Latest News - Page 3108

Michael Bay did say he was done with Transformers after Dark of the Moon, the third outing in franchise. Shia LeBeouf has said the same thing multiple times, but the old saying goes "money talks," and I'm sure a lot of the green has been waved under Bay's nose.

Bay's next movie is a "low budget" flick called "Pain and Gain," after which would leave him open to direct a fourth Transformers movie in late 2012. Bay has had a long-held desire to make Pain and Gain and is reportedly one of the major road blocks in a fourth Transformer movie being made. If a deal is finalized, Pain and Gain will begin filming early next year to keep Bay happy, and then get him back behind the camera for Transformers 4 directly after Pain and Gain.

Bay has made a comment or two regarding another Transformers movie, he was quoted at the grand opening of Transformers: The Ride:

Facebook have just clicked the 'start ignition' button on their Timeline feature today, where it will eventually rollout to everyone on Facebook. New Zealand is the first place to get it, with other regions will get it in the "near future."

If you don't remember what Timeline is, it's a way to illustrate your entire life, in a graphical way. Some people criticize Facebook for just being made up of "here and now", where major life events are pushed to the bottom of a person's feed and thus, forgotten over time. Timeline doesn't do that, Timeline brings those events back, mapping them on a graphic that tells the story of a user's life, from birth to the present day.

It's an exciting new feature, although what happens to the users who don't use Facebook that much? Log in for a bit of a copy/paste spam status update... or to water their crops in FarmVille? This will be an amazing feature for those who share most of their life with the social networking site. I know I do, that's the deal with living in the 21st century, right?

AllThingsD have some live coverage from a just-held Microsoft event, where they talked about their upcoming Windows Store that features in their next OS, Windows 8. Windows President Steven Sinofsky was on hand, as well as Windows Web Services VP Antoine Leblond.

Both took the stage and talked up the Windows Store, where a fair amount of information was unleashed onto the public. First off, Microsoft are promising the best economics of any app store by saying "we're going to give you a bigger bite of the apple". I don't know if that could be put in better words, but I love it.

Leblond recapped that Microsoft is proud to have Windows 8 working on ARM and x86 chips, small and big computers, with "it's the biggest and most significant developer opportunity ever", he promised. Windows Store is set to offer some differences to what the Apple App Store and Google Android Market offer, by giving free trial versions of apps, Leblond says "the best advertisement for your app will be the app itself," and I totally agree.

China, where all things like this seem to start, has done it again. A first-of-its-kind tablet, which sports Google's latest Android 4.0 OS is priced under $100 and for sale right now. It will reach the shores of other countries in the coming weeks and months.

The tablet comes from a company called Ainol, and is called the "Novo7". Novo7 sports a 7-inch capacitive screen and runs on just a 1GHz single-core MIPS processor. Battery life seems good, with claims of eight hours whilst watching video, seven hours if you're just browsing the web and six hours when playing games.

Software wise, Android 4.0 is the joy of this unit. For $100 its feature list is quite good: front and rear-facing cameras, 3D graphics capabilities, 1080p video decoding and an HDMI port.

ASUS' Eee Pad debuted in 2009 and virtually created a new market: netbooks. They were popular from grand parents, to travellers, to modders. Worldwide, they enjoyed success and to this day, still enjoy that success. But, today's market is a different beast with smartphones and tablets carving out most of the mobile market and ASUS are seeing this as a huge change going into 2012.

ASUS expects to ship 4.8 million netbooks by the end of this year, whilst they only have expectations to ship just 1.8 million tablets. ASUS see these roles reversing come 2012, with tablet shipments eclipsing netbook shipments.

In 2010 the Eee PC owners 20-percent of the netbook market, where it's estimated ASUS shipped 6-8 million units in that year alone. This year, ASUS offered just two tablets, the Eee Pad Transformer and the Eee Pad Slider. They've just announced and started shipping the Tegra 3-powered Eee Pad Transformer Prime.

PC fans may miss out on Back to Karkand this week to PS3 gamers, but they gain a 2GB patch that fixes and balances so much of the game. The changelog includes the tactical lights which have been way OP (over-powered) and have now (with the patch) been scaled down at a medium distance.

The patch also includes most of the content for the upcoming Back to Karkand DLC, as well as dozens of other tweaks. The IRNV scope is now limited to close range, certain weapons are properly suppressed and conceal your minimap location, stealth air vehicles are less effective, firing a weapon on full auto is now less accurate, miniguns have been made weaker against jets and helicopters, and 12g FRAG ammo is now less effective and not so OP with auto and semi-auto shotguns.

[edited] - actually 3.9GB. Thank you Blair McClelland ‎for pointing this out on the Facebook feed. Also, restart Origin for the update to intialize!

