I don’t know about you guys but I’m waiting for a good excuse to stop playing Wii games altogether. And I haven’t played that many of them in the first place. I certainly have arguments to back up my decision. Like the crappy graphics of the Wii or the fact that its follower, the Wii 2, isn’t going to offer us any significant changes! Add to that the fact that both Microsoft and Sony are adding motion sensing support to their console next year and you’ll understand why I’m more and more determined to ditch the Wii.
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British Intelligence wants you… so you can work for them, that is. British Intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (or GCHQ) is the Signals Intelligence branch of the British intelligence community, and have begun placing adverts on the Xbox Live Dashboard to try and recruit gamers to positions within their organization.

The ad campaign to recruit gamers will run six weeks and is being handled by a third-party advertising agency. This isn’t the first time that GCHQ has run ads in the video gaming domain, as in 2007, the GCHQ ran ads in Tom Clancy’s Splinter Cell: Double Agent for the PC, also trying to recruit gamers.

Xbox Live’s key demographic is 18- to 34- year old men, which is also the GCHQ’s key recruiting demographic. The GCHQ recruiting website point-blankly states that “you have to be a British citizen to for GCHQ. There are no exceptions.” The United Kingdom is one of 26 countries where Xbox Live is legally available. No current data is publicly on how many of  Xbox Live’s users live in the UK.

GCHQ is not MI6. Its mission is intelligence analysis, so it’s doubtful that Call of Duty addicts will be infiltrating foreign governments and wooing accented women anytime soon. A spokeswoman for GCHQ told The Guardian that it looks for in an employee is “reflected in game-play experiences on Xbox, such as quick thinking, problem solving and team work”. She added that GCHQ is responsible for dealing with communication and cyber threats to England, and that gamers may inherently be inclined to know more about these fields.

Targeting gamers for employment is nothing new. In addition to GCHQ’s earlier attempts, the US Army spends $10 million annually in continually developing America’s Army, a free PC shooter that has players playing the role of American soldiers.

Just when we thought that the PS3 firmware 3.10, which brings Facebook integration among other goodies, was Sony’s latest attempt to get some attention and possibly new customers, a late night report came in stating that the company’s next firmware upgrade is going to bring 3D stereoscopic capabilities for the games played on their consoles.

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Richard Schaeffer is the NSA official who said before the Senate’s Subcommittee on Terrorism and Homeland Security that the National Security Agency has been working closely with Microsoft to enhance Windows 7’s security guide, igniting fear that the software giant has deliberately coded a backdoor into the newly announced operating system. But given Microsoft’s announcement today, it’s all speculation, as they have “not and will not put ‘backdoors’ into Windows”.

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Software developers who want to come up with their own software for Microsoft’s touch-based Surface technology can now do so for free, as the Microsoft Surface SDK is now free for all at the Microsoft Download Center.

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Super hero-themed MMORPG Champions Online is having its second free-play weekend, after only being released two months ago and having its first free-play weekend one month ago. The upcoming free-play weekend, which will be based around Thanksgiving, will coincide with an in-game content update called ‘Nemesis Confrontation’, and will feature new player costumes and quests.

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Just when we thought the OpenOffice Mouse debacle and the Sony Vaio X “dead rat” are going to be the most popular models this month, we laid our eyes a new mouse introduced by the folks from Smartfish Technologies. The Smartfish Ergomotion mouse functions like any other run-of-the-mill wireless laser mouse, with some pretty large left and right buttons and a big scroll wheel.

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Cloud Engines has announced today the second generation Pogoplug. That’s all fine and dandy but what’s a Pogoplug most people will ask. A Pogoplug is an interesting device that will let you access all the content you want from your USB drives over the Internet. That means you don’t have to carry with you portable hard drives anymore. Instead just get a Pogoplug and access everything on those USB drives from anywhere in the world. It’s like setting up your own cloud.
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Google have officially confirmed that they have revamped their Google News for Mobile service for the iPhone, Palm Pre and Android phones which, according to Google, “provides the same richness and personalization on your phone as Google News provides on desktop”.
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Microsoft have officially confirmed that, by way of celebrating the integration of new Xbox Live services such as the Xbox Live Facebook and Twitter functionality, they are offering up a free upgrade to their Xbox Live service for Silver members in all Xbox Live regions expect for us Europeans (quite why Europeans are excluded is not explained but that’s sure to get a few people’s back up, and understandably so).
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The AT&T – Verizon war keeps on going no matter what. After today’s truth about the 3G ads, we caught wind that there’s a race for netbooks, too. If last month we found out that Big Red has announced availability for the new HP Mini 110 netbook, today AT&T has done the same announcing that they’ll add to their range of 3G mobile broadband equipped netbooks with the new Mini 110.

