IBLOG SPACE

Google has quietly updated Google+ and Google News with closer integration, making promotion of news stories among your social network circles more straightforward. Although Google News did have “+1″ buttons before, a redesign of the icon has arrived today; clicking it brings up a sharing box for a comment. That sharing box can, like all Google+ posts, be set to be visible publicly or only to certain individuals or circles you’ve set up on the social network. It’s also possible to not add a comment at all, and merely “+1″ the story as before. The change is the latest example of Google’s evolving social strategy, as the company attempts to better integrate Google+ into its more established products. Earlier this month, senior VP of engineering Vic Gundotra described the social network as part of a greater strategy, dismissing claims that it had been a failure and instead arguing that it was a type of glue that could better draw together different elements of Google’s range. Whether stre

This week its been quietly announced that members of the hacker group known as Anonymous are releasing their very own desktop operating system. This system is known at the moment as Anonymous-OS and is currently in as infant a stage as it possibly could be at version 0.1. That’s pre-pre-Alpha, for those of you counting, and we’re not even going to tell you to download it or do a search for it – keep your eyes off of it! What this operating system represents is a full toolkit for those of you looking to join the dangerous and illicit world of hacking. Inside the operating system you can actually download today is a relatively vast list of applications that will allow you to crack, spoof, and rip your way into the mainframe just like your heroes from the 1990′s movie Hackers, just like you’ve always wanted to! Have a peek at the list here, and forever hold your keyboards in glee: Pre-installed apps on Anonymous-OS: - ParolaPass Password Generator - Find Host IP - Anonymous HOIC - Ddosim

Windows 8 is shaping up to be Microsoft’s best mainstream OS to-date, but that hasn’t stopped criticism of the platform, even bringing one former team member out of the woodwork to try to “fix” it. The bluntly titled Fixing Windows 8 is apparently the handiwork of ex-Microsoft program manager and current user interface designer Michael Bibik Jr., who has taken on the challenge of addressing what he sees as obvious flaws before the OS even reaches commercial PCs. Among the issues observed are the absence of window controls for Metro apps, the newly introduced tablet-friendly software brought in concept over from the Windows Phone platform, about which Bibik scolds “How does a user know how to exit a Metro app? They can’t minimize, they can’t maximize, they can’t exit.” His concern – on Microsoft’s behalf – is that users won’t go to the effort of trying to figure out the new software’s foibles, and will instead just abandon the confusing functionality. “I’m pretty sure this is where 75%

After more than a year of waiting, BlackBerry users will finally be able to purchase an HSPA+ or 4G LTE PlayBook here in the USA. The FCC has revealed these two versions of the one and only BlackBerry tablet to the world before RIM has formally had a chance to show it off in the wild, and not one whole heck of a lot more than that is known as the moment. This version of the tablet has been tipped perviously to be coming with an upgraded series of specs such as NFC and a dual-core 1.5GHz processor under the hood. This device (or both versions of the device, rather), has been leaked previously via a RIM roadmap which noted the device to be scheduled for mid-2012. With the company still promoting this device with such items as trades for Android apps and inclusion in brand new Porsche concept cars, it appears that RIM wont be letting go of this device any time soon. Will RIM bring out the big guns for a re-release or upgrade for the summer season? We’ve had our own look at the original re

Everything is falling into place for the new iPad launch. If you didn’t manage to get your pre-order in via Apple’s website, you might be able to pick up the tablet from Apple stores starting from 8am on Friday, assuming you can brave the queues. And if you did pre-order or are planning to pick one up, you’re contributing to the predicted 65 million units being sold in 2012. That’s a lot of iPads. Analyst Michael Walkley has altered his predictions in terms of the price of Apple’s stock, and how many tablets they’re due to sell in 2012. First, he believes that Apple’s stock will hit $700 before the year is out. Second, he’s checked with Apple’s distribution channels and believes the new iPad has already shattered pre-order records. Part of that success is due to launching in ten countries simultaneously this Friday: that’s the biggest for an iOS device launch, according to CEO Tim Cook. Already pre-orders in the UK, US, and various other countries have pushed new orders back, with the

