Latest News - Page 3092

Since CES earlier this year, with all of the TV teases, smart TVs, OLED, and more, I began to feel my wallet shaking on the table. It shook more when I started checking out the leaked pricing on 2012 HDTV pricing, and oh boy am I excited.

HDGuru have entered my dreams and have released some advertising pricing on some new models from Sony and Sharp, with those models being the BX, EX and HX lines, and the 640, 745, 844, 847 and 945 lines from Sony and Sharp, respectively. Panasonic pricing has been revealed by Value Electronics and for Samsung, we're seeing preorders at Vanns, which even includes the preccioouuusss itself, their top-of-the-line 75-inch ES8000 priced at $7,999.

If the ES8000, $7,999-priced model is too much, how about the 46-inch model? That's just $2,699.

Microsoft have laid down some plans where they will open up four new retail stores over the next few months, with the first international stores opening up later this year.

This is all according to at least one person familiar with Microsoft's plans, says The Verge. The plans would see the Redmond-based company open up a brand new store in Palo Alto, California, and another in Austin, Texas. The funny thing about two of these stores? They will be opening during April, and they'll be quite close to Apple retail store locations in popular malls.

The same plans are said to include two new stores in the state of New Jersey, the first in Bridgewater, the second in Freehold. The New Jersey stores are said to be located in malls that also have Apple stores, and are expected to open up shop before the end of June.

Tim Sweeney, Epic CEO and Technical Director spoke at the 2012 D.I.C.E. Summit, where he predicted that the number of platforms for games will shrink to three or four over time. He also added that consumer have many choices when it comes to gaming platforms with tablets, PCs, smartphones, Macs, consoles and new handhelds. He adds:

Sweeney also predicted that there would be new devices on the market, as well as new technologies for developers to tap into:

We reported last year about the Steam hack, but it has now been reported that the hack was actually quite a lot worse than previously thought. The server hacked did contain data such as usernames, hashed passwords, game purchases, e-mail addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card numbers, but Valve didn't find any evidence that led them to believe that any personal information was stolen, until now.

Valve have completed further investigation into the matter, and have stated that their preliminary conclusion was, incorrect. Newell has now said he believes the hackers obtained a copy of a backup file with data about Steam transactions made between 2004 and 2008. This backup file is said to contain usernames, e-mail addresses, encrypted billing addresses and encrypted credit card numbers. One of the good things to come from this news is that no passwords were included in this file.

Even thought it's not guaranteed what the hackers did, or did not get from this file, Gabe Newell has come out and urged Steam customers to monitor their financial statements and make sure they use Steam Guard. Newell's full letter is below:

Here we go, again. Apple don't even let the dust settle on previous lawsuits against not only Samsung, but others, and today is no different. Apple are bringing a motion for preliminary injunction against Samsung's Ice Cream Sandwich-powered Galaxy Nexus smartphone in the U.S.

The latest motion is based on a handful of very powerful patents, which FOSS Patents have dubbed "the patent equivalent of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse". Quite the title considering it's 2012 and all. FOSS' breakdown:

Really, Apple? Are you that scared of the Galaxy Nexus and Samsung's future, most likely, quad-core phones? That scared that all you can do is patent slap the competition instead of releasing actual ground-breaking new devices instead of "S" variants of 18-month-old smartphones? Release something magical, revolutionary, and I hope with all the power in the universe that the people you've pissed off with patents come back to haunt you.

Google have just updated YouTube for Google TV, where they say it is "making it faster and easier to find great content". By doing so, they've added YouTube channel pages, which gives you more control of your experience.

The update is available on the Android Market, and after its updated, you should see some pretty big improvements. First up, the app works faster with smoother navigation, which goes toward that 'better experience' they want you to have. Secondly, Google have added a new feature called "Discover". Discover lets you browse YouTube channels by categories.

This means you could be looking for a comedy, cooking content, or the latest news, making it easier to search through categories versus running a search and hoping for the best. Google have also updated the YouTube app with new channel pages. Now you can navigate through playlists and videos in your favorite channels, as well as having the ability to subscribe to channels directly from the YouTube app with just a simple click.

I'm a huge fan of the Bourne trilogy, which starred the always great Matt Damon. If you didn't know, they're restarting the Bourne movies, with a new cool action guy. Jeremy Renner. You might remember him from The Hurt Locker, and most recently, Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol.

Renner also stars in the upcoming The Avengers, as Hawkeye. Anyway, the trailer to The Bourne Legacy is here and boy does it look like a great tease. We don't see much of the movie, but what is shown, looks good. Renner looks like he's in top form, and there should be the usual twists, turns and all-out action that Bourne movies are famous for.

