Latest News - Page 3119

Chinese search engine Baidu posted their earnings today, and they've got some very impressive results. Total revenue in Q3 rocks along at $654.7 million, an 85.1-percent increase from the same period last year, net income was up 80-percent to $295 million. Diluted earnings for Q3 were $0.84; non-GAAP earnings were for the $0.86. Robin Li, chairman and chief executive officer of Baidu says:

Baidu's operating profits in Q3 were $349.1 million, an impressive 88.5-percent increase from 2010. Online marketing revenues for Q3 were $654.4 million, another big increase of 85.1-percent from 2010. Baidu had approximately 304,000 active online marketing customers in Q3, this represents an 11.8-percent increase from 2010, and a 2-percent increase over Q2, 2011. Revenue per online marketing customer for the third quarter was approximately $2,148, a 65.1-percent increase from 2010 and a 19.1-percent increase from Q2.

For those of you who love your SSDs like me, you'll enjoy an interesting blog piece from Corsair. It's done by long time Corsair forum member Rafael Jaimes III, or by his forum name "Synbios". He sent Corsair some documentation of SSD life testing utilizing Corsair's Force F40-A SSDs.

The submission is quite long, so I won't go into it too much (and to avoid spoilers from the results), but it goes into a very lengthy discussion about the lifespan and the general users questions on how long it will be. Because SSDs are a very new technology when compared to the now ageing mechanical platter-based tech, the number of failures of SSDs are currently quite low. But because they haven't been around as long as their competition, its hard to get a handle on what type of return rate they have.

Synbios uses a variety of tools for his testing, and its not just some simple benchmarks that he runs. The time and effort that this man has put into the testing should really be enjoyed by a thorough read of his work. I actually looked forward to seeing more of his work.

Electronic Arts have just announced that their digital distribution platform, Origin, will now be offering third-party PC games starting in November. The first wave of publishers to sign a deal with Origin include Warner Bros., THQ and Capcom. This will bring hit titles such as Batman: Arkham City and Saints Row: The Third to Origin, with more games hitting Origin in the coming months.

Origin already has over 100 EA games in its library and adding additional publishers only cements their service into competition against Valve and their digital distribution platform, Steam. David DeMartini (shaken, not stirred, thanks), senior vice president of Origin at EA says:

Facebook sometimes gets the cold shoulder when it comes to privacy and their mobile apps, but todays news is a little different. Facebook are set to build a massive server farm 62 miles south of the Arctic Circle in Luleå, northern Sweden. The facility will include three 300,000 square feet server halls and it will be the first time that Facebook has built a data center outside of the US.

This is becoming a trend for American companies, with Microsoft looking to build a server farm in Siberia, but the deal never gelled together. Google on the other hand is currently building a similar data center in Hamima in southern Finland. Facebook chose Luleå because of its cold climate, with server farms requiring massive amounts of cold air to keep the operating temperatures down. The average temperate in the area is around 2C (35.6F) and the temperature has not been above 30C (86F) for more than 24 hours since 1961.

The plan Facebook have is to pump in cool air from outside to aid in temperature management. Despite this, the server farm will still require a fair amount of power, with the number hovering at around 120 MW. This will primarily be supplied by the Lule River which produces twice as much hydroelectric power as the Hoover Dam.

Shares in Take-Two Games have risen by 6-percent following the announcement of Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto 5 earlier this week. On Tuesday, Rockstar Games confirmed that GTA V's first teaser trailer will hit the Internet on November 2, where the announcement was made live with the game's official logo which shows a green-colored Roman numeral 'V' wrapped with a banner sporting the word 'Five.'

Of course, we all know how the Internet and fans work. As soon as there's a teaser for something, there has to be an easter egg or hidden something (image, word, art, etc) within the tease. GTA V as you can imagine, is no different. Some keen gamers have discovered that the logo displayed above, is identical to the design of the $5 dollar bank noted issued in 1889 by the US Mint. An American setting has been rumored, but would Rockstar be breaking the rules by taking GTA back to the pre-1900s era?

The most credible GTA V rumors lead toward an LA-based setting, in the modern-eta.

Own a tablet? Impressed with your single or dual-core speed? Well, ZiiLabs have shown off their JAGUAR3 reference Android-based tablet, which sports a 50-core processor. Inside the JAGUAR3 is a ZMS-20 system-on-a-chip (SoC), which sports two 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A9 cores as well as an additional 48 StemCell processing cores, effectively bringing it up to a 50-core monster. There's not much technical details on the 48 StemCell cores, but ZiiLabs compares them to GPU cores and says they easily make ZMS-20 "the most powerful SoC available for tablets today."

Passed out on the ground in a puddle of your own drool? Well, get your stuff together, kid. If you thought 50-cores were great, ZiiLabs will also intro the ZMS-40 to OEMs next year which sports, get this, 100-cores. The ZMS-40 SoC features a quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 and 96 StemCell processors. This 100-core "4th-generation" chip is compatible with the Jaguar3, so OEMs will have no troubles upgrading the part as it becomes available.

ZiiLabs is not well know, but you may know the company who owns ZiiLabs. ZiiLabs is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Creative Technology Ltd. and with that, brings 25 years of experience with 3D graphics, GPU and SoC designs under its previous name, 3DLABS.

Sony have just announced that Sony Ericsson will become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony and Sony is said to integrate Sony Ericsson into their broad platform of network-connected consumer electronics devices. The transaction also provides Sony with a broad IP cross-licensing agreement and ownership of five essential patent families. Payment wise, Ericsson will receive EUR $1.05 billion as a cash payment.

The transaction gives Sony a new opportunity for their products, where tehy will rapidly integrate smartphones into its broad array of network-connected consumer electronics devices, including tablets, televisions and PCs - for the benefit of customers and the growth of its business.

Sir Howard Stringer, Sony's Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President says:

HP have just announced that they are 'reversing course' and will now not sell off their PC unit. HP announced in August that they would spin off the business, but with CEO Lep Apotheker now on the outside, and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman directing the HP ship, they've reevaluated their plans. Quoting Whitman here:

According to The Wall Street Journal, HP's initial estimate of a $300-400 million cost to spin off the PC unit proved to be far too low, further studies actually put the cost closer to $1.5 billion. On top of that, a strategic review determined the level of integration across HP's business was deep enough that contributions from the PC unit would actually be missed. HP ultimately decided to keep the business in-house.

With little more than rumour to go off ever since we first heard about it many moons ago, Dell has finally confirmed the Latitude ST tablet's existence as well as a very close launch date - that being November 1st!

Dell says the Latitude ST is a business oriented product, running Windows 7 and being based on Intel's Oak Trail platform. The device also includes support for VMware and Citrix's virtualization solutions.

The unit weighs in at 816 grams and features a 10.1-inch (1366x768) touchscreen. It's powered by a 1.5GHz Atom Z670 processor with 2GB of RAM and up to 128GB SSD for storage. It has 802.11b/g/n WiFi, optional 3G support, SD card slot and USB and HDMI ports.

If you thought the swarm of mechanical gaming keyboards hitting the market over the past year or so have brought quite a few radical offerings to the scene, you haven't seen radical until you've seen the Levetron Mech4 from Californian based mob, AZiO.

This boldly designed keyboard sports Cherry Black MX mechanical switches and is said to be completely water resistent with 'special seals' and 'built in gutters'. The keyboard measures 7.75" by 18.50" by 1.60" and includes the following features :-

- Gold Plated USB connector

Apple today filed its Form 10-K with the SEC that discloses information to stockholders and the commission. It also allows sites like TweakTown to perve at some of the wallet-busting numbers included. Apple currently have $81,570,000,000 in cash, marketable securities and cash equivalents. What this means is Apple raked in $37.5 billion in cash profits in fiscal 2011. This is all in a time where they "missed" industry estimates.