Since its inception, the Google Chrome operating system for Chromebook computers has been unique in its ability to work completely independently of the desktop environment. Very recently the open-source version of Chrome OS, Chromium, has been seen to be amped up by developers in a setup called Aura Shell to have not only a desktop which interacts directly with the offline storage space of the hardware its running on, but applications other than the Chrome browser being launched directly from the desktop as well. While some might say that this defeats the purpose of Chrome OS entirely, the developers working on this project insist that because this version of the OS still has a very cloud-based set of intentions, it remains true to the Chrome OS cause. Chromebooks have thus far touted their ability to allow you to work with your files and software through the web, this affording you the ability to pick up where you left off no matter what computer you’re using. This setup also affords

Just a few days ago we learned that UK retailer GAME had put itself up for sale, so short on cash that they’re unable to pay rent, which could force the company into administration in just a few short weeks. While GameStop have previously expressed interest in buying the company, MCV reports that Walmart have approached GAME about a possible acquisition. Details are scarce, with MCV only being told that Walmart have been in contact with GAME about a potential sale. It wouldn’t be the first time the corporation has expressed an interest in a British brand: they bought supermarket chain Asda in 1999 for £6.7 billion (~$10.5 billion). GAME also has operations in France and Australia that would presumably also need rescuing in any sort of buyout. The company has been in decline for a while, seeing a particularly difficult holiday season in 2011 as more and more consumers used rival retailers, as well as digital delivery systems such as Steam. GAME had hoped to renegotiate deals with suppli

This morning it’s been announced that Apple will not only be selling the new iPad from their own retail locations, they’ll be working with a series of 3rd party stores as well – this likely spreading the stock thin for everyone involved. This iPad release will have Apple joined by Best Buy, RadioShack, Sam’s Club, Target, and Walmart, not to mention the two big mobile carriers giving this iPad its first dose of 4G LTE: AT&T and Verizon. Like last year’s release of the iPad 2, customers should expect lines to be long and stock to be short – people are already lined up waiting for the Friday 8AM release, believe it or not! It’s an 8AM local time release for several areas around the world including the USA, UK, Germany, Japan, and six other countries, all of them in the same 24 hour period. Sales of the new iPad will begin on March 16th (this Friday) in these countries and will be released to an additional 25 locations in the world in coming weeks. The base price for the least expensi

Things have been looking bleak for LightSquared recently: the FCC denied it the ability to use its spectrum for an LTE rollout due to the risk of GPS being affected. LightSquared is also on the verge of running out of cash, having recently missed a payment on a $56 million loan from a British bank, and has also cut its workforce by 45%. Vowing not to go quietly into the night, LightSquared is reportedly getting ready to fight back. The company has hired two conservative litigators, Theodore Olson and Eugene Scalia, suggesting LightSquared is ready to take a legal battle to the FCC over its alleged “mishandling” of the LTE situation. Olson told Politicothat the LightSquared situation was “an egregious example of the government encouraging a company to invest an enormous amount of money to meet a national objective and then pulling the rug out from under them capriciously and precipitously.” He went on to say: “On the face of things, it looks to me like the government has acted arbitrari

We all have that need for speed: SSDs are getting faster and faster, and technologies like USB 3.0 andThunderbolt help keep things moving swiftly along. If you have a large SD card full of images, it’s not that much fun pulling them all over to your computer. Toshiba aims to reduce the frustration that goes along with slow transfer times, today announced a new line of high speed SD cards, which they claim are the world’s fastest. They’re dubbing the new line the EXCERIA series, designed to offer the highest level of performance. SDHC and SDXC cards will be available, starting at 8GB and going all the way up to 64GB. There are three different classes of card: Type 1, which offers the highest read and write speeds of 95 and 90MB/s respectively; Type 2, which offers read speeds of 95MB/s and write speeds of 60MB/s; and finally Type HD, which offers read speeds of 90MB/s and write speeds of 30MB/s. How have Toshiba managed to achieve such high speeds? By using the latest version of the SD

So far manufacturers have stuck Android onto a wide variety of devices, including smartphones, tablets, and evensmart watches. According to seperate reports, both Panasonic and Samsung could be looking to use Android as the base operating system on digital cameras in the future. First up, TechRadar reports that a represenative from Panasonic UK says the company is looking into the possibility of using Android on digital cameras in the future. Barney Sykes says: It’s one option for the future, but we have to be mindful of the consumer and the warranty that we offer. If we open up the platform to third parties, then we lose control of the warranty that we could offer the customer, because you never know what you’re downloading. Sykes goes on to say that the main concern is app compatibility with the various optics and technology packed into existing cameras. If Android were to be used with apps being downloaded to smart cameras, there’s no guarantee it would play nice with what Panasonic

In December 2006, various LCD suppliers were found guilty of anti-competitive practices, and eventually paid $890 million in fines for being caught out. A similar payout happened in December 2011, with five companies, including Samsung and Sharp, having to pay $553 million due to their involvment in price fixing display panels for computer monitors, TVs, and laptops. Now, two executives from AU Optronics have been found guilty of price fixing displays over a five-year period. You may not have heard of AU Optronics, but they’re the second largest supplier of display panels for computers, TVs, and laptops in Taiwan. Business Week reports that the vice president and senior vice president of the company have both been found guilty of fixing prices, and have been convicted of colluding with rivals to do so. The company could face the highest fine yet, reportedly reaching $1 billion. Executives of the company met with counterparts from rivals in hotel rooms and karaoke bars between 2001 and

In-wall iPad docks are neat, but motorized in-wall iPad docks take some beating for tech-cred. Home automation and distributed media specialist ThinkFlood is appealing to our geekier nature with its new, electrically-powered wall mounting kit for the iPad: simply press the button and the cradle opens out to allow you to slot your tablet in place. Check out our hands-on impressions – and a video demo – after the cut. Unlike rival products, ThinkFlood’s dock doesn’t require the iPad to be put into any sort of special case: you simply drop it into the guide rails. The dock connector is also motorized, sliding out of the right edge to recharge the iPad while it’s in place. Power itself can be supplied either via a hidden AC connection or via power-over-ethernet for data use too. ThinkFlood in-wall iPad dock demo: ThinkFlood also offers a more secure version of the dock, with a six-digit touch keypad that demands a PIN before it will open up. That’s targeted at hotels and other venues, whe

Clearwire is currently in the process of migrating from WiMAX to LTE, but there was a slight bump in the road when Google announced at the end of February it was selling its existing stock in the company, well below the market value. The 6.5% stake was sold for $47 million at $1.60 a share, below the $2.27 asking price at the time. Clearwire has today announced a new partnership with Cricket, which will see the budget wireless provider making use of Clearwire’s LTE network when it’s eventually built. Cricket began rolling out LTE in December 2011, starting off in Tucson, Arizona. So far the company only supports USB modems, but with the latest move from Clearwire, could see some LTE smartphones on its network. Cricket are set to utilize Clearwire’s LTE network as part of a five-year deal. They’re the second company to make use of Clearwire’s LTE network so far. Of course, Clearwire’s LTE network isn’t even live yet: the hope is to have 5,000 cell sites live by June 2013, then build tow

The eleventh version of Mozilla’s popular Firefox browser is upon us. Firefox 11 brings various improvements over version 10. The casual user can look forward to improved stability, fewer crashes, and security fixes, although there are two big stand out features. The first is the ability to import bookmarks and history from Google Chrome, and the second is a 3D rendering tool of webpages, designed to help visualize page elements as blocks. In a move that should help users move over from Google’s rival browser, Chrome, Firefox 11 has an improved import system that can move over bookmarks, history, and cookies. Chrome has been able to import Firefox’s data for several years, so hopefully Mozilla’s move will help entice users looking to make the jump to Firefox, and make the transition as smooth as possible. The other big feature is aimed at web developers: you’re now presented with an extra option when looking at a webpage’s underlying code, the ability to render the page in 3D. The resu

