General Gaming Article |
- Facebook Working on Virtual Assistant Called 'M'
- Amazon Launches 'Underground,' Nukes Free App of the Day
- IDC Sour on Near Term PC and Tablet Outlook, Eyes Recovery in 2017
- Four Weeks Later, Windows 10 is Installed on 75 Million Devices
- QNAP TurboNAS TS-451 Review
| Facebook Working on Virtual Assistant Called 'M' Posted: 26 Aug 2015 02:26 PM PDT David Marcus, Vice President of Messaging Products at Facebook, revealed on Wednesday that America's number-one social network is currently developing a genderless virtual personal assistant called "M." This new AI will be located within Messenger, the company's stand-alone chat client. So far there's no indication when—or if—this virtual assistant will be released to the Facebook masses. What will make this AI different from Google Now, Siri, and Cortana is that M will actually complete tasks. "It can purchase items, get gifts delivered to your loved ones, book restaurants, travel arrangements, appointments, and way more," Marcus said in a blog. Unfortunately, Marcus doesn't go into great detail regarding M, pointing out that the virtual assistant is in its early stages. However, he provided several screenshots revealing that M can help order flowers for the user's mother, locate a "dog friendly" beach nearby, suggest shoes for a newborn baby, suggest a good burger joint for a trip that will be taken next week, and so on. Marcus says that M is powered by "artificial intelligence that's trained and supervised by people." He goes on to tell Wired that M is a hybrid personal assistant: it has an AI as well as a human team located at Facebook. These "M Trainers" will make sure that all requests made by users will be answered, whether it's by the AI or the human team. Users will have no idea if their question was answered by the AI or a human. According to Wired, M does not pull information for Facebook's huge stash of social data. Thus, if a human asks M about what type of gift to give Mom, the service will make a suggestion based on answers to additional questions and previous conversations. The best part about Facebook's virtual assistant is that it will be completely free to Facebook users. If that's the case, how will Facebook make money from M? "We start capturing all of your intent for the things you want to do," Marcus says. "Intent often leads to buying something, or to a transaction, and that's an opportunity for us to [make money] over time." Naturally, Facebook will potentially make loads of money if and when the user base increases. An increase in revenue means more investment into the project, which in turn will generate more revenue for the social network. One notable drawback to M is that users will have to open Messenger on their mobile device in order to access it. Perhaps the virtual assistant will be a stand-alone app in the future. The report states that M has been in use by a group of Facebook employees over the last several weeks. One Facebook employee even had M call the cable company and wait for a service representative. The wait was presumably a long (long) time and was actually endured by a Facebook employee instead of the AI. Currently, over 700 million Facebook members are using the Messenger app. Now, imagine the number of questions M and its human team could receive once the service goes public. Hopefully, Facebook will have plenty of M Trainers on hand. |
| Amazon Launches 'Underground,' Nukes Free App of the Day Posted: 26 Aug 2015 01:40 PM PDT Free Apps from AmazonFor a long time, Amazon offered the Free App of the Day promotion for Android tablets and smartphones. The catch was that customers needed to sideload Amazon's Appstore onto their device to take advantage of the daily promotion. Those days are gone, replaced by a new Amazon service called Underground. Like the Appstore, Amazon customers are required to sideload Underground on their Android device. The good news here is that customers can still download free apps—over $10,000 worth according to the company. Amazon says that it's making this giveaway possible by using a new business model with app and game developers. "Many apps and games that are marked as 'free' turn out not to be completely free. They use in-app payments to charge you for special items or to unlock features or levels," the company states. "In Underground, you will find 100 percent free versions of popular premium titles like OfficeSuite Professional 8, Goat Simulator, and PhotoSuite 4." The business model that allows an app to be totally free consists of a per-minute played scheme that pays developers for time played, allowing them to nuke in-app fees. Amazon said it will pay these developers "a certain amount," and that it's picking up the charges so that the app is totally free to users. According to Amazon, the Underground app will automatically be installed on Fire HD and Fire HDX tablets. To download the free apps and games, customers merely log into Underground with their Amazon account credentials and locate apps that have the "Actually Free" banner in the app's icon. So, how long will this promotion last? Amazon says the program will be "long-term" and that the company will continue to "invent and add more benefits" to the Underground app over time. To kick things off, Amazon Underground is offering a number of apps for free, including Inside Out Thought Bubbles, Cars: Fast as Lightning, Looney Tunes Dash!, OfficeSuite Professional 8, Duck Tales: Remastered, Toca Kitchen, Cut the Rope 2, Goat Simulator, and more. To get the Amazon Underground app, simply head here and provide your email address. You can find the free apps by clicking the "Actually Free Apps and Games" banner when you first load up the app. You can also purchase these apps, if the whole per-minute scheme is just too weird for you. |
| IDC Sour on Near Term PC and Tablet Outlook, Eyes Recovery in 2017 Posted: 26 Aug 2015 10:07 AM PDT Windows 10 to the rescue? When it comes to the PC market, analysts tend to err on the side of gloom and doom. We wondered if that would still be the case once Windows 10 released to the public, and though it's been installed on 75 million devices to date, at least one market research firm is predicting an ongoing decline in PC shipments. International Data Corporation (IDC) is forecasting that worldwide PC shipments will slip in the neighborhood of 8.7 percent in 2015, and if true, that would make five consecutive years of declining growth. Why the negative outlook? IDC points out that even though vendors have been preparing for Windows 10 systems in the second half of the year, the shrinkage is related to a "stubbornly large inventory of notebooks from prior quarters and severe constraints posed by the decline of major currencies relative to the U.S. dollar." Even so, IDC predicts a combined 281.6 million portable and desktop PC shipments in 2015. In other words, don't read too much into the accompanying rhetoric -- the PC market is by no means dead or dying. Looking ahead, IDC believes growth will resume in 2017 led by the commercial market, albeit not by leaps and bounds -- the research firms forecasts 282.1 million in 2019, up half a million from the end of this year. In years past, any decline in PC shipments was typically blamed on the market's infatuation with tablets. That's no longer the case. IDC sees the tablet market declining 8 percent in 2015. IDC clumps 2-in-1 devices in with tablets, though notes that detachables are are "starting to gain traction. "While the 2-in-1 form factor is not new, OEMs are getting more serious about this market and as a result IDC expects the 2-in-1 segment to grow 86.5 percent year over year in 2015 with 14.7 million units shipped," IDC said. It's worth noting that IDC doesn't include 2-in-1 devices with detachable keyboards in the portable PC category. That includes the Surface Pro, which Microsoft pitches as a tablet that can replace a laptop. |
| Four Weeks Later, Windows 10 is Installed on 75 Million Devices Posted: 26 Aug 2015 08:51 AM PDT Can't beat free It's been a month since Microsoft released Windows 10 to the public and during that time the OS has found its way onto 75 million devices. That's according to Yusuf Mehdi, Corporate Vice President of Microsoft's Windows and Devices Group, who posted the figure on Twitter today. "More than 75 million devices running Windows 10 -- and growing every day," Mehdi tweeted. He then tweeted out nine more tidbits related to Windows 10, such as revealing that the "Windows Store for Windows 10 has seen 6X more app downloads per device than Windows 8" and that "more than 122 years of gameplay have streamed from Xbox One to Windows 10 devices" so far. This is exactly the kind of start Microsoft needed for Windows 10, which rushed to 14 million installs within 24 hours of release. Of course, Microsoft virtually ensured that Windows 10 would see inflated figures by giving away free upgrades to Windows 7 and Windows 8.1 users, but as long most of those users stay on Windows 10, it's a win for Microsoft. Unlike Windows 8, Microsoft isn't forcing a tablet-friendly interface on users in Windows 10. The Metro UI is nowhere to be seen on desktops, and at long last, the Start menu (not just the Start button) is back. There's a lot to like in Windows 10, though it's hasn't been without controversy. Some are concerned that Microsoft is overstepping its bounds with regards to privacy, while others have taken issue with the OS's mandatory updates for Windows 10 Home users, the latter of which received negative attention when a faulty update resulted in some users being stuck in a reboot loop that required editing the registry to fix. If Microsoft sticks to its stated plan, Windows 10 will be the last monolithic release of Windows as it switches to a Windows-as-a-Service (WaaS) model. In place of major new Windows releases, Microsoft is (in part) banking on subscription services like OneDrive and Office 365 being big money makers. |
| Posted: 26 Aug 2015 12:00 AM PDT At A Glance(+) Tasty: Great UI; (-) Not so tasty: A little expensive, weird app design. Big features, small footprintOver the last several weeks, we've taken a good look at a couple of network attached storage (NAS) solutions including the beastly Synology Diskstation DS2515+ NAS and the smaller eight-bay QNAP TVS-871 NAS. Now we're taking a hard look at the four-bay QNAP TurboNAS TS-451, which isn't as large as the former two we reviewed, but still packs a punch in regard to features and performance. We're not going to beat around the bush here: This QNAP NAS is simply awesome. The device is perfect for the home and could be used as a theater PC despite some of the hardware shortcomings. That's because this NAS supports not only HDMI output to a monitor or HDTV, but you can plug a mouse and keyboard into the built-in USB ports for a full "desktop" experience. You can't play games on the device, but you can certainly surf the web using Chrome or Firefox, both of which are apps that can be installed. Its squarish form factor measures 6.97(H) x 7.09(W) x 9.25(D) inches, and includes an Intel Celeron dual-core processor (2.41GHz, 2.58GHz Burst), 1GB of DDR3L RAM (expandable up to 8GB), 512MB of internal storage, four drive bays, two gigabit Ethernet ports, two USB 3.0 ports (one front, one rear), and two USB 2.0 ports (both on the rear). The USB ports can support a USB printer, pen drive, a USB UPS, and more. On the front of the NAS are LED indicators for Status, LAN, and the four hard drives. There are also an IR receiver, the power button, and a one-touch copy button. On the back are a single large fan keeping the innards cool, a password and network settings reset button, the power connector, and a Kensington security lock. So, despite the small form factor, there's a lot going on in the TS-451. The TS-451 provides two interfaces powered by QNAP's QTS operating system. There's the back end, which is accessible through any web browser, and a front end that presents a number of services through the HDMI port. For the front end, there's a link to the QTS platform that basically loads up the back end interface without having to access a browser. There are a number of apps that come preinstalled, including the Photo Station, the Music Station, the Video Station, the File Station, and more. Customers can get additional apps on QNAP's built-in App Center, which plays host to a large number of apps that are compatible with this particular NAS. While the App Center is nowhere as large as Apple's or Google Play's offerings, the QTS operating system provides three screens (or pages) for apps, just like a tablet or smartphone. Some of the installed apps should speak for themselves, such as the Music Station and Photo Station. The files we uploaded were through the File Station, to keep everything neat and organized via folders. By default, media files are crammed into the Multimedia file folder; other folders include Download, Public, Recordings, and Web. The QTS platform recognizes the file extensions and will provide access to these files accordingly, such as JPGs can be viewed in the Photo Station, MOV files can be played in the Video Station, and so on. The QTS back end also provides a neat and tidy Control Panel that's broken down into four sections: System settings, Privilege settings, Network services, and Applications. The System settings portion provides access to the general settings, storage manager, the network settings, notifications, and so on. The Privilege Settings provides access to user accounts, shared folders, domain security, and more. The Network settings within the Control Panel app provides a number of features including FTP, Telnet / SSH, SNMP and Service Discovery. Meanwhile, users can access the Applications section to manage the iTunes server, the DLNA Media Server, the SQL server, the Web server, Antivirus, and loads more. As we previously stated, there is a lot of bang for the buck with this NAS. One of the great aspects of the TS-451 is that you can access the stored files from anywhere, as long as myQNAPcloud is registered and activated. To connect to the device, users can simply open a browser and type "www.myqnapcloud.com/cloudlink/yournasname" where the "yournasname" is the name for the NAS taht you provided during setup. By having remote access, users can upload pictures and other files to the device on the fly, whether they're on vacation or at the mall. For more savvy users, you can setup the TS-451 to a DynDNS service and configure your router to allow remote access that way. The TS-451 also provides QSync, an app that synchronizes files on a device with files stored on the NAS. There's also the interesting Notes Station, which allows users to edit documents, spreadsheets, and slides that were created in Microsoft Office. There's even the ability to stream media to a smartphone or tablet, a built-in antivirus service, and a surveillance station for customers with cameras installed in their home or office. The front end of the TS-451 is "controlled" by the HybridDesk Station. Here, users can install applications that will only be accessible through the front end, including Google Chrome, Firefox, Facebook, LibreOffice, Plex Home Theater, Skype, Spotify, TuneInRadio, and a few others. Also available on the front end are QNAP's native applications, such as File Station, Music Station, Photo Station, and Video Station. Although we believe that the TS-451 is an awesome machine, the main QTS apps are a little weird to use. As we previously said, files were uploaded to the NAS via the Files Station app in order to keep all files organized whether they're pictures or music. You can upload pictures into a specific folder and access them without much trouble, and you can also convert these folders into albums. Want to share them on a social network? Just right-click and choose either Picasa, Flickr, or Weibo. So, what's weird about the native QTS apps? Let's take Photo Station as an example. The left-hand menu provides the following: Shared Photos, Folder, Private Collection, Qsync, Album, Smart Album, Shared Center, Recent, and Trash Can. Having both a folder and an album is a little confusing, which is why we took the File Station route. Albums can be shared with other NAS users and the "public," which seems to mean only those that can access the login screen can see the album. Folders can also be converted into albums. For this review, we were provided with four Seagate (ST4000VN000-1H4168 SC46) hard drives with 3.64TB of usable space each, offering around 10.82 TB of overall storage. Users can keep track of each hard drive by going into the Control Panel app and clicking the Storage Manager icon. Here, you can receive data regarding each drive, cache acceleration, iSCSI, and Virtual Disk settings. There's also a handy dashboard that you can access by clicking the speedometer icon in the top-right corner of the main screen. You can get a quick shot of the overall system health, various info about the hardware (system temp, fan RPM), the resource monitor, hard disk health, and the amount of storage that's available. QNAP even pulls in its news feed, such as firmware and utility launches. According to QNAP, the TS-451 has a write speed of up to 82MB/s and a read speed of up to 126MB/s (AES-256 volume encryption throughput). These speeds were measured on a client machine consisting of Windows 8.1 Pro, an Intel Core i7-4790, and 16GB of DDR3 1,600Hz memory. We tested the RAID 5 write speeds using a rig with 8GB of RAM, an Intel Core i7-4790K clocked at 4GHz, Windows 10 Pro, and a 500GB Samsung 840 Pro SSD. We didn't perform additional speed tests because the NAS and test rig are on a 1Gbit network. The result, according to robocopy, was write speeds of around 107MB/sec. Read was the same. The performance numbers highlights the ceiling for 1Gbit/sec Ethernet speeds, which by most accounts is more than enough for the purpose of the TS-451. Wrap-upAll in all, QNAP's TS-451 is a great solution for homes and small offices that need more than just a disk backup. The device works well as a home media server, a backup center, a tool for file sharing, and so on. QNAP also has a number of apps on Google Play and Apple's App Store that expand the experience to phones and tablets. These include Qfile for managing files, Qmanager for controlling the NAS from a remote location, Qvideo for watching stored videos, Qmusic for streaming music, and so on. One thing that we wish QNAP had done was to make the native app usage a little more clear out of the box, as it may be a bit confusing for those who are just now buying into the need for a NAS (present company included). Even though the specs guarantee that Crysis will absolutely not run on this system, you could still use it as a small media PC for watching movies and TV shows and surfing the internet. There's definitely a lot of bang for the buck here, enough so that there are still many aspects about the box that this review didn't tap. The only real downside to this box of goodies is that it doesn't come cheap: It's right around $450 without the installed hard drives. Still, there are a lot of services under the hood that we think make it worth the outlay. |
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