Sony was victimized by hackers again as a Sony Ericsson website in Canada was breached and the personal data of 2000 people was stolen. Also details on another 8500 users were leaked on a Sony Music Entertainment website in Greece.

Among the sensitive information lost were e-mails, passwords and phone numbers. Credit card information wasn’t stolen this time so that’s a high five on that account, at least. Read more »

The creator of the Modular computer, Xi3 is going to be the first company to bring the Chrome OS to the desktop realm, using a revamped version of it, called ChromiumPC.

The Xi3 Modular computer can easily fit in your hand as it’s really small and houses three interconnected modules – one for the processor as well as primary and secondary I/O modules. The whole thing is encased in an aluminum body, which might to us bears slight resemblance to a toaster, but is certainly among the world’s smallest desktop PC. Read more »

Mike Elgan argues an interesting case and we’d have to agree with him. The potential for failure that comes with Chrome OS and the new Google Chromebooks, is strong. To many, it might be fair to say that Windows is the OS we most commonly live with, despite its many, many flaws; the OS we love to hate if you will and Google feels it’s time to give the people an OS they can be proud of.

Of course Microsoft have the enviable position of having the dominant OS across both the business and personal computing markets and one that Apple and Google would both surely kill for. But what does it take to knock Windows off the top spot? Google think their new way of doing things is the way of the future. A cloud based computing service where all your files, personal information and what-not are suspended in the cloud; the biggest draw being that if your computer were to fail, you lose nothing and could instantly pick up where you left off. Read more »

Today Intel announced the Z68 Express chipset, which the company promises to offer more flexibility than the previous generation Sandy Bridge chipsets, the H67 Express and P67 Express.

One of the benefits of the new Z68 Express chipset, compared to the old ones, is the ability to switch between the onboard Intel HD Graphics and the installed video card on the fly without the need to restart or swap cables. Read more »

Processor manufacturers are in this never ending race to produce faster and less power consuming chips for various devices and platforms. Whether it’s RAM or CPUs, we all like things to go quicker and be easier on our pockets.

And don’t worry, this trend will continue going for now. Intel has introduced a new 3D transistor design which will be implemented in the upcoming family of Ivy Bridge processors. As a result of this new 3D design named “Tri-Gate”, Intel will be able to produce smaller and faster chips which are going to be widely implemented from servers and desktop computers to laptops, tablets and mobile phones. Read more »

As you might have heard, Apple have just announced their latest batch of shiny new iMacs and Apple adopters everywhere are no doubt, itching to get their hands on one. Being the sleek, self contained unit that it is, it’s sometimes easy to forget just how much tech they’ve managed to fit behind that monolithic glossy black display.

The clever chaps over at iFixit have taken the liberty of ripping one of these new generation iMacs apart for all to see, the cheapest (which by no means makes it push over) 21.5″ variety if you were wondering. Read more »

Apple has just updated their Apple Store with the refreshed line-up of iMacs to feature the new Intel Sandy Bridge quad-core processors. The update comes 10 months after the first-gen Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 family of processors were introduced to Apple’s all-in-one desktop computer.

On the outside its business as usual. The 2011 iMac comes in 21.5-inch and 27-inch flavors with the same IPS-LCD screens as its predessor. But there’s more than meets the eye here. With the Intel Sandy Bridge processors come new AMD graphics cards, ThunderBolt I/O port and a Facetime camera. Read more »

You may not have heard of the Bing Maps Ortho Project but it’s goal is to up the ante on the digital maps scene by delivering high-resolution ground images of continental USA and Western Europe. Imagine the currently available Satellite views and imagine you could use those to zoom in even further down… Way in, actually, as the imagery is all shot from a small plane, not a satellite…

For this project Microsoft has equipped planes with specially designed 220 MP cameras and 13 PCs each. The planes were sent off to 5.8 km high in the sky to cover about 18 million square km. Do I hear those numbers crunching in your head? Yeah, the project is that optimistic and capturing those image data and importing it to Bing Maps it will cost Microsoft just about $130 million bucks. Whoa! Read more »

Adobe is releasing a touch SDK for developers and three apps for the iPad, which aim at turning the tablet into a capable Photoshop companion – something along the way of Wacom’s pen tablets. With the new apps you can finger-paint, color-mix, tool-shift and export to the full-featured PC version.

The touch SDK aims at giving developers the tools to create Photoshop apps for iOS, Android and BlackBerry. This way basically every tablet-maker (save for HP, for now) will be able to take advantage and use its tablets for professional Photoshop work. Read more »

Skype version 5.3 (for PC) is out and you can download it right away. It brings some bug fixes and a minor UI facelift, but most importantly improved video-calling to mobile devices, such as iOS and Android, among others.

Skype developers have shifted the weight of video-calling from the mobile devices to the PC, and as it does the heavier lifting, your mobile phone can send better quality video. This should create an overall smoother experience of PC-to-mobile video calls. Read more »

The story I am about to retell you starts in China. Some guy finds a really cheap portable 500GB USB hard drive in a store there. He buys one after he has it tested in the shop.

Then he goes home (in Russia) and starts filling it with data. But the drive doesn’t seem to work properly. You upload a movie on it, and you can only play just a few minutes from it. Why?

Here is what the guys at the near repair shop found out. Read more »

Google is introducing the +1 button, which will be a like button, available directly on every one of your search results. The service will soon be available for testing and after that to everyone with a Google account.

The idea behind this is to vote +1 for Google search results or websites that you like. Essentially, this way you would be giving feedback to everyone else who’s interested in the same topic. You’d also be on the receiving of this new feature as the community opinion should help you find relevant information sources as well. Read more »

Duke Nukem Forever is delayed again, guys. Not a big surprise there, right? Fortunately, it’s going to launch just a month later than the previously announced date in May – 10 June 2011. Gearbox prepared a funny video to give you the news and apologize for them.

The legendary game has been in development since 1997 and a month’s delay is nothing compared to those 14 years of waiting.

Read more »

NVIDIA seems to have developed a taste for dual GPUs recently. Today the company launched its latest GTX590, which is basically a couple of GTX580 units soldered together.

And even though some power/heat limitations forced NVIDIA to lower the clocks of 1024 CUDA cores inside the GTX590, compared to the GTX580 this is one beast of a GPU. Early reviews put it within 1% of the AMD Radeon HD 6990, a.k.a. the fastest single card on Earth. And the new NVIDIA baby is way quieter, too. Read more »

The YouTube in-browser video editor just got updated. And this isn’t your everyday minor tweaking, mind you, this is a pretty major improvement. The editor can stabilize your shaky video and even make it 3D worthy.

The stabilization feature is using the Green Parrot Pictures technology and know-how, which Google recently acquired by buying the company. It removes all the shaky camera movement and replaces it with specially selected trajectories. It makes it look as if you were using a tripod for filming the video rather than your hands. Read more »