Laut Angaben von Whatsapp gibt es 20 Millionen aktive Anwender in Deutschland. Whistle.im will eine 2048-Bit-End-To-End verschlüssselte Alternative sein, bei der das Adressbuch nicht bei der NSA abgegeben wird.
Google Deutschland setzt wieder Captcha-Abfragen ein. Wer die "falsche" IP-Adresse hat, wird mitunter ganz von der Nutzung der Suche ausgeschlossen. Die Unternehmenssprecher äußern sich nicht zu Captchas.
Die Betreiber der Crowdfunding-Plattform Kickstarter haben die Weitergabe von gentechnisch veränderten Pflanzen als Belohnung eines erfolgreich finanzierten Projektes verhindert. Das Projekt sei zwar cool, aber die Weitergabe von gentechnisch veränderten Pflanzen sei zu heikel, erklärte Kickstarter.
Unbestätigten Berichten zufolge will AMD die GPU-Serie "Volcanic Islands" in rund sechs Wochen vorstellen, und zwar mit einer öffentlichen Ankündigung. Verkauft werden sollen die ersten Karten, wenn auch Battlefield 4 erscheint.
Nach sieben Jahren Entwicklung gibt es einen Veröffentlichungstermin für X Rebirth - und einen neuen Trailer, der einen Einblick in das riesige Universum des Spiels erlaubt.
Chad Hurley und Steve Chen haben heute Mixbit als erweiterte Konkurrenz zu Instagram und Vine vorgestellt. Eigene Videos können mit vorhandenen Aufnahmen anderer kombiniert werden.
Leider kein Kochtopfset und keine Wunder-Pfannenreiniger - aber immerhin eine Konsole, eine Kinect, ein Headset, ein Aufkleber und ein bisschen Kleinkram: Microsoft-Blogger Major Nelson preist im Video den Inhalt der Xbox-One-Verpackung an.
Das US-Unternehmen Keyme hat eine iOS-App veröffentlicht, die digitale Kopien von Schlüsseln erstellt und speichert. Mit diesen Kopien kann bei Verlust eines Schlüssels ein neuer Schlüssel nachgemacht werden.
In Royal Revolt 2 soll der Spieler Angreifer und Verteidiger sein und sich im Multiplayermodus mit anderen Spielern knallige Schlachten liefern können. Flaregames will die Tower-Defense-Variante im Winter 2013 für Smartphones und Tablets veröffentlichen.
Canonical läutet bei seiner Crowdfunding-Kampagne für das Smartphone Ubuntu Edge mit einer Preissenkung den Endspurt ein, denn nach aktuellem Stand wird die Kampagne ihr gestecktes Ziel deutlich verfehlen.
Auf einschlägigen Foren wird ein Banking-Trojaner für Linux verkauft. "Hand of Thief" soll unter anderem Code in Webseiten von Banken injizieren können.
Wegen Angeboten zum Hacken des Nintendo DS verklagt der Hersteller eine US-Hackingseite. Dabei geht es wohl auch darum, frühzeitig gegen die sogenannten Gateway-Karten zu kämpfen, mit denen sich der 3DS knacken lässt.
Verwackelte und damit unscharfe Fotos sollen durch ein neues System von Casio verhindert werden. Es stabilisiert die Optik des 18fach-Zoomobjektivs der Casio EX-ZR800 gleich auf fünf Achsen. Fokus-Stacking und HDR-Aufnahmen beherrscht die kleine Kamera ebenfalls.
Die 300 US-Dollar teure Handheld-Konsole Nvidia Shield berechnet Android-Spiele ebenso flott wie hübsch, streamt PC-Titel ohne nennenswerte Verzögerung, und der Akku hält einen Mittelstreckenflug durch. Trotz toller Verarbeitung ist die Zielgruppe aber nur sehr klein.
Trotz Drosselungsdebatte verzeichnet die Telekom viele Neukunden in Deutschland. Aber auch in den USA legte T-Mobile dank iPhone und Fusion mit MetroPCS zu.
