Latest News - Page 2997

BlackBerry had a lot of announcements this morning at its BB10 launch event in NYC. What we didn't see in the live coverage was the booth's set up around the event showcasing the official accessories for the new BlackBerry Z10.

The Verge has just posted some images of a few of the official accessories geared for use with the new Z10. As expected there is a whole line-up of protective and stylish cases, but the big news accessories seem to be the optional Z10 charger that has a slot for charging a back-up battery.

Alongside the new charger is what appears to be a clip on Bluetooth 4.0 speaker that is big enough to clip onto the straps of even the largest messenger bag. The speaker doubles as a speaker phone and it has an auxiliary port so you can play music wirelessly on any device that lacks Bluetooth support.

The final major announcement at the BlackBerry 10 launch took most of us by surprise. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins announced that BlackBerry has been consulting with entrepreneurs and artist from around the globe in an effort to improve the company, and as a result BlackBerry has decided to create a new position called 'Global Creative Director'.

Hines said, "We've created a new position at BlackBerry, Global Creative Director. We wanted someone at the top of her field, someone who could help guide us. I want to announce 40 time Grammy award singer song writer, one of the top 30 people on twitter, wife and mother, Alicia Keys as the new Global Creative Director at BlackBerry."

Keys said "I'm so excited, thank you for reaching out to me. I love the new browser, the hub, the flow. I'm obsessed with the time shift, I love how you can switch from work to play mode through balance." Keys went on to say, "I was in a long term relationship with BB, and I started to notice some new hotter, more attractive, sexier phones at the gym. So I broke up with you, but started to miss how you organized my life. Then one day you called, and told me how you hard to started to work out, and now, we're exclusively dating again!"

BlackBerry just announced that as of today the BlackBerry World store already contains 70,000+ apps. They have partnered with all of the major app developers to bring the most popular apps to the service.

VP of Global Alliances and Business Development Martyn Mallick said, "Many people didn't believe we could create a BlackBerry that has incredible content and experiences. We are launching BB10 with more apps by far than any first-gen operating system - over 70,000 applications have already been added to the BlackBerry World Store."

Mallick continued, "When people get BB10 devices, they're going to be looking for certain apps... We have Skype committed to BB10, Amazon Kindle, Whatsapp, SAP, Angry Birds... over 1,000 of top applications from around the world committed to BB10."

BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins along with Vivek Bhardwaj, head of software portfolio, just announced several new and exciting keyboard and BlackBerry Messenger features. Heins said "We have the experience to be best keyboard experience... Everything feels like a BlackBerry. I call this writing without typing. Imagine typing on one screen with a single thumb."

Bhardwaj pointed out that "We wanted to do more than just building gestures. The new keyboard features predictive typing that can adapt by language. Sometimes I'm in a real rush and I start typing fast, make mistakes, miss spaces, the new BlackBerry 10 keyboard can fix that too on its own".

The presentation then moved on to BlackBerry Messenger (BBM). Bhardwaj said "The new keyboard is a great innovation, but I know there's another feature you can't live without: Blackberry Messenger. I've always enjoyed the real time nature of it, I use it for work, family, friends", said Heins.

When you've got nothing nice to say, the rule is to say nothing nice at all, so it looks like Amazon are playing this game with Kindle sales, as their lips are still sealed shut. On the flip side, their e-book business is churning through money like it's nothing.

Amazon's e-book business is now a very tidy "multi-billion dollar category" for the US-based retail giant. Amazon had sold out of their e-reader last year, with Amazon's CFO, Tom Szkutak, saying during their earnings call yesterday that if they didn't sell out of their Kindle's, they would've had much higher sales numbers - all without unveiling just how many they sold.

Szkutak was pushed by an analyst who wondered why the company's revenue was lower than expected for Q4, where the CFO cited a number of reasons - sales of consumer electronics fell short of expectations, as well as the shortages of the Kindle Paperwhite. He said:

Philips have just bowed out of the consumer electronics market, and are now focusing all of their energies into the medical equipment and lightning businesses. Philips have sold their consumer electronics business to Japanese manufacturer Funai Electric Co. for $201 million.

Philips' CEO, Frans van Houten talked to The Wall Street Journal, saying "Since we have online entertainment, people do not buy Blu-ray and DVD players anymore."

