Samsung 51-Inch 3D TV With 3D Blu-ray Player and Glasses, $1019

Samsung's PN51D6500 is a 51-inch plasma HDTV with Internet connectivity and very good standard and 3D image quality (read our review for details). Normally the HDTV alone sells for around $1400. Right now, though, BuyDig.com has a great deal: $1039 gets you the HDTV, a Samsung BD-D5500 3D Blu-ray player, and two pairs of active-shutter 3D glasses, with free shipping. Enter coupon code SeasonsDigging20 at checkout and watch the price fall to $1019.

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Lenovo IdeaPad

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How We Test Antivirus Software and Security Suites

Want to choose the most effective security software for your PC? Learn more about how we evaluate antivirus utilities and security suites.By Nick Mediati, PCWorld  

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Linux: A Getting-Started Guide

Are you fed up with Microsoft Windows and ready to give Linux a try? Here's how to get started. This guide for Linux discusses who the Linux OS is right for, what you need to get started, and how to turn your Windows PC into a dual-boot computer so you can have the best of both worlds--Linux and Windows.

Why Try Linux?

Linux will never be as popular a desktop operating system as Microsoft Windows or Mac OS X, but there are some good reasons to give Linux a try.

For starters, you can download and install Linux for free. Applications that run on Linux machines tend to be free as well, and they include PC essentials such as office productivity suites, image editing software, and video editing tools. Though Linux is not immune to viruses, malware is rarely a concern in the Linux world, especially for home users. And because Linux is less of a PC resource hog than Windows and the Mac OS, it's ideal for use with a laptop, a netbook, or an older desktop.

Finally, as Web services and HTML5-based apps play an increasingly dominant role in our computing lives--from music services such as Pandora to Yahoo Mail to Google Docs to Bing Maps to countless games--the operating system begins to play second fiddle to the Web. Linux is a dirt-cheap alternative to dropping $500 on PC that can run Windows 7.

Who Should Use Linux?

Linux can be a good choice for anyone, but two types of users are likely benefit most from Linux: power users and nontechnical users.

Power users will enjoy Linux, because it's a flexible, highly customizable OS that they can adapt to suit their needs in such areas as the look of the desktop or the ability to prevent any extra software from adding bloat to the system.

Linux is also great for nontechnical users who just want a computer that's easy to use, has many applications available for download, and doesn't require a lot of maintenance. Thanks to Linux distributions such as Ubuntu that are easy to install and use, Linux is no longer "difficult to use."

What Is Linux?

Linux is a Unix-like open-source operating system that uses the Linux kernel as its base and comes packaged with basic software, including a lot of components from the GNU (pronounced Guh-new) project.

The Wildebeest in the Room

There is some debate among Linux users about whether it's correct to call the open-source operating system Linux or GNU/Linux to reflect the fact that Linux distributions are loaded with software from the GNU Project. GNU is another Unix-like operating system, but one that lacks a usable kernel. Typical pieces of GNU that you're likely to come across in Linux include the Bash shell and assorted command-line utilities, GNU Emacs, Gnu Image Manipulation Program (GIMP), GNOME, and GNASH (a Flash player replacement).

Know Your Components

Three main elements of a Linux operating system come up often in discussions of Linux: the distribution, the desktop environment, and the Linux kernel. These components, along with software from GNU, constitute the basic parts of your Linux distribution.

Distribution

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Panasonic Announces 20X-Zoom Pocket Camera, Full-Featured Rugged Camera

Four new Panasonic point-and-shoots were unveiled today, including the 20X-optical-zoom Lumix ZS20 and the durable Lumix TS4, which is packed with a barometer, an altimeter, and full manual controls.By Tim Moynihan, PCWorld  

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Salesforce.com Launches Desk.com Help-desk Service

By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News

Salesforce.com on Tuesday unveiled a new SaaS (software as a service) help-desk application called Desk.com that can reach end users through social networks like Facebook and Twitter.

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Oracle Handed Setback in HP Itanium Case

By John Ribeiro, IDG News

A court in California rejected Oracle's bid to use a fraud claim to undo an agreement to support the Itanium processor, that it is said to have made with Hewlett-Packard.

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Apple Appeals IPad Trademark Decision in China

By Michael Kan, IDG News

Apple has appealed a Chinese court ruling last December that rejected its ownership of the iPad trademark in the country, and could expose the company to trademark infringement lawsuits from a local company.

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Samsung Still Not Allowed to Sell Original Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany

By Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News  

Samsung Electronics is still not allowed to sell the original version of the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany after it lost an appeal at the higher regional court in Düsseldorf, a spokesman at the court said on Tuesday.

The decision follows the verdict and ban in Düsseldorf's regional court last year. The design of Samsung's tablet is too close to Apple's registered Community Design, according to the German courts.

The ban also covers the Galaxy Tab 8.9, and it can't be appealed, the spokesman at the court said.

Samsung is disappointed with today's decision by the Dusseldorf Higher Regional Court to uphold the sales ban for the Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany, a spokeswoman at Samsung said via email. However, she said, today's ruling is of little factual relevance due to the new model Galaxy Tab 10.1 N.

After the ban in the regional court, Samsung developed the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, which has an altered design and is available in German stores.

Apple filed a motion to block the Galaxy Tab 10.1N, as well. But, in December, a judge at the district court in Düsseldorf issued a preliminary ruling that the Samsung tablet is now sufficiently different. So it is possible that there will be no ban this time, according to a spokesman at the court.

A final verdict, which can be appealed, will be handed down on Feb. 9.

One of Apple's core legal claims against Samsung is that the Korean company has copied the design of Apple's products. Apple has over and over argued that it's no coincidence that Samsung's latest products look a lot like the iPhone and iPad, from the shape of the hardware to the user interface and even the packaging. That message was reiterated on Tuesday.

Getting courts to agree with that has not been easy for Apple. After early Apple victories in Germany and Australia, Samsung tablets are now available in both countries. Last week, a Dutch court also sided with Samsung on the look of its tablets.

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Toshiba, Fujitsu Join Japanese Tech Peers in Booking Massive 3Q Losses

By Jay Alabaster, IDG News  

Toshiba and Fujitsu, two of Japan's largest tech companies, both said Tuesday they booked deep losses during the October-December quarter, blaming a spike in component costs caused by Thai flooding and a tough market for consumer electronics.

Toshiba said it was weighed down by its struggling TV business, which faced lower sales in Japan as a boost from the nationwide switch to digital broadcasting faded and government discounts ended, even as intense competition choked off profits. The company said it booked a ¥10.6 billion (US$136 million) loss during its third quarter, down from a ¥12.4 billion profit a year earlier.

Fujitsu said operating profit from its consumer goods fell by nearly half compared to a year earlier and its semiconductor business stumbled into an operating loss. The company said its smartphone sales are exceeding expectations, but it still had a ¥4.3 billion loss during the period, versus a ¥16.5 billion profit in the year-earlier period.

Both companies slashed their earnings targets for the current fiscal year through March, but said they are still on track to book an annual profit.

Tuesday's results were the latest in a series of grim third-quarter results for Japan's tech giants, whose are struggling to generate profits with their digital products even as foreign competitors such as Samsung and Apple report staggering profits. NEC said last week it is planning to cut 10,000 workers and now forecasts a $1.3 billion loss for the year, and tech bellwether Sony, which reports Thursday, also projects to finish deeply in the red.

Japanese firms have also been hurt by the strong yen. A strong local currency can negatively impact profits earned abroad.

Like many of Japan's large tech firms, both Toshiba and Fujitsu were buoyed by their non-consumer business. Toshiba said its memory and display components had a strong quarter, while Fujitsu reported strong profits at its large services division, which includes system integration and outsourcing.

For many Japanese companies including Toshiba and Fujitsu, the fiscal year runs from April through March.

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EU Launches Antitrust Investigation of Samsung Patent Licensing

By Peter Sayer, IDG News  

The European Commission is investigating the way Samsung Electronics licenses its patents on technology essential to mobile communications networks, concerned that it may be in breach of European competition law.

The Commission, Europe's highest antitrust authority, announced Tuesday that it has begun a formal investigation of Samsung's patent licensing practices.

The patents at issue relate to 3G mobile systems. Like other vendors working with the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) to develop the standards for 3G networks, Samsung gave a commitment in 1998 to license those of its patents considered essential to the standards on so-called fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory (FRAND) terms.

Such undertakings guarantee that one vendor cannot use patents to prevent its competitors from selling standards-compliant products.

But in 2011, Samsung filed suit in a number of European courts, asserting that some of its competitors' products infringed on patents it considered essential for mobile communications devices, and seeking injunctions preventing distribution of the products in Europe. Apple was among Samsung's targets.

The Commission now plans to examine whether those lawsuits conflict with Samsung's earlier undertaking to license such patents on FRAND terms, and whether it has distorted competition in the market for mobile communications devices.

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Norton Wants To Help You Remember Your Password

If you're anything like me, you're usually quick to reach for the "Forgot Password" link on most webpages that you don't visit that often. Sure you could have your browser remember your passwords for everything, but that probably isn't the best approach when it comes to handling your login information.

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Git Gets Enterprise Equipped

By Joab Jackson, IDG News

Developer tool provider AccuRev will release a package designed to help enterprises incorporate the increasingly popular Git open source version-control software into their development operations, the company announced Tuesday.

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Zultys Adds Android Client for Its IP PBX

By Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News

Zultys has upgraded the software in its MX family of IP PBXs and added a Mobile Communicator client for Android-based smartphones, the company said on Tuesday.

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HP Extends Asset Mapping Into Amazon, VMware Clouds

By Joab Jackson, IDG News

Hewlett-Packard has updated its Discovery and Dependency Mapping Advanced (DDMA) software package so it will allow administrators to map their IT assets in the cloud.

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Facebook Timeline Privacy Tips: Lockdown Your Profile

Facebook's Timeline is coming, whether you like it or not, to Facebook accounts everywhere - including yours. I've been using Timeline for about a month now, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.

On the one hand, it's a lot easier to find things -- events, wall posts, etc, because you can now search your Facebook profile by date. On the other hand, it's much easier for other people--friends, strangers, you name it -- to find things, because they can now search your Facebook profile by date.

Timeline Tell-all

As it turns out, I've posted a lot of things -- not all of which are totally tame and/or work-appropriate -- over the past eight years that I've had Facebook. And now they're all neatly categorized by date.

While it's true that you could technically see these posts before the introduction of Timeline, you would have had to do a lot more work. For example, in order to see my posts from 2006, you would have had to go to my Facebook profile, wait for the 20 or so most recent posts to load, and then click "Older posts" about

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Infor Revamps Support Services, Heightens Competition Against SAP, Oracle

By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News

Infor has rebranded and revamped its software support offerings in a bid to cement its profile as a potential alternative to rivals like SAP and Oracle.

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Office 15 Beta Slated for Summer, Time to Move to Office 2010

By Tony Bradley, PCWorld

Microsoft has launched the community technical preview (CTP) for Office 15 to a limited audience, with a public beta planned for summer of 2012. With what will likely end up being Office 2013 looming on the horizon, it’s time for those still using Office 2007 to migrate to Office 2010.

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Student Privacy Activists Due to Meet With Facebook

By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News

Austrian student activists say they expect to meet Facebook representatives in Vienna next Monday in an attempt to resolve their disagreements over the social-networking site's privacy policies.

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Smartphone Owners Prone to Using their Devices in the Bathroom

By John P. Mello Jr., PCWorld  Jan 31, 2012 6:25 AM

Smartphone owners just can't stop using their phones, even when they are answering nature's call, according to survey that tracked cellphone usage in the bathroom.

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Hackers Infect WordPress 3.2.1 Blogs to Distribute TDSS Rootkit

By Lucian Constantin, IDG News

Hackers are compromising WordPress 3.2.1 blogs in order to infect their visitors with the notorious TDSS rootkit, according to researchers from Web security firm Websense.

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IBM Buys Worklight for Mobile Software Platform

By Chris Kanaracus, IDG News

IBM on Tuesday announced plans to buy Worklight, a move that will give it a range of cross-platform mobile application development technologies. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the first quarter, were not disclosed.

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MegaUpload Users Get Reprieve on File Wipe

MegaUpload's users were granted a two week reprieve before the companies hosting their files wipe them off the face of the Internet.

Both companies

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Office 15: 5 Things Microsoft Should Do

Microsoft needs to better integrate Office with social networking sites and create a more useful Web version of its software suite.By Preston Gralla, Computerworld  

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When ERP Is Botched, CFOs Must Act

By Fred O'Connor, IDG News

Companies long have grappled with glitches in their ERP (enterprise resource planning) system implementations -- a situation that the recent botched-rollout record suggests won't get better any time soon. While ERP projects go awry for many reasons, each incident reveals its own set of troublesome repercussions, financial and otherwise.

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Windows 8 File Management Changes Include Minimized Ribbon

Hell hath no fury like a Windows power user scorned, as Microsoft learned when it introduced big changes to file management in Windows 8. Now, the company is responding to the feedback by tweaking or walking away from some of the changes it planned to make.

The most contentious issue was the

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SeaMicro Puts 256 Xeon Cores in Server

SeaMicro Tuesday announced a new microserver that incorporates 256 Xeon processor cores to enable faster delivery of data for Internet-based activities such as social media or search.

The SM10000-XE server is a 10U rack server with 64 quad-core Intel E3-1260L processors that run at a clock speed of 2.4GHz. The server is designed to provide faster response to Internet queries by speeding dynamic Web applications and tasks such as extraction of information from databases.

The new server is an upgrade from SeaMicro's SM10000-64HD, which launched last year with 384 dual-core Atom low-power netbook chips. The new server's Xeon processors have "heavyweight" cores that can deliver a better performance than Atom cores, said Andrew Feldman

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Firefox 10 Arrives Today with Extended Support for Businesses

By Katherine Noyes, PCWorld

Six weeks to the day after the release of Firefox 9, Mozilla is slated to roll out the next version of its popular open source browser on Tuesday.

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Twitter Terror: UK Pair Barred from United States Over Jokey Tweet

By Brennon Slattery, PCWorld  Jan 31, 2012 9:51 AM

Two UK tourists were arrested, detained for 12 hours and then sent home after U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents misinterpreted one traveler's tweets containing British vernacular and a

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Google, Microsoft and Facebook Battle Phishing with New Specification

By John E Dunn, techworld.com

Major Internet companies including Google, Microsoft, and Facebook have announced a new specification to streamline the way e-mail providers work out whether messages are part of phishing attacks using spoofed domain addresses.

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Final Cut Pro X Gets Multicam Editing

Apple's editing software receives multicam editing and broadcast output with version 10.0.3.By Serenity Caldwell, Macworld  

It’s been seven months since Apple released Final Cut Pro X amidst furor and bemusement; four months since the company released its first major update, with promised support for more pro-level features in the next year. That year is here, and with it, Apple brought its third major update to the platform, offering multicam editing, updates to Chroma Key, beta broadcast video monitoring, and an assortment of other improvements.

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SeaMicro Puts 256 Xeon Cores in Server

SeaMicro Tuesday announced a new microserver that incorporates 256 Xeon processor cores to enable faster delivery of data for Internet-based activities such as social media or search.

The SM10000-XE server is a 10U rack server with 64 quad-core Intel E3-1260L processors that run at a clock speed of 2.4GHz. The server is designed to provide faster response to Internet queries by speeding dynamic Web applications and tasks such as extraction of information from databases.

The new server is an upgrade from SeaMicro's SM10000-64HD, which launched last year with 384 dual-core Atom low-power netbook chips. The new server's Xeon processors have "heavyweight" cores that can deliver a better performance than Atom cores, said Andrew Feldman

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Semiconductor Market to Slow This Year, ISuppli Says

By Agam Shah, IDG News  

Semiconductor industry revenue will grow at a slow pace this year due to struggling economies worldwide, lower spending and sluggish demand for products, research firm IHS iSuppli said in a study released on Tuesday.

Revenue for the semiconductor industry this year is expected to be US$323 billion, growing by just 3.3 percent compared to last year's revenue, IHS iSuppli said.

"Because the world economy is not in a strong-enough position to drive growth, the semiconductor business is coming under pressure," said Len Jelinek, director and chief analyst of semiconductor manufacturing research at IHS iSuppli, in a statement.

The weak performance of the semiconductor market has continued from last year, and there are economic troubles in the U.S., Europe, Japan and China, Jelinek said.

Semiconductors are used in a range of products including PCs, smartphones, tablets, cars and medical devices. With consumers spending less, semiconductor demand will decrease and hurt revenue, Jelinek said.

Manufacturers will try to clear out semiconductor inventory and keep existing factories viable, iSuppli said. Any capital expenditure to boost production or upgrade factories will likely be pushed into 2013.

The weak demand for some products also will hurt demand for DRAM, iSuppli said. Revenue for the memory is expected to decline by 16.1 percent this year, which is slightly better than the 26.8 percent fall last year.

A shortfall in the PC market has hurt memory demand, which has softened DDR3 RAM pricing this year. As PC prices remain under pressure, PC makers have been resistant to adding more RAM, which has led memory makers to move excess memory inventory to market rapidly. Some top DRAM makers like Samsung have also been suffering from yield and supply issues.

The market for NAND flash is "less rosy" despite the surging demand for devices like smartphones and tablets, iSuppli said. There is growing demand for NAND flash as storage requirements grow on mobile devices, but additional factory capacity to meet excess demand could lead to oversupply and likely pressure NAND flash revenue.

NAND flash prices have also been tumbling since 2010, and stood at $12.90 on Tuesday afternoon for a 64GB unit, according to memory-price-tracking site DRAMexchange.

Semiconductor revenue growth will likely be negative in the first half and recover starting in the second half, iSuppli said.

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Nvidia Announces CUDA 4.1 with LLVM Compiler

8:00 PM - January 27, 2012 by Douglas Perry- source: Nvidia

Nvidia just released CUDA 4.1 Toolkit, which integrates, for the first time, the company's LLVM (Low Level Virtual Machine) compiler.

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1000-Player FPS Event Pits Press Against Gaming Industry

12:00 AM - January 28, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: MuchDifferent PR

The creator of Counter-Strike, the creator of ShadowGun and many more notable people will be participating in the 1000-player FPS Guinness event taking place this Sunday.

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Blizzard Makes Even More Changes to Diablo 3

6:00 AM - January 28, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: Blizzard

After releasing a long list of changes, Blizzard has revealed even more edits it will make to the upcoming PC game Diablo 3.

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Cleversafe Announces 10 Exabyte Storage System Configuration

12:00 PM - January 28, 2012 by Douglas Perry- source: Cleversafe

Cleversafe, a cloud storage software vendor which offers its customers "limitless storage space", says that it has designed a dispersed storage system that exceeds a storage capability of 10 Exabytes (EB), or 1,000 Petabytes (PB).

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Apple CEO Tim Cook Responds to Reports of Worker Mistreatment

6:00 PM - January 28, 2012 by Marcus Yam- source: Tom's Hardware US

Cook sends email out to Apple employees in response to report of factory worker conditions.

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You Can Edit 4K Video on a MacBook Air (With a Red Rocket)

11:00 AM - January 30, 2012 by Douglas Perry- source: Adobe

Since you can't even play 4K video on any PC, most of us would not automatically come up with an idea to edit 12-megapixel resolution video on a Macbook Air.

However, a demo published by Dave Helmly, in charge of tech sales of Adobe's pro audio and video products, shows that it is possible.

4K video editing

Helmly used a flagship Macbook Air with an Intel 1.8 GHz i7-2677M processor, which retails for $1700. The 4K video quickly overwhelmed the dual-core processor and its four threads. However, the video, apparently recorded with a Red One camera, ran in real-time via a Thunderbolt-connected Red Rocket accelerator and transcoder card. The Red Rocket card is key to getting 4K video to be played at 30 fps on a PC and can be purchased for $4,750.

It's important to note that Helmly went with the Apple hardware, but on the OS side it's running Windows 7 in boot camp. Helmly explained to Gizmodo on his choice:

No real reason I chose to show it running under Windows 7 other than I've been surprised that we haven't seen any demos of Windows running TB before now. It actually works pretty good in it's current beta state. That said the Mac OS kicks

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Windows 8 on ARM Heading To Devs Soon, Claims Sources

2:00 PM - January 30, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: CNET

Sources claim that Windows on ARM is now stable and gearing up for a release to developers soon.

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Intel Adds Seven New Sandy Bridge Processors

5:00 PM - January 30, 2012 by Douglas Perry- source: Intel

Intel has quietly added seven new Sandy Bridge processors in the i5 and Celeron M series.

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Man vs Machine Breaks Record: 999 Simultaneous Players

8:00 PM - January 30, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: MuchDifferent

MuchDifferent was just one player shy from its original 1000-player goal, but landed in the Guinness World Records Gamer Edition nonetheless.

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Office 15 Public Beta Arriving This Summer

12:00 AM - January 31, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: Microsoft

Microsoft has announced the launch of its Technical Preview program for "Office 15."

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Corsair Offers Individual-Sleeved PSU Modular Cable Kits

6:00 AM - January 31, 2012 by Doug Crowthers- source: Legit Reviews

Corsair quietly released its new individually sleeved modular cables for select Corsair PSU via a Facebook posting.

With the growing trend of enthusiast and case-modders individualizing their cases, Corsair has released its individually sleeved modular PSU cable to provide end users the option to switch out their modular cables. The cables are available in three colors; red, blue and white, along with the standard black cables. While other companies, such as NZXT, has taken the approach of offering each cable individually, Corsair has bundled all the required cables together into one individual package. Legit Reviews was able to get a first hand look of how these cables look in a Corsair 600T case at the FX GamExperience down in Dallas, Texas. 

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Windows 8 to Have Greatly Improved Wi-Fi Connection Times

10:00 AM - January 31, 2012 by Marcus Yam- source: Tom's Hardware US

Get back on the net even faster with Windows 8.

Earlier on we learned about the new steps Microsoft is taking in making Windows 8 the most wireless connection-friendly version yet with its simplified and integrated Wi-Fi and mobile broadband controls.

Buried in some of that information was a brief comparison highlighting how much better Windows 8 will be at picking up Wi-Fi networks as compared to Windows 7, particularly when resuming from standby. In fact, according to Microsoft, Windows 8 will be 11 times faster than Windows 7.

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Amazon Selling PC Games Crazy Cheap Today Only

11:30 AM - January 31, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: Amazon

Today only, PC gamers can purchase downloadable AAA games from EA, 2K Games, Ubisoft and others for as little as $5.00!

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Download All Versions of Mozilla Firefox 10 Here

1:00 PM - January 31, 2012 by Marcus Yam- source: Tom's Hardware US

Mozilla's browser Firefox and Bo Derek now have something in common.

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Picking A Sub-$200 Gaming CPU: FX, An APU, Or A Pentium?

12:00 AM - January 30, 2012 by Don Woligroski Table of contents 1. Can FX, APUs, And Pentium Processors All Game? 2. Test System And Benchmarks 3. Benchmark Results: Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 4. Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 5. Benchmark Results: Just Cause 2 6. Benchmark Results: StarCraft II 7. Benchmark Results: DiRT 3 8. Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 9. Overclocking Benchmarks 10. AMD Or Intel: Which Offers Better Gaming Performance?

We really like to hunt down great values in the processor space. Since our last round-up of affordable CPUs, AMD released its Llano-based APUs and Bulldozer-based FX family. Also, Intel introduced a handful of Sandy Bridge-based Pentium chips.

Whenever there are significant changes in the CPU market, we like to collect as many sub-$200 models as possible and put together a gaming comparison. Certainly a lot has happened since the last time we did this. Perhaps most obviously, the Phenom II and Athlon II families have started giving way to the FX series, along with the A4, A6, and A8 APUs. Intel, meanwhile, now has Sandy Bridge-based Pentium processors.

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AMD Radeon HD 7950 Review: Up Against GeForce GTX 580

12:00 AM - January 31, 2012 by Chris Angelini Table of contents 1. AMD's Tahiti Pro Goes Heads-Up With Nvidia's GF110 2. Tessellation Performance And Audio Output 3. Overclocking With XFX’s R7950 Black Edition 4. Test Setup And Benchmarks 5. Benchmark Results: 3DMark 11 6. Benchmark Results: Battlefield 3 7. Benchmark Results: Crysis 2 8. Benchmark Results: The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim 9. Benchmark Results: DiRT 3 10. Benchmark Results: World Of Warcraft: Cataclysm 11. Benchmark Results: Metro 2033 12. Benchmark Results: Sandra 2012 13. Benchmark Results: MediaEspresso 6.5 And LuxMark 14. Benchmark Results: vReveal 15. 2D Performance Via GDI And GDI

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Cop's attempt at parental control led to hacked German police system

Last July, a computer server used by German authorities for GPS surveillance was compromised by hackers and subsequently shut down. Although details were limited at the time, it is now being reported that the events leading to the break-in could have well been triggered by an officer’s attempt to monitor his daughter’s Internet activities.

It is believed the father, who is a senior officer with the German Federal Police based in Frankfurt, installed a form of spyware, possibly a Trojan on his daughter's computer in order to ascertain her online activities, according to reports from German weekly magazine, Der Spiegel.

A friend of the girl with ties to the hacker scene in Germany is said to have stumbled upon it when using her computer. In response to the discovery, her friend then hacked or gained access into the police officer’s computer.

While that shouldn’t have been an issue itself, the father was apparently diverting confidential work emails to his personal computer, storing them all locally. The hackers were able to gain access to those emails, which contained information key to obtaining unauthorized access to the PATRAS GPS surveillance system used by the police and customs authorities.

The breach came to light in July last year when the hacker group n0-n4m3 Cr3w (No Name Crew) announced they had access to the compromised server, which resulted in the German authorities shutting down the entire service to investigate the matter.

The hacker group then published documents and other information including usernames, passwords, phone numbers, and license plates of vehicles as well as geographic locations of ongoing criminal investigations.

The Federal investigation into the incident resulted in the German Federal Police arresting two individuals suspected of being involved in the breach. One of them is believed to be the leader of the hacker group.

germany, gps, hacking, surveillance, german federal police, patras

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Origin announces phase change cooling for Genesis desktop

By Jose Vilches

January 11, 2012, 1:30 PM EST

Comments2

High-end gaming computers are usually underrepresented at CES but Origin PC has stepped into the plate with a revised version of its Genesis desktop, which now supports overclocking to a record 5.7GHz, as well as redesigned Eon notebooks for mobile gamers.

The company has been selling Genesis desktops factory-overclocked to 5.2GHz for a few months already, but starting later this month, customers will be able to push frequencies even higher thanks to a new 'Phase Change' cooling system option. According to Origin, phase change technologgy will enable the machines' processor to be cooled at sub-zero temperatures, as low as -40 degrees celsius.

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Spanish Bank to Move 100,000+ Employees to Google Apps

By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News

Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) is adopting Google Apps for email and collaboration and expects to have its about 110,000 employees worldwide using the suite by the end of this year.

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Silver Gloves Said to Ease Cold-weather Touchscreen Use

gloves co-founder Jean Spencer shows off the firm's gloves lined with silver.Touchscreen smartphone and tablet users know their devices are tough to use while wearing gloves in in cold weather.

The problem is more widespread than one might think, and has spawned a market for specialized gloves that can ease the task and conduct a person's bioelectricity.

One vendor, Agloves, showed off its knit gloves this week at the Consumer Electronics show here.

The gloves, priced at $23.99 a pair, come in black with actual threads of silver woven in, said Jean Spencer, who founded the Boulder, Colo. start-up with her mother.

Many smartphones and tablets, including the iPhone and iPad, rely upon capacitative touchscreens, which means a person's fingertip bioelectricity is needed to activate a swipe or touch action on a screen.

Agloves claims that the silver fibers running throughout its glove can bring the electricity from other parts of the hand to the fingertip. Officials said some gloves from competitors put conductive material in just a couple of fingertips, and thus don't work as well as the Agloves design.

The company uses the Periodic Table symbol for silver, Ag, in its name.

Agloves was launched off in September and claims it has already sold more than 170,000 pairs worldwide.

Some of the gloves are made in China and others in the U.S. The Agloves Web site was down for maintenance this morning, but Spencer said the business is thriving nonetheless.

In a quick trial, Agloves worked quite well moving tiles on the latest Words with Friends game running on my phone.

Unfortunately, Agloves didn't improve my spelling.

Want more on CES? See our roundup of everything you need to know from CES and our interactive chart of top CES product launches .

Follow our staffers live from CES in Las Vegas Jan. 9-12 on Twitter

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Robotic Air Purifier Absorbs Impurities, Geekier Than Roomba

News Reviews How-To's Downloads Shop & Compare Apps Business Center Trending:Phones|Tablets|Laptops|HDTV|Games|Home Theater|Social Media|Gadgets|Windows|Cameras|MORE

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Asian Companies Rival U.S. Patent Champs

By Joab Jackson, IDG News

Look out IBM and Microsoft -- Asian consumer electronics giants such as Samsung and Canon are amassing patent portfolios that might soon rival the size of those held by the largest U.S. IT companies.

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IBM Wins Most Patents for 19th Straight Year

IBM retained its patent crown for 2011, topping the list of patent winners for the 19th year in a row. The only other U.S. company to make the top 10, Microsoft fell from third place to sixth place, according to data from IFI Claims Patent Services.

IBM at 100: How Big Blue helped redefine corporate architecture

Big Blue secured 6,180 patents last year, up nearly 5% from 5,896 in 2010. Samsung Electronics was the second most prolific patent winner, with 4,894 patents received in 2011, followed by Canon (2,821), Panasonic (2,559), Toshiba (2,483), Microsoft (2,311), Sony (2,286), Seiko Epson (1,533), Hon Hai Precision Industry (1,514), and Hitachi (1,465).

HP (1,308) and Intel (1,244) fell out of the top 10 and landed 14th and 16th, respectively, in IFI's list of the top 50 U.S. patent assignees.

According to IFI's count, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office issued 224,505 utility patents in 2011, which is 2% more patents than were issued in 2010. While the total number of patents grants grew, there appears to be a slowing of patent growth among individual companies, IFI notes. Among the companies on its top 50 list, 16 produced fewer patents in 2011 than they did in 2010, including Cisco, HP, Intel, Microsoft and Oracle. By comparison, only one of 2010's top 50 companies received fewer than the prior year.

"Global companies, and especially Asian ones, are collecting U.S patents at a dizzying pace, and now Asian firms hold eight of the top 10 slots in the 2011 ranking," said Mike Baycroft, CEO of IFI CLAIMS Patent Services, in a statement. "This isn't to say that U.S. companies have lost their verve for patent production, as their patent portfolios are also growing. It seems that Asian companies have apparently made it a higher priority."

Asian firms account for 25 of the top 50 U.S. patent-grant recipients in IFI's ranking, and U.S. firms captured 17 slots.

Other trends of note:

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Debian Linux Named Most Popular Distro for Web Servers

By Katherine Noyes, PCWorld

Linux may be enjoying great popularity in the mobile arena, thanks to Android--and even on the desktop, to an increasing extent--but there's no denying its longtime success on servers.

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Lawsuit Claims Symantec Sells Scareware-like Products

By Lucian Constantin, IDG News

Symantec has been accused in a lawsuit of California's unfair competition laws and fraudulent inducement by using scareware-like tactics to trick users into buying licenses for its PC utility-type products.

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Canonical CEO: Ubuntu Tablet OS Will Battle Android, iOS

Jane Silber is on a mission to get the Ubuntu Linux distribution onto mobile devices and TVs, rather than be stuck on desktop PCs. The CEO of Canonical (which makes Ubuntu) took over from the previous CEO, Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth, in March 2010, but has been with the company since shortly after its 2004 founding. Right after New Year's Day, she paid a visit to InfoWorld offices in San Francisco to talk with InfoWorld Editor at Large Paul Krill about Canonical's ambitions in the mobile market as well as reflect on Canonical's successes and what separates it from rivals.

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Modded Kindle Gets Child-Friendly With VTech Controls

Electrical engineer Glenn Johnson has shared instructions on how to create a Kindle that is accessible to all, with his one-of-a-kind creation dubbed the Frankenkindle.

Glenn's work sees Amazon's popular e-reader modified to work with the controls of a vtech V.Reader. The custom device was created with his sister in mind--she struggles to use modern electronics due to cerebral palsy, so big-brother Glenn set out to create a gadget that was easier for her to interact with.

The result is a basic hybrid device controlled by easy-to-press large buttons, taken directly from the vtech machine. These chunky buttons are indirectly wired to the Kindle's IO, which when pressed activate certain functions on the book reader. The re-tooled functionality is possible thanks to the help of an attached Teensy

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The Hidden Danger of Touchscreens

By Franklin Tessler, Infoworld

Spend five minutes on any busy street corner and you'll spot people using tablets and smartphones in dangerous ways, whether it's texting behind the wheel or strolling with their eyes on the screen.

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Moneto brings mobile payments to iPhone, Android through NFC add-on

By Jose Vilches

January 11, 2012, 11:30 AM EST With Video

Comments1

The idea of using our smartphone to pay for products, although already widely implemented in some countries, is just starting to gain traction in the U.S. with the launch of Google Wallet. It'll be a while before any mobile wallet solution takes off as most depend on your cell phone being equipped with NFC technology. But Spring Card Systems and DeviceFidelity have come up with a practical way around that stumbling block.

Forming a new joint venture dubbed "moneto", the two companies announced today the launch of a couple of products that will add NFC features to iPhones and a range of Android smartphones or tablets.

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Dell Prepares to Reenter the Tablet Market

By Daniel Ionescu, PCWorld  Jan 11, 2012 7:19 AM

Dell killed its 5- and 7-inch Streak tablets but it wants to reenter the consumer tablet market with a new model later this year. Dell has been taking its time, a company executive told Reuters, highlighting the

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Amazon Adds More Spots for Connecting Directly to Its Cloud

By Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News

Amazon Web Services has added four locations where enterprises can use its Direct Connect network service to communicate with its cloud, the company said on Tuesday.

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Adobe Plugs 6 Critical Holes in Reader

By Gregg Keizer, Computerworld  

Adobe on Tuesday patched six vulnerabilities in the newest version of its popular Reader PDF viewer, making good on a late-2011 promise when it shipped an emergency update for an older edition.

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Carrier IQ Detection Tool Converted to Premium SMS Trojan

By Lucian Constantin, IDG News

Android malware writers are taking advantage of the controversy surrounding Carrier IQ's smartphone tracking software in order to distribute a premium SMS Trojan, security researchers from Symantec warn.

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Do Mobile Devices Really Need Multi-Core Chips?

By Matt Hamblen, Computerworld  

Multi-core processors for tablets and smartphones are being touted by chip maker Nvidia and others at the CES trade show, but some in the industry question their value.

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See, They Told Us So: Sony Confirms No PS4 at E3

Sony just confirmed we won't see a new PlayStation at CES, at E3, or, I think it's safe to assume, any other point in 2012. That much was never really in doubt, though I'd like to know why some sites think it's cool to just drop-claim things are going to happen (sources, schmorses!).

That's what MCV did late last week, claiming the next Xbox and PS4 would be shown at E3 2012 and launching a thousand me-too fairy tales.

Reacting to the claim, Sony Computer Entertainment President Andrew House told CVG this week that the company wasn't "contemplating talking about anything to do with future console iterations at this point," adding that Sony was "just entering into this great period for PS3."

And at CES this week, Sony chairman Kaz Hirai was unequivocal, telling a journalist during a roundtable event that the company views the PS3 as a 10-year system while underscoring House's remarks, reports GameIndustry.biz.

"Andy is absolutely right in that we are not making any announcements at E3," said Hirai. "I've always said a 10-year life cycle for PS3, and there is no reason to go away from that."

So for the last time: No PS4 in 2012! And while Microsoft's not commenting about a new Xbox, with the 360's strong sales and games like Halo 4 in the offing this fall, I'll eat my controller if the company announces a new Xbox (by which I mean a totally new machine, not an Xbox 360-plus-a-tablet) this year.

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Laptops at CES 2012: Thinner, Lighter, and More Luxurious

The trend in laptops at CES 2012 is clear: It’s all about thinner and lighter laptops made with premium materials and slick design. Intel’s attempt to brand exceptionally thin and light laptops as

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300 Foxconn Workers Threaten Mass Suicide Over Raise

12:30 PM - January 11, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: Tom's Hardware US

Three hundred Foxconn workers threatened to jump off the roof of an Xbox 360 manufacturing plant after they didn't receive their pay.

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Pantech's Element is a waterproof 8-inch Android tablet, hands-on

We got some hands-on time with the just-announced Pantech Element tablet for AT&T here at CES 2012. The Element is a unique Android tablet that features an 8-inch display and waterproof construction.

Oh, where to start. There are a lot of cool, different things to like about the Pantech Element. For starters, I really like the size and more square'ish aspect ratio of the 8-inch, 1024 x 768 pixel touchscreen display. It offers an obviously larger amount of screen real estate than competing 7-inch tablets, but is still worlds easier to handle than the 10-inch monsters we see all the time. I like that.

I also like the fact that this low-cost, LTE tablet comes with a solid performing dual-core, 1.5GHz processor. In my quick test runs on the tablet, everything performed very smoothly. I didn't have access to data, though, so I can't say how well it performs when it comes to download speeds. I can say that you can spill your drink on it with no ill effects, though, since it is fully water-proof for up to 30 minutes in 3 feet of water. I don't really see people taking tablets out in the rain often, but it's nice to know that it's perfectly safe on your desk. Coffee be damned.

AT&T will offer the Pantech Element on January 22 for $299 with a new two-year data plan commitment. For a limited time, buyers can get the Element along with the Pantech Burst smartphone in a bundle for $249.99.

android, ces, tablet, att, ces 2012, pantech, waterproof, element

Next Article: Nvidia at CES: New Tegra 3 tech, 7-inch tablet, ICS on Transformer Prime2 comments User Comments (2) Post a commentGuest
on January 10, 2012
8:11 AMIts NOT 'Waterproof'! Its just 'Water Resistant'! Thats quite a big difference, though it would be superb if I could get a truly waterproof design that I can take diving.Reply

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OnLive Desktop brings Windows 7 and Office to your iPad

By Lee Kaelin

January 10, 2012, 8:30 AM EST

Comments5

Tablets have gained massive popularity over the past couple of years due to their ability to consume content, their portability, and ease of use. The explosion of all sorts of different apps has added even more functionality, offering users a myriad of software from games to social networking tools and everything in between.

Until now though, it is fair to say tablets have never been the best option for those needing access to certain productivity software and Office based applications. Video gaming streaming service OnLive hopes to finally change that by offering iPad users full access to Windows applications from the cloud, starting with a basic Office suite from Microsoft that includes Word, Excel, and PowerPoint.

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Kinect for Windows set for launch on February 1st

By Lee Kaelin

January 10, 2012, 9:30 AM EST

Comments9

Taking the center stage during what will supposedly be Microsoft's last keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show, the company's CEO Steve Ballmer officially announced to those in attendance that the Kinect for Windows will be available for purchase from select retailers beginning February 1st.

Microsoft sold large volumes of the device over the festive period, totaling around 18 million Xbox Kinects shipped worldwide in the last year. The company also has the Guinness World Record for the fastest selling gaming peripheral. Considering its sales success and all the interest it received from the developer and hacking community, it comes as no surprise that Microsoft is releasing a Windows version.

You won’t need to wait long either, as it is now available for pre-order at Amazon for $249.99. That said, the price is rather high given that the Xbox labeled unit can be had for around half that amount.

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Sony keeps Google TV candle burning, shows off two new models

By Lee Kaelin

January 10, 2012, 10:30 AM EST

Comments0

Sony has been a supporter of Google TV since its inception. Despite the platform's very limited success so far, the Japanese electronics firm is taking another swing at CES with two new Google TV powered devices announced at the show. The first item is an upgraded version of its Google TV powered Blu-ray player (below), designated the NSZ-GP9, which has been slimmed down from last year’s bulkier design and received a new remote offering voice search capabilities.

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Netgear shows off new products at CES, including new media storage router

By Lee Kaelin

January 10, 2012, 11:30 AM EST

Comments0

Netgear has announced several new products aimed at improving home office and consumer networks at the Consumer Electronics Show. One of which, the new Media Storage Router (WNDR4700), has just been awarded with the shows Innovations Design and Engineering Award.

The Media Storage Router combines a traditional wireless router with network storage. It will allow for users on the network to remotely back up and share important files and data seamlessly using the routers 2TB hard disk. It will also support Apple’s Time Machine backup utility as well as the Netgear Readyshare Vault tools.

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MSI demos Thunderbolt-based external GPU solution

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Microsoft's last CES keynote speech likened to an infomercial

By Lee Kaelin

January 10, 2012, 1:30 PM EST

Comments1 Thousands of people attended what will suppsoedly be Microsoft’s last opening keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show last night, which took place in the huge Palazzo Ballroom at the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas. For the last 14 years former CEO Bill Gates or the current CEO Steve Ballmer have entertained venue attendees at the world’s largest electronics convention.

There is no doubt Steve Ballmer’s last speech commanded the usual mix of power and had the attention of its omnipresent media circus, but at the same time it’s not difficult to see why the software giant has decided to step down in future conventions. January just isn’t typically a month in which Microsoft announces anything new or industry breaking and it showed, with much of the 90-minute keynote covering products the media largely already knew about.

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Tuesday tech deals: $450 off HP Pavilion dv6t, dv7t, more

HP Home & Home Office Store offers coupons for select items, as listed below. They're among the best discounts we've seen on these systems from HP Home in recent months. Last month's discounts had up to $500 off, since expired. Most items receive free shipping and sales tax is added where applicable. Some exclusions and restrictions apply. The coupons, which don't stack with existing discounts unless otherwise noted:

$450 off customized HP Pavilion dv7t Quad Edition Laptops via code "NBJ4867"$415 off customized HP Pavilion dv6t Quad Edition Laptops via code "NBL9438"33% off customized HP Pavilion Laptops of $999 or more via code "NBJ7558"$75 off customized HP Pavilion Laptops of $750 or more via code "NBE9686" (stackable)$15 off orders of $75 or more via code "SAVE15HP" (stackable)

11.6" Dell Inspiron 11z Core i3 1.2GHz Laptop for $300

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Razer intros Naga Hex gaming mouse, launches Synapse 2.0

By Jose Vilches

January 10, 2012, 2:30 PM EST With Video

Comments0

Razer has pulled the curtain on a couple of new products as the Las Vegas Convention Center officially opened its doors to CES 2012 attendees. First up is the Razer Naga Hex, a new gaming mouse that's reminescent of the Razer Naga MMO, except it drops six of the twelve thumb buttons and re-arranges them into a hexagonal pattern. The company says it is targeting the RPG/MOBA gaming crowd with this product -- if you are wondering what MOBA means it stands for 'Multiplayer Online Battle Arena'.

