Today, Hisense held a press event in New York in which they introduced a couple of tablets. The more powerful one (in a relative way) is the Sero 7 Pro, which is a 7-inch tablet that uses a 720p (1280×720) IPS display and a Tegra 3 processor (1.3GHz, T30 model with 1GB of RAM). Hisense has announced that the Sero 7 Pro will ship with Android 4.2 (Jelly Bean), 8GB of internal storage and a 4000mAh battery capacity. The rest of the specs are fairly standard.
Read full post →Hisense Sero 7 Pro And Sero LT Tablets Aggressively Priced

Bungie already announced Destiny, a new first person shooter game that is going to be released for both Xbox and PlayStation. Destiny has been slated for release in 2014 and it has been confirmed that the game will be compatible with future consoles as well. The newly revealed Xbox One and Sony’s PlayStation 4 will be getting this game, both of these consoles are expected to be released later this year. The story line of Destiny is not known, no details about the gameplay are available as yet. Bungie has a “worldwide gameplay reveal” scheduled for 10th June, at Sony’s E3 press conference, so additional details about the game aren’t that far off.

Today Bungie released a new Destiny trailer that it has created with the likes of Giancarlo Esposito of Breaking Bad fame and the director of Iron Man, Jon Favreau. The teaser trailer tells little about the game, though its definitely worth taking a look at. There are high expectations from Bungie for this game, considering that it already has the credit for the highly successful Halo games trilogy under its belt.

We often juggle multiple tabs or windows during our browsing sessions, and its quite easy to overlook a chat window or notification that is popping up outside of the window currently being used. Today Google has released a new beta update of Chrome browser for Windows and Chrome OS, this update brings a richer notifications experience outside the browser. Google says these notifications have been designed to be useful, engaging and beautiful. They can display formatted images and texts, and are also capable of supporting direct actions such as replying to an email from within the notification itself.

There’s also a notification center that will house all missed notifications, catching up on them require you to simply open up this center. There’s also the ability to disable notifications from any particular source, such as Gmail or Google Calendar whenever the user desires. Not only does it look good, it is definitely a useful feature. The latest Chrome beta for Windows and Chrome OS is now available for download. Google says that support for Mac as well as Linux is on the way.

Today Apple has officially confirmed that their WWDC 2013 keynote will be taking place on the 10th of June. That is the day when Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference kicks off. Traditionally Apple has always conducted its keynote presentation on the conference’s first day, so this announcement hardly comes as a surprise. The company hasn’t revealed a list of speakers who will be taking the stage, but we can expect to see the usual high level executives on stage after CEO Tim Cook formally opens up the keynote.

A lot has already been rumored about what Apple will possibly unveil at the event. We’re heard rumors of new iPhones and iPads being announced to the possibility of seeing a new and refreshed MacBook line up. What we do know for sure is that the company will be keeping focus on iOS 7 and the next major update of OS X. This year tickets for the WWDC sold out under three minutes, establishing a new record. As of now there’s no confirmation regarding the live stream of the keynote, though Apple will be offering a live stream of the technical sessions.

HTC First’s and Facebook Home’s problems have been well chronicled over the past few weeks. Apart from getting sued by Eminem’s publisher, Facebook’s new Home on Android hasn’t been doing as well as the company had hoped. It has also taken its toll on the HTC First smartphone, which happens to be the first smartphone to ship with Home pre-installed. We had recently reported a rumor that this smartphone was going to be discontinued, it seemed possible as AT&T slashed its price from $99 on contract to merely $0.99. While it continues to sell in the U.S., the smartphone’s U.K. release has been put off indefinitely.

Facebook says in a statement that it is now focusing on adding new customization features to Home in the next couple of months. They say that they have “recommended holding off” the UK HTC First launch, though adding that they’re committed to bringing the latest mobile experiences to their customers. So as the smartphone’s future in the Kingdom looks bleak, those across the pond who wish to try out Facebook Home can do so if they have any one of the supported devices, for which Home can be downloaded from Google Play Store.

It isn’t far-fetched to think if Microsoft actually plans on integrating its Windows Phone platform with the newly unveiled Xbox One in some way. As a matter of fact, the likelihood of such an integration seeing the light of day has greatly increased. Microsoft’s senior marketing manager, Greg Sullivan, has said that the “general idea of an increased seamlessness and integration across these elements is a goal.” He also says that despite the fact that Microsoft didn’t even mention Windows Phone at the Xbox One unveil, that doesn’t mean “there’s nothing that’s being worked on.”

