VIA has launched a new development board in the form of the VIA VAB-600 Pico-ITX, which has been created to allows developers to create low-power, small form-factor PCs or embedded devices.

The VIA VAB-600 Pico-ITX board is powered by a 800 MHz VIA Wondermedia WM8950 ARM Cortex-A9 processor, supported by 1GB DDR3 SDRAM, with Mali-400 graphics.

Other features of the VIA VAB-600 Pico-ITX board include 4GB of onboard storage and 1x USB 2.0 port, 2 x mini USB, GPIO pins, 1 x mini PCIe slot, 1 x Ethernet jack, and optional support for a touchscreen, SIM card, 3G, or WiFi, when required.

"Based on the ultra compact Pico-ITX form factor, measuring 10 cm x 7.2 cm, the VIA VAB-600 fe ... Read more »

Apple has avoided paying as much as $9.2 billion US dollars in tax, Apple has billions of dollars of cash reserves that are offshore, and they are in the middle of a $55 billion stock buyback.

Rather than using their massive cash reserves which are offshore to finance the buyback, Apple used debt to finance part of the buyback, in the form of a $17 billion bond offering.

Apple will pay interest on this bond offering of around $308 million per year, the company has an offshore cash pile of around $100 billion, so it could have easily used this cash for the $17 billion needed, although that would have cost the company around $9.2 billion in tax.

Apple apparently paid $6 billion in income tax in the US, which is apparently one out of every $40 dollar ... Read more »

Google has rolled out a new update to their Gmail service this week which has added a great new feature, that now allows you to add Google Calendar events directly from within Gmail emails.

Now event dates that are underlined within Gmail emails can quickly and easily be added to your Google Calendar.

Google explains a little more about the new Gmail update and how its works:

"If you do a lot of scheduling over email, it’s now a little bit easier to create events directly from your Gmail. Starting today, dates and times within emails are lightly underlined: click them to schedule that conference call or lunch date without ever leaving Gmail.

When you cl ... Read more »

Microsoft has announced that its new Outloook.com email service now has more than 400 million active accounts, the company also announced that it has now switched all of its email users over from Hotmail.

Today, we’re excited to announce that we’ve completed upgrading all Hotmail customers to Outlook.com. Coupled with the growing organic excitement for Outlook.com, this has pushed us to over 400 million active Outlook.com accounts, including 125 million that are accessing email, calendar and contacts on a mobile device using Exchange ActiveSync.  We’re also pleased to announce that we’re adding two new features to Outlook.com: SMTP send, so it’s easier to send mail from different email addresses, and deeper integration with SkyDrive.

Microsoft h ... Read more »

Mozilla has today announced that they have now finalised the functionality of their new Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 software and released it for use by all.

The new Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 has been designed to allow you to play with the new Mozilla Firefox OS in your Firefox browser, enabling you to see the features and navigation available in the latest release.

The Firefox OS Simulator 3.0 includes a number of new features including :

- Push to Device
- Rotation simulation
- Basic geolocation API simulation
- Manifest validation
- Stabili ... Read more »

Anthony Burch, a Borderlands writer, leaked the title for the next downloadable content for Borderlands 2. This is the picture he tweeted, which has now been removed. It shows a poster with the title of next Borderlands 2 DLC, "Tiny Tina’s Assault on Dragon Keep.”

 
Gearbox has since confirmed that yes, this is the new DLC. Gearbox did show off Tiny Tina when teasing something for Borderlands 2 at the PAX East conference which took place back in March, so maybe we should have expected this.

When we hear more we will pass it on. At least we know the title and character now.

Source Ubergizmo

Hacker Phame has taken a low powered Raspberry Pi mini PC, which is available to purchase for around $35, and added a pimped up cooling system creating a water cooled Raspberry Pi mini computer.

To re-cap the Raspberry Pi mini computer which is manufactured in Wales, UK, is equipped with a a 700 MHz ARM11 processor, which can safely be overclock it to 1 GHz if desired.

If you would like to go even higher than that you might then nee to think about upgrading to something similar to the water cooled Raspberry Pi version created by Phame.

The water cooled Raspberry Pi took a few months to build and uses neon-pink water pumped to three of the hottest points on the Raspberry ... Read more »

Steve Jackson the legendary UK games designer, and co-founder with Ian Livingstone of Games Workshop and Fighting Fantasy, has this week launched a new iOS game called Steve Jacksons Sorcery.

The new Steve Jacksons Sorcery game is an epic solo quest first published by Penguin Books via the ‘Fighting Fantasy’ series of adventure gamebooks way back in 1983, which I have fond memories playing.

Now the books have been updated into a iOS game that allows you to Journey across the wilds of Kakhabad on a quest to recover the Crown of King. Watch the trailer to see it in action.

"Choose your own path across the hand-drawn 3D map, overcome devilish traps, and battle fearsome cre ... Read more »

After a couple of leaks along the way Ubisoft has this week officially released their new retro styled game Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon.

The new Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon game is a standalone expansion to Far Cry 3, even though either game has very little in common with the other. Watch the launch trailer after the jump to see it in action.

"Developed by Ubisoft Montreal, Far Cry 3 Blood Dragon lets players get the girl, kill the bad guys and save the world in a VHS-era vision of the future! As Sergeant Rex Colt, you are part man, part machine, all American. You are a state-of-the art Mark IV cyber-commando on a mission…of vengeance.

You’re out to bring down your old c ... Read more »

Adonit has this week announced the launch of their new Jot Touch 4 Stylus which builds on the technology used in its previous styluses and now includes Palm Rejection Technology.

Allowing you to enjoy drawing naturally without worrying about your palm drawing lines as you write or sketch.Watch the video after the jump to see it in action.

The new Jot Touch 4 Stylus delivers 2,048 levels of pressure sensitivity enabling you to draw and write with a wide variety of strokes. The Jot Touch 4 Stylus can be paired with Bluetooth 4.0 devices and its rechargeable battery proves a month of use on a single charge.

"You deserve the freedom to write and draw like you’re used to. Jot Touch 4 was created to give you th ... Read more »