That is after Apple spent $2.4 billion on research and development in 2011, up from $1.8 billion for last year and $1.3 billion in 2009. Apple also forked out $4.3 billion for equipment, most likely for factory investments and the North Carolina-based data center. Apple also had purchases of $3.2 billion in 'intangible assets", which is most likely the $2.6 billion share of the Nortel patent purchase that it went in on with other companies, including Microsoft.

Apple only spent $244 million on acquisitions, which would include it's voice-based app Siri, which it acquired in Q1 2010. Other Apple numbers also state that they own or lease 13.2 million square feet of building space, primarily in the U.S. Apple Retail Stores across the world account for 3 million square feet of that number. The data centers Apple run are also included. Also included is the 2.6 million square feet that is located in Cupertino, California which isset to be demolished for Apple's new 'spaceship' campus. Apple also owns a total of 584 acres of land in various locations.

Winamp for Android is amazing. I love it, I use it all the time and it is wonderful. Today brings Winamp for Android updates that include a bunch of new features such as a Winamp for Mac Sync beta app that brings the same wireless freedom to Mac users that Windows users have enjoyed for a while now, access to Spinner's MP3 of the day from your Android phone, and a new premium version of the app with extended features.

The biggest feature is Winamp for Android now lets users sync their music and videos wirelessly with the Mac, the same as Windows users have been able to do. The Winamp for Mac Sync Beta app is brand new and a available as a free download. The new updated Winamp for Android also includes more streaming music for Winamp's "Listening Party" feature, where you can stream songs and listen together with friends, and more free music from Spinner.

Lastly, we have the Winamp "Pro Bundle" which will set you back $5 but includes extended features such as support for FLAC, crossfading and gapless playback, and a customizable home screen for the player and a 10-band equalizer. The free version does however include more features than before, but the extended features are just extra flavoring on an already tasty product from Winamp.

Do you like to have options? Enjoy portable gaming? Was looking forward to Sony's NGP, Vita? Well, games capable of saving directly to their own cartridges, won't offer gamers the option to save to an external cards. This means you will never receive a choice. Games that can save internally, will always do so.

Kotaku Japan also learned that you'll have to have a memory card in the Vita at startup to operate games that require external storage. Sony also told Kotaku Japan that in addition to save data, some games may use the memory card for DLC.

Disappointed? Hurt? Well, Sony have doen this before... but people were thinking that they might play the game differently with the Vita. People might have wanted to save a few dollars on not buying external memory, but you'll require this for DLC and the like. Frustrating? Yep!

Sony Online Entertainment's upcoming MMO/FPS hybrid, Planetside 2 is set to go insane on 'map' sizes (can we even call them maps now?). Planetside 2 is said to take a "Halo-esque" spin on its sci-fi universe, where it aims to combine the persistent world of an MMO, with the visceral, responsive mechanics of a first-person shooter. Planetside 2's creative director, Matt Higby talked about the staggering size of the new battlefields:

"We have enormous, enormous gameplay space," says Higby. Planetside 2's settings which are based on continents on the planet Auraxis, measure an insane eight kilometers square, with weapons capable of firing a full kilometer in distance. Higby continues saying "One of our largest development efforts on this project has been hand crafting every single area of those eight-by-eight kilometer continents".

In these eight-by-eight kilometer environments, three factions duke it out: The Terran Republic, The New Conglomerate and The Vanu Sovereignty. The battles are set to be epic, with Higby stating that "you're going to be fighting in battles sometimes when it's 200 people fighting against 30 people, because there's only 30 people defending that base and then suddenly 200 people log in from teh other ground and go do it".

Batman: Arkham City, one of 2011's most hyped games has done very well for itself. It was released last week for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 and has since then, shipped 4.6 million copies. All in a week! This is both a surprise, and not a surprise. It's a surprise because it has only launched on the consoles and has enjoyed successful shipping numbers.

