IBLOG SPACE

There’s one gigantically powerful and ultra-enticing smartphone headed for Mobile World Congress from Fujitsu, and it comes with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich and an NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core processor inside, right next to a tablet with no less than the same (minus the camera, of course)! These devices does not yet have a name, but according to Unwired View on the smartphone, they wont be anything to be scoffing at. With the onset of quad-core processors and the regular appearance of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich PLUS the coming of the 12+ megapixel camera on smartphones, have we suddenly decimated the relevance of all other smart devices from years past? I think we certainly have, why not? It’s always a good time to upgrade far beyond what you’ve just purchased a month ago, folks. Fujitsu is apparently preparing you for the next generation of superphones with a great partner, NVIDIA, the same group that dominated the 2012 landscape for dual-cores, and Ice Cream Sandwich is along for

This week the folks responsible for promoting the oncoming release of the first person shooter known as Borderlands 2 have done one spectacular job with a preview video that’s about to smack you right in your collective faces. In this epic three minute and three second trailer you’ll find yourself dipped in a world of ultra-detailed action across flat surfaces splooged across an environment where you get a “bazillion” guns and action so hot you might as well play naked. In addition, this trailer lets loose information of a pre-order club called Borderlands 2 Premiere Club that includes several exclusive items you cannot get anywhere else! This Premiere Club includes a Gearbox Gunpack, a Vault Hunter’s Relic, and your very own Golden Key! What more could you want?! This game comes out on the 18th of September and will be one of the most epic games you’ve ever played in your life. You’ll be able to roll around on foot destroying your human-sized or gigantic robot-sized enemies, grab hund

This week the act known as the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) has been pushed before the European Union’s highest court where it will face scrutiny by law. This move has been described by EU trade head Karel De Gucht as a question by the court that will clarify whether the treaty was able to comply with “the EU’s fundamental rights and freedoms.” What we know so far of the ACTA, for those of you following along, is that its a multi-nation agreement currently being signed (or protested against) after its initial negotiation excluded civil society groups, developing countries, and the general public on the whole. The agreement has thus far been signed by 22 EU member states including the UK (and holds support from the United States, Japan, and Canada) and needs 6 countries to come into force. Protesters include Germany and Denmark and the agreement is set to be debated by the European Parliament in June. As the European Commission stated this week: “[We have] decided today to

Today a nationwide outage of LTE networks is hitting the USA and Verizon has been vocal about being on the case with a fix as soon as possible. If you’re experiencing data loss in Houson, Dallas, Memphis, greater California, and New York City, you’re not alone, though you are unique if you’re not able to access 3G data, as Verizon has also noted that all 3G services are operating as they ought to be. This service outage appears to be regulated to the areas listed above, but feel free to be vocal in comments below if you’re outside these areas with a problem. Customer service lines have been alerted to the problem so that they can let customers know while repairs are made – and it does appear that voice and text are working normally while data is the center of attention in this case. The message that’s being sent out to customer service representatives at the moment reads something like the following: “We are aware that some customers in your area are experiencing difficulty with proces

It’s less than a week now before we head to Barcelona to check out the biggest event of the year surrounding nothing but mobile and ASUS is bringing the heat with the Padfone! We’ve gotten a couple glimpses of this device in different iterations leading up to this event, and indeed across the ocean in the opposite direction they’ve had an older version of the device out for hands-on experience, but this is the upgrade. What we can expect is nothing less than a whole new set of hardware and perhaps an upgraded processor on the inside as well! We’ll be checking out the Padfone even closer than we did at CES 2012 where they had the device combo out on display. This device is a unique (or nearly unique if you count all the copycats that have sprung up in the past few months) in that it’s a tablet with a holster for a smartphone that powers the whole rig. ASUS plans on coming correct with this device as it also brings forth the next generation of its tablet line including the Transformer Pr

Keeping up with desktop gaming hardware is a never-ending quest – and it never hurts to take some shortcuts. So rejoice, GPU enthusiasts: an early preview of the next generation of Radeon cards has been posted byEXPreview. The center of the lineup, the HD 7870 and 7850 cards, have been detailed, using the new Pitcairn processor architecture. The cards use the same 28 nanometer fabrication process, but more memory and other slight speed increases. On to the good stuff: according to the leak, the Radeon HD 7850 will operate at a core speed of 900mhz with a full gigabyte of GDDR5 RAM, while the 7870 bumps it up to 950mhz and 2GB at a slightly faster speed of 1375mhz. The 7850 gets 20 graphics CoreNext compute units and 1280 stream processors, while the 7870 bumps it up to 22 compute units and 1408 stream processors. The 7850 gets 80 Texture Mapping Units and the 7870 gets 88, but both cards share 24 render output processors and a 256-bit memory bus. Note that the photo above is a generic

NASA has discovered a distant exoplanet dubbed GJ 1214b that is 40 light years away from Earth. The planet is dubbed a “Super Earth” because it’s larger than our planet, but smaller than gas giants such as Jupiter. The planet was studied using the Hubble telescope, and the scientists believe the large part of the planet is water. The planet has very high temperatures and orbits close to the host star. The planet temperature is high enough to suggest that there may be some exotic materials existing. The planet was originally discovered in 2009 using ground-based telescopes and later studied using the Hubble Space Telescope. The data gathered suggests that the planet orbits 2,000,000 km above the surface of its cool red-dwarf star and it the temperature is likely to reach above 200C. The planet is 2.7 times the diameter of the Earth with a mass seven times that of Earth. Another possibility is rather than the atmosphere being made up of water, the planet could potentially be covered in a

Microsoft has joined Apple in filing an antitrust complaint against Motorola Mobility, claiming the company is trying to use online video standards patents as a weapon, and that new owner Google is doing nothing to stop it. According to Microsoft’s Deputy General Counsel, Dave Heiner, Motorola is demanding the company yank Windows PCs, Xbox 360 consoles and more from store shelves in North America and Europe, “or else remove their standards-based ability to play video and connect wirelessly.” That, Heiner argues, is antitrust behavior, and he shows Microsoft’s sums to prove it: Motorola apparently wants 1,125x the rate in royalty payments as other patent holders. Meanwhile, Motorola is also accused of holding essential WiFi standard patents to ransom too, with Heiner saying the company’s actions risk undermining the entire streaming standard. On a $1,000 Windows PC, he claims, Motorola is asking for $22.50 in royalties for its patents involved in H.264. If the laptop is $2,000, meanwhi

Fujitsu promised us European smartphone flagships for Mobile World Congress next week, and according to the latest rumors we may well be wowed: there’s reportedly a 4.6-inch Tegra 3 monster in store. The new Fujitsu will run Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on NVIDIA’s quadcore processor, UnwiredView reports, as well as a whopping 13.1-megapixel camera that could potentially overshadow whatever high-resolution cellphone snapperNokia is expected to unveil. The unnamed Fujitsu flagship will also have biometric security, with a fingerprint scanner to prevent unofficial access to the handset. That’s something we’ve seen before, on Motorola’s ATRIX 4G, and it’s a welcome addition even with things like Android 4.0′s Face Unlock system around. Finally, it’s said to be waterproof and dust-resistant, following the example of many Japanese handsets by offering a greater degree of ruggedness than most smartphones deliver. Talk of the new Fujitsu range earlier in the week also suggested NFC would be

The NASA Chandra X-Ray Observatory has discovered a black hole in a binary system called IGR J17091. Apparently, the system is located in the bulge of the Milky Way galaxy and is about 28,000 light years from Earth. That’s a good thing too, because the black hole seriously blows. According to NASA calculations, the gas wind blowing away from the black hole is traveling at 20 million mph. It’s hard to wrap your head around 20,000,000 mph, that works out to about 3% of the speed of light. The wind coming from the black hole travels about 10 times faster than any other winds that have been recorded from a stellar-mass black hole. The wind matches that of some of the fastest winds generated by supermassive black holes, which are billions of times more massive than the IGR J17091 black hole. If you’re wondering how a celestial object with gravity so powerful that light can’t escape can generate wind, the wind originates from a disk of gas that surrounds the black hole. Another amazing fact

Sony and Nintendo have each turned to gaming stalwart SEGA to help them pad out their gaming options, resurrecting classic titles from the company’s back catalog for the PS3 and 3DS. The PlayStation Plus gaming membership program now offers six Genesis titles – including Sonic 1 and Streets of Rage 2 - for free download, while Nintendo’s Virtual Console for the 3DS will get its own selection of titles from SEGA’s Game Gear line-up. PS3 gamers get a second shot at Altered Beast , Comix Zone , Golden Axe , Sonic 1 , Sonic 2 , and Streets of Rage 2 . The six games went up for download in 2011, but were promptly whipped away again. It’s not clear how long they’ll remain in the PlayStation Plus catalog for this time around, so probably best to download them while you can. Meanwhile, Nintendo confirmed in a Nintendo Direct livestream that Sonic and Tails 2 , Dragon Crystal: Shirani’s Maze , and Shinobi were all headed to the 3DS. They’ll be priced at 300 yen ($2.38) apiece, reportedly. It

The piecemeal drip of purported iPad 3 components continues, with what’s tipped to be the third-gen Apple tablet’s fascia emerging in shots out of China. If legitimate, the glass front panel confirms that – while Apple may well be considering ditching the physical home button – it’s sticking around for this iPad generation, at least; there’s also a longer ribbon cable assembly, Apple.pro reports, though since there’s no IPS LCD screen it’s not corroboration of the so-called Retina Display expected on the slate. That’s tipped to run at 2048 x 1536 resolution, or twice that of the first and second gen iPads. Leaked images of what was said to be one of those Retina Display panels caught and put under the microscope were spottedearlier this month, seemingly confirming the pixel-dense screen. Subsequent leaks showed the new, slightly modified casing design, with shallower curves to the edges along with what was tipped to be an 8-megapixel camera on the back. The same casing aesthetic was se

After lackluster game options were blamed for slumping Japanese PS Vita sales, Sony is doing its level best to avoid the same fate in the US and Europe with a range of games and other apps freshly released this morning. Hitting alongside first full in-store sales of the PS Vita, the fresh content includes Live Tweet, Flickr and Netflix, together with Touch My Katamari and Plants Vs Zombies . However there’s already controversy over pricing, with Plants Vs Zombies coming in at $14.99. The Vita’s augmented reality support gets a workout – overlaying game content on top of a real-time view from the handheld’s rear camera – with three free games: Cliff Driving, Table Soccer and Fireworks. In paid gaming, there’s Hustle Kings ($9.99), Ben 10 Galactic Racing ($29.99), Shinobido 2: Revenge Of Zen ($34.99), Army Corps Of Hell ($39.99), Dynasty Warriors Next ($34.99) and Tales From Space: Mutant Blobs Attack ($7.99). Meanwhile a range of new PS Vita add-ons have also been released. BlazBlue:

Things around the LightSquared offices have to be looking dim at this point. While the managers of the company continue to fight to get their proposed wireless 4G network approved, denials keep streaming in. LightSquared has announced that is having take rather drastic measures to save money and attempt to stay afloat. The company has announced that it is shedding 45% of its 330 person workforce. The company called the layoffs a “prudent and necessary” measure to save money. This week LightSquared missed a payment on a $56 million loan to a British company that operates satellites called in Inmarsat. Last week the FCC revoked permission granted LightSquared to move ahead with wireless network plans. The problem with LightSquared’s plan is that the FCC found the service interfered with a significant amount of GPS devices on the market today. Philip Falcone is backing LightSquared with a huge chunk of the assets from the hedge fund he manages. Reuters reports that Falcone has invested mo

This is not a good time to own a file sharing site with any ties to piracy. German police recently shut down another European file hosting site called Skyload.net. In the raid, the alleged owner of the website was arrested along with a person who is said to have provided hosting services to the site. Apparently, the arrests are tied to an ongoing effort to capture everybody associated with Kino.to and shut down any site that is related to the movie streaming portal. The owner/operator of Skyload is said to have uploaded more than 10,000 films to the Kino.to paid affiliate program. Police originally made more than 12 arrests in association with the closure of the Kino.to movie streaming portal. The closure of that streaming portal also resulted in the closure of several file hosting services connected to movie streaming. The alleged owner/operator of Skyload.net, 28-year-old Maik P, was arrested and presumably will face charges. The 25-year-old site hosting provider who was also arrest

