http://www.win7heads.com/ Microsoft Windows 7 Community - Win7heads - with Tips, Tricks, Support, Discussions, Information, News and Articles en Tue, 21 May 2013 18:12:13 GMT vBulletin 60 http://www.win7heads.com/images/misc/rss.png http://www.win7heads.com/ http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172760-lg-demo-5-inch-unbreakable-flexible-plastic-oled-panel-sid-2013-a.html Mon, 20 May 2013 03:41:37 GMT ""

LG's got quite a bit in store for us this week at SID's annual display exhibition in Vancouver. In addition to that 55-inch curved OLED TV we first heard about last month, the company will be demonstrating a very nifty 5-inch OLED panel. Created for mobile devices, the display is constructed of plastic, making it both flexible and unbreakable -- certainly a welcome quality when it comes to smartphone design.
Also on display will be 5- and 7-inch HD Oxide TFT panels. That first size features a bezel that's just 1mm wide, enabling a borderless frame when installed in smartphones. Both displays are lightweight and consume less power than their traditional equivalents. Finally, LG will have a 14-inch 2560x1440-pixel laptop panel on hand, along with LCDs designed for use in refrigerators and automotive dashboards.""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172760-lg-demo-5-inch-unbreakable-flexible-plastic-oled-panel-sid-2013-a.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172704-sonic-hedgehog-arrives-android-headed-exclusively-nintendo-console.html Fri, 17 May 2013 16:31:11 GMT ""

USSR and the USA. Batman and Joker. Christoph Waltz and... well, everyone. It's pretty tough to look at the world's best-known rivalries and exclude one of history's finest -- that being, of course, Sonic and Mario. The gritty battle between Nintendo and Sega gave fans on both sides plenty to converse about over the years, and one might say that the video game industry as a whole benefited from the back-and-forth. Now that Sega is a shell of its former self, though, the company's most iconic character is turning to its archrival in search of shelter. On the console side, Nintendo will be the exclusive home for Sonic games going forward, with the Wii U and 3DS set to become the homes for the next three titles -- details of which should be revealed "in the coming weeks."
Meanwhile, Android users will be pleased to know that Sonic the Hedgehog was released today in the Google Play store. It's available for $2.99, while iOS users are also being granted a free update to coincide.""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172704-sonic-hedgehog-arrives-android-headed-exclusively-nintendo-console.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172703-ios-6-approved-use-american-military-networks.html Fri, 17 May 2013 16:00:40 GMT ""

The Defense Department has officially given the thumbs up to Apple devices running iOS 6 -- paving the way for iPhones and iPads to become standard issue around the Pentagon. The move was hardly shocking. In fact, the Wall Street Journal had it on good authority weeks ago that the DoD was planning to give iOS its seal of approval. With Samsung devices running the Knox security suite and BlackBerry 10 already trickling into the hands of Pentagon employees, the decision sets the stage for a three-way bout for military market supremacy. And we're sure the government drones can't pick sides fast enough. After all, who wants to live under the tyranny of BlackBerry 7 any longer than necessary?""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172703-ios-6-approved-use-american-military-networks.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172702-opportunity-breaks-40-year-old-nasa-space-drive-record-reminds-curiosity-whos-boss.html Fri, 17 May 2013 16:00:40 GMT ""

If you thought current media-darling Curiosity is where all the martian action is right now, think again. Its elder sibling, Opportunity, is still rolling up there too. In fact, it's just wheeled its way into a little page of NASA history: the longest distance one of its vehicles has traveled on a body beyond Earth. A recent short (by our standards) trip of 263 feet took its total to 22.22 miles covered on Mars' surface since landing in January 2004. The previous title holder was a Lunar Rover, part of the Apollo 17 mission over 40 years ago, that covered (if you hadn't guessed) 22.21 miles. Opportunity's not beat the world galaxy record though. That honor goes to the Soviet Lunokhod rover, which totted up a total of 23 lunar-based miles back in 1973. In relative terms, Curiosity's barely stretched its legs.""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172702-opportunity-breaks-40-year-old-nasa-space-drive-record-reminds-curiosity-whos-boss.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172695-foc-us-headset-said-stimulate-brain-hones-gaming-forehead.html Fri, 17 May 2013 11:31:10 GMT ""

We've seen a number of headsets tap into the brain, some of which geotag your mood, grant you remote control over gadgets or simply let you wiggle a pair of cat ears with your mind. However, none of them function quite like the foc.us, which is meant to provide transcranial direct-current simulation (tDCS), a controversial form of neurosimulation that transmits current to a particular area of the brain. Originally used to help patients with brain injuries, tDCS has supposedly been found to increase cognitive performance in healthy adults. However, it hasn't been proven to provide medical benefits and isn't approved by the FDA.
Still, the foc.us is one of a few tDCS headsets designed for the consumer market, and can, the inventor Michael Oxley claims, improve your working or short-term memory when the electrodes are placed on your prefrontal cortex. A low-intensity current is passed through the different nodes, exciting that part of the brain. Interestingly, Oxley is positioning it as a way to boost your video gaming prowess for the "ultimate gaming experience," a concept we found a little odd.""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172695-foc-us-headset-said-stimulate-brain-hones-gaming-forehead.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172671-googles-blink-team-pulls-8-8-million-lines-webkit-code-one-month.html Thu, 16 May 2013 22:11:56 GMT ""

Google let us all know that it would strip out unneeded WebKit code to make its Blink web engine scream, but it never said exactly what kind of pace we could expect. The answer, it turns out, is "breakneck." The company's Alex Komoroske told Google I/O attendees that the Open Web Platform team has already yanked 8.8 million lines of programming from Blink in about a month, with 4.5 million of them scrubbed almost immediately. Removing so much cruft has reportedly improved not just the upcoming engine, but the engineers -- they're far more productive, Komoroske says. The team has already had time to explore new rendering techniques and garner code contribution requests from the likes of Adobe, Intel and even Microsoft. Although we don't yet know if all the trimming will be noticeable to end users by the time Blink reaches polished Chrome and Chrome OS releases, it's safe to say that some developers won't recognize what they see""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172671-googles-blink-team-pulls-8-8-million-lines-webkit-code-one-month.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172668-boeing-tapped-build-viasat-2-satellite-launch-set-mid-2016-a.html Thu, 16 May 2013 21:41:03 GMT ""

ViaSat-1 recently earned a Guinness World Record as the highest-capacity satellite in (or out of) the world, but it may need to hand off that title come 2016. ViaSat-2, the company's next-gen bird, will double the capacity of its predecessor while also extending coverage to a larger portion of North America, Central America and the Caribbean, along with the aviation and shipping routes between the East Coast and Europe. Boeing will manufacture the new equipment, which will be based on the 702HP satellite platform. Once in orbit, ViaSat-2 will serve residential customers, air travelers and government agencies alike, with a massive seven-fold increase in coverage""

More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172668-boeing-tapped-build-viasat-2-satellite-launch-set-mid-2016-a.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172639-google-nasa-team-up-d-wave-powered-quantum-artificial-intelligence-lab.html Thu, 16 May 2013 13:40:03 GMT ""

Google. NASA. Quantum computers. Seriously, everything about the new Quantum Artificial Intelligence Lab at the Ames Research Center is exciting. The joint effort between Mountain View and America's space agency will put a 512 qubit machine from D-Wave at the disposal of researchers from around the globe, with the USRA (Universities Space Research Association) inviting teams of scientists and engineers to share time on the unique super computer. The goal is to study how quantum computing might be leveraged to advance machine learning, a branch of AI that has proven crucial to Google's success. The internet giant has already done some work with quantum computing before, now the goal is to see if its experimentation can translate into real world results. The idea, for Google at least, is to combine the extreme (but highly-specialized) power of the quantum bit with its oceans of traditional data centers to build more accurate models for everything from speech recognition to web search. And maybe, just maybe, with the help of quantum computers your phone will finally realize you didn't mean to say "duck."""

More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172639-google-nasa-team-up-d-wave-powered-quantum-artificial-intelligence-lab.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172638-nhk-has-theoretical-fix-oleds-theoretical-longevity-problem.html Thu, 16 May 2013 13:40:03 GMT ""
Japan's National Broadcasting Corporation, NHK, reckons OLED displays don't last long enough. And they have a point, because OLED pixels that are exposed to the air can lose half of their brightness in just 100 days. Commercial products are of course protected from the elements, but they're not perfect. This is where iOLED comes in. NHK inverts the anode and cathode layers in traditional OLED configurations, hence the added "i", and then adds an additional protective coating above the cathode. The result is a display that retains its brightness even when not fully sealed from the environment. Hopefully, this sort of solution will make its way into OLED TVs by the time OLED TVs are actually affordable, but in the meantime we're expecting to hear more about NHK's technology (and maybe see it in action) at Display Week later this month.""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172638-nhk-has-theoretical-fix-oleds-theoretical-longevity-problem.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172635-windows-phone-steals-third-place-blackberry-idc-smartphone-ranking.html Thu, 16 May 2013 12:25:04 GMT ""

