Content and news by Rob Williams

Looking for a comfortable keyboard, but don’t want to go the way of the ergo? Logitech’s latest Wave keyboard is catering to you. The keys are laid out in a “Wave” pattern to contour to your hands and a palm-rest is added for additional comfort. Have Logitech come up with a winner?

So you just picked up a fresh iMac and have no idea what the heck to install. No worries, as this is the reason “BestMacSoftware” exists. This website has one purpose… to tell you what you should be downloading and installing. I don’t even use a Mac, but I can tell this is a great list, since many applications are also available for Linux. Included is VLC (of course), Quicksilver (which we looked at here), Miro video player, Handbreak video-ripping, Parallels and so much more.

Best Mac Software .com is a simple list of applications that will make almost every Mac user really, really happy. We aren’t trying to be a complete listing of every mac app, and there are obviously some hugely significant pieces of Mac software (like Final Cut Pro) that aren’t included, usually because of their cost or their specificity. We made this page to be a handy reference for all the folks who are buying new Macs and don’t know about all the great stuff that doesn’t come pre-installed.

Source: BestMacSoftware

If you enjoy sports to a large degree, you’ve probably pondered owning a team. Sure it’s just a dream for most of us, but what a great dream it would be. The problem? You don’t have that kind of money, but startup MyFootballClub wants to change that. The idea is that enough money is gathered to purchase an English soccer team and have thousands of “owners”. To get in, you pay £35 ($69USD) and once the team is bought, you are officially a club co-co-co-(recurring)-owner.

I am a big fan of English soccer, especially the Premier League, but in my opinion, this has bad idea written all over it. All you need to do is pay attention to any sporting forum to know that opinions can differ vastly. How will this be combated? It will be mighty difficult with THAT many owners. So with that, it seems like more of a joke than anything, but I’m hoping to be proven wrong. It’s an interesting concept, I’ll give it that.

The legal side is fairly simple. Contributors become members of the MyFootballClub Trust for £35 ($69). £27.50 goes towards purchasing a soccer club, buying new players and other club expenditure with the remaining £7.50 going towards administration. The Trust will acquire a soccer club only on the basis that the purchase provides a controlling stake (51%+) of the club and where the club is either debt free or has a manageable level of debt.

Source: TechCrunch

I’ve been accused of being a Vista-basher in the past, many times. I agree, sometimes I rant and rave about how much I dislike the new OS way too much. But it’s too difficult to keep my mouth shut when many other people are doing the same thing. The latest ‘victim’? Jim Louderback joined PC Magazine in 2002 as Editor in Chief and has just stepped down because of his distaste for Vista.

He mentions, “So why, nine months after launch, am I so frustrated? The litany of what doesn’t work and what still frustrates me stretches on endlessly.” I agree. Vista has been out since the beginning of the year, and when I go to install it, it is STILL as buggy as it was last year when I first installed the RTM. Microsoft doesn’t seem to be pushing too hard to have things fixed, or pushing for anything it seems. Nine months later, and Ultimate owners still have nothing to show in way of ‘Extras’. I want to like Vista… I just wish Microsoft would give me a reason to.

I could go on and on about the lack of drivers, the bizarre wake-up rituals, the strange and nonreproducible system quirks, and more. But I won’t bore you with the details. The upshot is that even after nine months, Vista just ain’t cutting it. I definitely gave Microsoft too much of a free pass on this operating system: I expected it to get the kinks worked out more quickly. Boy, was I fooled! If Microsoft can’t get Vista working, I might just do the unthinkable: I might move to Linux.

Source: PC Magazine

Having the need to compare two files directly is not something just for server folk. Just recently, a friend of mine had two files he -had- to find the differences between in order to continue to do what he was working on, and it’s too bad I didn’t know of WinMerge at the time. Lifehacker takes a look at this program which can save you lots of time and probably headaches. For the Linux user, you can use similar tools, such as Diff (with Kdiff as a frontend).

When several people are updating and making copies of the same files, multiple versions easily blossom out of control. Figuring out what’s changed, what hasn’t and merging it all back together can be a huge pain in the ass, but it doesn’t have to be. Say your kids downloaded images from the digital camera repeatedly to folders all over your hard drive. You and your co-worker lost track of who made the latest changes to that PowerPoint presentation. You want to merge the changes between two updated files into one. Fear not. The free, open source, previously-mentioned WinMerge is a powerful utility that can help coders and civilians alike merge and compare data on their hard drives.

Source: Lifehacker

So you just finished watching an online video and would love to save it to your desktop. But can’t. If this has never happened to you, you must not be online that often. With new web service vConvert, you can paste the URL to the video, such as http://youtube.com/watch?v=aAaAaAaAaAa, choose whether you want the outputted file in WMV, MOV, MP3, MP4, 3GP or FLV, wait a few moments, and your download will be ready.

I gave the service a quick test and am quite impressed. It was rather fast, and reliable. The problem though, is that all of the conversion and file hosting is done on the vconvert server, so slow-down is not likely to be uncommon. The author is accepting donations to help keep things running smoothly, however.

There are tons of sites that let you save your favorite videos from the likes of YouTube and Google Video, but then you have a Flash video you can’t do much with. You can download converters that will let you transcode, but then you have to hope you can figure out how to run them and that they are good quality. There is now a site that will let you do everything in one quick step.

Source: vConvert Via: Mashable

I have mixed feelings towards Tabula Rasa, because the final game is -nothing- at all like the original screenshots. When a game goes through such a drastic transformation, it has to make you wonder how well it will fare when all said and done. Luckily, RPG guru Richard Garriott is the man behind the game, so it can’t be that bad.

NCsoft has just opened pre-orders for the game, which releases on October 2, and with it comes a slew of benefits. First, you get a full three-day head start on the live servers. Add to that, you get a code to unlock bonus in-game content, exclusive Shell Bot or Pine-Ock pets, two exclusive emotes (*sweet*) and of course, beta access.

Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game that takes you, the player, into lush forest planets, volcanic moons, and exotic alien civilizations. Face off against powerful xenophobe soldiers, armored mechanoids, and vicious predators! Use a wide range of weapons and unique LOGOS powers to help the Allied Free Sentients (AFS) in their desperate fight against extinction. Tabula Rasa combines a vast, persistent game world and ongoing storyline with fast-paced action, resulting in a striking new approach to the design of multiplayer online games.

Source: Tabula Rasa Official Site

Remember way back at June’s WWDC, EA’s announcement that they’d be bringing games to OS X? Whatever happened to that, you ask? C|Net relays an EA press release that reveals four titles that are now available for the platform: Harry Potter and the Order of the Pheonix, NFS: Carbon, Battlefield 2142 and C&C 3. All four can be ordered now, but shipping varies between three and ten days.

You might wonder about the exclusion of the promised EA Sports games, including Madden and Tiger Woods. Those are also en route, but will not be seen until September/October. The fact that we are seeing these advanced games at all is impressive and shows how far the Cider technology has come. Now, where the heck are these games on Linux?

In response to an inquiry about the delay for Madden NFL ’08, an EA representative said “we’ve shorted the gap between the Mac launch and other platforms to just a few weeks. This is a huge leap compared with past launches. Over time, as EA gains experience in completing and shipping Mac games, the gap will narrow.” The representative did not specifically address what caused the delay, but some Mac gamers think there could be problems with the Cider technology used to port the Windows games to Mac OS.

Source: C|net

There are very few companies out there that manage to excite their customer-base time and time again with rehashed products. Nintendo has that power, however. We first seen the Nintendo DS in late 2004 and then a revamped model last summer. Of course, everyone who owned the original, wanted the new model. It was better, after all. But then, they released a pure-black model, then pink and now, they have gone ahead and released a two-tone Crimson/Black model.

The color scheme is not all that’s important though, Included is a carrying pouch and also a copy of Brain Age 2. My white Nintendo DS is suddenly looking very, very boring…

Once you pry open the ultra-sticky packaging, you’ll find an array of delights, including the carrying case, Brain Age 2, a snazzy Nintendo catalog. Oh, and a DS Lite — almost forgot! …We have to confess that the “open faced” DS looks a little plain. Sleek, but plain. Crimson-colored buttons (or a d-pad!) would’ve been a great touch, but it’s still easy on the eyes.

Source: GamePro

Everyone likes pizza. Everyone has a cell phone. Everyone would rather text to order pizza than to talk to a real person. It was only a matter of time before this became a reality, which it now is in the UK thanks to Domino’s Pizza. The process is simple. Sign up for the service, send a “TXT” and then one of their 470 locations will deliver you your pizza. During the trial of the service, 2,000 people signed up, showing that there is big demand for such a service. Domino’s was smart by being the first pizza place to offer the service, though I’m surprised it didn’t happen sooner. Everquest II beat everyone by two full years!

To use the service, you have to register your full details online, but from then on it seems dangerously easy to order. Once you’re registered you then need to set up your “favourite meals” by texting them to Dominos, and give them a code name that you’ll remember. So, you can set up lots of favourites depending on your lifestyle, a regular order for a whole pile of pizzas could be “Boy’s Poker Night Order”, and so on.

Source: Pocket-Lint

If you plan to leak anything on the internet, you can relish the fact that it will stay out there. On the other hand, you can also feel confident that you will be caught, as one Sydney-area man discovered the hard way. The Simpsons movie was shown in Australia before the rest of the world, so he took advantage of the situation and recorded the entire movie with his cell phone.

Ahem. How many people are willing to watch a movie recorded with a cell phone instead of going to the theatre? According to authorities, over 110,000. This all despite the fact that they were on top of the case just hours after the movie first leaked. Indeed, if a movie is leaked, there is not much that can stop it. That still doesn’t mean you will not be caught and punished, however.

As it turns out, AFACT got a heads-up from Fox, which was monitoring P2P networks in search of the first Simpsons movie uploads. Yet even with this monitoring, it was too late to stop the leaks. AFACT said that in the short time it took to identify the leak, it had rapidly spread to other sites, and investigators even learned that it was rapidly re-edited into a French language version, and also transcoded into other formats and distributed via BitTorrent sites by two “organized release groups which facilitate file sharing.”

Source: Ars Technica

Although Windows is still the dominating operating system, Linux and Mac OS X are steadily catching up for a variety of reasons. However, Linux has a few advantages over OS X, such as it’s open-sourced nature and also the fact that it’s free. While some versions of Linux can be complicated, there are others that are perfectly suited for the computer newbie. There is no doubt that Linux is a superb and fully-capable operating system, and it will continue to grow and have great success.

DailyTech blogger Michael Hoffman agrees, and states that he believes Dell and Lenovo will in no way be the last companies to pre-load Linux for their customers. Dell has recently stated that demand for Linux-based PCs has been “overwhelming”, which is certainly a sign of things to come. With rapid adoption of the OS, things can only get better.

“I think it is about time the PC manufacturers started showing us some love,” one LinuxWorld exhibitor told me prior to the show floor opening. I hope to see Hewlett-Packard offer something similar in the future, though I am not sure if the company is working on anything internally. I tried to pry details away from HP public relations and engineers people, but no one wanted to confirm anything.

Source: DailyTech

Welp, it’s been a while since our last “WCUOTG?”, so I figured it was about time we update you on what’s on our radar. Next week, you can expect a review of Logitech’s latest Wave keyboard. Rather than being ergo, it’s contoured in such a way that it’s supposed to feel completely natural to use. We’ll be the judge of that. You can also expect a review of their new G9 gamers mouse shortly after, which features a whack of tweaking ability for hardcore gamers.

This past week, we posted a review of Gigabyte’s 8600GTS card, but next week it will be time to focus on something even lower-end, Sparkle’s 8500GT. Kingston has also sent us two new memory kits which will be evaluated within the coming weeks, one DDR3 and their new 2GB DDR2-800 modules that feature the extremely tight timings of 3-3-3-8.

We’ve posted reviews of many P35 boards so far, but Greg has been dabbing with abit’s IP35 Pro board and will be posting his thoughts within the next few weeks. Our resident gadget geek Kiersten has been using Microsoft’s latest Ergo 7000 for the past few weeks as well, and you can expect her review next week. Sadly, as has been the recurring theme, Microsoft’s offering left us less than impressed. That wraps up this edition of WCUOTG?, so stay tuned as we get these articles in progress published. Of course there is a lot more on our plates, including a few interesting how-to articles, so stay tuned!

Has there been a bad thing to be said about Blu-ray in the past few months? We just learned of the fact that Heavenly Sword uses 10GB of sound effects, and now we see that Blu-ray is outselling HD-DVD 2 to 1 this year, according to Home Media Research. The movie 300, for example, has sold 190,000 copies on Blu-ray while only selling 97,000 on HD-DVD. It may seem non-impressive from the HD-DVD standpoint, but that’s still quite a dedicated fan base.

Perhaps these two formats can seek peaceful coexistence, but as things stand right now, Blockbuster has gone Blu-ray and so have some retailers. We really don’t care who wins the movie format war, but we’d prefer people spending their money on a couple extra games instead of possibly throwing their money away on a console attachment for a dying not-selling-as-well format.

Source: Joystiq

As if the Blu-ray format needed even more bragging rights, here comes along news that upcoming PS3 action game Heavenly Sword includes a staggering 10GB worth of sound effects, in addition to three and a half hours worth of music and 4,500 lines of dialogue. That aside, the game looks quite promising, although I have yet to play the demo. Marcus from DailyTech has, however, and wasn’t left that impressed.

Sadly, experience with the game from the demo available from the PlayStation Store has left me just a bit cautious. On paper, in screens, and in making-of videos, it looks like a hit. But after playing it for just a few seconds – which is really all the demo allows – there just doesn’t seem to be anything compelling about it. Of course, this could be the fault of the demo’s shamefully short playtime, but that’s all I’ve got to base my opinion on right now.

Source: DailyTech

If you are planning to pick up an iPod and have patience, you might want to wait, according to Engadget. Their sources show that Apple has slowed down iPod shipments, which suggests that a fresh release is right around the corner. Other facts to go by would be that the iPhone is now released, as are the revamped iMacs, and also that there’s been a new iPod every year since 2003. Oh, don’t forget the fact that Apple fans will rush out to buy a new iPod even if their current model is fine. What’s Apple to lose when releasing a new iPod? Nothing!

Do we have inside dope from Apple on this one? No, none at all. Just a lot of retail reports and mounting evidence that suggests a pretty obvious conclusion. Yeah, we expect new iPods this year (seriously, why wouldn’t there be?), and if we were gamblin’ men we’d put our money on the September – October. Of course, we know Steve will totally read this and launch in November or December just to mess with us, but hey, as long as the masses get their music players before our annual present-opening ceremonies, everybody’s happy.

Source: Engadget

According to Wired Blogs, Xtreme Notebooks is the first company to begin offering Quad-Core-equipped notebook computers to the masses, but they won’t come cheap if you want to deck them out. For their top-end 917V, included is a 17″ screen capable of 1680×1050, Q6600 processor at 2.4GHz, 512MB (yes really) of RAM, 60GB (yes really) hard drive and also a speedy 7950GTX graphics card. All that, for $3,359.00. Seems pricey, Quad-Core or not.

If you really have a strong desire to spend as much money as possible though, you could upgrade all the components to help you reach your goal. Throw in 4GB of RAM, SLI’d 8700M GT’s, 64GB SSD, RAID 1 250GB, Blu-ray burner and more. It will set you back over $10,000. Buy hey, at least they give you a ‘No Operating System’ option. That’s more than you can say for the rest of the competition.

Source: XtremeNotebooks

I am not a fan of Ziff Davis’ publications per se, but it’s difficult to laugh at any company that has accrued close to half a billion dollars worth of debt. While they used to publish a fair amount of paper magazines, they are now down to three: EGM, PC Magazine and Games for Windows. These along with the numerous websites they have scattered about, including ExtremeTech and 1UP. As you would expect, they are looking at options to help settle the debt, and assure us that they are still in “very good shape”.

There is art here, despite what many would say isn’t possible with games, from Roger Ebert to game designers like Hideo Kojima. But it’s in BioShock–it’s in the gorgeously realized, watery halls of Rapture. It’s in a Little Sister’s expression of thanks when you choose to save her, or the utter silence if you harvest instead. It’s in the way the characters develop, in the testimonials of the recording boxes you pick up along the way.

Source: Joystiq

It’s official. 2K Boston and 2K Australia know what they are doing, because Bioshock has wowed the collective press, with complaints difficult to find. This unique shooter has been hyped for quite some time now, and for good reason. It’s still a 3D-Shooter, but it offers fresh elements and a completely unique world. After looking through some reviews floating about, I am quite certain I will be picking up a copy as soon as possible. IGN awarded the game a 9.7/10, GameSpy a 5/5, 1UP a 10/10, TeamXbox a 9.5/10, Eurogamer a 10/10… well you get the picture.

There is art here, despite what many would say isn’t possible with games, from Roger Ebert to game designers like Hideo Kojima. But it’s in BioShock–it’s in the gorgeously realized, watery halls of Rapture. It’s in a Little Sister’s expression of thanks when you choose to save her, or the utter silence if you harvest instead. It’s in the way the characters develop, in the testimonials of the recording boxes you pick up along the way.

Source: IGN Xbox 360

SimCity… it’s one of those games you have to give credit to. It was one of the first sim games on the market that did things -right-… all the way up until SimCity 3 when things became inherently mind-dulling. I wanted to build cities and have fun, without the worry of screwing around with water-pipes! Well, apparently I am not the only one out there who feels that way, as EA is promising a “city builder with a focus on accessibility”. I admit, I am really, really looking forward to this game.

The act of zoning is gone entirely, leaving players to place their buildings one by one in order to lay our their city. That may sound contrary to the overall goal, but the structures themselves are the characters this time around. Each building comes with its own stats and attributes that more clearly affect the citizens of your city.

Source: Joystiq