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Best Ad Campaign in History (Maybe Not)

Tuesday, 18 June 2013 05:53 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

If you want to share stuff, but don't care who you share it with - Rando may be the App for you. It allows you to share stuff to someone - but you don't really know who. They are antisocial and it shows.

So what’s with the anti-social insults? Rando’s schtick is that it eschews all the usual social paraphernalia developers typically embed in their apps. There’s no Facebook sign-in, zero social sharing options at all, no comments, no likes, no favourites, no followers/followees. There’s also no way to tell who gets the photos you share/receive, beyond a general location. It’s deliberately — liberatingly — stripped of context.

Source: TechCrunch

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Surface RT Priced at $199 - For Schools

Tuesday, 18 June 2013 05:48 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

If you have been waiting to pick up a Microsoft Surface RT, the initial thought of grabbing one for $199 may be a bit tantalizing. The downside is that this price is only available to schools and it only lasts until August 31. Still, if you attend or work at a qualifying educational institution, you may want to check out and see if you could pick one of these up. For $199, it's certainly a lot more useful than an Android Tablet for many people.

Microsoft is pushing to get the Surface RT tablet into schools, and it's using a massive price cut and a giveaway to do it. On Monday, the company cut prices by more than 50% for its 32GB Surface RT, as long as schools buy the tablet before September. A Surface RT normally sells for $499 at retail, but Microsoft will drop the price to $199 for schools.

Source: TheVerge

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Digg to Roll Out RSS Reader In Place of Google

Tuesday, 18 June 2013 05:45 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

I did use Google Reader for years as a great place to stream all of the interesting RSS feeds that I enjoyed. It was handy, productive and simple - and they killed it. Digg trys to make a real comeback as they see a need for a good reader. They think they have what it takes and after all of the news experience they have, I'm sure it will be decent. Take a look for more details.

A five-person engineering team has been working heads-down for three months, and now Digg is finally ready to reveal an early version of its project. Since the developers found themselves running a sprint instead of a marathon, the company decided to focus on one type of user: the power user who depends on the availability, stability, and speed of the soon-extinct Google Reader.

Source: PCMag

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GEAK Watch is First Real SmartWatch

Tuesday, 18 June 2013 05:40 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

There is a lot of hype behind the new "SmartWatch" fad and while many of these devices merely mirror informaiton from your phone, the GEAK Watch from Shanda (Shanghai) is probably one of the first real ones. This unit has a lot of sensors as well as WiFi making it a stand-alone product as well as one that works with other devices. The best thing is that if you can travel to China, you'll be able to pick it up for a mere $330.

In terms of sensory features, the GEAK Watch offers to monitor the user's sleeping pattern, pulse, blood pressure, body temperature, mood and number of steps walked. The components that take care of all these are somehow tucked into the 8mm-thick body of the watch, with the brain being the rare 1GHz Ingenic JZ4774 that's based on MIPS architecture. The chip's accompanied by 512MB of RAM, 4GB of storage and a suspiciously minuscule 500mAh lithium polymer cell -- no word on the battery life just yet, though.

Source: Engadget

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Ironside Cyclone Desktop Gaming PC

Monday, 17 June 2013 04:14 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

There is something to be said about buying a great gaming PC from a company that cares. We've looked at a few over the years and things have certainly come a long way. There was a time when it was far cheaper to build your own, but since things have got a lot more competitive, the line has dropped and even some enthusiats I know are buying pre-built rigs. When systems come along like the Ironside Cylone Gaming PC, you understand why. This is priced fairly and comes loaded with some great hardware - GTX 670, 8GB DDR3, 3570K, Z77 Extreme Motherboard, 120GBSSD + 1TB HDD and more.

It's worth noting that because of the high degree of customization, your Cyclone system could look radically different than the one pictured above and throughout this review. Ironside allows you to select a platform-in this case, Ivy Bridge-and then select a case and components that make use of that platform.

Source: TweakTown

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Game Releases and a Review

Monday, 17 June 2013 03:58 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

E3 is in the history books and we learned a lot about the next generation of consoles and saw a bunch of cool new next-generation titles that will be coming this holiday season. In the meantime though, you can save your money for your favorite console - or spend it on some of the news games coming out this week. As always, we head to ShackNews for the scoop.

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (download - $15)
Fist Puncher (download - $10)
Hexodius (download)
Knights of Pen & Paper +1 Edition (download - $10)
Magrunner: Dark Pulse (download - $20)
Moto GP 2013
Neverwinter (free-to-play)
Pro Cycling Manager - Season 2013

360

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (XBLA - $15)

PS3

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (PSN - $15)
Storm (PSN - $10)

WiiU

Dungeons & Dragons: Chronicles of Mystara (eShop - $15)
Game & Wario

PSV

Jak and Daxter Collection

On the review side of things, TweakTown looks at Remember Me for the PC and comes away feeling pretty impressed with a single-player-only game. It doesn't have great replay value, but it looks like a decent title.

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The Key to Used Games

Friday, 14 June 2013 06:20 Written by Jason

Nintendo has been having a tough time with the Wii U, however, at this years E3 it seems like they might be getting back on the right track thanks to the release of some good titles for the Wii U. Even more than their game releases, Nintendo perhaps the best quote of this years E3:

If devs are worried about used game sales, they should make better games

I think Nintendo just won... Polygon has more on this story

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Intel's Haswell-E to Pack 8 Cores, DDR4 in 2014

Monday, 17 June 2013 04:18 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

Intel has not been laying down on the job lately. Besides their foray into the mobile chip market, they are pushing just as hard as ever on their desktop enthusiast chips. The Haswell launched amid some mild cheers, but the emphasis was on lower power consumption and for desktop users, this isn't all that exciting. They have recently shown some more of their cards and are now bragging about DDR4, X99 PCH, 8-Core chips and more. 2014 could be a great year to do another upgrade.

With Haswell-E, Intel will do away with 4-core configurations of these GPU-less dies and offer users a choice of 6 and 8 core CPUs, with up to 20 MB of L3 cache. Of course, Hyper Threading isn’t going anywhere giving the CPU a maximum of 16 logical cores. Maximum TDP for the platform will lie in the range of 130W to 14oW and the processors itself will be built on 22nm 2nd generation Hi-k process.

Source: VR-Zone

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BlackBerry Z10 Review

Monday, 17 June 2013 04:06 Written by Benjamin "Zeus" Heide

It's no secret that most of the staff here at BCCHardware are Android phone users. Many of us have Samsung devices, but there are some stray ones with HTC and LG devices. Android is a solid platform. Speaking of "solid" the BlackBerry Z10 is possibly one of the nicer pieces of hardware to ship earlier this year, and combined with a fresh BBOS, it may just have some hope to survive 2013. If you are considering a new device, take a look as this unit is often found for $0 on contract.

Source: LANOC

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ESPN to end 3D channel

Friday, 14 June 2013 06:27 Written by Jason

ESPN was one of the first major TV networks to get on the 3DTV bandwagon and now by the end of 2013 they will officially end their 3DTV channel. This isn't too surprising as 3DTV hasn't ever really taken off like TV makers had hoped. ESPN will be moving onto 4K content which isn't too surprising. The Verge has the story.

3D TV programming may be dying before it ever really got off the ground: ESPN, which was one of the first major programmers to embrace the format, plans to discontinue its specialized ESPN 3D channel by year's end. ESPN spokesperson Katina Arnold has confirmed the move via Twitter, squarely blaming low adoption as the reason for the channel's demise.

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R.I.P. Symbian

Thursday, 13 June 2013 16:08 Written by Jason

It's been a long road for Symbian, but this week marks the very last Symbian phones being produced by Nokia. At one point Symbian was the go-to mobile OS for smartphones but has since been killed off by Andriod, iOS, and others. BGR has the details on the very last Symbian phone.

What a long, strange trip it’s been. Once the most popular smartphone platform on the planet by a massive margin, Symbian is now officially dead. The Financial Times on Wednesday reported that Nokia has built and shipped the last batch of Symbian smartphones it will ever produce. The platform will now fade away, remembered only occasionally alongside other mobile operating systems that helped shape an industry before being crushed by their successors.

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