Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) today announced that via an update to Google Hangouts users will be able to make free phone calls to eachother as well as to numbers within the US and Canada.

The search giant is also introducing “affordable” calling rates abroad, which should equate to a few cents a minute. This is a clear extension of the company’s Voice service, which has been rumored to be killed off but really only appears to become integrated into Hangouts. This move makes sense as Google has been quietly trying to integrate all forms of communication, Voice, Video and Chat under one app. Right now, hangouts combines chat (once Google Chat) with video but with this update it it adds voice, simply making Google Hangouts more useful and versatile.

Google Hangouts

This is a clear attempt by Google to also compete with some of the already existing voice, chat and video services that exist as third party solutions. However, those services do not have free calling outside of the application and don’t come as the default messaging app on Android. The one thing to also consider is that even though Hangouts is a great app, it still doesn’t come default on a lot of devices due to manufacturer or carrier customizations. This is changing with the newer crop of smartphones, but that will take some time to really take hold on the whole Android install base. Some carriers, like AT&T (NYSE: T) and Verizon (NYSE: VZ) push their own cloud messaging services which make Hangouts a secondary messaging service to the regular consumer that doesn’t know the power of Google Hangouts.

Google expects to push out the update to Android users over the coming days and a simple update of Google Hangouts will enable free calling via Hangouts. If you have the iOS or web app, Hangouts will already have this functionality the next time you use it. The one thing Google failed to mention, though, is that they didn’t say anything about the Hangouts desktop app or when that functionality will come to those users.

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Every year Comic-Con rolls around and every year they have a preview night where you can check out some of the booths that are already setup and even some of the off-site stuff that’s already set up. This year, it seemed like almost all of the booths onsite (in the conference hall) were pretty much up and running (and selling stuff or signing stuff). However, a lot of the off-site things were not quite ready yet and were in the process of being brought up. As such, this gallery won’t be as complete as some of our later ones, but we wanted to give you a short feel of what Comic-Con Preview Night is like.

Preview Night Starts at 6PM and technically runs until 10pm, even though I believe the conference floor closes at 9pm. There are a lot of screenings during Preview Night and most people that get access to Preview Night are people that bought 4 day passes with Preview Night. In fact, there were already people in line for Hall H (where all the big panels and sneak previews happen) for Thursday’s Hall H panels. Those panels are, Dreamworks, Paramount Pictures, The Giver, Batman 66 and Entertainment Weekly. I’m personally interested in Hall H on Saturday but will see what will happen that day.

The other thing about Preview Night is that it is supposed to be less crowded, but in recent years it feels not much less crowded than going on a regular day, which defeats the purpose of Preview Night. This year is a bit better than last year, which may be attributed to the fact that many booths did not allow people with professional badges buy anything. They will be able to tomorrow, but today was explicitly no professional badge sales, which may have been the reason for lower preview night floor attendance.

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SteelSeries just announced the launch of their Rival: Dota 2 Edition Gaming Mouse, along with an exclusive in-game item, Hell’s Glare for Doom, just in time for the final bracket of The International 4 (the premier DOTA 2 tournament).

The Dota 2 Edition was inspired by the award-winning Rival Optical Mouse launched in Q4 2013. It features a unique color scheme, customizable illumination up to 16.8 million color options, and a deep arsenal of high-performance hardware that was developed with professional players from Na’Vi, iG, and Team Fnatic.

The SteelSeries Rival Dota 2 Edition Gaming Mouse will be available for pre-order after the conclusion of The International 4 Dota 2 Tournament for $69.99 / €69.99 MSRP.

More information about the mouse can be found here.

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The DOTA 2 International competition has already begun in the regional competitions and the final will be in July from the 18th and 21st in Seattle’s KeyArena. However, in order to fund the competition, Valve has decided to encourage the community to purchase compendiums for $9.99 which will allow them to increase the prize pool by $2.50. The International Compendium is a digital booklet that allows gamers to interact with the DOTA 2 tournament. DOTA 2 players will also earn more rewards as they are able to level up their Compendium by watching games, collecting player cards and making tournament predictions

The awesome thing about Valve’s model is that with the Compendium, they are encouraging DOTA 2 players to buy the Compendium because of the vast amount of additional rewards that they are enabling with each mark they hit trying to raise the prize value of the International competition going down in July. The stretch goals started at $1.8 million and has reached $5 million, meaning that at least a million gamers (out of 8 million active gamers) have bought the DOTA 2 International Compendium. So far, gamers have gained 11 new bonus items in addition to what the Compendium had originally offered and there are only two more stretch goals left, at which point they will have raised $6 million for the DOTA 2 Internationl competition.

By buying this Compendium and encouraging gamers to participate more with the Compendium Valve may actually be able to show the world how powerful their community (and game) really can be. And they may be able to get 1 million concurrent viewers to watch a single event which may show the world how serious eSports has gotten, if League of Legends hasn’t already done that with their competitions. However, based on the current $5 million purse, there is already going to be a LOT of attention bring drawn towards DOTA 2. After all, how many people are going to want to play a technically free game where you can compete for a share of a $5 million prize.

Keep in mind that last year the prize pool for the 2013 DOTA 2 International competition was $2,874,380, which is already quite sizable. But this year the DOTA 2 community have outdone themselves and are on pace to double it this year.

Last year’s split went like this according to PC Gamer:

1st – $1,363,988
2nd – $600,155
3rd – $272,798
4th – $190,958
5th – $109,119
6th – $109,119
7th – $40,920
8th – $40,920

Based on these numbers, and the fact that the current prize pool is nearly double the previous one from last year we can expect that 1st place will likely walk away with something like $2.5 million while second will walk away with something around $1.2 million and 3rd place with around $500,000. This is going to be a pretty big competition with incredibly high stakes and it will be very interesting to see how much attention it gets outside of the core DOTA 2 community, which currently is about 8 million strong.

The post DOTA 2 International Final Pool Hits $5 Milllion appeared first on VR World.

The DOTA 2 International competition has already begun in the regional competitions and the final will be in July from the 18th and 21st in Seattle’s KeyArena. However, in order to fund the competition, Valve has decided to encourage the community to purchase compendiums for $9.99 which will allow them to increase the prize pool by $2.50. The International Compendium is a digital booklet that allows gamers to interact with the DOTA 2 tournament. DOTA 2 players will also earn more rewards as they are able to level up their Compendium by watching games, collecting player cards and making tournament predictions

The awesome thing about Valve’s model is that with the Compendium, they are encouraging DOTA 2 players to buy the Compendium because of the vast amount of additional rewards that they are enabling with each mark they hit trying to raise the prize value of the International competition going down in July. The stretch goals started at $1.8 million and has reached $5 million, meaning that at least a million gamers (out of 8 million active gamers) have bought the DOTA 2 International Compendium. So far, gamers have gained 11 new bonus items in addition to what the Compendium had originally offered and there are only two more stretch goals left, at which point they will have raised $6 million for the DOTA 2 Internationl competition.

By buying this Compendium and encouraging gamers to participate more with the Compendium Valve may actually be able to show the world how powerful their community (and game) really can be. And they may be able to get 1 million concurrent viewers to watch a single event which may show the world how serious eSports has gotten, if League of Legends hasn’t already done that with their competitions. However, based on the current $5 million purse, there is already going to be a LOT of attention bring drawn towards DOTA 2. After all, how many people are going to want to play a technically free game where you can compete for a share of a $5 million prize.

Keep in mind that last year the prize pool for the 2013 DOTA 2 International competition was $2,874,380, which is already quite sizable. But this year the DOTA 2 community have outdone themselves and are on pace to double it this year.

Last year’s split went like this according to PC Gamer:

1st – $1,363,988
2nd – $600,155
3rd – $272,798
4th – $190,958
5th – $109,119
6th – $109,119
7th – $40,920
8th – $40,920

Based on these numbers, and the fact that the current prize pool is nearly double the previous one from last year we can expect that 1st place will likely walk away with something like $2.5 million while second will walk away with something around $1.2 million and 3rd place with around $500,000. This is going to be a pretty big competition with incredibly high stakes and it will be very interesting to see how much attention it gets outside of the core DOTA 2 community, which currently is about 8 million strong.

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