Because we want you to start every week on a high note, we bring you 'TechSpot Weekly' a new feature meant to give you an overview of what's going on the site behind scenes, the latest updates from our community, and mention in advance what's hot in tech during the coming week. Random thoughts and points of view will make an appearance as well. TS Weekly is a recognition to the community that revolves around this site, both on and off of it.
There is no better way to get started than mentioning the impending release of StarCraft II. We know many of you have been playing the beta, but tomorrow marks the final release of this long awaited sequel that likely deserves all the hype behind it. Yesterday, on our weekend round-up we linked to a very cool infograph that puts in perspective just how popular the original game was (and still is, especially if you live in South Korea!). We will be hard at work, testing the final game code for our definitive StarCraft II GPU/CPU performance review. You can expect that article later this week.
In addition we plan to complete a review on the Patriot Box Office, an all-in-one media player that has the potential to fit the needs of those not entirely decided on building a dedicated HTPC. Price is certainly an attractive aspect of the Patriot device.
Moving on to non-content related site updates, I have to mention we are always performing small to mid-sized enhancements on the background, some of which you may never even notice. Two recent noteworthy changes are the use of a CDN (Content Delivery Network) to serve static files around the globe at blazing speeds, and further server-side optimizations, courtesy of our own Per Hansson. As some of you may be aware, we use Linux to run our servers but late last year we switched from the ubiquitous Apache web server to the more obscure and very speedy Nginx (pronounced 'engine X'), which has given us ample room to grow our traffic without the need to spend on new servers.
We have several new things planned for our community and the forums. I won't spoil any surprises just yet, but I will mention the revival of our special title designations for members that have been an essential part of our community for a long period of time. Over a dozen deserving members were upgraded, and also for the very first time we are allowing custom titles. In the near future we expect to bring these to news comment pages and plan to transform the special titles to prominent badges that can be displayed along your username. Suggestions on this and any of the other topics we just touched on above are welcome and highly appreciated.
Offtopic: Last night the fourth season of Mad Men made its debut. What a great TV show.