General Gaming Article |
- AMD Reportedly Prepping Three Athlon II X4 CPUs For Socket FM2
- Gigabit Google Fiber Plans Unveiled, Include Traditional TV and a Free Internet Option
- A Rough Morning For The Net: Twitter, Google Talk and Windows Azure All Suffer Service Outages
- Valve Hedging Bets on Linux to Avoid Windows 8 "Catastrophe"
- Zynga's Cash Crops Appear to be Drying Up, Investors Head to Greener Pastures
- Asus Jumps on 802.11ac Bandwagon, Launches RT-AC66U 5G Wi-Fi Router
- Samsung Skips Ahead of Apple with Over 52 Million Smartphone Shipments
| AMD Reportedly Prepping Three Athlon II X4 CPUs For Socket FM2 Posted: 26 Jul 2012 11:23 AM PDT
The website, which is generally very reliable, only got ahold of the basic specs for the chips:
The rest of the details are murky: CPU world doesn't even know when the chips are slated to launch or if they'll be OEM-only or available at retail. The website reports the trio will be based on AMD's Piledriver architecture, but will likely have no integrated GPU functionality. |
| Gigabit Google Fiber Plans Unveiled, Include Traditional TV and a Free Internet Option Posted: 26 Jul 2012 10:39 AM PDT
Of course, that last package isn't quite no strings attached; freeloaders are limited to 5Mbps down/1Mbps up and they'll have to pay a $300 construction fee to have the fiber wires hooked up to their house, though they can opt to pay the fee in $25 increments over the course of a year. Google waves that fee for premium gigabit subscribers and tosses in 1TB of storage on Google Drive, to boot. The TV offering is intriguing, too: it comes with hundreds of traditional HD channels comprised of the major stations you're used to, on-demand movies, full YouTube and Netflix integration, and a DVR function that can save 2TB worth of TV and up record up to eight different shows simultaneously. Oh, and TV subscribers get a free Nexus 7 to act as a remote and a portable TV screen, though some stations aren't available for streaming to the tablet. Sign me up! Oh, wait: Google Fiber is only available in a small slice of Kansas Cities. Residents in uncovered portions of the cities can "pre-register" for a $10 fee; the neighborhoods that generate the most support by September 9th will be the next ones to receive that delicious gigabit Internet. |
| A Rough Morning For The Net: Twitter, Google Talk and Windows Azure All Suffer Service Outages Posted: 26 Jul 2012 10:05 AM PDT
It's odd that all three toppled in succession like dominos, but fortunately, none of the disruptions were overly long. A quick glance at Digsby tells me Google Talk is back up and running, and Windows Azure's status dashboard shows green lights and clean sailing around the globe. Twitter's status still says that "Users may be experiencing issues accessing Twitter. Our engineers are currently working to resolve the issue." We haven't run into any issues Tweeting retro-tinged pics of our utilitarian meals, however. How about you? Did the service outages knock you for a loop today? |
| Valve Hedging Bets on Linux to Avoid Windows 8 "Catastrophe" Posted: 26 Jul 2012 07:51 AM PDT
Newell sat down for a fireside chat at Casual Connect, an annual videogame conference in Seattle. AllThingsD was in attendance and posted some interesting, if unflattering (towards Windows 8) quotes from the head of Valve. "We want to make it as easy as possible for the 2,500 games on Steam to run on Linux as well. It's a hedging strategy. I think Windows 8 is a catastrophe for everyone in the PC space," Newell explained. "I think we'll lose some of the top-tier PC/OEMs, who will exit the market. I think margins will be destroyed for a bunch of people. If that's true, then it will be good to have alternatives to hedge against that eventuality." Newell isn't alone in his assessment. Stardock CEO Brad Wardell wrote a piece for Kotaku earlier in the year in which he called Windows 8 a "schizophrenic" operating system unable to decide if its a tablet or desktop OS, and a "usability nightmare" that puts too much focus on touch. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Zynga's Cash Crops Appear to be Drying Up, Investors Head to Greener Pastures Posted: 26 Jul 2012 07:26 AM PDT
In a conference call with analysts, John Schappert, chief operating officer for Zynga, was critical of changes Facebook made last quarter. "Facebook made a number of changes in the quarter. These changes favored new games. Our users did not remain as engaged and did not come back as often," Shcappert explained, according to The New York Times. That's concerning, but the biggest red flag for investors is the fact that Zynga sharply cut its forecast for its bookings (leftover revenue after paying Facebook) to as low as $1.15 billion, down from a previous projection of $1.47 billion. More details are included in the full report (PDF). Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Asus Jumps on 802.11ac Bandwagon, Launches RT-AC66U 5G Wi-Fi Router Posted: 26 Jul 2012 06:23 AM PDT
The RT-AC66U is a dual-band router with up to 450Mbps on the 2.4GHz band and up to 1.3Gbps on the 5GHz band. It's purportedly easy to setup and use, yet offers an advanced feature-set with goodies like QoS settings, DLNA support, VPN, and dual USB ports with printer and file server sharing. One of the features Asus talks up is AiCloud, which offers a unified app for iOS and Android devices that transforms the RT-AC66U into a personal cloud server. In addition, Asus' Download Master service lets users download files when their PC is turned off, as well as manage and monitor downloads remotely. Asus didn't say how much the RT-AC66U will cost or when it will ship. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Samsung Skips Ahead of Apple with Over 52 Million Smartphone Shipments Posted: 26 Jul 2012 06:05 AM PDT
Granted Samsung has the benefit of playing in Android's ecosystem, which allows it to pump out several different devices, whereas Apple deals solely with its iPhone line. Regardless of how and why, Samsung finds itself leading the smartphone category, and by a large margin. Samsung's smartphone shipments have been bolstered by its flagship Galaxy S III device, which Juniper Research dubs a "phenomenal success." In the month of June, Samsung sold 10 million Galaxy S III phones, helping to widen the gap in overall smartphone sales with Apple, though the iPhone 5 launch will likely tighten things up. As far as Android competitors go, Juniper Research says they "continue to fall short, with the resources needed to compete with Samsung's marketing push halting HTC's early promise (11.6 million) and Motorola, distracted by the Google acquisition, lacking a strong presence in Western Europe." Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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Even with all the talk about new directions like Trinity, 
Google just unveiled 
They say bad things come in threes, and that was definitely true for folks who rely on the Internet for communications and cloud-based data centers today. The woes started this morning when Google Talk went down and stayed down for several hours. Then Microsoft's Windows Azure service went belly up in Europe, followed by some users running into outage issues with Twitter. And without Twitter, how are you going to complain about the other services being down?
You may have heard that Valve is hard at work porting its Steam client to the Linux platform, but it's not because the company has developed a sudden affinity towards the open source space. The real reason is because Valve views Microsoft's upcoming Windows 8 release as a "catastrophe" in the making for the PC industry at large, or at least that's the viewpoint held by Gabe Newell, co-founder and managing director at Valve.
Shares of Zynga plummeted 40 percent to $3.03 in after market trading after the social game developer reported a net loss for its second quarter ended June 30, 2012. Zynga tried to put a positive spin on the fact that its Q2 revenue of $332 million represents a 19 percent year-over-year increase and that its six months year-to-date revenue of $653 million is a 25 percent year-over-year increase, but the numbers still added up to a $22.8 million net loss for the quarter, and a $108.1 million net loss for the six month period.
It might be awhile before there's an officially certified 802.11ac standard, but in the meantime, companies are ready and willing to forge ahead with router models based on draft specifications, just as we saw in the draft 802.11n days. Asus is one of them, having just announced the launch of its RT-AC66U 5G Wi-Fi router with greater than gigabit wireless speeds on the 5GHz band.
While Samsung and Apple continue to tangle in court over patent infringement claims brought on by the latter, the former spends its spare time shipping smartphones, and a great number of them at that. In the second quarter of 2012, Samsung figures it shipped 52.1 million smartphones, or nearly double that of its closest rival, Apple, which shipped 26 million iPhone devices in the same time period.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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