Apple and Samsung have butted heads once again, but this time, on U.S. soil. More precisely, a San Jose, Ca. court at the end of last week. In April of this year, Apple sued Samsung for "copying the look and feel" of its iPhone and iPad in its Galaxy range of phones and tablets.

Apple then expanded the suit to include another 13 models, such as the Galaxy Tab 10.1, Nexus S and Droid Charge. The full trial is set to go ahead on July 30, 2012, but Apple were pushing for a temporary sales injunction on the contested Samsung devices in the U.S. as that date arrived. It seems Apple are scared of Samsung, and so they should be.

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh refused Apple's request, stating it was an "extraordinary remedy." She was unconvinced that Apple would suffer irreparable harm should Samsung continue to sell their devices pending the court case, where she continued:

Earlier today in Taipei we attended the Intel Innovation & Research Forum 2011 where bigwigs from Intel Labs were in town to showcase what they have in store for the future of computing. Besides announcing further cooperation with research institutes in Taiwan, they also had some super techy and nerdy demonstrates on display in the showcase area of the event.

One demonstration that quickly caught our attention was the Hybrid Memory Cube display which was showcasing potential future memory technology in the mainstream running at a stunning 1Tb/s or 128GB/s.

Not only is the memory able to operate super-fast at around 12 times faster than DDR3-1333 (10.66GB/s) and DDR4-2667 (21.34GB/s) at around 6 times faster, it also uses less power per bit. DDR3-1333 uses 53.98 pj/bit and Intel's HMC Gen1 512MB Cube uses just 7.78 pj/bit.

Last week, the US Patent & Trademark Office published a set of patent applications from Apple that reveal another series of iPhone camera technologies. Patently Apple covered this, as they're a site dedicated to Apple patents and have said:

Patently Apple goes into some extreme detail regarding the new technology, so if you're an iPhone owner, or would just like to know what Apple are baking in the oven for the iPhone 4S, then take a look.

Good news PlayStation 3 Battlefield 3 gamers! Back to Karkand launches tomorrow for the PS3, a week ahead of when PC and Xbox 360 games will get the B2K love. Back to Karkand features four old-school Battlefield maps reimagined using the Frostbite 2 engine.

It also includes three new vehicles (the VSTOL fighter jet, Desert Buggy, and an APC), ten new weapons that you can bring back to the base game, and a new layer of persistence with DICE's all-new "Assignments" make this a must-have for any Battlefield fan. DICE have also included some of the best maps such as Wake Island, Sharqi Peninsula, Gulf of Oman, and Strike at Karkand.

Not only that, but DICE have also upped the destruction, where "huge portions of these maps can be razed to the ground", while the buildings may go down, this excites me and makes me go up. DICE have given some more details on the "Assignments" inclusion in B2K:

Juicy one today, folks! It is rumored that AMD's flagship single-GPU graphics card will hit a US$549 price, with the slower model having a price tag of $449.

Remember, that this is just a rumor and nothing is guaranteed, but it gives us a peak into what we could expect when the cards launch. Right now, the names being thrown around are the AMD Radeon HD 7970 and Radeon HD 7950, just like the previous variants of cards in the 6000 Series. The pricing is reportedly coming from AMD and not card partners.

We're expecting an early January shipping estimate, and should hopefully hear some more news on the subject soon. Is it too early to wish for two of these puppies? I'll take CrossFireX 7970's, thanks.

We knew it was coming, but wow has the time gone by fast. Tomorrow is the day Microsoft's new Metro-powered UI theme for the Xbox 360 goes live. Kinect is still a central part of the update, where users can now speak naturally to the Xbox, this will change the way a family or household uses the Xbox, instead of a clunky controller to navigate menus and such, a simple voice command is all that's required.

Let's say you want to run a search, if you're Kinect-powered, you could just say "Xbox: Bing, 'Fast and the Furious'", the results will show all of the content that matches the searched criteria across games, music, video and other categories.

The new Metro styling is instantly recognizable to anyone who has played with or owns a Windows Phone. This format will also be taken across to Windows 8. Microsoft are also trying to make the Xbox a set-top box, and is set to have a fair amount of live TV and movies on offer with companies such as Verizon FiOS, YouTube, HBO GO and Xfinity On Demand, TMZ, UFC, Wal-Mart's Vudu service and others lending a hand.

Fan of Minecraft? Fan of Super Mario? Get ready for your worlds to collide. Three guys have spent over 500 hours recreating the first two minutes and twenty four seconds of Super Mario Land. In their quest for insanity, they used more than 18 Minecraft blocks.

The above movie was made by carpenter James Wright, Joe Ciappa and a gamer known as Tempusmori, had the game running through an emulator and then replicating it pixel-for-wool-block-pixel inside a giant Minecraft Game Boy.

The three guys spent approximately four weeks, where each day consisted of six to seven days of hard work inside Minecraft creating the shots, which were then dropped into a video editor and slowed so each frame displayed for one sixth of a second. Crazy, but so, so awesome.

