Category Archives: Tech

Valve Unveils Thirteen Steam Machines at CES 2014

We came into CES 2014 expecting Valve to show off some of the Steam Machines that various third parties were making. However, I don’t think we expected over a dozen Steam Machines to choose from when they start rolling out. According to Valve, each of these machines will come loaded with Steam OS and will include a Steam Controller.

So let’s look at all of the Steam Machine manufacturers and what they’re offering.

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Posted in Games, Tech

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Tags: CES, CES 2014, Steam, Steam Machines, SteamOS, Valve

NVIDIA Unveils 192-Core Tegra K1 Processor

Jan 7

Posted by Steve Murray

Just when you thought that your smartphone had the latest and greatest tech, NVIDIA has set the bar for mobile processors even higher. Just one year after unveiling the Tegra 4 processor, NVIDIA has unveiled something more akin to a next-generation mobile processor rather than a little increase in horsepower with the Tegra K1.

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Posted in Tech

Are You Ready for Dogecoin?

Dec 20

Posted by Steve Murray

dogecoin-header

With Bitcoin suffering a roughly 50% value drop thanks to a report out of China that the country’s special bank wasn’t allowing money to be deposited into the virtual currency in Chinese Yuan, people are going to start looking to other cryptocurrency alternatives.

While you may have heard of Litecoin, the latest virtual currency du jour is based on a meme. Get ready for Dogecoin.

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Posted in Tech

Valve Ships Steam Machine and Controller Prototypes Today

Dec 13

Posted by Steve Murray

Christmas is coming early for 300 Steam users who were notified Wednesday that they are among the lucky chosen few to get their hands on prototype versions of the Steam Machine consoles and the Steam Controller. Valve announced that the Steam Machines and Controllers were heading out the door today and they’d be releasing an early version of SteamOS to the public.

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Posted in Games, Tech

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Tags: Steam, Steam Controller, SteamOS, Valve

YouTube’s Content ID System is Also Hurting Your Favourite Channels

Not only are YouTube content creators having to deal with a massive change to the networking system that will affect their ability to make money, but YouTube made a massive sweep of videos in a content matching check that caused a lot of YouTubers to lose the monetization rights to many videos.

YouTube’s content ID system is fairly indiscriminate. If it finds content that matches copyrighted content in their data base, the monetization rights revert to the original creator. The problem is that it makes no provisions for fair use and the dispute system is often considered as non-existent.

But rather than rehash this week’s column about YouTube on monetization, this detailed explanation of YouTube content matching, monetization and the implications of the current system by Force of Force Strategy Gaming does a much better job than I ever could.

Posted on December 12, 2013 | Video

Upcoming YouTube Changes Could Hurt Your Favourite Channels

Dec 9

Posted by Steve Murray

Very quietly, YouTube is making some behind-the-scenes changes with their monetization changes for channels affiliated with networks. Currently, the big advantage of being a YouTuber signed with a multi-channel network (MCN) is that you can upload your videos and monetize it instantly without having to go through any checks, or audits as they’re known to YouTubers, for unauthorized copyrighted content while getting more revenue through network sold ads. The trade-off is that those channels give up a portion of their add revenue to the network for that benefit.

YouTube has quietly announced that they are changing the current monetization rules for MCNs come January. Now, MCNs have to add a designation to channels to determine whether they will get the instant monetization or whether they’ll have to go through the auditing process just like every other unaffiliated channel on YouTube.

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Posted in Long Read, Tech

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Tags: WPLongForm, YouTube

Amazon Planning to Introduce Delivery by Drones

Dec 3

Posted by Steve Murray

When you think of America and drones, you tend to think of the ones that the American military uses to drop bombs on unsuspecting targets. However, Amazon wants to change your perception of unmanned flying drones by using them to deliver packages to Amazon Prime customers.

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Posted in Tech

1 Comment

Tags: Amazon, Drones

WinAmp to Shut Down in December

Nov 21

Posted by Steve Murray

Having been in high school in the early 2000s, I definitely knew about the iconic WinAmp media player. People had installed that on just about every computer in the school. Along the way, it was slowly replaced by other media players and this thing called “the internet.”

Now, we’re in the final days of WinAmp as the company quietly posted on its website that WinAmp’s web services and website would be shut down on December 20th.

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