It's SXSW time and with it comes some changes to social networking giant, Foursquare. Foursquare have started rolling out the changes ahead of the official start of the event on the 11th.

The changes are somewhat different to what you'd expect and creates an evolving step toward something exciting for Foursquare. Version 3.0 brings a bunch of changes which are listed below. I'm sure Facebook won't be far behind this, Zuckerberg's fist must be shaking in the wind right about now.

Big change 1: Personalized recommendations

After three months in beta testing, WinRAR 4.00 is fully-baked and ready for consumption. It is now available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The biggest improvement over the previous WinRAR versions is the decompression, which is now 30-percent faster depending on the file format used.

Additional features include a password manager for regular compression jobs, although passwords are not encrypted. When extracting multiple archives you are now able to set WinRAR to use the same password for all of them. Something worth knowing is that WinRAR 4.00 does not work on older Windows OS's such as 98, ME and NT. The Minimum requirement for WinRAR 4.00 is now Windows 2000.

Download links at the source.

EA's Frank Gibeau has said some good things about the future of PC gaming, as strongly as saying that he sees the PC platform as possibly being the biggest market for EA over the coming years.

He said to Gamasutra that 'The use base is gigantic, PC retail may be a big problem, but PC downloads are awesome.' With the recent success we've seen with Steam, this comes as no surprise - it's just good to hear from someone in the market who isn't whinging about piracy on PC. EA has also said that Battlefield: Heroes is doing very, very well with 368, 241 new users every month on the PC alone and now have over 7 million registered users since launch. The free-to-play title shows that it can do very well in the PC world.

Gibeau also added 'If you look at the way people play in Asia, PC is the model, I think that free to play model is coming to the West in a big way. The margins are much better and we don't have any rules in terms of first party approvals. From our perspective, it's an extremely healthy platform. It's totally conceivable it will become our biggest platform.'

NVIDIA is set to launch their dual-GPU counter-punch-in-the-nuts GeForce GTX 590 on March 22nd. Coincidentally, this is the date of the Crysis 2 launch in which NVIDIA paid a pretty penny (to the tune of $2 million) for some flashy NVIDIA-only benefits. Although Crysis 2 is only launching with DirectX 9 - which is shocking considering the first game from four years ago launched with DirectX 9 and 10 modes.

The GeForce GTX 590 uses two GF110 GPUs (the same as the GTX 570/580 cards), we can expect the GTX 590 to include 3GB of RAM and out-of-the-box support for NVIDIA's 3D Vision Surround and Vision Surround technologies (which are usually only for SLI users). The card is not far away and I'm sure that they're ready to strike while the iron is hot and I have full confidence it's going to be a great card.

*jumps in the air in his green bikini*

Before I was distracted by the AR.Drone cage's techno music at GDC last week, I spent some time at the 3dvia booth. I must have been in the French section of GDC, as 3dvia is part of Dassault Systèmes.

I was initially attracted to their augmented reality promotional game demo on the outside of their booth. There was a French Cereal Box resting, unattended beneath an external-camera-equipped flatscreen. Recognizing the giant AR marker on the back of the box, I lifted it to the camera to see what I was going to get. As I had expected, an interactive augmented reality game materialized on the screen in front of me. What appeared to be a cereal mascot seemed to be trapped on the right side of the box, standing on top of a spring. A marble rolled back and forth idly at the top left as my hand moved the box slightly. Tilting the box either way moved the marble, so I experimented. The object was to collect a series of wispy white light orbs positioned throughout the plinko style drop down "maze", and upon collecting them the spring jettisoned the mascot sprite outside the box where it did a little dance and offered to let me Rejouer.

[Fear The Beard]

Ok everyone: Calm. Down. I'm looking at you, Twitter.

Yes, the iOS 4.3 Hotspot Debacle is a complete slap in the face. Yes, the fact that AT&T only offers grandfathered unlimited data plans and the current available data plans are an absurd and brazen insult to developers, techies, and you know, people that use the internet. And Pandora.

All of that aside, evidently iOS 4.3 performs substantially better than iOS 4.1, and probably better than Android as well, according to the guys at Electronista.

Logitech released its supercharged surround sound Speaker System Z906 today:

And for $399, it can be! Not that you won't get your money's worth- the new speakers are THX certified, delivering 500 Watts of earthquake-faking audio. Six speakers and subwoofer, easily stackable and adaptable to your current entertainment setup as you can connect up to six different systems.

I was very excited once my iPhone 4 was finally updated to iOS 4.3. The reason? I couldn't wait to try out the new "Personal Hotspot" feature that Apple mentioned during the iPad 2 announcement event last week.

So, I got my iPhone 4 updated to iOS 4.3 and quickly went through the operating system to spot new changes. It's an exciting time for a geek to try out a freshly updated operating system. Something was missing, though. I couldn't find any options for the new Personal Hotspot feature. You know, right? The feature that allows you to share your 3G connection with up to five other Wi-Fi devices. I was all set to use it to share 3G internet access to my forthcoming iPad 2.

As it turns out, Apple has dropped the ball massively here and the Twitterverse is up in arms with anger - and rightfully so.

I find this one a bit strange, Microsoft are only hiring people now for work on the next-gen Xbox? Surely they'd have R&D constantly going before the Xbox 360 was even finished, but anyway, on with the news. Microsoft has reportedly begun recruiting hardware engineers to work on the next-gen console.

Microsoft have yet to have confirmed the news, but have advertised three job positions on LinkedIn with each position looking for people to work on designing new console architectures. The roles currently being advertised include Graphics Hardware Architect, Senior Architect and Performance Engineer for the Xbox Console Architecture Group and Senior Hardware Design Verification Engineer. Quite the mouthful.

'[The applicant must be] responsible for defining and delivering next-generation console architectures from conception through implementation,' reads one of the adverts, as originally reported by Eurogamer.

GDC was all about the 3D engines and games- and none was so impressive as Crytek's passive 3D engine. I demoed at least 5 different passive and active 3D engines, and Crytek's shined more than any of them.

The Crytek section looked like a scene from Risky Business: GDC (+ pants) with all of the dudes wearing the Real 3D glasses, both spectating and playing. The camera really doesn't do it justice, but the 3D here is top of the line. And it would have to be, as the Crytek demo area was crowded from beginning to end of Friday's Expo.

Part of that is undoubtedly due to Crysis 2's environment within the game. Unlike a lot of FPS's these days, the surroundings in Crysis 2 are very subdued, and reactive rather than constantly shifting and moving. The player is immersed almost seamlessly within the action because of how easily accessible it is. Though the gameplay is enhanced, there are few 3D gimmicks here (flying random projectiles, unnecessary "gotcha" pop-ups, etc), which sets it apart from much of the 3D media out on the market now (Don't get me wrong, I know it was absolutely imperative that the Justin Beiber movie was in 3D).

The AR.Drone by Parrot might be the coolest video game ever, if you can even call it that. Imagine for a second that you could take the external camera on your iPhone and fly it around your backyard. Or your neighbor's backyard. Or have it follow you while you're on the 21 Bus going down Market Street in San Francisco. Now make the camera a bad-ass insectoid quadracopter. That's the AR.Drone.

While I was checking out 3dvia's 3D game development engine, I couldn't help but notice some reverberating techno dance music. I looked to my left and noticed the following:

Maybe it was the music, maybe it was the giant cage- I had to go check it out. I had heard a lot about the AR.Drone previously, but never seen it in person. I experience a moment of eager child-like euphoria as I realized there was no line, just spectators, and that I would be able to fly it like one of those annoying kiosk dudes in every mall in America- but I just as soon realized that they weren't allowing attendees to try it out. I spoke to the rep in French for a bit (no big deal) and he explained to me that the Moscone Center wireless was too spotty to let people test it out, and they had the Drone on automatic pilot. Damn you Moscone Center!

It seems a little late, but I'll be posting wrap up reviews and cool things we found on the Expo floor at last week's GDC, including video and more photos.

The Nintendo section was almost entirely devoted to showcasing the new 3DS. The active 3D engine was pretty impressive, and the 3DS has an adjustment slide that lets the user decide how much he or she enjoys it or finds it necessary (which for the most part, I didn't). No offense to the good people at Nintendo, I just find active 3D disorienting and just a tad bit gimmicky. Luckily, the 3DS didn't sacrifice or slack on any of the other features in the wake of 3D, and all I saw at the booth were wide eyes and smiles.

My own eyes and smile were added to that mix when I tried out two of the augmented reality games that come preloaded on the system. Nintendo uses marker-based AR technology to run their games, launching the AR experiences from a small card (cARd? No? Okay, I'll stop) bearing the familiar Nintendo Question Mark logo. The user orients the 3DS camera toward the card until it recognizes it, and then a variety of things happen depending on what game you're playing.

From Research Triangle Park, just outside of Raleigh, North Carolina, Lenovo announced today its next generation of ultraportable laptops: The ThinkPad X220 Notebook and the X220 Convertible Tablet PC. Lenovo has given the tech consumer the option of purchasing a super-transforming-ultraportable device with detachable keyboard and trusty pen- or instead, you know, a regular notebook. The X220 is not really that regular however, as it brings along a host of nifty features that will be sure to make 2010's Best-Selling Ultraportable Laptop a surefire success in 2011 (According to IDC Worlwide Quarterly PC Tracker, February 2011)

The spec sheets, which we've attached in the gallery at the end of the article, read almost the exact same- Lenovo has outdone their previous efforts in releasing an ultra ultra portable product in tandem with their notebook. The X220 Tablet is therefore quite remarkable in that it possesses almost the exact same external and internal hardware features as its less-transformable cousin, the main tradeoff being that the Tablet weighs in almost a pound heavier than its alternate (~3.88 lbs) with maximum 66% the battery life.

If you want the highlights of their similarities instead of trying to extrapolate them from the Data Sheets below, here's an all-star rundown:

Since January 26th till March 5th thanks to our fabulous community and friends, we managed to donate $6,289.77 AUD to the victims of the Queensland floods.

Today a check was mailed off to the Premier's Disaster Relief Appeal and as promised, you can see a scanned copy of the check above. The Queensland government has already thanked us for the donation as we alerted them about the check that will be mailed once we knew the final amount.

Now, the moment you have been waiting for... the winner of the Aussie Flood Appeal Dream System. A hardcore computer gaming system valued at almost five thousand US dollars. Of course none of this would have been possible without the support of the generous companies who provided parts for the Dream System. Thanks again goes out to Corsair, GIGABYTE, Sapphire, Thermaltake, Western Digital and AVADirect. You guys are the best!

Western Digital has said that it has entered into an agreement with Hitachi Global Storage Technologies (Hitachi GST) to acquire them for approximately $4.3 billion in cash and stock. WD said on Monday that the acquisition will produce a customer-focused storage company with "significant operating scale, strong global talent and the industry's broadest product lineup backed by a rich technology portfolio".

The acquisition will also strengthen WD's position in the enterprise market, where businesses and consumers are moving their data to cloud-based solutions. Included in the agreement, WD will pay parent company Hitachi Ltd, $3.5 billion in cash and an additional 25 million WD common shares worth $750 million ($30.01 per share) as of March 4, 2011.

With the deal, Hitachi now owns 10-percent of WD shares "outstanding after issuance of the shares", additionally, two Hitachi representatives will now join the WD board of directors at closing.

Owners of Bulletstorms "Epic Edition" get access to the Gears of War 3 beta coming on April 18 - those without Bulletstorm get access on April 25 if they pre-order Gears of War 3 at GameStop in either standard, limited or "epic" edition form.

The beta wraps up on May 15 giving players a month of multiplayer thrashing, there's a tonne of content to unlock in the beta. Below is a list of what is able to be unlocked to those who have access to the GoW3 beta.

Beta Tester Medal - Complete one match in the beta to unlock the Beta Tester medal, which will carry over to your gamer profile in the final game. The Beta Tester title will be featured in the "Gears 3″ multiplayer lobby as well.

Almost two years ago, Google launched a rather mundane attempt to compete with social media juggernaut Facebook. If you weren't reading about how detrimental social media is to your brain and your sense of morality (which you probably, and ironically found on your Twitter or Facebook news feeds), you may have caught this somewhat underwhelming SEO boost to your social network two Aprils ago.

