Articles by Quinten Plummer

Mojang on Monday announced that Minecraft finally is headed for the Wii U, with touchdown scheduled for Dec. 17 The lack of Minecraft availability long has been a legitimate reason to skip the Wii U in favor of another console.

Former CEO Steve Ballmer on Wednesday called out Microsoft on finance reporting and its app strategy for Windows Phone, according to press reports CEO Satya Nadella this summer laid outhis vision for the company in an open letter to employees. It included a Windows 10 strategy founded on universal apps, software that could be scaled to Xbox One, Wi...

Nokia this week revealed its Ozo virtual reality camera system Priced at US$60,000, it will ship in the first quarter of 2016....

Up for discussion at Yahoo's next board of directors meeting is the sale of its Bing-powered search, longstanding mail service, aggregator-propped news platform, and the rest of the company's Internet business, according to reports that surfaced this week The possible spinoff of Yahoo's 15 percent stake in Alibaba also will be on the table, accordi...

President Obama last week signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act, which governs ownership of asteroid resources, possibly triggering a new battle in the commercial space race Section 5103 of the Act gives U.S. companies the right to resources mined from asteroids, although it does not give them rights to the asteroids themselve...

Yahoo earlier this week acknowledged that it has been experimenting with a neutralizing agent that can counteract ad-blocking software tools by closing off email access to browsers that use them "At Yahoo, we are continually developing and testing new product experiences," the company said in a statement spokesperson Anne Yeh provided to the E-Comm...

Blue Origin's New Shepard rocket this week made history when it landed intact in Texas. The unmanned crew capsule returned safely from a test flight that took it 330,000 feet into the air The New Shepard could become the first reusable booster -- it's scheduled to return to space in a few months. It's now tucked into a storage facility at a launch ...

There's a disconnect between the number of connections a LinkedIn user has and the number of post views attracted, one LinkedIn influencer has noticed There are several possible explanations for cases in which LinkedIn influencers with millions of followers average only thousands of post views -- or less -- but the company hasn't offered any....

Samsung last week began fulfilling orders for its Oculus-power Gear VR headset, giving U.S. consumers their first taste of Oculus VR's brand of virtual reality. International preorders have opened and have been expanding It won't be until early next year that Oculus VR begins shipping its full-featured Oculus Rift headset, but as a Gear VR collabor...

New York Attorney GeneralEric T. Schneiderman this week sought an injunction to keepDraftKings andFanDuel from operating in the state, according to press reports He also subpoenaedYahoo as part of his effort to end the operation of daily fantasy sports platforms in New York, press reports said....

The team behind the Telegram secure messaging app on Wednesday reported that it had shut down 78 channels, across 12 languages, used by ISIS and its supporters. However, the app's privately used channels weren't affected by the sweep After the attacks on Paris last weekend, for which ISIS has claimed responsibility, the Telegram team learned via re...

Nvidia on Tuesday revealed a refreshed Shield Tablet K1 and indicated that it isn't done updating the gaming slate One of the biggest parts of the refresh is a cut of US$100 off the price of the 16-GB tablet. The original Shield Tablet was available in a $299 16-GB version and a $399 32-GB variant....

Microsoft on Monday announced that itsMojang unit's Minecraft will star inCode.org's third annual Hour of Code event in December A 2-D tutorial version of Minecraft will introduce players ages 6 and older to simple coding, encouraging them to mine and craft by using visual programming, Microsoft said....

The NPD Group last week announced that Halo 5: Guardians set atop the gaming charts for October, despite its Xbox One exclusivity. The latest installment of the long-standing sci-fi shooter has given the Xbox One a much-needed boost, but Microsoft's latest console is still well behind rival Sony's PlayStation 4 Overall, the console market saw margi...

Microsoft on Thursday began rolling out the New Xbox One Experience, delivering backward compatibility for Xbox 360 games and updating the user interface to a Windows 10 foundation Support for legacy Xbox games is the headliner for the NXOE, but the roughly 1.15-GB update also includes new social elements baked into a reworked interface. The refres...

Valve this week rolled out the hardware phase of its road map from bedrooms and basements to living rooms and lounge areas with its long-awaited video game controller, PC link box and Steam boxes Valve's road map to the living room began with Big Picture mode in 2011, continued with in-home streaming in 2014, and now includes the new Steam hardware...

T-Mobile on Wednesday announced Binge On, a plan that lets qualified customers Netflix and chill as much as they want It's the type of move meant to shake up the wireless industry and to cultivate more T-Mobile loyalists....

Cisco andEricsson on Monday announced a partnership to build out a next-generation network for smart things and the carriers and enterprises that want to support such devices The deal plays to the companies' strengths in cloud, data center, mobility, management and control, networking, routing and global services, they said....

BlackBerry on Friday released its Priv smartphone, its first Android-based device The Android 5.1.1 Lollipop slider is driven by a Qualcomm Snapdragon 808 hexa-core processor and an Adreno 418 GPU....

Lytro last week announced its Immerge concept, a virtual reality camera system that promises to plop people right in the center of an experience the company calls "six degrees of freedom." Lytro's Immerge harnesses the potential of light field technology, the same tech behind the clandestineMagic Leap augmented reality headset....