Nintendo Wii Mini arriving in the UK on March 22nd

When Nintendo's Wii Mini landed in Canada, as far as we were concerned, the land of Due South was welcome to it. After all, the company had robbed the budget model of its internet connectivity, backwards compatibility and its, you know, charm. Unfortunately, Nintendo now feels that the UK deserves its own opportunity to be underwhelmed by the hardware, and so will launch the system in Blighty on March 22nd. Naturally, there's no word yet on pricing, but we'd get even tetchier if Nintendo tried to price it over, say, £70.

[Source: Engadget]

Apple no longer most admired company, but tops UK brand list

Apple could be about to drop off the top spot from Forbes magazine's prestigious World's Most Admired Companies list. The list doesn't come out until later in the week, but according to a blog post by Brad Chase, the company isn't likely to retain its number one placing.

It's not all bad news for Apple though. It's just been voted top of the Business Superbrands list here in the UK, and second in the Consumer Superbrands. Swings and roundabouts.

Chase writes that while Apple "isn't going to disappear anytime soon," the company's image isn't what it once was. "[T]he value of the once-invincible brand is teetering on the edge of a long, steady drop," he writes. And what does he reckon is the cause of this discontent among Apple fans? He puts it down to "glitches, missed deadlines and high prices", citing the debacle over Apple Maps, ethical issues with Foxconn plants in China, the proliferation of viruses attacking Macs, and increased competition from Google and Facebook, among other things.

Apple has won the Most Admired award five times on the trot, so it'd be quite a shock if it was snubbed this year.

The company is still doing well on these shores though, only behind Rolex in the minds of consumers according to the Superbrands survey, which identifies the UK's strongest brands. Apple came one spot ahead of Microsoft, and four ahead of Google. Facebook was the only other tech company in the top 20, placed at 14.

Apple also topped the Business Superbrands list, two places ahead of Google, five ahead of IBM, and seven ahead of Microsoft.

The consumer Superbrands survey asked more than 2,900 consumers which brands they thought had the best reputations. The business poll quizzed more than 1,900 professionals about their companies of choice.

[Source: CNET]

Instagram Hits 100 Million Active Monthly Users

Instagram is feeling no ill effects following its terms of service nightmare from last year. Instead of seeing a “max exodus,” the company is actually still growing, on Tuesday announcing the app sees 100 million monthly active users—10 million more than last month. TechnoBuffalo added to that tally.

On Instagram’s blog, co-founder Kevin Systrom reminisces about the company’s humble beginnings, and the amazing community that has shaped the app’s success. “It’s easy to see this as an accomplishment for a company, but I think the truth is that it’s an accomplishment for our community,” Systrom said.

It’s quite the accomplishment for a company that still has such a small team, and shows the community is an integral part—you, me, friends, family. Instagram has never been about the filters, but the sharing. And it seems more and more people each month are finding what a joy it is to share their experiences from around the globe.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Visa Partners With Samsung to Bring PayWave to Next Generation Samsung Devices

PayWave, Visa’s mobile wallet app, will be preinstalled on the “next generation” of Samsungdevices, Visa confirmed on Monday. The platform is part of the “Visa Ready Program,” which allows companies (banks, carriers, manufacturers) to connect to Visa’s network. To that end, future Samsung owners will be able to use NFC to take advantage of the system for mobile payments.

Unfortunately, The Verge suggests PayWave likely isn’t coming to the states, though Visa didn’t outright say so in as many words. Visa said it’s more focused on markets that have less “heavily operator subsidized models,” so take that for what it’s worth. We can certainly expect Verizon to skip out—if it does come to the U.S.—as the company has its own solution and has previously shunned Google Wallet.

Seeing as the next generation of Samsung devices will receive the PayWave treatment, perhaps we’ll see it first on the Galaxy S IV. That we won’t know until March 14.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Huawei and O2 bring Windows Phone to the masses as Ascend W1 debuts

Huawei, a leading global information and communications technology (ICT) solutions provider, is announcing today that its powerful entry-level Windows Phone smartphone, the Ascend W1, will be on sale exclusively with Telefónica O2 UK from March 7.

The Huawei Ascend W1 will be available in store and online for £119.99 on prepay and for free on contracts from £13.50 per month. It will be available in ‘Electric Blue’ from March 7 and in ‘Electric Pink’ also from March 18. The Ascend W1 will be supported by a significant ATL marketing campaign across UK media.

The Ascend W1 is designed for hectic modern lives; for users to make the most of their precious time by giving order and access simultaneously to their social and business worlds. It combines latest smartphone hardware and functionality with the innovative Windows Phone 8 operating system to enable quick and easy access to people, information and entertainment.

The Windows Phone 8 start-screen lets you customise and pin Live Tiles with topics of personal interest, providing real-time updates that are uniquely yours. Additionally, a dynamic lock screen allows you to select the photos or updates most important to you and have them ready at a glance, even when the phone is locked.

The Ascend W1 brings this powerful experience to a broader audience, and underpins it with great hardware. Its bright 4-inch IPS LCD 480 x 800 touchscreen has a low reflective IPS LCD display with full lamination technology, providing brilliant visibility under different lighting conditions. Its 1.2GHz dual-core Qualcommprocessor and Adreno 305 GPU combine as a powerful engine for immersive video streaming and game-play.

In addition, the Ascend W1’s 1950mAh battery provides the longest standby time of smartphones in its class. It also features a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash, and includes 4GB on-board memory, expandable to 32GB with a micro SD card.

The Ascend W1 is a smart and stylish alternative for consumers looking for great technology at the right price.

All PlayStation 4 Games to be Available Digitally

Gaming on the PlayStation 4 will not necessarily require going out to a brick and mortar shop to grab a copy of a new game. In fact, unless you live in a part of the world with less than stellar internet, news has come that suggests Sony will make it possible for you to buy each and every one of your PlayStation 4 games without any physical transaction at all.

The word comes from Sony Worldwide Studios President Shuhei Yoshida in an interview with The Guardian. Here’s the bit about game releases as digital downloads:

We’re shifting our platform more and more to the digital side – PS4 will be similar to PS Vita in that every game will be available as a digital download, and some will also be available as a disc.

The “some” that Yoshida mentions will, of course, be standard retail titles. Stuff like Uncharted, Killzone and LittleBigPlanet will ship with physical discs. The digital download exclusives will be the titles that you’d expect to see only on the system’s online store. The Witness, for instance, will be a PSN game.

What do you think about this push towards digital? Personally, as long as physical games still exist, I don’t mind it at all.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

App.net goes gratis, announces invitation-only free accounts

Since its inception, App.net has been working hard to improve its growing platform, giving all of its paid users a 10GB bucket of cloud storage and opening up its File API so devs could use the data stored there. Today, folks wanting in on the fledgling social platform can do so without paying the $36 annual fee -- provided you can score an invite from a paying member. And, there's something in it for paid accounts who refer folks. Both the inviter and invitee get an extra 100 MB of storage (up to 2GB) if the invitee subsequently follows 5 people and authorizes a third-party app.

Should you be lucky enough to score an invite, you won't have the same level of access as your paid brethren, however. Free accounts can only follow up to 40 users -- paid accounts have no such restriction -- and get a 500MB cloud locker. Also, while paid accounts can upload 100MB files, gratis accounts are limited to 10MB uploads.

We got to speak with Dalton Caldwell, CEO of App.net about the shift to a freemium model and he told us that the move has been in the works for some time. The reason it took awhile to do so is that App.net wanted to ensure that it had a market for its paid services and that it had enough of an app ecosystem to make App.net appealing to free users as well. Caldwell also informed us that in order to keep the number of free accounts manageable, paid members will get a limited number of invites to start -- with more invites appearing as the company finds it prudent to do so.

[Source: Engadget]

iOS 6.1.3 Beta 2 Fixes Exploits Used for Evasi0n Jailbreak

The upcoming iOS 6.1.3 update, which was seeded in beta form to developers last week, will put an end to new versions of the evasi0n jailbreak. 

Forbes reports that evad3rs team member David Wang (akaplanetbeing on Twitter) tested the patch over the weekend and found that one of the five exploits the hack uses was repaired.

Wang tells me that he's analyzed the 6.1.3 beta 2 update and found that it patches at least one of the five bugs the jailbreak exploits, namely a flaw in the operating system's time zone settings. The beta update likely signals the end of using evasi0n to hack new or updated devices after the update is released to users, says Wang, who says he's still testing the patch to see which other vulnerabilities exploited by the jailbreak might no longer exist in the new operating system.

Despite evasi0n's record number of downloads, hitting seven million installs just four days after release, Apple has been relatively slow to patch the bugs that make evasi0n possible, compared to some previous jailbreaks. 

The Cupertino-based company pushed the iOS 6.1.2 update six days ago, without a fix for evasi0n, which has now been available for download for three weeks. According toForbes, it took Apple just nine days to fix Jailbreakme 3.0, the jailbreaking tool for the iPhone 4. 

Wang is predicting that the iOS 6.1.3 update might take as long as a month to be released, and he also mentioned that the evad3rs have discovered additional bugs in the operating system, which could lead to a new jailbreak in the future. 

iOS 6.1.3 will bring improved Maps to Japan along with a fix for the Passcode bug that was discovered after iOS 6.1.

[Source: MacRumors]

Sony Says it Will Introduce Phone Running Firefox OS in 2014

In partnership with wireless carrier Telefonica, Sony said it wants to introduce a phone running Firefox OS by next year. The multi-year agreement will see Sony flex its Android muscles, but more interesting is how the partnership wants to explore development of the fledgling Firefox OS—not something in the Windows Phone camp—which has more freely reared its head at Mobile World Congress.

Sony said the decision to explore Firefox OS is so it can “deliver the premium user experience that Sony’s consumers expect.” We won’t know how, exactly, Sony’s Firefox efforts will translate into a premium experience until 2014, but the company’s backing of Mozilla’s OS is certainly a big one, and shows it wants to capture emerging markets.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Galaxy S IV Announcement Set for March 14

Its official, the Galaxy S IV will be unveiled in New York City on March 14.

After numerous rumors, Samsung has officially announced an Unpacked event for March 14 in New York City. Seeing as the slogan is “Ready 4 the Show,” we feel confident that this is indeed the launch event for the Galaxy S IV.

The event will kick off at 7 p.m. Eastern time, and you will be able to watch the livestream at YouTube.com/SamsungMobile. TechnoBuffalo will also be in attendance so be sure to check in for all of the live coverage of the event.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Nokia Unveils Lumia 720 and Lumia 520

Nokia took the stage during Mobile World Congress 2013 to unveil two new entry-level Windows Phone 8 handsets.

The Lumia 720 will launch in March of this year and features a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8227 processor, 512MB of RAM, 8GB of storage, a microSD card slot for adding additional storage, a 4.3-inch ClearBlack display with a WVGA resolution, a 6.7-megapixel camera, a “Skype HD Wide Angle” front-facing camera for video chat with a 1.3-megapixel resolution, a 2,000mAh battery and more. It will launch in red, yellow, cyan and black in matte and in a glossy white color.

[Source: TechnoBuffalo]

Sony announces global availability of Xperia™ Tablet Z – the world’s slimmest tablet

At Mobile World Congress, Sony Mobile Communications (“Sony Mobile”) today announced that Xperia Tablet Z – the slimmest* tablet available – will launch globally in Q2 calendar 2013. Additionally, Sony’s flagshipsmartphone, Xperia Z will be available to buy in stores from March 1st.

Since it was announced in January, the Xperia Z has won 13 awards and received the widest ranging of any Sony smartphoneto date with 140 sales channels in 60 markets across the globe. Both the Xperia Z smartphone and Xperia Tablet Z combine premium specifications with the best of Sony technology, entertainment, design and connectivity.

Premium Tablet Design Xperia Tablet Z is the most premium, high performance 10.1” LTE Android tablet available. Built from quality materials and featuring the same stunning OmniBalance design as its smartphone sibling, Xperia Tablet Z is also incredibly slim and lightweight at 6.9mm and 495g. Available in black or white and in LTE and WiFi versions, it is the first tablet to run on Qualcomm® Snapdragon™ S4 Pro asynchronous quad core processor and has the highest levels of water resistance (IP55 & IP57) ever delivered in a tablet, making it immune to accidental spills and splashes.** ”Xperia Tablet Z sets new standards in entertainment by matching premium specifications and Sony technology with cross-device connectivity and a consistent user-experience,” said Kaz Tajima, Corporate Vice President, Head of UX Creative Design and Planning, at Sony Mobile Communications. “Xperia Tablet Z reinforces our intention to be a leading player in the premium Android device market, by building on the principles established by Xperia Z and perfectly optimising them for the tablet form factor.” Integrated Sony Technology Xperia Tablet Z includes the very best of Sony technology. With a 10.1” HD WUXGA Display, powered by Mobile BRAVIA Engine 2, it delivers enhanced colour reproduction for a brilliant TV-like viewing experience. It also draws upon Sony’s camera expertise with an 8MP rear camera featuring “Exmor R for mobile” as well as a 2MP HD front-facing camera for capturing the best images in any condition. Sony’s S-Force Front Surround 3D, guarantees soul-shaking audio performance alongside Sony’s Clear Audio+ mode and the innovative use of two in-built speakers with four ‘speaker halls’ on the left and right corners delivers amazing sound no matter how it is held. Xperia Tablet Z also includes Battery STAMINA mode, Sony’s unique battery management technology that can significantly improve standby time. The WiFi variant also offers up to 64GB of storage with an optional mircoSD card. Seamless One-touch Connectivity Xperia Tablet Z includes more connectivity options than any other tablet. It also includes Sony’s One-Touch functions that let users transfer content seamlessly from HD tablet to TV, tablet to speaker or phone to tablet just by touching them together. One-touch functions are a key component of Sony’s device range this year and no other consumer electronics company is bringing as many NFC-enabled products to market. The tablet’s Universal IR Remote allows users to control the TV and other Sony devices - as well as products from other manufacturers - directly from the tablet placing the device at the heart of the home. TV SideView is a new application that gives users an entirely new way to interact with the TV. Sony’s media applications Sony’s signature media applications - “WALKMAN”, Movies and Album - allow users to enjoy, control and view content regardless of their device. The Sony Entertainment Network can also be accessed from these applications and includes Music Unlimited with more than 18 million songs and Facebook social integration as well as Video Unlimited with access to over 100,000 movies and TV series. Xperia Tablet Z Accessories Xperia Tablet Z will launch with a number of accessories including a charging cradle, an LCD Screen Protector and Leather Carrying Cover that comes in Black, White or Red. These will be available from Sony stores or registered retailers.