| Twist: Assassin's Creed III to be Set During American Revolution Posted: 02 Mar 2012 03:57 PM PST 
After what's felt like a lifetime of playing Ezio's, well, entire life, Assassin's Creed is finally in for a much-requested/angrily demanded change of scenery. More specifically, the American Revolution is about to get a massive shipment of conveniently placed hay bales, which have somehow been imbued with the magical power to muffle the sound of a 170 lb or so man falling 100 feet. But we digress. So far, Ubisoft's only officially sent along a box shot of AC III's tomahawk-wielding main character making a British soldier's head revolt from the rest of his body, but All Games Beta has managed to dig up roughly a billion screens depicting everything from wildlife hunting to George Freaking Washington. Ubisoft's PC indiscretions notwithstanding, this has us pretty damn intrigued. Apparently, more info's coming on Monday, so we'll emerge from our impregnable hay bale bunker as soon as that happens. |
| BioShock Infinite Taking to the Skies in October Posted: 02 Mar 2012 02:11 PM PST  And we feel the need to clarify that we're not being literal with that headline, seeing as a certain other game recently attempted to enter geosynchronous orbit because, well, marketers do the darndest things. At any rate, Ken Levine's magical/society-damning cloud adventure now has an official release date of October 16. This is, of course, a reason to get obnoxiously excited, seeing as the game's mix of character interaction, high-flying combat, and higher-flying steampunk nightmare birds has looked positively excellent so far. Also, 1999 mode strikes us as an interesting alternative approach to difficulty, even if we'll go skydiving without a parachute before we acknowledge 1999 as "old-school." That's just... wrong.
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| Google Chrome Coughs Up Market Share for Second Consecutive Month Posted: 02 Mar 2012 07:00 AM PST  Not a single month went by in 2011 in which Google's Chrome browser didn't grow its market share, and it's only moved in a backwards direction a few times since it was released nearly three and a half years ago in September 2008. At the end of 2010 and the beginning of 2011, Chrome accounted for 10.36 percent of all desktop browsers, compared to Firefox's 23.69 percent and Internet Explorer's 58.35 percent. By the time 2011 came to a close, Chrome had grabbed a 19.11 percent share of the market, compared with Firefox's 21.83 percent and IE's 51.87 percent. But so far in 2012, Chrome has only given up browser market share.
According to data by NetMarketShare, Chrome's market share at the end of February 2012 stood at 18.90 percent, down from 18.94 percent in January 2012, which itself was down from December 2011. That's two consecutive months of losing market share, and as minor as those figures are, that's not something we've witnessed from Chrome before. Other than Chrome's story line, February proved a mostly uneventful month. IE took a small step backwards, going from a 52.96 percent share in January 2012 to 52.84 percent in February 2012, while Firefox grew its share from 20.88 percent to 20.92 percent in the same time period. Apple's Safari browser also managed to attract a few new users, going from a 4.90 percent share to 5.24 percent share, while Opera inched forward from 1.67 percent to 1.71 percent. Which browser(s) you find yourself using most often these days? |
| Pew: Smartphones Now More Popular than Feature Phones Among U.S. Adults Posted: 02 Mar 2012 06:35 AM PST  Smartphones are bigger than feature phones, they're more complicated to use, and they're typically far more expensive, both in terms of upfront costs for the hardware and over the long haul when you factor in the required data charge every month for two years (assuming you're locked in a two-year service agreement). Nevertheless, smartphones now outnumber feature phones among U.S. adults, according to data by Pew Internet.
Almost half (46 percent) of American adults own a smartphone as of February 2012, up 11 percentage points over the 35 percent who owned a smartphone in May 2011. During the same time period, feature phones dropped from 46 percent (May, 2011) to 41 percent (February, 2012) and now take a backseat to smartphones. And it's not just one particular group inflating the numbers. "Nearly every major demographic group—men and women, younger and middle-aged adults, urban and rural residents, the wealthy and the less well-off—experienced a notable uptick in smartphone penetration over the last year, and overall adoption levels are at 60 percent or more within several cohorts, such as college graduates, 18-35 year olds and those with an annual household income of $75,000 or more," Pew Internet said. Perhaps not surprisingly, smartphone penetration didn't make any significant strides among seniors. Of those that are at least 65 years old, only 13 percent own a smartphone, far below the national average of 46 percent, and up just a smidgen from 11 percent in 2011. Plenty more details can be found in the full report here. Image Credit: Google |
| Windows 8 Consumer Preview Tops 1 Million Downloads in 24 Hours Posted: 02 Mar 2012 06:17 AM PST  Maybe Windows 8 will end up a raging success after all. Power users and many in the media have criticized Microsoft's next generation operating system for being a perhaps too radical of a departure from Windows as we've known it for the past several years, changing up not only the interface in drastic fashion, but even altering the familiar logo. And maybe it's for those very reasons that so many people are flocking to the Windows 8 Consumer Preview, to peek if things are truly as bad as they fear. Whatever the reason, Windows 8 is off and running to a large crowd.
Just 24 hours hours after being made available to the public, the Windows 8 Consumer Preview has notched more than a million downloads, Microsoft proudly announced in a Twitter post. "One day later...one million downloads of the [Windows 8] Consumer Preview," @BuildWindows8 tweeted. Windows 8 introduced what Microsoft calls a Metro user interface that looks different than any previous version of Windows on the desktop. It's designed to take advantage of today's obsession with touch technology. In between the time Microsoft launched the Windows 8 Developer Preview and the Consumer Preview, there have been over 100,000 changes to the OS's codebase, Microsoft's Steven Sinofsky said earlier this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. If you want to give the Windows 8 Consumer Preview a test drive, you can download the distro here. While you're at it, be sure to check out our guide, "How To Try Windows 8 Out Today With a Dual Boot Installation or Virtualization." |
| G.Skill Sets Another Memory Frequency World Record, Voodoo3 Graphics Card Sits Ringside Posted: 02 Mar 2012 05:57 AM PST  Throwing caution to the wind and dousing his AMD processor and G.Skill Extreme RipjawsZ memory kit in liquid nitrogen, Christian Ney, the well-regarded Swiss overclocker, set a new memory frequency record as recognized by HWBot's Professional Overclockers League. The record for DDR3 memory now stands at 3,736MHz, the highest frequency every achieved, besting the previous record of 3,600MHz.
"It was a lot of fun while tweaking G.Skill memory. You can feel the unlimited potential and always want to go higher and higher," Ney said. At 1,868MHz (3,736MHz effective), the LN2-cooled Extreme RipjawsZ ran latency timings of 11 (CAS)-13(RAS to CAS)-13(RAS Precharge)-36(tRAS). Both the memory and AMD A8 3870K processor were cooled to -197C. Other components that either aided the overclock or went along for the ride include a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H motherboard, 60GB OCZ Vertex 2 solid state drive, X-Series 750W power supply, and a Voodoo3 2000 PCI videocard, a once popular GPU built by 3dfx during the company's heyday. 
Image Credit: Christian Ney (HWBot) |