Razer has used a mechanical keys for the thumb buttons to ensure they don’t require too much force to press and execute an action. According to the company, this allows for 250 clicks per minute and a lifecyle of up to 10 million click, which should have gamers' obsessive clicking covered in titles like the upcoming Diablo 3.

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Smartphone Controlled Light-up Ball, Sphero, is Ready to Roll

We first saw Sphero, the smartphone-controlled robotic ball, at last year's CES--but it was just a prototype then. Now it's a product that retails for $129 and has five available free apps with more--both free and paid--apps in the works.

Sphero isn't terribly useful or productive. It's about the size of a baseball and it has a multi-color light inside it. You can control it using apps on your iOS or Android device--you can make it roll around, speed up, slow down, and change color. You can also play games with it, such as "golf," or "driving," using the golf and driving apps. There are a couple of other games, including a "draw and drive" game that lets you draw a path for the Sphero to follow.

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Oracle Partners With Cloudera for Hadoop Appliance

By Joab Jackson, IDG News

Oracle has partnered with Cloudera to bring Apache Hadoop to its Oracle Big Data Appliance, which the company officially released Tuesday.

Similar Articles:SGI to Launch Cloudera Hadoop PackageHortonWorks Hones a Hadoop DistributionOracle Launching 'Big Data,' In-memory AppliancesOracle Rolls out 'Big Data' ApplianceOracle Announces Database Appliance for SMBs

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Hands-On With the Sony Xperia Ion Smartphone

The Sony Xperia Ion smartphone, announced Monday, has some pretty drool-worthy specs. Not only does it hook into AT&T’s LTE 4G network, but it has a 4.6-inch display, HDMI-out with a TV launcher interface, and a super thin design. Oh--and a 12-megapixel camera. Yep, you read that right--a 12-megapixel camera. And it is pretty darn good.

I got my hands on the Xperia Ion Monday night and I think this might be my favorite of the Xperia series of smartphones. The display is roomy but not oversized, while the interface feels snappy and smooth. AT&T coverage was dismal (meaning there was absolutely no signal) at the event I attended, so I couldn’t test LTE speeds.

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Sony Shows Off 55-Inch Crystal LED HDTV

Sony recently announced a new display technology called Crystal LED that promises a picture with higher contrast, richer colors, better response time and a wider viewing angle than existing LCD and plasma high-definition televisions. The electronics maker is showing off the new technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with a prototype 55-inch HDTV. Sony has not announced pricing or availability.

Sony's Crystal LED HDTV uses six million pixels (two million for each of the RGB colors) to display a 1080p high-definition image. Unlike standard LCD televisions that use LEDs as backlighting, the Crystal LED display has six million tiny LED lights (equivalent to the number of pixels) affixed onto the front of the display.

The company claims Crystal LED displays have 3.5 times higher picture contrast, 1.4 times richer colors, and a 10 times faster response time compared to Sony's current LCD models. Sony's prototype Crystal LED also has a 180-degree viewing angle and the panel consumes less than 70 watts of power, according to the company.

Sony claims its prototype is the first 55-inch Full HD self-emitting display that uses LEDs as the light source. LEDs are able to produce their own light, while LCDs require a backlight to produce a visible image.

Display technology is shaping up to be a primary new feature for the next-generation of HDTVs. Samsung is also showing a 55-inch display that uses so-called "Super OLED" technology at CES, while LG has debuted a 55-inch OLED. The difference between Super OLED and OLED, according to Samsung, is that Super OLED sets don't use a color filter resulting in pictures with deeper contrasts and finer detail.

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Pirate Bay Block Prompts Anonymous to Launch DDOS Attack

By Jeremy Kirk, IDG News

Anonymous has struck the websites of two anti-piracy organizations, a day after Finnish ISP Elisa blocked access to The Pirate Bay search engine in response to an injunction requested by one of the organizations.

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DigiSafe DiskCrypt Does Ultra-secure Notebook Disk Encryption--At a Price

How much are you willing to pay to encrypt every bit of data on a notebook disk drive--without compromising performance? AT CES 2012, Singapore-based ST Electronics is showing its new DigiSafe DiskCrypt, which does the heavy lifting before you even boot up: It puts a hardware encryption module into an enclosure that will accept any standard 1.8-inch micro-SATA hard disk. It’s relatively easy to set up, but it’s also very expensive--the enclosure alone costs $450.

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Visa Certifies Smartphones for NFC Payments

By Mikael Ricknäs, IDG News  

Visa has added smartphones from Samsung Electronics, Research In Motion and LG Electronics to the list of devices it has certified to work with the 185,000 NFC-based payWave payment terminals in Europe.

All the certified products run Visa's payWave application on a secure SIM card and use NFC (Near Field Communications), a short range communications standard, to securely transmit payment information to a contactless payment terminal, according to Visa.

The first round of certified phones are: Samsung Galaxy S II, LG Optimus NET NFC, BlackBerry Bold 9900, BlackBerry Bold 9790, BlackBerry Curve 9360 and BlackBerry Curve 9380.

By certifying the phones, Visa guarantees that each device meets its payWave performance and interoperability requirements. Transaction speeds and the read range of the phone are just two of the metrics Visa measures as part of the certification, Mary Carol Harris, Head of Mobile at Visa Europe, said via email.

PayWave is Visa's method for wireless payments using either cards or mobile phones. It allows users to make purchases by waving their mobile phone in front of a compatible payment terminal, according to Visa. The certification scheme is a joint effort between Visa Europe and Visa Inc., which operates in the rest of the world.

There was some progress for mobile payments in 2011, but not as much as people had hoped for, John Devlin, group director at market research company ABI Research, saidin a recent interview.

Visa signed a license agreement with Google making payWave compatible with Google Wallet, for example.

Looking forward to the rest of 2012, Visa is optimistic. Mobile payments represent a huge opportunity as the different companies begin to work together to make their promise a reality, according to Harris.

"2012

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Native Union Debuts a Refrigerator Post-It for the Digital Age

Native Union, the company best known for its colorful MoshiMoshi retro cellphone handsets, has created a device that has roughly the same footprint as a Post-It but is actually a battery-powered video recorder and playback device.

Called Play, the gadget is roughly an inch thick and shaped like a comic strip dialog balloon, complete with tail. A 2.4-inch, 320-by-240 LCD takes up most of the device’s real estate, with three buttons to operate it to the right of the display. The sides and back are brightly colored (it's available in white, black, red, purple, blue, pink or green), and the back is magnetized so you can slap it on your refrigerator or any other surface on which you used to stick Post-Its. (If you don't have a metallic surface, you can use an included piece of magnetized wall tape to create one.)

The three buttons are, from top to bottom, for playback; on/off/record; and deletion of messages. Play's 256MB of memory holds up to three minutes' worth of video recording, but you can record multiple short messages until you reach the limit. The messages are captured with a .3-megapixel camera and labeled with a date and time stamp.

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TheBlu: An Ambitious Project to Virtually Map the Oceans

By Sarah Jacobsson Purewal, PCWorld  Jan 10, 2012 7:00 AM

If you're into the ocean (but you're terrible at keeping saltwater tanks alive), you may want to check out TheBlu. TheBlu, which just received a seed round of angel investment, is a worldwide art project focused on mapping out the oceans.

Your browser does not support iframes.

Let me explain. TheBlu is a web application that lets users "dive in" to the ocean and explore its species. It's sort of like a social networking game, because users are able to discover new species, share them with friends via Facebook, and even purchase more of that species to fill up their own personal "tank," or ocean.

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iOS 5.1 Beta Hints At Quad-Core iPhone, iPad

Apple released to developers a third beta of iOS 5.1 that brings back the 3G data toggle missing on the iPhone 4S since its release. There are no other changes on the surface in the new beta, but according to 9To5Mac, strings inside the iOS 5.1 beta 3 code hint at a quad-core iPhone and iPad this year.

The references to the quad-core iPhone and iPad chips were found in the code of the iOS 5.1 beta 3, and it’s not the first time Apple hinted at future hardware through its developer releases. In the first beta of iOS 5.1 in November, reference codes were found for the next-generation Apple TV, as well the next iPhone and two new iPad models -- although historically not all products referenced in iOS betas were released.

