Tag: the-end

Boeing tapped to build ViaSat-2 satellite, launch set for mid-2016

ViaSat-1 recently earned a Guinness World Record as the highest-capacity satellite in (or out of) the world, but it may need to hand off that title come 2016. ViaSat-2, the company’s next-gen bird, will double the capacity of its predecessor while also extending coverage to a larger portion of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, along with the aviation and shipping routes between the East Coast and Europe. Boeing will manufacture the new equipment, which will be based on the 702HP satellite platform. Once in orbit, ViaSat-2 will serve residential customers , air travelers and government agencies alike, with a massive seven-fold increase in coverage. There aren’t many details beyond that, but you’re welcome to dig through the press release, posted right after the break. Filed under: Wireless , Science , Internet Comments

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Boeing tapped to build ViaSat-2 satellite, launch set for mid-2016

Corning intros Lotus XT Glass for next-gen mobile displays, touts more efficient production (video)

Corning’s Lotus Glass promised a world full of thinner, more advanced mobile displays when it was unveiled in 2011, but it hasn’t always been easy to build with the volumes or features that customers want. Enter the company’s new Lotus XT Glass as the solution: clients can produce it more reliably at high temperatures, leading to more usable panels for our LCDs and OLEDs. The improved yields should not only result in larger device volumes than the original Lotus Glass could muster, but push the technological limits — Corning notes that hotter manufacturing allows for brighter, sharper and more efficient screens. The glass is commercially available today, although we’ll still need to wait for gadget makers to choose, implement and ship it before we notice the XT difference. Filed under: Cellphones , Tablets , Mobile Comments Source: Corning

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Corning intros Lotus XT Glass for next-gen mobile displays, touts more efficient production (video)

Windows Phone steals third place from BlackBerry in IDC smartphone ranking

First and second place in the smartphone OS wars is a foregone conclusion with Android and iOS (respectively) strongly entrenched , but the battle for third place is now full of intrigue. BlackBerry and Microsoft have each stepped up their games with their respective BB10 and WP8 OS’s of late, but so far it’s Redmond prevailing, having jumped two spots from last quarter to take third place, with a 3.2 percent share over BlackBerry’s 2.9 percent. While those two are fighting for third place scraps, Android kicked up its smartphone OS dominance with 75 percent of the global market, which is a huge jump from last year , while iOS fell back slightly to a 17.3 percent share. Between them, those titans owned 92.3 percent of the pie, but it’s arguably Windows Phone that has raised its game the most, with a senior IDC analyst claiming that this latest ranking “validates the direction taken by Microsoft and key partner Nokia.” Filed under: Cellphones , Mobile Comments Source: IDC

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Windows Phone steals third place from BlackBerry in IDC smartphone ranking

Redesigned Google Maps hands-on: vector-based, more personal and coming soon to mobile

According to Bernhard Seefeld, product management director at Google Maps, “this is the most significant overhaul of Maps since it launched in 2005.” We sat down with both Seefeld as well as Jonah Jones — lead designer of Google Maps — following a marathon keynote to kick off Google I/O . Their slice of the event centered around the desktop refresh of Google Maps , but there’s actually a lot more to be excited about than what was announced today. Essentially, the preview that I/O attendees were granted access to is the first instance of Maps for desktop using vectors instead of tiles. In lay terms, that’s a far sexier rendering engine, and users of the mobile Maps products will already be familiar with how it feels. Seefeld affirmed that the new desktop Maps is slightly quicker to load, but you’ll want a WebGL-supporting browser to take advantage of the bells and whistles. (In our tests, the Maps experience was far superior in Chrome compared to Firefox.) We toyed around with the new layout for a bit, and overall, it looks and feels better. Refreshing, you could say. The search box is now entirely more useful, popping up intelligent cards beneath places you search for. You’ll have glanceable access to operating hours, surrounding traffic and recommended places — that’s not new, it’s just surfaced in a more sensible way now. There’s also dedicated shortcuts to directions and starring. Visually, it looks a lot nicer, the zooms are a little cleaner, and the search box is a tad more useful. Street View is accessed via the search box now, and there’s a toggle on the right side that overlays Google Earth data and (impressively) shows it from varying degrees of tilt. The magic really begins after you sign in with your Google account. If you’ve starred or rated a restaurant using Google Maps or Google+, for example, it’ll automatically populate recommended eateries that your friends have rated highly. If, of course, your friends are using Google+. Gallery: Redesigned Google Maps for Desktop hands-on at Google I/O 2013 Filed under: GPS , Software , Google Comments Source: Google Maps preview

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Redesigned Google Maps hands-on: vector-based, more personal and coming soon to mobile

Google launches All Access music-streaming service in the US: $9.99 monthly fee

And now, one of the most anticipated I/O announcements. As rumored , Google has been working toward the launch of its own music-streaming service, and the official unveiling came today. Dubbed Google Play Music All Access, the product has a strong focus on personalized recommendations via the so-called Explore feature. Like Spotify and other services, All Access will let you start a radio station while listening to a particular track, and in-depth tweaking controls allow you to nix songs that don’t suit your fancy. Another feature demoed onstage is Listen Now, which highlights new releases and content Google thinks you’ll enjoy. As anticipated, All Access will require a monthly fee. A subscription costs $9.99 in the US, and all users will get a 30-day free trial. The service is launching stateside today, and if you sign up before June 30th, you’ll get $2 off the monthly fee. We’ll be taking All Access for a test drive as soon as possible — check back for our initial impressions. Gallery: Google I/O 2013: Google Play Music All Access Filed under: Google Comments

