IBLOG SPACE

MegaUpload founder and CEO Kim Dotcom has again been denied bail by a New Zealand court, after his appeal to the High Court was rejected over fears he might abscond to avoid extradition. The appeals judge agreed with alower court decision in late January that Dotcom – who has a track record of avoiding arrest, as well as multiple passports and bank accounts – was highly likely to flee the country to Germany, where he would be safe from extradition to the US. Dotcom protested that he wanted to spend time with his pregnant wife, Reuters reports, as well as alleging that he had been mistreated by police during his arrest. “I will not run away. I want to fight these allegations on a level playing field. I have three little children. My wife is pregnant with twins. I just want to be with them” Dotcom told the court, going on to point out that his assets had been frozen and at least some of the multiple passports seized during the raid. As for his arrest, Dotcom has made claims of unnecessar

I have long said that there is no legislation for drivers that will make them pay attention while behind the wheel. No amount of laws against texting and driving or using a hand-held mobile phone while driving will stop those acts from happening. If you look at the number prototype vehicles that have been surfacing over the last year that are able to drive themselves, I have to start wondering if taking the driver away from the driving is the only way to truly combat the distracted driver. I’m not for self-driving cars for myself, or for them being mandated, but I see idiots on the road every day that I would like to see behind the wheel of the car that doesn’t need them to drive safely. Google has shown off cars that drive themselves in the past using GPS and other tech that didn’t need a driver at all. Google is hardly the only company working on such technology, and this new BMW prototype is another example of a car that removes the driver from the equation, at least in part. The BM

We have some bad news today for haters of spam everywhere. Apparently, the Kelihos botnet that Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab shutdown in September 2011 is making a comeback. The botnet is spamming once again. The botnet was able to infect 45,000 computers before being shutdown and was sending out 4 billion spam messages a day. The spam messages flooded the web with promotions for porn, illegal drugs, and other scams. Microsoft and Kaspersky Lab were able use some sort of technical means to get the 45,000 computers that make up the botnet to communicate with what they called a “sinkhole” which was a computer that the two firms controlled. The problem was the computers that were infected with the software for the botnet were still unclean. It was known from the get go that eventually that the nefarious sorts in command of the botnet would regain control. Microsoft and Kaspersky could have used the communications with their sinkhole computer to force the infected machines to clean their act

If you use Skype a lot for business or play, Skype has announced that it has updated the Windows version of the software to 5.8. The new version has some interesting features, including a new group screen sharing feature. That screen sharing feature may be perfect for businesses that have employees scattered around the country or for geeks need to show parents how to work something on the computer. The group sharing feature allows you to share photos with a group of friends or share your screen to give a presentation to as many as 10 people. That group screen sharing feature is available Skype Premium, and the premium service includes group video calling along with live chat with customer support. The update also allows users of the Windows platform to check Facebook news feeds from within Skype and to send messages to or video call Facebook friends. Those last features are in Skype for Windows Beta. The new 5.8 version also supports full HD video calling, push to talk, Skype updater s

I know many people are competitive in everything they do from work to play. Some people are always looking forward to competing with others to see who’s better or just claim a win. If you’re this sort of person, and you like to exercise, Apple is researching some social fitness technology that would allow you to share your workouts in real-time, including performance data allowing you to compete with people you know. This is interesting, and there are some apps for Apple hardware that allow this sort of data sharing already. The research is tipped via a patent filing called “Interfacing Portable Media Devices And Sports Equipment.” The patent surfaced this week in the trademark and patent office database, but was filed on October 12, 2011. Interestingly, one of the names on the filing is Apple engineer Donald Ginsberg. Ginsberg heads up that Apple Made for iPod program. The patent outlines a way the workout data from your Apple device can be shared in real-time with your friends who ma

AMD held a financial analyst day this week, and it had a slick and sexy little notebook in a demo area for the geeks to check out while they were there. The thin, glossy little notebook packs in the new AMD Trinity APU the little beastie looks as thin as a MacBook Air in photos. According to Engadget, the reference design unit on display is one of the several proof of concepts that are being used to show off the powerful and thin machines packing the new Trinity APU. The prototype we see here is running a lower voltage range of Trinity that should be either the 17-watt or the 25-watt version of the APU. The little display machine is only 18 mm thick and is clearly aiming at Intel ultrabook shoppers. Granted this is simply proof of concept, so shipping versions could change significantly. However, Engadget reports that the machine was very flimsy and has a significant amount of flex in its chassis. The good news with these designs from AMD is that its targeting a price point much lower

