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iPhone 5 Announcement

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Apple announced the much anticipated iPhone 5 today which is loaded up with plenty of new features along with a new thinner and lighter design. Overall, I think Apple really has brought the iPhone up to par with what most consumers were expecting or hoping to see in this latest revamp. So here’s a rundown of the major design changes and features to get you up-to-speed.

iPhone5 Black

iPhone5 White

Design Changes

The iPhone 5 is 18% thinner and 20% lighter and now features a larger retina display of 4″,  which is up from the previous 3.5″.The extra screen real estate is nice and it isn’t too overpowering, this extra space will allow for a new row of icons, which I think is pretty nice. The screen is also wide enough to support a 16:9 aspect ratio. Touch sensors are now built in the display which is what allows the new phone to be much thinner.  The glass back has been replaced by mostly metal now which will prevent the phone from cracking if you accidentally drop it. The dock connector and SIM card are also much smaller and the dock connector no longer requires that you have it facing towards the front, it will work both ways.

Power

With the new A6 chip the iPhone 5 will be much faster, up to about 2x as fast. Graphics also get an overhaul here and will deliver a faster, smoother experience when gaming. The battery life promises to be strong by offering 8 hours of browsing, 8 hours of talk, and 10 hours of video playback.

Camera

The new camera will allow you to take panoramic images and will feature the ability to record video in 1080p HD. You will also be able to use the front facing camera for FaceTime, which you will be able to initiate over your cellular network now instead of just Wi-Fi.

Sound

The iPhone has an additional microphone and the speakers get a bit of a touch up by adding more magnets which are supposed to improve audio quality. The phone will support wideband to make voices sound more natural. The speakers have also been designed to take up much less space and offer better noise canceling.

iOS 6

iOS 6 will come already installed on the new device and will feature FaceTime over 3G, Apple Maps, and new updates to Siri, just to name a few.

Network Support

iPhone 5 will support 4G LTE networks as well and claims that battery performance will still be solid despite the power demands of 4G. Wi-Fi performance will also be much better on the iPhone 5 with the addition of 802.11n wireless connectivity.

Price

The iPhone 5 will be priced as follows:

16GB – $199

32GB – $299

64GB – $399

The iPhone 5 will be available in two different colors, black and slate or white and silver.

For complete details on the new iPhone you can head to Apple’s official site.

 

World Of Warcraft Screenshots Contain User Info

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When you want to take a screenshot in World of Warcraft you can press the print screen button. However, players are starting to complain that the game is placing watermarks on their screenshots that contain User ID’s, timestamps, and server IP addresses. The watermarks may have been there since 2008.

World Of Warcraft Logo

PCGamer believes that the watermarks were in place so Blizzard could track down players who are using private servers and breaking the terms of service.

So what’s the big deal? Well, basically this information could be used to track other players down allowing someone to stalk you or try to get you tangled up in a phishing scam.

So what can you do? You can remove the watermark by changing your screenshot quality to the highest setting. You can change your screenshots to this setting by typing: /console SET screenshotQuality “10″.

Blizzard has not officially replied to any questions about the watermarks but I imagine they will have to address the issue sooner or later.

GoDaddy Deals with Major Outage

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GoDaddy, a domain registrar and Web Hosting group, had a major outage today that started earlier this morning. The outages actually impacted this website (geekwithenvy.com) along with millions of others for nearly 7 + hours leaving visitors unable to access any content. Internal email with Godaddy was also severely impacted. Even as recently as 8:16PM PST GoDaddy is still trying to correct major issues.

A member of the hacktivist group Anonymous claimed responsibility of outage. While there is speculation the attack was due to GoDaddy’s stance on (“SOPA”) Stop Online Piracy Act, a Twitter user claiming to be a part of the Anonymous collective, AnonymousOwn3r said: “I’m not anti go daddy, you guys will [understand] because i did this attack .”

“I’m taking GoDaddy down [because] well i’d like to test how the cyber-security is safe and for more reasons that i can not talk now.”

This impacted businesses around the globe including our site (GWE). This has us any many others strongly considering going with other hosting and domain registrar service firms as it points to a major oversight in security. Among other controversial issues with GoDaddy this may be the biggest impact to the company yet.

GoDaddy has since stated that they were not hacked but rather, suffered an major internal issue. I understand that many web hosting services have their issues, but GoDaddy seems to more than most including the inability to fix ongoing server issues. I hope that GoDaddy can refocus and tighten up their company practices and correct major internal issues.

If we do decide to change our hosting platform it will not be an overnight transition, it could become a lengthy process. We will keep you informed on everything that unfolds over the next few weeks. Those of you who support our  growing site are GREATLY appreciated, your comments,contributions,emails,likes, and tweets are what drive us forward.

Thank  You.

 

 

Steam Gets Ready for Big Picture Beta

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SteamLogoWebValve will soon begin public testing this week of “Big Picture”, a new mode that will optimize Steam for you HDTV.  Big Picture mode will offer support for controllers making feel more like your PC is in console mode, which will be nice when playing on your television.

This is something that Steam customers have been asking for for quite some time and I can understand why. It’s not impossible to get things up and running on your HDTV now, but it can be a bit time consuming getting everything to work the way you want, especially the first time you set everything up.

Making sure your audio system is hooked up right and ensuring your surround sound is actually working properly, checking refresh rates and changing screen resolutions, and having to work with different input devices to navigate, swap, and play games can get a bit tedious. Big Picture mode should smooth all of this out and make it easier to bring your power house gaming rig to your HDTV with ease. At least we hope so, as this is only going to be a beta release. I would gladly try it out and provide feedback as I think this is actually a really cool idea.

The crew at Valve are constantly hard at work trying to improve their existing products as well as looking into the future and trying to capture and create the next big ideas for gaming. This is one of my favorite companies to watch just for those reasons alone.

 

Kindle Fire HD

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KindleFire8Web

Amazon has recently shown off their new kindle fire HD which will be available in three different models. There is a 8.9″ model with 4G capabilities, an 8.9″ model with out 4G, and a new 7″ model. The new lineup features faster processors and higher resolution screens. The 8.9″ model has a 1920×1200 HD display and a 1.5Ghz dual core CPU. The 7″ model offers up a max resolution of 1280×800 and a 1.2 GHz dual core CPU.  All models utilize anti-glare technology and dual-band Wi-Fi antennas. Amazon notes that dual-band antennas are not being used in other tablets and that it increases download speed by 40%.

KindleHD8WebSide

The Kindle Fire HD will also feature a PowerVR 3D graphics core that promises to keep HD games looking great and running smooth. The 7″ and the 8.9″ Wi-Fi only model will be available with two different storage sizes, 16GB and 32GB. The 8.9″ 4G model will be available in 32GB and 64GB.

Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G owners will be able to get 250MB per month for 12 months for a one time payment of $49.99. This will also include 20GB of Cloud Drive storage. Here is the price line up for Amazon’s new hardware:

Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ 4G LTE Wireless 32GB $499 64GB $599.
Kindle Fire HD 8.9″ Wi-Fi only 16GB $299 32GB $369.
Kindle Fire HD 7″ 16GB $199 32GB $249.

I think that overall this is a really nice tablet but what really makes this stand out from the crowd is the Amazon brand it self. Amazon is a brand that people trust and with the added benefits of an Amazon Prime membership, going with Kindle seems smart. It is also important to note that Amazon remains very dedicated to the Kindle as it is really Amazons primary focus and hardware counter part of it’s successful online business.

Here is the Amazon press conference about the new product line up from Amazon.