They ought to know. Flurry sources its data from somewhere in the vicinity of a billion devices. And sometimes statistics reveal more than meets the eye. Flurry went as far as to suggest that phablets are so insignificant in terms of user base that they don’t justify support.

What’s a phablet?

Before we get started, it’s necessary to establish where medium-sized phones end and phablets begin. According to Flurry’s parameters, which are more or less universally accepted, anything smaller than 5 inches is a phone, while anything bigger than 5 but smaller than 7 inches is a phablet.

From Flurry:

1. Small phones (e.g., most Blackberries), screens 3.5” or less
2. Medium phones (e.g., iPhone), between 3.5” – 4.9” screens
3. Phablets (e.g., Galaxy Note), 5.0” – 6.9” screens
4. Small tablets (e.g., Kindle Fire), 7.0” – 8.4” screens
5. Full-size tablets (e.g., the iPad), screens 8.5” or greater

For the most part, these definition are reasonable — until you come to Samsung’s Galaxy S4. With its massive (by medium-sized phone standards) 4.99-inch screen, it’s technically a “Medium” phone, even if the definitions only go to one decimal place. It looks more like a large phone than a mini tablet, but then the same could be said of most 5-inch models on the market. Thus far, the 5.5-inch Galaxy Note 2 is the biggest phablet that money can buy, at least in the U.S.

But when you get beyond 5 inches, things look dramatically different. There’s no mistaking a Galaxy Note or Galaxy Note 2 when you see one. They are big enough to make putting them in a pocket a challenge, and they’re good for Web browsing. The balance between convenience and usability is extremely delicate — which is why we have yet to see a model in the 6.0-inch – 6.9-inch range.

At the present time, the only phablet models on the market are the Samsung Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 2, the HTC Droid DNA, and the LG Intuition. The screen sizes of the latter two are precisely 5 inches, while the Galaxy Note and Galaxy Note 2 have screen sizes of 5.3 and 5.5 inches, respectively.

How insignificant is “insignificant”?

The phablet statistics that Flurry released are fairly dismal. Phablets account for 2 percent of all device models, 3 percent of active users and 3 percent of sessions. Medium phones, in contrast, account for 69 percent of all device models, 72 percent of active users and 76 percent of sessions. Thus far, phablets have not made much of a splash.

That phablets have failed to gain traction is not all that surprising — first and foremost, there is the matter of choice. You can count the current-generation high-end phablet models on one hand. While they all meet the technical definition, the only really adventurous models when it comes to screen size are the two from Samsung, which has concentrated its marketing pretty squarely on its flagship “medium-sized” Galaxy models.

Lack of choice is further compounded by carrier fragmentation. While the Galaxy Note 2 is available with all major carriers, its predecessor is available only with AT&T. The HTC Droid DNA and LG Intuition are only available with Verizon. If you’re not with Verizon, your phablet choices are rather limited. And, of course, there’s the lack of involvement of the world’s biggest smartphone manufacturer, Apple. A plus-sized iPhone would certainly have an impact on these figures.

Yet another issue with phablets is their age, or lack of it. The first major phablet was the Galaxy Note, which debuted in November 2011. So, they’ve been around for less than a 18 months — an eternity in the early days of the smartphone wars — but not that long nowadays, where novelty has worn thin and most people have been locked into two-year contracts.

What will it take?

While the cards are stacked against the phablet, it’s not beyond the realm of possibility that the market will ultimately prove Flurry wrong. Certainly, the manufacturers haven’t given up hope. At present a number of 5.5-inch models are in the pipeline from the likes of Sony, Lenovo and LG, and those will be dwarfed by Samsung’s upcoming 5.9-inch Galaxy Note 3. Chinese manufacturer Huawei has a 6.2-inch model in the works, but whether it makes its way Stateside remains to be seen.

For phablets to take off they need to be seen. People have to become used to them and manufacturers have to start differentiating them from medium-sized models. When it comes to browsing, bigger screens offer tremendous advantages, but the larger case size should be capitalized on as well. If nothing else, they have room for bigger batteries; the only real constraint is the size of the average pocket. The Galaxy Note 3 may well prove to be too big, but those waters need to be tested.

