 100,000 IOPS, it of course supports TRIM and has a total power consumption of around 16W.

The drive runs a kind of internal RAID0, and the circuit board is covered by a protective metal shell with the usual red and black ROG theme. We should hear more about the ASUS Raidr the closer we get to Computex, which is only a little over six weeks away.

Power Matters Alliance have announced that they've found some new recruits in Samsung, HTC and LG to help their wireless charging group chug along. The PMA have a long list of members currently, with AT&T, Google, Blackberry, NEC, Texas Instruments and ZTE.

The wireless charging advocacy group are pushing for a unified charging standard, where they've developed more than 1500 charging stations in Starbucks coffee shops, airports and other locations around the world. The PMA have asked their partners to integrate PMA-certified wireless charging solutions into their products by near year, with AT&T have also pledged to bake the technology into their smartphones within the same timeframe.

Until then, the wireless charging group are working with their partners to "deploy PMA-certified handsets and accessories as quickly as possible".

Wearable computing is really taking off this year, first we have the launch of Google Glass later in the year, but we're also going to see smartwatches gain some serious traction in the coming months. Market research firm ABI Research are predicting that smartwatches will see an explosion of sales this year, where they expect sales of 1.2 million smartwatches in 2013. Senior analyst Joshua Flood said:

Will you be buying a smartwatch this year? Personally, I'm not a watch wearing type of guy, but Google Glass? Shut up and take my money.

As part of the terms of sale for the Google Glass Explorer Edition, users are prevented from reselling, loaning, transferring, or giving them away. Users who break this rule could see their Glass deactivated and neither person would be entitled to a refund, support, or warranty. Ouch.

This is somewhat understandable. This is essentially a pre-release product that Google is allowing people to have and use. However, it's not clear if Google can legally deactivate a user's hardware because he sold it. While it's true that the purchaser agreed to the terms, it seems a bit overbearing and something where the government might step in to protect consumers.

Google seems to be expanding their push to roll out Google Fiber. Just days after announcing that Austin, Texas would be Google's second Fiber city, ArsTechnica is reporting that Google is working to acquire iProvo, a fiber-based ISP owned by the city of Provo, Utah.

Provo has a lot to gain from this. Not only would the city no longer have to finance the build-out of the network, Google is offering the same free 5Mbps/1Mbps connection as they have in Kansas and Austin. Google is also offering up free Gigabit connections to 25 different local public institutions, including schools, hospitals, and libraries.

The Name Your Own Price Mac Bundle 2.0 is much like the Humble Bundle. People can choose what ever price they would like for the pack of apps, 10 percent of which goes to charity. Every buyer, no matter the price, gets three apps, while you have to beat the average price to get all ten.

For the cheap--err, thrifty--among us, you'll get:

If you beat the average--note, it's better to do it now as the average will continually rise as more people beat it to get all ten apps--you'll get these additional apps:

Someone is having just a bit too much fun with the new HTC One. HKEPC decided to overclock the HTC One to 1.72GHz, using liquid nitrogen to keep the CPU cool. Once overclocked, HKEPC ran some benchmarks on the device to see how much extra performance they could squeeze out of the newest HTC smartphone:

As you can see, the device became rather frosty:

So just what were they able to achieve with the super-cooled and overclocked device? 11585 in the 3DMark Ice Storm benchmark. Impressive:

Yesterday we saw AT&T begin taking pre-orders on Samsung's long anticipated Galaxy S4, and tomorrow Sprint will follow suit ahead of its April 27th release. T-Mobile also confirmed that it will begin taking pre-orders for the S4 on April 24th.

T-Mobile customers will be able to purchase the Galaxy S4 for an upfront cost of $149 with 24 monthly payments of $20 when tied to the company's new Simple Choice Plan, which starts at $50 a month. AT&T is offering the device for $199 with a new two year contract.

Sprint customers can pick up the device for $249.99 with a new two year contract, but will receive a $100 credit which brings the price more in-line with T-Mobile's price range. I am still stuck deciding between Samsung's Galaxy S4 and HTC's aluminum unibody One.

During Intel's first quarter earnings call, Intel CEO Paul Otellini said that Windows 8 touch devices including laptops will see a massive price drop in the coming months when the company releases its new quad-core Bay Trail chip. He said that new innovative designs will allow future touch devices to sink into the $200 price range.

Being billed as the most powerful Atom processor ever, Bay Trail is a complete redesign of the Atom micro architecture and is said to bring Atom chips closer to the performance levels of mainstream Intel processors.

Next week Australia will see Huawei release a phone only rivaled in size by Samsung's Galaxy Note series of so-called phablets. The Ascend Mate is a 6.1-inch Android based smartphone that can only be described as a hand full of phone.

Featuring a 6.1-inch 720p IPS+ display, 1GB of RAM and 8GB of storage, the phone will be powered by Huawei's own quad-core 1.5GHz processor. A monstrous 4050mAh battery and an 8 megapixel camera round out the phone/tablet mutation. Huawei has skinned Android Jelly Bean 4.1 with a custom launcher dubbed "Emotion UI", which appears to make use of so called "Me Widget."

The standard Android app folder is ditched in favor of placing all your apps on the home screen similar to how Apple handles multiple apps. Australian consumers will be able to purchase the device next Monday for $429 AUD through Harvey Norman, which also includes a Boost starter pack, that runs on Telstra's phone network.

