Latest News - Page 3008

Most of my Facebook feed used to be filled with game requests, until I began blocking all game requests - I'm looking at you, Nanna. But, it looks like Zynga CEO Mark Pincus has started his cost-reduction plan which was announced last month.

Zynga has either shut down or pulled from app stores, stopped accepting new players to eleven games with some of those games turning off today. Zynga will reallocate resources from the games gone or cut down to the titles that are actually doing well, or put them into creating new games.

The company have had a very rocky year after bursting out of the gate to be a huge success, where their share price is down from their IPO launch of $10 to just $2.33 now. Zynga have announced huge cost-cutting measure which will see over 100 employees cut, offices shutting their doors, ceasing to renew deals with contractors, shutting down 13 games, as well as reducing investments into The Sims-style game, The Ville.

Foursquare have enjoyed a great 2012, seeing over 15 million new people joining the community, their 3 billionth check-in and have released over 50 new features but 2013 is going to see some big changes, and we're not even there yet.

Foursquare have unveiled a new "Privacy 101" document, which outlines how they build privacy into their 'product'. There are two changes so far, the first of which will display your full name. Until now, Foursquare has shown your full name, or sometimes your first name followed by your last initial. This would be a bit of a hassle, because when searching for friends you would sometimes see their full name in the results, but if you clicked through to their profile page it would not show their last name.

The second change is to businesses, where a business will now be able to see more of their recent customers which is a great change. At the moment a business using Foursquare can only see which customers have visited and checked in within the last three hours. This is great if a business owner is right there, all the time on Foursquare but there are plenty of businesses that wouldn't have the time to check their Foursquare until the end of the day.

Well, folks, Blizzard just confirmed that they will not be implementing a player-versus-player Team Deathmatch in Diablo III. Blizzard promised PvP modes for the game, but they have yet to materialize. Blizzard has said that plans for Dueling are still on and will be released in patch 1.0.7, which is coming sometime in 2013.

Keep in mind that Diablo III launched back in May of this year. At the time the game launched, Blizzard was promising these PvP features. Here's what they have to say about their plans:

Specifications for an upcoming Motorola device, known as the Droid Razr M HD, have reportedly leaked out. The specifications seem almost too good to be true, so take them with a grain of salt. However, a device with these specifications do make sense for Motorola to release, so it is possible they are real.

No image or supporting evidence has been provided, just a text list of specs. According to Phone Arena, the specs are as follows:

South Korean automaker Hyundai are looking to jump right into the future with some NFC-powered technology for their new vehicles over the coming years. Hyundai's new Connectivity Concept will let drivers control various features in their car through an NFC-powered smartphone.

Allan Rushforth, SVP and COO of Hyundai Motor Europe has said:

If you're someone who likes your privacy, this news won't be good for you. Federal regulators are proposing that all new automobiles sold in the US after September 2014 to come featured with a black box.

These black boxes, or as they're called "event data recorders", record everything a driver does. From the speed the car is going, the number of people in the car, and the location of the car itself at all times. You do have a chance to have your voice heard, where on February 11, the National Transportation Safety Agency will hear your comments on its proposal that will see them pushed into all vehicles.

Congress has donned the agency with the power to set the motor safety rules. The regulators' intentions are for safety - but they can be used for much worse things - such as data collection. During "events", such as a car accident, the black box would record all of the last-minute happenings such as sudden breaking, acceleration, swerving or anything else that might lead up to, or cause an accident.

Samsung has announced plans to build a 1.1 million square foot campus in San Jose, which is located in the heart of Silicon Valley. Global architecture firm NBBJ will be responsible for the new building, which will feature a 10-story tower, amenity pavilion and parking garage.

Samsung's R&D facility will be moving to a new campus that will feature two new 6-story class-A office buildings with about 385,000 square feet of space. This campus will feature two 5-6 story parking structures.

LG is teasing us with some information about their 2013 lineup of PCs and notebooks ahead of their CES 2013 debut. All of the machines are Windows 8-powered and use LG's IPS display technology, which should make them ideal for users who need accurate color reproduction, such as photographers.

