August 2007

“Well, for years after that I was a true diehard AMD fan. That is, until the tides recently turned and the tsunami of C2D arrived on the shores. Recently, Intel has been dominating the processor scene with its new line of Core 2 Duo's. Well, once again Intel has stepped up to the plate by literally stepping up the FSB from 1066 to 1333. This new line of CPU's have a model of Exx50 which represents the 1333FSB. This bump on the CPU will now match the Front Side Bus of some newer motherboards. The new processor under the microscope is the new Intel Core 2 Duo E6850, which is 3.0GHz, has 4mb of cache, and is using the 1333MHz system bus. With all these numbers floating around in my head, I just can’t wait to test the processor.”

While AMD keeps postponing the launch of their quad-core processors to the end of this year – beginning of next, Intel Company is offering very affordable quad-core CPUs from Core 2 Quad family. However, can Core 2 Quad processors be regarded as a worthy alternative to popular dual-core solutions?

SAN FRANCISCO - Internet search leader Google Inc. on Friday began hosting material produced by The Associated Press and three other news services on its own Web site instead of only sending readers to other destinations.

The change affects hundreds of stories and photographs distributed each day by the AP, Agence France-Presse, The Press Association in the United Kingdom and The Canadian Press. It could diminish Internet traffic to newspaper and broadcast companies' Web sites where those stories and photos are also found — a development that could reduce those companies' revenue from online advertising.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - NBC Universal has decided not to renew its contract to sell television shows on iTunes, becoming the second major media company to challenge Apple Inc's dominance in digital entertainment.

Apple said on Friday that NBC had demanded to more than double the wholesale rate for each show, which Apple said would have forced its iTunes online store to raise what it charged consumers to $4.99 per TV show episode from $1.99.

"We are disappointed to see NBC leave iTunes because we would not agree to their dramatic price increase," Eddy Cue, Apple's vice president of iTunes, said in a statement.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - The summer dry spell for video games came to an end last week with the arrival of "BioShock," the creepy underwater shooter that has won rave reviews and flown off store shelves. The main bulk of important games this year won't come out until November, but the next month or two will see the release of quite a few other hot games.

These aren't necessarily "system sellers" -- games that are so good that consumers will buy a particular video game console just to play them -- but give potential customers a few more reasons to eventually take the plunge.

NEW YORK - What began as a ninth-grade prank, a way to trick already-suspicious friends who had fallen for his earlier practical jokes, has earned Rich Skrenta notoriety as the first person ever to let loose a personal computer virus.

Although over the next 25 years, Skrenta started the online news business Topix, helped launch a collaborative Web directory now owned by Time Warner Inc.'s Netscape and wrote countless other computer programs, he is still remembered most for unleashing the "Elk Cloner" virus on the world.

"It was some dumb little practical joke," Skrenta, now 40, said in an interview. "I guess if you had to pick between being known for this and not being known for anything, I'd rather be known for this. But it's an odd placeholder for (all that) I've done."

Sunnyvale, CA—August 30, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, Inc. a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, today announced the OCZ Vanquisher CPU cooler, a much-anticipated expansion of their cooling product line. Using a highly efficient and compact design, the Vanquisher is an enthusiast-grade thermal solution for the latest high performance processors. Catering to the needs of gamers and enthusiasts, the Vanquisher will become an integral addition to any extreme-performance gaming rig.

The OCZ Vanquisher aggressively cools your CPU thanks to a pure copper base plate and three copper heat pipes that rapidly transfer heat away from the processor up to the dense, aluminum fin array where the thermal load is quickly dissipated by the included 92mm fan. The efficient heatpipe design moves so much heat that the fin array is able to transfer up to 200 Watts. The Vanquisher also utilizes a unique low speed fan mounted with rubber connectors to effectively decrease vibration and noise, ensuring minimal distractions at your workstation.

“The performance of OCZ Vanquisher is not compromised due to its compact size,” states Jacky Huang, VP of Product Management, OCZ Technology. “Instead, it reduces the CPU temperature more effectively than many larger coolers in the market. As a bonus, its compact form factor allows it to fit in even most crowded environments and cases.”

Way back in Web One Point Oh, my friend and fellow Internet habitué Ree Hines and I had this game we used to play. It was called “Find the Grossest Internet Image Ever and Trick You into Looking at It.” As even the most casual Web surfing enthusiast can imagine, the possibilities were endless.

We grew more net savvy, and strategy evolved beyond finding colorful sea anemone entrails, LASIK surgery documentation or a comparatively unusual fetish site. The game was now about luring one’s increasingly-paranoid opponent into a false sense of security, either by weeks of e-mail silence, labeling a particularly odious image with an irresistible slug (like “fuzzy_bunny”) or forwarding proxy urls that gave no hint of the carnage about to open in one’s browser.

PASADENA, Calif. - Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists and engineers sued NASA and the California Institute of Technology on Thursday, challenging extensive new background checks that the space exploration center and other federal agencies began requiring in the wake of the Sept. 11 terror attacks.

NASA calls on employees to permit investigators to delve into medical, financial and past employment records, and to question friends and acquaintances about everything from their finances to sex lives, according to the suit. The requirements apply to everyone from janitors to visiting professors.

SEATTLE - Ending court oversight of Microsoft's business practices in November would not allow enough time to consider the antitrust implications of the new Windows Vista operating system, a group of states said in a filing Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly, who oversees Microsoft Corp.'s adherence to the terms of a 2002 antitrust settlement, asked the software maker, the Justice Department and a group of states led by California submit reports by Thursday on the effectiveness of the consent decree.

The devices will support an open platform -- which means they will play a variety of music formats such as MP3 and Microsoft Corp's (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) WMA, providing more choices for downloading and managing music and video collections online.

Sony added that it would pull the plug on its Connect Music Services, which distributes music in Sony's proprietary ATRAC audio format in North America and Europe. Specific timing will vary, but the move will not occur before March 2008.

Sony said the models' battery life allows up to eight hours of video playback for the NWZ-A810 series, which will sell for between $140 and $230. Battery life will be more than nine hours for the NWZ-S610 series, with prices ranging from $120 to $210.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Imagine cramming 30,000 full-length movies into a gadget the size of an iPod.

Scientists at IBM said on Thursday they had moved closer to such a feat by learning how to steer single atoms in a way that could create building blocks for ultra-tiny storage devices.

Top 5 worst game movies

We love movies almost as much as we love video games. But we don’t love it when a filmmaker butchers one of our favorite titles in their quest to bring the game to the big screen. Unfortunately, we’ve seen that happen way too often.

Here’s our list of the Top 5 worst game-based movies. Check out the list then tell us which film you hate the most – and what truly terrible movies we’ve missed.

BERLIN - LG Electronics announced its first premium camera mobile phone on Thursday and an executive told Reuters the company aimed for 10-15 percent of this market segment within about a year.

The "Viewty" will go on sale in Europe in mid-October, priced somewhere between its hit "Shine" phone, which sells for about 400 euros ($547), and its LG Prada fashion phone, which sells for about 600 euros ($820), Chang Ma told Reuters.

Ma, who is in charge of design strategy at LG's mobile communications division, said the phone was designed for ease of sending, sharing and viewing pictures and video.

LOS ANGELES - 20th Century Fox has struck a deal with Microsoft Corp. to make the first two seasons of the animated series "Family Guy" available for downloads on the Xbox Live service beginning Monday.

"Family Guy" represents the first Fox product to make it onto Xbox, which lacks an overall deal with the News Corp.-owned studio. In the battle of the electronic sell-through outlets, score one for Xbox over main rival iTunes, which hasn't yet landed rights to "Family."

Nvidia's G92 mid-range graphics chip is provisionally set to launch on November 12 this year, while the launch date of the entry-level G98 still remains unknown, according to sources at graphics card makers.

Nvidia plans to replace the GeForce 8800GTS series with the G92, while the G98 will replace entry-level products in the GeForce 8 series, noted the sources.

The G92 will support PCI Express 2.0, HDMI, PureVideo Gen 3 and Display Port, while the chip will adopt a 65nm process. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) will manufacture the chips.

Despite the new chip designs, G92 and G98 can only be considered an update of the GeForce 8 series since they will not include any major changes, the sources explained.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. said on Tuesday it plans to release the first major update to its Windows Vista operating system early next year.

Many of Microsoft's large corporate customers wait for the release of the first "service pack" -- a software package of fixes, updates and improvements -- before implementing a new Windows operating system.

Corporate customers often hold back on adopting new software to allow Microsoft time to work out the kinks experienced by regular consumers who often buy a new computer with the latest operating system already preloaded.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile, Research) shares rose more than 4.5 percent on Wednesday, fueled by excitement over the pending launch of new iPod digital music players, which could entice current users to buy upgraded models.

The stock climbed $5.74 to $132.56 in early trading on the Nasdaq, after Apple distributed invitations to a September 5 event in San Francisco. Goldman Sachs said in a note to clients that the date would bring "the almost certain launch of a new family of iPods."

"The product announcement is likely to include a full line-up of revamped iPods with significantly greater functionality at current price points, including the much-anticipated full-screen video iPod,"

TOKYO - Japan plans to start research on new networking technology that could one day replace the Internet amid its growing quality and security problems, according to the nation's communications ministry. U.S. and European researchers already have started similar efforts to rebuild the underlying architecture of the Internet.

Yoshihiro Onishi, assistant director at the Japanese communications ministry, said Japan must follow suit to stay competitive. Post-Internet network technology is expected to become imperative by 2020, he said.

"The Internet is reaching its limit," he said. "We feel this research for the technology is definitely needed."

San Jose, California - August 28, 2007 -- Super Talent Technology, a leading manufacturer of DRAM memory modules and flash storage solutions, today launched a new line of VIDEGO personal digital media players.
These new players support MP3/WMA music playback, as well as FM stereo and voice/FM recording. They are packed with audio features including FM presets, various repeat modes and equalizer settings. But VIDEGO players are much more than just music players. These new VIDEGO players are designed for video on the go, sporting full color 2.4-inch or 2.8-inch screens to play AVI and other video files. They also support photo viewing and e-books, and come with up to 4GB of built-in flash memory.
The flagship 2.8-inch model, VIDEGO 28, includes intuitive touch-screen menus for quick and easy navigation. VIDEGO 24T offers a 2.4-inch display with a sensitive touch-panel menu.

Since the introduction of the COSMOS PC Chassis from Cooler Master, people have begun to experience the refinement and performance of a truly revolutionary PC case. To celebrate its release, Cooler Master is pleased to open the MyCOSMOS Contest to Cooler Master fans worldwide. From September 3rd to 28th, COSMOS owners around the world can enter the MyCOSMOS contest simply by creating a written or video review of their COSMOS experiences and filing in the entry from on the MyCOSMOS contest site. Every Friday, Cooler Master will be giving a way a veritable boatload of fantastic prizes, including CPU coolers, VGA coolers, power supplies, and more!

•3 x Real Power Pro 1250W PSUs
•3 x Hydra 8800 VGA Coolers
•3 x Glacier 600 VGA Coolers
•7 x Real Power Pro 750W PSUs
•8 x Hyper 212 CPU Coolers
•8 x CM SPHERE CPU Coolers
•8 x PWM Fan Hub Sets

Over $4000 in prizes in total are up for grabs! Each week, the contestant with the best and most creative reviews will win some high-performance Cooler Master gear. Not interested in writing or making a video? No problem. Prizes will also be given out for the most active participant in any given week. What’s more, each week, six users who have participated in the contest, either by creating a COSMOS review or commenting on one, will be entered into a lucky draw.

BOSTON (Reuters) - Software included with high-end memory sticks sold by Sony Corp can make personal computers vulnerable to attack by computer hackers, according to researchers with two Internet security firms.

Sony's MicroVault USB memory stick and fingerprint reader includes software that creates a hidden directory on the computer's hard drive, researchers with Finnish security software maker F-Secure Corp reported on the company's blog on Monday.

Such software that hides itself, which is known as a root kit, leaves room for hackers to secretly infect personal computers, they said.

AMD will release its RD790 chipset by the end of September, with Asustek Computer and Gigabyte Technology likely to be the first to launch motherboards supporting the new chipset, according to industry sources. The high-end RD790 has motherboard makers eagerly awaiting its launch, and they have listed the new chipset as one of their major product focuses for the fourth quarter, the sources added.

Asustek and Gigabyte have been taking the lead in the race to the launch the first RD790 motherboards, having already delivered design verification test (DVT) samples to AMD's Taipei validation lab, the sources revealed.

If everything goes smoothly, Asustek and Gigabyte will be able to start volume production of RD790 motherboards in early September, while competitors may not be able to launch motherboards supporting the new AMD chipset until mid October, the sources noted.

On Tuesday, EarthLink announced that it would shed 900 employees. The reason was simple, said Rolla Huff, CEO of the company. EarthLink, which has had four solid quarters of losses and a sinking stock price, needs to return value to its shareholders. And this means eliminating jobs that don't help the company add subscribers or increase revenue.

EarthLink's traditional dial-up Internet access business, which has seen hefty declines in growth over the past few years, will likely see major cuts, especially in marketing.

LOS ANGELES - Taiwan-based Acer Inc. will acquire Gateway Inc. for $710 million in a deal designed to give the long-struggling U.S. computer maker the size it needs to compete against larger players, the companies announced Monday.

