Sony exec hints at PlayStation 4 announcement in spring

Perhaps tipping his hand a bit about Sony's "big secret," VP Hiroshi Sakamoto directs our gaze toward the 2013 edition of the big E3 games conference.


Sony's vice president of home entertainment, Hiroshi Sakamoto, has hinted that the next-generation PlayStation 4 console may be announced in the coming months.
In an interview with Chilean Web site Emol, Sakamoto implied that the Playstation 4 may be ready for formal introduction by the time 2013's Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) appears on the calendar, or perhaps even sooner.
When asked whether a next-generation playstation console will be seen within the new few months, the VP told the publication:
Sakamoto went on to say that there would "probably" be a big announcement at E3, but consumers will have to wait until May at the earliest. Even if the hardware is revealed at E3 -- an event comparable to CES for gamers -- it is unlikely we will get our hands on the console, reportedly being developed under the project name "Orbis," until later in the year.
Whenever it arrives, Sony's next console will be contending for consumer dollars against the likes of Microsoft's yet-to-be-introduced next-generation XBox.
Rumors surrounding Sony's next console have suggested that the PlayStation 4's specifications will include a customized chip based on AMD's A8-3850 with a quad-core 2.9GHz processor and a 1GHz graphics card with 1GB of dedicated memory. Hardly the cutting edge of technology, but as other reports have suggested that the console has been designed for affordability, these kinds of facilities aren't surprising.
Most console manufacturers have generally kept to the tradition of a five-year shelf life for their devices. However, Sony has always gone against the grain, saying that its products have double the lifespan -- and as long they remain commercially viable.

Office 2013 pricing: What to expect

Microsoft's Office 2013 lineup should be launching soon. Here's what we know so far about prices and packages.



As expected, Microsoft is pricing its next-generation Office 2013 lineup in a way to try to convince users to pay an annual subscription fee -- with multiple device-installation rights as a carrot -- instead of buying the Office 2013 software outright.
Microsoft is believed to be ready to launch its next-generation Office product within the next few weeks, possibly before the end of January. The newest version of Office -- known both as "the new Office" and "Office 2013" -- will be commercially available on that date. In preparation for the launch, Microsoft has been educating its reseller and integrator partners as to what to expect, pricing- and packaging-wise.
A chart detailing some of the expected Office 2013/New Office prices leaked in October 2012. When I asked Microsoft at the time (and a few times later) to confirm the prices, company executives declined to do so, leading some to speculate that the leaked pricing might not be final.
However, it turns out these prices for some of the "hero" Office 365 and Office 2013 SKUs, were, indeed, accurate. Microsoft shared this slide with some of its partners this week:



Everything here that is labeled as an Office 365 SKU will be priced on a subscription basis. The SKUs listed along the bottom are non-subscription, buy-once/install-on-a-single-device prices.  (Microsoft officials disclosed the planned pricing for a few of its upcoming Office 365 SKUs last year.)
But as of now, we know for sure that Office Standard 2013 will be priced at $369 and Office Professional Plus 2013 at $499, based on this week's partner disclosure. (We already knew Home & Student 2013 would be $139 and Home & Business 2013 would be $219.)
The packages listed on the slide above are not an exhaustive list of the coming Office 2013/Office 365 SKUs. This looks to be the complete Office 2013 lineup, based on what I've seen updating lately as part of Patch Tuesday:

• Microsoft Office Home and Business 2013
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013
• Microsoft Office Home and Student 2013 RT
• Microsoft Office Personal 2013 (available in Japan only)
• Microsoft Office Professional 2013
• Microsoft Office Professional Academic 2013
• Microsoft Office Professional Plus 2013 (for volume licensees only)
• Microsoft Office Standard 2013 (for volume licensees only)

Microsoft released to manufacturing (RTM'd) its latest Office client and server products on October 11, 2012. Since that time, the Softies have made the final bits available to subscribers on MSDN, TechNet, and its volume licensing center. The products still are not available commercially to those without access to those channels. But as of the upcoming launch, the new Office will be preloaded on certain new PCs and available for purchase commercially.

Microsoft also will start making its new Office services -- its updated Office Web Apps, Office 365, and its Microsoft-hosted Exchange Online, SharePoint Online, and Lync Online offerings -- at that time, executives have said.
The company is putting a heavy emphasis on convincing not just business customers, but also consumers, to go the subscription/service route, rather than purchasing a single copy of one or more Office products with perpetual-use licenses. On the consumer front, the Office team is trying to make it more enticing for users to pay a "rental" fee for the new Office, allowing them the right to download Office products locally on up to five PCs and Macs and use them for a year. This is what's known as Office 365 Home Premium.
On the business front, Microsoft also is trying to convince customers to go the service/subscription route. Microsoft officials said late last year the company would be offering a number of new Office 365 SKUs and pricing plans. These should become available simultaneously with the Office launch in late January.
In addition to the aforementioned Office 365 Home Premium, the new Office 365 SKUs, last we heard, includes:

• Office 365 Small Business
• Office 365 Small Business Premium
• Office 365 ProPlus
• Office 365 Midsize Business
• Office 365 Enterprise

Microsoft began preparing some of its Office 365 partners in earnest for the upcoming launch last week, providing them with guidance about how the company plans to update its cloud-hosted suite that competes with Google Apps.
This story originally appeared at ZDNet's All About Microsoft under the headline "Microsoft Office 2013: What to expect on the pricing front."

Movie-accurate HAL 9000 bosses you around the house

Bring one of the most famous space personalities into your home with a life-size HAL 9000 replica based on the movie's original blueprints.



ThinkGeek boasts that the HAL 9000 life-size replica is the "most movie-accurate HAL 9000 replica ever created." Let's hope it's only movie-accurate enough to be entertaining and not deadly.
If you're a fan of HAL 9000 and want to bring a little bit of that relentless robotic terror into your home, you can plunk down $500 for a sentient computer of your own (minus the actual sentience.) This HAL 9000 is better-behaved than the real thing. You still get the menacing red LED eye, but he won't try to kill you.
There's a reason for the hefty price tag. The replica is machined from aircraft-grade aluminum. It's based on blueprints and studio files from the original movie. There's a glass lens over the LED eye and the whole thing is hand-assembled.
Of course, this wouldn't be HAL 9000 if he didn't talk back. You can trigger him by talking to him for longer than 1.2 seconds. He can also be triggered by IR remote. He comes back with one of 15 phrases taken from the film. He might even sing "Daisy Bell" to you if you're lucky.
Unlike movie-HAL, replica-HAL can be shut off when you're tired of him calling you "Dave." It's recommended that you don't taunt the HAL 9000 replica as you don't want to hurt his feelings. There's probably nothing he could do about it if you did, but I think we all want to be on the safe side with this particular product.

Twitter heads to Brazil

 The social network is opening an office in Latin America's largest city -- Sao Paulo -- in a move the company says will help it get closer to its Brazilian customers.

Paulistas, as the residents of Sao Paulo, Brazil, call themselves, like to refer to their home town as "the city that works." Time to update that description to the city that also tweets.
Twitter is opening up an office in the largest city in South America, Reuters reports.
"We believe our new office in Brazil will allow us to get closer to the users and show the value of our platform," the company's new country manager for Brazil, Guilherme Ribenboim, told Reuters.
"Brazil has rather mature Internet and advertisement markets. Our audience is very big and active," he said. "We are going to try to monetize it." Reuters quoted statistics provided by the Paris-based market intelligence firm Semiocast, which ranked Brazil as Twitter's second-biggest market after the United States in terms of accounts, and fifth in terms of usage.
Although that growth is slowing, Ribenboim referred to the approach of the World Cup and the Olympic Games -- both of which will be held in Brazil -- as offering "huge opportunities to leverage and show the potential of Twitter."
"It is already happening. We are talking (to advertisers) looking for opportunities, strategies," he said.

Hisense teases sexy transparent screens for commercial use

Hisense pushes the bar in digital signage with transparent displays that incorporate touch screen and 3D tech likely to make geeks pause in their tracks.



LAS VEGAS--Digital signage could vastly change in the next decade, especially if companies such as Hisense get marketers to sign on with transparent display technology.
One Hisense display, as seen above, adds 3D to a traditional transparent LCD. The demo illustrates how a real estate company could show off a real-life model town behind the LCD screen, while 3D video (passive glasses required) plays on-screen to show off some of the town's properties for sale.

Meanwhile, a few feet away, another display featured a transparent 2D touch screen with several objects visible through the display. The touch screen worked flawlessly, and seemed to make more real-world sense than the 3D counterpart as it offered more of an interactive element. Retail stores could add a layer of information for each product, such as a history of where an antique came from, for example.
In a conversation with a Hisense representative, the company wasn't keen to share much information about how it creates these see-through displays. However, we do know that Hisense isn't the only company innovating in this field, as Samsung and others continue to make advancements.
I did learn that Hisense's transparent LCD panels pump out 720p resolution and offer about 72 percent transparency while not in use, and about 6 percent transparency when showing an image. The company doesn't have any current plans to offer a consumer-ready version of these transparent screens in 2013, and seems only interested at this time in offering this tech for commercial applications.

AT&T opens FaceTime to all tiered-data customers

AT&T says it will allow all its tiered-data customers regardless of whether they have 3G or 4G iOS devices to use the FaceTime video chat service over its network. But it's still restricting unlimited-data users.

AT&T said today that it will allow any wireless customer with a tiered-data plan to use Apple's FaceTime videoconferencing app over AT&T's cellular network.
This is yet another change to AT&T's policy for this app, which when it was first introduced on the iPhone 4 was restricted to Wi-Fi networks only. In Apple's iOS 6 release of software, all FaceTime enabled iPhones were then capable of operating the app over a cellular network. Initially, AT&T still restricted usage to Wi-Fi.
In August, AT&T started to open the app to its cellular network. And it said FaceTime could be used on its cellular network if customers subscribed to the carrier's new Mobile Share billing plan. While consumers were happy that AT&T had opened the app to its network, many were outraged it was restricted to customers using AT&T's new and potentially more expensive tiered-billing offers. The Federal Communications Commission said it would review complaints on the issue.


Succumbing to public pressure, AT&T once again revised its policy. In November it opened the app to subscribers with any tiered-data plan so long as the device operated over AT&T's 4G LTE network. This meant the iPhone 5 and certain iPads.
Jim Cicconi, AT&T's top executive on legislative and regulatory affairs, argued at the time in a blog post for AT&T that the company is only trying to protect its network. He said AT&T has more iPhone users than any other carrier, and the company has been concerned that its network could be overwhelmed by allowing anyone to use FaceTime over the cellular network before it's been tested.
"In this instance, with the FaceTime app already preloaded on tens of millions of AT&T customers' iPhones, there was no way for our engineers to effectively model usage, and thus to assess network impact," Cicconi explained in a blog post last year. "It is for this reason that we took a more cautious approach toward the app. To do otherwise might have risked an adverse impact on the services our customers expect -- voice quality in particular -- if usage of FaceTime exceeded expectations."
In a blog post on Wednesday to discuss the most recent policy switch, AT&T Senior Vice President Mark Collins suggested that AT&T had always intended to open the service to more customers on its network.
"When FaceTime over Cellular launched in September 2012, we explained that we wanted to roll it out gradually to ensure the service had minimal impact on the mobile experience for all of our customers," he said in the blog.
But the reality is that the FaceTime app is still not available to all AT&T customers. The company still restricts subscribers with unlimited-data plans from using FaceTime over the cellular network. For this reason, consumer advocates say they're still not satisfied. Free Press, which filed a complaint with the FCC in September about AT&T's restrictive policy, said AT&T has taken a step in the right direction. But it still hasn't gone far enough.
"As we've made clear all along, the company has no right to block the application in the first place," Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood said in a statement. "Until AT&T makes FaceTime available to all of its customers, it is still in violation of the law and the broader principles of Net Neutrality. We remain ready to bring our complaint unless AT&T finishes the job and stops blocking this application altogether."

Facebook dials up teens, cheapskates with free calling

In search of its fountain of youth, Facebook gives away voice calls in its Messenger for iPhone app.

Calling all teens and cheapskates, Facebook has updated its Messenger for iPhone application to allow people in the U.S. to make free voice calls to their social network friends.
Facebook members with Messenger for iPhone will find a "Free Call" button located on friends' contact info pages inside the application. A click of the button will dial up the contact in question over Wi-Fi or your phone's data connection.
Facebook started rolling out voice calls to its U.S. members today, according to The Verge. The voice-over-IP feature was first made available to Canadian users in early January as a test but is now deemed ready for phone tag in the states.
The calling functionality makes Messenger into more than just an SMS or iMessage challenger. Now Facebook is potentially a bona fide threat to carriers. But the bigger play here is for teen attention.
With free calling, Facebook has built itself a large enough straw to drink out of the fountain of youth. Teens carry around iPod Touches and smartphones with limited or shared voice and data plans. Even if texting is their first love, they probably still want to make actual phone calls on occasion.
Though similar free-calling services have been available for some time -- through Gmail chat, for instance -- Facebook's offering seems better positioned to reach youngsters where it matters most: on a handset connected to their friends list.
Ultimately, the update could ensure that teens spend more time using Facebook, which skews older than competitors in the social-networking world.
Messenger for iPhone with free calling is available now to U.S. users and does not require an application update through the App Store.