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Windows Phone satisfaction higher than that of Android, still behind iPhone

Trace Hagan | Mobile Devices | Jan 15, 2013 6:55 PM CST

The iPhone remains the number one desired device in the United States, with half of American's planning to buy a new device in the next 90 days planning on getting an iPhone. That's down from 71 percent in September 2012, while Samsung's numbers have jumped from 13 percent to 21 percent, respectively.

More interestingly, 71 percent of iOS customers say they are "Very Satisfied," while only 53 percent of Windows Phone customers say they are. However, both groups are ahead of Android, which only sees 48 percent very satisfied. RIM lags behind with only 26 percent of its base being very satisfied.

Because of this, Windows Phone could very well see some great growth in the coming year, as long as those satisfied customers are getting the word out. The data above comes from 451 Research. They surveyed 4,061 people, with 88 percent of those being US-based.

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Continue reading: Windows Phone satisfaction higher than that of Android, still behind iPhone (full post)

Tesla opening 25 new stores in 2013, including first store in China

Trace Hagan | Business, Financial & Legal | Jan 15, 2013 5:55 PM CST

The all-electric vehicles made by Tesla are awesome pieces of technology. Not only should they help advance battery technology, they look great and, apparently, drive great. Tesla is planning to open 25 more stores during 2013, which is almost double that of the 13 stores it opened in 2012.

Half of those locations will be in the United States and the other half will be in foreign countries, including Tesla's first location in China. The new location in China is set to open this Spring.

Tesla has also redoubled its commitment to rolling out Supercharger charging stations across the United States. Currently only eight are in operation, most of which are on the west coast. Tesla plans to cover both coasts and then connect them in the middle so that someone can travel from Boston to LA without using any gas.

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Continue reading: Tesla opening 25 new stores in 2013, including first store in China (full post)

RumorTT: iPhone 5S to be mass produced in March, launch in June/July

Trace Hagan | Mobile Devices | Jan 15, 2013 4:07 PM CST

Jeffries analyst Peter Misek has released another research report, which continues to assert that the iPhone 5S will be coming June or July. New to the report is the assertion that mass production of the next iPhone will begin in March. If this is the case, I would expect to start seeing leaks soon, and definitely by March, as long as Apple continues to be as leaky as they have been in the past.

Along with rumors and predictions for the iPhone 5S, Misek provides some insight into the possibility of a cheaper iPhone:

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Continue reading: RumorTT: iPhone 5S to be mass produced in March, launch in June/July (full post)

Facebook's big thing is Graph Search, allows you to search through its social graph

Trace Hagan | Internet & Websites | Jan 15, 2013 2:40 PM CST

Facebook's big announcement today was the preview and beta launch of Graph Search, a new tool that will help you sift through the massive amounts of connections and data that Facebook has in its social graph. For the questions that can't be answered by Facebook's data, Bing will try and provide the answer from the Internet.

The current version is available in a limited preview for English users only. Zuckerberg stressed that privacy was an important issue when building the search engine. For instance, you should only be able to search for content shared with you, however, you can search for something like "TV shows watched by doctors" or "Music liked by people who like Mitt Romney."

The ability to do searches such as the examples above could allow researchers to sift through connections to see if there are any connections. According to Zuckerberg, there are currently 1 billion people, 240 billion photos, and 1 trillion connections in the social graph. How it works:

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Continue reading: Facebook's big thing is Graph Search, allows you to search through its social graph (full post)

NYPD to add GPS chips to prescription bottles to try and help New York City drug theft

Charles Gantt | Current Affairs | Jan 15, 2013 12:44 PM CST

Prescription drug theft is a major issue in New York City, and the NYPD have plans to try and prevent it from growing. Pharmacies across the city could receive "Dummy bottles" that contain GPS tracking chips in an effort to catch thieves.

"In the event of a robbery or theft, we'll be able to track the bottle, which may lead us to stash locations across the city", Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly writes in a speech he'll be giving in California today. Kelly has asked researchers to examine the feasibility of placing chips into fake pills that could be tracked by GPS.

The NYPD is also educating local pharmacies on how to better secure their premises in what is being called "Operation Safety Cap." What do you think about this? Is this just another money wasting effort or do you think that this could really clean up the streets of prescription drugs? Either way, I am happy to see more Law Enforcement Agencies embracing modern technology.

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Continue reading: NYPD to add GPS chips to prescription bottles to try and help New York City drug theft (full post)

Foremay releases world's first 2.5" SATA 2TB SSD

Charles Gantt | Storage | Jan 15, 2013 10:04 AM CST

Foremay, an OEM SSD manufacturer, has released the world's first 2TB SSD drives with a standard 2.5" SATA interface. Both new models seem to only be available for OEM and industrial applications though at this stage.

