Earlier this morning, Digital Storm unveiled its new VELOCE gaming notebook, which is being touted as the ideal balance between power and portability. The 13.3-inch gaming notebook packs a serious punch while weighing in at only a mere 4.6 pounds. Digital Storm says that the 1.26-inch thick VELOCE is ready to go to battle anytime, anywhere.

"VELOCE is the gaming notebook the industry has been waiting for," said Rajeev Kuruppu, Digital Storm's Director of Product Development. "The notebook strikes the optimal balance of power and portability without sacrificing gaming performance and is the first Haswell based slim gaming notebook to offer a stunning full 1080p HD display."

The VELOCE features an Intel Core i7 4800MQ Haswell processor, 8GB of RAM, an NVIDIA GTX 765M GPU, and a 13.3-inch full HD 1920x1080 display. Other key features include room for two storage drives (mSATA & 2.5") with RAID capability, a dedicated internal network port, SuperSpeed USB 3.0 ports, HDMI 1.4, VGA video out ports and Bluetooth connectivity.

This morning, Google announced that it will once again allow users to make phone calls from within Gmail through the use of Google Hangouts. The company says that it doesn't matter whether its users are on Gmail or on the web; all users will be able to call the US and Canada for free.

Google says that it heard the cries from many users who were disappointed that they could no longer make calls from within Gmail and this was the major factor in their decision to return the service. Calls can be made to anyone in the US and Canada for free from any country in the world where Hangouts are available. Calls can also be placed outside of North America through the use of Google Voice. A call to India will cost users $0.02 per minute while a call to Mexico will run users $0.15 per minute.

Users do not need to make calls through Gmail alone as Google+ and Chrome extensions also support the feature. The company tells us that with Hangout calls up to 10 people can converse through the video chat while up to five people can participate in voice only. This gives the ability for 15 people to be on the same call it one time.

This morning, GIGABYTE announced the arrival of a new addition to its gaming keyboard lineup. The FORCE K7 Stealth Gaming Keyboard is touted as having the embodiment of a Stealth fighter with its scissor-key structure and slim solid body. The keyboard features an extremely short actuation distance for accurate and stable key presses in addition to a switchable three-color backlighting system.

The new gaming keyboard also features anti-ghosting capabilities that surround the WASD cluster that guarantees that the general gaming combination keys are registered and executed without conflict. Just like other models in the line, the keyboard features a twin wheel design that offers prompt control of keyboard backlighting and volume levels during intense gaming sessions.

Below is a quote from GIGABYTE on the features of the new FORCE K7 Stealth Gaming Keyboard:

More details have surfaced on LG's upcoming flagship smartphone, the Optimus G2. Engadget has just posted several leaked photos of a new LG device that is said to be the company's new flagship smartphone. The phone takes some design cues from LG's Nexus 4 with rounded corners and an almost edge-to-edge screen.

The phone features no hardware buttons and looks significantly more sloped without the Nexus 4's hard edges. According to Engadget, the G2 is significantly larger than the Nexus 4 due to it featuring a 5.2-inch 1080p screen. LG has revealed in the past that the next generation Optimus G phone will feature a QUALCOMM Snapdragon 800 processor clocked at 2.3GHz.

The phone will feature 2 GB of RAM and will sport a 13-megapixel rear-facing camera. Most notable is that LG has chosen to place the volume rocker buttons on the back of the phone below the rear camera. The reasoning behind LG's decision to do this is unknown and quite frankly, I think it is a horrible idea. Rumors are circulating that we could see the G2 launched on August 7 at a press event LG has been sending out invitations for. All images are courtesy Engadget.com.

NVIDIA announced today its latest plans to compete in the ongoing bundling war with graphics rival AMD. The company has partnered with Ubisoft to bundle Splinter Cell Blacklist with the company's GeForce GTX graphics cards. Additionally, the company will include a bonus copy of the 2010 release of Splinter Cell Conviction.

NVIDIA engineers are working closely with the Ubisoft Toronto development team to incorporate an array of cutting-edge gaming technologies for Splinter Cell Blacklist including DirectX tessellation, NVIDIA HBAO+, TXAA antialiasing, and surround technologies to ensure gamers can experience smooth frame rates and awesome visuals in all of their covert missions.

Due to launch on the August 23, the game is to be made free to anyone buying an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660, GTX 660 Ti, GTX 670, GTX 680, GTX 760, GTX 770 or GTX 780 from the usual participating retail partners from now until December 31. In Splinter Cell Blacklist, Sam Fisher returns as leader of 4th Echelon, an elite counter-terrorism unit armed with a new mandate to hunt down the masterminds behind The Blacklist, a series of deadly escalating attacks on U.S. interests. To stop the Blacklist countdown, gamers will choose the best way to face any challenge by tapping into Sam's arsenal of lethal skills and training.

Earlier today, Steam updated the page for Dota 2 to reflect that its beta program has finally come to a close. The page directed players to check out various links which did not work and featured a graphic stating "The Beta Is Over." Also listed is a launch date of July 9 for the production version of the game.

Unfortunately, Steam has since removed the page but according to Valve, the disappearing act is the result of some technical difficulties. Below is a quote that can be found on the new Steam page:

Notice: Dota 2 is officially launching. In order to ensure the best possible experience for new and existing players, there may be a short wait for you to download the game. Visit the Dota 2 Launch page for more information about how the release process works.

Over the last month or so, we have seen a wealth of new games announced. While they are all quite spectacular in their own right, none of them come as highly anticipated as Grand Theft Auto V. GTA V has to be the most talked about game of the year and RockStar is doing a good job at keeping the anticipation levels high.

This morning, RockStar Games released a new trailer video of actual in-game footage that takes us on a more in-depth look at the reimagined San Andreas. We learn more about the game's three leading characters, which are all playable on-the-fly during gameplay. This means that you can switch to each of the three during missions to provide new vantage points to shoot from, or even to handle different parts of the mission such as flying the escape helicopter while the other two characters hang onto a rope.

The video also shows off old and new features such as the ability to deeply customize vehicles in customization shops, a playable stock market system, investing in and selling real estate, and even playing a round of golf. Traditional features such as getting a tattoo, buying clothing, and flying planes also make a comeback for what is almost guaranteed to be the most thrilling GTA ever.

This morning, reports are coming in that Apple has began to cut production on its iPhone 5 model. The report comes from Brian Blair of Wedge Partners, an analyst who closely follows Apple's production numbers. Apple's core suppliers are said to be expecting a cut as large as 20 percent for orders of components that make up the iPhone 5.

"So, when they make a dramatic change in their forecast, they need to let their suppliers know," Blair said. "And this is coming from some of our supply-chain work out of China and Taiwan that has let us know, not exactly, but that there's been roughly this kind of a change in their forecast for the period from June to December, about a 20 percent cut in what they've been telling their suppliers to be ready for."

Industry insiders say that Apple has cut iPhone sales forecast down from 115 million units to about 90 million units. Cutting back production is usually seen as an indication that Apple is getting ready to release its next generation in the iPhone series, so maybe we will begin hearing a solid release date for the iPhone 5S as well as that low-cost, budget level iPhone as well.

Early this morning, Facebook finally switched on Graph Search for all of its English-speaking users in the US. By expanding its test program that was rolled out in January from a few thousand users to a few million users, Facebook can now see how its new search performs on a massive scale.

Graph search is a tool that allows people to search Facebook's fast database using natural language searches to find almost anything the social network has ever indexed. An example of one search would be: "Photographs of my friends taken before 2005" or "restaurants in New York City my friends have visited and liked." Facebook would then return results based on your query.

I feel the graph search, while cool, is not really useful past searching for restaurants, photos, or places. I have been a member of the beta program since the week it was released and to be quite honest, the novelty wore off very fast. In the past few months, Facebook has modified the search so much that now most results are quite broad and not a specific as they used to be.

July 5 was the deadline for all bidding proposals to buy the content streaming service Hulu. The date was set by the Board of Directors after bids were received from everyone including Yahoo, AT&T and the Chernin Group in recent weeks. Today, we found out that both DirecTV and Time Warner Cable also submitted their bids before the deadline was up.

DirecTV apparently placed a bid to acquire the company as a whole, while Time Warner Cable reportedly offered up a proposal to become an investor alongside the service's current owners: Walt Disney Co., 21st Century Fox Inc., and Comcast.

No word on how much each bid was for, but with Yahoo's bid around $1.1 billion, we can assume that similar offers were in the same ballpark. It looks like Hulu will get purchased by someone, and let's all hope that the service actually improves over the current state it is in.