In a bid against e-Book competitors Apple and Amazon, Microsoft and Barnes & Noble have teamed up, however some of the details are rather scarce. What we do know is that a new subsidiary of B&N will include all of its Nook businesses as well as its education-focused College business, and that Microsoft will make a $300 million investment in the subsidiary, valuing the company at $1.7 billion in exchange for an approximate 17.6% equity stake. Not bad in terms of numbers, at all. This could allows B&N to further expand the Nook, and even sell off the whole thing to Microsoft if need be. Via: Microsoft
It’s been a smooth week of tech news. 
This is the most powerful GPU that Nvidia makes. It can run Crysis 2 on its maximum settings — all bells and whistles — at a creamy 58 FPS. And it contains dual-GPUs, 28nm Kepler architecture, 3,072 CUDA parallel processing cores and a fan that spins at 3000rpm. The GTX 690′s casing consists of trivalent chromium-plated aluminum, new magnesium alloy fan housing, nickel-plated fins and dual vapor chambers.
As the days go by, it seems that Alienware’s decision to stop making new versions of the popular M11x is more of a bad decision than before. Today, Origin, a company that sprouted from Alienware’s defected employees, announced their re-branded version of the Clevo 11-inch laptop that many companies are going to use for the basis of their 11.6-inch gaming laptops. This particular version with Origin’s badge on it includes the new Intel Ivy Bridge processors, a 2GB NVIDIA GT 650M GPU for some great gaming, Optimus graphics-switching technology and a battery rated for 6.5 hours of runtime. The laptop starts at $999 (compared with $1,099 for Maingear), except you’d better go to Origin’s site to find out what kind of specs you get for such a low price. At least it looks good and is pretty light.
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This is a real blow to Android, which Steve Wozniak (an Apple co-founder) was very much a fan of, and owned plenty of Android devices. It is taken into account that Steve probably has a Nokia Lumia 900, which he stated he was eager to acquire. Moving on towards his praise, he says that Windows Phone 7 is like you’re ”with a friend not a tool.” He goes on to say using Android is more of a chore, and there is “no contest” between Google’sOS and Windows Phone. And he’s not done yet; he bashes iOS: it is “more awkward” in its interactions than the Lumia phone containing Windows Phone 7. His only problem? Lack of more (and better) third-party apps for Microsoft’s mobile platform.
Remember those times where something strange happened, and then — boom? You had to re-launch Firefox, and all of your 20 tabs erupted into a volcano of tab terror. Well, no more. The new Firefox 13 beta (for those that still stick with the fox that Mozilla has created) disables this feature by default. There’s also speedier browsing in general, with plenty of changes on the developer side. Via: 
On a recent (and always delightful) episode of Charlie Rose, features the founder of Google X Sebastian Thrun, who is the second person that has publicly used Project Glass. In the episode, he takes a photo of Mr. Rose using the camera found in the glasses, which can be seen above. The TV cameras, on the outside also were able to see the battery pack of the glasses. He takes the photo by tapping the glasses, then submits it to Google+ by nodding twice. Unbelievable? Yes. See the source link for the full video, and if interested in the glasses rather the majority of the discussion focusing on higher education and future projects, skip to the 30 second mark.
Quickly, it can be said that Twitter has updated their official Twitter app for iOS and Android. The changes? Improvements to discover, search and notifications, allowing users to view “Activity” — described by the social network as a “stream of updates that shows which tweets are favorited or retweeted by the people you follow and which accounts those people follow or add to lists.” Very nice definition, indeed. It’s available as an update on both the App Store and Google Play Store for download right now. Your call, humans.
I, for one, would not mind using this bathroom. On the other hand, I’d have the crap scared out of me, presumably. Furthermore, I’ve said that also knowing that there are reinforcing beams under the glass, but still, you’re fifteen stories high. Also, the source link leads to an amazing design blog called Let Me Be Inspired. Good stuff. Via: 
