The Nintendo Wii is known for its innovative control system with motion that has been imitated in various ways around the gaming industry now. THQ has offered up a new and cool controller for various games and uses called the uDraw Game Tablet. The tablet is an accessory for the Wii that will land in time for Christmas in the US.

The uDraw will sell for $69.99 and comes bundled with a drawing, coloring art-based game called uDraw Studio. THQ also has two other video games that support the uDraw tablet. Those games include Dood's Big Adventure and Pictionary. Each of the games is available for $29.99 per title. The tablet will land in other countries next year. THQ will also offer more games that support the device in coming months as well.

"The uDraw GameTablet is an amazing addition to the Wii and opens up its creative possibilities," said Reggie Fils-Aime, President and Chief Operating Officer of Nintendo of America. "THQ has shown enormous innovation with uDraw, which is not only a perfect holiday gift, but we think will become a 'must-have' for Wii owners for a very long time."

One thing you can count on when taking pictures of a baby is that the flash is probably going to scare the little guy. That means you have about one or two shots to get the image you want before the kid is screaming. The same goes for pets, they don't like the bright light either. The other thing about the built-in flash on most DSLRs is that it's just not that great for taking images.

A cool product called the Lightscoop is available for just about every DSLR camera on the market. The thing hooks to the pop-up flash on a DSLR camera and has a mirror that shoots the light up to the ceiling and makes it more diffuse. The result is that the bright flash isn't right in the subject's eyes. The flash bounding off the ceiling also lights the subject more evenly.

The Lightscoop works with DSLRs from Canon, Fuji, Nikon, Olympus, and Sony. It can be had in standard or warming versions for $29.95. It comes in a version for Sony cameras only and a universal version that works with other cameras. You can also buy both the standard and the warming version together for $49.95.

The geeks over at AnandTech have laid hands on the new OCZ Vertex Plus SSD and are offering up a preview of the storage device and its new Indilinx Martini controller. The new controller came after the next-gen 6Gbps Jet Stream controller from the firm was delayed until next year. The controller used in the OCZ SSD is called Barefoot and is a new hardware revision and Martini is the new firmware for this new hardware only.

The new controller sets aside more spare area for its garbage collection and bad block allocation than the older controllers. The older Barefoot controller would leave an SSD with 128GiB of NAND with 119.2GiB or storage and the new one leaves 115.2GiB. The target pricing for the SSD using the new controller will be $74.99 for 32GB, $114.99 for 64GB, and $194.99 for 128GB. That pricing is actually pretty good.

In testing the Vertex Plus SSD scored 220.6MB/s on sequential read and 204.7MB/s on sequential write. AnandTech says that new SSD controller loses in longevity to other more modern controllers, but helps make up for that in price. The SSD would be a decent option for a budget performance system wanting to use an SSD.

When it comes to the mobile industry the major players like AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon are at each other's throats in a fight for subscribers and dominance in the market. The three have managed to find common ground in the potential to make huge sums of money by revamping the way consumers pay for goods and services at the register. The joint venture is called Isis.

The goal of Isis will be to work with the Discover Financial Services payment network to allow consumers to pay for products using their mobile devices and NFC tech inside the handsets. The user would present the mobile device at checkout rather than cash or credit card to pay. Isis plans to roll its tech out to select markets in the next 18 months. The tech uses "strong" encryption and privacy protection according to Isis.

The first card issuer to use the Isis system will be Barclaycard US. The CEO of Isis is Michael Abbott who was with GE Capital before, said, "Our mobile commerce network, through relationships with merchants, will provide an enhanced, more convenient, more personalized shopping experience for consumers," said Michael Abbott, Chief Executive Officer of Isis. "While mobile payments will be at the core of our offering, it is only the start. We plan to create a mobile wallet that ultimately eliminates the need for consumers to carry cash, credit and debit cards, reward cards, coupons, tickets and transit passes."

Google TV is cool and when it was first announced I was really looking forward to getting it on my set with the Logitech Revue box so I could watching Hulu and online shows from networks. After the device launched, all of the major networks and Hulu blocked users of Google TV from being able to access any of their online content making the Google TV service much less appealing. At launch, the only TVs to support Google TV were from Sony.

Sometime next year that will change. Samsung will be making an announcement in January that it will support Google TV. The specifics of their plans are unknown, but with January being CES time, we will most likely hear then what will happen with Samsung and Google TV. I would be surprised if there aren't some Samsung TVs supporting the service on hand at CES.

Samsung says that it is open to using Intel chips inside the sets. I am sure Intel will land the deal. Google TV and online access on TVs is the way many TV makers are combating falling prices in the market and trying to woo users to their sets. Price competition in the market is very competitive with many consumers viewing TVs as a commodity and buying on price more than brand. If Google TV is blocked by more major services, it will be useless to many.

The holiday season is upon us for sure and shopping for gifts is at the top of to-do lists for tons of people all around the world. Odds are you have a gadget hound on your list that would love a new eReader like the Nook color. Barnes & Noble has announced that it is now starting to ship the Nook color eReader, which is the latest in the Nook line up. If you have already pre-ordered the device, and put in your order early, you may be one of the select groups that get the new reader first.

Barnes & Noble states that the Nook color will start arriving at the door of those that pre-ordered today and will continue to ship throughout the week to pre-order customers. The pre-orders are being filled for those that ordered online and those that ordered in stores as well. B&N says that a "very limited" number of the Nook color devices will land in Barnes & Noble stores, Walmart, and Books-A-Million stores this week as well.

If you didn't pre-order and really want one of these things, you had better start looking at these stores daily. I suspect this will be one of the more popular eReaders this Christmas. The Nook color has a 7-inch VividView color touchscreen and delivers books, magazines and more content to readers. If you order the reader online today, you can expect to receiver your device around November 26. However, B&N says it will "adjust" that date as needed due to demand. That means there is no way of knowing exactly when the device will turn up for buyers. The Nook color sells for $249.

This is the working of Intel's "tick, tock" method - the Sandy Bridge being the "tock" and bringing a 32nm fabrication process. Arriving on the same train will be the 6-series core-logic chipsets. These new chipsets will be on a slew of updated LGA1155 socket motherboards.

Sandy Bridge's arrival is quite close - so motherboard makers are tent-poling to show their line ups. Today, we have the Asus 6-series motherboards to have a quick look through. As with other quite long articles, I'll post a quick speel and the pictures for you to tent-pole over yourself, there's a few surprises throughout!

First up, I will note Asus are readying 17... yes, seventeen! different 6-series motherboards for Sandy Bridge. But, even that number is lower than Intel's last CPU platform launch. 10 will be based on P67 - which won't use Sandy Bridges integrated graphics, 6 boards will use the graphics ready H67 chipset while the final board is looking to incorporate the business-focused twin Q67 chipset.

And with this news all graphics card partners and companies have entered in two key strokes on their keyboards, colon and capital O.

Futuremark® announced today that 3DMark® 11, the upcoming DirectX 11 benchmark, will be bundled with MSI's line of GTX 580 series NVIDIA graphics cards at launch and upcoming enthusiast level graphics cards for select, model, stock and country. The bundle will be available while stocks last in specially-designed collector's edition packaging inspired by the Deep Sea scene in 3DMark 11. MSI is the official launch and bundle partner for 3DMark 11. https://www.3dmark.com

"We are proud to partner with MSI on this unique promotion," said Oliver Baltuch, President of Futuremark Inc. "Together MSI's high performance graphics cards and 3DMark 11, the industry standard for DirectX 11 performance measurement, make a great package for discerning PC users."

When it comes to gaming mice gamers tend to fall into two general categories. You have your low sensitivity gamers who like to be able to make big hand movements when they are controlling their character. You also have high-sensitivity gamers that like mice that move a long way on screen with tiny hand movements. What mouse you choose will depend on what type of gamer you are. If you are the low-sensitivity type of gamer, Tt eSports has a new optical mouse for you.

The mouse is called the Azurues and has some interesting features built-in. It has adjustable sensitivity with a switch from 400 dpi to 1600 dpi. Considering that the high-end laser gaming mice have sensitivity upwards of 5000dpi, this mouse is certainly for the low sensitivity gamers out there. Tt eSports is aiming this mouse at FPS gamers, but it will work for any type of game.

You don't get tons of buttons with this mouse, it only has three. It has a lighting system that makes the mouse scroll wheel and logo glow. The cable is braided for durability and the mouse feet are made from a low friction material. The entire mouse has a rubberized coating that offers good grip. You can also adjust the weight of the mouse, which is a common feature on many gaming mice today. Pricing and availability are unannounced at this time.

Gamers tend to drive many trends in the consumer electronics world. For years, the only way you got anything 3D in the home was if you had a PC and were playing with a stereoscopic 3D driver. Some of the 3D games that NVIDIA had optimized drivers for looked good. Gamers will pay the money it costs for 3D gear in the home before your average TV watcher will and the gamer will wear the glasses that 3D requires while many people are holding at for 3D TVs that need no glasses.

If you are a gamer looking to step up to NVIDIA 3D vision gaming a new LCD is now available for you to pick up. Other than a compatible NVIDIA video card, all you need for 3D gaming action is a LCD with 120Hz refresh rate and the NVIDIA 3D Vision glasses. The Planar SA2311W LCD is a 23-inch wide 1920 x 1080 resolution LCD that has a 2ms refresh rate. That should give the screen plenty of speed to support gaming and fast action without any video issues.

The monitor will sell for $449 and it is set to ship in December. It doesn't include the 3D vision glasses, but you can bundle the 3D Vision gear with the screen for $640. The screen has 2.1 megapixels and can show 16 million colors. The panel has a refresh rate of 55hz to 120Hz and works for both 3D and 2D content. Connectivity includes VGA, DVI-D, and HDMI.