Finally there is a new video card that is worthwhile upgrading to, one that gives you great performance to price ratio! That card is the nVidia 460 GTX and it's making huge waves on the gaming front.

The price of the new card comes in around just above $200 (CAN) and is meant to be overclocked! At stock the card comes with a 675 MHz processor, and can be overclocked to over 800 MHz on air based cooling.

The card also runs cooler and draws far less power than the 480, which means you won't have to upgrade your power supply or install an after-market heatsink.

If you buy 2 of them and SLI the cards you will get more performance than a nVidia 480 top of the line card while still paying less money over all (nVidia 480 is around $500 CAN).

I would highly suggest that anyone looking for a new video card take a serious look at these cards and their potential.

Check out these in depth reviews by [H]ard|OCP:

• http://hardocp.com/article/2010/07/12/nvidia_geforce_gtx_460_review
• http://hardocp.com/article/2010/07/12/nvidia_geforce_gtx_460_sli_performance_followup
• http://hardocp.com/article/2010/07/26/geforce_gtx_460_sli_performance_vs_amd_gpus

Buy the nVidia 460 GTX:

• NCIX.com
• NewEgg.ca

If you're looking for a good stylist for a capacitive touch screen check out the Pogo Sketch. It works on Apple, Blackberry and Android devices with capacitive screens. Apple users can buy a clip for it as well to hold it on their device.

Link: Pogo Sketch

I'm probably going to get one because it's a little hard to draw detailed images in Sketch Online (Android) with a finger. 

The Pogo Sketch is said to work just find on phones and devices with screen protectors as well! Also great for the winter when you're wearing gloves.

If you want something a little cheaper there are many versions of the stylus on eBay for a few bucks. If you're really cheap you can use the negative side of a AAA battery. lol 

Great news for Linux and Mac users, a new stable version of Google's Chrome browser has been released!

I highly recommend Google Chrome. In my opinion it beats everything else hands down. It's fast, secure and lets me see web pages, not a window littered with tool bars.

Download Linux Chrome

Download Mac Chrome 

Now that Google's IO conference is done for the year I can re-post all of the videos for those of you who missed watching them. I was able to catch the live broadcast of Day 2's coverage, which was served to YouTube viewers in 720P with no lag at all. Very impressive. Day 1 had over 25,000 people watching.

Day 1 focused on Chrome and application development and Day 2 focused on Android and Google TV. There were a lot of other topics included, but that's the basic overview.

Now on to the videos!

Day 1: 

• Google Chrome and Application Development

Day 2: 

• Android Playlist
• Google TV Playlist

I think it's a cool idea to actually sell the game guide digitally, it should bring up the profits for the companies selling them.

Currently there are guides for BF: BC2, Left 4 Dead 2, Dragon Age, Just Cause 2, and the new Splinter Cell Conviction. 

Here's a link to the Battlefield: Bad Company 2 guide.

http://store.steampowered.com/app/22815/ 

Introduction:

A QR Code is a matrix code (or two-dimensional bar code) created by Japanese corporation Denso-Wave in 1994. The "QR" is derived from "Quick Response", as the creator intended the code to allow its contents to be decoded at high speed.

Usefulness:

Use your Android phone to scan the bar code and it will give you the information it contains. Sometimes the information is a URL to a website, product information or it can be instructions on how to use something.

You will start to see these QR Codes on websites, movie posters, ads, products and even Facebook. There are already many websites that have these codes for downloading Android apps.

You can scan the bar code to the right with your android phone for an example of how it works.

Which Android scanner do I use?

ZXing's Barcode Scanner is a free Android app that lets you scan bar codes just by focusing your camera on the bar code in real time. 

There are other scanning programs out there, but ZXing Barcode Scanner is the fastest. You can use Google Goggles as well but you have to actually take a picture of the bar code and let it scan a few times before it will tell you what it is.

Bit-tech has a great look at the latest USB standard USB 3!

The speeds are much faster and will be great for external hard drives.

http://www.bit-tech.net/hardware/2009/12/18/first-look/1 

Google Chrome is now available for Linux and Mac computers. 

Linux Download: http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/w00t.html
Mac Download:  http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/huzzah.html

For PC users Google Chrome Beta now has Extensions! There are around 300 extensions now available, including favorites like StumbleUpon, Google Translate, Ad-Block and more!

Also, Google chrome has favorites sync since the last beta. This is a must have browser! 

http://www.google.com/intl/en/landing/chrome/beta/

To keep up to date on Google Chrome news you can check out the Google Chrome blog: http://chrome.blogspot.com

Make sure you grab the latest drivers from nVidia! They were released on Nov 26, 2009.

This is a WHQL-certified driver for GeForce 6, 7, 8, 9, 100, and 200-series desktop GPUs and ION desktop GPUs.

New in Version 195.62:

• Adds GPU-acceleration for smoother online HD videos with the new Adobe Flash 10.1 beta.
• Adds support for GeForce GT 240.
• Adds support for OpenCL 1.0 (Open Computing Language) for all GeForce 8-series and later GPUs.
• Adds support for CUDA Toolkit 3.0 features and performance enhancements.
• Adds SLI and multi-GPU support for many top new gaming titles including Borderlands, Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, FIFA Soccer 10, and more.
• Includes numerous bug fixes including improved performance for Need for Speed: Shift. Refer to the release notes on the documentation tab for information about the key bug fixes in this release.