If Apple is indeed working with quad-core processors (A4 was the 1GHz chip, A5 dual-core 1GHz, so maybe A6 for quad-core?), this would allow the company to power high-resolution displays, like the iPad 3 with Retina Display that pundits expect to be released this spring. As it was with the A4 and A5 chips, once the new iPad model is released, the quad-core processors could then find their way in the revamped iPhone 5 tipped for later this year.

Code hints aside, iOS 5.1 doesn’t seem set to be a very exciting update for iOS users. So far Apple listed several minor bug fixes, most of them relating to iCloud accounts or migrating from MobileMe, as well as security improvements. As mentioned, the third beta brings back the 3G data toggle under Settings/Network, missing for iPhone 4S users, which allows data traffic through EDGE in order to use less battery.

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French Operator Free Slashes Mobile Pricing With 3G Network Launch

By Peter Sayer, IDG News

French ISP Free lived up to its name Tuesday with its launch of France's fourth mobile phone network.

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Hands On With the Motorola Droid 4 and Droid RAZR MAXX

I managed to get some alone time with Motorola’s latest Android offerings while attending the Digital Experience event at CES: The Droid 4 and the Droid RAZR MAXX. Both Droids feature dual-core processors and 8-megapixel cameras, and both can connect to Verizon’s LTE network. However, though similar, each phone brings something new to the Motorola Droid line on Verizon.

The Droid 4 is the follow-up to the Droid 3, which launched on Verizon last July. You still get a roomy 4-inch display to fool around on, as well as a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard for faster typing. The keys felt as good as the ones on the Droid 3, if not slightly more comfortable. The keyboard is backlit, for easier typing in low light areas, and the keys are all slightly domed to assist in touch-typing.

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Thinner Gorilla Glass Packs Same Punch

By Jay Alabaster, IDG News  

Corning is shipping samples of an updated version of its popular Gorilla Glass product that will allow screens to be 20 percent thinner at the same strength.

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Kinect for Windows Available February 1, but Overpriced at $249

Say what you will about Steve Ballmer's swan song CES 2012 keynote (and the ridiculous, mostly made-up hype preceding it), at least we got a launch date and price for Kinect for Windows. It's about time, too: Microsoft released the Windows SDK beta, which works with any Xbox 360 Kinect sensor, last June.

You can lay hands on the Kinect for Windows bundle come February 1 for $249, which...wait, isn't Kinect for the Xbox 360 just $149? $119 discounted (brand new) at places like Amazon? Well under $100 if you pick one up used? What gives?

Microsoft says the Kinect for Windows kit comes with a Kinect sensor (which, if you voted Xbox 360, you probably already own), development software, a one-year warranty, software updates for speech and human tracking and "our continued investment in Kinect for Windows-based software advancements" (hey, give the company credit for admitting flat-out that they're charging us R&D costs).

If you're a "qualified educational user," you can have the thing for $149 "later this year," so if you're a student or educator, due diligence (and patience) should save you $100.

Anticipating pricing backlash, Microsoft writes on its Kinect for Windows blog that it's "proud to bring technology priced in the tens of thousands of dollars just a few years ago to the mainstream at extremely low consumer prices," adding that "

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Tech Finds Its Voice Control at CES 2012

By Ian Paul, PCWorld  Jan 10, 2012 8:31 AM

Voice control is looming large at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas with companies such as Ford, Lenovo, LG, Nuance, and Samsung touting voice control for high-definition televisions, ultrathin laptops and cars. Here's a look at some of the next-generation gadgets that you'll be talking to (even when other people are watching).

Talkative TVs

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Adobe Launches Photoshop Lightroom 4 Beta

By Jackie Dove, Macworld  

Keeping its tradition of releasing a free public beta of its professional photo management software in advance of a major new version, Adobe has announced Photoshop Lightroom 4 beta. It's now available for download on Adobe Labs. The company seeks feedback from the community on how to improve the program before the final release of version 4, which will be sometime in the early part of the year.

Lightroom, which plays alongside Apple's Aperture and the brand new Corel AfterShot Pro, is a photo workflow tool targeted to professionals and advanced amateurs to import, manage, enhance, and showcase their images.

The beta showcases the upcoming version's refined technology for shadow and highlight processing, enhanced support for DSLR video, the ability to create photo books, and send email from within the program.

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Gorilla Glass 2.0: Stronger, Thinner, Lighter

By Tony Bradley, PCWorld

What’s better than a thin, light smartphone or tablet? An even thinner and lighter smartphone or tablet, of course. Corning is doing its part to bring that vision to life with the next generation of Gorilla Glass.

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Attack Code Published for Serious ASP.NET DoS Vulnerability

By Lucian Constantin, IDG News

Exploit code for a recently patched denial-of-service (DoS) vulnerability that affects Microsoft's ASP.NET Web development platform has been published online, therefore increasing the risk of potential attacks.

The vulnerability, identified as CVE-2011-3414, was disclosed in December at the Chaos Communication Congress, Europe's largest and oldest hacker conference. Shortly afterward Microsoft published a security advisory and released an out-of-band patch for the flaw.

The type of attack facilitated by this vulnerability affects other Web application platforms as well and each of them has its own mitigation instructions. "This vulnerability could allow an anonymous attacker to efficiently consume all CPU resources on a web server, or even on a cluster of web servers," explained Suha Can and Jonathan Ness, two Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) engineers, in a blog post back in December.

"For ASP.NET in particular, a single specially crafted

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A Closer Look at the Samsung Galaxy Attain and LG Connect for MetroPCS

The LG Connect.The LG Connect 4G and Samsung Galaxy Attain 4G--both offered through MetroPCS--were the first of many LTE phones that launched Monday on Press Day at CES. These phones piqued my interest due to the simple fact that they’re contract-free. Remember those days when the only smartphone you could get prepaid was an ancient BlackBerry? My, how things have changed.

The LG Connect, as far as I know, is the only dual-core LTE prepaid phone available. It isn’t the most attractive phone, but the 4-inch NOVA display (LG’s LCD display technology) looks great. NOVA displays, as seen on the LG Optimus Black, the LG Prada, and other top-of-the-line LG phones, have deep blacks and bold, bright colors that pop. It also has the added benefit of a Corning Gorilla Glass Screen Protector.

The Connect isn’t this thinnest phone around and the design is a bit on the clunky side. I’m not a big fan of the textured plastic battery cover, either. It does feel solid in hand, however, partially due to that extra tough Gorilla glass.

Performance-wise, the LG Connect seemed pretty snappy. Sadly, I couldn’t test MetroPCS’s 4G network, however, as we seemed to be in a complete dead zone (for multiple networks).

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Intuit Debuts New Card Swiper, Takes Its Mobile Payment Service to Canada

It's shaped like a chubby cork, covered in slate-colored rubber, and connects to mobile devices through--of all things--a headphone jack. But for small businesses, the best thing about Intuit's new credit card swipe attachment may be that it won't cost them a dime, at least not for the hardware alone.

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Presented By: Do you have what it takes?

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Mercedes-Benz, Facebook Team Up to Put App in Cars

Facebook is coming to a new Mercedes-Benz near you.

At CES 2012 in Las Vegas, the German car maker revealed that Facebook would be one of the apps in its new Mbrace2 telematics system, which will begin appearing in the company's SL class vehicles this spring.

Mercedes' edition of Facebook won't be as robust as the online version, according to a report by Reuters. It will have a limited set of features designed for drivers and focused on locations of friends and businesses.

Moving Facebook to venues with Internet access other than computers and smartphones is a logical extension of the social network, its vice president of partnerships and platform marketing, Dan Rose, told Reuters. For example, he noted that since people use GPS devices to track the location of their car, why shouldn't they be able to track the location of their Facebook friends from their car.

There has been increased concern lately, especially in the United States, about gadgets in cars, especially smartphones, distracting a driver's attention from driving and contributing to accidents. In fact one national automotive safety organization has called for a complete ban of operating cellphones in cars.

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Myspace Reinvents Itself, Pins Hopes on Myspace TV

By Brennon Slattery, PCWorld  Jan 10, 2012 10:16 AM

Myspace is remaking itself yet again, pinning its latest comeback hopes on TVs.

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The Cloud, Day 22: In and Out of the Cloud

30 Days With the Cloud: Day 22

Storing my documents, photos, music, and other data in the cloud is great. During the course of the 30 Days With the Cloud series, though, I have also come across a little problem -- keeping track of whether I am in the cloud, or not.

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Nearly Half of Americans Surveyed See Tablets Wiping out Laptops

Amazon Kindle Fire Said to be Moving into Second Place in Tablet War

Of course, "eventually" is a very long time, and the recent rollout of Amazon's Kindle Fire and anticipation over the Apple iPad 3 might have survey takers overreaching a bit.

