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China reverses 'ban' on videogames, but there's a catch and it involves Shanghai's free trade zone
Consider this the somewhat end of China's 13-year old (loosely enforced) "ban" on videogames. A new policy issued by the country's State Council amends the language of a prior bill from 2000 which
Tech journalist Seth Porges on NES awe, Captcha rage and cherry picking Kickstarter
Sunday, September 29, 2013
Every week, a new and interesting human being tackles our decidedly geeky take on the Proustian Q&A. This is the Engadget Questionnaire.
In this week's installment
PES 2014 Review (Xbox 360, PS3, PC, PSP)
With the FIFA vs PES battle now largely a critical rather than commercial one (that war has been long-won), PES 2014 finds
Grand Theft Auto 5 Review (Xbox 360, PS3)
GTA 5 Review
The best GTA game ever made.
Unless you play it for yourself, it's near impossible to grasp how big GTA 5 is. It's not just the world. It's the gargantuan story,
Bang & Olufsen promises 'second-to-none' experience from new wireless speaker technology
Wireless speakers still aren't usually the first choice of those primarily concerned with sound quality, but high-end manufacturer Bang & Olufsen is setting out to change that perception with its latest offering. Announced at the CEDIA
Apple hires Nike FuelBand designer Ben Shaffer; Cupertino's wearable can't be far behind
A month after after poaching fitness expert and Nike FuelBand consultant Jay Blahnik, Apple has added another former Nike employee to its ranks.
Sony confident on PS4 pre-orders before Christmas
The boss of Sony UK has said that all PS4 pre-orders should be fulfilled before Christmas, with no stock problems expected in the New Year.
‘Everyone who has put down a pre-order so far will definitely get one before Christmas, as long as nothing goes terribly wrong,’ Fergal Gara told website CVG.
The phenomenon of Candy Crush: Why is the game so popular?
Candy Crush Saga is one of the most widely-played app-based games (Picture: File)
It’s been a big year for gaming. Not only were there many huge releases, including the record breaking Grand Theft Auto V
French agency may slap Google with a €300,000 fine for privacy violations
Google has once again found itself in the hot seat over its data practices, and this time, a French agency is sounding the alarm. Earlier today, France's National Commission on Computing and Freedom
Valve announces Steam Controller, a gamepad for its game console
Saturday, September 28, 2013
Valve revealed Steam Controller today, a controller for its living room PC-based game console initiative. It's the third announcement this week from Valve, following reveals of SteamOS and Steam Machines
Global HTC One gets Android 4.3 update, improved low-light camera performance
If you're the proud owner of an unlocked HTC One smartphone, you should now have access to an Android 4.3 update. If you picked up a locked device from a US carrier,
Games Inbox: Rayman Legends vs. GTA V, Sega 3D, and next gen GTA Online
Rayman Legends – more fun than GTA V?
Today’s evening Inbox recommends Xbox Indie game Bleed, as one reader admits he couldn’t wait till his birthday for GTA V.
To join in with the discussions yourself email gamecentral@ukmetro.co.uk.
Never so cheap
Microsoft announces Surface Pro 2 accessories including a docking station, Power Cover and Type Cover 2
In addition to introducing the Surface Pro 2 this morning, Microsoft also trotted out a smattering of accessories for its new slates including the new Power Cover and a docking station.
Is Grand Theft Auto 5 too short?
Does Grand Theft Auto last long enough? (Picture: AFP/Getty Images)
Grand Theft Auto V was one of the most hotly anticipated releases of the year. With hundreds of gamers throughout the country queuing for their copy at midnight on Monday 17 September, the proceeding days were almost undoubtedly dominated by GTA V action.
Rockstar absolutely nailed it. While the previous GTA titles had solid campaigns, GTA V’s was by far the best yet. The action was intense. The chemistry between the characters was outstanding. The plot was solid. The game greatly surpassed my expectations in all these areas. Sure, I knew it was going to be extremely entertaining, but I hadn’t counted on being taken in so thoroughly by the story at certain points.
The combination of the three characters worked much better than I had anticipated. Numerous later missions utilised each of the playable protagonists in different ways, including three prong attacks, sniper and cover moments and splinter stories.
Rockstar: GTA 5 police are not racist
Some GTA V fans complained of extra police attention when playing as Franklin (Picture: Rockstar) GTA V developer Rockstar has been forced to come out and defend Los Santos’s police force against claims of racial discrimination from gamers.
The world has been absorbed by the free-roaming game over the past week, which has broken sales records and been critically-acclaimed for its immersive gaming experience and realism.
Some players have been irked by what they see as racial profiling by the in-game police however, purportedly experienced when playing as the game’s only black protagonist, Franklin.
‘Walked up to a cop as Franklin, cop dropped his coffee and said “back the f*** up”. Then shot me in the face. For no reason. #Racist #GTAV’ one gamer wrote on Twitter, with another adding: ‘Anytime I’m franklin, I get chased by cops for “a disturbance.” this never happens with Michael or Trevor. The gta cops are racist’ (sic).
Microsoft Surface 2 hands-on (video)
Microsoft just announced the Surface 2, the successor to the original Surface RT tablet. So of course, we did exactly what any self-respecting Engadget editors would do: we muscled our way to the front of the demo area and made sure we were the first to get our hands on it. As you can see, we've got a gallery of hands-on shots below, as well as our first impressions.
IRL: Another look at the Samsung Galaxy Mega 6.3
Friday, September 27, 2013
Welcome to IRL, an ongoing feature where we talk about the gadgets, apps and toys we're using in real life and take a second look at products that already got the formal review treatment.
So you say a phone's too big to live with? Challenge accepted. In this week's issue, Jon takes the Galaxy Mega 6.3 for a spin to see if it's prohibitively large, or just stupidly so.
Galaxy Note 3 and Galaxy Gear smartwatch for Sprint: ships October 4th with 'unlimited data for life'
As has become the norm, Sprint's primary differentiator is its "unlimited data for life" policy affixed to new flagships. Granted, the carrier isn't promising that the amount it charges for said data will remain the same for life, but at least you'll have the option to pony up for it.
Call Of Duty: Ghosts hands-on preview and interview – ‘Call Of Duty is Call Of Duty’
Call Of Duty: Ghosts – is more of the same really a bad thing?
GameCentral talks to the producer of the new Call Of Duty about everything from next gen AI and destructibility to competing with Titanfall.
Valve’s final reveal is Steam Controller gamepad
Has Valve just reinvented the game controller?
A gamepad with two trackpads instead of analogue sticks, and a central touchscreen, is Valve’s latest attempt to bring PC gaming to the living room.
Hands-on with the Surface Music Kit, a digital audio workshop aimed at beginners (video)
We were expecting new tablets at today's Microsoft Surface press event, but this? This was a surprise.
Focal camera app removed from CyanogenMod, launched as standalone beta
Thursday, September 26, 2013
Not everyone is happy with Cyanogen as a company. Guillaume Lesniak, the creator of CyanogenMod's Focal camera app,
Microsoft announces the Surface 2, the follow-up to the original Surface RT; coming October 22nd for $449
As promised, Microsoft has just revealed the Surface 2 here at its Surface-themedpress event. Whereas the new Surface Pro 2 makes subtle changes to the original Pro, the Surface 2 is being billed as a revamped version of the Surface RT.
LG Vu 3 official: 5.2-inch 4:3 display, Snapdragon 800, 13MP camera, LTE-A
Considering LG's G2 was leaked many times before it became official, we're a little surprised that the company managed to keep the Vu 3 under wraps before today (more or less, anyway).
Marshall's mini Stanmore speakers available now for $400
Marshall's mini Stanmore speakers: a small footprint for a not-so-tiny price. We first spotted these beauties back at IFA, and now it seems you can finally pick 'em up here in the States.
BlackBerry enters agreement for $4.7 billion sale of company to consortium led by Fairfax Financial
For the second time in as many trading days, shares of BlackBerry were halted in advance of some big news from the company. Today's news is no less big.
Microsoft Surface 2 event now available for online streaming
We thoroughly covered this morning's Microsoft Surface event, but the company opted not to livestream it through its own channel.
Oppo N1 puts a 13MP camera on a hinge, comes with CyanogenMod extras
Oppo's been prepping its photography-centric N1 for quite some time, but at last, the teasing stops today as the company unveils its first N-Lens series device in Beijing.
Microsoft's new Surface Pro 2 gets official
The Surface RT's full-fledged Pro counterpart just got an update. Today, Microsoft unveiled the follow-up to that x86 / Windows 8-compatible tablet: the Surface Pro 2 and it still comes with a stylus.
Peachy Printer's sub-$100 3D printer smashes fundraising goal
While the cost of 3D printers are coming down, it's unlikely we'll start to see them invade everyone's homes 'til they become much cheaper.
Oppo N1 hands-on (video)
Oppo's already made quite an impression with its N1 earlier today, and now that we've gotten our hands dirty with said Android phone, we can confirm that it's just as dandy in real life.
Microsoft Surface Pro 2 hands-on (video)
Here it is: Microsoft's powerhouse Surface Pro 2. As we've seen and heard already, Microsoft's follow-up to the Surface Pro is thinner and considerably faster.
CIO interview: Wolfgang Krips, head of global operations, Amadeus
INTERVIEW
CIO interview: Wolfgang Krips, head of global operations, Amadeus
Amadeus is critical to the travel industry. The global distribution system (GDS) for airline tickets was established in 1987 by Air France, Iberia, Lufthansa and SAS to provide services to connect travel agents with airlines.
For Wolfgang Krips, head of global operations at Amadeus, automation and a highly skilled team work in unison to provide high availability IT services. Krips has worked at Amadeus since July 2013 - prior to joining he was managing director of SAP managed services.
He heads up global operations, and is responsible for ensuring the services Amadeus provides are available 24/7, 365 days of the year.
Krips is based at Amadeus’ Erding datacentre outside Munich. Prior to the likes of Google, Microsoft and Facebook, Amadeus would have been regarded as one of the biggest European datacentres. Today it operates the largest datacentre in Europe for the travel industry.
He says: "Our systems build up travel itineraries and book your travel." This is the core Amadeus global distribution system that enables travel agents to check seat availability and book tickets for passengers. But since 2000, the company has been expanding to offer a number of cloud-based products.
"We also support the operational processes of airlines such as check-in, printing baggage tags, boarding and the load plans for the aircraft," says Krips - systems that are mission critical to the airlines. "If these services are not available then the airplanes are unable to leave the airport."
MORE ON HIGH AVAILABILITY IT OPERATIONS
Krips and the operations team at Amadeus have the responsibility of keeping these systems available at all times. Any failure could lead to major travel disruptions globally. "If we have a system outage it affects the operations of the airlines," he says.
The site in Erding is made up of three separate datacentres, each operated in an N+1 configuration which provides additional hardware for failover. He says, “Everything in the datacentre is redundant. We can operate for days even if we were cut off from power and water. We have redundant computers and state-of-the-art fail-over technology.”
Datacentre automation
Amadeus makes extensive use of automation.
"An automated environment is one of the ways we fulfill the requirements of the business. No matter how fast a human works, it can take a week or so to bring in a physical server into a datacentre," says Krips.
"Today we live in an age where you can go to Amazon in the cloud to get a virtual server instantly. So the classical approach of physically provisioning a server needs to be decoupled using virtualisation and automation."
But Krips says datacentre automation is impossible if there are too many configurations, in terms of the hardware and software set-up: "We are trying to standardise the technology to reduce complexity by having as little variants as possible. From here you can automate."
He says fewer datacentre configurations reduces complexity and increases agility: "If you need to bring in automation that covers 85 variations of hardware it takes much longer to deploy and test. If you have only two or three variations of hardware, complexity is less and the configurations can be automated more easily."
Operations has moved from box shifting to a very sophisticated discipline where operations staff have to think through how to make processes fail-safeWolfgang Krips, Amadeus
He says there needs to be a balance between having the highly skilled team who can solve complex issues that arise when running a datacentre like the Amadeus site in Erding, along with the procedures needed to repeatedly get high quality results. This procedural approach to change management fits alongside the automation tools: "The human factor is very important".
Krips says standardisation plays a major role in reducing errors within a datacentre.
"Operations has moved from box shifting to a very sophisticated discipline where operations staff have to think through how to make processes fail-safe. We have highly educated and skilled people who understand the systems they operate."
The team adheres to a process framework to reduce the risk of human error. He says the operations teams use checklists, analogous to the preflight checks run on the flight deck of an aircraft, to minimise human error.
Career progression in IT operations
In many ways, Krips regards automation as a way to run the mundane tasks required to operate a major datacentre, albeit extremely quickly, allowing the highly skilled operators to problem-solve situations automation cannot handle.
"Our datacentre services are automated to minimise any service disruptions. But automation means the skillset required by operations staff increases. They no longer think about how to do the job, but instead they are asking, 'What is the next level of automation I can use'," he says.
Due to datacentre automation, he says: “We require a very different level of thinking."
Speaking about the progress of IT and the impact on IT operations, he adds: “In the early days you could bring in any technology and the business would figure out what to do with it. But today you need a business case. You need people who not only understand the technology but also people need to understand the price in terms of operational costs and the total cost of ownership. This is what is needed for the managerial side of IT operations.”
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