So you love the svelte nature of the current MacBook Airs, but you need something with a little bit more screen real estate. A 15-inch version would be about right, no? It’s not the first time we’ ve heard a rumor about a forthcoming 15-inch MacBook Air, although new information today suggests Apple could be releasing one as soon as April. ElectricPig has been told by a prominent accessory manufacturer that a 15-inch version of the MacBook Air is definitely on the horizon for an April release. Why take their word for it? They apparently supply docking solutions for MacBooks , and believe that a 15-inch version is coming. As expected, it won’t feature an optical drive or Ethernet port, and will split ports to either side of the unibody aluminium case like the current Airs. The source went on to say that this won’t necessarily fully replace the 15-inch MacBook Pro, and might sit alongside it for now. The 17-inch MacBook Pro also doesn ’t appear to be going anywhere thanks to its

Apple has announced an 8am start for iPad sales at Apple Stores across the ten launch countries getting the third-gen tablet this Friday, March 16, in addition to confirming a further 25 locations next in line for the slate. Apple Stores will throw open their doors to queuing crowds from 8am local time in the US, UK, Germany, Japan and six other countries, with the new iPad priced from $499 in WiFi-only form. The US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Switzerland and the UK; along with Puerto Rico and the US Virgin Islands, are all first in line for the third-gen iPad. Pre-orders have been hotly received, with Apple’s online sales now showing a 2-3 week delay in shipments for new purchases. In the US, the new iPad will also go on sale at Best Buy, Radio Shack, Sam’s Club, Target and Walmart, with AT&T and Verizon stores also having stock of the tablet. Actual stock levels, however, at third-party retailers are unclear, so bypassing Apple’s stores may b

I had a Game Boy back in the day, and at the time it was pretty cool. Compared to today’s standards it was horrible, but so things go with progress. Back in the day, the Game Boy was one of my favorite things along with Tetris. I also had a serious fixation on Transformers and Lego. A geek named Julius von Brunk has crafted a mashup that wraps all three of those 80s favorites in one project, and it’s awesome. The dude took Lego building blocks and created a transformer that into a Game Boy. The creation is complete with a pair of Duracell AA batteries made from Lego and a Tetris game cartridge that appears to be accurate. He calls the creation Domaster and says it took about a month to engineer and construct. I shall just call it epic. The custom decals used to get the Game Boy accuracy were made on a laser printer. I can’t imagine how complex the engineering task on this was to make something so accurate yet able to transform into a robot. The thing even has a battery compartment for

There are a bunch of awesome video games on the market today including games like Battlefield and Mass Effect 3. When the games we haven’t seen in a while that was always one of my favorites was the MechWarrior franchise. I keep hoping someone will make a new game in the universe but until then this scale real-life air soft version might be as close as we get. A group of geeky hobbyists have launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise money to fund the building of a new enclosure for the real-life Mech combat. The competition plays out mech warfare using little remote-controlled bots strut that around the environment shooting air soft guns at each other. The competition is in its fourth year and has international competitors. The geeks say the current play environment is a canvas tent with PVC poles and they need to upgrade for larger robots and more powerful weapons. The $6000 the group is seeking would go to build an awesome aluminum and lexan enclosure where they can fight their battl

HTC were keen to point out the micro-arc oxidation process used on the HTC One S chassis. Back at the MWC 2012 unveiling, they said the ceramic metal finish was tougher than average smartphone materials, and that if you took a fingernail to it, you’d find the nail wearing down very quickly instead of the case getting scratched. Now HTC have thrown up a video on YouTube outlining the exact process that the case goes through to achieve such a finish. They take aircraft grade aluminium and zap it with 10,000 volts of electricity for an extended period of time. This attacks the metal on a microscopic level, working the ceramic surface into the metal itself as opposed to simply coating it. The treatment isn’t purely to attain a smoother feeling device, but also makes the casing five times stronger than if they had just used aluminium. HTC also say that after micro arc oxidation, the treated material is three times stronger than stainless steel. As the video points out, it’s not a process

