Google Beats Out Apple as World’s Most Valuable Brand [Mac Blog]
Google has usurped Apple as the world’s most valuable brand in Millward Brown’s annual BrandZ study of global brands (via The Telegraph). This comes after the survey had named Apple the top brand for the past three years.
The study saw Apple’s brand value decline 20%, from $185 billion to $147 billion, while Google saw a 40% increase, from $113 billion to $158 billion. Samsung also grew, going from the 30th most valuable brand to the 29th with a 21% jump, growing from $21 billion to $25 billion.
The big question for Apple, according to Millward Brown, is whether Apple is still redefining technology:
Google has knocked Apple off its perch after three years at the top. Apple is performing well but is it still redefining technology for consumers?
Overall, Brown noted that the study, which has four technology brands in the top five, reiterates how integral technology is to the lives of people.
Among other technology brands, Microsoft jumped into the top five with a 20% increase, going from $69 billion to $90 billion, while IBM stayed put at number three with a 4% decrease. The largest increase in technology came from Facebook, who jumped 10 places to 21 with a 68% increase, going from $21 billion to $35 billion.
While “brand value” studies can be difficult to compare, because of the use of differing methodologies used by those who gather the data can lead to much different results, they can be a good look at marketing and branding trends.
Homebrew server keeps Nintendo DS and Wii games online
Nintendo may have pulled the plug on internet multiplayer services for the DS and Wii, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll be stuck playing their games offline from here on out. Enterprising fans have launched an unofficial Wi-Fi Connection server that lets matchmaking and other core services work (almost) the way they did before the cutoff. In many cases, it’s relatively easy to set things up. The DS usually works just by changing the handheld’s connection settings; Wii owners, meanwhile, have to run some software from an SD card for the magic to happen.
Having said this, the solution is far from flawless. The developers have only tested a handful of titles so far, and a few releases (including Mario Kart DS) need some modified device firmware to fully support online play. There’s also the matter of scale: enthusiasts just aren’t going to replicate Nintendo’s capacity, so don’t be surprised if the server melts under a heavy load. If you’re absolutely determined to play Metroid Prime Hunters or Endless Ocean with your internet buddies, though, this may be your best bet.
Filed under: Gaming, Internet, Nintendo
Via: Tiny Cartridge
Source: GitHub (1), (2)
Sales Ban of Older Samsung Galaxy Phones Upheld by Dutch Court [iOS Blog]
A Dutch appeals court on Tuesday night upheld a lower court’s sales ban of some older Samsung Galaxy phones, reports Re/code. It’s yet another chapter of Apple and Samsung’s worldwide patent battle.
The order applies specifically to the Galaxy SII and Galaxy Ace, but could possibly be extended to other Samsung devices found to similarly infringe on a European Apple patent.
Initially, when Apple filed an infringement claim against Samsung and requested the ban in 2011, the company had requested a ban on all Samsung devices. Apple did not see its request fulfilled, however, and only saw the Galaxy S, Galaxy SII and Galaxy Ace banned.
Last week Apple and Google/Motorola Mobility agreed to a settlement and will dismiss patent litigations between the two companies. As part of the agreement they will also work together “in some areas of patent reform”. Following that news, it was reported that Samsung and Apple were in early negotiations to settle their patent disputes out of court as well, although some key royalty payment terms are under negotiation.
Check Out the 360 Degree View of the HTC One M8 Prime
Evleaks gives a 360 degree look at the new HTC One M8 Prime, and I must say, it looks pretty good. Now a lot of you might think this is dumb for HTC to release a better version of the M8, and it is for the most part, but both them and Samsung are releasing Prime versions of their latest flagships, so I guess we just got to accept it. The only other information we have for the new phone, is that it will rock Sense 6.5, and it will be slightly more powerful than the regular M8. Sounds about right to me, but let us know what you guys think about the HTC One M8 Prime.
Source: evleaks
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Join the Engadget HD Podcast live on Ustream at 9:30PM ET
It’s Tuesday, which is time for the Engadget HD Podcast and we hope you’ll join us for the live recording at 9:30PM. It finally happened, Microsoft dropped the price of the Xbox One. We’ll discuss what that means for HD geeks, and perhaps even more importantly, how big a deal it is that streaming content to an Xbox no longer requires a subscription to Xbox Live Gold. Of course we’ll also talk a bit about net neutrality and some Netflix, before we get into other home theater and entertainment news. And finally we’ll finish up with what we’re watching this week. If you’ll be joining us, take a peek at the topics after the break and then get ready to participate in the live chat.
AT&T to buy DirecTV for $48.5 billion
AT&T’s multibillion dollar DirecTV purchase could hinge on… football?
Comcast and TWC voted most-hated ISPs in America’s most-hated industry
FCC votes in favor of new Net Neutrality rules, leaves room for ‘fast lanes’
Virtual Joey app arrives with satellite TV for your PS3
Brazilians will see every blade of World Cup grass on outdoor 4K screens
Gadget Rewind 2007: Pioneer Kuro PDP-5080HD plasma
Sony’s $700 4K streaming box gets a much needed pre-order discount
Watch ‘Game of Thrones’ mysteries explained (or disproved) with science
Sailor Moon arrives on Hulu Plus in its full, uncensored glory
‘Halo 5: Guardians’ and live-action Halo TV show set for fall 2015 launch
Upcoming Xbox history show will let you ‘play TV’
Must See HDTV for the week of May 19th: Indy 500, Monaco GP and no Game of Thrones
Filed under: Home Entertainment, HD
Oculus Rift is coming to… Chuck E. Cheese’s?
Sure, a spin in the ol’ ticket grabber machine on your birthday can be fun, but trying to capture the small pieces of paper as they whiz by your head? That’s a lot of work. Luckily, Chuck E. Cheese’s is offering a new, less physical way to reach prize station glory using Oculus Rift. The pizza party giant is offering a “Virtual Ticket Blaster Experience” at parties for the guest of honor that uses the VR headset to simulate the high-speed grabbing experience.
To play, kids will strap on Oculus Rift and collect virtual tickets by focusing a digital target on them. Oddly, the experience will still take place in the traditional chamber with paper versions blowing around – you just won’t grab them. Also worth noting, Oculus doesn’t recommend the headset being used by children under 10, and currently prohibits its use for commercial purposes. That said, a six-week test of the high-tech game is launching today in Dallas with expansions headed to Orlando and San Diego later this month. Our biggest worry about the technology? We won’t be able to grab tickets quite as fast, and will have to waste all our tokens on Skee-Ball to score that mammoth water gun.
Filed under: Gaming, Wearables
Via: Polygon
Source: PR Newswire
Chrome OS gets better organized with latest update
The Chromebook revolution is here and, naturally, Google is doing everything it can so that these devices keep improving even as time goes on. As such, the search giant today revealed some new things rolling out to Chrome OS laptops and desktops, including support for folders within the launcher and the ability to use hands-free voice commands (aka “OK, Google”) in English. What’s more, this new version of the OS, released through the Chrome stable channel, brings back the minimize button, with Google stating that it listened to your feedback and knew you really wanted the feature to be part of the window controls. Unfortunately, not all Chrome OS devices will get this — namely, the ASUS Chromebox and Samsung Series 3 Chromebox. Google didn’t say whether the update will ever come to the omitted Chromeboxes, but we’ll let you know if anything changes.
Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Software, Google
Via: Android Central
Source: Google
The new HTC One appears to be getting a bigger, badder cousin
Rumors of a higher-end edition of the HTC One M8, the M8 Prime, have been difficult to pin down; we’ve seen little in the way of tangible evidence. However, things just got interesting. Frequent tipster @evleaks has posted what’s reportedly a 360-degree render of the Prime, showing off a design with a few big differences from the current model. The most obvious may be the camera — it’s conspicuously bigger than that of the regular One, and it even juts out from the back. The phone also has a flatter, One Max-like body with a different surface than the current handset. According to @evleaks, the cosmetic change may stem from the use of an unusual aluminum and liquid silicone hybrid that would be both strong and heat-absorbing.
While the imagery doesn’t reveal much about what’s inside the device, rumored specs have hinted that it wouldn’t strictly be a One Max sequel. It would be the most powerful HTC phone yet with a quad-core Snapdragon 805 processor, 3GB of RAM and a 2,560 x 1,440 screen resolution, but its 5.5-inch display wouldn’t be quite so gargantuan as the 6-inch panel of the Max. That’s assuming the render and the hardware details are authentic in the first place, mind you. Although @evleaks has developed a reputation for mostly accurate scoops, we haven’t seen live shots or other details that would confirm what we’ve seen to date. If the Prime exists at all, it may not match up perfectly with what you see here.
Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, HTC
Source: Evleaks
Virtual reality’s biggest enemy is bad virtual reality, says Oculus founder
Palmer Luckey can hardly take a step without being stopped for pictures, questions or just friendly handshakes. I’m not surprised; we’re at the Silicon Valley Virtual Reality Expo, and Luckey just closed a speculative panel on the future of VR. Here, he’s a celebrity, and with good reason — the Expo floor is littered with Oculus headgear, almost without competition. As we make our way to a more quiet area, Luckey tells me that his hardware isn’t enough. “What we have that’s impressing all these hardcore gamers and technology enthusiasts isn’t good enough to be a consumer product.”
“People don’t have experience with this technology,” he explains further. “When it arrives, it has to be good.” Nothing’s a sure thing, Luckey tells us, and a poor consumer launch could spoil the milk. “I think really bad VR is the only thing that can kill off VR. That’s why we’ve been so careful to say that ‘these are devkits, do not buy, do not buy!’” Luckey quickly corrects himself, saying that he doesn’t think that the Oculus DK2 couldn’t be a consumer product; he just wants VR to hit the consumer space with its best foot forward. It’s part of the reason Oculus decided to join Facebook.
“It lets us make the first version really, really good, and use a lot of custom components that wouldn’t have been possible otherwise.” Without Facebook, he continued, Oculus might have been forced to release more expensive iterative headsets to fund the envisioned consumer model. “Maybe it doesn’t sell and we actually hurt the VR market overall because it wasn’t good enough.” Luckey is relieved its a scenario he didn’t have to live. “This [Facebook] lets us have as good of a shot as we’re ever going to have at making consumers believe in virtual reality.”
Staving off the danger of “bad VR” also makes Luckey reluctant to push for virtual reality hardware standards — it might stifle innovation. “If you talk to people who are actually doing things that are very novel and different from what we’re doing, most of them are not very pro-standard,” he explains. “The standard is going to end up being defined by whoever sells the most headsets, and it would not be a good thing for them if the standard is games that don’t include motion control, or games that require a very high field of view or that absolutely require position tracking.” It wouldn’t help Oculus much either. “If we were to lock into a standard now, what happens when we want to make big changes that vastly improve the performance of our device and requires a complete retooling of the SDK?” The hardware isn’t good enough to set a standard, he says, just like it isn’t good enough for consumers yet. Still, he admits that it’s good time to start thinking about what those standards might be. Eventually, the industry is going to need them.
In the meantime, Luckey is thinking about the Rift’s retail launch — if consumers are going to believe in VR, they need to have good experiences. That means games. “The biggest public challenge is going to be software. We’ve been talking a lot about how the Facebook deal gives confidence to content makers of all kinds, but people shouldn’t take that to mean there’s going to be this slam dunk of AAA content that’s going to be available at launch. It doesn’t mean that. Content takes a long time.” While Luckey says he expects a healthy pipeline of innovative software, he admits that making good games in VR is difficult. The platform’s first big hit might not be there at launch.
Before SVVR ended, I caught up with Sony’s Richard Marks — the man behind Project Morpheus. He too had his concerns about bad software hurting VR adoption. “There’s no AAA title yet,” he said “Most of the world asks ‘when will Call of Duty be on VR,’ but that’s not the right answer.” Hopefully, the VR community will figure out what is the right answer soon.
Bringing internet to the Amazon takes more than cables and laptops
Internet access is something most of us likely take for granted, but for portions of the developing world, reliable connectivity isn’t available. The New York Times recently cast its lens on an ultra-tiny Peruvian village and the struggle to install and maintain a solid communications system, chronicling the journey and hardships of maintaining telecommunications in the middle of the jungle. There, a a busted internet connection takes as much as a year-and-a-half to repair and One Laptop Per Child computers are charged via a series of car batteries. Despite the village being a world away, however, there are familiar arguments. The issue of not having enough laptops for everyone in the village (some 65 people) is countered by the argument that they serve as little more than entertainment or an anesthetic; if the village had a road, the kids could travel to bigger cities nearby and be inspired by the real world instead of cyberspace. It seems that some things don’t change regardless of where you live.
Filed under: Wireless, Internet
Source: New York Times
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