Today OCZ Technology released a firmware update for Vector. The new firmware, version 2.0, is available through OCZ's Toolbox and is a mass production release (not beta). At the time of writing the release notes weren't available but Alan, a long time TweakTown reader provided the benchmarks below from a system in steady state with the Vector 512GB used as a boot drive.

He states that "IOPS are great" and "the performance has definitely increased, you will want to run this against the Samsung 840 Pro and maybe reevaluate which is drive is faster in all capacity sizes."

You can find the thread discussing the new update on OCZ's Forums. Firmware update instructions are located here. Do note that C-States were enabled in this tests. We'll have a full article with all three Vector capacity sizes updated in a few days here on TweakTown.

Since its release, the Raspberry Pi has been changing the DIY landscape much like the Arduino did in 2009-2011. The Raspberry Pi Foundation has been hard at work developing the most anticipated add-on module it has developed to date, the camera module.

Today Raspberry Pi released a blog post detailing how the upcoming $25 camera module was created, and in that document we learn some interesting information about the camera. A fixed focus 5MP sensor capable of 2592x1944 stills, but also 1080p30, 720p60 and 640x480p60/90 video is featured. The lens is fixes so that means no auto focus will be present.

The camera will connect to the Raspberry Pi via two connections. I2C will handle the basic functions like start, stop, change resolution, and adjust exposure time. The much higher bandwidth CSI bus will handle the pixel data from the sensor back to the processor.

Each pixel produced are 10 bits wide compared to the 8-bit pixels you are used to seeing with standard JPGs. Raspberry Pi configured things this way so that they can adjust parts of the dynamic range, which will reduce "gaps" that cause banding in images. In the blog post, the foundation said that they are very close to releasing the camera module now and that the $25 price point is still there.

This morning Microsoft announced a new Imagine Cup competition that is aimed at game developers in the 9-18 years old range. The Imagine Cup Kodu Challenge is designed around Kodu, an easy to learn game creation tool kit and programming language.

Scott Fintel, producer for Kodu at Microsoft said:

"Microsoft developed Kodu to transform programming from a skill perceived as overly difficult to grasp to one that is fun and kid-friendly. By getting students interested in game design at an early age through Imagine Cup, it's our hope they will acquire new skills that will translate into a lifelong passion for computer programming and computer science and will encourage them to explore STEM-related careers in the future."

The Kodu environment can be downloaded for free on Windows based computers and has generated over 16,000 kid-created games since its release. The Imagine Cup Kodu Challenge begins today and runs through May 17th 2013 and features two age brackets 9-12 and 13-18 that students can compete in.

WhatsApp, the $0.99 SMS-like instant messenger, is used by millions daily. In fact, the app sees a reported 17 billion messages sent across its service daily. That is more than eight times the number of messages sent on Apple's iMessage.

With its ever growing popularity, the company is looking to capitalize on its user base. Later this year WhatsApp for iPhone will move into a subscription based service where the app will cost $0.99 and the first year of service is free. Each additional year will run subscribers an additional $1 per year.

WhatsApp has been using this model on its Android app for a while now and when asked about the new subscription model, WhatsApp CEO Jan Koum said that the company just wanted "to keep things simple." He went on to say that the new subscription model "would likely follow the same pricing structure as its other apps, which are free for the first year and then cost $1/year, compared to the single, for-life $0.99 purchase that users make on iOS today."

You might want to be good this year, or else Santa won't know to add this to your Christmas list - Digital Storm have just announced their brilliantly specced Hailstorm II. Digital Storm's latest creation crams some seriously high-end components into Corsair's Obsidian Series 900D case.

Hailstorm II features an advanced liquid cooling system with the current of cold air driven by three front intake fans, backed up by a large exhaust fan. The Hailstorm II is capable of having a total of 15 fans installed, which should give even the most airflow crazy gamer out there plenty of room to move. There's ten expansion slots at play, up to nine HDDs or SSDs with three hot-swap mounts, four 5.25-inch optical drive bays, two USB 3.0 ports and four USB 2.0 ports on the front of the Hailstorm II give you plenty of storage and connectivity options.

Each Digital Storm PC goes through a rigorous 72-hour stress-test, ensuring that when you receive your Hailstorm II (or any other Digital Storm PC) it is ready for some serious gaming. There are four tiers of Hailstorm II PCs available, Level 1 through 4. Level 1 starts at $2762 and comes with an Intel Core i7 3770K overclocked to up to 4.8GHz, 16GB of DDR3 1600MHz, NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 680 GPU, a 120GB SSD and 1TB HDD for storage.

Wacom has announced a new 13-inch addition to its Cintiq line of interactive pen displays. The new Cintiq 13HD is being billed as a smaller display that saves valuable desk space, but still packs a full size performance punch.

The new Cintiq 13HD features a 13-inch LED display with a 1920x1080 resolution, adjustable mount, and uses a tweaked version of the same battery-free Pro Pen that the larger Cintiq's feature. Wacom says that the screen provides a 178-degree viewing angle and sports four customizable ExpressKeys.

The display is tethered to a PC or Mac by a USB cable, and it features HDMI output as well. The Cintiq 13HD is expected to go on sale in early April and with a price point of $1000. It looks to be an awesome gateway for someone who wants a Cintiq, but does not want to spend $2k on a larger model.

Samsung has made it no secret that it intends to go head to head with Apple in everything it does. This time we are getting reports that the Korean make-everything giant is planning on entering the Smart Watch game... again.

Samsung's executive VP said in an interview with Bloomberg today that "We are preparing products for the future, and the watch is definitely one of them." He went on to say that between Apple and Samsung the "issue here is who will first commercialize it so consumers can use it meaningfully."

This is not the first time Samsung has taken on the role of Smart Watch builder, just back then we did not call them smart watches. The S9110 "Watchphone" debuted in 2009 and a decade earlier, it released the SPH-WP10 "Watch Phone". Who do you think will win the Smart Watch war? My bet is on Samsung, but in reality all we can do is sit back and watch.

Over the last several months free users of Spotify's music streaming service have been increasingly experiencing caps on how many times they can listen to a specific track. The limits seem to take effect after the six month free trial period has expired.

UK users have been limited to five plays per track unless they subscribe to Spotify, but as of today, that limit has been lifted. In a statement on the company's blog Spotify said: We've got some mighty fine news for all Spotify Free users. From today, there's no more 5 play-per-song limit. You can listen to your favorite songs as many times as you like.

The company went on to state:

That's right, no more greyed-out songs. The tracks that you couldn't listen to before will once again be available for your listening pleasure...Of course, if you've been using Spotify for less than 6 months, this change won't affect you. You can already listen to whatever you want, as often as you like.

NATO has released a new document that lays down the law about cyber warfare for all of its members. The document details what is considered acceptable and what is thought of as out of bounds for state sponsored hacking.

Hospitals, nuclear power stations, dams and dykes are all on the do not touch list much like similar UN resolutions that do not allow its members to bomb certain targets. The new document does give the go-ahead to enact analog war against a country who is digitally attacking you.

"An international armed conflict exists whenever there are hostilities, which may include or be limited to cyber operations occurring between two states or more." The Guardian suggest that this may roll over into the so-called "hacktivist" community as well. This could leave its members venerable to physical attack if a country deems them a threat.

Andrew Auernheimer might not be a name that rings any bells for you, but in June of 2010, he created a program that would connect to a publicly accessible, unsecured AT&T database of iPad subscribers. At the time, I'm sure he didn't think a few years from then, he'd be locked inside of a prison.

Fast forward two years, into November of 2012, where he was found guilty of violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA) and identity theft. For his last day of freedom before his sentencing, Auernheimer and his supporters rented a 10,000 square foot hall where they partied the night away. Auernheimer told John Koetsier from Venture Beat: "It's a f***ing ludicrous charge. The FBI has tried to frame me for terrorism five times, and by their own admission they've been surveilling me since I was 15 years old."

Auernheimer was lucky to enjoy his last day of freedom, as he was sentenced to 3 years in jail, and $73,000 in fines.

PC shipments aren't looking too good for this quarter, with the IDC's latest report saying it won't get better anytime soon. The IDC pegs the blame on an economic slowdown in China will eventually lead us to a loss in PC sales in the first quarter of 2013.

This is a big problem, as China has accounted for "over 21% of global shipments for 2012," making it the world's largest market for PCs. IDC analyst Loren Loverde has projected that "we could see a drop [in PC shipments] touching double-digits in the first quarter and a mid-single-digit decline in the second quarter before we see any recovery in the second half of the year."

Loverde adds that it will be hard for the PC industry to push into growth in 2013, and that the PC industry will need to release "attractive new PC designs and more competitive pricing relative to tablets and other products."

Apple shares have been sliding for months now, losing hundreds of billions of dollars of market cap for the Cupertino-based iPhone giant. Talk of a 'revival' (not my words) is now happening, with Morgan Stanley analyst, Katy Huberty, during an interview with CNBC on Monday that Apple's shares are quickly approaching the bottom, and will rebound later in the year with the launch of the iPhone 5S.

Firstly, I thought we were to expect two iPhone's this year - the iPhone 5S and iPhone 6 - so this is why I slapped a 'RumorTT' stamp on this news. Huberty recently met with Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer, with Huberty saying: "Apple will surprise this year" with "a killer feature that drives consumers increasingly to the platform" that will debut on the iPhone 5S. I thought users constantly flocked to the iOS platform, and that there was no new killer feature required, iOS is, after all, the world's most advanced mobile OS.

What could the killer feature be exactly? Leave us your thoughts in the comments.

We're seeing some shifts of power in big companies this year, where earlier today we saw EA's CEO step down, and now we're hearing that ARM's CEO, Warren East, will retire in July. East will be replaced by current ARM president, Simon Segars.

Segars has been with the company since 1991, where East has helped expand ARM's business from one product line when he took over in 2001, to the position of power they find themselves in today. Their technologies are used by over 300 chip customers, which in turn have seen ARM technology baked into 9 billion chips last year alone, according to ARM chairman John Buchanan. An interesting turn for ARM.

There have been rumblings about this for a few weeks now, but Sapphire have just announced the release of their new HD 7950 Mac Edition graphics card. From the model alone, you can tell this is destined for an Apple machine, more specifically, their Mac Pro series of desktop PCs.

Sapphire's HD 7950 Mac Edition comes with 3GB of GDDR5 memory, and works on the PC too thanks to its dual firmware support through a simple dual BIOS switch. The HD 7950 Mac Edition GPU is compatible with Apple Mac Pro late-2010 and up models, as long as there is an available PCI-Express x16 slot. Two six-pin PCIe power connections are required, which come in the box.

AMD brings along their powerful Graphics Core Next (GCN) architecture, which gives the Mac a number of technologies to play with. These include de-blocking, de-noising, automatic de-interlacing, Mosquito noise reduction and edge enhancement as well as advanced image quality enhancement technology, such as adaptive anti-aliasing and 16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering.

As for graphics horsepower in games, there's a huge improvement in that department - up to 200% faster than competing graphics cards (an NVIDIA GeForce 8800GT is what Sapphire are comparing to - a commonly used GPU in Mac Pro's).

Google have so many different services you can communicate through, Google Talk, Google+, Google Voice, and oh-so-many more - how could the Mountain View-based search giant bundle all of these together? With their rumored 'Babble' service, that's how.

Babble is reportedly how Google will unify their communication services, which would be powered by the XMPP protocol. This means it'll be future-proof, scalable and versatile enough to morph its way around the many services Google currently use. This information is coming from "multiple sources" of Geek.com, and the XMPP-based nature of Babble will see Google forcing you to use their new service, their way - which will push some people out of the Google bubble. Those who continue to soldier on will most likely enjoy a super stable, well-featured service.

There's no ETA on Babble, but I would guess that we'll hear more about it at Google I/O in a few months time.

Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Josh in the US wanting to buy a new GPU with a budget of around $300.

Q: Which graphics card should I get for around $300, I can go a bit above if I need to.

A: You can view the answer to Josh's question right here.

What can fifteen GoPro cameras do in the hands of an amateur filmmaker? They can provide some Matrix-like content, where Marc Donahue from Permagrin Films showing off his half-circle bunch of GoPro cameras in a bunch of different ways, check out the video below.

The video shows off basic things like cooking, or people riding bikes, and slowing them down and going into different angles like we've seen in The Matrix. The fifteen GoPro cameras are synchronized to shoot around the subject, giving off the effect of wrapping around the item, or persons in focus. Donahue has admitted that his technique isn't perfect, adding that he is "making a cable" to help the cameras snap photos quicker, so future videos will be smoother.

GoPro provided the cameras to Donahue, where he'll continue to pump cool content out with them in the future, where Donahue has a music video coming out soon using the same technique.

Kogan Mobile is in the headlines again, this time for booting a customer off their network for abusing their mobile phone plan. The telco offers an unlimited calls and text pre-paid plan that includes 6GB of data for $29, something they launched in December last year.

Brisbane customer, retail store manager Joel Campbell, was kicked off of the network, with Kogan claiming he was not using his service for "personal use", giving him 90 days to find a new provider. Within section 1.1 of Kogan Mobile's terms of service, they state that their network must be used for "personal use only" - the big problem is that in this seven-page ToS document, it does not state that heavy users would be kicked off of their service.

Campbell said "I have no reason to need a business phone," admitting he was a heavy user, saying that he accessed the Internet on his phone a lot during the day, but didn't think the cancellation of his service to Kogan was "warranted." He adds: "I'm paying for it. At the end of the day if I want more, I'll pay for more. It's not a loss to them."

Google's Nexus 10 tablet has received a new commercial, centered around a couple getting ready for the arrival of a new baby. The ad shows off some of the abilities of the Nexus 10, without overstepping the mark like other ads.

Google are definitely refining their ad-making skills here, with a great advertisement on the ease of use of their Android OS on the Nexus 10. The Nexus 10 'New Baby' ad has the expecting parents using Google Now, video chat through Google+ hangouts, and multi-user support. Not everyone is into the whole processors and benchmarks game, so its refreshing to see a smart ad on the things consumers actually use.

If you haven't updated to Windows 7 Service Pack 1 (SP1) yet, you'll be forced to in the coming days. Microsoft are rolling out SP1 automatically through Windows Update, so you'll no longer have the option to opt-out of the update.

Previously, SP1 was available on Windows Update, but required the user to action the installation. As of tomorrow, the installation of SP1 will be fully automatic, not requiring the user to choose to update to SP1 or not to those who have Automatic Update enabled. SP1 will eventually roll out to all customers on the RTM version of Windows 7.