If you thought the old Hollywood flick “Armageddon” with Bruce Willis was too far-fetched to work when it comes to destroying asteroids, it appears you were wrong. In that movie, astronauts went to the surface of an asteroid coming towards Earth, where they drilled holes and placed bombs to destroy the asteroid. Scientists were wondering if that exact plan could actually work in the real world should Earth ever be posed with the threat of a direct asteroid strike. Scientists have Los Alamos National Laboratory used a supercomputer to model the effectiveness of nuclear weapons to destroy an asteroid. The team attacked a 1650-foot long virtual asteroid using a 1-megaton nuclear weapon. That nuclear weapon is about 50 times more powerful than the one dropped by the US during World War II. According to the team of scientists, the results are very encouraging and the blast was able to fully mitigate the threat of the pending strike in simulations. The 3-D modeling study ran on a supercomput

Apple’s tablet market-share has dipped but the iPad looks set to continue dominating the segment over the next four years despite the best efforts of Android rivals, according to research firm predictions. The iPad held 54.7-percent of the worldwide tablet market-share in Q4 2011, IDC‘s figures suggest, down from 61.5-percent in the previous quarter, though those figures disguise the fact that Apple shipped more than 4m units more in Q4. By 2016, meanwhile, the iPad is set to ship 94.7m units per year, for 48-percent of the overall tablet market. In second place comes Android, with 44.6-percent market-share in Q4 2011, up from 32.3-percent the previous quarter. Low-cost tablets like the Kindle Fire, NOOK Tablet and slates from Pandigital helped buoy those figures, IDC says, with total Android tablet shipments in 2016 predicted for 100.8m units of a total 198.2m worldwide. It’s disappointing news for RIM, however, with the sums suggesting that its tablet share with the BlackBerry PlayBo

I bet most of us are familiar with Encyclopaedia Britannica. The encyclopedia company had some insanely annoying commercials that ran during the summer when I was a kid. I can also remember a seemingly endless string of door-to-door encyclopedia salesman showing up all summer long when I was in grade school. Thankfully, I’ll never have to put up with door-to-door salesman trying to sell me encyclopedias because Encyclopaedia Britannica has announced the end of its print publication. The encyclopedia company is going completely digital. The electronic encyclopedia promises expanded coverage, continuous revision and updating, supplemental materials, full text searching, hypertext linking, and links to external sites on the Internet. The encyclopedia should work just like any other digital reference source. Being updated was always the issue with print encyclopedias since they tended to get stale, especially in quickly changing categories like electronics and technology. The encyclopedia

The UK Competition Commission has been looking into whether or not BSkyB exclusive deals in place with six major Hollywood movie studios are limiting competition for online movie streaming within the country. BSkyB has contracts with Disney, Warner Bros., Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Sony Pictures, and Universal Studios. The investigation seeks to determine if those contracts are anticompetitive and need to be broken to allow competition. A provisional decision was published by the Competition Commission last year saying at the contracts did seem to be anti-competitive. The deadline for the final determination has now been extended to July to allow the commission to take into account changes in the movie market. The commission stated that it needs to assess “potentially relevant” developments in the industry such as the arrival of Netflix in the UK. The commission also plans to assess the impact of LoveFilm that offers streaming movies as well. BSkyB reportedly announced recently that

It’s been a while since we talked about the insanely successful Double Fine Kickstarter campaign for its latest video game project. The game project was called Double Fine Adventure and was on Kickstarter looking for $400,000 in development funding. The game landed that funding in about eight hours and then proceeded to rack up more than $1 million in pledges within the first 24 hours. The funding campaign for the game has finally ended, and it has set a record for the most funded project in Kickstarter history. The game racked up $3,335,265 in funding pledges. Once the development of the game is complete, it will launch on Mac, Linux, IOS, and Android along with the PC. The game will be a point-and-click adventure title. The game will also be offered in multiple languages, including French, Italian, German, Spanish, and English. The game did so well funding itself that some larger companies in the gaming industry also decided to back the project with an additional $110,000 coming in f

