Content and news by Rob Williams

Yahoo is at the center of the latest rumor sweeping the blogging world. Several sites are reporting that the media company is getting ready to acquire Digg.com, an online news community that’s quickly become one of the popular gathering spaces for technophiles.

This would only make sense since Yahoo owns other ultra-popular social networking websites. Check out the full blog entry at News.com.

Nintendo President Satoru Iwata today announced Nintendo DS Lite, a slimmer version of the best-selling Nintendo DS. Also featuring brighter screens, Nintendo DS Lite will launch in Japan on the 2nd of March. Nintendo DS Lite will be less than two-thirds the size of the original Nintendo DS and more than 20 percent lighter.

Usually I shrug when I hear that Nintendo has released a different version of the same console, but this one I can agree with. The original DS just isn’t that comfortable, so hopefully a slim version will be. Check out the posting at Slashdot.

San Jose, California – January 25, 2006 — Super Talent Technology today announced two new ultra high performance DDR memory kits. Both kits consist of a pair of 1GB DDR memory modules.

Both kits have some great timings, so it will be interesting to see how well they shape up in reviews. Check out the full release here.

VNU Business Publications Ltd, the London-based publishing arm of VNU Business Media Europe (BME), has purchased The Inquirer, www.theinquirer.net, one of the leading technology news sites. The investment is part of VNU’s ongoing strategy to enhance its online portfolio and transform its business into a fully cross-media content publishing organisation.

This was quite a sudden surprise. Hopefully this will mean only good things for the Inq, as it’s already a pretty reliable tech source. You can check out the full press release here. Hexus were the first ones to bring this to our attention.

3D Xtreme is taking a look at the Max 4 HDD Enclosure from TT. It includes a seperate power supply and a very sturday chassis. It’s too bad that it doesn’t offer S-ATA support though. Adrian has added quite a few options to his BIOS guide, so definitely head over there if anything related to your BIOS puzzles you. 3D Gameman takes a look at a fairly smaller, but feature packed PSU. The Nexus 350W NX-9003 has many connectors, but only one PCI-E. Of course, who would run SLi on a 350W? The coolest feature of this PSU though, is the security fan that *only* turns on when the sensors reach a certain temp.

Cases & Enclosures
• Thermaltake Max 4 HDD Enclosure – 3D Xtreme

Cooling
• Sytrin KuFormula VF1 Plus – PyroCPU

Motherboards & CPU’s
• ASRock 775XFire-eSATA2 – Phoronix
• BIOS Optimization Guide Rev. 8.8 – Rojak Pot

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Nexus 350W Silent NX-9003 SFB Power Supply w/ Security Fan Backup – 3D Gameman
• Titan Power Inverter HW-150 – A1 Electronics
• X-Micro Video MP3 400 1GB – Think Computers

Video Cards & Monitor
• Club-3D 7800GT 256MB – Viper Lair
• Gigabyte GV-3D1 6800GT – GamePyre
• PowerColor X1300 – XYZ Computing
• XFX 7800GT – Motherboards.org

Etcetera & Contests
• CES 2006 Spotlight: Flexity PowerSquid Surge Protector – Design Technica
• Do It Yourself PC System Guides – Legit Reviews
• Samsung ML-3561N Laser Printer – XYZ Computing

Do you like the simplicity of Notepad, but want the security of Steganos? That’s where LockNote comes in to play, which protects your text with 256-Bit encryption. This is also the very first Steganos product to be labeled as freeware, and it’s even open source!

BRUSSELS (Reuters) – Microsoft’s (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) top lawyer said on Wednesday that the company would take new compliance steps to meet requirements set by the European Commission.

“We are announcing today that we will also license the Windows source code itself so anyone who takes code also has access to that source code,” General Counsel Brad Smith told a news conference.

That’s all we need.. multiple other operating systems that have countless holes. Check out the full posting at Reuters.

GAINWARD is back with the vengeance. And now we won’t be able to make fun of its ultra-long names anymore as it brings in a new naming convention along with its new designs.

And, since Nvidia could not deliver enough 7800 GTX 512s these guys have made an alternative.

If you think your GPU should use 512MB of memory, then check out the full review of this new card at The Inquirer.

