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During its Gamefest 2008 developer conference in Seattle, Microsoft not only made the multiplayer component in Games for Windows a free service but also revealed details concerning DirectX 11, the latest edition of its PC gaming graphics API.

Like its predecessor, DirectX 11 will be exclusive to Windows Vista and future versions of Microsoft’s operating system. Features include a new computer shader technology that lays the groundwork for developers to utilize video cards as parallel processors, as well as improved multi-core support and support for tessellation, which supposedly improves the appearance of close-in models.

Microsoft also revealed that the new software will add features to existing DirectX 10-compatible hardware, though it was not clear what those features may be. Don't go tossing your DirectX 10 card just yet, however, as DirectX will be available sometime in 2009-2010 when the next version of Windows ships.

It looks like Microsoft has finally caved to demands from PC gamers who have long-enjoyed online multiplayer for free. At its Gamefest 2008 event, the company announced it is making all of the Live functionality for the Games for Windows platform available at no cost – that includes Achievements, TruSkill matchmaking, friends lists, voice and text chat, and cross-platform play with Xbox 360 on games that support it.

The move is effective immediately and will affect all current and future Games for Windows titles too. In addition, Microsoft has reduced the technical requirements for those developers looking to utilize Live and will be adding a new Marketplace to the PC version of the service later this year along with a revamped user interface.

The move is certainly great news for gamers and should make Games for Windows a more direct competitor to Valve’s Steam service. I wonder, though, if Microsoft plans to reimburse those who already paid for a Live Gold Membership.

Firefox has come a long way since its debut in 2004, from the introduction of tabbed browsing and pop-up blocking in early builds to more recent features such as improved page rendering and anti-phishing protection in its latest 3.0 incarnation. Its adoption has grown steadily since inception, mostly at the expense of Internet Explorer, and now holds approximately 16% global usage share of web browsers.

Just before the launch of Firefox 3 in June, Wired sat down with Mozilla’s CEO John Lilly to talk about future plans for the browser. They’ve just recently posted the interview where they mention a couple of things worth noting, such as Lilly’s views on competition from Apple in both the desktop and mobile fronts as well as Mozilla’s dependence on advertising revenue from Google. Check out the full interview here.

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Their timing couldn’t possibly be worst – with Psystar’s recent run-in with Apple’s lawyers and all – but a new company is supposedly set to join the world of Mac clones. Open Tech has announced their new hardware lineup, including a desktop designed to run not just Windows XP and Vista, but Ubuntu and Mac OS X Leopard as well.

Though details are still rather scarce, a tentative configuration includes a 3.4GHz Intel processor, a 500GB hard drive, and 3GB of DDR2 RAM. Instead of loading the operating system onto a computer, Open Tech intends to evade the legal hassles incurred by Psystar by merely selling systems along with a “do-it-yourself” kit for users to install the OS of their choice – which they have to buy separately.

In other words Open Tech is dodging responsibility by letting the user violate the license agreement himself. Of course, inciting users to break the OS X license agreement is also one of the reasons Apple is suing Psystar.

Earlier this month news emerged about a flaw in the DNS standard that could allow attackers to redirect Internet requests to wherever they want – such as sites that engage in phishing or malware distribution. While Dan Kaminsky was hoping to wait until the Black Hat Conference to release details of the flaw he discovered, it appears that another researcher has jumped the gun and posted a hypothesis on how to exploit it.

On his blog, Halvar Flake described how an attacker could conduct DNS cache poisoning by overloading the server with requests until a legitimate answer is received. The technique also involves redirecting the name server to an IP address set up by the attacker and the use of “Bailiwick checking.” Matasano Security was already in on the details of the flaw and posted confirmation of Flake’s hypothesis, adding that an attacker with a fast internet connection would only need 10 seconds to carry out such an attack.

Kamsinsky, for his part, has declined comment on Flake's speculation but urged DNS operators to patch their servers immediately.

It is Vista’s fault that solid state drives aren’t performing as well as its promoters had predicted. At least according to SanDisk’s Chairman and CEO Eli Harari, who recently announced it has delayed the launch of optimized drives until next year to overcome serious performance issues with the operating system.

Speaking at the company’s second quarter earnings conference call, Harari deflected blame for being behind schedule by claiming “Vista is not optimized for Flash memory solid state disks.” According to Harari, SanDisk didn’t fully understand the limitations in the Vista environment and thus now they are forced to develop new Flash memory controllers that can be built into SSDs to allegedly compensate for the operating system’s shortfalls.

His statements were notably short on details, though. It would seem like SanDisk is just throwing out a red herring to draw the spotlight away from deficiencies in their SSD products, especially when we’ve already seen OCZ’s Core SSDs performing at levels comparable to those of 10,000 RPM hard disk drives.

ATI has released their first official driver with Radeon 4800 support. The new Catalyst 8.7 release brings the usual round of bug fixes along with a handful of performance enhancements in games including Company of Heroes, Call of Duty 4 and Lost Planet.

Users can also expect resolved problems in a host of games as well as a new “full Hardware information” section in the Catalyst Control Center that details each graphics card installed on a system. On the Linux front, the latest Catalyst release fixes a few bugs and adds support for Ubuntu 8.04, SuSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 SP2, and openSUSE 11.

You can learn more about the changes and fixes within the official release notes. As usual, the drivers are available for Windows XP 32 and 64-bit, Vista 32 and 64-bit, and Linux 32 and 64-bit.

Despite concerns of sluggish sales due to a troubled US economy, Apple today reported a 38 percent jump in revenue and a 31 percent gain in profit in its fiscal third quarter compared to a year ago – the best June quarter for both revenue and earnings in Apple’s history – thanks in no small part to the strength in sales of its Macintosh line of computers.

The company said revenue rose to $7.46 billion in the quarter ended June 28, and profits reached $1.07 billion, or $1.19 a share. Apple said it shipped 2.5 million Macintosh computers, up a whopping 41 percent from a year earlier. While iPod sales have been expected to begin flattening out, the company managed to move 11 million units during the quarter, for a rather unexpected year-over-year growth of 12 percent. Apple also said it sold 717,000 iPhones, compared with 270,000 a year ago. Interestingly, the iPhone does not appear to have cannibalized iPod sales, though the lower-priced iPhone 3G may change that beginning in the coming quarter.

Apple CEO Steve Jobs also took the occasion to tease fans about several unnamed new products that will supposedly launch “in the coming months.” The company’s shares nevertheless fell 9 percent in after-hours trading after revealing one of its typically conservative fourth-quarter earnings forecasts, where it said revenue would reach $7.8 billion and earnings would be about $1 a share.

Nvidia’s mobile GPU lineup has expanded today with the introduction of five new high-end products in the GeForce 9M series: the GeForce 9700M GT, 9700M GTS, 9800M GTS, 9800M GT, and 9800M GTX. Not only these new cards promise improved gaming performance, but also to help save power and increase battery life.

At the top end sits the flagship GeForce 9800M GTX, with a core frequency of 500MHz and 112 stream processors each running at 1250MHz. The card is based on the same G92 core of the previous-generation GeForce 8800M GTX but has a higher 420 gigaflops floating-point arithmetic rating. Next up is the 9800M GT and 9800M GTS, both based on the G94 core with a frequency of 500MHz – oddly, the 9800M GT appears to have better specs than the 9800M GTS with 96 stream processors compared to 64 on the latter.

The 9700M series includes the GeForce 9700M GTS and lower end 9700M GT. All these new models share many of the same features as cards announced early last month when the GeForce 9M line was unveiled, including Nvidia’s Hybrid SLI and Hybrid Power to save battery life.

The Windows Home Server Team announced on their blog the availability of the Power Pack 1 for that OS on the Microsoft Download Center. Additionally the patch has been released to manufacturing and is expected to become available through Windows Update beginning next month.

With its relatively short life, Windows Home Server has got a mildly positive reception, though it has been limited to a small number of OEM systems and Microsoft hardcore users willing to experiment with it for the most part. WHS is designed to sit in the middle of multiple connected PCs within a household to offer file sharing, automated backups, and remote access.

Much like its Service Pack counterparts, the Power Pack 1 provides a number of enhancements and fixes including support for home computers running Windows Vista x64 editions, backup of home server Shared Folders, improvements to remote access, more efficient power consumption and better performance. The biggest fix corresponds to a well documented data corruption bug on Home Server systems that contain more than one hard drive.

Facebook is suing a German social networking site by the name of StudiVZ for allegedly copying the look, feel, features and services of Facebook in order to piggyback off their success. The lawsuit comes several months after Facebook finally launched a German language version of its website but is apparently struggling to gain traction among users in that region.

Indeed StudiVZ does look like just a red version of Facebook and early versions of the site even featured filenames such as fbook.css and poke.php, according to reports. Facebook said it was seeking to end StudiVZ’s illegal activity to ensure that their reputation remains unharmed as well as monetary compensation in an amount to be determined at trial.

StudiVZ of course says the lawsuit is not about intellectual property but about stifling competition. Interestingly, Facebook began rolling out its revamped interface today so any alleged negative impact felt from StudiVZ’s copycat design should be significantly decreased.

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Intel has announced a slew of price cuts on more than half a dozen of its processors, bumping up the pressure on AMD following their announcement of yet another big quarterly loss and a change in management. The 3.16GHz Core 2 Duo E8500 got the largest cut, from $266 to $183 – a 31 percent reduction – followed by the 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo E7200, reduced 15 percent, from $133 to $113.

The 3GHz Core 2 Duo E8400 fell 11 percent, from $183 to $163. Meanwhile, the only quad-core part to receive the chop was the 2.4GHz Q6600, which already saw its price drop 16 percent back in April and can now be bought for just under $200, at $193. Xeon server processors also saw some price cuts, with the X3220 and X3210 chips both dropping 12 percent to $198, while the price of the E3110 went down 11 percent to $167.

Is the computer mouse soon to become a thing of the past? Analyst firm Gartner seems to think so, with innovations in the maturing fields of touch screens, motion detection and facial recognition systems supposedly driving the demise of the device in the next three to five years.

According to the Gartner analyst, Steve Prentice, using a mouse for working on a desktop will still carry on for a while but “for home entertainment or working on a notebook it is over.” That’s a rather sensationalistic claim, in my opinion. While newer pointing technologies like the Wii’s Motion Plus and the iPhone’s multi-touch interface are indeed revolutionary and offer great accuracy, they are of rather limited use for day-to-day applications.

With time there will undoubtedly be a change in the way we interact with our PCs, but Gartner’s predictions seem to be a bit ahead of their time. Not only prices of competing pointing technologies need to drop significantly before people even consider switching from the longstanding mouse, but whatever ends up replacing it should provide a more efficient way to interact with data than what the mouse already offers.