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If you thought that the Raspberry Pi models found in the cheap Model A and Model B offerings were great - well, things are about to get a whole lot Moore's Law-sy with Hardkernel's latest offering.

The product in question is the ODROID-U, which costs just $69 but sports a 1.4GHz quad-core Exynos 4412 CPU, you know - the same thing that powers Samsung's Galaxy S III and Note II smartphones. On top of its quad-core processor, it has 1GB of RAM, a quad-core Mali 400 graphics chip, micro-HDMI out, USB ports, a headphone jack and Ethernet connectivity.

One thing the ODROID-U doesn't have is on-board flash memory, Hardkernel have left this out and provided a microSD card slot instead. For an additional $20, you can get yourself double the ram at 2GB, and get the chip clocked up to a nice (and hopefully not toasty) 1.7GHz on the ODROID-U2 model.

Curiosity is awesome from many different standpoints. It's one hell of a robot, a feat of engineering, and a great way to increase our knowledge about Mars and space in general. Rumors of a massive discovery, according to NASA and Curiosity's Twitter account, have been a bit overblown, but never-the-less, NASA will be presenting its findings so far tomorrow at 12:00 p.m. EST, 9:00 a.m. PT.

The press conference will be held during the fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, which takes place in San Francisco. NASA has been trying to dial-in expectations and has said that there won't be any unbelievable findings presented tomorrow. "Rumors and speculation that there are major new findings from the mission at this early stage are incorrect," officials at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory wrote. "The news conference will be an update about first use of the rover's full array of analytical instruments to investigate a drift of sandy soil."

The rumors of a massive discovery started making their rounds two weeks ago when an NPR story used a quote from John Grotzinger, mission chief scientist, that said the SAM tool had found data "for the history books." If an earth-shattering discovery is presented tomorrow, you'll be able to read about it here.

This might be nothing, this might end up as never seeing the light of day - but it's interesting nonetheless. Sony have applied for a new patent, which looks to be an interesting new form of controller for the company.

The new controller combines the usual dual analogue stick we've all come to know and love, with two of their motion-based move peripherals. It appears the controller can be separated into two pieces, which if used in the right way - could end up being a very cool twist on the now stale controller market (if your name isn't Nintendo).

The controller can be separated when needed, for a specific game or a specific part within a game, and then clicked back together when needed. The patent calls this a "hybrid separable motion controller".

Normally this is reserved for the "only in Japan" type of posts - but here we are. I could pretty much just leave it as a title and blank news piece, but let's continue. Tom Nardone of MakerLove wants to be one of the first in to use 3D printing for the adult sex toys business.

Yes - 3D printers and adult sex toys - all in the same sentence. Nardone is an engineer who moved into the sex toy business, and doesn't want to make any generic sex toys - for this salesman, his 3D printed sex toys are a mix of art and science, with a dash of technology and pleasure.

The porn business has been a huge mover in technology in the years gone by, with VCRs, DVDs and now the Internet all being molded and guided by the needs, and requirements of the porn industry. 3D printing is just another factor of this - and where there's money to be made, there will always be someone there to make it.

After a while on the run, the founder of anti-virus company McAfee has been caught by the police. John McAfee was wanted by police over the murder of his neighbor, and has finally been found after weeks in hiding.

McAfee set up a website, whoismcafee.com, and has had updates of his progress since the murder of his neighbor, Gregory Faull, on November 11. The McAfee founder has also tapped Twitter to promote his posts, too. His site used a title "Breaking: John Captured" on December 1, stating "we have received an unconfirmed report that John McAfee has been captured at the border of Belize and Mexico". Then teasing "more information as it is received".

McAfee actually wrote entries to the blog, where he has said he disguised himself as a beggar, a street trader and a drunken German tourist - all an elaborate plan so he could watch police as they searched his home in Belize. He also states that at one stage, he was hiding out on his compound on the island of Ambergris Caye.

We all know it's coming - but when exactly? Will the next-gen Xbox be revealed at CES in Las Vegas next month? Or will Microsoft wait until E3 in LA in June to unveil the Xbox 360's successor.

Well, "people familiar with the company's plans" have spoken up - telling everyone that Microsoft are preparing for the next-gen Xbox, which is usually referred to as the Xbox 720, and will be released in time for the 2013 holiday shopping season.

The next-gen Xbox, which I think will just be known as "Xbox", is rumored to pack a quad-core processor, 8GB of RAM, directional audio, Kinect 2.0 support as well as sport a Blu-ray player. We should expect a decent kick in the ass in terms of GPU capabilities, with full DX11 support and hopefully 1080p @ 60fps support and 4K support built-in.

If you were thinking of buying a second or third Xbox 360 this holiday season for your mansion, you might want to hold off on having one of your butlers order it for you as by this time next year, we'll be graced with a new Xbox console.

According to Bloomberg whose sources are "familiar with the company's plans," Microsoft will be making its next Xbox available for retail in time to be available for Thanksgiving and Christmas shopping next year. As of now, Microsoft isn't entirely sure when exactly they should unveil its next Xbox as its currently debating whether to unveil it at E3 in June or at an entirely different event completely dedicated to the unveiling.

With all of the recent rumors and possible leaks of the next Xbox's hardware, it does seem like much of what Microsoft has planned for its next console is already finalized at this point and they just need to decide when to announce it to the world. For now, we just need to sit back and wait to receive our invites to whenever Microsoft decides to announce its next Xbox, which will hopefully be soon as I'm sure many of you are waiting with your wads of cash in your hands right now waiting to throw it at Microsoft for its next-gen Xbox.

Microsoft has been directing the majority of its marketing campaigns lately directly at Google with its recent campaign pitting Bing directly against Google in blind tests comparing the two services. This week, the company has launched another campaign, this time, going against Google's Shopping search results.

According to Microsoft's new "Scroogled" campaign, it's suggesting Google users are getting the short end of the stick when they search in Google's Shopping section as those results are paid for and not based on relevance of what users are searching for.

"They Scroogle you by defining relevance as how much they're getting paid. Don't get scroogled, you may be missing out on the best prices and highest quality products."

I've been enjoying my PlayStation Vita since it was released nearly a year ago, but I certainly have been feeling the big game releases have been too far and in between. With Sony's news of its PlayStation Plus service being made available on the PS Vita, they've decided to deliver a bundle that brings its popular premium service to new PS Vita owners.

The PS Plus Instant Game Collection PS Vita Bundle, which I hope you all take note as it may be a product with the longest name ever, comes with a 3G / Wi-Fi PS Vita, one-year membership to PS Plus, a voucher for Unit 13 and a 4GB memory card for $299.99.

With the PS Plus service on your Vita, you can access a number of the handheld's most popular titles like Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Gravity Rush and WipEout 2048. But if you plan on taking full advantage of PS Plus on your Vita with this bundle, you may think about investing in a new memory card as 4GB absolutely will not cut it with how much you'll download from PS Plus.

The Nexus 4 has been one of the most popular devices released this year, selling out in minutes across the world - I was lucky enough to score one here in Australia and you can read our review on it here.

Well, it has been so popular that eBay has deemed the demand high enough that they're enforcing sales restrictions on the quad-core smartphone. These restrictions are normally places on hot items like the iPad or the Nintendo Wii, with the rules covering just how many phones a seller can list.

Dell's once internal skunkworks project dubbed "Project Sputnik" eventually launched as the XPS 13 Developer Edition, but now the Ultrabook-based is now shipping with a Precise Pangolin Ubuntu build that comes pre-installed.

It also sports feature-complete drivers that make sure that the maximum peripheral compatibility is great out of the box. The XPS 13 also comes bundled with Project Sputnik's open source tools, such as Profile Tool and Cloud Launcher, that are included to help developers install and deploy their projects in a quick and timely manner.

Hardware wise, the new XPS 13 is quite powerful - sporting a choice of an Ivy Bridge-based Intel Core i5 or i7, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SATA III SSD. The Developer Edition of the XPS 13 costs $1549, which is $50 more than the Windows-based XPS 13.

Things haven't been good in Syria for a while now, but things have just taken a turn for the worse. A few hours ago, Syria dropped off of the Internet completely. All access to the world wide web has been cut from them.

Research for Renesys, who keeps track of the status and health of the technical underpinnings of the Internet across the world, reported at 10:26 UTC that all of Syria's international Internet connectivity was completely shut off. More precisely, that within the global routing table, all 84 blocks of IP addresses assigned to the country have gone unreachable.

This means that any Internet traffic headed to Syria will be undelivered, and that traffic coming from within Syria cannot get to the outside world. This usually happens when they don't want information getting out of the country - and is not a good sign as the regime of Bashar al-Assad is going to do one of two things.

There's quite the gaming bundle available right now offering some amazing prices on a bunch of great games called the Humble THQ Bundle. Pay $1 or more for Steam keys for Company of Heroes (and its two full-blown expansions Opposing Fronts and Tales of Valor), Darksiders, Metro 2033, and Red Faction: Armageddon.

If you pay over the average price ($5.75 will do) you'l receive all of those games, as well as Saints Row: The Third. The games bought will be available through Steam, and included in the bundle are a collection of DRM-free soundtracks! You really can't go wrong here, folks.

Buying all of these games separately would set you back $190, but THQ are letting you, the consumer, set the price. At the time of writing, there had been close to $1.7 million paid with the average price of $5.71. Nearly 295,000 purchases with the top contributor being "Jason Rubin" who contributed a very nice $1050. Turtle Rock Studios' contribution of $1024 is second and @WrapBootstrap is third with $1000.

When Apple launched the iPhone 5 this past September, it ran into some production issues that kept its latest iPhone from the hands of its customers. For weeks now, the iPhone 5 has been a difficult device to purchase as retail Apple Stores barely had them in stock and shipping from Apple's online store kept the device from customers' hands for weeks.

