Content and news by Rob Williams

Vardan Kushnir, notorious for sending spam to each and every citizen of Russia who appeared to have an e-mail, was found dead in his Moscow apartment on Sunday, Interfax reported Monday. He died after suffering repeated blows to the head.

He knew that many, many Russians hated him for his massive spamming, and must have known that this was a chance he was taking. It wouldn’t surprise me if we see more of this type of news in the future. Check out the full news post at MOS News.

REDMOND, Wash. — July 24, 2005 — Microsoft Corp. today announced beta availability of MSN® Virtual Earth™, a new Web service that further builds on the company’s investment in the search category by harnessing the company’s extensive search and mapping capabilities to give people an immersive way to utilize location-based information online. The service enables users to search, discover, explore, plan and share information and activities relevant to specific U.S. locations by combining aerial imagery, detailed maps and precise local search capabilities. Users can access the beta version of the service at http://virtualearth.msn.com.

You can read the full press release here. I am a huge fan of Google Maps and Google Earth, so I was hard pressed to like Microsofts version. After playing around with it for a bit, I find it much more buggy than Google’s version, but with Virtual Earth, you can zoom in further than Google, and still have great looking quality. I look forward to seeing updates in a future.. and hopefully like Google, they will release a stand alone application.

The Mozilla Foundation Latest News about Mozilla Foundaton is delaying the release of the next version of the increasingly popular Firefox Latest News about Firefox Web browser, adding more development cycles to create better features for the next big update.

Firefox 1.5, codenamed Deer Park, was tentatively scheduled to be released during the summer, but the project remains in the alpha development stage. The official launch of the major upgrade now will be moved to September, according to Mozilla, after a beta version appears in August.

Mozilla noted that the delay is not due to security issues, but for feature sets. At any rate though, 1.5 should be worth the wait, at least we hope. Check out the posting at Sci-Tech Today.

Yahoo! has just launched their Widgets section of the website. Available for both the Mac and PC, you can download these to have different functions on your desktop, such as Search, Weather and even Finance. Check it out at Widgets Yahoo!.

Microsoft may be in trouble for naming its forthcoming operating system Vista after it transpired that the name has been registered by an American company for nearly six years.

Vista, which operates a small business internet interchange, is actually based in Microsoft’s home town of Redmond. It was started in May 2000 by John Wall, the founder of Wall Data and an erstwhile investor in SCO.

This is definitely going to be interesting. Vista may of found this a good chance to either score some money from Microsoft, or simple really wants the PR. I don’t understand how they could win an arguement over this.. it’s not like they renamed the company to Vista. Check out the full news post at VNU Net.

The KN1 Extreme is ECS’ first entry in to the nForce4 and Athlon64 world. In fact, it might be said that it is ECS’ first true entry into the enthusiast motherboard market ever. We put it through our normal evalutions and come away surprised.

ECS hasn’t had the best track record, but [H] left feeling impressed with the board, so hopefully we will see that continue in the future. Check out the review at Hard|OCP.

Size matters when it comes to hard disks. Bigger is always better. Everyone is always looking out for the biggest hard disk in the market. Today, we are going to take a close look at one of the biggest hard disks in the market – the Seagate 400GB Barracuda 7200.8 SATA hard disk! Check out why we consider it worthy of our Reviewer’s Choice Award!

Check out the full review at Rojak Pot!

Like overclockers, networking enthusiasts have their favorite chip for the job. Although a wireless networking Chipset may not lead to as many advantages as say a good TCCD batch or BH5 memory chips but poor wireless chips can also lead to a weaker signal and poor performance. In this review, we’ll be trying out a NetGear WG511T, which utilizes the infamous Atheros Chipset.

Seems to be a solid card with a lot of good features. Check out the full look at Phoronix.

With the system powered on you can now see the brightly lit front panel temperature display. The readout is a bright blue color with a small animated thermometer on the left side. The numbers are clear and easy to read, with them extending to one decimal place. Compared to my ExTech digital thermometer, the included probe was only 1-2 degrees off from the actual temperature.

This is a great looking case, I love the orange/black color scheme. Too bad it doesn’t have a side window, though. Check out the review at Big Bruin.

By now anyone within 10 feet of a computer, TV, or mobile phone has heard that Microsoft’s visionary Chairman Bill Gates told the his minions attending the Microsoft Global Sales Briefing, last Friday (an internal sales event) in Atlanta Georgia in the US that from that day henceforth the long used and somewhat abused name, “Longhorn,” would be expunged from the vocabulary of all Microsofties and most likely anyone wanting to have any association with mighty Microsoft – that would include, well, the universe, right? I’m OK with that, Vista is a cooler name than Longhorn, and in fact, I personally didn’t like the Longhorn name all that much to begin with, reminded me of big mean tempered cows I had met when I lived in Texas a few million years ago.

Check out the full article over at Hexus!

Guru3D is proud to bring you the new Second Edition of NVHARDPAGE. Our NVIDIA tweaking tool underwent quite some changes. nVHardPage nVidia videocard tweaker is tweaking utility for nVidia display adapters running under Windows 98 (SE) / Windows ME / Windows 2000 and Windows XP. With this tweak utility you can enable/disabe hidden features in nVidia control panel, tweak nVidia Direct3D and OpenGL settings and overclock your nVidia display adapter.

There is a lot of fixes and additions to this version, including support for the G70 cards. Check out the official homepage for the tool here and download it here.

Kingston’s latest and greatest HyperX memory was released a few months back. Their DDR2-6000 was the fastest then and still offers
great performance and overclocking headroom. But there is a steep price to pay.

Head over to InsaneTek for the review!

In the following review pages handy to use lists which we hope you will find as useful as we do the range of current AMD Athlon 64, FX, x2 dual-core & Sempron processors which we hope give you all the details necessary from model number, speed and order code to enable you to make an easy choice from the many different processor types, speeds and versions that are available whether you are looking for socket 939, 754, 940 or socket A, 64, FX, x2 dual-core or Sempron motherboards be for the fastest 64, FX x2 dual-core or the best value for money.

Check out the handy list over at A1-Electronics.

Asus has decided to do something about that requirement in rather inventive fashion. The CT-479 is an adapter card that plugs into the processor socket of certain Asus Socket 478 motherboards and converts them to a Socket 479 configuration capable of accepting a Pentium M. This adapter neatly solves both the price and performance issues, the latter by supplying a dual-channel memory configuration unavailable in the Intel 855GME laptop chipset.

If you have a need for this, than it’s perfect. I always wonder about the performance hit though, although it doesn’t really seem to be a problem here. Check out the review at Tech Report.

Home entertainment systems have come a long way since you ooh’ ed and ahh’ed because your neighbor had a few pairs of speakers that actually fit flush into his walls. That’s old news now. Even homes in comparatively modest new developments are being outfitted with a full complement of audio, network, TV and telephone wiring. In many developments the builder offers a standard wiring package and various upgrades for additional wiring, speakers, wiring enclosures and even full control systems.

Check out the full article at Bona Fide Reviews.

Video card cooling specialists Arctic Cooling have listened to the user’s reports and released the ATI Silencer 5 Revision 2. This VGA cooler, which is designed to fit on ATI’s X800 and X850 PCI-Express was built with high-performance in mind, while keeping sound levels at an acceptable level.
We test the cooler against an X850 Pro which already has a big fan, a copper base and cools memory as well.

Arctic Cooling never fails to make great coolers, and I’m sure this is no exception. Check out the review at techPowerUp!.

Do you want a CPU cooler with flair? We are taking a look at the great looking Vanessa L-Type from Titan. Of course, looks are not everything, so let’s see how well it cools!

This is the day everyone has been waiting for! It’s results time! Let’s find out who’s the winner of the XBL-grade Patriot DDR memory!

Check out the full results over at Rojak Pot.

Illuminated keyboards are a great invention. They provide soft
gentle light in the dark for your eyes. Therefore, it makes sense that
Sunbeam Tech, a leader in computer lighting and modding, would produce its
own line of illuminating keyboards. Today, we look at the Pro-Series Lite
Up Keyboard, EL-K8-078K.

Check out the review at A True Review.

At the very top of the Crucial graphics portfolio sits a genuine behemoth of a card, the Radeon X850 XT. Based on the R480 VPU , this chip boasts 160 million transistors and 16 pipelines , 256MB of DDR3, a 520MHz VPU and 540MHz DDR3, or in short, masses of pixel pushing power. Yes we say that with every new generation of graphics chip, but by today’s standards this thing really shifts some pixel plastered polygons.

Check out the full review at 3D Velocity.