Content and news by Rob Williams

If you have hopes of owning a stable Xbox 360, your chances may be improved with the new Halo 3 edition, which features a 65nm CPU and lighter heatsink. It seems to be the only major change to the system though, but it could be the one that really helps patch things up as far as reliability is involved. Whether or not this will make the RROD a rare occurance is yet to be seen, but at least Microsoft seems to be headed down the right path.

Strangely, the chip that makes the move to 65nm in “Falcon” affects only the CPU, rather than the trouble-causing GPU. Of course, making the CPU at 65nm is also a cost-cutting measure for Microsoft, as the chip will be smaller and 50 percent less expensive to manufacture. Without moving the GPU to 65nm, however, it is impossible to know if the new “Falcon” models are still at risk of the Red Ring of Death.

Source: DailyTech

Things don’t seem to be going well for NCsoft Korea as of late, with much angst towards CEO, Kim Taek-jin. The past few months in particular haven’t been smooth sailing, as many employees are leaving and internal scandals occurring, but Tabula Rasa’s release may be able to bring them out of the ditch they are beginning to fall into. That game might be the reason it’s happening at all though, according to Korea Times.

Other than the financial overload, the “Tabula Rasa” project was one of the big reasons many employees of NCsoft lost their confidence in CEO Kim. He hired Richard Garriott and his brother Robert Garriott in 2001 by allegedly paying 16 billion won ($17 million) in cash and 1.5 million shares in stock options, worth 50 billion won. But the brothers failed to deliver the product as promised, and the project has been protracted for six years.

Source: Kotaku

The music industry has stepped on people for far too long, and it’s not only the customer who is affected. Radiohead is taking a stand, and advantage of the fact that they have no current contract with any record label. Their latest album, In Rainbows, which has been in the works for over two years, will be released only through the official album site.

Interestingly, if you wish to purchase a downloadable version of the album, you are the one whose left in choosing a price. This is a solid idea since fans will obviously not feel right by ripping off one of their favorite bands and also attempts to prove a point to the music industry. We need to see more of this… a lot more.

This is major, and it’s such a slap in the record industry’s face. An unsigned superband, treating loyal fans and customers like loyal fans and customers instead of thieves — what a revolutionary concept.

Source: Boing Boing

In our final portion of DigitalLife coverage, we take a look at Gateway’s new 30-inch monitor that you do want to see, Toshiba’s latest X205 SLI-configured notebook, ooma’s “free” VoIP solution, Gyration’s latest media remote and even more photos from around the show floor.

In our first part, we take a look at Polk Audio’s new I-Sonic ES 2, R2-D2 projector and webcam, Dell’s latest XPS notebooks with AGEIA’s PhysX physics processor and Xyber’s high-end and totally silent HTPC. There are also a slew of various photos from around the show-floor, including triple Alyx Vance’s!

We caught up with AGEIA at DigitalLife to see what’s new and were surprised to see that some big announcements have been made, including inclusion of their PhysX PPU in Dell’s latest XPS M1730 notebooks. We also take UT3 and Warmonger for a spin and give our thoughts.

After months of speculation, Gateway finally unveiled their One “all-in-one” PC. Once out of the box, all that’s required to get up and running is a single power cord. We had an opportunity to take a good look at the machine today and relay our thoughts here.

Although Showstoppers had only 32 exhibitors, we found many cool products to write about. Included in this article are quick looks at the wireless speaker lamp, Eye Clops, Iomega’s 3TB NAS, magicJACK and much more.

We knew this was going to happen, but I personally expected it to happen a lot sooner. Amazon has launched their DRM-Free music store, tentatively called “Amazon MP3“. Creative, huh? But who cares if it’s creative, because it’s one step closer to DRM-Free music truly catching on. Amazon sells each song for $0.99, while iTunes sells their DRM-Free tracks for $1.29. It’s not currently known whether or not Amazon embeds user information into each song, however.

If you are looking for full albums, you can sort results by price or genre, with albums beginning at under $5. At quick glance, the store seems to be missing a lot of my favorite punk bands, and if they are there, it’s only one or two songs. Hopefully their collection will fill out as time passes.

It goes without saying that Amazon is aiming squarely at Apple, and it’s attempting to hit the digital music monopoly where it hurts–with regard to pricing, file quality, and versatility, all of which have come under scrutiny by critics. But this could also be a painful blow for eMusic, the online music store that has made a small name for itself by selling exclusively DRM-free music.

Source: News.com

As we mentioned yesterday, we will be reporting from the DigitalLife conference happening in New York, beginning tonight. However, the conference begins officially on Thursday and runs through Sunday. Unlike CES and other popular conferences, DL is open to both the press and public, so if you are in the area, you can pony up some cash and visit the show floor just like we are.

There are events on the side though, such as Showstoppers that we will be attending this evening. Once finished exploring there, I will scurry back to the hotel and write up all of what I saw there. It shouldn’t be that difficult given that there are only 30 exhibitors, but there may very well be some notable products and announcements. Regardless, stay tuned as we will be updating the site with content from the show.

DigitalLife – the consumer electronics and entertainment event of the year – invites consumers of every interest and age to experience the latest in digital technology by exploring hundreds of interactive and hands-on exhibits geared to educate, entertain, inspire, and support adoption of the digital lifestyle.

Source: DigitalLife

According to the official Playstation blog, PS3 consoles working together crunching for the Folding@home project have just hit the 1 Petaflop mark, a truly incredible feat for a console that’s been out for less than a year. The Cell processor may not be that ideal for computer use at this point in time, but it really makes a great folder.

As can be seen from the stats page over at Stanford, PS3 consoles are delivering 1020 TFLOPS (that’s over 1 Petaflop) from 41,145 participants. I’d like to encourage people that really want to learn more about what Stanford’s doing with Folding@home to read the project director’s blog. He recently blogged about how processors such as the Cell/B.E. can produce that much work for the Folding@home project.

Source: Playstation Blog

Toshiba is a company known for their high-end and top-quality products, but their new X205 notebooks really look to set a standard as far as gaming goes. Equipped are dual GeForce 8600M GT graphic cards with 512MB dedicated video ram. The notebook also includes an HD-DVD drive, 2.0GHz T7250 C2D, 17-inch monitor and more. The smaller model of the two retails for $2,000 while the faster model retails for $2,400. I am hoping that Toshiba has these on display at DigitalLife later this week…

Toshiba looks to be doing its best to make it’s high-end X200 series laptops even more attractive to gamers, with its latest X205 models sporting SLI graphics courtesy of NVIDIA, among other upgrades. That desirable option is available in both the X205-SLI1 and X205-SLI3 models, each of which pack dual NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT GPUs, with a combined 512MB of dedicated video RAM.

Source: Engadget

Who saw this one coming? According to TechDirt, a man is being detained in Houston claims that both Google and Yahoo! stole their names from Tanzanian tribes, which go by Gogo and Yao. He’s asking that both companies award $10,000 to each member of the tribes, going back three generations. Will this lawsuit go anywhere? Probably not, but it’s humorous regardless. At this point though, I am really hoping that there are no Tec Ga tribes out there anywhere.

Not that the guy doesn’t try: “The court is now been asked to answer a common sense question: Is “Google” much more related, semantically and lexically, with “Gogo” or with “Googol”?” Once again, the chance of this lawsuit getting anywhere is basically nil (even if they had taken their names from the tribes, which they clearly did not), but as Goldman points out to us: “There is, of course, a serious problem here about the courts getting clogged up with lawsuits brought by prisoners/detainees with too much time on their hands and nothing to do but file lawsuits, and companies having to spend money to stomp out these lawsuits.”

Source: TechDirt

With news coming out of Apple the other day regarding unlocked iPhones, we knew that ideas and solutions would pop up rather quickly. The best solution? Re-locking your iPhone. Of course this means that you will be back at square-one, but it also means that you will not void your iPhone’s warranty. The good news is that when the upcoming update is applied, there’s little chance of cracker groups not coming up with a solution within days.

The unlock hacks are not undone by a full software store; the re-lock process is still in flux and comes with the appropriate warnings to users until finalized, allows users to restore their phone, so Apple’s forthcoming update — due later this week — does not render it inoperable: “It is believed the above proceedure will relock your iPhone and prevent it from being made permanently unusable by the upcoming firmware update. There is no gaurantee [sic], however, and I take no responsibility for your iPhone if the above procedures do not work for you and your iPhone gets hosed.”

Source: macnn

Ouch. That’s all that can be said about Vonage’s orders to pay out $69.5 million and royalties on future revenues to Sprint. This is due to the fact that Vonage infringed on six telecommunication patents that are owned by Sprint. Considering Vonage is not that large of a company, such a fine is massive and will no doubt set them back. They are not likely to die off anytime soon though, as their customer base seems to be universally pleased with the service they are receiving.

“We are disappointed that the jury did not recognize that our technology differs from that of Sprint’s patents,” said Sharon O’Leary, chief legal officer for Vonage. “Our top priority is to provide high-quality, reliable digital phone service to our customers.” Matt Sullivan, a spokesman for Reston, Va.-based Sprint, which has operational headquarters in Overland Park, Kan., said the company was “extremely pleased” with the verdict.

Source: Yahoo! News

After many months of being in the beta stages, Window Vista’s Dreamscene technology has finally been released as a stable version. For those unaware, Dreamscene allows you to run a video as your desktop instead of a wallpaper. Are you as impressed as I am? It’s sad that this is really the only “Extra” that Vista Ultimate users can acquire. Unless you count all 30 language packs.

As most of you already know, Windows DreamScene transforms your desktop from a static wallpaper image into a full-motion video. In conjunction with Stardock, we’re pleased to also offer a number of cool, new animated DreamScene desktops, including “Aurora”. Additionally, you can use your own videos as DreamScene desktops or visit Stardock’s Dream.WinCustomize.com website to download Stardock’s DeskScapes (an add-on to DreamScene) as well as a collection of fabulous content created by Stardock and members of the Ultimate community.

Source: Windows Ultimate

Just a note that Techgage will be at this weeks DigitalLife conference in New York and we will be posting content throughout the entire conference of what we find out there. Although the event is not chock-full of product announcements like CES and other trade-shows are, there should be a few, and if not, then there should be enough to look at to make up for it.

If you happen to live in the NY area and want to attend yourself, you can check out the website here and purchase tickets that way. If you are not planning to go but would like to know about something specific that’s being shown there, feel free to shoot me an e-mail and I will see what I can do!

DigitalLife – the consumer electronics and entertainment event of the year – invites consumers of every interest and age to experience the latest in digital technology by exploring hundreds of interactive and hands-on exhibits geared to educate, entertain, inspire, and support adoption of the digital lifestyle.

Source: DigitalLife

The road to X38 has been a long one, but it’s only a matter of a few more weeks before embargo lifts and products will be readily available. Some e-tailers have already been offering a few X38 models over the past few weeks, but all are still bound to consist of problems, since BIOS updates are constantly being released.

Oddly enough, the X38 platform will be offered with a 1333FSB, while 1600FSB processors will be released the following month. It’s not unlikely that the first X38 boards on the market will offer BIOS updates to make 1600FSB a stock option, but it’s strange why Intel didn’t just wait to release X38 at the same time as Penryn and just offer both with 1600FSB.

Intel circulated a memo over the weekend detailing the new embargo details with a “firm” release date of October 10, 2007. However, the company has a history of lifting embargos early. Furthermore, some X38 motherboards are, and have been, available in the retail channel for the better part of September. These motherboards certainly need BIOS updates, but do not physically differ from the boards expected to launch on October 10.

Source: DailyTech

I’m no experienced thief, nor do I aspire to be, but if I were to steal a slew of computers, I’m quite sure I’d be smart enough to wipe the hard-drives before turning them on. According to a story at BoingBoing, an unnamed individual (and perhaps others) stole a slew of iMac computers from an office in British Columbia. Little did he know, one of the machines was set up to auto-upload images to a Flickr account, making him one of the most popular people on the internet right now.

Note that this might not be the thief, but he could rather be one of the people who purchased one of the stolen computers. Even then, chances are if you purchase stolen merchandise… you know very well that it’s stolen. The big question is, does this guy even know that he is all over the internet?

Last week a number of computers were stolen from our office in Vancouver, BC. One of those computers was a shared iMac with Flickrbooth, an app that automatically uploads photo booth shots to our flickr account, installed on it. Just this morning a friend called to tell us that there are photos of whoever has the computer now in our flickr stream! Obviously the guy didn’t know he was uploading images of himself and his awesome tattoos.

Source: Boing Boing

This is one of those stories that comes as absolutely no surprise. AnywhereCD had good intentions, though. They sold you a music CD and also allowed you to download the MP3s of all of the songs on the album right away, so that you could listen while you wait for the actual hard-copy to hit your door. I am not sure who this type of service would really appeal to, but what killed it was the lack of overall support. If you want some music on the cheap, they are having an “everything must go” sale, with all CD’s priced at $7.

Online music retailer AnywhereCD is closing down within the next few days. The online retailer took a different approach toward music sales than pretty much anybody else around. The company’s business model was based around selling CDs and throwing in free MP3 downloads. Or maybe it was the other way around.

Source: Download Squad