Latest News - Page 3039

If you haven't heard the news, the iPhone 5 is pre-selling like crazy. The initial pre-order stock was exhausted from Apple's store in just one hour, leaving those who didn't stay up out in the cold. Customers are now being quoted up to two weeks for the device to ship, instead of arriving on the 21st of September.

Apple has issued a statement regarding the incredible demand seen: "Pre-orders for iPhone 5 have been incredible. We've been completely blown away by the customer response." Of course, this wasn't too unexpected. Analysts estimates put the number of iPhones sold in the first week somewhere near the 10 million mark.

It's now expected that 5-10 million will be sold in the first weekend. If you still want to get an iPhone 5 on launch day, Sprint is still quoting September 21 as the date. Otherwise, you can queue up outside an Apple store at 8am, or outside an AT&T, Verizon, or Sprint store. At least they had the courtesy to launch it before winter!

Let's set the record straight as there are many sites reporting that the new iPhone 5 comes with an adapter so that legacy accessories can be used. This rumor has been spurred on by Apple inadvertently saying their would be during the checkout process on their site. You can see the error in the picture below.

Apple has updated their site to correct the mistake, though we want to make sure our readers who purchased the iPhone 5 before the change realize that they, in fact, will not be receiving an adapter. The adapter will set customers back $29, or $39 if they want it with a cable. The adapter is due out in October.

Apple has released a statement to this effect:

The era of IPv4 is drawing to a close. As the last block of IPv4 IP addresses begin to be allocated, TweakTown would like to wave good-bye to the outgoing Internet standard that has been around for 30 years or so. When it was first announced, it was thought that we would never run out of IPs. Apparently the developers didn't foresee smartphones, set-top boxes, and all kinds of other web-connected devices.

Allocation has started on the last block of /8 addresses, some 16.8 million addresses. Since there are so few IP addresses left, each application has to go through a strict set of guidelines set forth on RIPE's website. Once these last addresses are gone, no new devices can be added without NAT translating, which isn't always possible. IPv6 can't come soon enough.

Axel Pawlik, Managing Director of the RIPE NCC:

It seems as though Google has decided to come to the "Do Not Track" party with Google Chrome. The latest test build of the popular browser now includes a "Do Not Track" option, which allows users to opt-out of being tracked by cookies for advertising and other purposes. It's becoming more and more popular.

Advertisers are, of course, worried about these changes due to the fact that they will be less able to target ads at web-surfers. A Google Spokesperson:

Acer were set to unveil their CloudMobile A800 smartphone yesterday, but cancelled it at the very last minute, just hours before the unveiling of the new phone. Acer's new smartphone was destined to run Aliyun 2.0, an operating system created by e-commerce giant, Alibaba Group.

Acer planned to hold a press conference in Shanghai to unveil the new phone, which was going to reach the Chinese market rocking the Aliyun 2.0 OS. But, the company cancelled the event hours beforehand, with an Acer exec declining to explain why the plans were changed, saying only that the unveiling was cancelled for a "special reason".

But in this day and age, that's not good enough - and an unnamed company official quoted in a report on the Dow Jones Newswire said that the cancellation is in relation to Google's concerns over Acer's use of the Aliyun OS. Alibaba spoke with CNET, where they have come out and said that the Mountain View-based company threatened Acer, saying they'd end their partnership with the device maker if they support Aliyun. CNET's source said:

ASRock's Z77 OC Formula has been used with an Intel Core i7 3770K and the help of legendary overclocker Nick Shih, which has reached an insane 7.136GHz. This has given ASRock the number one spot on HWBOT, as well as setting a new overclocking world record. The man himself had the following to say about the achievement:

ASRock's Z77 OC Formula is ASRock's first motherboard designed for overclocking, featuring three Formula kits. These three kits are the Power Kit, which delivers "smooth and stable current with Digi Power, DSM, PAC, MFC and the 12+4 power phase design". Next up we have the Cooling Kit, which provides some great cooling, sporting the Twin-Power Cooling Heatsink, 8-layer PCB design with 4 sets of 2oz copper inner layers and GELID Solution GC-Extreme Thermal Compound. Finally, we have the Connector Kit, which includes Hi-Density Power Connectors and 15μ Gold Fingers.

