Rumor: Diablo III and Xbox 360 Price Cuts on the Way

Even though the news hasn't been confirmed by both parties, two separate rumors have hit the internet. The first one involves a sequel to long-time fan favorite series, Diablo. The third game in the franchise, which has been all but confirmed. According to DiabloII.net, they have acquired information about the game's announcement from "insider sources." Blizzard also purchased the domain diablo3.com, and "Diablo III General Discussion" forum has appeared on the Battle.net.

Blizzard design VP Rob Pardo revealed that the company does intend to announce a new title at the event at this weekend's Blizzard Worldwide Invitiational in Paris, but declined to offer further details... Moreover, Diablo fan website DiabloII.net reports that Blizzard's game announcement will be Diablo III, the long-awaited next title in Blizzard's hack-and-slash RPG series.

Finally, in a bit of unrelated news, a K-Mart circular has hit the internet advertising a $299.99 Xbox 360 Premium. There was speculation about Microsoft dropping the price of the 360 during E3, but it's possible the company might make the move a week earlier to compete with the PS3.

Sources: Shacknews, Slickdeals

Flashy Websites Annoy Users

Even though this is sort of a no-brainer, SDL Tridion, a web content management firm polled users for their opinion on the most annoying and most frustrating web experience. It may be hard to believe, but pop up ads came at the top of the list, along with "long introductions to web sites that cannot be turned off, the requirement to download new applications to view elements of a page, and a requirement to hand over a lot of personal information just to access company details."

A good example, in my mind, would be a promotional site for a cell phone. Sprint's page for the Samsung Instinct, and RIM's page for the BlackBerry Bold are both Flash based, but offer little in the ways of actual information or content. Yeah, I want to know the specs on the newest phone, but do I really have to sit for the transitions on the Flash

I'm curious, however, to what exactly denotes "clean" web design. Clearly, users prefer style with substance, but the actual science behind good web design can be the difference of making a good first impression or keeping a customer, or reader in our case. There are studies and principle on the case, but design is subjective in a lot of ways.

Web content management firm SDL Tridion has released the results of its research into what elements of web site design most turn off internet users, coming in top is pop up advertising. Seventy-eight percents of respondents said that this type of advertising was the most frustrating web experience, complaining that ads appeared at inappropriate times and were difficult to get rid off.

Source: vnunet, Via: Neowin

Dell Releases New Studio Laptops

Even though the notebooks have been leaked before, Dell just officially announced the availability of their newest consumer-based notebook line. The new line offers a refreshed look, more customizability, and, interestingly enough, new applications.

The first new program to be included is Dell Video Chat, a sort of Skype and iChat competitor. The second is a Leopard-inspired Dell Dock application, which puts icons in a dock (hence the name) at the top of the window for easy access. There's little telling weather or not these programs will actually be of use and efficient, or just more bloatware we've come to expect from manufacturers, but it's a nice change to see a company try to move forward and give more to their customers.

The new notebooks are available now, and Notebook Review has a review of the 17" model, with a video highlighting its features.

Source: Dell

"The Last HOPE" Conference in NY Next Month

Ahh, the summer is here, and the next two months hold some great conferences and trade shows, such as the Intel Developer Forum, NVISION and the first ASUS Republic of Gamers convention. But that's far from all. One I'll be attending next month is HOPE, or Hackers on Planet Earth.

This conference takes place bi-annually in New York City, at the historic Hotel Pennsylvania. That hotel is set to meet its grim fate next year, as it will be torn down to make more room for, get this... a new office building! So, this is the last conference to be held there, hence the theme, "The Last Hope".

For those unaware, HOPE is a conference that's sole purpose is to inform. All of the keynotes and workshops revolve around hacking in some regard, and it's almost impossible to find a subject here you will not be interested in. Of course, we all know that hacking doesn't always equal evil, but rather is a great hobby that involves learning and tinkering - both very good things.

For a list of all the talks, check out the complete list of official ones. Some notable speakers are Steve Rambam, Mitch Altman, Adam Savage and Steven Levy, but there are countless other great speakers and topics scheduled as well. If anyone here is planning to make the conference, feel free to post in the thread, and perhaps we could meet up!

There will be three days and nights of speakers along with all sorts of activities to keep you entertained and enlightened. We have a tremendous amount of space for us to make use of and it's all right in the middle of the city, across the street from Penn Station. You still have time to get involved in this historic event, whether by attending, volunteering, speaking, or creating something new that none of us have thought of yet.

Source: The Last HOPE

NVIDIA's PhysX Drivers Under Fire

NVIDIA is the target of a lot of backlash the past week, since releasing updated PhysX drivers that optimize higher-end GPUs to handle the workload. The drivers themselves aren't the problem, but rather inflated 3DMark Vantage scores. Because the benchmark utilizes PhysX libraries in a few tests, adding in acceleration can increase the overall score by a fair margin, putting NVIDIA cards right into the leaderboards.

In a normal system, the algorithms are sent straight to the processor, and as you are probably aware, the processor isn't so good for specific calculations like this, whereas the GPU excels, and that's evident by running this test. Many are calling NVIDIA cheaters, but I think they are far from it. The physics calculations have just shifted from the CPU to the GPU, where they calculate faster.

Why people care so much about high 3DMark scores is beyond me, but what many are overlooking is the fact that this driver not only inflates what is apparently the most important number in computing, but it also opens up PhysX capabilities in any of the games that support it, including Unreal Tournament III. I gave this a quick test last night and was impressed. Finally, cool physics done from a GPU in a game people actually play.

Right now it's limited to higher-end GPUs, and from quick tests, I believe it might be due to the amount of processing power the physics actually need. I'll be testing it more, and report further when I have a few findings. If you have a 9800 GTX or GTX 260 / 280, feel free to give them a go.

During the benchmark install, a runtime library is updated to allow the test to run on the GPU and then during the test, it addresses the benchmark DLLs to the GPU instead of the PPU or CPU. Nothing within the benchmark is changed at all. No software libraries or even a line of code changes in the benchmark whatsoever. The only thing that changes is that installer, nothing else.

Source: HotHardware

June 26th Tech Roundup

Motherboards & Processors
• AMD Phenom X3 8750 - Digit-Life
• ASUS Crosshair II Formula - Overclockers Club

Displays & Video Cards
• AMD Radeon HD 4870 and HD 4850 - PC Perspective
• HIS Radeon HD 4870 CrossFire - Legit Reviews

Memory & Storage
• Thecus N3200 RAID 5 NAS - TweakNews
• Western Digital Velociraptor - Computer ShopperP

Peripherals & Gadgets
• Logitech G15 Revision 2 Keyboard - Big Bruin

Cooling
• ZEROtherm Zen FZ120 - Gaming Nexus

Chassis & Power Supplies
• In Win PowerMan Commander 1200W - Think Computers

Competitions, Complete Systems & Et cetera
• Contest: 200,000 Visitors Celebration - Benchmark Reviews
• Ubuntu MID Edition 8.04 - Phoronix