IT-Code-News: IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 10/21/2014

Fitbit announces new Fitbit Surge, a $250 'superwatch' with GPS
Fitbit will soon launch three new fitness trackers, with the top-of-the-line model being the new Fitbit Surge. Surge will be more than the average wearable, with the company referring to it as a "superwatch".

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The new Fitbit Surge should be priced at $249, with the superwatch featuring built-in GPS tracking, PurePulse heart rate monitoring, and the ability of real-time workout data for various activities. The superwatch will provide users with stats on distance, pace, elevation climbed, heart rate intensity, and more. The new Surge will also carry over Fitbit's 24/7 activity tracking, where it'll make sure that you're getting enough sweat generated on your body each day.
Sleep tracking continues over, with the Surge having its, and your stats wirelessly synced over to the Fitbit app. Surge will also have "smart" notifications for phone calls and texts, and you can also control your music playback from Surge, which is a nice touch - pun not intended, but hey it works. Surge will launch in three colors: black, slate, and a colorful tangerine option.

Half-Life 3 pressure campaign could get crazy, gamers want HL3 bad
Two US ad agency interns are creating quite the stir with their idea of throwing up a new crowdfunding campaign for Half-Life 3. The duo is looking for a total of $150,000 which they think will help push Valve over the edge and "get Valve to finish the game we've dreamed about for all these years".

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The $150,000 won't be used to help Valve in any way, but it will instead be used for a massive marketing campaign targeted against Valve, and its employees, shouting from the rooftops: "WE WANT HALF-LIFE 3". At the time of writing, the campaign was a little short of its $150,000 target, with just $942 raised. The theory behind the campaign is that "we think that the fans aren't doing enough, we think that we've never truly been united in getting our voice heard". As for the tiered goal system, we have:

$3,000: All 300 employees of Valve will be targeted by a Google Adwords campaign with the message "WE WANT HALF-LIFE 3".
$9,000: A mobile billboard truck will "besiege Valve HQ in Bellevue, Washington" to urge Valve to out HL3.
$45,000: Another Valve HQ siege will take place, this time with "a bunch of Gabe Newells" (lookalikes) trying to sneak into Valve HQ and push of the HL3 development/release.
$150,000: the "Most Epic Concert EVER" will be organised where Half Life fans will listen to "some of the biggest names in video game music".

So it sounds like a lawsuit waiting to happen, and even if Valve wanted to show off Half-Life 3, it's not going to be from a public-funded whinge campaign. What do you think about all of this?

NVIDIA GeForce GTX Titan Z price drops considerably at Overclockers UK
When NVIDIA announced the GeForce GTX Titan Z back at GTC 2014 in March, it was an expensive beast at $3999, but now Overclockers UK has dropped the price on some of its Titan Z's, radically.

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Just last week, the site dropped it from its launch price of $3863, to $3219, which is a decent drop. But, the company has just taken a massive $900 off its price, dropping it down to 'just' $2415. For $2415, you're getting a triple-slot, dual GPU card with 12GB of RAM, two full GK110 GPUs with 2880 stream processors, 240 texture units, an 48 raster operations pipelines.
You'd still be better off with two GeForce GTX 980s in SLI, but for some people a single card is what they want, and no single card can compete with the Titan Z right now.

ASUS prepares massive motherboard marketing campaign
The competition between GIGABYTE and ASUS is as fierce as ever, but ASUS is set to lower the prices of its motherboards, and spend considerable amounts of money on furthering its marketing reach according to DigiTimes' industry sources.

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ASUS has reportedly planned multiple promotions, where it will sell bundles with its GPUs and motherboards, hoping to gain thousands more consumers with its impressive line up of GPUs. DigiTimes' sources noted "GIGABYTE's motherboard and video card businesses are separate units and the two departments hardly cooperate over sales and marketing. Although GIGABYTE's motherboard business has been performing strongly recently, Asustek's new strategy is expected to impact GIGABYTE's motherboard business group".
Just how much is ASUS planning to spend on marketing? According to DigiTimes' sources, the Taiwanese manufacturer has already prepared between $32 million and $65 million to boost its marketing. The company is expecting to see its profits for 2014 drop because of this, but the marketing should gain more sales going into 2015. The sources continued "GIGABYTE had profits of NT$3-3.3 billion from the motherboard business in 2013. Although the company's shipments in 2014 are unlikely to achieve the targeted growth of one million units, profits in the year are expected to stay at around NT$3 billion because of the rising proportion of high-end models".

Apple is 'not all that interested' in making a touchscreen Mac
Apple's Senior Vice President of Software Engineering, Craig Federighi, talked with CNET after Apple's unveiling event for the new iPad, and the new 5K-capable iMac. Federighi had some interesting things to talk about when it came to the Mac, especially when the idea of touchscreen Macs was bought up.

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Federighi said: "We don't think it's the right interface, honestly. Mac is sort of a sit-down experience. We've really focused on building the best track pads we can, something where it feels [like] your posture's relaxed, it's a comfortable machine to use. And, of course, over the years we've experimented with all the technology, but we found it just wasn't good. ... We're not all that interested in building one".
He also added that the iPhone and iPad can be used in a "very relaxed position" compared with the fact that a touchscreen Mac would have a user sitting at a desk, reaching forward to touch their display. It was only earlier in the year where the idea of merging iOS and OS X was considered a "waste of energy".

Toshiba TransMemory Pro EXII 128GB USB 3.0 Flash Drive Review

Over the last two years, I have seen an intense amount of flash drives come through the lab. With that said, we add a new vendor to the list today, with Toshiba sending over their TransMemory Pro EXII for review.
The TransMemory Pro is the latest solution from Toshiba featuring both 64GB and 128GB capacity options. Marketing specifications list the drive at 222 MB/s read and 205 MB/s write, while compatibility is listed for Windows and Mac computers. In addition, Toshiba has included software called "EXII Pad Locker" that enables users to create a separate partition that can be securely locked and hidden.
MSRP of the Toshiba TransMemory Pro EX II in the 128GB flavour is listed at $199.99 with a five-year warranty.

Packaging for the EXII carries a small window for the drive down below with marketing information above.

The drive itself carries a professional appearance, as you can see the exterior is solid aluminium with capacity and branding listed at the top right.

The EXII utilizes a capped design that fits quite snug. Of course, we have the USB 3.0 port colored appropriately.

The Toshiba TransMemory Pro EXII is factory formatted with the FAT32 file system, insuring compatibility between Windows and Macintosh computers. The usable capacity after formatting is 119GB.

Performance results for the EXII came in at 234 MB/s read and 205 MB/s write, just over marketing numbers for the read speed.

Price/Performance even with the high price per GB put the EXII near the top at 79.7%.
The TransMemory Pro EXII is a rather good flash drive that carries both aesthetic appeal and durability, using an aluminium case designed with louvers that could possibly be used to dissipate any heat form the NAND and controller. Build quality of this drive is top notch due to the metal nature, and the cap fits really tight, so I don't see any issues there.
Performance of the drive was rather good as well. We were able to reach 234 MB/s read and 205 MB/s write in our testing, and price/performance put the EXII near the top in our charts, just above the HyperX 64GB.
PRICING: You can find the Toshiba TransMemory Pro USB 3.0 Flash Drive (PFU128U-1BDS) for sale below. The prices listed are valid at the time of writing but can change at any time. Click the link to see the very latest pricing for the best deal.
United States: The Toshiba TransMemory Pro USB 3.0 Flash Drive (PFU128U-1BDS) retails for $129.04 at Amazon.

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Available Tags:gamers , NVIDIA , GeForce , GTX , Overclockers , UK , ASUS , Apple , Mac , USB 3.0 , Toshiba , USB ,

Monday, October 20, 2014

IT News Head Lines (TweakTown) 10/21/2014

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