Asus has announced Xonar Essence STU, very interesting DAC with integrated headphone amplifier. The device, according to Asus, has the same internal design as the critically acclaimed Xonar Essence ST/STX Series sound cards for audiophiles.
A video game developer has decided to use an interesting approach to piracy. Instead of trying to prevent their game from being downloaded illegally they actually pushed out their own release for people to download. Now this may sound counterproductive, but they have a plan and one that they hope will help to stop future piracy. They have decided to add piracy and its “effects” to the torrent release.
There has been a few articles that popped up over the weekend crowing about Microsoft’s Windows 8 and how it has jumped in numbers from 0 to 7.4% market share in a single quarter. The claim is interesting and also very misleading if you actually take the time to read the data used as a basis for this claim. In most of the articles that we read the data source is from Strategy Analytics which does not show ANY data that represents Q4 12 to Q1 13 they instead cover same quarter year to year (Q1 12 compared to Q3 13).
Developers and other lucky ones who got the first copies of the Google Glass on testing revealed more details about this interesting gadget. Among them is Jay Lee, who with the help of Liam McLaughlin managed to find the USB debugging options of Glass and connect them to computer via Android ADB.
New Apple patent shows a method of finding and accessing capabilites of a car with the help of mobile devices and Bluetooth.
It looks like Intel is branching out in other directions in terms of operating system partners. Currently they work with both Microsoft and Apple as the primary processor for systems running these two competing OSes. Now Intel is looking to the tablet and mobile market as they cozy up with Google’s Android. Although the announcement is fairly recent many have heard the rumblings through a few teasing comments made on the internet.
In November 2012 a jury found Apple guilty of patent infringement against patent troll… sorry non-participating entity, VirnetX. VirnetX claimed that Apple was in violation of a few patents that they own. These patents relate to video and text messaging. VirnetX has also filed a new suit against Microsoft for some of the same patents claiming that Microsoft’s license for Skype does not cover what they are using these technologies for. So you can see that VirnetX keeps themselves busy.
I read something today that had me thinking about how quickly the tablet have turned on Apple. In 2011 pundits and analysts were crowing about the invulnerability of Apple and their iPhone and iPad. The going belief was that Apple would continue to dominate the consumer electronics market until 2018. Even conservative estimated put Apple as the market leader until 2015. So why would the media be talking about a survey which claims Apple will overtake Android by 2016?
Model DEV-50V is Sony's second-generation digital binoculars with recording capability and built-in GPS receiver for geo tagging of captured images and movies. This is not even remotely new kind of devices, but Sony's latest piece is a impressive demonstrator how this segment of devices advanced.
Nintendo's Wii U, the successor to famous Wii issued last year, was very interesting for some customers at the first sight while others were not so much impressed, but on one thing they all agreed, console's performances were not as expected. Aware of this, Nintendo recently decided to push out the first major software upgrade for their new console and dealt with that aspect.
Are you still sure that you want to sign up for that online service? Well you might want to think twice considering recent news. Last year we watched as Blizzard, LastFM, LinkedIn and others had their security breached and user information stolen. Now there is another online service that has had their security broken and their users’ information exposed to attackers. The online deals site LivingSocial fell victim to a cyber-attack that left over 50 Million (yes 50 Million) users’ data exposed.
Codenamed Raring Ringtail, a new version of Ubuntu 4.13 brings a number of improvements despite the fact that there are no some radical big news here. Canonical have decided to polish already existing elements of the operating system in this version 13.04. Among other things, according to recent statements new Ubuntu 13.04 should ,thanks to the work on the code for the version of Ubuntu intended for smartphones and tablets, have a better performance and be more frugal with energy.
Apple was found guilty of infringing on the copyright of three Chinese authors by allowing their books to be purchased through iTunes. The Beijing No. 2 Intermediate People's Court found that Apple should have known the books were protected under copyright and not posted them. This was even more true considering that one of the plaintiffs, Mai Jia has works that have been on the Best Seller lists in China.
Microsoft has announced the date of official launch of the new-generation Xbox console. The company has sent out invitations to certain media to presentation of the new generation Xbox, which will be held on May 21st at Microsoft's headquarters in Redmond, starting at 10 a.m. local time.
Apple has released the schedule of this year's WWDC (10-14. June) Conference which is held every year in San Francisco and regularly used to introduce new Apple gadgets and software. Usually the content of the conference is to some extent hidden, but it seems that Apple this year has something different in mind. It was announced that on the conference we will see a new version of OS X but also much more interesting iOS.
Looks like HTC was not really guilty in the story about the use of microphones that were designed exclusively for Nokia. Contrary to previous allegations, the company now can sell the device HTC One in the Netherlands.
A couple of days ago the internet lit up with AMD’s announcement of their new Jaguar SoCs. These new G-series embedded processors were boasting some rather healthy improvements in performance including a claim of a 113% increase in performance over older x86 SoCs and a rather bold claim of a 125% increase in performance over Intel’s Atom. But while the new embedded APU with its 8000 series GPU should have been big news all on its own, what really caught people’s attention was a little x in the corner. As it turns out this X is intended to denote an x86 version of the G-Series SoC…
Spanish manufacturer of mobile phones based on the Firefox OS, Geeksphone, on the first day of the sales sold out all copies of the mobile phones that are now intended primarily for software developers.
Today I read some very interesting news. According to a few news outlets the Australian Federal Police have arrested another “leader” of the group formerly known as LulzSec. This would make the 2nd top dog of the Anonymous splinter group to have been taken in by authorities. So the question is; who is the real LulzSec leader? Is it Hector Monsegur (Sabu) who was caught in New York and turned informant for the FBI to avoid a lot of jail time or is it 24 year old Mathew Trevor Flannery who went by the name Aush0k?
The latest Asha 210, which is available in versions with one or two SIM slots is the latest in a series of cheap QWERTY phones that comes with a dedicated button for a popular social app - before that we already had the opportunity to meet with the HTC ChaCha Facebook button and now Asha 210 comes with dedicated key for mega popular WhatsApp.
BlackBerry has announced prices and date for the start of sales of their Q10 smartphone in the U.S. market. BlackBerry Q10 is second company's smartphone running BlackBerry 10 (after the current model Z10), and with physical keypad remains loyal to the original BlackBerry design.
Some of you might remember the days of the “P” rating CPUs. It was an interesting time when you never really knew what you were actually getting in terms of clock speed. Instead you were able to get a CPU named something like P333 or P500. This was an attempt by some manufacturers to show their “P”erformance rating in relation to Intel’s Pentium. Cyrix, AMD, and a couple of others used this to sell CPUs. Unfortunately everyone knew that the P did not really stand for performance it really meant Pentium equivalency. A Cyrix P667 was supposed to perform as well as an Intel Pentium 667 (at least on paper). Sadly this just confused the market more and we all had the fun of trying to figure out what our CPUs were really doing. Now we might be seeing the trend return, but perhaps in reverse as AMD has announced the Centurion CPU.
In 2012 there was more than 1 data breach per day and of these 365 plus breaches about 80% managed to get some sort of data. This is a pretty scary number when you think about it, but it actually pales by comparison to the number of personal accounts that are compromised due to poor security, weak passwords, and malware designed to steal passwords. So what do you do to help prevent this? A simple answer is to just not have any online accounts so there is no chance of getting your account compromised. However, we know that this is not really a viable solution so it is fortunate that many companies are finally turning to two-step authentication to help mitigate this type of attack.
According to unnamed sources close to Microsoft, Redmont giant will in the coming update of Windows 8, colloquially called Windows 8.1, restore the Start button to its original position - first spot in the taskbar. Ejecting the Start button from the taskbar has been one of the most controversial releases of Windows 8, and in parallel with the release of a new version of Microsoft operating system appeared a great number of applications that have brought it back (Start8, StartIsBack, Pokki, StartMenu8 and others).
AMD expanded their offer of embedded solutions with a new generation APU's based on the Jaguar architecture. The new APU's, or better to say SoC's because beside x86 cores and graphics combine and southbridge functions with TDP ranging from 9-25 watts depending on the model, and will replace existing embedded APU Solutions from Series G on the market. Architecture Jaguar is used in the chip that will power the upcoming Playstation 4, and probably a new Xbox.
LG Display announced operating results for the first three months of the year and they are worse than in the previous quarter.
Online privacy is a big issue in the US and around the world. Every day we as consumers dump information about ourselves into the web in the form of email, texts, tweets, Facebook updates, documents purchasing habits and more. We put our trust in the companies that maintain that data and have faith that the laws that should protect our private information are being followed and even more to the point enforced. Sadly it seems that we have never really had a right to have our personal information protected after it leaves our computers and enters the Internet.
Logitech continues to improve their department of gaming peripherals. The company last month united peripherals for gamers into a single Logitech G product line and introduced a redesigned six keyboards and mouses, and two new headsets.
According to analyst firm ChangeWave survey, every fifth respondent would buy the Apple watch. Of course, provided that the device is introduced first. The survey was conducted in March on 1713 people in the U.S.
Scientists from the MIT's Media Lab have presented the concept of flexible screens that you can literally pinch, pull out or push in.