This past Thursday, Google announced it had enhanced its Profiles section. I think we all remember what happened the last time Google created a social service that duplicated an existing one, but 8.5 million reminders of their mistake will hopefully avert anything similar this time.

Google users that decide to participate will notice that their profiles will update automatically as new features become available. For the time being, the page looks almost identical to a watered-down Facebook Profile page- but is that necessarily a bad thing? With so much noise in the social media ecosystem, it's almost refreshing to have a clean and simple profile page somewhere. Though Google Profiles integrates aspects of LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter, it does come with original features: a "Places I've Lived" Google Maps Interface, a "Bragging Rights" input field, and 10 personal tags for social SEO. All of the user's Picasa photos are of course readily available for posting, but there seems to be a 5-photo limit when posting on your actual profile.

Rovio has been enjoying their sky-rocketing success lately and have TV/movie spin-offs happening but also a new 'collaborative' Facebook game coming out. Currently the PS3 has a version of Angry Birds out on the PSN with Wii and 360 getting their shot soon.

The Facebook version, "there will be completely new aspects to it that just haven't been experienced in any other platform," said studio boss Mikael Hed, who confirms that due to the social site's 'collaborative nature', "the pigs will have a more prominent role". Launching in a few days is "Angry Birds Rio" which is a tie-in with a Fox movie and swaps the evil pigs for monkeys.

Rovio's strategy has been compared to Disney, with Peter Vesterbacka (Rovio's 'might eagle' in Business Development) saying "We're building an integrated entertainment franchise where merchandising, games, movies, TV, cartoons and comics all come together," he added "Look at how Disney got started. Steamboat Willie created Mickey Mouse, then they added more characters. You can see the same pattern today, but everything is happening much, much faster. Other brands used to build recognition over the course of decades. We've done it in one year."

I'm here at the last day of the GDC in dowtown San Francisco, hanging out and checking out the cool tech. Most of the things I'm going to see here are demonstrations of products and games that everyone already knows about from former press releases and the like, but it's still going to fun to play around with it. I wanted to get a first hand look at Nintendo's much-heralded 3DS, especially the AR interface, so my first stop was the Nintendo booth.

The Nintendo array is great- demos of many games including the new Zelda. A very helpful 3DS rep named Jamie introduced me to the AR games. The 3DS uses marker-based augmented reality, meaning the the images and experienced are anchored to a physical object, like a sign or a barcode. In this case, Nintendo uses a small card with the familiar Nintendo Question Mark logo. I played around with two games, the AR Archery game (which I think they should call ARchery if they haven't already) and a game called "Face Raiders".

Playing the games with the active 3D engine was disorienting at first. Developers have been working for a while to get past that particular Uncanny Valley, but my eyes adjusted to it after a moment. The archery game begins with a small box that appears to be harboring a small creature with bright white eyes. The game literally "unfolds" from there, as the user shoots the one box, which turns into many boxes, which turns into targets, and then things get crazy. The game somehow drops into the table, from which a very angry dragon emerges as the final boss. Didn't really notice a life level or any sort of negative incentive in the game, so I can only imagine the skill incentive is the end Time. I overheard two of the 3DS guys laughing about who had done it faster- the top score is 00:43, but I only managed a paltry 1:40. These games are clearly quick fixes and are not intended be profound experiences, just the simple and beautiful design and UI that we've all come to know and love (and be addicted to) from Nintendo.

The GDC is pumping out some great content today with Epic Games using the show as an opportunity to show off some updates to their Unreal Engine 3. The engine is now capable of DirectX 11 tessellation, subsurface scattering on characters, depth of field with bokeh effects for lights, fully modeled hair, and a new reflection effect that add a veneer of realism to the rain-soaked streets depicted.

The results of these additions are some very impressive looking screenshots, but for now the updates are near useless until we get some DX11-based next-gen consoles. The second we get next-gen consoles, I feel there will be an absolute explosion of graphics, right now we're very much held back. The tech and software is there, it's just a matter of time.