The deal will push the combined company past China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. to become the world’s third-largest vendor of personal computers, behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc.

With the acquisition, Acer will absorb a company that made a splash when it was founded in 1985 in an Iowa farmhouse.

TAIPEI, Taiwan - Asustek Computer, a leading Taiwanese computer maker, will launch its much awaited low-price computer next month, becoming one of the first companies marketing an ultra-mobile laptop for the developing world. Developed with Intel Corp., the Asustek laptop with a 7-inch screen will also come in a more sophisticated version that will target the developed world, said company Chairman Jonney Shih.

"It will be a laptop that's easy to learn, easy to play and easy to work with ... one targeting both the emerging and mature markets," Shih said in an interview.

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Video-sharing Web site YouTube has met with harsh criticism in Germany for hosting clips that incite racial hatred, according to a news report due to be broadcast on German public TV late on Monday.

The videos hosted on YouTube include clips of a 1940 anti-Semitic propaganda film "Jud Suess" and two music videos of outlawed German far-right rock band Landser, which show footage from World War II depicting Nazi military operations.

“ASUS has been one of the leading manufacturers of motherboards for a number of years, and is the preferred board of the VH staff. The motherboard under the scope this time around is the P5N32-E SLI Plus, which uses the 650i chipset - a lesser version of the 680i which means a lower retail price. Although this is a newer motherboard using a less powerful chipset, they did make some changes to it and got dual x16 PCI-E SLI support. Another cool feature is the Stack Cool design which helps pull heat away from the components around the CPU. Another heat reducing feature are the heatpipes that cover each of the chipset chips separately. With so many features let’s get on with the review and see how things work out.”

SAN FRANCISCO - Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news)/span>. will introduce new features Monday for its popular Web-based e-mail program, including software that allows computer users to type text messages on a keyboard and send them directly to someone's cell phone.

The enhancements make it easier to send e-mail, instant messages or text messages from a single Web site — no need to launch or toggle between separate applications or devices. The features will be available to users in the United States, Canada, India and the Philippines.

The most obvious beneficiaries will be parents, who will be able to use their keyboards to type messages sent to their children's cell phones — no thumb-twisting typing on a dial pad, said Yahoo Vice President John Kremer.

DENVER, CO, August 24, 2007– Mushkin Inc. (www.mushkin.com), a global leader in high-performance computer memory products, today announced the availability of HP3-10666 DDR3 modules available in 1GB single DIMMs and 2GB dual-channel kits, part numbers 991574 and 996574 respectively. Sporting 6-7-6-18 latencies, the new DDR3 modules are designed to give high-bandwidth, low-latency performance for current and future 3D gaming platforms.

“The focus for our enthusiast-grade DDR3 products is to offer high-bandwidth solutions that maintain Mushkin’s typical aggressive latency values,” said Brian Flood, Mushkin director of product development. “Many enthusiasts have expressed disappointment in the high standard latency values of DDR3. With the HP3-10666 modules, we have attained a CAS latency value that is a full 3 clock cycles below standard-rated DDR3-1333 DIMMs available on the market today, allowing for more efficient use of bandwidth.”

Lower latency and high-bandwidth translates into better benchmark scores and increased frames per second during 3D gaming. The HP3-10666 modules will become available worldwide in the next few weeks in 1GB single modules and 2GB (2 x 1GB) dual-channel kits through Mushkin.com and its authorized resellers. Every module is hand-tested beyond its rated specification and features Mushkin’s FrostByte heatspreader technology which keeps the modules within safe operating temperatures. Like all Mushkin products, the HP3-10666 modules are backed by a lifetime warranty and an industry-leading technical support staff.

The operation of the new security thread looks like something straight out of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. This magic, however, relies on innovations produced from decades of development.

It combines micro-printing with tiny lenses — 650,000 for a single $100 bill. The lenses magnify the micro-printing in a truly remarkable way. Move the bill side to side and the image appears to move up and down. Move the bill up and down and the image appears to move from side to side.

"It is a really complex optical structure on a microscopic scale. It makes for a very compelling high security device," said Douglas Crane, a vice president at Crane & Co. The Dalton, Mass-based company has a $46 million contract to produce the new security threads.

vPro is a collection of a Core 2 Duo processor, chipset and other elements that together the company calls a platform. Intel's first platform technology was Centrino, which it announced in 2003.

Since then, under Chief Executive Paul Otellini, the company has moved from selling and branding discrete processors and chipsets to selling them together as related technologies, or platforms, in a bid to sell more chips overall.

Following a Burton Group report in which analysts said that recommending Google Apps could be a career killer for enterprise architects, Forrester analyst Oliver Young called the study "a bit overly pessimistic" and said Google Apps is targeted toward those who are not "power users" and who have a low level of expertise with applications.

NEW YORK - Armed with a soldering iron and a large supply of energy drinks, a slight, curly haired teenager has developed a way to make the iPhone, arguably the gadget of the year, available to a much wider audience. George Hotz of Glen Rock, N.J., spent his last summer before college figuring out how to "unlock" the iPhone, freeing it from being restricted to a single carrier, AT&T Inc.

The procedure, which the 17-year-old posted on his blog Thursday, raises the possibility of a cottage industry springing up to buy iPhones, unlocking them and then selling them to people who don't want AT&T service or can't get it, particularly overseas.

LEIPZIG (Reuters) - Sprawling virtual worlds in which electronic avatars do battle with mythical beasts may offer game publishers a unique chance to combat piracy, especially in Asia, where the format is wildly popular.

On Thursday, the video game industry gathered at Europe's largest games convention in Leipzig to tantalize the 200,000 expected visitors with upcoming offerings that include an array of new MMOs -- massively multi-user online games.

Players usually have to buy the software to play the game, a model that invites bootleggers to get a cut of the action, so publishers are increasingly looking to offer the software for free.

Talk of a possible Google phone kicked up again Friday with new rumors coming out of India that the phone could be launched within two weeks.

Rediff.com reported that Google is in talks with two of the three top mobile providers in India, Bharti Airtel and Vodafone Essar, to offer the new "Gphone." The article cites unnamed sources who say the phone will also be launched simultaneously in the U.S. and Europe. The only remaining hurdle in the U.S., the story said, is approval from the Federal Communications Commission, which must certify any wireless device sold in the U.S.

Google isn't commenting on the rumors, saying in a statement that the company "is committed to providing users with access to the world's information, and mobile becomes more important to those efforts every day."

Taipei, Taiwan--August 22, 2007--Synology has confirmed its 07-series of NAS products passed the compatibility test with Hitachi 1 TB hard drives. This result applies to the entire Synology 07-series NAS product, including the DS107e, DS107, DS107+, DS207, CS407e, CS407, and RS407 models.

Taipei, Taiwan—Aug 21, 2007—Synology Inc. has released the official firmware v.0509 for its 07-series NAS products; RS407, CS407, CS407e, DS207, DS107+, DS107 and DS107e. The prime objective of this release is to introduce Synology File Station, Audio Station, support for three new languages, and various enhancements. This release also closes the beta program opened earlier in July for the same models.

NEW YORK - The iPhone makes me mad. Not, mind you, at the iPhone itself, but mad at cell-phone manufacturers who have saddled us for years with interfaces that lure us into labyrinths of menus.

The buttons that are supposed to guide us through this maze do different things on every screen: a single button can mean "Back" on one screen, "Cancel" on another, "Exit" on a third.

The iPhone has one button on its face. It always does the same thing: takes you to the top menu, where icons representing all functions of the phone — music player, Internet browser and more — are laid out in a clear manner. Wham, you're out of the labyrinth.

LEIPZIG, Germany (Reuters) - While Sony (6758.T: Quote, Profile, Research) battles with Microsoft (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) over which of their next-generation video game consoles will dominate, its seven-year-old PlayStation 2 still has a lot of life in it.

The Japanese company has sold over 100 million of the consoles globally since the 2000 launch.

Now PlayStation 2 has come down so much in price that it is cheap enough for people in Western Europe or North America to buy on a whim and affordable for consumers in emerging markets such as Eastern Europe, Sony said.

The iPhone has launched, and the iMac has been redesigned, which means it's probably time for new iPods.

Several different reports have surfaced over the past couple of days regarding revamped iPods that Apple may or may not have in the works. Other than adding color to the iPod Shuffle line, Apple hasn't done anything with the traditional iPods this year, and it looks like that's about to change.

They don't wear black veils. You won't find them shopping for caskets at the local funeral home. And they don't expect you to send them somber flower arrangements or cards expressing your sympathy.

And yet, they're widows nonetheless.

Though their spouses and partners haven't gone to the great beyond, these particular widows and widowers say their loved ones have gone someplace that's almost as distant and unreachable. Some have left this world for the "World of Warcraft," others have forsaken this life for "Second Life" and still others have been taken away by "EverQuest," "Final Fantasy XI" and "Dark Age of Camelot."

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Thursday it was giving customers free retrofits to a wireless racing wheel with its Xbox 360 video game system after hearing of malfunctions in a wheel component.

The company said it was informed of about 50 incidents worldwide of a malfunction in the Xbox 360 Wireless Racing Wheel, in which a component in the wheel chassis may overheat and release smoke when the AC/DC power supply is used.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - A creepy, underwater shooter game which refused to sink when publishers balked at its high development costs has turned into a success story, with "BioShock" getting glowing reviews and top sales.

"Honestly, we couldn't get a lot of publishers to sign up to spend millions of dollars to do a game," said Ken Levine, creative director for "BioShock".

Google Earth has launched a new feature called Sky, a “virtual telescope” that the company hopes will turn millions of Internet users into stargazers.

The upgraded version of the free software weaves together sky surveys conducted by the Palomar Observatory and the Anglo-Australian Observatory, along with images from the Hubble Space Telescope, to produce a zoomable view of the cosmos — in parallel to the zoomable satellite views of Earth offered by previous versions.

In effect, users can now zoom in on Earth's surface to the street level, or turn around and look skyward, zooming in on more than 100 million individual stars and 200 million galaxies.

Google will make a significant push toward integrating results from a variety of its search engines in an attempt to deliver as relevant and comprehensive a result set as possible to search queries. Although Google and its competitors have been moving in this direction for years, Google's announcement on Wednesday is its clearest and most concrete statement of direction yet regarding its efforts in this area. The announcement was made by Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, at an event in the company's headquarters in Mountain View, Calif.

LEIPZIG, Germany (Reuters) - Sony Corp. (6758.T) plans to sell a satellite navigation accessory from February 2008 that turns its handheld PSP games console into a navigation device, the company announced at the Leipzig Games Convention on Wednesday. The PSP equipped with the global positioning (GPS) accessory will compete with dedicated navigation devices such as those made by TomTom (TOM2.AS) and Garmin Ltd (GRMN.O).

Richard's loss is a very significant development in what has been a disastrous year for AMD. Its flagship product for 2007, a quad-core server chip known as Barcelona, will arrive six months later than expected after a number of technical glitches. AMD has lost a ton of money in the interim, trying to compete against Intel's quad-core chips by slashing the prices of its dual-core chips.

Go out right now and get a copy of "BioShock." No, I mean it. Stop reading. Go to the store and get 2K Games' new M-rated shooter/survival horror/adventure/RPG title for Xbox 360 and PC. If you love gaming, if you think gaming can be a form of art, if you like your digital entertainment to be smart, stylish and suspenseful, "BioShock" is for you. It's also a serious Game of the Year candidate.

Why? Because "Bioshock" combines several genres with amazing results. Then there's the smooth gameplay, mixed with gorgeous graphics and some of the best sound direction in ages. What's more, "BioShock" brings with it a fresh energy and intelligence from the opening moments to the ending.

NEW YORK - Video advertising is coming to YouTube, but it won't be the type common at sites elsewhere. Starting Wednesday, the popular video-sharing site plans to feature semitransparent "overlay" ads at the bottom of selected video clips. The ad disappears after about 10 seconds if the viewer does nothing; the featured clip automatically pauses if the viewer clicks on the overlay to launch the full pitch.

YouTube said it was trying to avoid pre-rolls that precede the main feature at sites like Microsoft Corp.'s MSN, which partners with The Associated Press on a video news service.

SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Tuesday it plans to introduce a computer mouse designed for PC gaming, in an effort to capture a growing segment of the computer peripheral equipment market.

Microsoft's new SideWinder mouse, which will target hard-core computer video game fans, allows nearly 5,000 different adjustable settings, including weight, materials and touch.

The new mouse comes with a small liquid crystal display between the thumb and index finger to keep track of game functions and settings.

NEW YORK - Besides leaving the hospital with a birth certificate and a clean bill of health, baby Mila Belle Howells got something she won't likely use herself for several years: her very own Internet domain name. Likewise newborn Bennett Pankow joined his four older siblings in getting his own Internet moniker. In fact, before naming his child, Mark Pankow checked to make sure "BennettPankow.com" hadn't already been claimed.

"One of the criteria was, if we liked the name, the domain had to be available," Pankow said. It was, and Pankow quickly grabbed Bennett's online identity.

Milton Keynes / Dornach. After the successful launch of the 5th generation power supplies, at Games Convention in Leipzig (hall 4/G01) HIPER presents the “Energy Saving” line extensions with ultra-efficient models: up to 87% is the new top level among the Type R Mk II and Type M Series. HPU-4M630 and HPU-4M880 represent the new power solutions of the Type M Series with the well-known HIPER Mesh-Design in an environmental-friendly packaging

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Internet service providers in the U.S. experienced a service slowdown Monday after fiber-optic cables near Cleveland were apparently sabotaged by gunfire. TeliaSonera AB, which lost the northern leg of its U.S. network to the cut, said that the outage began around 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday night. When technicians pulled up the affected cable, it appeared to have been shot. "Somebody had been shooting with a gun or a shotgun into the cable," said Anders Olausson, a TeliaSonera spokesman.

The damage affected a large span of cable, more than two-thirds of a mile [1.1 km] long, near Cleveland, TeliaSonera said.

If you don't know Vizio yet, you will very soon.

The LCD TV maker has quickly staked out a place in the flat-panel market and has elbowed aside some of the biggest names in electronics in the process.

For all the clout and brand recognition that accompanies names like Sony and Samsung, it was Vizio, a virtual unknown a year ago, that topped all LCD TV makers in the second quarter of this year in televisions shipped to retailers. Vizio sold 606,402 TVs in North America in the second quarter, a 76 percent jump from the previous quarter, according to a report by iSuppli released Monday. That puts Vizio in first place among LCD TV vendors, with a market share of 14.5 percent, up from 9.4 percent, or fifth place.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A plague carried around the world by travelers, pets and curious teen-agers may show that experts have not taken everything into account when planning for an outbreak of disease, researchers said on Monday.

Luckily, the world involved is an Internet game.

The outbreak of "Corrupted Blood" indicates that specialists trying to predict what the next pandemic will look like might make use of a real-world laboratory -- the culture of online gamers.

Whenever a doctor, nurse or administrator in Georgia’s DeKalb Medical Center sends an e-mail, the message detours through a special box in the three-hospital system’s computing cluster. The box analyzes the e-mail, scanning for sensitive information like patient names, prescription histories and Social Security numbers.

More than 1,200 times a month, the box finds such private data and automatically routes the message to a server that encrypts it for secrecy before sending it to its original destination. Sometimes, though, the box is unsure what to do, so it asks Sharon Finney.

The explorer who discovered the Titanic shipwreck now plans a robotic expedition to look for sunken ships on the floor of the Black Sea as well as clues to its geologic history.

Robert Ballard, a University of Rhode Island oceanographer whose team located the long-lost RMS Titanic in the North Atlantic in 1985, will lead the new effort that will rely on an autonomous underwater vehicle called DOERRI, short for Delaware Oceanographic and Environmental Research Remote Instrument. The vehicle will dive into the depths of the Black Sea as well as the Aegean Sea. In ancient times, both waterways were major trade routes.

LOS ANGELES - Paramount Pictures and DreamWorks Animation SKG Inc. will offer next-generation DVDs in the HD DVD format and drop support for Blu-ray, further complicating the race between the competing technologies. Monday's announcement affects the upcoming DVD releases of the blockbusters "Shrek the Third" and "Transformers," along with movies distributed by Paramount Pictures, DreamWorks Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Nickelodeon Movies and MTV Films.

Movies directed by Steven Spielberg, however, will continue to be released in both formats.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Canon Inc said on Monday it will launch a new digital single lens reflex (SLR) camera for advanced amateur users to better compete with Nikon Corp in the fastest-growing segment of the digital camera market.

The global market for digital SLR cameras -- high-end models with interchangeable lenses -- was held 47 percent by Canon in 2006 followed by Nikon with 33 percent, according to research firm IDC.

But in the Japanese market, Nikon has exceeded Canon in monthly digital SLR camera sales since December 2006, data from Tokyo-based research company BCN Inc showed, helped by strong demand for its mid-range and entry-level models.

“The Vantec 5.1 audio adapter isn't for everyone. If you already have a soundcard in your system capable of outputting 5.1 channels, you probably won't need this, which adds another external device to the mix. However, if you have a laptop or other portable system, most of which only have stereo outputs, this adapter will be helpful, especially if you watch movies a lot and would like to take full advantage of your 5.1 speaker system. Watching movies with a full 5.1 channels is far better than listening to them in down-converted stereo mode. This is the audio adapter's intended use, as it quickly and easily adds 5.1 output support to any system, and does it well.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Aniboom, an Internet home for animators to create and share original clips, is launching its own channel on video site YouTube with the aim of hatching the next animated blockbuster that could rival "The Simpsons" or "South Park." A small startup founded in Israel last year, Aniboom offers professional and amateur animators a place to showcase their clips and test their popularity with Web audiences.

The company also provides tools for creating animations and has to date built a community of more than 2500 animators from more than 70 countries who use the site.

But Eminem isn't the only star going after Apple. A records check showed that Apple is accused of copyright infringement in two other similar suits: one filed in May by a small label called Dawg Music and another from 2005 by Bridgeport Music, a publishing company with a history of filing such suits. None of the companies involved in the litigation, including Apple, agreed to comment for this story.

HOUSTON - The space shuttle Endeavour undocked from the international space station a day early on Sunday, as NASA kept a wary eye on Hurricane Dean.

Space agency managers worried that the storm would move toward Houston and force them to evacuate to a smaller-staffed makeshift control center at Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The Endeavour crew prepared to land on Tuesday as a precaution.

"Endeavour departed," space station commander Fyodor Yurchikhin said as ringing bells heralded the shuttle's parting, a tradition borrowed from the Navy.

NEW YORK - Skype said its Internet phone service has returned to normal after a software bug left many users unable to log on for two days. The company, a division of online auction company eBay Inc., said it would explain what caused the problem in more detail Monday.

"Until then, wed like to apologize and thank you. Precisely in that order," the company told its customers in a posting on its Heartbeat blog Saturday. "We know how difficult and frustrating the past two days have been. And still, your good wishes kept flowing in."

CrazyPC.com is running a special offer coupon for the month of August. Get a FREE Dual Cold Cathode Light Kit for orders of $25 or more*. That's a $9.99 value! Enter the coupon code: CPCCOLDCATHODE and select Redeem Coupon on the Check Out page.

* Coupon expires 8/31/07. Offer applies to orders of $25 or more before shipping. A discount of $9.99 will be applied to your order provided qualifying products are selected. Discount applies to all Dual Cold Cathode 12" Light Kits (item codes: 8240UV, 8240B, 8240G, 8240R, 8240W, 8240P)

SINGAPORE - Mobile phones are a potential gold mine for advertisers, the most personal and intimate way to communicate and engage with subscribers — more than 2 billion of them and counting worldwide. Yet the advertisers' two-liner text pitches have largely fueled a growing hate club, with recipients quickly equating the messages with spam they abhor on desktops.

Now, thanks to improved technologies, advertisers believe they have struck upon the formula for getting their messages across without irking consumers. The development is important given the mobile handset's promise to be a "third screen" — after the television and the desktop computer.

How does that song go? We've all used the Internet to search for the lyrics to songs whose tune we know but whose words we just can't muster.

Often the Web sites we end up on have misspellings or incomplete and inaccurate lyrics, not to mention annoying pop-up and flashing ads. But there's another problem with the sites--many of them are violating copyright by republishing the lyrics without permission. And they are making money from the Google text ads that appear on the site.

VIA Technologies is about to introduce a new addition to its Eden ULV (ultra low voltage) processor lineup, the company announced at a press conference yesterday (Aug 16). The new CPU adopts the typical VIA V4 bus and 21mm × 21mm nanoBGA2 packaging as other Eden models, but sets itself apart offering a 500MHz core frequency at a power consumption of only 1W.

“Not too long ago I did a review on the IP Video 9100A Plus Network Video Server, which allows a device with a video out connection to be used over a computer network. Well, what good is a video server without video cameras? Here I have four 1/4'' Color CCTV Video Cameras w/Sony CCD from Geeks.com. These cameras have infrared LED's that will help illuminate an area up to 15-20 meters. The metal housing and protective cap protects the camera from the elements.”

Games Convention 2007—Leipzig, Germany—August 16, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and computer components, will exhibit a number of exciting new products, innovate prototypes, and live technology at this year’s much anticipated Games Convention next week from August 23 to 26. As the largest gaming and technology event in Europe, various tech companies have the chance to impress end-users from around the world with their next generation products. With a diversified offering of leading-edge PC products for gamers, OCZ aims make their mark and be the lead attraction at Games Convention 2007.

EINDHOVEN, Netherlands - It was Aug. 17, 1982, and row upon row of palm-sized plates with a rainbow sheen began rolling off an assembly line near Hanover, Germany.

An engineering marvel at the time, today they are instantly recognizable as compact discs, a product that turns 25 years old on Friday — and whose future is increasingly in doubt in an age of iPods and digital downloads.

LOS ANGELES - Short Internet videos from the creator of the animated TV show "Family Guy" and Raven-Symone, star of the Disney Channel show "That's So Raven," will be distributed over Google Inc.'s AdSense network, it was announced Thursday. Media Rights Capital, the financing company that backed last year's film "Babel," is supporting the two projects. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The programs will appear in a video box that a user would click on to start. The box will be packaged with banner advertising and video ads that will appear either before or after the programming.

BOSTON - Two longtime rivals in computing, IBM Corp. and Sun Microsystems Inc., plan to cooperate on server technologies, a move that could put pressure on their joint competitor Hewlett-Packard Co. Sun's chief executive, Jonathan Schwartz, called it a "comprehensive relationship" that "represents a tectonic shift in the market landscape."

The collaboration announced Thursday will enable Sun's Solaris operating system to run on IBM servers. Among other things, that means customers that run Sun servers will be able to switch to Big Blue's hardware without having to rewrite any programs.

Dell concluded an internal investigation into its accounting procedures Thursday and found that three years' worth of quarterly earnings statements were improperly adjusted, and senior executives knew about it.

Which executives knew isn't clear yet. A Dell representative said the company is "taking responsibility as a team" and isn't naming names.

According to a statement released by the company, the investigation yielded evidence that "certain adjustments appear to have been motivated by the objective of attaining financial targets," and usually took place at the end of a fiscal quarter. Adjusted account balances were "reviewed, sometime at the request or with the knowledge of senior executives," according to a company statement.

Milton Keynes/Dornach. Anubis is the name of the ancient Egyptian God of Death and the name of the 1st ATX case ever from HIPER. As expected, HIPER does not come up with something usual: This case is entirely constructed out of high quality 3mm thick aluminium 6063 T5 alloy, weighing in at over 10kg. What makes this case different to the other alloy cases is in the manufacturing process of the jointing method. The panels are alloy welded together creating a much stronger structure to withstand over 100kg compared to the cheaper rivetting method, where not only becomes a weaker point, but allows the entire structure to bend. The case comes pre-modded with a side window and is probably the only case with a window to pass EMI testing, so is perfect for any system builders.

This case has been designed with thermal issues in mind and the HUGE heatsinks on top of the case help dissipate the conducted heat from inside the case. HIPER even supplies a brush for cleaning dusts out of them!

The sidepanels assembling is completely screwless and the drive-bay mounting is also tool-free. A stylish top function panel gives you comfortable usage. And even the most design oriented user will be convinced by the quality of the diamond laser cut trimming.

An additional functional detail among others is the removable modular HDD rack with dedicated fan mount for optimized cooling.

As a bonus for the end user who eventually owns this case, there is a limited edition Anubis keyring supplied inside.

Anubis is both a cutting edge design and top-quality pc chassis for design enthusiasts and gamers.

Recommended retail price is about US$ 220 excl. vat.

Hi-Res pictures are available for download at: http://hiper-pc.com/press/

Fremont, CA, August 16, 2007 – Corsair® www.corsair.com, a worldwide leader in high performance computer and flash memory products, today launched the "Flash Padlock” family of affordable USB 2.0 drives, the safest way to secure your data while on the go. Priced starting at only $29.99, the Flash Padlock line of affordable USB 2.0 flash drives address the need for secure data storage through hardware technology, rather than software. Flash Padlock features "Auto-Locking," so the user doesn’t need to remember to enable the protective feature -- It will automatically lock and protect itself in 15 seconds after removal from the computer.
With its simple touch-pad security PIN entry system, Flash Padlock can be unlocked quickly and confidentially for use as a standard USB flash data drive. Flash Padlock is impervious to “brute force” hacks or keystroke loggers that would defeat a software secured USB flash drive.
Flash Padlock is immediately available in two capacities:
Flash Padlock 1GB ~ $29.99 USD MSRP
Flash Padlock 2GB ~ $39.99 USD MSRP
Flash Padlock Security Features Include:
Hardware-Enabled Auto-Lock Function: Device Auto-Locks in 15 seconds after removal from computer.
User Customizable Security PIN - User sets unique security PIN (up to 10 digits long) for unlocking device.
Platform Independent: Works on Windows, MAC and Linux platforms without the use of additional software.
Easy to Use: Direct keypad access and indicator lights make locking/unlocking simple and understandable.
“The Corsair Flash Padlock is one of the most secure USB flash drive solutions on the market today,” said Jack Peterson, VP of Marketing at Corsair. “Corsair has built the Flash Padlock specifically for those customers with concerns about inadequate software-based security solutions on a USB flash drive. The designed hardware security feature puts these concerns to rest,” continued Peterson.
Corsair Flash Padlock 1GB and 2GB products are available immediately through Corsair’s authorized distributors and resellers world-wide, priced at $29.99 USD MSRP and $39.99 USD MSRP respectively. Corsair Flash Padlock products are backed by a 3-year Limited Warranty. In addition, a PIN registration service and complete customer support via telephone, email, forum and TS Xpress are also available. PadLocks are developed and produced by Corsair Memory based on licensed technology (patents pending) from ClevX, LLC. For more information on Corsair Flash Padlock USB drives, please visit www.corsair.com/products/padlock.aspx.

FRANKFURT, Germany - Skype, the popular computer program that lets its users make long-distance phone calls over the Internet, said Thursday that software problems have left many of its millions of users without service worldwide. The company, a division of online auction company eBay Inc., said on its Web site that many users cannot log on to the free service. It was not immediately clear how many users were affected, but Skype users in Colombia, Brazil, Germany, Finland and the United States reported difficulties logging on.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Like many central bankers, Eyjolfur Gudmundsson spends his days fretting about inflation, making sure monetary growth is reasonable and trying to collect data about the economy.

The difference is that the economy Guodmundsson oversees exists only in the virtual world of Eve Online, a science fiction computer game run out of Iceland.

(Business 2.0 Magazine) -- Holding the AK-47 assault rifle against my shoulder, I aim and fire at the gunman running to attack me. The report of the rifle is deafening, and the recoil feels like getting kicked in the shoulder by a horse.

"That is fine," says my bunker partner, Ashok Atluri, chief executive of Zen Technologies, based in Hyderabad in southern India. "But generally users are trained to injure and not to kill." On the Zen Advanced Weapons Simulator screen, the man I have blown away lies crumpled in a heap.

This is no videogame. The modified AK-47 sounds and kicks just like the one I fired 16 years ago on a press junket with India's Eastern Air Command. But unlike on that occasion, when nobody explained why I missed my target -- a bottle of local cola called Thums Up -- the Zen simulator is both gun and instructor.

ASRock recently launched its 2Core1333-2.66G and 2Core1333DVI-2.66G motherboards bundled with Intel dual-core processors that support a 1333MHz FSB (front side bus) and 2.6GHz overclocked core frequency, according to sources at ASRock.

The two motherboards adopt the Intel 945GC A2 chipset, which features support for Intel dual-core Core 2 Extreme, Core 2 Duo, Pentium D, Pentium Dual Core, Pentium 4, Celeron and Celeron D processors and supports a FSB of up to 1333MHz (Intel officially only supports up to 800MHz), and dual-channel DDR2 memory up to 4GB and an integrated Intel GMA950 graphics engine, noted the sources.

The fallout from Hewlett-Packard's boardroom leak scandal continued Wednesday as three CNET News.com reporters sued the computer maker, alleging that its investigation tactics amounted to an invasion of privacy and a violation of state rules on business practices.

You have no idea how you'd get any work done on business trips if you didn't have a laptop. You can't remember quite how you lived without your BlackBerry. Your cell phone might as well be surgically attached to your ear, it's so crucial to your job. Then there's the Internet. It's hard to conceive of getting through the day without Google (GOOG )—or, if you're under 40, text messaging or even joining Facebook to stay in touch with your extended network of colleagues. In just a decade or less, technology sure has done a number on the way you work, hasn't it?

The Crucial Memory Advisor™ tool, which takes the guesswork out of finding compatible memory upgrade options, now allows users to select their systems’ manufacturer, product line, and model on a single page – making it even easier for customers to find 100%-compatible memory upgrades. Additionally, a simplified order process saves customers valuable time during checkout.

SAN JOSE, Calif. - Two years after announcing a somewhat vague software-distribution partnership, Google Inc. and Sun Microsystems Inc. have clarified their tactics for jointly attacking Microsoft Corp. and its ubiquitous Office software.

Google quietly began including Sun's StarOffice suite of word processing, spreadsheets and other workplace-oriented programs for free as part of the Google Pack download.

The update to Vista's Kernel Patch Protection, a.k.a. PatchGuard, was issued through Windows Update as a high-priority download, but not as a patch per se. Microsoft, in fact, denied that it was a security fix. "While this updates adds additional checks to the Kernel Patch Protection system, it does not involve a security vulnerability," an advisory posted Tuesday by the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) stated. "The update does increase the reliability, performance, and resiliency provided by Kernel Patch Protection."

NEW YORK - Apple Inc. has dropped "Computer" from its name, but its computer business is still growing, even if the iPod player is the company's real star. Apple's resurgence started with the first iMac, in 1998. Little by little, Apple has been persuading people to opt for Macintosh computers over Windows PCs.

After Apple refreshed its iMac line last week, I decided to test one from the perspective of a Windows user. I found it to be a powerful if not completely irresistible enticement to switch.

SAN FRANCISCO - Citrix Systems Inc. is buying 3-year-old startup XenSource Inc. for $500 million, marking the second big deal this week to highlight the bustling market for software that makes computers run more efficiently. The cash-and-stock acquisition announced Wednesday followed the sensational stock market debut of XenSource's much-larger rival, VMware Inc., whose shares have nearly doubled from Monday's initial public offering price of $29.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (Reuters) - It resembles a hand-held electric razor and is available in metallic pink, electric blue, titanium silver and black pearl.

But it gives out a 50,000-volt jolt that short-circuits brain signals and momentarily incapacitates.

Meet the sleek new C2 stun gun from Taser International in Scottsdale, a controversial device aimed mainly at women consumers that has sparked widespread concern among U.S. law enforcement and human rights groups.

NEW YORK - The publishing world is linking up to the iPhone. HarperCollins announced Wednesday that it will allow browsers to view excerpts from more than a dozen new releases, including Michael C. White’s “Soul Catcher” and Michael Korda’s “Ike,” a biography of President Eisenhower.

“Reaching consumers on mobile devices and the Internet is increasingly important for publishers,” Brian Murray, president of HarperCollins Publishers Worldwide, said in a statement that noted the publisher has some 10,000 titles already digitized.

Asustek Computer introduced the Asustek EAH2600PRO/HTDI/256M and EN8600GT/HTDI/256M graphics cards that feature bundled high-quality HDMI adaptors certified by HDMI Licensing. Both models utilize specially designed cooling fans and heatsinks to dissipate heat efficiently for better cooling in comparison to reference design boards, noted the company.

Each card features either AMD's Avivo HD or NVIDIA´s PureVideo HD technology, to provide hardware acceleration for video decoding, noted the company.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Top U.S. satellite television provider DirecTV Group said on Wednesday it reached a deal to offer subscribers high-speed Internet and voice services carried by Current Group over electric power lines. DirecTV will be able to offer its customers the services as early as the end of 2007, with initial coverage extending to the Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, area for 1.8 million homes and businesses.

The deal is part of DirecTV's plans to expand its high-speed Internet offerings to better compete with rival cable operators.

Lake Forest, IL – (August 14, 2007) BFG Technologies, Inc. announced today the release of the BFG NVIDIA® GeForce® 8600 GT OC and OC2 graphics cards with ThermoIntelligence™.

“We’ve added our custom ThermoIntelligence custom cooling solutions to our 8600 GT lineup, lowering GPU temperatures up to 18°C over the reference cooler”, said Dean Brady, Sr. Director of Marketing for BFG Technologies. “This translates into increased reliability and performance for our customers.”

Bigger isn’t always better
Better cooling solutions often come at the expense of space inside your computer, many of them taking up two add-in card slots when installed. The BFG 8600 GT series with ThermoIntelligence fansinks only use a single PCI Express® slot, leaving you with room for other add-in cards.

Quiet by design
Many custom cooling solutions today increase the fan speed to reduce temperatures, but this results in excess noise. The 8600 GT ThermoIntelligence fansink was specifically designed not to increase acoustic noise while providing, on average, an 11°C lower GPU load temperature. For users running two graphic cards in an NVIDIA SLI® configuration, the thermal performance improves with the primary graphics card operating at up to 18°C cooler

Please visit www.thermointelligence.com for further information.


BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT OC2 with ThermoIntelligence™
(256MB & 512MB versions)

* Core Clock: 620MHz
* Shader Clock: 1350MHz
* Memory Clock: 1600MHz (256MB), 1500MHz (512MB)

BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT OC with ThermoIntelligence™
(256MB & 512MB versions)

* Core Clock: 565MHz
* Shader Clock: 1242MHz
* Memory Clock:1400MHz

BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT series graphics cards with ThermoIntelligence™ will be available at leading retailers and etailers throughout North America and Europe.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Yahoo Inc may be struggling to convince Wall Street of its future prospects, but for the first time its users gave its services overall a better rating than what Google Inc received, according to a study released on Tuesday. "For the average consumer, what you see with Google is what you saw three years ago," Freed told Reuters.

While Google has developed its own e-mail, desktop office and chat applications, among other features, they have not drawn enough attention to them among regular users, he said.

"Google needs to figure out a way to take advantage of those great applications they've developed," Freed said. "Not necessarily through advertising, but better marketing."

The nonprofit Linux Foundation has unveiled the Linux Weather Forecast, a Web site aimed at giving people a better sense of the status of specific Linux kernel projects. The Foundation created the forecast site by teaming up with Jonathan Corbet, a Linux kernel developer and writer, who's also executive editor of the LWN.net Linux and free software news site.

The forecast, which will be officially announced on Wednesday, is already live and tracks work in the Linux developer community likely to be included in the operating system's kernel and in major distributions of the open-source software, or both.

“The Sonata III is the third chapter in this series of enclosures from Antec. Over a year ago, I had the opportunity to review another case from this line: the Solo. Now I'm getting the chance to review the Sonata III. The Sonata III is marketed to the quiet users, and I'm one of those people. New front panel connections, along with a 500W Earthwatts PSU, add to the enclosure's improvements along with many more features.”

August 14, 2007, Woodstock, IL, -- Newer Technology, Inc. (NewerTech) http://www.newertech.com, a leading developer of PC, Macintosh® and iPod® performance upgrades and accessories, today announced the newest addition to its award-winning storage line, the miniStack® NAS Network Attached Storage solution for storing and sharing music, videos, photos, and files at home or at the office. miniStack NAS easily connects to computers via Ethernet or USB 2.0 ports for Plug & Play storage and sharing of up to 750GB between up to 20 Windows® or Mac® users.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Comedians Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, whose programs were once among the most viewed on YouTube, were requested by the video site to give testimony in legal proceedings as it fights a $1 billion lawsuit by Viacom Inc, according to court filings.

The two hosts of the Viacom hits "The Daily Show" and "The Colbert Report" were listed as numbers three and four out of 32 people called by YouTube to give a deposition in Viacom's case against it and parent Google Inc, according to a document filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York last week.

HELSINKI (Reuters) - Nokia said 46 million batteries used in its phones could overheat and it would replace them free to consumers while negotiating with battery maker Matsushita over who would bear the costs.

"Nokia has identified that in very rare cases the Nokia-branded BL-5C batteries...could potentially experience overheating initiated by a short circuit while charging, causing the battery to dislodge," it said in a statement on Tuesday.

The world's top cellphone maker said about 100 such incidents had been reported globally but no serious injuries or property damage had been reported.

With the recent CPU price cuts boosting motherboard demand, it has been reported that Intel chipsets are to face shortages in the third and fourth quarters of this year, according to a Chinese-language Economic Daily News (EDN) report citing sources at downstream makers. The shortages will result in an increase in demand for chipsets from VIA Technologies and Nvidia, noted the paper.

Second-tier motherboard makers will be hurt the most by the shortages since Intel is more likely to supply chipsets to first-tier makers as a priority, added the paper.

Microsoft Corp. is increasing the storage limit for its Web-based e-mail service, surpassing competitor Google Inc.'s limit but far short of Yahoo Inc.'s unlimited storage.

The limit for a free Windows Live Hotmail account will increase from 2G bytes to 5G bytes. The change will be rolled out to users over the next few weeks along with a series of other upgrades, wrote Ellie Powers-Boyle, a Microsoft program manager, on a company blog.

Sunnyvale, CA—August 13, 2007—With the goal of providing proprietary technology combined with the latest industry platform hardware, OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today launched the OCZ PC3-12800 Flex XLC kit. This high-speed DDR3 solution features the industry’s most unique and powerful cooling capability on the market. Intended for the extreme enthusiast looking for the absolute highest performance, the new Flex XLC delivers unprecedented speed and thermal management to cool the modules for optimal stability and longevity.

The newest PC3-12800 modules feature OCZ’s Flex XLC (Xtreme Liquid Convention) heatsink that delivers superior heat dissipation via a hybrid copper and aluminum design alterable between passive air or water cooling. This unique “flexible” design gives enthusiasts the option to run the modules passively or water cooled via the integrated liquid injection system. The concurrent use of both technologies (water-cooling) promotes maximum heat dissipation, allowing the memory to operate at extreme speeds without the high temperatures that inhibit or damage the module’s ICs.

“Increasing clock frequency translates into a linear increase in power consumption and heat dissipation, and with DDR3 hitting doubling the frequency of DDR2, the memory technology is facing serious thermal challenges that require advanced solutions of heat management,” commented Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology at OCZ Technology. “OCZ answers this challenge with the introduction of the Flex Series of heat spreaders to high speed, enhanced latency DDR3 to underscore the commitment to delivering the best overall memory solution with the flexibility to utilize advanced air or water-cooled systems.”

WASHINGTON - It's a battery that looks like a piece of paper and can be bent or twisted, trimmed with scissors or molded into any shape needed. While the battery is only a prototype a few inches square right now, the researchers at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute who developed it have high hopes for it in electronics and other fields that need smaller, lighter power sources.

"We would like to scale this up to the point where you can imagine printing batteries like a newspaper. That would be the ultimate," Robert Linhardt a professor at the Center for Biotechnology and Interdisciplinary Studies at RPI said in a telephone interview.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Content online is king. Internet users spend nearly half their time online viewing news or entertainment content, surpassing activities such as sending e-mails, shopping or searching for information, according to a study released by the Online Publishers Association on Monday.

The four-year study, conducted by Nielsen/NetRatings, tracked a 37 percent increase in amount of time spent viewing content such as online videos or news, surpassing a 35 percent rise in using search engines like Google Inc..

The abundance of content and faster online speeds accounted for the spike, the study said. A proliferation of social networks such as News Corps' MySpace and Facebook have helped boost content

IRVING, Texas - Say Madden this time of year and most everyone knows the reference is not about the Hall of Fame coach and sportscaster himself. It's about his video game. In an industry seemingly fixated on aliens, dragons and crime sagas, John Madden's football series rushes its way annually to the top of the sales charts, selling some 60 million copies in the past 17 years.

The newest version, "Madden NFL 08," debuts Tuesday for 10 different gaming systems with the sort of spectacle usually reserved for blockbuster movie premiers and "Harry Potter" books.

Microsoft will try its best to persuade regulators that it can hook up consumers with high-speed Internet services over unused TV airwaves -- without wreaking havoc on television broadcasts. According to the Washington Post, Microsoft plans to file papers with the Federal Communications Commission to dispute the FCC's recent conclusion that devices operating over unused TV channels pose one of two problems: They either interfere with TV signals or fail to detect those signals to avoid creating interference.

Car buyers usually compare things like horsepower, mileage and warranties. But increasingly, the most important parts of a new car are also the least visible: software.

The self-parking Lexus LS 460 has already shown that sensors, cameras and software can get a car to parallel-park itself. Automakers are now gearing up to include more automated driving features for even the most budget models. And further down the road, the computerized car will become part of an even larger network of highway communication.

Nvidia's MCP 73 chipset family supporting Intel platforms will launch on September 25 this year, according to sources at motherboard makers.

Five versions of the MCP 73 will be introduced, four including an IGP; GeForce 7150 nForce 630i, GeForce 7050 nForce 630i, GeForce 7050 nForce 620i and GeForce 7050 nForce 610i, and a single non-IGP chipset the nForce 630i. The chipsets series will support PCI Express and Intel CPUs ranging from the Core 2 family to Celeron D, noted the sources.

The damage to the shuttle's underbelly's thermal tiles is worse than expected and could delay future shuttle missions needed to complete construction of the international space station. The three-inch gouge apparently reaches to the shuttle's aluminum skin.

SEATTLE - In closing a $6 billion buyout of digital marketing company aQuantive on Monday, Microsoft is taking a first step in its quest to leapfrog Yahoo and challenge Google in the online advertising business. "Our goal is to be No. 1 or No. 2," Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft Corp.'s platforms and services division, said in an interview last week.

It's an ambitious plan, given that the software maker lags far behind Yahoo Inc. and Google Inc. in search traffic and advertising revenue.

“This is where Kingston Technology has come to answer the call. One of those kits could very well be the Hyper X KHX11000D3LLK2/2G Dual Channel Kits. It's based on their newest performance Hyper X DDR3 series intended for the upscale and more serious enthusiast who want to tap in to their processor's unseen performance. At 1375MHz, it operates at a frequency previous DDR2 modules just couldn't quite achieve mainly due to power requirements and related heat causing too much instability. Have a look at Kingston's latest signature Hyper X DDR3 1375MHz modules.”

LOS ANGELES - About 6,000 international passengers were stranded for as long as six hours Saturday at Los Angeles International Airport because a computer failure prevented them from passing through customs, authorities said. "That system allows our officers to make decisions on who we can allow to enter the United States," said Mike Fleming, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman. "You just don't know by looking at them."

With the number of malicious Web pages mushrooming over the past several months, the Mozilla Foundation is looking to help users defend themselves. Window Snyder, who is Mozilla's "chief security something-or-other," says the company is taking a two-pronged approach. First, Mozilla developers are working on giving Firefox 3.0, the next version of the open source browser due later this year, the ability to detect malicious code on Web sites that users are trying to access. "In Firefox 2, there's no mechanism that identifies if malware is present," says Snyder.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A routine shuttle mission, highlighted by a teacher's first spaceflight and space station construction, is now overshadowed by a troubling gash in Endeavour's thermal shield.

A detailed laser inspection on Sunday of the difficult-to-reach area on Endeavour's belly could send astronauts out to repair the 3-inch (7.6-centimeter) wound later in the week, although NASA said that prospect appeared less likely than it did a day earlier. A penetration, if severe enough, could let in searing gases when the shuttle returns to Earth in a possible replay of the Columbia accident.

According to the best estimates, in 2007 the Earth is predicted to cut through the densest part of the Perseid stream sometime around 2 a.m. ET on Monday, Aug. 13. That corresponds to 11 p.m. PT on Aug. 12 for those living in the Western United States or Canada. The interval when the meteors will be falling at their highest rates will likely last several hours or more on either side of these times. As a result, it is the late-night hours Sunday, on through the first light of dawn Monday that holds the greatest promise of seeing a very fine Perseid display.

The moon, whose bright light almost totally wrecked last year's shower, will have zero impact this year. The moon will be new on Sunday, meaning that there will be no interference from it at all.

Perfect!

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - NASA discovered a worrisome gouge on Endeavour’s belly soon after the shuttle docked with the international space station Friday, possibly caused by ice that broke off the fuel tank a minute after liftoff.

The gouge — about 3 inches (7.5 centimeters) square — was spotted in zoom-in photography taken by the space station crew shortly before Endeavour delivered teacher-astronaut Barbara Morgan and her six crewmates to the orbiting outpost.

“What does this mean? I don’t know at this point,” said John Shannon, chairman of the mission management team. If the gouge is deep enough, the shuttle astronauts may have to patch it during a spacewalk, he said.

LOS ANGELES - People who own an HD DVD player can forget about watching "Spider-Man 3" in high definition when it goes on sale during the holiday season. The movie from Sony Pictures will only be available in the Blu-ray DVD format. Likewise, people with Blu-ray players won't be able to enjoy the action-thriller "The Bourne Ultimatum," which Universal Pictures will release only in HD DVD.

These exclusive arrangements, plus aggressive price cuts for high-def DVD players, are designed to persuade consumers to finally embrace one format or the other.

But analysts wonder if the moves will anger consumers, just as the studios and consumer-electronics companies are hoping to boost high-def DVD sales as growth in standard DVDs stalls.

Many of the customers reported bringing the phone back to an Apple store, where in many cases they received a loaner phone at no charge while the broken handset was being repaired. Apple, according to the reports, was not handing out new phones as replacements.

A minority of customers, however, reported less than satisfactory service at the stores. "I went to the iPhone bar a couple weeks ago, and the guy told me this was just how the screen is, and that it was the length of my nails!!" a Chicago resident who used the name Newtype said.

Another customer reported taking his broken iPhone to an Apple store in Westchester County, N.Y., where a manager denied such a problem existed and refused to waive the $29 fee for a loaner phone. "He denied that he had the discretion to replace the phone or waive the loaner fee. Great product, support not so great," the person who went by the name Tjrubeo said.

SAN FRANCISCO - Google Inc. is shutting down a service that sold and rented online video, ending a 19-month experiment doomed by the proliferation of free clips on other Web sites like the Internet search leader's YouTube subsidiary. The decision, confirmed late Friday, underscores Google's intention to concentrate its financial muscle and brainpower on developing an advertising format to capitalize on the immense popularity of online video.

YouTube, which Google bought last year for $1.76 billion, is expected to be the focal point of the company's expansion into video advertising. Google executives hope to settle on an effective advertising system for video ads by the end of this year.

Google already offers plenty of free storage with its online services, but that hasn't been enough for some users, prompting Google to roll out extra storage that can be purchased to use with several Google products. Google's extra storage offerings begin with Picassa and Gmail, but will soon expand to other apps, such as Docs & Spreadsheets.

The video-sharing Web site on Friday morning launched its "Don't You Forget About Me" channel, featuring several clips seeking the whereabouts of more than 25 missing children from around the world.

YouTube, which was bought by search-engine giant Google (GOOG) last year, began the channel in conjunction with the International Centre for Missing and Exploited Children and the Find Madeleine Campaign, the organization devoted to finding Madeleine McCann, the English toddler who vanished from a hotel in Portugal earlier this summer.

"Lian-Li has a good reputation in the case market, so I had high expectations for the PC-A70. For the most part, this case lived up to those. I was very impressed by the overall construction and quality that this case possessed - it was definitely up to Lian-Li standards, and you can immediately tell that it's a sturdy case that won't fail you."

TAMPA, Fla. - Kevin Alderman didn't bring sex to "Second Life." He just made it better. The 46-year-old entrepreneur recognized four years ago that people would pay to equip their online selves — which start out with the smooth anatomy of a Barbie or Ken doll — with realistic genitalia and even more to add some sexy moves.

Business at Eros LLC has been brisk. One of his creations, the SexGen Platinum, has gotten so popular that he's now had to hire lawyers to track down the flesh-and-blood person behind the online identity, or avatar, that he says illegally copied and sold it.

The $45 SexGen animates amorous avatars in erotic positions. It is software code, written in the scripting language of "Second Life" and placed in virtual furniture and other objects. Avatars click on the object and choose from a menu of animated sex acts.

LOS ANGELES - People who own an HD DVD player can forget about watching "Spider-Man 3" in high definition when it goes on sale during the holiday season. The movie from Sony Pictures will only be available in the Blu-ray DVD format. Likewise, people with Blu-ray players won't be able to enjoy the action-thriller "The Bourne Ultimatum," which Universal Pictures will release only in HD DVD.

These exclusive arrangements, plus aggressive price cuts for high-def DVD players, are designed to persuade consumers to finally embrace one format or the other.

The band takes center stage, the fans surge forward and the sheer power of the crowd’s excitement amplifies the sound of their favorite songs — providing enough energy, in fact, to move a train.

It could happen in the Crowd Farm, a conceptual design by two graduate students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology that seeks to milk the mechanical movement of hundreds or thousands of assembled people to produce electrical power.

In principal, a large-scale version of the setup could harness the collective energy of commuters bustling toward subway stations, shoppers marching through mega malls or fans dancing at a rock concert. Already, the students have shown how the simple act of sitting on a stool can generate enough power to turn on four LED lights.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Vivendi's Universal Music Group, the world's largest music label, on Thursday said it will test the sale of songs from artists such as Amy Winehouse, 50 Cent and the Black Eyed Peas, without customary copy-protection technology.

The company said in a statement it will allow the sale of thousands of its albums and tracks available in MP3-form without copy-protection software, known as digital rights management, over a trial period.

Silicon Integrated System (SiS) has announced that Micro-Star International's (MSI's) MS-7317 motherboard, which adopts the SiS671 chipset, has entered volume production. The MS-7317 motherboard is designed for the mainstream market, according to SiS.

The motherboard supports Intel Core 2 Duo processors with 800MHz FSB and single-channel DDR2 667 memory up to 4GB. It includes the integrated Mirage 3 graphics engine, which supports DirectX 9 and SiS Real Video technology.

The SiS968 southbridge on the motherboard supports a PCI Express x1 slot, and also provides two SATA connectors, high-definition (HD) audio and Gigabit Ethernet, according to SiS.

With the peak season approaching, first-tier motherboard makers all saw growth in their July shipments except Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), which was the only maker to suffer a decline, according to sources at the makers.

Asustek Computer announced July consolidated revenues of NT$45.91 billion (US$1.39 billion), an increase of 6.2% compared to NT$43.22 billion in June this year and an increase of 10.8% compared to the same month a year previous. Accumulated revenues for the first seven months of 2007 were NT$408.28 billion, an increase of 68.8% on year.

CNET readers were so impressed with Sync, the in-car media application developed by Microsoft for Ford, that they voted it the winner of the People's Voice award for Best of CES 2007. Today Ford released details on how much the people are going to have to fork over to choose Sync on select 2008 Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln models: a pretty reasonable $395.

Microsoft plans to ship nine security bulletins next Tuesday with patches for a wide range of “critical” vulnerabilities affecting the Windows operating system, the Microsoft Office productivity suite and the widely deployed Internet Explorer browser.

In an advance notice alert issued today, the software maker said six of the nine bulletins will carry the highest severity rating while the remaining three will be rated “important.”

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A San Francisco native who loves the beach, parks, running and dancing, Marco has easily made connections over the Internet, racking up 5,200 on his profile. Not bad for a 4-year-old Miniature Schnauzer.

Marco is just one of thousands of dogs with a Web profile on Dogster.com, an online community featuring pet photos posted by owners along with pooch videos, diaries and travel tips.

Dogs not your thing? Cat people can go to Catster.com; car lovers can put their ride on Boompa.com, and there's Sneakerplay.com for those who are crazy about ... well, sneakers. Obsessed with your bike or motorcycle? Give them a profile on Velospace.org or Motortopia.com.

SAN FRANCISCO, Aug 9 (Reuters) - Football season is almost here and for U.S. video gamers, that means one thing -- a new version of "Madden NFL", which could be back in championship form after a couple of lackluster seasons.

"Madden NFL 08", to hit store shelves next week, promises smoother visuals, finer control over players, and more dramatic gridiron action, such as gang tackles and mid-air hits.

NEW YORK - Internet telephone company Vonage Holdings Corp. on Thursday reported a much reduced loss for the second quarter as it scaled back marketing, but it also saw a drastic drop in new subscribers. The drop in recruitment means that Vonage is no longer the country's largest provider of Internet-based telephone service, a field it pioneered. Cable company Comcast Corp. reported 3 million digital phone subscribers at the end of the second quarter, surpassing Vonage's 2.45 million, an increase of just 57,000 lines from the first quarter

Now, electronics makers are realizing that the real, untapped opportunity for hardware may lie in catering to an even younger crowd: 3- to 6-year-olds, whose undeveloped motor skills and messy habits (think grape-juice spills and cookie crumbs) prompt most parents to keep their offspring away from their computers, or only allow supervised use. Seeing their parents tinker daily at personal computers, many kids want PCs of their own for game-playing and exploring the Web.

San Francisco (IDGNS) - A publisher of nude model photography is suing Microsoft for putting links and images of the company's content in search results taken from other Web sites that are illegally reproducing the material. The company, Perfect 10, previously filed similar suits seeking injunctions against Google and Amazon.com over alleged copyright infringement.

The latest suit alleges that Microsoft's MSN image search feature creates unauthorized thumbnails of content owned by Perfect 10 and includes links to see a full-size versions of the images for free. The suit also says that Microsoft's MSN search engine makes passwords available to the company's perfect10.com Web site.

Schappert will focus on expanding Live's online services and broadening the audience using it, Microsoft said in a statement. Live users can also do video, voice and text chat with each other.

Xbox Live is one of the best performing parts of the Xbox business, gaining subscribers faster than Microsoft expected and earning more money than the company anticipated, said Matt Rosoff, an analyst with Directions on Microsoft.

The service has more than 7 million users and has had 220 million downloads of content, including 45 million paid arcade games, Robbie Bach, president of Microsoft's entertainment and devices business, said at a recent meeting with financial analysts.

To accommodate requirements in mass storage and fast transfer speeds in intranet applications of SMBs (small and medium business), Asustek Computer recently launched its P5M2-E/4L quad-LAN motherboard designed for servers.

The P5M2-E/4L, with a built in quad-LAN that integrates four high-speed Gigabit LAN ports into a single one, provides almost four times the transfer bandwidth. Even if an error occurs in one port, the network connection will not be affected in any way, according to Asustek.

“The bottom line is very simple. This is an extremely solid performer and offers a great deal all around from the BIOS to the design. Everything about the board says performance and stability. Overclockers will definitely enjoy playing around with the motherboard. It affords a nice array of settings, features, and options that are all but guaranteed to show you what it can do. Just make sure your memory, power supply, and CPU cooler are up to the task. The ASUS P5K3 Deluxe WiFi-AP Edition Motherboard is a perfectly balanced enthusiast board for any and every type of desktop user.”

The extremely air-conditioned computer farms known as data centers are the gas-guzzling jalopies of the technology world. Some require 40 or 50 times more power than comparably sized office space. So with energy costs high and environmental friendliness making for good public relations, more tech companies are touting ways they are "greening" data centers, which serve up Web pages, swap Internet traffic, and process and store business information.

But it's a lot easier to put out a news release than to build a data center with a significantly smaller environmental footprint. Even as efficiency improvements are reducing the energy gulped by many kinds of hardware, the industry's overall electricity consumption could double from 2006 to 2011 as demand grows.

LOS ANGELES - Video rental chain Blockbuster Inc. said Wednesday it is buying the digital movie download service Movielink, giving it the online foothold it has long sought to compete with rival Netflix Inc. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Blockbuster said it will continue to operate Movielink as a stand-alone service and eventually make elements of the service available through Blockbuster.com.

Movielink was launched by five studios in 2002, marking the first time that a large supply of recent, popular films was available for rental on the Internet.

Toshiba America Electronic Components (TAEC) recently announced new compact high-efficiency white LEDs that provide twice the brightness of Toshiba's previous generation devices and the company claims the new products are among the brightest white LEDs in the industry available in this form factor.

Developed by Toshiba, the new TLWK1100B LED delivers luminous intensity levels of 1500 millicandelas (mcd) from a drive current of only 20mA (typical value). The design makes it suitable for automotive lighting designs, LCD backlighting, panel indicators, and the replacement of incandescent bulbs in certain lighting applications.

Milton Keynes, England, 8th August, 2007 - The best solution for a new generation of Intel® Core™2 Quad processors – the ECS P4M900T-M motherboard, already providing support for some of Intel's most advanced processors, has been upgraded to support the power of four processing cores for the ultimate solution for demanding entertainment.
A leading motherboard manufacturer, Elitegroup Computer Systems, Inc. (ECS), plays a prominent role in innovation and technology and is announcing its new entry-level motherboard; the P4M900T-M, which will fully supports 1066 MHz FSB as well as Intel® Core™2 Quad processors, offering an array of exciting capabilities and delivering an impressive level of performance for demanding users.
The entry-level P4M900T-M gives full-scale support for a wide-range of processors. The P4M900T-M motherboard not only supports Quad-Core processors like Q6700 but also supports Core 2 Duo processors, Pentium D/4 and Celeron D. Users can optimize the overall performance of their computers at a reasonable cost without giving up flexibility in upgrading.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - With "The Bourne Ultimatum" grossing $69.3 million in its first weekend and delivering the biggest August opening ever, surely someone would want to transform it into a similarly hot video game. What game publisher wouldn't want to ride the coattails of its huge marketing campaign?

But, oddly enough, there's no "Bourne" game in sight, at least not this year. And the one that Vivendi Games has up its sleeve for a mid-2008 release on the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 is no "movie game," its developers insist.

Didn't the publisher of "John Woo Presents Stranglehold" -- which leaps onto video game shelves the week of August 20 -- say the same thing about its game? Is there suddenly some stigma against movie games?

"Not at all," says Emmanuel Valdez, chief creative officer at High Moon Studios, Vivendi's San Diego-based internal developer, which is building the game titled "The Bourne Conspiracy."

Dell put out this minimialist press release about its acquisition of Silicon Valley-based ZING Systems Inc. today. But while the price was not large enough to require that it be disclosed, the implications of this deal are big, indeed. It's a sign that Dell is serious about getting in on the booming consumer market. I'm not talking about hitting new price points, or making cosmetic improvements to its existing products. And I'm not talking about much-needed defensive moves, such as investing to upgrade its much-maligned customer service or squeezing out a spot on the retail shelves at Wal-Mart. Rather, buying Zing suggests Dell has a plan, or at least a desire, to differentiate itself in new ways.

Hewlett-Packard (HP) is expected to launch new iPAQ-series handheld devices, including PDAs, PNDs and 3G GPS PDAs, in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to sources at Taiwan-based handheld device makers.

HP has stepped up its contacts with Taiwan-based makers for different segments, with the sources indicating that Quanta Computer, Inventec Appliances and Foxconn International Holdings (FIH) are likely to land new orders from HP.

HP previously outsourced its iPAQ-series products to High Tech Computer (HTC), Quanta and LG Electronics. It added FIH to its supplier list in the second quarter of this year by outsourcing the production of iPAQ 510 PDA phones to the Hong Kong-listed company, the sources noted.

Since HTC has been focusing on developing own-brand products recently, HP is unlikely to continue to outsource the production of smartphones to HTC and instead, could switch its orders to Quanta, FIH or Inventec, said the sources.

HP may establish long-term contracts with certain suppliers for products designated for particular segments, stated the sources, noting that HP is to cooperate with Verizon to launch CDMA-enabled PDA phones in the US and focus on low-cost PDAs and PNDs in the China market.

Intel is currently developing two new technologies which will be introduced along with the upcoming high-end X38 chipset, according to sources at motherboard makers. Both technologies target the enthusiast market.

The two new technologies are named Extreme Memory and Extreme Tuning Utility. Both new marketing lead architectures will be introduced along with the X38 chipset in October this year, according to motherboard makers.

Extreme Memory technology will function similar to Nvidia's SLI Memory allowing specially branded and certified memory modules to operate at higher performance levels when installed in a supporting motherboard, said the sources. Extreme Memory technology will only be available for DDR3 modules and will not support DDR2 memory, the sources added. In addition to X38 and P35 chipsets for desktops, the next-generation Intel 3-series notebook Centrino platform will also support Extreme Memory technology, noted the sources.

Currently, Intel is cooperating with memory makers including Kingston Technology and OCZ Technology Group to deliver Extreme Memory certified modules, with engineering samples predicted to be delivered in mid to late September, added the sources.

Intel's Extreme Tuning Utility technology will provide an interface to enable the changing of BIOS settings directly from within the operating system making it easier to tweak settings and overclock the system, the sources detailed. Intel's partners have the option to customize the interface of the software tool, according to the sources. Initially, the technology will only be implemented in the X38 chipset, the sources added.

Sources at channel vendors have reported that first-tier motherboard maker Asustek Computer is facing an overstock of 965 chipset-based motherboards.

Other first-tier makers such as Gigabyte Technology and Micro-Star International (MSI) recently dropped prices for their newer Intel 3-series motherboards forcing Asustek to follow suit. This has resulted in Asustek's own 965 and 3-series motherboards being in competition with each other in the market, noted the sources.

Additionally, there has been a decline in 965 chipset demand due to Intel's increasing focus on pushing the new 1333MHz FSB supporting Core 2 Duo E6050-series processors, intended to be paired with 3-series chipsets and which are not natively supported by 965 chipsets.

Asustek responded in saying that demand for 965-based motherboards is still rising and inventory levels of non-1333MHz processors are high implying that it sees no issues in clearing stocks of these motherboards.

“LapWorks is one of those companies that specialize in a field that’s often overlooked in the mobile computer world. That field is ergonomics. With more and more people on the move we think less about ergonomics, and LapWorks is here to help us with that. They are doing that with a new product called the Futura, which is multi-purpose device for a notebook computer. It can either serve as a desktop stand or as a laptop desk for the on-the-go business person.”

SAN FRANCISCO - Barry Bonds hit No. 756 to the deepest part of the ballpark Tuesday night, and hammered home the point: Like him or not, legitimate or not, he is baseball’s new home run king.

Bonds broke Hank Aaron’s storied record in the fifth inning, hitting a 3-2 pitch from Washington’s Mike Bacsik 435 feet to right-center field. Three days earlier, Bonds tied the Hammer with a shot to left-center in San Diego.

“Thank you very much. I got to thank all of you, all the fans here in San Francisco. It’s been fantastic,” he said shortly after crossing home plate, his godfather, Willie Mays, at his side.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A 37-year-old man was found guilty Tuesday of collecting more than $90,000 in payments for Rolex watches and sports tickets through eBay but never delivering the merchandise to customers. Gilbert Vartanian operated the scam from 2001 to 2004, using more than a dozen user-identification names.

A federal court jury convicted him of 12 counts of mail fraud. Vartanian faces a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison. He was arrested earlier this year in Fremont. Buyers were told to send their money to Vartanian's mailboxes. He either did not respond or sent back empty envelopes or blank sheets of paper.

It might have been a good deal if ATI had delivered as Chief Executive Officer Hector Ruiz had promised. But it hasn't. Its latest round of graphics chips have run behind schedule. Meanwhile, Nvidia (NVDA) , ATI's main rival in the graphics chipset business, has been gaining market share, while ATI's has been falling. Research firm Jon Peddie & Associates pegged AMD's share of the graphics chipset market at under 20%, down from over 26% a year ago, while Nvidia and Intel saw their market positions grow. "I think AMD overpaid for ATI," Berenbaum says. "I think management overreached in taking a company that ultimately hasn't delivered what was expected in terms of accretive performance." AMD declined to comment. Its latest graphics-chip release, the FireGL line of graphics accelerators for workstations, was released Aug. 6.

Sunnyvale, Calif.—August 7, 2007—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, today unveiled a revolutionary new tool for end-users to enhanced and stabilize their memory modules when upgrading to a new motherboard. OCZ’s patent-pending SPD-Z Technology is the world’s first means for DIY users to reprogram their memory’s SPD (serial presence detect) and remedy an inefficient module and mainboard interface completely independent of BIOS tweaks. Thanks to this convenient method of reconfiguring the SPD, consumers can now enjoy ultimate compatibility, stability, and performance.

“Tweaks of hardware and firmware have become the primary tool of most computer hardware OEMs to differentiate themselves from the field of competitors, however, in some cases at the expense of compatibility,” commented Dr. Michael Schuette, VP of Technology Development at OCZ Technology. “OCZ’s answer to the fragmentation of the market is the patent-pending SPD-Z technology that allows users to select custom SPDs from a library to optimize the interaction between the motherboard and memory firmware.”

The first public beta test of SPD-Z will be available for download on the OCZ Support Forums starting today. OCZ’s renowned technical support staff will be on hand to offer advice and tips for those in need. New SPDs will be added every week and community involvement and discussion is highly encouraged on the forum so OCZ can provide the best level of compatibility and service.

SAN DIEGO, CA—SIGGRAPH 2007—August 7, 2007— Lundo and Flint, two plush characters with a penchant for joyriding in their 1969 Buick Electra, find themselves on a unforgettable journey in the new NVIDIA Corporation (Nasdaq: NVDA) animated short film “The Plush Life,” which is set to make its debut today at SIGGRAPH 2007 in San Diego, CA (NVIDIA booth 513).

The brainchild of animator Timothy Heath of the NVIDIA Digital Film Group, “The Plush Life” is the first in a planned series of animated short films that will showcase the advanced rendering features of NVIDIA® Gelato® GPU-accelerated rendering software.

From concept to final renderings, The Plush Life animation evolved over a period of seven months. Modeled and animated with Autodesk Maya 3Dsoftware, the film was rendered entirely in Gelato Pro software on NVIDIA Quadro® professional graphics boards, utilizing the program’s advanced features such as depth-of-field, motion blur, ambient occlusion, and raytraced reflections. Also incorporated into the animation is subsurface scattering, which allows materials to absorb and scatter light, depth-of-shadows for rendering of the hair, and new shader technology used to create the velvety appearance of the “Flint” character.

“The Plush Life” will give attendees a firsthand look at the advanced rendering features of Gelato software, and a glimpse of future rendering technology from NVIDIA, powered by the latest NVIDIA Quadro solutions.

Here's what's new to V5.

GameFire: Let Pertelian keep tabs on your favorite online gaming servers, you've got better things to do. For the first time ever, check on PC game server status information such as current number of players, current map, etc at any time, even while playing on another game or server, perfect for waiting a spot to free up on your favorite game without wasting time waiting. Not only that but check up on player's stats while in game and check if the person is your squad is as good as they say they are.

Stock Monitor: Bring your stocks right to your desk without the need of browsers, application windows, emails, etc. This amazing plug-in keeps users up-to-the-minute on their stocks and portfolios by allowing users to stay constantly connected to investment performance quickly and easily. Set alerts for stocks that appear right on the LCD, keeping users aware of their critical stock information without the effort.

Multi Time Zone Digital Clock: Keep track of various time zones anywhere in the world without having to calculate hour differences. More than just a clock which allows users to add several time zones, any number of alarms can be set for any time zone and keyed with WAV files to custom make your alarms.

Stop Clock: A community suggested feature, this is just one of those features which can find a home with just about anyone. Stop clocks are hardly readily avaiable, much less an electronic one which displays independent of the computer monitor and allow sfor various timers to display at one time. Whether timing presentation length, employee's time at work, or time it takes to get a frag online.

CUPERTINO, California—August 7, 2007—Apple® today unveiled an all new all-in-one iMac® line featuring gorgeous 20- and 24-inch widescreen displays encased in elegant and professional aluminum and glass enclosures. The entire new iMac line features the latest Intel Core 2 Duo processors and a new, ultra-thin aluminum Apple Keyboard, built-in iSight® video camera for video conferencing and iLife® ’08, making it the ultimate digital lifestyle desktop computer for both consumers and professionals. The 20-inch iMac now starts at just $1,199, $300 less than the previous 20-inch model, and the 24-inch iMac starts at just $1,799, $200 less than the previous 24-inch model.

“This new iMac is the most incredible desktop computer we’ve ever made,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “Our new design features the innovative use of materials, including professional-grade aluminum and glass, that are highly recyclable."

Redefining Apple’s signature all-in-one design, the new iMac integrates the entire computer system into a sleek, professional aluminum enclosure for a striking, clutter-free desktop. An elegant glass cover joins precisely to the aluminum enclosure creating a virtually seamless front surface. The new iMac’s 20- and 24-inch glossy widescreen displays provide incredibly crisp images, ideal for photos and movies using the all new iLife ’08 suite of digital lifestyle applications that are included. The new ultra-thin aluminum Apple Keyboard is just 0.33 inches thin at its front edge. A new optional Apple Wireless Keyboard is a compact design that, with Apple’s wireless Mighty Mouse, offers a cable-free desktop.

Lakewood, CA – Monday August 7th, 2007, 8:45 AM Pacific Standard Time - Rouchon Industries, Inc. dba Swiftech® today announced the release of the new Apogee™ Drive 350, a patent pending self-powered CPU waterblock. The product combines two of Swiftech® award winning technologies into an integrated pump and water-block unit which is expected to revolutionize the world of water-cooling by offering superior performance, high reliability, and consumer-friendly installation at substantial cost savings. “In the world of water-cooling, the Apogee™ CPU Waterblocks and MCP350 pumps have become legends, proving themselves to be among the best available to the enthusiast and professional users alike. By combining the low thermal resistance and high-flow/high-reliability characteristics of these technologies into a single unit, we substantially facilitate installation, enhance reliability and cut costs while preserving the high performance aspect of the device. This is a significant step forward for our industry, which we hope will help spreading liquid cooling further into the main stream”, said Gabriel Rouchon Swiftech's Chairman & CTA. The Apogee™ Drive 350 is initially being sold as part of a new CPU liquid cooling kit called the H20-120 Compact which is the subject of a separate press release; the Apogee™ Drive is scheduled for release to the distribution channels Mid-august. MSRP: $99.95

Lakewood, CA – Monday August 7th, 2007, 9:00 AM Pacific Standard Time - Rouchon Industries, Inc. dba Swiftech® today announced the release of the revolutionary H20-120 Compact liquid cooling kit. The kit is composed of only two elements, each representing major innovations in the liquid cooling industry: a patent pending self-powered CPU waterblock, the recently released Apogee™ Drive 350, which combines pump and water-block into a single unit, and a new 120mm radiator featuring an integrated reservoir. Conventional liquid cooling systems are composed of four components: a waterblock, a pump, a heat exchanger, and a reservoir. With a two components system installation is substantially simplified, reliability is improved, cost is reduced and the company expects this new product to enable numerous PC builders, OEM’s and end users to access the benefits of high-performance liquid cooling. “The H20-120 Compact is the first of a new generation of liquid cooling solutions that brings true enthusiast performance to the industrial level; further declinations of the kit should also be available soon, starting with a dual radiator version expected by the end of August” said Gabriel Rouchon Swiftech's Chairman & CTA. The product is being shipped to the distribution channels now. MSRP: $159.95

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp said on Monday it will cut the price of its main Xbox 360 video game console model by about 13 percent in the United States, hoping to boost sales ahead of the crucial holiday season.

The move reduces the price of the Xbox 360 Premium model by $50, to $350, and follows a move last month by rival Sony Corp to cut the price of its PlayStation 3 machine by 17 percent, to $500.

NEW YORK - Buy.com is looking to steal some customers from eBay with a new shopping service for online hangouts like Facebook.

On Tuesday, Buy.com is officially launching its Garage Sale service on the social networking Web site Facebook. It's intended to let users post and sell items on their profile pages.

Unlike eBay, which charges sellers a listing and final transaction fee, Buy.com is charging a flat 5 percent commission for items sold. Buy.com processes the transactions, which means consumers must use credit cards to pay for items. Sellers get their money via eBay Inc.'s PayPal or a check from Buy.com.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. - A computer sabotaged by a disgruntled worker for a NASA supplier has been repaired and loaded aboard the space shuttle Endeavour for a Wednesday liftoff.

A top NASA manager said Monday that it was apparently an isolated event and that there was no reason to believe anyone had tampered with anything else on the spacecraft.

“We have found no other areas of concern,” space shuttle program manager Wayne Hale said. “We have thoroughly reviewed all the parts made by that contractor and gone back through our records to make sure that all the orbiter systems on board Endeavour thoroughly check out.”

All New X3® Modular Power Supplies
Ultra pulls out all of the stops for their latest power supply. By combining our "EE" (Energy Efficient) platform, which converts as much as 85% of AC power into DC power during typical loads, with a quiet 135MM ball bearing fan, our patented modular interface and our Limited Lifetime Warranty, Ultra clearly dominates the market with the new X3 power supply!

The X3 is super efficient, using less electricity than other power supplies when providing power to your computer and it generates less heat. Cooling is substantial yet silent by utilizing a thermostatically controlled 135MM ball bearing fan and a honeycomb cut exhaust grill. The X3 also has full range active PFC, which improves apparent power used by the computer. The modular interface allows you to only plug in the cables you actually require for your particular PC. The X3 is ready for even the most high end gaming rigs by providing up to four 6-pin PCI-e connectors, and the 800W and 1000W models provide the newest 8-pin PCI-e connector for the latest 300W graphics cards.

If the you're looking for an efficient, quiet, powerful, modular power supply with a Lifetime Warranty, there's no reason to look any farther than the Ultra X3!

NEW YORK (Reuters) - English soccer's Premier League Ltd and music publisher Bourne & Co said on Monday that eight more parties have joined their lawsuit charging Google Inc and its YouTube online service with deliberately encouraging copyright infringement.

The new parties include the National Music Publishers' Association, which is the largest U.S. music publishing trade association, the Rugby Football League, the Finnish Football League Association and author Daniel Quinn.

Video programming owners have teamed up against YouTube, charging the top online video service with encouraging copyright infringement to generate public attention and boost traffic to its site.

NEW YORK - At long last, someone has cracked one of the technology world's biggest mysteries — the identity of Fake Steve, a sharp-tongued blogger who had tech aficionados in stitches with a satiric diary purporting to be from Apple CEO Steve Jobs.

Now for the really good part: Both the blogger and the guy who outed him are from staunch bastions of Old Media, Forbes magazine and The New York Times.

YOKOSUKA, Japan - Some Nissan cars will soon come with a gas pedal that lifts to warn of possible collisions, while the cars will automatically stop if drivers take their foot off the accelerator in response to the warning. The technology combines radar sensors and a computer system to assess a car's speed and the distance to a vehicle in front, Nissan Motor Co. said Monday. Cars with the new safety features will be available this year in Japan, and next year in the U.S.

The idea was to make a car that judges dangers on its own, like a friendly animal, so machine and driver can work together, said Nissan Senior Manager Yousuke Akatsu.

SAN FRANCISCO - Max Levchin already changed electronic commerce as a co-founder of PayPal, an online payment service that is expected to process more than $40 billion in transactions this year. Now, he's tinkering with a new way to make money off Internet widgets — high-tech shorthand for the mini-applications planted on the personal pages of online social networks and other popular Web sites like Google.

Levchin's latest startup, Slide Inc., has emerged as the No. 1 widget maker so far, largely because its programming tools have made it easy for people to add more pizazz to the pictures and videos decorating trendy hangouts like MySpace, Facebook and Bebo.

When Take-Two Interactive announced last week that it would delay “Grand Theft Auto IV” until 2008, Wall Street punished the company’s stock and sent a chill wind throughout the game industry.

The much-anticipated title, along with Electronic Arts’ “Madden 08” and Bungie’s “Halo 3,” was expected to account for one-third of all game sales this holiday season. And Sony and Microsoft were both counting on “GTA IV” to help sell PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 consoles.

That was a fair bet. The gangster-adventure series, created by controversy-courting Rockstar Games, was critical to the success of the PlayStation 2.

MINNEAPOLIS - A helicopter with a camera like those used to film Hollywood movies will soon peer into the wreckage of a collapsed bridge. Laser-guided surveying equipment has already helped produce a detailed map of the debris. Software re-creating the disaster on a computer screen may even pinpoint the exact piece of bridge that gave way.

Even with the water still filled with debris, investigators are already using this powerful technological arsenal to get answers about why the bridge collapsed into the Mississippi River last week. It is a quantum leap ahead of investigations of previous eras, when crews literally had to put the pieces of fallen bridge back together.

“Not too long ago, 128mb flash drives were the norm; now the norm is around 2GB or up. Well, today I'm going to be reviewing a 2GB flash drive from Super Talent. Now keep in mind that size is not the only factor in a flash drive, but the speed in which data flows also plays a major factor. The Super Talent 2GB drive has a rated speed of 200x. 200x is extremely fast, but just for the sake of comparison, 400x is around the speed of USB2.0 Super Talent also offers other varieties of flash drives.”

LAS VEGAS - Terrorists and other criminals could exploit a newly discovered software flaw to hijack massive computer systems used to control critical infrastructure like oil refineries, power plants and factories, a researcher said Saturday. Ganesh Devarajan, a security researcher with 3Com Corp.'s TippingPoint in Austin, Texas, demonstrated the software vulnerability he uncovered to attendees at the Defcon hacker conference on computer security.

IBM Corp. will stop selling the BlackIce PC Protection security suite, a product that came under its wing after buying Internet Security Systems (ISS) a year ago for US$1.3 billion. The company will stop selling BlackIce on Sept. 19, and end technical support for the product, which is just for PCs running Windows, on Sept. 29, 2008, according to ISS.

ONCE AGAIN, VALVE has updated results of its hardware survey among users of Steam, and the results speak for themselves.
This survey took place among 969,600 gamers worldwide, almost a million from three million users that play steam on monthly basis.
In the everlasting battle of AMD versus Intel, currently Intel has the nod with 53.19% of all users on steam, while AMD held 46.80%. However, results do not sound so good for Intel, since 76.06% of all users own a single-core processor, predominately Intel Pentium 4. Over a third of users own a processor with clocks from 2.3 to 3.29 GHz in Intel world, while 21.06% owners of AMD processors like clockspeed of 2.0-2.3 GHz.

A LOT OF MAKEUP can make you prettier, but it won't make you smarter. Michelle Madigan, Associate Producer for Dateline NBC found this out the hard way at Defcon.

According to sources at the show, she was there to do a piece called Hackers for Hire, with the goal of showing the criminal hacker underground and possibly outing an undercover fed. As Michelle was said to have said, "People in Kansas would be very interested in what is going on at Defcon". She was busted hours before she walked in the door, the first slide before the keynote was this, and the speaker asked to notify a goon (security) if she was spotted.

“The latest motherboard to reach my test bench is the ASRock 4Core1333-FullHD HTPC Motherboard. The features it offers aren't completely new yet it does support 1333 Front Side Processors right out of the box. Being a movie buff that enjoys a good movie, I also enjoy great sound to go with the movie even more. Compared to current A/V Component systems you can pick up at any Best Buy or Fry's, the ASRock board offers up upgradeability and a more configurable Home Theater experience. This is a new kind of ASRock, so read on to see what kind of goodness we found.”

LAS VEGAS - Social networking Web sites such as MySpace.com are increasingly juicy targets for computer hackers, who are demonstrating a pair of vulnerabilities they claim expose sensitive personal information and could be exploited by online criminals.

The flaws are being demonstrated this week at the Black Hat and Defcon hacker conferences, which draw thousands of people to Las Vegas each year for five days of training and demonstrations of the latest exploits.

Black Hat, the more genteel of the two events with heavy industry sponsorship and big admission fees, ended Thursday with some 4,000 attendees. Defcon, larger and more roguish, started smoothly Friday, without any of the registration problems that irked fire officials last year and caused lengthy delays. Organizers said more than 6,800 people attended the first day, with more expected Saturday.

Fortunately however, I captured something else on video: it was Vista telling me to save my work because it was going to reboot. But this wasn’t any old reboot. This was a you-have-no-choice reboot. I had stepped away from the system for a few minutes and when I came back, it basically told me I had 1 minute and 30 seconds to save my work because it was going reboot itself, no matter what. Luckily, our camera was sitting there on its tripod (we were about to tape something else) when this happened and we caught it on tape. As you can see in the video, although the dialog appears to have some options to postpone the reboot, I can’t get into those options. They’re grayed-out.

The Ruckus MediaFlex NG is the best Wi-Fi router on the market today. Not by a little bit – but by a wide margin.
Before I got the MediaFlex, I thought I had been happy with my home Wi-Fi system. In their literature, Ruckus guarantees 20 Mbps of speed for streaming video throughout a typical 2,500- to 3,000-square-foot-home. Prices run in the $120-150 range. The Ruckus costs more than other Wi-Fi routers – but it does more – and is a far superior product.

Amazon is going to the farm--literally--under a pilot program to sell fresh food like eggs, vegetables and fish.

The company that began in 1995 as the world's biggest bookstore confirmed on Thursday that it kicked off the program, AmazonFresh, in the Seattle, Wash., enclave Mercer Island by invitation only on Wednesday.

"It's up and running," said spokesman Craig Berman. "People are ordering and trucks are delivering." He would not speculate, however, on when the program would be expanded.

Microsoft's announcement that it will spend $1 billion to fix problematic Xbox 360s seemed like a step that would assuage disenchanted customers. Nearly a month later, however, some console owners are still less than pleased.

Taipei, Taiwan - July 31, 2007 - In Taiwan Top 20 Global Brand recognition ceremony in July 26, GIGABYTE was ranked Top 20 Global Brands by brand value according to the brand valuation project conducted by Interbrand for the 4th consecutive year.

Taiwan Global Brands is a project in its 5th year to provide top Taiwanese brands quantified values and strength adopting Interbrand's proprietary brand valuation method. The same methodology has also been used by Business Week Magazine to qualify the known Top 100 Global Brands.

Take-Two Interactive announced Thursday that Grand Theft Auto IV would not be released Oct. 18 for Sony's PlayStation 3 and Microsoft's Xbox 360 video game systems, as originally planned. Instead, the game will arrive in spring of 2008, "due to additional development time required to complete the title," the company said in a statement

In 2003, Advanced Micro Devices released 64-bit chips for PCs in the form of the Athlon 64, and Intel followed suit in 2005. But the software needed to take advantage of those chips is harder to find than a Beatles song on iTunes.

Several issues have contributed to the problem, but as seen in other transitions, device drivers always seem to be front and center. Drivers are a vexing piece of the PC puzzle. They're small bits of software needed to make sure devices like printers, DVD drives and graphics cards connect properly to PCs and Macs, and they can cause major problems if something goes wrong.

Microsoft is requiring those device manufacturers to develop 64-bit drivers if they want their devices to work with the 64-bit edition of Windows Vista, in an effort to ensure that device drivers are written to proper standards. But hardware vendors and application developers haven't wanted to take the time and effort to develop new software for an operating system that very few people use. As a result, 64-bit Windows software is hard to find, although Microsoft says the situation is improving.

This week's tragic collapse of the Interstate 35W Bridge in Minneapolis triggered another collapse of sorts: a jam-up of the cellular phone networks in the area. Bystanders and survivors tried to phone loved ones, only to find that they couldn't put the call through. So what's the solution? Two words: text messaging.

For some cell-phone users on the scene, the call-blocking was brutal: "Every tenth call I tried to make went through, and half of the successful ones had problems like not hearing the other end, dropping, or unusable quality," Charlie Demerjian wrote in The Inquirer.

His bottom line was that "the cell network is barely adequate for public use, and completely inadequate for mission-critical use."

The recall affects 284,000 Cyber Shot DSC-T5 cameras sold in the United States, Europe and China, and about 66,000 sold in Japan, Sony spokeswoman Ryoko Takagi said. Customers are advised to check the model and serial numbers of their cameras to see if they are among the affected products, the company said in a statement. The problem only affects cameras with numbers between 3500001 and 3574100.

U.S. customers can go to Sony's support Web site at http://esupport.sony.com for more information or call Sony support at 877-573-7669.

San Francisco (IDGNS) - Google has developed a prototype cell phone that could reach markets within a year, and plans to offer consumers free subscriptions by bundling advertisements with its search engine, e-mail, and Web browser software applications, according to a story published Thursday in The Wall Street Journal.

Google is showing the prototype to cell phone manufacturers and network operators as it continues to hone the technical specifications that will allow the phone to offer a better mobile Web browsing experience than current products, the story said.

The next wave will include a lot more robots and drones, and they'll be smarter and more autonomous than the current gear. They'll communicate better with each other and do more and more of the dangerous legwork now done by flesh-and-blood soldiers, and some of them will be as small as insects. Meanwhile, U.S. forces will start to field so-called directed-energy weapons: lasers that can shoot down incoming artillery rounds, and less-than-lethal "heat rays" designed to disperse crowds.

Are there people out there who really do pay full retail price for Microsoft Works? I find that very hard to believe — even at the pocket-money price tag of $39.95. Works is the low-end business software suite that gets bundled with new PCs. The manufacturers buy it at an OEM price of no more than a few dollars — an average of $2, to be precise, according to an internal Microsoft document that CNET reporters saw last year. The price is so low because Works has no real value.

Microsoft Works 9.0So I’m wondering why on earth anyone would pay to fund it with advertising? Unless of course that advertising had some knowledge of what the user’s doing, which raises all kinds of privacy concerns. Not so much ’software plus services’ as ’software plus spyware’. It’s one thing to serve contextual ads to someone while they’re searching the Web or reading their email on a hosted service, quite another to do it right there on their own private desktop.

MIAMI - A Japanese computer science student fails to take a full load of university classes and loses his student visa. A 10th-grade Indian girl is detained because of a high school essay she wrote on the Department of Homeland Security. These are two of the characters in "ICED!" — a new video game that invites players to step into the shoes of foreigners who run afoul of the U.S. immigration system.

It is part of a burgeoning genre of video games that examine major social and policy issues such as the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, the situation in Darfur and the Electoral College.

NEW YORK - It's been a year since Google Inc. launched its much-anticipated payment service, and I've been curious whether a company known best for its search engine can deliver a money service as good as industry leader PayPal.In many ways, I found Google Checkout much easier to use. I can pay for merchandise in fewer steps and more easily understand my account options. But the ultimate test is whether Checkout works with the tasks for which I've been using PayPal, and the answer is no.

Schwalbe, editor in chief of Hyperion Books, and David Shipley, deputy editorial page editor at The New York Times, have written “Send: The Essential Guide to Email for Office and Home,” (Knopf, $19.95; on the Web, http://www.thinkbeforeyousend.com).

It’s certainly not the first book on the topic.

“There are lots of books about e-mail writing skills, but we wanted to do something on people skills and e-mail, and how people treat each other when they e-mail,” Schwalbe said.

“E-mail is still relatively new in terms of other types of human communication,” he said. “Even at the height of letter-writing, I did not write 200 letters a day. And when I wrote a letter, I concentrated on it, and I had occasion to change my mind when I was writing it.

“But with e-mail — and many business people say they deal with 200 e-mails a day — we’re responding to it while we’re distracted, while we’re on the telephone or talking to others.

SEATTLE - Microsoft Corp. will delay the release of Office 2008 for Apple Inc.'s Macintosh computers until the middle of January 2008, in order to fix lingering bugs in the software.

The software maker previously said the new suite, which is to include Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint and the Entourage e-mail program, would go on sale sometime in the second half of 2007.

"It really is just a quality issue across the board," Craig Eisler, general manager of Microsoft's Macintosh business unit, said in an interview Wednesday.

NEW YORK (AP) -- A group representing thousands of taxi drivers said last week it will idle cabs in September if the city goes ahead with a plan to require installation of GPS tracking systems.

Starting October 1, as the city's 13,000 taxis come up for inspections they must have the GPS equipment along with touch-screen monitors that will let passengers pay by credit card, check on news stories and look up restaurant and entertainment information.

“Many companies, including Abit, has known for quite some time that HTPC systems of all kinds would soon be out there for the choosing. It's no surprise to see Abit systems paired up with many HTPC systems when you are configuring your components through E-tailers and Retailers alike. Abit has a new and aggressive look to their new flagship HTPC motherboard; the Fatality F-190HD.”

Fremont, CA (August 1, 2007) -- Corsair® http://www.corsair.com, a worldwide leader in high performance computer memory and peripheral components, today unveiled the environmentally friendly Corsair VX Series of power supplies. Designed and engineered for mainstream computer users, both the VX450W and VX550W supplies support the Energy Star 2007 Standard and feature the industry's most efficient power-management and ultra-quiet design available.

Unlike most power supplies in the market, the VX Series incorporates a single +12V power rail that delivers continuous power under heavy loads. This conservative design ensures reliable operation in today's most demanding system configurations and adds compatibility for future platforms. The unique combination of rock-solid performance and incredible value puts the Corsair VX family of power supplies in a class of its own. Available in 450Watt and 550Watt models, the VX Series is ideal for home theater PCs and Energy Star systems.

With Active Power Factor Correction (PFC) and 80% or more energy efficiency under a wide range of loading conditions, the PSU generates minimal heat during operation. In addition, the high quality thermally controlled double ball-bearing 120mm fan delivers excellent air flow with whisper quiet operation.

"Corsair has engineered a power supply that appeals to both the enthusiast as well as the cost conscious system builder," said Jack Peterson, VP of Marketing a Corsair. "We leveraged everything we learned from our award-winning HX Series of modular power supplies to build the most reliable, Eco-friendly value priced PSU in the market," continued Peterson.

The Corsair CMPSU-450VX (450 watt) and CMPSU-550VX (550 watt) are available immediately through Corsair's authorized distributors, resellers, retailers and e-tailers worldwide, priced at $85.99 USD MSRP and $99.99 USD MSRP respectively. Corsair's power supplies are backed by a 5-year Limited Warranty complete customer support via telephone, email, forum and TS Xpress troubleshooting guide. For more information on Corsair VX Series power supplies, please visit www.corsair.com/products/vx.aspx.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Sales plunged worse than expected at U.S. automakers in July, allowing import brands to overtake their domestic rivals for the first time, even as weak demand for autos spread to Asian and European manufacturers.

Combined, the U.S. automakers - General Motors, Ford Motor and the Chrysler Group unit that is being sold by DaimlerChrysler - reported a 19 percent decline in sales in July versus a year earlier, compared to single-digit declines or even modest gains reported by most overseas automakers in the period.

Our world, he said, has become freakishly quiet. "It's not noise pollution -- it's noise absence. And I find it almost more disturbing and upsetting than I did loud noise. It's sort of unnatural."

But in places and spaces where silence is golden -- planes, trains and office cubicles, for example -- even slightest thump-thump-thump of bass can feel like a violation

This update is only available through iTunes, and will not appear in your computer's Software Update application, or on the Apple Support Downloads site. Make sure you have an Internet connection and have installed the latest version of iTunes from (www.apple.com/itunes).

The Logitech G9 Laser Mouse takes customization to a new level giving PC gamers the ability to modify every part of the G9 mouse for the best personal fit, feel and performance- interchangeable grips, on-board memory profiling system, custom-color LED and more.

Also, Logitech unveils an upgrade to the popular Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard - now with native support from the most popular games for its exclusive GamePanelT LCD screen, a backlighted 160 by 43 pixel screen that gives gamers critical information during game time.