Taking some inspiration perhaps from Apple’s old round mouse, this Greenhouse one is pretty much the same, except it’s texture is similar to a golf ball’s (which might make it uncomfortable after a while), and has the obligatory scroll wheel.

I think the device would have had more appeal if a bit more care had been put into the end details of the mouse pad. That plastic flag makes it look…. well, in a word, cheap. Though I guess that for a golf fan, it would be a nice thing to have, or a nice thing to receive as an offer.

[Via Akihabaranews]

This new addon takes advantage of PCIexpress to bring great 3D performance to laptops without gaming-oriented graphics card and 5.1 audio surround. The graphics card is an Nvidia 8600GT, which should be enough for more gamers.

As detailed as the original article is they failed to mention the price, nor can I find it on Asus’ announcement. So I guess we’ll have to wait a few more days to find out how much they will be selling it for.

Google Sites is an online software that allows you to create websites in a matter of seconds by choosing from  a pre-made template, and deciding who may visit the website and what content, or what type of content you can publish on each page.

I’ll be blunt, I think that the default templates could be much nicer than they currently are. If a less-famous company was releasing a similar service with templates such as this one they would certainly be criticized for it, still, the integration with Google Calendar, and consequently other Google services, like Picasa, make this online software worthwhile.

In one of the examples shown in the homepage, you can see an example Project homepage, and I do think that is certainly one of the better uses for it.

Microsoft has midterm contracts with the state in Hungary for “way cheaper than from the store” Campus-licences. This costs billions (in HUF, 160HUF=1USD) for the state and makes students stuck in the Microsoft-world, not knowing Linux etc.

Just goes to show how Microsoft remains top-gun in the Operating System market. I’m certain that Hungary aren’t the first, nor the last, country with similar contracts with Microsoft. You can watch the original video on Gizmodo.

If you’re a Pokemon fan, own a DS, and still haven’t gotten your hands on the newest ones, then this should be the perfect opportunity to do so. Sure, the game is more of the same, but it’s the best iteration so far. Plus, being American/European has great advantages like being able to trade Pokemons named Pikachu for rare or legendary Japanese ones (they get them simply for the sake of different letters).

Now you know readers, if you own Ruby or Diamond, farm those Pikachus and do thorough searches in the trade channel.

So without further a do, and after the Tsunami of news (and most people who were interested in the game have played it for more than a couple of days) I bring you the world’s most beloved troll game reviewer his opinion on one of the year’s biggest games.

But it looks like not all Beta testers have the same luck. Last September Microsoft launched the first beta for the next Windows Live client which brought a few useful features to the client, but nothing revolutionary. Features wise, Live Messenger is a few generations behind other clients like Yahoo Messenger and Trillian. And some features we take for granted in most IMs like Tabbed chatting.

“The first Windows Live Messenger 9.0 Beta build was released in November 2007. The release brought the ability to sign into Messenger from up to four computers at once, the ability to choose customized sounds for your sign-in and for your contacts, URLs in Personal Status Messages, and Animated Display Pictures. However, features requested across the many Messenger programs such as Tabbed Conversations and the ability to decline a group conversation invite were nowhere to be seen.”

Microsoft aims to become the most popular IM client, but it saddens me to see them giving the testers the silent treatment. If they want to have limited Beta testing periods, for a select few users, to gain better PR and help improve the product doesn’t this treatment contradict what Beta testing should be about?

The game seems to be closed inside tower levels, where players will be constricted by walls, but will have access to an immensely large level to explorer and complete each challenge. The new “thing” of this Banjo Kazooie is vehicle construction. You’ll be able to build wacky vehicles that can drive, jump and even fly over obstacles. And that should add some depth to the rather plain vehicle sections that most modern platformers include.

[Source: Kotaku]

It actually looks decent. The costume isn’t too modern, nor too traditional, and I think that the hair stylists did a great job in recreating Goku’s gravity defying hairstyle.

Maybe it’s just my inner fanboy speaking for actually seeing something being produced and shown to the fans. Even if this ends up being the biggest flop ever, I’ll certainly be on the front lines of the theaters.

[Source: Dragonball the movie Blog]

Engadget recently had the opportunity to play a bit with the new Touch and they were quite happy with it, particularly with the VGA screen which is twice as many pixels as most PDAs in the market today. And although I didn’t mention this enough yesterday, this is definitely the best looking Windows Mobile PDA I’ve ever seen. It’s slick, shinny and the interface since much nicer, which is great because it goes perfectly with the device.

And now a video of the device in action:

Another feature that wasn’t mentioned yesterday was that the device has, like the iPhone, has an accelerometer that allows it to act differently depending on the movements you make with the device. You can see a video of the accelerometer in action at the original article.

Even though I’ve never listened to any albums of theirs before, only assorted singles, I found the album surprisingly good with a nice variety of songs and themes. Some are lyrical, others are more instrumental, others are more computerized, but overall, it’s an above average album and I recommend it to anyone who likes alternative/industrial rock.

You can download it from Nine Inch Nail’s official website, simply by entering your e-mail to get the link.

The problem I found with switching from one to the other is that while on PVP you have resilience and crit, on PVE you have stats, haste, expertise, etc. And all of those affect your damage differently, and depending on the stat, it might make a world of difference.

Thankfully, I found a website that gives the exact answers to what should be your next upgrades, and you’ll be surprised to find out how many great items you can get without the need of endgame raiding. For example, for a Plate-wearing damage dealer, such as myself, I discovered that the second best DPS belt in the game can be crafted by blacksmiths, and the mats aren’t impossible to acquire. In fact, they’re quite easy.

If you are interested in boosting your DPS in World of Warcraft you’ll find that maxdps.com is an excellent resource and obligatory bookmark.

The first HTC Touch was largely consider by many the Microsoft answer to the iPhone. Although it didn’t live up to the hype of Apple’s device, it was an above average device, and since Apple isn’t in any hurry to unveil the highly anticipated 3G model, now is a great time to announce a new device.

Here are the Diamond’s specifications:

* Windows Mobile 6.1
* VGA Screen
* Quad-band HSDPA 7.2
* One-touch navigation, including single-finger dialing
* An accelerometer that rotates pictures as you rotate the phone
* One-touch music playback with an animated music browser
* A heavily-animated weather forecast app
* Full-featured desktop-like web browser (Opera) with zoom-in tech that actually reformats to fit the screen upon zoom, although Microsoft promises IE 6 coming soon for it
* Youtube app and content playback
* Available in June in Europe via Orange and the “rest of the world” sometime later
* Orange music store, games, wallpapers, and ringtone downloads
* Orange mobile TV with up to 61 channels
* No normal headphone jack – gotta use HTC’s proprietary USB dongle
* “Better battery life” than their other devices (although it uses a smaller battery than the Touch – we’ll keep our eye on this) — will offer a bigger battery at a later time for those who are experiencing battery life issues
* No pricing info just yet

This mobile device won’t having me running to the shelves to purchase it, but it’s certainly better to see a sophisticated device getting a sophisticated look, rather than the “plastic look” most Windows Mobile devices have.

Team Fortress 2 was one of the online gaming franchises that received the most uplifting facelift yet. The game was thoroughly balanced, the comedy factor was increased, and a few new game modes were enabled, so you weren’t always running after flags all the time.

With this weekend, Valve decided to promote it’s flagship multiplayer game by allowing players to experience it fully for 2 days, which not only debut a new map/mod called Goldrush, but also debut the new unlockable items for the Medic class which become available when 30/60 or 90% of the game’s achievements are unlocked.

I logged in to play the game just a shortwhile ago and I have to say they weren’t the funnest games I’ve played so far. On the server I was on, a lot of players end up switching to the Heavy class in order to counter the exaggerated number of doctors on the opposing team. In any case, if you ever wanted to give this game a try, tomorrow is the right day to do so.

Now you’re telling us XP support will not end, and we’ll continue to receive security and bug fixes and they’ll continue to provide support for companies who acquired extended support contracts with M$.

This means that Microsoft might continue to provide updates and support for XP until 2009

As time went by, Grisoft greatly improved their product that went from a very basic anti-virus that provided protection only the simplest, or most obvious, of viruses to a much more solid security program that does most of the things Norton or any other’s AV programs do without consuming 20% (or more) of your computer resources.

Version 8 now includes built-in protection against Trojan horses. Although I still prefer to use a dedicated program like Spybot for that type of malware, this should help protect my friend’s/family’s computers against these annoying programs that seriously gimp their PC’s performance and compromise their security.

If you are looking for a lightweight Anti-Virus I recommend you try out AVG 8 free, and then purchase one of their software packages with added security if you like it.

You can download it from here.

This new version allows you to use the Office Communications Server 2007 for video audio/chat, but I’m guessing that very few of you will ever use that service. On the other hand, some new features which you are likely to use include: editing your contact’s names, and searching for contacts using the new search field on the contact list.

The blog entry regarding this new version announces that they will be including AV chat support as soon as possible. If they want to gain a respectable number of users from the Mac community they’d better fix some of the issues the program has and bring the features which users already expect from any modern IM.

If you’re interested, you can download the new version from here.

Unlike Sp2, this upgrade doesn’t bring as many changes to the interface, as most things are done under the hood. It features a very large amount of bug fixes, improves connectivity a bit, but only large corporations will really take advantage of that.

Amazingly, I was unable to find a dedicated page for SP3 to give you more details, but essentially that’s what you’ll find. It’s sad to see Microsoft through away an Operating System like XP, which is quite stable and efficient, to bring some young and “immature” OS like Vista.

You can download the Stand-alone installer for SP3 from here, or get it from Windows Update (although localized versions will probably have to wait a bit longer).

If any of you install SP3, feel free to share your opinions/experiences with us.

This new laptop will have either an 8.9″ or a 10″ LED lit LCD screen, a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 80GB of HDD, 1GB of RAM and a 1.3 Megapixel camera. Compared to the Asus, it has much more capacity, but on the other hand, it uses a standard hard drive.

It will come with Windows XP pre-loaded, so it will at the very best, be as cheap as the Asus EEE. Even so, for these devices, I think that a flash-based hard drive is a much better choice.

It’s the iPod vs iPod Nano battle again, except this time they are bigger machines fighting for domination. Given how well the Nano sold, I think it’s safe to say that for portable devices, people will choose the device with the best portability. But I don’t doubt for a single second that this MSI will also sell well, if it’s priced correctly.

In an attempt to bring back this old/new type of social-networking, Microsoft is beta testing a new Live Messenger functionality called “Messenger Groups“.

Groups allows you to create a virtual chatroom that will always be available for those who wish to join it, or those you wish to invite. You’re not obligated to join it, but getting in is as easy and double clicking a contact on your friend list.

I tried out this new functionality just now with a few friends, and it works well enough. It’s not perfect, but good enough for small groups of friends.

I don’t see this generating large social communities, because it seems much better suited for small groups. And since you can only have two moderators at one time (the creator and the administrator), it would be almost impossible to moderate a large group of people.

This is definitely a step in the right direction, and if it evolves properly, it could very well be the thing that sets Messenger apart from all of the other IMs out there. I, for one, am happy to see Microsoft developing something for it’s messaging client that doesn’t focus on bringing them more income, or annoying it’s users (nudges anyone?).

Taking a page from Apple’s iMac, this computer includes everything you’d expect to find in a bulky box besides (or underneath) the monitor, inside the monitor itself.

Here are the machine’s specifications:

this 16” (1366×768 ) wide PC features an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU T8100 (2.1GHz) with 2GB of RAM (Max 4GB), 250GB of SATA HDD, an Intel X3100 graphic chipset, Wifi B/G, and Bluetooth.

It’s not an ideal machine for games since it does not include a very powerful graphics card. It is however ideal for company receptions, where looks matter, or for people who want a simple Windows computer but don’t want to deal with the wire-clutter that comes with it.

* RTM (release to manufacturing) Apr – 21st
* OEM Channel Apr – 21st
* Windows Update Apr – 29th
* Download Centre Apr – 29th
* MSDN/Technet Download May – 02nd
* Windows XP SP3 Fulfillment Media May – 19th
* VL Customers via download Jun – 01st
* Automatic Updates Jun – 10th

The post that had these dates was brought down shortly afterwards, so I reckon it’s safe to say that these dates are credible.

Even so, no matter how I look at it, it makes little, if any, sense at all to release the latest major update to the world’s most used Operating System, so close to the release date of Vista SP1, which they are having enough problems with.

[Via Neowin]

Here are the specifications:

- Intel Core 2 Duo running up to 2.5GHz (T9300) with base models using the T8100 (2.1GHz)
- Intel PM965 Express Chipset
- Supports up to 4GB of DDR2 667MHz SDRAM
- 17-inch WUXGA LCD panel (not LED)
- Blu-ray drive with DVD burning
- Intel HD Audio chip (Azalia)
- GigE Ethernet
- Intel 4965AGN WiFi (PRO/Wireless 3945ABG optional)
- Built in 1.3MP camera
- Built in 4 Altec Lansing speakers (with 1 subwoofer)
- Support for Dolby Home Theater
- HDMI out
- DVI out
- e-SATA out

Given that it comes from Asus, which is a quality, trustworthy brand, I’d say that this is probably one of the best desktop replacements you can get. But it’s a shame that they couldn’t get an Nvidia or Ati in it.

I reckon that they needed the extra room for the hard-drive and to keep the laptop’s price down, but if that weren’t the case, this laptop would probably beat many modern desktops today.

Still, it was smart of Asus to release this laptop now, rather than later, because according to the ongoing rumors, Apple should be updating it’s laptop lineup with brand new models very soon.

[Via Akihabaranews]

Besides being able with the two incredibly popular characters you’ll also be able to fight in at least one scene from the original movies: the Death Star. With this said, it’s safe to say that any self-respecting fan of Lucas Art’s high-tech milking cow will surely pick this game up, as it should provide much better action sequences than all of the previous first/third person adventures from them.

English of the Dead is a modified House of the Dead in which you have to type the missing letters on some english words that are pronounced by the console and written in a square (in Japanese of course).

It even has a trailer, as wacky as most Japanese game trailers are, with some memorable quotes and moments like the one just in the beginning:

“Come on, friend.
Write or I’ll bite!”

Regardless of how good or bad this game ends up being, the amusing trailer certainly lit up my day.