Latest News - Page 3060

NVIDIA's mid-range of GeForce GPUs have always been the most popular, recently we've seen the GTX 460 and 560 cards soar through gamers' wish lists, as well as the Ti variants. But, with the Kepler-based GPUs, we haven't seen a mid-range card released.

According to Sweclockers, the GeForce GTX 660 Ti will arrive in mid-August carrying an MSRP of $299. This will make it a direct threat to AMD's Radeon HD 7870 GHz Edition, which just received a new price last week. The GTX 660 Ti would be based on the same core as the GTX 670, the GK104 core architecture, with 7 SMX units enabled giving us a total of 1344 CUDA cores.

Memory specifications, and clock speeds are expected to be changed also. The GTX 670 sports two different choices in memory, either 2GB or 4GB of GDDR5 memory on a 256-bit memory bus. The GTX 660 Ti will reportedly put on offer, 1.5GB or 3GB of GDDR5, on a 192-bit memory bus.

Samsung's 75-inch ES9000 LED Smart TV is making its way to the US of A. Samsung's 3D-capable, LED-backlit set flashed its goodies in New York as part of the Samsung-sponsored SpaceFest marking the Space Shuttle Enterprise's arrival at the Intrepid.

The ES9000's US debut is good news for those who have been holding their breath for a new 75-inch Samsung LED TV. Specs of the TV are not available, but the 75-inch TV bezel measures in at just 0.31 inches, with the frame sporting a rose-gold finish.

Samsung's 75-inch ES9000 also features a built-in web cam that retracts when not in use, and it also comes with four pairs of 3D glasses. The usual Smart Interaction is at play, giving gesture-based movements, as well as voice control to the TV. Samsung also announced a new Angry Birds app for its smart TVs, which allows users to play the game entirely from gesture controls. The app will be a free download, and will be available later this month.

Facebook shares were trading above $30 for a few weeks, but they dropped earlier this week, where they closed on Tuesday afternoon at a month-low of just $28.09. Facebook stock dropped 0.55-percent on Tuesday, after a huge 8.6-percent fall the day before.

Zynga shares were also hit, as the company is closely tied into the success of the Facebook platform, where they saw a drop of 5-percent on Tuesday, closing at a year-low of $4.58. The cause of these drops come after Capstone analyst Rory Maher released a report claiming Facebook's U.S. user base declined 1.1-percent over the last six months, as well as the European Facebook user base experiencing decline.

But, with 900 million monthly active users, Facebook can't see continuous growth - there will be stages of stagnation in their user growth, and maybe we're seeing the early signs of this. Looking into the future, Facebook's areas of growth seem to be international. Japan, Russia and China are their next markets to concentrate on.

Infortrend have just announced the North American availability of two new product lines in their EonNAS family, the EonNAS Pro and EonNAS 1000 Series. Infortrend note that while NAS' are getting more popular for the SOHO and SMB markets, data protection offerings on other brands "come up short".

This is where Infortrend's new EonNAS Pro and EonNAS 1000 Series come into play, running a ZFS file system, Infortrend fill this voice by offering an "unprecedented collection of advanced data protection features", including data deduplication, corrupt data self-healing, snapshot and pool mirror - bringing enterprise-level data protection and storage features to the SOHO and SMB markets.

Infortrends' NAS' definitely deliver on the performance side of things, too, offering performance of more than 100MB/sec, and in FTP environments, it can ramp up to a respectable 180MB/sec. Director of the EonNAS product line for Infortrend, William Chen, says:

Yahoo announced their second quarter financial performance yesterday, with the search giant enjoying revenues of $1.22 billion in the quarter, with diluted earnings of $0.27 per share. After all factors considered, revenue sat at $1.1 billion.

GAAP diluted earnings per share were $0.18 for the quarter, not moving from the previous year. Yahoo saw revenues of $461 million from search, with this number being 1-percent down year-over-year. GAAP display ad revenue was up 2-percent year-over-year. Yahoo made a splash across headlines earlier this week, announcing Google exec Marissa Mayer would be taking over as CEO. Yahoo listed Mayers move as its first 'business highlight'.

Even though the news of Mayer joining the company, it had little effect on Yahoo stock, which rose around 2-percent in after hours trading following the announcement. The following is Yahoo's overview of their quarter:

Thermal paste has been a long-time friend of computer enthusiasts, and over the years has evolved and had some great work done to it to reduce those temperatures, even by a few degrees. But, Sony showed off a new product in Tokyo last week that could thermal paste disappear, forever.

Sony revealed a prototype of a silicon and carbon-based thermal sheer which is currently known as "EX20000C" that measures 0.3-2.0mm thick with a thermal resistance of 0.4-0.2K cm2/W and a compress load of around 1-3kgf/cm2 - this is five or six times the effectiveness of Sony's previous solution.

EX20000C is said to meet, if not exceed the thermal conductivity of standard thermal grease. One of the show floor exhibits compared the sheet's effectiveness with a conventional setup and it managed to reduce the processor's temperatures by another 3C. Not only that, it removes the need for cleanup and also prevents over application, as the sheets last longer than paste because they don't degrade.