The first is LG's hybrid notebook, the H160 Tab-Book, which features an 11.6-inch display and QWERTY keyboard that is hidden beneath. It weighs in at 2.3 pounds and is only 0.6 inches thick. It reportedly has 12.5 hours of battery life, though the processor isn't detailed. I would venture to guess an Atom will power the machine. A second model, the Z160, comes with all of the same specifications, but comes with an i5 processor and higher specifications.

LG's Ultrabook, the Z360, comes in at 2.5 pounds and 0.5 inches thick and will be powered by a core i5 processor. It features a full HD IPS display. Finally, LG is showing off the AIO V325, which will have a 23-inch display. The screen will feature 10-point multitouch support and will be powered by an i5 coupled with a GT 640M. Interestingly, it will feature a TV tuner and picture-in-picture so that you can watch both TV and your desktop at the same time.

Facebook has filled for trademarks for Poke, the app similar to Snapchat. The application was filed on Friday with the U.S. Patent and Trademark office, the day before the app went live.

This is not the first time the company has trademarked the word "Poke" however. Since the early days of Facebook, the company held the trademark from 2006 until July 2011 when it let the trademark lapse.

Poke is the social network's latest app in which users can send text, videos and photo messages that self-destruct within 10 seconds, which is functionally very similar to the app Snapchat. That company's co-founder Evan Spiegel acknowledged Facebook's Poke with a brief statement on Friday: "Welcome, Facebook. Seriously."

Apple and Intel have a very interesting relationship, as Intel are the ones powering their Mac range of products now. Gone are the years of PowerPC-based Macs, Intel have come to the rescue with their Core range of processors.

Now this relationship is reportedly growing, where Intel are working with Apple for the Apple Smart Watch which should arrive in the first half of next year if the current rumors are anything to go by. There's no information on it, but there is the above concept design which should hopefully come close to the final design.

Apple's iWatch or whatever they decide to name it, would connect to another iOS-powered device like the iPhone in your pocket displaying something on the screen. Replace 'something' with a phone call, Facebook, iTunes or just the time - because, you know, it is a watch after all. Mobile Geeks' insider sources have talked some specs, which are speculation right now, where we would find a 1.5-inch RiTdisplay with OLED technology.

With the tragic Newtown, Connecticut shooting just weeks ago, it looks like EA's grand plan of marketing has failed. When EA started their marketing for the latest Medal of Honor Warfighter game, on their website you could go a step further than most games, and buy guns within a few clicks of the MoH website.

Alongside the weapons you could use in the game on the MoH website, were links to manufacturers who actually sold them. After the Newtown shootings, the Internet went on a stampede and called EA out, where the company were quick to reply that they'd forgotten of the links, sure.

The Warfighter website has been updated and one would think anything related to violence would be removed, but no - we find links to Zero Dark Thirty, the movie based around the SEAL raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. You know, the one where he was shot in the head with a gun.

AMD are already going through tough times, but a 25-year veteran has just jumped ship to Samsung. Michael Goddard's last title with the company was Corporate Vice President for Product Design Engineering and Chief Engineer on Client Products has left the company after a quarter of a century.

He has been with AMD since 1988, and has changed jobs just this month according to his LinkedIn profile, where he has joined electronics giant Samsung as their Vice President and System Architect at their Austin, Texas-based facility.

In the last couple of months, AMD have seen some 26 executives leave the company - from the higher levels of power, all the way down the ranks. AMD sliced 15% of their workforce this fall and are expected to slash even more jobs when the new year arrives.

Last month, Mozilla announced that they would be killing the 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows due to many bugs and insecurities in the version, coupled with the fact very few users actually used or needed the 64-bit version. Mozilla has now reversed that decision due to backlash from users of the 64-bit version.

Mozilla is still looking to transition the large majority of 64-bit users over to the 32-bit version, though they will continue to provide nightly builds of the 64-bit version. Users will be forced onto the 32-bit through an automatic update, but will be able to download the 64-bit nightly and reinstall.

"After I announced my decision to disable 64-bit Windows nightlies, there was significant negative feedback. After reviewing that feedback, and consulting with Release Engineering, I believe that we can keep a set of users happy by making a modification to the original plan," Smedberg said. "I do hope that the projects and developers who are interested in win64 will work together to maintain this build configuration. I am interested in hearing from volunteers who want to become the 64-bit build maintainer. I will also set up a discussion list specifically for win64 issues, if that would be valuable."

Samsung is quite the player in the mobile phone market, with an estimated 420 million devices shipped this year. Next year, it's looking to do even better by aiming to move a record 510 million mobile handsets. If Samsung manages this, they will further separate themselves from their bitter rival Apple.

"Of the 510 million handsets it plans to sell, 390 million are slated as smartphones and 120 million, feature and budget phones," according to an executive from one of Samsung's key suppliers.

"There are some possibilities that smartphone demand will slow in general. But we are seeing new demand for devices using Long Term Evolution (LTE)," said Kim Hyun-joon, an executive at Samsung's telecommunications division.

Commander Chris Hadfield, currently on the International Space Station, recorded a Christmas carol in space. While that alone is pretty awesome, the fact that he was able to make it sound good with all the background noise is the really impressive part. When he made a comment regarding the noise with his original post, people asked him just how loud it is on the ISS, so he made a recording.

As you can hear in the recording, there is quite a bit of noise. Most of it comes from the fans and ventilation system that is keeping the astronauts alive, so we doubt they are complaining too much. Besides, they have optional earplugs and noise cancelling headphones to keep it at bay.

Google has set its eye on converting a whopping 90% of Microsoft office users to it's web based Google Docs platform. In a recent interview, Google's head of enterprise Amit Singh said "the Google Docs platform can grab the vast majority of Office users who don't use the more advanced functionality."

"In the last year, if you look at the depth of where we've gone with Docs, both in the core features and in the desktop fidelity, we've made tremendous progress. Our goal is to get to the 90 percent of users who don't need to have the most advanced features of Office." he went on to say

Singh continued, "We know the gaps between our features and theirs. We're improving them week by week. We're going to get to the the 90 percent. If you need the last 10 percent, you'll want to use the desktop. The next thing is the import from PowerPoint to Slides. That's where QuickOffice is going to help us a lot."

Today we can share almost every aspect of our daily lives on Facebook. Where we eat, where we shop, even what our workout routine consisted of is easily share-able on the social networking site. Letting your friends see what you watched on Netflix however, has not been possible up until now.

It would seem that sharing your Netflix history on Facebook would be as simple as pulling some data from an API and integrating it with your Facebook account. Unfortunately, U.S Law prevented that from happening. The Video Privacy Protection Act, prevented Facebook and Netflix from sharing your video viewing history.

The new bill basically updates the old antiquated law and allows you to share your Netflix history with everyone who views your Facebook timeline. Social video sharing under the new bill will come with two stipulations: Netflix and similar companies will be required to give users a "clear and conspicuous" option to stop automatically sharing their views, and customers must be asked once every two years if they would like to continue sharing their views.

News came out that the upcoming Sim City successor will be required to have an always-on internet connection to play and save the game. Some people have worried that this could be a problem if your internet drops out while you're playing. What exactly happens to your city? The answers aren't clear, but Lucy Bradshaw, lead for the Maxis lablel at EA, would like to defend the DRM scheme.

I'll leave it up to you to decide whether or not you believe or agree with Bradshaw. Of course, once the game comes out in March 2013, we, along with other sites, will be able to give you a better idea of how the game plays.

It's important that users of the Facebook Camera app update to the latest version as the previous versions featured a security vulnerability that would allow hackers to tap the network and hijack accounts. They were able to gain access to information such as email addresses and passwords.

Versions pre-1.1.2 and releases before December 21 feature the vulnerability that was discovered by Mohamed Ramadan, an Egyptian security researcher with Attack-Secure. The problem apparently resided in the SSL certification:

It's that time of year again when Santa Claus is traveling around the world, delivering lots of toys and goodies on his sleigh. But just how will you or your kids be able to know when he is getting close? We've rounded up some of the best options for you to track Santa on his journey this Christmas Eve.

The two main suggestions would be Google or NORAD. The two have previously tracked Santa in a partnership, though this year NORAD ditched Google in favor of Bing, mainly due to Microsoft sponsoring NORAD's tracking. That didn't stop Google from wanting to bring joy to lots of boys and girls, so they are tracking Santa on their own.

You'll want to select one of the two and stick with it. As you can see in the above picture, the tracking technology differs and places Santa in different locations. The various other metrics also differ between services, so you don't want your kid asking how they can vary so wildly.