Earlier on today I stopped by the BitFenix headquarters here in Taipei and spoke with product manager David about the Taiwanese company's new range of mid-range computer cases that are due to go on sale midway through April in the United States and Europe.

Shinobi is the name and there are two versions: the standard Shinobi coming in at $59 USD and the Shinobi Window coming in at $69 USD. You would be mistaken in thinking that the only difference between the two is that one has a side window and the other one doesn't. While that is partly true, the window version is actually more expensive since it also includes a well designed tool-free design for the hard drives and optical drives.

These cases are made of a nice soft rubbery material that is easy on the eye and feels great. The design is simple with no fancy lights or anything like that, but still manages to maintain a good level of style. Internally most of the important chassis design points can be ticked off with good color coding, impressive cable management, a CPU cut out for easily changing coolers without the need of having to remove the motherboard and more.

Even though there's no USB Port, iPad 2 still got some pretty cool accessories today at the unveiling.

Smart Cover

As you can see from the video, this cover is all magnets and intelligence. The cover, made of microfiber, attaches magnetically to the side of the iPad. It's unique design allows the user to fold it into two different stand positions, and it's quite lightweight as well. Not only does using the cover clean your iPad screen, it automatically puts the device to sleep, too- which will of course reawaken when you fold back the cover. Pretty darn nifty- and it's available in polyurethane (bright colors) or leather (earthtones), albeit at a moderate price tag of $39 and $69, respectively.

According to the twitter-stream-throttling hashtag #ipad2, everyone in the world is talking about Apple's newest post-PC product release, announced today at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco. Despite rumors of his failing health, a very chipper-looking Steve Jobs showed up to deliver the keynote presentation, which in true Apple style rolled out all of the next-gen iPad's newest features, many of which confirmed previous rumors and speculations about the device.

The iPad 2 is slated to ship March 11th in the United States, and will bring with it (among mass hysteria and frustrated Apple Store customers) a host of "long"-awaited specs:

-A5 Dual Core Processors

For those of you old enough to remember Flashback, this news might come as a surprise to you. France-based VectorCell is the work of Paul Cuisset of "Moto Racer" and "Flashback" fame. They have a new title in the works dubbed, Amy.

The world of "Amy" takes place in December 2034, when global warming has taken its toll on human life with the spread of disease and the occurrence of natural disasters. The game is set in the small Midwestern town of Silver City where players take on the role of Lana, who wakes up in the aftermath of a meteor strike.

Amongst the warzone she wakes up in, she discovers that everyone around her is inflicted with a virus of some sort that makes them violent. Lana must find a way out of the chaos before she too loses her sanity. During her escape Lana encounters a strange little girl who she rescues and must make choices that will ultimately affect both of their lives.

WOW. That's all you'll say when you see the video below. This is where the teaser footage came from, but it full gameplay footage. The one thing in this video that brings a tear to my eye? A guy gets shot and from the your point of view, you walk up and pick up him to drag him to safety... this is where a WASD graphic comes up, telling you to press "S" (which is obviously, reverse/backwards).

Compared to the disappointing Crysis 2 PC demo, this looks absolutely, hands-down, new-pair-of-jocks worthy of your money. The video shows off the insane character models and movement animation, environmental and lighting detail (smoke and debris fly when bullets hit walls). I've been really pushing Battlefield 3 to crazy levels of anticipation, but believe me, I'll be taking the day off work when this puppy comes out.

Did I say one day? I meant a week.

Crytek and EA launched the Crysis 2 multiplayer demo yesterday and after playing it, I found myself quite under-enthused. It was okay graphically, but there are only a few drop down menus for graphics, no way near the customizability of the first. There's barely any destruction (which was a big feature of the first game) and no sound through my USB-powered Logitech G35's.

Motion blur is too annoying in the sequel, and it is only DirectX 9. News is leaking that the full game will ship with DirectX 9 only and DirectX 11 support will be added later through a patch. This is a very big blow as CEO Cevat Yerli has put his name on the line saying this will still be a huge hit on the PC and they have spent considerable time on PC making sure PC fans are not disappointed.

If this news is true, yet again, PC gamers are kicked in the balls. DirectX 9 on one of the biggest titles of the year, in 2011? It's not 2007 anymore, Crytek.

The company behind the Killer line of gaming network gear has introduced their new Killer Wireless-N laptop network adapter. Bigfoot are making claims that the Wireless-N adapter offers transfer speeds of up to five times faster than competing WiFi adapters.

Bigfoot says this will give laptop gamers an advantage over opponents who don't have a comparable networking kit as it cuts down on latency and lag. Bigfoot Networks' CEO Michael Howse also said that other wireless connections that are usually unsuitable for other online activities that are sensitive to wireless packet loss such as VoiP and HD video streaming would benefit from these new Bigfoot products.

He went on to say "with our innovative networking technology and advanced 802.11n hardware, Killer Wireless-N adapters not only accelerate performance for online games, they also reduce stuttering, excessive buffering and other annoyances in video chat and on-demand entertainment services."

Valve are not a company afraid of change, they've dominated digital distribution in the past near-decade or so and now are expanding out into the lounge rooms of gamers worldwide. The announcement is not detail heavy, but it does give a few facts.

"Big picture" mode will provide "controller support and navigation designed for television interaction", it will also allow players to "enjoy Steam and their library of Steam games on more screens throughout the house." This probably means they've re-jigged the Steam interface to fit a large TV or projector setup and have it accessible via controller.

This could be a major win for Valve, it might stop the couch-gamer from going to console if they can hook up a single HDMI cable to their TV and use wireless controllers to boot.

Google is currently investigating a problem with the e-mail portion of its company following complaints from some of their Gmail users saying that all of their messages, attachments and Google Chat logs have vanished.

Google issued a warning via it's App Status Dashboard saying they had been hard at work attempting to recover the lost data. "Google Mail service has already been restored for some users, and we expect a resolution for all users in the near future," the website reads. "Please note this time frame is an estimate and may change. This issue affects less than 0.08% of the Google Mail userbase. Google engineers are working to restore full access. Affected users may be temporarily unable to sign in while we repair their accounts."

Supposedly there is a bug which is completely resetting accounts, some users have said that when they logged in they would receive a welcome message as if they had just opened up their account. Considering Gmail has over 170 million users, a 100, 000 section of people is only 0.08-percent of their total user base.

iFixit are at it again, this time ripping apart the 2011 edition of Apple's MacBook Pro. Some facts about the dissection of it show that the RAM and HDD are still user-replaceable parts, which is a good thing. The battery inside is a 77.5 watt-hour battery with Apple's claims of 7 hours of use.

They did find a tonne of thermal paste on the CPU and GPU and noted that this may cause overheating issues in the future, so to anyone who purchases one of these new MBP's, this is something of an important note. Another surprising thing they found was one of the screws near the subwoofer enclosure had been stripped and there was also an unlocked ZIF socket for the IR sensor, tsk, tsk.

Other than that, it looks like another great thing of beauty. The guts of the MacBook Pro are glorious. If only I had the money to do this myself!