Windows 8 causes Microsoft's customer satisfaction rating to drop to Vista levels

Trace Hagan | Business, Financial & Legal | May 23, 2013 6:29 PM CDT

Microsoft's customer satisfaction rating has plummeted to levels it hasn't seen since Windows Vista was the current operating system. Most attribute this fall of satisfaction to Microsoft's new Windows 8 operating system, which has been received by consumers with much discontent.

Windows 8.1 should hopefully help customer satisfaction recover as its rumored the much-loved Start button will be making a return along with an option to boot straight to the desktop mode. Microsoft's ACSI report has consumer satisfaction at 74 out of 100. Shortly after Vista launched, it was just 73 out of 100. In 2011, Microsoft's ACSI was at 78 out of 100 and it quickly dropped to 75 after Windows 8 launched.

David VanAmburg, director of ACSI:

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Need for Speed Rivals is coming to Xbox One and PlayStation 4

Trace Hagan | Gaming | May 23, 2013 3:29 PM CDT

Now that both next-gen gaming consoles have been announced, EA has been issuing a flurry of press releases detailing games that we can expect on the consoles. Today's announcement sees Need for Speed Rivals coming to both the newly announced Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.

Need for Speed Rivals will make use of the Frostbite 3 game engine, allowing the game to use stunning graphics and continue to blur the line between virtual and real. The game is being developed by EA's newest studio, Ghost Games, and is being built with help from Criterion Games.

Need for Speed Rivals is bringing with it several new features, most interesting of which is AllDrive. The developers explain:

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Amazon says that its Appstore is now available worldwide in nearly 200 countries

Charles Gantt | Software & Apps | May 23, 2013 12:35 PM CDT

Today Amazon.com announced that its Appstore is now available in nearly 200 countries worldwide, and features apps for Macs, PC's and Android based devices such as Amazon's Kindle Fire. Alongside this announcement, Amazon said that the Kindle Fire will release to over 170 new countries in June.

"We are thrilled to be expanding the reach of our global app distribution to nearly 200 countries. We think our customers will love the app selection we have to offer and also find features such as Free App of the Day and personalized recommendations very helpful as they discover and explore new apps and games," said Mike George, Vice President of Apps and Games at Amazon. "By further expanding the distribution of apps to millions of customers around the world, we are continuing to make it easy for customers to enjoy their Amazon apps on Kindle Fire and any Android device."

To celebrate this expansion, the Amazon Appstore is bringing back one of its most popular Free Apps of the Day, "Fruit Ninja," along with "Cut the Rope: Experiments." These will be available, for free, on May 23 and May 24. For those not in the know, the "Free App of the Day," is a program in which Amazon offers a paid app for free every day.

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EA Vice President says PS4 and Xbox One are a generation ahead of the current fastest gaming PC on the market

Charles Gantt | Gaming | May 23, 2013 11:01 AM CDT

The entire world is talking about the upcoming PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at the moment, and rightfully so. It has been many years since we have had a console hardware refresh. Unfortunately some of those involved with the new console seem to have slipped into some sort of false reality.

In a comment on LinkedIn, Electronic Art's Vice President and CTO Rajat Teneja said that Xbox One and PlayStation 4 are "a generation ahead of the highest end PC on the market." He went on to say "The compute capabilities of these platforms and the data transfer speeds we can now bank on, essentially removes any notion of rationing of systems resources for our game engines. Our benchmarks on just the video and audio performance are 8-10 times superior to the current gen. gaming pc systems."

I am going to speculate that Mr. Teneja was speaking about the semi-custom AMD APU that is running in both systems, and that part of his rationing is based on both chips having Unified Memory Access.

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Are Sony preparing to sell the film rights to Spider-Man and Resident Evil to help their financial position?

Anthony Garreffa | Business, Financial & Legal | May 23, 2013 12:29 AM CDT

Sony are in a bad position right now, but now there are rumors floating around that the Japanese company are thinking about selling the films rights to Spider-Man and Resident Evil. The news comes from The Register who says:

Chief exec Kazuo Hirai told reporters from the Financial Times, Reuters and others that the company's board was discussing the plan to sell a portion of its entertainment biz, suggested last week by the firm's largest investor, Loeb's Third Point hedge fund. [Activist investor Daniel] Loeb said he wants the ailing Japanese firm to spin off 15 to 20 per cent of its film and music division in a public offering to raise money for its electronics and turn the entertainment business into a separately listed firm. The fund manager's suggestions carry new weight after revealing that he had increased Third Point's stake in Sony to $1.1bn.

