CES 2014 kicks off this week and you can expect to see a plethora of Steam Box related news.

Up until now we have received a good amount of information pertaining to Box’s specs but very little has been known as to whom would be selling the machines.

iBuyPower will be showing off their machine fitted with a multi-core AMD Cpu, 500GB hard drive (we are not sure if this is SSD), WiFi, Bluetooth, and an AMD Radeon R9 270 graphics card.

The size if the unit is said to be around the same size as a PS4 and a tad smaller then an Xbox One.

It’s the kind of run Nintendo’s been on lately, that even the company’s one piece of good news – the growing success of the 3DS – has to get a little gloomier.

With the Wii U a disaster, it’s 3DS sales that are making Nintendo’s money right now, but from here on in the Japanese company is going to have to give up a percentage of every wholesale sale of the handheld to another company.

That company is Tomita. A US judge declared last month that Nintendo has been using Tomita’s patented camera technology without permission, so from now until the end of the handheld’s life, “Nintendo must pay Tomita 1.82 percent of the wholesale price” on every 3DS sold.

That may not sound like much, but if the 3DS goes on to sell 100 million units, it all adds up. To a lot of lost money.

Original article here

Many months ago, Square – a company that helps merchants do their business by providing business tools and equipment to take payments, etc. – made waves with their combination Square Reader and free Square Register App, which offers merchants an easy way to accept credit card payments via mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets by plugging a tiny card reader to the phone’s headphone port and then running the app. However, it’s not been possible to keep the iPhone in a case while using the Reader as no case has room to accommodate it – until now, that is.

Revealed today at CES 2014, Griffin’s $19.99 “Merchant case” is a protective iPhone Case that incorporates a compartment on the back for storing the detachable Square Reader when you’re not using it; and a moulded slot at the bottom to insert the Reader while you are, allowing you to keep the case on and keep the Square Register app running – so you can take card payments while keeping the phone safely protected. Griffin state it is the “first protective iPhone case optimised for Square”; and note the case also features “a groove in the bottom of the case [that] aligns with the Square Reader to guide a credit card to an easy, consistent swipe time after time.”

The Merchant Case + Square Reader is available to order now at Griffin’s online store; and plans to ship in the next two weeks. Its debut coincides with Square’s launch of Works with Square, a program that allows developers to build accessories for Square businesses.

LG has announced it will reveal a 77-inch TV at CES 2014 which will be capable of a 3840 x 2160 pixel resolution and use an OLED (Organic Light Emitting Diode) display, giving above HD graphics on an OLED TV for the first time.

The 77EC9800, as it is being called, will join a few other smaller TVs such as the 55-inch 55EC9700 and 65-inch 65EC9700 as part of three OLEDs in LG’s twelve-model strong 4K lineup for CES. Given LG’s track record of being first to market with new technologies, the EC9800 series is likely to be one of the first shipping 4K OLEDs in the United States.

The 3840 x 2160 resolution is one of a number of recent standards TVs are adopting which have commonly been nicknamed “4K HD”. The name refers both to how close the width is to 4,000 pixels (even though it’s still a distance away), and because it’s more than twice the current HD standard in pixel density in both directions, making for a supposed 4x improvement. One of the advantages of 4K is that you can sit closer to it than regular HD TVs and not see pixel structure–making this similar to the effect given by an Apple Retina display, and particularly handy for larger screen sizes – although one must remember it is unhealthy for the eyes to get too close to a TV.

LG’s new high-end TVs including the EC9800 also feature an upgraded Motion Remote. Though most specifications are still undisclosed the company has confirmed the EC9800 will include HDMI 2.0 and HEVC decoding. It will also have a curved screen – LG’s recent innovation for supposedly improving viewing angles, although it sometimes results in a glossy screen that is not particularly good at reducing reflections.

The television will be available in June 2014 but pricing is yet to be announced.

Not long ago, Typo Products LLC – a company part-founded by American Idol host Ryan Seacreast – revealed its first new product, an iPhone case with a difference, which was scheduled to release next month. The “Typo Keyboard” case covers over the iPhone’s dedicated button and utilises the bezel below the screen to add a physical QWERTY keypad directly below, for easy typing without using the touch-screen – at the cost of a slight increase in the phone’s length; and the dedicated iPhone button replaced by a single, tiny key. Many who saw the Typo case commented that the keyboard seemed to take design cues from the keyboard found on some BlackBerry phones – and it looks like BlackBerry themselves just took notice.

A Typo Keyboard case, minus the attached iPhone (courtesy Typokeyboards.com)

BlackBerry Ltd – the company behind the eponymous smartphones and systems – have filed a legal complaint in federal court in San Francisco, officially suing Typo Products for infringement on the basis that the Typo case’s keyboard too similarly copies the design of BlackBerry’s own patented keyboard as used on many of its own keyboard-equipped smartphones, most notably the recent BlackBerry Q10. “Typo chose to copy BlackBerry’s iconic keyboard design as embodied in, among others, BlackBerry’s Q10 smartphone, seeking to trade on BlackBerry’s commercial recognition and goodwill,” the Waterloo, Ontario-based company said as part of the complaint.

Left: The Typo Keyboard case attached to an iPhone. Right: A BlackBerry smartphone. Could you tell the difference between the two keyboards?

BlackBerry is seeking a court order preventing Typo from infringing BlackBerry’s designs; and another order for taking those designs off the market – effectively stopping Typo Products LLC from selling the Typo Keyboard from being sold or any similar products being created in the future. The first order also sets down that should BlackBerry win the case, the requested payment from Typo Products is all the profits made from the Typo and other infinging products, plus triple damages – which could total a substantial sum and would help BlackBerry greatly in its current financial situation.

Naturally, Typo Products disagree with BlackBerry’s claims, stating that the design of their own keyboard was independently developed based on years of development and research. “Although we respect BlackBerry and its intellectual property, we believe that BlackBerry’s claims against Typo lack merit and we intend to defend the case vigorously,” Erika Gutierrez, a spokeswoman for Typo, said in an e-mailed statement.

For those of a legal mindset, the case is BlackBerry Ltd. v. Typo Products LLC, 14-00023, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco).