Latest News - Page 3059

The release of Windows 8 is getting closer and closer every day and Microsoft keeps releasing more and more information about the upcoming operating system. The latest nugget of news is that the app store, aptly and unimaginatively named Windows Store, will enable and facilitate the ability to offer 7-day free trials.

This is a welcome addition. As most users of iOS know, there is no method for offering trials through the app store. While some developers have produced lite versions of their paid apps, significantly more have not. Furthermore, these lite versions aren't exactly the same as a full version trial. Developers also have to worry about putting safeguards in, which isn't the easiest task, especially with Apple's restrictions.

However, Microsoft has detailed how the Windows Store will offer APIs and facilitate the ability to offer 7-day free trials of paid apps. It turns out that a try-before-you-buy offer boosts sales to as high as five times. Microsoft is even going to offer analytics to show how many conversions are made from the trials.

Websites are reporting that Intel is planning on releasing a new flagship processor in Q4 of this year. The new processor, called the i7-3970X, will utilize the LGA2011 socket and take the title of flagship. The report is claiming that the processor could ship with clock speeds of 3.5GHz and TurboBoost up to 4.0GHz.

Of course, as it is an Extreme Edition processor, it will feature an unlocked multiplier and should overclock like a dream. It will run off of the current SandyBridge-E silicon as the current LGA2011 processors and will be built on the 32nm production process. It will pack 6 cores and 12 threads through the use of HyperThreading.

It is rumored to sport 15MB of last-level cache and will pack a quad-channel DDR3 integrated memory controller, supporting up to 64 GB of DDR3-1600 MHz memory. Pricing will likely be in line with the current i7-3960X and this new chip will likely cause that chip to be gradually phased out in favor of this new, faster chip.

A cool science project has brought something that every person on earth has been waiting for. Think back to all those Sci-Fi movies. What do they all have in common? If you said moving trashcans that adjust their position to catch the trash you have just thrown towards it, you'd be correct.

And one would think with all of the technology we have some researcher would have been able to build this some time ago. Well, it turns out that people who are too lazy to get up and place trash in the can are too lazy to work on inventing a trashcan like this. However, an inventor by the name of FRP has managed to design and build one for himself.

FRP built everything from scratch from the wheeled base to the circuit boards and programming. He used a Kinect sensor that monitors the entire room and watches for trash to become airborne. It then tracks the trash and directs the trashcan to move to where it is likely to land. The video makes it look pretty darn accurate, but FRP admits the accuracy wouldn't win an MVP award quite yet.

A company that you've probably never heard of has released an infographic that shows the radiation output for five different phones. The higher the output, the worse it is for your health. The FCC has a limit of 1.6W/kg and the iPhone 4S isn't too far away from that number. On the other hand, the Galaxy SIII does considerably better.

The company in question is Tawkon, a company that released an app on iOS and Android which shows how much radiation your phone is emitting. Apple, of course, quickly removed the app since it didn't make the iPhone look very good. The app is still available on the Google Play store if you would like to check out your device.

According to the infographic, the BlackBerry Bold is one of the worst phones you can buy, in terms of radiation, as it is the closest to the legal limit imposed by the FCC. The iPhone 4S comes in second with a SAR rating of 1.11W/kg. The Samsung Galaxy S3, however, comes in with only .34W/kg, more than three times less than the iPhone 4S. If you prefer to keep your brains raw, you might want to rethink your phone choice.

Executives speaking to the Yonhap news agency, it looks as though Samsung have smashed through the 10 million sales milestone. The company talked about hitting the milestone by the end of July, and well, they've done it.

Samsung's head of mobile, J.K. Shin, said "It appears that it (accumulated sales) has exceeded 10 million units". But, and there's always a but, Shin didn't specify whether this 10 million unit count was actual sales to customers, or shipments to retailers. Either way, it's an achievement in itself.

The Samsung Galaxy S III has been available for a little over two months, and can now be purchased in over 140 countries across the world.

Earlier this year, Dell launched an experiment to see if they could build a compelling Linux laptop for software developers. It was called Project Sputnik, and infused an XPS 13 Ultrabook with Ubuntu 12.04.

