Activision has released the launch dates for the last two downloadable content packs for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. With the new packs come new multiplayer maps, game modes, and missions to the popular first-person shooter. Incredibly, these two packs bring the DLC count up to 29 in just under a year.

Collection #3 will be released on August 9 and is titled Chaos Pack. With it comes a new game mode: Special Ops Chaos Mode; three new Face Off maps: Vortex, U-Turn and Intersection; and four new Special Ops missions: Vertigo, Arctic Recon, Light 'Em Up and Special Delivery. The new game mode sounds somewhat similar to Zombies in Black Ops as it pits players against unending waves of enemies, helped by power-ups.

Collection #4 is due to be released on September 6 and is called Final Assault as it is the last DLC that is planned to be released for Modern Warfare 3. Final Assault adds five new multiplayer maps to the game. Boardwalk will see players fighting on a beach in Jersey Shore, Gultch will be set in a mining town, Parish will be set in the French district of New Orleans, and Decommission and Offshore will be set on an ocean liner and oilrig.

NVELO have opened their arms to The SSD Guy, who provided the site with some benchmark data comparing the company's Dataplex software's performance versus Intel's iSRT caching software that is getting baked into more and more Ultrabooks as they arrive.

For those, like me, who aren't fully aware of this technology, they are both caching software that "automatically maintains "Hot" data within a low-capacity SSD while leaving "Cold" data on the system HDD. The end result is that the PC performs as if it boasts a large SSD when, in truth, it uses a standard HDD and a modest-sized SSD, giving SSD-like performance at HDD-like prices, with full HDD capacity."

The above chart was provided to The SSD Guy by NVELO, shows a few standard benchmarks run on three different systems. The first is an off-the-shelf HP Envy 4-103 Ultrabook using the iSRT-based write-back cache that it ships with (represented by the grey columns), the same system but adapted to use a write-around implementation of NVELO's Dataplex (shown in pale blue), and finally, the same system sporting Dataplex running in write-back mode (shown in dark blue).

Google have updated the developer program policy page, which has now made the platform more secure and easier to navigate for users. Google had sent out an e-mail to its developer community with the news that Google Play would be undergoing some changes to clamp down on suspect behavior in the Android market.

Google outlined the types of apps that aren't allowed on the platform, with apps that disclose personal information like credit card and social security numbers without authorization are now, not allowed. Google are also restricting developers from using names, or icons that are similar to existing apps, which should cut down on piracy and dodgy apps that look the same as real apps, but aren't.

Google have said on their policy page:

Facebook have officially launched their App Center, which is the social network's storefront of desktop and mobile applications, which is now available in every country that Facebook is. The App Center first debuted in English-speaking countries such as Australia, Canada, India, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

Then, last week the App Center hit Brazil, France, Germany, Russia, Spain, Taiwan and Turkey. Now, it is completely global, in every country Facebook can be used in, the App Center is there. If you log into Facebook.com, you'll see an App Center bookmark on the left side of your homepage, as well as in the Facebook apps for iPhone, iPad and Android.

Facebook continues to grow, and needs to feed itself into new markets, with mobile being a very important one. Considering that international users make up 81-percent of Facebook's staggering 995 million monthly active users, it's a step in the right direction. I don't personally play any games on Facebook anymore, I'm tied up working so much that I don't have the time to mess with them anymore. But it's nice to know that my wife can jump into SongPop now, direct from the App Center on her notebook, or Galaxy S III.

Kickstarter funded OUYA has passed $6.2 million in funding, and has also teamed up with VEVO to make sure that "music lovers have plenty of places to watch videos", even on an indie game console. OUYA also announced another partnership just a few days ago, inking a deal with cloud gaming company OnLive.

OUYA chief, Julie Uhrman, has said that OUYA is all about entertainment, and that means expanding "beyond gaming", and she is right. As for the VEVO deal, its SVP of Product and Technology, Michael Cerda, has said that the company supports "OUYA's vision that the future lies in being open and accessible for users looking for high quality entertainment experiences". OUYA also adds:

I stumbled across some interesting news today, with EA's financial results for the first quarter of this year, which have some interesting facts for the games industry. EA's report is broken down into platforms, PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

EA made $292 million from the Xbox 360, $276 million from the PC and $267 million from the PS3. This means that as one of the world's biggest publishers, EA made more money on the PC than they did from the PlayStation 3, which to me, is quite surprising. EA's surge in business for the PC is looking to be attributed from digital sales.

EA has made $342 million from digital sales, up considerably from $232 million last year. Physical sales represent $592 million, dropping from $647 million last year. So, we're seeing that more and more people are going digital, like myself, compared to buying physical copies of games. If this trend continues, we could see digital thrashing physical copies, and when (note that I'm not using the word if) this happens, we're going to see an interesting shift in the gaming world. This is coming from a company who has said that it's "inevitable" that they'll become a 100% digital company.

Apple have today expanded the available options for configuring a new Retina MacBook Pro. The company is now offering a heap of individual upgrade options on the base model that starts at $2199. Previously, if you wanted a base model rMBP, you were stuck with the 2.3GHz Core i7 model with 256GB of SSD storage, with the only configurable onboard option being a RAM upgrade from 8GB to 16GB for $200.

If you wanted a faster CPU, or more flash storage, you were required to jump to the high-end $2799 model, which sports a 2.6GHz Core i7 processor, and 512GB of storage. But now, Apple are offering a slew of upgrades to the processor, memory and storage options. Customers can now upgrade storage on the base $2199 model from the stock 256GB to 512GB for an additional $500, or 768GB for an additional, wait for it, $1000.

The CPU options can also get upped from the base 2.3GHz Core i7 to the 2.6GHz model for $100 extra, or for $350 extra you can get it ramped up to 2.7GHz. Memory options stay the same with an upgrade option to 16GB for the same $200. Apple still has a 1-2 week shipping estimate for the rMBP, as they try to keep up with demand. I really want one, but dumping down that much moola on a single product is hard.

Google have finally opened up an official Android blog, as up until now, all of the Android-based news had to find its home in the Google Mobile blog. Now, it has its own home, its own man cave, dungeon and experimental lab. Call it what you will, but Android has its own home within a blog.

The Google Mobile team had some words to express for the new home for Android:

You know what? I love numbers. I think this is why I love technology so much, specs, GHz, core clocks, frame rates, power consumption, I could go on forever. Social networking site, Facebook, have released their energy usage report for the year of 2011, with some interesting details.

Facebook's total annual carbon footprint for each monthly active Facebook user is 269 grams. Facebook have put this into context in the report as detailing that for one person's Facebook use for the entire of 2011, had roughly the same carbon footprint as one medium latte, or three large bananas, or a couple of glasses of wine. I'll take the latter, thanks.

Facebook's total energy usage from office space, data centers, and other facilities was approximately 532 million kWh. Greenhouse gas emissions, also known as our carbon footprint, comes from many different areas: data centers, office space, employee commuting, employee air travel, data center construction and server transportation totaled approximately 285,000 metric tonnes of CO2e (carbon dioxide equivalent, which includes greenhouse gases CO2, CH4, N2O, and HFCs).

So it looks like its not just Valve's Gabe Newell, or Blizzard who are against Microsoft's Windows 8, which just hit RTM, by the way. Minecraft developer Notch is cautious of the shift to the Windows Store, and third-party outlets.

Notch sees any further lockdown of Windows 8 as potentially "very very bad" for indie game developers, and overall competition in the gaming business. It was all during an interview on Reddit, where the Minecraft dev predicted a bright future for indie game developers, as long as there are "open and free" platforms to support their work. Notch says: