On August 6, 1991, British engineer and computer scientist, Tim Berners-Lee from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) unveiled a project for organizing information, which would later result in it turning into what we use today as The Internet. He dubbed it the World Wide Web and posted a short summary on the alt.hypertext newsgroup.

The World Wide Web is really just a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet. Within this, users can obviously access text, images, videos and other multimedia web pages. Navigation of these web pages occurs via hyperlinks. Berners-Lee is now the Director for the World Wide Web Consortium and back in March of 1989, he used concepts from earlier hypertext systems to write a proposal that would essentially become the World Wide Web.

The project was publicly introduced in December 1990 at CERN in Geneva, Switzerland. Berners-Lee used a NeXT Computer as the world's first web server and also to write the first web browser, WorldWideWeb. By Christmas of 1990, Berners-Lee had built all the tools required for a working Internet: the first Web browser (which doubled as a web editor), the first web server, and the first web pages which described the project itself.

Like most, I hated Steam when it came out. But, it has turned into one of the best digital distribution methods on the market and I personally do not buy any games anywhere else. News has surfaced that EA will not be offering Battlefield 3 through Steam, but their own digital distribution service, Origin. EA's Seeson Mahathavorn said in a statement:

Dates have been shifting around quite a bit lately, but the latest indication of when the Apple iPhone 5 will launch looks to be September 23. A little more concrete shows that either way, this is also the launch date for Nokia's MeeGo powered N9 smart phone, at least in Sweden it looks like it. A countdown page on Nokia's swedish webpage gives the hint, but it doesn't necessarily mean it applies to all the markets getting the N9, though it's becoming safer to assume most markets should have it by late September.

Running back over the N9, it is Nokia's first MeeGo device, featuring a 3.9-inch curved glass AMOLED display (running 854x480 res). It has a 1GHz TI OMAP 3630 processor, 1GB of RAM, between 16 and 64GB of built-in storage, rear facing 8MP Carl Zeiss equipped auto focus camera and dual LED flash allowing for 720 video recording, and front facing camera for video calling.

The phone has a built in GPS, NFC, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1 and a microUSB port with pentaband WCDMA, quad-band GSM and HSDPA 14.4Mbps support. The phone will be available in three color options; black, cyan and magenta.

GIGABYTE has extended its enthusiast class G1-Killer series of motherboards today with the launch of the Z68 chipset based G1.Sniper 2.

Like the original G1.Sniper based on the aging X58 chipset, the new model looks similar at first glance with the same black and green color scheme going on. But apart from the improved 'locked and loaded' heatpipe cooling system onboard, the simalarities don't extend much beyond that point.

Designed for "extreme gaming", this motherboard has had pretty much everything thrown into it, including future Ivy Bridge support with its PCI Express Gen 3 setup (the first implementation from GIGABYTE), ready and waiting for upcoming PCI-E 3.0 cards requesting additional bandwidth.

Blizzard has changed their StarCraft 2 demo and morphed it into the StarCraft II: Starter Edition. The new demo has been revamped and removes the time restrictions that plagued the original demo which means you can play the same missions over and over again if you wish. Multiplayer is there in some form, with the new Starter Edition capable of using the StarCraft II AI and allows you to take on the Skynet-like AI in a quarter of the full games maps.

A detailed run down of what is included in the new Starter Edition:

The first four missions of the StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty single-player campaign, including Mar Sara 1-3 and the choice to embark on Tychus's first mission or Dr. Hansen's first mission.

It looks as though Apple might be merging its iOS and Mac OS X operating systems into a single unified platform for applications and cloud-based services as soon as 2012, starting with the MacBook Air. Peter Misek with Jefferies & Co said in a note to investors on Wednesday that he sees this transition possible with the next-gen MacBook Air's custom next-generation "A6" processor. This would mean the new iPad, iPhone and MacBook Air would be A6-powered by 2012.

Misek has been quoted:

The first look at the new Superman suit is now available and I must say as a loving, adoring Superman fan that I'm quite excited. This is my Star Wars, my Star Trek. Superman is being rebooted under the helm and help of Christopher Nolan (of the Batman reboot and Inception fame) and directed by Zack Snyder of 300 and Watchmen fame. Henry Cavill plays Superman and photos have been making their way to the Internet for weeks now, but WB decided to get out ahead of time to show off the suit instead of a leaked smartphone shot or similar.

As you can see, it has a very Batman/Spiderman reboot feel, very "techie" and out-of-this-world, so they've nailed the Kryptonian feel of it. How do I think Henry looks? Right now, he definitely looks like the Man of Steel, rather than the Boy of Steel that Brandon Routh gave in Superman Returns. I really can't wait to see the direction this movie takes, I just hope Snyder uses practical flying rigs and not 90% CGI flying scenes like we saw in Returns.

Also, this is where our new Image system comes in handy, slide your cursor over the image for a high-resolution shot. It's 1.2MB and should give your eyeballs a bit of a work out. Enjoy!

Following the launch of its DisplayPort to dual HDMI adapters yesterday, ZOTAC makes headlines again today with a couple more products.

In collaboration with water cooling specialists CoolIT, ZOTAC has introduced the liquid-cooled GeForce GTX 580 Infinity Edition which has CoolIT's OMNI self-contained water cooling system mounted.

ZOTAC ships the card with increased clock rates of 815/1630MHz on the core and shader, and 4100MHz on the 1536MB of GDDR5 memory. The card itself is otherwise much a standard fare with its 512 CUDA cores, 384-bit memory interface and dual-DVI and single mini HDMI outputs.

Gearbox Software has officially announced the development of the sequel to Borderlands. The sequel will be based on the rustic planet of Pandora (Avatar, anyone?) and will have players traversing uncharted lands to discover new "mysteries." As usual at the time of a new game announcement, details are very low but Gearbox are promising to deliver an "ambitiously crafted story" that unfolds alongside new characters, skills, environments, enemies, weapons and equipment.

Wow, I'm pretty sure that's also known as "stating the obvious." If Borderlands 2 follows its previous title, we can expect the same four-player, role-playing, FPS lootfest that the original game made oh-so much fun. Hopefully this time round, the PC version is at least worked on. The original Borderlands stank of console port, which was very disappointing to say the least.

More information will be available about Borderlands 2 shortly in the form of next month's issue of Game Informer magazine as well as the game being shown off at Gamescon in Cologne, Germany on August 17-18 and finally at PAX Prime on August 26-28. The official release window for Borderlands 2 is slated for Take-Two's 2013 fiscal year which runs from April 1, 2012 through to March 31, 2013.

There have been rumors flying about NVIDIA's upcoming next-gen Kepler-codenamed GPU for a while now, that it would be delayed until 2012 because of issues with the adaption of the 28nm-based process. But, Chris Malachowsky spoke at their GTC Workshop Japan event, saying that Kepler is still on track for launch this year. Chris was careful with wording, saying only that the parts would begin "shipping" by the end of the year which could mean a paper launch and not an actual card-in-your-hands-giving-you-sexy-times launch.

Kepler is meant to deliver a threefold increase in double precision performance per watt over the previous Fermi, as well as being easier for developers to utilize GPGPU applications. Whatever, NVIDIA, just give me the damn cards now please.

Smartphones and tablets are edging ever-so-close to the now ageing consoles in terms of capabilities, with the future not looking bright for the old consoles. SoC (System on Chip) creators such as NVIDIA and Qualcomm have some very powerful technology coming out and Qualcomm has gone as far as saying that future SoCs will be capable of beating current-generation consoles such as the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in terms of graphics and that we'll see a move from console and PC gaming to mobile-based gaming.

Their vision is to have a device such as a smartphone or tablet based on a high-end SoC, plug it into the wall or tether to a display (either wirelessly or through HDMI) and you've got a portable gaming console. Qualcomm is committed to delivering both the hardware and software support needed to bring developers to these platforms.

Most players in the SoC market are looking at doing this as the smartphone and tablet market expands at what seems to be a never-ending rate. With console sales slowing down, there is no better time for next-generation console announcements from the juggernauts of Microsoft and Sony. The transition from console and PC-based gaming to mobile-based gaming won't happen overnight, as there are too many AAA franchises on the big boy platforms.

MSI has just unveiled another gaming laptop with it already showing up in a few stores and being available for pre-order elsewhere.

The new GT683DX laptop is a 15.6-inch sized unit using one of NVIDIA's most recent high-end mobile GPUs, the GTX 570M with 1.5GB GDDR5 memory. The rest of the default specs include a 1920x1080 Full HD display, 2nd-gen Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU, 4GB of DDR3-1333MHz memory, 1TB (500GBx2 / RAID 0) storage, 8X DVDRW, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth, 2xUSB 3.0, 720p webcam, 2.1 Dynaudio sound system and a 9-cell battery.

Depending on how much extra you may like to spend over the $1,600 odd base price, you can switch things up for a 120GB SSD+750GB HDD, 12GB RAM, Blu-ray drive and matt-finish display.

Google's Android OS has taken an amazing 48% of the smartphone market in Q2 of 2011, which is an all-time high according to a report by market research firm Canalys. Android overtook Symbian in Q4 of 2010 to become to top smartphone platform representing 32.9% market share at the time. Smartphone shipments have increased exponentially also, seeing a total of 107.7 million units shipped in Q2 of 2011 which is a 73% year-on-year growth.

Android was also the biggest driver of smartphone shipments in Q2, with Android-based smartphone shipments being 379% year-over-year higher, coming in at 51.9 million total units shipped. This is thanks to Android being on so many different branded phones such as Samsung, HTC, LG, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, ZTE and Huawei.

Apple also did well, iOS taking Nokia's Symbian platform on and winning, rising from third to second place. 20.3 million iPhones were shipped and Apple took a 19% market share in the smartphone world. Apple also became the world's leading individual smartphone vendor, taking the throne that was previously owned by Nokia. Samsung also passed Nokia, with Nokia facing a rapid decline in demand across multiple markets.

Sony have previously said their next-generation portable gaming machine, PlayStation Vita, will launch globally by the end of the year and have said more specifically, that'll it'll be in the fall. Blockbuster have jumped the gun, with IGN nabbing their flier which suggests the PS Vita will hit UK retail shelves on Friday, October 28, 2011. The advertisement suggests that both Vita models will arrive in Europe after two months. Will we see a US or Japan release at the same time? We don't know.

As we can see from the above image (if true), the Vita will be £$229.99 for the Wi-Fi only model, with the 3G & Wi-Fi Vita at £279.99. Pricing doesn't seem too bad considering Sony has promised a PlayStation 3-level experience, as the Vita sports a quad-core ARM Cortex A9 processor with a multi-core PowerVT SGX543MP4 graphics chip that is four times as fast as the PSP. The Vita will come with a 5-inch OLED screen with a resolution of 950x544, two micro-analog sticks to simulate the Dual Shock experience, front and rear-facing cameras, as well as a two-finger multitouch pad on the back of the Vita unit.

Sony is hoping that the front and rear touch screens will offer new three dimension-like motion gameplay experiences never before seem on any device through "touch, grab, trace, push and pull" finger motions. A Sixaxis equivalent with a gyroscope and accelerometer is also available to let players control games by moving and tilting the Vita itself.

WD have today announced that its making the Hulu Plus subscription service available to its WD TV Live Plus and WD TV Live Hub family of media players. WD TV customers can now watch hit TV shows, movies and catch up on previous seasons of their favorite shows.

Hulu Plus compliments the already strong content offerings such as Netflix, Blockbuster, Cinema Now, Pandora, YouTube, Facebook and many others. The Hulu Plus subscription service will allow WD TV customers in the US to watch nearly every episode from dozens of current hit programs all season long from networks such as ABC, Comedy Central, FOX, MTV, NBC and VH-1.

Series such as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart,South Park, Modern Family and Grey's Anatomy, to Glee andFamily Guy, to The Office and 30 Rock, dozens of classic shows like Battlestar Galactica, The X-Files, Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, Arrested Development, Saturday Night Live, Miami Vice, Ugly Betty, Quantum Leap, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Roswell andAlly McBeal, and hundreds of movies from Miramax and the Criterion Collection.

As many of us know, the next big move we're waiting for from NVIDIA since Fermi came about is the release of its next-generation 600 series cards, dubbed Kepler. As the days roll on following a somewhat uneventful past 8 months or so in the VGA market, it's looking pretty certain that Kepler should come about around the start of 2012.

Kepler will be one of the first products to use TSMC's new 28nm process (with them getting a warmup session on some mobile 28nm GPU parts initially). Of course, it's safe to assume there will be a number of additional features on tap from NVIDIA with these next-gen cards, one of which looks to be in the way of better multi-monitor support.

As reported via the source link below, NVIDIA is apparently taking serious notice of the clear success that is Eyefinity with so many folks jumping aboard and making use of 3-screen gaming bliss since its inception.

ASUS are readying up a standout AMD A75 powered motherboard for launch very soon which HTPC and SFF builders will primarily be attracted to. The new F1A75-I Deluxe is a Mini-ITX based Socket FM1 board which packs a ton of features given its stature.

Using a 4+1 phase CPU VRM setup, it also has a couple DDR3 slots supporting dual channel DDR3-1866 memory and a dedicated PCI-E x16 slot for discrete add-in GPUs should you not already be satisfied with the kickass built-in GPU on the new A-series APU's.

Looking elsewhere on the board, we've got four SATA 6Gbps ports, one eSATA 6Gbps port, 6-channel HD audio with optical S/PDIF, four USB 3.0 ports (two in the form of headers, the other two on the rear I/O), built in WiFi b/g/n support, Gigabit ethernet, Bluetooth and a range of USB 2.0 ports.

At the end of July, Windows XP fell below 50% OS market share. Between June and July, Windows' market share in general dropped 0.63 percentage points (from 88.29-percent to 88.76-percent), whilst Mac OS games 0.22 percentage points and Linux gained 0.03 percentage points. Mobile operating systems have also, most obviously, gained market share. In the same period, Windows 7 gained 0.74 percentage points whilst Vista slipped 0.28.

By the end of 2010, Windows 7 nabbed 20% of the market and by the end of April 2011, it had 25%. Last month Microsoft reported they had sold over 400 million licenses in 21 months which means they're selling no less than 20 million per month. Back to school season is approaching which should see these numbers stay solid until at least 2012.

Blizzard have released some drips of information for their upcoming keyboard/mouse-thrashing RPG, Diablo 3. First off, Diablo 3 will be online-only, Blizzard believe that a high number of users have access to permanent internet connections anyway, and even though piracy was a concern it was not "a deciding factor" in making the decision. Blizzard instead claim that internet connectivity will be necessary due to a cache of Battle.net features that complement the game.

Things like persistent character saving server-side and the possibility of opting in/out of co-op play, persistent friends list, party system and matchmaking, the game's achievement system, and an auction house system that will allow real world currency to purchase items. Blizzard is not planning on selling any items directly through the auction house, instead, they'll let players list items for which they will charge a fixed fee.

The point of this is, real money auctions will be allowed along with in-game gold and normal item trade. Players will be allowed to rock up at the auction house at any time, with instant transactions of nearly everything, inclusive of characters themselves. Finally, Diablo 3 will not include support for bots or mods which Blizzard say is for a "variety of gameplay and security reasons."

ASUS has just dished up a standout graphics card under its DirectCU family with an all-passive cooled HD 6770 powered model.

The first thing that catches your eye with the HD 6770 DirectCU Silent is indeed that chunky passive cooler, which ASUS claims to be 16% more efficient than the reference cooler, while of course being completely silent.

To help with the coolers efficiency, it uses four direct touch copper heatpipes pulling heat away from the GPU. Meanwhile, the card itself boasts a Super Alloy Power design which basically means higher-grade componentry in terms of the capacitors, chokes and MOSFETs, while the rest of the specs shape up with 800 Stream processors, a 128-bit memory interface, 1GB of GDDR5 memory and D-Sub, DVI and HDMI outputs. The out of the box frequencies on the model are not yet known.