As you may well know by now, Google introduced its social network platform last week called Google+. It was only opened up to a select group of people at the start, then others managed to find their way into the system by way of a little invite trick. The trick required that you have a Gmail email address, though.

Now obviously convinced of its readiness for the general public, Google has decided to open up its new social website to the general public.

It's still going by the name "the Google+ project" which still suggests it's in its early stages, but Google and its engineers and staff have been playing with Google+ for around 8 months now, according to an employee of Google who mentioned it during a "hangout". It's tuned rather well, but still has many featured to add in the following days, weeks and months.

Anonymous is inviting all, Anonymous and non-anons to join OpESR in demanding Federal Reserve accountability. Instead of just hacking random companies and websites like other Lulz-orientated hacking groups, Anonymous are grabbing the Fed by the balls and asking "why?". Obviously this might not end up in any serious court, or even reach the mainstream media, but we're finally seeing a group large enough to make a difference, try.

Trying is better than nothing and we'll see how this one goes. For those who don't want to watch the video and would like the TL;DR, look below or click into the news story for a full read.

Hello American People,

Google are on a rampage this week, not only launching their social networking extravaganza Google+ (which is awesome btw) but now a new look Gmail is out and being previewed. The new look is virtually identical to Google+ which helps keep an overall theme for Google and has cut the clutter away and still keep it as a powerhouse e-mail solution. Google have stated it's a Google-wide effort to bring you, the user, an experience that is more focused, elastic and effortless across all of their products.

They've said that they are not going to change everything at once and will work on the upgrades gradually over the next few months which will allow users plenty of time to get used to it and incorporate feedback that will go into the ever-evolving design. Google are starting with two new themes for users to try as a sneak peak of things to come. Currently there's "Preview" and "Preview (Dense)" themes in the Themes tab in Gmail Settings.

Once you take a look around you'll realise it looks cleaner, with a more modern look yet has a few rough edges. Labs features will also look strange as they're not built for the current themes (yet). Google plan on fixing these issues once the changes are rolled out over the next few months. New themes will be released and will include the same design principles but are better suited to working in a dark environment (yay! I enjoy my dark Gmail background and will wait for this).

Utilizing the super snappy 6Gbps SandForce 2281 controller, Corsair has just officially launched a new family of high performance SSDs under their Force arsenal in the form of the Force GT.

Thanks to the use of a proven controller capable of incredible performance, This fast, flaming red beast is capable of read and write speeds of up to 555MB/sec and 525MB/sec respectively, along with up to 85K Random Write IOPS.

The series comes in capacities of 60, 120 and 240GB, with an RRP mentioned in the official PR on the first two at $149 USD and $279 USD respectively.

And so it continues! Samsung have upped the ante on their legal dispute versus Apple over smartphone patents, filing a trade complaint that seeks to block US imports of the iPhone, iPod and iPad. Samsung claim that Apple are infringing on not just one, but five patents, according to a filing with the US International Trade Commission in Washington yesterday. The ITC has the power to halt the imports of products that are in violation of US patents.

This new case adds to the on-going four cases that Samsung have in four countries, as both Samsung and Apple are fighting for the same mobile market, with both companies using the courts to try and get a sneak peek at the competing companies product. Samsung currently have lawsuits against Apple in Seoul, Tokyo, San Francisco and Mannheim, Germany.

The patents in question are related to ways to transmit multiple services over a wireless network; the format of data packets used for high-speed data transmission; integrating Web browsing into a phone; a way to store and play digital audio; and viewing digital documents using a touch-sensitive display, according to the complaint.

As well as having just rolled out their Cloud based Office 365 service, Microsoft has just kicked out Service Pack 1 for Office 2010. This pack includes all public updates right up until now along with a handful of unreleased fixes which help improve stability, performance and security.

Here are some of the highlights :-

We really loved what the first iteration of Sapphire's EDGE-HD mini PC had to offer when checking it out around the time of launch. It was small, light, offered great performance with effortless HD playback and came in at a great price.

Fast forward near on five months later and Sapphire has introduced a revised, updated iteration of the unit, now dubbed the EDGE-HD2. While the unit itself looks much the same, running the same slim dimensions as the first and weighing in at a mere 530 grams, it packs a faster Atom 1.8GHz D525 processor for a start.

Further to the faster CPU, it sports a larger 320GB HDD (vs the 250GB on the original), 2GB of RAM, NVIDIA ION 2 GPU with 512MB VRAM, Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a couple USB 2.0 ports, card reader, D-Sub and HDMI outputs.

iSuppli have come out and said that DDR3 modules will remain the dominant DRAM tech throughout 2011 and flowing right into 2012, 2013 and even into 2014 before DDR 4 arrives in its next-generation glory. DDR3 RAM currently represents 85 to 90-percent of today's DRAM market and that will swell to 94-percent by 2013. But in 2014, iSuppli is predicting that DDR4 will emerge out of the flames of the DRAM market with a 12-percent share, within a year they expect this number to expand to 56-percent leading DDR3 with just 42-percent of the market.

As you can see from the above chart, DDR3 really is the current champion and with 4GB DIMMs available so cheaply these days, it'll be a very hard switch to DDR4 for most people. Keepign in mind that DDR3 launched in 2007, that makes it a seven year life span for DDR3 until it gets some proper competition. Also keep in mind that whilst DDR3 launched in 2007, it was just too expensive for most users to change over to, but we know this has changed considerably over the years. DDR4 will most likely debut at huge prices and eventually fall just like all tech.

Intel's new x86 Atom architecture dubbed 'Cloverview', is set to launch before Windows 8 hits shelves early next year. Intel's Director of Product and Technology Media Relations, Bill Korcos has said the Atom Clover Trail and its Cloverview processor are designed to work with Windows 8 and it will be a "nice one-two chip-software punch."

He didn't give an exact month or quarter launch frame, but rumors of Windows 8 hitting RTM status in April would be a good indication of Intel's launch details. Kircos was clear that the upcoming x86 Atom architecture would power a bunch of new tablets, netbooks, slider devices and more.

Cloverview will be one of Intel Atom's first 32nm-based chips and is intended for tablets, which is great because the shrink is set to reduce power consumption and improve battery life. There is of course the Cedar Trail and Medfield which are prepped for netbooks and phones/tablets respectively. NVIDIA and ARM have some competition against their Kal-El and Cortex A15 products. Can Intel win? We will have to wait and see!

Google+ has been launched today and it is quite the bundle of joy. Included are multiple parts which create one large social networking web of connectivity, social fun and constant information on friends and more specifically the friends you want to know your whereabouts or specific posts.

Included are four major sections, +Circles, +Sparks, +Hangouts, +Mobile. First off +Circles is all about sharing what matters, to those who mean the most to you. Not all relationships and friendships are equal, +Circle allows you to create a "circle" which allows you to add the people you want to it and share what's new or something cool you found online. Instead of going out to all of your friends at once.

+Sparks allows you to strike up a conversation about, well, pretty much anything. Sparks delivers a feed of content from the internet in any topic you want across 40 languages. All you have to do is add your interests and Sparks will find relavant links and info on what you want to look at, again with the right circle of friends.

Futuremark have partnered with MSI once again to kick off their infamous Lords of Overclocking competition for 2011, the largest of its type and acting as a qualifying event for the prestigious MSI MOA 2011 competition in Taipei. The event will see well known overclockers from far and wide across the globe using 3DMark 11 together with an MSI branded graphics card to compete for the title of "Lord of Overclocking" for their region.

The contest will run for 4 weeks, commencing July 4 until August 1st and prizes will be awarded to the top weekly winners in each region (Europe, Asia, Africa and America) as well as prizes going to additional winners chosen at random from all qualifying entries each week. And what a prize pool it is, from the latest top-end graphics cards to motherboards, cases, power supplies and more.

If you're in the market for an outrageously fast notebook for gaming and the current top dog choices of mobile GPUs from both the green and red teams weren't impressive enough to meet your expectations, hold onto your seats folks, for notebooks equipped with a new GPU weapon are on the immediate horizon thanks to the launch of NVIDIA's new mobile GPU today; the GTX 580M.

With previous GTX-500M series GPUs not up to par in the performance stakes with the previous gen GTX-480M, this new model from NVIDIA comes much welcomed and looks to boast some very impressive performance, well overshading the aforementioned 480M.

Specs wise, the GPU runs at a clock speed of 1240MHz and a memory clock of up to 1500MHz. It houses 384 CUDA cores and up to 2GB of 256-bit 96GB/s GDDR5 memory.

While PCI-E 2.0 has been more than kind enough to us since its inception in early 2007 with its gobs of available bandwidth on tap, looking over 4 years beyond and now PCI-E 3.0 is becoming the talk of the town.

While it's been said that current gen high-end video cards can be used to their maximum potential on existing PCI-E 2.0/.1 equipped boards, PCI-E 3.0 gives far more headroom for future super bandwidth hungry graphics cards inevitably to come, boasting a bit rate that effectively "doubles" PCI-E 2.0 at 8GT/s.

On that note, it's been rumoured that the benefits of PCI-E 3.0 could be utilized for some folks straight off the bat, providing you are lucky enough to have one of those super duper PCI-E based SSD solutions, such as one of these monsters from OCZ.

As promised Crytek have released the "DX11 Ultra Upgrade" patch for Crysis 2 and also the high-resolution texture pack is now available. The update intros DX11 as well as graphical improvements to not only the DX11 version of the game, but the stock DX9 version. There are three packs available, patch 1.9 enables DX11 support but there will be separate downloads on top of patch 1.9 in the form of "DirectX 11 Ultra Upgrade," DX11 Tessellation Pack," and "High Res Textures."

The DX11 patches will obviously give higher-fidelity visuals, but the patch also includes graphical and performance improvements under DX9. After the patch 1.9 is installed, DX9 users will gain real-time local reflections and contacts shadows. DX11-based gamers will gain hardware tessellation, parallax occlusion mapping along with various shadow, water, particle, depth of field and motion blur enhancements.

Patch 1.9 also includes over twelve gameplay tweaks as well as multiplayer bug fixes.

Following nearly 2 months of worldwide security mayhem which began with the breach and temporary (but painfully long) closure of Sony's PlayStation network, the hacker group responsible, "LulzSec" has indicated that it finally plans to withdraw its aggressive hacking antics and disband.

This group has certainly made quite a shattering impact in performing several high-profile security breaches and DoS attacks against the likes of Sony as mentioned, Nintendo and even the US Senate and FBI. Their hacking adventures have resulted in company costs well into the 10s of millions.

Having done wonders for their own egos and making sure they don't push it too far by ending up in a court room, it appears their intensive hacking spree has ended, with the announcement "After 50 days of mayhem, the LulzSec boat has apparently sailed its final hacking voyage" accompanied by a torrent named '50 Days of Lulz' posted on Pirate Bay; the contents of which had a mass of sensitive information including 550,000+ user details for the Battlefield Heroes Beta which were apparently provided ''to selflessly entertain others'. That torrent has now been removed from the site.

Alongside the likes of ASUS, MSI and ECS, ASRock have also launched their first Llano optimized A75 chipset motherboards ahead of the official APU launch in just a few days.

The particular boards ASRock have first let out the gate include their top-of-the-line option in the A75 Extreme6, as well as the A75 Pro4 (also a full ATX sized board) and three mATX boards in the A75 Pro4-M, A75M and A75M-HVS.

All boards of course carry support for FM1 APUs, have two or four DDR3-1866 RAM slots, and between five and eight SATA 6.0 Gbps ports depending on the board. All boards carry four USB 3.0 ports (boasting ASRock's XFast USB technology) with the exception of the Extreme6 which has six ports. Both D-Sub and HDMI outputs are resident on all models.

Prolimatach have proven several times over that they know what their doing when it comes to designing a solid air cooling solution for your hot headed CPU, with the Megahalems being worthy of sitting atop their pedestal.

With that said, the design principals behind the Megahalems have aged a little now versus what else is on the market; but rather than let this iconic name die off, they've given Megahalems a new lease of life by re-working the base design, making a few tweaks here and there and kicking it out as a new Megahalems "Black Series" edition, which as the name suggests, means you get a sexy new breed of this high end cooler in black coated attire.

While measuring in the same as the original at 130 x 158.7 x 74 mm (LxWxH) and with the same six nickel-plated copper heat pipes passing through the base, the new model sports a grainy black coating which increases surface area (vs the polished glossy type) and wider compatibility for all current as well as pre-gen AMD/Intel platforms. You also have the option of strapping one or two 120mm or 140mm fans of your choosing on the beast that is the new Megahalems Black Series.

Telstra have today announced that they are set to launch the Android-powered HTC Sensation smartphone in Australia this July, exclusive to Telstra. Included i nthe HTC Sensation is a dual-core 1.2GHz chip, 4.3-inch qHD display and an 8-megapixel camera with auto-focus and dual-LED flash.

HTC Sensation will run the latest Android 2.3 software and is made from premium materials including contoured glass edging, distinct metallic speaker grills and an aluminium unibody. Full specs listed below:

• Android™ 2.3 (Gingerbread) with HTC Sense 3.0

ASUS have today announced the launch of the AMD A75 chipset-based F1A75 Series motherboards. The F1A75 Series are specifically designed to optimize performance for the AMD Llano APUs, the F1A75 Series boards also sport overclocking capabilities for the APU with a variety of integrated graphics built directly into the same die.

The new series is also sporting the latest ASUS-exclusive technologies and features such as Dual Intelligent Processors 2 (DIP2) with DIGI+ VRM for precise power control, a graphical and mouse-controlled UEFI BIOS and easy-to-use auto tuning for better performance.

The first board to be pimped with the new APU-powered chips is the ASUS F1A75-V EVO which is the world's first FM1 socket motherboard with dual x8/x8 PCI-Express for AMD CrossFireX support, it also includes USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps and it's also worth pointing out that the entire ASUS F1A75 range includes native support for both USB 3.0 and SATA 6Gbps.

The PCI Special Interest Group have revealed they are working on an external PCI Express standard to compete against eSATA, USB 3.0 and Intel's Thunderbolt interconnect. The new standard would be based on PCIe 3.0 tech which offers a potential of up to 32Gbps. Whereas, Thunderbolt offers up to 10Gbps in transfer speeds, but keep in mind Intel say it can scale up to 100Gbps in the future.

With those lightning speeds, USB3.0 seems to be left shaking in fear in the dark. The proposal of PCI Express 3.0 suggests using copper wires with a maximum transfer distance of 3 meters and the ability to support up to 20W of power delivery. That's double the current capabilities of Thunderbolt which offers 10W. This would mean it has enough power to run external HDDs and other power-related items without the need for a separate power source.

PCIe cables will be faster, cheaper and thinner than current Thunderbolt-based cables. But they will be less functional in the way that Thunderbolt is capable of daisy-chaining and carry DisplayPort data while external PCI Express cannot. The new proposed technology is obviously still in early stages and won't be commercialized until mid-2013.