Getting phablets into more hands is a huge part of the equation. I doubt that they’ll ever rival medium-sized phones in terms of user base, but it’s possible for manufacturers to carve out a significant niche for the larger form factor. It would take a hugely popular model and no small measure of the unfriendly rivalry that has driven Apple and Samsung to the top of their games. At present, nothing like this is coming out of the Android community, but that kind of dynamic could develop if Apple became involved.

Back to stats and recommendations

Flurry certainly established that phablets represent a trifling percentage of the devices in use today. Does that justify developers ignoring the larger form factor? As an iPhone 5 user, I often find myself with Galaxy S3 envy. While the iPhone’s screen handles light browsing and occasional reading, it’s truly dreadful for heavier work. It’s too small even for putting the finishing touches on a document or spreadsheet. In contrast, the S3 is just big enough to make such tasks possible. The S4 is bigger still, but half an inch past that and you can do a good deal more, especially with a stylus.

This year marks the first time in the history of the Internet that the majority of Web users will be mobile-only. If this trend continues, then the space for larger-sized devices is likely to grow.

For developers, the in-between size presents something of a challenge, but it’s worth noting that the Galaxy S4 is closer in size to the Galaxy Note 2 than it is to the iPhone 5. Does it really take that much extra work for a developer to add support for phablet screen dimensions in phone apps, or to rejigger the layout of a tablet app so that it can function on a smaller screen? Developing apps for phablets alone would be a waste of time; maintaining support for different screen sizes and functionalities is not.

Adding a mere 0.01 inches to the screen size of the Galaxy would make it a phablet. With that point in mind, either Flurry’s statements are a little premature, or the cut-off point between medium-sized phones and phablets is a little silly.

Image: Wikipedia

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The PS4 is one of two, possibly three, next-generation consoles that are set to hit the market before the end of the year. By piecing together information from Sony’s various announcements, we can gain a reasonably good understanding of what Kaz Hirai and company have in store for us.

Specifications

For Sony fans, the updated specifications are both good and bad news. The good news is that the company is switching to an x86-based architecture. The bad news is that means the PS4 will be the first PlayStation that’s not backwards compatible. But while it won’t play legacy games directly, Sony has a workaround in store that should satisfy most people. More about that later.

At this stage, it’s unclear how Sony plans to deliver the approximately 2 teraFLOPs of graphical processing power (1.843 teraFLOPS at an 800Mhz clock speed, to be precise) that the PS4 is rumored to pack. The CPU is likely to be an AMD APU, which features an onboard GPU, but as at least one pundit has pointed out, AMD’s flagship APU chip only manages a ho-hum 700 GFLOPs. That means that AMD either has a monster of a chip in the works for Sony that ramps up graphics performance by nearly 300 percent, or that there will be some sort of discreet graphics processing. However, it’s worth pointing out that a major refresh of the AMD processor line is well overdue, so an all-in-one processor is definitely not out of the question.

The memory is where things really get interesting. Sony is using GDDR5 “unified memory” — 8 GB of it to be precise. While 8 GB of RAM is more or less standard for current-generation PCs, the memory itself is usually DDR3, which is quite a bit slower. One finds GDDR5 on discreet graphics cards, but most high-end cards top out at around 2 GB — a precious few go up to 3GB.

That amount of memory would be overkill for graphics alone, but the memory won’t be used for graphics alone. It will be doing everything. I’m guessing that Sony has taken this tack for practical reasons: RAM is cheaper than ever and excess memory can help with future-proofing. It also allows a certain level of multitasking. Up until now, console users haven’t really had any need to multitask. Now they might. If Sony incorporates multitasking functionality, don’t expect the laissez-faire arrangement that Windows and OSX users enjoy. It would be more about running multiple services at the same time. Think social networks, downloads, video and voice. It takes a fair bit of memory to simultaneously run those types of services and a graphically intensive game.

The Blu-ray drive is still there, which should come as no surprise considering that Blu-ray was one of Sony’s pet projects. The company has said that the drive will be approximately three times faster than the drive found on the PS3. As of yet, there’ve been no major announcements regarding on-board storage. Though Sony has said that the PS4 will ship with a large hard disk, it’s unclear what that translates to in terms of capacity.

The Controller

On the surface, the DualShock 4 looks a lot like the DualShock controllers of yore, but a closer look reveals that there are some rather big changes.

On the top of the controller, many of the changes aesthetic and/or ergonomic alterations: The analog sticks now have a slightly different surface, the D-pad has been given a PS Vita-esque makeover. The controller looks a little bit larger, a little squarer and a little easier to hold. It’s lost the familiar “Start” and “Select” buttons and gained “Share” and “Options” buttons. Losing “Select” makes sense; it was seldom used. Presumably “Options” will take the place of “Start.” More on the “Share” button later. The most significant change is a large rectangle of seemingly dead space, which is where you’ll find the touch pad.

At the back of the controller, above the Micro-USB port, is a light bar which changes color to indicate different in-game statuses. It also interacts with a 3D camera, which Sony is calling the PlayStation 4 Eye. The PS4 Eye it is able to track the controller’s motion via the light bar and sense depth, which paves the way for motion and possibly even gesture-based gaming. The controller also features a six-axis sensor, a speaker and a headphone jack, which more than likely also supports a microphone.

The controller also features a “Power” button, which is strangely absent from all of the images that Sony has released. That leads me to suspect that it could be hiding somewhere at the back of the controller. Since Sony has been sticking an extra power button at the back of its TV remotes for a while now, this wouldn’t be all that surprising. The “Power” button allows users to power down or suspend their system.

Social Gaming

The aforementioned “Share” button is used to incorporate one of the PS4′s more interesting features. The innocuous little piece of rubber involves more than just Facebook or Twitter or the PlayStation Network for that matter.

At its most basic level, “Share” will let users post screenshots and video (easy, thanks to the PS4’s always-on video compression) to their friends, more or less what one would expect. At its most complicated level, it looks a lot more like Remote Assistance. It offers a few options for struggling gamers including an over-the-shoulder mode that allows friends to watch each other’s gameplay and comment in real-time. If the backseat driver fails to get you through a level, you can actually hand over control of the game to him or her. Remember, though, that the PlayStation Network has had a few hiccups in the past, so it remains to be seen whether it will be able to handle the load of all these extra features.

For Developers

The real benefit of Sony switching to x86 is that it makes things much easier for programmers. Difficulties in programming for and porting games to the PS3 is part of what made its game library so limited. But the switch to x86 is significant for another reason: It marks a departure from older consoles, since it’s basically a PC with an operating system that is totally focused on entertainment. According to Ars Technica, the development environment will be Windows-7 based and “fully integrated with Visual Studio 2010 and 2012.”

The effect that this has on the marketplace will be interesting to watch. At this stage we can assume that Microsoft’s next-generation Xbox will have very similar architecture, so preparing a title for multiple platforms should be a whole lot easier. The simplified development process could also mean that some of the publishers who’ve shifted their focus away from PCs will become a little more PC-friendly.

Assorted Conjecture

Sony’s early showcasing of the PS4 has put it in an interesting strategic position. As Microsoft continues to keep the successor to the Xbox 360 under wraps, not-so-pleasant rumors have started to surface. At best it resembles a particularly ugly presidential campaign.

At this stage, we don’t really know whether Microsoft plans to make its games single-system only. We do know that games on the PS4 won’t be locked into a single machine. This doesn’t mean that Sony will allow games to run on multiple systems at the same time, it just means that when someone’s finished, they’ll be able to pass the game on or install it on a new system if they suffer equipment failure. Given Microsoft’s about-face to the backlash to a similar policy for Microsoft Office, its position could very well change.

Another controversial policy attached to Microsoft’s new console is that it will require a constant Internet connection. Last month, Sony unequivocally said the PS4 will be able to operate in offline mode. While the majority of console users would have an Internet connection, many still do not, and a good number of gamers live in countries with severe bandwidth restrictions. A constant connection might help to reduce piracy and prevent users rooting their hardware, but it has the potential to alienate more than a few customers. That said, gamemakers will have the option to require users to register a game online in order to play.

At this stage, Sony seems to be doing everything right in the marketing department. As long as there are no ugly surprises further down the line, the PS4 should hit the market with a lot more positive buzz than its Redmond-based competition.

Legacy Support, of Sorts

As noted, the PS4 will not support legacy games, but all is not lost. Lasy July, Sony acquired the cloud gaming service Gaikai, which will stream games from previous consoles. The service will also allow users to try before they buy. This sounds hopeful, but it might be best to temper expectations: As of this writing, Gaikai isn’t expected to be up and running when the PS4 launches — at least not fully — and the ability to stream games doesn’t really help those with existing game collections. Unless Gaikai offers some sort of title-matching service, people are going to have to re-buy old games.

A Potential Windfall for AMD

At this stage, it’s no exaggeration to say that AMD has been facing some pretty hard times — “floundering” isn’t too strong of a word. While Intel has always maintained an edge in terms of performance, AMD has always offered better value for the money. With consoles stepping into PC territory, AMD’s pricing strategy could really pay off. Consoles typically sell for less than they cost to produce so cutting the fat isn’t just important, it’s crucial.

We expect to see at least two new consoles this year in the form of the PS4 and the next incarnation of the Xbox — Valve’s Steambox could be a third. If AMD’s chips were to find their way into one or both, the impact would be huge.

Pricing and Availability

While AMD has always managed to keep its processors affordable, the level of performance Sony is trumpeting isn’t likely to come cheap. Throw the memory and on-board storage into the mix and you have the makings of a fairly pricey system. So how much can we expect to pay? All kinds of figures have been floating around. According to the Asahi Shimbun, the launch price will be around a little more than $400 in the U.S. However, though Sony has tended to launch with higher prices, the lackluster performance of the PS3 may have given it the motivation to try a different approach.

The post Why Sony’s PlayStation 4 Could Change the Game appeared first on Dice News.

The Tegra 4 achieves this boost thanks to 72 custom GeForce GPU cores, which allow the chip to power higher-resolution displays at higher frame rates. It will be the first SoC to make use of ARM’s 1.9-GHz Cortex-A15 (Tegra 3 had a 1.7-GHz processor), which is the most advanced quad core CPU from ARM to date. The Tegra 4 also offers a fifth companion core, included to save power. The fifth core is another Cortex-A15.

One novel thing about the Tegra 4 is that it incorporates its own LTE radio. The optional Icera i500 chipset offers 100Mbps LTE (category 3) and should support 150-Mbps (category 4) in the not too distant future.

Where Will It Be?

There haven’t been any announcements regarding devices will use the SoC, but NVIDIA’s Project Shield portable gaming console is a likely candidate. Should Microsoft release a second-generation Surface, it might find its way in there, too. Other than that, as with its predecessor, the Tegra 4 is bound to find its way into lots of tablets and a smattering of smartphones.

Code-named “Kal-El,” the first-generation Tegra 4 offers a Quad ARM Cortex-A9 with a low-power companion core on 28-nm HPM architecture. It’s due out in the next couple of months. The next-generation chip, code-named “Logan,” is essentially the same but with an ARM Cortex-A15 MPCore and a low-power companion core.

At this stage, not much is known about the third version, code-named “Stark.” What details are available suggest that it will be a much more laptop-friendly platform. It will feature a 64-bit ARMv8, have a faster GPU core and offer a substantial speed improvement. Logan and Stark are rated at approximately 50 and 75 times the speed of Tegra 2, respectively.

What’s noteworthy here is that the Tegra 3 — which powers Google’s Nexus 7, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Yoga and Asus’s Transformer Pad Infinity, among other devices — was already a strong platform. All of the Tegra 4′s extra graphical processing power should allow it to achieve interesting things, especially in mobile gaming. Other indications of its gaming potential are its dual-channel memory and support for DirectX 11+, OpenGL 4.X and PhysX.

A year ago, I would have scoffed at the thought of an ARM-based laptop. Now, that possibility is looking increasingly more likely.

Image: NVIDIA

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To pull this off, Gigabyte blended a few technologies. Each Thunderbolt chip is able to output 2K worth of graphics which can be split over two standard 1080p monitors using a DisplayPort to Dual-DisplayPort adaptor that gives you a single 1920 x 1200 monitor running off a single Thunderbolt port. Do that twice and arrange the displays using Intel’s Collage and you end up with a single 3840 x 2400 display.

Obviously all of the adapters and cables don’t come cheap, but neither do a lot of video cards. Both the GA-Z77X-UP5 TH and GA-Z77X-UP4 TH motherboards have twin Thunderbolt ports.

Not all 4K arrays are equal and it’s worth pointing out that the setup is by no means suitable for anything that you consider graphically intensive. You can watch video or edit one hell of a spreadsheet, but that’s about it. What this does, though, is provide proof of concept for something that will get a lot more interesting as on-board graphics technology evolves. It also shows that the days of needing pricey graphics cards to power twin monitor setups are done and dusted.

Supposedly, USB 3.0 is getting a speed boost that should allow it to do much the same thing over cheaper cables. But it can’t do it now, which means Thunderbolt still has something up its sleeve.

Image: Gigabyte

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At first glance, the Stick-N-Find Bluetooth stickers don’t look like anything special but what they do is is pretty nifty, especially if you have trouble keeping track of things.

The Stick-N-Find stickers are a hot funding project on Indiegogo, where they’ve exceeded their $76,000 goal with 40 days to spare. Currently in pre-production, samples have been built and beta testing is underway.

The stickers are about the size of a dime and are nearly weightless. They can be attached to pretty much anything that has a flat surface. Once a sticker is secured to one of your treasures, you would use a corresponding app on your iOS or Android device, (don’t lose your phone!), to find the misplaced item within a 100-foot radius. The app will use a radar-style screen to indicate your proximity to the aforementioned keys, or remote, second phone, etc.

If being able to find lost doodads isn’t enough, the developers have added a couple of other useful features. The “Find It” option can be used with objects that are out of the 100 ft. area, allowing you to set up a notification for when the item comes back within range.

One terrific use for “Find It” is if you’ve forgotten what row you parked in at the mall, the app would be able to lead you to the general location of your car. Traveling? Finding your luggage on a crowded carousel could be a snap too.

The “Virtual Leash” feature lets you know when an object goes out of range. This option could be used to secure a wallet or a laptop that’s about to wander out of a coffee shop with a person who’s not you. It could also be helpful in keeping track of a wayward pet or possibly a toddler (the project page suggests putting them on kids’ shoes).

If everything goes according to plan, the final sample will be submitted to the FCC for certification in early January 2013. Mass production is scheduled for February and delivery to your hot little hands is anticipated for this coming March.

As someone who loses absolutely everything on an almost daily basis, Stick-N-Find seems like something I could get behind. If only they were small enough to help me find my glasses in the morning.

Related Links

• StickNFind [Indiegogo]

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The digital age has made pretty much made everything except music better. Back in the 80s, television came out of a heavy box with a tiny screen: a tiny, low-definition screen.

Today, I have a 56” monstrosity that takes up much less room. The picture is so great that I eschew DVDs in favor of Blu-rays because my eyes can no longer bear the sight of those grainy sub-1080p images. If you ever watch a classic movie on Blu-ray, you notice all kinds of imperfections that were not visible at the original resolution, and it’s beautiful how far we have come.

Few people will compromise when it comes to video, so why is it that so many of us are prepared to accept a lesser quality for music? Why is it that the world’s largest purveyor of digital music still deals mostly in 320kbps MP3s?

If the folks at Olive HD have their way, how we listen to music may change. The Olive ONE, which is currently up for funding on Indiegogo, is what many would deem an an “audio-file grade” media player. It allows people to play music of the same level of quality as its original studio recording and that means the way it was meant to sound.

It may seem that this idea is nothing new. There are other high definition media players on the market but what makes the Olive ONE special is the price point, the compatibility and its onboard software. Its onboard amplifiers are pretty good too.

A hard disk drive is not a standard option in the ONE; you can give it a terabyte for an extra $100. A hard disk will allow the ONE to act as your own music cloud, accessible from anywhere on the planet that has Internet access. The ONE does not have this functionality without a hard disk, but it will still collate and allow you to access all of the music that you have stored in machines on your home network. The quality of playback will of course depend on the quality of the files in question.

The folks at Olive HD have big designs for their ONE player. Should the funding round prove successful, they plan on releasing a range of add-ons, including modular speakers and lighting. There is also the possibility that the whole ONE unit will be customizable. If the device takes off, the open platform release should prove interesting.

The time is not just right for high definition digital music to go mainstream, it’s long overdue. Being able to buy music online is wonderful thing and 320kbps is better than tapes but there is a whole world of detail that gets chopped from a track in the name of compression. Once you have heard it, it’s hard to go back.

The $400 asking price seems reasonable and Olive HD has a good history with high-end media players. A peek under the case reveals some innovative electronics but the question is whether the public will be prepared to drop that much money on something they’ve never heard.

Whether the device is huge, or not, may matter little. The main attraction is that a private company has taken the initiative that the major electronics manufacturers have failed to seize and have managed to raise just under $48,000 of its $200,000 goal in just two days. There’s a very good chance that this player will actually be coming soon to a living room near you.

Specifications

Wireless HD docking station:

• Bluetooth 4.0: Connect to your favorite smartphones
• Dual-band Wi-Fi 802.11n
• Wi-Fi Direct^TM: Play music in HD quality from your smartphone
• Wi-Fi Certified Miracast^TM: Access the user interface and music on your TV.
• UPnP/DLNA: Play music from your Mac, PC or NAS
• Multi-room music streaming: Add ONE to each room and play the same or different songs
• Use the free iOS or Android app to control your ONE

Music Operating System:

• Smart: Using our patented SESSION technology Olive ONE learns from your listening habits. The more you play, the smarter it gets.
• Social: ONE integrates seamlessly into your favorite social networks. Post or tweet your favorite new music discovery with one simple touch of a button. Or rate, review and share your love for music with the Olive community.
• Open: If we reach critical mass (i.e. number of units) the ONE platform will be interesting to app developers and artists. We are working on a Software Development Kit so developers can deliver cool music apps. And we have designed an Open Music Platform that allows artists to bring you studio master quality recordings directly to you.

Audio technology:

• Best-in-class Burr-Brown 32-bit/384kHz Digital-Analog-Converter with amazing SNR of 112dB!
• Dual HD amplifiers for direct output to your speakers
• 24-bit DSP with our patented PRISM^TM technology that dynamically adapts the sound output to your brand and model speakers, as well as music genre and other acoustic parameters
• Dynamic compression technology for streaming music in full HD quality up to 24-bit/192kHz (depending on network quality)

Optional hard disk drive:

• Ultra-quiet 2.5” AV hard drive with up to 2TB stores a maximum of 6,000 albums in CD quality, or 20,000 HD tracks. Enjoy instant access without relying on your network or Mac/PC.
• Home Cloud Service: Access music stored on your ONE, anywhere in the world.

Image: Olive ONE [Indiegogo]

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You can’t accuse the developers of false modesty: They call their Sabre engine “the biggest breakthrough in propulsion since the jet engine.” If it manages to do everything that it’s been designed to do, they could turn out to be right.

The magic in the Sabre comes from a compressed helium cooling system that’s able to cool air entering the engine from a searing 1000°C to an icy -150°C in 1/100 of a second. The -150°C operating temperature allows the Sabre to run with much more power than conventional jet engines without overheating. While predicted speeds are all theoretical at this point, the company estimates its engine would allow a properly designed aircraft to reach 2,000 mph. That’s enough to reduce one of the most brutal long-haul routes, London to Sydney, to a comfortable 4.5 hours.

