Latest News - Page 3024

Microsoft is pretty much only known in the operating system world for Windows, but the Redmond-based software giant have been working on another OS in secret, cheating on Windows.

The secret OS is known as project Midori, and according to ZDNet's well-sourced Mary Jo Foley, it has definitely been beating along in the labs at Microsoft. Midori is a new OS believed to be designed around Singularity, which was a Microsoft Research microkernel OS. The under-development OS was, and most likely still is, overseen by senior vice president of technical strategy, Eric Rudder.

The OS is reportedly a distributed, concurrent OS, and was referenced during a presentation last month at the OOPSLA 2012 conference. A handful of Microsoft employees presented a paper during the event which was titled Uniqueness and Reference Immutability for Safe Parallelism.

Rumors have unfortunately been confirmed, with Blizzard's expansion pack to StarCraft II has been delayed, Heart of the Swarm was scheduled for a Christmas release, but has been delayed until some time in 2013.

Heart of the Swarm originally was meant to add seven new units to the game, and remove three existing numbers for balancing reasons. But behind closed doors, Blizzard have changed their plans, dropping the planned Shredder and Warhound units for the Terrans due to balancing problems, replacing them with Widow Mines - variants on Spider Mines that fire splash-damage missiles, and tweaks to the Hellion, Ghost, Battlecruiser and Reaper units.

Protoss players will receive three of the four new multiplayer units, while the Replicant has been thrown away over fears that it would encourage players to spam masses of identical units. There are also single player modifications where an expanded plot would continue where Wings of Liberty finished.

Every time I hear something new about the upcoming Call of Duty: Black Ops 2, I get a little bit more excited. For instance, I just learned that Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 will allow players on Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to stream they're gameplay live to the internet so friends and random people alike can watch you play.

"With Call of Duty: Black Ops II, people can live stream their gameplay directly from the game or watch the best players live on YouTube, which is an awesome next step for the eSports community," said YouTube's Sang Kim, head of game partnerships.

Now everyone will be able to watch you get that amazing headshot, or tea bag the player you just knifed in the back. Whatever your playing style, you'll be sure to get numerous comments on YouTube, both good and bad. This live streaming of play is a really cool feature and ushers in the future of eSports.

Twitter may have withstood the election wave of tweets successfully, but their security is apparently still pretty lax. Today, Twitter sent out an e-mail to a large number of users urging them to change their respective passwords. The root cause for this is that several (number undetermined) accounts had been compromised through a third-party site.

The hacked accounts were then used to send out spam, the one problem every website with user contributed content faces. Twitter acknowledged that the accounts had been compromised, changed the passwords on them so as to make them inaccessible, and sent out the following e-mail, which explains some background and provides instructions for getting your account back:

With Samsung and Apple taking up most profits in the mobile sector, it leaves just scraps to the rest of the market, thus most companies are struggling right now. One of these companies is Sharp, and it looks like Apple analyst Horace Dediu may have discovered something quite worthy of a RumorTT post.

The analyst looked into Apple's 2012 capital expenditures and found some spending which was much higher than Apple previously disclosed. Dediu noticed that Apple had spent $2.3 billion more than it had forecast on "product tooling, manufacturing process equipment and infrastructure".

Dediu believes that the Cupertino-based iDevice maker bailed Sharp out, who were in serious financial issues earlier this year:

With other companies like THQ having serious issues, competitor and much bigger juggernaut Activision have posted record revenue for Q3. The company has reported $841 million, up from $754 million in the same period last year.

Activision also delivered record earnings per share of 20 cents, compared to the third quarter of 2011. Their results beat the company's outlook, which saw them hoping to achieve around 6 cents per share over a revenue of $740 million. These results also blew away analysts' expectation, which are better to compare against the company's non-GAAP earnings.

These calculations, excluding some results, saw Activision reporting 15 cents per share in profit on revenue of $751 million. This kills analyst expectations which were projecting just 8 cents per share in profit over revenues of $708 million.

Solar panels are slowing oozing their way across the world, being slapped onto peoples' houses to power their houses. But, some panels don't have enough tech inside to completely power your house from the sunlight captured.

Well, research and development into new methods of capturing sunlight on solar panels is an ongoing thing, with the New Zealand territory of Tokelau being a great example. Tokelau is a group of three islands in the South Pacific which now has enough solar panel installations to completely meet their electrical needs.

Just recently, the islands relied on importing diesel fuel to power electrical generators, but as the New Zealand Foreign Affairs Minister, Murry McCully has said, this has huge economic and environmental costs. The project was funded by the New Zealand government to the tune of $7 million, with a collection of solar panels installed on each of the three islands.

I wrote an editorial regarding Apple a month ago now, and it seems that my words are ringing more and more true every day that passes. Apple's stock prices hit a peak of just over $700, where virtually every news outlet was covering it.

Now that Apple stock prices are tanking, we're not hearing about it. We're not a biased news site, so you won't just get news when tech companies are doing glowingly well, as it's when they're doing bad that we should really stand up and pay attention. Think about it, in the last month, we've seen some of the biggest releases from Apple, and I would dare say the most amount of releases of top-end products from a company, ever.

We've seen the iPhone 5, fourth-generation new new iPad, the iPad mini, new Retina-based iMacs, the 13-inch MacBook Pro, and new iPods. On top of this we've seen the launch of iOS 6, and OS X Mountain Lion. With all of these releases, one would think that Apple would be hitting the high notes and seeing their stock prices climb, considerably.

Ferrari and Apple, what do they have in common? Sleek looks, performance, something else? Well, while they might not have much in common right now, they now have a shared employee. Apple's Senior Vice President, Eddy Cue, has joined Ferrari's Board of Directors, probably to aid in adding electronic technology to the vehicles.

Cue said:

Apple has been hit with a judgement requiring them to pay $368.2 million for infringing on VirnetX Holding Corp's patents regarding virtual-private-network technology. VirnetX's stock has, of course, jumped on the news of the jury's ruling, and went up at least 23 percent to $32.44.

VirnetX has previously sued Microsoft--and won--regarding the exact same technology that they have just successfully sued Apple form. Microsoft decided to hand over $200 million in a settlement, which took place in 2010. The jury ruled that Apple's FaceTime on iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Macs infringe upon four of VirnetX's patents.

"This victory further establishes the importance of our patent portfolio," VirnetX Chief Executive Officer Kendall Larsen said in a statement.

Twitter had an incredible day yesterday. While most of the country was out and about voting and watching the results come in, they were also tweeting about it--heavily. Twitter has come out today with a bunch of different stats for Election Day 2012, and some of them are extremely impressive.

Most impressive of the stats is that Twitter recorded a maximum of 327,452 tweets per minute (TPM). The number of tweets is incredible, and Twitter handled it all without a hitch. "These numbers reflect the largest election-related Twitter conversation during our 6 years of existence," VP of Infrastructure Mazen Rawashdeh wrote, "though they don't capture the total volume of all Tweets yesterday."

Even more impressive is that Twitter handled these loads for long periods. Previously, Twitter has had to deal with a high number of tweets per second, but only for a few seconds. An example of this is midnight on New Year's Eve or at the end of a sporting event, such as the Superbowl. For the election, Twitter averaged just under 10,000 tweets per second from 8:11 to 9:11 p.m. PT.

Ever since the Wii U was announced at E3 2011, gamers around the world have been hoping Nintendo steps up their online network game seeing as competitors Microsoft and Sony have completely left them in the dust with Xbox Live and PlayStation Network. Nintendo has assured gamers it will not repeat the same mistakes it made with the Wii and 3DS with Nintendo's Friend Code system. When you consider the Wii U will launch in a little over a week, it's natural to be concerned Nintendo has yet to give any real details surrounding its upcoming online network. The phrase "better late than never" certainly rings true here as Nintendo has finally released some details of how the Wii U's online network will work through its YouTube channel.

Before getting into the nitty gritty of the Wii U's online network, Nintendo first describes the experience Wii U owners will have when they first turn on their console. You'll first need to create a user account for the Wii U with a total of 12 user accounts possible per console. Once a user account is created, the user will create their Mii to attach to the account.

After a user account is created, they will go on to create a Nintendo ID which will be used to eShop purchased, video chat and Miiverse. Iwata-san says the Nintendo ID will live beyond the Wii U console as more Nintendo products will support the use of the Nintendo ID as well as PCs and mobile devices. He also states the Nintendo ID can be used with other third-party network services, which leads me to believe services like Origin and UPlay will be compatible with a user's Nintendo ID.

Microsoft's SmartGlass has made its way to Windows Phone and Android, and now it's finally been made available for iOS users as an update to its Xbox iOS application.

Just like the Windows Phone and Android version of SmartGlass, the application allows iOS users to connect to their Xbox 360 and interact with it in a number of ways such as launching games or applications and becoming a second screen for software that supports that feature. An example of this feature is being able to launch a DJ mode in Dance Central 3 that will allow for the SmartGlass user to interact with the game or when listening to music or watching a video on Zune Marketplace, information regarding the content can be accessed from SmartGlass.

SmartGlass users can also use their iOS device to further interact with their Xbox 360 in the following ways:

THQ's stock has dropped 50%, and as a big publisher in the gaming industry, they've been experiencing a very dismal 2012. THQ have been firing staff in both external and internal studios, with a lawsuit from Adidas over the incompletion of its micoach app not helping, or their stock prices.

THQ were close to being delisted from NASDAQ fror dropping below the $1.00 prerequisite that allows you on the exchange, but in July they were able to claw themselves back from that threshold, just. They've grown since then, but the latest drop has seen them slide to $1.74 per share, a 42% drop.

On top of this, the company has announced delays for three of their upcoming games: South Park: The Stick of Truth, Company of Heroes 2 and Metro: Last Light. Metro: Last Light was poised for a 2012 release, but has now been pushed back to March 2013. THQ have said that South Park: The Stick of Truth will be released, at the earliest, in April 2013. THQ president, Jason Rubin, has said:

Samsung have just announced that their new, next-generation 840 family of SSDs are available, including the 840 Pro SSD and 840 Series SSD. The new drives are available for purchase right now from Amazon and NewEgg, and as a bonus for a limited time only, they include a downloadable version of Assassin's Creed III.

Samsung teamed up with Ubisoft for the bonus game, which is available when you purchase the 128GB, 256GB, or 512GB SSD from Samsung. Samsung's new 840 Pro SSD is geared for professionals and tech enthusiasts who want the best performance, with the 840 SSD for the mainstream user who would like an affordable, yet fast upgrade for their PC. The higher-end 840 Pro SSD sits on the SATA 6Gbps interface, featuring 400 megabits-per-second (Mbps) Toggle DDR2 flash memory, AES256-bit encryption, and new triple-core MDX controller, while using triple-level cell (TLC) Toggle DDR2 flash memory.

The new 840 Pro SSD and 840 SSD sport Samsung's proprietary controllers and firmware, all while spinning in its leading NAND flash memory technology. Samsung, unlike most SSD makers, engineers all of their components in-house. This gives Samsung a one-up on the competition, allowing them to perfect their hardware and software for extreme performance, as well as great reliability.

It looks as though Korea could dethrone Dubai as the tourist spot in the not-too-distant future, with plans of a new $264 billion mega-city to be built on the islands of Yongyu-Miiu in the port of Incheon, which is close to Incheon International Airport.

The mega-city would be so gigantic that it would span 80 square kilometers, with the designers claiming the 8City project would be the largest single tourism plan in the world, if they manage to complete it. The mega-city would spot a "megastrip" which would be 200m high, 880m wide and 3.3km long, making it the world's largest single architectural unit.

An "inner circle" would be built, which would feature a tubular 14km building. The mega-city would house luxury hotels, condominiums, casinos, shopping centres, a concert hall and even a Formula One racing track. The new mega-city would stand out of the crowd, too, was there would be a medical tourism "healing town" and entertainment "hallyu" town.

I've said this a few times now, but I really think the next advancement in mobile technology needs to be battery life. I can use an iPhone 5, a Galaxy S III, Nexus 7 or any other top-end smart device, but I can't get more than 8-12 hours of intense use out of it.

Well, it looks like we could be there with researchers at Rice University announcing that they have worked out how to triple lithium-ion battery life using crushed silicon anode. Rice University engineer, Sibani Lisa Biswal and research scientist Madhuri Thakur managed to use crushed silicon to create battery anode that is capable of holding 10 times more litium ions than graphite anodes used in today's batteries.

The results of this are a new battery design capable of holding a charge of 1,000 milliamp hours per gram through 600 tested charge cycles of two hours charging, two hours discharging. Current graphite anodes are only capable of around 350 mAh/g.

Here I am thinking Apple were really only targeting the use of 'rounded corners' and the 'style' of the iPhone compared to competitors' devices. But, it looks like Samsung's pen-toting Galaxy Note 10.1 has just been added to Apple's on-going lawsuit against Samsung.

But, we haven't even gotten to the best part yet - the Cupertino-based iPhone maker has sought to add Google's Android 4.1 Jelly Bean OS to the lawsuit. Apple told US Magistrate Judge, Paul S. Grewal in a federal court in San Jose.

Apple attorney, Andrew Liao, told Judge Grewal that the Galaxy Nexus is the only phone with Jelly Bean that Apple wants to add to the patent complaint. Liao also said that Apple seeks to add 17 devices that could use a stylus, even if the products don't ship with a stylus. Grewal hasn't issued a ruling today, saying he was concerned that if he denied both sides their requests, the companies would file a new round of lawsuits.

HTC have been having a very rough year, where their last quarter results pretty bad, and back in August I reported that Taiwan Central Bank proposed a bailout of the struggling phone maker. Now we're looking at October's sales numbers and for the second month in a row now, revenues have dropped in double digits.

Revenue for HTC is down around 19% from September, with year-over-year figures even worse. We're talking 61% since October of 2011, which is a huge drop, even after last month's drop of 53%. The phone maker could possibly soon reach the point where they would struggle to even meet their very conservative earnings goals.

I really don't expect HTC to be here twelve months from now, and this is going to be the case for most other Android phone makers in the near future. With Google selling subsidised Nexus 4 handsets for $399, why would you buy a smartphone for double the price with the phone maker's UI splashed on top and slow updates of Android? I know I wouldn't.

There's a team of scientists in Bangor, Wales, who are working with current fiber optic technology hoping to boost its speeds. The team believe they've found a breakthrough that could see broadband speeds excel by a magnitude of 2,000 times what is on offer today.

Fiber optic technology currently takes digital data, 1s and 0s, and converts them to light pulses. They then have the ability to travel very, very fast, but as data is continuously flowing through the cables and required to be sent over vast distances, signal degradation becomes a huge problem. At the moment there are a few ways of working around this, adding more fiber optic strands to the cable, implementing signal strength boosters and installing extra encoding and decoding lasers at each end.

Those three options are all very expensive and require massive investments in order to do so. The Bangor, Wales-based researchers want to keep the potential costs down by manipulating current technology. The one being worked on now is used by wireless networks and those in the digital broadcasting field. This technology is called Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex, or OOFDM.