I once loved everything about soda. Its amazing refreshing ability, its sweetness, its bubbles—it was magic in liquid form. But of course it came with the cost of ridiculous amounts of sugar and calories. So I cut back. But for people who don’t cut back on soda? Watch out. Here’s what would happen if those cute Coca-Cola polar bears really drank soda. More »
Welcome to Wednesday evening, everyone. Today Samsung sent out formal invites to its upcoming Galaxy Note II press event in New York City, and we were told that HTC will be backing out of the US tablet market, at least for a little while. RIM is trying to lure developers into BlackBerry 10 with a new “$10K Developer Committment,” in which RIM says it will give developers $10,000 if their app reaches $1,000 in sales. RIM also opened up app submissions for BlackBerry 10 developers today, and we heard that the rumored LG Nexus 4 smartphone may be making its debut on October 29.
Microsoft showed us the retail packaging for Windows 8 today, while eBay gave us a look at its incoming redesign and launched a brand new same-day shipping app for iOS. Huawei may be facing a ban in Canada after US lawmakers suggested the company could potentially help China with espionage, and like so many other companies these days, PayPal has updated its policy to prevent disgruntled users from taking it to court.
Today’s Canadian launch of the DROID RAZR HD suggests that we may soon see it launch in the United States, and NASA’s new satellites that are powered by the HTC Nexus One will be heading into space next year. Earlier today we heard that Microsoft Office will be coming to Android and iOS next year, but it wasn’t long after that rumor hit before Microsoft was saying that there wasn’t any truth to it. Gearbox said today that the freshly-released Mechromancer DLC and the rank reset bug in Borderlands 2 have nothing to do with one another, while we learned that Wing Commander designer Chris Roberts is making a new space MMO.
Dishonored developer Arkane Studios said today that it wasn’t pressured by Bethesda to include multiplayer in the game, while Rovio released a brand new Bad Piggies-themed update for Angry Birds. A new Twitter study gives us a much closer look at the differences between male and female tweeters, and TweetDeck has been updated with a new theme and adjustable fonts. Finally tonight, we have a pair of original articles and a review for you to look through. Chris Burns discusses why AT&T’s new partnership with IBM will give the cloud the boost it needs, and why the Galaxy S III Mini proves that Samsung’s hero branding is working. He also gave us a review of the new Lenovo IdeaTab A2109, so be sure to have a look at that.
That does it for tonight’s Evening Wrap-Up, so go out and enjoy the rest of your night folks!
SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: October 10, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
We don’t often summarize market share in one word, but: ouch. Both Gartner and IDC have trotted out their preliminary estimates for PC market share in the third quarter, and the two agree that this summer was a dire one for the traditional computer. Outside of ASUS and Lenovo, whose price-focused strategies and key acquisitions kept them ahead of rivals, virtually every major vendor saw its PC shipments collapse versus a year ago, often by more than 10 percent. Total worldwide shipments declined by more than 8 percent in either estimate — enough to make a flat second quarter seem rosy by comparison. Lenovo took the top spot in Gartner’s study, although IDC is counting workstations and kept HP in its usual lead.
As for the US, it’s almost better that we don’t look. Gartner and IDC believe that the American market sank by respective 13.8 or 12.4 percent amounts, and the steep global declines repeated themselves in the one country for everyone but Lenovo. Even a market share gain for Apple came only because its shipments dropped at a gentler rate than most of its peers. Whether it’s the US or worldwide, don’t assume that inventory clearances ahead of Windows 8 were the only factors at work, though. Both research teams point to continuing world economic troubles as influences, and IDC contends that buyers are still skipping PCs in favor of smartphones and mobile tablets. There’s often a jump in computer sales between the summer and the fall, especially with a new OS on the way, but we wouldn’t count on a return to the halcyon days.
