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Plex Android app gets a makeover and media server abilities, beta launches soon (video)
Users of the Plex media server and its suite of client apps can expect an all-new app for Android soon, rebuilt two years after its debut for a vastly improved UI and feature set. While musing about the progress of Android as a platform for users and developers alike -- a good read if you'd like a peek behind the curtain to find out more about multiplatform coding life -- a Plex blog post details everything that's added in the new version, and one major thing taken away: compatibility with any Android OS before 3.2 (retained to keep working with Google TV.) According to the devs, almost 90 percent of users are on at least Ice Cream Sandwich, and focusing on newer platforms means support for newer features like Cloud Messaging, lock screen music player controls and global search integration. As revealed in a preview video (embedded after the break) the new "Kepler" build also lets it act as a media server, so any media stored on your Android device can be played back on other Plex clients. The company says it set out to make the "most beautiful Android app, period" -- PlexPass subscribers can get a taste of the beta when it launches in Google Play later this week, all others will need to wait until after the test period.
Ngmoco shutting down some titles March 31
Ngmoco announced on its website earlier this week that some of the game maker's biggest iOS titles, including We Rule, Godfinger and Touch Pets Dogs 2, are going to be shut down for good on March 31. The games will be off of Apple's App Store later this week on February 1, so no new users will be able to download them, and the servers for the games will go offline at the end of next month, effectively ending the games completely. Ngmoco didn't give a clear reason for the shutdowns, but it's not hard to guess: The company, once one of the biggest app developers on the App Store, has been fairly steadily transitioning over to Android titles in the past few years, and has seen a sharp decline in popularity on iOS. Not to mention that many of the figures who made the company so large, including former EA exec Neil Young, have left the company in recent days. In other words, it's finally game over for Ngmoco on iOS. Ngmoco was purchased by Japanese network DeNA a little while ago, and that company is still steadily trying to grow its own iOS sales and popularity. But Ngmoco as a brand is effectively done on the App Store, especially since these once-thriving games are shut down. One of the biggest names of the App Store's first generation is finally on its way out the door.
Amazon wants to make your hi-res videos mobile-friendly with Elastic Transcoder
Transcoding video is a pain. We know that about as well as anyone. Amazon feels that pain, and thankfully, it's got the servers to back it up. Ahead of today's earnings release, the retail giant is announcing the release of Elastic Transcoder, a service aimed at helping users convert their videos into different formats, with a number of presets available for mobile devices, web browsers and the like. Customers can also go ahead with their own presets, if they're so inclined, adjusting things like file size and bitrate. Elastic Transcoder makes it possible to process multiple videos and prioritizes files based on urgency. The pay-as-you-go service is currently available in a half-dozen areas, including the EU, US East and two in the US West and Asia Pacific. More info after the break.
DayZ standalone version jacks up graphics, player customization
The race to a DayZ standalone version release is on, and creator Dean Hall is feeling excited and confident about the progress being made. Hall posted a list of improvements that the team is currently working on, from graphics to customization, and gave an update regarding the testing process. DayZ standalone's graphics are clearly improved from the ARMA II-modded version, and Hall includes side-by-side comparison photos of a town to show just how big of a difference the new engine makes. He said that the team is working on vehicle, character, and weapon customizations, although players will find that the real avatar customization will come while engaging in the game proper. One notable entry on Hall's list is the fact that the team is building the servers to be "MMO-like" so that hacking and cheating will be markedly more difficult. He also said that while external testers haven't been invited into the beta yet, this will happen once the full server/client architecture is completed.
Monster Hunter Tri servers go down April 30
The Monster Hunteth, and the monster taketh away. On April 30, just over three years after the game's release, the online multiplayer servers for Monster Hunter Tri on Wii will be disabled.Capcom's hope is that the people still playing the action RPG on Wii will migrate to Monster Hunter 3 Ultimate on Wii U and/or 3DS, of course. That comes out March 19, giving you a safe, six-week overlap period to secure your hunting fix.
AMD unveils Open 3.0: an Opteron 6300 platform for the Open Compute Project
The Open Compute Project is pushing hard for servers that are both very scalable and streamlined, and AMD is more than willing to help with the launch of its Open 3.0 server platform. The framework combines two Opteron 6300 processors with a motherboard that contains just the essentials, yet scales to meet just about any need in a rackmount system. Among the many, many expansion options are 24 memory slots, six SATA ports for storage, as many as four PCI Express slots and a mezzanine link for custom components. Open 3.0 isn't as flexible as a decentralized, Intel-based prototype being shown at the same time, but it's also much closer to practical reality -- a handful of companies already have access, and on-the-ground sales should start before the end of March. If all goes well, companies will have a Lego-like server base that solves their problems with precision.
Facebook's Open Compute Project splits up monolithic servers with help from Intel, more
As much as it's important to have every component of a PC stuck together in a laptop, that same monolithic strategy is a major liability for server clusters: if one part breaks or grows obsolete, it can drag down everything else. Facebook and its Open Compute Project partners have just unveiled plans to loosen things up at the datacenter. A prototype, Atom-based rackmount server from Quanta Computer uses 100Gbps silicon photonics from Intel to connect parts at full speed, anywhere on the rack. Facebook has also garnered support for a new system-on-chip connection standard, rather affectionately named Group Hug, that would let owners swap in new mini systems from any vendor through PCI Express cards. The combined effect doesn't just simplify repairs and upgrades -- it lets companies build the exact servers they need without having to scrap other crucial elements in the process. There's no definite timeframe for when we'll see modular servers put to work, but the hope is that a cluster's foundations will stay relevant for years instead of months.
Fusion-io brings Fusion ioScale SSD to small, speedy server clusters
Fusion-io has made a name for its Fusion ioDrive solid-state drives by selling them to the largest of enterprises -- the sort that crave thousands of servers. Not everyone wants that level of computing muscle, though, which is why the pro-grade storage firm is now selling the Fusion ioScale to a much wider audience. Cloud service hosts and other, smaller companies just have to buy a (relatively) paltry 100 or more of the PCI Express-based drives, which include both slim 1.6TB and full-size, 3.2TB versions. Neither will be cheap for datacenters when prices start at $3.89 per gigabyte, although Fusion-io is vowing better deals for those buying in buik. We also suspect that the time saved by moving to fast flash storage could be worthwhile in itself.
Blackberry users suffer fresh server chills across UK, Europe, Africa (update: it's a Vodafone problem)
It's 2013 and RIM's BlackBerry servers seem to be as grumpy as ever -- and totally oblivious to the need for happy headlines in the run up to January 30th. We're hearing from multiple readers that BB servers are down in the UK, while Vodafone has confirmed that its customers are having problems, with the biggest casualty being push email. Meanwhile, BlackBerry UK's Twitter feed says the outage is the result of "Vodafone service issues" and is affecting "some customers" across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. We'll update if we hear more. Update: An early statement from Vodafone gave no hint that it was responsible for the outage, and merely said it was "working closely" with RIM to fix it. However, this does now look like a Vodafone problem. The company's African offshoot, Vodacom, has seen fit to apologize on Twitter and has said services in that continent are now being restored, though a backlog of data could cause delays.
Plex updates arrive for Windows 8 app, web client and media server
The busy developers behind the Plex media server / client system have rung in 2013 with a slew of updates, this time targeting the company's native Windows 8 app, the Plex/Web interface and also the server software itself. On Windows 8, it's added audio/subtitle stream selection, universal search (seen above), some UI tweaks and more. On the web access front it's sporting retina-ready graphics, the ability to upload custom posters and some Flash video player fixes, among other tweaks. Finally, to make all this go (you'll need to update it to connect to the new Windows 8 app, as our own Sean Cooper found out) the media server gains a series of fixes, plus a speed boost on some DLNA streaming, searching for music by album and the necessary backend fixes to support Plex/Web's poster upload feature. More improvements are promised later this year, for now just hit the source link for the full list of changes, or check for an update on your platform of choice.
Ultima Online levies two-week rollback for high-pop server
It's not a good time to be a player on Ultima Online's Atlantic server, to put it lightly. Mythic was forced to rollback the game (and players' progress) yesterday on Atlantic to a backup from two weeks ago. Atlantic is the highest-populated shard in the Western hemisphere. The official announcement cut straight to the point: "Due to issues beyond our control, I am sorry to have to inform all of Atlantic that we had to revert to a Dec 5th backup. We have tried to retrieve a more current backup but we have been unable to do so due to corruption issues." Mythic said that it will be compensating affected players with a month of free game time, although that's undoubtedly small consolation to those who have lost progress and acquisitions during this period. Apart from the short announcement, there has been no additional communication from the studio on the issue. [Thanks to Brad for the tip!]
GameSpy: Multiplayer server shutdown result of failure to pay by devs
GameSpy has responded to the issue earlier this week of its owners Glu Mobile shutting down various multiplayer servers for older PC games like Neverwinter Nights and Sniper Elite. First up, GameSpy itself has put together a large blog post on its own site, making clear that GameSpy, the editorial outlet owned by IGN, is different from GameSpy Technologies, the multiplayer middleware provider owned by Glu Mobile. It's GameSpy Technologies that closed the servers down, not the GameSpy outlet.GameSpy Technologies has also responded to the issue on its Facebook page, and says that the server shutdowns are a result of the game developers choosing not to pay their service fees, and that "in some cases this lapsing ranges back as much as four years." GameSpy Technologies tells players that it "cannot be expected to provide a service free of charge," and that's why these servers went down. The company also says it was the developers' responsibility to inform players of the impending shutdowns, and "it is regrettable that these publishers chose not to inform their users of the impending discontinuation of support."Now, developer Rebellion said that GameSpy had changed its rates to be "far in excess of how much we were paying previously," but GameSpy Technologies reportedly told GameSpy (the editorial outlet) that server fees haven't changed in eight years and there were no increases made or even plans to do so. Someone, in other words, is mistaken. Joystiq has followed up with both parties, and we'll update this post if we hear more.
Intel's Atom S1200 lays claim to title of world's first 6-watt server-class processor
We often hear talk about the most powerful servers and supercomputers, but the most power-efficient are just as important. On that latter front, Intel has today announced what it claims is the world's first 6-watt server-class processor, the Atom S1200. That's a 64-bit system-on-a-chip designed for use in data centers, and it comes in three variants ranging from 1.6GHz to 2.0GHz, each of which support up to 8GB of DDR3 memory, eight lanes of PCI Express 2.0, and all the basic features an x86-based data center requires. Not surprisingly, going the Atom route also entails a relatively low up-front cost, with the processors starting at just $54 in quantities of 1,000. And Intel is naturally promising even bigger advances in energy efficieny for the future, including a "leap further ahead" in 2014 when it moves to 14nm manufacturing for low-power Xeon processors, and Atoms after that.
Custom enclosure designs shove 160 Mac minis into a single rackmount tower
When the Xserve joined the great server farm in the sky, Mac-minded datacenters everywhere were left without a true rackmountable computer; even the current Mac mini wasn't designed for those kinds of tight spaces. Enter the purposefully anonymous Steve, who just filled the gap with one of the cleverer solutions we've seen yet. He and vendors have developed custom 1U shelving, cooling from car radiators and four-in-one power cables that, combined, fit 160 Mac minis (and a managing Xserve) into one enclosure without cooking the machines to death. With each Mac mini carrying a quad Core i7 and an SSD, Steve now has twice as many cores (640) as an equivalent Xserve cluster despite lower power consumption and a 45-second, network-controlled reboot -- all big helps to his unnamed employer's software development, even with the lack of built-in redundancy for Apple's tiny desktop. As many gritty details as Steve can share are available at the source.
AMD reveals Opteron 3300 and 4300 processors for the penny-pinching enterprise
As a followup to its flagship Opteron 6300 launch last month, AMD has just released several more Piledriver-based processors meant for the server room. One eight-core and two quad-core models are part of the Opteron 3300 series, while the Opteron 4300 series gets six new CPUs: one quad-core, three six-core and two eight-core designs. With all this new silicon, IT pros may have concerns about compatibility issues -- but fear not, for all of AMD's new gear has sockets that fit in with the 3200 and 4200 series to make upgrading a painless process. Designed for small-to-medium sized businesses and web host servers, the chips are relatively inexpensive with prices ranging from $174 to $501, a far cry from the the $575 to $1,392 price of the higher-end 6300. Despite the low cost, AMD claims the CPUs have a 24 percent performance per watt increase and 15 percent less power usage than their predecessors. The chip maker will likely still face an uphill battle against Intel's mighty Xeon, but businesses looking to save a little cash might be the Opteron's saving grace. There's more detailed specs on the newly announced processors at the source, and you can get a peek at the pricing table after the break.
Flameseeker Chronicles: Guild Wars 2's Lost Shores recap
I won't be the first one to point this out, but almost as annoying as his eagerness to tell the citizens of Tyria about his new tourist destination (he was so eager that he actually interrupted himself -- constantly) was Subdirector Blingg's use of the phrase "most unique." No idea what I'm talking about? Then you likely didn't get a lot of hands-on time with Guild Wars 2 over the weekend. While Southsun Cove and the Fractals of the Mists are still around for your enjoyment, you missed out on the Lost Shores event itself. Some people will dispute whether or not you actually "missed out." They'd argue, I suppose, that there wasn't a ton of missing out to do. We differ on that point. Anyway, jump below the cut to catch the skinny on this weekend in in Guild Wars 2: the good, the unfortunate, and the maddening.
AMD's dual-GPU FirePro S10000 gobbles watts, spews out nearly 6 TFLOPs for server graphics
It can't be easy, running a modern IT department. Not only are people making ever more graphics-hungry demands on your servers, but NVIDIA and AMD are locked in an unending spec war that can make it hard to keep up with the market. The FirePro S10000 is merely the latest salvo: a dual-GPU, server-focused version of the W9000 that greatly increases overall compute power, delivering 5.91 TFLOPs of single precision calculations and 1.48 TFLOPS of dual precision performance in a single PCIe 3.0 card with 6GB of GDDR5 RAM. Even though the Graphics Core Next GPUs have been slightly underclocked to 825MHz, and even though they technically offer better performance per watt than a single-GPU configuration, their overall 375w power draw could still get you in trouble with your local power station. That level of consumption is around 50 percent higher than a regular server card like the S9000 or Tesla K10 and it may well require you to research new server cases and coolers in addition to weighing up the $3,600 cost for the component itself. See? This was never going to be straightforward.
ARM chief tosses Moore's Law out with the trash, says efficiency rules all
ARM CEO Warren East already has a tendency to be more than a bit outspoken on the future of computing, and he just escalated the war of words with an assault on the industry's sacred cow: Moore's Law. After some prompting by MIT Technology Review during a chat, East argued that power efficiency is "actually what matters," whether it's a phone or a server farm. Making ever more complex and power-hungry processors to obey Moore's Law just limits how many chips you can fit in a given space, he said. Not that the executive is about to accept Intel's position that ARM isn't meant for performance, as he saw the architecture scaling to high speeds whenever there was a large enough power supply to back it up. East's talk is a bit long on theory and short on practice as of today -- a Samsung Chromebook isn't going to make Gordon Moore have second thoughts -- but it's food for thought in an era where ARM is growing fast, and even Microsoft isn't convinced that speed rules everything.
AMD unveils Opteron 6300, hopes to put servers in a Piledriver
AMD's advantage these days most often rests in datacenters that thrive on the chip designer's love of many-core processors, so it was almost surprising that the company brought its Piledriver architecture to the mainstream before turning to the server room. It's closing that gap now that the Opteron 6300 is here. The sequel to the 6200 fits into the same sockets and consumes the same energy as its ancestor, but speeds ahead through Piledriver's newer layout and instructions -- if you believe AMD, as much as 24 percent faster in one performance test, 40 percent in performance per watt and (naturally) a better deal for the money than Intel's Xeon. Whether that's true or just marketing bluster, there's a wide spread of chips that range from a quad-core, 3.5GHz example to a 16-core, 2.8GHz beast for massively parallel tasks. Cray, Dell, HP and others plan to boost their servers before long, although the surest proof of the 6300's success from our perspective may be that everything in the backroom runs just as smoothly as it did yesterday.
New Mac mini tear down and benchmarks from Mac Mini Vault
The Mac Mini Vault has already grabbed a new Mac mini and taken it apart. You can read through the site's teardown and analysis right now. The short version is that much of the mini's design is the same. As you can see above, with the new version on the left and the 2011 version on the right. But because of the upgraded processor and memory, the new version is much faster than the last one, with nearly an extra thousand score on Geekbench tests. Mac Mini Vault (one of a few businesses offering Mac mini co-location) has a few more tests coming later on this week, including benchmarking on a few different operating systems running on the new mini, as well as a look at the new Mac mini server model that Apple has added to the lineup. It's great to see the mini getting some love, as it's an affordable and powerful way to run Apple's excellent hardware and OS in all kinds of different ways.
