FIFA 14 crowned Gaming Chart Christmas number one

The final pre-festive Gaming Chart has been announced with EA’s popular football sim FIFA 14 being crowned the 2013 Christmas number one.

Available across both current and next-gen consoles, FIFA 14 has seen off competition from a range of high-profile first-person shooters and GTA 5, a game which earlier this year became the biggest entertainment launch of all time.

With EA having now accounted for 14 of the 28 recorded Gaming Chart Christmas number ones, FIFA 14 has become the eighth member of the FIFA franchise to hold top honours in the UK All Format Gaming Chart over the holiday season.

While Activision’s Call of Duty franchise has recorded a handful of Christmas number ones in recent years, the latest offering, Call of Duty: Ghosts has been beaten down into second place by FIFA 14. Mixing up the leading publishers, Ubisoft’s Assassin’s Creed 4: Black Flag has rounded out the festive top three.

With EA featuring again in fourth with the issue hit Battlefield 4, LEGO Marvel Super Heroes has completed the top five for the highest selling games for the week ending December 21.

Although GTA 5 has slumped to sixth following its chart topping sales earlier in the year, Just Dance 2014 has held firmly onto seventh spot.

Rounding out the week’s, and Christmas, top 10, Need for Speed Rival and the PS4 exclusive Killzone Shadow Fall have lined up in eighth and ninth spots respectively while Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition is in tenth.

Read More: Best Games 2013

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Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘We have a lot to look forward to in 2014’

Apple CEO Tim Cook has teased potential new product lines for the coming year stating “we have a lot to look forward to in 2014.”

Speaking in an end of year note to employees, Cook, Apple’s replacement to co-founder and former CEO Steve Jobs, teased that the company has “big plans” for 2014 and that he believes “consumers are going to love” what the Cupertino-based company has to offer over the coming 12 months.

“We have a lot to look forward to in 2014, including some big plans that we think customers are going to love,” Cook said in his letter to employees.

Looking ahead to the festive period he added: “This holiday season, tens of millions of people around the world, from all walks of life, are experiencing Apple products for the first time. Those moments of surprise and delight are magical, and they’re all made possible by your hard work.”

Although Cook has failed to reference any new product lines by name, it has been widely rumoured that Apple will launch both its first smartwatch and own-branded television set in the coming year.

While the Apple iWatch has long been mooted as an iOS powered challenger to the Samsung Galaxy Gear and Sony Smartwatch 2, an Apple iTV unit was originally tipped by Steve Jobs to change the television and home entertainment markets for good.

As well as looking ahead to what 2014 will bring, Cook reviewed Apple’s efforts over the past 12 months. He stated: “We extended our lead in the smartphone market with iPhone 5s; launched iOS 7, an extraordinarily ambitious project; released OS X Mavericks for free to our customers; introduced the iPad Air and the iPad mini with Retina display; and this week began shipping the Mac Pro from a manufacturing facility in Austin, Texas.”

In a particularly festive and jovial fashion he concluded: “I am extremely proud to stand alongside you as we put innovation to work serving humankind’s deepest values and highest aspirations. I consider myself the luckiest person in the world for the opportunity to work at this amazing company with all of you.”

Read More: iPad mini 2 review

Via: 9to5Mac

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Samsung's 2014 smart TV range to enable finger point control

Samsung will introduce a new level of gestural control refinement to its 2014 range of smart TVs.

While this year's Samsung TVs saw the introduction of Kinect-like motion control, next year will see considerable refinement to the process.

"Samsung’s 2014 Smart TV models deliver significantly improved voice interaction and motion control features so that our consumers will be able to enjoy our Smart TV more intuitively," revealed Samsung’s Kyungshik Lee over on the company’s official Samsung Tomorrow blog.

The most notable improvement here will be the addition of a "finger gesture." You’ll be able to change channel, adjust the volume, and browse content simply by pointing at the screen.

One example given for this finger gesture control is the ability to back up to the previous screen by rotating your finger anticlockwise. Samsung believes that this will be a more intuitive way to control your TV in 2014.

In addition to improved gesture control, Samsung will be enhancing its voice commands for 2014. Changing channels with vocal commands will now take only a single step.

At the moment it’s a two-stage process: "Channel change" followed by the channel number. With next year’s Samsung smart TVs, you’ll just have to say the channel number.

Also, when using voice interaction to search for information while watching TV, a pop-up window will appear at the bottom of the screen containing the relevant results.

So, it seems we’ll still be barking and waving at our screens in 2014 - just less emphatically.

Read More: Best TVs 2013

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Google Play Music for iOS 7 gets feature parity with Android

It’s only been out for a month, but Google recently updated its Play Music app for iOS 7 to bring it up to the level of the original Android version.

Version 1.1.0.988 (really, Google?) adds a new iOS 7-friendly UI to the Google Play Music app, as well as a couple of welcome new features.

Chief among these is 'I’m Feeling Lucky' radio - an automated playlist that forms based on your recent listening habits. You also get themed playlists based on your music library and those you’ve applied the Thumbs Up rating to.

Those who’ve signed up to the All Access subscription service also get access to genre radio stations. Speaking of genre, you can now search by it in the iOS Google Play Music app.

Essentially, the Google Play Music app on iOS now has feature parity with the Android version.

Google first launch Google Play Music just over two years ago, and has massively expanded its feature set since then.

Initially a simple iTunes-like MP3 store with the added ability of being able to upload 20,000 for your own tracks to Google’s servers for free, Google Play Music eventually picked up a Spotify-like All Access premium subscription service that allows you to stream unlimited music from its 20 million tracks for £9.99 per month.

Read More: Google Play Music All Access vs Spotify

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iOS 7 untethered jailbreak released

An untethered iOS 7 jailbreak has been released giving iPad and iPhone owners access to more of their device’s software options than Apple allows.

Earlier today, December 22, the Evasi0n team announced that it had released an untethered jailbreak for iOS 7 devices, more than three months after the latest Apple software was rolled out for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch devices.

The jailbreakers have suggested that the untethered iOS 7 jailbreak will work on all devices running iOS 7 through to iOS 7.0.4 and will take just five minutes to install.

With the Evasi0n team publishing step-by-step installation instructions alongside the iOS 7 jailbreak, they have claimed the jailbreak will work on both OS X and Windows-based machines.

As always we must warn you of the risks with jailbreaking your device. With jailbreak software putting users at risk of security vulnerabilities, installing it to your Apple handset will void your smartphone or tablet’s warranty. Further iOS 7 jailbreak concerns include the risk of a shortened battery life and an inability to update to future software releases.

Given Apple’s stern stance on jailbreaks, it is expected the Cupertino-based company will look to release an iOS patch to fix the software vulnerabilities exploited by the jailbreakers in the near future.



Read More: iPhone 5S review



Via: 9to5Mac

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EA facing Battlefield 4 lawsuit

Leading games developer Electronic Arts is being taken to court over claims that it provided falsified details on Battlefield 4 to help inflate its stock prices.

The latest in a series of issues to befall EA following the recent Battlefield 4 launch, US law firm Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd has filed a class action lawsuit against the publisher on behalf of investors who bought stock in the company between July 24 and December 3 2013.

According to the law firm, earlier this year EA made statements which violated the 1934 Securities Exchange Act. It is claimed that the company offered “materially false and misleading statements” about the first-person shooter, after which “the price of Electronics Arts’ stock steadily climbed on these statements.”

The law firm’s filing added that EA’s stock prices reached “a Class Period high of $28.13 per share by August 23, 2013 and allowing certain of Electronic Arts’ senior executives to sell their Electronic Arts stock at artificially inflated prices.”

Although EA’s share prices rose earlier in the year, the Battlefield 4 release was followed by a mass of consumer complaints due to a number of high-profile bugs and glitches with the game. On top of this, a number of promised Battlefield 4 updates to fix these issues have been hit by continued delays.

EA has flatly refused these claims, suggesting that the Robbins, Geller, Rudman and Dowd filing is “meritless.”

"We believe these claims are meritless. We intend to aggressively defend ourselves, and we're confident the court will dismiss the complaint in due course,” the publisher said in an official statement.

Read More: Best Games 2013

Via: Guardian

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Epson Expression Photo XP-950 Printer Review

What is the Epson Expression Photo XP-950?

Photo enthusiasts are a more diverse crowd than they were. With cameras in phones and tablets, added to their compacts and SLRs, there is a need to be able to print from a variety of sources and at a variety of sizes, too. Epson’s top of the range Expression Photo XP-950 aims to take care of all these requirements and adds in a couple of other extras, too.

Epson Expression Photo XP-950 - Design and Features

This is a substantial all-black box, though not quite as large as you might expect for an A3 printer. Epson may have looked at Brother’s recently introduced range of A4 sized printers, which can also take occasional A3 sheets.

This machine has three different paper sources. At the front, once you flip down the unnecessarily tall tray cover, you can pull it out to reveal the main paper tray, of just 100 A4 sheets. Directly above this is a separate photo paper tray, which can take sheets up to 13 x 18cm. Finally, a flip-open cover at the back reveals a pull-up paper support for sheets up to A3, fed from the rear.



At the top of the machine a textured plastic lid to the 4800ppi flatbed scanner is oddly hinged across its middle, Epson says it’s to enable a better fit over irregular scan subjects. In front of this is a touchscreen control panel with an 88mm touchscreen and dedicated touch buttons.

Both the control panel and the output tray slide out under power when a page is printed, though, unlike HP’s Envy series all-in-ones, the control panel doesn’t fold back down when you shut down the machine. Instead, you have to push it against its mechanism, which is a bit tacky.

Epson Expression Photo XP-950 - Connections and Cartridges

To the left of the control panel, a flip-open cover reveals two memory card slots, adding CompactFlash to the more ubiquitous SD and MemoryStick types. There’s also a PictBridge USB socket, for legacy camera connection.

Hinging up the whole of the scanner section reveals the head carrier, with its six ink cartridges, adding light cyan and light magenta to the normal set. Bundled software includes ArcSoft’s Scan-n-Stitch editing utility and Epson’s own scan, photo print and CD printing software. There’s a CD/DVD Holder at the bottom of the front panel, which can be slotted in to directly print on coated discs.

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