Unfortunately Greg didn’t reveal more than just these subtle hints. So obviously one can’t say for sure when exactly we’ll see this interaction formally be revealed. Greg also said that Windows Phone is an evidence of “great cross-divisional collaboration at Microsoft” and that the company aims to continue improving it. The Windows Phone platform is doing considerably well in the marketing, considering how it snapped up the third place title from BlackBerry recently. The idea isn’t outright impossible, though there aren’t any hints about the level of integration between these two platforms.

Google, the maestros of search, has certainly done their bit to further enhance the Google search experience on your email, where it will soon be made possible for everyone living in the US to be able to perform an instant search on relevant emails, Google Drive files, and Calendar events among others each time you decide to perform a search in Gmail. Of course, this particular feature did not come about just like that, as this was not an idea pulled out of thin air, but rather, it has been tested in recent months via a trial, and apparently, those “lab rats” so to speak have fallen in love with the time-saving convenience of being able to search for the entire slew of items from a single place.

Throughout the coming week, this particular search feature will rollout to all US users (affecting searches in English only for now), so if you happen to live in the land of the free and home of the brave, be patient if you have yet to enjoy this particular feature. [Press Release]

A new ‘Administrative Fee’ has been introduced by AT&T which will apply to postpaid consumer contracts and individual responsibility user of IRU business contracts. The fee was applied to aforementioned subscribers from 1st May. AT&T says that this new fee helps it to “defray” some expenses that it has to bear. These expenses include but are not limited to “charges AT&T or its agents pay to interconnect other carriers to deliver calls from AT&T customers to their customers” or “charges associated with cell sites rents and maintenance.” The administrative fee is $0.61 per month, which works out to be an additional $7.32 per year.

AT&T subscribers might find solace in the fact that their carrier actually charges less administrative fees than other carriers in the country. Carriers such as T-Mobile actually bundle this fee with the regulatory charges, so obviously its not as clear cut as the way AT&T is adopting to inform its subscribers about the charge. As a customer, what is your point of view on carriers charging such fees to subscribers? Do you think whether they should be paying for whatever expenses they mention out of their own pocket? Should carriers be liable to disclose if their collections are actually more than the mentioned expenses?

How many of you out there were exposed to the Transformers for the first time in your life through Michael Bay’s effort on the silver screen? Well, if you so happen to fall under that particular category, might I encourage you to check out the entire back history and story of the Transformers over the years so that you would not end up thinking that there is no such Transformer out there that is as large as an entire planet. Having said that, it is always cool to have a vehicle which changes its shape to that of a robot, and the folks over at the JDSF – Japan Self Defense Force might be on to something with this unique looking anime-inspired helicopter design that you see above.

Known as the Fuujin attack helicopter, it seems to be more fantasy than reality, and that is exactly what this is – the brainchild and inspiration of a DeviantArt-ist and ex-Lucasfilms animator who hails from Indonesia. Should the good people pick up this particular design concept and implement it in real life, expect to see the world go abuzz over it in no time at all.

If you have been on the lookout for the Kindle Fire HD from Amazon, but never really meant business by purchasing one, you might want to take note that the Amazon Kindle Fire HD is now available for pre-orders in more than 170 countries, not to mention doing their bit to expand the Amazon Appstore so that folks living in nearly 200 countries will be able to take advantage of it. If you are interested in the Kindle Fire HD but never really got around to getting one, may we know what is stopping you from picking it up? You are able to place pre-orders for the 7-inch and 8.9-inch models of the Kindle Fire HD via Amazon.com, its UK site, France, and Amazon Germany so far, where shipments are tipped to make its way to customers from June 13th onwards.

The Kindle Fire HD was on sale in the US, select countries in Europe, and Japan previously, so this extension of a device rollout in even more countries is definitely a welcome move. Not only that, Amazon has also requested app submissions from developers so that they can distribute these in the new Appstore regions, which so happen to be usable as well on normal Android devices in addition to the Kindle Fire HD. The 7” model can be pre-ordered from $214 or the regional equivalent, while the 8.9” model will start from $284.