Apple has yanked the majority of its 3G-enabled devices from its German online store, including the iPhone 4 and the iPad 2 WiFi + 3G, after Motorola Mobility secured a sales injunction over 3G/UMTS patents. The move, Deutsche Presse-Agentur reports, is a response to a court win back in December 2011, rather than Motorola’s permanent injunction success earlier today over a different patent, with the company apparently posting a €100m ($131m) bond to enact the late-2011 ruling. The iPhone 4S is excluded from the sales block, presumably because it uses a different baseband chip to earlier Apple 3G-enabled devices. The iPad 2 WiFi + 3G, along with the iPhone 3G and iPhone 4, use Infineon wireless hardware, but Apple switched to Qualcomm GSM/CDMA hybrids for the iPhone 4S. Motorola’s win in December was around a FRAND (fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory) licensed patent, deemed essential to 3G/UMTS standards. The ruling this week is not believed to refer to a FRAND patent, however. Sa

It’s clear that Apple CEO Tim Cook, who replaced the late Steve Jobs, is a different kind of leader than Jobs was. While Jobs was not known for philanthropic efforts during his life and his time with Apple, Cook is focusing heavily on talking up Apple’s charitable contributions. In fact, Cook recently told employees at a Apple Town Hall meeting that the company is donating to charity in a big way. Cook told workers that Apple has so far donated $50 million to Stanford’s hospitals. The donation will split into two parts with $25 million for a new Main building an additional $25 million going to a new Children’s Hospital. Cook also mentioned that Apple is the leading contributor to Product RED and since the project kicked off Cook says Apple has donated $50 million.

Spilled details on Windows Phone 8 “Apollo” have opened the floodgates on Microsoft’s next significant update to its smartphone software, with more tidbits on the Windows 8 kernel based platform slipping out. Paul Thurrott confirms the shared kernel, along with the multi-core processor support, sensor fusion, security model, network, and video and graphics technologies from Windows 8, though says Skype will remain a separate app rather than baked in at the OS level. The Microsoft-owned VoIP service is “a separate but better app and not integrated into OS” Thurrott claims, and will remain “optional.” There appears to be some confusion around this; from what’s been said, it looks like Windows Phone 8 will offer deep-level hooks for Skype, allowing the app to integrate seamlessly alongside traditional voice calls as far as the user sees, though it won’t be bundled as part of the OS itself. There’ll also be better use of sandboxing, with a way for Windows Phone 8 apps to communicate with

The big story this week has been the Facebook IPO filing that is set to make a bunch of early employees at the social network millionaires. The Facebook IPO filing also showed how important game developer Zynga was to the money Facebook earns. The filing showed that Zynga accounted for 12% of Facebook’s 2011 revenue. That means that to some extent profits for Facebook and profits at Zynga are intertwined. With big expectations for Facebook IPO filing, Zynga’s own stock has soared since the IPO paperwork was filed. In fact, since the Facebook IPO filing Zynga’s market cap has climbed over $1 billion thanks to the increase in stock prices for Zynga. Apparently, Zynga stock was trading at the close of market early this week for $10.96 per share, which is a bit higher than the $10 per share price in December when the company made its IPO. Yesterday, Zynga stock opened at $11.05 and the price went up to $12.81 per share at its peak. That meant by the close of market on Thursday Zynga’s mark

OnStar is pushing major utility companies, energy companies, and technology firms to develop Smart Grid solutions that will allow the Chevy Volt to interface with utility grid for various tasks. The goal is to allow the driver of the Volt to have granular control over how and when their vehicles charge, and the sort of electricity that is used. The new Smart Grid API that OnStar is pushing will do several things for drivers of the EVs and plug-in hybrids that will make charging smarter, cheaper, and easier on the environment. The APIs will offer things like demand response, time of use rates, charging data, and aggregated services. The aggregated services solutions interesting and is intended to allow companies such as Google that operate large fleets of electric vehicles to control the charging simultaneously. The charging data offers details that the utility companies can use to determine potential load scenarios for a given area where multiple electric vehicles might be charging at

“Won’t somebody think of the children” US lawmakers have pleaded, after an unsatisfactory two hour face-to-face with Google‘s execs over privacy changes left them unconvinced that the search giant is doing enough to offer data tracking opt-outs. “At the end of the day, I don’t think their answers to us were very forthcoming necessarily in what this really means for the safety of our families and our children” California Republican Mary Bono Mack said after the meeting, The Hill reports, despite two of Google’s top execs giving her and the other members of the Commerce, Manufacturing and Trade subcommittee a “thorough walkthrough” of the privacy options available today. In fact, that demo only convinced Mack that Google’s system had become more of a potential threat to privacy. “By being more simple, [the privacy policy] is actually more complicated” she claims. Google had been asked to meet with the subcommittee this week to answer questions on how its streamlined privacy policy would

Motorola has won a permanent injunction against Apple’s iCloud service and the devices that access it in Germany, though the company must risk a €100m bond and the threat of huge damages if Apple’s likely appeals if it actually wants to enact it today. Motorola Mobility’s case against Ireland-based Apple Sales International – Apple’s European sales branch – was brought in April 2011 and swiftly pushed through a full proceeding, FOSS Patents reports; it potentially encompasses sales in Germany of the iPhone, iPad and other devices. Although the injunction is a permanent one – as it was the result of a full proceeding with trial, rather than a fast-tracked hearing which would result in a preliminary injunction – it’s what’s known as “preliminary enforceable” at this stage. Motorola can choose to enforce the sales ban, but to do so it must put down the €100m ($133m) bond: if Apple successfully appeals the injunction, which they are almost certainly likely to attempt, then Motorola will no

Google has released Google Wallet for the AT&T Galaxy Nexus and Galaxy S, bringing the NFC-enabled smartphones up to speed with contactless payments. However, the download requires that an AT&T SIM be loaded into the phone – though you can still download over WiFi – since with a T-Mobile USA SIM the app simply disappears from the Android Market. For those unfamiliar, Google Wallet allows you to register your Citi MasterCard or a Google Prepaid Card to your Nexus, and pay for things at participating retailers simply by holding the phone to a payment terminal. The app also pulls in Google Offers, discount vouchers and other promotions, based on your shopping history. Google Wallet is available for AT&T Galaxy S and Galaxy Nexus users here or by searching in the Android Market on the device itself. If you haven’t got an AT&T SIM lying around, there are some semi-sneaky ways in which you can grab a copy of Google Wallet for your Verizon or T-Mobile USA Galaxy device. Head o

If, like me, you have a Nintendo 3DS just collecting dust, there’s a new push to take your handheld device out into the world and gain access to exclusive content. There are 29,000 so-called “Nintendo Zone” locations throughout the US and Canada. These special hotspots give dedicated content to anyone who pulls out their 3DS, ranging from videos to mini-games. These Zones haven’t gotten much traction, but Nintendo hopes they will now that they’ve evoked the magic word: Pokemon. Beginning on February 6, Nintendo Zone locations will offer full-length episodes of the animated Pokemon TV series. Of course, you have to be in the connected zone area to watch them. In addition to the TV episodes, Nintendo is doling out a dedicated section where gamers can see the latest Pokemon news and watch videos about the latest games and trading cards. Every Nintendo product or service always gets a bump when Pokemon come on board, so perhaps Nintendo Zone will start to gain a little more name recognitio

Just when the world was beginning to forget about News Corp’s hacking scandals, a new investigation has been launched regarding the media giant’s UK newspaper the Times. The Metropolitan Police Service in England is looking into reports that a reporter may have hacked into e-mail accounts. This of course comes after News Corp faced a humiliating probe into phone hacking last year. That case prompted the giant company to close down News of the World, a tabloid that had been in print for 168 years. The scandal crept over to another News Corp tabloid, Sun, with another investigation that led to four employees being arrested on bribery charges. Now, it’s another publication, another scandal, and another criminal charge. According to the allegations, a Times reporter broke into an unauthorized person’s e-mail account and used private information from that account to run a story. That’s what we in the real world call illegal. No further details were spilled on whose e-mail address was compro