Google released Chrome for iOS just over a fortnight ago, and even though it's being held back by Apple's security protocols and can't use its own rendering engine, the browser has been among the most popular free downloads on Apple's App Store since release.

According to the latest data from online advertising network Chitika, Chrome for iOS has snagged a market share of 1.5-percent on its network. Safari is still the champion browser on iOS, but Chrome is seeing some great growth, considering its just over two weeks old.

Chitika has found that around 14.5-percent of iOS users surf the Internet on a browser that isn't Safari. It is worth noting that most of this traffic doesn't necessarily come from a third-party web browser, but from people who arrive on a given site through an app such as Facebook. Chitika's data is based on an analysis of "hundreds of millions of impressions" from Chitika's ad network in both the U.S. and Canada.

Western Digital Australia today announced their new range of hard drives at a media event in Sydney with a few of their NAS partners; Promise, QNAP & Synology. The WD Red NAS drives are the newest addition to the Western Digital hard drive family, specifically designed for SOHO and prosumers that utilise a 1-5 bay Network Attached Storage (NAS) in their network.

All NAS vendors were approached to ensure that their products were compatible with the new WD Red NAS drives. Both ARM & Intel chipsets are supported.

Western Digital explains that the NAS market is the fastest growing market in hard drives. "People are purchasing diskless NAS systems and worry about which hard drives are compatible," said Albert Chang, Senior Product Marketing Manager for WD, "We want to make the perfect choice clear."

LG Display Co., the world's second-largest flat-panel maker has had six naughty employees charged over the theft of technology from Samsung Mobile Display Co. The six employees of LG leaked, or stole Samsung Mobile's OLED technology and business secrets.

This is all according to an indictment filed with Suwon District Court in South Korea. Two of the six accused include two former Samsung Mobile employees. Samsung Mobile have requested that LG Display formally apologize, as well as take the necessary steps to prevent reoccurrence. LG Display also merged with Samsung Display Co. this month.

In an e-mail sent out yesterday, Samsung Display Co. said that LG Display systematically took Samsung's OLED technology, and core staff to overcome its own shortcomings. LG said in a separate e-mail that the information obtained is widely known in the industry and isn't considered a trade secret. LG Display are also taking legal action against Samsung Display, a unit of Samsung Electronics Co. for defamation.

It looks like increased competition from companies such as HTC, and Samsung are forcing Apple to make changes to the new iPhones design, where "people familiar with the matter" saying that manufacturers of the new iPhone are currently using a new technology that makes the new iPhones screen smaller, reports the Wall Street Journal.

The WSJ reports that Japanese LCD makers, Sharp, and Japan Display Inc., who is a new company that combined three Japanese electronics makers' display users, as well as South Korea's LG Display Co. are currently mass producing panels for the upcoming iPhone, which is said to use in-cell technology.

In-cell technology integrates touch sensors directly into the LCD, removing the need of a separate touch-screen layer. Thanks to this layer not being needed, it shaves half a millimeter off the total thickness of the phone, while increasing the quality of the display itself, says DisplaySearch analyst Hiroshi Hayase. The current iPhone is 9.3mm thick, which means we should see the new iPhone somewhere below 9mm in total thickness.

Nielsen, an analyst firm, have their latest numbers for the U.S. smartphone market in Q2 2012, with numbers showing that for Q2, smartphone adoption continues to increase with 2 in 3 new customers grabbing a smartphone.

But, the Windows Phone 7 numbers are the most interesting bit of this new data, where the mobile OS holds just 1.3-percent of the market. Nokia itself has only 1.2-percent of smartphone owners, and that's considering the amount of marketing that Nokia have pushed with their Lumia series of devices.

We have RIM's BlackBerry handsets having a nice 9-percent of the US smartphone market, with Motorola, HTC and Samsung enjoying 11-, 14- and 17-percent, respectively. Apple takes the crown by enjoying a nice 34-percent of the US smartphone market pie. If we look at operating systems, Android takes the crown, with a hefty 51.8-percent of the market, and 54.6-percent of new customers taking an Android-based handset.

Back in April, Arkane Studios' teased the debut trailer to Dishonored. Then, it was only last month that Arkane Studios talked of the PC standards being "a religion", and that the PC version will get its own interface. Now we're hearing more of the fruits of this developers labor.

We can now see just how much Arkane Studios' passion for PC gamers has leaked into Dishonored. The official Bethesda blog offers a look into Dishonored PC's customization options, and there is quite a lot of them. In the above screenshot, you can really see the length to which Arkane Studios have gone. UI options allow the gamer to disable HUD elements one by one. This allows the best balance between hand-holding, and immersion.

Arkane are also offering the following:

Well, who'd have thunk it? Valve have just announced Steam for Ubuntu. Yes, Steam is on a Linux distribution. Valve have used a new blog exclusive to its Linux-based goodness, where they've introduced the team, and talked about the future of the project.

