Black Ops II sells more than 1 million units overnight at Gamestop alone

Call of Duty: Black Ops II will likely beat Modern Warfare 's impressive sales records.

Everyone knew the launch of Call of Duty: Black Ops II was going to be huge, but just how huge is still a bit of a surprise.

GameStop president Tony Bartel told Bloomberg Business Week today that the retailer sold more than 1 million copies of Treyarch’s military shooter during its midnight launch events alone.

“Black Ops II is shaping up to be our biggest game launch of all time,” he added.

Of course, it’s worth noting that this is just one specialty retailer’s sales figures, and the tally doesn’t include the countless other ways players got their hands on copies of the game. Thus far, the launch of Black Ops II looks to exceed that of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, which broke just about every existing sales record when it generated $775 million in revenue in its first five days on the market last year.

Activision has yet to announce any official data on Black Ops II sales, but at the rate the game is moving we’re likely to hear about more records broken in the near future.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

This iPhone has been sleeping with the fishes for 6 months and it still works

Modern day smartphones are great at many tasks, but unfortunately, swimming is not among those. Ken Hovanes learned this the hard way when he accidentally dropped his iPhone in a lake about six months ago. The water in the lake was 2m deep and murky back then so Ken gave up on retrieving the device and bought a new iPhone.

Fast forward to more recent times, after finding the lake waters have slightly receded, he went to search for his iPhone again. And he finally found it, still sitting on the bottom. What surprised him most however, is that it still worked.

The battery is dead (you can see the bulge on the back), there’s no Wi-Fi, the screen is messed up and the rusty port supplies the phone with power, but won’t transfer data just yet. Yes, the newly found iPhone won’t win a beauty contest and it’s hardly usable, but Ken still hopes to find a way to offload his photos from the device.

Water damage does not stop this iPhone from working

So do you have an amazing electronics water damage survival story yourselves? Share it in the comments below.

You can also check out some more photos at the source below.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Neither Treyarch or Infinity Ward are making Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified for PS Vita

Who's making Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified? Not Infinity Ward, makers of Modern Warfare, and not Treyarch, makers of Black Ops.

Activision wants everyone, from the lowliest nerd to the highest spending shareholder in the company, to know that it is the publisher behind Call of Duty. Call of Duty: Black Ops is the best-selling video game of all time? That was us! We’re all Call of Duty, all the time, us Activision folk. Unless you’re talking about Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified for PlayStation Vita. That might not be us.

That seemed to be the message at least when the first PS Vita version of the popular shooter series made its debut during Sony’s press conference at Gamescom in August. Activision was very quiet about the game, especially after the tepid response the first trailer received from press and fans. In fact, Activision wasn’t even clear on who is making it.

Not Treyarch and not Infinity Ward, says CVG. Neither of the studios responsible for Call of Duty’s annual HD console releases has worked on the Vita game. John Rafacz of Treyarch said his said hasn’t “been involved with the Vita version.” Rough!

Who is making the game? Nihilistic, an independent studio in California. Call of Duty obsessed Vita owners might want to dial back their excitement for the game even more considering Nihilistic’s most recent output. Its last game was Resistance: Burning Skies for PS Vita, a shooter built to showcase the handheld’s horsepower and capabilities as a platform for FPS games. It was instead a ramshackle series of boring levels and tacked on touch screen features.

Activision hasn’t totally separated itself from Call of Duty Black Ops: Declassified. “Activision is the publisher, but we also have a partnership with Sony to bundle Declassified with the PlayStation Vita.” Translation: We’re sort of publishing, but Sony’s publishing it more than us!

The concern here is not just the poor quality of Declassified based on footage of the game. Yes, the footage is especially rough since the game is due out in just over a month. The real problem is the amount of money that Sony no doubt spent to get Activision to commit the brand to Vita at all. Activision has been reticent to publish on either Sony or Nintendo’s handhelds in recent years, recognizing that the devoted portable gaming market is contracting on a nearly daily basis. If Sony spent big to get Activision to just loan out the Call of Duty name, it’s not getting very much for its money.

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Microsoft changes its logo for only the third time in its history, old one lasted 25 years

Microsoft is pushing hard to unify all its products. Metro – um, sorry, Modern UI/Windows 8 UI – is permeating everything from the smartphone OS, desktop OS, Office, Xbox and now even the company’s logo.

The old logo is probably quite familiar to anyone who has used a computer in the last 25 years. No, that’s not an exaggeration, it’s how long the old logo had been in use.

The new logo is similar to that of Windows 8, except it retains the colors and isn’t tilted. The font used in the logo is Segoe – the same font used in Windows 8, Windows Phone, Outlook.com and other Microsoft-made UIs.

Check out this video to see the various new logos of Microsoft products:

Also, Microsoft.com has been redesigned to use the Metro aesthetic (yes, that’s what I’m calling it) and three of Microsoft’s retail store have been updated too (Boston, Seattle’s University Village and Bellevue, Wash.).

How long do you think this new logo will last – another 25 years or until Windows 9 does away with the whole Metro thing?

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com

Move over Chrome, preview of Firefox for Windows 8 expected in September

Mozilla will release a preview of Firefox for Windows 8 in September, complete with Modern UI styling and windowless Flash.

Mozilla already announced plans earlier in the year to offer a Modern UI (formerly known as Metro) version of its popular browser, but now new details are beginning to emerge, including a few carefully placed screenshots like the one above.

Brian R. Bondy, a developer working on the project, posted an update to his blog outlining Mozilla’s progress and goals for the fall release.

“Work on the Metro style enabled desktop browser has progressed steadily and things are looking really good,” Bondy writes.

According to Bondy, a preview version of Firefox will be available first as a beta release, planned for later in the year. The preview will be styled as a “combined classic + metro browser” with classic desktop user interface elements for tabbed browsing and navigation.

The Mozilla team still has a lot of work to do before beta release, but a few features have already been successfully implemented. Some are of little interest to the average user, referring to programmer-specific details. But others like a built-in PDF viewer (no need for a plug-in), an option to view a page on the desktop when in the Metro version, windowless Flash, and auto-populated search results below the URL bar are all promising.

Add-ons will not be included in the initial release when in Metro-mode — much like IE’s Metro browser — but Mozilla hopes to enable them eventually. Syncing between the desktop and Metro versions of the browser is also in development. Bondy hopes to find some sort of local sync functionality requiring zero set-up, but says he and the rest of the team can always default to the current syncing solution if needed.

Based on some screenshots posted by developers working on the project, Firefox for Windows 8 will borrow a little inspiration from its Android version with a sprinkling of Modern UI on top. The simple URL bar at the top of screen makes the design look neat and clean, though it’s oddly located at the top rather than the bottom — Microsoft’s preferred position. The tiled bookmarks are a welcome addition as well, an improvement over the traditional drop-down menu.

Google may have beat Mozilla to the punch on Windows 8 with a Chrome dev release tailored to the Modern UI design, but from what we’ve seen and read so far, it seems Firefox will do a much better job of competing with Internet Explorer’s tiled interface than Chrome, which basically ported its desktop design to Windows 8. 

Source : digitaltrends[dot]com

Windows 8 version of Skype leaked, shows off its “Modern” styling

An upcoming version of Skype for Windows 8 has leaked showing off an interface optimized for touch interfaces (read: tablets).

It’s styled using the Metro Modern UI, characteristic of the upcoming Microsoft platform.

Some highlights include the ability to pin favorite contacts, as well as use pay-as-you-go and monthly payment options for landlines.

The app runs smoothly and with almost no issues with its updated interface. When chatting with different contacts, the background changes to let you easily identify who you’re talking to.

The app preview is in very polished, so we are hoping to see it released in the very near future.

Source : blog[dot]gsmarena[dot]com