If you’re the sort who finds rockets, space, and science fascinating and live in the mid-Atlantic region of the country, you need to keep your eye on the skies today. NASA is set to launch five different rockets over mere 5 minutes today from the NASA Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. The five rockets are the core of the Anomalous Transport Rocket Experiment. All five of the rockets are suborbital. Each of the rockets releases chemical tracers at altitudes of 50 to 90 miles above the surface of the earth intended to help track high-altitude winds. These Winds are said to blow at up to 300 mph. Not only will some people in the area be able to see the five rockets soar into the upper atmosphere, but sky watchers will also be able see the chemical tracers the rockets release. The chemical tracers will create a milky-white cloud. These clouds are expected to be visible to the people on the ground in parts of South Carolina up through the New Jersey area. The rockets are also launching a

MAINGEAR has outed its latest custom PC, the Solo, a 21-inch all-in-one which promises to be the most flexible of its ilk. Fronted by a 1080p Full HD display – with an optional 10-point multitouch touchscreen – the Solo kicks off with a Core i3-2125 processor and 4GB of memory, but can be upgraded to a Core i7-2600S and 16GB of DDR3-1333. MAINGEAR also slots in 32GB of SSD caching memory as standard, to turn any regular HDD into a hybrid drive for up to 8x the performance, supposedly. 500GB of HDD space is standard, upgradable to a 2TB 7,200rpm drive, and there’s a DVD burner with a Blu-ray burner option. Connectivity includes USB 3.0, WiFi b/g/n and Bluetooth as standard, along with gigabit ethernet and a memory card reader. In fact, the only drawback to going the all-in-one route is the graphics; unlike MAINGEAR’s other gaming-centric PCs, the Solo is a little less ambitious in the GPU department. The only option is Intel HD Graphics, certainly enough for the basics but not likely to

If you like what you saw when we talked about the Nokia Lumia 900 a while back new details on when you’ll be able to buy it have been tipped. A tipster claiming to be an assistant manager at an AT&T store has tossed the tip out that stores have already begun receiving demo units. The source claims mandatory training on the handset will start soon. This tipster is tossing around April 8 as the potential launch date for the smartphone, I’m dubious about that date considering that is Easter Sunday. A major Christian holiday would seem to be a bad time to launch a new smartphone. The tipster also claims that blue or black versions will be available initially with a white version coming later. Last we talked about this device; availability had slipped to April 22. The smartphone has some decent specs with a 4.3-inch 800 x 400 AMOLED screen. The phone is 1.3-megapixel front camera and eight-megapixel rear camera rocking Carl Zeiss optics. The camera has dual LED flash, and the phone has

Apple’s new iPad will launch using only LG Display and Samsung Retina Display panels this Friday, it’s claimed, with Sharp’s LCD production unable to meet the Cupertino company’s demand. In fact, according to the WSJ‘s source, Sharp is yet to deliver a single panel to Apple’s third-gen iPad production lines, after encountering unforeseen problems meeting the tightly managed hardware requirements in place. Launch-day stock of the new iPad is already constrained, with current online pre-orders listing a 2-3 week delay before delivery can be expected. Nonetheless, Sharp is expected to remain a supplier for Apple’s tablet, and its LCD IPS panels are tipped to begin shipping to Apple as early as this month. The shipments had initially been expected from late December. Meanwhile, LG Display is also believed to have encountered difficulties initially shipping its panels, and the source declined to comment on whether it is currently providing units to Apple. The struggles to produce high-quali