Last month, Twitter decided to refine its rules on what users can and cannot post. Instead of creating one massive set of rules that incorporated every single country’s individual laws on what kind of content is legal, it decided to restrict content on a regional basis. Now, Google has followed in those footsteps with its blogging software Blogger. The search giant will begin by redirecting Blogger domain accounts to specific country domains based on user location. From there, it will be easy to implement country-specific rules and regulations. This means, for example, someone in the US who posts pro-Nazi content on their Blogger blog will be perfectly in his legal rights to do so, but someone in Germany, where the exact same content would be illegal, will be censored. For Blogger, this process will be implemented over the next several months. While this doesn’t mean Google can automatically weed out content that local governments deem illegal, it does mean that if a local government a

Having GPS functionality in Sony’s impending handheld game device will be nice if you’re ever lost on the road or happen to wander off while being immersed in a game. Or, if you’re playing Nippon Ichi’s RPG Disgaea 3, it will allow you to earn discounts on in-game items, gain experience points, and increase your mana. That’s because the irreverent Japanese game will use the PlayStation Vita’s GPS functionality to measure how far players travel in real life. RPGs are all about big, vast experiences that require players to navigate through virtual miles of caves, valleys, and dungeons. So it’s almost a fitting feature for Disgaea 3 to measure the distance you’ve gone in the real world. This will be captured by an in-game value known as your “Honor Quotient.” As players increase their HQ, they will earn all sorts of enhancements within the game. There have been a lot of unique ways that games have tried to tap into real-world elements. Some are the normal, to-be-expected kind, like augmen

It’s not the most shocking suggestion that has surfaced about the iPhone 5, but there is new substantive info linking the latest and greatest Apple handset to the company’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June. In addition, new speculation has surfaced about what might make the new device worthy of a numerical upgrade that the iPhone 4S couldn’t achieve. One such nugget is that the touch panel will have what’s called “glass-to-glass” technology. In addition, according to overseas manufacturing observer Digitimes.com, which translated an iPhone 5 article that appeared in the Chinese language newspaper Commercial Times, the iPhone 4S successor will have a larger display. It will reportedly check in at around four inches, and include an aluminum case that will be thinner than previous iPhone iterations. But the big scoop that Commercial Times seemed to get was the unveiling info. The Worldwide Developers Conference would of course be an appropriate setting in which to debut significant

The Huffington Post, which has blossomed into one of the biggest online news networks in the world, is planning to enter a space it hasn’t really delved into before – live streaming video. The site will essentially become a competitor not only to online news outlets but to the 24/7 cable news networks as well. At least, that is the goal. The site plans to offer 12 hours of original programming every day. This bold and ambitious new plan is planned to come to fruition some time this summer. Then, by the end of 2013, the number of hours of content will grow to 16 hours per day, literally pitting it against CNN, Fox News, and the other 24-hour news channels which only offer about 15-17 hours of news and then several hours of re-aired programming during the overnight hours. This announcement came from a blog post written by Huffington Post founder Arianna Huffington, who actually has very little to do with the site’s day-to-day operations anymore. People won’t just be watching it from thei

For the first time, the Super Bowl will be available not only on TV, but also on your phone. That is, if you have a Verizon phone, and it’s powerful enough to run live streaming video. The carrier was given the honors after scoring points as a valuable partner of MobiTV, the company that will be powering the live transmission. The game will be transcoded to bit rates ranging from 22 Kilobits per second to 1.2 Megabits per second. This first-of-its-kind stream only applies to Verizon phones, not tablets. Verizon isn’t the only company making Super Bowl-watching history this year. NBC, the exclusive telecaster of the big game, will allow users to watch the match on NBCSports.com. It will also be streamed live on NFL.com. For those who want to watch the game on-the-go, you’ll need to download the Verizon Wireless NFL Mobile app, which is available on both the Android Market and the Apple App Store. Customers with a 4G phone get to watch the game for free, but those with a 3G handset must

If Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, Crackle, live TV, and Microsoft’s own proprietary video download platform wasn’t enough for you, there is a new way to stream movies and TV shows from your Xbox 360. CinemaNow, which operates as a joint deal between Best Buy and Sonic Solutions, has launched an official app for the Microsoft platform, further expanding the reach of its 14,000 pieces of content. That concent ranges from full-length movies to music concerts, short films, and TV show episodes. It has all the major licenses including Disney, Sony, Warner Bros, NBC Universal, etc, etc, etc. Unlike Netflix or Hulu, CinemaNow charges users per movie or TV show, and with most titles users have lifetime access to their content on any device that has CinemaNow support. The service is available on computers as well as Internet-connected TVs, Blu-ray players, and set-top boxes. Everything is stored in the cloud so buying a TV episode on the Xbox 360 means you can watch it on your PC later. This of course

The Kepler mission initiated to find habitable Earth-like planets near our own has turned up another candidate for places we might visit in the future: GJ 667Cc. This planet has an orbital period of about 28 days regularly and has a mass that’s at least 4.5 larger than Earth. This planet is neither too hot nor too cold for liquid water to exist on the surface, and it sits aside two or three additional planets that may well be similar enough to also be Earth candidates. This newest discovery was made by astronomers from UC Santa Cruz Steven Vogt and Eugenio Rivera, lead by Guillem Anglada-Escudé and Paul Butler of the Carnegie Institution for Science. The host star in this system is called GJ 667C and is an M-class dwarf star. Two more stars sit in the same system and are a pair of orange K dwarfs. This area was not expected to be the best place for a habitable planet to be out of all those being concentrated on in this larger Kepler mission, but turned out surprisingly to be just what

Sony’s web-connected PlayStation Network has been taken down for maintenance today, a scheduled event ending at midnight PST. This event was planned well in advance and, unlike the break-downs and hacks of 2011, is nothing to worry about as far as gamers personal data and security on the whole goes. This maintenance began early this morning at 6 AM PST and will be fully complete by tomorrow. For those of you reading this in the future, this particular down-time took place on the 2nd of February, 2012. This maintenance period has for the most part left online play unaffected, while those who had signed into their accounts before 6 AM PST today should have been able to stay logged in throughout the down time. The services you know and love that are down and will remain down through the night will be the PlayStation Store via the PlayStation 3 and PSP, and Media Go. In addition, PlayStation HomeMusic Unlimited and Video Unlimited services are unavailable until tomorrow. Account Management

Both iOS and Android devices will be ready and welcome to watch the Super Bowl live right here in 2012 – just so long as you’ve got a Verizon-based device. While the Super Bowl XLVI Live Feed does have one gigantic button sitting right at the top of all of the main screens here in this guide app, you’ll need Verizon’s NFL Mobile app (built in to most Verizon phones released in the past few months) to watch it. What this guide app offers is everything other than that, complete with a massively impressive 3D map of the area around and inside Lucas Oil Stadium. You’ll find not only a full guide of the interior of the stadium, but a full guide to the city as well. Want to park your car and mark the GPS location? Go for it here! Want to find a place to eat, drink, and be merry? That’s here too. Plan your day before the game and after the game if you like, and find your seat when it’s time to sit! This app has been developed with the NFL to provide you a map not only from your car to the sta

Activision announced today that its Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 game title for the PlayStation 3 will be getting new DLC maps later this month. The new content will be available to download by Premium Members on the PlayStation Network starting February 28. It will include two multiplayer maps called Liberation and Piazza. The Call of Duty Elite Drop 1: Liberation will take place in a militarized Central Park in the heart of NYC. It features a vast landscape great for long-range sniper and LMG kills with mounted turrets on each end of the map. Elite Drop 2: Piazza takes place in a seaside village where blind corners and complex branching pathways means danger lurks at every turn and ensures plenty of close-quarter combat. Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3′s content season is co-developed by Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games, and Raven Software. The new maps have already been released for the Xbox 360 last month due to an exclusivity deal between Activision and Microsoft. Hence, new DLC

When Apple announced its fiscal first quarter earnings last week, which encompassed the three months ended December 2011, much of the attention went to the company’s exceedingly strong iPhone and iPad sales. There was also a lot of talk about its huge profit and exploding cash reserves. But lost amid all that talk was Apple’s iPod. That device, which once meant nearly everything to the company’s success or failure, actually saw sales decline 21 percent to 15.4 million units sold worldwide. Over the last several quarters, similar scenarios have played out as consumers increasingly turn to Apple’s iPad and iPhone and turn their backs on the iPod. Those sales declines make sense. Apple’s iPod has been on store shelves for over a decade now, and the vast majority of consumers who wanted a music player bought one of Apple’s devices long ago; the number of people who actually need an iPod has dwindled. What’s more, Apple has incorporated iPod functionality into its iPhone and iPad, making th

The next great installment in the Final Fantasy series has dropped to the press, and the reviews are in. First, there’s no great update here, folks, or at least that’s what they’re saying. On the other hand, should a person jump in on the series from this point without having played such classics as Final Fantasy VII, there may be some enjoyment to be had. Have a peek at the opinions dropping across the web on this Square Enix-made game, and decide for yourself whether it’ll be worth your cash to pick a time-traveling RPG with the big FF on it again! The first thing you should know here is that Final Fantasy XIII-2 is a time-traveling game with plotlines that fit in several places after the original XIII. There’s one timeline 700 years into the future, one 100 years into the future, and one just 10 years into the future, each of them after XIII. Reviewers seem to have mixed feelings on this installment of the game for a variety of reasons, but one thing seems clear: everyone who has re

Huawei announced today that its 7-inch MediaPad tablet will be heading to AT&T. The tablet, which is already on T-Mobile as the Springboard, will be available for AT&T’s 4G HSPA+ network starting tomorrow, February 3. However, it will only be offered to enterprise users and the price will vary depending on your business account. The Huawei MediaPad features a 7-inch IPS multitouch display with 1280 x 800 pixel resolution, a 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and 5-megapixel rear-facing camera. The rear camera is capable of 4X zoom, AF, and 1080p Full HD video capture. The tablet also sports HDMI output and has a 4,100mAh battery for a six-hour battery life. Although Huawei is set to launch MediaPads with the latest Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on board, this MediaPad for AT&T will not. Instead, it will running Android 3.2 Honeycomb with the ICS update likely to come over-the-air sometime this first quarter of 2012. It’s not

RIM’s VP of developer relations Alec Saunders has offered up free PlayBook tablets to Android developers today in exchange for their apps. All they’ve got to do is make sure they’re signed up and have submitted their Android app to BlackBerry’s BB AppWorld by the 13th of February. If your humble narrator didn’t know any better, it would seem that RIM is desperate not only to get rid of their remaining stock of the PlayBook BlackBerry tablet, but to get Android users interested in working with them, no matter the cost. For a company whose tablet was once several hundred dollars, giving these tablets away for free to developers might seem like a move of madness. Of course the truth of the matter is that there’s no better way to get people to love your hardware than to get the greatest creators of software on your side. And there’s no greater way to get a developer to work for your platform than to give them free hardware, right? Incorrect, ladies and gentlemen, the best way to get a deve

The Nokia Lumia 900 is now ready for pre-orders from Microsoft’s retail stores in the US. The much anticipated Windows Phone will be an AT&T exclusive, resembling an over-sized version of the elegant Lumia 800. The device is expected to launch on March 18, although the date hasn’t been officially confirmed yet. According to WMPoweruser, you can pre-order your Nokia Lumia 900 today at Microsoft retail stores by paying $25 upfront and you can choose between the two colors of Cyan and Black. To see if there’s a Microsoft store nearby, you can see all the locations here. Also make sure to check out our hands-on video with the Lumia 900. The Lumia 900 is expected to feature a 4.3-inch WVGA ClearBlack display, an 8-megapixel Carl Zeiss rear-facing camera, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, 512MB of RAM, 1.4GHz single-core processor, 16GB of internal memory, and support for AT&T’s LTE network. Rumors have suggested that the handset will be priced at $99 with a new two-year contract.

