“We and the selling stockholders have granted the underwriters the right to purchase up to an additional 63,185,042 shares of Class A common stock to cover over-allotments” Facebook wrote in its eighth amendment to the SEC-1 filing. Meanwhile, “the selling stockholders are offering 241,233,615 shares of Class A common stock,” up from the 157,415,352 mentioned in yesterday’s filing.

That takes the total amount of shares on offer to 421,233,615. Facebook has not revised its estimate for pricing, which was increased earlier this week from the original range of  $28 – $35 each, to $34 – $38 each.

Response to Facebook’s IPO round has been reportedly mixed, with the social network supposedly heavily oversubscribed despite simultaneous talk of investor reservations. Facebook’s lacking mobile advertising strategy has been cited as the main cause for concern, with the company seeing rocketing use of the social site from mobile devices like phones and tablets, but having yet to come up with a workable way to monetize them.

[via TNW]

It marks an interesting move by Apple, perhaps responding to various Android devices with ever increasing screen sizes. What started at around the 4-inch mark quickly moved to 4.3-inches, and the latest slew of handsets from Samsung, HTC, and LG hit the 4.7 and 4.8-inch marks. Customers seem to be responding well to the large sizes too, with Samsung reaping the lion’s share of Android phone revenue thanks to the Galaxy S II. They’re hoping to do the same with the Galaxy S III and its 4.8-inch screen.

Mockups and rumors have suggested that Apple will increase the screen size and go with a new aspect ratio in the process. iLounge reported two weeks ago that the next iPhone would feature a 4-inch screen, keeping the same width but increasing length. Thickness would also be decreased, and the phone is said to have a metallic back to complement the glass design. Not only that, but a smaller dock connector would debut on the new iPhone that would eventually make its way to other iOS devices.

What can you look forward to? Pretty much what you’ve seen on other HTC ICS devices so far, although Sense 4.0 won’t make the jump: you’ll be stuck with Sense 3.6 instead. Otherwise you’ll be seeing system bar enhancements, resizable widgets, an improved lock screen, Face Unlock, home screen folders, and improved battery life.

T-Mobile will push the update out OTA when it’s been approved, although you’ll be able to check manually via HTC’s software update option in the Android settings too if you’re feeling impatient. As for the Sensation 4G, the ICS update will be dropping today boasting similar features, but beware: you’ll lose the ability to tether you internet connection unless you shell out additional cash to T-Mobile for the option.

Most frustrating for HTC is the fact that the company believes it has already implemented a workaround to the patented technology, which details how information from one point in the phone – such as a phone number – can be linked to another aspect of the handset. However, the ITC must review the devices to ensure those changes are in compliance with the “limited exclusion order” granted to Apple back in December 2011.

“The US availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order” HTC told SlashGear in a statement yesterday. “We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval. The HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE have been received enthusiastically by customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to get these products into their hands as soon as possible.”

Sales of the One X had already begun on AT&T, though now HTC is warning that supplies could be constrained. The release of the HTC EVO 4G LTE, previously expected to take place this coming Friday, will now be delayed the company has confirmed.

No estimate for how long that delay may last, or just when One X supplies might come through, has been given, with HTC pleading ignorance and saying it depends on how fast Customs works. Apple is yet to comment on the ITC decision.

Users will be able to unlock the home screen by dragging anywhere on the display, and customize a pattern unlock that opens specific functions on the phone, such as the camera. Speaking of the camera, here’s an interesting function: LG will let users take photos using voice commands instead of pressing the shutter button, and like Sense and TouchWiz, you can fire off multiple photos and then select the best one from the group.

Android users love to customize every aspect of the OS, and LG seems to have picked up on that detail. Optimus UI 3.0 will feature customizable icons, so you can use custom photos and images instead of the stock Android or LG pictures. LG also say they’ve simplified the UI over previous outings, and the app menu features a new “Downloaded” category for easier access.

OEMs are starting to wake up to the fact that the spec war is coming to a close, and the software experience is paramount, so it’s nice to see LG running with the herd and experimenting with features like Voice Shutter. Still, what we’d really like to see is manufacturers giving the option to use either the stock ICS experience or their own customizations. We’ll keep dreaming in the meantime.

The case includes Kensington’s ClickSafe one click locking mechanism and has an integrated security tether to secure the tablet on the go. The stand has adjustable angle so you can put the screen in the most comfortable position, and the integrated keyboard connects to your iPad via Bluetooth. When you’re done using the tablet, the keyboard closes over the screen to protect it from damage.

The keyboard is removable allowing you to use the locking case and no keyboard if you want. The case also has an integrated loop to hold a pen or stylus and the case leaves all iPad controls and the docking connector uncovered. Official pricing on the locking keyboard case is unknown, but other similar cases from Kensington range from $60 to a bit over $100.

