New FreeNas release

I love FreeNas but they don't half release on an almost too regular basis.

They are planning a auto-update feature in their next major update which might be nice as long as they put some good QA in place before releases.

Anyway:

Release announcement:
http://www.freenas.org/whats-new/2014/04/announcing-freenas-9-2-1-5-waking-up-edition.html

Bug fixes:
https://bugs.freenas.org/projects/freenas/issues?query_id=75

Openreach launches new 40Gbps & 100Gbps optical capability for uk communications providers

BT Press release:

http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/ShowArticle.cfm?ArticleID=8F009284-A81F-4AF9-8F6B-5DB8E133A8DA

Seems a bit slow with this release if you ask me. Vendors such as Alcatel Lucent have had the tech at that capacity ready and out in the field for ages!

OneNote for Mac

Microsoft Office blog:  http://blogs.office.com/2014/03/17/introducing-onenote-for-mac/

OneNote in the Mac App store: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/microsoft-onenote/id784801555?mt=12

A look at the PS4 and Xbox One hardware

A gadget p0rn video really.. but all the same it does make me take another look at the PS4 controller.

I'd still fairly set on the Xbox One but I think some really interesting stuff could come out of the PS4 controller with advance PC support (they have only announced basic PC support).

Samsung to unveil the S5 in January?

So Samsung, although selling well with the S4 has supposed not met internal sales targets. This could mean an early revision for the next release. To loosely tie that in with other rumours, could we see it dual booting with Windows Phone 8! 

I was very tempted by the Ativ S... a 5S with windows phone could be a real crowd pleaser... 

http://www.t3.com/news/samsung-to-unveil-the-s5-in-january

O2 bag the LTE Google nexus 7 exclusive in the UK

The wait is over for folks in the UK who want to get their hands on the new Nexus 7. The tablet, which was launched just over a month ago, can now be purchased for £199.99 (16GB Wi-fi only version) and £239.99 for the 32GB version.

There's also an LTE version priced at £319.99 on offer at O2 for those needing the cellular availability add in, but that won't be available for a couple of weeks. The N7 can also be picked up in Germany, France, Spain, and Japan from today.

The updated N7 features a 7-inch HD screen with a 1920 x 1200 resolution (323 ppi), the device also packs an Adreno 320 GPU, a 1.5GHz snapdragon processor, 5-megapixel rear-facing  and 1.2-megapixel front-facing cameras. In the U.S. Best Buy is currently taking orders for it with the 16 GB and 32 GB SKUS costing $229 and $269 respectively.

http://www.neowin.net/news/new-nexus-7-now-on-shelves-in-the-uk-starting-at-19999

https://www.o2.co.uk/shop/tablets/google/nexus-7-4g-black/

Microsoft lists 23 launch-day titles for Xbox One

Here's the current list of games you can expect to see on store shelves (and Xbox Marketplace online displays) when the Xbox One releases sometime in November.

• Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft)
• Battlefield 4 (EA DICE, Electronic Arts)
• Call of Duty: Ghosts (Infinity Ward, Activision)
• Crimson Dragon (Grounding/Land Ho!, Microsoft Studios)
• Dead Rising 3 (Capcom Vancouver, Microsoft Studios)
• FIFA 14 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts)
• Fighter Within (AMA Ltd., Ubisoft)
• Forza Motorsport 5 (Turn 10 Studios, Microsoft Studios)
• Just Dance 2014 (Ubisoft Paris, Ubisoft)
• Killer Instinct (Double Helix, Microsoft Studios)
• Lego Marvel Super Heroes (TT Games, Warner Bros. Interactive)
• Lococycle (Twisted Pixel, Microsoft Studios)
• Madden NFL 25 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts)
• NBA 2K14 (Visual Concepts, 2K Sports)
• NBA Live 14 (EA Sports, Electronic Arts)
• Need for Speed Rivals (Ghost Games, Electronic Arts)
• Peggle 2 (PopCap Games, Electronic Arts)
• Powerstar Golf (Zoe Mode, Microsoft Studios)
• Ryse: Son of Rome (Crytek, Microsoft Studios)
• Skylanders: Swap Force (Vicarious Visions, Activision)
• Watch Dogs (Ubisoft Montreal, Ubisoft)
• Zoo Tycoon (Frontier Developments, Microsoft Studios)
• Zumba Fitness: World Party (Zoë Mode, Majesco)

http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/08/microsoft-lists-23-launch-day-titles-for-xbox-one/

A new major release of FreeNAS is out!

First link for the news, second for the user manual.

http://www.freenas.org/whats-new/2013/08/ixsystems-announces-revolutionary-freenas-9-1-0-release.html

http://www.freenas.org/images/resources/freenas9.1.0/freenas9.1.0_guide.pdf

SimCity Update 2.0 Release

What’s New 
• Mayors Mansion: Mayors will now drive their fancy cars to work. Mayors will take their helicopter, limo, or sports car if the modules are present.

• HUD: Now color-corrects when in a colorblind mode.

• Data map: Data maps show the filtered color when a color filter is enabled (unless in a colorblind mode)

Fixes and Updates
• Cities not Processing: Mitigates some of the issues that were causing cities not to process. We are continuing to work on and improve this issue.

• Region Filters: Now sorts regions with available cities to the top

• Invitations: Invitations to join a region should be sent and received more quickly.

• Tourism: Fixes for unexplained fluctuation of tourists. Tourists more smartly counted on transit.
- Cruise ships are now more effective at bringing medium and high wealth tourists in coastal cities.
- New tourists will now decide to come into a city once leaving tourists reach train stations, bus depots, or cruise ship docs instead of waiting for those tourists to go out to the region first.
- This change will reduce the downtime of tourist buildings.

• Casinos: Casinos tuned so that Gambling will be a more profitable specialty. Players can bulldoze and replace existing casinos to see effects of tuning.
- The larger casinos now invite more tourists into the city which helps keep them full.
- Note that existing casinos will need to be replaced to take advantage of this change.

• More Casinos: Raised module limit on Sci-Fi and Sleek Casinos to 6 modules.

• Region Play: Cash gifts can now be received in a bankrupt city.

• Education: Fixed school buses getting stuck at the high school. Existing Schools will fix themselves.

• Education: Fixed school buses picking up students at neighboring cities that didn’t have school bus stops.

• Education: Fix to more accurately track regional student population.

• Education: Fix where kids leaving the school bus stop would teleport to the nearest pedestrian path instead of walking directly into the school.

• Education: University wings now give the proper bonus.

• Recycling: Fix for the Recycling Center where it would sometimes stop working, recycling services will visit other cities.

• Air pollution: Fixed issue where air pollution would appear to come from nowhere. Fix issues where your regional air pollution would be reflected back into your box for a double penalty.

• Fire Service: Fire Trucks don’t clump, dispatch to fires more efficiently.

• Water: Water pumps are now capable of pumping water from rivers at a larger radius so they can take better advantage of the water table in a city.

• Disasters: Cooldown for random disasters: Some players were getting hit too frequently with random disasters, this introduces a cooldown where no random disasters will occur.

• Trade: Fix for trade ports that suddenly stop shipping.

• Transit: Street Cars and Buses go to high volume stops first.

• Transit: A city with residents and public transit will now provide the accurate amount of workers and shoppers to its neighbors.

• Transit: A transit vehicle stuck in a pick-up or drop off loop will now go back to a garage instead of trying to pick up more people.
- Transit vehicles should recover automatically after the update. If players want to force the recovery, turn off the stops that are having looping issues, wait a few game hours, then turn them back on.

• Transit: Neighbors buses will now come in lower numbers into the city and do a better job at picking up local passengers first.

• Residential Tuning: Residential-only cities have failure state.
- Buildings are prevented from going up in density when they don’t have power or water.
- The amount of happiness gained from low taxes, police, fire, and health outreach has been lowered.
- Fixed some cases where buildings would not go abandoned when they should have.
- Higher density residential buildings are no longer blocked from going abandoned due to not having enough money.
- Happiness from low taxes does not double up every time it is given.
- Losing happiness due to not having a job is more impactful.

• Budgets: Fixed bug that prevented systems like fire, abandonment, garbage, and sewage from turning on when they were supposed to.

• Audio: Fixes issue where audio will stop working after creating a large city or where phantom audio sounds play in a city.

• Demolish: Fixes issue that occurred when players demolished buildings that had service vehicles, delivery vehicles, or agents out in the city or region. Previously, the agents would be in a state of limbo and would not recover when new buildings of that type were placed. This will no longer happen.

http://forum.ea.com/eaforum/posts/list/9453148.page

Skype drops its BETA, Goes straight to version 4

Highlights from the Skype blog post released yesterday:

• Four major changes in this release:
• We have a new Conversations View where users can easily track all of their chats in a unified window.
• Those users who prefer the old view can disable this in the Chat options;
• We have a brand new Call View.
• Call quality has never been better thanks to several investments we made in improving audio quality.
• We've worked on improving video call quality and have also extended support for more cameras.

• Improved chat synchronization.
• New presence and emoticon icons.
• The ability to store and view phone numbers in a Skype contact's profile.
• Much lower chance Skype for Linux will crash or freeze.
• Chat history loading is now much faster.
• Support for two new languages: Czech (flag:cz) and Norwegian (flag:no).

 

http://blogs.skype.com/linux/2012/06/skype_40_for_linux.html