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Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

With Sony jump-starting the next-generation console hype train with its PlayStation 4 reveal this week , it seems Microsoft might not be willing to wait for June’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) to unveil its follow-up to the Xbox. Computer & Video Games is reporting that Microsoft is planning a “one-off media event” to show off its new system in early April, based on information from unnamed sources inside and outside of Microsoft. VG247 has corroborated CVG’s information , saying it has “also received word of the April event,” and National Alliance Securities analyst Mike Hickey has previously said he expected Microsoft to announce its console successor in April. Internet sleuths on gaming forum NeoGAF have noted that the company that helped organize Microsoft’s E3 2012 media briefing registered the domain XboxEvent.com just yesterday , suggesting that, um, an Xbox event might be in the works. Practically the entire professional game industry will be gathered together in San Francisco at the end of March for the Game Developers Conference, which would also seem like a natural time for Microsoft to reveal its next-gen plans to an interested audience. Then again, Microsoft could use GDC as a sort of pre-tease tease, letting slip certain small, developer-centric details before a fuller April event. Read 1 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Reports: Microsoft planning to unveil Xbox successor at April event

Unpacking the Pixel: A first look at Google’s expensive new Chromebook

The Chromebooks we usually see around these parts can be summed up in two words: competent and cheap. This nicely sums up our reviews of both Samsung’s $249 ARM Chromebook and Acer’s $199 C7 . Google’s recently announced Chromebook Pixel goes against that grain: it’s a high-quality machine with a gorgeous 2560×1700 display, but you’ll pay a hefty $1,299 (or $1,449, for the LTE version) for the privilege of owning one. Our full review of the computer—and, with it, our continuing thoughts on whether this machine makes any sense —is in the works, but in the meantime we took the Pixel out of its box to give it a good once-over. “Understated” is an understatement The Chromebook Pixel’s box is simple to the point of being nondescript. Andrew Cunningham 15 more images in gallery Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Unpacking the Pixel: A first look at Google’s expensive new Chromebook

Qualcomm’s global LTE chip could help end iPhone fragmentation

Qualcomm yesterday unveiled a new series of chips designed to solve one of the nagging problems faced by smartphone manufacturers and smartphone users: a single phone isn’t capable of hopping on any cellular network. This difficulty caused Apple to release three versions of the iPhone 5, with support for different LTE networks. As a result, customers who frequently travel overseas had to think hard about which version of the iPhone they would buy, since different countries and carriers use different cellular bands. The iPhone uses Qualcomm chips . LTE has exacerbated this cellular fragmentation, Qualcomm said. “The wide range of radio frequencies used to implement 2G, 3G, and 4G LTE networks globally presents an ongoing challenge for mobile device designers,” Qualcomm Senior VP Alex Katouzian said in the company’s announcement . “Where 2G and 3G technologies each have been implemented on four to five different RF bands globally, the inclusion of LTE brings the total number of cellular bands to approximately 40.” Read 4 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Qualcomm’s global LTE chip could help end iPhone fragmentation

Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog

When Android 4.2.2 quietly debuted last week , most users were left guessing about what exactly had been included in the software update. Helpful community sites like AndroidPolice had put together a thorough listing of some of the new features in Android 4.2.2, but any official listing of updates had yet to be made. Today, Google published its official changelog for its Android 4.2.2 update, as well as everything else that comes as a part of the Jelly Bean package. Many of the bullet points marked as “new” actually identify features that have been included in Android 4.2 since its initial launch and have since been thoroughly discussed. However, the changelog does include some of the minor features not previously touched on, like networking changes that were made to improve Wi-Fi Direct support and faster captive portal detection. Updates also include minor features, like the fact that TalkBack can now be accessed right from the power menu. You can also view the entirety of the Google Cards updates that have been made in Android 4.2. If you’re curious, you can view the official changelog at Google’s official Android site, then try out some of the features you may not have known existed on your Android 4.2 device. Read on Ars Technica | Comments

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Google shows the world its official Android 4.2.2 changelog

Laser intended for Mars used to detect “honey laundering”

Matthew T. Rader A laser tool funded by the European Space Agency to measure carbon on Mars has been reappropriated to detect fake honey. The counterfeit goods trade might more commonly be associated with handbags and watches, but it turns out that the world of honey trading is also a murky one, riddled with smuggling and fakery. According to a Food Safety News investigation , more than a third of honey consumed in the US has been smuggled from China and may be tainted with illegal antibiotics and heavy metals. To make matters worse, some honey brokers create counterfeit honey using a small amount of real honey, bulked up with sugar, malt sweeteners, corn or rice syrup, jaggery (a type of unrefined sugar) and other additives—known as honey laundering. This honey is often mislabeled and sold on as legitimate, unadulterated honey in places such as Europe and the US. Read 10 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Laser intended for Mars used to detect “honey laundering”

Adobe ships new features, new apps, exclusively to cloud subscribers

Adobe today shipped the first public preview of Edge Reflow. First shown off last September , the new application for responsive Web design is designed to make it easier for developers to produce webpages that alter their layout in response to changes in screen size, enabling the same page to be used on both desktop and portable devices. The company is also shipping an update for three other tools. It’s adding direct support for using the free Edge Web Fonts to its Web development app Dreamweaver and its timeline-based animation software Edge Animate. Edge Animate is also picking up new support for CSS gradients. Finally, the Edge Code HTML editor, currently available as a preview, is being updated to support live previewing and a quick edit mode that allows scripts and styles to be edited where they’re used even when they’re stored in separate files. The new Edge Reflow app looks handy for those interested in responsive Web design, and the other improvements are pleasant if incremental. The most significant thing is not the updates themselves, however, but the fact that they’re being made exclusive to Creative Cloud subscribers. Buyers of the traditional perpetually licensed versions of Creative Suite are excluded. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Adobe ships new features, new apps, exclusively to cloud subscribers

Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic

TeleGeography New research (PDF) from TeleGeography, a telecom market analysis firm, shows that worldwide Skype usage is now equivalent to over one-third of all international phone traffic—a record level. The firm’s new data, released Wednesday , shows that “international telephone traffic grew 5 percent in 2012, to 490 billion minutes.” At the same time, “cross-border Skype-to-Skype voice and video traffic grew 44 percent in 2012, to 167 billion minutes. This increase of nearly 51 billion minutes is more than twice that achieved by all international carriers in the world, combined.” While that doesn’t mean that telcos are going to go out of business anytime soon, it does mean that they are certainly continuing to feel the heat. Read 3 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Skype calls now equivalent to one-third of global phone traffic

MediaPortal 2 Alpha 1 – Winter release!

Time for another Alpha release of the next generation in HTPC software: Med iaPortal 2 ! A lot has been done since the autumn release, so the path to Alpha 2 is nearly gone. Please be aware that this is still an Alpha release , meaning that it isn’t either feature complete nor bug free, and therefor is not meant to be used on a productive system. Make sure that you read the instructions at the end of this news regarding installation, upgrade and extension compatibility. Summary of changes Here is a list of major changes since the autumn release: The internal player handling of MediaPortal 2 got extended to control an unlimited number of players, which allows us nice things like Video Backgrounds Better input handling including support for key shortcuts (see Keyboard shortcuts ) Copy and paste support for Text Controls / Virtual Keyboard Added UPnP compression support, which improves network performance Reworked the Fanart handling both on server (extensible provider structure) and client (faster loading) Multiple monitors are now supported correctly, MP2-Client can also run fullscreen on secondary screen Integrated news plugin, using news ticker in home screen Support for more power options. This will be used later for an advanced shutdown menu (WiP) Support for reading metadata from video MP4-tags Support for picture geo location (lookup country, state, city from GPS coordinates inside EXIF) Several tweaks done to further improve performance And last but not least: The new skin for MediaPortal 2 – Titanium! Additionally there are new plugins available, ready to be used with the current Winter Release: Now it’s possible to use MySQL instead of Microsoft SQLCE, resulting in much better performance and no size limit for database. The required plugin can be downloaded separately from: ( MySQL database plugin ) Online Videos MP2 has been updated for Winter Release ( OnlineVideos MP2 ) ( coming soon : Integrated TVE3.5 test build: Test builds for Native MP2 TV ) Screenshots To get a first impression of the new Titanium skin take a look at those screenshots: Installation Before installing MediaPortal 2, you need to make sure all requirements are installed. Then simply run the .msi installer file. For screenshots refer to our installation wiki . Upgrade notes If you have an earlier version of MP2 installed, you need to recreate your shares for pictures . Due to the new location lookup feature the database has been extended. Remove your existing share, then add a new one for the same location. Feedback & Support Discuss this release in the official thread MediaPortal 2 Alpha 1 Winter Release! If you are looking for further information please check out MediaPortal 2 wiki first. We are heavily working to improve it. If you don’t find an answer there create a new thread in MediaPortal 2 forums . If you found a bug, please check Mantis & bug report forums first. If it has not been reported already, create a new thread. Download If you would like to support MediaPortal, we would be happy to receive a small donation ! The Team wishes you a lot of fun with this new release! .::. Download – MediaPortal 2.0 Alpha 1 Winter Release .::. :: Post a Comment ::

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MediaPortal 2 Alpha 1 – Winter release!

How we built a DIY book scanner with speeds of 150 pages per minute

Bookshelves today are simply not as appealing as they used to be, and there’s no shortage of people looking to digitize their own book collections. Fortunately, we now have easy and relatively inexpensive ways to digitize those books. You don’t have to slave away at your copier or scanner, either—we’re talking about building a book scanner of your very own. We’re not talking about the numerous book scanning services that have popped up in the last few years, offering book digitization at the cost of only a few cents per page. Nor are we talking about chopping off the binding of your book and feeding the pages into a copier or scanner, or purchasing a commercial book scanner for upwards of $10,000 (that just isn’t going to happen for most). No, we’re talking toolbelts, paint cans, bike brakes, and digital cameras—doing it yourself. For two law students interested in the legal and policy discussions surrounding copyright and technology, deciding to build a DIY Book Scanner was never just a project to digitize our own textbooks (however practical that might be). Instead, it gave us the opportunity to experience these issues first hand. Plus, we wanted to see what it would take to build one. Read 31 remaining paragraphs | Comments

Thanks, Adobe. Protection for critical zero-day exploit not on by default

dimland.blogspot.com The recently discovered zero-day attacks targeting critical vulnerabilities in Adobe’s ubiquitous Reader application are able to bypass recently added security defenses unless end users manually make changes to default settings, company officials said. According to an advisory Adobe published Wednesday night , the “protected view” feature prevents the current attacks from working—but only if it’s manually enabled. To turn it on, access Preferences > Security (Enhanced) and then check the “Files from potentially unsafe locations,” or even the “All files” option. Then click OK. There’s also a way for administrators to enable protected view on Windows machines across their organization. The revelation is significant because it means users aren’t protected when using the default version of the widely used document reader. The limitation came to light following the discovery of in-the-wild attacks against current versions of Reader, which are being exploited to surreptitiously install malware on end-user computers. The exploit is also noteworthy because its intricate code base bypasses several additional protections added just four months ago with the goal thwarting malware attacks. Read 6 remaining paragraphs | Comments

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Thanks, Adobe. Protection for critical zero-day exploit not on by default