Gmail fans have been building unofficial extensions to spice up their inboxes for a while, but up til now themes haven't been an integral part of Gmail. We wanted to go beyond simple color customization, so out of the 30 odd themes we're launching today, there's a shiny theme with chrome styling, another one that turns your inbox into a retro notepad, nature themes that change scenery over time, weather driven themes that can rain on your mailbox, and fun characters to keep you in good company. There's even an old school ascii theme (Terminal) which was the result of a bet between two engineers -- it's not exactly practical, but it's great for testing out your geek cred. We've also done a minor facelift to Gmail's default look to make it crisper and cleaner -- you might notice a few colors and pixels shifted around here and there.

I don't got it. Google doesn't really care about me, or my love of low-contrast dark websites. That's OK, I'll still let them profit off my searches in hope that they, I dunno, predict the raptor flu or something. I'm a little surprised by this, haven't they had working themes for their user-specific home page for a while? And don't they know that the flu and flu vaccination is part of a massive conspiracy put together by FEMA to infect us with alien-hybrid DNA to make our population supplicate to slavery under our unearthly overlords?

I mean, no, that's just science fiction... FEMA is worthless.

The original Barcelona is a 65 nm part and really the first of its architecture. Since its release and the subsequent shuffling around of design teams, AMD has refocused their energy on delivering a design that would not only have a better per clock performance than the older part, but allow the design to scale in clockspeed on AMD's new 45 nm process. So far what we have seen shows that AMD has done very well. While the 3.0 GHz Phenom II will likely not perform anywhere near that of the new 3.2 GHz Intel i7, it will show very well against the older Intel Core 2 quads. Not only that, but we will see how AMD scales clockspeed in the future, as well as how they handle DDR-3 support early next year. With AMD's constant process improvement program, and tweaks to the Phenom II design that we typically see in the manufacturing stage, AMD could theoretically have a 3.4 to 3.6 GHz processor at moderate TDP levels (think 125 watts) that would more adequately perform against the mighty i7 within the next 8 months.
...
The Phenom II reached 6 GHz+ at 1.9v on liquid nitrogen (boiling point -321F/-196C at 1 atm). Testing looks to have been done on a Gigabyte 790GX motherboard that is currently available.

Not three bad, not three bad atoll. Here's a little bit on the current i7 record, obviously as incomprehensible as the preceding sentence for non-germanophones:

Hardware-Infos

Einem japanischen Overclocking-Team gelang es nun, den Takt von 4x 3,20 auf 4x 5,73 GHz zu hieven. Zuvor hatte man sich an einem Core i7 940-Prozessor versucht, der sich bis 4x 4,44 GHz ubertakten lieB.

The important thing to remember, here, is that in Foreign, there are no rules for comma usage; they seem interchangeable with periods. Quotes, similarly, remain recognizable only because of their placement around phrases not original to the article at hand, otherwise they look like chevrons, likely due to the highly militarized nature of Foreign.

In the past, it's been noted that the RIAA has curiously avoided suing any Harvard students, with one of the theories being that Harvard had made it quite clear to the RIAA that it would fight back hard. And, with Harvard law school at its disposal, and various professors there indicating that they had serious legal problems with the RIAA's strategy, the RIAA simply decided to ignore any file sharing going on at that prestigious university.

However, for RIAA critic and well known law professor, Charles Nesson, waiting around for the RIAA to sue someone at Harvard was getting boring, so he went out and found a case to participate in. Along with two third year law students, Nesson has hit back hard on the RIAA's efforts in a court filing, where it's noted that the very basis for many of the RIAA's lawsuits is very likely unconstitutional.

I've read through that at least three times now, not because it's complicated, but because it's so damned entertaining. And unlike the characterization of RIAA activities to RICO, this is interesting because it's so much more plausible. Plausible, Hell, it's right. I don't think anyone really believes that the RIAA is out for anything beyond self-interest, and they've absolutely picked a strategy of targeting the vulnerable (broke).

