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.

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."

DICE have confirmed that the debut trailer for their upcoming Frostbite 2-powered Battlefield 4 will arrive on March 27, taking it a step further by unveiling a very short teaser clip to get those gaming juices flowing.

The announcement came from the official Battlefield Twitter account, which included a sneak peak at the trailer. It looks as though we should 'Prepare 4 Battle' and that we should expect some naval gameplay, too. Once the trailer breaks, we should hopefully hear more on the game in the coming months, which platforms it'll be released on - and when - and which platform was the development platform.

Remember last time, we were told it was the PC, but then switched to the consoles to get it out on time. Hopefully this time, DICE aren't messing around and have developed on the PC first and foremost, especially considering that next-gen consoles are powered by x86-based, PC architecture - like the PlayStation 4 from Sony.

Valve have quite the announcement today, telling the world that Team Fortress 2 will get a new mode this week - "VR Mode" for Oculus Rift, the superstar VR headset. This means that people who own the development kit of Oculus' VR headset can play Team Fortress in virtual reality.

Engadget have an interview with Joe Ludwig, one of the engineers in Valve working with Team Fortress 2's VR Mode. The interview can be seen here. The good news doesn't stop there! What good is a new mode if we don't have a new exclusive had in the game? The Oculus Rift development kit is now a wearable item within the game! Valve has been even more generous, donating Rift hats to the Oculus developer community - so if you backed the Kickstarter campaign at any level at all, or pre-ordered one of the Rift developer kits from Oculus' website before April 1, 2013, you'll receive a code to redeem your own TF2 Oculus dev kit hat.

Now the big question - how long until we see Rift support added to other games? In Engadget's interview with Joe Ludwig, he says that TF2's VR Mode is a big test, to see how the community accepts it. Obviously Oculus' Rift headset won't be available to the consumer market until later in the year, so hopefully we see some Steam Box support, and maybe some Half-Life 3 launch at E3 with Rift support? Or am I asking too much there?

RapidShare will likely upset some of its customers with its latest move. As of March 20, the unlimited storage option will disappear, even for those who have pre-paid for unlimited storage for longer periods. In exchange, RapidShare is expanding its options provided to free users.

Current customers will now be able to pick from a 250GB plan for 10 euros per month and a 500GB plan for 20 euros per month. Unfortunately for some, RapidShare's Terms of Service allow them to change the contents of RapidPro services at anytime. RapidShare had the following to say:

It looks like NVIDIA may be working on a second GK110-based consumer GPU to fill the gap between the marginally expensive GTX 680 and the ridiculously expensive GTX Titan released last month. With a $500 gap between the GTX 680 and GTX Titan, NVIDIA has a lot of wiggle room to squeeze another GPU in the lineup.

The video card is said to feature 13 of the 15 streaming multiprocessors that are built into the GK110 silicon. This means we would have 2,496 CUDA cores to do our gaming bidding. Combine that with 208 texture memory units, 40ROPs, a 320-bit memory interface, and 5GB of GDDR5 RAM and you end up with a fairly powerful card.

The rumored release date is somewhere between July and August of this year.

Google has climbed some of the highest peaks in the world to bring Street View images so that you don't even have to get out of your seat. While this won't satisfy some of the most adventurous Google Maps users, it will satisfy those of us who may not be physically capable of climbing these mountins.

You might be interested in checking out Mount Everest, Kilimanjaro, Aconcagua, and Mount Elbrus. You might also be interested in checking out the blog post drafted by one of the people who went on the adventure.

The Australian Financial Review released a report this morning in which BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins slams Apple over "lack of innovation." With a market cap that is less than Apple's quarterly profits, Heins claims are making some industry insiders laugh.

Heins went on to say that BlackBerry has surpassed Apple in innovation with the new BlackBerry 10 and that Apple has stood virtually still and has just rehashed the same old technology it released in 2007 with the first iPhone.

Last week we learned that Google Reader would be put out to pasture this coming July, and while Google continues to sever the heads of some of its apps, it seems to be planting seeds for new services to grow.

Earlier today website Android Police spotted some source code that alluded to a new service from Google called "Keep" that would let users easily take, store, and sync notes using one's Google Drive storage space. After some more digging, the sleuths discovered that the desktop version had already gone live at drive.google.com/keep.

The site has since been taken down, suggesting that Google had not meant for the public to see the new service yet. TheNextWeb was able to demo Keep for a few minutes before it was pulled offline and they described the interface as being "basic" and "made for mobile". They said that it did include a search feature, but integration with the rest of Google Drive was nonexistent.

Last week's launch stole the smartphone news show, but this week, everything is about Sony's next offerings. The company has announced two new Android based smartphones today in its Xperia line. In a series of videos, Sony shows off the best features of each phone.

The Xperia L is a lower end smartphone that is aimed at improving photo quality. Sony is touting the L as "the beat of Sony Camera Experience in a smartphone." It features a 1GHz dual-core Qualcomm MSM8230 processor, 1750mAh battery, an 8MP camera and 8GB of internal storage. The Xperia L will come in three colors - white, black and red.

The Xperia SP looks to be the new flagship phone from the company. Sony states that the XP was "precision crafted in every detail." and "the Xperia SP brings Sony brilliance to life, inside and out." The Xperia SP features a 4.6-inch 1280x720 "reality display" and is powered by the Mobile Bravia Engine which can sense the type of content on the screen, and adjust settings for the best image possible.

March has been a roller coaster ride for gaming companies, with major games like Sim City and Tomb Raider experiencing major issues on launch. Tomb Raider was all but playable on NVIDIA GPUs up until now. The GPU architecture giant has finally been able to release an official driver update that fixes most issues with the latest installment from Crystal Dynamics.

On the company's official blog, they stated:

Lenovo have just unveiled their latest ThinkPad, the T431s. Lenovo's ThinkPad T431s is a 14-inch Ultrabook, sporting a 1600x900 matte display backed up by 250 nits of brightness. Inside, we have Intel HD graphics, a 720p front-facing camera, 4GB of RAM (upgradeable to 12GB), a 47WHr sealed battery, an optional backlit keyboard, Bluetooth 4.0 and support for both Wi-Fi and WWAN connections.

Diving in deeper, we find Intel's Core i5-3337U processor clocked at 2.7GHz, with an upgrade to a Core i7 available. A full-sized Ethernet port is available, while VGA makes a weird appearance, too. A 3.5mm headphone/microphone combo jack is here, two USB 3.0 ports, a 4-in-1 SD card reader and a 320GB 5400RPM mechanical HDD resides inside for storage - with the option to upgrade to a super-fast SSD. It'll ship with your choice of Windows 7 or Windows 8.

No touchscreen is here yet, but Lenovo have said that future T431s models might feature touch panels. The trackpad has lose its physical buttons, with a custom-built alternative at play from Lenovo and Synaptics that reportedly took two years to work on. The T431s' trackpad supports some 20 different gestures. Lenovo's latest Ultrabook will start at $949 and will be in stores next month.

Defense Distributed has received a federal firearms license, with company head Cody Wilson announcing this would allow his company to manufacture and sell the group's guns. The news comes from Defense Distributed's Facebook page, where they uploaded a photo of the license with a note saying "The work begins!"

Wilson has said that the Type 7 license he received will allow him the same rights as other manufacturers, where he adds: "I can sell some of the pieces that we've been making. I can do firearms transactions and transport." Wilson will be required to, of course, keep records on what his company makes and sells, but he doesn't have plans to sell anything until he receives a supplemental license to make a broader range of firearms.

Defense Distributed seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to 3D-printed gun companies, successfully testing 3D-printed rifle lowers and high-capacity magazines.

Battlefield 4 will be officially announced later this month, on March 26 at the Games Development Conference 2013 (GDC), but for now we have the first image of the game. The image, below, confirms that the next-gen, first-person shooter will take place in the present day.

As you can see, the image shows off a soldier and various vehicles pushing through a city, which is in the background. Battlefield 4 continues on its predecessor's color scheme, of orange, black and blue - which is definitely not a bad thing. DICE's Karl Magnus Troedsson said last summer: "We still want to stay in this genre, the modern day as it is. We feel this is a place we can be and continue with the series. Battlefield 4 can live in this space and be very successful."

Something I'm looking forward to seeing is the unlocking of the potential of the graphics engine to be used, Frostbite 2. Frostbite 2's engine in Battlefield 3 was only utilized to a reported 30%, with Battlefield 4 pushing that right up to 80% with improved dynamic lighting and tessellation, among other goodies.

Android and Me have received an an image from an anonymous source, claiming that they work for Google, telling them the image below is the real deal on the Nexus 5. Their source claims that the Nexus 5 would be released later this year, October to be precise, and that they are evaluating several prototypes from different manufacturers.

One of these prototype's is LG's, who made the Nexus 4, and is going under the codename of "Megalodon". Megalodon looks like a serious powerhouse, but before we get into them we will state that this is a serious rumor, and half of these specs are most likely not correct:

A Nexus 5 with a 5.2-inch display would make sense, since we're seeing more high-end smartphones feature bigger displays, like the Galaxy S4's 4.99-inch display. 3GB of RAM is quite insane, so is a 2.3GHz-clocked processor. The 16-megapixel rear-facing camera with 4k video recording is quite a step forward, as is the 3300mAh battery. I'd expect those specs to be the ones that change, but I do think we'll see Google put even more pressure on Apple going into the future. Bring it on!

Well, well, well, here we are; Maxis' chief, Lucy Bradshaw, has come out and admitted what we all thought - SimCity was capable of an offline mode, but it conflicted with the vision that the developer had for the game. Bradshaw said Maxis had:

Bradshaw also added:

I know many of us are saddened by Google's choice to close down the Google Reader product. Many of the TweakTown staff use it daily. However, some good news has come out of the decision: new competitors are stepping up and developing new products or improving existing ones.

A petition was started on Change.org that asks Google to rethink its plans regarding shutting down Google Reader. Impressively, the petition has already surpassed 100,000 signatures. The Google Reader closure was announced just two days ago. For comparison, it took nearly 30 days for the White House petition regarding cell phone unlocking to gain a similar count.

We're not sure that this petition will have any effect on Google's stance. A Google spokesperson said in a statement, "We've given an overview of our reasoning and plans on our blog posts on the Official Google Blog and the Google Reader blog, and we'll be communicating directly with our users as we make these changes."

Bringing you doom and gloom seems to be my job today. Nintendo's Wii U appears to be selling in underwhelming amounts. According to a Macquarie Capital analyst, Nintendo only managed to move 66,000 Wii U consoles in February, though 70 percent of those were the more expensive Deluxe Set.

According to NPD Group, Wii U sales actually went up in February by roughly 40 percent. However, this doesn't account for that many extra units as January's sales numbers were also low. The Wii U's price is likely to blame as it costs as much as, or more than, competing consoles that have extensive game libraries.

It's important to note that the Wii U's February sales numbers are lower than the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360's numbers from any month within the last seven years. Nintendo needs to repeat the success it saw with the 3DS after they dropped the price by dropping the price of the Wii U to a more competitive level.

It's looking as though Microsoft's expedition into the tablet market might not be paying off as much as the company expected. According to people knowledgeable about Microsoft's sales, the company has reportedly only sold around 1.5 million Surface devices, meaning Surface RT and Surface Pro sales combined.

Bloomberg reports that only about 400,000 Surface Pro units and just over one million Surface RT tablets have been sold. This is in stark contrast to Microsoft's expectations which had the company moving two million Surface RT tablets in December alone. The company ordered around three million, so there is quite a bit of stock left.

Part of the problem is the high cost of the Surface device. Another issue is Windows RT. There has yet to be a compelling argument for the operating system. Intel continues to push x86 as a viable tablet chip and it's capable of so much more. Microsoft's Surface advertising certainly hasn't helped, either.

I imagine that many of our readers tuned into the Samsung Unpacked 2013 event last night. If you didn't, you might have been following our coverage of the event. But, if you were just following our coverage, you missed out on quite the show. You missed out on the ridiculousness that was Unpacked 2013. Check it out for yourself:

We all know the basic story line that press conferences follow. Some big player will come up on stage and tell you about their new product. Some try to deviate from this basic story line by bringing up celebrities to endorse their products. Last night, Samsung deviated far from this basic story line to some success.

While I found the whole show quite contrived, it did have several funny moments thrown in. The humor didn't come naturally, but it still managed to get the occasional laugh. If you've ever been to Disneyland's Innoventions Dream Home, you'll probably understand what I mean by that.