We have the sneaking suspicion we know what we’ll be seeing when 11AM ET time rolls around, but we’ve certainly been surprised in the past. We’re here in New York City, eagerly waiting Nokia’s next big announcement. Be sure to join along to get a play by play of all 41 million of those aforementioned reasons.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Nokia
Source: Liveblog
No doubt: the following spacewalk photos are the best I have seen in a very long time. I just cannot stop staring at the stunning photos captured during the spacewalk of ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano and NASA’s Chris Cassidy, on the 9th of July, released by the European Space Agency today on its webpage and on Flickr.
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The patent application from Sony that popped up at the US Patent and Trademark Office this morning isn’t quite the DualShock 4 that we’ve become acquainted with this year. While it contains many descriptors that apply to the controller Sony introduced alongside its PlayStation 4, it’s also got a few extra bells and whistles that the current model doesn’t include — most notably, a microphone for tracking player location and a larger light bar that extends to the bottom of the controller. Apparently the light bar at some point could be “shaped to provide for a wide angle of visibility.”
There’s also a variety of trackpad versions, and the patent describes a slight outward curvature “which provides a tactile sensation by virtue of its shape” — the DualShock 4 models we’ve used don’t seem to feature this, but we’ll need to revisit the controller to be sure. Further, the trackpad was apparently tested as a display screen as well at one point. “In one embodiment, the touch panel can be coupled with a display screen to provide a touchscreen interface as part of the controller,” the application reads. “For example, the touchscreen might display an image which delineates regions of the touchscreen that correspond to various functionalities for the interactive application.”
Beyond that, the patent dances around its connection to the PlayStation 4, as this was filed back in the end of June 2012 (it just published today). Make no mistake: this is very much a patent for the DualShock 4 long before the controller and its corresponding console were announced.
Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds, Peripherals, HD, Sony
Source: USPTO
It’s usually pretty easy to spot an electric bike coming down the road. Besides the lack of pedaling, they also feature over-sized frames packed with batteries, or bulbous hubs on the side of the wheels for the electric motor. But not Electrolyte’s e-bikes. All of the required components—including the battery, electronics, and electric motor—are hidden away inside what looks like nothing more than a sturdy shock absorber.
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There’s been a lot of hype lately about the recent Samsung deal with rap artist Jay-Z, where Samsung owners had the chance to grab one of the one million albums that Samsung and Jay-Z were giving away to fans before the official launch of the new album. However, it seems Jay-Z wasn’t too thrilled with the outcome of the whole experience in the end, calling it “not cool.”
Jay Z signed an exclusive deal with Samsung that would give away one million free copies of the rapper’s latest album, Magna Carta Holy Grail, to Galaxy S III, Galaxy S4, and Galaxy Note II owners nearly a week before the official launch of the album. Samsung owners simply had to download an app to get access to the new album.
However, it seems like many Samsung users had trouble downloading the album when accessing it through the Magna Carta Holy Grail app, and to make matters worse, the album was leaked online just moments after the app went live for some Samsung users, breaking the exclusivity with Samsung.
Jay-Z was mostly upset at the fact that many users were unable to download the album due to server errors, and he called the experience “not cool,” as well as “disheartening” after some fans weren’t able to download the album right away due to server issues. However, he didn’t blame the outcome on Samsung, but merely just noted that the demand for the album in the app was something that no company could really prepare for.
Nonetheless, Jay-Z still received $5 million from the deal, seeing as how Samsung paid $5 for each of the one million album copies. However, those one million copies won’t be going towards the tally for best-selling albums on the Billboard charts, but we’re guessing the album will still make its way on the list.
VIA: NY Daily News
SOURCE: Power 105.1
Samsung Jay-Z Magna Carta app experience was “not cool” is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
Microsoft has detailed its much-rumored reorganization plan, with Steve Ballmer describing the strategy as “One Microsoft” and forming four main areas: operating systems, devices & studios, applications & services, and cloud & enterprise. The new teams – which will be led, respectively, by Terry Myerson, Julie Larson-Green, Qi Lu, and Satya Nadella – will take a more over-arching approach to engineering Microsoft products, rather than seeing things like Xbox gaming, entertainment, and Windows all silo’d off into separate divisions. Ballmer says that the company will adopt a more direct communication strategy with him as CEO, following the five tenets of being nimble, communicative, collaborative, decisive, and motivated.
“Going forward, our strategy will focus on creating a family of devices and services for individuals and businesses that empower people around the globe at home, at work and on the go, for the activities they value most” Ballmer wrote in an email to all staff sent today. He also confirmed that Kurt DelBene will be leaving Microsoft, that Craig Mundie will be solely occupied in “a special project for me through the end of this calendar year”, and that Rick Rashid will shift away from Microsoft Research and instead take on “driving core OS innovation in our operating systems group.”
The reorganization basically means that Windows and Windows Phone have been merged into a single group, the Operating Systems Engineering Group, which will also handle the software that runs on Xbox, back-end systems, and core-cloud services for OSes. Hardware, meanwhile, will be tackled by Julie Larson-Green’s Devices and Studios Engineering Group, covering design, engineering, and supply chain.
Larson-Green’s team will also tackle the various studios experiences, such as games, music, and video.
“We are going to focus on completely reinventing experiences like creating or viewing a creative document and what it means to communicate socially at home or in meetings at work. We are going to immerse people in deep entertainment experiences that let them have serious fun in ways so intense and delightful that they will blur the line between reality and fantasy. And as we develop these new experiences, we will also support our developers with the simplest ways to develop apps or cloud services and integrate with our products” Steve Ballmer, CEO, Microsoft
According to Ballmer, working in divided ways is no longer a possibility. “Each major initiative will have a champion who will be a direct report to me or one of my direct reports” the Microsoft CEO writes. “The champion will organize to drive a cross-company team for success, but my whole staff will have commitment to the initiative’s success.”
The full organizational structures and the new divisions are detailed below, and you can find the updated titles and other information at Microsoft’s senior leaders page.
Operating Systems Engineering Group. Terry Myerson will lead this group, and it will span all our OS work for console, to mobile device, to PC, to back-end systems. The core cloud services for the operating system will be in this group.
Devices and Studios Engineering Group. Julie Larson-Green will lead this group and will have all hardware development and supply chain from the smallest to the largest devices we build. Julie will also take responsibility for our studios experiences including all games, music, video and other entertainment.
Applications and Services Engineering Group. Qi Lu will lead broad applications and services core technologies in productivity, communication, search and other information categories.
Cloud and Enterprise Engineering Group. Satya Nadella will lead development of our back-end technologies like datacenter, database and our specific technologies for enterprise IT scenarios and development tools. He will lead datacenter development, construction and operation.
Dynamics. Kirill Tatarinov will continue to run Dynamics as is, but his product leaders will dotted line report to Qi Lu, his marketing leader will dotted line report to Tami Reller and his sales leader will dotted line report to the COO group.
Advanced Strategy and Research Group. Eric Rudder will lead Research, Trustworthy Computing, teams focused on the intersection of technology and policy, and will drive our cross-company looks at key new technology trends.
Marketing Group. Tami Reller will lead all marketing with the field relationship as is today. Mark Penn will take a broad view of marketing strategy and will lead with Tami the newly centralized advertising and media functions.
COO. Kevin Turner will continue leading our worldwide sales, field marketing, services, support, and stores as well as IT, licensing and commercial operations.
Business Development and Evangelism Group. Tony Bates will focus on key partnerships especially our innovation partners (OEMs, silicon vendors, key developers, Yahoo, Nokia, etc.) and our broad work on evangelism and developer outreach. DPE, Corporate Strategy and the business development efforts formerly in the BGs will become part of this new group. OEM will remain in SMSG with Kevin Turner with a dotted line to Tony who will work closely with Nick Parker on key OEM relationships.
Finance Group. Amy Hood will centralize all product group finance organizations. SMSG finance, which is geographically diffuse, will report to Kevin Turner with a dotted line to Amy.
Legal Group. Brad Smith will continue as General Counsel with responsibility for law and corporate affairs and will map his team to the new organization.
