Not everybody has 24 hours to burn through a hit game like The Last of Us. But if you do, you’ll want to click on over to Redbox.com. From August 18-22, users who reserve a game online through Redbox will be able to rent that game for one night for free. OK, so it’s only a $2 credit. Still, it’s a chance to rent a game without paying for a monthly service like Gamefly, which charges a minimum of $16 per month. “Games Week was one of our most popular games promotions last year, so we’re bringing it back this year for round two,” said Joel Resnik, vice president of video games, at Redbox, in a statement. “Games Week is a fantastic way for everyone to get a quick hands-on trial of the hottest games Redbox offers.” Games are available to rent for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Wii platforms, Redbox said. Reserving online isn’t just the only way to redeem the coupon, but also to ensure that the game is actually available. (For example, a quick search for The Last of Us failed to turn up availability at any locations near me in San Francisco or in my home in the East Bay, where the game was available.) Also note that some games—again, such as The Last of Us—restrict the game to single player mode, so multiplayer options won’t be available.
Engineers at Google have developed a way to display information to people in the lenses of their eyeglasses. The work, outlined in a patent application, is the latest in a line of research by the company that points to future head-mounted displays that don’t require the clunky display arm that’s present on the first generation Google Glass. The design detailed in calls for a small display to be mounted onto the surface of the lens of a pair of glasses. The display and a companion light source are located on the periphery of the lens and the image is funneled to the area in front of the user’s eye with a couple of optical beam splitters—passive optical devices that bend and route light. In their patent application, the engineers have also included an eye-tracking camera and a couple of small lamps that illuminate the eye. One illuminates the entire eye and the other provides a focused beam that creates a glint in the eye to aid tracking, both likely operating at wavelengths invisible to humans.
Never go home again.
The failure of a massive payroll project involving SAP software has California lawmakers, state officials and the vendor pointing fingers of blame at each other. California and suspended work on it, saying that despite the expenditure of more than $200 million, the system was error-prone and far behind schedule. Officials have been weighing what to do next. Controversy is now mounting anew over who is responsible for the project’s woes. The system “suffered from a failure to resolve core issues raised early and often, chronic leadership turnover and lapses in due diligence,” states a report by the state Senate Office of Oversight and Outcomes.
Sometimes, it just ain’t easy being a Windows Phone owner. A mere two days after a revamped, , bringing sweet relief to the poor Windows Phone users long saddled with an old and crappy port of the service, the new app has stopped working whatsoever. Why, you ask? Because Google blocked Microsoft’s access. Again. “Microsoft has not made the browser upgrades necessary to enable a fully-featured YouTube experience, and has instead re-released a YouTube app that violates our Terms of Service,” YouTube spokespeople told both. “It has been disabled. We value our broad developer community and therefore ask everyone to adhere to the same guidelines.” While the situation stinks for Windows Phone owners, it’s pretty ironic for several reasons. Google has long refused to release an official YouTube app, so Microsoft has been forced to homebrew a band-aid of its own to keep Windows Phoners placated.
Android tablets are making strides, but they still lag behind the iPad in at least one key area, market research firm Canalys says -- the availability of optimized apps for tablets.
The market for x86 open-source PCs is now a two-horse race, with GizmoSphere releasing schematics and design documents for hobbyists to build from scratch a Windows 8 computer based on open design. The barebones PC called the Gizmo runs on an Advanced Micro Devices G-series embedded processor, and the design documents were made available just a few weeks after the release of MinnowBoard, the first open-source PC based on an Intel x86 processor. Intel and AMD have been PC adversaries, and that now moves to the open-source hardware space. on GizmoSphere’s website. GizmoSphere’s design documents go into detail about the components, manufacturing information and where parts were bought. Using the information, hardware makers and developers can replicate the board from scratch.
Facebook's new mobile payment system may place it in direct competition with PayPal.
If you can't get by with just 104 keys and a few mouse buttons, don't despair—Razer has you covered with the Tartarus, the latest in a line of gaming keypads designed explicitly for macro nerds and control freaks. next week, the $80 Tartarus doesn't offer much in the way of surprises. It's an auxiliary USB gaming keypad that's designed to sit on your desk, fit in the palm of your hand and offer up a spare rack of programmable keys that won't ghost on you—meaning you can hit multiple keys at the same time and your PC will recognize and respond to each one of them. The big selling point of the Tartarus is that it gives you 25 programmable keys and a thumbstick for navigation. That’s sixteen more buttons than its predecessor, the Razer Nostromo, though astute readers have probably already noticed that the Tartarus only has fifteen keys and two buttons on the right side; the additional “buttons” come courtesy of a new customization feature that allows you to assign commands to each of the eight directions of the thumbstick.
San Francisco-based online payments startup Stripe expanded to the U.K. Thursday. Stripe enables companies to accept credit and debit card payments online. Companies integrate a couple of lines of Stripe code on their websites in order to use the service. Stripe offers code in Ruby, PHP and Python, among others, for a quick integration. Toolkits are also available for native Android and iPhone apps as well for a number of third-party plugins and libraries for Wordpress and Drupal. U.K. users get the same instant activation as provided in the U.S. and Canada, where the company is already active, said Andy Young of Stripe U.K. in . All major credit-card types are supported and U.K. businesses will be able to charge customers in U.S. dollars, British pounds and euros, he said, adding that conversions will be handled automatically by Stripe. Pricing in the U.K. starts at a 2.4 percent transaction fee, plus £0.20 ($0.31) per transaction, plus VAT. In the U.S., Stripe charges 2.9 percent, plus $0.30 per successful charge.
Working with Microsoft, a company called Ubi Interactive is bringing us ever-closer to the day when everything is a touch screen. , starting at $149 with support for projected images up to 45 inches. . Ubi had been a part of Microsoft's Kinect Accelerator program, which helps startups figure out how to use the technology in interesting ways. Since then, Ubi has been testing the software in a private beta with 50 organizations. Now, it's available to anyone running Windows 8. Just don't think of it as a quick and dirty way to have touch screens all over your house. Ideally, the projector should be set up behind a transparent surface, so you don't block the projection with your hands and arms, and Kinect should be set up in an area where it can easily see your hand movements. Ubi recommends a ceiling mount. Also, keep in mind that for projected images larger than 45-inches, you'd need Ubi's professional software, which costs $379 and up.
Druva chose to build the new private cloud edition of its inSync endpoint data protection using OpenStack because of its object storage functionality, but the increasingly popular cloud platform still needs to improve in some key areas, according to CEO Jaspreet Singh. The growing amount of backup and file sharing data that has to be stored by enterprises today represents a real challenge for IT departments, according to Druva. For CIOs who want to keep the data in-house, the problem is exasperated by on-premises storage that hasn’t kept pace with public cloud architectures for cost, scale and availability, it said. The company hopes to change that with the new OpenStack-based version of inSync, which lets enterprises build a private cloud behind the firewall that can be used for automated backup of desktops, laptops, smartphones and tablets.
It sounds like you need a cliché detector--software that can catch a word, a phrase, or even a piece of punctuation that you use too often. This can be a valuable tool. If your word processor has an Autocorrect feature, you can use it to catch certain words or phrases. A number of word processors, including the ones in LibreOffice and Google Docs, have Autocorrect. The specific instructions below are for Microsoft Word 2010 and 2013, but the general idea will work in other programs.
In addition to lax passwords, manufacturer lacks a effective way to get its patches and updates out to customers.
Academics have responded to Elon Musk's hotly-anticipated transport concept, Hyperloop, by calling it unrealistic and "hyperloopy".
Samsung has unveiled an Android flip-phone with dual-touchscreens in China, which will likely be positioned as a premium device.
Microsoft will start selling its struggling Surface devices to business customers abroad via channel partners on Thursday. The move builds on a similar effort Microsoft launched in July to tap distributors and resellers to push Surface tablets to businesses in the U.S. The channel program goes into effect in Canada and 16 European countries, including France, Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the U.K. Until now, Microsoft only sold Surfaces in a limited way directly to business customers in these countries, as it had done in the U.S. prior to July.
Lenovo's sales of tablets and smartphones were higher than that of PCs in its fiscal first quarter, reflecting the company's efforts to reduce its dependence on the ailing PC business. The company reported on Thursday that net profit jumped 23 percent during its first fiscal quarter ended June 30. Lenovo's net profit reached $174 million, up from $141 million in the same period a year ago. Its revenue was $8.8 billion, a year-over-year increase of 10 percent. , according to research firm IDC. During the period all of the top five PC vendors saw decline in shipments, with Lenovo's down year-over-year by 1.4 percent.
You don’t need to be a neat freak to hate having wires snaking all over your desk, especially if you’re a laptop user who wants to get up and go without first untangling a rat’s nest of cables. It’s bad enough that you have to unplug your monitor and power supply. These days, there’s no good reason to mess around with a wired mouse and keyboard (unless, of course, you’re a gamer worried about lag). I’ve spent the past several weeks auditioning a brand-new mouse and three all-new keyboards that let you cut the cord so that you can be more comfortable and productive in front of your PC. Stop digging batteries out of random remotes just to get your wireless keyboard back to working order, and go green in the process. Batteries, even the rechargeable ones, are a pain because they fail at the most inopportune moments. Logitech’s K750 Solar Wireless Keyboard depends solely on light—any light—for power. Dominating the top of this plank are two wide photo-voltaic panels that convert any type of light to electricity. Whether you’re positioned next to a window or tucked away in the bowels of your building’s basement, all this keyboard needs is a little ambient light from your desk lamp or ceiling lamp (or the sun, of course) to power itself and charge its internal battery. With its battery charged, you can work in complete darkness for up to three months, according to Logitech. We’ll have to take the company’s word for it—I love my job, but I wasn’t about to test that claim.
costs a mere $199. Unfortunately, bargain pricing continues to be the main reason to consider a Chromebook. Vendors want to tempt Web-centric consumers away from their tablets and smartphones with the promise of a decent-size screen and a bona fide keyboard. Most of the current Chromebooks are so basic, however, that they’re can't offer the better experience that would help their case. The Acer C710-2457 Chromebook is yet another example. All it provides is a bargain browsing machine that could knock around the family room or a kid’s backpack without causing parental trauma. The unit is made entirely of hard plastics, with a thick, shiny black bezel around the display and a lightly textured keyboard and touchpad. It feels pretty sturdy, with just a touch of flex in its keyboard and display panels.
When it comes to digital note-taking and archiving software categories, both of those 800-pound gorillas are in the Windows Store. From a sheer usability standpoint, (witness the abundance of poor reviews for Evernote Touch in the Windows Store). However, it has been improving rapidly since its launch. If you're new to notes and you plan to stick mostly to Windows, I'd recommend skewing toward OneNote. But Evernote Touch works well enough if you're already invested in the Evernote ecosystem. Bonus: The app includes Evernote Business integration.
The Nokia Lumia 1020 and Moto X square off against the iPhone 5 and Samsung Galaxy S4 to see who takes home the smartphone camera crown.
IBM has signed an agreement to acquire security company Trusteer, and plans to set up a cybersecurity software lab in Israel. The financial terms of the proposed acquisition were not disclosed. With offices in Boston and Tel Aviv, Trusteer is a provider of endpoint cybercrime prevention technology and services, with customers among the top banks in the U.S., Canada, and Australia. The acquisition will bring to IBM capabilities in the areas of security as a service delivered through the cloud, counter-fraud and advanced persistent threat protection and secure mobile transactions, IBM said Thursday.
Google is distributing patches for a cryptography flaw in Android that may affect hundreds of thousands of applications. Alex Klyubin, an Android security engineer. Affected applications are those that rely on the pseudo random number generator (PRNG) within the Java Cryptography Architecture or “directly invoke the system-provided OpenSSL PRNG without explicit initialization on Android,” Klyubin wrote. Random numbers are used in part to generate secure encryption keys and for other cryptography processes. In some cases, the numbers were not “cryptographically strong values,” Klyubin wrote.
Chinese hackers are using an automated tool to exploit known vulnerabilities in Apache Struts, in order to install backdoors on servers hosting applications developed with the framework. Apache Struts is a popular open-source framework for developing Java-based Web applications that is maintained by the Apache Software Foundation. Several security updates were released for Struts this year, , to address highly critical vulnerabilities that could enable remote attackers to execute arbitrary commands on Web servers running applications built with the framework. Hackers have since taken notice and are now actively exploiting those flaws, according to researchers from security firm Trend Micro, who found a tool on Chinese underground forums that automates attacks against vulnerable Struts versions.
Hanapin Marketing has released its 2013 State of Paid Search report, revealing how PPC marketers are feeling about paid search marketing and where they plan to spend their money in 2014. A large majority, 83 percent of respondents, said they are feeling positive about the state of paid search....
Digital Marketing Depot presents How to Create & Measure Quality Content Your Audience & Search Engines Will Love, Tuesday, August 20 at 1 PM EDT. Speakers Nathan Safran of Conductor and Ryan Howard of Trident Marketing will share their expertise. Registration is free at Digital...
As one of the hottest topics in marketing, attribution is often presented as a panacea for marketers’ dilemmas, allowing you to understand how different advertisements in a purchase funnel work together. The typical description first shows how conversions attributable to various channels...
When it comes to search, we are accustomed to queries that are initiated client-side and not server-side. But, Google Now and similar services are altering this long-standing trend. Search, by definition, implies user-initiated actions. How is this changed by technology such as Google Now and...
I’ve been a search engine marketer (both paid and organic) for over ten years, and in that time I have made my share of mistakes. I’m not talking about pure accidents here — most of these mistakes were caused by poor assumptions on my part which turned out to be horribly wrong....
What do webmasters do when receiving a manual action from Google telling them they have a penalty because of paid or bad links pointing to their site? Google told us back in June that we should use Google’s “links to your site” report within Webmaster Tools to analyze bad links pointing to our...
Brands have a new way to pay for external or offsite SEO, a path to influence rankings. It follows the search engines’ terms of service and can lead to the type of links Google says are among the most valuable. Google spokespersons even endorse the principle behind this new paid form of SEO…...
Struggling to demonstrate the value of Twitter followers? Trying to decipher Facebook’s ever-changing advertising options? Uncertain if Google+, Instagram, Pinterest or Tumblr deserve a slice of your limited time and attention? Attend SMX Social Media Marketing for a jam-packed program of cutting...
Earlier today, comScore released July 2013 US search market share data. The figures reflect modest growth for Google, stasis for Bing and contraction for everyone else. Google bumped up slightly from last month to 67 percent market share, while Bing hovered just below 18 percent. Yahoo lost a tenth...