Software : IDF 2013: Intel shows off automatic, intelligent and dynamic overclocking |
- IDF 2013: Intel shows off automatic, intelligent and dynamic overclocking
- Facebook tests auto-play videos as commercial interruptions loom
- Twitter Music gets Spotify app, maybe what it should have been all along
| IDF 2013: Intel shows off automatic, intelligent and dynamic overclocking Posted:  The Extreme Tuning Utility (XTU) just got a game-changing upgrade called AppTune and it could be one of the most important things to happen to PC overclocking in years. Intel's XTU software isn't particularly well known, but it's an incredibly powerful overclocking utility that gives you access to every part of your Intel system from within a Windows application. In other words, no BIOS tweaking necessary. Now, most of us casual overclockers will generally just nip into the BIOS at boot, push up the multipliers and very occasionally mess around with a few voltage settings. That's all well and good, and can get you an easy, robust overclock on your processor. The problem is you'll probably end up burning away your CPU at that overclocked frequency, whether you're fragging folk Planetside or tapping out a shopping list in Notepad. Frying chipsWhether it's shortening the lifespan of your desktop chip, making your system sound like a Harrier jump-jet or rapidly sucking juice from your notebook's battery, none of these is a particularly efficient use of your chip. What AppTune offers is a dynamic, per-application overclock. That means you can set up your system to overclock the nuts off your processor when you really need it, and for those applications that don't, you can drop it down. In fact, if you're particularly power-conscious, you could even use it to underclock your system and save on juice.
"This is absolutely revolutionary," explained Dan Ragland, Senior Systems Engineer at Intel. "I really believe this is a game-changer. It may take a while for this to settle in and people to get this, but you're going to see this take off like wildfire. "We showed you the tip of the iceberg – this is going to be huge." Icebergs and wildfireIt's not just the processor that Intel's XTU has access to either. If you're running Intel graphics you can tweak those too, plugging that overclock into your application profiles. You can also have access to the bells and whistles of whatever RAM you've got installed in it. Now, you may be looking at the screenshots and thinking, "that all looks rather complicated to me," but AppTune has that covered too. Intel has worked with overclocking maestros, HWBot [hwbot.org], to introduce the XTU Zone into its website, and also to link the benchmarking component of XTU directly with that community. From the benchmark tab of XTU you can test your system, submit the results of your current profile and see how your system compares with others like yours, or indeed any other setup. The very cool thing though is that you can then download anyone else's overclocking profile and import it. So, if someone's got a really impressive graphics overclock you can add that in to an individual game's overclocking profile. The Extreme Tuning Utility is already out there and the 4.2 version offers the AppTune in beta form if you choose to opt in via the software's settings.
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| Facebook tests auto-play videos as commercial interruptions loom Posted:  Facebook is testing auto-playing video clips within the News Feeds of a small sample of its iOS and Android app users. Initially, the company said, only videos posted by individuals, musicians and bands would automatically play whether users wish to view them or not. The relevant videos will play silently, unless users tap the clip in order to expand to full screen and, in-turn, activate the audio. The announcement on Facebook's Newsroom blog comes amid speculation the company is plotting to integrate TV-style, 15-second video commercials into the News Feeds of users. Filling the feedsIn the post, the company said it was exploring how to expand the feature to marketers, which is probably code for: "Sorry guys we're going to be filling up your feeds with loads of ads really soon." Facebook Product Manager Kelly Mayes wrote: "We're doing this to make sure we create the best possible experience. Over time, we'll continue to explore how to bring this to marketers in the future." |
| Twitter Music gets Spotify app, maybe what it should have been all along Posted:  The Twitter Music service has now piped-up as a new app within Spotify, which may turn out to be a more natural home for the service, which has struggled to gain traction since launch earlier this year. The social network's music streaming and sharing app requires a Spotify login to play full songs. However, upon launch, some felt it could work better as an app for Spotify rather than the other way around. Now the app, which provides users with Twitter-charts from Superstar, Popular, Unearthed, Emerging and Hunted categories while allowing them to pick from Genres, is available within Spotify's App Finder. The neatest feature is probably the ability to save charts as Spotify Playlists, which can then be synced for offline playback on desktop or mobile devices. Rolling chart of what's hotSo, for example, if a user saves the Hunted chart as a playlist then they should have a rolling chart of music popular on the blogs. Meanwhile saving the Popular category as a playlist will populate a revolving chart of music trending on Twitter. Using Twitter data to power a music service has always been a good idea, but the idea of a separate app, when most people do their streaming through Spotify and the like may have been a bit of a reach. The launch of a Twitter Music app for Spotify may restore some sort of balance to the force. |
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