It does get a little hot after, with Sony Pictures' boss, Amy Pascal, talking to Ain't It Cool News saying that none of this is actually true:

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Activision used lighting system tricks with the Call of Duty: Ghosts trailer, did they lie to us?

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | May 22, 2013 10:13 PM CDT

I was very underwhelmed with the Xbox One event, and even more so with Call of Duty: Ghosts. I expected it to launch up to the same playing field of Battlefield 4 (or even at least BF3) when it comes to graphics, but I was very disappointed.

I didn't watch the trailer again because I wasn't interested, but I've done some reading since and found that someone noticed there was a very big mistake when it came to Ghosts' lighting system. As you can see from the below image, the sun is to the right, and there are sun shafts to the left, indicating that the sun is beaming down from the left. Well, this is a huge problem as it shows that Infinity Ward have been creating Ghosts from the ground up, ready for next-gen consoles, with a fake trailer.

If Infinity Ward were trying to impress their fans, I understand, but one would think the company is big enough they don't need to use graphical tricks to impress. Why not just make their graphics engine great, instead of trying to fake it.

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Kids prefer Tumblr to Facebook, Twitter according to new study says

Trace Hagan | Internet & Websites | May 22, 2013 6:28 PM CDT

Facebook is so yesterday. The hip site among teenagers is Tumblr, at least according to a Pew Research study. The study says that teenagers are looking for a more "real" experience that isn't offered by Facebook and Twitter. Furthermore, teens are acutely aware that their parents are now on Facebook and monitoring their activities.

By switching over to Tumblr, these teens are looking to escape the drama, watchful parents, and "unnecessary pictures" that are ever-present on Facebook. Several teenagers were interviewed during a Pew Research focus group:

Anonymous female, age 15:

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Microsoft uses Vine video to tease Internet Explorer 11 WebGL support

Trace Hagan | Software & Apps | May 22, 2013 5:05 PM CDT

We can expect Microsoft to include WebGL support in Internet Explorer 11. Microsoft teased that the new web technology would be supported through a Vine video released earlier today. Internet Explorer is expected to release alongside the upcoming Windows 8.1 update that will make its first public debut in June alongside Microsoft's BUILD conference.

WebGL allows web browsers to display 3D graphics, which is becoming increasingly important as Google pushes for Chrome OS and more and more software is becoming web-based. Opera, Chrome, Safari, and Firefox all currently offer some support for WebGL. Epic Citadel, a tech demo, was recently released that demonstrates just what WebGL is capable of.

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Fractal Design releases PSU list approved for Intel Haswell processors

Charles Gantt | Cases, Cooling & PSU | May 22, 2013 1:30 PM CDT

With its 4th Generation Intel Core processors AKA "Haswell," Intel has introduced a new power saving feature that reduces consumption while the CPU sleeps. This new deep state sleep mode is called "C7" and is causing a lot of tech insiders to second guess if older power supplies will be able to function properly with Haswell.

This morning Fractal Design released a list of their PSUs that are Haswell friendly. With 12 models throughout its Newton R3, Tesla R2, Integra R2 PSU lines on the list, Fractal says that its customers can rest easily knowing that their PSU is compatible with the next generation of Intel processors.

The issues come from the new deepest sleep state, called C7, will be able to reduce the power consumption of the CPU to only 0.05A (0.6W). As this occurs in the deep sleep state, when most other 12V devices are either in low-power states or turned off, this can reduce the 12V load on the power supply significantly.

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Facebook adds new Pandora app to Timeline, lets users find and share music with friends

Charles Gantt | Software & Apps | May 22, 2013 11:12 AM CDT

Pandora and Facebook have had a very friendly relationship for years now and now both companies are taking it to a new level with a purpose built app for Facebook's Timeline. The new app will let users share what they are listening to on their timeline, similar to how Spotify handles things.

The new functionality is being integrated into Pandora's iOS and Android apps as well as Pandora.com and will let users automatically publish their listening habits to their Facebook Timeline. Pandora users will be able to specify which stations they share on the social network, as well as which artists and tracks they would like to appear on the wall.

In a statement, Pandora's Tim Conrad, had the following to say:

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