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Microsoft is no stranger to the inside of a court room in its 34-year history, and another is potentially coming what with Law firm Abington Law having announced that they are investigating a Class Action Lawsuit against the software giant, representing people who have been unfairly banned by the Xbox Live service.
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Better late than never right? That’s how the saying goes and it looks like Sony clearly qualifies for that. The company has realized that Apple’s iTunes idea is a goldmine and therefore it’s preparing to launch its own iTunes version which will sell music, movie and books to its customers. Mobile applications could also be included in the future Sony Online Service but let’s not get ahead of ourselves!
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Imation are now shipping their M-Class SSD Upgrade Kits which is aimed specifically at users looking for an all-in-one SSD upgrade solution for those wishing to swap out their HHDs for SSDs with the minimum of fuss.
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If earlier reports have pointed out that the new ThinkPad X100e is actually Lenovo’s first Thinkpad netbook, today we caught wind that the computer manufacturer is not going to introduce only one, but two models. Guilty for the whole thing is the new Lenovo ThinkPad Edge ultraportable, a rather powerful machine that feature sa choice of AMD and Intel processors (ranging from the AMD Turion X2 or AMD Neo to the Pentium SU4100 or the Core 2 Duo SU7300) designed for the ultra low power segment.

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Toys R Us has decided to pleasantly surprise us and tempt us with a few pre-Black Friday game deals. And we certainly love pre-Black Friday deals, don’t we? The company will offer you a couple of extra savings on various products starting with Sunday, November 22 and ending on Thursday, November 26.
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Lexar has announced today new storage solution for your gaming consoles. These are the Memory Stick Micro M2 and the Secure Digital High Capacity (SDHC) memory cards.
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Just as we told you a few days ago, Google has decided to unveil its own computer operating system this year. Although we were expecting it to arrive at some point in 2010, Google execs must have realized that now’s the time to make Google OS official.
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If you’re looking for a sizable laptop that offers portability whilst happily serving as a desktop replacement and you fancy getting in on a little mulittouch action then Dell hope that their new Studio 17 multitouch touting laptop will prove tempting enough to part you with your hard earned cash.
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Archos have acted to confirm that shipping of its latest tablet PC, the Archos 9, is now set to be delayed with those who have pre-ordered the Archos 9 now having to wait till next month before potentially getting their hands on the 8.9” Windows 7 powered UMPC. And, it’s worse news still if you haven’t pre-ordered as its not not set to hit shelves until 2010.
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iBuyPower captured some attention earlier this year by unveiling their Chimera gaming PC. Built using one of the company’s signature custom cases, it looked really awesome with some great glossy fire graphics and some amazing performance on the inside. Today, however, the company has announced the slick Chimera 2 desktop and it looks like it really does the part about being a true gaming PC.

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We’re back with more Apple tablet rumors and you might not like what I’ll tell you today. It looks like Apple decided to push back the launch of the tablet to the second half of 2010. Are there any problems in paradise? Is Cupertino unable to deliver the tablet at an earlier date next year?
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Having advised you earlier this week that the new PS3 firmware update (specifically the 3.10 PS3 firmware update – which has now become available) was to introduce Facebook integration to the PS3 according to as yet unsubstantiated rumours just hitting the wires it appears that Sony and Mozilla are currently in talks with view to integrating Mozilla’s Firefox browser in a future firmware update.
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If you’ve been aching to get your hands on the latest iteration of what is the most selling software title of all time, namely the latest instalment in the Microsoft Office – namely Microsoft Office 2010 – and you happen to be either a Technet or a MSDN subscriber then you’ll doubtless be pleased to know that you can get you hands on the Microsoft Office Beta as of today.
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ASUS just announced a new notebook that supports NVIDIA’s GeForce 3D Visionand generates 3D imagery. Dubbed ASUS G51J 3D, it packs a GeForce GTX 260M graphics card with 1GB of video RAM, renders everything on a 15.6-inch 120Hz LCD screen that boasts 1366×768 pixel resolutions, and includes NVIDIA’s special 3D glasses.

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Activision has announced today a brand new Tony Hawk game, the Tony Hawk: RIDE. What’s particularly interesting about this new title is the introduction of a new controller. The skateboard controller is a unique concept so if you love skateboarding you’ll certainly love the RIDE.
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ViewSonic are now rolling out their new VOT550 PC Mini which takes the form of an ultra compact PC which, thanks to its integrated Blu-ray drive and inbuilt Ethernet and WiFi connectivity would serve happily as a digital home entertainment hub – though the apparent lack of HDMI output is a somewhat curious omission.
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We’ve shown you the MSI Wind Top AE2220 a while ago and now we’re happy to tell you that the all-in-one computer is official. MSI has announced the U.S. availability of the Wind Top AE2220 and today you can have one with prices starting at $749.99.
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OCZ, who are no strangers to TFTS, have officially introduced their new Colossus range of SSDs. The new OCZ Colossus solid states drives, aside from boasting maximum read speeds of up to 260MB/s, are also particularly interesting as they top out with a 1TB capacity SSD – namely the OCZSSD2-1CLS1T – which offers somewhat higher capacity than are usually offered in OCZ SSD ranges.
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A few weeks ago, the cool freaks from Maingear have announced what many call a supercomputer. Dubbed Maingear Shift, the beast delivers a good choice of Intel Core i7 processors, works on DDR3-1600 memory (up to 24GB if you can imagine), has Asetek liquid-cooling and either six regular hard-drives or 12 SSDs for some serious storage space.

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