Bing news search now shows related topics and personalities

Microsoft’s Bing may be a boy among men in the search-engine wars, but that’s not stopping it from piling on new features. The latest are in its news search, where it just added a “trending topics” carousel that shows timely info in the same category as your query (see the above image), along with a sidebar that displays personalities “you might also like.” Clicking on either will bring up further news results, and Bing also said it’s now extended the article index several years back in time compared to the curt two week period it had before. It’s an interesting change-up over Google’s Knowledge Graph, and Microsoft needs all the help it can get in search, given recent survey results.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

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Source: Bing blog

Bing news search now shows related topics and personalities

Microsoft’s Bing may be a boy among men in the search-engine wars, but that’s not stopping it from piling on new features. The latest are in its news search, where it just added a “trending topics” carousel that shows timely info in the same category as your query (see the above image), along with a sidebar that displays personalities “you might also like.” Clicking on either will bring up further news results, and Bing also said it’s now extended the article index several years back in time compared to the curt two week period it had before. It’s an interesting change-up over Google’s Knowledge Graph, and Microsoft needs all the help it can get in search, given recent survey results.

Filed under: Internet, Microsoft

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Source: Bing blog

Intel: Haswell will boost laptop battery life by 50 percent

When Intel launched Haswell, it promised a generational leap in battery life, and now the chip giant’s talking numbers to back that up. Architecture Group VP Rani Borkar said that laptops packing the chipset should get 50 percent more battery life than current Ivy Bridge models and go up to 20 times longer in standby or idle mode — without any cost to performance. She said that lower power requirements will be one factor in the drop in consumption, but an all-new architecture including a power management chip will also help reduce the energy draw. We’ll have to see whether that encouraging piece of news will help the moribund PC notebook market pick up lost ground to tablets, or whether companies will just keep blurring the line.

Filed under: Laptops, Intel

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Source: Computerworld

Microsoft details how Xbox One cloud servers will tackle processor-intensive gaming chores

One of the Xbox launch’s big reveals was that Microsoft added 300,000 servers to Xbox Live, and now GM Matt Booty has detailed to Ars Technica how that’ll improve game play. He said the improved cloud architecture will speed up GPU- or CPU-heavy chores that aren’t dependent on latency — like lighting or cloth dynamics — by pre-calculating them before applying them to a scene. To make that happen, the Xbox One server cloud will provide three virtual devices for “every Xbox one available in your living room.” It’ll be up to game developers to manage transitions between console-only and cloud assisted graphics, though, since the first few seconds of lighting in a new scene will need to be handled by the console before servers can take over. Of course, that means many titles may look better when you’re online, but he added that you’ll still be able to play if the internet is cut and “the game is going to have to intelligently handle that.”

Filed under: Gaming, Microsoft

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Source: Ars Technica

Broadcom to bring 5G WiFi to the masses with entry-level combo chips

As we’ve mentioned before, 5G WiFi, aka 802.11ac is a good thing, unless you hate speed and range. After launching its integrated BCM4335 chip on flagship handsets like Samsung’s Galaxy S 4 and the HTC One, Broadcom has announced new 5G WiFi combo chips for lower-end smartphones, PCs, notebooks and tablets. Budget handheld devices can now be equipped with the BCM4339, which Broadcom says brings the same performance as its top-end mobile chip while integrating power and low-noise amplifiers for easier integration. Meanwhile, the BCM43162 is targeted at desktop and notebook PCs with direct support for the Microsoft’s Windows OS. Customers are now sampling both chips, and Broadcom expects volume production in the second half of the year — another possible reason to put off that notebook purchase a bit longer.

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Tablets

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Warrior Web from DARPA aims to boost muscles, reduce fatigue and injury (video)

The US military’s dabbled with full-on robotic suits in the past, but it’s now looking at a less convoluted, more energy-efficient approach. A project called Warrior Web from DARPA aims to enhance soldier carrying capacity and minimize injuries by distributing loads better, providing better joint support and “reapply(ing) energy to enhance motion.” Such a suit would be equipped with sensors to detect forces, and be able to fit beneath existing uniforms while consuming only 100W of juice. The US Army has nearly completed five months of prototype testing using a multi-camera motion capture system (see the video after the break) to develop critical tech. The next step will be to design and fabricate a suit ready for real-world testing, which should happen in the fall — assuming the program keeps its footing.

Filed under: Wearables, Science

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Source: DARPA

Lenovo pulls in best-ever revenue of $7.8 billion for Q4 2012/13, record $34 billion for the year

Lenovo’s just announced its Q4 and full year 2012/13 financial results, and it’s touched new highs on the two most important indices. It earned $127 million on $7.8 billion in revenue for the quarter and $34 billion for the full year, both records for the company, while netting $635 million in profit for the full year — another all-time high. The only sore spot for Q4 was Lenovo’s laptop business, which dropped two percent over last year to $4.2 billion, but that’s a far milder plummet than many PC makers saw — thanks to a 74 percent revenue growth in China. Otherwise, desktop PCs held flat for the company at $2.4 billion during an otherwise down period, and it held firm as China’s number two smartphone manufacturer, seeing shipments grow at 206 percent year-over-year, double the average rate. It remains to be seen if Lenovo can continue to buck the downward PC trend that’s continued unabated with the release of Windows 8 — but if not, maybe we’d finally see some of its smartphones over here.

Filed under: Cellphones, Desktops, Laptops, Lenovo

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Source: Business Wire

3M, Nanosys ready to bring quantum dot film to LCD makers

3M and Nanosys have just announced that they’ll start shipping qualification samples of their Quantum Dot Enhancement Film (QDEF) to manufacturers to bring a 50 percent wider color gamut and lower power consumption to LCD displays. Consisting of trillions of quantum dots tuned to create precise color hues, such films can be swapped in to replace existing backlighting tech, meaning manufacturers will need no special equipment to adopt it. The companies say they’ll have samples for manufacturer design cycles starting “late second quarter this year” — but if you can’t wait that long, you’ll be able to actually buy similar tech from Sony, likely very soon.

Filed under: Displays

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Logitech unveils $60 wired iPad keyboard built for classroom abuse

Bluetooth keyboards for the iPad are nice and all, but aren’t you going to need to be within a wire’s-length to see the thing anyway? To that end, Logitech has announced a full-sized wired iPad keyboard targeted to classrooms with an emphasis on durability and maintenance. It has a spill-resistant design, three-year warranty and key life of over 5 million strokes, according to the company, and comes in either lightning or 30-pin versions. If you don’t mind being tethered, the Lightning model will ship in August and the last-gen iPad model in November for $60 each — but you can pre-order now at the source.

Filed under: Peripherals

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Via: ZDNet

Source: Logitech

Google’s conversational search goes live with latest version of Chrome

After revealing it at I/O 2013 only days ago, Google’s new conversational voice search function is up and running on Chrome 27. If you’ve got that version, you’ll now get a spoken response on top of a web page display when using the voice search function (the microphone in the main search window), for starters. More interestingly, the new feature also includes semantic search, meaning you can ask follow-up questions without repeating needless info — for instance, “who’s the CEO of GE?” can now be followed up with “how old is he?” and Google will know who “he” is. We gave it a spin for ourselves and found that when it worked, it worked well, however, the system may be overwhelmed by the launch and is giving us a “no internet connection” message most of the time — not exactly what we’re looking for.

Filed under: Internet, Software, Google

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Via: Search Engine Land