This is true though - as most consumer electronics are pretty much identical these days as the content displayed on them is completely online. Myself, I use a Samsung Smart TV and don't use any of the 'smart' features apart from two times in eight months I've used Skype. Everything comes from a networked media player, streaming from my QNAP NAS. There should be many changes in the consumer market with more players shifting and changing in the coming years.

CBS Interactive has filed a response to an injunction that is keeping CNET's journalists from talking about bit torrent technology. The injunction alleges that by CNET talking about, and linking to, P2P software that can be used for illegal purposes, they are encouraging users and causing it to become more pervasive.

CBSI has responded to the injunction claiming just the opposite. They say that because they provide warnings about not using the technology to infringe on copyrights, they are actually doing more good. They warn that the software is still publicly available and wouldn't come with these warnings if found by a Google search.

While most people can't distinguish the difference in bit-rate between 128Kbps and 320Kbps, the latter has become a selling for most online streaming services. Sony has updated their Music Unlimited service to keep up with the times and that means they will now be streaming 320Kbps audio.

The updated streaming quality will first be coming to Android, web, and the PlayStation 3 players, but desktops, iOS, and the Vita won't be left out. Upgrades for the latter devices and home theater devices will be coming later this year. Sony has staggered the update to make sure it goes without a hitch.

You can read Sony's full press release below:

Epic has released Epic Citadel for Android. The Epic Citadel demo was originally released on iOS devices over two years ago, but it still highlights what Unreal Engine 3 is capable of. Epic has also added in a feature that will allow Epic Citadel to be used as a benchmark on Android devices, so reviews and users can gather data across a wide variety of devices.

Epic would like to see developers use Unreal Engine 3 to develop games for Android, and so would I. This demo shows what is capable of being produced using the engine on Android and I am impressed. While Epic won't be bringing Infinity Blade to Android, hopefully other developers will fill in the gap and produce awesome games using UE3.

Google, citing help from its community of citizen cartographers, has launched a highly detailed map of North Korea in its Google Maps service. The company pieced the map together using "very limited map data," and admits that it is far from perfect.

Most of the data was generated by users who added it using Google's Map Maker, a web app that lets users add to a map using their unique local knowledge. All of this user generated data had to have come from visitors to the country as its citizens are denied access to the internet. In a blog post, Jayanth Mysore, Senior Product Manager at Google Map Maker wrote:

Warface, a new free-to-play FPS from Crytek, the makers of Crysis 3, is set to enter closed beta very soon and as a result, the company is now taking applications for gamers wanting to join the closed beta. Signing up is as simple as entering an email and your desired gamer tag.

Normally I do not get very excited over a free to play FPS game as they usually lack in quality, features and realism, but Warface just might be the exception. Warface was developed on the CryEngine, the same one used on Crysis 3, and was given a budget in the $10-$30 million range.

Crytek will make its investment back by offering paid content and personally I am hoping that content is in the form of extra maps, camo and other non-critical gear. Being able to buy a more powerful weapon just takes the fun out of things. The game will offer combative and co-op modes. You can apply to join the closed beta by clicking the Source #2 link below. Who knows, maybe I will see you in-game!

HGST, formerly Hitachi and now a Western Digital company, announced today the new C10K1200 10K RPM enterprise HDD. This HDD sets itself apart from the crowd by becoming the highest capacity 10K HDD in a 2.5" form factor to spin at 10,000 RPM.

Featuring 1.2TB of capacity, this new HDD is designed for the increasing demands for more storage capacity in the datacenter. This capacity extension to the product line utilizes a SAS 6GB/s interface and 64MB of cache buffer for optimized read/write response time. The 10K rotational speed also provides the power for these drives inclusion in high performance computing environments.

The increase in capacity ushers in higher density servers, blades and network storage arrays. By packing more data in less space, users will save in floorspace, cooling and power. These factors are ongoing costs that can add up to cost much more than the device over the course of its lifetime, so any increase in density is always welcome.

DARPA have some interesting projects they're working on, with probably only a few percent of them known to the public but this latest one is just so amazing, you have to know about it.

DARPA have been working on dissolvable, biodegradable electronics for a while now, where they showed them off last September - where their main focus was for medical applications. We all know DARPA wouldn't just be playing around with this technology for the medical community, and this is where the technology ramps up to be put into the military.