The software environment is tailored for developers, where it features a bunch of useful tools and a framework for automating the installation of specific development stacks and cloud deployment tools. Dell also worked on hardware enablement, where they tweaked drivers which improved touchpad support, as well as adding support for toggling Wi-Fi from the keyboard.

Project Sputnik was a six-month pilot program, where Dell would evaluate the potential of turning the concept into a real product. This week, Dell announced that it will proceed with the project. Sputnik is destined to take-off later this year, and will be available to consumers in selected markets. Dell are also going to be using developer feedback into the product itself.

Australian airline Qantas are set to provide Apple iPads to use as in-flight entertainment, the move follows a successful test run from late-2011. Qantas would put iPads in their entire Qantas 767 fleet starting from Q4 this year, starting on flights based on Australia's east-coast routes.

Qantas have 23 Boeing 767-300 aircraft, meaning the company is looking at providing at least 5,000 iPads, without including units for spare tablets in case of one malfunctioning. The in-flight content is set to be provided by Panasonic's eXW solution dubbed Qstreaming. Qstreaming uses an onboard server to stream over 200 hours of on-demand entertainment to the iPads via strategically placed Wi-Fi access points.

Part of the test run late last year included the suggestion that Qantas would allow customers to use their own iPads with the service, but the company is still assessing whether or not to allow the option. I don't see why they should hold back, just allow them to download the app itself onto their iPad.

With EA stock trading at a 52-week low, EA CEO John Riccitiello said during an interview with CNBC that the fundamental problem is not with the company itself, but with investors understanding the business.

Julia Boorstin sat down with the CEO for an exclusive interview at Fortune's Brainstorm Tech conference, where the Riccitiello said that he's currently in the process of shifting EA from being about packaged goods to digital revenue. We reported just over two weeks ago that EA saying it's "inevitable" that they'll become a 100-percent digital company.

Riccitiello said during the interview that the industry's focus on NPD's packaged game sales numbers is misguided, and overlooks the massive growth EA have been seeing in digital revenue. EA have had a number of social and mobile gaming acquisitions, with the company saying it had found success on the Facebook social games platform, as well as Apple's game store.

We had a another RumorTT post on the upcoming Samsung Galaxy Note II last month, where we heard it would have Samsung's quad-core Exynos processor inside, but it looks like those rumors are now materializing as we get closer to its impending release.

Some numbers have just shown up in the form of some test results uploaded to GLBenchmark, which let's us report that the Galaxy Note II should sport a 1.6GHz quad-core Exynos processor, clocked 200MHz above its little brother the Galaxy S III. The Galaxy S II was clocked in at just 1.2GHz and was only a dual-core chip, while the original Note was clocked in at 1.4GHz and also just a dual-core chip.

The benchmark scores show that the Note II is a little faster than the Galaxy S III. The screen resolution tested on the device was 1280x720, which is a 16:9 ratio compared to the original Note's 16:10. This goes hand-in-hand with previous rumors of the Note II featuring a slighter bigger screen. I've already taken a stab at the 5.5- to 5.6-inch range. Another good note on the Note II (geddit?) is that it looks to be running that sweet Google OS, Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. But, that seems obvious at this point, for Samsung to launch a flagship phone without Jelly Bean.

We heard about Samsung's flexible AMOLED technology a couple of months ago now, called "Youm". But it seems that new reports from Korean website DDaily are suggesting the production of these panels could be any day now.

Samsung were rumored late last year to have these flexible AMOLED displays in mass production by Q2 2012. The first production run of these displays won't be too flexible, as the displays will be fixed to a rigid sheet of "protective" glass, at first. DDaily's sources claim that Samsung has an internal goal of mass-producing fully flexible screens by 2014.

Producing some of them now would give Samsung a head start on the competition, as they can get the screen tech working now, and get to work on the devices shrinking down (power sources, chips, PCBs, etc). This means we could see flexible smart devices sometime after 2014. We should see new forms of fashionable technology such as watches, headware, and others. The future is flexible.

It looks as though Google didn't expect this much demand for the 16GB version of their Nexus 7 tablet, with the tablet selling out from stockists and other sources, whilst demand for the 8GB variant remains comparatively low.

Google have stopped further orders for the 16GB variant across their US and UK Google Play stores, with orders placed up to the end of last week looking to be fulfilled, but a shortage in stock now means a stop in sales, temporarily. If you're after a Nexus, and don't mind the smaller 8GB version then you can still grab one, with a 3-5 business day wait.

If you still want that 16GB version, you'll have to "sign up to be notified by e-mail" when it becomes available, according to Google's Play Store. Even though the Nexus 7 is sold out in its 16GB flavor, the company haven't released any sales numbers, so its unknown whether this "sold out" number is just 500,000 or a few million.

Microsoft have just updated Bing Maps, which now includes 215TB of high-resolution imagery covering most of the United States, as well as key locations within Europe, Australia, New Zealand and Tokyo. These new pictures, named Bird's Eye, were captured at a 45-degree angle to provide increased detail of buildings and landmarks.

Over on the Bing Maps blog, they point out that the new photos in the update cover over 230,000 square kilometers, and are made up from more than 1.1 million files. Bing Maps now covers a total of 1,388,593 square kilometers, which is good for 302TB of data. Bird's Eye maps use three different kinds of data. The first is native Bird's Eye scenes using photos captured at 45-degree angles. There's also Bird's Eye Oblique Mosaics, which are a group of aerial photos that have been stitched together.

The final type of data uses top-down photography that is projected onto a digital terrain or landscape, again, at a 45-degree angle. This is used to showcase topological depth perception when traditional aerial photography just isn't feasible.

Micron look to be the first manufacturer to bring phase-change memory (PCM) to the market, a flash-alternative. Micron have said that PCM will be first be baked into feature phones, with smartphones and tablets to arrive later.

Why feature phones, and not smartphones and tablets? Micron says they'll be stamping out a board with 1GB of PCM (45nm) accompanied by 512MB of LPDDR2 (mobile DDR). Smartphone and tablet users expect much more capacity, but with PCM still in its early days, this can't be done.

Micron seem to be taking a slow and steady approach, before working with higher densities and smaller packages. PCM is a type of non-volatile memory which appears to be best suited for applications where NAND flash is currently used. Most of you probably use something with NAND flash inside, USB flash drives, SSDs, memory cards, and most other commercial products where permanent data storage without a power source is required. PCM also does this.

Microsoft have just posted some newer system requirements for their upcoming productivity suite, Office 2013. It seems that the company are cutting support for older versions of Windows, with Windows Vista and XP both not being compatible with Office 2013.

Office 2013 will only be compatible with Windows 7, 8, 2008 R2 Server and 2012 Server. In one way, I can understand that they are cutting Windows XP's support, as the OS is both old, and about to get cut from updates on Microsoft's side, but Vista? Then again, Vista reached its end-of-life milestone in April, so its not that surprising to be honest.

Not only are there stricter OS requirements, but system requirements are a bit higher, too:

US District Judge Lucy Koh of the Northern District of California ordered Apple CEO Tim Cook, as well as the top-ranking Samsung executives Choi Gee-sung and Shin Jong-kyun on July 16, where they met in the US to discuss putting an end to the on-going patent lawsuits that are being fought across the world.

The US jury trial was scheduled for July 30, but The Korea Times reports that the two technology leaders met early. This is the second time in two months that they've met, with Samsung Electronics' COO Lee Jay-yong also reported to have scheduled talks with Cook while the Apple CEO was attending the Sun Valley Media Conference between July 10 to July 14.

Where it gets more interesting, is that an 'unnamed Samsung official' told the Korean news website that Samsung placed an added importance on the meeting as they were "very important business partners", in which they very much are. This is thanks to large orders for processors, LCDs and memory components that are using in Apple's iDevices. Samsung provided a whopping $7.8 billion in parts for Apple devices in 2012, meaning that Apple is Samsung's largest customer.

It looks as though OCZ are hard at work on a new Indilinx controller, where according to CEO Ryan Peterson, the Barefoot 3 controller is currently in production over at TSMC. OCZ expects to offer sampling drives based on the Barefoot 3 controller by September.

