Content and news by Rob Williams

It seems like we just began using 2.0, but 3.0 will be here before we know it. The final alpha has been released to developers, with a first beta available by the end of the month. That beta will be a feature-complete version of 3.0, which means only bugs will be the focus before the final release. At that time, developers will likely begin updating their extensions to function properly with it, as well. Since 2.0, I’ve had countless issues with the browser, so I am looking forward to seeing if 3.0 will improve upon it’s stability.

I just took the new version for a quick test drive and found that, as with previous alphas, it’s faster than Firefox 2 but it still has a ways to go before it’s stable and ready for the public. We’ll do a more detailed review of Firefox 3 when the first beta arrives. I’m particularly interested to see the revamped download manager and the rest of the Places improvements.

Source: Wired Blogs

If you find yourself with a relentless desire to pick up an iPhone, but don’t have any intentions of actually using it as a phone, then you are crazy. But regardless, DVD Jon has created a workaround that allows you to activate a fresh iPhone without subscribing to a phone plan through AT&T. The downside is that while the iPhone will have complete feature functionality, it will lack phone capabilities. Time to go buy a BMW with iPhone support with no plans to drive it.

The point of Johansen’s coding exercise, as he explains it, is that there are many potential iPhone purchasers who do not want to enter into a 2-year contract with AT&T, but do want to use the device for WiFi, web, email, video, music, calendar, contact management, and other features — basically, treat it like a bomb-ass iPod, forget about the phone part.

Source: Boing Boing

Top lists are all the rage lately, but you need to give anyone who throws together a top 100 some credit. Popular gaming magazine Edge has released a top 100 games of all time list, which puts Zelda: Ocarina of Time at the very top. Many will disagree with this choice, but there is no denying the sheer impact the game had on that console and for gaming in general. I have a lot of memories wrapped into the game, so I will consider myself a fan and wholeheartedly believe it deserves to be in my top five, easily. Interestingly, five out of the top ten games were for Nintendo based consoles.

In late March, Asustek and Gigabyte announced that they would dissolve their partnership. Called Gigabyte United, the operation between the two companies shared manufacturing resources and sold products under the Gigabyte United brand name. Gigabyte officials said that after much consideration, the partnership did not appear to be beneficial to the company.

Source: BBC News

It’s the 4th of July and chances are good that you just want to sit around and relax. So, here is a video to help you retain the lazy state you are in. The first thing you may think of doing with a Bentley Arnage is driving it, but not with these folks. Donuts are in the game plan, as a way to release some stress brought on by the car.

(Click To Launch Video)

The beginning of the video shows three other chaps besides the Bentley owner who all own high-end cars, but everything works well. However, the Bentley owner has to literally struggle to get his key out of it’s holster. Of course, if he does this with a $250,000 auto, who knows where the key has been. The video throws around a few f-bombs, so take that as a warning.

Via: Autoblog

The Flock browser is positioned towards those who thrive on the web 2.0 lifestyle and it has finally received a long-coming major upgrade, which Steve O’Hear of ZD Net has taken a hard look at. We first perused the browser way back in 2005, and it seems to have come a long way. It’s feature-rich, integrates many web 2.0 services and has a completely revamped UI. The way things are going, it’s bound to become a much more prominent in the browser world.

The look ‘n’ feel of flock remains as slick as ever, and is possibly the nicest ‘skin’ for a browser out there. But this isn’t style over content and the UI’s most significant overhaul is its emphasis on improving discoverability.

Source: ZD Net

We might be the last to actually post this story, but ASUS announced that they will be splitting the company into two independent entities. The reasons are simply so that each can focus on what they do best, churning out quality products, and analysts have officially given a thumbs up. This won’t mean that much for consumers at first, but may result in ASUS being more efficient and releasing even more products to please the masses.

In late March, Asustek and Gigabyte announced that they would dissolve their partnership. Called Gigabyte United, the operation between the two companies shared manufacturing resources and sold products under the Gigabyte United brand name. Gigabyte officials said that after much consideration, the partnership did not appear to be beneficial to the company.

Source: DailyTech

Surveyor Evans Data have released reports that show Windows developers are on the decline, while the number of Linux developers is increasing. Though only 400 developers are queried, it’s hard to discredit the decline. Developers for Windows platforms was 74% of the total market in 2006, but has now dropped to 64.8%, while Linux has gone from 8% to 12%. No information regarding Mac OS X and other OS systems were elaborated on.

In other findings in the Evans Data Spring North American Development survey, Evans found that JavaScript is the most widely used scripting language. It has more than three times the users of PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor), Ruby, or Python. But Ruby usage is expected to increase by 50 percent within the coming year.

Source: Info World

Sigh, another MMO hits the dust. Auto Assault was released just last April, but it won’t see it’s second birthday, or even come close. It will be shut down on August 31, with the final month being free. If you pre-paid a bunch of game time, you will be refunded for any past July. It’s too bad, AA was one of the coolest MMO’s I’ve played. It’s different, but once you were in, you’d realize just how good of a game it really was.

The game will close at midnight on August 31. No reason was given as to why the game is being shut down, but it was hardly a success story. In Auto Assault’s first full quarter of availability, NCsoft’s financial report showed that the game–along with South Korean tennis game Smash Star–accounted for less than one-third of 1 percent of the company’s sales.

Source: GameSpot

We posted yesterday about a DailyTech report that exposed the fact of an Xbox 360 33% failure rate. If you still had doubts that such a claim was true, DT is now reporting that popular console repair service, Micromart, has decided to no longer repair 360s due to a design flaw in the product and the overwhelming demand. Though not explicitly stated, they may still repair the console if it’s a non-RROD related injury.

“We were seeing about 30 a week before we pulled the plug on the service,” said Micromart’s Jeff Croft to GamesIndustry. “We saw it over a period of several months and it was just getting worse. It began towards the end of last year. Once the twelve month warranty finished then we started to see more and more machines being sent in to be looked at.”

Source: DailyTech

YouTube seems to be unstoppable, and for that reason, everyone wants a piece of the pie, including LG. They have signed an agreement with Google to develop a phone which has a huge focus on YouTube integration. When said and done, you will be able to watch YouTube video on the go and even upload them on the fly, with videos you create with the phone. The 3G phone will be available in Europe later this year, with no apparent mention of a US release, though it’s unlikely to take long before they bring it over here.

Whilst many may argue that nothing can compare overall to the iPhone, Apple’s failure to launch a 3G version of the phone, or release it outside of the United States gives Apple’s competitors time to improve their offerings prior to the inevitable future worldwide release of the iPhone.

Source: TechCrunch

We posted our review of Gigabyte’s P35C-DS3R today, which you should check out if you have your sights set on a P35 board. It offers great performance for the price, although it’s overclocking ability left a bit to be desired. Still, a very solid offering from Gigabyte. Also, don’t miss Nate’s exhaustive look at two good headsets, Medusa 5.1 and Sennheiser HD555, before making a purchase decision. One’s stereo while the other is 5.1, and depending on what you use your PC for most, each headset has clear advantages in different areas.

While the board won’t be for hardcore overclockers, it still offers lots of OC’ing room for those who want high CPU frequencies without the benefit of a major FSB overclock. In truth, 450FSB may have been the limit thanks to our fanless NB/SB, but I didn’t proceed with extensive testing to see if that was the case. Most people won’t want to ghetto-mod fans inside their case to keep these two cool. The fact is handled 450FSB with modest heatsinks is good.

If you read our “Should You Buy Vista Ultimate?” article back in January, you know that one of the selling features of the edition was the exclusive extras. The bad news? Not a single update has occurred in almost five months, which no doubt rubs the Ultimate Edition owners the wrong way, understandably.

“We apologize for taking so long to provide a status update to customers”. It’s hard to sit back and ignore the fact that there has been an insane delay, especially when Ultimate costs at least $140 more than Home Premium and most people will not even take advantage of BitLocker. Goffe mentioned that there have been more than a dozen extras since launch, but in reality there have been three unless you include all of the language packs. Here’s to hoping that those who opted for the Ultimate Edition will soon reap the rewards they deserve.

Microsoft has listened to the grumbling across the web, and now Barry Goffe, director of Windows Vista Ultimate, has issued an apology on his blog. “We want to let our Windows Vista Ultimate customers know that we are actively working to deliver the remaining Extras that we identified in January,” he wrote. “Our goal is to provide the highest-quality, most secure and reliable offerings, and as a result we are continuing our work on these offerings.”

Source: Ars Technica

We haven’t linked to any iPhone reviews since the device was released last Friday, but I couldn’t help but peruse Ryan Block’s exhaustive look at the device. It’s three long pages and covers virtually everything that a potential iPhone buyer will want to know.

The overall opinion is that it’s a great phone, but there are still a few needless issues, such as a recessed headphone jack that will not work with most headphones available. If you are still considering an iPhone, this is a great way to make your final decision. I’m in no hurry, so I will sit back and wait to see if the issues on the first generation iPhone are fixed in the second, which is supposedly due out later this year.

The fact is, there’s only a very short list of properly groundbreaking technologies in the iPhone (multi-touch input), and a very long list of things users are already upset about not having in a $600 cellphone (3G, GPS, A2DP, MMS, physical keyboard, etc.). If you’re prepared to buy into the hype, and thusly, the device, it’s important that purchase (and its subsequent two year commitment to AT&T) not be made for features, but for the device’s paradigm-shifting interface.

Source: Engadget

Its been revealed in a new AMD roadmap that FX-80 and FX-90 Phenom processors are on the way. FX-80 is expected to launch in late Q4, while FX-90 will be released in early 2008. The differences between FX-80 and FX-90 are simple… the latter is technically FX-80 except designed for a multi-processor system. Clock speeds will range between 2.2GHz – 2.6GHz, sitting on top of an HT3 bus of 3.0GHz+, depending on the processor. Things are looking good, but it’s going to be a tough wait to see how these perform.

AMD plans one Phenom FX processor for Socket AM2+ platforms. The AMD Phenom FX-80 is essentially the FX-90 for single-processor systems. The Phenom FX-80 will clock in between 2.2-to-2.4 GHz and have a HT3 bus speed in excess of 3.2 GHz. All Phenom FX processors share similar feature sets, with 512KB of L2 cache per core and a shared 2MB L3 cache. The TDP of Phenom FX processors are still to be determined.

Source: DailyTech

If you are a Linux user, and according to our stats, there is a 10.35% chance that you are, then you will want to check out a new article at Lifehacker. It’s all about tweaking the heck out of your terminal, focusing on the .bashrc file in your home directory. The article is especially helpful if you want to create shortcuts for long commands you run all the time, such as yum.

t’s easy to customize the command line to your particular needs. Today I’ve got a few tweaks that will ramp up your command line productivity so you can spend less time frackin’ around in the terminal and more time getting things done. The holy grail of the terminal lies in a configuration file located in home/username/.bashrc. Let’s transform .bashrc from a couch potato into a productivity monster.

Source: Lifehacker

AllOfMP3.com has been in the news a lot over the past few months, with assurance of its imminent death. Well, the final nail in the coffin has been hammered down, and the service appears to be no more. However, a remake was immediately launched as MP3Sparks.com, which uses a similar layout and identical back-end. This means, if you had a login at AllOfMP3.com, your login will work here as well.

Legal beliefs aside, AllOfMP3 did a lot of things right, in my opinion as a big music fan. They have a huge selection and offer a wide selection of bitrates, something that personally bugs me with every other music service available. If a ‘legal’ version of this exact same service was available with reasonable prices and DRM-free, it would no doubt do well. I am sure I am not alone in that thinking.

Customers found last week that allofmp3.com would not load on their computers, while others who went through its Russian web address were greeted by a message saying that it was closed “for maintenance”. A former employee confirmed to The Times today that it had been shut down under pressure from the Russian authorities.

Source: Times Online

Two weeks ago, we posted about how Helio was charging people $6 to take advantage of YouTube usage through their phone, even though the service should have been free. Well thanks to the iPhone offering YouTube for free, Helio had little choice but to join the fray and make it free as well. Now all you Helio subscribers can relax and enjoy some online video without the extra needless charge.

Helio originally wanted to charge a few bucks a month for YouTube, but in response to the iPhone’s free access, they’re doing it free, too. And that’s over 3G, so it’ll be fast where ever you have EVDO coverage. See? One-up-manship can be beneficial for all.

Source: Gizmodo

Gigabyte, like others, released a slew of motherboards utilizing Intel’s P35 chipset when it was first announced. The P35C-DS3R is unique to their line-up though, since it will accept both DDR2 and DDR3 memory. We pit the boards performance using both types of memory against our recently reviewed ASUS P5K and P5K3.

Remember when E3 used to actually mean something? Well, despite it being kept away from ‘public eyes’, it’s still alive and kicking. Last March, E3 was kept exciting for all Xbox Live subscribers, because new demos and trailers were constantly uploaded and it was actually quite fun. I recall finding something new every time I turned the console on. Well, it’s happening again this year, beginning next Tuesday and running through Friday.

For the second year running, fans around the world thirsting for a sneak preview of the Xbox 360 holiday games and entertainment lineup can get together with friends to experience the E3 Media & Business Summit (E3) — the biggest video game industry event of the year — in high definition from the comfort of their own homes.

Source: Gamescore Blog

Earlier today, we posted that the HD-DVD group was planning to release a few upcoming movies with new internet-related features integrated. Well, that’s far from being the only HD-DVD news of the day, as Toshiba has apparently dropped the price of their HD-A2 player to a reasonable $299. Considering that the HD-DVD add-on for the Xbox 360 retails for $200, $299 for a full-blown stand-alone sounds like a great deal. At the Blu-ray camp, the least expensive machine retails for $499. Even with the five-free movies promise, that’s still a full $100 more than the HD-DVD player.

In another attempt to help push the HD-DVD format, Microsoft and Amazon are gearing up to promote indie films, by offering free authoring services to qualifying filmmakers. This sounds like a win/win for everyone involved, especially filmmakers looking to further push their product. As a further benefit, the filmmakers themselves will be the ones to set the sale price.

This new HD DVD program is the latest addition to Amazon’s CustomFlix CD and DVD service, which produces and ships discs only as they are ordered, eliminating the need for costly inventory. Filmmakers can then set the sale price, and earn royalties for each disc sold.

Source: DailyTech, High-Def Digest