It looks like Microsoft are ramping up for a mammoth Windows 8 launch, where they've announced at the company's annual event that every single Microsoft employee will not only get a new Surface tablet, but a Windows Phone 8 smartphone, as well as a Windows 8 touchscreen-based PC.

Forbes has said that the PC part of things isn't just limited to a desktop, it could be a desktop, laptop, Ultrabook or tablet. Considering there are some pretty awesome looking Windows 8-based Ultrabooks coming out, this is great news for MS employees.

Employee morale should go up considerably, and it also makes them look great to the public. 90,000 employees would surely cost Microsoft into the hundreds of millions, if not more, but hey - Windows 8 is their biggest step yet, and pushing their own gear to their employees for free is a very good start.

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak has weighed in on the Apple vs. Samsung patent lawsuit, and has said that he hates the result, and doesn't agree with it, and he thinks that it will ultimately be overturned.

Wozniak told Bloomberg in Shanghai:

Researchers at the University of Southampton have done something that only us mere mortals could only dream of, build a supercomputer from Raspberry Pi's and Lego.

They've called this Iridis-Pi, which is a very small 64-node cluster made from Raspberry Pi's Debian Wheezy distribution, linked through Ethernet. On their lonesome, Raspberry Pi's are not that powerful, but in a cluster with 1TB worth of storage in SD cards, that's another question.

Rackmounting the cluster was done in a very interesting way, where team lead Simon Cox and his son James put the entire array into two towers of Lego. LEGO!!! There are even instructions so you could do this at home if you've got the money for some Raspberry Pi's and some spare Lego around. The entire system cost less than $4,026 or so to make, which is not too bad at all.

As an avid ultraportable laptop user, I've often wished that I had a way to upgrade my laptop's performance when I was sitting at home at my desk, or in the hotel at one of the many trade shows. Unfortunately, there doesn't currently exist a solution to my problem. But that could all soon change, if Lucid's technology catches on.

Lucid has demoed a technology that utilizes Intel's stupid-fast Thunderbolt port, which is capable of 20Gbps theoretical throughput. The Thunderport connects a laptop, or any Thunderbolt-enabled PC, to an external enclosure that houses a desktop graphics card and its accompanying power supply.

To upgrade your laptop capabilities, just plug the device in. The screen currently flashes black and then the GPU is recognized by Windows. This allowed an Ivy Bridge bridge system, which managed 28 FPS in 3DMark06 on HD4000 graphics, to achieve 89 FPS. The system theoretically can even handle Crossfire and SLI setups.

The online auction house giant eBay has updated their logo. Following in the footsteps of Microsoft, the new logo features a cleaner, more modern design, which eBay says is to reflect who they are today. It's taken them 17 years, but they finally took out a ruler and managed to get all four letters in a straight line.

The new logo will begin to show up across eBay's sites and marketing campaigns in mid-October. As the years have progressed, eBay has tried to diversify into a multi-platform e-commerce giant, which they have seemingly done to great success. As it stands currently, the majority of items sold are listed as new and with a fixed BuyItNow price.

Google is king of producing high quality useless features. Think about it: the doodles are high-quality and cool, but not really useful. They may be good for a little bit of entertainment, but other than that, they serve no purpose. Today's addition is in the same vein in that it's fun, it's cute, but doesn't really serve any purpose other than that.

The new feature is called The Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon. The game, with tools, has been around for a while and spawned offshoots such as The Six Degrees of Wikipedia. The idea is that only six movies or fewer connect Kevin Bacon with any other actor, due to his wide appearances in movies.

To use the new tool, just type "bacon number" and an actor name. The number represents how many "degrees" apart they are. For example, in the picture, Bacon never worked with Willis, but they both worked with Bill Murray. If you're having a bit of trouble understanding the game, allow Wikipedia to explain:

Apple's new iPhone 5 is only a few hours old, with no consumers actually laying their hands on one just yet, the legal battles have begun. Samsung did threaten Apple that they would "immediately sue" the company if they used 4G LTE connectivity, and according to an industry source the Korean Times are reporting:

Samsung haven't taken legal action just yet, but I do not doubt we'll see some legal movement from the South Korean company. But, and here's the big but, HTC have already come out, lawyers swinging. The struggling device maker has lawyered up, presenting a patent claim to the US International Trade Commission Judge. Judge Thomas Pender has told Apple:

iPod nano gets large display, nice controls, and new dock connector. It looks basically like a mini phone:

It comes in at 38% thinner, the thinnest nano ever created. The device features physical controls along the side, a 2.5-inch multi-touch screen and comes in 7 colors. The nano also gets video again, as well as an FM tuner. Fitness and pedometer are built right in, along with built-in Bluetooth. Apple is also bragging it has the longest battery life of any nano.