Foremay is offering the SC199 (for mission-critical applications) and TC166 (for terminal computing) product families in either commercial or industrial grades to suit end-user's specific applications. Features include Advanced Power Management, Advanced Error Correction, Military Secure Erase, and hardware based encryption.

"By leveraging Foremay's patent pending technologies, we are proud to deliver the world's first 2 TB SSD in standard 2.5" SATA form factor," said Jack Winters , Foremay's CTO and co-founder. "We hope our high reliability 2 TB SSD drives can help create more design freedom and storage space for both mission-critical and enterprise applications."

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Continue reading: Foremay releases world's first 2.5" SATA 2TB SSD (full post)

World not going to end in 2029 or 2036 due to Apophis astroid

Trace Hagan | Science, Space, & Robotics | Jan 15, 2013 5:13 AM CST

Fans of the end of the world will have to wait just a bit longer to start cheering. NASA has just released information that the world will not be ending in an explosion caused by an asteroid in 2029 or 2036. Previously, the Apophis asteroid was thought that it could hit the Earth in 2036, with a low chance of collision in 2029.

NASA's new data suggests that there is only a one in a million chance of the asteroid colliding with Earth in 2036, which is small enough for NASA to effectively rule out the collision. NASA says that interest in the Asteroid will now be purely scientific for the foreseeable future.

The asteroid will pass within 9.3 million miles of the Earth, which is a bit close for my comfort. However, it's far enough away that nobody will need to build bunkers. So, until the next space scare, put away your end of the world gear.

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Continue reading: World not going to end in 2029 or 2036 due to Apophis astroid (full post)

ADATA shows working Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) on video at CES

Chris Ramseyer | Storage | Jan 15, 2013 5:06 AM CST

CES 2013 - ADATA had one of the only working NGFF products on display at CES that we saw. NGFF stands for Next Generation Form Factor and it's the next evolution for SSDs. By moving the SSD away from the SATA bus and to PCI Express, current bandwidth limits are increased by nearly 4x. Before overhead, the PCIe bus will deliver nearly 2000MB/s for the boot SSD.

NGFF also goes under the more marketable name M.2. At this time there are several versions of NGFF, around 15 or so but we hope manufacturers can come together to standardize one or two. Once connector would be even better, this one looks like a winner to me.

To get NGFF up and running, ADATA teamed with LSI SandForce for the controller. A M.2 to SATA adapter was used, much like the mSATA to SATA adapter we use to test mSATA drives in a desktop. As we mentioned, ADATA was the one company with a unit working at we saw.

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Continue reading: ADATA shows working Next Generation Form Factor (NGFF) on video at CES (full post)

GPS error leads woman to drive 900 miles, versus her 90 mile trip

Anthony Garreffa | Connectivity & Cloud | Jan 15, 2013 4:33 AM CST

We'll put this in the bin of 'how the hell did that happen', but a 67-year-old woman has driven for 900 miles over a two-day period thanks to a GPS error, as well as her total lack of attention. The kicker? Her destination was just 90 miles away.

Sabine Moreau had planned to pick up her friend at a train station in Brussels, with her first step of the trip leaving her home town of Hainaut, Erquelinnes, Belgium. The train station was 93 miles north of her home town, so the GPS gets flicked on and directs her... south, instead of north. She listened to the GPS and started her turn-by-turn navigation trip down to Zagreb, Croatia.

What should've been a couple of hours in the car turned into a multi-day trip including gas stops, sleeping on the side of the road for a couple of hours and even a minor car accident. This all happened while she was none the wiser, where she has said:

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Continue reading: GPS error leads woman to drive 900 miles, versus her 90 mile trip (full post)

Kaspersky uncovers five-year cyber espionage network, makes the Flame malware look like a wimp

Anthony Garreffa | Hacking, Security & Privacy | Jan 15, 2013 1:32 AM CST

Kaspersky of all companies have found something utterly shocking, an advanced cyber espionage network that makes last year's infamous Flame malware look like a joke. Dubbed Operation Red October, each attack is handcrafted for its victim in order to make sure it 100% works.

Red October has been hitting systems across the world since at least May 2007 and carefully chooses its victims spanning over two dozen countries who hold positions in government, military, aerospace, research, trade and commerce, nuclear, oil and other important, vital industries. Investigators aren't sure who is behind the attacks, but it is being reported that Chinese hackers may have created the exploit, while the various malware modules deployed seem to have been created by those who speak Russian.

Kaspersky can't put their finger on the source, as it is currently being run through at least two layers of proxy servers across Russia, Germany and Austria. Whoever is involved has some skill, as they've been silently sitting, unknown to the user, in major government and industry computers.

