The Prime Minister of Britain, David Cameron, is to attend a behind-closed-doors meeting of global business leaders, politicians, and academics that critics say is too secretive. Number 10 Downing Street--which is the British equivalent to the US White House--said the prime minister had been invited to the Bilderberg meeting in Hertfordshire in his role as head of the government hosting it. Other politicians listed as attending are Ken Clarke, George Osborne, Lord Mandelson, Ed Balls, and Lady Williams, plus the former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the prime minister of the Netherlands Mark Rutte, the former US commander in Afghanistan and former CIA director General Petraeus. The list also includes business and banking leaders like Google boss Eric Schmidt, Amazon founder and chief executive Jeff Bezos, Goldman Sachs International chairman Peter Sutherland, and former Barclays chairman Marcus Agius.

Downing Street confirmed Cameron's attendance on Friday, saying he would "participate in a discussion around domestic and global economic issues. He feels it is an opportunity to discuss economic issues with senior ministers, businesspeople and academics." The Bilderberg group says that topics to be discussed at its 2013 meeting include economic growth, cyber warfare, medical research trends, Middle East developments and EU politics.

President Barack Obama has defended newly revealed US government phone and internet surveillance programs, saying they are closely overseen by Congress and the courts. Obama said his administration had struck "the right balance" between security and privacy. He also stressed US Internet communications of US citizens and residents were not targeted and he tried to reassure the US that "nobody is listening to your phone calls".

Obama was commenting on revelations this week in the Guardian and Washington Post newspapers that the US National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting or tapping into vast amounts of telephone and Internet communications data. The news accounts--subsequently confirmed by officials--roiled Washington DC, with privacy advocates criticizing the surveillance as an unlawful intrusion and many in Congress defending the programs as appropriate counter-terrorism tools.

On Wednesday night, the UK's Guardian newspaper reported a secret court had ordered phone company Verizon to hand over to the NSA millions of records on telephone call "metadata". That report was followed by revelations in both the Washington Post and Guardian that the NSA tapped directly into the servers of nine Internet firms including Facebook, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo to track online communication in a program known as Prism.

Computex Taipei 2013 - The storage market is growing rapidly and for good reason. Cloud storage is booming, but not just for consumers looking to keep family photos in two or more secure locations. QNAP had two demos and more than one product in the racks are unannounced as of this time.

The first rack we looked at was titled Scale-up. In this picture we can see a 20-bay 2.5-inch form-factor model that has us quite excited. Several products in this rack connect to a central NAS via expanders. It's a good way to increase density while working with a smaller budget.

With the Scale-out option, you're increasing density through full NAS products. This increases both drive count and increases compute power at the same time.

We have a few QNAP rackmount systems in our lab and appreciate their versatility. A NAS is no longer a NAS when the feature set is stacked as deep as it is in these products.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We have a few stories from QNAP in the works, but this one will affect the largest number of new buyers. Until now, the 10GbE Ethernet option was available only on larger NAS systems, platforms with eight or more drives.

In a bold and exciting move, QNAP has brought 10GbE to six-bay and four-bay models. The TS-670 Pro uses six drive bays and has the processing power to go with it.

We're starting to see 10GbE ship on workstation and server boards, mainly from on-board Intel X540 parts. Intel X540 add-in cards are available for less than $300 if you look around for good deals. The add-in cards allow you to add 10GbE capability to any system, including desktop computers.

We're using 10GbE in the office now and love the performance. Transferring files to and from the NAS with roughly a 10x increase over gigabit Ethernet not only reduces the wait time, but also increases the number of users who can comfortably connect to the NAS at the same time.

Kaspersky Labs has announced the discovery of what it is calling the "most sophisticated" Android trojan yet. Kaspersky identifies the trojan as "Backdoor.AndroidOS.Obad.a" and notes that the trojan is capable of many different functions with the added ability to be extremely hard to remove.

Obad.a is capable of sending SMS to premium-rate numbers, downloading other malware, sending malware over Bluetooth, and remote console commands. Obad.a makes use of code obfuscation and several previously undiscovered security holes in Android to make itself hard to remove or analyze.

Once it gains Device Administrator privileges, it's nearly impossible to remove:

One feature of this Trojan is that the malicious application cannot be deleted once it has gained administrator privileges: by exploiting a previously unknown Android vulnerability, the malicious application enjoys extended privileges, but is not listed as an application with Device Administrator privileges.

Google has been informed by Kaspersky of the various security holes discovered and the security company notes that the trojan only amounts to 0.15 percent of all malware infection attempts, making it a rather minor threat for now.

Google's CEO Larry Page is once again attempting to reassure consumers that the concerns over privacy when it comes to Google Glass are unwarranted and being blown out of proportion by the media. Page said that privacy fears will fade as people become accustomed to the new technology noting that "it's not that big of a concern."

He went on to compare using Glass to take an image or video in much the same way one would use their smartphone to capture a photo or video. Page said "you don't collapse in terror that someone might be using glass in the bathroom just the same as your class in terror when someone comes in with a smartphone that might take a picture."

This reassurance beach comes on the heels of a month of numerous privacy concerns surrounding Glass. Google has said that it will not approve apps with facial recognition features, and even had to defend itself to the U.S. Congress who wrote a letter to Google asking if Glass "could infringe on the privacy of the average American"

Amazon has started selling its Kindle Fire HD and Kindle Paperwhite e-reader in China. This marks the first time that Amazon has sold their Kindle line of products in China and goes to show just how important the emerging superpower will be moving forward. Everyone wants to get their slice of the market.

The Kindle Fire HD costs 1,499 yuan ($244) for the 16GB model, with the 32GB model costing 1,799 yuan ($293). The Paperwhite e-reader comes in at just 849 yuan ($138). In addition to being sold on the web, local retailers will also have the Kindles up for sale.

Sony has reportedly signed on with Apple for Apple's rumored iRadio service. Many believe that iRadio will launch at this year's WWDC, so it's important for Apple to have deals with all three major music labels in hand ahead of the announcement.

It's still possible that Apple has other issues barring it from a full launch, but they could still announce the upcoming product on Monday. It's quite likely that it would be announced during the keynote that takes place on Monday. We'll have coverage if iRadio does end up launching.

iRadio is believed to function much like Pandora, with the added abilities of instantly buying and downloading a song from iTunes should you discover you like it. Expect it to feature targeted ads to support a free version, with a possible premium version doing away with those ads.

Nintendo has decided to skip holding a press conference at E3 this year citing the rise of social media marketing. Nintendo of America President Reggie Fils-Amie spoke directly to fans in a video posted on Facebook saying that "change can make people nervous."

He went on to add that "people are wondering how we can possibly share information about all our games without all the bells and whistles of an expensive press conference." He said that the company plans to promote itself on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube during E3.

The company will hold a Nintendo Direct Conference on June 11 at 7AM PT, which will be followed by a steady stream of content ranging from developer interviews, game trailers, and wrap-up videos.

The only thing we are left wondering is what is Nintendo thinking? The entire tech media world will be focused on E3, which leaves little coverage room for the slowly sinking company. Maybe that is their plan since Wii U sales are flat-lining and the company has no interesting announcements to share at the Expo.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We've seen many images of the Windows 8.1 Start Button surface over the last few weeks, which has led to much speculation on what it will actually do. Thanks to a recently surfaced video, we now know exactly what it does.

During a demo the company held at the 2013 Computex show in Taipei, Taiwan, Microsoft briefly showed off the new Start button. It appears that clicking the button will launch the Windows 8 Start Screen, but will launch it from within the desktop environment.

This frees the consumer from having to switch between the "Metro" UI and the desktop environment constantly to perform different tasks. A proper Start menu is still not present, but users will be able to launch desktop apps from the start screen without being forced to search for the apps.

This morning, Verizon posted two new LG Optimus smartphones to its pre-paid device catalog. The LG Optimus Zone is a rebranded version of the Optimus L3, while the Optimus Exceed appears to be a rebranded Lucid. Oddly enough, the devices have disappeared shortly after the posting.

The Optimus Zone is quite the low-end Android phone, featuring Android 2.3, a single-core 800MHz processor, 512 MB of RAM, and 4GB of internal storage. The device also features a 3.2-inch QVGA display, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, a 3.2 megapixel camera, and a 1540mAh battery.

The Optimus Exceed is nothing more than a rebranded Lucid that we saw last year. It features Android 4.0, a 4-inch WVGA display, a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, and 1 GB of RAM. On the rear, a five-megapixel camera handles the photo taking duties and internal storage is set at what appears to be 8GB. The Zone will sell for $80 off-contract, while the Exceed will retail for $130.

Video of Nokia's rumored--well, it's hardly a rumor anymore--EOS device has shown up online. The video of the device shows off the enormous camera bulge and the camera itself. Specifically, the EOS features a mechanical shutter and image stabilization. Take a look for yourself:

Rumors say that the Nokia EOS will feature a massive 41-megapixel PureView camera, easily beating the 16MP shooter in the Galaxy S4 Zoom. ViziLeaks omitted any specifications that they know to protect the person who provided them access to the device, though they note the specifcations floating around the web are mostly accurate, with GSMArena's being the closest.

During next week's E3 Expo, we will undoubtedly see many new games as well as gaming accessories unveiled. We all expected Mad Catz to show off its upcoming line of Xbox One accessories, but what was unexpected was the announcement that it will be showing off a new Android gaming console.

