Facebook finishes US rollout of Graph Search

Charles Gantt | Internet & Websites | Aug 7, 2013 3:07 PM CDT

Today, Facebook has announced that it has finished rolling out its Graph Search feature to everyone using US English as their primary language. Eight months ago, the company launched the advanced search feature to a handful of select beta testers and then began to slowly roll the service out a few months later.

Graph Search lets users search using common phrases such as "pizzerias in my city that my friends have visited and liked." In the early weeks of the beta program, the service received much criticism as the level of search capable was just to much for some people to be comfortable with.

A search phrase such as "photos of friends of my friends at the beach" would return photos of all the friends of your friends who were at the beach. This became a problem because many of those photos featured women in bikinis. Facebook has since restricted certain search phrases and this issue is no longer a problem.

Continue reading: Facebook finishes US rollout of Graph Search (full post)

LG announces G2, a 5.2-inch Android based smartphone / phablet

Charles Gantt | Mobile Devices, Tablets & Phones | Aug 7, 2013 11:12 AM CDT

Today, LG Electronics unveiled its latest flagship smartphone in the form of the LG G2. This is the first device introduced under LG's new "G" series which is reserved for premium devices only. LG says that the G2 is a beautifully designed smartphone that brings together functionality and convenience in a comfortable package.

"Our definition of innovation today is technology that truly resonates with consumers," said Dr. Jong-seok Park, president and CEO of the LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, who welcomed the guests to the event. "We have always listened to and learned from consumers in pursuit of innovation. We took these insights to new heights in developing LG G2, the most exciting and ambitious mobile phone in our company's history."

The G2 features a 5.2-inch full HD 1080x1920 IPS display that packs 423 pixels per inch, and is powered by a quad-core QUALCOMM Snapdragon 800 clocked in at 2.26Ghz. 2 GB of low-power DDR3 800 is present and a 3000mAH battery keep things up and running for quite a long time. A 13-megapixel rear camera handles imaging duties, while a 2.1-megapixel front-facing camera is in control of the selfies.

Continue reading: LG announces G2, a 5.2-inch Android based smartphone / phablet (full post)

id Software founder John Carmack joins Oculus VR as CTO

This morning Oculus VR, the company behind the Oculus Rift, announced a new addition to the team. The company said that id Software co-founder and legendary programmer John Carmack has joined the Oculus team as the company's new Chief Technical Officer. Oculus says that Carmack "is one of the brightest minds of our generation - pioneer, visionary, and industry legend. There are very few people in the world that can contribute to the Oculus Rift and the future of virtual reality like John can."

For those of you who might be too young to remember, John Carmack is the brains behind revolutionary pioneer first-person shooter games such as DOOM, QUAKE, RAGE and Wolfenstein. Carmack is widely considered to be one of the pioneers of 3-D graphics and has recently worked as a programmer in the aerospace industry at Armadillo Aerospace. Carmack prepared a statement which I have pasted below.

"I have fond memories of the development work that led to a lot of great things in modern gaming - the intensity of the first person experience, LAN and internet play, game mods, and so on. Duct taping a strap and hot gluing sensors onto Palmer's early prototype Rift and writing the code to drive it ranks right up there. Now is a special time. I believe that VR will have a huge impact in the coming years, but everyone working today is a pioneer. The paradigms that everyone will take for granted in the future are being figured out today; probably by people reading this message. It's certainly not there yet. There is a lot more work to do, and there are problems we don't even know about that will need to be solved, but I am eager to work on them. It's going to be awesome!"

Continue reading: id Software founder John Carmack joins Oculus VR as CTO (full post)

Android 5.0 'Key Lime Pie' spotted on Nexus 7 and Nexus 4?

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 6, 2013 11:28 PM CDT

Google have been hiding Android 5.0 "Key Lime Pie" behind some very sealed doors, but it looks like the first sliver of information has leaked out on Google's next-gen mobile OS.

Members of the Chromium Project are used to seeing countless Android builds, but the latest one is from a Chromium user who spotted a posting of bug 267659, who reported an issue with Cloud Print by listing out his devices. The Nexus 7 and Nexus 4 were both listed, running Android built KRS36B. These few digits and letters are very significant, to those who know what to look for.

The most important part? The "K" in KRS36B, which stands for "Key" in Key Lime Pie. All previous releases for Jelly Bean start with "J", and it continues backwards with "I" for Ice Cream Sandwich, "G" for Gingerbread, and so on. The most recent build pushed out to the original Nexus devices was JWR66V, so we have "J" for Jelly Bean, obviously.

Continue reading: Android 5.0 'Key Lime Pie' spotted on Nexus 7 and Nexus 4? (full post)

Samsung has high hopes for Tizen, they want the OS on everything

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 6, 2013 10:29 PM CDT

Samsung has been working on Tizen for a while now, but in case you didn't know what Tizen was, you might want to do some light reading. Tizen is Samsung's mobile OS, that will see a bright future for the South Korean giant in the years to come.

But now there's some new information on just how much faith Samsung have in Tizen, with co-CEO, J.K. Shin, who runs Samsung's IT and Mobile Communications Division saying that Tizen is more than a small project for the company, and it isn't just a "simple alternative for Android." Shin sees a future of Tizen powering more than smartphones, a future where the mobile OS would move into vehicles and other industries.

Shin continues: "There are many convergences not only among IT gadgets, including smartphones, tablets, PCs, and cameras, but also among different industries like cars, bio, or banks. Cross-convergence is the one [area] Samsung can do best since we do have various parts and finished products."

Continue reading: Samsung has high hopes for Tizen, they want the OS on everything (full post)

AMD: NVIDIA's CUDA and PhysX are 'doomed'

Anthony Garreffa | Software & Apps | Aug 6, 2013 9:34 PM CDT

According to AMD's Vice President of Channel Sales, Roy Taylor, NVIDIA's CUDA and PhysX platforms are an utter failure. How does he get to that conclusion? Because the industry doesn't like proprietary standards.

Taylor continued: "NVIDIA should be congratulated for its invention. As a trend, GPGPU is absolutely fantastic and fabulous. But that was then, this is now. Now, collectively our industry doesn't want a proprietary standard. That's why people are migrating to OpenCL." The AMD VP says that Intel will continue adding more GPU to their die.

Taylor said that with Intel's Sandy Bridge platform, 17% of the die was GPU. Ivy Bridge notched that up to 27%, and Haswell sees 32% of its die reserved for GPU silicon. He thinks that Intel will eventually use the term APU, but not for a little while yet. He adds: "We think the reason they're doing that is because of GPGPU. It's not because of games. I think they see that HSA is an absolutely unstoppable force. I just don't know why they don't call [Haswell] an APU... it seems just like pride. If you remember [ATI] tried to join the coin term VPU... 'No, no, no, it's a VPU not a GPU,' they would say. GPU just became widely adopted they just quietly adopted it, and I believe Intel will do the same. Look [Intel] it's an APU, why are you protesting?"

Continue reading: AMD: NVIDIA's CUDA and PhysX are 'doomed' (full post)

Amazon now sells fine art, launches fine art store

Charles Gantt | Internet & Websites | Aug 6, 2013 8:48 PM CDT

Today, Amazon launched a new online fine art store named Amazon Art. This new marketplace will give customers direct access to more than 40,000 works of fine art from over 150 galleries around the world. Amazon says that the new store will showcase artwork from more than 4500 artists and is one of the largest online marketplace collections of original and limited-edition artwork in the world.

"We are excited to bring one of the largest selections of fine art direct from galleries to our customers. Amazon Art gives galleries a way to bring their passion and expertise about the artists they represent to our millions of customers," said Peter Faricy, vice president for the Amazon Marketplace. "We're thrilled to bring the excitement and emotional connection of art to our customers."

