News Archive

As 2013 ushers its way into existence, Mayans be darned, Microsoft will find itself planning to plug a hole that hasn't needed plugged in a very, very long time. The company's Chief Research and Strategy Officer Craig Mundie has announced that he'll be turning in his badge in 2014, after some two decades dreaming up big projects for the company....

With CES 2013 just around the bend, a few of the fancier items are beginning to surface early courtesy of FCC filings that are being unearthed. Generally speaking, a product destined for a U.S. reveal will scurry through the FCC's testing lair just days or weeks prior to its official announcement. And that seems to be the chain of events that...

Now that Foursquare is all grown up, boasting some 30 million members, the socially-minded check-in tool is adding some tender, loving care to its policies to usher in the new year. After the massive backlash against Instagram's haphazard terms-of-service update, it sure feels as if every app and startup is now being ultra cautious with how...

As of today, there's precisely a month before Research In Motion takes the wraps off of its forthcoming BlackBerry software platform. And that's a very, very monumental statement. RIM is in a very serious state of decline, with users flocking to Android and iOS and leaving their BlackBerry handsets behind like never before. The once-vaunted...

If there's one thing you don't want to happen when you run a website, it's for Google to shun you. Or worse. Today, that "worse" bit happened to one of the web's largest hosts of image files, used extensively on websites and social media. TwitPic, for some odd reason, was picked up in the latest Google sweep of malware sites, which meant that...

Intel being in the set-top business isn't news. The company has been producing SoCs that are ideal for boxes that hum along 24/7 handling media-related tasks, and while these chips aren't nearly as well-known as the Xeons and Pentiums of the world, they're being shipped in a large amount of products. But what if we told you those shipments...

Now that Ouya open source gaming consoles have shipped to developers, we’re getting a look at what the Ouya interface looks like and how the little unit performs. Developer Codezombiegames posted some videos on YouTube unboxing the package, looking at the parts, and fiddling with the interface. Ouya has already done a video unboxing,...

Microsoft is currently investigating reports of a zero day bug affecting Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8, the company announced in a Security Advisory. At issue is a remote code execution vulnerability that would allow attackers to seize control of a Windows PC. How it works is IE attempts to reference and...

Windows 8 represents a new era in computing, and at this early stage, some of Microsoft's major hardware partners are already speaking out about the touch-friendly operating system and its impact on computing. Fujitsu, for example, pointed to "weak" demand for Windows 8 as the reason why its PC sales are sagging. That's not exactly a glowing...

A few months ago, BLU Products introduced a killer Android smartphone to the world at a bargain price of just $250 unlocked. Now, for those who need a slightly bigger version of the Vivo 4.3, there's the Vivo 4.65 HD. It's called the "big brother," boasting a 4.65" high-def display, which has been improved in terms of quality with an HD Super...

As far as promising wireless technologies go, few have rivaled Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. But honestly, TransferJet has the potential to. It's a sophisticated communications platform with all of the right bells and whistles, but it has yet to gain the kind of mainstream attention and adoption necessary to make it a household name. But at CES 2013,...

In what can only be described as a bid to make its TecTiles product line a bit more... mainstream, Samsung has just announced that new Galaxy S III and Note II buyers are now eligible to receive not only a free flip cover, but six TecTiles. It's actually a pretty excellent deal, given that TecTiles typically sell for around $15 for a six-pack,...

For most smartphone owners, GPS has become an outright necessity. From navigation to deals apps that look at your present location to present offerings to you, there's a lot to be said about global positioning. But over the years, we've seen a few variations. There's GLONASS, for instance, and now China is predictably rolling out a variation...

Some Xbox 360 gamers are having to cope with an Xbox Live service SNAFU the first weekend after Christmas, one that prevents them from utilizing Microsoft's Cloud Saved Games feature. Everything else appears to be in good working order for the moment. "Xbox Live experienced a service issue today affecting some users of our Cloud Saved Games...

Mega online shopping site Amazon was proud as a peacock to announce its Kindle Fire HD is the best selling, most gifted, and most wished for product across its catalog of millions of items since the upgraded tablet was introduced 15 weeks ago, though stopped short of offering up specific sales figures. The next three spots belong to the Kindle...

As the end of the year draws near, it seems that we're starting to (finally) see some grace from the lawyers at Apple and Samsung. As the two were deadlocked in heated trials throughout the year, recently they've caved a bit in what feels like joint efforts to simply move on. Live and let live, as it were. Now, Apple has decided to drop patent...

You may not know it by listening to the evening news, but there's something of a silent war ongoing in the education sector. And perhaps not surprisingly, that war involves tablets. Apple held their own live event around 11 months ago just to show off their new iTunes U and iPad education initiatives, and Amazon started years ago by introducing...

When it comes to flying in the U.S., and dealing with either the FCC or the FAA, "red tape" comes to mind. It's a heavily regulated industry, and with safety at the forefront, there's at least somewhat of an excuse. But, it's still no fun to deal with, particularly if you're waiting for Wi-Fi to come to your favorite airline. But now, the...

We’ve been following the Ouya open source gaming console ever since it raised an astonishing amount of money in a very short amount of time. The latest development is that Ouya has 1,200 developer consoles on pallets ready to ship as promised, which is a good sign for the future viability of the ambitious project. Ouya says that the...

Every dog has its day, and every rose has its thorn. And clearly, every flagship gaming console has its retirement ceremony. Shortly after Sony announced plans to axe a final Walkman cassette player, the company has just announced that the aged PlayStation 2 console has been discontinued in its homeland, Japan. Shipments of the fabled unit...

Attention citizens of New York, be careful where you wield your iPhone, lest you make yourself a target for thieves. The crime rate is up in New York City, and according to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the reasons is because of the number of iPhone and iPad thefts that have occurred. A rise in thefts of Apple devices directly contributed to...

If Microsoft was hoping for a ringing endorsement for Windows 8, it won't find one from Fujitsu, Japan's largest provider of computer services. On the contrary, Fujitsu pointed the finger directly at the touch-friendly operating system, blaming Windows 8 as part of the reason why the PC maker will miss its annual shipment target for computers....

Each year, it seems as if Amazon outdoes itself in terms of holiday sales. As brick-and-mortar stores lose their luster, traffic becomes more annoying, and fuel prices continue to soar, kicking back and handling holiday shopping online just seems entirely more reasonable. And evidently, Amazon has become a role model for every other online...

A few months ago, feathers were ruffled as it was noticed that Apple was hiring mapping engineers as if they were going out of style. Now, a similar fuss is being made over new job postings at Google. Recently, there has been much talk that Google's cloud-based Docs suite is eating into the Office empire built by Microsoft, and we're moving...

Christmas Day is always a day filled with activations of new devices. After all, Santa's just there to bring new gizmos, right? Kidding aside, it's quite clear that the mobile movement is forging ahead, as Flurry's latest analytic data shows that December 25, 2012 was a record day for the activation of mobile products. This year, more iPhones,...

The CEO of the most valuable company in the world is taking a big pay cut for 2012. We're of course talking about Tim Cook, the man who took the reins from Steve Jobs as the head honcho of Apple, but lest you worry yourself silly over his reduced compensation package, understand that a man can still feed his belly with $4.17 million. That's...

The good news for TV manufacturers is that televisions are still the primary device for viewing content in the home, so they can rest easy in that respect. However, the "less than great news" is that TV manufacturers are doing a poor job executing a strategy to extend the TV's functionality beyond simple viewing, The NPD Group stated in its...

It’s time for our latest HOT deal, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction today is a Lenovo Ideapad Y500 15.6" Core i7-powered gaming laptop. After a huge 30% discount and free shipping, this relatively powerful yet sleek gaming laptop can be had for just under $800. (More powerful configurations are also available)....

There is a reason ASUS is so well respected amongst PC enthusiasts. The company has been making some of the best-performing, most feature-rich products in the space for years. Whether it’s a min-ITX motherboard, sleek Ultrabook, or a full-fledged, touch-enabled All-In-One system, ASUS has highly competitive products that are worthy of...

Emulation tools have been around nearly as long as modern-day operating systems and user interfaces. For years, users have been trying to figure out ways to run Program X on Operating System Y. Boot Camp, Parallels, you name it. Bluestacks has been a name thrown around all the more frequently in the emulation realm, and earlier this year,...

The Pebble smartwatch is most certainly in the limelight. After raising bookoodles of money on Kickstarter, the crowdfunded smartwatch has garnered the attention of the masses in a major way. And now, after it missed its September ship date, it's in the spotlight for another reason: ruining Christmas for some. All jesting aside, there's no...

It's long been rumored that Apple plans to launch its own brand high definition television, but let's not get ahead of ourselves. According to the latest water cooler chatter, Apple's next new product might be much, much smaller. So small, in fact, that you could wear it on your wrist. That's right, we're talking about a "smart watch." A technology...

It's most certainly a holiday season, and a quiet one at that, but is it also a season of change? For one Michael Goddard, the answer is "yes." While that name may not be a household one, anyone who has followed AMD in recent decades would recognize it. But soon, it'll be a name that's associated with Samsung. Advanced Micro Devices is still...

iRobot, and other sci-fi flicks of that kind, have made us reconsider what it is to be human. Robots have grown increasingly important in the consumer electronics universe, growing smaller and smaller while being more and more important to healthcare and science. But Roboy is hoping to take the mass appeal of robots to the next level, as it's...

Marvell on Thursday said it plans to appeal a jury verdict awarding Carnegie Mellon University $1.17 billion in damages for patent infringement claims brought against the company. At the center of the dispute are two patents -- U.S. Patent 6,201,839 and 6,438,180 -- that a federal jury found Marvell and its U.S. operating subsidiary, Marvell...

When it comes to communication apps, it's tough to even wade through all of the options. There's Viber, Skype, WhatsApp, Kik, iMessage, BBM -- the list goes on and on. But for those picking up a Samsung product, there's one app that hits you right square in the fingertips: ChatON. Samsung has this week announced the second major version of...

It’s time for our latest installment of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction today is an Apple MacBook Pro 13.3" with Retina Display. After discounts and free shipping, the machine is available for $1575, which is about $120 off the list price. The Apple MacBook Pro 13.3" with Retina Display being...

The LG Optimus G on Sprint sports a 13MP rear-facing camera so that you can shoot high quality photos about the size of Texas, and smartphones in general have upped the ante when it comes to snapping photos. Is there even a market for point-and-shoot cameras anymore? You better believe it. In an effort to stay relevant, we're starting to see...

Business-class laptops don’t get much love these days, due to all the buzz surrounding ultrabooks and tablets. But there are still plenty of jobs that demand the processing power, storage, and general flexibility of a true business-class machine. If you still use optical media like CDs or DVDs in your day-to-day computing, a laptop with...

Samsung's Galaxy Note range of phablets has taken off in a way that most outside of Samsung never could have imagined. New form factors are always a gamble, but it seems that splitting the difference between a tablet and a smartphone has paid off in spades for the Galaxy brand. In fact, even owners of the original Galaxy Note now have something...

Apple has always gone out of its way to keep users from tinkering with their iOS devices, from using funky screws and lots of adhesive to prevent do-it-yourself (DIY) repair, to locking down iOS so that it's extremely difficult to jailbreak. Speaking towards the latter, hacker i0n1c posted on Twitter that the upcoming iOS 6.1 update will be...

Acer is making white box tablet producers nervous with rumors floating around that the well-known computer maker is developing a $99. At that price, it’s likely to eat up a large chunk of the market share that is currently going to off brands, particularly in developing countries. At the moment, it doesn’t look as though Acer...

Netflix is gearing up to add something you’ve been wanting for a long time. What? No, it’s not HBO content. No, it’s not a better selection of new movies. This is bigger! Better! It’s…”social features.” That’s right, Netflix is getting closer to letting you share your viewing habits with...

Samsung took over as the top cell phone brand in 2012 (shipping 29% of all cell phones and 28% of all smartphones worldwide) and presumes to continue its upward trajectory in the new year. According to the Korea Times, Samsung believes it will sell 510 million handsets in 2013. The company estimates that it shipped 420 million devices this...

While the jury is still out somewhat on how successful the Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 platforms will be, Microsoft is apparently confident enough that it’s planning to open more retail stores in 2013. Microsoft is starting off the year by opening a half-dozen new locations, in San Antonio, Miami, Beachwood (Ohio), San Francisco, Salt...

Wondering what kinds of apps to cram onto that new tablet or phone that Santa delivered? Wonder no more. Google has just delivered its year-end list of Best Android Apps for the year 2012, taking the legwork out of finding those gems in the hundreds of thousands of so-so applications out there. The "Bests" are sorted by genre and category,...

A couple of years ago, the Stuxnet worm went on a bit of a rampage worldwide and hit Iranian systems especially hard. Primarily, it hit industrial targets including nuclear power plants and oil rigs. Stuxnet itself has faded a bit, although it was revealed this summer that another particularly nasty piece of malware called Flame had a lot...

Understanding Facebook’s privacy settings is notoriously difficult. Facebook’s services are constantly evolving (wait, we’re “poking” each other again?), therefore by nature altering which privacy settings alter what aspect of the service, and of course the privacy settings and policies themselves are always in...

It feels like Windows 8 has hardly had time to breathe since being let loose by Microsoft in late October, but already the rumors for the company's next OS, "Windows 9", codenamed "Blue", are beginning to spread. On Chinese forum PCBeta, member and Microsoft alpha/beta tester Maxy has given some insight of where the OS currently stands....

Is there an unwritten rule that all leaked photos of unreleased products have to be shot with what looks like a $25 kiddie camera from Toys R Us? It certainly seems that way sometimes, and it would explain why a new batch of BlackBerry 10 images look like crap. But let's not fuss any further over image quality; the real story here is that...

Datacenters are known for a lot of things. Their immense size, ultra-complex configurations, noise and sometimes, how futuristic some of them are. Noise is one of the biggest factors that tops most lists, however, and that noise is caused primarily by one thing: cooling. Even on our desktops and notebooks, efficient cooling is important....

Is there a better way to celebrate the day after Christmas than by bashing the skulls of zombies who are intent on eating your flesh? The correct answer is, 'No, there is not, so sign me up!' Lucky for you, The Walking Dead: Episode 1 -- A New Day is free to download and play on Xbox Live (and iOS, if you prefer). This is a great gift from...

You don't have to look far to find pundits that'll deny it, but you have to wonder if Microsoft is feeling threatened. Despite owning a colossal share of the desktop OS market -- a fact that isn't likely to change in our lifetimes -- the company's other facets aren't so well-grounded. Outside of the successful Xbox franchise, Microsoft's other...

Mitsubishi may have wound down its production of laser-based rear-projection television, but lasers are clearly too stylish to leave the display industry completely. LG has just let slip a new Hecto laser TV projector, which is set to make its official debut in just days at CES 2013. Reportedly, the rectangular black box will be able to produce...

 ECS A55F-M4(1.0) FM1 AMD A55 (Hudson D2) HDMI Micro ATX AMD Motherboard for $20 with free shipping (normally $40- use this form). CPU Socket Type: FM1 Memory Slots: 2x 240-pin Memory Standard: DDR3 1333/1600/1866 180GB Intel 520 Series Solid State Drive (BBSSDSC180A3K5) for $130 with free shipping (normally $200). Controller: SandForce...

CES 2013 is just around the bend, and it looks like a couple of companies are getting that boll rolling sooner rather than later. Instead of waiting for the official show doors to open, Samsung is taking the wraps off of a few secrets ahead of time. Thanks to shots seen in its Flickr feed, which the company is known for updating regularly,...

Exposing one of the troubles inherent with cloud computing, Netflix on Christmas Eve coughed up a hairball and left its paying subscribers without streaming video service until the next day. The outage affected subscribers in Canada, Latin America, and the United States. According to Netflix, the fault belongs to Amazon and its Web Services'...

Belated Merry Christmas to all of you that celebrate! Although the holiday has just passed, we still have some HOT deals rolling in, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. If you’ve got some gift cards burning a hole in your pocket, this slick Dell Inspiron 13z Core i3-based 13.3" Ultra-thin laptop may be right up your alley. With...

Good news, HTC One S owners, your Android 4.1 Jelly Bean update is waiting in the wings. Well, sort of. HTC has reportedly begun rolling out the Jelly Bean software to WWE (WorldWide English) handsets, which are those that are mostly sold in European markets. If you're feeling impatient for the over-the-air (OTA) update to arrive, you can...

At $199, Google Nexus 7 is already making waves, but it looks like the popular tablet could be headed for even lower price points, if component makers in Asia are right. Digitimes is reporting that the next Nexus 7 may come in at the enticingly-low price of $150, and a $99 price tag isn’t out of the question. If the reports...

Oppo may not be a household name in the U.S. smartphone market, but it's a name that's certainly building up steam elsewhere. The company has just launched the new Find 5 in a slew of international markets, and it looks as if world domination is the goal. Starting in Q1 2013, the high-end phone will begin shipping for $539 (for the 32GB edition),...

Who needs a GoPro when you've got an iPhone? That may have been a silly question a few years ago, but these days... not so much. Mophie has made a name for itself by producing world-class smartphone cases that double as external battery packs. While it started as an iPhone outfit, Mophie now makes cases for select Android phones as well. But...

Where portable gaming systems are concerned, this has to be some sort of record. Tommo's just-released Neo Geo X handheld has found itself in the hands of its first customers this past week, and already people have figured out how to run custom ROMs on the device. To call it a "hack" is a little generous, however, as the process involves little...

Years ago, 3D printing may have seemed like little more than a cool toy, but as we've seen things progress leading up to today, we can now see otherwise. Look no further than our recent roundup of three different consumer-level printer models. Sure - building miniature models is one thing, but others have even found even more important...

The legions of cord cutters have a lot of options to choose from. There's VUDU, Hulu Plus, Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, iTunes -- and that's just the major players. A growing cadre of smaller startups are also coming to light in order to deliver more and more content over an Internet connection versus a traditional pay-TV arrangement, and...

Talk about an unfortunate way to spend Christmas Eve. For a great many Netflix engineers, they're up right this moment working to patch up an error that has sent Netflix streams offline for many. Reportedly, there's an outage at Amazon Web Services that's impacting Netflix, leaving many people who are looking to stream some content on a rare...

At this rate, one has to wonder if die sizes won't be infinitesimal in 10 years. As process technology improvements continue to enable SoC makers to create smaller and smaller chips with more and more power, Samsung has been at the forefront of the push. Now, Synopsys has announced that its multi-year collaboration with Samsung on FinFET technology...

Mobile devices cater to a multitude of needs, but one of the most important and perhaps interesting is learning. Even in a country like the United States, where education and learning content isn't hard to come by, many parents have begun introducing their children to tablets. It's a way they can learn interactively, while having fun....

Remember the awesome yacht Steve Jobs commissioned before he passed away? Well, it was temporarily impounded over a payment dispute. Designer Philippe Starck and his lawyers contended he was 'only' paid €6 million (~US$7.9 million) for the €100 million (~US$132 million) superyacht, but was owed €9 million (~US$11.9 million)...

What we have on tap for you today is the Rosewill 9100BR. It's not as flashy as some of the other mechanicals on the market, but it gets the job done with style. So how nice is this Rosewill 9100BR? Pretty damn sexy. In fact, I'd say it hits the Goldilocks zone perfectly. If the Gigabyte Osmium's keys were a bit too light for your taste, but...

Software vulnerabilities will be the main target of cyber criminals in 2013, according to research by Panda Security's malware laboratory, PandaLabs. Java and Adobe in particular will prove points of emphasis for both cyber criminals and intelligence agencies in countries around the world. "In 2012, we saw how Java, which is installed on hundreds...

Rockstar has become a complete force in the gaming industry, producing one hit after another and continually pushing the envelope in terms of gameplay and graphics. But when it comes to Rockstar's star title, there's really no arguing: Grand Theft Auto has become a classic in so many ways. Spanning the gamut from iOS devices to top-tier home...

The good folks at Google have made it easy for you and your kids to track the jolly bearded guy in a red suit as he travels around the world delivering gifts. Google is getting a bit of help from the North Pole air traffic control elves, who are finished making toys for the year and have now turned their attention to relaying Santa's location...

The world of online reviews as it pertains to literature just got a little more unclear. To be honest, open-ended reviews from anonymous masses has always been dodgy. Hotels have long since spiked their own ratings, and many authors have recently started to do more than just simple outreach in order to solicit positive reviews for their work....

As Android tablets continue to fall in price, the iPad's market share dominance could be truly challenged in the coming year. Don't expect Apple to go down without a fight. A Japanese blog site is claiming that a thinner, lighter version of the 9.7 iPad will make its debut in March 2013. The timing seems curious when you consider that Apple...

Cheap tablets aren't anything new. After all, the $199 Nexus 7 is easily one of the most value-packed tablets on the market, boasting a slick design and an unadulterated copy of Android. But according to a new report, Acer may be trying to up the ante by racing down to the bottom. The company is reportedly looking to launch a tablet next year...

One of the difficulties in using solar panels is that solar panels aren't exactly easy to install. Most are big, stiff, fragile, and inefficient. But now, engineers at Stanford have developed a peel-and-stick alternative that sounds more like a 3M Post-It note than a scientific invention. The goal was to create flexible, decal-like solar panels...

Certainly, the Google TV platform has promise, but like a lot of intriguing projects, this one has needed more hardware makers to jump on board. The latest to get into the game wholeheartedly is LG, which announced its lineup of Google TV products for 2013. It appears that the Korean company will roll out 42-, 47-, 50-, 55-, and 60-inch TVs...

When it comes to Bluetooth headsets, there really are only a few names left in the industry making new ones that people are actually interested in. Perhaps it's because the whole "talking to yourself" fad never took off, but whatever the case, it's certainly a tough business nut to crack. But that's not stopping a new name from surfacing just...

It's a wild, wild world we're living in. These days, cars don't just get you places -- they offer a place for your gadgets to feel cradled. Toyota recently announced that the 2013 Avalon Limited would have a wireless Qi charging station in the console, and now BMW is going a step above on its own with built-in LTE technology. Automotive 3G...

3D body sensors are soon to be useful for more than just video games and sci-fi movies. Xsens has just introduced what it's calling the "world's first wearable 3D body motion tracking system" that's based entirely from consumer-grade MEMS combo sensors. The kicker here is the "consumer-grade" part. Finally, the cost is coming down in the world...

In around five weeks, the world is going to watch as one of the smartphone giants from the past two decades attempts to stay relevant. For years now, RIM's hardware just hasn't livd up to modern expectations, and despite a loyal following, BlackBerry's market share has slipped tremendously as BB users have slid over to iOS or Android. But...

If you're looking for a last minute Christmas gift, head on over to your local Wallyworld (if you can stand the crowd this time of year) and browse the Apple products, you might be surprised at what you find. Namely, Walmart is selling the iPhone 5 for just $127 in-store with a two-year service agreement to AT&T, Sprint, or Verizon. The...

Without getting too political here, you can't help but chuckle at the latest stunt (or whatever you'd call it) by the Free Software Foundation. The FSF recently rolled by a Microsoft store during the "Tech For Tots" session in order to spread a little holiday cheer. And, of course, to push copies of the Trisquel GNU/Linux operating system....

Oh Raspberry Pi, is there no end to the fun and creative projects of which you are a part? The latest nifty implementation of the tiny $35 Linux computer is a mobile Raspberry Pi machine called the Pi-to-Go. The brainchild of a fellow named Nathan Morgan, who dug into his nearby stack of Dell laptop parts for the battery he used to make the...

If BlackBerry 10 doesn't end up being the savior that Research In Motion (RIM) hopes it will be, then maybe RIM should a write a book titled, "How Not to Navigate the Mobile Waters." It'd be an instant hit, and might be even be required reading for every Nokia employee, a company that's struggling to regain relevance of its own. But that's...

If you've been misguided by Apple's own mapping software in iOS, you have to be thrilled that Google Maps is back and better than ever. Certainly many are, as Google Maps notched 10 million iOS downloads in the first 48 hours following its return, an indication that iPhone users were eager to run, not walk, back to mapping software that wouldn't...

As the months march on, we're starting to see a more varied array of form factors in the tablet universe. As companies move to differentiate themselves from the pack, we've seen firms like Asus offer up the PadFone, which essentially traps a phone inside of a tablet shell for quite the unique piece. Now, the TransPhone is emerging, and in...