During a recent earnings call Mad Catz CEO, Darren Richardson, announced Project M.O.J.O, the latest so-called micro-console to enter the Android gaming realm. Richardson claims that M.O.J.O. is like a supercharged flagship smartphone without a display. So basically it's like an OUYA.

Mad Catz says that Project M.O.J.O. focuses purely on hardware performance and will be an open platform and will rely on existing Android developers to create content for the console. While no hardware details have been leaked, we are almost positive that M.O.J.O. is the fruit of a recent partnership between NVIDIA and Mad Catz, which means it should be fully compatible with Tegra Zone, and therefore will have a bookstore of games available at launch.

Computex Taipei 2013 - ASUS were showing off their TUF motherboards at Computex 2013, with four boards in the range. The first of which is the Mecha TUF, which uses the TUF Sabertooth Z87 motherboard with a striking design that is very robotic.

Moving on, we have the Thermal Universe Finder, which again uses the TUF Sabertooth Z87 motherboard and was designed by Tod's Factory Custom Studio and has loads of gears, rocket exhausts and all sorts of tank-themed goodies. The next board is the MATX Ranger, which uses the TUF Gryphon Z87 motherboard, Gryphon Armor kit and was designed by Lee Han-Sheng and Han-Sheng Environmental Art.

The final board in the range showed off at the show was the Winger Charger, which uses the TUF Gryphon Z87 motherboard with the Armor Kit and was designed by Tod's Factory Custom Studio.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Acer had something that was probably hands-down the most unique thing I saw at Computex, the Bicyclean. What is the Bicyclean? Well, it's a three-part process to combat the issues of the growing electronic waste problem.

The first step is that it pulverizes and grinds down circuit boards to the consistency of sand, second it extracts ferrous metals using a magnet, then it separates nonmetals from nonferrous metals with an eddy current rotor. It's an impressive concept, and I'd love to see Acer pushing this across the world. Unfortunately, I didn't hop on for a ride!

Computex Taipei 2013 - Something Apple Mac users have long waited is the ability to play games at high resolutions, with high details, but until now their GPU offerings haven't been impressive. Sapphire's HD 7950 Mac Edition is here to help.

It has been out for a while, but we actually had a Mac Pro in front of our eyes for the first time with Sapphire's GPU sitting inside doing it's thing. They've given it a nice white heatsink and fan cover, which looks great. If you're a Mac Pro user and want to play something like Team Fortress 2 with everything cranked up and maintain 60 FPS strong, Sapphire has your back with the HD 7950 Mac Edition.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We took a closer look at Sapphire's beautiful Atomic HD 7990 GPU in their room at Computex, and wow does it look great. Not only does it feature two Tahiti XT2 cores, but the cooling system on it is really something else.

There's six miniDisplayPort outputs, for some serious multi-monitor work and the power going into it is quite insane: 12 Phase/50 amp per phase to provide 600 amps total. This is provided by three 8-pin PCI Express power connectors. The water cooling on the Atomic HD 7990 is great, too, with a full copper water block on offer, with an ultra low noise pump and for the reservoir we have a front 5.25-inch reservoir with one pump pre-installed with the option of upgrading to a dual pump system.

The radiator is 240mm and fan wise we have two 120mm fans capable of 1200 RPM.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Something at the Antec booth caught my eye in the halls of Nangang, and that is their new PowerUp mobile chargers. They come in up to 9000mAh, which is enough juice to charge the average high-end smartphone 3 to 4 times over.

This is impressive, as it is also slim, very slim. It runs Antec's TruePower Mobile Technology and features two USB ports to boot. I hope to get my grubby hands on these bad boys in the near future and bring you a review. The color range, including pink, is a perfect present for your mobile happy female friend or wife.

Computex Taipei 2013 - For our last day at Computex 2013, we decided to take a look at some of the wares that gaming peripheral maker Epic Gear had on show. There's not much to talk about, so let's gush over the pictures, shall we?

They are continuing to make great looking products, and I'm really in love with their new keyboard. Their mouse lineup continues to impress, with those mouse cords look especially attractive.

Nokia is said to be getting Instagram as an exclusive app on June 26. Windows Phone has lacked many popular apps from other platforms, this has been seen as a problem for Windows Phone adoption and one that Nokia has decided to address. If this rumor proves true, it would appear that Nokia's work has paid off.

Exclusivity seems just slightly unlikely as Instagram would probably not want to cut themselves off from a greater market possibility. However, it could end up being an exclusive for a certain period of time. Either that or Instagram doesn't see the Windows Phone market as being that huge. After all, Nokia is one of the major Windows Phone players, so they would still pick up a large portion of Windows Phone users.

We'll have to wait until an official announcement or June 26 to see if this rumor proves to be true. Until then, take it with a grain of salt.