Latest News - Page 3026

It has not been a good couple of months for Apple. After launching the iPhone 5, their stock took a dive. After launching the iPad mini, their stock took a dive. After announcing executive changes, their stock took a dive. Adding all these up, their stock value has dropped from over $700 to below $600, a pretty large change.

Not only has the stock price been falling, they've suffered a few losses in court. The UK courts ruled that the Galaxy Tab does not infringe on the iPad design copyrights and Apple has been forced to run ads saying so. Well, now the company has suffered another loss at the hands of the court, this time in Mexico.

The Mexican court system has ruled that iFone, a telecommunications and call answering service in Mexico and Latin America, has the legal right to the trademark iFone and, subsequently, iPhone, since it is said the same way. The trademark was registered in 2003, and Apple didn't launch their iPhone until 2007. Oops.

With every new mobile device launch, somebody inevitably decides its a good idea to drop it from various heights onto hard surfaces. The launch of the iPad mini today is no different as drop test videos have already appeared online. SquareTrade, a company that deals in extended warranties is the perpetrator of the following video that compares the iPad 3, iPad mini, and Nexus 7:

In the video, the iPad mini performs well when dropped from 4 feet on its corner. The Nexus 7 cracks in the corner ever so slightly, and the iPad 3's screen is destroyed. The folks at SquareTrade then dropped the tablets on their faces. The iPad mini's screen cracked everywhere and would need to be replaced. The iPad 3's screen also cracked quite a bit and the Nexus 7's screen did the best.

The tablets were then placed in water for 10 seconds to see how they would survive an accidental dunking. The iPad mini performed the best out of the three and seemed to be fully functional. The iPad 3 seemed to have a couple of bugs from the water, and the Nexus 7 was unresponsive, likely due to resetting from going into the water.

Up until just a few months ago, Xbox 360 achievements have just been a way to brag to your friends on how much of a gaming god you are over them as you've gone above and beyond in order to unlock your achievements. But Microsoft changed that recently when they began to offer discounts on merchandise within the Xbox Live Marketplace for gamers who reached a certain amount of Gamerscore. Now it looks like American Express is getting in on the "rewarding gamers for their achievements" bandwagon.

American Express announced today that it will be launching its Card Sync Technology with the Xbox 360 which will reward players with real-world prizes like coupons and credit to their credit card. American Express card holders would need to sync their card to their Xbox Live account to which the company would keep track of your achievements and reward you accordingly.

The program will be available to U.S. and U.K. American Express cardholders and kicks off with Halo 4 next week. One reward that will certainly get a lot of Halo 4 players sprinting towards its completion is the reward for the "Lone Wolf Legend" achievement. Players will need to be one of the first 25 people in the U.S. and one of the first five in the U.K. to complete Halo 4 solo on Legendary difficulty. The reward for that achievement would be a trip to E3 2013 with all accommodations paid for.

I still remember when Medal of Honor came out - that's about the time we got some wicked anistrophic filtering tech on our graphics cards and it was one of the first games I used it on. The game itself was phenomenal, and this was all before Call of Duty entered the first-person shooter arena.

After rebooting a couple of years ago, we're looking at another jolt into the now disappointing franchise with Medal of Honor: Warfighter (our review on it is here). But, EA's earnings call a couple of days ago noted the disappointing performance of the game, but didn't give out any exact sales figures.

Wedbush Securities analyst, Michael Pachter, says that the bad reception could be the beginning of the end of the Medal of Honor brand, and furthermore, hurt EA's ongoing fight against Activision for the king of the hill position in the first-person shooter market. Pachter says:

NVIDIA have re-opened the GeForce Community Forums, after they "suspended operations" of the forums back in July due to a suspected breach of their systems.

NVIDIA have said that they've built a new and improved forum experience, which sports a new appearance. They've redesigned and re-hosted them in order to line up better with the overall GeForce.com experience, which completes a vision set more than three years ago when nZone and the SLI Zone forums merged.

There was no talk of the previous breach of their systems, which is quite strange considering that's what took them down in the first place. Hopefully these forums stand up better than the last ones did.

Finally, some news for the gaming world that is exciting. VG247 have had multiple sources whisper into their ears that "Orbis" developer kits, otherwise known as the PlayStation 4, are reaching developers, housed in a normal PC case.

VG247 report that there are four different dev kit versions, with the previous version just a graphics card. The version shipping at the moment is a "modified PC", and the third version which will arrive in January 2013 will be closer to the final spec. The final version will be in developers' hands "next summer".

The latest Orbis units are based on AMD's A10 APU series, with the PS4's APU described as a "derivative" of existing A10 hardware, which is "based on A10 system and base platform". VG247 were told that the "ultimate goal" for the hardware is to run 1080p60 games (1920x1080 at 60 frames per second) in 3D with "no problems". The goal, to create a machine that's powerful enough for "today and tomorrow's market". Considering tomorrow's market is 4K... I'll stop there for now.

Android is by far the most popular mobile operating system, very likely due to the fact that the phones vary so greatly between manufacturers. This means there is a phone available for nearly everyone that runs the Google-crafted operating system. Big or small screens, multicore processors, whatever your desire, there is an Android phone to meet your needs.

I'm sure this is why Android's market share came in at exactly 75 percent for the third quarter. This large number comes as no surprise to me at all, just like the market share numbers for Windows comes as no surprise. Apple's iOS market share is just one-fifth of this number, coming in at a tiny (by comparison) 14.9 percent.

BlackBerry and Symbian are still doing horribly. BalckBerry managed to grab just 4.3 percent of the market, falling 34.7 percent year-over-year. Symbian did even worse, capturing a tiny 2.3 percent and falling 77.3 percent year-over-year. Windows Phone 7 is still the biggest loser in terms of market share, but did the best in year-over-year change.

Crysis 3 is coming. We've covered the game quite a bit, especially while checking it out at E3. We've told you how to get an Alpha multi-player key for this upcoming public trial. Now we're bringing you news that if you pre-order Crysis 3, CryTek and Electronic Arts will provide a free digital copy of the original for PS3, Xbox 360, or PC.

"The release of Crysis in 2007 was truly a watershed moment for first-person shooters and raised the bar on cutting-edge visuals and gameplay and we could not be more thrilled to include the original game as a pre-order bonus," said Cevat Yerli, Chief Executive Officer of Crytek. "Building upon the framework laid by the previous games, Crysis 3 offers unparalleled tactical freedom as players experience New York City's Seven Wonders and adapt to the truly unique challenges they present. By blending the best elements of the series so far, we've created an action experience that we believe will blow fans away."

Crysis 3 is sure to be great and getting Crysis original for free is just that much better. Users who pre-order the Crysis 3 Hunter Edition will get the Predator bow immediately in multiplayer, along with a Hunter Nanosuit module. Players will also start at level 5 in multiplayer. Pre-order the Hunter Edition on Origin.com and other retailers for $59.99.

Samsung's lawyers argued that the legal posting by Apple proclaiming that Samsung did not copy Apple's iPad design did not meet what the court ordered Apple to post. The court has agreed and now ruled that Apple has 24 hours to remove the current statement and 48 hours to replace it with a proper account.

"This has received enormous publicity and has perpetuated confusion as to Samsung's entitlement to market the Galaxy tablet computers in issue," a Samsung lawyer said in a written statement to judges. "It has created the impression that the UK court is out of step with other courts."

If you'll recall, the statement had in it verdicts that other courts had found, something Samsung clearly wasn't happy with. The original reasoning behind the requirement to post the notice is solid:

Amazon has jumped into yet another market by producing their own mobile game for Android and iOS. The game, called Air Patriots, seems like an interesting take on the whole tower defense type game that has proven popular on the mobile platforms. I know I love TowerMadness and play it constantly on my iPhone.