We haven't even had our hands grace the next-gen CPU that is Haswell yet, but Intel are already talking about their chipset destined for 2014 - Intel's 9-series chipsets.

These chipsets will support Serial ATA Express, which is based on the PCI Express protocol and will pave the way for some seriously high-bandwidth storage devices. Intel's 9-series chipsets will include core-logic sets such as Z97 and H97, and will support SATA Express by default. There will also be an all-new Intel device protection technology with boot guard built into the chipset, enhancing the security against low-level malware attacks on the upcoming next-gen platform.

What can we expect from SATA Express on Intel's 9-series motherboards? Well, we should see a cost-effective means to deliver interface speeds between 8Gb/s and 16Gb/s compared to the 6Gb/s maximum that the SATA III specification allows now. The specification will define new device and motherboard connects that will support both the current SATA devices, and the new SATA Express devices.

We know the PC industry is in a state of pain, but it looks like the largest chipmaker is hurting, too. Intel have just posted their latest earnings report, revealing that their quarterly profits for Q1 2013 are down 25% year-over-year.

For Q1 2013, Intel made $2.045 billion in profits, down from $2.738 billion last year. Intel CEO, Paul Otellini, said in a statement:

Facebook may have over one billion users, but how could they make more money from these users? The social network is reportedly set to roll out their own video-based advertising service, reports Ad Age.

A video ad on Facebook won't be cheap, where it might cost one million dollars for a 15-second spot. Quite an astronomical amount, but considering the amount of people you'd reach, it could just be worth it. Facebook are currently experimenting with four advertising slots, which could see the social network make around four million dollars in revenue, per day.

Facebook will do it well though, where they won't make you see the same video ads more than once per day, while simultaneously limiting the total delivery of ads to three per user, per day. How would these ads display to you? They could pop up as the 15-second ads, playing automatically and taking up a portion of your screen.

A Beijing-based third-party Internet security company called Anquan, are looking for a "chief porn identification officer", a position they posted on their Weibo account.

The company was started in 2010, with the goal to "combat bad information on the internet" and promote greater control of porn on the web. Anquan have big partners in Baidu and Tencent, as well as government agencies that regulate the Internet in China. Here's a translated version of the job post:

Job Location: Beijing

Android looks like its the OS of choice for malware developers, with mobile security vendor NQ finding that Android devices infected with malware grew exponentially last year alone.

NQ found that Android devices with malware infections grew from 10.8 million in 2011 to 32.8 million, meaning a triple of infections year-over-year. They also found that nearly 95% of malware detected in 2012 was designed specifically for Google's mobile OS, which means that Android is the main target for cybercriminals.

Most Android malware infections happen in China, India and Russia - so while this might seem like some frightening numbers at first, InfoWorld's Brian Katz does make us feel all a little better. Katz also writes that most mobile malware can be avoided if Android users "download apps only from known sources", such as the Google Play Store. My advice? Don't click ads, don't open suspicious links, don't join random or weird Facebook groups that want all of your info.

Google have finally unveiled the full specifications of their Glass tech, which is actually a bit better than what I thought we'd receive in the final consumer units.

We have the display first, which is a high-resolution display being the equivalent to a 25-inch high-definition screen eight feet away from your eyes. Camera-wise, we have a 5-megapixel camera for photos and 720p capture for video, there's some adjustable nosepads with a durable frame that fits any face. There's also two extra nosepads included.

We have a Bond Conduction Transducer for audio, Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g and Bluetooth for connectivity, 12GB of usable memory synced with Google cloud storage, 16GB of flash memory total. Battery life should be good, with Google quoting "one full day of typical use", which includes Hangouts and video recording which are more battery intensive.

Ouya developer James Coote ran the new 3DMark for Android benchmark on his Ouya game console, the video of which you can see embedded below. Interestingly enough, the Ouya is easily bested by current generation smartphones and even some previous generation smartphones.

In fact, the Ouya console is ranked 73 among all Android devices in Futuremark's database for the 3DMark Ice Storm benchmark. This doesn't exactly make me believe the Ouya will play host to graphically exciting games. The Samsung Galaxy S4 manages over double the score of the Ouya console.

This weak performance is likely the best the Ouya designers could manage while still staying within a $99 sticker price.

According to a Google study, the mobile internet pipes are getting faster. Google used their Site Speed reports from Google Analytics and opted-in web publishers to get an idea of the speed of websites around the world. Google has again aggregated that data into the following graph:

As you can see, on the desktop side of things, not much has improved from 2012 to 2013. Speeds are just slightly better, but not by enough to really have much significance. On the mobile side of things, however, the mean time to load has decreased by about two seconds. The median time has decreased by about one.

Google credits most of these speed increases to LTE/4G roll outs as well as increased processing power in mobile devices. Read the full Google report.

You might not remember when a former Rochdale Securities trader was arrested last December or why he was arrested, but today he plead guilty to wire fraud and conspiracy after making an unauthorized purchase of $1 billion in Apple stock that led to the demise of Rochdale Securities.

David Miller's lawyer:

One thing that annoys most, especially me, is that I want an all-day (all-week preferably) battery life on my devices. Running a quad-core smartphone with all the trimmings is great, but charging it every night is not the ideal thing for me.

New technology is required, and this is where the Massachusetts Institute of Technology steps in, with Professor Donald Sadoway's new research - liquid metal batteries. Professor Sadoway told BBC News: