This morning, Apple has laid to rest the number of issues that have been plaguing the new MacBook Air since release. A new software update has just been released that is said to fix certain Wi-Fi issues that were causing network connections to be dropped. This issue arose shortly after launch and caused a small uproar on the Internet when users were unable to connect to their networks after spending a small fortune on the next-gen device.

At the same time, other MacBook Air owners said they were experiencing a severe flickering of the screen when using Photoshop. Going into detail, they said that the issue seem to be more prevalent when using large brush tools or other high resolution add-ons for the popular image editing program. Additionally, a fluctuating volume issue arose early last week which affected video playback on some of the new machines.

Even though the Cupertino-based company never officially acknowledged any of these issues, this morning Apple released an update that is said to repair all of these problems. After scanning a few forums and doing a couple searches, it appears that this new update has indeed washed these bugs away forever. If you have a new MacBook Air and have not downloaded this update yet, head over to Source #2 below for the full download.

Today, Evernote updated its app for iOS and added some new features that are sure to make its users happy. The update mostly includes features that make organization much easier including things like Shortcuts, Related Notes, and Skitch integration. This new support for Skitch allows users to have the app annotate their images and notes with Skitch and they will show up at Evernote.

As you would expect, the newly integrated Shortcuts feature allows users to "shortcut" important notes, notebooks, and even tags so they are easily accessed for quick use. Additionally, your shortcuts will sync across all devices and versions of Evernote which makes cross-platform organization much easier. The new shortcuts feature is similar to the old "Favorites" section which only allowed the pinning of notes.

Don't worry premium users of Evernote, you are not left out in this update as you now have the ability to annotate PDF documents using Skitch. Another new feature called Related Notes will search when a new note is started and recommend additional posts that may be helpful or related. Evernote for iOS is available for free in the App Store with a premium version costing users $4.99 a month or $44.99 per year.

PAX Australia 2013 - When I go out to a bar, I generally drink, like most people do - but would you want to go to a bar and enjoy some virtual reality gaming? Well, Virtual Reality Insanity are hoping you do, as they are opening up a new VR gaming bar in Melbourne, Australia.

We're currently in Melbourne, Australia for PAX AU 2013, and our first meeting was with VR Insanity, where we got to use Oculus Rift in Team Fortress 2. It was my first test with Oculus Rift, and I was blown away. Later in the day we had a meeting with Oculus VR themselves, but this was our first toe in VR water. Team Fortress 2 was phenomenal on Oculus Rift, something that I soon hope to play much more when Oculus release Rift to the public.

As for the VR gaming bar, VR Insanity are going to open up a 6v6 VR gaming bar, which will include Oculus Rift, Onmi, Razer Hydra controllers and more. It's going to be quite kick ass, as there'll be tournaments and matches versus your friends, all in virtual reality. We hope to attend the opening night of this, and should have some content if we get to that point.

TweakTown has lead the coverage of NGFF (m.2) products with a preview from Computex using ADATA products, finding retail products currently shipping with m.2 SSDs and now a quick look at performance from a Samsung m.2 drive in a retail ultrabook.

Although still rare in the channel, m.2 form factor SSDs are set to take off like a rocket later in this year. The form factor comes in two flavors, SATA based and PCIe based, the second being the quite exciting since it breaks through some of the SATA III performance limitations. In the video above, we see a CDM performance run with a Samsung based SATA III SSD and a new PCIe based m.2 drive.

Looking closely at the performance on screen we were surprised to see the SATA III drive score higher performance in the 4K read and write test. This tells us Samsung still have some optimization work left to do.

A firmware update coming around the September timeframe adds true AES 256-bit hardware encryption to Samsung's 840, 840 EVO and 840 PRO SSD products.

Two flavors of encryption are covered, Trusted Computing Group (TCG) Opal and Microsoft's eDRIVE, part of Windows 8 BitLocker.

Class 0 SED is an important feature for businesses and end users who would prefer to only have the NSA steal their data. While we've had access to encryption for several years, hardware based encryption lessens the overhead and reduces the amount of resources needed from surrounding components.

PAX Australia 2013 - I have been waiting since Oculus first reached Kickstarter to try out their Rift VR headset, and today my day came. We first went to another booth and tried out the 720p Developer Kit version, which we'll have a video uploaded shortly on.

The first story I wanted to write from PAX AU was about Oculus. We had a 2:30PM meeting but turned up 30 minutes early by mistake, but the Oculus guys were happy to accommodate us. We were sitting there, in one of the smallest booths at PAX AU and while it's small, it had heart and soul, and most of all: passion. We were introduced to Joseph Chen, who is head of Product at Oculus, who mentioned that Nate (the Vice President of Product at Oculus VR) would be on-hand soon.

We were been greeted with the Full HD 1920x1080 version of the Oculus Rift, which is different to the HD 1280x720 version of Rift which is found in the form of the Kickstarter backed Developer Kits. These devices are much higher resolution, but as we were told, are more like 'alpha' units.

A report from Dutch website Tweakers.net just arrived that says Dell may be working on a laptop that will compete with Apple's top-of-the-line MacBook Pro with Retina display. The report says that a 15.4-inch Dell Precision mobile workstation is in the works and features a whopping 3200 x 1800 display. This is a pixel density much higher than the 2880x1800 Retina display featured on the MacBook Pro's.

Reportedly named the "Precision M3800," the device will feature a matte black surface with aluminum edges. The device will be powered by an Intel Haswell Core i7 4702MQ, 16GB of RAM, and a 1TB HHD or 512MB SSD. Graphics crunching duties will be handled by an NVIDIA Quadro GPU, and the entire device will weigh in at just 4.5 pounds.

Engadget was able to confirm the existence of the Precision M3800 from Dell, but the company declined to reveal any other details saying that everyone can "stay tuned for more information in the coming weeks." The report from Tweakers.net suggests that the new device will cost between $1699 and $1999 which puts it in at $200-$800 cheaper than the equivalent Apple device.

Today, XSPC released a safety notice regarding its D5 Dual Bay Reservoir in regards to the top of the reservoir warping and allowing a tiny gap to open up. The company says that in most cases this warping will not cause a leak and is purely a visual issue, but there have been a few cases where it led to a very slow leak of coolant. XSPC says that it appears that this issue is only present in 2.5 percent of the first batch of reservoirs it shipped and is due to a flaw in the material used.

XSPC says that it believes the issue was caused by water temperatures beyond normal limits which caused the top plate to warp. The company says it has fixed the issues it had by changing the material used on the top plate and revising the mold. They have put the new model through rigorous testing which placed it far beyond normal usage temperatures and pressures and have found no further warping or leaks.

The revised design started shipping in April, so all current stock at resellers will already be version 2. If you have bought the product recently, it's likely you already have the revised model. The photos below show the difference between version 1 and 2. You can check the back of your reservoir against the photos above. If you see a leak from the highlighted area, you will need to get the reservoir replaced. If you are affected by this issue, please contact your local reseller to arrange a replacement, or contact technical support at support@xs-pc.com

OUYA has announced that it will match some of the funds raised on Kickstarter for games being developed on its Android-powered console beginning next month. Dubbed the "Free the Games Fund," OUYA will match donations up to $1 million total for eligible game projects that are posted on Kickstarter between August 9 and August 10.

The project owners can set funding goals at any level they wish but to receive the extra funding that OUYA has promised, the game developers will need to meet their Kickstarter goals and raise at least $50,000. OUYA says that they will match every dollar raised beyond that amount up to $250,000. There is, however, a small little catch to receiving the funding: the game must be exclusive to the OUYA for at least six months after launch. Additionally, the company will give a $100,000 bonus to whichever eligible game raises the most funding.

I really hope that this incentive will create some really good games for the OUYA as my experience so far has been less than satisfying. I have played several games on the device and clocked in a few hours of total game play. To me, everything seems laggy with some games being virtually unplayable due to the near half second pause between pushing a button on the controller and it causing a reaction on the screen.

86 years ago, the University of Queensland in Australia began conducting an experiment in which the flow rate of a piece of pitch was measured. For those of you who may not know what pitch is, it's a highly viscous liquid which, for all intents and purposes, appears to be solid. Bitumen is the most commonly used form and at room temperature, this tar pitch flows at a very slow rate sometimes taking up to a decade or more for a single drop to fall.

The University of Queensland is not the only institution studying this phenomenon. Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland has also been conducting their own experiment since 1944. Finally after 69 long years, the first drop of pitch has finally fallen. The drop occurred on July 11, 2013 at 5 PM local time and webcams that were set up last April were on hand to catch this extremely rare occurrence.

While some of you may not understand the excitement, I find in things like this let me break down how many times human eyes have missed seeing this event take place. According to Prof. John Mainstone of the University of Queensland, he has missed several opportunities to witness the drop happening with his own eyes. First in 1979, Mainstone said that he skipped one of his usual Sunday campus visits and coincidentally the drop happened the same day. Then again in 1988, Mainstone left his lab to grab a snack and apparently missed the drop by just five minutes. Finally in 2000, fed up with missing the drop, Mainstone set up a camera but unfortunately a glitch at the moment of the drop prevented any video of the event occurring.

We will most likely see Android 4.3 unveiled at next week's mystery press event being held by Google, but today we get to learn all about the next iteration of Android thanks to a video that has surfaced on the web. The video below (courtesy of AndroidCentral) was taken of a Nexus 4 running Android 4.3 which was purchased from a Google employee.

While most of the updates are minor and the user experience will feel much like that of Android 4.2, one of the most notable new features is the ability for the phone to automatically suggest phone numbers from your contact list as you dial. Additionally, as I speculated yesterday, Android 4.3 will also feature the updated camera application that has been spotted on the Google Play editions of the HTC One and the Samsung Galaxy S4.

Other new features include the ability to let apps turn on Wi-Fi to get a lock on your location before turning Wi-Fi back off again. This feature will prevent apps from pestering you about turning on Wi-Fi. Also in line with speculation is Android 4.3's ability to utilize Bluetooth Low Energy technology as well as the inclusion of OpenGL for Embedded Systems 3.0.

Today, the NCAA said that they will not allow Electronic Arts Inc. to use their name or logo in any future video games. In a statement, the NCAA said that it has no plans to enter into a new contract with EA Sports after the current one expires in June 2014. While not official, industry analysts suggest that this is due to a number of pending lawsuits against the NCAA from former college athletes who state that EA profited off their likeness.

EA Sports says that they will still produce college football video games which will still feature all of the powerhouse colleges such as Alabama, the University of Georgia, Ohio State, and many others as it is the schools who license their name and logos, not the NCAA. This is usually handled through the Collegiate Licensing Company who manages the trademarks of the majority of the colleges in the country.

"EA Sports will continue to develop and publish college football games, but we will no longer include the NCAA names and marks," said EA executive vice president Andrew Wilson. "Our relationship with the Collegiate Licensing Co. is strong and we are already working on a new game for next generation consoles which will launch next year and feature the college teams, conferences and all the innovation fans expect from EA Sports."

This morning, HTC officially announced a smaller version of its HTC One. Dubbed the One Mini, this new handset is a 4.3-inch version of the company's popular flagship device. Unfortunately, appearances and software are where the similarities end. HTC says that they will be offering the One Mini "at pricing points below that of the HTC One" and as a result, a few hardware downgrades have had to take place.

Included in the trade-offs is a step down to QUALCOMM's Snapdragon 400 dual-core processor which is clocked at 1.4GHz. It also features 1GB of RAM, 16GB of non-expandable storage and there is no NFC present. Additionally, HTC has removed the optical image stabilization from the One Mini as well as the IR blaster that gave the phone the ability to control your home entertainment system.

HTC one also switched out the LCD from a 1080p panel to a 720p super LCD, which features a pixel density of 341 ppi. Battery capacity was also reduced and now features an 1800mAh which was expected due to the overall smaller form factor. It appears that BoomSound has stuck around as well as the aluminum unibody. HTC says that it will roll out the One Mini starting in August and two colors will be available: silver and black.

A new app has just hit the smartphone markets and it aims to serve up audio news much in the same way the Pandora handles music. Swell actually launched back in June and featured content from NPR, American Public Media, ABC news, the BBC, Ted talks, and many others. Today, the company announced that they have raised $5.4 million in Series A funding.

This round was led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson and included investors like Google Ventures, InterWest Partners, and Correlation Ventures among others. This tops the company's seed funding round by almost $3 million, which was led by Google Ventures, Charles River Ventures, DFJ, Andreessen Horowitz, and other angel investors.

Swell works much like Pandora and once you start the app, you just let it run. In the event you don't like what it's playing, simply swipe to skip it. You're also able to choose topics that appeal better to you such as technology, world news, health and wellness, and many more. With it being out in the wild for over a month, it appears that the app is a success with the company saying that users listen for 30 minutes on average their first time using the app and returning users spending more than 110 minutes per week using the app.

Under the theme of "SSDs for everyone", today Samsung held the 2013 Samsung SSD Global Summit at the Westin Chosun Seoul in celebration of the launch of its new solid state drive (SSD), the Samsung SSD 840 EVO. This is a consumer-oriented entry-level, high-performance SSD that comes in capacities up to 1TB.

"After accelerating the growth of the SSD market with last year's launch of entry-level, high-performance SSDs, we are introducing much faster SSDs with up to 1TB capacities offering consumers a wider range of choices," said Young-Hyun Jun, executive vice president, memory sales & marketing, Samsung Electronics. "Samsung continues to enhance its SSD brand image by delivering the industry's highest quality solutions and continuously increasing its SSD market share by expanding the adoption of higher density SSDs especially in client PC segments."

The new a 840 EVO series features the industry's most compact 10nm class 128 GB high-performance NAND flash memory. Samsung began mass-producing these memory modules in April and they feature the company's proprietary multi-core MEX controller. This allows the 840 EVO to achieve "unrivaled value for performance with improve sequential read and write speeds"

It feels like a new leak forms every day about Apple's upcoming "low-cost" iPhone. This time the leak comes in from iOS developer Sonny Dickson who compares the plastic shell that houses the rear of the phone to a current generation iPhone 5. In the images, we can see a green and white version of the shell which appears to be a bit thicker than the iPhone 5 sitting next to it.

Other than the thickness, the "low-cost" iPhone appears to be roughly the same size as the iPhone 5. This works to disprove rumors that stated the new budget friendly iPhone would be sized closer to the iPhone 3GS. Speculators still suggest that we will see not only the "low-cost" iPhone 5 launch this fall, but an updated version of the iPhone which will be named the iPhone 5S as well.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am one of the biggest Elder Scrolls fans on the planet. Naturally, Skyrim is one of my most played games and as a result, I have pretty much worn the game out and seen almost everything there is to see and done everything there is to do. Fortunately, Bethesda knows how much their fans love modding their games and freely releases content creation kits that allow users to customize the game in the form of mods.

That is where 19-year-old Alexander J. Velicky enters the story. Over the last year, Velicky has been hard at work on one of the largest Skyrim mods ever created. Dubbed Falskaar, this new mod adds over 25 hours of content as well as a new landmass a third the size of the original game. Velicky has added new characters, new voices, and dozens of new quest. The mod features 54 new characters which are voiced by 29 different voice actors. If that alone is not impressive, then nothing else in the story will be.

"I organized everyone involved, but the voice actors themselves recorded all the dialogue and submitted it to me," Velicky told PC Gamer. "I had some people help me out with a few models and textures, someone wrote a book or two for me... But otherwise all content was implemented, written and developed by me."

Earlier today, Logitech introduced us to its latest set of Bluetooth stereo speakers. Dubbed the Z600, the speakers are targeted at the MacBook Air and UltraBook markets but will work with any Bluetooth A2DP-enabled device including smartphones, tablets, and media streaming devices. Capable of pairing with up to three devices at the same time, users can stream music from each individual device by just making sure music playback on the other two devices are paused.

Logitech says that the speakers produce a room-filling sound and each incorporates three drivers in a very sleek and refined tower style package. Covered in a fabric finish, the Z600 speakers incorporate touch sensitive volume controls which are actuated by gliding a finger across the edge of the top panel of either speaker to raise or lower the volume.

Logitech has included a small USB Bluetooth dongle that will allow streaming audio from devices that may not be Bluetooth-equipped. No actual launch date was given, but Logitech has the Z600 Bluetooth Speakers up for preorder on their website at a price point of just $150. That price seems a little high when compared to the Panasonic portable Bluetooth speaker we covered earlier today, but I have a feeling the speakers will reproduce a more rich and full-bodied sound.

If you own stock in QUALCOMM Incorporated, today is a very good day for you. The company announced this morning that it will be paying a quarterly cash dividend of $0.35 per common share which will be payable on September 25, 2013. This dividend comes after record-breaking quarters for the company as the mobile devices market continues unprecedented growth in all sectors.

During the second quarter of 2013, QUALCOMM amassed $6.12 billion in revenue which is up 24 percent over the same period in 2012. Of that $6.12 billion, $1.87 billion accounted for net income which was actually down 16 percent year-over-year. Operating cash flow came in around $2.2 billion which was up 17 percent year-over-year. Second-quarter operating income was around $1.88 billion which is said to be up 24 percent year-over-year.

"We delivered another strong quarter as the worldwide adoption of smartphones continues," said Dr. Paul E. Jacobs, chairman and CEO of Qualcomm. "Looking forward, we are seeing strong traction with our new Qualcomm Snapdragon 600 and 800 processors, and we continue to expect healthy growth in 3G and 3G/4G multimode devices around the world. We are pleased to be raising our calendar 2013 3G/4G device shipment estimates and our revenue and earnings guidance for fiscal 2013."

WhatsApp has been quickly making its way to the top of the list for the world's most popular messaging platforms. Just a few months ago, its owners claimed that its servers see more than 10 billion messages pass through each day; that's more than Twitter or even iMessenge. The app is free on Android for the first year and then costs one dollar per year thereafter. Unfortunately for iOS users, until now they had to pay that dollar upfront.

Today, the company announced that it is finally going to bring the iOS version of the app in line with Android and BlackBerry and offer the application free for the first year and then require a one dollar per year subscription thereafter. This move has been planned for quite some time and everyone knew it was coming; we just did not know when.

Existing iOS users should be ecstatic to hear that since they've already paid for the app, their subscription to the service will be free for life and they will not be required to pay the one dollar subscription fee each year. I use WhatsApp on a daily basis as it appears to be much faster than my carrier's text messaging service, is quite convenient, and is a free way for me to communicate with my brother and sister who live overseas. While none of us are iOS users, I know a few friends will be happy to hear of this announcement.