The defense research group are thinking of how this technology can help out in the military, where they hope to develop "transient electronics" and systems that are "capable of physically disappearing in a controlled, triggerable manner" that work similar to how "commercial-off-the-shelf" systems work.

The previous beta of SwiftKey Flow hasn't allowed you to 'flow' in all text fields, but it looks like this has been fixed up in the latest betas to hit the SwiftKey website.

The new beta looks much more refined and sports less features this time around, where it includes easier corrections, new languages, a new theme and more. The full changelog is quite hefty:

Changes in this version:

THQ was broken apart last week, with bits and pieces being sold to other companies in various forms. Now we're hearing that Crysis developer, Crytek, have just opened up a new studio based in Austin, Texas, and have filled it with some of the core developers from Vigil Games.

Vigil Games are the guys and girls behind Darksiders, but with THQ sinking, they were left without anything to do, until Crytek come to their rescue. Ex-Vigil co-founder, David Adams, has now become the CEO of the newly-formed Crytek USA Corp., where he has said:

Specifications for AMD's upcoming Richland APU processors have leaked online. The Richland series of APUs will follow the current Trinity desktop APUs that are currently available and will continue to use the 32nm lithography process currently employed. The new chips will offer about 8 percent better performance than Trinity.

The full specifications are listed out in the chart above. The chips offer a 300MHz boost in base clock speed across the entire range. Turbo speeds are also increased and the boost ranges from 200-400MHz. AMD managed to boost these clock speeds, all while remaining in the same 65W and 100W TDPs present on Trinity.

The unlocked K-series processors are the only ones to feature the 100W TDP. Integrated graphics remain based upon the 6000-series GPU, even though they feature numbers in the 8000 range. Reports say that the Richland APUs are already in the hands of system builders, so we could be seeing a release of these parts soon.

Following in the footsteps of Google, Twitter has released its second transparency report. The report details that Twitter complied with 69 percent of US data requests, which is less than the 88 percent of requests that Google responded to. It seems that Twitter puts a bit more effort in blocking data requests.

The report also detailed that the US government led the pack in sheer quantity of data requests. For last year, Twitter said it received a total of 1,858 requests for information from governments, 6,646 reports of copyright violations, and 48 demands from governments demanding material to be removed.

As part of Facebook's governance change--you know, the one that took away your right to vote--Facebook instituted a policy that would allow easier access to their chief privacy officer, Erin Egan. The way Facebook is allowing access is through a new app aptly named "Ask Erin."

The app is basically a comment form on the site's "Facebook and Privacy" page that allows users to directly ask questions of Erin Egan. While she won't answer every question, certain ones that have value for the public or are especially important will be features in a series of posts present within the app.

Specific account questions should still be directed to the Help Center. To get the ball rolling, Egan answered three common questions in a blog post:

Are you an NVIDIA GPU user? Planning on checking out the Crysis 3 multiplayer beta that starts tomorrow? If so, you should really consider picking up the new 313.95 beta driver that NVIDIA has released as they are touting Crysis 3 improvements of up to 65 percent, which should really help you get your game on.

Crysis 3 is said to be another machine crusher, so any boost in performance is definitely appreciated--and needed. The 65 percent boost is specifically for the GTX 690, which I don't think most of you are using. However, some performance increase can be seen all the way down to the GTX 560.

The driver also includes SLI profiles for Crysis 3, DmC: Devil May Cry and Warframe. If you use multiple GPUs in your system, this is also an important driver update. GTX 670 owners can expect the following performance increases:

With Intel shifting gears and reversing out of the motherboard business, moving into their Next Unit of Computing (NUC) and reducing power consumption on their processors, a new SSD has been unveiled by the Santa Clara-based chipmaker.

Welcome the new Intel SSD 525 Series, which comes in an mSATA form factor attached to the 6Gb/s SATA standard. Intel will be providing the SSD 525 Series to OEM customers, channel and tech enthusiasts as an ultra-portable, low-power storage solution in "one-eighth the space of a traditional 2.5-inch hard disk drive". In other words, Ultrabooks, tablets and embedded applications.

Thanks to its PCIe mini-connector, the SSD 525 Series drive will sport the same performance of the Intel SSD 520 Series, making the SSD 525 the perfect choice for all-in-one desktops, notebooks, Ultrabooks and more - such as cars, digital signage, embedded video and retail solutions, too.