HR Group. Lisa Brummel will lead Human Resources and map her team to the new organization.
Microsoft reorganization official: OS teams merge, Hardware unified is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
If you often partake in social activities — particularly those involving alcohol — you may have a horror story about compromising Facebook photos. A new iOS app, Secret.li, sets out to limit the lifespan of those sensitive images, letting you delete the evidence before your boss (or parents) finds out. Hoping to capitalize on Facebook privacy concerns, the team behind Secret.li has taken a page out of Snapchat’s book with selectively shared “timebombed” photos. After choosing your security filter and time limit, Secret.li will ping your friends via Facebook with a short-lived photo without storing the image or associated metadata to its servers. (It’s worth nothing that there’s nothing stopping your friends from capturing your photos and saving them for future blackmail, though.) You can check out the full press release after the break or download the free app at the source link below.
Filed under: Software
In a move that only further closes the gap between the quickly merging Windows worlds, Microsoft has shuffled itself around in what Steve Ballmer terms "a far-reaching realignment of the company."
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Rumors of a massive reorg in Redmond have been floating around for awhile now. And the noise reached a fever pitch when Don Mattrick left Microsoft for Zygna’s (apparently) greener pastures — purportedly because he didn’t like the role he’d receive in the pending restructuring. Now, a mere ten days after the ex-Xbox chief’s departure, we know what the new Microsoft will look like.
As expected, the company has been bifurcated into services and devices divisions, with Julie Larson-Green getting the nod as hardware chief and Terry Myerson becoming the Grand Poobah of Windows. Of course, quite a few other execs have seen their roles shift as well, with Qi Lu managing productivity, communication and search apps and services, and Satya Nadella heading up the company’s cloud initiatives. Additionally, Skype president Tony Bates has been tapped to manage the Business Development and Evangelism group, where he’ll lead corporate strategy and developer outreach.
There are even more changes afoot. CTO Eric Rudder is now responsible for an Advanced Strategy and Research group and Tami Reller is the new US marketing chief. COO Kevin Turner, CFO Amy Hood, General Counsel Brad Smith and Chief People Officer Lisa Brummel will maintain their current positions. Finally, Office president Kurt DelBene will be retiring from Microsoft, according to the company-wide reorganization email published on the company’s site. So what this all this mean for MS? Hit up the source for a 2,700-word memo detailing Steve Ballmer’s vision.
Filed under: Cellphones, Gaming, Tablets, Software, Microsoft
Via: AllThingsD
Source: Microsoft
Apple‘s 2014 MacBook refresh will see the company switch to IGZO displays, it’s reported, reducing power consumption while simultaneously improving clarity. The switch, which isn’t expected to take place until the first half of next year, will see Apple raid the production lines of Sharp and LG Display, ETNews reports, with the iPad also potentially in line for the screen technology.
IGZO – or indium gallium zinc oxide – is used by Sharp and others to replace the more traditional amorphous silicon substrate found in TFT LCD panels. Since IGZO demonstrates more electron mobility, it can be more efficient, and the individual pixels can be smaller.
That allows for higher-resolution displays, but also permits a reduction in backlighting for the same degree of brightness as a regular LCD. Sharp has used the technology for a number of smartphones and tablets in the Japanese market, but we’re only just seeing IGZO make its way to the desktop in the shape of displays from Sharp itself and ASUS.
Those advantages have long been said to have caught Apple’s attention, and in fact the company is believed to have quietly invested in Sharp so as to get first refusal on the panels once they reach mass-production level.
According to the Korean reports, Sharp may end up supplying both MacBook and iPad scale IGZO panels to Apple, trimming the power consumption of the notebooks and tablets in the process. It’s also expected that LG Display will join the supply chain with IGZO, and said that the company is already upgrading its existing AMOLED and LCD lines to be compatible with IGZO manufacturing.
For Apple, the biggest benefit could be Retina display resolution but without the drain on battery life. The company has made a name for its hardware thanks to the pixel-dense displays, but balancing the power demands of such panels is an ongoing challenge.
2014 MacBook and iPad IGZO display switch tipped is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2013, SlashGear. All right reserved.
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