Software & Apps - Page 111

Futuremark have today released the first major update to 3DMark 11. The update introduces some critical stability improvements to 3DMark 11 and addresses some specific bugs that needed squashing.

I would bet that just about everyone has read a Wikipedia page about one thing or another. There are pages for just about everything you can think of, even if some of those pages are suspect. If you like Wikipedia and want to be able to look at the pages you like without having to be online you can with a little gadget that has been around for a while called the WikiReader.

TechPowerUp's very, very popular graphics subsystem information and monitoring utility, GPU-Z has now reached 0.4.9 - the program shows you important information like which graphics hardware is in your system, allows you to monitor parameters such as clock speeds, voltages, temperatures, fan speeds and usage (on supported GPU's).

Futuremark has today officially announced the highly anticipated (and delayed) 3DMark 11 for Direct X 11 GPU's. Futuremark and their official motherboard and graphics card sponsor MSI have also together announced the official launch of the OC competition Phase II.

Google Editions, Google's book store that's been a victim of delayed releases since last summer, looks like it finally may see the light of day soon. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Google Editions will open its virtual doors by the end of 2010.

The newest movie streaming startup Zediva has an interesting way of circumventing licensing requirements and other issues that Netflix, Hulu, and other well known streaming services have to deal with. Their process? Offering rental of a DVD player and DVD for a fixed amount of time and then streaming the media to you.

FinalWare Ltd has today announced it has acquired Lavalys EVEREST - whom own the diagnostics, hardware monitoring, network audit and benchmark software that is used by many around the world.

I would bet all the readers of TweakTown are familiar with 3DMark. This benchmark has been around for a very long time and is used in our reviews of video cards and computers here and all around the web. Anytime a new version of 3DMark comes out, we all get excited and sit up to find out more. We already know most of the details of the new benchmark, but we now have the final pieces of the puzzle.

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Futuremark has now revealed that the final version of 3DMark 11 will ship on November 30, which is only a few weeks away. The real-time 3D graphics benchmark will sell for $19.95 for the Advanced Edition. Along with new screen shots showing off some of the really cool looking benchmarks, Future Mark has also posted a number of videos to YouTube that show off the new GPU tests.

The video and screens show off the before and after tessellations, volumetric lighting, and other effects in DirectX 11 games and capable video cards. A new trailer shows the Deep Sea and High Temple scenes in a bit more detail. Along with the $19.95, Advanced Edition of the software will be a free Basic Edition as well. The Advanced version will have a lot more features and benchmarks added in and will have no advertisements. You can Pre-Order right now.

Twitter has become pretty big business 140 characters at a time, and they are now looking to be close to releasing an Analytics product that would allow users to see a ton of information about their account that has previously been kept officially behind the scenes except by use of some third party apps. The photo below gives a little bit of what could be expected from the new release:

And with this news all graphics card partners and companies have entered in two key strokes on their keyboards, colon and capital O.

Futuremark® announced today that 3DMark® 11, the upcoming DirectX 11 benchmark, will be bundled with MSI's line of GTX 580 series NVIDIA graphics cards at launch and upcoming enthusiast level graphics cards for select, model, stock and country. The bundle will be available while stocks last in specially-designed collector's edition packaging inspired by the Deep Sea scene in 3DMark 11. MSI is the official launch and bundle partner for 3DMark 11. https://www.3dmark.com

For those Firefox that are tired of swimming through all of the tiny sharing links to share articles and other web info via their social networks, Mozilla has heard your cries and may just have the answer to streamlining the webpage sharing experience. Mozilla has released F1, a plugin that turbocharges the page sharing experience. Facebook, Twitter, and Gmail are the first three supported entities due to their popularity, but Mozilla plans to expand this as they keep working on the plugin.

Microsoft is set to launch a new online PC game store called Games for Windows Marketplace in the middle of November.

It felt like only yesterday that Windows Vista was released, it only felt like a few hours ago that Windows 7 was let out of the bag - but now we're hearing the early rumbles of Windows 8 and rumor has it, it's less than 2 years away.

Today Microsoft have launched Office 365, a cloud based service that includes Microsoft Office, SharePoint Online, Exchange Online and Lync Online.

Sometimes I imagine that product packaging designers sit around a huge table like Dr. Evil and his cohorts, imaging the most fiendish ways to pack electronics and other items we all buy. I would imagine the dude who said, "Why don't we just make them easy to open" ended up in the burn pit under his chair. With the holiday season coming it's a good time to check out the opening gadget for your gadgets called Open It.

Some of you may be aware of this, but reviews and opinions on the latest Final Fantasy game have not been that good, Final Fantasy XIV is plagued by issues - but like most games, it's a divided landscape. Some people put up with it, die hard fans might look past it, or, they might just hate it.

The latest addition to Valve's smash hit zombie apocalypse FPS, Left 4 Dead 2 has had some DLC released in the form of "The Sacrifice", which is free for PC users (yay!) but for Xbox 360 users, they'll need to pay 560 "Microsoft points" or $7.

Ever been stung paying 30, 40, 80% more for games because you live in Australia (and also a few other countries)?

Microsoft has released the 2011 version of Windows Live Essentials - the consumer package of it's "software plus services" (S+S) strategy.