AfterDawn: Tech news

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AfterDawn: News

Steam integration headed to Razer Edge tablet

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 29 Mar 2013 10:47

Steam integration headed to Razer Edge tablet Razer has announced that its new Edge gaming tablet will soon be getting Steam software pre-installed.

"Razer has one mission in mind: to innovate for PC gamers worldwide," says Min-Liang Tan, co-founder, Razer CEO and creative director. "Providing users with access to Steam will enable Razer Edge users to play their favorite games with greater ease than ever before."

Steam has over 2000 titles available for digital download, and currently has over 40 million accounts.

"The Razer Edge has more than enough power to play the latest and greatest Steam titles and it is completely built with PC gamers in mind," says Greg Coomer, product designer at Valve. "The tablet is a great way to experience everything Steam has to offer, including Big Picture mode."




AfterDawn: News

Microsoft Surface Pro to launch in China on April 2nd

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 9:23

Microsoft Surface Pro to launch in China on April 2nd Microsoft will make its Surface Pro tablet available for the first outside of North America.

Starting on April 2nd, the tablet will make its way to China, although the pricing remains unclear.

Microsoft made the post via Chinese social networking site Weibo, and the Chinese launch marks the first time the tablet is available outside of Canada and the U.S.

The announcement comes after the Redmond giant teamed up with Chinese seller Tmail to launch more stores in the region. Tmall sells Windows, Office, and Windows Phones and now will add the Surface.

Microsoft is looking to expand its tablet offerings to other regions, but those dates (and locations) remain unclear.




AfterDawn: News

Ouya begins shipping to Kickstarter backers, will reach retail stores on June 4th

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 9:12

Ouya begins shipping to Kickstarter backers, will reach retail stores on June 4th Ouya has finally revealed its retail release date.

The gaming box will be available on June 4th for $99.99 at Amazon, Game, GameStop, Target and via the Ouya website.

Additionally, the company has begun shipping units to its Kickstarter backers, with a more full rollout over the coming weeks.

Ouya will be available initially in the U.S., Canada and the UK. For $99 you get a console, a controller, two batteries and an HDMI cable.





AfterDawn: News

Smartphone users check Facebook on their phones 14 times per day

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 8:30

Smartphone users check Facebook on their phones 14 times per day According to a new IDC survey, smartphone owners check their Facebook pages, on average, 14 times per day.

In total, users spend 32 minutes a day on Facebook, every single day.

The analytics firm surveyed 7446 Android and iOS users, all between the ages of 18 and 44.

Moving beyond Facebook, 44 percent of the group used their phones as an alarm clock, and 79 percent checked their phones within 15 minutes of waking up every morning. 79 percent of the group also admitted that their phones were out of reach for only two hours per day.

Email was the most used feature, actually followed by Facebook and then messaging and voice calls.




AfterDawn: News

AT&T to sell Samsung Galaxy S4 for $250 starting April 16th

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 12:38

AT&T to sell Samsung Galaxy S4 for $250 starting April 16th AT&T has announced the availability and pricing of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S4.

Customers will be able to pre-order the phone beginning on April 16th for $250 with new 2-year contract.

The carrier says it will be the first in the U.S. with the flagship although Sprint, Verizon and T-Mobile will offer it, as well. T-Mobile has already said it will offer the phone beginning on May 1st, although it is unclear if pre-orders will begin earlier.

Samsung's latest has a 5-inch 1080p super AMOLED display with 441ppi. The screen is also protected by Corning's latest Gorilla Glass 3 and can be used with gloves thanks to "mitten tech." Under the hood the phone is powered by a Samsung Exynos 5 (international) or Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Pro (North America), has 2GB RAM, 16-64GB of internal storage, a microSD slot, a removable 2600 mAh battery, 100 Mbps Cat 3 LTE, Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11ac Wi-Fi. The device also has an IR blaster, turning it into a full remote control. The device is a thin 7.9mm.

Read more...


AfterDawn: News

Men arrested for trying to sever undersea Internet cable

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 12:20

Men arrested for trying to sever undersea Internet cable Egyptian police have arrested three men this week for trying to sever an undersea Internet cable.

The cable, the SEA-ME-WE 4 main line, is part of a larger network that connects the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia, the Middle East and Western Europe and has a total of 39 landing points.

Telecom Egypt owns the line, which was in Alexandria, and ISP Seacom said the attack reduced network speed in Egypt temporarily.

"The armed forces foiled an attempt and arrested three divers while they were cutting a submarine cable," said the authorities.

Seacom was quick to respond: "SEACOM can confirm that at 06:20 GMT 27 March, the SMW4 cable system suffered a cable cut off the coast of Egypt. Earlier this morning, SEACOM had restored all services on both SMW4 and IMEWE cable systems."




AfterDawn: News

Amazon Studios announces 'Betas' comedy about Silicon Valley

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 11:54

Amazon Studios announces 'Betas' comedy about Silicon Valley Amazon Studios has greenlit a new comedy pilot, called "Betas," about four Silicon Valley "geeks" trying to create code that will make them rich.

The show is the eight comedy to be accepted by Amazon Studios, with the first six getting greenlights in December and 'Zombieland' getting a greenlight last week.

Viewers will be able to watch the shows for free via Amazon Instant Video and through Lovefilm if they are subscribers.

Betas will star Ed Begley Jr., Jon Daly, Joe Dinicol, Margo Harshman, Charlie Saxton, and Karan Soni and the pilot at least will be directed by Michael Lehmann.

Producer Michael London says: "Amazon is giving us a chance to work outside the TV bureaucracies and connect directly with audiences hungry for original content, and Betas is the perfect match for that model. Betas is a half-hour comedy about a group of tech-savvy millennials trying to connect with the world both personally and professionally."




AfterDawn: News

PC gaming sees another year of strong growth

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 11:31

PC gaming sees another year of strong growth While the PC market itself has topped and has even been declining in recent years, PC gaming has seen continued growth.

For 2012, the gaming market saw growth of 8 percent compared to flat growth for the PC market.

There are over 1 billion PC gamers, with total revenue hitting $20 billion. China represented a good portion of the growth, with the nation accounting for $6.8 billion of the revenue, good for a 9 percent boost year-over-year.

Overall, the industry also saw growth in Korea, Japan, the US, the UK and Germany, all of which are considered "mature" markets in regards to growth.

Of the 1 billion gamers, a full 25 percent were not interested in "hardcore" games such as shooters, but preferred to play "core games" like strategy, role-playing and action titles.




AfterDawn: News

Sony shows off PlayStation 4 controller, Eye at GDC

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 11:00

Sony shows off PlayStation 4 controller, Eye at GDC At the ongoing Games Developers Conference (GDC) 2013 this week, Sony has taken the time to show off their new PlayStation 4 controller as well as the Eye technology.

The new face buttons and the L1/R1 buttons are now digital and not analog, which Sony says will reduce latency (and most likely cost). The analog sticks will have a smaller so-called "dead zone," a complaint for many years by active users.

Sony's new light bar glows a different color for different players and will also blink while charging, even if the PS4 is in standby mode.

The touchpad on the controller has a large 1920x900 resolution, can be "clicked" if you push on it, and supports 2 point contact.

Moving to the Playstation Eye, the camera has 2 cameras inside and four mics for better tracking.

Additionally, the company released some slightly updated specs on the console:

CPU: Single-chip custom processor, x86-64 AMD "Jaguar" 8-core

Read more...


AfterDawn: News

BlackBerry posts a surprise profit

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 10:47

BlackBerry posts a surprise profit BlackBerry reported their quarterly earnings today, posting a surprise profit.

For their fiscal Q4 2012, BlackBerry reported a net income of $114 million, well above the consensus of a $130 million loss. Revenue was light, however, at $2.7 billion. A year ago, revenues for the quarter were $4.8 billion.

The company says they shipped 6 million smartphones in the past quarter, with 1 million being Z10 BlackBerry 10 phones.

Despite the profit, other numbers were not so pretty. Subscribers fell to 76 million, down from 79 million in December. Overall shipments were down 38 percent year-over-year.

Next quarter's earnings should be even more important for the company, as the Z10 has only just reached U.S. shores, RIM's largest market.




AfterDawn: News

Nokia gets massive tax bill from India

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 10:38

Nokia gets massive tax bill from India Large mobile phone marker Nokia says they will not pay the 20.8 billion rupees ($380 million USD) tax bill demanded of them by India for supposed unpaid taxes.

A Delhi High Court has so far issued a stay on the bill, but Nokia will still need to fight the claim moving forward.

"Nokia reiterates its position is that it is in full compliance with local laws as well as the bilaterally negotiated tax treaty between the governments of India and Finland and will defend itself vigorously," the company said in a statement.

Nokia cannot afford to get hit with such a lefty tax bill, as its cash reserves have been quickly dwindling in the past few years. Nokia ended 2012 with net cash on hand of $5.6 billion, down 22 percent from the end of 2011.

India has been aggressively pursuing claims against foreign companies, and others such as Mondelez, Royal Dutch Shell, Vodafone Group and LG Electronics have already received bills that they are fighting.




AfterDawn: News

Apple appears in Chinese court over Siri claims

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 10:28

Apple appears in Chinese court over Siri claims Apple appeared in court this week over claims that it stole software now used in the "Siri" personal assistant tech seen on iPhones.

Shanghai's Zhizhen Network Technology Co. accused Apple of patent infringement for the voice recognition software and both companies are now submitting evidence at the pre-trial hearing.

Zhizhen says it patented its own "Xiao i Robot" software back in 2004, three years before Apple began developing Siri. Siri was eventually unveiled in 2011. Xiao Robot works the same way as Siri, responding to voice commands.

Xiao i Robot is allegedly used by over 100 million users in China, including in the telecommunications, finance and e-commerce fields.

"The company will ask Apple to stop manufacturing and selling products using its patent rights, once Apple's infringement is confirmed," says Si Weijiang, a lawyer representing Zhizhen (via AFP). "We don't exclude the possibility of demanding compensation in the future,"




AfterDawn: News

Mozilla and Epic Games team up to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Web

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 10:17

Mozilla and Epic Games team up to bring Unreal Engine 3 to the Web Mozilla and Epic Games have announced this week that they have teamed up to port the Unreal Engine 3 to the Web without the need for any plugins.

The browser company has long wanted to make the Internet a viable platform for modern games, and "about six months ago, Mozilla started to work on using its emscripten compiler to port C and C++ code to asm.js, a strict subset of JavaScript. This combination allows the JavaScript code to run at a speed within 2x of native performance and the latest versions of Firefox Nightly now support these optimizations," says TechCrunch.

For a demo, the companies showed off Epic's Citadel demo and Unreal Tournament running natively from within the browser.

Vladimir Vukicevic, Mozilla's engineering director and the inventor of WebGL, says the port only took four days and required minor adjustments.

Read more...


AfterDawn: News

Google Translate for Android adds offline support for 50 languages

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 10:07

Google Translate for Android adds offline support for 50 languages Google has announced today that it has added offline language support to its Google Translate app for Android.

The search giant says the new support is good for fifty languages ranging "from French and Spanish to Chinese and Arabic."

As a caveat, the company says the offline offerings are "less comprehensive" than if you were connected to the Internet but it should do fine if you need the occasional word.

To be able to use the service offline, you will need to download language packs from within the installed app.

The Google Translate app is free in the Google Play store.




AfterDawn: News

Boxee TV adds DLNA, 3D streaming support

Written by Andre Yoskowitz @ 28 Mar 2013 1:26

Boxee TV adds DLNA, 3D streaming support If you have a Boxee TV device, a new firmware update is headed your way with a plethora of additions.

The new update will bring DLNA functionality, 3D streaming of Vudu content, better DVR scheduling and a TV guide that is more reminiscent of one you are used to on cable TV.

Boxee says the update should be rolled out to all owners by Friday.

Om adds that "DLNA will enable Boxee TV owners to play files stored on their computers or network-attached storage drives. Boxee TV also functions as a DLNA digital media renderer, meaning that users can beam music and videos straight from their mobile device to their Boxee TV, much in the same way as one would stream a video via Airplay to an Apple TV."

Read more...



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