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Microsoft Surface

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Microsoft

Microsoft is getting ready to release its new tablet PC to the world. With an elegant design that is entirely built around Microsoft’s new OS release Windows 8.

What makes this more interesting is how this will work on the market considering Microsoft will be competing against many of its own partners. It really is kind of an odd idea to have Surface in competition with other devices that run Windows 8.

The impact of Surface will remain to be seen, more specifically the impact with other partners like Acer, who is one of Microsoft’s largest OEM partners. Either way Microsoft is moving forward with Surface and creating it’s own unique mark in the tablet hardware world.

I personally think this could be a solid move in the right direction but I can’t help but think about Microsoft Zune in this situation. Zune was an overall large failure for Microsoft when they tried to compete in the mobile music device world. I think that clearly much if not almost all of Surfaces’ success will depend on a good Windows 8 experience. Either way you look at it I still think it is refreshing to see some bold moves by Microsoft and hopefully they pay off in the long run.

Halo 4

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Halo 4Mankind’s greatest hero makes a return in this lastest installment of the Halo franchise.

Halo 4 is set about 5 years after the events of “Halo 3”. Master Chief and Cortana are back together and discover that an ancient evil is threatening to destroy all of mankind.

This release will mark the beginning of a new game series being named “The Reclaimer Saga”, which has the Masterchief dealing with personal demons and extreme challenges in a darker story deeply tied to Master Chief himself.

The Campaign promises to be thrilling, action packed and to have and overall faster pace as you face a new class of super advanced enemies known as the Prometheans.
New combat tactics and interactive story elements should make for a great campaign experience.

Multiplayer in Halo 4 revolve around the UNSC Infinity, the largest star ship in the UNSC fleet. From here, you will be able to build a custom Spartan super soldier and progress your multiplayer career which will be set firmly in Halo lore. As you continue on, certain choices you make in game will affect your appearance, weapons and role on the battlefield.The Story of the Infinity will eventually intersect with the Halo 4 campaign and then continue with a new episodic storyline named Spartan Ops.

Halo 4 will come with all the goodies we would come to expect from a new installment including new multiplayer modes,weapons and a new armor modification system.
Players will be able to customize their characters by tweaking combat enhancements that will aid their style of play.

With new visually stunning graphics and a new soundtrack from producer and composer Neil Davidge, you should really feel like your part of an epic journey.
Halo 4 Will be available in the U.S on November 6, 2012 and will come in two editions, Standard Edition for $59.99 and Limited Edition for $99.99.

Google Improves Maps

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Google

Google’s already uber detailed maps get an overhaul in areas of Europe, Africa and Asia. The areas of focus are updated maps of Croatia, Czech Republic, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Lesotho, Macau, Portugal, San Marino, Singapore and Vatican City.
The maps are said to be more detailed and precise such as coverage of National Heritage Areas, as well as more detailed coastlines and bodies of water.

Google has added more accurate names and locations, such as airports, universities and public squares, better and more clearly labeled ferry routes in many places.
Local roads are more accurately distinguished from highways, and multi-lingual names are available for a larger proportion of roads in many countries. Another update mentioned having maps available offline in Google Maps for Android.

I personally use Google Maps all of the time and I am always amazed at the level of detail achieved. I imagine it won’t be long before Google will allow you to virtually walk through any public building right from your home computer or smart phone.

How To Erase a Hard Drive

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So, you have finally decided to throw out, sell, or give away some of your old hard drives and you want to make sure what ever data you had stored on them is completely wiped out. Well, I’m glad you have made the smart decision to protect your sensitive information but there are a few things we need to go over before we wipe everything clean.openHarddrive

Please note that the process explained in this guide will completely erase your hard drive, unlike formatting which basically makes the data invisible but not completly gone. With formatting, data can actually be recovered by using special software.

So you want to nuke it all, let’s get started.

1. Backup anything stored on the drive that you want to keep, as you will not be able to recover it once this process is completed.

2. Download a program that is made for destroying data. The one I will mention in this guide is DBAN which is a free and powerful tool.

3. Following the instructions provided on the DBAN site, burn the iso file to a disc.
**Do not modify the file at all or it may corrupt boot disk creation.

4. Once you have created your boot media by buring the DBAN iso file to a disc, insert the disk into the computer that contains the hard drive you would like to erase.

5. Boot the system with the DBAN media, if this dosen’t seem to be working you may have to go into the settings of your BIOS. You can usually access your BIOS settings by pressing, esc, delete, F1 or F2 right when you power on your machine. Once inside the BIOS settings make sure to change your boot order to allow your system to read from your optical drives before your hard drives. Then be sure to properly save your BIOS settings before you exit.

6. After DBAN is running you can follow the on screen prompts to complete the cleaning process. I would recomend running DBAN in interactive mode which will allow you to change the method in which DBAN will erase data. In interactive mode you will see a menu at the bottom of the screen. Press “M” to change the method. Each method has a decription of it wipes a hard drive and the security level it has been given.

7. Choose a how you want to verify passes to enusre the proper removal of data.

8. Start the wipe process. Usually “F10” in the menu.

** Please note that it can take anywhere from just a few minutes to many hours to complete this process depending on the storage capacity and method used to wipe the drive.

If you have any other issues getting started please refer to the DBAN webite and navigate to their help section.

Diablo III Player Makes $10,000

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Diablo III

WishboneTheDog, managed to make more than $10,000 using the real money auction house in Blizzards’ Diablo III. He has even posted a Reddit AMA showcasing his work.
He claims that it’s all completely legit and earned his cash by diving into the games economics. He mentions that he has been enjoying playing around with item markets in other games such as Neopets for years and used many of the same techniques.

Making the move towards the use of real money in video games has been a controversial subject and it still remains to be seen how well these types of gaming features stand up to the test of time. Many players however have embraced the idea of spending hard earned cash for video game progression. Don’t forget about the many apps we use on our mobile devices that ask for cash in order to gain levels or grab special items to move past all of your friends and level up.

As long as gamers are not being punished for not wanting to participate with real money then I don’t see why these features can’t exist. We already spend a lot of money on our favorite games to begin with.