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Google launches All Access music-streaming service in the US: $9.99 monthly fee

ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU Mini set at $399 with May 20th release, up for pre-order (video)

ASUS’ GeForce GTX 670 DirectCU Mini graphics card first broke cover in April without a price or concrete release date, but now Newegg has dished out just those details along with extra specs. Loaded with 1,344 CUDA cores and 2GB of 256-bit GDDR5 RAM, the silicon boats a base clock of 928Mhz and a boost speed of 1,006MHz. The 6.7-inch-long hardware bound for diminutive — or even full-size — PCs rings up at $399, and is slated for availability on May 20th. Click the source link below to pre-order the dual-slot dwarf or head past the break for the retailer’s unboxing video. [Thanks, Cody] Filed under: Desktops Comments Source: Newegg

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ASUS GTX 670 DirectCU Mini set at $399 with May 20th release, up for pre-order (video)

Sign-up page for revamped Google Maps shows off plenty of new features

Just hours before its I/O event, Google has apparently had a little accident: the sign-up page for “the new Google Maps” briefly went live, revealing a slew of extra details about what’s coming in the rumored refresh before quickly being pulled. Droid-Life managed to grab some screenshots, including the one above, which gets to the heart of what Google is trying to achieve. The central idea is that Google will create maps tailored to the kind of information you’re looking for, using a “smarter search box” to highlight just the “things that matter most,” whether those be flights, ground transport or the new Earth View that integrates directly with Google Earth without the need for a plug-in. According to the leaked sign-up screens, the bringing together of all Google’s data will result in layers of information that reach “from outer space down to the streets” — but there’s still no evidence about how (or whether) this might work on mobile. Stay tuned to our Google I/O opening keynote liveblog for more. Filed under: Internet , Software , Google Comments Source: Droid-Life

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Sign-up page for revamped Google Maps shows off plenty of new features

AMD unveils Radeon HD 8900M laptop graphics, ships them in MSI’s GX70 (eyes-on)

Did you think AMD showed all its mobile GPU cards when it launched the Radeon HD 8000M series in January? Think twice. The company has just unveiled the 8900M series, an adaptation of its Graphics Core Next architecture for desktop replacement-class gaming laptops. To call it a big jump would be an understatement: compared to the 8800M, the flagship 8970M chip doubles the stream processors to 1,280, hikes the clock speed from 725MHz to 850MHz and bumps the memory speed slightly to 1.2GHz. The net effect is about 12 to 54 percent faster game performance than NVIDIA’s current mobile speed champion, the GTX 680M , and up to four times the general computing prowess in OpenCL . The 8970M is more than up to the task of powering up to 4K in one screen, and it can handle up to six screens if there are enough ports. We’ll see how long AMD’s performance reign lasts, although we won’t have to wait to try the 8970M — MSI is launching the GPU inside the new GX70 laptop you see above. We got a brief, hands-off tease of the 17.3-inch GX60 successor at the 8900M’s unveiling, and it’s clear the graphics are the centerpiece. We saw it driving Crysis 3 very smoothly on one external display while powering 2D on two other screens, albeit through a bulky set of Mini DisplayPort, HDMI and VGA cables. Otherwise, the GX70 is superficially similar to its ancestor with that chunky profile, an unnamed Richland -based AMD A10 processor, Killer networking and a SteelSeries keyboard. More than anything, price should be the clincher: MSI is pricing the GX70 with the new Radeon at $1,100, which amounts to quite the bargain for anyone whose laptop has to double as a primary gaming PC. Gallery: AMD Radeon HD 8900M presentation Gallery: MSI GX70 eyes-on Filed under: Gaming , Laptops , AMD Comments Source: AMD , MSI

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AMD unveils Radeon HD 8900M laptop graphics, ships them in MSI’s GX70 (eyes-on)

Amtrak to roll out high-efficiency trains with regenerative braking (video)

Some of us look at electric trains as efficient transportation almost by definition, but that’s not entirely true when they consume a lot of power and give little back. Amtrak is about to strike a better balance now that it’s close to receiving the first of 70 high-efficiency Siemens ACS-64 trains destined for routes across DC, Massachusetts, New York and Pennsylvania. Each engine centers on a regenerative braking system that can recover up to 5MW of energy, much of which goes back to the power grid. The machinery is smarter, too: it can self-diagnose problems and mitigate the impact until repairs are possible. Commuters won’t immediately notice the difference when ACS-64 trains reach the rails between this fall and 2016, but there should be important behind-the-scenes savings. Amtrak reckons that the new vehicles could lower energy consumption by 3 billion kilowatts in the long run, which might help both the company’s bottom line and local utilities. Filed under: Transportation Comments Via: Inhabitat , Wired Source: Amtrak

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Amtrak to roll out high-efficiency trains with regenerative braking (video)

PayPal targets Square with hardware trade-ins, waives fees through 2013

After watching its rivals Square and Groupon play their hands earlier today, PayPal announced a program that allows merchants to trade in their old payment processing equipment in exchange for new hardware. The promotional offer features POS systems from ERPLY, Leaf, Leapset and the company’s own PayPal Here . In addition to luring retailers with a fancy new cash register, the outfit is offering to waive credit, debit, check and PayPal processing fees for the remainder of the year . If the aforementioned incentives sound appealing and you’d like to know more, head on over to our source link to check out the program’s all-important fine print. Filed under: Peripherals , Software Comments Source: PayPal

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PayPal targets Square with hardware trade-ins, waives fees through 2013