The blog talks of Gabe's interest in moving Steam, and the Source engine over to Linux. But, at the time, Valve were supporting Linux by using Linux-based servers for Source-based games, as well as maintaining several internal servers for various projects, the OS on these servers? A 64-bit version of Ubuntu.

So, last year, Valve decided to take the next logical step, and form a new team. This team consisted of people who had the sole purpose of investigating the possibility of moving the Steam client, as well as Left 4 Dead 2 over to Ubuntu. After successfully getting it to work, interest grew within Valve, and the results of this interest were the expansion of the team, and projects they were working on. Their main focus is now the following projects:

Considering Android is mostly on smart devices such as smartphones and tablets, it does get baked into all sorts of different devices. But, this news is somewhat different. The next device to see Android get its OS is in the Boeing 787 Dreamliner passenger jets.

Two models are destined to be fitted, the first is Panasonic's eX3, and the Thales TopSeries Avant. Details on the Thales model were unveiled alongside a demonstration at the Farnborough International Airshow just recently.

The TopSeries Avant model will sport 10- and 17-inch versions, but there's no details on the display type, nor the resolution. Performance-wise, we should find a dual-core, ARM-based processor rocking inside, backed up by 1GB of RAM, and 256GB of storage. The central server will feature 32 cores in either an Intel Xeon, or AMD Opteron-based processor, 128GB of RAM, and 4TB of storage.

During a recent Q&A session, Rockstar have claimed that the next entry in the Grand Theft Auto series will be the "biggest open world game to date". Grand Theft Auto IV's open world was already impressive, so how much bigger than GTA V get?

Well, how about Rockstar go vertical? Lots of flying, missions involving flying, etc could work. Rockstar have claimed that it was not possible for them to integrate an interactive high definition airspace that matched the ground because it took too much work. Rockstar stated:

Apple released iOS 6 Beta 3 to developers today, with the next-gen mobile OS set to hit users' devices sometime "this fall", most likely with the new iPhone that is rumored to be announced on August 7.

iOS 6 Beta 3 is Build 10A5355d, which is released only three weeks after the previous dev version which was Build 10A5338d. Users are the ones that really add juice to this news, thanks to forum discussion and blogs. One of the additions to this new beta is a new section in the Settings app for Maps, which now allows users to change the volume of the navigation voice, set distances to display in miles or kilometers, set map labels to display either in the local language or always in English, and finally, to set map label sizes to either "normal" or "large".

Other changes found in iOS 6 Beta 3 include:

Windows Phone 8 seems to be adding a fair amount of notches to its belt, before its even released. Microsoft's Joe Belfiore talked about the mobile OS at the WP Summit a few weeks ago, but there are also leaks and more around, too.

Then, a rumor has been floating around that Windows Phone 8 is to support "USB Mass Storage", which is the ability to simply plug your phone into your computer and transfer files. But, WPCentral says that this is no rumor, and that it is 100-percent truth, as Microsoft talks about this with the site, and a few other news outlets, pre-Summit. Secondly, WPCentral says you can watch the video yourself with Joe Belfiore briefly discussing the feature at the 14-minute mark in the Summit video.

Rumors of the Apple TV have been around for a while now, but with Samsung and their new Smart TV range, is it too late? Or is there something Apple could do to the TV market that would shake things up as much as they did when they entered the smartphone market?

Well, according to Raymond Soniera, founder of DisplayMate Technologies, Apple may cram a Retina display into their upcoming TV range. Soniera spoke to CNET, where he said:

A single image from Comic Con has just injected a very tasty amount of goodness into the rumors and talk of Metal Gear Solid 5, now revealed as Project Ogre. The image is simply a logo, but OGRE stands for Open Ground Reconnaissance Endeavors.

OGRE is the sub-title for Metal Gear Solid 5, with the text under it reading "The moment we were cast out of heaven, we became monsters". MGS mastermind Hideo Kojima has previous talked of the game, and stated that Project Ogre "is some game that has a very wide entrance, a very wide entrance". Kojima adds "rather than making something very cinematic, [I plan to] make something very free".

When the first screenshot for Project Ogre was shown, Kojima said that the title is:

Know Your Mobile has a big scoop on the new iPhone, where according to a "reliable industry source who wishes to remain anonymous" revealed to Know Your Mobile that the iPhone 5 would be launched at a keynote speech given on August 7.

There were reports floating around that the date for the iPhone 5's launch was brought forward from October to August (most likely from increasing competition). Because it is just a rumor, there are no details on specs, design, pricing, or anything else really. According to previous rumors, Apple will break their usual stance of keeping the screen at just 3.5-inch, and increase it to 4-inch.

They need to do this to break the mould, and keep up with the competition. Apple's new iPhone should also sport NFC capabilities, as well as a faster processor. It should also adapt a new look and style, changing from the iPhone 4 and 4S. The new iPhone should also be the debut device for Apple's iOS 6 mobile operating system, which should bring some nice changes to iOS, as there again, is already competition from Google in the form of Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, and the soon-to-be released Windows Phone 8 from Microsoft.