News and Editorials (1830)
Back at CES 2013 we had the chance to stop by the nVidia booth in the LVCC to take a look at nVidia’s Shield mobile gaming system. It was an interesting demo and the concept was… shall we say interesting. What we saw was a small devices that looked like an Xbox controller on steroids with a flip up screen. Inside was a new generation of nVidia’s Tegra running an optimized version of Android. The idea is that with this one product you can access gaming content from three sources; Google Play, Tegra Zone and even Steam in the future.
It seems that the French could be making some changes to the way they handle copyright law when it comes to movies, TV, Music and other titles. Although they admit that piracy is a problem they are joining a growing number of countries and governments that are concerned about the way the entertainment industry is dictating laws. Philippe Aigrain, co-founder of protest group La Quadrature du Net recently commented on this saying: “The government will be judged on its ability to resist the harmful influence of the entertainment industry to whom the conception of policies has been delegated by the governments one after the other.”
That Google is preparing a service for online gaming on smartphones and tablets with Android, we already knew. However, thanks to a proactive team with Android Policea, we now know more.
If you thought it was bad that AT&T dropped the price on HTC’s Facebook centric phone to $0.99 in less than a month you haven’t heard anything yet. It is not only consumer acceptance of the Facephone that Facebook gets to look forward to. There is also a problem with the Facebook Home App despite Facebook’s claims that it has been downloaded one Million times. I seems that Facebook cannot catch a break when it comes to mobile.
Sharp will start layoffs within their ranks as part of a restructuring plan according to sources close to the company. Over a period of three years, the number of employees should be reduced by 5,000. The company currently has 51,000 employees.
In order to attract developers to write applications for their operating system for mobile devices, Mozilla offers them free mobile phones to use for development. This method of motivating developers is becoming more and more popular, just to remind you that BlackBerry recently also decided to give their Z10 smartphones to the developers of applications for their new platform.
Samsung has announced a breakthrough in cellular technology that should help us get to 1Gbps on a cellular network by 2020. The new network is, of course, going to be called 5G and represents a huge improvement over current data transmission rates. What is interesting about the announcement is that we are now seeing a similar technology available in the form of 802.11ac for the home. Does Samsung’s break through show how cellular and traditional wireless have become the same technology?
In our second installment on wearable computing we will talk about why the timing is right for a new class of device and the steps that have been taking to bring them to the market. As we mentioned in part one we have been moving toward more portable yet functional forms of mobile computing. Along the way we go through a two distinct steps while these products get smaller. Step one is the companion or connected device and step two is the move to make these smaller product stand on their own.
Apple has no intention, at least not in the near future, to release a version of iTunes for the Modern UI (Metro interface) of Windows 8. The information was confirmed in a CNN interview with Tami Reller, Microsoft CFO of Windows department, noting that the most popular applications from the iTunes store will be available for Windows 8 by the end of this year.
According to many, one of the biggest downsides of the Windows Phonea is a lack of applications, but at Microsoft they are working on fixing this problem. They recently announced that the platform now has over 145,000 titles available.
Microsoft will never learn it seems. On top of making core changes to their OS there are now trying to spin those changes as simply responding to customer feedback. The problem with this stance is that this feedback has been around since before the launch of Window 8 and Microsoft not only ignored it, but told the critics that they would get used to it. Microsoft also ignored the feedback that their Modern UI was going to look like a mobile OS on anything that had a keyboard and a mouse; they ignored this too. In short Microsoft can try to spin their way out of their admission of failure, but no one is buying it.
The saga of Gordon Freeman is one that is legendary in the gaming world. The original Half Life represented a significant shift in the way that games were designed. Valve put an enormous amount of thought and time into the development of Half Life and then did it all again with Half Life 2. Fans ate up the new set and characters hungrily and once they were done with that helping they sat at the table waiting for more. Sadly, after a few mini-games called episodes Gordon Freeman has dropped off the face of the Earth. We have not heard anything about him and his famous crowbar in a number of years.
If you use Android then Google Play is your main destination where you find new interesting, useful, fun application. Google Play has often changed appearance in recent years, (sometimes even the name, but with not so much success), so it's nothing extraordinary that they have once again decided to do a new redesign.
According to a report from the Wall Street Journal, Amazon is working on a device that should allow the three-dimensional images to appear on the screen of the smart phone or to hover above the display and can be viewed from all angles like a hologram.
For its first fiscal quarter, which ended on April 28 for the company,Nvidia reported a better-than-expected operating results. The total revenues of the company ere $954.7 million, a decline of 14% compared to the previous quarter, but an increase of 3.2% compared to $924.9 million company had achieved in the same period a year earlier.
The internet is awash with articles about the Defense Distributed Liberator and how the US Government had the plans pulled from the internet. Some of the articles are for the decision and others are very much against it. The funny thing is that both sides have a point, but neither have been very good at conveying them. On the one hand information should be freely shared, but the sharing should stop when it opens up the potential for injury.
Sony has development of games for the PlayStation Mobile platform made available to all interested developers. According to the official announcement on the PlayStation blog, the company has revoked the payment needed for the license for publication of PlayStation Mobile games.
Samsung might soon cease the production of microSD cards in their own facilities. According to Digitimes, the company gives up the manufacture of fabricated microSD card in order to improve focus on more profitable embedded solutions such as eMMC, EMCP and SSD.
The Indian government these days enters the final stage of the first phase of implementation of the system for monitoring Internet activity, text messaging (e-mail, SMS) and voice calls of their residents. It is about $74 million heavy security project that is broadly conceived as a weapon to fighting terrorism. It is difficult, however, to ignore the fact that the privacy of users now virtually will not exist.
Adobe is jumping on the revenue stream bandwagon and has announced that they will no longer release boxed versions of their creative suite products. Instead they are pulling everything back into their Creative Cloud and forcing users into a subscription service. In other words they are joining Microsoft and a few others in the attempt to make your software turn into a recurring charge instead of a one-time purchase. This new business model seems to be catching on with many larger software developers and we do expect it extend down into game developers in the next few years.
If Mark Zuckerberg and crew needed any more evidence that people are not interested in a FacePhone they only have to look at the HTC First. This new phone has already dropped down from its introductory cost to the $.99 bucket which is normally reserved for products that are at or near the end of their sales life. The HTC First is less than a month old so why is it already in the bargain bucket? Is this showing that people do not want Facebook running their phone or simply a reflection that people are do not want a phone that is too social network oriented?
Nokia could be in a tad bit of trouble with their decision to buddy up to Microsoft. It seems that investors are not willing to wait for their investment in Windows Phone to pay off and we can’t blame them. When Nokia made this decision it was more than a little controversial as Window Phone represented a mere fraction of the market and had not shown any growth potential to warrant making it the exclusive OS for Nokia. Many felt that it was only Stephen Elop’s close connections to Microsoft that enabled the deal as Elop was the head of Microsoft’s Business Division prior to taking the top spot at Nokia.
Wearable computers have been a dream of many for a long time. The idea of this type of device goes much farther back than the computer itself and can been seen in comics and science fiction movies and books. Some examples of the gadgets are Dick Tracy’s two-way communicator wrist watch, Michael Knight’s Communicator/Computer watch from the TV Series Knight Rider and of Course Buzz Lightyear’s wrist computer. Ok so that last one was not really a good example, but you can see that there is no shortage of examples out there. Still, even with these examples we have not really reached the level where we have true wearable computing; we are getting close and some of the devices that are out on the market are impressive, but we are not there just yet.
There are a few leaked photos of Nvidia card from the upcoming GeForce 700 series. Models on the pictures are GeForce GTX 780 and GTX 770, which are visually very similar to the recently introduced GeForce GTX Titan.
Although the first reviews agree that Google Glass in its current edition does not offer much, many now see it as a threat. Among these is Caesars Palace, one of the world's largest casinos, located in - where else - Las Vegas.
Electronic Arts has announced plans by which they will throw their weapons from licensed games, which will be reflected in their upcoming projects. This decision has nothing to do with the recent shootings and attempts to blame the video games for them.
A Certain Jens R., a 33 years old German citizen, who owns the site torrent.to, normally located on servers in Russia, received three years and 10 months in prison at the court in the German city of Aachen. As owners of The Pirate Bay, in his case, he is charged for illegal distribution of copyrighted content. In addition, Jens is still under investigation for false report of bankruptcy and embezzlement.
Futuremark announced that they have just released a patch v1.1.0 for the new 3DMark, which as the most important news emphasize the possibility to operate on the computers with three or four graphics processors. In such situations the tests until now gave less than expected. At first it was thought to be a minor problem in the video drivers, but after months of browsing through 3Dmark Engine they found out that the problem was still in its code.
Electronic Arts has announced that they have signed a new multi-year exclusive contract that gives them the right to create and publish new games based on the characters and the story of Star Wars. How is this announcement important for Electronic Arts is best illustrated by the signature of Frank Gibeaua, EA Labels boss who does not hide his enthusiasm with the acquired license. „The magic of Star Wars is interwoven into the worlds, characters, planets and amazing battles. It is a universe that lends itself perfectly to gaming. Our agreement unlocks a whole new future of Star Wars games that will span consoles, PCs, tablets, mobile and more“ he said.
With all of the articles talking about life after the PC we were surprised to hear that Foxconn is looking at life after Apple. Apple is an interesting company with a rocky history their two founder Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak were both very talented at what they did and that combination managed to help the fledgling consumer PC market take off. However it was not that long before both of the founders were no longer with the company and it was being run by a business man instead of anyone with vision or personality. That business man tried to embark on a legal campaign to kill off rival Microsoft with not only failed, but also came close to bankrupting Apple.