When Amazon launched an Instant Video app for iPad, we heard a few grumbles from the Android crowd. A few weeks ago, Amazon ushered in an Instant Video app for iPhone, and then those grumbles got noticeably louder. Clearly, Amazon's listening to those who use the operating system that sits as the base for its Kindle ecosystem, as select Google...

Nick Woodman was inspired to create what would eventually become today’s GoPro wearable cameras after a surfing trip to Australia in 2002. He wanted to capture some close-up action shots and wasn’t able to with amateur camera gears. So he did what any enterprising entrepreneur would do and figured out his own solution to the...

NORAD may have decided to power their Santa Tracker engine with Bing maps this year but Google is stepping up to the mistletoe, with yuletide vigor, to help those on the "nice" list keep track of Santa's activities and of course that magical journey on Christmas eve.  Google's Santa Tracker page is loaded with goodies for good girls and...

Yesterday, we reported that a Kickstarter project called POP, a wireless charging station that could support all mobile devices, got effectively shut down after Apple refused to allow the developer to implement both a Lightning connector and a 30-pin iPod connector in the same device. The developer, Jamie Siminoff, lamented the turn of events...

Own a Nexus 7 tablet and are left bored with the default Android OS? Want to wipe it clean and install Linux? If so, you're in luck, as a couple of developers behind the KDE-derived Plasma Active project have just issued the first release of their distro specifically designed for the tablet. "Wipe it clean" is mentioned specifically above,...

Procrastination doesn't ever pay off, and if you're sitting pretty with a free preview of Microsoft's Windows 8 operating system (OS), be advised that the free ride is almost over. The Developer Preview (from September 2011), the Consumer Preview (from February 2012), and the Release Preview all expire next month on January 15, 2013. "Starting...

If looks could kill, the new 9.7-inch Titanium HD tablet from Archos would be lethal, at least based on the handful of pics we've seen. Even more impressive is the tablet's spec sheet, not the least of which includes a brilliant IPS panel with a 2048x1536 resolution, the same as Apple's 3rd and 4th generation iPad devices. Unlike the iPad,...

With Valve soon to launch its Steam client for Linux, the OS has its first real boon where gaming's concerned. Sure, there have always been games available for Linux if you've known where to look, and likewise, the Humble Bundle has been a definite help as well. But with Valve backing the OS for gaming, the future is very bright, and it may...

Could Motorola be the company in charge of designing the next Nexus phone? Hard to say for sure, but a new report from The Wall Street Journal suggests that Google is finally making good on its purchase of Motorola Mobility, and the results could be astounding. In a bid to directly compete with the iPhone, Samsung's Galaxy line and other flagship...

Some things get old, and some things get stale. But some things, they just never die. Such is the famed "Poke" on Facebook, which started out as "a thing," slowly faded to a feature that's tough to even find, and now it's evidently ready to resurface. Facebook has just announced its Poke app, available for iPad, iPod touch and iPhone. It's...

To commemorate the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., HotHardware and our friends at Thermaltake, Gigabyte, and AMD teamed up to put together one heck of an exciting full-system give-away! This time around you all had a chance to win an AMD FX-8320-infused, custom-built rig complete with 8GB of RAM, a Gigabyte 990FX-based...

It’s time for our latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction on this, the final Friday before Christmas, is a Dell Inspiron 660 Core i5-based Mini Tower. After discounts and free shipping, this machine can be had for just under $450—assuming the world doesn’t end at some point...

For as dominant as Apple has been in the smartphone market, the iPhone maker has been playing second fiddle, numbers-wise, to handsets running Google’s Android operating system. However, according to a report from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, Apple has nudged past Google to claim over half of the smartphone market share in the U.S. The...

The developers behind a Kickstarter project called POP (short for “portable power”), a multi-device charging station that would support virtually all mobile devices, were looking to raise $50,000 but found themselves flush with over $139,000 in support. The portable chargers looked promising, but the devs hit a brick wall when...

Polaroid confirmed plans to reveal an interchangeable lens camera that runs on Android at CES in January. Earlier this week, multiple sites claimed Polaroid planned to offer a mirror less compact system camera that will be called the IM1836. This camera will be manufactured by Sakar. The mirror less camera will reportedly feature an 18.1-megapixel...

As we get closer and closer to the launch of BlackBerry 10 on January 30th, more and more details are leaking out about what we might see. We've already had a glimpse at RIM's upcoming touchscreen device. A newly leaked picture suggests the L-Series handset may actually be referred to as the Z10. What's more, the new picture also features...

When it comes to Apple’s much-maligned Maps, anecdotes about the app’s mapping errors are easy to find. But data makes a more compelling argument, and that’s what CrowdFlower set out to get. The results of its research led CrowdFlower to peg Google Maps as the most accurate mapper out there, with Bing taking place...

Let's start with the good news. Apple's over-the-air (OTA) iOS 6.0.2 update is available and it brings with it a fix for "a bug that could impact Wi-Fi." Great, say goodbye to Wi-Fi glitches. And hey, the Mayans messed up; the world didn't end today, or at least it hasn't yet, so that's good news too, right? As for the bad news, well, here...

The lukewarm response to Windows 8 might be just what Linux needs to gain a wider mainstream audience. Either way, Linux is more popular than ever these days, and that's good news for Red Hat, the open source company that makes a living serving Linux to the enterprise market. Red Hat's revenue for its third fiscal quarter came out to $343.6...

One of the most unpopular decisions Apple ever made was to boot Google Maps from iOS as a native application and replace it with its own broken mapping software. Yes, that's up for debate, but there are also some hard numbers to back that assumption. One need only look at the rate of iOS 6 adoption before and after Google Maps returned to...

Perhaps Samsung's Galaxy S IV or V will sport a display that can bend over backwards without breaking or shattering into a million pieces. Such devices are coming, maybe sooner than you think. At the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next month, Samsung will kick things off by demonstrating a flexible display intended for handsets....

HTC's first love affair is with Android, but that doesn't mean the mobile handset and tablet maker isn't willing to flirt with Windows. That much was obvious when the company launched its Windows Phone 8X and 8S devices. Looking ahead, HTC also plans to a pair of Windows RT tablets. One of those will be a 12-inch tablet, according to Bloomberg....

Facebook sure is a different company now that it's on the stock exchange. Now that it's a for-profit entity with stockholders, the company has completely changed course, and it's having a serious impact on user experience. News feeds are now loaded with ads, and even video ads could be en route. But ads are a fact of life for the media business....

Well, it's time to start mentioning "Amazon" in the same breath as HBO and Netflix. While the company once did little beyond ship a myriad items from random warehouses to customers across the globe, lately it has been dabbling in far more. There's the Kindle line of hardware, of course, but then there's the video service, which is slowly but...

As guns and their associated violence dominate the current headlines in the wake of the unimaginable tragedy in Connecticut, the focus on and debate over the ability to print gun parts using 3D printing technology has intensified. Though not explicitly motivated by current events, 3D printing company MakerBot has deleted schematics for gun...

It's Christmas. Actually, it's the day before the fake Mayan apocalypse, Winter Solstice Eve, two days before Festivus, and five days before Christmas. Regardless of your chosen holiday, it's the magical time of year when the kinfolk you've spent 51 weeks successfully avoiding manage to squirm their way into your home like particularly determined...

Nintendo (NTDOY) is adding some value to its Wii U console with the launch of Nintendo TVii, which essentially uses the GamePad controller with its second screen and touch capabilities as both a remote control and a content aggregator. Nintendo TVii pulls in content from all over a user’s available sources, including cable or satellite...

It’s time for our latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction today is the slick Alienware X51 small form factor gaming PC. Not only is Dell throwing in a $100 gift card with this awesome, little box, but with discounts and free shipping, it can be had for only $799. The Alienware X51...

The expression "better late than never" fits like a glove when talking about the recent trend towards 15.6-inch Ultrabooks. We fully appreciate that Intel and its hardware partners made a concerted effort to slim down the notebook without sacrificing performance (unlike the once popular netbook form factor), but limiting the segment to 14-inch...

There's absolutely no shame in finishing second, especially when you're going up against the President of the United States. To wit, Time Magazine named Tim Cook the runner-up to its Person of the Year, giving the ultimate prize to President Barack Obama. According to Time, Cook is the first CEO of Apple to come to power "without blood on...

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) took a second look at Apple's "pinch-to-zoom" patent and this time decided to invalidate it. It's a preliminary ruling and Apple will undoubtedly appeal, but for now, it serves as a temporary setback in Apple's quest to sue the mobile world, and in particularly Samsung. The ruling also opens the...

Hard times have fallen on video game maker THQ, which reportedly filed for Chapter 1 bankruptcy this week. Affiliates of private equity firm Clearlake Capital Group L.P. will acquire THQ's assets for around $60 million, taking control of the company's four studios and any games currently in development. The sale will allow THQ to shed certain...

The Humble Bundle is back for a seventh iteration, and in a throwback to its earlier days, the newest package includes indie titles. As always, you get to name your own price for the bundle, after which you're afforded instant access to the games on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The seven titles up for grabs include: The Binding of Isaac + its...

Valve has some great news for the open source gaming crowd. The Steam for Linux beta program is now open to the public, meaning anyone and everyone can join. All that's required is that you download the latest Steam Linux client (or upgrade your current Steam for Linux client to the latest release) and you're good to go. The new client introduces...

The words "Motorola" and "billions" have hit the same sentence an awful lot lately. First, it was Google's involvement in buying Motorola Mobility. And now, Arris is set to acquire Motorola's Home Business for $2.35 billion in cash and stock. In the latest blockbuster deal involving the Motorola name, Arris -- hailed as a "global innovator...

There's a bit of good news coming out of the Apple camp tonight. Well, not out of the camp per se, but certainly impacting that camp. Kantar Worldpanel, a noted research firm when it comes to mobile market share numbers, has just cited a pretty impressive milestone for Apple. The latest data compiled by the company shows that Apple has achieved...

Automobiles are changing at a faster rate than ever before, particularly in the technology space. Historically, motorcars have evolved fairly slowly compared to the rapid pace of technological change, but now that technology is becoming an integral part of cars, the whole experience is hastening. Just look at Toyota's newest car -- the 2013...

Given all the rumors, it almost seems a foregone conclusion that Apple will at some point launch its own brand television set. It was the same situation with the iPad; rumors persisted for what seemed like an eternity before it became a reality, and now it appears an Apple TV is imminent. In fact, a news outlet in Taipei claims that Apple's...

Microsoft is really trying to sell small businesses on the idea of using Office 365. In an attempt to woo users away from using apps from rival Google, Microsoft tripled the length of its free trial for Office 365 Small Business from 30 days to 90 days. Microsoft refers to the offer as Plan P1. This trial offers small businesses cloud-based...

We found quite a bit to like about the Digital Storm Bolt Level 3 small form factor gaming PC when we reviewed it last month, including fine performance and a (mostly) smart and sexy custom chassis, but there were a couple of lingering issues that we weren’t thrilled about. Primarily, it was the noisiest PC we’d ever encountered,...

It’s time for our latest batch of HOT deals, straight from our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction today is a Dell XPS 13 Core i5-based 13.3" Ultrabook. With discounts and free shipping, this machine can be yours for just under $750, which is the lowest price LogicBuy has seen and $50 lower than the Black Friday deal. The Dell...

HTC has had some struggles over the past few years. Although the company continues to put out some really great looking phones, its struggles persist. The company has been affected by the launch of the iPhone 5 as well as declining prices in China. As a result, HTC has reportedly revamped its product roadmap for 2013. Citing industry sources,...

3D printing is a fascinating new technology and an exploding new market. The process involved is pretty basic actually. Heat up some plastic, and sort of like that Play-Doh Fun Factory you were so fond of as a kid, you extrude the melted plastic out to create objects of magnificence -- because you built it yourself... It all started back in...

Facebook is planning some big changes for its fairly tame advertising format, according to Ad Age. Right now, many ads are static images and a little text by your newsfeed. By Q2 of next year, you’ll be seeing video ads popping up. The plan is to make video ad spots available to advertisers in the computer and mobile app versions of...

It's easy to be cynical in this business when you see millions and even billions of dollars exchanging hands, and Mark Zuckerberg has certainly received his fair share of criticism. In the grand scheme of things, is Facebook really worth over $60 billion, as its market capitalization suggests? Probably not, but let's not overlook the fact...

500GB Samsung 840 Series Solid State Drive + Far Cry 3 Game Coupon for $314 with free shipping (normally $350). Controller: Samsung MDX Controller Max Sequential Read: Up to 540 MB/s Max Sequential Write: Up to 98,000 IOPS 4KB Random Read: Up to 48,682 IOPS 4KB Random Write: Up to 70,000 IOPS MTBF: 1,500,000 hours   Fractal Design Define...

Hey, good news everyone! After we're done ravaging the natural resources on this rock we call Earth and have turned it into an uninhabitable wasteland, there's another planet the human race can relocate to and nary skip a beat. Unfortunately, that planet is 12 light years away, which puts a small kink into our relocation plans. The planet...

Nokia, arguably the biggest champion of Microsoft's Windows Phone strategy, is apparently fond of Windows RT as well. Or perhaps Nokia believes it can build a better Surface than Microsoft. Either way, Nokia has reportedly resumed development of its own Windows RT tablet, which it will likely unveil at the 2013 Mobile World Congress (MWC)....

Mobile World Congress is quickly coming into view, and when it arrives, we expect handset makers to come out swinging with next generation devices that continue to push the envelope. HTC certainly plans on doing so. The company is reportedly waiting for MWC to reveal the well equipped M7, a new flagship phone that will take the torch from...

Instagram CEO and Co-Founder Kevin Systrom (pictured) dealt with a bad misfire by penning a blog post with a perfect title: “Thank you, and we’re listening”. The company made waves, to say the least, by altering its terms of service and privacy policy this week to make it seem as though Instagram was planning to sell users’...

One has to wonder what the technology universe would feel like if Apple and Samsung weren't at each other's throats. For months now, we've just seen the two tech titans battling like no other in courtrooms all across the globe, largely bitter of patents and who infringed on who. But all told, it's all rather boring. For consumers, it's all...

Remember Google Music? That was Google's attempt to cut into the growing music streaming business prior to iTunes Match becoming a reality, but one has to wonder what kind of traction the service has had in the months since. Google has remaining mostly quiet on new features for Music, but there's a new update today that may make it more attractive...

When dual core phones first hit the smartphone market several years ago, Tegra 2 was perfectly positioned across the smartphone and tablet market. Tegra 3 has done extremely well in tablets this past year; Nvidia has won high-profile designs with everyone from Google to Microsoft. In the past few months, however, it's become clear that Tegra...

It’s time for a fresh batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attractions this Tuesday—which happens to be the FINAL Tuesday before Christmas—is a Dell Vostro 3560 15.6", Core i7-based quad-core laptop. With a huge 40% discount and free shipping, this machine can he had for $774, delivered. The Dell...

For the past 14 years, Nokia has been the top cell phone brand. This year, there's a new leader: Samsung. According to analytics provider IHS, Samsung is expected to ship 29 percent of the world's cell phones in 2012. Last year, Samsung had 24 percent of the market and held the No. 2 spot. In 2011, Nokia held the No. 1 spot with 30 percent...

Crowd funding site Kickstarter has been host to some compelling endeavors, and the site offers a beautifully democratic way for people to back the kinds of products, technologies, and services they care about. The fundraising portion of these projects can be thrilling, as we saw with the open source gaming console Ouya, but of course once...

Apps are a key component of any mobile operating system. RIM recognizes this and is working hard to ensure its upcoming BlackBerry 10 platform will have plenty of apps to offer when it launches. In a recent interview with Forbes, RIM's chief marketing officer Frank Boulben said there will be more than 70,000 BlackBerry 10 apps when...

There are consumer projectors of nearly every shape and size and for a myriad of purposes. From big, feature-rich monsters ideal for large home theaters to tiny pico projectors (which can now be found in some smartphones), there are projectors available now that let users display photos or video for a small audience almost anywhere. In the...

It was only a little over a year ago when Twitter announced that it had 100 million active users posting tweets every month. Here we are at the tail end of 2012 and that number has more than doubled, a statistic that should finally put to rest any talk that this whole thing is just a fad. "There are now more than 200M monthly active @twitter...

In a change that will prove laughably unpopular, Instagram has altered its terms of service so that it can sell your photos to other companies for the purposes of advertising. The new policy stresses that users own their content, but the language is clear that Instagram can take what you own and do with it just about whatever they like. The...

Do you think Apple users may have missed Google Maps after the Cupertino company unwisely kicked the native app to the curb? You better believe it. The proof is in the numbers, and according to Google's Jeff Huber (Senior Vice President, Geo and commerce), Google Maps was downloaded more than 10 million times in 2 days after returning to iTunes....

The U.S. government is embracing this thing called the Internet. No, you still can't vote in presidential elections while sitting in front of your computer in your skivvies, but for the first time, you will be able to participate in government surveys conducted by the Census Bureau. Giving U.S. households the ability to respond online is part...

Fair warning to any company that's still interested in trying to acquire Hulu, the price may have just gone up. The streaming service had a heck of a year, ending 2012 with more than 3 million paying Hulu Plus subscribers contributing to approximately $695 million in revenue, the company announced in a blog post. That's an addition of more...

Samsung on Tuesday expanded its Galaxy line with the introduction of the Galaxy Grand, a smartphone that's being marketed towards "users with fast-paced mobile lifestyles" and who "demand more from their phone." The sleek looking devices reflects Samsung's penchant for larger size screens with a spacious 5-inch display. It also includes a...

Microsoft's Windows Phone platform is closing in on three years old, yet it still holds less than five percent of the global smartphone market share. For a company with as much recognition as this, and as many marketing dollars to spend, that's fairly poor. With Windows Phone 8, the platform is evolving nicely, and the hardware that has shipped...

It's unlikely that Google Fiber will ever blanket all of America. After all, the cost for that could easily put Google in a serious bind after spending billions upon billions on infrastructure. But for the Kansas Cities in the middle of America, things are looking great in terms of Internet. Google first started rolling out fiber Internet...

AMD has just released some preliminary information regarding the company’s upcoming Radeon HD 8000M series of mobile GPUs. Based on the naming convention alone, it may obvious to many of you that the Radeon HD 8000M series is AMD’s second generation of products featuring the GCN (Graphics Core Next) architecture, which debuted...

You don’t hear a lot about MIPS Technologies, Inc., but the company’s technology is important to the embedded processor industry and is found in millions of devices. It’s also apparently important to chip designers Imagination Technologies and Ceva, Inc. The former has now outbid the latter and is buying MIPS for $100 million....

Linksys routers have become virtually ubiquitous in consumers’ homes over the years, but parent company Cisco (NASDAQ: CSCO) is reportedly looking to sell off the brand. Cisco is looking to get out of the consumer business and focus more on enterprise software and services, and unloading Linksys will be a big step in that direction....

It’s time to kick off a new week, with a fresh batch of HOT deals courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The features attraction this Monday is a set of Sony Extra Bass In-Ear Headphones (model: MDRXB60EX/GLD). With free shipping and a huge discount (50% off!), these headphones can be had for just under $40. These Sony Extra...

If you've been itching for a game to showcase a new video card, or to rub in the faces of your friends, with their 2005-2006 Xbox 360s and PS3s, Far Cry 3 is that game. It eschews the space-gray corridors or military battlefields of other franchises for the lush tropical environments the Far Cry series is famous for, and the game absolutely...

At last check, Windows 8 has had a difficult time getting off the ground. Sure, it's selling millions of copies, but given the hype leading up to its launch, the reaction has been quite timid. Personally, I know very few people who've gone out of their way to upgrade, with most trying to actually avoid it. This is really no surprise given...

Global semiconductor revenue saw a downswing in 2012 compared to one year prior, dropping 3 percent to $298 billion, according to preliminary results by market research firm Gartner. The top 25 players were collectively hit the hardest, as their revenue dropped 4.2 percent, surpassing the industry average and accounting for a smaller portion...

Sprint and Clearwire have reached an agreement whereby Sprint will purchase roughly half of Clearwire for $2.2 billion (approximately $2.97 per share). After the transaction is complete, Sprint will have full ownership of Clearwire. The announcement comes days after Clearwire shareholders said a $2.90 per share offer from Sprint was too low....

If you’ve been following the evolution of the tiny-and-inexpensive computer Raspberry Pi, you’re probably not too surprised to know that the Pi Store launched today to give budding and mature developers and chance to share and sell their programs.   The Pi Store is an X application under Raspbian and is also accessible on...

Is there anything Google can't do these days? Apparently the sultan of search can even predict which next generation game console is likely to be the top dog. The mystifying answer to which is going to be more popular, Microsoft's Xbox 720 or Sony's PlayStation 4 (or whatever each console will ultimately be called) can be found by glancing...

Ask any child who celebrates Christmas and he or she will tell you that the big day is just over a week away. They keep track of these things, the way adults keep tabs on their favorite sports team, and understandably so. How cool is it to wake up to a pile of loot that a man in a red suit delivered the night before? The logistics of Santa's...

Video games aren't just for kids, nor have they ever targeted just a single demographic. In fact, the average gamer is 30 years old and has been playing games for 12 years. And the average age of those who purchase games most often is 35 years old. Are you at all surprised? These statistics come courtesy of the Entertainment Software Association...

Why brave obnoxious crowds and deal with bad drivers when you can get all you holiday shopping accomplished online? The convenience of online shopping is not only catching on, but it just had its biggest week ever, along with several days the past month that surpassed $1 billion in spending, according to data by comScore. For the holiday season...

In-car entertainment has changed a lot over the years, and for the most part, we're living in an era where the electronics in one's vehicle is actually pretty impressive. No, voice directions don't really work as they should, and it's all pretty hit-or-miss, but when you consider that integrated iPod support is pretty much a standard feature...

China is a perplexing place in terms of how it impacts Apple. It's the place that has caused Apple tons of trouble in terms of bad PR, stemming primarily from Foxconn suicides and tales of terrible working conditions to assemble items like the iPhone and iPad. It's also home to a huge amount of knockoff Apple products, and even knockoff Apple...

The quest for a bullet-proof but human-usable CAPTCHA continues. A couple of months ago, we talked about a CAPTCHA implementation that relies on human empathy to bypass, but for a couple of reasons, it might not be ideal for a lot of people. Now, the folks at Minteye have given us yet another option: slide-to-fit. The idea is simple, and so...

The transistor, the fundamental base to all of our electronic devices, turns 65-years-old today. Though the concept of a transistor had been worked on decades earlier, it was on December 16, 1947 when John Bardeen and Walter Brattain operated the first transistor based on a point-contact design. Gold sheets were used as point contacts, separated...

Harry Potter’s invisibility cloak was almost too fantastical a magical item (and made for a cheap and easy literary foil to allow some of the main characters in the series to move from place to place and eavesdrop) to be believable even in fantasy novels, but a company called Hyperstealth Biotech Corp claims to have a camouflage material...

Someone fire up the theme song from Austin Powers, Mozilla found its mojo on the desktop -- oh, behave! Mozilla made the claim in a blog post reflecting on 2012 and all the advancements it's been able to make to its Firefox browser. "We streamlined and we upgraded. Our performance and memory teams didn't incredible work," Mozilla said. "The...

Walmart may be able to save you a few bucks this holiday shopping season, provided you're in the market for Apple gear. We're not talking about ancient devices, either. One of the discounted items up for grabs is the 16GB iPhone 5, which Wally World is selling for $127, a fair amount cheaper than its usual selling price of $199. The 16GB iPhone...

We all know the world is gravitating to wireless. The only real question is this: "When's wireless power going to get serious?" Well, that and the other one: when is 1080p wireless streaming going to be ubiquitous? A few companies have tried out video streaming solutions, with Intel's WiDi and Apple's AirPlay being two major players on the...

For a good while now, high-end Nokia smartphones have been planted in the Lumia line using Windows Phone, while lower-end Nokia phones were planted in the Asha line running an OS that hardly anyone in America could even pretend to care about. But now, it looks like Nokia's spreading its wings a bit. The company's newest Lumia just happens...

If you’re one to tinker with computers, you probably already know about the Raspberry Pi Model B, which is a tiny, barebones computer that consumes very little power and cost a mere $35. It really is a no-frills system – it doesn’t even have a case – which is what makes the system so appealing to many DIYers: what you...

For the past few years, Google's been making a concerted effort to act a little more mature. A little less "throwing things against the wall," and a little more focused. Every quarter or so, the company makes the tough decision to sunset certain projects that simply aren't impacting a large enough crowd. You have to make careful choices in...

What do you do when the world jumps into its hand basket? You build a fort and survive, of course. And while you’re waiting for the apocalypse, a good way to practice might be Forsaken Fortress, should it come to pass. Think of a post-apocalyptic version of The Sims and you’re in the right neighborhood. If you build it, they will...

In what is probably the best free agent pickup in computing in a very, very long time, Google has hired Ray Kurzweil as Director of Engineering. Yes, that Ray Kurzweil, the inventor and futurist who came up with all that synthesizer technology and regularly prognosticates on the technological innovations of tomorrow. His primary tasks at Google...

When you download that banking app to your tablet or smartphone, do you ever wonder if it’s legitimate? Security software publisher Kaspersky Lab recently found some fake banking apps on the Google Play Store, which Google promptly removed upon being alerted. The fraudulent apps are for Russian banks in this case.   This Russian...

Microsoft earlier this week rolled out a streamlined design for its social sidebar feature for Bing, making it easier to find contacts relevant to your search query based on what they've shared, blogged, or tweeted. That same feature has now been ported over to the Safari browser on iPad tablets, including the iPad mini. "Whether you're planning...

One of Apple's hesitations in releasing a small size tablet was that it would cannibalize it's 9.7-inch iPad sales, but was that an unfounded concerned? Not according to at least one analyst, who lowered his iPad shipment forecast after seeing the 7.9-inch iPad mini jump out to a fast start. The iPad mini has been selling so well that Apple...

The next time your spouse says video games are a waste of time, you can point out that a home invasion victim recently used his Xbox 360 to call for help. If that’s not a reason to rush out and buy a console (or three), I don’t know what is. In a pinch? Your headset may be the fastest way to call for help. According to reports,...

Dropbox might be a mainstay, but it's forcing a tougher road ahead with iCloud and Google Drive being widely available and growing rapidly. Now, however, the company is giving iPhone, iPod and iPad users a reason to stick with it, with a new v2.0 update. Now all of your photos are right at your fingertips with the brand new Photos tab. With...

To commemorate the Thanksgiving holiday here in the U.S., HotHardware and our friends at Thermaltake, Gigabyte, and AMD have teamed up to put together one heck of an exciting full-system give-away! This time around we're giving you all a chance to win an AMD FX-8320-infused, custom-built rig complete with 8GB of RAM, a Gigabyte...

HTC's EVO LTE isn't the only phone receiving a shiny new Jelly Bean update. Today, AT&T announced a similar update for its Motorola ATRIX HD. Customers who have a Motorola ATRIX HD will be able to update their phone to Android 4.1 aka Jelly Bean starting today. With the update, you'll get popular Jelly Bean features such as Google Now...

We’ve all done it; you’re trying to navigate around an app or web page on your smartphone or other mobile device, and because of your meaty adult-sized fingers, you accidentally click an ad that kicks you out of whatever you’re doing and takes you elsewhere. Even Google, who makes its bones on ad clicks, recognizes that this...

Google’s numerous and mostly excellent apps, which include Gmail and Drive, will not be getting the Windows 8 nor Windows Phone 8 treatment. Clay Bavor, product management director for Google Apps, told V3 that the company currently isn’t planning to develop its apps for the new Windows platform. "We have no plans to build out...

It’s time to close out another week, but not before we dish out the latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction this Friday is a Dell Inspiron 660s Quad-core, Core i5-based Slim desktop system. With discounts and free shipping, this relatively powerful system can be had for just under $450....

Is there any stopping the iPad from tablet dominance? Give it time and Android is likely to skip ahead in market share simply by sheer volume and the number of partners pumping out devices based on Google's open source operating system, but it won't happen next week, next month, or even next year. The iPad is still incredibly popular, and...

Apple's been known to be fickle when it comes to relationships with its hardware partners, and the latest evidence of that might be found in a job posting. The Cupertino company is in search of a Hardware Systems Electrical Engineer, one that has experience in either AMD or NVIDIA GPUs, it doesn't matter which. Or does it? NVIDIA currently...

If you live in Seattle and you’re a heavy bandwidth user, here’s some good news: you may be getting a fiber connection right to your house in the near-ish future. Seattle and the University of Washington have teamed up with Gigabit Squared to test a public fiber network that will bring high-speed Internet to homes and businesses...

PC gamers are in for a treat. I can confidently say that after watching the latest Dead Space 3 trailer, which looks every bit as spooky as fans of the franchise were hoping, but also features great voice acting and sound effects. In the event Dead Space 3 turns out to be a turd, it will have nothing to do with cinematics or the ambiance....

Samsung has always subscribed to the philosophy that size matters, and that's never been more evident than with the company's Galaxy Note line. These devices are so big that they dance the line between a smartphone and a tablet, creating a new category called phablet. The question is, at what point should Samsung stop increasing the screen...

If you want to know what's trending, a good place to start is iTunes, given the wild popularity of Apple's iPhone and iPad devices. And if you're new to iTunes, a head on over to Apple's newly posted Best of 2012 categories, in which the Cupertino company lists the top sellers in various categories. For the iPhone, Angry Birds pretty much...

Need more storage? Face it, we all go. And that's why Kingston Digital is shipping a 128GB version of its Wi-Drive. The 128GB model enables even more sharing and storage. It's a 128GB drive with a built-in Wi-Fi module and a battery that'll stream content from the device for up to four hours. Basically, it's a pocket-sized portable storage...

When it comes to Android updates, it sure feels as if the carriers get in the way. While unlocked, pure Google ("Nexus") devices seem to see updates nearly as quickly as Google finishes them, Android phones stuck on a carrier have yet another barrier of QA testing to live through. Sprint's phones have been seemingly held back forever when...

It’s time for the latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction this Thursday is a Planar Helium 27" LED-Backlit LCD Touchscreen. With discounts and free shipping, this large touchscreen (which is perfect for Windows 8) can be yours for just under $700. The Planar Helium 27" 1080p Touchscreen...

Dell has been rather quiet on the mobile front lately, and there’s good reason: the company is officially getting out of the smartphone game, rendering your Streak, Aero, and Venue handsets instant relics of mobile computing history. Dell’s Jeff Clarke (pictured) told Forbes, “It needs a lot of investments to really be successful,”...

Intel’s upcoming fourth-generation Core-i7 CPUs (codenamed Haswell) promise to be game-changers, and we’ve reported on some of the specifications of its accompanying Z87 chipset, as well. Apparently, VR-Zone has gotten its hands on leaked details of the impending processor line, including the targeted launch date of April 2013....

If there's one industry that could seriously use a disruption, it's the world of ISPs. Yes, we have options, but too few -- in some locales, none at all. FreedomPop has been trying to shake things up for some time on the mobile front, but now the company has started to accept limited pre-orders for its new home wireless broadband modem scheduled...

The next version of Linux will not support Intel 386 processors. That's bad news if you haven't upgraded your machine in, oh, 20 years or so, but other than for the sake of nostalgia (and to give those old machines some real-world purpose), the discontinuation of support for old CPUs isn't likely to send shock waves through the Linux community....

Amazon is evidently looking to aggressively push its Cloud Player platform on as many devices as it can by the end of the year. In two separate announcements, the mega e-tailer announced that its Cloud Player is now available on Roku streaming players and Samsung's 2012 model Smart TVs in the U.S. "We’re excited to bring Cloud Player...

Gaming is something we've done quite a bit of over the years, but sitting down to pick a list of the most addictive games ever proved surprisingly tricky. Addictive games aren't necessarily the top sellers, or record-smashing behemoths. Sometimes, their appeal is measured in near-perfect execution of a narrow concept, while other games keep...

Searching images on Google can be risky business, especially if there's an underage viewer nearby. Double meanings and innuendos can turn an otherwise innocent search query into a rather steamy slideshow, and that can be hard to explain if your kid, wife, or boss strolls by at the wrong time. Google isn't oblivious to the issue, and to help...

The sly dogs at Samsung fired off a humorous cheap shot at Apple in Australia that makes fun of the whole Apple Maps fiasco. Of course, making fun of Apple and it's legion of fans isn't exactly new territory for Samsung, this one just happens to hit really close to home, especially for Australian motorists who were warned by police not to...

Once again, Facebook is reworking its privacy controls in an attempt to address what some feel is the social networking site's Achilles Heel (a major blemish for a company that's considered one of the best to work for). In addition to giving users more tools to play with, Facebook is also focusing on making it easier to wield its privacy controls....

A couple of months ago, we caught wind of a curious and somewhat dark story about a law student who was attempting to develop schematics for a 3D-printable gun (only to have his 3D printer seized when the leasing company, Stratasys, caught wind of what he was doing). Wherever you fall on that particular issue, it brought to mind some of the...

In September, Apple ditched Google's mapping data in order to switch to its own maps app. The results were horrible, eventually causing CEO Tim Cook to issue a public apology for the maps fiasco. Apple's troubles didn't end there. Earlier this week, Australian authorities warned people against using Apple Maps and went so far as to call...

There's no shortage of peripherals for Mac users these days, and Logitech certainly has a history of producing a good amount of them. Now, the company has introduced a new Bluetooth "Easy-Switch" keyboard as well as a Wireless Rechargeable Trackpad. The Logitech Bluetooth Easy-Switch Keyboard features Logitech Easy-Switch technology –...

“Zeitgeist” is a word that should be in everyone’s vocabulary. Roughly meaning “spirit of the times”, the term sums up so many things about a culture at a given point in history. Google has a Zeitgeist 2012 website that shows the world’s most searched topics from this past year, broken down by subject, type...

Smart TVs are intriguing pieces of technology that seem to foreshadow a future where our TVs and computers are one and the same. It seems that if nothing else, one of the things that computers and smart TVs--in particular, some of the ones made by Samsung--have in common is a vulnerability to hackers. According to Threat Post, security researcher...

Early last month, we learned about what Google had in store for its "App Verification Service" that comes bundled with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean). The concept was simple; the app would gather bits of information about any app you are about to install, send that information to Google's servers, and then send back the a-OK or a red flag. Sounds...

It’s time for a fresh batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction today is a Dell Inspiron 15R (5520) 15.6" Core i5-based laptop. With discounts and free shipping, this puppy can be yours for just under $500. The Dell Inspiron 15R featured in the deal sports a Core i5-3210M 2.5GHz CPU, 6GB RAM...

Glassdoor recently announced its fifth annual Employees' Choice Awards. This list provides a look at the 50 best places to work as selected by people who actually work for these companies. There are a number of tech companies that make the list, but Facebook takes the No. 1 spot. Scoring 4.7 out of 5 stars, Facebook has been reviewed by 159...

There are plenty of great game trailers out there, but the one that just hit YouTube for Metro: Last Light will really make your trigger finger itch. Great graphics are to be expected, but they’re nothing without compelling imagery, and this game has that in spades. Subway tunnels that make you feel claustrophobic? Check. Haunting wreckage...

We've known Verizon and Coinstar were teaming up to offer a streaming and physical media service similar to Netflix. Earlier this month, we even heard suggestions the service could launch by the end of this year. With just over two weeks of 2012 left, there's not much time for these two companies to get the service off the ground if they want...

You can find some interesting things when browsing through filings on the US Patent & Trademark Office's website. One such patent that has intrigued is an airbag for mobile devices, such as your smartphone or tablet (though it could also be applied to any handheld gadget, like a digital camera or media player), which was recently awarded...

Olive has big plans for a home music player that can connect to virtually any device, app, and service you have that might store or play music. The aptly-named ONE All-In-One Home Music Player is a slick, cylindrical device with a touch interface and support for a wide range of music formats and connections. Olive is looking for music/gadget...

A Vietnamese website has posted what are supposedly the first real images of Research In Motion's (RIM) upcoming BlackBerry 10-based smartphone. If the pictures aren't legitimate, someone deserves kudos for a fine Photoshopping, because they sure look real. Best of all, they're not blurry, as leaked photos have a nasty tendency to be. In full...

MSI FM1 AMD A55 Motherboard + A4-3400 APU + 8GB Corsair XMS3 Memory for $75 with free shipping (normally $140)   Use these forms: One Two Three Four Foscam FI8910 Wireless 480 TVL Dome-Shaped IP Surveillance Camera (black or white) for $65 with free shipping (normally $100)   Acer Aspire S3 13.3" Ultrabook for $449 with free shipping...

