I was going to post this yesterday but the sources for this news were not what I would deem trustworthy. The news has popped up again that Microsoft might be including Xbox 360 compatibility in Windows 8. This would mean that anyone who purchases Windows 8 (and has a minimum requirement in hardware) should be capable of running Xbox 360 games! This is obviously a very, very bold move by Microsoft and if true, could really shake up the entire gaming industry.

As you can see from the above picture, in the Windows 8 source code is a line with "XBOX360_SYSTEM_CRASH", gee, I wonder what that could be for. If you look at the source (Engadget) and its comments, most people don't understand why this would be beneficial. Well, let's look at it this way. Microsoft have 400 million Windows 7 licenses out in the wild, 50 million plus Xbox 360 users and hundreds of millions of other customers who may not yet be on either platform.

The biggest thing to remember, is Microsoft are set to launch a next-generation console, if they do so by holiday season 2012 it would be a huge coup for them. The way I see it is, they could market by holiday season this year, until the launch of Windows 8 that Xbox 360 games will be compatible. It'll drum up unimaginable business and amazing PR for them. Once it launches, they could announce the next-gen Xbox at E3 2012 and release in holiday season later that year.

Right now, AMD would be on top of the world. Their Radeon series of GPUs are phenomenally successful with their next-gen 7000-series just around the corner, their APU is rolling out right now, and they're already powering consoles; the Wii and Xbox 360. Rumor has it that they might end up getting jiggy with all three console makers come next-gen. The Wii-U is set to be AMD-based and now its looking like the Microsoft and Sony console will be powered by AMD solutions.

Both Microsoft and Sony have of course not verified this news, but HardOCP have a reliable tipster roaming the halls of E3 last week. Based on their information, they say that AMD's future console dominance is already a "done deal." Of course, NVIDIA will be... green... with envy but keep in mind they are powering a slew of Tegra 2-based Tablets and Smartphones. AMD are also set to have an opportunity to win contracts for microprocessors for the next PlayStation.

Right now, all three consoles are sporting Power-based IBM processors, even the PlayStation 3's Cell chip has a PowerPC component sharing die space with SPE co-processors.

Apple are finally catching up with my good old trusty Nokia 3310, custom text message alert sounds. Sarcasm aside, its about time Apple started offering custom text message alert sounds and iOS 5 beta 3 includes them. The new beta allowed users to fish for new features and one of the first ones was of course the custom alerts for SMS. Others weer subtle like a new icon for Reminders, a toggle for location/GPS settings added to the initial, iTunes-free setup and small tweaks to the wording of certain options.

The biggest thing was a "Buy More Tones" button sitting right in the Text Tone selection screen, where it has never been, ever. Scrolling down further and the custom ringtones people had made themselves or purchased are sitting there waiting to be used as an SMS tone.

WHAT! This is amazing, revolutionary almost... until you remember that Jailbroken iPhones have had this feature for eons and virtually every other handset on this planet allows this except the great Apple. But, finally, Apple are letting users use their phones in a way they want, and not in Apple's almost Nazi fashion.

A new social media film project has been given the green light By collaborators Intel and Toshiba to kick off from July 25th onward in the form of multiple short episodes with a casting call already running from today through to the 20th of this month to identify a new character to be included in said film.

The film, "Inside", is centralised around Christina (played by Emmy Rossum) who is trapped in a room with only a Toshiba Satellite P775 series laptop and an untraceable internet connection. With no idea where she is located or what her fate might be, she uses the laptop to launch her social network, reaching out to friends, family and anyone else who can help her figure out where she's being kept and how to get out of there.

This is the first film of its type in that it helps engage its audience by enlisting them to be a part of the film through social media.

Meanwhile, all sorts of drugs are somehow imported into the [super secure] borders of most countries (like the US for example), yet a little 'ol cable like the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cables have been deemed by HDMI org to be illegal. HDMI org are the committee that oversees the HDMI specification, saying such wires are illegal and could soon disappear from stores.

HDMI org claim that any cable with a male Mini DisplayPort connector on one side and a male HDMI connector on the opposite side is unlicensed and shouldn't be sold on store shelves. HDMI org did back up its claims with a few lines from the HDMI specification, one line says that a HDMI cable consists of only HDMI connectors, nothing else is permitted.

If that's not enough, the group also said that all HDMI products undergo compliance testing as defined by the Compliance Testing Specification. Since mDP to HDMI cables aren't mentioned in the HDMI specification, there are no tests associated with the product, so they are unable to be approved. But, cables that include a male mDP connector alongside a female HDMI receptable are fine because a licensed HDMI cable is able to be used.

Following its first appearance at Computex early last month, GIGABYTE's T1125P booktop is now listed at website ExcaliberPC with an indicated date of availability being July 22, albeit pricing is yet to be disclosed on the unit.

In case you missed the rundown on it during all the goings on at last month's Computex, this is an 11.6-inch booktop (that can be used as a notebook, tablet or desktop PC) and is set to replace last year's T1125N which we reviewed a while back here.

The new T1125P weighs in at 1.73Kg (not too bad for a convertible laptop) and its multi-touch LED-backlit (1366 x 768) display is capable of rotating 360 degrees. Packed inside is a 1.33GHz Core i5-470UM CPU, 4GB of DDR3, GeForce 410M 1GB graphics with Optimus support and a 500GB mechanical HDD. The feature set gets rounded out with Gigabit ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, two speakers and two woofers, 1.3MP webcam, 1xUSB 3.0 port and a 6-cell battery.

Mozilla's Firefox development team appear to be working faster than ever lately with a new alpha (Aurora) build 7 now available, less than a month after Firefox 5 Final was released to the masses. They sure are chewing through version numbers of late.

The new 7.0 Aurora (alpha, 7.0a2) build brings what looks to be a decent amount of new features and improvements. with reported optimizations including a faster startup time, faster rendering performance and less memory usage. The new build also has an improved sync manager for syncing up your bookmarks and passwords effortlessly and instantly with your other devices.

Other benefits include better font rendering When GPu acceleration is enabled and some new web and server tools that allow developers to build performance tests directly into the browser.

Apple have quite the achievement today, announcing that they have had over 15 billion (that's 15,000,000,000!!) apps downloaded from their App Store by more than 200 million iOS-powered users worldwide. The App Store sports 425,000 apps and developers have created an incredible array of over 100,000 iPad-only apps.

Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing says;

The underdog in this fisticuffs battle of online music services [in my opinion] is Amazon and maybe they know that too which is why they were the first to launch their music service before the great Apple and Google, it nabbed them headlines and probably, groupies. This has given Amazon time to gain a customer base and do some work on their service. Amazon have since studied what Google was offering (free upload of 20,000 songs) and also Apple (unlimited storage up to 25,000 songs for $25) and decided that its own pricing scheme needed some lovin'.

Anyone who purchases MP3s from Amazon should definitely give Cloud Drive a second look: every MP3 purchase before the cloud streaming service launched can now be stored for free and all limitations on music uploading have been removed from paid members. Upon launch, Cloud Drive offered five Gigabytes of free storage to users and the option to upgrade was there. 20GB for $20, 50GB for $50 and so on up to 1000GB. All new MP3s purchased through Amazon are able to be stored for free without counting against that total, but the allowance didn't apply to previous purchases.

Now it does. This is now Amazon's greatest strength in the online music battle, it's connection to the Amazon MP3 store. But that's not all... Cloud Drive now has a "limited time offer" which gives anyone who pays for storage unlimited space for uploading tunes. This means that everyone who dropped $20 for storage now has unlimited, yes, unlimited space for MP3 uploads even if they were not purchased from the Amazon store.

All of this next-gen iPad news is really getting to me, everytime I think I have a new piece to type up, a few days later there's something else out from some other analyst saying something different. Enter Craig Berger, an FBR Capital Markets analyst says that the next iPad to hit the market will not be the iPad 3, but will be dubbed the "iPad 2 Plus" and planned for later this year.

Expected in this iPad 2 Plus is the hotly-rumored higher-resolution display, at 250 to 300 pixels per inch compared to the pansy 132 pixels per inch. This would make the images and text look much crisper and natural, almost like words printed on paper. The iPhone 4 had a similar bump in ppi, up to 326 ppi. Berger also cited reports from the supply chain saying that Apple has begun grasping for parts for the future iPad:

Chics it up a notch, geddit? Chic styling, yeah, you know you do. Today, Gateway intros in a new, revamped style of two of its Gateway notebook PCs, the Gateway ID Series and Gateway NV Series. Both lines feature incredibly stylish designs in the most in-demand sizes, powered by the latest and greatest mobile technology. First up the Gateway ID47 Series sports a 14-inch HD widescreen LED backlit display with full edge-to-edge glass which slides into a chassis usually designed for smaller 13.3-inch models.

The Gateway NV Series features a new sleek design with a bigger 15.6-inch display with instant social media connections. Both lines include USB 3.0 for fast transfers and device charging. The Gateway ID Series comes in two designs, "Infinity Blue Liquid" which is meant to resemble tranquil water whilst the second design dubbed "Brushed Platinum" conveys an industrial modern feel.

Both the ID and NV Series include instant social networking with quick-use hot keys that give customers quick access to their social networks on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Pushing the button launches and integrated widget that lets customers easily make updates to their own sites by posting information, images and video as well as checking out the status feeds of friends, family and colleagues.

Charlie from SemiAccurate has written an article on Kepler which is NVIDIA's upcoming 28nm-based flagship GPU. If one were to believe the article, it would look like AMD is going to beat NVIDIA to the holy grail of 28nm-based GPUs. Charlie reckons that AMD taped out Southern Islands in February whilst NVIDIA didn't tape out Kepler until June.

He then estimates that a delay of around seven to eight months between tape out and launch, which should throw AMD's cards into our hands in around two months whilst NVIDIA's cards won't get their green on until February of next year "at the earliest." Another thing to throw into the ring of speculation is Kepler's processing resources. Charlie wrote a separate piece that Southern Islands is more or less a play-it-safe shrink of the Cayman-based design that powers the Radeon HD 6900 series whilst Kepler is a new architecture that has substantially more processing resources than Fermi.

If this is true, we might see a repeat of the entire Radeon HD 5000 series punching the Fermi-based GeForce 400-series in the nuts, Cartman style.

During Facebook's "Awesome" event that is going on now at Facebook's HQ in Palo Alto, CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced "Video Calling".

It is a partnership with Skype and integrates into your current Facebook experience rather seamlessly. All you need to do is pop up your friends list in that chat area in the bottom right of the screen and select a friend. Then click on their name and click the "start a video call" camera looking icon.

For the first time you are asked to download the Facebook Video Calling Plug-in which is small and downloaded and installed very quickly. I'm going to give it a try right now! One last thought, now that Microsoft own Skype, does this mean we will see more Facebook and Microsoft joint efforts in the future?

Just after the magical release of Skype 5.5 for Windows which included deep Facebook integration (why do I feel dirty saying that?), they've just launched their new solution for Apple. Skype 5.2 for Mac is now available and seems to be much better equipped than the 5.1 version that was released back in November of 2010. The new video is not only capable of group video calls (which was available in the November beta) but also share their screens during that call.

Screen sharing is already available for free on a one-to-one Skype call, but the new ability to share documents, photos, presentations and whatever else you choose with multiple people in a single session really makes the product shine. The downfall? To take advantage of the group video calling and screen sharing function, one or more call participants must have a Skype Premium subscription.

These subscriptions cost between $4.49 and $8.99 per month, with a day pass available for $4.99 if you only use it every now and again. The call control bar now includes video when you multi-task during a video call, this allows you to still see the person you're Skyping as well as being able to hang up or mute the conversation when you're engaged in a different program. Skype have also made it easier to find your most active conversations under "Recents" which is found in the sidebar and they've also added a "History" section where users can see those who are not as active.

With Nintendo releasing their next-generation console next year in the form of the Wii U, it must be making Sony and Microsoft shake in their boots. Their consoles are getting old, cannot handle AAA titles in 1080p and are beginning to age, fast. With the underdog (in terms of hardware) coming out with a next-gen solution, it seems Sony are already looking at the PS4 for a possible 2012 release.

Taiwanese component makers have told DigiTimes that Sony are prepping a new home console for a 2012 release, which will feature body-movement controls ala Microsoft's Kinect. Unexpected? Well, yes... after the time, sweat, tears and money into their Move technology, it's a strange move indeed. The report states that both Foxconn and Pegatron Technology will assemble the PS4 for Sony, as they did with the PS3.

Sources told DigiTimes that the PlayStation 4 will go into production at the end of the year for a 2012 launch, with rumors that Sony will pump out 20 million PS4 consoles for 2012. Launching in 2012 has its benefits and draw backs. Draw backs are the US economy, yes it's bad, but people are still buying tech. Apple haven't slowed in sales, they've grown. Release a great product and people will find the money to buy it.

The latest game to get thrown onto torrent sites [way] ahead of release is Gears of War 3. Not due until September 20 (!) and considered by many as the biggest Xbox 360-exclusive title of the year, a leak this early of a game this big is very surprising. The build is near-final and a poster on the website NeoGAF says that it includes the full single-player campaign and all of the multiplayer options and adds "Buggy as hell, but it seems like it's all there."

Of course, Epic are doing damage control and are trying to contain the leak and go after those who are responsible, claiming they are working with their security teams and law enforcement to address the situation. Epic have said that the leak does not represent the final experience players will have with the real thing.

The leak whilst bad, can also be good for Epic. First, it's not the final build so it does not represent retail quality, secondly it's only playable on the Xbox 360. Gameplay videos have made their way to YouTube and other streaming video sites, so fans of Gears of War 3, start looking for some gameplay footage!

Samsung have announced (and most likely, very proudly) that they have passed the 3 million units sold milestone of their latest and greatest (and may I add, amazing) Samsung Galaxy S II Android-powered smartphone. The Galaxy S II is expected to launch in no less than 120 countries on over 140 mobile operators, so these numbers will expand pretty quickly. Keep in mind that the phone has only launched in South Korea and the UK, these numbers are mighty impressive for just two markets.

The phone launches in the US later this month. Samsung has modest ambitions for the Galaxy S II; sell 10 million units for the entire of 2011. If they've hit 3 million, in just two countries in less than two months, then I dare say Samsung have got their goals sealed up, ready to go and the Moet is on the chill.

A rumor that will never die is a saying that pops into my head whenever I read something new about an upcoming Apple product. Rumors are again making their way around the tubes that we might see the next-gen iPad as soon as October of this year. Rumor is that the iPad 3 will sport the super-high resolution of 2048x1536 and if it does, it is sure to get display junkies wagging their tongues.

Of course, right now this is just rumor. Apple are currently having problems keeping up with demand for the iPad 2 let alone getting a third-gen iPad onto the market. But, the market wants it and it wants it bad. Put an Apple logo onto anything and it'll sell. More details of the iPad 3 as they surface will be posted so check back!

Jaap is a 66 year old Grandpa who still cranks online gaming and since his retirement at 59 years of age has gotten himself into the world of online FPS gaming in the form of Battlefield: Bad Company 2 on the PS3. His YouTube video has seen what Borat would call "great success" with half a million views in the first week alone! His wife thinks he spends a little too much time playing games whilst his two sons are actually part of the BF:BC2 squad he is part of and are proud of him.

When Jaap retired at 59 he first stated playing Call of Duty and has now evolved up to BC2 on the PS3. His normal day consists of 2-3 hours of gaming and since the video has gone viral he spends most of his day playing games because of all the supportive attention he has received.

His online name is "Wacko Jacko" and this came about from his previous job as a journalist where he met Michael Jackson and several members of his family and to honor him, Jaap used the name "Wacko Jacko". Jaap has also received a great Father's Day present; Battlefield 3. He has a pre-order for it and can't wait to play it.

PayPal have just announced they have more than 100 million active accounts. PayPal believe that consumers are giving up traditional payment methods in droves, systems such as cash and checks are instead using more modern methods as a form of payment. As more modern ways of payment are becoming the norm, PayPal want to deliver solutions that are better than what is on offer today.

PayPal have acted out on this and have predicted that by 2015 digital currency will be excepted everywhere in the US, from your local store right up to the big chains like Walmart. More specifically, this means PayPal thinks that in just four, short years, that you will no longer need to carry a wallet. PayPal is actually quite confident in this remark, going as far as asking five of its Bay area employees to plunge into the world of a digital lifestyle and use only digital currency to pay for all of their purchases.

PayPal will then learn from their findings and experiences.