Retrode gives your SNES + SEGA Genesis catridges a new life
Posted Friday, February 3, 2012 at 8:22 am by Daniel Kipping
I am most certainly, without a doubt, a self-confessed retro-gamer. Whether i’m fist-fighting until my last breath in Sega’s Street Fighter, or making a final-lap comeback during a Super Mario Kart session on my SNES — it’s all good. However, those of you who have experienced console issues with these outdated devices – and believe me, issues do and will occur – will know that there is nothing worse than owning a large collection of SNES or Sega Genesis/Mega Drive cartridges without a functioning console to utilise them. Fortunately, the folks over at Retrode understand our need to stay stranded in the “old days”, and have created a device that allows users to play any SNES or Sega Genesis game on their PC and/or iPad. Say hello to the Retrode 2.0…
Facebook photos updated, now looks like Google+
Posted Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 3:34 pm by Jason Cartwright
It seems that while the company was filing their submission to go public, the engineers and designers haven’t taken their foot off the pedal. Today also marks the release of an updated photo viewer. Photos posted on users walls open to a lightbox when clicked, but instead of comments (and ads) being displayed at the bottom, they are now located to the right.
Sound familiar? Yep, those social networking sluts will know that Google+ treats photos in a very similar way. The difference being that G+ photos display larger, in more a full-screen mode, but essentially there’s a strong similarity between the two.
What do you think? Like the new style, or is this yet another change users will revolt against ?
Review: RevoDrive 3 x2 and RevoDrive Hybrid
Posted Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 11:52 am by Bryce Wilson
Last October I was knee deep in SSD technology. Drives here, drives there, drives everywhere, and 2012 is looking to be no different! Today we bring to you OCZ’s well known and critically acclaimed RevoDrive Hybrid, and their enterprise level RevoDrive 3 x2.
Testing Rig:
Motherboard: ASUS M4A89GTD PRO USB3
CPU: AMD Phenom x4 955 Black Edition @ 3.8Ghz
RAM: 8GB DDR3 1600Mhz G-Skill Ripjaws X (9-9-9-24)
GPU: GTX 580 (1.5GB)
Note: All drives were benchmarked as is, out of the box.
Testing Programs:
AS SSD – 1.6.4237.30508
ATTO Disk Benchmark – 2.47
HD Tune Pro – 4.61
As I mentioned above today we have the high priced and even higher performance 480GB RevoDrive 3 x2, and the consumer orientated RevoDrive Hybrid, boasting 1TB of traditional HDD space with a 100MB SSD.
Both drives were wiped before having Windows 7 64 bit installed on them. We then took the drives through a series of tests and benchmarks using common tools, the data and results of which have been provided below for review.
We’ve also included data from the RevoDrive x2 to compared alongside the newest iteration. It is however important to remember that both storage devices are PCI-e, and as such you shouldn’t expect to get similar performance from a SATA based SSD.
Facebook IPO filed.. raising $5 Billion.. now we wait.
Posted Thursday, February 2, 2012 at 8:00 am by Jason Cartwright
Facebook has just filed their initial public offering, the first step in taking the company public. For now the figure being raised is $5 Billion, which will turn hundreds of their employees into millionaires. Hopefully their contracts mean they have to stick around for a while after the filing is rubber stamped.
If you’re looking to buy stock, you’ll need to look for the trading symbol “FB”, after the SEC approves the filing. While exact shareholder stakes in Facebook have largely been kept secret, it is now revealed that Mark Zuckerberg still owns 28.4% of the company. Depending on the valuation of the company, Zuckerberg’s stake may be close to $30 billion once the IPO shares are sold.
The filing also reveals some astonishing figures listed below:
- Net income of $1 billion in 2011, $3.7 billion revenue.
- Facebook had 845 million MAUs as of December 31, 2011, an increase of 39% as compared to 608 million MAUs as of December 31, 2010.
- Facebook had 483 million daily active users (DAUs) on average in December 2011, an increase of 48% as compared to 327 million DAUs in December 2010.
- Facebook had more than 425 million MAUs who used Facebook mobile products in December 2011.
- There were more than 100 billion friend connections on Facebook as of December 31, 2011.
- Facebook users generated an average of 2.7 billion Likes and Comments per day during the three months ended December 31, 2011.
There’s no denying it, those figures are amazing and demonstrates how strong the company is and why now is a great to to file for the IPO. I guess they haven’t yet reached the 1 billion users mark yet, or that’d be surely be included. The S-1 Registration Statement to the US Securities and Exchange Commission is embedded below, all 201 pages of it.
More @ TechCrunch and The Verge.
Kinect for Windows 1.0 SDK is here to look at you closely
Posted Wednesday, February 1, 2012 at 11:14 pm by Jason Cartwright
Microsoft has just released version 1.0 of the Kinect SDK for Windows. One of the biggest complaints about the beta releases of the SDK was the lack of support for close object recognition. Near mode now allows the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimetres rather than the standard 6 feet.
The 1.0 release of the SDK addresses a number of other issues:
- Support for up to four Kinect sensors plugged into the same computer
- Significantly improved skeletal tracking, including the ability for developers to control which user is being tracked by the sensor
- Near Mode for the new Kinect for Windows hardware, which enables the depth camera to see objects as close as 40 centimeters in front of the device
- Many API updates and enhancements in the managed and unmanaged runtimes
- The latest Microsoft Speech components (V11) are now included as part of the SDK and runtime installer
- Improved “far-talk” acoustic model that increases speech recognition accuracy
- New and updated samples, such as Kinect Explorer, which enables developers to explore the full capabilities of the sensor and SDK, including audio beam and sound source angles, color modes, depth modes, skeletal tracking, and motor controls
- A commercial-ready installer which can be included in an application’s set-up program, making it easy to install the Kinect for Windows runtime and driver components for end-user deployments.
- Robustness improvements including driver stability, runtime fixes, and audio fixes
It’s important to keep in mind that the new Near Mode is only available from the new Kinect for Windows, which isn’t available in Australia. You can see from the screenshot below, connecting an existing Kinect to a computer shows under the range selection ‘NearMode not supported on this device’.
Let’s hope Australian availability for Kinect for Windows arrives soon so Aussie developers can start building Windows 7/8 Kinect-enabled applications.
More information @ MSDN or just download the Kinect SDK 1.0 now.
Via The Verge.
Firefox 10 now available, stay with Chrome or IE
Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2012 at 5:50 pm by Jason CartwrightIn the latest chapter of browser wars, Mozilla has just released their latest offering – Firefox 10. If you’re like me each new version of the browser you install and try out, see what new and see if a new default has arrived. Sadly this is not the case with the milestone version 10 release of Mozilla Firefox.
![Firefox10[9]](http://techau.tv/blog/images/Firefox-10-now-available_104F6/Firefox109.jpg "Firefox10[9]")
Strangely the Firefox 10 ‘What’s new’ page is filled with quotes like “A better browser for the great good” and a 2 minute video that has nothing to do with the product, but all about their ‘different’ company. Sorry Mozilla, I just don’t care about your charitable non-profit mantra, I care about the best browser and the reality is that Firefox isn’t it.
There’s just nothing new on offer here, which frankly just disappointing from a version 10 release. Look through the features page for Firefox and it’s the same old story, improved standards support, faster speed, etc, that’s all great, but you can’t be as good as the competition to win, you need to be better, much better.
Somewhere along the way, around the time Chrome arrived in the market, you lost your way and your fans have gone. While I’m sure there’s still some die-hards out there that love Firefox, most have moved on. Looking ahead there is always an opportunity for the company to get over themselves and actually built a better product, a different product, an innovative product. Even IE was able to rebuilt and transform into a viable option again.
Check it out for yourself at http://getfirefox.com