Remember how you loved customizable ringtones? Remember how much you like The Beatles ? It’s hard to believe, but it’s only today that you can mix the two pleasures together on your iPhone. Apple and EMI have announced that the 27 tracks from The Beatles 1 – which only hit iTunes for the first time last September – are now available as downloadable ringtones for your iPhone. Tracks include “Yellow Submarine”, “Love Me Do” and “Hello, Goodbye” – the latter seeming somewhat fitting for a ringtone – on the iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. As well as ringtones themselves, they can be used as alert sounds. Whether this is too little, too late for even the staunchest Beatles fan remains to be seen. The heyday of ringtone downloads is arguably past, and those who particularly wanted the work of John, Paul, George and Ringo as their call alert probably loaded an unofficial version some time back. You can find more information on the new ringtones at iTunes.com/TheBeatles [itunes link], and the fu

ASUS has released the bootloader unlock tool for the Eee Pad Transformer Prime this morning, and developers have wasted no time in opening up the Tegra 3 tablet to Ubuntu. Prime owner littlesteve had a Ubuntu build prepped and waiting for just this day, though there are still some hardware issues to iron out: no touchscreen support, for instance, so that a Bluetooth mouse is necessary for navigation. However, this is still believed to be the first native port of an OS to the Transformer Prime, something developers have long been anticipating. The Prime currently ships with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich, having been upgraded to the OS earlier in the year, but ASUS opted to lock down the bootloader in what it said was a move to ensure device stability and protect content-owner DRM. That unsurprisingly didn’t go down well with the developer community, and ASUS was forced to backtrack andpromise an unlocker tool. It’s not for everyone, though; using it will void your manufacturers warrant

Apple‘s behind-the-scenes Foxconn factory tour for ABC’s Nightline has aired, leaving the company’s fans and critics arguing over whether the “privileged” access unlocked any secrets or alleviated concerns over labor treatment. Many of the more astonishing figures surround the production processes for Apple’s most coveted devices, the iPad and iPhone, which are for the most part built by hand by an ever-growing team of Foxconn workers. An iPhone, for instance, takes 141 construction steps, and there is huge demand for positions at the factory. As for an iPad, each of the tablets takes five days to construct, coming into contact with more than 300 hands,TUAW observes. The camera module for the iPad is produced 24 hours a day, with two twelve hour shifts responsible for 300,000 each day. Training for new staff lasts for several days before they’re unleashed on the production line. Worker conditions, meanwhile, also came under scrutiny. The average wage is $1.78 per hour, and employees pa

Adobe has announced that it, and Google will be partnering to bring Adobe Flash Player to Linux users. The move has been talked about in the recently released roadmap from Adobe for Flash runtimes. The duo plan to work closely together on the development of a single modern API for hosting plug-ins within a browser. The goal is to replace the current Netscape API that Flash Player uses. The new API is code-named “Pepper” and is intended to provide a layer between the plug-in and the browser to take away any differences between the browser and operating system used. The goal of Pepper is to provide an implementation of Flash Player, which will work for all x86/64 platforms that the Google Chrome browser operates on. Adobe notes that after the release of Flash Player 11.2, the Pepper API will only be available via the Google Chrome browser and will not be offered for direct download. Adobe also pledges to provide security updates on non-Pepper distributions of 11.2 on Linux for an additio

T-Mobile has confirmed that it will be getting a new Android device as an exclusive next month. The device is called the Galaxy S Blaze 4G and will operate on the T-Mobile HSPA +42 network. The mobile phone will come packed with apps for entertainment and navigation. Preloaded apps include Netflix, T-Mobile TV in mobile HD, Samsung Media Hub, a customized Yelp app, and TeleNav GPS navigator. The smartphone will be offered in carbon black color and runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread for the operating system. The phone uses a Snapdragon S3 dual core processor running at 1.5 GHz. The screen of the smartphone is a 3.97-inch AMOLED promising great colors and brightness for multimedia use. The phone also comes preloaded with the T-Mobile 4GPro App Pack that adds in applications for professional users including LinkedIn, DropBox and more. The rear camera is a five megapixel unit that can record 720p HD video and has four times digital zoom. The camera also has integrated flash and advanced shooting

Microsoft can’t seem to stop taking pot-shots at Google, and following the privacy-fear-flogging Gmail Man video comes an attack on the Office-rivaling Google Apps. The new video – which you can see after the cut – pits a sleazy Google Apps salesman against the enterprise market and, somewhat bizarrely, some soulful crooning about how we should fear the “Googlighting” man and the possibility that Google could simply pull the plug on features we’re reliant on or, in fact, whole services. Microsoft points to Google’s track record of killing off other high-profile services, such as Google Wave and Buzz, and argues that cloud based software is a risk most businesses can’t afford to take. Even if they stick around, the software company warns, the feature-set is very much a work-in-progress and users are being treated as alpha- or beta-testers. ”Different, better, completely gone… who knows what the future holds for Google Apps” the video’s character says. You could well argue that Microsoft