Though Reaction Engines isn’t the only company working on supersonic engines, its work is significant for another reason. In theory, it could allow passenger jets to go well beyond the 2,000 mph mark by leaving the atmosphere and traveling through space. Its research team has also suggested that the engines may be able to harvest oxygen from air at low altitudes in order to power higher speed flight.

It’s premature to speculate about how long it will take for the technology to find its way into the market. Once a production model is ready, the engine will face rigorous safety inspections and thousands of test flying hours before it can start paying passengers.

Image: The Telegraph

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Aside from the revelation a few days ago that Apple Maps turns out to be a good tool for getting yourself lost in Australia, things have been quiet on the Apple-embarrassment front lately. Personally, I found the service in Japan, where I’m based, to be acceptably accurate. But it’s nowhere near as accurate as the updated Google Maps.

To test the accuracy of each, I simply turned them both on and noted how close they came to pinpointing my actual location. They both showed me at the same point, which was roughly 10 meters from where I actually was, but I’m in a building with poor cell phone reception. Outdoors both found my exact whereabouts, but Google Maps was instantaneous where Apple’s still took a few seconds.

The real difference, though, was the level of detail. Japan is notoriously difficult for would-be foreign navigators. To start with, many streets have numbers instead of names, and the numbers are assigned in the order in which the streets were built. Plus, few have signs, which makes things all the more confusing. So most people navigate by landmarks: turn left two streets after the 7-11, etc. The lack of detail in Apple Maps makes it next to useless in this regard. You simply cannot tell if you’re on course or not.

In contrast, Google Maps shows pretty much every shop on a street, English in many cases. It even manages to pull an accurate address when you press on the location for a couple of seconds. Given the idiosyncratic nature of Japan’s address system, that’s no small feat.

Finally, there’s the turn-by-turn navigation. I migrated to Apple from Android, which already had turn-by-turn, but the navigation capability of my Android device (an aging Pantech) was terrible. It was simply too inaccurate to use. Google’s the new app has functioned perfectly. It doesn’t know all my shortcuts, but it gets me to and from work in rural Japan–precisely the sort of location that Apple Maps has struggled with in its brief and tumultuous existence.

The post Google’s New Maps Shows Apple How It’s Done appeared first on Dice News.

The Prague Mind Sports Festival, a game focused event that begins Dec. 1, is introducing an RFID-equipped, LED illuminated Scrabble board with a carbon fiber base.

Produced at a cost of some $30,000 the Scrabble board is designed to make what is arguably the world’s most famous word game even more social. The custom-built board can be read in 974 milliseconds, transmitting via unique software to online viewers who will watch the action in real time. To make the game really pop, the makers use nine RFID circuit boards and 225 RFID antennae, which read RFID-tagged tiles wherever they are on the board.

The carbon fiber base, which well may have contributed to the price tag, is a bit of a head-scratcher. Given the weight of the rest of the materials, the developers could have probably gone with a cheaper material. But then again, it does add to the futuristic look, and the visuals here are worth at least 30,000 words.

Image: Mind Sports International

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According to ABC News, Qari Yousuf Ahmedi, an official spokesman for the terrorist group, made the classic newbie e-mail user’s mistake when he forwarded a routine press release from another Taliban spokesman, using the carbon copy field instead of the blind carbon copy field for recipients’ e-mail addresses. As a result, he inadvertently revealed the e-mail addresses of everyone on the invitation list to each other.

As to the intelligence value of the e-mail addresses that were revealed, it would be fair to say that it would be questionable at best. A few unsavory individuals may be on the list, but most were journalists, plus a few politicians, activists, academics, and so on. So the mistake is more of a timely reminder of the power of BCC than it is enlightening—but that doesn’t make it any less amusing.

ABC News said that Ahmedi—whose name is also spelled Ahmadi in many news reports—did not respond to e-mails requesting a comment.

Related Links

• Oops! Taliban Reveal Identities of Their Mailing List Members [ABC News]

Image: Email In Inbox [Bigstock]

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