We've reported on the rather slow sales of the Nintendo Wii U, but the cause of these slow sales has been a bit more elusive. Nintendo apparently thinks they know why sales are slow and are attempting to fix the problem...by sending out a message to all Internet-connected Wii consoles.

Did you know that you can play nearly all your existing Wii games on Wii U? Your Wii controllers and many Wii accessories can also be used with a new Wii U console -- along with any downloaded games, save data, and other info stored in your existing Wii console.

It's time to discover Wii U

Intel have just taken the wraps off of the new naming on their integrated graphics found in the fourth-generation Core processors, otherwise known as "Haswell". Welcome to the Intel Iris and Iris Pro Graphics. Iris Pro will be available on select CPUs denoted by an R at the end, such as the i7-4770R.

Iris is a huge leap over the previous third-generation Core processors, with nearly twice the graphics performance and over three times the graphics performance of the second-generation Core processors.

When Intel compare their fourth-generation Ultrabook part, the Core i7-4558U (a 28W part) gets pitted against the Core i7-4650U (a 15W part) and the third-generation Core i7-3687U (a 17W part) it is a decent distance from them in terms of performance. Compared to the previous-generation part, the new i7-4558U is over twice as fast in 3DMark 11, and around 1.5x the performance in both 3DMark 06 and 3DMark Vantage.

Nintendo has issued a statement regarding the story we ran yesterday about the Wii U being hacked so possibly pirated games could be played. According to Nintendo, they haven't seen any unauthorized applications running on a Wii U while in Wii U mode.

Nintendo is aware that a hacking group claims to have compromised Wii U security. However, we have no reports of illegal Wii U games nor unauthorized applications playable on the system while in Wii U mode. Nintendo continuously monitors all threats to its products' security and will use technology and will take the necessary legal steps to prevent the facilitation of piracy.

Not to be outdone, the makers of the Wiikey have posted a response to Nintendo's statement on their site. The response consists of four cryptic lines of what appears to be hexadecimal code:

Everybody's favorite little rover, Curiosity, is back in contact with its handlers on Earth, now that Mars and Earth are in an alignment where communication is possible. Curiosity had previously been sitting mostly idle for the last four weeks while the sun blocked communications between Earth and Mars.

The first step NASA has to complete is to update Curiosity's software. After Curiosity is brought up to speed, its handlers will instruct the rover to continue analysis on Yellowknife Bay. Yellowknife Bay is the location that Curiosity has already found the basic building blocks of life.

We just didn't stumble into this area. This was something that took a lot of planning. In case something happened with the rover we needed to make sure we had science to do in that landing ellipse. What was serendipitous was landing in a past aqueous environment and finding sulfates and clays...The hope is we find some other examples of habitable environments. There are a bunch of different geological reasons why there could be more of less carbon in one place.

We have recently reviewed Shadow Defender, a light-virtualization program with a difference. SD (as it is known among fans) sandboxes whole disks/partitions and protects them against unwanted changes. All changes (including most malware infections and their effects) actually happen within the SD buffer, a virtual environment which resides in an area isolated from the real system. Upon reboot, the virtualization buffer is emptied by default and all volume changes are immediately discarded. The real volume remains untouched and Windows boots back to its normal clean state.

SD is essentially a final safety net for Windows systems. It also features a handy RAM cache, which means that you can now have a superfast virtual Windows environment running directly from RAM. When using such a RAM cache setup, your disks take no write hits, something that is very beneficial for devices like SSDs and flash sticks.

SD is a great piece of code, but threats keep evolving constantly. It is essential for SD to also keep evolving in order for it to continue to be relevant. Since October last year, I had the pleasure of exchanging ideas with Tony, the Shadow Defender developer. Some of my ideas have now already been implemented in current SD versions, e.g. the user-configurable RAM buffer for the virtual system, plus cache encryption.

Today Amazon announced that it had updated its Kindle for iOS app to incorporate more accessibility features for users who are visually impaired.

The biggest of the updates is the integration with Apple's VoiceOver technology, which is now capable of reading aloud more than 1.8 million Kindle Store offerings.

Also included in the update are improvements to UI navigation, Search Tools, and other features like X-Ray, End Actions, sharing, highlighting and bookmarking. Amazon said, "Accessibility features make it easier for blind and visually impaired customers to navigate their Kindle libraries, read & interact with books, and more. Enable VoiceOver in your device settings to begin."

This year's "Who Has Your Back" report published by the Electronic Frontier Foundation has just been released and Twitter is sitting pretty in the number one spot. In contrast, Facebook, Apple and Amazon all ranked very low on the list.

The report is based on how far the world's biggest tech companies go to protect your data from government demands. Each company is evaluated on six different criteria and given a star if they fit the requirements. Of the 18 companies tested, only two met every criteria with an excellent rating.

Twitter and Sonic.net both scored a full six stars, while on the other end of the scale, Myspace was awarded nothing. Facebook was middle of the road with three stars while Google, Dropbox, and Spideroak all tied for second best with five stars each.

Researchers at Cern in Switzerland have some interesting things to play with, and have now proved the merits of a way to test antimatter as a source of the thing we all want to see in our futures: "anti-gravity".

Antimatter particles are the "mirror image" of normal matter, but have an opposite electric charge. Antimatter and its relationship with gravity is still a mystery, but it may just simple "fall up" rather than down. Researchers reporting in Nature Communications have made a few steps toward solving this notion.

Antimatter continues to be one of the biggest question marks in physics, where equal amounts of matter and antimatter should have been created at the Universe's beginning. But, if the two were to shake hands, they destroy each other in what is called annihilation, turning into pure light. Cern's Alpha experiment is here to help the researchers hopefully solve this.

Today, Digg disclosed the results of a survey it ran last week. The survey contained questions trying to gauge user interest in various features that Digg might implement in a replacement for Google Reader. The survey also asked if a respondent would be willing to pay for the service.

As you can see above, 40 percent of respondents said they would be willing to pay for a Google Reader replacement. This then makes me ask, why doesn't Google charge and continue their own reader? As seen in the graph below, many users use E-mail, Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ to share links. Digg plans to include "seemless sharing" to all of the services seen below.

Free products on the Internet don't have a great track record. They tend to disappear, leaving users in a lurch. We need to build a product that people can rely on and trust will always be there for them. We're not totally sure how pricing will work, but we know that we'd like our users to be our customers, not our product. So when we asked survey participants whether or not they would be willing to pay, we were pleased to see that a majority said yes.

AT&T has announced a new program in which you can receive a credit for trading in one of your old smartphones when you upgrade. The program officially starts tomorrow, May 1 and AT&T says that this is a limited time promotion, so you might want to take advantage of it early on.

Beginning May 1, consumers who trade in their current smartphone to AT&T* will be eligible to receive at least $100 off the purchase of a new smartphone, including the new Samsung Galaxy S 4, BlackBerry Z10 or 32 GB HTC One. These devices are normally $199.99 with a qualifying two-year agreement** but, with this limited time promotion, they will be available for $99.99.

This promotion applies to any smartphone AT&T sells, and gives customers access to the latest devices at a fraction of the cost or, in the case of smartphones priced under $99.99**, for free. To take advantage of this offer, customers are encouraged to visit any AT&T company-owned retail store or participating authorized dealer with their previous smartphone that is no more than three years old and in good, working condition. In stores, upon trading in their old phone, customers will receive the $100 credit on-the-spot and can use it immediately. ***