For it not being a surprise, is because the first game, Batman: Arkham Asylum was a smash hit. Batman: Arkham City has received rave reviews for both versions (PS3 and Xbox 360) and looks to be one of the biggest sellers for 2011. I haven't played it yet, as I'm waiting for the PC version which launches in a little under two weeks time. The PC launch will only expand these numbers, so too will sales between now and the end of the year.

4.6 million copies shipped is a very good milestone for Batman: Arkham City as it makes it one of the (if not the most) successful comic-book-to-game adaption ever. Now all we need is a really good Superman game, and I'll be one super happy camper. Please, please make a great Superman game. Maybe the guys behind Batman and Just Cause should get together for it?

AMD have invested an undisclosed amount of money into BlueStacks, a "venture-back firm" whose software allows Android apps to run "fast and full-screen" on Windows 7. I posted about BlueStacks earlier this month, and now we have AMD helping them. AMD aren't just helping them financially, either:

Manju Hegde, corporate vice president of AMD's Fusion Experience Program says:

Jon Peddie Research says that the PC gaming hardware market will continue to grow at a rate of 11-percent from now until at least 2014. These figures are based on the fact that over 250 million game-capable PCs will ship in 2011 alone, compared to only 230 million PS3, Wii and Xbox 360 consoles (combined) have shipped since 2005.

The PC gaming market will generate $19 billion in sales in 2011, with estimates that half a billion people regularly play PC games. New markets such as social networking and mobile gaming on tablets and smartphones are continuing the threaten the PC's gaming reputation, a phenomenon that senior gaming analyst Ted Pollack noted in his research.

Nokia's CEO, Stephen Elop, teased the codename "Sea Ray" phone in the middle of the year, which looked just like a Nokia N9. Today, Sea Ray has been unveiled as the Nokia Lumia 800 and we get to see how Windows and Nokia gel together, according to Elop, it's the "first real Windows Phone".

Nokia's Lumia 800 sports a single-core Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 1.4GHz processor, 16GB of internal storage, a curved 3.7-inch ClearBlack AMOLED screen framed by a black, cyan or magenta case with individually drilled speaker holes, a dedicated camera button for the f/2.2 Carl Zeiss Tessar lens, 512MB of internal memory, 12.1mm-thick frame and a 1450mAh battery that is said to be good for approximately 9.5 hours of 3G talk time. Software wise, we have Windows Phone Mango, and the Lumia 800 comes packed with a free 25GB SkyDrive account, as well as Nokia Drive, a free turn-by-turn voice navigation program, a first for any Windows Phone.

Filling out the Lumia 800 we have Nokia Music with Mix Radio, which is a global service with no subscriptions or log-ins required for "hundreds of channels of locally-relevant music", and an ESPN Sports Hub, three programs not found on any other Windows Phone 7-powered device.

For those of you in the know, you'd know that Mainstream Media is a mostly controlled medium. If they were to tell the real news, then most politicians, presidents, members of Congress and more, would all be thrown in jail. But, instead, the money from powerful people is used to gain control and influence within the power of politics. The same goes for news. This is where Anonymous steps in with something they're calling "Operation Fox Hunt".

Anonymous promise an all-out attack on the Fox News website as retaliation for the network's unjust attack on protesters with the Occupy Wall Street movement. In the YouTube clip, the digitized voice says:

LSI Corporation have just announced that they have signed a definitive agreement to acquire SandForce Inc for approximately $322 million in cash, net of cash assumed, and assume approximately $48 million of unvested stock options and restricted shares held by SandForce employees. SandForce is a leading provider of flash storage processors for enterprise and client flash solutions and solid state drives (SSDs).

SandForce controllers power most of the SSDs we all know and love, and the acquisition greatly enhances LSI's competitive position in the fast-growing server and storage PCIe flash adapter market, where the WarpDrive family of products from LSI are already SandForce-powered.

Abhi Talwalkar, LSI president and chief executive officer has a few things to say: