Do you love Heroes of the Storm as much as we do? Well you’re in luck. In collaboration with Mionix and Blizzard, we’re giving away 50 keys for the Heroes of the Storm beta.

If you’re not familiar with the game, Blizzard describes it as “a raucous online team brawler starring your favorite Blizzard characters. Build and customize heroes from across every Blizzard universe to suit your play style. Team up with your friends and engage in fast-paced mayhem across varied battlegrounds that impact strategy and change the way you play the game.”

So if you’ve ever wanted to pit your favorite characters in the different Blizzard universes against each other, this sounds like the perfect game for you.

Currently Heroes of the Storm is in closed beta with a release expected later this year. So far over 9 million players have signed up for the closed beta.

Using the widget below you can enter to win one of 50 beta keys for the game.  For an extra chance at winning, visit www.mionix.net/HOTS. The contest closes on April 11 and the keys will be distributed then to the lucky winners via email. The contest is only open to those that reside in the EU, as the keys will not work outside of that geographical area.

Heroes of the Storm beta key giveaway

The post Win a Heroes of the Storm Beta Key from VR World and Mionix appeared first on VR World.

When we look at the world of covering technology today, we see that (unfortunately) most of the media and worse, paid up blogs and forum shilling tactics, are smothering the information which the public should receive.

It is hard to get information when technology sites have to live off selling ads in exchange for a set number of awards per year (in all of its five and a half years, Bright Side of News* received plenty of those offers from Far East), or even worse, unmarked advertorials.

We all live in a period of time when the amount of respect for a profession of journalism is at an all-time low. To make the matters worse, everyone can state even the craziest conspiracy theory and hope for a “repeated truth” syndrome to take place. Quite often, false news will get even the most brilliant engineers go on a self-destructive tangent.

When looking to invest in an organization, you’re often met with shady business practices. In media, this typically means journalists and bloggers (based in foreign offices) are doing visa runs because the parent company often doesn’t even legally exist in a territory from where the content is created. Then, an investor will face off difficulties with due diligence when the contracts signed with off-shore authors are illegal in the countries where the parent companies are.

As you can read, with this type of structure it is almost impossible to pass due diligence check from any serious investor. And from my stand point, there are only two options: cry over spilled milk, or put the money where the mouth is and create a working framework where people are respected from both sides of the fence. Products, technologies and maintaining the integrity of the said individuals is of paramount importance.

Our New Framework

Starting today, we are executing a roadmap which will see us split into three directions. Bright Side of News*, which 1.67 million of you came to trust, is going to evolve to cover the financial aspect of the industry.

What does a technology or a product mean for you? Should you invest in companies that we report on – that advice is not something we can legally do – we can give you our honest opinion, and we will not hold stock in companies we report about. Especially not when it comes to shorting the stock to make a quick buck (something which AMD is especially fragile from, and Intel barely made an escape from that zone). For any potential investor looking to come to technology, we would advise you to read The Wolf of Wall Street first amongst others.

We are expanding our focus from United States to cover what is really going on in countries which you read on the sidelines, but no one actually goes there and reports how it will affect you. We live in a global economy and you deserve coverage from everywhere.

West (Coast) Meets (Far) East

As of this moment, we are setting up offices throughout the Asia-Pacific (including Singapore, Hong Kong, Taipei, Taiwan and Shenzhen). Coming on board to report from Taipei will be Sam Reynolds as well as Chris Low and Han-Wei Tsai for BSN*’s new Chinese section.  A roster of reputable technology journalists with bylines you will recognize will be complimenting their coverage from around the world.

Now is a time of transition, so Bright Side of News* will be a temporary home for two teams of journalists as we put the finishing touches on a new publication. As you might notice, content will be temporarily in both English and Chinese for the next couple of weeks.

Next, we are launching several new business units, including Special Industry Groups (SIGs), which will work hard with the key industry players to bring new technology to the market in the most compatible way. In order to stay true to our path of independence and unbiased views, any technology we deliver on the market will not be directly reviewed by us (as an actual product we will write about what makes the technology tick).

Instead, we will launch a program that puts the technology in the hands of people. We want to hear what you think about the products and technologies that are coming to market.

Over the past two years, BSN* hosted several dozen giveaways where we tried to remove the regional locks which were the bane of most readers, and I cannot express my gratitude to over 2000 people that wrote to us about having a fair approach and often paying hundreds of dollars in shipping cost to the winner. Come to that, I believe the craziest package we ever sent was to a Swedish doctor working in Botswana. How in the world he ran a 3D Mark Vantage benchmark of a diesel generator, we’ll leave that one for you.

Thus, let’s move on together. I wish to thank you for five and a half years of supporting our efforts to remain independent and unbiased, and let’s jointly work on many more years to come.

Thank You,

Theo Valich
Co-Founder and Publisher, Bright Side of News*

The post Editorial: New Era Ahead appeared first on VR World.

As a continuation of our 5th anniversary celebrations this year and our partnerships with various companies in our industry, we are introducing a giveaway to our readers that tops all of our others. We are giving away two HTC One M8 smartphones thanks to Qualcomm’s Snapdragon, which this phone currently uses as its applications processor in the Snapdragon 801. If you’d like to learn more about the Snapdragon 801’s performance or the HTC One M8 that we’ve reviewed we recommend you check out our review.

The HTC One M8

In order to participate in this review, you must be a legal resident of the United States and Washington D.C. and complete one simple task. That task is to leave a comment on our review of the HTC One M8 telling us why you like the HTC One M8 so much and what phone you currently have. Since this promotion is limited to the United States only, we are providing two HTC One M8s to our readers, with the first person getting priority of which HTC One M8 they will chose. We have done this because unfortunately not all people are on the same carriers and not all versions of the HTC One M8 will work on the same network. As such, we are trying to cover as many people as possible and will be giving away one HTC One M8 for Verizon and an unlocked one which will work on AT&T and T-Mobile.

The contest will begin at 12:00 pm PST on July 9th and run until July 23rd at 11:59 pm. Contest winners will be posted within 24 hours and they must claim their prize within 48 hours of the winner being posted. We wish all of you the best of luck in our contest and hopefully you will be enjoying a new HTC One M8 fairly shortly.

The post HTC One M8 BSN* Snapdragon Giveaway appeared first on VR World.

As we had promised, we would be giving away two Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1″ tablets thanks to ARM helping us celebrate our 5 year anniversary. We asked you guys to tell us what ARM devices you guys had and to tell us when you would do with your tablet if you won one. Some of you followed directions, some of you didn’t, but what was the most interesting part was that some of you learned that you had ARM-powered devices and didn’t even know it. In fact, ARM devices are not just limited to most mobile (smart and dumb) phones, but also routers and a whole host of other electronics including many mobile gaming consoles. ARM actually has a website that talks about the fact that ARM has shipped over 50 billion chips and are now talking about where the next 50 billion are likely to come from.

Getting back to our winners, we selected our winners among over 150 entries, with some of you really giving us some great answers. Our winners today for this contest are Paz and David Z, both of whom need to contact us directly at giveaways at brightsideofnews.com and we will confirm your identity within 24 hours.

We wanted to thank you all so much for participating in our 5th anniversary giveaway with ARM and know that this isn’t going to be the last of our giveaways as we still have more coming from other partners of ours. The next one should be even more impressive than this one was. So, stay tuned!

The post ARM Giveaway Winners Announced! appeared first on VR World.

We’ve partnered with ARM and their 50 Billion Chips initiative to give away two Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1″ tablets! All you have to do is leave a comment here telling us what ARM-based devices you own and how having one of these awesome Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1″ will improve your daily life. We love to hear from you guys and even more importantly, we love giving stuff away. These are both 16 GB Wi-Fi tablets with stunning WQXGA (2560×1440) resolution displays and even more importantly, ARM SoCs. We’ve had a great relationship with ARM, including the announcement of new products from their server partners with HP’s Moonshot.

Since we are running this giveaway, we are opening it to all of our readers around the world, so don’t be ashamed to share it with your friends and family. Don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter or Google Plus. And since ARM is involved, don’t forget to follow them on  Twitter too.

Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 10.1″ Tablets

Disclaimer: This contest is global and must fulfill all parameters stated above in order to qualify. This contest is done in good faith and neither Bright Side Network, Inc. nor ARM or any sponsors are responsible for any liabilities associated with this giveaway. All contestants must leave their comments on the stipulated page before any eligibility is considered. This contest will run from 6 pm Pacific on May 8th, 2014 until 11:59 pm Pacific May 16th. The winner must contact BSN* via email at giveaways at brightsideofnews.com to verify your identity and claim your prize within 48 hours of the winner being posted on the site. The winner will be posted within 24 hours of the contest ending at 11:59 pm on May 16th, 2014.

The post ARM and BSN Partner for 5th Anniversary Giveaway! appeared first on VR World.

As promised, we’ve selected the winners for our Nvidia 5th Anniversary Giveaway. This giveaway was the second massive giveaway of our multi-week-long giveaway to commemorate our 5th anniversary as a site. It followed our Thermaltake and Titanfall giveaways. We had over 876 entries in the giveaway and we’ve selected the winners based on their comments, tweets, FB shares and Google+ +1’s. Some contestants did not follow the rules and attempted to leave multiple comments under the same user name or under different user names using different IP addresses. So, please, do not try to cheat the system. You end up cheating yourself out of a prize. In this case, one of you lost the chance to win an Nvidia SHIELD, so next time follow the rules and leave a comment, not comments. We’re happy to run these giveaways for our readers, but we also want to ensure that those winners are ones that have won the prize fair and square.

The winners of the contest are as follows:

GTX Titan:
Jake P

Nvidia SHIELD:
Jason Li

Nvidia Tegra Note 7 with Smartcover:
David (no last name, from the UK)
Mack Brown

Congratulations to the winners and we hope that you guys remember to claim your prizes within 24 hours at our giveaways at brightsideofnews dot com email address. Thank you all for participating and don’t forget that we’re going to have a TON more giveaways these coming weeks and that we’re only about half way through with our pile of hardware to give away…

Once again, thank you all for participating and good luck in our other giveaways!

The post BSN 5th Anniversary Nvidia Giveaway Winners Selected! appeared first on VR World.

So, you guys deserved it and I’m sure that many of you asked for it. So, we’re bringing it to our global audience. Now, since we have a global audience we wanted to make sure that this giveaway was available to all of our readers across the world. However, we cannot guarantee that Origin’s services will work in all countries since Origin is required in order to be able to run Titanfall. If you can install and run Origin in your country, you should be fine.

Now, getting to the requirements for the contest and how to enter. All you have to do is make sure that you leave a comment here about what element of Titanfall excites you the most and what makes it different from any other FPS game you’ve played before. Additional entries will be granted to those that like Bright Side of News* on Facebook and Titanfall on Facebook. As well as share the post on their Facebook page, publicly since that’s the only way we can track them. You can also +1 us on Google+ and follow us on Twitter and Retweet this contest announcement. We will be giving away 5 keys, for PC via Origin, one for each year that we’ve been around for.

In the end, we just want to give you all a chance to play Titanfall, but at the same time get an idea of why you want to play it so badly. For those of you that don’t know what Titanfall is, here’s a short and sweet little trailer.

Disclaimer: This contest is open only to people that fulfill all parameters stated above in order to qualify. This contest is done in good faith and neither Bright Side Network, Inc. nor EA or any sponsors are responsible for any liabilities associated with this giveaway. All contestants must leave their comments on the stipulated page before any eligibility is considered. This contest will run from 12:00 pm Pacific on March 28th, 2014 until 11:59 pm Pacific April 4th. The winner must contact BSN* via email at giveaways at brightsideofnews.com to verify your identity and claim your prize within 24 hours of the winner being posted on the site. The winner will be posted within 24 hours of the contest ending at 11:59 pm on April 4th, 2014.

The post BSN* and EA Partner for 5th Anniversary BSN* Titanfall Giveaway! appeared first on VR World.