Content and news by Rob Williams

The cops in Long Beach don’t mess around. You pull some crap and they will chase you down with their Segways at a staggering 12.5MPH. Don’t think of trying anything funny, they can climb trees and jump fences as well. Alright, I am full of it, but the police actually did catch a 13 year old carjacker using their Segways.

Notably, the Segway was no match for the Mercedes-Benz’s engine at first, but after the obviously unlicensed driver and his partners in crime leaped from the car just before it slammed into a utility pole, their worn legs were no match for the potent battery-powered engine.

Source: Engadget

The good folks at Ars Technica have taken a hard look at the latest alpha for Firefox 3.0, which seems to be shaping up quite nicely. I will admit that I didn’t notice much difference between Firefox 1 and 2, but 3.0 has a lot in the gameplan. This includes a revamped password manager, bookmarks manager and an all new crash reporting system. I wish I had that now, as my Firefox crashes at least twice a day.

Despite all that sounds good, don’t run out to pick up a copy if you plan on using your 2.0 extensions, as they will be deemed unusable.

One of the most significant features in Firefox 3 is Gecko 1.9, a vastly improved Cairo-based HTML rendering engine. As we reported in our early review of the first Firefox 3 alpha, Gecko 1.9 can pass the Acid 2 test, a CSS test case developed by the Web Standards Project to illuminate flaws in HTML/CSS rendering engines. Support for Cairo-based rendering in Gecko 1.9 also ensures higher quality SVG rendering.

Source: Ars Technica

With Computex now on its final day, which is evident thanks to the lack of updates, this might very well be the last round-up we will deliver, so eat it up like there is no tomorrow.

Hexus continues their in-depth coverage with a look at Silverstone’s Grandia GD02 HTPC case which looks promising, Sparkles 8500 GPU based on PCI (wow), iEi’s 2560×2048 monitor, Cooler Masters behemoth 1250W power supply, Lian Li’s expensive PC60 chassis and finally, a look at the only DDR3 SODIMM to appear at the show.

Tweak Town also continues their coverage with a look at… ok wow. ASUS has a motherboard with BUILT-IN DDR3?? Yes, it’s true. ASUS wants to own the market, and that’s evidenced by their internet radio and Eee. Aside from ASUS’ crazy products, they also look at Thermaltakes 2000W PSU, Sparkles on-board temperature LEDs, Foxconns use of SideShow, PowerColors passive 2400/2600 GPUs, MORE booth babes and finally, abits accomplishment of taking a X6800 CPU to 5GHz.

For more round-ups, you can head on over to Legit Reviews, Hardware Logic and Phoronix.

Though not a feature that’s been talked about much in the past, Wired has taken it upon themselves to delve further into the technology known as Core Animation. It’s an integrated part of Leopard which allows developers to add flashy, animated interfaces.

Take for example Disco, a piece of software for burning CD/DVDs. While it burns, the application smokes out the top in a realistic fashion. Blowing into the microphone would make the smoke react as if it were real. While a feature like this sounds great, to me it’s just something “fun”, not a feature you’d want to be using all the time. However, Core Animation doesn’t end there. It’s up to the developer to utilize it in a unique and interesting way.

The WWDC beings on Monday, so chances are we will find out a lot more about this new technology then. Will it vastly change our computing experience? Hard to say, but it appears to be shaping up nicely so far.

Shipley predicts that Core Animation will kick-start a new era of interface experimentation, and may lead to an entirely new visual language for designing desktop interfaces. The traditional desktop may become a multilayered three-dimensional environment where windows flip around or zoom in and out. Double-clicks and keystrokes could give way to mouse gestures and other forms of complex user input.

Source: Wired

If you find yourself whining about your small 50″+ HDTV, then how about going bigger? JVC has just unveiled their 110″ HDTV that is actually available for sale. It includes the usual slew of suspects, such as 1080p, HDMI, Component and of course, the amazing input we know as S-Video.

Interestingly, it also includes a Firewire and ethernet so that you can view photos and possibly videos, though the official product site is hard to read since it’s Japanese. If you have a weak floor or a weak wallet, this TV is not for you. It weighs in at 730 pounds and $53,000. Ouch.

Football fans can rejoice knowing that there is now an even bigger screen to watch Tony Romo fumble on. Now you can experience failure on a 110-inch rear-projection screen of awesomeness thanks to JVC.

Source: Crunch Gear

Contrary to popular belief, Sony’s Playstation 3 is producing great sales numbers. PAL regions (Europe) just hit the 1 million mark, which I have to admit is quite impressive given the price of the machine. By comparison, there have been 1.4 million units sold in US/Canada since launch.

Games attributed to the consoles success overseas include Resistance: Fall of Man and MotorStorm, selling 600K and 500K copies respectively. I am a proud PS3 owner, but I will be the first to admit that the games are lacking right now. There are quite a few on the horizon though, so sales for Sony might pick up even further.

Across PAL territories the PlayStation 3 has now sold more than a cool one million units since its March 23 launch–just ten weeks ago. This makes the console faster-selling than either of Sony’s previous living room machines, the original PlayStation or the PS2.

Source: Gamespot

Admit it, you use Google for every-single-thing you do online. But do you know how to optimize your searches? There are many minor tweaks you can do to your search to better help you find out what you need. In this article, there are a total of twenty different tips including wildcards, either or, number ranges and back links. Worth a look if you are interested in becoming a Google master.

Some of these are obvious ones, that you probably know about. But others are lesser-known, and others are known but not often used. Use this guide to learn more about, or be reminded of, some of the best ways to get exactly what you’re looking for, and quickly.

Source: Dumb Little Man

If you read the title and are in disbelief, you are certainly not alone. The proposal over in Europe is to have all cars capable of going faster than 101 MPH banned. They have many different reasonings behind this, namely that cars that are capable of such high-speed weigh too much, causing a great amount of CO2 to be released into the atmosphere.

The second thought is that 101MPH is 25% over the speed limit in most Euro Countries anyway. For one thing, banning cars that go faster than the speed limit would be like banning television sets that have the capability to deliver 999 channels, when your cable provider utilizes only 250 of them. Second, cars don’t weigh more because they go faster. They weigh more because they are getting bigger and beefier, partly in thanks to all the added safety features.

We’re all for increased safety – such as the proposed standard fitment of ESP stability control – but to claim that banning the making of cars capable of over 101mph would create a dramatic reduction of CO2 is incorrect.

Source: Autocar

With all of the hype around Apple’s iPhone, can it possibly fail? The folks at Crunch Gear seem to think so. They have a slew of reasons why they believe this, with the first one being the fact that Apple has never released a product on a Friday, which the launch date of June 29 just so happens to be. That in itself is not odd, but they think that it’s evidence that Apple is rushing the phone out the door sooner than their engineers would have liked.

Because the entire front of the phone, or at least most of it, is a touch screen, they foresee mass reports of iPhones with cracked screens. This sounds viable, but how many people do you know that have broken their PDAs screen by carrying it around like that? One thing is for sure, third-party accessory manufacturers are going to make a killing.

Other gripes they have include the keyboard and of course, the forced contract which I can wholeheartedly agree with. It alone is the reason I am not pumped up for what should be the ultimate phone.

What kind of gray market will pop up for contract-less phones? Since AT&T is REQUIRING iPhone purchasers to sign up for 2-year contracts (any lawyers out there know if this is legal?), it isn’t difficult to imagine folks who have no real need for the phone aspect looking for a nice web-browsing widescreen iPod.

Source: Crunch Gear

Ars Technica is reporting that revisions of Santa Rosa later this year will include a decoder for next-gen formats with their integrated graphics processors. This will be great for consumers who don’t wish to purchase an expensive laptop for the sake of the beefed up graphics card. With a built-in decoder, Blu-Ray and HD-DVD content will run smoothly, even with that gaming-impared IGP.

Not surprisingly, the support will exist for Windows Vista only, but by the time this decoder sees the light of day, Vista should be more reliable than it is now. Hopefully.

When next-generation DVD playback finally arives, the Intel graphics solution will be optimized for Vista. Currently, Vista loses some of the Aero effects during HD playback on some non-Intel systems, but Intel’s optimizations will let users have the full Aero experience simultaneous with HD-DVD or Blu-Ray.

Source: Ars Technica

A common goal that a lot of modders have is to take the product they are dealing with and help it appear more modern, or even futuristic. It’s not often you see a throwback to time when brass and intricate design were commonplace.

The end result is a monitor that is an accurate representation of what it would look like a few hundred years ago, had something like this actually existed.

The Steampunk Keyboard looked terribly anachronistic sitting in front of my Dell 1907FP flat panel monitor and while I hesitated to tear open a $300 monitor that was still under warantee, art must be served.

Source: Steampunk Workshop

There have been many Computex updates since our last round-up, so get your reading glasses prepped. Hexus has taken a look at numerous happenings, such as CoolITs cooled Radeon HD 2900XT card, GeILs 8GB DDR2 kit, ASUS’ Eee (no typo) laptop and also OCZs brain reading headband.

techPowerUp! again has updates from a variety of companies including Scythe and GeIL.

Tweak Town continues their exhaustive reports with Gigabytes U60 UMPC, Shuttles X38 SFF rig, ASUS RD790 motherboard, booth babe photos, Intel X38 motherboards and also a recap of the Intel press conference.

For a nice big sum-up of day 3, check out the coverage at Phoronix.

If you, like me, dislike laptops because they simply lack the overall power that a beastly desktop system can offer, then Falcon is trying to change our minds with their DRX.

The “laptop” packs a 100GB 7200RPM HDD in addition to two 160GB 5400RPM drives, and really ices the cake with the dual NVIDIA GeForce 7950GTX Go 512MB graphics cards.

Yes, as if a 100GB drive was not good enough, you get two more far larger drives in the background which would be used for RAID 0 or 1, or neither. The DRX also features an X6800 2.93GHz CPU, 4GB of ram and a huge 1920×1200 resolution on it’s 17″ monitor. All yours for just over $7,000.

Source: Engadget

I admit I have never played a TrackMania game, but I’ve constantly heard great things about it. Well, now might be the time to try, since it’s coming to Steam.

Rev up your engines and fire up Steam: Focus Home Interactive today announced a distribution agreement with Valve to introduce TrackMania United via Steam, a leading digital distribution platform for PC games. TrackMania United, the newest title in the much-loved TrackMania racing series, is available at a 20% discount for those who pre-order via Steam by June 14, 2007. The game will also be available in retail outlets in the coming weeks.

No word on pricing, but expect it to be around the $20 mark.

It’s a well-known fact that Antec produces some of the best cases on the market, and the P182 is a perfect example of that. We have here a case that looks great, packs a lot of smarts and is efficient, all at a price that’s easy to swallow.

I will be perfectly honest in saying that I had no idea Netscape as a browser still existed, but here is a brand new version. A few unique features include the ability to vote on news stories that appear on their hubsite, view news in the sidebar and have automatic correction of misspelled URLs.

Navigator 9 shares its architecture with the latest Mozilla technologies; as such Navigator 9 will allow you to install extensions that are compatible with Firefox 2.

I’ve been experiencing a higher than normal number of problems with Firefox 2.0 recently, so I think I will be giving Netscape a try in the coming days since it’s compatible with FF’s extensions.

Die-hards of the browser seem to be sticking with 7.2, since Netscape has never given them the option to properly carry their e-mail over to the latest version. If you don’t have that problem, give it a try. It’s available for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.

Source: Netscape Blog

We reported yesterday that Pac-Man Championship edition was available, and now IGN is the first with a full review. The verdict?

After feeling the burn of paying a combined $10 for the original Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man, you may be wary of a third Live Arcade Pac-Man game. Don’t be. Unlike the other two, Championship Edition feels fresh and exciting. The classic feel of Pac-Man is still there, but the new features are well designed and fit in perfectly with the overall purpose of the Live Arcade.

Compared to some more recent games, Pac-Man could be considered boring. The Championship Edition does well to spice things up though, offering unique new mazes, lots of flashy neon and upbeat music. Not all games that hit the XBL Arcade are worth the cash, but this one is an exception.

Source: IGN Xbox 360

Yes, ASUS strives to deliver consumers the classiest and sexiest laptops on the market. We’ve taken a look at a few of them in the past, such as the Lamborghini VX1 and VX2. For the fashionable types out there, they have leather-skinned notebooks as well, in pink no less!

Forget about all those whacked-out computers covered in diamonds, flames, and car manufacturer logos that tell the world how much money you have to spend. Instead, impress the design-school girl sitting next to you by whipping out a wooden computer.

Who woodn’t want this? I admit they have done a great job, and it was enough to be awarded the Best Product Design award at the show. No specs were given, but who cares? It’s wooden!

Source: Sci Fi

If you are a mobile Office user, you will be pleased to learn that the upcoming Office 2007 will be released completely free. It sounds like it will be available to those with Windows Mobile 6, as it’s not compatible with WM5.

It doesn’t sound like there will be a ton of new features in the updated version of Office Mobile. But it will have one killer app: support for Office 2007 documents. You’ll be able to open Office 2007 file formats like .pptx .docx and .xlsx.

You might find it odd that Microsoft would be releasing something for free, and well, so do I. I have mastered the art of ignoring my instincts and not asking questions. Just take it, and love it.

Source: Download Squad

It’s not too often that the developer of an operating system decides on a completely new filesystem, and when they do, it’s probably for a good reason. Information has been leaked inadvertantly by Sun, that Apple’s OS X Leopard will utilize the ZFS file system, effectively replacing journaled HFS+ as seen in current versions.

Rumors of Apple’s interest in ZFS began in April 2006, when an OpenSolaris mailing list revealed that Apple had contacted Sun regarding porting ZFS to OS 10. The file system later began making appearances in Leopard builds.

First released in 2005, ZFS is certainly one of the newer filesystems on the market, but if Apple is this confident in its efficiency, then it’s hard to think otherwise. It’s a filesystem of the future, able to handle upwards of 16 exabytes (16,000,000,000GB) thanks to it’s 128-bit design.

Source: Mac Rumors