Some people are disappointed that Matt Damon isn't returning to a role he made himself famous for, but for me, I really don't mind. I see the Bourne movies like the Bond movies, continue the theme, make it a great action movie and I don't care. Renner should replace Damon quite nicely.

We've reported on the various Samsung vs. Apple lawsuits around the world, with a few successful wins for Samsung, and Apple not so happy with the outcomes. Today is a victorious day for Samsung, as a Duesseldorf court has just cleared the modified Samsung's Galaxy Tab 10.1N for sale in Germany.

Several rulings were against Samsung in a never-ending battle of patent suits, where Apple succeeded in blocking the original Galaxy Tab 10.1 in September, as well as the smaller 8.9-inch Galaxy Tab 8.9 in January. It was determined that they both "resembled the iPad too closely".

Samsung had prepared a tweaked version of its Galaxy Tab 10.1 dubbed Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which features a more pronounced metallic rim, relocated speakers, as well as some minor adjustments to change both the look, and feel of the device. Apple were unsurprisingly unsatisfied with the changes, and were quick to file additional injunctions to ban the updated Galaxy Tab 10.1N. Their demand? Rejected.

Well, to celebrate the release of Skyrim's new freshly-baked Creation Kit on Valve's Steam, Bethesda and the creators of Portal have joined forces and released an official mod for Skyrim. THis brings Portal 2's Space Core to Skyrim, how exciting!

This is how you keep your fans happy on both sides of the fence, Valve and Bethesda, FTW.

The world's largest BitTorrent site, The Pirate Bay, as reported previously, will stop linking to .torrent files shortly and replace them with magnet links. Magnet links have a pretty big advantage over .torrent files, where they're much more portable, and easier to copy. On top of this, a new torrent link on TPB lists all titles and magnet links, where the public can download a copy that would fit onto even the smallest USB flash drive, or if you're still rocking those floppies, a few of them, too.

TPB told TorrentFreak that one of the advantages to a "magnet site" is that it requires little bandwidth to host a proxy site. A proxy site is required as TPB is blocked in many countries, and is of course, going to increase. Think it can't happen? Well, Pirate Bay user "allisfine" was intrigued by this idea, and has decided to find out just how small a copy of TPB would be. He told TorrentFreak:

Everyone is going to want to combat the upcoming slaughterhouse that will be the iPad 3, but Amazon has enjoyed great success with their Kindle Fire tablet. Pacific Crest analyst Char Bartley said this week that:

Amazon have already said they're making more Kindle Fire's to meet demand, as well as reports of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich rocking on the Fire. It seems that the fire the Kindle has burning, just can't be put out.

The first two words of hearing this news to me in my mind were, 'do want!' NERF have just announced the revolutionary new Lazer Tag system, which "combining the power, precision and excitement of live-action blaster battles with the high-action, strategic, augmented reality gameplay of traditional video games."

Players can download the free Lazer Tag app from the App Store onto their iPhone or iPod touch device, connect it to their Lazer Tag blaster, and immerse themselves in a world where "video games and real life connect". You can play in both single and multi-player, where players can engage in a Lazer Tag match featuring friends (or foes?) or virtual opponents.

Each Lazer Tag blaster has a virtual firing range of over 250 feet, and contains a Heads Up Display (HUD), which lets players keep track of their gear and remaining power, as well as providing a view of the augmented reality targets and enemies in the area. On top of this, a virtual leaderboard also keeps tabs on each player's profile, with every successful mission, players gain access to in-game upgradeable attacks, missions and gear.

Google have been hard at work, where they've released Google Chrome for Android Beta for Android 4.0-based devices, as well as a few other cool announcements, today brings the latest stable build of Chrome, Chrome 17.

Chrome 17 includes a serious speed bump, if it wasn't already fast enough. Google reckons you'll be surfing quicker than ever before with a new feature that lets pages start loading in the background before you've even finished typing a URL into the Omnibox. If the URL auto-completes to an address you'll most likely visit, Chrome will begin prerendering the page. Nifty, huh?

Security-wise, Chrome 17 includes a new security feature. Chrome 17 now runs executables through additional reputation checks that ensures that you're safe. This means that if you attempt to download a Windows installation file (EXE or MSI) that isn't on a whitelist, Google analyzes the file to determine its reputation and trustworthiness based on files previously seen from the same publisher, and site.

We've talked about the Kinect Star Wars bundle before, when it was teased at last years Comic-Con, but now, we're closer than ever to having the Kinect Star Wars Bundle in our hands. Included in the bundle is "Kinect Star Wars", where the game teasing "With no controller in the way you can live out the ultimate "Star Wars" fantasy".

