Google have released Chrome 15 and 16 to beta and dev channels respectively. Just a week after the first stable build of Chrome 14 hits the sticky webs of the Internet, Google throw more versions into the mix. Available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux, Chrome 15 beta brings a redesigned New Tab page that makes it easier to manage your apps, bookmarks and most visited sites. Chrome 15 includes the ability to drag and drop apps to rearrange them, create new sections with custom names and delete apps by dragging them into a trash can on the bottom right of a page.

Navigation between various sections such as Most Visited, Apps and Bookmarks is easier and Chrome will now remember your selection the next time you open up a new tab. On top of the new whiz bang additions, Chrome Web Store items can now be installed inline by their verified site, Omnibox History can now be synced alongside your other browser data with Google Sync and the Javascript Fullscreen API is enabled by default.

Chrome 16 on the other hand (only available on Windows and Mac OS) enabled the long-awaited multi-user feature by default. This allows you to switch between various in-browser user profiles. The pre-release beta also consists of an updated V8 engine (3.6.4.0) and various bug fixes.

AMD's Bulldozer is set to enter the construction site shortly, and these new benchmarks are leaned heavily in their favor. It looks as though a set of leaked press slides of the AMD FX Processor found their way into the grubby hands of DonanimHaber ahead of the official launch with AMD claiming huge performance leads over rival, Intel. AMD claims that their FX-8150 processor is aiming to take down Intel's Core i7-980X in game tests and even passing it in some DirectX 11 titles.

It's performing on the same level as the Core i7 2600K in several popular CPU benchmarks such as WinRAR 4, X.264 pass 2, Handbrake, 7Zip, POV Ray 3.7, ABBYY OCR, wPrime 32M, and Bibble 5.0. The AMD FX-8150 benefits greatly from the FMA4 instruction set that is lacking in Intel's Sandy Bridge. In the OCL Performance Mandelbrot test, the FX-8150 thrashes the 2600K by as much as 70%.

But, performance isn't everything to a lot of people. Considering that the FX-8150 is confirmed to hover at around $250, we should see massive love for AMD's new Bulldozer processor.

Neo said it in the Matrix Reloaded, "hmm, upgrades" and now I think he was referring to the release of Battlefield 3. DICE Community Manager, Daniel Matros, has come out and said that the PC built around the Battlefield 3 recommended system requirements is only able to run the game at Medium settings. This came about after a Twitter-based question and answer session where Matros stated that "recommended is usually medium".

He was also asked if a single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580 would have enough power to run the game at Ultra settings with Matros saying if you were aiming for that level of detail from the Frostbite 2 engine, you'll probably want to have two GeForce GTX 580s in SLI. There was no mention of the resolutions Matros was referring to but after looking at the videos, screenshots and now the Twitter question and answer session, one thing is for sure: Battlefield 3 is going to push your PC.

But this time, not because it's unoptimised. It's because it is a true next-gen game with next-gen graphics, sound, physical movement and destruction. I'm guessing Medium settings would look better than consoles with High and Ultra just looking uber-amazing. Bring it on.

Word came out just yesterday that Amazon is preparing to hold a press event in New York City on the 28th of September for an unveiling of sorts.

The event will take place at 9am on said date, but it can only be speculated at this time as to what little trick, or tricks they have up their sleeve. The most likely purpose of the unveiling however is to officially introduce its long-awaited "Kindle" (name yet to be confirmed) Android running tablet.

There's been a number of rumours floating around about it for several months now, but we were recently given more of an idea on what to expect when TechCrunch said it managed to get hands on with it. It was said in this report that it will hit shelves in late November at $250US.

Deepcool has just announced a new high-end graphics card cooler under its "Gamer Storm" series, oddly dubbed the Dracula. While there doesn't appear to be any blood sucking attributes here, it looks like its taste for "heat" is its substitute, being able to handle the hungriest, hottest of GPUs out there.

The Dracula uses a convex copper base with two large aluminum heatsinks and a mass of L-shaped heatpipes, no less than 12 of them in fact. It's possible to equip the Dracula with up to three 140mm sized fans, or four 120mm fans and all the mounting hardware is bundled to make this possible with ease.

The cooler supports NVIDIA GTX 580, GTX 570, GTX 560, GTX 480, GTX 470 and GTX 460 as well as AMD HD 6970, HD 6950, HD 6870, HD 6850, HD 5770, HD 5670, HD 4870 and HD 4850 video cards. A definitive shipping date or price tag has not yet been revealed.

A couple weeks back we saw MSI make a bold claim that GIGABYTE's "PCI-Express 3.0" implementation on many of its motherboards is, to have put it bluntly, "Fake". MSI even went to the extent of creating a number of detailed slides to express their views on why GB is supposedly misleading its buyers with the "Ready for Native PCIe Gen.3" tag on as many as 40 of its motherboards.

Of course, it wasn't difficult to imagine GIGABYTE would respond at some point in relation to this claim, and sure enough, that occured just the other day.

