Alienware is putting on quite a song and dance in Australia at the moment with its world first Live Dimension Reality experience which took place in Melbourne on July 7th and its Area-52 tour which is scheduled to begin at Sydney's Circular Quay when it opens its doors on July 19, operating there until July 21.

As you can see from the piece of video coverage of the event last week, a great deal of effort has gone into this show, combining stunts, pyrotechnics, projection mapping and other special effects to demonstrate the power of Alienware. world renowned Melbourne based special effects studio, Boffswana were the powers that be to help reel the audience in to what was clearly quite an impressive performance indeed.

Adobe has released a beta version of Flash 11 for Windows, Mac and Linux. Adobe have also announced the availability of the Adobe AIR 3 beta which is available for Windows and Mac, but has been killed on Linux in favour for Adobe to focus on mobile instead. Adobe says this is this first beta is a desktop release with mobile on it's way soon. 64-bit support is now included which is a pretty big step since the preview of it back in September of 2010.

Adobe have also listed a bunch of features and performance enhancements included in both the Flash Player 11 and AIR 3:

More details have surfaced today in regards to AMD's first run of CPU's (codenamed Zambezi) based on Bulldozer, though the same source of this info also indicates that the previously rumoured Q3 release plan may well be missed and it's looking more like October before AMD decides to launch the new family.

A chart obtained by the folks at DonanimHaber helps give a clearer picture on what to expect, however, with eight FX-series models on the cards comprising four octo-core chips, two hexa-core and two quad-core.

These processors are built around GlobalFoundries 32nm process in an AM3+ package, with a built-in dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory controller. They are given 1MB of L2 cache per core, sport an unlocked multiplier as well as having Turbo Core 2.0 tech implemented to boost the clock rate depending on current load levels.

In case you weren't already aware, Cooler Master are paving way for the return of COSMOS, their widely loved, iconic enthusiast tower chassis of years past. All the attributes we loved about the COSMOS are said to be remaining, with a ton of exciting new features added into the mix.

Now we can get an even better idea of what to expect from the COSMOS II, thanks to the folks over at TPU posting up a number of images of what looks to be a very close to final form version of the chassis.

The case remains true to the original with its suspended box shape design, albeit a little more curvey this time around, and is roughly the same overall size, but adds all the good stuff expected from a high end tower of today including USB 3.0 ports, touch sensitive buttons, accommodation for 2.5-inch SSDs and a smarter cooling sub-system arrangement.

First spotted at Computex early last month, HIS has now released its new Radeon HD 6970 IceQ "Mix" graphics card which is unlike any other around at this time - reason being it is able to be paired with either AMD or NVIDIA DX11 cards on any current motherboard for superior performance. This comes thanks to LucidLogix technology built into the card (most probably a physical Hydra chip residing on its PCB).

As you can see from the image, the card boasts a nice aftermarket dual-slot cooling solution with copper heat-pipes and a 'black hole impeller' fan) which is said to help drop temperatures by 23c over the reference AMD cooler while also being somewhat quieter. The card supports Eyefinity 5 via its many outputs including dual-DVI, HDMI 1.2 and dual DisplayPort 1.2. The factory clocks on the card see the GPU running at 880MHz out of the box with its 2GB of GDDR5 memory at 5500MHz QDR.

Microsoft have outlined their vision for a single ecosystem of Windows, the vision will include phones and PCs and was outlined by Microsoft's president of the Windows Phone Division, Andy Lees who spoke at a keynote address during Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference on Tuesday in Los Angeles. Lees explains that there are key trends that are fundamentally changing the world of devices and form factors.

Lees, talking about Microsoft's first Windows 8 demo at CES said:

It starts right at the core of the devices themselves, the core technology. You can put all of the key things required to run a computer into a single chip." The system-on-a-chip transformation will assist in the form factors of PCs explained Lees.

Folling an announcement from ASRock a couple weeks back which unveiled the world's first PCI-E 3.0 equipped motherboard in the form of the Fatal1ty Z68 Professional, ASRock has now provided us with some details of their entire new "Gen3" lineup sporting next-gen PCI-E 3.0 architecture.

As you can see, PCI-E 3.0 provides up to double the amount of bandwidth possible from the current 2.0/.1 standard, with a raw bit rate of 8.0GT/s.

As you can see above, ASRock is kicking out five Gen3 Series boards.

After numerous rumors and hearsay, EA have announced an agreement to acquire PopCap Games. The transaction is expected to close next month subject to customary closing conditions, including regulatory approvals. The deal includes EA pay approximately $650 million in cash and $100 million in shares of EA common stock to be issued to certain stockholders of PopCap.

PopCap employees roughly 400 people and makes casual digital games for mobile phones, tablets, PCs and social networking sites. Their games include smash-hit titles such as Plants Vs. Zombies, Bejeweled and Zuma. PopCap Games is a Seattle-based company which has more than 150 million games installed and played worldwide on a range of platforms: the Web, PC, Mac, Nintendo DS, Nintendo DSi, Wii, Xbox, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Zeebo, Cell Phones, PDAs, iPod Classic, iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad, and Android.

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.

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.