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Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 8th September 2010 at 7:38am
| 5 comments
The latest beta update to the DivX Web Player has just been released and brings with it a host of new features, including one that could help DivX carve up a slice of the web video market.
The new feature, known as DivX HiQ™, allows you to switch the videos you watch on popular video websites like YouTube, Vimeo and Daily Motion, to a high quality DivX format. According to DivX, the videos will feature "fewer interruptions, smoother playback and more vivid colors".
Flash have a solid hold on the web video market but after some serious criticism from Apple recently, as well as the emergence of HTML 5, Adobe might find Flash playing catchup for the first time in a while.
The main new features of the beta release of DivX Plus Web Player are as follows:
DivX HiQ™ – use DivX Plus Web Player on YouTube and more
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 7th September 2010 at 8:28am
| 1 comment
The new social networking feature of iTunes, called iTunes Ping, has amassed over one million users within the first two days of launch.
This large number of Ping users represents about a third of all the users who have downloaded iTunes 10, though this is only a small fraction of iTunes users so far.
“One-third of the people who have downloaded iTunes 10 have joined Ping,“ said Eddy Cue, Apple’s vice president of Internet Services. “As many more people download iTunes 10 in the coming weeks, we expect the Ping community to continue growing.“
iTunes 10 and Ping have had a bit of a rocky start, in some ways mirroring the mixed reception the iPhone 4G had due to reception problems and other technical issues. There has already been a backlash on the web about the the iTunes logo, which now has a spoof Twitter account to defend itself against criticism, and Ping itself has also come into criticism for unleashing a torrent of spam upon release.
Still, a million new users in two days isn't bad going and if Apple can press on with further improvements, Ping could end up being another successful addition to the Apple family.
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 5th September 2010 at 12:37pm
| 0 comments
NVIDIA have announced a brand new GeForce 400M series of GPUs for notebooks, claiming to offer a whopping 40% performance boost over the previous 300M series of GPUs.
The NVIDIA GeForce 400M GPUs includes:
For enthusiast users: GeForce GTX 470M and GTX 460M
For performance users: GeForce GT 445M, GT 435M, GT 425M, GT 420M and GT 415M
The GeForce 400M GPUs will feature NVIDIA Optimus technology, a power-saving technique that automatically turns off the GPU when not needed, extending the battery life of a netbook. GeForce 400M has been designed from the ground-up for DirectX 11, as well as supporting NVIDIA 3D Vision, PhysX™, CUDA™ and NVIDIA 3DTV Play™.
Expect to see GeForce 400M enabled notebooks from Acer, Asus, Dell, Lenovo, Samsung, and Toshiba appearing in time for this Christmas.
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 3rd September 2010 at 7:25am
| 7 comments
Apple has announced the arrival of iTunes 10, and with it the removal of the 'CD' logo and the addition of Ping, a "new music-oriented social network".
The new Ping service will allow users to follow artists and friends in a similar manner to Twitter, though instead of sharing 140-word 'Tweets', users can share thoughts on music, information about what you're listening to or downloading, lists of your favourite albums or songs, as well as view concert listings and share which ones you plan to go to.
"iTunes is the number one music community in the world, with over 160 million iTunes users in 23 countries, and now we're adding social networking with Ping," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "With Ping you can follow your favorite artists and friends and join a worldwide conversation with music's most passionate fans."
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 2nd September 2010 at 7:18am
| 0 comments
Microsoft has announced that its brand new mobile operating system, Windows Phone 7, has gone gold and has been released to manufacturers (RTM).
Windows Phone 7, the successor to Windows Mobile 6.5, is now rolling out to various manufacturers and carriers across the world, where last minute tweaks and modifications will be carried out. There's no precise date set yet, but the OS is currently scheduled for public release sometime in October.
Engadget have an in-depth preview of Windows Phone 7 if you want further information on the software, which is packed full of great new features. The question is however, will it be enough to challenge Apple's supremacy in the smartphone market?
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 1st September 2010 at 5:24pm
| 0 comments
A Swedish filmmaker is planning to release a documentary film about the infamous torrent indexing website Pirate Bay and its three founders, in part funded by users of the peer-to-peer website.
Simon Klose has already amassed over 200 hours of footage and plans to add more during the founders' appeal against their verdict. The documentary is called TPB-AFK (in case you didn't work it out, that stands for The Pirate Bay - Away from Keyboard), and Klose is calling on fans of Pirate Bay to chip in to help get the film finished, with an official website already set up for donations. Commenting on his unusual funding method, Klose said:
"I want to prove that people who claim that the network is threatening cultural creation are wrong, and I will ask the Internet for help."
"TPB AFK is not a fan movie about the Pirate Bay," Klose continues, "Neither is it a journalistic piece on copyright conflict. It’s an observational, character driven film about three guys whose hobby homepage became the embryo of a global political movement."
TPB-AFK is currently set for an autumn 2011 release.
Posted by gonaads
on the 31st August 2010 at 10:35pm
| 9 comments
Gmail users who feel swamped by a flood of messages in their inbox will now have help sorting them out, with "Priority Inbox".
"Priority Inbox" is a new feature for Gmail users who are getting swamped by massive amounts of messages in their inbox. This feature pushes a user's most important e-mails to the top of the inbox list and leaves them there. The new feature was scheduled to be part of Gmail midnight Monday ET.
Gmail users should see a red "New Features" link in their inbox on Tuesday morning, with that you can enable the "Priority Inbox" feature.
An algorithm will determine what messages go into the "Prioty Inbox". This will depend on key phrases in the message, like the identity of the sender and if the e-mail was sent to one individual or a group.
So if you received a message from say a family member (Spouse, Son/Daughter, etc...) it would get listed above/ahead of some promotional e-mails that the Gmail user might have subscribed to.
Gmail users will be able to personalize their priority boxes, removing and/or adding e-mails as they'd like to prioritize them.
Gmail has added quite a few tweaks recently and it looks good so far.
Posted by fitz
on the 31st August 2010 at 3:27pm
| 8 comments
Just as Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD) gets ready to reap the true fruits of its largest acquisition ever, the company is doing away with a few side effects of that deal.
The ATI brand name will soon be nothing but a memory. A $5.4 billion buyout has resulted in the revolutionary Fusion platform, which is expected to propel AMD into steady profits and technological leadership from 2011 onward. But the ATI brand itself has played its part and now only serves to dilute AMD's central brand, according to the company's own market research.
This move is but a small part in a larger overhaul of AMD's branding strategy. The current plethora of confusing product names will be boiled down significantly over the coming months: You won't need to keep track of what makes a Phenom II processor better or worse than an Athlon II or Turion, for example. Instead the company will offer "Vision" categories that summarize the processing power of AMD machines. This goes one step further than Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) and its Core i3, i5, i7 strategy: one brand to rule them all, at least for a while.
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 31st August 2010 at 8:05am
| 8 comments
Google, who owns video sharing site YouTube, is reportedly in talks with major Hollywood studios to launch a global pay-per-view movie streaming service.
According to The Financial Times, the latest movies would be released on YouTube at the same time as the on iTunes, DVD and Blu-ray Disc. The FT also predicts that it would cost somewhere in the region of $5 to stream 'newer movies', presumably with older titles being potentially discounted below this. YouTube has already been beta-testing a movie rental service since January.
As DVD sales rapidly decline, the next few years will see a massive shift from physical media to online distribution - Blockbuster is already closing hundreds or even thousands of stores this year as it prepares to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September. Movie subscription service Netflix is already "aggressively acquiring" the rights to stream movies, while movie/TV streaming website Hulu, owned by Walt Disney, News Corp and NBC, is planning on floating itself on the stock market.
The latest moves by Google to bring online movie rental to YouTube will mark another big step in the inevitable mass adoption of digital rather than physical media.
Posted by ray_gillespie
on the 30th August 2010 at 10:57am
| 1 comment
The long-awaited Nokia N8 smartphone will be released in "just a few weeks" according to an interview with Dolby, courtesy of ElectricPig, just in time for Nokia World 2010.
Dolby will be providing the first 'true surround sound' to a mainstream smartphone, with the Nokia N8's key feature of Dolby Digital Plus. Among other features, the smartphone will also include:
Symbian^3 OS
3.5-inch, 640x360 capacitive touchscreen
12 megapixel camera with 1/1.83" sensor and xenon flash
HDMI out
802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi
Pentaband 3.5G radio
While surround sound on a mobile phone sounds a little like lipstick on a pig, the N8 sports some very impressive features that hold up against even the top of the current smartphone crop. Christmas 2010 is going to be very interesting for the smartphone industry.
Source: 