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Continue reading: Kaspersky uncovers five-year cyber espionage network, makes the Flame malware look like a wimp (full post)

ReportTT: Instagram seeing roughly half the number of daily users after ToS mess

Trace Hagan | Software & Apps | Jan 15, 2013 12:01 AM CST

Instagram, the photo-sharing social network owned by Facebook, had a bit of a screw up with its terms of service when it went to update them in December. The changes included clauses that seemingly give Instagram permission to use users' photos, likeness, and username in paid advertising without any sort of compensation, or even permission.

After an outcry by users, Instagram backpedaled the proposed changes, saying that they were unclear and misunderstood by the public. According to data by AppStats, the number of daily users has decreased by roughly 50 percent since the terms of service fiasco. Prior to the change, 16.35 million people were using it daily. On the day of the change, only 5.2 million used the app.

We're now about a month since the change, and AppStats says that on January 12, only 7.81 million people used the app. In other words, roughly half of the daily users are no longer using the app. Of course, these numbers are approximations as it is very hard to get an accurate accounting for apps. But, it does appear that things aren't so good for Instagram. I wonder if Facebook is regretting their decision to purchase the photo-sharing network.

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Continue reading: ReportTT: Instagram seeing roughly half the number of daily users after ToS mess (full post)

Wildman, from the developer who bought us Total Annihilation, needs your Kickstarter funds

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Jan 14, 2013 11:28 PM CST

The days of Total Annihilation ruled me, I played tens of hours per week and upgraded my system constantly to play it smoothly at a high resolution like 1600x1200 back in the CRT days. Well, the developer behind it, Gas Powered Games, are looking to release a new game and need your help to fund it. Gas Powered Games require $1.1 million in funding, which will wrap up on February 15.

Gas Powered Games' master and commander, Chris Taylor, is behind things again and below, you'll find the perfect explanation behind the game from their Kickstarter page:

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Continue reading: Wildman, from the developer who bought us Total Annihilation, needs your Kickstarter funds (full post)

Google unveils Chrome 25 beta, includes voice search

Trace Hagan | Software & Apps | Jan 14, 2013 9:13 PM CST

Google unveiled Chrome 25 beta today, with some notable improvements, such as voice search. Other changes include the disabling of silent extension installs, the inclusion of Web Speech API, and a new tab page that includes a search box.

Google's blog post announcing the new beta:

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Continue reading: Google unveils Chrome 25 beta, includes voice search (full post)

RumorTT: Samsung Galaxy S IV to feature 5-inch, 440PPI full HD screen

Trace Hagan | Mobile Devices | Jan 14, 2013 7:18 PM CST

Mark down yet another rumor for the Galaxy S IV, though this one has a bit more weight behind it. Anandtech, while in the demo room of Samsung's booth at CES, saw the following, seen in the picture below, which has caused a bit of a stir regarding the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S IV:

The roadmap pictured above has several clues that point to this screen being the one present in the Samsung Galaxy S IV. For instance, the release timeframe is that which has been rumored by several other sites. The other screens line up nicely with releases of other devices, as well.

The likely screen to be in the next Galaxy S device should be a 4.99-inch, 440PPI full HD screen. Of course, like all rumors, take this with a grain of salt.

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Continue reading: RumorTT: Samsung Galaxy S IV to feature 5-inch, 440PPI full HD screen (full post)

ReportTT: Prices for the Xbox 720, PlayStation 4 to be roughly $400 at launch, and use standard hardware

Trace Hagan | Gaming | Jan 14, 2013 3:18 PM CST

Colin Sebastian, an analyst for Baird Equity Research, has made a prediction that the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox 720 will launch for a price of around $400. Along with a prediction of price, the company is also providing a prediction that the new consoles will use high-end computer hardware that is readily available from the likes of Intel and others.

This isn't the first time we've heard the second prediction. In fact, it's been a common occurrence for rumors to say that this is the case. There are several benefits to using standard PC hardware, the main of which is that programmers don't have to learn a new technology or architecture. It would also allow game developers to program only once for one architecture.

If standard components are used, it also leaves the door open to the possibility of upgrading the components at a later time. Sony and Microsoft should also be able to keep updating the console with refreshes that use Intel's, AMD's or NVIDIA's latest and greatest parts.

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Continue reading: ReportTT: Prices for the Xbox 720, PlayStation 4 to be roughly $400 at launch, and use standard hardware (full post)

Apple stock drops below $500 as reports on dwindling iPhone 5 sales surface

Charles Gantt | Business, Financial & Legal | Jan 14, 2013 1:44 PM CST

Apple's stock dipped below $500 a share this morning after media outlets reported that Apple ($APPL) was decreasing iPhone 5 component purchases due to lowering demand. That is over a $20 drop from Friday's closing price.

