It’s just been a few months since Apple launched the fourth generation model of the iPad with Retina display and we have already started seeing leaks of the next generation model, expected to go on sale later this year.

What you see above is allegedly a prototype back plate of the fifth generation iPad and as you can see it looks exactly like the current generation iPad mini, pictured right next to it. Read more »

The Music Hub is Samsung’s online music streaming service, which is currently only available on the Galaxy S III and the Galaxy Note II in a select few regions. Now, the company’s SVP for Samsung Media Services – TJ Kang – has announced that this feature will shortly be available on other, non-Samsung devices as well.

But before that happens, Samsung plans on making the service available across its own range of devices, including smartphones, tablets, smart TVs, etc. Read more »

H.265, the successor to the highly popular H.264 video codec, used for over 80 percent of all the online video, has been approved by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), allowing it to be used for the creation of video content that is significantly smaller in size than what we have today.

Known also as High Efficiency Video Coded, H.265 allows file sizes that can be around half as much as the current H.264 encoded videos while maintaining the video quality. This allows content providers to supply much smaller files with the same quality, thus reducing the time required to download or stream the video. Read more »

Apple started seeding out iOS 6.1 Beta 5 to registered iOS developers over the weekend. The update comes over a month after the last update was released to developers.

Along with the usual bug fixes and performance improvements, this new version of iOS also includes an interesting tidbit of information that a lot of people have been looking forward to; a mention of a 128GB version of an iOS device. Read more »

We have been seeing a lot of leaked images of the BlackBerry Z10 over the past month, including some official looking press images. Now we have some new cases for the yet-to-be-announced device, already up for pre-order by a British online retailer.

Above you can see the leather swivel holster, leather pocket case and a transform hard shell case cover. There is also a flip shell case cover (not pictured here). The prices range from £14.99 for the pocket case to £18.99 for the swivel holster. Read more »

Looks like someone at Gameloft left their scanner on again and out comes another clone of a popular game. Called the Blitz Brigade, Gameloft has now turned to Valve’s highly popular Team Fortress 2 as a source of inspiration for their next game.

The company has released a trailer for this game, which, although does not show any in-game footage, does show two teams of red and blue color battling it out over a large open map. It also shows just how similar the game looks to Team Fortress 2, including the game characters. Read more »

Twitter has announced a new service called Vine, which lets you share short looping videos on Twitter. The videos can be up to 6 seconds long with sound and loop automatically on the website like an animated GIF.

To capture one of these videos, you will need to download the Vine application, which currently is only available for the iPhone and the iPod touch. The app is very similar to the Instagram app, but instead of square images you see square video clips on your timeline. Read more »

Google has announced a new version of their Image Search service. The changes are specifically targeted at improving the time required to find and download images.

Previously, clicking on a thumbnail in the Image Search results would load a silly iframe where the selected image was floating on top of the source page. This considerably increased the time required to access the image as the browser would be loading the image as well as the source page simultaneously. What Google has done now with the new Image Search is eliminate the iframe page altogether and display the image directly within the search results. Read more »

Sony has announced a brand new Android-based tablet in Japan, called the Xperia Tablet Z. This new tablet is 6.9mm thick and weighs 495g, which makes it the thinnest and lightest 10-inch Android tablet on the market and even thinner than smaller tablets such as the iPad mini.

On the front the Tablet Z has a 10.1-inch, 1920 x 1200 resolution ‘Reality Display’ powered by Mobile Bravia Engine 2. The design language of the tablet is similar to the recent Sony Xperia handsets, such as the Xperia Z. Also, just like the Xperia Z, the Xperia Tablet Z happens to be dust and water resistant. Read more »

If you have been waiting for the next major release of Microsoft Office, then you won’t have to wait too long. According to a pre-order page on Canadian retailer Future Shop (which has now been taken down), Office 2013 is set to release on January 29.

Microsoft announced Office 2013 back in July, and a Preview version was made available for download. Since then the software suite has shipped on every Windows RT device out there in the form of the same Preview version but the final version is now just over a week away from release. Read more »

Exactly a year ago, The US Justice Department shut down popular file sharing website Megaupload on grounds of promoting piracy, with the founder Kim Dotcom being arrested for it.

Dotcom has since then been working on a successor to Megaupload, which now a year after the original site went down, has finally gone live under the name Mega. Read more »

When Microsoft released Windows 8 last year, they were kind enough to offer a considerable discount on the full price for those who would be upgrading from previous versions of Windows. However, that gesture was for a limited time and is about to expire at the end of this month.

Microsoft has now released the new prices for Windows 8 and Windows 8 Pro upgrade editions. Read more »

Opera is currently working on a brand new version of a mobile browser designed specifically for tablets. Currently known only as ‘Ice’, this new browser uses a gesture-based interface quite common on apps these days and is the first Opera browser to use the WebKit engine.

As you can see in the video below, ‘Ice’ allows you to save web pages on the homescreen for quick access. It then loads these sites as you’d load a native app. The fact that it uses the WebKit engine means that it works quite well with Google’s services, such as Google Maps. Read more »

After announcing the new Graph Search feature yesterday, Facebook has rolled out yet another important feature, the ability to make voice calls from the mobile app to any of your friends.

Currently, this feature only works on the iOS version of Facebook’s mobile app and only within the US. There is no need to update the app to get this feature. Read more »

Facebook has announced a major upgrade to the search engine on their website called the Graph Search. Using this new tool, you will be able to enter more specific search queries and get results based on the massive amount of data that Facebook has collected over the years.

Graph Search works by taking advantage of all the information people have uploaded over the years on Facebook. Things such as their jobs, location, relationship status, photos, etc. It then uses all of this information to give you relevant results for your specific queries, something you cannot do with regular web search. Read more »