Anstatt gemeinsam zur Aufklärung der NSA-Affäre beizutragen, hauen Regierung und Opposition weiter aufeinander ein. Am Montag will die Regierung die Hintergründe der Kooperation zwischen BND und US-Diensten erläutern.
Im zweiten Quartal des Jahres 2013 wurden in Europa erneut deutlich weniger PCs verkauft als zuvor. Nicht alle Länder sind gleich stark betroffen, und auch die Verschiebungen bei den Herstellern fallen unterschiedlich aus. Diesmal sollen nicht nur Tablets an dem Einbruch schuld sein.
Mit Darling sollen Anwendungen aus Mac OS X unter Linux laufen. Es handelt sich allerdings noch um einen Prototyp mit ungewissem Ausgang. Einige Terminalprogramme laufen schon.
Tesla Motors und SpaceX nehmen Elon Musk so in Anspruch, dass er das neue Transportmittel Hyperloop nicht selbst bauen wird. Das hat der Unternehmer in der Telekonferenz zu den Tesla-Quartalszahlen angekündigt.
Drei Fraktionen, Kampfarenen und Free-to-Play: Deep Silver kündigt für das Universum von Dead Island einen Ableger namens Epidemic an.
Neue Quartalszahlen zeigen, dass sich die Verbreitung von Android verglichen mit demselben Vorjahreszeitraum erhöht hat. Apples iOS hat an Boden verloren, während Windows Phone sich besser positioniert hat.
Eltern in Hamburg sind wütend, weil ihre Kindern trotz Chipkarte ihren Fingerabdruck abgeben mussten. Ohne biometrische Erkennung soll es für die Grundschüler kein Essen gegeben haben.
Die OpenX-Entwickler haben die Downloadpakete ihres gleichnamigen Adservers korrigiert. Die Version 2.8.10 hat eine gefährliche Hintertür, die Angreifer in die Serverpakete einschmuggelten. OpenX 2.8.11 korrigiert diesen Fehler, der nur die freie Version betraf.
Keine rundenbasierte Turniere, sondern ein MMORPG mit frischen Ansätzen soll Civilization Online werden - in dem der Spieler als ganz normaler Bürger antritt. Das Spiel basiert auf der Cry Engine 3.
Der gleichnamige Nachfolger des Google Nexus 7 stammt ebenfalls von Asus. Die erste Version glänzte durch ein recht gutes Display, mit dem Nachfolger will Auftraggeber Google noch Besseres anbieten - ohne das Gerät sehr viel teurer zu machen.
Der GPS-Empfänger Piksi für 900 US-Dollar soll die Positionsgenauigkeit deutlich erhöhen: So können auch Privatanwender zentimetergenau bestimmen, wo sie sich befinden. Das Projekt wird über Kickstarter finanziert.
Bigshot ist eine ungewöhnlich große Kompaktkamera, die jungen Fotografen und interessierten Erwachsenen die Welt der Fotografie näherbringen soll. Sie muss erst zusammengebaut werden. Der Akku kann über eine Handkurbel unterwegs wieder aufgeladen werden, falls der Strom unerwartet zur Neige geht.
Der Zubehörhersteller Twelve South hat mit dem Hirise eine iPhone- und iPad-Mini-Halterung für den Schreibtisch vorgestellt, mit der die iOS-Geräte auf Augenhöhe gehoben werden können. Wie bei Displays mit Höhenverstellung kann das Hirise den Gegebenheiten angepasst werden.
Zwei MIT-Studenten haben einen Weg gefunden, einen eigentlich als besonders kopiersicher geltenden Schlüssel mit zwei Bärten nachzumachen. Dazu genügte ihnen ein Scan des Schlüssels und ein 3D-Drucker.
Unter eigenem Namen bietet Intel Tablets mit 7- oder 10-Zoll-Displays für den Einsatz in Bildungseinrichtungen an. Die Android-Geräte vertragen kleine Stürze und bringen Software für den Einsatz im Unterricht mit.
Trotz des Informationsfreiheitsgesetzes gibt es keinen Einblick in den Vertrag, mit dem ein Staatstrojaner vom BKA angeschafft wurde. Begründung: Rückschlüsse auf das verwendete Gesamtsystem, dessen Hardware, eventuelle Schwachstellen sowie die polizeilichen Methoden wären durch eine Vertragseinsicht möglich.
Mit dem G2 hat LG ein neues Android-Smartphone präsentiert. Die Stärken des Geräts sind ein leistungsfähiger Prozessor, ein großes Display und zahlreiche Zusatzfunktionen. Die Tasten befinden sich auf der Rückseite des Smartphones.
Die Staatschefs der USA und Russlands werden sich auf dem G20-Gipfel Anfang September nicht unter vier Augen treffen. Der US-Präsident Obama hat das Treffen abgesagt. Der Grund ist unter anderem, dass Russland Edward Snowden aufgenommen hat.
Programmier-Guru John Carmack hat einen neuen Job: Er arbeitet ab sofort Vollzeit bei Oculus VR, der Firma hinter der VR-Brille Oculus Rift. Fragen zu seinem Status bei id Software beantwortet er nicht.
In den USA sind schon länger keine Vorbestellungen für die Playstation 4 mehr möglich, jetzt ist es auch in Deutschland so weit: Amazon und andere Händler nehmen keine Vorbestellungen mehr entgegen.
Oberleitungen für Busse sind lange passé. Eine Stadt in Südkorea setzt elektrische Busse ein und elektrifiziert dafür Straßen - mit Magnetspulen im Belag.
Der frühere NSA-Chef Michael Hayden hat sein eigenes Bild über die Verteidiger von Edward Snowden. Dies seien "Nihilisten, Anarchisten, Aktivisten, Lulzsec, Anonymous und Twens, die seit fünf oder sechs Jahren nicht mit dem anderen Geschlecht gesprochen haben".
HTC bringt mit dem Desire 500 ein neues Mittelklasse-Smartphone nach Deutschland. Das Android-Gerät hat einen Quad-Core-Prozessor, eine 8-Megapixel-Kamera und kommt mit HTCs News-Ticker Blink Feed.
Facebook hat seinen Edge-Rank-Algorithmus überarbeitet und will Änderungen daran besser erklären. Eine Neuerung hat das Unternehmen in einem Blogpost bekanntgegeben. Die dürfte nicht jedem gefallen.
Wer Pornofilter beim Internetprovider fordert, sollte "sich die Debatten der vergangenen Jahre ausdrucken lassen - und vielleicht das Grundgesetz", rät Justizministerin Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger. Und Norbert Geis erklärt seine Pornoschranke näher.
Single board or “open-source” PCs have become a hot market, with the Raspberry Pi selling in the millions and competitors getting in on the act, including Intel’s recently announced MinnowBoard. These PCs have open designs that can be replicated by other hardware companies, are inexpensive to manufacture as components get smaller and can run Android, Ubuntu and other flavors of Linux. Here’s a look at the open-source PCs that are available and finding a number of uses, including as media servers. Raspberry Pi .
On Thursday, the SATA-IO group paved the way for SATA Express, putting PCI Express speeds over a SATA interface for the next generation of ultrafast solid-state discs, or SSDs. Specifically, the Serial ATA International Organization ratified revision 3.2, which includes support for the SATA Express feature that was originally . A number of other useful improvements are also included, including better power management as well as support for so-called “micro” or embedded SSDs. SATA is the bus that’s traditionally associated with internal storage within a PC, such as an SSD or disc drive. PCI Express, meanwhile, is used for high-bandwidth cards like graphics cards. (External hard drives either use external SATA, FireWire, a Thunderbolt connection, or, most commonly, USB.) Speeding up the internal bus paves the way for faster drives, which in turn will improve the internal performance of PCs over time. The marquee improvement in the new revision is the support for PCI Express throughput through a supported SATA interface. Conventional SATA runs at speeds up to 6 Gbits/s; allocating two lanes of PCI Express 3.0 bumps up the speed to 2 Gbytes/s. That’s far more than today’s conventional hard drives will need; “[t]he faster interface (SATA Express) is intended for SSDs and emerging Solid State Hybrid Drives (SSHDs), but the speed of the existing SATA spec will be more than adequate for [hard drives] for the foreseeable future,” a spokeswoman for SATA-IO said in an email.
