One gripe many PlayStation fans had with the PlayStation 4 global event was the fact Sony didn’t show the console. Sure – we heard a lot of information pertaining to the DualShock 4 as well as caught glimpses of some sweet-looking next-generation games, but we certainly wanted to see what we’ll be staring out for hours at a time. While Sony has yet to unveil the PlayStation 4, that hasn’t stopped them from teasing us nearly 24 hours prior to Xbox’s unveiling of its next-generation Xbox.

The teaser video looks to have highlighted the PlayStation 4 console, but many of the images are shown at high speeds while slowly zooming into a blurry, black rectangle. What we can make out from the video is a PlayStation logo, what looks to be exhaust ports, maybe a power button, and a bunch of close-up angles of what we assume is the PlayStation 4. Oh – yea, don’t forget about the “4″ which seems to resemble the “4″ in the PS4 logo.

The title of the video hints that we could possibly be seeing the PlayStation 4 make its debut at E3 this year, although we think it would have been safe to assume Sony was planning on unveiling it on June 10 anyway during its global press conference.

Earlier this month, we did bring you word that the Samsung SGH-i537 could be the waterproof version of the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active for AT&T, while a few days after that, a handset known as the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active has picked up its Bluetooth certification along the way. This would certainly mean that the Galaxy S4 Active has long been making its rounds on the rumor mill. Word has it that the Samsung Galaxy S4 Active (SGH-I9295) has leaked out as you can see above, where this will be a tougher dust and water resistant version of the Galaxy S4 flagship.

What we do know about the device is, it will be powered by a quad-core 1.9GHz processor with Adreno 320 GPU, in addition to a 5” Full HD display – although it remains to be seen whether this is a Super AMOLED screen or not. Other than that the pixel density of this display stands at a purported 480ppi. Not only that, some rumors point to an 8-megapixel rear camera, which would definitely be a step down in terms of megapixel count from the Galaxy S4’s 13-megapixel, but unless you plan to blow up your photos to really large sizes, this really isn’t any big loss to the end user.

We’ve featured stories of batteries which have the potential of recharging batteries in less time than we’re currently used to, but you don’t hear of many teenagers inventing such a device, thus winning a major science award. That’s exactly what occurred with 18-year-old Eesha Khare as her tiny device is able to recharge cell phone batteries in as little as 30 seconds.

Khare was chosen as one of the two winners of the Young Scientist Awards at Intel’s International Science and Engineering Fair held in Phoenix, Arizona. The device is a black, rectangular supercapacitor that is over one inch in length and can charge a cell phone battery in 20 to 30 seconds. “I developed a new supercapacitor, which is basically an energy storage device which can hold a lot of energy in a small amount of volume,” she told KPIX 5. She further added the technology may also be used to speed up the process of charging automobile batteries.
Read full post →Teen Invents Device Which Can Recharge Cell Phone Batteries In 20 Seconds

There has been a rash of iPad mini 2 rumors in recent memory, but here we are with what some might deem to be the “main event” – the tablet that caused tablets to explode across the board. Well, obviously the iPad is due for a new model after a long time, but it seems that Digitimes has some more information concerning the iPad 5. The iPad 5 will be used for its description and namesake at this point in time, since you can never quite tell just what Apple is going to call it next.

According to Digitimes‘ sources, the next generation iPad will most probably be between 25% and 33% lighter compared to the fourth-generation model, where it will also go on sale from this September onwards. If you were to take the current fourth-generation iPad as the benchmark, where it tips the scales at 652 grams, a 25% reduction in weight would translate to the fifth-generation model ending up at a mere 489 grams. Not only that, Digitimes’ sources claim that Apple will kick start production of the new iPad sometime in July, citing LG Display, Samsung Display and Sharp to be suppliers of its display panels.

HTC is a company that is currently going through some pretty difficult moments, but this does not mean it will remain stagnant and throw in the towel. Their HTC Butterfly was definitely a smartphone which is worth looking at, but then again, it did not do that well as HTC probably expected it to, and part of the blame lies with them as they rolled out the HTC Butterfly J shortly afterwards, followed by the new flagship, the HTC One. Having said that, there seems to be a new variant of the HTC Butterfly in the works, namely the HTC Butterfly S that has recently been seen in a User Agent Profile XML file.

Other than the screen resolution of 1,080 by 1,920 pixels, nothing else is revealed concerning the HTC Butterfly S. This would leave it to be on par (where the display is concerned anyways) with the older HTC Butterfly. Hmmm, could the HTC Butterfly S come with features that are also available on the HTC One, such as BlinkFeed, an Ultrapixel camera sensor and Boom Sound audio? This could very well be the HTC Butterfly 2 that we talked about more than a week ago.

Tomorrow is a pretty big day in the gaming world as Microsoft is preparing to announce its next Xbox. As you would have assumed, we expect Microsoft to unveil its next Xbox, which reportedly is called Xbox Infinity, but what else could Microsoft be planning for tomorrow’s event?

One report we’re hearing is Microsoft is preparing to unveil its IllumiRoom during tomorrow’s next-generation Xbox reveal, For those that are unaware of the technology, IllumiRoom was first introduced as a concept at this year’s CES that expands what is going on inside of your HDTV to the area surrounding your television. The technology is supposed to use a combination of the Xbox Kinect as well as a projector.

In addition to the rumor of IllumiRoom making an appearance, Microsoft is also planning to scrap plans to launch a subsidized version of the next Xbox. The next-generation Xbox was rumored to launch at $500, while also giving new customers the potential to subsidize the system by spending $300 with a two-year commitment to Xbox Live Gold with monthly payments of $10. We’re not sure if that’s a deal many people would have taken advantage of, although when you consider a large number of Xbox owners subscribe to Xbox Live Gold, we could certainly see it being a viable option to those customers.

In the world of hard drives, one name we’re sure you’ve come across is Seagate as they’re one of a handful of popular hard drive manufacturers. Up until now, their hard drives have been focused on providing storage for a wide variety of customers, but today, Seagate is announcing a new hard drive specifically for storing video.

Seagate’s Video 3.5 HDD is the industry first 4TB 3.5-inch HDD that has been engineered specifically to be used in video applications such as digital video recorders (DVRs), set-top boxes and surveillance systems. THe Video 3.5 HDD can store up to 480 hours of HD content while delivering superior performance and operation in three key areas: high capacity and streaming capability, reliability and acoustics.

A total of 16 simultaneous HD streams or 20 standard-definition streams are possible with the Video 3.5 HDD as well as the ability to operate 24×7 with a 0.55% annual failure rate, making it a great drive for those looking to access material on the drive at any time. At the time of this writing, only the 1TB version of the Video 3.5 HDD was available for as low as $75.99. Seagate did not announce official pricing or availability of its 4TB version.

If you’re the kind of person who would prefer to order their food online rather than talk to an actual person, then you might have heard of either GrubHub or Seamless as they both offer a great platform to get you food with as little effort as possible. Today, both GrubHub and Seamless are announcing they are merging to take on its rivals within the online meal ordering ecosystem.

The merger will bring together GrubHub’s over 20,000 local takeout restaurants in over 500 cities in the U.S. with Seamless’ over 12,000 restaurants in the U.S. and U.K. GrubHub and Seamless’ partnership will expand its ordering network and product offerings and will also accelerate its product development. At the time of their announcement, GrubHub and Seamless haven’t picked a name for the new combined business, but we’re hopefully it’ll sound as delicious as GrubHub while offering a seamless ability to have food delivered to us while we’re knee deep in a Star Wars marathon.

Now if only they can come up with a way where the delivery person leaves your food at the door, which would make for the perfect way to avoid any sort of human interaction when ordering food.

During last week’s Google I/O, Google announced some major changes to some of its most popular services, one of which was Google+. One of the changes they made to the service was bringing together all of its communication applications, such as Google Talk and Google Hangouts, and brought it together under the unifying umbrella of Google Hangouts. As great as an idea as that was, it seems a number of users are reporting some issues regarding Google Voice.

Users are reporting if they upgrade their Google Talk service from within Gmail to Google Hangouts, they lose a number of key features such as being able to set their availability status, but one of the most impactful features is the ability to place or receive Google Voice calls from within Gmail. Google Voice calls are still possible as you can initiate a call from within the Google Voice web app, which will result in calling one of your connected phone numbers to then route the call to the number you wish to reach.

Fortunately, those of you who would like to have this feature to use Google Voice within Gmail can always revert to the old Google Talk service, but considering how Google is attempting to unify its communication services within Hangouts, we’re hoping the company issues a fix for this soon as it probably impacts a larger number of people that they anticipated would be affected.

Chromebooks do not have any built-in capability to access local content (LAN) in its native mode because there is no access to the chromeOS filesystem to mount a network shared resource. I wish there is “browse network” feature in the ChromeOS file management tool to access shared folders on the LAN.

The two current available options to manage content are:

1- Cloud storage, Google Drive (and other providers) but 5GB would be not enough and not mentioning the upload (to gDrive) AND download (to Chromebook), that is a lot of overhead.

2- Transfer the data to a USB storage and copy it back to the chromebook. It is still faster than the previous option, but still a lot of back and forth between the shared resources and the Chromebook.

I wanted to find other ways to access directly my local content, to stream videos, to play audio files or to read training materials, .PDF file, stored locally. The option I explored and came up with, is to simply use the web protocol the ChromeOS supports natively, HTTP. The solution is to install a web service on a computer within the same network as the Chromebook. Here are few screenshots of the end result.

Read full post →How To Stream Local Content to Chromebooks