And so it begins. An Apple user has filed suit against Google over the alleged bypassing of privacy settings on the Safari web browser. The story broke late last week when Google and several other web companies were accused of bypassing the privacy settings on Apple’s Safari browser on the iPhone and other Apple devices. Google had previously said that it would follow privacy settings that Safari uses. Allegations claim that Google instead is bypassing the privacy settings and tracking the activity of Safari users online. The suit was filed by an Illinois man, Matthew Soble, in a federal court in Delaware. In the complaint, Soble’s attorneys argue that “Google’s willful and knowing actions violated [federal wiretapping laws and other statutes].” I would imagine this is the first of many suits that we will see over this issue, we could be looking at yet another class-action suit in the technology industry. So far, Google has declined to comment on Soble’s allegations or the lawsuit. Goo

We don’t hear much from NEC here in the US on the tablet/smartphone front, but in Asia the company has several products that fall under those categories. Most of what we get from NEC in the US are projectors. NEC has unveiled three new Android 4.0 LTE handsets in Japan, and two of them look particularly interesting. Granted they’re strapped with names that are odd to my ears. My favorite of the three products is called the Best Cloud Device. That device shares a bit in common with the Sony Tablet P in that it has dual screens and folds. The big difference between the two is that the NEC folding tablet puts the screens on the outside rather than on the inside as Sony does. We don’t have any hard specifications on any of the three devices, but they are expected to be seen at Mobile World Congress where we will get the full scoop. All we know now is that NEC touts an extra-large battery to let the device run for a long time despite having dual screens. The middle device in the photo above

When it comes to new products that haven’t been officially unveiled, many companies are apt to deny out right that the products exist right up until the official announcement. That means some people lucky enough to get early previews or leaked images and actually write about them at times end up being called liars. This is certainly the case with The Daily and Microsoft’s back and forth over the story yesterday that Microsoft Office is coming to the iPad. The Daily posted a story yesterday about a demo given to it by a Microsoft employee of a prototype version of Office for iPad. It didn’t take long for the story to get around and for Microsoft come out and flatly deny the app existed. Microsoft tweeted the following: Great respect for The Daily but regrettably someone is giving them bad info, and that’ll be clear in the “coming weeks.” After that tweet, the twitter war erupted between The Daily writer Peter Ha and Microsoft. I certainly don’t blame Ha for being upset, Microsoft allege

Apple-arguer Proview has demanded the iPad 2 be banned from sale in Shanghai, one of its biggest markets, over ongoing trademark controversy, though Apple has argued such a move would ”hurt China’s national interest.” Although Proview has secured small-scale blocks on iPad sales in some of China’s smaller cities, the company is now chasing a Shanghai ban in the apparent hope of motivating Apple to open up its corporate purse. “Both sides have willingness to negotiate” Proview lawyer Roger Xie told press, Reuters reports, though he confirmed that “official negotiation hasn’t started yet.” It’s not the first time Proview has talked about a settlement being its preferred route out of the legal saga. The company’s own chairman hinted that a cash payout could make Apple’s headache go away earlier this month, a stance some believe is to do with Proview’s ailing fortunes. Apple, for its part, seems unlikely to make Proview a further payment, maintaining it already acquired the iPad trademark

Anytime I think of a DNA sequencer, I envision a giant machine sitting in a laboratory that costs millions of dollars. I guess that could be the case in some instances considering I’ve never actually seen a DNA sequencer in person. A company called Oxford Nanopore has what may be the coolest USB gadget ever called the MinION DNA Sequencer. The device looks like some sort of fat flash drive. The device plugs into the USB port of the computer and is able to monitor biochemical processes and sequence DNA using a little bio-mechanical sieve combined with some enzymes to pull a thread of DNA through a little hole in the device where can be sequenced. As the DNA strand is pulled through the hole, each base pair is tested one at any time. The pairs are tested in the order they come through the hole, contiguously. There is a bit of a wet towel to throw on the flames of your science geek lust, apparently the DNA sample still needs to be prepared in the laboratory. The device is expected to cost

