In a sea of bad quarterly earnings reports from competitors, ASUS are standing strong with some positive third quarter results this week. The Taiwanese maker of just about everything these days reported a revenue of $3.8 billion with a net income of $230 million.

Revenue saw a rise of 9% year-over-year, with net income boosting up by around 43% in the same period. Revenue is up 18%, with net income up 39%, sequentially. Expectations were lower than this, with over 12 analysts expecting net income to reach just $185 million, meaning ASUS beat analysts' expectations by over 10%. Where is this surge coming from, you aks? Tablets.

ASUS have been able to successfully glide over from the sinking netbook market to the ever-expanding and super-popular tablet market. If we look back to Q2, ASUS shipped 800,000 tablets - fast forward to Q3 and we're looking at tablet shipments hitting 2.3 million, a meteoric rise. Shipment increases can be credited to the great Nexus 7 tablet which ASUS co-developed with Google. ASUS didn't give the goss on just how many Nexus 7's shipped, but it would have to be a chunk of that 2.3 million.

I know I used the whole "can it play Crysis" thing yesterday when we reported about the new Titan supercomputer - but how can I pass up the chance again? Intel have announced plans to use their 48-core processor in future mobile devices, such as tablets and smartphones.

Intel CTO, Justin Rattner, has said that baking the powerful chips into mobile devices could arrive "much sooner" than the 10-year window predicted by researchers. The chip is currently used for linear algebra and fluid dynamics, but being the heart and soul of a mobile device could speed up just about everything.

Having 48 cores on top would lead to immensely powerful multitasking that dual- or quad-core parts just can't even dream of doing. Future mobile devices could be running a Full HD (or 4K) game in the background, a 4K movie, while streaming YouTube, and sending e-mails, all while it feels like it has just loaded up and isn't even running a single task. The problem is now software developers having to develop the goods to take advantage of 48 cores. Let's just hope it's capable of running Crysis.

In 2006, mega giant media company Disney acquired Pixar, the makers of huge hits like Toy Story and Up, and have just now announced that they've acquired Lucasfilm. You might know Lucasfilm, they're quite well known for, well, Star Wars among others.

Lucasfilm are also responsible for the Indiana Jones series, and the deal includes other Lucasfilm properties such as Industrial Light & Magic and Skywalker Sound. This news isn't the finish yet, as the press release for the announcement also includes news that there will be yet another Star Wars movie.

Disney is aiming for a 2015 release for Star Wars: Episode 7 and that its "long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years". I guess I should get around to watching the Star Wars movies then, huh?

I'm an avid user of the Gmail platform. I love it for many features that other services don't offer, such as the ability to download e-mail from other POP3 accounts. Google is constantly trying to make the service better, and they are now pushing out an update for how users compose and respond to e-mail.

Instead of going to an entire new window, Gmail will begin to pop-up a compose window in which you can type your e-mail as you normally would. It looks like an oversized chat window, if you've ever used the built-in Gmail chat feature. Google says that the new window is faster and better for multitasking as you can now easily go to other e-mails without closing the draft you're working on.

Google also says the new window is easier to use:

I imagine these new lights are going to be popular with teens across the world, with Philips announcing a new iOS-controlled LED lighting system that can display almost any color, personalizing the lighting experience with a wide array of dimmer and scheduling options.

Philips believe at the new "hue" light bulbs would reinvent "the way we think about and experience light in our homes". Philips elaborates:

Building on its innovation capabilities, today Philips unveils hue, the world's smartest web-enabled LED home lighting system. Philips hue signals a new era in home lighting both in the way we think about and experience light in our homes. It allows you to create and control the light using your smartphone or tablet.

Intel have begun shipping their latest SSD, which the chipmaker describes as the most efficient multi-level cell (MLC) NAND flash currently available. Intel's 335 Series SSD are also the first to use 20nm NAND flash which was built in a joint effort between Intel, Micron and IM Flash Technologies.

Intel's 335 Series SSD use the now-standard SATA 6Gbps interface, sports a SandForce SF-2281 controller running custom Intel firmware. The only drive available at the moment is a 240GB model, which comes with 500MB/sec read, 450MB/sec writes and ramps up to 42,000 read / 52,000 write IOPS using 4KB data.

The 20nm IMFT NAND uses a new cell structure that is said to enable more aggressive cell scaling than conventional architectures. Hi-K/metal gate planar cell technology is used to get around problems that come with this advanced process tech, enabling performance and reliability that we enjoyed with the 25nm process.

Android 4.2 was just announced, but you'll need to have the skinny on those features, right? Well, I'm an avid Android user and there's a bunch of new features that look great, so let's go through a few of them.

Android 4.2 is going to arrive on the freshly announced Nexus 4 smartphone and Nexus 10 tablet, and should be quite the OS from Google. Android 4.1 really ramped it up with Project Butter, but there are some features in Android 4.2 to be quite excited over, so here we go.

5.) Daydream - This is something that will have its specific users, who want to use this feature, but it is something nice to see as a tiny feature on an otherwise huge release from Google. Daydream will allow your tablet to display photos, news and more while the device is idle, or docked.

Amazon has started the tablet wars. On their homepage, you will see the ad, pictured below, which compares the Kindle Fire HD to the newly released iPad min. Sure, they pick on a few features where the iPad mini is weak, but what is even more interesting is the quote they picked up from Gizmodo. Take a look for yourself:

Pretty funny, right? Everything about that ad is factual. The Kindle Fire HD does feature a higher resolution screen and pixel-per-inch count. It also picks on the iPad mini for not featuring stereo speakers, though I imagine most people use headphones when watching a move or listening to music as the built-in speakers of most mobile devices are pitiful.

I had to laugh at the quote Amazon pulled from Gizmodo: "...Your 7.9-inch tablet has far fewer pixels than the competing 7-inch tablets! You're cramming a worse screen in there, charging more and accusing others of compromise? Ballsy." However, what Amazon is forgetting to compare is the "cool factor" of the iPad mini, something that famous UK judge noted about the original iPad.

Google has unleashed a new wave of Nexus devices upon the world, even after canceling their press event due to Hurricane Sandy. Get ready for some great new devices because that is what Google has on offer. Out is the old Nexus 7 8GB, in is a 16GB at the same price. Also new to the Nexus 7 is cellular network capability.

The new Nexus 4 is not quite for sale, at least not yet. However, a sign-up page has been put online for users to be notified when the device is actually available. It comes in two models, an 8GB version for $299 and a 16GB version for $349. Noticeably lacking from the devices is LTE capability. Instead, they both feature unlocked HSPA+ radios.

The nexus 7 has seen a price cut along with some new features. The 16GB version will set you back $199, the 32GB version, $249, and a new 32GB model with mobile data will set you back $299, though this model isn't available yet. It has the same sign-up form that the Nexus 4 has. Google is no longer offering an 8GB model.

Bulgarian blogger and digital rights activist, Bogomil Shopova, recently purchased 1.1 million Facebook users' data, including names, IDs and e-mail accounts. Shopova has said that he has no intentions of spamming or hacking those on the list, but is using the acquisition of data to highlight just how easy it was to gather personal information from Facebook.

Where would you buy the data to 1.1 million Facebook accounts in the first place? Well, I thought that too, but Shopova reportedly found the data for sale on the social market website Gigbucks. The seller went by the username "mertem", claimed that the data had been collected through third-party Facebook applications, consisting mostly of active accounts in the US, Canada, Europe and the UK.

The advertisement for the data stated it had "great potential" if you were offering a Facebook, Twitter of other social media-related product or service. Forbes has been told by a Facebook spokesperson that they were looking into the security breach. The representative said that the social network had dedicated security engineers that take aggressive action on reports such as this.