Screenshots from eBay-bought Windows Phone hint at notification center, interface tweaks Mobile

You know how it goes, you buy a phone on eBay, and it comes with a developer / pre-release version of a major mobile OS. Well, if these images are to be believed, that's at least what happened to one bargain-huntingWindows Phone fan. The screenshots -- said to be taken from a Nokia 920 -- show Windows Phone 8, but with a few new tweaks and features. Most notable, will likely be the notifications, but other tidbits include App list ordering based on frequency of use, week view in the calendar and the option to kill apps from the multitask screen. The phone reports a build number of: 12084.WPMAIN(wpbldlab).20130509-1407 leading some to infer that this version could have been compiled sometime in May. A tease of something to come? As always, hard to tell, but expect the price of second-hand 920s to bump up a little, for the next few weeks at least.

Skylanders Swap Force launches October 13th, headed next-gen as well HD

The Skylanders aren't just evolving into combinable characters in their next entry, they're also heading to Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Skylanders Swap Force was given an October 13th release date today, alongside news of its two new platforms (in addition to being on basically every other video game platform in existence).

Like previous entries in the Skylanders series, Swap Force employs a wired power pad where physical Skylanders toys (Swap Force versions seen above), power-ups, and new levels can be placed and then played in-game. This October's entry allows for toys from both the original Skylanders game and Giants to work with it; that also applies to PS4 and Xbox One versions. As for the launch date of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions ... well, that's a question of when Microsoft and Sony launch their consoles. The game will otherwise launch on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Nintendo 3DS, Wii and Wii U on October 13th.

Tianhe-2 may easily crush supercomputer speed record at 30.7 petaflops

Many suspect that China's Tianhe-2 could win the supercomputer speed wars, but there haven't been real numbers to back up that hunch. We now have some of those figures courtesy of Top 500's Jack Dongarra, and Tianhe-2 could well be the new leader -- by a gigantic margin. The cluster of Ivy Bridge and Xeon Phi chips has benchmarked at 30.65 petaflops when using 90 percent of its nodes, giving it a 74 percent edge (!) over the 17.6-petaflop Titan. There's no guarantee that Tianhe-2 will hold the crown when the official Top 500 rankings appear on June 17th, but we don't see any upstart rivals on the horizon. It could be lonely at the top... for a while.

Getting the most from your 336x280 ad unit

To ensure you are always getting the best results from your ad units, we recently introduced some updates to our ad serving process enabling our larger ad units to serve similar-sized display ads. We’ve already updated this for our 300x600 and 970x90 ad units and now we’ve extended this flexibility to our 336x280 ad unit, allowing it to serve a 300x250 ad when doing so will maximize the performance of that ad unit for the publisher.

With this change you may now occasionally see a 300x250 ad served in your 336x280 ad unit when that unit is opted in to showing image ads. 300x250 and 336x280 image ads will both compete for your 336x280 ad unit with the most competitive ad served thus maximizing the earnings on your ad unit. When a 300x250 image is served it will be centered in the 336x280 ad unit as illustrated below.

300x250 display ad served within a 336x280 ad unit

Aside from ensuring that you’re getting the most from your ad units, this change gives advertisers the opportunity to expand their reach with their existing ad creatives. To maximise your earnings potential with this change, don’t forget to enable both text and image ads for your ad units. You can opt out of having similar-sized display ads served in your ad units but remember this may impact your earnings. When you opt out, this applies on an account level and not just on an individual ad unit. To opt out, go to the Allow & block ads tab in your account, click the Ad serving tab in the top horizontal bar and select the block option under the “Similar Sized Display Ads” header. Tell us what you think about these new changes on our AdSense +page.

Posted by Amit Mhatre - AdSense Software Engineer