E3 2013 - Possibly the hottest sports gaming franchise in the world right now is FIFA, and EA did not disappoint with its FIFA announcement at this afternoon's press conference at the E3 Expo. The company says that FIFA 14 will feel alive with players who think, moved and behave like world-class athletes.

This is all made possible through EA's IGNITE engine which is able to blend the best rendering, runtime physics, animation, intelligent, locomotion, and online systems into one powerful ecosystem to fuel the next generation of sports games.

EA says that for the first time ever, fans will feel the electricity of the living Stadium, and experience the majesty of the world's greatest soccer theaters. Players now have four times the decision-making ability in the current generation of players in the current FIFA, which enables each player to have "Pro Instincts" which EA defines as humanlike reactions, anticipation, and instincts.

E3 2013 - Electronic Arts has just announced that Madden NFL 25 will be coming to the next-generation consoles Xbox one, and PlayStation four. Madden NFL 25 is powered by EA Sports' new IGNITE engine and ushers in the next generation of sports games by delivering the smartest, most realistic, and detailed version of the game in its franchises history.

"We've never been more ready for a console transition than we are right now," said Cam Weber, General Manager of American Football for EA SPORTS. "The development team is crafting the most impressive Madden NFL game we've ever made, and I'm extremely excited for fans to get their hands on it for themselves when the Xbox One and PS4 launch."

Coupled with this announcement is the introduction of Adrian Peterson as the cover athlete for Madden NFL 25 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings running back, is a five-time Pro Bowler and the reigning NFL MVP. Last season Peterson came within 9 yards of breaking the NFL single-season rushing record set by Eric Dickerson.

E3 2013 - During the Microsoft and EA press conferences today at the E3 Expo, game developer DICE showed off its flagship FPS, Battlefield 4, in both single player and online multiplayer modes. As one of the biggest Battlefield fans in the world I cannot express in words the excitement I am feeling for Battlefield 4.

During the Microsoft event dice showcased "Angry Sea" a stunning display of how the new Sea warfare mode in battlefield for might play out. While during the EA press conference DICE showed off a 64 person online multiplayer demo that was played by 64 actual participants on stage. Dubbed the "Siege of Shanghai" it unveiled several new dynamics to the game. Players are now able to use elevators to reach various levels of buildings, and even level entire skyscrapers for a truly destructive environment.

First EA is bringing back Battlefield Commander Mode, which is similar to the Commander mode featured in Battlefield 2, but is much more dynamic and only gives you the resources available based on your team. Possibly one of the coolest features of Commander Mode is that it can be utilized through your touchscreen mobile device such as a tablet. In my opinion this brings in an entirely new dynamic, and is the new technology needed to take the Battlefield series to the next level.

E3 2013 - Microsoft and Turn 10 studios announced the next generation in simulation racing this morning. Forza 5 just may be the most bad ass racing game I have ever seen. The use of cloud processing and what is being called a Drivatar, you are always racing, even when you are not online.

The so-called Drivatar is an AI that learns your driving habits, your speed up and breaking habits, and even your crashing habits. It then races for you when you are not online. It is able to accomplish this through cloud processing which also gives the game graphics like no other game I have ever seen. The McLaren featured on the screen appeared to be a live video image and not a video game rendering.

Over the weekend a very mysterious AT&T branded, Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone popped up on the popular social networking site Reddit. The phone appeared to be running a new prototype of Windows Phone 8, and was confirmed when information was posted about the version of Windows Phone it was running was revealed in a screen shot.

The Lumia 920 appeared to be running a Windows Phone build of 12084.WPMAIN(wpbldlab).20130509-1407, which gives us a compile date of May 9th. As for new features, a notification center can be seen in one of the screenshots, providing access to the typical Live Tile notifications, as well as a redesigned calendar interface, and the ability to sort apps by name or by the most used.

Redmond appears to be working on improving multitasking in the new OS as well, which is apparent by the new ability to close apps in the multitasking view. The prototype phone was purchased on ebay, and the buyer mentioned that the phone has many apps whose name begin with the letter Z leading us to believe that it once belonged to a developer.

This is something conspiracy theorists (like myself) were laughed at about just last week, and for years now, but now we have an NSA whistleblower coming out and feeling compelled to talk about it. Edward Snowden thinks that the US public needs to know about the control all of the data that is being recorded about them on a day-to-day, heck a second-to-second scale.

All data is recorded, Facebook, Google, Apple, SMS, e-mail, everything digital, is being targeted and secured by the NSA. The NSA collect, store, analyze and keep that data to get data on every living person within the United States right now. They use the reason of 'they're targeting suspected terrorists' but it picks up data on everyone at the same time. We live in a post-9/11 world, and this is something the people of the world need to stand up and say "no" to, and this is what Snowden is here to do.

He is fully aware that coming out and stating these things puts a target on his back bigger than anything I personally think has happened before, and I really expect a big 'event' to go down to throw the media and the citizens off this trail. We're talking about some seriously bad things that the US has done, and this guy has proof of that fact. The question is, where do we go from here?

Computex Taipei 2013 - Supermicro had a beast of a SuperStorage Server on display at Computex 2013, with support for up to 24 x 2.5" drives, which could either be the latest and greatest 10 and 15K HDDs, or SSDs, including the new breed of 12Gb/s SSDs on the market.

From the top, we can see the three 12Gb/s controllers for the HDD bays. We typically expect rebranded HBA's and RAID controllers for large OEM suppliers, but the origin of these controllers is unclear.

Supermicro was not forthcoming with many details, including the ROC utilized in these builds. These controllers look to be a custom design with large capacitors to the end of the board.

Computex Taipei 2013 - At Computex 2013, Supermicro displayed their newest line of Haswell servers, with the SuperServer 5038ML-H12TRF on display.

The power efficiency of the new Haswell architecture provides the possibility for enhanced density in server solutions. Here we can observe a 1U rack with a single processor server.

Here we see the 12-node version of the Supermicro SuperServer 5038ML-H12TRF on display. These hotpluggable racks pull out for easy service and each hold 2 drives for storage.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Once you go black....you never go back to blue? Western Digital's performance line for consumers is the Black Series. With flash increasing performance the company decided it was time to add a little flash magic to their proven mechanical products.

The result is Western Digital's first SSHD. SSHD, the industry term for hybrid drive is part SSD and part spinner. In this case, the marriage of a special Sandisk iSSD that is between 8GB and 24GB depending on the OEM customer, and a 5mm slim Western Digital hard drive.

We finished testing Western Digital's 5mm Blue drive right before walking out of the door for Computex.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We know it's coming and coming sometime soon but that isn't good enough when OCZ Technology teases it at CES and Computex in 2013.

With two Indilinx Barefoot 3 controllers and up to 1TB of NAND flash, we know you want it too. If the PCIe version of Vector includes SCSI unmap, a form of TRIM, then we'll do back flips followed by cartwheels. Wouldn't that be a sight to see?

As far as I know, this is the first back side picture of the card. All together there are 32 NAND flash chips, four DRAM buffers and two Barefoot 3 controllers. Bridging the two controllers to the PCIe 4 lane is an OCZ VCA II. This is a full height card for desktop use. When they finally come out I want six for RAID 5 in a prosumer SAN.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Noctua had their maybe upcoming active noise cancellation (ANC) cooler back out at Comptuex this year. We say again because we had a taste of the technology last year at Computex but this year's version is much more refined. I would say it is pretty damn close to production ready actually but that's not to say anyone can afford it.

The first thing everyone is thinking has to be why Noctua would even make a product like this to begin with. The company makes silent coolers, I've hand nearly all of them and can honestly say I don't use anything else and the reason why is because they are quiet and work better than advertised.

What ANC gives the company is the ability to run its fans at higher RPMs and retain the silent operation that Noctua is known for. With more airflow, the coolers can dissipate more heat from the CPU, increasing the thermal capacity of the cooler. With overclocking making a comeback on Haswell even us old guys are ready to get back in the game.

Computex Taipei 2013 - MemoRight had a sizable booth this year at Computex and inside we found a product we're ready to try. To date, only Samsung has shipped consumer grade SSDs with triple-level cell (TLC) flash but that's about to change now that Toshiba has their 1Xnm TLC in production.

The MemoRight XT3 Series will use a Marvell controller with MemoRight's own firmware and pair it with Toshiba's new TLC NAND.

There aren't a lot of details yet but MemoRight expects performance in the 540 MB/s sequential read and 300 MB/s sequential write area. Wear-leveling will be very important with TLC NAND and MemoRight even mentions Global Wear-Leveling on the spec card. This will be an interesting one for sure.

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.

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:

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.

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 - 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 - Intel has hacked together some Thunderbolt-powered thumb drives. These 128GB drives interface using Intel's still relatively unused Thunderbolt connection to boost theoretical transfer speeds above those that are possible using a traditional USB 3.0 or SATA 3 interface.

We doubt that the thumb drive will hit Thunderbolt's theoretical 10GB/s limit, but it should outperform SATA 3 6Gpbs. Interestingly, the hacked device makes use of a Sandisk SSD rather than an Intel SSD. It's not clear why they didn't make use of their own technology in the device.

While a Thunderbolt drive would be awesome, it's still quite expensive. It's cost-prohibitive to produce these devices until the cost for Thunderbolt comes down. The cost for Thunderbolt will likely only come down as adoption picks up. We're stuck in situation where one thing has to move first, but which will?

Ahead of this year's E3, SteelSeries has introduced a new line of headsets. The new H-series has several different models, ranging from the basic 3Hv2, which costs $39.99, to the advanced 9H, which costs $159.99. Whatever your needs may be, SteelSeries' new H-series of headsets should feature a headset for you.

The 9H features Dolby Technology and comes with an MSRP of $159.99. According to the company's press release, the headset features up to 7.1 channels of "realistic multi-channel surround sound." The 9H also features SteelSeries' in-line audio controls, with swappable cables for PC, Mac, tablets, and phones.

The 5Hv3 comes with an MSRP of $79.99 and is a step down from the 9H. It features a retractable microphone, which retracts into the headset when not in use. It also features SteelSeries' in-line and swappable audio controls, making the headset compatible with PC, Mac, tablets, and phones.

By now it's no secret that Google's Fiber initiative is scaring the pants off of every major ISP in the country. This is confirmed by the brass of several large ISPs speaking out against gigabit Internet speeds in separate interviews. This morning, David L. Cohen, Executive VP of Comcast, has tossed his two cents into the discussion as well.

Cohen, speaking in an editorial he wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer stated that gigabit Internet speeds at the moment are pointless because "most websites cannot deliver content as fast as current networks move, and most US homes have routers that can't support the speed already available to the home."

What Mr. Cohen is saying is that because most households currently own a DOCSIS 2 or DOCSIS 3 cable modem that we would not upgrade to a modem capable of handling gigabit speeds. What he fails to realize is that Americans in general like to upgrade to the latest and greatest technology. This is why companies like Apple and Samsung are the success they are today.