Yahoo Axis "Browser" Gets a Close Button, Performance Enhancements

A couple of months ago, Yahoo made quite a stir with a brand new "browser." The browser is nothing more than a browser add-on on the desktop and a search app with browsing functionality on mobile devices, but once you get past that, the app is quite interesting, at least as interesting as anything Yahoo put out lately.

Now it's getting an update with some tweaks and improvements. The big new feature, if you can call it that, on the desktop is a close button.

Now, if you want to simply close the Yahoo Axis panel and continue browsing unhindered you can simply click on the 'x' button on the right side.

Performance has been a focus for the team since the initial launch and the new Yahoo Axis 1.1 should be faster and more responsive than the version it's replacing.

Via: Yahoo Axis "Browser" Gets a Close Button, Performance Enhancements

Panasonic Rakes In Nice Profit Despite Low Sales

Unlike certain other companies on the IT market, Panasonic weathered the second quarter of 2012 with little trouble, even succeeding in making some profit.

The reason for this is that Panasonic has been reducing fixed costs and restructuring each business segment.

With this to compensate for the increasingly serious financial crisis in Europe, the company was able to make up for the previous losses.

That is to say, whereas 2011 brought a loss of $9.7 billion (7.91 billion), the second quarter of 2011 put a stop to the drop in income and generated $164 million / 133 million Euro.

It bears noting that Panasonic achieved this feat in spite of a 6% decrease in sales, compared to the first quarter.

The only unfortunate part in all this is that this business balance has been achieved at significant cost.

Via: Panasonic Rakes In Nice Profit Despite Low Sales

Snoop Dogg Changes His Name to Snoop Lion, Quits Rap

Snoop Dogg may be one of the most instantly recognized names and voices in showbiz, but all that is about to change soon: the rapper has decided to change his name to Snoop Lion and to quit rap because it's no longer as challenging as it used to be.

Calvin Cordozar Broadus, Jr. (the rapper's real name) recently spoke to journalists in New York, making sure the entire world found out about his decision to open a new chapter in his life, News.com reports.

And an entirely new chapter it will be: not only will he go by the Lion name, but he'll also be turning his attention to reggae music instead of rap.

He explained that the name change was a consequence of a spiritual rebirth after a trip to Jamaica, while the new sound for his upcoming album a result of his no longer finding rap as challenging these days.

“I want to bury Snoop Dogg, and become Snoop Lion. I didn't know that until I went to the temple, where the High Priest asked me what my name was, and I said, 'Snoop Dogg',” the artist said.

“And he looked me in my eyes and said, 'No more. You are the light; you are the lion.' From that moment on, it's like I had started to understand why I was there,” he explained.

“There comes a point where you say I done it all, or there isn’t much more to do. This was like a rebirth for me. With no disrespect to other rappers, but they can't [expletive] with me in rap... I've won every accolade you can get in rap, they call me 'Uncle Snoop' in rap,” Snoop went on to say.

At this point, he either plateaus or moves on to another genre and greener pastures. He's obviously opting for the latter.

“When you're an uncle, it's time to find something new... I want to feel like a kid again. I have always said I was Bob Marley reincarnated. I feel I have always been a Rastafari. I just didn’t have my third eye open, but it's wide open right now,” Snoop added.

Fans who are still having a hard time believing this won't have to take his word for it for much longer: “Reincarnated” is now in the works and will be a 100 percent reggae album.

Via: Snoop Dogg Changes His Name to Snoop Lion, Quits Rap

Seagate Reports Another Billion Net Income

Seagate Technology has just announced its financial performance for the last quarter of fiscal year 2012 and the overall fiscal results for the whole fiscal year 2012. Despite the global economic downturn and the specific issues in the hard drive market, Seagate made over $3 billion in net income from June 2011 until June 2012.

We were waiting for news about the OCZ acquisition talks, but it seems like OCZ’s market value jumped by more than 30% in the last weeks, which apparently led to a standoff.

Therefore, if OCZ was having trouble getting enough financing, now that their market value has jumped so high and so fast, they’re able to ensure the necessary funds much easier.

This is not in Seagate’s favor, as this allows OCZ to stay and bargain for more and the more the talks last, the more the company’s value will increase.

Seagate reported $4.5 billion of revenue for the last three months that materialized into a $1 billion net income for the company.

Seeing how the shares have only went up during the last months, Seagate continued purchasing its own shares back from the free market to regain control of the company and enjoy the profits that will come.

Now that Seagate and Western Digital have no competition left and they only have to mimic the competition between themselves, the profits will just keep on flowing.

Seagate repurchased 45 million of its shares and that means they’ve managed to buy back 19% or 88 million of the company’s shares during the past six months alone.

The company has also paid $106 million in cash dividends for its shareholders.

While both companies are playing the “business as usual” game, we’re waiting to see how the OCZ negotiations turn out. If OCZ remains the top SSD player and an independent company, its shareholders might not make a “fast” billion, but the users are the ones to gain.

On the other hand, prices of hard drives remain high and there’s no relief in sight.

Via: Seagate Reports Another Billion Net Income

Skyfall Gets New Trailer for the Official Trailer

As is the case with every other hyped release, the upcoming James Bond film “Skyfall” is also getting a trailer for the official trailer which, mind you, is not the same as the official teaser. Check it out above in full.

The actual trailer drops online this week.

While there isn't much in it save for what we already knew from the synopsis, this new clip does include new footage and a possible explanation for the title, which coincides with a major hint as to a possibly life-threatening injury for the swift 007 agent.

“Bond’s loyalty to M is tested as her past comes back to haunt her. As MI6 comes under attack, 007 must track down and destroy the threat, no matter how personal the cost,” a brief synopsis of the film says.

“Skyfall” sees Daniel Craig return as James Bond, and will be out in theaters in IMAX later this year.

Via: Skyfall Gets New Trailer for the Official Trailer

Gigabytes SuperClock WindForce5x HD 7970 Monster Tested

We have been waiting for news about Gigabyte’s SOC Edition of the AMD Radeon HD 7970 for a long time. The card has been finally tested and it is likely the fastest single-GPU video card in the world.

The card is officially called Gigabyte HD 7970 Super Overclock, but the naming scheme might be change once it is officially launched.

The special and most original cooling design has already been descried in detail here.

There was fear that the card would be loud, but the reality is that the WindForce5x cooling system is even quieter than other designs, and only when over-volting the card do the fans get considerably louder.

There is one clear advantage to this design, as this is the ideal way to cool the cards when working into a CrossFire setup.

The card tested by the hardware experts at techpowerup.com is not the final version, but we were actually surprised to see that the whole design was not using any of the “GHz Edition” features and improvements.

The GPU is actually clocked higher than AMD’s reference Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and works at 1080 MHz, but the memory is only set to work at 1375 MHz, and that’s 5.5 GHz effective instead of the 6 GHz that the GHz Edition has.

Even so, the card manages to beat most of its opponents, only staying behind the dual-GPU cards like Nvidia’s GTX 690 and AMD’s own Radeon HD 6990.

Considering that AMD’s cards are able to run in 5760 x 1080 high resolution while Nvidia’s graphics adapters are incapable of such a feat, we can safely say that Gigabyte’s AMD Radeon HD 7970 SuperOverclock is the fastest single-GPU video card in the world.

We’re hoping to see a “GHz Edition” setup on the final version with 1500 Mhz memory and finer GPU frequency adjustments, but, even so, the card is impressive.

Head over to techpowerup to check out their tests.

Via: Gigabytes SuperClock WindForce5x HD 7970 Monster Tested

Android 4.0 ICS Update for HTC Incredible S Now Available in India

Good news for HTC Incredible S owners living in India as the Taiwanese mobile phone manufacturer has decided to start the rollout of the long-awaited Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.

Those who were afraid that HTC Incredible S may have the same faith as the Desire HD, which has recently been denied the same update, can now rest easy as their phones will receive the hotly anticipated upgrade.

It appears that offering Ice Cream Sandwich updates for older Android phones has been quite a challenge for HTC.

The company has recently announced that HTC Desire HD won’t be receiving an official Android 4.0 ICS update in the future “to how storage on the HTC Desire HD is partitioned - and the larger size of Android 4.0 - it would require re-partitioning device storage and overwriting user data in order to install this update.”

Basically, it means that the phone is short on storage and users would have to delete all data stored in the memory in order to install Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. This is a rather weird explanation especially that HTC Incredible S has a lower amount of internal memory.

In fact, aside from internal memory, both smartphones, HTC Desire HD and Incredible S, have similar features. They are powered by the same Qualcomm MSM8255 Snapdragon single-core processor clocked at 1GHz and pack 768MB of RAM.

Luckily, HTC Incredible S will be getting the promised Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update, while Desire HD owners will be stuck on Gingerbread.

According to AndroidOS, an Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich update is now available for download in India. The file is about 250MB in size and is pushed OTA (over the air) in stages, so not all Incredible S owners will get it at the same time.

The update is said to add HTC Sense 3.6 UI, as well as new features and overall improvements. Users can manually check for the update by going to Settings / About / Software update.

Via: Android 4.0 ICS Update for HTC Incredible S Now Available in India