First and second place in the smartphone OS wars is a foregone conclusion with Android and iOS (respectively) strongly entrenched, but the battle for third place is now full of intrigue. BlackBerry and Microsoft have each stepped up their games with their respective BB10 and WP8 OS's of late, but so far it's Redmond prevailing since last quarter, with a 3.2 percent share over BlackBerry's 2.9 percent. While those two are fighting for third place scraps, Android kicked up its smartphone OS dominance with 75 percent of the global market, which is a huge jump from last year, while iOS fell back slightly to a 17.3 percent share. Between them, those titans owned 92.3 percent of the pie, but it's arguably Windows Phone that has raised its game the most, with a senior IDC analyst claiming that this latest ranking "validates the direction taken by Microsoft and key partner Nokia."""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172635-windows-phone-steals-third-place-blackberry-idc-smartphone-ranking.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172602-googles-map-dive-takes-us-virtual-skydive-across-seven-instances-chrome-vid.html Wed, 15 May 2013 23:51:54 GMT ""

During Google's extended edition opening keynote this morning, there was a distinctive lack of skydiving. However, developers showed off lots of interesting things, including functionality highlighting the easy, real-time syncing of data across multiple instances of the Chrome browser -- whether on smartphone or tablet or desktop. The on-stage demo was a simple slot car racing game but, out on the I/O floor Google had a somewhat more advanced implementation: Map Dive. Running on seven separate instances of Chrome and relying on a 3D camera, Map Dive lets you experience the Maps API from a rather elevated perspective. Join us after the break for an arm-waving demo.[B]""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172602-googles-map-dive-takes-us-virtual-skydive-across-seven-instances-chrome-vid.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172589-apple-marks-50-billion-downloads-app-store.html Wed, 15 May 2013 21:01:20 GMT ""

You think 50 billion is a big number? It's certainly a bit bigger than some other numbers that spring to mind, such as 48 billion, and that in itself gives Apple something to celebrate. As is customary with these App Store milestones, whichever lucky jackanape triggered their download at just the right millisecond will receive a gift -- a $10,000 iTunes voucher, no less -- while 50 runners-up will get $500-worth of credit each.
But none of that is the really big, big news. What matters here is the rate of growth, which seems to have accelerated during the course of this year. It took 14 weeks for the App Store to get from 40 billion to 45 billion downloads between January and April, but less than 4 weeks to get from 45 to 50 billion. Now, we're totally dependent on Apple's internal stock-takers here, not to mention an erratic ticker ("for illustrative purposes only"), but if those numbers are even remotely accurate then they represent something of a popularity surge""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172589-apple-marks-50-billion-downloads-app-store.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172590-google-asks-microsoft-remove-youtube-app-wp8-takes-issue-lack-ads.html Wed, 15 May 2013 21:01:20 GMT ""
YouTube only recently came to Windows Phone 8 as a full-fledged app, but its availability may be short-lived. According to documents obtained by The Verge, Google has requested that Microsoft remove the app from it Windows Phone Store -- and disable installations on devices -- immediately. The reason? Apparently the app didn't get Goog's stamp of approval before going live, and it blocks the ads that typically run on YouTube. Naturally, ads are an important source of revenue for both Google and no shortage of third parties, so Mountain View may not be out of line for crying foul. And that's not the only strike against Redmond: according to the cease and desist letter, YouTube on WP8 lets users download videos, in addition to streaming content that's been restricted on certain devices. Oh, and all the above-mentioned issues violate YouTube's Terms of Service. Google is giving MS until May 22nd to remove the app""

More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172590-google-asks-microsoft-remove-youtube-app-wp8-takes-issue-lack-ads.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172575-google-cloud-messaging-now-part-google-play-services.html Wed, 15 May 2013 17:00:16 GMT ""
More goodies for devs here at I/O: Google just announced that Google Cloud Messaging -- the push-notification system that debuted last year -- is now a part of its Google Play Services, and it will get three new features, to boot. These include "persistent connections," which should help push out messages quickly, upstream messaging for sending data from your app to your servers and -- most importantly -- synced notifications across devices. This means that if you dismiss an alert on your phone, it will similarly hit the dust on your slate. Mountain View recently announced that Cloud Messaging will now integrate with all versions of Chrome and Chrome OS""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172575-google-cloud-messaging-now-part-google-play-services.html http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172567-google-there-have-been-900-million-android-activations-48-billion-app-installs-d.html Wed, 15 May 2013 16:24:20 GMT ""

What would a Google liveblog be without some updates on Android activations? Well, in case you're curious, the newest figure is 900 million. What's more, Google reports there have been 48 billion app installations to date, including 2.8 billion in the last month alone, with revenue per user 2.5 times what it was a year ago""


More... ]]> Technology News win7news http://www.win7heads.com/technology-news/172567-google-there-have-been-900-million-android-activations-48-billion-app-installs-d.html