There are five dynamic modes available, Jedi Destiny: Dark Side Rising, Podracing, Rancor Rampage, Galactic Dance Off and Duels of Fate. Also included, and only announced today by Xbox 360 and LucasArts, are new additions to the game, including:

New experiences within Jedi Destiny Mode, including:

PowerColor have teased everyone on their Facebook page with a glimpse of their new AMD Radeon HD 7970 GPU. Nothing more than it's "our new HD 7970 design posing for the camera" has been said from PowerColor.

What we can see though, are multiple video outputs, looks like the new HD 7970 from PowerColor sports dual DVI, HDMI, and dual DisplayPort. The card is still a dual-slot card, with two big fans on the front of it and a decently thick heatpipe design behind it.

More information on this bad boy as it comes. I do like the black/blue design of it. Reminds me of getting a bruise. This could could be powerful enough to punch the lights out of other HD 7970s, and give them... bruises? We'll find out soon enough. Hopefully our VGA editor is out of hospital by then, but I'm sure he's enjoying his Razer Blade gaming laptop too much, eh? ;)

Paradox CEO, Fred Wester, is a man of important words. He has revealed the amazing growth of his companies digital distribution revenue. In his own words, he has said:

Did you see that? From 1.5-percent of their revenue, to a whopping 95-percent, in just 5 short years. In these 5 years we've seen retailers go from selling tonnes of retail boxed games, to the App Store opening, the Android Market arriving and more. Steam is generating more and more income, and other digital distribution methods such as GOG, and Origin.

Ever wanted to create a mod for Skyrim? Come on, we know you have. Today you can. Bethesda have released their Creation Kit, which really lets Skyrim loose, and sets the boundaries to virtually infinity, and beyond.

The Skyrim Workshop and Creation Kit are free for anyone with a copy of Skyrim and a Steam account. Finding mods for Skyrim is as simple as visiting the Skyrim Workshop in the Steam Community. From there, you can browse the most popular, newest or highest-rated mods of all time. On top of this, you can specifically search for content via tags such as "Armor", "Quests", "Dungeons", and so on.

Creating your mod is a litter harder, of course, you'll need to install the Creation Kit, from the Tools section of your Steam Library. If you run into any problems, the wiki over at www.CreationKit.com is an amazing resource for modders of all skill levels. When you've polished your mod and want to unleash it to the world, just choose "Upload plugin and archive to Steam", from within the File menu of the Creation Kit.

Well, this is interesting: physicists have reportedly discovered a new method of recording data onto hard drives, where the fruits of their labor could see mechanical-based hard drives jump in speeds, up to hundreds of times faster. Heat is the key.

A hard disk drive is a magnetic storage device, which, unlike magnetic tapes, allows random access. The recording surface of a hard drive consists of hundreds of billions of tiny portions that can be magnetized in a particular polar direction to represent 0s or 1s. Recording data flips the direction, which is currently done using an external magnetic field.

A team of researchers led by Thomas Ostler at the University of York, UK have discovered that a short burst of heat can do the job much faster. This is where things get karazay. Up until now, it was thought that heat could only assist in remagnetisation when used in conjunction with a magnetic field. This knowledge base has changed: zapping a magnet with a laser for less than one trillionth of a second, momentarily raising the temperature by over 800-degrees Celcius, can have the same effect.

Salt, here take it. Let's get onto the goss! Leaked information has floated up from the depths of the Internet from Lenzfire, where they've published some specifications for the upcoming GeForce 600-series. I'll say it again, here's your salt.

This news has me excited. Lenzfire's sources claim that NVIDIA's Kepler GTX680 should be up to 45-percent faster than AMD's fastest Radeon HD 7970 GPU. The interesting part here is that the GeForce GTX680 is said to have just 2GB of RAM, compared to the 7970's 3GB, and is still 45-percent faster. What helps here is the GTX680 reportedly has twice as many stream processors, and backed up by the entire Kepler range being PCI-E 3.0 compliant.

The GeForce GTX680 will reportedly launch with a $649 price, so for just $100 more, you're getting a Team Green card that is 45-percent faster. This could be some very dangerous news for AMD. On a different note, specs of a dual-GPU Kepler-based card are here too.

Google have released Chrome for Android Beta, exclusive (for now) for Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich devices. Exactly like the desktop-based Chrome, Chrome for Android Beta is focused on speed and simplicity, but also sports seamless sign-in and sync, so you can take your personalized web browsing experience anywhere you go.

Chrome for Android Beta is built for speed, so when searching, your top search results are loaded in the background as you type so that pages appear to load instantaneously. Chrome for Android is built from the ground up for mobile devices, where Google have reimagined tabs so they fit just as naturally on a small-screen smartphone, as they do on the larger-screen tablet.

Privacy is a big deal for Chrome, and Chrome with Android Beta is no different. Chrome for Android Beta includes the famous incognito mode for private browsing as well as fine-grained privacy options.