Diablo 3 Worldwide Launch Date Announced for 15th May and we have the details

One of the most exciting games that’s been a long time coming is almost here, almost…

Blizzard have announced the launch date of 15th May and the game will be available throughout the United States, Canada, Europe, South Korea, Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand, and the regions of Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Macau.

Blizzard have said that anyone that pre-orders the game will be able to play it “the minute the servers go live.” Which will surely give everyone a huge sigh of relief, with all of us being left in the dark for so long, but Blizzard have always stood firm in what they believe and wanted to ensure that they created the best possible game for players and would not be pushed into releasing it early.

So what can we all expect….

Here is the last trailer that was released by Blizzard for Diablo 3 just 3 months ago

What’s New to Diablo III
Are you new to the Diablo series? Did you play Diablo or Diablo II? Are you curious about what’s different in Diablo III, and what’s stayed the same? Read on.

IN RETROSPECT
We’re proud of the original Diablo’s dark, moody atmosphere and engaging item-grabbing gameplay. Diablo II added more environmental and monster variety, more diverse classes, and a number of unique elements that have since become synonymous with the franchise (like gems, runes, set items, etc.).
Both games established the series’ hallmarks: randomised levels, the relentless onslaught of monsters and events in a perpetually fresh world, unique quests, tons of items, and an epic story about the High Heavens, the Burning Hells, and the hapless and heroic human beings caught between them.
Diablo III is the inheritor of this legacy, and we’ve added even more elements to the game to keep building on our vision for the world of Sanctuary.

SKILL RUNES
In Diablo III, runes give you unprecedented control over your skills and powers, changing elemental damage types, accuracy, and area of effect; adding new debilitating effects like slows and stuns; and even altering the nature and appearance of your abilities.

FOLLOWERS
Sometimes a hero needs a helping hand. Followers, champions brave enough to join you in battle against the Burning Hells, are similar to Henchmen from Diablo II in that they can be outfitted with relevant arms and armor, but they’re upgradable with their own skills, allowing you to customize how they fight and what passive benefits they convey. They’re also fleshed-out personalities in their own right.

CRAFTING & ARTISANS
As you meet and assist people during your journey through Sanctuary, some of the world’s most talented craftsmen will sign on to travel with you. These artisans are capable of putting the materials you’ll find in the wilderness or salvage from unneeded items to good use, hammering out customized suits of armor or combining gems to unlock their powers.
Invest time and money into an artisan’s training, fill their shop with worthy materials, and they’ll keep improving the quality of items they can produce, augment or combine for you.

SEAMLESS INTERACTION
To push Diablo’s blistering fast pace even harder, we’ve made some changes to Diablo III’s character and inventory ‘management’ systems, so you’ll spend more time using new powers to slay your enemies and get loot. Rather than hoarding skill points and holding off on improving your abilities while you wait levels for an ideal build, Diablo III lets you “respec” your skills readily to experiment with interesting choices. You can also share items between all of your characters just by placing them in your stash, and you can identify unknown items and teleport back to town without needing to collect scrolls and tomes to do so.

COMBAT: FASTER, SMARTER, DEEPER
Combat in Diablo III follows the established model of clicking on your squealing, snarling enemies and watching the carnage – but it’s deeper and richer. Scads of defensive abilities for each class mean more tactical possibilities; cooldowns on potions guarantee that choosing your targets carefully and controlling the battlefield is as important as what you bring with you to a fight, and the presence of health globes ensures that mobility can mean the difference between life and death.

IMPROVED CONTROLS
Diablo III adds new control options to the classic Diablo II hotbar, including full customization of all shortcut and mouse buttons, to make using your skills during combat quicker than it’s ever been.

AUCTION HOUSE
Items are just as important to Diablo III as they’ve been throughout the series, so we’ve added an auction house for faster, easier trading without the potential for scamming and abuse that’s existed in the past. Items can now be bought and sold without needing to count on the trustworthiness of strangers to make sure your exchange goes through smoothly.

CLASSES AND SKILLS
There are five classes in Diablo III; four (the wizard, witch doctor, demon hunter and monk) are brand-new, and the returning barbarian has many, many new destructive tricks for tearing through foes. Each class has a unique resource system and appropriately different playstyle – no longer do all heroes share the single resource of mana.

MONSTERS AND ITEMS
Diablo III has more different, distinct monsters than Diablo I and II, and these monsters all bring their own special destructive abilities, some new and some familiar. The variety of Diablo III’s random items is similar to that of the other Diablo games (though we’ve included Legendary items), but we’ve added thousands of new combinations, many with unique abilities and previously unseen properties.

New weapon and equipment types, like the demon hunter’s one-handed crossbows and witch doctors’ mojos, also provide a great deal of class-specific flavour.

PVP ARENAS
In past Diablo games, fighting with other players acquired something of a storied history. In Diablo III, we wanted to create a more formalized play-space for heroes to test their mettle. Diablo III’s arenas are designed exclusively for PvP combat, and so they have different level layouts and rates of health spawning, along with matchmaking to ensure more evenly balanced battles.

EXPANDED DIFFICULTY
The advanced Nightmare and Hell difficulty modes in Diablo III add new progression options to the game not found on the Normal setting – increasingly powerful and intimidating armor sets, potent unique items, high-level runes and exclusive recipes and upgrades for artisans. Monsters grow increasingly more dangerous in subsequent difficulty levels.

In the brutal new Inferno mode, available only once the game’s been beaten on Hell difficulty, monsters outstrip players in level range. Inferno difficulty is an epic challenge intended for players who have reached the game’s level cap, and it offers epic rewards as well.

ACHIEVEMENTS
You’ll be able to show off your achievements with a battle standard, a banner visible to all players on Battle.net that will be a visual representation of your accomplishments in Diablo III. And you should expect even more ‘endgame’ additions to come – ones that’ll let you pursue unique goals and achieve more glory in the world of Sanctuary than ever before.

NEW EPIC STORYLINE
Diablo has always been a macabre take on a classic theme – the battle between good and evil – set in a world of fragile people who have somehow persevered through chaos and tragedy. In Diablo III, Blizzard are taking this story to new heights (and depths), and exploring parts of Sanctuary they have only hinted at in the past.

MINIMUM SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Windows

• Windows® XP/Vista/7 (latest service packs) with DX 9.0c
• Intel Pentium® D 2.8 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 4400+
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 7800 GT or ATI Radeon™ X1950 Pro or better
• 1 GB RAM (XP), 1.5 GB (Vista/7)
• 12 GB available HD space
• DVD-ROM (required for retail disc versions only)
• Broadband* Internet connection
• 1024×748 minimum resolution

Mac

• Mac® OS X 10.6.8, 10.7.x or newer
• Intel® Core 2 Duo
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600M GT or ATI Radeon™ HD 2600 or better
• 2 GB RAM
• 12 GB available HD space
• DVD-ROM (required for retail disc versions only)
• Broadband* Internet connection
• 1024×768 minimum resolution

* Be advised that some wireless connections do not meet the minimums required to be a true Broadband Internet connection. Wireless results may vary.

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS

Windows

• Windows® Vista/7 (latest service packs)
• Intel® Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHz or AMD Athlon™ 64 X2 5600+ 2.8 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® 260 or ATI Radeon™ HD 4870 or better

Mac

• Mac® OS X 10.7.x or newer
• Intel® Core 2 Duo
• 2 GB RAM
• NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M or ATI Radeon™ HD 4670 or better

You can pre-order Diablo 3 in the UK from Amazon.co.uk today via this link

We will be running through the Accessories available from official licensed partners SteelSeries tomorrow that are already available to order via Amazon.co.uk, so subscribe to the blog, like our Facebook page and Follow us on Twitter and come back for more Diablo 3 related news…

New Apple iPad 3 Announced at 7th March 2012 Launch Event….all the specs

So, with the months of rumours, leaked photos and specs….what’s the lowdown of the newly launched Apple iPad 3, and yes we’ll skip around the details of the seemingly overlooked Apple TV.

Costing the same as the iPad 2 with the 16GB Wi-Fi only model available first on 16th March in US and UK, those looking to snap up the third-generation iOS tablet available in black and white will need to part with £399 with those requiring 32GB or 64GB of internal storage having to spend slightly more at £479 or £559 respectively available via Amazon.co.uk through this link from 16th March 2012.

Firstly the specs:

• 3.1 Million Pixels
• A5 X Quad-core Graphics
• Retina Display
• iSight Camera – 5MP sensor, Backside Illumination, 5-element lens
• Apple software for image signal processing
• HD Video Recording
• Next Generation Wireless with 4G/LTE – Can also do dual carrier HSDPA which gives you up to 42 megabits per second and up to 73Mbps on LTE
• Voice Dictation – Supports English, French, German, and Japanese
• 10 Battery Life

A few shots of the iPad 3 from the launch and the finer details:

New Retina Display

A large, beautiful display. The Retina display on the new iPad features a 2048-by-1536 resolution, 44 percent greater color saturation, and an astounding 3.1 million pixels — in the same 9.7-inch space. That’s four times the number of pixels in iPad 2 and a million more than an HDTV. Those pixels are so close together, your eyes can’t discern individual ones at a normal viewing distance. When you can’t see the pixels, you see the whole picture. Or article. Or game.

A5X Chip

The A5X chip with quad-core graphics drives four times the pixels of iPad 2 yet it delivers the same smoothness and fluidity iPad is known for. Even with all that extra oomph, on the new iPad you still get up to 10 hours of power to read, watch, play, write, and create whatever you want, all you want.1

The Retina display on the new iPad wouldn’t be possible without the new and powerful A5X chip. It drives power to every one of the 3.1 million pixels in the display. And its quad-core graphics processing makes everything you do on iPad feel incredibly responsive. From the little things like swiping, scrolling, and pinching to the big things like editing photos in the new iPhoto, applying filters and transitions in iMovie, and, of course, playing games.

4G LTE Wireless Technology

The new iPad offers the most comprehensive support for networks around the world. It’s designed with cellular antennas that access a larger frequency spectrum. That means you can get online almost anywhere you are — whether you’re on AT&T or Verizon. You can even pop in a local SIM card to get a connection when you’re traveling.

The new iPad supports fast cellular networks the world over — up to 4G LTE.2 So you can browse the web, stream content, or download a movie at blazing-fast speeds. It also works on GSM/UMTS worldwide network technologies including HSPA+ and DC-HSDPA — the fastest 3G networks out there. You’ll see downlink speeds up to 42 Mbps with DC-HSDPA and up to 21.1 Mbps with HSPA+.3

Now for the first time, you can share the high-speed data connection on your iPad. If your carrier supports it, iPad can act as a personal hotspot for connecting up to five devices — such as a MacBook Air, an iPod touch, or another iPad — over Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, or USB.

iOS
iOS is the magic behind iPad. It lets you see and do everything using Multi-Touch. It includes all the powerful, innovative, and fun built-in apps you use every day, many times a day.

iCloud
iCloud stores your music, photos, apps, mail, contacts, calendars, documents, and more and wirelessly pushes them to all your devices.4 So if you buy a song, take a photo, or edit a calendar event on your iPad, iCloud makes sure it appears on your Mac, iPhone, and iPod touch, too.

Voice Dictation
Write an email. Send a text. Search the web. Or create a note. And do it all with only your voice. Instead of typing, tap the microphone icon on the keyboard. Then say what you want to say while your iPad listens. Tap Done and, just like that, your spoken words become written words. Dictation also works with third-party apps, so you can do things like update your Facebook status or share a thought on your Twitter feed.

iSight Camera

The new iPad features Apple’s 5-megapixel iSight camera. Designed with advanced optics, it lets you shoot gorgeous photos and 1080p HD video.

The 5-megapixel iSight camera features a backside illumination sensor that captures great-looking pictures whether by sunlight or candlelight. Autofocus, tap to focus, and tap to set exposure functions mean every photo you take instantly becomes a frameworthy gem. And with built-in face detection that automatically balances focus and exposure across up to 10 faces.

HD Video Recording
The iSight camera on the new iPad lets you capture all these unpredictable, beautiful, and hilarious moments. In 1080p HD, no less. And with automatic video stabilization, your recording is free of bumps and shakes.

Megapixels matter. But the quality of a photo is determined by other things, too — like the camera’s optics, image signal processor, and software. The iSight camera uses advanced optics to give you the best picture possible. With an ƒ/2.4 aperture and a five-element lens, it captures light efficiently to produce a sharper overall image. And the hybrid infrared filter — typically reserved for expensive SLR cameras — keeps out harmful IR light for more accurate, uniform colors.

Costing the same as the iPad 2 with the 16GB Wi-Fi only model available first on 16th March in US and UK, those looking to snap up the third-generation iOS tablet available in black and white will need to part with £399 with those requiring 32GB or 64GB of internal storage having to spend slightly more at £479 or £559 respectively available via Amazon.co.uk through this link from 16th March 2012.

Apple Announcement Details …

IDEAS4TECHNOLOGY Will be Tweeting live on today’s Apple announcement, expected to be on the iPad3 with an already rumoured release date of 16th March. Follow Ideas4Tech on Twitter and come back for full details following the announcement.

UPDATE: The full details are now available on our latest post here

The new Apple iPad will be available via Amazon.co.uk through this link from 16th March 2012.

International CES 2012 round-up: What happened in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas

Every brand on the planet that had something either wired or wireless to shout about was at CES 2012 in full force.  LG grabbed a huge amount of press and CNET’s Best of CES award with its 55-inch OLED TV, due its incredibly skinny screen size, reportedly even more so than any of its current phone range.   The Last Gadget Standing event saw the Lytro simple box-like camera grab the award with its revolutionary technology, where by camera captures total information about the photo so not only the user of the camera, but anyone else also can click anywhere on the photo and change the focal point.  In the gaming arena the Playstation Vita’s sleek design, touch screen controls and high spec graphics along with its rear touchpad made this future UK console release major talking point of CES.

The Ideas4Technology Radar from CES 2012

With our love of all things technology we couldn’t help but look beyond the headliners at the show to bring you some news of a release announced headset at the show from the leading gaming manufacture with their finger on the pulse, SteelSeries.

SteelSeries Flux Headset, compatible with PC, Mac and Mobile devices and features on-ear cushions that pump out impressive sound levele via its 40mm driver units. The SteelSeries Flux factors in convenience for the user by including 2 input jacks – one on each side, which allows for two user options: to choose which side the microphone cable can be plugged into, and the ability to “daisy chain” or plug in another headset to the Flux which allows for multiple users to listen to the same device.   Bruce Hawver, SteelSeries CEO said of the headset “We work with professional gamers that travel often to tournaments and events, but we also cater to users that want headset compatibility for more than just gaming, which is where the design of the Flux began.”

You can find SteelSeries products in the UK at Amazon.co.uk