The Wall Street Journal has reported that demand for the iPhone 5 has been lower than expected and cited "people familiar with the situation" as saying that Apple has cut its order for iPhone 5 screens in half for the March quarter. The Japanese daily publication Nikkei said that Apple has halved its initial order of 65,000 LCD screens from suppliers.

As if on cue, this news rattled investors, sending the stock into a downtrend. The stock started recovering shortly after falling below $500 and at the time of this writing, was hovering around $505 a share.

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Continue reading: Apple stock drops below $500 as reports on dwindling iPhone 5 sales surface (full post)

Upcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile OS gets 15,000 apps after porting incentive event

Charles Gantt | Mobile Devices | Jan 14, 2013 1:02 PM CST

Two recent Research in Motion events has resulted in more than 15,000 apps being ported to the BlackBerry 10 mobile operating system according to RIM's vice president of developer relations Alec Saunders. The so called Port-A-Thons have been a huge success in helping jump starting RIM's app offerings.

Both the Android Port-A-Thon and Community Port-A-Thon were designed to entice developers to port their popular apps over to RIM's upcoming BlackBerry 10 OS for cash and prize incentives. In what has to be some sort of record, the events topped out at their goal within a mere 38 hours.

The events ran from January 11th to January 13th, and offered developers $100 for every app ported, with a maximum of 20 apps set per vendor. Vendors who submitted five or more apps were entered into a drawing for 1 of 100 BB10 Dev Alpha devices. Research in Motion CEO Thorsten Heins has promised that BlackBerry 10 will launch with at least 70,000 apps, which actually does not seem like such a far off goal now.

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Continue reading: Upcoming BlackBerry 10 mobile OS gets 15,000 apps after porting incentive event (full post)

Introducing the Nanolight, the world's "most efficient" light bulb

Charles Gantt | Science, Space, & Robotics | Jan 14, 2013 11:11 AM CST

Three students from the University of Toronto have designed a revolutionary new type of LED based light bulb that is orders of magnitude more efficient than traditional incandescent bulbs.

The Nanolight is an LED based light bulb replacement that consumes just 12 watts of energy and produces 1600 lumens of light output. This is on par with a 100w incandescent bulb at almost 1/10th the power consumption. The new design claims to have solved the LED heat problem and has no need for an expensive aluminum heatsink.

The Nanolight has a lifespan of 30,000 hours and is estimated to cost a mere $50 in electricity over the full lifespan of the bulb. The company plans on producing a 10w Nanolight which would be equivalent to a 75w incandescent and cost even less to power.

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Continue reading: Introducing the Nanolight, the world's "most efficient" light bulb (full post)

US gets first paper-less library in San Antonio, Texas

Charles Gantt | Current Affairs | Jan 14, 2013 9:38 AM CST

BiblioTech library in San Antonio, Texas, is the first of its kind in the US. They are ditching the traditional public library model of vast amounts of paper bound books and switching to a much more modern and efficient e-books and digital media.

The library will feature around 10,000 digital titles, and is designed to "supplement" the area's traditional libraries. Those who like to visit the library and bring home a book need not to fear as BiblioTech will carry e-readers for you to check out. Checked out e-books will be programmed to be available for only two weeks, upon which the e-reader will be returned.

We all knew it was coming and rightfully so. Hardbound books are expensive, costly to maintain, and take up vast amounts of space. With dwindling budgets, falling public interest and rising book cost, the traditional library model is just not cutting it anymore. What do you think about the inevitable move from paper book libraries to digital only libraries? Is it a good thing, or something to be feared? Let us know in the comments below.

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Continue reading: US gets first paper-less library in San Antonio, Texas (full post)

Lego unveils their next-generation robot, the EV3

Anthony Garreffa | Science, Space, & Robotics | Jan 14, 2013 5:33 AM CST

Lego has announced that they will soon be offering up the next-generation of their Mindstorms line. The new system, which is the third-generation of its line, will be the EV3. EV3 sports a bunch of improved features in both hardware and software, where it's headed to the classroom and will also be used in Lego League competitions. Soren Thomsen of LEGO Education told Forbes:

Some of the new features being built into EV3's kit include Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity, the ability to add memory to the units - which is something that the Lego League teams have been asking for - as well as the file sizes of the programs being streamlined. The new EV3 has a 3D instruction manual which should make it easier for users to see all the pieces from all angles, allowing them to design and construct their own robots.

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Continue reading: Lego unveils their next-generation robot, the EV3 (full post)

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