‘In terms of Facebook specifically, while we currently do not plan to continue with advertising, we remain committed to an aggressive content strategy through all of our products and brands, as it continues to be a very effective tool for engaging with our customers” a GM spokesperson said of the change. The company will continue to use its free Facebook profile pages to announce news and field comments from drivers.

The decision to abandon Facebook advertising is being viewed as a considerable one within the industry, given General Motor’s heft. As the third largest spender on advertising in the US – only beaten by Proctor & Gamble Co. and AT&T – it is believed to have been pumping $40m into promotion on Facebook, $10m of which was supposedly in paid adverts.

Facebook has highlighted advertising as one of its key risk areas ahead of the social site’s IPO later this week. The company has seen a surge in users accessing the site from mobile devices, but revenue from advertising is yet to catch up with that increase. Nonetheless, estimates for the Facebook IPO are still more than healthy, with the company board releasing a further 50m shares earlier this week, and bumping the overall estimate to the site’s worth to over $100bn.

The R6200 isn’t quite as fast as the original router that Netgear announced: it’ll deliver 300Mbit/s over 802.11n, and 900Mbit/s on the 5Ghz band using 802.11ac to deliver a total of 1200Mbit/s. That’s down from the 1750Mbit/s offered on the R6300, but we imagine it’s more than enough to stream Game of Thrones across your house. The R6200 also only has one USB 2.0 port for storage devices instead of the two found on the R6300.

As for the A6200 adapter, it marks the first such adapter to be made available for the 802.11ac standard, even if it hasn’t been finalized yet. The USB adapter has adjustable antennas so you can find the best signal, plus a desktop docking station. Netgear says that the both of these should be available by the end of the week, with the R6200 costing $179.99 and the A6200 coming in at $69.99.

The physicians took healthy nerves from the man’s body and used those nerves to bridge the damaged nerves and rewire the man’s nervous system. The groundbreaking surgery was performed by surgeons at Washington University’s school of medicine, and the operation could be a breakthrough for some people suffering from spinal cord injury. The man the surgery was performed on is a 71-year-old who broke his neck in a car crash in 2008.

Prior to the surgery, the man had limited use of his arms, but he had lost the ability to grasp or hold things in either hand. The surgeons used the healthy nerves above the spinal breakage and connected those healthy nerves to the anterior interosseous nerve in the forearm that controls hand movement. After surgery, the men underwent physical therapy, and began to move his thumb and fingers of the left hand eight months after the surgery, and could move fingers on the right hand 10 months after the surgery.

“To our knowledge, this is the first reported case of thumb and finger flexor reinnervation after a spinal cord injury. While the results in this patient are usually modest, due to the severe joint stiffness, his function has improved significantly with his ability to feed himself,” the team writes in the Journal of Neurosurgery.

[via Guardian]

The regular TV advert introduces a slightly camp dancing tiger who proceeds to strut his stuff to an insanely catchy tune while, coincidentally it seems, on the moon. He’s watched by a somewhat bemused astronaut.

Intel Tiger Ultrabook advert:

Intel seemingly decided that what works to impress the brave men and women of space exploration would have no trouble doing the same to the Japanese media, hence tiger man’s reappearance at an ultrabook event earlier this month. This time, however, he was joined by mask-wearing backup dancers both inside and outside the venue.

Intel Tiger Ultrabook dancer event:

Never before has the Intel jingle bracketed something quite so bizarre, though it’s definitely more memorable than “oh look, another computer that looks a bit like a MacBook Air, but that runs Windows.”

[via Twitter]

As you can see in the photo here from Google Street view, the Fiat is parked right by the front door under the Volkswagen awning. I wonder if the folks working in the VW headquarters in Sweden will see the humor in this, or if they’re going to be angry, bitter shrews. Whatever the case, that little Fiat 500 will be viewable on Google Street view for about a year.

I’d like to know how Fiat pulled off the prank. I can only assume someone got lucky and noticed the Street View cars cruising the city and simply hung out waiting for the right time to pull in and let nature take its course. Maybe this is the start of a prank war between Fiat and Volkswagen in Sweden. It’s your turn VW, make it a good one.

[via Jalopnik]

Samsung won’t be offering the phone for sale on the 29th – it’s only for those who pre-order at that specific store. Retailers will be able to make their own pre-orders available early from 7pm on the 29th, but you’ll have to swing by Samsung’s own store if you want to be one of the first in the UK to own the device.

Those specs again if you haven’t committed them to memory already: a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD 720p display, quad-core 1.4Ghz Exynos 4212 processor, 1GB of RAM, eight megapixel camera, 16/32/64GB of storage with a microSD card slot, 2,100mAh battery, and a new industrial design along with tweaked TouchWiz on Ice Cream Sandwich. We’ll be bringing you a full review before the phone launches, so keep an eye out.

Operational for the past few years, but little publicized, the Microsoft Signature program offers “clean” versions of Windows PCs from its own Microsoft stores and online store. Generally identical to the branded PCs sold elsewhere by the same vendors, the big difference to the Signature models is that they come with none of the software customization by OEMs: instead, it’s Windows how Microsoft envisaged it.

“Many new PCs come filled with lots of trialware and sample software that slows your computer down – removing all that is a pain, so we do it for you! Every PC the Microsoft Store sells is put on a software diet and performance is tuned to run the best it can. We call this process Microsoft Signature” Microsoft

The WSJ reports on the program, which as well as offering brand new Signature PCs, gives new owners who bought their computer elsewhere the option to bring it to a physical Microsoft store and pay $99 to have it de-cluttered.

“The Signature desktop, which is labeled “Microsoft Signature,” features a picture of a sunset over a lake as its wallpaper. It contains no icons other than the recycling bin. The Taskbar contains only icons for Internet Explorer, the Explorer file browser, and Microsoft’s free email, photo and moviemaking programs. The system tray, to the right of the Taskbar, contains only the bare minimum of items, such as the network and battery indicators” Walt Mossberg

Greater digging turned up no “optional” toolbars in Internet Explorer, no utility or settings apps from the OEMs themselves, and no trials for anti-virus or anti-malware apps. Instead, Microsoft loads its own Security Essentials program, which is free. Where apps are essential for particular elements of the PC’s hardware, however, they’re left in place. Testing showed start-up times were a little improved, but shutdown times were considerably quicker.

Although Mossberg comes away impressed by the Signature service, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Microsoft should be insisting on this user-experience for all of its new owners. Whether OEMs would be willing to give up the extra income from selling off day-one access to the user’s desktop looks unlikely, however.

Speaking at an annual general meeting, Xi went on to say: “China Mobile and Apple both have the will to strengthen cooperation. When there is more specific news, we will disclose it.” Apple, meanwhile, declined to comment. Offering the iPhone on its network is sure to attract even more customers and boost revenue, and allow the carrier to compete against China Unicom and China Telecom who both offer the iPhone.

The company is also hoping to battle declining sales with the introduction of an LTE network across China. Currently it relies on a TD-SCDMA 3G service, preventing China Mobile from offering more popular handsets to compete with its rivals. The company will expand its LTE trial to nine cities and add around 20,000 base stations (up from 900 last year).

The NTT DoCoMo Galaxy S III (SC-06D) is one of eight phones in the DoCoMo NEXT series. That also includes the Optimus Vu, LG’s oversized Galaxy Note rival, and devices from Panasonic (the Eluga Power P-07D), Sharp (the Aquos Phone sv SH-10D among others), and Sony (the Xperia GX SO-04D). All run Android 4.0.

The DoCoMo “with” Series, meanwhile, features seven more mid-range phones, including Panasonic’s Eluga V P-06D and Sony’s Xperia SX SO-05D. Again, all run Android 4.0, and three pack LTE connectivity.

As for the tablet, that’s the ELUGA Live P-08D by Panasonic, set to arrive in August, with a 10.1-inch 1280 x 800 display, 1.2GHz dual-core OMAP4460 processor, 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, no rear camera but a chassis that’s both waterproof and dustproof.

The kid’s phone, HW-01D, has a 2-inch 240 x 320 display and is waterproof and dustproof, while the Mobile WiFi Router L-04D can share its LTE connection out over WiFi b/g/n connections with up to ten tethered devices.

DoCoMo will announce pricing later on, with the phones arriving from June 2012.

However, so far, only a small amount of those games have actually been made available. But today, there’s good news. “Starting today, you’ll have even more reason to never stop playing. We’re very excited to announce [more] PSP titles and minis will be available on the PS Vita Store, with many more coming soon,” Sony said in a post on the official PlayStation Blog. Among today’s new PSP titles are Cho Aniki Zero, Strikers 1945, Valhalla Knights 2, and Tom Clancy’s Rainboy Six: Vegas.

The minis are Aero Racer, Age of Zombies, Blast Off, Dynogems, Echoes, and Vempire. That’s quite a slate of titles for one day. In addition, Sony promised no fewer than 29 more PSP games will be “coming soon” to the Vita, and nearly 40 other PlayStation mini games were also unveiled. So even though the Vita isn’t really a backward compatible system, Sony is showing that it does at least appreciate those who want to play previous-generation titles on it.

[via PlayStation Blog]

At least, that’s what the BBC is planning to do. In case you were wondering, that’s more than 2,500 hours of content. The broadcaster will offer a special video player on its website, chock full of 24 different live high-definition video streams. In 2008, the BBC offered six streams. During a media event, BBC general manager Phil Pearnley was quoted as describing the project by saying, “The biggest single event we’ve ever seen was in the World Cup when England played Slovenia. Take that and double it – that’s what we’ve been planning for the Olympics.”

In addition to the Web-based video player, the BBC will offer special apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android. It will also deliver a special app for Internet-connected TVs as well as the PS3, Tivo, and even other platforms that the company hasn’t confirmed yet. On top of all this, it will also have constantly updated Twitter feeds so that users who don’t have the time to launch a video player will be able to get instant updates. The BBC is calling it “the first proper digital Olympics.”

[via paidContent]

It became a huge issue when the game was released. There are areas within the race tracks that allow players to essentially skip more than half ot the course. The shortcuts were so extreme – and unintentional – that anyone using them has been considered a cheater. It was a big headache for Nintendo because the way the system originally worked, there was no way to patch individual 3DS games over the Internet.

However, a firmware update for the device went live earlier this year that modified the 3DS’s inner workings and made such a feat possible. This issue caused many to draw comparisons between Nintendo and Sony/Microsoft yet again, noting that Nintendo is far behind when it comes to things like online connectivity in the gaming environment.

[via Wired]

SlashGear has received the following statement: “The US availability of the HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE has been delayed due to a standard U.S. Customs review of shipments that is required after an ITC exclusion order. We believe we are in compliance with the ruling and HTC is working closely with Customs to secure approval. The HTC One X and HTC EVO 4G LTE have been received enthusiastically by customers and we appreciate their patience as we work to get these products into their hands as soon as possible.”

The patent at issue is one that deals with the way phone numbers are linked to the dialer app that comes pre-installed on HTC mobile phones. The manufacturer said that it complied with the mandate earlier this year and made design specifications, so it’s a little unclear as to why there is an issue. But that’s all that we know at this point. We’ll keep you posted as more details come into the picture.

[via Android Community]

You can’t try to spread your message virally by piggybacking on another viral brand and expect them not to find out about it. And this wasn’t just a mistake. White Castle used the JibJab name in a video it made, then tweeted “5 minutes of @JibJab #fame?” and referenced JibJab in the copy of its Facebook advertisements. It also apparently depicted cartoon characters that looked like the JibJab mascots.

JibJab, like any good company in this day and age, monitors all references to its name and when it saw White Castle plastering it everywhere, it wasn’t amused. The company, which rose to stardom in 2004 when viral videos were still a new thing and its parody musical about the presidential campaign captured the nation’s attention, has filed a lawsuit to block White Castle from using the JibJab name.

[via paidContent]

The primary reason to move to robotically-assisted production is the reduction of labor costs, which is why it’s so popular in the automaker and appliance industries. But there’s a cultural element as well, according to Japan Daily Press. They report that part of Canon’s drive comes from keeping up Japan’s image as “a nation of technological advancement”. While other companies are taking up robotic assembly as a means of moving high-paying jobs to china and other nations, Canon says that it will train its employees for new types of work and avoid eliminating a single job.

The change should allow Canon to produce its cameras and lenses at a cheaper price point, something that every photographer should be happy with. The 5D Mark III retails for $3500 for just the body, a significant step up from the previous generation even considering its advances in features and specs. More options for more consumer and pro photographers should be welcome.

Nintendo has gained a lot of rightful accolades for a lot of things. It is a marketing powerhouse, it knows how to connect with its fans, and when it comes to its killer franchises, it never cuts corners. But there’s one thing that hasn’t been associated with Nintendo for decades – the bleeding edge of technology. But offering cloud saving will take it at least in the right direction.

Apparently, the service will give users 512 MB of storage, which should be enough for dozens of save files. Unfortunately, this doesn’t exactly give Nintendo a competitive advantage. Both the PS3 and Xbox 360 have cloud saving options, but it is good that Nintendo is catching up when it comes to online connectivity.

[via Wii U Daily]

Featured: Sometimes we at SlashGear go on some pretty epic journeys just to catch up on the latest tech news. This time we’re coming at you all the was from South Korea and are offering a look at one of the most impressive smartphones that we have seen to date. There’s no guarantee it will come to the US, but you should check it out – LG Optimus LTE2 hands-on in Korea.

Facebook, Chrome, & OLED: So as we wrap up the Wrap-Up, let’s take a look at the other stories that grabbed headlines today while you were out earning a living. For starters – Facebook enhances transparency in its data use policy. And that’s not the only thing that is getting enhanced. We’re talking about Chrome 19 – Chrome 19 stable release adds tab syncing. And finally, an advancement in TVs may soon be coming your way – Sony and Paasonic reportedly in talks to partner on OLED.

What NVIDIA and Industrial Light & Magic had to offer this week on stage at GTC was more than just a couple of videos. Cofer broke down his situation like so: “all of my data is localized at ILM, a lot of my work is presentation, and I need to go to LA and show some film. Now, I need to break everything down, but I don’t have access to how it was made.” He continued that because he needed more often to not to simply show work, not necessarily to work with the video itself, he needed a next-generation solution.

Popping out a MacBook Air, Cofer clicked to get to his simple workstation desktop. From there, he noted, he could “show you a live scene running Maya from ILM’s offices in the Presidio.” Cofer noted that “over the course of the year we [ILM] had five weeks and 500 shots left – a hundred shots a week.” Working with a virtual desktop on the MacBook and NVIDIA Kepler architecture, sculpting these scenes from anywhere on the planet virtually.

Pulling up an application called Nuke next, Cofer showed a running scene from Battleship with “shredders” flying through the air towards a ship in the sea. Cofer demonstrates that he’s able to remotely access the data which allows him to adjust the film that can move the shredder devices through the air in near real time, “accessing terabytes of information remotely.”

Finally, Cofer shows of a display of 100 screens showing streaming video at once, one one workstation. This power of virtualization is made possible with NVIDIA’s Kepler architecture and is made real with technology that is live today. Check out the rest of our NVIDIA coverage from this week through the timeline below and let us know what you’re looking forward to in the world of graphics processing now!

Also take a look at NVIDIA’s live stream of this event where we’ve picked up a couple of images that you see here in this post – thanks NVIDIA!

What is known is what glitch actually set this whole firestorm off. The most innocuous of things, a trade, a pushing of items is to blame. To make the error happen for yourself, and we do not recommend this if you’re still able to play online at the moment, is to create a Demon Hunter and give a Templar follower a shield. Simple as that.

Once you do that strangely common set of actions, you’ll be booted from the Battle.NET servers and will not be able to log back on until Blizzard sends out a software fix. This sad news is also popping up as Error 3006, the saddest of messages a Diablo fan can get after waiting more than 10 years since the last installment of the Diablo online RPG series. Now we must wait – oh the pain!

UPDATE: Servers are offline for the time being – hopefully not for long!

“Starting at approximately 2:15 p.m. PDT, we will be bringing Diablo III servers in the Americas offline for urgent maintenance to address several issues that are impacting the game. We anticipate that maintenance will last for about an hour and that servers will be available at approximately 3:30 p.m. PDT. We will provide further updates as they are necessary. Thank you for your patience.” – Blizzard Forums

His predictions on hardware seem obvious enough: new Intel Ivy Bridge platforms for all the laptops and the iMac, and a new version of both OS X and iOS before the fall. On the iPad side of things, he claims that a smaller model would make sense for the fall, especially in the education market, where the high price of entry for tablets is keeping many away. Interestingly, textbooks seem central to this thesis, even though the meager offerings on iBooks haven’t improved significantly since it was introduced in January. Quote Reitzes, “We do not feel that a smaller, lower priced tablet will dilute the quality of the iPad brand and iOS ecosystem either, despite prior comments by the company.”

The analyst isn’t saying anything more than we’ve already heard (if fact a cynic might say he’s an avid reader of the tech blogs), but he says it with the authority of several billion dollars worth of guided investments. Apple has successfully navigated the passing of Steve Jobs and continues its incredibly profitable streak above the mobile market, while dominating tablets and making strides on the desktop. All of Apple’s non-mobile hardware is due for a refresh, and at least some of it will certainly come during WWDC in June.

[via Forbes]

This set of two updates is ready to remove all known variants of the malware at hand. If you do use any version of Apple’s OS X or Mac OS X software, you should check for a software update immediately. Flashback software has already found its way to thousands of computers across the entire earth, infecting users without their knowledge. The software then works to grab advertisement cash by having your web browsers load webpages without your consent, the creators of the Flashback software netting thousands of dollars in the process.

This software update is now live for both Apple’s OS X 10.7 Lion as well as OS X 10.5 Leopard and can, once again, be accessed via a simple check of your Software Updates page from your desktop. This upgrade is not mandatory, but we suggest very much that you install and execute as soon as possible. Have a peek at our timeline below to see the effects of the Flashback software as it spread across the Apple world over the past few weeks.

This release would have Google controlling the apps that run on the operating system they’ll release next to a greater degree, so says the tipster speaking with the WSJ as well. This soft of strategy would take what Google has done so far in working with HTC for the HTC Nexus One back at the start, the Samsung Galaxy Nexus more recently, and manufacturers such as Motorola (with the XOOM tablet) along the way to bring each new version of their software to the public in a vanilla iteration.

This tip may well be playing off the fact that Google is still in the process of taking control of Motorola and might have them working with both Samsung (who has been tipped already for the release that will come more than likely during Google I/O) as well as Motorola for this next release. One option here is that Google will work with Samsung for a tablet version of their Jellybean software and Motorola for a smartphone, but we will just have to wait and see!

Stick with us here on SlashGear for the full 4/11 on the situation as we inch nearer and nearer to Google I/O next month – we’ll be there live!

While it’s not extremely fair to compare a massive PC role-playing game release like Diablo III to a third-person shooter like Max Payne 3, you’d have to be living under a rock not to have seen the media blast-out between these two beasts over the past few weeks. What we’re seeing here is Rockstar Games going up against Blizzard Entertainment, creators of the rest of the massively popular Diablo series and the most popular MMORPG of all time, World of Warcraft.

Pre-order totals for the Xbox 360 version of Max Payne 3 came in at 158,551 new customers while the PlayStation 3 version brought in 123,046 players of its own. Combined, 281,597 Max Payne 3 players don’t have anything on the 823,992 Diablo III pre-order players taking on the forces of evil today. If you’re in either camp, you’re likely not going to be reading this any way you look at it, as online and offline games are burning up consoles and gaming PCs starting earlier today across the nation and the planet.

Happy gaming, folks, and stay tuned for release numbers which should be racked up by either production group by the end of the week. Expect the best!

You’re looking at a smartphone right here still running Android 2.3 Gingerbread in 2012, which does not give us a whole lot of confidence about its future, even though it does also have 1GB of RAM inside and a lovely 8-megapixel camera on the back. You get a microSD card slot for 32GB of memory expansion if you wish, 16Gb of internal storage, and a 1.3-megapixel camera on the front. Have a peek at this device in quick action courtesy of SlashGear and our sister site Android Community.

This smartphone’s dual-core 1.6Ghz processor does have some explosive potential, but here isn’t truly living up to what we’d expect out of a competitor for such titans as the HTC One series of the Samsung Galaxy S III. Instead what we’ve got is an extremely safe design with not a whole lot of pazazz other than the microHDMI port along the side and two speakers on either side of the base.

Above you’ll see Quadrant Standard being run on this smartphone as well. No records being broken here! Expect more out of alternate manufacturers, folks, as this smartphone isn’t going to break any molds any time soon. Have a peek!

This new technology deployed on Kepler, noted Huang, was super energy efficient, this allowing for deployment on a massive scale. This architecture allows for every command buffer to be virtualized, NVIDIA now able to have one GPU shared with “countless users” as each virtual machine can be discerned from the next, each of them sending graphics commands individually. Machines can now have streams sent to them completely virtually with Kepler architecture, this allowing for a BYOD environment.

Bring Your Own Device is the new key here with NVIDIA, with one limitation currently being that in the past we’ve needed to integrate into one network which has tended thus far to be working with Windows. NVIDIA’s solution to this limitation problem has your GPU virtualized entirely, adding Kepler and newly developed GPU-aware hypervisor software (aka a virtual machine manager), with each machine then having a GPU to itself. NVIDIA is teaming up with Citrix to make this a reality.

Huang invited Sumit Dhawan, Group VP & General Manager at Citrix Systems to the stage to discuss the future of virtualization. Together Dhawan and Huang headed to stage left where an iPad was connected with Citrix Receiver, an app which here allows a massive 1,000 CUDA cores to be shown on the tablet at once – all of them virtualized.

The cores aren’t actually running on the iPad, instead running on a remote server powered by NVIDIA VGX technology. Stay tuned for the rest of the big bang NVIDIA is releasing today at GTC and check out the timeline below to see what we’ve seen thus far – NVIDIA GPUs blowing up all week!

Thanks to NVIDIA for the awesome photographs snapped right up front at the GPU conference live! You can check out their in-house live stream at NVIDIA Blogs now!

Why has the United States been so difficult for Nokia?

It was a combination of factors:

1. Nokia’s business model used to be based almost entirely on volume sales with minimal customization. The U.S. is a carrier-controlled market where the carrier chooses phones and dictates which phones reach the market and which functionality. To succeed in that environment, you need to be willing to customize your devices to meet specific carrier needs – which can mean filling holes in their portfolio or supporting their unique technologies. Nokia simply was not set up to do that in the past.

2. Nokia hated CDMA, expected it to fail, and under-invested in the technology. CDMA makes up more than half of the U.S. cellular subscriber market.

3. Over the years, Nokia successively ignored every form factor that U.S. consumers liked – clamshell phones, super-thin phones, QWERTY phones, and touchscreen phones. Each time, Nokia would lecture everyone about the problems with the new form factor. Eventually, Nokia would begrudgingly launch one or two models with that form factor, but by that point the rest of the industry had long since moved on to the next form factor, which Nokia would publicly disparage… and then the cycle would start again.

4. Nokia’s smartphone line was based on Symbian. Symbian never caught on in the U.S. Part of the problem was that the user interface was horrible, and the OS’s advantages (like the ability to selectively choose data networks) were completely lost on U.S. consumers. Another part of the problem was that Nokia didn’t bring its best Symbian phones to U.S. consumers because of #1, #2, and #3.

5. Nokia would occasionally talk about the importance of the U.S. market with the media and investors, but the company never truly considered the U.S. all that important. If it had, it would have made structural changes to address items #1 – 4.

Does Nokia have a real chance to grow for market share in the U.S. with its Lumia models?

Other than the Lumia models, Nokia has no share of the U.S. market. This isn’t like the UK where Nokia needs to get consumers to buy Lumia phones instead of Symbian models and can rely on rapidly declining – but material – sales of S40 phones. There are no other Nokia phones sold here. Of course, an optimist would say that there is no place to go but up. If Nokia can convince U.S. consumers to consider buying a Windows Phone instead of an iPhone or Android phone, then, yes, it certainly has a chance to grow market share.

It is worth noting that in Finland and throughout Europe, Nokia is a well-known, premium brand. This is not the case in the U.S., where older consumers think that Nokia is a Japanese company that used to make clunky bar phones, and younger consumers have never heard of Nokia at all — aside from the Nokia Theater in L.A. where American Idol TV show finals are televised. Nokia will have to build its brand along with the challenge of convincing consumers to invest in a phone that uses an unfamiliar operating system.

How would you characterize Nokia’s situation in the United States now? Is Nokia’s alliance with T-Mobile and AT&T enough?

The carriers do not want to be overly dependent on Apple – which they have almost no control over – or Google – which actually competes with them in certain situations and acts in ways that the carriers find irrational. So it is in the carriers’ best interest to help Microsoft establish a viable third ecosystem. That doesn’t mean it will automatically succeed, but it explains why T-Mobile and AT&T are eager to invest in Windows Phone at retail and with advertising. However, Nokia needs to get distribution at Verizon Wireless as well as AT&T to have a significant impact on the U.S. market overall. Before that can happen, Nokia needs Microsoft to create a version of Windows Phone that supports CDMA/LTE.

Nokia got off to a rough start by launching the Lumia 900 on a holiday, then discovering bugs in the software. However, its response was amazingly decisive and swift (investigating the problem, confirming it, fixing it, and offering refunds – all within two weeks), and I don’t see any lingering negative after effects. I am not a fan of the Beta Test ads; nothing Chris Parnell says can be taken seriously (that’s core to his comedy), and by calling the incredibly polished iPhone “beta,” Nokia loses credibility. However, Nokia’s merchandising strategy has been brilliant – the cyan (bright blue) phone stands out in a sea of black rectangles, and giving nearly every AT&T store rep a Lumia 900 guarantees that they are familiar with the phone and increases the likelihood that they will endorse it. Regardless, if a consumer asks, “what phone do you use?” the answer is a Lumia 900.

Apps play a very important role in cellphone marketing. Can you describe the competition for app development between Apple, Android and Microsoft applications? Who is the strongest player?

Apple is the strongest and growing stronger. Android has also reached critical mass for apps in smartphones (though not yet in tablets). At this point, it is unlikely that Microsoft will ever fully catch up, but if it can get enough of the important apps along with a commitment from developers to support the OS even if they develop for iOS first, Microsoft can try to use other aspects of the platform (such as the unique user experience, cloud services, or exclusive apps) to attract consumers to buy the phones.

This upgrade to Air Display is version 1.6.1 and also brings Retina resolution to both Windows and Mac. The bump up to 1.6.1 also brings you “much faster initial connections” for your Mac and improves your frame rate and latency for both Windows and Mac significantly, so says Avatron. Several bug fixes are also in the mix including cosmetic issues, a fix for the first frame (sometimes not drawn correctly before this upgrade) and virtual keystrokes will no longer generate double-key events on your new iPad.

NOTE: This upgrade adds to the already announced 1.6.0 upgrade which had a Retina upgrade in part – this upgrade makes the whole show live.

Have a peek at our history with Air Display below and go grab the app for yourself from Avatron’s download section right this minute. They’ve got everything between displays, and not just between your Mac and iPad. Have a blast with Windows machines galore and make sure you’re on-board with their latest upgrades for all apps so your running in full HD all the way. This application is part of a suite which also includes Air Sharing, Print Sharing, and Air Dictate as well – gotta catch em all!

“We’ve always said in the data use policy that we may serve ads off Facebook and we may use that same information to serve you an ad off Facebook,” said Egan. So for instance, if your friend “likes” a product, such as Coca Cola, Facebook may serve you an ad for that product that would say something like “Andrew likes Coke.”

Egan explains that in the future, Facebook may take that same approach outside of the Facebook ecosystem to display that same ad on a third party website. That ad on the third-party site could be with or without the social context (“Andrew likes Coke”) that explains why you’re seeing the ad.

[via ComputerWorld]

First the Tesla K10, as Huang noted today at GTC, “is dedicated to seismic analysis where the most valuable resource is bandwidth – it has three times the single precision of today’s Fermi Tesla and 1.8 times the memory bandwidth.” On the second Tesla upgrade here with the K20, Huang noted that it had “3 times double precision of the Fermi, including Hyper Q and dynamics parallelism for stuff like physics, quantum chemistry, and computational finance.

Stick with us throughout the day for the rest of the action as Jen-Hung Huang and the rest of the NVIDIA crew reveal new technologies across the board for graphics processing. Earlier today Huang spoke on the explosive growth of CUDA for NVIDIA and how this will affect the future as well. Check out our NVIDIA timeline below and get pumped up for the future of NVIDIA architecture!

Ranjay Krishna, Seonwoo Lee, and Si Ping Wang, along with help from Jonathan Lang, developed a Sign Language Translator glove for their final project this past semester. The prototype glove is powered by 9-volt batteries and can transmit signals wirelessly. It uses various accelerometers, contact sensors, and flex sensors to gather three-dimensional data from complex finger gestures.

It then converts the gestures into digital signals that can be spoken aloud as letters by the system itself or sent to a computer as text. The prototype unit does both and the letters sent to the computer can be used to construct sentences or to play games, such as an American Sign Language testing game demoed in the video below.

[via Engadget]

The LG Optimus LTE2 will be coming to Korea exclusively (at first) and will be bringing a True HD IPS display with 2GB of RAM to back it up. There’s 1280 x 720 pixel resolution in this 4.7-inch display, all of that being brought to the table with the massively impressive Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor being run at 1.5Ghz per core here this week. The gigantic 2GB of memory is impressive, of course, but what we’ve found while we’re just holding it here on display is that it’s using a massive 1GB on idle – we must expect that this is just because the device does not have final software in-tact quite yet.

This device has an 8 megapixel camera on the back, voice actions throughout with modifications to Google’s own voice recognition by LG, and there’s a massive 2.150 mAh under the hood to keep you powered up all day long. The camera itself will be benefitting from the voice actions mentioned here, just saying “kimchi” bringing you video capture. Snap a photo or capture an amazing moment with rolling 1080p with just a word – simple stuff.

Inside you’ve got NFC as well as Bluetooth 4.0 and the ability to work with Android 4.0′s Ice Cream Sandwich Beam. This ability also works with LG’s Tab+ in the wild. This device also has wireless charging if you’re into such a thing, and the whole device benefits from a soft-touch backing which makes for an almost fabric-like situation for extreme comfort. Have a peek at the hands-on video, the gallery above and below, and check the timeline for additional coverage of this next-level LG smartphone!

Samsung has expanded its list of devices that are set to receive the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. The list now includes several T-Mobile devices, including the Galaxy S Blaze 4G, Galaxy S II, Galaxy Tab 7.0, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1. However, when the upgrade will arrive for those devices have yet to be revealed, and the list will continually be altered as updates are confirmed or released.

Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich has so far only been available for Samsung’s Nexus S 4G on the Now Network and will soon be available for the Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch on the same carrier. For AT&T, the Galaxy S II, Galaxy S II Skyrocket, Galaxy Note, Captivate Glide, and the Galaxy Tab 8.9 will be receiving the upgrade.

Both the Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Galaxy Tab 7.7 on Verizon will also be getting the ICS update as will the WiFi versions of Samsung’s tablets, including the Galaxy Tab 7.0 Plus, Galaxy Tab 8.9, and the Galaxy Tab 10.1.

[via Samsung]

NVIDIA’s CUDA was downloaded 150 thousand times in 2008 and was a subject in classrooms in 60 universities across the United States. Today there have been over 1.5 million downloads of CUDA and over 560 universities teach in CUDA – Huang can’t be plain enough about the power of these numbers. Four years ago, he notes, 4 thousand academic papers were written about CUDA, while today that number is at over 22,500. The growth of CUDA is tremendous, notes Huang, “I don’t know of one computer company that doesn’t sell computers with CUDA.”

Speaking on how the CUDA platform has exploded throughout the University world here in the USA, Huang noted some key words from Ianan Couzin of Princeton, he saying “GPU computing has utterly transformed the science we can do.” Huang continued by noting that back in 2007 when NVIDIA went into the SuperComputing Conference of 2007, they were just a tiny blip on the radar. Ramping up to 2011, CUDA was being used not just on 1/500th of the showroom floor as it was in ’07, it was being used on about three quarters of it.

Stay tuned for more awesome NVIDIA computing action here on SlashGear as this keynote continues. Thanks to NVIDIA also for the images you see above, straight from the conference.

The changes this week will include both the elimination of certain positions as well as the change in roles and responsibilities for certain positions. The memo doesn’t reveal specifically how many employees will be affected, but it does reassure that front-line staff at T-Mobile stores, technicians in engineering, and customer service representatives at T-Mobile’s remaining 17 call centers will not be affected.

The employees affected will get transition support, which includes severance, assistance with COBRA continuation coverage, and outplacement services. T-Mobile also plans to add 1,000 jobs over the next few years in its B2B segment, where it plans to shift more of its focus.

[via TmoNews]