Welcome back to this week's edition of TG's time wasting guide

Lots of stuff to catch up on, and remember, federal charges will apply unless you click on every one of these links......


Tech Hardware News

ASUS' USB 3.0-equipped P6X58D Premium motherboard now available -We have been talking USB 3.0 about in another thread, and looks like we are finally seeing some motherboards. Looking forward to seeing some numbers.

Buffalo announces USB 3.0 Blu-ray burner, ships HDD - Along the lines of the MB above, now there is some toys to play with.

Scythe Setsugen GPU cooler tested - We have a thread going right now about another Scythe GPU cooler, and this new one looks to work great too. Not bad for under $40.

NVIDIA Tegra tablet prototype hands-on - This might be an early look at what an Apple Tablet might be like. Hopefully Apple will announce in Jan., but latest rumors have it priced over $1,000. Sure hope that is wrong. A site called Techcrunch was saying they were going to introduce one for under $500, but it is vapor ware so far. Check out the video at the link where it shows the charging station. Think about running the tablet as an 2nd display, but then you just take it with you to the living room or to school.

Ostendo now selling CRVD display directly; multiple CRVD display rig blows minds on video -Get a towel, because you are going to be drooling all over yourself, until you see the price and your mouth goes dry. Funny thing is the demo video has 3 together, which would be $20k.

Razer Imperator gaming mouse ships with adjustable side buttons, disdain for southpaws Interesting concept. Seems like Razer comes out with something new every week.

The Four Gaming PCs Worth Lusting After - Hope you have a trust fund, but they are pretty good.

Sewell's DisplayLink-enabled USB-to-DVI / VGA / HDMI adapter does 2,048 x 1,152 - Do I see a triple monitor setup in your future? Only thing is the new ATI cards have 4 outs, but not sure if you can use all at once.

SSDs with TRIM Support - This helps explain why you want TRIM on that new SSD drive you will be buying soon.

Kill-A-Watt's Updated Graphical Version Has Programmable Timer - I keep meaning to pick up the old version when it is on sale on newegg, but might get one of these instead.

Korean 3D television broadcasts in Full HD just weeks away - Like we talked about last week, 3d TV is coming. I can't wait to see what CES has to show this year.

Core i7 Scaling -Really good article for you to scan through. They take a brand new ATI 5970 and then underclock and overclock an i7 to show what a difference it makes. Interesting to see how many games out are CPU limited VS GPU limited. You could have your CPU clocked to 5.0, and still wouldn't give you an extra FPS over stock.

Large Hadron Collider is online, Higgs boson be damned - Talk about some massive hardware!

USB Pet Rock - I so want to get one for the wife for Christmas. Thought I'm considering making one myself.



Tech Software/Web News

Nvidia releases new official GeForce drivers - I feel like I post this every week. Oh wait, I do. At least ATI only does it once a month.

Driver Sweeper 2.1 Completely Uninstall Drivers - Pretty big news. He completly rewrote it from the ground up. I posted it next to the Nvidia driver news since you should always use Driver Sweeper when you change drivers. Just cuts down on chances of something going buggy.

Hulu grows by 47% in October, Google serves over 10.5 billion videos - I've been using Hulu almost nonstop the past week. Watched all 9 seasons of Stargate, The Daily Show, Lie to Me, 30 Rock, Sons of Anarchy, and am halfway done with all the Kyle XY series.

This Week's Best iPhone Apps - Lots of GPU ones out.

The 5 Games You Should Be Installing On Your Android Mobile Phone - Should come in handy for all you Droids.

Freeware Files: Widescreen Mania! Make the Most of your Monitor's Real Estate! - I tried the Edgeless app in the article a long time ago, and don't remember why I stopped. Some other good apps as well.

Fishbowl – An Awesome Facebook Client For Windows - For all you Facebookers out there.

Hands-On Look at What's New in Office 2010 We talked about the open beta last week, and here is a quick review of it. They say "t adds a lot of stuff that's previously been available only through plug-ins, makes performing the basic tasks of opening, printing, and sharing documents a good deal more convenient, and throws in a few new features that will expand the repertoire of those who really know their Office."

Power Pack 3 for Windows Home Server Available Now - I think a couple of TG folks have Windows HS running, so this should be good news.

MediaMonkey 3.2 Syncs with More Devices, Adds Auto Folder Watching - If you are ready to give Itunes the boot, and still want to sync your Ipod/phone. I keep meaning to give this a try as it looks really good.

Programmer adds IE 9 graphics acceleration to Firefox - Oh hell yeah!

Internet Radio Recorder The MP3 VCR - We have a thread around here somewhere about recording internet radio, and here is another good app. I still like StationRipper since it can import directly to Itunes and other cool tricks.

Ace Free Fonts I know there are some other font junkies here. I love this site because it is so easy to test the font with your own text right on the site. Saves from having to install the font and then test in an program only to find it isn't right.

Media Cope – An All In One Media Player, Cutter & Converter -Interesting app that lets you edit your media. Not sure how it stacks up against other programs.

Antenna Web - Cool site that lets you enter your zip/address, and can tell you what HD stations you can pull in with an antenna and how to do it. One more way to cut the Cable cord.

FastStone Image Viewer 4.0 - I haven't used FastStone since version 1.0-2.0, but the new 4.0 version released this week looks really good.

Is There a Noticeable Difference Between 1080p and 720p YouTube? - We talked about this last week, and this is the best example of it I have seen yet. And the video is funny as hell too. Man I miss the Muppets.

Darik's Boot And Nuke - A buddy needed some help on xfire the other night with a bad HD, and we were looking for something to try and wipe the drive and found this program. Looks pretty good. Wipes the drive without booting into the OS.

Vanilla Forums - Lets you set up free forums for whatever you want. They don't look to be too fancy, but if you just wanted a place to talk about something, could be a good option.

BitSnoop: A New Torrent Search Engine - I don't torrent much, except like RealityMod downloads, but I read this week that PirateBay and MinoNova are both out now for may people.

Cambridge's ProFORMA does 3D scanning with any stationary webcam and Creator of ProFORMA 3D scanning system talks details, availability - This is awesome. Think about how easy it will be to add new object to a game once this gets perfected. Though texturing will still be very important.

40 Beautiful Dark Website Designs - Not saying TG's homepage needs an update, but *cough, cough*. Some of those examples are pretty awesome.

61 Free Apps We're Most Thankful For - Tons of good programs, most of which you will reginize. I just like they are all in one place. But don't forget about the killer thread flakt posted here:Huge Free Software List - Everyone should check out that thread and give flakt a +1 rep for putting all that together. It already says I can't give rep for the same post twice



How To and Guides

TV Calibration: The Easy Route - For all you picking up a new TV this season.

The Incredible Guide to NEW Ubuntu (Karmic Koala) [PDF] - Like last week's ubuntu guide, but from another good site and in PDF forum.

Quickly Add Media to iTunes When It’s Not Running - Might come in handy.

How-to: get music, video, and photos off your iPod or iPhone (Windows) - Kind along the lines of the one above.

How-To: Rip Archival-Quality MP3s from Audio CDs - For all you audio junkies out there.

20 Essential Tips and Tricks Every Flickr User Should Know

4 Unique and Cool Ways To Use Dropbox

How to Do Automatic Color Correction On Your Pictures For Free - For those super quick touch-ups.

Disable “Windows is checking for a solution…” message after a program crashes - This annoys the heck out of me. Glad there is an easy fix.

Tech Tip of the Week: How to Change the Logon Screen Wallpaper on Windows 7 - I plan on doing this the first day I install Win7.


Random and Off-Topic,

29 Really Creepy and Creative Photoshopped Self Portraits

20 Amazing Examples of Conformal Photography. How do they do this? - don't get dizzy

Top 85 Halloween Costume Ideas! - About a month late, but might help you out for next year.

40+ Impressive Examples of Lightning Photography - Wow.

Parkour Fail Compilation - We don't need no stinking health care [/sarcasm]. I'm so glad Parkour wasn't around when I was in my teens. I would have been in traction. The site that video is on is awesome for those that haven't seen it.

Yamaha Wants You To Hear The Lexus LFA - Gives me goose bumps.

All that wasted Vodka
[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xQvXU-T9nKQ[/media]

and

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zFWQJ-D_Uo[/media]

The voice over on that one was great.

I first saw this Target Ad on a Hulu commercial. Hope they release a full track

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdGuloi_6_0[/media]


The last few clips on the video blow have me in aww! I keep watching it over and over. I grabbed the songs from the vids on Itunes as well.

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVYlpCZ2OXY[/media]


And finally, some pics I stared at this week, and now you get to as well:




























+10 points to the first person to tell me what city the shot above was taken in