The Final Fantasy XII-2 Official Guide Collector’s Edition Video!


Final Fantasy XII-2 the Complete Official Guide… by Impulse_Gamer

Posted in Game News, Trailers |

Romney defeats Gingrich in US spam primaries 45% to 33%

Romney wins Most Mentioned Politician status in spam

SYDNEY & AUCKLAND – February 10, 2012 – Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who’s leading polls in the race to become the Republican Party’s nominee for the US presidency, is also the favourite politician of spammers touting knockoff drugs and dubious bargains in junk email.

Romney is mentioned in 45 per cent of spam messages that reference US politics, ahead of second-placed Republican Newt Gingrich, who scored 33 per cent, according to a Bitdefender analysis of 8 million unsolicited messages spread in January.

Romney’s name was most often used in scam messages that advertise low-interest loans or free credit score analysis while Gingrich was mentioned in junk mail promoting miraculous energy saving devices that almost certainly don’t exist. Most of these offerings actually redirect the unwary user to survey site scams or knockoff drugs for sexual dysfunctions.

US Republican hopeful Ron Paul came third in the spammers’ list, with 12.18 per cent. The most popular politician outside the Republican race that caught the spammers’ attention this year was Bill Clinton, with 3.99 per cent.

“Winning Most-Mentioned Politician in Bitdefender’s spam survey is probably not an honour that many politicians want,” said Bitdefender E-Threats Analyst Bogdan Botezatu, who coordinated the spam study. “And I don’t think we’ll see spammers suddenly turning into political pundits. But the results could tell us which politicians spammers think are most likely to get a reaction from random email readers. Spammers are, ultimately, after money and they’re essentially making a bet on popularity when they favour one politician’s name over another.”

Spam messages frequently use names of celebrities or politicians in fragments of news items in an attempt to give credibility to the message and to trick antispam filters that look for the percentage of links versus other words in the message. Only a small portion of the spam analysed in the Bitdefender study – or about 0.24 per cent – mentioned US politicians at all.

In the overall analysis of spam – not filtered to include only political references – the Republican politicians were handily beat by celebrities including Jay Leno, Eva Longoria, Kobe Bryant, and even political commentator Rush Limbaugh.

For more information on Bitdefender’s spam survey, see http://www.malwarecity.com.

Posted in Mind Fun, Software News |

2K Games Announces The Darkness™ II Now Available

The Darkness™ returns with Quad-Wielding™ combat and four-person cooperative play

Sydney, Australia – February 10th, 2012 – 2K Games announced today that The Darkness™ II, the sequel to the hit 2007 title, The Darkness™, is now available in Australia and New Zealand for the Xbox 360® video game and entertainment system from Microsoft, PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system and Windows PC*. Inspired by the comic book series created by Top Cow Productions, Inc., and developed by Digital Extremes, The Darkness II continues the story of Jackie Estacado, head of a New York crime family and wielder of an ancient and brutal force of chaos and destruction known as the Darkness. Introducing unique Quad-Wielding™ combat and four-person cooperative gameplay distinct from the first-person campaign, The Darkness II breaks the mold of traditional first-person shooter titles.

A playable demo** of The Darkness II is broadly available worldwide for Xbox 360, PS3™ and Windows PC. The Darkness II is rated MA 15+ by the OFLC. For more information on The Darkness II, please visit www.embracethedarkness.com.

Posted in Game News |

New Mass Effect Trailer – Mass Effect 3 Reinstate – Female Shepard

Posted in Game News, Trailers |

First look at DC Comics’ Earth 2 and World’s Finest Covers … wow

Posted in Books & Comics |

FANGO delivers on Social TV

FANGO delivers on Social TV
Social influence, apps and companion experiences are changing the viewing experience 

Sydney, Australia, 10 February, 2012 – Australians have a healthy appetite for social TV according to Yahoo!7, with the release of new research demonstrating that viewers are increasingly using mobile devices and social media to enhance their TV experiences while shows are airing.

The research, conducted by Yahoo!7, sampled 7,741 people from around Australia and polled them on their viewing habits, activities undertaken while watching TV and the influence of social media on viewing habits. 

Top Line Social TV Research Results

  • 41 percent of people reported posting on Facebook while watching TV
  • 36 percent of respondents are using a mobile phone to text or call friends and family while watching TV
  • People are more likely to use social media during or after a show
  • Nearly 72 percent of people watch TV shows live on TV as they are airing
  • 90 percent of people prefer to watch TV on a traditional TV set 

These statistics support how people are using FANGO – Yahoo!7’s social TV app. FANGO has secured over 200,000 downloads since launch, averaging over 10,000 downloads each day. FANGO for iPhone was App of the week in the iTunes App store and FANGO for iPad reached the number one ranking in the iTunes App store. 

With FANGO, people can check-in to their favourite TV shows including all free-to-air programs from 3pm-12am. They can let their friends know what they are watching; chat about shows and see what other people are saying on FANGO, Facebook and Twitter. FANGO offers show-related trivia, topical polls and gives viewers the ability to earn points and badges to reward their engagement. 

During the Australian Open, FANGO brought together like-minded viewers with 100,000 fan check-ins during the tournament and the Hewitt vs. Djokovic match clocking up the highest number of check-ins. During the tournament one of the popular interactive elements of FANGO was ‘Open Mic’, the ability to send questions to Jim Courier to ask players during post match interviews. 

Yahoo!7’s Social TV research also showed that online social circles influence our choice in programming with 27 percent of those surveyed saying that they have watched a TV show based on a recommendation from a friend via a social networking site. Similarly, 26 percent of respondents said that they had been made aware of a TV show because of something they saw on a social networking site. 

“The research clearly shows that Australians love to watch appointment-based TV. The success of FANGO demonstrates a new way in which Australian television viewers can engage with shows FANGO brands and other fans, as the show is airing,” said Kristin Carlos, Head of TV, Yahoo!7. “FANGO makes it easier for viewers to engage with their favourite TV shows.” 

According to Tim Worner, CEO of Seven Network Television: “Viewers are changing the way they watch TV and we’ve changed the way we produce shows to cater for this. Social and interactive elements aren’t an afterthought anymore, we are integrating them into the making of our shows. 

“The initial numbers for FANGO during the tennis were very strong, and this enthusiasm has carried right on into My Kitchen Rules. At Seven, we’ve made it a priority to keep innovation at the very heart of our business and FANGO is yet another example of this,” he said. 

The companion TV experience that Seven and Yahoo!7 are offering with FANGO will no doubt continue to influence the way in which television is produced in this country with more interactive and social elements being introduced into programming. We’re leading the next wave in TV innovation.”

FANGO is available now for iPhone and iPad. To download the latest version of the FANGO app, please visit the iTunes store: http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/id475261145?ls=1&mt=8  or visit: yahoo7.com.au/fango

Posted in Mind Fun, Movie & TV News |

GET READY FOR THE REAL PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN!

CAPTAIN MORGANE AND THE GOLDEN TURTLE SETS SAIL ON

16TH MARCH 2012 

To land-lubbers and Sea Dogs alike – the preparation is over, the sun is rising over the yard arm and the main sail is set – Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle hits the high seas – and the stores – on Playstation 3, PC,  Nintendo Wii and DS on Friday 16th March 2012. 

Packed full of mystery, intrigue, puzzles and over 40 characters (some of whom won’t be friendly), Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle promises to show off what Pirates of the Caribbean were really about!

This fun and feisty adventure game from premier writer Steve Ince and developer Wizarbox, is the follow-up to their hit-game So Blonde and tells the story of the Caribbean’s first female captain, Captain Morgane, and her adventure in her search for the treasure of the Golden Turtle! 

With an immersive storyline with over 40 unique characters in 50 locations on five islands, all developed in 1080p HD beauty, Captain Morgane is set to enthral adventure gamers and casual gamers alike. 

For more information on Captain Morgane visit www.captainmorgane.com and to receive all of the latest updates for its launch, join Morgane’s Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Captain-Morgane-And-The-Golden-Turtle/191022037610365

Ahoy me hearties! Your Caribbean adventure starts here! 

Captain Morgane and the Golden Turtle is launched Friday 16th March 2012

Posted in Game News |

Australia’s ultimate handheld gaming device PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita) arrives at Vodafone. Pre-order begins today

SYDNEY – February 9, 2012 – Vodafone, the preferred provider of 3G connectivity for the highly anticipated PlayStation®Vita (PS Vita), today announced the 3G/Wi-Fi model of the revolutionary hand held device will arrive in-store on 23 February, 2011, with pre-order available today online at www.vodafone.com.au/psvita, from 3:30pm (ADST) today. 

Customers will have the freedom to enjoy the next evolution of portable gaming on Vodafone’s new 850MHz network rolling out now, with exclusive offers from the preferred mobile carrier including sensational deals for customers on both contract and prepaid. 

For customers looking to snap up the PS Vita 3G/Wi-FI model and spread the cost over 12 months, Vodafone is offering the powerful 3G gaming console for $55 per month, over 12 months (total minimum cost is $660) with 1.5GB data a month and bonus 4GB memory card included. Prepaid customers can enjoy Vodafone’s PS Vita Prepaid kit, which has everything you need to be mobile gaming in no-time, featuring the PS Vita 3G/WiFi with 200MB of data on a 30-day expiry, and bonus 4GB memory card for $419. 

Ross Parker, General Manager of Devices at Vodafone said, “Our partnership with Sony Computer Entertainment Australia presents us with a unique opportunity to make the move into the exciting world of mobile gaming. Our new network is built for smart devices like PlayStation Vita. Our customers have told us they can’t wait to get their hands on this device, and we echo their enthusiasm and look forward to the arrival of PlayStation Vita in Australia later this month.” 

PS Vita 3G/Wi-Fi at Vodafone 

  • Postpaid: $55 per month ($40 per month for the PS Vita 3G/Wi-Fi and $15 mobile broadband plan) over 12 months (total minimum cost is $660) with 1.5GB data and bonus 4GB Memory card.
  • Prepaid: $419 for the PS Vita 3G/Wi-Fi with 200MB of data and bonus 4GB Memory card.
Posted in Game News, Hardware & Technology News |

Symantec Releases Backup Exec Dedicated to 100 Percent Virtual Environments and Expands Data Protection for Small Businesses

SYDNEY, Australia – 9 February 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced Backup Exec 2012 to help users eliminate complexity, perform backups in 100 percent virtualised environments and deliver instantaneous and cloud-based recovery through a single solution. As part of the new release, Symantec transformed Backup Exec’s user interface and configurability to provide a significantly simpler customer experience. Symantec is also expanding its leading technology to small businesses with Backup Exec Small Business Edition, enabling growing organisations to back up their information in three simple steps in less than 10 minutes.

“Backup is a critical part of a protection strategy, and with mounting digital assets and shrinking IT budgets, growing organisations need to find a way to keep costs down without compromising availability of their information,” said Amit Walia, vice president, Information Management Group, Symantec. “With close to two million businesses worldwide trusting in Symantec Backup Exec, it is our responsibility to help IT professionals and small business owners become backup heroes.”

Backup Exec Portfolio Now Includes:

  • Backup Exec V-Ray Edition: Backup Exec V-Ray Edition will give virtualisation architects the option of having industry leading Backup Exec technology protect their 100 percent virtualised environment and the option to easily extend protection to physical environments, if needed, without having to buy a separate solution.
  • Backup Exec Small Business Edition: In three simple steps, Backup Exec 2012 Small Business Edition will install and configure backups so small businesses with limited IT experience can protect their data with ease. Backup Exec Small Business Edition will bundle Symantec’s data and system recovery technology into one affordable solution with a single license that’s designed specifically for businesses with up to three servers.

Backup Exec 2012 will deliver the following benefits:

  • Eliminate Backup Complexity with a New Administration Console: A newly redesigned administration console will provide users with fast, concise management, simplified experience, and monitoring capabilities. The new user interface will also automatically configure the most common and successful policies and settings, drawn both from Symantec’s many years of experience and from the Backup Exec community, to allow for quick configuration of systems and protection of data and applications with minimal effort.
  • Unite Virtual and Physical: Powered by Symantec V-Ray technology, Backup Exec 2012 enables visibility across both virtual and physical environments for fast and efficient backup and recovery while eliminating the need for specialised point products. Backup Exec 2012 will also provide true single file recovery, deduplication and backup management for VMware, Hyper-V or physical servers in a single product enabling significant storage and management savings.
  • Integrated Disaster Recovery: With Backup Exec’s integrated bare metal and “no hardware disaster recovery,” organisations will be able to easily recover a failed system to a physical server, or to a Hyper-V or VMware guest. Backup Exec’s powerful and patented recovery capabilities enable granular restore of entire virtual machines, single files, Active Directory objects, Exchange Emails, or SharePoint Documents from any single-pass physical, VMware or Hyper-V backup.

Availability
Symantec Backup Exec 2012 will be generally available for purchase in spring 2012 through Symantec’s worldwide network of value-added authorised resellers, distributors and systems integrators or directly.

Supporting Quotes
“When we deployed Backup Exec 2012 in production, it immediately reduced our backup window by almost 24 hours every week. Backup Exec 2012 has afforded us the ability to base weekly full backups from an enumerated virtual machine image thereby providing best in class data protection. The simplicity of the new user interface has streamlined the process for setting up new backup jobs in our environment and saves an immense amount of time,” said Brandon Mosak, Network Manager, Task Force Tips, Inc.

“Symantec Backup Exec 2012 is a user friendly solution that maintains the highest degree of data protection.  The first time I saw Backup Exec’s new user interface, I knew it was going to revolutionise how I manage our backup environment,” said David Lewis, LAN administrator, Health New England. “Backup Exec’s P2V recovery will be the biggest time saver for disaster recovery.”

“Our IT environment is 90 – 95 percent virtualised, and we continue to leverage this technology to reduce costs and the number of physical servers,” said Jason Drake, director of Infrastructure and Security, Premiere Global Sports. “We have trusted Backup Exec to backup our data for several years and the transition from a physical server infrastructure to virtual infrastructure didn’t change our choice in a data protection solution. Symantec’s V-Ray technology embedded in Backup Exec allowed us to easily expand to a virtual environment and feel confident in our decision.”

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Connect with Symantec

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world with storage management,  archiving, eDiscovery, backup & recovery solutions.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.

Posted in Hardware & Technology News |

Symantec Declares Better Backup for All Sized Organisations and Calls for 80 Percent Reduction in Operating Costs

New survey data reveals that the current approach to backup modernisation is broken

SYDNEY, Australia – 9 February 2012 – Symantec Corp. (Nasdaq: SYMC) today announced it will deliver a new approach for modernising backup and recovery, a process that has become unnecessarily complicated and expensive as organisations’ data stores grow exponentially. Compared to traditional backup, Symantec’s approach enables 100 times faster backup, eases management and simplifies recovery if a disaster occurs, helping customers realise significant cost savings while better protecting their business information. Over the last 20 years data has exploded, virtualisation has become widely adopted and service level agreements (SLAs) have become near impossible to meet. These challenges also affect the smaller businesses that struggle with backup complexity and are at risk of data loss due to a disaster. The current approach to modernisation introduces an ever-growing collection of point solutions resulting in added complexity, increased costs and headaches for backup administrators, network administrators and executives.

“The single most dramatic change is scale – or volume – of data, applications and virtual machines which cannot be processed by current backup environments. Organisations have increased service level agreements, rising expectations of availability and the need to run in a 24/7 business model. When combined with trying to integrate new technologies, it adds up to a disruptive environment with a huge impact on IT teams. Organisations small and large need a holistic protection strategy, a single platform or solution, to handle the variety of data types and workloads as opposed to integrating a number of disparate point solutions, which proves to be costly and time consuming,” said Dave Russell, vice president of Storage Technologies and Strategies, Gartner.

“Today, Symantec unveils a radical new plan to modernise data protection that will drive out 80 percent of the operating costs associated with backup over the next five years,” said Deepak Mohan, senior vice president of Symantec’s Information Management Group. “Symantec is announcing a new set of solutions that address the problems in backup – from the most complex of enterprise data centers requiring a true tiered-recovery strategy to the smallest business that needs the confidence that they can easily recover their data.”

Symantec recently surveyed more than 1,400 IT professionals worldwide on their backup practices and their ability to recover information in the event of a disaster. The findings reveal that traditional approaches to backup are broken and a new approach is vitally needed:

  • 49 percent of respondents can’t meet service level agreements (SLA’s) due to too much data
  • 72 percent of respondents would switch backup product if speed doubled
  • 28 percent say they have too many backup tools
  • Organisations average four backup solutions to protect physical systems, and three for virtual
  • 42 percent of respondents believe that their virtualisation backup is not adequately or perfectly working
  • More than a third (36 percent) of respondents would not bet their paychecks that 100 percent of backed-up data could be recovered

According to Symantec’s 2011 SMB Disaster Preparedness Survey, SMBs are not making disaster preparedness a priority until they experience a disaster or data loss. Half of respondents do not have a plan in place and 41 percent said that it never occurred to them to put together a disaster recovery plan. The survey data reveals that the cost of not being prepared is high, putting an SMB at risk of going out of business.

Key components to Symantec’s unique approach to data protection are the NetBackup 7.5 and Backup Exec 2012, designed to help Symantec’s more than two million backup customers address backup issues common to companies all over the world. Symantec’s strategy focuses on the following areas:

  • Change the Operating Model of Backup: Symantec’s strategy is to eliminate 80 percent of the operating cost of backup by delivering an integrated platform that replaces multiple solutions typically used in backup today. Symantec backup appliances can drive down costs even more than traditional appliances by combining backup software and deduplication into a single solution supported by a one vendor, that is fast to deploy and easy to manage.
  • Break the Backup Window: 100 times faster backup with NetBackup 7.5, compared to traditional approaches, means organisations can complete full backups at the speed of incremental backups without sacrificing recoverability to meet critical service levels.
  • Fight Infinite Retention: Too many organisations keep backups for too long. Knowing when information can be deleted can significantly reduce costs and management burdens on IT. New backup search capabilities in NetBackup give IT the ability to separate out what is relevant to legal or compliance investigations while keeping the rest of the backup infrastructure running on a more typical 30-60-90 day backup cycle. Infinite retention is infinite waste for IT and infinite risk for legal.
  • Unify Snapshots and Backup: A snapshot without NetBackup is just a snapshot. A snapshot with NetBackup is data protection, manageability and recoverability. Unifying snapshots and backup with NetBackup gives organisations the speed of snapshots with the recoverability of backup.
  • Stop Putting Tapes on Trucks: With the help of Symantec NetBackup technology, organisations can modernise their disaster recovery strategies and stop the practice of shipping tapes by truck. Symantec NetBackup Auto Image Replication (AIR) allows customers to eliminate volumes of physical assets and prioritise files that can be sent over the network, while significantly reducing the chance for human error.
  • Unite Virtual and Physical Backups: Reduce operating costs around virtualisation with patent pending Symantec V-Ray technology that enables organisations to have deeper visibility into their VMware and Hyper-V machines for virtual backups with a single product. Integrated in NetBackup and Backup Exec, V-Ray delivers load balanced virtual machine backups to eliminate backup storms, improve virtual machine performance and reduce storage by deduplicating data everywhere, whether it is on VMware, Hyper-V or physical servers resulting in up to 90 percent storage reduction.
  • One Product for Any Recovery: Symantec provides one solution for all backups whether they are based on tape, disk, or in physical or virtual environments. Customers can recover any application or system to a virtual machine whether they have the hardware or not. Physical to virtual recovery is now included for free in Backup Exec, simplifying disaster recovery by automatically creating a virtual machine when recovery is needed. New backup to virtual (B2V) technology is also available to accelerate the migration from physical to virtual servers as part of the backup process.
  • Eliminate Complexity: Backup Exec has eliminated backup management complexity by simplifying the user interface, utilising insights from millions of users, policies and licensing. This allows IT administrators and SMB owners to have a professional data protection strategy without being backup professionals.
  • Easy Backup: Symantec introduces Backup Exec Small Business Edition ensuring smaller companies can set-up proper data protection in less than 10 minutes and in three simple steps.

Related

Connect with Symantec

About Storage from Symantec
Symantec helps organisations secure and manage their information-driven world both on-premise and in the cloud with storage management, archiving and eDiscovery, backup and recovery solutions.

About Symantec
Symantec is a global leader in providing security, storage and systems management solutions to help consumers and organisations secure and manage their information-driven world. Our software and services protect against more risks at more points, more completely and efficiently, enabling confidence wherever information is used or stored. More information is available at www.symantec.com or by connecting with Symantec at: go.symantec.com/socialmedia.

Posted in Hardware & Technology News |