The drink that allows most of us to study for exams or keep going despite knocking back four sake bombs in a row has launched a widespread augmented reality marketing campaign for their 12-Packs. Utilizing racing celebrities like Cole Whitt and Kasey Kahne as spokespeople, Red Bull has launched Red Bull Augmented Racing, an iOS app allows you to design a racetrack with all 12 of the cans.

All the player has to do is find a fairly open space and arrange the 12 Red Bull cans in the shape of what, ideally, is a bird's eye view of a racetrack. With their iPhone, the user loads the Red Bull app and proceeds to "track" the top of each can. The application then creates a racetrack using the relative positions of the cans, which the user can then race and subsequently upload to the Red Bull site and/or Facebook. Players compete by racing for best times in various user-created tracks, including those created by Kahne and Whitt themselves.

For Cole Whitt's promotional video, and more information about the experience including how to download, go here.

Microsoft Internet Explorer 9 is off and running with 2.35 million downloads in its first 24 hours. The non-beta version was released this past Monday at 9PM PST, so for that first day people were acquiring IE9 at a rate of about 27 downloads per second. That's around twice the downloads of the IE9 Beta, and a whopping four times the amount of downloads for the release candidate.

Though Microsoft is totes psyched (and they should be) about this turn of events, the record holder for most downloads in 24 hours has been rock solid for almost three years, and that blue ribbon will remain with Mozilla's Firefox 3, released June 17 of 2008.

Mozilla is poised to release Firefox 4 next tuesday, and already enjoys a very large percentage of worldwide browser market share, according to this graph from StatCounter:

Disclaimer: it is painfully evident from this video that it has nothing to do with Apple Corporation or any of the products they make. This is clearly a concept video made by an arbitrary user on YouTube illustrating a "What-If" Type scenario.

First off, see above. Then, if you're not entirely sure that this "product" is not connected to Apple, see above again. This is not "coming out" anytime soon, and the hardware is years out. Also, I sincerely doubt that Apple would make "hologram rings". Then again, if anyone could, it'd probaby be them.

Who knows who this person is (YouTube user "AppleiLens")- this video popped up on my #AR Twitter feed from user Peter Meijer (@seeingwithsound), and despite numerous links to tech head gear (including an already existing iGlasses, a sonic mobility aid for near or fully blind people) it is dubious as to whether Peter created this video.

Crysis 2, the mega-visual FPS, is the first of the two installments to be released on consoles. A lot of people said Crysis 2 would never stack up to the PC versions, and that the PS3 version was underwhelming, but I had a hands-on look at Crysis 2 during the GDC in San Francisco, and didn't have a single complaint about the visuals, especially not the Passive 3D engine. A new multiplayer demo is now available on the PlayStation Network, so if you are one of the 41 million people that owns a PS3, you really can't miss out on this.

PlayStation Blog interviewed Nathan Camarillo, the Executive Producer of Crysis 2, who shared many insights on the upcoming game. As I had written before, one of the greatest things about Crysis 2 is the lack of 3D gimmickry in the game design, as Camarillo clearly states in the interview:

we don't throw things out of the screen at you. We start at the TV screen and then push in. This avoids eyestrain and eye fatigue, because we want you to play this for hours and hours.

Much like the article we posted yesterday about Capcom, SEGA is donating to the Red Cross all of its proceeds from its Sonic iOS titles and the Football Manager Handheld game starting yesterday and continuing all throughout the week.

Like the Street Fighter IV iOS download, SEGA is reducing their prices for the following games, all available on the App Store. The prices and links are below:

Sonic the Hedgehog 1 - 1.99

The reccent and tragic events of the 8.9 Japanese Earthquake hit very close to home for revered gaming giant Capcom. Though they have offices in bth Tokyo and Osaka, Capcom reported today that their employees are "safe and well", and that they very much appreciated all of the kind wishes and support in the aftermath of Japan's largest earthquake on record:

Thank you to everyone who has sent inquiries and wished us well during this crisis. We want to reiterate that all of our employees in the Osaka and Toyko regions are safe and well, and we thank everyone for their support.In response to recent events, Capcom will immediately donate 100 million yen to help victims of the earthquake and communities recover from this tragedy. For one week from today, March 15, Street Fighter IV on iPhone will be available for 99cents/115yen, and all sales of the title during this period will be donated to support earthquake relief activities. Capcom will also suspend operations or shorten operating hours as necessary at amusement arcades and other business sites that are located in areas served by Tohoku Electric Power and Tokyo Electric Power. In addition, Capcom will refrain from holding special events. Again, thanks to everyone who has supported Japan during this difficult time, and please help to spread the news about relief efforts.

You hear that people? Download Street Fighter IV RIGHT NOW, not only do you get a great-priced fighting game on your iPhone, you're doing a good thing. Tell your friends, tell your family. You can always delete the app later. Every bit counts though.

AMD did not impress their fans by denying warranty if the performance "OC" bios switch was used on their Radeon HD 6990, but XFX have stepped up to the plate and are now saying that they will be fulfilling their warranty even if AMD won't.

XFX told Kitguru that they'd be offering it, with a statement saying:

XFX will warranty the 880Mhz OC Usage as per our usual RMA terms, as long as there is no Consumer Induced Damage etc, as per our usual terms and process for RMA's...

The first wave of AMD's FX-series processors based on a Bulldozer micro-architecture will include four different models with eight, six or four cores and a TDP of either 95W or 125W. The first batch of AMD FX8000, FX6000 and FX4000 chips currently known as codename Zacate will completely support all of the advantages that the Bulldozer architecture has to offer.

This includes the new Flex FP floating point processing unit. The new chips (including the eight-core) are projected - by AMD's internal documents - to offer roughly 50-percent performance improvement over the Phenom II-series of microprocessors in multimedia applications.

The main family of AMD FX-series CPUs will feature two eight-core models, a single six-core model as well as a quad-core model. The FX-series chips will support dual-channel DDR3 1866MHz memory, it will also support Turbo Core dynamic acceleration technology and will come in AM3+ form-factor which will have a 95 and 125W TDP.

Microsoft just released the "final" version of Internet Explorer 9, the Browser That Started It All. Sort of.

Though there are bound to be bugs nonetheless, Microsoft is touting some pretty impressive features. Though the browser comparison on their website is a bit outdated, here are some of the options that a user just won't be able to find in Firefox 4 or Chrome 9 (Betas):

- Full hardware acceleration for text, graphics, and video provided by default

The first video of Samsungs upcoming iPad 2 competition, the Galaxy Tab 10.1 is out and is titled "One day with The New Samsung GALAXY Tab 10.1," has been posted on YouTube. It's 12 minutes of hands-on footage and is bought to you by AndroidHD. This is not an official video, with that being discovered subtly by the video's description.

The Galaxy Tab 10.1 features a 10.1-inch WXGA TFT LCD display with a 1280x800 resolution, 1GHz dual-core processor, weighs in at 1.23 pounds (599 grams), features a SIM slot, 3.5mm jack, BlueTooth 2.1 and Wi-Fi 802.11. It uses Samsung's proprietary charging cable and doesn't have a USB or HDMI port. Galaxy Tab 10.1 does however feature dual surround-sound speakers, an 8MP rear-racing camera with Auto Focus which is capable of capturing 1080p video, a 2MP front-facing camera and is set to become available in 16 and 32GB versions.

One of the biggest features of the Android-powered tablet is that it ships with Flash 10.1 support. As for the video's description, I have it listed below.