Google is looking to push users of Picasa Web Albums over to Google+ Photos. The URL that used to take users to Picasa now redirects users to Google+ Photos. Clicking http://picasaweb.google.com will take you to Google+ Photos. However, not all hope is lost as there is a back door to get into Picasa.

Heading over to this Google page will take you to Picasa and will set a cookie that allows you to return to using the URL listed above. Eventually, Google may shut down the Picasa product for good as they continue to shuffle users over to the Google+ product, much like they did with the Google Docs product.

I'll give Picasa a year before it is completely shut down. If you still use Picasa, what are your thoughts? Is Google+ Photos a good replacement for Picasa?

Hybrid Hard Drives are nothing new, and certainly not something Seagate is a rookie at. The company has been shipping 2.5-inch hybrid drives for years now, which have been awesome for the laptop market, but desktop PC enthusiasts who demand high capacity as well as speed have been left out until now.

This week Seagate has finally shipped a 3.5-inch version hybrid drive that features 2TB of spinning platters alongside 8GB of flash storage that help speed up disk intensive task without sacrificing precious storage or buying a dedicated SSD. Seagate says that the new SSHD should be as much as four times faster than traditional HDDs. That claim, of course, will depend on what you're doing on your system at the time.

The company also announced that it has updated its line of 2.5" hybrid drives and is now shipping 1TB regular height laptop drives as well as 500GB super slim versions that measure in at just 7mm thick. The new 2.5-inch hybrid drives are said to be as much as 40 percent faster than previous generations.

This morning images surfaced online from the Twitter account of the infamous evleaks that appeared to be official renderings of the upcoming Samsung Galaxy S IV. Along with the rendering is a full set of specifications that are sure to wet the appetite of any Galaxy enthusiast.

The rendering shows a much more boxy design with a massive screen that is said to be a full HD LCD of the Super AMOLED category. A rear 13MP 4128x3096 camera is said to be featured along with three choices of internal storage - 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. As expected the new Galaxy S4 will be running Android 4.2.

Normally I do not put much stock in leaks or rumors, but the e-tailer Expansys is also reporting leaked renderings of the new Galaxy S IV. Samsung has speculated that the this will be its biggest selling phone ever, but with innovative design smartphones like the HTC One being released, I think Samsung has its work cut out to remain the dominating smartphone provider.

Every month Steam releases a hardware survey that provides a look into the corner of the PC gaming industry that Steam occupies. February's numbers look fairly nominal until you notice that two percent of Steam users are now running Linux.

Two percent may seem like a small number, but when you consider that the Steam Linux client has only been available officially since the beginning of February, the "adoption" rate is actually higher than Windows 8. On top of that, when you factor in that there are roughly 100 games ported over to Linux on Steam and none of them include major titles like Borderlands 2, Far Cry 3, Skyrim, or even the GTA series, two percent is pretty large.

The survey also reveals that 1080p is the most used resolution, Direct X 11 holds 58% market share, and NVIDIA dominates the GPU stats with 52% market share. Finally Windows 7 64-bit still reigns king with 8GB of RAM being the norm.

During this week's Microsoft TechForum, Craig Mundie, a senior advisor for Microsoft, said that the company is looking to take the Kinect to new heights including TV's and laptops. "My dream is to get a Kinect into the bezel of something like this", as he pointed to a Surface tablet.

The company was showing off a bulky, but very large display that featured a Kinect built into its bezel at its recently opened "Envisioning Center" along with many more Kinect integrated screens. The Kinect's being shown off were much smaller than the current model, but no one would comment on if they are version 2.0 or not.

Before you can expect to see a Kinect in your ultra-thin smart TV, or even in your laptop or desktop monitor, things will have to get much smaller and some new technology will have to be created. The Kinect sensor does not work in daylight. "It turns out it's infrared so when you go out in the sunlight the sun is a big infrared source that drowns it out," Mundie explains. "There's a whole bunch of problems, not just miniaturization, in designing the sensors so they actually do what you expect them to do in all of the environments."

CeBIT 2013 - We are still three months out from Intel's Haswell line of processors hitting retail shelves, but that is not stopping ASRock from unveiling four new LGA1150 motherboards.

The high-end ASRock Z87 Extreme6 is a standard sized ATX motherboard that is equipped with gold capacitors, can support dual channel DDR3 RAM up to 1600MHz, and features two PCI-Express 3.0 slots. It sports 14 USB ports of which six are USB 3.0, 8 SATA 6Gb ports and DVI, D-Sub, HDMI and Display Port.

The Z87 Pro4-M is a MicroATX board that features 100% solid capacitors, one PCIe 3.0 x16 slot, support for AMD CrossfireX, multiple monitor support through built in display connectors, and 12 USB ports (six USB 3.0) The Pro4-M also includes six SATA 6Gb ports.

For months now Battlefield 3 players have awaited the final expansion pack in the series and today (at least for PS3 owners) the wait is over. Battlefield 3 End Game is here and man does it pack one hell of a punch!

Returning to the series is Capture the Flag mode, but with a twist. Players now have dirt bikes at their disposal to help aid in capturing and returning the enemies base. There are also 21 new dog tags, 10 new assignments, 4 new massive maps, and something I am going to spend a lot of time in, Air Superiority mode.

Three new vehicles including the fast and agile dirt bikes will be seen in the DLC along with a new "Dropship" that provides support to ground troops with vehicle drop capabilities. Battlefield 3 End Game released this morning on the PlayStation 3 and will be coming to Xbox 360 and PC gamers on the 12th of this month.

Opera has released a completely redesigned version of its web browser that runs on Android, and is being billed by the company as "the best browser on Android." Opera says that they started from scratch to bring a fully native web browsing experience to your Android based smartphone.

Opera says that the new browser brings forth a new way to browse the web that is more elegant and efficient. The new Discover feature provides a panel in which you can read popular articles from the web based on your interest. Another new feature is "Speed Dial", a service that is similar to a bookmark folder, but streamlines the process of organizing favorited websites.

Like similar browsers, the search and URL bar are now combined, tabbed browsing is present, and users are able to save websites to their phone for viewing when not connected to a data source. Browsing history has also been simplified making it easy for the end-user to quickly find and revisit previously viewed sites.

CeBIT 2013 - Johannes Knapp is on the ground for us at CeBIT 2013 in Germany and is back again with another hands-on video.

This time he spends some time to get acquainted with the new ASUS Pro BU400 14-inch non-glossy display laptop. This laptop confines to Intel Ultrabook guidelines and is designed for business users on the go.

It features an Intel Core i5 CPU at 1.5GHz along with an NVIDIA NVS 5200M GPU and the screen is capable of a 720p resolution. There is a good sized touchpad along with a fingerprint reader for added security. It also includes a bunch of I/O options including three USB 3.0 ports, ethernet, HDMI, SD card reader and VGA output.

One of the downsides is that the battery is built into the unit and cannot be replaced. The laptop was actually launched at IFA, but it's going on sale now.

Tt eSPORTS has a very unique product announcement today, with their Level 10 M Headset now known to the world. The Level 10 M Headset is Tt eSPORTS' third design collaboration with BMW Group DesignworksUSA.

Managing Director of Tt eSPORTS, Tony Liu, said:

Its mission is to extend the Level 10 experience to the headset that users can directly interact with. With the Level 10 design, the headset now also functions as the experience itself. And it's a huge part in the world of E-Sports as well - always exciting, always emotional, and full of challenges - exactly the same as Tt eSPORTS' brand mission and the Level 10 M Headset.

Tt eSPORTS' new headset is set to launch in the following days at CeBIT 2013 in Hannover, Germany.

There's some bad news coming out of the cracks of the Internet today, with Hardware.info reporting that they have talked with a "reliable source" who says that the next-generation processor from Intel named Haswell, is having issues with USB 3.0.

The site claims they've taken a look at a document that Intel reportedly sent out to inform system builders of a bug surrounding USB 3.0 and Haswell - the bug specifically has issues with waking from sleep and using a USB 3.0 device. If the system exits S3 level sleep while a user is accessing data on a USB 3.0 drive, their session with that data will end.

This would mean if you're working on a document open before you put your PC to sleep, or it went to sleep after a period of time, when you come back that document could be just blank. Intel is reportedly aware of this issue and are said to be trying to make partners accept the flaw before purchasing the affected CPUs.

It looks like Microsoft could be hit with a large tax bill if the Danish authorities have anything to do with it, where Denmark officials are considering a tax levy of 5.8 billion kroner, or around $1.01 billion. This is all in relation to Microsoft's acquisition of financial software maker Navavision back in 2002.

Microsoft have reportedly been using Caribbean-based shell companies to operate their acquired company's enterprise planning and account units. This has allowed Microsoft to push profits away from Denmark where tax rates are 25%, compared to the effectively 0% in the Caribbean. Obviously they aren't the first company to do something like this, with most big corporations and companies funnelling cash into places like Bermuda to save on tax.

It's being reported that Microsoft and Danish officials are in talks regarding the bill, which includes back taxes, penalties and fees, too.

The Pirate Bay have been bouncing around the sea for a week or so now, peeping through their binoculars for a new home and it now looks like they've found one.... in North Korea. A Pirate Bay insider has told Torrent Freak that the piracy-related group have been in talks with North Korean officials for around two weeks.

The Pirate Bay have said that they were invited in the same fashion that Google's Eric Schmidt were, but until now, they declined. People will find this funny as The Pirate Bay are running from corporations and governments (they're close to the same thing nowadays) such as in the US, yet a country that is synonymous with keeping people in camps and detaining others, some would think this is a move by North Korea to slyly smile at the US and nod.

There's so many games coming out in these coming weeks, including the just-released Crysis 3. NVIDIA are now out of the gate with new beta drivers, the GeForce 314.14 beta drivers. The new beta drivers include improved performance and compatibility for multiple titles.

This includes Tomb Raider, which is out any minute, SimCity due a few minutes later, StarCraft II: Heart of the Swarm (March 12) and Resident Evil 6 (March 22). If you want to hit up Hawken with hardware-accelerated PhysX effects when it drops later this week, you'll need these new beta drivers. NVIDIA have also said there are multiple performance increases for those of you running GeForce GTX 680 GPUs, and again when they're in SLI - more numbers here:

GeForce GTX 680:

3.1% in Just Cause 2 at 1920x1080/DX10/4xMSAA

9.1% in Sleeping Dogs at 2560x1600/Extreme/High AA

21.1% in Sniper Elite V2 at 1920x1080/Ultra/High AA

Our Ask the Experts section has a new question, where we have Peter in Australia wanting to know which GPU he should buy for his system.

Q: Hi. I would like your suggestion on which graphics would suit a 30 to 32in full high def single monitor, using Cuda, PhysX, tessellation, 3D, 3D surround at max settings. I play BF3. I have read many articles on the new Titan which were compared to GTX690, and in most cases, the 690 was slightly better.

However, the Titan has 6GB ram, while the 690 only has 4GB. I know the Titan runs cooler, quieter and uses less power than the 690, and that running 3D requires plenty of RAM. I do not want issues such as stuttering, micro stuttering, bottle-necking etc. Which would be better 1 x Titan or 1 x 690, or 2 x Titins or 2 x 690's.

Thanking you Kindly

Peter

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

We've been so busy hearing about Samsung's upcoming Galaxy S IV, that iPhone rumors are now getting a back seat - isn't that a big change in the tides? Now we have KGI Securities analyst Ming-Chi Kuo issuing a new research report, which claims that we should see two new iPhones and iOS 7 launched in June.

The new smartphones would be made available to the public a month later in July. Kuo continues:

We expect Apple will introduce its new iPhones and iOS7 in June, and start shipping the new iPhones (5S and low-cost model) in the FDD version in July. Both dates are earlier than last year's roadmap. We attribute this to: (1) an effort to avoid repeating the fatal mistake of last year of the delayed iPhone 5 launch, which gave competitors room to grab market share; and (2) the new iPhones this year are mainly designed on the basis of the current iPhone 5, which suggests development time could be reduced.

CeBIT 2013 - Johannes Knapp is on the ground for us at the moment in Germany at CeBIT 2013.

One of the first new products he discovered at the show was Panasonic's 11.6-inch Toughbook CF-AX2 with a 1366x768 resolution and 10 finger capacitive multitouch screen. It's a business focused Ultrabook device with plenty of great featuring including a flip-over convertible style design that turns it into a tablet, which should work well considering it comes installed with Windows 8.

The device comes with a load of different I/O options (two USB 3.0, LAN, SD-XC, VGA and HDMI) that should work well for most business users and starts out with an Intel Core i5 CPU and goes up from there with various configuration options. Being a Toughbook, it's rather ruggedized weighing around 1.15kg and should be able to take a few drops here and there. Panasonic claims up to eight hours of battery life.

It's quite expensive starting at around $2000, but if it looks like the kind of "tough" device you need for your meeting and travel, it could be worth a look.

We reported yesterday that NASA's Mars Curiosity Rover hit a snag, and was forced into "safe mode" after an issue with its flash memory, but the Rover has now successfully come out of safe mode and will resume full operations next week.

NASA engineers still don't know why the primary system experienced a memory problem, but they do hope they can restore it to some working order. The Mars Science Laboratory Project Manager for JPL, Richard Cook, says:

One path of progress is evaluating the A-side with intent to recover it as a backup. Also, we need to go through a series of steps with the B-side, such as informing the computer about the state of the rover - the position of the arm, the position of the mast, that kind of information.

You might remember Infinity Ward, the creators of Call of Duty - but that can be rolled into two men - Jason West and Vince Zampella. The two of them left IW on fiery terms and started up Respawn Entertainment.

West has now left the studio, citing family issues which have been on-going since May 2012, according to a source who didn't want to be named. West's partner, Vince, confirmed the news, saying:

Jason has left Respawn to take care of some family issues. We have worked together on some amazing accomplishments over the years, starting with an early Segasoft project that never shipped. It is sad to see things come to an end, but there are times when change is best for growth, both personally and professionally. I wish Jason the best and send my best wishes to his family. Respawn continues to amaze me, the team here is resilient and talented. E3 will be therapeutic for us, as we finally get to start showing our work again. I know the team was excited about the response we got from just admitting we were going to attend.

Kim Dotcom is constantly in the news, usually for his court case, his previous MegaUpload website, his skills in Call of Duty, but now he's in the news for an entirely new reason - finance. Dotcom has asked his twitter followers for help in making a Bitcoin-based credit card.

The card would likely be attached to his new site, Mega, but be based off of the non-fiat-based currency, Bitcoins. It would be an interesting venture for Dotcom, something I'm going to be following closely.