Sony Xperia S phone to get Ice Cream Sandwich

By admin|News

The flagship phone to carry the Sony Mobile Communications name is heading up to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. “Xperia S is planned to get ICS somewhere around late May/early June. That’s what’s been said and that’s still what we’re sticking to,” wrote Sony in an official forum post.

“The roll out is, as always, gradual and will not happen overnight for all phones. Some phones might get the update in late May whilst other will get in mid June etc,” the post continued. The Xperia S contains a 12-megapixel camera, near field communication (NFC) technology for mobile payments and contactless interactions, and a 4.3-inch HD display.

It is the flagship phone for Sony Mobile Communications, which was developed after Sony bought out Ericsson’s stake in its previous joint venture. With Sony Ericsson now becoming Sony Mobile, there is a lot more inter-departmental communication that will make future Sony phones more compatible with other Sony devices. Ice Cream Sandwich is one of the biggest updates to Android yet, and includes such features as scanning your face to unlock the phone, a much more robust speech-to-text software program, and an entire platform of data sharing that focuses on NFC.

Sony Xperia S phone to get Ice Cream Sandwich is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: May 17, 2012

By admin|News

Happy Thursday, everyone. Friday’s right around the corner and that means the weekend is almost here! But for now, we’re chugging along to give you the tech news you need to know. First out of the gate today – Comcast boosts data cap to 300GB, adds tiered plans. And speaking of data, let’s go to mobile news – T-Mobile announced contract-free data passes. And in other major mobile news, the HTC Evo 4G LTE is set for a May 23 release.

Featured: So for a lot of gamers, there is only one thing on their minds right now – E3. The biggest video game trade show in the world happens in just a few weeks and the hype is at a fever pitch. That’s the show where every company will try to prove it has the hottest game of the year. But we already know – Why Halo 4 is the most anticipated game of 2012.

Patents, Diablo III, & T-Mobile: In our miscellaneous grouping of other stories that made news today, we have a lot of corporate restructuring, damage control, and legal stuff. Fun! Like this – Apple and HTC ordered to discuss pattent settlement in August. And this – Diablo III error apology is sues by Blizzard. And finally, more news from the company that isn’t part of AT&T – T-Mobile details restructuring, 900 jobs cut, 550 new hires.

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: May 17, 2012 is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

GeorgiaWindshieldRepair.com

By Carlton|News

Georgia Windshield Repair, LLC provides auto glass repair services to customers in Gwinnett County, Barrow County, Hall County, Walton County, Clarke County, and more

DiscountAutoInsuranceFAQ.com

By Carlton|News

A big and expensive error that many consumers make happens when they fail to compare auto insurance rates. When consumers examine a cheap insurance company before making a final decision, they often find out that the policy they’re being offered won’t meet their needs after all.

EchoStar HDT-610R is world’s slimmest FreeView STB

By admin|News

EchoStar might not be a big name in the UK, but they’re hoping to change that with the introduction of a new FreeView+ HD set-top box. The company says it’s the world’s slimmest FreeView coming in at 14mm thick. The HDT-610R packs a lot of tech into that 14mm too, as well as a familiar software interface and additional apps and services from the likes of BBC iPlayer and Box Office 365.

Inside the box you’ll find a 500GB hard drive, which EchoStar says can record up to 300 hours of standard definition, or 125 hours of high definition. The original plan was to try and incorporate SSD technology into the box, but companie recovering from the floods in Thailand last year paired with advancements in slim HDDs means the company can offer a large capacity and still save on costs. Other ports include an antenna input, HDMI, Ethernet, two USB 2.0 ports, and an optical audio output.

The user interface is very similar to what you’d find with existing FreeView boxes, supporting all the SD channels FreeView has to offer plus the four HD channels available from the BBC, ITV, and Channel 4. In terms of on-demand content, EchoStar has added the ability to watch content via BBC iPlayer thanks to the included Ethernet jack, and the company has partnered with Box Office 365 which offers a variety of movies for £4.99 a month.

The EchoStar HDT-610R might be the world’s slimmest, but it’ll cost a pretty penny: you can pre-order now from retailers like Amazon UK and John Lewis for £259.99. The box will ship on May 31st.

EchoStar HDT-610R is world’s slimmest FreeView STB is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Pirate Bay hit with DDoS attack

By admin|News

Torrent website The Pirate Bay has been the target of just about every authority around the globe that fights copyright infringement and piracy. Recently courts in Europe have ordered that the website be blocked by ISPs and people who use the site are finding it increasingly difficult to access. The Pirate Bay is now fighting an attack that has taken it off-line for many users, which is something authorities had a difficult time doing.

Over the last 24 hours or so The Pirate Bay has been mostly inaccessible in many countries due to a DDoS attack. Interestingly, the pirate website apparently criticized the hacker group Anonymous for launching a DDoS attack against Virgin Media in the UK last week. I can certainly see some disgruntled Anonymous hackers attacking Pirate Bay in retaliation to the criticism.

Reports indicate that many Pirate Bay users believed workarounds were in place that would allow them to access the site once the European censorship started. However, those workarounds aren’t working in the face of the DDoS attack leaving users of the pirate website unable to access. It’s interesting that a group of hackers has been able to take the site off-line while The Pirate Bay has managed to skirt authorities around the world who have attempted the same thing over the years.

[via TorrentFreak]

Pirate Bay hit with DDoS attack is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Commercial Cleaning Columbia SC

By Carlton|News

If you’re looking for commercial cleaning services in the Columbia area, consider Palmetto Commercial Services. In addition to commercial cleaning, Palmetto also offers commercial and residential painting services. Boasting facts like having no employees with less than 10 years experience and having not lost a single commercial cleaning account in that same 10 years, Palmetto is truly head and shoulders above other cleaning companies in the Columbia area. Believe it or not, they are responsible for cleaning over a million square feet of office space every week!

iPhone architect presents Electric Imp

By admin|News

It’s time to take a peek at some brand new use-cases for a company that’s been brewing some magic for a bit over a year – Electric Imp, headed by CEO Hugo Fiennes, former Apple hardware team manager and iPhone architect. This fellow co-founded this group by the name of Electric Imp and is presenting their greatest ware yet: an SD-card sized Wi-Fi node set to be the standard for connecting the web to all things electronic. These little $25 cards may well be slotted into everything you own in the near future from your electric outlet to your coffee maker.

What you’ll be doing with this little impish card is connecting one web-connected device to another – the simplest example being you switching on a light from your smartphone. Each card is powered by the device it connects with, connecting then to your wireless network and showing up on Electric Imp’s servers for access anywhere across the globe. Below you’ll see an example where the Electric Imp card is slotted in to a wall outlet, powered by the same energy that moves through the sockets, controlling the outlet with its own hardware and connecting to the web so that you can make it all happen remotely.

Another example (after the simple light switch situation) comes from EDN who spoke with the makers of Electric Imp this week:

“A second example is an Electric Imp enabled passive infrared sensor. Fiennes demonstrated how it could be programmed to report the time and date of detected motion to a client’s Web pages on the Electric Imp server. In turn, those pages could be programmed to send an alarm to a mobile phone. The alarm could also be triggered if no motion was detected, allowing the sensor to serve as a monitor for the elderly in their homes, for example. If there is no activity before 9 a.m., a message is sent to a caregiver.” – EDN

Brilliant stuff, really – if for no other reason than it’s all done primarily from this single card which will cost developers just $25 at the end of June, 2012. Developers will also be able to pick up a development kit for $7 which includes an ID chip, socket, and power connection on a small board. All the information you (the developer) needs can be found at ElectricImp.com, with apps well on the way as well. You can also pick up a $20 or $25 set on their DevKits page depending on how far you want to dive down the rabbit hole.

Let us know how it goes!

iPhone architect presents Electric Imp is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Diablo III Server Status page helps the war weary

By admin|News

Since Blizzard is used to working with online players and has been providing online games for some time now, they’ve gone ahead and had Battle.NET (their main servers for all powerful games like Diablo III) set up a server status page for all players. What you’re going to be able to see here is, if you’ve got a “server unavailable” message, whether or not the whole server you’re used to playing on is actually down or if it’s just you who is experiencing the outage. This is exactly the sort of page I would have loved to have had back in highschool for Diablo II, I can tell you that!

This server status page includes Battle.NET servers for Diablo III across the whole earth and currently divides sectors up into the Americas, Europe, and Asia. Whenever there’s a giant outage, you can count on SlashGear to give you the whole 411 on the situation, but this Battle.NET dedicated Server Status page is always going to be your most accurate source for how up or down Battle.NET currently is. This site is up here on the second full day that Diablo III is live and we’re expecting it to remain active throughout the lifetime of the game as it’s played online.

This server status page works with Battle.NET’s full range of support pages including the newest couple of Diablo III helpers: Diablo III Common Errors as well as Diablo III Information and Known Issues. Check these pages whenever you get an error or have trouble of any kind and find out what’ll be best for you to get back into the game as fast as possible.

Have a peek at our Diablo III timeline below as well, and get online now – the game is live!

Diablo III Server Status page helps the war weary is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Sony promises big PSP, mini onslaught for PlayStation Vita

By admin|News

One of the things that die-hard PlayStation fans have been disappointed about when it comes to the PlayStation Vita is the lack of downloadable PSP games that have not been made available for the Vita. One of the selling points of the new system was that people who downloaded PSP games for their previous game platform would be able to re-download them on the Vita.

However, so far, only a small amount of those games have actually been made available. But today, there’s good news. “Starting today, you’ll have even more reason to never stop playing. We’re very excited to announce [more] PSP titles and minis will be available on the PS Vita Store, with many more coming soon,” Sony said in a post on the official PlayStation Blog. Among today’s new PSP titles are Cho Aniki Zero, Strikers 1945, Valhalla Knights 2, and Tom Clancy’s Rainboy Six: Vegas.

The minis are Aero Racer, Age of Zombies, Blast Off, Dynogems, Echoes, and Vempire. That’s quite a slate of titles for one day. In addition, Sony promised no fewer than 29 more PSP games will be “coming soon” to the Vita, and nearly 40 other PlayStation mini games were also unveiled. So even though the Vita isn’t really a backward compatible system, Sony is showing that it does at least appreciate those who want to play previous-generation titles on it.

[via PlayStation Blog]

Sony promises big PSP, mini onslaught for PlayStation Vita is written by Mark Raby & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.