LinkedIn, everybody's favorite professional social media networking site unveiled its new "News" feature (still in Beta) today in conjunction with a press conference. "Today" is part of a suite of new features that the already successful startup is rolling out in the near future to further endear themselves to social professionals.

[I hope everyone appreciates the Inception-level of meta-irony here]

"Today" utilizes a LinkedIn user's already existing professional network and the industry in which that person currently works to share relevant and current news. It is yet another information aggregator, but there's not a heavy degree of customization required if you've already a LinkedIn user. And unless your industry is Aeronautical Internet Pancakes, "following" relevant industries is as easy as the click of a button in a conveniently located side bar.

If you haven't had the chance to play SpyParty yet, it's a combination of Metal Gear Solid and that one level that exists in every FPS where you only have a sniper rifle. But more classic.

The IGF Seumas McNally Grand Prize runner-up (Minecraft won) was one of the most popular indie destinations at GDC last week, with people lined up to get in on the action. The game itself has a nostalgic arcade feel, but the gameplay is wonderfully and psychologically complex. One player is a Sniper, one is a Spy, and the former has no idea who the latter is. The Spy can blend into an entire dinner party of characters, and must complete a host of secret missions while simultaneously avoiding detection. This is difficult, because the Sniper has been "briefed" (i.e. the instructions to the game) on all of the "tells" a Spy could possibly evince. The Spy has the advantage of being able to see the laser-sight of the Sniper, and thus know where he or she is looking at all times. Catch is: there's a time-limit, so one of you has to make a move at some point.

Game Designer Chris Hecker has succeed in creating a smart, thrilling, psychological game. In fact, it's absurdly addictive, and the inherent violence of the game is described only though the sound of a silenced rifle shot and the screams of the other partygoers. No gore, no blood- nothing overdone. And the environment is so voyeuristic and immersive that you start to panic almost immediately. If you're playing in person, you are almost face to face with your opponent, who is either hunting you or trying to evade you- not a typical video-game experience.

Google have just clicked the GO button on Instant Previews. Instant Previews provides a fast and interactive way to evaluate search results. Google Instant Previews is compatible with mobile for Android (2.2 and above) and iOS (4.0 and above) devices.

Similar to the desktop version, Instant Previews allows a user to visually compare search results from a webpage of snapshots, making it easier to choose the right result faster. In order to use Instant Previews on your Android or iOS-powered device, do a search on Google and tap on the magnifying glass next to any search result.

A side-by-side comparison view of the webpage previews for the first page of search results will appear, once you've found a result you like, tap the preview to go directly to the side.

It's SXSW time and with it comes some changes to social networking giant, Foursquare. Foursquare have started rolling out the changes ahead of the official start of the event on the 11th.

The changes are somewhat different to what you'd expect and creates an evolving step toward something exciting for Foursquare. Version 3.0 brings a bunch of changes which are listed below. I'm sure Facebook won't be far behind this, Zuckerberg's fist must be shaking in the wind right about now.

Big change 1: Personalized recommendations

After three months in beta testing, WinRAR 4.00 is fully-baked and ready for consumption. It is now available to download for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. The biggest improvement over the previous WinRAR versions is the decompression, which is now 30-percent faster depending on the file format used.

Additional features include a password manager for regular compression jobs, although passwords are not encrypted. When extracting multiple archives you are now able to set WinRAR to use the same password for all of them. Something worth knowing is that WinRAR 4.00 does not work on older Windows OS's such as 98, ME and NT. The Minimum requirement for WinRAR 4.00 is now Windows 2000.

Download links at the source.

EA's Frank Gibeau has said some good things about the future of PC gaming, as strongly as saying that he sees the PC platform as possibly being the biggest market for EA over the coming years.

He said to Gamasutra that 'The use base is gigantic, PC retail may be a big problem, but PC downloads are awesome.' With the recent success we've seen with Steam, this comes as no surprise - it's just good to hear from someone in the market who isn't whinging about piracy on PC. EA has also said that Battlefield: Heroes is doing very, very well with 368, 241 new users every month on the PC alone and now have over 7 million registered users since launch. The free-to-play title shows that it can do very well in the PC world.

Gibeau also added 'If you look at the way people play in Asia, PC is the model, I think that free to play model is coming to the West in a big way. The margins are much better and we don't have any rules in terms of first party approvals. From our perspective, it's an extremely healthy platform. It's totally conceivable it will become our biggest platform.'

NVIDIA is set to launch their dual-GPU counter-punch-in-the-nuts GeForce GTX 590 on March 22nd. Coincidentally, this is the date of the Crysis 2 launch in which NVIDIA paid a pretty penny (to the tune of $2 million) for some flashy NVIDIA-only benefits. Although Crysis 2 is only launching with DirectX 9 - which is shocking considering the first game from four years ago launched with DirectX 9 and 10 modes.

The GeForce GTX 590 uses two GF110 GPUs (the same as the GTX 570/580 cards), we can expect the GTX 590 to include 3GB of RAM and out-of-the-box support for NVIDIA's 3D Vision Surround and Vision Surround technologies (which are usually only for SLI users). The card is not far away and I'm sure that they're ready to strike while the iron is hot and I have full confidence it's going to be a great card.

*jumps in the air in his green bikini*

Before I was distracted by the AR.Drone cage's techno music at GDC last week, I spent some time at the 3dvia booth. I must have been in the French section of GDC, as 3dvia is part of Dassault Systèmes.

I was initially attracted to their augmented reality promotional game demo on the outside of their booth. There was a French Cereal Box resting, unattended beneath an external-camera-equipped flatscreen. Recognizing the giant AR marker on the back of the box, I lifted it to the camera to see what I was going to get. As I had expected, an interactive augmented reality game materialized on the screen in front of me. What appeared to be a cereal mascot seemed to be trapped on the right side of the box, standing on top of a spring. A marble rolled back and forth idly at the top left as my hand moved the box slightly. Tilting the box either way moved the marble, so I experimented. The object was to collect a series of wispy white light orbs positioned throughout the plinko style drop down "maze", and upon collecting them the spring jettisoned the mascot sprite outside the box where it did a little dance and offered to let me Rejouer.

[Fear The Beard]

Ok everyone: Calm. Down. I'm looking at you, Twitter.

Yes, the iOS 4.3 Hotspot Debacle is a complete slap in the face. Yes, the fact that AT&T only offers grandfathered unlimited data plans and the current available data plans are an absurd and brazen insult to developers, techies, and you know, people that use the internet. And Pandora.

All of that aside, evidently iOS 4.3 performs substantially better than iOS 4.1, and probably better than Android as well, according to the guys at Electronista.

Logitech released its supercharged surround sound Speaker System Z906 today:

"We're delighted to offer consumers a successor to the highly acclaimed Logitech® Z-5500 Digital 5.1 Speaker System," said Mark Schneider, vice president and general manager of Logitech's audio business unit. "The Logitech Surround Sound Speakers Z906 are the logical evolution of surround sound speakers, and we're confident they will become an indispensable part of the living room."

And for $399, it can be! Not that you won't get your money's worth- the new speakers are THX certified, delivering 500 Watts of earthquake-faking audio. Six speakers and subwoofer, easily stackable and adaptable to your current entertainment setup as you can connect up to six different systems.