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Startup company SteamBoy Machine Team has teased the first ever Steam OS-based handheld. The console should directly rival the PS Vita and the Nvidia Shield.

Set to launch next year, the device will have a 5-inch 16:9 screen, a quad-core processor, 4GB RAM and 32GB internal storage. The device will also have Wi-Fi, 3G and Bluetooth.

"SteamBoy won't be as powerful as other announced Steam Machines in the same way [the] Nintendo 3DS or PS Vita performance is not comparable to Wii U or PlayStation 4," said the company. "However, it will be possible to play the majority of current games in Steam."

One of the more popular services available to gamers now on PS4 and Xbox One is 'Twitch,' the ability to record and share your entire playthroughs and other events when gaming.

Unfortunately, it appears the Wii U fans will not get the same services, at least not in the way rival console owners can. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Aime has said Twitch will not be headed to the Wii U, and he does not really see the appeal anyway. "What we've got to think through is, so what's fun about that? From a consumer standpoint, what's fun about it?"

Currently, the Wii U allows you to pick highlights and upload them to YouTube, leading to the now infamous "Luigi Death Stare" meme. Fils-Aime is a great fan of that ability, adding that "You can make some choices as to what parts are going to be shared. We think that makes it interesting. That's different than watching Joe Blow's 30 minute stream, which may or may not have something that's all that interesting."

Now of course there could be technical or hardware capability issues that Fils-Aime has not noted, but for the time being it looks like no Twitch for the Wii U.

Late night talk show host Conan O'Brien has added another hilarious addition to his 'Clueless Gamer' segment, this time playing an advanced copy of the upcoming 'Super Smash Bros' for Wii U.

The popular segment shows Conan and co-host Aaron Bleyaert playing video games, which Conan admits he does not like, does not understand and is certainly not good at.

Conan plays as multiple characters, trying to understand the basics of the craziness that is Super Smash, while making fun of nearly every character. The segment concludes with a four player match including his assistant and another employee.

The Wii U version will be available for Wii U sometime "this Winter."

Check the video here:

Samsung has revealed their ninth and tenth tablets of the year so far, the Galaxy Tab S available as an 8.4-inch model and a 10.5-inch model.

The device looks similar to older Galaxy Tabs, but is once again lighter and thinner, at 6.6mm thick and 16 ounces for the larger model. It is thinner than the iPad Air, and is just as light, with just 2 grams separating the two devices.

Samsung noted that the company now has 22.6 percent of the tablet market with its wide range of Galaxy Tab devices. Apple is still the clear leader, but the margin has been shrinking.

Most notably, the devices have Super-AMOLED displays with resolution of 2560 x 1600, and the display has already received rave reviews from demo units. In addition, the devices have fingerprint readers just like the Galaxy S5, although the reader has generally been panned.

The device runs on Android 4.4.2 KitKat, and has Samsung's own suite of applications including Knox and embedded hardware security that should interest enterprise users.

According to Forbes, Google will launch a new health service, dubbed "Google Fit" to collect your data from fitness trackers and smartphone/tablet apps.

The service will be revealed at the upcoming I/O developer conference on June 25th and 26th.

If accurate, the service would be a direct competitor to Apple's upcoming HealthKit framework that will be a part of iOS 8. Samsung also unveiled their biometric data platform Sami last month, meaning the market is clearly the next battleground between the giants.

The report says that "Google Fit will aggregate data through open APIs" and that Google is likely to announce partnerships with wearable device makers like Motorola and LG, as well.

It is unclear whether Google Fit will comes as part of Android updates or will be a standalone app to be downloaded in the Google Play Store.

At E3, Sony revealed that the upcoming blockbuster 'Destiny' would also get its own bundle, including a white colorway PlayStation 4 console.

So far, the console has only been available in black since launch.

The bundle includes a 500GB white PS4, a white DualShock 4 controller, a copy of Destiny and a 30-day subscription vouncher to PlayStation Plus.

Sony did not reveal a price for the bundle.

Pictures of the upcoming console:

Yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced a bold and strategic plan in which the company opened up all of their closely held patents for fair use, in an effort to boost the fledgling electric car market.

This means that anyone who wants to use the technology (in good faith) will not be sued and will likely actually receive assistance from the company.

Musk says that corporations that rely solely on their patents are falling behind: "It means they're not innovating. They're not innovating fast enough. You should be innovating so fast that you're invalidating your prior patents."

The brilliant executive then went on a rant about the current patent system and how it was stifling innovation in every industry. You will find very few people who are not CEOs who disagree with him.

Here is Musk's full post:

'A Song of Ice and Fire,' the book series better known now as Game of Thrones due to its popularity on HBO, will have two new characters killed in a "grisly" manner after the fans paid $20,000 each (to be distributed to charity) to have author George RR Martin create characters for them and then kill them off in the upcoming book.

David Goldblatt, a Facebook employee, was one of the two fans to win the auction. "I'm fortunate enough to be in a position to do this cool thing, and it's going toward a good cause – I don't think I'm doing anything extraordinary." Goldblatt says he would like "to be a Valyrian if at all possible, but he figures it out himself. I wouldn't want to impinge upon his creative process." As part of the prize, the winners will get to choose their "character's station in the world (lording, knight, peasant, whore, lady, maester, septon, anything)."

While hundreds of characters including some very notable ones have been killed off in the series, Martin says he does feel sad when they die. He will not have the same regret for the new characters, however. "Despite my sinister repute, I actually find it hard to kill off characters that I've been writing about for some time. Good guys or bad guys, they're all my children. But this time the slaughter should be easy, since the victims will be laying down their lives in a good cause. I will do my best to make their ends memorable."

According to a new report, Samsung is working with bicycle designer Giovanni Pelizzoli building a new Smart Bike that can be controlled by your Samsung smartphone.

The Samsung Smart Bike was revealed at a design trade show in Milan. The rider can add their smartphone in a mount between the bike's handle bars, using it to control smart features which include turning on "laser beams" to create bike lanes or viewing directions.

Those same beams are also automatic at night since they use the ambient light sensors of your phone.

The bike also includes a camera on the back that syncs with the Smart Bike app and can be used as a rear view camera. From a design standpoint, the bike is constructed of curvy aluminum tubes that supposedly absorb the vibrations of bumpy roads.

Microsoft has announced the launch of a beta version of its Outlook Web App (OWA) for Android available now in the Google Play Store.

The beta has some stringent restrictions, however, that may be extended to the full release. You must be running Android 4.4 (or newer), your device cannot be larger than 5.2-inches (sorry no tablets or the Galaxy Note) and your mailbox must be running on Office 365 for business.

As with most betas, the new OWA release in its current form will be to help the company collect feedback, fix bugs and improve stability.

Currently, there are just a few devices that have access to the app, but you can vote to have your device added via this link here: OWA for Android Pre-Release.

Microsoft launched OWA for iOS about a year ago, and promises the Android version will have all the same features.

Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe has conservative expectations for the first-generation consumer model of the Rift headset, saying he hopes for just "north of a million units [in sales]" over the life of the first consumer version of the Oculus Rift."

"It's not going to be a console-scale market," Iribe added. "It always could be, but that's not the goal. The goal is to set expectations low, get the enthusiasts and early adopters to get into the space, get their feedback, get developers making really great content..."

There is still no set time frame for the release of the Rift, although many believe 2015 will see its launch.

After the first model is released, Iribe says he expects the second consumer version to hit two years after. That headset will be the first to see its full potential, Iribe admits, and one that should see mass-market appeal. "That's when we'll get these incredible, holy grail [games], the killer app for VR," he said. "And that's when we think the scale will really goal, and hopefully you'll get many millions of people into VR, playing great games and other stuff."

The use of streaming video services continues to grow, especially in the U.S., where 47 percent of households now have a subscription to at least one of the biggest three services: Netflix, Amazon Prime and Hulu Plus.

In addition there are at least another two percent of households that have a TV connected to the Internet, but do not have one of those services. In 2011, the figure was 24 percent for households with TVs connected online.

Breaking down the figures to individual services, reads the study, 78 percent of Netflix subscribers watch their movies and TV shows on a TV.

Of those surveyed, 34 percent said they watch online video daily, and 61 percent do so at least once per week.

Finally, cord cutting is on the way up, with 80 percent of Netflix subscribers saying they also have a pay TV service, compared to 88 percent five years ago.

Major chipmaker Intel has lost their appeal of a massive 1.06 billion euro fine handed down by the European Union five years ago.

The European Union's second-highest court says previous regulators did not act "too harshly," and the fine will stand.

In 2009, the European Commission ruled that Intel gave rebates to PC OEMs HP, NEC, Dell and Lenovo for buying most of their processors from Intel rather than rival AMD, and also that the chipmaker paid a major German retail chain to only buy Intel chips.

"The Commission demonstrated to the requisite legal standard that Intel attempted to conceal the anti-competitive nature of its practices and implemented a long term comprehensive strategy to foreclose AMD from the strategically most important sales channels," the court said in a 297-page decision.

Oculus VR founder Palmer Luckey is sure to have made consumers happy with his latest comments, saying that the company will sell the Rift VR headset at cost, with the company not looking to make a profit on them.

"We're going to be selling it at cost," Luckey said in an interview. "Whatever it costs us to make, that is what we're going to sell it for."

Facebook recently acquired the startup for over $2 billion, ensuring that Oculus has enough funding to survive whether or not they turn a profit or not, ever. "If we were running purely on our own and trying to make money just from hardware, we would need to make enough profit from each unit to pay for running the company for several years, until we launched the next one," said Luckey, clearly happy to have been acquired by the social media behemoth.

Of course, the company has plenty of ways to make money without profiting on the actual hardware. Oculus is likely to obtain licensing fees from game developers, especially for games that can only be played on the VR headset. This would be considered the "console model" currently enjoyed by Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft.

According to new reports, Samsung is preparing to unveil a curved glass Galaxy Note 4 at September's IFA trade show for consumer electronics.

Samsung has launched new Note devices at the last few IFA events, so it would not be too shocking if they revealed the next iteration this year.

Making this year notable is sources are claiming Samsung will ship two models, one with a standard display and one with a curved OLED for "niche markets."

Samsung released the Galaxy Round with a curved display for niche markets last year, and LG released the Flex. Neither were hot sellers.

Besides the display, the Note 4 is expected to once again feature high-end specs and a screen potentially larger than last year's 5.5-inch IPS.

Source:
9to5Google