Events

Battlefield 3: Close Quarters from Electronic Arts now on PS3

Gaming
News

Andrew Edney

-

Jun 21, 2012

Battlefield 3: Close Quarters from Electronic Arts now on PS3

This week, the tight level design and vertical gameplay of Battlefield 3: Close Quarters comes to the PS3, followed by its release next week on Xbox 360 and PC.

Battlefield 3: Close Quarters is a themed expansion pack bringing the team play of Battlefield 3 to tight indoor environments. The frantic close quarters infantry combat showcases the wide spectrum of battles that only Battlefield 3 can deliver, from huge open environments to intimate indoor gunplay. Battlefield 3: Close Quarters is amplified by unprecedented high definition destruction, new ways to play, added persistence, and new weapons including the ACW-R carbine, the M417 sniper rifle, the L86LSW machine gun and the M5K tactical machine pistol.

Creating a highly competitive and deadly environment, Close Quarters is a themed expansion packs that features enhanced destruction, letting players riddle the environment with bullets to reduce entire locales to rubble. Everything from furniture to plaster can be shot to pieces, and players can see the result of the mayhem as rubble and debris pile up on the floor around them.

Key features in Battlefield 3: Close Quarters includes:

10 new Assignments
5 unique dog tags
10 new weapons to use on all Battlefield 3maps including:
1. AUG Assault Rifle
2. SCAR Assault Rifle
3. ACW-R Carbine
4. MTAR-21 Carbine
5. M417 Sniper Rifle
6. JNG-90 Sniper Rifle
7. L86LSW Machine Gun
8. LSAT Machine Gun
9. M5K Tactical Machine Pistol
10. SPAS-12 Shotgun

This expansion pack costs $14.99 for the Playstation 3 and PC download, and 1200 MS Points for the Xbox 360.

I really enjoyed playing the game, and I can’t wait to play some more!

Drobo announce the new Drobo Mini storage device

Andrew Edney

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Jun 21, 2012

0

Drobo announce the new Drobo Mini storage device

Today Drobo announced two new devices – the Drobo 5D and the Drobo Mini. Here we talk about the Drobo Mini.

Drobo Mini is a technical marvel that redefines personal, professional, and portable digital storage. It combines a unique blend of the most advanced storage technologies with unrivalled ease-of-use, all in a sleek, world’s-smallest package, measuring seven inches square by less than two inches tall and weighing less than three pounds. Drobo invented a patent-pending “carrierless” design, which allows up to four 2.5” drives to be easily inserted into a Drobo Mini without the need for any additional drive carriers or screws. The benefit to the customer is not only the ease of drive insertion and removal, but also flexibility; because the design accommodates a common industry drive size, customers are free to choose the drive vendor, type (HDD or SSD), capacity, speed and price that best meets their needs.

Since the Drobo Mini is portable, it features a ruggedized design that allows users to transport it with drives inside. In addition to being the first Drobo to offer this capability, the Drobo Mini features a custom miniature power supply and an optional carrying case, making it the ideal storage for professionals who travel extensively.

Both the Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini include industry-first SSD acceleration – utilizing the performance benefits of solid state drives (SSDs) and the capacity benefits of hard disk drives (HDDs) to deliver an automated, no-compromise system. In addition to supporting SSDs in any of their drive bays, both units include an additional bay that will accommodate a small-form-factor SSD to achieve significant performance boosts while making all drive bays available for high-capacity HDDs.

The products also support both lightning-fast Thunderbolt (2 ports) and USB 3.0 connectivity, an industry first for storage arrays, that will provide flexibility to both Mac and Windows users. The two Thunderbolt ports allow customers to easily daisy-chain devices to accommodate massive growth, and the USB 3.0 port ensures compatibility to millions of USB systems.

Along with SSD acceleration and Thunderbolt / USB 3.0 interfaces, the new Drobo products have been completely redesigned from the ground up with new hardware and software architectures. These enhancements provide a significant increase in processing capability and several optimizations to BeyondRAID that will increase baseline performance by at least five times – prior to the addition of SSDs – easily making the new Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini the fastest storage arrays in their class.

Ordering, pricing and availability information will be announced in July, so watch this space.

Learn more about the Drobo Mini from here.

Drobo announce the new Drobo 5D storage device

Andrew Edney

-

Jun 21, 2012

1

Drobo announce the new Drobo 5D storage device

Today Drobo announced two new devices – the Drobo 5D and the Drobo Mini. Here we talk about the Drobo 5D.

The Drobo 5D is the most modern and complete storage system for creative professionals including photographers, videographers, graphic designers and individuals creating and working with large amounts of rich media. In particular, professionals who are power users of Adobe and Apple applications including After Effects, Aperture, Final Cut Pro, Lightroom, Photoshop and Premier Pro are a great fit for the new product, which is ideal for editing, storing catalogues and backing up files of all types.

With up to five drives with an additional SSD bay, the 5D can support up to 16 terabytes of protected, SSD-accelerated data. This is the equivalent of 32 million photographs, 4 million songs, 1 million HD movies, or 48 hours of uncompressed HD video – all accessible through lightning-fast Thunderbolt or USB 3.0 interfaces.

Both the Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini include industry-first SSD acceleration – utilizing the performance benefits of solid state drives (SSDs) and the capacity benefits of hard disk drives (HDDs) to deliver an automated, no-compromise system. In addition to supporting SSDs in any of their drive bays, both units include an additional bay that will accommodate a small-form-factor SSD to achieve significant performance boosts while making all drive bays available for high-capacity HDDs.

The products also support both lightning-fast Thunderbolt (2 ports) and USB 3.0 connectivity, an industry first for storage arrays, that will provide flexibility to both Mac and Windows users. The two Thunderbolt ports allow customers to easily daisy-chain devices to accommodate massive growth, and the USB 3.0 port ensures compatibility to millions of USB systems.

Along with SSD acceleration and Thunderbolt / USB 3.0 interfaces, the new Drobo products have been completely redesigned from the ground up with new hardware and software architectures. These enhancements provide a significant increase in processing capability and several optimizations to BeyondRAID that will increase baseline performance by at least five times – prior to the addition of SSDs – easily making the new Drobo 5D and Drobo Mini the fastest storage arrays in their class.

Ordering, pricing and availability information will be announced in July, so watch this space.

Learn more about the Drobo 5D from here.

BBC release official Top Gear app for Windows Phone

Andrew Edney

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Jun 21, 2012

0

BBC release official Top Gear app for Windows Phone

The BBC have released an official Top Gear for Windows Phone so that you can get your Top Gear fix 24 hours a day!

This is how the app is described in the Windows Marketplace:

Keep up to date with Top Gear HQ, 24 hours a day Have you always wanted more Top Gear in your life?

Then good news! Here is our brand new Top Gear News App, with all all the latest news, videos and random nonsense direct from the Top Gear team. And it’s completely free to download and use.

With our splendid new app your phone will receive:

• All the latest news, rants, video and reviews live from Top Gear HQ • Behind the scenes exclusives from the three presenters • Your favourite clips from Top Gear TV • All the latest cars driven in our reviews section.

Once downloaded, you can read content offline without an internet connection – great for tube or train journeys. You can also alert your friends and share content directly from the app on Facebook, Twitter or via email.

So there you have it – the first official BBC app for Windows Phone. I suspect a Doctor Who one later this year!

Download the Top Gear app now from the Windows Marketplace

Debian “wheezy” public beta for Raspberry Pi

Andrew Edney

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Jun 21, 2012

0

Debian “wheezy” public beta for Raspberry Pi

If you have got your Raspberry Pi you might want to try our the Debian “wheezy” public beta.

This is what was posted the Raspberry Pi blog:

Alex has produced a new reference image based on the upcoming Debian “wheezy” release. This incorporates Dom’s latest firmware, and numerous kernel patches for performance and stability. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be running a public beta program to identify major bugs, and in particular regressions relative to the existing Debian “squeeze” image.

Although this is a beta release, you will almost definitely find it a worthwhile upgrade. Please give it a try, and report issues here.

Torrent
2012-06-18-wheezy-beta.zip.torrent

Direct download
2012-06-18-wheezy-beta.zip

SHA-1
cbe18f5a27ee2d3110d71b8316bfa465a9bc29f6

Default login
Username: pi Password: raspberry

Thanks to everyone on the forums who tested an earlier version of this release, and in particular to lb for investigating SD card performance issues and contributing patches. Notes:

It will fit on a 2GB SD card, but 4GB will leave you with a more comfortable amount of room; we now include a tool to make it easy to resize the filesystem to use the full SD card.

Future firmware updates will be delivered via apt-get upgrade.

The first boot is expected to be slower than subsequent boots.

Now where did I put those spare SD cards?

Check out a Slice of Raspbery Pi at Sci Fi London Horizons

Have you ordered one?

Dropbox app for iPhone and iPad updated to version 1.5.2

Andrew Edney

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Jun 21, 2012

0

Dropbox app for iPhone and iPad updated to version 1.5.2

Dropbox has updated it’s iPhone and iPad app to version 1.5.2.

Dropbox is a free service that lets you bring all your photos, docs, and videos anywhere. After you install Dropbox on your computer, any file you save to your Dropbox will automatically save to all your computers, your iPhone and iPad and even the Dropbox website! With the Dropbox app, you can take everything that matters to you on the go.
Read your docs or flip through your albums when you’re out and about. Save photos or videos to your Dropbox and share them with friends in just a couple taps. Even if you accidentally leave your iPhone in a taxi, your stuff is always safe on Dropbox.

Features:

Always have your stuff with you, no matter where you are.
Add files to “Favorites” for fast, offline viewing.
Easily save photos and videos to your Dropbox.
Share your photos and docs with family and friends.
Save email attachments straight to your Dropbox.

What’s New in Version 1.5.2

Bug fixes

Download now from the Apple App Store

Plex Updates their Media Server to v0.9.6.4

Andrew Edney

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Jun 21, 2012

0

Plex has just released an update to their Media Server taking it to version 0.9.6.4 and bringing with it a number of fixes and new features.

Here are the changes:

NEW: Added a new advanced preference option to allow remote networks access to PMS without myPlex. You can designate a list of IP/netmasks which are allowed in.
NEW: Add basic CORS support for web clients.
NEW: (DLNA) Profile option to override device fields.
NEW: (DLNA) DlnaDeviceDiscoveryInterval can now be set to 0 to disable device detection.
NEW: (DLNA) Sections shared from remote servers now includes the server name.
NEW: (DLNA) Support matching devices by other device properties than friendly name.
NEW: (DLNA) Ship DLNA profiles with PMS builds instead of Framework builds.
NEW: (DLNA) Emit icons using alternative resolutions.

And a bunch of most excellent fixes:

FIX: Skip publishing IP addresses from virtual interfaces.
FIX: Be faster about extracting thumbnails.
FIX: Fix the scanner hanging with 100% CPU scanning some evil AVIs.
FIX: (Win) Fix crash when playing some Flash/Silverlight video.
FIX: Notify HTTP clients that we close the connection.
FIX: Only write the amount requested with HTTP range requests.
FIX: Calculate bitrate for videos in a more accurate fashion.
FIX: Scanner is smarter about need to reanalyze media.
FIX: A few small memory leaks fixed in scanner.
FIX: Crashes scanning some IMG/ISO files.
FIX: Overeager timeout when waiting for transcoded content.
FIX: iTunes plug-in crashes with invalid input key.
FIX: (Linux) Crash related to VMware network interfaces.
FIX: (Linux) rsync fixes.
FIX: (Linux) DLNA crashes on certain systems with ancient compilers.
FIX: (DLNA) Non-local servers will display server name along with section titles.
FIX: (DLNA) PNs not being set for audio, fixes playback on PS3.
FIX: (DLNA) Folders now show up in the folders view.
FIX: (DLNA) Posters weren’t showing up on PS3.
FIX: (DLNA) DLNA server now cleans up correctly when shutting down.
FIX: (DLNA) Xbox now supports transcoded jpeg as icons and thumbnails.
FIX: (DLNA) Set seek flags for audio/video (regression).
FIX: (DLNA) Metadata for iTunes content now set properly.

Download Plex Media Server from here

Microsoft Announces Windows Phone 8

Jim McCarthy

-

Jun 21, 2012

1

Microsoft announced some of the upcoming changes in Windows Phone 8 today. We bring you some details!

Developer Related Improvements

Microsoft announced the following improvements related to developers:

Native code support: Windows Phone 8 has full C and C++ support, making it easier to write apps for multiple platforms more quickly. It also means Windows Phone 8 supports popular gaming middleware such as Havok Vision Engine, Autodesk Scaleform, Audiokinetic Wwise, and Firelight FMOD, as well as native DirectX-based game development.

In-app payments: In Windows Phone 8 we make it possible for app makers to sell virtual and digital goods within their apps.

Integrated Internet calling: In Windows Phone 8, developers can create VoIP apps that plug into our existing calling feature so Internet calls can be answered like traditional phone calls, using the same calling interface.

Multitasking enhancements. Windows Phone 8 now allows location-based apps like exercise trackers or navigation aids to run in the background, so they keep working even when you’re doing other things on your phone.

These developments will make it easier to code applications that will run on both Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8. Microsoft expects games to be ported over to the phone. In addition, some of the issues that users had using Skype on Windows Phone 7 will be eliminated by enabling VoIP capabilities as first tier applications. A new SDK will be available later this summer.

Windows Phone 7.8

Microsoft announced that current Windows Phone 7 hardware will not see an upgrade to Windows Phone 8. Instead, Windows Phone 7.8 will be released in order to bring some of the new Windows Phone 8 features to current hardware. I expect that recent Lumia 800 and 900 customers will not be pleased that their new handsets will be obsoleted fairly quickly.

Overall Assessment

I was very happy to hear about support for multiple cores and device encryption and corporate management features. These gaps to the competitive operating systems for mobile were glaring and were going to limit the ability for Windows Phone to be embraced by corporate customers and by power users. In addition, the ability to support new and HD screen resolutions is another improvement that will help make this platform more compelling. The ability to deploy apps and games across both phones and PC’s with minimal effort is a huge plus for Windows Phone 8. Also, IE10 running consistently across phones and PC’s will enhance the user experience. And apps that work in WP7 will work just fine on WP8. Very nice!

On a negative note, anyone who recently purchased a Windows Phone like the Nokia Lumia 900 will likely be annoyed that their hardware is already obsolete. I expect Microsoft will try to bring as much of the Windows Phone 8 experience to recent handsets as they can, but this will be difficult as the hardware requirements have changed.

It looks like Microsoft is closing the gaps to competing mobile operating system platforms while providing some degree of differentiation with Windows Phone 8. I am very happy to see a real, viable alternative to Android and iOS and am very intrigued to see how this new version of Windows Phone 8 is implemented by handset makers and mobile carriers.

I am in the market for a new cell phone, and with these enhancements, Windows Phone is now on my radar screen….now I just need to wait for the fall to see what gets announced. We’ll bring you updates when we get more information.

Go ahead and watch the event here.

Windows Phone 8 Blog Posting Microsoft Windows Phone 8 Event Video

QNAP Partners with TappIn to Offer Mobile File Access and Sharing

Jim McCarthy

-

Jun 21, 2012

0

QNAP Partners with TappIn to Offer Mobile File Access and Sharing

QNAP announced a new partnership with TappIn the other day to bring mobile file access and sharing to its TurboNAS line of NAS units. Read on for details.

TappIn is a service that allows you to access files on a PC or other device remotely over the internet, without having to load content to cloud storage services. QNAP is adding TappIn as a content partner for all customers running TurboNAS 3.6. Here is what was announced the other day:

Taipei, Taiwan – June 18, 2012 – QNAP^® Systems, Inc. announced today a partnership with TappIn™, Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of GlobalSCAPE (NYSE MKT: GSB), a leading innovator of secure information exchange solutions for businesses and consumers. TappIn by GlobalSCAPE’s secure content mobility solution will be available to QNAP’s customers using the storage vendor’s popular NAS devices. TappIn provides a secure, integrated service for customers to receive on-the-go access to digital contents stored on a QNAP Turbo NAS device from any web-browser, tablet, or smartphone, including Apple iOS^®, Google^® Android™, Windows Phone 7^®, and Kindle Fire. QNAP customers simply register for TappIn and begin accessing their contents on any Turbo NAS device via a TappIn web application or mobile apps.

According to new research from International Data Corporation (IDC), the volume of digital information may balloon from 2.7 zettabytes this year — the equivalent of filling 2.7 billion of Apple^®Inc.’s priciest desktop iMacs to capacity — to 8 zettabytes by 2015. The explosion of digital content is paralleled by the proliferation of devices on which people can access it. As this market’s demand continues to increase, QNAP’s integration of TappIn by GlobalSCAPE into its NAS devices will provide a solution for its customers that allows comprehensive local storage, and enables simple and secure content mobility, helping QNAP to continue its trend as one of the top providers of NAS and unified storage devices in the industry.

“As mobility increasingly makes every facet of our lives available at the touch of a screen, QNAP customers are looking for solutions that not only allow them to securely store their data, but access it anytime, anywhere,” said Jérôme Jaussaud, product manager of QNAP. “By partnering with TappIn, QNAP can now offer its customers secure access to the digital content they store on our Turbo NAS devices from any remote computer or mobile device, without the hassle or expense of moving or syncing that content to the cloud.”

With TappIn by GlobalSCAPE, users can safely access data directly from most operating systems, platforms, and mobile devices. TappIn’s innovative secure cloud pathway eliminates the need to upload, sync, or pay for additional cloud storage. With the TappIn service, QNAP Turbo NAS customers can securely access and share files of any size with encryption to safeguard content.

TappIn free edition is available for 1 user account for thirty days, and additionally, the TappIn Standard Edition subscription will be available to QNAP customers for a special $17.99 price annually or a $1.50 monthly charge.

“QNAP has made it its mission to provide customers with the highest level of functionality and the widest array of options to meet a variety of storage needs,” said Chris Hopen, president of TappIn, Inc. “The integrated QNAP/TappIn offering empowers mobile users to easily and securely store and access digital content contained on QNAP Turbo NAS devices while adding little cost to their bottom line. This partnership highlights TappIn’s ability to bring our partners and their customers the secure, versatile access that today’s mobile world demands.”

Availability

TappIn by GlobalSCAPE is now available on all QNAP Turbo NAS units installed with NAS firmware version 3.6 onward.

For more information please visit: http://www.qnap.com.

This is a very interesting partnership. Being able to access data from the web portal is a real benefit to both QNAP TurboNAS devices and my Windows Home Server. There is a real need for this type of service.

We’ll keep you posted on any other QNAP developments.

TappIn Website