I think this is about to be the legal equivalent to He-Man wrestling midgets. Fun to watch, tickets always sell, and part of a long-standing foundation of our republic.

Maybe just my republic.

i always wondered why he-man wore pink

There's a good news/bad news update on the rogue ISP McColo and last week's coordinated effort to drive the malware faucet offline. The good news is, the ISP has (mostly) stayed offline, and spam levels a week later are still running significantly lower than they had been. The impact of taking McColo offline seems to have reverberated longer than what we saw from the Atrivo takedown back in September. When Atrivo shut off, spam levels fell, but rapidly climbed back to near-original levels. Post-McColo spam counts have remained lower for the last eight days, but may unfortunately be on the verge of climbing again.

That's where the bad news comes in. McColo, it turns out, had previously negotiated the rights to a backup internet connection with Swedish ISP TeliaSonera. Once its own connection to the Internet was severed, McColo bided its time until Saturday, at which point it flipped a switch, reconnected via TeliaSonera, and began frantically updating its C&C servers, aiming them at new targets within our old friend, the Russian Business Network (RBN).

That's it, I know I'm fairly fond of collecting my Folding@Home work units, but I would love, love to participate in an anti-spam distributed computing project. Instead of folding yo many proteins, you could just score killed spams. Get mad points for participating in a DDoS against these dudes' machines, and win the Internet in points if these guys get completely shut off, even for just another week.

Wait, no joke, it totally already exists! Or at least, existed. I would have freaking loved to participate in that. Someone do it again! Alzheimer's isn't going anywhere. (Here's where you make the joke to yourself that it forgot where it was going, anyway. I would never make a jest that crudely. Never.)

apparently, today is pink picture day

...More gaming PC's have been sold over the past three years than Xbox 360s, PlayStation 3s, and Wiis combined. The study, which tracks the sales of three different classes of gaming PCs over since Q3 2005, found that 196 million units have been sold between then and Q3 2008, compared to a worldwide total of 74.7 million consoles. As Edge points out, this of course doesn't take into effect handheld gaming systems like the DS and PSP, which sold a combined 125 million units during the same period.

The study goes on to conclude that the $20 billion dollar PC gaming market, predicted to rise to $34 billion by 2011, was bigger, worth more money, was growing faster and had better tech than the console market could provide.

Yeah, I bet they also didn't go into how for every copy of The World Ends With You (or TWEWY, in the parlance) that there's a dude playing World of WarCraft. For each dude and chick getting his and her respective Castlevania: Order Of Ecclesia on, there's some poor schlub trying to quest through Moria, and for Horse Adventurer, there's a Conan, er, Conanerer. And I understand people pay to work for EvE Online, also.

By the way, that's a picture of the pinkest $8,000 gaming machine ever. It's sweet alright, sweet like insulin shock. Just look at it like this: if you don't have diabetes, you're saving roughly an amount that could be spent on at least one or two of these machines every year. So go nuts!

ASRock has put out a video showing its new Instant Boot feature that can start a computer in 4 seconds. Thanks to this new BIOS feature (a BIOS update is available for some existing boards), when the operating system is shut down it goes through a process of rebooting and then hibernates / goes into suspend mode until the user presses the power button again. Pretty slick.

Pretty slick? Hardly. Distilled premium quality awesome? Hell yes. These engineering dudes and their voiceovering have switched me from being a neutral party to a strict ASRock enthusiast.

I can only ask that in the future, ASRock get these guys to dance to O-Zone while simultaneously showcasing their ground-breaking, highly innovative technology. (Assuming that it works and everything.)

These "CupSpeakers" from designer Dmitry Zagga are MacGyverific. With nothing more than a large disposable drinking cup, a couple of toothpicks, and the included iPod earbuds, Zagga has constructed a sleek, cheap, and easy speaker system for his iPod. He claims the volume increase is "significant," and his photography makes this self-aware DIY project look like something straight out of a Steve Jobs PowerPoint.

I think I'm going to do this tomorrow after I snag some paper cups from the coffee shop. I'm totally serious; I've been looking for a little hands-on project for a couple of weeks. The best part about this is the nostalgia over using a needle and a paper cone to play a record spun on a pencil.

You remember records? Much like plates of black food, we filled up our faces, saw some far places, then stopped listening to Jackson singles.

Oh come on, he was the King of Pop for a good reason. Plus, I was like, seven.

A woman in Cornwall, England, has filed papers to divorce her husband on the grounds of "unreasonable behavior" after she discovered that his character in the online role-playing game Second Life had been having an affair.

Amy Taylor, 28, whose online alter ego is named Laura Skye, said that her husband's virtual infidelity exacted a pain that cut as deep as any extramarital liaison. "It may have started online, but it existed entirely in the real world and it hurts just as much," she said. "His was the ultimate betrayal. He had been lying to me." (See the 50 best websites of 2008.)

This is truly the downfall of society. If we can't respect the values of a digital wedding before the grandest of tubes, the Internet, how can we put any faith in effable, mortal vows? There is a tragic vacuum of morality, and if it can't be filled with YouTube and Cracked.com then we are at a palpable loss.

But there may be light at the end of the fiber, as CNN reports:

Taylor is now in a new relationship with a man she met in the online roleplaying game World of Warcraft.

May all your purples go unsharded.

Blizzard has categorically denied it is 'milking' the StarCraft franchise by deciding to release StarCraft II in three separate products.

At BlizzCon last month Blizzard revealed that the single-player campaign of the hotly anticipated follow-up to the still popular StarCraft will be divided into three products reflecting the game's three races - Terran, Zerg and Protoss. The first game in the series will be Terran: Wings of Liberty, followed by Zerg: Heart of Swarm and Protoss: Legend of the Void.

Some fans reacted angrily to the announcement, accusing Blizzard of milking the franchise, with some even openly promising to pirate the game when it comes out.

I really don't see a problem with this, and I completely agree with the notion that this is pure profit. You take a game like Oblivion, with easily as much content as three StarCraft Twos, and they only make, what, fifty, sixty bucks? A hundred with a chunky expansion pack? (Arguments about the expansion being short don't hold much water in light of the fact that the original game can be beat in about the same amount of time, I know, because I've done it.)

Blizzard is used to making money hand over fist, and unlike WoW, they can't charge for tournament play, even if it doesn't cost them nearly as much to host. But come on, people still play StarCraft, and it's OK for them to want a little more for doing it all over again. Besides, the $50 game rate hasn't changed in almost two decades, so really they're making a lot less per game.

It's going to be OK. No matter how much the game costs, I promise you this: we're still going to lose, like, a bunch of times, to Korean kids plastered on Green Soju. There will be plenty of people who will trample us with half a brain tied behind their back; just like old times.

Currently CPG is contacting its customers telling them that they will need to yet again deposit money into CPG accounts in order for CPG to have the cash to cover rebate checks to consumers. This is money that companies have already paid CPG previously. CPG is telling its customers that if they do not pony up AGAIN, consumer rebate check payments are in jeopardy. In our example above, CPG is not sure where the $100,000 is that Company X paid them, but we are sure that they want another $100,000 or CPG will start bouncing consumers’ MIR checks.

If you have a rebate out with CPG, I would check into it quickly. If CPG is no help, contact the company that manufactured the product directly and explain your concerns.

Certainly MIRs are a mixed bag in the world of the computer hardware enthusiast. Some swear by them while others will not touch them with a ten foot pole. One thing is for sure, if CPG fails consumers and starts bouncing rebate checks, CPG will massively undermine the entire way that e-tail and retail computer hardware outlets do business as well as many other markets. It likely will not be for the better initially, but let's face facts, lower pricing up-front without the MIR hoops to jump through is what the consumer wants.

I've on only two occasions, in my entire life, received a rebate. And one was half what it should be. (Samsung stiffed me, Mushkin is golden.) So I'm not a fan to begin with. The whole scheme is designed around the principle that people are too dumb or lazy to fulfill their end of the 'bate, anyway, and while I don't generally have a problem with companies taking advantage of dumb, lazy people, I'm still not one to happily associate with them.

That is to say, I won't buy a single Goddamn Monster cable, but I rather like the fact that they exist to plumb the wallets of people. It works like this: if you honestly tell me you hear a difference after the personal finance equivalent of being cockslapped, I know to ignore everything that comes out of the shriveled bean that keeps your heart beating. It's a semaphore like that.

But yeah, going in for a mail-in-rebate right now is kinda like staying on your knees in front of a rapidly approaching unbuttoned fly.

@ Ars Technica

Running across an entire city isn't a hard thing when you're moving as the crow flies, and this is the feeling that DICE's Mirror's Edge wants to give you: freedom.

@ GameSpot

Unfortunately, Mirror's Edge has a tendency to trip over its own feet, keeping you slipping and sliding blissfully along, only to have a tedious jumping puzzle or hazy objective put the brakes on.

@ GameSpy

Mirror's Edge takes place in a futuristic society in which the people have acquiesced their right to freedom of speech in order to live safely. Well, at least most of the people.

@ the Guardian

In short: it's very good but not the classic it could have been.

@ ign.com

A bold leap that doesn't nail the landing.

@ Kotaku

Mirror’s Edge: Leaps of Faith End in Splat.

@ Wired

Mirror's Edge, the First-Person Parkour Game You Must Play

Yeah, well, until my bones stop bleeding, this is the only way I'll be getting my parkour on. So screw you, bad reviews, I'm going to like this one with a bias to a degree that likens itself to my busted digits.

Both Senators Hillary Rodham Clinton and Joseph Lieberman, who once stood together to attack the current rating system, are big fans:

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY)
"This new supplement to the ratings is a real gift for parents as we head into this holiday season. Parents need all the information they can get to make more informed decisions about what’s appropriate for their children. These new rating summaries offer more helpful information than ever before to help parents to get involved and get informed."

Senator Joseph Lieberman (I-CT)
“For well over a decade I have called upon the video game industry to inform consumers about the content in video games so they could make the right choices for their children. One result was the creation of the ESRB rating system, which provides useful guidance to parents about game content and age-appropriateness. The ESRB has now taken consumer education one step further with their new rating summaries, which provide a greater level of detail about game content to help parents be even more prepared to make informed game selections for their children. I applaud the ESRB for taking this proactive step to inform video game consumers.�

I guess I can't really complain if this sticks. As long as people continue to allow games developers to self-regulate, I'm OK with that.

But I can't help but point out that I never had any such limitations on games. My dad was OK with me getting the Leisure Suit Larry game, my mom wasn't, and as such, I don't have a weird fetish for cartoon ladies. (Giant fighting robots, on the other hand, rrrowrr.)

I still say that these people would be better off trying to figure out where all that money went...

"PC gamers have known for a long time that there are lots of them out there, you get on a server for a brand new beta of Call of Duty World at War and you get on there at 6 o'clock at night and you see thousands and thousands of people playing on hundreds of servers," he told Ars. "The notion that PC game is dead immediately gets bumped if you're a player... What the PCGA is attempting to do with its research is to quantify the market, to say 'We know you're out there, and we're going to add you up and make certain that everyone recognizes that you count.'"

Stude also says the PCGA wants to help gamers choose the right hardware. "With the amount of money that people are spending on their new PC, the PC [they're buying] should have graphics capabilities, and CPU and memory capabilities, powerful enough to play the games they want to play." The PCGA wants to make the suggested gaming requirements clearer, and it wants to communicate "in harmony" what it thinks the best gaming experience is on the PC, and to show OEM how to make these things clear to consumers. Announcements about this goal are expected in the coming months.

The most difficult hurdle, I think, is maneuvering a ratings system into place without it turning into marketing. Well, not good marketing, but bad marketing. The kind that has three separate naming schemes for the current lineup. Or without it pandering to low-end hardware, or falling into separate camps between manufacturers...

That and cosplay in general is a hurdle. Not a we're a bunch of diverse fans, accepting all creeds hurdle, but definitely the holy crap did that dude dressed as Darth Vader just do what I think he did... with a crutch!? hurdle.

image creative commonsed from Brandy Shaul

Gmail's new voice and video features work in modern browsers that support the latest version of its web app, namely Firefox 2.0+, Safari 3.0, IE7, and Google Chrome. Google Apps users will also get this feature as it rolls out, but Gmail voice and video conversations are only supported on Mac OS X, Windows XP, and Windows Vista via a Gmail voice and video chat plug-in that must be installed. Sorry, students, Internet café nomads, and cubicle warriors everywhere, but you may have to beg your admins for this new feature.

I'm kinda pumped about the cross-OS, browser-integrated audio/video chat that's coming down the pipe from the Goog'. It seems like it's really as easy as installing a plug-in and firing away with the video chat requests, something even my mom can do. My brother and I went the Skype route last month because we are on either side of the OS divide, and it took much trial and toil to get even that to work correctly.

That reminds me... have any of you seen the auto-zoom that Sony integrated webcams (and, most likely, others) use to keep your mug front and center during a video call? It digitally pans and zooms to a person's face, but it's all choppy and slow-like. Reminds me of one of those bad killer-internet-video-game / live-murderer-webcast flicks that have come out over the last few years. But since it's real life, it's more legitimately creepy.

It’s likely that the new chip will be smaller and more energy efficient than current AMD processors. And AMD, which acquired graphics card maker ATI not too long ago, will likely use ATI’s expertise to produce a chipset with integrated graphics capabilities that will allow for decent high def video playback without burning down your battery in a matter of seconds.

In the past, AMD’s comments about netbooks have left me wondering whether the company truly understands what makes these tiny notebooks tick. We won’t know for sure until AMD unveils more details about the new processor, but I’m still a bit dubious. Focusing on battery life is a good start. But I’m not convinced that graphics should be a high priority. Sure, it’s nice to be able to watch some web video or a ripped DVD on the go. But I’ve never had a problem doing that with an Intel Atom, or even Celeron CPU. If AMD can offer performance as good or better without taking a toll on battery life, that’s fine. But I’d rather see a focus on multi-tasking. A dual core, low power chip would be a nice.

Pictured above: a netbook with a dual-core AMD Turion and 690E integrated video. It's E like with Jag-u-ars, so, limited and drop-dead gorgeous. You know, for integrated video.

What I'm saying is that AMD doesn't have any "new" plans to get into the netbook market, they're already there and with damn fine hardware, even if it's just the one netbook. Since they announced Phenom in aught-six, they've stated that they had no intention of phasing out the K8 architecture (although I bet no one expected to hang on to it quite like they have) instead, cutting it down, tweaking it for super-low-power and decent, if improved, mobile performance.

Not that there's much on the Turion Ultra front, either. But whatevs.

In many (if not most) cases, these devices are available in a series of successive prototype builds that improve on elements of the hardware before they're blessed and released to manufacturing for retail; the availability dates you see here are of the most recent prototype build that we were able to find. Notable goodies include the "Corolla" with a 3-inch VGA display, the "Jig" landscape slider for AT&T, and the "Eitri," a monster QWERTY candybar with a 640x350 display and 5-megapixel camera, but there's a ton of good stuff here, so make a bowl of popcorn, curl up with your laptop, and take a few minutes to digest this thing in its entirety.

When taken in context, that's probably the sexiest set of sans serif text I have read in a long while. And there's a concept with the code name "Bruce Lee". Nokia's always gotten a discrete nod of personal approval from me for their higher end handsets. They're always packing the really pricey hardware with tons of cutting edge features, and the operating system has kept pace (for the most part). It's encouraging to see that they've still got "it" when it comes to whiteboard dreaming. I see lots of WiFi + AGPS and lots of significantly higher resolution screenage up in that list - hot.

The first half of 2009 might turn out revealing some sweet Nokia phones. I cry tears of desperation, though, because the U.S. will probably only see the release of two or three of 2007's coolest phones and a budget bottom-feeder or two. I want to move to Europe so I can play with the truly new stuff without having to pay exorbitant amounts for imported units.

The MintyBoost is a small DIY kit is available from the Makershed and works well for any gadget that can be charged via a USB port. It's been tested with iPods, cameras, cell phones, and other gadgets to make sure that it works well. What's really cool is that the power comes from 2 AA batteries. That's right, you just plug in two disposable AA batteries and charging will start.

Funny that I spotted this today, as Kurtis and I were mashing our brains together earlier in an attempt to come up with the a plan to build the coolest DIY headphone amp ever conceived. Apparently the mint-tin is in for such projects. Too bad the MintyBoost doesn't have laser beams or a ninja star thrower hidden inside. If my aim is true over the next two weeks, however, the (un)official TTL Headphone FrankenstAmp will.

I just hope it works without shocking me every time the 808 goes off in Let the Beat Build. I might have to hit the kill switch.

The iPhone recevied a score of 778 on a 1,000-point scale, the company said. Apple scored well in several categories including ease of operation, physical design and handset feature factors.

Apple competitors Research in Motion, makers of the BlackBerry scored a 703 and Samsung scored a 701 in the survey.

Sure, it's all rainbows and unicorns for most. The iPhone is real purdy. It does several things very well, and it doesn't pretend to do anything that it can't. The browsing and e-mail apps are almost untouchable, in my opinion. I bought an iPhone 3G a week ago because I needed a standard headphone jack to test all these headphones I have sitting around my cave. And 3G sounded really sexy.

So I had an audio out that will accommodate any phones I want, and I could pull down data much faster... and my "silent" switch popped off after 6 days? And I drop calls faster than Kimbo Slice got dropped by Seth Petruzelli last month?

Maybe I'm not so bad off though. Customer service, through both in-store issue resolution (pending an extraordinarily long wait) and frequent software updates, has been better than with any other wireless device I have owned. The broken hardware was replaced without question, and software updates in the past have fixed issues like the call dropping. The platform keeps getting better. I tried, desperately, to give a different phone a chance for a day before I picked up the 3G. And nothing I found in extensive demoing could come close to the smooth-like-butter iPhone experience. I guess I'll roll with the surveyed masses on this one.

“Before Fusion introduced the CA-IP500, iPod support in car stereo systems was kludgey at best,” said Todd Crocker, head of region, Fusion Electronics USA. “With our new solution, the iPod nestles into the stereo, removing the need for cables, elaborate set-up or extra space. Our complementary iPod interface also gives users a seamless and familiar way to access their music. Taken together, our new iPod receiver is the most simple and powerful car audio solution available on the market.”

If you haven't given over to the dark, precipitous desire that is iPhone fanboyism, or you still prefer to have a dedicated music player at your side, Fusion's new iPod-devouring car stereo might be to your liking. It's compatible with generation 2 and 3 of the Nano, generation 5 and 6 of the Classic, generation 1 of the Touch, and all of the new iPods announced in September. Once you slip your iWidget inside the dock, you'll control the music through the head unit. If that interface ends up not frustrating the heck out of users, Fusion might have a winner on their hands.

I am in the market for a new head unit for my aging system in my Jeep, and this is just short of my dream setup. Imagine if Fusion was not only compatible with the iPhone, but they enabled built-in handsfree and interfacing with phone calls. It'd be like every other iPod / cell phone vehicle solution, but loaded on HGH and Red Bull. Someone needs to turn this giggle-inducing fantasy into reality. I know so many OCD people who would swoon for that kind of lack-of-wires, hands-off, hands-free integration. Fusion's offering is, pending an actual test impression, a wicked awesome solution in the mean time.