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Apple, Microsoft, ASUS, HP, Dell, Acer, Lenovo
Gartner and IDC: PC shipments tumbled over 8 percent in Q3, only ASUS and Lenovo escaped unhurt originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:56:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Astronomers at the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) observatory have observed something very surprising for the very first time: a weird tridimensional spiral structure inside of a dying star, one that is just like our very own Sun. More »
Ever since Samsung issued invitations for its October 24th event, it’s become increasingly clearer that the New York City gathering would center on the Galaxy Note II. After all, we’ve tried almost every US version so far, and nothing else has loomed on the horizon. Just in case there was any lingering uncertainty, though, Samsung sent us that promised formal invitation with exact details of what’s going on: it’s the US stop for the Galaxy Note II World Tour, with a press event that night followed by a “consumer celebration” later on that might bring a public side to the affair. Most American editions of the phablet have been announced or re-announced, which suggests to us that we’ll primarily get firmer release dates and prices while we’re busy hobnobbing.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Samsung
Samsung confirms October 24th event is for the US Galaxy Note II, removes what doubt was left originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:27:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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While Half-Life 3 has yet to see the light of day, hopefully this Half-Life fan-movie will be able to appease Half-Life fans in the meantime. Either that or it will simply whet the appetite of fans which should drive the demand for Half-Life 3 into all new heights. That being said, this Half-Life movie has been dubbed “Enter The Freeman” and was put together by a bunch of gamers with a rather small budget of $3,000. It was filed by director James Duncan and co-produced by Berhard Forcher. It’s only 10 minutes long but its production value is pretty good and the quality is most certainly there. If you’re a Half-Life fan, perhaps you might want to spare 10 minutes from your busy day to check it out. If anything, this kind of makes me wish that someone with a bigger budget would make a full length Half-Life movie a reality – what do you guys think?
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Half-Life 2 Gravity Gun prop fetches $21,000 at auction, Half-Life 2 Gravity Gun prop up for auction,
The other day we reported that Razer had launched a campaign on Facebook in which Project Fiona would be made a reality if they managed to garner 10,000 Likes/Shares. The good news is that it looks like Project Fiona has been given the greenlight and it seems that Razer is keeping true to their motto of, “For Gamers, By Gamers”, by actively involving their fans in the process of creating Project Fiona. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: RAZER Project Fiona Demo, Razer unveils Project Fiona concept,
Remember a while back we reported on a concept called the Instagram Socialmatic camera? Well as it turns out, the folks who came up with the concept have announced that they have plans to turn it into a reality. They have dropped the Instagram moniker and are now simply calling it the Socialmatic. It will retain some of its concept features, such as its instant-print feature which is similar to that of a Polaroid camera. (more…)
By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Canon EOS 7D MK II rumored for January 2013 announcement, Polycom New Solutions: RealPresence CloudAxis, New User Interface, RealPresence Desktop 2.0, Virtual Edge Executive Desktop,
You probably already know this by now, but there are a lot of people using Twitter. A new study conducted by Beevolve gives us an insane amount of statistics on these users, gauging everything from how many followers the average user has to which background color is used the most by females and males. The study – which surveyed a total of 36 million Twitter profiles – may confirm a lot of the stuff you already assumed about Twitter, but there are some surprises to be found in the results.
For instance, you might assume that more Twitter users are female, and you’d be right. Beevolve’s study, which has been aptly titled “An Exhaustive Study of Twitter Users Across the World,” says that 53% of Twitter users are female, with 47% of users male. Were you thinking that the majority of Twitter users were teenagers or young adults? You’d be right there too, with Beevolve’s study finding that 73.7% of Twitter users are aged 15 to 25. However, it’s also worth pointing out that only 0.45% of Twitter users disclose their age.
How about this one: when it comes to background color preference, which color to do you think females prefer most? If you said pink, you’re wrong, and shame on you for falling back on gender stereotypes. It’s actually purple (Eminence if we’re being specific), while males prefer darker tones, with steel grey taking the lead by a pretty large margin. Beevolve found that the majority of Twitter users have less than 50 followers, just as the majority are following less than 50 people.
Females seem to be a bit more active on Twitter than males are, with the study claiming that males have tweeted an average of 567 times, while females have tweeted an average of 610 times. “Love” is the most popular word used in Twitter bios, and Family is easily the most popular subject for users aged 15 to 65. There’s a lot more to Beevolve’s survey than what we’ve talked about here, so be sure to check the full survey out for even more ridiculous statistics. Just be careful – when it calls this an “expansive” study, it isn’t kidding, and you may just get lost in the absurd amount of information the survey provides.
New Twitter study gives tons of stats on users is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.
We caught a glimpse of a Verizon-branded Windows Phone 8 handset by the name of Atlas in a leaked image yesterday, and now new photos give us a closer look at the smartphone. According to WMPoweruser, who received the photos from a tipster, the device is a Nokia Lumia 820 variant and will be exclusive to Big Red as the Lumia 822. Though it’s riffed on its progenitor’s design, the mobile will keep the same WVGA resolution and 8-megapixel rear-facing camera. There’s still no official word from Verizon or Nokia regarding the phone, but we expect that to change relatively soon.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile
Verizon-bound Nokia Lumia 822 surfaces in leaked photos originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 10 Oct 2012 19:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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