Content and news by Rob Williams

There are numerous P35 boards available, so what does a company have to do to have an edge? Well, as far as ASUS is concerned, they should produce feature-packed boards that also come with many extras, including a game and 3D Mark 06. Oh… not to mention a water-cooled northbridge!

Well, it looks like the entire internet, including us, blew another report out of proportion. We posted the other day that Target decided against selling HD-DVD movies at their stores, but in actuality, they will still be selling them in the regular aisles. The difference is that Sony paid a premium to have their movies sold on end-caps, which works well for impulse buyers. HD-DVD is still safe.

It turns out that the Target ‘exclusive’ for Blu Ray is *not* an exclusive. Sony bought some end aisle placement (normal in retail) and just called it exclusive. Target WILL continue to carry HD DVD products. I am told to expect a comment from Target next week.

Source: Major Nelson via Engadget

Last week, we kicked off a new news feature, where we periodically keep you in the loop of what to expect content-wise on the site. This past week was particularly slow for various reasons I won’t get into, but next week will be back in full swing. Early next week we will be posting our review of ASUS latest top-end motherboards, the Blitz Extreme and Blitz Formula, DDR3 and DDR2 versions respectively. Are they good? You will have to wait and see. As it stands, I really think they should be called Bling Extreme. I mean.. they have a waterblock over the northbridge!

Last week we mentioned that Greg had a killer Synology NAS review on the way, which is still in progress because of a recent firmware upgrade that unlocked many new features. This is a review you won’t want to miss. My Gigabyte 8600GTS review is still in the works and should be posted this coming week if all goes according to plan. It will be a good read for those who are looking for a mid-range gaming card that’s passively cooled. Up until now, we’ve never posted a review for an m-ATX motherboard, but that will change shortly when Rory posts his review for Gigabyte’s and ASUS’ 690 motherboards, based on the ATI chipset.

We’ve only scratched the surface on upcoming content, so stay tuned as there should always be at least one review or article that will pique your interest each week.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult to think positive about HD-DVD, because yet another retailer has gone Blu-ray only, that retailer being BJ’s Wholesale Club. Just the other day, Target announced they would be Blu-ray-only, and all of this comes just a month after Blockbuster made the same decision. HD-DVD is going to have to perform a miracle it seems to keep in the race.

Another blow to HD DVD came today as BJ’s Wholesale Club will bounce the format from its shelves in the fourth quarter according to VB, a Variety company. Just like yesterday’s news about Target going with Blu-ray players, if Wal-Mart’s Sam’s Club went Blu-ray it’d be a much bigger deal, but BJ’s is a large company on the East Coast (particularly the North East). BJ’s will continue to sell HD DVD format products on their website.

Source: Joystiq

Whew, I am never, ever, EVER complaining about internet price again. Ars Technica reports that the land of Kazakhstan, made famous with the help of Borat, has DSL internet available for $3,355 per month. Yes, for the price of a nice BMW in the US, you can get DSL internet for one year in Kazakhstan. Bear in mind also that the average monthly wage is $399 there as well, which makes the number all the more extreme.

Most users (and only four percent of the country even has access) hook up through state-owned Kazakhtelecom, a company not concerned with competitive pricing for its services. An unlimited dial-up plan costs about €82 ($111) in a country where the average monthly wage is €292 ($399). As for DSL, an unlimited 1.5Mbps connection costs €2,458 ($3,355) a month, and doesn’t even included the required ADSL modem. Want a 6Mbps cable connection? It’ll cost you, to the tune of €16,144 ($22,032) a month. As the OSCE report drily notes, this is more than a thousand times the price of such a connection in Western Europe.?

Source: Ars Technica

Playstation 3 owners finally have a good reason to get excited: Rockstar is creating an entirely new series exclusive to the console. Microsoft pays $50 million to Rockstar for exclusive rights to extra GTA IV content, and Sony gets a complete series, just like that? Sounds like a sweet deal. Of course, details of the series are scarce. No name, no genre and of course, no screenshots. Has there been a horrible Rockstar game lately though?

Everyone knows to have success in this business you need to look ahead, identifying the talent and titles that are going to give consumers new kinds of gaming experiences that help set the bar for the rest of the industry. Rockstar has a heritage for doing just that. We have had incredible success with the GTA franchise and are happy to continue to offer those titles on our platforms, and even more excited about what’s to come from the current and future relationship between our companies.

Source: Playstation Blog

Although HD-DVD is having a rough time proving itself lately, neither Toshiba or Microsoft are willing to give up without a fight. In an effort to push the format, Microsoft has announced a $20 price drop for the player, which will occur on August 1, landing it at $179. To make that sweet deal far sweeter, there will also be a deal tied to it that offers five free movies, from a selection of fifteen. Considering each movie costs a minimum of $20 to begin with, that means you essentially get the player for $79. Not a bad deal… at all.

While the add-on player has come bundled with a single HD DVD disc in the past, this new five disc promotion extends the HD DVD camp’s “Perfect Offer,” which was previously exclusive to consumers buying Toshiba HD DVD players. The program allows consumers to choose five HD DVD titles for free from a selection of 15 popular titles through a mail-in offer.

Source: High-Def Digest

Blockbuster made huge news last month because they stepped forward and chose Blu-ray as their format as choice. Immediately, consumers wondered who would be next to jump on the Blu-ray train, and apparently that will be Target. This is a blow to HD-DVD, although they still have room to prove themselves. One thing is for sure… Sony is not regretting their decision to include Blu-ray capabilities with their PS3.

Target would not say why it decided to sell only Blu-ray players in stores. Sony is paying a fee to have its products featured in the end-of-aisle display, called an endcap, although Sony executives said the retailer contacted them about the decision. “We are not proclaiming one format vs. the other as the preferred consumer technology, and software will continue to be available to our guests in both the Blu-ray and HD DVD format,” Target spokeswoman Brie Heath said.

Source: Forbes

We mentioned back in June that Microsoft paid Rockstar $50 million to have exclusive rights to GTA IV’s exclusive content, and apparently Rockstar themselves are saying that there specific reason for owning the PS3 version. Microsoft plans to sell the extra episodes via Xbox Live, because quite frankly, they want to see that $50 million again.

“They’re identical games,” Simon continued. “We’re not hardware makers, and we’re not like a pawn between these companies, we try not to be as much as we can. We make great games for people to enjoy on whichever system they want. But I guess if you want the complete experience with the episodes, then yeah, you should buy the 360, I suppose,” Simon said.

Source: GamesRadar

Ever want to send someone an e-mail discreetly? Ever want to sign up for some internet service that “requires” an e-mail address without giving your real e-mail? Of course you have. But where to look? Tech blog ThinkAbdul lists ten sites that can help you out. Visit, create a fake e-mail, do what you need to do, and the e-mail will vape after a certain amount of time. Simple, and effective.

An embarassing email sent years ago might come to haunt you today just when you thought it must have been deleted permanently. Self Destructing emails delete the original message once it has been read by the recipient. While they are not completely fool proof, for example, someone can take a photo of the message with the camera, the record on the Internet does not remain.

Source: ThinkAbdul

In recent years, Mozilla has handled two main projects: Firefox and Thunderbird. That’s about to change though, according to Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker on her blog. The reason, of course, is so that the most important focus can be shifted towards Firefox only. So, where is Thunderbird going? No one knows yet, although options are flying around. TB will still of course use the same Mozilla base it always has had, it will just be under a different direction. Thunderbird is my preferred e-mail client, so whatever happens, I hope development continues to go strong.

While the Mozilla Foundation supports a number of projects, its taxable subsidiary the Mozilla Corporation is responsible for only Firefox and Thunderbird. However, it has become increasingly clear that Firefox is the priority. The resources allocated to Firefox dwarf those allocated to Thunderbird and recent projects such as the initiative to improve Mozilla support exclude Thunderbird.

Source: MozillaZine

Sure, the PS3 and Xbox 360 have some killer graphics, but that never usually means better gameplay. Well, of course the price comes into play as well, which is why it’s no surprise to see that Nielsen’s research claims that the Playstation 2 is still the most-played console around, accounting for 42% of the market. The original Xbox takes 17% and the 360 took 8%. The PS3 was underwhelming to say the least, at 1.5%, but that may change a little after recent price drops. Somehow… the Wii only claims 4%.

Nielsen GamePlay Metrics has started tracking video game activity using data from Nielsen’s existing sample of TV viewers. Nielsen’s sample includes more than 12,000 U.S. households with about 33,000 individuals. Nielsen also found that households that own the Nintendo Wii are more likely to earn more than $100,000 a year. And summer break has meant kids play video games later: in April, the Wii’s peak usage hour was 5 p.m., during the summer, it’s 8 p.m.

Source: USA Today

DisplayPort is the latest connector to hit the market, which is expected to completely replace DVI once in full-swing. Samsung is the first company out the door with a DisplayPort monitor, with similar specs to their current 305T 30″ DVI monitor, which offers 2560×1600 resolution. According to the press release, DisplayPort offers a data rate of 10.8Gbps, which they claim to eliminate the chance of color smear. Pricing of the monitor is not yet known, but it will be thrown into mass production in Q2 2008.

In a joint undertaking with Genesis Microchip Inc. (Santa Clara, California), Samsung developed its 30” panel using a new four-lane, 2.7Gbps/lane interface chip. The interface technology processes 2560×1600 pixels of graphics data at up to 10 bits of color depth or 1.07 billion colors, a feat that would normally require at least three DVI or four LVDS interface chips.

Source: Korea Newswire

Seagate is often in the news for new drives they are putting out, but now they are in the news for drives they will no longer be putting out. IDE connectors have served us well, but I for one, am pleased to see it finally starting to go the way of the dodo. What about those who need upgrades for ancient machines, though? They won’t be picking up Seagate drives, I guess. Regardless, S-ATA is the current and future. How long will it take before we start to see P-ATA connectors missing from our motherboards?

According to a report published at Australian-based ITNews last January, SATA now accounts for 66.7 percent of desktop hard drive sales, 44 percent of laptop sales, and an unspecified (but increasing) amount of enterprise storage connectivity.

Source: Ars Technica

Once in a while, a new web service will come along that simply takes off right away. Joost was one of those services. Apparently the tv-sharing site is coming along in development quite well, and should launch by years-end. As I’m sure everyone is aware, the Joost beta was quite difficult to get into, with only 1,000,000 testers currently using the app. I look forward to seeing where the service goes once officially “launched”.

Joost aims to provide a YouTube-like video sharing experience, but with authorised content, advertiser support and a peer-to-peer model for content sharing. The use of P2P has underpinned all of Zennstrom’s ventures, from the now-moribund file sharing service Kazaa to the massively successful Skype, which has attracted 220 million users to its free Internet calls service.

Source: APC Mag

RPG mastermind Richard Garriott believes the same thing that’s been evident for a while… all MMORPG games are the exact-freaking-same. Granted, there are a few unique ones out there, but it’s certainly not WoW or Lineage II. One problem I’ve found, is that in fantasy RPGs, monster, character and weapon names will be the EXACT same as in fifteen other MMOs. Way to take the immersion out of things! How many Dragon Slayers do I really need?

Garriott explained that the NCSoft team had tried to change a number of these ingrained MMORPG features, including making the combat more fast-paced although still in a style befitting of a role-playing game, and forcing the player to make ethical decisions by giving them conflicting missions. He said, “Say two people send you to do something, but one of those is going to be completable only at the expense of the other, so the player has to make a kind of ethical decision–which storyline are they willing to give up, which character are they willing to lose?”

Source: GameSpot

I recall a little bit of doubt before World of Warcraft was released. How is it that Blizzard could handle the release of an MMO game? Haha! I think all doubts are safely gone, with Blizzard making the announcement that 9 million addicts are now subscribing to their game. That would be well over $100 million per month that Blizzard is taking in… incredibly impressive.

That’s half a million more than the number of monthly players WoW had back in March five months ago. And all this before the release of the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade expansion pack in mainland China, which Blizzard expects to give a huge increase in gold farmers, no wait they didn’t say that, they said an increase in new and returning subscribers.

Source: Videogames Blogger

Up until recently, Nikon’s line-up has had many gaps. This past March though, they released their P5000 advanced point-and-shoot camera alongside their D40x D-SLR. Today we are taking a look at the latter, which turns out to be a fantastic offering for those looking to take the plunge into high-quality photography.

According to DailyTech, the USB Implementers Forum has just certified six wireless USB 1.0 products, which include the Dell Inspiron 1720, Lenovo T61/T61p and D-Link’s DUB-2240 wireless hub. What does this mean to you? Not much, unless you plan to own one or more of the products here. It does mean that more wireless USB products are on their way. I’d be interested to know what kind of power draw they have, when compared to other wireless methods.

Products that comply with the Wireless USB 1.0 standard will feature a “Certified Wireless USB” logo on the product packaging — this is similar to the “Hi-Speed USB” logo featured on standard-issue USB 2.0 compliant hardware. Wireless USB 1.0 provides data rates of up 480Mb/sec at a distance of three meters. At 10 meters, the speed drops to just 110Mb/sec.

Source: DailyTech

SabayonLinux has finally reached it’s 3.4 milestone, after being four months in development. As always, we will be taking a look at the latest release this week. If you are looking to delve into the Linux scheme of things and don’t know where to start, don’t even hesitate… download SL. It’s based on a difficult distro, but made easy.

New in 3.4 is the 2.6.22 Linux kernel, new games, updated video drivers, NTFS read/write support, bleeding-edge version of Compiz, KDE 3.5.7, GNOME 2.18.2, X.Org 7.3, etc, etc, etc. Sabayon is known to always include the absolute latest versions of all applications, within reason, so even a month after installing the distro, the machine will still be up to date. Check it out.

Source: SabayonLinux 3.4, SabayonLinux Business Edition 1.0