Next up, iPod touch. "It's not just a great music or game player - it's a great iOS device. We wanted to make it better, with an all new, 5th generation iPod touch."

Amnesia: The Dark Descent reportedly increased the number of new underwear purchases by 3 million percent, but it looks like its sequel is about to raise that bar far higher. Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs is being worked on by developer Frictional Studios, right now.

A new blog post by the studios' head, Thomas Grip, has unveiled that the developer is working on a "super secret", first-person horror game. So, we're looking at another game, like Amnesia, but what could the developers do better this time around? Grip writes:

Intel will release a driver update for their Ivy Bridge platform next month that will enable 4K display output support, as well as hardware accelerated 4K video decoding abilities. Two DisplayPort outputs will be required to power a 4K display.

This means that most Ivy Bridge-based systems won't be capable of pushing 4K out from their systems, but future IVB systems wil have the 4K capabilities. Intel's Haswell platform will support a 4K-based panel from a single DisplayPort, or HDMI connection.

What do you think of Intel's announcement of 4K support on IVB? Disappointing because it requires two DP outputs, or surprising that they're at least noticing 4K support this early in the game?

If you thought the Raspberry Pi was impressive, you ain't seen nothing yet. Intel have asked their engineers to build the absolute smallest fully-featured compute unit possible, which is something they like to call the Next Unit of Computing.

On a board measuring just 4 inches by 4 inches, you'll find an integrated Core i3 processor on a 7-series chipset, mini-PCIe slot, mSATA slot, two SO-DIMM slots and three USB ports. Power is supposed through an external AC/DC adapter, but there's also a header for an optional internal power supply. Filling out the external ports we have an ethernet port, and two HDMI outputs.

Intel's Next Unit of Computing isn't a standard form factor just yet, which means the chipmaker had to work with a chassis vendor in order to put together the reference platform. Intel are hoping to sell you a chassis, PSU and Core i3-powered motherboard for the $399 or so mark. This would also include an mSATA SSD of some description, but would be OS-less. $399 is impressive, at that size.

It looks like Google were a little surprised by the patent win by Samsung, but not at the case itself, but with the smaller details. Bloomberg had Google's Vice President of Corporate Development, David Lawee, in front of the camera for an interview.

Lawee says in the interview itself that "we didn't know rounded corners were patentable", and covers that the company wasn't "aggressive" enough in patenting their intellectual property. The one thing I took away from this video is I think Apple have pushed every other large company to re-think where they stand with patents and IP.

Does this mean we're looking at a future of much more back room deals with companies, letting each other use the other company's patents? Or are we looking at companies who will be really held back if they don't have any decent IP or patents of their own? Did Apple just kick every other company in the balls with their Samsung attacks? I think so. Check out the interview over at Bloomberg.

Hello Kitty fans probably had a fit of excitement at the title, but its true, South Korean company, Samsung, are releasing a Hello Kitty edition of their entry-level Android-based Galaxy Y phone. Samsung will be releasing the Hello Kitty edition of the Galaxy Y in Germany.

Sporting a special home button, a two-tone pastel pink and white case, as well as special wallpapers and ringtones, this is perfect for any Hello Kitty fan. Spec-wise, we're definitely looking at the same entry-level phone that the Galaxy Y is.

3-inch screen, 800MHz CPU, and Android 2.3 are to be shipped with the device. But, I'm sure that Hello Kitty fans, which will be mostly tweener girls, won't care about specs. IT. HAS. HELLO. KITTY. ON. IT.

During TechCrunch's Disrupt event in San Francisco, Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg talked of his disappointment in HTML5, announcing that the social networking is working on native code for an Android-based version of the Facebook app.

While there, Zuckerberg gave his first post-IPO interview, where he was pressed about the Facebook phone that has been rumored lately. Michael Arrington was the man to interview the social networking giant's CEO, where he teased "I've been bugging you about Facebook phone for months, you say there's nothing, but I don't believe you".

Zuckerberg didn't seem surprised about the question, replying with: