Posted on

Apple completes the purchase of Shazam and releases the ads application

Apple has announced the successful completion of the acquisition of Shazam nine months after announcing a purchase agreement that valued the London company at about 400 million dollars. In addition, those of Cupertino have revealed that soon the application of music recognition will eliminate the announcements for all the users, including those of iOS and Android.

“Apple and Shazam have a long history together. Shazam was one of the first applications available when we launched the App Store and it has become the favorite application of music fans around the world, “said Oliver Schusser, vice president of Apple Music. “We share the love for innovation and music, so we are delighted to join our teams to offer users more ways to discover, experience and enjoy music.” 

Last February the European Commission initiated, at the request of several Member States, an evaluation to determine whether the purchase operation between Apple and Shazam could adversely affect competition within the European Economic Area. The results were publishedabout three weeks agoof this inspection, whose conclusion was that the acquisition “will not reduce the competition in the digital music market by streaming “. 

According to data provided by Apple, the Shazam application has been downloaded more than 1,000 million times and its users use it more than 200 million times a day to identify songs. It remains to be seen if Apple will integrate Shazam into iOS and Apple Music or how it will use the augmented reality technology developed by the company.

Posted on

Zhaoxin VIA shows its low-cost x86 processor, with eight cores 3 GHz and iGPU

Earlier this year we received the first news that Via was preparing to compete face to face supposedly with Intel and AMD by launching a new family of processors compatible with low-cost x86 . He did not intend to do it under his own name (which Cyrix fans will regret) but with the Zhaoxin banner , a joint venture established with the Chinese government for the development of chips. This processor, known as the KaiXian KX-6000, now has an official photograph and several basic details of interest.

Successor of the much more modest KX-5000, a processor also compatible with x86 and whose scope is limited to China, the new KaiXian KX-6000 suggests a potentially interesting data sheet. Its microarchitecture is called LuJiaZui. It is a more refined version of the WuDaoKou used by its predecessor, and it will be commercially produced using a Finnit 16 nm production process, when the KX-5000 was manufactured at a certainly full 28 nm.

According to the Japanese publication PC Watch, the technical specifications of the KaiXian KX-6000 include support for SSE 4.2 and AVX, as well as encryption and virtualization technologies. The price-power ratio will apparently be its biggest attraction, providing a total of eight cores at 3 GHz and making use of 8 MB of L2 cache. As an interesting detail (and we were unaware at the time) there will also be an integrated GPU or iGPU compatible with DirectX 11.1, which increases its appeal.

It will be interesting to see comparisons with low-price processors such as the newly updated Athlon , which now incorporates Zen cores and Vega graphics.

Speaking precisely of comparisons, Zhaoxin does not hurt garments to say that the performance of the KaiXian KX-6000 not only exceed 50% of the virtually unknown KX-5000, but will be equated with a seventh-generation Intel Core i5 . We are not talking about a hardware pointer, but a chip with enough power for most users, especially considering that the CPU stopped being an important bottleneck for Windows and even many of the current games.

Zhaoxin has not yet facilitated the launch date of the KaiXian KX-6000, which AnandTech temporarily places at some point in 2019. It is also not clear if we will see this processor in the West, but its mere existence is intriguing in itself.

Posted on

Nintendo Switch stores Online data in the cloud for six months once the subscription expires

Finally Nintendo has clarified what will happen with the data saved in the cloud when a user of his brand new online payment service for Nintendo Switch stops paying the subscription. For the players’ peace of mind, a spokesperson for the company has confirmed that the information will not be erased immediately, as was initially believed , but will be stored for a maximum period of 180 days (six months). 

“If the subscription to Nintendo Switch Online expires, users will not be able to access backup copies of data storage in the cloud,” a Nintendo spokesperson told the IGN portal . “However, Nintendo will allow access to previous backup copies of data in the cloud to users who re-subscribe in 180 days.”

This statement serves to dispel any doubt arising from the publication of a question and answer page on the official website of Nintendo UK, where it was stated that data in the cloud of Nintendo Switch Online could not be maintained without an active subscription. Saving the information up to 180 days Nintendo is at the height of PlayStation Plus, which in case of not paying the membership stores the data during the same period of time. On Xbox Live this feature is offered at no cost. 

Nintendo Switch Online has been running without known incidents since September 19. The payment platform, whose monthly fee is 3.99 euros per month (or 19.99 euros per year), is mandatory to play online, although some free games such as the popular Fortnite do not have it among their requirements. The service also offers saved in the cloud, a collection of classic games and exclusive offers such as the possibility of acquiring commands inspired by the NES .

 

Posted on

Microsoft announces the arrival of keyboard and mouse support for Xbox One


After a long wait, Microsoft has finally announced that keyboard and mouse support on Xbox One is closer than ever. Before this new feature is available for everyone, developers will have the possibility to adapt their games and within a few weeks some users of Xbox Insider program will be able to test it to verify that everything works as expected.
Phil Spencer, head of the Xbox division, has made it clear that support for keyboard and mouse is a feature that will be added game to game and that its adaptation will depend solely and exclusively on the developers. By default the possibility of using keyboard and mouse will be disabled. In case of embracing this new way of playing it will be the development teams that decide how to do it and Microsoft will help them create an experience made to their measure so that everything works optimally and fairly.


In the video Phil Spencer also announces the return of the event X0

Players who use keyboard and mouse have a significant advantage over those who resort to the command, especially if we talk about games like those of first-person shooter. Microsoft will advise large and small studios, always remembering that they must take into account their multiplayer user base. There is the option to automatically split the community based on the peripheral input or offer the option to choose whether or not to play against the keyboard and mouse users. One of the first titles that will prove support for both peripherals will be Warframe .

The “majority” of keyboards and mice with or without USB cable will work with Xbox One, but Microsoft has announced a partnership with the peripheral manufacturer Razer to offer new hardware options. The details of this alliance will be known in November, but three months ago the possibility was leaked that the Razer Turret peripheral get support for Xbox One as well as the idea of ​​taking advantage of the Razer Chroma lighting system.

Posted on

The founders of Instagram leave the company, opening the doors to greater control by Facebook

Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger, co-founders of Instagram and up to now the heads of the famous photographic social network, have resigned. None of them have provided a reason to explain their departure from what is one of the best known Internet firms, but sources consulted by TechCrunch say that the decision was made based on increasing pressure from Facebook to reduce their autonomy.

Systrom and Krieger were until now CEO and chief technology of Instagram, respectively. During this time they had the support of product vice president Kevin Weil, who after leaving to lead the blockchain teamof Facebook was replaced by Adam Mosseri, head of Facebook News and trusted man by Mark Zuckerberg. Systrom and Zuckerberg had until then maintained a cordial relationship punctuated by moments of generally resolved tension, but something would have gone wrong at that moment.

According to the statements of an anonymous source quoted by TechCrunch, “Chris [Cox, Facebook’s product manager] started taking the initiative and with Adam in sync with the old Facebook school, it was clear that it was not going to be [a comfortable situation] I saw that this guy [Systrom] was going to tighten the nuts. ”

One of the particularities of Instagram is that it has managed to maintain a great autonomy so far, despite being one of the first and most important acquisitions of Facebook. In fact, Systrom and Zuckerberg had a resounding showdown when the second wanted Instagram content to flow to Facebook directly from Instagram. Systrom refused and soon after Facebook eliminated direct access to Instagram accounts from their favorites and contacts menus.

Despite these occasional frictions Instagram has not had problems to prosper. The photographic social network has avoided important scandals and maintains a positive image, while its matrix goes from puddle to puddle .

Systrom and Krieger will now take a break while “exploring again” their “curiosity and creativity”, implying that they are working on some kind of project. It would be the third collaboration of these friends of the university since they launched an unknown application called Burbn. It was a failure, but the interest of its users for the photographic filters that it incorporated gave rise to the creation of Instagram, which was a resounding success. With it came Facebook, which paid more than 700 million dollars for an application that then did not reach 50 million users. Now it has more than 1,000 million and has set its sights on the creation of its own contents .

The march of the founders of Instagram is not without precedents within Facebook. Recentlyalso resigned Jan Koum , co-founder and CEO of WhatsApp. As has been known, the leader of the messaging application left the company after several misunderstandings with Facebook, which required a series of important changes related to the privacy of its users and strategies to make the platform profitable .