IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 03/06/2013

Google are being careful with Glass and facial recognition
Google have taken to their Project Glass Google+ page to address privacy concerns over facial recognition apps being built for Glass. Google have addressed the public about this subject because there are plenty of people with Google Glass Explorer Edition units.

There's still ongoing worries about privacy over the use of the wearable technology, especially if people start writing Glassware (apps for Glass) that are capable of facial recognition. Google have said they're listening to feedback from early users of Glass and will continue working on their policies on facial recognition software in the near future. What I like to see is that Google are actually listening, and addressing the public over this, instead of not tackling the concerns of people and their privacy.

Silicon Valley company wants Kickstarter funding to build a Nikola Tesla statue in Silicon Valley
Northern Imagination, a California-based company, have a Kickstarter page setup to get a statue of the famous innovator Nikola Tesla built-in Silicon Valley. Northern Imagination need to raise $123,000 in order to get the statue erected, and at the time of writing they had $80,269 pledged with 35 hours to go.

If they meet their funding goal, they would built a statue in Palo Alto, California and would make the statue depicting Tesla holding a lightbulb, demonstrating a wireless electricity concept. Better yet, the statue will double as a Wi-Fi hotspot and house a time capsule with predictions from Kickstarter backers that won't be opened for 30 years, all the way in the year 2043.

Metro: Last Light is doing incredibly well, has shifted more units in a week than the original game did in three months
It looks like Metro: Last Light is turning into a success, with both digital and US retail sales doing extremely well. Deep Silver, the publisher of Metro: Last Light, haven't provided exact numbers, but have noted that across all platforms Metro: Last Light is on, the game has sold more copies in one week than Metro 2033 did in three months.

Not only that, but in the United States, Last Light has sold more retail copies in the first week than its predecessor has managed since it was released three years ago. Metro: Last Light has stood on top of the charts for the past four weeks in a row in the UK, Germany, Austria, Switzerland and France.
Have you played Metro: Last Light? This news of its success makes me think I should play it.

Windows 8 market share reaches 4.27%, Windows 7 is still the OS king
To tell you the truth, I haven't bothered with Windows 8 and I know I'm not the only one. It looks like I'm not alone, as Net Applications' latest numbers show that Windows 8 still isn't doing too well out in the wild, but its numbers are improving.

During May, Windows 8 gained 0.43% of the OS market share, rising from 3.84% to 4.27%. In the same month, Windows 7 actually gained 0.13%, shifting from 44.72% to 44.85%. In December, Windows 8 gained 0.66% of the worldwide OS market share, and has seen similar numbers in the months following the end of 2012.

GIGABYTE walk us through their new BIOS being featured on Haswell motherboards
Computex Taipei 2013 - We visited GIGABYTE's HQ last night and were greeted to their new ultra compact PC, the BRIX. The fun didn't end there, as well as a tease of their upcoming BIOS for their Haswell-based motherboard range.

As you have probably seen in the video above, the user interface is gorgeous. GIGABYTE have packed the new-look BIOS with some serious details, which give you a run down of what your system is doing temperature wise, and much more. The background is customizable, so you can actually chuck in your own pictures if that's what you want to see. The entire UI runs in 1920x1080, which is something I think I can get used to.

GIGABYTE should win many more fans over with their new-look BIOS, on top of their boards looking incredibly sexy yet again.

The Hangover Part III (2013) Cinema Review

In 2009, a sleeper hit called The Hangover took Hollywood by storm, taking nearly half a billion worldwide on a mere $35m budget and solidifying star Bradley Cooper as a bankable leading man. Two years later and the inevitable sequel was released, memorable only because of how spectacularly unfunny it was, it's few laughs regurgitated from its predecessor. A further two years later and we now have the third (and so we're told final) entry into what's now known at The Hangover Trilogy. It will be memorable for... well, having the last laugh by pretending to be a comedy when it was anything but.

Hangover III opens with a pre-credit Bangkok prison escape scene featuring Mr. Chow (Ken Jeong) and the establishment that Alan (Zach Gafilinakis) is refusing to take his prescribed medication, leading to even more outlandish behavior such as the direct death of a giraffe and the indirect death of his father Sid (Jeffrey Tambor). An intervention is staged by Alan's mother, Stu (Ed Helms), Phil (Bradley Cooper) and his brother in law, Doug (Justin Bartha) to force Alan to attend a rehab clinic in Arizona, which is accepted once it results in the reformation of the Wolfpack, but en route through the Arizona desert, their car is run off the road by drug baron Marshall (John Goodman) and Doug is kidnapped at gunpoint until they can track down and deliver Chow before their time is up.

After it's all said and done, neither of the sequels to The Hangover really did much to justify their existence. The first film worked fine as it was; a solid and memorable comedy in its own right, the second merely rehashed the best of its predecessor's jokes and when the third tries to inject a little substance to proceedings, it comes as an unnecessary and ill-advised turn.
It feels rather strange, like someone kidnapped the characters from the first film, cloned and put them in a familiar landscape. They look the same and talk the same, but they don't act the same. This is how the Hangover III felt for me.

Ultimately there are a few decent laughs sprinkled throughout, but I really stress 'few' - they can be counted on one hand. This is no laugh fest, to be sure. I can understand that the filmmakers wanted to take the franchise in a fresh new direction for the latest (and apparently last) entry in the franchise, and on a certain level I even applaud the risky maneuver. But sometimes it's an ill-advised gesture for a studio to promise one thing and then deliver another.

In short, if you really want to spend more time with the Wolfpack, I'd advise you to lower your expectations. Ideally though, rent or buy the first film on Blu-ray. You'll thank me later.

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Digital Storm ODE Haswell-powered Desktop Gaming PC Review

Introduction

Digital Storm has provided us with their ODE gaming system for review. They've equipped our unit with Intel's new Haswell processor as well as NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX 780 video card, so our system is quite top-tier.
We've previously reviewed Digital Storm's small form-factor Bolt gaming PC, which used a custom case. The ODE makes use of an off-the-shelf case that makes it have a bit better fit-and-finish.
Please note that PCMark 7 has been updated to the latest version, causing previous benchmark results to not be comparable. We have archived these results. Unfortunately, this means that we have few comparison systems for this review.
Without further ado, let's take a look at this powerful gaming PC and see what we think.

Specifications, Configurations and Pricing

Digital Storm was able to provide us a Haswell-powered rig ahead of the NDA, giving us time to check out the latest and greatest generation. Our system is equipped with Intel's newest Core i7-4770K CPU. The 4770K, which has been reviewed by our resident CPU reviewer, features four cores and eight threads. It's clocked at 3.5GHz, but uses TurboBoost to break the 4GHz barrier.
The i7-4770K is cooled by a Corsair H100i integrated water cooling system. This all-in-one cooler should provide good temperatures for Intel's latest CPU. It will also add to the Corsair theme you'll see in this system.
The heart of the machine is supported by an ASUS Sabertooth Z87 motherboard, which is new for the Haswell line of CPUs. It makes use of the Z87 chipset and brings many of the styling cues that the Sabertooth brand stands for. The I/O panel comes with a full-compliment of four USB 2.0 ports and four USB 3.0 ports, two eSATA 6G ports, an HDMI port, Display Port and the usual audio connectors.
Digital Storm has equipped our review system with 16GB of Digital Storm-certified ADATA RAM clocked at 1600MHz. The layout is 2 x 8GB sticks, so it's an easy-and cheap-upgrade to 32GB of RAM should you need it in the future.
Graphics are provided by NVIDIA's latest and greatest GTX 780. It appears our system is rocking the NVIDIA reference card as there is no add-in board partner labeling visible on the card. It features 3GB of RAM and should easily destroy the other systems we've reviewed, save for the dual-GTX 680 powered Chimera we opened our desktop reviews with.
The ODE features a 120GB Corsair Neutron GTX SSD and 1TB Western Digital Caviar HDD. The system is powered by a Corsair 1050W Pro Silver 1050HX PSU. Windows 8 64-bit is the operating system pre-installed on our system's SSD. Users can customize the Digital Storm ODE to come with various 64-bit versions of Windows 7 or Windows 8 Pro 64-bit.
The cost for a system like this is $2,731, give or take a few dollars for sales and other discounts. Configuration is quite high. Digital Storm offers a wide variety of upgrades, component selection and customization. This is aided by the giant Corsair Graphite Series 600T case, which provides plenty of room for multiple video cards, hard drives and high-performance components.
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Intel Core i7 4770K (Haswell 4th Gen) CPU and Z87 Express Chipset Review

Introduction

As silly as it sounds, right now is the first time we can officially say words like "Haswell" and "Z87". Due to the general way an Intel NDA works, our ability to release specific names when it comes to upcoming platforms is rather limited. While anyone who pays just the slightest attention to computers would know that "Intel 4th Generation Core processors" indeed referred to "Haswell", till now, we couldn't officially write that in coverage.
You're going to see an absolute ton of coverage to the new platform as it brings with it so many new products. Unlike the last Intel CPU we looked at, the Intel Core i7 3970X Extreme Edition, the Core i7 4770K brings with it a new chipset in the form of the Z87 Express. The products that surround a new chipset are what are going to keep us extremely busy for the coming weeks and months.
It of course starts with new motherboards from the huge amount of vendors that exist. It's not just a matter of receiving a single motherboard from each vendor, we have up to nine motherboards from a single vendor at the moment. Weeks before launch the amount of motherboards we had already sat in double digits, and as the days go on the amount of boards we have to test is climbing at a rapid rate.
It's not just motherboards, though, a new platform often brings with it new memory. We saw the last generation Ivy Bridge platform bring with it a chance to achieve memory speeds much higher than we had seen before. The latest Haswell platform is said to take that a step further and that of course means that Corsair, G.Skill and others are jumping on the high speed memory bandwagon as quickly as they can.
We've then of course got multiple CPU models coming out for the desktop platform along with mobile versions of everything. Combining all this together means that we've then got a bunch of new systems coming from PC builders and of course laptops and ultrabooks coming from manufacturers.
Today, though, is all about two things. The new CPU's that we'll be seeing alongside the performance of the top dog Core i7 4770K. The second is the new Intel Z87 chipset. The particular Z87 motherboard that we'll be using today comes from ASUS in the form of the Z87-Expert.
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Available Tags:Google , Market Share , Windows 7 , Windows 8 , Windows , Windows , GIGABYTE , motherboards , Gaming , Intel , i7 , CPU ,

Sunday, June 2, 2013

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 03/06/2013

Introduction

Specifications, Configurations and Pricing

Introduction

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