Amazon Buys Woot, Will We Now See An AmazonOff?

As of today Amazon has officially purchased Woot but don't hold your breathe on seeing an AmazonOff anytime soon. The deal which was formally announced on Woot's company blog leaves Woot as an autonomous unit and not part of the main Amazon.com shopping experience so its highly unlikely we'll see any cross integration marketing strategies and ideas like the all to popular WootOff. (sorry folks)

In a note to Woot employees, founder Matt Rutledge utilizes his all to familiar hilarity and promises that the site and the how its ran will likely go unchanged.

"We plan to continue to run Woot the way we have always run Woot - with a wall of ideas and a dartboard. From a practical point of view, it will be as if we are simply adding one person to the organizational hierarchy, except that one person will just happen to be a billion-dollar company that could buy and sell each and every one of you like you were office furniture. Nevertheless, don’t worry that our culture will suddenly take a leap forward and become cutting-edge. We’re still going to be the same old bottom-feeders our customers and readers have come to know and love, and each and every one of their pre-written insult macros will still be just as valid in a week, two weeks, or even next year. For Woot, our vision remains the same: somehow earning a living on snarky commentary and junk."

For the most part there was little information that was actually disclosed but it does make for some funny reading, hey this is Woot after-all.

The Texas-based company was originally launched way back in 2004 as a single site and has since grow not only in size but in popularity. Today hundreds of thousands of deal seekers flock to the site. One of the more popular deals is the Woot-bag-o-crap, Two for Tuesdays and of course the aforementioned WootOff.

Lawyers Gearing Up For Possible iPhone 4 Class-Action Lawsuit

Are you one of the 1.7 million new iPhone 4 owners, and are you experiencing the dreaded "grip of death"? If so there may be a lawsuit for that!

"If you recently purchased the new iPhone and have experienced poor reception quality, dropped calls and weak signals, we would like to hear from you," said the law firm Kershaw Cutter & Ratinoff in a recent statement.

Kershaw Cutter & Ratinoff is best known for filing a massice class action lawsuit against Facebook and Zynga, the social gaming company behind Farmville and Mafia Wars, over allegedly misleading third-party offers.

According to their recent statements the firm is actively searching for individuals that might be unhappy with their recently purchased iPhone 4. If they find enough individuals to make a lawsuit work the firm has promised it will head the action and seek adequate compensation from Apple.

So if you are one of the many out there that have complained about problems with your iPhone and you want to try and sign up for a future class action you can contact KCR directly.

Hulu Announces Hulu Plus $10 A Month Subscription Service

No longer do we need to sit back and listen to the rumors and speculation as today the fine folks over at Hulu announced the limited launch of Hulu Plus.

The new ad-supported premium subscription service will run users $9.99 per month and includes HD access to full season runs of shows from Fox, ABC, and NBC. Hulu Plus will work across a multitude of platforms, including PCs, the iPad, iPhone, some Samsung Blu-ray players, and soon, the PlayStation 3. The service is currently only available to select Hulu members who have been invited — you can request an invite here.

hint: If you want to get an invite a little faster follow Hulu on Twitter ( www.twitter.com/hulu) or “Like” Hulu on Facebook ( www.facebook.com/hulu), they have suggested that they will be handing out invites to a random set if friends from each of those groups from time to time over the coming months.

Microsoft Talks Windows 8

Windows 7 may still be in its infancy but that's not stopping Microsoft from moving forward with their next operating system. Appropriately dubbed Windows 8 the new OS is supposedly slated for real sometime in 2012 (when Windows 7 will have become 3 years and 2 service packs old).

Over the past week several confidential presentations were leaked to the public domain. The presentations were intended to be released to Microsoft's industry partners to outline the ideas in store for the developers. Several sites including Microsoft Kitchen successfully nabbed most of the slides and are now keeping them online for all to see. The information outlined on the slides is mostly high-level and conceptual, likely dating back to even before Windows 7's retail release – but it's still very interesting to see what Microsoft's goals and inspirations are for Windows 8.

Big goals for Windows 8

Instant On - Microsoft wants to cut down on the wait time between powering on and the user being able to access the information or functionality of the OS. This includes both faster boot times and faster resume from sleep. Many of the newly designed operating systems out there are adding in features that considerably cut boots times and there are several instant boot OSs that provide limited functionality. MS however wants to give you access to the full operating system as quickly as possible.

Facial Recognition - Microsoft has proposed that all new PCs are equipped with several new sensors including infrared proximity sensors, accelerometers, ambient-light detectors and web-cameras. These will let PCs detect its user nearby, verify the user's identity by face-recognition, and load-up (or unlock) the user's account on the PC. Later, the user can just walk away from the PC, and it will standby, hibernate, shut-down, or simply lock the PC and turn-off the display, to save power.

Moving to the cloud - MS wants to move more of the OS, and presumably the users information to cloud based computing. Much like Jolicloud, the Chrome OS or any of the new lightweight operating systems we see being developed Microsoft wants to move user account including things like a user's bookmarks and Windows settings onto servers stored via Microsoft. This could lead greater access to user information even from other people's computers.

App Store - Another major development would be the adoption of a major software and content delivery platform along the lines of Apple Store or Valve Steam, where users will be able to buy content and proprietary software. For now the medium is referred to as the "Windows Store".

Conclusion

These are just a few of the improvements MS is looking at and again these are conceptual ideas so there is no guarantee that we'll actually see any of them built into the final release of the new system. Sadly looking at most of these "major improvements" you'll see that they are ideas and features already built into several operating systems out there. The only thing I see that is new and somewhat revolutionary would be the implementation of facial recognition. This would be a nice feature around the office, at home or in any other environment where you have multiple users. It would be nice being able to simple walk up to the PC and have it wake to each individual users own personal settings.

Harry Potter Theme Park Has Hidden Easter Eggs

Planning a visit to the newly opened Wizarding World of Harry Potter theme park at Universal Studios Orlando? Then keep your eyes peeled and you may just find a few hidden treasures.

According to Wired.com the castle corridors of Hogwarts and the shop windows of Hogsmeade aren’t just filled with magical-looking junk from a Universal prop house. The attractions designers have scattered Harry Potter Easter eggs throughout the set, filling the park with little details designed to reward observant fans.

So far more than 10 Harry Potter Easter eggs have been spotted in various locations around the attraction and who knows how many more may be waiting to be found. So if you are planning a trip out there look carefully and maybe you'll find a few the guys over at Wired missed.

iPhone 4 Teardown Shows Off the Goods

Undoubtedly blessed by the hands of early deliveries the gang over at iFixit have managed to get their geeky little hands on the new iPhone 4 and have promptly begun tearing it asunder. As of post time the teardown is still ongoing, but here's what we know so far:

Powering this little beast is a 1GHz ARM Cortex A8 processor with 512MB of RAM (confirming earlier rumors). The screen is made with chemically-strengthened Gorilla Glass for a more enduring scratch resistant front panel. Their 32 GB iPhone has an actual capacity of 29.06 GB. There is a rear-facing 5 MP camera with 720p video at 30 FPS, tap to focus feature, and LED flash.

Beyond all that is just a bunch of flashy sexiness that will have all you Apple Fanboys drooling!

As always the iFixit crew are posting several great pics as they tear apart the iPhone and of course they are providing a well written step-by-step guide so you too can tear apart your iPhone. So go check it out at: iFixit iPhone 4 Teardown

Internet Kill Switch Back In The News

Legislation originally introduced early last year by Senators John Rockefeller and Olympia Snowe has reared its ugly head again. This time spearheaded by Sen. Joseph Lieberman.

Dubbed the "Internet Kill Switch" Lieberman's new Cybersecurity bill could potentially give the president the power to switch off internet services in the event of an immediate threat. The Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, or. S3480, would create an Office of Cyber Policy in the White House with a director accountable to the public who would lead all federal cyberspace efforts and devise national cyberspace strategy. A National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications within the Department of Homeland Security, also led by a director accountable to the public, would enforce cybersecurity policies throughout the government and the private sector. The bill would also establish a public/private partnership to set national cyber security priorities and improve national cyber security defenses.

In addition to the creation of the National Center for Cybersecurity and Communications (NCCC) the bill adds provision that would effectively allow the disconnection of several sectors of the civilian infrastructure including parts of the Internet that runs the electric grid, the telecommunications grid and the transportation gtid in the event of attack.

According to transcripts from CNN's State of the union Sen. Joseph Lieberman feels the government "Needs the capacity to disconnect the American Internet from all traffic coming in from another foreign country" stating we are "constantly being probed by nation states, by some terrorist groups, by organized criminal gangs."

Lieberman feels there is a need for the government to protect itself and its citizens should a war or organized attack occurs. Sadly (and yes this is a US senator) he compares the US to China stating "Right now, China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in a case of war. We need to have that here, too."

On Sunday Lieberman dismissed the idea that the new bill would give the president access to an Internet kill switch as "misinformation." What misinformation you might ask? Lieberman feels confident that even though the government has the power it "never take over -- the government should never take over the Internet."

Yeah right we all believe that the government will never do that. History has shown us otherwise! To me its sickening that Lieberman, a sitting US senator, can sit there and compare us to China. Sure we need to "protect" the government but saying that this bill is good for the people sounds pure communistic to me. The private sector has the right to shut down their networks in case of attack, the government does not need the power to be able to interject.

As I mentioned in last years post "New Bill Would Give Obama An Internet Kill Switch" the wide sweeping power this legislation could give is utterly scary. It could be enacted in the event of almost any perceived threat, real, imagined or otherwise.

Apple iPhone iOS 4.0 Released Today

You may not be able to get your hands on the new iPhone 4 until Thursday, but that doesn't mean you have to wait to checkout Apple's new iOS 4 operating system. As of 10am PST Apple officially released the latest version of the iPhone operating system for download for those of you that own the iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS, and second- and third-generation iPod Touch models. First gen owners are sadly out of luck.

The the UI hasn’t changed too much since the release of the first firmware, but Apple has made more than 100 improvements to the basic functionality and support for the mobile operating system, and several major improvement including the much anticipated addition of multitasking.

iOS 4 is free for all compatible devices, and can be downloaded via iTunes 9.2 or later.

For more details on features checkout the official Apple IOS4 update page.

Toshiba Libretto W100 High Priced Dual Screen Sexiness

In celebration of the 25th anniversary of the company's laptop business, Toshiba introduced three new portable devices - the Portégé R700, the AC100, and the sexy new dual touchscreen Libretto W100.

Touted as he world's first dual touchscreen device to run Windows 7, the ultra portable 7.95" by 4.84" by 1.2" inch Libretto weighs just 1,8lbs and feratures dual 17.8cm (7") 1024 x 600-resolution screens. Powering the W100 is a 1.2GHz Intel Pentium U5400 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 64GB SSD and of course Windows 7 Home Premium. For connectivity the W100 features a 802.11 b/g/n WiFi card and Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR5. There is also a 1-megapixel HD Webcam with facial recognition a USB port and built-in memory reader.

For your typing needs there are four virtual keyboard modes simple, thumb and 10-key, plus a quick-launch button all with haptic technology—which offers a sort of tactile feedback that makes typing feel more authentic — as well as a virtual touchpad.

Toshiba is calling the Libretto W100 a "concept PC," however the company is actually planning to bring it to market sometime in August. The price is reportedly going to be a rather high $1,099 with only a limited number available.

For more details checkout the full Toshiba press release and for more images checkout the Libretto W100 set on Flickr

Futuremark Lords of Overclocking 2010 Competition

Starting today and running four weeks to July 18 the Futuremark Lords of Overclocking contest features overclocking enthusiasts from Europe, Asia and the Americas. The goal is to achieve the highest 3DMark06 results utilizing MSI motherboards and their choice of commercially available components.

The contest is divided into three regions - Americas; Europe and Africa and Asia Pacific -region. Entries are separated into these regions according to submitting IP address. There is no limit to number of entries, so you can run the tests, tweak your systems and try as many times as you want to win!

Entry period runs from June 21st (11 am GMT) to July 18th, divided into four weekly periods. To enter just submit your 3DMark06 score to Futuremark ORB. Login or register to ORB to submit your contact details to win prizes.

The grand prize, awarded to the top two contestants across the whole contest period in each region is a trip to Taipei with paid travel and hotel for the winner and one friend/teammate to compete in MOA 2010 Grand Final. This prize is personal and non-transferable. If any highest scoring contestant elects not to participate, this award passes to the next eligible contestant. Weekly prizes are awarded to the highest scoring contestants in the region during that week. Lucky draw prizes are drawn weekly among all contestants who submitted a valid result to the contest. Each contestant is only eligible to win one prize (grand prize or weekly).

The prize pool includes MSI Big Bang XPOWER and P55-GD85 motherboards, MSI N470GTX-M2D12 and R5770 Hawk VGA cards, Antec P193 Advance Super Mid Tower and Twelve Hundred gaming cases, Antec CP-1000 Watt and TP-750 Watt power supplies, Kingston HyperX T1 DDR3 and HyperX DDR3 LoVo memory modules, GlacialTech F101 CPU coolers and Enermax Apollish cooling fans. Two overall grand prize winners from each region will also win the chance to participate in MSI’s Master Overclocking Arena 2010 event in Taipei, Taiwan in August.

For further details of the Lords of Overclocking 2010 competition please visit http://www.futuremark.com/lords

YouTube Now Features Online Video Editor

Google introduced a rather exciting new feature for you wanna viral video makers, a new online video editor for YouTube.The new feature can be found via TestTube, a section of the site designed for YouTube engineers and developers to test out new tools and get feedback on how they’re doing.

With this new editor, you can:

• Combine multiple videos you’ve uploaded to create a new longer video
• Trim the beginning and/or ending of your videos
• Add soundtracks from our AudioSwap library of tens of thousands of songs
• Create new videos without worrying about file formats and publish them to YouTube with one click—no upload necessary

The online editor certainly isn't as powerful as some of the free down-loadable software but it doesn't provided users access to a quick, user friendly way to edit their clips before posting them. For more details checkout the Official Google Blog.

AVAST Antivirus Warns Consumers To Beware Of "America's Most Wanted" Websites

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Get $10 Free For Amazon Video On Demand

Amazon is offering up a new promotion for anyone on Twitter that is willing to follow @AmazonVideo. In a tweet posted yesterday evening Amazon posted the details of the new promotion:

Follow us between now and 6/30; get $10 off select TV shows at @amazonvideo. See Amazon.com for full terms & conditions.

Tweeters already following Amazon Video simply need to reply to the tweet and they'll reciprocate the follow so you so you can send them a DM asking for a "follow-us code."

You can find the full terms of the promotion on the Amazon website. The terms page has a list of all of the shows you can use the credit towards which include:

• Heroes
• House
• Curious George
• The Real Housewives of New York City
• The Office
• 30 Rock
• Battlestar Galactica

iPhone 4 Hot Enough To Melt Down Apple And AT&T

Even the biggest Apple dissident can't deny the fact that Apple's iPhone is one of the hottest items on the market today. Earlier this week they rebuffed that statement when they began offering pre-sale orders of the latest incarnation the iPhone 4. The mere act of offering the phones for pre-sale was enough to drag both companies sites to a crawl!

In statements released today both companies acknowledging and apologized for yesterday's iPhone 4 pre-order meltdown. According to AT&T spokesperson Seth Bloom, pre-order sales for the iPhone 4 were 10 times higher than the first day of pre-orders for the iPhone 3GS last summer. Apple has also publicly acknowledged that things did not go smoothly, apologizing to would-be customers who weren't able to get an order in before the iPhone 4 sold out.

While persistent problems plagued both the AT&T and Apple sites and ordering was less than smooth enough U.S. customers got through to exhaust the supplies Apple and AT&T had set aside for delivery June 24.

Late Tuesday, Apple replaced the iPhone 4's June 24 delivery promise with "Ships: By July 2nd."

Apple reported they took more than 600,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4 yesterday. This was the "largest number of pre-orders Apple has ever taken in a single day and was far higher than we anticipated, resulting in many order and approval system malfunctions," forcing many customers to abandon their attempts to complete an order.

It looks like all you Apple Fanboys (and girls) will just have to wait another week or two to get your hands on your new iPhone.

Not To Late To Join The Crysis 2 Beta Program

Electronic Arts officially relaunched the My Crysis website with a new design just in time for Crysis 2. The newly designed site features loads of Crysis 2 information as well as, and here is the exciting part, a chance to sign-up for early registrations for the upcoming Crysis 2 Beta Program.

Details on the beta program are a bit sketchy but what we do know is in order to participate gamers will need to register for a username with the new website. Unfortunately, there's no information in regards to platforms, the beta's overall size and contents, or when the program/demo will actually launch. Still, there's the blurb announcing the beta before the original site officially went offline:

Looking to get your hands on Crysis 2 early? Now is your chance! Early registrations will be tracked, and our first wave of users will have a chance to win a key as and when the Crysis 2 beta takes place. All you need to do is sign up early and one day in the near future you may be receiving a mail with an invite to the game.

More iPad Security Issues Exposed

Goatse Security, the security group which exposed hundreds of thousand of iPad users emails last week, has revealed yet another potentially more serious security flaw found on the iPad.

Responding to AT&T's claims that the security researchers at Goatse Security were "malicious hackers who attacked AT&T's servers", Goatse researcher Escher Auernheimer has issued a new warning to all iPad users out there. Warning them that AT&T and Apple are doing too little to protect them from harm.

According to the post Apple has failed to fix two flaws, one of which could be used to determine an iPad owners location. The second flaw is an exploit in Apple's Safari browser which was originally published back in March. Apparently the company has failed to be patched on the iPad. This flaw combined with the ICC-ID data taken last week could be used to perform targeted attacks that could not only leave users at risk but nay major organization that has an iPad attached to their network.

The exploit uses an integer overflow exploit, which gives access to proxy connections over banned ports (behind corporate and government firewalls!), allowing a hacker full access to the machine for spamming, exploit payloads, password bruteforce attacks and other undesirables.

Goatse warns if Apple and AT&T do not patch this flaw and fast, the iPad could soon become the tool of choice for attacking corporate networks. All you would have to do is gain access to the network itself (which can be accomplished via a variety of techniques either social engineering or otherwise) and then jump on and carry out attacks -- bypassing all firewall protections.

Given some of the names shown on the ICC-IDs list handed out last week the potential here is very serious. We not only saw heads of major corporations but several big names in the government sector. You are talking about some serious ramifications and the potential to directly affect national security should hackers be able to utilize this exploit!

Let People Schedule Ahead of Time

This is a guest post by Darryl Vicks

DVR’s have become very popular in millions of households. A DVR is a digital video recorder that consumers can use to record movies and television shows from their television sets. I use my DVR with directtv Oregonand I love how well the DVR performs.

The DVR is separate from the television and looks like a square box. There are both HDTV DVR’s and regular DVR’s to record programming. HDTV DVR’s only differ in that they typically have a much clearer picture than regular DVR’s do.

A DVR works by having people select the programs that they want to watch later; users can fast forward, rewind, and pause the programs that have been recorded. There is a remote that works with the box and a guide will be displayed on the screen. The user then uses the arrow to click on a program that they want to watch. After this, they click DVR and set up the recording. People can view their schedule and record one recording while watching another.

Users can use the auto tune function to automatically change their TV to the channel that they want at a certain time. They can also use the DVR to set timers so that they can be reminded to watch certain programs during the week. The DVR typically lets people schedule recording up to a week in advance.

Malware Found On More Devices With Flash Memory

Following recent reports of malware being detected on the internal memory cards of gadgets like the Samsung Wave, HTC Magic and other similar devices Olympus Japan has issued a warning to customers who bought the new Stylus Tough 6010 shockproof and waterproof camera, informing them that their new cameras may be infected.

According to the advisory from Olympus Japan, just over 1700 units are at risk - and customers can check if their camera is carrying the malware by checking their serial number via a widget on Olympus's website (sadly, it's only available in Japanese).

As with most the cases of infection the malicious code, or worm,  is an auto-run hiding on the camera's internal memory. The auto-run itself does not affect the camera in any way and can not activate on the Stylus Tough camera, but it will attempt to infect your Windows PC should the camera be connected via the USB cord. Its currently unclear if the worm will try to infect external memory cards or not, I would say no considering the nature of the beast. However user that think they may be infected should not only check the camera but any external cards just in case.

AT&T Confirms iPad User Info Exposed

According to Gawker the emails of over 114,000 iPad 3G owners were accidentally exposed over AT&T's network. The hackers were able to gather emails of every AT&T customer who purchased an iPad 3G before Monday June 7, 2010.

The specific information exposed in the breach included subscribers' email addresses, coupled with an authentication ID used to authenticate the subscriber on AT&T's network, known as the ICC-ID. ICC-ID stands for integrated circuit card identifier and is used to identify the SIM cards that associate a mobile device with a particular subscriber.

AT&T was already aware of the breach and had since closed the security hole but the victims have been unaware, until the news was leaked via Gawker. “The issue has escalated to the highest levels of the company and was corrected by Tuesday; and we have essentially turned off the feature that provided the e-mail addresses,” AT&T said in a statement.

AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel confirmed the breach to CNET stating "AT&T was informed by a business customer on Monday of the potential exposure of their iPad ICC IDS. The only information that can be derived from the ICC IDS is the e-mail address attached to that device. We are continuing to investigate and will inform all customers whose e-mail addresses and ICC IDS may have been obtained," he said. "At this point, there is no evidence that any other customer information was shared."

The subscriber data was obtained by a group calling itself Goatse Security.

Goatse Security obtained its data through a script on AT&T's website, accessible to anyone on the internet. When provided with an ICC-ID as part of an HTTP request, the script would return the associated email address, in what was apparently intended to be an AJAX-style response within a Web application. The security researchers were able to guess a large section of ICC IDs by looking at known iPad 3G ICC IDs, either their own ICC-IDs or some of those unwittingly posted on the internet.

According to the Gawker article there were some rather big names who's addresses were leaked and may now be vulnerable. Among those are several military based email addresses from all branches of the military, NASA, the Department of Homeland security and several devices registered to the domain of DARPA, the advanced research division of the Department of Defense. There are also several major names in the tech sector, finance and media.

While there may not be much information leaked and hackers may not be able to do much with what little was leaked the fact that the info and email addresses are out in the wild might be a reason for concern. I'm sure they all have security measures in place to avoid phishing scams, spam and or other malicious emails but that doesn't mean hackers won't be trying and we all know it doesn't take much to slip something by.

Microsoft Puts An End To Bing CashBack

Sad news today for online shoppers as Microsoft has announced plans to put and end to their popular online rebate program.

Bing CashBack was an MS related service which offered users cash back for buying products after searching for them and purchasing through Bing.com links. The program, which launched back in May 2008, attracted millions of customers who shopped the more than 1,000 merchant partners who offered cash back to shoppers.

According to a blog post byYusuf Mehdi, senior vice president for Microsoft's Online Audience Business Group, Bing's CashBack program was part of a part of a “test-and-learn” mentality, whereas the company could constantly experiment and learn from their results. As such they felt the program "did not see the broad adoption that we [Microsoft] had hoped for."

The program will be retiring July 30, 2010, though you will have a year to redeem any cashback you have earned through your cashback account consistent with the cashback Terms and Conditions. In addition, Microsoft will provide 12 months of customer support to ensure a smooth transition.

For more information please see the cashback FAQ.

Sad to see the program go, I've found several great deals through the BCB program including many through eBay.  Even though the BCB program is ending MS did leave the door open to a possible replacement. Stating, "we have some ideas for making it easy to get a broader array of products and offers into Bing." There wasn't much elaboration as to what that may be but we'll be keeping an eye out to see!

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock Announced

Activision, the producers of the popular Guitar Hero series have officially announced the latest incarnation of the popular game. The latest installment, version 6 to be exact, of one of the world's most popular music game series will be known as Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock and will feature the biggest on-disc selection of rock music ever in a Guitar Hero game and Quickplay+, which invites gamers to rock out to any of the on-disc or over 500 songs in the Guitar Hero Music Library.

"Guitar Hero has set the standard for music based gaming and with Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock's all-new Quest Mode, robust and authentic set list, over-the-top challenges and rock-inspired new hardware, we are once again bringing the soul and energy of rock n' roll to fans around the world," said David Haddad, Chief Operating Officer, Guitar Hero.

In Quest Mode, using any combination of instruments, players will embark on a larger-than-life, epic rock journey from the stage of CBGBs, the infamous punk-rock club in New York City, to the molten lava fields of rock treachery as eight Guitar Hero characters transform into rock warriors that must join together to use their unique, game-changing powers to help the Demi-God of Rock take down "The Beast" and save rock n' roll.

"The world is a boring place. Come with me, and enter a world populated of Demi-Gods and Beasts. Transform from an everyday person and become the savior of rock and roll," said Gene Simmons of KISS. "It was an honor and privilege to narrate Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock, even more so, to voice the Demi God. From the God of Thunder to the Demi-God, how cool is that..."

The first songs off of Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock's new set list which will eventually feature more than 90 tracks are:

• AFI – "Dancing Through Sunday"
• Avenged Sevenfold – "Bat Country"
• Black Sabbath – "Children Of The Grave"
• Buzzcocks – "What Do I Get?"
• Children Of Bodom – "If You Want Peace... Prepare For War"
• The Cure – "Fascination Street"
• Def Leppard – "Pour Some Sugar On Me (Live)"
• Dethklok – "Bloodlines"
• DragonForce – "Fury of the Storm"
• Drowning Pool – "Bodies"
• Foo Fighters – "No Way Back"
• Foreigner – "Feels Like The First Time"
• Jane's Addiction – "Been Caught Stealing"
• KISS – "Love Gun"
• Megadeth – "Sudden Death"
• Metallica & Ozzy Osbourne – "Paranoid (Live)"
• Muse – "Uprising"
• My Chemical Romance – "I'm Not Okay (I Promise)"
• Queen – "Bohemian Rhapsody"
• Rammstein – "Waidmanns Heil"
• The Rolling Stones – "Stray Cat Blues"
• Silversun Pickups – "There's No Secrets This Year"
• Slayer – "Chemical Warfare"
• ZZ Top – "Sharp Dressed Man (Live)"

Guitar Hero: Warriors of Rock will be released for the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii.

For more info checkout the full Activision press release or visit GuitarHero.com

Tech Giants Back Linux Form Linaro

Six major tech companies have decided to join forces to boost Linux forming Linaro - a Software foundations for an open digital world.

Linaro, backed by mega hitters ARM, Freescale, IBM, Samsung, ST-Ericsson and Texas Instruments, is a none profit organizations whose goal is to bring together the open source community and the electronics industry to work on key projects. The main focus will be delivering great tools utilizing Linux-based distributions such as Android, LiMo, MeeGo, Ubuntu and webOS.

Linaro will work with the growing number of Linux distributions to create regular releases of optimized tools and foundation software that can be used widely by the industry, increasing compatibility across semiconductors from multiple suppliers. As a result, Linaro's resources and open source solutions will allow device manufacturers to speed up development time, improve performance and reduce engineering time spent on non-differentiating, low-level software. Linux distributions, open source and proprietary software projects will benefit from Linaro's investment, with more stable code becoming widely available as a common base for innovation.

To further its mission, Linaro aims to unite the open source engineering resources within its member firms with the broad open source community. Linaro engineers, leveraging their extensive embedded knowledge, will contribute to a wide range of open source projects covering areas such as tools, kernel, graphics and boot code. Linaro intends to work in partnership with the Linux Foundation to align on core operating principles.

The company's first release is planned for November 2010 and will provide performance optimizations for SoCs based on the ARM CortexTM-A processor family.

Read more in the full Linaro Press Release

Powermat Charges Up Promotion Through MyTown

Leading Location-based App to Offer Real Life Rewards to Consumers for In-App Activity

Powermat, the worldwide leader in wireless charging, is charging up Booyah’s MyTown location-based gaming experience for more than two million players. Powermat is rewarding consumers for interacting with the brand in MyTown, checking in on-location. In addition to virtual rewards, the campaign will include a first-of-its kind sweepstakes promotion through the “Ultimate Charging Station” page.

During the Powermat campaign, running through June 13, 2010, MyTown players who “check-in” to a Powermat retailer, such as Best Buy, Bed Bath and Beyond, or Target, will unlock Powermat branded virtual items. The players will learn about available wireless charging products and will be able to enter into the sweepstakes to win Powermat’s Wireless Charging System for iPhone® by physically interacting with Powermat products in-store.

“Partnering with MyTown offers us a unique opportunity to engage millions of technology savvy consumers with a unique cutting-edge forum,” said Beth Harrison Meyer, Vice President of Global Marketing for Powermat. “Powermat is all about using technology to enhance consumer convenience. With MyTown, we are reaching the most tech savvy consumers right where they live. What could be more convenient than that?”

Powermat launched its premiere product line in the US in October 2009 and sold in excess of 750,000 Powermat products in the two months after its debut with most stores experiencing severe out-of-stock shortages late in the season. As the first wireless charging system to be made available at mass market retail, Powermat created the category that it now dominates. For the consumer, it’s as easy as plugging the Powermat into the wall once, at only one access point; enabling his/her device with a Powermat receiver, and then dropping and charging. Its simplicity and innovation eliminates the tangle of wires, ensures that devices stay charged without the constant hassle of plugging and unplugging and frees consumers from the angst of running on empty.

MyTown recently surpassed two million registered users and is expanding at a rate of more than 100,000 per week. The Powermat campaign led by Maxus Global (www.maxusglobal.com) and M80 (www.m80im.com), in partnership with appssavvy (www.appssavvy.com), Booyah’s direct sales team partner, includes the first sweepstakes to be integrated within MyTown.

“Powermat, pioneering wireless charging for consumers, is an innovator in consumer tech and we are delighted to have them on board,” said Keith Lee, CEO of Booyah. “Savvy marketers are beginning to see the potential of our vision to blend the real and virtual worlds.”

Unique to Booyah is their ability to blur the lines between the real and digital worlds. With extensive experience in the traditional gaming industry and cutting-edge mobile technologies, Booyah is poised to create new forms of entertainment for the masses and revolutionize the consumer experience. In the massively popular app MyTown users can check in at real-world locations using GPS features to unlock rewards. Players can purchase, upgrade and collect rent on their properties, enjoying MyTown ownership of their favorite real-life places.

More MAC Malware Found In The Wild

MAC antivirus vendor Intego has issued a warning about a new piece of malware being distributed primarily in freely available screen saver programs. This new spyware application dubbed OSX/OpinionSpy can scan files, record user activity and send stolen data to remote servers.

OSX/OpinionSpy is installed by a number of applications and screen savers that are distributed on sites such as MacUpdate, VersionTracker and Softpedia. The spyware itself is not contained in these applications, but is downloaded during the installation process. This shows the need for an up-to-date anti-malware program with a real-time scanner that can detect this malware when it is downloaded by the original application’s installer.

OSX/OpinionSpy performs the following actions:

• This application, which has no interface, runs as root (it requests an administrator’s password on installation) with full rights to access and change any file on the infected user’s computer.
• If for any reason the application stops running, it is re-launched via launchd, the system-wide application and service launching facility.
• It opens an HTTP backdoor using port 8254.
• It scans all accessible volumes, analyzing files, and using a great deal of CPU time. It is not clear what data it copies and sends to its servers, but it scans files on both local and network volumes, potentially opening up large numbers of confidential files on a network to intrusion.
• It analyzes packets entering and leaving the infected Mac over a local network, analyzing data coming from and being sent to other computers. One infected Mac can therefore collect a great deal of data from different computers on a local network, such as in a business or school.
• It injects code, without user intervention, into Safari, Firefox and iChat, and copies personal data from these applications. Code injection is a form of behavior similar to that of a virus, and this malware “infects” applications when they are running to be able to carry out its operations. (It infects the applications’ code in the Mac’s memory, and does not infect the actual applications’ files on the user’s hard disk.)
• It regularly sends data, in encrypted form, to a number of servers using ports 80 and 443. It sends data to these servers about files it has scanned locally, and also sends e-mail addresses, iChat message headers and URLs, as well as other data. This data may include personal data, such as user names, passwords, credit card numbers, web browser bookmarks, history and much more.
• Given the type of data that it collects, the company behind this spyware can store detailed records of users, their habits, their contacts, their location and much more.
• The application can be upgraded automatically, with new features added, with no user intervention, and without the user being aware of this. It occasionally asks users for information, via the display of dialogs, such as their name, or asks them to fill out surveys.
• In some cases, computers with this spyware installed no longer work correctly after a certain period of time; it is necessary to force-reboot such Macs.
• If a user deletes the original application or screen saver that installed this spyware, the spyware itself will remain installed and continue to operate.

The amount and type of data the malware collects makes it a very high risk piece of spyware. Not only does it collect sensitive data such as user names, passwords and credit card numbers, but it opens a backdoor that could led to further attacks and or more malicious code being injected. While Intego suggest the distribution is limited, the company warns Mac users to pay careful attention to which software they download and install. 

Shattered Horizon Free This Weekend Via Steam

Futuremark Games Studio today announced that Shattered Horizon™, their PC exclusive multiplayer first-person shooter, will be free to play and 50 percent off to buy on Steam this weekend. Shattered Horizon’s innovative zero gravity gameplay has recently been enhanced by the Firepower weapons pack which added eight new weapons and three new grenades encouraging different styles of play and providing the opportunity for new team tactics.

"Shattered Horizon continues to evolve as we add new features requested by the community," said Jaakko Haapasalo, head of Futuremark Games Studio. "This weekend PC gamers can play the complete game for free and experience the new Firepower weapons. And those who wish to continue playing can buy Shattered Horizon for just $9.99 / €9.99."

In Shattered Horizon, a catastrophic explosion on the Moon has filled near-Earth space with billions of tons of rocky debris. Teams of players fight in zero gravity to control the limited supplies that mean the difference between survival and death in the cold of space.

Shattered Horizon is available from Steam and the official website: http://www.shatteredhorizon.com/buynow/

Source: Futuremark Press Release

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 Arrives

NVIDIA this week announced its latest addition to the DirectX 11 compliant GeForce 400 series, the GeForce GTX 465. Based on the 40 nm GF100 GPU, the GTX 465 is a drop in performance from the flagship the GTX 470. To achieve the lower performance numbers NVIDIA slashed some of the components off the GTX 470 reference design.

The new GTX 465 drops five streaming multiprocessors (SMs), leaving a CUDA core count of 352, and a memory bus width of 256-bit. The GTX 460 reference design features 1 GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at a slightly slower 1603 MHz compared to the GTX 470 at 1674 MHz. Both cards feature graphics clock speeds of 607 MHz and processor clock speeds of 1215 MHz

Additional features for the GTX 465 include:

• 11 dedicated tessellation engines
• Support for Blu-ray 3D, with GPU decoding for enhanced 3D movie playback and 3D Internet streaming
• NVIDIA SLI(R), the most popular multi-GPU solution for gamers
• NVIDIA PhysX(R) which brings dynamic realism to PC gaming
• Next-generation CUDA architecture, with support for CUDA C/C++, DirectCompute, & OpenCL

The GeForce GTX 465 is available for purchase now from add-in-card companies including ASUS, Colorful, EVGA, Galaxy, Gigabyte, Gainward, MSI, Palit, PNY, Zotac and others, with a target price of $279.

Geforce GTX 465 Reviews

• Hardware Canucks - EVGA GeForce GTX 465 1GB Superclocked Review
• HardwareHeaven - Zotac GeForce GTX 465 Graphics Card Review
• Tweaktown - Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 GC Video Card
• HotHardware - NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 Debut: EVGA, ZOTAC
• PCPer - Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 1GB Review - NVIDIA lowers Fermi cost of entry
• Legit Reviews - EVGA and Galaxy GeForce GTX 465 SLI Video Card Review
• TechARP - The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 465 Tech Report

More reading:

• ZOTAC Expands GeForce GTX 400 Series Lineup
• MSI Announces N465GTX Graphics Card
• EVGA Announces GeForce GTX 465 Series Graphics Cards

Metered Data Plans, Tethering Coming To AT&T June 7th

AT&T has announced that the company will be moving away from their unlimited data plans to a new metered pricing plan for its smartphones and iPads. This comes as bad news for high end users that will now see a cap of 2 GBs/mo for $25 rather than the existing unlimited plan for $30.

The new AT&T plans are setup as follows:

• DataPlus. Provides 200 megabytes (MB) of data – for example, enough to send/receive 1,000 emails (no attachments), plus send/receive 150 emails with attachments, plus view 400 Web pages, plus post 50 photos on social media sites, plus watch 20 minutes of streaming video – for just $15 per month.**  This plan, which can save customers up to 50 percent off their wireless data charges, is designed for people who primarily like to surf the web, send email and use social networking apps. If customers exceed 200 MB in a monthly billing cycle, they will receive an additional 200 MB of data usage for $15 for use in the cycle.  Currently, 65 percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 200 MB of data per month on average.
• DataPro. Provides 2 gigabytes (GB) of data – for example, enough to send/receive 10,000 emails (no attachments), plus send/receive 1,500 emails with attachments, plus view 4,000 Web pages, plus post 500 photos to social media sites, plus watch 200 minutes of streaming video – for $25 per month.**  Should a customer exceed 2 GB during a billing cycle, they will receive an additional 1 GB of data for $10 for use in the cycle.  Currently, 98 percent of AT&T smartphone customers use less than 2 GB of data a month on average.

Additional the company offered a new tethering plan, allowing smartphone owners with a compatible phone to use their phones as a data modem. Smartphone customers – including iPhone customers – who choose the DataPro plan have the option to add tethering for an additional $20 per month. Tethering lets customers use their smartphones as a modem to provide a broadband connection for laptop computers, netbooks or other computing devices. Tethering for iPhones will be available when Apple releases iPhone OS 4 this summer.

With the new wireless data plans, pricing for a smartphone voice and data bundle now starts at just $54.99 per month for an individual plan, or $24.99 per month for an additional line on a FamilyTalk plan, $15 per month less than the price of the previous entry level bundle.

For new iPad customers, the $25 per month 2 GB plan will replace the existing $29.99 unlimited plan. iPad customers will continue to pre-pay for their wireless data plan and no contract is required. Existing iPad customers who have the $29.99 per month unlimited plan can keep that plan or switch to the new $25 per month plan with 2 GB of data.

These new metered plans will not affect customers that are currently under contract. They will only take affect should a user upgrade to a new phone, and/or sign a new contract.

Update:  According to the AT&T Facebook page folks on the current $30 smartphone data plan will be able to keep that plan when upgrading hardware. You won't be able to add the tethering option as tethering specifically requires the DataPro plan. But you will be able to keep your unlimited data plan.

Source: AT&T