The Next Web claims that sources close to Microsoft have said that we should expect the pubic Windows 8 beta sometime in late February 2012. Windows 8 is expected in 2H 2012, but an exact date for release is currently unknown.

But, knowing the release date of the public beta paints a better picture of when to expect the RTM copy of Windows 8. If we use Windows 7's release milestones, we should expect Windows 8 hit the released to manufacturers (RTM) release in June. If this happens, Microsoft could enjoy a very, very good 2H of 2012, by selling its new OS, pushing tablets powered with the OS and pre-built systems with Windows 8 baked in.

What is unknown about the Windows 8 beta is what exactly will be included in the beta itself. No feature set is known, but we should find some information closer to release. I'm incredibly excited myself.

Counter-Strike: Global Offensive's beta went live last week and its just days later we have our first taste of gameplay footage. CS: GO looks much prettier than the previous Source-powered Counter-Strike. Check out the video of gameplay below:

It doesn't look too bad, but compared to next-gen shooters like Battlefield 3, it just feels so... old. But, for fans of Counter-Strike, they'll look past these things. Below is also a comparison between Counter-Strike: Source and Global Offensive.

I do like the improved buying system, it looks much better than the old CS/CS:S versions. Graphics look much better than CS:S and the original CS [of course], and all of the old-school sounds are back. "Lock and Load", "Fire in the Hole", all of the gun sounds, all make it back.

AMD may not have released what people were expecting when they unleashed Bulldozer, but that has not stopped the CPU from selling out on retail shelves. AMD are selling out as soon as shops receive stock, even while they're not competitively priced against Intel's Core range.

Is it the "It's an 8-core CPU!!" marketing that is doing its magic here? Or are the uninformed customers grabbing it thinking this is somehow better than Intel's offerings? Most tech sites, magazines, forums, and what have you have taken a ride in the Bulldozer and not enjoyed it that much. It can beat Intel's Core i7 2600K in some tests, but overall, it's not in the same league.

Bulldozer has run over the Phenom II and Athlon II processors, which were relatively good chips with good pricing as well as selling well. Manufacturing plants however, share equipment between 45nm products and the new 32nm-based chips, so one has to be discontinued.

AMD's Bulldozer "FX" series of processors have not enjoyed the lime light lately, where we could replace lime light with poo flinging and we'd be more on the mark. We've covered it a few times now and even our reviewer Shane Baxtor was not that impressed.

It got its arse handed to it in most tests, with existing platforms like the Phenom II actually beating it sometimes. Sad. But, it seems as though AMD did not even know how many transistors the Bulldozer sported, with an e-mail from Anand Lal Shimpi of AnandTech, where AMD's PR department and Anand has shared his thoughts:

It looks like Apple retail stores are in for some competition from the fun-sounding creation from Google and Telstra: Androidland. Androidland was unveiled at Telstra's retail outlet in Bourke St, Melbourne, where its based in the 154 square metre space which brings together interactive technology, games and on-site experts to explain the features of Google's Android OS.

Executive Director of Telstra Mobile, Warwick Bray, said that its the first time a mobile carrier had teamed up with Google to create an Android-dedicated retail presence. He added:

Google is reportedly shopping around with multiple retailers and shipping couriers in an effort to create a service that would compete with Amazon's Prime one-day shipping option. Google could even offer same-day delivery on certain items, which would actually be better than Amazon's offering.

The way it differs to Amazon, is Google's service would not have them selling items directly to the customer, but rather allow them to handle the delivery process through deals and companies such as UPS and local couriers. When a customer is checking out at a particular retailer, Google's system would kick in and offer expedited delivery services.

Google, according to sources, have pitched the idea to Macy's, Gap and OfficeMax, but none of the aforementioned companies would comment on the story. Amazon Prime launched in the US in 2005, with a flat fee of $79 per year, subscribers could opt for free two-day shipping for $3.99 overnight shipping on millions of items sold on their site.

Someone on the NeoGAF forums have gotten their mits on the South Park edition of Game Informer and have released details on the upcoming South Park-themed RPG. The RPG will be the first game that South Park duo Trey Parker and Matt Stone have directly participated in, where they've written the script and dialogue.

As the protagonist, you will be silent. Parker has always preferred silent protagonists, so his wishes will come true. The character you play has a smartphone which acts as the primary game menu and has a Facebook-like app which shows the number of friends you have and your current standing with the various kid factions. Five classes are said to be included, wizard, paladin, adventurer, rogue, and a fifth unannounced class.

Obsidian will be using the Dungeon Siege III engine and have developed a dynamic lip-syncing tool to accommodate changes in the script. Parker and Stone have given an astonishing 15 years of assets to Obsidian to make the game with. For full details, check out the insane list below: