Content and news by Rob Williams

With the advent of wireless devices, it’s no surprise that the technology has made its way to headphones. Not only are they becoming more abundant, but they are not that expensive either. We are taking a look at a contender from Altec Lansing and after reading you will surely know whether they are for you or not.

Cases & Enclosures
• Spire Pininfarina – TweakNews

Memory & Storage
• Corsair Dominator TWIN2X2048-8888C4DF – Hexus
• Western Digital 500GB – Computing On Demand

Motherboards & Processors
• GIGABYTE GA-965P-DQ6 – HardOCP

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Apevia BeastPower PFC680W-BL PSU – Think Computers
• Logitech MX Revolution – Hardware Info
• Razer Barracuda HP1 Gaming Headphones – Virtual-Hideout
• Sandisk Sansa E250 2GB MP3 Player – Xtreme Computing
• SteelPad QcK Heavy – techPowerUp!
• XTracPads Ripper XL – DragonSteelMods

Displays & Video Cards
• Albatron 7300GT – Overclockers Online
• Albatron 7300GT – Red & Blackness
• ATi X1650 Pro and X1300 XT – MadBoxPC (Spanish)
• Galaxy 7300GT w/ Passive Cooling – Technic3D (German)
• Sparkle Calibre P790+ 512 MB SLI – Guru3D
• Viewsonic N3260w 32″ Widescreen HDTV – XYZ Computing

Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
• “Building A KICKASS Gaming Rig Part 1 of 3” – 3D Gameman
• Dell XPS 700 – BIOS Magazine
• LG Fusic – Digital Trends
• SiSoftware Sandra 2007 Professional – techFEAR
• “Why It’s Difficult To Build PCs For The Less Tech Savvy” – Hardware3D

Crocodile Man, Steve Irwin, is dead. He was killed in a freak accident in Cairns, police sources said. It appeared that he was killed by a sting-ray barb that went through his chest, Queensland Police Inspector Russell Rhodes said.
He was swimming off the Low Isles at Port Douglas where he had been filming an underwater documentary when it occurred. Ambulance officers confirmed they attended a reef fatality this morning at Batt Reef off Port Douglas.

Tech news it isn’t, but Steve was known the world over for his great documentaries. Who could count the amount of times you’ve heard someone mimic “Crikey!”. Sad day indeed.

VisionTek has released the first PCI graphics card since the NVIDIA GeForce FX5200 and ATI Radeon 9250 was available in PCI. The new VisionTek Radeon X1300 256MB PCI provides users that lack AGP or PCI Express expansion capabilities with a new upgrade path. Based on the ATI Radeon X1300 graphics processor, the VisionTek Radeon X1300 256MB PCI features four pixel shaders and two vertex shaders. It also features a 450 MHz core and 533 MHz memory clock.

It’s great to see another PCI GPU being released, but the thing costs $129.99US! That’s rather expensive considering what it is. It has great TV/Video support though, so that will be it’s main selling feature… not gaming.

The practice of burying the dead may date back 350,000 years, as evidenced by a 45-foot-deep pit in Atapuerca, Spain, filled with the fossils of 27 hominids of the species Homo heidelbergensis, a possible ancestor of Neanderthals and modern humans.

What better way to start off the week than with a morbid top 20 list? “Zoroastrians in India leave out the bodies of the dead to be consumed by vultures.” Twisted stuff.

Sadly, the number of user-friendly, appealing BitTorrent clients available for the platform are very few in comparison to the number of those available for Windows. In this article we will highlight the most popular Mac BitTorrent applications and compare their features.

There are not many torrent programs to choose from for Linux either, but it’s good to see some quality ones for Mac. Azureus takes the crown, not surprisingly, though Tomato Torrent comes in a close second place.

It might be one of the most self-congratulatory press releases to come around these parts lately (PDF), but video game mega-publisher Electronic Arts apparently has some reason to shout and dump an ice-filled cooler of Gatorade all over itself: apparently Madden NFL 07 sold more than two million copies during its first week of release, the best first-week performance in the game franchise’s 17-year history.

For a sports title, this is incredible! 2,000,000! Kudos to EA for that one. In related news, stay tuned to our review of the game happening next week.

The photo on the right isn’t exactly what it appears to be–nor are the other images that follow in this photo gallery. All were manipulated beyond straightforward cropping of edges or lightening shaded areas. Often they have a key element inserted or deleted.

Here is some good material to enjoy over your morning coffee/tea/beer. 24 pictures are displayed that have been doctored since they were originally taken. It just proves how easy it is to be fooled!

Only days after Microsoft patched the FairUse4WM DRM hack, the creators of the program have released an update that once again breaks the restrictions on protected WMA and WMV files. The utility works by stripping the DRM information from protected windows media files allowing users to freely manipulate the files and play them back as they see fit.

Great. Fantastic. Awesome. That’s all I can say about this since I despise DRM. Though, I have to wonder who actually still use WMA’s? Regardless, it’s good to see such a tool around. Not to thwart Microsoft, but DRM in general has got to go.

The application Browzar has been branded “adware” by many because it directs web searches to online adverts. Some technical experts also say Browzar, which claims to leave no trail of webpages visited, does not work. Browzar’s developers say they are examining the feedback but strongly deny that it is adware.

This is not how I would personally define ‘spyware’ or ‘adware’, but it’s shady regardless. Before you consider downloading it, you should read this article to see why people are up in arms.

The idea is to use the existing PC microphone to listen to whatever is heard in the background, be it music, your phone going off or the TV turned down. The PC then identifies it, using fingerprinting, and then shows you relevant content, whether that’s adverts or search results, or a chat room on the subject.

The process behind this is rather neat, but it’s yet another way that our privacy will be invaded. Holding all of our search terms is enough, but this is getting ridiculous. Though the article doesn’t mention which Google products this will be introduced in, you can be sure it would be Talk first up to the plate.

Cases & Enclosures
• Antec Fusion Media Center Case – Think Computers
• Enermax Chakra – Phoronix
• ICY DOCK MB722 Drive Enclosure – Think Computers
• I-Star S-9000 Server Tower Case – ModTheBox

Cooling
• Nmedia IceCone CPU Cooler – DragonSteelMods
• ThermalRight Ultra-120 – 3D Gameman

Memory & Storage
• Buffalo FireStix 2GB PC2-6400 – Virtual-HIdeout
• G.Skill PC 4200 DDR2 F2-4200PHU2-2GBNV – Technic3D

Motherboards & Processors
• Asus P5NSLI – HotHardware

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• A4 Tech X-718 Optical Mouse – GameApex
• APIOTEK 12-in-1 Express Card Adapter – techARP
• CrystalFontz 635 USB Front Panel – Xtreme Computing
• Logitech G7 – Modders-Inc
• Logitech G15 – Think Computers
• Samsung YP-U2 MP3 Player – Overclockers Online
• ThermoHAWK 200 Touchless Thermometer – ModTheBox

Displays & Video Cards
• Acer 19″ Widescreen LCD + ATI AIW VE Video Card – Red & Blackness
• ASUS M2N32-SLI Deluxe vs. Crosshair – Hexus
• ATI X1950XTX – MadBox PC (Spanish)
• ATI X1950XTX – Neoseeker
• Club3D 7800 GS AGP – Cooling-Station
• HIS X1650Pro 256MB – 3D Gameman
• PowerColor X1650 PRO – Bjorn3D

Complete Systems, Competitions & Etcetera
• Giveaway: 2 * Cooler Master Mystique 631 – 3D Gameman
• “How To Build a Computer” – techPowerUp!
• “How To Properly Clean Your DVD Collection” – Hardware3D
• Giveaway: Saitek Eclipse II Illuminated Keyboard – Overclockers Online
• “The Ten Common Myths of I.T.” = The Tech Zone
• “The Trials and Tribulations of Buying Your Term Papers Online” – Futurelooks
• Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft Knot 2 – Phoronix
• “Why Should We Buy Battlefield 2142?” – NGOHQ

The M2N32-SLI Deluxe is one feature packed motherboard in every sense of the word. Whether you are a hardcore gamer, enthusiast overclocker or Joe HTPC, this board delivers what you are looking for.

The 75-year-old would only be allowed to sign the forms for the Carphone Warehouse’s TalkTalk phone and broadband package if she was accompanied by a younger member of her family who could explain the small print to her.

When was the last time you were asked for your age when signing up for broadband? Strange enough, but this is even weirder.

Garbage cans all over England are under surveillance tonight. And not by sleepy, fallible humans. At least 500,000 “wheelie bins” now use technology worthy of James Bond’s fabled electronics genius “M” (or at least a competent villain from SPECTRE).

Ugh! I’m all for RFID in certain scenarios, but not in a garbage bin. What’s next? Toothbrushes? Toilet seats? Underwear?

MySpace, the wildly popular online teen hangout, said on Friday it will make its first move into the digital music business by selling songs from nearly 3 million unsigned bands.MySpace is the latest company to try to take on Apple Computer Inc.’s iTunes Music Store, but unlike many other start-up rivals, it already boasts 106 million users, as well as the backing of parent company News Corp.

Finally! I have a reason to like MySpace now. iTunes should have done this a long time ago.

Identity thieves in Canada have begun targeting the homes of their victims. Recently, several cases of mortgage and title fraud involving identity theft where several individuals have had their houses sold without their knowledge. Ontario’s land-registry system does not currently protect homeowners from such fraud, but instead favors banks, mortgage companies, and purchasers. The provincial government is however working to solve the problem.

It’s truly incredible that you can actually have your own house sold from under your feet and know nothing of it. What’s worse, is it appears once the fradulant sale is finished, it’s time for you to pack up… no two ways about it.

The latest such case is brought by a woman who is suing Google for suspending her Adsense account due to clickfraud. She wants $250,000 to compensate her for the 100 hours it took her to determine the placement of the ads on her site. And she admits to clicking on her own ads, but only, she says, because she wanted to screen the advertisers.

She must’ve been doing quite well to ‘earn’ $2,500 per hour. Techgage has not hit that level yet, sadly. Not surprisingly, she is suing Yahoo! for the same reasons. Good stuff. I almost spit out my morning coffee as I was reading this…

Microsoft’s Windows Media Player hasn’t been around as long as Apple’s QuickTime, but the Redmond company has been working furiously to make it the biggest, baddest, and above all most dominant media player on the block. Version 7, released in 2000, was the first “bells and whistles” version that offered all sorts of extra goodies such as CD ripping and visualizations. Version 8 arrived with the release of Windows XP a year later, 9 arrived in 2003, and version 10 came along with XP SP1.

You can find out all of what’s new over at Ars and you can grab the download here. I haven’t used WMP much since 9 because it keeps getting more bloated, but 11 is looking sharp.

What products will be shown are completely unknown, naturally, but anyone with a pulse might hazard a guess that the event could be used to launch the new, proper video iPod, while some more adventurous people might mention “iPhone” in the same breath. Hopefully, they’ll have their movie store worked out by then, or soon after.

Classic Apple trying to stir up interest. Of course, this works. New iPod? Only ten more days before we find out.