As if no-one guessed already – Sony has officially announced plans to release 3D enabled games for its Move motion-sensing controller.
At the Tokyo Game Show, the Japanese consumer electronics giant revealed to the mass media plans to introduce 3D games to its PlayStation Move, while announcing 3D Blu-ray movie support for its PS3 console with a firmware update, which according to reports will be released on 21 September.
Opinions are divided, with others saying that 3D technology is both still in its infancy and an unattractive proposition to most consumers – a situation not expected to change for three years – and others claiming that it makes good business sense as a way for Sony to tout it’s OWN 3D TV sets. There’s also a belief that the Nintendo’s 3DS hand-held gaming device may steal Sony’s thunder, as its technology does not require special glasses. But Sony’s spokesman has refuted all anti-3D opinions, stating that the company is trying to promote the technology in content and that the 3D titles fall in same price bracket as their 2D variants. What do you think?
For most people, surfing the internet has become synonymous with clicking on the ‘e’ icon on their computers to launch Internet Explorer (IE). And while it is by far the most popular browser in the world, of late, IE had seen increasing threat from others such as Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera that claim to be faster, have more features, and more secure. Microsoft’s answer to all these criticisms has been to unveil a new version of the browser: Internet Explorer 9 (IE9). Read the rest of this entry »
Security vendor Avast takes a cue from its own name and a slightly aged Internet meme to bring you a pirate-themed approach to home computer protection.
Since last night, Avast has been preparing to celebrate the international “Talk Like a Pirate Day” that comes every year on September 19. Users using Avast! will at some point receive a prompt from the program telling them about Talk Like a Pirate Day and give them the option to install a special “Pirate English” language pack. This tongue-in-cheek new feature rebrands four of the main screens in Avast!’s user interface to use Pirate Speak for people who opt in to the feature through September 22.
The changes are actually quite minimal, but somewhat humorous. A skull-and-crossbones is added to the avast! logo, and the “Secured” text to confirm that the program is working correctly changes to say “Ship-Shape”, also stating, “Yer ship be secure.” Menu options are also renamed to a more pirate-y theme, with the Scan options being renamed “Scour the Ship”, the Virus Chest becomes the “Dead-man’s chest”, and so on. If you like a little bit of pirate humour, then you’ll like this new feature.
Google today have officially retired the original web-based interface for GMail, their own-brand email service, previously served to browsers unable to support the current interface or those who clicked the “Older Version” link at the bottom of the page.
Browsers incompatible with all the features of the modern interface are now forced to use the Basic HTML view, and the “Older Version” link no longer exists. Attempts to load the Older Version manually, by typing in the URL to it yourself, also fail.
Since the HTML version is incredibly limited in functionality, this change effectively means that Google has forced all GMail users into an “all-or-peanuts” situation – either having to use the default interfacer, with ALL of Google’s various features and tweaks if they want to use any feature not standard to email (such as Chat, Labs Features…); or going back to the dark ages. In this reporter’s opinion, expect to see a number of complaints in the upcoming weeks.
A Twitter user going by the user name of ‘nocchisan’, who apparently is or was an employee at Japanese Videogaming company Key Factory, tweeted that Key Factory is gearing up to launch 3DS peripherals to coincide with the Japanese launch of the hand-held on 20 November 2010.
However, shortly after the tweet was posted, the Twitter account disappeared completely from the service, taking the tweet along with it.
The tweet Read the rest of this entry »
To be honest, I’m quite surprised that Google haven’t approached this idea sooner, however now, according to reports, Google are now lining up their own online music store, which no doubt they are hoping will give Apple iTunes a run for its money.
Reports say that Google’s VP of Engineering, Andy Rubin, has been in touch with various record labels proposing the idea which he hopes will be ready by Christmas, although it would seem that at the moment no deal has been agreed.
So, perhaps we will see yet another Google vs. Apple battle – however Google will have to step up a gear and get some major record labels on board if they are hoping to have this service up and running by Christmas time.
Earlier this month, Google stated that they plan to kill off their revolutionary cloud collaboration service, Google Wave, citing lack of user interest (and prompting some protest). In case you didn’t know already, Wave was a collaborative communications suite that effectively combined email, instant messaging, wikis, and blogging abilities into one software that you could update in real time.
It seems that Google has got the message that some people liked Wave and had found effective uses of the software, and don’t want it to die; because they’ve now announced their plans for Wave’s future. Quite simply, Google has said that it will be offering developers a reduced-functionality version of its defunct Wave application suite dubbed ‘Wave in a box.” Read the rest of this entry »
SpywareBlaster is a popular tool for protecting your computer against the various nasties that lurk on the internet, ready to spread to and cause havoc on your computer. Unlike Malware Scanners, which clean and protect you from existing infections, SpywareBlaster is designed to prevent new Malware infections from ever getting installed from the moment it’s active. As Javacool Software, the parent company of the software, explain it:
SpywareBlaster focuses on prevention and protection. Removal deals with threats after they’ve already had a chance to wreak havoc and compromise your data. There are plenty of freely-available spyware removal tools. But few of them do anything to help keep your system secure. That’s why we initially released SpywareBlaster, and that’s why we’ve continued to strengthen its already powerful protection – to stop potentially unwanted software before it has a chance to get on your machine.
Recently, JavaCool Software updated the entire software package, bumping up its version number to 4.4. Those who have an older version should already have been notified to download the new version from the website, but if you haven’t been yet and didn’t know, or just needed a reminder, then I thought I’d just post this to remind you. Unfortunately JavaCool doesn’t post changelogs for its software, so I don’t actually know what the new version brings.
Last night, Google officially launched a new VoIP telephony service called GMail Calls. The service, which lives inside Google’s Email service, GMail, can be used to call landlines and mobile phones directly within Gmail, simply by clicking the new “Call Phone” icon. The service is currently only available for American users, but Google says they will roll it out to other countries as soon as they can.
It seems the service has got a significant early interest and may well prove to be a good move by Google, because in a statement released today, Google claims to have logged one million calls in the first 24 hours of the service being launched! Google is obviously pleased about this and is calling this a very successful launch, and who can blame them? Google confirmed the news in a Tweet, although it didn’t give information on where the callers were placed.
Just a few hours ago I saw this headline appear in the news. Since it’s attracted some interest in tech circles I’m a part of, I thought I’d repost it myself.
(This post was updated 20:35 BST with updated information about the deal. I’d like to thank The Register for their report of the news, which acted as the main source for these updates)
Intel has announced it is buying software-security company McAfee. The chip maker has offered $48 a share in cash for the anti-virus firm, a 62 per cent premium of McAfee’s Wednesday closing price of $29.93 a share. The total value of the acquisition, $7.68 billion, is Read the rest of this entry »