Peterson also revealed the progress on the new SSD controller during a conference call with financial analysts. There's not much information on the chip itself, but it reportedly sports a 32-bit, 400MHz "Aragon" processor, with a SSD-specific RISC instruction set. Peterson also said that the chip's "primary IT blocks" are licensed from a third-party.

OCZ expects these new Barefoot 3-powered SSDs to outperform their current offerings, obviously, with Peterson mentioning a "significant performance increase over [OCZ's] current products", but he didn't provide any numbers. We should expect Barefoot 3-powered SSDs from OCZ sometime before the end of Q3 2012.

It's been previously reported that Apple have begun their final production of the upcoming next-gen iPhone, but BGR is reporting that this isn't true. They have reported that Apple go through multiple stages before a product is manufactured, and two of these phases include the "engineering verification test" stage, as well as a "design verification test" phase.

BGR have a source that tells them that the new iPhone is currently in the EVT3 stage, the third revision of the engineering test stage, not yet reaching the DVT stage. Production of previous iPhones, according to BGR's source, is as follows:

Remember, that it's still completely plausible that Apple are producing engineering samples of the new iPhone, as well as messing around with manufacturing device enclosures to ensure any problems with the manufacturing itself is ironed out before the real production starts. But the final retail product has not yet reached this stage, not yet. BGR also reports that the units that Apple are currently testing sport 1GB of RAM.

To be brutally honest, I didn't even know about Robotoki, until I received Project Update (#4) from Ouya, the Kickstarter-funded console. The e-mail that hit my inbox explained that the team had received their first exclusive game.

The game, Human Element, is from Robotoki, whose president of game development, Robert Bowling, is ex-Activision. You know, the good, old Call of Duty days. His Twitter account @fourtwozero hinted that he had some news, and this news is that Ouya gamers will get the very first access to his new game Human Element. Human Element is a post-zombie-apocalyptic game. Robotoki is the first studio to commit to building a game exclusively for Ouya: an episodic prequel that will set the stage for his eventual release of Human Element in 2015.

Human Element definitely sounds great, so after I found out about it, I did a bit of digging. Games Industry has an interview with Bowling, where he explains that the game seems to blur the lines between reality, and gaming. One thing that stood out from this interview, was that Bowling touched down on the fact that Human Element is a cross-genre, cross-platform 'experience'. Bowling notes in the interview:

We all know the on-going patent war between Samsung and Apple is keeping the entire industry talking, but this latest news is just icing on the cake for Samsung. Apple has been ordered by a judge to publish a notice on its U.K.-based website, as well as British newspapers notifying people that the ruling stated that Samsung didn't copy iPad designs.

This notice is said to outline the July 9 London court decision that Samsung's Galaxy tablets didn't infringe on Apple's registered iPad designs, Just Colin Birss said yesterday. Birss added that this notice should be posted on Apple's U.K. homepage for six months, as well as having it published in several newspapers and magazines to correct any impression that Samsung copied Apple's iPad. Richard Hacon, a lawyer for Apple told the court that this order means Apple will have to publish "an advertisement" for Samsung, and that "no company likes to refer to a rival on its website".

If anyone sees an advertisement or notice in a British newspaper, please do drop us an e-mail!

Google have announced that their Street View team have been snapping a tonne of 360-degree imagery of notable locations in Antarctica, with some of this work being posted to the World Wonders Project website. Featured destinations include the South Pole Telescope, Shackleton's hut, Scott's hut, Cape Royds Adelie Penguin Rookery and the Ceremonial South Pole.

Google had already posted static photography imagery that was taken from Antarctica to Google Maps, back in 2010. But, these new photos combine high-resolution, panoramic imagery with the same camera panning, rotation and zooming features that people expect, and use from Google's Street View service. Google worked with the University of Minnesota's Polar Geospatial Center and the New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust to bring these pictures to our screens.

The search giant claims that its altruistic goal is to provide scientists and students with the most accurate high-resolution data available for historic and notable locations in Antarctica. In order to snap these amazing shots, Google used portable cameras with fish-eye lenses, which is the type of equipment usually used for capturing virtual tours for real-estate agencies, and others. Usually Google would use trikes or vehicles mounted with 3D imaging systems.