It seems the iPhone 5 drought is nearly done with as it looks as though Apple has finally caught up with demand as AppleInsider conducted a poll of 20 U.S. Apple Stores to reveal the iPhone 5 is readily available for customers who wish to purchase them.

Not only that, but customers who prefer to receive their iOS devices via online shopping can now purchase their iPhone 5 from Apple's online store and have it ship out in about a week.

The Nintendo Wii U's launch library probably isn't strong enough right now to sell like hot cakes as fans are most likely waiting for the next Mario, Legend of Zelda or Smash Bros. title in order to pick up the company's next-generation console. Games like New Super Mario Bros. U, ZombiU and Batman: Arkham City Armored Edition will probably do well on the console, but nothing garners excitement like a new Mario or Legend of Zelda title.

A new Mario or Legend of Zelda game for the Wii U was inevitable as there's no way Nintendo would launch a new console without thinking about new versions of their first-party AAA games. But during an interview with IGN, Nintendo's Global President Satoru Iwata confirmed a new "3D" Mario and Legend of Zelda game are currently under development for the Wii U.

The question was never if, but rather, when we would be hearing about the new Mario or Legend of Zelda titles. Iwata had the following to share during his interview:

Black Eyed Peas star, Will.i.am, has just launched a new camera accessory for the iPhone, the "i.am+" accessory. The new i.am+ will be available as a £199 C.4 "contemporary" and £299 V.4 "vintage" models for the iPhone 4 and 4S. In USD, we're looking at around $318 and $478 for the C.4 "contemporary" and V.4 "vintage" models, respectively.

The V.4 "vintage" model sports a slide-out keyboard, which is what that extra $160 or so will give you. Both models use the existing iPhone camera and feature interchangeable lenses for standard, fish-eye, and zoom photo abilities, while the C.5/V.5 models for the iPhone 5 will arrive next year, but will sport a 15-megapixel sensor and flash.

The makers behind the Rift head-mounted VR device, Oculus, have just come out and disappointed thousands of people across the world. Oculus' Rift was meant to see the release of a developer kit before Christmas, but now it has been pushed back four months into 2013.

The Rift's developer kit will be released in April, and has been delayed due to an overwhelming response:

There was a time when the iPhone and iPad were the absolute undeniable champions of the industry - breaking records on quarterly shipments, and market share in their respective fields - smartphones and tablets. The iPad pretty much created the tablet market on its own, and has enjoyed complete dominance since its launch.

Well, Apple may still lead the tablet market in terms of their share of the pie - but this number has dropped to its lowest point since the original, first-generation iPad launched in 2010. In ABI's latest estimate report, Apple's share of the worldwide tablet market dropped to just 55% in Q3 2012 - a 14% sequential decline.

Google's Android-based tablets are the main cause of this, which comes as a surprise to no one. Apple did just introduce the 7.85-inch iPad mini, but is it too late for them to claw back some of that lost market share? A quarter or so from now should tell, and we should have even more proof in the next few quarters as Apple start shipping, and selling more of their smaller slates. ABI analyst, Jeff Orr, isn't too sure on whether the iPad mini will help their market share numbers:

Solar power, up until now, has not really been all that great - sure, it provides a different method of powering things, but it doesn't capture anywhere near enough light to truly replace coal, oil or nuclear power. But, this week a team of MIT researchers hope to put us on the path of truly sustainable solar power.

Current solar power technology is not that efficient, with the latest development in solar systems delivering around 32% efficiency. This was met with titles of a "major breakthrough" in solar power - but in reality, it's still nowhere near as good as it should be. At this rate, solar farms need to be gigantic, taking up valuable space, in order to collect a useful amount of energy. The price per square foot has always been another issue altogether.

The main issue is that solar energy collectors can only absorb a small amount of the energy being blasted onto it from our star, with the rest of the potential energy not being captured. A recent MIT study has proposed an "atomically thing" sheet of semiconducting material that would be stretched by pushing a pin down onto the center. This may not sound like much, but it has endless possibilities for the future of our species.

The Grand Theft Auto series is one of the best selling series of all time, with numbers passing 125 million units life-to-date according to Take-Two Interactive's CEO, Strauss Zelnick. Zelnick revealed the amazing milestone during his presentation at the Credit Suisse 2012 Technology Conference.

In September 2011, GTA series units were sitting at 114 million - so we're looking at 11 million units selling in the last twelve months alone. Zelnick didn't break the figures down, but a Take-Two Interactive rep confirmed that the 2008 released GTA IV shipped 25 million units. Zelnick attributes the success of the Grand Theft Auto series to the James Bond film franchise, which doesn't get a release every two years. The release schedule keeps the series "special", says Zelnick.

Zelnick doesn't like the risks associated with a yearly release like Activision's Call of Duty series, with Zelnick stating that this business model has risks that his company doesn't want to take. He adds: