App Store Subscriptions recurring your way soon

Expected to debut as one of the key features in iOS 4.3, the new digital billing service will be similar to In-App Purchases, as currently used in most apps in the App Store.

Subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will be sold using the same App Store billing system that has been used to buy billions of apps and In-App Purchases. Publishers set the price and length of subscription (weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly). Then with one-click, customers pick the length of subscription and are automatically charged based on their chosen length of commitment (weekly, monthly, etc.). Customers can review and manage all of their subscriptions from their personal account page, including canceling the automatic renewal of a subscription. Apple processes all payments, keeping the same 30 percent share that it does today for other In-App Purchases.

With regards to whether content may also be offered outside of this new billing mechanism, Apple CEO points out that publishers are free to offer content outside of the app. But if so, the same or better offer has to be given to subscribers of the app.

"Our philosophy is simple - when Apple brings a new subscriber to the app, Apple earns a 30 percent share; when the publisher brings an existing or new subscriber to the app, the publisher keeps 100 percent and Apple earns nothing," said Steve Jobs, Apples CEO. "All we require is that, if a publisher is making a subscription offer outside of the app, the same (or better) offer be made inside the app, so that customers can easily subscribe with one-click right in the app. We believe that this innovative subscription service will provide publishers with a brand new opportunity to expand digital access to their content onto the iPad, iPod touch and iPhone, delighting both new and existing subscribers."

Besides providing customers an easy way to keep track of their subsription and ease of activation and billing, Apple is pushing this new App Store Subscriptions as 30% of the content providers revnue will go to Apple.

But for the ease of potential customers and the vast distribution power of the App Store, Im sure many content providers will submit to Apples demand in exchange for a potential 160 million iOS users around the globe.

Source: Apple

Amiga returns... with an $98 Android Tablet

Lo and behold, we received news from Bill McEwen that Amiga is introducing a seven inch tablet powered by Android 2.2 operating system. The price of the 7" Amiga Xpedio 7MTB is set at only $98, while the add-on USB keyboard and protective case raise the price to only $118.

The Amiga Xpedio 7MTB is powered by VIA Technologies WM8650 ARM chip ticking at 720MHz, 256MB LPDDR2 memory, 4GB embedded storage and of course, the multi-touch screen. In order to keep the price down, 7MTB comes with resistive two-point touch-screen. You can expand the storage up to 32GB locally via MicroSD/MemoryStick/MMC cards.

Besides the Xpedio 7MTB, Amiga also offers Xpedio 7 MT ($189) and Xpedio 10 MT($289), which also feature Samsung PV210 SoC with ARM Cortex-A8 processor ticking at 1GHz, 512MB LPDDR2 memory and 8GB of local storage, also expandable up to 32GB. 7MT and 10MT are both equipped with capacitive multi-touch display.

The manufacturer is stating that the preorder prices are good until November 11, 2011 with the delivery taking place before December 25, 2011.

Angry Birds developer shows trailer for next game

Rovio, the developer behind the popular Angry Birds series, has released a trailer for its next game, Amazing Alex, which promises to bring more physics-based puzzles to mobile gamers.

The game focuses on Alex, a kid who sets up various contraptions with his toys, giving players over 100 levels of physics puzzles that will make use of toy cars, footballs, balloons, and any piece of furniture in the vicinity.Another unique feature of the game is a level creator, which means gamers can expand the possible game experiences with 35 interactive objects, a number which is sure to grow over time. Player-created levels can also be shared online and Rovio is promising plenty of free updates.If the game is as well-crafted as Rovios bird-flinging pig-crushing antics the gaming world could be in for another puzzle phenomenon.Amazing Alex launches tomorrow, 12 July for the iPhone, iPad and Android devices.

An app store for non-smartphones

It is common knowledge that the draw of smartphones does not lie in the devices themselves; that honour has to go to the online applications store (or app store for short), where owners of such phones can access various downloadable widgets and applications which provide additional functionality, either for free or at a price.

Of course, with smartphones well on the way to becoming the next mainstream devices in mobile telecommunications, it is easy to forget that there are still large numbers of classic web-capable non-smartphones which are every bit as capable as their newer counterparts, and locking all of these handsets out from the boon of online services would no doubt cause many owners to feel somewhat left out of the trend.

And that is where Snaptu comes in to save the day: by releasing an app store specially targeted at non-smartphones.

To access to Snaptu's app store users need to access its homepage with their mobile phones at m.snaptu.com to download and install an application (which TechCrunch claims is Java-based, something which most older phones should have pre-installed)., as shown below:

Once this is done, you should have a new application installed in the handset which allows you to browse through the various applications that Snaptu has to offer.

So if downloadable apps are what you have been craving for, there's no reason to junk your current handset away now that Snaptu has given it a new lease of life with its own app store. Of course, you 'll still need a data plan before you start downloading anything.

Source: Snaptu via TechCrunch

AMD Showcases Bulldozer At E3

AMD 8-Core Bulldozer Processor

AMD 4-Core Bulldozer Processor

8-Core on AMD Vision!

AMD is going to bring back some fond memories by naming the Bulldozer processors, AMD FX-Series. The FX-Series come in 4-core, 6-core and 8-core processors. Fans will love the attractive design of the FX-Series boxes. Just look at the 8-core sweetness in the AMD Vision.

Source: 4Gamer

AMD reports Q4 and 2011 results

AMD has announced financial results for Q4 2011 and full year 2011. Revenue for Q4 2011 stayed flat over Q3 2011 at $1.69 billion, while revenues were slightly up in 2011 to $6.57 billion over 2010.

Non-GAAP net income for Q4 2011 was reported as $138 million. However, AMD underwent restructuring changes costing $98 million, and an impairment of AMDs investment in Globalfoundries at $209 million. Accounted for in the GAAP results, this lead to a net loss of $177 million for Q4 2011. Despite this, AMD still managed an increase in net income for 2011 to $491 million, up from $471 million in 2010.

AMD shipped more than 30 million APUs in 2011 over A, C and E series. AMDs server division also saw strong growth, due to the introduction of Bulldozer bazed Opteron 6200/4200 series. The graphics segment however saw a decrease in Q4 2011, 5% over Q3 and 10% over Q4 2010. This was largely due to a decline in mobile GPU shipments, possibly caused by processor graphics / APUs gaining traction, as well as NVIDIAs Optimus gaining mind share. However, this was offset partially by increase in royalties from increased Xbox 360 and Wii sales in Q4.Curiously, AMD made no mention of the hard drive shortage, something NVIDIA and Intel have blamed.

Looking forward to Q1 2012, AMD expect revenue to decrease 8% ± 3%.

Source: AMD Press Release

Asus readying Rampage IV Formula for LGA-2011

It appears that Asus has more motherboard coming based on Intels X79 chipset and its next model will be the Rampage IV Formula, a more affordable sibling to the Rampage IV Extreme. This move makes sense considering the price tag of the Rampage IV Extreme and in all fairness; the two boards have slightly different target markets as the Rampage IV Formula is more of a gamers board than its more expensive sibling.

Sadly we dont have a top-down view of the board, so its not entirely clear what has been changed. However, the Rampage IV Formula has some features that you wont find on the Rampage IV Extreme, such as a new audio design which has a small part of the PCB isolated to reduce EMI interference. Asus took the opportunity to add a rather pointless but interesting looking backlight to the PCB to highlight the separate audio area. Asus has also added a massive 1,500uF capacitor to the audio circuitry which the company claims will somehow improve the audio quality thanks to reduced ripple.

Most of the other features are cost savings, such as a pair of PCI Express x1 slots instead of that fifth x16 slot and a x1 slot, four DIMM slots, a simpler cooler design which were happy to say is using a passive heatsink and a few cuts when it comes to connectivity options such as only two front USB 3.0 ports. The rear I/O is fairly similar, but the Bluetooth dongle is gone, but you still get a PS/2 port, six USB 2.0 ports, four USB 3.0 ports, two eSATA ports, Intel Gigabit Ethernet, 7.1-channel audio with optical S/PDIF out and a clear CMOS and ROG connect button.

The rumour also has it that Asus is working on a Rampage IV Gene, i.e. a mATX LGA-2011 R.O.G. motherboard, although neither model has a firm launch date at the moment. This brings Asus total board count for the LGA-2011 platform up to eight boards, thats a few too many in our opinion as the platform isnt likely to gain a major uptake among consumers until at least the more affordable quad core Core i7-3820 which were hearing has been pushed even further back now and is not expected to launch in January. Check out the source for a slide deck detailing a few more of the features of theRampage IV Formula.

Source: Sweclockers