Apple Passes Microsoft as Largest Tech Company

The little fruit company has climbed high.

While Microsoft may still rule the software world with its operating system and desktop software, the worlds most valuable technology company, at least when it comes down to the finances, is Apple.

According to the New York Times: In intraday trading shortly after 2:30 p.m., Apple shares rose 1.8 percent, which gave the company a value of $227.1 billion. Shares of Microsoft declined about 1 percent, giving the company a market capitalization of $226.3 billion.

This also gives Apple the second highest market capitalization among American companies. Only higher is Exxon Mobil, at $282 billion.

A venture capitalist call's Apple's rise from ashes of decades ago something remarkable. "It is the single most important turnaround that I have seen in Silicon Valley," said Jim Breyer.

NYT points to this as a sign of changing investor attitudes and the increased value of consumer tastes. While Microsoft's products still completely own businesses, Apple's products cater strongly to the consumer.

Google TV brings the web to your TV

Seemingly bored with its quest for total domination of the personal computer and smartphone, Google just announced its new and upcoming service called Google TV. Television is a huge ad market with 4 billion users around the globe using it actively and Google plans to revolutionize it.

The concept behind Google TV is to merge the web with your TV so you can enjoy all those videos available online on the largest and best screen in your home – the one of your TV set.Google have partnered with Sony and Logitech on this one. Sony have prepared the world’s first Google TV lineup. That should hit the US market this fall. The lineup includes both a standalone TV model and set top box-type unit incorporating a Blu-ray Disc drive.

Google’s other partners Logitech have been working on a companion box that brings Google TV to existing HDTV home entertainment systems. It should be compatible with any brand of HDTV currently available.

The final notable member at the Google party is Intel, who will be providing the CPUs to power all that hardware. Wait, does that mean there’s an Atom inside that Sony Bravia? Cool!

The future of gaming is now: the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M unveiled, meet world’s fastest notebook GPU

Gamers can now start dreaming of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M which was announced today and happens to be the fastest notebook GPU known to mankind. The GeForce GTX 480M GPU combines some of the most advanced technologies, which make it not only fast but also capable of delivering life-like gaming graphics.

According to NVIDIA, the GeForce GTX 480M is the first GPU to allow notebook users to really taste DirectX 11. Thanks to the integrated Tessellation engine the GTX 480M offers up to 5 times more performance than the competition.

This is the GPU to first bring the next-gen Cuda architecture (a.k.a. Fermi) to notebooks, which should dramatically speed up video transcoding, upscaling from standard to high definition as well as real-time movie clean-up.

Thanks to the 3D Vision and PhysX technologies the GeForce GTX 480M should also deliver mouthwatering realistic gaming graphics while the Verde direct notebook drivers will make sure that you get the most from your notebook.

The first notebook to feature the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M GPU will be made by Clevo, while more systems are expected to show up soon.

Qubee is Ready for Official Launch in Pakistan

Qubee, a UK-based Augere company is told as ready to launch its services officially in Pakistan. Since its soft launch in October 2009, Qubee has secured 1,500 WiMAX customers in Karachi.

In an interview with Daily Times, Mubashir Naqvi, Chief Executive Officer Qubee announced that company is going to officially launch its services in Pakistan – starting with Karachi this month while expanding its coverage to other major cities such as Islamabad, Lahore and Rawalpindi in next two to three months.

Mr. Naqvi said that Qubee has invested about $70 million in last calendar year and planned to invest another $25 million to $50 million next year, depending on its capital and operating expenses. The company has rolled out its infrastructure network in all major cities of the country. Its network support partners are internationally recognized for the provision of best wireless Internet services called WiMAX.

In the faster-than-expected competition among broadband operators, he added, only those companies will survive who are financially sound and equipped with latest technology. “The service charges also matter a lot, therefore, we do a lot of care about it and offer our services from Rs. 750 per month.”

Mubashir Naqvi, who is former CEO of Ufone said that Qubee’s strategy is to share network with different telephony companies and penetrate in maximum parts of the country step by step with the shortest possible time. He intended to stretch coverage to all corners of the country.

He said the marketing model of the company is unique because we approach our targeted customers for saving their precious time instead they come to us.

Qubee sales agent will offer door-to-door service in the potential and literate areas of the city. Besides, four sales and service centre, the service promotion is also done through telesales and four to five thousands phone calls are made every day.

Mr. Naqvi’s proven track record in sales is for sure going to help Qubee in achieving its targets. However, it may not beat Wateen when it comes to unlimited bandwidth per month.

Steamworks Now Integrated into UDK

Epic as tossed Steamworks into the free version of Unreal Engine 3.

Back in March we learned that Epic Games had integrated Valve's Steamworks into Unreal Engine 3. This meant that all licensees suddenly had access to Valve's suite of services including product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, and more. Those options have now expanded into the free-to-use Unreal Development Kit (UDK).

In the latest release, Epic has made Steam the default system for handling all online services, including matchmaking, friends and server browsing. Epic has also incorporated numerous additions and improvements in the latest UDK build, offering the Scaleform GFX user interface (Flash-based), engine upgrades such as light shafts, exponential height fog, color grading and more. UDK also now supports running 64-bit binaries for the editor.

Launched late last year, UDK is the free edition of Epic's Unreal Engine 3. The release was slated for anyone interested in using 3D game engine technology, including game developers, students, hobbyists, researchers, creators of 3D visualizations and simulations, and digital filmmakers. Although there is no charge for non-commercial or educational use of the UDK, developers wishing to develop for commercial purposes are required to use the licensed version.

To download the latest build of UDK, head here. Minimum requirements include a 2.0+ GHz CPU, Windows XP SP2 or Vista, 2 GB or RAM, a SM3-compatible video card, and 3 GB of free HDD space. The current May build weighs a somewhat light 762 MB.