Twitter's new program hopes to give marketers better information about how companies' tweets impact sales in physical stores.
Thinking of the $280 Dell B1265dfw as a monochrome laser printer with benefits puts it in its best light. Besides good print speed, it offers copying, faxing, and scanning in color. There's even an automatic document feeder (ADF), though the duplex scanning features are restricted to the flatbed portion of the scanning system and are manual only. The B1265dfw also suffers particularly pricey toner--well over three cents per page even with the high-capacity supplies. The B1265dfw is your standard medium-sized, boxy small-to-medium business MFP. It's solidly constructed, and though its standard warranty lasts just one year, a 3-year advance-replacement warranty is available for an additional $40. The B1265dfw is a triple treat connectivity-wise, with USB, Wi-Fi, and Ethernet on board. The software Installation is easy, and Dell has made an effort to simplify Wi-Fi setup, even providing a WPS button on the control panel. Said control panel is on the right front of the unit, flips up for easy access, and is intuitively laid out. There's a numeric keypad for faxing and a two-line monochrome display. It's rendered in off-white which helpfully focuses your attention on it from the otherwise charcoal colored unit. On the other hand, Dell made the embossed icons on the circular cursor control difficult to read by not differentiating their color. Go figure. Paper handling features include automatic duplex printing; a 250-sheet bottom-mounted paper cassette; a front-loading, single-sheet auxiliary feed; a 151-sheet integrated output tray directly above that; and a 40-sheet automatic document feeder (ADF) for the scanning portion of the unit. The flatbed scanner is letter/A4-sized, and the lid telescopes slightly more than an inch to accommodate thicker materials.
You moved out of your parent's home and into a dorm, apartment, or co-op. And suddenly you don't have a television. True, you can watch just about anything on your computer or tablet. But with a real TV, you can kick back, watch programs on a larger, more immersive screen, and comfortably entertain friends. Here are some tips to help you find the right TV for your new digs. To pick a TV that fits your room and your budget, start by measuring your space with a tape measure to determine the maximum size you can comfortably fit. Next, compare that measurement to your budget. The instinct with TVs is that bigger is better, but bear in mind, if you sit too close to a large screen, flaws that weren't visible before become obvious and annoying. Fortunately, there are guidelines to help you avoid that problem. For example, sitting no closer than four feet away from a 40-inch screen for the best experience. Sure, you can plug your laptop into your television, but a Smart TV--one with Internet built in--will prove much easier to use. Besides, Windows isn't really designed to be controlled from across the room.
Dropping the veil of secrecy over Office 365 uptime, Microsoft has released availability data for each of the past four quarters and is celebrating the results. on Thursday in a blog post. Uptime is the amount of measured time a cloud-based service is available to a user. Those percentages are calculated based on the number of minutes in each calendar month and the number of minutes in which the Business, Government and Education editions of Office 365 were available worldwide. “Individual customers may experience higher or lower uptime percentages compared to the global uptime numbers, depending on location and usage patterns,” the blog post reads.
Every student or conference attendee knows the ever-present dilemma: listen to the presentation, or try to take notes? Sonocent Audio Notetaker is an ambitious product that brings an end to this plight...at least some of the time. Audio Notetaker analyzes audio recorded either by the program or outside it to create speech bars that are easy to navigate. You can enhance these bars with colors, text, images, screenshots, slides, and PDF documents, and add text and references to boot. Audio Notetaker can record live lectures, interviews, Skype calls, and even online talks a la TED. It makes it possible to concentrate on listening while taking minimal notes, and easily go over the recorded material later. Audio Notetaker is a truly innovative way to handle recordings, but at its current price of $150 for a perpetual license, it's not an impulse buy. It also crashed multiple times while I tried it, causing me to lose my work, so frequent saves are advised. It's a great product if you can soak the cost. The Download button takes you to to the vendor's website, where you can download the software.
What good is an Internet balloon if kids are dying underneath it? In a Bloomberg interview, Microsoft chairman Bill Gates implies that the world’s burning, and companies like Google—and Silicon Valley at large—are simply inventing better fiddles. The with Bloomberg BusinessWeek, released Thursday, doesn’t just take the side that Silicon Valley isn’t just inventing anything useful, as some have said over the years. It takes aim at the idea that the technology industry is losing sight of the big problems that it should be solving. Case in point: Google, which Gates uses as a scapegoat for tech woes in general. Google recently unveiled , a series of wirelessly interconnnected balloons designed to float over third-world counties and provide Internet access to those below. The problem, according to Gates, is that challenges those poor countries face isn’t a lack of Internet access, but the basic issues of poverty, income, education, and health. ”When you’re dying of malaria, I suppose you’ll look up and see that balloon, and I’m not sure how it’ll help you,” Gates said, according to the interview. “When a kid gets diarrhea, no, there’s no website that relieves that. Certainly I’m a huge believer in the digital revolution. And connecting up primary-health-care centers, connecting up schools, those are good things. But no, those are not, for the really low-income countries, unless you directly say we’re going to do something about malaria.”
wants to relieve that burden by delivering “expense reports that don’t suck,” and it continues to add new features to achieve that goal. (for receipts under $75, Expensify guarantees that its eReceipts are IRS compliant), and use its GPS to determine travel miles. Expensify can also import transactions from online bank or credit card data and automatically categorize most expenses to save employees the effort. Expensify is continuously updating its capabilities, and expanding its relationships with other services. The ability to scan, track, and manage receipts to produce expense reports is great, but the real value of Expensify lies in how it integrates with other business and accounting tools to simplify the whole process from start to finish. —a popular online accounting service. Xero lets you view and share cash flow in real time, reconcile bank accounts, and invoice customers. Businesses will be able to conveniently incorporate expense data from Expensify as well, and manage everything from tracking hours, to invoicing, to payroll from one place.
Action is expected Friday in two separate patent infringement cases brought by Apple against Samsung.
, a tool to make it easier to develop apps for Windows Phone smartphones. Microsoft is hoping it will help expand the volume and variety of apps available in the Windows Phone Store, but it’s an especially useful tool for businesses that want to use Windows Phone. What’s that? You’re not a programmer? Good news, then—no coding skills are required to use the Windows Phone App Studio. It’s a free, Web-based service (currently in beta) that provides a variety of templates and essentially lets you drag and drop design and function elements to create an app without writing a line of code. explains, “Getting started is easy—just create a Microsoft account, choose your template, and begin adding your content. Windows Phone App Studio does the rest. When you’re [sic] app is ready to go, you can download the app to your own phone, or share it with others by publishing it to the Windows Phone Store.” will also produce the source code and allow developers to incorporate more advanced capabilities.
There’s a broad belief that bitcoin might just be the virtual currency that takes off in a big way. To do that, it will need to become a lot easier to use. But developers within the Bitcoin community are close to finishing a new layer of code for bitcoin software clients that makes using it more practical for shoppers and merchants. “This payment protocol represents a major advance in security and usability,” said Jeff Garzik, senior software engineer at BitPay, an Atlanta-based company that builds Bitcoin software tools. The protocol will be open source, and it will be up to other developers to implement it in Bitcoin wallets, or software clients used to hold and spend the virtual currency.
. So, it stands to reason that researchers creating the next generation of computer processors would do well to look at nature's most powerful data cruncher: the human brain. To that end, IBM scientists have just unveiled a “breakthrough software ecosystem” designed to work with a silicon chip architecture inspired by the function, low power, and compact volume of the human brain via a series of so-called “neurosynaptic cores.” “Architectures and programs are closely intertwined and a new architecture necessitates a new programming paradigm,” said Dr. Dharmendra S. Modha, Principal Investigator and Senior Manager, IBM Research. (Systems of Neuromorphic Adaptive Plastic Scalable Electronics) has been developing nanometer-scale electronic synaptic components analogous to those in the human brain. In conjunction with this synapse-like chip architecture, the new programming model would facilitate an electronic system where all parts are able to work together simultaneously, as in the brain.
As a new school year approaches, Box is hoping to march into more campuses right alongside students and teachers with its cloud storage and file sharing application. The company has struck a new set of partnerships with education software vendors in order to expand the use of its product among schools and universities, Box said on Thursday. The education vertical has been a good one for Box, whose sales in that market have grown about 120 percent in the past year, according to Whitney Bouck, general manager of Box’s enterprise business. “We’re announcing we’re going big in education,” she said.
Canonical has lowered the price of its to $695 from $775 in a bid to reach its lofty $32 million crowdfunding goal in the next two weeks. As of Thursday morning, the Indiegogo campaign for the Linux-powered Edge smartphone had received pledges for about $8.6 million. Canonical still has a long way to go, but is optimistic that it can raise the funds. "The target is still $32 million, so we will need to ship a few more phones at $695 than we would at a higher price, but we believe we can do it. We have two weeks, and we have the best community out there," the company said
Microsoft made a big deal out of the Xbox One's in-game DVR, which lets you share footage of your in-game adventures with friends. But now, the company says the feature will only be available with a $60 per year Xbox Live Gold subscription. this week. That's not the only feature Microsoft is hiding behind the Xbox Live paywall. As with the Xbox 360, players will need a subscription to play online multiplayer and use streaming apps such as Netflix and Hulu Plus. Skype video chat will also require an Xbox Live subscription. In other words, Microsoft is trying to make the Xbox Live subscription an essential part of owning an Xbox One. The strategy contrasts sharply with Sony's Playstation 4, which will only require a Playstation Plus subscription for online multiplayer. Users won't need a subscription for streaming apps, in-game recording, or free-to-play games.
Oracle has moved quickly to provide virtualization support for its recently released 12c database, saying this week that a set of virtual machine templates for the product are now available. Templates are also now available for database version 11g 11.2.0.3.7, said Wim Coekaerts, senior vice president of Linux and virtualization engineering, in a “A very important new feature added is the ability to deploy [a] single instance database,” he wrote. “In the past the database templates were focused on RAC deployments (Real Application Cluster) but because of popular demand, we also added support for Single Instance. With Single Instance you can really create a new VM with the database up and running in a matter of a few (very few) minutes, and with a very simple config file.” The templates give users virtual database appliances that are “production ready, not trial, not using a random OS, all ready to go,” he added.
in the United States, announcing three more regional debuts for September. In addition to a previously planned rollout to Chicago on September 13, Aereo will debut in Miami on September 2, the Houston metropolitan area on September 16, and the Dallas-Fort Worth region on September 23. . With the newest additions, Aereo will be available in eight markets across the U.S. by the end of September, covering around 60 million people. For $8 a month, Aereo offers a tiny antenna stored in one of its data centers that can grab local television broadcasts to watch live online. You can also use Aereo to record up to 20 hours of content on its DVR service for later viewing. Add an extra $4 a month and you can get a total of 60 hours of DVR recording time. There should be more markets to come before we get to the end of 2013. Aereo announced in January that it planned to expand its service to another 22 markets in the U.S. before the calendar turned over to 2014.
On paper, Bitcoins sound like a libertarian's dream: A virtual crypto-currency that's veiled in anonymity, free from ties to national governments, and wonderfully bereft of transaction fees? Take that, The Man! But now that Bitcoins have been thrust into the limelight, The Man is starting to take back. Earlier this week, a federal judge in Texas ruled that Bitcoins are indeed a currency, and therefore subject to government regulation. . When the SEC filed the case, 700,000 Bitcoins were worth in excess of $60 million. But all those digital dollars weren't invested in earnest, and the SEC alleges that BS&T operator Trendon Shavers defrauded his investors. Shavers' defense? Bitcoins aren't money, so shove it, SEC. :
Generally, you have to pay for copyrighted material. The people who make TV shows expect to be paid for their work--just like you and me. Some Web sites offer free, bootlegged copies of TV shows. I don't use those sites and I don't recommend them. There's a lot I don't like about current American copyright law, but without it, you wouldn't have any new television shows, books, music, movies…or articles in PCWorld.
When are debuting now in 18 Microsoft Store retail locations across the U.S. Dubbed “The MakerBot Experience,” the demos provide 3D printing fans with live demonstrations of MakerBot products at select Microsoft Stores. You will also be able to purchase your very own MakerBot Replicator 2 3D printer, and filament, if you happen to have an extra $2549 lying around. MakerBot is one of several Microsoft partners working with the software maker to ensure their hardware will have plug-and-play functionality with Windows 8.1. The complete list of Microsoft Store locations where you can find MakerBot printers includes:
T-Mobile US had 1.1 million net customer additions in the second quarter, as customers backed its . The company added 678,000 new branded customers, its strongest growth in four years. It had lost 330,000 branded customers in the same quarter last year. T-Mobile ended the quarter with about 44 million customers, an increase of more than 10 million customers over the previous quarter, of which 8.9 million came from its acquisition of MetroPCS Communications on May 1, it said Thursday. The carrier aims to increase the number of branded post-paid customers by another 500,000 to 700,000 in the second half of the year, majority owner Deutsche Telekom said.
The sounds of music. And also violence.
Lucas Pope's one-man effort Papers, Please turns Soviet-era bureaucracy into a game, putting you in the role of a hapless border official. Though it seems like a crazy premise, it's one of the standout titles of 2013.
Five book publishers have objected to restrictions that would be placed on Apple’s business after it was found guilty last month of conspiring to fix prices for ebooks. A New York federal judge that Apple conspired with the publishers to fix prices for ebooks, snuffing out competition and leading to “significantly higher prices” for consumers. The accused publishers, including Penguin, HarperCollins and Macmillan, had all settled the charges against them with the U.S. Department of Justice, but Apple went to trial and lost. The company says it plans to appeal. In the meantime, the last week to prevent Apple from engaging in the same conduct again. In a filing Wednesday in a Manhattan federal court, the publishers objected to those restrictions, specifically a part they say would prevent their use of the so-called agency pricing model.
While more and more general PC buyers may favor low-cost machines, a dedicated group of PC gamers continues to buy more and more high-end gaming hardware. In fact, Jon Peddie Research estimates that a single game — Bohemia Interactive’s Armed Assault 3 (ARMA 3)—is responsible for more than $800 million in gaming hardware sales, just for that title alone. While the gaming hardware market is expected to dip in 2013—to $17.8 billion, down 3.1 percent from $18.4 billion a year ago—JPA predicts the gaming market’s growth rate will average 3 percent through 2016, when it’s estimated to top $20.8 billion. will decline 7.8 percent this year, and then 1.2 percent in 2014, before finally returning to a positive 1.4 percent growth rate the following year. “Many users are realizing that everyday computing, such as accessing the Web, connecting to social media, sending emails, as well as using a variety of apps, doesn’t require a lot of computing power or local storage,” IDC vice president Loren Loverde said when that report was released in May.