"Paddle8 Editions sells works by internationally renowned artists to benefit the world's leading non-profits and cultural institutions. Through our new relationship with Amazon, we can dramatically expand our audience while simultaneously providing access to affordable, limited-edition works by some of the most significant artists working today," said Osman Khan, COO and founding partner of Paddle8. "We're excited to list our artwork on Amazon to make it more convenient for our existing clientele, and to help us reach new clientele."

Continue reading: Amazon now sells fine art, launches fine art store (full post)

Perseid Meteor Shower set to dazzle stargazers on August 11

August holds a special event for stargazers across the nation in the form of the annual Perseid Meteor Shower. This astronomical event occurs on an annual basis and produces more fireballs and "shooting stars" than any other meteor shower. During its peak, stargazers could see more than 100 meteors per hour with some streaking across the sky as bright fireballs.

"We have found that one meteor shower produces more fireballs than any other," Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office said in a statement. "It's the Perseid meteor shower, which peaks on August 12 and 13."

Cook and a team of scientists from NASA have placed meteor observing cameras across the southern United States in an effort to count the amount of fireballs produced during the Perseid event and between 2008 and 2013, the project logged 568 fireballs. This is significantly more than next largest meteor shower event, The Geminids.

Continue reading: Perseid Meteor Shower set to dazzle stargazers on August 11 (full post)

Researchers create world's smallest recreation of Mona Lisa

The world's smallest re-creation of the Mona Lisa has been painted on a surface that is just 30 microns in width, which is roughly one-third as wide as a human hair. This tiny feat was accomplished by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and used a process known as ThermoChemical NanoLithography, which is similar to the process used to etch the circuitry on the silicon used in microprocessors.

The process uses a precise application of heat in a painstaking process that "paints" the image pixel by pixel. Varying the amount of heat allows for changes in in the darkness of the gray used to illustrate the image. For example, the more heat used in a single pixel, the darker that pixel will be. Likewise, less heat produces a lighter pixel.

"By tuning the temperature, our team manipulated chemical reactions to yield variations in the molecular concentrations on the nanoscale. We've created a way to make independent patterns of multiple chemicals on a chip that can be drawn in whatever shape you want," Jennifer Curtis, an associate professor in the School of Physics and the study's lead author, said in a statement.

Continue reading: Researchers create world's smallest recreation of Mona Lisa (full post)

Marvell chip powers first self-branded China Mobile smartphone

Charles Gantt | CPU, APU & Chipsets | Aug 6, 2013 3:04 PM CDT

Today, Marvell announced that China Mobile's first self-branded smartphone will feature a Marvell ARMADA Mobile PXA988 processor. Dubbed the M601, the Android-based smartphone will feature unified 3G performance thanks to the ARMADA PXA988 which has been designed to deliver high-performance computing with industry-leading graphic capabilities, while at the same time producing best-in-class robust connectivity.

The ARMADA PXA988 is a unified 3G and LTE single-chip solution that integrates a high-performance low-power ARM Cortex A9 application processor alongside cutting-edge cellular modems that support advanced multimedia and graphics capabilities. The PXA988 also features TD-HSPA+ R8 as well as Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, FM radio, and GPS.

"I am very pleased to see the launch of China Mobile's first self-branded smartphone, which is a major milestone for China Mobile and over a billion consumers in China. In the past several years, we have seen the fast development of China's 3G TD-SCDMA technology and the rapid growth of the smartphone market, thanks to the close collaboration among China Mobile and global companies, such as Samsung, ZTE, Yulong Coolpad, Lenovo and others," said Weili Dai, President and Co-founder of Marvell. "I am very proud of our collaboration with China Mobile and Marvell's investment in developing advanced TD-SCDMA technology. I am very thankful for the innovation, dedication and contributions made by the China Mobile and Marvell global engineering teams."

Continue reading: Marvell chip powers first self-branded China Mobile smartphone (full post)