Sony’s PS Vita has hit the mean streets of the UK, stores across the country opening at midnight to give eager gamers their chance to grab the next-gen portable, with US sales expected to begin within hours. Although early queues for the Vita had only garnered low numbers earlier this week, by midnight there were several hundred waiting outside retailer Game’s flagship London store, The Telegraph reports. The store itself had been reskinned to mark the Sony console’s launch, with huge PS Vita branding across its windows. First in the queue was Zohaib Ali, who had been waiting since Sunday to pick up his Vita. Early enthusiasm is likely to reassure Sony, along with pre-order sales for the console which have been going on in the UK and US for some weeks now. Initial deliveries of the PS Vita First bundle began in the US late last week; you can see our hands-on with the 3G variant here. Still, after the diehard gamers get their fix, it remains to be seen whether the Vita will be a mass-ma

MegaUpload founder Kim Dotcom has been finally granted bail by New Zealand courts, after a court decided the outspoken internet activist lacked sufficient funds to flee the country and avoid extradition to face US charges. Still, while District Court Judge Nevin Dawson deemed Dotcom safe enough to be released from jail, he also imposed some stringent limitations, 3 News reports, including no access to the internet, an electronic ankle bracelet and a block on helicopters onto the property where he is staying. Dotcom has been bailed to a house in the grounds of the mansion he and his family had been living in prior to his arrest, though the conditions of that bail mean he is not allowed to actually enter that mansion. The property itself was found to contain no shortage of luxury goods; among the collective haul seized during the raid on MegaUpload execs were eighteen luxury vehicles and numerous computers. The US government’s legal team had been pushing for Dotcom to remain behind bars,

Google‘s latest homepage doodle has gone live today, celebrating Germany physicist Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, whose experiments with electromagnetic waves paved the way to radio, television and more. Born in Hamburg in 1857, Hertz is credited with an early expertise in science that saw him earn a doctorate by the age of 22; he went on to develop several antennas and other equipment that allowed him to conclusively prove the existence of electromagnetic waves. Later experiments proved that electromagnetic waves move at the speed of light, as well as examining how those waves could be reflected and refracted. One such setup is still named after him, the Hertz antenna receiver of 1886, and his name was also used for the Hertzian cone model of wave-front propagation through different media. In 1892, Hertz underwent surgery to address persistent migraines believed to be caused by an infection. He died of Wegener’s granulomatosis - an incurable inflammation of the blood vessels - at the age of 3

The next generation of 3D smartphones has begun to drop here just one year after we first saw similar devices drop at Mobile World Congress 2011. It appears that LG will be the first big manufacturer to come back swinging with a new Optimus 3D, this time called the LG Optimus 3D Cube complete with 3D video editing. At the moment it appears that this device is only set to be released in Korea, but afterwards we can expect this handset to hit at least one carrier here in the United States – bet on it! This device continues the trend of adding more and more letters to the name of a device in order to make it seem more awesome, this time actually improving the specifications along with the name though as well. What we’ve got here is a massive 4.3-inch IPS display for brightness and beastly sharpness, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor from what we must assume is Texas Instruments OMAP line once again, and a very similar shape to the last Optimus 3D model all around. This time around though the d

If you used Google Talk, Facebook Chat, imo, or any other data-based social messaging platform on your phone, congratulations. You helps reduce the pockets of mobile providers by nearly $14 billion. That’s the number that analytics group Ovum came up with, saying the rise of instant messaging apps is killing what is one of the highest margin line items on any cell phone bill. And it isn’t just text messaging. New apps that allow users to place calls without using any plan minutes are also on the rise. According to Ovum, Skype was the primary player in that segment. It accounted for 79% of all mobile-connected voice-over IP (VoIP) bandwidth. The next closest competitor was Windows Live, with only 3%. Viber, a still-nascent VoIP platform, managed to score 2% and take the spot at third most widely used mobile VoIP service. At this point, though, it’s really those messaging apps that are giving headaches to the major carriers. And in that category, you might be surprised to know that Faceb

