Western Digital is warning owners of its hard drives that upgrading to Apple's OS X Mavericks might not be a good idea right now, warning of data loss when upgrading to Apple's freshly released operating system.

It affects WD's Drive Manager, Raid Manager or SmartWare applications are installed. The company e-mailed its customers after it had noticed its support forum go crazy with users reporting data loss after upgrading to Mavericks with the aforementioned applications installed. WD says if users uninstall the applications, then they are safe to upgrade to Mavericks, without losing their data.

If you've already made the jump and suited up for Mavericks, then you should remove those applications immediately to ensure your data is safe. There's a fix on the way, but it's not here yet.

Oh the days of flip phones were glorious - you felt like a king. You whipped your phone out, flipped it open and started being the cool person on a flip phone. Not anymore, though.

Well, Samsung is going backwards with the new SCH-W2014 smartphone, which is the most powerful flip phone on the market. It features Qualcomm's Snapdragon 800 SoC - a 2.3GHz quad-core part, 2GB of RAM, a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera, and 2-megapixel front-facer, with dual-SIM connectivity. Storage-wise, we have 32GB of on-board flash backed up by microSD expandability.

The screen itself is lacklustre, at just 3.7 inches it features an 800x480 resolution. It does win some brownie points back by being a Super AMOLED display, though. We have a removeable 1900mAh battery, and Android 4.3 as its OS. All of this comes in at 173.5g. Where it'll hurt you is the price: $1640 or so. This is absolutely insane, but there'll be some people who will cough up this money to own it.

Germany nearly turned into Australia there for a minute, with Deutsche Telekom attempting to introduce Internet throttling, where users' Internet speeds would be capped once they downloaded a certain amount of data.

But the Cologne Regional Court ruled that this would not happen, strengthening the rights of consumers. Deutsche Telekom has enforced users downloading over 75GB be throttled, something which will take place in 2016. The industry thinks Deutsche Telekom could split its customers into two groups: those who don't mind the capping, and those who consume digital data in many forms, especially the growing web form - YouTube, streaming services (music, TV, movies), and next-generation gaming.

The problem here is that the term Deutsche Telekom is using, is 'flat rate' where consumers connect to an Internet service through the fixed network, with a fixed price, for a pre-defined surfing speed, and 'do not expect restrictions' which is where the Civil Chamber of the Court will base its decision. At the moment, the judgment is not yet final.

The original Ouya console didn't really aspire to much, mine is sitting on my shelving since I finished my review, completely untouched since. But, the company is pushing forward, announcing that a new, redesigned controller will ship in 2014.

The refreshed controller will hopefully fix most of the problems found in the origin, offering textured thumbsticks, more responsive triggers, and face buttons that don't get stuck in the controllers' faceplate. The problem with the new 'Ouya 2.0' is that it will be hard to differentiate between the current model and the model with the new controllers because the packaging will not reflect this change.

Ouya founder Julie Uhrman spoke with Polygon where she said: "The feel of the controller today is actually probably a lot better than in June. Our goal is to build a great controller. We wanted to build something that was ergonomic, that had great weight, that had a great feel, that offered developers a different way to develop games by including a touch pad in the design."

After this mornings Android 4.4 announcement many were left wondering which of the top Android phones would be getting the update. Google said that its Nexus 4, Nexus 7 and Nexus 10 devices would be receiving the update but its Galaxy Nexus would not. It appears that the HTC One will be the first non Nexus device to receive the update, beating Samsung's Galaxy S4 to the punch.

HTC has confirmed to Engadget that its HTC One will receive the update within the next 90 days and that the Google Play edition of the device will get its update within the next 15 days. Developer and Unlocked versions of the One will get their updates within the next 30 days. It is unclear if or when other HTC Devices will see Android KitKat pushed to them. Samsung, Sony, and LG have not yet released any update into either, though I fully expect to see update information from them in the next few days.

Shortly after Google announced it's new Nexus 5 smartphone this morning, the company unveiled the latest version of Android, version 4.4 KitKat. Unlike the 4.3 update we saw earlier this year, Android 4.4 is much more than a minor update, and ushers in some features that many have been requesting for some time now.

