If you use a MacBook or an Apple device like an iPod or the iPhone, you may be familiar with HyperMac. The company offers some nice accessories like charge cables and external batteries for the Apple devices that will keep them powered up for longer. Apple sued HyperMac a while back for taking original Apple cables and modifying them for use in HyperMac products.

The suit prompted the start of licensing negotiations between the two companies, though no terms have been agreed to at this point. That means the end of HyperMac external battery packs for Apple gear. That also means that if you want one of the battery packs you will need to buy one while the getting is good. After the current supply, runs out there may be no more, and if you wait until after November 2, you will be out of luck.

Not all is doom and gloom though. Apparently, the cessation of sales of the existing cables was a requirement for negotiations for continued use of the MagSafe cables for HyperMac products. That could mean that the products will carry on. That said you could bet if HyperMac has to pay a licensing fee prices will go up. I would buy now if you want one.

Microsoft and Foxtel are to create a package of pay TV channels available on joint "Foxtel on Xbox 360" service for less than $20 per month.

You'll be able to access the service from the Xbox 360 consoles that are connected to the internet through the Xbox Live service. Foxtel on Xbox 360 will include live streamed pay-TV channels, full-length "catch-up TV" programs that have been recently broadcast, Foxtel on Demand and the recently launched internet TV and movie pay-per-view service.

The "Get Started" package (which is the basic connection you require to watch Foxtel through your Xbox 360) will cost $20 per month and include 11 channels FOX8, MTV, Nickelodeon, Channel [V], LifeStyle YOU, Discovery, National Geographic Channel, TV1, SKY NEWS, FOX Sports News and CNN. The service includes live streaming of all 11 channels.

Looks like there's something else for germaphobes to worry about: smartphones! According to a study at Stanford University, a phone can be covered with up to 18 times more germs than a toilet flush handle.

According to the study, "If you put virus on a surface, like an iPhone, about 30 percent of it will get on your fingertips. A fair amount of it may go from your fingers to your eyes, mouth or nose, the most likely routes of infection." The facts make sense considering how often you drag your dirty fingers across your phone; I just find it funny how they love to throw the word "toilet" into these studies. Toilet handles are generally touched by one finger for a second or so; phones are prone to all day touching. Of course it's gonna be more germtastic!

Samsung promised that all of their many Galaxy S smartphones around the world would receive the Android 2.2 "Froyo" update, and they have started making good on that promise. Countries in the Nordic region are the first to get an official taste of Froyo starting today.

Rollout to other European countries is expected to start soon, and then "Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Asia, North America, Africa and rest of the world" after that. With five million handsets to update, it's understandable it could take a while. Check out the list of fixes after the break.

Android 2.2 JPM for the Galaxy S reportedly adds the following: (Courtesy of Engadget)

I just love GPU wars - I seriously do. We all win because of it, each team will try to bring something out to smash the other and because of the runaway success of the 4k and 5k Radeon GPU's - NVIDIA has some serious thunder stealing to do.

With the 6k launch very imminent, NVIDIA need something - and here we go, the leaks of a GTX580 with full 512 CUDA cores.

Now, these are rumours - so don't start lighting your pitchforks and gathering your peeps... But, NVIDIA are supposedly working on a new Fermi GPU called "GF110" which builds on a restructured design with new clusters. This is NOT a reworked GF100 GPU with all CUDA cores unlocked - but a new solution, design, layout and it should hopefully see a big increase in texture units.

Back early in the summer it came out that the SEC had filed charges against Dell computers for alleged fraudulent accounting practices when reporting its earnings to stockholders. After fighting the case in court, Dell Computers finally came back and proposed a $100 million settlement offer to the SEC, which had to be approved by the judge presiding over the case.

That judge has given the $100 million fine the nod and Dell is set to put the legal row behind it and move forward. The charges stemmed from the fact that Dell failed to disclose to shareholders that some of the money it was reporting as earnings was in fact payments from Intel to remain an Intel exclusive processor company. The payments were to prevent Dell from buying AMD processors. The practice of paying for exclusivity has also landed Intel in hot water with authorities and resulted in a huge fine for the world's largest chipmaker.

Dell computers will not be paying the entire $100 million settlement out of its own pockets. Founder Michael Dell will also pay $4 million of the fine from his own money. Former Dell CEO's Kevin Rollins and James Schneider will also pay fines out of their own pockets to the tune of $4 million and $3 million respectively. The settlement does allow current CEO Michael Dell to retain his position in the company.

If you have a netbook, notebook, or an iPad that has WiFi but not 3G connectivity on the go you may have wished on more than one occasion that you had a broadband modem for the device. The problem for many folks is that while 3G mobile broadband might be appealing the thought of a two-year contract for a device that we may not use that often is far from appealing, not counting the price of buying the modem as well.

Cricket Wireless is a no contract wireless provider that serves much of the US. The company has a 3G network that offers data speeds of up to 1.4Mbps at its peak. Cricket has announced that its cool Crosswave mobile hotspot is now in Cricket Wireless retail stores for purchase at $149.99. The mobile hotspot is small and measures in at under 4-inches high and under half an inch thick. That small size will make the thing easy to take with you on the road.

The mobile hotspot will provide any WiFi equipped device access to a 3G connection using 802.11b/g. That means that you can use the Crosswave to connect your iPad or iPod touch online or your netbook. The internal battery of the device is good for three hours of use and 90 hours of standby per charge and is supports Windows and Mac computers. The device landed in stores today.

Geeks can be some of the hardest people to shop for. Many of us tend to already have the latest gadgets and the best computer gear so finding gifts for birthdays and holidays is challenging. If you know a geek that likes music, and most do, Pandora has a cool new gift subscription offering that is working right now that will make an excellent gift.

The service will let you purchase a gift subscription for a year's worth of access to anyone you want. The gift price for a year is $36 and you can give the gift as a printable gift card or as an email gift card. The email option will be perfect for people who want to give someone a gift that lives far away. Another cool feature of the email option is that you can schedule the gift to be sent up to a year in advance.

That means you can give a year now and then schedule a second year to be sent at the same time the following year. The gifted subscriptions include all of the features of a normal subscription like unlimited listening with no ads. The audio streams at 192kbps for high quality and the music can be played on the desktop, a smartphone, and some connected TVs and Blu-ray players.

Texas Instruments makes all sorts of chips for a vast range of devices running from mobile phones and set top boxes to other electronic devices that you probably don't even know they work with. TI runs its own fabs where it builds its chips itself rather than being a fabless semiconductor firm like some that farm out the actual construction of their chips to someone else.

TI has announced today that it has acquired a new analog semiconductor fab in China. The fab is the first that TI has in China, is located in Chengdu, and will be known as TI Chengdu. The fab is a fully equipped 200mm fabrication facility and TI purchased the fab from Cension Semiconductor Manufacturing Company at an undisclosed price.

The fab facility is 120,000 square feet and TI claims it can support about $1 billion in annual revenue. The purchase also included an additional 134,000 square foot fab that is reserved for future production needs. "TI has been committed to serving the China market for 25 years," said Gregg Lowe, TI senior vice president for Analog. "Increasingly, customers there are using TI's analog chips for the real-world functions in their electronic applications. This fab in Chengdu will strengthen our ability to support customers' growing requirements and deliver analog products when and where customers need them."

I have mentioned Quirky products a few times around there and the things are pretty cool. Quirky has unveiled its latest product and it's one that will help you keep all those tangled wires running to and from your computer nice and neat. The thing is called the Cable Collar, it is designed to wind up some of the excess cord behind your desk that runs from your computer, and it will work with all manner of other gadget chargers as well.

The thing has enough space to wrap up to 24-inches of cable and is made to fit all plugs used in North America. The Cable Collar also has six integrated anchors for keeping the cords snug and secure. The plastic the Cable Collar is made form is heat resistant and will not interfere with the electrical connections of your gear.

It appears that the thing mounts behind the faceplate for the outlet. The design is simple enough, even if it is probably not something you would want out for everyone to see when they come to your home. The Cable Collar is up for pre-order right now and Quirky hopes to build 3000 of the things with 118 of them pre-sold already at $6.99 each.

After NVIDIA has been owning the 3d-gaming market with it's 3D Vision bundles, AMD have been left in a 2D world.

Not anymore - with the launch of the Radeon 6000-series of GPU's next week, they will add 3d capabilities to the Radeon line, including support for Blu-ray 3D through the added feature of Multiview Video Coding (MVC) in UVD3.

Viewsonic are the first manufacturer to have AMD Radeon 3D support.

AMD's recently had it's Q3 2010 reports out - where they had a loss of $118 million from $1.62 billion in revenue.

At the same time, CEO Dirk Meyer changed his thoughts on the company's idea of tablets - saying that he believes Tablets will bite into the notebook and netbook markets - he elaborated by saying that he expects AMD's netbook parts to start appearing in slates in the next couple of years. He added that they would "show up with a differentiated offering with great graphics and video technology" when the market becomes large enough for them to offset it against their R&D investment.

In other news, AMD CTO of servers, Donald Newell mentioned that the number of individual core's on a chip won't continue to increase forever. He said "There will come an end to the core-count wars." "Just as the megahertz race was eventually defeated by thermal restrictions, so too will the number of cores on an chip cease to increase. " I won't put an exact date on it, but I don't myself expect to see 128 cores on a full-sized server die by the end of this decade".

Optus are to offer unlimited 3G browsing between $60 and $65 per month.

Optus are stepping closer to offering an unlimited 3G wireless broadband offer with their recent launch of pre-paid plans that offer "unlimited" mobile web browsing for between $2 and $3 per day. Optus are also set to launch new plans called "Dollar Days" on Sunday.

The new plans go up in dollar increments depending on usage from the customers handset. All 3 plays ($1, $2 and $3 a day) include unlimited national calls to fixed lines and access to social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.

Telstra at the moment charge if you want to unlock the phone from it's Telstra-locked network, most people are ok with this - but when purchasing a $1000 phone, you kind of want to own it and not be locked to just one carrier. Telstra have been charging customers a fee to unlock the phones.

All iPhones purchased from Telstra are locked to the Telstra mobile network by default and will only work with a Telstra sim card - even with this news, that will still be the case.

Telstra have had numerous customers ask them they'd like to use their iPhone overseas when travelling - by putting the local countries sim card in, but the network lock has prevented this from happening until now.

The lads over at KitGuru have an interesting interview with Richard Huddy of AMD.

The interview explains a lot about both business practices, benchmark's, the Batman AA scandal, DX11, the future of PC gaming and hardware and how every game up until 2012 will be developed around the AMD Radeon as they were the first GPU company with DX11 level hardware.

Here are some snippets from the interview:

One thing we can count on is that over the coming months there will be a ton of new tablets that hit the market with various hardware configurations, operating systems, and price points. Most users are seemingly waiting on Android tablets to hit the market, but there will be many that want Windows so they can use the Office software they are used to. A new Windows 7 tablet has surface from a company called bModo called the bModo12.

The tablet sounds like netbook on the inside with an Intel Atom processor, dual USB ports, a single SD card slot, HDMI output, and a SIM card slot. That SIM card slot will mean the device will be able to get mobile broadband access. The tablet also has a VGA resolution camera mounted on the front for video conferencing. The processor runs at 1.6GHz and the machine has 1GB of RAM. bModo says the tablet is like a combination of the iPad, Tablet, and notebook PC.

The bModo12 will support the apps that you use in the office like MS Office, Outlook, Acrobat, Photoshop, and the thing supports Flash and a lot more. It has Bluetooth, 3G connectivity, WiFi, an internal Mic, speakers, and a docking connector for a docking station that will ship in January 2011. Storage for the tablet is to a 32GB SSD and the screen is an 11.6-inch HD resolution unit. The tablet measures in at 11.61" x 7.68" x 0.55" and weighs under 2.2 pounds.

Sony was one of the early entries into the market for interchangeable lens cameras that aren't DSLR offerings like micro four-thirds cameras. Sony has announced that it is adding new features to the NEX-5 and NEX-3 digital cameras that will make them better and easier to use for owners. It's nice to see that camera markers like Sony are adding new features via firmware updates today rather than just tossing a camera out and leaving new features for newer models.

Sony has announced a new firmware that works with the NEX-5 and NEX-3 digital cameras. The update is available for download right now with versions for Mac and Windows PCs available. The update adds support for autofocus for 14 new Sony lenses including the entire range of A-mount optics by Sony and Carl Zeiss. That range of lenses includes telephotos, primes, and zoom lenses. The update also brings new aperture settings.

The aperture settings can now be maintained when the users is recording HD video in video mode with the camera. The operation of the system menus has also been simplified and streamlined as well as several other utility improvements being made. One of the other changes the firmware brings with it is soft key settings that allow users to customize functions for the camera to two of the three soft keys on the rear of the cams. The update also adds a menu start option to display either the main menu screen or the last parameter set. It is worth noting that support for autofocus using the LA-EA1 lens requires a separate firmware update as well.

SteelSeries has been making gaming peripherals for a long time now. The company bought the rights to one of the coolest gaming keyboards on the market that has interchangeable keysets a while back. SteelSeries is supporting that keyboard with new keysets that are specifically made for certain game titles like the Medal of Honor game from EA that is coming soon. EA has announced a keyset for the Shift along with several other peripherals.

The MoH keypad for the Shift keyboard will sell for $24.99 alone or with a bundle including the keyset and the Shift keyboard for $99. If interchangeable keysets isn't your bag, a special version of the 6Gv2 keyboard with MoH images printed on it will be available for $99.99 as well. If you like your current keyboard and mouse, but want some MoH bling there will be a version of the QcK mouse pad with artwork from the game for $14.99.

A special edition of the Xai gaming mouse with imagery will be offered for $89.99 with all the features of the standard Xai mouse in tow. The final MoH gear from SteelSeries includes a couple different sets of headphones .The 5Hv2 headphones are designed to be travel friendly and can be broken down into three pieces and have a retractable mic. The 5xb headphones are specifically aimed at Xbox 360 gamers. Both of the special edition headphones will launch in January at undisclosed prices. All of the other gear will land along with the game launch.

Pioneer Electronics has been in the audio world for as long as I can remember. My dad had a Pioneer stereo when I was a kid. Today the company makes all sorts of electronics for audio fans and home theater users. Pioneer also has an entire line of gear that is specifically aimed at the professional or aspiring DJ. That gear runs the gamut from turntables and controllers to the headphones and mics a DJ needs during a performance.

The latest product to be added to the Pioneer DJ line is aimed at DJs, but can be used by anyone and is a special edition of the HDJ-1000 DJ headphones. The headphones have previously been spied in a chrome finish, the new gold version is metallic looking, and a new black version is available as well and shares the same specifications. The headphones are designed to fold away for portability and storage and have a mono or stereo selector switch.

The headphones are designed to be comfortable during long performances with low rebound urethane ear pads for a better fit and increased comfort. The ear pads also provide sound isolation. The headphones ship with a carry pouch and the black or gold versions will ship in December for $209. Specifications include 50mm dome type drivers, a frequency range of 5Hz to 30kHz, 36 ohms impedance, and a 3.5mm plug with a 3P gold plated adapter. The headphones weigh 9.52 ounces without the cord.

Sometimes I imagine that product packaging designers sit around a huge table like Dr. Evil and his cohorts, imaging the most fiendish ways to pack electronics and other items we all buy. I would imagine the dude who said, "Why don't we just make them easy to open" ended up in the burn pit under his chair. With the holiday season coming it's a good time to check out the opening gadget for your gadgets called Open It.

Open It is sort of like a Swiss army knife for extracting all manner of new items from the package. Anyone that has tried to open a clamshell with a new gadget inside can attest that it can be a challenge complete with cut fingers. The Open it tool has long cutting jaws to snip off the edges of a package for easy opening. It can also cut through the million zip ties holding things inside boxes. A retractable razor blade cuts through those stickers keeping your DVDs closed.

Some of the stuff I get is secured to the box with little screws, the Open it has a small screwdriver specifically sized to remove those screws easily. It also has that most important of additions - the bottle opener. That way you can sit back and soothe your cut up fingers from all that razor sharp plastic with a cold beer. You can pick the thing up for $9.99 at many places around the US and online.