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Future Ford cars to balance MyFord Touch with old-fashioned buttons

While Ford’s MyFord Touch is a popular option for tech-savvy drivers, it’s not always the most intuitive — some complain that basic tasks, like radio tuning, are relatively awkward. The company is very aware of the feedback, as it’s now supplementing the touch controls with “traditional” buttons and knobs. Both the latest F-150 and future vehicles will reflect the hybrid approach. Ford is still giving touchscreens some love with a MyFord Touch update due this summer, but it’s clear that the company will keep one foot in the analog world for a while longer. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: SlashGear Source: Ford

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Future Ford cars to balance MyFord Touch with old-fashioned buttons

Samsung makes first PCIe-based SSD for Ultrabooks, we see one likely customer

Solid-state drives are so speedy these days that that even a SATA interface might not have the bandwidth to cope. It’s a good thing that Samsung has started mass-producing the first PCI Express-based SSDs for Ultrabooks, then. The new XP941 series uses PCIe’s wider data path to read at nearly 1.4GB/s — that’s 2.5 times faster than the quickest SATA SSDs , and nimble enough to move 500GB in six minutes. It also ships in a tinier M.2 format that makes past card-based SSDs look gargantuan, even when there’s up to 512GB of storage. Samsung hasn’t named laptop makers receiving the XP941, although it doesn’t take strong deductive skills to spot one of the (probable) first customers. When Apple is shipping a new 13-inch MacBook Air that just happens to use a very similar PCIe SSD from Samsung, there’s likely more than coincidence at work. Filed under: Laptops , Storage , Apple , Samsung Comments Source: Samsung

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Samsung makes first PCIe-based SSD for Ultrabooks, we see one likely customer

Microsoft Office Mobile for iOS quietly launches in the US, requires Office 365 subscription

After rumor upon leak suggested Microsoft was cooking up a release of Office for iOS, you’d think its arrival would be celebrated with streamers and cake. Making a rather low-key entrance, the app is now available to those with a small-screen iOS device and an Office 365 subscription. You can create new Excel and Word files from scratch, or view and edit spreadsheets, docs and Powerpoint files stored on Microsoft’s cloud services, or pinned to emails. Offline editing is also possible, as long as you’ve recently viewed or edited the file. You’ll also be able to see any files you recently accessed at home if your computer is running Office 2013 . You’ll need an iPhone or iPod touch running iOS 6.1 (there’s no iPad version just yet), and the app is limited to the US at the moment, but head to the iTunes Store source link for the full feature list. [Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Update: Check out our hands-on . Filed under: Cellphones , Internet , Software , Mobile , Apple , Microsoft Comments Source: iTunes Store , MS Office News blog , MS Office Technical blog

Facebook adds clickable hashtag support to your News Feed

Facebook wants to help you make your conversations just a little more discoverable (if you so desire), and it’s decided to finally include a long-missing feature — clickable hashtags — to the News Feed. If you’ve ever enjoyed hashtag searches on Twitter, Instagram or other social networks (some of our friends enjoy them a little too much, if you ask us), you’ll now have the same feeling of exhilaration on Zuckerberg’s service as you are now able to click on each one. Up until today, any hashtags from imported tweets or Instagram posts just showed up as regular text, with no backlink to accompany them. When it comes to the visibility of your own hashtags, Facebook won’t allow any unintended audiences to see your private updates, so you remain in control of your desired privacy. The company also plans to roll out trending hashtags and other related features in the coming months, but this is a good start for now. The company’s official blog post can be found below. Filed under: Facebook Comments Source: Facebook

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Facebook adds clickable hashtag support to your News Feed

Bing Maps adds 270TB worth of Bird’s Eye imagery, its largest update yet

If you thought the 215TB of satellite imagery Bing Maps added last year was hefty, think again. In what is the largest installment of Bird’s Eye shots yet, the mapping folks in Redmond piled on a whopping 270TB of high-res flyover images to their database yesterday. Some of the more notable (read: gorgeous) additions include overviews of Rome and Milan in Italy, Stavanger in Norway and Kaanapali in Hawaii. Aside from the new visuals, Bing also added a couple of improvements to its Venue Maps with an expanded points of interest list and a new “Report a problem” system so users can inform Bing if a location is marked incorrectly. So go on, head over to the source, select any of the amazing locales and take a little free trip to the other side of the world. Comments Source: Bing Maps blog

Quantic Dream’s 12-minute PS4 tech demo is ready for your viewing pleasure (video)

Now that the dust has settled from Sony’s E3 press conference , Quantic Dream’s posted the entirety of its PS4 tech demo, The Dark Sorcerer . Over on the PlayStation Blog , the studio’s director, David Cage, laid out the finer points of their experience with performance capturing and going from flexing the PS3’s graphical muscle to working with the next-gen powerhouse. When it comes to technical details, the Heavy Rain developer’s comedic sketch was rendered at 1080p in real-time (lighting and all), includes one million polygons for the set and just shy of a million for every on-screen character, which each boast 350MB of textures and roughly 40 different shaders. Impressed with what you see? Cage says it’s bound to get better. As it stands, the engine used for the demonstration is in its first iteration, and is missing features that are scheduled for the final version. “We can feel that we are closing in little by little on the kind of graphic quality we find in CG films,” Cage notes. Venture past the break for the video or hit the bordering source link for more background. Filed under: Gaming , Sony Comments Source: PlayStation Blog , PlayStation (YouTube)

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Quantic Dream’s 12-minute PS4 tech demo is ready for your viewing pleasure (video)

AMD wins race to 5GHz CPU clock speed, in which it was the sole participant

AMD has refreshed its lineup of eight-core FX chips in what sounds like some straightforward overclocking of last year’s products. The FX-9590 claims a clock speed of 5GHz in turbo mode, making it the “world’s first commercially available 5GHz CPU processor,” while the FX-9370 lags slightly behind at 4.7GHz, as compared to the 4.2GHz top speed of the current FX-8350 . Both new CPUs are based on the familiar Piledriver core, which has a reputation for being relatively cheap and easily overclockable (honestly, the 5GHz barrier was obliterated long ago ), but far behind an Intel Core i5 in terms of all-around computing. This is especially true since the launch of Haswell , which largely avoided clock speed increases in favor of architectural tweaks that didn’t compromise efficiency . Maingear plans to pick up the 5GHz part for use in a gaming system coming this summer, but there’s no word yet on pricing or even general availability for DIY upgraders. Now, we’re just speculating, but with AMD increasingly focused on APUs, it’s possible that today’s chips will represent the FX’s lap of glory. Filed under: Desktops , Gaming , AMD Comments

Quantic Dream’s The Dark Sorcerer demo highlights PS4’s graphics power

Remember the Emotion Engine from back in the PS2 days? Well, Sony’s still on about the emotional connection its consoles will bring to gamers — specifically, that of the PS4 . And to showcase the console’s graphical sophistication, Worldwide Studios head Shuhei Yoshida played a 12-minute tech demo of Quantic Dream’s upcoming PS4 title, The Dark Sorcerer . The majority of the demo focused closely on the sorcerer in question, giving gamers an early glimpse of the nuance and hyper realistic expression capable in characters’ eyes and faces. Only a short snippet was shown on stage here at E3, but if you want to digest the entire thing, Sony’s planning to unveil the full 12-minute demo tomorrow afternoon. Gallery: Sony E3 2013: The Dark Sorcerer Filed under: Gaming , HD , Sony Comments

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Quantic Dream’s The Dark Sorcerer demo highlights PS4’s graphics power

Apple announces new Mac Pro with cylindrical design, 12-core Intel Xeon E5 CPU, flash storage, Thunderbolt 2.0 and support for up to three 4K displays

It’s been brewing for a while, and now Apple has finally redesigned its flagship cheese grater pro desktop . The 2013-era Mac Pro has been totally redesigned with a new, cylindrical chassis and vastly upgraded internals that have been designed to last for “(another) 10 years.” At the center of the new Mac Pro is a 12-core, 256-bit Intel Xeon E5 processor with 1,866MHz DDR3 RAM capable of 60GB/s data transmission. Following the trend of the MacBooks, the new power tower uses PCIe-based flash storage, and so pro users will be relying upon four USB 3.0 and six Lightning 2.0 ports (that can take up to 6 devices per port with 20Gbps throughput) for expandability. Fortunately, for those of you who intend on placing the hardware beneath your desk, the expansion ports light up to help you find your connections in the gloom. Other connections include HDMI-out 1.4, dual gigabit Ethernet jacks, WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 and the usual pair of 3.5mm audio in and out ports. This machine is also the first Mac that’ll ship with dual AMD FirePro GPUs as standard, which’ll support 4K displays. Of course, the most striking change is in the design, which occupies 1/8th the volume of the current Mac Pro and stands 9.9-inches tall and 6.6-inches wide. The chance is thanks to a new thermal core, a triangular air duct that runs through the center of the hardware — with one huge fan mounted at the top. Presumably, this new model has also been tweaked to conform to new regulations concerning electrical shielding, meaning that the hardware can finally return to European shores when it arrives later in the year — at a (probably high) price that’s still to be decided. Gallery: WWDC 2013: Mac Pro Update: You can now check out our eyes-on of the new machine here ! Follow our liveblog for all of the latest news from WWDC 2013. Filed under: Desktops , Apple Comments Source: Apple

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Apple announces new Mac Pro with cylindrical design, 12-core Intel Xeon E5 CPU, flash storage, Thunderbolt 2.0 and support for up to three 4K displays

Killer Instinct returns as an Xbox One exclusive title

That’s right, folks. Killer Instinct is making a return to consoles. When it arrives, the title will be exclusive to the Xbox One . “We listened, and Killer Instinct is back, only on Xbox One” said Microsoft Game Studios VP Phil Spencer. No word on an exact release date, though, so we’ll bee keeping an eye out for those details. Follow our liveblog for all of the latest news from E3 2013. Filed under: Gaming Comments

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Killer Instinct returns as an Xbox One exclusive title

Ken May

Tag: the-end