Air Patriots has the player control a squad of planes to defend your territory and defeat the enemy. Users draw a path on the screen with their finger, which the planes then follow and use as attack paths. Amazon is offering up 13 different types of planes, 28 levels, and 7 different maps, 3 of which are free.

"When we created Air Patriots we wanted to make a game that was easy and engaging, and the simplicity of drawing paths for planes was something we thought would appeal to players," Ernie Ramirez, executive producer at Amazon Game Studios, said in a statement. "We think customers will find Air Patriots both familiar and fresh, with a degree of challenge that keeps them engaged and enthused to play more."

We're getting closer to the release of Angry Birds Star Wars and Rovio has indulged us with yet another trailer, this time featuring Han Solo and Chewie. The trailer also shows off some in-game play and it's rather interesting how the game appears to be taking shape. More on that in a moment, for now, take a look at the trailer:

The game appears to feature some really unique forms of birds and they take the Star Wars theme to the max. For instance, Han Solo is firing a laser gun as he flies through the air, and the beams then ricochet around the level, something we haven't seen out of Angry Birds as of yet.

Chewie, too, offers a unique play style as it appears Rovio has mixed the previous land-based Angry Birds with Angry Birds space. This is rather fitting, considering Star Wars takes place on both planets and in space. It really is a culmination of the many games that Rovio has produced in the Angry Birds series.

For several years now, Craigslist has been the go-to site for anyone looking for local classifieds with many people content with its overall use. A number of Craigslist-like websites have popped up recently such as Backpages, but none have been able to make any sort of dent in Craigslist's dominance in the classifieds world. Although, if today's report turns out to be true, Facebook could finally give Craigslist a run for its money.

According to a report by The Daily, Facebook is currently working on a tool that would allow for users of the social network to publish listings that would announce things like apartment rentals, furniture for sale and even job listings. The section, which is being called Marketplace for now, will also give the user the ability to share their listing that would show up in their friends' news feeds.

A good portion of the service will be completely free, but Facebook will be accepting payments to further promote your listing to your friends, similar to its "promoted posts" feature. Promoted listings will appear as ads in your friends' Facebook feeds instead of being shoved into regular Facebook updates. Promoted listings will cost less than $5 to promote.

Google Drive users, who also happen to use Google's social network service, Google+, will be pleased to hear the company has now made it much easier for users to share their documents with their friends by allowing your files to be viewable in Google+, to which you can choose who you'd like to share them with.

The process to share your Google Drive documents on Google+ isn't as simple as clicking on a "Google Drive" option in Google+ to then choose which document you'd like to share with your friends. Instead, as of now, it's a multi-step process:

Back in early September, Kim Dotcom revealed he was working on an "ultimate" version of his widely popular MegaUpload website, which was brought offline earlier this year. Last week, it was reported Megaupload's successor would launch on January 20, 2013, and it looks like things are going according to plan as Kim Dotcom's successor to MegaUpload, simply called "Mega," has been soft launched today.

The new Mega is completely free of the U.S. as hosters, domains and backbone providers have all been taken overseas, which will make it nearly impossible for it to suffer the same fate as MegaUpload. What also helps is having the burden of hosting unlawful content focused squarely on the user as they're the ones who are in complete control of what content they store in the cloud.

One big improvement Mega will have over MegaUpload is it will be free of any software required to be used in order to upload or access a user's content. Instead, everything will be taken care of within the Mega website itself as it will encrypt and decrypt your data in real time. Cross-account folders will also be available which will make collaborating between multiple users a breeze.

Concrete is the world's most widely used building material, but there haven't been any fundamental changes in the material, and because of that it is prone to cracks - which means that most structures be substantially reinforced with steel.

This is all about to hopefully change with experimental concrete that self heals - yes, self, heals. The experimental concrete contains limestone-producing bacteria, which are activated by corrosive rainwater working its way into the structure. The new concrete is about to enter outdoor testing, and if successful, we could see new structures made with the concrete that could provide better service life with the concrete, and huge cost savings, too.

The work is being done at Delft Technical University in the Netherlands and is the brainchild of microbiologist Henk Jonkers and concrete technologist Eric Schlangen. If the testing is positive, Dr Jonkers says that they could start the process of commercializing it as soon as 2-3 years from now.

It looks like Linus Torvalds and I have something in common, we both want to see higher resolution notebook displays. Torvalds has used his Google+ account to post about the subject, asking "can we please just make that [the 2560x1600-pixel] the new standard laptop resolution? Even at 11"? Please."

The problem is, as he says, is that we're seeing so many 1366x768 displays in this Full HD world of displays, and it really is just crap. He does state that "soon even the cellphones will start laughing at the ridiculously bad laptop displays".

I fully, 100% agree with Torvalds, and I think every sector needs a reality check. TVs should have jumped from 1080p ages ago, and so should PC screens. I had 1920x1200 displays when the first Dell FP2405W came out and that cost me $1500+, I upgraded to the HP LP3065 monitor as soon as it came out because I wanted the 2560x1600 res it offered. Now we're going backward with 90% or more of displays only offering 1920x1080.

We all know Samsung doesn't just twiddle their thumbs after their release a flagship smartphone, where earlier this year we saw the release of the phenomenally popular Galaxy S III, and now we're seeing the rollout of the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note II. These two smartphones represent just a sliver of what Samsung actually sell, and now we're hearing more talk on the Galaxy S III's successor, the Galaxy S IV.

Sources are claiming that Samsung recently produced a test version of their 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) processor which goes by the codename "Adonis", that will eventually be baked into their next-gen flagship smartphone. Adonis is a quad-core design, which will most likely end up with the name Exynos 5400, and uses ARM's Cortex A15 architecture. The new chip should ship with better GPU abilities, that reportedly use very little power. Samsung currently use the Cortex A15 architecture in their Exynos 5250, but that is built on the older, and less efficient 32nm process.

HKMG ushers in low power-consuming chips thanks to ultra-miniaturization being possible without current leakage. This is currently a big problem when shrinking processes on the traditional SiON silicon-based process. Exynos 5400 should begin mass production by the end of the year, and if it misses that date, then we're looking at mass production in early 2013. If Samsung can keep on track, they would be the first to have a mobile applications processor (AP) on the market sporting the 28nm HMKG manufacturing process.

Some bad news for Australians regarding the Nexus 4 and Nexus 7 3G devices, big Australian telcos Telstra and Vodafone won't be stocking them. Telstra have weighed in, saying they won't be stocking either of the Nexus devices:

Telstra are expanding their LTE network, but their 3G side of things has far more customers and is a way bigger piece of the network pie. Myself and 99% of everyone I know is on 3G, with the only people I know on 4G are one, with Telstra, and two, have an iPhone 5. It was only on the first day that I saw people bragging about 4G speeds, and now it has died off - the honeymoon period for 4G disappears quite quickly, it seems.

Who thought this time last year that SSD maker OCZ would be in this much trouble? The company have announced their reducing a large number of its staff, with as much as 28% of their non-production staff being out of a job, while workers at the company's Taiwan production facility getting cut down by 32%. The company has said:

They aren't just stopping there, either. OCZ plans to discontinue around 150 product variations, too. OCZ adds:

Users of Android on the Verizon network will now have the ability to bill their Verizon Wireless account, instead of using a credit card or other form of payment. This change should help users purchase more apps easily, and is especially important for those users who do not have another form of payment, such as a credit card.

Users will be able to charge up to $25 of apps and other Google Play "merchandise" to their wireless bill every month and then they only have to pay through one channel. This latest addition brings the feature to Verizon, a feature that Sprint, T-Mobile, and AT&T have had for a while now. Just be sure to keep track of how much you're spending.

If you'd like, it appears to be something you can disable by going to Verizon's site and enabling "Block Web Purchases."