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Avira Teams with secure.me for Facebook Security

By Tony Bradley, PCWorld

Privacy and security concerns come with the territory when you use a social network like Facebook. Avira is partnering with secure.me to deliver protection that extends beyond traditional malware, and helps defend your personal information and reputation as well.

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Samsung Galaxy Note Gets Cloud Based Mark-Up App with Scribble

Verizon JetPack Hotspots: Take 4G Abroad

The Samsung Galaxy Note is a unique device somewhere between a smartphone and a tablet, and it comes with an interesting add-on called the S Pen. The S Pen is not just another capacitive stylus, but rather an active digitizer which provides better accuracy, palm rejection, and pressure sensativity.

Soonr, a cloud based collaboration service, has announced a new app to take advantage of the S Pen that will allow users to mark-up documents stored in their Soonr cloud using the S Pen on the Galaxy Note.

The team at Soonr worked closely with Samsung to optimize Scribble for the Galaxy Note and take advantage of the accuracy of the S Pen. Users can write freehand in a variety of pen sizes and colors and add highlights on any document type then share those edits and notes with their team through the Soonr cloud.

Soonr provides cloud collaboration services with project management, commenting, versioning, and syncing tools. Scribble brings files stored in Soonr to the Galaxy Note for annotation and markup using the S Pen. Files are available both online and offline, and changes sync back automatically.

Saumsung will feature Scribble as an S Choice application in their app store. Exact release dates and pricing have not yet been confirmed.

Check out these videos to see Scribble in action:

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Splunk 4.3 Gets a Boost for Business Analysis

By Joab Jackson, IDG News

With the newest update of its machine-data search engine, Splunk has expanded the user interface in a number of ways so it can be more easily used by business analysts as well as system administrators.

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Tebow Sets Twitter Record

When Denver Broncos quarterback Tim Tebow hit Demaryius Thomas on a slant route that turned into a 80-yard touchdown Sunday on the first play in overtime, he not only advanced his team to the next level of the NFL playoffs, but he set a new record for sports tweets on Twitter.

According to the microblogging site, Tebow's overtime heroics set a new record for sports of 9420 tweets per second.

In setting a new record, Tebow eclipsed the mark of 7196 tweets per second (TPS) set at end of the 2011 FIFA Women's World Cup where the U.S. team lost to a plucky Japanese squad in a penalty kick shootout.

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Quad-Core Intel Atom CPUs Coming in 2013

11:30 AM - January 10, 2012 by Doug Crowthers- source: ComputerBase

With Cedar Trail being released in 2012, we get a look at the next phase for the Atom processors, which includes a quad-core model.

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MSFT Talks Windows 8, TV Interaction During CES Keynote

1:20 PM - January 10, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: Microsoft

Microsoft crammed an interview, demos of Windows Phone, Windows 8 and Xbox with Kinect into one action-packed hour.

On Monday, President and CEO of the Consumer Electronics Association Gary Shapiro (who could easily be played by SNL's Chris Kattan in a made-for-TV movie) opened the CES 2012 Keynote Address with an explanation as to why Microsoft is pulling out of the show. Technically he called it "taking a break," and admitted that both parties agreed it was time for Microsoft to do something else, something bigger. Hence, Shapiro set the tone of the entire keynote address, a retrospective of what Microsoft has brought to the show for more than a decade, to what the company is doing now.

To be perfectly honest, this wasn't the best way for Microsoft to "go out with a bang." The company clearly wowed all of us last year when Windows was revealed to run on ARM's architecture. That same wow factor wasn't present this year. Instead, Microsoft's final keynote -- at least for now -- was presented in the form of a one-on-one interview between American Idol's Ryan Seacrest and Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer. The entire dialogue exchange came across as a scripted, hokey, late-night infomercial, with the product presenter (Ballmer) spewing off obviously prepared answers as the "host" (Seacrest) merely did the "gosh gee golly" while holding up said products or firing off brief, scripted questions.

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5 Things You May Have Missed About Windows Phone

Microsoft's mobile operating system has been getting a lot of buzz among the media and consumers ahead of the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas -- some good, some not so good.

Here's a rundown of recent Windows Phone chatter in case you missed it.

UPDATES BACKLASH

PCWorld reported Friday that Microsoft was scrapping its "Where’s My Phone Update" site. The news wasn't received well by Windows Phone users who felt betrayed and abandoned by Microsoft -- especially after Microsoft has touted the fact that Windows Phone had a better updating model than Android.

In response, Greg Sullivan, senior product manager on Windows Phone, told ZDNet, "Nothing has changed in regard to how we work with carriers to deliver Windows Phone updates to our customers." He also indicated there's been no carrier push-back leading to the decision. Apparently, if Microsoft were to continue adding each and every new phone model and new carrier relationship, the Windows Phone Update table would have become unwieldy.

MAPS PATENT

Microsoft has been granted a patent to make its maps more pedestrian-friendly. Not so affectionately, though, the patent is being dubbed by some observers as the "avoid ghetto" feature.

According to CNET, in order to create suggested routes, Microsoft's GPS -- which will reportedly be inserted into Windows Phones in the future -- will use input from more varied and up-to-date sources, including crime statistics. This idea is leading some people to think it will be an insult to poor neighborhoods. The patent covers other things as well, such as helping pedestrians avoid "harsh temperatures."

NOKIA SMARTPHONE

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Strike Knight for iPhone and iPad

Strike Knight looks to recreate the puck bowling game you might find down at your local tavern. And it does a pretty good job of it, from the gleaming wood of the playing surface to the neon bar lights in the background. This iPhone offering from Backflip Studios--and its iPad counterpart, Strike Knight HD--doesn't exactly push the envelope for iOS gaming. But both versions of Strike Knight offer up a decent degree of fun, if you're either willing to put up with a lot of ads or pay for the privilege of making those ads go away.

Gameplay in Strike Knight couldn't be simpler: Use your finger to slide a puck across a wooden tabletop toward ten pins. At the far end of the table, lit-up numbers flash just above the pins. These are the points you pick up if you record a strike (knocking down all ten pins in one turn) or a spare (knocking them down in two turns); fail to record either, and you're awarded only a meager amount of points for the pins you do manage to knock down.

The game's scoreboard also features the titular Strike Knight, an animated figure who plays air guitar to celebrate your bowling successes and shakes his head sadly to mark your defeats. He also praises your strikes and mocks your misses, though in a gravelly roar that makes it kind of hard to figure out what the Strike Knight is saying. (I think I've heard him say things like "Impressive" when I've picked up the spare and "Come on" when I've missed pins--it's like being taunted by someone in the Witness Protection Program.)

Strike Knight looks to liven up its basic gameplay with achievements that you can unlock with feats of bowling skill--picking up the seven-ten split, for example, or bowling an entire game without any open frames. The game also features a pass-and-play multiplayer mode, in which up to four players can compete to rack up the highest score. You can't challenge opponents over Wi-Fi or Bluetooth, alas.

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Apple Reportedly Objects to Steve Jobs Doll

By Michael Burns, macworld.co.uk  

Sites across the Web have been given another chance to run images of the eerie Steve Jobs poseable doll from In Icons as the expected legal challenge from Apple seems to have been delivered to the Chinese company.

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Google Chrome Finally Gets Malware Download Protection

By John E Dunn, Techworld.com  

Nine months after first being put into testing, the new version of Chrome will at last included filtering against inadvertently downloading malware executables, Google has announced.

Reported as being on the browser's long list as long ago as April 2011, the version 17 beta includes the ability to relate known malicious websites detected using the software's Safe Browsing API, blocking downloads hosted on such domains.

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Crysis 2 Wins Title of Most Pirated Game of 2011

11:00 PM - January 6, 2012 by Douglas Perry- source: TorrentFreak

Crysis 2 scored almost 4 million BitTorrent downloads and captured the title of the most pirated PC game of 2011.

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It Was A Record Year for Steam, Claims Valve

3:00 AM - January 7, 2012 by Kevin Parrish- source: Valve PR

Steam saw over 5 million simultaneous users over the holidays. Business was good too, of course.

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Galaxy Nexus to Arrive in White for UK Next Month

7:00 AM - January 7, 2012 by Jane McEntegart- source: Clove

Who wants to have the same color phone as everyone else?

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Apple Patents Point to Thunderbolt on iOS Devices

11:00 AM - January 7, 2012 by Jane McEntegart- source: Patently Apple

Currently present in its line of desktop and laptop computers (but not the Mac Pro), could Apple be bringing Thunderbolt to its media players next?

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