With that being a somewhat wishy washy response in unsurprising defence, what I felt particularly news worthy was ASRock's comedic approach to the whole situation, with a new advertisement showing up via its Facebook page that puts its own range of PCI-E 3.0-ready boards up on a pedestal, not that they ever really came down off it seeing as they were one of the first to roll in PCI-E 3.0-ready boards anyway.

Have a baby at home and use traditional baby monitors? I feel your pain. They are slow, drop out, have limited options and are usually clunky. This is where Evoz have stepped in with the next-generation of baby monitoring. Evoz use a system that works over iOS and will ship on October 4. No separate receiver is required, all you need is an iOS-based device like an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch and they can function as both the receiver and monitor.

Alternatively, you could purchase the Evoz hardware monitor and use your iOS device as the receiver. The app alerts you to cries, monitors bubs sleeping behavior to derive patterns and even connects you to a network of experts to help you with your concerns. It works from Wi-Fi and cellular connections because it is based on the iOS operating system, thus it will work anywhere you have Internet access.

In addition to this, the system tracks your child's sleeping and crying patterns, matches the information to the data anonymously collected from others of the same age and shows you where your child fits in. How awesome is that? Evoz has gone as far as partnering with sleep consultants and will be adding additional "baby experts" and behavior specialists to its network, allowing parents to rech out with questions. At first, this will be available over email only, but later down the track over the phone will be added.

Were HP lurking eBay looking for a new CEO? It could be a possibility. Former eBay CEO, Meg Whitman, is now the CEO and President of Hewlett-Packard. Current non-executive, Ray Lane, will become executive chairman. Whitman is a well-known executive, will replace HP's current Leo Apotheker, who was prodded out of the company just recently. Whitman is an experienced digital executive, has a large task ahead of her.

HP wants to re-direct itself after numerous strategic gaffes, disappointing financial results and probably the biggest issue, stock that has dropped 47-percent in 11 months since Apotheker was head of the ship. The board of HP is hoping Whitman can turn this all around, with ever-increasing pressure from the competition.

Check out the official press release from HP.

Police in Canberra suggest that their new point-to-point speed cameras be lined to unmanned aerial surveillance drones and used to track vehicles of interest to authorities. The first of the cameras will sport automated number plate recognition technology to calculate a car's average speed and whether it is within the legal limit, are due to hit the skies by the end of the year. Of course, with unmanned drones flying through the skies, they can be used for other tasks not linked to tracking cars.

Minutes from a Government point-to-point steering committee meeting held in June 2010 show that police recommended a broader range of uses for the cameras. According to the minutes which were obtained by the Opposition under the Freedom of Information Act, a senior police officer said the cameras could be used for other purposes. The minutes stated:

Alright, we were a little too hasty in our previous news post saying that Spotify would be the provider of music on Facebook.

It turns out that Spotify is just one of the partners that will provide music playback on Facebook. It will be very easy for you to discover what songs your friends are playing and listening to via the ticker notification system. All you will need to do is click on the song and the song will playback on the music service which you use and it will play in the area where you usually see the chat window.

This does make more sense - if Facebook did just use Spotify, it would only work in countries where the service is supported. Mark quickly mentioned that he thinks all music should be free as in his opinion it enables users to discover new music which will encourage them to buy more in the long run. That's an interesting theory since nowadays if you are in the right part of the world; you don't need to pay a cent for the music you enjoy.

I-O Data has just unveiled its latest portable Blu-ray drive, the BRP-U6XE which at first may not seem like anything special at all considering there's quite a number of these portable Blu-ray drives on the market these days.

However, there is in fact quite the stand-out feature with this one; it is capable of writing in the new BDXL format, meaning up to 100GB of data can be placed on supporting discs with this drive.

On the downside, the drive only has USB 2.0 connectivity. Considering the drive has BDXL support, I would have thought USB 3.0 would have been the more sensible, ideal interface with its much more accomodating bandwidth for such large amounts of data.

After recently hearing of Intel's plans to release a new, top end entry in its LGA1155 Core i7 line, the i7-2700K, new information has come out not only confirming its soon to be existence, but also covering pricing and availability.

Where Intel usually has a tendancy to roll in new top end parts at the same price point as what the predecessor sat at, this time things are expected to be different and apparently the i7-2700K will carry a higher price tag than the 2600K. While the exact price isn't allowed to be revealed at this time, a source has made it clear the i7-2700K will in fact be significantly higher than the 2600K's current $317 price tag - most likely somewhere around the ball park of US$340 to $350.

The i7-2700K will run at 3.5GHz out of the box, a typical 100MHz bump over the previous top model (2600K), while the chip is otherwise pretty much identical, including the multiplier with the highest available setting being 57x. On the upside, it's been rumoured that Intel is cherry picking its best Sandy Bridge cores for 2700K allocation, and this is backed up by other reports that it is one hell of an impressive overclocker.

Ah, James Cameron. I really hope you can make this happen. The infamous director of such movies as Terminator, Aliens and Avatar, is pushing the film industry toward using higher frame rates than the current industry standard of 24 frames per second. Cameron wants to see digital cinema projectors enabled for higher frame rates. He started pushing for higher frame rates at CinemaCon earlier this year where he argued for the use of 48 and 60 fps.

