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OUYA, the $99 Android-based console gets $1.7 million (and counting) worth of Kickstarter
[UPDATE: They've just hit $2 million!] If there's anything we know about the world, and technology, and everything around it, is that its in a constant state of change. Kickstarter is here to help that, and so are the guys and girls behind Ouya. What is Ouya?
Ouya is a kickstarter project, and a "new kind of video game console". Ouya love gaming on a bigger TV screen, they know that smart devices like smart phones and tablets are the current in-thing, but they also know that some of the best are abandoning the traditional platforms and moving toward where "it" is, and "it" is in smart devices. Ouya want to change this.
Ouya have raised (at the time of writing) $1,772,876 of their $950,000 goal. They have 14,144 backers, and 29 days of Kickstarting to go. Kickstarter has confirmed that Ouya has achieved the biggest first day ever for one of their hosted projects, and it's the eighth project ever to crack the $1 million mark.
WD announce new WD Red NAS HDD range
Western Digital have just announced a fresh new series of HDDs, this time bound for Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices. Enter the WD Red NAS HDDs, designed specifically for SOHO NAS systems with one to five bays. WD have had the Red series of HDDs compatibility-tested with top NAS box manufacturers for power and performance, which is something that is perfect for NAS setups.
WD's Red NAS drives come in 1TB, 2TB, and 3TB capacities, all in the 3.5-inch form factor. WD's Red line sports NASware technology, which is designed to improve reliability and system performance, reduce customer downtime and to simplify the integration process. WD's Red customers also get something special, free premium 24x7 dedicated support, and a three-year warranty.
Western Digital's Red line of HDDs is their fourth color to enter the market from the company, with the other colors being Black, Blue and Green. WD puts this down to the "Power of Choice", with their storage solutions clear and easy to identify. Blue for "solid performance and reliability for everyday computing", Green for "cool, quiet, eco-friendly", and then we have Black which features "maximum performance for power computing", and of course, Red for "home and small office NAS".
Continue reading: WD announce new WD Red NAS HDD range (full post)
Valve to let users vote on what games get released on Steam
Valve are a company that don't like to stay the same, and I love them for it. The company that are known for Half-Life, Counter-Strike, Team Fortress, and many, many more amazing games, have announced a new feature that will see users voting for what titles appear on Steam.
At the moment, Valve has an internal group that decides on what launches on Steam, but since Valve don't really employ psychics, it can be very hard to please the entire community. Valve wants to stop this, so in late-August, the company will launch "Steam Greenlight". Steam Greenlight will use the system introduced by the Steam Workshop from last October.
The Workshop lets players rate and comment on content, such as Team Fortress 2 items, Skyrim mods. Valve have said:
Continue reading: Valve to let users vote on what games get released on Steam (full post)
One of the biggest gaming collections sells for $1.2 million
What I imagine is probably the coolest person ever, has just sold their insane catalog of video games for Nintendo home systems from the NES/Famicom through to the GameCube, as well as the full lineup of every game released on any Sega system.
All of this comes in their boxes, with original instructions. It amounts to more than 5,000 games, with the collection mounting up cartridges for the NES, Super Nintendo, Nintendo 64, GameCube and Virtual Boy, as well as anything published (!) for the Sega Master System, MegaDrive/Genesis, Game Gear, Saturn and Dreamcast. The Dreamcast collection is a stand out, funnily enough, which includes 550 games, and is advertised as factory sealed, all of it.
The seller also states "all games ever released on NEC systems, all factory sealed!" and included a buy-it-now price os just 999,999.99 Euro, or at the current exchange rates, US$1,238,099.99. Not bad, considering the seller would need to have some very exclusive industry access, or the ability to walk through walls in order to build this type of a one-of-a-kind library. The seller does state "you can email me asking the presence of a specific title in a fullset, but you can be 99.9% sure it is present".
Continue reading: One of the biggest gaming collections sells for $1.2 million (full post)
Next Issue amps up iPad app, offers all-you-can-read magazines starting from $10 per month
It looks like Next Issue is about to become much bigger than they were yesterday, with the release of an app on iOS, with the iPad app hitting the App Store today. For those of you who aren't in the know with how Next Issue works, it wants to be the Netflix, or Spotify of the magazine world.
Next Issue offers monthly subscriptions for unlimited access to their library of 39 titles. This breaks down to around $10 per month for all the monthly and bi-weekly magazines, or alternatively, $15 for all of that, as well as access to tabloids and other weeklies. One note: the free app is the magazine reader, you'll need to download the apps through Next Issue's browser-based store.
What magazines do they have on offer? Well, most of the big players are on-board: Conde Nast, Time, Hearst, Meredith and News Corp. This means you'll have access to The New Yorker, Esquire, GQ, Vanity Fair, Sports Illustrated and Popular Mechanics. Next Issue Media has also talked of wanting to double the catalog by the end of 2012, as well as grabbing deals with more publishers. I think I may just have to have one of those $15 per month subscriptions!
Google's Nexus 7 has been rooted, overclocked and flashed with custom ROM, all before its official release
Before the sure-fire-hit $199 tablet from Google and ASUS hits, the Nexus 7, the tablet has been overclocked, flashed with a custom ROM, rooted and replaced with a full tablet user interface (UI). 'FadedLite', a member of the XDA-developers forum posted some instructions on how to do the rooting.
But, it seems that rooting the Nexus 7 isn't as easy as previous smart devices, as the Nexus 7 features a locked bootloader. We all know that things like this can usually be overcome, with experienced developers trying their hand on the Nexus 7, provided they have sdk, can use adb as well as fastboot, and have debugging on the Nexus 7. They'd also need to download Su and CWM.
Overclocking on the Nexus 7 is impressive already, ramping up to 1.5GHz thanks to a kernel build from zaventh. The kernel does sport other features such as voltage tweaks, and support for init.d. The kernel is insecure, which is to be expected in its early days. User 'jcarrz1' offers an "enhanced" Android Jelly Bean experience with a custom ROM. This custom ROM sports init.d support, Zip alignment, a host file that blocks ads, the Aroma installer, Busybox, the Nexus 7 boot animation, an uncluttered appearance, the removal of some unnecessary apps, and enhanced speed.
LG are working on a quad-core smartphone, also sports a 10-megapixel camera
It seems as though LG wants to claw their way back up that smartphone winning mountain, with their first quad-core smartphone arriving in the form of the Optimus 4X LTE this month, but there is a follow-up coming soon that should also impress. This device is said to have a camera that beats the Optimus' 8-megapixel rear-snapper.
A report from The Chosunilbo says that LG Electronics chairman Koo Bon-moo has direct input into the planning and development of the as-yet-unnamed device, which is due to his dissatisfaction that the mobile-making division of LG has not taken full advantage of technology produced by fellow LG subsidiaries.
What makes Bon-moo's blood boil is that parts from LG Display, LG Chem and LG Innotek are featured by numerous LG competitors, including Apple, but last year, the LG Electronics chief said to have pointed out that LG is not "making enough" of the technology. Recent smartphone industry data from Strategy Analytics revealed that LG hold just 3.7-percent of the industry-wide shipments, with Samsung taking 30.6-percent, and Apple with 24.1-percent.
AMD's dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990 to arrive in July, would be a very limited edition
AMD's dual-GPU Radeon HD 7990 has been quite elusive until now, but "New Zealand" is now rumored to be hitting sometime late this month. It will sport two Tahiti XT GPUs and 6GB of GDDR5 memory, with special editions of the 7990 reaching an amazing 12GB of RAM on-board.
VR-Zone cites some of their sources saying that the boards are being sampled right now, with it all ramping up to a product launch before the end of the month. Pricing is one of the details that has been left out for now, and AMD are known to change pricing at the last minute.
Do you think we need a Radeon HD 7990? So there can be more broken 3DMark records? The only time these bad boys would really stretch their legs is for multi-monitor gaming, or when games really ramp up their graphics engines in the near-future, hopefully. I would love to see what one of the 12GB cards could do, CrossFired up with another HD 7990 12GB card, on 6 screens, oh the pants-wetting would be glorious.
Samsung will release a Windows RT-based tablet in October
With Microsoft making the decision to make their own hardware may have upset other OEMs, Samsung are still going full steam ahead on releasing a smart device based on Windows RT and it will be released in October.
The Windows RT-based tablet from Samsung will sport an ARM-based processor, and has now opened up a new avenue of business for the company, since they're now supporting Windows 8 and Windows RT-based devices. The move is sure to help Samsung have more devices on offer, with multiple OSs to choose from, to combat their main competitor, Apple.
Windows RT is set to become the first mainstream OS from Microsoft built for touch-screen devices that works on energy-efficient chips that are usually bound for smartphones. Most traditional desktop and notebook PCs run x86-based processors.
Continue reading: Samsung will release a Windows RT-based tablet in October (full post)
Apple tells EPEAT, a green electronics registry, to remove 39 of their products from its list
Apple have asked the Electronic Product Environmental Assessment Tool (EPEAT) to remove 39 of their products from its group's list. EPEAT are one of the largest eco-friendly certifying agencies in the U.S., who are funded by the EPA and a coalition of manufacturers, including Apple.
Why are Apple making this move now, considering they've supported EPEAT up until now? Well, in order to gain EPEAT certification, "recyclers need to be able to easily disassemble products, with common tools, to separate toxic components, like batteries", reports John Schectman from the Wall Street Journal.
That is a pretty big restriction for the closed-garden company that is Apple and their products. Considering the new Retina MacBook Pro (rMBP) is virtually impossible to take apart, with the battery glued in, and is pretty much non-serviceable by users. The LCD on the rMBP is glued into the notebook, making it quite difficult to remove. But, Apple are removing all of its products from EPEAT's registry, even their older desktops that were once certified.
Amazon's next-gen Kindle Fire to sport better display, ships Q3
Amazon's first-generation Kindle Fire started off with a bang, but sales of the tablet are dropping off, which means we're headed toward next-generation territory. Sources close to AllThingsD have said that Amazon are looking to unleash the next-gen Kindle Fire in Q3, and are talking to developers about hardware already.
The next-gen Fire is meant to be both thinner and lighter than the original Fire, sporting a built-in camera and much-improved display. Developers have also been told to build their apps for a display with a 1280x800 pixel display, different to the 1024x600 display of the current Fire.
This makes the next Kindle Fire's screen to look better, as well as featuring a new aspect ratio, meaning the display has an entirely new width-to-height ratio. DisplayMate President Raymond Soneira told AllThingsD:
Continue reading: Amazon's next-gen Kindle Fire to sport better display, ships Q3 (full post)
EU court rules that digital downloads can be resold
One of the things that sucks about digital media is the fact that until now, once it was downloaded, that was it. No trade-ins, no selling them to friends or someone over the Internet. But, the Court of Justice of the European Union thinks you should be able to resell those games.
The court thinks consumers should be able to resell any software they buy, no matter if it was physical media, or in a downloadable form. Where did this judgment pop up from? A case involving UsedSoft, who is a company that resells Oracle licenses acquired from previous owners. Oracle tried to stop UsedSoft from selling licenses, but it didn't fare well for Oracle. You can check out the full ruling here, as well as the official press release, a snippet can be seen below:
Continue reading: EU court rules that digital downloads can be resold (full post)
Microsoft says their top 4 franchises "outsell like the top 11 Sony franchises"
Corporate Vice President of Microsoft Studios, Phil Spencer, has some words to say against his competitors Nintendo and Sony. First off he has stated that the Wii U is graphically equivalent to the current-generation Xbox 360, and he's got some even nicer words for Sony, saying that Microsoft's top 4 franchises outsell the top 11 franchises from Sony.
He told GamesIndustry:
Facebook adds gay marriage icons, Apple follows suit with iOS 6
Up until the weekend, if you were to declare you were married on Facebook, it would show the traditional cake-topper style icon of a male and a female together. Well, with the whole gay marriage debacle going on across the world, Facebook have gotten with the times and updated the options for marriage.
Considering the social networking site features more than 900 million users, it is a move that should've been done a while ago. In the U.S. over the weekend, users started to notice new icons, either two males, or two females. James Lazar, a 38-year-old Chicago man was married to a man, but refused to change his status due to the male-female cake-topper style icons. He says "I don't like being forced into typical gender roles -- because we aren't. I think it's offensive".
Eventually, he changed his relationship status on Facebook to married and shortly after his icon changed to two men. He said in an interview with CNN, "I honestly didn't realize it was going to show up in my feed. I have 80,000 people 'liking' it and congratulating me and I'm like, 'Well, it was seven years ago!'"
Continue reading: Facebook adds gay marriage icons, Apple follows suit with iOS 6 (full post)
Olympus show off MEG 4.0, a Project Glass-style wearable display prototype
Google's Project Glass augmented reality wonder device may be on everyone's wish lists for Christmas 2013, but that is a fair while away. Olympus have just announced their own prototype of a glasses-mounted heads-up display, the MEG 4.0.
Olympus have reportedly been working on wearable displays for a few years now, but considering the fan fare Google received and how they're moving the technology closer to consumers, the timing seems perfect for Olympus to unveil their product. Olympus' MEG 4.0 floats a 320x240 screen above the user's regular eye-line and hooks up through Bluetooth to a nearby smart device. MEG 4.0 weighs around 30g and has a decent 8-hour battery life in intermittent display mode that will automatically turn on the display every 3 minutes for just 15 seconds only.
MEG 4.0 features a built-in accelerometer that detects the position of the user's head and reacts accordingly. One major thing Olympus' MEG 4.0 doesn't include is a camera, which is something that Google's Project Glass sports, and will most likely be one of the strong points of Google's product versus Olmypus' offering. At the moment, Olympus haven't hinted at pricing, or availability, and there's no video demonstration of their technology, either.
RumorTT: Sony to release super-slim PS3 at Gamescom next month
The PlayStation 3 is quite old now, and was refreshed for the first time back in 2009 as a slimmed down version of the popular console, and right now, it's the only model that is in production. But, according to some documents that were filed with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), we could expect a "super-slim" version to be announced at next months Gamescom in Germany.
When Sony announced the current slim model, they did so at Gamescom three years ago. The above FCC sketches don't really show much, but they do show a different FCC label position as well as confirming that Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR and 802.11 g/n have become standard once again.
Eurogamer took some time at E3 to speak to Sony executive Shuhei Yoshida, where they asked him if Sony had any plans to release a super-slim PS3. Yoshida told Eurogamer to never say never, which is a strong hint toward the move to a super-slim PS3. Considering that the PlayStation 4 could be out within the next 1-2 years, this would be the perfect time to cash in on the ageing console. What could its name be?
Continue reading: RumorTT: Sony to release super-slim PS3 at Gamescom next month (full post)
HTC beats Apple in swipe-to-unlock patent dispute
Last year, HTC launched a London-based lawsuit as part of an effort to invalidate European patents that Apple had referred to in a German court case. Apple countersued, and here we are today. A judge has ruled that HTC has not infringed on four technologies that Apple claim as their own.
The judge has said that Apple's slide-to-unlock feature was an "obvious" development in the light of a similar function on an earlier Swedish handset. Apple has used this patent in disputes against other companies using Google's mobile operating system, Android. The four patents discussed were:
The judge ruled that the first three patents were invalid in this case, where the fourth didn't apply to HTC's devices. HTC were lucky, though, as the judge stated that if it weren't for a device HTC released back in 2004, they would've infringed on Apple's patent. HTC's Neonode N1 had a padlock on its screen with the words "right sweep to unlock" when it sat in protected mode. If it weren't for this, this entire case may have had a completely different outcome.
Continue reading: HTC beats Apple in swipe-to-unlock patent dispute (full post)
Point Grey have a 4K-capable USB 3.0 webcam
If you've ever wanted to get into 4K video, which comes in resolutions of 3840x2160 or 4096x2160, up until now it has been an expensive adventure. Usually you'd grab one of the RED One, Scarlet or Epic cameras, but they're many thousands of dollars, and not really consumer-based hardware.
But, a Canadian company, Point Grey Research Inc. is designing, researching and manufacturing the 4K-capable Flea3 webcam all in Canada. The camera is poised to become the next-generation of technology in surveillance, while providing some insane levels of details for those who need it in a security setting.
Flea3 is one of the world's first USB 3.0-based webcam, capable of delivering 1920x1080 at up to 150 frames per second, or 4096x2160 at up to 21 frames per second. Flea3 sports Sony's Emor R (IMX121) 8.8 million CMOS sensor, and captures 4K video, and not just a megapixel-riden gimmick of a number. For a sub-$1000 4K camera, this definitely looks like the goods. You'd want to have a 4K-capable screen to go with it, though.
Continue reading: Point Grey have a 4K-capable USB 3.0 webcam (full post)
Motorola Atrix HD sports 4.5" Colorboost HD display and ICS
Motorola have just outed their next Atrix phone, known as the Atrix HD. The listed specs show the Atrix HD will sport a 4.5-inch HD Colorboost display with a resolution of 1,280x720, a 1.5GHz dual-core CPU, Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, and the swish look of the Droid RAZR.
Filling out the sepc we find a 1,780 mAh battery, 8-megapixel rear-facing camera, 1GB of RAM, 8GB of internal storage, and measures in at just 8.4mm thick. Motorola make it "business ready" as the Atrix HD features Gorilla Glass and Kevlar fused together, so it should be tough as nails.
There's no news on when the Atrix HD will hit stores, but if you want to find out more about it and sign up for updates, check out this link.
Continue reading: Motorola Atrix HD sports 4.5" Colorboost HD display and ICS (full post)
The ratio of PCs to Macs has fallen, back to levels not seen since the 90s
According to analyst Horace Dediu of Asymco, who has used a chart to show the ratio of PCs to Macs sold each year since the early 1980s. The chart shows Apple's temporary victory, as well as teh meteoric rise Microsoft took in the mid-2000s. But, we're seeing Apple's resurgence over the last 8 years or so.
This chart shows that the ratio has fallen back to level not seen since the mid-90s. A very important note, is that this chart only shows PCs vs. Macs, actual full-fledged computers that Apple doesn't really sell that much of. Another fact is that if the chart included iPhones and iPads, which given the constantly blurred lines of "what is a PC", the chart would be much more interesting.
We know PCs thrash Mac sales, but this would be more BYO (build your own) versus off-the-shelf systems from Dell, HP, and co. We know that Apple are definitely on their way back, but I think we have a long time before they'll ever see the numbers that Windows-based systems do.