There was a time when 5-inch and larger smartphones were scoffed at. The term "phablet" was coined and holding one of these things up to your head typically meant a bit of ridicule was in order. However, as devices got thinner, lighter and ever more sleek, the 5-inch smartphone has become a hot commodity with devices like the Samsung Galaxy...

The next iPhone model may ship in a variety of colors. Jefferies analyst Peter Misek wrote in a note to investors that the rumored iPhone 5S is destined for a June 2013 release, and that it will be available in 6-8 color options. It's unclear if he has some inside info he's working with, or if he's basing his prediction on the fact that Apple's...

Instagram scored a $1 billion bid from Facebook simply by popularizing the practice of tarnishing an otherwise well taken photo with funky filters, and now Flickr is getting in on the fun. Maybe Yahoo's hoping Google will fork over a similar buyout offer for its photo sharing division? More likely, Yahoo's just giving users what they want,...

I'm a big fan of DirecTV, without which I'd have a harder time following my Boston sports teams now that I no longer live in the New England area. It's an expensive luxury, as all those sports packages quickly add up, and apparently DirecTV has found other ways of cashing in on the love of competition in America. The satellite provider has...

Just as Instagram finished making its dramatic exit from Twitter, Pinterest stepped onto the scene with Twitter Card support. The feature means that you can put Pinterest photos in expanded tweets. Twitter has been working to improve the way images appear in its famously short messages, leading to Twitter Cards. This is good news for...

Windows 8 is expected to be a key player at CES 2013, despite the fact that Microsoft's severely lessening its presence at the show after this year. As the products and accessories begin to roll out, Amped Wireless is introducing what it calls the first high-power Wi-Fi adapter for Windows 8, enabling Win8-based tablets and notebooks to pack...

It’s time for our latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction this Tuesday is the Dell U2713HM UltraSharp 27” LED-backlit LCD monitor. With discounts and free shipping, this baby can be on your desk for just under $630. Features of the Dell U2713HM UltraSharp include a WQHD (2560...

Intel set the solid state storage market ablaze when it released the X25-M a few years back. Up until that point, solid state drives had steadily been improving in performance, but there was no real dominant player in the space. When the X25-M arrived though, with its proprietary controller, firmware, and NAND, it blew the doors of the competition...

Following in the footsteps of Microsoft, which released a revamped Outlook.com a couple of months ago, Yahoo! has today begun rolling out updated Yahoo! Mail clients for the Web, Windows 8, iOS and Android. In a post made to Yahoo!'s corporate blog by CEO Marissa Mayer, she states that the company's users have long requested "fewer distractions"...

In keeping with its strategy to unify all screens in its product ecosystem, Microsoft has added a SkyDrive app to the Xbox 360 that allows you to see, interact with, upload, and share your SkyDrive photos and videos in the living room. You can pull up your SkyDrive media and easily show images or video from an event (bringing the living room...

Intel has been promising it for months, and now the company has officially announced the Intel Atom S1200 SoC. The ultra low power chip is designed for the datacenter and provides a high-density solution designed to lower TCO and improve scalability. The 64-bit, dual-core (four total threads with Hyper-Threading technology) Atom S1200 underpins...

If it wasn’t for the Internet meme, you might not know that a well-dressed monkey was wandering the parking lot at Ikea in Toronto this week. Seriously, what did our parents do all day, without the interwebs? What about their cats? Anyway, the now-famous seven-month-old rhesus monkey, Darwin, went to Ikea with his owner, lawyer Yasmin...

It took a little longer than Linus Torvalds would have liked, but after a last minute delay and an extra Release Candidate (RC) release, Linux 3.7 is all polished up and out in final form. Torvalds initially hoped to roll out Linux 3.7 last week, but said he was "uncomfortable" with the release candidate due to some last-minute issues, most...

Hobbit game publisher Kabam announced that it secured investments from Warner Bros. Entertainment and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios (MGM). Terms of the deal were not disclosed, though it should be noted that Warner Bros. owns the rights to the upcoming trilogy of Hobbit films. "Partnering with Warner Bros. and MGM is a natural fit for Kabam...

I've often wondered what would happen if Google day decided to call it quits and pulled the plug on all of its services. Could you imagine what kind of disruption that would cause? The truth is, many of us have come to rely pretty heavily on Google's services, so even just simple (and temporary) outages sometimes hit users hard. Users on several...

HTC 8X owners have begun to receive the first over-the-air (OTA) update for Windows Phone 8. The update introduces a persistent Wi-Fi feature, which prevents the handset from switching over to cellular mode after the display's been turned off, and also fixes a rebooting issue some HTC 8X owners had complained about. According to WPCentral,...

You rarely hear politicians talk about patent reform, but perhaps it's high time the topic merits some discussion. The alternative is to leave the system alone and let businesses pay the price, even if they can't afford it. According to researchers at Boston University School of Law, the cost for businesses paying royalties to patent owners...

Lenovo announced the new ThinkPad X1 Carbon Touch. This ultrabook is optimized for use with Windows 8 and features touch capabilities. The X1 Carbon Touch weighs 3.4 pounds and measures just 20.8mm thick (about 0.82 inches). Thanks to its carbon fiber construction, the ultrabook offers strength and durability not found on other notebooks....

Ever wanted to add a filter to your photo, but not through Instagram? Perhaps only on Twitter? Now, there's an app for that. As the photo wars heat amongst the big players in social networking, Twitter has updated its iOS and Android applications to feature eight new filters from Aviary. In other words, the new Twitter app will let you add...

Need some new keys this winter? Don't worry, ROCCAT has you covered -- if you love wild, colorful gaming keyboards, anyway. The company has just introduced the ROCCAT Isku FX, a new gaming 'board that automatically tweaks lighting depending on in-game actions. The Isku FX features off-white UV-coated keys and your choice of backlighting in...

The tablet world is a highly fluid one. On the hardware side, new rivals seem to be coming and going with record speed, and in terms of software, there's still so much experimentation going on due to the young nature of the platform. As Google tries to fend off arrow from Apple claiming that its tablet apps aren't actually engineered to render...

It’s time for the latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction today is the Amazon Kindle Fire HD 8.9” tablet. With discounts and a coupon code, this device can be had for just under $300. According to LogicBuy, this is the lowest price they have seen for the 8.9” Kindle Fire HD....

While we all wait patiently for the latest edition of the 3DMark benchmark, Futuremark is releasing a new test for Windows notebooks and desktops called 3DMark Cloud Gate. Cloud Gate is designed to offer a benchmarking tool for gamers with more modestly-spec’d systems, such as entry-level DirectX 11 rigs that won’t be able to handle...

Although it's already flooded with a slew of excellent devices, the smartphone market has shown no signs of letting up. While Samsung and Apple are dominating the charts in terms of global hardware market share, Android's continued rise in the smartphone space has also been bolstered by devices from companies like HTC, Sony, and LG. In fact,...

Like many companies, Samsung is gearing up for CES 2013. There has been plenty of speculation as to when Samsung will officially unveil the follow up to its flagship Galaxy S III smartphone. Most rumors suggest Samsung will unveil the phone either at CES in January or at Mobile World Congress in February. Although details are relatively sparse,...

The inaccuracies in Apple's new mapping application have been well publicized. Apple has acknowledged issues, and CEO Tim Cook has even issued a public apology for the maps fiasco in iOS6. It's been a couple months since Apple replaced Google Maps with its own app and the company is still working to improve things. Although overhauling the...

Jason Sadler, the creative entrepreneur who figured out he could sell the shirt off his back (literally) for advertising space, has a new scheme in mind. He's selling his last name to the highest bidder, and believe it or not, bids are coming in. If nothing changes between now and when the auction ends on December 12, 2012, his new name will...

Cabs really haven't changed much over the years. Sure, some of them now accept credit cards, and some of them arrive when you hail via your smartphone, but by and large things are mostly the same as they always have been. But now, it feels like the future is finally catching up with the taxi business. The city of London already has a growing...

CyberPowerPC is a boutique PC builder known for, among other things, its Zeus line of custom gaming rigs, and the company is lending the brand name to a new series of all-in-one desktops, as well. The Zeus Touch series is now available and includes the Zeus Touch 1000, 2000, and 3000. The AIOs were made with a “minimalist tablet-like...

Don't worry if you missed out on all the Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals that came and went, there are still bargains to be had as we plunge deeper into the holiday shopping season. One of them comes from Amazon, but you'll have to act fast. For today only, Amazon is advertising a coupon code to save $50 off the normal price of its Kindle...

Apple chief Tim Cook recently announced plans to invest $100 million towards moving some of his company's manufacturing operations to the U.S.. It's a move that, at the very least, would give Apple more control over working conditions, which have oft been criticized at Foxconn. But would it also mean higher priced electronics? Probably not....

Google Now, an all-purpose alert system introduced in Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, is hopping over to the desktop. It will be integrated into a future build of the Chrome browser, giving desktop users access to the same groovy alerts and notifications that Android users receive, such as birthday reminders, weather alerts, nearby traffic information,...

Just as we always suspected, Valve's push from the PC to the living room isn't going to end with Big Picture mode. The next logical step, and one that Valve hinted at before, is to jump over on the hardware side of the equation and launch a PC-based console of its own, a "Steam Box," if you will. Confirmation of Valve's plans comes from Kotaku,...

Don't look now, but Square is getting hip with Passbook. While Apple's Passbook feature remains mostly unused for many, devs and apps are slowly getting their act in order for compatibility. Now, the mobile payment provider has opened up support for both gift cards as well as Passbook, just in time for the holidays. The Square Wallet app has...

Hot on the heels of news that Microsoft's Surface tablets haven't been selling too well thanks to "channel problems", we now have a developer speaking freely about its lack of success with selling its established game through the Windows RT Store. Rubicon's Great Big War Game has been available for Android and iOS for quite some time, and...

In an increasingly competitive wireless landscape, Sprint is reportedly trying to sweet talk satellite provider Dish Network into working together on providing mobile phone service over the carrier's network. The discussion has been going on for several months, though it's unclear if the two sides are close to an agreement or not. According...

Google may have pulled the biggest prank of the year by launching its much coveted Nexus 4 smartphone, only to tease buyers with a shortage of inventory and long wait times for the lucky few who managed to place an order. Could it really be that Google and LG simply failed to anticipate the demand a powerful and pure Android phone would elicit?...

Ever been on a flight with a TV in the headrest? Sadly, too few planes still have these, but those fortunate enough to see one may have seen some fairly compelling content of late. But evidently, more of that is to come. YouTube has reportedly signed a deal with Virgin America that would see an airline offering YouTube channels for the first...

It seems that Barnes & Noble is serious about getting its NOOK under the Christmas tree this year. This morning, it chopped the price of the NOOK Simple Touch from $99 to $79. That has to gall people who have been picking them up in the past few weeks, but it’s good news for the procrastinators. The NOOK Simple Touch was already...

An end of an era? Only if you didn't think the era was already over. The famed cassette tape has had one heck of a run, and even though the CD itself is finally dying, the cassette was seemingly still hanging around in some areas beyond consignment shops. Sony's Walkman will forever live long in consumer lore, enabling music lovers to carry...

Atari isn’t the only gaming institution celebrating anniversaries this year. Capcom is commemorating 25 years of both Mega Man and Street Fighter, two of the most beloved gaming franchises from the 1990s, by delivering a free crossover game for the PC that combines the Mega Man universe with Street Fighter characters as bosses.Indeed,...

The jury is still out when looking at Surface RT sales, as Microsoft itself hasn't even given the world at large a hint beyond Steve Ballmer's "modest" quote. All the while, the company has come clean with numbers surrounding Windows 8 licenses sold and Xbox units sold during Black Friday, giving pundits plenty of reason to believe that sales...

One of the more annoying parts of flying, outside of the ridiculous TSA security process and the notoriously packed flights, is the whole "turn your phones off" thing before taking off. While the skeptics would argue that it's just a myth that a phone could wreck a plane's GPS system, the FAA takes the "better safe than sorry route." But now,...

Seems like a couple of companies are in the giving mood this holiday season. Sony and Box have just renewed a nice promotion through 2013, enabling those who buy an Xperia smartphone with Android 2.1+ to grab 50GB of Box cloud storage for free. Box works much like Dropbox or Google Drive, but getting a full 50GB for nothing isn't a bad deal....

Security researcher Carlos Reventlov discovered a vulnerability in Instagram version 3.1.2 on the iPhone 4 (iOS 6) that leaves users’ Instagram accounts open to attacks. Specifically, users are at risk for partial eavesdropping and man-in-the-middle attacks that a ne’er-do-well could use to delete photos or even take over a user’s...

There's no love lost between Google and Apple. Steve Jobs once vowed to destroy Android even if it meant bankrupting Apple, and given his competitive nature, there's every reason to believe he fully meant it. More recently, Apple raked one of Google's hardware partners (Samsung) over the coals by winning a $1 billion patent verdict. Despite...

After being shunned by Target and Walmart, both of which stopped carrying Amazon's Kindle line because of the small profit margin (and because Amazon is major competitor to their brick-and-mortar business model), Amazon is taking its Kindle Fire tablets to GameStop. The new and used games retailer is more than happy to oblige and is already...

Wireless power feels like one of those technologies that really should have taken off by now, but it just hasn't. And it's really tough to pin down exactly why that's the case. Every year about this time, usually during the CES before-and-after period, we start to hear rumblings all over again. Now, Texas Instruments is announcing that it...

Handset makers have a bad habit of leaving customers in the dark about upcoming Android updates or, at best, offering up vague release schedules. That isn't always the case with Motorola, which just updated its Android 4.1 Jelly Bean roadmap with a few specific dates. It's especially good news for Atrix HD owners, who are next in line to receive...

Up to now, there’s been a free version of Google Apps for Business and a premium version, but Google is changing that policy. Henceforth, all new Google Apps for Business customers will be required to pay $50 per user per year. Although customers will no doubt be a bit unhappy with the new structure, they are getting a little something...

RIM's upcoming smartphone launches are going to play a huge role in how the company competes in the market moving forward. As a former leader in the smartphone market, RIM has an uphill battle to fight if it wants to be one of the top smartphone manufacturers once again. With Android and iOS currently enjoying great success, it's easy to wonder...

It’s time to close out another week, but before we go we’ve got a fresh batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The features attraction this fine Friday is a Dell Inspiron 17R Ivy Bridge-based 17.3" Laptop with Windows 8. With a huge 33% discount and free shipping, this machine can be yours for just under...

Apple introduced its new iMac models in October, and although the 21.5-inch version is now available, the 27-inch version’s ship date keeps getting pushed back. You can still preorder it from Apple, but the initial ship date of sometime in December is no longer happening. Instead, the website says that the models will be available to...

By May 15, 2014, all four of the nation's top wireless carriers (AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint, and T-Mobile) will support emergency texting. U.S. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski said all four of these carriers have committed to major deployments of text-to-911 in 2013. The rollout is scheduled to be available...

Since the Raspberry Pi's launch, we've seen the market surrounding these small all-in-one system boards explode. Usually, however, any form of competition that comes along amps things up only so much. Maybe a slight RAM boost, performance increase or the addition of some other functionality such as wireless. Well, for those tired of seeing...

Text-to-speech and adjustable font sizes are two features that have been around for years on Kindle devices to help vision-impaired Kindle owners with learning disabilities. Now Amazon is bringing "Voice Guide" and "Explore by Touch" to its standard definition Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD 7" tablets. These two accessibility features were...

The online game company responsible for Farmville, Mafia Wars, and other online games that clutter your Facebook feed with various requests has an request of its own. Zynga wants Nevada Gaming Control Board to approve is application for online gambling in the U.S., a process that could take up to 18 months. Zynga already offers real-money...

Kudos to Samsung for not resting on its laurels with what many would consider the best Android smartphone on the market (and you could argue it doesn't need the "Android" qualifier). We're of course talking about the Galaxy S III, and along with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean, which both T-Mobile and AT&T have pushed out, Samsung is upping the...

Intel Chief Paul Otellini recently announced that he plans to retire from chipzilla in May 2013, which leaves the world's largest semiconductor player plenty of time for find a replacement. Who will it be? That's the big question that nobody knows the answer to, though Otellini did indicate that it's likely to be someone who already works...

For the past year or so, YouTube has made a pretty concerted effort to act a lot more like a proper TV outlet, and less like an outlet for goofy cat videos. Of course, goofy cat videos will always feel at home on YouTube, but parent company Google is seriously hoping to make it more than that. This week, YouTube expanded on its Guide efforts....

AMD announced late today that it's reached a new wafer supply agreement (WSA) with GlobalFoundries. This is the second time AMD has renegotiated the agreement this year, and while the new arrangement offers Sunnyvale some needed flexibility, it carries further penalties as well. First, a few quick explanations. The WSA governs the purchase...

Wireless carrier T-Mobile is finally and nearly officially going to start offering the iPhone and other Apple products beginning next year. We say it's "nearly" official because parent company Deutsche Telekom didn't specifically single out the iPhone, but did say that it hammered out an "agreement with Apple to bring products to market together...

It’s time for our latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The featured attraction this Thursday is Lenovo’s diminutive IdeaPad Yoga 11 convertible ultrabook. With discounts and free shipping, the Windows RT-based Yoga 11 can be had for $665, which is a big 22% discount from the original asking price. The Lenovo...

Archos on Thursday announced the retail availability of its new GamePad device, or the "first true Android games console," as the company pitches it. The Android-powered GamePad is a new type of tablet that combines physical gaming button controls and Archos' patented mapping tool with a full Android tablet experience built around Jelly Bean...

If you’ve been losing sleep over rumors that Intel was planning to do away with socketed CPUs and move to soldered-in-place ball grid array chips, rest easy; the company told Maximum PC that it would stick with LGA sockets for the foreseeable future. Although noting that Intel can’t really comment on its long-term roadmap for processors,...

When USB flash drives first came to market it was a revolution. They offered much larger storage capacity compared to floppy disks, packaged in something about the size of a person’s thumb. Suddenly, you could just save your papers, presentations, and even a smattering of photos onto a little flash drive and safely take it with you anywhere....

Perhaps it was the iFixIt teardown a few days ago that showed some new iMacs are stamped with “Assembled in the U.S.A.” that prompted the announcement, but in any case, Apple CEO Tim Cook told both Bloomberg and NBC’s Brian Williams that Apple is moving some of its manufacturing operations back to the good U.S. of A with...

Some of us do it in the dark, others do it with the lights on. Heck, I've even done it in public, more than once. Yes, at some point or another, we all drop our smartphones (what did you think I was talking about?, and it's a little surprising it doesn't happen more often when you think about the number of times it gets handled in a normal...

It's not every day a music artist hits 1 billion views on YouTube. Asian pop artist Park Jae-sang, who is also known as PSY, is getting ready to do just that, however. PSY's hit "Gangnam Style" has been viewed nearly 900K times on YouTube since it was released in July. As you might expect, PSY is making lots of money from this hot song. However,...

PC gaming has long had a reputation for being more difficult to get into than consoles, due to the plethora of potential hardware combinations and the pitfalls of bargain-basement OEM systems. PC gamers are used to seeing minimum game specs that occasionally imply the marketing department lives in an alternate dimension, but the question of...

AT&T is enjoying record sales of smartphones this quarter. As a result, the wireless carrier could exceed expectations for smartphone sales for the entire year. While speaking at an investor conference, Ralph de la Vega, CEO of AT&T's mobility arm, said AT&T has already sold 6.4 million smartphones in the first two months of the...

If you ordered and paid for a single iPad tablet but received a box full of five iPads, what would you do? Such is the ethical dilemma a son and his girlfriend found themselves in after the boy's mother ordered him an iPad from Best Buy only for him to receive five of them. Before you say one way or the other, it should be made clear that...

Finicky investors weren't as high on Apple yesterday as they have been in the past. Apple's share price dropped 6.4 percent on Wednesday, representing the company's biggest single-day drop in four years and shaving $35 billion from its market cap. What gives? That's a good question, and there are no concrete answer to be found, only theories....

Let's be honest, the time we spend making calls on our smartphones pales in comparison to all the other activities we use it for, like surfing the web, logging into Facebook, streaming music and video, and of course playing games. It's that latter functionality that a startup called Green Throttle wants to tap into, and given the power of...

Amazon's Kindle line has been tearing it up, or so we're led to believe. The company still has yet to reveal hard sales figures, but it's pretty clear from the expansion that things are doing well enough to support the standalone business. Now, the company has said that Voice Guide and Explore By Touch features are slated to land on Kindle...

When it comes to getting Wi-Fi strewn across huge areas, your options have historically been a little limited. Most routers needed specific range extenders in order to work together, and the universal solutions were fairly huge. But now, D-Link has introduced the Wireless Range Extender (DAP-1320), which functions with any router you have...

Google Now is getting even smarter. Widely viewed as, in many cases, superior to Siri, Google's own intelligent assistant has taken Jelly Bean owners by storm, offering them news and suggestions without them even needing to ask for it. Now, the product is seeing its first major update, and travelers are going to love it. Before you even leave...

We've always known that Microsoft's Surface had an uphill fight ahead of it. Launching a new version of Windows based on an entirely different CPU architecture was a dicey move, as was the decision to push Redmond's own vision for the hardware. In some ways, Microsoft's bets have paid off; the $499 Surface tablet looks and feels like a much...

No doubt about it, notebooks have come a long way from the bulky, plastic laden boxes of yesteryear that you'd rather not perch on your lap for very long, to the sleek, ultralight, well-built machines we call Ultrabooks these days.  Intel Ivy Bridge technology powers Dell's latest 14-inch Ultrabook variant and we've got a deal on it from...

EMC has been talking publicly about an all-flash datacenter storage array for about a year and a half, and the company has put its money where its mouth is, so to speak, by developing acquiring flash array maker XtremIO this spring and developing flash products such as its VCache enterprise flash storage. Project X, the code name for this...

Biostar TZ77XE3 ATX Intel Motherboard for $75 (normally $110 - use this form and this form) CPU Socket Type: LGA 1155 Memory Slots: 4x 240-pin Memory Standard: DDR3 2600(OC)/2400(OC)/2133(OC)/1866(OC)/1600/1333/1066 Corsair CX430 V2 430W Power Supply for $20 with free shipping (normally $45 - use coupon code EMCJHNF69 and this form) Energy...

The iPhone 5 has been available for two and a half months, and quite frankly, we're surprised it took this long for the first pics of what's supposed to be the inevitable iPhone 5S to appear online. But they're here now, and assuming they're real, you can expect the iPhone 5S to look just like its predecessor. No big surprise there. After...

You can certainly make the argument that tablets didn't catch AMD or Intel "flat-footed" (and we in fact did make that argument), but at the same time, you have to give companies like Qualcomm credit for being well prepared for the mobile boom that we now find ourselves in. To wit, Qualcomm is now the world's third largest semiconductor player,...

Amazon’s FreeTime app for the Kindle Fire lets parents create individual profiles for their children so they can customize the content their little ones can access. It’s somewhat brilliant, because as opposed to simply blocking or restricting what kids can get to, it allows you to pull in just the content they’ll enjoy (and...

Today we're taking a look at Google's new Nexus 4 smartphone driven by Android 4.2 Jelly Bean. With a single unbroken piece of Gorilla Glass up front the Nexus 4 looks very clean and it makes a nice change from the buttons and branding you'll see on most other smartphones. It's also quite unique if you flip it over: the phone has a series...

Your run-of-the-mill smartphone announcement usually involves the same old names, like HTC, Motorola, or Samsung. But one company you probably never heard of is Oppo. That's because Oppo doesn't really have much of a presence in the U.S. market, but it sure is looking to make a grand entrance with its Find 5 Android phone. The Find 5 is absolutely...

Netflix went out and scored itself a multi-year licensing agreement that will make it the exclusive U.S. subscription television service for first-run live-action and animated feature films from The Walt Disney Studios, the streaming company announced this week. "Disney and Netflix have shared a long and mutually beneficial relationship and...

Nokia on Tuesday added to its Windows Phone lineup by launching the Lumia 620, the third and most affordable device in its range of Windows Phone 8 smartphones. It slides underneath the top-end Lumia 920 (see our review) and mid-range Lumia 820, but unlike those other two, Nokia's entry-level WP8 device aims to offer a "more fun, youthful...

It's a patent that sounds like a plot description for a science-fiction movie or the result of Apple's Siri and Google's AdSense mating. With it, Verizon could program its set-top boxes to survey a room to determine relevant ads to display either on your television or mobile phone. Sound a bit scary? It kind of is. Verizon's technology can...

Although HP's attempt at competing in the consumer tablet market with the HP TouchPad may have been short-lived, the company has continued to compete in the business segment of the market with products such as the ElitePad. In yet another effort to attract the business crowd, HP recently announced the new HP EliteBook Revolve. The EliteBook...

When Apple announced that YouTube would need to build its own, standalone app for iOS 6 devices, we suspect the builders at Google panicked a bit. We sure would've. But just a few months later, the standalone iOS app is seeing its first major update since hitting the App Store, and it's a power-packed one. The new edition is tailored to work...

Google knows all about dealing with regulations. The company seems to be up against various governments all the time, mostly over privacy issues revolving around cookies, Street View, or just how much Google knows about you. The company also had to deal with a fair amount of red tape when setting up its Fiber initiative in Kansas City, MO...

We’ve often said that upgrading to a large, high-end display is one of the best things you can do to improve your computing experience. To that end, today’s featured HOT deal is just what the doctor ordered. After discounts, the awesome Dell U3011” 30” LCD with IPS-panel is available for $1049, with free shipping....

We’ve made no secret of the fact that we’re enamored of 3D printing--all the more after visiting Maker Faire 2012 a couple of months ago--so a new 3D printer joining the market is something that piques our interest. Solidoodle, a company that has grown to 60 employees after a year in the 3D printer-making business, announced its...

While the ASUS name may be well-recognized by visitors of HotHardware, it's still a relative unknown in North America to those who don't eat tech for breakfast. This, despite the fact that the company really does produce some compelling products. Let's not forget that it was ASUS which spear-headed the entire netbook movement. ASUS has proven...

Facebook announced that it’s updated its Facebook Messenger for Android app to allow users to create a Messenger account without actually joining Facebook. Instead, you can sign up for the service with merely your name and cell phone number. Over the next few weeks, the new Messenger accounts will be rolling out, and according to CNET,...

Just over two months ago, Linus Torvalds released the Linux 3.6 kernel in final form, opting to push it out to the public rather than building what would have been an eighth Release Candidate. At the time, he said he couldn't think of a major reason to do yet another RC. Since then, work has shifted to Linux 3.7, and this time around Torvalds...

Mobile is trending high these days, though economic conditions are still the determining factor for any market. To wit, International Data Corporation (IDC) projects that the mobile phone market will grow just 1.4 percent year-over-year in 2012, the lowest annual growth rate in three years despite what it expects will be a record number of...

There's a bit of quoted wisdom that's been making the rounds in tech news, recently. Up until now, I've ignored it, in the hopes that it would die out and go away. Instead, it seems to be showing up with greater frequency. It looks something like this: "Like Intel, AMD was caught flat-footed in recent years with the emergence and fast growth...

Unfortunately, many PC enthusiasts tend to skimp on their chassis when building a new system. After all, you can get a decent case with adequate cooling for next to nothing these days, making a splurge on a $200-plus, premium case seem unnecessary. However, as anyone who’s owned a truly high-end chassis can tell you, it's usually worth...

Japanese TV maker Sharp is in desperate need of a cash infusion, and it may be getting one from Qualcomm, which is reportedly going to invest as much as $120 million into the company. That would make Qualcomm Sharp's largest share holder, and could save the company from collapse. According to Reuters, Qualcomm will work with Sharp through...

In need of a feel-good story heading into the heart of the holiday season? Well friends, you have one, and it comes courtesy of LEGO, or "The best company in the world" as seen through the eyes of one extremely grateful 11-year-old boy who received a discontinued train set from LEGO after he tried acquiring it on his own. His name is James...

Good news for Samsung Galaxy S III owners riding AT&T's wireless waves. An official Android 4.1.1 Jelly Bean update is now available for your device, beating both Verizon Wireless and U.S. Cellular to the punch (in the U.S.), though not T-Mobile, which has been doling out Jelly Bean for a few weeks. This is not an over-the-air (OTA) update,...

Technology moves quickly in the era that we're fortunate enough to live in, but unfortunately, that means that some services just can't last forever. Of course, it's up for debate whether or not the masses even wanted Verizon's mobile video service to survive, but it probably wouldn't be shut down if the user numbers were huge. As smartphones...

Nokia Siemens Networks isn't a name you hear very often in the consumer space, but it's behind quite a few connections made around the world. The networking company has just announced an agreement with Marlin Equity Partners to sell its Optical Networks business unit. The deal would result in the unit being established as an independent company,...

Want to scare the life out of a programmer friend? Just utter the words "multi-threading" into their ear - it works every time! Alright - that's a bit of an exaggeration, but writing multi-threaded code is one of the biggest challenges a programmer can ever face. The reason boils down to the fact that for the longest time, everyone wrote...

We’ve been tracking Crysis 3 for a while, from the trailer a few months ago to the alpha multiplayer preview. The game is available for preorder ($59.99 for PC and console versions, $79.99 for the “Digital Deluxe” edition), and it will launch in February. Crytek has now listed the minimum system requirements for Crysis 3...

Valve just keeps adding features and value to its Steam gaming (and now, software) platform, and the latest is a doozy. The company announced the launch of Big Picture, which allows users to game on the living room TV with their Steam accounts. The actual connection is quite simple--you can hook up a PC or Mac to your TV with an HDMI cable--but...

It’s time for our latest batch of HOT deals, courtesy of our friends at LogicBuy. The features attraction this Monday is Dell’s slick Inspiron 14z Core i7 Ivy Bridge-based Ultrabook. There’s a huge 30% discount at play here, along with free shipping, bringing the price down to just under $800. The Dell Inspiron 14z configuration...

The release of the next 3DMark is right around the corner, and to help tide us over Futuremark has released a new trailer called "Fire Strike" that shows off some pretty DirectX 11 effects - aka: effects we hope to actually see implemented in our future games. If you can believe it, this trailer is even shorter than the last one, with...

Americans have an obsession with politics, smartphones, and celebrities, and apparently in that order. Or at least that's how it shook out on Yahoo! Search during an election year that saw President Barack Obama defeat GOP hopeful Mitt Romney in a hotly contested race. "The United States is sometimes criticized for its citizens' apparent lack...

The "Intel Next Unit of Computing" (NUC), as it's appropriately called, is an ultra-compact desktop system that's small enough to fit in the palm of your hand, while packing a performance punch that belies its diminutive stature. Power users looking to game on their high-resolution 30-inch monitors need not apply, but there are plenty of markets...

These days, it seems like tablet and panel makers are doing everything they can to be the best at being small. But Sharp, the company responsible for a 90" HDTV, has other plans. The LL-S201A "BIG PAD" was just revealed, and it's a 20" LCD-backlit screen that can handle ten-point multi-touch input, and ships with a stylus that measures 2mm...

A lot of the talk in the 7-inch tablet space revolves around the Nexus 7, Kindle Fire HD, and more recently, the iPad mini (7.85 inches). Lest anyone forget, Barnes & Noble competes in the handheld tablet space too, and it's hoping a special holiday offer in collaboration with MasterCard will nudge potential buyers over to the Nook. Effective...

At long last, the ultra small and cheap Raspberry Pi Model A is now being produced, with the first samples already coming off the assembly line, the Raspberry Pi Foundation announced in a blog post. The $35 Model B has been available to purchase for some time now, while the Model A is a slightly downgraded version that will sell for $25. "We’re...

Had things gone to plan, AT&T would already be selling HTC's One VX smartphone, which was originally supposed to be available on November 16. For whatever reason, it didn't launch on the day AT&T announced, but don't despair. If you've been holding out for this mid-range device, you only have to make it through the week, as AT&T...

The nimble fingered folks at iFixIt got their mitts on one of Apple's refreshed iMac models, so naturally the first thing they did was put it on the operating table for a full dissection. Before cracking the 21.5-inch iMac open, however, they discovered an interesting tidbit. On the back, sitting below the FCC stamp and various other certifications,...

Looking to get into a business? Don't bother with flat-panel TVs. The last company to seemingly get into this shindig and have a real go at it was Vizio, and it's been downhill ever seen. Sony, Sharp, LG, Toshiba and a host of others have cited the TV panel industry at being one with razor thin margins, and while new plasma and LCD sets used...

The folks behind Bing Maps have been undeniably busy this past month: they've released 121 terabytes worth of satellite and Global Ortho imagery to its Windows 8 Maps app and Bing Maps, released a Hurricane Sandy-specific map app and have also launched a Facebook page where they'll show off some cool imagery each and every day. Whenever a...

Ubuntu fans on the lookout for desktops or laptops bundled with their favorite OS have had a rough time - there's been selection, but it's been painfully limited. Helping that just a wee bit is Dell, with its Vostro 2420 and 2520 notebooks, which each offer a singular Ubuntu option. The only difference between the two is that the 2420 comes...

Yes, it's true machines pose a serious threat of human extinction (a group of Cambridge researchers thinks so, anyway), but they're so darn adorable, which is what might ultimately be our downfall. Until then, you might as well enjoy what our mechanical creations have to offer, like the real-life Pixar lamp that swings around and doesn't like...

You might find this hard to believe (we certainly do), but obnoxious ringtones aren't the only ones that exist. If a study by Nokia is to be believed, classical music ringtones are actually the second most popular, followed by who-knows-what. It doesn't matter what came in third or fourth or fifth -- the point is, lots of mobile users enjoy...

There was a bit of moving and shaking among the top OEM mobile players in U.S. market share, though not for the top spot. That position remains firmly in the grasp of Samsung, which now holds a 26.3 percent share of the mobile market, up from 25.6 percent last quarter, according to data collected from comScore's MobiLens service. Second place,...

Back in February, we heard tell that Verizon was teaming up with Coinstar (maker of those Redbox DVD rental kiosks you see everywhere) to develop a streaming and physical media service not unlike Netflix. Now, it appears that the service--dubbed “Redbox Instant by Verizon”--is in the offing. GigaOM uncovered some key details of...

Google has been raking in money for years now, but it has also been spending a pretty penny, too. Some of that spending has been on various other companies, useful for bolstering its offerings in a hurry, and potentially in areas that it wouldn't enter itself otherwise. The latest pick up from Google is BufferBox, a Canadian company that could...

Microsoft's Windows Phone 8 platform is seeing a surge in interest now that the WP operating system has leveled up, but as these things usually go, each U.S. carrier seems to have a phone or two that's exclusive to them. And if you've had your eye on the HTC Windows Phone 8X, that might be unfortunate if you aren't a Verizon Wireless subscriber....

When Mozilla dropped the latest version of its Firefox browser for Android on November 19th, it just seemed like any other update. If you're like me and have a couple of apps every single day wanting updates, it really doesn't leave much time to look into what's new with every one of them. Apparently Mozilla realizes this, because despite...

The strained relationship between Apple and Samsung could result in the Cupertino outfit turning to Intel to supply chips for future mobile devices. It would be an interesting partnership, if not a little odd considering there are rumors that Apple is may ditch Intel for ARM for its next generation Mac devices. It also makes sense. Apple has...

Scary things happen on Black Friday, like the angry mosh pit that broke out at Walmart over low priced cell phones. In the words of Sweet Brown, "Ain't nobody got time for that!" We hear you Sweet Brown, which is why we're big fans of Cyber Monday, the busiest online shopping day of the year. According to data by comScore, American deal seekers...

When the team behind the Ouya open source gaming console was soliciting startup funds on Kickstarter, we all took notice, and despite asking for just $950,000 in cash, the group found itself flush with nearly $8.6 million in cash. Apparently the prospect of a $109 gaming console that was built specifically to be hacked and tweaked by basement...

If you've had your eye on one of Nokia's newest Lumia phones, particularly the 820 or 920, here's something that'll make the photographers in the house feel extra loved. The company has just revealed its new PhotoBeamer app, described as a "magic picture show." This is what happens. You install the app and use it to look at pictures in your...

If you've paid any attention to Apple's obscene quarterly profits here lately, you may have noticed a trend: an increasingly gigantic portion of those profits are coming from sales in mainland China. The same country responsible for ripping off countless Apple products seemingly has a huge amount of citizens willing to pay for the real deal,...