Bethesda Announces Elder Scrolls MMO

An anonymous reader writes “Today Bethesda announced that their popular Elder Scrolls series of video games will be getting its own MMORPG. It’s planned for 2013, and will be available for PCs and Macs. ‘Players will discover an entirely new chapter of Elder Scrolls history in this ambitious world, set a millennium before the events of Skyrim as the daedric prince Molag Bal tries to pull all of Tamriel into his demonic realm. “It will be extremely rewarding finally to unveil what we have been developing the last several years,” said game director and MMO veteran Matt Firor, whose previous work includes Mythic’s well-received Dark Age of Camelot. “The entire team is committed to creating the best MMO ever made – and one that is worthy of The Elder Scrolls franchise.”‘”


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Bethesda Announces Elder Scrolls MMO

Foxconn builds a fanless nano PC, forgets to put someone else’s name on it

Foxconn builds a fanless nano PC, forgets to put someone else's name on it

Two nano PCs, actually, and both expected to be announced officially this week according to FanlessTech. The first is the Foxconn AT-5300, running off a 2.13GHz dual-core Cedar Trail D2700, while the second — the AT-5600 — is powered by AMD’s popular (but last-gen) 1.65GHz E450 APU. Each one consumes around 15W idle and 24W under load, which is the equivalent of somewhere between an Ultrabook and a regular laptop and low enough to be passively cooled. What’s distinctly unlaptop-like, though, is the 190 x 135 x 38mm form factor, which should sit discreetly on your desk, below your TV or on a VESA mount, and also the price, which is expected to be under $200 with worldwide availability. As with similar mini-ATX budget barebones, you’ll need to add your own HDD (or maybe a hybrid) to that, but you do get a pair of USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit LAN, a multilingual card reader and built-in 802.11n WiFi. The only thing missing? You guessed it.

Foxconn builds a fanless nano PC, forgets to put someone else’s name on it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 03 May 2012 11:24:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Flashback Trojan Made Its Makers $10,000 a Day [Factoid]

If you’ve ever wondered why people write malware, it’s just like anything else – it’s all about the money. Symantec has worked out that the evil-doing bottom-feeders behind that nasty Flashback Trojan, which caught the Mac world with its pants down, were raking in around $10,000 a day. More »


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The Flashback Trojan Made Its Makers $10,000 a Day [Factoid]

Google beefs up Apps Scripts for Docs



Google announced a slew of new features this afternoon for its Google Docs suite, hailing the addition of 450 new fonts for creating pamphlets and invitations in Docs, but also mentioning some new features for its application scripting language that will allow developers to build some interesting programs on top of the cloud service.

Google introduced a scripting language for Google Docs, Google Apps Script, in early 2010 so users could automate certain tasks in spreadsheets. Apps Scripts also permitted users to mesh certain third-party services with Google products to make sending e-mails and posting dates on a Google calendar automatic. Scripting is something that few other cloud services offer, and it puts Google ahead of the game in that respect.

Google’s latest edition to Apps Script, called ScriptService, allows scripts to be published as a service program and provides control over when scripts run via timers and other “trigger” events—permitting Docs to perform automated functions. Another new feature of Apps Script integrates with Google Drive, allowing your script to find the root folder of someone else’s Google Drive account so that published scripts can create and manipulate files in them. Finally, the revamped scripts now permit e-mail attachments of 25 MB (up from 5 MB), and can create docs up to 50 MB (up from a 2 MB limit).

Google has been aggressive in building out Apps Script’s functionality—in early April, the company announced the ability to add HTML to a script’s dialogue, and to program sheet protection in spreadsheets so a manager could control which collaborators see what.

Along with the font and scripting announcements, Google also said its service will allow importing photos into docs from Google Drive, and show bidirectional controls for people typing in right-to-left languages. Google Docs also has 60 new document templates in the template gallery.

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Google beefs up Apps Scripts for Docs

Windows 8 to integrate cloud services, ditch Windows Live branding



The Windows Live branding that Microsoft has used since 2005 for its range of consumer-oriented cloud services will fade away over the next few months, as the company positions the online services as an integral, integrated part of the Windows experience.

This integration includes the ability to log on to Windows using a Microsoft Account (formerly known as a Windows Live ID), and the automatic configuration of the mail, messaging, and contact applications using information from the Microsoft Account.

“Windows Live” is currently used both for the services themselves, and the corresponding desktop applications that access them. Microsoft has historically gone back and forth on how this branding is used; Hotmail, for example, has had its name changed from Hotmail to Windows Live Hotmail, then back to Hotmail again; its desktop application counterpart is Windows Live Mail. Even the domain names used by the services show this same inconsistency: logging on at hotmail.com will take you to a mail.live.com domain.

The new branding will introduce uniformity; although many of the services will continue to use live.com domains, their names will exclude any hint of the Live branding.

With this change, the Windows Live Essentials application bundle will go away. Microsoft first announced Windows Live Essentials in 2008, with the first release coming alongside Windows 7. The intent was to decouple the applications—including Mail, Messenger, Movie Maker, and Photo Gallery—from Windows itself, so that they could be regularly updated on their own timetable.

Most of the applications themselves will live on, but in Windows 8 (and Windows Phone) they are pre-installed apps, rather than a separate package. The Windows Live Writer blogging software, however, was not mentioned. Though never wildly popular, it remains much loved by its users. It is, however, something of an anomaly, as it no longer has a corresponding online service: Microsoft closed down its blogging platform, Windows Live Spaces, last year.

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Google badmouths HTTP behind its back, proposes SPDY as a speedy successor

Google badmouths HTTP behind its back, proposes SPDY as a speedy successor

If there’s anything that Google doesn’t like, it’s things that collect dust. The company is famous for its annual spring cleaning efforts, in which the firm rids itself of redundant and dead-end projects, along with more bullish moves, such as its push to overhaul the internet’s DNS system. Now it’s looking to replace HTTP with a new protocol known as SPDY, and to that end, it’s demonstrating the potential speed gains that one might expect on a mobile network. According to the company’s benchmarks, mean page load times on the Galaxy Nexus are 23 percent faster with the new system, and it hypothesizes that further optimizations can be made for 3G and 4G networks. To its credit, Google has already implemented SPDY in Chrome, and the same is true for Firefox and Amazon Silk. Even Microsoft appears to be on-board. As a means to transition, the company proposes an Apache 2.2 module known as mod_spdy, which allows web servers to take advantage of features such as stream multiplexing and header compression. As for HTTP, it’s no doubt been a reliable companion, but it seems that it’ll need to work a bit harder to earn its keep. Stay weird, Google, the internet wouldn’t be the same without you.

Google badmouths HTTP behind its back, proposes SPDY as a speedy successor originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 May 2012 14:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Google badmouths HTTP behind its back, proposes SPDY as a speedy successor