http://www.pcworld.com en-us Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:46:29 -0800 Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:46:29 -0800 Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:15:00 -0800 Agam Shah Agam Shah Samsung is trying to smash the status quo in PCs with a new all-in-one desktop computer that has a curved screen. The idea for the Ativ One 7 Curved came partly from Samsung's TVs, which already have curved displays. Samsung has already been offering laptops and Chromebooks, and the 27-inch all-in-one will be its first desktop computer. The all-in-one looks like a 27-inch curved TV, with all the PC components at the back of the monitor. As with TVs, the curved display could provide a more immersive gaming and entertainment experience than conventional monitors, said David Ng, product manager at Samsung. But Ng acknowledged that the PC's unusual shape could catch potential buyers off guard. He said the screen's curved contours will grow on desktop users, Ng said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung's Milk VR video app, announced Tuesday, marks a tantalizing step forward for virtual reality. The app will let you run full-motion, 360-degree video on the Gear VR headset. Not a movie in a simulated theater environment, like we've seen with Oculus Cinema demos, but a video beamed right to your eyes, bringing VR users ever closer to a real-life experience.
Samsung will reportedly provide free video content for the app on an ongoing basis, to keep users coming back for more.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2863919/samsungs-milk-vr-app-brings-the-virtual-reality-promise-ever-closer-with-full-motion-video.html#tk.rss_all Gadgets Tue, 30 Dec 2014 09:45:09 -0800 Lucian Constantin Lucian Constantin In today's world of agile software development and fast release cycles, developers increasingly rely on third-party libraries and components to get the job done. Since many of those libraries come from long-running, open-source projects, developers often assume they're getting well-written, bug-free code. They're wrong. The major patching efforts triggered by the Heartbleed, Shellshock and POODLE flaws this year serve as examples of the effect of critical vulnerabilities in third-party code. The flaws affected software that runs on servers, desktop computers, mobile devices and hardware appliances, affecting millions of consumers and businesses. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here After an interminable year of private alphas and betas and gammas(?), Elite: Dangerous is finally out. That makes it the first of the three massive space games (Elite, Star Citizen, and No Man's Sky) to officially release, and thus I've spent quite a few hours recently holed up with a HOTAS, a glass of eggnog, and my trusty spaceship. I don't think it's appropriate to smack a score on Elite: Dangerous yet, in the same way I wouldn't smack a score on any MMO. It's early days for the game, and I don't think the full scope of what Frontier has planned is even close to realized despite the 1.0 status. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Control systems at South Korean nuclear plants have not been harmed by recent attacks by hackers, but nevertheless Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power is increasing its security efforts to defend against a possible additional attack, the company's CEO Cho Seok told legislators on Tuesday. An investigation had found traces of a low-risk worm that had been removed from PCs and portable devices connected to the nuclear plant's control system, but no malicious code linked to a cyber attack was found, according to the country's Energy Ministry. The government began the investigation last week after an anti-nuclear-reactor group threatened to launch a cyber attack after leaking a batch of the company's internal documents. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Times New Roman, Calibri, and many other popular fonts are created by Microsoft and can't be included with Linux. If you open a Word document or another Microsoft Office document in LibreOffice or OpenOffice, you'll need Microsoft's fonts installed on your Linux system to see the documents as they were intended to look. You can also use Microsoft's fonts to create documents of your own, so you can compose a document in Calibri or Times New Roman and save it as a DOCX or DOC file for maximum compatibility with Office. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Advanced Micro Devices wants its chips in more laptops, and is devising a new strategy to reverse a free fall it has endured in the PC market over the last few years. The chip maker is reshaping the way it supplies chips and components with the hope that more PC makers will use its upcoming Carrizo processors in laptops. At the center of the strategy is a plug-and-play component approach that will make it easier to plug any Carrizo chip into any laptop, regardless of size or price. AMD will supply just one motherboard that will support a wide range of Carrizo and Carrizo-L laptop chips. The new approach will provide PC makers the flexibility of using a range of Carrizo chips in any laptop. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here IT services company CSC will pay US$190 million to settle a case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over four-year-old charges that it violated U.S. antifraud, reporting, and books-and-records laws. The company did not admit guilt, but has promised not to violate those laws in future. The charges concerned accounting entries relating to CSC's activities in Australia and Denmark, and to the company's contractual relationship with the U.K National Health Service (NHS) over the failed National Program for IT (NPfIT), the company said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The last few years in the world of Android news have been kind of a snooze fest. Sure, we had the usual barrage of software updates and gadget releases, but nothing seemed truly worth a standing ovation. What's worse: it felt like Android was no longer in Google's control, and that companies like Samsung were actually the ones that were ruling the pack. It was hard to tell who to root for. But this year Android underwent a metamorphosis of sorts—one that was long overdue. To commemorate this event-filled year, we rounded up some of the year's biggest news stories that helped contribute to the transformed Android ecosystem we see today. The 64-bit mobile processor was a big announcement for Android. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The highest praise I can muster for Nvidia GRID is that I sometimes forgot I was even using it. That's no small feat for a cloud gaming service that streams high-end games to low-powered devices over remote servers. Other efforts, such as OnLive, constantly remind you of the journey its games must take from server to client, with rampant stutters, slowdowns and resolution drops. Nvidia GRID rarely has those problems—at least when the conditions are right. Nvidia has been beta-testing GRID with Northern California residents for about a year, but in November the service opened up to anyone in North America and Western Europe with an Nvidia Shield handheld or Shield Tablet. From now until the free preview ends on June 30, 2015, users can access GRID at no charge. While there are only 30 games currently, Nvidia has been adding at least one new game every week (though usually two). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here LG's 55-inch OLED HDTV (model number 55EC9300) is a stunner, with a slight curve that brings the right and left edges of the screen ever so slightly closer to your eyes. And while its $3500 price tag will give most consumers pause, especially considering its resolution is limited to 1080p, that's really not such a terrible shortcoming. There's very little 4K content to be had today, and that situation will improve only marginally in 2015. What makes the 55EC9300 so interesting—in addition to the curve, of course—is its use of OLED technology (the acronym stands for organic light-emitting diode). OLED panels are naturally emissive, which means they radiate their own light. The backlights that LCD panels require can result in uneven brightness and contrast (the difference between the darkest and lightest images the TV can produce). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Alex from Target. Meghan Trainor. The Ice Bucket Challenge (brrrr!). Those are just 3 of the 10 biggest memes and videos that went viral in 2014. If you can name them all, you're either incredibly connected or incredibly tormented. I'm not going to lie to you: It took me forever to pull this list together because I kept getting distracted by other videos and memes. Here's hoping the same fate doesn't await you as you read on. A portion of the original photo of Alex From Target. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Kim Dotcom, founder of the file hosting service Mega, is preparing to launch an encrypted video-calling and chat service that will shield its users' communications from government surveillance. "Mega will soon release a fully encrypted and browser-based video call and chat service including high-speed file transfers," the entrepreneur known as Kim Dotcom said in a tweet. Kim Dotcom is positioning the service as a more secure way to chat and collaborate online free of government surveillance or spying, partly by virtue of Mega being based in New Zealand. Kim Dotcom has been teasing the app for some time, though now it appears nearly ready for prime time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The urge to pre-announce products that will be unveiled at CES seems is apparently contagious. Last week, LG tipped us off to its new Music Flow series of speakers. Monday evening, Samsung put out a press release about its intent to expand its sound bar lineup and to offer two new wireless speakers that look remarkably like white artillery shells. Samsung claims its WAM7500 single-cabinet speaker "allows sound to flow in a 360-degree ring." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Instead of revamping Internet Explorer for the launch of Windows 10, a new report claims Microsoft plans to start from scratch with a new browser, dubbed "Spartan." Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet reported Monday that Spartan could ship alongside Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 10, due sometime in the latter half of 2015. The purpose of Spartan is twofold, Foley reports: first, as a lightweight alternative to IE, but with the foundation for third-party extensions; and as a marketing "do-over" for Internet Explorer, to do away with Internet Explorer's legacy once and for all. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Chances are that if you shopped for a cheap holiday PC on Amazon for the holidays, what you ended up buying was a Google Chromebook. Again. Amazon said Friday the top three computers it sold between Nov. 1 and Dec. 25 were all Chromebooks, a first for the Google-powered computer. (Two of the three most popular computers Amazon shoppers bought during the 2013 holiday season were also Chromebooks—the third being a Windows-powered Asus Transformer. Amazon didn't break out holiday computer sales for 2012.) Amazon said the three most popular computer items were the Acer C720 Chromebook (11.6-inch, 2GB); the Asus (C300) Chromebook 13-inch with Gigabit WiFi (16GB, 2GB), an update to the C200; and the HP 11-2010nr 11.6-inch Chromebook (Snow White). None of those are priced at higher than $250, at least on Amazon's site. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Three out of three? That could be the score for the U.S. National Security Agency's cryptographic "most wanted" list of 2012. In January 2012, it saw Internet traffic anonymizing tool Tor (The Onion Router), Linux distribution Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) and disk encryption system TrueCrypt as the biggest threats to its ability to intercept Internet traffic and interpret other information it acquires. Since then, flaws have been found in Tor, and the FBI has unmasked Tor users. A vulnerability was found in Tails allowing attackers to determine users' IP addresses. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've ever seen an episode of The Jetsons, you've no doubt longed for some of the space-age home tech enjoyed by George and his family. Push-button meal dispensers? A car that folds into a briefcase? Rosie the robot-maid? Yes, please. Alas, much of that stuff remains science fiction, at least for the moment, but there are plenty of high-tech tools available right now that can help turn your house into a smart-home. And you don't have to be president of Spacely Sprockets to afford it. In fact, if you already own a smartphone, you're halfway there. Let's take a look at some of the surprisingly affordable ways to raise your roof's IQ. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Tctws Tan wanted to know about the dangers of using a public Wi-Fi network, such as the ones you find in cafes and libraries. "Is there any other method to increase my privacy?" If Windows knows it's accessing a public network, it will hide your laptop from other computers and devices. That provides significant, but not perfect, protection. So you have to make sure Windows knows you're on a public network, and you need to take additional precautions. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here We already reviewed one set of mechanical keyboards this year, but believe it or not there've been enough new releases in the months since that we're able to put together an entire second set of reviews. The craziest bit? Out of the five mechanical keyboards in this roundup, only one (the Corsair K70 RGB/K95 RGB) uses Cherry MX switches—long the de-facto standard for all brands. That means my typical spiel about the four main kinds of Cherry switches (Red, Black, Brown, Blue) is basically worthless. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Its manufacturer ambitiously calls the Ubi—a voice-operated computer—the "Voice of The Internet." It's a small box (measuring 4.75 by 4.75 inches and 1.5 inches thick) designed to plug directly into an electrical outlet. With its integrated microphone and speaker, it looks much like an intercom. Once connected to your home Wi-Fi network, you can use the Ubi to control smart devices with voice commands, access online information and entertainment, get voice alerts for calendar events and incoming mail, and perform other potentially useful tasks. UCIC says Ubi works with smart-home devices such as the Nest Learning Thermostat and a variety of gadgets in the SmartThings portfolio. I tested it with a Belkin WeMo Insight smart switch, basically a three-prong outlet you plug into an existing outlet and turn on and off via Wi-Fi. The Ubi also works with If This Then That (IFTTT) recipes, and the list of recipes available on the IFTTT site, some created by the company itself, gives a good idea of the range of tasks the Ubi can accomplish. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The configuration of the i7 X99 that AVADirect sent us comes as close as any PC I've seen to perfectly melding class and gaming flash. I was not alone in my opinion. No fewer than three of the staff here at PCWorld commented on this gaming system's good looks—a rare event for anything not Apple or thin-and-light. Of course, AVADirect has to share the credit with Corsair for the Graphite Series 760T case, as well as with EVGA for the GeForce GTX980 cards with their glowing neon-green call-outs. I did mention that the i7 X99 is fast, didn't I? It is. With such a beautiful interior, why use naked DDR4? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here We already took a look at the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate earlier this year, and this new "Chroma" version is 95 percent the same—with the addition of fancy new RGB backlighting and another $40 tacked onto the price. Like its predecessor, the Chroma is a sleek and durable black keyboard designed specifically for gaming. This is most obvious in its custom-designed Razer Green switches, which (as far as I'm aware) are branded Kailh switches. Razer Greens feature the same tactile click and actuation force (50cN) as Cherry MX Blues, but the actuation point is a bit higher. Cherry MX Blues are traditionally considered good for typing, because you can learn to press keys without bottoming out—striking the key so hard it slams into the bottom of the board, putting strain on your wrists and fingers. However, the low actuation point can be problematic in games because it's harder to double-tap keys. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The Corsair K70 and K95 RGB are the only keyboard models in this roundup that use Cherry MX switches—a relief for my fingers, after traipsing through Kailh Yellows and Kailh Browns and Romer-Gs and Razer Greens, only to return home to my tried-and-true Cherry Blues. But surprisingly, the real moral of the K70 RGB (and by extension, the K95 RGB) is that switches aren't everything. While I love Cherry Blues—they make my fingers sing when typing—Corsair makes some drastic missteps on both the hardware and software sides that undermine what should be a fantastic keyboard. The K70 keyboard is a Corsair classic, with a sleek, brushed-aluminum industrial look that stands out from the competition. The K95 is basically the exact same keyboard, except there are three rows of macro keys attached to the left side. And I mean "attached" in the most literal of ways: The K95 looks like someone took a K70 and pasted an extra piece onto it. It's not very pretty compared to the stripped-down K70, but if you need the dedicated macro keys that's your prerogative. On the other hand, you could just use Corsair's software to assign macros to literally any key on the keyboard and save yourself some desk space in the process. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Logitech's G910 Orion Spark is a completely new keyboard with completely new switches, built from the ground up for gaming and full RGB backlighting. As such, it's probably the device where we have the most to talk about because, well, it's entirely unique. Let's start with the design of the keyboard itself, which is weird enough as it is. The G910 is a similar shape to previous keyboards in Logitech's lineup—that is to say, a bit chunky. Even with the smaller of the two wrist rests attached, this thing will take up quite a bit of your desk—thanks to a row of macro keys on the side, another row on the top (above the function row), the dedicated media keys, and a phone dock (more on that later). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Mechanical keyboards are typically such beastly devices, I'm always surprised when I pull one out of a box and it's a dainty little thing. The Rapoo KX fits that bill, occupying a mere 13 x 6 inches of desk real estate thanks to a no-frills, tenkeyless (no number pad) design. For mechanical keyboard snobs needing something on the road, the KX would fit into a backpack easily. And thanks to its attractive brushed-aluminum top and solid plastic casing, you could do so without worrying about its durability. It's also a dual-mode wired/wireless keyboard. Embedded in the back are a MicroUSB jack, a power switch, and then a slot to hold the KX's small wireless USB dongle. As I type this I'm using the KX wired because the battery was low, but there's a lithium battery inside that held about a week's worth of charge for me. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Like the Rapoo KX, the Nixeus MODA will score points with some consumers right out the gate because of its small size. It's not quite as compact as the KX, thanks to a small palm rest and a dedicated Home block, but this is still a dainty model compared to your typical gaming monstrosity. And the Nixeus Moda is a great little device, provided you're looking for a bare-bones mechanical keyboard. You're not going to get many frills here—not even media keys. If you can live without those perks, though, this is a solid (and cheap) device. The Nixeus Moda uses "Brown" switches, but not those made by Cherry. These knock-offs are otherwise the same though, with an actuation force of 45cN and a 2mm actuation point that features a tactile bump instead of the click found in MX Blues. Despite being "the same," I did notice that the Moda has more of a hollow, clacking sound to it than other Cherry Brown keyboards I had lying around, but whether that's due to the switch or due to the Moda itself I can't say. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here China is apparently blocking Google's Gmail service in the latest move by the country to curb foreign Internet services. Internet performance monitoring company, Dyn Research, said Sunday that China was blocking Gmail at the IP level when served from Hong Kong. All Gmail traffic to China is through Hong Kong and affected by the block, unless users deploy evasion techniques, wrote Earl Zmijewski, Dyn's vice president of analytics, in an email. Google's real-time measure of traffic patterns for its services also indicated a sharp drop in Gmail traffic in China after Christmas. The company could not be immediately reached for comment because of the Christmas holidays. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here "The Interview," which is already linked to a massive corporate hack, a U.S.-North Korea spat and an outcry over censorship, now has another claim to fame: it's the most successful online film in Sony Pictures' history. Available to stream and download since Wednesday via websites and platforms from various companies, including Sony, Google and Microsoft, "The Interview" generated over US$15 million in online rentals and sales through Saturday, according to the studio. The controversial comedy about an assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was rented or bought 2 million times online during those four days. It costs $5.99 to rent and $14.99 to buy. Apple began offering it via iTunes on Sunday. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here64-bit mobile processors
1. Alex From Target breaks Twitter
Credit: Via Know Your Meme 
Rob Schultz
http://www.pcworld.com en-us Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:46:29 -0800 Wed, 31 Dec 2014 00:46:29 -0800 Tue, 30 Dec 2014 12:15:00 -0800 Agam Shah Agam Shah Samsung is trying to smash the status quo in PCs with a new all-in-one desktop computer that has a curved screen. The idea for the Ativ One 7 Curved came partly from Samsung's TVs, which already have curved displays. Samsung has already been offering laptops and Chromebooks, and the 27-inch all-in-one will be its first desktop computer. The all-in-one looks like a 27-inch curved TV, with all the PC components at the back of the monitor. As with TVs, the curved display could provide a more immersive gaming and entertainment experience than conventional monitors, said David Ng, product manager at Samsung. But Ng acknowledged that the PC's unusual shape could catch potential buyers off guard. He said the screen's curved contours will grow on desktop users, Ng said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Samsung's Milk VR video app, announced Tuesday, marks a tantalizing step forward for virtual reality. The app will let you run full-motion, 360-degree video on the Gear VR headset. Not a movie in a simulated theater environment, like we've seen with Oculus Cinema demos, but a video beamed right to your eyes, bringing VR users ever closer to a real-life experience.
