Meanwhile, all sorts of drugs are somehow imported into the [super secure] borders of most countries (like the US for example), yet a little 'ol cable like the Mini DisplayPort to HDMI cables have been deemed by HDMI org to be illegal. HDMI org are the committee that oversees the HDMI specification, saying such wires are illegal and could soon disappear from stores.

HDMI org claim that any cable with a male Mini DisplayPort connector on one side and a male HDMI connector on the opposite side is unlicensed and shouldn't be sold on store shelves. HDMI org did back up its claims with a few lines from the HDMI specification, one line says that a HDMI cable consists of only HDMI connectors, nothing else is permitted.

If that's not enough, the group also said that all HDMI products undergo compliance testing as defined by the Compliance Testing Specification. Since mDP to HDMI cables aren't mentioned in the HDMI specification, there are no tests associated with the product, so they are unable to be approved. But, cables that include a male mDP connector alongside a female HDMI receptable are fine because a licensed HDMI cable is able to be used.

Following its first appearance at Computex early last month, GIGABYTE's T1125P booktop is now listed at website ExcaliberPC with an indicated date of availability being July 22, albeit pricing is yet to be disclosed on the unit.

In case you missed the rundown on it during all the goings on at last month's Computex, this is an 11.6-inch booktop (that can be used as a notebook, tablet or desktop PC) and is set to replace last year's T1125N which we reviewed a while back here.

The new T1125P weighs in at 1.73Kg (not too bad for a convertible laptop) and its multi-touch LED-backlit (1366 x 768) display is capable of rotating 360 degrees. Packed inside is a 1.33GHz Core i5-470UM CPU, 4GB of DDR3, GeForce 410M 1GB graphics with Optimus support and a 500GB mechanical HDD. The feature set gets rounded out with Gigabit ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 2.1, two speakers and two woofers, 1.3MP webcam, 1xUSB 3.0 port and a 6-cell battery.

Mozilla's Firefox development team appear to be working faster than ever lately with a new alpha (Aurora) build 7 now available, less than a month after Firefox 5 Final was released to the masses. They sure are chewing through version numbers of late.

The new 7.0 Aurora (alpha, 7.0a2) build brings what looks to be a decent amount of new features and improvements. with reported optimizations including a faster startup time, faster rendering performance and less memory usage. The new build also has an improved sync manager for syncing up your bookmarks and passwords effortlessly and instantly with your other devices.

Other benefits include better font rendering When GPu acceleration is enabled and some new web and server tools that allow developers to build performance tests directly into the browser.

Apple have quite the achievement today, announcing that they have had over 15 billion (that's 15,000,000,000!!) apps downloaded from their App Store by more than 200 million iOS-powered users worldwide. The App Store sports 425,000 apps and developers have created an incredible array of over 100,000 iPad-only apps.

Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing says;

In just three years, the revolutionary App Store has grown to become the most exciting and successful software marketplace the world has ever seen. Thank you to all of our amazing developers who have filled it with over 425,000 of the coolest apps and to our over 200 million iOS users for surpassing 15 billion downloads.

The underdog in this fisticuffs battle of online music services [in my opinion] is Amazon and maybe they know that too which is why they were the first to launch their music service before the great Apple and Google, it nabbed them headlines and probably, groupies. This has given Amazon time to gain a customer base and do some work on their service. Amazon have since studied what Google was offering (free upload of 20,000 songs) and also Apple (unlimited storage up to 25,000 songs for $25) and decided that its own pricing scheme needed some lovin'.

Anyone who purchases MP3s from Amazon should definitely give Cloud Drive a second look: every MP3 purchase before the cloud streaming service launched can now be stored for free and all limitations on music uploading have been removed from paid members. Upon launch, Cloud Drive offered five Gigabytes of free storage to users and the option to upgrade was there. 20GB for $20, 50GB for $50 and so on up to 1000GB. All new MP3s purchased through Amazon are able to be stored for free without counting against that total, but the allowance didn't apply to previous purchases.

Now it does. This is now Amazon's greatest strength in the online music battle, it's connection to the Amazon MP3 store. But that's not all... Cloud Drive now has a "limited time offer" which gives anyone who pays for storage unlimited space for uploading tunes. This means that everyone who dropped $20 for storage now has unlimited, yes, unlimited space for MP3 uploads even if they were not purchased from the Amazon store.

All of this next-gen iPad news is really getting to me, everytime I think I have a new piece to type up, a few days later there's something else out from some other analyst saying something different. Enter Craig Berger, an FBR Capital Markets analyst says that the next iPad to hit the market will not be the iPad 3, but will be dubbed the "iPad 2 Plus" and planned for later this year.

Expected in this iPad 2 Plus is the hotly-rumored higher-resolution display, at 250 to 300 pixels per inch compared to the pansy 132 pixels per inch. This would make the images and text look much crisper and natural, almost like words printed on paper. The iPhone 4 had a similar bump in ppi, up to 326 ppi. Berger also cited reports from the supply chain saying that Apple has begun grasping for parts for the future iPad:

There are some indications from the supply chain that Apple may look to introduce an 'iPad 2 Plus' device as they put out request for quotes from various component suppliers for this marginally different device.

Chics it up a notch, geddit? Chic styling, yeah, you know you do. Today, Gateway intros in a new, revamped style of two of its Gateway notebook PCs, the Gateway ID Series and Gateway NV Series. Both lines feature incredibly stylish designs in the most in-demand sizes, powered by the latest and greatest mobile technology. First up the Gateway ID47 Series sports a 14-inch HD widescreen LED backlit display with full edge-to-edge glass which slides into a chassis usually designed for smaller 13.3-inch models.

The Gateway NV Series features a new sleek design with a bigger 15.6-inch display with instant social media connections. Both lines include USB 3.0 for fast transfers and device charging. The Gateway ID Series comes in two designs, "Infinity Blue Liquid" which is meant to resemble tranquil water whilst the second design dubbed "Brushed Platinum" conveys an industrial modern feel.

Both the ID and NV Series include instant social networking with quick-use hot keys that give customers quick access to their social networks on Facebook, YouTube and Flickr. Pushing the button launches and integrated widget that lets customers easily make updates to their own sites by posting information, images and video as well as checking out the status feeds of friends, family and colleagues.

Charlie from SemiAccurate has written an article on Kepler which is NVIDIA's upcoming 28nm-based flagship GPU. If one were to believe the article, it would look like AMD is going to beat NVIDIA to the holy grail of 28nm-based GPUs. Charlie reckons that AMD taped out Southern Islands in February whilst NVIDIA didn't tape out Kepler until June.

He then estimates that a delay of around seven to eight months between tape out and launch, which should throw AMD's cards into our hands in around two months whilst NVIDIA's cards won't get their green on until February of next year "at the earliest." Another thing to throw into the ring of speculation is Kepler's processing resources. Charlie wrote a separate piece that Southern Islands is more or less a play-it-safe shrink of the Cayman-based design that powers the Radeon HD 6900 series whilst Kepler is a new architecture that has substantially more processing resources than Fermi.

If this is true, we might see a repeat of the entire Radeon HD 5000 series punching the Fermi-based GeForce 400-series in the nuts, Cartman style.

During Facebook's "Awesome" event that is going on now at Facebook's HQ in Palo Alto, CEO Mark Zuckerberg just announced "Video Calling".

It is a partnership with Skype and integrates into your current Facebook experience rather seamlessly. All you need to do is pop up your friends list in that chat area in the bottom right of the screen and select a friend. Then click on their name and click the "start a video call" camera looking icon.

For the first time you are asked to download the Facebook Video Calling Plug-in which is small and downloaded and installed very quickly. I'm going to give it a try right now! One last thought, now that Microsoft own Skype, does this mean we will see more Facebook and Microsoft joint efforts in the future?

Just after the magical release of Skype 5.5 for Windows which included deep Facebook integration (why do I feel dirty saying that?), they've just launched their new solution for Apple. Skype 5.2 for Mac is now available and seems to be much better equipped than the 5.1 version that was released back in November of 2010. The new video is not only capable of group video calls (which was available in the November beta) but also share their screens during that call.

Screen sharing is already available for free on a one-to-one Skype call, but the new ability to share documents, photos, presentations and whatever else you choose with multiple people in a single session really makes the product shine. The downfall? To take advantage of the group video calling and screen sharing function, one or more call participants must have a Skype Premium subscription.

These subscriptions cost between $4.49 and $8.99 per month, with a day pass available for $4.99 if you only use it every now and again. The call control bar now includes video when you multi-task during a video call, this allows you to still see the person you're Skyping as well as being able to hang up or mute the conversation when you're engaged in a different program. Skype have also made it easier to find your most active conversations under "Recents" which is found in the sidebar and they've also added a "History" section where users can see those who are not as active.