Nvidia Shield arrives in June for $349, pre-orders open now (update)

Nvidia surprised many of us by announcing a dedicated gaming handheld during the company's CES press conference earlier this year. Codenamed Project Shield, the device went from idea to prototype in less than a year. Now, Nvidia is all set to take the final step into commercial product, announcing that pre-orders for Shieldwill open on May 20 at $349, with shipments expected reach customer’s hands by the end of June.

Based on the new Tegra 4 mobile chip, also announced at CES, the device comes in the shape of a console gaming controller and includes a 5-inch capacitive touch screen with 1,280x720 resolution. Tegra’s four CPU cores and 72 graphics cores support a maximum resolution of 3200 x 2000 pixels, however, so games can be played at full HD on a TV. Other specs include 16GB of storage, mini-HDMI, micro-USB 2.0, GPS, Bluetooth 3.0, a microSD card slot for storage expansion, 802.11n Wi-Fi, integrated speakers, and a headphone jack.

In terms of software the Shield will ship with an un-skinned, "pure" version of Android 4.2.1 Jelly Bean, and as such it should be able to receive any updates Google releases in the future without much delay.

Nvidia’s Tegrazone will be the main storefront for Shield-optimized games -- currently there’s 76 of them including Max Payne and Grand Theft Auto: Vice City. Naturally, the Google Play store will also be available for a vast catalog of apps and games that aren’t featured on Nvidia’s storefront.

In addition to running Android games, the Shield can also stream games from your GeForce-equipped PC to the controller via Wi-Fi, where you can play them directly on the small screen or output to a TV. Paired with Steam’s Big Screen mode this means you can navigate your library and launch games without moving back to your PC.

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CW to launch Apple TV's first network television app

More and more network channels are embracing the power of streaming content. According to a report from Deadline, the CW is jumping further into the game by bringing its shows to Apple TV users. This move makes it the first network to have its programming available directly on the device without going through another service like Hulu or Netflix.

CW did not announce an exact release date for its Apple TV application, but it did say it would hit the market in the coming weeks. The network is responsible for shows like 90210, Gossip Girl, and the Vampire Diaries. These programs, along with everything else it offers, will be available for streaming from within the application when it launches.

The app will be very similar to the one CW offers on Xbox 360 and mobile devices. It will be ad supported, and no authentication with a cable provider will be necessary, which means anyone can take advantage of the programs offered. All shows will be available on the app the day after they air on television, which is pretty standard in the cable industry.

This is a move that could be followed by other networks. HBO Go is available on a bunch of devices, including the iPhone and iPad, but Apple TV is a notable exception. Of course, HBO Go does require an active cable subscription, which makes sense being a premium channel, while CW is not. HBO president Eric Kessler said the channel would get to Apple TV at some point, but it appears that CW is going to get there first.

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Intel CEO passed on the opportunity to power the original iPhone

Outgoing Intel CEO Paul Otellini recently revealed a missed opportunity that could have drastically altered the company’s prospects for the better. During a recent interview with The Atlantic, Otellini said he passed up on an opportunity to have Intel silicon inside the original iPhone. As the saying goes, hindsight is 20 / 20.

Otellini said there was a chip that Apple was interested in and they wanted to pay a certain price for it – not a nickel more. At the end of the day, the price was below Intel’s forecasted cost and it wasn’t something they could make up on volume. As such, Intel ended up not winning it or passing on it, depending on how you want to view it.

Of course, this was all well before the first iPhone launched so nobody knew the impact it would have on the mobile phone industry at the time. Apple ultimately went with an ARM-based chip and well, the rest is history.

To make matters even worse, Otellini said the forecasted cost of the chip Apple was interested in was wrong and the volume ended up being 100x what anyone thought. He told the publication his gut instinct was to say yes but the data at the time suggested otherwise. As you could imagine, the executive expressed visible remorse when telling the story.

Who knows how different the iPhone would have been with an Intel chip inside but one thing is for sure: Intel’s bottom line would certainly look better today.

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Congress pressures Google on Glass privacy concerns

As I’ve said before, Google is garnering a ton of press from Glass – a product that isn’t slated for release until sometime in 2014. While the majority of attention has been positive, some have called into question what could be described as pressing privacy issues.

The topic has since gone from casual discussion to a demand for answers as a Congressional privacy group recently requested that Google CEO Larry Page address several lingering privacy concerns regarding the technology. The bi-partisan group sent Page a letter containing eight questions with a deadline of June 14 to respond.

In it, the group asks how Google plans to prevent unintentional collection of data from users and non-users without consent. The second question is a multi-part question that deals with protecting the privacy of those not wearing Glass. Next up is a question designed to clarify facial recognition features and determine limits that Google will place on it to avoid invading privacy.

The next five questions simply dig deeper into Google’s plans for privacy. I’ll spare you for the sake of brevity but if you’re interested in reading through the entire letter, it can be viewed simply by clicking here.

In an interview with The New York Times on the matter, Google’s director of product management for Glass Steve Lee said they have consistently said they won’t add new face recognition features unless there are strong privacy protections in place. What’s more, he said they are thinking very carefully about how they design Glass because new technology always raises new issues.

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Google I/O 2013 Roundup: Learn about all the company's updates and announcements

Google live streamed their 3-hour I/O opening keynote today. If you couldn't tune in earlier scroll down below for a complete roundup with the most important announcements and links to in depth coverage. If you'd like to reprise the entire keynote, you can watch it here.

The new Google Maps

Google Maps has been rebuilt from the ground up. Gone is the sidebar and most of the user interface elements to make way for a beautiful edge to edge map that’s tailored to your location and personal preferences. For instance, the map automatically highlights your work, home, and other places of interest based on past searches as well as GMail and Google+ user data. Everything appears in Google Now-style information cards.

The tiled bitmaps have also been replaced by vector graphics to improve overall performance. There are lots of new ground-level data, including a wholesale integration of Google Earth, with virtual tours of famous landmarks and more. Check out the video above for a complete overview of the redesigned app.

Sign up for a preview of the new Google Maps for desktop here. Android and iOS versions will come later.

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Search

Continuing to build upon its “Knowledge Graph”, Google says search is evolving into new experiences, which the company is cataloguing as Answer, Converse, and Anticipate. The first you’re likely already familiar with -- ask about the weather, sports results or a number of other things and you’ll get an answer right on your device. The important news here is that new sources and languages are being added.

Moving on to converse, Google says it is working on natural language technology to let you ask questions in a conversational manner. Ask Google things like “What are my trip plans” or “photos of my trip to New Zealand” and get an answer. This already exists on iOS and Android, but now the same is coming to laptops and desktops via Chrome using “hot wording”. That means you don’t have to click a button, just say “okay google” and ask.

Lastly, Anticipate is essentially Google Now, which brings up information that’s deemed relevant to you even before you search for it. The company is introducing a few new features though, like the ability to set voice reminders, and cards for public transit commute times, music albums, TV shows books and video games.

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Google Plus Photos

Photos have always been an important part of Google+ and now the company’s social network is getting better at helping you edit and store them. Free storage will be expanded from 5GB to 15GB so you can save more photos at full resolution. Since organizing, enhancing and sharing is so labor intensive Google is putting its data centers at your disposal by automating tasks such as finding duplicates, blurry or badly exposed photos.

An auto enhance button will take care of things like tonal distribution, skin softening, noise reduction, structure, white balance, and vignetting. Most impressively, it will help you pick out the best pictures based on a handful of criteria, like who’s on the picture (close friends of family) and if they’re smiling. You can also create animations or panoramic shots from a bunch of photos when Google detects they are part of the same series.

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Hangouts

Google’s heavily rumored unified messaging service was officially announced as Hangouts. The new service takes its name from one of Google Plus’s most popular features and will bring Google Talk, Google Messenger, and the original Video Hangouts together into a single web and mobile app for Android and iOS.

Users will be presented with a list of recent one-to-one and group chats. You can see people’s avatars as they join in and a “…” animation pop over it as they are typing. Everything -- including text and images -- is stored in the cloud and synched everywhere so you can go back to any point in the conversation -- this can be turned off. The standout feature is group video, though. Up to ten people can join and unlike Skype it costs nothing.

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Google Plus

Google’s social network will debut a new design later today that does away with the long list of posts in favor of a three column-wide grid of cards -- similar to Google+ on iPad and Android tablets. The site is supposed of feel more dynamic and app-like. Menus slide in and out, while clicking on a card triggers a flip animation to reveal user comments or reveal related items. On that note, Google is adding hashtags to Google+, but with a twist: image recognition and other analysis tools will automatically tag things like landmarks or sports-related posts.

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Chrome

Less than five years since setting out to “make the web better” with its own browser, Google’s Chrome now counts 750 million active monthly users and is available across a range of devices. The company quotes 25% and 50% performance boosts over the last year on desktop and mobile, respectively, while talking about other open and royalty-free initiatives aimed at improving images (webP) and video (VP9) on the web.

The company showed off Chrome’s ability to sync devices together with a slot-car type, racing game demo where the track itself extended across five different devices -- iOS included. Also, free Chromebook Pixels for Google I/O atendees... Big applause, people like expensive stuff better when it's free.

Samsung Galaxy S4 running stock Android

Anyone who’s interested in the latest smartphone hardware but prefer a stock Android experience will certainly appreciate this. Google will soon begin selling an unlocked version of Samsung’s flagship device, ditching TouchWiz for a “pure” Android install that’s set to receive updates as soon as Google pushes them out the door. It’ll also ship with an unlocked boot loader. Arriving June 26 for $649 off-contract, the device runs on both T-Mobile and AT&T's LTE networks and comes with 16GB of storage.

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Google Play Music All Access

Rumors have been floating around for months and now Google has made it official. Today the company is launching its own subscription music service to take on the likes of Spotify and Rdio -- all while beating Apple’s rumored subscription service to the punch. The service is priced at $9.99 a month, or $7.99 if you join before June 30. There’s also a 30-day free trial. Users will be able to stream “millions of songs” from Android devices or a web browser. There was no mention of which markets it will be available on but our bet is U.S. only initially.

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Android Studio

Google took the wraps off an integrated development environment for building apps called Android Studio. Based on IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition, the new suite is a replacement for Eclipse and should make developers “faster and more productive.” Google didn’t delve into many details but mentioned things like changes to code displayed in real-time within the development console, optimization and development tips, revenue graphs, referral tracking, beta-tester control and usage metrics pulled from analytics.

Google Play game services

As rumored, Google also announced a game centric addition to Google Play services -- aptly called Google Play game services. It’s a full-featured gaming service akin to Game Center on iOS and Games Hub on Windows Phone that includes achievements, cloud saves, matchmaking, and leaderboards.

The key difference here is that Google Play game services is cross-platform, meaning developers can implement these features on Android games, as well as iOS and web-based games.

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Google Play services

Google kicked off its conference with a round of updates to the Google Play services framework. Building upon the Google Maps API released a few weeks ago, the company is rolling out three new location centric APIs: fused location provider, geofencing, and activity. The first makes location faster to acquire while using less than 1% of battery per hour. Geofencing enables creating virtual fences around geographic areas to trigger actions when a user arrives or leaves places, and activity recognition uses accelerometer data to figure out when the user is walking, cycling, or driving. It’s said to be battery efficient and works without turning on the GPS.

Other additions include expanding Google+ Sign In to a cross-platform sing-on service, and updates to Google Cloud Messaging, which lets developers easily send data between their apps and Google servers. The latter will no allow things like persistent connections between app servers and Google, and sync notifications across devices, “dismiss a notification on your handset, and it goes away on your tablet too.”

What to expect? (rumors ahead of the show)

It’ll be hard to top last year’s skydiving stunt, and the company has already set expectations lower saying it plans to focus on software developers, not products. But we’re still keeping our eyes peeled to see if some of the recent rumors pan out. Among them are a major update to Android, Google Play Games, a refreshed Nexus 7, a Google Maps redesign, a unified messaging platform, Google Glass updates and more.

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Asus' new lineup of Z87 Haswell motherboards revealed

Asus is showing off its new line of Z87-based Haswell motherboards, and one of the more immediate updates you’ll notice is the fit and finish. Asus has made moderate adjustments to the ROG and TUF product families, but has completely retooled the ‘Deluxe’ line, ditching the two-toned blue scheme for a polished gold-anodized and black that finally matches its moniker.

A full suite of boards spanning Mini-ITX, microATX, and ATX form factors will be available, including a new addition to the Republic of Gamers line, the Maximus VI Hero. The Hero is a slimmed down version of the Extreme, with a much more reasonable MSRP of around $200, yet still featuring most of the same functionalities.

The entire ROG lineup features SupremeFX integrated audio, which now includes software called Sonic Radar. Sonic Radar maps directional sounds onto a two-dimensional onscreen overlay. It can be attuned to different in-game sounds such as footsteps or gunfire, and then display which direction they came from.

The rugged Sabertooth board has been further bolstered with dust plugs for the ports, adjustable ducting around the CPU socket, and a reinforced back plate for heavy CPU coolers that covers nearly the whole backside of the board to combat warping and assist with cooling. If something more “practical” is your style, the new TUF Gryphon microATX mobo mirrors the board-level components and features of the Sabertooth, but leaves out the thermal armor, back plate, and additional accessories.

Some notable changes have been made to Asus’ UEFI as well, which will now summarize any adjustments selected by the user before applying them and exiting. Another tweak sharpens the interface with adjusted scaling and fonts, and adds a new favorites tab that can be populated with frequently used functions, along with text notes saved by the user. 

As for the less superficial changes to Z87 motherboards, details are limited because of non-disclosure agreements in place until the official launch of Haswell in June. Some of the expected changes in the Haswell chipset include a switch to all 6Gbps SATA ports, abandonment of PCI, triple display support, and TRIM for RAID0 configurations.

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Bill Gates is once again the richest person in the world

Bill Gates is once again the richest man in the world thanks to the recent success of the company he helped create. The 57-year-old Microsoft co-founder surpassed Mexican investor Carlos Slim yesterday to reclaim the title according to the Blooomberg Billionaires Index as stock value in Microsoft hit a five-year high twice this week.

Microsoft is riding a wave of success that has seen shares climb 28 percent so far this year. Gates owns a substantial amount of stock in Microsoft which as of yesterday, put his net worth at $72.7 billion – an increase of 15 percent year to date. Keep in mind that Gates has already donated some $28 billion of his fortune to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, a charity that he runs with fellow billionaire Warren Buffett.

Interestingly enough, however, less than 25 percent of his total fortune is held in shares of Microsoft. As of late April, the NASQAD revealed Gates held more than 400 million shares in the company.

It’s the first time Gates has been the wealthiest man on the planet since 2007 when he lost the title to Slim. The 73-year-old investor has watched share value in America Movil – the largest wireless provider in the Americas - slide 14 percent thus far this year. Mexico’s Congress recently passed a law designed to regulate the telecom industry which could force Slim to either break up the company or charge lower rates for service.

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