I originally got this CPU for one reason: I noticed recently that I had 4 sets of memory top out at 306mhz. A very strange thing to do, I decided. After thinking about it for a while, I concluded that the issue must lie with my Opteron 146’s memory controller, so I talked to robberbaron for a bit, and he was able to procure this 3200+ DH-E6 Venice for me.

I love listening to Eclipse ramble; he makes a lot of solid points. The ram sinks his mentions in the article look to have good potential.. Check out the full article at EclipseOC.

Are you in the market for a new HTPC case? Overclockers Online is taking a great SilverStone case for a spin, the SG01. It’s a solid case, and allows room for extra cooling, and in an HTPC, you will need it. If you are in need for a 1GB kit of memory, and refuse to make the jump to 2GB, then you may want to check out Pro-Clockers today. They are taking a look at the Crucial Ballistix PC4000 kit, which has extreme overclocking abilities.

Cases & Enclosures
• SilverStone SG01 – Overclockers Online

Cooling
• AeroCool Streamliner 140mm & Extreme Turbine 90mm Fans – Hi-Tech Reviews
• Noctua / Coolink Tower Heatsinks – Silent PC Review

Memory & Storage
• Crucial Ballistix GB (2*512) Kit – Pro-Clockers

Motherboards & CPU’s
• ECS PF22 Extreme – Digit-Life

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• Altec Lansing iM616 Headphones – Think Computers
• Logitech G5 vs. Razer Copperhead Gaming Mouse Comparison – TechSpot
• Saitek Gamers Keyboard – Overclockers Club
• Xbox 360 Controller for Windows – OC Mod Shop

Video Cards & Monitor
• ATI Radeon X1900 – Bit-Tech
• DoubleSight DS-1900 – Motherboards.org
• Geforce 7300GS: ASUS vs Gigabyte – 3D Avenue

Etcetera & Contests
• Cooler Master Give Away Reminder – Overclockers Online
• Do It Yourself PC System Guides – Legit Reviews
• GAIM v2.0.0 BETA 2 – Phoronix
• Palm LifeDrive – Design Technica

Combat the wintertime blahs with a road trip you’ll never forget as you blast your way across the post-apocalyptic landscapes and smoldering ruins of Auto Assault, the fastest, most destructive MMORPG ever! Discover new and exciting towns, marvel at the architecture and then flatten the place with heavy ordnance and reckless driving. You’ll take in breathtaking mutated landscape and feel those day to day irritations melt away as you set everything ablaze with your new flame-throwing turret weapon. Be sure to sample the local flavors and culture as you meet the denizens of the war-ravaged highways and byways; then enjoy the satisfying crunchy noise they make when they wrap around your screeching tires. It’s true – there’s nothing like a road trip to Ground Zero. It’s the ultimate vacation!

We’re very excited about the progress we’ve made during the course of beta testing. As we move closer to launch, our goal is to continue this progress through stress testing the servers and gathering feedback on new vehicles, missions and character progression features as they are introduced. To accomplish this, we’ve begun to hold special beta weekend events, partnering with some of the online gaming communities’ favorite sites to help us spread the good news about Auto Assault and provide beta account keys for these weekend events.

Penny Arcade (http://www.penny-arcade.com) is currently giving away keys for our next special beta weekend event that will kick off on Friday, January 27 at 4 pm Eastern and continue through Tuesday, January 31 at 3 am Eastern. Visit their site and click the Auto Assault banner on the home page if you’d like to get a key.

Nero has released a new version of their Ultimate Edition and we are here to take a look at what’s new and upgraded. There’s so much packed into this bundle, but is it worth your hard earned cash?

FRANKFURT, Germany, Jan. 23, 2006… Steganos GmbH, a leading provider of
security and privacy software for consumers and small to medium-sized
businesses, today announced that it has published its first freeware —
Steganos Locknote — which encrypts important notes or memos in the blink of
an eye.

You can check out the full release right here.

Several hours and countless frags later, the door prize time had come. Every prize had to go, and almost every LANner walked home with something cool to play with. Finally, after the tourneys had ended, the food was exhausted, and the caffeine effect had begun to wane, everyone packed up and headed home, yawning widely and sorting through their new gear.

Looks like the party was a huge success! Check out the full coverage at Legit Reviews.

The race is on. You can try to get the bounty for booting Windows XP on iMac. At this moment there is $2773 waiting for the winner. However several people have brickified their iMacs when playing with EFI.

Ahh, what fun. Killing your iMAC would suck, but it sounds like quite a challenge and there’s hope for decent money at the end. It will be very interesting to see if it happens! Check out the posting at Slashdot.

Just in time for the release of the new X1900 cards, ATI Tool has been updated with support for them. Here are some of the listed changes:

• Added support for X1900 Series
• Added voltage change support for VDDCI on R580
• Fixed Adaptive AA checkbox enabled on NVIDIA
• Improved detection for “2D/3D switch enabled”
• Some debugging output removed
• Fixed negative ranges for temp. monitoring graph
• Added Yes/No question to disable 3D switch dialog
• More fixes to hotkey code
• Shift key is no longer required to display the fuses info
• Added longer delay after voltage change from profile, also put clock change as last change

You can grab the new download right here and discuss it in their forums here.

Even though you could purchase these cards online for the past couple days, the official launch is today.

MARKHAM, Ontario–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Jan. 24, 2006— Gamers and multimedia enthusiasts alike will be delighted by the launch and immediate availability of the Radeon® X1900 graphics processor from ATI Technologies Inc. (TSX:ATY)(NASDAQ:ATYT). With the most advanced and complete set of features, PCI Express® add-in-cards based on the Radeon X1900 GPU (Graphics Processing Unit) will, without question, be the cards of choice for gamers looking for the best performance and for multimedia enthusiasts looking for a high-performance, high-quality digital media experience.

Of course this means that there are reviews a plenty. I am impressed by the performance of this card, as it actually storms past the 7800GTX 512MB in a few select tests. You can check out reviews at Hexus, Guru 3D, Legit Reviews, HardOCP and see a preview at NGOHQ.

AMD has a new stock heatsink to be included with some of their processors, and it looks great. It’s a nice step up from the previous version, so it would be nice to see it available for their entire line-up. You can read all about it at MadShrimps. We all know that the OCZ Rally is a super fast USB thumb drive because of it’s dual channel memory. Well, GeIL has recently released a similar product and Techniz is taking it for an evaluation. It took only 18 seconds to read 500MB of data off the drive!

Cases & Enclosures
• Raidmax RX-9 ATX Gaming Case – Big Bruin
• SilverStone LC09B Mini-ITX – Virtual-Hideout
• Xion II ATX Case – Futurelooks

Cooling
• AMD new stock Athlon 64 HSF – Madshrimps
• Coolermaster Susurro – Madshrimps
• Scythe Ninja Plus CPU Cooling – Technic3D

Memory & Storage
• DAViD 100 Series, Dual Channel USB Pen Drive – Techniz
• SanDisk Sansa m230 512MB MP3 Player – XYZ Computing
• X-Micro Mini DisGO 20GB Portable Hard Drive – Think Computers

Motherboards & CPU’s
• ECS PF5 Extreme – techPowerUp!

Peripherals & Power Supplies
• SilverStone Strider 600w ST60F – A1 Electronics
• Zalman ZM460-APS 460W Quiet Power Supply – 3D Gameman

Video Cards & Monitor
• XGI Volari 8300 Graphics Card – Rojak Pot

Etcetera & Contests
• 3DMark2006 Benchmark Roundup – TweakPC
• VoIP and the Leap of Faith – Design Technica

Advanced Micro Devices, the No. 2 maker of computer processors, on Monday said it promoted Dirk Meyer to president and chief operating officer. Meyer, 44, joined AMD in 1995 and was promoted to the company’s No. 2 spot, as president and chief operating officer of the Microprocessor Solutions Sector unit, in April. He is known as the father of Athlon.

Maybe with Dirk as President, they will soon be No. 1? Source: News.com.

Pixar Animation Studios, whose films have garnered critical acclaim with both domestic and overseas audiences, is being bought tomorrow by Disney for $7 billion. Steve Jobs, as the CEO of Pixar, will become the largest shareholder in Disney. In contrast to Pixar’s remarkable success, Disney have struggled in the last decade to release original and financially successful productions; recently, many of the studio’s films have been sequels of earlier successful works, a good portion of which have been released direct to video.

This will no doubt affect Apple’s products in the future. In the future, maybe we will see Disney movies available on iTunes.. the possibilities are countless. Check out the full news story at AppleXnet.