Sonic is one of those classic games that is right up there with Mario Bros. And just like Mario, Sonic keeps coming back to please fans. Some new rumors suggest that SEGA is ready to announce a new Sonic game in February.
Saturday, February 9, 2013
Blizzard Still Working On Blizzard All-Stars
Many gamers are wondering what is going on with Blizzard's Blizzard All-Stars. It was unveiled at BlizzCon in 2010 and they promised that it was "coming soonish". And here we are in 2013. Many gamers have given up hope.
Friday, February 8, 2013
Tim Cook congratulates employees on another record quarter during Town Hall Q&A
“Following reporting what CEO Tim Cook referred to as another record-setting quarter, today the Apple executive sent out an email to employees congratulating the team,” Jordan Kahn reports for 9to5Mac. “Within the email, Cook thanked employees for their ‘incredible hard work and focus’ and highlighted that the company sold over 75 million iOS devices during the quarter.”
Kahn reports, “Like last year, when Apple held a Town Hall meeting following its Q1 results, Cook is asking employees to attend an employee communications meeting scheduled for today at 10 a.m. Pacific time. The email sent out last night following Apple's earnings results conference call, and it noted that employees would be able to submit questions via AppleWeb in advance.”
Read more in the full article here.
Apple in danger of losing ‘Most Valuable Company In The World’ crown
On Jan. 25, 2012, Apple Inc. passed Exxon Mobil as the most valuable publicly-traded company in the world. The gap between #1 and #2 had widened to as much as $240 billion by September 2012 as Apple shares hit all-time record highs. You know, back when we all should have sold our AAPL stock (wink).
“That gap alone is greater than the value of some 98% of the companies in the S&P 500,” Steven Russolillo noted for The Wall Street Journal. “Over the summer Apple even gained the title of biggest U.S. company of all-time, surpassing Microsoft's previous peak in 1999.” (See related articles below.)
“But Apple's fall in recent month has been fast and furious. Thursday alone, the company's market cap fell by as much as $59.48 billion, according to WSJ Market Data Group,” Russolillo reports. “At one point, the gap between Apple and Exxon's market cap had narrowed to only about $6.2 billion.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Damn that all-time record performance! Damn it all to hell!
Embrace the lunacy, folks, for calmer, saner heads will someday prevail and this too shall pass.
Thursday, February 7, 2013
Google unveils a more beautiful, reliable, and faster image search with inline results and metadata
Google on Wednesday announced a redesign of its image search feature on Google.com that the company claims is faster, more beautiful, and more reliable. Google says you will see the new look “in the next few days” but wouldn’t get any more specific beyond that.
The new design displays images in an inline panel and lets you quickly flip through a set of images by using the keyboard (we assume this will also work on touchscreens eventually with gestures):
Google says that going back to browsing other search results is as simple as just scrolling down and picking up right where you left off. Yet this is more than just a visual update: the company is finally going to show useful information about the images it is surfacing.
Google’s images section will soon display detailed information (the metadata) right underneath it in the search results; more specifically, key information will be shown much more prominently next each image: the title of the page hosting it, the domain name it comes from, and its size. The company also says the source page will no longer load up in an iframe in the background of the image detail view, significantly speeding up the experience for users.
Do you know what that means? It means no more annoying redirects and landing pages.
All those extra clicks just to get basic data about an image has always been one of my biggest pet peeves about the company’s image search so I’m rather excited about it. Google and Bing have played around with including more details by default (but this required a setting to be turned on), hovering over images, and so on, but I’ve still found all of this to be rather unnecessary. We’ll see soon enough if Google has figured out how to address all these shortcomings.
This is great news for users, but Google is also saying it will be a boon for webmasters. With image search ditching iframes that show the image’s original site in the background, Google says it will reduce the load on the source website’s servers and also improve the accuracy of metrics such as pageviews.
This might seem like a bad idea since image search often leads to a lot of click-throughs for many sites. To compensate, Google is making the domain name for each image clickable and is also adding a new button to visit the page the image is hosted on.
With these changes, Google has effectively doubled the number of clickable targets to the source page from two to four. The company says its tests have revealed a net increase in the average click-through rate to the hosting site, but only time will tell if the same holds true once users become accustomed to the new image search.
We’ll keep you posted as Google rolls out the new image search design.
Image credit: AFP/Getty Images
Apple in China Q1 2013: Revenue up 67% to $6.8 billion as iPhone sales double YoY
Apple began breaking out its Greater China operating segment with the release of its Q1 2013 financials on Wednesday, reporting $6.83 billion in revenue in the region, up 26% sequentially and 67% year-over-year.
The company recorded $54.5 billion in revenue the first fiscal quarter, with $13.1 billion in profit. It sold 47.8 million iPhones and 22.9 million iPads.
Its performance in Greater China, which includes Taiwan and Hong Kong, continues to gain strength, but it did see the region’s share of overall revenue decline sequentially. In Q4 2012, the region accounted for 15% of overall revenue, but it made up just 12.5% in Q1 2013. It is a significant improvement year-over-year, though, as Q1 2012 saw just 8.8% coming from Greater China.
Looking across all of Apple’s operating segments in Q1 2013, Greater China actually had the lowest sequential revenue growth (26%). Japan and the rest of Asia Pacific had the highest with 88% and 89% respectively, and the company’s overall revenue jumped up 52% quarter-over-quarter.
The most likely cause for the lower growth in Greater China is the fact that the mainland didn’t receive the iPhone 5 and the iPad 4 and iPad mini until late in the quarter. The new iPads arrived on December 7th and the iPhone 5 hit the market a week later.
While some naysayers have expressed concerns that Apple’s handset market share in China is under tight pressure from low-priced Android handsets, the iPhone does still appear to be doing well in China. CEO Tim Cook noted during Wednesday’s earnings conference call that iPhone sales grew by triple-digit percentage year-over-year.
“We experienced strong iPhone growth in each of our geographic segments most notably Greater China where iPhone sales more than doubled year-over-year,” he said, as transcribed by Seeking Alpha.
It’s worth noting, though, that the year-ago quarter didn’t have a new iPhone launch on the mainland, as the iPhone 4S didn’t arrive there until January 2012.
Apple reported record iPhone sales of 2 million units in mainland China during its first weekend of sales. The iPad mini also appears to be quite popular in China, as the company has had trouble keeping it in stock since it arrived last month.
Cook himself is optimistic about China, as he told Chinese reporters earlier this month that he expects the region to eventually become its largest market. His recent trip to China included visits with top-ranking government officials and executives at Chinese carriers.
In order to continue its impressive sales growth in China, Apple will eventually need to strike a deal with China Mobile, the country’s largest carrier by a large margin with over 700 million subscribers. Sales on China Unicom and China Telecom are going fine, but the country’s smaller carriers have a much lower ceiling.
China Mobile has said it expects to sell 120 million 3G devices this year, up from 60 million in 2012. By releasing an iPhone compatible with China Mobile’s TD-SCDMA 3G network, Apple could grab a portion of that pie. Though the company might be more inclined to wait for China Mobile’s 4G TD-LTE network to arrive, that’s still a year or two away.
Next quarter will be the quarter to watch for Apple in China, as it will contain the first full quarter of iPhone 5 and iPad mini sales there, as well as the Red Friday shopping event to take advantage of Chinese New Year spending.
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Garmin Approach S2 Golf Watch Contains Data On 30,000 Courses Worldwide
If you are an avid golfer and are looking to improve your club selection a little more using the latest technology, you might be interested in a new wrist deveice unveiled by Garmin today, in the form of the Garmin Approach S2.
The Garmin Approach S2 watch has been packed with the data on 30,000 golf courses worldwide out of the box, and includes extensive measurement features and a digital scorecard.
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