Recent incidents in which the Android Market has been accused of hosting massive malware outbreaks have been responded to by Google today with a brand new system code-named Bouncer. With this new system, a completely non-invasive and potentially developer effort-free system will continue to build on Android’s security system blocking out all malicious software, especially here and now in the Android Market. This comes at a time when security group Symantec has changed their tune after a week of screaming about malware that the object they found wasn’t malicious at all in the first place. Symantec aside, Google is indeed bumping up their efforts to keep the Android Market clean with Bouncer as well as reinforcing through words the security that’s already in place and has been for some time with Android. Bouncer sits at the heart of the Android Market and checks for malicious software once an app is uploaded, checking it for known viral bits as well as codes that show that it was built b

During AMD’s 2012 financial analyst event today, the chip maker revealed its roadmap that promises a slew of next-gen chips to come in 2012 and 2013. The company is ready to dive into tablets with its first tablet-ready chip to arrive this year. It also plans to release next-gen accelerated processing units or APUs built on its most advanced 28-nm process by 2013. AMD’s first APU for tablets is codenamed “Hondo” and will be built on a 40-nm manufacturing process. APUs combine a microprocessor and graphics on the same chip and feature ultra-low power consumption. The company revealed that the first AMD-toting Windows 8 tablet will be available this year. AMD will also be refreshing its lineup with Brazos 2.0 chips that feature faster TurboCore and universal serial bus 3.0 built on a 40-nm process. A second-gen Trinity APU will be built on a 32-nm process and feature significant improvements in performance and power consumption. Additionally, AMD will be launching a new stand-alone graph

If you’re an avid user of Dropbox and love to test out new builds of software for your favorite cloud storage service, today’s your lucky day. Dropbox is showing off their version 1.3.12 beta release of their desktop software, offering up to 500MB of photos and video (or space for whatever you like) at a time, with 500MB more free each time you fill your space up. This testing ground software download is entirely free to download and will have you checking out a bevy of new options with the program itself including imports from iPhone, imports from SD cards, and a cleanup of the Windows user interface! When you do download this update to your Dropbox software for desktop machines, you should know that there are different versions for different Linux builds, but one version per system for Mac OS X and Windows. Dropbox also warns users that they should make backup sets of files while using this update specifically as this testing sequence is in place to test out stability primarily. Thos

AT&T has managed to beat out all its rivals in the latest mobile phone customer service survey conducted byVocalabs, despite being ranked worst by Consumer Reports. According to data collected from the firm’s survey, which involved telephone interviews immediately following a customer service call during the last three-month period in 2011, AT&T had the highest percentage of customer satisfaction among the four major US wireless carriers. The survey found that 69% of AT&T customers surveyed were “Very Satisfied” with their customer service experience. This is an improvement from the 65% ratio the year before. AT&T also dethroned the Now Network, which dropped 12 points to 59%. Tying with AT&T a year ago at 65%, T-Mobile has dropped 17 points to a miserable 48%, while Verizon remains unchanged at 60%. Apparently, AT&T was able to improve customer service without its proposed T-Mobile acquisition, despite its arguments otherwise. However, T-Mobile’s customer servi

Back when Facebook was limited to its first couple of campuses here in the USA, artist David Choe was commissioned to paint their interiors in exchange for stock options instead of cash. As you can imagine, this was the correct choice made by the artist to choose the stocks and wait this long to cash them in, because instead of the “thousands” of dollars he would have gotten back in 2005 and 2007, he now has right around $200 million USD in stock value. That’s some major cash for a fellow who, though he certainly isn’t doing bad on his own, will be blowing this cash on some fabulous swag in the near future. Have a peek below at a video of both Zuckerberg and Choe collaborating on an image that still exists somewhere in some Facebook office in the world today. This video was filmed at the second Facebook campus and the paint was laid down inside 2007, where the stock options were eventually given over to Choe. Notice the simplicity that Zuckerberg adds and Choe just takes hold of and sh

A group certifying who-knows-what on devices all the way over the ocean by the name of Quietek have revealed a brand new tablet from ASUS. This tablet features many of the same qualities that the last couple of ASUS Eee Pad Transformer models have had in tact, but takes a wholly new form on the back panel. As you can see from the photos this device is prepared to deliver a 10.1-inch display experience with a lovely maroon plastic back for optimal signal transmission and a tried-and-true display size for your eyes. The first Transformers took on the code TF201 and TF101, this newest one coming up at TF300T. This could be set to out-do the Transformers currently on the market by having a slightly upgraded casing and the same quad-core NVIDIA Tegra 3 processor that the Transformer Prime has – but it’s not likely. Instead since this model looks so very similar to the original Transformer, we must expect that this is a new lower-end model that’ll replace the original Transformer in stores w