Samsung will reportedly provide free video content for the app on an ongoing basis, to keep users coming back for more.
To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here
]]> http://www.pcworld.com/article/2863919/samsungs-milk-vr-app-brings-the-virtual-reality-promise-ever-closer-with-full-motion-video.html#tk.rss_all Gadgets Tue, 30 Dec 2014 09:45:09 -0800 Lucian Constantin Lucian Constantin In today's world of agile software development and fast release cycles, developers increasingly rely on third-party libraries and components to get the job done. Since many of those libraries come from long-running, open-source projects, developers often assume they're getting well-written, bug-free code. They're wrong. The major patching efforts triggered by the Heartbleed, Shellshock and POODLE flaws this year serve as examples of the effect of critical vulnerabilities in third-party code. The flaws affected software that runs on servers, desktop computers, mobile devices and hardware appliances, affecting millions of consumers and businesses. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here After an interminable year of private alphas and betas and gammas(?), Elite: Dangerous is finally out. That makes it the first of the three massive space games (Elite, Star Citizen, and No Man's Sky) to officially release, and thus I've spent quite a few hours recently holed up with a HOTAS, a glass of eggnog, and my trusty spaceship. I don't think it's appropriate to smack a score on Elite: Dangerous yet, in the same way I wouldn't smack a score on any MMO. It's early days for the game, and I don't think the full scope of what Frontier has planned is even close to realized despite the 1.0 status. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Control systems at South Korean nuclear plants have not been harmed by recent attacks by hackers, but nevertheless Korea Hydro and Nuclear Power is increasing its security efforts to defend against a possible additional attack, the company's CEO Cho Seok told legislators on Tuesday. An investigation had found traces of a low-risk worm that had been removed from PCs and portable devices connected to the nuclear plant's control system, but no malicious code linked to a cyber attack was found, according to the country's Energy Ministry. The government began the investigation last week after an anti-nuclear-reactor group threatened to launch a cyber attack after leaking a batch of the company's internal documents. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Times New Roman, Calibri, and many other popular fonts are created by Microsoft and can't be included with Linux. If you open a Word document or another Microsoft Office document in LibreOffice or OpenOffice, you'll need Microsoft's fonts installed on your Linux system to see the documents as they were intended to look. You can also use Microsoft's fonts to create documents of your own, so you can compose a document in Calibri or Times New Roman and save it as a DOCX or DOC file for maximum compatibility with Office. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Advanced Micro Devices wants its chips in more laptops, and is devising a new strategy to reverse a free fall it has endured in the PC market over the last few years. The chip maker is reshaping the way it supplies chips and components with the hope that more PC makers will use its upcoming Carrizo processors in laptops. At the center of the strategy is a plug-and-play component approach that will make it easier to plug any Carrizo chip into any laptop, regardless of size or price. AMD will supply just one motherboard that will support a wide range of Carrizo and Carrizo-L laptop chips. The new approach will provide PC makers the flexibility of using a range of Carrizo chips in any laptop. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here IT services company CSC will pay US$190 million to settle a case brought by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission over four-year-old charges that it violated U.S. antifraud, reporting, and books-and-records laws. The company did not admit guilt, but has promised not to violate those laws in future. The charges concerned accounting entries relating to CSC's activities in Australia and Denmark, and to the company's contractual relationship with the U.K National Health Service (NHS) over the failed National Program for IT (NPfIT), the company said. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The last few years in the world of Android news have been kind of a snooze fest. Sure, we had the usual barrage of software updates and gadget releases, but nothing seemed truly worth a standing ovation. What's worse: it felt like Android was no longer in Google's control, and that companies like Samsung were actually the ones that were ruling the pack. It was hard to tell who to root for. But this year Android underwent a metamorphosis of sorts—one that was long overdue. To commemorate this event-filled year, we rounded up some of the year's biggest news stories that helped contribute to the transformed Android ecosystem we see today. The 64-bit mobile processor was a big announcement for Android. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The highest praise I can muster for Nvidia GRID is that I sometimes forgot I was even using it. That's no small feat for a cloud gaming service that streams high-end games to low-powered devices over remote servers. Other efforts, such as OnLive, constantly remind you of the journey its games must take from server to client, with rampant stutters, slowdowns and resolution drops. Nvidia GRID rarely has those problems—at least when the conditions are right. Nvidia has been beta-testing GRID with Northern California residents for about a year, but in November the service opened up to anyone in North America and Western Europe with an Nvidia Shield handheld or Shield Tablet. From now until the free preview ends on June 30, 2015, users can access GRID at no charge. While there are only 30 games currently, Nvidia has been adding at least one new game every week (though usually two). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here LG's 55-inch OLED HDTV (model number 55EC9300) is a stunner, with a slight curve that brings the right and left edges of the screen ever so slightly closer to your eyes. And while its $3500 price tag will give most consumers pause, especially considering its resolution is limited to 1080p, that's really not such a terrible shortcoming. There's very little 4K content to be had today, and that situation will improve only marginally in 2015. What makes the 55EC9300 so interesting—in addition to the curve, of course—is its use of OLED technology (the acronym stands for organic light-emitting diode). OLED panels are naturally emissive, which means they radiate their own light. The backlights that LCD panels require can result in uneven brightness and contrast (the difference between the darkest and lightest images the TV can produce). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Alex from Target. Meghan Trainor. The Ice Bucket Challenge (brrrr!). Those are just 3 of the 10 biggest memes and videos that went viral in 2014. If you can name them all, you're either incredibly connected or incredibly tormented. I'm not going to lie to you: It took me forever to pull this list together because I kept getting distracted by other videos and memes. Here's hoping the same fate doesn't await you as you read on. A portion of the original photo of Alex From Target. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Kim Dotcom, founder of the file hosting service Mega, is preparing to launch an encrypted video-calling and chat service that will shield its users' communications from government surveillance. "Mega will soon release a fully encrypted and browser-based video call and chat service including high-speed file transfers," the entrepreneur known as Kim Dotcom said in a tweet. Kim Dotcom is positioning the service as a more secure way to chat and collaborate online free of government surveillance or spying, partly by virtue of Mega being based in New Zealand. Kim Dotcom has been teasing the app for some time, though now it appears nearly ready for prime time. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The urge to pre-announce products that will be unveiled at CES seems is apparently contagious. Last week, LG tipped us off to its new Music Flow series of speakers. Monday evening, Samsung put out a press release about its intent to expand its sound bar lineup and to offer two new wireless speakers that look remarkably like white artillery shells. Samsung claims its WAM7500 single-cabinet speaker "allows sound to flow in a 360-degree ring." To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Instead of revamping Internet Explorer for the launch of Windows 10, a new report claims Microsoft plans to start from scratch with a new browser, dubbed "Spartan." Mary Jo Foley of ZDNet reported Monday that Spartan could ship alongside Internet Explorer 11 in Windows 10, due sometime in the latter half of 2015. The purpose of Spartan is twofold, Foley reports: first, as a lightweight alternative to IE, but with the foundation for third-party extensions; and as a marketing "do-over" for Internet Explorer, to do away with Internet Explorer's legacy once and for all. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Chances are that if you shopped for a cheap holiday PC on Amazon for the holidays, what you ended up buying was a Google Chromebook. Again. Amazon said Friday the top three computers it sold between Nov. 1 and Dec. 25 were all Chromebooks, a first for the Google-powered computer. (Two of the three most popular computers Amazon shoppers bought during the 2013 holiday season were also Chromebooks—the third being a Windows-powered Asus Transformer. Amazon didn't break out holiday computer sales for 2012.) Amazon said the three most popular computer items were the Acer C720 Chromebook (11.6-inch, 2GB); the Asus (C300) Chromebook 13-inch with Gigabit WiFi (16GB, 2GB), an update to the C200; and the HP 11-2010nr 11.6-inch Chromebook (Snow White). None of those are priced at higher than $250, at least on Amazon's site. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Three out of three? That could be the score for the U.S. National Security Agency's cryptographic "most wanted" list of 2012. In January 2012, it saw Internet traffic anonymizing tool Tor (The Onion Router), Linux distribution Tails (The Amnesic Incognito Live System) and disk encryption system TrueCrypt as the biggest threats to its ability to intercept Internet traffic and interpret other information it acquires. Since then, flaws have been found in Tor, and the FBI has unmasked Tor users. A vulnerability was found in Tails allowing attackers to determine users' IP addresses. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here If you've ever seen an episode of The Jetsons, you've no doubt longed for some of the space-age home tech enjoyed by George and his family. Push-button meal dispensers? A car that folds into a briefcase? Rosie the robot-maid? Yes, please. Alas, much of that stuff remains science fiction, at least for the moment, but there are plenty of high-tech tools available right now that can help turn your house into a smart-home. And you don't have to be president of Spacely Sprockets to afford it. In fact, if you already own a smartphone, you're halfway there. Let's take a look at some of the surprisingly affordable ways to raise your roof's IQ. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Tctws Tan wanted to know about the dangers of using a public Wi-Fi network, such as the ones you find in cafes and libraries. "Is there any other method to increase my privacy?" If Windows knows it's accessing a public network, it will hide your laptop from other computers and devices. That provides significant, but not perfect, protection. So you have to make sure Windows knows you're on a public network, and you need to take additional precautions. [Have a tech question? Ask PCWorld Contributing Editor Lincoln Spector. Send your query to answer@pcworld.com.] To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here We already reviewed one set of mechanical keyboards this year, but believe it or not there've been enough new releases in the months since that we're able to put together an entire second set of reviews. The craziest bit? Out of the five mechanical keyboards in this roundup, only one (the Corsair K70 RGB/K95 RGB) uses Cherry MX switches—long the de-facto standard for all brands. That means my typical spiel about the four main kinds of Cherry switches (Red, Black, Brown, Blue) is basically worthless. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Its manufacturer ambitiously calls the Ubi—a voice-operated computer—the "Voice of The Internet." It's a small box (measuring 4.75 by 4.75 inches and 1.5 inches thick) designed to plug directly into an electrical outlet. With its integrated microphone and speaker, it looks much like an intercom. Once connected to your home Wi-Fi network, you can use the Ubi to control smart devices with voice commands, access online information and entertainment, get voice alerts for calendar events and incoming mail, and perform other potentially useful tasks. UCIC says Ubi works with smart-home devices such as the Nest Learning Thermostat and a variety of gadgets in the SmartThings portfolio. I tested it with a Belkin WeMo Insight smart switch, basically a three-prong outlet you plug into an existing outlet and turn on and off via Wi-Fi. The Ubi also works with If This Then That (IFTTT) recipes, and the list of recipes available on the IFTTT site, some created by the company itself, gives a good idea of the range of tasks the Ubi can accomplish. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The configuration of the i7 X99 that AVADirect sent us comes as close as any PC I've seen to perfectly melding class and gaming flash. I was not alone in my opinion. No fewer than three of the staff here at PCWorld commented on this gaming system's good looks—a rare event for anything not Apple or thin-and-light. Of course, AVADirect has to share the credit with Corsair for the Graphite Series 760T case, as well as with EVGA for the GeForce GTX980 cards with their glowing neon-green call-outs. I did mention that the i7 X99 is fast, didn't I? It is. With such a beautiful interior, why use naked DDR4? To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here We already took a look at the Razer Blackwidow Ultimate earlier this year, and this new "Chroma" version is 95 percent the same—with the addition of fancy new RGB backlighting and another $40 tacked onto the price. Like its predecessor, the Chroma is a sleek and durable black keyboard designed specifically for gaming. This is most obvious in its custom-designed Razer Green switches, which (as far as I'm aware) are branded Kailh switches. Razer Greens feature the same tactile click and actuation force (50cN) as Cherry MX Blues, but the actuation point is a bit higher. Cherry MX Blues are traditionally considered good for typing, because you can learn to press keys without bottoming out—striking the key so hard it slams into the bottom of the board, putting strain on your wrists and fingers. However, the low actuation point can be problematic in games because it's harder to double-tap keys. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here The Corsair K70 and K95 RGB are the only keyboard models in this roundup that use Cherry MX switches—a relief for my fingers, after traipsing through Kailh Yellows and Kailh Browns and Romer-Gs and Razer Greens, only to return home to my tried-and-true Cherry Blues. But surprisingly, the real moral of the K70 RGB (and by extension, the K95 RGB) is that switches aren't everything. While I love Cherry Blues—they make my fingers sing when typing—Corsair makes some drastic missteps on both the hardware and software sides that undermine what should be a fantastic keyboard. The K70 keyboard is a Corsair classic, with a sleek, brushed-aluminum industrial look that stands out from the competition. The K95 is basically the exact same keyboard, except there are three rows of macro keys attached to the left side. And I mean "attached" in the most literal of ways: The K95 looks like someone took a K70 and pasted an extra piece onto it. It's not very pretty compared to the stripped-down K70, but if you need the dedicated macro keys that's your prerogative. On the other hand, you could just use Corsair's software to assign macros to literally any key on the keyboard and save yourself some desk space in the process. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Logitech's G910 Orion Spark is a completely new keyboard with completely new switches, built from the ground up for gaming and full RGB backlighting. As such, it's probably the device where we have the most to talk about because, well, it's entirely unique. Let's start with the design of the keyboard itself, which is weird enough as it is. The G910 is a similar shape to previous keyboards in Logitech's lineup—that is to say, a bit chunky. Even with the smaller of the two wrist rests attached, this thing will take up quite a bit of your desk—thanks to a row of macro keys on the side, another row on the top (above the function row), the dedicated media keys, and a phone dock (more on that later). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Mechanical keyboards are typically such beastly devices, I'm always surprised when I pull one out of a box and it's a dainty little thing. The Rapoo KX fits that bill, occupying a mere 13 x 6 inches of desk real estate thanks to a no-frills, tenkeyless (no number pad) design. For mechanical keyboard snobs needing something on the road, the KX would fit into a backpack easily. And thanks to its attractive brushed-aluminum top and solid plastic casing, you could do so without worrying about its durability. It's also a dual-mode wired/wireless keyboard. Embedded in the back are a MicroUSB jack, a power switch, and then a slot to hold the KX's small wireless USB dongle. As I type this I'm using the KX wired because the battery was low, but there's a lithium battery inside that held about a week's worth of charge for me. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here Like the Rapoo KX, the Nixeus MODA will score points with some consumers right out the gate because of its small size. It's not quite as compact as the KX, thanks to a small palm rest and a dedicated Home block, but this is still a dainty model compared to your typical gaming monstrosity. And the Nixeus Moda is a great little device, provided you're looking for a bare-bones mechanical keyboard. You're not going to get many frills here—not even media keys. If you can live without those perks, though, this is a solid (and cheap) device. The Nixeus Moda uses "Brown" switches, but not those made by Cherry. These knock-offs are otherwise the same though, with an actuation force of 45cN and a 2mm actuation point that features a tactile bump instead of the click found in MX Blues. Despite being "the same," I did notice that the Moda has more of a hollow, clacking sound to it than other Cherry Brown keyboards I had lying around, but whether that's due to the switch or due to the Moda itself I can't say. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here China is apparently blocking Google's Gmail service in the latest move by the country to curb foreign Internet services. Internet performance monitoring company, Dyn Research, said Sunday that China was blocking Gmail at the IP level when served from Hong Kong. All Gmail traffic to China is through Hong Kong and affected by the block, unless users deploy evasion techniques, wrote Earl Zmijewski, Dyn's vice president of analytics, in an email. Google's real-time measure of traffic patterns for its services also indicated a sharp drop in Gmail traffic in China after Christmas. The company could not be immediately reached for comment because of the Christmas holidays. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here "The Interview," which is already linked to a massive corporate hack, a U.S.-North Korea spat and an outcry over censorship, now has another claim to fame: it's the most successful online film in Sony Pictures' history. Available to stream and download since Wednesday via websites and platforms from various companies, including Sony, Google and Microsoft, "The Interview" generated over US$15 million in online rentals and sales through Saturday, according to the studio. The controversial comedy about an assassination plot against North Korean leader Kim Jong Un was rented or bought 2 million times online during those four days. It costs $5.99 to rent and $14.99 to buy. Apple began offering it via iTunes on Sunday. To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here64-bit mobile processors
1. Alex From Target breaks Twitter
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