Cameron talked to THR about his need for higher frame rates, saying he would favor 60 fps:

The Kal-El-powered second-generation ASUS' Eee Pad Transformer has not been shy from the news lately and now the benchmarks for the "ASUS Transformer TF201" have floated up from the depths of the unknown and onto the Internet. The results have been taken down, but the magic involved in Google's cache have bought them back to life and they paint a glorious picture. When benched against the Acer Iconia Tab A500, which sports a Tegra 2 system-on-a-chip, the Transformer 2 scores 40.6 fps versus the 17 fps of the A500 in the "Egypt Standard" test in the GLBenchmark site.

Not only that, the "Offscreen 720p test" saw the Transformer 2 score 65 fps versus 21 fps which is not too bad at all. Considering that Kal-El's power consumption is meant to be lower than the Tegra 2, it offers much more performance as well as better battery life.

I'm sure you dear readers don't like the old-school, 80s style boot-up sequence that has plagued Windows since, well, forever. This is all set to change with the old BIOS system being replaced by a Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) which gives users a high-resolution logo and graphical menu to look at whilst booting up their PCs. Not only does it look pretty, but the menu will allow booting to a different disc, OS or USB drive with pictures and words as prompts.

The command prompt will still be there if you would like to get your black and white, text thrashing on. For everyone else, they get the super-pretty, super-fast boot up sequences we've all been dreaming of for a very, very long time. Microsoft will continue to support the legacy BIOS interface, but systems using the UEFI interface will have "significantly richer capabilities". Other nifty things built-in is ease of use for performing troubleshooting in Windows RE.

Microsoft have gone as far as included a soft keyboard available from the command prompt in Windows RE, they cited an example as a field repair on a device that doesn't have a keyboard. This is a great step, and a large one in the right direction for Microsoft.

An announcement from Adobe today lets us know that significant new versions of its Flash Player and AIR platform are on the verge of release, Flash Player 11 and AIR 3; these both scheduled to become available to the masses early next month.

The new browser plug-in of Adobe Flash promises massive performance improvements over the 10 release using full hardware acceleration. Adobe also rolls in full, native 64-bit web browser support which should make the switch over to 64-bit web browsing less of a problem with there already being HTML5 and Java 64-bit plugins available.

Here's a detailed rundown on all the new goodies coming with the new versions :-

ASUS' sexy U46SV ultra-thin laptop has been spotted in the U.S., with a pre-order listing now up over at ExcaliberPC. Having been out in Europe for a short while already, it's been quite the popular little number at its respective price point and certainly catches one's eye with its champagne-colored brushed aluminum casing.

With a price tag of $879 in the states at the aforementioned etailer, the U46SV-DH51 measures just 1.08-inches thick and is based on Intel's Huron River platform. It sports an LED-backlit display running at 1366x768 and is powered by a Core i5-2410M processor (2.3GHz) with 4GB of RAM, 640GB HDD, 3-in-1 card reader, GeForce 540M 1GB graphics, 0.3MP camera, Gigabit ethernet, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, SonicFocus audio, a USB 3.0 port, HDMI output and 8-cell battery.

It looks like the official U.S. release is around about October 1st.

Diablo 3 has been in a "friends and family" beta for quite a while now, but today that changes. Blizzard have announced that the closed beta test for the game has officially begun, with the first wave of invitations being sent as we speak. More beta invites will fly out over the course of the beta, so refresh your e-mail inbox every 35.2 seconds!

The closed beta test of Diablo 3 has players fighting their way through part of Act I as any of the five hero classes. Barbarian, Witch Doctor, Wizard, Monk and Demon Hunter are all up for play and go head-to-skull against the Skeleton King, taking him on alone or playing co-operatively with other adventurers. You'll also get to meet up with some of the artisans, followers and other key characters from Sanctuary and try out the game's skill and crafting systems.

Mike Morgaime, CEO and co-founder of Blizzard Entertainment says:

Homefront creator KAOS Studios shut down during the summer and it left fans and THQ wondering what would happen to the sequel without its developer and especially after its cliffhanger ending. THQ has now hired Crytek to develop the sequel which is expected to be out in 2014 for PC and console platforms. Crytek only recently launched their DX11 upgrade for Crysis 2 to spruce up the console-ported games graphics so we should see the next Homefront game get a visual polish to define it well.

Danny Bilson, EVP Core Games from THQ says:

Battlefield 3's open beta begins on September 29. Yes, you read that right - it's nearly here. Those who pre-ordered through EA's Origin service will have access to the beta 48 hours before the rest of the people who didn't pre-order. Those who purchased the Limited Edition of Medal of Honor will also get access to the beta. EA also say that "ORIGIN WILL BE USED TO DISTRIBUTE THE BETA INSTALLATION AND RUN THE GAME AND THEREFORE NECESSARY TO PLAY." Not my caps, that's EA's work.

As for system requirements, they're not too bad at all:

Minimum: