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If you are a Fallout fan and have been watching the development of Fallout 3, you'll definitely want to check out some newly released videos for the game. Bethesda showed five new videos for the upcoming title, and my initial perspective is that it looks simply awesome.

The updated HUD looks tiny but cumbersome, though it's definitely lighter in appearance than the original series were. The graphics don't leave anything to the imagination and the gameplay so far seems very smooth. The VATS system remains nearly true to its original form, which was something most fans were gunning for. The only thing I didn't notice was any remnant of the SPECIAL system. All in all, the videos are definitely worth watching, and at this point I am sold on getting it by day one.

Microsoft is looking to enhance its Live Search offering with the $486 million acquisition of Greenfield Online, the owner of European price comparison and shopping site Ciao. The deal marks Microsoft’s largest purchase since the demise of its $44 billion takeover bid for Yahoo earlier this year and is part of the company’s recent efforts to combine shopping and search.

Ciao provides consumer reviews and ratings along with prices from online merchants, and will be integrated with Microsoft's Live Search platform to deliver a “richer, more rewarding” experience for advertisers and consumers. Whether or not the acquisition will have a significant effect on Microsoft's search market share remains to be seen, but it’s interesting to see them shift their focus to the shopping and commercial search markets as they struggle to compete with Google in general purpose search.

Apple is scrambling to fix the latest in a series of glitches plaguing their iPhone recently. The flaw, discovered earlier this week, is remarkably simple to expose, involving just a few simple taps on a PIN-locked iPhone to expose private data such as email accounts, browser bookmarks and the address book.

Apple issued a statement saying that a fix for the problem is due next month in a software update. While the company is calling this a minor security issue and indeed there is a fairly easy workaround to avoid being exposed, news of the flaw could be seen as a blow to Apple’s aspirations to have the iPhone compete in the business market. For all the praise the iPhone gets in the press and from fans, it’s almost perplexing to see this rather embarrassing security hole plaguing the device.

Yahoo has decided to pull the plug on its Mash social networking service, in what has been another failed attempt to compete in this rapidly growing market. The one-year old service was meant to be the follow-up to Yahoo 360, a previous attempt at creating a social-network from the millions of Yahoo users, but never truly made it out of beta.

Previously, in 2006, Yahoo was not able to close a $1.62 billion transaction with Facebook nor could they pull the trigger on a $1 billion Bebo deal. We should note however that the company’s part blogging and part search-based social networking tool, Yahoo 360, is still running and will remain unaffected – though it has failed to lure users away from top players Facebook and MySpace.

One of the most useful functions a smartphone can have is the ability to tether. Anywhere you get cell reception you also get Internet service on your phone that you can hookup to your laptop, provided your plan (and phone) supports it. It's been a downer to some that the iPhone 3G was not among the devices to support such a useful feature, but that may be changing.

Apparently, statements from Steve Jobs himself have indicated that Apple and AT&T are working to bring tethering to the unit. This seems to be in response to numerous customer requests to offer such a service. Jobs has indicated that the delays from AT&T and Apple in providing tethering weren't in the best interests of iPhone users, but offered nothing in the way of saying why it has taken them so long to consider it either.

Yet another computer vendor is stepping into the netbook ring, with Fujitsu recently announcing the Amilo Mini Ui 3520. Similar to what we’ve come to expect from these low-cost alternatives to traditional notebooks, the Ui 3520 will feature a 1.6GHz Atom processor, an 8.9-inch display, 1GB RAM, and either 60GB or 80GB HDD.

Unlike some other netbooks however, this one offers an ExpressCard slot intended for the addition of the 3G connectivity and ditches Linux as an operating system option in favor of Windows XP Home. Other features include USB 2.0 ports, 4-in-1 card reader, VGA out, 1.3-megapixel webcam, and 802.11b/g Wi-Fi. The Amilo Mini Ui 3520 weighs in at about 2.2 pounds and is expected to cost around $585 – somewhat expensive for a netbook.

Even though AMD is the proud owner of multiple chipset lines, including their original chipsets along with the Radeon line, they actually have a minority share of chipsets for their own platforms. According to recent research, it is actually Nvidia who will be found sharing space with most AMD processors. More than 60%, in fact.

This figure has remained steady despite AMD's chipsets like the AMD 7 series helping them make a comeback, going from 26% to 37% in the past year. The share AMD has won has largely come from SiS and VIA, it seems. It's interesting that one of AMD's biggest competitors is the chipset of choice for their processors. If recent trends are an accurate depiction of how this will change, AMD should gain share pretty quickly.

Not all of that is good. If AMD manages to overtake Nvidia in this market, Nvidia may choose to focus on Intel CPUs. Ultimately that could lead to a vendor lock, with Nvidia being paired only (or largely) with Intel, and AMD relying on their own CPUs, GPUs and chipsets.

The IEEE standards group has formally approved 802.11r, a new variant on Wi-Fi that will make it easier for mobile devices to move seamlessly between access points. The technology is particularly useful for VoIP, where a short switching time between hotspots is required for maintaining the flow of conversation.

Also called Fast Basic Service Set Transition, the new standard allows for access point transfers of less than 50ms, which is the maximum time delay stipulated for wireless voice roaming, by establishing the security and quality of service state for the next access point before actually hopping to it.

No immediate plans have been announced for the new wireless standard – and of course city-wide Wi-Fi coverage to fully take advantage of this is still far from being a reality – though the approval should at least mean that the next generation of VoIP phones and other devices will be “roaming-friendly.” Meanwhile, the IEEE is still picking its way through the completion of the 802.11n standard, which isn’t expected to be ratified until next Spring.

Have you ever bought a game you had high hopes for, and then were disappointed, not by the game itself but all the politics and mismanagement surrounding it? Buggy and rushed releases, draconian copyright protection, intrusive download managers or updaters – all significant distractions from enjoying a game. Some feel so strongly about those distractions, developers included, that they have sought to craft a “PC Gamer’s Bill of Rights” that they feel should be used as a framework for game development and release.

Compiled by an independent game developer, it is composed of 10 rules they feel highlight the most common mistakes publishers make, most of which just anger and frustrate gamers, causing them to potentially avoid buying games in the first place. The rules include asking publishers to quit releasing rushed games, focusing on completing them rather than getting them out the door. It also asks to avoid using DRM, along with removing CD/DVD checks on launch. Some of the rules are very reasonable, and in fact if every game was released to those standards PC gaming would be a much different industry.

Most of them are just fantasies, though, as publishers these days would never agree to such terms. It's a good read, but perhaps more of a dream than anything close to reality.

Earlier this year rumors started to emerge that AMD had scrapped its plans to bring dual-core K10 parts to the market. That does not appear to be the case though, at least according to a screenshot taken from a German search engine which lists three Phenom X2 processors already for sale in Europe.

The chips in question range from 1.90GHz to 2.3GHz, with each of these 65nm parts sporting 1MB of L2 cache (512KB per core), 2MB of L3 cache and a TDP of 45W. While none of this has been confirmed by AMD, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes of ZDNet has done some digging around and found placeholders for these CPUs elsewhere on the web. Furthermore, X-bit labs reports that AMD will indeed release a dual-core chip based on the K10 micro-architecture in September, albeit under the Athlon X2 brand-name.

In related news, X-bit labs claims to have learned from “sources familiar with AMD's plans” that the company will announce 45nm Phenoms on early January, with the first quad-core chips expected to run at 2.8GHz and 3GHz and have 125W TDP.

After months upon months of debates, inquisitions, rumors and much more, the final outcome of the Comcast vs. the Internet fiasco looks like it's about to be resolved. Comcast has confirmed earlier rumors about bandwidth caps, and is now going to implement them.

Starting October 1st, Comcast will begin enforcing a 250GB monthly bandwidth cap. The cap, they say, will satisfy the overwhelming majority of their users given that the median consumption rate is only about 2-3 GB per month. From many perspectives, this is a fair amount. Even if you are an avid Netflix user and stream like crazy, download a lot of music, and spend 12 hours a day on YouTube, you'd be hard pressed to chew up 250GB of data in a month. For those that do, however, there's definitely going to be some backlash.

Whether or not people will agree with the cap, at least it's good and correct for customers to acknowledge what the set limitation is. Formerly, Comcast would simply fine or cancel accounts that consumed too much bandwidth (in their opinion) never telling customers how much that was anyway.

After hiccups and delays, Android, the Google-supported mobile phone initiative is finally nearing release. Looking to build some more interest around the platform and get developer’s attention, Google has revealed its competitor to Apple’s iPhone App Store, the Android Market, which will enable developers to publish applications and Android users to discover and download them onto their devices.

Unlike Apple's store, however, Android Market will be open to all with no approval process for applications – which of course lowers the barrier of entry for developers, but at the same time raises some questions about quality and most importantly about security.

The first handsets running Android are expected to appear later this year, and will include a beta version of the Android Market that might only support distribution of free applications. The search giant claims paid content will be offered later on, though it didn't disclose pricing for the applications nor how much of a commission it plans to take.

Samsung has revealed its latest addition to its laptop range, the X360, which the company is touting as being “lighter than air and fully featured” – clearly a reference to Apple’s MacBook Air. Weighing in at 2.8 pounds, this laptop sports a 13.3-inch LED-backlit display and unsurprisingly lacks a built-in optical drive.

Other than that, the X360 doesn't seem to compromise terribly on what’s inside, with a Centrino 2 ULV processor, up to 4GB of RAM, six-cell battery, and you can go with a traditional 120GB hard drive or opt for either a 64GB or 128GB solid state disk. You also get three USB 2.0 ports, HDMI, VGA, a 7-in-1 card reader, Ethernet port, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0, and built-in 1.3 megapixel webcam.

Samsung says the X360 will be available next month in Europe, but they’re keeping mum about price and U.S. release date.

It's not a secret, nor a surprise that laptop sales are soaring. People are constantly on the move and there is an ever increasing demand for their PCs to be equally mobile.

Just as purchasing a new desktop can feel overwhelming to the untrained eye, buying a new laptop tailored to your specific needs whilst remaining cost effective can seem virtually impossible with the sea of potential component combinations. Realizing this, we have analyzed the market and assembled a number of specification tables outlining the ideal components for the most in demand system types today:

• Desktop replacement notebooks
• Ultra-portable laptops
• Budget/Value-minded laptops

Mozilla has extended its search deal with Google for another three years, whereby Google pays the former a substantial sum in return for being set as the default home page and the default search box choice on Firefox. The deal has been lucrative for the Mozilla Foundation, to say the least, with Google supplying $56.8 million of their revenue in 2006 alone – or 85 percent of the total for the foundation.

The money has certainly come in handy for Firefox, which in just a few years has vaulted to its current position as the second-ranked browser and is increasingly becoming a threat to IE’s dominance. This latest move will ensure that the Mozilla foundation will be able to continue with the development of Firefox, at a time when Microsoft is fighting back hard with Internet Explorer 8 and both Safari and Opera are spreading fast in the mobile world.

Mozilla plans to release Firefox 3.1 by the end of the year with a revamped JavaScript engine it claims will dramatically boost performance in today’s rich Internet applications.