Facebook today announced that it has released new functionality that allows native iPhone and iPad applications to get traffic from Facebook. That is, app developers will be able to more easily direct users from the iOS Facebook app to an external website or app. It’s an extension of an initiative Facebook launched in October called Social App Discovery on Mobile. Today’s advancement includes what the social networking site calls “granular controls for native iOS apps.” “By default, published News Feed or Open Graph stories will link back to the provided story URL. For example, you may link these stories to your mobile web site or you may link to an intermediate page that then redirects to either a mobile web site, desktop page, or native URL,” the site explained in an official blog post. The Open Graph refers to a recently launched feature that give app makers a much stronger sense of flexibility in developing for the Facebook platform, both on browsers and within mobile Facebook envi

Mass Effect 3 is no doubt going to go down as one of the biggest games in 2012, but it hasn’t been released quite yet. So you can imagine the surprise of Xbox 360 users when they noticed that a piece of downloadable content was put up on the Xbox Live Marketplace. The DLC pack, called From Ashes, showed up on the digital marketplace but it did not appear to actually be downloadable. Someone clearly just hit a very wrong switch over at Microsoft headquarters. We bet he (or she) got a pretty stern talking to. Not only did the DLC pack get posted to the marketplace, but it also contained a description that got gamers in a tizzy because it revealed a spoiler about the storyline in Mass Effect 3, a game which, as mentioned, no one has played through yet since it hasn’t been released. So it was a spoiler for everyone. On the official forums of developer Bioware, associate producer Michael Gamble responded to a threat about the Xbox Live leak but did not address the leak itself. Instead, he j

You could soon be able to see where your friends and, how much farther you have to go until you reach the building for your job interview, and other important information just by walking around. That may sound like the kind of stuff you can get by taking out your smartphone and opening a couple apps, but Google wants it to happen right in front of your face. Yeah, the company is planning on releasing its own brand of futuristing glasses with heads-up displays by the end of the year. The company has not officially announced anything about the project, but an employee with loose lips has been quoted as saying the smart glasses will come fully equipped with mobile broadband connectivity, GPS functionality, and a built-in digital camera. Wearing the glasses will essentially be like grabbing all the locally relevant information you can get on an Android phone and augmenting it into what you actually see right in front of your face. The software powering the glasses is based on Android, and

Netflix has just added yet another content partner to its ever expanding list of digitally streaming video content. This time around it’s The Weinstein Company, known mostly for its high-brow documentaries and dramas. Among the more recent titles in Weinstein’s arsenal are Sarah’s Key, The Intouchables, W.E., Coriolanus, Bully, and a flick that’s getting a lot of Oscar buzz, The Artist. That’s just a sampling of what the new content deal will bring to Netflix. Okay, so you may have heard about The Weinstein Company before. If you’re a movie buff chances are you’ve seen the company’s logo at some point, even though you may not recognize it enough to be a huge fan. What’s most important about this latest deal is that the Weinstein Company has a very comfortable relationship with HBO, and its films often debut there first when they leave the theater. Now, under the new Netflix deal, The Weinstein Company will provide its movies to the streaming service within a year of their theatrical re

If you log onto Facebook and you feel like you just aren’t happy with the advertising content you get right now, there’s a solution on the way. No, that doesn’t mean that advertising is going away. Quite the opposite in fact. You might end up being inundated with more ads, but Facebook says they’ll be more relevant and the site expects their performance to increase by as much as 80%. That’s great news. Well, at least, if you happen to be an advertiser. What does it mean for the average Facebook user? Here’s how the new “Premium Ads” product will work. Advertisers will choose to display a message on Facebook. Any fans that advertiser has will receive thie message on their news feed. Not only that, friends of friends will see the message too, and these friends will be able to see how they’re connected to the company or product being advertised. “When people hear about you from friends, they listen. “We’ll expand your ad with stories from friends who have already connected,” Facebook expl

Are you planning on buying a PlayStation Vita? If not, Sony is planning on spending a lot of money to change your mind. The company’s SVP of marketing in the US Guy Longworth said the budget for peddling the latest handheld is more than any other gaming device in company history. Do you think he disclosed the amount? As a matter of fact he did, and noted that the budget is a cool $50 million. That’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 cents for every living person in the country. “We’re focusing the attention on the strengths of the Vita platform: the hardware, the great lineup of games, and access to all of your digital entertainment. We think it’s all pretty compelling. We are aiming it at core gamers who are crying out for the opportunity to have a console-like experience on the go,” Longworth was quoted as saying. For Sony, the challenge is to convince skeptics that there is still a market for dedicated gaming handhelds in a world of iPhones and tablets. The war is now also beginni