E3 2013 - Possibly the hottest sports gaming franchise in the world right now is FIFA, and EA did not disappoint with its FIFA announcement at this afternoon's press conference at the E3 Expo. The company says that FIFA 14 will feel alive with players who think, moved and behave like world-class athletes.

This is all made possible through EA's IGNITE engine which is able to blend the best rendering, runtime physics, animation, intelligent, locomotion, and online systems into one powerful ecosystem to fuel the next generation of sports games.

EA says that for the first time ever, fans will feel the electricity of the living Stadium, and experience the majesty of the world's greatest soccer theaters. Players now have four times the decision-making ability in the current generation of players in the current FIFA, which enables each player to have "Pro Instincts" which EA defines as humanlike reactions, anticipation, and instincts.

E3 2013 - Electronic Arts has just announced that Madden NFL 25 will be coming to the next-generation consoles Xbox one, and PlayStation four. Madden NFL 25 is powered by EA Sports' new IGNITE engine and ushers in the next generation of sports games by delivering the smartest, most realistic, and detailed version of the game in its franchises history.

"We've never been more ready for a console transition than we are right now," said Cam Weber, General Manager of American Football for EA SPORTS. "The development team is crafting the most impressive Madden NFL game we've ever made, and I'm extremely excited for fans to get their hands on it for themselves when the Xbox One and PS4 launch."

Coupled with this announcement is the introduction of Adrian Peterson as the cover athlete for Madden NFL 25 on Xbox One and PlayStation 4. Peterson, the Minnesota Vikings running back, is a five-time Pro Bowler and the reigning NFL MVP. Last season Peterson came within 9 yards of breaking the NFL single-season rushing record set by Eric Dickerson.

E3 2013 - During the Microsoft and EA press conferences today at the E3 Expo, game developer DICE showed off its flagship FPS, Battlefield 4, in both single player and online multiplayer modes. As one of the biggest Battlefield fans in the world I cannot express in words the excitement I am feeling for Battlefield 4.

During the Microsoft event dice showcased "Angry Sea" a stunning display of how the new Sea warfare mode in battlefield for might play out. While during the EA press conference DICE showed off a 64 person online multiplayer demo that was played by 64 actual participants on stage. Dubbed the "Siege of Shanghai" it unveiled several new dynamics to the game. Players are now able to use elevators to reach various levels of buildings, and even level entire skyscrapers for a truly destructive environment.

First EA is bringing back Battlefield Commander Mode, which is similar to the Commander mode featured in Battlefield 2, but is much more dynamic and only gives you the resources available based on your team. Possibly one of the coolest features of Commander Mode is that it can be utilized through your touchscreen mobile device such as a tablet. In my opinion this brings in an entirely new dynamic, and is the new technology needed to take the Battlefield series to the next level.

E3 2013 - Microsoft and Turn 10 studios announced the next generation in simulation racing this morning. Forza 5 just may be the most bad ass racing game I have ever seen. The use of cloud processing and what is being called a Drivatar, you are always racing, even when you are not online.

The so-called Drivatar is an AI that learns your driving habits, your speed up and breaking habits, and even your crashing habits. It then races for you when you are not online. It is able to accomplish this through cloud processing which also gives the game graphics like no other game I have ever seen. The McLaren featured on the screen appeared to be a live video image and not a video game rendering.

Over the weekend a very mysterious AT&T branded, Nokia Lumia 920 Windows Phone popped up on the popular social networking site Reddit. The phone appeared to be running a new prototype of Windows Phone 8, and was confirmed when information was posted about the version of Windows Phone it was running was revealed in a screen shot.

The Lumia 920 appeared to be running a Windows Phone build of 12084.WPMAIN(wpbldlab).20130509-1407, which gives us a compile date of May 9th. As for new features, a notification center can be seen in one of the screenshots, providing access to the typical Live Tile notifications, as well as a redesigned calendar interface, and the ability to sort apps by name or by the most used.

Redmond appears to be working on improving multitasking in the new OS as well, which is apparent by the new ability to close apps in the multitasking view. The prototype phone was purchased on ebay, and the buyer mentioned that the phone has many apps whose name begin with the letter Z leading us to believe that it once belonged to a developer.

This is something conspiracy theorists (like myself) were laughed at about just last week, and for years now, but now we have an NSA whistleblower coming out and feeling compelled to talk about it. Edward Snowden thinks that the US public needs to know about the control all of the data that is being recorded about them on a day-to-day, heck a second-to-second scale.

All data is recorded, Facebook, Google, Apple, SMS, e-mail, everything digital, is being targeted and secured by the NSA. The NSA collect, store, analyze and keep that data to get data on every living person within the United States right now. They use the reason of 'they're targeting suspected terrorists' but it picks up data on everyone at the same time. We live in a post-9/11 world, and this is something the people of the world need to stand up and say "no" to, and this is what Snowden is here to do.

He is fully aware that coming out and stating these things puts a target on his back bigger than anything I personally think has happened before, and I really expect a big 'event' to go down to throw the media and the citizens off this trail. We're talking about some seriously bad things that the US has done, and this guy has proof of that fact. The question is, where do we go from here?

Computex Taipei 2013 - Supermicro had a beast of a SuperStorage Server on display at Computex 2013, with support for up to 24 x 2.5" drives, which could either be the latest and greatest 10 and 15K HDDs, or SSDs, including the new breed of 12Gb/s SSDs on the market.

From the top, we can see the three 12Gb/s controllers for the HDD bays. We typically expect rebranded HBA's and RAID controllers for large OEM suppliers, but the origin of these controllers is unclear.

Supermicro was not forthcoming with many details, including the ROC utilized in these builds. These controllers look to be a custom design with large capacitors to the end of the board.

Computex Taipei 2013 - At Computex 2013, Supermicro displayed their newest line of Haswell servers, with the SuperServer 5038ML-H12TRF on display.

The power efficiency of the new Haswell architecture provides the possibility for enhanced density in server solutions. Here we can observe a 1U rack with a single processor server.

Here we see the 12-node version of the Supermicro SuperServer 5038ML-H12TRF on display. These hotpluggable racks pull out for easy service and each hold 2 drives for storage.

Computex Taipei 2013 - Once you go black....you never go back to blue? Western Digital's performance line for consumers is the Black Series. With flash increasing performance the company decided it was time to add a little flash magic to their proven mechanical products.

The result is Western Digital's first SSHD. SSHD, the industry term for hybrid drive is part SSD and part spinner. In this case, the marriage of a special Sandisk iSSD that is between 8GB and 24GB depending on the OEM customer, and a 5mm slim Western Digital hard drive.

We finished testing Western Digital's 5mm Blue drive right before walking out of the door for Computex.

Computex Taipei 2013 - We know it's coming and coming sometime soon but that isn't good enough when OCZ Technology teases it at CES and Computex in 2013.

With two Indilinx Barefoot 3 controllers and up to 1TB of NAND flash, we know you want it too. If the PCIe version of Vector includes SCSI unmap, a form of TRIM, then we'll do back flips followed by cartwheels. Wouldn't that be a sight to see?

As far as I know, this is the first back side picture of the card. All together there are 32 NAND flash chips, four DRAM buffers and two Barefoot 3 controllers. Bridging the two controllers to the PCIe 4 lane is an OCZ VCA II. This is a full height card for desktop use. When they finally come out I want six for RAID 5 in a prosumer SAN.