IBLOG SPACE

Following several leaks and a strange viral ad campaign, Capcom has finally confirmed its much anticipated Resident Evil 6. The company not only announced the game, but also revealed the release date along with a trailer and new artwork. The game will launch for the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 on November 20, 2012, with a PC version to be released later. Resident Evil 6 is being called “the most ambitious, immersive and feature rich title of the series to date and promises to be the dramatic horror experience of the year.” Capcom went on to reveal the first official plot details: It has been ten years since the Raccoon City incident and the President of the United States has decided to reveal the truth behind what took place in the belief that it will curb the current resurgence in bioterrorist activity. Due to be by the President’s side is his personal friend and Raccoon City survivor, Leon S. Kennedy, but when the venue suffers a bioterrorist attack, Leon is forced to face a Presi

Microsoft’s quarterly financial results today make for great reading if you’re a shareholder, with a record $20.9bn in revenue, but are less reassuring if you’re a Windows Phone fan. The big software company broke down Windows 7 licensing numbers, spilled its Bing search share and gleefully detailed Xbox 360 and Kinect sensor sales, but Microsoft’s smartphone OS merited little more than a vague mention of “a lot of excitement.” This was Microsoft’s most obvious opportunity to hammer home whatever dent Windows Phone had made in the mobile market; that it didn’t leaves us more than a little concerned. Market share for Windows Phone is always something Microsoft has been coy about. So far, we’ve mainly been forced to go on unofficial figures by stats companies like Gartner and Nielsen, with the latter saying earlier this week that Windows Phone held 1.3-percent of the US market in 2011. There’s a little positive news for Microsoft in the stats too – in the final quarter of last year, 1.

Earlier today the sites Megaupload and Megavideo were shut down by ICE, a federal group responsible for working with and shutting down groups that pirate media illegally – in retaliation the hacker collective known as Anonymous have shut down the RIAA, the MPAA, Universal Music, and the United States Government site Justice.org, belonging to the Department of Justice. These hits have been confirmed by several anonymously run “official” Anonymous sources such as twitter accounts @Anonops, @AnonymousIRC, and @YourAnonNews, and were likely planned in advance. As a bit of an extra jab after the biggest sites in this situation were downed, Anonymous noted that they should simply say, “for #SOPA supporters their#SOPAblackout is today.” You can check for yourself with several sites that check the network status of sites, RIAA.ORG is down for the count, Justice.org is no longer, http://universalmusic.com is nowhere to be seen, and the Motion Picture Association of America will be showing no

Apple’s education-driven press event took place earlier today in NYC and unveiled the company’s plans to revolutionize textbooks and the entire learning experience. The news announced almost made us want to go back to school. In case you missed it, here’s a roundup of the magic that was unleashed. Starting today students will be able to easily access digital textbooks from their iPads, the star device of Apple’s education revolution. Apple unveiled the iBooks 2 app that now includes a section for textbooks and an overall improved user experience. Be sure to check out our hands-on with the new iBooks. The textbooks to be offered in the iBookstore will cost only $14.99 or less. These digital textbooks will always be up to date and can be easily purchase with one click. Publishing partners include Pearson, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, and McGraw Hill, which make up about 90 percent of all textbooks in the US. The first to be available will be high school textbooks. And to create the i

The fourth quarter earnings for the 2011 season for Google have been reported this week, results showing up as a slightly less impressive jump than analysts suspected. Google’s fourth quarter earnings rose by 6.3%, but as this did end up being the slowest revenue increase of all four quarters of 2011, estimates jumped the gun – meanwhile shares in Google today fell 9.7% amid news in after-hours trading to $577.92. Perhaps its time to buy then, said those who wished they’d invested in Google when they had the chance all those years ago, as a 34% increase was seen over last year’s Google ad clicks overall, this being also a 17% increase over the 3rd quarter of 2011. Costs rose a mighty 30% this fourth quarter of last year, while services outside Google’s search service have been doing quite well – 90 million users for Google+, for example, at the end of 2011, where just this past October there were merely 40 million. Google’s fourth-quarter profit ended up being up at $2.71 billion, th

Google‘s social network, Google+, may only have been operational for little over a year, but it has already accrued over 90,000,000 users according to CEO Larry Page. Announced as part of Google’s Q4 2011 financial results today, the milestone comes just four months after Google+ was opened up to general public registrations. However, it’s still in the shadow of the Facebook behemoth. Facebook was believed to have 800m active users back in September 2011, and has been aggressively promoting site changes since then in an attempt to increase popularity and engagement. Earlier this week, Facebook launched Timeline Apps, part of its Open Graph promotion to increase the amount of personal data shared on each users’ wall. Still, Google’s achievement is a credible one, given it came significantly later to the social market than rivals. The search giant has boasted that it added at least one new feature to Google+ each day since July 2011, most recently the ability to initiate YouTube vide

Microsoft released its fiscal second quarter 2012 earnings report today, exceeding analyst expectations of earnings per share but saw a slight dent on revenue due to slowing Windows sales. Revenue came in at $20.89 billion, up 5 percent from the same quarter last year. However, earnings dipped to $6.62 billion or about $0.77 per share. The Windows and Windows Live division posted revenue of $4.74 billion, dropping 6 percent form the year ago. The business division, which includes Microsoft Office, reported revenue of $6.28 billion, up 3 percent from the last period. The online services division, which includes Bing, saw a narrower loss of $458 million. “We delivered solid financial results, even as we prepare for a launch year that will accelerate many of our key products and services,” said CEO Steve Ballmer in a statement. “Coming out of the Consumer Electronics Show, we’re seeing very positive reviews for our new phones and PCs, and a strong response to our new Metro style desi

When it comes to Apple, there’s only one thing you can guess on releases: you never ever quite know what you’re going to get or what it’ll be called – thats why when the name iPad 2S popped up on the airwaves this afternoon, the wheels in our minds started spinning furiously. This is not the first time we’ve seen the “S” naming scheme appear on an Apple product, nor will it be the last time, but here it certainly does appear to be the first iPad to attain the partial step between full refreshes in models. It’s a Chinese case maker by the name of Chinee that appears to have spilled the beans here, showing off a case that looks not unlike one that would fit fine on an iPad 2, but with an additional letter that’s oh-so-telling in the title. It was 9to5mac that turned this gem up, showing how the case does have a 1mm increase in thickness over the current iPad 2, making this a 9.8mm deep case for the next generation iPad. The S being a specification thus far for Apple symbolizing a speci

There’s nothing better than a gigantic pink monster truck / hearse hybrid made out of cardboard and paper to get your rock and roll concert tour underway, and They Might Be Giants have done us one better: they’ve taught us how to make our own! We love gadgets, and they’ve got a gigantic person-sized cardboard and paper boombox to fix us up there as well! This is basically the greatest combination of oddities to happen here in the tech, music, and fun world all day long! All you’ve got to get is a bit of paper, some scissors, and maybe a bit of glue and you’ll be well on your way to creating the same awesome structure everyone in the hipster world’s favorite band of all time They Might Be Giants are pushing in this video! They’ve got a concert coming up, and their monster truck is telling you to get interested in it! Along for the ride as well is none other than Jonathan Coulton, famous for his ballads “the First of May” and “Still Alive” from the end of the Portal video game series (

The European Commission has set a February 13 deadline to decide whether or not to approve Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola. The new date comes after the commission suspended the January 10 deadline to wait for additional documents from Google. The merger was first announced last August as a move to help defend Android in the patent war. Competitors such as Microsoft and Apple have been attacking Android OEMs with patent suits related to technologies used in the open-source Android platform. The merger would secure Motorola’s massive patent portfolio, giving Google more leverage. However, the purchase has concerned Google’s Android partners as it could give Motorola an unfair advantage over other device makers. Google chairman Eric Schmidt had also expressed that the company wanted morecontrol over hardware as part of the Motorola deal

One of the most notoriously popular media uploading and downloading sites in the world has been shut down today amid allegations of piracy and charges amounting to $500 million in lost revenue for pirated content. These charges come from federal prosecutors in Virginia and are being leveled against the founder and others involved with the site. If found guilty, needless to say, Megaupload’s owners will stand no chance of revival any time soon. The indictment was unsealed Thursday, January 19th, 2012, not one day later than a multitude of sites shut themselves down for a 24 hour period to protest laws relatively similar to the ones being used to knock out Megaupload now. The difference here is that Megaupload is local while SOPA and PIPA work to snuff out USA access to international sites with pirated material. Megaupload has noted that they’ve always been diligent in responding to complaints about pirated material, but it seems to have done them no good in this situation. Until we

For those of you wondering why the PlayStation Network is down today, they’re currently letting the world know that they’re going to be down until 9PM PST for maintenance. And just like a fleet of Vogons, they remind us all that it was posted yesterday in a place where everyone could very easily have seen it, the PlayStation Blog. This down time started at 8AM PST and will last until tonight for essentially all services, so you’ll just have to play with yourself or a friend nearby until then. The service will be down for the PlayStation Store on PS3, PSP, and Media Go, as well as the PlayStation Network Account Management and Registration services. PlayStation Home will be down this whole time as well, as will Music Unlimited and Video Unlimited services. As it turns out, unlimited does not include maintenance times. You will not be able to sign in to the PlayStation Network from us.playstation.com during this time. Those who were signed on before the maintenance began should be ab

This week the inevitable appears to be revealing itself, that being Apple’s plan for Siri, currently on the iPhone 4S exclusively, to be updated to work with online stores for completely voice-only purchases. This would be a gigantic step forward for the futuristic interface that the iPhone 4S currently holds above the heads of the rest of the smartphone world, especially in that it was the first thing we’d hoped it would do when it was launched – it at least expected to be able to do eventually. This future plan comes in the form of a patent discovered by AppleInsider titled “Intelligent Automated Assistant.” What this patent outlines is both everything Siri can already do as well as some rather interesting things Apple has in the bag for the near future. What this patent details is how Siri will be able to in the future work with phrases such as “Sorry, I can’t purchase that,” for example. This most recent move into e-commerce follows perfectly with how Apple has been giving its sm

Like its very close relative, the Kaoss Pad 2, this Kaossilator 2 Dynamic Phrase Synthesizer is an electronically attuned piece of musical monstrosity – of the most awesome variety. Korg presents this little beast, an X-Y touchpad which allows you to create and save your own music with the touch of a finger. With its ergonomic styling, lovely ultra-bright OEL display, and built-in microphone and speaker, you’ll be GJing the night away in no time! You’ve got a gigantic range of abilities for loop recording, the ability to save all of your creations on the fly, and an advanced sound generator built in. The Kossilator is played by you tapping, sliding, or otherwise engaging with the Kaoss touchpad with your finger. From there, your pitch and note information are read and distributed how you intend. Inside are 150 sound programs divided into seven categories including Lead, Bass, and Chords. Unlimited loop recording is included on this pocketable device, two loop recording banks includ

The folks at Twitter have picked up a startup by the name of Summify, a group whose main goal it is to aggregate the social media users around the world deal with on a daily bases. As Twitter scoops up this company, so too does the Summify team move over to San Francisco and their products be transitioned into Twitter-centric orbs. Their main service, the aggregation product which moves Twitter, Facebook, RSS, and other streams into one product, will be shut down inside a month. Twitter is always looking for ways to streamline their already seemingly simple system – it’s just a bunch of text, right? No way, says Twitter, it’s much more complicated than that, and the amount of data they must filter already with all of this “just text” comes down to one thing: they need more hands to help. What Summify is set to do is not only help them on the back end, but bring forth a possible front-end interface change to Twitter down the line as well. Imagine a much simpler way to have all of your

Since yesterday when news broke that AT&T would be changing both their prices and their data allowances on new users accounts for the 2012 season, there’s been one whole heck of a lot of dissent out there on why people “hate AT&T even more”, and so forth. What’s not showing up nearly enough is the fact that with these new price “hikes” also comes a better data to price ratio as well as the ability to keep your old prices if that’s what you enjoy more. Instead of griping about how AT&T is raising their prices, perhaps a glance at the fact that it’s not you, current AT&T customer, who will be footing the bill, nor will it be someone who previously payed less. Instead, what we’ve got here is a simple set of facts: first of all, if you DO want to switch to the new data plan, you’re getting more data per dollar. Where before the prices were $15, $25, and $25, now they cost $20, $30, and $50. With these prices comes an increase per dollar of 2MB, 20MB, and 100MB. That’s sub

There’s a tiny audio distorting monster on the block, and it’s name is Kaoss, Kork Mini Kaoss Pad 2 Dynamic Effect Processor for short, and it comes complete with the features you need to turn your DJ station into a massive fingertip express. What this device does it takes your finger tapping, pressing, pushing, and pulling into its tiny computer brain and makes your motions into beautiful noises on the fly. You’ll be following in the steps of such fabulous devices as the Kaoss Pad Quad and the Kaoss Pad KP3 with this most lovely of pocketable tappers. This device is made with an undeniably simple industrial design, made for what it’s made for and nothing more. Inside is a microphone, high-visibility organic electroluminescent (OEL) display up top, and the ability to accommodate what they say will be nearly any audio source. Battery power in this device is rechargeable, there’s an MP3 player aboard, FX Release, and a microSD card slot. Also built in is 100 effects right out of the bo

The folks at Korg have released a bit of info on a couple more tiny keyboards, synthesizers to add to the already awesome hero original Korg Monotron with the Monotron DUO and the Monotron DELAY, both of them an unbelievably inexpensive way to get unique custom-tweaked musical notes to your fingertips. We’ve already reviewed the original Korg Monotron, so you should have a pretty good idea of what you’re getting into here with these two new models. Each of these little beasts have their own set of features and colors to make them unique enough for you to want to own the whole series. Each model has a front panel with five knobs and a front-panel switch, these controls giving you hands-on analog sound control across the board. Each unit has a ribbon keyboard, this allowing you to make separated sounds if you like, or gradients of moving sound with a slide of your fingertip. The entire Monotron series uses the same VCF circuit as Korg’s classic MS-10 and MS-20 semi modular synthesizers