The first major change that one might notice is that the notification bar is now translucent, and when full screen in an app, the bar disappears entirely which is part of what Google is calling "Immersive Mode." This new mode hides everything on the screen except what the user wants to focus on. Furthermore, the overall look and feel of KitKat is akin to that of Jellybean, but it appears to be slightly more refined.

Google is also now making calling easier than ever by helping you search across your contacts, nearby places, or even Google Apps accounts (like your company's directory), directly from within the app. Furthermore, the new Hangouts App for KitKat merges your SMS and MMS messages together to a single screen in which you can receive Google Hangout messages and Video calls.

I recently had the pleasure of sitting down with Jeri Ellsworth and Rick Johnson, the two co-founders of Technical Illusions, the company behind CastAR. Many of you might remember Jeri Ellsworth from her many exploits in the Maker community, or from her time at Valve where she worked alongside Rick Johnson developing the early prototype of CastAR.

I won't go into much detail on CastAR in this post, but you can read my initial report on the next-gen gaming system which I wrote when Technical Illusions launched their Kickstarter campaign. Since its launch on October 14th, the CastAR project has raised over $674,000 and is well on their way to reaching their stretch goal #2 of $700k. The campaign still has 14 days left and a third stretch goal of $800,000 still needs to be met. Head over to the Kickstarter source link below and back the project.

I would like to thank Jeri Ellsworth, and Rick Johnson for taking time out of their busy schedule to sit down with me and wish them the best of luck with Technical Illusions and CastAR. With the gaming innovation we have seen appear in 2013, the future of gaming is here and I feel that Technical Illusions is right at the front of the pack leading the way!

This morning Transcend announced the release of two new high-capacity USB flash drives in 64GB capacities. The new JetFlash 770 is a USB 3.0 compatible flash drive that features a innovative capless design. With a capacity of 64GB, the JetFlash 770 is capable of housing 30,000 images 23 hours of DVD quality video or 16,000 MP3 audio files.

The JetFlash 770 features a USB 3.0 interface that provides transfer speeds up to 80MB/s which means that file transfers will be quick and painless. The new Jetflash 520 is also available in 64GB capacity and is the epitome of luxury USB flash drives. The drive is constructed out of a single solid piece of metal, and is fully water-resistant while maintaining an excellent shock and vibration resistance. The JetFlash 520 features a USB 2.0 interface, but does come in silver or gold plated versions. Both new drives are available now and retail at an MSRP of $69.

According to some documents supplied to the Washington Post by Edward Snowden, Google and Yahoo data centers across the world are intercepted directly by the NSA and GCHQ. The program is known as "Muscular" and can tap into the main communications link that connect Google and Yahoo data centers.

A documented dating back to January 9, 2013 says that the NSA captured millions of records from the search giants each and every day, sending them to NSA data warehouses. Within a 30-day period, over 180 million records were collected, all of which included metadata, text communications, audio and video, too.

The Washington Post did say that the NSA doesn't keep everything, which should help you sleep at night (so much sarcasm intended). Both search giants maintain multiple data centers around the world for redundancy reasons, with data shared between the data centers all the time. Google has said that it was not aware of the NSA activity, with a Yahoo spokesperson saying that it has strict controls in place to protect the security of their data centers, and that it has not given the NSA or anyone else access to their data centers.

We've heard some rumors in the last couple of weeks, but unfortunately they've been confirmed: Call of Duty: Ghosts on the Xbox One will indeed run at 720p, but at 60FPS.

The main problem here is that the PS4 version will run at the much-cranked-up 1080p resolution, at the same 60FPS frame rate. On the technical side of things, the Xbox One will bump the resolution up to 1080p, but it's still being rendered at 720p which is definitely not "next-gen" to me. Ghosts' producer, Mark Rubin, said through Twitter:

Hey, been on the road last couple weeks so haven't had a chance to update, but wanted to confirm that for Xbox One we're 1080p upscaled from 720p. And, we're native 1080p on PS4. We optimised each console to hit 60 FPS and the game looks great on both. Still on the road, but glad to see the great reception to Extinction. Can't wait for next week's launch.