The car you see here isn’t Batman’s latest ride, it’s called the Nissan DeltaWing, and it looks very strange. The car is described as part road racer and part salt flat racer it is designed to be more aerodynamic than other cars on the grid and to use half the fuel the other vehicles use. Interestingly, the car isn’t a pure flight of fantasy research project either. It will be coming to the 24 hours of LeMans. Fuel economy is a huge deal in endurance racing and if the car delivers on its promise it could be very competitive indeed. The DeltaWing is a joint project undertaken by Ben Bowlby, a former Lola design chief, and Chip Ganassi Racing. Apparently, the team working on the car pitched it as the future of IndyCar, but the racing organization didn’t feel the same way calling the car too radical. Since that initial pitch, the project has been joined by Nissan and Michelin, with Nissan providing the engine, and Michelin providing the rubber. The car weighs a scant 1300 pounds with a fu

Huawei has just introduced a new mobile hotspot device that breaks some of the barriers we have come to expect from mobile devices these days. First, it can be used as a hotspot for up to 10 Wi-Fi products, not just five. And second, it says it can offer peak speeds of up to 100 Mbps, a number that certainly pushes the limits of LTE. By comparison, in the US, the strongest 4G LTE signals give users download speeds of around 25 Mbps. And that’s considered blazing fast. For now, this device from Huawei is only available in Japan, but that’s only because that’s the only region where a network exists that can fully support it. The problem with taking that technology to a country like the US is that spectrum is at a premium over here. The name of the hotspot is simply its model number, the E589 FDD. Huawei, which remains a nascent company in the US and European markets, has been trying to build a brand that sets it apart from the HTCs of the world. HTC was lucky enough to spring ahead and b

The HP ENVY 14 Spectre was easily one of the most promising ultrabooks we saw at CES 2012, and a few months of waiting hasn’t dampened our enthusiasm. The premium notebook combines high-end features and unique materials into a 14-inch body that’s distinct from just about everything on the market, which is something you couldn’t say for many of HP’s previous entries in the ENVY line. Does this unique machine rise above the pack? Let’ find out. Hardware The first thing you’ll notice upon taking the Spectre out of its premium packaging (after sliding off the complimentary neoprene case) is a lid that isn’t so much glossy as glassy. Gorilla Glass, to be specific: not only does it cover the screen, you’ll also find it on the touchpad, palmrest and the jet-black lid of the laptop itself. While this is certainly a unique approach (and much appreciated on the screen and touchpad) it makes the lid a rather predictable magnet for fingerprints and smudges. If the Spectre catches your eye for its

HTC has just published a blog post that, aside from making a cheesy reference to ice cream sandwiches, confirms a list of devices that are guaranteed to eventually be pushed to Android 4.0. The latest version of Google’s mobile operating system has a bad track record when it comes to legacy device upgrades, but manufacturers are nevertheless steaming ahead. HTC said that it is in the “early stages of rolling out Android 4.0″ for the HTC Sensation and the HTC Sensation XE. It promised that “upgrades will be more widely available in the next few weeks.” The company stressed that upgrades are also reliant on carriers, and a lot of the update scheduling has to go through them, so nailing down timelines is difficult. The hope is that HTC’s update process will go much more smoothly than the manufacturers before it. The Nexus S phone and the Transformer Prime tablet both had horrendous experiences that caused early upgraders to see their devices freeze and crash, with the updates quickly pull

Even though GameStop somehow got its hands on a Donkey Kong 3D display case, the games retailer is now saying that the game doesn’t exist and it should never have been put up in the store in the first place. In fact, a company employee has even been quoted as saying that the displays were essentially put up in error. It does a bit suspect, though. So over the weekend, an online user who goes by the handle Scraps69 posted photos of a Nintendo 3DS display box with the title “Donkey Kong 3D” with the words “Coming 2012″ and “Preorder Now” at the bottom. In the middle was a picture of Donkey and Diddy Kong. The picture was taken at an EB Games store in Australia. EB Games was acquired by GameStop several years ago. When asked for comment, though, a GameStop representative told Kotaku, “The displays were not supplied by Nintendo and have been taken down. It’s definitely not in the system in the U.S. I’m sure it’s not elsewhere, either, but I can’t confirm that.” It’s hard to imagine that EB